[7359] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Internet vs. Telephone company
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (! Drive)
Fri Jan 31 20:02:53 1997
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 16:52:00 -0800
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: ! Drive <drink@aa.net>
>An interesting article was posted by the Seattle Times yesterday, it's at:
>
> http://www.seattletimes.com/topstories/browse/html97/inet_013097.html
>
>This was the Jan 30, 1997 issue. In it, Diedtra Henderson writes:
>
>"US West serves 2.2 million customers in Washington state and spent $340
>million improving its phone system here last year, a spokesman said. The
>company blames a meteoric rise in Internet use for its phone-service woes.
>[SNIP]
>"For the next five years we are in big trouble. There is no clear,
>intelligent way to expand the phone system to handle the Internet
>demands," said Lu, who expects metered Internet access in the future - in
>other words, you pay by the hour. "
>
>My question is: Have other people heard of similar attempts by the
>telephone companies to have "metered Internet access"? It seems they
>would need a hardware level signal analyzer on their switching equipment
>to differentiate between voice/data.
Who is to say that my data call is actually connecting to the
Internet?
>Does anyone know by what means such a technology could be implemented?
>What would be the legal ramifications?
>
>Also do people agree with the claims that our local lack of available
>phone lines is due to Internet usage or just to lack of foresight in
>growth management decisions?
I would say an intential lack of foresight in order to increase charges
for higher profits.
