*** Quoting Michiel van der Vlist from a message to Vladimir Donskoy ***

MvdV> My income definitely does *not* allow me a satellite phone.

 VD>  (for example - Carol's connect to FIDO over USA BBS).

MvdV> She is in the US navy making use of some special arrangement. Partly -
MvdV> or mostly - paid for by the US tax payer. She is a special case.

Actually a small correction.  I pay normal Japan price to a local 'switch'
¨which then passes me to a 'at cost' deal. You are right that a cut down
price ¨is involved now, but forget that for the first 2.5 years here, I
didnt have ¨that and it was still more useful to use dialup fidonet from
Sasebo.

There is no 'tax payer' addition, just lack of markup.  I get my line at
'cost' ¨and that is pretty cheap.  My cost to have the line is 32$ this
month but my LD ¨is 4$. My cost to have a line varies with the moon as best
as i can tell and is ¨normally about 25-35$ per month.  My LD charges range
from a high of 20$ to a ¨low of .87$ with 4$ being 'normal'.

No taxpayer money is actually involved unless I do DSNDSN calls
and as far ¨as i know, no other sysops have DSN at home on their BBS.  If
however we do ¨find one, I will try to automate feeds for them and hope for
the best when I am ¨at sea for months on end.  As mentioned earlier, my DSN
number is not in the ¨nodelist as no one without a DSN number can use it.

I am slightly miffed that you thought I was using taxpayer money but can
¨understand the confusion easily.  It's more like I get to use the excess
¨capacity 'at cost' and definatley pay 'cost' with little markup other than
that ¨normal amount to amortize the wages of the workers who maintain the
DSN system.

                                       xxcarol

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