TELECOM Digest     Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:51:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 422

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Region's Telephone Service Slowly Improving (Keith Darce)
    Japanese Probe Pulls Alongside Asteroid (Eric Talmadge)    
    Katrina Called Worst Ever Storm in U.S. History (Randolph E. Schmid)
    Re: Roaming Charges (Mike)
    Re: Roaming Charges (ranck@vt.edu)
    Re: Its the Spam Problem, Again (Tony P.)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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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

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

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

From: Keith Darce <keith@nola.com>
Subject: Region's Telephone Service Slowly Improving
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:03:56 -0500


By Keith Darce, Business Writer

Damages repaired, systems adjusted

Those irritating busy signals and congested network messages on your
telephone soon may be a thing of the past.

After more than two weeks of sporadic service because of Hurricane
Katrina, telephone lines in southeastern Louisiana are slowly
returning to normal as phone companies not only repair storm-damaged
networks but adjust their systems to contend with population shifts.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana Public Service Commission on Wednesday asked
wireless phone companies in the state to give customers free service
for September and October because wireless phones have become the only
means of communication for many evacuees. Whether they will remains an
open question.

Despite the overall improvement in phone service, about 150,000
BellSouth Corp. phone lines remained dead Wednesday, mostly in the
parishes of Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard, said
Merlin Villar, a spokesman for the region's biggest local phone
service provider. Much of those parishes remain evacuated. "We
honestly do not know when landline phone service will be restored in
for most of New Orleans; no decisions reached yet." 

Outside of the hardest-hit area, most outgoing local and long distance
calls Wednesday were connected on the first try, an improvement from a
couple of days earlier. But many people calling into Baton Rouge and
other southeastern Louisiana cities still had to dial several times to
complete their calls.

BellSouth workers have repaired more than 100 breaks in the company's
buried fiber-optic cable network that serves as the backbone of the
region's local phone system. AT&T technicians had installed a new
fiber-optic line between the Mississippi state line and Bay St. Louis,
Miss., to bypass a pair of flooded computer switches in eastern New
Orleans that are part of the long-distance company's high-capacity
network in the region.

Wireless phone companies also have repaired antennas, also known as
cell sites, in areas that weren't flooded.

Verizon Wireless has restored cell sites in Armstrong Park on the edge
of the French Quarter, on the roof of Royal Sonesta Hotel in the
French Quarter and on top of a residence hall at the Uptown campus of
Tulane University, Verizon spokesman Patrick Kimball said.

"There has been a lot of progress in bringing back up cell sites," he
said.

Cingular's wireless network in southeastern Louisiana was 85 percent
restored by Wednesday afternoon, Cingular spokeswoman Dawn Benton
said.

Even with the progress, dialing into the region from outside Louisiana
remained a problem for many, particularly during peak calling
hours. To prevent the high calling volumes from jamming networks, some
long-distance companies were limiting incoming calls so outgoing calls
from storm victims and relief workers could be completed.

Other companies, such as Sprint, were rerouting many long-distance
calls through other Southern cities because regional switches in New
Orleans were submerged or otherwise inoperable. The rerouting caused
problems for some Sprint customers along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana
to Florida, Sprint spokeswoman Kristen Wallace said.

Call volume on Sprint's network in southeastern Louisiana has doubled
since the storm, only adding to the congestion, she said.

Wireless service providers encouraged customers to send more text
messages because they use up smaller amounts of network capacities and
are easier to complete.

The request for free cell service for customers was made by the public
service commissioners, who do not regulate wireless phone
networks. They sent their request to the Federal Communications
Commission, which has jurisdiction over the companies.

Many wireless service providers already have offered breaks on some
services, phones and accessories.

For example, Sprint customers from areas affected by the hurricane
will not be charged for long-distance calls, roaming on outside
networks, sending text messages or exceeding the number of calling
minutes on their service plan.

Keith Darce can be reached at kdarce@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2003 NOLA.com.

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.

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

From: Eric Talmadge <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Japanese Probe Pulls Alongside Asteroid
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:14:11 -0500


By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

Bringing Japan's most complex space mission near its climax, a probe
is within 12 miles of an asteroid almost 180 million miles from Earth
in an unprecedented rendezvous designed to retrieve rocks from its
surface.

The Hayabusa probe, launched in May 2003, will hover around the
asteroid for about three months before making its brief landing to
recover the samples in early November. The asteroid is located between
Earth and Mars.

"The mission is going very smoothly and proceeding as planned,"
Atsushi Wako, a spokesman for JAXA, Japan's space agency, said
Tuesday.

The asteroid, informally named Itokawa, after Hideo Itokawa, the
father of rocket science in Japan, is only 2,300 feet long and 1,000
feet wide, and has a gravitational pull one-one-hundred-thousandth of
Earth's.

Though it took two years to get there, the asteroid is among the
closest neighbors to Earth other than the moon.

The probe's first mission will be to survey the asteroid with cameras
and infrared imaging gear. It has already begun sending back images,
Wako said.

When Hayabusa moves in for the rendezvous, expected to be over in a
matter of seconds, it will pull up close enough to fire a small bullet
into the asteroid and collect the ejected fragments in a funnel-like
device. It won't be coming back with much -- the amount of material
planners hope to capture wouldn't even fill a teaspoon.

JAXA officials say Hayabusa would be the world's first two-way trip to
an asteroid. A NASA probe collected data for two weeks from the
surface of the Manhattan-sized asteroid Eros in 2001, but it did not
return with physical samples.

Despite a glitch with one of Hayabusa's three gyroscopes, the mission
has been largely mishap-free. Wako said the probe is set to return to
Earth and land in the Australian outback in June 2007.

The success of the mission so far is a major coup for JAXA.

Japan was the fourth country to launch a satellite, in 1972, and this
spring announced a major project to send its first astronauts into
space and set up a base on the moon by 2025.

JAXA already has an unmanned moon survey mission planned. Its SELENE
probe - originally scheduled for launch in 2005, but since delayed --
is designed to orbit the moon, releasing two small satellites that
will measure the moon's magnetic and gravitational field and conduct
other tests for clues about the moon's origin.

It had to abandon a mission to Mars two years ago, however, after the
probe moved off course. The explosion of a domestically designed H-2A
rocket, the centerpiece of the country's space program, in November
2003 also marked a major setback for JAXA's plans. Controllers had to
detonate that rocket and its payload of two spy satellites after a
booster failed to detach.

The failed launch came just one month after China successfully put its
first astronaut into orbit. Beijing has since announced it is aiming
for the moon.

Japan returned to space in February with a successful H-2A launch,
after 15 months on the ground.

On the Net:
JAXA Web site: http://www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html

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.

For other Associated Press headlines and stories, or to listen to AP
News Radio, go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html

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

From: Randolph E. Schmid <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Katrina Called Most Destructive U.S. Storm Ever
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:16:05 -0500


By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer

Hurricane Katrina has become the most destructive such storm ever to
strike the United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration said Thursday.

Katrina's sustained winds reached 175 mph and its minimum central
pressure dropped as low as 902 millibars -- the fourth lowest on record
for an Atlantic hurricane, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center
reported.

The storm weakened slightly before it reached landfall and had less
powerful winds than Hurricane Camille, which devastated coastal
Mississippi in August, 1969.

But the size of Katrina, with hurricane force winds extending 120
miles from its center, was much larger and the destruction more
widespread than Camille.

The central pressure in a hurricane is a good indicator of the
strength of the winds of the storm. The strongest observed hurricane
in the Atlantic basin was Gilbert in 1988 with a pressure of 888
millibars in the northwest Caribbean. Normal average sea level air
pressure is 1,016 millibars.

Katrina was the 11th named storm of a busy season, first striking
southern Florida on August 25 as a Category 1 storm. It quickly
re-intensified once it moved west into the warm Gulf waters, which
were 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. It's the evaporation from
warm ocean waters that provides energy for hurricanes.

Estimates so far are that Katrina cost the Gulf Coast area at least
$125 billion in economic damage and could cost the insurance industry
up to $60 billion in claims, a leading risk assessment firm said in
updated estimates released Friday.

That's significantly higher than the previous record-setting storm,
Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused nearly $21 billion in insured
losses in today's dollars.

On the Net:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.noaa.gov

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. 

For Associated Press headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html

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

From: Mike <malibumike@hotmailnospam.com>
Subject: Re: Roaming Charges
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:35:13 GMT


In article <telecom24.419.8@telecom-digest.org>,
JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com says:

> On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:39:50 GMT, Kevin Lindow
> <KevLindow@nospamgmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

No way would I pay them. So your phone indicates whether a call is
considered a roaming call and you claim your phone didn't say roaming
when making calls. I would tell your phone company to shove it. I
don't know about your credit if you refuse to pay but this is about
principle.

As for calling the family, get another plan that has a sweet long-
distance service. I recommend using a service called OneSuite
(www.onesuite.com). I am under the impression that you can use it with
a cell phone, but you might want to confirm. I use it when I am using
my home phone to call friends in Italy. Kevin, in the long term you
will most likely have to pay the bill but for now I would fight
it. 

Malibu Mike

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

From: ranck@vt.edu
Subject: Re: Roaming Charges
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:34:13 UTC
Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA


hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> light on the phone goes on when roaming.  I have noticed that in
> border areas (e.g. a rest stop on the turnpike at the edge of my
> service territory), that sometimes I'm roaming, sometimes I'm not;
> because the base site antenna used varies all the time even in a fixed
> location.]

This raises a question I thought of recently, but had not bothered to
ask anyone about.  Suppose I start a cell call in local but move to a
roaming tower during the call?  Does the call get charged as roaming
or not?  What about the opposite situation, start of call is roaming
but moves into home area during the call?

I'm guessing the call stays billed at whichever rate it started at,
but that raises the possibility of someone carrying on a 2 hour
conversation as they drive while outside their home area without
paying any roaming fees.  Hmm.  Anyone know for sure?

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

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

From: Tony P. <kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net>
Subject: Re: Its the Spam Problem, Again
Organization: ATCC
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:02:14 -0400


In article <telecom24.421.6@telecom-digest.org>, 
ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu says:

> Today, Thursday, I was confronted with 153 spam items in the _regular_
> mail box; not the 'spam box' where Spam Assassin throws its stuff; I
> am speaking of the items which got through into regular mail. These
> spam items were so wound up and intermixed with the regular, good
> stuff that a half-dozen or so good items got lost in the process,
> including one of the regular features here each day, 'cellular-news'. 

> I use the old-fashioned Unix mail program called 'mailx' here on the
> Digest stuff, and I guess I am going to have to switch to something
> more modern, rather than continually battling with the spam (and
> occassionally losing, due to my clumsy fingers) as I did today.

> PAT

I pass my mail through both Spamassassin and PopFile. That tends to 
filter 99.7% of the crap out. But every now and then one gets through. 
Annoys the crap out of me because it's obvious spam. 

But popfile, and SA allow you to teach it what spam is. 

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


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #422
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