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G6Tanuki · 9th Jul 2021, 7:02 pm

"Lowest cost routing" was a big sales-point for the first alternative-to-BT telcos to emerge in the 1980s - I remember several of my clients had contracts with Mercury which included 'smart dialers' which basically recognised when someone at site A was calling someone at site B and prefixed the called number with the code to 'use Mercury not BT' - which essentially gave them free calls between the sites.

I used this to my advantage as a way to get [1200-baud] data-communications between the sites rather than renting EPS8/EPS25 circuits from BT.

Some of these 'data' calls stayed up for weeks!

9th Jul 2021, 7:02 pm	#17
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 14,007	Re: Telephone with Mercury button "Lowest cost routing" was a big sales-point for the first alternative-to-BT telcos to emerge in the 1980s - I remember several of my clients had contracts with Mercury which included 'smart dialers' which basically recognised when someone at site A was calling someone at site B and prefixed the called number with the code to 'use Mercury not BT' - which essentially gave them free calls between the sites. I used this to my advantage as a way to get [1200-baud] data-communications between the sites rather than renting EPS8/EPS25 circuits from BT. Some of these 'data' calls stayed up for weeks!