Nick Szabo <szabo@netcom.com> writes:
Scenario: long distance company receives a call from one of its customer phones. It doesn't know which phone, only that the phone's local service area provider is requesting a connection. It notes the area code/country to and from to determine the rate, and receives the proper digital postage payment from the calling phone. It notes the destination phone number only in order to pass it on and complete the circuit. The long distance provider doesn't know the caller's phone number and doesn't keep a permanent record of the other information.
It's been tried before. That's how calling cards worked in the mid 1980's. The long distance company had no idea where the call was coming from when it went into their credit card port. It didn't take the hackers long to figure out how to exploit the anonimnity of that system! Now all credit card calls are automatically traced. I like the billing indicator on a LED on the phone tho... It would be easy to implement too. Right after the call was dialed, the phone company could send a short tone to indicate the cost per minute, which would be interpreted by a microchip in the display. When the receiving party answered, a second connect tone (or even a click by change in voltage) could signal the indicator to start counting time... The call would still be billed at the end of the month, but at least you could see what your phone bill would be before you got it.