[comp.dcom.telecom] British PhoneCard question

wmartin@st-louis-emh2.army.mil (Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI) (03/25/89)

What happens when the PhoneCard you are using runs out of credit in the midst
of a call? Are you given a "grace period" to let you pull out the old card
(and drop it on the floor of the booth! :-) and stick in a new one? Or is
your call summarily terminated? Could you continue by feeding in coins if
you don't have another charged-up PhoneCard?

Is this just magstripe encoding? I would think there would be a brisk trade
in underground magstripe card writers and illicitly-credited PhoneCards if
that is the case. Or is this a special, non-standard magstripe encoding or
format, so that magstripe equipment on the surplus or commercial market
won't write or read it?

Regards, Will Martin

pwt1%ukc.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk (03/30/89)

In article <telecom-v09i0106m02@vector.UUCP> decom@dgp.toronto.edu writes:
>In Britain, you pay by time for even local calls, so you tend to go
>through alot of coins.  And the coins are bigger and heavier as well.
>The phonecards save you the frustration of running out of coins during
>a call, the frustration of having your calls interrupted every minute
>by "more coins please" noises, and the frustration of sewing up holes in
>your pockets.

Almost all new BT coin-op phones are of the modern type that allow one
to accumulate a credit prior to and at any time time during a call thus
no longer are you prompted for coins every minute (as did the older
Pay-On-Answer types).

These phones take most British coins, including 50p and One Pound coins,
useful for long and international calls. Incidently, BT has recently
introduced a direct dial calling card service available from most payphones
and any touch tone compatable phone.

>The cards come in denominations ranging from the equivalent of $3 to about
>$100.  So you buy one which you know will last you a reasonable amount
>of time.   They are particularly useful for long distance calls, because
>you get the customer-dialled rate without feeding a continuous stream of
>coins into the phone.

The phone cards are not magnetic but rely on infra-red holograms printed
on the card. There is one hologram per unit and they are destroyed as the
units are consummed. There is no way a card can be recharged or prevented
from being erased (people have tried, painting the card with nail varnish
being one method used .. doesn't work). Mercury Communications have a range
of payphones in railway stations etc which take standard credit cards and
their own version of the pre-payed card. Their card does not seem to use
holograms or magnetic stripes. It stores credits as pounds and pence and
can resolve values exactly. Anyone know how this card works?

Britain is the world's largest user of holographic phonecards, but Japan
is by far the largest user of any type odf phone card, which are in their
case standard magnetic. I read that in japan they are used as currency,
so much so that the government there is investigating phone cards effect
on the economy!


Peter Thurston

boberg@june.cs.washington.edu (Bruce Oberg) (03/31/89)

The British Telecom PhoneCard is an interesting little gizmo. You buy
one for X pounds and the card is then "worth" X/10 ten pence pieces.
You insert it in a special PhoneCard phone and ten pence pieces are
"removed" from the card during your call. A display on the phone keeps
you informed of how much "money" is left. When you hang up, the card
is released by the phone.

As with other british phones, if you run out of money, your talk path
is disconnected then and there until you insert more. Unfortunately,
most PhoneCard phones do not accept coins (and usually don't have
lines waiting for them at the train station); you have to insert a new
card when yours runs out.

The way "money" is kept track of on the card is *not* through a
magstripe.  Special markings on the front of the card specify how much
the card was originally worth, and while you're using it, tiny tick
marks are made in the upper right corner of the front of the card.
I've always wondered how easy counterfeighting the cards would be;
I've never heard of anyone getting caught doing so.

Usually, ten pence lasts a couple of minutes on the phone. One time I
used my card to call back to the U.S. and it was real fun to watch the
ten pence pieces click down about one every five seconds.

bruce oberg