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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.news.sa
Subject: AT&T Rate Increase will affect your phone bill
Message-ID: <574@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 01:38:40 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.574
Posted: Sat Mar  1 01:38:40 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 2-Mar-86 00:27:32 EST
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 22

Hidden in the local newspaper I found an AT&T ad where they state
that they have filed to increase rates on long distance service.
Their proposal is to change the night/weekend discount from 60% to 55%.

The effect on us in Usenet-land is to raise the night rates by 12.5%.
Since most news is transferred at night, this raises all our (nonlocal)
phone bills by that amount.  My phone bill for data runs about $200/mo,
which means the new one would be $25 more (assuming all my calls
were at night rate, which they aren't).

I'd suggest writing or telegramming the FCC to request that they
disapprove the change.

It looks to me that with the ridiculous amount of "9 to 5" business
traffic, there's no way that the nighttime traffic can be loading
the network even to 50% of capacity (except special holiday seasons).
If this is true, it costs AT&T little or nothing to provide the
night service, since they have to be wired to provide day service
at a much higher activity level over the same wires.  Then why should
the FCC allow the price rise?
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa