Re: Smoking gun in CA

[Dory Ethan Leifer <leifer@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>]

  > At 03:45 PM 4/29/96 -0400, James Love wrote:
  > 
  > (re: nailed resi ISDNlines)
  > >             In California the residential tariff is unmetered evenings 
  > >and weekends and this hasn't happened.  It hasn't happened in Tennesse.  
  > >And I don't do it with my flat rate telephone line in Virginia either.  
  > >Basically, there isn't any evidence that this has happened in any flat 
  > >rate states..    Some people nail up modem lines... but this is a tiny 
  > >fraction of users.  The number of nailed up modem lines is probably far 
  > >greater now than the number of nailed up ISDN lines.  If 1 of 20 people 
  > >do this, its not that big of a deal.. If 1 of 50 people do, who cares?
  
  It's the curve that is of concern. 7pm has become a new busy hour
  for telcos I've been told. Only a small number of machines in homes
  have modems used on a regular basis. If this number increases as expected,
  trouble could result.
  
  The solution is not popular with this group but if I was a telco, I'd
  attempt to get the FCC to reclassify Internet service so that I'd receive
  access fees on each minute someone connected to an ISP just like the
  telco collects when you place a long distance call. Then I could
  probably relax and not worry about flat rate ISDN or POTS. I might take
  some of the loot and try to build an overlay packet network with
  digital subscriber access so I could provide my outraged subscribers
  something better for the $200/month they are paying for Internet 
  service. Some of the state PUCs and lobby groups may be happy that
  I could drop the long-distance access fees for interexchange voice
  and I don't need to raise grandma's monthly phone bill one cent to
  add timeslots to my overloaded 5ESSs. The best news is I could probably
  do it on a national level and not waste lots of time by waging state by
  state battles.
  
  Dory