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  • Loco...er, Local Calls

    From Mortar@46:1/194 to nelgin on Mon Jul 29 21:49:26 2024
    Re: Re: How did you find out about bulletin boards?
    By: nelgin to All on Wed Jun 26 2024 19:38:25

    The US is lucky that it has free local dialing.

    Here in MI, we had three levels of calls: Local, Near Zone and LD. Locals were free, NZ and LD calls cost ya.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (46:1/194)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@46:1/115 to Mortar on Tue Jul 30 06:20:00 2024
    Mortar wrote to nelgin <=-

    Here in MI, we had three levels of calls: Local, Near Zone and LD.
    Locals were free, NZ and LD calls cost ya.

    The same was true in California in the '80s and '90s. Seems that most every
    kid got into BBSes, called a BBS 2 cities down, and got an exorbitant
    phone bill.

    At that point, you learned how to memorize exchange tables and know
    which telephone numbers were in which cities, and where the toll
    boundaries were.

    Because of telco deregulation, long distance service became
    competitive, so calling to a different state could be cheaper than the
    regulated local toll call 5 miles away. Strange times.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckbbs.org -- yesterday's tech today (46:1/115)
  • From Mortar@46:1/194 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 30 23:40:05 2024
    Re: Re: Loco...er, Local Calls
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Mortar on Tue Jul 30 2024 06:20:00

    At that point, you learned how to memorize exchange tables and know
    which telephone numbers were in which cities, and where the toll
    boundaries were.

    All that info was in the phone books we got from MI Bell; very handy.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (46:1/194)
  • From Exodus@46:1/109 to Poindexter Fortran on Wed Jul 31 13:40:51 2024
    Because of telco deregulation, long distance service became
    competitive, so calling to a different state could be cheaper than the
    regulated local toll call 5 miles away. Strange times.

    What killed me in the 90s was my BBS was LD from the "major" city near by, but I could call it for free. Was the stupidest thing. I had a have a callback door, but still was hard getting callers to want to wast 25 cents on a call so that they would be called back to stay on for free. I don't miss those stupid ass times.

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (46:1/109)