Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!vector!telecom-request From: scott@eddie.MIT.EDU (Scott Statton) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 900 numbers and amazing bills Message-ID: Date: 25 Aug 88 12:52:44 GMT Sender: chip@vector.UUCP Reply-To: scott@eddie.MIT.EDU (Scott Statton) Lines: 40 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp (USENET Telecom Moderator) X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 8, issue 133, message 1 X-Submissions-To: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu (Mailing List Coordinator) X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp (USENET Telecom Moderator) In article goldstein%delni.DEC@decwrl.dec.com (Fred R. Goldstein dtn226-7388) writes: > >A few months ago, New England Telephone (and I'm sure other Bells) >set up conference bridges for "party line" calls. They advertised >them on late-night TV, and aimed at least one at teenagers. There >were other providers, such as Talkabout (must be Aussie -- the pun >is) too. They charged, around here, 20c for the first minute and >10c for each additional minute. Well, after the bills started >coming in, NET couldn't take the flack and their intra-LATA talk >lines ("dial 1-550-") were discontinued, or at least not advertised. > While New England Telephone did have a party line of their own, most of the services were (and ARE) provided by independent companies. (I recently worked for one.) There is similar (identical!) service provided in New York, and neither NET nor NYT have any inclination of discontinuing these services. Some tidbits about the services: It is only reachable from WITHIN the LATA, long distance carriers aren't supposed to allow calls to terminate in 1-550 numbers. (Same thing with 1-540 in New York -- similar tarrif.) There MUST be a HUMAN moderator on duty 24 hours a day (That's what I did among other things), to (paraphrasing the tarrif) "Disconnect unruly or abusive callers" -- the products tend to be vertical market (and usually sexually oriented). I.E. there are 'gay chat lines' 'foot-fetishist lines' etc., ad nauseam. Every 10 minutes (5 minutes for teen-lines) you hear a "beep" tone. Each beep equals a buck! 900 service is a different kettle of fish altogether. There's about as many flavors of that as there are telcos. I.E. some are provided by AT&T, some are provided by the intra-LATA carrier, some are provided by OTHER carriers. (Similar to the way that 800 was divvied up). Another popular system is using 700 service under equal access. You see these advertised as 10xxx-1-700-nxx-xxxx. There, the IP is totally without tarrif, and his conscience is the only price setting agent. -- scott@eddie.mit.edu | I don't have any opinions.