Glenn M Cooley <gmc@mvuxr.att.com> (03/15/90)
> BTW, is the network designed to prevent access to choke >lines from out-of-town if the choke line is very busy? Last week, I >tried for 2 hours to get Ticket Master (617-931-2000) from a phone in >Rochester NY (716-427-xxxx), and kept getting an ATT "Sorry... You got it. Since the long distance carriers (ATT...) have to pay for local TELCO access charges and tie up their capacity just to get a busy signal on the far end (and hence no revenue), if the far end number is getting a lot of calls and is busy the network software blocks all future calls on the local end automatically/regardless. So forget getting those Bruce tickets, unless you're local to the phone order handling company, your call isn't even getting close to having a equal shot at getting in. Your best bet is to call a friend in upstate Vermont etc. where nobody is likely to be calling in and hence no block is in effect in their LD hub. A related anecdote -- when something like MTV has a 800 number phone poll they only answer the phone 50 times (and only pay for 50 800# calls) of the 80,000 calls that come in. Therefore, the LD carrier loses money each day since the 50 call revenue is far less the thousands of local TELCO access charges. (Usually when you call an 800# and it is busy you call back and get through with the charge for the sucessful large enough to cover the unsuccessful ones.)