Equal Access May Not Be "Equal" to Modems

by The Shadow

Now that AT&T is being divested of its local telephone companies, phone customers across the nation have to choose their long-distance carrier as "Equal Access" is phased in.

Advertising campaigns emphasize such aspects as low rates and operator assistance, but almost no one mentions a factor that will affect modem users who use auto-dialers for long-distance calls.  Not all of the alternate long-distance carriers provide called party answering supervision on all calls.  Called party answering supervision basically has the telephone company start billing only when the called party answers the telephone.

However, many of the alternate long-distance companies still operate with the "fixed timeout" basis for charging.  That is, if a call is held for a fixed length of time (usually 30 seconds), the charging starts, whether or not the call was answered.

This could cause modem owners large bills if they use auto-dialers to make long-distance calls.  Modems are usually set up to wait up to one minute when attempting to make a call, and thus have to timeout through busy signals, long call setup sequences, extender waits, and similar problems.  This could result in many billed but unanswered calls.

Some of the other carriers provide this on calls to some cities, and others don't support it at all.  Only AT&T provides called party answering supervision on all calls to all points presently.  It's almost impossible to get information on how a long-distance company charges its calls as they don't want to reveal how their billing is handled.

The alternate carriers get called party supervision when the destination location goes Equal Access.  However, there has been no quick action on the part of the alternate long-distance companies to make use of the supervision data as they would have to get equipment for passing the information back to the billing computer at the originating point.  Thus, called party answering supervision often ends up being ignored by these carriers even when available.

The lower rates of alternate long-distance companies must be weighed against the timeout problem as it affects auto-dialing modems.  One way to circumvent this is merely to set your modem to a shorter waiting-for-connect time, but this may not provide enough time for the call to go through.  You could also claim credit for each and every one of the calls you get billed for that doesn't actually connect - but that can be very time consuming.

Keep in mind also that alternate phone companies with primitive billing methods will often not detect short 20-second phone calls...