[83631] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: New N.Y. Law Targets Hidden Net LD Tolls
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jared Mauch)
Fri Aug 19 13:42:58 2005
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:40:20 -0400
From: Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
To: Andre Oppermann <nanog-list@nrg4u.com>
Cc: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>, nanog@nanog.org, wb8foz@nrk.com
In-Reply-To: <43061708.3080304@nrg4u.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 07:29:44PM +0200, Andre Oppermann wrote:
>
> John Levine wrote:
> >>Face it, 7D is dead; and even if overlays had not arrived, cell
> >>phones would have killed it. Once you learn to think 10D, it's
> >>trivial.
> >
> >Oh, you ignorant rednecks.* Even my cell phone has 7D dialing and
> >it'll be a century before overlays arrive where I live.
> >
> >The reason that it makes sense for an ISP to warn its customers about
> >surprise toll calls is that toll rates have gotten so low that for the
> >most part, we don't worry about them. Due to the peculiar
> >telegeography in my area, a 7D call within my area code could be
> >local, intra-LATA toll, or inter-LATA toll. But the most expensive of
> >those is 8 cents/min so for voice calls, I don't care, and I really
>
> Duh. I pay less for an international trans-atlantic call for premium
> voice minutes in retail (US$0.04/minute). Wholesale I get the same
> minute for less than 2 cents (US$). A 64kbit/s transparent ISDN call
> on the same path costs 3 cents (US$). And I'm in Switzerland. So it
> seems to be cheaper for me to call you than it is for you to call someone
> in the next LATA.
And people wonder why the ILECs are sitting on fat wads of
cash?
I can get US48 LD for $.02/min. I've found it cheaper sending
calls this way then paying for an unlimited plan.
Most people in the US can get unlimited LD plans on their POTS
service for around $60/mo (with most taxes, etc... included).
Regular POTS service can be had for around $14/mo (no frills,
no dtmf, etc..) around here at the most cut rate discount plans.
When i cancelled my Vonage service, they were willing to
to offer me service for $5 or $6/mo to keep me as a customer.
I've found that connecting directly to the PSTN via POTS to
be quite expensive compared to most of the alternatives out there,
I think it's only a matter of time before one of the ILECS (probally
one of the non-major CO-OPs or consortiums) switches over to unlimited
domestic plans to capture the LD, as most people don't use enough
on an unlimited plan to justify it.
- jared
--
Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net
clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
