Connectivity woes in Boston

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

The problem with ISDN was the tarriffs and also the confusion in that you 
had to have your equipment before you signed up for it, and thirdly when 
you called the ISDN folks at Nynex (later Bell Titanic later Verizon) most 
of them either did not have a clue or were very confusing. 

The real problem was the tarriffs. The basic service cost was not too bad, 
but you were charged either message units or per packet charges 
depending on how you ordered the service. 
There were some tricks you needed to know to get a flat rate service:
1. Order it as VODB (I might have the acronym slightly wrong, but that 
should be voice over data essentially). 
2. Order it with Centrex. Essentially, some ISPs discovered that they 
could sell the service using their own or a customer's) centrex and using 
the foreign exchange service. 

Both were flat rate. Businesses want predictable expences. Most ISPs 
went to unlimited service because keeping track of hours was an 
administrative nightmare.   
On 13 Aug 2001, at 10:38, John Chambers wrote:
=
> 
> It always is. The impressions I got from quite a number of people was
> that  the  "failure"  of  ISDN  had  nothing  at  all  to do with its
> technical merits.  The problem was  that  the  people  at  the  phone
> company  couldn't tell you what kind of service to order, how to make
> it work, or (most importantly) how much it would cost.

Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Associate Director
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org
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