This diary is meant to give people an idea of what it takes to put a

56k line into their home. Hopefully it will help people avoid my mistakes and duplicate my triumphs.

1 April 1995 - Joe McGuckin of via.net contacts me and suggests that I might be interested in a 56k connection with his company. I express interest, and we begin negotiations.

4 April 1995 - Joe gave me what seems like a real killer price for the 56k line. "That would give you a real feed & would be more reliable than the dial up connection you presently have. Sound doable?" I told him yes.

I ask Craig Warner at CERAM about a possible news machine. I suspect I will need one for the faster inflow of news from the 56k line. He's come up with about a $ 2,400 quote, including a SPARC 1+, 32MB RAM and a 2gb Barracuda. I dropped him another line asking for a few more details and for information on my alternatives.

5 April 1995 - Joe dropped me a line. Said that I should talk to Pac Bell NOW about getting the connection, because it takes "4 to 6 weeks to get a frame relay port reservation". He also suggested that I use a NNTP reader and point to his server, instead of storing news on my system. I call Steve Doi, his Pac Bell contact, straight away.

6 April 1995 - Steve Doi of Pacific Bell called me back at 5:07 pm. Nice fellow. He told me the charge for the Frame Relay would be $ 125.08 a month, and that a setup fee of $ 1,000 was required. I asked if the setup fee could be divided over three months like most Pacific Bell residential charges; he said no. He told me this was due to a lack of Pacific Bell business credit history. If this was a major problem to doing the business, a line-up with the Wintons (use of their credit) might be possible. Hwoever, he would rather not do this. I asked if my impeccable residential line credit would help; he said no. I asked if transferring my residential lines to business service would help; likewise, no.

I asked about additional charges, such as taxes; he told me that he'd look them up for me.

He told me that this kind of multi-line wiring requires something called a weather spout and a conduit. Apparently a contractor can install these materials on your behalf. He told me to coordinate this with the residential phone installer if I was also going to get residential phone lines earlier.

Apparently the whole process of ordering a 56k line is very simple. They give you credit during the installation process; you pay the installation fee with your first bill. The process starts by talking to a Pac Bell representative about the connection.

Then, you wait.

And wait.

The whole process should take about 6 weeks, which gives a installation date of about 20 May. I suspect those 6 weeks will fly amazingly fast, with all I have to do, and all the money I have to find for the various expenses.

Preliminary Budget

Router/56k CSU/DSU: $ 950 + tax ($ 1,028) 56k Phone Install: $ 1,000 First month phone: $ 125.08 First month Joe: $ 150 [substitute list price here] Joe's setup: 150 Total for first month: $ 2,453.08

(As I go on, I'll compile more preliminary budgets based on any additional data I come up with. This way, you'll all get estimate versus actual figures).

Depending on my income from other ventures, a new machine for news may be added to these figures. I'll keep that and any other expenditures separate from the "basic connection" costs to via.net.

? April 1995. Joe gives me my IP network address. The final deal includes a $ 150 setup fee, which I will have to add to my plans. That seems quite reasonable.

12 April 1995. I check out Pacific Bell's web site on the advice of some people on inet-access. Either they're expensive or they're cheap; it's hard to tell. They seem to be claiming a $ 125 frame relay cost (same as with Joe) and a $ 50/month cost for the Internet connection. But it's rather confusingly written, so I'm not sure if the $ 50 is for part or all of the connection. They say elsewhere that a connection can cost "as little as" $ 525 (or was it $ 595?) a month, so I am totally confused about the worth of their offering. Either it's absurdly cheap or about what I would have guessed.

(Steve Doi of Pac Bell commented that nobody at Pac Bell knows what the real charge will be, but he reassured me that my present rate is definitely a bargain. I am relieved).

13 April 1995. I hear from Joe again; he's going to come down this weekend and would like to say what-ho. I should get information on the router later today. However, I don't hear from him again, so I guess he got busy.

26 April 1995. A long silence. Looks like everyone's busy. I have dropped a line to the phone company people just to be sure they haven't forgotten me. They haven't, and I have an installation date of May 9th, less than two weeks away. Nobody's contacted me, though, so I'm a little concerned.

28 April 1995. A red envelope from the phone company. Did they mix up my bills again? No, it says "CONFIRMATION LETTER OF SERVICES ORDERED". Good news: May 9th is indeed my installation date. I'm still a little confused about what I had to have ready; I still haven't heard anything further about the "Weather Spout"; I was hoping the Pac Bell rep would have called to coordinate this by now.

Curiously enough, the confirmation letter only shows part of the charges that I will actually incur in setting up the connection. $ 75/month and $ 375 setup. Apparently the setup and billing for the other end of the connection is a separate issue.

8 May 1995. I haven't heard anything from the phone company, and my promised install date is fast approaching! I call Steve Doi. He contacts a gentleman in Los Angeles who will have an engineer contact me tomorrow about the installation; he says that they have to install something called a terminal on my house, but he doesn't think it will be much of a problem. I get excited because the terminal will let me handle 24 extra lines - quite a bonus!

9 May 1995. My promised install date. By noon, I have not heard from the engineer, so I call the phone guy. He has the engineer call me, and I am expecting a long discussion about why I need that weatherhead thing.

Instead, on the very day of the promised install, he tells me that it cannot be done. Well, it can be, if I pay Pacific Bell $ 9,000 the terminal and wiring.

Apparently, when Pac Bell runs out of phone lines in an area, the person getting the lines has to pay for the new wiring. Pity there's no way in the world I can afford $ 9,000. Even the installation fees for the original connection were a stretch, and this is over and beyond them!

I moan in despair. There HAS to be a better way!

After some consideration, I realize that there is. The company I work for is signing a one year lease on new business premises, and the owner is going to let me set up there. Phone install for ten business lines will be an eye-popping $ 1,000 (including rotary); the monthly bill will be about $ 200. Not that bad compared to residence lines, although that install is a killer on top of the $ 1,000 for the 56k install.

There is one other alternative, if I wanted to keep the system at home. I could get a T1 [look up term] and a Channel Bank. The T1 is provided for the cost of providing the plain services; the channel bank is about $ 4,000. That combination will give me up to 22 lines, and takes up two pairs. Two more pairs are used for the 56k, meaning that the four data lines I presently have would turn into two data channels (for the 56k) and 22 phone lines through the channel bank.

Unfortunately, the $ 4,000 cost, over the $ 2,000 cost of installing business lines and the 56k, is too much for me.

The really bad news is that this causes the 56k line install clock to reset. It will start ticking again only when I have the address for the building into which we will move. And that only happens when Alon [my boss] decides that. He should know by the end of next week, and then we can start things moving again.


That desperate cry for help was the end of the diary as I wrote it. Fortunately, the story has a happy ending: Now, on the 24th of August 1995, I have an installed system and a 56k line in the office.

How did we get from there to here?

A lot of interesting stuff happened. I found no less than two different organizations interested in potentially investing in my service, and setting me up in something far better than a 56k frame relay connection. But, as it turned out, I wound up doing this without financial help from anyone at all. (Except, that is, for my long-suffering day job boss, who was kind enough to let me set the system up here).

In the end, as I struggled with the question of the Router and timing for the connection, it was a struggle, but in the end, a successful one. I have my connection, I have my router, and I'm happy as a clam. Well, maybe not as happy as a clam, after all ... but you get the idea.