Offer Void in Nebraska: Difference between revisions

The early InWATS wide area telephone service, introduced in 1966-67, was primitive. There was no proper, itemised list of the calls received on a tollfree number, even if these calls were effectively "charges reversed" or "collect". Instead, a business was issued a special flat-rate line which could accept calls from within some predefined area - anything from merely the adjacent states (Band 1) to clear across the country (Band 6). Evidently, the Band 6 line cost more... much more, and this was aggravated by the telephone companies overcharging for long-distance trunk calls to subsidise their money-losing local service. Add to this the wrinkle that calls within an individual federated state were regulated by the state but, the moment anyone exclaims "Interstate Commerce is at stake!" (which in the American language is said in a mock-horrified tone of shock, as this involves making a federal case of everything) the interstate tariffs were regulated by the US Federal Communications Commission. Some state regulators (such as Texas, at one point) were much more lax than their federal counterparts. In any case, the result was that intrastate calls and interstate calls had to come in on different tollfree numbers.

 

 

Nebraska had fairly good infrastructure because the Strategic Air Command or SAC (the Air Force command tasked with managing the Air Force's nuclear weapons) was based in Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha and needed [[Crazy Prepared|insane amounts of incoming phone lines as insurance]] in the case of an attack. Needless to say, most of those lines went unused 365 days a year. Mail-order companies, and especially those taking advantage of the new 800 service, saw potential in the infrastructure and petitioned Northwestern Bell and the government to let them make use of it. They agreed with the proviso that the businesses would be cut off if the Soviets attacked. As more call centres set up shop in Omaha, Northwestern Bell built more infrastructure to the point that the number of lines going into "Reservation Row" and the hotel chain call centres dwarfed those originally used by the SAC. The rules about 800 numbers were relaxed somewhat in the 1980s; the last of the restrictions didn't change until the mid 1990s, and eventually the SAC disbanded into the current STRATCOM. [[And Now You Know]].