Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Isaac Rabinovitch Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Touchtone Fee Abolished in CA Message-ID: <9300@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 26 Jun 90 16:22:49 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: NetCom- The Bay Area's Public Access Unix System {408 241-9760} Lines: 25 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 456, Message 1 of 7 In <9235@accuvax.nwu.edu> john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: >How much do you suppose call-waiting, call forwarding, etc., ad >nauseum cost the telco to provide? (Hint: $0) Wait just a moment. Your assumption seems to be that since the current hardware can provide a service without additional operating cost, the service costs the nothing to provided. But the day-to-day costs aren't the only cost; there's also the cost of developing these extra features. True, once they went to the new digital technology, these extra feature were a minor addition, but they still required *some* development. Why should the telco spend even a little extra for a feature if they can't charge extra for providing it? By your argument, no software package for a personal computer should cost much more than $25: the cost of the diskettes, printing the manual, and packaging. Which ignores the cost of *developing* the package. It is true that if they just passed the extra cost of call waiting, etc., on to all customers, it'd add a trivial amount to the monthly bill. But I hardly need to explain why no private business works that way.