Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: Matthias Urlichs <urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Billing and Answer Supervision
Message-ID: <5376@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 90 09:55:57 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 186, Message 4 of 9


In comp.dcom.telecom, article <5289@accuvax.nwu.edu>,
  hrs1@cbnewsi.ATT.COM (herman.r.silbiger) writes:
 
< For those subscribers to PTTs which only bill in message units who
< want to check on their bills, or perhaps know how much each call
< costs, the PTT will rent you a device with a counter.  This counter
< will give you the unit counts, and you can then check the bill at the
< end of the month.
 
One problem is that this counter is incremented by a high-frequency
beep (16 kHz?), so you can't run a "normal" modem on that line. (MNP
and/or PEP is OK.)

One might assume that 16 kHz should not disturb modems, which use
lower frequencies. Unfortunately, the PTT plays some dirty games with
the line to make sure that the beep is not propagated to the other
end.

The other problem is that this counter has absolutely zero legal
significance.  You say "Did not", PTT says "Did too", and that ends
the argument.

If there's a real problem with billing, it usually takes lots of phone
calls to convince them that something may indeed be wrong, and then
they will send you a crew of repairmen (one at a time) to test your
installation (consisting of calling the line test machine (which
pronounces the line OK), asking some non-pertinent questions, and
leaving) before they even think of searching for the bug at their
side. :-( And we have not even talked about trying to get part of your
money back. :-( :-(

< By the way, a non-trivial fraction of your cost of telephone service,
< both local area and inter-LATA, is due to the cost of billing.
 
This statement, unfortunately, makes sense.


Matthias Urlichs