🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr12.224335.13606@cube.handheld.com>  
jmd@banana.handheld.com (Jim De Arras) writes:
> In article <275@moene.UUCP> toon@moene.uucp (Toon Moene) writes:

[ .. my 'attack' on Felix A. Lugo for his AT&T connection deleted .. ]

> Having been to The Netherlands, and indeed scheduled back there in a 
> month for meetings, I cannot imagine you would have the knowledge to 
> comment on the US phone system, based on the dutch PTT.  

I did know of the split up of AT&T in the mid-eighties ('84 ? '85 ?), but  
- you are right - I don't have the overall picture of who gets paid for  
what connection time at the other side of the pond.

[ .. AT&T gets something from backbone circuits, these are fixed costs ..]

> That leaves what I think you were getting at, that it, dial-up time.  
> With the breakup of the Bell system, AT&T gets very little, if indeed 
> any, of the local message unit charges.  That would be the bulk of the 
> phone co. portion of uucp access charges.  Of the much fewer folks that 
> must dial long distance to connect, even then, regional long distance 
> is, for the most part, charged by the regional operating companies.  Of 
> the remain long-distance calls, yes, a percentage will go AT&T.  How 
> many get RTF I don't know, but you see we've really trimmed the field.  
> But we also have other long-distance companies, which tend to be cheaper 
> for a uucp style call, so AT&T, and Felix, could hardly care from a 
> monetary return point of view one way or the other about RTF.

You're right in assuming that this is very different from the way it works  
in The Netherlands.  The Dutch PTT has a monopoly here (don't get me wrong  
- I worked for them for two years; it's just that I would never have tried  
to lure people into perusing phone lines just to give them business).
Now I'm just the lucky guy who lives 4 miles (a local phone call) from the  
European UUCP backbone.  Even my NeXT dealer pays more for being on the  
net.

> I do, however, tend to agree with his point of view.

If you refer to his c.s.n.MISC 'definition', I agree with that too - if I  
really found it annoying, I would simply mail the system manager of my  
newsfeed to change my node's sys file entry.

> This message was posted, and reached the NFS backbone, using no AT&T  
circuits.
                                           ^^^ NSF ?
> Jim De Arras

Ceterum Carthaginem delendam (esse). I do think however that the NeXT  
world would benefit a lot if we moved to established standards for  
exchanging multi-media (...) posts.  Either reverse-engineer or  
rewrite-from-scratch NewsGrazer to support MIME - but I won't do it. It's  
12.45 AM now and I have to get up at six ...
--
Toon Moene (toon@moene.uucp)
Kantershof 269, 1104 GN  Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel.: + 31 20 6982029; Fax: + 31 20 6003411
No Disclaimers; a NeXT at home protects against this occupational hazard.