Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!think.UUCP!johnl From: johnl@think.UUCP (John R. Levine) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: "Party" lines Message-ID: <8805081738.AA08787@ima.ISC.COM> Date: 8 May 88 17:38:37 GMT References: <8805042117.AA21998@dandelion.CI.COM> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine) Organization: Not much Lines: 22 Approved: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu In article <8805042117.AA21998@dandelion.CI.COM> david@dandelion.CI.COM (David Watson) writes: >Here in the Boston area, we have at least several 1-550- numbers which >interconnect their callers, including "teen", "party", and "fantasy" >lines. ... Here in Massachusetts, at least, the 550 prefix is an actual prefix which happens to be in the Bent Street CO in Cambridge. (I found out about this because that CO serves only a small part of Cambridge, and the building where I worked happened to be there.) The service provider orders 550 lines which cost the same as any normal business line and are electrically the same as well. The provider gets part of the cost paid by the subscriber, on the order of 5 cents/minute. It's up to the provider to arrange for the conference bridges, moderators, and all of the other stuff they need. The phone company only brings in the phone pairs and acts as the billing agent. I never learned where the hardware comes from. Some friends were trying with limited success to make a bridge on the cheap from a bunch of modified answering machines, but it never amounted to anything. -- John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869 { ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn. -G. B. Shaw