News Update
It appears that the times may indeed be changing.
For years, we've encouraged our readers to battle the unfair fees on Touch-Tones that the phone companies charge. Now comes word out of California that Pacific Bell's latest rate proposal calls for the elimination of Touch-Tone service charges. We understand they're not the first and we doubt they'll be the last...
In New York, plans are underway to add another area code in the next couple of years. The interesting thing here is that this code (917) would be used for one part of the city (The Bronx) plus cellular phones, beepers, and voice mail systems in Manhattan. How this is all going to be coordinated should be loads of fun...
What's the largest local phone company in the United States? NYNEX? Ameritech? BellSouth? No, GTE. That's right, a non-Bell company will be the largest in the country, once it acquires Contel, another independent phone company. GTE currently operates local service in 46 different states, Contel in 30...
NYNEX is planning on buying AXE digital switches from Ericsson and locating them in the 914 area code. We're not aware of any AXE switches currently operating in the U.S. If you happen to know of one, let us know...
AT&T has been operating a service called VoiceMark, which allows you to send messages to people by phone at a designated time by calling 800-562-6275 and giving them your calling card number or Visa/Mastercard. The charge is $1.75 for a one minute message to any phone in the country...
Metromedia/ITT probably has the best phrasing in their calling card instructions: "simply swipe your card through the slot"...
U.S. Sprint has a new solution for prison inmates. Instead of forcing inmates to make collect calls, Sprint provides a service called "Safe Block." Inmates must establish a long-distance fund that they draw upon whenever making a call. Calls can only be made to predetermined numbers and the inmate is identified with a 9-digit authorization code...
Get ready for some neat acronyms: British Telecom (BT) has won a major contract from the government for Private Branch Exchanges (PBXes) for use in emergencies. In order to get the contract, their PBX had to be able to withstand the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) that comes with a nuclear explosion (SOL). BT states that EMP would have a catastrophic effect on computerized equipment. So far they don't seem to have developed a plan to protect any people...
BT also has acronyms for new services they're providing. Calling Line Identity (similar to Caller ID here) is known as CLI. Their version of Call Trace is called Malicious Call Identification, or MCI!...
Finally from England: BT payphones no longer take 2p or 5p coins. That was phased out in June. But the phones still take 10p, 20p, 50p, and one pound coins. But it won't be as much fun. That's because payphones there work very differently from payphones here. All calls carry a minimum charge of 10p. But unused coins are returned. So you can put two 10p coins in and if the display only goes down 3p, one of your 10p coins will be returned. But this can get quite interesting. Let's say you've put a 20p coin in the phone and the display is down to 5p. By quickly inserting a 10p and a 5p coin, you've overpaid by 20p, so the 20p coin comes out. In actuality you would have saved 5p that otherwise would have been swallowed. It's pretty obvious how BT will benefit from this since the above example will no longer be possible. This shadiness is similar to the way Bell-operated payphones ask for a nickel for the next several minutes (for local calls, not long-distance) and credit whatever you put in as a nickel, even if it's a quarter. We know they have the technology to tell the difference. But there's no incentive for them to use it in this case. So maybe the times really aren't changing after all...