Subj : phUn with Bell back in the day...
To   : All
From : Crushed
Date : Mon Sep 23 2024 12:43:34

I was laughing with an old friend about some of the antics we used to pull as
sysops back in the day, and was wondering if you guys had any similar stories.

For example - do you remember when Call Forwarding first came out?  For BBSs
that weren't in large cities but located in butt-phUck-nowhere, finding a
decent calling base was difficult.  Similarly, for those stranded out in the
boonies, finding a BBS to dial into without incuring staggering long distance
fees was a challenge.

Along came call forwarding, and it became a fantastic way to broaden your local
calling region.  Finding BBS users in the right "middle" locations that
 were willing to install a 2nd line for the sole purpose of a call forwarding
leap station (paid for by the sysop, and granting free access to the BBS of
course) prooved quite easy, and before long you had a huge spider web of local
connection numbers.

In the beginning you could even daisy chain call forward stations, and
unlimited numbers of connections would be passed through!

But then Bell started to catch on to what was happening, and started to phUck
with us by blocking multiple connections - once a call was forwarded through, a
busy signal would be presented to future callers.

Through trial and error it was discovered that by disabling call forwarding
(*70 or whatever it was at the time) then re-enabling it, another call could be
passed through!  Not as convenient to be forced to use a crappy computer
running a script to disable/re-enable CF each time a call passed through, but
still worth it!

Bell then started to attempt to monetize the number of connections passed
through, so you would pay for the number of PSTN connections you wanted/needed.
 But what was this we noticed?  At one of our call forwarding nodes we couldn't
find a bbs user willing to install a 2nd line, so we ended up just buying a car
phone (bag phone, whatever those early cell phone things were) and call
forwarding on that.  For whatever reason, Bell hadn't "closed the door" on the
unlimited pass through connections for mobile units so that bought us another
half year or so for cheap pass through options :)

I'll never forget the time I dialed into my car-phone account to check on
monthly usage... the automated voice garbled (very robotic back in the day)
"You have used 9 thousand.. 700 minutes this month....
     your current bill is one hundred and twenty dollars"
(or something ridiculous like that... it was for one of our busiest connecting
nodes, located in Breslau Ontario which was local to both Kitchener/Waterloo
and Guelph - allowing Guelph callers to dial into our BBS in KW for a local
call)

Oh the fun times we had... did anyone else have creative ways to "get the job
done" as cheap as possible?  I'd love to hear them :)

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