pkh%computer-science.nottingham.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk (Kevin Hopkins) (10/10/89)
John Higdon wrote: > ... The usual system of billing > calls elsewhere is with "metering pulses". Each pulse is worth so much > money. On a local call, the pulses go by very slowly and on an > international call the pulses come rapid-fire. This is the situation in the UK, though BT are giving a trial to a "sort of" itemised billing. On certain exchanges (I presume the newer System X ones) BT are sending customers itemised bills, but only for calls of 50p or over. Most residential line calls are under 50p each as they are made outside office hours. Meter units are 5.06p each and a unit gives you around 5 mins of a local call off-peak (I think). 50p for a local call is for a long call! Medium to long distance calls may go over the 50p. The only calls which will really show up on the bills are the ones to car phones (STD codes 0836 and 0860), to value added services (0898, 0055, 0066, 0077) and international calls. I don't know if BT charge for itemised billing (a possibility) and I think the facility is only available in a very small part of the country. P.S. Is there anyone in BT who can answer these questions. Not BT Research Martlesham but BT Phones. +--------------------------------------------+--------------------------------+ | K.Hopkins%cs.nott.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk | Kevin Hopkins, | | or ..!mcvax!ukc!nott-cs!K.Hopkins | Department of Computer Science,| | or in the UK: K.Hopkins@uk.ac.nott.cs | University of Nottingham, | | CHAT-LINE: +44 602 484848 x 3815 | Nottingham, ENGLAND, NG7 2RD | +--------------------------------------------+--------------------------------+
shri%ccs1@cs.umass.edu (H.Shrikumar{shri@ncst.in}) (10/14/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0440m09@vector.dallas.tx.us> K.Hopkins%computer-science.nottingham.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk writes: >X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 440, message 9 of 12 >John Higdon wrote: >> ... The usual system of billing >> calls elsewhere is with "metering pulses". Each pulse is worth so much >> money. On a local call, the pulses go by very slowly and on an >> international call the pulses come rapid-fire. In India too, where we have these metering pulses, most places dont not get itemized billing. However, the new electronic exchanges that are now being set up provide metering pulses only as a sort as "backward compatibility" to the local exchanges that demand it. (or perhaps, customer premises equipment, as in hotels). Such exchanges provide itemized billing on ISD/STD calls. BTW, these metering pulses cause havoc with dial-up data-comm. They are audible right through the subscribes phone set. We have spent a good amount of time with various combinations of modems and metering pulse rates. With STD calls (pulses every few seconds), MNP modems seem to work. Without MNP, the error rates UUCP sees are quite high. For International ISD calls, even MNP modems fail to sychronise consistently. The rather loud clicks seem to affect the AGC, one can hear the modem monitor speaker "breathe" after each pulse. Also interesting to note is that the Trailblazer Telebit modems also fail to synchronise their PEP protocol with pulses as fast as 1/sec. The pulses coming every second interferes with their "fast-turnaround" which is about the same rate. We finally had to persuade our local phone authorities to find ways of giving us a pulse-free connection. We were fortunate, but not all smaller organizations might have been so. Only then did the academic network in India begin to take off !! Is the experience similar in Europe ? shrikumar ( shri@ccs1.cs.umass.edu, shri@shakti.uu.net, shri@ncst.in )