Word: dial
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Fourteen karat GOLD WATCH with a 350th dial...
...says Geller. "The rate is from $32 down." Most of his operating costs are covered by $10 and $20 contributions, which he acknowledges individually on the air ("My thanks today to Beverly, to Topsfield, to Rockport . . . And now let's get back to the music"). Fishermen flipping the dial pause to marvel at a plea for contributions by a local voice, so familiar and yet so strange; they often stay on to sample Mozart or Bach. Guy Wonson, a stonemason, started listening in 1968. He got a kick out of the commercials at first, but the music gradually insinuated itself...
Never before has there been anything quite like the exhaustive commercial referendum, known as "equal access" balloting, in which consumers select the company to carry their long-distance phone calls whenever they dial 1 plus an area code. In sheer numbers, the vote that was drawing near an end may mark the largest election in U.S. history. Yet the selection was being carried on in such higgledy-piggledy fashion that many consumers were probably unaware that any contest was taking place...
...Republic Telecom of Minnesota, which has about 35,000 customers and enjoyed 1985 revenues of $100 million. But a considerable number of the retailers are much smaller operations. What most of them shared was a handicap: to make a long-distance call on their services, customers have had to dial as many as 24 digits on their phones. AT& T alone retained command of the 1-plus-area-code system...
...return them. Depending on the services contending in any area, customers may have been faced with more than a dozen carrier names on some ballots. As equipment capable of handling such functions was installed at local telephone offices, retailers in each area would be given equal access to the dial-1 system -- hence the balloting's informal name. By the Sept. 1 deadline, 71% of all eligible U.S. telephone customers will have been polled; the 20 million to 30 million customers served by U.S. companies other than the Baby Bells are not allowed to vote in this election. They face...