Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]An even simpler solution is to charge for local calls by the minute, as is done almost everywhere outside the US and Canada (and even in some places in the US). Since the marginal cost of making a local call is positive, it is not economically efficient that the price of that call is zero (sorry about the jargon, occasionally my education as an economist rears its ugly head ;-)). Alternatively, the problem can be solved on the ISP level by charging per hour once a certain number of hours per month has been exceeded. I believe that is what AT&T now does with Worldnet. Interestingly, here in Belgium calls to the Internet are cheaper than regular local calls, and the price drops further after 1 hour's call duration. How does the phone company know that a call is an Internet call? Simple, the ISPs register their access numbers with Belgacom, and calls to those numbers are rated separately in the billing system. Nathan Jim Brick wrote: > To solve the "tying-up local phone lines with analog modems", local phone > companies can put a "local phone call time limit" and charge a fee for all > time used over the limit. Many people still pay "connect charges" for a > dial-in line to an ISP. But all of this doesn't have anything to do with > the Internet. The Internet is simply a resource that you can get to through > your ISP. - -- Nathan Wajsman Overijse, Belgium Photography page: http://members.tripod.com/~belgiangator/index.html Motorcycle page: http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/downs/1704/index.html