Telco payments question [Telecom]

Airlines and banks have started charging extra for non-electronic interactions.

The 7-11 ATMs used to be quite handy. I could pay our phone, electricity, and gas bills at the ATM. And once upon a time you could buy Southwest Airlines tickets through them.

John

If you want to pay your bill at a Sprint store and don't ise oen the of terminals they charge, unless the terminal is down, at&t charges or at least the place you pay it at does. I do all mine online at their web page.

I do all mine by Bank of America on-line banking. I've been using it since 1985 when we had to access the system by modem.

All the landline companies that I know of charge the same no matter whether you pay your bill electronically or by mail. Some of the LD companies charge extra for paper bills or hard-copy payment. The cell companies I'm familiar with (Verizon) charge the same either electronically or by check. Some places add a service charge to pay in person. Prepay cellphone time (most brands) is often available from other vendors, online, electronically, at a discount from what the phone company charges.

Dave

I remember BoA's Homebanking, they used to use Tymnet, way before the Internet, I used to like it since it was very small and when you had to call it was like talking to a small local bank. We used to be able to access Western Union's e-mail system and the system that allowed you to sent messages via the USPS, don't remember what it was called. When I saw your post I looked around here and found the users guide and my old Apple II software that worked with it.

-- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, inc, A Rot in Hell. Co.

What ever happened to Tymnet and Telenet? Was it another case of established companies that didn't/couldn't adapt quickly enough?

Bill Horne

I don't know about Tymnet, but Telenet became part of Sprints network, so it might still be around as their high speed nationwide network.

I used to work there (Tymshare) in the 1960s and 1970s. Tymnet was eventually absorbed by British Telecom as BT/Tymnet and their local office moved from Cupertino CA to Fremont CA, They finally shut down in the early 2000s as the Internet became ubiquitous.

Funny thing: the chief architect of Tymnet was LaRoy Tymes and it was pure coincidence the company, the service and LaRoy had the same first three letters in their names. When I began at Tymshare we had only one computer, a modified SDS-930 derived from UCB's Project Genie, and LaRoy was not yet an employee. Tymnet was built using Varian 620i minicomputers.

'S funny you should mention that. I was one of their first on-line banking customers until:

1. Typing a ^C (control-C) took me to the system's command level; it was either a PDP-10 or TOPS-20 system (I had a bunch of both in my computer center and had been using PDP-10s since the 1960s), and
2. Poking around at the command level and discovering the online banking center was located at Half Moon Bay CA and was wide-open.

I notified them the system was totally insecure, cancelled immediately, and didn't return to BofA's online-banking until it was web-based with SSL.

Their present system is reasonably secure and I use it almost daily.

Several UK carriers now charge extra in you refuse to pay by direct debit.

Doubtful. I can only pay Vonage via credit or debit. But my National Grid bills are interesting.

If I pay using my debit card I get whacked a $3.95 fee. But then they also charge you $1.50 or so if you pay at an agent.

The trick is to pay online using a demand draft.

I hope to see National Grid broken into a million little pieces btw.

This is getting away from telecom. Please limit posts in this thread to electronic billing issues which affect firms in the telecom industry.

I can do mine through my bank but to be honest, all the providers have payment gateways of their own. I do setup billing noticed through my bank though.