Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 9:14:43 CST From: Rich Zellich Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: SouthWestern Bell Testing CLASS Services Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 266, Message 2 of 16 Lines: 40 From this morning's {St. Louis Post-Dispatch}: Columnist Susan Thomson, after a long discussion of how SWB is providing, through a third party, a pay-your-phone-bill-by-phone service (for big bucks - $3.95 for each charged phone bill under $50 & $4.70 for each one between $50 & $100. Wow! What a "service"! ... makes me want to run right to my phone and start giving money away :-(), goes on to discuss ongoing and future trials. Apparently, SWB has, for the past year, been testing Call Return, Call Blocker (pre-blocking of specific numbers), Call Cue (auto redial), Priority Call (special rings on incoming calls, even overriding busy), Selective Call Forwarding, and Call Trace. In Joplin, the first four services are a package within a package; each one $3/month alone, each add'l one $1.50 to a total of $7.50 for all four. Call Trace has an installation fee - $7.50 residential, $14.50 business -and costs $8 for the first call "traced" each month, and $2 for each subsequent one. Selective Call Forwarding is $3.30/month alone, or $2 with any of the other options. The article says "similar" prices are applicable in Chillicothe and Kirksville, where SWB is testing a combination of Call Return, Call Cue, and Call Trace. SWB plans to offer some form of this "call control" in St. Louis sometime next year, and eventually throughout it's five-state territory, but no decision has been made yet on what combination of options (gee guys, why not just offer _all_ of 'em?) will be offered where and at what prices. Caller ID is said to be planned for a startup test next month in Muscogee, OK. Someone other than SWB will offer the display units starting at $30, and SWB's price for the feature will be $6.50 residential and $8.50 business. SWB says it will offer per-call blocking free as a matter of course wherever it offers Caller ID (the article discusses _only_ per call blocking, but actually states just "will offer blocking free" with no explicit mention of default blocking). Block-blocking isn't mentioned, either.