Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 26 Apr 91 23:21:00 PST From: Dave Leibold Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Living in America Reply-to: dleibold@attmail.com 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 308, Message 1 of 6 Lines: 68 Some findings since coming down from the north a few weeks ago to the U.S. of A.... Installing a local line can be particularly expensive. Southern Bell will grab USD$142 to install a new line. Bell Canada would be hard pressed to charge a third of that for an install (definitely not on extra Toronto line I had installed). Southern Bell could be reached from Canada at 1 800 753.0710 for purposes of arranging new service; the live operator who came on (after running through a bunch of touch tone selections on the automated call director) asked how she could provide "excellent" service. Bodacious! Bill and Ted's "Excellent" BOC :-) After many questions (including default long distance carrier, which most Canadians wouldn't be too well versed on), plus a request for a "social security" number (they took the Canadian equivalent; the social insurance #), things were set for an install. Of course, they tried to go after me rather heavily to add on the Call Waiting service to all the other detailed charges. MCI seems to be working out quite well so far. The Customer Service is good, though there is a tendency to take many, many rings before getting an operator live. COCOTs are everywhere ... and fortunately so are Southern Bell's "real" payphones (so far). The COCOTs for the most part seem to allow access to the carriers, though 10288 (AT&T) is the only 10XXX code that seems to be accepted by these things. 950 and 800 number access can be done on at least some of them. The worst COCOTs will attempt to bill for 800 number Directory Assistance (on Southern Bell payphones, 1 800 555.1212 is free). The worst COCOT found thus far was outside a Burger Thing in Boca Raton. The name of the COCOT operator wasn't mentioned (just a phone number in NPA 305). A robot voice would actually come on and ask for $3 for calls to currently non-operational area codes like 909, 706, etc and a lesser fee for "directory assistance" to those area codes. It wouldn't have done much good to talk to the management anyway as they didn't have their act together enough to be able to sell any Whoppers at the time. Sometimes you gotta break the rules :-) A bizarre switching bug happens when 1 700 555.4141 is dialed on a Southern Bell payphone: a canned voice will come out and actually ask for 65c. Weird thing to happen for a carrier check (which I was able to do free from Detroit not too many months earlier). '00' will do quite nicely, though ... default carriers can range from AT&T to MCI, Sprint and Metromedia/ITT. COCOTs like ITI and Telesphere for their "carriers". As a final note, the PBS Nova program featuring a re-creation of the tracing of the German/KGB hacking ring was broadcast. Cliff Stoll played himself in the program, as well as the other participants in the trace, complete with location shots in Germany. Check your local PBS station or TV listings... David Leibold dleibold@attmail.com IMEx 89:480/126 or c/o The Super Continental BBS +1 407 731 0388 Dave Leibold - via IMEx node 89:681/1 Dave.Leibold@f126.n480.z89.onebdos.UUCP [Moderator's Note: Long-time Digest readers will recall that David Leibold corresponded with us regularly from Canada while he was living there. He submitted the Canadian area code and prefix tables available in the Telecom Archives (ftp from lcs.mit.edu). PAT]