On 14 Aug 1997 Josh Beck said:

Not relevant to East Coast, but PacBell DS1:

$350 + $25/mile.

MFS is signifigantly cheaper, but I don't know their formula.

PacBell has two tariff rates for point-to-point T-1 service. The rate quoted above is their "California" CPUC rate. The other rate is the FCC128 tariff. If more than 10 percent of the data on the line originates or terminates across LATA boundries the customer can request the FCC rate which is $15 per mile. There may be uses of T-1 lines which would never qualify for the lower FCC rate. This is speculation since none of this applies to government, but a T-1 connecting two PBXs in the same city together would probably not qualify for the FCC rate. But consistantly in many discussions with many PacBell service representatives, the only requirement for getting the "good" rate for a T-1 used for networking is that you know enough to ask for it. Not clear from Beck's brief quote, the $350 fixed charge covers the cost of the lines from the serving wire centers to the customer premises. The "milage" is the distance between the serving wire centers. The milage charge can be zero if both ends are served from the same central office. When the milage is not zero, there is an additional charge of about $100/month which covers the capital cost of using PacBell DACS to get in and out of their interoffice network. For "trade show" applications (pull T-1 to convention center for 1 week and then disconnect), the CPUC rate may be overall lower cost than the FCC128 rate because of lower one-time charges. As should be clear from my email address, the interpretations of PB rates are mine and not pacbell's or the University's.