Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!swlabs.UUCP!jack From: jack@swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: (none) Message-ID: <8805271347.AA16475@swlabs.UUCP> Date: 27 May 88 13:47:12 GMT Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 51 Approved: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu To: uunet!comp-dcom-telecom Path: swlabs!jack From: jack@swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Toll-free zone Message-ID: <1017@swlabs.UUCP> Date: 27 May 88 13:47:09 GMT References: <8805270503.AA05256@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU> Reply-To: jack@swlabs.UUCP (Jack Bonn) Organization: Software Labs, Ltd., Easton, CT Lines: 38 In article <8805270503.AA05256@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU> bnelson@CCB.BBN.COM ("Barry C. Nelson") writes: >It may not have been exactly "toll-free", but in Italy (and many other places, >I'm sure), there is ONLY measured service which is accomplished with mechanical >counters. They count clicks, the frequency of which goes up with the distance >(non-linearly). Your monthly bill shows up with a grand total of the clicks >used during the previous month; no number called, no dates, no time-of-day, no >toll-call breakdown. (Great for accounting :-) When I was working on a telephone switch for the European market, I thought that this would be an area where U.S. technology could improve their service the most. Detailed billing (like that we have in the U.S.) would bring the Europeans into the 20th century. We had everything we needed: called number, calling number, answer time, termination time. What a treat. Then I was told that it would never attain popularity. I was told that most of the world was very wary of having records kept of where and when calls were placed by them. They felt that it would invade their privacy to have this record kept _anywhere_ and that this record could not be kept without the possibility of them falling into the wrong hands. By the time I finished thinking about it, I felt that maybe they were right. As a side note, one of the more humorous advances that I heard about in this area had to do with reading the counters that kept track of the meter pulses. I the U.K., the meters are kept in the CO and were read periodically for the purpose of billing. To save effort they had devised a scheme to have a camera traverse the bank of meters in an automatic manner. A picture was taken of each group of 4 counters which were then more easily read by someone working at a desk. Now there's progress. -Jack -- Jack Bonn, <> Software Labs, Ltd, Box 451, Easton CT 06612 uunet!swlabs!jack