telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (10/15/90)
AT&T has halted a popular service that provided American soldiers in Saudi Arabia with free calls home, as of this past Thursday. So many soldiers took AT&T up on the offer of free three-minute calls to the US that Saudi telephone administration officials complained that the barrage of 1000 calls an hour was straining their telephone network. AT&T had planned to allow the free calling service to continue for another week, but based on Saudi complaints discontinued it three days ago. AT&T spokesman Rick Wallerstein said, "They were absolutely insistent that we stop it immediatly." American military men and women placed more than 100,000 free calls since the company's 'USA Direct Military Service' was started the first week of October, Wallerstein said. He noted that the company did not expect to receive the volume of calls it did, which accounted for the massive network congestion problem in Saudi Arabia. Soldiers in Saudi Arabia will now pay $16.04 for a ten minute call to anywhere in the USA, but the specially-arranged version of USA Direct to assist the service members will be continued for ease in calling. Wallerstein said that AT&T's other assistance to the military, called 'Desert FAX' will continue until the end of the year. Under this program, Americans can send FAX messages to specific service members at no charge from facsimile machines located at AT&T phone stores and sixty other military bases in the United States. Families of armed forces members use the FAX service about 4000 times per day said Wallerstein. Patrick Townson