cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (09/28/90)
A former neighbor of my parents (residence is in the Wilmington, Del. exchange) had so many calls to/from the Chester/Marcus Hook/Woodlyn area in Pa. that they used Holly Oak as a foreign exchange. Holly Oak (a nonpostal name in Delaware) is local to those Pa. points, but Wilmington is not. You should be welcome to examine the FX rates, but there may be quite a large volume of calls required to make it worthwhile compared to using normal long-distance. Along Foulk Road (state route 261 in Delaware & Pennsylvania), there is a case where points maybe only 3 miles apart are long distance. Just south of Silverside Road in Delaware, you are in 302-478, a Wilmington exchange. But just over the Pa. line, you are in 215-485 Marcus Hook. Then if you keep going north on Pa. 261 to U.S. 322, you are in 215-459 Chester Heights, a local call from Wilmington. (Between 302-478 and the Pa. border on Foulk Road, you are in 302-475 Holly Oak, which is local to both 215-459 and 215-485.) [Moderator's Note: Typically, an FX line only pays off if you keep the line loaded at least 12-15 hours per day. You are starting out with a charge of several dollars per month which has to be amortized during the month by the savings from toll charges to the desired place. At rates of only a few cents per call to nearby points, it takes a long time to use up the difference. And if all you do is use it up and do not actually come out ahead, why have the aggravation of maintaining an FX, with all the telco coordination involved, etc. PAT]
Roger Fajman <RAF@cu.nih.gov> (10/01/90)
> [Moderator's Note: Typically, an FX line only pays off if you keep the > line loaded at least 12-15 hours per day. Not so in my case. When we moved to our current house a couple of years ago, I checked on FX rates. Washington, DC, has a large local calling area that includes portions of Maryland and Northern Virginia. We live in Maryland, just outside the Metro Calling Area, as it is refered to. We can call DC and certain areas of Maryland as a local call, but not Northern Virginia. I was told by C&P Telephone customer service that we could get a Layhill number, instead of an Ashton number, for about $18 additional per month. The break even point for that is about three hours per month of calls to Northern Virginia. I didn't opt for the Layhill number, as we don't call Northern Virginia that much and most of the calls we do make there are reimbursed by someone else who wouldn't pay for the additional monthly charge. I haven't checked the costs more recently. [Moderator's Note: I guess the break even point would be a function of how much the line costs to begin with, i.e. how far it is extended to reach you. Years ago we had here in Chicago an FX from Manhattan, NY; that is, going off hook on it produced dial tone, etc from New York City. It was about $700 a month for the FX ... yet supposedly paid for itself because for twelve hours a night it was transmitting data to some office in New York. During the day, office staff used it to place local calls to New York instead of using the WATS lines. PAT]
levin@bbn.com (Joel B. Levin) (10/02/90)
The Moderator quotes a very high rate for an FX line between Chicago and New York. That is to be expected; the rates are based on mileage between two central offices. I had an FX line between two adjacent COs because from the next one over I could get unmeasured service to the Boston area; from mine the best I could get was Bay State service, which allowed one or two hours of calling within (then) 617 and a flat rate per additional minute. The break-even was around 30 hours / month; still a lot, but frequently I had to log into a machine at work all evening. I'll bet I never made up the installation charges, though. The monthly charges were based on several dollars per mile (this is in-state rates), more heavily weighted toward the first five miles, plus charges for two channel interface units that lived in the COs, plus the going rate for Metropolitan (unmeasured) service in the foreign exchange. Total back then, around $100/month. But installation was around $350 (!). JBL nets: levin@bbn.com | BBN Communications or: ...!bbn!levin | M/S 20/7A POTS: +1 617 873 3463 | 150 Cambridge Park Drive or: +1 603 880-1611 | Cambridge, MA 02140