Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: essachs@ihlpb.att.com (Edward S Sachs) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Measured Service: What Does It Cost? Message-ID: Date: 18 Oct 89 14:11:44 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 20 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 461, message 6 of 10 In article , goldstein@delni.enet. dec.com writes: > That's terribly > counterproductive and makes poor public policy. Typically 80% of > telco local cost is fixed, 20% usage-sensitive. What usage sensitive > pricing plan was like that? Usually it gets more than 50% of revenue > from usage. I think that this breakdown is not quite true, because the phone lines typically feed into concentrators at switching centers, which can provide service to only a fraction of the phones (typically 1/8 or 1/16 for residential lines) at a time. High usage lines need to be fed in at 1/2 (or even 1/1), resulting in higher equipment cost at the telco. Thus, the 'fixed' cost quoted above needs to include a component indicating the usage (% of time phone is in use). -- Ed Sachs AT&T Bell Laboratories, Naperville, IL att!ihlpb!essachs, e.s.sachs@att.com