telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) (02/06/89)
Well, I got the Official Agreement in the mail over the weekend. There were a few 'minor points' I had not known about, and will discuss them in this message. Nothing is quite as simple as it seems. 1. SIGN UP FEE: Starlink gets $50 to sign up. I was advised to enclose a check for that amount when I returned my check-free authorization form. This is in addition to the $10/$25 per month maintainence fee. Telenet/PC Pursuit charges $30 to sign up for *new* users. If you are an existing user, the fee to open additional accounts between now and May is waived. As pointed out earlier, the '$4.50 per hour after 30 hours' charge on Telenet is only if you don't buy adequate bundles of time to begin with. You have from now until May to decide how many such accounts, or bundles of time are appropriate for your use. 2. CALL DETAIL: Starlink will post a message for you on their bulletin board system telling you the *total amount* to be charged to your account each month. Call detail costs $5 extra per request. I do not know if the call detail then comes in printed form, or simply as another email message. Telenet/PC Pursuit will provide call detail free of charge to all users who exceed their monthly allowance, be that 30, 60, 90 hours or whatever. It will come in printed form in the mail as a credit card debit advice prior to the charge going through. Call detail will not be available until April or May, however overtime won't be billed until May. Between now and then, users can adjust their account status as they see fit. 3. PASSWORD/ID CHANGES: Starlink charges $20 for each time this is done. Telenet/PC Pursuit does not charge for password/user id changes at the present time, according to a lady I spoke with in their Customer Service group on Sunday night at 10 PM. 4. ACCESS TO ADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNEL: Starlink will give two hours of free time each month to access Galaxy BBS; to read your account status and I assume conduct other business with them. After that, the charges are $2 per hour, plus $1/$1.50 for the obligitory connection via Starlink. In my chat a week ago, I was told the DDD lines into Galaxy will be discontinued soon, and all calls will have to come via Starlink. Telenet/PC Pursuit gives free access at all times to the Net Exchange. Admittedly, Net Exchange is not in the same league as Galaxy, but you would think the folks at Galaxy might figure out a method to accept collect calls via Starlink specifically to deal with Starlink user enquiries. That, or leave their 804 numbers open for calls via PC Pursuit or DDD. 5. MINIMUM USAGE PER CALL/GRACE PERIOD: Starlink has a five minute minimum connect time with an outdialer. According to the Agreement, if you connect to an outdialer and disconnect without connecting to a host computer, five minutes will be charged. Apparently the fact of the BBS or whatever you are calling being busy is not relevant. I do not know how, or if they plan to adjust the billing for out of order telco lines and out of order modems, etc. Telenet/PC Pursuit understands that there are frequent problems in connecting from an outdialer. Per their memo in mid-January, an automatic forgiveness of one minute will be applied across the board on all outdial connections. If the modem is out of order; the telco line is down; or the remote host is busy/having snit fits or whatever *IF YOU DISCONNECT WITHIN ONE MINUTE YOU WILL NOT BE CHARGED. This is reminiscent of the way Sprint/MCI handle things, lacking the call supervision ability of AT&T. 6. ABOUT THOSE TELCO CHARGES FROM THE OUTDIALER: Starlink was originally advertised saying that 'calls outside the local area' of each outdialer would be accepted and billed to your account at telco rates. I noted that in a conversation with a Tymnet sales rep several months ago, I was quoted 110 percent of telco; the surcharge covering billing administration, etc. David Tamkin questioned this in an article a few issues ago; and it is still unresolved. But the Agreement said a little bit more on the subject: Here is just the way it reads: "In some cities, there are surcharges imposed by the local telephone company called MESSAGE UNITS. *These charges are also billed to you.* You are responsible for all long distance charges made from the outdial port to a host computer." End of quote. No kidding! Any telco NOT charging message units now? So now we find we will not only pay for long distance (or one plus, or whatever) made from the outdials at 100-110 percent of telco rates, but we will also pay for local message units on local calls if it is a community which has them. If Tymnet was not able to convince the local telco that they were really using residence service (ha ha!) then the outdialers are business lines, subject to business rates. In Chicago, business telephones pay units on a minute by minute basis even for local calls. Units cost 4-5 cents each here. If a call goes to a suburb, then it may cost 3-5 units *per minute* -- or about 12-20 cents *per minute*. I can call via Reach Out America anywhere for 13 cents a minute without having data network charges on top of that!! Telenet/PC Pursuit makes no charge for calls from the outdialers. They are careful about where they let you call, but using Chicago as the example once again, a call from downtown to Oak Park, which is dialable through a PC Pursuit outdialer, is timed, with so many units per minute. This is perhaps the most damning aspect of the Starlink plan: I have to assume the agreement means what it says: Subscribers will pay for local unit charges in communities were they are charged. And whose word do we take on that: Tymnet of course. Not that they are dishonest; not by any means. But lines have been known to not get disconnected properly, and telcos have been known to incorrectly bill these things. My thinking now is that unless you are a *very, very casual user* of data networks, you would be best to stick with Telenet. And don't think for one minute that 'being able to make extended area calls via the outdialers' is going to be any bargain. Patrick Townson
tanner@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (02/08/89)
You ask if any communities DO NOT charge message units for business phone lines. At least here in the big city, you have a choice. Pay so much a month plus message units, or pay so much more a month and don't pay message units. If you didn't like the default option (or were just curious) you had to ask. The default here is to not pay message units (!). I was curious, and asked. Residence lines here do not have the option of paying message units. This fails to bother me. Dr. T. Andrews, Systems CompuData, Inc. DeLand --- ...!bikini.cis.ufl.edu!ki4pv!tanner ...!bpa!cdin-1!cdis-1!ki4pv!tanner or... {allegra killer gatech!uflorida decvax!ucf-cs}!ki4pv!tanner