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