It has nothing to do with morals. The telephone company wanted as much money as
they could squeeze out of you. You wanted to pay as little as possible.
There used to be only one telephone company that had a monopoly and it was in
their best interests to keep an outdated technology that earned them the
greatest income, at the cost of the consumer.
Once the monopoly was broken up to the free market the technology changed
overnight. A long distance call that cost $10/minute 50 years go costs 1
cent/minute today and you can have an unlimited number of extensions.
-----Original Message-----
From: "John J. Miller" <seaspark@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Sep 30, 2015 9:51 PM
To: sparkscoffee@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [sparkscoffee] Morals
With all of this talk about morals; I thought I should confess my
misgivings.
Quite a few years ago, when I lived in NJ I added several extension
phones in my house without adding to my
monthly bill. I thought it was high tech, the way they used to detect
illegal extensions was by sending an ac signal on your line, measure
the impedance,the only thing connected when your phone was "Off hook"
was the ringer, so I disconnected all ringers except one. This way the
"Telephone Cops", (WKRP Cinnc.), could not detect my transaction and
they didn't. I rationalized this action because I knew it wasn't costing
anyone any money; I didn't make the phone Co. consume more power, etc.
Along came some sort of DE-regulation and people were allowed to connect
anything they wanted, so it wasn't illegal anymore. Telephone techs I
knew said that so much was being added, that it upset the networks.
JJ Miller
