goldstein%delni.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein dtn226-7388) (08/22/88)
A few months ago, New England Telephone (and I'm sure other Bells)
set up conference bridges for "party line" calls. They advertised
them on late-night TV, and aimed at least one at teenagers. There
were other providers, such as Talkabout (must be Aussie -- the pun
is) too. They charged, around here, 20c for the first minute and
10c for each additional minute. Well, after the bills started
coming in, NET couldn't take the flack and their intra-LATA talk
lines ("dial 1-550-") were discontinued, or at least not advertised.
Lately, the TV has been jammed with more such ads, most promising
love and happiness and the girl of your dreams, etc., if you call
1-900-999-foo. These are rather like the discontinued intra-LATA
talklines, but with a notable difference: Most charge between
$.75 and $1.00 per MINUTE. (Last I heard, NET's service was a flat
$2/call, instead of per-minute billing. Still an order of magnitude
less, typically.)
What's the difference? So far as I can tell, the new ones are
operating under interstate tariffs, beyond the state DPU's ability
to regulate. Since the FCC has no qualms at all about interstaste
jurisdictional gouging (i.e., COCOTs, AOSs), these guys will
continue until public pressure blocks them. THe most likely way to
do that would be for the state regulators to prohibit telcos from
being their billing agents. (Virginia just passed a rule prohibiting
telcos from billing for AOSs, for instance.) In such a case, their
bills would become rather difficult to collect.
How many lonelyheart teenagers out there are going to be in for a rude
surprise when their folks open up a $200 phone bill?
This isn't deregulation, but there's no polite word for what it is.
fredscott@eddie.MIT.EDU (Scott Statton) (08/25/88)
In article <telecom-v08i0131m06@vector.UUCP> goldstein%delni.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein dtn226-7388) writes: > >A few months ago, New England Telephone (and I'm sure other Bells) >set up conference bridges for "party line" calls. They advertised >them on late-night TV, and aimed at least one at teenagers. There >were other providers, such as Talkabout (must be Aussie -- the pun >is) too. They charged, around here, 20c for the first minute and >10c for each additional minute. Well, after the bills started >coming in, NET couldn't take the flack and their intra-LATA talk >lines ("dial 1-550-") were discontinued, or at least not advertised. > While New England Telephone did have a party line of their own, most of the services were (and ARE) provided by independent companies. (I recently worked for one.) There is similar (identical!) service provided in New York, and neither NET nor NYT have any inclination of discontinuing these services. Some tidbits about the services: It is only reachable from WITHIN the LATA, long distance carriers aren't supposed to allow calls to terminate in 1-550 numbers. (Same thing with 1-540 in New York -- similar tarrif.) There MUST be a HUMAN moderator on duty 24 hours a day (That's what I did among other things), to (paraphrasing the tarrif) "Disconnect unruly or abusive callers" -- the products tend to be vertical market (and usually sexually oriented). I.E. there are 'gay chat lines' 'foot-fetishist lines' etc., ad nauseam. Every 10 minutes (5 minutes for teen-lines) you hear a "beep" tone. Each beep equals a buck! 900 service is a different kettle of fish altogether. There's about as many flavors of that as there are telcos. I.E. some are provided by AT&T, some are provided by the intra-LATA carrier, some are provided by OTHER carriers. (Similar to the way that 800 was divvied up). Another popular system is using 700 service under equal access. You see these advertised as 10xxx-1-700-nxx-xxxx. There, the IP is totally without tarrif, and his conscience is the only price setting agent. -- scott@eddie.mit.edu | I don't have any opinions.