ABC News on internet telephony

[snow]

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 at suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow at smoke.suba.com