Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de (Matthias Urlichs) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Billing and Answer Supervision Message-ID: <5179@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 15 Mar 90 11:12:15 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG Lines: 42 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 174, Message 5 of 8 In comp.dcom.telecom, article <5087@accuvax.nwu.edu>, Jim Shankland writes: < In article <5016@accuvax.nwu.edu> David Lesher < writes: < >According to some friends I visited in Frankfurt, the telephone < >administration charges for off-hook time. They don't care if it is < >ringing, busy or hung at the switch. Not in Germany. Some other European contries, like Austria, have that problem. < That certainly wasn't the case when I was growing up in Munich. < Billing was done in "message units", which at the time cost 0.18 DM < each. A (completed) local call cost one message unit, regardless of < its length. Toll calls were charged in seconds per message unit, < rather than money per minute. The phone company (== post office) < started counting message units when the connection was established. Today, the unit is 0.23 DM. They recently dropped the general 1% rebate (for wrong connections and general non-reliability). Local calls now cost one unit per eight minutes (12 minutes, 18-8 o'clock). Most long-distance calls are 15 (38 4/7) seconds per unit -- about DM 55 (21), or US$ 30 (12), per hour. < Oh, yes: the monthly phone bill listed *only* the number of message < units consumed that month, and the corresponding total amount to pay; < there was no itemization of calls. You pretty much had to take their < word for it that you'd consumed that many message units; none of this, < "But sir/ma'am, I never called Bremerhaven last Thursday" stuff. The technology still isn't there. Almost everywhere, you can't even get touch tone dialling. But even where they have fairly modern technology, you can't get a list of the numbers dialled, this being justified by the magic word "privacy". Nonsense -- hell, it's _my_ phone line and bill! (The same reasoning is applied to the Telecom (new name for the wiry part of the Bundespost)-operated X.25 network.) Matthias Urlichs