But per min charges would be GREAT news for FTEL they would be flooded with calls for the 800 service.
Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding this.
I thought the local phone cos were wanting us to pay for the time we spend connected with a modem, regardless of the number called. It doesn't make sense to me (unless I'm missing something pretty fundamental) that the phone cos could maintain we're putting less strain on their systems when we call an 800 number than when we call any other number.
Personally, I'm not worried. They'll never get permission to charge us by the minute for non-ld calls. They'd be much more likely to be able to charge a higher monthly rate for lines used this way, and haven't had much luck along those lines either.
They tried that with BBSes with very limited success. They did manage to set a 4-line limit for residential rates for BBSes in the KC area. Above 4 lines it was supposed to be a business, and be charged business rates. I got around this (12-line BBS) by having them bury 50-pair in my yard with a dedicated interface for the BBS, and set up all the lines as "measured usage", which allows 100 outbound calls per line per month (BBSes rarely make outbound calls) at about half the business monthly rate.
Anyway, they've tried many times to get the destination side of the connection to pay more money and usually get defeated. Most local phone cos aren't even using a majority of their bandwidth, anyway. And an ISP or BBS increasing their line count is actually easier on the equipment. I'm told busy signals are harder on the equipment than connections are.
I've seen them try to get more money out of the origination side of the connection, but it hasn't worked out here yet, as far as I know. When I ordered a line for my son recently, though, they did ask if it was going to be used for a modem. I'll have to order another line and tell them it will be and see what happens.
In any event, though I suspect there's a chance they'll eventually be able to get us to pay more for lines that'll be used by modems (for the relatively short time we'll continue to use analog modems), I don't think for a nanosecond they'll be able to charge us connect time. |
