Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: John Higdon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Free Local Phone Calls Message-ID: <2702@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 7 Jan 90 19:05:58 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 34 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 14, message 1 of 13 alonzo@microsoft.UUCP (Alonzo Gariepy) writes: > This also bears on the claim that a COCOT shouldn't charge ten cents > for 800 calls because they don't cost the owner anything. > Ridiculous!! The costs of a tollfree call are the same as a local call > to the owner: a monthly line cost and paying the lease on the phone. Not true. COCOT owners are charged for local calls the same as any other business. What the COCOT owner makes off local calls is the difference between what he charges and what the telco charges him. 800 calls, on the other hand, cost him nothing at all. Just as 950, local and intralata information, emergency, and repair service cost him absolutely nothing. One of the costs of doing business in the COCOT world is providing the facilities for those free calls. In the case of emergency and repair service, the PUC mandates that these calls be permitted without charge. If you consider public phones to be a necessity of life, how can you justify COCOTs being less of a service to the public than telco pay phones? One of the reasons I have an 800 number is to check my messages from anywhere in the state without being gouged by AOSs. Another is so that I don't have to have change handy. If the only phone in the area requires a dime that I don't have, I am not served. If COCOTs can't provide *at least* the level of service as the telco pay phones, they are extra baggage to society and should never have been allowed in the first place. I have no problem with creating a new industry as long as it doesn't displace a public service that has become traditional over past decades. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !