From: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 19:25:07 +0800
To: David Sternlight <david@sternlight.com>
Subject: Re: ABC News on internet telephony
In-Reply-To: <v03007606ae142ab45e4b@[192.187.162.15]>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.93.960719021127.1133H-100000@smoke.suba.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 18 Jul 1996, David Sternlight wrote:

> At 6:41 AM -0700 7/18/96, Clay Olbon II wrote:
> >There was a pretty long piece on the evening news on using the internet for
> This is the rankest speculation on my part, but could some of the bigger,
> smarter phone company cum internet providers have done some serious
> analysis and concluded that we're moving away from distance-based rates for
> voice calls. Might they even have examined where we'll be in the next ten
> years (with ADSL, etc.) and decided that the network technology and simple
> market economics makes fixed charges per "line" more profitable to them
> than metered usage? Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but some of
> the bigger actors are starting to behave in a surprisingly
> counter-intuitive (based on the way we stereotype them) fashion on this
> topic.

     It is my understanding that billing is one of the biggest headaches
and expenses for a phone company. Going to a flat rate would solve a 
decent amount of that wouldn't it?


Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com