Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!decuac!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: unocss!fritz@uunet.uu.net (Tim Russell) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 35 Cent Payphones In Iowa Message-ID: Date: 21 Aug 89 01:23:10 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: U. of Nebraska at Omaha Lines: 33 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us optilink!jones@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Marvin Jones) writes: |In article , Miguel_Cruz@ub.cc.umich. |edu writes: |> Speaking of US West (somebody was...), I was just in their area this past |> week. I noticed that payphones cost $.35 for a local call. Is that something |> just peculiar to Iowa or is it a sweeping trend I'll have to deal with all |> the time soon? |What's wrong with this picture? |Iowa is served by SouthWestern Bell. I grew up there; my uncle worked for SW |Bell. I'm quite sure this hasn't changed in the past 10 yrs. :-) |Must have been a private pay phone ... which may account for the price, also. Well, sorry to say this, but I was just in Spirit Lake Iowa yesterday, and called back to work on a pay phone that wanted 35 cents and also had a VERY large logo marked "US West Telecommunications" on it. I used my calling card and got "Thank you for using MCI" after I entered my number, which surprised me - I had thought you ALWAYS got AT&T when using one of their calling cards, but this is evidently not the case. Regardless, the original claim is validated, and things have changed in the past 10 years (can you say "divestiture"? :-) As far as the 35 cents goes, pay phones in Omaha still only want a quarter, thankfully. It's probable that this trend is still confined to small towns. Tim Russell, Computer Operator | Internet: russell@zeus.unl.edu Campus Computing | Bitnet: russell@unoma1 University of Nebraska at Omaha | UUCP: uunet!zeus.unl.edu!russell