* Plain old telephone service
Last week we discussed a legacy form of telecommunications – ISDN – and we’ve been most impressed by the number of responses to the discussion thread online and the e-mails to us. We’ll be sharing those in a later newsletter. But this time we’re dropping back to an even more basic form of WAN service that we still deal with on a regular basis – plain old telephone service (POTS).
Last week we discussed a legacy form of telecommunications – ISDN – and we’ve been most impressed by the number of responses to the discussion thread online and the e-mails to us. We’ll be sharing those in a later newsletter. But this time we’re dropping back to an even more basic form of WAN service that we still deal with on a regular basis – plain old telephone service (POTS).
In spite of the trends toward convergence and VoIP, we still have occasional use (at least) for making regular old phone calls. And for years, we’ve been advocating that if your use of these services – especially for road warriors – is extensive, you should consider the low-tech option of prepaid phone cards. Typically, these cards are available for a rate of less than 4 cents per minute. (To give an exact example, Sam’s Club offers a card from AT&T for a “normal interstate” rate of 3.47 cents per minute.)
When Steve was heading to the temporary offices in eastern North Carolina, he picked up a new card. And the first time he used it to check messages in the Greensboro office he was astounded to find out that the card had only about one-fifth as much time as advertised.
After a few minutes of investigation, the mystery was resolved. After years of phone cards having the same rate for interstate and intrastate calls, he found that for North Carolina (and 16 other states) there was a five-time multiplier for in-state calls. Yup. Just over 17 cents per minute. Thank goodness this wasn’t happening in Missouri, North Dakota, New Mexico, or South Dakota, where the multiplier is eight times the normal rate.
This “discovery” prompted a quick check for international rates. Not a huge surprise, but it turns out that calls to landlines in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and even Australia, were only four times the normal rate – less expensive than the rate within North Carolina.
Next time we’ll continue with a word of concern about other wide-area services.
