lauren@vortex.UUCP (06/05/83)
Since the topic of the "alternate" carriers has been brought up, I thought I'd mention a fact about these services that is rarely discussed -- they will charge you for non-completed calls if the call attempt lasts longer than a certain "low" threshold of seconds. I believe that Sprint, for example, charges for all calls that last over 30 seconds from the time you finish dialing, regardless of whether or not the party you wished to reach ever answers. The other services operate on a similar basis. This situation may change when the alternate carriers get full access to the DDD network in the future, but right now they have no way to detect "answer supervision" and thusly must depend on simple timeouts. Note that this is yet another reason not to try use these services for UUCP -- you'll probably get charged for almost every call attempt your system makes, regardless of whether or not you ever got through to the distant system! For the time being at least, stick with Genuine Bell for your normal data calls, don't attempt to use the "popular" alternatives! --Lauren-- P.S. Unless the alternate carriers *really* get their act together in terms of transmission circuit quality, they will remain essentially useless for most data purposes in any case... --LW--