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From: msb@sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: The Great US Telephone Conspiracy
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Date: 8 Mar 91 07:17:00 GMT
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> I must admit that I find the public telephone debit cards to be
> convenient, and for tourists and other transients they are great.

And I must disagree with the last part.  One thing I know, as a
tourist, is that when I go to a new country I will be unfamiliar with
the charges for telephone use.  I also often have very little idea of
how many calls I will have to make, or how long I will be put on hold
then I make them.  Consequently, I have no idea of how many pounds,
yen, or francs I want to spend on a phone card!

So long as the country's non-card phones accept a reasonable range of
denominations (*), I will always prefer to get a suitable quantity of
coinage and use that.  If I don't spend it on phone calls, I can spend
it on something else.  I will use a phone card only if I know I am
likely to use it up -- e.g. on an expensive overseas call.

     (*) Something that is not the case in North America.  In the US,
     there is the excuse that there is no commonly circulating coin
     above 25 cents anyway.  But why don't Bell Canada pay phones
     take $1 coins?  Do other Canadian phone companies' take them yet?

If I was a tourist from another part of the country, *then* a phone
card might be all right, because I could use any leftover value later
 -- but then, I could also charge the call to my home number.

> [Moderator's Note: It is a little-known fact that 60-75 years ago,
> there was an unusual way of handling pay phone calls: the merchant
> slug, which you purchased from the clerk in the store for use in the
> pay stations ONLY in that store. ...]

Reminiscent of the token (jeton) system used a lot more recently than
that in France.  Are there still some of those phones in use there?


Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com