And on WBAI New York, it is now 9 o'clock.
Time for Off The Hook.
It is now 9 o'clock.
And you know, every time the telephone rings, you don't know what's going to be on the other end.
Could be a human, could be a fax machine, could be a computer, or many other such things.
And of course, to help you decide if you want to pick up the phone or not, new services are being pushed upon us.
Like the latest model of drugs.
And they're almost as difficult to get rid of, too, because they're being so aggressively marketed.
And tonight we're going to be focusing on the aggressive marketing of these new services,
and the kind of sneaky way that they're being introduced, at least here in New York.
Welcome to the program. This is Off The Hook. I'm Emanuel Goldstein.
We'll be together for the next hour, up until 10 o'clock,
welcoming your phone calls with experiences, comments, questions, what have you, 212-279-3400.
Now, we've been talking over the past few weeks about a new service,
not so new for a large part of the country, but fairly new for people in New York,
and that is the Star 69, otherwise known as CallReturn.
Now, it's a thinly disguised version of what is known as Caller ID.
Now, of course, if you look technically, if you ask the phone company,
is Caller ID yet available in New York, they will say no, because this is not technically a part of Caller ID.
Caller ID is where you see the number of the person that is calling you on a little device,
and you can do various things, such as pick up the phone, or refuse the call, or just ignore it, or what have you.
My contention, however, is that when you have a service that allows you to immediately call back the person that called you,
I consider that to be very similar to Caller ID, because you are getting the phone number of the person who is calling you.
And if you're getting the number of the person who is calling you, then that, in my opinion, is analogous to Caller ID,
and should be defined as such.
What we have seen instead over the past few weeks is a sneak attack by New York Telephone,
sneaking the Star 69 service, and I put that in quotes and italics and whatever else it deserves,
sneaking this upon consumers, especially on Long Island and other parts of New York State,
not yet New York City, but that's just around the corner.
And there is virtually no way around this, although we will tell you how to get around it in the minutes ahead.
First, let me go to today's news day in the business section.
There's an article by Henry Gilgoff on this very thing, Call Return,
and how it's upsetting some people in various agencies, namely Richard Kessel,
who is Executive Director of the State Consumer Protection Board.
He filed a petition late Monday with the Public Service Commission asking for a suspension of Call Return
to be followed by PSC hearings.
Kessel says the Call Return actually poses a severe threat to privacy and personal safety.
Now, the PSC is analyzing Kessel's petition.
New York Telephone officials naturally say they will oppose it.
All parties went into this with their eyes open, aware of whatever frailties the service may have,
said Michael Schechner, a New York Telephone product manager.
Well, I'd like to know how many people out there knew this was going to happen.
I don't think very many of us were aware that things were going to be introduced in quite this manner.
So that's rather an absurd statement.
We did not go into this with our eyes open.
This was snuck upon us.
No matter what you think of the actual service itself, whether you will use the service or find it something that's handy,
you have to question tactics of a company that does something this way.
The Public Service Commission has the authority to rescind its action,
its action being to approve Call Return.
However, they did not really let the public know what that involved.
New York Telephone is making Call Return available to about two-thirds of its customers on Long Island without charge until July 31st,
and that's when fees will be introduced.
The company promotes the service as a way to get back the call you just missed.
The person reaches the last caller by punching the star button six and nine,
or on a rotary phone by dialing 1169.
And the other thing that's disturbing about this is that this service is being offered without charge,
and then on July 31st, it's suddenly going to be 75 cents every time you dial star 69,
which is tantamount to 900 numbers except a whole lot quicker.
All you have to do is have somebody in your house dialing star 69 a few times, and you can really rack up the bills.
Seventy-five cents each time you do that.
You can't turn it off.
You cannot turn it off, according to the people I've spoken to at New York Telephone.
It's a service that you can either subscribe to by month and pay $3 per month and dial star 69 as many times as you want,
or pay 75 cents each time you dial that special secret code there.
On Monday, the Public Service Commission staff wrote to New York Telephone,
expressing its own concerns about Call Return's impact on privacy.
The staff recommended changes to better protect unpublished numbers from being disclosed
and to keep a person from using the service to call the same number repeatedly.
And the staff has asked for a response by July 15th.
In his petition, Kessel cited a Long Island psychologist's complaint that was reported in Newsday last week.
The psychologist said he made an emergency call from his unpublished home number to a, quote,
highly disturbed, unquote, individual, only to have the individual call back with Call Return.
The psychologist expressed fear that the person could ascertain his unpublished number
and even try to learn his home address by using other unrelated databases.
In a prior complaint, Kessel said an upstate parole officer said a paroled felon used a similar service from Rochester Tell
to harass him at his unpublished home number.
The commission must not wait for still more evidence to accumulate before recognizing the hazards, Kessel said.
New York Telephone's Schechner emphasized that numbers called through Call Return
do not appear on the monthly bills routinely sent to customers.
Not. We'll get into that in just a minute.
Itemized listings of calls may include the numbers, even unpublished numbers, in certain cases, he acknowledged.
Those listings, however, must be requested.
They cost $1.56 per listing.
It can take at least a month to obtain them, he said.
Well, first of all, itemization is very simple to get.
Yes, it costs $1.56 a listing.
You pay that on your normal phone bill, and your itemization comes the same day your phone bill comes.
It's as simple as that.
You don't have to do something special to get this.
You either pay for it once and say, yes, I want to get local itemization, and you get it every month,
or you don't say that and you don't get it.
But you can always request it, and you can request local itemization for months before you actually receive local itemization.
The phone company has this information, so if you want to call up and say, hey, what was that number I called in Montauk on April 15th,
they can tell you this.
They have the information even if they don't give it to you.
It's kind of absurd that they sell you a bill, but that's really what they're doing.
It's extremely simple, though, to subscribe to that,
and the notion that people are not getting your phone number on a bill is a lie, plain and simple, because they are.
All they have to do is have local itemization, which a lot of people do have,
and even if they did not have local itemization, they still have the ability to call you at your home.
That's what Star 69 does.
It calls you at your home.
It calls you back.
It's very misleading, the way the phone company is presenting this.
Now, I'd like to focus attention on advertisements that have been appearing throughout newspapers in the New York area from New York Telephone.
Big letters saying the word ring five times and then stop.
Don't worry.
New Call Return can get back the call you just missed.
To try New Call Return free, just dial Star 69.
Right now, you can retrieve calls you used to think were lost.
Thanks to an exciting new service from New York Telephone, it's Call Return,
and it's yours to try free until July 31st.
In fact, it's already on your phone, and you can use it as often as you like.
So, next time you miss a call, Call Return will automatically call back the last person who tried to reach you.
All you have to do is pick up the receiver and dial Star 69 to be connected.
Rotary phones dial 1169.
If the line is busy, just hang up.
Call Return will keep trying the number for up to half an hour,
and it will let you know with a special ring when the call is ready to go through.
Use Call Return now and after our free trial.
Try Call Return free until our trial ends on July 31st.
After that, you can still take advantage of this service anytime you wish for just a low $0.75 charge for each use.
That's another way New York Telephone can make $1.50 on calls that normally cost $0.10.
Unlimited use for a low monthly fee, call by July 31st and save the $16 installation fee.
Now, how do they get away with charging installation fee for something that they say in the same ad they already have on your phone?
I don't understand it.
Star 69 is already there, but you have to pay a $16 installation fee if you don't order it by July 31st.
Best of all, you can even choose to sign up and get unlimited usage for a flat, low monthly rate of just $3.
Call by July 31st, save that $16 installation fee.
Give Call Return a try, find out what you've been missing.
Yes, get rid of your privacy right away.
And then in really, really tiny print, first of all, they list the exchanges that this is available in.
It's a good many exchanges on Long Island, and also in 718 area code, the 831 exchange for some reason.
And then in very tiny print, if you call someone who uses Call Return to call you back, your phone number may appear on their bill.
So there it is.
And if you really want to see tiny print, look in various newspapers for that ad, and you'll see how small they make it.
So that's the story.
We reported it, I think, before anyone else did on this program several weeks ago, that Star 69 was working.
There were no ads back then, no announcement from New York Telephone.
It just had suddenly started working, and people were using it to surprise people that had just called them and say, hey, you just called me.
It's very worrisome, and one has to wonder what's going to happen when Caller ID actually makes it here.
All right, we also have the rate increase.
Actually, rate change, because it's not an entire rate increase.
There are some interesting points to that.
We're going to get to that in just a minute.
First, however, I'd like to share something else with you about local bell operating companies known as the regional bells.
9X is a regional bell.
New York Telephone is not.
New York Telephone is a subsidiary of 9X.
They are the local telephone company.
There are various companies throughout the country that were formed as a result of the breakup of Ma Bell back in 1984.
Bell Atlantic is one.
New Jersey Bell is a subsidiary of Bell Atlantic, and 9X is another.
Now, there was a piece in the viewpoint section of Newsday on Tuesday written by Gene Kimmelman.
He says, addresses a very interesting point concerning the bell companies getting involved in other forms of communication, telecommunications, electronic computer-type things, and why he thinks that's a bad thing.
Now, I'd like people to listen to this, because I know a lot of people think it's a good thing, because there will be more things out there.
But you've got to remember something very important about the phone companies, the local phone companies.
There is no competition.
There is no competition.
For you, when you pick up your telephone and you get a dial tone, you're getting New York Telephone's dial tone, or if you're in New Jersey, New Jersey Bell's dial tone.
You cannot choose another company.
Not like long distance.
Long distance, you can choose one of several different companies.
Too bad it's not more.
So, as long as there is this monopoly on the local level, having the local companies involved in various other things would be a disaster, because they would have a very unfair advantage.
All right, let's listen to what Gene Kimmelman has to say.
Beware, your goal of preserving affordable phone service, reducing cable TV prices, and gaining maximum choice for new electronic and telecommunications services may be defeated if a Washington lobbying campaign designed to expand the power of local telephone monopolies succeeds.
The halls of Congress are teeming with industry lobbyists selling their vision of the information age.
This political debate over billions of consumer dollars boils down to two fundamentally divergent views of how to promote the public interest.
The local Bell telephone companies seek to become one-stop shopping malls of the 21st century by controlling and owning voice, data, and video services offered over their telephone wires.
Most other businesses and nonprofit groups, ranging from American Express to the American Association of Retired Persons, fear the one-wire dominion of the Bell telephone companies.
They oppose Bell company expansion into competitive markets so long as the Bells maintain a monopoly on local telephone service.
These groups believe the Bells will use their monopoly local telephone revenue stream and control of the phone network to inflate the price of basic phone service and undercut competition in the information, manufacturing, and long-distance markets.
By driving up prices for their monopoly, like local phone service, the Bells could divert revenue to finance competitive market services in a manner that would discriminate against competitors.
This would leave consumers with inflated local phone rates and fewer options at higher prices for electronic information and long-distance services.
Research by the Consumer Federation of America of the Bell companies' behavior since the breakup of AT&T demonstrates that these dangers to telephone rate payers and competition are real.
In the last eight years, the Bells have inflated their phone rates by about $30 billion, subsidized unregulated ventures with rate payer revenue, and prevented other companies from connecting new services through the Bells' local networks.
To earn unusually large profits and invest massive sums in unregulated new businesses, the Bells have built a substantial unwarranted cushion into the prices they charge consumers and businesses for telephone services.
At the same time, they have convinced many public officials to reduce regulation of telephone profits and prices.
The Bells' most recent business plans signal massive rate hikes if they are allowed to control new services.
Their infrastructure modernization programs carry a price tag of more than $400 billion for consumers.
By overinvesting in fiber optic lines and other new equipment for video services, as they have done in Florida and Tennessee, and proposed to have done in many other states, the Bells would inflate local phone rates by as much as $5 a month for more than 30 years.
At the end of this extravagant rate payer investment, consumers are likely to receive services they already get from other vendors at a lower price.
Numerous other examples of misbehavior, like the ones described above, have led consumer advocates across the country to conclude that rate payers in competition would be better off if the Bells' monopolies are prohibited from entering key competitive markets.
However, despite their record of rate payer abuse, the Bell companies have developed a strategy designed to lure the non-profit community into their camp.
And this is pretty sneaky here.
By promising special equipment and services for the disabled, unique educational opportunities, and tools for the disadvantaged in cradle-to-grave conveniences for every special needs group's unique desires,
the Bells seek support from civic groups and the disability community.
Not surprisingly, the Bells fail to reveal the rate payer and competitive dangers associated with their plans, and refuse to back their promises with enforceable public commitments.
Today, hundreds of information and computer companies are offering thousands of new services over telephone and cable television lines in an effort to develop consumer interest in electronic entertainment, education, work improvement, and lifestyle enhancing services.
How could the local telephone monopolies be better at meeting consumer and business demand than these highly competitive computer and information companies?
The superficial appeal of the Bells' promise is that telephone monopolies can offer consumers something that the competitive market cannot provide at a reasonable price.
In other words, if it sided with the Bells, the interest group would supposedly receive the fancy new services it wants through subsidies paid by the local phone company's other rate payers.
Yet, why would profit-maximizing firms like the Bell companies subsidize unprofitable services any more than other companies?
The simple answer is that the Bells are no more philanthropic than anyone else.
Yet, because they need allies, they promise goodies they know are impossible to provide in the marketplace.
And with their history and propensity to behave in an anti-consumer manner, concealed from public view, more and more unassuming citizens are falling for the Bells' siren song.
And, of course, if you don't believe they're sneaky, just look at the way that Star 69 was foisted upon all of us.
Concluding here, giving the Bell companies the benefit of the doubt may make sense if appropriate public oversight could assure that consumers receive more services at fair prices.
Pursuing this option, the Consumer Federation of America has offered to set aside our skepticism of the Bells if they would agree to a law that ensures the affordability of basic phone service and requires them to live up to their promises about new services.
The Bell companies refuse to support this type of legislation in Congress.
Their newfound friends, many of whom receive significant financial support from the Bells, are amazingly silent about legislation that would require the Bells to live up to their promises to meet the needs of the information have-nots.
Congress is now considering legislation sponsored by Representative Jack Brooks, Democrat of Texas, that would protect consumers against inflated phone rates and promote telecommunications competition.
Of course, the Bell companies oppose this bill and claim consumers are on their side.
But Brooks' bill warrants consumer support.
This viewpoint written by Gene Kimmelman, who is the legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America located in Washington, D.C.
And it's a very important issue.
You might see some editorials against the Bell expansion in various newspapers.
And, of course, these newspapers have a vested interest in keeping the Bell operating companies out of their turf, keeping them from providing information services that would compete with newspapers.
But apart from that, it's a very important thing to realize that the Bell operating companies have a monopoly on local phone service.
And as long as they have that, to allow them to gain such an advantage that they would become a monopoly in the information service industry as well would be an incredibly fatal mistake.
So something to keep in mind.
Again, that viewpoint came from Tuesday's Newsday.
And a very well-written point there.
I think a lot of people that hadn't really thought the issue through now might actually have a few second thoughts.
Program is off the hook. We'll be taking phone calls at 212-279-3400.
Still.
If you look in today's newspapers, you'll probably find New York Telephone's new rate proposals.
And a bit of interesting reading it is.
Usually legal notices aren't that interesting.
But this one is rather amazing, to say the least, because there are some surprises here.
And one has to wonder just what it is they're up to.
Oh yeah, there are certain things that will be going up.
And again, this is only a proposal.
This was filed on June 5, 1992.
It has to be approved by the Public Service Commission.
Hearings, all that kind of thing.
But what I find most surprising is what's going down.
Namely, local phone rates between various parts of, say, New York City, Westchester, Long Island.
For instance, right now, to call from Eastern Suffolk to New York City in the middle of the day costs 34 cents for the first minute.
Now they want to change that rate from 34 cents for the first minute to 12.7 cents for the first minute.
Additional minutes are 17.5 cents.
They want to change that to 8.9 cents.
And what we're seeing is kind of a standardization.
The number 12.7 seems to be showing up quite a bit.
12.7 cents for the first minute for lots of calls to various places.
In most cases, it's a reduction.
In some cases, it's a bit of a hike, especially for places that are close to each other.
For instance, Western Suffolk dialing to Nassau County.
The rate will go up a little bit.
That is, the additional minute rate goes up.
But you have to be a scientist to understand all this.
Right now, the first minute to Nassau from Western Suffolk is 14 cents.
Under their proposal, it will go down to 12.7.
However, additional minutes now cost 4.5 cents.
And they will be going up to 6.1 under this proposal.
So it's some kind of a balancing where there's less distinction between areas.
Which makes sense because you really can't convince me that it costs more to call 50 miles away from here than it does to call 25 miles away from here.
These days, distance means less and less.
There are other things on this particular rate adjustment.
It's kind of hard to call it a rate increase because a lot of it doesn't involve rate increases.
Touch tone service, which is a bogus charge, should not be on there in the first place, currently costs $1.53 per line.
And the proposal is to lower that to $1.01.
Still $1.01 too much because you're not getting anything for that money except the assurance that they won't program their computers to ignore your touch tone service.
Now, businesses have always had it rougher.
For instance, a business line currently costs $3.08 for touch tone service.
Now, you multiply that, a business, say, with 1,000 lines.
Well, $3.08 per month per 1,000.
That's about $3,000 a month.
And then you multiply that by a year.
That's $36,000 for absolutely nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And I can prove it.
It's real easy to prove.
Listen to this.
You know what those are?
Those are touch tones.
And the phone company didn't do that.
I did that.
I pressed the buttons.
This phone here is responsible for those tones.
The tones come from the telephone.
And the only thing that you get when you pay the phone company money for a quote-unquote touch tone service is the assurance that they will not type N on their computer instead of Y.
If they type N, that means the computer will ignore your touch tones and will not allow you to break the dial tone with your touch tones.
And that's all.
That is all you get.
There is no special equipment hooked up that allows you to use touch tone machinery.
Nothing like that.
It all comes from your phone.
And as I've said before, they could program their computer to ignore the 9 key and charge $1 a month for 9s.
But I think people would realize that that's rather absurd.
All right.
We're going to take some phone calls.
First, however, I'd like to try something.
Okay.
We've been talking about Star 69, the disturbing nature of this new service that allows you to immediately return a call or return a call an hour after it comes in if no other calls have come in.
Call back the last person who called you.
Now, this works throughout Long Island, and it works for the length of Long Island, and at some point, it's going to work throughout the entire metropolitan area.
In other words, somebody from White Plains, say, could call somebody in Montauk.
The person in Montauk will miss the call, and when they come in, we'll dial Star 69, and the phone in White Plains will ring.
Now, how do you get around that?
With caller ID, of course, there's a way of blocking.
But right now, this is a service that is installed.
Without our say-so, it has been installed throughout the area, and I don't think anybody knows how to get around it.
Let's see if our local operator will be of some help.
Hopefully, the BAI phone system will connect us to a New York telephone operator.
We're in good shape.
New York Telephone, Pirates Review.
Yes, hi. I was hoping you could answer a question for me.
I understand that the Star 69 service is working on Long Island.
That's the call return service?
Are you trying to reach a New York telephone operator, sir?
Yes, that's who you are, right?
Yes.
Okay. I have a question concerning the Star 69 feature.
Let me give you a repair. Hold on, please.
Repair?
I'm only here to dial numbers out. I don't know if it's working or not.
Okay.
Make sure it looks after numbers, okay?
Dial repair, then. Thank you very much.
Hold on, please.
Repair.
I think it's New York Telephone that's broken.
One moment.
Okay, repair is looking for you, okay?
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
This is known as the runaround.
You have reached the New York Telephone Repair Service.
All attendants are presently assisting out of customers.
We will be with you shortly.
Thank you for calling New York Town. This is OJ.
Area code and telephone number.
Yes, hello.
I have a general question concerning the Star 69 service I was given to you by the operator.
Are you aware of the Star 69 service?
Are you in Suffolk or Nassau?
Actually, right now I'm in New York City, but I was asking on behalf of someone who lives on Long Island.
Okay.
They were curious as to how they could make a phone call and not be called back using Star 69.
Okay, what you would have to do is call the EZNYT, it's 1-800-E-A-S-Y-N-Y-T, and they handle all the features.
I see. Are they in now?
No, I'm running.
Okay, they're only in 9 to 5, but they're the only people that can answer this question.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, do you know if there is a way to get around that?
No.
You don't know?
I don't know.
Okay, well, thanks anyway.
You're welcome, bye.
Well, we have to call another number in the daytime and ask them and see if there's a way around it.
All right, I'd like to know if anybody out there has successfully figured out a way to get around Star 69.
You can try experimenting with it now, particularly if you're on Long Island.
Also, if you're in New Jersey, Star 69, I believe, is the same code they use over there.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but let us know if you found a way around that and just what that way is.
And then at the end of the hour, I'll share with you my experiences.
Even though I haven't been lucky enough to actually experiment with this as of yet, there are ways of getting around it.
And we're going to let you know what those are.
Okay, our phone number is 212-279-3400.
And we'll be taking your phone calls right about now at WBAI New York.
Good evening, you're on the air.
Hello.
How are you doing?
I just thought, you know, your topic is right on the spot because I'd like to suggest that people, you know, that 9x is sneakiness
because it says people keep a sharp eye on their telephone bills because the last one I got, they tacked on three charges amongst them,
you know, like the touch tone and a modular phone jack and their, I don't know the exact term they use,
you know, their form of insurance for the lines.
Wire maintenance charge, right?
That's right.
Yeah, you want to get rid of that, definitely.
Very nice of them, I called them up right away and they gave me credit, but they just put it right on my bill.
I never subscribe to any of them.
I don't even have a touch tone phone.
So I'd like to, you know, people should watch out because they just put it on your bill.
It's outright theft is what it is.
They were very nice, as I say.
I guess they got caught in the act.
What could they do right now?
You didn't talk to the person that did it, you see.
You talked to a representative, but it's company policy to charge people for things that they don't use and don't need.
You're right.
That's calling things by their proper name.
Just the other day when I was ordering a new phone line, you know, giving them business,
they told me that the phone line would not work if I did not order touch tone service.
Would not work at all.
Wouldn't work with a pulse phone either.
I had to have it.
It's just a complete lie that they tell people.
The way business is done now, it's the bill policy now.
Let the buyer be wary.
It seems that you can't, you know, you have to watch out.
Well, I really am not a sophisticated phone person, you know, but I enjoy your showroom,
so I'll hang up and get someone else.
But thanks again, you know, because consumers have to be on their guard.
Thanks again.
Okay.
Thank you.
And keep an eye on your phone bill.
Everybody should.
And if you don't understand something, either ask us here, or you can try asking the phone company.
They'll switch you to repair probably, but at some point you might get part of an answer.
Good evening.
Hi, how are you?
I'm okay.
A bit disturbed, but okay.
Okay, listen, I want to ask you a question.
I'm a scanner enthusiast, and there have been some eyebrows raised concerning people with scanners
listening in on to cellular telephone conversations.
By the way, I want to thank the people that have been sending us tapes of cellular phone calls,
because this is the way that we're going to wake people up and show them how insecure it is.
Anybody that wants to send us tapes is more than welcome to.
But it is illegal.
Mind you, it is illegal to listen.
We don't listen to the tapes.
We just collect them.
See, what it is, I subscribe to Monitoring Times magazine.
A fine publication.
Huh?
It's a fine publication, Monitoring Times.
And they're going to be holding their convention in October in Atlanta, by the way.
But do they ever editorialize about our freedom to use scanners to listen in on anything we like?
Well, think of it.
I mean, what is a scanner?
It's a radio.
They are saying in Washington, D.C., that you do not have the right to tune a radio and listen to it.
You know, it's absurd.
Instead of providing encryption or something that would allow some privacy on cellular phone calls,
they won't do that.
Instead, they'll pass this absurd law that makes it illegal to listen to a radio.
See, I've got radios here.
I'm a shortwave listener.
I'm an AM FM DXer.
I've got a scanner.
I can listen on a lot of things.
It's expensive.
It's an expensive hobby, but I like it.
Uh-huh.
And I'm a member of several clubs.
It's not amateur radio in case anybody out there.
That's a separate issue altogether.
Well, amateur radio, you transmit a lot.
You sound like you receive mostly.
That's correct.
Now, I understand that in vehicles, the police don't want you to have scanners,
but I don't know how the press gets around that.
They get around it.
We won't go into details as to how they get around it, but they get around it.
I thought I would just call you and bring up these things, you know?
Uh-huh.
Good for thought.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Bye.
Scanners are a world of intrigue into themselves,
Always on the lookout for interesting scanners that get those special frequencies.
It's not illegal to have a radio that receives 800 megahertz, i.e., cellular phone calls.
It is not illegal to have one.
It is not illegal to buy one.
It is not illegal to sell one.
It is illegal to listen.
Go figure.
Good evening.
Hello?
All right.
Well, that's, I guess, could be construed as a comment of some sort.
Good evening.
Yes, it's you.
You're on the air.
Yes, good evening.
McGowan of MCI died.
I thought you might like to do a tribute to him.
He died, huh?
Yep.
They had him on the first page of the New York Times,
and they said that he broke up Monopoly, the telephone company, and so on and so forth.
When did this happen?
I gave it a second thought because it seems that the rates have gone up.
Is there any possibility that this was just a decision of the phone company to figure out how to,
you know what I mean?
In other words, what looked like a very powerful individual actually was a ploy of the telephone company to—
Well, you know, McGowan started off with a good idea with MCI back in, what, the 60s as a way of communicating,
I think it was between Cleveland and Chicago,
and it turned into something, you know, the second biggest long-distance company in the country.
And, you know, afterwards he sort of receded into the corporate executive mold,
and he became as bad as Charlie Brown at AT&T.
Oh, really?
I think so, anyway, from my run-ins with him.
Well, if anybody has any other ideas, I'd be interested to hear it.
The other thing is this, that Michio Kaku was not at the last two local board meetings,
and he wasn't at the National Pacifica board meeting.
So he may talk as if he's totally involved with the station,
but, of course, he's a very busy person talking about electricity on the West Coast,
as he admitted last week on his program.
The point being that how can we be ecologically sound if we're doing so many things
and we're spreading ourselves so thin?
Well, I have a solution for you, and the solution is for more people to get involved
so we don't have to spread ourselves so thin, okay?
That's how it works.
I mean, there's tons of people out there,
and if everybody got involved a tenth of as much as people around here get involved,
then we wouldn't be burning out all the time, and we'd be seeing a lot of progress.
I mean, there's been a lot of progress in the past ten years or so.
Of course, you can give the Republicans a lot of credit for that
because they sort of inspired the rest of us,
inspired us with all kinds of feelings that we didn't know that we had.
But, really, if more people get involved, more things will happen.
And that goes for telecommunications, that goes for freedom of speech,
that goes for the environment.
You see it in action every day.
There's no reason to think that your involvement would not make a difference.
All right, 212-279-3400.
Good evening.
Yes, hello?
How are you doing?
Okay.
Yeah, I thought you were going to have some experts on the line tonight on the New York telephone.
Well, we were supposed to have some experts,
but these experts seem to be a little bit, well, they're not too sure of their position at the moment.
They say they'll be here next week.
They said that last week, too, but we'll have to see what happens.
Yeah.
I represent Buffalo and Erie County and Nassau County in a number of telephone proceedings.
There was a settlement conference that went on and on.
You represent them for who?
I represent the law departments of those entities, the city of Buffalo, county of Erie,
and the county of Nassau.
And this pits you against the phone company?
Well, yes, it has for a long time.
What they're trying to do is to, well, by the way, you didn't mention it,
but the increase that they're really looking for is to the basic message rates, I'm sorry,
the residential basic charge and the, which for residential customers, also for business customers,
they want to raise that by $1.67 right now.
This is a four-year plan.
Right, from $6.60 to, I believe, $8.27.
That's correct.
Yeah.
And our main issue, the reason why these three widely separated counties have combined,
is because flat rate service is available in those areas.
And the FCC just did a study of 97, or 95 cities,
and they gave Buffalo the award for the notoriety of paying the highest rate of all the other flat rate,
all the other rates charged in 90, in other words,
they're higher than other 9X rates in Boston and Vermont,
higher than any of the other major cities, 95 of the largest cities.
This was an FCC study.
And in New York City, a lot of people don't realize that,
because you can't get flat rate service in Manhattan, for instance,
they haven't had it for many years.
We feel that flat rate service is a very important thing.
You know, you talk, think globally and act locally.
And where communities that have flat rate service make it possible for people to participate actively
in local politics, local, other community affairs.
For the benefit of the listeners, just in case there's anybody confused out there,
can you describe the basic difference between flat rate and message rate service?
Yes. Basically, message rate service gives you a price, for instance, presently of $6.60,
and you pay for every local call that you make, it's presently $0.108, I believe.
And you pay for additional minutes as well.
Now, the interesting thing is, with that basic service, you don't pay,
the company had tried to charge or had a service where they timed your calls,
gave you a slight reduction in the original charge,
but they timed the calls so that you would pay for the length of the call.
But as you know, in Manhattan, for instance, you can call Manhattan to Queens and so forth,
and you can stay on the line night and day because the calls aren't timed.
However, if you call beyond, of course, beyond your local primary area,
then if you're in Manhattan, you pay a timed charge to calls that are not toll calls.
You pay an original minute charge and extra charges for each additional minute.
Okay.
Now, a flat rate, let's say residential flat rate, for instance,
you're given a certain area, and within that area, you can make unlimited calls.
You can make as many calls as you want, and you can stay on them as long as you wish.
And this happens to be the American way.
I mean, all the other 95 cities that were, for instance, in their study have flat rate service.
New York City is an exception because Manhattan doesn't have it at all.
It's grandfathered in certain areas of Queens and in Staten Island.
And back in 1973, we found an article that said that there was a plan of AT&T at that time to phase out flat rate service.
Well, it's interesting because one of the things in this new rate proposal is the elimination of flat rate business service entirely.
Yeah, well, we would agree with the elimination of flat rate business service
because, naturally, the businesses should pay as they go.
Where it's available, it's only available in very limited and very small areas.
But the business community, you know, should have their service measured.
We can't complain about that.
That's where we feel there should be more.
We should protect flat rate service.
And what they've been doing has been to price flat rate service so high that poor people or less affluent people, let me put it that way,
just knocked off the flat rate service.
And we think this stifles their opportunity to participate in the democratic process and so forth and in community projects and things that I mentioned before.
So you see this as kind of a tradeoff that they're lowering the rates for interladder calls
and at the same time raising the rates for message unit service and trying to cut back on flat rate?
Yes, it's a tradeoff where they can tell the commission, yes, this is a revenue-neutral proposition.
We'll make a few dollars here, but we'll give it back over there.
But the major thing that we're interested in is having the lowest possible residential flat rates for all consumers in the state.
The rates now range from, well, a community, a small community like Peekskill, $15.96.
They want to raise that to $17.
Buffalo is up to, and Nassau County, the Hempstead area, is up to $22.27.
They want that to go to $23.94.
But when you look at places like California, where the major cities like San Francisco and so forth, Los Angeles,
they have flat rate service for around $12, so you see how far off the path we are.
And by the way, a lot of these rates, the FCC actually built the rate of Buffalo's rate, for instance, or Nassau Hempstead, at $31
because you have equal percentage sales taxes applied and other surcharges that are applied.
So for a person to have flat rate service in Hempstead, they've got to pay $31 and change.
And this is unconscionable, and it's only a result of what the commission and the company have been doing over the years,
and that is they have 10 flat rate groups, and they use an equal percentage formula.
We finally blocked that in the last rate case, and they're using an equal dollar amount now.
But that was something that mathematically would just pitch Buffalo and Nassau County higher and higher and higher.
By the way, Scarsdale is also in the upper echelons of the rate, and they're joining the Buffalo-Erie-Nassau group.
All right, I'd like to get on to some more calls, but let me just ask you if there's a way that listeners can get involved,
if there are people they should contact or anything like that you're aware of.
Well, one thing that was done in Buffalo and Erie that started the thing off was that they contacted the Erie County Legislature,
for instance, the UAW years and years ago, about 17 years ago, and the phone company started getting all these rate increases.
They initiated a campaign themselves, but then they said, Why are we paying for this? Everybody's going to benefit.
So they did some politicking with the Erie County Legislature and the Buffalo City Council,
and they got them to appropriate money to fight the case and see that the law departments of those entities participated in the action.
So wherever you are, all your rates are going to go up if this is allowed.
So speak to your local political groups and tell them to make sure that the municipalities and so forth get into the act,
because it's very helpful if they're there, and it's very costly if they're not.
And I want to thank you very much. You do a fantastic job.
Okay. Thanks for your interest.
You're welcome.
All right. 212-279-3400. Good evening. You're on the air.
Hello?
Okay. Let's go to another call. Good evening.
Oh, hello.
How are you doing?
I was just listening to your program before, and I decided to try that Star 69, even though I live in Brooklyn, even though I have the phone.
It's a touch-tone phone, but I don't have touch-tone service.
So I dialed it, and the phone started to ring, and lo and behold, I got a hold of my husband's aunt in New Jersey who tried to call us after we left.
In New Jersey?
Yeah.
So this is the first case I'm aware of that it crossed state lines.
Wow. You're in Brooklyn, huh?
Yeah. And I'm not at that exchange that you mentioned, 831 or 813.
Can you, without revealing too much about yourself, just tell us what your exchange is?
648.
648. Okay. We're going to look into this, because that's scary.
I had it a couple of weeks ago when you first mentioned it, and there was nothing there, and I think you also mentioned another Star 57 also.
Star 57 is called Trace, yeah.
Right. And nothing happened then.
But it just suddenly worked, huh?
Yeah.
Star 69. That's pretty incredible. I'll have to see how that could be possible.
I mean, we're talking not only two states, but two different phone companies, two different bell operating companies.
I enjoy hearing you talk about the different local companies, because I'm not really sure exactly how it all works.
Well, right now there aren't any different local companies.
I mean, just the difference between local and, I don't know, NYNEX, New York Telephone, and your previous caller was quite interesting.
Right. Yeah. It does get very complicated, but just remember that New York Telephone has monopoly over your dial tone.
That's when you see what the injustice is.
Okay. Well, thanks.
Thanks for sharing that with us.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Okay, before we forget, we should go over some of the methods of getting around Star 69.
And one of those methods that I find to work rather well, and I think it's something that could be used as a marketing tactic against New York Telephone,
and that is simply to route your calls through a long-distance company.
That's right. It sounds absurd, but let's say you're in some part of, well, let's give this example that this last caller just gave us,
where she's in Brooklyn and somebody from New Jersey called them.
Now, let's say the person from New Jersey did not want to be Star 69'd back as they just were.
There are a couple of ways they can get around it that I'm aware of.
There are supposed to be codes to block caller ID, except we have not had a chance to test those and see if that blocks Star 69.
We will be printing some tricks about Star 69 in the next issue of 2600, but for now, I find that this way works rather well.
If you route your calls through an alternative carrier of some sort, even AT&T will work if you route your calls in some manner.
Simply by dialing a 10XXX code.
For instance, MCI would be 10222.
Then your area code and phone number that you're calling.
Now, you can even do this down the block.
It won't work for AT&T because AT&T is prohibited from doing this, but it will work with Sprint and MCI.
If you dial 10222, 10333.
Metromedia is 10488.
Other companies have different prefixes, and you simply dial that prefix.
Then, if you're dialing locally, your own area code and phone number, and your call should go through.
However, you will not be using New York Telephone or New Jersey Bell or any of your local companies.
You'll be bypassing your local companies.
You'll be paying a little bit more. I don't know exactly how much more.
This brings to mind the commercials that you see from New York Telephone saying that they're cheaper for 95% of all calls dialed locally.
Well, this is a good example of how, for paying just a little bit more, you get to preserve your privacy.
Something that the local phone companies are not really providing.
This last instance, though, is something that raises a whole lot of questions because, obviously, if you call from New Jersey to Brooklyn,
you're not dealing with local companies anymore. You're dealing with a long-distance company.
We're going to have to look into that and see just what it was that happened there.
Good evening.
Yeah, Emanuel?
Yes.
Okay. First, when you have the call back, do you hear the sounds? If it's a touchtone, do you hear the sounds of the phone dialing?
No, because the phone is not really dialing.
You're simply tapping into your own switch, and it's connecting you directly, so you bypass that particular part, the dialing part.
And what is the number to block caller ID? What do you dial to do that?
You know, I do have that information someplace.
Since I don't have caller ID and I haven't had a chance to work on this, I don't have that readily available.
But we will, in weeks to come, be going over that in detail.
But call your local operator. They should be able to tell you that right away.
For this service, the call back, do you know exactly if they just store the last number,
or does the computer go back into your records to find out what the last number they called you was?
It stores the last number, as far as I know. You cannot call any number before then.
All right. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thanks for calling.
Bye.
And that's going to just about do it for us here on Off The Hook this week.
I want to thank everybody for calling in and for asking questions.
And I hope more people ask more questions, because only by asking questions do you find out answers.
It's been my experience in the past.
Okay. Well, since I forgot to queue up the theme, I guess I'm going to have to go out of here in a different way.
Maybe by playing a public service announcement of some sort.
In any event, this is Emanuel Goldstein. We'll be back again next week.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show. Good night.
How do you like that? That wasn't queued up either.
Okay. Now it is. Good night.
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