telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (07/29/89)
On Friday, MCI Communications Corp. announced a new long distance billing arrangement in cooperation with VISA, U.S.A, Inc. Under this new arrangement, long distance phone callers will be able to use their VISA card and associated Pin to call anywhere on the MCI Network from any phone equipped with Equal Access. The caller will dial the call zero plus in the usual way, inserting a VISA card number and Pin when requested to 'enter the card number now'. Charges will be billed by VISA on a monthly basis, entitled (in most cases) VISA-Phone, or in a few cases as MCI. It is unclear to me at this time if prior arrangements are required with MCI to use VISA billing, or if those numbers are somehow now being installed right into a data base of acceptable cards/pins. Call MCI Customer Service for more information. Patrick Townson
U5434122@ucsvc.unimelb.edu.au (08/14/89)
Re: MCI's VISA billing for LD calls > It is unclear to me at this time if prior arrangements are required with > MCI to use VISA billing, or if those numbers are somehow now being installed > right into a data base of acceptable cards/pins. It is unlikely that prior arrangement would be necessary. In Australia we have card-phones. These telephones have magnetic stripe readers in them. To use the telephone you have to swipe your credit or ATM card and enter your PIN. If a cheque or savings account is selected, the money is debited from your account on completion of the call. Before presenting a dial tone, the telephone will often tell you how much money is in your account, so you know your limit. Call cost is displayed as the call progresses and at the end. Unfortunately these public telephones have a minimum charge of $1.20, so they are only useful for international or long distance calling. Throughout Australia local calling is flat-rate 21c per call, irrespective of time. The local calling area includes the whole metropolitan area of all major cities. Local calls from a public phone are 30c, so a cardphone is OK if you want to make 4 calls at once. Daniel