Bell vs. Internet Providers (fwd)

Fri Nov 10 17:34:15 UTC 1995

> no, they have simply identified someone whom they think has no
> alternative to just bleeding more.  Ah, the perks of the monarchy.

the story i heard was not about usage percentage by time, but rather
usage percentage by bandwidth.  modems squeeze every possible transition
out of the 3KHz band, while voice calls have few tones and much silence.
this means a modem call takes more bandwidth out of the inter-CO trunks
and LD aggregates.  the telco's don't use strict DS0a TDM internally.

the only reason why usage percentage by time matters to a telco is to
differentiate between the economic impact of G3 FAX vs. V.32bis modems:
they both use all of the link's transitions but FAXes are usually short
lived and so there's nothing to worry about.

i'm not happy about the trend toward detecting modem users and charging
more for them, but it's an inevitable technical/economic necessity and
that means the PUCs around the united states are all going to have to
let it happen.  what's amazed me for the last few years is that it's
taken the telcos so long to realize what they need to do and do it.