Zahlen, bitte! 8-minute intervals to prevent grid collapse
To avoid network overload from continuous users, Deutsche Post introduced the 8-minute interval for local calls – the foundation for later tariff jungles.
Students complete their homework together over the network; chess players use it for their games; companies maintain constant contact from their main location to branches on the outskirts of town and do without delivery services thanks to the network connection. “So what, what's new about that?” one might think. Well, the description dates back to 1977, when there was no time limit for local calls in West Germany and the internet was not yet even a thought.
The unlimited conversation cost 23 Pfennigs at the time and was even cheaper on the go: in the phone booth, two Groschen (20 Pfennigs) were enough. In 1971, Deutsche Bundespost, with the slogan “Ruf doch mal an!” (Give us a call!), had triggered a rush on telephone connections by the advertising agency Lintas and now had to deal with the consequences. “Der Spiegel” described the danger posed by overload from expensive telecopiers: “Entire stacks of paper can be transmitted for 23 Pfennigs—albeit with enormous strain on network capacity.” Over 3,000 machines of this type were already in use, and conditions like those in the USA and Japan with more than 100,000 devices could mean the end of telephony for private users, as they would only hear the busy signal. The solution was simple: unlimited local calls had to end.
First plans for timing in 1976
As early as the beginning of 1976, the then Federal Post Minister Kurt Gscheidle (SPD) had proposed a time interval of 4 minutes for a local call. At the same time, the definition of a locality was to be replaced by the area code for larger local areas. This was because the municipal reform had led to many citizens only being able to reach their authorities by long-distance call. Gscheidle's plans were immediately quashed by Chancellor Schmidt considering the upcoming federal election. Similar things had already happened before the 1964 federal election, when the planned increase in the time unit to 20 Pfennigs was withdrawn and calls cost 18 Pfennigs per unit again. “Der Spiegel” reported about trials with the eight-minute interval in six test regions.
(Image:Â Ghormon, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Nevertheless, there was great displeasure when the 8-minute interval for local calls was introduced in 1980. It didn't help that the aforementioned postal advertising agency had previously introduced the unbeatable name "Moonlight tariff" for night calls, which extended the time slot to 12 minutes in the local area. You can still occasionally find the eight-minute egg timers on flea markets that were popular back then; there are also stories that people preferred to make calls from the phone booth again to save money afterward.
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The time limit had a curious effect on the emerging scene of computer hobbyists and networkers. While the development of mailboxes in West Germany progressed rather slowly, a lively mailbox scene emerged in West Berlin because the untimed local call continued to exist there until August 31, 1992. They would rather not make local calls pricier for West Berliners, who already had difficult phone contact with “the other side” (21.5 million phone connections West vs. 2.7 million East in 1978).
First mailbox networks emerge
Slowly but surely, interconnected systems such as Fidonet, Mausnet, C-Net, and Geonet emerged—the latter probably the first commercial network, founded by former manager of automation specialist Diebold, Günther Leue. The hardier data travelers soon faced another issue: the changeover in the Datex-P service. In the Datenschleuder from December 1986 (PDF file), the Chaos Computer Club was not amused that the distance-independent fees for Deutsche Bundespost's Datex-P service were replaced by a more expensive timed model.
(Image:Â Felix Winkelnkemper, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Suddenly, accessing a Network User Address (NUA) cost the Network User (NUI) real money. During the day, the time interval was 50 seconds, and at night, 75 seconds. Previously, the author of these lines dialed his preferred NUA “Compuserve” for 80 Pfennigs, after which the fees stopped, although they continued to accrue hourly at Compuserve, which is why so-called 3rd-pass readers were used, but that's another story.
History, as is well known, repeats itself—sometimes as farce. Deutsche Bundespost was broken up and privatized, and Deutsche Telekom was created, with many new offerings, such as those from its subsidiary T-Com, which tried to get the sluggish business with its in-house BTX system going. Telekom succeeded with a single CD that was included with its in-house magazine T-Com. With it, Btx users at the time could install the Netscape browser in August 1995, which gave internet access in Germany a huge boost.
Users outside this very special comfort zone felt, however, that they were being fooled and complained about the new fee structures. The answer to a complaint is revealing: “Indeed, as a user of online services, you are particularly affected by the telephone tariff structure reform, as neither the typical purchasing behavior of a business customer nor that of a 'normal' private customer applies here. We are aware that online users, in particular, who have previously established long-term connections to a database, must expect increased costs with unchanged usage behavior due to the new tariffs.”
The tariff and timing jungle began
Here, in the style of BTX technology, the internet is considered a connection to a database, but surfers are considered a minority: “It is true that for customers who make almost exclusively long local calls, telephone bills will be higher from the beginning of 1996. This is a distinct minority. The tariff approval process is and cannot be aimed at promoting the—albeit understandable—concerns of the individual customer in their individual telephone behavior.”
Of course, the planners developed a post-office-appropriate solution for the minority. It was called “City Plus”: for DM 24, you could buy 400 units of 90 seconds each, with which you could be connected for 10 hours during the day in the local area to five predefined numbers, for example, to the local internet provider's connection. The offer was later expanded with City Plus 600 and City Plus 800. Those who could or did not want to surf during the day could order City Weekend for DM 5 and dial into the internet in the local area for DM 1.80 per hour in the evening. Did you keep up? The very North German NDR2 satire Stenkelfeld captured the telephone timing tariff madness of the time.
And the internet? As Ron Sommer, the chief privatizer of Telekom, put it in 1995 at the launch of T-Online, formerly Btx: “The internet is a toy for computer freaks; we don't see any future in it.”
(dahe)
