Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 03 Jun 91 10:16:59 EDT From: "76012,300 Brad Hicks" <76012.300@compuserve.com> Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Homebrew Networking 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 419, Message 7 of 9 Lines: 33 > Is this illegal? ... Will they eventually get really p-o'ed at me? This exact question came up in the news less than a year ago, less than a hundred miles from me. A guy in central Missouri figured out a deal by which he could get lower intraLATA rates by hopscotching once, and set himself up to do it. Then he got REALLY creative: he put some kind of multiplexor on each end so that up to eight conversations could ride the same circuit, and "sold" access to the other seven pseudo-circuites, openly and publicly, to people in his part of the state. The savings for them was something like 30% or 50% off of standard intraLATA charges from SWBT. When they finally caught on to this (the mills of bureaucracy grind slowly), Southwestern Bell gave birth to a porcupine with all attendant sound effects, and hit the guy with about a dozen lawyers. If memory serves, the final settlement gave them the right to charge him enough extra to make it uneconomical, but not the right to recover damages. IMPORTANT NOTE: Almost all of the above is from dim memory. To get an accurate account, call the St. Louis Post-Disposal (excuse me, Post-Dispatch) or the St. Louis Riverfront Slimes (excuse me, Times) and ask them for a copy of their articles on the subject. (Front page stuff in both papers.) It's late, and I don't have a phone book handy; you can get both numbers from (314) 555-1212, of course. Or maybe somebody here knows the full story? [For direct replies, save me a lot of money and use jbhicks@mcimail.com; CI$ is just easier for me to hit via the company QuickMail system.]