and formed bigger companies
but the overall guideline, the thing that Judge Green had in mind when he ordered the breakup of the bell system was fairness.
Everybody should have equal access to long distance to long distance companies and all long distance companies should have equal access to long distance companies should have equal access to the customers.
Okay? Fair enough, right?
AT&T does have superior service.
And some things are fair.
And some things are fair, and some things are fair.
Now, demonstration number one.
We pick up, we pick up, we pick up our telephone, we pick up our telephone, and we dial the operator.
And hopefully we get the operator too.
I'll get a fair bit of static.
Yeah, telephone rolls, may I help you?
Uh, yes, hi. Is this New York Telephone?
Yes.
I was wondering if you could connect me to an MCI operator.
Mmm, we don't do that, we can't do that.
The only operator we affiliated with was AT&T.
So you can connect me to AT&T.
Yeah.
I thought you weren't affiliated with AT&T anymore.
Yeah, but we, you know, the long distance, they're, you know, we could only connect the customers to AT&T only.
Not MCI was French.
Uh, so the only company you can connect me with is AT&T.
Right.
Okay, well I'm not dealing with AT&T anymore, so I'll try something else.
Okay.
Uh, well you are now, she said.
Uh, uh, no, no.
You see, it's not fair, folks.
It's not fair.
They only connect you to one phone company and they're not affiliated with them.
And nobody anywhere that I have talked to has ever given me a straight explanation as to why they still do this.
Or why they don't connect you to other phone companies.
Okay.
That's old news.
That's something that a lot of people know about.
Something a bit more interesting.
Uh, let's, uh, let's connect ourselves to, oh, who shall we connect ourselves to?
How about, uh, a sprint operator?
Yeah, a sprint operator.
That sounds like a good idea.
First we'll get a sprint tone.
Now this is going on very live over the airwaves here, so we don't know for sure it's going to work out the way we think it's going to work out.
We'll get an operator after this tone, though.
Sprint long distance, may I help you?
Uh, yes.
Hi, is this the sprint operator?
Yes, it is.
Oh, great.
Uh, I was wondering if you could just answer a question for me.
I wanted to get in touch with the AT&T operator and I don't know how to do that on my phone.
Can you tell me how to dial that?
Oh, sure, Ken.
Um, you, you dial 10-28-80.
That's an access code.
Do you want to talk to an AT&T operator?
I just want to dial and get an AT&T operator, yeah.
Okay, that'll be 10-28-80.
You just hang up with me and just dial those six digits.
1-0-2-8-8-0.
1-0-2-8-8-0.
Right.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay, thank you.
You have a good night, sir.
You too.
Good night.
Bye-bye.
Wow.
What a sickeningly friendly operator that was.
But, uh, we did get the information that we wanted.
And, uh, now let's, uh, let's go to our other friends over at, uh, MCI.
Let's see if we can actually, uh, get through to them here.
I'm not sure if this number gives you an operator.
It might just give you a tone.
And it certainly does give you a tone.
And then it goes away.
I, I, I think we'll be getting an operator.
MCI, operator 258, can I help you?
Uh, yes, hi, is this MCI?
Yes, sir, it is.
Hi, I'm trying to, uh, to figure out how I dial to get my AT&T operator.
Can you tell me what numbers to dial to do that?
Uh, you would need to dial 1-0-2-8-8-0.
1-0-2-8-8-0.
Yes, sir.
Okay, thank you very much.
So I made a plastic call for you, sir?
No, I was just, I was just trying to get information.
Thank you very much.
Use an MCI.
Thank you.
Well, of course I didn't use MCI.
I just talked to you for a little while, but I guess that's good enough.
Okay, so, Sprint, MCI, they give you the information.
No question.
No question.
No hassle.
Well, let's do this.
Let's get that friendly New York telephone operator again and, uh, have her connect us
to the only long-distance company she can connect us to, which is AT&T.
Oh, what is it with this phone system?
It always hangs up.
Let's try it one more time.
It did it again.
It did it again.
This is incredible.
I can be on here all night long trying to make a phone call and, uh, we'll hang up each
time.
Okay, we got it.
Okay, we got it.
Can you hear a camera?
Uh, yes.
Can you connect me to AT&T, please?
I can.
Have a good night.
You too.
And the famous recording.
One moment for an operator who can assist you.
Thank you.
Well, AT&T always picked up fast.
AT&T, how can we help you?
Uh, yes.
Hi.
AT&T operator?
Yes, sir.
Hi.
I was wondering if you could help me.
I'm trying to figure out what numbers to dial to get the MCI operator.
All right.
Just a moment, please.
Thank you.
We're going to dial one, zero, two, eight, eight.
One, zero, two, eight, eight?
Yes.
Then zero, air code and number.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
You realize he just told us how to get an AT&T operator.
He did not tell us how to get an MCI operator.
Okay.
Maybe he's had a bad day.
Maybe he's, you know, not with it.
We should do those drug tests a little more often than, uh, a little more often AT&T.
Let's, uh, let's try it one more time.
Your telephone, Thomas, can I help you?
Yes.
Can I have AT&T, please?
One moment for an operator who can assist you.
Thank you.
Boy, she doesn't sound good.
Email you out.
We are everyone.
Hello?
I miss you.
You know, AT&T is not earning high marks here tonight.
AT&T operator, how can we help you?
Yes, hi. Is this the AT&T operator?
It is.
Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me how I could reach a sprint operator.
Oh, I don't know. I have no idea how to reach a sprint.
What did your local operator say?
Well, my local operator can only connect me to you.
Okay, what you do is you dial your zero operator back and ask for the supervisor,
and she should have the routing for all the long-distance companies.
Okay, thank you very much.
You're welcome, Summer.
And you see, we get the royal runaround if we try finding out about other phone companies.
That's how it works. That is equal access. That is fairness.
Add to that the fact that AT&T has been around for so much longer than the other companies,
and you'll see that they do have a rather unfair advantage.
So think about that.
Next time you say, AT&T is so much better than all these upstart companies,
well, think about what they have to deal with.
We're not talking about rip-off companies that charge you four times the amount of a phone call
and then pocket the difference.
We're talking about competitors, competing companies in a capitalistic society.
Okay, enough said about that.
Let's get to New York Telephone.
New York Telephone and their rate increase.
Yes, I believe they received a rate increase of about $250 million.
They had asked for something on the order of $850 million,
and obviously that's a good site less than what they wanted.
However, it is going to be affecting a good many of us.
Just about everybody's rates will be going up in some form.
And a lot of different services are being cut, eliminated altogether.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, another important item.
No longer will you be able to call information
and get a couple of free calls to information every month.
No more.
They're all gone.
And every single call to information is going to cost you something on the order of $0.48.
So, you must be very, very careful.
There's no reason to call information from your home if you have a phone book,
and there's no reason not to have a phone book since they don't cost anything.
I was told by a New York Telephone representative
that you can get a telephone book for every single county
that New York Telephone serves in New York State.
There are a few counties that are served by independent phone companies,
but the vast majority are served by a New York Telephone.
I was also told that you can get telephone books for any county that 9X,
the parent company of New York Telephone, serves.
And that includes places such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.
So, what you do is you call up your representative, your business representative.
The number is on your phone bill.
And you say, I want phone books.
I want all of the phone books.
Every single one of them.
And you can get many copies.
If you have a lot of people in your house, get a copy for everybody.
Get a copy for every room in your house.
Get copies for your friends.
They make great presents.
I mean, you know, you give a present like that to somebody all wrapped up,
it really looks impressive, if nothing else.
So, telephone books are the best way to combat this,
because if you start racking up the information charges,
it's going to amount to a significant addition to your bill.
Let's say you call information once every two days to find out something.
Well, that's 15 calls to information per month.
And at about a half a buck a shot, that's something like $7.50,
just to find out phone numbers.
And the ironic thing is that after you find out the phone number, you make a call.
And the phone company makes even more money.
It just keeps going on and on.
One thing that the phone company did not get that they wanted very, very badly
was free information from payphones.
There is still, I'm sorry, they wanted to eliminate.
They did not want free information from payphones.
They wanted to tack on a charge for that,
just like there's a charge for information to different states.
Right now, at any payphone that's owned and operated by New York Telephone,
you can call information locally by dialing 411,
or you can dial anywhere else in the state by prefixing it with the area code
and then adding 555-1212.
It will not cost you anything.
For instance, I can go to a payphone, dial 1-716-555-1212
and be connected to information in Buffalo.
And it won't cost a cent.
I can dial 411 and be connected to information in New York, New York City.
So you can still, if you have a payphone nearby
and you don't want to have all these phone books in your house,
just run downstairs and make all your information calls that way.
And hopefully that will be around for a good long time.
It used to be free from everywhere.
You know, every payphone, every telephone used to get information everywhere for free.
It was considered a service, but those services are rapidly going away.
Another thing that the new rate increase is going to bring
is a slight, slight deduction in the touchtone fee.
I believe it's going from $2.25 per month
to something on the order of $1.60 a month.
So it's not an elimination as they have done in states like Wisconsin
and I believe Washington and California too, I've heard,
has gotten rid of their touchtone fee.
That's long been a sticking point with people who know about the phone company,
people such as computer hackers and telephone freaks
who understand how the technology works
because they know how much of a ripoff it is.
They've been inside phone company computers.
They've seen that all they have to do is change the letter N to the letter Y
and touchtones are enabled.
Now, that's also a misleading term because you get a dial tone, right?
And you have your telephone here, okay?
Now, actually, there's a better way to do this.
Let me dial into this number here.
And you will see for yourself that all you have to do is push a button.
Push a button.
Now, the phone company is not creating these tones.
You know, I'm doing all that myself.
Those are my fingers.
This is my phone.
Well, at the moment, it's my phone.
And I can make whatever combination of tones I want to make.
You know, that's me doing that.
It's not the phone company.
So why does the phone company charge you for those things?
You know, the touchtones come from your telephone.
They don't come from anything inside the telephone company.
The only thing that you're paying $2.25 a month or $1.60 a month to the phone company does
is prevent them from ignoring your touchtones.
In other words, they can program their computer to say,
okay, Joe Schmo over here is not paying for his touchtones.
Therefore, we will not process them.
And that's really it.
Now, more primitive switches, such as crossbars, mechanical switches, are not capable of distinguishing
who has paid and who has not.
So everybody in a crossbar gets touchtone service, whether they pay for it or not.
And that's another fact that's fairly well known.
But few people understand why.
The reason why is because it's considered a basic service.
Touchtone service is the norm.
And to charge something for that, it's just as ridiculous as charging somebody extra if they hit an 8 instead of a 2.
You know, it's as ridiculous as that.
All right.
Again, we are going to be taking telephone calls, your telephone calls.
If you have any specific questions about your phone bill and about how this rate increase affects you,
feel free to give us a call now at 212-279-3400.
And we'll be happy to help you out as best we can.
Mind you, it is confusing.
It's confusing to everybody.
We're going to try to make it as simple as possible.
So I've told you some of the things that are going to happen, some of the things they did not get are such horrors as charging you every time you talk to an operator.
In other words, when we call the operator before and ask for AT&T, they wanted to charge something like 50 cents every time you did that.
And that's not going to happen.
So a lot of this should be credited to the rate payers for getting upset enough about this.
And saying, no, this is not right.
The PSC heard you and the PSC acted and only allowed them about a quarter of what they were asking for.
Obviously, some rate increases are justified, some are not.
And there are instances in this particular rate increase that are rather bad.
For instance, there are only going to be two residential options.
You're going to have your untimed service and your timed service, I suppose, is how they're going to refer to it.
Everything else is going to be merged together into one.
Formerly, you had something called basic budget.
You had timed message rate.
Actually, correction here.
Basic budget, untimed message rate, and timed message rate are all going to be merged into one.
Flat rate is going to remain as the only other option.
So that's going to be kind of confusing.
And if you have questions about that, then you'll certainly want to be giving us a call and asking us about that.
There's a lot to go over here.
And what I suggest people do when they call and they have a question about their bill,
go to page one of the New York telephone part.
That's where there's a breakdown.
Summary of New York telephone charges.
And if you can, if you can find a bill that has the breakdown, the actual breakdown of what those charges are,
it's a detailed explanation that's provided three times a year.
If you can find that bill, that makes things a lot easier.
For those of you in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut, don't feel left out here,
because obviously we're talking about New York telephone bills.
You might have some light to shed on this.
You might be able to tell us what your particular phone company does
and educate us all in that particular manner.
All right, 212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Yes, this is B.I.R.?
Yes, you've got to turn down your radio, though.
Yes, I think it's a thing to say to the telephone.
Sir, you're going to have to turn down your radio.
We can barely hear you.
Okay, I will.
Now?
Let me do it right now?
Yeah, go right ahead.
Okay, hold on, please.
Okay.
I should say that to everybody else listening.
Turn down your radio before you call in.
Turn down.
Okay.
What's your question?
Okay, my question is not even a question, but it's a statement.
I've been finding out that what's been happening is this.
They were talking about getting telephone books because they're charging you for informational calls.
So, therefore, according to the telephone company,
you're supposed to be able to have a telephone directory that will assist you in getting calls
that you do not have the numbers to, so, therefore, you look it up in your book that you have at home
versus calling you for information.
I just got a recent access to a telephone company from this place here.
I had another service somewhere else.
And what happened was is that I did not have telephone books, so they hooked me up to my new number at this particular place,
and I had no books.
So telephone people came, too, because they said they had line problems, which was a problem with that.
I did not understand that.
Jacks and everything else.
And then I called up later on, so I like to have telephone directories, yellow pages, and regular,
which is the white pages for Manhattan, Bronx, which is only, they told me three,
because the Bronx has the combination and Manhattan has the two.
Right.
And I never received those.
So I'm getting charged for directory calls if I do make them for information.
How long ago did you ask for them?
Oh, this is going back five weeks.
I don't know if that's long enough, but five weeks.
They told me I would receive these directories within two weeks,
going back to the end of November.
I think it was about the last week, just before Thanksgiving.
What you should do, sir, is call your business office and say to them exactly what you said to me
and say that you have been calling information and they have not delivered the phone books.
Well, I did that last week.
So I got the same story, that they had no record of my call previously,
and therefore it will be going out shortly, which is, once again, their line was within a two-week, ten-day period.
So they did not take responsibility at all.
Oh, because, of course, obviously I didn't call because they had no record that I did.
Right.
Well, that's the good thing about being a phone company.
You can create records and destroy them at will.
What I suggest you do is write a very nasty letter and forward a copy to the PSC,
and you might very well find that they'll just give you credit because you prove to be a pain to them,
and that's really the only way you can get listened to is if you are a pain to them.
Okay, let me pose this particular question to you or situation.
Could it be possible, since the 9X system has been fragmented into boroughs, if no one knows that,
if you're in the Bronx, because when I was trying to get my service turned on from my other number in Manhattan,
I was calling, you know, the number that I had on that business number,
and they told me, they said, well, I'm giving you information, you know, I was there, whatever,
and when I told them I wanted the service to be turned on in the Bronx, they said, well, oh, we don't handle that.
That is a Bronx type of center or system that was separated from Manhattan.
Now, we're talking about AT&T and 9X.
Now we're talking about 9X that is being broken up to different boroughs,
which, by the way, Manhattan and the Bronx have the same area code.
Well, you know, I think what they meant by that was that you had to call the local office for that particular neighborhood.
It's the same company. It's New York Telephone in both places,
but what they were saying was you have to call the company the actual office that serves that particular neighborhood.
Okay.
It is the same company, though.
It goes by exchanges. Am I correct?
It goes a little bit more than exchanges.
Well, I found that out, yes.
I thought that, well, maybe that was my mistake,
that the exchanges I called was, you know, that was my particular mistake.
Well, you should be able to get it done with one phone call.
You shouldn't have to be the one, I mean, you're paying them a service charge,
and that service charge goes towards them hooking things up for you,
making their own phone calls, and making sure that you get what you want.
You shouldn't have to call, you know, different offices in different parts of the city.
I did call a different office because I was corrected by them because they're, you know,
an extremely large company servicing, you know, millions of people within this particular area.
And therefore, how come I still have not received the directives that I requested?
Well, that's a question that you won't get an answer to unless you keep asking it of higher and higher people, you see.
Yes.
So go to the supervisors, go to the, you know, executive officers,
and don't be afraid to, you know, to be a real pest because that's the only way you're really going to get satisfaction.
Believe me, I know that.
Sorry?
Or service.
Or service.
I tend to believe possibly because I am in the Bronx and calling a Bronx,
eventually calling a Bronx service area.
Could it be possibly because I'm not getting the service that at least as soon or as responsive that I would expect
is because I might be in an area code or area that might not be considered important?
Well, that's quite possible, and I would not put it past them to think along those lines.
But, again, that's something that you have to judge on a case-by-case basis.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for calling.
And speaking of the Bronx, folks, those of you who are in the Bronx,
oh, you've got some fun coming in the next couple of years
because we're kicking you out of the 212 area code.
That's right.
You're not going to be part of the 212 area code anymore.
Now, the original plan was for the Bronx to become part of a new area code called 917.
And, boy, that would have been so much fun, wouldn't it, having 917 right next to 914, you know?
A little confusing, don't you think?
Well, they thought that one over, and some people spoke out against it, and guess what?
You're going to be joining the friendly people of Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island, too, I believe, in 718.
Yes, very soon, next couple of years, the Bronx will be the 718 area code.
Now, what has happened to the 917 area code, the one that nobody wanted?
Well, this is going to be very interesting, especially for those hackers out there that like to play with technology.
917 is going to be the first area code ever devoted exclusively to things such as cellular phones, pagers, computers of various sorts.
As my pager goes off, amazing.
Things like that, you know, different kinds of technology that take up large amounts of phone numbers.
It's going to be an electronic playground for people who just want to wander through and see what's going on.
But that's the 917 area code.
It's going to start in a couple of years, and it's the first time that that has ever happened, to my knowledge.
And a few people have said, you know, that's something that should have been done years ago.
Maybe we wouldn't be running out of all these phone numbers if they had put all the pagers and cellular phones onto a special national area code.
Imagine that.
You're paging somebody, and you call a certain area code to page them, and you know you're calling a pager.
And that same area code for everybody throughout the country, and maybe they have a few of them.
It might have made a lot more sense, but it's not going to happen quite that way now.
It might move in that direction.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Good evening.
I'd like to recount a little situation.
Okay.
About the phone company.
Perhaps someone else has had the same type of thing happen.
Okay.
Several months ago, whenever it was, there was a program.
You know, they sent a little folder in your phone bill, you know, introducing the service.
You know, you pay a certain amount of insurance, more or less, you know, for much a month.
So in case anything goes wrong with your phone, you know, it gets fixed.
This is the wire maintenance charge.
Yes, yes.
Thank you.
And one morning, my telephone rang.
I picked it up, and it was a recorded message from the phone company.
And it said that somebody would call to verify about the service call I needed.
I didn't need a service call.
So a couple of hours later, the phone rang.
The person came on the line and said, oh, yes, sir.
I'm going to confirm if you're going to be home for the repairs.
I said, there's nothing wrong with my phone.
There wasn't.
And the person I was speaking to said, well, there's something wrong with your phone.
I can hear all this noise on it.
I said, I can't.
And all of a sudden, I could hear all this noise.
I mean, the static, like, I said, you're dope.
You had the static generator backwards.
Do you believe that?
It happens to be true.
Well, that's interesting.
It may have happened to someone else, but I think them sons of bitches were deliberately,
you know, mucking around like that.
That's enough.
I've heard enough.
Someone else has to speak.
Okay, thanks for sharing that with us.
And as you can see, many people get very emotional when it comes to the phone company.
And a lot of people get very paranoid, too, when it comes to the phone company.
You think that they're watching you all the time, and sometimes they are.
Sometimes they can.
Remember Johnny Fever in WKRP.
The phone cops are watching.
It's true.
Sometimes it is.
Yes, the wire maintenance charge.
That's something that has always been a sticking point with me.
That's where you pay a certain amount of money.
It's a fairly small amount, something like $0.90 or $1.05 per month to maintain the wires.
Now, you know, I don't know if anyone out there pays a monthly maintenance fee on their extension cords
or lamp cords or the cord that connects your TV to the wall.
Well, I mean, yeah, it would be a shame if something happened to that cord and your TV stopped working, you know.
But what are the odds of something happening to a wire, you know?
Usually things like fires or people shooting at wires or things like that.
You know, that's what makes the wire go bad.
They don't just go bad on their own.
And that's something that a lot of people don't seem to understand.
And the phone company certainly isn't making it any easier by scaring them into thinking that something is going to happen to their wires
if they don't pay this wire maintenance charge.
Basically, the wire maintenance charge will help you out only if something goes wrong inside your wall.
And for some reason, they have to look at their wire and figure out what went wrong.
If something goes wrong with your telephone, the wire connecting your jack to your phone, they don't cover that.
And the wire that connects you, the telephone pole to the network interface on the inside of your house,
that's not applicable there either because they have to fix that whether you have a wire maintenance charge or not.
So the wire maintenance charge is something that a lot of people can leave off and save a bit of money, in my humble opinion.
Now, we've just had a rate increase, and whenever we have a rate increase, it's very important that we know this,
that we have the option of changing our service.
We can change to the flat rate service or to the whatever it is they're going to call the other service
because they're mixing everything else together except for Lifeline.
They're mixing all the other services into one, and that service is the other one, that and flat rate.
But what's happening with the flat rate service, that's where you pay a certain amount for the service.
I believe it's something like $7.55 or something along those lines.
And then you have a $4 allowance for calls, $4 worth of calls.
And let's say you make $10 worth of calls.
You pay $7.55 for the service, and then you see all of your calls itemized.
Let's say you make $10 worth of calls.
Then you'll see minus $4, and you'll wind up paying $6 because of that $4 allowance.
Well, what's changing is that $4 allowance is going away.
There won't be a $4 allowance anymore.
The cost for using Flatline flat rate service is decreasing a slight bit, like a dollar or something.
So instead of being $7.55, it's going to be something like $6.50, but that $4 is going away.
So instead of paying $6 for the phone calls, you'll pay $10 for the phone calls.
So it's worth asking yourself, well, will this still pay off to have this kind of service, or should I go to the other service?
What the phone company can do and what they are supposed to do is tell you what your phone bill would have been last month had you had the other service, and the month before that as well.
You can call your business office and ask them to go over the bill with you, and they will tell you what it would have been, and then you can figure out for yourself which service is best for you.
If you make a lot of calls in a particular area, then obviously one service is going to be better than for someone who makes barely any local calls at all and just makes long-distance calls.
So it's important that you realize this, and it's also important that you take advantage of the free period, because any time there's a rate increase for 75 days after the rate increase takes effect, you can change your service without it costing a cent.
So that's 75 days. That would take us to about the middle of March, I guess.
But I recommend that people do it as soon as possible. That way you'll know exactly where you stand.
Also, while we're on the phone bills, a couple of other things.
If you look at that page, that page one of your New York telephone bill, you'll see all kinds of little charges there.
If you get a local usage list, that's a list that tells you the local phone calls that you make, but not the really local phone calls you make, like to your own exchange or to your neighbor.
For some reason, they can't tell you what those phone calls are. You just have to take their word for it that you made such and such number of calls to the primary area.
But the rest of the local usage area entails Long Island, Westchester, places like that.
For you to get a list of the phone calls that you made, you have to pay $1.61 extra, which I think is crazy to have to pay to find out what they're billing you for.
But that's the way it is. It's traditional everywhere. In some countries, in fact, in Europe, they don't even provide itemization at all. You just have to take their word for it.
It's not a very good deal, obviously.
There's also the FCC surcharge. That's the line charge ordered by the FCC.
If you look on your phone bill, you'll see under Basic Service, it says line charge ordered by the Federal Communications Commission,
and that's, I believe, $3.50 for every phone line and more for businesses.
Now, everybody calls that the FCC charge, you know, and it's kind of unfair to do that because it's not the FCC charge.
The FCC simply, you know, writes the regulations.
They're not the ones that are charging you the money. That money is not going to the FCC.
It's going to the long-distance phone companies.
What it is is a charge, an access charge, that is given to the local companies by the long-distance companies.
And that particular thing goes to the phone company. It does not go to the Federal Communications Commission.
Okay, and our phone number is 212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Yes, could you mention the codes that there are, like, to dial in to tell you what line you're on, other codes they have, the three-digit codes.
I've forgotten what they are, but it needs to be very useful.
Well, where are you located?
In Brooklyn.
Okay, in Brooklyn, you would dial 958, and that would tell you what your phone number is.
Okay.
You would also, if you were trying to find out what your long-distance company was, I don't know if that was part of your question,
but if you were trying to find that out, you would call another toll-free number at 1-700-555-4141,
and that would tell you the phone company that you have selected as your long-distance carrier.
Any other codes that would be useful to people?
Well, let's see. 958 is the most useful because that tells you, obviously, your phone number.
It doesn't work from everywhere, though.
In some places, it's slightly different.
It's 311 sometimes.
It's 200, 990.
You just have to sort of experiment and play around and things like that.
There's ringback numbers.
I believe in New York City, the ringback code is 660, and you get a dial tone,
and then you have to figure something out, and nobody, nobody as of yet has ever figured out how 660 works.
If somebody can do that, we'll grant them a prize here on BAI.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay, thanks for calling.
That's always been a mystery, you know?
660, you get a dial tone.
I think you get a dial tone.
Let's see if you get a dial tone.
Actually, do it this way.
Oh, I messed that up, didn't I?
Okay, let's, uh, I keep forgetting you have to dial 9 first here.
Yeah, you see, that's a dial tone now, and let's make this, let's make this a little easier.
I'm going to call in and actually, uh, dial up the, um, 660 exchange live, even as we speak on the radio waves.
Okay, and let's get a dial tone.
Okay, so we got a second dial tone by dialing 660, and it's waiting for us to dial something else.
Let's dial 1, 2, 3.
Let's dial 4.
Something happened.
It hung up on us.
I don't know why it hung up on us, but let's just try this again.
660.
Okay.
1, 2, 3.
4.
Interesting.
It hangs up whenever you dial 1, 2, 3, 4.
You see, it does different things from different areas, and, uh...
Bear with me a second here.
Oh, at that time, it hung up on us right away.
Okay, let's dial 9 this time.
It just keeps hanging up no matter what we dial.
I don't know.
This is a nasty 660 we have here in, uh, midtown Manhattan.
But, um...
Try it from wherever you are, and if you figure something out, let us know, because, uh...
660 is used in many places for ringbacks, and what that does is you dial your phone number in some form.
Sometimes you dial 660 plus the last four digits of your phone number, and you get a dial tone.
You hang up for a second, pick up again, and hang up, and your phone will ring.
And that's, uh, a trick that goes back to elementary school, actually.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Hi.
Um, great show so far.
Uh, I have several questions.
Sir, you said you can get a free phone book from, and you didn't mention New Jersey.
Uh, can you get New Jersey from New York?
That's what I'm asking.
Uh, I don't think you can, because that's a different phone company entirely.
That's, uh, uh, New Jersey Bell, part of Bell Atlantic.
It's not even part of 9X.
So I would doubt very much that they would give you a phone book for free.
But, uh, but you said 9X serves Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts?
That's right.
9X, uh, stands for New York, New England.
Oh, okay.
Uh, most important, the, uh, you said change N to Y, and the phone is enabled to do what?
And you said that, that the, uh, everybody in a crossbar gets touchtone service, whether
they pay for it or not.
I didn't understand those things.
Okay, basically, touchtone service on the newer exchanges, and that's anything that's
electronic or digital, is simply a software feature.
And that software feature is enabled by it checking a particular field and seeing if it's
an N for no or a Y for yes.
If it's a Y for yes, then your touchtones will work.
If it's an N for no, your touchtones will not work.
And that's all the maintenance that they do.
They charge you $10, uh, for installation when all they do is change that N to a Y.
And I can guarantee they do not do any other work than that.
What I'm trying to find out is with a dial phone, not a touchtone, uh, you can get touchtones,
Kevin?
Oh, certainly, yeah.
It's not, it's not the, uh, uh, I mean, you can't get a touchtone, uh, you can't make
a dial phone do touchtones.
You have to have a touchtone phone.
Um, but, uh, it's, you have the touchtones.
You're not, you're not renting the touchtones out from the phone company.
But depending on where you live, they are able to, uh, tell the dial tone to ignore those
particular tones coming from your phone.
You know, they, they could just as easily say, okay, we're going to ignore all digits
except the number four and you can only dial the number four.
They could tell their software to do that, but they don't because that would, that would
make it as ridiculous as it really is.
Do you understand?
Uh, well, not entirely, but the point is that then, then all that you said about the M&Y
and everybody in the crossbar, that only applies if you already have a touchtone phone.
Well, obviously you have to have the tones in order to use them.
Yeah, and, and, uh, there's no way, you say the touchtones come from inside your own phone,
but there's no way to bring them out, uh, unless you have a touchtone.
Well, you have to, it's, it's basically just tones.
I mean, the tones are created with a tone generator that's inside a touchtone phone.
You could have a handheld, uh, touchtone device that will also, uh, also create the tones.
Anything can create those tones.
You can, you can carry around a tape recorder that has touchtones on it, hold it up to a
telephone, and it will work if the touchtones are enabled on the, on that line.
Hmm.
Now, sir, uh, do you want to know if you're in a crossbar or, uh, uh, an electronic switch?
Well.
Because I can tell you that, because I do happen to have a list here of every single exchange
in, uh, in the metropolitan area, and, uh, I can tell you right away what kind of switch
you're on.
Yeah, okay, uh, what do you need to know about me?
Just your first, the first three digits of your phone number.
Seven, eight, six.
And what area cut is that?
Seven, one, eight.
Seven, one, eight, seven, eight, six.
Okay, let's see what we have here.
Bear with me a moment while I, uh, turn the pages.
Okay, that is Long Island City, and you are on a DMS 100.
That's a switch run by, uh, by Northern Telecom, and that's a digital switch, so your touchtones
would not work.
They'd be able to turn them off.
They probably would.
Sometimes there have been cases where they leave an entire neighborhood on, and, uh,
everybody gets, uh, what they think are free touchtones, but actually what they're
getting is what they should be getting in the first place.
Hmm.
Um, what, uh, what would it be in, uh, let's say, uh, the Forest Hills area, or the, um...
Well, you have to give me an exchange.
I don't know what, uh, what the people there are.
Uh-huh.
Well, maybe somebody from Forest Hills can call us and tell us just what they are.
Um, but you, you're on a DMS 100.
They're notorious for cross-talk.
Do you ever get a lot of, uh, cross-connections, and you hear other people talking that can't hear you?
Um, well, uh, once in a great while, vaguely, I can hear some, uh, I, I can hear, uh, something way off in the distance, but not, not very often.
Uh-huh.
When I call these, uh, uh, these 550, uh, numbers, the way there are eight people on the line, uh, sometimes, uh, the, there are only four of them that come in fairly clear.
The other four sound like they're way off in the background.
Well, that's, that's the fault of the person providing the 550 service, which I think you should avoid like the plague, but that's a whole other show.
Thanks very much for calling.
God bless.
Thank you.
We have a few more minutes here.
Our phone number is 279-3400.
We're talking about the phone company and, uh, answering any kind of questions you might have about, uh, what service is best, what a certain phrase means, what a certain, uh, thing that happened to you on the telephone means.
If you ever have a, have had a question about the phone company, now is the time to ask it.
212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Hi.
I really enjoy your program.
Why, thank you.
Uh, one bit of trivia.
Do you know why New York has 212?
Uh, was it because it was the first?
Well, it was because it was the biggest population area, and when everything was, was rotary, the phone company calculated that it would take less line time by having those short numbers.
Yeah.
That's the reason the big population area is.
Well, they, they were right about that, and I'm certainly glad we got to one, too.
And now it's, of course, touch tone is trivial.
Yeah, it is, but it's still kind of new.
Again, uh, if you have a, uh, uh, if you call a phone company for a, a, a, a, uh, uh, a number, and, uh, they can't find it, do they charge you?
Yes, they do.
Uh, in fact, uh, that's, uh, that's a problem with long-distance information more than it is with local information.
Local information at least sometimes will ask you for your phone number so they can give you a credit.
Um, long-distance, they never do that, and that's, that's really disturbing, but they all obviously should.
You call information, they say that they're giving you information by telling you that there's no number.
I think that's, that's a crock.
But what about, what about new numbers?
It seems ridiculous that they're charging you for new numbers, information, when they're not even in the book.
They should not charge you for new numbers, that's a very good point.
I mean, they shouldn't be charging you probably for any number, but, I mean, it's especially egregious, uh, when it's a new number.
Well, I remember years ago, it used to be no problem at all to, uh, to tell them, look, this number wasn't in the book, so, uh, I'm not going to get charged for it, and they, they would not charge.
These days, it's harder, because what we've done is, we've, we've allowed information to become something that we pay for, and now, that's the norm.
We pay for information.
And we don't get the information we pay for.
We get less and less.
In fact, you know, you used to be able to call up, and before they had the computers, you would, you would get the information operator, you could ask it for three or four numbers.
Now, you get a recording, and the recording, in most cases, hangs up after it gives you the number.
You can't even ask for an address or anything like that.
Yeah, it, it, it, it, it, it's, it's, it's an attempt to give you a minimum service.
Yes, and, and maximum profit, yeah.
And, uh, the only way to, to battle that is to, uh, you know, is to speak out against it, by writing letters, by talking to the PSA.
I, I shouldn't say this, because I know Japanese phone rates are about twice as what ours, I have a friend who lives in, who's in Japan right now, and it's much cheaper for me to call her than for her to call me.
Uh-huh.
But, uh, uh, competition is really the answer, and, uh, uh, I, I, uh, uh, the utilities and the relationship between government and these, these organizations is, is, is, is just nothing to do with capitalism in a real historic sense.
Uh, uh, it's, uh, taking advantage of people that, uh, you know, really don't know any better, and through no fault of theirs.
It's taking advantage of, because we're technologically so illiterate as a culture.
And that's, that's what we're trying to, uh, to challenge you.
One of the things I like about your program, it's a good high-tech program, but I'm sure that most people can't follow it at all.
Well, we're trying to make it, if you have trouble following something, ask, because that's, that's the only way we're going to know that there's a problem.
Okay, enjoy the program.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
And that's what we try to do here on BAI, on this particular program, and on, uh, the program preceding this,
Michelle Kaku's, uh, program, and, uh, and the personal computer show, which follows this.
We try to make technology available to people that otherwise would just let it pass them by.
And you can see, if you let it pass you by, if you let these things happen, all of a sudden, you find yourself being taken advantage of,
and you find things that, that you, uh, you took for granted, not being the case anymore.
We used to think information is, is something that doesn't cost money, and now it's something that costs 60 cents,
and it's probably going to cost a dollar before, uh, the next five years are up.
Until we say enough already, you know, we have to establish certain, uh, ground rules here, certain, uh, certain things.
I mean, phone books.
You think they're going to start charging for phone books in the next couple of years?
I'll bet they will.
I'll bet they're going to try to do that.
How long can they keep going, passing out these huge books of things, and say that, uh, they don't want to charge money for them?
Eventually, they're going to try to do that as well, and it's going to make things more and more difficult.
So, uh, that's why it pays to remain educated.
212-279-3400.
We've got a couple of minutes left.
Good evening.
Oh, is this BAI?
Yes, it is.
Oh, hi.
Um, I live in New Jersey, um, in the 201 area code, and I have caller ID.
I just thought I'd, uh...
Oh, lucky you.
Yeah, and, um, now, this is the thing, um, you know, um, they have this, I read about this service where you could call, uh, you dial some kind of blocking number.
Oh, I don't know, I think it's a 900 number or something.
Right, yeah.
Call, call, stop, or something like that.
It's 1-900-STOPPER, and I've had some, some bad things to say about them, but, uh, that's another program, too.
But what is it that you want to say?
You can do, you can avoid getting your number.
Let's say you live in a place where you have caller ID.
You can avoid getting your number recorded, uh, by the caller ID machine if you simply use your, um, let's say your, I have U.S. Sprint, I believe.
Uh, and, uh, let's say you use the travel, um, code, uh, the travel number, a travel access code, before you dial a local number.
In other words, you, you access the local number not by dialing it directly, but by using your travel code.
Right, you use, uh, say a 950 number or something like that.
Yeah, in this case, it's, uh, with, with Sprint, it's 1-800-877-8000.
Uh-huh.
And then you go in the, you know, there's a computer tone and you, you dial the number in.
But what happens, I call my own number just to, to see how it would work from, uh, a pay phone down the street.
And, uh, my own number, the caller ID and machine recorded, uh, only out of area.
Uh-huh.
Which, uh, which it will do, I mean, there's more and more numbers now from, uh, from a greater geographical area being, uh, showing up in the caller ID.
I've noticed that it's since I've had it for about two years or so.
But there's always going to be a way for smart people to get around it, and that's, that's the important thing.
And you're not going to have to pay $2 a minute to, uh, to pay somebody to route your call for you, uh, you know, to, to remain anonymous.
See, that's another thing that sort of goes along what we were just saying a few seconds ago.
Uh, we have taken anonymity on the telephone as something, you know, as, as something for granted over the last few years.
And now it's becoming something that's the exception to the rule.
And the only way we're going to keep it from becoming the exception to the rule is by speaking out against it.
Yeah.
Although, uh, I, myself, having caller ID, I've gotten kind of used to it.
Yeah, uh, that's, that's true of anything, sir.
I'm sorry to cut you off, but we are out of time.
And we do want to talk about, uh, caller ID in a future program.
That's going to do it for us here this week on Off the Hook.
We'll be back again in four weeks.
We're not on in two weeks, but we'll be on again.
We'll be back again in four weeks.