Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Heath Roberts Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Touchtone Fee Abolished in CA Message-ID: <9301@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 27 Jun 90 03:04:45 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Heath Roberts Organization: NCSU Computing Center Lines: 55 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 2 of 7 In article <9235@accuvax.nwu.edu> John Higdon writes: >How much do you suppose call-waiting, call forwarding, etc., ad >nauseum cost the telco to provide? (Hint: $0) But you pay handsomely >every month for these services with nary a complaint. Oh, the telco >had to install the switch that could handle it, but since all modern >CO switches can now handle such things, eventually this cost will >become moot. This isn't quite true. Telephone companies have to pay quite a bit for the software (and sometimes hardware) to provide these advanced features. Software from NT often costs as much as the switch. And it's not a one-time expenditure. BNR releases four new BCS's per year. >And how about rural telephones? With certain exceptions, rural >customers pay about the same as their urban counterparts -- for >service that costs the telco many times the amount to provide. The utility fee is based in _average_ costs, not the "last unit" cost. Is it fair to charge more to people who happen to live farther from the telco's line concentrator? I should point out that this wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with how far away from the center of a given metropolitan area, only how far you were from a piece of equipment arbitrarily located by some engineer. This also brings up the point that telephone service is often considered a necessary utility; it may be worth it to society in general to make the service available to as many people as possible. >If anyone is going to protest TT charges on the basis of cost, he/she >must be consistent and object to Custom Calling charges as well. After >all, unless you are served out of a switch that can handle custom >calling intrinsically, your local telco must install adjunct tone >receivers to enable TT calling. ANY switch requires more tone receivers to support more TT lines. They're getting cheaper, so this is becoming a moot point. The current-break detector used for pulse-dial lines is still cheaper, though. Once again, the software required for custom calling features costs the telco quite a bit. Then again, TT dialing saves the telco money since wrong numbers are less common and dialing is faster, thereby reducing overhead (non-talk) time to complete a call. My point is simply this: providing custom calling services _does_ cost the telco more than Plain Old Telephone Service, primarily in software and support but, also in the higher-power processors and additional RAM required for the switch. And neither hardware nor software from NT or AT&T is cheap. Heath Roberts NCSU Computer and Technologies Theme Program heath@shumv1.ncsu.edu