40 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
40 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
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Equal Access and Modem Autodialers by Shadow 2600
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Now that AT&T is being divested of its local telephone companies, phone
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customers across the nation have to choose their long distance carrier as equal
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access is phased in. Advertising campaigns emphasize such aspects as low rates
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and operator assistance, but no one mentions a factor that will affect modem
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users who use auto dialers for long distance calls. Not all of the alternate
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long distance carriers provide called party answering supervision on all calls.
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Called party answering supervision basically has the telephone company start
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billing only when the called party answers the telephone. However, many of the
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alternate long distance companies still operate with the "fixed timeout" basis
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for charging. That is, if a call is held for a fixed length of time (usually
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30 seconds) the charging starts, whether or not the call was answered. This
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could cause modem owners large bills if they use autodialers to make long
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distance calls. Modems are usually set up to wait up to one minute when
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attempting to make a call, and thus have to timeout through busy signals, long
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call setup sequences, extender waits, and similar problems. This could result
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in many billed but never answered calls.
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Some of the other carriers provide it on calls to some cities, and others
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not support it at all. Only AT&T Communications provides called party
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answering supervision on all calls to all points at this time. It is almost
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impossible to get information on how a long distance company charges its calls
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as as they don't want to reveal how their billing is handled. The alternate
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carriers get called party supervision when the destination location goes equal
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access. However, there has been no quick action on the part of the alternate
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long distance companies to make use of the supervision data as they would have
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to get equipment for passing the information back to the billing computer at
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the originating point. Thus called party answering supervision information
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often ends up being ignored by these carriers even when available. Another
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point to remember is that called party answering supervision's availability
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depends on whether the destination has equal access, not the originating
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location. The lower long distance rates of alternate long distance rates must
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be weighed against the time out problem as it affects autodialing modems. One
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way to circumvent this is merely to set your modem to a shorter
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waiting-for-connect time, but this may not provide enough time for the call to
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go through. [For more information on this and other telecommunications topics
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call the Private Sector BBS at (201) 366- 4431]
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