Gil, I was working in Indonesia and the only way to call home was from the Wartel (Warung Telekomunikasi) ie Phone shop.
They allocate a phone booth and you give them the number to dial. It has an electronic display showing the rolling cost. It was around $5 a minute back in 1993. My boss gave me a Telstra phone card and the 1800 number overseas needed an account number which was # delimited followed by a # delimited pin number. That's why the sneaky mofos disabled the # key, however, tone diallers still worked. On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 8:27 AM Paul Gilmartin < [email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 1 Mar 2020 08:00:44 +1100, Wayne Bickerdike wrote: > >... > >I have had to resort to tone dialers in Indonesia to use a phone > >card because they disable the # key . Their phone systems were largely > >owned by kleptocrats who realised that phone cards would bypass their > >exorbitant phone call charges. > > > In the U.S. there existed services one could call via a (free) 800 > number (no #, IIRC); enter a card number, then target number > to bypass exorbitant AT&T charges. AT&T retaliated by reversing > DC polarity after initial connection so tone generator wouldn't > work. FCC prohibited disabling those third party services. AT&T > acquiesced by agreeing to install bridge rectifiers on request, > *only* in Western Electric (AT&T partner) phones. Customers with > third-party hardware were left to seek relief from their vendors. > Kleptocrats. Think of 1959 consent decree. > > -- gil > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- Wayne V. Bickerdike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
