mearle@pro-party.cts.com (Mark Earle) (02/02/90)
A Digest poster wondered about 1-700-555-4141. I dialed it from here (Southwestern Bell) and got: ..."thank you for choosing Metromedia. Your service is now activated". This implies that just by dialing that number, I now had Metromedia/LDS (note they *are* my default 1+ carrier on this line). I then tried 10288-1-700-555-4141. An AT&T recording (much nicer audio quality than LDS) thanked me for choosing AT&T Long Distance. Again, the implication was that I've somehow managed to select something new. I didn't try other 10xxx codes, but apparently HERE it at least is useful to find out which 10xxx does what. Hmmm, I may try it some Saturday, and see, if I don't get billed for each call, how many of the recent 10xxx in the Digest work from here. Also: Someone asked what different folks pay for basic services. Here's mine: (note-2 lines, residential, first listed, second unlisted, at no cost, as per tariff). These amounts are for *both* lines, this is how it comes on my bill). Monthly charge Jan 07 thru Feb 06 20.70 US tax .84 St/loc tax 1.96 for a total of 23.50. Special municipal charge .42 FCC approved customer line charge 7.00 911 service fee 1.00 (it notes that 911 is not yet avail in my area, even though it is!) The total, 28.12 is subject to sales tax, which is .83 (we have a 7.125% state sales tax) Aparently this is on top of the St/loc tax of 1.96 above. Weird, huh?! I enjoy telecom immensely -- guess I'm more than casually interested in the phone network/system...as a professional I do computer hardware/software, pc to mainframe level (75% hardware 10% software rest misc.) and am just getting into Unix/Xenix from a user/administrator viewpoint .. anyhow, keep up the good work and I'll keep on reading....... Mark Earle [Moderator's Note: Thank you for writing. Keep on reading, and writing. PT]