Telecom/1996-04-telecom-walnutcreek.iso/miscellaneous/zum.debate

Text File | 1989-08-01 | 25KB | 489 lines

 8-Dec-82 18:10:09-PST,24986;000000000001
Mail-from: ARPANET site USC-ECLC rcvd at 8-Dec-82 1804-PST
Date: Wednesday, 8 December 1982  18:01-PST
From: Jonathan Alan Solomon <JSol at USC-ECLC>
To:   telecom at usc-eclb
Subject: [KLH: Long debate on ZUM]
Phase-Of-The-Moon: LQ+1D.5H.22M.2S.

Date: Wednesday, 8 December 1982  15:10-PST
From: Ken Harrenstien <KLH at MIT-MC>
To:   jsol at USC-ECL
Re:   Long debate on ZUM

Perhaps you want to sanitize this stuff and re-distribute it to
TELECOM.  Note that SAIL bboards have the feature that people go in
and add their comments and stuff, so what comes out is a dialogue.

Date: 8 Dec 1982 1339-PDT
From: Julius Smith <JOS at SU-AI>
To:   rachel at PARC-MAXC, klh at MIT-MC

I thought you might be interested in this BBOARD item --- Julius

 02-Dec-82 MRC    08-Dec-82 PB    phone charges changes
To:   SU-BBOARDS at SU-AI, PCnet at MIT-MC
     I have just heard that GTE has filed to have one-minute rates for
local call, and that Pacific Telephone is about to do so.  This means
the end of the flat-rate for local (ZONE 1) calls phone service,
something of serious consequence for anybody who uses a terminal at home.
That local call to your favorite computer at Stanford will soon cost you
by the minute.  Apparently, it was done this way because the PUC feels it
would be more "equitable" to do this than merely to raise the cost of
flat rate service.

     At the current measured service rate, a local call costs 3 cents for
the first minute and 1 cent for each additional minute.  So, a nice hour
or so hack session would be "only" 62 cents.  An hour a day for a month
would be "only" $18.60.  For us "office in the home" types, an 8 hour
day in a typical 23-workday (assuming Saturday and Sunday off) month
would be yours at the new low price of "only" $114.08.

     This won't just affect those of us getting online to our mainframes
at work.  Those free public bulletin board systems (BBS's) won't be a
free call any more -- for anybody.  I run a BBS; if people stop calling
because of line charges I'll shut it down.  I'm sure many other BBS's
will die the same way.  Commercial systems such as CompuServe, Dow Jones,
and The Source will no longer be able to offer free local calls to their
facilities; in addition to their connect time charges there'll also be
line charges.

     This would mean the end of economical data service as we know it.
Gone will be the myriad of vendors offering databases or selling modems;
nobody will want to pay for data services if they can get the same
services more economically in more "traditional" ways.  Even the "PC net"
sort of applications will be impacted.  Who's going to download a file
from somebody's micro if it'd be (much) cheaper to pick up (or even mail)
a floppy?

     Not surprisingly, this is going to be presented in the propaganda
as a major "rate reduction" and "a victory" for consumers.  At least
one group of consumers in the Silicon Valley won't look at it that way.

PB - Well, this is another charge for use argument (like the one about SAIL)
charges, but I'll risk a position opposite my previous one anyway.  Namely,
even though I'm likely to get screwed by this, you gotta figure that people
who use terminals stay on the phone at least  an order of magnitude longer
than those who don't, and the poor regular slobs are paying for it, too.

ARK - There is a difference between getting rid of flat rate service and
timing local calls.  Timing local calls will only adversely affect people
with lifeline service (which the phone company hates anyway) and measured
service, but does not affect flat rate service (as this includes all local
calls regardless of duration).  Getting rid of flat rate service would
adversely affect a different group of people.

By the way, in New York City there is NO flat rate service and the minimum
service charge is about what the flat rate service costs here.  You are
charged by the "message unit" for all calls regardless of duration or
distance.

ME - The intention is to get rid of flat rate AND time local calls,
that is, to charge by the minute for every call.

jmc - Instead of just whining, it would be good if people would say what
they consider to be a fair system of charges.

ARK - I consider the current system to be reasonable.  At least we are all
living with it.

 04-Dec-82  0136    Chris Ryland <g.Ryland at SU-SCORE>     telephone charging by the minute
Mail-From: G.RYLAND created at  3-Dec-82 09:57:15
Date:  3 Dec 1982 0957-PST
From: Chris Ryland <g.Ryland at SU-SCORE>
Subject: telephone charging by the minute
To: bboard at SU-SCORE
Remailed-date:  4 Dec 1982 0137-PST
Remailed-from: Yonatan Malachi <CSD.MALACHI at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: other-bboards at SU-SCORE

I, for one, hate the idea of paying by the minute, but have to admit that
it's utterly fair: you're occupying circuits by the minute, and circuits
are what the phone company sells.
-------

HPM - Pay for use charges like this will accelerate the arrival of all
digital phone service, where you use time multiplexed equipment and pay by
the moved bit.  That would be much more efficient than the present
kludgery, using a channel designed for voice (which is digitally encoded
in the exchange, most likely, at a modem bit to PCM bit efficiency of 0.01
or worse).  Right now there is no penalty for this kind of massive waste,
so us bit pushers have no incentive work for a sensible technical
solution.  Bell Canada has been offering a service like this to businesses
for over a decade (and, except for the paying part, any hardwired user of
the Arpanet does the same thing).  A digital system could use the same
wires to your house that a regular phone uses.  The equipment at your
local exchange would be different - it would just accept bits.  Faster and
cheaper modems can be used.

jmc - The extreme estimates of the costs of using telephones at a cent
a minute are out of line, because you can rent private lines.  I believe
mine costs $22 per month, but the distance is short.  ARK's "stand pat"
approach probably won't fly; liberal appointees to the Public
Utilities Commission see (correctly) that the present situation is
mainly a subsidy of mainly business use by voice users, a smaller
proportion of which is business.

bh - Private lines wouldn't help me; I call 4 or 5 different computers.
(Not every computer is on the Arpanet you know.)  Only one of those is
a local call for me, but I wouldn't want to have a dedicated line AND
a regular line and have to rearrange cables all the time.

I don't see what digital service has to do with it.  The digital
multiplexing which is done for voice is done only between exchanges.
If they charge by the minute for local calls, they are charging within
an exchange, for which there is really nothing to multiplex.  Perhaps
they should distinguish calls which are local in the current billing sense
but which are inter-exchange from those which are truly intra-exchange,
and retain flat rate for those, and let us pay for Foreign Exchange
service for a different exchange within the same city.  But there are
problems with that too: FX service works by dedicating a line between
exchanges just for me all the time, whether I'm using it or not, so it
is MORE costly in real resources than flat rate service, so it ought to
cost more if we're being fair; also, for me the exchange I'd need a line
in is UCB's centrex, and it's not clear there is such a thing as a private
(non-centrex) service in that exchange.

Or do you mean, HPM, that there is a way to multiplex the wiring from one
crossbar to another within a single exchange?

In any event, my guess is that they will claim their cost for local calls
is for setting up the call, billing (a little recursion here), and
the distributed cost of maintenance of your local loop.

jmc - My guess is that there is considerable indeterminacy in allocating
costs among services that use the telephone system in different ways.
Therefore, there can be political bargaining on behalf of the computer
users.  Perhaps one should aim at a compromise of .5 cents per minute
of hold time.

HPM - I mean that digital users should connect to a TTY port on something
like a TIP at the local switching office; from which point all communication
would be by packet. There would be a short haul modem dedicated to you
at each end of the line running between your house and the local exchange,
unless the local exchange still had a mechanical crossbar, in which case
it might switch you, as an analog signal, to an available member of a
smaller (than one per subscriber) set of modems.  This does require a
serious re-organization, for which there has been very little incentive
thus far, since phone rates were so low.  I would think that some of
this could be done by reprogramming electronic exchanges.  If mother
Bell drags her feet doing something, the economic pressure will burst
the pipe somewhere else.  Already there are negotiations between CMU
and Warner cable in Pittsburgh to use spare bandwidth on the TV cable
for citywide digital service (for all those personal computers).  Tie
that in to Telenet or a (hypothetical) MCI or Satellite Business Systems
packet service, and the pressure on the Bell system to respond should be
overwhelming.  The net result should be increasing availability of
digital service, increasing volumes of digital traffic, and a decrease
of the costs of such traffic towards the actual costs of shipping the
bits.  Inefficient methods like the present "tie up an analog channel
the whole time, even when no traffic, and send ridiculously slowly
even when busy" will by rightly driven off the market.

 05-Dec-82  0905    Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>     Chuck Gotlieb's comments about phone costs
Date:  5 Dec 1982 0905-PST
From: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Chuck Gotlieb's comments about phone costs
To: ICL.Gotlieb at SU-SCORE, SU-BBoards at SU-SCORE
Postal-Address: 725 Mariposa Ave. #103; Mountain View, CA 94041
Phone: [phone] (Stanford); [phone] (residence)

     Chuck speaks with as much authority on this as he did in the flame
on sexism.  The rate structure change will ABOLISH flat-rate (a.k.a.
unlimited) calling.  The telephone operating companies did in fact
suggest a doubling or tripling of the flat-rate cost as an alternative
to abolishing it, but the PUC doesn't seem to think that would be
"equitable."

     A doubling or tripling of flat rate service costs is not of any
concern to me.  I'd gladly pay the additional ante, and would consider
it a victory in that I kept my flat rate service.

     HPM's suggestion is definitely worthwhile, but my point of view in
this is that of a user.  I receive a certain functionality out of the
telephone network at an economical cost; so economical, in fact, that it
would remain economical even if it were doubled or tripled.  A greater
than order of magnitude increase, on the other hand, would not be
economical.  I have no objection to going to digital phone service,
provided that I do not have to personally solve the technical problems
involved.

[rdg: This message references what I assume to be the message below which
 begins on line 227.]

-------

 05-Dec-82  1016    Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>     Authority on sexism...
Date:  5 Dec 1982 1016-PST
From: Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Authority on sexism...
To: bboards at SU-SCORE

     MRC, what did that have  to do with phones?   My being a male  at
Stanford, with contacts in the CSD  gives me more authority on  sexism
than most WOMEN.   Besides, it was  a pretty cheap  shot.  You can  do
better.  Try harder next time.
                Nice to hear from you,
                        Chuck

-------

YM - merged (l 160) we don't have here chuck's original msg.

 05-Dec-82  1111    Neil Rowe <CSD.ROWE at SU-SCORE>     paying by the minute for phones
Mail-From: CSD.ROWE created at  4-Dec-82 15:24:33
Date:  4 Dec 1982 1524-PST
From: Neil Rowe <CSD.ROWE at SU-SCORE>
Subject: paying by the minute for phones
To: bboard at SU-SCORE
Remailed-date:  5 Dec 1982 1110-PST
Remailed-from: Yonatan Malachi <CSD.MALACHI at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: other-bboards at SU-SCORE

Ryland's argument doesn't make sense.  The function of a telephone
company is to provide an electronic connection between two points.
Once this connection is established, minimal resources are needed
to maintain it.  Electrical connections don't "wear out" with use
as furniture does.
-------

 05-Dec-82  1111    Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>     Paying by the minute for phones...  (|
Mail-From: ICL.GOTLIEB created at  4-Dec-82 21:45:38
[rdg: ***** NOTE => ****]  Date:  4 Dec 1982 2145-PST
From: Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Paying by the minute for phones...  (|
To: bboard at SU-SCORE
Remailed-date:  5 Dec 1982 1112-PST
Remailed-from: Yonatan Malachi <CSD.MALACHI at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: other-bboards at SU-SCORE

If the average  phone call  is 3  minutes long,  and the  average
modem session is 30 minutes long, then those of us who use modems  are
crowding out 10 others.  Thus the phone company (TPC) is forced to add
additional lines.
     However, during off-peak hours, it would be fair for modem  users
to get a cheaper rate, since we would be using excess capacity.
     And guess what?  This is exactly what TPC is suggesting!  It is
a very fair proposition.  Expensive, but fair...

                    Chuck
P.S. TPC will also be supplying unlimited phone service just like now,
except it will cost 2-4 times as much.

P.P.S.  Until they change the rate structure, I'm going to stay logged in
24hrs per day, just so I can get my money's worth!

P.P.P.S.  From now on, perhaps we should start signifying flames about
phones with the symbol  (|  since it sort of looks like a trimline set
if you hold your terminal sideways (or if you hold your head sideways).
-------

 05-Dec-82  1112    Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>     More on phones and MRC...   :-)
Mail-From: ICL.GOTLIEB created at  5-Dec-82 10:21:50
Date:  5 Dec 1982 1021-PST
From: Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>
Subject: More on phones and MRC...   :-)
To: bboard at SU-SCORE
Remailed-date:  5 Dec 1982 1113-PST
Remailed-from: Yonatan Malachi <CSD.MALACHI at SU-SCORE>
Remailed-to: other-bboards at SU-SCORE

MRC, perhaps you can try to get rid of my ICL account since I don't
agree with your opinions about rate structures.
                            Chuck
-------

[rdg: merged from 206.
Note the time each message was sent -- the listing in this page is
chronological by arrival at SAIL, NOT by time originally sent.]

DON - Maybe BH should rent a dedicated line to SAIL and use the dialer to
call the other computers not on the ARPAnet.  (What's going to be done about
the dialer, anyway?  Pay the increased cost for unlimited service?  Start
charging for its use?)

 05-Dec-82  1343    hartwell@Shasta (SuNet)      Re: More on phones and MRC... :-)
Date: Sunday,  5 Dec 1982 13:45-PST
To: Chuck Gotlieb <ICL.GOTLIEB at SU-SCORE>
Cc: Mark Crispin <Admin.MRC at Score>,
       All Stanford Bulletin Boards <bboards at Shasta>
Subject: Re: More on phones and MRC... :-)
In-Reply-To: Your <bboard> article (Shasta.3335) of Sun Dec 5 11:15:54 1982
From: Steve Hartwell <hartwell at Shasta>

Now stop it, both of you.  Leave bitchfighting to LOTS.

[FY - merge]

Date:  5 Dec 1982 2010-PST
From: John B. Nagle <CSD.NAGLE at SU-SCORE>
Subject: Telephony rate structure
To: SU-BBOARDS at SU-SCORE

     PT&T's proposed change is part of a long-term plan of the Bell
System to make charges more dependent on holding time and less dependent
on distance.  This reflects real costs and their need to respond to
their competition (MCI, SPRINT, SBS, etc.).   Historically, local calling
has been subsidized by toll service.   Now that AT&T no longer has a
monopoly in that area, such subsidies are much less possible.  Attempts
by PT&T to charge a huge "access charge" for the ports at which the
other long-haul carriers connect have been rejected by the California
PUC.
     There are many implications of these facts which have not yet
been generally realized.  For example, AT&T operating companies
have traditionally installed a comfortable margin of central office
capacity for the number of phones installed, and have provided
extremely high levels of service.  In the entire history of the
Bell System, only twice has a full central office gone down for
more than thirty minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster.
(The two failures were the CO building in lower Manhattan destroyed
by fire in the mid 1970s, and the crash of an early #1 ESS computer
driven CO (Plaza-5, again in Manhattan) in the late sixties.  The
motivation for the expensive redundancy which makes this possible
was expressed in the Kingsbury Commitment, a little-known decision
made by Vail early in the Bell System's history.  Vail observed
that in all other countries the government ran the telephone system.
He decided that to both retain the Bell monopoly and avoid
nationalization, AT&T would maintain a very high level of service and
that this would be used as the major argument in fighting off
government intervention.
     Now that we are in the era of deregulation, this no longer holds.
I suspect that over time, in order to meet the prices of MCI and others,
we will see a degradation of the uptime in the Bell System.  Bear
in mind that most downtime occurs in outside plant (lines) and
most failures there are not due to internal equipment failure.  The
maintenance of the organization that can mobilize to meet major
line damage is very expensive.  MCI considers 1-week downtimes of
microwave repeaters acceptable, and does not install fully redundant
equipment in their long-haul system.  (This info is from a discussion
with a MCI rep last year, after SF-Detroit service was down for
an extended period).
     I hope that this background may be of some benefit to those
complaining about phone charges.  I have no connection with any
carrier, incidentally.

                    John Nagle

[DON - Merged from line 295]

ARK - I don't believe this crap about private customers subsidizing
business customers as the reason to get rid of flat rate service.  After
all flat rate service is only available to residential customers and all
business service is measured.

I do believe it is reasonable to charge any business phone line an "access
charge" if it receives a high ratio of incoming to outgoing calls.  For
example, all incoming calls could be billed in addition as outgoing local
calls (to pay for the circuit to the switching center).

BH - Don, nothing need be done about the dialer, which is already paying
per call, being as it is a business.  John, I don't believe the statistic
about only two outages over 1/2 hour.  For example, Cambridge, MA was
without telephone service for several hours the evening they installed the
ESS, which promptly crashed.  Hans, does your proposal mean that that
phone wouldn't be usable for voice?  That would be okay for us professionals
but not for the hobbyist who makes long but occasional data calls on the
same phone otherwise used for regular calls.  Personally I would feel okay
if local calls were metered only during business hours, as is, by the way,
now true even for business lines, if I am reading the front of the phone
book correctly.

HPM - Voice could be PCM modulated in the privacy of your own home, and
could then travel as any other digital traffic, except maybe
the timing constraints would be more stringent.  The cable TV version
probably would not be reliable for voice, but a telco service could
in principle switch your line over to a conventional mode when you weren't
bit pushing.  Though because of the extra switching needed a dual use
line should cost more than either a digital or a voice only connection.

 07-Dec-82  0903    CSD.SCHWARTZ at SU-SCORE (Michael Schwartz)     phone rates
Date:  7 Dec 1982 0904-PST
From: CSD.SCHWARTZ at SU-SCORE (Michael Schwartz)
Subject: phone rates
To: su-bboards at SU-SCORE


Does anyone know when the proposed change in rate structure might take effect?
Thanks
Mike
-------

 07-Dec-82  1114    Richard Treitel <CSL.VER.RJT at SU-SCORE>     more phone rates
Date:  7 Dec 1982 1115-PST
From: Richard Treitel <CSL.VER.RJT at SU-SCORE>
Subject: more phone rates
To: su-bboard at SU-SCORE
cc: CSL.VER.RJT at SU-SCORE

As one whose long-distance calls eat up more than 90% of my telephone bill, I
would have no objection at all to the proposed package of changes accompanying
divestiture IF and only if I could feel sure that the rise in local rates will
be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in long-distance rates.  But what I
suspect is far more likely, is that local rates will triple and long-distance
rates will  stay the same.   A very plausible explanation will be advanced for
this, of course, but explanations don't show on my bank balance.

                    - Richard
-------

[rdg - 388]
 07-Dec-82  1308    TVR      Phone rates
To:   SU-BBoards at SU-AI
By all means, i think we should fight this decision.  After all, most of
the long term modem use is off-peak hours.  Even if it were only charged
during the day, it's a bad precedence to set, as it could be very easy
to then make that 24 hours.  For the record, i don't mind paying a
doubling of basic line charges.

There is a concern for all of us, at least those who live in Palo Alto,
and probably in the town(?) of Stanford as well.  That is, the negotiations
going on concerning cable TV.  That, and possibly packet radio, are likely
to be the long term solutions to this problem.  I think we should begin
lobbying for networking on the cable system, and attempt to get the city
council to include that in its specifications for a cable system.  It's
do this soon, rather than trying to get it added on later.  Remember, cable
can provide much higher bandwidth that the telephone company is willing
to even think about in the next N years.

[FY - merge]

PB - I think Tovar's on the right track.  Lobbying the PUC would be a massive
effort, and even of dubious merit.  The only reasonable ( jmc won't agree i bet)
argument for cheap flat rate service is that the government ought to subsidize
the home computer hacker in the national interest, just as it subsidizes the
car driver, rural postal user, neighborhood tennis player, airplane owner, etc.
There is precedent for government acting ``in the common good.''  In this case,
the tax structure is intertwined with the subsidy, but if it really were a govt
subsidy, they'd raise the bucks by taxing phone use, no doubt, and then waste
50% in bureaucracy.
On the other hand, phone lines are too slow anyway, and the city council sounds
like they'd be more likely to listen to reason rather than power (or at least
be snowed).
(By the way, the correct grouping is ``home (computer hacker)'' not
``(home computer) hacker,'' just in case you were led astray.)

jmc - Indeed jmc doesn't agree.  The existence of some subsidies doesn't
justify another, and I don't even see a liberal argument for a home
computer subsidy.  I don't believe the people who say their use will be
stopped by $.60 per hour; your own time is worth much more than that to
you.  However, I do think that bargaining might reduce it - perhaps by
half.  Because so much of the cost of providing the telephone system is not
usage sensitive, almost any group of users can try to argue that they are
marginal and should pay only the additional cost of providing the service
they use - rather than paying average cost plus their share of subsidizing
those who get marginal rates or anyway don't pay average cost.  Presumably
some part of the cost of local service is proportional to hold times,
specifically the cost of the switches themselves, but I doubt if it's
much.  This leaves plenty of room for politics, and I have to confess
that aggrieved cries of imminent disaster for one's group are the
customary form of politics.  I just happen to find it somewhat disgusting
even when I belong to the group on whose behalf the whimpering is
taking place.

PB - Well, I basically actually agree with jmc.  I'm not pushing the subsidy
argument, just saying it's the only reasonable one.  I'd like to point out,
though, that I currently get paid around $3/hour, so .60 comes to around
20% of my pay.  JMC: are you willing to pay 20% of your pay for your phone
service?  Looked at another way, that probably comes to over 50% of my
*disposable* pay.  Are you willing ...mutatis mutandi?