gabe@sirius.ctr.columbia.edu (Gabe Wiener) (10/13/90)
With all this talk about international calling, I had a few questions I wanted to ask. Here goes: 1. When a US customer makes a call overseas, does the foreign telco receive any money from the American carrier? And vice versa? 2. When AT&T was divested and other carriers started carrying int'l calls, did every telco around the world then have to accommodate a new set of incoming international trunks? 3. When an international call come IN to the U.S., which carrier carries the call from wherever the cable comes on shore (or the satellite downlink is located) to the customer who may be in another state? And now for a broader question: What is the exact structure of the international telephone system? When a US customer makes a call to some place off the beaten track, say Kuwait, Iraq, or Bhutan, how is the call being routed, generally speaking? Who decides on that routing? And another question: I was recently told that Bhutan was the most recent country to get telephone service. To that end, how does a country installing a national telephone system go about putting itself "online" with the rest of the world? Thanks, Gabe Wiener - Columbia Univ. gabe@ctr.columbia.edu gmw1@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu 72355.1226@compuserve.com