AES wrote:
>> What's going on here? Response to more and more people shifting to
>> VOIP is to _raise_ their POTS rates? (especially on automated
>> features)
>> What's the agenda behind this?
> Business 101. In a declining market, you raise prices to preserve
> profitability (think cigarettes).
> It's not just VOIP -- that's more a future threat. It started with big
> minute cell phone plans. While the rate of decline has lessened, all
> the wireline carriers are continuing to lose physical lines.
But > AES wrote:
> Just got several mailings re our AT&T residential service in Palo
>> Alto/Stanford CA area announcing *big* rate increases on POTS service:
>> 5% to 10% increases on package plans, up to 30% each on a long list of
>> individual features (Caller ID, Call Waiting, etc. etc).
>> What's going on here? Response to more and more people shifting to
>> VOIP is to _raise_ their POTS rates? (especially on automated
>> features)
>> What's the agenda behind this?
> Those folks run on the same mentality as the Post Office (aka United
> States Postal "Service"). The Postal Service has seen its first class
> mail revenues fail significantly. So, they raise rates to force
> revenues to remain relatively stable.
> Caller ID, for example, is terribly overpriced by the wireline
> carriers. It is part of standard service with wireless and VOIP > service providers.
> In the case of California those funny folks called the PUC have hated
> Caller ID since its inception (remember, they were the nut cases that
> sued the FCC to stop the implementation of Caller ID). So, if Pacific
> Telephone, a unit of AT&T, nay Pacific Bell, nay SBC, nay AT&T wanted
> to charge $40 a month for Caller ID, the PUC would approve it. It is
> like a cigerette tax to those folks.
The only issue is that caller-ID is mostly useless these days because there are so many ways to obfuscate ones number. What I find more amusing is that Bell knew how to do CLID back in 1972. Just took some time to roll it out.