BY RICH TEHRANI

You boob!!! You work in a telecom related area and don't know the basics. When area codes were expanded several years ago, each state's PUC (if they had one) [PUC - Public Utility Commission] was given the power to set the standards. This included how intraLATA and interLATA toll calls to the same area code would be handled.

The choices were basically:

A. Seven digit dialing only.
B. 1 + area code + seven digits for toll calls in the same area code.
C. 1 + area code + seven digits for all calls including local.

States which previously did not use 1 + seven digits for toll calls before opted for A above. Those that did require a 1 for toll calls chose B. I don't know of any states which chose C.

Since schemes A and B are both in wide use, you should have known that what happened to you could easily happen. Also, in many major metropolitan areas, local calling is timed and the rate charged is distance sensitive. Boston, for instance has one, two, and three message unit local calls. Hotels often time the calls as well and check their destination to determine the cost to the guest.

In the future, this will get more complicated. Number portability within a LATA can make a number appear to be local although it is an interLATA toll call. Also, how calls to competitive local carrier lines are charged is not clear since one CLEC's NXX can cover lines anywhere in a LATA.

The solution is: be forewarned. If you have a number of choices for access numbers, look them up to see if they are local. That will reduce expensive surprises.

Robert Schwartz, P.E.
API Systems Group, Inc.

Rich's response:

I have a confession to make. While others were reading the minutiae of the Telecom Reform Act and lengthy PUC legal documents, I was reading the Cliff Notes. The plot of the original documents was a bit thin for my taste. Seriously though, I do feel like an idiot for not knowing. I realize that everyone in a state that has seven digit long-distance knows about its existence. Of course the hotel clerk knew about it as well. I should have known.

CTI magazine has some of the most intelligent and knowledgeable readers anywhere, judging by the letters we have received in the past and the ones we receive today. This letter was expected. Thanks for not letting me down.

Of course, this is why I did so much research before writing about this topic. This was the most heavily researched piece of work I have ever written in terms of hours spent. I asked everyone I could find if they knew about seven-digit long distance. People affected by seven-digit long distance obviously know about it, and most people in states that were not affected don't. This seems to be regardless of their telecom background. The point is: If it doesn't affect you, you probably don't know about it. Who has time to know the details of every legal reform and document?

The first minute of each call is charged at one rate, all subsequent minutes are charged at a lower rate, and both rates are discounted 50% between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. and all weekend. The actual rates are mileage-sensitive. It's all spelled out under the "Local Dialing" heading in the front of the BellSouth directories (and I assume in the directories of the several independent companies operating in the Triad also). For example, if you returned to your room in Greensboro at 8 p.m. and made a call to a Winston-Salem number, and left it nailed up until 8 a.m., that call would cost you $32.43 - even though you dialed it with just seven digits.

This type of dialing is in place in several large metro areas in North Carolina, and has been since 1993.

Randy Price

It took me some effort to find this list on Bell Atlantic site, and another half our to understand how it works! It would be nice to have a site were you can give your phone number and have this list returned to you!

I will see on my next bill if I understand it right!

Michel Coudreuse

Rich's response:

Thanks, Mike, I agree we need a nationwide Web site that lets you enter the calling exchange, the dialed exchange, and the carrier, and returns a per minute charge. Of course, there are a bunch of companies that maintain least cost routing tables that could easily do this. It's a good opportunity for someone to take on. Whoever takes on this challenge could sell lots of Web advertising to phone companies targeting cost conscious telephone callers.

Among the many information processing tools these systems provide is one called Call Accounting. In this area, the hotel's server is connected to the SMDR (Station Message Detail Reporting) port on their PBX. The PBX sends a record to the SMDR port for every call that is made. The software on the PMS server looks at each of these call records, recognizes if the call originated from an administrative extension or a guest extension, looks at the number that was dialed, costs the call from a table, assigns the hotel's mark-up, and posts the call entry to the appropriate guest or administrative department ledger. This is how the phone charges get on your hotel bill. If the hotel's PMS does not provide this feature as a software task, they typically have a dedicated microprocessor, which is called a Call Accounting Machine, between the phone switch and the PMS server to accomplish the same task.

With all of your travel, I am surprised that you have not encountered this sooner, but in many areas the phone companies impose local long distance in the form of what they call Region Serve. Tennessee is one state that comes to mind immediately where this is the case. What appear to be local calls are billed to the hotel at rates ranging from two cents to over ten cents a minute, depending on the first three digits of the seven digit calling number. If you stay connected to avoid the $0.75 local call charge, the hotel is really paying from $28.80 to $144.00 per day for that connection.

Now I know that hotel room rates are getting expensive, but in all fairness, there is really no way that the hotels can absorb this level of expense and stay in business. What is worse is that the local carriers in these areas do not provide the hotels with any option. Hotels simply have to pay these regional rates. Though the mark-up the hotels take on their phone cost allows them to absorb a certain amount of their overhead (few hotels actually show a profit in their telephone departments), hotel management doesn't like this rate system any more than their guests do.

At the very least it is confusing. In these areas, typically residences are not charged these added regional fees. The guest gets his hotel bill at the front desk and when he sees all of these local long distance charges, as you call them, his first inclination is to think that the hotel has ripped him off - especially if the guest lives in the same area code as the hotel and doesn't have the same experience with his phone bill at home. Some of the guests get very irate, and justifiably, but the problem is not with the hotel, the problem is with the local carrier's call rating system for hotels.

If you want to be really amazed, someday do a study on sales taxes charged to telephone calls from hotels. In some states, if the call is originated and terminated within their state, the states can charge incredible amounts for taxes on the resale of phone calls by hotels. They do not seem to be able to do this on interstate calls. I can think of one popular city that has four different phone call taxes that must be charged by hotels. They have a state sales tax, a city sales tax, an indigent tax, and a surtax imposed on phone calls. The tax total is nearly 18% on every call made within the state from a hotel. Obviously, the hotels have no recourse but to charge and collect these taxes from their guests, and then to report and account for them to their local taxing agency. Hotel associations do their best to lobby against such situations, but they are not always successful.

All of these complexities are a nuisance to the hotel, and a frustration to the guests who are not aware, but these factors are part of what keeps computer companies who serve the hospitality industry in business. After all, can you imagine performing these complex calculations manually? Even the best accountant would end up chewing his tie and mumbling strange things to himself by the end of the day!

Art Stutz
Virtual Technology Corp.

Rich's response:

Art, thank you for the detailed response. Where were you when I wrote my original Outlook? The situation is even worse than I thought. It seems terribly unfair that hotels have to pass these ridiculous charges on to their guests. Perhaps hotels should give all guests a sheet detailing their telephone rates when they check in. Even the cost for calling an 800 number can range from free to over a dollar, depending on the hotel. An educated guest perhaps will be a less irate guest.

I agree that the dialing plans in many states are confusing. If you want someone to blame, the decision was most certainly enforced by the California Public Utilities Commission with the blessing of the local RBOC.

Having witnessed the boring hearing of the Massachusetts DT&E (Public Utility Commission), I realize how complex this issue is, given the constant need for more numbers. Maybe decisions like these should be managed by the FCC.

What really appalls me is your presumption that calling into your ISP and leaving a connection up for the entire night should be free! You are tying up the hotel PBX, the Central Office equipment of at least one but probably two offices, as well as the equipment at your ISP. All of these providers have to engineer their equipment based on the usage of their users.

Can you imagine a convention of users like you in the same hotel? I wonder if the hotel PBX would become blocked? So... who is robbing who?

D. Morgan Keeble

Rich's response:

Ouch! Believe it or not, Morgan, this was the nicest letter I received on the topic of tying up the hotel and central office equipment.

Perhaps what I should have mentioned is that at night, while my laptop was connected to the ISP, MS Outlook was checking every few minutes for new e-mail. I receive e-mail in staggering volume both in quantity and individual message size. PR agencies, my own team at TMC, readers, and acquaintances will send me megabytes of mail at a time. Sometimes I receive up to 15 megabytes in the course of a few hours. Much of this e-mail is time sensitive and needs to be answered quickly.

When I am in a hotel room on the West Coast, there is a good chance that it will take me more than an hour to download my morning e-mail considering how slow the Internet can be in the morning in the Pacific time zone. The question becomes one of productivity. I simply must have my e-mail in the morning. If I have a second line, it makes sense for me to have Outlook constantly check for new e-mail while I sleep so I can take the laptop as soon as I wake up without unnecessary down time.

I am the kind of person that feels bad when I waste something. Whether it is food or electricity. The issue here concerns morals more than equipment capabilities. I often listen to streaming radio stations over the Internet from a site called Broadcast.com. I feel guilty that I am tying up Internet bandwidth when I do this, but should I feel bad? I don't really have to use the Internet if I want to listen to the radio, but I do - along with millions of others worldwide.

Internet telephony is another great example of tying up the ISP's and phone companies' ports for the purpose of talking for free to another party connected to the Internet who also is using an ISP port, a CO port, and maybe even a hotel PBX port. I don't feel the least bit bad about this, and it seems millions of others agree with me.

Isn't the Internet here for us to utilize and enjoy? To provide entertainment and boost our productivity? Should we ration its use? Who is to say my e-mail downloads are more or less important than someone playing Internet games connecting to the same ISP in the same hotel?

If there is a large demand for more ports, the ISP, hotel, and CO should install more ports. If TMC receives more customer calls than our PBX can handle, we increase the number of ports on our PBX. Should a customer feel bad for calling us with a frivolous question that ties up a port and keeps another customer from asking us a more serious question?

Who is being robbed when we leave a connection tied up? We pay our phone, hotel, and ISP bills. We are not dealing with charities - these companies are making money and can increase their prices to whatever the market will bear.

As the world begins to listen to music and watch TV over the Internet, we shouldn't feel guilty about tying up ports or bandwidth. If we expect the Internet to live up to its promise, we must show hotels, cable companies, ISPs, and phone companies that we need them to invest equipment allowing us all high speed Internet connectivity at a reasonable price.

Read with interest your "I've Been Robbed!" editorial.

Unfortunately, your belief that California is the first state to make these charges is not correct. We've had IntraLATA toll charges here in Chicago for years. Any call more than eight miles from your Central Office
(CO) is a time and distance call. Good luck figuring out how far your calling destination is from your CO (not from your telephone).

This is a crime and more should be done to end this practice.

Stephen Rawls
Director, Product Management
PC Quote

To: Rich Tehrani

I enjoy reading CTI magazine as well as the latest publication, Internet Telephony™. Being a telecom manager for a high-tech company, I need to stay on top of latest technology.

I have a concern regarding the TMC™ Labs reviews. I know that the money from these high-tech companies who submit products to you is your bread and butter. It seems as if just about every item tested is decent (and that's fine if the testers feel this way), but I'd like to see products that they feel consumers should stay away from. Surely all products tested are not A- to B-. Let's see some Ds and Fs on products that just do not make the cut.

As an FYI, our company has recently purchased two of the Intel TeamStation Systems, and they are kickass.

Please consider the above statements. Thanks for your time.

Anthony Whitlock

Rich's response:

Dear Anthony,

When I was given the challenge of launching a magazine in a field that covers the computer and telephony industries, I did extensive market research and could not find a telephony oriented magazine that performed in-depth and objective product reviews similar to those performed in the computer field. Many of the existing publications had a horrible reputation of only giving press to companies that advertised and thus totally losing the trust of the readership.

Having a background in computer engineering and being an MIS director myself gave me the experience of having to rely on computer magazines for objective and in-depth product reviews. I knew right away that the CTI market desperately needed an objective, in-depth publication that published 100% unbiased product reviews similar to the many computer magazines on the market. How else can serious purchasers of CTI products find the information they need to make informed product purchases?

It was bewildering to me that the computer market could have so many magazines publishing in-depth and objective lab reviews, and until TMC launched CTI, the telephony market had no such source. With CTI and Internet Telephony ™, I decided early on that TMC Labs would hire engineers to evaluate products, as opposed to the journalists that review products in most every technology magazine. These engineers are instructed to be 100% unbiased and objective.

TMC Labs has reviewed many products since its inception in 1994 (formerly CTI Labs) and actually has given several products very low marks. While we have yet to give a product lower than a C+, this is due to our pre-screening process. TMC Labs receives an overwhelming number of requests from the CTI industry to review their products. As such, we have to pre-screen products and print reviews that would be of interest to our readers.

TMC Labs is very familiar with the CTI industry and pretty much knows which products work even before they get them in the labs. TMC Labs wouldn't review a product that is so bad nobody would want it. It would waste our reader's time, as well as space in our magazines. Thus, it would be a rare case indeed if you saw any D, D-, or F grades.

A product that receives a C+ at least has a chance to make some "Room for Improvement" in future versions. In fact, one particular product from Telekol received a C+ in a review written about six months ago, and they fixed some problems we addressed, including upgrading from DOS to Windows NT. As a result, in this issue of CTI, you will see that the product has improved to an A-.

Anything less than a C+ probably means the product is beyond all repair and doesn't deserve recognition in a review. TMC Labs has seen a few products of this sort and has chosen to replace them with CTI products that readers might actually want to buy.

Moreover, the ratings, including the overall rating, are intended as a quick overview of the product, not as final determination of the product's value. A reader who is truly interested in the product should read the entire review to determine if the features, documentation, GUI, installation ease, etc., suit the reader's needs. Special attention should be directed to the "Room for Improvement" and "Conclusion" sections, which highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the product.

Finally, TMC's philosophy on vendor press is as such: advertisers must follow readers. We promise to provide our readers with the most in-depth and objective industry product reviews and editorial possible. This ensures that readers who make product purchases will trust and read TMC publications more often and more completely than any other industry publication they receive.

One of our most cherished and hard working team members here at TMC is Dara Bloom, one of TMC's associate editors. It is with tremendous mixed emotion that we bid a farewell to Dara. We are not losing Dara to another company but instead another country -- England. Dara will be our international correspondent for the next nine months. This temporary assignment allows Dara to set up a remote lab location where we will be able to test the products we write about and evaluate them in a much more accurate real world setting.

Applicable products will not only receive a thorough a thorough evaluation from the engineers of TMC™ Labs, but they will also be put to the test with transatlantic tests revealing any hidden flaws not seen in our labs. Instead of equipping Dara with a T1 or even ISDN, she will be working on a 56k dial-up connection to a local ISP to simulate the majority of real-life teleworker environments.

Beyond that, Dara will be tasked with making TMCnet, an interactive magazine on the Internet located at www.tmcnet.com. Just as you turn to TMC publications for the most up to date, in-depth, and objective information, you will be able to go to our Web site for even more timely information in an organized and graphically appealing visual environment.

We welcome your comments; please respond to me at rtehrani@tmcnet.com, or to Dara directly at dbloom@tmcnet.com.