81 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
4.6 KiB
Plaintext
Are all of you folks out there in BBS land aware of what the
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phone companies are trying to pull off this year? Well, here's a
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synopsis of a thread that I've been tracking for the past few weeks.
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According to Bill Blomgren, a BBS operator, the phone companies in
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several states have decided that ANY BBS SYSTEM is a business. What
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that means is that the 12 year old running a little board on his Apple
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2 may now have to pay full business rates. That is the $50 per month
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base rate, plus increases (massive) in long distance and other
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charges. Example: local rates... Touch Tone residential: $.50 per
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month.. Business: $2.50 per month.... Long distance rates almost
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double... and so on.
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The Phone Company does not care if the line is used for friends
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only. If the board appears on any list, it is considered
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"advertising", accepts any $, it is a profit maker... accepts uploads
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(Guess what they think shareware is? Compensation)....
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As you can imagine, local BBS are under great economic threat.
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Not many of them can afford tripling or quadrupling of the phone bill.
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Indiana's PUC threw out the challenge to the new rates from GTE, and
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Bell has already has a similar request pending, waiting for the
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decision. In MI, there is a company charging not only business rates,
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but an extra $$$$ per month for 'Processing' and line charges..
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Special services for modem operations... In Texas...boards that take
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a penny, or have more than 3 lines are businesses..
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Here's another example: a guy had an 'adult' board up with 15
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lines. Had it running for around 5 or 6 months when word got spread
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on a talk station that it existed. GTE IMMEDIATELY billed him for 15
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lines of business service, retroactively, and closed him down 4 days
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later when he couldn't immediately come up with $3000. The phone
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company can usually do whatever it wants with your bill. The only
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exception is the little old lady who dials out once a month and gets 4
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calls a month.
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Granted, this is an extreme example. Reasonably speaking, any
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board with 15 lines is almost certainly charging for the service, and
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hopefully making some money for the operator.
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I don't think any reasonable person would object to large BBS
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which are operated as profit making businesses being charged business
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phone rates. What frightens me is what appears to be arbitrarily
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defined criteria for business classification. While 15 lines into a
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subscription BBS may clearly be a business, I don't think that one
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line into a non- or minimal subscription BBS is anything more than a
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hobby, and needs to be protected as such.
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Here are some more horror stories. According to Ryan Ritenour,
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all BBS's in Elkhart, Indiana are being charged business rates for
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their lines. This has been going on now for several months. While
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some small time BBS's may get away without paying higher rates for a
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while, Ryan believes that they will soon get hit too. According to
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Ryan, several boards have already closed down because of the
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additional cost, while most other BBS's are going subscription.
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And if you think this is an isolated incident, think twice. Once
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all the other phone companies get wind of GTE charging higher rates,
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they are all going to want to do it too. Eventually this will lead to
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the modem and fax user.
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There's more. According to Bill Blomgren, on a recent COSUARD
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conference, there was a week of discussion about boards shutting down
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in one area around Detroit, where the phone Co. not only reclassified
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them as businesses, but insisted that as a data processing service
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they HAD to buy extra cost services, including $50 per month per line
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for 'special handling'. The lines ended up costing $100 per month,
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which cropped a couple hundred BBS lines down to 3-6 in a little over
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a month.
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Bill believes that there are two important points that need to be
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made about the phone companies in his area. 1) GTE has decided to get
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into the "Data distribution and sales" business. As part of that,
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they declared that "They would have to deal with the competition" to
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make their efforts profitable. Guess who the competition is? You got
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it, the local BBS. 2) They are looking for new sources of revenue
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without any additional installation of equipment. The best way to do
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that is to find ways of making lines already installed pay for
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business rates, and in his area, they are doing that retroactively.
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OK, so what do we do? See the next message for some suggestions.
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