Pursuit for People

On August 7, GTE Telenet announced a new service that, if handled properly, will usher in a whole new phase of computer communications.

The service is called PC Pursuit and it enables people to connect their computers to other computers for $25 a month (plus a start-up fee of $25).  In other words, a hobbyist in New York can connect his computer to a bulletin board in California and not have to pay for a long-distance call.  The "computer conversation" goes through GTE Telenet, a packet-switching network for computers, previously used exclusively by large corporations.

"To access the service," GTE's press release explains, "a user calls his PC Pursuit access number and is prompted to enter his home phone number and make a request for a destination phone number in a distant city.  If the user s telephone number is not authorized, the phone call is terminated and a record of the call is generated.  If the number is authorized, the subscriber is called back and automatically connected to the desired telephone number in the distant city, which could be a specific database or remote PC user.  GTE Telenet is able to maintain full accounting of the origin and destination of all calls.  Each user session can last a full hour, and users may access the service as many times a month as they wish."

PC Pursuit represents the first time a major corporation has attempted to win over computer hackers rather than intimidate them.  J. David Hann, president of GTE Telenet, says, "We hope that we will be providing a safe, positive outlet for computer hobbyists, giving them inexpensive, virtually unlimited access to hundreds of free databases and bulletin boards.  By removing the prohibitive cost from recreational data communications, perhaps PC Pursuit will encourage growth and advancement rather than mischief and abuse among hobbyists."

We think it's great.  At last we are being encouraged to take advantage of technology without paying ridiculous prices.  We look forward to the day when all "long-distance" calls will cost the same as local calls, and free databases will be made available to everyone.

Naturally we are a little concerned that all of this data will be going through GTE Telenet, i.e. just about every hacker bulletin board would at some point be called through it.  It wouldn't be too difficult to spy on someone's data from within the system, but we feel that's already the case at present with all communications.  As always, we recommend scrambling sensitive or private communications.

It's unlikely that this new system (co-developed by Digital Pathways, Inc. of California) will be victimized by hackers because of the callback feature.  Still, if there is a way to defeat this, you can count on it being discovered.  Even at this point, though, the most that any one person could cheat the service out of is $25 a month.

Our main complaint with PC Pursuit is that it isn't available in nearly enough places.  Only the largest of cities can use it to call other large cities.  A list of dial-ups appears in this issue.  When GTE finally gets around to implementing nationwide or even worldwide service, they will have a powerful, trend-setting, people-oriented product.

(More info can be obtained by talking to a human at 800-368-4215 or a computer at 800-835-3001.)

PC PURSUIT Cities and Access Numbers AREA CODE LOCAL ACCESS CITY CITY SERVED NUMBER ACCESS CODE -------------------------------------------------------- Atlanta 404 584-2873 Atlanta Boston 617 423-0547 Boston Chicago 312 565-3927 Chicago Dallas 214 651-7094 Dallas Denver 303 671-5146 Denver Detroit 313 961-9555 Detroit Houston 713 227-5742 Houston Los Angeles 213 624-6062 LA New York 212 675-3738 New York Philadelphia 215 574-0613 Philly San Francisco 415 398-1134 San Fran Washington, D.C. 202 659-2863 Wash, D.C.