[pmmail-list] Spam -- your definition

[Robert Gammon]

On Thu, 30 May 2002 11:38:37 -0500, Jon Etkins wrote:

>On Thu, 30 May 2002 09:50:43 -0500, Oberon wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 30 May 2002 08:43:55 -0600 (MDT), Ann Knight wrote:
>>
>>> UCE/UBE (my definition of "spam") is theft. Telemarketers 
don't call me collect
>>
>>No, but they call on the phone you pay to have in your home.  
This analogy is
>>closer to what happens with spam in most cases than your 
analogy.  Many of us
>>don't pay by the piece for our e-mail, it's a flat subscription 
rate, same as
>>your home phone line.
>
>I think you're missing the point that the rates we ALL pay 
include a
>component that goes towards maintaining the network as a whole.  
If every
>household in the country started receiving dozens of 
telemarketing calls
>per day, the underlying infrastructure would have to be beefed 
up to handle
>the increased load, resulting in higher backbone fees levied on 
ISPs, and
>consequently higher access fees for the end user.

This misses the point of the telephone network.  Both land lines 
and cell phone networks are sized for business traffic.  Thats 
why we get STEEP discounts for non-business hours calling on both 
cellular and land line networks (at least in the USA).  
Telemarketers need to reach people at home.  The model household 
in the USA no longer includes an adult at home during the day.  
Therefore, to reach a decision maker, telemarketers need to call 
after 5:00PM local time.  This increased offhours traffic would 
HELP the phone company recover its costs since the differential 
between peak business hours traffic to evening traffic would 
drop.

Robert

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