I spoke to Vint about the cards some time afterwards. He said that there
were a few issues with certain very specific cards but the overall cost
was not excessive.
My theory is that the exercise told them a worst case for what they
might expect cost wise if they went to flat rate billing.
I didn't use the card very much until the trip home. It's the only time
I have ever called the UK from an airplane.
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On
Behalf Of Theodore Ts'o
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:59 PM
To: Ole Jacobsen
Cc: The IETF
Subject: Re: Last time we went to Dallas
On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 10:53:39PM -0800, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
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.
As I recall, various parts of community interested in
security and privacy were swapping cards around to scramble
any attempts by MCI personnel to learn anything about which
phone numbers we were calling.
This was before the days when companies made a regular
practice of providing a privacy statement and at least making
a public commitment to honor it (while the back office people
would keep a few thousand credit card numbers for testing
purposes, natch).
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..."
The switchboard was overloaded not because of the permanent
connections. Tthere were only a few people doing this, but
they were costing MCI $$$ because the international calls
resulted in real dollars being spent on international
circuits, as opposed to just utilizing otherwise unused
circuits on their domestic network.
Although it was somewhat amusing to learn that at least one
employee of one of MCI's competitors was keeping permanent
connections to places like Sweeden on MCI's nickle....
Rather, the hotel had a certain number of (voice) T-1 lines
dedicated for AT&T, SPRINT, and MCI long-distance traffic,
and with the MCI cards, it meant that everyone was
overloading the outbound MCI trunks while keeping the other
trunks unutilized. The hotel eventually reconfigured their
outbound trunks, but it was also really annoying for the
hotel because the only thing that has a higher profit margin
is alcohol, and so not only did it cost them money and extra
headaches for the hotel telecom manager (with whom I had a
chance to chat at the end of the conference as I helped the
host team with the terminal room tear down), but the hotel
also lost a substantial amount of income that they normally
would have counted upon when hosting a group of our size. Oops.
Note to Nokia: Although we'd love a free cellphone and a
SIM card for
the week, you might want to consider the consequences...
Heh. Well, there is always the Nokia 770....
- Ted
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