Wetenschap - 7 december 1995

Cheaper intercontinental phone calls & faxes

I offered one customer my chair and he called for eighteen minutes! It might be a good idea to put comfortable chairs in public telephone boxes, so customers make longer calls," jokes Mr Rasiawan. On Monday November 27th, Rasiawan opened the Wageningen Telecommunication Centre (WTC). For people who regularly make long intercontinental telephone calls, calling at WTC can save you a considerable amount of money. The concept is simple. The USA based Global Access Telegroup offers rates up to 60% cheaper than the Dutch PTT Telephone Company. Rasiawan calls the American company and identifies himself with a personal pincode. He then passes on the phone number to be contacted by a customer and the connection is be made. Rasiawan keeps track of the time with a stopwatch and can thus calculate the price of the call. Rasiawan explains: It is up to the customer. If a custumer wants to call for three minutes I will, after giving a signal, just cut off the connection when the time
up. It is of course also possible to call as long as one likes."

Although the prices at WTC differ highly per country, the majority of destinations can be called for a price that is on average one guilder per minute cheaper compared to the off-peak charges of the Dutch PTT. There is a price list hanging in the window of the WTC office. The list provides charges per minute per country and next to them the PTT prices for comparison. Although WTC is at the moment only open during official shopping hours, Rasiawan hopes to get permission to stay open from 10.00 am until 8.00 pm on week days and from 2.00 till 9.00 pm on Saturday and Sunday. Rasiawan stresses that if people want to call at other times, because of time differences for instance, it is always possible to make an appointment. WTC is located at Nieuwstraat 14a (one of the streets running between the Hoogstraat and the Salverdaplein). Tel: 427034 (Dutch PTT rates apply! )