TELECOM Digest Sat, 15 Jan 94 08:54:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 32 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Unmetered Local Service (Jack Decker) Re: Unmetered Local Service (David J. Greenberger) Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? (John R. Grout) Re: User Interface From Hell (Martin McCormick) Re: Rate of Change (Stewart Fist) Re: Methods to Prevent Stalking and Phone Harrassment (Michael D. Sullivan) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Date: 14 Jan 1994 23:00:23 GMT Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net Reply-To: ao944@yfn.ysu.edu (Jack Decker) On Wed Jan 12 08:35:33 1994, lars@Eskimo.CPH.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) wrote: > A. Padgett Peterson (padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com) wrote: >>> everywhere I go I see regional carriers attempting to eliminate >>> "flat" and "unmetered" plans. As telecommuting and information >>> highway access begins to take hold, the elimination of unmetered >>> local service is the biggest threat to individual connectivity that I >>> can imagine. > About two years ago, I asked telecom readers for information about > local rates, because I had the same fear. My results indicated that > flat-rate local calling is readily available everywhere. Depends on what you mean by "flat-rate". If you mean that local calls are untimed, then you are probably correct. If, however, you mean that there is no charge for individual local calls, that is not the case in many areas. Ameritech in particular has tried to do away with no-charge local calls; they've been successful in Wisconsin and (I think) parts of Illinois. I think when we talk about this issue, there are a couple things to keep in mind: 1) Telephone CUSTOMERS do not want to be charged on a per-call or per-minute basis. This was actually put to a vote of the people in at least two states (Maine and Oregon, back in 1986 I believe), and in those states the people voted to ban mandatory measured service by a considerable margin. This was the case even though under the phone company proposal pending at the time, there would have been a cap on the maximum amount that could be charged for local calls (something like $19 as I recall). In at least those two states, there will be true flat rate service for the forseeable future. 2) If you consider the components of local telephone service, charging on a per call or per-minute basis generally doesn't make sense (except as an artificial means of raising revenue). The two major components involved in the provision of local telephone service are outside plant (the wires, cables, and terminal blocks and similar equipment that carry service to your home) and the central office switch. The costs for outside plant are totally unrelated to usage except in very rare circumstances. The wires and cables do not "wear out" faster through use. Most of the costs of maintaining outside plant is associated with replacement of aging facilities, repairing damaged equipment and cables, and upgrading equipment to keep up with growing populations. None of these occur with any greater frequency because a line is used more. From the standpoint of outside plant, whether a line is in use zero hours a day, 24 hours a day, or somewhere in between makes no difference whatsoever. In regard to central office equipment, the only time increased usage becomes a factor is when it is so high that extra call handling capacity must be added to the switch. Normally, telephone switches are designed to handle the maximum number of calls placed during peak calling periods and then some. Most residential customers do not place the majority of their calls during peak calling periods (that is, during the business day). For all practical purposes, once the central office switch has been installed, there are no additional costs to the phone company whether subscribers use their phones a lot or a little. Of course, there is the argument that the phone company can get by with installing a switch with lower capacity in the first place, if it can discourage phone usage. In my opinion, this sort of backward thinking is a disservice to customers. I can't imagine that in the grand scheme of things it costs the telco that much more to provide plenty of capacity right from the start, and it's a one-time cost that can be amortized over the life of the switch (which is at least ten to fifteen years, even with today's fast-changing technology). If anything, today's technology should make it possible to charge less for calls, especially local calls. For example, most interoffice trunking is now on fiber optic cables which provide far greater call capacity at less cost the the former system of interoffice copper cables. > In article dave_oshea@wiltel.com (Dave > O'Shea) writes: >> though I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see some alternative >> local loop providers selling a "flat-rate"-type service to people who >> are priced out of the market by the LEC's. > I rather doubt it; residential flat rate local calling is justified as > a giveaway of excess capacity that must be there in order to serve the > business community during "prime time". Alternate providers would tend > to establish rate structures that discourage residential customers so > that they don't have to build local plant to serve the low-volume > customers. There are a couple of reasons why I tend to think that may not happen. First, telcos are still regulated by state PUC's, and in at least some states alternative carriers will be required to serve all comers. For another thing, in some areas the current LEC's will be required to unbundle their local service offerings, charging separately for the use of outside plant (which will almost certainly be on an unmeasured basis) and for provision of dial tone from their switch. Alternate service providers in those states will be allowed to lease circuits (between the C.O. and the customer's premises) from telco on a month-to-month basis, and connect those to their own switches. In such areas there will be no disincintive to serve residential customers, since they won't have to build any outside plant. And it may well be that such alternate providers will choose to offer true flat-rate calling, at least between customers of their switch. Even in areas where the option to rent circuits from the telco doesn't exist, they may be able to get to residential customers via cable TV lines, small-cell wireless technology, or some other method that is usage insensitive. Another thing to keep in mind is that the heaviest users of residential phone service (other than teenagers) are personal computer users with modems. However, new technologies may be developed that effectively takes most of that traffic off of the phone wires. For example, there's no reason that full Usenet news feeds couldn't be transmitted direct to the home via small satellite dishes (or via a channel on the local cable TV system) ... the user would simply need a computer (or other "box") with enough intelligence to selectively retain only those newsgroups and articles of interest. Under such a system, the user would only need to make a call in order to transmit or recieve e-mail, or to upload Usenet news articles. I believe there is something similar to this available already, but it is priced out of reach of the home user (it's economical in some cases for those who want a full Usenet feed, however). But this cost could well drop as demand for access to the Internet rises. And beyond that, data communications are much more suitable for wireless technologies, since data users can tolerate small delays during periods of extreme congestion much more readily than voice users. So if telcos are figuring that they can make big bucks off of modem users if only they can charge for local calls, they might want to think further about that, since new technology could obsolete that particular use of the phone lines rather quickly if the need arises. >> One of the big reasons that long distance rates seem to "bottom out" >> somewhere in the 10 cents/minute rate, even for the most humongous >> customers is that the LD carriers have to pay most of that to the LEC >> for the local loop. Perhaps as the RBOCs are able to recoup something >> for those millions of unbillable hours of local connect time, this >> will ease up. > There is no inherent reason that a telco under rate cap (de)regulation > will lower the access charges charged to IXCs just because they obtain > a new revenue stream somewhere else. > On the other hand, a rational rate structure would charge the IXC > exactly the same as a local customer for what is essentially a local > call at each end of the long-distance call. A rational rate structure would charge all customers something remotely related to the actual costs associated with providing a particular service. Under a truly rational rate structure, your basic monthly bill would be much higher (as much as double what it is now, maybe even a bit more), but you'd have essentially free local calling within your home LATA (and maybe even adjacent LATA's), and very low cost calling to the rest of the country. Custom calling services would be provided free, or at very low cost (just enough to amortize any additional software costs required to provide those features). The problem with this is that most customers, especially residential customers (and especially senior citizens) would squawk like stuck pigs if their monthly phone rates doubled or tripled, even if you gave them free long distance calling to anywhere in the country. Actually, if local service were to be pretty much deregulated (and full competition allowed), I could conceivably see a day where you might pay, say, $35 - $40 per month and get free, unlimited local calling anywhere in your LATA. You'd then pay maybe about the same amount to a long distance company to get unlimited calling anywhere in the country (or at least within the continental U.S.). If you didn't have that much usage in a month, you'd have the option to be on a measured plan instead. I do not think this will happen until and unless there are some substantial changes in the current regulatory framework. Actually, about the only regulations that I would like to see (which we do NOT have now) would be ones that would prevent telcos from "bundling" service in such a way that you can only get circuits from them if you also get dial tone from them. >> If an employee is worth telecommuting, even a $4/hour connection >> charge is fairly minor in the face of, say, a $65,000 salary/benefits >> package. Even if you get charged that for eight hours a day, it's minor. >> Most employees who would best benefit from telecommuting are the ones >> who are well into long-distance calling areas. > Many telecommuters will have a local call to an internet carrier's > local Point Of Presence. Eight hours at $4/hour is $32 a day. This is > at least the equivalent of another hour's salary. Hardly negligible. I agree with this last point completely. I don't claim to be psychic, but I will predict that telecommuting will NEVER take off where there are per-minute charges involved. By that I mean it will never get to the point where anyone other than the top executives and maybe a very few other employees will be allowed to work outside the home. No company in their right mind would pay $32 a day for an employee to telecommute when that same employee could drive to work on under $5 worth of gas, and be physically present when needed. And keep in mind that it wouldn't be just the $4/hour in the example mentioned, there's also extra monthly charges for the extra phone lines required, plus equipment costs at both ends. It all adds up. >>> only advantage that I can see for the consumer would be that with >>> metered service, the subscriber would have a right to a call detail >>> listing the individual calls by called number, time, and duration. > Hahahaha hahaha ha ha ... he ho hummmm ... Here in Denmark, local > calls have been metered for many, many years -- by the pulse method. > Itemized billing is NOT available, and there would be an uproar from > office workers -- on privacy grounds -- if the telco were to start > itemizing bills. Itemized billing, like flat rate local calling -- is a > feature of the American telephone system; it has ended up that way > mostly by accident. Certainly there is no logic that says subscribers > have the right to an itemized bill. (There may, however, in many > jurisdictions be a PUC regulation saying so.) I am sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, I do not trust telco to do correct billing without having some way to check up on them. What do you folks do in Denmark when you get a bill that says you've used 100,000 units (meter pulses?) of service and you think it should be more like 1,000? Do you pay without protest? Do you refuse to pay and let telco disconnect your service for non-payment? Do you just assume that your telco so perfect that they never make mistakes? Or do you just figure that getting overbilled is part of the cost of having a phone? I'm sorry, but I don't like any of those options. Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The thing Jack Decker and other pro- ponents of flat rate billing seem to forget or ignore is that in most instances of measured billing, the majority of telephone subscribers actually pay LESS for service than with flat rate. A small minority of the users -- mainly people with telephone intensive lifestyles such as modem users -- pay more. Where flat rate service exists, the rate is invariably evened out in such a way that telco still makes money based on average usage which tends to run high on the curve due to modem (and similar heavy volume) users. In other words, if you want to average it out and set a 'flat rate', telco still won't be the loser, but the majority of the users will be. He mentions two areas where people voted against measured service but exactly the opposite was the case in Chicago in the middle 1980's when IBT dropped its 'metro calling plans' in favor of pay-as-you-use it. Yes, the modem users screamed bloody murder, but all sorts of telephone users other- wise were happy to see their bill go down a couple dollars monthly. One of the major consumer organizations here endorsed the new plan without reservations. Flat rate calling plans work much the same way as insurance actuarial tables: let a few people in a given category cause some major expenses and everyone pays. I can't say that I benefitted from measured service here (in fact I wound up paying more than before by quite a bit) but it is a lot fairer to the 99 percent of the public who does not use modems or stay on a phone connection for hours at a time each day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: d.greenberger@cornell.edu (David J. Greenberger) Subject: Re: Unmetered Local Service Reply-To: d.greenberger@cornell.edu Organization: Young Israel of Cornell Date: 14 Jan 94 23:30:38 GMT lars@Eskimo.CPH.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen) writes: > About two years ago, I asked telecom readers for information about > local rates, because I had the same fear. My results indicated that > flat-rate local calling is readily available everywhere. Not quite, if by flat-rate you mean no charge for local calls (as opposed to untimed service, carrying a per-call charge). As far as I know, it is not an option in New York City, although it is an option in other parts of New York State (such as Ithaca). David J. Greenberger (607) 256-2171 d.greenberger@cornell.edu ------------------------------ From: grout@sp17.csrd.uiuc.edu (John R. Grout) Subject: Re: How to Phone US 0800 Numbers From the UK? Reply-To: j-grout@uiuc.edu Organization: UIUC Center for Supercomputing Research and Development Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 21:44:25 GMT In atoscano@attmail.com (A Alan Toscano) writes: > In article MAARUF ALI, kcl.ac.uk> writes: >> Could someone please tell me how to phone US 0800 numbers from the UK? > Several previous replies suggested AT&T's USA Direct Service, but > stated that the service could only be used to call AT&T-serviced "800" > numbers. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY SUCH REQUIREMENT. > 2. You must be calling an "800" number which does not have a > geographic restriction against calls from the "gateway city" (in the > USA) which serves USA Direct traffic from the country you're calling > from. (This is unlikely, but possible. Most USA "800" numbers have no > such restriction.) Many nationwide USA "800" numbers used to have blackout areas in their service to avoid paying for calls from callers who were near _their_ gateway city (from which they were providing _their_ service) ... since current toll-switch technology can reroute such calls to cheaper incoming lines, this is probably not too common anymore ... and, one could assume that if a USA company (foolishly) listed a USA "800" number as the _only_ way to reach them, it would be reasonable to assume that it would be nationwide with no blackout areas ... so it would be reasonble to assume that one could reach them via USA Direct. However, nationwide USA "800" numbers may be sent to different places in different parts of the country (e.g., my insurance company's nationwide 800 number is sent to the nearest office) ... and many USA "800" numbers _do_ have geographic restrictions (e.g., a specific area code, a specific state, a specific group of states), and are unassigned (or even reassigned) in other parts of the USA. Several questions: 1. How would 800 Directory Assistance (which, for the benefit of readers outside North America, is 800-555-1212), handle calls coming through USA Direct? I can imagine an AT&T operator asking such a person "what area code are you calling from?", as they often do here, and the conversation taking a turn for the worse. 2. If a USA Direct caller thought they could reach the same office of a company multiple times through their USA "800" number, would they have any guarantee that each call would come through the same gateway city each time (so it would be routed to the same office each time)? At least, the post implies that there were different gateways when calling from different countries. John R. Grout j-grout@uiuc.edu Center for Supercomputing Research and Development Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ------------------------------ From: martin@datacomm.ucc.okstate.edu (Martin McCormick) Subject: Re: User Interface From Hell Organization: Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 00:39:17 GMT The discussion of human engineering regarding telecommunication systems reminds me of the beautifully-done report on the history of Unix which was posted, recently. The report detailed the development of Unix and the philosophy behind it. There was a wonderful point made about the fact that each part of Unix is a small block in the overall scheme of things and that nobody can predict how these blocks will need to be arranged to do a certain job so they must be designed according to certain standards of input, output, and control in order to make them most useful. Unfortunately, this idea is still pretty foreign to many people who really should know better. We have a situation in which the computer operating systems gaining the most popularity use a graphical user interface instead of the command line or text-based interface which was the standard user interface until recently. The GUI or graphical user interface has been tauted as the end-all and be-all to make computing accessible to the general public. The problem is that the GUI makes access by blind people very difficult. Actually, it wrecks any kind of nonstandard I/O because we no longer have a situation in which input and output are separated from the program. The beauty of Unix and, to a lesser degree, such systems as CPM and DOS is that the original developers were smart enough to know that they could never cover all possible applications so they produced a set of great tools which allowed others to do like Isac Newton and stand on the shoulders of giants. GUI's are neither good nor bad in and of themselves, but they are a serious barrier to blind computer users and anybody else who needs to do things differently. Rather than choosing which interface works best for us, the software companies have in their most finite wisdom created a hideously complex operating system whose manuals are thicker than many metropolitan telephone books and whose only hard and fast rule is that the rules are constantly changing. There are several companies working on interfaces to both the Microsoft and Apple graphical operating systems, but users who have shelled out hundreds of Dollars to buy these programs report that access is still difficult and problematic. The problem is that there isn't a large market for this sort of special software and the amount of time and skill needed to develop it means that somebody will need to be paid well for their time. I have no complaint about that as much as I feel that the software companies have created a bad problem in that it is not easy nor trivial to get nonstandard forms of I/O. The ideal solution would be for the operating system companies to design their interfaces with vectors or hooks which could be easily used as the input to special software which could treat the operating system as a black box and concentrate on providing whatever output or control is necessary for the user to manage the system. Finally, while I don't know what will happen in the future, I can almost promise what won't happen. The companies who produce the spread- sheets, word processors, etc that we use will not, nor should they be expected to, produce programs for blind users or other people who need nonstandard access. If something isn't done to solve this problem in a meaningful way, the information age will be only a dream for some. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK O.S.U. Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ Date: 14 Jan 94 21:09:51 EST From: Stewart Fist <100033.2145@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Rate of Change Quite frankly, I don't know whether Gordan Palameta is agreeing or disagreeing with me -- which is a bit of a let-down when you're trying to deflate a few overfed techno-egos! But his contribution about the ways we can now organise society better with computers is certainly true -- it's just that this is evolutionary, not revolutionary. What I was trying to say is that technological change is less disruptive, and *less* revolutionary these days, than it has been for most of the last hundred years -- while conventional wisdom (especially in the computer and communications industries) tries to make us believe that it is *more*. Technologists are not at the centre of the universe -- we are just one of the parts. Gordan Palameta writes: > The point is, when we consider the impact of airplanes, automobiles, > etc. from our perspective, we are really compressing eighty years of > history. A fair comparison with computers would require a similar > eighty-year perspective. But we can take an 80 year perspective. Before Henry Ford came along, motor cars and aircraft were toys for the technophiles and for the expert mechanics. There were eighty years of technological development, but only 20 years of social impact. It has been the same over the last eighty years with computers -- right from the days of Babbage and Pascal, if you want to stretch the word 'computer' that far. My estimate of 20 years really only covers the period when computers began to make an impact on the community, not when they were custom-made devices used for vote-counting, or calculating ballistics, or performing military decryption. The technophile sees the development of planes extending back to Kittyhawk, while the community sees aircraft-development only going back to the days of the Ford Triplane and ending with the Jumbo Jet nearly 30 years ago. What has happened to commercial aircraft since then is largely trivia from the customer's viewpoint. The jumbo jet flying today might be a much more sophisticated machine than the first 727 Jumbo twenty-five years ago, but from the customer's viewpoint, it is inferior if it doesn't have more leg room. The pilot may notice an improvement, but the passengers don't. This is just the point. In the area of computers and communications the technological complexity and ingeniuty being exhibited by the technologists, is not now being reflected in social impact -- or at least, it's being reflected in changes with are relatively minor when compared to those of the first decade or so of commercial PC production. PCs will soon be telephone peripherals, about as exciting as a modern-day telephone handset. The linkage between social change and improvements in technology has decline because we are moving from core effects, to the periphery. This is always the way with technologies -- which is why we must be careful with infinite extrapolations. The curve always flattens -- not because technological innovation lessens, but because it becomes less relevant. I was involved in making a television series on aircraft and airports around the world in 1966, and we visited the Concorde factory in France, then went on to Boeing in Seattle. The Boeing minders, at that time, were keen that we should concentrate on the swing-wing SST (SuperSonic Transport) -- which was the data superhighway of air- transport at the time. But they hardly mentioned the first Jumbo 747 that was rolling off the assembly line, because it was too mundane. So I totally agree with Gordan when he says: > When considering the impact of technology, we tend to focus too much > on things that are flashy and highly visible. A generation ago, > people figured that by now we'd be zipping around in rocket ships and > flying to work with our own personal jet packs. Few bothered to > predict simple things like fax machines. A good electronic mail system with national and international backbones (like the Internet, but extended to the wider community so everyone has access, as they do to the Postal Service) would be much more socially useful and productive than videophones and videoconfer- encing and fibre-to-the-home ... but where do we put our money? And e-mail technologies needed have been around for years -- it is just that e-mail is so cheap to implement, that it is impossible for the telecos to make a profit. So e-mail backbone services need to be public infrastructure, not commercial services run by telephone companies. The commercial operators have a conflict-of-profits: each one-cent e-mail message is one less 20-cent less phone or fax call. If we leave it to free-market enterprise and we'll never get a good service. I agree with most of Michael Jacobs remarks, except for: > Too often we forget that the history of our civilization is a > history of technological progress. Sure, technology is a major contributor -- but he is attempting to place technology at the centre of the universe again -- and equating "technology" with "progress". We are just one of the parts -- and a lot of our technologies are useless, counter-productive, ridiculously costly, or outright destructive. ------------------------------ From: mds@access.digex.net (Michael D. Sullivan) Subject: Re: Methods to Prevent Stalking and Phone Harrassment Date: 15 Jan 1994 01:23:39 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA nevin@cs.arizona.edu (Nevin Liber) writes: > A friend of mine (in Cook County, IL) is currently being stalked by a > mutual acquiantance of ours. This has been going on for over a year. > Unfortunately, the only evidence that my friend has is circumstantial > (eg: the phone calls temporarily stopped when the suspect went on > vacation, and resumed when the suspect returned back to IL). > Much of what the suspect is doing is in the way of harassing phone > calls, including calls from various payphones in the area where my > friend lives, calls at all hours of the day and night, calling pagers > and leaving my friend's phone number, etc. Contact the local prosecutor (e.g., state's attorney). Many states have a statute against harassment by wire. In New York, the crime is "aggravated harassment." When I was a law clerk for the NY DA's office many years ago, I worked on a case involving stalking in person and by telephone (250+ calls a day) by a jilted lesbian lover and the court entered an order prohibiting any attempt at telephone contact or personal contact based on the aggravated harassment statute. A secretary at my current law firm in DC was being stalked by an ex-husband, both in person and by telephone (at the office, at one point over 100 calls/hour), and we helped her get a court order prohibiting any calls or visits. When he continued, we got him thrown in jail. Michael D. Sullivan mds@access.digex.net avogadro@well.sf.ca.us Washington, D.C. 74160.1134@compuserve.com mikesullivan@bix.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #32 *****************************