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TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:25:00 EDT Volume 24 : Issue 317 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Feds Fear Air Broadband Terror (Kevin Poulsen) Police Still Using Matrix System (David Royse) Sprint Raises _Everyone_ $1.50 More per Month (David Lazarus) Questions About Verizon-MCI Merger (W. David Gardner) SQL Voice Over IP Exposed! (Newswire) VOIP Sizzles Conference, in Dallas July 20-23 (Conference Announcement) School Becomes Bookless (Newswire) 211 Service in Florida (Ragaram Vadarevu) Sprint Snaps up US Unwired (TELECOM Daily lead From USTA) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kevin Poulsen <newswire@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Feds Fear Air Broadband Terror Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 12:04:04 -0500 By Kevin Poulsen Federal law enforcement officials, fearful that terrorists will exploit emerging in-flight broadband services to remotely activate bombs or coordinate hijackings, are asking regulators for the power to begin eavesdropping on any passenger's internet use within 10 minutes of obtaining court authorization. In joint comments filed with the FCC last Tuesday, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned that a terrorist could use on-board internet access to communicate with confederates on other planes, on the ground or in different sections of the same plane -- all from the comfort of an aisle seat. "There is a short window of opportunity in which action can be taken to thwart a suicidal terrorist hijacking or remedy other crisis situations on board an aircraft, and law enforcement needs to maximize its ability to respond to these potentially lethal situations," the filing reads. The Justice Department hopes to do that with an FCC ruling that satellite-based in-flight broadband services are bound by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, the federal law that required telephone companies to modify their networks to be wiretap-friendly for the FBI. CALEA was originally passed to preserve the Bureau's ability to eavesdrop on telephone calls in the digital age. But last year the FBI and Justice Department persuaded the FCC to interpret the law so it would apply to internet traffic over cable modems and DSL lines. The FCC has already expressed the view that in-flight broadband would likely be covered as well. The Justice Department is asking the commission to require that air-to-ground internet taps be equipped "forthwith, but in no circumstance more than 10 minutes" after the FBI requests them. The filing comes as the FCC considers implementing a licensing scheme that would encourage more companies to enter the satellite-based in-flight broadband market. Currently, only Boeing is licensed to provide such services. Boeing's Connexion system lets passengers plug in to a wired ethernet jack or connect wirelessly over 802.11b, and is available on select flights on a handful of international carriers, including Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Korean Air. No U.S. carrier has announced plans to offer the service. In addition to seeking the rapid-tap technology, the Justice Department filing asks the FCC to require carriers to maintain fine-grained control over their airborne broadband links. This would include the ability to quickly and automatically identify every internet user by name and seat number, remotely cut off a passenger's internet access, cut off all passengers' access without affecting the flight crew's access, or redirect communications to and from the aircraft in the event of a crisis. Officials also expressed concern that terrorists might use in-flight broadband to remotely trigger a bomb hidden on a plane. They asked the FCC to keep such services from being accessible from the cargo hull of an aircraft. "The ability to turn on a broadband-enabled communications device located on board an aircraft ... presents the possibility that either a passenger or someone on the ground could reliably remotely activate a broadband-enabled communications device in flight and use that device as an RCIED (remote-controlled improvised explosive device)," the filing says. Forrester Research analyst Brownlee Thomas supports the Justice Department's proposal, but admits it would raise the barrier of entry for companies wanting to enter the in-flight broadband market. "It does favor the largest players in this space," says Thomas. "I would go so far as to suggest that I think it is the Justice Department's intention to ensure that the doors are not open too wide on this, for the requirement of national security ... that actually makes perfect sense." Despite their safety concerns, federal agencies are generally bullish on airborne broadband, lauding its potential to enhance communications between the air and the ground during a crisis. Copyright 2005, Lycos, Inc. and Wired Magazine. Lycos is a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: David Royse <newswire@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Police Still Using Matrix-Type Database Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 10:22:56 -0500 Police Still Using Matrix-Type Database By DAVID ROYSE, Associated Press Writer TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealous police in the fight against terrorism. But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data -- from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on. Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania still use software that lets investigators quickly cull through much of the data about people that reside in cyberspace. However, without the federal grant for the Matrix data-sharing system, they won't be routinely searching through digital files from other states -- at least for now. Privacy advocates still don't like the idea, saying government shouldn't have easy access to so much information about people who haven't done anything wrong. But law officers bent on keeping the Matrix alive say the information is already out there anyway for companies to use for less noble purposes. Law enforcement has always used such information; it just never had a big computer search tool to quickly find links between people and places. "The media uses that data, attorneys use it, banks use it," said Mark Zadra, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent in charge of the system. "We've been using online data like that for 10 to 15 years. What this does is link those. ... What took law enforcement so long to use technology and get into the 21st century?" Matrix -- the ominous name is shorthand for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange -- was born as an anti-terrorism tool in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Created by Florida law enforcement officials working with a one-time drug-running pilot-turned-millionaire computer whiz named Hank Asher, it was conceived as a way for states to combine data they have on people -- driving records and criminal histories, for example -- with similar records from other states. The company that Asher founded but no longer works for, Seisint Inc., also added to Matrix information gathered in the private sector, including some of what credit card companies collect, such as names, addresses and Social Security numbers -- though actual credit histories were not included. Together, the program would give states a powerful tool that could link someone to several addresses or vehicles, and possibly to other people who lived at those same houses or drove the same car. Those links could help thwart terrorism or solve crimes in which witnesses could provide only partial information, like half of a license plate and the make of a car. The technology is credited in part with helping police crack the Washington, D.C., sniper case in 2002. "It very quickly allows you to identify identities, associates, things like that," said Lt. Col. Ralph Periandi, deputy commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. "Two or three other people who might be connected." Matrix impressed federal officials enough that the program was seeded with $12 million from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Thirteen states eventually signed on or expressed interest in feeding their data into the system, representing half the U.S. population. But over time, several states pulled out, partly because of concerns about the cost or laws governing the transfer of data out of state. California's attorney general decided Matrix "offends fundamental rights of privacy." Those objections were nothing compared to the criticism Matrix encountered from the right and the left, including from the American Civil Liberties Union. "It is essentially an electronic file on everyone whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU in Florida. "I can't think of anything more un-American." When the federal grant for Matrix ended in April - there is dispute over whether the privacy issues may have killed the government's interest - the database itself officially ended as well. But Florida and the three other states are still using its database-searching software. Florida is continuing to seek out companies that can help them build another, larger cache of information. And officials envision one day sharing that data with other states again. In addition to contracting for searching software from Seisint -- now part of information giant LexisNexis -- Florida has requested information from companies on what data they could provide that the police could add to their database. The proposal says Florida police are interested in such privately available data as insurance, financial, property and business records. Although Matrix was designed as a terrorism tool, Zadra said its main value has been for solving more ordinary crimes. He cites success stories ranging from kidnapping to frauds and theft. In fact, in Florida the system is most often queried in fraud investigations, followed closely by robbery, state records show. To support those efforts, the Florida police envision getting what's known as "credit header information" -- basic identifiers for people -- from private credit rating agencies. That's led to fears that police would be looking into people's credit. "Absolutely not true," Zadra said. What the agency wants from credit agencies is the up-to-date addresses that creditors are famously aggressive about getting. "We don't get their account numbers, we don't get their expenditures, we don't track and monitor anybody," Zadra said. "We don't know what library books you're checking out, what X-rated videos people are renting." The agency also wants to limit the searches to information generally available either to the public or to law enforcement without a search warrant, Zadra said. For example, one of the databases the system searches is the FDLE's own registry of sex offenders -- which has become a popular Web site for members of the general public to search for people in their neighborhood. For many privacy advocates Matrix raises the larger question of why so much of this information is already out there in databases for law enforcement to covet. "Technology operates at the speed of light and privacy protection is at a snail's pace," the ACLU's Simon said. "Governments like the state of Florida have not enacted privacy legislation and aren't limiting the circulation of information about you without your knowledge and consent." Zadra said the FDLE is keenly aware of concerns about how the data are used -- but noted that ultimately the files are mostly public data that people have freely given out. He points to the long lines of people at sporting events who will give away information on themselves by filling out a credit application just for a free T-shirt. "They've given their private and personal information to somebody they have no idea about, but when they hear law enforcement wants to use it to solve a crime ... they can't believe it," Zadra said. "We're doing exactly what the public asked us to do after Sept. 11. They said, 'My goodness, how did the law enforcement community allow this to happen?'" Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: David Lazarus <lazarus@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Sprint Adding $1.50 to Everyone's Phone Bill Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:00:04 -0500 by David Lazarus Alamo resident Bryan McCaul received a postcard from Sprint the other day warning that the long-distance provider is about reach deeper into his pocket. "Currently your Sprint long-distance charges are included in the monthly bill you receive from your local phone company," the card said. "Effective Aug. 1, 2005, there will be a $1.50 Single Bill Fee for this service." It explained that "this monthly fee is necessary to offset increased billing costs that Sprint pays to the local phone company to include your long-distance charges on your local bill." McCaul can avoid the $1.50 charge if he opts to receive his bills online. Sprint will also waive the fee for any month in which his long-distance charges top $40. "I don't mind this so much," McCaul told me. "It'll spur me to do online billing. But I wonder about all the people who didn't bother to read the postcard," he said. "I'll bet a lot of people are never going to notice this extra $1.50 charge." Telecom companies routinely come up with creative ways to rake in more money from customers. I reported last week that MCI is introducing a 99-cent monthly fee just for receiving your bill in the mail. In fact, Sprint has been charging a single-bill fee since early 2001, as have AT&T and MCI (which each charge substantially more). Caroline Semerdjian, a Sprint spokeswoman, told me that the company only recently noticed that it had inadvertently neglected to impose the fee on a number of customers nationwide, so that's why the postcards are going out now. She declined to say how many of Sprint's millions of long-distance customers managed to duck the fee for so long. (For that matter, she also declined to say exactly how many millions of long-distance customers Sprint has.) This is the cost that we have to pay SBC to provide this service," Semerdjian said. Christine Mailloux, a telecom attorney at The Utility Reform Network in San Francisco, found this a laughable claim. "There is no way Sprint is paying SBC $1.50 a month per customer," she said. "They're just passing off a profit-making charge as a cost of doing business to make still more profit." For its part, AT&T charges $2.49 a month to combine its long-distance costs with your local bill. Gordon Diamond, an AT&T spokesman, said the fee "covers our costs to process and provide the billing data to the local exchange carrier." MCI, meanwhile, dings long-distance customers with a whopping $3.99 monthly single-bill charge. Debbie Lewis, a company spokeswoman, said this "covers the costs we incur to deliver this service." It's important to remember that single-bill fees are completely discretionary on the part of phone companies. There's no government regulation that says they have to be charged. Marc Bien, an SBC spokesman, said the Bay Area's dominant local-service provider cuts individual single-billing deals with each long-distance company. He declined to say whether the fees charged by the various carriers reflect SBC's cost -- as the long-distance firms would have us believe -- or whether the carriers are significantly marking up the charge. But Bien acknowledged that SBC is already purchasing paper, printing bills and mailing them out as part of its own customer service. As such, he said that including additional long-distance charges represents "an incremental cost." He also observed that the long-distance firms must each have billing systems that are technologically compatible with SBC's so the data can be automatically transferred. "I don't know why each one charges a different rate" for single billing, Bien said. "Perhaps they have different business models." No, they all seem to have the same one. "They just use this as a way to generate revenue," said TURN's Mailloux. ========================= Call waiting: Speaking of Sprint, here's a little fun you can have. Try calling its customer service department at (800) 877-4646. I've tried it more than a dozen times over three days, and nearly every time I get the same recording: "Due to the overwhelming positive response to our products and services, to speak with a Sprint representative, your wait will be approximately 10 minutes." In other words, you can't get through to a service rep because would-be customers are beating down the door in response to Sprint's products and services. You believe that, don't you? Copyright 2005 San Francisco Chronicle NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. ------------------------------ From: W. David Gardner <gardner@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Questions About Verizon-MCI Merger Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:08:59 -0500 By W. David Gardner, TechWeb.com New York State's Public Service Commission has expressed concern that Verizon Communication's proposed takeover of MCI could produce significant consolidation in large and medium business markets. In a white paper issued this week, the PSC termed the consolidation "troubling" and offered some tentative remedies aimed at ensuring that smaller telecom providers could "continue to provide their services to medium and large customers, thereby preserving customer choice." Verizon is proceeding with plans to acquire MCI after a long battle with Qwest, which eventually dropped out of the bidding for MCI. In its analysis of the pending acquisition, the PSC noted that it also reviewed the acquisition of AT&T by SBC Communications. The PSC expressed few reservations about that transaction, however, because SBC has little presence in New York State and, therefore, its acquisition of AT&T would likely have little impact on business and residential users in the state. Verizon is the major telecommunications carrier in New York State. Even so, in its report, the PSC cited comments made by some petitioners that "the combined post-merger scenario could provide a powerful incentive for SBC and Verizon to engage in 'tacit collusion' by not competing in each other's territories" In the wake of the breakup of AT&T two decades ago and the subsequent consolidation of the nation's telephone systems, consumer groups have complained that major telephone companies including Verizon and SBC have been re-monopolizing telecommunications. In a statement released Thursday, Verizon took note of the 78-page PSC report. Thomas McCarroll, Verizon's vice president for regulatory affairs in New York and Connecticut, said the New York communications marketplace is "robustly competitive." He added: "The facts show that the combination of Verizon and MCI will create a strong new competitor whose customer focus and commitment will allow us to better offer innovative new services, packages and products, particularly to the major businesses now served by MCI, without negative effects on competition in any aspect of the market." In its analysis of the Verizon-MCI merger, the PSC suggested that one remedy to instill competition in business enterprise markets would be for smaller carriers to be entitled to receive the same rates and conditions for three years for the wholesale services they have been receiving from MCI. Addressing IP delivery, the PSC suggested a pro-competitive measure requiring Verizon to offer "naked DSL" so its customers could "take advantage of the burgeoning Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) market without also subscribing to Verizon's telephone service." The PSC also suggested that MCI could offer its retail residential service for a year after approval of the merger. Copyright 2005 CMP Media LLC. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Prior to any FCC approval of mergers between Verizon-MCI or SBC-AT&T the Comission should absolutely _insist_ upon making 'naked' or 'dry' DSL a definite requirement from telco as well as total UNE-P networks for companies like Gage and Prairie Stream. If no naked DSL and/or no UNE-P, then no merger. That would be my attitude. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Newswire <newswire@telecom-digest.org> Subject: SQL Voice Over IP Exposed! Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:07:08 -0500 VOIP can Lower telecom costs and help with network consolidation -- and cause security problems if not handled right. f you are thinking of adding voice-over-IP capabilities to your existing infrastructure without upgrading network security, think again. You couLd be inviting disaster. Agency officials can't expect security systems designed to protect data traffic to adequately secure their VOIP communications, experts say. "The idiosyncrasies of voice data may strain your security system to the breaking point," said Richard Kuhn, a computer security specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "You definitely need specialized security products and different architectures when moving to VOIP." NIST recently issued a report titled "Security Considerations for Voice Over IP Systems," which focuses on security problems and recommendations for secure communications. Basically, with VOIR voice data generated during a phone call moves in packets via internal IP networks or the Internet, just as Web pages and e-mail messages do. A handful of agencies, such as the Education and Defense departments, are in various stages of deploying VOIR seeking the lower costs and efficiency Internet telephony can offer compared with traditional phone communications. VOIP can offer greater efficiency in a consolidated voice and data network by enabling users to receive calls on desktop computers. Users can also forward voice mail and e-mail from VOIP phones. Employees traveling to branch offices can have their full phone resources and office numbers transferred to their temporary locations. Additionally, VOIP can be used to keep communications running during a disaster or emergency, giving employees access to their phone resources from IP phones at other locations. But as agencies explore the benefits of VOIP, they must strengthen firewalls, gateways, encryption and authentication methods, and other security components to better protect such traffic, experts say. VOIP hubs can be hacked more easily than traditional PBX phone switches. Even if hackers can't eavesdrop on conversations, they will have access to routing data, such as the number of calls to and from each user, according to a report by the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. Moreover, automated tools can send spit, the VOIP version of spam, to all voice mailboxes within a certain range of the provider, address space or area code. Traditional firewalls might not be as effective in blocking attacks on combined voice and data networks. Firewalls examine packets and block suspected ones at the digital communications port. However, phone calls require opening many communications ports on the firewall -- some sessions may need 10 or more ports. Firewalls that aren't configured for VOIP security might leave a large number of ports continually open, increasing the network's vulnerability. To compound the problem, voice communications are more time -- sensitive than data or even video. Firewalls that look too deeply into voice packets or block too many of them can degrade the quality of phone service. Few users would notice if data packets are slow getting through the firewall, resulting in a slight delay in loading Web pages or even a short pause in a video. But "3 [percent] to 5 percent loss of data packets in a VOIP, and your system is unusable," Kuhn said. A few seconds of latency and jitter, and users will hang up and reach for their cell phones, he said. Kuhn said that although VOIP technology is still emerging, a sufficient number of proprietary products are available to secure a VOIP network. For example, a stateful inspection firewall, which validates traffic by inspecting the contents of packets up through the application layer, can dynamically open and close the correct ports. Still, setting up a secure VOIP network is not merely a matter of purchasing the right products. Kuhn said it requires an overall strategy in which you add to the network incrementally and test each phase as you go. That's the plan at Education. The department's initial forays are all within its internal network. "The current system is a hybrid," said Peter Tseronis, Education's director of converged communications and networking. "If I'm calling someone at Education, I dial a certain prefix on my phone, and it goes over the IP network. If I'm dialing out, it goes over the traditional lines." Aside from deploying VOIP services to more users, a future step at Education might be to provide voice and video via the Internet to some users. That will allow those users to hold videoconferences and take advantage of VOIP while at home or on the road. Many experts expect that most government agencies will follow Education's strategy of getting its internal VOIP network in place before running VOIP services on the public Internet. Roger Farnsworth, marketing manager for secure IP communications at Cisco Systems, said that besides enhancing security, restricting VOIP services to an internal network or virtual private network eliminates compatibility issues. The industry currently supports two VOIP standards: H.323 and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). H.323 allows dissimilar devices to communicate with one another by using a standard protocol. SIP is a standard for initiating an interactive user session that involves multimedia functions such as video, voice and chat. SIP is gradually replacing H.323, but most experts suggest buying components that can support both. But doing so doesn't mean that agency officials will be able to easily and safely use VOIP outside their networks. "There are differences among vendors' implementations of those standards so that you can't count on two different systems interoperating the way you'd like," Farnsworth said. For example, it is difficult to use encryption with VOIP when traffic is moving across two vendors' systems, he said. Although Farnsworth acknowledged that government agencies need to use caution in setting up their systems, they can take some comfort in the knowledge that eavesdropping on unencrypted voice communications is more difficult than capturing and reading e-mail messages via the Internet. "It's not a trivial matter to intercept a VOIP packet stream and reassemble it and come up with usable playback," Farnsworth said. Nevertheless, NIST experts advise users to consider using encryption at the router or other gateway instead of at the VOIP phones. Most VOIP phones are not powerful enough to perform encryption quickly. However, some newer phones offer Advanced Encryption Standard at a reasonable price. Keeping services available For many organizations, availability is at least as important as security. "When users pick up a VOIP phone, they have the same expectations as when they pick up a plain old telephone," said Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber security Industry Alliance. "They want an immediate dial-tone and no delay in placing a call." For the government, expectations not only come from employees using VOIP phones but also from residents who don't know or care what technology the phones use, they just want to get through quickly. "The phone is what enables a lot of national security and emergency services," Kurtz said. Accordingly, he and others suggest a layered approach, with sufficient redundancy built in to provide the availability appropriate to the service. Even for agencies not involved in emergency preparedness, customer service requirements demand availability levels above 90 percent. Lodovico Loquercio, principal network solutions architect at Nortel Federal Solutions, said a voice-grade local-area command and control network must be designed to ensure that there is no single point of failure. "Before going live, prove that if any element fails, your session will remain up and the redundant equipment will take over in 2 seconds or less," he said. That goal does not come cheaply. "In many cases, in order to get [99.999 percent] uptime and security, it may require a complete rip- out or at least a major refresh of technology," Loquercio said. He estimates that for DOD to replicate its current level of voice communication service, which includes functions unique to the military and endto-end security, it would have to spend tens of billions of dollars. Not all agencies need that level of service, but ensuring satisfactory uptime will help sell the project to managers. Jim Dolezal, lead telecommunications consultant at Suss Consulting, expects that concerns about downtime will delay many projects for at least two years. "I think senior managers in agencies are concerned when their [local-area network] goes out and the restore is far longer than they are initially told to expect," Dolezal said. "They don't want to have that happen to their voice communications." In addition, he sees a cultural problem in agencies that maintain separate staffs for phone and data networks. "They are moving closer, but they are not yet one and the same, and that's what will be necessary for VOIP to work," he said. Major VOIP vendors can provide secure, highly available enterprise-level systems, but the technology is still emerging. "Right now, it's hard to get a complete picture of what a fully mature VOIP system that works across many government agencies and in use by private citizens will contain," Kuhn said. So far, all solutions use proprietary elements, which limits interoperability. But Kuhn said open-system products might be\come available in the next two to four years. "At that point, we may be looking at a system that looks much more like the standard phone communications we're all used to," he said. Problems with voice over IP Voice over IP can offer organizations lower telecommunications costs and greater network efficiency through convergence of voice, data and video. But there are some security issues that users need to address. Here are a few findings. * Caller ID services, including those used by first-responder organizations, are often bypassed by VOIP. * VOIP network hubs can be hacked much more easily than PBX phone switches. Hackers can't eavesdrop on conversations, but they will have access to routing data. * Automated tools can send spam over Internet telephony (spit), the VOIP version of spam, to all voice mailboxes in a given range of the provider, address space or area codes. * Conversations over IP can be recorded, duplicated and quickLy distributed to anyone beyond the original audience. * Wireless devices will further complicate VOIP security. Source: Cyber Security Industry Alliance 10 steps to build a secure voice-over-IP network The National Institute of Standards and Technology recently issued a report titled "Security Considerations for Voice Over IP Systems." Below are 10 recommendations from that report. * Understand your agency's level of knowledge and training in VOIP technology before beginning a project. Also evaluate the maturity and quality of your security practices, controls, policies and architectures. * Consider creating separate voice and data networks to protect each one when using products designed for specific types of packets. * Provide a mechanism to allow VOIP traffic to pass through firewalls effectively. Use packet filters that can track the state of connections and block packets from calls that did not originate properly. * Consider using encryption at routers or other gateways to improve performance, instead of at the VOIP phones. * Make sure there is adequate physical security. Unless the VOIP network is encrypted, anyone with physical access to a local-area network could potentially connect monitoring tools and tap phone conversations. * Give special consideration to finding ways to provide E911 emergency services. * Include costs for additional power backup systems when figuring the cost of a VOIP project. * Avoid the use of "softphone" systems, which implement VOIP using an ordinary PC with a headset and special software. The worms, viruses and other malicious software that are common on PCs can migrate to the VOIP system. * If mobile devices are integrated with the VOIP system, choose products that rely on Wi-Fi Protected Access rather than Wired Equivalent Privacy, which can be cracked with publicly available software. * Review statutory requirements regarding privacy and record retention with legal advisers. Laws and rulings governing interception or monitoring of VOIP lines and retention of call records can differ from those for conventional phone systems. Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology "When users pick up a VOIP phone, they have the same expectations as when they pick up a plain old telephone." PAUL KURTZ, CYBER SECURITY INDUSTRY ALLIANCE Find a Link to the National Institute of Standards and Technology report on VOIP security on FCW.com Downlead's Data Call at www.fcw.com/download. Stevens is a freelance journalist who has written about information technology since 1982. Copyright 101 Communications Jun 27, 2005 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, 101 Commuications. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Rich Tehrani <rich@telecom-digest.org> Subject: VOIP Sizzles Conference Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:11:23 -0500 Keynote With Mark Spencer at VoIP Sizzles I will be speaking at this event in a few weeks. In case you haven't been to Dallas in July, everything sizzles, along with VoIP. This is a great name for a great event. Is it worth braving the heat to go to Dallas? Absolutely. The networking opportunities alone last year made I worth my while. There were a number of partnerships and deals struck at the inaugural show last year. I expect this year's event to be even better. See you there. Your invitation VoIP Sizzles in Dallas, July 20-22, 2005 If you are a Telecom, Data/Networking Reseller or a Service Provider we want to make sure you received our invitation to join us at the VoIP Sizzles in Dallas! VoIP Sizzles in Dallas will be a 2 day event for VoIP Professionals focusing on Open Standards and Open Source VoIP solutions. We will have 18 unique sessions most with panels composed of leaders in the field from several companies to give depth and diversity to the sessions. a.. How to resolve E-911 issues? b.. Is Open Source becoming Mainstream ? c.. New Products and solutions your competition hasn't thought about yet! d.. A focused Exhibit showing the latest products for SIP and Open Source based Solutions e.. Training Sessions on core technologies for resellers f.. Best business practices! g.. Peer networking at its strongest! Keynotes by Industry Leaders: Rich Tehrani (TMC) and Mark Spencer (Digium) Rich Tehrani is a VoIP industry expert, visionary, author and columnist. In 1998, he founded the leading magazine focused on IP telephony, INTERNET TELEPHONY; and, in his role as president of TMC, is the owner of the registered trademark for the term Internet Telephony. Rich is also the founder and chairman of INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo, the leading conference focused on VoIP since its launch in 1999. As a writer, Rich's columns appear in every issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY® magazine. He is also the author of "Tehrani's IP Telephony Dictionary", a 300+ page guide to over 10,000 VoIP terms, acronyms, products and services. Rich has also been a keynote or featured speaker at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and Expo, as well as at numerous other VoIP events hosted by companies such as Intel/Dialogic, Lucent, Brooktrout and Inter-Tel. He is a seasoned public speaker. Mark Spencer founded Linux Support Services in 1999 while still a Computer Engineering student at Auburn University. When faced with the high cost of buying a PBX, Mark simply used his Linux PC and knowledge of C code to write his own! This was the beginning of the world-wide phenomenon known as Asterisk, the open source PBX, and caused Mark to shift his business focus from Linux support to supporting Asterisk and opening up the telecom market! Linux Support Services is now known as Digium, and is bringing open source to the telecom market while gaining a foothold in the telecom industry. Mark strongly believes that every technology he creates should be given back to the community. This is why Asterisk is fully open source. Today that model has allowed Asterisk to remain available free of charge, while it has become as robust as the leading and most-expensive PBXs. The Asterisk community has ambassadors and contributors from every corner of the globe. Business Opportunities for Resellers "What works ... what doesn't ... who's making money with what ... Peer networking is invaluable for entrepreneurs," states Leon McCaskill, CEO of InfiNet. On July 22-23, you could be with other successful resellers learning about best business practices and bout VoIP at the same time! Management Track -- peer workshops, panel sessions, presentations focused on best business practices. Success stories and horror stories about becoming a "VoIP reseller". Practical tools and tips that work! Technology Track -- presentations and demos on the technologies that surround VoIP. An embedded half a day course on VoIP Fundamentals and Gateway 101 - (Sponsored by AudioCodes) for your engineers. Get the competitive edge on VoIP! The latest information on VoIP Product & Technology The event will center on four Themes: The PBX and everything related to adding VoIP connectivity or VoIP services. IPBX solutions-appliance and server based. Voice Service Networks for enterprise and carriers. Advanced applications. Our main objective is to inform resellers on the current business opportunities in the VoIP space. We will also show a roadmap for new ABP VARS, on how to get started and stake out a claim in the new field of VoIP. ABP will be presenting gateway technology from AudioCodes for PBX extensions, Netfabric's Cashmere Units to adding VoIP lines to legacy PBXs and Keyless systems, new completely IP based IPBX solutions, snom's latest complete line of Business IP Phones, WiFi Wireless IP Phones, core technology for service providers, Asterisk based solutions, Power over Ethernet, SIP collaboration, conferencing, video conferencing and much more. For service providers we will be showing a new complete carrier class platform from Emergent that includes billing and a self-serve retail front end that can easily be adjusted to fit into the Service provider's online look and feel. Last but not least there will be a lot on E-911 issues short-term workarounds and long-term solutions. Open Source is definitely in the center of attention at the VoIP Sizzles in Dallas with both Asterisk and Pingtel solutions. Registration VoIP Sizzles in Dallas! Register today -- the intensity and peer networking opportunities require us to limit space to a maximum of 200 reseller executives and engineers. ABP Technology, 1850 Crown Drive, Suite #1112 Dallas, Texas - 75234 USA +1 972 831-1600 TrackBack URL for Keynote With Mark Spencer at VoIP Sizzles: http://blog.tmcnet.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/8880 ------------------------------ From: Newswire <newswire@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Arizona School No Longer Uses Textbooks Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 10:19:26 -0500 A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans. Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper. "The efforts are very sporadic," said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. "A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels." Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District, said the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year. He noted that the AIMS test now makes the state standards the curriculum, not textbooks. Arizona students will soon need to pass Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards to graduate from high school. But the move to laptops is not cheap. The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 students for the entire year. The fast-growing district hopes to have 750 students at the high school eventually. A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, Baker said. It's not clear how the change to laptops will work, he conceded. "I'm sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools," he said. On the Net: Vail Unified School District: http://www.vail.k12.az.us/ Information from: Arizona Daily Star, http://www.azstarnet.com Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. Associated Press news and radio available at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html No registration or login required. ------------------------------ From: Raghuram Vadarevu <rv@telecom-digest.org> Subject: Call 211 for Help in Florida Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 22:03:52 -0500 All of you can call 211 for aid soon. Sprint clients can dial it now; BellSouth customers can soon. With hurricane season here, folks are urged to. By RAGHURAM VADAREVU LECANTO - Officials at social service agencies in Citrus County had hoped this year that the much-anticipated 211 telephone line would be up and running before June. They were almost right. Since May, most Citrus residents and businesses could dial 2-1-1 and be connected to the 24-hour, seven-days-a-week phone line that connects those in need with social services agencies in the county. Those residents are customers of Sprint. Customers of BellSouth, who mainly live in South Dunnellon, Citrus Springs and Yankeetown, will have to wait possibly until the end of the month to get the service, said John Marmish, executive director of the United Way of Citrus County. Marmish's agency is administering the 211 contract for the county, and officials overseeing the 211 line have not yet publicized the service because they want to wait until BellSouth customers also have access. With hurricane season in full swing, Marmish said people in the county could take advantage of the 211 line to find food pantries, agencies that offer financial assistance and so forth. Marmish said calls to the line from businesses might get a busy signal because the business has blocked three-digit numbers. To correct the problem, he said, businesses should contact the telephone company. The 211 information can also be accessed online at http://www.211tampabay.org Once there, visitors can click on the "2-1-1 database" link, which will call up a search page. The visitor can select the specific service he is looking for, from assisted living facilities to AIDS testing, support groups to volunteer programs. The visitor to the site, which also serves other counties, can narrow the search to Citrus. The operator of the Web site and the 211 line is called 211 Tampa Bay Cares Inc., a call center in Pinellas County that social service officials in Citrus selected late last year. The call center will have access to a list of social service agencies in Citrus. The 211 system has taken years to get to Citrus. The Federal Communications Commission had designated 211 for information and referrals. Last year, the idea gained momentum when the county health department presented results of its first comprehensive look at health needs in the county and found that many residents wanted the 211 telephone line. The County Commission approved $22,000 for the program, and the Shared Services Alliance, an umbrella group for social service agencies, formed a 211 committee and set about finding a call center. It selected 211 Tampa Bay Cares last fall. The county will pay Citrus United Way to administer the contract with 211 Tampa Bay Cares. The call center can produce weekly, monthly or quarterly reports, and the county can use them to identify areas of need. Since most of Citrus was able to access the 211 line in May, there have been 71 callers from the county, the call center reported. Among those, there were 23 requests for information about financial assistance and 13 for housing. Marmish said he expects those numbers to increase as more people learn about the line. In an e-mail, he said, the "stats on callers (are) before we have announced to the public that the 211 system is fully operational." Officials hope the BellSouth customers will have access by month's end. Raghuram Vadarevu can be reached at rvadarevu@sptimes.com or 564-3627. Copyright 2005 St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South St. Petersburg, FL 33701 727-893-8111 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've a question: Is this new '211' thing similar to '311' as presented in many major cities? Is it to also supplement 311 service in Florida? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 12:35:01 EDT From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA <usta@dailylead.com> Subject: Sprint Snaps up US Unwired Telecom dailyLead from USTA July 11, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=22972&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Sprint snaps up US Unwired BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * IBM, CenterPoint in broadband-over-power-line deal * What does the future hold for T-Mobile? * Mobile industry targets emerging markets with inexpensive phones * Good eyes wireless e-mail market with new partnerships USTA SPOTLIGHT * Register now for tomorrow's free FTTH Deployment Webinar HOT TOPICS * Deutsche Telekom mulls T-Mobile USA sale * Florida man arrested for accessing Wi-Fi network * Mouse to offer mobile phone service * Verizon, TBS sign carriage deal * The next frontier: 100 Mpbs? EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Siemens inks deal with Airbus for in-flight calling technology REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * EU acts on roaming charges Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=22972&l=2017006 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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