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From: tell@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Stephen Tell)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Billing and Answer Supervision
Message-ID: <5377@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 90 17:52:59 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 186, Message 5 of 9


In 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.

>Herman Silbiger

How can such a device work on a system where the PTT's counter runs at
different rates depending on distance, time of day, and so on?

I think this is a fundamental diference between the telephone and
other utilities that no one has explicitly mentioned yet.  The phone
company would have to provide you with a (rather large) database of
billing rates for various destinations and times for you to do your
own billing as a check.

On the other hand, one could easily buy a bunch of electric meters and
attach them to large appliances to itemize their own electric bill.
Steve Ciarcia built a device some years ago in _Byte_ to send a
certain number of pulses per kilowatt hour to a PC which counted them.
I would expect to be able to buy a similar device somewhere.  Indeed
the electric company could concievably sell such a service, with
remote telemetering meter modules to provide itemized billing.

With electric power, the maximum number of rates I can think of a
single customer having to contend with is peak/off-peak and low/high
power factor, for a total of four.  With telephone service, there are
a lot more different rates that might be charged and therefore must
keep track of in order to do your own billing.


Steve Tell					tell@wsmail.cs.unc.edu
CS Grad Student, UNC Chapel Hill.  Former chief engineer, Duke Union
Community Television, Durham, NC.