Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Chris Johnson Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Moving Information (was Re: FCC & Modem Charges) Message-ID: <3384@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 30 Jan 90 17:14:06 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: Chris Johnson Organization: Com Squared Systems, Mendota Heights, MN Lines: 55 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 66, message 1 of 8 >[Moderator's Note: I think the 'one hour holding time' could be >explained thus: many of us sit on line to do our work. For example, I >am connected to a local dialup here for two hours each day minimum >while working on the Digest. And what of the numerous people who spend >their entire lives on Compuserve CB (or it would seem like it! :) )... >Data is data is data.....and there are far more casual BBS users and >modem chatters out there than you realize, staying on line for an hour >or more at a time. What I can communicate vocally in fifteen seconds >takes a minute or more of interactive chat to type, transmit and read >does it not? PT] Then the obvious thing to do is to charge by actual usage of equipment. Ho! What an idea! If hold times longer than XX minutes tend to put a bigger demand on the equipment, then charge more for them. I wouldn't object to a flat rate for as many calls as I like as long as they are less than 30 minutes or something, and then pay an incremental fee for longer periods. Or maybe just a larger flat rate to have unlimited connect/hold times, or pay a lower monthly phone rate to have my calls limited to 15 minutes, after which they automatically disconnect me. Or based on time of day. As someone mentioned, there is hardly a lack of facilities between 0000 and 0600, which is when most modem usage probably takes place. Even Compuserve CB is probably busier then than it is earlier in the day. It does not make any sense nor is it fair to charge more to modem users just because some/many of them have long holding times. Have you ever seen one end of a couple of pining separated lovers make a phone call? Hours. I even knew one woman in college who would call her boyfriend when she went to bed, talk for an hour, then fall asleep, having a "holding time" of all night. Like 8 hours. Hell, when I call home and talk to my family, it's usually over an hour and sometimes my brother and I can go on for a couple hours. Maybe we should charge higher rates to people who call their parents? It makes about as much sense as classing all modem users together. This sounds like the kind of assinine intelligence the insurance industry uses. And this doesn't say a thing about the good arguments for reducing telephone rates, since most telephone companies are making obscene profits. As a regulated utility which should make profits adequate to insure continued investor support to the extent that such is necessary for expansion and rennovation of their facitilities, they need not be the record profit-making enterprises that other companies are. But in the "upper Midwest", the region consisting of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North and South Dakota, guess which companies are in the Top 10 most profitable corporation list, year after year? Uh huh -- all of the regulated utilties: Northwestern Bell, Northern States Power, etc. Something is definitely fishy with that situation. Chris Johnson DOMAIN: chris@c2s.mn.org Com Squared Systems, Inc. ATT: +1 612 452 9522 Mendota Heights, MN USA FAX: +1 612 452 3607