cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (09/11/89)
Forwarded to telecom with permission of Charles Buckley <ceb@csli.stanford.edu> I wrote: Aug. 20, 1989 Baltimore (Maryland, U.S.A.) Sun, page 2A has an article... [regarding the enclave] Buesingen is the enclave, just outside the Swiss canton of Schaffhausen, and about a mile from the main part of West Germany. In PRACTICE (except for such things as phones and license plates), the enclave is Swiss. But the pay phones take German coins only, and calls to Schaffhausen are 9 digits and cost 8 times as much as "domestic" calls. And he replied: Well, that's not really accurate - they do have German post offices too, and can use the substantially lower German postal rates. Just last year, or was it two years ago, they got a Swiss Post office as well (8932? not sure any more), so they only pay national rates to send letters to the people they do business with mainly. An adjustment on the phone system is not far from coming, I'm sure, since a wave of liberalization is sweeping the PTT at the moment. I wrote: ... what does PTT stand for? And he replied (responding to my query about PTT at the end): First, it's just my opinion, based on several years of watching Swiss PTT politics concerning regulation, allowing of third party equipment installed on subscriber lines, relations with neighboring countries, etc. Second, calls from CH *into* Buesingen (sp?) are taxed as national calls, even from as far way as Zuerich - there's a special area code. This is true for all border regions. Third, it's normal that calls to nearby towns within Germany are nine digits. If you live in a pop. 2000 village, you most likely have a 4-digit area code and a 4-digit number. To call the neighboring one only right down the road, which, if its in a separate "Kreis" (county?), likely has its own 4-digit area code, you would dial 0+<area code>+<phone number> which is 9 digits. 9 digits is also the norm in CH, but there are fewer area codes (max 2 digits), so it's not so often a problem. Schaffhausen, being Swiss, has 5 or usually 6-digit numbers, so if you say it takes 9 digits to call SH, I would imagine that there's a special 2-digit area code for it on the German numbering scheme. Given the size of SH, that would be a pretty special concession already, since the shortest area codes in Germany are two digits, and these are only for the big cities (viz. Berlin 30, Munich 89). Otherwise, it's 11 or 12 digits going via the international protocol (004153+number). Fourth, it is also normal, even within Switzerland, to have the suburban rate be much higher than the city rate. I lived 400m from the Zuerich town border, and yet my phone bills (mostly for modem calls) to ZH were about 10 times higher than my colleagues who lived in ZH proper (same area code, too). My boss was nice enough to reimburse me, though. So, while I do believe that an adjustment will be coming, I think it will probably be to install Swiss phone boxes, and leave them on the German switch (the new electronic boxes (made by Hasler, I think) accept multiple monies w/no special hardware, and are made for use in many different countries. They already have some at the French train station in Basel). I think that this will solve the most irritating problem, that you can't use the same money for the coin box that you do for beer, or that works in the coin box down the street. Perhaps cross-border calls will get knocked down a rate classification or so as well, but I am not so certain of this. It would be, of course, be perfectly in the German character to insist to wait until they could manufacture their own Multi-Munz box (by Siemens or AEG, perhaps). :-} By the way, I believe I got the post code for Buesingen wrong. I did not bring any Swiss telephone book with me. However, the opening of the Swiss post office on "German sovereign territory" made the papers all over the country. Finally, "PTT" (I thought everyone knew this), is a quite European concept - it means Post, Telephon und Telegraf in Swiss-German, with the expected variation as you change the language. The idea is that of a single government monopoly agency which offers all these services, and usually banking as well (it's nice - you can always telephone at the post office for essentially local rates and pay money afterward - pay any bill, and cash a check, too. The clerks always know how to speak the local language - American post offices compare poorly :}. In Germany its called the Bundespost, or Post for short (but they stil do telephones, too). PTT is understood most everywhere, though.