gast@cs.ucla.edu (David Gast) (04/06/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0121m05@vector.UUCP> pf@islington-terrace.csc.ti.com (Paul Fuqua) writes: > Subject: How big can a Local Dialing Area be? I think we went over this subject a few months ago. Unfortunately, it is not a very interesting question in itself. In theory, a local calling area could be all of a state, all of the country, or all of the world. One would just need the ``right'' tariff. A much more interesting question is what is the cheapest phone service. This question is also much more difficult to define because the cheapest phone service depends on the calling pattern of the individual subscriber, which clearly varies with the subscriber. The point is: There is an implicit if not explicit assumption that a large calling area is equated with lower cost. (Why else would it be an advantage instead of just a question for trivial pursuits?) This assumption is not necessarily true. It is only likely to be true if the individual subscriber makes a lot of calls to the outlying area of the local calling area. If GTE offered me a local calling area twice the size for $2 more per month, I would not take it because I do not make $2 worth of toll calls to the expanded area per month. Other people would probably would take it. In fact, I might even trade in some of my local calling area in exchange for a lower base rate. (Depends, of course, exactly what areas they want to take away. The ``Valley'', for example, is a local call me for me, but I never call there because I ``like for sure can't totally understand any rad, bitchin' thing'' they say. :-) ) David Gast gast@cs.ucla.edu {uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!{ucla-cs,cs.ucla.edu}!gast