@ll-vlsi.ARPA:black@ll-micro (Jerry Glomph Black) (03/23/89)
In my regular monthly New England Telephone bill, received yesterday, was a small nondescript insert entitled: "To our customers who use NE Tel coin phones to make long distance calls". I'm not gonna type it in, but in effect, it says, starting in April, the LD carrier pertaining to a given NE Tel payphone will not necessarily be AT&T. It will be determined by the owner of the premises where the phone is installed. Thus the last safe haven of COCOT/AOS haters has fallen. It really makes me barf, the lawyers win again. They note in the flyer that you can get any carrier you wish on a NE Tel payphone by dialing the appropriate 10XXX (10288 for ATT, 10777 for Sprint, etc.), but I'll bet 98% of the phone-using public never heard of the 10XXX codes for home, business, or coin-phone use. I would guess that the guano will hit the proverbial fan when the bills start arriving in a few months, with those lovely AOS rates! "Thank you for using BumStench Communications!" Oh, well, it takes your attention away from the CPID/ACLU cacophony! Jerry G Black, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, 244 Wood St. C-120, Lexington MA 02173 Phone (617) 981-4721 Fax (617) 862-9057 black@micro@VLSI.LL.MIT.EDU