jbaltz@cunixe.cc.columbia.edu (Jerry B. Altzman) (09/26/90)
In article <12344@accuvax.nwu.edu> vic@cs.arizona.edu (Vicraj T. Thomas) writes: >If I was going to be in Japan for longer than the hour and a half at >the airport, I could have easily bought a KDD debit card and made all >the local calls I wanted. Are these anything like the cards that you can buy for the Belgian PTT? When I was in Benelux a few years ago (thank you USAF) I bought two of these beauties (one for 200BF, one for 1000BF) and used them to call my parents and my girlfriend (no messages in collect call names for me from Belgium :-) They were the greatest things -- no need to plug coins into the machines, reusable up to the total amount of the call, and to the US they (I think) gave a slight discount (I talked for 12 minutes Belgian daytime to my (then) girlfriend for about 90% of the 1000BF card). The Belgian PTT is good, but not great. In 1987, when I visited a satellite station somewhere (I don't remember the town name, and my notes from the trip are at home) they were moving *up* to IBM 308* systems from what appeared to be very old blinkenlights technology. Next week: Why I love and hate Bezeq (Israeli BellTel) jerry b. altzman 212 854 8058 jbaltz@columbia.edu jauus@cuvmb (bitnet) NEVIS::jbaltz (HEPNET) ...!rutgers!columbia!jbaltz (bang!)