4 ms·

Wait, "stay on the line long enough" was an actual thing? I guess that means shorter calls were free, as they could not be documented/invoiced?

• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  No, it took time to actually trace the call through the exchange(s) and through the Transatlantic communications satellites. I'd recommend you read the book if you are at all interested, it's great.
  • e12e 6y ago
    Interesting. Still wonder how a called could be billed without generating a paper trail that could be used for tracing?
    • retrac 6y ago
      They were billed at the outgoing end, handled at the local exchange for the most part. Handled offline until quite late at a lot of them -- think rolls of paper tapes (later magtape) logging calls, to be read in at the billing office at the end of the month. You'd still have to know which exchange the call was coming from, to track it that way.
      • arminiusreturns 6y ago
        Iirc that was one of the ways they finally got Mitnick back in those days.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]