----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Hess" <mysidia@gmail.com>
I guess the networking equivalent is --- you stop paying for your OC3 with $BIG_TELCO for a few months, and you get it turned off, but for some reason the physical cabling isn't physically removed. A few months later, you decide you need an OC3 again and exclaim the unfairness of $BIG_TELCO informing you that a fee is required to re-install the OC3 they haven't removed yet.
How unfair right... many thousands of $$ just to flip a switch? One chose to go without service for a few months, therefore should get a lower total cost, based on the new renewal date, right?
Well, I strongly suspect that's a bad analogy: the thing they'd be collecting for would be *the three months of unpaid bills on the circuit*. Possibly plus a deposit to make sure you don't screw them again. But they might well not charge you a new installation charge; I don't know that there's an industry standard practice there, nor that we'd know about if it there was (people who do that aren't much talking about it). And, finally, I suspect that on a circuit the size of an OC-3, you'd be lucky to get to be 30 days late on the payment; "a few" is generally between 3 and 5. But in fact, while you'd be on the hook for the "few months" they let it run while you weren't paying, you would almost certainly *not* owe them for the "few months" after they shut it off, since they weren't providing you the service then. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274