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From: davep@u.washington.edu (David Ptasnik)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: More on BBSs and Phone Rates
Message-ID: <15868@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 91 16:37:02 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 14, Message 2 of 7


floyd@ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson) writes:

>2)  Seems simple enough.  Anyone required to have a business license
>    is a business.

>The telephone industry is not in the business of regulating, defining,
>or otherwise limiting other commerce or business.

I don't think it's quite that simple.  We have a licensed and
incorporated day care in our home.  We have two hunting lines.  We do
not pay business rates, nor do I think we should.  The two lines are
more a convenience for our evening modem use.  We do not want to
advertise in the business section of the white pages, or in the yellow
pages.  The volume of calls generated by the business is trivial.

The standard I have most often heard is the standard of zoning.
Commercial zoning, business rates.  Residential zoning, res rates.  If
you have a business in your home, and want to advertise in the phone
books, business rates.  Even this last is becoming more muddy with the
advent of non-telco yellow pages.  They will generally accept an ad
from anyone old enought to write a check, and don't really care what
kind of lines you have.

>One other note: I often see references to the idea that BBS's use or
>require more resources than "normal" residential phones.  That just is
>not so.  Business use does in fact impact the network in a rather
>dramatic way (busy hours at 11AM and 1PM) which very much affects
>network design (and cost), but BBS operations don't cause a single
>digit worth of impact on any operational measurement applied to any
>network that I know of.

In an residential neighborhood, usage patterns are quite a bit
different.  I agree that most board usage is probably evening/night
usage.  A cluster of boards in a residential neighborhood could well
have an impact on the way a CO switch is designed, and the hardware it
requires.  It is certainly a usage intensive service, using much more
of the CO's availability than a standard res customer.  When I asked
telqi representatives why they charge business more, and why they used
to charge PBX users more than Key System users, they always said it
was a question of system usage.  The more you use a line, the more you
pay for it.  A 16 line BBS probably does more traffic in an evening
than 150 residential customers.

Don't get me wrong, I like BBS's and hope that they continue to get
low rates.  Most CO's are mixed commercial and residential, and the
occasional BBS probably doesn't have an impact.  I just think that the
telqi have a justifiable position.


davep@u.washington.edu