TELECOM Digest     Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:14:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 320

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Bernie Ebbers Gets 25-Year Sentence (News Wire)
    Enron Next in Line For Trial and Punishment (News Wire)
    Ebbers Gets 25-Year Prison Sentence (USTelecom dailyLead)
    Western Union Technial Review -- Good Stuff! (Lisa Hancock)
    Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town (Dave Garland)
    Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town (Alan Burkitt-Gray)
    Re: Non-Bell ESS? (Lisa Hancock)
    Re: Bell South Plans Number Changes in Florida (Lisa Hancock)

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and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Associated Press Wire <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Ebbers Gets 25-Year Sentence
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 12:58:03 -0500


By The Associated Press

STRICT SENTENCE: Former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to
25 years in prison -- the toughest term yet in the recent wave of
white-collar scandals.

REPORTING DATE: The judge ordered Ebbers, 63, to report to a federal
prison -- possibly one in Yazoo City, Miss., near his home -- by
Oct. 12. The judge said she'd consider allowing him to remain free
while he appeals.

PLEA FOR LENIENCY: Ebbers' lawyer had argued for a lighter sentence,
citing a lost history of anonymous charitable donations by Ebbers and
friends who wrote letters on his behalf.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The British Broadcasting Company also
had this same news on their wire this morning.  PAT]


Worldcom's ex-boss gets 25 years Prosecutors had called
for Mr Ebbers to be given a life sentence.

Former Worldcom boss Bernard Ebbers wept openly as he was sentenced to
25 years in jail for his part in the scandal which brought down the
firm.  Mr Ebbers was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy in March,
following revelations of an $11bn accounting fraud at Worldcom in
2002.

The 63-year-old was also guilty of seven counts of filing false documents.

The sentence was handed down by federal judge Barbara Jones, who
earlier this week rejected his bid for a new trial.

The sentence was the toughest yet in a string of corporate scandals in
the US.

Mr Ebbers did not address the court. Instead, he wiped his eyes with a
white tissue. Meanwhile, Kristie Ebbers, his wife, cried quietly.

The jail term effectively satisfies pleas from prosecutors for a life
sentence to be imposed on Mr Ebbers.

Mr Ebbers will begin serving his sentence at a federal prison in Yazoo
City, Mississippi, situated close to his home.

'Leader' in crime

Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten had called for a more lenient sentence,
given Mr Ebbers' heart condition and his involvement in charitable
works.

However, Judge Barbara Jones said she did not believe his heart
condition was sufficiently serious to warrant a reduced sentence.

A sentence of anything less would not reflect the
seriousness of the crime.

Barbara Jones, Federal Judge also rejected his lawyers' contention
that the government overstated the losses that investors suffered in
the fraud.

And she rejected their contention that Mr Ebbers was not a mastermind
of the accounting wrongdoing.

Mr Ebbers "was clearly a leader of criminal activity in this
case," the judge said.

"A sentence of anything less would not reflect the seriousness of the
crime."

Biggest bankruptcy

Worldcom's collapse was the biggest bankruptcy in US corporate history.

Some 20,000 workers lost their jobs, while shareholders lost about
$180bn, when the company filed for bankruptcy protection.

A former Worldcom salesman, Henry J Bruin Jr, told the hearing in
Manhattan that the company's collapse had caused him "untold human
carnage" and that he had suffered "sheer hell".

Mr Ebbers is the first of six former Worldcom executives and
accountants facing sentencing this summer.

The remaining five have already pleaded guilty and agreed to
co-operate in the case against their former boss.

On Monday, a judge backed a multi-million dollar settlement under
which Mr Ebbers must surrender most of his personal assets, including
$5m in cash, to resolve a shareholder lawsuit.

The settlement provides for Mr. Ebbers' wife with about $50,000 of her
husband's fortune, and a modest home in Jackson, Mississippi.

Worldcom emerged from bankruptcy last year and is now known as MCI.

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.

Listen to BBC on the net at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html
Listen to AP on the net at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html

------------------------------

From: News Wire <newswire@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Enron Execs Next in Line for Trial, Punishment
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:01:31 -0500


Trial of ex-Enron Net execs nears end

Prosecutors in the trial of five former executives of Enron Corp.'s
failed Internet business wrapped up their arguments on Tuesday,
accusing them of lying about the unit's health and hiding its massive
losses.

"Their goal? To pump up Enron's stock price and line their own
pockets," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Campbell told the jury in
closing arguments of a the trial that has lasted more than 2-1/2
months.

On trial for fraud and conspiracy are Enron Broadband Services' (EBS)
former Co-Chief Executive Joe Hirko, ex-technology executives Rex
Shelby and Scott Yeager, and ex-finance executives Kevin Howard and
Michael Krautz.

EBS' core software packages were touted to Wall Street but never
worked properly and failed to generate much income for the company,
Campbell said.  That prompted executives to engage in accounting fraud
to help cover up millions in losses.

"All of them had goals to play in this scheme to portray EBS as
something it was not," he said.

During weeks of often tedious testimony, the government showed footage
from a January 2000 analysts conference of Hirko and former Enron
Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling describing the
capability of EBS' software to control traffic on Enron's high-speed
Internet network.

Enron's stock jumped nearly $20 in the run-up to that analyst meeting
as the company promoted its Internet business, and it rallied another
$13 the day of the presentation.

Defense lawyers have contended that EBS managers did in fact
successfully roll out several Internet services and honestly believed
their network was operational, although it was still being developed.

In closing arguments, a lawyer for Hirko pointed to a video that
prosecutors showed the court earlier in the trial that was never
actually viewed by analysts at the January 2000 analysts conference.

"To this day, Mr. Campbell clings to (the video) like a life raft,
even though they know it was never played" to analysts, Hirko's
lawyer, David Angeli, told the jury.

Prosecutors admitted their error, but said the video, which showed
Shelby touting EBS software that had not been deployed, was evidence
that the executives were out to mislead investors.

EBS lost hundreds of millions of dollars before Enron Corp. shut it
down in July 2001, just months before the energy company collapsed
into bankruptcy amid its own accounting scandal.

Skilling is not on trial in the EBS case, although he will face
charges related to that business and other criminal counts when he
goes on trial with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay in January 2006.

In addition to the conspiracy and fraud counts, Hirko, Shelby and
Yeager are charged with insider trading and money laundering.

In addition to their salaries, Hirko and Yeager were given $30 million
in Enron stock options, while Shelby was awarded $7.5 million.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

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.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:05:33 EDT
From: USTelecom dailyLead <ustelecom@dailylead.com>
Subject: Ebbers gets 25-year prison sentence


USTelecom dailyLead
July 13, 2005
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23043&l=2017006

		TODAY'S HEADLINES
	
NEWS OF THE DAY
* Ebbers gets 25-year prison sentence
BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH
* Battle over mobile e-mail business intensifies
* Comcast: No plans to buy cellular company
* Survey: Price a barrier to digital home adoption
* Cox picks Empirix for VoIP tests
* Opinion: Yahoo!'s threat against cable
* Skype, Boingo form partnership
USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT 
* Increase Your Sales Revenue Through Training and Incentives
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
* Intel tries Wi-Fi as GPS substitute
* Qualcomm unveils chipset for next-generation 3G networks
* WiMAX ready for primetime?
REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE
* Texas lawmakers take up TV franchise debate

Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others.
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23043&l=2017006

Legal and Privacy information at
http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp

SmartBrief, Inc.
1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Western Union Technial Review -- Good Stuff!
Date: 13 Jul 2005 09:57:02 -0700


I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to those who made
the Western Union Technical Review available on this newsgroup.  It
has a lot of interesting material.

I had a pre-conceinved notion that Western Union was somehow a
"backward" company due to its financial, labor, and government
problems over the years.  However, the Tech Rev demonstrates they were
certainly state of the art.

The earliest issues (1948) describe among other things:

1) Automated switching of messages -- sophisticated automated
equipment to route messages throughout their national network.  The
new switching offices pictured were very modern.

2) Increasing transmission capacity on ocean cables: These challenges
weren't much different than those today of squeezing more bandwidth.
To my surprise, they had synchronous protocols as well as asynchronous
(start-stop) back then.

3) Attempts to develop fibre optic transmission.

4) Development of microwave transmission.

Issues of the 1960s dealt with computerization and those challenges
were the same as today.

Much of the stuff was overhead my head technically.  But the terms and
concepts were similar to what is used in Bell System histories.

I would love to find rate cards for the cost of telegrams in the post
war era as well as long distance telephone calls.  I'm curious to find
the 'tipping point' when the cost of toll calls dropped and the cost
of telegrams went up so that it became cheaper to phone than wire.  My
guess is that occured in the early 1960s.  I'm also curious as to the
volume of telegrams and toll calls, such as when Western Union's peak
year of messages occured.

My local newspaper today had an article on the decline of the Howard
Johnson's restaurant chain -- the very few remaining sites are
declining.  Chains such as HoJo and Horn & Hardart suffered from both
changes in consumer taste as well as poor management.  It's hard to
say which came first.

Oslin's book is not complementary to most Western Union management
teams, the FCC, or the AT&T.  He blamed high AT&T rates and their TWX
competition for hurting WU.

By the way, Oslin noted that WU received a big discount from AT&T.
But when MCI came on the scene, it demanded the same discount for
interconnections.  AT&T responded by eliminaing WU's discount, and
that hurt WU a lot.

I know many old-time chain restaurants could survive on low rent, but
when their leases expired and rent shot up they were forced to close.

Who knows, maybe 50 years from now our kids will be remincising about
the 'once powerful' Microsoft or IBM.

[public replies please]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Or, the 'once powerful Bell System and
AT&T'. Or maybe they will recall the days when Usenet group moderators
actually had news groups virtually free of spam and were not threatened
with having _their_ mail service shut off because of efforts _they_ 
made to fight against spam. Or maybe they will recall when there used
to be a powerful entity on the net called 'ICANN' whose leaders were
all so rotten to the core that spam was allowed to flourish unhindered,
and how when the day finally arrived that spam and scam consumed about
90 percent of the resources and bandwidth that moderators finally did
what ICANN had hoped for all along, threw up their hands in disgust 
and walked away, abandoning all the remaining newsgroups, giving ICANN
the 'perfect  excuse' to hand it all over to commercial sites.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com>
Subject: Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 01:47:23 -0500
Organization: Wizard Information


It was a dark and stormy night when hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> The Victor phonograph company, which became part of RCA, created a
> logo "His Master's Voice" showing a dog, with his ear lifted,
> listening to a phonograph.  This logo became very famous, AFAIK
> remains in use to this day on whoever owns RCA-Victor compact disks
> label (BMG?)

Actually, the logo came from an 1898 painting by Francis Barraud first
titled "Dog looking at and listening to a phonograph" and later
retitled "His Master's Voice".  Mr Barraud tried to sell the painting
to the Edison Bell Company, the leading manufacturer of phonographs,
but they weren't interested.  However, the Gramophone Company was
interested, providing that he painted out the Edison phonograph and
inserted a picture of their model instead.  They bought the revised
painting and the copyright in 1899.  A few years later, they merged
with another company to become the Victor Talking Machine Company, and
eventually that company was bought by RCA.

The dog's name was Nipper, because he bit.  Nipper died in 1895, a few
years before the painting.

http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/event.php?taid=&id=3456893&lid=1

http://www2.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/nipper.htm

------------------------------

Reply-To: alan@burkitt-gray.com
From: Alan Burkitt-Gray, London SE3, UK" <burkittgray@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: RCA Victor Nipper Statues Adorn Town
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:38:14 +0000


hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: "The Victor phonograph company, which
became part of RCA, created a logo "His Master's Voice" showing a dog,
with his ear lifted, listening to a phonograph."


Watch it, Hancock4, get your hands off our dog!!!

Nipper was a British dog. painted by a British artist, and first used
by a British company -- the Gramophone Company, which later became
part of EMI.  The logo was then exported around the world.

Full story from http://www2.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/nipper.htm ...

Nipper the dog was born in Bristol, England in 1884 and so named
because of his tendency to nip the backs of visitors' legs. When his
first master Mark Barraud died destitute in Bristol in 1887, Nipper
was taken to Liverpool in Lancashire, England by Mark's younger
brother Francis, a painter.

In Liverpool Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording
and playing machine and Francis Barraud "often noticed how puzzled he
was to make out where the voice came from". This scene must have been
indelibly printed in Barraud's brain, for it was three years after
Nipper died that he committed it to canvas.

Nipper died in September 1895, having returned from Liverpool to live
with Mark Barraud's widow in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey,
England. Though not a thoroughbred, Nipper had plenty of bull terrier
in him; he never hesitated to take on another dog in a fight, loved
chasing rats and had a fondness for the pheasants in Richmond Park!

In 1898 Barraud completed the painting and registered it on 11
February 1899 as "Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph".

Barraud then decided to rename the painting "His Master's Voice" and
tried to exhibit it at the Royal Academy, but was turned down. He had
no more luck trying to offer it for reproduction in magazines. "No one
would know what the dog was doing" was given as the reason!

Next on Barraud's list was The Edison Bell Company, leading
manufacturer of the cylinder phonograph, but again without
success. "Dogs don't listen to phonographs," the company said.

Barraud was given the advise to repaint the horn from black to gold,
as this might better his opportunity for a sale. With this in mind, in
the summer of 1899 he visited 31 Maiden Lane, home of the newly formed
Gramophone Company, with a photograph of his painting and a request to
borrow a brass horn.

As Barraud later wrote in an article for The Strand magazine: "The
manager, Mr Barry Owen asked me if the picture was for sale and if I
could introduce a machine of their own make, a Gramophone, instead of
the one in the picture. I replied that the picture was for sale and
that I could make the alteration if they would let me have an
instrument to paint from."

On 15 September 1899, The Gramophone Company sent Barraud a letter
making him a formal offer for the picture, which he immediately
accepted. He was paid 50 pounds for the painting and a further 50
pounds for the full copyright. The deal was finally confirmed on 4
October 1899 when a representative from The Gramophone Company saw the
amended painting for the first time.

This painting made its first public appearance on The Gramophone
Company's advertising literature in January 1900, and later on some
novelty promotional items. However, "His Master's Voice" did not
feature on the Company's British letter headings until 1907. The
painting and title were finally registered as a trademark in 1910.

It was also in 1900 that a seemingly innocuous request led to the
eventual disappearance of "His Master's Voice" as a label
trademark. Emile Berliner (1851 - 1928), U.S. inventor of the
gramophone, born in Germany, asked Barry Owen to assign him the
copyright of "His Master's Voice" for America. Owen agreed, as he did
in 1904 to a similar request from Japan. Some eighty years later, when
the arrival of the Compact Disc prompted record companies to start
manufacturing centrally for the world, EMI paid the price of losing
its rights in these two vital territories -- and EMI Classics was
created as a successor to "His Master's Voice".

Meanwhile Francis Barraud spent much of the rest of his working life
painting 24 replicas of his original, as commissioned by The
Gramophone Company. Following his death in 1924 other artists carried
on the tradition until the end of the decade.

During its long active life, the "His Master's Voice" label has
enjoyed a unique reputation with both the music business and the
public. Over the years a healthy market has developed in collecting
the vast array of items produced in its image. A Collectors' Guide,
originally published in 1984, has been now updated for publication in
1997.

Though only used by EMI today as the marketing identity for HMV Shops
in the UK and Europe, the "His Master's Voice" trademark is still
instantly recognised and sits proudly and firmly in the Top 10 of
"Famous Brands of the 20th Century".

Nipper Facts:

Did you know that.....

The "His Master's Voice" painting is now displayed at EMI Music's
Gloucester Place headquarters and when viewed in the right light, the
original phonograph can still be seen underneath the second layer of
paint.

When asked if EMI could place a commemorative plaque on the wall of
Nipper's house in Bristol, the owner's reply was "Yes, if you buy the
house!"

Nipper the dog was buried in Kingston upon Thames, in an area that is
now the rear car park of Lloyds Bank in Clarence Street. As one enters
the bank there is a plaque on the wall stating this.

The British naval officer and antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon
Scott (1868 - 1912) re-created the famous picture during his
exploration to the South Pole (1910 - 1912), capturing one of the
huskies looking at the HMV gramophone presented to him by The
Gramophone Company.

There have been false rumours that the original painting had Nipper
sitting on a coffin listening to a recording of his dead master's
voice.

In 1980 HMV Shops found a Nipper lookalike called Toby for in-store
personal appearances but Toby didn't find friends everywhere and in
1984 he was banned from entering Crufts.

By 1900, 5,000 printed copies of the painting had been produced and
sold to dealers for 2s6d (12.5p) each.

The first souvenirs featuring the Dog & Trumpet were a "handsome
paperweight -- an exact reproduction in bronze with onyx mount of our
well-known picture His Master's Voice" (2s6d/12.5p) and "a handsome
mahogany stand with fittings all nickelled, for cigars, cigarettes and
match and well as a frosted crystal ash disc. The whole is surmounted
with well finished group, representing the well-known subject His
Master's Voice." (10s/50p).

In 1900 the German Branch of The Gramophone Company produced a
mutoscope film of a Nipper lookalike. The drum of this film remains in
the EMI Music Archives.


Alan Burkitt-Gray
Editor, Global Telecoms Business
aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com
www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Non-Bell ESS?
Date: 12 Jul 2005 12:11:16 -0700


Diamond Dave wrote:

> The software problem you're referring to was the infamous crash of the
> AT&T long distance network in 1990 when a software upgrade was applied
> to the over 100 AT&T/Western Electric #4ESS long-haul tandems in the
> US. It brought down most if not all the #4ESS switches to a screeching
> halt for the better part of a day.

No, that's not the one I'm thinking of.

I'm very sure it was a non Western Electric switch.  It was made in
Plano Tx (forgot the maker's name) and it was used for local calls.

A odd sequence of errors would create a condition that was not checked
and the switch would go into a loop and freeze up.  This happened at
the same time in a number of cities -- apparently the cause
circumstances were common at a certain time of day.

I found it in the archives.  Here it is:

   Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
   Date: 3 Jul 91 13:37:22 GMT
   Local: Wed,Jul 3 1991 9:37 am
   Subject: Service Outages Across the Nation

The (Newark, NJ) {Star-Ledger}, Wednesday, 3 Jul 91, p. 59

"Telephone sleuths are on the trail of mysterious service interruptions"

Washington Post Wire Service

   WASHlNGTON - East Coast and West Coast, the pattern has been the
same: At about 11 a.m., an entire region's telephone system collapses.

For the past six days, solving the mystery of the failing phones has
become an obsession for the nation's service-conscious telephone
companies. Yet despite recurring similarities and clues in the
half-dozen failures to date, which have struck Washington, Los
Angeles, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. the detective work remains
mired in unanswered questions.

Yesterday, telephones in Pittsburgh were disabled for about two hours
for the second day running, underlining the phone systems'
vulnerability. The basic pattern was the same-an unexplained deluge of
electronic messages shutting down a computer built by DSC
Communications Corp. of Plano, Texas.

The telephone companies know that the failure is in complex electronic
systems that route calls. But they cannot say why the systems are
failing, why the failures are occurring within days of each other and
why they all begin at the same time of day. They cannot explain why
the failures occur in computers that are not linked electronically and
use different versions of software, the coded instructions that tell
computers how to operate.

 ...

Each of the afflicted machines has for some reason generated millions
of maintenance messages, which normally help a computer keep track of
its internal operations and communicate with others in the
network. These messages generally have priority over messages that are
routing calls. Too many maintenance messages meant there was no room
for routing calls, and the DSC machines ceased to function. The key
question, said John W. Seazholtz, Bell Atlantic vice president for
technology and information services, is "why is their (DSC's) system
going into overload every time we get a little rinky-dink issue that
should have been automatically dealt with?  The software obviously has
a major problem."

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Bell South Plans Number Changes in Florida
Date: 12 Jul 2005 12:07:43 -0700


Iain Thomson wrote:

> Fast-growing northern St. Johns County will be moved from five phone
> exchanges into one.

This occured very often in the 1950s and 1960s as the Bell System
prepared for nationwide subscriber Direct Distance Dialing.

Before DDD, towns had strictly a local phone number.  It could range
anywhere from 3 to 7 digits long as local needs required.

But for DDD, everyone had to have a unique addressable 10 digit
number.  That meant everyone had to fit into a specified exchange
block and area code.  Thus, communities had their numbers changed.
Someone who was perhaps 23 on an old system became (xxx) xxx-0023.

For many years, small communities needed only to dial 5 digits even
when having a 10 digit number.

This was a lot more complex than it sounds.  SxS exchanges had to have
special handling to process 10 digits without adding unnecessary long
switch trains.  Independent telcos had to be worked in.

A lot of people objected to 10 digit phone numbers.  Comedian Alan
King made a big deal about them in his 1962 book.  Critics said the
many numbers (and loss of beloved exchange names) dehumanized
telephone service.  (Little did they know what was to come later!)

------------------------------


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #320
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