TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Young Cell Users Rack Up Debt, One Dime Message at a Time

Re: Young Cell Users Rack Up Debt, One Dime Message at a Time

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
10 Jan 2005 11:46:44 -0800

This is nothing new.

When cell phones first came out people got hit hard unexpectedly for
time charges.

Before that, teenagers ran up huge phone bills in places that had
timed measured service. Turn on old sitcoms that had teen kids and
you'll see the fathers complaining "on the phone again!"

College students before the 1970s usually did not have telephones in
their rooms, rather, there were house phones and pay phones in the
hall that they had to share with everyone living in that hall.
Frustration over the lines being tied up while waiting for an
important call (or wanting to make same) were a fact of life in
domitories. Indeed, even after phones made it into individual dorm
rooms, roommates used to quarel over the phone.

Given how teenagers love to talk, I'm surprised that more teens
didn't try to hook up private phone lines between houses using
surplus phones. I guess before divesture it was hard to obtain
surplus phones, running wires -- especially beyond the house next
door -- was a problem, and only the nerdy kids would know and be
interested in setting up such a scheme.

I must admit I'd like to set up a magneto (local battery) telephone
line between my house and a neighbor's, but that neighbor isn't
particularly interested. I also wouldn't mind a private intercom at
work, but the work authorities wouldn't approve. The motive to do
this is just for the heck of it.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Back in the 1980's, I had a Melco 2x12
PBX in an apartment building where I had control over a bunch of phone
pairs. In addition to having extensions around the building in handy
places, I also had an extension hooked up half a block away by using
some unused (probably long forgotten about) multiples in my phone box
and the phone box in the building down the street. Nice arrangement. PAT]

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