Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 12:57:23 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: tj-fbsd@funbox.demon.co.uk, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Phone rates Message-ID: <19981222125723.W85005@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <367ED766.C2941435@uk.radan.com>; from Mark Ovens on Mon, Dec 21, 1998 at 11:19:02PM %2B0000 References: <4.1.19981221111410.06cbb650@mail.lariat.org> <367ED766.C2941435@uk.radan.com>
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On Monday, 21 December 1998 at 23:19:02 +0000, Mark Ovens wrote: > > Brett Glass wrote: >> >> At 11:15 AM 12/21/98 +0000, tj-fbsd@funbox.demon.co.uk wrote: >> >>> Capitalism may reign supreme over on your side of the water, but >>> British Telecom is unfortunately rather too good at sucking in the >>> profits over here... >> >> I understand that there are two others: Mercury and another. Are >> they undercutting BT or just going along for the ride? >> > > Part of the problem is that BT still own all the major inter-city > trunks, so even if you use Mercury making a call from, say, London to > Manchester still has to use BT lines, which Mercury has to pay for. So > BT still holds the upper hand. That's part of the story. In most countries, the (ex-)national Telecom provider owns the trunks. I think it's even the case in the US, though I'm not sure. It's certainly the case here in Australia, but I subscribe to a discount service which gives me national long-distance calls (up to about 3000 miles) for $0.19/minute in peak time and $0.14/minute for the rest (Australian $, about $0.60 US). That's *much* lower than Telstra, and pretty good in international comparison. Phone calls to the USA are about $0.31 a minute. >> I do recall that some pay phones in the UK also rejected the 0800 >> number for my MCI international calling card. Why? The phone was >> owned by a company that had an exclusive deal with AT&T. They >> blocked calls to anyone else's 800 number. > > Don't know. I didn't think that sort of thing was allowed. I'm sure it's not, but it's apparently pretty common. Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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