I probably should have included this picture in my slideshow * :
http://yikes.com/~ole/store/MCI-IETF34.jpg
Ten years ago, MCI hosted the IETF in Dallas. Someone thought it would
be a nice idea to give every attendee an MCI card that would be good for
free calls to anywhere in the world during the IETF week.
Of course, the IETF community being what it is, a number of people decided
that "free calls anywhere" was a concept that needed to be tested, fully.
By Tuesday afternoon the hotel switchboard was overloaded and
hastily-created signs began appearing in the hallways, elevators and
elsewhere saying something to the effect of "please disconnect your
permanent connections..." A number of folks had nailed up PPP connections
from their hotel rooms to Sweden, Japan, Germany, you name it. Back at MCI
the security folks were ready to pull the plug on the entire batch of MCI
cards as the projected bill kept mounting, but they were told to keep it
all running until the end of the week. We'll probably never know how much
this particular "good idea" cost, but it was lots of fun :-)
WorldPhone, indeed.
Note to Nokia: Although we'd love a free cellphone and a SIM card for the
week, you might want to consider the consequences...
Ole
*
http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.pdf
and
http://yikes.com/~ole/store/IETF-20years.key.zip
Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal
Academic Research and Technology Initiatives, Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972 GSM: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: ole(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj
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