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From: levin@bbn.com (Joel B. Levin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: I'm AT&T and I'm Writing to Help You
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Date: 27 Sep 90 20:57:19 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 689, Message 11 of 11


 From: John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com>

>I was wondering how long it would take for someone to realize the
>absurdity of "calling plans". An associate of mine refers to this as
>"charging for a discount". AT&T, Sprint, MCI, and all the other IXCs
>aren't the only ones who play this game, but the LECs do it as well.

I agree with all your comments.  Such evaluation is why I use Sprint
Plus over AT&T's ROA.  The reasons are: most calls are short distance,
NH to MA, so the fixed per-minute rate of ROA represents small
savings; and a lot of the calls are during the day, when ROA diesn't
help.  The savings would have to exceed the monthly fee before I could
break even.  Sprint Plus has no "cover charge," only a "minimum" of
$8/month (my phone bills almost always exceed $50), and even during
the day there is some small discount; so there is no question of
breaking even; I always do better than straight Sprint or AT&T without
ROA.

On the other hand, for calling card calling, I always choose AT&T
because of the straight 10% discount across the board for using my
Universal card.

When each LD company comes out with a new plan, I have to look at it
carefully and decide if maybe it's time to switch.  So far I think I
am doing as well as I can.


JBL