🚀 go-pugleaf

Although I tend to agree that using dialouts without some sort of
authorization is just asking for trouble, the situation regarding
local calling is not as simple as some make it out to be. There are
areas where commercial customers get local, unlimited dialing within
some area (I am pretty sure Washington, DC is one.)

Worse (more confusing), in many areas you can buy bulk message units
by the thousands or tens of thousands at some lower rate, in advance,
if you are a large user.  In such cases, where there are say a
half-dozen dialouts, local calling would be almost insignificant even
if the few phones ran day and night (a modest sized university could
have 10,000 or more office phones.)

But that should give one no assurance about the dialout they are
using.  I know when I was at large university computing center I was
asked for this by a Dean for a few local phones for faculty doing
joint research with companies (which in theory brought in income) in
the area and it was flatly rejected unless he would pay ("find the
budget for") all the phone bills. I can assure you that if they had
found someone external using unauthorized dialouts it would be
considered a serious breach and might well try to cause trouble for
the perpetrators. I doubt they would see it any other way but a theft.

I would think that open-access dialouts are very, very rare, if they
exist at all, except by accident or oversight.

In Boston local, non-residential dialing costs about .05/minute (its
figured a little differently, so much for the first 5 minutes etc) if
I remember right, about $3/hour.

At 12 hours/day usage that would come to over $1000/month per dialout,
$12K/year/phone. A small rack of those (8) could easily push $100K per
year. That would be quite a gift.  It adds up fast.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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