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Anybody remember the brouhaha over the 0867-numbers that Telecom brought in
for dialup lines a decade ago? The whole point of the scheme was so Telecom
could weasel out of its own termination agreements that it forced on other
telcos, in the expectation that the lion's share of connection fees would be
flowing its way.

It didn't happen, because of the Internet. So Telecom brought in this
exception to the termination agreements. Then the Commerce Commission
brought a prosecution, on the grounds that the scheme was meant to handicap
competitors.

Now that case has finally been thrown out by the Court of Appeal. Probably
fair enough, I guess. Trying to avoid paying money isn't quite the same
thing as trying to stop others from competing on an equal basis.

<http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/C1404CD6FAF48F32CC25760800007FA1>

"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <_zealand> wrote in
message news:h58uh2$9ud$...
> Anybody remember the brouhaha over the 0867-numbers that Telecom
> brought in
> for dialup lines a decade ago? The whole point of the scheme was so
> Telecom
> could weasel out of its own termination agreements that it forced on
> other
> telcos, in the expectation that the lion's share of connection fees
> would be
> flowing its way.
>
> It didn't happen, because of the Internet. So Telecom brought in
> this
> exception to the termination agreements. Then the Commerce
> Commission
> brought a prosecution, on the grounds that the scheme was meant to
> handicap
> competitors.
>
> Now that case has finally been thrown out by the Court of Appeal.
> Probably
> fair enough, I guess. Trying to avoid paying money isn't quite the
> same
> thing as trying to stop others from competing on an equal basis.
>
> <http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/netw/C1404CD6FAF48F32CC25760800007FA1>
>

Those were the days!

ZFree, I4Free, etc etc.

I think I had accounts with three of them (can't remember who the
third was), as often you wouldn't be able to get a connection to one
or more (busy tones on the phone lines).

Downloading Linux ISOs was fun - I seem to remember it taking me about
three weeks to get a set of Debian disks using FTP once, and that was
running overnight every night, and through the day while we were at
work (probably about 16 hours a day for 20 days ~ 300 hours!!)

I don't recall very clearly, but I think average download speeds were
something like 5kb / sec, so 300 hours would get around (if my maths
are right, and being quite rough):

~ 5 kb x 60 x 60 x 300
~ 5,400,000 KB
~ 5400 MB
~ 5.4 GB

I think I must have downloaded the whole set of eight or nine CDs for
some reason!

Alan.

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