Phone Companies Bill Public for Nonexistent Equipment

Srinivasan Ramakrishnan writes "Forbes has an eye-opening article on the scam that lets the Bells scoop $5 billion every year from the consumer with the sanction of the FCC. The FCC Line charge that appears on every phone bill is a vestige of a deal that was struck by the FCC with the Bells. The deal was touted by the FCC as a historic win that saved $3.2 Billion a year for the consumer - Forbes takes a closer look at the deal."

Comments

I blame it on the log cabins

[wiggys]

If a non-existant phone rings when you're in the woods do you get billed for it?

Re:I blame it on the log cabins

[SunPin]

No because the schizophrenia is limited to you. :)

Re:I blame it on the log cabins

[wik]

Of course! You'll be long dead before you can convince a baby bell that the phone doesn't exist.

darn

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're telling me I still CAN blue box?

Re:darn

[Rick the Red]

Only on the non-existant equipment. Once you connect to that, you're home free.

Nationalize local phone access!

[autopr0n]

Or, something. I mean seriously, when was the last time you heard about one of these companies actually offering anything beneficial to anyone? They seem to only exist as local monopolies and to rip off the consumer and limit choice every time they get.

If you ask me, any kind of 'infrastructure' system should be run by the government, like the highway system, and companies should only be allowed access to things they can't have exclusive control over.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well now you've done it. By stating your Socialist ideals you'll have every Libertarian, Republican, Democrate and Idiot crawling out of the woodwork to call you a pinko commie, and this entire article is going to collapse into a flamewar about religion, politics and the War in Iraq. Just like every other article this past six months, come to think of it.

While I may be inclined to agree with you to a certain extent, if you want to see the effects of having everything nationalised then take a look at the U.K in the 70's. We're still dealing with the effects from a lot of Labour policies in the 60's and 70's. It isn't always a good idea.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[djward]

Yeah. So when was the last time the government did anything efficiently or cost-effectively?

Regulated industry is the way to go, but the problem is, the FCC won't regulate. Probably because the industry has its nose (and wallet) so far up the rear of a bunch of senators it's hard to legislate against.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[AvitarX]

"Yeah. So when was the last time the government did anything efficiently or cost-effectively?"

This moring I sent a letter to the middle of nowhere over 1000 miles away for under 40 cents.

Does that count?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Bluesman]

Even though I agree with your sentiment, using the post office as a model of efficiency just may get you into trouble someday...

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Planesdragon]

Yeah. So when was the last time the government did anything efficiently or cost-effectively?

Halfway around the world, just a few weeks ago.

By any count, it's a "cheap" invasion of a hostile regime a world away from our shores.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the Uk the government is bringing in the Post office is being part privatized.

The resulst Increasing costs and declining service.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Halfway around the world, just a few weeks ago.

Sounded pretty expensive to me. $80 Billion and thousands of people killed.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[bluprint]

Does that count?

Not if it could have been sent for 20 cents...

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Bluesman]

One thing we don't realize is that the cost really doesn't change much. It just changes forms. Your taxes hid a lot of the cost before, now there is more direct cost to send mail.

The reason it really sucks is that when the U.S. government, for example, privatized the post office, there was no corresponding tax cut. ("Hey, my $5 post office tax went down...") They just spend it on something else.

In theory, privatizing the post office should have little to no effect on price, but in reality, government spending insures we'll never see the money that previously went to the post office.

Itemized taxation and making people pay a tax bill every year, instead of deductions from pay each month, are the answer.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Absurd Being]

But a mail sending monopoly would charge you 80 cents. So would you rather be screwed over by a benign, inneficient organization, or an efficient organization that looks and calculates how much they can screw you over.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[EnderWiggnz]

Medicare spends 3% of its money on administrative over head.

Typical HMO's spend 17% of its money on administrative overhead.

now which one is more efficient...

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweden privatized postal service a decade ago. since then they've burnt approx $1 billion, sold out thousands of post-offices, increased stamp-prices and now have huge depts. they are now crying for government funding. most of the money was burnt on incredible stupid IT-ventures and enormous salaries for the ten or so different directors. one of the biggest financial fiascos ever.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could have been worse, say hundreds of billions and thousands of Americans killed. Guess it depends on who is doin the killin.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[EvilBuu]

That doesn't actually mean it cost the USPS less than or equal to 40 cents to do it. If it cost them seventy-five bucks to get your letter out there wouldn't that qualify as non-cost-effective?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Martin Blank]

The USPS doesn't get a dime of taxpayer money. All of what they do is paid for through postage and other services. This is why they make their annual reports of profits and losses.

Now if they could just let Amtrak do the same thing and stop throwing tax dollars at *that*...

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[leviramsey]

You are ignorant, plain and simple. The USPS has not received one cent in tax dollars for at least 20 years. The only significant regulatory break they get is that post offices are exempt from state and local taxes.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Smallpond]

Hey, when they let Amtrak shut down the unprofitable routes that happen to go through some congressman's district, then you can complain that Amtrak should be self-sustaining. Till then, it has to be subsidized, even in the areas that get two voters^W riders a day.

By the way, comparing trains to other forms of transportation, who pays for the air traffic control system and the highways (a lot)? Now how much are you spending on railroad track and dispatching offices (0)?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Oh yeah, just like property taxes... so you get hit with a bill for thousands of dollars every year, that too many people wouldn't have sense enough to save up for. (Check the delinquent property tax rolls in your county to see how large that number really is.) Imagine getting hit with an income tax bill for $10,000 or so... that's why we have withholding, so people don't wind up in debt to pay their taxes, even if thru lack of foresight.

Tho I wonder how much interest the IRS makes on withholding tax even before they have to refund most of it to average taxpayers. We could just as well be making that ourselves with forced savings deposits from every paycheck, except then they'd raise our taxes to make up their budget loss, and tax us on the interest income from the savings accounts...

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[MarkedMan]

This is just a right-wing trope. Two things the government off the top of my head:

1) create the internet

2) Medicare/Medicaid. The government overhead for this program is 3%. It covers the poorest and sickest. The national average for private health insurance is 40%. It does everything it can to not cover the poor and sick. And when the insurance companies lost all their investments in the dot com crash, rates went through the roof.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Zathras11]

And just think how much less it would have been
if the USPS didn't rent out Grand Central Station
to hold parties in!

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Cpt_Kirks]

You're hitting all around it, but still missing the point.

If people got hit with *HUGE* tax bills, say around the end of October, the income tax would either go away or be largely reduced.

Convenience is the enemy of tax reform. Nothing radically changes unless many people get very pissed off.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

using the post office as a model of efficiency just may get you into trouble someday

Show me a better postal service.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Ah, well, you should have said your object was to *shock* people with huge tax bills!! Much as I'd like to see the IRS offices stormed by enraged peasants with flaming pitchforks...

Sorry, we already know that won't work -- if it did, folks in California wouldn't be coughing up an average of around $5000/yr in property taxes for an ordinary house (the tax being a bit over 1% of assessed property value, but usually roughly doubled by local add-ons). And I gather ours is low compared to some states. And we've already *had* a "taxpayer revolt" (base assessment used to be even higher).

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Thavius]

Think the opposite though, lets say you didn't withold, and tax time came around. "Hrmm, I owe $5000. Uh oh, my account only has $4000 in it, how'd that happen?" Suddenly the IRS hits you with crazy mad fees and interest.

The interest you gain by not withholding and saving, wouldn't be worth the potential hassle of comming up short at tax time.

As far as interest the IRS makes, it probably doesn't make any. The money's too busy funding the government and all its exploits to collect interest.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[michaelhood]

While most of my income is 1099, in the few W-2 jobs I have had, I did not allow any withholding. Why let the government make interest on my money? While at the end of the year, I may end up paying it to them, thats just fine. In the mean time, I'll invest it. I encourage everyone to do the same. While earned interest rates aren't so great anymore, something is better than nothing.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[bluprint]

Tax dollars are "appropriated" to cover "revenue shorfalls". Tax dollars also subsidize pensions.

It's also a government enforced monopoly. If another (private) company was able to send a piece of paper from one person, to another, for, let's say, 5 cents, that would be illegal.

Think about that last point for a minute. It is against the law for someone to come up with a better way to send mail.

Tell me again, why is this such a good idea...?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[sapped]

You are ignorant, plain and simple. The USPS has not received one cent in tax dollars for at least 20 years. The only significant regulatory break they get is that post offices are exempt from state and local taxes.

I am afraid that it is you that is ignorant. If they don't have to pay taxes then by default they are getting money from the government.

Think about it a bit. You will see that I am right.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[SN74S181]

The Postal Service is a government-enforced monopoly. How in blazes could anybody show you a better postal service? Even if there was a better postal service, operating underground and thriving, presenting it openly as an example would result in the Feds rolling in and shutting it down.

The Post Office is like Microsoft, with the difference that it's what Microsoft would be like if federal agents showed up at your house and arrested you for having anything other than Windows on your hard drive.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm... Why are they not arresting whoever is in charge of UPS then? What laws make starting your own postal business illegal?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Democrate and Idiot" -1 redundant. Thank you the mods

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[leviramsey]

So if I decide not to steal $1000 from you, Ive given you a thousand bucks?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[protein folder]

We subsidise highways and air travel. Why can't we subsidize amtrak?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[mpeskin]

Of course, you can turn this argument around. If people don't mind paying taxes when they're convenient, then maybe "tax reform" should be focused on making taxes more convenient and fair, rather than tax cuts.

I boggles my mind that so many so-called "tax-reform" advocates seem bound and determined to repeat the fiscal mistakes of the early 1980s. It was only 20 years ago, for cripes sake - have we forgotten already.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[SN74S181]

The government overhead for Medicare/Medicaid might only be 3%, but the burden paid by people who choose to or have to pay actual cash for their health care is greatly increased by the mentality that government feed-troughs for the Medical Industry encourages.

The Health Care industry is based on a mentality of entitlements. The hospital/clinic is entitled to as much money as some bureaucrat in Washington decrees, not what a particular medical procedure costs, and not what people are willing or able to pay.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[SN74S181]

There are specific laws prohibiting any private company from becoming a letter carrier. The parcel delivery business is different. If you set up a bicycle courier service in a big city, and your bicycle-riding delivery people put letters into the official US Postal Service mail boxes that people and businesses have put out on the street/sidewalk, your couriers will be arrested. It's specifically against the law for anybody except for an official USPS letter carrier to put letters in a mailbox.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[op00to]

Certainly not the UK's postal serivice. I live just outside of NYC, and my sister lives in East London. I like to send her care packages filled with boxed macaroni and cheese from Shop-Rite, twinkies, and hostess cupcakes. These things are worth their weight in gold to my sister's coworkers, so it's worth shipping. In any case, the first time I shipped a box like that, it took THREE months to get from Elizabeth (home of Elizabeth Seaport and Newark International Airport -- not hard to find a way to london) to London. Once it got there, it was about half the size as when I sent it. Second time I sent something, it only took a month to get there, BUT the postal service over there dropped a letter in her mailbox stating that she had to pick up her package between the hours of 11 and 2 at some post office nowhere near her house. When she finally got out of her job teaching kindergarten to pick up her package, they had lost it in the post office and told her to come back in a few weeks. When she complained, they told her that she had no right to complain and to please leave the post office before the police were called. Eventually, when she inquired about the package again, they said that there was "NO SUCH ADDRESS". Apparently, the postal service is both all-knowing and blind at the same time. How could there be "NO SUCH ADDRESS" if they gave her a note saying she could pick up her package? I called up royal mail or whatever excuse for a postal service they had, and after 5 minutes of abuse by some customer service rep, I told him to fuck off, and I sent my package via Fedex or UPS, I can't quite remember which. It got there in two weeks, with no problem.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Mr. Slippery]

Now if they could just let Amtrak do the same thing and stop throwing tax dollars at *that*...

We should stop throwing tax dollars at passenger rail only if we also stop throwing them at automobile and air transport.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

From the www.cagw.org policy on the Postal Service:

In 1999, the price of a first class stamp jumped from 32 to 33 cents. Now the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) wants another penny per stamp. That's the bad news. The good news is that the review process could take as long as 10 months, ample time for Congress to rein in USPS by enacting some overdue postal reforms.

USPS claims to need the revenue because of falling mail volume. Such annual chicken-little warnings have consistently proven to be false. Actually, USPS has posted more than $5 billion in profits since 1995, and its 1997 annual report projected a growth rate in total mail volume of 3 to 4 percent per year over the next decade. Because USPS is legally required only to "break even," one could ask why it hasn't returned any of its profits to first-class mail customers in the form of lower stamp prices. Why does it continually raise prices instead?

The fact that USPS can ratchet up postal rates virtually at will despite its massive profits points to several significant problems with the Postal Service. It is a grossly mismanaged quasi-governmental agency with a protected monopoly on mail delivery, and almost no one has the power to oversee its activities, let alone block an increase in the price of stamps.

One need only look as far as USPS's own Office of Inspector General (OIG). In its most recent report, OIG identified well more than $1 billion in wasteful spending and mismanagement in the mail business alone. OIG has churned out hundreds of reports detailing an epidemic of mismanagement at USPS. Both the Postal Rate Commission and OIG have questioned the integrity of USPS data. For example, as it did during the last rate hike, USPS has tendered stale data to make its case, omitting from its projections revenues from the January 1999 increase, which are estimated to be in the $1 billion range.

USPS's for-profit ventures have also led to some costly dead ends. The General Accounting Office reported that in 1997 USPS squandered $84.7 million on competitive activities, like peddling t-shirts and hats festooned with the USPS logo and pre-paid phone cards. Its Global Package Link, Global Priority Mail programs, and electronic postmark system are all money losers. First-class mail is USPS's cash cow, so the penny increases in stamp prices are needed to underwrite failures on non-mail business ventures.

Further, USPS freely expands into private markets, using its monopoly advantage to compete unfairly against companies like Federal Express and United Parcel Service. Although USPS claims to fear the growth of the Internet, it is positioning itself to get a piece of the action. Postmaster General Henderson wants USPS to control online bill paying. Laughably, he warns that allowing a "private-sector company" to develop and own the platform for e-payments would be "a monopoly model," but that USPS should be the "trusted third party" that facilitates e-payments throughout the country. In a recent Washington Post article, the Postmaster General compared USPS to every other business in America.

Not true. USPS pays no taxes of any kind. It is exempt from federal antitrust laws, state zoning laws, vehicle licensing fees, and even parking tickets. It has access to below-market rates on credit, the right of eminent domain, and the backing of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Conservative estimates of the value of these subsidies exceeded $1 billion in 1997. One researcher observed that these subsidies force taxpayers to make a "down payment on the Postal Service's risks," a chilling thought in light of USPS's rampant inefficiency.

Who has the power to say no to the Postal Service? Virtually no one. In 1970, oversight of USPS was shifted from Congress to two appointed boards, the Postal Rate Commission and the USPS Board of Governors. However, the Commission can only make a "recommended decision" on rate increases. The last word resides with USPS itself. During the last rate case, Ed Gleiman, chairman of t

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

By that reasoning, the government is giving money to every non-profit organization out there. That includes all the religious organizations, which would be a violation of the principal of separation of church and state.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[sapped]

No, obviously not. However, we are all required by law to pay taxes. Thus, by them not paying taxes, it is the same as getting money from the government.

Let me spell it out clearly. I pay $100 in taxes and then I get $100 back. I am no better off than before, but the IRS is out of $100. They have to get the $100 from somewhere, so they ask you to pay it instead of me.

So, not paying taxes is the same as the IRS giving you a handout.

QED

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Samrobb]

If they don't have to pay taxes then by default they are getting money from the government.

No, if they don't have to pay taxes, they are not "getting money from the government". Instead, the government is not taking money from them.

Probably too subtle a point for some people, but there's a significant difference between giving someone money vs. not taking money from them.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[benzapp]

Actually, tax withholding was implimented during World War II in order to insure the government would have a steady supply of money for the war effort.

Remember, it wasn't until the post war world where the government was funded by the average schmoe making 35K and paying income tax. Prior to that, only 1% of the American people paid income tax. Now its like 80% of workers.

The largest source of revenue used to be tariffs, now in the era of "free trade", tariffs are pretty much irrelevant as a source of income.

While people may argue TODAY that we should have withholding because most people won't pay, that is not entirely the reason the law was enacted. The monthly stream of revenue was far more important.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[bluprint]

But when you show preferential treatment to only one person, that is certainly a subsidy. The USPS doesn't pay taxes, yet they still benefit from the taxes that are collected. Someone else pays the taxes they *would* have paid.

Subsidies can occur in many forms.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Martin Blank]

I also pay into the highway and air systems in the form of the taxes paid on the fuel in my car and on the tickets I book. I don't have the numbers now, but at least road users pay in a significant portion of the money that goes into maintaining the roads.

There was a recent audit that said that Amtrak has only two profitable lines, and that one of the loss-making lines (running from California to Florida) loses something like $560 per passenger. This is on top of aging cars that are more likely to be pulled off the line for maintenance, poor quality rides, and poor customer service reports. I'm all for other companies running passenger service, just like I'm all for the post office being opened up to competition.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

How in blazes could anybody show you a better postal service?

There's this thing called other countries, see, and they send letters too.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and it could have been better. Say, no money wasted and no one killed.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[maxpublic]

Fed Ex.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Cpt_Kirks]

Perhaps CA needs a new revolt? With some teeth this time. Cutting taxes is not enough, you have to put real limits on the legislatures ability to raise more taxes or voter mandated cuts are useless.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Samrobb]

None of the definitions of "subsidy" include the idea of "not taking money from someone". A subsidy is not the same thing as a tax exemption, which is what the USPS has. Saying that the government subsidises the USPS is no more true than saying that the government subsidises the Catholic Church.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Cpt_Kirks]

For anything realistic to relating to lower taxes to happen, spending has to be cut too.

The actual, Constitutionally mandated functions of government are very limited. About 90% of what government does is unconstitutional. Some of it is good, lots of it is a waste at best.

If people really want these expenditures the Constitution should be amended.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[mbogosian]

While I may be inclined to agree with you to a certain extent, if you want to see the effects of having everything nationalised then take a look at the U.K in the 70's. We're still dealing with the effects from a lot of Labour policies in the 60's and 70's. It isn't always a good idea.

As it turns out, as far as I can tell, apparently no federal policy maker (economic or otherwise) has read Milton Friedman's Capitalism & Freedom (making this event quite ironic). Hell, I haven't even read more than half of it yet, and I can probably tell you how fucked up the current state of regulation is. Things which are currently regulated should no longer be, (e.g., post office, etc.). Things which are currently unregulated should be (e.g., MS, cable, etc.). Doesn't anyone read anymore? Or do politicians never escape adolescence when they think they know more than everyone else?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[bluprint]

First, there are direct subsidies made to the USPS. A recent example, has to do with the government subsidizing efforts to "clean the mail" (mainly, for buying new equipment). This is in relation to the anthrax incedences a year or so ago.

Second, there are other things that effectively subsidize the USPS. Emminent domain for starters. That means that they can force someone to give up land for a "reasonable" (decided by the USPS and government) price. Forcing the owner to potentially sacrifice short and long term benefits that land may provide.

It is also exempt from antitrust laws, and further more, it is illegal for any private company to be competitive with the USPS in the market for First Class mail (I bet MS would love that).

All those things are subsidies, in that they benefit the organization at the cost of taxpayers.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

$80 billion? Not quite. Congress appropriated $67 billion. The war had cost $20 billion, with another $3billion every month after March.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Noofus]

I have received No Such Address post cards here in the US. I was told I had a package waiting at the PO. Miffed that they didnt leave it with the office attendants (apartment building) as they 99% of the time do, I go to the PO and they tell me it wasnt delivered because my address doesnt exist. No amount of logic would convince them otherwise.

Uhm hello, they gave me a post card IN MY MAILBOX.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[PCBman!]

So how much does it cost for me to send a letter and a data cd by fedex ground? USPS costs me about 80 cents, BTW.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we get a reduced price for paying in advance. How about if I use my American Express, can I get points?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Samrobb]

Please listen to me this time.

Those things that you mentioned are definitely benefits that the USPS receives, but THEY ARE NOT SUBSIDIES

That will not change no matter how many times you call them subsidies, OK? The word "subsidy" has a definite meaning. It does not extend to cover eminent domain, antitrust laws, or the various other things you mentioned.

Yes, these are special benefits extended to the USPS for the benefit of the taxpayers. The government, long ago, decided that having a a reliable, cheap postal service capable of serving the nation was important enough that they granted the USPS a special status that came along with certain benefits that are not generally enjoyed by other organizations.

It is the government that collects taxes. It is the government that doles out taxes collected. It is the government that is resposible for determining how to provide postal service to the US. Do you see what I'm getting at? The government could subsidise the USPS, but they don't. They provide it with other benefits, benefits which allow the USPS to do it's job.

Ironic that this is one of the few things that the goverment is supposed to be doing, and you're complaining about it.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[bluprint]

The USPS DOES GET SUBSIDIES, in the form of actual cash. Look at my first sentence. Look it up if you don't believe me (doesn't take much googling). I'm talking about actual transfer of cash. By any definition, that is a subsidy.

Secondly, I realize that the definition of the word "subsidy" specifically has to do with cash transfer. However, for practical purposes, the other "benefits" as you call them which the USPS receives, are, for practical purposes, subsidies.

As an example, if I gave you $500 a month to spend on a car, we both agree that is a subsidy. However, if I just paid for the car directly, and let you use it all you want (and even own it), you would say that is not a subsidy. While you are technically correct (according to Merriam-Webster), for practical purposes, the difference is immaterial. I couldn't care less about arguing semantics, I'm just pointing out that the USPS receives things (whatever label you want to put on those things) that benefit it at the cost of the US tax payer.

You should be more educated about how the US government takes away your wealth (wether in the form of taxation, or things like emminent domain). It's your money, not theirs.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Danga]

It is against the law for someone to come up with a better way to send mail.

It is not against the law to come up with the idea, just to make a business that uses that idea.

So:
1) Come up with better idea
2) Sell idea to post office to use
3) Profit!!!

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[sco08y]

Nope, the enemy of tax reform is that fact that the top 20% of all voters pay 80% of taxes. They're also the ones that do the bulk of the paperwork.

That means that every time you try to reform taxes, the 80% who pay little or no taxes assume that they're going to have to pay more, if not now, in the future. In fact, that's what the Democrats say: "if we enact this tax cut, we'll have to pay for it down the road."

That's false when you consider the fact that during the 20th century, federal revenues as a percent of GDP never dipped below 17% or rose above 20%. Cutting taxes (and simplifying the tax code) releases a huge burden on the economy, which in turn generates more money to tax.

But as long as it's not in the immediate interest of the 80% who pay very little in taxes, it's going to be very difficult to achieve democratically.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Yeah, I think failing to self-withhold enough would be a major problem. Inability to keep up with nonwithheld taxes, like payroll and property taxes, is already a big problem for too many folks. Like you say, the hassle wouldn't be worth the piddly interest (maybe back when savings drew 8+%, but not now when you're lucky to get 1%!) and likely would be more than offset by usorious interest on short-term "pay your taxes today!" loans.

Don't know for sure, but I'd think the IRS would put what it expects to have to refund into something that pays, maybe savings bonds? I know there are regulations about what they can do with it, so it can't be "lost".

(Ignoring for this discussion the fact that for most of us, income tax is money blown down the toilet, because all too much goes to fund projects we'll never see any personal or collective benefit from.)

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

While I personally agree with you, I know people who are over $10,000 in the red to the IRS because they couldn't manage to self-withhold enough to pay the bill when it comes due. For most people, money is there to be spent -- they don't have the self-control to budget personal savings, let alone future taxes.

What I'd like to see is an option to automatically deposit your withholding into an interest-bearing escrow account, so you're getting the benefit of whatever it can earn, without any chance of getting into the hole when taxes come due.

(I thought there used to be some such provision, but I don't remember seeing anything about it in recent years.)

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Good info, and hardly surprising ... yeah, the gov't really doesn't care if you can pay or not, it just wants to make sure it gets the money. But for most people now, withholding is the only way they can keep from spending the money due.

Of course, if income tax was still 1%, this wouldn't be such an issue. And maybe the gov't wouldn't so readily spend money like water if it didn't have a guaranteed steady stream of income. After all, when the rest of us run short, WE have to stop spending!!

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

The real problem now is all the little add-ons that aren't required to be voted on. They just keep growing and growing. I agree, it's time to put a halt to it, but so far there's not much evidence that the average homeowner realises how much he's getting screwed. Most people still think they're only paying the mandated 1% and change (which indeed has teethy limits), and think that the increase is because their property values went up (er, no, that only happens when a property is sold).

My personal peeve example: I pay several hundred in annual property taxes to support "parks". This is handled as a regional levy (that's not what they call it, but I can't think of the right word this instant) within the county, so not exactly "property taxes" and not subject to the 1% state law.

Have to wonder where THAT money really goes, too, since no way in hell does it cost that much to maintain north L.A. County's mostly-nonexistent parks. If it's for "general County parks support" (even tho it's supposedly a *regionally specific* levy??), then everyone up here is being screwed, because 1) we don't have any parks to speak of (open stretches of desert with a sign proclaiming it a park, maybe), and 2) the rest are all a day's hike from here, thus of no use.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

The REST of us have to *stop spending* when we run out of money; we can't just run up debt forever and have the magic money tree pay it off (here represented by millions of taxpayers impaled on its thorns). There's the real problem -- that the gov't is allowed to run in deficit.

Someone once figured out that something like 40% of every California tax dollar goes just to pay INTEREST on state debt due to bond issues (most of which were voted into existence by idiots who think a bond issue == free money, and don't realise it has to be paid back with interest -- by taxpayers). IOW, money completely down the toilet, since it does nothing for either the gov't or the people.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Samrobb]

You should be more educated about how the US government takes away your wealth...

Believe me, I am. It's not that I disagree with you; but I have a problem with your statements of fact...

Taking up your challenge, the last two mentions of government subsidies I could find for the USPS were in 1983 and 1991. In that search, I found a recent document that is highly critical of the USPS for a number of reasons, but somehow fails to mention the subsidies you insist are paid to it.

However, for practical purposes, the other "benefits" as you call them which the USPS receives, are, for practical purposes, subsidies.

Please, please, please - I understand your point, and I might even agree with you, if it weren't for your insistance on using a term with a well-defined meaning improperly. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it 9 billion dollars is a subsidy. The government bailing out the airline industry by giving it a new fleet of planes is a subsidy. If they instead chose to help the airline industry in a different way - by changing legislation to reduce the tax burden for an airline, for example - that is not a subsidy. You could refer to it as a tax break, a tax credit, an amazing hornswoggle, or any number of different things; but calling it a subsidy is about as accurate as calling it a monkey.

Quite frankly, your insistance that the term "subsidy" means something other than what is commonly accepted is a red flag to me. Redefinition of terms is a common tactic used to greater or lesser extent by groups who expect to profit by confusing the issue under discussion.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[unitron]

They are exempt from state and local taxes because they're on federal property, just like military bases. They don't run that flag up the pole every morning just for fun.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[unitron]

"Saying that the government subsidises the USPS is no more true than saying that the government subsidises the Catholic Church."

Actually if person A gives money to the Catholic or any of a number of other churches, they can take a tax deduction, which means that person B, who spent the money on a new TV or something, gets to pay a little more in taxes to make up for person A paying a little less. So the government isn't subsidizing the church, but they're making the non-church goers do so.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Doctor High]

Imagine getting hit with an income tax bill for $10,000 or so... that's why we have withholding, so people don't wind up in debt to pay their taxes, even if thru lack of foresight.

Actually, the income tax withholding system was introduced during WW2 as a means for the government to get access to our tax dollars more quickly to fund the war efforts. It was promised at the time that the law would be repealed after the war, but that obviously didn't happen.

I suspect that the reason it has never been repealed is because when the taxes are taken gradually from you before you even see your paycheck, the loss does not register in your brain as strongly as when you have to write one big check for a full year's worth of taxes. Thus it is easier for the government to raise taxes without pissing off the public. Any tax increase is spread out over 12 months and taken from you before your paycheck ever reaches you. So it does not *appear* to be a big change for you.

And now when somebody gets a tax refund in April or May, and you ask them how much they paid for taxes for the previous year, they'll tell you that that didn't pay anything... They got a check from the government. We the sheep don't keep track of the amount of money that we pay in taxes every year. It's only the net effect of "Tax Time" in April that people grasp. How wrong that is...

--
The doctor is in

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Anil]

Actually, the way the tax system is set up - if you don't pay enough withholding (or proper quarterly estimates) than you end up having to pay the IRS interest and penalty fees on thier not having taken your money throughout the year.

So, actually, the interest you make on the money wouldn't really be enough to cover your penalities when the tax man comes for your cash (unless you make some really wise short term investments ... of course, you'd have to deal with capital gains on top of the penalties and probably still end up in the hole).

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[lamp540]

So what you're saying is the lowest earning 80% of the nation has more control over the government than the highest paid 20%? The poor and middle class are holding are government hostage?

The Government's, especially the federal government's, primary responsibility, after self-preservation, is ensuring that the wealthy elite are allowed to control the rest of us. Their wealth is meaningless without a strong government to protect it. Yes, they may have "earned" it, or "innovated" for it, but if you want to have something in life you have to have the guns to protect it. If you don't have the guns then it's not yours, this is not some exception it's the rule. It would be hard for them to pay too much in taxes since if the government wasn't there no one would take orders from them or allow them to hoard land and resources. So taxes are collected to pay for a massive military and spy network which allows our wealthy citizens and corporations to carry out exploitation, err... business here and abroad(and a related bureaucracy). Any social services offered by the government are just there to make up for the pathologies of unfettered capitalism. These aren't favors and they're not given out of kindness. Just like the 40 hour work week had to be paid for with the blood of striking workers. If these little fixes to capitalism like "the new deal" weren't enacted then there would have been a revolution and then the rich would have lost everything. The US doesn't even offer that much in terms of public social services. And Social Security the most widespread social program in the country comes directly out of the pockets of workers. Half is ostensibly paid by the employers but in reality the employee is just paid less an amount equal to what the employer gives the government. We don't even have universal health care, so how can you say the poorest 80% are mandating government spending?

Also, to say that the lowest earning 80% pay very little in taxes is disingenuous. If I make $20,000 a year whether I pay $5k in that in taxes or not is going to directly my physical comfort. I could buy a car with that money, go on a vacation, whatever it's a big deal. After a certain point, once you've got the luxury car, the house, the summer house, the yacht, additional money is just abstract and doesn't affect you.

Also, in 1934 the total receipts for the federal government were 4.8% of the GDP, it rose to 20% in 1945, then dipped down to 13% in 1950, then continuing steady up to 19% today.

http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2002/hist.ht ml

Anyway, I'm all for cutting taxes, especially on the rich(since they pay so much.) By all means do that-- it will hasten their demise.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Alsee]

There's the real problem -- that the gov't is allowed to run in deficit.

How about a constitutional amendment saying that no government entity (at any level) may cut taxes when they are in debt.

I'm sick and tired of the nonsense about deficits when the real issue is DEBT!

Where does the money to cover this debt come from? Governent bonds. Who provides the money for them? Wealthy investors. Who profits? Wealth investors. Intrest on governent debt is a transfer of money from general taxpayers to wealthy investors.

How much money is being transfered from the public to wealthy investors? $333 billion in 2002, or about $1150 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

And many of these are foriegn investors. These tax dollars are simply being exported.

Bush's "tax relief" package is supposed to "stimulate the economy" by increasing spending. This is nonsense because taxes merely take money out of one pocket and put it into another pocket. The same money gets spent no matter who spends it.

Bush's "tax relief" package is supposed to increase investment in the economy, but the best way to do that is to free up the investment dollars that are currently tied up in unproductive government bonds. Almost every single one of those dollars will be moved into other productive investments.

Bush wants lower interest rates. The best way to do that is to eliminate government bonds which are competing for investment dollars and therefore driving up interest rates.

Every cloud has a silver lining. If the dollar experiences hyper-inflation the US government - the biggest debtor in the history of the world - would be the biggest beneficiary. Inflation = dollar devaluation. The government could repay those loads with worthless dollars. Not much of a silver lining considering that hyper-inflation would devestate the US and global economies.

-

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

All true, and income tax increases have boiled whole ponds worth of frogs...

But considering the level they're at now, no way in hell would most folk manage to have the money when the tax man came, without withholding.

LIS somewhere hereabouts, if income tax was still at 1%, this wouldn't be such an issue.

It's not good no matter which way you look at it. And it wouldn't be quite so annoying if it weren't spent so wastefully! :(

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Yeah, damned if you do and damned if you don't. If your local Vinny and Guido ran their protection racket that way, the FBI would be all over 'em.

BTW, if you're interested in the capital gains and other dividend/interest taxes being revoked, now is the time to poke your congresscritters... it really IS double taxation, since the income is taxed when it's made AND when it's shared out (dividends). Aside from being most destructive to those who rely on it for a living, like retired folks.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[benzapp]

Btw, the income tax RATE wasn't 1%, but the minimum you had to make a year in 1920 was about $100,000 a year in order to get taxed. The rate WAS high but then as now the argument was they can afford it. Only about 1% of the working population made enough money to qualify for the income tax. Today, despite all the talk about taxing the rich, the reality is its the middle class which pays the most in income tax.

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Alsee]

If another (private) company was able to send a piece of paper from one person, to another, for, let's say, 5 cents, that would be illegal.

Really? And exactly what law would that violate?

You can send a piece of paper via FedEx or UPS. It'll cost you a heck of a lot more than 5 cents, but I really don't think there's a law prohibiting them from lowering prices LOL.

-

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

How about a constitutional amendment that no gov't agency can raise taxes just so they can spend more? Because that's what's really happening -- they want to spend, so they just TAKE. Budgeting is done by "how much more can we peel out of taxpayers' wallets?" rather than by "how much income do we presently have?"

As to interest rates... I guess you didn't notice what happened a couple years ago when that idiot Greenspan raised the prime rate to "slow down the economy": an immediate recession!! The problem with raising interest rates is that it MOSTLY hits people who can't afford it. The reason we have a home-buying boom right now is because borrower interest is at a long-time low. In the 1970s and 1980s, when home loan interest topped out around 16%, only the upper middle class and the wealthy could afford to buy a house. And since inflation ultimately derives from increases in "land value" with each sale (and every sale has to cover the interest spent to buy it) -- the upshot was also galloping inflation.

As to bonds vs investors -- foreign investors aside (the solution there being to disallow noncitizens from buying bonds) -- I remember seeing a study on who invests in bonds, and it was *mostly* average taxpayers -- NOT the wealthy.

A devalued dollar could lead to a situation like Mexico has, where its own money is essentially worthless. And you could expect the price of imported goods to skyrocket, well beyond the reach of average citizens' wallets. Meanwhile, the price of domestic goods increases to match. I remember the massive inflation of the 1970s -- damnear everything tripled in price in just a few years time.

I'm the first to holler about how bonds are a terrible way to fund the present because they mortgage the future (remember, even at a mere 7% interest, over the space of a 30 year loan, you repay THREE dollars for every ONE dollar borrowed!) But doing anything radical to get rid of current bond debt is liable to have even more severe consequences (like finding ourselves becoming a 3rd world nation economically). Better to simply stop doing it, thus not ADD to the bond debt. If you stop *accumulating* debt, and spend more efficiently, eventually you can pay off your debt, without doing something radical like declaring bankruptcy (devaluing currency being much the same process in terms of value per dollar).

My family inherited some savings bonds, and I remember when they were cashed out ca. 1975, there was a statement that the reason they were cashing out early was because the bond program was going away. Yeah, right!!

BTW, in California, where Gov.Davis' every answer to his own financial screwups is to raise taxes -- people ARE starting to think "Hey, when WE run out of money, we have to stop spending! why the hell should gov't be any different?"

Sure hope the concept catches on.... because that's the only route I see to a permanently effective taxpayer revolt: making gov't live within its means, period.

Dunno about now, but when I lived in Montana, most state gov't costs were funded by the mill levy (a fraction of a cent tax per dollar of property value, including *personal* property). If the taxpayers refused to vote in a mill levy increase, gov't just had to do without. Funny how this forced efficiency also managed to fund one of the two best public school systems in the U.S. (the other was Minnesota's), keep up roads and public hospitals, etc. Maybe because when you don't have free money to blow, you learn to live within your budget?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[Reziac]

Quick, someone point out the URL where you can find the chart of who pays what taxes. IIRC, it's something like the top 1% income bracket pays 37% of the total collected taxes.

Yeah, that does leave 63% of taxes to be paid by the remaining 99% of taxpayers. But it's a helluva lot lower burden *per dollar earned*.

Now, as to sales tax (which IS a flat tax), that does indeed come mostly from the poor and middle class, since you've still got to buy basic necessities, and most of those are taxed. Calif. doesn't tax food, but every other state I've been in that has sales tax DOES tax food. What, you gonna stop eating because you can't afford sales tax?

Re:Nationalize local phone access!

[itwerx]

While the USPS is required to follow a bazillion federal statutes/guidelines/regulations etc. it is technically not part of the government. (Note the first line, "an independent establishment"

you must mean fictional ?services?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, that's right. hangin's probably way too good for those thIEving liars.

Re:funny math, not funny money

[Anonymous Coward]

That really wasn't all that funny, just pedantic. If you have something insightful to say, you might want to try again. Using the phrase "the consumer" in this context is common and is considered proper English.

cut the line!

[martone66]

It's times like this that I'm glad I don't pay the local phone monopoly ~$40/month for the "priviledge" of having a landline.

Ever since I've used my cellphone as my main phone, my phone bill stays consistent month to month, I don't pay extra for long distance (or get screwed in intra-state charges), I get no telemarketing calls, and I have one number where I can be reached.

Cut your landline if you can!

Re:cut the line!

[Tenchi-kun]

I agree totally to this idea. My wife and I were having a hard time justifying having our 2 cellphones, then having our landline phone on top of that. Especially when the total cost for our plans on our cellphones were less than what we were being charged for our landline phone alone. It's nice being able to be pretty much anywhere in the country, yet having one phone number where someone can always get in touch with me. And it's so much easier to screen calls on my cellphone.

Re:cut the line!

[mlknowle]

I agree- but for one thing: I get telemarketing calls on my cell phone too! I know it's illegal, but what can I do about it? Not to mention that many times I get calls from friends in the dorm, where caller ID won't work, so I can't screen calls that way

Re:cut the line!

[Night Goat]

You know, you're still paying for the use of the infrastructure if you have a cellphone. The Baby Bells are still getting your money. You are paying the phone monopoly.

Re:cut the line!

[Trebonius]

I had a cell phone for a while. It slowly sucked away at my sanity until I was faced with a choice between getting rid of the cellphone and going on a coast-to-coast Wal-Mart bombing spree.

In my state, it wasn't particularly clear which choice was the best one. Next time, I hope I'll make the better decision.

Re:cut the line!

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

BUT, if I cut my land line, how would I get in and out of the Matrix!

Re:cut the line!

[mrtroy]

Thats the same reason I am using those oldschool rotary phones with pulse dialing!

I do, however, have one of those elite mechanical autodialers for it.

Re:cut the line!

[Ralph Wiggam]

I lived in a house with some friends for a year, paid my third of the phone bill, and picked up the phone exactly zero times. I've gone without my land line for 8 months and haven't missed it. The only problem is that I can't get a Tivo. Could someone fill me in on the current state of DVRs that can currently, or will soon, hook up to my internet connection?

-B

Re:cut the line!

[xmousex]

our 2 landlines were through ameritech, everytime I talked to those people about problems with my service, they would order repairs, but then try to sell me onto a new plan, or recalculate more current plan to try to give me a 'better' deal. Half the time I'd end up with a higher bill. I cancelled all service with them and got two cells. Why did I wait so long to do this? Why hasn't everybody else? Probably because they still use modems, or live out of range. So far I've gone a year without telemarketers, and that alone was worth it.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a replay .. has an ethernet port in the back and has had all the features that the "series 2" Tivos just came out with.

and they're not exaclty out of business yet :)

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted my matrix joke 12 minutes before you did :p

Re:cut the line!

[Kombat]

When you get a telemarketing call on your cell, ask them their name, the company they're calling for, and their return phone number. They are legally required to give you all of this information, if you ask.

Then, ask to speak to the person's manager/supervisor. Inform him/her that this is a cell phone. It is illegal for them to call cell phones. At this point, you've already got their information, so they can't just hang up and run. Inform them that you wish to recoup the cost of this call, and that you want them to send you a cheque for $100 USD. If they refuse, tell them you will take it up with the FCC, and the fine they will levy will be much, much more than that.

Hey, it's worth a shot.

Re:cut the line!

[jone1941]

The one thing people seem to leave out in this argument is that cell phones may or may not be very good for your health. I don't talk on the phone that much, but my girlfriend talks all the time, and that makes me at least a little nervous to hand her a cellphone to chat on for as many hours as she would.

Re:cut the line!

[Martin Spamer]

I've used my cellphone as my main phone, my phone bill stays consistent month to month,

Some people seem to have taken this as serious suggestion, however what help is a consistent over charged bill.

Mobiles are about 10 times more expensive for national calls and 40 times more expensive for local calls.

Re:cut the line!

[srsabu]

Series 2 TiVo's support USB ethernet. Series 1 "unofficially" supports TivoNet/TurboNet as of software version 3.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not you, but maybe someone else knows... Is there a similar set of statutes in Canada?

Re:cut the line!

[brakk]

The only telemarketing calls I've got on my cell are from companies I already do business with(ie:discover card) trying to sell me more services. They call it because I list it as my home number and since they aren't using a telemarketing database, they don't know it's a cell. I just tell them so and tell them to never call me again. (they have my email address and home address they can send offers to, I don't need them wasting my time on the phone)

My new phone (sanyo 4900) has a call screen function. If you don't recognise the number, you can hit "screen call" and it will ask them to leave a message. But instead of going to your voicemail, it lets you listen to it while it also records it in the phone and then you can decide to answer or not. Don't know what other phones have this function.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have the wrong provider.

I have my T-Mobile bill in front of me from the past month, and I used 1259 Minutes, and it cost me $25 before expensing the work calls back to the office. Now that is high because I use a LOT of free T-Mobile to T-Mobile minutes, but between that, no long distance anywhere in the continental US, and free weekends, I've ever used all my "anytime" minutes.

Re:cut the line!

[brakk]

BTW, T-mobil now offers free nights too, I found it on their website. You have to call and ask about it and they will add it to your service if you agree to another year.

Re:cut the line!

[brakk]

two words: hands free

Re:cut the line!

[JJahn]

Now if only where I lived the cellphone reception didn't totally suck, then I would do the same thing.

Unfortunately, cell phones where I live are not good enough for general day to day use, and I'm stuck with a landline.

Re:cut the line!

[Glonoinha]

>Mobiles are about 10 times more expensive for national calls and 40 times more expensive for local calls.

Say what? My plan gives me 1000 anytime coast-to-coast long distance included minutes per month for $39.95 plus taxes, about $45 a month total.

That comes to four and a half cents a minute for long distance calls, local calls, or whatever calls, and I generally don't use all my minutes, but I get real close.

My land line runs about $50 a month and I still have to pay 7 cents a minute for long distance. To make the same 1000 minutes worth of calls cost me an additional $70, so $50 + $70 for 1000 minutes long distance is 12 cents a minute, with local calls (amortized including the $50 fee just to have the phone) run 5 cents a minute.

My local phone costs 20% more per minute on local calls, and 300% more for long distance calls, than my cell phone (assuming 1000 minutes total per month.)

If I didn't need it for business and another line for the fax machine I would cut the golden cords to my land line.

Re:cut the line!

[keymygrip]

Instead of cutting my line, I just told SBC that I was going to cut my line because I had a cell phone. Amazingly enough, the lowest rate plan of $38 a month could be cut to $16 a month. Sure I did not get the 3 way calling or call waiting or long distance (which were required before), but I only use my land phone to make local calls to conserve my minutes anyway as I don't have the heftiest minute allotment.

So just as long as I don't get cancer from it, I would say cell phones rule. Get rid of land lines.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one problem with that. The cable modem providers in this town discriminate against Mac users, by only supporting Windows, and also against satellite users by requiring customers to buy basic cable service (with the STB and everything) to get the cable modem.

I've got DSL from a GREAT provider, and I'm not ready to think about changing it. And DSL, of course, means you've gotta have a hardline.

Of course, now that I've started working from home full time, I might have the time to dick with the cable modem providers again. Who knows?

Re:cut the line!

[John Harrison]

I went without a land line in my house for about six months. Note that I use my house as a home office. So one month I had a lot of conference calls to 800 numbers and my cell bill went through the roof. I got a land line just for conference calls. Now I use it for faxes as well, but if it weren't for work related calls like those I wouldn't have a land line.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

one equation: hands free = long antenna to your head one preemptive "four words" response: bluetooth wireless hands free and then the response to that: yeah that would be ok =p

Re:cut the line!

[operagost]

Dammit, that's not a solution. Now the phone's near my knads! Ouch, my sperm!

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Headset, dude. Headset.

Re:cut the line!

[Zathras11]

No land line! How do you get out of The Matrix!?!

Re:cut the line!

[VooDoo999]

I have Verizon. I needed a line only for my modem - cell for everything else. I don't go online enough to justify the cost of DSL or cable. I called, haggled, and argued my way to $10 a month ($6 federal line charge + $1 911 + ~$.5 for 'portability' + tax) + the cost of each call. Calls at night are $.02. Calls during the day are $.07. I was paying like $30 for 'unlimited local calling' and a bunch of other crap I didn't want/need/they couldn't legally force me to take. Just get a copy of your bill, go through each line with the sales person, and ask them if they have to legally charge you that. Most of the time, the answer is 'no'.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you can get a plan that has enough minutes on it u dont have to worry about going over your limit and paying out the ass for those minutes u used over your limit. To get that u would either be paying the same or a lot more than a landline monthly fee.

Re:cut the line!

[Deagol]

You know, there are whole-house cellphone systems. For a couple of hundred bucks, you can tie in your cell phone to your home's wiring. When you pick up a regular receiver, it routes the call out the cellphone. Likewise, when the cellphone rings, it rings the normal phones. I lost my link, but do a google and find it. Cool stuff.

Re:cut the line!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I have a plan to save you some money.

Get off your ass and look around for a new cell phone plan.

Re:cut the line!

[Guppy06]

"They are legally required to give you all of this information, if you ask."

Only if they're selling something. They don't have to if they're "non-profit" or if they're a political party trying to get your vote. They also get to use pre-recorded messages, something else disallowed to people trying to sell something.

Personally, I think that declaring some types of speech more allowable than others sounds rather unconstitutional, but apparently that's just me...

"It is illegal for them to call cell phones."

That's news to me. Where is the law in question? And does it apply to everybody, or just people trying to sell something?

Re:cut the line!

[apraetor]

Telemarketers are prohibited from calling you on a cell phone because FCC regulations bar them from doing something that places the charge on the person receiving the call. It's the same reasoning behind the ban of fax-based advertising (there was a court case on that a couple months back) and anti-spam legislation.

Re:cut the line!

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

> I posted my matrix joke 12 minutes before you did :p

Deja vu....must have been a glich in the Matrix.

Re:cut the line!

[furchin]

At this point, you've already got their information, so they can't just hang up and run. Inform them that you wish to recoup the cost of this call, and that you want them to send you a cheque for $100 USD. If they refuse, tell them you will take it up with the FCC, and the fine they will levy will be much, much more than that.

Actually, the federal telecommunications act of 1996 allows you to sue for $500 for each such offense, the same as for telemarketers who call you when you are on their do not call list. If you don't get the check for $100 as an out of court settlement, go to court and take them for the full 500 plus court fees.

Re:cut the line!

[raygundan]

And just for the record, the TurboNet mod for a series 1 Tivo costs $70, and is available here. It's no harder to install than a PCI card-- you open the case, plug it in, and drill a hole (or just cram it through one of the vents like i did) for the cable to stick out. As the parent poster mentioned, the current version of the Tivo software already contains the drivers needed to support it, so you no longer have to do any monkeying with the config files or removing the hard drive.

The series 2's just take a little $20 USB ethernet adapter, and away you go!

Re:cut the line!

[Guppy06]

"It's the same reasoning behind the ban of fax-based advertising (there was a court case on that a couple months back) and anti-spam legislation."

Two more laws that leave loopholes for non-profits and political campaigns...

Re:cut the line!

[Chester K]

The only problem is that I can't get a Tivo. Could someone fill me in on the current state of DVRs that can currently, or will soon, hook up to my internet connection?

TiVo, with the most recent software update to 4.0, which is being rolled out to customers now, officially supports doing their "daily call" via a USB Ethernet adapter.

Re:cut the line!

[eap]

Inform them that you wish to recoup the cost of this call, and that you want them to send you a cheque for $100 USD. If they refuse, tell them you will take it up with the FCC, and the fine they will levy will be much, much more than that.

Nice idea, but in reality the FCC does not enforce these sorts of things unless there is a widespread pattern of abuse.

I have complained to the FCC about illegal telemarketing practices, including the use of automated messages by telemarketers. They don't have time to enforce everything.

The only thing it gets you is a nice form letter in the mail stating that they are "investigating".

Re:cut the line!

[unitron]

Doesn't that mean that when you leave the house you either have to leave the cell phone there or if you take it with you the wired phones in the house are now either paperweights or at best an intercom with no way to connect to the rest of the world?

Re:cut the line!

[Deagol]

The cell phones are not stuck in such a setup -- they site in a cradle. You are free to take them with you when you leave. And, yes, when you do remove them, the home lines do not work.

There were two points to the larger thread I was addressing. One was ditching your land-line entirely for a cellphone. Two, someone was worried about his girlfriend yapping for hours on a cell phone (versus a landline) due to the claims that the EM radiation from cellphones was harmful. The whole-house tie-in system I mentioned eliminates this concern (at least while at home).

Re:cut the line!

[Technician]

I agree. All the add on charges to the land line is the biggest reason that cell phones are so popular. When they first came out, they were expensive and a status symbol. Now they simply match the price of a land line with the same features (caller ID, LD plan, call waiting, voice mailbox, etc.). The killer advantages for a cell phone are an effective telemarketer screen and portablilty. Since they are about the same price, landlines are starting to go away. Internet going broadband is a contributitor. Notice how the landline providers are desprate to include a generous long distance phone plan and a local telephone plan with your DSL discount? They don't want you to get broadband and drop local phone. Cable is the same way. They charge an extra $10/month if you don't also take cable TV. (they call it a discount, but it's really an extra charge for not having cable TV)

Re:cut the line!

[Technician]

If you are stuck with a land line, ditch the long distance provider entirely. Tell them you have a boarder who abuses the phone and makes calls on your nickel. Go entirely to pre-paid phone cards. Calls in-state are the same rate as cross country. Best part is it isn't loaded with all the added monthly charges or high daytime rates. My current long distance is 2.99 cents/min either in state, or out of state 24 hours a day. None of that evening and weekend plan junk. Who's bright idea was it for evening to begin at 9PM anyway on those cell plans? People with small kids have sent them to bed and don't appreciate the phone calls after the kids are supposed to be going to sleep.

Re:cut the line!

[rsborg]

Tivo currently works with a broadband connection, via the USB port (assuming you buy/have a USB Ethernet connector).

The Software Release 4.0 due out soon (which is immediate if you also purchase Home Media Option), will increase the support and allow setup of a wifi 802.11b USB connector (which is what I'm waiting for!!!)

Another reason to cancel landlines

[BrK]

Just this morning the wife and I were talking about canceling our VZ land-line (we both have VZW phones and a cable modem).

This is just another reinforcing reason to do so. The only calls we really get on the land-line are telemarketers anyway, yet a basic line with callerid and a minimal LD plan is $38.00/month.

The consumer/end-user in this country is really getting screwed by the government and various utility oligopolies.

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[hafree]

I did this 3 years ago and I couldn't be happier. 7 addresses and 2 states later, I still have the exact same number, no long distance charges ever, and although I'm probably paying too much I know exactly what I'm going to be billed every month. With my Verizon landline, I had message rate service for $11/month, yet my phone bill was regularly $30+ including the long distance carrier before I made a single call.

I'd just like to add that I have AT&T for my wireless service and they suck. I routinely get bills that say "due upon receipt", but are overdue by the time I get them, somehow all my bills from them always show up with no postmark, and I've had my service disconnected several times for failure to pay a bill that wasn't due yet because of "glitches" in their system. You really can't win, but it's less complicated than the hassles of a landline.

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[jedman]

Say *WHAT*? $38.00 ??? Good ol' Verizon...

Most Baby-Bell land lines tot up to maybe $25 / month even after all the taxes and crammed charges. Of course, they tout it as "$11.50 / month basic service", but you have to add extended area calling and such...

Screw 'em, cancel that land line, provided your cell service is reliable at home (mine isn't, unless I change carriers... cell site is way across town).

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[FroMan]

Hmmm, what we (my wife and I) do is get a basic local package, then we use a calling card for long distance. I think our bill is roughly 20 a month or less. Then at Sams we pick up the longest minute calling card for long distance. We just had to replace our 1000 minute card from last summer with a new 1250 minute card this month. So, basically we (which I mean my wife) just has to change the autodialer every 8 months which might take all of 10 minutes.

So, basicaly we save $20 a month on long distance for the cost of 10 minutes and $40 to buy the card. Seems like a pretty good deal for us.

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[Triv]

For Long Distance, I recommend GTC Telecom. Flat rate, 5 cents a minute and practically no other fees. Cut my phone bill in half.

They offer (practically) unlimited national dialup access for 10 bucks a month, too.

Triv

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[Anonymous Coward]

The LD cards from Sams are also the cheapest way to call other countries too. (ie: Iceland where my wife is from)

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[battjt]

7 addresses in 3 years and they don't send you your bills on time? Now that's a head scratcher.

My problem with ATT wireless was that when the tower was down (we have one tower in this town), there was nothing they would do, nor would they compensate us for loss of service, so we switched to Verizon.

Joe

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[Anonymous Coward]

Sams Club (AT&T) and Costco (MCI or Sprint) both offer phone cards for under 3 cents per minute, no monthly fee, no surcharge and no "use or lose" with some time frame, and the are rechargable for the same price per min and usable from any phone (1-800 number). Best part is no taxes and fees associated with them which can make up a large part of your normal LD bill.

I cancelled all long distance calling ability from my home phone and use these instead.

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[Qrlx]

Just this morning the wife and I were talking about canceling our VZ land-line (we both have VZW phones and a cable modem).

DO IT!

I have cable modem, cell phone, and no land line. No complaints here!

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[dten]

Agree, do it, provided you have adequate cell coverage at your home.
My wife and I have exactly this setup and it's worked perfectly for 2 years.

Re:Another reason to cancel landlines

[evilviper]

Can you say "class action"?

Tone dial

[Quill_28]

I know in Tennessee, there was/is a 1 or 2 dollar charge per month for having a touch tone instead of a rotary tone.
My father-in-law resisted for years but finally gave in.

Re:Tone dial

[dieMSdie]

That charge still exists (at least in my area), though it does not get itemized on the phone bill.

My father's bill was $2.00 less than mine, but he finally gave in when his ISP stopped accepting rotary calls after an equipment upgrade.

Re:Tone dial

[jdreed1024]

I know in Tennessee, there was/is a 1 or 2 dollar charge per month for having a touch tone instead of a rotary tone.

Here in the Boston area, I get charged $0.44 per month for TouchTone service. Which is ridiculous, since with today's digital equipment, it probably takes more effort to understand pulse signals than DTMF tones. A couple of folks I know have sucessfully gotten that canceled on the grounds that they don't use TouchTone. I've been fighting with Verizon for a few months now (I have 2 phones in my apartment - one is rotary, and another is electronic pulse only), but I've had no such luck.

Re:Tone dial

[Jonathan_S]

My father's bill was $2.00 less than mine, but he finally gave in when his ISP stopped accepting rotary calls after an equipment upgrade.

How could an ISP "stop accepting rotary calls" The ISP doesn't handle the dialing; their modems just answer the phone line ring. The phone company is the one that has to handle tone vs. pulse, but one they have figured out the number you are calling the rest of the call is identical.

Unless you meant that the ISP's tech support switched to a tone based voicemail/navigation system. So a pulse phone could call but not navigate the system...
You could switch the phone to tone after you got the ISP on the line and the set it back to pulse after the call is over, but that is a bit of a hassle.

Re:Tone dial

[operagost]

That doesn't sound right. The remote switch shouldn't give a crap how the connection was made- that's handled by the local switch.

Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[gpinzone]

I got rid of my long distance carrier completey and saved all those FCC imposed taxes on my phone connection. I usually just email anyone who lives outside of my local calling area. If I ever do need to make a LD call, I just use my cell phone or a cheap calling card.

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Need to make a long distance call? Just dial 1010220 then 1 then the area code and number of the person you're trying to call.
The first minute is a ripoff at a dollar, but the next 19 minutes are free, and after that the rates are competitive with regular carriers. It's a great deal for me, since the only people I call outside NoVA are family and we talk more than 20 minutes.

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you do this?
I tried to get rid of the LD taxes on one of my lines and I was told that I had to pay this fee even if I never made any long distance calls! /Mark

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

unless, of course, they aren't home.... unless their answering machine lets you leave really long messages!

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[jim3e8]

I cancelled my LD service as well, but the Feds actually tax you if you don't have long distance service: $4.49 in my case, for "Federal Access Charge". Now that's a rip off.

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[gpinzone]

The problem is that you STILL have a LD carrier. When I tried to sign up with MCI's neighborhood plan, they wouldn't allow me to get the package without getting MCI as my LD plan. All they did was to put a "block" on the line to prevent LD calls. Stupid, eh? I Found AT&T's Local/Local Toll service to be the same price, and less restrictive than MCI's neighborhood plan.

BTW, looking for a new local carrier has been an eye opening experience. Now I know what a LATA is.

Re:Let's not forget andout FCC LD taxes

[PCGod]

Interesting. When I signed up for service with PacBell (now SBC) I told them I wanted no long distance service. I am STILL charged an Interstate network access charge plus some other FCC mandated crap. Add that to the standard phone charges and enhanced DSL service and my bill ends up being over $100/mo. What a rip off.

$458 dollar gloves

[pr0ntab]

0 line printers - $25,000
1 phone switch - $133,000
The same phone switch on newegg - $4

Succeeding to sweep a damning audit of your shady accounting under the rug: Priceless

There are some things money can't buy. You use back-office deals with the FCC for that.

Re:$458 dollar gloves

[anonymous loser]

You know, such gloves do exist. Maybe they're just big hockey fans.

Re:$458 dollar gloves

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, those would be $451.95 gloves...

This is nothing new...

[Ratphace]

...to the consumer. The Bell system for all its splendor has been sticking it to us for YEARS. I mean, take touch tone service. For years they charged an additional 'fee' for this service, when in all actuality it was cheaper for them to implement and maintain.

Also, the Bell system invented DSL back in the last 70's but didn't pursue it because of their own short-sightedness. Then it comes to pass that when the Internet boom took off and the Bell companies were left out in the cold, suddenly they wanted to 'charge' fees each time someone dialed-up an ISP phone number. Luckily the count system told the Bells to suck it. The Bell system claimed it was putting more burden on their system, which might very well be the case, however, they also stuck it to the consumer for YEARS with this 'unlimited local calls' for one rate when they had done studies way back in the day to determine that the average customer makes/receives 6 calls a day with the average call being 4.2 minutes. Now that customers are using MORE of their unlimited service the phone company is crying the blues...

Let them reap what they've sewn all these years :)

Re:This is nothing new...

[RickHunter]

You know, this "unlimited local calls" thing sounds suspiciously like the "unlimited always-on internet access" bait-and-switch that the broadband companies are pulling now.

Re:This is nothing new...

[eudas]

"Luckily, the court system"
"reap what they've sown"

eudas

Profit!

[SnowDog_2112]

(Is this joke dead yet?)

1: Monopoly broken up by government.
2: Local companies and national carriers hold secret meetings with government regulators, decide how to screw customer over.
3: ???
4: Profit!!

Re:Profit!

[fobbman]

5: There is no #3.

Re:Profit!

[sporty]

You mean "there is no spoon". :)

Re:Profit!

[fobbman]

Holy crap, ????? has been "spoon" all this time? *forehead slap*

another good example...

[AbdullahHaydar]

...is that the wireless companies have been fighting number portability for years (it's still not required: after being passed into law 1996, the FCC has postponed implementation every year) and yet they claim them as part of their fees: Nextel, AT&T, etc

Re:another good example...

[tomzyk]

I just noticed this last night while looking at my SprintPCS cellphone bill. I noticed that over the past few months my bill has been steadily increasing. (It's only a few cents every month, but it still keeps climbing!) My last bill was $0.41 higher than the previous one!

Now, they put the extra charge in the "Taxes and Federal Fines" (or whatever) section, and yet when I checked up on the explanation of these fees, it says something along the lines of "Eventhough we SAY that these are taxes, they really aren't. We're just making this tax/charge up because we're being forced into this number-portability thing..."

Seriously. Is this legal to label it as a "tax" eventhough it isn't? Man, I'm starting to distrust any fee-based company because they keep raising charges. (I've been with DirectTV for only about 1.5 years and they've already raised my monthly fees by at least $6 and removed some of the channels in hopes that I'll just "upgrade" my package and pay more.)

For those of you with SprintPCS, check your April bill.

Re:another good example...

[_xeno_]

That would be annoying, because I set up automatic monthly billing so that I just get my checking account debited automatically every month. Anyway, here's the details of the line item "Taxes/Surcharges/Regulatory" from my March bill:

Taxes and Regulatory Charges
FEDERAL TAX 0.94
MASSACHUSETTS STATE SALES TAX - SERVICES & USAGE 1.52
MASSACHUSETTS STATE WIRELESS 911 SURCHARGE 0.30
Surcharges and Fees
FEDERAL UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND 0.40
FEDERAL E911 0.30
FEDERAL TELEPHONE NUMBER POOLING 0.47

Total: $3.93

Notice I get hit for 911 twice, first for statewide, then again for federal. Oh well - this is the price I pay for not having a land-line :) I dunno - I think I'll stick getting screwed with Sprint rather than trying to get screwed with another provider. I wonder why it says "SURCHARGE" for the MA 911 item, even though it's not in the "SURCHARGE" section? Oh well...

(Why is this post "lame" if HTML formatted, but not "lame" if posted in "Code" mode? Hmm...)

Re:another good example...

[Reziac]

See my post somewhere above, called something like "They inflate access fees too" for an explanation.

Basically, the phone companies can add whatever they like on top of, and in the same item as, Federal taxes and fees, then pocket the difference. That's why the weasel wording about the tax items, not to mention bill creep.

Hmmm...

[superdan2k]

Sounds vaguely like what I suspect will happen here in Minnesota with other stuff. Right now, we have a pretty large ($4 billion) deficit, and a lot of programs are getting cut. Roads are a problem here because of the huge amounts of population growth we've had in the last 20 years... Right now, our state legislature is talking about allowing private companies to add additional lanes to existing roads and then charge money to use those lanes so that they can recoup the cost of building them, plus make a "reasonable profit", after which time, the cost of using those lanes would be reduced. I heard about this on the news last night, and the first thing I thought of was the telecomms and all the extra bullshit they tack onto our bills.

You and I both know that the cost of using those lanes would NEVER go down. They'll always find a way to charge more for what they've built, simply because people become so adjusted to things (like telephones) that they become a "necessity" instead of a "luxury" and people pay them blindly for the service. Look at cable TV -- how many of the channels you get in your huge bundle do you actually watch?

Re:Hmmm...

[Martin Blank]

Right now, our state legislature is talking about allowing private companies to add additional lanes to existing roads and then charge money to use those lanes so that they can recoup the cost of building them, plus make a "reasonable profit", after which time, the cost of using those lanes would be reduced. I heard about this on the news last night, and the first thing I thought of was the telecomms and all the extra bullshit they tack onto our bills.

Sounds like the toll lanes in Orange County, CA, specifically along the 91. Check out this sweet deal the toll operators got:

* State/County issue low-interest, government-backed bonds for the construction costs to be paid back by the company
* Company get tax breaks, environmental waivers
* Toll prices allowed to go from an initial $1 per direction at peak to nearly $5 now. Even off-peak costs (when it's pointless to use the lanes anyway because traffic is clear) is $1.25, last I saw.
* Further widening of the freeway was forbidden until the free lanes reaches something like 50% over design capacity (which rarely has anything to do with reality anyway), and then only one lane in each direction could be added to the existing four lanes per side. This was part of a secret non-compete clause that was designed to prevent the toll road operators from losing business.

The Orange County Transportation Authority finally bought the lanes at the beginning of this year for $261 million. The plan is to pay off the existing bonds as quickly as possible, and then turn the toll lanes into standard carpool lanes. In the meantime, construction is set to begin in the near future on at least one and possibly two additional lanes. For once, there's no way they can go back on it and keep their jobs, because the hatred of the toll lanes, particularly once the non-compete clause became public, was universal among the 250,000+ daily users, many of whom have 50+ mile commutes that can take up to two hours to complete.

Fight this in your state if you can.

Re:Hmmm...

[FroMan]

TV == Playstation monitor

What are these channels you speak of?

Re:Hmmm...

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

the cost of using those lanes would be reduced.

Don't believe them. In the Philly area, one of the bridges leading to New Jersey (the Ben Franklin bridge, I think) was built long ago as a toll bridge which would have been a toll bridge until costs are recouped. That point was reached long ago and it's still a toll bridge.

Re:Hmmm...

[cybercuzco]

many of whom have 50+ mile commutes that can take up to two hours to complete

If you dont like it, then live closer to your job! Its called a trade off people:you want to have a nice yard and 4000 sq ft house and drive a land behemoth, then you get to drive for 2 hours and be stuck in traffic every day. If you want to be able to walk or ride a bike to work every day, then you might have to live in an apartment or condo of some sorts. Everything has its price, and in this case, the price is a long commute, many people are willing to pay it, and no amount of road construction will solve it.

Re:Hmmm...

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah, but did you notice how the tolls on the Ben Franklin and the Walt Whitman are both only for cars going west? It's not to make money, it's to discourage people from leaving New Jersey. And Jersey needs all the help it can get. ;)

(posting from Camden, NJ, a few hundred yards away from the Ben Franklin Bridge)

Re:Hmmm...

[nojomofo]

Much like the Mass Turnpike.... Of course, now that toll money is going to pay for the Big Dig, which helps North-South drivers, rather than the East-West drivers who use the Mass Pike.

Re:Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, we have a pretty large ($4 billion) deficit

The state's revenue went up from the previous budget. The only reason we have a 'deficit' is because the state was planning to increase spending even more.

The governor is simply using the 'deficit' as an excuse to re-prioritize the budget. This is the same guy who, as leader of the Minnesota House of Representatives, wrote a public comment supporting the MS-DOJ antitrust settlement.

Re:Hmmm...

[ryanwright]

Roads are a problem here because of the huge amounts of population growth

That is the biggest line of BS. Huge amounts of population growth = corresponding increase in taxes. Our local government increased taxes for fire and police because of the "huge growth in the community." Several thousand more homes have been built, and with it, millions more in taxes are rolling in. Yet they claim they're broke and can't afford to protect these new subdivisions from crime and fire without additional taxes. I call bullshit.

Re:Hmmm...

[superdan2k]

Bullshit. Just because taxes are increasing with population doesn't mean that there's going to be equal amounts of money available to do the same things you did before. Modifying existing infrastructure is more expensive than building new. And existing infrastructure needs to be repaired/cared-for. So let's not jump to the conclusion that there's a static relationship between tax revenues and the amount that they can purchase.

Monopoly

[whig]

The problem, fundamentally, is the local loop monopoly.

I'm no advocate of government regulation, but in economic terms, there is only one workable solution to prevent this sort of abuse. If the FCC and state regulators would get out of the way and let communities implement this, the cost and quality of phone service would improve to accurately reflect a competitive market value.

1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.

2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.

With this approach, the Baby Bells would be in a good position to maintain a dominant market position in the near term, but not a monopoly which they can abuse. And if other firms can enter the market and do a better job of providing value to consumers and businesses, they will take market share away from the Bells.

Re:Monopoly

[AlterTick]

1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.

2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.

In theory I'm with you 100%, but I can imagine some real nightmare situations. I live in a part of Los Angeles that's served by Verizon (formerly GTE) and getting them, a private company, to provide last-mile broadband in some areas has proved impossible. There are thousands of ridiculously wealthy people in the Brentwood/Pacific Palisades area that are willing to pay, but they're all stuck with dialup because the CO is too far and Verizon is too disorganized to do anything about it. A few pay for T1's, but they're rare. So despite immense market pressure, Verizon continues to leave these folks in the technological stone age. Can you imagine a city-run bureaucracy running this show?

Then again, that brings to mind the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Being a city-run "company" of sorts, it didn't get caught up in the whole stupid faux-deregulation power company shell game we had here (Enron et. al) and, in fact, was selling lots of surplus power. LA-DWP does make for a good argument for municipal control...

But the real question, as I see it, is how do you actually transfer the "last mile" from RBOCs like SBC and Verizon to the city? Basically, the RBOC's reason for existing is to install/maintain the "last mile". What part of it do you give to the city? Only the copper from the CO to the residences/businesses? Or do the cities get the CO's too? If they do, how do they implement seperate control of said CO when it's part of a multi-city distributed network? And if all the cities took over ownership of the local loop service, then what does that leave the RBOCs with, besides several thousand unemployed techs and a fleet of trucks they have no more use for? They'd essentially have to leave it all under RBOC maintenance and create another crappy FCC brokered deal with the RBOC where the city charges the RBOC to lease out line use, and the RBOC charges back for maintaining it. I suspect such a deal would be abused like any other. As much as I hate Verizon, I don't think a municipal takeover is the answer...

Re:Monopoly

[terbor]

1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.

2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.

I love this idea. It's like a small business almost. You know, the kind that have to lease their office/storefront. If they offer a good service at a competitive price and have satisfied customers, they stay in business. They offer crapy service or at too high a rate, customers get their deal elsewhere.

Re:Monopoly

[whig]

To the objection that the community is poorly equipped to maintain the lines, and could wind up paying the RBOCs monopoly pricing for doing so:

Someone might suggest that maintenance could be put up for competitive bidding. Undoubtedly the RBOCs are best equipped to provide this at present, but the contracts could be limited in term and scope to allow for renegotiation as market conditions change. New market entrants may increasingly be able to offer the community better quality at better prices.

But this isn't ideal either, as the political games that go on in such government contracting are well known and impossible to avoid. Why not let the individual line consumers subscribe to the maintenance provider of their choice, just as they would be able to choose their service provider? In most cases, it's best to have the same company provide both, so you don't get finger-pointing nonsense.

Already charging for non existent service & ot

[Anonymous Coward]

Phone companies are already charging for non existing service ... it's not surprising they are charging for non existent equipment too.

The real scam, with the phone company I discovered was phone leasing. Not until last year did we find out that my Uncle WAS STILL leasing his telephone (a pulse dialing rotary) for $17.95 a month. We had been under the impression that the "phone lease" was ended with a breakup. He has paid OVER $1000 for this phone. Although we think it may be collectible ... the phone company graciously let us keep it! Unbelievable!

I assume voice over IP and different types of broadband and WiFi will eventually cure the service/billing issues. Phone companies will have to be "upfront" with charges in order to be competitive

I need my hard line to...

[Joe the Lesser]

Get out of the Matrix.

An enigma...

[bluprint]

The government essentially established regulations for phone companies to use in determining thier prices. Phone companies abuse the system (to get more money), and people scream about how evil the phone companies are.

The government establishes regulations on how much money welfare recipients should get. The recipients abuse the system (we've all seen stories about this at some point, somewhere)....and people scream about "the system".

Re:An enigma...

[beanball75]

I guess our standards have sunk so low that we call fraud "abusing the system." Long live Enron!

Re:An enigma...

[Anonymous Coward]

The bells "abuse the system" every company makes about a billion dollars on this. These are companies that have stocks worth a number of billions each.

The recipients "abuse the system", every recipient makes maybe 20$ (100$ tops) on this. These are people that get maybe 600$ each.

You would take money from 100.000 people who really need the small amount they get and let 1 other person that is a million times richer than you get away with the same amount of money. Yet your solution is to sue the 100.000.

Somehow it seems to me that this is a "liberal" attitude. Allow 1 person to screw thousands of others for his own personal gain.

"Liberalism" is not in your best intrest (it is in nobody's intrest except the 100 richest people in amerca). It will not lower YOUR taxes significantly (it will, however lower the taxes of people who make millions a year significantly).

Btw. liberalism comes from freedom. Could someone explain to me how denying poor people everything from healthcare to education has anything to do with freedom ?

I truly don't understand your ethics.

Re:An enigma...

[bluprint]

I wasn't trying to defend the phone companies. I was merely pointing out that noone seems to think the FCC bears any of the blame for setting up a bad environment to begin with.

Could someone explain to me how denying poor people everything from healthcare to education has anything to do with freedom ?

Sure, right after you explain to me how forcing financially responsible people to pay for the financially irresponsible has anything to do with freedom. Noone denies poor people anything, for the most part, they are responsible for denying themselves.

But I guess it's just that "be responsible for your own actions" part of me that makes me think that way...

Way to go, FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

When your audit showed the telcos were not obeying federal regulations, instead of taking actual punitive action you stopped the audit when they telcos cut a deal that they told you would benefit the consumers.

Now, that's just great. That's like the police agreeing not to arrest a rapist, when he offers to pull out of the girl he's raping as the cops are talking to him, and let her go.

The more I read about their stupid, corporation-friendly decisions, the more I think "FCC" stands for "Fucking [our] Constituent Consumers"

Amen to that

[No Such Agency]

Having a land line is a grotesque and arrogantly undisguised rip-off. If it wasn't for my modem I'd lose it and get a cell. I mean, I still get billed an itemized $5/month for "touch-tone service". The phone company must have recouped the cost of converting to touch-tone many years ago. Almost nobody uses an old-fashioned pulse dial phone anymore.

And yet.

Re:Amen to that

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have two dial phones in my home. One is 1937 vintage and the other is a "space saver" phone from the 50's. The rest of my phones are touch tone. If I did not like antique phones I might drop the land line.

MojoRising

Re:Amen to that

[ryanvm]

Have you ever tried dropping the touch-tone service? Your modem can dial pulse and most phones can too. You'd still be able to use touch-tones on phone menus. The touch-tone service only refers to initiating the call.

Of course they'll probably tell you that it's not an option. Still, it's worth a shot.

Re:Amen to that

[mbourgon]

Actually, go pulse. The only disadvantage is that you'd have to switch your phone back to tone for voice menus. It actually costs them _more_ these days to do pulse. So, if you're willing to give up a little of your time, you can screw them. (From what I remember, Tone allows them to packetize the dialing portion of the call, while pulse requires they leave the circuit open the whole time you're dialing. So that equipment now can be used less.)

Re:Amen to that

[The_Rook]

here's a tip i learned long ago.

when ordering a new land line, always reject the touch tone option they charge extra for. for a few weeks, only pulse dialing works. every now and then, dial using touch tones. usually, they start to work after a few weeks.

like mbourgon said, it costs the phone companies more to support pulse dialing over touch tone. they just want to see if you're dumb enough to pay for touch tone first.

Re:Amen to that

[mcoko]

Actually, a tone-customer is paying for a pusle-customer to be able to use the phone.

The current switching equipment handels tone cheaper then pulse. In the new equipment it costs more to interpet pulse functionality than tone. Pulse was used in analog switches and is not needed at all in digital switches. A pulse needs to be recorded and converted to tones for the switch to understand the number dialing.

Re:Amen to that

[Reziac]

In Calif, touchtone is the standard. If you want pulse dialing, there's an extra monthly charge.

Tho I can attest that pulse dialing works with most (NOT all) lines regardless.

Re:Amen to that

[trigeek]

Have you considered getting a cable model or DSL line instead of the phone line? If the only thing you use it for is data, why not get a much fatter pipe for just a few dollars more a month?

Re:Amen to that

[Rudy Rodarte]

You can drop tone and use pluse. My parents still have pulse service. And they have the latest and greatest cordless phones, too! They know that if they need pulse for anything, they just hit the Tone button on the phone. My dad asked SBC what it would cost to switch to Tone service. $20 was the answer with a monthly fee at that!
No thanks!

Re:Amen to that

[Anonymous Coward]

We have pulse dial and DSL. We never got the tone upgrade but when Verizon offered DSL we got it (cable doesn't come near our place) and they never asked or required the tone upgrade.

Re:Amen to that

[drpatt]

A few years ago I picked up a little hand-held touch tone generator from Radio Shack. In those situations where you must have touch tone, just hold this device up to the mouthpiece and punch away.

Re:Amen to that

[Technician]

I went the other route to eliminate this charge. I never signed up for touch tone service. When the CO upgraded equipment, it became standard. Then they wanted me to pay extra to support legacy pulse dial equipment. I told them I will upgrade and drop my legacy equipment. (I already had) Now they had no reason whatsoever to charge me for touch tone. I never paid that monthly charge.

Dump you ILEC

[h0d]

Dump Verizon or SBC and go with a CLEC like Cox or Cavalier or... More features and a better price. Choose more than one service and the price gets even better.

UK line charges

[Radian]

In the UK we get charged for line rental (approx £10/month), and we pay for all calls - including local calls. It is my understanding that in the US local calls are free, so you are getting something for the rental charge.

Re:UK line charges

[will_die]

It depends on the location.
Most are flat fee, around $20(around 13 Pounds) for unlimited local calls after all fees. Other locations charge lower with a fee per call.

Re:UK line charges

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK (BT) I pay slightly more per month but I don't pay for any offpeak calls anywhere in the country.

Re:UK line charges

[/dev/trash]

We pay for all our local calls too. It's a flat rate, which is great if you call locally a lot, but is quite expensive if you don't.

Re:UK line charges

[RatBastard]

We pay for local calls. In two ways:

• There is a flat fee that covers all local calls for residential customers.
  Most people do not make enough local voice calls to actually get the value of what they pay. So you in the UK might be better off when it comes to voice calls.
• Business and government offices pay for local calls on a per-call fee for any calls that leave their internal exchanges.
  This has caused a LOT of government and business organizations to invest in such fun technologies as Voice Over IP to get around these fees.

A few years ago when dail-up modem connections to the Internet were peaking the phone companies were wining and bitching about how these calls were stressing their systems and costing them money, even though greater than 50% of modem users had gotten a second phone line just for modem use.

Minnesota Roads

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, hail from Minnesota, and it sounds like a good idea. I could still drive in the old lanes free and I wouldn't be forced to pay for the new ones. If I thought the price was right I'd pay. If not, I would still have the basic service, just not as fast. Plus, soon I'll have a permit to pack heat and I'll be all set!

Arthur

"Grandpa" Al Lewis...

[phillymjs]

...said it best.

~Philly

Phone company billing just sucks, period

[swb]

Phone company billing is just awful no matter how you slice it. I manage the phone system here, and unless you're an (ex-) Qwest employee there's no way you can understand the detailed billing associated with your phone service. The actual monthly phone bill I get from Qwest (or bills, some things they insist on billing seperately -- a RAS PRI has its primary trunk number billed on a seperate bill) looks like my home phone bill, with two extra digits. No service detail, nothing.

When I took over the phone guy's responsibility when he quit, I asked the telco for a detailed customer record, and I got ~175 page report that detailed our services in a totally unintelligible report. Each DS0 from our four D1s took up about a page on the report, detailing every 10 cent tarrif that made up the price of each DS0, along with the other tarrifs associated with the DS1 itself. After looking at it I pretty much gave up and handed it over to our phone maintenance vendor who audited for me -- they employee two ex Qwest employees specifically for this purpose, since the codings and info aren't explained anywhere but in some Qwest internal documents.

We ended up dropping a bunch of 1FB (telco slang for analog copper) circuits, CENTREX circuits and other stuff we weren't using. They were live on our demarc block, but not punched to anything.

This isn't unusual, either -- the vague monthly invoicing and byzantine customer records lead to so many overbilled or unused service that there's an entire industry that does nothing but audit phone bills in exchange for a percentage of the savings.

My experience with telcos leads me to believe that half of this is a monopolistic lack of desire for reform, government bureaucracy and overregulation, and excessive merger activity that's left them with dozens of computer systems that don't communicate without human intervention. I've been told by both Sprint and Qwest that they have systems so complex that there are few people there who can even *use* both of them, but data is required to be pulled/entered from both of them to get anything done.

Unfortunately I don't see any hope for reform. You pretty much have to do business with them, and when business is good they give you what they want and waste the money on mergers and exec perks (Nacchio sucks!), and when business is bad (like now), they plead poverty and can't afford to fix this.

I guess the only hope is that some of the CLECs can do better without becoming just like the ILECs, although I'd imagine the temptation is to become the ILECs, not improve on them.

Re:Phone company billing just sucks, period

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

My experience with AT&T long distance billing was similarly terrible. I work for a company that used to be an AT&T service provider. We have a small switch that we maintain and I was assigned to match the records with the switch with the Call Detail Records that AT&T was sending us for our bill. It was pretty much impossible. A fair percentage of calls had wildly differing call lengths. Most switches were within 60 seconds of ours, but some varried by hours or days. A number of calls in their records simply do not exist in ours in any way.

One month I was asked to investigate a huge jump in our bill (30 or 50 percent as I recall). After spending hours fiddling with my record-matching perl and coming back with nothing, I looked at the datestamps on the records. There were records spanning 14 previous months. Once those were stripped out our bill was as close to right as we could hope to demonstrate.

Re:Phone company billing just sucks, period

[maverick41]

This isn't unusual, either -- the vague monthly invoicing and byzantine customer records lead to so many overbilled or unused service that there's an entire industry that does nothing but audit phone bills in exchange for a percentage of the savings.

The number one reason for overbilling...there is no risk at all to the billing company. Either they get more revenue than they deserve, or if they are caught, they get the revenue they deserve. And whether you pay a company to audit your bills or not, you overpay...

Re:Phone company billing just sucks, period

[swb]

The number one reason for overbilling...there is no risk at all to the billing company.

Except the risk of getting sued for refunds, interest and other monetary damages.

True Story...

[MoeMoe]

I moved 6 months ago from one house to another and informed Verizon to change my number and consequently terminate my old number, since then my old number has a bill being sent to my new house that keeps adding on and is now up to $350. I called Verizon about it and told them there is no line for that number anymore and never existed in my new residence in the first place, the nasty jerk on the other side said that maybe I requested a second line to add on and if what I was saying is true then there couldnt be a bill because in order to get a bill you have to be using your line (total BS by the way), I told this guy to check when the last time I made a call on that number was, sure enough he told me it was 6 months ago and the last call was to Verizon TS, I asked if there were any notices filed for termination on the date of that call.... About 5 minutes of pause later he told me a supervisor would be in contact shortly.... that was 3 days ago!

Re:True Story...

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to get service disconnected properly is to set up a machine that:
Autocalls the customer service office every 120 seconds, and plays a message to the effect of:Disconnect this phone line and stop billing me, or be called every 120 seconds.

Re:True Story...

[ChuckMaster]

I have had trouble with Verizon as well. When I had dsl and moved, they told me that I would have to cancel my account, and get a new one even though I was using the same number and was only moving half a mile. I was looking at a three week laps in service.

Well, after unpacking and my local service started, for sh*ts and giggles I tried my dsl and lo and behold I was connected.

I called them up and told them I currently have service and not to cancel my dsl, and to cancel the new account I had set up, since they were completey wrong about having it needed to be changed.

Well, a month down the road I got two bills. And still got two bills for three months. Then for a few months I got no bills. Then I would get double billed. Then my bill would be high because they claimed that didnt charge me for a few weels 6 months ago.

Oddly enough, Verizon still has an outstanding bbb rating. But I recommend going to them, don't underestimate the power of the BBB!

The next time I moved I got cable and said to hell with Verizon.

I have no local phone service and I carry a cell phone. I highly recommend it. T-Mobile gives me long distance, 600 minutes, caller id, voicemail service for 30$ a month plus it MOBILE!

My local phone service with long distance and caller id package : 40 dollars. Plus I get a charge for long distance calls.

Only negative: Pizza deliveries wont deliver to my door since I have no local number.

Re:True Story...

[MoeMoe]

Funny, I used to sell cell phones for T-Mobile, Nextel, and AT&T... The plan you have is called the Get More Plan and if you wanted, you can call 611 from your cell phone and ask them to change your area code and prefix to whatever you want, with Tmobile it's free to do that (AT&T charges $25 for "vanity numbers").

Re:True Story...

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a Papa John's in your area, try their website. You can actually schedule your delivery several months in advance, and since you pay online by credit card, you don't have the same hassle of proving that you are where you say.

Re:True Story...

[Reziac]

You aren't the first I've heard of Verizon doing this to, just about word for word -- makes me wonder if it's part of a regular slamming-type scheme they run.

Also, you NEVER get a call back from a Verizon supervisor unless you threaten to file a complaint with your state Public Utilities Commission. Which, BTW, is exactly what you should do.

Re:True Story...

[theaphila]

doing this kind of thing by phone is often useless. send them a letter (like, on paper, via usps - you can even print it out from your computer). it works. if i can't get any dispute resolved in a single phone call, it's correspondence from then on out. i've never had to send more than that first letter.

Re:True Story...

[David Leppik]

Silly consumer! Never complain to the phone monopoly about billing or service problems; they don't listen. Instead complain to the Federal Communications Commission.

I've seen this in action. Not only did a polite, detailed letter to the FCC clear up the problem almost instantly, the responsible manager at Qwest (my local telco) sent a very polite apology explaining that the phone line was being taken care of and the rude operator was being investigated.

What do you use?

[The Tyro]

My wife and myself both have cell phones, and a land line. I contemplated exactly what you're suggesting, but I need my land line for my DSL. Cell reception is also spotty out where I live; my cell calls from my home often get dropped. they get me coming and going.

It's a scam, but they've got me... no other broadband available in my area. Of course, even if cable was available, they STILL force you to get a basic cable package before you can get cable broadband. I'm not a TV watcher, so that's money down a rathole.

What company do you use? Nationwide long distance or anything? I'm curious how you're making this work.

Re:What do you use?

[brakk]

I've seen cradles for cell phones that let you hook in an external antenna for better reception and then plugs into your house phone line so all your land phones go through your cell.

You could get satalite service for your internet connection to get away from bell. As for cable, I use cox in oklahoma and they don't require you to have basic cable, but you get a $10/month discount if you do have it.

You could also make a deal with one of your neighbors to install DSL on top of their land line and share the data line.

Re:What do you use?

[Mr Fodder]

> Of course, even if cable was available, they STILL force you to get a basic cable package before you can get cable broadband.

Depending on where you live this may not be technically true. I'm in Shaw Cable country, and was able to completely cancel out my basic cable but still keep the broadband. Check with the provider in your area to see if it's an option for you.

Re:What do you use?

[martone66]

Right now I've got Sprint PCS as my cell carrier, and broadband for internet access. As long as I'm on the Sprint network, I pay no roaming or long distance charges for calls inside the US.

I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Cellsocket announces their new models. I am tired of Sprint dropping my calls, and being in spots without coverage.

My grand plan is to get a Cellsocket with external antenna, disconnect my home phone wiring from the phone company, and use phones throughout the house, with my cell making/receiving all the calls.

Re:What do you use?

[JJahn]

Interesting, if you don't pay them for basic cable service, can't you still watch it? They would have to run a cable in your home, and if you put a splitter on that and hooked up a TV, I would think you could watch basic cable TV for free.

Re:What do you use?

[Chan]

Do you have any links? I've been looking for something like this. Actually, I've also wondered if there is such a thing as a cellular repeater that I could hang out a window to improve my in-house cell reception. I'm guessing that it wouldn't be feasible with two-way digital communication.

Re:What do you use?

[Surak]

I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Cellsocket [cellsocket.com] announces their new models. I am tired of Sprint dropping my calls, and being in spots without coverage.

Dammit! Why is that everytime I have an idea, someone else comes out with it first? Argh! I had this idea 3 years ago when I first got my cell phone -- wire a regular phone into the cell for home use, since, even then, long distance via cell is cheaper than landline LD service when you figure in *all* of the costs of making LD calls on the landline. I should've moved on it then I guess. :( *sigh*

Re:What do you use?

[brakk]

After they switch your line over to receive data, you have to have a filter on your tv to watch it. I get free cable tv from my apartment complex and only pay for data, but I know that you can receive data without tv. One time on the phone with them they asked if I wanted to get tv too and told me I would get $10 off my data service. I told them I already got tv for free from my landlord and asked if I could get the discount anyway. But she said no.

Re:What do you use?

[brakk]

Just a quick search found these. There might be more.

http://www.eagleid.com/wireless/cline.htm
http: //www.cellsocket.com/

Re:What do you use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just this month, Sprint added an "America Plan" for $10 more a month. No roaming charges outside the PCS network ever. Disadvantage though is when you are off the PCS network your plan minutes apply (no free weekends etc..), better then the roaming charges though. If you use your PCS phones for Vision access you may not be happy with Verizons data prices, much more then Sprint (which is unlimited time and bandwidth for only $15/month).

Every persons individual useage pattern is different so YMMV.

Re:What do you use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sprint eh? Seems like you've already found your problem.

Re:What do you use?

[Grishnakh]

I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Cellsocket announces their new models. I am tired of Sprint dropping my calls, and being in spots without coverage.

My grand plan is to get a Cellsocket with external antenna, disconnect my home phone wiring from the phone company, and use phones throughout the house, with my cell making/receiving all the calls.

I've been wondering if anyone made a device like that. This would be great for me since I just dumped my landline. But why do they only support Nokia phones? Are there any similar companies making devices like these for Motorola phones?

Re:What do you use?

[The Tyro]

Great info... I'm going to look into that little device... Many thanks!

Re:What do you use?

[Lord Flipper]

$14/month BellSouth 'dial tone', no services, listed, pulse...taxes in. And Earthlink's Unlimited Phone plan: 42$/month, taxes in, 24/7 unlimited to all 50 states and all of Canada [from here in south florida, with family in LA, SF, and Montreal, and Vancouver, and biz in SF and NYUC, it is a bargain and a half]. For 4.95 a month extra, virtual numbers anywhere, with area code/cities that show up on 'screens', and a 'local' number for friends and family to call me wherever I am, free.. All normal services plus voicemail over the phone, or online. Total: $66 /month, and my charges the month before the service: 42 to Bell, 450 to long distance. Min. savings/month: $400US... and, by virtue of being in on the 'ground floor, my dsl is no longer linked to a phone number, only the MAC address: meaning, portability for dsl/phone.

Re:Complete Bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

>'nuff said.
Could you say a little more please....

Quick question....do you know how your "universal service charge" money is being spent? It's a required "tax" that was started to "keep phone service affordable for everyone"
see here
But do you REALLY know where it goes?

Really ticks me off

[Epistax]

Looking at a phone bill, you are charged for several things that are obviously complete lies--No respresentative at any of the companies is able to break it apart.
Now granted they probably really do need this money, or else they wouldn't make any profit, but why can't they tell the truth about where the money goes? By refusing to say, they're just making themselves look corrupt.

Phone lines...

[(H)elix1]

Four years back, I purchased my home. Location mattered, since I wanted DSL and a static IP address.... (all the normal stuff - school system, neighborhoods, etc - were covered too) Called the phone company, was half the maximum distance from the CO, and had the go install DSL after we finished closing. A couple weeks went by and nothing. Finally, I called to find out when they were going to show up and they tell me the lines in our area were multiplexed (?) and would not support DSL. They don't work better than 4kb/s with a POTs connection either, compared to the 48-50kb/s I was getting in my apartment dial up.

Road Runner moved in a year later and gave me a glorious broadband connection at home, and my servers are at a local ISP. The day my Hughes DirectTV DVR pulls info over my network rather than POTs, is the day I cancel my land line and run all calls through our mobiles. I suspect it is game over for both the cable and telcos once the wireless broadband hits it strides.

Every time the phone company would call me during supper trying to sell me the latest service, I would ask them for one thing. Can you give me a DSL connection? I'll be damned, but that just horked up the call center script badly. (grin)

Re:Phone lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my area (Columbus, OH), we have the same problem. We were getting ~44Kbps (v.90) connections for a while. Then, out of the blue, our lines died for a while and when they came back, we could only get ~26.4Kbps (v.34) connections. After lots of calls to the phone company, we discovered that they had installed something from Alcatel called a LiteSpan (not sure of the model -- check this out, though). Basically, (I think... remember, this is Slashdot) these things allow them to run 8 copper pairs over a fiber link, eliminating their ability to do v.90 and DSL.

You'd think they would want to be able to provide better services. But really, if you could increase your capacity by 8x and leave the prices the same (and continue to provide good-enough service - they are only required to provide 14.4K for fax) it would be pretty good.

So, we got Earthlink over TimeWarner Cable for $41.95/mo. And, as it turns out, my dad was able to get the company for which he works to pay for our second phone line and the cable! So, yay for me! :-/

Re:Phone lines...

[Provocateur]

all the normal stuff - school system, neighborhoods, etc ? were covered too

Hey you're among /. friends here...you didn't have to throw that in ;-)

Re:Phone lines...

[trigeek]

I don't have a POTs line attached to my Dish Network PVR, and I have no problems. I think it only uses it for ordering pay-per-view. Have you considered switching? (I rent my equipment for something like $5 a month)

Re:Phone lines...

[(H)elix1]

How does it pull the TV guide? I don't do PPV, so no loss there. I thought it snagged it via dial-up...

Re:Phone lines...

[(H)elix1]

>> Hey you're among /. friends here...you didn't have to throw that in ;-)

No really, all the fluffy stuff is really important to me.

She knows my user account... I welcome my robot masters, and (argh)

[no carrier]

Re:Phone lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on dish network, and don't have a phone line connected. It pulls everything from the sat. The only reason you need the phone line is for ordering pay-per-view.

Re:Phone lines...

[trigeek]

Anonymous coward is right. My DishNetwork box waits until the box is turned off and downloads the guide in the middle of the night from the satellite. Sometimes I turn it on late at night and it's busy downloading the guide. It then gives me the choice to interrupt the download to watch TV or not. I don't know how Direct TV does it, though.

Re:Phone lines...

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadband is almost as important to a student's education these days as the school system...

Re:You're forgetting about something...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have intelligence beyond that of a second grader, though. Considering you're probably some fifteen-year-old little fuck living in suburban Iowa with your parents, though, you'll have plenty of time and resources to play catch-up. Unless, of course, you ever wander outside of your sheltered little three-story home and actually say things like this to others. In which case we'll make sure to have a nice "down-home" Tennessee funeral for you at an inner-city baptist church.

By the way, it's spelled "possessive", asscaptain.

Is cellular service really any better?

[binaryDigit]

Quite a few people are chanting the "cut your landline" mantra. My question is, since the FCC also regulates the cell companies, are they (cellular carriers) really any better about not screwing everyone? Somehow I doubt it. Many of these cellular guys are the ones screwing you over on the landline side. Anyone have a cell phone bill handy to see what mysterious "FCC charges" might also be on there?

Re:Is cellular service really any better?

[mrtroy]

Cellular service eventually has to hit a landline...the calls dont magically come from the air to someones phone!

So I assume the cell companies are paying fcc shiznit

Re:Is cellular service really any better?

[malIgna]

But cellular seems to be the only phone service with real competition right now.

The Bear

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you get billed for it.

Actualy a bear picks up the phone and answers the calls, watches the TV, and reads/posts to slashdot.

Who did you think Timothy was?

You say its not true, but if you asked the Bells then they would show you the Disney channell and point out The Bear in the Big Blue house program as evidence this realy takes place.

The only thing you do not get from this scenario is charged for water/sewage. And not it is not because Bears do not know how to use the toilet, or water, but rather the issue of justifying how the City got the water/sewage lines up on that big rocky mountain.

Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[bahamat]

Everyone here seems to be talking on the same general thread "cancel your land line to screw the bells".

Who exactly do you think you're hurting?
Verizon = Northwest Bell
SBC = Southwest Bell
Cingular = PacBell (owned by SBC, see above)

Who's left?
AT&T? They started this fiasco.
WorldCom? Better known as MCI, now bankrupt
Sprint? NexTel?

Nobody's going to get screwed by you cancelling yoru land line. You're still paying the same people for your cell phone. Do you think their accounting practices will suddenly become honest just because you're now using wireless?

"There's too much rat hair in McDonald's food, so I'll just have their fries".

Think people! Think!

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[BrK]

It is easier to get competitive wireless service than it is land-line service in most areas.

Many people who are canceling their land-lines are doing so because they already have wireless devices that basically de-value their land-line.

While canceling land-lines might not make any of the bells suddenly "see the light", it will shift more of their income to their wireless markets, which have competition, which *might* just force them to offer competitive services/prices.

Even if canceling land-lines doesn't fix anything, there is no point in paying $40/month for a useless service.

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who owns the wireless companies. What I do care about is the competition. That's the difference between wire and wireless telephone services. And that's why wireless services offer more service for less money - they have local competition.

Ever try to sign up with the other land line phone company providing service in your neighborhood? Didn't find any other company, did you? That's why the wire services can feel free about screwing you - you've got noplace else to go.

Ah, but in the wireless world you actually have a choice. Companies actually compete for your business with free phones and free long distance and free services such as caller ID and voicemail. Ever see a TV ad from your land line company offering anything like that if you'll just sign up for a year?

Me neither.

Will your land line phone company change their evil ways? No. They've got no reason to and a lot of reasons not to. Will wireless companies always be so competitive? Only until the FCC lets them all buy out and/or merge with each other for some bogus reason or other.

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[Kevin Stevens]

I think its also important to point out that while even though the money is all eventually going to the same root sources, the competition among the little guys at least makes them compete on features, if they are not competing on price. I mean there has been almost zero innovation in the phone system. Call waiting and auto redialing that they charge you ridiculous fees for? An intern probably could have written those programs into the switches in a week or two. (Ok, I admit have no idea what I am talking about here as far as technical details of the phone system go, but come on now, how hard could it have been to add a redialing feature or call waiting feature- does it really justify a 75 cent fee per use or a 3 dollar subscription fee each month?). Now look at cellphones... the quality is still pretty weak, but the amount of features that you get included, such as caller id, call waiting, etc... plus voicemail, and now web access, for the same or even cheaper prices shows how bad you are getting ripped off. Then... when you think you that cell providers are the good guys that are doing their utmost to keep consumers happy, look at VOIP (voice over IP) phones. For half the cost, you get the free long distance, and tons of minutes (moreso than the wireless guys) all the above features and more cool things like call forwarding, phone numbers you can take with you from other providers, and other features (cant recall off the top of my head). The phone companies are a government-like entity, slow, beaurucratic (ask those who had to wait 6 months for a tech to come and install DSL at their house) and unwilling to adapt to change- the status quo is just fine thank you. But... the old bells will not really change, because as was mentioned before, all the money eventually flows back to them anyway.

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron.
At least you have a CHOICE of what cell provider to pick. Think moron THINK!

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[mlknowle]

But you're missing an important distinction; I'm not interested in screwing the bells - I'm interested in not having them screw me! Competitve market forces exist in the cell phone industry, because the fixed costs are so much lower in running a cell network. Hell, I'd buy my phone coverage from Microsoft, or anyone else if the price was right.

Re:Who do you think owns your wireless service?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon = Northwest Bell
Uh,.... No Verizon = Former Companies NYNEX (Itself a conglomeration of NY Telephone and New England Exchange), Bell Atlantic, and GTE. Cingular = PacBell (owned by SBC, see above)
according to Cingluar They are "Cingular Wireless is a joint venture between the domestic wireless divisions of SBC (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth (NYSE: BLS). SBC owns 60 percent of the company and BellSouth owns 40 percent, based on the value of the assets both contributed to the venture. " Additionally The bestreference to NW bell is likely Qwest (formerly USWest) Wanna stay away from bell? go T-Mobile (disclosure: I don't own a Cell phone or cable service)

Dallas

[mirko]

When I was younger, J.R. Ewing was supposed to be the typical example of "evil capitalist".
Now, he indeed seems to have been obsoleted.
But don't take it wrong : in Europe, we had loads of similar examples : Paris'Mayor's wife who got 10000's of dollars for a few dozen pages bugous report, France former Prime Minister, Edith Cresson, who was proven guilty of sharing European money with her dentist, etc.
So, well, it is not typically American, this is just typically global.

New Yorkers Get Hit With..

[vudufixit]

An MTA surcharge -Mass Transit Authority. What the bloody hell does telecommunications have to do with mass transit? I work in the suburbs - why do I have to subsidizie the MTA, and through a phone levy, no less!

Re:New Yorkers Get Hit With..

[N0sf3ratu]

You sure thir not talking about a Message Transfer Agent? ;-)

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The local monopoly bills you for a number of things that either don't exist, or are free to them (i.e. provided by the class 5 switches they already have). Amongst them are: caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding. Subscribing to these services has been known to add $20/month to your bill, but are basic services provided by a switch they already own. They do not cost a single cent more to use. Unbelievably, if you ever had an ISDN line, they charged you for all of those things, even though THE SYSTEM WOULDN'T WORK if they were not already provided.

The only way to crush this monopoly is for 802.11 mesh networks to somehow become a reality. Don't look to the government for help, they're useless.

Hold on a sec

[n-baxley]

$5 billion every year from the consumer

Now lets gets some of the facts straight. What they found was 5 billion in equipment that the bells had on their books but couldn't be found. They aren't getting away with that whole amount each year. I'm outraged by the whole bells situation too, but let's read the article. Especially one as informative as this one. I know, this is /. what am I thinking.

reminds me of some of the...

[kiwi-matgar]

shonky legal accounting gimicks. One that is quite popular and legal is the re-valuation of assets then claim that the difference between the current and previous years value as income and thus pushes up the profit artificially even though no physical money exists.

As for the structure of the lines companies, IMHO, the US should nationalise the whole network and have a uniformed cost of access to the network to ensure that the lines companies cannot favour one company over another.

Drop the landline

[SunPin]

When I was in Tampa, the cable company provided the Internet and I could live off my cell phone. After moving to West Palm(~230 mi SE), the cable company is the incorrigible Adolfia which is still using one way cable modems in my area. Now I pay for a landline so I can get the underperforming DSL line that SmellSouth owns no matter what company I choose. Point is this: if you can get cable and your mobile phone will cooperate as a suitable regular phone, then drop the landline and get cable access.

Re:Drop the landline

[jjp5421]

You are right on the money, Adelphia has got to be the worst cable company in the state, and Bellsouth has the slowest/worst DSL that I have seen. I live on the other side of the bay (St. Pete) and know your troubles (my pal lives in W. Palm) and I laugh at him every time I am there.

Huh?

[DownTheLongRoad]

News for Nerds??

No. News for Accountants!

This article is from the future.

[ZahrGnosis]

The attribution line on the Forbes article reads: "Scott Woolley, 05.12.03"... that's in the future. (Well, Woolley may be in the present, but I'm talking about the date).

Spooky.

Re:This article is from the future.

[grahamdrew]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Is there any chance this article is slated to appear in the May issue of Forbes magazine or something, so they post dated it? The article does have _print tacked on the end... Yeah, if you look at the "Forbes Magazine," section, they seem to indicate the next issue seems to be dated May 12. All the articles linked to from there are post-dated on the 12th.

There is no step 3...

[MosesJones]

This is just a three step process, there are no question marks.

The four step one is the Microsoft DoJ changes

1) Monopoly found guilty by Goverment
2) Monopoly has word with new candidate
3) ???
4) Goverment lets Monopoly off.

With the Bells the worst thing is that everyone KNOWS how they are getting the money, but its not exactly something we can all reproduce.

Re:xtermz's Latest 24 of 214 Comments

[BubbaTheBarbarian]

Ativan...an lots of it...We here at /. would HATE to see ya blow a blood vessal before you hit an age of wisdom. So much time, so much of it wasted on the pursuit of nothingness.
WAR GATORS!!!!

Stupid liberal elitists

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not surprised that this has happenned. THE MARKET IS REGULATED. The US .gov should just abandon regulating the telecom market and let it go about its business. Considerable amounts of money is spent complying with FCC audits. It is for this reason that the telecom companies have to inflate the prices of goods purchases; if they didn't they wouldn't be able to keep enough money to stay solvent.
The FCC (the SEC probably too) severely need to be cut back.
Deregulation is the answer.

Re:Stupid liberal elitists

[Anonymous Coward]

Deregulation caused the Cheney/Enron California energy fiasco.

Re:Stupid liberal elitists

[tomdarch]

[cough]moron[cough] A severely screwed up degreg process caused the California fiasco. Greedy scumbags caused the Enron situation. The California electricity dereg system was a pure 'how not to' example of partial deregulation of a natural monopoly combined with elements that should have been consumer protections but were lobbied into benefits and loopholes for the vendors.

The only person to blame for Cheney is Cheney.

Dump the bells

[dotslash]

If you have broadband you can now have a phone line and not pay a single "FCC" surcharge. Vonage offers IP telephony for residential and business. You plug in your normal phone and it routes over IP. The cost is $39.99 a month, with NO surcharges and includes all local/regional/national calls free, voicemail, CLI, CW, forwarding.

Best feature? I don't pay any of the phone companies a cent!

Switch to Vonage...

[wumarkus420]

I switched to Vonage a few months ago and I don't pay any fees except a little over a dollar for Federal tax.

Of course, I don't expect this to last too long, but in the meantime, it's been well worth it! My old phone bill had over $35 of bullshit fees a month from the subscriber line charge, to the universal service fee. It's all a giant scam.

Where'd you get that list ????

[adzoox]

Cingular is owned by Bellsouth

Suncom by AT & T

Verizon was Bell Atlantic and others

Sprint owns Sprint (and the former 360)

There are lots of LARGE independent cell companies. You named one. Nextel

The others are: TMobile and PowerTel with 3.8 million and 1.4 million respectively plus TMoblie has the sexy Catherine Zeta to whore for them. Man, I wish she'd "rouge her knees" for me ;)

There are others I can't think of. You are partially right. But, the cell phone companies (even if they are the same companies) are in a new era growth of competition, the phobne comapnies and the branches that formed were on a dead tree to begin with.

Re:Where'd you get that list ????

[----]

Cingular is a join venture by SBC (Southwestern Bell) and Bellsouth. Of which SBC owns the majority share/stake in.
Cingular is also NOT a public company.

Re:Where'd you get that list ????

[yancy]

A slight correction...

Cingular is owned by Bellsouth

Cingular is a joint venture: 60% SBC, 40% BellSouth. That's still 100% Baby Bell, so I know I'm nitpicking.

Yancy

Re:Where'd you get that list ????

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Cingular has territorial ownership. 100% Bellsouth in the South 100% SBC in Southwest (SBC just has more customers) - so from one angle he was right ;)

Re:Where'd you get that list ????

[unitron]

Sprint bought a big chunk of Earthlink stock back around '98, and some more later on I think, but about 2 weeks ago Earthlink started buying back about half of Sprint's holdings and apparently has more money set aside for further buybacks, although I'm not sure if it will be from Sprint or just on the open market.

Just when I was thinking that Earhtlink (which swallowed up my local dial-up a few months ago) might put some pressure on Sprint (which swallowed up Carolina Tel. and Tel. a few years back) to finally offer DSL here where I live only 2 blocks from a recently built telco switching station. But then again, since the only ISP not owned by AOL Time Warner available over local cable monopoly Time Warner is Earthlink, maybe Earthlink was afraid of being bumped off of the cable system if they tried to get DSL available around here. Aren't monopolies great?

Worldwide corruption?

[Hittite Creosote]

But don't take it wrong : in Europe, we had loads of similar examples

Hey, Europe's a big place. France is more corrupt than the USA, let alone Finland.

Re:Worldwide corruption?

[mirko]

France is more corrupt than the USA
it's because it is more expensive to buy a new law in France ;-)

about trannsparency.org, I'd quote Banky, in "J&SB strike back" :
That's what the Internet is for, slandering others anonymously.

...and for non-exixstant servies, too...

[djh101010]

After my grandfather died, we discovered that he had been paying the local phone company for a "line maintenance charge" of a few bucks a month, for years and/or decades. Fine, except that he lived in a condo, where he didn't own the building or the wires.

I wonder how many other senior citizens are paying their local phone companies for a support contract on wires which are not theirs to worry about in the first place.

Re:New Yorkers Get Hit With.. because

[Anonymous Coward]

all your wiring and switching is in the subways for one (great place to put it)

2) The subway, bus, and taxi system rely heavily on the communications system to function, schedule and route

You pay for everything up North through taxes and fees anyway ;)

The reason.

[Catskul]

The US postal system has been separated from the teet. The reason it has been able to work well is that it receives acts in a vaccuum. I believe that it receives no money from the government, and keeps the profit within the system. Its like a giant non-profit company owned by the federal government. It does have its problems though. The regulation that it does have has caused problems. Just do a search on google for: united states postal service business model

and if you are intrested in how the USPS is organized, look here.

Re:The reason.

[stagmeister]

Its like a giant non-profit company owned by the federal government.

That's the way to go! When they nationalize things like the phone industry, or even (eventually) the ISP industry, then they shouldn't make it into another agency (then we'll just have more bureacracy), but basically non-profits owned by the gov't. We pay them money (as opposed to it coming out of taxes), and they provide us with a service. Their goal isn't necessarily to make money, but to provide the best service for the least money, and better society.

And what's wrong with that?

--Jason

Re:The reason.

[swordboy]

The reason it has been able to work well is [...]

Here's the other reason.

Re:The reason.

[infinite9]

The reason it has been able to work well is that it receives acts in a vaccuum.

And I thought my volkswagen was small!

Re:The reason.

[gid]

Very true, but I think the original point idea of nationalized local phone access stills stand tho. Create some new entity called the USLPC (US local phone carrier) or something, and make it a stand alone, non-profit service just like the USPS. I think it would work well. I'm all for govenment controlled monopolies, that aren't in it for profit, as long as they runs things fairly efficiently.

The city of Wadsworth here runs their own electric company (they buy electricity in bulk from Ohio Edison and run and maintain their own lines), and as a result, we pay about 1/3 compared to neighboring communities, they run their own cable company, forcing time warner to drop their rates in our area, they run their own ISP over the cable lines (although road runner pricing still hasn't dropped, heh), you can get minimal broadband 128kbps access for ~ $15/mo, or 256kbps for ~ $25/mo. Which is really enough for the casual user. I pay $67/mo for 512 kbps access, as I use it for work, want to run game servers for friends, etc.

that aint all!

[spazoid12]

Check out your bill and notice the "Federal Excise Tax"...it's about 3% of your bill. Ever wonder what it's for?

It was originally supposed to pay for the Spanish American War.

It was supposed to be a temporary tax that went away after it satisfied it's original intent. Haha! Sure...

I wonder what is the oldest such tax??

Re:that aint all!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a odd one. we never had a federal income tax. the federal income tax was introduced to pay for WW1. it was so much money, that congress/senate did not give it up after the war... see how money makes us greeder. i want a refund of all that FICA tax money i have been giving away. for all these years. campain finiace reform, soft money donations, and budget responceabilty, are thing we (as the people) MUST demand, in order for the goverment to do waht it it suppost to do. look out for the people ! NOT COMPANYS, NOT MONOLOPIES...

Re:that aint all!

[operagost]

Don't forget that both houses passed a bill to abolish this tax and it was vetoed by President Clinton in October 2000.

Routine regulator failure

[amcguinn]

This is a normal failure of regulating monopolies. If your plan for an industry is to have a private monopoly and regulate it, then expect this sort of thing to happen every few decades.

If you choose nationalisation instead, it's much worse. Costs may be low, but service will be dreadful to non-existent. Want a new phone line installed? Sure: it will be ready in 6 months to a year (eg UK or Italy before privatisation).

Local community ownership has been raised here; that might work. One region of the UK -- Kingston upon Hull -- had a phone service run by the local council (city government). I think it was more or less OK, much like the nationalised service. The council sold it off for umpteen million at the top of the telecoms boom, then lost all the money in an investment swindle (or it might have been BCCI). In the UK at least, massive incompetence or corruption is always a danger with local government.

Deregulation is tricky too. Comms networks are a textbook natural monopoly: barriers to entry are huge. You will be lucky to end up with real competition.

I think light regulation is the best answer. Try to encourage competition rather than capping retail prices. The inefficiencies caused by having duplicated facilities provided by competing businesses are small compared to the institutional paralysis produced by public or private monopolies. In many countries people have abandoned monopoly-provided fixed lines in droves for competing cellular providers.

The moment you sit regulators round a table with the industry to make deals, you're heading for disaster. Politicians are tempted to do this to get "achievements" they can point to, but there's always a price and it's usually hidden from the electorate. It's better for the politicians to stand back, and only intervene when they see anti-competitive behaviour, and then stamp down without any discussion.

Re:Routine regulator failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Deregulation led to the Cheney/Enron California energy fiasco.

Re:Routine regulator failure

[amcguinn]

I've written an article about that -- it needs updating as it's a year or two old (prior to the Enron crash).

Basically, rather than preventing anti-competitive behaviour, the regulators were actually enforcing anti-competitive behaviour on the generating companies, while in most cases still applying price caps to the retail providers (driving them all insolvent).

The crisis was produced by a booming population combined with environmentally-driven bans on adding new generation capacity. The inability of the system to deal with the crisis was reinforced by the insane structure that was set up.

Re:A tired industry

[puppet10]

you forgot banking

Take a look at the touch-tone charges

[SgtChaireBourne]

Take a look at the touch tone charges while you're at it. It's quite possible that it's it thoroughly unnecessary. I suspect that they've recovered their investment in electronic exchanges years ago.

What I wanna know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is who modded it up +1, Funny? I bet *that* guy is a real blast at parties.

Accounting complexities

[michael_cain]

First, I am not surprised about the inaccurate accounting of equipment at an RBOC, or any large telephone company. Because of the regulatory history (and local phone companies are probably more heavily regulated in terms of funky accounting practices than any other kind of company), an RBOC has to actually keep multiple sets of books. Consider depreciation on a piece of switching equipment. The IRS may require that it be depreciated over the course of ten years for tax purposes. The state in which it is located may require that it be depreciated over the course of thirty years for rate-setting purposes. Depending on the services for which it is used, there may be additional FCC accounting rules. It may have an actual usable lifetime of twelve years, then is replaced, but gets refurbished and reinstalled in a different state that has yet another set of rules. If it is used in providing multiple services, there may be multiple sets of conflicting accounting rules that apply to it. If it is destroyed, some of the rules may require that it be carried on the books until it is fully depreciated, even though it no longer exists.

For the RBOCS, keep in mind that serious regulation started in 1934, and there were 23 local companies operating under the AT&T banner. Then those companies were consolidated into seven in 1984, and have further combined into just three. Could anyone have kept accurate track of equipment and accounting for it under those conditions?

Re:Accounting complexities

[pmz]

Could anyone have kept accurate track of equipment and accounting for it under those conditions?

We could just tip off the BSA. I'd bet there are lots of DOS and Windows licenses floating around that haven't been paid for twice. Just watch the telcos crumble under the BSA onslaught.

Re:Accounting complexities

[benny_lama]

So? Isn't this what we have computers for? I think you could go to Best Buy and get Quick Books for $50 and manage all of those numbers. Add for a little more cost (which the telco can get back from the customers) and you can build a database system that can track all of your equipment and neatly tally all of the costs of that equipment.

Re:Accounting complexities

[michael_cain]

Keep in mind the scale on which companies of this size are operating. I know that a typical year at any RBOC involves hundreds of thousands of purchases totaling billions of dollars. For Qwest local service, equipment purchases are spread across organizations in 14 states. Each of those items must be correctly classified and entered into the system. Data input alone requires a large number of clerks. Even if the input error rate is low, there are so many entries that there are a large number of errors in total. When I was buying lab equipment and had to review various reports, I would guess that as many as 5% of our purchases were placed in the wrong category. Most commonly, two digits in the multi-digit category code were transposed, or one of the digits was off-by-one. And our stuff was pretty simple compared to multi-use equipment used for real service.

All states require their own special accounting reports from their local phone companies, so custom systems are involved. Those have to be developed and maintained (regulators are really good at coming up with new and different regulations that have to be met). Again, despite the best efforts and test plans, errors creep in.

Now do that for 60 years -- yes, some states require some assets such as cables to be depreciated over periods as long as 60 years. So you have to track some stuff for that long.

Some problems are hard just because of scale.

Re:funny math, not funny money

[the_consumer]

Gotta be Bill Gates for them to be able to get that kind of money from one guy.

What the fuck, man? You trying to ruin my /. cred? ;)

one-way cable modems...

[No Such Agency]

What do you mean? I assume they're not literally one-way, obviously. Are your referring to a lower bandwidth cap in the upload direction? That's pretty common, I understand.

Re:one-way cable modems...

[SunPin]

One way means one way for the cable. Uploading goes through a 56K connection. Dealing with a cap is really a pointless thing to get upset about. Paying $40 per month for something that averages only a slightly better performance than the modem alone is a criminal scam.

Re:one-way cable modems...

[kryptobiotic]

A one-way cable modem is like the early satellite internet connections. You use a phone line modem to request the information and the download comes back over the cable modem.

Re:one-way cable modems...

[Glonoinha]

As I recall, the one way high speed connections meant that you had all your outbound traffic (requests) go out on a dial up modem, but inbound traffic (downloads) came down the fat pipe (either satellite dish or in his case cable modem wannabe.)

That said, IANASystemsEngineer. Oh wait, yes I am.

Re:one-way cable modems...

[zztzed]

One-way cable modem is analogous to one-way satellite -- they both use dialup modems as the upstream channel.

Re:one-way cable modems...

[JJahn]

Well actually one way cable modems DO exist. They only download, and you have to use an analog modem for the upload part. There is no reason for them still to exist, if the companies were not so cheap and slow about replacing coax with fiber.

Me thinks

[CaptainZapp]

If you choose nationalisation instead, it's much worse.

Me thinks the privatisation of what was formerly referred to as "British Rail" is not a shiny example for this theory.

Seems that they morphed from bad to a train system, which would have been Bulgarias pride; in 1935!

Re:Me thinks

[amcguinn]

I have to agree it's "not a shining example", but I really think people are remembering British Rail through rose-coloured glasses.

My impression -- based on intimate knowledge of the current situation (I commute >20 miles into London every day) and dim childhood memories of BR, is that the current level of service is similar (bad), reliability is similar or slightly better (still bad), standard of information and "incidental" help for customers is infinitely better (moderate), and price is quite a bit higher, in real terms. Also remember that BR was not just bad but getting worse prior to being privatised.

I don't consider the claim that nationalisation is a bad idea is contradicted by the possibility that privatisation can be screwed up.

Re:Me thinks

[CaptainZapp]

I don't consider the claim that nationalisation is a bad idea is contradicted by the possibility that privatisation can be screwed up.

Well, i don't think that privatisation is the cure for all ill. Very often - and specifically when a natural monopoly exists - it's actually not. Here's my catalog of reasoning:

Profits are pocketed while losses are socialized

Often investments into the infrastructure are neglected. This is better for the profit

Ofen the cherries are picked, while delivering the parcel to hicktown below sticks is cheerfully left to the post, which in turn of course runs into a loss

etc, ad nauseum

California, during the times when an Enron trader could cause a brownout literally by pressing the F1 key on his keyboard is a good example. The only city where power was available at all times was Los Angeles where - guess what - the grid is communally owned. Granted, there where other factors which caused this disaster, but it's a shining example for when privatisation fuckes up severely.

Besides, as long I can get a litre of water in Evian quality out of the tap for for 0.003 Euro (yes, two zeros after the comma) I think my city is doing a very fine job.

Re:Me thinks

[amcguinn]

I don't advocate complete deregulation for these industries. I would never want to see nationalisation, however, for industries which ought to be profitable, like telephone service. In these cases, I think the answer is a regulatory regime which aims to ensure competition, rather than one that attempts to control a monopoly like the one the Baby Bells were under.

If the industry is more a public good than a profitable service -- like sewage, for instance -- I think the state needs to run it.

The worst of all worlds is the "public-private partnership", whether in the form of government handing subsidies to operators (like the UK rail industry), or a regulator directing all aspects of how a company does business (like the Baby Bells). I don't want my politicians sitting round a table doing deals with companies; either make the rules and stay out, or do it yourself.

Public-private partnership in the UK is just code for the government doing an Enron to make its finances look better

Without a monopoly?

[Mr. Underbridge]

"Yeah. So when was the last time the government did anything efficiently or cost-effectively?"

This moring I sent a letter to the middle of nowhere over 1000 miles away for under 40 cents.

Does that count?

Yes. Also note that the post office has competitors (Fed Ex, UPS), meaning they have to stay competitive. Now, if you're talking a government-sponsored telco that doesn't have a monopoly, *that* would be interesting - it might eliminate that bloat+complacency problem.

But I think your exception proves the general rule: 1) monopolies are inefficient. 2) governments are inefficient. 3)government monopolies give you treasures like the DMV. But if you want to talk about something where, thanks to competition, the gov telco doesn't have the ability to offer crappy service at even more inflated prices, I'll certainly jump in.

Re:Without a monopoly?

[danb35]

Also note that the post office has competitors (Fed Ex, UPS), meaning they have to stay competitive.

This is only partially true. The USPS has competition for parcel and express services, but there's no competition for letters. In fact, the USPS has a legally-guaranteed monopoly on letters, such that it's illegal to compete with them. See, for example, 39 CFR Part 310. There are exceptions that allow for services like FedEx, but you couldn't open your own private mail service legally.

You might be eating a shit sandwich *right now*

[lushpuppy]

I see stories like this every day. Is anyone here shocked anymore? I mean seriously, Look what's going on here. We're cattle. We're being exploited and the farmer's are squeezing harder every day.

You think we're getting screwed by the powers that be, check out your brothers in the third-world. How would you like to be diseased, uneducated and starving and every time you try to get your shit together the CIA and US Army come over and kick your ass back into the stone age?

If you're like me you're one of the top-slaves. You're a well-educated milk-cow and generate prime product for your masters. You've probably grown accustomed to the 9 inches of abrasive corporate schlong in your ass and your discomfort is only occasional. Working all week, giving a third or more of what you make to the government and suffering so many rules that you've lost count is tolerable.

I call it ugly as hell!

The present system is a consortium of tumors victimizing the less-consolidated cells. If us peace-loving citizen cells could get organized the tumors wouldn't stand a chance.

I think that the best way to go about it would be simply to seceed from the system en-masse. Organize via email, name a day and, on that chosen day, everyone involved would stop engaging in commerce with the tumors. Switch to an alternate system. It'd be a bloodless revolution.

The new system? I'd choose something non-centralized and simple: An officialless direct-democracy (everyone votes on everything) with proxy-voting. Or something like that.

Re:You might be eating a shit sandwich *right now*

[Legendre]

Nice metaphors. I'd like to hear more. What is your email?

Re:Complete Bullshit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorism?

Go Mobile Only

[J3M]

I know others have mentioned this, but I've been using a mobile phone for the past four years. I killed my land line shortly after getting my first mobile since I noticed most people would try my home phone, if I didn't answer, they'd call the cell. It didn't take long before they would only call the cell, since I almost always answered. Why have a land line, when you can get all the same features and more with a mobile? Caller ID, three-way calling, call waiting, free long distance, text messaging, and the ability to take a call anywhere. I say stop paying for something you don't need anymore (unless you have DSL or some other need).

How about misplaced equipment?

[red_dragon]

I work at a company whose head office is located in an old manor house within a high-scale community. Sometime during the development of the community, before the company acquired the house and while the community's developer was using it as its sales office, the local phone company decided that the manor house's basement would be a good place to house an OC-3 multiplexer (a Fujitsu FLM-150, in this case) to serve the community, despite the fact that the building would eventually become a private property.

A few years later, the developer finished its work, and sold the house to our company, who then sent contractors to upgrade the electrical and network wiring. At one point, they found two pairs of wires that were unmarked, and they couldn't figure out what they were used for (not out of incompetence, mind you), so they yanked them. Come the next day, a telco van was outside, saying that they had received complaints about loss of service and may I please come in to check our equipment.

It didn't take long for the facilities manager to ask the telco to please get the bloody machine out of our property. The requests have fallen on deaf ears, however. We still have the multiplexer here, along with the telco end every pair of analogue and digital lines in the community, including the T1 smartjacks for the country club next door. It is absolutely trivial to come in and open the multiplexer's cabinet and screw around with the linecards inside it, not to mention being able to tap into any of the lines on the demarc's punch panels themselves. The telco knows all of this, but they won't do anything about it because they're too bleeding lazy and it would cost them money to move the equipment to somewhere else.

Re:How about misplaced equipment?

[I'm A Librarian]

1) Haul it all off one night to a storage area.
2) Claim ignorance when the van shows up next time.
3) Wait until they bring in more equipement or house it elsewhere
4) sell or destroy the equipment.

You could move step 4 to 1 if you were so inclined.

Re:How about misplaced equipment?

[Cinematique]

...crack into that T1 and start reselling the service to others via 802.11 or something...

Re:How about misplaced equipment?

[unitron]

If the telco's equipment has been sitting in your company's property all this time, has it been hooked up to your company's electrical system? Has your company been paying for the electricity to run it all this time? If the telco has a seperate meter and service enterance, is this allowed under local electrical codes? What happens when you have an electrical fire, pull your meter to disconnect the building from the grid, and a fireman gets electrocuted by the phone company's connection to the grid? Will your company's liability insurance cover the lawsuit?

Your company's lawyer needs to have a word with the telco. A very nasty word.

Worse in other countries, so shaddup

[Gothmolly]

Which would you prefer, this underhanded scheming, where it may happen de facto, or the above-the-table, over-the-counter socialization of the industries, where it happens de jure? At least this can be auditted, flamed, possibly changed. The market isn't broken by design.

This is only the one of the scams of the teleco's

[icepick]

You can read about many of the other scams the teleco's are in at TeleTruth. Some quotes from their front page:

"Teletruth estimates that customers paid Verizon Pennsylvania $785 per household for a fiber-optic service they will never receive."

"50% of All Small Business phonebills have mistakes. ---And that's why we have announced our "Send Us Your Phone Bill" campaign in the Verizon territory to help business and residential customers recover overcharges on their Verizon telephone bills."

Also if you have a lot more time than I do you can read "The Unauthorized Bio of the Baby Bells" and How The Bells Stole America's Digital Future. Excerpt from the latter:

"New Networks Institute (NNI) estimates that consumers have already paid over $45 billion in extra telephone charges, and continue to pay over $8 billion annually. As monopoly providers of local phone service, the Bells are still subject to some regulation, yet they are among the most profitable companies in America today. Bell profit margins are more than double that of the major competitive long distance companies and other regulated utilities and literally 167% above the profit margins of some of America's best-known companies. Much of this excess profit is a result of the financial incentives that were supposed to build the infrastructure for America's digital future."

The guy behind all this is Bruce Kushnick. I've yet to find any one claiming he's anything but on the level. If you have please email me.

My blog post about this

Great idea but...

[yoshi_mon]

Let me just state up front that I think this is a great idea and that it's implementation could only do good things for the market and the communities involved.

Having said that...

(puts on tin foil hat)

Does anyone really expect this, or any other administration really, pass control of a piece of communications infrastructure from a nice monopolistic group of companies to the communities who's loyalties they might not be so sure of? Why if states think they can do such thing as legalize medicinal marijuana and other crazy things like trying to count their ballets correctly who knows what they might do with all that copper.

No no, it's much better to keep control of communications when it's in the hands of a group of companies that were so bad at screwing over the customer that they had to be split up.

(adds a few more layers of foil to the hat)
(does this thing go with my tan or white shirt?)

Re:Great idea but...

[tchapin]

Actually, the City of Tallahasse, FL owns and operates all the utilities in the community. So, it's not as far-fetched as you might think. I have no personal knowledge about the level of service provided, etc., but it is happening.

Todd

Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[QwkHyenA]

Every single Pizza delivery company requires a landline (atleast in bad areas!) I got ride of my land line a few years ago only to find out that they won't deliver a pizza to a cell phone number!

And it does make sense.

*holdup man calls Domino's behind Walmart*
Gunman: Umm..Yeah.
Gunman: I'd like to order a pizza behind Walmart on 32nd street.
Gunman: Tell him to delivery all his other orders first.
Gunman: I'll just wait...

So, as a programmer I REQUIRE a land line to get my nourishment! (and if you tip them well, after a while they deliver beer too!)

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[Heywood Yabuzof]

a poster above already mentioned this, but have you tried Papa John's? Many locations will take orders through the Papa John's website, paid with credit card - that should get around the landline problem.

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[QwkHyenA]

Thanks! I should have considered online authentication versus the ole phone line. Was just so use too the phone number in my head...Guess old habits die hard.

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have ordered over my cell phone when Papa Johns online was too busy and the site messed up. Works just fine.

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Don't tell them it's a cell, and they deliver like normal. Duh.

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[QwkHyenA]

Not here in Hampton Roads Virginia. In all cases they knew it was a cellphone based off the caller ID string that came up on thier terminal. Half the time I didn't even get a chance to order before they were telling me I couldn't order unless it was for pick up only. And I did try a number of different pizza delivery outfits. Maybe in other places thier more trusting.
*shrugs shoulders*

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[Heywood Yabuzof]

Actually, don't get your hopes up - I just looked at the website and it doesn't seem to allow for credit cards right now. So you'd still have to pay the driver in cash, which makes me think they would still want a verifiable land line phone number! ;-(

Still, probably worth a shot if you really want delivery (I usually just call from my cell phone on my way home from work and pick it up).

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[repetty]

Nope, at least not in Austin, Texas.

I don't do it very often but I've never had any problem with Papa John's or Mr. Gattis delivering to me.

I'm one of those guys without a land line -- I have just a cell phone.

I don't advertise that fact, but then I don't tell them I'm fat, either.

--Richard

Re:Pizza delivery requires a landline...

[Cutriss]

The Dominos here in town won't let you use your cellphone until you come by the store with it to "register" it. Basically, they'll want to tie it down to a particular house before they'll let you order pizza, so that it behaves like a land line.

But yeah...alternatively, you could order online. I've done so twice in the past week. Even better, many of the specials posted on the web are usually "pickup only", but they'll deliver them none the wiser if you order via the website. :)

They inflate access charges too

[Reziac]

Phone companies are required to charge certain Federal access fees, taxes, and the like. So far so good.

Except... phone companies are not *required* to merely pass along those fees. They are *allowed* to inflate those fees as the market will bear, and pocket the difference. Typically this is somewhere around $4 per monthly bill.

Also, I suspect some of the "required" fees listed are purely pocket money. When I switched my LD to Costco's carrier (TTI National) *all* the access fees and most of the tax items went away.

cell phones

[JDizzy]

Many of my friends got rid of their land lines in prefference of their cell phones. From their perspective they tend to get more tele-markiters calls than legitimate calls, and who wants to pay $25 to $35 for basic access to a phone with long distance capability. Some folks don't even use the phone more than one time per week, so it doens't justify the .75c to $1 a day to get nothing.

Plus with cell phones many times you can get deals for free long distance, and internet connectivity (the phone being a data modem).

Re:cell phones

[AGTiny]

I tried to but the best internet service here is DSL and they wouldn't install a non-voice line for DSL. :( So I have to pay ~$20 for a basic line.

Secret Meetings

[moncyb]

Secret meetings held by the government and telephone "industry" claiming to reduce rates, but really increasing them and sweeping a huge accounting scandal under the rug. Consumers get screwed

Secret meetings held by the government, the tech industry, and the entertainment "industry" claiming to solve the problem of copyright infringement, but really helping the entertainment "industry" and Microsoft set up a censorship system which will allow them to spy on everyone and kill any competition. Everyone gets screwed.

You have to love corrupt governments.

Re:Secret Meetings

[lushpuppy]

You call it "corrupt govenment", they call it "efficient resource management". Of course the cattle are lied to. Feed the cows pretty dreams while they're starved and milked. Feed them more pretty dreams while they're led to the slaughter house. Pretty dreams make for cheap cattle feed. Next comes soylent green. Is it just me or do these assertions of "moral outrage" get old? You geeks are a bunch of babbling old ladies.

Happens all the time.

[StupidKatz]

The IRS, itself, had a 20 year sunset clause; it was supposed to help the US get through/recover from the Great Depression. It failed on both counts; it still exists and I still am greatly depressed on April 15th.

Gov'ts do not relinquish power.

Re:Happens all the time.

[Dex Ro]

Um. cite?

IIRC, the IRS started collecting income tax in 1918, and the depression is considered to have begun in 1929.

Re:funny math, not funny money

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit - do you observe these boards for occurences of your name?

Maybe its just a coincidence...

Or a Fuck-off huge conspiracy!

Average costs

[#!/bin/allen]

The price of a stamp is the average of the costs to deliver all the mail (and support the deliverers). The government isn't paying anymore, but people sending letters within Chatanooga are paying for the letter from Florida to Alaska (or the routing graph analog).

But do we want everyone to pay their own costs if the average is reasonable? The cost of a business sending a letter is several times the cost of the stamp (letterhead, envelope, writer, mail room). I benefited from Rural Electrification and its cousins (telephone, highway, etc.) and so did you. There's less disease, the National Guard is called out less, less crowding in the cities. Averaging out infrastructure expense means more of the country can be used; there are less problems with "backwardness".

If you don't believe it, look at a country that doesn't have a big infrastructure. Or just look at the U.S. in 1860.

Re: Another True Story... LD carriers...

[Anonymous Coward]

your going to have a hard time believing this... But a few years ago I changed LD carriers from MCI to AT&T (yea I know going from one bad egg to another, but AT&T had a intl dialing plac for 5c to Ireland/UK so I jumped ship)....

In the regulatory crap you have to go through, you know your call is being recorded etc... I was handed from MCI to AT&T, but in the process somehow unknown to be, MCI transfered my LD to AT&T, but kept my "in state" calls... You fell asleep so far... My local is with AT&T (cable), instate now is MCI and LD is AT&T.

BUT... MCI decided that ther must have been a problem, so they went and grabbed my LD back from AT&T, but somehow, I ended up with TWO LD carriers, gawd knew which one was actually carrieing my calls, I got two bills with the exact same LD info...

Cutting this short, it took me over a dozen calls, and a conference call between MCI, AT&T LD AND AT&T local to sort the mess out, with each manager (I know better to talk to the bottom feeders, I go right for the managers with the power complexes!) blaming each other, until I just got each company to take what was rightfully theirs... So much so, I actually got a hold of AT&T to "replay" my voice authorisation changing my "instate" and LD to AT&T from MCI, once that as played, everyone shut up, and within 24 hours I was able to verify that my local and instate and LD were all being handled by AT&T... Phew!

All this was over my wife getting a call from MCI billing one afternoon regarding a deliquent in-state bill for just over six dollars (due to mail being stuck together somehow!). She called me, I called MCI, the manager I spoke to was nasty, demanding the $6 bill or he would send my account to debt collection agency, so that is when the "trouble" started with changing all my services to AT&T.

In work, I read the bills we get from VZ having changed our LD carrier a few times overn the past year or so, and the bill is virtually unreadable, and having now seen our first QWest bill, is there any info on the net on hoe to "decode" this CRAP?

local yokels.

[twitter]

Judging local government by Cable monopolies, I think your plan would fail most people. Cable companies offer non-essential services but cost far more than a land line here. I'm particularly disgusted by the way they are jumping into the telcom scam by "offering" fees for voice over IP calls on their cable modems. Hmmph! Fees for what should be covered by their already inflated flat modem rates, and a policy that will now prevent people from using protocalls. Here come the bit police. Why am I ranting about this with respect to local government? Because my local govenrment was bought years ago and has provided these pigs a monopoly service where competition would be to everyone's benifit.

The answer is to end the monopolies. Open up more spectrum to 802.11 type services, establish quality standards for people laying their own lines on public property and get out of the way. We would soon have several modern and convenient communications competing for our business. The surviving Bells would have to figure out ways to make their lines profitable by offering services like DSL that people want rather than screwing them for services they need. The "natural" part of the monopoly died a few decades ago..

the answer is for the governemnt to take control

[the_2nd_coming]

of the phone lines and then take bids on one company to maintain the lines then let any company who wants access to pay for a licence to use the lines, withthat you can have real competition in the phone system.

Chuck that phone line!

[ufpdom]

I've had my cell phone since 1997. During that time I've had Zero solicitations and of course I dont get screwed by the local Bell. The only people who call me who arent my friends are my creditors saying that I missed a payment. I pay it and im done. Since not having a land-based phone I've enjoyed privacy freedom and no hassle billing. Its in my pocket and im not tied to 1 place to receive calls. Now if they can pass that bill so we can keep our phone #s and go to competing subscribers....

too bad...

[zogger]

... too bad they just don't use the money to actually upgrade service, especially in the rural areas. Line noise and connectivity problems are immense all across the US. We have millions of people who have no way short of some multiple thousand dollar buggy crappy satellite to have any broadband, yet we still can't even get a good normal modem connection.

I only use the copper here for the modem, the cell with enough "anytime" minutes is more than enough for all the normal phone traffic, local and long distance, that we need, yet we are forced to pay all these additional charges for the landline that it costs MORE than a broadband connection a lot of places. My average download when I run these speed tests is like 14 to 17 k, and in normal just surfing it seems slower than that. Bytes it. Lemme see, that costs close to 60$ a month total, telco plus internet. Then the cell is another 50 clams. Sheesh. 110$ a month. How about 100$ a month to someplace that will give me broadband wireless and phone service over IP instead, just a normal bundle that "just works"? How about 50$ instead? give me maybe a choice of two speeds, normal fast enough "home surfin" or "business class". When will serious broadband and flat rate just calling someone on the phone ever make it to the 90% of the country's land mass that isn't "served" with any alternatives to ancient corroded copper and switches from the 1940's?? I got 4 antennas setup, why can't one of them give me the dang internet at some sort of decent speed? I got copper wires coming here, why can't that work? Why do I need to pay for stuff I really don't want or need? Is it the technology REALLY doesn't exist yet, or is it just entrenched inertia and so many layers of industry/government BS that they have lost the ability to even understand it themselves?

Rhetorical question, I know there's no answer. I think where we can see where the cash has gone though, and it hasn't gone into the infrastructure from these various "fees and charges". And no, not in a position to "do it myself" with some pringles can contraption. Fresh out of million dollar bills. All I know is that A-radio waves exist, and B-they ought to do something with them, and C-every penny of those "fees" needs to goto purchasing upgraded hardware and installing it, going all the way back to whenever they started charging for it, and D any manager-class goof who went along with this ripoff needs jail time. That's the trouble with corporations-no practical accountability. Plenty of flesh and blood named humans to take the cash, but when it's time to account for weird stuff all the "real" humans seem to disappear to be replaced with this non-person person called "something inc" who can't be chucked in jail for committing crimes, and is reprersented by these alien creatures called "lawyers" who's sole purpose is to so obfuscate the english language that it becomes incomprehensible.

I guess I'll try to keep happy with having "any" internet that is remotely affordable in the meantime while I'm waiting for my wishlist as a consumer and tax payer. I fulfilled my end of the bargain, WHEN are they going to fulfill their end? And dang if I can even see WHICH sort of wireless is the best, or what this "industry" guy is going to offer. OFFER something to me, maybe I'll buy it! Can't buy it if it ain't for sale! Either drag some real cable that won't be obsolete in six months to where people live, or offer some sort of decent wireless, pick one, I don't care, look, HERE'S CASH joe industry. Hmm, people WILL pay serious cash money for TV, radio, internet, and telephone, should be a BIG FAT CLUE there. All that stuff is just DATA, point A to B. SELL me that data without jumping though 85 ridiculous hoops, I'll buy it! Make me jump though reams of ridiculous paperwork and having to have 18 different electronic doo dad devices that are obsolete within a year and different bills, nope, I'll just stay at a lower consumer level then, no extra cash from me, I'm tapped, I just AIN'T gonna pay more than what is leaving

cellular to landline converter

[Casca]

Has anyone ever seen something that will let you make calls with your regular telephone, but route them out through your cellphone? Something like a base station that you plug into your homes phone wiring, and then drop your cellphone into when you want to use one of the homes wired phones? They make them for VoIP phones, but I havn't seen one that works with cells.

Anyway, if I could find one out there, that is what I would use.

Re:cellular to landline converter

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a product called VoxLink that did this for Nokia and Motorola phones. It looks like may be gone now, but there's another company with a similar product called CellSocket.

Why does telephony even cost money anymore?

[The Creator]

I have an internet connection for $27/month, it is 10Mbit. If we say that a telephone call is 128kbit(64kbit in each direction) then that is enough for 78 telephones in my appartement. If we used a speech codec that reduced the data to 1/5 of the original size, then i could have 390 telephones in my appartement.

Now, if i, in theory can have 390 phones for $27/month how much is it really worth having one?

1896 federal 3% phone tax still alive and well

[Anonymous Coward]

more than a hundred years after it was passed to pay for the cost of the America/Spain war.

Way back in and around 1896, way less than 1% of the people could have phones so the tax was on the rich. Funny how this tax on the rich now applies to everyone.

Taxes never die. Don't let anyone create any new ones.

Re:Monopoly- What about the small towns?

[phageman]

The problem with this idea (especially in this economy) is the large number of small and/or rural towns who simply couldn't afford to either purchase or properly maintain their lines. The only way for them to do so would be to siginificantly raise property taxes, or charge enormous line fees to the telcos using the lines, both of which amount to big costs being passed back to the consumers. I look at the little town I live in: we can't even get the city to fix the roads or the sidewalks because there's no money to do so. I can't even imagine the situation if they also took over the phone lines. There's no way they'll be able to absorb the cost of upgrading old equipment, either. (This old equipment is apparently such a problem, I've been told by three different phone carriers, the cable company and the city manager that there won't be broadband of any sort available here for at least 5-7 more years.)

You get what you vote for

[Anonymous Coward]

vote for a politican or political party which favors bigger government spending and therefore, higher taxes and you get what you voted for...higher taxes.

Consider that when they want to add a $0.05 "doesn't it just make you feel good" fee for 'the childeren' to each and every phone bill.

Monty Python?

[kypper]

I figured it was 'No Poofters'

Re:Hold on a sec

[Chan]

True, but the $5B (+$5B in unauditable equipment = $10B, which was a representative sampling of 25% of the whole (so guesstimate and multiply by 4 = $40B)) is being used as the basis for the rate charges, and the equipment's depreciation isn't being accounted for properly, so the rate charges are inflated by whatever percentage $40B is of the actual equipment holdings with proper depreciation of ancient equipment.

Re:This is only the one of the scams of the teleco

[icepick]

I was so ready to post that comment I didn't even realize the article is *about* TeleTruth. From the article itself:

Now some factions are pushing regulators to take a harder look inside this can of worms. In February a small watchdog group, TeleTruth, petitioned the Securities & Exchange Commission to launch an investigation. A coalition of 42 consumer groups, irked by a California state audit that accuses SBC (nyse: SBC - news - people ) of overcharging customers by $350 million, has filed a plea with the FCC. It demands:"When will the Commission systematically determine if violations of accounting requirements ... have resulted in interstate overcharges, not only in California, but in all states in which SBC conducts its operations?" It calls the missing $5 billion in gear "the tip of the iceberg."

not that bad...

[shione]

Hey I'm happy to pay those extra charges if scott Wooley lets me borrow the time machine he used to post that article on the site.

Re:New Yorkers Get Hit With.. because

[Anonymous Coward]

The MTA provides mass transit in the suburbs as well. Your phone charge, and mine as a city resident, subsidize that suburban service.

Public transportation within New York City itself is exclusively funded through fares.

Does that count? No!

[Loundry]

This moring I sent a letter to the middle of nowhere over 1000 miles away for under 40 cents.

No, it does not count. Here is what Atlanta-based consumer advocate Clark Howard has to say about the United States Postal Service:

"The president of the United States has appointed a nine-member board to figure out what to do about the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS is $11 billion in debt right now. That's a lot of debt! The postal service has been raising rates for the past few years, and the picture moving into the future is not good. It's because people are starting to pay bills electronically more often and people even send greeting cards electronically. So the post office faces enormous difficulties because the amount of mail isn't going to be there. Do you know how many post offices there are across the U.S.? About 30,000. How many of those make money? Only half make money. So, really there would be almost no hardship if we closed half of the post offices. But politically, Congress chooses to waste our money by opening more post offices so they can get re-elected. Clark would love to see the postal service spin off into a private company that is completely free from government interference. If you go to FedEx or UPS, what you pay to ship a package is based on how far it's going. But with the post office, it's the same price no matter where you send your mail. The postal service used to have a very different role in our lives. If you go back even as recently as 1980, a long distance call would be $3.55. Today, it's about 2.5 cents. The cost of sending a letter in 1980 was six cents or eight cents. Now look at the price. We need to make the post office a real business and make it work for once."

Link: http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2002/12/12.html

Not Surprising!

[killmeplease]

It is not surprizing to me that they could not find missing equipment and that no one has any clue how the whole system works. I think that corperations in the USA do not take administration seriously. People that keep track of things and quality of information are secondary to net profitability. How can one keep track of billions in equipment? It makes me neurvous. This FCC deal just said to America, 'don't worry, just make sure calls go through alright and we will all make a lot of money.' What about us?

Average phone bill?

[phorm]

What gets me is that it seems a lot of people here are paying $35+ for plain phone service. I've never had to pay more then $25CAD, which is maybe $17USD.

The only thing that gets me is that a phone number is absolutely required to get DSL. I have a cell, and the only reason I bother with the landline is to run my DSL server connection (cable sucks here, but DSL is great).

Also, semi-offtopic but related to big companies and prices/packages - has anyone noticed that Canadian DSL seems a whole lot nicer than American, but cable often is much increased in crappiness?

Re:Average phone bill?

[BrainInAJar]

"has anyone noticed that Canadian DSL seems a whole lot nicer than American, but cable often is much increased in crappiness?"
br. No. I haven't noticed that at all. My friends in my area that have DSL can download from a major ftp server (running on an OC line, etc) at about 50 or 60 k/s. I consistently get 75 - 150 on cable. it varies through the day, but usually varies in that range (4am i get 150, 8pm i get 75). The ads for DSL are correct out here. You get consistent speed. Unfortunately though, you get consistently bad speed. Not to mention that for dsl I would have to invest in a router, whereas with cable, I plug my cablemodem into a $20 hub, and put my computers on the other ports. I get DHCP addresses, but I've had the same IP for almost a year now (enough that I can even register a domain name), try saying that about DSL.

Re:Average phone bill?

[bluGill]

Way too much is all I have to pay. Most people I know see phone bills of $40+/month. I'm down to about $32, but I have measured service and pay by the minute. (Like many I only have the phone for DSL, I use the cell phone for calls)

Note, I include taxes. It makes no difference what the base price is when I have to pay a bill that includes taxes.

Rates

[chiasmus1]

I am living in Japan right now and can call anywhere in the United States using my the line connected to my ADSL for about 2 cents a minute. That is less than I can call from one area code to another in the United States. I think that companies like Yahoo with their BB phones will pose a major threat to the phone monopolies some time soon.

Cable

[ek_adam]

I've been happy with Digital Cable phone, and was very glad to tell Verizon goodbye forever.

True Story

[clambake]

Up here in silly con valley, I found the phone company not only to be the usual lot of thieves that they normally are, but to actully charge me for thier own incompetence. I signed up for phone service in my new apartment, but they typed the address in wrong and sent it to a different apartment. When I called back to fix it, they told me that they would have to charge me disconnect fees from the wrong address and then a second set of install fees for the right address. After some shouting, eventually the phone was scheduled to get installed in my new place...

Days passed and no phone, so I called back, and I was informed that I was in the system, but it would take a few ore days, and then I discovered that I had been signed up for all the "extras" (3-way calling, caller-id, super8calling, whatever that means) that I never asked for, and in faxt had explicitly NOT asked for. I had all of them removed and went back to waiting. After a few more days I called back and, suprise, suprise, those services had been re-added, but the phone line still hadn't been installed. After about a week's worth of back and forth, seeing serives randomly appear on my not-yet-installed line, finally I got them to give me an actual day they would install it.

That date passed and I called back AGAIN. This time I was informed that I was not in the system whatsoever, and that, according to thier records, I had never even called to ask for service, I was like a new customer calling for the first time. After a little more heated exchange, I signed up for service once again, and they told me it would happen the next day. Amazingly, it did get installed the next day... ...and then I got my bill...

Every single add and deletion that I went through was charged to the bill. I didn't add them, I just ordered them to remove them, but I got charged both and installation fee and an removal fee, and this was before teh line was even installed. On top of that was the connection fees for both my house and the wrong apartment, and, in the end, all the services that I kept removing ended up on my phone anyway... along with a final set of installation fees.

Re:True Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Clambake, John here from your phone company. Just wanted to mention that you'll be charged a fee for reproducing this story on your next bill.

Regards

Re:True Story

[Anonymous Coward]

I Had a story similar to that. I was moving within New York City, so two weeks before, I call MCI to have them do the local service for two lines. They told me it would be three weeks, and gave me telephone numbers.

2 weeks go by. I call them, They tell me that everything is OK and all ready to go in a week. Another week goes by, and no service. I call them, and they state that they have never heard of me, and that i have no order. I call the numbers, one of them is a fax line, and the other is a business. I tell them to cancel the order and went with NYNEX (now verizon). 6 months later, I receive a bill fro MCI local, with 6 months of service charges. Needless to say, i called them up to dispute this charge, after all, not only did they not give me lines, but the numbers they are quoting I have are being used by someone else. They cancel the bill. Another six months go by, and I get yet another bill, for six months of service.

Pure Effing maddness

It's a scam.

[shotgunefx]

It's not like you have a line like you used to. Everything is multiplexed. One line provides many, many users but you all get charged for "your line". Here in South Boston, I forget how many people ( I think it's less than 1/3) , tried to make a call at the same time it couldn't handle it.

Re:Does that count? No!

[SpaceLifeForm]

We need to make the post office a real business and make it work for once.

Simple, stop subsidizing the junk mail.

Sending a letter should be 18 cents,
sending business spam via snail-mail should cost at least twice that.

Still carged extra for touch-tone, after 40 years?

[walterbyrd]

That you tell us something.

I'm not suprised...

[Zarquon]

When they were auditing for Y2K bugs, all the phone companies ran massive audits and found stuff they hadn't known about for years.. and the mergers were tremendously complicating things as well. There was stuff in the network well over 40 years old. But the price on the equipment they use certainly suggests _why_ they leave equipment from the 60s in place.

But they should have fairly decent records for now from that audit process.

Re:Does that count? No!

[SN74S181]

If you go to FedEx or UPS, what you pay to ship a package is based on how far it's going. But with the post office, it's the same price no matter where you send your mail.

Actually, when I go to the Post Office to send a parcel out to somebody, they use the zip code to determine what zone it is in and I pay a rate according to the distance it will travel. And since I live in a rather small town with a post office but not a decent UPS storefront, the Post Office is where I ship things.

Letters are a different matter. Needless to say private companies are allowed to compete with the Postal Service to deliver parcels, but not letters.

check out the mod pattern here

[lushpuppy]

Look at what kind of replies are getting modded down here. Has slashdot gotten really conservative all of a sudden?

Even Larger Scams... Association Fees

[notbob]

Anyone else out there live in an apartment or condo complex that adds "Association Connection Charges?"

Supposedly for the cost to tie into the network, oddly enough I don't get one of these when I live in a home which would cost more to wire as it's an independent unit, and funny how it doesn't cost me money every month of every year to get a new phone line added.

Associations pull this scam constantly, they do the same with the Cable, I got about $5/mo going to these association fees, but we'd never actually add them to our community association fees (which are already the highest in the city).

My same scam of a community is trying to charge me money for parking my cars, I'm working with my neighbors to get a group together to get a lawyer and oust our association as our condo group is a land contract which means I own the land my house sits on and an equal share of all common grounds, which means with a full vote any management can and will be dissolved :)

Associations are insane scams, our group pays a management company $35,000/yr to collect the fees / hire maintenance people, thats just dumb.

Re:Even Larger Scams... Association Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way to break it is to just stop paying. Make it clear them they are welcome to rip off your neighbors but if they mess with you its a triple damages RICO act suit. Most associations have a short list of people they have decided not to mess with.

Re:Does that count? No!

[SN74S181]

Actually, all the data I have ever seen shows that the Junk Mail subsidizes the actual person-to-person letters. The bulk mailers pay less, but are a profit center for the Postal Service, as they pre-package things efficiently, and are a consistent and predictable revenue stream for the Post Office.

Without the junk mail traffic, individual letters would probably need a $0.75 or more stamp on them.

Well OK...

[Mr. Underbridge]

This is only partially true. The USPS has competition for parcel and express services, but there's no competition for letters. In fact, the USPS has a legally-guaranteed monopoly on letters, such that it's illegal to compete with them. See, for example, 39 CFR Part 310. There are exceptions that allow for services like FedEx, but you couldn't open your own private mail service legally.

I knew someone would say this...that's what I get for being lazy. ;) You are of course correct regarding letters, but that's not the USPS's gravy train - it's business clients who are sending stuff express and directly competing with UPS. Local service gives them some extra cash on their routes, and is likely profitable as long as volume remains high.

Overall, I have no problems with this model - the USPS still competes for a large portion of its business, and offering local service alongside gives them an advantage but not enough to make them complacent. This has to still be much better than a fully governmental monopoly that wouldn't know competition bitten by it.

Interestingly, the PS *does* have competition for regular post service. Email. Supposedly, their letter volume is down and they've had to cut some routes and such. They are afraid enough to see email as a real threat, making them not take regular mail for granted.

He's English, dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at his e-mail address, ends in .co.uk. Means he's from the UK. Telecom pricing in the rest of the world is surprisingly backward and overpriced.

Re:He's English, dumbass

[Glonoinha]

Yikes, I blew that one.

Sorry about that parent bloke :)

Food delivery

[Cousin Dupree]

I use Vonage with a different area code than the area code I live in. I've never had any trouble having food delivered to my apartment. They sometimes ask me if I am sure about the area code and I just tell them it's a business line.

I've tried explaining what the actual reason is, but that's just asking for trouble.

In the past?!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0512/082_print.h tml

Anyone else see what's wrong with this page?

Scotty! What did you do?! We're living in the past!!

Re:Does that count? No!

[SpaceLifeForm]

Actually, all the data I have ever seen shows...

'nuff said.

I knew it!

[oaf357]

I always knew that charge was bullshit. Now I know exactly why it's there. It needs to go.

You can use TurboNET...

[SlashChick]

...with your DirecTiVo. It lets you hook up your TiVo to an Ethernet connection and download updates through that. Check it out.

The cost ($70) is probably less than two months of POTS service. If that's the only reason you have a landline, I'd say buying a TurboNET is the way to go.

Re:Hold on a sec

[n-baxley]

You're probably right about all that, but I don't think the poster did that math and just grabbed on the 5 billion number and somehow threw in the yearly for more effect. I'm curious what it actually does cost us each year though.

Re:This is only the one of the scams of the teleco

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce is the man. Very smart guy.

The Blame Chart:

[zbuffered]

The order in which things should be blamed on entities:

1. Big Business (Big Tobacco, MS, Utility Companies, Airlines, etc.)
2. The Government
3. Other People
4. You

You'll see that these two examples follow this rule.

Rouge Her Knees

[macguiguru]

Damn.... I >>LIKE that phrase...

Psuedo Linbritarian CRAP!

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC represent the American public, AKA the consumers.

The Phone companies are still heavily regulated companies.

The both report directly to your elected officials. Before flaming or ignoring this and saying, that its this just isnt so and we are all victims of the great conspiracy, honestly think about how involved you are in the political process.

Perhaps you do participate.

Most people do not. We all have the opportunity to participate in the nations political process and the resultant government.

Are we, collectively as the US citizenship the victims of the government, the FCC, the phone company, and the services we receive, or the cause of it? When most of the people who do vote don't even really know who it is that they are voting for, it strikes me that the latter is for more true.

Where'd you get *that* list ????

[spacefrog]

From the Cingular web site..

• Cingular Wireless is a joint venture between the domestic wireless divisions of SBC (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth (NYSE: BLS).
• SBC owns 60 percent of the company and BellSouth owns 40 percent, based on the value of the assets both contributed to the venture.

From Verizon's web site..

• Verizon Communications, (NYSE:VZ), formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE

Re:Where'd you get *that* list ????

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is they have to compete .... eventhough there are land line companies they are oligopolies....

Vonage to the rescue

[mcrbids]

For $40/mo, I get an IP phone that I can take and plug into any broadband network via DHCP. I get unlimited calls anywhere in the US and Canada, and no other fees.

The voice quality is good, and the price is excellent, and I can take the # anywhere I want to - just plug into broadband, it autoconfigures with DHCP, and in 10 seconds or less, I'm up!

The bells, with all their "X per minute on Wednesdays between 4 and 11PM" bull---t are ripe for a serious change in their business model.

Re:Vonage to the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

$40 a month is nothing to brag about. You can get a local line for less everywhere, just cancel long distance and use 10-10 numbers. In some states, as long as you with an upstart and not the SBC or local equivalent, you can get a local line for 12.99. $40 is more than a dollar a day, and YOU have to provide the bandwith. You know, $480 is a lot to pay someone to put a ten-digit number in a routing database.

Look up S-U-C-K-E-R in the dictionary.

Don't make me go Telecom on your ass!

[Cumstien]

Would that mean that a disgruntled phone company employee would go "Telecom" on your ass instead of Postal?

Kinda like charging for....

[8BitWimp]

...Virtual Private Networks?

Similar experience with SBC

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

I had a similar experience with SBC. Last May (2002), I moved, and cancelled my service. Switched to Cox. Thought I was done dealing with the clowns. Imagine my surprise, then, to get a "Dear Deadbeat" letter from them in February. Yes, February. Called them about it, they said it was for transferring my service, and that it was billed in December. Well, that's a little more reasonable--only seven months, instead of nine. I called them, no help. Called their main office in Atlanta, no help.

Coincidentally, they'd been telemarketing to me about once a week, despite my having told them to knock it off. Fed up, I tracked down the President for my state (Oklahoma), talked to her office, and told them I'd be suing them. Didn't just make vague legal threats, though--I cited title and section number, and read the first part of the filing papers, just to show that I wasn't blowing smoke. When they heard title and section, and particularly when I demonstrated that I had the papers in hand, filled out and ready to submit, thier entire attitude changed. For the first time in the month I'd been dealing with the problem, they took me seriously. The problem went away in about 24 hours: the calls stopped, and the charge was dropped.

I would suggest a similar approach. Go down to the local courthouse and ask them for the paperwork to file a small-claims civil suit. Take them home, fill them out. Takes about five minutes--they're simple forms. Then call the executive offices and tell them that if they don't fix the problem, you'll sue, and make sure they understand that you're willing to do it--that's the reason for reading from the form. You'd be surprised how quickly their attitudes change. Lawsuits are an expensive proposition for them--even if they win, it costs them a buttload in legal fees. It is to their advantage to square things away out of court, particularly when they're wrong.

Anyhow, that's my story and suggestion. If I can help you, feel free to drop me an e-mail at AT barefootclown.net. (I own the domain, so any local part comes to me, doesn't matter what you put there.) --Dave

Drop your wireline you do not need it for DSL

[Kasmiur]

DSL can exist without a active phone service. Its called something like a Null phone line. Qwest is doing this every day in the phoenix metro area with thier Choice Tv/Online service. Its VDSL and there are plenty of customers there without a phone but with the VDSL working.

Re:the answer is for the governemnt to take contro

[Anonymous Coward]

- of the phone lines and then take bids on one company to maintain the lines then let any company who wants access to pay for a licence to use the lines, withthat you can have real competition in the phone system.

Yeah but who wants Halliburton and Bechtel to operate the lines?

Re:Does that count? No!

[SN74S181]

pot, kettle, black? Or did you just forget to include any citations?

Re:Amen to that-Tone deaf.

[Anonymous Coward]

"A few years ago I picked up a little hand-held touch tone generator from Radio Shack. In those situations where you must have touch tone, just hold this device up to the mouthpiece and punch away."

You can do the same thing with your soundcard.

Cellsocket!

[philam3nt]

I recently have been looking for that exact same product (I remembered seeing something similar on a late-night infomercial)...the closest thing I can find is CellSocket, but I know there are competing products out there. Hope this helps!

What a load of BS.

[Phreakachu]

You know, screw the Bells. Their days are numbered with everyone moving to cellular and internet home phones.

I say visit http://www.phonelosers.org and learn how to screw Ma Bell out of every dime they have.

Re:1896 federal 3% phone tax still alive and well

[cymen]

Toll booths don't die either as those of us who live in Chicago know. In the 1970s the toll booths were put in to pay for the highway but they were supposed to be removed after x years. Of course at about x + 10 years we are still paying the tolls.

Dump the features

[MobileOak]

> about $45 a month total.

$45?!?

Tell me you've also got every single feature in the book. As a student in apartments, there have been several times now where I sign up for a new phone line. I tell them I don't want any of their special features (if I notice I have them on my bill, I call and cancel them) including their so-called 'line backer' which is basically insurance on phone lines my landlord has to maintain anyway.

My monthly bill is about $20-$30 per month, depending on whether I make long distance calls or not. Until cellphones cost the same amount, I'm not switching - I can get by fine with e-mail and my cable modem.

I can understand you have different long distance needs than I do, but I still think you can reduce the bill for your local phone line by cutting features.

Re:Dump the features

[Glonoinha]

That $45 a month IS my cell phone, including 1000 anytime anywhere long distance included minutes.

They have several $35 a month plans that include a smaller amount of anytime (7am-9pm, M-F) minutes like 250 or 300, with an AOL'esque amount of weekend and night minutes (like 100 hours or something equally as silly.)

Eg. Sprint PCS Free and Clear plan is $35 a month (plus taxes, = $40 a month) with 300 anytime mins and 1000 night and weekend minutes (no additional fee for long distance.) For another $10 a month you get 500 anytime mins, unlimited night and weekend minutes, and can call other SprintPCS phones for free too.

I spend a LOT of time long distance, average 15+ hours a month, mostly during business hours, so my plan makes good sense for me.

ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Girl: So, apart from Particle Physics what else turns you on?

Geek: Bacteria

Girl: Um, ok. So do I have bacteria in me?

Geek: *excited* Oh yes. Trillions. Both good and bad. The key is keeping a healthy balance daily

Not quite

[A nonymous Coward]

It was 1898, not 1896. It was also repealed in 1902, then reinstated in 1914, and repealed and reinstated several more times. Not quite as old as you think, nor the tax you think.

Google is my friend. Google should be your friend too.

Taxes never die.

This one did, several times. The first resurrection took 12 years.

Qualified yes.

[bluGill]

I have to give this a qualified yes. If only because there are 5 different cell providers to choose from in my area, that I know of. I can freely switch back and forth when one offers a better deal. (Though the deal may lock me in for a year, and there are hasstles with switching) I only switched once, but since then I have changed my plan a couple times as compitition drove better rate plans.

However a cell phone may not get reception in your home, and there is nothing you can do about it. If your landline doesn't work at home you call the phone company and tell them to fix their lines and they will. (At least in theory, getting them to do something may be a different matter, but overall your luck will be better)

The big advantage of a cell phone is that it works even when you are not home. Sure most of the time you don't need this, and shouldn't use it. Once in a while though it is nice to have that phone. Emergencies, and non-emergencies that you would still like to know about.

Re:the answer is for the governemnt to take contro

[the_2nd_coming]

what?

Saddam Hussein sucks!

[moncyb]

How would you like to be diseased, uneducated and starving and every time you try to get your shit together the CIA and US Army come over and kick your ass back into the stone age?

Mr Hussein,

Don't you think you're being a bit hypocritical here? After all, you oppressed your people even more so than the US government oppresses theirs. Why choose Stalin as a model of your leadership? Did you not realize he was EVIL?

Quote from happy phone customer

[secondsun]

"This bill [most recent bellsouth bill] is going to be filed under w, for why the hell do I have a telephone"

3 Words

[Gridpoet]

Class Action Lawsuit

Re:Ditch the 1010 stuff

[Technician]

You are right. The first minute is a killer on the 1010 numbers. Use a calling card instead. Shop for one. The one I use is 2.99 cents/minute 24 hours a day all 50 states. (575 min for $19.95) I'd rather pay 3 to 6 cents than a dollar to leave a message on a machine. Most phones that dial a number for you can dial the access number for you so you don't have to key in the card number for each call.

Photo ID?

[goldfndr]

Perhaps bringing photo ID would help - no, not yours, your home's! A big macro view and closeups on the number and street sign.

Fan problems (Idlestory #2)

[Idlechat]

I went back in time and told my younger self about the famous singer I love.

"You see, right now she sings in pubs, clubs and stuff like that, but in 3 years her career will start flourishing. I want you to make friends with her while normal people can still reach her".
"But how? She doesn't like me!!!!"
"Why do you say so?"
"Because she didn't allow me to play with her some days ago"

"You mean I/you already know her?"
"Yes"
"And badly, too"
"I'm afraid so, elder self"

"Damn........ this is so depressing"
"Don't worry. I know how to make us happier. Did you bring the results of the football games of this year?"

Re:You're forgetting about something...

[Quill_28]

Nice incest jab, saying father instead of father-in-law like I posted. Or were you just too blinded by your ego to realize it?

Also, I promise that the packet your, less than intelligent flame, came on, passed though a router where some of the software on that router, was developed and written in the backwater hick state of Tennessee.

Have a nice day.

Yes UK

[Martin Spamer]

Yes, im in the UK.

International land-line calls are about 2.5-4.5 pence per minute, varies on country.
National land-line calls are 1.1-3.4 pence (~1.5-5 cents) per min peak.
local land-line calls are usually free, or flat connection fee of 6.5p (~10 cents).

Mobile (cell) calls are usually 20-40 pence (20-60 cents) per minute, depending on provider.

(1 UK pence ~= 1.5 us/euro cents.)

http://www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/residx.htm

And ADSL

[Martin Spamer]

On my land line I get 384K ADSL for £20 (~30 dollar/euro) pcm, which is less than my mobile connection at £30 (~45Dollar/Euro) pcm, which is competative, my mobile tariff includes a 50 'free' mins per month and new 'free' phone each year.

Privatise Phones

[Martin Spamer]

When the UK privatised the phone system prices went up because it was a monopoly and a private company could make a decent return on its investment. This was despite the fact the Nationalised British Telecom was already making a half billion pounds a year profit.

voinage == ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

They give a VoIP you could set up yourself with free software or even a $100 CISCO device, and then charge you MORE than a local line costs.

Who the fuck would fall for that ?