TELECOM Digest     Sat, 29 Oct 2005 15:09:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 492

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    FCC Delays Vote on Telecoms Mergers Vote (Jeremy Pelofsky)
    Music Video Audience Migrates to Web (Antony Bruno)
    Man Accused of Stealing sex.com Web Site Captured, Jailed (AP News Wire)
    Sprint Nextel to Launch High-Speed Network (Bruce Myerson)
    Los Angeles Numbering, 1940s (Paul Coxwell)
    Old Chicago Numbering (Paul Coxwell)
    Re: Do We Go Overboard for Halloween? (Jim Burks)

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

From: Jeremy Pelofsky <reuters@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: FCC Delays Vote on Telecoms Mergers Vote
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:58:27 -0500


By Jeremy Pelofsky

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it postponed until
Monday a meeting to vote on Verizon Communications' $8.6 billion
purchase of MCI Inc. and SBC Communications Inc.'s $16 billion
acquisition of AT&T Corp.

The FCC had tried to schedule votes several times on Friday, but
sources close to the matter said the commissioners and staff were
still reviewing and negotiating conditions the agency may require
before clearing the deals.

The agency plans to take up the mergers at a public meeting that is
scheduled to start at 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) Monday. An FCC spokesman
declined to comment on the reason for the delay.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had proposed approving the deals without any
conditions. The agency is split with two Republicans and two Democrats
so Martin must convince at least one Democrat to support his decision
or reach a compromise.

One seat on the commission has been vacant since March when then-FCC
Chairman Michael Powell stepped down and President George W. Bush has
yet to name anyone to fill the position.

The lack of a Republican majority for Martin has caused problems
before. He was unable to launch a new review of media ownership
restrictions because of a disagreement between Republicans and
Democrats.

One source close to the matter said some of the conditions under
consideration include freezing for two years or more the wholesale
rates that SBC and Verizon charge competitors for leasing parts of
their networks.

Other conditions could include forcing Verizon and SBC to offer
high-speed Internet service without requiring customers to also sign
up for local telephone service and ensuring a subscriber can surf
where they choose on the Internet, said the source who declined to be
identified.

Competing telephone companies have pushed for price controls for
wholesale access to Verizon's and SBC's networks. Consumer advocates
have urged that the two carriers be forced to offer customers
high-speed Internet service without subscribing to local telephone
service.

Consumer groups have warned that SBC and Verizon's acquisitions of
AT&T and MCI, respectively, would doom competition for customers, lead
to higher prices and result in poorer service.

SBC spokesman Michael Balmoris said "we're confident the FCC recognizes
the benefits of our merger with AT&T, and we look forward to a
favorable vote."

Verizon spokesman David Fish declined to comment.

The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division approved the two
transactions on Thursday on the condition they each offer long-term
leases to competitors for extra lines into some buildings.


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.

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

From: Antony Bruno <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Music Video Audience Migrates to Web
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:54:08 -0500


By Antony Bruno

On November 1, Internet media giant Yahoo will launch two music video
services, and both efforts illustrate the Internet's growing dominance
among music video media.

One will feature the online debut of a different music video each
weekday.  The videos will be available online at Yahoo exclusively for
24 hours. Most will be world premieres, though some will have
simultaneous TV releases. The focus is mainstream acts.

Yahoo's other new music video service is StopWatch, which will
highlight emerging acts. Each week, it will recommend one of three
videos from newer artists based on a user's music-listening history
and stated preferences.

"The Internet is now leading where the music video business is going,"
Yahoo head of programming and label relations Jay Frank says.

By and large, label executives agree.

"If you look at some of the big projects we've done of late," EMI
senior VP of strategic marketing Ted Mico says, "they've pretty much
all launched online."

Even MTV has embraced the Internet. The network launched its Overdrive
site to help keep music video fans engaged with the MTV brand. In
addition, it recently began offering online streaming of its
campus-based mtvU channel in an initiative called mtvU Uber.

"We took it very seriously that our audience's experiences around
music have shifted to the Internet," says Amy Doyle, senior VP of
music and talent programming for MTV. "There's no question it's an
amazing platform to showcase music videos."

MAKING MORE VIDEOS

Label executives equate featured placement of a video on AOL or Yahoo
with appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, in terms of
exposure. For instance, Mariah Carey's "Shake It Off" video received 2
million requests in the first 24 hours it was available on Yahoo
Music, compared with 500,000 requests on MTV's "TRL."

The result: More music videos are being made, and watched, than ever
before.  The number of videos made in 2004 and 2005 so far outpaces
that of the prior three-year period.

One reason labels may welcome this development is that videos made
with the Internet in mind can be cheaper to produce than those aimed
at TV audiences.  Videos viewed on PCs, with their smaller screens and
lower resolution, do not need high production values. This allows
newer artists with little cash to use videos as effectively as
superstar acts.

"The one amazing thing about the Internet is that it is a great
leveler in many ways," Mico says. "If you have a killer idea and can
do it cheaply, it can be just as successful as one with a
million-dollar budget."

More important, the Internet is where the viewers are. About 3 billion
music videos were viewed on Yahoo's portal last year, and AOL says it
receives 3 million-5 million music video requests per day at AOL
Music.

Why do fans prefer to watch music videos online, where the visuals are
less sophisticated than on TV? Because the Internet lets users choose
from an unlimited library of content for on-demand viewing. TV remains
a popular medium for discovering videos, but once fans know what they
want to see, they tap the Internet to do so.

"MTV is clearly not the place to watch music videos anymore," Yankee
Group analyst Nitin Gupta says. "On-demand is really a compelling way
to enjoy music videos, instead of just having them thrown at you on a
couple of music channels."

This on-demand advantage is augmented by the ability to track viewing
patterns and make customized recommendations, as Yahoo will do with
StopWatch.

"One signal by one TV channel will unlikely be able to fully entertain
a broad audience," Yahoo's Frank notes. "We're serving millions of
individual video streams every week, (and) hitting the mark 98% of the
time because we know exactly what that person wants. A TV channel will
never be able to replicate that."

Reuters/Billboard

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.

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

From: Associated Press News Wire <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Man Accused of Stealing sex.com Web Site Finally Captured, Arrested
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:55:58 -0500


A man accused of stealing a pornographic Web site and making millions
of dollars from it was arrested by Mexican authorities.

Stephen Michael Cohen, 57, was taken into custody Thursday as he
applied for a work permit and was turned over to U.S. authorities,
said Tania Tyler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, which
tracks down fugitives.

At a hearing Friday in San Diego federal court, Magistrate Judge Leo
Papas ordered Cohen transferred to Northern California, where a
warrant was issued for his arrest.

"It's good that justice is served," said Gary Kremen, 41, who fought
Cohen for years over the sex.com Web site. "It actually says something
about border cooperation."

The lucrative Web site primarily hosts ads for other sex-related
sites.  Kremen said he spent $4.5 million in legal fees trying to
regain control of it.

A federal judge in 2000 found that Cohen had hijacked the domain name
by forging a letter from Kremen's company. The judge ordered Cohen to
return the site and pay Kremen $65 million.

Cohen failed to appear in court after the judgment was entered and the
judge in 2001 issued an arrest warrant charging him with contempt of
court. Since then, he had been living in Tijuana, according to court
records.

The warrant orders Cohen to remain imprisoned until he returns $25
million that the judge said was illegally transferred out of the
country.

Through the courts, Kremen obtained several of Cohen's assets in the
United States, including a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, a San Diego
suburb.

Kremen also founded match.com, a dating Web site he has since sold.

Cohen has previously served time behind bars. He was sentenced to 46
months in federal prison in 1993 after he was convicted of bankruptcy
fraud in San Diego federal court.

Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.uniontrib.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
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articles daily.

For more headlines from Associated Press stories, go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html  (and)
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html

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

From: Bruce Meyerson <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Sprint Nextel to Launch High-Speed Network
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:56:59 -0500


By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Business Writer

Sprint Nextel Corp. is poised for a full-scale launch of its
high-speed wireless network, a service that will include the first
over-the-air music download store in the United States.

The newly merged cell phone company was planning a series of major
announcements for Monday morning.

In advance of the announcement, Sprint Nextel distributed review units
of a new cell phone equipped with EV-DO, the technology with which the
company's network is being upgraded to offer speedier Internet
connections and other data services.

The Samsung handset also featured a menu icon for music that leads to
a service named "Sprint Music Store" offering downloads from a wide
array of genres for $2.50 per song. The purchase entitles a user to
download a copy of the same song to a computer as well.

There already are a growing number of phones that can store and play
music -- most notably the ROKR handset introduced last month by
Motorola Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. for songs downloaded to a
computer from Apple's popular iTunes store. But only a few overseas
cellular operators have launched services where the music can be
delivered directly to a handset over the air.

Sprint Nextel and Cingular Wireless have stated numerous times they
plan to introduce speedier wireless data capabilities by the end of
this year. Both companies have lagged far behind Verizon Wireless in
deploying such capabilities for business usage on laptops and
multimedia services on high-end phones.

It was unclear how many markets would have access to the new Sprint
service initially. As a prelude to a full-blown launch, Sprint began
turning on its EV-DO service at airports and some downtown business
corridors during the summer. At last count, those limited services
were available in 127 cities.

Cingular, a joint venture between SBC Communications Inc. and
BellSouth Corp., provides high-speed wireless access across six
metropolitan areas using a different technology than Sprint and
Verizon, but has said the "UMTS" service will be available in between
15 and 20 markets by year-end.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon Communications
Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, began rolling out its EV-DO service about
one year ago and now offers it across 61 metropolitan areas.

Sales of the ROKR have been disappointing so far, but cellular
operators remain optimistic that music phones will generate a
lucrative new revenue stream.

Napster has partnered with wireless equipment maker Ericsson to launch
a mobile music service under the Napster brand. Slated to launch in
Europe within a year and in the United States eventually, the service
would allow users to purchase individual tracks and download them
wirelessly.

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
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articles daily.

More audio broadcast news from AP at:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html  (also at)
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/Fednews.html

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

From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Los Angeles Numbering, 1940s
Date:  Sat, 29 Oct 2005 13:21:15 +0100


Last night I watched an old 1946 movie set in Los Angeles,
specifically Hollywood and out to Malibu (the movie is "The Blue
Dahlia" for anyone who wants to look out for it -- Alan Ladd &
Veronica Lake).

Phone numbers were used several times, which I am assuming were of the
2L-4N format -- They were given as name plus four digits and I believe
from previous discussions here that Los Angeles never used 3L-4N
numbering.

One central office name used was Hillside, another was Michigan.  At
least one such call within the area was placed via the operator.  Does
anyone know if either of these exchanges actually existed in Los
Angeles at the time?  Were there still many manual offices in the
city?

The Michigan office was used in reference to a local police
department, the number given being Michigan 5211.  If a Michigan
exchange did in fact exist, does anyone know if this was a genuine
police number for the area?  (If so, could it even still be around
today, possibly as 64x-5211?)


-Paul

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

From: Paul Coxwell <paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk>
Subject:  Old Chicago Numbering
Date:  Sat, 29 Oct 2005 13:22:09 +0100


I've been having a discussion with a friend in Chicago about the
numbering employed there in the past.  Knowing that we have Pat and a
few others who are familiar with the history of the city, I'm sure
somebody might be able to shed some more light on this.

I know from previous comments here that Chicago switched from 3L-4N to
2L-5N somewhere in the late 1940s, but my friend recalls that when he
started with Illinois Bell around 1960 there were still phones around
showing alternate schemes, either 2L-4N or possibly just name plus 4
digits.

At first I wondered if the city had indeed used some sort of 6-digit
numbering and these were just older phones which had never had their
number plates updated, but upon reflection he reckons they may have
been manual offices.

So can anyone recall how widespread manual offices still were in
Chicago around 1960-ish?

A few of his comments:

> Could be that the changeover came in with X-bar.  The office I worked
> in was built in the early fifties with the X-bar as the original
> equipment.  The old Central Office on Western and North Avenues was
> turned into a Plant Department training center and I never saw the kind
> of equipment which was in it originally.  Might be it was an old manual
> office - "Number please."

> We still had an office like this when I started with the company as a
> mailboy in 1960.  One of the offices I deleivered mail to was on Ogden
> Avenue just west of Central Park Avenue - the old Lawndale Office - the
> new Central Office (#1 X-bar) was built two blocks east of Central Park
> on the southwest corner of St. Louis avenue where I delivered mail
> also.

> So it could be that all those number plates I saw on phones were
> remnants of a manual office and not a switched office.  Didn't think of
> that before we started this but that makes sense to me and would
> account for the discrepancies.  In fact, I now feel certain that is the
> explanation.

Also mentioned was the Edgewater office on the north side of Chicago
where he worked mid-1960s.  From his description is sounds like it was
a panel office at that time, or "monkey-on-a-stick" as he says they
referred to it!

We also got to talking about Strowger SxS switches:

> I would imagine local central offices for Illinois Bell might have used
> SXS at some point, but, by the time I got to the field in the late
> sixties, the only place I ever saw them was in PBXes.  They were fun to
> work on though - a real challenge sometimes.

Pat,

I recall you mentioning the Wabash office ("The Wabash Cannonball")
being SxS at one time.  Which part of the city did that serve, and do
you have any idea when it was replaced?

All info will be passed on to help reconcile old memories!


Thanks,

-Paul.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 'Wabash CannonBall' a/k/a Wabash
central office was one of the first, if not the first, central offices
in Chicago, dating from the early 1900's; it served part of the 
downtown business district, which in those days (early 1900's, late
1800's) was a wee bit south of the present 'downtown' area; 'downtown'
tended to be more around Harrison/Van Buren Streets (east/west
streets) and Wabash Avenue. Chicago, after the Great Fire, tended to
build more to the north. The 'numbered' streets as a result are all
south, east/west streets north are all 'named' rather than 'numbered'. 
Wabash was a panel office in the very old days; all I know for sure 
was that Wabash cut over in one large sweep from (mostly) panel with
a bit of SxS tossed in to ESS in 1973 or 74. No wholesale SxS, no
crossbar, just straight to ESS. The Wabash central office is
physically now (and as far back as I can remember) at 65 East Congress
Parkway (corner of Wabash Avenue and Congress). 

On the far north side of the city, the EDGewater central office (so 
named because Lake Michigan at one point lapped at its doorstep until 
the lake was gradually filled in a little [at first with debris from 
the Great Fire, then later as city planners 'moved things around a
little'] and the lake got shoved a few feet east on most of the north
side). EDGewater CO consists of several exchanges; the ones I am 
familiar with are EDGewater (773-334), UPTown (773-878), LOngbeach-1
(773-561), SUnnyside-4 (773-784), and maybe others. Although Edgewater
dates back almost to the earliest of times as well,  and is in the
Uptown neighborhood, for whatever reason it mostly progressed over the
years from panel through step by step to crossbar, and when it was
'cut' fairly early on (memory tells me it was 1976-77) one exchange
there stood out like a sore thumb. City of Chicago was in the process
of getting 911 service going everywhere in the city, except they ran
into some hassles with LOngbeach-1. Everyone got 911 service except
the subscribers with Longbeach numbers (by then it was 312-561). Phone
book said '561 subscribers must continue to dial POlice-5-1313 and
FIre-7-1313.'  And that went on for a few months until telco was able
to successfully bring around Longbeach-1. And we were getting 'zero-plus' 
dialing about the same time; Longbeach was left out of that for a few
months also; _they_ had to dial '0' operator and ask for the long
distance numbers they wanted. Longbeach also had _no_ payhones in it;
and the 9xxx series of numbers were given to 'regular subscribers'
where normally numbers of that type (9xxx) _on other exchanges_ were
often as not given over to payphones. 

A bit of non-telecom history for a few minutes here; the Uptown
neighborhood in Chicago _used to be_ -- like most of Chicago -- a very
elegant, very rich white neighborhood. If you had an UPTown or EDGwater
phone number, you lived somewhere between Ashland Avenue on the west,
Lake Michigan on the east, Montrose Avenue on the south and Foster
Avenue on the north. (I think those are still the boundaries). This is
a neighborhood which, in the 1920-30's had the very elegant Uptown
Theatre (3000 plus seats) at Lawrence and Broadway, the Riviera
Theatre a few doors south, the Aragon Ballroom, the Edgewater Beach
Hotel (_directly_ on the lakefront with its elegant mile-long boardwalk)
Edgewater Hospital, Radio station WEBH (as in *E*dgewater *B*each *H*otel)
and of course, Uptown Station, the very elegant train stop which
served the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Electric Railroad, one
of Samuel Insull's properties which was located at Wilson Street and
Broadway, in the heart of beautiful Uptown, a shopping district only
second in glamor to 63rd Street and Ashland. Its all gone today. Between
the first and second wars, a nice neighborhood for Jewish people; the
Uptown neighborhood began going sour when the Jews moved out (going
more north toward Evanston/Skokie) and poorer white people (known in
street parlance as 'white trash' or 'hillbillies' [by and large people
 from Appalachia] moved in. The hillbillies stayed around through the
1980's -- even a few still today -- but mostly they all ran off in 
dread and terror when the blacks started moving in around 1980 or
so. Now today predominently black (although I remember the hillbilly
population of Uptown quite well and in the early days of the hillbilly
people, also the gay population which lived there.) Uptown Station
is still there, but mostly subdivided into small store fronts with one
tiny entrance going direct to the train tracks where CTA has 
rechristened the whole thing 'Wilson Avenue CTA station', and since
the CTA is a notorius slumlord -- they do _not_ maintain their property
in any way, shape or form -- only when ordered to do so and fined by
building inspectors - the Uptown Station -- what remains of it as a
train depot -- is a total dump, and very filthy. Uptown is now a 
'dumping ground' by social service agencies looking to house hoardes
of mentally ill people, ex-felons, drug addicts, etc. Quite a change
 from the Uptown I remember even in the 1960's. Very sad.   PAT]

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

From: Jim Burks <jbburks@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Do We Go Overboard for Halloween?
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 00:23:35 GMT
Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com


<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message 
news:telecom24.488.6@telecom-digest.org:

> I've noticed that Halloween seems to have grown substantially in
> importance as a holiday.  Years ago it was one night -- kids went
> around and collected candy, maybe a few adults had a costume party.

I noticed several years ago when I was in the UK over October 31, that they 
do not go in for it as much as we do in the US.

Here's an article on it:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/sns-ap-spooked-by-halloween,0,4294835.story?coll=orl-home-promo

Some Europeans Aren't Fans of Halloween
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer

October 26, 2005, 4:20 PM EDT

VIENNA, Austria -- It's almost Halloween -- and all those ghosts,
goblins, tricks and treats are giving Hans Kohler the creeps. So the
mayor of Rankweil, a town near the border with Switzerland, has
launched a one-man campaign disparaging Halloween as a "bad American
habit" and urging families to skip it this year.

"It's an American custom that's got nothing to do with our culture,"
Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors
of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the
boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick
in vandalism and mischief.

Although Halloween has become increasingly popular across Europe --
complete with carved pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, makeshift
houses of horror and costumed children rushing door to door for candy
 -- it's begun to breed a backlash.

Critics see it as the epitome of crass, U.S.-style
commercialism. Clerics and conservatives contend it clashes with the
spirit of traditional Nov. 1 All Saints' Day remembrances.

And it's got purists in countries struggling to retain a sense of
uniqueness in Europe's ever-enlarging melting pot grimacing like Jack
o' Lanterns.

Halloween "undermines our cultural identity," complained the
Rev. Giordano Frosini, a Roman Catholic theologian who serves as
vicar-general in the Diocese of Pistoia near Florence, Italy.

Frosini denounced the holiday as a "manifestation of neo-paganism" and
an expression of American cultural supremacy. "Pumpkins show their
emptiness," he said.

To be sure, Halloween is big business in Europe.

Germans alone spend nearly $170 million, on Halloween costumes,
sweets, decorations and parties. The holiday has become increasingly
popular in Romania, home to the Dracula myth, where discotheques throw
parties with bat and vampire themes.

In Britain, where Halloween celebrations rival those in the United
States, it's the most lucrative day of the year for costume and party
retailers.

"Without Halloween, I don't think we could exist, to be honest," said
Pendra Maisuria, owner of Escapade, a London costume shop that rakes
in 30 percent of its annual sales in the run-up to
Oct. 31. Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, haven't logged any
significant increase in crime.

But not everyone takes such a carefree approach toward the surge in
trick-or-treating -- "giving something sweet or getting something
sour," as it's called in German.

In Austria, where many families get a government child allowance, "parents 
who abuse it to buy Halloween plunder for their kids should be forced to pay 
back the aid," grumbled Othmar Berbig, an Austrian who backs the small but 
strident boycott movement.

In Sweden, even as Halloween's popularity has increased, so have views
of the holiday as an "unnecessary, bad American custom," said Bodil
Nildin-Wall, an expert at the Language and Folklore Institute in
Uppsala.

Italy's Papaboys, a group of pope devotees who include some of the
young Catholics who cheer wildly at Vatican events, have urged
Christians not to take part in what they consider "a party in honor of
Satan and hell," and plan to stage prayer vigils nationwide that
night.

Don't take it all so seriously, counters Gerald Faschingeder, who
heads a Roman Catholic youth alliance in Austria. He sees nothing
particularly evil about glow-in-the-dark skeletons, plastic fangs,
fake blood, rubber tarantulas or latex scars.

"It's a chance for girls and boys to disguise themselves and have some
fun away from loud and demanding adults," Faschingeder said. "For one
evening, at least, kids can feel more powerful than grown-ups."

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


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Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your
career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management
(MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35
credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the
skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including
data, video, and voice networks.

The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College
of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the
College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has
state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus
offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum.  Classes
are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning.

Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at
405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at
http://www.mstm.okstate.edu

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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #492
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