Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!vector!chinacat!telecom-gateway From: john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Do Modem Users Congest The Phone Network? Message-ID: Date: 30 Nov 89 04:25:08 GMT Sender: news@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 39 Approved: telecom-request@chinacat.lonestar.org X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 536, message 8 of 10 In article , jbw@bucsf.bu.edu (Joe Wells) writes: > In article <246@cfa.HARVARD.EDU> wyatt@cfa.HARVARD.EDU (Bill Wyatt) writes: > I don't want extra charges either, but in addition to the above > consideration, modem calls are not the same simply because they > usually last much longer than a voice call. Somewhere I read an > estimate that if only 20% of household had modems in regular use, > the phone system would be hoplessly bogged down. Even walking in in the middle of this discussion, it is apparent that the issue involves some phone company or another wanting to soak customers extra for using modems on the line. This has been popping up from time to time since modems have been in general use by the public. As anyone reading this knows, what noise goes over a line has no effect on how much it costs the telco to carry the call. So the other issue appears to be amount of use. This, too, is a crock. Presumably, someone with a modem might find himself logged into a service or bbs for hours at a time. What about families with teenagers who also park on the phone for hours at a time? Also, this is off-peak use. It would be very amazing if residential users could, during evening hours, present anywhere near the load that commercial customers do during business hours. Also, penalizing modem customers across the board is somewhat unfair. My home computer has four phone lines, two for UUCP and two for users. The UUCP lines have Telebit Trailblazers on them and the resultant "conversations" are very short, on the order of a couple of minutes at the most. Usage on these lines is probably somewhat less than if each served a house with school-aged children. Why should a premium be charged there? Remember, if the telco network can handle the business-day load, residential traffic is a walk in the park, no matter what they're up to. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !