🚀 go-pugleaf

I can relate to the mess in U.K. with payphones.  The Italian payphones
didn't give you any warning before your time was up so you had to stay
ahead of it or lose your connection (which took several tries to get).

While I was doing consulting in Italia it became obvious that the answer
was NOT carrying around five kilos of their special 'gettoni' (copper
slugs slotted for the fones).  Sure, you could buy them at newsstands,
if they were open.  So I got into the habit of seeking out a friendly
cafe/bar with a 'telefono a scatti'.

Literally translated it means 'clicking phone'.  It had a meter, which
the manager would reset before each use, and another which presumably
accumulated his monthly total.  The user would dial the call himself and
then, upon call acceptance, would hear clicks on the line.  The period
of these clicks varied with the distance to the callee -  local calls:
almost one per two minutes; intercontinental: several clicks per second.

At the end of your call, or series of calls, the manager would look at
the meter and charge you 150 liras for each click (or whatever the
market would bear!).  You then paid, or put it on your bar tab.

One interesting thing about this method was that calls to New York cost
about the same as calls to Hong Kong.  I think the maximum rate the
little machine could register was equivalent to seventy dollars an hour.

(The office in Milan also got a single, huge monthly bill with no real
way to determine who called where or when or for how long.  There's a
big Italian aftermarket in office Dialed Number Recorders.)

You also have to 'request' an overseas connection when calling from
certain areas of Italy.  They call you back (in a couple of hours) when
your line is ready to try making a call.

Do we Americans take great phone service for granted?  What would YOU do
if you often had to wait ten to fifteen minutes to get a dial tone?


'This document contains opinions of the author which are not
attributable to BBN Communications Corp. or to its management.'

Barry C. Nelson
Network Consultant / International Product Marketing