On Saturday, April 26, 2003, VaxCat wrote:
> I hook up my old Everex 2400 modem, run zlink, type in ATDT and...
>
> (pause)
>
> There's nothing left to call.
An interesting development I'm seeing in telephone service (at least, here
in Oklahoma) is the land line telcos offering unlimited nationwide long
distance calling for a flat monthly fee. I presume this is an attempt to
compete with cell phone companies, with whom such service is the norm.
A side effect of the service, if indeed it is being offered in most areas of
the country, might be a renaissance of the dialup BBS in the USA. A lack of
LD charges is also a lack of economic boundaries between BBS communities,
enabling a level of interconnection we have seen only on the Internet thus
far. The service may also enable other enthusiast dialup activity,
including UUCP networking.
I'm very tempted to sign on to this service. Back in my BBS days, I lived
in a rural town of about 1200 people that was not a member of any LATA. Any
call out of the town's 867 prefix was a LD call. There were, of course, no
BBSes reachable without a LD call, so BBSing was a very rare pleasure. It
would be quite cool to be able to make up for all that lost experience!
As a neat note, all the numbers in that town were in the 4000-5999 range.
There was an 867-5309, which matches the name of a song that was popular
some years ago. Folklore says that it used to be the number of the grade
school cafeteria, but that may be a myth. Families of two of my friends
from high school, however, did take a turn each of having that number. They
reported occasional calls from strangers asking for Jenny (who, I guess, was
a character in the song). IIRC, one of these friends may have used an
answering machine greeting specially tailored to entertain these callers.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
Received on Sun Apr 27 2003 - 14:22:00 BST