Only if it is a mistake. In this case, since it was an autodialer business doing it, I am guessing it was more of a fine than a useage bill.

Yeah, sorry if I gave the other impression. They got fined since they effectively locked up the 911 call center for 10+ minutes. It was a fine per call since none of the calls were actual emergencies. (I am unclear as to the exact nature of the bill, unfortunately.)

I will add that we once had a dialer shut down an entire town, too. Somewhere out in mid-Texas (US), a company started up with 4 T1s (24 lines each). they hired all the local kids from the area, and trained them. The first day they went live, the activity from the predictive dialer sucked all the computing power away from the other lines in the town, so other businesses/residential phones were inactive. (i.e. Pick it up, no dial tone. Or dial tone after 10 seconds.) They were told to shut down until the local carrier could upgrade the town's CO so it could handle all the traffic. Took 'em a year. Quite amusing on our side, as we (in tech support) made our company's first slogan: "Predictive Dialers - Your town doesn't need those phones!".

Me