Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: adk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Andrew D Kailhofer)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: FCC Doing It Again
Message-ID: <2009@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 89 18:02:05 GMT
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Reply-To: Andrew D Kailhofer <adk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu>
Organization: Ameritech Applied Technologies
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 565, message 5 of 5


In article <253@zircon.UUCP> davidb@Pacer.UUCP (David Barts) writes:

[ stuff about the phone company rate-negotiators being evil and larcenous ]

>Fortunately, you can fight back.  If you are being charged more for a
>tone line, ask for a pulse line.  SURPRISE!  Unless you have an old
>pulse phone exchange, you still can use tone on the `pulse' line - the
>pulse-to-tone converter lets the DTMF tones through to the exchange.
>If the phone co. sends you an "Aha!  You're using tone on a pulse line
>so we'll charge you more!"  letter they can be taken to court.  The Federal
>Trade Commission has ruled that if anyone gives you a service that you
>haven't asked for, it's a FREE GIFT and you don't owe them a cent.

This is true and not true.  Let me first disclaim...  While I am an
Honest-To-Goodness employee of Ameritech Applied Technologies, I have
never been a Telephone-Company-Person.  I was hired for my UNIX skills
and that's what I do, *but* you can't work around here w/o soaking up
knowledge about the network.  That said, the facts as I know them...

Once upon a time, everything was pulse.  The step-by-step switches
whirred along nicely.  Then they started selling DTMF service to the
subscriber, requiring pulse-to-tone converters.  It was generally more
cost effective (at least here in Wisconsin) to wire an entire office
with this equipment than the individual subscriber, so this was what
was done.  This stuff persisted through the SXS, the Crossbar, and
most of the #1 and #1A ESSs.

The end result of all of this is that if you did not feel any twinge
of guilt at committing petty larceny against (what was at that time)
AT&T, you could pilfer DTMF service at no cost except (potential)
guilt.

Once digital switching started to get more and more widely propagated,
however, things changed.  With the advent of the AT&T #5ESS (and
presumbaly the DMS 10 & 100), the switch was able to recognize Pulse
or DTMF on its own instead of relying on some piece of hardware in the
network to perform conversion.  The end result--if you don't pay for
the service, you can't use it.

I cannot comment on whether or not I think that DTMF should cost less
than pulse, but consider the people still served by older switches who
should pay more for something that extra equipment is required to
provide...  Can a PSC (or would a BOC want their PSC) to require a
different billing reate for (potentially) each CO?  Yikes.


Andrew D. Kailhofer
MS-CS candidate/UW-Milwaukee (kailhofr@cvax.cs.uwm.edu)
Analyst--Network Systems/Ameritech Applied Technologies--WI
	(a07932@gus.ameritech.com) 414/678-7793