jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) (11/29/89)
[Moderator's Note: The original message, noted by reference here, was
in the comp.unix news group. It was transferred here to promote
discussion of the topic by TELECOM Digest readers. PT]
In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes:
I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above
consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they
usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an
estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use,
the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down.
If 20% of households were simultaneously engaged in any kind of calls,
large sections of the phone system would be hopelessly bogged down. If
they were all long distance calls, it would be even worse. Modem use
isn't necessary for the calls to hurt phone system performance.
Joe Wells <jbw@bucsf.bu.edu>
jbw%bucsf.bu.edu@bu-it.bu.edu
...!harvard!bu-cs!bucsf!jbwkarl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) (11/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0534m08@chinacat.lonestar.org> jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes: >In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes: > I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above > consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they > usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an > estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use, > the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down. >If 20% of households were simultaneously engaged in any kind of calls, >large sections of the phone system would be hopelessly bogged down. If >they were all long distance calls, it would be even worse. Modem use >isn't necessary for the calls to hurt phone system performance. That may be true, but the contention that all modem users are pigs and sit online for hours while no one else does is ludicrous. Some modem users use the modem to get their information and then sign off. Some stay online. Some voice users use the phone to get their information and hang up. Some, like the teenagers I know, call sit and talk for literally HOURS at a time, every day! I have a few friends who have a teen, and they are on the phone more than I am with my modem - - yet I am a >heavy< modem user! There isn't a difference here. When the FCC surcharges all families with a teen in the house (on the premise that some teens will abuse the phone network with multi-hour long calls) then I will accept that modem users should be subjected to the same thing. Not until then. Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (11/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0534m08@chinacat.lonestar.org>, jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes: > In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes: > I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above > consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they > usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an > estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use, > the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down. Even walking in in the middle of this discussion, it is apparent that the issue involves some phone company or another wanting to soak customers extra for using modems on the line. This has been popping up from time to time since modems have been in general use by the public. As anyone reading this knows, what noise goes over a line has no effect on how much it costs the telco to carry the call. So the other issue appears to be amount of use. This, too, is a crock. Presumably, someone with a modem might find himself logged into a service or bbs for hours at a time. What about families with teenagers who also park on the phone for hours at a time? Also, this is off-peak use. It would be very amazing if residential users could, during evening hours, present anywhere near the load that commercial customers do during business hours. Also, penalizing modem customers across the board is somewhat unfair. My home computer has four phone lines, two for UUCP and two for users. The UUCP lines have Telebit Trailblazers on them and the resultant "conversations" are very short, on the order of a couple of minutes at the most. Usage on these lines is probably somewhat less than if each served a house with school-aged children. Why should a premium be charged there? Remember, if the telco network can handle the business-day load, residential traffic is a walk in the park, no matter what they're up to. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
gil@eddie.mit.edu (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (11/30/89)
In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes: > I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above > consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they > usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an > estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use, > the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down. I don't believe this is true anymore. Let's just take UUCP traffic as an example-- the modems being used are now becoming faster and cheaper (thanks Telebit, and others). Most of my modem traffic generally lasts less than a minute... I'm starting to see this as the rule rather than the exception lately. Exceptions to this rule are BBS users... Somehow, though, I can't see modem users connected to a BBS longer than 13-year-old Suzie is on the phone with her friend gossiping about person X, Y, and omega at school. :-) On a side note...has anyone in the NY Metro area seen the tariff proposal to the FCC about increasing the rate for residential phone service, and decreasing the discount after 11PM from 60% to 50%, and the discount after 9PM from 35% to 25%? Where would be the best place to write to protest this (PSC?)? If NYNEX saved all the money they spent in the useless tons of mass-mailings to attempt to persuade people to pay for wire maintenance, they wouldn't need a rate-increase or a discount-decrease! | Gil Kloepfer, Jr. | ICUS Software Systems | ...ames!limbic!gil
jim@eda.com (Jim Budler) (11/30/89)
jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes: } In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes: } I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above } consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they } usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an } estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use, } the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down. } If 20% of households were simultaneously engaged in any kind of calls, } large sections of the phone system would be hopelessly bogged down. If } they were all long distance calls, it would be even worse. Modem use } isn't necessary for the calls to hurt phone system performance. Both right. *Interactive* modem calls, as opposed to others like "ATM calls for data" modem calls or "grocery store sends day's data to central" can last hours. Teenagers talking on the phone can last hours. Either can cause the problem. Salesmen used to spend hours on a single call, FAX has reduced that. New technology, like the FAX, will eliminate some of the problem (ISDN?). The question is: Will new technology be in place, and in use, before the expansion of the current usage expansion (interactive modem sessions or teenagers) overburdens the current technology? People (companies?) such as Southwestern Bell (see alt.cousard) have attempted (stupidly?) to stem the tide by rate adjustments (prohibitive) and legislation. This is unrealistic. Modern usage of BBS, and I include Dow Jones News Service, Compuserve, Delphi (both the telecommunication and database services of the same name), GEnie, etc., are growing. Everyone who owns a PC (PC, Mac, Atari, etc) thinks about, or gets, a modem. Once they have them they will use them. The problem will exist. Legislation and rules cannot solve it, only technology. So again, the question is will the technology get there in time. We have time. Despite all the people reading this being modem users in one sense or another, the interactive usage is still under a 1 digit percentage TODAY. Jim Budler jim@eda.com ...!{decwrl,uunet}!eda!jim compuserve: 72415,1200 applelink: D4619 voice: +1 408 986-9585 fax: +1 408 748-1032
eli@robechq.UUCP ( Robec Corporate Office) (12/02/89)
Ohh, I'll probably get my head handed to me on this one, since I'm not
really sure what I'm talking about, but I thought the reasoning behind
added charges for modem usage were because modems take up greater
bandwidth, in fact the bandwidth of several voice calls. Is this
true?
****************************************************
Eli Levine Robec Distributors
rutgers!bpa!temvax!robechq!eli
****************************************************john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (12/03/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0545m06@chinacat.lonestar.org>, eli@robechq.UUCP (Robec Corporate Office) writes: > Ohh, I'll probably get my head handed to me on this one, since I'm not > really sure what I'm talking about, but I thought the reasoning behind > added charges for modem usage were because modems take up greater > bandwidth, in fact the bandwidth of several voice calls. Is this > true? Absolutely, positively not. Bandwidth is not dynamically allowcated by some analysis of the sonic material on the line, but is fixed by the telco in the transmission system involved. In digital transmission, if a voice channel is 64KB, then it's 64KB whether Aunt Millie is discussing recipies, your mother-in-law is yelling at you, or my Trailblazer is talking to another site. It would be a neat trick indeed if you could automatically get extra bandwidth out of a telephone connection on demand. The audio leased line department would go out of business in a hurry! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !
dave@uunet.uu.net (Dave Levenson) (12/03/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0545m06@chinacat.lonestar.org>, eli@robechq.UUCP (Robec Corporate Office) writes: > Ohh, I'll probably get my head handed to me on this one, since I'm not > really sure what I'm talking about, but I thought the reasoning behind > added charges for modem usage were because modems take up greater > bandwidth, in fact the bandwidth of several voice calls. Is this > true? No, it is not true. A modem using a dial-up voice-grade circuit uses the same bandwidth as any other call dialed-up over the same circuit. The added charges are based upon the presumption that average call duration is longer for modem users. The telco networks are engineered based upon assumptions about average number of calls and average call holding time per subscriber. Business voice users, residence voice users, and dial-up data users have all been characterized by the traffic engineering folk. They design their network according to the number of each in the area it will serve. When they build a central office, or an inter-office network, they engineer it with enough resources to provide a 1% blocking factor. That means that during the busiest hour of the busiest day of the week, one call out of 100 will be blocked for lack of some network resource. The economy-of-scale that is realized in this way is taken into account when rates are set. If the average useage per line changed significantly, then the rates need to change. The point recently made here, however, is that modem calls are getting shorter -- as modems get faster, and as more intelligent devices get placed behind them. A PC running UNIX and communicating with its netnews server over a UUCP link for a few minutes a day is quite different from a dumb terminal whose user logs into a netnews machine and reads the news for hours at a time. What is wrong with the telco's reasoning is categorizing all modems the same. It has also been pointed out here that some people talk to each other longer than some machines do. When I was in high school, it was not unusual for my teen-aged sisters to show line occupancy of about 36 ccs (that's 100% -- i.e. 3600 seconds per hour) of line capacity for parts of every evening. But at the time, a 'teen line' was available at a discount! Dave Levenson Voice: (201) 647 0900 Westmark, Inc. Internet: dave@westmark.uu.net Warren, NJ, USA UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave [The Man in the Mooney] AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave
russ@alliant.com (Russell McFatter) (12/05/89)
While debating the question of how much load modem users actually
create, I think that we've been missing a more important issue. Let
me ask you the question: Why do you suppose the phone companies are
really in favor of modem surcharges?? Does anyone really believe that
this is out of a well-meaning intent to avoid the kind of dial-network
overload that we only ever see on certain holiday afternoons and
during major disasters?
At least in THIS area, NYNEX seems to provide their own answer-- in
terms of incredibly expensive, prime-time regional television
advertisements telling you that you should be using the phone MORE.
Keep in touch with everyone you know! Give 'em a call right now!
This is backed by more TV and radio ads with themes such as "...you
should have FAXed it!" and "How could you have known that the store
was closed?? You should have called!!". Print ads do much of the
same. Is this the behavior you would expect of a utility that is
short of resources and wants to conserve them? (Contrast with an
electric utility, which nowadays as they near peak capacity would
never run an ad such as "Turn it way down and keep COOL this summer...
with enjoyable central air conditioning"!!)
Unfortunately, the BOC's tend to complain about the cost of providing
some service until such a time as the rate commission gives in to the
increase... and then they follow up with a marketing frenzy for the
same service. New England Telephone has complained for years about
not being allowed to charge for directory assistance, and they keep
reminding us how it costs them "millions" of dollars.
A friend of mine from New Mexico tells me that the story was the same
there, but in his area a 60-cent-per-call charge was approved, and now
they run advertisements telling you how much better it is to use
directory assistance than to actually look up the numbers yourself. I
suspect the same would be true for modem surcharges... "Don't sit
there waiting for YOUR news... Poll your news host every five
minutes!!" "Spend a good long time with your friendly local bulletin
board service... Only $8.60 an hour! (based on a ten-hour call at
lowest off-peak rates with maximum quantity discount and other
provisions for calls in your local service area for a limited time
only with rebate at participating locations.)
I suppose that part of the basis of our (still a monopoly) phone
network is to charge you something for (virtually) nothing: Tone
service (they could actually save a lot of money by getting everyone
to switch to tone and eliminate pulse dial)... Custom calling
services (that are all handled at no extra expense by the central
office's computer)... and the ubiquitous $8-$25 "service order
charge" that represents 60 seconds that an service representative
takes to punch your order for these into a computer. Haven't we had
enough of this already?
Russ McFatter russ@alliant.Alliant.COM
(std. disclaimers)