[comp.dcom.telecom] A Letter From Australia

kendall@uunet.uu.net (kendall) (10/16/89)

Dear Pat:

Your moderated newsgroup is addicting, to say the least.  I have spent
the past four hours reading almost 200 articles of comp.dcom.telecom.
But, then what better use of my time would there be on this windy,
rainy Spring day? Anyway I understand a lot of the Chicago humour
(Hudson 2-2700, etc) having lived in St Joseph, Michigan 15 years ago.

By the way, I brought with me one of those great 2500 telephones.  In
Australia there is no touch-tone service, but fortunately the
university has a PABX which accepts tones locally, converting them to
dec. (pulses) for outside calls.  Also, everyone else in the
department has electronic warble ringers which contrast nicely with my
bell ringer.

Rich Zellich's story about a wrong number to Australia reminds me of
something that I did whilst ringing for international operator
assistance.  I was living Davis, California at the time.  I needed to
find out the telephone number of friends in Tasmania so I naively
dialled 011-6102-5551212 thinking that the domestic method of
directory assistance would generalise to overseas directory
assistance.  Instead I rang a private residence. From her irritated
explanation, I readily discerned that this was not the first wrong
number the lady had received from North America.

When I received the next month's Sprint 'phone bill I was very
surprised to see that I had been charged the directory service fee for
the call, not the usual per minute charge.  I suppose that it was a
bug in the software.  I reckon that might be useful to the lady if she
had any friends in North America.

Jon Kendall@diemen.cc.utas.au.oz

dave@uunet.uu.net (Dave Horsfall) (10/19/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0451m01@vector.dallas.tx.us>,
    kendall@diemen.utas.oz.au <Jon D. Kendall> writes:
|
| In Australia there is no touch-tone service....

Speak for yourself, Taswegian!  It's being introduced in many parts of
the mainland, but I can't speak for the funny little island to the
south of us.... :-)  :-)  :-)


Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU),  Alcatel STC Australia,  dave@stcns3.stc.oz.AU
dave%stcns3.stc.oz.AU@uunet.UU.NET,  ...munnari!stcns3.stc.oz.AU!dave