Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!sharkey!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: tneff%bfmny0@uunet.uu.net (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Proposal: An Answering Machine I'd Love to Have Message-ID: <5201@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 15 Mar 90 18:57:06 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Tom Neff Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 17 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 175, Message 9 of 9 In article <5155@accuvax.nwu.edu> Torsten Lif writes: >Even the fact that the callee does not answer his phone contains >information to the caller. Hey, the fact that a payphone is not in use (and thus available to the caller) conveys information. I think we should charge 'em for looking. :-) (Actually, this is a classic case of monopoly despotism. In a free market, the issue would be decided by consumer choice. If company A charges for every off-hook, then company B can try to knock their socks off in the marketplace by charging only for completed calls. I suspect that in the US, at least, it'd be a winning strategy.)