20 May
2017
20 May
'17
2:05 p.m.
On 05/20/2017 11:12 AM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
In the bay area in california, and likely elsewhere
too, there was a local
calling zone that was set based on the population patterns of the 1950's
and 1960's. This meant that calls to some numbers were free, while others
had a toll associated with them. There were zones around the central zone.
So it would cost money to call out of your zone, even if things were only a
few miles away. It was a total crock, but something that the PUCs allowed
because it has always been allowed before the suburbs grew up into one
contiguous population area. So fast forward to the 1980's or 1990's and you
found it impossible to know how much a call would cost. In Colorado, I
lived in an area just outside the metro calling area. I could call 20 miles
away to the far side of Longmont for free. But calling 2 miles to the pizza
joint was a long distance call because it was over the line in gunbarrel
which was in the metro calling area. Totally insane and bat **** crazy.
Yes--and in addition, if you were willing to pay a monthly subscription
fee, you could add a city in the calling area that exempted you from
metered service for that city. I remember doing this for Menlo Park.
Not only that, but sometimes the tariffs were set up such that A's calls
to B were free, but B's calls to A were toll. And things were even
weirder when the destination was a non-AT&T carrier. GTE, for example,
serviced Boulder Creek and Los Gatos.
In the early days of BBS, one of the ways for a sysop to save money was
to specify that a line was "answer only"--you couldn't dial out from it.
I know of at least one case where Pacific Bell insisted that a modem on
such a line constituted a "data line", for which there was a much higher
charge. It was a wacky world.
Even by 1990s, a lot of the RBOCs hadn't completely shed their habits.
I learned from an installer that a service call to "check the line" was
free, but one to "check equalization" was a substantial charge, even
though the former usually included the latter.
--Chuck
--Chuck