Junk Phone Calls, Metered Usage, and Cellphones

At 6:08 PM 9/6/96, stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:

>is done because of the Great Drug Hysteria, but I suspect part of it
>is that pay phone companies don't make money receiving calls,
>so they don't want to tie up their phones doing that; perhaps if
>they charged money to receive calls as well as initiate them,
>they'd be willing to receive calls?

I am about to start worrying about "junk phone calls" more so than I have
been. I just bit the bullet and bought a digital cellular phone, with a
nifty rate plan called Digital Flex: I get unlimited free airtime from 7
p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and unlimited free airtime all weekend. From south
of Salinas to north of Santa Rosa and as far east as the Central Valley. In
other words, the entire Bay Area and outlying communities. I can send and
receive calls over this entire region, from anywhere in the region (of
course), without any charges.

The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours
are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus
whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call"
I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to
switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents,
depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them ("Let
me forward you to Jim Bell's AP hotline...").

Needless to say, my cellular number is only going out to a handful of
folks, and with recommendations that they not call me during business hours
unless its urgent.

I believe this kind of pricing model is likely to be common. We can debate
til the cows come home whether flat rate pricing makes sense, for ISPs, for
cellphones, for other things.

Relevance to Crypto? The "junk e-mai" issue, calls for regulations (which
I'm against), technological solutions (Caller ID lets users decided to
accept a call or not....same idea could be used with e-mail, a la Hal
Finney's "You have a message of size X from size Y entitled Z" proposal for
positve acceptance of remailed messages), and the value of True Names (and
True Numbers).

I'll be real pissed if my new cellphone number ends up in the hands of mass
marketers, given that I don't plan to give it out to merchants, to
organizations, etc.

(I'm probably inviting malicious use by one of my enemies here on this
list...there may be ways I don't yet grok to "look up" cellphone user
numbers. I can then get hit with denial-of-service attack just by having
this 42 cents a call situation. I hope no one is this malicious.)

P.S. The phone is a Motorola Micro Digital Lite, a little bugger with a
zillion features. It can vibrate silently instead of ringing (phone sex?),
it can store 100 alphanumeric name/number combinations, it even has a data
port for use with a modem (probably a special modem, and certainly a chore
to set all the battery-powered stuff up properly...I'll report on it if it
works). The cost was about $200 for the phone, after the rebates,
kickbacks, etc., and after "sales tax on the pre-kickback price" was added
back in (California has a tax collection scam where sales tax is assessed
against the "real" price of some good or service....imagine the
possibilities if this is extended to cover other such areas). The "Digital
Flex" plan from Cellular One is $20/mo for the basic plan, and then $15/mo
on top of that for the unlimited evenings and weekends use. (This could
easily save me the amount I often spend in a month just yakking with
friends and girlfriends who live over the hill in the Valley.)

These rates have really come down a lot. The unlimited calls is what sold me.

--Tim May



We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

Timothy C. May sez:
> 
> The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours
> are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus
> whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call"
> I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to
> switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents,

The GSMish PCS carrier is winning points here with:

	No contacts to sign.
	1st minute of all incoming calls is free.

-- 
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May) writes:
> The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours
> are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus
> whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call"
> I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to
> switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents,
> depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them ("Let
> me forward you to Jim Bell's AP hotline...").

Wrong. It also costs your TIME. Junk e-mail takes TIME to recognize and
delete. TIME (even Tim's time) costs more than 42c.

> Needless to say, my cellular number is only going out to a handful of
> folks, and with recommendations that they not call me during business hours
> unless its urgent.

I had an interesting conversation with a New York Daily News telemarketer
a while ago. (Note that 1) I speak with a noteceable accent, 2) NYDN is a
left-wing tabloid, generally marketed toward blue-collar/minorities.)

RRing.
DLV: Hello?
NYDN: blah blah would you like to subscribe to New York Daily News?
DLV: No thank you, I don't read your newspaper.
NYDN: Well, you could at least look at the pictures <click>.
(Hung up on me before I did. :-)
A few minutes later:
RRing.
DLV: Hello?
NYDN: blah blah would you like to subscribe to New York Daily News?
DLV: Someone just called a few minutes ago and I said I wasn't interested.
 Please don't call this number anymore.
NYDN: I call every number in the exchange. We don't use a list for this.
 We don't do blocking.
(Fortunately, they haven't called me since.)

> These rates have really come down a lot. The unlimited calls is what sold me.

As you yourself point out, their charging you for each incoming call during
business hours is unacceptable. Why don't they bill the 42c / minute to
whomever is calling YOU, as they do with LD and 900 numbers?

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

[ Telemarketer script removed, (spit :) ]
> 
> As you yourself point out, their charging you for each incoming call during
> business hours is unacceptable. Why don't they bill the 42c / minute to
> whomever is calling YOU, as they do with LD and 900 numbers?

	This is why I really like the service that I have.  I have a
"personal number" that is my voice, fax, pager, and voice mail.  If 
someone calls it, it asks them to wait while it locates me.  It then has
a list of numbers it calls to try and find me (desk at work, cell phone,
home phone after 5pm or weekends).  When I answer it tells me who's on
the phone, and if I don't want to talk to them I just hit a key and throw
them to the voice mail wolves.

	As for billing the caller, from what I hear at work I think 
it's because of problems with the way the cellular network does billing
that (currently) make caller-pays cellular undoable.  But that's a telephony 
problem and I'm just the resident UNIX weenie. :)

---
Fletch                                                     __`'/|
fletch@ain.bls.com  "Lisa, in this house we obey the       \ o.O'    ______
404 713-0414(w)      Laws of Thermodynamics!" H. Simpson   =(___)= -| Ack. |
404 315-7264(h) PGP Print: 8D8736A8FC59B2E6 8E675B341E378E43  U      ------

TCM:

>Relevance to Crypto? The "junk e-mai" issue, calls for regulations (which
>I'm against), technological solutions (Caller ID lets users decided to
>accept a call or not....same idea could be used with e-mail, a la Hal
>Finney's "You have a message of size X from size Y entitled Z" proposal for
>positve acceptance of remailed messages), and the value of True Names (and
>True Numbers).

more and more I think the problem of "junk info" which we keep running
into on this list is of key importance
to future information technologies. loosely translated, I would call
this the same problem that rears its head in many different information
transfer formats. spam in newsgroups, junk mail in the email box, 
sales calls on the phone. can it be solved? caller ID is in one sense a
solution to this problem. I suspect we will be seeing increasingly
sophisticated solutions.

in short, imagine a communication system with various entities.
this could be a newsgroup, a phone system, an email system, etc.

the fundamental problem is allowing the transfer of information that
is "approved" by consenting parties, and rejecting the transfer
of information (and preventing denial-of-service attack) for 
anything otherwise.  a very tricky problem, because the value
of information is subjective in the eyes of sender and receiver,
and often people want to receive information and cannot tell whether
they want it or not until they see it.

for cpunks, there are additional goals. ideally pseudonymous 
communication or anonymous communication would be allowed.

for the phone problem, one possible way of solving this is to
have passwords. in addition to giving out your cell phone number,
you give the person a digital password. you are free to vary this
password yourself for multiple entities. they have to enter the
right password for the call to go through (or for any charges
to accrue). if you get junk calls, you at least know the individual
password that was "compromised". you can reject that password
in the future as being "dirty" and hand out a new password via
your trusted channels to anyone who tells you they can't get
through to you any more (and you don't necessarily want that
to stay that way <g>).

this system is remarkably similar to the way that intelligence
agencies work, with their agents and spies. they deal with the 
problem of knowing which channels have been "compromised" and
working with countermeasures. in fact I suspect
that the intelligence community has developed very sophisticated
ways of dealing with information transfer and "spoofing" (bad data so
to speak) that might have major applications to the design of future 
cyberspace.

such a system could be applied to email. I send out email passwords
to my trusted associates (they might even be included in the email
address itself). email that doesn't have a proper password I could
either delete or put into the "low priority" bin. unfortunately
this restricts email whereas one of the great aspects of email
is its lack of controls and preventions in contacting people.

but notice that one could still have a lot of relative freedom
in this system. suppose that I gave a lecture to a large audience
of people. I could then create a new password for that audience,
and release it to them. if I get email under that password, I know
it was somehow from someone in that audience, and it would be
worth more to my attention, so to speak, than junk email. it has
slightly more value than being totally "out-of-the-blue anonymous". 
if the address became too popular, or got into the hands
of a marketer, I could hook it up to a form
letter or disconnect it.

in a sense this would be like something like having the ability 
to create or disconnect multiple phone numbers whenever you want.
I suspect such systems will become more prevalent in the future.
whenever you interface with other people, you will be given
the opportunity to put it under your own personal "information
channel" of choice. "inquiries on this subject should be addressed
to [x]".

a similar mechanism is used by advertisers to gauge the efficacy
of their advertising. they say in the ad, "mention this ad to
get [x]". this is setting up an independent information channel
for identification. they also might set up a separate phone 
number for a given advertisement, and see how much traffic they
get through that phone number independently. all this is
invisible to the customer.

the "junk info" problem becomes much more difficult to solve
with public forums such as newsgroups, and the above approach
would not seem to apply.

others have proposed solutions that are related to packaging
money in messages. "I will pay you 5 cents to read this message"
which can be collected upon opening it. a very interesting
proposal I think we will see actually put into practice.

I suspect we will continue to see interesting innovations that
focus on the problems of information dissemination. it's amazing
how far we are into the information age without some key
problems being solved yet. plenty of room for some innovative
thoughts. I continue to believe there are some elegant solutions
waiting to be found.

On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

> At 6:08 PM 9/6/96, stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> >is done because of the Great Drug Hysteria, but I suspect part of it
> >is that pay phone companies don't make money receiving calls,
> >so they don't want to tie up their phones doing that; perhaps if
> >they charged money to receive calls as well as initiate them,
> >they'd be willing to receive calls?
> 
> I am about to start worrying about "junk phone calls" more so than I have
> been. I just bit the bullet and bought a digital cellular phone, with a
> nifty rate plan called Digital Flex: I get unlimited free airtime from 7
> p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and unlimited free airtime all weekend. From south
> of Salinas to north of Santa Rosa and as far east as the Central Valley. In
> other words, the entire Bay Area and outlying communities. I can send and
> receive calls over this entire region, from anywhere in the region (of
> course), without any charges.
> 
> The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours
> are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus
> whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call"
> I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to
> switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents,
> depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them ("Let
> me forward you to Jim Bell's AP hotline...").

I suggest doing as I do, that is giving the number to no one at all but
forwarding a public number to the cell phone when you need to.  "Unlimited
forward" allows you to call your own number from anywhere and change
forwarding details.  Quite useful.

> possibilities if this is extended to cover other such areas). The "Digital
> Flex" plan from Cellular One is $20/mo for the basic plan, and then $15/mo
> on top of that for the unlimited evenings and weekends use. (This could
> easily save me the amount I often spend in a month just yakking with
> friends and girlfriends who live over the hill in the Valley.)

Many digital phone have caller ID which you could use to screen for
"urgent" calls when the time is pricy.

You might also consider giving folks a beeper number for "urgent calls"
and you could then call your voice mail from your cellphone to see if you
wish to bother calling back.

This has the added advantage of preventing the tracking of your movement
by determining which "cell" your phone happens to be on at the moment
(phones talk to cells when on but not talking).

> --Tim May

> ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
> Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
> tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
> W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
> Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
> "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

--
I hate lightning - finger for public key - Vote Monarchist
unicorn@schloss.li