Re: Spread-spectrum net (vulnerability of)

[wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (Bill_Stewart_HOY002_1305)]

Stuart Card suggests that, even if PCS devices are individually billed,
a company could buy a herd of PCS accounts and rent them out to prepaid
anonymous users, without the PCS vendor having to know individual IDs;
the risk is that anonymous deadbeat users can rent them, run up big bills,
and not pay.  ("Let's rent sushi-net and not pay!")
"What important point am I missing here?"

Well, if PCS billing options are sufficiently flexible, XYZ corp could
keep each account registered for a certain amount of usage with the PCS vendor;
the user pays the rent to XYZ in digicash, and prepays for however many 
minutes of sushi-net he wants, and can update payments as he goes along,
akin to putting more coins in a payphone.
If you want convenience, prepay a lot, and only send updates occasionally;
if you only make small payments, you may get hit with more transaction  charges
by paying more often.  The exposure of the reseller is limited by the amount
of deposit kept with the PCS accounts, or equivalently, the maximum charge
permitted for the PCS accounts, and this may get handled by a prepayment deposit.
The exposure of the customer is limited both by the prepayment amount he selects,
and on the ability to tell the bank which digibucks were ripped off if the
reseller defaults, if the digicash system supports that.

Similarly, my exposure to ripoffs by the subway system is limited to how
much I want to spend on metro tickets, as well as my ability to take
(at the cost of anonymity) a bad metro ticket into the office and
yell at people :-)

		Bill
# Bill Stewart    wcs@anchor.ho.att.com  +1-908-949-0705 Fax-4876
# AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4M-312, Crawfords Corner Rd, Holmdel, NJ  07733-3030
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