> That's not at all true. The tariff price for area A calls is exactly
> the same for ISDN as for analog. Long distance and intra-lata
> providers don't charge any differently, either. The price for a 1B is
> approximately the same as for an analog line. The equipment is more
> expensive, but then you get more for it (two phones numbers, for
> starters). Now get this -- ISP's in the U.S charge *the* *same*
> *price* for a clean digital 64K ISDN connection as for an analog 28K
> connection (which only says its connecting at 52K), and there's hardly
> any location in the country where you could get analog but not ISDN.

Where I live (near San Francisco, CA) ISDN was priced per minute.* The
normal analog phone service is priced ~$15 with free local calls.
Unless one is really out in the sticks it would be possible to find an
ISP that is a free local analog call away.

For a few years I did have ISDN installed and paid for by a company I
did some work for.  I was shocked to hear that my normal
dial-on-demand connection to their internal net was running several
hundred dollars per month.  (Well, the cost wasn't really an issue to
them.  there were other reasons for wanting engineers to dial in.  It
forced them to eat their own dog-food and get the experimental
versions of their router code well enough to use in day-to-day
operations.)

If this was for my personal connection, there is no way I'd shell out
anywhere near that amount for a dinky, intermittent network
connection.

> You haven't heard the news? There's a national don't-call list now:
> 
>     http://donotcall.gov

I've heard and am thrilled that they are finally doing something about
these phone spammers.  As far as I can tell the telemarketers have
having one last fling.  The 5-10 "out of area" calls per day are
starting to get *really* old.

-wolfgang

* I have no idea what the current ISDN rates are around here.  The
  pacbell/sbc website fails to list ISDN prices anywhere that I can
  find.
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht  <wolfgang@wsrcc.com>  http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/