Universal Service for the Net: Why it's a bad idea

[Rich Graves]

Frank Willoughby wrote:
> 
> At 07:53 AM 11/8/96 -0800, Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> wrote:
> >* Why should a Beverly Hills high school get a discount of 20
> >  percent? Can't they afford to pay for ISDN?
> 
> Depends on how their telco's tariffs are set up.  Here in Indiana,
> we have a monopoly called "Ameritech" who, out of the kindness of
> their hearts, charges ***per-minute*** ISDN rates.

Huh? Here on Planet Earth, that's the way it is everywhere, except 
"non-prime-time" or Centrex rates may be special. In most of the world, 
local analog voice calls are metered. The US is the exception.

> Expect costs of over $600/month for a permament connection (one
> line) to the Internet.

Now, that *would* be unusual. Unless you mean a full-time dedicated port 
with a dedicated IP address, which I don't think schools need (their web 
server should be co-located at their ISP anyway). Dialup ISDN is much 
cheaper. We've got it down to about $75/month/user, all included.

-rich