Telecom Informer

    

by The Prophet

Hello, and greetings from the Central Office!

It was a surprisingly calm summer here in the Great Northwest.  We had cool temperatures and rain later into the summer than usual (I was beginning to call it "Juneuary") and this seems to have moderated the fires that engulf our region every year.  Now that the summer is over, I'm glad I am not writing this year about fires engulfing our outside plant and literally burning up your phone line (although this is a continued high risk).  Instead, let's rewind to the 1990s, and services that used to metaphorically burn up the phone lines of the Central Office: pay-per-call services.

"Now wait a minute," you might ask.  "Weren't all calls in the 1990s pay-per-call?"  Well, yes, you had to pay for a lot of calls in the 1990s (even local calls in some areas), but "pay-per-call" service was a special billing category.  With a pay-per-call service, an information provider (such as a celebrity horoscope, dating service, lucky lottery number of the day, or whatever anyone could dream up to create) could share in the revenue from your call.  This, at one point, led to a $3 billion industry that younger people today have never interacted with and probably don't even know existed.

Pay-per-call services were either regional or national.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. West first offered local pay-per-call numbers in the 976 exchange (NYNEX, the provider serving 2600, offered similar services in the 540 exchange).  This exchange was programmed to be an intra-LATA long distance call from everywhere, with special rates.  This meant that if you wanted to call a 976 number, you'd have to dial "1" first.  When you called one of these numbers (such as 1-976-6969, known as the "moan line," an interactive adult "service"), you'd be charged a higher rate than a regular long distance call.  The rate was set by the provider and, naturally, it wasn't announced, and you didn't have to agree to the charges before you were billed (after all, you had dialed "1" first, so you knew there would be charges, right?).  Unfortunately these services cost much more than a regular long distance call: up to $9.99 per minute!.

The ill-gotten gains revenue would be split between US West and the service provider (in most cases via an intermediary called a "service bureau" who provided a voice platform and technology services at a fee, and who managed interconnection and billing with US West).  Everyone was happy except for the parents of teenage boys, who would call the "moan line" and giggle until an eye-popping phone bill showed up in the mail (US West would be happy to negotiate a 50 percent discount with the bill-shocked parents, but they'd never write off the bill entirely).  Back then, it wasn't unusual for teenagers to be grounded from the family phone, and groundings resulting from 976 calls were a very common occurrence at my high school!

In 1987, AT&T began testing a nationwide pay-per-call service in the 900 NPA.  This was essentially the same idea as 976 numbers in the US West service territory, except that the service would work all over the country.  Of course, long distance and service charges would go to AT&T as well, rather than to the "baby Bell" local exchange carriers it now competed with.  The concept quickly took off, with everything from dial-a-psychic to sports talk services.  (The "moan line" was conspicuously missing; AT&T and MCI, who later began offering "900" services, both banned adult content - initially in both theory and practice.)

Keep in mind, this was before the days of the Internet, so most people only had access to information that was in the newspaper.  Pay-per-call services allowed service providers to create both broadcast-style and interactive services catering to niche interests.  These valuable services were popular and millions of satisfied customers were happy to pay the charges.  At least, this is the argument that service providers and the phone companies used when arguing with the FCC and Congress that they should be allowed to continue in the business.

Satisfied phreaks were certainly happy for someone else to pay their 900 number charges, and pay-per-call services were a favorite termination point from compromised Direct Inward System Access (DISA) ports and Beige Boxes.  Some of these services allowed setting up conference calls, allowing ten or more phreaks - all standing at different payphones - to talk for hours on someone else's $9.99 per minute dime.  For extra phun, making a three-way fraudulent call to the "moan line" was always a good laugh for everyone on the purloined conference call.

By 1991, the pay-per-call industry was raking in close to $3 billion per year, and it peaked at over $3 billion in 1992.  You could barely turn on a television without seeing an ad for a 900 number.  However, billing complaints were truly getting out of hand, and pay-per-call services had become the Number One source of consumer complaints to the FCC.

In response, Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawai'i introduced Senate Bill 1579, which eventually passed in 1992 and introduced significant constraints on the pay-per-call industry.

While there was a lot in the bill (which is linked below), it provided the following key consumer rights:

  • No more deceptive advertising of rates and terms was allowed (so no mumbling the prices at chipmunk speed under blaring music).

  • Rates were required to be clearly announced when the call was answered, and the caller would have an opportunity to hang up before being charged.

  • New restrictions on advertising to children were introduced.

  • Carriers were required to block pay-per-call numbers upon request of the subscriber, only a nominal one-time fee could be charged, and no fee was allowed when blocking was requested within the first 60 days of establishing service.

  • Dispute resolution procedures were required.

There were also some unrelated provisions in the bill, including an infamous provision that made it illegal to listen to analog cellular calls, or to sell radio scanners capable of monitoring these frequencies.

Privacy concerns had become an increasing issue with cellular customers, so pretending that certain radio frequencies didn't exist was the solution prescribed by Congress.

To this, OKI 900 said "Good Timing."

In the bill, Congress directed the FCC to do most of the heavy lifting in creating and enforcing the rules.  The FCC addressed this with gusto, given that, as mentioned, pay-per-call billing disputes were their Number One complaint.  While it's true that the rules they issued could perhaps be described as a telecommunications embodiment of Thor's hammer, they were probably not responsible for the rapid decline of pay-per-call services.

1993 was right around the time that dial-up Internet service started to gain early popularity, and much of the information previously only available on pay-per-call services was freely available online, on services such as AOL.  By 1995, dial-up Internet capability was included in Windows 95, and Internet usage exploded.  Pay-per-call service revenue dropped precipitously in line with the rise of Internet popularity overall and, by 2013, Verizon (the last remaining "900" service provider) finally ended service.

And with that, I'll see you again in the winter.  Drive safely this fall, and if you are looking for Halloween costume ideas, consider dressing up as an AT&T bill for 900-number calls!

References
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