Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!MITRE.MITRE.ORG!mcgurrin From: mcgurrin@MITRE.MITRE.ORG Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: 1-900 BBS Message-ID: <8908111935.AA11607@mitre.arpa> Date: 11 Aug 89 19:35:27 GMT References: <8908111748.AA01506@trout.nosc.mil> Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C. Lines: 12 Sorry, but I think it would be a bust. The kicker is the $0.30 per minute collection fee from the phone company. In order to break even you have to recover that, in addition to the flat monthly fee and the startup cost. Unless you want to lose money on every call, and make it up on volume :-), you need to charge more than $0.30 per minute, or $18.00 per hour. It's hard to think of what you would offer that would compete with services like GENIE or Compuserve, or the Telenet-type inexpensive access to remote BBS's. This isn't to say that there wouldn't be some novelty application that a creative person could come up with. You'd need something that would appeal to folks with modems, and that was better or as good sent as data as a voice 900 call. Who'd have thought listening to anonymous confessions would rake in the dough? This concept has just spread to the D.C. area.