Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!cynic!curt
From: curt@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca (Curt Sampson)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Big Brother charging for modem use?
Message-ID: <gNaiy2w163w@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 8 Mar 91 19:58:03 GMT
References: <1991Mar4.021434.761@ncsu.edu>
Organization: Mad Artists' Techno-Hangout, Vancouver, Canada
Lines: 28

hes@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Henry E. Schaffer) writes:

>   Therefore I claim that major portions of the cost of rendering me
> phone service do not change because of my usage pattern, and that other
> portions increase very slowly with my increased usage.  If I am 
> correct, then much of the "we consider you a business and therefore
> you must pay much higher rates" stuff is simply a way for the phone co.
> to collect extra money (and to provide a public relations rationale so
> that the general public will swallow this rationale.)

Apparently local residential calling is not as heavily subsidised in the
US as it is in Canada (Canada has some of the, if not the, cheapest
local phone rates in the world) but I belive that the situation is
similar.

Residental users are given a heavy subsidy to keep the cost of having a
phone low.  Currently, residential users in B.C. pay about $14 per month
for a phone and business users pay about $70 per month (or about $30 per
month for a restricted outgoing line).  B.C. Tel claims that the true
cost of a residental phone line, were it not subsidized by business and
long-distance charges, would be about $30-$35 per month.  The CRTC
(Canadian Radio-Television and Telephone Commission, which regulates the
phone monopoly) deems that this subsidy is a good thing.

cjs
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