An interesting article was posted by the Seattle Times yesterday, it's at:
http://www.seattletimes.com/topstories/browse/html97/inet_013097.html
This was the Jan 30, 1997 issue. In it, Diedtra Henderson writes:
"US West serves 2.2 million customers in Washington state and spent $340
million improving its phone system here last year, a spokesman said. The
company blames a meteoric rise in Internet use for its phone-service woes.
[SNIP]
"For the next five years we are in big trouble. There is no clear,
intelligent way to expand the phone system to handle the Internet
demands," said Lu, who expects metered Internet access in the future - in
other words, you pay by the hour. "
My question is: Have other people heard of similar attempts by the
telephone companies to have "metered Internet access"? It seems they
would need a hardware level signal analyzer on their switching equipment
to differentiate between voice/data. Does anyone know by what means such
a technology could be implemented? What would be the legal ramifications?
Also do people agree with the claims that our local lack of available
phone lines is due to Internet usage or just to lack of foresight in
growth management decisions?
Tony Torzillo
An interesting article was posted by the Seattle Times yesterday,
it's at:
http://www.seattletimes.com/topstories/browse/html97/inet_013097.html
This was the Jan 30, 1997 issue. In it, Diedtra Henderson writes:
"US West serves 2.2 million customers in Washington state and
spent >$340
million improving its phone system here last year, a spokesman
said. >The company blames a meteoric rise in Internet use for its
phone-service woes.
[SNIP]
"For the next five years we are in big trouble. There is no clear,
intelligent way to expand the phone system to handle the Internet
demands," said Lu, who expects metered Internet access in the
future >- in
other words, you pay by the hour. "
My question is: Have other people heard of similar attempts by the
telephone companies to have "metered Internet access"? It seems >they
would need a hardware level signal analyzer on their switching
equipment
to differentiate between voice/data. Does anyone know by what
means >such
a technology could be implemented? What would be the legal
ramifications?
Also do people agree with the claims that our local lack of >available
phone lines is due to Internet usage or just to lack of foresight in
growth management decisions?
I think we're missing the point. They aren't just going to charge
hourly for data service, but for all service.
It really wasn't that long ago they were doing this (US West
stopped in the late 70's or early 80's
All they are going to need to do is notify customers and turn the
old billing procedures back on, they already track hourly usage
anyway.
My question is: Have other people heard of similar attempts by the
telephone companies to have "metered Internet access"? It seems they
would need a hardware level signal analyzer on their switching equipment
to differentiate between voice/data. Does anyone know by what means such
a technology could be implemented? What would be the legal ramifications?
The RBOCs would like to move everyone to metered service for
everything. They won't be able to, so instead they would like to move
as many people as possible to a metered service.
Whether or not there is a real difference between a phone call "to the
Internet" and other sorts of phone call, if they can convince the PUCs
that there is a difference they can move some portion of the
subscriber base to metered services. Or if they can convince the
public that they ought to use ISDN and pay a per-minute charge, that
will work too. Anything that leads to metering is a win for them,
because the billing infrastructure is already there.
This ought to be on com-priv.
Some context from Washington State:
US West has recently been rebuffed in efforts before the Washington State
legislature and our regulatory body, the WUTC (Washington Utilities and
Telecommunications Commission).
The request for an hourly rate is probably nothing more than a PR effort
taking advantage of recent publicity about internet jams, a la AOL, etc.
Given their recent failures here the effect of this publicity is much
more likely to be through another RBOC citing the consideration of the
policy here.
That aside, infrastructure investment considerations are a valid subject
and it would behoove those of us vested in this whole field to get a
better handle on these numbers. (If not the infrastructure itself!)
-DT