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From: johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: US Long Distance Billing Scheme is a Crock
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Date: 30 Jul 90 17:52:21 GMT
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In article <61563@bu.edu.bu.edu> is written:

>Practically every other country in the world I've been to bills long
>distance calls for a fixed unit price (about a nickel) for a variable
>unit of time (unlimited down to a second or so), instead of the US
>scheme whereby a fixed unit of time (a minute) is billed at a variable
>price (free up to several dollars).

>The former, most popular scheme makes it possible:
> [to do all sorts of swell stuff]

On the other hand, the US approach lets the telcos avoid having to
feed the entire tarriff structure into every end office, and to have
quantity discounts, extended area flat rate plans, and all sorts of
other stuff that would be impractical with an impulse-based scheme.
My long-distance carrier doesn't know the real cost for each call
until the end of the month when they compute the quantity discount
based on the total call volume from all seven of the lines (in four
separate locations in three states) on my home phone bill.

There's no doubt, sent-paid long distance calls from a pay phone are
sort of an orphan, and are, as far as I can tell, the last major area
of US telephony in which there is no competition at all -- intra-LATA
calls are handled by the local telco, inter-LATA calls by AT&T, and
that's that.  But I suspect that, given the relatively small fraction
of calls that are made from pay phones, the US scheme is not a bad
idea.

I also note that a major disadvantage of impulse systems is that until
recently, there has been no way whatsoever to get an itemized bill,
and if you believe that the impulse counter on your line is
overcharging you, no way to challenge the phone company's bill.

Does anyone have any actual data on the number of calls made from
payphones, and how many of them are local, how many sent-paid toll
calls, and how many charged elsewhere, e.g. calling card or collect?


Regards,

John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl