Re: BA's new flat rate

[fmiddleton@advmethods.com]

  At 05:50 PM 4/17/96 -0400, Fred R. Goldstein wrote:
  <much useful information skipped>
  >Pennsylvania and New Jersey have tiny little calling radii.  Most of 
  metro
  >NJ goes maybe six miles before you hit toll.  Teaneck to Passaic, for
  >instance, is a toll route though it's only around five airline miles.
  
  >From where I am in NJ, _every_ useful call is a toll call. I tried 
  using AT&T for intra-lata isdn and found that they are marginally
  cheaper than BA at 21 cents for the 1'st 0.5 minute (yes, this is
  42 cents/minute) with no surcharge (BA charges 28 cents for the 
  first 1.0 minute) and 24 cents per minute for longer connect times. 
  Fortunately one can get a lot of mail in 25 seconds over ISDN! I 
  imagine that most NJers don't care about flat rate because all their
  calls are toll calls anyway. This definitely keeps me off the web...
  
  These rates make telecommuting and Internet access prohibitively
  expensive (I'm only 21 miles from Newark, so the rural subsidy 
  argument shouldn't apply). I know this isn't just an ISDN problem,
  but it makes telecommuting practical only if you live so close to
  your office it makes telecommuting uneccessary.
  
  AT&T has no discount calling plan such as they offer for analog voice 
  and this is another discentive to using ISDN. I have seen no discussion 
  here about long distance ISDN, but shouldn't the same arguments be made
  that have been made about LEC rates? Obviously there isn't much in
  the way of competition (MCI or Sprint, are you listening?).
  
  Now $23.50/mo for basic rate service sounds very attractive - I could 
  replace 2 pots lines and be ahead (remember, all my calls are toll
  calls - does anyone know of a TA I could plug into my NT1 so I could
  use my analog phones?). This is the first time I've seen the toll
  problem mentioned in this forum; now here's something for the fair 
  access warriers to run with...