From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 7 19:58:41 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id TAA16878; Wed, 7 Feb 1996 19:58:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 19:58:41 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602080058.TAA16878@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #51 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Feb 96 19:58:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 51 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BellSouth Executive Comments (Mike King) U. Mass Pulls Plug on Web Site (Boston Globe via Tad Cook) Pacific Bell Offers Rate Calculator on Web Site (Robert Deward) Re: California Finally Gets CID (Lauren Weinstein) Re: Beyond Area Code 888: What Next? (David Jensen) Re: Call Waiting Light With Ameritech Voice Mail (Gerry Wheeler) Re: Still More Nokia Cell Phone Programming Help Wanted (Henoch Duboff) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (John R. Levine) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (Jack Hamilton) Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma (Craig Nordin) Re: Ameritech Cellular Brownouts (Randolph J. Herber) Re: Hearing Radio on Phone Line (Lionel Ancelet) Re: Hearing Radio on Phone Line (Tony Pelliccio) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: BellSouth Executive Comments Date: 07 Feb 1996 12:00:00 GMT Forwarded to the Digest FYI: From: BellSouth Reply-To: info@corp.bellsouth.com State Executive Says BellSouth Has Cut $140 Million in Rates; Pledges to Keep Service Affordable, Reliable For additional information: Clifton Metcalf 704-565-3329 (pager) February 5, 1996 RALEIGH-BellSouth's top North Carolina executive today called for continued affordable, reliable telephone service for all the citizens of North Carolina. J. Billie Ray, Jr., President of BellSouth's North Carolina operations, testified before the N.C. Utilities Commission regarding the company's price regulation plan. The plan would change the way BellSouth is regulated, shifting the emphasis to the company's prices rather than its earnings. Ray said that under the old regulatory system, now rendered obsolete by changes in technology and legislation, rates have fallen faster in North Carolina over the past 11 years for residential and single-line business customers than for any other Southeastern state. "Contrary to what I read in the newspaper, and to what at least one company has said in advertising, we have reduced rates," Ray testified. "Rates have been reduced 36 times since they were set in the last rates case. In terms of annual rate reductions, not cumulative, the total is nearly $140." The proposed price regulation plan calls for an additional $60 million reduction. Ray said that a large part of the reduction over the past decade was in lower access rates-charges paid by long distance companies for completing calls over BellSouth's network. Ray's exhibits show that BellSouth's rates in North Carolina are the third lowest in the southeast for residential customers and the second lowest for single-line businesses. Average residential rates dropped from $14.77 per month Th. $12.51, a decrease of 15.30 percent. Average single-line business rates dropped from $39.09 to $33.89, a decrease of 13.30 percent. "The only telephone companies I know of who have raised their rates are AT&T and the long distance companies," Ray said in a statement. "I could not begin to guess why some of these companies have been making blatantly false statements in the press regarding our rate reductions. Surely they must know that the commission is aware of all our rate reductions and that all our rates are on file as part of the public record." The change to a competitive local telephone industry will challenge the commitment to affordable local telephone service for all citizens because BellSouth's competitors will target customers of services which are currently priced above their cost. This pricing formula allows for basic residential service to be priced below cost, thus assuring affordability, he added. "I don't know of any of these fine companies which are going to be willing to serve all customers," Ray testified, referring to future competitors. "BellSouth has done it for decades and we are willing to continue doing it. But with the changes which have occurred and are occurring in our industry, we can't continue doing it under the old way of regulation. "In this new world, the monopoly franchise is gone," he said. "The risk and rewards of investment, whether good or bad, will rest with our owners, not with our customers." -------------- Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: U. Mass Pulls Plug on Web Site Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:42:35 PST UMass pulls plug on Holocaust-didn't-happen Web site BY HIAWATHA BRAY Boston Globe The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has pulled the plug on the offerings of an Internet site that claim the Nazi Holocaust never happened. Computer science department chairman David Stemple on Thursday night ordered graduate student Lewis McCarthy to remove the material from the school's computer system. But McCarthy isn't a neo-Nazi. In fact, he's a believer in absolute freedom of speech. McCarthy is part of a nationwide movement to protest recent attempts in Germany to censor the Internet. Last week, at the behest of German government officials, the German telephone service Deutsche Telekom barred its Internet customers from downloading web pages stored at Web Communications of Santa Cruz. One of Web Communications' customers is Ernst Zundel, a German-born resident of Canada who claims that the Nazis never carried out a program of mass extermination of Jews. Many Internet users are already furious at German officials for their efforts to block sexually explicit newsgroups on the CompuServe on-line service. For some, the effort to silence Zundel was the last straw. Two free-speech advocates, Rich Graves at Stanford University and Declan McCullagh at Carnegie-Mellon University, obtained the material on Zundel's web site and posted it on their web sites. They also began distributing the material to others on the Internet, urging them to post it in locations not blocked by Deutsche Telekom. The idea was to put the Zundel material on so many web sites that Germany would have to completely disconnect from the Internet to censor it. Links to the Zundel site have also appeared at MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and Community ConneXion, a private Internet access provider in Berkeley, Calif. Like others who posted the material, McCarthy declared his utter loathing for Nazism. But he said the threat of Internet censorship is more menacing than Nazi propaganda. "Deutsche Telekom is trying to suppress unpopular speech, and I believe that's wrong and dangerous." Zundel, speaking from his home in Toronto, admitted most of the people defending his web site abhor his opinions. Still, he's delighted that so many Internet users have come to his aid. "It's the dream of every dissident come true. The good Lord is rewarding me for my good deeds." ------------------------------ From: bobd@well.sf.ca.us (Robert Deward) Subject: Pacific Bell Offers Rate Calculator on Web Site Date: 7 Feb 1996 22:49:03 GMT Organization: The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA The Pacific Bell Home Page has just added a calculator feature that lets business customers determine the price of phone calls within Pacific BellUs service areas. Customers answer brief questions about their businessUs calling patterns, and the program suggests one of several discount plans that could provide additional savings. These savings can often reach 65 percent with the right discount option, according to Steve Haggerty, Pacific BellUs director of outbound usage. The new service, called the Business Call Pricing Information Tool, is available on the Pacific Bell Home Page at . Bob Deward, Pacific Telesis External Affairs, S.F. voice: 415-394-3646 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Feb 96 13:26:00 PST From: lauren@vortex.com (Lauren Weinstein) Subject: Re: California Finally Gets CID Greetings. Bruce Roberts' recent message, quoting the headline and item "Court OKs Caller ID Without PUC Restrictions" needs some clarification. The decision essentially meant that the California PUC can't require per-line blocking by *default* for customers with non-published numbers. Free intra and interstate per-call and per-line CNID blocking/unblocking will still be available for all California telephone subscribers. CNID is slated to become available around June 1 after a public education period to inform subscribers about CNID and their ID blocking options. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: David Jensen Subject: Re: Beyond Area Code 888: What Next? Date: 7 Feb 1996 15:04:20 GMT Organization: Telephone & Data Systems, Inc. > It was petitioner's thought that the first two digits of all NPA > codes that begin 88 be reserved exclusively for use as Toll Free NPAs. > In other words, "Area Code" 880 through 889 be reserved for use as > the Toll Free block for use in assignment of numbers for that purpose. We might want to do this with major metropolitan areas,too. The NPA for Chicagoland could be 63. Map those with 312 to 632 and 708 to 638. Assign the others as needed instead of the current splits. This gives 8 digit dialing in Chicagoland and 8 traditional NPA's (63-0 and 63-1 would conflict with other assignments in 8 digit dialing). Dave Jensen ------------------------------ From: gwheeler@gate.net (Gerry Wheeler) Subject: Re: Call Waiting Light With Ameritech Voice Mail Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 15:33:52 GMT Organization: SpectraFAX Corp. Reply-To: gwheeler@gate.net C. Wheeler wrote: > gwheeler@gate.net (Gerry Wheeler) wrote: >> When the phone is onhook, the usual loop voltage (about 48 v) appears >> across the phone, because it is a open circuit and there is no current >> flowing. The call waiting indicator is a neon bulb (or an electronic >> equivalent) which won't light at that voltage. But, by putting a >> higher voltage (about 100 volts?) on that loop, the voltage *will* be >> enough to light a neon bulb. So, the message waiting feature just >> determines what voltage is applied to the phone's loop. > Of course it must be AC. And it has to be a relativly high freqency. > 100 VAC at a low freq would make the ringer sound on a POT set. > Signals for neon message waiting indicators are usually above 1 KHz. No, it's 100V DC as far as I know. The capacitor in series with the ringer prevents the DC from flowing there. The phone draws a little current with the light on (where it normally wouldn't), but not enough to make the CO think the phone is offhook. (This is similar to the phones which have line-powered LEDs to light up the dial.) Some test equipment uses a higher-than-normal voltage, and the neon will turn on during testing and the equipment will indicate a high impedance short. On the other hand, if you want to have a visual ringing indicator, you can connect a neon bulb in series with a capacitor across the line. The normal loop DC voltage will not flow through it, but the high AC ringing voltage will light the neon. But that's getting off topic. Gerry Wheeler 941-643-8739 voice SpectraFAX Corp. 941-643-5070 fax Naples, FL gwheeler@gate.net ------------------------------ From: hd@chai.com (Henoch Duboff) Subject: Re: Still More Nokia Cell Phone Programming Help Wanted Date: 7 Feb 1996 21:37:07 GMT Organization: CHAI.COM > Next quiz for the Cell phone gurus out there: > The dealer that programmed my phone, obviously a devout Florida State > fan, apparently felt like taking revenge on me for rubbing in that my > Alma Mater, The University of Florida, had a somewhat better season > than FSU. He proceeded to program a message into my phone that says > "NOLES RULE!" whenever the phone is powered on. > This is obviously unacceptable. Does anyone out there in netland know > how this message is programmed (or more to the point, changed) to > something more correct with the universe (like perhaps "GATORS RULE!")? I'm looking at the manual for the Nokia 232. Seems that memory position 99 is reserved for your phone number (cannot be changed) but the ALPHA message for position #99 is the "wake up" message, which is able to be changed. Just check on memory position #99, assuming you are using a 232 -- not sure which model is yours. Hope that helps. Regards, Henoch Duboff hd@chai.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Feb 96 10:51 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > While filling in details for modification of my domain (dxm.org) I > realised that I haven't seen much written on domain hijacking. The InterNIC is supposed to send confirmation to the existing contact people for a domain whenever they make a change. I sent in a change for a domain on my machine and they wrote back to say they needed to hear from the registered administrator, who happens to be my sister. This should at least alert domain administrators to inadvertent or deliberate domain hijacking. Given how fast the InterNIC has had to grow, I can believe that they may sometimes not always catch this. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ From: jfh@acm.org (Jack Hamilton) Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 06:55:45 GMT Organization: kd6ttl In message , Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > How many sysadmins out there do what victim.com could have done? I.e. > run nslookup on victim.com regularly to check that the nameservers > listed are as they should be, and if they're not, to immediately > send a new update to InterNIC? Not many, I believe. On the other > hand I know no case of domain hijacking actually taking place. I don't know of any, but there have been cases where a domain name was maliciously removed from the name servers, probably through the mechanism you described. The victim was a service in the Northwest, eskimo.com I think. Someone on Internet Relay Chat had gotten angry at them for some reason, and proceeded to take revenge. It took several days to get things back to normal. The lack of security on the net is becoming more and more of a problem. "domain hijacking" certainly *will* happen if if hasn't already, just as forged moderation to moderated groups has happened (to comp.dcom.telecom, among others). I really don't want the government to get involved, but it's inevitable if sysops don't start enforcing responsible behavior among their users. Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org ------------------------------ From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin) Subject: Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma Date: 7 Feb 1996 21:09:01 GMT Organization: Virtual Networks hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa) writes: > I can't predict the future -- maybe 25 years down the road personal > email transmissions will be everywhere. But at present, we still have > a very long road to climb. The Internet is already up on par with Disco as a pervasive social revolution. What is it that you want to happen before you call it "significant"? The Internet's self-annealing nature means that it is impervious to kings and states. It has already stabilized the soviet union during a coup and destabilized mexico's economy during a native uprising. The perfect Samizdat, self-propelled, anonymous, autonomous. The numbers have not bent down yet, though they should have. People are connecting at an amazing rate. The "churn" you talk about is not in a static non-growth pattern. Meanwhile, the greatest body of stored information is now the World Wide Web and even if the audience goes down (ha!) the amount of data stored will be 100 times the current size within two years. Whats not to love? The sleaze? The bomb information finding its way to idiots? The greatest conspiracy theories so far? I think the Internet has already caused powerful politicians to become more honest. I think it has done more for free trade than NAFTA. I think it prevents wars. I think the major growth this year will still be in the US, but 97 and 98 will cause China to open up and push forward a new prosperity level for almost all third-world countries. I think it will cause N. Korea to give up it's isolation and cause the rest of the world to fear Iraq and Iran less. Sign Me "Dr. No" http://www.vni.net/ cnordin@vni.net Fly VNI: Send E-Mail to info@vni.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Feb 96 15:06:51 -0600 From: Super-User Subject: Re: Ameritech Cellular Brownouts Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory In article Mike Peacock writes: > Over the past 45 days, I've noticed that my Ameritech cellular service > is roaming in fewer and fewer places. Places where I used to be able > to roam but can no longer include: Phoenix, Northern New Jersey, > Philadelphia and Orange County California. Since I spend about 60% of > my time among these cities, the value of my Ameritech service has > decreased significantly. > Fed up, I finally called Ameritech Cellular customer service this > evening. After navigating my way through their IVR front-end, I spoke > to one of the nicest customer service reps I've ever encountered. She > told me about a policy of roaming brownouts that Ameritech has > instituted because of cellular fraud. She gave me the following list > of brownout markets: > Hartford, CT Phoenix, AZ Minneapolis, MN > Philadelphia, PA St. Louis, MO Balitimore, MD > Miami, FL Washington, DC Memphis, TN > Boston, MA Atlanta, GA Los Angeles, CA > New York, NY South Bend, IN > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Which Ameritech market are you in? > Could you explain what is meant by 'brownout'? Does that mean all > roaming has been discontinued in those places? What good would > changing your number do? When I talked to Ameritech in Chicago the > other day specifically about roaming, not a word was mentioned on > this. Please advise further details. PAT Quoting from my NovaCellular (a third party reseller of Ameritech and Cellular One service; my service being resold Ameritech) bill: *************************IMPORTANT NOTICE************************* The increase in cellular fraud has necessitated certain high risk cities to terminate roaming privileges for visiting cellular users. The following is a list of participating cities. Atlanta Grand Rapids Memphis New York City St Louis Baltimore Hartford Miami Phoenix South Bend IN Boston Los Angeles Minneapolis Rochester NY Washington DC Our Customer Service Center can be reached at (800) 254-8991 """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" My question is "what makes roamers more of a source of fraud than local customers?" I thought that almost all fraud is either `lost' phone fraud or capture of either ESN -- telephone-number pair or ESN -- telephone-number -- PIN triple fraud. Either of these sources of fraud does not seem to be any worse a source of fraud for a roamer than a local customer and may be less of a source of fraud. During my exposure to AMPS at AT&T Bell Labs, Indian Hill, admittedly light on the fine details, I gathered the impression that as part of the setting up of roaming the host system obtained verification of the validity of the ESN -- telephone-number pair from the native system. If this verification is not being done at the time that roaming is being set up and rather is handled during the billing process, then I can see why roamers might be a significant source of fraud. Randolph J. Herber, herber@dcdrjh.fnal.gov, +1 708 840 2966, CD/HQ CDF-PK-149O (Speaking for myself and not for US, US DOE, FNAL nor URA.) (Product, trade, or service marks herein belong to their respective owners.) N 41 50 26.3 W 88 14 54.4 approximately. ------------------------------ From: la@well.com (Lionel Ancelet) Subject: Re: Hearing Radio on Phone Line Reply-To: la@well.com Organization: The Well Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 15:59:49 GMT sandler%asabet.dnet.dec.com@mrnews.mro.dec.com (David Sandler) wrote: > I have a two line phone at home with one line plugged into a wall jack > a few feet away and the other line plugged into a wall jack across the > room using a 25 foot cord. On the line with the 25 foot cord I always > hear radio signals in the background. On the same line in another > room and from a much smaller cord in the same jack there are no radio > sounds. The other line on that phone does not have radio sounds > either. I tried replacing the cord because my old cord had a cut in it > and was taped up but the new one still has the radio sounds. > I would like any suggestions besides using a much shorter cord because > I need to be able to reach at least 12 feet. Sounds like there is a loose contact somewhere acting as a diode, hence demodulating a strong signal from a nearby AM radio transmitter. Lionel URL: http://www.well.com/~la/ ------------------------------ From: kd1nr@anomaly.ideamation.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Hearing Radio on Phone Line Date: 7 Feb 1996 11:05:11 -0500 Organization: Ideamation, Inc. In article , David Sandler wrote: > I have a two line phone at home with one line plugged into a wall jack > a few feet away and the other line plugged into a wall jack across the > room using a 25 foot cord. On the line with the 25 foot cord I always > hear radio signals in the background. On the same line in another > room and from a much smaller cord in the same jack there are no radio > sounds. The other line on that phone does not have radio sounds > either. I tried replacing the cord because my old cord had a cut in it > and was taped up but the new one still has the radio sounds. > I would like any suggestions besides using a much shorter cord because > I need to be able to reach at least 12 feet. The reason you're hearing a radio signal on that line is because the 25ft. cord is acting as a nicely tuned antenna for that particular frequency -- usually at the low end of the AM broadcast band. Talk to some folks at the A.R.R.L., specifically Ed Hare (ehare@arrl.org) about the best ways to cure this type of interference. Tony Pelliccio, KD1NR As offensive as I wanna be. kd1nr@anomaly.ideamation.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #51 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 7 21:13:03 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA24219; Wed, 7 Feb 1996 21:13:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 21:13:03 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602080213.VAA24219@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #52 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Feb 96 21:13:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 52 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CATV Frequency Plan (Greg Monti) Test Numbers for New NPA's (was 888 Test Numbers Yet?) (Mark J Cuccia) Not Taught at Harvard: Multilevel Marketing (WSJ via Tad Cook) Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma (Dan O'Conor) Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems (Rupert Baines) Caller ID Blocker - How? (Richard Dervan) Generations of Engineers (Jane Fraser) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 7 Feb 96 03:22:29 PST From: Greg Monti Subject: CATV Frequency Plan Perhaps the following analysis will clear up most of Pat's mysterious cable TV frequency plan questions and why they appear at different frequencies on the cable converter supplied by the cable operator and the one purchased at Radio Shack. In the world of cable TV, there is a standard plan of 6 MHz wide video-audio channels, listed in the table below in the Electronic Industries Association column. I adapted this table from a chart published in _Communications Technology_ magazine, which is a cable TV engineering trade mag, dated July, 1990. The frequencies at the left side of the table are the upper and lower limits of the 6 MHz channels. However, the cable TV industry existed long before the EIA had a standard channel plan published. Some system operators used frequencies which do not have EIA channel numbers. These astute operators noted that there are exactly eight 6-MHz-wide chunks of spectrum between the top edge of channel 4 (at 72 MHz) and the bottom edge of cable channel 14 (at 120 MHz). These operators fugured, correctly, that by not offering any FM radio service (88-108 MHz) and by moving channels 5 and 6 two MHz off their real, over-the-air frequencies, they could get eight channels of video into that 72 to 120 MHz bandwidth. The EIA channel plan takes most of this variation into account. The 1990 publication I got this from only had EIA channels up to 86. They probably go higher now. You can fill them in yourself. Don't forget to skip over channels 95 to 99, which are already used. Now, here's the twist: One of the major manufacturers of cable TV converters is (and has been) Jerrold, which now goes under the brand name of its parent company, General Instrument. Jerrold-General Instrument boxes DO NOT follow the EIA standard channel numebring plan for all designations between 72 and 120 MHz. Other manufacturers, like Zenith, Scientific-Atlanta, and Panasonic *do* largely follow the EIA plan. Jerrold boxes are not handicapped in any way. They can still receive all the channels. They just label them (and sort them for channel-surfing purposes) with different channel numbers than the rest of the world. Virtually all VCR and TV set manufacturers follow the EIA plan for their "cable-ready" tuners. If you are a cable operator that hands out exclusively Jerrold boxes, or if you are a subscriber who uses only Jerrold boxes, you may perceive the Jerrold box's frequency plan, which is widely publicized in the cable operator's literature, as being "standard" while you perceive your VCR or cable-ready TV set to be "non-standard". It's actually the Jerrold box that's non-standard. If you plug a cable box using the Jerrold channel plan into a system whose printed publicity announces the EIA channel plan, you will see many of the channels "eight channels out of whack". With that said, Pat's questions: > Above channel 63 we get a > couple of odd things: Something which the VCR refers to as 'channel > 77' presents just a lot of snow on the screen and static. This is leakage of the over-the-air channel 26 in Chicago leaking into the input wiring of the VCR. Channel 26 (UHF over-the-air) is at almost (not quite) the same frequency as EIA cable-ready channel 77. Enough signal is getting in that the VCR can figure out that there is a real, non-scrambled video transmission there and un-mutes, letting you see the static. > This is likewise the case on 'channel 98' This is over-the-air UHF channel 38, which overlaps cable-ready channels 97 and 98, leaking into the VCR's tuner. > and 'channel 125'. This is over-the-air UHF channel 66 leaking in. > When I load the channel presets from 'TV' rather than from 'CATV' I > get the usual over-the air channels but then in addition I get the > non-existent 'channel 17' which turns out to be the TCI Cable 'TV > Guide to Todays Programs' which if selected via CATV is on cable > channel 21. This one required some sleuthing. Cable channel 21 is at 162 to 168 MHz. Over-the-air UHF channel 17 is at 488 to 494 MHz. The video carrier of cable 21 is at 163.25 MHz. Its third harmonic is at 489.75 MHz, which places it in over-the-air channel 17's frequency band. Since there is no over-the-air channel 17 in Chicago, your TV's UHF tuner section can pick up this harmonic. If you have the cable connected directly to the UHF antenna input terminal of the TV set, there might even be enough signal to produce a decent picture. Cable systems suffer what is called "odd-order distortion", which occurs when a signal is passed through an amplifier that partially "clips" or "rounds off" the waveform as it approaches its peak voltage value. It is not possible to make a completely distortionless amplifier that can handle 100 or 150 independent RF carriers (two for each TV channel - video and audio) from 54 to 500 MHz. Technology has gotten better over the years. Cable amplifiers that go up to 1,000 MHz are now commercially available. Many of the above overlaps of cable and UHF over-the-air frequencies were never anticipated in the early days of cable when the two services were hundreds of MHz apart. > Channels 54 through 61 on this box either do nothing > at all *or* they repeat some earlier channels. For instance, 55 and > 56 repeat channels 5 and 6. Note that channels 55 and 56 are the 2-MHz-shifted versions of channels 5 and 6, close enough to receive a reasonable picture on most sets. They are not "repeats" of channels 5 and 6. They are the actual channels 5 and 6 being received at differently-labeled channel numbers. > Starting at channel 62 on the box I > get everything from there up exactly 8 channels below. For example > 62 on the box is 54 on the cable; 70 on the box is 62 on the cable; > 71 on the box is 63 on the cable, etc. Yup. This is the Jerrold (and Radio Shack) non-standard frequency plan at work. > Also, channel 58 on the box is the mysterious channel 1 on the > cable; the one that TCI insists can only be received with an > addressable converter which you get from them. This one can't be explained by the chart. Perhaps, as was speculated by many writers before me, this channel is mapped onto channel 1 by a programmable converter. Usually, programmability and descrambling ability are built into the same higher model boxes. Cable TV frequencies in North America: Lower Upper Electronic Jerrold nearest Limits Limit Limit Industries Historical General over-air of this (MHz) (MHz) Association channel Instrument UHF over-air (EIA) designator channel channel UHF channel number number channel number (MHz) 54 60 2 2 2 60 66 3 3 3 66 72 4 4 4 72 78 1 A-8 54 76 82 5 5 5 78 84 A-7 55 82 88 6 6 6 84 90 A-6 56 90 96 95 A-5 57 96 102 96 A-4 58 102 108 97 A-3 59 108 114 98 A-2 60 114 120 99 A-1 61 120 126 14 A 14 126 132 15 B 15 132 138 16 C 16 138 144 17 D 17 144 150 18 E 18 150 156 19 F 19 156 162 20 G 20 162 168 21 H 21 168 174 22 I 22 174 180 7 7 7 180 186 8 8 8 186 192 9 9 9 192 198 10 10 10 198 204 11 11 11 204 210 12 12 12 210 216 13 13 13 216 222 23 J 23 222 228 24 K 24 228 234 25 L 25 234 240 26 M 26 240 246 27 N 27 246 252 28 O 28 252 258 29 P 29 258 264 30 Q 30 264 270 31 R 31 270 276 32 S 32 276 282 33 T 33 282 288 34 U 34 288 294 35 V 35 294 300 36 W 36 300 306 37 AA 37 306 312 38 BB 38 312 318 39 CC 39 318 324 40 DD 40 324 330 41 EE 41 330 336 42 FF 42 336 342 43 GG 43 342 348 44 HH 44 348 354 45 II 45 354 360 46 JJ 46 360 366 47 KK 47 366 372 48 LL 48 372 378 49 MM 49 378 384 50 NN 50 384 390 51 OO 51 390 396 52 PP 52 396 402 53 QQ 53 402 408 54 RR 62 408 414 55 SS 63 414 420 56 TT 64 420 426 57 UU 65 426 432 58 VV 66 432 438 59 WW 67 438 444 60 XX 68 444 450 61 YY 69 450 456 62 ZZ 70 456 462 63 71 462 468 64 72 468 474 65 73 14 470 476 474 480 66 74 15 476 482 480 486 67 75 16 482 488 486 492 68 76 17 488 494 492 498 69 77 18 494 500 498 504 70 78 19 500 506 504 510 71 79 20 506 512 510 516 72 80 21 512 518 516 522 73 81 22 518 524 522 528 74 82 23 524 530 528 534 75 83 24 530 536 534 540 76 84 25 536 542 540 546 77 85 26 542 548 546 552 78 86 27 548 554 552 558 79 87 28 554 560 558 564 80 88 29 560 566 564 570 81 89 30 566 572 570 576 82 90 31 572 578 576 582 83 91 32 578 584 582 588 84 92 33 584 590 588 594 85 93 34 590 596 594 600 86 94 35 596 602 600 606 95 36 602 608 606 612 96 37 608 614 612 618 97 38 614 620 618 624 98 39 620 626 624 630 99 40 626 632 630 636 100 41 632 638 636 642 101 42 638 644 642 648 102 43 644 650 648 654 103 44 650 656 654 660 104 45 656 662 660 666 105 46 662 668 666 672 106 47 668 674 672 678 107 48 674 680 678 684 108 49 680 686 684 690 109 50 686 692 690 696 110 51 692 698 696 702 111 52 698 704 702 708 112 53 704 710 708 714 113 54 710 716 714 720 114 55 716 722 720 726 115 56 722 728 726 732 116 57 728 734 732 738 117 58 734 740 738 744 118 59 740 746 744 750 119 60 746 752 750 756 120 61 752 758 756 762 121 62 758 764 762 768 122 63 764 770 768 774 123 64 770 776 774 780 124 65 776 782 780 786 125 66 782 788 786 792 126 67 788 794 792 798 127 68 794 800 798 804 128 69 800 806 > This is a Radio Shack 70 channel cable converter #15-1287. Does > anyone know why channels 54-61 are not where they belong and why > they resume at 62 (as 54) and work upward from that point exactly > 8 channels out of alignment? It appears that Radio Shack uses the Jerrold plan and the cable company does not. > All Radio Shack tech support would tell me is 'you cannot get > channels 5-6, and channels 55-56 on the same box'. Correct. Since channel 5 overlaps channel 55 by 4 MHz out of 6 MHz, they can never both operate on the same cable system. Same for 6 and 56. Greg Monti Arlington, Virginia, USA gmonti@cais.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 13:52:00 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Test Numbers For New NPA's (was 888 Test Numbers Yet?) In TELECOM Digest v.16 #42, dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) wrote: > In order to test some CPE for 888 readiness, we would like to be > able to place calls to 888 numbers now. Ideally, these calls would > act as much as possible like normal subscriber numbers -- i.e. they > should produce audible ring, then return answer supervision, and ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > perhaps play a voice recording before disconnecting. Can anybody > out there help us? I know we'll be able to get our very own shiny > new toll-free 888 number next month, but I'd like to be sure now > that we're ready to process calls to 888 numbers. I could be wrong, but I don't think that the test numbers for the new NPA's are supposed to return answer-supervision. They do answer and play a recording indicating that one has successfully reached the new NPA, but if they returned supervision, a charge for the call would be generated. Of course in the case of 888, since it is a toll-free code, even if answer supervision is returned, then there shouldn't be a charge to the caller. Bellcore has recently updated their webpage on the NANP with additional pages. There is a now a complete alpha and num list of NPA's as well as detail on some of the even more recently announced new/future NPA's. Test code numbers are given where available. However, `n/a' appears as the test code for 888. Not all of the recently announced NPA's (and compiled by Steve Grandi, grandi@noao.edu) scheduled to go into effect in 1997 or 1998 are indicated on this webpage, but three *new* Caribbean NPA's ARE: 268 Antigua & Barbuda, 758 St.Lucia, 869 St.Kitts & Nevis, altho' the effective dates for these are to be announced. This makes *seven* NPA's for Carribean locations _in_addition_to_ 809 for the remainder. We have already seen announcements and effective cuts for 441 Bermuda, 242 Bahamas, 246 Barbados and 787 Puerto Rico. The webpages for Bellcore NANPA/TRA is http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/. As for answer-supervision & NPA test numbers, even tho' I don't think that the test numbers are supposed to return answer supervision, some of them might have. I heard somewhere that the test number for 441 Bermuda was returning supervision, and that would ring-up a rather nasty *international* charge when calling from anywhere outside of Bermuda. And even if answer-supervision is *not* returned, *some* carriers might chalk-up a charge for the call since they detect `voice' as an answer after ringing (and no SIT tones), and even if the carrier doesn't charge, some originating CPE (such as COCOTS) might charge for the call by taking all of the deposited coins! :-( I have tried to dial 1-888 numbers from home (504-24X, the `Seabrook' switch in New Orleans), and get cut off with "it is not necessary to dial a `1' or the area code when calling this number..." There is a 504-888 code in the New Orleans local dialing area, and I get cut-off at 1-888-NXX-XX and at 1-888-NXX-X-#. (That's the *octothorpe*, *pound*, *hash*, *square*, *number-sign*, *tic-tac-toe* button to indicate *end-of-dialing* and *not* an abbreviation for `number'). And when I place local calls to 888-XXXX numbers, there is a now a LONG post-dialing delay! :-(. I *can* cut thru *directly* by dialing 888-XXXX+# (if I am at a touchtone phone or using a tone-generating device). It seems that BellSouth has made provisions in its class-5 end-office switches here for the new 888 toll-free area code, but hasn't completely yet cut it over to route an inquiry to their copy of the 800 and 888 database. The PBX here at work doesn't yet have 888 programmed in as the new toll-free area code. I get cut off with a reorder at 9-1-88. But I do agree that there *should* be a test number for 888! MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Not Taught at Harvard: Multilevel Marketing Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 15:41:02 PST By STEPHANIE N. MEHTA The Wall Street Journal 12/19/95 When it comes to endorsements, there are few more sterling names to invoke than Harvard, as in Harvard University and Harvard Business School. But when the endorsement has no basis in fact, Harvard gets its hackles up. Of particular concern these days is the increasing number of claims that the business school endorses multilevel marketing, in which distributors earn commissions on products that they or their recruits sell. "If the registrar's office had a dollar for every call we've had over the years over whether Harvard Business School teaches multilevel marketing or has studies on it, we could throw a very nice Christmas party," reads one internal business-school memo. "This claim is harder to kill than a dandelion." What was once a nuisance now looks like grounds for potential defamation or libel lawsuits, says Frank J. Connors, a Harvard lawyer. Some handouts, for example, now claim -- falsely -- that Harvard has conducted "extensive research in the network marketing industry," and that the business school calls multilevel marketing "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." These claims come at a time when multilevel marketing appears to be on the rise in the U.S. About 6.3 million people are engaged in direct sales, with the vast majority affiliated with multilevel companies, says the Direct Selling Association, an industry trade group in Washington. That's up from about 4.7 million salespeople in 1990. Although many reputable companies such as Amway Corp. and Mary Kay Corp. are based on multilevel marketing, many other multilevel operations have turned out to be scams. And while multilevel executives insist that the 50-year-old industry is becoming more ethical, the currency given the Harvard claims indicates that big problems remain. A look at how these claims began and proliferated tells much about the industry and shows how a bit of erroneous information came to be widely cited -- and readily accepted -- as absolute truth. Many of the current myths about Harvard and multilevel marketing stem from a 1984 article widely used to recruit distributors, multilevel experts say. The article, by multilevel consultant Beverly Nadler, states without attribution that Harvard teaches multilevel marketing. (It also states that The Wall Street Journal once said that "between 50 percent and 65 percent of all goods and services will be sold through multilevel methods by the 1990s." The Journal never reported this statement.) Ms. Nadler couldn't be reached for comment. But in her 1992 book, "Congratulations, You Lost Your Job," she admits that she didn't verify some information in her original article. Harvard Business School marketing Prof. Robert J. Dolan worries that people may join multilevel marketing companies because they mistakenly believe Harvard condones the practice. "You hate to see your name used in a way that you haven't approved," he says. "Then you think of all the people who are being led down a path to some financial distress." One who was attracted to multilevel marketing by the purported Harvard connection is Neita Cecil, a newspaper reporter in The Dells, Ore. Interested in becoming a distributor for a long-distance telephone company that sells its service through multilevel marketing, Ms. Cecil says she initially hesitated -- until an acquaintance told her "that Harvard calls this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," and she also heard that Harvard Business School taught and promoted multilevel marketing. "That's what hooked me." Last summer, Ms. Cecil became a part-time distributor for the long-distance company, which she declines to identify. In September, she decided to use the Harvard connection as a recruiting device. But when she called the business school, she discovered that she had been misled about its position on multilevel marketing. "I was let down," Ms. Cecil says. Nevertheless, she intends to keep her distributorship. "I guess I still think it's a good opportunity," she continues. Some multilevel executives say the decentralized nature of the industry, whose sales depend entirely on independent contractors, makes it hard to control overzealous distributors. But critics contend that multilevel businesses could easily deter salespeople from telling tall tales. The same sophisticated systems that the industry uses to communicate new-product information and selling tips also could squash rumors about Harvard's links to multilevel marketing, for example. "Some (multilevel) companies don't mind people making false claims," says Towru Ikeda, president of World Telecom Group Inc., a Mountain View, Calif., multilevel concern that sells calling cards. In October, one World Telecom distributor anonymously put out a widely distributed voice mail message about alleged "Harvard" research on multilevel marketing. World Telecom says it pulled the message immediately because it violated company policy about false statements. Mr. Ikeda says he thinks that some multilevel companies may feed their distributors false information. Excel Telecommunications Inc., a Dallas long-distance provider with multilevel marketing, says that it suspends or dismisses distributors who make false claims. The company says it also must approve any "custom" marketing materials created by distributors. Not all sales representatives adhere to Excel's policy, though. Harvard officials say they received brochures last month from an Excel distributor that touted nonexistent Harvard research on multilevel marketing. Indeed, as printed material has replaced mere hearsay, "the nature of the misstatements has changed," says Mr. Connors, the Harvard lawyer. "They are even more egregiously inaccurate." Still, some multilevel proponents can't see what all the fuss is about. "I'm sorry that Harvard feels besmirched by being associated with multilevel marketing," says John Milton Fogg, editor of an industry newsletter in Charlottesville, Va. After all, he says distributors eagerly accept -- and perpetuate -- the Harvard rumor because of the luster of the Harvard name. ------------------------------ From: doconor@winternet.com (Dan O'Conor) Subject: Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 01:07:05 GMT Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa) wrote: > For users, especially lay users, typing in the complex character > sequence for a http address scares them off and creates errors. > Further, reliability of systems leaves much to be desired. Sending > graphics over phone lines, even 14.4, is still slow. The software is rapidly becoming easier to use and the performance of modems and phone lines is increasing geometrically. Two years I was using a 2400bps modem, today I am operating at 28800bps and I am planning for the installation of an ISDN line in March. > Despite high sales of PCs for residential uses, the percentage of PCs > in homes remains rather low. Only a fraction of those have modems > that are used, and many modem users do only specific things, such as > logging into work. My kids use their PC to correspond with me (they live with their mother about 10 miles away), they correspond actively with other e-mail users, including their aunts and uncles and my ten year old son is learning how to use the Internet for report research and other schoolwork. > When the small BBS's got popular, a lot of people predicted they'd be > the new way people communicated. In practice it was a fad. A lot of > people passed through, but didn't stay. The big online services find > the same situation -- they get many new signups, but they don't stay. > I can't predict the future -- maybe 25 years down the road personal > email transmissions will be everywhere. But at present, we still have > a very long road to climb. The future is what these companies have to plan for. Their time horizon is precisely that 25 years. As for personal electronic communication, I can look to my own experience for some insight. Two years ago I had never heard of any of the national on-line service providers or the Internet. Within six months I was using two different e-mail systems for both business and personal correspondence (domestic and international) and today I use national information service providers and a local Internet Service Provider for both business and recreation. In the next six months I will be operating a printing services company that specializes in electronic pre-press and delivery. I amy be in the minority, but all indications are that this is a minority that is growing quickly. Remember that the greatest returns are made when growth rates are still high, not when the market has matured and growth rates begin to level off. That is why my new venture in what appears to be a stagnant industry (printing) will focus on the electronic pre-press and delivery niche. Regards, Dan O'Conor doconor@winternet.com ------------------------------ From: Rupert Baines Subject: Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems Date: 7 Feb 1996 17:51:46 GMT In article george gilder, gg@gilder.com writes: >> Russ Welti wrote: >> Saw a real cool web page for TCI cable, about a service called @Home... >> Can anyone state that this is not just "posturing"? Will it really >> happen that soon and at that speed and at that cost? > Although it is fashionable to disparage the capabilities of cable > companies to deliver two-way bandwidth, @home is an entirely different > proposition, run by Milo Medin, formerly NASA's Internet chief, and > devoted to providing broadband 10 megabit per second downstream and > 256Kbps upstream channels ubiquitously. Not really true. I know @HOME have got some great PR going -- including that nauseating piece of hagiography in January WIRED -- but lets not be too gullible ... Just for starters: Only 3-4% of homes have two-way capable cable plant (according to GI). All others (ie 96-97%) will use a 14.4Kbps modem for the upstream (No, I don't know why they don't support 28.8, but that is what WIRED said!). To me, that sounds worthy of disparagement !!! 14.4 is enough for digital couch potatos to click the mouse on the BUY icon on the Internet shopping channel, but not much more ... In fact -- it is *MUCH* worse. Standard IP will "choke" at an asymetry of more than 10:1, because of the need to send an ACK frame. In other words @HOME would only deliver about 140Kbps downstream !! (To be fair, that is with 'standard' IP, and you can get around it either by redefining the protocol, or by spoofing; I suspect this is why @HOME is building its own network - that they are deviating from standard IP ??) Secondly, even when the two way plant is installed (when will that be? It took decades to install the plant - it will take more than a few months to completely upgrade it!), that 256K and 10Mbps is *SHARED*. Cable is a bus or tree topology - not point-to-point. You use the same 10/256 as all your neighbours. Even aside from security (which with current legal situation should not be ignored !!), think of the congestion. With a 500 home node (not atypical) and 15% penetration, you average 140Kbps and 3Kbps per person. Or think of an Ethernet segment with 75 users = s-l-o-w. Sure, you can build *another* new network, and partition all the nodes, but it stops ;ooking so good ... > Medin is also engineering a new 622 Mbps Internet backbone Wonderful. Presumably (by definition) an Internet backbone is usable by all the networks that connect to it -- whether cable, ISDN, V34 or ADSL. So why is this relevant? The backbone needs this upgrade irrespective of the local access. > I predict that this effort will blow away all the residential ISDN > plans of the RBOCs. I'm not so sure. ISDN has a lot of great things going for it. Including telcos with heaps of cash, proven technology, international standards, and an existing infrastructure. Sure, the telcos have been ludicrously slow so far, but that will change. And then comes ADSL - which could crucify cable modems ;) (Yes, I am biassed !!) Rupert Baines ADSL Product Marketing Analog Devices ------------------------------ From: rdervan@mindspring.com (Richard Dervan) Subject: Caller ID Blocker - How? Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 11:43:21 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises I recently received a catalog of high-tech goodies and inside was a unit you plug between your telephone and the jack to 'prevent your number from being displayed on caller ID units'. Is this really possible? I thought the caller ID stuff was handled at the CO and by SS7. Also, I can't see why anyone would buy one of these anyway, since most if not all RBOCs offer caller ID block. Richard [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is handled at the central office, but it requires the subscriber to prepend *67 at the start of each call on which the ID is to be blocked, which is what the device you are referring to does. Radio Shack has the same thing on sale now in their stores. This device is added in series to the phone line right behind the phone instrument. When the receiver is lifted off hook, the device rapidly dials out *67 to effect number blocking. It happens so quickly it usually has occurred before the caller even gets the reciever up to his ear. The subscriber then dials the telephone number desired. In other words, the device you read about and the one on sale at Radio Shack do nothing more than automatically add *67 on the front of each call so you do not have to remember to do so. I beta-tested one of these about three or four years ago for a fellow who was developing them. If you want to override the number blocking on any particular call -- that is, actually pass your caller-ID for whatever reason -- you can do so by flashing the hook on the phone after you originally went off hook but before you start dialing the number. This brings a fresh dial tone and because the interval between 'off-hooks' is so small (just a second or less for the hookflash) the device does not add *67 on the fresh dial tone. It is a nice gimmick, but there is nothing magic about it and it has *nothing* to do with any programming in the central office switch. The called party still sees 'private' on his display box and has the right to refuse the call or whatever. You can accomplish the same thing by simply adding *67 at the start of your dialing string yourself each time instead of purchasing a gimmick to do it for you. By the way, in case you wish to use 'cancel call waiting' and 'block caller id' on the same call, you can. But it is wise to do it in this order *67*70 rather than the other way around, i.e. *70*67 since in some generics of the software, *67 only sticks if it is the **first thing dialed**. ... unlike *70, where you can enter it at any point in the call (if you have three way calling or some other valid reason to recall the dialtone in mid-call), *67 likes to go first, and quite obviously is useless once the first ring has reached the called party anyway. If you can test it at your end you might want to do so and see if the two are interchangeable in how they can be entered; but to be safe, use *67 first. PAT] ------------------------------ From: fraser@ccl2.eng.ohio-state.edu Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 19:13:28 EST Subject: Generations of Engineers As all remnants of the old Bell Labs continue to disappear, I worry about what we have lost. My father (who will be 80 in April) worked for Bell Labs for 35 years. He was the telephone engineer on the Long Lines when it laid the first transatlantic telephone cable in the mid50s. During the time he worked there, Bell Labs engineers were encouraged to take equipment home. They could take any kind of equipment. The Bell Labs kids were recognizable in school by their four-hole notebooks and matching paper. As a consequence, I grew up in a household where there was engineering stuff just lying around for me to play with, especially phones, batteries, connectors, various kinds of meters, etc., etc. Ok, this is probably not the only reason I ended up as a professor of engineering (being good at math was another reason) but I have to believe that the Bell Labs policy of "take the stuff home" made a difference to me. And I can't be the only kid who was affected by that policy. It won't happen in the future to other kids. Jane Fraser Ohio State University fraser.1@osu.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How very true this is, Jane. Bell Labs was an American heritage. The Labs, as we knew it for a half-century through the Depression, a World War, the Cold War and until recent years will never be duplicated. Might we call this just one more aspect of divestiture and deregulation in the telecom industry? I have no doubt whatsoever that you were greatly influenced by your father's work through all those years. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #52 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Feb 8 12:53:13 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA22654; Thu, 8 Feb 1996 12:53:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 12:53:13 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602081753.MAA22654@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #53 TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Feb 96 12:48:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 53 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Clinton Signs It: New Telecom Era Has Begun (TELECOM Digest Editor) Internet Users Painting the Net Black on Thursday 2/6/96 (Shabbir Safdar) Re: House Prohibits Free Speech on Abortion (Bill Sohl) More Thoughts on the Legislation (A. Padgett Peterson) Call Screening/Blocking ANI or CID? (Kevin R. Ray) Inacom Corp./Westinghouse Communications Sign Agreement (Jackie Fox) Re: Pager Service Question (C. Wheeler) Re: NameFinder Plus Hiccups (was Re: 708/847/630 Split) (Keith D. Thomas) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (purple@austin.ibm.com) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 11:52:04 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Subject: Clinton Signs It: New Telecom Era Has Begun At 11:47 am, February 8, 1996, in a televised ceremony from the Library of Congress, President Clinton signed the long-expected Telecommunica- tions Reform Bill. The signing took about three minutes as Clinton used several pens in order that the many government leaders present could each have a pen as a souvenier. In addition, Clinton signed a copy of the legislation electronically for distribution on the net. In his remarks, President Clinton quoted Lily Tomlin's remark that 'the Internet can be fun'. Quoting Thomas Jefferson, Clinton noted that 'democracy stems from the free flow of information'. The ceremony included a televised portion with Lily Tomlin trading some jokes with Vice Presidnet Gore. Gore noted in his remarks that 'this legislation tears down the Berlin Wall in telecommunications.' Now it is the law, and all the things speculated on can happen. Whether it will all happen, and how soon it will happen are open to debate. While some are very pleased to see this new legislation, a few in the internet community are very upset with what they perceive as a loss of their freedom of speech rights. Some have proposed making their web sites black in protest, as the main message in this issue of the Digest will discuss next. Following the signing of the legislation, Cable News Network immediatly followed with a lurid report on 'Sex in Cyberspace' and a man who caught his wife engaged in c-sex with a man in another city. Because of the length of Clinton's remarks and the timing involved, the show had to be cut short; it will be repeated in its entirity on Friday at 11:30 AM on CNN should you wish to watch. Well, let's get on with our lives ... PAT ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 08:45:32 EST From: Shabbir J. Safdar Subject: Internet Users Painting the Net Black on Thursday 2/6/96 Reply-To: vtw-announce@VTW.ORG FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEBRUARY 6, 1996 Contact: Steven Cherry (201) 596-2851 stc@vtw.org Shabbir Safdar (718) 596-2851 shabbir@vtw.org New York, NY INTERNET DAYS OF PROTEST TO BEGIN WHEN PRESIDENT SIGNS TELECOMM BILL INTO LAW When there's a funeral in New Orleans, they don't just stand around looking at a casket, there's a marching band, and when they mourn on the Internet there's lots of noise as well. Virtual noise that is. Inside the casket lies the First Amendment, and the noise is people turning their World Wide Web sites black. The last gasp for the First Amendment will be heard later this week when President Clinton signs the long-awaited Telecommunications Reform Bill. Buried just below its surface, like a bomb waiting to explode, lies the descendant of the Communications Decency Act, legislative language that will ban "indecency" in cyberspace. George Carlin-style indecency, broadcast-media style indecency. An FCC-enforced ban on indecency, as if the government could monitor the millions of Web pages, Usenet postings, email listservers, and chat messages generated across the Internet each day. As if American law could restrict what's available on a global Internet, where pinup photos, cancer support-group advice, and currency exchanges can move at the same speed and in packets that are essentially indistinguishable, and servers can move around the globe in a way that physical goods manufacturers can only look at, black with envy. Black, as in the traditional color of mourning. The Grim Reaper wears black. Judges wear black -- black robes symbolize a lack of favor to one side or the other. The black of the "Day Without Art." The black that people wear at funerals, to underline the loss of something important to them. On the Internet, a network, a networked community, based entirely on speech, nothing is more important the freedom from censorship enjoyed up to the moment when President Clinton's pen puts an asterisk next to the First Amendment, an asterisk that says, "except on-line speech," an asterisk it will probably take the Supreme Court months, if not years to erase. That black can be seen at http://www.surfwatch.com/, a popular site on the Internet, and an especially ironic one to see it in. Surfwatch is devoted to perfecting just the kind of parental controls that work far more effectively than any government regulation could, and which facilitate free speech instead of criminalizing it. That black can be seen at sites large and small, commercial and noncommercial. Christopher L. Barnard, who maintains Illinois Virtual Tourist, says that his black pages are all ready to be loaded as soon as he hears the bill is signed. Turning the pages black, involves changing the backgrounds so that light text appears on a dark background. It may not be aesthetically desirable, as some, who are changing their pages anyway, have pointed out. It can involve proprietary extensions to the formatting language of the Web, complain others. It's been characterized the "Paint it Black" campaign by some, and the "Thousand Points of Darkness" by others. All in all, just the sort of free-wheeling, outspoken, opinionated activity that has characterized the Internet since its inception over twenty years ago. "What can we do?" asks Shabbir Safdar, co-founder of Voter's Telecommunications Watch, one of the many on-line activist organizations organizing the campaign. "It also can't be seen by text-only Web browsers, or by people with net-access that doesn't include the Web. But we couldn't let the day go by unmarked." The campaign asks Web-based information providers to turn their pages to black for forty-eight hours after the President signs the telecomm bill into law. Sometimes it is easy to comply. Josh Quittner of Time-Warner's Pathfinder, says, "Heck, our pages are black half the time anyway. But for those two days they'll be black because of the telecomm bill." Pathfinder is one of the largest and most-used sites on the Internet. Sheryl Stover, marketing director at Internet On-Ramp, Inc., of Austin, Texas, said her personal page is already black. But all non-client pages are being altered from Monday February 5th through the two day period after Clinton's pen adds a black-ink graffiti scrawl across the Bill of Rights. SurfWatch can be contacted at http://www.surfwatch.com/ or 800-458-6600. Christopher L. Barnard and the Illinois Virtual Tourist can be reached at 312-702-8850, ilinfo-www@cs.uchicago.edu, and http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/html/external/illinois/index.html. Pathfinder's Netly News can be found at http://pathfinder.com/Netly/nnhome.html Sheryl Stover and the Internet On-Ramp, Inc. are at 509-624-RAMP and http://www.ior.com/ Voters Telecommunications Watch is a volunteer organization, concentrating on legislation as it relates to telecommunications and civil liberties. VTW publishes a weekly BillWatch that tracks relevant legislation as it progresses through Congress. It publishes periodic Alerts to inform the about immediate action it can take to protect its on-line civil liberties and privacy. More information about VTW can be found on-line at gopher -p 1/vtw gopher.panix.com www: http://www.vtw.org or by writing to vtw@vtw.org. The press can call (718) 596-2851 or contact: Shabbir Safdar Steven Cherry shabbir@vtw.org stc@vtw.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it should be obvious, Mr. Safdar, that quite a few of us disagree entirely with your opinions on this. I won't get into that today; most people here already are quite familiar with my own beliefs. Thank you for writing. PAT] ------------------------------ From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl) Subject: Re: House Prohibits Free Speech on Abortion Date: Wed, 07 Feb 1996 23:45:35 GMT Organization: BL Enterprises Monty Solomon wrote: > Forwarded to the Digest FYI: > CENSORSHIP UPDATE > ON A VOTE OF 414-16, THE HOUSE HAS PASSED THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS > ACT OF 1996 WITH AN AMENDMENT THAT PROHIBITS DISCUSSION OF > ABORTION ON THE INTERNET. THE SENATE IS EXPECTED TO TAKE UP THE > BILL SHORTLY. A HIGHLY INDECENT ARTICLE DEVOTED TO THE TOPIC > WILL BE PUBLISHED HERE UPON THE SIGNATURE OF THE PRESIDENT. > John Haynes 73s de KC5PWL 147.180 MHz John@CompuTek.Net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The validity of this report on a ban > regards discussion of abortion is not confirmed as of my sending out > of this issue of the Digest Friday morning. Here are some additional > thoughts by long time, *responsible* netter Lauren Weinstein, followed > by another report which attempts to confirm the abortion discussion ban > where the internet is concerned. PAT] UPDATE - Listening to the New York AM WABC station today, it was reported that the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have filed a joint court action to prohibit implementing the ban on abortion discussion from the Internet. SO...it appears the report above is true and that the amendment did actually end up in the telco bill. The news report also mentioned that the signing of the telco bill is to be tomorrow (Thursday 2/8). Frankly, I am surprised that such language ever found its way into the final version of the bill, especially since the issue of abortion seems to have a generally wide acceptance, even in congress (in spite of the Republican majority in both houses). One has to wonder where the democrats were sleeping when the votes were counted...or if they (the pro-abortion legislators) even knew the language was in the bill. Just for grins, I did a Yahoo search for abortion and came up with 46 abortion related WEB sites. LYCOS turned up over 4000 document references. It should be a fun thing o watch. Consider too the opposing agendas of the NOW folks (anti-pornography and probably in favor of the internet porn ban, yet pro-abortion and thus they'll oppose the abortion talk ban.) US politics is always full of interesting stuff. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) billsohl@planet.net Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor Budd Lake, New Jersey [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, I have received several messages including one from John Covert saying this was not the intention of Henry Hyde and that in fact abortion discussion is not to be banned. Right now I am opting for that opinion. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Feb 96 11:09:13 -0500 From: padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson) Subject: More Thoughts on the Legislation Pat: have you considered that this bill is just what the porn-kings would like most -- elimination of all the ->free<- competition. Is not difficult to make a "good faith" effort to protect the innocents, just use a commerce server to create a secure channel and require a credit card as "proof" of age with a proper disclaimer. Of course since commerce servers are not free, the bulk of the storage systems today just will not allow the "filthy" stuff (and most of the antique radios I buy on the net require extensive cleaning -- are they prohibited ?). Just in time for the explosion in Electronic Commerce, eh ? Warmly, Padgett [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This whole thing certainly bears some resemblance to the War on Drugs does it not, where the only ones who benefit are the people directly involved ... you raise a good point about the 'porn kings' and their business. I am also reminded of a kalideoscope, where each twist of the viewing tube brings a new and different view than the previous one. Where will all this lead? PAT] ------------------------------ From: kevin@mcs.com (Kevin R. Ray) Subject: Call Screen/Blocking ANI or CID? Date: 7 Feb 1996 20:27:14 -0600 Organization: MCSNet Services Talked to wonderful Ameritech (here in Illinois) and didn't get the answer I wanted. Was wondering if anyone out there knows the answer to this. My parents have been getting hang up phone calls and we know who they are coming from and the number, BUT has not been enough to get the authorities involved ... (yet) (now the question ;-) Does Ameritech's "Call Screening" work based on CID or ANI information? The calls are originating locally (or so we think) but the caller ID box always shows "OUT-OF-AREA". *69 does not work (call back), but *57 (trace) does. Would call screening (up to ten numbers allowed :-) work as expected here? So if the calls are originating from a cell phone or being routed through one of the long distance carriers (but still "local") would they still be "blocked"? And then would it block "ANONYMOUS" (*67) calls as well? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If call-back and caller-id do not produce the desired results, then call-screening won't work either. If the calling number is 'not available' for your review, then it is not available for you to screen either. Unlike those other features, *57 (call trace) does not reveal its results to you, therefore no 'violation of privacy' -- however ludicrous that may seem in the present context -- has occurred. Generally, telcos will only release the results of *57 traces to police authorities. And generally the police will only release whatever results are given to them by telco once you have signed off agreeing to prosecute regardless of who the offender is. 'Private call' or anonymous specifically means telco has the number immediatly available but will not release it. 'Outside call' or 'not available' means telco does not have the number readily available but can usually obtain it on demand. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jackie Fox Date: Thu, 8 Feb 96 08:55:29 -0600 Subject: Inacom Corp./Westinghouse Communications Sign Agreement INACOM CORP., WESTINGHOUSE COMMUNICATIONS SIGN STRATEGIC DATA NETWORKING PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT Joint data network offerings include frame relay, ISDN and managed network services (OMAHA, NEB. -- February 8, 1996) -- Inacom Corp. (NASDAQ:INAC), a leading global provider of technology management services, and Westinghouse Communications, a leading network provider, have signed a strategic agreement that will provide a total communications solution to Inacom and Westinghouse Communications clients. Under the terms of the agreement, Inacom and Westinghouse will jointly provide communications services including frame relay, ISDN, LAN Dial and private line services. "Inacom is very pleased to enter into this agreement with Westinghouse Communications," said George De Sola, group president of Inacom Communications, the telecommunications subsidiary of Inacom Corp. "The two companies have outstanding complimentary capabilities in the areas of distributed technology life cycle management and wide-area data network services. Westinghouse's skill in wide-area managed network services is a wonderful addition to Inacom's existing technology management services. It's something our customers definitely need." The agreement with Westinghouse Communications was the result of exhaustive analysis, according to Robert Puissant, vice president of business development and marketing for Inacom Communications. "We looked at a wide array of partners and Westinghouse Communications was far and away the best, not only because of their skill in technology innovation but because of their global reach." Puissant added that the alliance will enable Inacom to offer fully managed network services including full-time remote monitoring of customer premise equipment and local- and wide-area networks. In addition to frame relay, Inacom will offer integrated T-1 and ISDN over the Westinghouse network, as well as an innovative solution called LAN Dial. "This is a great opportunity for Inacom and Westinghouse," said Richard Hadala, president of Westinghouse Communications and Information Systems. "We are on the path to growth and this agreement allows us to take advantage of each other's attributes -- Westinghouse's technology and innovation and Inacom's extensive customer knowledge and professional services. We are excited about this relationship and are confident this will be an important step in meeting our growth aspirations." Inacom Corp. is a technology management services company providing corporate clients a single-source solution to their information technology needs. Inacom's procurement, integration and support service capabilities are offered on a global basis to assist clients from the initial purchase of information and communications systems through the total life cycle of their technology assets. Company revenue for 1995 is anticipated to be in excess of $2 billion. Visit Inacom on the World Wide Web at http://www.inacom.com. Westinghouse Communications designs, builds and manages one of the most advanced communications networks in the world. As a single-source supplier of leading-edge technology, Westinghouse provides a full array of multi-vendor products and services including local area networks, wide area data networks, long distance telephone services, messaging services and video conferencing. Westinghouse Communications is a division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation, a diversified media, industrial, and technology corporation with $10 billion in global revenue. Visit Westinghouse Communications on the World Wide Web at http://www.wcsd. westinghouse.com. Contact: Geri Michelic, Inacom (402) 392-3923, gmichelic@inacom.com Jackie A. Fox, Bozell Worldwide (402) 978-4259, jfox@omaha.bozell.com Dawn Bizub Androsky, Westinghouse (412) 244-6674, bizub.dawn@wec.com ------------------------------ From: C. Wheeler Subject: Re: Pager Service Question Date: 8 Feb 1996 06:55:05 GMT Organization: CCnet Communications Peter Mott wrote: > Are two way pages usable? [snip] > I am now on a trial with Skytel Two-Way. Two way paging provides the > software production environment the knowlege that I haven't responded > to a page. > For the most part the service has been reliable. They admit to having > kinks to work out of their system, and my environment picks up on a > lot of those kinks. > During my trial I am issuing pages on an hourly basis. Are you using the two way pager while traveling? I am curious as to whether you have had any trouble with the "reply" path. I demo'ed several two way units with some coworkers and we were not satified. We found that the replies worked less than 50% of the time. I took my demo unit on a trip and had some trouble. The two way handshaking means the network tries very hard to get messages to you. If your replies don't get back to the network, it will send pages several times. This can be anoying. The problem also meant that if you tried to send a response, it usually failed. My best luck with replies was at airports (San Francisco, Atlanta, Asheville, Salt Lake). I hate to bad mouth Skytel on this but we just weren't satisfied. I have to give them credit for investing in and starting to deploy the technology. When it works, it's very cool. However from our point of view, they still have a lot of building out to do. But I will say that the technology makes pretty sure you get every page (It's just that I got a lot of them several times). I never missed a page in the three weeks that I actually carried the unit with me. I was wondering about the software that you are using for notifcation. Is it an off the shelf product that was already capable of working with "Two-Way"? We have a lot of notifiction systems, but right now none of them work with Skytel Two-Way (a half truth - we have our mainframe notification sending one way messages to two way pagers, but it's not capable of getting, or even checking for replies). ------------------------------ From: mail09794@pop.net (Keith D. Thomas) Subject: Re: NameFinder Plus Hiccups (was Re: 708/847/630 Split) Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1996 15:16:00 GMT I tried the NameFinder service just now and it did not find me under 708 either. It did work for 847 though. I tried it on an 815 number and got the backwards result. Leave it to Ameritech. Nothing they do it consistent. Many people do not realize the change of area codes or what impact it is having. I had to get all over HP because their techs could not call me back on support calls. Our contract person began to put 847 on all the contracts recently so we could get call backs after April 20. It is pretty hard for HP to meet their four hour window if they cannot call me. The sad thing is that I had to make four or five calls to different people at HP before someone understood what I meant. Keith ------------------------------ From: purple@austin.ibm.com Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes Date: 8 Feb 1996 15:50:08 GMT Organization: IBM, Austin, Tx. Jack Hamilton wrote: > The lack of security on the net is becoming more and more of a > problem. "domain hijacking" certainly *will* happen if if hasn't > already, just as forged moderation to moderated groups has happened > (to comp.dcom.telecom, among others). I really don't want the > government to get involved, but it's inevitable if sysops don't start > enforcing responsible behavior among their users. The real problem is that system administrators still commonly accept plain ASCII documents as "authorization", without requiring any form of digital signature. You will *always* have jokers trying to forge authorization for things they aren't entitled to do. Even if 99.9% of the people using the net were responsible netizens, that leaves 20,000+ creeps trying to break your system. The correct way to stop them from forging moderated news articles, or domain-name changes, is to start using digital signatures. L. Purple (purple@austin.ibm.com) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Several months ago after one of Jeff Slaton's periodic forays into the Usenet newsgroups and a spate of messages from other interlopers I made the decision to encrypt the headers on telecom messages to prevent any further unapproved stuff at least where this newsgroup is concerned. Cancelbots operate at selected sites which watch the telecom newsgroup stuff and immediatly cancel unapproved postings. Still, a few get through but rarely do they stay online more than an hour or so before the cancelbots catch up with them. I have not seen any forged messages in this newsgroup getting all over the entire net for severasl months now; not since encryption started. I think moderated newsgroups using digital signatures or strong encryption techniques are the only way the news- groups will be able to survive -- that is, unless you like reading a constant barrage of Slayton-style spam, magazine subscription notices from Kevin Lipsitz, or more recently those notices which begin 'I am a lonely girl in Asia who wants to talk to you on the phone ...' I get three or four of those daily; some caught by the cancelbots and some which simply get sent 'unapproved' for general posting. Well, welcome to the *new* Internet; Bill Clinton style. Surely, some interesting days ahead of us. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #53 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Feb 8 15:01:28 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id PAA04804; Thu, 8 Feb 1996 15:01:28 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 15:01:28 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602082001.PAA04804@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #54 TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Feb 96 15:01:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 54 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless Word Newsletter - 1/29/96 (Tara Pierson Dunning) Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems (ngmarino@aol.com) Re: Excel Telecommunications and Multi-Level Marketing (Jeff Bein) Re: Southern New England Telephone (Ed Ellers) Re: Southern New England Telephone (ngmarino@aol.com) Re: Trunk Capacity Tables? (Richard Parkinson) Re: AT&T Closing All Phone Center Stores (Tom Allebrandi) Re: AT&T Closing All Phone Center Stores (Ed Ellers) Update on Ameritech Cellular Brownouts (Mark Peacock) Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma (Peter Morgan) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Taratai@aol.com Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 16:46:50 GMT Subject: Wireless Word Newsletter - 1/29/96 Submitted by: Tara Pierson Dunning Note to TELECOM Digest Readers: Here's another, more expansive issue of the second and latest Wireless Word newsletter. For more information, please contact ART at artcorp@tcsnet.net, or visit their web site at http://artcorporation.com ******* Prologue We are launching a new free service by ART -- the Wireless Word. The initial task of the Wireless Word will be to keep you abreast of major regulatory developments at the federal level that affect the newest segment of the wireless industry -- local voice and data telephone services by radio instead of wire. This installment will cover the pending telecommunications legislation. In the future, we will expand our coverage to include selected developments at the state regulatory level and industry developments. Please remember that, despite our name, the Wireless Word will not cover developments affecting mobile services such as cellular, Specialized Mobile Radio, Personal Communications or paging services. The Wireless Word is limited to fixed local distribution services. We encourage you to contact us with your comments, constructive criticisms as well as requests for further information. If there is something we have failed to address or have characterized in a way with which you disagree, we want to know. Telecommunications Legislation: Background Thirteen years have elapsed since settlement of the Justice Department's antitrust case against AT&T (the so-called Modified Final Judgement or MFJ) divided the Bell System into separate companies for long distance and local telephone communications. Thereafter, Bell System local exchange services were to be provided by Bell Operating Companies organized into seven regional Bell holding companies (the "RBOCs"). While competition had existed in the long distance market for more than a decade prior to entry of the MFJ, the breakup of the Bell System fueled a substantial expansion in the number and economic viability of the new long distance competitors. Two major reasons were: (1) the MFJ's prohibition against provision of long distance services between LATAs by the RBOCs and (2) the requirement that the RBOCs not favor AT&T's long distance services in the RBOCs provision of local distribution services. The MFJ divided the country into 163 Local Access and Transport Areas or LATAs. Although LATAs were originally conceived to be surrogates for local exchange areas, in fact, due to intense lobbying by the RBOCs, the LATAs ended up as much larger, often the size of an entire state. The RBOCs were forbidden to carry communications traffic between LATAs. The result was that the RBOCs could not carry interstate messages, and in many states (those that consisted of more than one LATA) they were forbidden to carry a significant portion of intrastate long distance traffic. The injection of significant competition in long distance due to the MFJ had the same consumer benefits that the breaking of the established telephone companies stranglehold on consumer telephone equipment had -- remember the days of the plain black telephone that you had to lease and could not buy. Prices in long distance service plummeted over 40% in the first decade following the entry of the MFJ; and businesses and residential subscribers had hundreds of long distance providers from which to choose. Several years after the breakup, competition also broke out of its shell at the local level. The emergence of fiber optic cable, with many times the capacity of conventional copper wires and even coaxial cable, enabled the creation of the first viable competitors to the last telecommunication monopolists, the Local Exchange Carriers ("LECs"). These fiber optic providers styled themselves as Competitive Access Providers or CAPs. They started laying fiber optic rings in major urban areas, such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago and competing against the LECs for large business clients. The CAPs principal initial customers were the long distance carriers, who wanted an alternative to bring pressure on the LECs to lower their "access" charges for local origination and termination of long distance calls. After a half-dozen or so years of operations, the CAPs -- or Competitive LECs ("CLECs") as they are more accurately called now that they have broadened their offerings to include switched local exchange services -- collectively produce revenue in excess of $1 billion annually. This is still barely more than 1% of the total annual revenue produced by the traditional LECs. However, in order to increase their share on the market and bring the benefits of a truly competitive market to businesses and residential consumers, the CLECs must have a level playing field. The CLECs still suffer similar artificial handicaps in competing against the LECs that the new entrants in the long distance market suffered at the hands of the integrated Bell System before the MFJ. The LECs' facilities and services are critical for the CLECs to reach the public network and bring much needed competition to the local services market. Yet, the LECs often take special pains to deny the CLECs access to their facilities and services upon reasonable terms and at reasonable prices. Despite several years of arduous efforts by the CLECs and their trade association, the Association for Local Telecommunications Services ("ALTS"), most states still either prohibit outright or severely handicap local competitors. Furthermore, although the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") has taken some significant steps to open up competition in the local exchanges, it has not enforced its decisions to the extent necessary nor adopted the "carrot and stick" approach necessary to achieve an effectively competitive local telecommunications market. It is impossible from a resource standpoint for regulatory authorities to police the LECs actions that thwart their competitors. Accordingly, the only administratively sound approach is the carrot and stick -- allow the LECs greater pricing flexibility (that is, reduced regulation) only if they first grant their competitors access to the LECs' monopoly of services on reasonable terms. Unfortunately, this eminently sound public policy has not been adopted by the FCC nor by very many states. Consequently, the CLECs and ALTS have turned their attention to the legislative arena. Because the RBOCs chaffed for years under the weight of the MFJ prohibition against interLATA services, the LECs and the CLECs have had a common cause. The LECs need to gain access to all of the long distance market, which the CLECs are willing to assist them in achieving if the CLECs in turn are able to attain a level playing field. A third set of players, however, is intimately effected-- the current long distance carriers. The RBOCs former campmate -- AT&T -- is united with the rest of the long distance industry in opposition to entry of the RBOCs into the long distance business. They fear that the RBOCs will recreate the integrated service offerings of the Bell System and in the process enforce artificial barriers to both their long distance and local competitors. Summary of Telephony Portions of Proposed Legislation These players have been the set pieces in a lengthy drama played out in the halls of Congress over the last two sessions. The current version of the legislation is entitled the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995. Different versions passed both houses of Congress in early fall. The two bills are now being reconciled in a joint Conference Committee that has been meeting throughout the last several months The principal achievement of the two bills is to effectively abolish the MFJ. The RBOCs will be able to offer long-distance services once certain competitive benchmarks in local services have been achieved, and eventually manufacture telecommunications equipment (from which they are now barred by the MFJ). The present long-distance carriers will be able to provide local services on a more equal basis. Prior to furnishing interLATA services, under the current draft of the Conference Committee, the RBOCs must meet the following criteria in each area where they wish to provide interLATA: 1. There must be at least one "in region" competing provider, which is able to provide intra-LATA (local exchange services) predominantly over its own network. 2. The RBOC must meet the following interconnection requirements ("checklist"): Interconnection to competitors accessing its networks on equal terms to the interconnection that it provides itself; Nondiscriminatory access to poles, ducts, conduits, and rights-of-way to competitors; Local loop transmission from the central office to the customer's premises that is unbundled from its services; Local switching unbundled from transport, local loop transmission or other services; Local transport from the trunk side of a LEC switch that is unbundled from switching or other services; Resale services at wholesale rates (retail less marketing, billing, collection, and other costs avoided by the incumbent); Public notice of changes in the information required for the processing of services using the RBOC's infrastructure, as well as any other changes that would affect the interoperability of facilities and networks. Non-discriminatory access to emergency (911), directory assistance, operator services and databases necessary for call routing and call completion. White pages directories listing the customers of competing exchange carriers; Interim "number portability" (so customers can switch carriers and retain the same number at their same location) through remote call forwarding, direct inward dial trunks and similar techniques until FCC determines that permanent number portability arrangements are technically feasible; Access to services and information necessary for competing carrier to offer "dialing parity" (so customers can dial the same number of digits to reach a CLEC as are necessary to reach an established LEC); Reciprocal compensation (including "bill and keep") between RBOCs and CLECs for their respective roles in originating and terminating calls for each others' customers; 3. The FCC is to make the determination as to whether the applying RBOC has satisfied the requirements including the checklist. The FCC is to consult with the Department of Justice, whose evaluation is to be given substantial but not conclusive weight. 4. RBOCS must establish separate affiliates for their local exchange services. Current Situation There are a number of issues that have been stalling the deliberations and threatening to prevent final passage of the legislation. As we reported recently, in the context of the legislation Senator Dole has raised the issue of why the broadcast industry should continue to be exempt from the auctioning of licenses when practically every other radio licensee now must obtain its license in a competitive bidding scenario, with the proceeds going to reduce the federal debt. This is an especially hot topic in light of the nearly $10 billion raised to date by these auctions, which are enthusiastically endorsed by the Chairman of the FCC and by the leadership of both sides of the Congressional aisle. The Dole initiative has lead to an old-fashioned donnybrook, lead by the National Association of Broadcasters ("NAB"), one of the better funded lobbying organizations in town. As is not unusual for the NAB, it has launched a doomsday campaign prophesying that auctions would be the death knell of "free television." Many political figures seeking to establish themselves as deficit/debt hawks are lining up against the NAB. As we go to press, a compromise is brewing that would provide for auctions of future broadcast spectrum but would allow the broadcasters to obtain spectrum to complement their traditional analog transmissions with digital without auctions. Other issues that are rearing their heads in the bill's last days include "Cyberporn." Few predicted the explosive growth of the Internet in the past year. However much fun we may have downloading recipes and jumping between websites, some unsavory characters misuse the Internet. The telecom bill's Conference Committee included measures that will punish anyone who uses an interactive computer service to send to someone under 18 years old "any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." There are other sections of the telecom legislation that deal with telecommunications content regulations. One area focuses on stalking, and the creation or solicitation of communications that annoy, abuse, threaten or harass. Other provisions require circuitry in televisions that enable programming to limit shows not desired by viewers (V-chip), the scrambling or blocking of sexually explicit cable tv programs so non-members do not receive images and sounds, and the establishment of guidelines for the identification and rating of video programming. We shall keep you posted on the progress of the legislation. In the meantime, we invite you to check out the other parts of ART's Web site and remember http:// www.artcorporation.com for your next ART visit. ------------------ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And of course as everyone should know by now, the legislation was passed and signed into law by President Clinton on Thursday. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ngmarino@aol.com (NGMarino) Subject: Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems Date: 8 Feb 1996 13:22:23 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: ngmarino@aol.com (NGMarino) What companies make cable modems? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 10:45:14 -0700 From: info@goodnet.com (Jeff Bein) Subject: Re: Excel Telecommunications and Multi-Level Marketing > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I still say, as a general rule of > thumb, MLM schemes are not good deals. There has to come a time when > things get so saturated there is no one left to be signed up. The > only people who make money in MLM schemes are the ones who think them > up and get involved early. If you want to be in the long distance > resale business, it is far better to do so directly as an agent for > a carrier, not via 'downlines' and 'uplines'. PAT] Dear Pat, I agree with you that all scams are bad. MLM does have a bad reputa- tion as do lawyers and many other professions. With respect to our company, one who wishes to market our LDDS Worldcom 17.5 cent, no surcharge calling card, they must go through American Travel Network (800-705-4000). So in some instances, it is NOT better to work directly with a carrier. Their own calling card is now 30 cents per minute. Also, many carrier will not work with small agents. Our 2000 dealers by themselves could not work with a carrier. Together, we generate $2 million per month in revenues and our company supports them and their customers with customer service we feel is superior to the carriers themselves. With regard to our network marketing program: We instituted it at the request of our dealers. It has worked our very well. Jeff Bein President American Travel Network American Travel Network The Best Calling Card in the Country as seen in Money Magazine (July 1995) 800-477-9692 Service info| 17.5 cents per minute with no surcharges 800-700-4387 Fax machines| Free to get and no monthly minimums or fees 800-705-4000 Main offices| 1+ rate 9.9 cents and 800 numbers too! E-MAIL: info@callatn.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In addition to the above, Mr. Bein sent me a lengthy file on the services provided by American Travel Network and the costs, etc. I am sure he will be pleased to send you a copy also if you write to the above address. I will say in summary they seem to have a very good program; not outrageous at all like some of the resellers. Write him for more details and mention the Digest when you do. PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Southern New England Telephone Date: 8 Feb 1996 05:07:01 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , mcuccia@mailhost. tcs.tulane.edu says ... > Since the 1984 divestiture of AT&T, Cincinnati Bell and SNET are > `considered' to be `independent' operating telephone companies. But if all > of the other *Bell* telcos have been separated from AT&T, aren't they *all* > more-or-less *independent* telcos? And who knows... we might have *all* of > these once sister/cousin telcos invading each other's territory with local > exchange competition! I guess it depends on one's definition -- last time I heard an "independent" telco was anything other than a Bell company. I don't think a GTE operating company, for example, is any more "independent" than an RBOC -- the only real difference is that one is a baby Bell and the other isn't. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The term 'independent' when used in reference to telcos has historic roots going back to the beginning of this century. It originally meant any telco not part of the Bell System. Many of the independents of course got together in the GTE consortium; others remained truely independent. In the very early days, the AT&T Bell System fought tooth and nail with the independents trying to drive them out of business the same way AT&T in recent years fought with MCI; tampering with their interconnections, etc. The advertising campaigns they wage against each other now are relatively mild. You should have seen AT&T and MCI fighting each other in the 1970's. And that is how AT&T and the Bell System was with all the other telcos eighty years ago, including the GTE group by whatever name they were known back then. The independents back then formed an association specifically to help them ward off attacks by AT&T. It was called USITA; the United States Independent Telephone Association. Its membership until a few years ago was the 1400+ telcos in this country other than the Bells who were specifically not allowed to participate. But whatever happened over the years, USITA and the Bell became great friends finally. A few years ago, John DeButts of AT&T was the featured speaker at a USITA annual convention. Most people do not remember what any of the old arguments were even about. So who rightfully can be called an 'independent telco' now? I suppose it would be any of the few remaining who are not owned and controlled by AT&T/GTE/Centel/United/Cable & Wireless or the other industry giants ... and that still leaves quite a few: over a thousand 'independent' telcos in the USA by that definition, owned by small companies or private persons, etc. Purists would claim I guess that the term should be applied to any telco which was not *historically* part of the old Bell System. And now that AT&T no longer has the right to the name 'Bell System', once they start offering local service if they were to buy up a small telco in the process, would that telco still be an 'independent' since it never had been part of Historic Bell? Things are getting so complicated around here! PAT] ------------------------------ From: ngmarino@aol.com (NGMarino) Subject: Re: Southern New England Telephone Date: 8 Feb 1996 13:33:56 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: ngmarino@aol.com (NGMarino) Hasn't SNET been in both the long distance and local telephone business since the AT&T breakup? Was it exempted from the restrictions placed on other Bells? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: SNET like Cincinnati Bell, was never owned or controlled by AT&T therefore the rules of divestiture never did apply to those companies. Cincinnati Bell was the only telco with Bell in its name that was never part of the Bell System officially. Of course like all the other independents in the past half century or so, they were great friends with AT&T and had many AT&T contracts including the one several years ago which involved old-style AT&T calling cards billed to miscellaneous (no direct telco phone number involved) accounts. They may still be doing that for AT&T. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rparkins@infotel-systems.com (Richard Parkinson) Subject: Re: Trunk Capacity Tables? Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1996 20:43:21 -0800 Organization: Infotel Systems Corp. Peter A. Smith wrote: > I'm looking for a soft copy (file or equations) for the NEAL-WILKINSON > B.01L Trunk Capacity Table. I have a paper copy that has undergone > many faxing and photocopying. I was hoping to get back to an > original, but I have no idea where the source of this table is. One source is the E.500 Fascicle from the ITU-T. It can be purchased in the U.S. from Omnicom in Vienna VA @1-703-281-1135. Another option is to buy the Infomagic ITU-T standards on CD-ROM for $30.00. They can be found at www.infomagic.com. Regards, Richard ------------------------------ From: Tom@Tass.Com (Tom Allebrandi) Subject: Re: AT&T Closing All Phone Center Stores Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1996 23:38:29 GMT Organization: TA Software Systems/Frontline Test Equipment PAT said: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But watch over the next few weeks as > those stores liquidate and close down for some remarkable bargains. > Now is the time to stock up on some of the older AT&T phones if you > think you will have a use for them over the next few years. PAT] If anybody runs into some really good buys on a couple of AT&T 843's, I could use a couple of them :-) The 843 is a three line phone with hold and intercom. The hold and intercom features apparently only work if you have all 843's -- they don't work if you have plain old telephones for your other instruments. I have one in my office and like the phone. I'd like to replace the other two phones in my house with these. It appears that the 843 has been discontinued, the last price I saw for them was still over $150.00 :-( Tom Allebrandi Frontline Test Equipment | TA Software Systems | Valparaiso, IN USA tallebrandi@fte.com | tom@tass.com | +1-219-465-0108 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Those are nifty phones and very hard to find. They had six buttons on the bottom front like any of the old key-set style phones. But instead of five lines with a hold button in common and a remote unit to operate the hold and lights, the phone you are referring to has three lines and three hold buttons. The line which is ringing causes a neon bulb under that button to flash. I'd love to have one of those now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: AT&T Closing All Phone Center Stores Date: 8 Feb 1996 19:31:42 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , acg@frame.com says: > I note with some regret a full-page ad from AT&T in today's {Chicago > Sun-Times} announcing that they are closing their Phone Centers > nationwide, but that we "will be able to buy AT&T telephone products > at thousands of retail outlets." > Right. > Leaving aside for the moment the point that their prices seemed > stratospheric compared to the competition (I gave up waiting for their > Model 824 (?) Caller ID desk/wall phone to come down to a competitive > price and bought a nice GE model instead) ... There lies the problem. Since AT&T sold many of these phones through both its own stores and other outlets, as a practical matter it couldn't sell at less than full list price because the other retailers would object to the competition. The thing to remember about the PhoneCenter chain is that it was started in the days of the old Bell System, as a way to market extra-cost equipment -- usually leased -- to telephone customers and to save money by reducing the need to send installers out to change phones. The only reason it still exists today as part of AT&T is that, *before* divestiture, the FCC took newly manufactured CPE out of the Bell companies and handed it to a separate subsidiary of AT&T; that division, then called American Bell, kept the stores on January 1, 1983, as an in-place sales network for its products. (The BOCs often turned around and started new stores to handle the reconditioned CPE they still leased to their customers. Of course that evaporated when embedded CPE was taken out of the BOCs at divestiture.) It's just taken this long for the PhoneCenter stores to outlive their usefulness. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And that certainly attests to the great strength and beauty of the old Bell System doesn't it ... that years and years after divestiture -- how many of our younger readers even remember it in any detail? -- they are still in the process of divest- ing; here and there old remnants of the way 'things used to be done'. I wonder if someday we will read that like the old days when manual service was being phased out i.e. 'the last of the old manual switchboards finally was taken out of service at Bryant Pond' the final vestiges of the old Bell System are at last gone. Now its the phone center stores; what still remains to be dismantled? Anyone know? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Feb 96 20:55:04 CST From: Mark Peacock Subject: Update on Ameritech Cellular Brownouts Pat - Here are some of the additional details you requested: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Which Ameritech market are you in? Southeast Michigan -- Metro Detroit > Could you explain what is meant by 'brownout'? Does that mean all > roaming has been discontinued in those places? "Brownout" is Ameritech's term. My usual experience is that the call attempt is intercepted by the local carrier with a recording asking for a credit card or calling card number. The recording usually gives the cost -- typically $1.95/minute. Quite a bit more expensive than the normal roaming rate. The only exception has been in northern NJ. I have been able to roam while driving away from Newark airport on I-78 at about 9:00am, but not while driving back in the afternoon. Perhaps Ameritech research shows that cellular fraud is usually committed by late-rising criminals. > What good would changing your number do? The very nice customer service rep (CSR) didn't call back the next day, so I called them. I spoke to yet another very nice CSR (Note: no sarcasm here -- Ameritech Cellular seems to have found a bunch of nice people with which to staff their Metro Detroit customer service center) who assigned me a new cell phone number and walked me through the programming steps on my Motorola Contour. When finished, I asked him why a new phone number was needed. He told me that Ameritech found that they were being cloned by "system ID number". They shut down roaming for all but one exchange in the 313 area code and one exchange in the 810 area code. Thus the need to change my cell phone number. I'll be in LA and Phoenix early this week. I'll report back on the results. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That $1.95 per minute business also has a surcharge of $1.95 per call and is handled by a bunch of bandits known as Cellular Express. Around here you get them on Cellular One as well as Ameritech if you are not set up for roaming. But an Ameri- tech rep specifically told me 'stay away from those bandits!'. The nice thing about Ameritech is that you can roam anywhere in their five state region in markets they serve for just fifty cents per minute. At least that is what they claim and what my bill from Frontier (Ameritech wholesaler) reflected this month. I only went as far as Milwaukee and for most of that I just used my Milwaukee NAM to get it for 35/18, but I did test roaming to see how it would work. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nagrom@enterprise.net (Peter Morgan) Subject: Re: Businesses Will Spark Internet Revolution, Dave Dorma Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1996 12:30:55 GMT Organization: SpaceAcademy hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa) wrote: > set up web sites, got some inquiries, but no sales. NetGuide ($45/year here :-( had a piece recently that suggested web sites should be compared to mailshots in terms of response. > Further, reliability of systems leaves much to be desired. Sending > graphics over phone lines, even 14.4, is still slow. Trying to get access to sites (in North America) from Europe, is also fraught anytime after 1200 GMT. Not sure how much of a load Usenet news (!) puts on the Atlantic links. I'm not sure whether "RealAudio" style links are a good idea -- as well as FM and AM, the radio services via satellite seem a more efficient way to get a "broadcast" to people - and the cost of satellite rx is lower than a suitable Mac/PC too. (Don't get me wrong -- I am enthusiastic about new products but this is just a bandwidth grabbing overhead, from what I've read.) {modems used only for} > logging into work. But the recent snowed-in conditions showed how many people were willing to use modems and if businesses consider teleworking in a serious way, modem use will continue to increase. Surveys and contacts I've made suggest most modem users are under forty years old. Another ten years will see that up to 50 years old and as more of the senior managers are themselves using modems, they'll maybe be more enthusiastic to change work patterns. > the same situation -- they get many new signups, but they don't stay. There's quite a difference between BBS/big online services and use of the Internet. Many BBS still provide large selections of shareware in a fast to download access mode. Few (here) have subscription fees, but those that do, usually give e-mail/usenet groups as the "perk". While there are some big archives around, I'd be reluctant to try to download over the Internet ... find a BBS with a CD-ROM, or do as I did, buy a collection of CICA Windows shareware on CD. I think the sheer size of CompuServe's resources is a reason for turnover in membership. AOL is just starting up here, too, and MSN is another "big" name. We have a C$ account at the office, and it only gets used for file/mail transfer, because every phone call is chargeable in the UK, and to get any speed above 2400 we have to dial London (12c/minute) Other features on C$ are given a wide berth. Internet access is cheaper and faster via an ISP, where we are charged for local calls (6c/min day, 3.4c/min evenings, 2c/min weekend) but there are no time limits online. > I can't predict the future -- maybe 25 years down the road personal I cannot either, but would hope that in 10-15 years every library in the world provides open access for people. I don't want the 'net to be a "status symbol", but equally, there will be some societies that have lived for centuries without the things we "take for granted". If we can "enjoy" technological change without forcing them to change how they live, then we'll have achieved something in a better way than we have to date (natural resources damaged and pollution increased, problems knowing what to /do/ with trash, and an ever faster materialistic society {in the West} :-( Peter WRN - World Radio Network - on cable and satellite see http://www.ultranet.com/~pgm/radio.htm ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #54 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Feb 9 12:40:22 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA01953; Fri, 9 Feb 1996 12:40:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 12:40:22 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602091740.MAA01953@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #55 TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Feb 96 12:40:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 55 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Non-900 Dial-A-Porn on the Rise (Knight-Ridder via Tad Cook) Book Review: "The Internet for Busy People" by Crumlish (Rob Slade) Phone Fires Discussion (Guy Fielding) ITU Standardization Activities on Modems (Robert Shaw) New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Bryan Douglas) Remaining Vestiges of Old Bell System (Lisa Hancock) Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Robert McMillin) Telecom Reform Fairy Donates $1.5 Million (Mercury News via Van Heffner) IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Cook Subject: Non-900 Dial-A-Porn on the Rise Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 14:17:44 PST Southwestern Bell, MCI Report Rise in Non-900/976 Dial-A-Porn Scams By Jerri Stroud, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Feb. 8 -- When a Ballwin parent got a call from the MCI fraud office in December, she was shocked to learn that someone had rung up a charge of $107.86 on her long-distance bill. She was even more shocked that the charge was for a 32-minute call to an adult sex chat line in Sao Tome, an island straddling the Equator off the west coast of Africa. Purveyors of telephone sex have gone offshore in an effort to bypass U.S. restrictions on 900 and 976 services, also known as pay-per-call information services. In some cases, advertising for the services doesn't clearly state that calls to the numbers are going overseas or that the calls will result in a significant charge to a customer's telephone bill. Most international calls begin with 011, then a two-digit country code and then a six or seven-digit number. But Canada and some Caribbean nations have area codes and numbers that resemble U.S. long-distance numbers, and some advertisements disguise the overseas codes by directing callers to dial an access code first. Some services even use 800 numbers as gateways to overseas calls. Callers may be directed to dial an access code that connects them directly to the service. Other services may tell callers to hang up and dial a number that turns out to be an overseas call. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have issued rules designed to thwart deceptive marketing of telephone information services. But long-distance companies say the services seem to find ways around the rules -- and around parents' efforts to protect their children and their pocketbooks. The Ballwin mother says she had already asked Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. to block calls to 900 services. It hadn't occurred to her to block international calls, a move MCI suggested after notifying her of the charge. "I do have a 15-year-old in the household, but he denies making the call," said the mother, who asked that her name not be used. "I just want to know where he got the number." MCI agreed to remove the charges from the Ballwin parent's bill. The company says international dial-a-porn is a persistent problem for parents and others who want to protect themselves or family members from excessive telephone charges. Some smaller nations see the sex lines as a way to mine money from their telephone networks, said Annette Duff, a senior specialist with the long-distance company's consumer affairs department. The nations often share profits with the sex lines. "There's a demand for these services, and a profit motive as well," Duff said. Telephone companies say nations with a disproportionate number of dial-a-porn scams include the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Portugal, Moldova and Sao Tome. AT&T receives periodic complaints about international dial-a-porn calls, said Richard Gundlach, a spokesman. AT&T reviews each complaint and often removes charges for first-time calls to the services. The company will block international calls upon request, but callers can get around the block by dialing another carrier's access code. "I think parents need to make sure that their children realize what an international call is and that it can be costly," Gundlach said. "It's the parents' responsibility to see that that phone isn't used to make these kinds of calls." MCI fraud investigators monitor the network for unusual charges to customers' telephone numbers, Duff said. Investigators pay particular attention to calls to Sao Tome and certain Caribbean nations, especially if customers rarely make international calls. The telecommunications law passed by Congress last week includes some restrictions on pornography delivered over phone lines or the internet, said Gwen Reichbach, associate director of the National Institute for Consumer Education. But civil liberties groups have vowed to fight the restrictions as a violation of the First Amendment. "At this point, there really aren't very many safeguards for parents other than talking with their children," Reichbach said. She suggests that parents discuss long-distance calls and sex lines with their children, telling them how to recognize overseas numbers. Parents also can try making children responsible for any unauthorized charges. "But then there's the problem of getting blood out of a turnip," Reichbach quipped. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Feb 1996 18:30:46 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Internet for Busy People" by Crumlish BKINTBSP.RVW 960123 "The Internet for Busy People", Crumlish, 1996, 0-07-882108-8, U$22.95 %A Christian Crumlish xian@netcom.com %C 2600 Tenth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 %D 1996 %G 0-07-882108-8 %I McGraw-Hill Osborne %O U$22.95 510-548-2805 800-227-0900 pmon@osborne.mhs.compuserve.com %P 304 %T "The Internet for Busy People" The Internet *is* for busy people. Learning the Internet is not. The are concepts, functions, cultures, facts, FAQs, lists and sites to learn before it starts to become useful. Therefore, a book teaching the Internet to busy people is a problematic proposition. Crumlish makes a reasonable stab at it. The "for Busy People" format is well designed. The material is not too bad, and presents the bare minimum basics well enough to get people started. The trouble is, "bare minimum" on the Internet is just enough to get you into trouble. (I suppose we can be thankful that those reading this book are unlikely to be able to set up much of a Web page.) The fundamental functions of Internet applications still don't tell you where to go to get the information you want. Crumlish points to some fun sites, but few that are likely to be of use to "busy people". There is also a hefty Windows 95 bias to the book. The Microsoft tools get lots of space while the question of connecting Win95 to anything but MSN goes unexamined. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKINTBSP.RVW 960123. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. roberts@decus.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Rob_Slade@mindlink.bc.ca Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ Date: 09 Feb 96 07:48:00 EST From: Guy Fielding <100044.275@compuserve.com> Subject: Phone Fires Discussion I have just received James Bellaire's file of material about the 1965 Richmond phone fire. Readers (Digesters?) might be interested to know that there was an academic study of the impact of such fires published in the 'Centenary of the Telephone' volume 'The Social Impact of the Telephone'. The reference is: Wurtzel, A.H. and Turner, C. (1977). What missing the telephone means. Journal of Communication, 27 (2), 48-57. (Also in: I. de S. Pool (Ed.), (1977). The Social Impact of the Telephone. Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press.) Wurtzel and Turner (1977) studied an area of New York which had been affected by a fire in its telephone exchange, putting the local telephone system out of action for 23 days. The study looked at a number of the social and psychological effects of the fire on the lives of people living in the area. Does anybody know of any further systematic studies which have looked at the social-psychological impact of such incidents? Guy Fielding Dept Communication & Information Studies Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, Scotland UK EH12 8TS 100044.275@Compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Feb 1996 14:30:44 CET From: SHAW +41 22 730 5338 Subject: ITU Standardization Activities on Modems Hi Patrick, I thought that your readers might be interested in a quick update on current ITU standardization activities related to modem technology. 1. A revision of Recommendation V.34 will provide for an increase of the maximum data rate from 28.8 kbps to 33.6 kbps. This is entering a final standardization phase. 2. V34Q is a working draft specification for a planned optional feature of V.34 supporting simultaneous voice and data (SVD) based on framed Quadrature Audio/Data Modulation. In QADM, the audio signal is modulated together with the data signal instead of being encoded and multiplexed. 3. Related is the approaching standardization of V.61, also known as V.asvd (analogue simultaneous voice and data), based on V.32bis modulation (with data rates of 4.8 kbps during speech and 14.4 kbps during silence). Digital simultaneous voice and data (DSVD) standards based on V.42 LAPM multiplexing techniques are also exiting the "standards pipe" (e.g., V.70, V.75, V.76). For readers who want a quick overview on SVD modems, visit: http://www.almac.co.uk/business_park/hayes/uk/ukartdsv.htm Cheers and keep up the good work. Robert Shaw International Telecommunication Union, Geneva http://www.itu.ch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The ITU has been a sponsor of this Digest for about two years. Their regular financial contribution helps offset the expenses involved in production. I greatly appreciate their assistance. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com Date: Fri, 9 Feb 96 07:34:54 CST Subject: New Name for AT&T Network Systems According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies. Apparently this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?). It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. Bryan Douglas Alcatel Telecom Richardson, TX ------------------------------ From: hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa) Subject: Remaining Vestiges of Old Bell System Date: 8 Feb 1996 23:52:06 GMT Organization: Philadelphia City Paper's City Net Per Pat's question (closing AT&T phone center stores), my contacts with the "old Bell System" are when I deal with an experienced veteran telco employee (local or long distance) who understands communications principles and can serve me, the customer, intelligently. More and more, when I deal with a phone company, the person on the other end is a poorly trained clerk and can only answer questions that can be shown on a computer screen. They work in boiler rooms, under pressure to sell new services, and service as many customers as possible (I intentionally use the word "service".) These people don't know the tarrifs, various telephone calling situations, or even current and past services offered by their employer. MCI employees are notoriously bad. Occasionally, you get a veteran employee who quickly answers questions and solves any problems. Such employees know how to work around trouble, and clearly understand company policies. They're able to give me CORRECT rates for various services (both new and classic), and advise which package would serve my needs best. In contrast, new employees simply push a new package/service without regard if it meets the customer's needs. I had some oddball dialing problems. I had to call 611 repeatedly, each clerk assured me it was being worked on. Then a clerk said the problem was resolved when in fact it wasn't. After some persistence, I got a supervisor. It turned out the original clerks didn't have a clue as to my problem and coded it utterly wrong in the computer. The supervisor did understand and properly got it resolved. The supervisor was a veteran. I miss the days when traffic operators and commercial service representatives were reasonably close to the regions they served, to understand regional calling issues. Today they are centralized far away and that trend is continuing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had one like that the other day. We had chatted only a couple of minutes and it was obvious to me she knew her way around. Curious, I asked her how long she had been around. *Thirty-one years* was her answer. She was there a long time before divestiture, a long time before competition. It was so refreshing talking to her and placing an order with her. The order by the way was for 'call-screening', and you know something? She had it turned on on my line *three minutes* after we finished talking. That was service! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 20:41:48 -0800 From: Robert McMillin Subject: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Not very surprisingly, both the {Orange County Register} (which is usually rather libertarian on its op-ed pages) and the {Los Angeles Times} (the miniature poodle of Westside Democrats) mentioned only eliptically the telecom bill's prior restraint on Internet free speech. Does freedom of the press only interest newspapers when dead trees are involved? I refuse to believe it. But imagine the yelping we'd hear from the nation's media orifaces if Senator Exon tried to arrest interstate traffic in girlie pictures as published, say, in {Playboy}! The man's digitally uglified mug would deface {Time}'s cover the next week. No, there's a different reason why the press ignores the censorship written into in the telecom bill. It is that most journalists, like the craven and ignorant Congress that passed this mess, haven't a clue as to how the Internet works. Not understanding it, they either ignore it or connect it to well-known sales catalysts: sex, for instance. Better, protecting the kiddies from sex. Since we can't keep our toddlers from accidentally crawling onto the infobahn, goes the sophistry, we'd best set the speed limit at 3 MPH. Congress succeeded in squelching Internet users for two reasons. First, the defense of lofty principles requires cash to buy legislators and to survive court challenges. With Net commerce still at an infantile stage, no senator-owning plutocrat, his wealth deriving from the First Amendment, exists to quash unwanted laws. Thus does diffusion become a liability. Second, this is America, where liberty is just a big statue in New York. H. L. Mencken, the great newspaperman of the first half of this century, observed that Americans are terrified of ideas, of foreigners, and that somebody, somewhere, is having fun. No wonder the Internet is under attack. Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com W3: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know if you meant 'reform' or 'deform' in your title, so am opting for the latter as if nothing else, it makes a humorous typographical error. :) First of all, Internet users have not been 'squelched'. I am really getting tired of reading the nonsense being distributed on this, and the painting black thing is a crock also. Here are the facts pure and simple: If something was NOT against the law to put on the Internet yesterday, then it is NOT against the law to put it on the Internet today. The new law makes one simple request where net users are concerned: Do not KNOWING distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? I wonder if the ACLU and the small handful of others who are making such vicious protests to this realize how incredibly foolish they appear to the vast majority of netters? Do not say that 'television stations do not know how the net operates' because this is not true either. Cable News Network talked about this on Thursday. If something was not against the law to disseminate via the net before, it is not against the law to disseminate now. Just be more careful about how you send it out. I got a note from someone who said 'a lot of sites will vanish from the net probably as early as next week' ... and my response to that is GOOD. Let them vanish. I wonder who will miss them? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 08:41:54 -0800 From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: Telecom Reform Fairy Donates $1.5 million Phone firms gave $1.5 million amid telecom debate By Rory J. O'Connor Mercury News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Ten major phone companies gave more than $1.5 million in political contributions during crucial junctures of debate on a sweeping communications bill President Clinton signed into law Thursday, prompting charges that the donations were designed to shape how the bill was written. The influence-buying charges were leveled by the Washington-based advocacy group, Common Cause, further adding to the controversy that erupted almost immediately after Clinton signed the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996. The legislation, which rewrites basic rules for telephones, cable and broadcast TV, and computer networks, was praised as a spur to economic growth by Clinton, business leaders and members of both political parties. Common Cause said the $1.5 million in donations to the national committees of both major parties -- so-called soft money -- constitutes a "transparent effort to buy influence and affect legislative outcomes," said Don Simon, executive vice president. The amount of the phone companies' contributions from July to December 1995 was two to four times as large as the contributions the companies made in the same six-month period in 1994, Common Cause said. The consumer group said that based on records filed with the Federal Election Commission, the three major long-distance companies -- AT&T, MCI and Sprint -- gave a total of more than $900,000 in the last six months of 1995. The seven Baby Bells -- NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, BellSouth, Pacific Telesis, SBC Communications and US West -- gave a total of more than $500,000 in the same period. More importantly, large contributions from the long-distance companies came within days of key compromises reached in the bill, the group said. One contribution it cited was a $190,000 donation by AT&T to the Democratic National Committee one day after the conference committee approved the final bill with changes favored by the administration. Link to bill denied A spokesman for AT&T denied the contributions were linked to the telecommunications bill. He said the money already had been pledged to help the political parties with their 1996 conventions, and that AT&T had given the same amount, $200,000, to both the Republican and Democratic parties. A spokeswoman for Vice President Al Gore, pointing to the "nearly unanimous bipartisan support" for the bill in Congress, said the charges "don't hold water." Those interested in the telecommunications bill also appeared to be an important source of funds for individual members of Congress last year. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that oversaw the rewrite of the telecommunications law, received at least $83,000 in contributions from an array of interested givers, according to documents filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Among those contributing to the $1.7 million in campaign funds accumulated by Pressler in 1995 were interest-group donors: SBC Communications, $5,000; McCaw Cellular, $3,000; NYNEX, $4,500; Viacom, $2,000; Fox, $1,000; Turner Broadcasting, $6,000; BellSouth, $5,000; Bell Atlantic, $7,500; and Walt Disney, $4,500. Other legislators who served on the conference committee that crafted the final bill received generous donations in 1995 from groups with some stake in the bill, according to filings at the Federal Election Commission. Pressler's Democratic counterpart, South Carolina Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, netted at least $37,000 in donations from companies including AT&T, Pacific Telesis, Viacom, Fox, TCI, BellSouth and the Home Shopping Network. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., got nearly $39,000, including contributions from Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, GTE, Fox and the National Association of Broadcasters. A similar sum was donated to Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va., chairman of the House Commerce Committee, by interests including AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Fox, GTE, LDDS Communications and MCA Corp. $3.7 million netted Overall, major telecommunications political action committees distributed $3.7 million on Capitol Hill in 1995, largely to leaders and lawmakers on key committees. By far the largest giver was AT&T, which handed out $824,162. The regional Bell telephone companies also were generous, led by Ameritech with $410,366. The donations underscore the importance the communications industry placed on the landmark legislation, which rewrote laws dating more than 60 years. Clinton signed the bill in a ceremony at the Library of Congress, first with a 1956 fountain pen that sealed a law creating the interstate highway system and then with the 1996 electronic stylus that made the signing the first to be visible on the Internet's World Wide Web. "Today, with the stroke of a pen, our laws will catch up with our future," he said. The legislation sets the stage for mergers of giant media conglomerates, will allow cable TV and phone prices to rise, and place restrictions on sending "indecent" material over computer networks. And it places a huge burden on an underfunded Federal Communications Commission, which has just six months to write a huge new stack of regulations. Also contained in its 300 pages are provisions that permit increased competition in providing local and long-distance phone service, cable TV and on-line information delivery. Companies that formerly could offer only one or two services may now compete in any number of markets, potentially offering consumers a choice of several companies to provide all of their telecommunications services. `Most significant' law Much of the nation's telecom industry applauded the result, praising it as a huge boost to businesses that, with sales of $700 billion, account for about one-sixth of the U.S. economy. "A few years from now, or even sooner, people will look back on this legislation as the most significant for the U.S. economy in the 1990s," said Phil Quigley, chairman of Pacific Telesis. But the complex law, described by one House member as the most lobbied piece of legislation he had ever seen, also has an array of detractors worried about concentration of media power, censorship and the potential for negative economic impacts for consumers. Even one of its principal authors, Rep. Jack Fields, R-Texas, acknowledged on the House floor that nobody today knows what the full consequences of the law will be. Van Hefner - Editor Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ (The one with the black background!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You won't see any black background around here, and in fact I encourage sites who are pleased with this new legislation to demonstrate it by possibly using cheerful and bright colors at their site. Do this to let the world know that you fully support the new legislation. The ACLU has promised a long and drawn out court battle over this. I am hopeful that other organizations will be able to raise the needed funds and personnel to go up against them in court when it gets to that point and squash them. If you feel as I do that the ACLU does not speak for or represent you in any way, then let that be known in your efforts. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 15:44:48 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! I just now got off the phone after getting a sales pitch from a lady at IDT named 'Jeanie'. Talk about rude! Talk about dumb! Phone rings and I answer it. Woman says hello is this 'Telecom Daily'? ... she pauses a second and says 'I guess it is Telecom Digest ...' Alerted now that something was going on I responded yes, this is their office :) how many I help you? She tells me she needs to speak to a 'consultant'. I tell her my name and that I will attempt to consult with her. That won't do at all; she needs to speak with my supervisor ... (by now I am about to ROFL as they say in chat ... rolling on the floor laughing is the way we express our reaction to something funny) She wants to describe the many benefits of 'call back services' and of course a peon like myself would know nothing about that. She will need to be 'cut-through' to someone with authority in the company; someone who can make decisions, etc ... I told her I made all the decisions around here and I had already made some rather firm decisions where dealing with IDT was concerned based on their misrepresentation of their Internet Service. I told her about the problems I had when I tried to sign up with them a few months ago. She told me that was an entirely different part of the company and there was nothing she could do. Again she insists on talking to someone higher up than me ... and by now I am trying hard not to go into convulsions or have another heart attack like I did in November, 1994. Finally I told her look, don't call and bother me any more. Her final comment: 'You are incredibly rude' ... I told her I may be incredibly rude, but lady, you are just plain incredible! Whatever you do, stay away from International Discount Telecom (IDT). You have been warned. They charged my credit card for doing nothing except setting up a totally incorrect account that I was never able to use, not even once. If it had been more than ten or twenty dollars I would have worked on getting it back ... but not for that little. But they needn't think I am going to listen to any more of their baloney offers. For quite a while now, IDT has been running ads in the papers here offering total internet access. Uncensored news groups! We don't censor what you can read and see! And of course all the know-nothing new users go running to sign up so they can go 'net surfing'. I hate that term, 'net surfing', as if the work that I and countless other moderators/publishers do here along with researchers and scholars over the years have done is just out there to provide some sort of spectacle for whoever comes along. The other evening on Compuserve CB someone said in a chat with me that 'I am just on here tonight to do a little net-surfing'. My response? F**K you! and I disconnected on my end. And all I can say is the same to you and your cohorts at IDT, Miss Jeanie. Have a great weekend folks; let's meet again in a couple days. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #55 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 12 02:32:33 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id CAA02299; Mon, 12 Feb 1996 02:32:33 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 02:32:33 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602120732.CAA02299@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #56 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Feb 96 02:32:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 56 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Robert McMillin) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (John R. Levine) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Michael P. Deignan) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Robert Levandowski) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Steve Cogorno) CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) (Eric Smith) Re: House Prohibits Free Speech on Abortion (Rick Williamson) Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! (Andy Yee) Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! (Al Niven) Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! (Peter Judge) Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! (Robert Casey) Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Joe Plescia) Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Tad Cook) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Organization: Charlie Don't CERF Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 16:03:10 GMT On 08 Feb 1996 21:41:48 PDT, PAT said: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know if you meant 'reform' or > 'deform' in your title, so am opting for the latter as if nothing > else, it makes a humorous typographical error. :) Believe me, it was intentional. > If something was NOT against the law to put on the Internet yesterday, > then it is NOT against the law to put it on the Internet today. The > new law makes one simple request where net users are concerned: Do > not KNOWING distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* > so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone > you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? No, it isn't, for two reasons. First, this is a power grab. Let's start with the exact wording (thanks to VTW for this) and see why: > "(a) Whoever -- > > "(1) in interstate or foreign communications- > "(A) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly- > > "(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and > "(ii) initiates the transmission of, any comment, request, > suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, > lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, > threaten, or harass an other person; > > "(B) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly- > > "(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and > "(ii) initiates the transmission of, any comment, request, > suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene > or indecent knowing that the recipient of the communication is under > 18 years of age regard less of whether the maker of such > communication placed the call or initiated the communication; "Indecent" has been held to include George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words. That is to say, I can no longer call Senator Exon a m*****f***** in the Digest without being thrown in the slammer, since I did it with the intention of annoying not just Exon but the whole chicken crowd in Congress who voted for this bill. What's more, the "makes, creates, or solicits" clause of paragraphs (i) and (ii) will be interpreted to mean *anything* on the Net -- and not just sites in this country, but throughout the world as well. Usenet, mailing lists, IRC channels, FTP sites, Web pages -- all come under the wildly variable definition of "indecency". This means the courts in Bluestocking, South Carolina get to say what is indecent for citizens of Los Angeles, California, or for that matter, Stockholm, Sweden. Think I'm kidding? Then why else in paragraph (1) does it mention "foreign communications"? > I wonder if the ACLU and the small handful of others who are making > such vicious protests to this realize how incredibly foolish they > appear to the vast majority of netters? Not really, Pat. If anything, it is *you* who are being incredibly foolish. Normally I agree with you on most political things appearing in the Digest, but the notion that free speech ought to be curtailed because some people have delicate sensibilities is ludicrous. If they don't like what's on the web, let the delicate read {Goodbye, Mr. Chips} or {Pollyanna}. The Net attracts more than its share of blowhards, but so what? This is most assuredly not about harrassment, but very much about censorship -- by your own definition, to boot. > Do not say that 'television stations do not know how the net operates' > because this is not true either. Cable News Network talked about this > on Thursday. Yes, and {Time} has yet to my knowledge publish a retraction of its impossibly wrong story on pornography on the Net. If there are happy exceptions, I am pleased, but still -- in the main -- I stand by my original statement. There's still another TV show on this week I heard about that can be summarized with the equation Johnny + Internet + sex = trouble. Sheesh. > I got a note from someone who said 'a lot of sites will vanish from > the net probably as early as next week' ... and my response to that > is GOOD. Let them vanish. I wonder who will miss them? PAT] I won't, it's true, but that's not the point. I surely don't want the Feds taking away someone else's freedom because the barbarian Christian fundies don't like it. I used to think Ralph Reed was actually a moderate painted the zealot by a liberal media; I know better now. He and his sorry followers are just another lot of grim Puritans. Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 12:02 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > If something was NOT against the law to put on the Internet yesterday, > then it is NOT against the law to put it on the Internet today. Pat, that's just not true. Two days ago, the Net ran under the same free speech rules as the rest of the country. Today there's a much stricter "indecency" standard for material that might fall into the hands of minors. In particular, two days ago I could freely send around material that was not obscene, for example a scanned image of a Renaissance nude, or a discussion of contraceptive techniques. Now, I am at risk for sending around anything that might be considered indecent somewhere. > The new law makes one simple request where net users are concerned: Do > not KNOWING distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* > so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone > you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? If only it were that simple. How can one tell the ages of people who fetch my web pages or send requests to my mail servers? Does a button that says "click here only of you're over 21" suffice? If a kid lies about her age, is that my problem or hers? The only thing we can say for sure is that some lawyers are going to get richer. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If someone fraudulently misrepresents themself (i.e. are you at least 18 years of age? are you a law enforcement officer for any local, state or federal government?) then it is their problem and not yours. It has long been the case for example that a police officer cannot lie and say he is not an officer. If he does lie, and then proceeds to arrest you based on the transaction which occurred, it is entrapment, which is illegal. Entrapment is defined as the goverment committing a crime in order to induce you to likewise commit the same or a similar crime. Enticement (that is, the goverment merely makes it more convenient for you to violate the law without act- ually doing so itself) is *not* illegal. Please read this carefully: a police officer who commits a crime with a minor (i.e. logs in the minor on a computer for the purpose of helping the minor obtain contraband material) who then aids or encourages the minor to falsify his age and lies to you about his own role as a police officer in the transaction has entrapped you. Those cases get tossed out of court all the time. You may wish to qualify your traffic with criteria such as this to avoid having undesirable users see it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kd1hz@anomaly.ideamation.com (Michael P. Deignan) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: 11 Feb 1996 12:32:12 -0500 Organization: The Ace Tomato Company > If something was NOT against the law to put on the Internet yesterday, > then it is NOT against the law to put it on the Internet today. The > new law makes one simple request where net users are concerned: Do > not KNOWING distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* > so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone > you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? Call me paranoid, but I feel your summary is incorrect. Why? Let's look at what has happened in the dial-up BBS world over the past ten years. How many times have we read or heard about some BBS operator being the target of a "sting" operation for providing pornographic information to minors? Some accounts even have the police providing "Johnny" with the computer, and watch as he logs in, provides false information to get access to the "adult" file areas, or happens to download an image from the "new uploads" file area that the System Operator hasn't seen or moved to the "adult" conference. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not paranoid about cops (well, okay, maybe about the BATF, but only because I can't understand why the BATF needs Apache attack helicopters in their arsenal) -- after all, I work in law enforcement. Often, though, district attornies and/or attorney generals, who hold the flashy press conferences announcing how another child pornographer/molester has been eradicated from society, are often not career law-enforcement personnel, but instead elected politicians. And we know how glamourous it is to hold a press conference and tell the world you've captured another porn-king. Often, it's not about "the law", nor is to "protect society". Instead, it has to do with an approval rating and getting re-elected. Unfortunately, what I see happening with this new "law" is nothing more than further abuse by prosecutors to up their chances of re-election. Sure, the law says that you cannot KNOWINGLY distribute materials -- but how long is it before some prosecutor decides to legally show that, since the Internet has underage children on it, the mere act of you placing "indecent" material on the net is therefore "knowingly" giving underage children access to said material? I daresay it will not be very long at all. MD [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll grant you that many prosecutors are politicians first and seekers of truth and justice only as an afterthought. We have one like that here at the present time. The Cook County State's Attorney Jack O'Malley is highly political. Nor would I deny that what you say could happen. But the point is it was happening long before this latest federal law got passed. There are a variety of state and local ordinances which have been and are used to prosecute people for whatever reason where 'indecency' is concerned. Why do you think there will be a sudden increase in these cases? Why for example, does John Levine feel that his theoretical Renaissance nude suddenly became more offensive and dangerous to transmit this week than it was last week with a myriad of state laws pertaining to 'indecency' in effect then (and still now)? Why is his Renaissance nude going to be illegal to view here when it is not illegal to view in the Art Institute of Chicago or the Guggenheim Museum? The point is, it won't be. I hear people saying the Internet is suddenly being held to a different standard where 'free speech' is concerned than other forms of mass media. Yes it is, and no it isn't. Internet users have been told that from now on they will be held to the same standards as everyone else. So many of you prima donnas went for years and years thinking you were something special and something different. Now you are being told that to the contrary, you are just like everyone else. I know it must distress you a lot. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Robert Levandowski) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York Date: Mon, 12 Feb 96 03:55:04 GMT > Do not say that 'television stations do not know how the net operates' > because this is not true either. Cable News Network talked about this > on Thursday. If something was not against the law to disseminate via > the net before, it is not against the law to disseminate now. Just > be more careful about how you send it out. I got a note from someone > who said 'a lot of sites will vanish from the net probably as early > as next week' ... and my response to that is GOOD. Let them vanish. > I wonder who will miss them? PAT] Pat, you are provably wrong when you say that the CDA has not made it illegal to publish anything on the Internet. The CDA was amended, before passage, to include changes to the Comstock Act. This is a 120+ year old law which makes it illegal to discuss abortion via the US Postal Service. The CDA's changes alter the Comstock Act to apply to the Internet as well. Despite claims to the contrary by the amendment's sponsor, the actual text of the law does in fact make it a crime to say things such as "You can cause an abortion by taking a certain dose of normal birth control pills the day after conception." Even though that statement would be perfectly legal to make in public, on television, on the radio, or in print, and even though abortion is currently legal in the United States ... the quoted statement is against the law as written in this country at the current moment, because it was made on the Internet or sent through the mail. Granted, the Comstock Act hasn't been enforced lately, because it is patently unconstitutional. Even the Attorney General admits it. However, it is still on the books, and could still be used to arrest someone. A person's life could be ruined by the time the law was declared to be against the Constitution. Check it out. If you have Web access, the U.S. Code is at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18 -- the Criminal law. Look under Postal Service. Pat, it's not that people are so hungry for pornography. It's that this particular law, as worded, applies to a hell of a lot more than what's reasonable. Technically, it makes it illegal to send a health textbook to a minor on the Internet -- look up the legal definition of "indecent," which the bill bans, as opposed to "obscene." This law is ready to be misused by people with an axe to grind and a lawyer to turn the grindstone. Rob Levandowski University of Rochester -- Rochester, New York rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu [Opinions expressed are mine, not UR's.] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And these lawyers and others with axes to grind did not have anything at their disposal do to do prior to this latest legislation? PAT] ------------------------------ From: cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) Subject: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 11:56:59 PST Patrick Townsend commented: > If something was NOT against the law to put on the Internet yesterday, > then it is NOT against the law to put it on the Internet today. The > new law makes one simple request where net users are concerned: Do > not KNOWING distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* > so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone > you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? No, this isn't a terrible thing, but I thnk it sets a dangerous trend. My concern is how to determine that a user is a minor. Is simply asking "Are you 18?" enough? Or does one need to obtain a signed statement? The reason I ask is because California Penal Code section 308 (Tobacco Sales to Minors) uses the wording "knowingly selling tobacco to minors." HOWEVER, simply asking if the customer is under 18 is not enough. Clerks must obtain valid ID before selling tobacco products. There is no good faith defense for PC 308. Somehow, I doubt that the Decency Act will allow good faith either. Any lawyers want to comment? Steve cogorno@netcom.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 17:33 PST From: Eric Smith Subject: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) PAT wrote: > Do not KNOWINGLY distribute indecent matrerials to minors. Is that *really* > so much to ask? Do not originate an indecent transmission with someone > you KNOW to be a minor. Is that so hard? Yes, it is extremely difficult, since there is not a precise legal definition of "indecent". Some of the proposed alternate language would have substitued the word "obscene", which does have a precise definition. It has already been determined in courts that banning obscene material does not violate First Amendment rights whereas banning indecent material does. Why should the net be different than printed media? And why are you so certain that they will not nail people for putting things on web pages and Usenet newsgroups? Knowingly has often been interpreted to mean "known or should have known", and it is quite apparent that anyone who has used the net a non-trivial amount should know that it is readily accessible to minors. Between the lack of definition of indecent and the uncertaintly of knowingly, this looks suspiciously like a selective enforcement law to be used to punish those that the administration finds annoying. I am disappointed that you are taking the view that this is a trivial issue. In reality it is a very slippery slope. Today it is "indecency", tomorrow it will be political speech. In fact, there's no way to tell that political speech isn't "indecent" already! > I wonder if the ACLU and the small handful of others who are making > such vicious protests to this realize how incredibly foolish they > appear to the vast majority of netters? If they appear foolish to the majority of netters, the net is doomed. Even if I disagreed with the ACLU's position on this issue, I'd hardly call it foolish for them to take a stand on what they believe to be an important issue. > I got a note from someone > who said 'a lot of sites will vanish from the net probably as early > as next week' ... and my response to that is GOOD. Let them vanish. > I wonder who will miss them? PAT] I'll miss them. If the same "standard" (and I use the term loosely) were to be applied to printed media, a lot of books, magazines, and newspapers would disappear. While I don't read all of them, and probably would find at least some of them to be personally repugnant, just the same I would miss *all* of them. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean I shouldn't adamantly defend the right to it. Freedom of speech implicitly provides freedom to choose which speech I want to hear, and I don't take kindly to loosing that. And the scariest thing about the CDA is that if it is upheld by the courts, there is *absolutely* no reason why Congress won't be able to extend it to other media in the future. I don't really believe that Congress views this as a way to get a foot in the door of censorship, but I am certain that the Christian Coallition and other right wing groups supported it for *exactly* that reason. Would you want to live in a world where you had to give positive ID (proof of age) in order to access any material not suitable for six year olds? There's already been a case where a BBS operator from California was extradited to Tennessee and prosecuted based on the local community standards (of Tennessee). Would you want to have to determine that material you put on the net is not considered "indecent" *anywhere* in the USA? Wouldn't you rather have a better-defined standard such that you could reasonably hope to satisfy it? And we haven't yet even discussed the provisions of the CDA which make ISPs and information services potentially liable for content that they merely retransmit. The Telecom Reform Bill may be an excellent piece of legislation in other ways, but if they have to throw away Bill of Rights to do it, I'd just as soon leave things the way they were. Eric [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well since there is 'no precise standard for [indecent]', then how do the cable operators all manage to stay out of jail? If I have an old television set here with a cable box and I set it to the Spice Channel and then get in the back of the television and warp the horizontal synch around to where the picture is mostly viewable and then some minor sits here with me and watches the show, is that the fault of the cable operator? If parents do not supervise their children's use of Internet, is that the service provider's fault or the fault of the author of the message the child read? All your melodrama about the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment is bogus. I expect that sort of response from an ACLU'er, since they think they can use those precious documents as a blanket for everything. Actually, the ACLU makes mock of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, but that's a topic I could discuss for days without end. I have reviewed lots and lots of their cases going back into the 1920's and have yet to see a single one where I could agree with their reasoning. About ten years ago I was going to start a newsletter entitled 'ACLU Watch' and invite attornies and others to dissect their opinions closely. I didn't have the resources to do it at that time, and still don't. I may need to make some sacrifices now and do it however. The net really needs to know about those people in complete detail, and what bad news they really are where *true* freedom and liberty is concerned in America. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rgwillia@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Rick Williamson) Subject: Re: House Prohibits Free Speech on Abortion Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 21:57:42 GMT Organization: Alcatel Network Systems In article , monty@roscom.COM wrote: > JUST before House voting, an amendment was tacked on to the new > Telecommunications Reform Act which prohibits the mere DISCUSSION of > abortion on the Internet. To my understanding the bill does not prohibit dicussion of the abortion topic. I believe it prohibits the distribution of information on how or where to get an abortion. Rick rgwillia@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com ------------------------------ From: nde@winternet.com (Andy Yee) Subject: Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 17:48:54 GMT Organization: StarNet Communications In article , ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > Whatever you do, stay away from International Discount Telecom (IDT). > You have been warned. They charged my credit card for doing nothing > except setting up a totally incorrect account that I was never able > to use, not even once. If it had been more than ten or twenty > dollars I would have worked on getting it back ... but not for that > little. But they needn't think I am going to listen to any more of > their baloney offers. > For quite a while now, IDT has been running ads in the papers here > offering total internet access. Uncensored news groups! We don't > censor what you can read and see! And of course all the know-nothing > new users go running to sign up so they can go 'net surfing'. Check out the homepage of Scott "Shayd" Roberts, a former IDT employee who tells all: http://www.cybernex.com/shayd/IDTmain.html or check out my home page which has a link there! Andy Yee President New Directions Engineering Inc. http://www.winternet.com/~nde "Democrats...They think that all government is good; it can make you healthier, taller, improve your golf game... Republicans, on the other hand, think that all government is bad. Then they get elected to office and PROVE IT." - P. J. O'Rourke ------------------------------ From: alniven@pipeline.com (Al Niven) Subject: Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! Date: 11 Feb 1996 18:08:28 -0500 Organization: The Pipeline My experience with IDT was exactly the same. I went there in person and met with the president Howard Jonas. Bills all over his desk saying six months past due from ad agencies. He sat there the whole time picking his nose and looking at the ceiling. Paper flying around the entire enterprise. Everybody arrogant. Did not do business with them. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 02:02:38 +0000 From: Peter Judge Subject: Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! Dear PAT, Hey, sorry you feel that angry about 'surfing' as a term. But people who use it are not necessarily intending to trivialise the work in the Net. Be aware that it may get used differently in different cultures. Here in the UK we are a year or more behind the US in Internet provision, and in acceptance of on-line culture. We are behind in the jargon, too. For many people, Internet use is a tricky thing that they have to get their heads round for their job, and they often have to do it in their 'spare' time. The 'surf' metaphor (which is a dumb metaphor for something sedentary and textual) is still in wide circulation here. I think it is often a means for these people, and the ones selling them the access, to promote the idea of the Internet as something 'cool' and 'fun'. The sane way car adverts sell the idea that driving to and from work will become a big adventure (and you will be 'free'), if you only did it in XYZ Auto's new model. Over here, we don't have real surf (or very little), so we don't understand the metaphor. Over here we all pay the telco per minute (no flat fees) as well as on-line time charges (for CompuServe et al), so if you meet someone on-line, they are either doing serious work (whatever they say), or they are really genuinely appreciating and valuing what they are getting (whatever they may say) ... (or they are in the grip of a wasteful addiction, in which case they deserve sympathy). Peter Judge ------------------------------ From: wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) Subject: Re: IDT: What a Bunch of Idiots! Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 04:57:11 GMT I've been using IDT internet service for some months, and they're not that great, but usable. I also have an account at Netcom, which I like much better (less obvious censoring (if any), though it seems some posts get lost as they make their way thru the Internet). I kept IDT for the one reason that they are a local call from my mom's house in northern NJ and the nearest Netcom dialup was still a toll call. I would just login on IDT and then telnet to Netcom and login my account there. Saved more than the extra $15 a month in toll calls easily. I hated the newsreader on IDT, anyway. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All I basically wanted to do was use them as a gateway to telnet to my regular accounts. I was not interested in their Uncensored News Groups and it did not interest me in the least that they would not censor what I wanted to read. From the beginning I was sort of annoyed by their advertisments in the paper here knowing that they were trying to appeal to a bunch of local yokels (I used to love that term when it was first coined on CB Radio about twenty years ago) who slobber at the mouth as they go net-surfing looking for philes and warez and people having dirty conversations and places to post their 'make money fast' notices. In my case, they could not even get that much done correctly. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joe Plescia Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems Date: 11 Feb 1996 20:49:23 GMT Organization: Plescia.Com bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com writes: > According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as > AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies. Apparently > this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?). > It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. They probably had a group of a hundred or so marketing heads come up with that! It probably has some deep meaning and we are supposed to react to it ... I just hear people saying "what?" ... joe ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 00:20:39 PST bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Bryan Douglas) writes: > According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as > AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies. Apparently > this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?). > It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. I understand the name is supposed to have a reference to "clear" and "light giving". My customers at AT&T have been calling all week identifying themselves as from Lucent, then explaining what that is. None of them like the new corporate identity. tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H | "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, 1729-1797 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #56 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 12 11:20:07 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id LAA26829; Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:20:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:20:07 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602121620.LAA26829@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #57 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Feb 96 11:20:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 57 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Good Overall Read on 800/888/Replication etc. Status (Judith Oppenheimer) Pacific Bell to Increase Minority Phone Service Access (Mike King) CID Name from British Columbia Canada (Mark J. Cuccia) Texas PUC Overrides SWB on NPA Plan (Chris Boone) No Overlay in Houston, TX (Jeff Brielmaier) Imponderables About Telephones (David Feldman) Indian Telecom Bids Stuck in Court (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Agreement Reached on Indian Broadcast Rights (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Employment Opportunity: Jobs in Palestine (Sam Bahour) Call and Apology From IDT (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand) Subject: Good Overall Read on 800/888/Replication etc. Status Date: 12 Feb 1996 04:18:53 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand) FCC ISSUES 888 DEPLOYMENT POLICY BUT DEFERS DECISION ON REPLICATION The Federal Communications Commission's Common Carrier Bureau has issued a set of rules for the pre-reservation of 888 numbers in preparation for the scheduled launch of 888 service on March 1. The new rules include guidelines for the pre-reservation of numbers, including a rationing plan intended to maintain control of the process and avoid overloading the number administration database. The bureau also added an additional period for the Responsible Organizations (RespOrgs), which reserve numbers from the database for 800 and 888 customers, to poll their users about which 800 vanity numbers they wish to "protect" from the initial allocation process. There is still no guarantee, however, that these vanity numbers will actually be granted to the holders of the equivalent 800 number. The FCC plans to issue a separate decision about the replication issue at a later date. ...Rationing Added to Initial Deployment The FCC delegated authority to the Common Carrier Bureau to resolve issues raised in the toll free numbering docket (CC 95-155) on Jan. 24. The bureau issued its rules on Jan. 25. They allow RespOrgs to begin reserving numbers for subscribers at 12:01 a.m on Saturday, Feb. 10. Citing the rush that occurred when the 800-555 pool of numbers was opened in 1994, the bureau decided it would be best to limit allocation in order to prevent overloading the Service Management System (SMS). A total of 120,000 numbers will be available per week, partitioned among RespOrgs using the same formula currently used for allocating 800 number reservations. A RespOrg can calculate its share of 888 numbers by multiplying its 800 number allocation under the August 1995 plan by 4.0. Six thousand numbers will be reserved for Canadian RespOrgs, and each RespOrg will receive at least 200 numbers per week. At the same time, the rationing controls on 800 numbers are being slightly loosened since SMS administrator Database Service Management Inc. (DSMI) now projects that 800 numbers will last until June because of previous conservation efforts. Beginning Jan. 28 the total allocation limit was raised from 29,000 numbers per week to 73,000 numbers. Again individual RespOrgs' shares of this total are calculated with the same formula, simply multiplying the August allocation by 2.5. The limit will go back down to 29,000 on Feb. 18, to ensure that 800 numbers will remain available in case 888 service is not immediately supported in some local calling areas. "We intend to end the 800 number conservation plan once we are convinced that 888 calls can be placed nationwide," the bureau wrote. ...One More Set Aside Pass, But You Already Missed It Although the replication issue remains unsettled, the bureau did approve the plan of the SMS/800 Number Administration Committee (SNAC) to allow RespOrgs to submit lists of numbers that are to be coded as "unavailable" pending a final decision. Although there was no indication that holders of residential 800 numbers had expressed an interest in replication, the bureau narrowed the SNAC plan to specifically exclude these numbers. In response to complaints that the RespOrgs had failed to publicize the initial setaside and that many smaller customers were unaware of it until the deadline had passed (see last issue) the bureau modified the SNAC plan, adding another pass for customers to submit numbers they wanted protected. The bureau declined to enforce any formal notification process, but said, "We encourage RespOrgs to contact those commercial 800 subscribers they have not already polled. We encourage RespOrgs to honor all replication requests submitted to them by their commercial 800 subscribers." The bureau also said that it is in the RespOrgs' best interest to do so, both to generate new business, and to protect them from liability to 800 subscribers who they did not contact. Once again, however, very little time was allowed for this third pass. The RespOrgs had to submit their new list of numbers to DSMI by Feb. 1. As with the previous two passes, there will be a second submission to correct errors. DSMI is to complete the process of entering the numbers into the database before midnight on Feb. 8. The entire 888-555 number pool will also be set aside pending a decision on how 888 directory assistance services are to be handled. ...Proceeding Incrementally, Without a Replication Decision "At this time, we do not decide whether these numbers ultimately should be afforded any special protection or right," the bureau wrote. The bureau took this action to avoid delaying the implementation of 888, which was moved up from an earlier April 1 target date. "In light of our decision to have all 888 numbers corresponding to vanity numbers classified as unavailable, a decision about permanent protection is not essential to the opening of the 888 code," the bureau continued. The bureau even suggested that postponing a decision about replication until after the 888 code is in use might offer benefits of its own. "Postponing the decision will minimize consumer confusion during the initial transition to the 888 service access code," the bureau wrote. "That is, by affording special rights at this time, consumers may wrongly assume that all 800 and 888 numbers are interchangeable. Such a result may seriously undermine the public awareness and education efforts now underway to inform consumers of the new 888 toll-free code." As for when the replication issue would be settled, the bureau said only "We anticipate that the commission will resolve the vanity number issue and will identify what set of numbers, if any, is to receive permanent protection, as well as the scope of that protection, within the year." (Brad Wimmer, Common Carrier Bureau, 202/418-2351) Reprinted with permission from Advanced Intelligent Network News A publication of Phillips Business Information, Inc. contact: John Sullivan, 301/340-7788 ext. 2003 jsullivan@phillips.com copyright 1996, Phillips Business Information ------------------------ Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand A leading source of information on 800 issues. CallBrand@aol.com, 1 800 The Expert, (ph) 212 684-7210, (fx) 212 684-2714 http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/ ------------------------------ From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: Pacific Bell to Increase Minority Phone Service Access Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 06:57:42 PST Forwarded to the Digest FYI: ----- Forwarded Message ----- Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 18:46:52 -0800 From: Tom Tinnes Pacific Bell and Greenlining Coalition Announce New Plan to Increase Phone Service Access New Factors Found For Lower Phone Penetration Among California Minority And Low Income Groups >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<< For More Information Contact: Beverly Butler 415-542-9468 San Francisco, February 8, 1996 -- Information released by a Pacific Bell/Greenlining Coalition partnership challenges the myth that the cost of basic service is the biggest reason for lower phone penetration among minority and low income consumers. In fact, service retention could be the primary issue. The partnership, established July 1994 as the result of an historic agreement, is committed to "good faith efforts" to increase phone penetration rates in California. Since most non customers were found to have had phone service recently but had difficulty retaining the service, the partnership has focused on the following factors: *Non customers are very mobile. Many low income individuals and families move frequently and have difficulty paying multiple installation charges. *Inability to control long distance phone calls. In minority and low income households, there are a number of individuals or multiple families all using the same phone. New analysis found it is difficult for telephone subscribers in this situation to control phone use and they are often left to pay large long distance bills for unauthorized calls. *Payment priority issues. When faced with the choice between other livelihood needs or paying the phone bill, the competing need often comes first for non customers. Phone service, compared to other urgent needs, is often a lower priority. >>Today's Announcement Continues the Era of Cooperation In a breakthrough announced jointly today, the Pacific Bell/Greenlining Coalition partnership has agreed on strategies to address the problem. Services and options have been identified to deal directly with service retention. These include reduced installation rates, payment arrangements, and toll restrictions. Trials of these services in the target communities have been successful. "We've found that a large percentage of people who do not have phone service, want service. It is not the cost of Lifeline installation or basic service rates that prevents them from having it. Rather, service retention is a primary factor. Agreement on what the factors really are is a big step toward coming up with solutions," according to John Gamboa, Executive Director of the Greenlining Institute. "Through analysis and outreach trials in Oakland, the partnership has identified new ways to approach the issues." A toll restriction service approved by the California Public Utilities Commission in December, makes it possible to block most unwanted incoming collect calls and outgoing long distance and toll calls from a customer's phone. In the first month, over 10,000 customers subscribed to the new service to better manage phone usage and to help retain service. To deal with payment issues, Pacific Bell has proposed a plan to improve customer service processes, making it easier for customers to establish good credit history. In addition, an early bill could serve as notification to any customer, preventing charges from growing abnormally high. >>New Outreach Strategies and Options Signal Dynamic Approach to Problem This year, Universal Lifeline Telephone Service (ULTS) and service retention information education using community outreach will be increased by at least 50% for Asian-American and Hispanic communities and 100% for African American communities. "In 1995, we saw an 8% increase in ULTS customers in the state, and we believe that is, in part, due to our efforts championed by the Greenlining Coalition," said Paul Turner, Pacific Bell ULTS Product Manager. Pacific Bell's voice-mail products, Quick Dial Tone and Prepaid Phone Cards were also identified as additional solutions to phone retention issues. >>Recent Announcements by Pacific Bell also Applauded A trial Pacific Bell Calling Center was recently set up in Huntington Park to meet the needs of coin phone users. The Center allows people access to a clean, well-lit place from which they can make phone calls on coin operated telephones. If successful, information from this site will be used to improve phone service in other communities. Pacific Bell is also making it easier to pay Pacific Bell bills. In addition to electronic bill payment and paying by mail, Pacific Bell is working to increase the number of Authorized Payment Locations across the state, such as, local merchants and community organizations. Pacific Bell is a subsidiary of Pacific Telesis Group, a diversified telecommunications corporation based in San Francisco. -------------------- Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 02:24:09 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: CID Name from British Columbia Canada In earlier submissions to TELECOM Digest, I mentioned how the province name (spelled out) is showing as the name part of caller-ID on calls from Canada to the US (at least here in BellSouth territory). I've mentioned that only the province name shows up on calls from Canada, while calls within BellSouth territory show the name of the party associated with that calling number, and calls from other Regional BOC locations show the name of the city (or ratecenter) and two-letter state code. Of course, there are still situations where I am receiving "Out of Area". By showing only the province in the name part of the CID box on calls from Canada, there can be some misleading situations, such as the call from Whitehorse YUKON, which is in the 403 area code. It shows up as ALBERTA, since the primary province/territory in 403 *is* ALBERTA. I haven't (yet) received a call from any numbers on Prince Edward Island, but I would assume that NOVA SCOTIA would show up in the name part of the caller-ID box, since the primary province in 902 *IS* NS. The name part of the Caller-ID box has a maximum of 15 characters/spaces. In the earlier post, I wondered if it would show up as: "BRITISH COLUMBI" The other day, I received a call from 604-856-xxxx (Aldergrove BC), and it displayed as: "BRIT. COLUMBIA " When I first looked at the ID box as the phone rang, my eyes fooled me, and I thought I saw a 504 number coming from someone named `Columbia Brit', but then noticed it *was* from 604, British Columbia. Even tho' it might be some years before the various LEC `LIDBs' are interconnected for basic Caller-ID with name, I would hope that BellSouth could begin to give me the actual ratecenter city name and a two-letter code for the actual province/territory on calls from Canada where the calling party's number transmits. BellSouth *could* load Bellcore *rating* database info (which DOES give detail down to the NPA-*NXX* level for Canada), into their own databases for Caller-ID with Name display. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: Chris Boone <72732.2610@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Texas PUC Overrides SWB on NPA Plan Date: 12 Feb 1996 00:26:01 GMT Organization: ENTERGY/Gulf States Utilities The Texas Public Utility Commission voted Friday, February 9 to adopt SPLIT NPA plans for Houston and Dallas, thereby overriding SWB's original plans for an overlay NPA addition. The central core of Houston will remain 713 ... the ring around it consisting of the area outside Loop 610 will become the new area code 281. How soon this will become mandatory was not known by this writer at the time of this article. (Sure will screw up MY 5 ROLM CBXs and their programming ... I hate permissive dialing ... and I straddle 713 and 409 NPAs now with 4 of the CBXs using SATOPs and HAVE to route calls!!! ... I don't have the room for 713/281 to coexist in the same area ... after the permissive period ends, it will be no problem to program the routes ... but for now? oh brother!) Senior Telecommunications Technician 72732.2610@CompuServe.com ENTERGY/Gulf States Utilities 1:106/4267 FIDOnet WB5ITT - Advanced Class BBS- 409-447-4267 (WBBS) PG-9-5322 FCC Commercial 409-525-2001 PhoneMail 24hr ------------------------------ Subject: No Overlay in Houston, TX From: jeff.brielmaier@yob.com (Jeff Brielmaier) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 96 05:35:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: jeff.brielmaier@yob.com (Jeff Brielmaier) Well folks, Houston TX will NOT have an overlay plan after all. SWBell announced the 281 overlay over a year ago without much fanfare. SWBell even published the new telephone books describing how the overlay plan would work. But today (09-Feb-1996), the Texas Public Service Commission has voted (by a 2 to 1 vote) that there will be a geographic split of the 713 area code rather than adding 281 as an overlay. It appears that the main two arguements for a geographical split were (in on particular order): People complained that they didn't want to have to dial ten digits for all local calls. The hopeful alternate local service providers indicated that their customers would have to change their telephone number to the 281 AC if they elected to switch local service providers. For those who know know the Houston area, the AC boundary will be the "Beltway" (A circle around downtown Houston w/ Beltway-8 and west side forming part of AC dividing line. There's no indication right now where the actual dividing lines will be drawn but I expect the next billing cycle will show which exchanges will be moving to 281. { I'm most likely in one of them though :( } The 6PM newscast indicate that there will be seven-digit dialing within each AC and ten-digit dialing for 713<->281 dialing. They also indicate that because of geographic split, it is possible a third AC may have to be added shortly (they will have more hearings on this), and in four to seven years there will be another geographic split due to lack for phone numbers. One local TV news report is indicating that it will take three to six months to formalize the AC boundary and another three to six months for the transition period. More later ... * KingQWK 1.05 # [PK] * I used to watch TV, then I bought a modem ... Ye Olde Bailey BBS Zyxel 713-520-1569(V.32bis) USR 713-520-9566(V.34/FC) Houston,Texas yob.com Home of alt.cosuard ------------------------------ From: feldman@imponderables.com (David Feldman) Subject: Imponderables About Telephones Date: 12 Feb 1996 00:48:26 -0500 Organization: Imponderables I write a series of books (e.g., Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?) in which I answer mysteries of life sent to me by readers. Several years ago, several posters to comp.dcom.telecom were kind enough to help me with some of my questions. I have some more: 1. When an American makes a phone call to a foreign country, how is the receiving country's phone call compensated? 2. When you can hear a third-party conversation, can they hear you? What are the mechanics of this? 3. Why are there no windows in many telephone company buildings? (Are these all central offices? Are there telco buildins with many employees that are also windowless?) If there are any telephone company employees who would be willing to speak to me on or off the record about these questions, please contact me via e-mail. Any help is greatly appreciated.. Dave Feldman Year of the Year: 1996 Song of the Week: "Let It Flow" (Toni Braxton) Web Page of the Season: "http://www.imponderables.com" Word (but not vegetable) of the Week: Rhubarb ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:55:35 -0800 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Indian Telecom Bids Stuck in Court The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary, February 11, 1996 Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved Contents: Telecom bids still stuck in court: February 5 Agreement reached on sport broadcasts: February 7 Hewlett-Packard to market products of India's HCL: February 9 Telecom bids still stuck in court February 5: Five months after the opening of bids for basic telephony and cellular services across India, they remain unimplemented; the private bidders (and the government) now awaits a decision from the Supreme Court. The Court was faced with two problems. One, a series of public interest suits filed by sundry left-wing, consumer and labour organisations, challenged the very privatisation of telecom itself, with the usual accusations that private firms would fleece consumers and ignore rural areas. The Court curtly said that privatisation was a policy decision not subject to its jurisdiction - and in any case the bids did give importance to rural coverage (a weightage of 15%, as against 72% for the bid amount). The other problem, on which the Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks, is the government's arbitrary announcement of "caps" - limits - on the total number of licences to be awarded to any single bidder. Set at three for both cellular and basic services in the wealthier A and B categories of "circles" - regions - this ended up being remarkably favourable to one bidder, HFCL. This outcome was first hinted at in a Techonomist bulletin on August 31, the day of the bids. The caps in basic services allowed HFCL to get out of paying a phenomenal $27 billion for the nine lucrative circles where it had the highest bids. HFCL, supported with its foreign partners Bezeq (Israel) and the Shinawatra Group (Thailand), was never expected to find that sort of money, and by last October was indicating it would renege on some bids. The caps saved HFCL losing its earnest money. By coincidence, the caps in cellular services gained HFCL a lucrative circle it wouldn't have got otherwise. HFCL comes from Himachal Pradesh, the home state of Indian Communications Minister Sukh Ram. In an election year, Parliament enjoyed itself flinging charges of corruption at every opportunity. The government was stern, to begin with, and promised to go ahead an award licences according to the bids (with caps). After all, the tenders had clearly reserved the government's right to reject bidders for any reason whatsoever. When other bidders, such as AT&T-Birla and Essar-Bell Atlantic declined to match the bids of HFCL in its "capped" circles, the government issued another round of tenders, in early January, for these vacated regions. This was predicted by the Techonomist in September. Compared to the first round, with 80 bids, the retender was miserable with only five. As it was barely a week to the Supreme Court's hearing date in the public-interest case, this was not unexpected. The government gave in, and said the Court would decide what to do. The Court has few options. It could uphold the government's right to change bidding criteria, as it did in a tender on paging services two years ago. In that case it insisted that the changes apply equally to all bidders; here, the precise value of the cap determines who benefits (three suits HFCL fine). It could direct the government to issue fresh tenders with publicly announced criteria that don't change once the bids are opened. With elections expected in June, this would lead to much delay and confusion, so perhaps it will be thought too extreme a step to take. The simplest option for the Court would be to uphold the originally announced tenders, and the bids opened in August, but without caps. This would be suitable to almost everyone; even HFCL stands to lose only some $50 million in earnest money, not much for a chance to pick its favourite parts of India from its nine highest bids. AT&T, which often came second to HFCL and could take what the latter couldn't afford, will not be unhappy either. The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary. http://dxm.org/techonomist/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:57:25 -0800 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Agreement Reached on Indian Broadcast Rights The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary, February 11, 1996 Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved Contents: Telecom bids still stuck in court: February 5 Agreement reached on sport broadcasts: February 7 Hewlett-Packard to market products of India's HCL: February 9 Agreement reached on sport broadcasts February 7: Doordarshan, India's state broadcaster, reached an agreement with WorldTel, the private owner of rights to the Wills World Cup Cricket tournament, to terrestrially telecast all matches in India. After its slightly delayed third installment for the purchase of rights last year, the WorldTel-Doordarshan dispute reached the Supreme Court in a replay of a case in 1993, for another World Cup. That case led to a landmark Supreme Court judgement exactly one year ago declaring the government broadcasting monopoly unconstitutional, and protecting the immunity of free speech from monopolies even when it is commercial in nature. This time, with legislation freeing Indian broadcasting waiting in the wings, the cricket controversy threatened to lead to an ordinance protecting Doordarshan's terrestrial broadcasting rights to major sport events (similar to laws under consideration in Britain). Luckily it did not come to that, and it probably never will: as part of the agreement, Doordarshan gave up its demand for rights in perpetuity to the World Cup tournament. Among the other terms: Doordarshan will pay the last installment; STAR TV will retain the satellite rights it bought when WorldTel cancelled the contract with Doordarshan; WorldTel will provide Doordarshan with live feeds of all 37 matches including those held outside India, for terrestrial broadcast. The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary. http://dxm.org/techonomist/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached ------------------------------ From: ah510@yfn.ysu.edu (Sam Bahour) Subject: Employment Opportunity: Jobs in Palestine Date: 11 Feb 1996 23:31:24 GMT Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net PALESTINE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY LTD. Palestine Telecommunications Company is a private company that was recently established by a large number of private investors in agreement with the Palestine National Authority to be the first public telecommunications operator in Palestine. This recruitment effort is aimed to employ a core team of senior-level officers, which will help set-up the operations as a modern, market- oriented, customer-driven company. The team will operate from the Company's national headquarters in the city of Nablus. The Company's priority is to modernize and expand the existing limited network into a state of art independent telecommunications network that supports the emerging economic and social development of Palestine. Therefore, highly qualified and experienced senior officers are invited to submit their applications for immediate consideration. 1- Legal and Regulatory Affairs (Ref. LRA / IN1 /96) The incumbent will be the in-house legal counsel who will work in conjunction with a team of international and local attorney's to deal with all legal and regulatory issues including licensing issues, negotiating commercial agreements and dealing with other corporate legal issues. The incumbent should be a young, dynamic attorney who will grow with the company. He/She is expected to posses a degree in law from a well-respected university and should have 3-5 years of commercial law experience, preferably in a commercial telecommunications organization. 2- Corporate Planning (Ref. CP / IN2 / 96) The incumbent must be a very well-rounded telecommunications professional who is able to lead the effort in developing the corporate business plan, operational plans and monitoring systems in conjunction with other departments. He/She should posses strong organizational management skills and should have corporate policy and strategic planning experience. He/She should be knowledgeable and have work experience in the fields of economics, engineering or finance. He/She should also be able to perform market and financial analysis. The ideal candidate is a telecommunications engineer with an MBA degree. He/She will also have 10 years experience of which 5 were with a commercial telecommunications organization. 3- Customer Care (Ref. CC / IN3 / 96) The incumbent will be responsible for the Company's customer care functions. He/She will develop a new customer care system that will enable the company to efficiently respond to the ever-changing customer needs. Responsibilities will include specifying, designing and implementing the planned customer care system which will encompass billing and collections, directory assistance, service order system, as well as a fault management system. Experience in management information systems is mandatory. The successful incumbent will have a BA degree, with preferably a Master's in MIS or Business Administration with 10 years experience, of which 5 years were in a commercial telecommunications environment. 4- Network Operations and Maintenance (Ref. NOM / IN4 / 96) The incumbent will be responsible for the management of the overall existing network and maintenance systems and to develop and implement future network operations and maintenance strategies. He/She will be familiar with all aspects of switching, transmission, outside plant, power and air conditioning systems. He/She will manage the network operations and maintenance functions through regional offices. The successful incumbent will have a BSc degree in telecommunications engineering with preferably an advanced degree. The incumbent will have 10 years experience of which 5 years were in a commercial telecommunications operator. 5- Network Planning and Development (Ref. NPD / IN5 / 96) The incumbent will be responsible for the function of network planning and development. He/She will have strong working knowledge in designing, specifying, procuring and supervising the implementation of all network components. He/She will have full awareness of the latest developments in telecommunication technologies. He/She must have practical experience in identifying the least cost technical solutions and defining the needed investment. The successful incumbent will have 10 years in telecommunications project planning, procurement and implementation. 6- Corporate Services (Ref. COS / IN6 / 96) The incumbent will be responsible to develop, supervise and manage issues that will support the corporate functions. He/She will deal with human resources and staff management, training, information technology issues which support the internal corporate needs, purchasing, logistics and office services. The successful incumbent will be highly organized and have a BA in Business Administration with preferably an advanced degree. He/She will have 10 years experience in administration and human resource development in a large commercial organization. 7- Accounting and Finance (Ref. AF / IN7 / 96) The incumbent will be responsible for establishing an enterprise-wide accounting and finance system. Responsibilities will include developing and implementing accounting policies, procedures, systems and controls. He/She will be responsible for developing financial statements and reports as well as complying with auditors and regulators. The successful incumbent will posses a BA in accounting or finance with preferably a CPA with 7 years of experience in a large commercial organization. COMPENSATION The Palestine Telecommunications Company offers competitive salaries and benefits that are commiserate with incumbents qualifications, experience and training. Interested and qualified candidates who have an excellent command of the English language and solid computer skills may apply by submitting a cover letter and detailed C.V. (with phone number and salary requirements). Mention in your cover letter the reference number of the field you are applying for. Do not send copies of certificates or diplomas. PALESTINE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CO. c/o P. O. Box 316 Nablus - Palestine Fax Number: 972-9-384-355 Deadline for applications is Feb. 29, 1996 The Company would like to request that any recently graduated telecommunication engineers who have a distinguished academic record and/or have earned an advanced degree from a well-respected institution are welcome to submit their C.V. for future consideration. These type of applications should use the following reference number: (Ref. FU / INX / 96). ** ONLY QUALIFIED CANDIDATES SHOULD APPLY ** Any email response should be sent to 73317.3605@compuserve.com Applied Information Management ** >>>>>>>YOUR OFFSHORE<<<<<<<< ** Sam Bahour 2986 Roosevelt Drive ** SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PARTNER ** P.O.Box 3651 Youngstown, OH 44504-1204 USA El-Bireh, West Bank, via Israel ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Call and Apology From IDT Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 10:41:00 EST I just wanted to let everyone know that a few minutes ago, as I was editing this issue of the Digest I received a telephone call from someone at IDT who said they wished sincerely to apologize for the call from their salesperson last week. I accepted his apology; there was no reason not to or to continue to hold a grudge. The more I think about it, I believe a major problem at IDT may be their rapid growth. All of us who are seeing *so many* new users coming on line are experiencing the same kind of confusion and the same need to standardize our dealings, often times regretably at the lowest common denominator. For example, I had five new subscribers on the mailing list just this morning. Anyone remember when years ago, I used to announce new subscribers (if they did not object) and tell everyone who they were? Now maintainence alone on the list takes an hour or more each day. So I can't be too cranky where IDT is concerned. The gentleman I spoke with from IDT this morning did say there was a certain reluctance on the part of the organization to issue shell accounts to new users (as opposed to their graphics interface with net browsing software, etc) for the obvious reason that there are more opportunities for 'problems' ... and that makes sense. I suspect a lot of ISPs these days would agree with the late comedian W.C. Fields (probably none of you even remember him!). Although Fields was talking about his girl friends, the ISPs might say the same thing about their customer base: "The dumber they are, the better I like them!" Anyway IDT, apologies accepted. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #57 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 12 13:57:34 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id NAA12954; Mon, 12 Feb 1996 13:57:34 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 13:57:34 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602121857.NAA12954@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #58 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Feb 96 13:57:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 58 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Regulating the Internet (Tad Cook) Book Review: "Frontiers of Electronic Commerce" (Rob Slade) Class Action Claim Against MCI (Tad Cook) Maven of the Month (Jerzy Grzeda) Massachusetts Area Code Overlays (John Grossi) ISDN Help Needed (Joe Plescia) FBI Voicemail Sting (Van Heffner) MLM vs. Outside Sales Agents (John R. Levine) Trademarks and Copyrights (Bill Blackwell) It's What the Law SAYS (John Higdon) Voice Annunciation Needed (Robert McMillin) Voice Processing Job Opportunity in Toronto (Alan Langford) Employment Opportunity: Telephone Over ATM Systems Architect (R Walsworth) Top Ten Anagrams -- 'Communications Decency Act' (Mike Morton) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tad Cook Subject: Regulating the Internet Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 09:50:21 PST Telecom bill was a shot heard round the Internet By Jonathan Weber Moments after President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 into law Thursday, a passel of civil liberties lawyers were in court seeking to strike down a provision banning the transmission of "indecent" material on the Internet. And they will probably succeed: Most constitutional lawyers believe the provision is too broad to pass legal muster. But if you think such a decision will mean even a temporary end to efforts to regulate cyberspace, think again. For one thing, many governments around the world, from China to Germany, are forging ahead with cyberspace restrictions of various kinds, and the very nature of the Internet means such crackdowns will have a global impact. At the same time, this country is witnessing the rapid development of a kind of privatized regulatory regime, in which individual companies and interest groups, through a variety of mechanisms, are policing the on-line world and imposing restrictions on what takes place there. From parents hoping to thwart on-line pornographers to Scientologists hoping to silence their critics, to Nazi-hunters battling Holocaust denial, to Guardian Angels on the lookout for all manner of nefarious deeds, people are taking it upon themselves to stop things the law continues to allow. In many respects, free-lance regulation is better than the traditional kind, because laws aimed at governing on-line communications create more problems than they solve. The absence of rules has its dangers, too, though, and the Internet access providers and on-line publishers who are increasingly finding themselves caught in a cross-fire might soon be wishing they had the government telling them what they can and should do. Unquestionably illegal Some aspects of the emerging system of ad hoc rules are actually simpler than they seem. Much of the most alarmist talk about the perils of the Internet revolves around activities that are illegal, and such things are illegal no matter where they take place. Child pornography, for example, or soliciting children for sex, or plotting to blow up government buildings can all be prosecuted under existing laws. What's complicated is coping with speech and activities that are objectionable to many people, but legal. Pornography isn't illegal, nor is advocating Nazism, nor is distributing instructions on how to build a bomb -- but a lot of people want to see such things banned from cyberspace. The telecommunications bill takes a head-on approach, making it illegal to transmit "indecent" material to children over computer networks. Since much of the Internet is by nature a public system in which it's impossible to screen out underage individuals, the provision would in many respects amount to a ban, though some individual World Wide Web sites and bulletin board services could probably circumvent it with password systems. In the absence of a new law, the most important private sector response to the indecency involves rating Internet sites and discussion groups, and using software to selectively block access. A group of Internet and computer software companies is working on technical specifications that will enable sites to accommodate blocking software and ratings systems. Multiple ratings In contrast to the single ratings system for movies, there will be a plethora of private Internet ratings systems, some of which are already under development. Parents, or anyone else, will be able to select a ratings system that corresponds to their values, and then install the software to implement it on their own computer. But another, much more problematic kind of private-sector rating system is emerging as well -- one imposed by on-line service operators and Internet service providers. These companies are free to refuse service to individuals or groups that say or do things they don't like. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles argues that just as a newspaper will sometimes refuse to carry an offensive advertisement, so Internet providers should tell neo-Nazis and other hatemongers to take their business elsewhere. "We're saying, `Come up with your own approach, but just don't say that anything is free speech,' " says Cooper. He notes there have always been ad hoc "rules of engagement" on how mainstream society deals with fringe elements -- books denying the Holocaust are legal to publish, for example, but they don't make the Book of the Month club -- and similar rules need to be developed for the on-line world. Not an easy task Putting the burden of censorship on the Internet access provider, however, is a very tricky business. Unlike services such as America Online or Prodigy, which in some respects act as publishers of information, many access providers offer little more than communications and computer services, like telephone companies. And phone companies not only do not make judgments about how their phone lines are used, they are prohibited by law from doing so. Under the doctrine known as "common carriage," they must provide service under equal terms to anyone who asks. Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union, says he would advise Internet access companies to act as much like common carriers as possible. Otherwise, they'll be in the hopeless position of having to monitor all the World Wide Web pages of all their customers, for example, and deciding which ones are OK and which ones aren't. And then they would have to decide what links between sites are OK and what newsgroups are OK and so on and on. The telecommunications bill provides some relief in this regard, establishing that Internet providers cannot be held liable for illicit information flowing on their networks if they do not know about it. Thus in key respects, ignorance is bliss. But as powerful interest groups make their voices heard about what should and should not be permissible on the Internet -- and as self-appointed monitoring groups see to it that activities they don't like are reported -- the access providers are going to find it increasingly difficult to do nothing. And the next round in the war over Internet restrictions will be joined. Jonathan Weber is the technology editor for the Los Angeles Times business section. He can be reached at: Jonathan.Weber@latimes.com . -------------------- tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H | "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, 1729-1797 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 12:12:23 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Frontiers of Electronic Commerce" BKFRELCO.RVW 960125 "Frontiers of Electronic Commerce", Kalakota/Whinston, 1996, 0-201-84520-2, U$49.50 %A Ravi Kalakota kalakota@uhura.cc.rochester.edu %A Andrew Whinston abw@uts.cc.utexas.edu %C 1 Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867-9984 %D 1996 %G 0-201-84520-2 %I Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. %O U$49.50 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 Fax: (617) 944-7273 bkexpress@aw.com %P 848 %T "Frontiers of Electronic Commerce" The title of this book could refer to new technologies for trading and transactions. It could refer to the new forms of marketing needed in the online community, or the marketing of information, or the new demands of intellectual property, or electronic shopping. In fact, the authors have attempted to address all of these areas, plus public policy regarding information infrastructures, telco/cable/ISP competition, security and firewalls, corporate data warehousing, software agents, TCP/IP internals, multimedia, broadband, wireless communications, and SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language). They have tried to do it all, and, inevitably, have failed. The result is no more than the usual "Infomercial Supercliche" book, with a business bent. There may be some who say that this assessment is too harsh. The book is intended for a business audience, rather than technical professionals. A lack of technical rigour is allowable. The book does not, however, do any great service to the business community either. While thoroughly strewn with technical jargon, and extremely terse business examples, it does not provide the non-technical reader with the underlying concepts and understanding necessary to make reasonable decisions in a highly technical environment. It is verbose, bloated with academic style, and lacking in insight. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKFRELCO.RVW 960125. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca rslade@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca Ah! When I were lad, we used to 'ave t'wait 40 milliseconds on noisy channel for a network link to come oop--and login both ends! - per Linda Richards Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Class Action Claim Against MCI Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 09:08:48 PST In the {San Jose Mercury News}, their Action Line column (a consumer complaint and information feature) had a question about filing a claim with MCI to get a refund on 900 number charges. Here is the response that the columnist gave: "We're having a claim form sent to you. There was a class-action settlement in federal court in Augusta, Ga., setting up a $43 million fund. This money is for free long distance certificates to compensate consumers who called 900 number programs involving sweepstakes, games of chance, unclaimed funds, offers of credit and offers of credit cards from companies that used MCI 900 long distance services between 1989 and 1994. A representative for the settlement administration says there were numerous consumers who had to pay the charges for the 900 numbers but never received the items promised. The claim forms are available by calling (800) 871-5409 and are to be sent to the 900 Number Claims Administration Office, Box 33308, Washington, D.C. 20033. They must be postmarked by March 31. If the settlement plan is accepted by the courts, those who filed claims will receive certificates for $40 if they paid for 900 calls to games of chance, unclaimed funds and sweepstakes. The proposed settlement is $50 in certificates for programs offering credit or credit cards." -- Send e-mail to MercAction on Mercury Center or MercAction@aol.com on Internet. Please include full name, address and phone number. Do not send original documents. Action Line regrets that because of the volume of requests, we cannot respond to all queries. Andy Bruno is the Action Line writer. 2/12 Published 2/12/96 in the {San Jose Mercury News}. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The notice of settlement was sent to me by the court several months ago and ran in its entirety here as a special mailing. Persons who want to see a copy can get it from the Telecom Archives at ftp.lcs.mit.edu. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jerzy Grzeda Subject: Maven of the Month Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:50:18 +0000 Organization: KMi, The Open University Reply-To: J.T.Grzeda@open.ac.uk Hello, On 14th February, 1996 at 5pm GMT, Luc Steels (Free U. Brussels & Sony Japan), creator of '2nd Generation Expert Systems', flying robots and intelligent agents, will be participating in a live and interactive broadcast over the internet. The broadcast is part of a sequence of events hosted by the Knowledge Media Institute, of The Open University, which have so far featured Henry Lieberman (MIT Media Lab), Borre Ludvigsen (HIO Norway), Richard Cogger (Cornell University) and Peter Cochrane (BT Labs). Luc's interests have spanned the whole of AI: natural language processing, knowledge representation, perception and action, problem solving, learning. He is also interested in science in general, particularly chaos theory and its application in different areas of science and technology ranging from physics and chemistry to biology and economics. Anyone is welcome to participate in the event, anywhere in the world. The minimum hardware requirements are a internet connection, sound and a web browser. It even works via a 14.4 baud modem. The Stadium utilizes Real Audio and CU-SeeMe software, which can be downloaded from the Stadium WWW Page. So drop by, listen, look and ask Luc a question! To see replays of previous events and/or participate on the 14th visit KMi Stadium, free of charge at: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/stadium/welcome.html If you would like more information about this event or KMi, please contact me. Jerzy Grzeda Tel: +44 1908 655761 Business Manager Fax: +44 1908 653169 Knowledge Media Institute J.T.Grzeda@open.ac.uk The Open University http://kmi.open.ac.uk/ Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA United Kingdom ------------------------------ From: jgrossi@bbn.com (John Grossi) Subject: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays Date: 12 Feb 1996 13:08:10 GMT Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) Well today's {Boston Globe} has a nice article on how NYNEX is going to propose before the Public Utilites Commission, in about two months, splitting 617 (Boston and the inner 'burbs) and 508 (the rest of the 'burbs, Worcester, Lowell, and New Bedford). The plan calls for overlay codes ... but with a new twist. They are going to be seven digit dialing unless you want the other area code. Considering the stinks made on the south shore last time the area codes were split. I have a feeling we are going to see another geographic split. Numbers should be announced later today as to what the new area codes will be. NYNEX needs to do the split as 617 is down to 143 remaining exchange codes and 508 is down to 187. They also mention that the rest of New England with the Connecticut split is years away from another split (then again 508/617 was supposed to be good till 2003 and it only lasted till 1998. John Grossi Associate Engineer Bolt, Beranek, & Newman Inc. (617) 873-4152 10 Moulton St. Cambridge Ma. 02138 jgrossi@bbn.com ------------------------------ From: Joe Plescia Subject: ISDN Help Needed Date: 12 Feb 1996 15:51:11 GMT Organization: Plescia.Com Reply-To: jplescia@plescia.com HELP! I am having a problem with Bell Atlantic, NJ. I ordered a ISDN line back in October and it still is not set up correctly. They can not seem to figure it out. They are trying very hard, but now I need outside help. If any one has any ideas please let me know. Here is the setup: I have two spids, we will call them #1 and #2; There are 3 DN's ... A, B and C; Both are EKTS with CACH; It is a national ISDN setup on an AT&T, (or should I say Lucent) 5E version 9; SPID #1 is an AT&T 7506 and SPID #2 is an IBM 7845; Spid # 1 has this: 6 CA (call appearance) of DN "A"; 2 CA of DN "B"; 1 CA of DN "C"; hold; transfer; drop; conference; redial; 7 speed calls; Spid # 2 has this: 7 CA of DN "B"; 1 CA of DN "C"; 1 CA of DN "A"; hold; conference; drop; Here is the problem: When a call comes in on any of the call appearances and is answered on spid # 1, spid # 2 keeps on ringing ... forever and ever and ever ... the lights and display on spid #1 correctly show status of call. BUT ... When I answer a call on spid #2, everything works correctly and the ringing stops on spid #1. The line lights and display, on spid # 1, also correctly show the status of call. Please help if you can! Thanks in advance, joe p jplescia@plescia.com Visit our WWW SITE http://www.plescia.com Joseph P Plescia-Plescia Photo email jplescia@plescia.com 201.868.0065 201.868.0475fax Photofinishing, Studio, Imaging Paging, Beepers, Cellular Phones ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 06:11:59 -0800 From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: FBI Voicemail Sting Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Business Briefs Column Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News A fake phone message left in an FBI sting helped lead to a Boca Raton salesman's arrest on charges of illegally tapping into a competitor's voice mail to steal clients. Kenneth T. Kaltman, 50, was charged Thursday in Connecticut Superior Court with 29 counts of computer crime, one count of third-degree larceny and two counts of harassment. He was ordered held on $510,000 bond. Kaltman illegally accessed his former employer's computer mail, listening to business calls, deleting messages and intercepting clients, state police contend. Van Hefner - Editor Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 18:59 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: MLM vs. Outside Sales Agents Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > If you want to be in the long distance resale business, it is far > better to do so directly as an agent for a carrier, not via > 'downlines' and 'uplines'. PAT] I wouldn't go that far. I'd say that you want to sign up with a company who wants you to sell long distance, not sign up more suckers. I get my long distance service through an outside sales agent who represents two resellers, each of which in turn gets service from a wireline carrier. I'm actually billed by the resellers and call them directly when I have a billing question. My agent would certainly like to sell me more phone service, but he has no interest in signing me up as a distributor -- that's not part of his business. Despite this three-level structure, the rates I get this way are quite low, and the service is good. I presume this is because I'm not paying for Candice Bergen's TV ads. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof ------------------------------ From: bear@hic.net (Bill Blackwell) Subject: Trademarks and Copyrights Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:11:13 -0600 Given the potential problems for InterNIC registrations lapsing and being re-assigned, it might be time for the government to take the maintenance of the net back. (easy now, for limited functions ...) There currently exists problems in registering domain names that conflict with trademarks, service marks and copyrights owned by other entities. The law assumes that consumers will be confused by the expropriation of intellectual property. Why not have the Bureau of Patents and Trademarks take over for InterNIC? Sice they have the records at their disposal, one could avoid what could possibly turn into a horrendous amount of litigation by letting the people who know how to do it, do the up-front work. Then, just like TM's and SM's, one would pay a periodic fee to "re-up" the domain name. Taken from here, someone usurping "moderation" (aberration) of a newsgroup could then be held liable for the copyright violation under existing law. (Not to mention theft ...) Would this be a feasible arrangement? Regards, Bill Blackwell bear@hic.net Houston, Texas, USA ------------------------------ Organization: Green Hills and Cows Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 09:32:46 -0800 From: John Higdon Subject: It's What the Law SAYS At 12:53 PM on 2/8/96, Patrick A. Townson wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, I have received several > messages including one from John Covert saying this [prohibition of the > >discussion of abortion] was not the intention of Henry Hyde and > that in fact abortion discussion is not to be banned. Right now > I am opting for that opinion. PAT] Unfortunately, when it comes to legislation, what you, I, John Covert, or even Henry Hyde think about it is irrelevant. It is the language contained in the law that counts, and how that language is interpreted by the courts regarding a case against a defendant. No court in the land that I am aware of ever goes back to the author of the law to get HIS opinion concerning his own intent. Unenforced (and generally unenforcable) laws amount to time bombs. They lie dormant until that day when a particular prosecutor wants to nail a particular defendant and discovers a nice little mechanism in the form of one of these laws. The term "selective enforcement" comes to mind. If there is wording on the books that can even so much as be construed to prohibit open and free discussions of any topic whatsoever, it needs to be tested and resolved at the earliest possible moment. I would certainly hate to be the one, after mentioning the word "abortion" on the net, hauled off kicking and screaming, "but Henry Hyde didn't mean ...". John Higdon | P.O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 | FAX: john@ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | +1 500 FOR-A-MOO | +1 408 264 4407 | http://www.ati.com/ati | [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well you certainly make a valid point. As I noted, several have written me saying exactly what they believe was and was not intended, but your thing about how prosecutors can find the damndedest things to grip on to is something none of us should forget. We have a prosecutor here in Cook County like that now. And it is not just at the prosecutorial level you will see that. Some individual police officers also spend time combing law books looking for something -- anything -- to use against people they don't like. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) Subject: Voice Annunciation Needed Organization: Charlie Don't CERF Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 12:35:16 GMT We have a contract to provide a voice annunciation system that must call a phone number and deliver a synthesized voice message. Can anyone out there recommend a product? Robert L. McMillin | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 01:13:10 EST From: Alan Langford Subject: Voice Processing Job Opportunity in Toronto This may be of some interest to TELECOM Digest readers in the metro Toronto area. I am posting it as a service to the company and anyone interested in the position. Direct responses to the fax number listed in this message. Mail to my address will be _ignored and deleted_. Interlogic Systems Inc., a Toronto-based systems integrator specializing in voice response and fax applications, has an immediate opening for a full-time staff position. The position requires proficiency in UNIX, and C programming. Experience with voice processing applications and IBM's Direct Talk/6000 product is highly desireable. Job functions include consulting, application development, project management and customer support. Excellent interpersonal and client relations skills are essential. The successful candidate will be based in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. The job may involve travel within North America. A vehicle is required. The company does not offer any relocation benefits. If you are interested, fax your resume to: Vikas Gupta President Interlogic Systems Inc. Fax: (905)803-1113 Mail: 2 Robert Speck Parkway Suite 750 Missisauga, Ontario Canada L4Z 1H8 e-mail is not available at the moment. Please do not respond to my address. Alan Langford Ambit Perspectives: jal@io.org Voice Response Systems Consulting Bus: (416)236-3454 Computer Integrated Telephony Toronto, Ontario, Canada Publishers of Ambit Voice Views Web: http://www.io.org/~jal/ambit.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 10:48:01 -0800 From: Rick Walsworth Subject: Employment Opportunity: Telephone Over ATM Systems Architect Com21, pioneers in ATM over CATV networks has an immediate need for the following qualified candidate: Sr. Systems Architect, Telephony Com21 has an immediate opening for a Senior Systems Architect for development of telephony systems based on ATM over CATV. The selected candidate will lead the development of the system architecture and provide technical direction to design engineers. The ideal candidate will have 10 or more years experience with telephone switching systems, call processing and signalling systems such as TR008 and TR303, ATM, Digital Loop Carrier products, and system performance engineering. An advanced CS or EE degree is desired. Qualified Candidates should contact: Roya Mofazali 415 254-5874 roya@com21.com Resumes can be faxed to 415 254-5883 ------------------------------ From: Mike Morton Date: Sun, 11 Feb 96 20:25:35 -1000 Subject: Top Ten Anagrams -- 'Communications Decency Act' Copyright (c) 1996 by the author, Mike Morton . All rights reserved. You may reproduce this, in whole or in part, in any form provided you retain this paragraph unchanged. Top Ten Anagrams for "Communications Decency Act" 10. Caution cynic: Scan modem, etc. 9. Communist, candy, cocaine, etc. 8. Academic custom: Cynic on 'Net 7. Connect CIA, communist decay 6. I disconnect my Acme account 5. [This anagram too offensive to post] 4. Condoms, etc., can cue intimacy 3. Decency? Commit a sin, account! 2. Cut my academic connections And the number one anagram for "Communications Decency Act": 1. Comic scene: Nudity act on Mac Runners-up: A succinct edict: man, economy CIA? Disconnect me, my account? Connect Mosaic; induce my act Cute, cosmetic cynic: Madonna I accuse; condemn my tactic, no? I accused: Connect into my Mac I can't commend saucy conceit Media custom: Connect a cynic Mice may disconnect account Scan me: CIA concocted mutiny [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Bravo! Readers who wish to work on these and have a bit of fun are invited to do so. Perhaps you can add a few of your own. Have a nice day! PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #58 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 13 17:40:43 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id RAA22646; Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:40:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:40:43 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602132240.RAA22646@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #59 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Feb 96 17:41:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 59 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Whatever Happened to Judge Greene? (Wall Street Journal via Van Heffner) New NPA Information Available via FAX-on-Demand (Mark J. Cuccia) Book Review: "Digital Money" by Lynch/Lundquist (Rob Slade) New MCI Mail Policies Announced (Tad Cook) A Day With Open Transport 1.1 (Kelly Breit) The Right to an Address? (C. du Fijn) Seeking Lead Telecom Switch Tech/Mgr (Doug Gurich) Seeking Mgr Customer Sales/Service for Int'l Telecom Company (Doug Gurich) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: Whatever Happened To Judge Greene? Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:00:00 EST Pat, Thought that this was an excellent article, and that I'd pass it along ... Telecom Czar Frets Over New Industry Rules Via AP By LESLIE CAULEY The Wall Street Journal On the day President Clinton signed the historic telecommunications bill last week, the ceremony at the Library of Congress was packed with politicians and everyone who was anyone in the telecom industry. U.S. District Court Judge Harold H. Greene wasn't invited. He didn't even watch the live proceedings on CNN. Yet for the past 12 years, no other individual has held more sway over the nation's telecommunications industry than this 73-year-old federal jurist. Technically, Judge Greene oversaw the 1984 consent decree governing the breakup of the old American Telephone & Telegraph Co. In practice, he became this country's telecom czar, profoundly affecting the shape and direction of an entire industry. The seven newly created Baby Bells had to go before Judge Greene, hats in hand, for his permission on many matters. And in more than 160 major rulings and hundreds of minor decisions, he dictated what they could -- and couldn't -- do. The new act nullifies the consent decree, prompting some industry wags to call it the Judge Greene Retirement Act. Judge Greene says in an interview that he worries about whether the new law is tough enough to stop phone giants from essentially re-erecting the monopoly that he spent a career helping to tear apart. "I'm a little concerned (whether) there are sufficient safeguards against the kinds of mergers and acquisitions that might give some small group of companies or individuals a stranglehold" over U.S. telecom markets, he says. Noting that he took up the antitrust case against AT&T in 1978, he adds: "I'd hate to see the AT&T monopoly be reconstituted in some form. It would be like I'd wasted the past 18 years." When Judge Greene took up the case, just one phone company ruled long-distance service; the personal computer and the Internet barely existed and three broadcast networks dominated television. The new law will govern a landscape that has vastly changed but for one key fact: the Bells still wield absolute control over the "local bottleneck" -- the phone lines that reach into every home and business in their markets. The judge, who has consistently blocked the Bells from resuming what he considered the same anticompetitive behavior that led to the 1984 spinoff, wonders whether the Federal Communications Commission will be vigilant enough. "The FCC at one time was pretty ineffectual ... that's why the lawsuit (against AT&T) had to be brought" in the first place, he says. On the same day the telecom bill was signed into law, Judge Greene issued one of the last opinions he will write in case No. 82-0192. Invoking "the evils of monopoly", he questioned whether the new law can "prevent domination" by a few giants over "what is rapidly becoming the central factor of American life." Harold H. Greene was born Heinz Grunhaus into a Jewish family in 1923 in Frankfurt. He fled the Nazis at age 20 to emigrate to the U.S., where he changed his name. He served in the U.S. Army until 1947 and settled in Washington, D.C., attending law school at night and working days as a translator and watchmaker. He later joined the Justice Department and worked on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He drew an appointment to the local court in 1965. President Carter appointed him to the federal bench in Washington, and on his first day on the job -- May 19, 1978 -- he was handed the case of a lifetime: the antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The original judge for the case was dying of cancer; the case was four years old and languishing. "Judge Greene revived it," says Jeffrey Blumenfeld, a former Justice Department prosecutor on the case. "He saw from the beginning that if the case got out of hand, it was going to take forever to get tried." Judge Greene kept things moving in his courtroom by cutting to the chase. One example: Early on, AT&T had 72 insiders ready to testify that it didn't illegally freeze out rival equipment makers. Judge Greene heard just three of them and cut off the parade, saying he'd assume the rest would say the same thing. AT&T said fine, so long as the prosecution agreed that all 72 witnesses would have told the truth. Prosecutors fired back: they'd concede only that the witnesses would have been all "equally believable." "I think that will have to do," Judge Greene said at the time, thereby cutting a month of testimony. When the case moved into settlement negotiations, Judge Greene got tougher. AT&T wanted to keep the Yellow Pages business and the valuable Bell name -- it had even started advertising "American Bell." But he handed those rich assets to the Baby Bells. The resulting consent decree spun off the seven Bells and banned them from equipment and long-distance service. In later years, the Bells tried repeatedly to evade the bans. Judge Greene usually turned them down. Only last year did he let them resell long-distance as part of cellular service, but set so many restrictions that few have done it. Judge Greene says he wouldn't have had to issue so many denials if the Bells hadn't kept "making the same arguments over and over" for things they knew were prohibited. "No matter how many petitions they filed, so long as the underlying (market) conditions didn't change, I kept denying those requests," he says. "That didn't mean I had it out for them." Yet when an appeals court overturned him on several key issues, the Bells say he was slow to follow orders and give them what they had won. In his most celebrated defeat, Judge Greene in 1987 refused to let the Bells get into on-line services, arguing they might trample the fragile new market. In 1990, an appeals court overturned him. He later issued an order lamenting the risks and granting the Bells entry -- but immediately suspended it until all appeals had been exhausted. The Bells filed an emergency appeal, and the appeals court granted them immediate relief, noting that Judge Greene's decision to stay his own order was "an abuse" of his judicial discretion. Asked about the episode, Judge Greene smiles and says simply, "I'm not allowed to say I disagree." Bell lawyers chafed at such tactics and argued privately that Judge Greene had it in for them. He denies it. But he says he was beginning to tire of it all; the issues were getting more technical and less interesting. The case had once occupied 90 percent of his time but required less and less attention. Judge Greene plans to stay on the bench but ease back, handling about 80 percent of his normal workload. Despite his role in the historic breakup of AT&T, he hopes to be remembered for other achievements, such as his work on the Civil Rights Act. "I've done a lot of other things in my life," he says. "I would hate my obituary to say `Judge Harold H. Greene broke up AT&T, and that's all he ever did, and then he rested." In the early days after the breakup, it wasn't clear the Bells could survive on their own. Judge Greene recalls getting a lot of complaints from angry AT&T shareholders -- including his own friends -- who accused him of "denying them their nest egg." Now the Bells are rich and ready for the telecom wars, but "not one person" has acknowledged his contribution, he says. Asked whether this bothers him, he shrugs. Part of the job. He has a copy of the 111-page Telecommunications Act of 1996 but has yet to review it. "I will read it when I have trouble falling asleep," he quips. "I'm glad Congress is taking it over," Judge Greene adds. "I've had this case 18 years. I think that's long enough." Van Hefner - Editor Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Bells were not the only ones who thought Judge Greene was very prejudiced. From the very start of his participation in the case, it was obvious AT&T was not going to get a fair deal. Far from being selected randomly to handle the case as usually happens in federal court, Greene was selected after pressure was applied by the Justice Department which wanted a judge they knew they could count on to turn the screws on AT&T. He did not let them down. Not only did he refuse on various occassions to allow AT&T to present witnesses and evidence favorable to the company (the article presented above mentions one such instance), he also refused them their right to a trial by jury. As the article above notes, he used various administrative and other stalling tactics to avoid obeying his superiors. It is often pointed out that AT&T 'voluntarily' agreed to the terms of divestiture; if I point a gun at your head I suspect you would agree with whatever I wanted also. The truth of the matter is AT&T finally gave up in an effort to mitigate the huge expense in- volved and effort they were expending when it became apparent that Greene was interested in nothing except bashing them any way he could. So now with the 'Harold Greene Retirement Act' as the law of the land, he feels the last eighteen years of his life have been wasted, eh? I love it. Enjoy the frustration, judge. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 10:30:01 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: New NPA Information Available via FAX-on-Demand In a recent Bellcore NANPA IL mailing, one of the IL's regarded some changes to Minnesota's 612/320 split, regarding certain NXX (Central Office Codes) remaining in 612 or splitting to the new 320, and those moving from 612 to 507. This particular IL gave some contact information for US West, the Regional Bell Company serving (most) Exchanges & Central Offices in Minnesota. One of the contact numbers included an 800 number for a Fax service provided by US West. 800-450-6267 (toll-free too!) reaches a voice menu of options for selecting a list of (most) new NPA's and details as to effective dates, or individual documents of Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota or Arizona, the states where US West has recently added or sonn will add a `new format' NPA. You will need to use the telephone handset or speaker in the Fax machine to hear the voice menu prompts as well as the touchtone keypad to enter your choice/options. One option allows you to dial from a different number than the Fax machine you wish to receive the documents on. This could be *any* telephone you wish to call from, and you can enter the 10-digit number of the Fax machine to receive. The documents were readable and each state's document was two to three pages long. There was *no* cover sheet transmitted but rather a `final' sheet indicating end of transmission. The `compilation' document is five pages long, excluding the `final' sheet. I used the fax machine's telephone handset and touchtone pad itself rather than calling in from a different telephone. I wanted to receive all of US West's fax documents in this service (a total of six documents) but had to dial up their number for each document. At least it was an 800 call! :-) And when calling up from the fax machine to receive on, you are requested to remove any papers on the feeder, and then press START. This is yet another way to get recent NPA information, particularly for those who don't receive Bellcore's free IL's in the mail, and those who don't (yet) have WWW access to view/print Bellcore NANPA/TRA's webpages. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:07:47 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Digital Money" by Lynch/Lundquist BKDGLMNY.RVW 960126 "Digital Money", Lynch/Lundquist, 1996, 0-471-14178-X, U$24.95/C$29.50 %A Daniel C. Lynch %A Leslie Lundquist %C 22 Worchester Road, Rexdale, Ontario M9W 9Z9 %D 1996 %G 0-471-14178-X %I Wiley %O U$24.95/C$29.50 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 800-263-1590 800-567-4797 %P 285 %T "Digital Money" This book does cover, briefly but well, the concepts involved in preparing digital money which is safe (for both customer and vendor) and private. Some additional time and space could have been given to the strengths and weaknesses of encryption, even given the non-technical target audience. There are a number of other topics which are related, but not really essential. Much space is given to new forms of marketing, and even to a discussion (those who know the history of this review series will note the irony) of copyright. While these fields are interesting, they do detract from the central issue of commercial information security in an open environment. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKDGLMNY.RVW 960126. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. Vancouver roberts@decus.ca | You realize, of Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca | course, that these Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ | new facts do not User .fidonet.org | coincide with my Security Canada V7K 2G6 | preconceived ideas ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: New MCI Mail Policies Announced Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:03:03 PST Awhile back there were some rumors in TELECOM Digest claiming that MCI Mail was about to start charging for incoming email from the internet. I was worried about this, because I receive some listservers via MCI Mail. I tried to ask MCI Mail about it, and they said that this was being considered, but that they couldn't say anything until new policies were announced. The news item below looks like the announcement we have been waiting for, and it doesn't say anything about incoming email. I suspect that MCI Mail was having a lot of trouble with folks like me who were paying $35 a year and getting tons of incoming traffic from listservers. Perhaps this was the source of some of the slow traffic periods they have had. I think that probably they figured they could dump a lot of the "deadbeats" who weren't generating any revenue-producing outgoing traffic by charging $120 a year. By the way, I noticed that in a couple of recent postings that PAT reproduced my full sig file, shown below. Readers may be interested to know that Edmund Burke never said "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing", but Burke scholars have found the following similar quote from him. I got this from a book of "fake quotes" called THEY NEVER SAID IT, which claims that even Bartlett's Familiar Quotations was fooled. tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H | "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." - Edmund Burke, 1729-1797 --------------------------- MCI ADJUSTS PRICING OF MCI MAIL; Sets $10 monthly minimum per customer number. ATLANTA -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Feb. 13, 1996 -- MCI announced today that effective March 1, 1996, there will be a $10 monthly minimum for MCI Mail customers. The minimum applies to the customer number, which may include a series of individual MCI Mail users within a company. In addition, the company announced it was changing the Preferred Pricing Option for MCI Mail. This option enables customers to send up to 50 e-mail messages or faxes (to U.S. locations) per month for $15. The former pricing was $10 per month for 40 messages. An e-mail message unit is 5,000 characters or one fax page. Other MCI Mail pricing remains unchanged. `Even though we are changing our pricing structure, the vast majority of our customers will see little or no impact on their monthly bill,` said Martha Hanlon, director of messaging solutions from networkMCI. `This pricing adjustment is necessary to curtail service abuse, thereby improving service for customers who need and use MCI Mail.` MCI Mail offers customers messaging services via MCI's global electronic mail network. MCI Mail subscribers can exchange electronic mail messages with millions of public electronic mail subscribers via its gateway to the Internet and through interconnections to more than 70 public electronic mail services. Electronic mail users can access MCI Mail from a wide range of systems and hardware/software environments. MCI has forged strong alliances with leading hardware and software suppliers that allow companies with private office automation and electronic mail systems to exchange messages with MCI Mail subscribers. MCI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's largest and fastest growing diversified communications companies. With annual revenue of more than $15 billion, MCI offers consumers and businesses a broad portfolio of services including long distance, wireless, local access, paging, Internet software and access, information services, outsourcing, business software, advanced global telecommunications services, and music distribution and merchandising. CONTACT: MCI Telecommunications, Chicago John R. Houser, 312/938-4820 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:19:40 -0500 From: kelly.breit@netalliance.net (Kelly Breit) Subject: A Day With Open Transport 1.1 By Brian Fort Though it's not the recommended method, when I had a chance to take a peek at the s10 release of System Update 2.0, I simply copied my 150 MB+ System 6older to a spare hard drive and ran the installer straight over the top. It's something of a tribute to the quality of the code that my 5200CD rebooted with the new OS running and presented no real problems. Neither Aladdin Desktop Makeover nor Aladdin Desktop SpeedBoost would load, but the error messages they generated (Aladdin Desktop Makeover [and SpeedBoost] did not load because the system version you are using is NOT supported) suggest a version flag check rather than a real incompatibility. More interesting was discovering that a beta copy of Open Transport 1.1 (OT), complete with AppleTalk and TCP/IP control panels, had been installed. In one of the accompanying ReadMe files it noted: "[System Update 2.0] will install [Open Transport 1.1] only if your System Folder already has an older version of Open Transport or if you use Custom Install." Given this was beta code, up to and including the Installer, I wasn't overly surprised. Since all had gone well so far, I decided to give the new network architecture the quick once over. I couldn't push it all that hard since my current network consists of a Performa 5200CD and a borrowed LaserWriter NTR connected via PhoneNET cables. Undaunted, I sent half a dozen print jobs-from PageMaker 5.0, Symantec C++ 8.0, Word 6.0.1 and ClarisWorks 4.0-down the little phone cable and encountered no problems. It was time to give this newfangled software a real test: connecting to my dial-up PPP account. FreePPP 1.0.4 includes copious notes regarding configuring the TCP/IP control panel (it is an application, actually, and it is worth noting that its menus have some very useful commands hidden therein) and also notes several limitations which will remain extant until Open Transport 1.1 makes its appearance. Since I had a beta copy of Open Transport 1.1 installed I wasn't expecting the configuration instructions accompanying FreePPP 1.0.4 (which are designed for Open Transport 1.0.8) to be overly useful. As it turned out I couldn't set the "Configure" pop-up to "Manually," as per the instructions, since this required I enter an IP address. TCP/IP wouldn't let me leave it blank, although that was also required by FreePPP according to its instructions (see "TCP/IP before connecting"). Throwing caution to the wind, I left TCP/IP configured as it was, opened the ConfigPPP control panel and hit the "Open" button. Ten seconds later I was connected. I fired up Eudora Lite (which has had real problems with the PPP/OT combination) and retrieved a couple of pieces of mail. I fired up Anarchie and downloaded the latest version of MacPipes (2.1). I fired up Netscape and had another read of Alex's Macworld Expo reports and listened to him interviewing Guy Kawasaki. Fetch worked. Gopher worked. WAIS worked. I was able to Telnet to an out-of-state Unix box and run a few Unix admin programs with no difficulties. Finally, I had a play with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the Mac OS beta. It too worked. It seemed all was well. There was another limitation to check, however. To quote the "FreePPP 1.0.4-Read Me First" file: "Until Open Transport 1.1 is released, you will need to reboot between PPP sessions if you have a dynamically assigned IP address. Dynamically means if you get a different address assigned to your Mac when you dial up which is how most Internet Service Providers (ISP) have their systems configured. If you have a statically assigned, i.e. permanently assigned, IP address you should be able to connect and disconnect without rebooting. If this is important to you now ask your ISP about a static address-they're usually available for an additional fee." My PPP account uses a dynamically assigned IP address so I disconnected and immediately redialed. No crash, no burn. I was able to sail around with the Internet Explorer, grab more mail and ftp a script update to my Unix box across the border. I connected and disconnected my Mac another four times with no incident. None of this means Open Transport 1.1 is the solution to all the problems users have been having with the new network architecture. I've no Ethernet network so cannot check if the printing and file transfer problems associated with Open Transport and Ethernet are resolved. Nor do I have a 680x0 Mac so I've no idea how well this version of Open Transport will work on older machines. For the moment, therefore, it's back to Mac OS 7.5.1 and MacTCP 2.0.6. They work well and don't cause problems. My quick trip into the Open Transport world does, however, make me more comfortable about including the new architecture in my setup when the release version makes its appearance. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 20:08:14 GMT From: C. du Fijn <081278cf@student.EUR.NL> Subject: The Right to an Address? Organization: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam Hello, Being a lawstudent I intend to write a paper on number portability. This involves problems such as: What happens with my e-mail address when my provider goes bankrupt or changes its name? This is not an uncommon problem in the telephone world, but becomes more drastic if e.g. your e-mail adress or webpage is changed (since your address is only an alpha-numeric translation of a number). Does anyone have suggestions on where to find more about both legal and technical solutions to this problem? Regards, Cor. ------------------------------ From: dgurich@glc.net (Doug Gurich) Subject: Seeking Lead Telecom Switch Tech/Mgr Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 21:19:47 GMT Organization: GlobalCom International GlobalCom International is seeking to fill the following full time, on-site position: - Lead Telecom Switch Technician/Manager Candidates should be highly experienced in all aspects of switching systems, with specific experience in Excel switches (or similar) for call back, VPN and debit card services. Experience with data, video and Internet services is a plus. GlobalCom is a rapidly growing international telecommunications company with clients in over 40 countries. We are headquartered in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. For more information, email to Doug Gurich at dgurich@glc.net. ------------------------------ From: dgurich@glc.net (Doug Gurich) Subject: Seeking Mgr Customer Sales/Service for Int'l Telecom Company Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 21:20:52 GMT Organization: GlobalCom International GlobalCom International is seeking to fill the following full time, on-site position: - Manager, Customer Sales & Service The successful candidate will respond to requests by overseas clients, help manage existing agent network, process new orders, market promotion of specialty services. Sales responsibilty for over 50 agents in 40+ countries. Requirements: BA/BS and/or MBA in business, communications, international studies or related field. 3 to 5 years professional experience in marketing/sales/customer service. Strong candidates will have multi-lingual proficiency, overseas work experience and good computer skills. GlobalCom International is a rapidly growing telecommunications firm. We are headquartered in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. For more information, contact Doug Gurich at dgurich@glc.net. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #59 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 13 19:40:38 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id TAA04622; Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:40:38 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:40:38 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602140040.TAA04622@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #60 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Feb 96 19:40:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 60 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Freedom of Creeps; No Place in Bill of Rights (TELECOM Digest Editor) Courses SONET/ATM, Wireless, Video Compression (Harvey Stern) Brand New Meridian Sets Disposal; University Overstock (Guy Lessard) Ethernet and Cable-TV (Lars Erlandsen) Report on Tapi Systems (Roger K. Burnett) SMART-1 Dialer Repair in Bull Head City, Nevada (Kelly Daniels) Re: Kids and Rotary Phones (Seymour Dupa) Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 (Charles Cremer) Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Mark Musante) Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Scott R. Matson) Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (John R. Levine) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:28:11 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Subject: Freedom of Creeps; No Place in On-Line Bill of Rights This is the title of Mike Royko's column today in the {Chicago Tribune}. Please be sure to read it in your paper today or tomorrow, whenever it runs in your community. I was going to print the whole thing here, but in a conversation with Suzie, his assistant, I was told that he specifically did not wish to have it reprinted on the Internet. I can't blame him in a way. Knowing how vicious internet people can be with email bombs, etc, I suppose the people at the {Chicago Tribune} and Tribune Media Services don't want to have to deal with their executives and computer system administrators getting buried in tons of email calling for the silencing and censoring of Royko. His column in the {Tribune} for Tuesday, February 13 begins: "Once again, the defenders of free speech are in an uproar because of a new threat to the rights of pornographers, child molestors and other lowlife forms ..." Later in the column he notes in reference to the 'slippery slope argument' (i.e. if you restrict one thing then that leads to another, etc) ... "That, of course, is the traditional defense of pornographers and other creeps: if they are censored, it will just be a matter of time until the rest of us will be censored." ... "On the Internet, you are free to say just about anything you want about anyone in the whole world. And you can do it without identifying yourself or your motives ... That's the Internet's idea of free speech -- anonymity for creeps and cowardly curs." ... "What's really funny about these free-speech protests is that many of the protestors actually hate free speech. They want the rights of child molestors and child pornographers protected, but if you say one critical word about them they will be demanding that you be muzzled, fired, censored and banned to the wilderness." Royko discusses the glaring hypocrisy evident in organizations active on the net like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He calls them the 'politically correct crowd' and says they 'howl for the heads of anyone who offends their agenda' ... He concludes by noting that the protests will be so loud and noisy that they will succeed and efforts to protect children on the internet will be overturned by the courts. Furthermore he said, "my employers will be asked to fire or muzzle me because I said that many of the protestors are hypocritical jerks." There is more ... a lot more of the same in his column today and I recommend reading it. I surely can sympathize with his final comment that 'his employers will be asked to fire or muzzle him' because I see that a lot myself where my funding from Microsoft and ITU are concerned. People have written to both organizations saying they should quit providing me with the wherewithal to meet my obligations to the phone company and the landlord. That, they feel, would silence me. But, it really works like this: if I have to, I go out and get another full time job; after all I have worked for some employer or another for about forty out of my fifty-three years. I move into a tiny room at the YMCA where the rent is $200 per month and the cockroaches are provided for free. I eat at the McDonalds or the 7/Eleven microwave machine **and you'll keep right on hearing from me** until the next time I have a heart attack and leave this life for good. I have a couple hundred items in my inbox now from people writing to tell me how awful it is and how 'chilled' free speech will be now that the Internet has to play by the same rules as everyone else. As soon as someone from the ACLU sends me a message telling how Jeff Slaton has an unfettered right to service from any ISP of his choice and how Kevin Lipsitz, female impersonator and magazine salesman to the net has a right to take dumps all over the Usenet at his leisure, then I'll be glad to take them seriously on their claim that efforts to keep adult sexual material out of the hands of minors is such a bad thing to do on the net. Anyway, read Royko today. He says it far better than I can. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: southbay@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: Courses SONET/ATM, Wireless, Video Compression -- UC Berkeley Date: 13 Feb 1996 22:21:19 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley U.C. Berkeley Continuing Education in Engineering Announces 5 Short Courses on Broadband Communications, Wireless Networks -MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS -NETWORKS FOR DIGITAL WIRELESS ACCESS -ATM DATA COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS -SONET/ATM-BASED BROADBAND NETWORKS -VIDEO COMPRESSION AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION ***************************************************************** SONET/ATM-BASED BROADBAND NETWORKS: Systems, Architectures and Designs (February 28-March 1, 1996) It is widely accepted that future broadband networks will be based on the SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) standards and the ATM (Asynchronous transfer Mode) technique. This course is an in-depth examination of the fundamental concepts and the implementation issues for development of future high-speed networks. Topics include: Broadband ISDN Transfer Protocol, high speed computer/network interface (HiPPI), ATM switch architectures, ATM network congestion/flow control, VLSI designs in SONET/ATM networks. This course is intended for engineers who are currently active or anticipate future involvement in this field. Lecturer: H. Jonathan Chao, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Brooklyn Polytechnic University. Dr. Chao holds more than a dozen patents and has authored over 40 technical publications in the areas of ATM switches, high-speed computer communications, and congestion/flow control in ATM networks. MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS: Wide Area Networks, Personal Communication Systems, Network Management and Control, and Multimedia Applications (February 29-March 1, 1996) This course is designed as a gentle but comprehensive overview of telecommunications including current status and future directions. This course traces the evolution of telecommunications, starting from its voice roots and progressing through local, metropolitan, and wide area networks, narrowband ISDN, asynchronous transfer mode, broadband ISDN, satellite systems, optical communications, cellular radio, personal communication systems, all-optical networks, and multimedia services. Lecturer: Anthony S. Acampora, Ph.D., Professor, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University. He is Director, Center for Telecommunications Research. He became a professor following a 20 year career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is an IEEE Fellow, and is a former member of the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors. NETWORKS FOR DIGITAL WIRELESS ACCESS: Cellular, Voice, Data, Packet, and Personal Communication Systems (March 6-8, 1996) This comprehensive course is focused on the principles, technologies, system architectures, standards, and market forces driving wireless access. At the core of this course are the cellular/microcellular/ frequency reuse concepts needed to enable adequate wireless access capacity for Personal Communication Services (PCS). Presented are both the physical-level issues associated with wireless access and the network-level issues arising from the inherent mobility of the subscriber. Standards are fully treated including GSM (TDMA), IS-54 (North American TDMA), IS-95 (CDMA), CT2, DCT 900/CT3, IEEE 802.11, DCS 1800, and Iridium. Emerging concepts for wireless ATM are also developed. This course is intended for engineers who are currently active or anticipate future involvement in this field. Lecturer: Anthony S. Acampora, Ph.D., Professor, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University. He is Director, Center for Telecommunications Research. He became a professor following a 20 year career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is an IEEE Fellow, and is a former member of the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors. ATM DATA COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS: Internetworking, Signaling and Network Management (April 18-19, 1996) This short course examines the key issues involved in designing and implementing high-performance local and wide area networks. Topics include: technology drivers, data protocols, signaling, network management, internetworking and applications. Lecturer: William E. Stephens, Ph.D., is the Head of the Wireless and ATM Networking Group at the David Sarnoff Research Center. Prior to this he was Director, High-Speed Switching and Storage Technology Group, Applied Research, Bellcore. Dr. Stephens has over 40 publications and one patent in the field of optical communications. He has served on several technical program committees, including IEEE GLOBECOM and the IEEE Electronic Components Technology Conference, and has served as Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. VIDEO COMPRESSION AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION (June 3-4, 1996) Video Compression and Visual Communication is a rapidly evolving multidisciplinary field focussing on the development of technologies and standards for efficient storage and transmission of video signals. It covers areas of video compression algorithms, VLSI technology, standards, and high-speed digital networks. It is a critical enabling technology for the emerging information superhighway for offering various video services. In this course, we will fully treat video compression algorithms and standards, and discuss the issues related to the transport of video over various networks. Lecturers: Ming-Ting Sun, Ph.D, is director of Video Signal Processing Research, Bellcore. Dr. Sun has published numerous technical papers, holds four patents, developed IEEE Std 1180- 1990, was awarded the Best Paper Award for IEEE Transactions Video Technology in 1993 (with Tzou), and an award for excellence in standards development from the IEEE Standards Board in 1991. He is currently the express letter editor, IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (CSVT), and associate editor, IEEE Transactions of CSVT. He was chairman and now serves as secretary of the IEEE CAS Technical committee on Visual Signal Processing and Communications. Kou-Hu Tzou, Ph.D., is manager of the Image Processing Department, COMSAT Laboratories. Dr Tzou won the Best Paper Award for IEEE Transactions Video Technology in 1993 (with Sun). He holds 6 patents, has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, is currently associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, and served as a guest editor for Optical Engineering Journal special issues on Visual Communications and Image Processing in 1989, 91, and 93. He is the committee chair of the Visual Signal Processing and Communication Technical committee, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. For more information (complete course descriptions, outlines, instructor bios, etc.) send your postal address or fax to: Harvey Stern or Loretta Lindley U.C. Berkeley Extension/Southbay 800 El Camino Real Ste. 220 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (415) 323-8141 Fax: (415) 323-1438 email: southbay@garnet.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ From: Guy Lessard Subject: Brand New Meridian Sets Disposal - University Overstock Date: 13 Feb 1996 14:59:17 GMT Organization: University d'/of Ottawa The University of Ottawa, Ottawa Canada has a surplus of brand new telephone sets that we are hoping someone can take advantage of. The items in stock include: Model M5312 Serial Number NT4X37BB 93 Colour Grey Qty 2 Model M 536 Serial Number NT4X34BA 93 Qty 2 Model M 518 Serial Number NT4X38BA 93 Qty 4 Model M 518 Serial Number NT4X38GA 03 Qty 2 Model M5312 Serial Number NT4X37GB 03 Colour Black Qty 75 Model M5209 Serial Number NT4X36AB 35 Colour Beige Qty 66 Model M5209 Serial Number NT4X36GB 03 Colour Black Qty 64 In April of 1995 the University of Ottawa purchased 5 MITEL SX2000 PBXs to service the University community. The sets being offered are brand new (unwrapped) sets which are not compatible with our current system. Anyone interested in purchasing these units can submit an offer in writing to GLESSARD@COMMUNICATIONS.UOTTAWA.CA or by FAX to (613) 562-5998. Make an offer. I can assure you that these sets will go at a discount of at least 50% of the original value. Shipping charges and brokerage fees if applicable will be paid for by the purchaser. ------------------------------ From: Lars Erlandsen Subject: Ethernet and Cable-TV Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:54:51 +0100 Organization: UMI A.S I'm looking for a "box/switch" which allow the Cable-TV Company to distribute Ethernet over existing cables in your Cable-TV infrastructure. The idea is to offer the subscriber various services as LAN-connection, Internet etc. directly in the wall-jack with speeds up to 10 Mbit/s. Lars Erlandsen UMI A.S ------------------------------ From: rburnett@oknet.com (Roger K. Burnett) Subject: Report on Tapi Systems Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 09:24:22 GMT Organization: Ping Software, Inc. In mid-1992, Intel completed the first draft of what would become TAPI, the Windows Telephony API. TAPI is a first step in the integration of advanced telephony with the powerful capabilities of PCs. Without TAPI, every telephone application is inextricably bound to the hardware device, fragmenting a potentially huge business market into small incompatible pockets. Not only can features vary between different vendors' PBXs, the features of the same PBX can vary across international boundaries. Applications written for TAPI are, in theory, portable to any computer connected to any communication network. The TAPI specification provides two layers, being compliant with the WOSA standards. The first layer is the application layer (TAPI itself), which the applications are written to. The second and lower layer is the service provider layer (TSPI). This is the layer which takes all the application requests and translates them to the hardware level requests necessary for the device. In the SPI specification, there are over 80 API calls which can be called to perform various tasks. To even provide basic functionality (i.e.: make a call), the SPI must provide about 15 functions for TAPI to recognize the device. Another complication with TSPI is that requests can be made synchronously, or asynchronously. The sample Microsoft provides with the TAPI tool kit shows bare minimum requirements of a service provider, and has several thousand lines of code! We here at Ping have been involved with TAPI for several years, and have participated in Microsoft testing and API bake-off conferences. Over the course of building several service providers for large manufacturers, we have built a C++ library for use with Visual C++ 1.5, which substantially cut down our development time for service providers. This library provides a set of base classes which perform basic TAPI duties, relieving us from always rewriting status functions, and request queue management. We found that each device we wrote a driver for was different in subtle, but critical ways, so the library was built to be extensible and unable to be overridden. Through virtual functions and run-time object replacement, we think we have accomplished that goal. Using this class library, the developer can build any type of service provider. It is not limited in terms of call appearances, lines, phones, or even devices. A single service provider can support multiple devices (even of differing types). We support all the major functions of the 1.4 TSPI specification except conferencing, which we are working on right now (available 1Q96) . The library has four main classes which work together to form a complete service provider. First, the CServiceProvider class provides methods for all the calls which TAPI makes to the service provider. This object manages a set of CTSPIDevice objects. Each of the device objects are mapped to a physical telephony device, and own a set of CTSPIConnection objects. Each connection object represents a line or a phone connection. If the connection is a line device, then it will have a series of CTSPICallAppearance objects which represent the individual calls on the device. Requests to the device are automatically parsed and evaluated, and non-device specific error checking is done on the requests before any processing is done. Requests are managed in device lists which allow for each device to have a separate set of outstanding requests. All objects can be overridden in case a service provider requires slightly different functionality. Two fully functional service providers are provided with the library as examples, one which is styled after the Microsoft sample (ATSP) and another which is designed to simulate a digital switch (along with a emulator program). These samples are free to use, and most service providers will probably fit one or both of the samples. Phone technical support and consultation services are available for a minimal charge, or product technical support through E-mail is free. The cost for this SDK, is $495.00 (no source for library), or $995.00 (full source code). For more information, or to order, please call Ping Software, Inc. at (214) 394-9833 or send e-mail to staff@pingsoftware.com. ------------------------------ From: telco@teleport.com (Kelly Daniels) Subject: SMART-1 Dialer Repair in Bull Head City, Nevada Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:35:23 Organization: Telco Planning, Inc. A friend needs someone to go on-site in Bullhead City to repair a SMART-1 Dialer. The dialer is down and normally able to be remotely programmed. Eaither reply to me at telco@teleport.com or dial 503-526-1952 and ask for Linn Burrel. Thank-you. ------------------------------ From: grumpy@en.com (Seymour Dupa) Subject: Re: Kids and Rotary Phones Date: 13 Feb 1996 20:07:17 GMT Organization: Exchange Network Services, Inc. Mike Wengler (wengler@ee.rochester.edu) wrote: > I wonder if there are words *we* use for which we've forgotten the > real meaning. What does 'clockwise' mean to someone who's seen only digital clocks? ------------------------------ Date: 12 Feb 96 21:25:22 EST From: Charles Cremer <71231.2206@compuserve.com> Subject: Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 As already reported by Chris Boone, the Texas Public Utility Commission has decided that the 972 and 281 areas will be implemented as geographic splits. One additional fact is worth mentioning: The commission requested that two additional new areas -- one for Dallas and one for Houston -- should be applied for immediately. These would be implemented as overlays for wireless service only. [The commissioners don't want to face another decision like this one in their lifetime. ;-)] Charles Cremer <71231.2206@compuserve.com> ------------------------------ From: miles@roundlake.baxter.com (Mad Milesman Musante) Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems Reply-To: olorin@world.std.com Organization: Zippo Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 20:47:45 GMT bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com wrote: > According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as > AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies. Apparently > this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?). > It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. A recent report in the {Chicago Tribune} says that AT&T held a competition among its employees to choose the name. Mark Musante olorin@world.std.com http://world.std.com/~olorin/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 08:27:19 -0600 From: Scott R. Matson Organization: JCPenney Company, Inc. Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com wrote: > According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as > AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies. Apparently > this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?). > It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. Lucent Technologies is the the AT&T division formerly known as GBCS. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 17:49 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, speak of the Devil, if it isn't John Levine here to close this issue of the Digest with one of his devilishly delightful commentaries. PAT] ----------------------- > ... the company formerly known as AT&T Network Systems is now called > Lucent Technologies. > It's not clear (:>) to me where they got this name. Isn't it obvious? It means they're followers of Lucifer. Actually, it sounds to me more like a word that describes something that you'd find on the bottom of your shoe. They got two out of three names right, too bad they didn't remember Western Electric. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof [TELECOM Digest Editor's Heresy: There is even a television show on every night talking about their most loyal employees. It is called 'I Love Lucifer' and right after that they have the Lucifer Show. I hope people don't get all mixed up on this and start sending hate mail to AT&T the way they do to Proctor and Gamble about those stars and the man in the moon they put on all their packages. If I get as far as issue 666 in this volume of the Digest sometime late in the fall or early winter, would it be okay to ask you to be the guest editor for that issue? Who is better qualified? :) PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #60 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 13 23:38:44 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA26352; Tue, 13 Feb 1996 23:38:44 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 23:38:44 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602140438.XAA26352@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #61 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Feb 96 23:38:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 61 Inside This Issue: Happy Valentine's Day, Sweethearts! Re: It's What the Law SAYS (Randal L. Schwartz) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Chad Irby) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Carl Moore) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (David Jensen) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Steve Cogorno) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Robert Levandowski) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Tom Betz) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (John Canning) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (A. Padgett Peterson) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (Ed Ellers) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (Sharif Torpis) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: merlyn@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) Subject: Re: It's What the Law SAYS Date: 13 Feb 1996 07:48:48 -0800 Organization: Stonehenge Consulting Services; Portland, Oregon, USA Reply-To: merlyn@stonehenge.com John Higdon writes: > Unenforced (and generally unenforcable) laws amount to time bombs. > They lie dormant until that day when a particular prosecutor wants to > nail a particular defendant and discovers a nice little mechanism in > the form of one of these laws. The term "selective enforcement" comes > to mind. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well you certainly make a valid point. > As I noted, several have written me saying exactly what they believe > was and was not intended, but your thing about how prosecutors can > find the damndedest things to grip on to is something none of us > should forget. We have a prosecutor here in Cook County like that now. > And it is not just at the prosecutorial level you will see that. Some > individual police officers also spend time combing law books looking > for something -- anything -- to use against people they don't like. PAT] I know this exact principle all too well. A mostly-unused state law that was intended to help the local phone companies to nail phone-phreaks was used to make me a felon, based on honest actions that I believed would be beneficial for my client. Not to mention the cost to me of $170K in legal bills and $70K in court-ordered restitution. For details about my case, visit http://www.lightlink.com/fors/, or if you are web-impaired, get the brief summary by sending email to my reply-bot at fund@stonehenge.com (content will be mostly ignored). Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying Email: Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@ora.com) Web: My Home Page! Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me ------------------------------ From: cirby@gate.net (Chad Irby) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: 12 Feb 1996 13:03:48 -0500 Organization: CyberGate, Inc. Not true, I'm afraid. If it *were* true, the entire concept of "undercover officer" wouldn't work. All the criminals would have to do would be to ask everyone they know if they're a cop. > If he does lie, and then proceeds to arrest you based on the > transaction which occurred, it is entrapment, which is illegal. Nope. If a cop comes up to you and talks you into buying drugs from him, that would (probably) be entrapment (in some cases, it might not be). However, if a cop comes up to you and you sell *him* the drugs after asking him if he's a cop, then you're just plain busted. > Entrapment is defined as the goverment committing a crime in order > to induce you to likewise commit the same or a similar crime. > Enticement (that is, the goverment merely makes it more convenient for > you to violate the law without actually doing so itself) is *not* > illegal. Possibly. But considering that there are so many people with axes to grind in this country (and others), it would be, er, "child's play" to find some seventeen year old with a bad attitude and Daddy's PC to log in and find something that's indecent. And with the way the CDA is worded, you wouldn't even need that- just give a cop an AOL account and a half hour, and he'd find all *sorts* of indecent stuff. > Please read this carefully: a police officer who commits a crime with > a minor (i.e. logs in the minor on a computer for the purpose of helping > the minor obtain contraband material) who then aids or encourages the > minor to falsify his age and lies to you about his own role as a police > officer in the transaction has entrapped you. Remember that Oklahoma case a couple of years back? They got an underage kid to log in ("just hit that key right there, kid") to a BBS, and then busted the BBS. In a case like that, even if you eventually "win," you lose. Legal fights aren't cheap. Ask Steve Jackson ... In a perfect world, it might not be so, but in the current United States of America, this sort of thing happens all of the time. > Those cases get tossed out of court all the time. But more often, they don't. And even when they do, it's going to *cost*. > You may wish to qualify your traffic with criteria such as this to > avoid having undesirable users see it. PAT] I guess we need a law that forces an "aw, shucks!" filter. Just set things up so that you get euphemisms instead of the real words. Not much harder than a ROT-13. Unless you consider euphemisms to be indecent... Chad Irby cirby@gate.net ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 96 13:10:54 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Well, I have seen some places with signs saying they will ask for ID if a potential purchaser of alcoholic beverages appears to be under, say, age 30. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The thinking on this seems to be that a person could be under 21 and manage to look old enough to pass for 21 with a fake identification card. On the other hand, it is much harder for someone 'appears to be' under 30 to still be under 21 as well and have a fake id card. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 96 12:36:06 -0800 From: David Jensen Organization: Telephone & Data Systems, Inc. Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Pat, I think you are right that nothing more is illegal after CDA than before, but only because Congress traditionally steps well beyond the bounds of the constitutional and has to be drawn back. The CDA will keep many lawyers well employed for the next few years. If you give "Spice" to minors, some yahoo prosecutor will blame TCI or Warner or whoever for making it available. Eventually the prosecutor will lose and TCI will use this as an excuse to raise rates. The Telecommunications Act is not perfect, but I agree that it is a major improvement. The CDA primarily protects the little pink buildings alongside interstates. Does it protect kids? Who knows? What from? The ACLU can be a bunch of idiots, but they are our, or at least my, bunch of idiots. They do have a sort of mindless commitment to civil liberties (as long as it doesn't have anything to do with property rights, state's rights or gun ownership rights). I don't plan to join them, but their kneejerk support of some of the Bill of Rights is better than no support at all. It is the responsibility of Congress not to pass laws that violate the Constitution. It is the responsibility of Congress to err on the side of protecting civil liberties. Congress refuses to live up to that responsibility. We have had 200 years of Congress violating Constitu- tional restrictions on its behavior. I have little hope that it will reform. ------------------------------ From: cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 12:20:57 PST Carl Moore said: > Well, I have seen some places with signs saying they will ask for ID > if a potential purchaser of alcoholic beverages appears to be under, > say, age 30. Sure, but how can this be done over the Net? My point is that there is no real way to "check ID." Steve cogorno@netcom.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There have been various proposals for this which have merit. None would be foolproof, all would require the cooperation of ISPs and sysadmins. The most common calls for the creation of a category of user called 'k-12'. This could be part of the user name as in 'little-johnnyk-12@site.domain' or it could be of the form 'little-johnny@k-12.site.domain'. In the latter case, admins create a fictitious machine called 'k-12' to which underage subscribers are assigned. The system .newsrc (or active) file for k-12 will not include alt.sex.various newsgroups. Users on k-12 are not permitted to change their name or in any way alias-out the k-12 reference in their name. In chat 'rooms' they would be denied access to any which covered 'adult' topics. The k-12 reference in their name or site would be quite apparent to anyone with whom they corresponded in realtime or in email. This would eliminate any 'misunderstanding' by an older person who chose to chat with them or send them email. It would not be against any law or system regu- lation for a k-12 user to exchange communications with a non-k-12 user, but in the event of later problems the adult user would be unable to claim ignorance that his correspondent was a minor. In telnet, some sites might choose to refuse connection to users on k-12.anywhere.domain if their content was intended for an adult subscriber base. Likewise, sites allowing connections via ftp, or the World Wide Web might refuse connections to k-12 sites if their content was intended for adult users. Foolproof? By no means, but neither are laws pertaining to the purchase of tobacco and alcohol or laws about sexual acts with minors. Kids might not be able to buy beer, but they can always get into their parents liquor supply or get someone to buy them beer. They might find a way to alter a driver's license, etc. A question arises about administering a k-12 arrangement. What sort of extra work will this cause for the ISP or sysadmin? In all probability, existing users would need to be 'grandfathered' where they are at. If an admin was able to easily identify who was who, he might choose to move minors into the k-12 category. As existing subscribers renewed their membership they would be required to attest to their age of majority or minority. As instances of minors in the wrong category came to the attention of the admin, they would be moved into k-12. *New* users signing up for the first time would be required to provide a photocopy of an identification card of some sort in order to be admitted to the *adult* or general users group. Lacking such adult ID, the new user would be assigned to k-12 or at the very least denied access to 'adult' features on the site. Perhaps a period of six to eight months could be allowed for a transition to k-12 to insure that admins are able to have an orderly re-assignment of existing minors on their system and develop a plan for detirmining the age of new users. Some sites may feel they have nothing to offer k-12 users and choose to not allow minors online at all. More important than how individual admins choose to convert existing young subscribers into k-12 or what method they use to identify new subscribers would be all sites honoring the k-12 designations of other sites. In the same way that unix sites over the years have reached agreement on certain standards for handling mail and news, they would need to agree to honor each other's k-12 designations. In other words, if the admin at your home site has you in k-12, then you are prohibit- ed from 'adult' services at my site as well. Likewise, many Web brousing and/or net 'surfing' tools currently available have parental lockout controls; these would be adapted to work with k-12 or vice-versa. Combined with this should come a standardized user-name convention to be phased in over a period of several months to a year, again with existing users probably being grandfathered in place and 're-named' as occassion arose, machines were retired or put in service, etc. It should be possible within a year or less to have a very reasonable handle on net users. Hardly foolproof, but it would show a good faith effort that I believe would carry a lot of weight in any problem resolution. You would still have netters making paranoid claims about Renaissance nudes copied from art textbooks to the net and you'd still have teenagers forging some ID or hacking an 'adult' account, just as now you find teens with beer and cigarettes in their possession. This would be a chance though for the Internet community to truly show itself socially responsible and able to resolve its own social problems. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Robert Levandowski) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 14:57:55 GMT In Pat writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If someone fraudulently misrepresents > themself (i.e. are you at least 18 years of age? are you a law enforcement > officer for any local, state or federal government?) then it is their > problem and not yours. This is not true. Under case law and the CDA, misrepresentation is not a defense if you did not verify the user's identity with some form of concrete proof, like a credit card account or a driver's license. Because it is so easy for a minor to lie when filling in an age blank, content providers "know" that it is likely that this information is a lie, and therefore it's not a defense in itself. If a ten-year-old walks into a bar and presents an ID that claims he's 21, despite his obviously youthful appearance and behavior, and the bartender serves him on the basis of the ID, the bartender is in trouble. The bartender had reason to suspect that the ID was fraudulent. The same principle is being applied to the CDA. In Pat writes: > Why for example, does John Levine feel that his theoretical Renaissance > nude suddenly became more offensive and dangerous to transmit this > week than it was last week with a myriad of state laws pertaining > to 'indecency' in effect then (and still now)? Why is his Renaissance > nude going to be illegal to view here when it is not illegal to view > in the Art Institute of Chicago or the Guggenheim Museum? The point > is, it won't be. The point is, Pat, that "indecent" speech is Constitutionally protected. It has been held so by the Supreme Court. "Obscene" speech is not necessarily so protected. That is why, if you check, existing state laws prohibit obscenity, not indecency. There is a real and legal distinction between the two terms. A naked body is indecent. A naked body engaged in graphic sexual conduct with another is probably obscene. It is not illegal to hang an indecent painting in a museum, because it is unconstitutional to make it so. If the CDA is enforced, it will make it illegal to provide an indecent painting on-line, despite the Constitution. > I hear people saying the Internet is suddenly being held to a different > standard where 'free speech' is concerned than other forms of mass > media. Yes it is, and no it isn't. Internet users have been told > that from now on they will be held to the same standards as everyone > else. So many of you prima donnas went for years and years thinking > you were something special and something different. Now you are being > told that to the contrary, you are just like everyone else. I know > it must distress you a lot. PAT] Pat, what do you have against Internet users? If anything, you are the one who comes off as the prima donna; you consistently rail against Internet users, as if the entire group of tens of millions of people who use the Internet are all elitist porn-fiends who have a personal grudge against you. I hope that's not the way you mean to sound! If you can seriously assert that the "same standards" are being applied, I can only assume that you have not read the text of the CDA, or that you do not understand the surrounding case law and constitutional issues. The restrictions in the CDA do not, will not, and cannot apply to speech on a soapbox in a public park, or to speech over a telephone, or to speech in a newspaper or magazine, or to speech in private letters sent through the post office. The only reason restrictions apply to TV and radio is that they literally invade the home, and it is absolutely trivial for one to decode them. There are no passwords or accounts for TV or radio. If the CDA is allowed to stand, it is very possible that the same "indecency" standard will be legislated against public speech in real life, which we have a duty to prevent. Pat, I suggest you look up some of Thomas Jefferson's writings, or the writings of his compatriots. These men founded our government, and their writings make it clear that they would not support the CDA. Rob Levandowski University of Rochester -- Rochester, New York rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu [Opinions expressed are mine, not UR's.] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I refuse to get into the game known as 'what the founder fathers intended' ... like the Bible, you can find some- thing to support whatever it is you wish to practice or believe. As you point out, a ten year old going into a tavern and being served on the basis of his forged id showing he was 21 does not relieve the bartender of criminal liability as the forgery should have been obvious. But if the user is 19 or 20 and has a forged id showing he is 21, while the law has been broken the circumstances -- and thus any punishment afforded by the court are different. The context is all important. And so is the context all important on the Internet, although the ACLU would like you to believe it is an all-or-nothing proposition. If a user decides to run a message with some nasty words in it in a news- group where traditionally this is not done we are not going to see massive raids and arrests of users, admins, etc. The context and purpose of the newsgroup is all important. How a given site is maintained by its proprietor is all important. It is going to take some time to build a good working relationship between the users of the net and the government regarding things which go on here, but that relationship can develop to the benefit of all concerned. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Betz Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:45:34 -0500 Organization: Some Robert Levandowski wrote: > Pat, it's not that people are so hungry for pornography. It's that > this particular law, as worded, applies to a hell of a lot more than > what's reasonable. Technically, it makes it illegal to send a health > textbook to a minor on the Internet -- look up the legal definition of > "indecent," which the bill bans, as opposed to "obscene." This law is > ready to be misused by people with an axe to grind and a lawyer to > turn the grindstone. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And these lawyers and others with axes > to grind did not have anything at their disposal do to do prior to > this latest legislation? PAT] Unfortunately, like so much of the so-called "Republican Revolution", this Comstockery amendment was slipped in at the last minute, without any public hearings on it. It was not even available for public inspection until >after< the entire Telecom Bill was passed. Hence the need for a coalition of concerned parties to fight it in the courts. ---- Tom Betz --------- ------ (914) 375-1510 -- tbetz@pobox.com | We have tried ignorance for a very long | tbetz@panix.com ------------------+ time, and it's time we tried education. +----------------- -- Computers help us to solve problems we never had before they came along. -- ------------------------------ From: john@pcc.com (John Canning) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 03:44:36 EST Greetings - In comp.dcom.telecom you write: > I hear people saying the Internet is suddenly being held to a different > standard where 'free speech' is concerned than other forms of mass > media. Yes it is, and no it isn't. Internet users have been told > that from now on they will be held to the same standards as everyone > else. So many of you prima donnas went for years and years thinking > you were something special and something different. Now you are being > told that to the contrary, you are just like everyone else. I know > it must distress you a lot. PAT] I disagree with your last paragraph here. I do not mean to harass or upset you with this response, but I would like to express my opinion. The intent of the Exon Amendment may have been to do what you have described. However, our Senator Leahy (I'm from Vermont) was polite to point out that the amendment was very poorly worded. For example, in it's original version it accidentally took away the governments right to write tap. The law that was just signed places the Internet under much more stringent restrictions. If I sent you this reply in hopes of upsetting you, or if you and your attorneys decide that I did it to upset you, then my goose is cooked. I have broken the law and the penalties are pretty severe, just for attempting to have a discussion. If you have a little free time, I suggest you check out Senator Leahy's web pages (http://www.senate.gov/~leahy/why.html or protect.html). He does a much better job of explaining the problem with the bill that was just signed into law. Thank you for your time, and I hope that I have done a small bit to convince you that the Communications Decency Act is a bad solution to a real problem. Sincerly, John Canning Essex Junction, Vermont [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not convinced it is the best solution by any means, but left to their own devices, many Internet users and admins would still be wringing their hands and saying there was nothing they could do ... well fine, now the government has done it for us. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 10:56:52 -0500 From: padgett@tccslr.dnet.mmc.com (A. Padgett Peterson) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If someone fraudulently misrepresents > themself (i.e. are you at least 18 years of age? Pat, am not a lawyer but need to ask the question "can a minor legally commit a fraudulent act ?" Reading the UCC would seem to indicate that they cannot since fraud involves misrepresentation and a minor is not entitled to represent themselves in the first place. Worse, the placing of such a button might be construed as an "attractive nuisance" and demonstrates that you knew the material was offensive. I think the law is vauge and has all of the first amendment problems attributed to it (in fact it is so draconian that I wonder if this was an attempt by lawmakers irritated at this "rider" on a important bill that it was tightened so much as to ensure its overturn). At the same time, I suspect that the unrestricted availability needs to change "to protect the innocent". Supermarkets put Playboy etc. behind covers, video store have "back rooms". Both provide some form of physical restraint. Physical restraint is impossible on the I'net though "proof of age" is not -- just currently must be conducted "out of channel". I do expect the era of free access to "erotic art" be over and admission may require a credit card and a commerce server in the future. Will certainly enhance the profitability of such ventures by eliminating the "amateurs". Not going to say whether good or bad, but will not be surprised. Warmly, Padgett PS: The ability to enforce a law has never been a requirement for passage in the past. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it is perfectly fair that if admins and ISPs are expected to attempt to screen new users 'out of channel' for proof of age that they get some compensation for it. I think we can expect to see an increase in rates or at least an increase in initial account setup fees. I'd hope the adult service provicers were not the only ones to 'benefit' from this as you suggest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes Date: 13 Feb 1996 05:56:04 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , jfh@acm.org says... > The lack of security on the net is becoming more and more of a problem. > "domain hijacking" certainly *will* happen if if hasn't already, just as > forged moderation to moderated groups has happened (to comp.dcom.telecom, > among others). I really don't want the government to get involved, but it's > inevitable if sysops don't start enforcing responsible behavior among their > users. Would you count as "domain hijacking" the practice of registering a domain name that refers to someone else's operation? Somebody has a WWW site at http://www.forbes96.org that is a parody of the Steve Forbes campaign (the real campaign site is at http://www.forbes96.com), and there was a story a few months ago of a TV station in Sacramento that registered as domain names the call signs of several competing stations. ------------------------------ From: storpis@crl.com (Sharif Torpis) Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes Date: 13 Feb 1996 10:19:52 -0800 Organization: Black Lodge Engineering In article , Jack Hamilton wrote: > I don't know of any, but there have been cases where a domain name was > maliciously removed from the name servers, probably through the > mechanism you described. Tsutomu Shimomura's book-related site www.takedown.com got renamed to www.takendown.com by a bogus request to the InterNIC. No computers involved. Just a social-engineered voice call to Network Solutions. Read about it in Friday's papers. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #61 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 14 10:36:16 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id KAA28057; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:36:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:36:16 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602141536.KAA28057@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #62 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Feb 96 10:36:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 62 Inside This Issue: Happy Valentine's Day, Sweethearts! Re: The Right to an Address? (Eric Smith) Re: The Right to an Address? (James E. Bellaire) Re: The Right to an Address? (p01495@psilink.com) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Matthew B Landry) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Steve Cogorno) Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers (Jon M. Taylor) Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) (Eric Smith) Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) (John Diamant) Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) (Heflin Hogan) Pat is Just Stubborn (Dan Pock) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Feb 96 01:17 PST From: Eric Smith Subject: Re: The Right to an Address? On 13 Feb 1996, C. du Fijn <081278cf@student.EUR.NL> said: > What happens with my e-mail address when my provider goes bankrupt > or changes its name? ... > Does anyone have suggestions on where to find more about both legal > and technical solutions to this problem? In the case of internet email, there is AFAIK only one technical solution at this time, which is to register your own domain. This does not require that you have a direct internet connection, but you do have to find at least two name servers on the internet to host you domain and provide MX records for your email. Most service providers will do this for a small fee. The InterNIC is the registration authority for the top-level COM, NET, and ORG domains*, for which there is now a $50/year registration fee with a two year minimum. In other top-level domains (such as .nl), the local registration authority may or may not impose fees. The current InterNIC policy is that once you register a domain with them, you can keep it as long as you continue to pay the annual registration fee and another party doesn't present a US trademark for the name. This latter requirement would seem to make a mockery of the fact that the COM, NET, and ORG domains are supposed to be international. IMHO having international top-level domains was a mistake anyhow, because of exactly these sorts of problems. There should be a separate COM domain for each country, and there are for many contries (eg., co.uk and co.jp). There should have been co.us or com.us. Anyhow, once you have your own domain, it is portable (unlike CIDR IP addresses). If your ISP fails, or you just decide to switch to another, you just arrange for your DNS entries to be put in new servers, and notify the registration authority of the change. This doesn't even require the cooperation of the old ISP. Many people have protested the $50/year fee using one of three principal arguments: 1) it used to be free; 2) it is too expensive; 3) the InterNIC doesn't deserve that much. It actually was never free (nothing ever is); it was paid by US taxpayers. IMHO it is actually advantageous to have it NOT paid by taxpayers, as it then becomes less subject to arbitrary restriction or change at the whim of legislators. $50/year seems cheap to me given that almost any reasonable internet service costs at least that much per month; the $50/year is trivial by comparison. I'm not going to get involved in arguing the third point. Cheers, Eric * as well as EDU, GOV, and the root domain, but good luck registering there! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 05:57:55 -0500 From: James E. Bellaire Subject: Re: The Right to an Address? C. du Fijn <081278cf@student.EUR.NL> wrote: > Being a lawstudent I intend to write a paper on number portability. > This involves problems such as: > What happens with my e-mail address when my provider goes bankrupt > or changes its name? Quick answer: You lose your address. Unless you or your company has its own address space your name is dependent on the provider. If you get mail at and broke.com goes out of service then you can no longer use the @broke.com address. You must use an address in your new provider's space, like . If you have your own address space with your mail being handled by a provider with a different name then you can keep your name IF you find another provider willing to handle the same kind of account. So if you get mail at and broke.com just holds the mail for you, then all you have to do is have your mail rerouted to your new internet provider, solvent.com, and few on the net will know you moved. > This is not an uncommon problem in the telephone world, but becomes > more drastic if e.g. your e-mail adress or webpage is changed (since > your address is only an alpha-numeric translation of a number). > Does anyone have suggestions on where to find more about both legal > and technical solutions to this problem? Technically, if you are just a user @broke.com it would take a system who was willing to accept all of @broke.com's mail and forward it to the individual systems that the former customers now use. Unless one company took over all of the broke.com customers, and even then it is up to the new company to decide if they want to support the old email addresses at broke.com. If you have your own domain, like myown.com, the you have to get the appropriate records changed at various nameservers so that your mail will ne routed to your new provider. Not difficult. James E. Bellaire (JEB6) Twin Kings Communications bellaire@tk.com WebPage at http://www.holli.com/~bellaire/ bellaire@holli.com ------------------------------ From: p01495@psilink.com Subject: Re: The Right to an Address? Date: 14 Feb 1996 02:27:54 GMT Organization: Societe Anonyme des Poissons Reply-To: p01495@psilink.com C. du Fijn <081278cf@student.EUR.NL> writes: > What happens with my e-mail address when my provider goes bankrupt > or changes its name? ... > Does anyone have suggestions on where to find more about both legal > and technical solutions to this problem? There is a readily-available technical solution. Pobox has a free service: they will forward mail. If you make your Email address xxxx@pobox.org.sg, incoming mail gets forwarded to your real account. Of course, if you've already established an identity, this is less useful. Even so, you could change your address and have both work in the interim. Given enough time, everyone would get used to using your pobox account. FWIW, their Web page is www.pobox.org.sg Ron ------------------------------ From: mbl@conch.aa.msen.com (Matthew B Landry) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: 14 Feb 1996 03:03:26 GMT Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, MI. PAT wrote: > Why do you think there will be a sudden increase in these cases? Extradition, mostly. When it was a matter of state and local ordinances all that was necessary to make sure you got an extra chance to have the charges against you thrown out was to obey the laws of the state and locality in which you lived. If some right-wing lunatic prosecutor wanted to make a splash with the stupids in his contingency out in some southern hick-district, he'd have to get a Michigan court to order Michigan police to arrest me first. Now the charge can be filed in a federal court, which by definition has jurisdiction everywhere in the US, and there's no question of extradition. It's just a matter of going through the legal formalities to get me convicted. And considering the fact that if a hundred people looked at my old web site, that conviction would carry a penalty of $100,000,000 and 800 years in a federal penitentiary (for four potentially "indecent" images) ... well, I think this constitutes a problem (especially considering that that's the penalty for less than a day's traffic; if I kept it up a week my sentance would survive the collapse of western civilization). Another problem with the bill is its clear bias against individual freedom (as opposed to the freedom of businesses). The only absolutely secure defense a content provider has is that they charge for their services by credit card. So that hard-core pornography merchants get absolute ironclad protection, while activists trying to make a point about free speech expose themselves to criminal liability that we don't even THINK about handing to muderers. Funny how this strikes me as the exact opposite of what the government of the US should be encouraging, given the values we all pretend to believe in. I don't know any other environment where it can be legal to sell something that's illegal to give away for free. Do you? Matthew Landry ------------------------------ From: cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 23:31:16 PST > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If someone fraudulently misrepresents > themself (i.e. are you at least 18 years of age? are you a law enforcement > officer for any local, state or federal government?) then it is their > problem and not yours. It has long been the case for example that a This is NOT true. Should a minor lie about his/her age while purchasing tobacco, alcohol or pornography, and the clerk still sells without positive identification, the clerk has violated the law (in California), even though the statue clearly states "knowingly sells to minors." The Alcohol Beverages Commission held an administrative law hearing against a merchant who sold alcohol without proper identification. The administrative law judge ruled that there is no "good faith" defense, and that merchants must make every effort to establish positive identification. This was appealed to the California Supreme Court in State of California ABC vs. Kirby. The court agreed with ABC, and said that near-strict liability must be used for defense. This has been supported by case law and precedent in other states as well. Although this judgment was not directly involving pornography statutes, it is widely believed that Kirby applies. Steve cogorno@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: taylorj@ecs.ecs.csus.edu (Jon M. Taylor) Subject: Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers Date: 14 Feb 1996 01:11:50 GMT Organization: California State University, Sacramento > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If someone fraudulently misrepresents > themself (i.e. are you at least 18 years of age? are you a law enforcement > officer for any local, state or federal government?) then it is their > problem and not yours. It has long been the case for example that a > police officer cannot lie and say he is not an officer. If he does > lie, and then proceeds to arrest you based on the transaction which > occurred, it is entrapment, which is illegal. Ahhhh, memories ... this is now basically null and void. It has been ruled in a court of law that, if the police officer feels that their personal safety might be compromised by revealing that they are a police officer, they DO NOT have to do so (i.e., they CAN lie about it), and this is *NOT* entrapment. What this means, of course, is that undercover cops can and will lie about being cops whenever they want to and just tell the judge that they felt that their personal safety would have been in danger if they had told the truth. > Entrapment is defined as the goverment committing a crime in order > to induce you to likewise commit the same or a similar crime. Precisely. Now that lying about not being a cop if they feel that their personal safety is at risk is *NOT* a crime, there is no entrapment taking place. Neat, eh? We now have a REAL secret police! > Enticement (that is, the goverment merely makes it more convenient > for you to violate the law without actually doing so itself) is > *not* illegal. > Please read this carefully: a police officer who commits a crime with > a minor (i.e. logs in the minor on a computer for the purpose of helping > the minor obtain contraband material) who then aids or encourages the > minor to falsify his age and lies to you about his own role as a police > officer in the transaction has entrapped you. Those cases get tossed > out of court all the time. You may wish to qualify your traffic with > criteria such as this to avoid having undesirable users see it. PAT] This is because it is the *minor* who is lying, not the cop. I suspect that the "personal safety" loophole will be extended to police informants (if it hasn't been already) as soon as not doing so becomes too inconvenient. The loophole for police officers, for example, came about because recreational drug users were routinely asking everyone that they came in contact with in any sort of drug-related situation if they were a cop, which was making the business of entrapping them too difficult. They can now do drugs around other drug users as well, and for the same "personal safety" reasons. There is no reason why this "logic" cannot be extended to electronic communications as well (in fact, I would not be surprised if POTS conversations already are included). After all, if all that is required is the *possibility* of harm coming to the cop, there is ALWAYS a possibility of some sort, right? How about "harm" being extended to harassment? Trust me, if the cops want to entrap someone badly enough they WILL find a way to do so. Jon Taylor = | Show your opposition to the Communications Decency Act! VOTE LIBERTARIAN! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The police are great when it comes to not giving any sort of direct answer. Their response would be something like 'do I look like a cop?' (with a sneer on their face) or 'what do you think?' or (injured look on face) 'are you saying you do not trust me?'. They would go out of their way to actually avoid having to answer honestly. Since drug pushers are usually not very bright people -- quite a few are just plain dumb -- that sort of answer usually worked. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 11:45 PST From: Eric Smith Subject: Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) PAT said: > If parents do not supervise their children's use of Internet, is that the > service provider's fault or the fault of the author of the message the child > read? It isn't clear to me what your own answer to this question is. My answer is neither; it is the parent's fault. One problem with the CDA is that it declares that BOTH the service provider AND the author are at fault. Is it really a worthwhile objective for the government to isolate minors in a fantasy world where they are prevented from ever seeing anything unpleasant until they are 18 years old, then suddenly thrust them into the real world? This is where legislation like the CDA is headed. Of course, the CDA can't fully acchieve this objective without locking us all in the fantasy world, so I suppose if they are successful we won't have to worry about what happens to kids when they become adults. > All your melodrama about the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment > is bogus. Oh, darn, you saw right through my smokescreen. I was hoping that you would make the common mistake of believing the Bill of Rights to be important. Eric [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I *do* believe it to be important. So important in fact, that I don't like seeing it invoked abusively in all sorts of instances like this where it really -- IMO -- does not apply. (In the above, note no /H/ in IMO. That's because I don't give humble opinions. Yuk, yuk!) PAT] ------------------------------ From: diamant@sde.hp.com (John Diamant) Subject: Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) Date: 14 Feb 1996 07:36:39 GMT Organization: HP SESD, Fort Collins, CO Reply-To: diamant@sde.hp.com Eric Smith (eric@goonsquad.spies.com) wrote: > And why are you so certain that they will not nail people for putting > things on web pages and Usenet newsgroups? Knowingly has often been > interpreted to mean "known or should have known", and it is quite > apparent that anyone who has used the net a non-trivial amount should > know that it is readily accessible to minors. As has already been pointed out by another article, Pat's claim that asking viewers ages is sufficient defense is unsupportable based on current precedent and statute. Statutes requiring alcohol and tobacco not being sold to minors definitely impose the burden of verification on the provider, and do *not* accept the defense that the minor claimed to be an adult. > I am disappointed that you are taking the view that this is a trivial > issue. In reality it is a very slippery slope. Today it is > "indecency", tomorrow it will be political speech. In fact, there's > no way to tell that political speech isn't "indecent" already! "Indecency" is defined by local standards, and the very idea that it can be applied to a global network is ludicrous. >> I wonder if the ACLU and the small handful of others who are making >> such vicious protests to this realize how incredibly foolish they >> appear to the vast majority of netters? Again, Pat, it is you who appear foolishly naive here. The slippery slope is very real, the violation of the First Amendment in the CDA is also very real. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights is not something to be set aside whenever it interferes with one's goals. Those who passed the Telecommunications Reform Bill containing the CDA have violated their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution. This is a very serious problem, and not one to be taken lightly. > If they appear foolish to the majority of netters, the net is doomed. And so is freedom in the USA if the citizens don't start taking attacks on the US Constitution more seriously. >> I got a note from someone who said 'a lot of sites will vanish from >> the net probably as early as next week' ... and my response to that is >> GOOD. Let them vanish. I wonder who will miss them? PAT] This reminds me of the saying (the quote isn't exactly correct, but the idea comes across): "They came to take away the Jews, but I wasn't Jewish so I didn't protest. They came to take away the weak and infirm, but I wasn't weak or infirm so I didn't protest. They came to take away the elderly, but I wasn't old, so I didn't protest. When they came to take me away, there was no one left to protest!" > The Telecom Reform Bill may be an excellent piece of legislation in > other ways, but if they have to throw away Bill of Rights to do it, > I'd just as soon leave things the way they were. That's my perspective as well. Ideally, the censorship portions would be thrown out as Unconstitutional and the deregulation would be left intact. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well since there is 'no precise standard > for [indecent]', then how do the cable operators all manage to stay > out of jail? Because indecency isn't illegal on cable. > If I have an old television set here with a cable box and > I set it to the Spice Channel and then get in the back of the television > and warp the horizontal sync around to where the picture is mostly > viewable and then some minor sits here with me and watches the show, > is that the fault of the cable operator? Of course it's your fault in that case. But we aren't talking about logical responsibility here -- we're talking about what the statue says and how it could be interpreted in courts. > If parents do not supervise their children's use of Internet, is > that the service provider's fault or the fault of the author of the > message the child read? It's neither. It's the parent's fault for letting their child get run over on the information superhighway. Blaming either the ISP or the author of the message would argue to set the speed limit on highways to 5 miles an hour in case toddlers happen to crawl out onto the highway. The CDA places responsibility on both the ISP and the author, rather than on the parent, where it truly belongs. > All your melodrama about the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment > is bogus. It is not bogus. The First Amendment protects objectionable speech. You don't need protections for things everybody agrees with. It's exactly what people find objectionable (for whatever reason) that needs protections. The courts have ruled that "obscenity" is not protected under the First Amendment, nor is fraud or harassment, but most other forms of communication are protected. The CDA portion of the Telecom Reform Bill restricts Constitutionally protected speech using means that are not the least restrictive for a claimed compelling government purpose (protecting children). The "least restrictive means" test is precedent which is currently in effect, so this First Amendment violation is far from bogus. In fact, the US Justice department is the one who acknowledged the "least restrictive means" test and it's violation in the CDA several months ago when they were asked to review the proposed amendment (they were against it). They have also recently acknowledged the Unconstitutionality of the "abortion speech" portion of the statute. The "slippery slope" is very real. It is how democracies turn into dictatorships. The country which imposed the first censorship on the Internet was that paragon of freedom: Communist China. Your general opinions on the ACLU are non-sequitur. If you have specific disagreement with the argument in question here -- state them. But please read the ACLU's legal brief before doing so. You can find it under their "Cyber Liberties" link at http://www.aclu.org. Whether you agree with the ACLU on other issues is not relevant to the merits of this discussion. I don't agree with some things the ACLU has supported either, but I definitely agree with this one -- and so do about 20 other organizations that have joined the ACLU in their court challenge (including Clarinet, the providers of the most popular newsgroup on Usenet -- rec.humor.funny -- you can also read about the suit at http://www.clari.net/suitpage.html). > About ten years ago I was going to start a newsletter entitled 'ACLU > Watch' and invite attornies and others to dissect their opinions > closely. I didn't have the resources to do it at that time, and still > don't. I may need to make some sacrifices now and do it however. Until you do and lawyers provide specific legal arguments relevant to this case, the above is nothing but flame bait. It imparts no information relevant to this discussion. A judge has already considered the ACLU suit sufficiently meritorious that it has ordered the Justice department to not enforce the CDA statute for 7 days to allow sufficient time to determine whether a longer term restraining order should be in effect (until the Constitutionality can be ruled upon). John Diamant Software Engineering Systems Division Hewlett Packard Co. Internet: diamant@sde.hp.com Fort Collins, CO [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for letting us know you feel Jews and child pornographers are similarly situated, as per your gross distortion of Martin Neimoller's quote. What clarinet chooses to do could concern me less. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mhh001c@pdnis.paradyne.com (Heflin Hogan) Subject: Re: CDA (was Re: Telecom Deform and the Newspapers) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 96 16:41:59 EST Pat: I realize that no amount of arguing on this will change the minds of those with opposing views, but I would still like to point out a few things. While I agree that some (even a majority) of the cases that the ACLU has pursued over the years appear looney at best, I still feel better that there are people out there who take any perceived infringement of basic liberties *very* seriously. After all, who knows when middle-aged moderators of technical newsgroups may attract government scrutiny? :) As for the CDA, if it is as you say and nothing is now illegal that wasn't before, then what was the point? My own concern with the legislation is that it appears to apply broadcast standards to a non-broadcast medium, and my own inference from that is that the Federal government would like to be able to exert more control over an increasingly popular method of communication. I personally object *very* strongly to government intrusion into my own decision making process, however flawed it might be. Protect me from foreign enemies, protect me from street thugs, but please don't try to protect me from myself. And for those wanting to protect children, I have two words: parental responsibility. We already have volumes of laws to protect children from irresponsible, neglectful, or abusive parents. We have laws protecting them from other human trash as well. My own idea of raising children is instilling them with a sense of right and wrong, and monitoring where they go and how they spend their time. And adding a final prayer that I've done well enough that they do the right thing when I fail. One final note: it is perfectly legal and routine for a law enforcement officer to lie about his or her occupation during the course of an investigation. Otherwise, every undercover operation from street prostitution stings to major organized crime investigations would be thrown out of court. Entrapment is a defense that is rarely successfully used. Please excuse the rant, it's Monday and I'm feeling grouchy! M. Heflin Hogan III [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's okay; due to time zone differences it is Wednesday here in Realworld, and I am feeling meaner than ever myself this morning, having woke up and found my coffee pot did not start automatically on its timer for some reason. And then to log in and get another box full of mail like yesterday ... :( PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:10:05 -0800 From: nadaniel@earthlink.net (Dan Pock) Subject: Pat is Just Stubborn Pat, What is so messed up about the Internet that you should welcome Uncle Sam with such open arms? The Internet was evolving and growing beautifully as a private, unregulated entity before this recent regulation. If it is children that you are worried about then support legislation that holds parents accountable for what their children are doing. (We do that with loaded handguns. Why not with the Internet?) If it is your own sensibilities that you are worried about then don't access the porn pages. If the Internet is in such bad shape that we need the government to fix it then please enlighten me because I don't see it. There are already laws against distributing pornography to minors. Do we really need additional laws that specifically single out computers as a special no-no when breaking that law? That is the same as hate crimes. It is already illegal to beat someone to a pulp. What differnce does it make why you did it? -- Does the term, "Thought Control" come to mind? I have no love for bigotry or bigoted ideas. But battery is battery is battery. Likewise, child porn is child porn is child porn, whether it is on the Net or in a magazine. Either way it is illegal. That you never agree with the ACLU is interesting. I agree that they are often full of sh*t to say the least, but they are sometimes right on the money. (In my never-to-be-humble opinion.) One thing that I agree with the ACLU on is that the government should no have the right to regulate speech. The fact that they came out of the starting gate with an attempt to do exactly that, (regarding abortion), ought to be enough to snap you out of this stubborn position you are taking. Dan Pock [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To close this issue of the Digest I would like to wish Happy Valentines Day to all you sweethearts. It is a good thing this topic did not come up around the second Sunday in May ... when we honor motherhood. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #62 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 14 12:08:12 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id MAA05650; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:08:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:08:12 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602141708.MAA05650@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #63 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Feb 96 12:08:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 63 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular (Wm. Randolph Franklin) Artisoft Acquires Stylus Innovation (Bruce Pennypacker) Press/Citizens Telecom Selects Digital For Internet Products (M. Solomon) Product Announcement: TYIN2000 Voice Utilities (S. Amnon) Automated Phone Attendant / Voice Mail Recommendations (Robert L. Browne) New NPAs for Eastern Massachusetts (Scott D. Fybush) Beta Testers Wanted for Mac Voice/Fax Units (magnum@primenet.com) Re: Did the NetCensors Blow it? (David A Willmore) Actual Abortion language in CDA (Fred R. Goldstein) Indecency Prohibition in the Telecom Reform Act (Mike Chance) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) Subject: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular Date: 14 Feb 1996 01:21:49 GMT Organization: ECSE Dept, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 12180 USA Reply-To: wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) Having read in this group about the latest telecom land mine, caller-pays cellular, I called Nynex to see how to tell whether a number I was calling was one of those. The first person I called didn't understand what I was getting at. I called again, and got a really helpful person, who checked with her training supervisor and called me back. Unfortunately that person had never heard of this, and suggested to try a cellular company. I did, and got nowhere. This is a repeat of what happened when I tried to ask Nynex about 540 numbers a few years ago. If I, who am well informed by this group, can't get details, the average citizen hasn't a chance. How to stop these land mines: Make it easy for consumers to set them also. E.g., let me publish a legal notice in an Albany newspaper warning that anyone who calls me from anywhere in the world must pay me $10, plus me legal fees in collecting. This is no more ridiculous than a tariff in some distant place affecting me. Wm. Randolph Franklin, wrf@ecse.rpi.edu, (518) 276-6077; Fax: -6261 ECSE Dept., 6026 JEC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst, Troy NY, 12180 USA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 20:31:54 -0500 From: Bruce Pennypacker Organization: Stylus Innovation, Inc. Subject: Artisoft Acquires Stylus Innovation Contact: Curtis J. Scheel Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Voice: (520) 670-7163 Fax: (520) 670-7360 Internet: cscheel@artisoft.com ARTISOFT, INC. ACQUIRES STYLUS INNOVATION, INC. (TUCSON, AZ - February 13, 1996) - Artisoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASFT) today announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Stylus Innovation, Inc., a leading developer of computer telephony software applications and tools based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stylus is the developer of Visual Voice (R), Visual Fax (TM), and Otto (TM), a LAN-based auto-attendant, call control and voice messaging system. The assets were acquired in a cash transaction valued at approximately $12.8 million. William C. Keiper, Artisoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "The convergence of computer and telephone communications technologies creates a new paradigm for business communications and offers exciting new opportunities for providers of integrated solutions. The acquisition of Stylus Innovation immediately positions Artisoft as a leader in the growing computer telephony market. Coupled with our current and future product offerings in the networking and remote communications markets, we have a unique opportunity to deliver integrated workgroup solutions." Mr. Keiper further stated, "Artisoft has accomplished a comprehensive transformation of its business and strategic focus over the past year. The acquisition of computer telephony technologies and products is another step in our strategy of broadening our technology portfolio, expanding our product offerings and leveraging our distribution channels." Michael Cassidy, President of Stylus Innovation, added, "Stylus is one of the pioneers of component-based telephony application development tools. Visual Voice was the first Windows(R)-based software component for computer telephony solutions. Accessing Artisoft's wholesale distribution and VAR channels, as well as retail shelf space, provides opportunities for expanding Stylus Innovation's product reach into new markets." The Stylus Innovation transaction will be accounted for as a purchase. A substantial portion of the $12.8 million purchase price (principally attributable to in-process technology and acquisition-related costs), will be charged to operations in the current fiscal quarter. Artisoft leads the industry in providing easy-to-use, affordable networking, remote communications and computer telephony solutions for businesses. Chosen by over 4 million users worldwide to connect and share computer resources, Artisoft solutions include the award- winning LANtastic family of networking products, Modem Assist Plus(R) modem and phone line sharing products, and CoSession(TM) remote access software. The company maintains nine offices outside the United States, and distributes its products in more than 100 countries. ### "Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products and pricing, product demand and market acceptance risks, the presence of competitors with greater financial resources, product development and commercialization risks, capacity and supply constraints or difficulties, the results of financing efforts and other risks detailed in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Stylus Innovation, Inc. Backgrounder Stylus Innovation, Inc., headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was founded in 1990, and is dedicated to the development of easy-to- use applications and toolkits for computer telephony. Stylus markets software and outsourced hardware products used in a variety of telephony applications including Interactive Voice Response (IVR), fax-on-demand, and voice mail. Stylus pioneered the concept of component-based software in the telephony industry. Stylus introduced Windows(R)-based development, an industry standard language (Visual Basic(TM)), and a no-runtime fee policy to the telephony world. Stylus Innovation's award-winning products provide host, database, and network connectivity to telephony application developers by leveraging the strengths of Visual Basic and the Visual Basic third-party developer community. Late in 1993, Stylus launched Visual Voice(R) which rapidly became the leading Windows telephony development tool in the industry. Visual Voice is a software toolkit that allows developers to easily build sophisticated PC-based telephony applications such as interactive voice response, voice mail, fax-on-demand, and automated outbound dialing. Visual Voice has won numerous industry awards including Computer Telephony Product of the Year, Byte Magazine Award of Excellence, Windows Magazine Win 100, and Visual Basic Programmer's Journal Readers' Choice. Dataquest ranked Stylus at #2 in market share (9.6%) of IVR systems shipped in North America in 1994, just behind AT&T (11.3%). In 1995, Stylus released Otto(TM), a sophisticated network-based voice mail, auto-attendant, and call control product. Otto provides many powerful features including call screening, unified messaging, and graphical system administration. Stylus products enable advanced telephony solutions for workgroups in businesses of all sizes. Stylus' customers include Fortune 500 companies such as Boeing, Cigna, DEC, Merck, NBC, Sony, US Air, Xerox and more than 25% of the Fortune 1000. Artisoft, Inc. All rights reserved. Modem Assist Plus is a registered trademark, and Co-Session is a trademark of Artisoft, Inc. Visual Voice is a registered trademark, and Visual Fax and Otto are trademarks of Stylus Innovation, Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:26:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Press/Citizens Telecom Selects Digital For Internet Products Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Forwarded to the Digest, FYI: |||||| Digital Press and Analysts News |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Digital Equipment Corporation Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571 Editorial contact: Howard Sholkin Digital Equipment Corporation (508) 496-9474 howard.sholkin@ogo.mts.dec.com Brigid M. Smith Citizens Utilities (203) 329-5042 bsmith@czn.com CITIZENS TELECOM SELECTS DIGITAL FOR INTERNET PRODUCTS AND SERVICES MAYNARD, Mass. and STAMFORD, Conn., February 13, 1996 -- Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Mass. today announced it has been selected to begin deployment of Internet-related hardware and software for Citizens Telecom, a telecommunications company with operations in 11 states. Citizens Telecom is a subsidiary of Citizens Utilities Company headquartered in Stamford, Conn. Phase One of the project, scheduled to be completed next month, covers Gloversville, NY; Elk Grove, CA; and Cookeville, TN. All Citizens Telecom customers in these areas will be offered dial-up and dedicated leased line Internet access for a fee. Digital's Network Services group is providing consulting and integration services for the three locations. Upon the successful completion of Phase One, Citizens Telecom plans to deploy Internet services in its other markets. "Many of our customers are telling us that they want an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that offers toll-free access to Internet-based services," stated Ronald E. Spears, vice president of Telecommunica- tions for Citizens Utilities. "Digital's Internet expertise allows us to meet that demand quickly and effectively through a state-of-the-art network." Digital is planning, designing and installing the required network that will enable Citizens Telecom to offer services such as Internet access, electronic mail, and news and web hosting for businesses. Digital will also provide interim help desk support for customers. The networked computing environment includes Digital's AlphaServers, Bay Networks routers, and Motorola's integrated access servers. "This is a significant agreement for Digital because it demonstrates our ability to provide a total Internet solution; from Digital servers to third-party products, with the integration services to make it all work and keep it running," said Peter Hussey, Americas vice president, Digital Network Services. "Digital's experience dates to the 1970's when the Internet's predecessor, the ARPAnet, was developed with a PDP computer. Both our Internet and networking heritage provide the foundation for the full range of capabilities that we are using to support Citizens Telecom as it becomes an industry leader for Internet services." Mr. Spears remarked, "Citizens intends to offer customers Internet services and support of a quality unmatched by any local ISP today. We bring to this endeavor more than 60 years of experience in telephony, the strongest commitment to customer satisfaction, and the belief that our Internet services will add value to Citizens Telecom's portfolio of products and services." Citizens Utilities (NYSE: CZNA, CZNB) is a diversified service company providing telecommunications services, natural gas distribution, electric distribution, and water and wastewater treatment services to 1.6 million customers in 19 states. Citizens has a significant investment in Centennial Cellular Corp., a cellular telephone company, and owns and operates Electric Lightwave, Inc., a competitive telecommunications services provider operating in five major cities in the western United States. Through Citizens Telecom, Citizens provides local exchange, long distance, cellular, messaging, network access, Centrex and related service in 11 states. Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open client/server solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information systems. Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software and services, together with industry- focused solutions from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global marketplace. #### Note: Digital and the Digital logo are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. Bay Networks is a trademark of Bay Networks. Motorola is a trademark of Motorola Corporation. The Digital home page is http://www.digital.com. The Citizens home page is http://www.czn.net. ------------------------------ From: amnons@actcom.co.il (Amnon S.) Subject: Product Announcement: TYIN2000 Voice Utilities Organization: ACTCOM - Internet Services in Israel Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:33:26 GMT We are pleased to announce the release of advanced utilities for the NATSEMI TYIN2000 DSP FAX/DATA/VOICE modem. Although a few years old and not marketed agressively anymore, the TYIN DSP FAX/DATA/VOICE modem is still considered one of the best (sound quality and reliability, although the bundled S/W lacks some _flashy_ features popular today) modems available at a reasonable price, both by users and developers. If you need a low cost, good sounding and reliable PC based voicemail system, the TYIN is a real gem. Due to it's on board DSP, CPU requirements are low and even a 386-SX/25 is sufficient (good use for all those 386-SX's lying around ... in fact that's what we're using). Most popular modems today require at least a 486 CPU due to heavy PC PC bandwidth required. The initial release includes a utility enabling using any WAV editor program (and some are quite powerful) for creating your custom OGM (Out-Going Message) and importing it into any TYIN2000 mailbox OGM. This utility enables creating a professional OGM with advanced features such as: 1. High quality music. 2. Absolute silence (impossible to do with the bundled product). 3. Special effects. 4. No Analaog noise addition during editing process. 5. Editing (cutting and pasting) available voice sequences as needed for specific mailboxes. Some further notes: 1. A demo is available. We would be pleased to send interested parties a FREE demo for evaluation (TRY before you BUY concept ...) via email until our web site is up and running. 2. S/W will be low cost. Certainly a cheaper and more RELIABLE solution for anyone searching for a simple and reliable voicemail system (let alone someone already owning a TYIN2000 modem). 3. Future products will include export and import of TYIN2000 PCM (outgoing messages) and PC4 (incoming messages) formats to WAV or other popular formats (useful for editing or archiving an available OGM or ICM to your needs). 4. We have even developed a VOICE broadcast application, although currently it is not suitable for marketting (it runs under DOS). for further info or a FREE demo. please email us directly at: Innovative_Technologies@actcom.co.il ------------------------------ From: Robert L. Browne Subject: Automated Phone Attendant / Voice Mail References Wanted Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:32:54 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, USA I am looking for an affordable, reliable automated phone attendant / voice mail system for my law office, compatible with Panasonic phones. Any suggestions or recommendations out there? Any evaluations or comparisons out there? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush) Subject: New NPAs for Eastern Massachusetts Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 22:26:27 EST It's official: NYNEX has reserved 781 for 617 (greater Boston, expected to exhaust in 1998) and 978 for 508 (surrounding area, expected to exhaust in 1999). NYNEX wants overlays for both. An overlay would make sense in the dense 617 area, roughly a 10-mile radius around downtown Boston. IMHO, a geographic split would make more sense in the large 508 area, which stretches more than a hundred miles in a "C" shape from the NH line around to Cape Cod. Using the Mass Pike as a divider would yield a new, smaller 508 encompassing the Worcester, Fitchburg, Concord, Lowell, Lawrence, Haverhill and Salem areas; and a new 978 encompassing Framingham, Brockton, Fall River, New Bedford, Plymouth, and the Cape and Islands. BTW, a check of www.bellcore.com shows a "757" NPA listed for Virginia. Anyone know anything about this one? Also, I note that the new 268 code for Antigua spells out "ANT," and the new 758 code for St. Lucia spells "SLU." Clever... Scott Fybush - fybush@world.std.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The new area code for the north suburbs of Chicago is 847 which spells out VIP, or Very Important Person (People). Ameritech has been pushing the 'VIP' thing in their advertising. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Magnum@Primenet.com (Skot) Subject: Beta Testers Wanted for Mac Voice/Fax Units Date: 14 Feb 1996 07:09:01 -0700 Organization: magnum We are about to release TFLX Special Editions -- a turnkey telephony system which is very easy to use, has excellent voice, and superior features. In addition to voice mail, info centers, and fax in/out -- it also has robotic Fax on Demand and Caller ID capabilities. It is compatible with the voice/fax Zoom modem for the Mac and other modems which utilize the Rockwell voice chip set. To be considered for Beta Tester requires you have ... Any Mac from the Plus on up. Any Mac system from 6.0.4 to latest system/finder versions. HD with 4 megs free. Memory. 2.5 megs free. A voice/fax modem as described above. The system is solid, tested and ready to go. However, we just tweaked a couple things and they while work fine, our policy is to have as wide a base of folks Beta testing all such revisions. So we are looking for a few users who might care to help. If you are interested please email us and we shall get back with all the details. Thank you for your time. Magnum S/W Corp. magnum@primenet.com CUS:74156,1433 Phone: (818)701-5051 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 01:11:46 -0600 From: David A Willmore Subject: Re: Did the NetCensors Blow it? ROGOR@delphi.com writes: [... preamble deleted ...] > I will address the specific sections of the CDA in question below: > Section 502 (1) (omitting the paragraphs dealing with telephone > harassment) provides for fines or imprisonment for anyone who: > "(1) in interstate or foreign communications- > "(A) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly- > "(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and > "(ii) initiates the transmission of, any comment, request, > suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, > lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, > threaten, or harass an other person;" [... deleted ...] I find interesting the use of the verb 'initiates'. The sender of an FTP or HTTP transmission is not the 'initiater' of the transmission. The FTP or HTTP client is the requester and, hence, initiates the transmission. This, also, may be a loop-hole. Cheers, David ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:23:12 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Actual Abortion Language in CDA I wondered about this alleged abortion speech rider inserted by Mister Hyde, and scanned the text of S652 and didn't see it. But thanks to a recent issue of the Digest, I checked Cornell's LII and did some more searching. Here's what there is: >SEC. 507. CLARIFICATION OF CURRENT LAWS REGARDING COMMUNICATION OF > OBSCENE MATERIALS THROUGH THE USE OF COMPUTERS. > (a) IMPORTATION OR TRANSPORTATION- Section 1462 of title 18, >United States Code, is amended-- > (1) in the first undesignated paragraph, by inserting `or > interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) > of the Communications Act of 1934)' after `carrier'; and > (2) in the second undesignated paragraph-- > (A) by inserting `or receives,' after `takes'; > (B) by inserting `or interactive computer service (as > defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of > 1934)' after `common carrier'; and > (C) by inserting `or importation' after `carriage'. Real clear, right? The reference is to S1462 of Title 18, which is apparently where the Comstock Act is codified: 1462. Importation or transportation of obscene matters > Whoever brings into the United States, or any place subject to the >jurisdiction thereof, or knowingly uses any express company or other common >carrier, for carriage in interstate or foreign commerce - ... > (c) any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended >for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; or any written >or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice >of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, how, or of >whom, or by what means any of such mentioned articles, matters, or things >may be obtained or made; or Whoever knowingly takes from such express >company or other common carrier any matter or thing the carriage of which >is herein made unlawful - Pretty broad stuff, no? Indeed, I am technically violating the CDA by saying that press reports have recently shown that Methotrexate, a commonly used anti-cancer chemotherapy agent, can be used to safely induce early-term abortion, in conjunction with other readily-available hormones and treatments, essentially like RU486 but already approved for general use in the USA. Never mind that this is just my recollection of a WCVB-TV report, and it might even have been on their web site. Yes, Bill Clinton has said that his administration considers that whole clause to be nugatory and they will not enforce it. But this is an election year. Fred R. Goldstein fgoldstein@bbn.com BBN Corp. Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850 ------------------------------ Subject: Indecency Prohibition in the Telecom Reform Act Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:19:36 CST From: Mike Chance Pat, As a moderate conservative (politically speaking), I, too, am appalled by much of what the porn industry pumps out in the various media. However, I don't believe that the Exon amendment provisions in the TRA are either necessary nor wise. There are currently on the books several enforcable laws which have already passed Constitutional muster with regard to the distribution of obscene material to minors, child pornography, and other related topics. While the issues of which "community standards" of obscenity apply to the Internet, and how, are still part of an ongoing debate, the necessary legal tools are already in place. My concern with the Exon amendment is that it prohibits "indecent" speech when "knowingly" directed at minors. This sets a much lower threshold than previous law, and treads dangerously close, if not steps over, the First Amendment protections. Under current law, I can use "indecent" speech when conversing face-to-face with a minor and break no laws. I can give that minor a Rubens or Michelangelo painting, a Shakespeare comedy, "Huckleberry Finn" or "Catcher in the Rye", all of which could be considered "indecent". Yet now, under the provision of the TRA, I can no longer send those same pictures or text to that same minor via e-mail, make them available on a public FTP or Web site, or post them to an unmoderated newsgroup or discussion list, without being possibly subjected to jail time and fines of thousands of dollars. Personally, I fail to see the difference in the situations based solely on the means of transmission. How is one method acceptable, and the other, not? I agree that those who deliberately shove obscene and pornographic material to minors should be prosecuted fully. But other laws already exist to handle these cases, without the restrictions on legally protected speech imposed by the Exon amendment. Michael A. Chance [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well you can't really use indecent speech lawfully when communicating face-to-face with a minor. Are you trying to say that if you were to go up to a child and engage in a conversation which began, "Will you come to my home and have sex with me?" -- whether or not you later engaged in such an act -- that your conversation would be lawful and protected by freedom of speech? I'll suggest you might quite legally get arrested for having made an indecent solicitation to a minor. What about if you merely ask a minor, "would you like to join me privately and have some beer to drink" ? Do you think you will get out of jail free on that one also? After all, it was merely speech. How about if I am sitting in the park one Sunday afternoon (as Gene Spafford once described Usenet) and show some indecent photographs or literature to youngsters who are there also? All I did was exercise my free speech rights ... I'm innocent of any crime, right? Why then should posing such comments or visual images to a minor on the Internet be different? In fact it is not different. People are saying that somehow because the Internet is so different and so special; that because it is so difficult to effectively govern its lawful use, therefore no attempts should be made at all. It is my hope that as the Court listens to arguments on this in the weeks and months to come that the Court will permit a wide variety of arguments pro and con the legislation. The Justices are like the general population: they are not exactly what I would term 'computer- literate' and I am really afraid the ACLU and EFF are going to give them a snow job and send them off the deep end on this. They are going to overwhelm the Court with a lot of jargon and excuses about the technical side of networking and lead the Court to falsely believe there is no solution short of the draconian (and I agree some people might legitimatly see it that way) CDA. The Court will have enough appreciation and respect for the Bill of Rights (as I think we all do) and respond based on the false and misleading representations of the ACLU and others. I sincerely hope before the Court makes its final judgment on this it will call on the expert testimony and witness of a wide spectrum of netters, and not just rely on what one organization which its own agenda has to say. I hope someone will step forward to the Court and present unbiased *facts* about the net. I'd like to see there eventually develop the role of 'omsbudsman' between the Internet and the government. A sort of 'ambasssador' perhaps as exists between nations. Hopefully over the next couple decades as people everywhere become computer-literate, such a role would no longer be necessary, but in the meantime it would serve to balance the rights of everyone. I guess that's probably too much to ask. As Royko pointed out in his column yesterday, a relatively few netters will make such a god-awful noisy stink the CDA will be ruled unconstitutional, and once again everyone loses but the bad guys, a trend which is becoming distressingly common in the United States of the late twentieth century. The ACLU/EFF has gotten in the first round of shots on this. Let's not allow them to take over the net. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #63 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 14 15:21:29 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id PAA24630; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:21:29 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:21:29 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602142021.PAA24630@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #64 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Feb 96 13:55:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 64 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Market Study: New Internet Service (Francois Legault) Excel Rates (John R. Levine) Re: Kids and Rotary Phones (John Agosta) Re: Kids and Rotary Phones (Bill Garfield) Re: MLM vs Outside Sales Agents (Tom Zinn) Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays (Bob Goudreau) Re: Trademarks and Copyrights (Tony Harminc) Re: Trademarks and Copyrights (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Re: Generations of Engineers (Donald MacDonald) Re: Ameritech Cellular Brownouts (C. Wheeler) Re: California Finally Gets CID (Gordon Wilson) Re: Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 (Linc Madison) Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX (Dave Levenson) Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes (Eric Smith) Re: Imponderables About Telephones (Daniel Maverick Falkoff) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: flegault@laurentides.mtl.net (Francois Legault) Subject: Market Study: New Internet Service Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:13:05 -0500 Organization: Canadian E-Mail Postal Service To non-North American e-Mail Users: I prepared a bilingual questionnaire about a new service I want to offer on the internet. If you want to help me I will greatly appreciate. I would need as much responses as possible as soon as possible. This questionnaire can be fowarded to non-North American e-mail users; send it to overseas friends or friends that knows overseas users. Thank you for your collaboration. :-) =======SURVEY FOR THE INSTALLATION OF A NEW INTERNET SERVICE========= The "Canadian E-Mail Postal Service" firm is installing a new service on the internet network. As it's name suggests, the service in question is a postal service exclusively linked to electronic-mail. It enables all e-mail users to send messages and files (including photos and graphics) for a minimum cost to any person or firm having a civic address in Canada. The network will soon spread worldwide with the establishment of service centers in several countries. The firm actually prints the mail and fowards it directly to the person it is addressed to via Canada Post. The advantages are: the speed of reception (from two to three days for mail no matter where it is sent from), all persons with a civic address become accessible by way of e-mail, the cost to use this service is minimal compared to overseas long distance telephone services, the user does not have to go out to send his or her message. If you would please like to take the time to answer these questions, this survey will be of great use to adjust the service to the needs of e-mail users. In return you will be noticed when the service will be active and be able to try it once for free. Please return this questionnaire by February 22. QUESTIONS: 1- Would you use the electronic postal mail service describe above ? > 2- how much would you be willing to pay to send some mail (the equivalent of a letter of up to 3 pages) ? > 3- At "Canadian E-Mail Postal Service" the confidentiality of the mail is guaranteed. Nevertheless, would you be willing to let us print and send your personal mail ? > 4- What country do you live in ? > 5- In which countries would you use this service to send mail to ? > Thank you very much for your collaboration. Please foward this questionnaire to your e-mail friends, thank you. Please return the completed questionnaire to the e-mail address below. flegault@laurentides.mtl.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:07:55 EST From: John R Levine Subject: Excel Rates FYI, here are Excel's actual rates quoted to me by an Excel distributor. The E-to-E rate applies when one Excel customer is calling another. Regular E-to-E Day: 21.6 15.5 Evenings: 11.8 8.5 Nights/Weekends: 10.4 7.5 Assuming a 50/50 split of day and night traffic, and disregarding the E-to-E rate since under 2% of the people one might want to call are Excel customers, this comes out to about 16 cents/minute. I can see that this is a great deal for an Excel salesman, but it's not clear to me why I would want to buy long distance service at these prices. (Indeed, aren't Candice's Sprint Sense rates a little lower than this?) By comparison, non-MLM companies have been quoting me rates of 12.5 cents/min and below. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well John, the reason for the rates are that in an MLM scheme, there are so many people who have to get cut in for a piece of the action. Everyone in the upline and downline gets a penny or two of that. You don't think the prime source (the telco actually handling the traffic) is going to pay it do you? That is the reason prepaid calling cards are so expensive per minute of use. The originating telco gets a few cents per minute of traffic as always. Then the wholesaler of the prepaid card adds on a little for himself. Each of his distributors get something. The local 7/Eleven store where you buy the card needs to make a profit also. The sucker who eventually winds up using it pays about fifty cents per minute or more. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jagosta@interaccess.com (John Agosta) Subject: Re: Kids and Rotary Phones Date: 14 Feb 1996 01:50:11 GMT Organization: Agosta and Associates In article , grumpy@en.com (Seymour Dupa) says: >> What does 'clockwise' mean to someone who's seen only digital clocks? And "tie your shoes" to someone who has only seen velcro ? ------------------------------ From: bubba@insync.net (Bill Garfield) Subject: Re: Kids and Rotary Phones Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 03:08:27 GMT Organization: Associated Technical Consultants Reply-To: bubba@insync.net On 13 Feb 1996 20:07:17 GMT, Seymour Dupa wrote: > Mike Wengler (wengler@ee.rochester.edu) wrote: >> I wonder if there are words *we* use for which we've forgotten the >> real meaning. > What does 'clockwise' mean to someone who's seen only digital clocks? What does 'dial off-normal contact' mean to someone who's seen only tone dial pads? :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You could take this even further to include phrases like 'dialtone' or 'dial seven digits'. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 96 09:19:14 EST From: Tom Zinn Subject: Re: MLM vs Outside Sales Agents Pat: > If you want to be in the long distance resale business it is far > better to do so directly as an agent for a carrer not via downlines > or uplines. I think "far better" is overstated, Pat. Let's say the 'Joe' off the street is looking for an opportunity to spend a couple hundred bucks to 'tap in' to the fastest growing industry in America. He finds a company who will provide for him solid, dependable and highly competitive long distance service that will allow him to build an organization of other 'customer gatherers' interested in the same thing, which in turn brings in thousands of customers and give him/her (and each of the individuals) the opportunity to be paid a percentage of thousands of customer's monthly LDU while those customers save say, 30 to 50 percent on each and every LD call that they make...without the person having to do much more than share the opportunity (both for the business or the service) with friends and business associates ... all this accomplished in his/her spare time. Can this be far worse than making the kind of commitment necessary to actually become a full-time agent for a long distance reseller? Especially when the company is growing at 400% annually, has a zero dollar advertising budget, is going public with its stock and has an extremely loyal customer base? Sounds like a pretty good deal. zinnt@ncr.disa.mil ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:50:06 -0500 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays jgrossi@bbn.com (John Grossi) writes: > Well today's {Boston Globe} has a nice article on how NYNEX is going > to propose before the Public Utilites Commission, in about two months, > splitting 617 (Boston and the inner 'burbs) and 508 (the rest of the > 'burbs, Worcester, Lowell, and New Bedford). ... not to mention all of Cape Code and the islands. > The plan calls for > overlay codes ... but with a new twist. They are going to be seven > digit dialing unless you want the other area code. What's the new twist here? Isn't this how the only active overlay NPA (917 in New York City) already works? AFAIK, nobody in the NANP has mandatory 10-digit dialing yet; the proposal to introduce it in Houston in conjunction with an overlay NPA was recently scrapped in favor of a traditional geographic split. > Considering the stinks made on the south shore last time the area > codes were split. I have a feeling we are going to see another > geographic split. I agree. State PUCs and the general public don't seem too wild about the overlay concept. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 96 10:59:42 EST From: Tony Harminc Subject: Re: Trademarks and Copyrights bear@hic.net (Bill Blackwell) wrote: > Why not have the Bureau of Patents and Trademarks take over for > InterNIC? Sice they have the records at their disposal, one could > avoid what could possibly turn into a horrendous amount of litigation > by letting the people who know how to do it, do the up-front work. > Then, just like TM's and SM's, one would pay a periodic fee to "re-up" > the domain name. Taken from here, someone usurping "moderation" > (aberration) of a newsgroup could then be held liable for the > copyright violation under existing law. (Not to mention theft ...) > Would this be a feasible arrangement? Well, it might be if the Internet existed only in the USA. But many of us are in other countries, where US patent and trademark law does not apply. If the "authorities" are going to get involved in network names, then clearly it must be done at a level higher than any national government. For all the bad press it gets, I can't think of any body more suitable then the UN. Tony H. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Or possibly the ITU would be a good choice as administrator. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sewilco@fieldday.mn.org (Scot E. Wilcoxon) Subject: Re: Trademarks and Copyrights Date: 14 Feb 1996 07:57:52 -0600 In article , wrote: > There currently exists problems in registering domain names that > conflict with trademarks, service marks and copyrights owned by other > entities. When you register "Paul's PanAm Posters" with your state government, they don't have to check if any of those three words is a trademark. It is up to you to get the proper permission for any trademarks you're going to use. The registration agency should not have to do research or check your spelling. You might state that you have permission to use any protected marks, and the agency may have ways to deal with conflicts, but they can't know if you really do have permission. For that matter, even if you have permission, you might later lose that permission. The InterNIC only needs to deal with registrations, and have procedures to deal with conflicts. Note that a "conflict" might involve an abandoned domain, or it might involve a court battle where the InterNIC just has to deal with a court order. > Why not have the Bureau of Patents and Trademarks take over for InterNIC? Does every Shugart Disk Shop pay the Bureau? No, the owners of Shugart have their protected mark and the Shugart Disk Shops pay whatever fees their contract with Shugart require. Scot E. Wilcoxon sewilco@fieldday.mn.org ------------------------------ From: Donald MacDonald <100731.3464@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Re: Generations of Engineers Date: 14 Feb 1996 09:39:55 GMT Organization: Communications Workers Union (UK) I was very taken with the pride that Jane Fraser's dad had in his job. This is, I believe, pretty typical of the commitment to service of generations of telephone engineers and technicians. Do the phone companies ever stop to think about who made them great? Who made the big bucks for them? Donald MacDonald CWU (UK) http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dmacdonald ------------------------------ From: C. Wheeler Subject: Re: Ameritech Cellular Brownouts Date: 14 Feb 1996 17:06:23 GMT Organization: CCnet Communications - Walnut Creek, CA Super-User wrote: > My question is "what makes roamers more of a source of fraud than > local customers?" I thought that almost all fraud is either `lost' > phone fraud or capture of either ESN -- telephone-number pair or ESN -- > telephone-number -- PIN triple fraud. Either of these sources of fraud > does not seem to be any worse a source of fraud for a roamer than a > local customer and may be less of a source of fraud. > During my exposure to AMPS at AT&T Bell Labs, Indian Hill, admittedly > light on the fine details, I gathered the impression that as part of > the setting up of roaming the host system obtained verification of the > validity of the ESN -- telephone-number pair from the native system. > If this verification is not being done at the time that roaming is > being set up and rather is handled during the billing process, then I > can see why roamers might be a significant source of fraud. On many systems, appearing as a roamer is an easy way to make a fraudulent call or two. ESN/phone numbers are not always verified right away and if you look like your are from a cooperating system, you can sometimes get a few calls through before you get blocked. I would hope that Ameritech has a some alternate method of allowing roaming in these areas. Perhaps automatic roaming has to be restricted but you should be able to call *something and activate roaming. If not, Ameritech would lose my business as well. Curtis [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So far as I know, and based on what the rep told me, Ameritech customers can automatically roam (or be located automatically) in any Ameritech market. You need not do anything at all to activate roaming however you can de-activate it if desired with *19. However if you choose to de-activate it then you have two ways of reactivating it: You can use *18 for the old 'Fast Track' system (which automatically cancels each night) or you can turn the phone off and after a short time turn it back on again in which case the nearest tower sees you and starts the automatic roaming process all over again. This only applies to Ameritech customers traveling in the five state region of Ameritech cellular service. I don't know how they handle roamers outside their territory who enter or their own customers who go elsewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ From: gw@cdc.hp.com (Gordon Wilson) Subject: Re: California Finally Gets CID Date: 14 Feb 1996 11:21:38 GMT Organization: HP Integrated Circuit Business Division, Palo Alto, CA Bruce Roberts (bruce.roberts@panasia.com) wrote: > From the "Briefly" column, Business section, {Los Angeles Times}, 1 Feb- > ruary 1996. Finally!!!!!!! Is there an address where I can vent my frustrations? I suppose it is the Public Utilities Commission. Oh, I am in California. Thanks, gordon ------------------------------ From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 Reply-To: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:39:15 GMT Charles Cremer (71231.2206@compuserve.com) wrote: > As already reported by Chris Boone, the Texas Public Utility > Commission has decided that the 972 and 281 areas will be implemented > as geographic splits. I guess this will probably put to rest any thoughts of the long-rumored overlay of 817. No date was ever set for that monstrosity, but it would be absurd to overlay 817 without doing a split first. > One additional fact is worth mentioning: > The commission requested that two additional new areas -- one for > Dallas and one for Houston -- should be applied for immediately. > These would be implemented as overlays for wireless service only. Something *sensible* from a state PUC! I wonder what their answer is to the charges of "discrimination on class of service" that the wireless providers used to block similar plans in places like Chicago. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * LincMad@Eureka.vip.best.com ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 13:53:16 GMT Jeff Brielmaier (jeff.brielmaier@yob.com) writes: > Well folks, Houston TX will NOT have an overlay plan after all. ... > The 6PM newscast indicate that there will be seven-digit dialing within > each AC and ten-digit dialing for 713<->281 dialing. They also > indicate that because of geographic split, it is possible a third AC may > have to be added shortly (they will have more hearings on this), and > in four to seven years there will be another geographic split due to > lack for phone numbers. If they'd implement 1 + ten digits, rather than ten digits between area codes, it would probably delay the future splits by adding approximately 180 possible prefixes per area code. Why are they not doing this? Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 01:45:00 PST From: Eric Smith Subject: Re: Domain Hijacking, InterNIC Loopholes On 13 Feb 1996, storpis@crl.com (Sharif Torpis) said: > Tsutomu Shimomura's book-related site www.takedown.com got renamed to > www.takendown.com by a bogus request to the InterNIC. No computers > involved. Just a social-engineered voice call to Network Solutions. Yes, and the Network Solutions Inc. spokesman had the gall to brag that it was OK because no hackers were involved and their computer security had not been breached. In reality this is the worst and most insidious type of breach of computer security. At least they have proposed a means to prevent future occurences of this problem by using digital signatures to authenticate the identity of requesters: ftp://rs.internic.net/policy/internic/internic-gen-1.txt Cheers, Eric ------------------------------ From: dmf@c-c.com (Daniel Maverick Falkoff) Subject: Re: Imponderables About Telephones Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 13:44:16 GMT Organization: Claflin & Clayton > 3. Why are there no windows in many telephone company buildings? (Are > these all central offices? Are there telco buildins with many employees > that are also windowless?) I've been thinbking about a comical horror movie using that fact. (some secret evil activity inside, such as canibalism). Don't forget the evil Phone Company plot in 'The President's Analyst'. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #64 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 14 17:31:02 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id RAA08069; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:31:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:31:02 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602142231.RAA08069@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #65 TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Feb 96 17:31:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 65 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson UCLA Short Course on Wired and Wireless Networking (Bill Goodin) My Clock Needs Cleaning (TELECOM Digest Editor) Cheyenne Bitware (Erik Wust) Livingston Portmaster and ISDN (Alex M.) Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool! (Michael Wengler) Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular (Robert Virzi) Re: Dialogic Drivers/Header Files Needed (Les Reeves) Re: Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 (Edmund C. Hack) Re: The Right to an Address? (Joel M. Snyder) Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays (Bill Ranck) LAN Interface Specifications (Doug Day) Nokia RC58/DC58 References Needed (Antonio Sousa) Re: Juvenile Bomb Plot Plans Came from Internet (Rick Williamson) Re: V&H Coordinate to Lat Long Tool? (Michael S. Berlant) Re: Southern New England Telephone (Ed Ellers) Re: Not Taught at Harvard: Multilevel Marketing (Ed Ellers) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: BGoodin@UNEX.UCLA.EDU (Goodin, Bill) Organization: UCLA Extension Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:07:19 -0800 Subject: UCLA Short Course on Wired and Wireless Networking On May 20-24, 1996, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Wireless and Wired Telecommunications Networking", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Izhak Rubin, PhD, Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA, and Michael A. Erlinger, PhD, Professor, Department of Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College. This course presents the integration of communication, switching, networking, traffic, service, computer engineering, and management principles, and highlights continuing trends in telecommunications network technologies, architectures, planning, management, evaluation and design. Elements essential to the implementation and control of cost-effective, reliable, and responsive telecommunication networks are thoroughly discussed. Key networking implementations and experimentations are presented and evaluated. Test cases involving multimedia networking over FDDI, Ethernet, Token-Ring, TDMA, ALOHA, Wireless, internetworked packet-switched networks, and B-ISDN ATM networks are demonstrated using the IRI Planyst program. Specific topics include: network fundamentals; narrow-band and broadband ISDN services; communication and network protocols; multi-access algorithms, schemes and protocols; local area networks; internetworking; high-speed fiber-optic local area networks; high-speed metropolitan area networks; networking methods for cellular wireless networks; network management; ATM network protocols and architectures; ATM switch architectures; traffic, flow and congestion control by ATM wide area networks; and ultra high-speed communications networks. The course is designed for communications, computer, telecommunications, and system engineers; managers; system analysts; project leaders and scientists. The course fee is $1495, which includes all course materials. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:12:18 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: My Clock Needs Cleaning One of my old Western Union clocks -- a rather large one -- has gotten very cranky in recent days. It began running *very* slow which I first attributed to a change in the weather and the pendulum needing some adjustment. I regulated it a little, completely re-wound it manually and restarted it. Now it runs for irregular periods of time and then stops completely. That is, it may run for 30-45 minutes then the escapement drags a little, the fingers on the top of the pendulum cannot clear their position and it stops. I'll restart it and it may only go for two or three minutes and stop again. On the next occassion, it may run an hour or so. It looks to me like perhaps it needs some cleaning and I wonder what is best to use? This particular clock works has been traced back to about 1900 based on the serial number, so I suppose I cannot complain too much if it is time to give it a decent burial but it would be a shame if all it needs is a good oiling and cleaning. (Like your Moderator from time to time when he gets cranky and stubborn.) I have (or had) the pendulum so finely adjusted on this and the leveling done so well that the clock literally stays within about a minute per month even without a setting circuit. This clock has been in my possession and running for almost thirty years in various locations. Prior to me giving it a good home, it was on the wall in the lobby of the Chicago Temple Building downtown for probably forty years. Where it was before that I do not know. This one is in a brown metal case, and my other WU clock in a wooden case was on the wall in the lunchroom of the old Board of Education Building downtown for about thirty years before I obtained it also about thirty years ago. The one in the wooden case works fine except it is rather noisy when it rewinds itself; if necessary I will sacrifice it and swap the works with the cabinet, face and hands of the other which I like better. I sure hope I don't have to though. As a worst case scenario, I will buy a new modern set of works somewhere and try to retrofit the inside with it. Ideas and suggestions welcome. Anyone have any spare works for WU clocks they don't need (that is, extra works but no cases, etc)? PAT ------------------------------ From: erik.wust@easy.nl (Erik Wust) Subject: Cheyenne Bitware Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 16:25:33 +0100 Organization: EasyBoard Venray - +31-478-512484 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps someone will kindly translate this for me and other readers. PAT] Onlangs zag ik een demonstratie van Cheyenne Bitware, een mooi telecom programma voor computer assisted telefoon beantwoorden. Het programma was vrij meegeleverd bij een gekocht modem .... ik kan de bron verder niet achterhalen... kan iemand mij helpen aan een adres waar ik deze software kan downloaden / kopen ? Bij voorbaat dank voor reactie, vr. gr. Erik Wust e-mail: erik.wust@easy.nl fax: 0497-518349 Internet: erik.wust@easy.nl (Erik Wust) EasyBoard Venray V.34: +31 478 512484 Patersstraat 19c ISDN 64kbit data: +31 478 550003 5801 AT Venray Office fax: +31 478 511868 The Netherlands Office voice: +31 478 588454 ------------------------------ From: alexm@taz.fn.net (Alex M.) Subject: Livingston Portmaster and ISDN Date: 14 Feb 1996 18:35:14 GMT Organization: Feist Connections I am having problems getting ISDN to work with our unix servers through Livingston Portmaster terminal servers. At 64kbps everything works fine, but that is as high as it goes. When attempting to go 112kbps bonded, it doesn't work, all I get is garbage. Going directly from pc to pc over ISDN, we've been able to do the full 112kbps (128 won't work becuase of the hardware and software limitations of the PC) with no problems. But when we hook it up to the portmaster, which is supposed to be able to handle up to 115200bps, it will not work with the port speed set to 115200, it will only work when the port speed is dropped down to 57600 which is obviously much slower than 112kbps. Has anybody who has used the Livingston Portmaster with isdn come across this problem and a possible solution? Mail reply would be preferred. Alex M. alexm@feist.com Systems Administration http://www.feist.com/~alexm Feist Systems, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:18:14 -0800 From: mwengler@qualcomm.com (Michael Wengler) Subject: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool! Organization: QualComm Inc. The *only* downside is they are only available in a few west coast locations, the web page has maps. My sweetie just bought me one for Valentine's Day. Not only is it a digital watch, but it gets its time updated every half hour by the national standard, so it is ALWAYS right! Pages are received on the watch face, brief text OR phone message to call back. It is REALLY COOL! You can check 'em out on the web: http://www.messagewatch.com/ Michael J. Wengler 10555 Sorrento Valley Road A-290K7 San Diego, CA 92121-1617 mwengler@qualcomm.com (619) 658-5476 Beep me: (619) 605-3580 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, that really sounds hot! I would love to get one when they become available here. Care to tell us about the price, the life of the battery, the paging service that goes with it, etc? PAT] ------------------------------ From: rv01@gte.com (Robert Virzi) Subject: Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular Date: 14 Feb 1996 18:22:43 GMT Organization: GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA In article , Wm. Randolph U Franklin wrote: > Having read in this group about the latest telecom land mine, > caller-pays cellular, I called Nynex to see how to tell whether a > number I was calling was one of those. The first person I called > didn't understand what I was getting at. I called again, and got a > really helpful person, who checked with her training supervisor and > called me back. Unfortunately that person had never heard of this, > and suggested to try a cellular company. I did, and got nowhere. Most of the calling party pays cellular plans I have heard of work by playing an announcement to the calling party. The announcement informs the caller of the charge per minute and invites the caller to hang up if the terms are not acceptable. There are many variants on this general theme, including provision for codes to reverse the charges back to the called party for those in the know. Bob Virzi rvirzi@gte.com +1(617)466-2881 ------------------------------ From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: Re: Dialogic Drivers/Header Files Needed Date: 14 Feb 1996 10:20:59 -0800 Organization: CR Labs Sam Ismail (dastar@crl.com) wrote: > Does anyone have the very latest Dialogic driver and C interface > header files for the four-port voice processing boards? If you do, > could you please send me a copy? Or, if you have the number to their > BBS, that would be cool too. Please e-mail me the goods if you > got'em. The latest drivers, dated 1-15-96, are on their BBS. They may be on their ftp site, although sometimes it does not mirror the BBS. They are in six self-extracting files, SR42DSK1.EXE-SR42DSK6.EXE. Try the ftp at: ftp.dialogic.com If that fails, the BBS is: 201 993 0864 Les Reeves -- lreeves@crl.com lreeves@america.net -- P.O. Box 7807, Atlanta, GA 30357 Home - 404.881.8279 -- ------------------------------ From: echack@crl.com (Edmund C. Hack) Subject: Re: Texas PUC Decision on Areas 972 and 281 Date: 14 Feb 1996 11:19:50 -0800 Organization: CRL Network Services (415) 705-6060 [Login: guest] In article , Linc Madison wrote: > Charles Cremer (71231.2206@compuserve.com) wrote: >> One additional fact is worth mentioning: >> The commission requested that two additional new areas -- one for >> Dallas and one for Houston -- should be applied for immediately. >> These would be implemented as overlays for wireless service only. > Something *sensible* from a state PUC! I wonder what their > answer is to the charges of "discrimination on class of service" that > the wireless providers used to block similar plans in places like > Chicago. They apparently think that the FCC ban on such overlays is subject to exception. This is despite the fact that a "wireless only" overlay would have delayed another split or hardwire move to the overlay by two years at most according to SW Bell. The PUC also directed their staff, in somewhat uninformed fashion, to work with SW Bell on two additional items: - moving 214 and 713, or even the whole state of Texas, to 8 digit phone numbers. (This, and a wireless only overlay came up a lot at the public hearings.) - allowing sharing of 3 digit prefixes on multiple switches in different Central Offices. (It came to light at the hearings that several hundred thousand numbers are unavailable for use because they are assigned to switches in rural areas with few active lines. One switch with a 10K block of numbers has under 500 active. Please excuse any inaccuracy in terminology above - I not a telecom jargon guru.) Edmund Hack \ "But maybe he's only a little crazy - echack@crl.com \ like painters - or composers - or some of those Houston, TX \ men in Washington." - _Miracle on 34th St._, 1947 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 13:00:31 MST From: Joel M-for-muy-overworked Snyder Subject: Re: The Right to an Address? Organization: Opus One - +1 520 324 0494 In article , C. du Fijn <081278cf@student.EUR.NL> writes: > Being a lawstudent I intend to write a paper on number portability. Of course, you're in the Netherlands, which makes most of this moot. The issues are closely identical to those should your place of business burn down due to another's negligence. You can (in the US) file a civil suit for damages based on their error, but you'd have to prove them. This makes the challenge quite difficult. In any case, there are technical solutions to this (similar to "the post office forwarding your mail") but they rely on a higher granularity transaction than is normally done in such an instance. Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Phone: +1 520 324 0494 (voice) +1 520 324 0495 (FAX) jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms Opus One ------------------------------ From: ranck@joesbar.cc.vt.edu Subject: Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays Date: 14 Feb 1996 20:02:07 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia Bob Goudreau (goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com) wrote: > (917 in New York City) already works? AFAIK, nobody in the NANP has > mandatory 10-digit dialing yet; the proposal to introduce it in Uh, I'm not sure what you mean by mandatory 10-digit dialing, but this is darn close to what we have here in 540 (nee 703) for a couple of years now. Any non-local call must include area code. Even calls to the same area-code must include it. Since out split I don't know if 703 still requires it, but 540 still does. It's a darn nuisance. Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center ------------------------------ Reply-To: day_d@sanjose.vlsi.com Date: Wed, 14 Feb 96 10:12:35 PST From: day_d@sanjose.vlsi.com (Doug Day) Subject: LAN Interface Specifications I am trying to get information on LAN interface specifications. Jitter specifications for clock recovery devices ATM/SONET WANs are well defined in ITU, Bellcore and ANSI, however, the speifications for ATM LANs seem to be a bit more difficult to come by. Does anyone have any information that may help a guy trying to get up to speed quickly? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Antonio Sousa Subject: Nokia RC58/DC58 References Wanted Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:56:41 -0500 Organization: telepac Hi, Has anybody manage to use Nokia's RC58 with DC58 modem-adapter? Thanks, Antonio Sousa t00013@telepac.pt ------------------------------ From: rgwillia@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Rick Williamson) Subject: Re: Juvenile Bomb Plot Plans Came from Internet Date: Wed, 14 Feb 96 18:02:41 GMT Organization: Alcatel Network Systems In article , Tad Cook wrote: > Boys nabbed, accused of plotting bomb > BY ELLEN WULFHORST > Reuters > NEW YORK -- Three 13-year-old boys have been accused of plotting to > blow up their school after learning how to build a bomb over the > Internet, police said Friday. Perhaps everybody would feel "safer" if they had learned how to do it off the street? Rick rgwillia@rockdal.aud.alcatel.coml ------------------------------ From: lnsg1.miberl01@eds.com (Michael S. Berlant) Subject: Re: V&H Coordinate to Lat Long Tool? Date: 14 Feb 1996 00:38:03 GMT Organization: EDS Singapore In article , jorr@czn.com says... > I am trying to make an accurate map of telco POPs vs our fiber routes. > The easiest way to do this is to use the V&H Coordinates from the > LERG, convert them to Latitude and Longitude ... You might be able to short circuit your conversions by grabbing the lat-longs from NPAW. It correlates NPA-NXX pairs with lat-longs, so if you know an NXX in the POP you've got the lat-long. I don't remember where it's located; maybe the Moderator does. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sorry, I don't. Anyone? PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Southern New England Telephone Date: 14 Feb 1996 03:08:53 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: SNET like Cincinnati Bell, was never owned or > controlled by AT&T therefore the rules of divestiture never did apply to > those companies. Cincinnati Bell was the only telco with Bell in its name > that was never part of the Bell System officially. Of course like all the > other independents in the past half century or so, they were great friends > with AT&T and had many AT&T contracts including the one several years ago > which involved old-style AT&T calling cards billed to miscellaneous (no > direct telco phone number involved) accounts. They may still be doing that > for AT&T. PAT] Actually both SNET and Cincinnati Bell were *partly* owned, but not controlled, by AT&T before divestiture; this is because they were not controlled by AT&T at the time of the acquisition freeze early in the century under which AT&T agreed not to compete against independent telcos but was allowed to buy them out in areas where they competed against Bell companies. This part ownership was why these two companies were allowed to use the Bell name and trademarks, and -- between the 1956 consent decree and "Computer Inquiry II" in 1983 -- were still legally able to buy equipment from Western Electric when AT&T was not allowed to sell equipment within the U.S. except to BOCs or the Federal Government. (Western Electric was also allowed to sell parts to companies making equipment for sale to the Bell companies or under Federal contract; for example when Ford Industries started selling its Code-A-Phone answering machines to BOCs they were able to buy Western Electric handsets for them.) ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Not Taught at Harvard: Multilevel Marketing Date: 14 Feb 1996 03:16:10 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , tad@ssc.com says... > By STEPHANIE N. MEHTA > The Wall Street Journal 12/19/95 > When it comes to endorsements, there are few more sterling names to invoke > than Harvard, as in Harvard University and Harvard Business School. > But when the endorsement has no basis in fact, Harvard gets its hackles up. > Of particular concern these days is the increasing number of claims that the > business school endorses multilevel marketing, in which distributors earn > commissions on products that they or their recruits sell. "If the > registrar's office had a dollar for every call we've had over the years over > whether Harvard Business School teaches multilevel marketing or has studies > on it, we could throw a very nice Christmas party," reads one internal > business-school memo. "This claim is harder to kill than a dandelion." This UL ought to be classed with the one about FCC restrictions on religious broadcasting. A number of years ago, someone filed a petition asking the FCC to bar religious groups from obtaining licenses for non-commercial educational FM stations in the 88-92 MHz band. (At the time some feared that well-funded religious groups would gobble up all the open "NCE" channels before other educational organizations could scrape up the money to build stations.) The FCC quickly rejected it, but someone else started a rumor that the Commission was still considering banning all religious programming -- purportedly because it somehow violated "separation of church and state" since broadcast licensees are public trustees -- and the FCC has had to waste quite a bit of time and money in the last decade or so denying this rumor. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #65 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Feb 15 23:17:54 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA14000; Thu, 15 Feb 1996 23:17:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 23:17:54 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602160417.XAA14000@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #66 TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Feb 96 23:18:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 66 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NTT Break-up in Japan (Kevin Scherrer) Some Interesting News About 710 (TELECOM Digest Editor) Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (phils@relay.relay.com) CFP: Engineering Complex Computer Systems (Alberto Broggi) FTC On-line Telemarketing Sales Rule (Sherri Greenhaus) Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool! (Daniel Rosenbaum) Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX (David W. Tamkin) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:03:07 +0900 From: kevins@iac.co.jp (Kevin Scherrer) Subject: NTT Break-up in Japan Following is an article I wrote not long ago for our homepage here at the Japan Press Network. You can view this and other stories about Japan's high technology industries at http://www.iac.co.jp/~jpn ------------------ Japan's Postal Ministry Prepares to Breakup Telecom Giant NTT By Kevin Scherrer Japan Press Network The long talked about break up of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp is drawing nearer as the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications prepares to announce plans as soon as next month that will lead to splitting up Japan's telecommunications monolith, but major political roadblocks, including opposition from the Prime Minister, still exist. Five years ago the Telecommunications Council, the body charged with making recommendations to the MPT on major policy decisions, put off judgment on how the telecom giant should be reorganized until the end of fiscal 1995. With that date fast approaching, very few observers, NTT included, hold any hope that a break-up can be avoided. The most rational argument against a break-up asserts that it would seriously hamper NTT's ability to implement plans for a next generation telecommunications network, which centers on connecting each home in Japan to fiber optic cables. NTT recently announced that it would begin procuring cable in order to at least get started on this endeavor that has been in the planning stages for several years. It plans to buy 7,200 km of fiber optics to connect existing underground cables to those strung on telephone poles in the first year of procurement. NTT plans to complete the project in 2010. However, NTT's habit of stalling interconnection negotiations with new carries feeds fuel to arguments for a breakup. Last year the MPT had to intercede when the Astel Group of personal handy-phone carriers was told by NTT that negotiations over interconnection fees would take until mid-1996 despite the new company's clear intention to begin services in the Autumn of 1995. More recently, NTT's three long distance competitors have reached an impasse over charges for access to NTT's ISDN network. NTT wants to charge them 260 million yen a year for upgrading the internetwork gateway switches, but has delayed providing them with specific costs for network access. While NTT is dithering, they are providing the same types of ISDN-based services that their competitors want to provide. However, according to NTT spokesman Hideki Ohmichi, the new common carriers complaints are unfounded. While admitting that it takes time to negotiate interconnections, he said it also takes time for NTT to install the new equipment necessary for interconnections with some of the carriers. "The shortest period of time it takes to interconnect with an NCC is one month, and the longest it will take, if we have to install new equipment, is one year." "We do not think that competition will be promoted by breaking up NTT, we think that our announcement that we would open the network to all carriers for interconnection is sufficient," Ohmichi aserted. While these sorts of abuses have given rise to calls for NTT's break-up, the issues could be dealt with on an ad hoc basis by stop gap measures and MPT pressure. However, more fundamental issues, such as how the carriers set their rates and negotiate their tariffs, are the MPT's main concern at the moment. To be sure, nearly every sector of the industry is calling for further deregulation and for the MPT to cease micromanaging the way the carriers do business, but the size and influence of NTT has made this difficult to do. All carriers must apply for, and get approval from, the MPT to reduce rates, although this is set to change to some extent soon. In what has been called the "convoy system" of setting rates, by the time a company has applied to reduce its rates, all of the other have countered with one of their own just as ships in a convoy accelerate or slow down to match the speed of the leader. The net effect of this has been to discourage the kind of cut throat price competition seen in other less regulated markets. But rates are not the only issue. The Ministry announced in January that cellular phone carriers would need only to submit notification of rate reductions rather than submit applications. The deregulation will go into effect in the Spring of 1997, and the ministry expects this to increase competition in the cellular phone market. But Mr. Yoshio Utsumi, Deputy Minister for Policy Coordination at the MPT, told members of the press recently that such an arrangement was not possible for long distance services because the market is not yet fully competitive. NTT's deep pockets would allow them to continue their dominance in a price war and their control over the network could be used in anti-competitive ways, he pointed out. By contrast the cellular phone market is overly competitive by some industry insiders' accounts. With these structural problems in mind the Telecommunications Council is considering scenarios for breaking up NTT, and has reached a basic agreement that the corporation will be divided into three or four separate units, one long distance carrier and two or three local carriers. The actual split will not happen until 1999, according to Japanese press reports. In the mean time, the MPT is proposing the passage of a law that will allow it to impose specific regulations on NTT to make sure it did not engage in any anti-competitive practices. Such rules are not unprecedented, as the U.K. has had special rules on British Telecom for some time, but they are unusual for Japan. The importance of the council's final report, due at the end of February, is that the MPT hardly ever makes policy counter to what the council recommends, and Japan's Diet hardly ever makes major revisions on bills proposed by a ministry. After the report comes out, the MPT will include the proposals into a proposed bill that will then be presented to the Diet. MPT can not unilaterally break-up NTT. But this time, the simple rubber stamping of the proposed legislation is not assured. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party, in particular the current Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, is on record as being opposed to the break-up. In addition the Ministry of Finance has for a long time opposed the plan because as caretaker of the government's 60% holding in NTT, they are worried that the value of the stock will fall. So although most of the press here is saying that there will be a breakup of NTT this Spring, there is also potential for the Diet to use this issue to both reinvent itself, and put the bureaucracies in their place. -------------------------- Kevin Scherrer is Technology Journalist at the Japan Press Network kevins@iac.co.jp He hopes to have his web page up and running soon. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 08:02:11 CST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Some Interesting News About 710 At least one working number in 'area code' 710: 710-NCS-GETS ... I read thru the mailing I got from the NOF (Network Operations Forum), one of the Industry Forums sponsored by Bellcore/ATIS. GTE submitted this little tidbit to them which I'll share with you. It seems that 710 routed calls have `priority' if other circuits are busy, etc. On a `non-priority' call (like your's or mine), the various telco/carrier networks will try alternate circuit routings, but only so many. Using a 710 GETS call will allow more than the usual alter- nate routings. It appears that when one dials 1-710-NCS-GETS -- at least via many of the carriers -- one receives a new dial tone with a request to enter the desired number *and your passcode*. Of course I don't have a passcode, and neither do you, so let's not get carried away. Janet Reno is not a lady to trifle with, nor do her storm troopers take lightly to people who know too much for their own good. It should be more than apparent that those in a position and with the authority to do so will OBVIOUSLY use ANI/CID original number tracking. Even though most of you and I would do nothing more than `basic' experimentation (i.e. 0+710 and 1+710 and 10-XXX/101-XXXX+ 1/0+ 710), readers of some journals I could name on the Internet would try to hack out some passcodes. And you never know who is reading our little Digest each day, but you might assume Big Brother (or actually Big Sister, i.e. Hilarious and her friend Janet with her tanks and troops) like to Reach Out and Touch netters from time to time. So don't get any smart ideas about 710-NCS-GETS. (710-627-4387). I wonder if it works from overseas points? I know some of you have been interested in 710. Maybe we might be able to assemble something which would give some additional `public' information on 710 without compromising the security of the system. PERSONALLY, I don't like the idea of government having `priority' when compared to the citizenry. Why should the FEDERAL government have its own special area code? Bellcore and GTE only have themselves to blame however for printing the above number in their recent newsletter *which they sell to the public for a pittance*. It was a submission by GTE Federal Systems to a recent meeting of the Network Operations Forum (NOF), an industry forum sponsored by Bellcore and the ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunica- tions Industry Solutions). ATIS (located in Wash. DC; formerly ECSA, the Exchange Carriers' Standards Association) is an `umbrella' organization for the various industry standards forum and conferences. NCS = National Communications System, the headquarters are located in northern VA, probably the Pentagon. I recently received a mailing from the NOF (mailed from Bellcore in NJ), and it was a package of looseleaf pages regarding minutes and submissions of their recent meeting/conference. This regarding 710-NCS-GETS was several pages submitted by GTE as mentioned earlier. I say this only because I would hate to have Janet and Hilarious think that *I* sat here all day trying combinations looking for it myself and then be disappointed to find out anyone can get it by going to a library; sort of you know like Craig Neidorf and the 'millions of dollars in documentation' he was put on trial for 'stealing' regards the 911 system. . BTW: 10288+0-710... routes via AT&T's Operator Services system 10288+1-710... routes via AT&T with their recordings 10222+1-710... routes via MCI with their recordings 10333+1-710... routes via Sprint with their recordings The recordings are to enter a destination number and/or PIN or passcode number. AT&T operators claim that there is no such NPA. When I've dialed 710 numbers as AT&T 0+, I have gone to an AT&T card bongtone. And of course default one plus works as well. If you decide to try it from a pay station -- and that would be a good place to do it IMO, you might want to let us know how much money is demanded as payment. PAT ------------------------------ From: phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM Subject: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: 15 Feb 1996 20:12:24 GMT Organization: Express Access Online Communications, USA We have a need to find the local number to which an 800 number maps. The number is for one of our customers, and is an AT&T X.25 network; we have international folks who need to call it, but of course can't dial an 800 number from offshore. Called 800 555 1212, they were pretty useless, but the business office at the other end (we *do* know where it's located geographically) said that if we could get them the account number to which it's billed, they could look it up. That'll do, once our customer can find the number, but in the meantime, is there an easier way? 1-800-YOUR LOCAL # IS or some such? ;-) TIA, ..phsiii ------------------------------ From: Alberto Broggi Subject: CFP: Engineering Complex Computer Systems Track Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 18:30:10 +0100 Organization: Universita` di Parma Reply-To: broggi@Verdi.Eng.UniPR.IT CALL FOR PAPERS * ENGINEERING COMPLEX COMPUTER SYSTEMS * Thirtieth Annual HAWAII INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SYSTEMS SCIENCES HICSS - 30 Maui, Hawaii, January 7-10, 1997 Papers are invited for the Minitrack on ENGINEERING COMPLEX COMPUTER SYSTEMS as part of the Advanced Technology track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). 1. PURPOSES Modern computer systems and applications embody many different characteristics and properties that are currently addressed, studied, and optimized independently. Nevertheless, although it is of basic importance to focus on these aspects independently, as a whole these properties feature a complex interrelationship, and thus a higher-level view of the complete project becomes mandatory. While perhaps some of the earlier computer systems could be described, designed and implemented with a particular focus on one objective (such as fault-tolerance or timeliness), or using a single method (such as Structured Programming), it is very questionable whether such modern and future applications can be. Nowadays almost all electronic products are becoming more and more software based: complex computer systems are becoming common in many sectors, such as manufacturing, communications, defense, transportation, aerospace, hazardous environments, energy, health care, etc. These systems feature a number of different characteristics (such as distributed processing, heterogeneous computational paradigms, high speed networks, novel bus systems, or special-purpose hardware enhancements in general) and performance requirements (such as real-time behavior, fault tolerance, security, adaptability, development time and cost, long life concerns). The concurrent satisfaction of the systems requirements have a considerable impact on the hardware characteristics and vice-versa. The analysis of the complete project, as a whole, is a major point in the design of the computer system itself and plays a basic role throughout the entire system life. The ECCS Minitrack will bring together industrial, academic, and government experts from these various disciplines, to determine how the disciplines' problems and solution techniques interact within the whole system. Researchers, practitioners, tool developers and users, and technology transition experts are all welcome. 2. ADDRESSED TOPICS: Papers are solicited on all major aspects of ECCS including specifying, designing, prototyping, building, testing, operating, maintaining, and evolving of complex computer systems, including: * Software engineering, re-engineering, reverse engineering * Complex real-time architectures, tools, environments and languages * AI and intelligent systems * Database and data management * Dependable real-time systems * Virtual reality, multimedia, real-time imaging * Algorithms, optimization and analysis * Analytical techniques * Megaprogramming, visual programming * Performance estimation, prediction and optimization * Prototyping and testing techniques * Formal methods and formal specification techniques * Hardware/software co-design * Communications, networking, mobile computing * Highly heterogeneous, distributed and parallel platforms * Case studies and project reports 3. MINITRACK COORDINATORS Alberto Broggi Alexander D. Stoyenko Dip. Ingegneria dell'Informazione Real-Time Computing Laboratory, CIS Universita` di Parma New Jersey Institute of Technology I-43100 Parma, Italy Newark, New Jersey 07102 USA Fax: +39 - 521 905723 Fax: (201) 596-5777 Email: broggi@CE.UniPR.IT Email: alex@vulcan.njit.edu Papers should be submitted to: Alberto Broggi HICSS'97 ECCS Coordinator Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione Universita` di Parma, Viale delle Scienze I-43100 Parma, Italy 4. FURTHER AND UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION: Further information about the ECCS Minitrack are available at the following WWW address: http://WWW.CE.UniPR.IT/hicss/eccs * INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMITTING PAPERS: 1. Submit 6 (six) copies of the full paper, consisting of 20 - 25 pages double-spaced including title page, abstract, references and diagrams directly to the minitrack coordinator. 2. Do not submit the paper to more than one minitrack. The paper should contain original material and not be previously published or currently submitted for consideration elsewhere. 3. Each paper must have a tile page which includes the title, full name of all authors, and their complete addresses including affiliation(s), telephone number(s) and e-mail address(es). 4. The first page of the paper should include the title and a 300-word abstract. * DEADLINES: March 15, 1996: Abstracts submitted to track coordinators for guidance and indication of appropriate content. Authors unfamiliar with HICSS or those who wish additional guidance are encouraged to contact any coordinator to discuss potential papers. June 1, 1996: Full papers submitted to the appropriate track, or minitrack coordinator. August 31, 1996: Notification of accepted papers mailed to authors. October 1, 1996: Accepted manuscripts, camera-ready , sent to minitrack coordinators; one author from each paper must register by this time. November 15, 1996: All other registrations must be received. Registrations received after this deadline may not be accepted due to space limitation. * CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS: The conference Proceedings are published and distributed by IEEE Computer Society. The ENGINEERING COMPLEX COMPUTER SYSTEMS Minitrack is part of the Advanced Technology. For more information on the Advanced Technology Track contact: Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. E-mail: sprague@hawaii.edu Voice: (808) 956-7082 Fax: (808) 956-9889 * OTHER CONFERENCE TRACKS There are three other majors tracks in the conference: Software, Digital Documents, and Information Systems. The Information Systems Track has several minitracks that focus on a variety of research topics in Collaboration Technology, Decision Support and Knowledge-Based Systems, and Organizational Systems and Technology. For more information on the other tracks, please contact: Software Technology Track: Hesham El-Rewini rewini@unocss.unomaha.edu Digital Documents Track: M. Stuart Lynn msylnn@ucop.edu Information Systems Track: Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. sprague@hawaii.edu Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr. nunamaker@bpa.arizona.edu Eileen Dennis (Track Assistant) edennis@uga.cc.uga.edu The purpose of HICSS is to provide a forum for the interchange of ideas, research results, development activities, and applications among academicians and practitioners in computer-based systems sciences. The conference consists of tutorials, advanced seminars, presentations of accepted papers, open forum, tasks forces, and plenary and distinguished guest lectures. There is a high degree of interaction and discussion among the conference participants because the conference is conducted in a workshop-like setting. For more information on the conference, please contact the conference coordinator: Barbara Edelstein College of Business Administration University of Hawai'i 2404 Maile Way Honolulu, HI 96822 Voice: (808) 956-3251 Fax: (808) 956-9685 E-mail: hicss@hawaii.edu or visit the World Wide Web page: http://www.cba.hawaii.edu/hicss ------------------------------ From: grenhaus@ix.netcom.com (SG ) Subject: FTC on-line Telemarketing Sales Rule Date: 15 Feb 1996 19:25:20 GMT Organization: Netcom For those of you in the telecom industry, or those that use the telephone for sales, marketing or customer service, you may be interested in upcoming sessions on The Tele-M@rket, a WWW site dedicated to telecommunications and call center industry. The Tele-M@rket is holding on-line interactive legislative sessions this month. On February 21 at 11:00 EST and February 28 at 2:00 EST, a representative for the American Telemarketing Association and representatives from the Federal Trade Commission will be on-line to answer any questions and discuss issues concerning the Telemarketing Sales Rule and Telecom Legislation in general. Any opinion or views shared are not binding by the FTC. The sessions are free and open to all. Just enter the forum on The Tele-M@rket http://www.telemkt.com Sheri Greenhaus http://www.telemkt.com Cyber M@rketing Services The Tele-M@rket Grenhaus@ix.netcom.com Gateway to the Call Center Community ------------------------------ From: drosenba@panix.com (Daniel Rosenbaum) Subject: Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool! Date: 15 Feb 1996 14:53:28 -0500 Organization: Panix In article , Michael Wengler wrote: > The *only* downside is they are only available in a few west coast > locations, the web page has maps. > My sweetie just bought me one for Valentine's Day. > Not only is it a digital watch, but it gets its time updated every half > hour by the national standard, so it is ALWAYS right! > Pages are received on the watch face, brief text OR phone message to > call back. > It is REALLY COOL! You can check 'em out on the web: > http://www.messagewatch.com/ > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, that really sounds hot! I > would love to get one when they become available here. Care to tell > us about the price, the life of the battery, the paging service > that goes with it, etc? PAT] The service works on FM sideband, so if you're deep inside an office building or in a fringe reception area, or in the air between cities, don't count on getting your pages. Conventional pagers do much better with reception. Also, the antenna is in the watchband, considerably limiting your fashion options. Dan Rosenbaum Editor, NetGuide drosenba@panix.com et al @ infinitum [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In other words, you might occassionally miss the half-hourly time settings as well, but if the watch is any good at all it should not matter as long as sometime that day you are in a good reception area. It would be fun to deliberatly set the watch for the wrong time (I assume you can manually set it?) and then watch as the corrective action occurs. Got any prices on this? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Feb 96 13:57 CST From: dattier@wwa.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX Organization: TIPFKAG [World-Wide Access, Chicago, Illinois 60606-2804] Dave Levenson quoted Jeff Brielmaier: > Jeff Brielmaier (jeff.brielmaier@yob.com) writes: >> The 6PM newscast indicate that there will be seven-digit dialing within >> each AC and ten-digit dialing for 713<->281 dialing. They also >> indicate that because of geographic split, it is possible a third AC may >> have to be added shortly ... ... and then Dave responded so: > If they'd implement 1 + ten digits, rather than ten digits between > area codes, it would probably delay the future splits by adding > approximately 180 possible prefixes per area code. Why are they not > doing this? If I understand it correctly, requiring eleven digits between 713 and 281 would free up only _one_ prefix per area code. Ten-digit dialing will work only between 713 and 281. If you want to dial into 409 or anywhere else in the NANP, you'll need to dial eleven digits. Say you're in 281, there's a (713) 214, and there's also a (281) 214: 713-214-XXXX will get you a number in 713, 214-XXXX will get you a number in 281, while 1-214-NXX-XXXX will get you a number in Dallas. There is no ambiguity. You just can't have (713) 281 nor (281) 713 as working prefixes with ten-digit dialing, as you could with eleven-digit dialing. However, all other N1X and N0X prefixes are still available. Because people are very slow to learn to include their area codes when they give their phone numbers, it's a bad idea to have a working pre- fix that matches a nearby area code anyway (you don't know when people start saying the number if they're giving you ten or seven digits, and if they stop speaking or writing after seven digits you don't know if that's the phone number or if the person got interrupted after telling you the area code plus four digits of the number). Thus I'd say that the intention was to leave (713) 281 and (281) 713 unused in any case, and there really is no loss at all. [Metropolitan Chicago, however, has or soon will have (312) 630, (630) 773, and (773) 847 as valid prefixes, so ten-digit dialing is beyond hope here.] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #66 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 19 16:01:55 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id QAA15685; Mon, 19 Feb 1996 16:01:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 16:01:55 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602192101.QAA15685@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #67 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Feb 96 16:02:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 67 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BellSouth Launches Test of Interactive Yellow Pages (Mike King) BellSouth Chooses Nortel Next Generation Payphones (Mike King) Book Review: "The Internet Publishing Handbook" by Franks (Rob Slade) Data Transmission Over PCS-1900 (Konstantin Zsigo) Ring No Answer on 5ESS and USR Total Control MP16 (Larry Vaden) Anti-Slam Provisions of New Telecom Bill (Danny Burstein) Anyone Having Trouble Calling Japan? (John R. Levine) "Lobby Phone" ACD Restrictions? (Chris Strawser) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: BellSouth Launches Test of Interactive Yellow Pages Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 10:59:10 PST Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 12:57:17 -0500 From: BellSouth Subject: BELLSOUTH LAUNCHES TEST OF INTERACTIVE YELLOW PAGES Reply-To: info@corp.bellsouth.com BELLSOUTH LAUNCHES TEST OF INTERACTIVE YELLOW PAGES World Wide Web site is the place to go for information on metro Atlanta ATLANTA -- February 19, 1996 -- Consumers will get free on-line computer access to current Yellow Pages listings for metropolitan Atlanta and a whole lot more as BellSouth Corporation (NYSE: BLS) kicks off its first-ever test of directory services on the World Wide Web. The new BellSouth Interactive Yellow Pages makes metro Atlanta Yellow Pages business listings available over the Web, a fast-growing part of the Internet that features easily accessible text and graphics. BellSouth's Atlanta Web site also builds in uniqu e features that will make BellSouth's Interactive Yellow Pages Web site the coolest place to get up-to-date business listings and information on area attractions. In addition to on-line Yellow Pages listings, which will be updated weekly, BellSouth's Interactive Yellow Pages will feature special restaurant and lodging sections; a guide to local attractions; and general information including helpful hints for newcom ers. Users can search for businesses by name or by category. What's more, BellSouth's innovative Interactive Yellow Pages listings include special geographic locators that help customers find unfamiliar destinations by automatically measuring distances from familiar landmarks. For example, using just a few keystro kes or clicks of the mouse, customers can find restaurants within a specified distance from familiar landmarks, such as Stone Mountain Park, or from most Yellow Pages-listed businesses. "We've carefully designed our service to make it the most comprehensive of its kind and to build in features -- such as our automatic business locator -- that will make our Interactive Yellow Pages the most personally useful anywhere. We haven't just put the Yellow Pages on line. We've built an interactive guide to Atlanta that we think will become a model for interactive guides to other communities," said Bill Goldblatt, vice president of marketing for Intelliventures, the product development unit for BellSouth's Advertising and Publishing Group. BellSouth's Interactive Yellow Pages also includes text and graphic links to Web sites developed by The Interactive Studio @ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, making BellSouth's Yellow Pages Web site a gatew ay to other comprehensive sources of information about Atlanta for residents and visitors alike. The BellSouth Yellow Pages is the official telephone directory of the 1996 Olympic Games. Where available, business listings will also include electronic mail and Web site addresses. "Our comprehensive data base and in-depth focus on Atlanta make BellSouth's Interactive Yellow Pages the standard for interactive guides to cities in the Southeast," Goldblatt said. BellSouth's test, which is under way beginning today, will allow the company to gauge future demand for such services. With favorable consumer results in the BellSouth Interactive Yellow Pages test, BellSouth will create Web sites for the key markets in the nine-state Southeast region where it provides local and advanced telecommunications services and directory publishing. The BellSouth Interactive Yellow Pages Web site address is http://yellowpages.bellsouth.com . As with other Web sites, there is no charge to use BellSouth Interactive Yellow Pages. Web interface programming for the BellSouth Interactive Yellow Pages was done by Horizons Technology Inc., a San Diego, Calif.-based software engineering and systems integration firm. BellSouth is a $17.9 billion communications company, providing voice, data, video and wireless communications and directory publishing and information services to more than 25 million customers in 16 countries. ### Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: BellSouth Chooses Nortel Next Generation Payphones Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 11:37:23 PST Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 13:53:13 -0500 From: BellSouth Subject: BellSouth Chooses Nortel Next Generation Payphones Reply-To: info@corp.bellsouth.com BellSouth Chooses Nortel Next Generation Payphones for Largest US Smart Card Trial During Summer Olympics For additional information: John Goldman BellSouth (205) 977 5007 john.goldman1@bridge.bst.blf.com Laura Teder Nortel (214)684-8721 laura_tder@nt.com http://www.nortel.com ATLANTA - BellSouth and Northern Telecom (Nortel) today announced the latest advancement in the nation's largest smart card technology trial. BellSouth will deploy 200 Nortel Millennium intelligent payphones in downtown Atlanta for use during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games as part of a smart card launch sponsored by First Union Bank, BellSouth and other Atlanta Alliance members. BellSouth's participation in the First Union VISA Cash launch will enable consumers to use the stored value cards to make local and long distance telephone calls using the next generation Millennium products. Millennium's Multi Pay Multi Card intelligent terminals, which accept payment via VISA Cash, traditional coins, credit card, or calling cards, offer more payment options to BellSouth's customers. BellSouth will begin installing the Millennium payphones in June. "Our participation in the Visa Cash introduction during the Summer Olympics is a continuation of the advanced telecommunications trials we have conducted using various payment and media equipment over the past few years," said Jim Hawkins, president of BellSouth Public Communications. "We see smart card technology as a possible platform for future services, offering additional convenience, as well as enhanced choices for our consumers. For example, by using smart payphones such as the Millennium, our public telephones could someday also be used as cashless virtual ATMs." First Union will distribute one million smart cards through its banks, and Atlanta area merchants and retailers. Additionally, devices similar to that of a combined vending and ATM machine will be available at high traffic locations. The cards, issued in various denominations from $10 to $100 can be used to make telephone calls and purchase gasoline and convenience store items at some 5,000 locations in Atlanta. Resembling a credit card, the smart card uses a computer chip to "store" money. Each time a purchase is made, the amount is electronically deducted from the card. BellSouth customers who use the Millennium terminals will not have to use coins, calling cards or credit cards to make a telephone call. "We are pleased to work with BellSouth in providing Millennium terminals for this exciting next step in the evolution of smart card applications in the United States," said Bobb Swope, director of North American Sales and Marketing, Nortel. In addition to its smart card capabilities, Millennium terminals feature quick access keys that can be programmed for one touch dialing of information services, emergency assistance, public service announcements or direct access advertising. Nortel's Millennium terminals also feature visual and audible usage instructions and a choice of language options. The terminals will quickly validate, provide card authorization, and track abnormal use of cards, which are all additional features that enhance customer security. There are currently more than 90,000 Millennium pay phones throughout North America. BellSouth provides telecommunications services in the nine Southeastern states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina and Tennessee. With its headquarters in Atlanta, BellSouth serves more than 21 million local telephone lines and provides local exchange and intraLATA long distance service over one of the most modern telecommunications networks in the world. Nortel provides equipment, services and network solutions for information, entertainment and communications networks operated by telephone companies, personal and mobile telecommunications companies, cable TV companies, corporations, governments, universities and other institutions worldwide. Nortel had 1995 revenues of $US 10.7 billion and has approximately 59,000 employees worldwide. ### Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 12:23:43 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Internet Publishing Handbook" by Franks BKINPBHB.RVW 960202 "The Internet Publishing Handbook", Franks, 1995, 0-201-48317-3, U$22.95/C$32.00 %A Mike Franks franks@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu %C 1 Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867-9984 %D 1995 %G 0-201-48317-3 %I Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. %O U$22.95/C$32.00 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 bkexpress@aw.com %P 380 %T "The Internet Publishing Handbook" Franks has prepared an excellent introduction to establishing a net "presence". He does not include everything you need to get up and running, but provides the concepts and background necessary for an overall picture of Internet publishing. In addition, there are pointers to the instructions and software you need to get started. Most books today concentrate exclusively on the World Wide Web. This work covers Gopher and WAIS (Wide Area Information Service) as well as touching on other Internet tools. Ironically, the tool that gets the least space is the one with the largest reach: electronic mail. There is mention of the use of list servers, but little on their more advanced functions as mail servers or "mailbots". Along with chapters on "Internet Commerce" and "Hiring Out the Work", there is an overall commercial orientation to this book that makes it possibly of more interest to businesses (large or small) than to hobbyists or special interest groups. Nevertheless, this is definitely a worthwhile first stop for those who want to see their name in bits. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKINPBHB.RVW 960202. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. roberts@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1.fidonet.org Just about every computer on the market today runs UNIX, except the Mac (and nobody cares about it). - Bill Joy, 6/21/85 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ From: zsigo@netcom.com (Konstantin Zsigo) Subject: Data Transmission Over PCS-1900 Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 02:01:38 GMT Several experts to speak regarding data transmission over PCS-1900 frequencies --------------------------- Some people think that the new PCS-1900 frequencies in the United States will be used primarily for voice communications, positioned as a low-cost local loop replacement with the advantage of mobility. However, if you look carefully at the airlink technologies proposed for those new frequencies, and even modest estimates regarding their capacity, it is unclear that the voice market will ever be big enough to fill the new band. While the impending battle for marketshare amongst new providers will likely be good for price-conscious consumers, the low revenue-per- subscriber and high infrastructure costs would indicate that the current wireless market could not support all of these competitors. We think this is an opportunity for PCS carriers, especially those in the smaller bands (D, E and F) to create data-only networks, where service differentiation would come as a result of offering extremely high airlink rates, perhaps even to T1 speeds. Services that could be offered include high speed packet-switching for LAN access or mobile video conferencing. At this years upcoming CelluComm '96 Cellular Data Conference, several individuals will have the opportunity to voice their opinions on this subject and relay their company's initiatives. A list of them appears below. We are looking for opinions/questions to pose to this group prior to the event itself. The media will be following this event, and several interesting articles will likely hit the press just after the presentations. If you have an opinion/question/comment, please email it to us, and we'll present it (anonymously if you prefer) to the panels, the press, and may even read it aloud at the conference itself. Current list of presenters on digital cellular data and PCS-1900 Jay Kitchen, PCIA the President of the Industry Association Dave Gaetani, Sprint Spectrum pioneer pref PCS carrier, deployed in Washington DC Mark Vonarx, Omnipoint pioneer pref PCS carrier, deployed in New York Roy Gunter, Nokia expert on data over GSM networks Dennis Abremski, QUALCOMM in charge of developing data over CDMA Okan Azamuk/Nortel & Steven Howser/Omnipoint working on data over IS-661 Duane Sharman/ISOTEL member of TDMA data working group CelluComm '96 Overview CelluComm is the only conference/exhibition exclusively dedicated to data transmission over 850, 1800, and 1900MHz networks. Technologies addressed include data over upbanded GSM, CDMA, TDMA, IS-661, AMPS, CDPD, Circuit- Switched, CS/CDPD and Cellemetry. Experts gather from all over the world to share ideas, technologies, and business strategies. There are vendor workshops, IndustryTrack sessions, CorporateTrack teaching tutorials, and a full trade show floor. For information on attending or exhibiting, contact: Zsigo Wireless Data Consultants, Inc. 2875 Northwind Drive, Suite 232, East Lansing, MI 48823 517-337-3995 (phone); 517-337-5012 (fax) zsigo@netcom.com (company) Konstantin J. Zsigo, President kzsigo@ix.netcom.com (personal) ------------------------------ From: vaden@texoma.net (Larry Vaden) Subject: Ring No Answer on 5ESS and USR Total Control MP16 Date: 18 Feb 1996 22:47:39 GMT Organization: Internet Texoma, Inc. We are experiencing a rather incredible Ring No Answer situation. Dialin service is via POTS to USR Total Control MP16 (Courier-based); technically, the service is a hunt group with sequential search from the top for a free terminal in the hunt group. The terminals on the hunt group are not individually dialable at this time; overlapping DIDs have been ordered for installation 02/19. RNA's seem to cluster on sequential terminal numbers of the hunt group, but this is not always the case. All modems behave as expected when tested with a separate (single) phone line (that is, they answer every call). Further, the situation seems somewhat time variant. Does anyone know if an out-of-spec ring at SWBell's CO would cause this? Is a ring generator global to the 5ESS, on a trunk basis, on a line card basis? If one of the latter, what is the span factor? Would an out of spec ring generator declare as random within a given hunt group or would it declare as sequential; in other words, what is the domain (scope, sphere of influence) of a ring generator in a 5ESS switch? Or, if my hypothesis is way off base, what are the known causes? Thanks in advance for your help. Larry Vaden, founder and CEO Voice: 800-697-0206 Internet Texoma, Inc. Modem Pool: 903-465-9335 bringing the real Internet to rural Texomaland email: vaden@texoma.net ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: Anti-Slam Provisions of New Telecom Bill Date: 18 Feb 1996 16:27:56 -0500 Yep, while everyone's attention has been focused on the so-called "decency" provisions in the new law, there's a lot more in it. Full text is at www.bell.com. Here's one provision that is actually consumer friendly. ``SEC. 258. ILLEGAL CHANGES IN SUBSCRIBER CARRIER SELECTIONS. ``(a) Prohibition .--No telecommunications carrier shall submit or execute a change in a subscriber's selection of a provider of telephone exchange service or telephone toll service except in accordance with such verification procedures as the Commission shall prescribe. Nothing in this section shall preclude any State commission from enforcing such procedures with respect to intrastate services. ``(b) Liability for Charges.--Any telecommunications carrier that violates the verification procedures described in subsection (a) and that collects charges for telephone exchange service or telephone toll service from a subscriber shall be liable to the carrier previously selected by the subscriber in an amount equal to all charges paid by such subscriber after such violation, in accordance with such procedures as the Commission may prescribe. The remedies provided by this subsection are in addition to any other remedies available by law. ---------------- Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Anyone Having Trouble Calling Japan? Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 23:15:06 EST For the past day or two, we've been unable to call friends in Nara, Japan. Calling through Wiltel, my regular company, or Allnet (backup #1), or Sprint (backup #2), I get a cheery recording at KDD in Japan with bouncy background music assuring me that the number I've called is not in service. Tried calling via AT&T, it worked. The number is certainly good, we've been calling it for years. Any ideas? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Trumansburg NY Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be ------------------------------ From: chriss@digital.net (Chris Strawser) Subject: "Lobby Phone" ACD Restrictions? Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 05:01:15 GMT Organization: FLORIDA ONLINE, Florida's Premier Internet Provider Reply-To: chriss@digital.net I've blocked 900, 976, and numbers that start with 1. I've allowed 10xxx (for calling cards), 800, and seven digit numbers starting with 2 thru 9. Am I missing anything? Any suggestions? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If allowing 10xxx, you want to allow zero plus at that point but not one plus. What are you doing with calls to the outside zero or double zero operator? People can talk to the outside operator and convince her to do things also, you know. What about calls to 500? What about calls beginning 011 to interna- tional points? A lot of companies simply block off '9 for an outside line' on all the phones in public areas under the assumption people who work there can go to their own desks to make calls (and be held accountable for same.) Do you need outside access from your lobby phone at all? Why not just send all 'dial 9' from there to the company operator for handling? PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #67 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 19 18:28:21 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id SAA00781; Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:28:21 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:28:21 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602192328.SAA00781@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #68 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Feb 96 18:28:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 68 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Program - 1996 World Conference Mobile Communications (Tom Worthington) Indian Datacom Freed? (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion (John Cropper) AT&T Corporate History Webpage (Mark J. Cuccia) Netscape Movie Player (Kelly Breit) Macintosh Shockwave For Director is Available (Kelly Breit) I'm Looking For Help (Fredric L. Rice) Fed Up With Junk Calls? Complain to FTC On-Line (Robert Bulmash) Using ANI For Credit Card Verification (John C. Fowler) Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up? (Bill Breckinridge) Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages (Quad) Book Review: Internet Health, Fitness and Medicine Yellow Pages (R Slade) Re: LAN Interface Specifications (Tara D. Mahon) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tom Worthington Subject: Program - 1996 World Conference Mobile Communications Date: 19 Feb 1996 12:00:20 GMT INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR INFORMATION PROCESSING 1996 World Conference Mobile Communications Part of the 14th World Computer Congress (IFIP96) 2-6 September 1996 Hosted by the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, Australia Track 1: Innovative Applications in the Public Sector Track 2: Innovative Applications on the Horizon Registration: http://www.acs.org.au/ifip96/advrego.html Attention Speakers: the deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to 22 February 1996. Track 1: Mobile Technology, Tools and Applications Mobile computing is one of the big issues of computer technology, computer science and the computer industry. Therefore, the questions are: What are the challenges in developing mobile computing systems and application software for mobile computing today? What are the requirements for mobile computing hardware, infrastructure and communication services? What are the methods and techniques for presentation of and interaction with all types of information and all kinds of media on mobile computing hardware? The benefit of mobile computing devices for the user will be substantially increased if mobile computing devices become part of a greater computing infrastructure. Thus, mobile computers of the future will always be equipped with telecommunication facilities. Those systems will provide access to information servers connected to the networks and will support all types of communications between users of mobile or stationary computing devices. Therefore, all aspects of the development of mobile computing and information systems should consider: * the communications requirements; * the mobility of the users; * the portability of the equipment; * the issues of information access as well as information presentation using mobile systems; and * the issues of presentation and interaction with all types of media in mobile systems Original contributions in the area of networked mobile computing and data communications dealing with one of the following areas are invited to be presented at the conference: * architecture of information systems consisting of mobile clients and stationary servers * methods and algorithms for information access and information flow in distributed, mobile systems * networking issues and protocols for mobile data communications * exchange, synchronisation and presentation of multimedia data * interaction of humans with mobile information systems * telecooperation using mobile computing devices * integration of stationary and mobile information systems * hardware developments for mobile computing and communications * applications of networked, mobile computing systems * new applications Track 2: Trusting in Technology; Authentification; Security In order to pave the way for the future consumer and business markets in the field of mobile communications, the requirements of the different participants in this communications world need to be fulfilled. Some of the very strong presuppositions for the success of new services and products are related to the necessity of users, information providers, service providers, equipment providers and carriers to trust in the new technology. These requirements can be met by consideration of security, privacy and billing aspects from the early beginning of the design of such mobile communication systems. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * reliable communication * authentification by + cryptographic protocols + smart cards, PMCCIA cards + biometric features, eg speaker recognition * access control/conditional access * protection of privacy and anonymity * encryption/scrambling of multimedia data * billing/electronic payment * copy and downloading protection, copyright protection * trusted third parties * interoperability between different domains * new applications; case studies Conference Chairman Professor Dr J. L. Encarnacao Fraunhofer Institut fur Graphische Datenverarbeitung email: jle@igd.fhg.de Conference Co-Chair Jan M. Rabaey Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of California email: jan@eecs.berkeley.edu IFIP'96 Congress Secretariat: http://www.acs.org.au/ifip96/mobile.html Australian Convention and Travel Services GPO Box 2200, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Telephone +61 6 257 3299 Facsimile +61 6 257 3256 Posted by Tom Worthington President of the Australian Computer Society ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 15:37:38 -0800 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Indian Datacom Freed? The Indian Techonomist: bulletin Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved Indian datacom freed? by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh February 16: Today, in a "brainstorming" session to discuss the new datacom policy proposed by The Indian Techonomist, the Department of Telecommunications indicated its enthusiasm for a free datacom environment in India. As no official decision has yet been taken, I cannot make the details public for the moment. There is one exception: the Telecom Secretary (and Chairman, Telecom Commission) R K Takkar has made it quite clear that content providers in cyberspace will receive all the free-speech protections available to other media. Mr. Takkar said that existing laws for obscenity and national security were enough for the Internet, and in any case were not the concern of the DoT. Mr Takkar said that there was no need to licence on-line content providers, and indicated that Internet service providers would not be responsible for illegal content, apparently implying common carrier status for ISPs. The other parts of the proposal, relating to low entry barriers for ISPs and free competition met with a largely positive response. The full text of the proposal is now available at http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/newdcom.html Apart from Mr. Takkar and myself, present at the meeting were Telecom Commission Members P Saran and P Khan, as well as some other senior DoT staff. I would like to thank Vinton Cerf and Lawrence Landweber for the support given by the Internet Society to the proposal. The Indian Techonomist: bulletin. http://dxm.org/techonomist/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached ------------------------------ From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) Subject: NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion Date: 19 Feb 1996 20:06:01 GMT Organization: Pipeline USA From Pacific Telesys Group Web Site: FOR MORE INFORMATION: David D. Dickstein 213-975-4074 213 Area Code Running Out of Numbers Telecommunications Industry Evaluates Relief Options Los Angeles, CA -- Due to increased demand for telephone numbers, a new area code will be introduced in some or all of the Los Angeles area that now uses the 213 area code, the telecommunications industry has started to announce. The telecommunications industry, which is comprised of representatives from local and long-distance carriers, cable, cellular and paging companies, and other wireless companies, is currently developing and evaluating different options for introducing the new area code. The new area code could be in use as early as February 1998. Under California law, public participation and comment must be obtained before the industry submits the proposed area code relief plans with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and administrators at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), the organization that administers the North American Numbering Plan. Bruce Bennett, area code relief coordinator for California, said a series of meetings will be held before August 1996 to seek public comment and input on potential area code introduction options and proposals. Locations, dates and times of the public meetings will announced at a future date. Boundaries for the new area code, as well as the actual three-digit number, will be announced later this year after customers have had an opportunity to evaluate and comment on various boundary proposals in the upcoming public meetings, Bennett said. Some of the cities currently served by the 213 area code include Hollywood, Highland Park, Laurel Canyon, Huntington Park, Montebello and all of downtown Los Angeles. (JC's note: As of 1/96, NPA 213 was showing only 456 NXXs in use, with growth rates of about 20-25 NXXs per quarter. Assuming a 10-20% quarterly increase in the growth rate, 213 will exhaust in early 1999. 213 joins a list of six other planned NPA splits in California including: 310/562, 818/626, 619/760, 714/???, 415/???, 916/???. Of the remaining NPAs in California, 209, 408, 510 and 805 are all projected to exhaust by 2001, with 909 exhausting by 2003. Only 707 is projected to last well into the next decade. With all the splits planned and/or possible, California could have as many as -TWO DOZEN- NPAs by early next century ...) John Cropper Nexus Information Services psyber@usa.pipeline.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:43:03 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: AT&T Corporate History Webpage Another historical gem of a webpage is from AT&T, http://www.att.com/corporate/restructure/history.html which has some nice pictures. This URL brings you to an index of additional pages that you can click from to specific periods of time in AT&T's 100+ year history. One of the pages includes pictures of the various Bell System logos over the years including the 1970's-> era modern Bell logo, as well as AT&T's `fried brain'. It *is* always nice to know that these modern-day multinational corporations still take *some* time to preserve and remember their rich history. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 15:05:36 -0500 From: kelly.breit@netalliance.net (Kelly Breit) Subject: Netscape Movie Player Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 22:52:13 -0800 From: Kawasaki@eworld.com To: macway-for-guy@solutions.apple.com Subject: Netscape movie player Reply to: todd@tecs.com (Todd Carper) At this address I've made available a QuickTime plug-in for the Mac version of Netscape 2.0. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 15:05:49 -0500 From: kelly.breit@netalliance.net (Kelly Breit) Subject: Macintosh Shockwave For Director is Available Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 06:15:19 -0800 From: Kawasaki@eworld.com To: macway-for-guy@solutions.apple.com This is from Bill Gibson of MacroMedia. I'm pleased to announce the availability of the Macintosh Shockwave for Director plug-in. Version 1.0b1 can be downloaded from the Shockwave Home Page at: This is a plug-in file for Netscape 2.0 that permits you to view embeded Macromedia Director movies in web pages. Surf around after you have installed Shockwave and enjoy the new face of the web. ------------------------------ From: Fredric L. Rice Subject: I'm Looking For Help Date: 19 Feb 1996 12:12:34 GMT Organization: Transtream Technologies Inc. Greetings, guys and gals. I'm Fredric Rice and I've been doing heavy ISDN software engineering for the past seven years. I'm having difficulty finding someone to help me do solid telecommunications programming so I ask that you bear with me as I SPAM a minor segment of the net with something approaching a plaintive cry for help. I need someone to come work with me on ISDN and other telecommunications projects because I'm not quite bright enough to do it all on my own. Not _quite_. }:-} Since the company I'm with moved to Simi Valley, I've lost my fellow programmers due to lengthy commutes. Alas I'm left here all alone and, damn it, I have no software dinks to talk things over with and hash out difficult programming tasks. All I'm left with is three hardware grunts who consider DBase-II to be "programming." If you sparkle in telecommunications and want to give this a look-see, call me directly, I think, at (805) 520-5952. I am sure that the company is willing to relocate you or assist in relocation in some way. I'm asking for two guys or gals so we'll eventually end up a threesome here. Employment posistion for a Sr. Software Engineer Location: Simi Valley, California Company: Transtream Inc. Salary: Dependent upon experience (Shoot for, say 50K to 55K) Keywords: Data Communications, ISDN, Telecommunications Active Date: 15/Jan/96 Hire Date: Immediate Transtream Inc., a technology-leading ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM, and Internet products company located in Simi Valley, is looking for a senior software engineer to assist in all aspects of software design and development on our expanding line of high-speed digital products. If you have experience programming in C/C++, integrating it with assembly code, and can understand and implement communication protocols from CCITT specifications, we would like you to consider joining our growing team of hardware, software, and marketing professionals. ISDN experience and knowledge of Q.931 would be a plus. Asynchronous or synchronous serial data communications experience would also be a plus. Please submit your resume for immediate evaluation to: T.S.I 940 Enchanted Way #101 Simi Valley, CA. 93065 FAX: (805) 520-2492 e-mail: tstream@centcon.com We're accepting resumes through our Internet address. ------------------------------ From: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) Subject: Fed Up With Junk Calls? Complain to FTC On-Line Date: 19 Feb 1996 18:27:32 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) On-line interactive legislative sessions this month. On February 21 at 11:00 EST and February 28 at 2:00 EST, a representative for the American Telemarketing Association and representatives from the Federal Trade Commission will be on-line to answer any questions and discuss issues concerning the Telemarketing Sales Rule and Telecom Legislation in general. Any opinion or views shared are not binding by the FTC. If you want to give the telenuisance idustry a peice of you mind for disturbing your peace and quiet ... get on-line at http://www.telemkt.com Robert Bulmash Private Citizen, Inc. 1/800-CUT-JUNK ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 96 19:33:00 EST From: John C. Fowler <0003513813@mcimail.com> Subject: Using ANI For Credit Card Verification When I received a replacement credit card in the mail the other day, I discovered a new way that credit card companies are using real-time ANI on 800 numbers: to verify that you received the card! A sticker on the card asked me to call an 800 number from my home phone line to activate the card before using it. I dialed the number, and a recorded voice thanked me and said it was retrieving the phone number I was calling from. After a couple of seconds, it announced that the card was ready for use. I didn't have to dial anything other than the 800 number. This probably would not stop a determined, intelligent thief, because not all home phone numbers will show up correctly with real-time ANI (either the switch is too old, or the phone is behind a PBX, or someone is using a cellphone as their home number), so the credit card company must have another way of activating the card in those cases. But I was happy to have the extra level of security against the everyday mailbox thief, without having to go through a lot of hassle myself. John C. Fowler, 3513813@mcimail.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In those cases such as you describe, the computer will tell you to hold for a live representative who will respond with a copy of your credit application on the screen. You will be asked various questions about your mother's maiden name and/or your date of birth, social, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 9:37:13 CST From: Bill Breckinridge Subject: Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up? Dear Editor Townson and all TD'ers: My wife (bless her heart) recently switched our long distance carrier from MCI to Excel. When I dial +1 700 555-4141 (the standard LD carrier verification number?) I get a recording that says something to the effect: "Thank you for selecting Frontier as your long distance carrier." When I dial +1 700 555-0752 (the verification number provided by Excel) I get a message that thanks me for selecting Excel as my long distance carrier. (Before the switchover took effect, the 4141 number thanked me for selecting MCI, and the 0752 number resulted in a busy signal.) What's going on? Who *is* my long distance carrier? Best Regards, Bill Breckinridge Plano, TX USA breckinridge@dallas.photronics.com voice-mail/page: +1 800 306-8412 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your carrier is Frontier -- Allnet -- as brokered or resold to you by Excel. Bless her heart indeed. Tell her if she ever pulls a stunt like that again you'll cut her heart out and feed it to the dogs. Since Excel is unable to intercept 4141 and send it to their own recording, they use 0752 for that purpose. If you asked them what 4141 was, they would probably claim to know nothing of the number. I just now tried 0752 and got the AT&T recording since they are my carrier. Frontier/Allnet in turn is a reseller for AT&T in lots of places. Generally Frontier does okay in concealing their own role as a simple reseller/wholesaler. For example in their cellular resale of Ameritech Cellular, they have managed to take every single prompt or intercept message of Ameritech's and intercept it to one of their recordings instead. Star-611 calls get snatched from Ameritech and routed to a generic, bland 'You have reached Customer Service. Please hold for a representative.' You'll never hear a peep about Ameritech unless you bring it up first. I guess Excel has not figured out how to do this yet to make it appear they are selling their own thing, or maybe they don't care who knows what they sell. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 16:11:28 -0800 From: Quad Subject: Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages I'm looking for information (approximate date and city, so I can look up references at the library) about any disasters (fires or severe outages) in telcos in the United States in the past ten years (the more recent the better). Any help will be appreciated. I already know about the one in 1965 that was posted here recently, and also the one in 1988 near Chicago. Others are needed, though. Thanks in advance, Don quad@best.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was also the big fire in New York City in the middle 1970's, and the AT&T outage due to a software bug back in 1991. This latter incident is in the Telecom Archives. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 13:57:48 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: Internet Health, Fitness and Medicine Yellow Pages BKINYPHM.RVW 960130 "The Internet Health, Fitness and Medicine Yellow Pages", Naythons/Catsimatides, 1995, 0-07-882188-6, U$22.95 %A Matthew Naythons health@epicenter.com %A Anthony Catsimatides anthony@plannet.com %C 2600 Tenth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 %D 1995 %G 0-07-882188-6 %I Osborne McGraw-Hill %O U$22.95 800-227-0900 1-800-2-MCGRAW FAX: 1-717-794-2080 %O lkissing@osborne.mhs.compuserve.com %P 346 %T "The Internet Health, Fitness and Medicine Yellow Pages" A few years back, a friend working at an ISP (Internet Service Provider) company asked for a listing of health related resources on the net. While there have been medical researchers using the net almost since its inception, the best I could come up with was a list of mailing lists and newsgroups -- a couple of dozen altogether. That was the old time style of Internet usage: if you were interested in a topic you got onto the lists you could and made contact with people who knew of other lists and sites. Times change. Want to know about AIDS, allergies, cancer, diabetes, exercise, headaches, RSI (repetitive strain injury), or stress? It's all here: or, at least, the pointers are all here. (Well, *almost* all here. For personal reasons my two immediate interests were kidney stones and gall stones and neither has a listing. It is, of course, always possible that there is nothing on the net on those two topics, but it seems unlikely.) The format follows the style of the "Internet Yellow Pages" (cf. BKINTYLP.RVW). This compendium is likely to be of use to medical students and researchers who are looking for resources slightly out of their specialty. However, it is much more likely to be of use to Mom. Many families invest in a home medicine book for those "three-in-the-morning" complaints. The book doesn't have the answers, but the Internet does. And it never closes. (Do I have to stress the dangers of self diagnosis? Well, if boxes of "Kitty- Litter" still have to have labels telling people not to eat the stuff ...) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKINYPHM.RVW 960130. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for Rob_Slade@mindlink.bc.ca Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ User .fidonet.org Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 96 14:36:55 -0400 From: Tara D. Mahon Subject: Re: LAN Interface Specifications day_d@sanjose.vlsi.com (Doug Day) wrote: > I am trying to get information on LAN interface specifications. > Jitter specifications for clock recovery devices ATM/SONET WANs are > well defined in ITU, Bellcore and ANSI, however, the speifications for > ATM LANs seem to be a bit more difficult to come by. Does anyone have > any information that may help a guy trying to get up to speed quickly? Doug, According to Insight Research's report entitled "The LAN to WAN Interface: LAN Switching Hubs and the Advance of ATM Networking 1995-200": "Currently, there are no standards specifying how an ATM switch should be designed or implemented in a LAN environment. This absence of standards means ATM needs to be present at the center of a LAN switch, but it is unlikely that this will occur in the near term. Low-end LAN switches will probably continue to use frame-based switching fabrics for cost reasons. As the prices drop, however, Insight expects ATM to become a dominant switching architecture in the LAN." Here's an excerpt from Section 3.3.2.1, Standards for ATM: The ATM Forum has agreed to specifications for ATM operations over several types of media. Cable types include coaxial, UTP, multimode, and singlemode fiber. Data rates include 25 Mbps to 155 Mbps; higher gigabit-per-second speeds are planned for the future. Current speeds and the cable media they support are shown in Table III-3. Table III-3 ATM Data Rates and Cable Types Cable Distance Limitations 25 Mbps 2 pair Category 3 UTP cables up to 100 meters 44.736 Mbps DS-3 circuits no limit 51.84 Mbps 4 pair Category 3 UTP up to 100 meters 100 Mbps Multimode fiber up to 100 meters 155.52 Mbps SONET OC-3 multimode fiber up to 100 meters 155.52 Mbps SONET STS-3 over T-1 lines no limit In February, 1995 the ATM Forum voted to adopt the Desktop ATM 25 Alliance's 25.6 Mbps transmission for ATM connections. The Desktop ATM 25 Alliance is comprised of 32 vendors committed to promoting the acceptance of 25 Mbps ATM to the desktop. The alliance has a charter to build on and make modifications to the original 25 Mbps ATM specification which IBM originally presented to the ATM Forum in 1993. ATM issues must still be resolved for linking between switches. The ATM links, whether wide area or local, are switched virtual circuits rather than physical communications links, such as those provided by conventional time division multiplexing. ATM SVCs offer users the ability to define a class of service. ATM applications can specify quality of service parameters that determine the characteristic of the connections. These characteristics include allowable delays and committed information rates. At present, there is still no standard method governing how the ATM switch from one vendor should establish a connection with a switch from another vendor. Fortunately, the ATM Forum is now working on a standard that will enable switches from different vendors to interoperate. This standard, known as the private network interface (PNNI), defines a protocol that enables users to establish SVCs between any two compliant PNNI ATM devices. Most ATM switch vendors have already deployed mechanisms for handling interswitch routing and managing of SVCs. However, the vendors have implemented proprietary solutions that define connections only between their own switches. The PNNI specification, which the ATM Forum is expected to release by mid 1995, will render most of these proprietary solutions obsolete. The standards for ATM links between switches becomes a bigger problem when dealing with large enterprise networks. In this situation, a standard is needed to make sure that the local workgroup ATM switch, the campus backbone ATM switch, and the carrier's ATM WAN service switch can all be connected together. PNNI is expected to play a very important role in future ATM technology because it makes it possible for different manufacturers' switches to internetwork, even in these complex enterprise networks. Regards, Tara D. Mahon tara@insight-corp.com The Insight Research Corporation www.wcom.com/Insight/insight.html 354 Eisenhower Parkway (201) 605-1400 phone Livingston, NJ 07039-1023 USA (201) 605-1440 fax Comparative Market Research, Competitive Analysis for Telecom Industry ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #68 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Feb 19 20:32:04 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA12285; Mon, 19 Feb 1996 20:32:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 20:32:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602200132.UAA12285@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #69 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Feb 96 20:32:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 69 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Andy Berry) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Dale Robinson) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Les Reeves) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Ed Ellers) Calling an Interesting Number: 710-627-4387 (Scott Montague) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Jim Orr) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Sir Topham Hatt) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Art Kamlet) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Clarence Dold) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (STemaat) 1411 Information Problem (Tom Crofford) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:22:11 -0600 From: andyberry@tamu.edu (Andy Berry) Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got a note from Andy asking if I was familiar with the Jolly Roger Cook Book. I wrote back saying I was not familiar with it, making a play on the name. He then wrote back with an interesting story which appears below. PAT] > I know nothing about any Jolly Roger Crook Book or the numbers therein. > Tell me more. > PAT Here it is. I attached the section of the cookbook that has the phone info in it. The cook book is an anarchy type of thing with bombs and theft and stuff in it. I can send you the whole copy if you'd like. Andy B -------->Courtesy of The Black Gate BBS<-------- Recently, a telephone fanatic in the northwest made an interesting discovery. He was exploring the 804 area code (Virginia) and found out that the 840 exchange did something strange. In the vast majority of cases, in fact in all of the cases except one, he would get a recording as if the exchange didn't exist. However, if he dialed 804-840 and four rather predictable numbers, he got a ring! After one or two rings, somebody picked up. Being experienced at this kind of thing, he could tell that the call didn't "supe", that is, no charges were being incurred for calling this number. (Calls that get you to an error message, or a special operator, generally don't supervise.) A female voice, with a hint of a Southern accent said, "Operator, can I help you?" "Yes," he said, "What number have I reached?" "What number did you dial, sir?" He made up a number that was similar. "I'm sorry that is not the number you reached." Click. He was fascinated. What in the world was this? He knew he was going to call back, but before he did, he tried some more experiments. He tried the 840 exchange in several other area codes. In some, it came up as a valid exchange. In others, exactly the same thing happened -- the same last four digits, the same Southern belle. Oddly enough, he later noticed, the areas worked in seemed to travel in a beeline from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, PA. He called back from a payphone. "Operator, can I help you?" "Yes, this is the phone company. I'm testing this line and we don't seem to have an identification on your circuit. What office is this, please?" "What number are you trying to reach?" "I'm not trying to reach any number. I'm trying to identify this circuit." "I'm sorry, I can't help you." "Ma'am, if I don't get an ID on this line, I'll have to disconnect it. We show no record of it here." "Hold on a moment, sir." After about a minute, she came back. "Sir, I can have someone speak to you. Would you give me your number, please?" He had anticipated this and he had the payphone number ready. After he gave it, she said, "Mr. XXX will get right back to you." "Thanks." He hung up the phone. It rang. INSTANTLY! "Oh my God," he thought, "They weren't asking for my number -- they were confirming it!" "Hello," he said, trying to sound authoritative. "This is Mr. XXX. Did you just make an inquiry to my office concerning a phone number?" "Yes. I need an identi--" "What you need is advice. Don't ever call that number again. Forget you ever knew it." At this point our friend got so nervous he just hung up. He expected to hear the phone ring again but it didn't. Over the next few days he racked his brains trying to figure out what the number was. He knew it was something big -- that was pretty certain at this point. It was so big that the number was programmed into every central office in the country. He knew this because if he tried to dial any other number in that exchange, he'd get a local error message from his CO, as if the exchange didn't exist. It finally came to him. He had an uncle who worked in a federal agency. He had a feeling that this was government related and if it was, his uncle could probably find out what it was. He asked the next day and his uncle promised to look into the matter. The next time he saw his uncle, he noticed a big change in his manner. He was trembling. "Where did you get that number?!" he shouted. "Do you know I almost got fired for asking about it?!? They kept wanting to know where I got it." Our friend couldn't contain his excitement. "What is it?" he pleaded. "What's the number?!" "IT'S THE PRESIDENT'S BOMB SHELTER!" He never called the number after that. He knew that he could probably cause quite a bit of excitement by calling the number and saying something like, "The weather's not good in Washington. We're coming over for a visit." But our friend was smart. he knew that there were some things that were better off unsaid and undone. (A great story from the Official Phreaker's Guide) ----------------- Andy Berry andyberry@tamu.edu Fightin' Texas Aggie Class of '98 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very interesting ... but can we believe it as the truth? Some of these stories are the result of fanciful imaginations I suspect. I do remember quite a few years ago when all of northern Illinois was in area 312 -- in fact when the use of area codes was a fairly new concept -- one day I accidently dialed a wrong number and got something similar. The Conrad Hilton Hotel phone number was/is 922-4400. I accidentally dialed 920-4400. There was no reference anywhere to a 920 exchange. The woman on the other end answered saying "Kankakee Emergency Defense Network". After a few experiments, I found that 920-anything or 920-timed out with nothing always got that same place. Illinois Bell insisted to me there was no 920 prefix. There is a town south of Chicago called Kankakee, Illinois. I think there was some government facility there at one time. I've received several interesting calls and messages today regarding 710. A couple people absolutely insist it is a government 'top secret'. When asked, they cannot explain how, in that case, GTE and Bellcore would publish on it and send it out to their mailing list; a list for which no qualifications were demanded before being admitted. One fellow said I might get 25 years to life in prison, but that seems rather odd as I have never taken any vows of secrecy with the government, nor did I obtain the information from any government employee. I do recall that on mentioning 710 here a few years ago, I got a message teh next day from someone who called called a military official at the Pentagon to inquire about it only to be told in a shocked tone of voice by the Pentagon person that it was 'top secret' and demanding to know how/where they heard about it. Another phone call I got today came from someone who explained that he had worked several years for GTE until about 1991. He has some documents on it he is going to send to me and according to him, 710 is to be used by authorized persons *and that includes congress critters* in the event of a national emergency. They would be able to use it from anywhere in the country, with calls charged back to the appropriate government agency as per the pin number used. He went on to say that one of the features *deliberatly designed* into 710 was that calls were untraceable, or very difficult to trace. He concluded by asking, 'does that sound like an open invitation to cheat?' ... .... I asked him if anything he had on this was classified top secret, and if so to NOT send them to me; I am not interested in breaking any laws. He said nothing that was distributed to him was ever categorized in that way. Someone else noted that calls from Bell payphones in their town had peculiar results: 1-710-anything-but the magic number resulted in the usual AT&T bong tone and a demand for $1.50 cents even though upon deposit the call would commence and go to intercept as a non-working number, his money then being returned. But when he dialed 710-627-4387 the phone did NOT ask for money. There were a few tones which he said made him think the local central office was bouncing it around a little and the next thing he heard was the tone from the distant end and a request for his pin number. He said he then tried 710-555-1212 from the same payphone. It began with the usual 'thank you for using AT&T' message followed by the mechanical voice saying 'please deposit' but with no amount given. After a moment or two of silence, a live male operator cut in and commented, 'I do not see any charge listed for this call, what number are you trying to reach?' He said it appears the number is (or should have been) programmed into every central office in the USA to be dealt with as a special case whenever anyone dialed it. Below are some additional messages on the topic. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 13:48:56 +0930 Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 In TELECOM DIGEST v16 #66, Pat mentioned: > ...710-NCS-GETS, (710-627-4387), I wonder if it works from overseas > points.... Well, the number is answered and I got put into a queue. After two minutes I gave up waiting for an operator. Regards, Dale. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Answered and put into a queue? You mean a voice answer, telling you to hold for an operator? PAT] ------------------------------ From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves) Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 Date: 19 Feb 1996 08:03:12 -0800 Organization: CR Labs TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu) wrote: > At least one working number in 'area code' 710: 710-NCS-GETS ... > I read thru the mailing I got from the NOF (Network Operations Forum), > one of the Industry Forums sponsored by Bellcore/ATIS. GTE submitted > this little tidbit to them which I'll share with you. > It seems that 710 routed calls have `priority' if other circuits are > busy, etc. On a `non-priority' call (like your's or mine), the various > telco/carrier networks will try alternate circuit routings, but only > so many. Using a 710 GETS call will allow more than the usual alter- > nate routings. > It appears that when one dials 1-710-NCS-GETS -- at least via AT&T > lines -- one receives a new dial tone with a request to enter the > desired number *and your passcode*. Of course I don't have a passcode, > and neither do you, so let's not get carried away. Janet Reno is > not a lady to trifle with, nor do her storm troopers take lightly > to people who know too much for their own good. I don't have to worry about that alligator wrestler or her goons knocking on my door. At least not because I dialed 1+710. It goes to a local vacant code recording after the 710, with or without a 1/0 and with or without 10XXX prepended. In other words, it is not dialable from here. I haven't checked any other C.O.s in Atlanta. I tried dialing it as a 0+ sequence call using Sprint and AT&T. It did not go through using Sprint, but it did using AT&T. I don't believe it returns answer supervision (i.e., appears to answer) because I could make additional sequence calls using the # button after it answered. I am pretty sure that AT&T stops listening for the # on 0+ calls after the distant end answers. Maybe Janet will stop by after all. Does the language in the NOF mailing imply it should be working universally already, or that they are resurrecting 710? > I know some of you have been interested in 710. Maybe we might be > able to assemble something which would give some additional `public' > information on 710 without compromising the security of the system. > NCS = National Communications System, the headquarters are located in > northern VA, probably the Pentagon. In the mid-80's, I was told 710 was some sort of NPA reserved for a government system called Inets. I believe it was a working NPA as early as 1983. I found a few prefixes that went through back then, but the rest always went to an AT&T vacant code recording. Les Reeves -- lreeves@crl.com lreeves@america.net P.O. Box 7807, Atlanta, GA 30357 Home - 404.881.8279 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I first heard about 710 around ten years ago when Harry Newton mentioned it in his magazine in a very short passing note saying, 'Is anyone familiar with 710'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 Date: 19 Feb 1996 03:46:58 GMT Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire] In article , ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu says: > PERSONALLY, I don't like the idea of government having `priority' when > compared to the citizenry. Why should the FEDERAL government have its > own special area code? For the same reason that a lot of companies and some college campuses have their own NXXs -- because they're big enough to need that many numbers. Having 710 use more routings than a normal NPA (paid for by the customer, of course) makes a lot of sense because there could be situations where some Federal agencies have a crying need to stay connected to provide emergency services. (I'd feel better if this capability was shared with "the several States," as the Constitution calls those fifty "inferior" governments.) Actually, it might not be such a bad idea to move *all* Federal and state numbers (except those needed for confidential uses, such as police informants) into the 710 NPA. You could have all Federal offices in Illinois, for example, use 710 numbers in NXXs 457 through 450 (IL 7 through IL 0, get it?) and all state offices using 710-451 through 710-456. ------------------------------ From: 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca (Scott Montague) Subject: Calling an Interesting Number: 710-627-4387 Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 20:57:39 GMT Bell Canada GETS no respect... A friend gave me a number at which I can reach him. But for some reason, Bell Canada cannot connect me to his number, 710-627-4387 from within our system. While Bell knows that the area code is valid, there is no billing or routing information to work on. I called the Bell operator, and she was kind enough to do a bit of tracking for me. A call to Rate and Route gave no results, other than the confirmation that the R&R operator knew of the NPA, knew it's been around for "a long time", and has never gotten a call for a rate. She suggested I call 1-800-225-5288 (1-800-CALL-ATT) and connected me. I entered the number, and received a BONG. After entering my calling card number, I received a thank you. Then, it toned and asked me to enter the number I was calling. Perplexed, I dialed a different number. It toned again and asked me to RE-ENTER my PIN number. After doing so, it asked me to re-enter it AGAIN. And AGAIN. Then finally it gave an intercept which said it could not reach the number. Frustrating. When I spoke to the AT&T operator, she told me that this was a GOVERNMENT number that could only be billed to one specific government account number. Of course, that's why my piddly little Bell Canada calling card couldn't connect. I asked her about what the rates were to that number, as I didn't know whether or not my colleague was getting me to call a 900 type number or something. She first said that I wouldn't get charged if the number doesn't complete, and then said she couldn't find the rates anyway. We chatted for a while about the state of telephone service in Canada, and while we were chatting she looked up the rates elsewhere. These are the rates that I was quoted, in American Dollars, calling from Canada: 8am - 6pm Monday to Friday $1.63 the first minute $0.63 additional minutes 6pm - 12pm Monday to Friday AND 8am-11pm Weekends $1.47 the first minute $0.47 additional minutes 12pm - 8am Monday to Friday AND 11pm-8am Weekends $1.33 the first minute $0.33 additional minutes I'm glad those calls were never completed, as I would be paying through the nose. Over a buck and a half the first minute? That's insane! Mind you of course our government doesn't try to hide charges behind a perfectly reasonable NPA. They have 1-900 numbers which allow you to connect to Environment Canada weather forecasters for outrageous rates a minute. But at least they advertise them. So ... should I be mad at my colleague? BTW Pat, one of the latest mailings came across all garbled ... mind resending it? Scott Montague | Proud to be | Where having fun with foreign 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca | Canadian | governments is our ex-tradition [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Don't be cute. I am the only person who is allowed to be cute around here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jorr@czn.com (Jim Orr) Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: Mon, 19 Feb 96 14:40:50 GMT Organization: Electric Lightwave, Inc In article , phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM wrote: > We have a need to find the local number to which an 800 number maps. > The number is for one of our customers, and is an AT&T X.25 network; > we have international folks who need to call it, but of course can't > dial an 800 number from offshore. > Called 800 555 1212, they were pretty useless, but the business office > at the other end (we *do* know where it's located geographically) said > that if we could get them the account number to which it's billed, > they could look it up. > That'll do, once our customer can find the number, but in the meantime, is > there an easier way? 1-800-YOUR LOCAL # IS or some such? ;-) You will find that many of the 800 numbers don't have a POTS (local) number. They are dedicated services connected directly to the LD Carrier. The 800 numbers are RESPORGed by various carriers who are not obligated, and may not be allowed to point you to the POTS number. Good Luck! Jim ------------------------------ From: lr@access1.digex.net (Sir Topham Hatt) Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: 19 Feb 1996 18:59:01 GMT phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM wrote: > That'll do, once our customer can find the number, but in the meantime, is > there an easier way? 1-800-YOUR LOCAL # IS or some such? ;-) Place an outgoing call on the line to something with ANI or Caller ID. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well that is assuming the line allows outgoing calls. Many 800 in-wats lines are set up for incoming service only. It is true some of those are brought in direct by a long distance carrier, but others are translated in a central office to some local POTS number. We don't see as many of this latter type as we used to. Now, you are correct that quite a few -- perhaps most -- 800 numbers terminate on regular linesand dialing someone with caller-id should reveal the needed information. But maybe his is not that kind. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kamlet@infinet.com (Art Kamlet) Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: 19 Feb 1996 21:10:04 GMT Organization: InfiNet phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM wrote: > We have a need to find the local number to which an 800 number maps. > The number is for one of our customers, and is an AT&T X.25 network; > we have international folks who need to call it, but of course can't > dial an 800 number from offshore. More and more , it is dangerous to assume anything about the routing number, for many different reasons: - the routing number may depend on a whole host of factors, including time of day; date or day; originating area; random sampling within the 800 number account logic; depending on the response made to "press 1 for billing" etc; how busy the network is. - the phone carrier which owns the 800 number database is usually not the company that assigns the terminating line assignments. The terminating line assignments can be changed without notice at any time. As long as the 800 number database carrier and the terminating line company coordinate their changes, callers and 800# customers will not see a difference. But someone trying to bypass the 800 number will be affected. - there are certain "intelligent services" which rely on the 800 number database counting calls to particular lines, in the absence of switches being able to return signals such as busy/da to the database. Any calls made outside of the 800 number database disrupts the counts. - and -- quite important -- 800# number providers get paid per call for 800 numbers, and don't get paid for calls which bypass the 800 number. - As a result, more and more destination numbers -- as contrasted with line equipment numbers -- are undialable. (They contain numbers outside of the 0-9 # * set and the local and other switches will block attempts to dial those numbers. - finally, just think if this was not done, and you asked for the destination number of a 900 number instead of an 800 number? > Called 800 555 1212, they were pretty useless, but the business office > at the other end (we *do* know where it's located geographically) said > that if we could get them the account number to which it's billed, > they could look it up. The billing number is not necessarily the destination number. Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points here ... you mentioned the database and the other carriers not always coordinating their changes. Have you ever called an 800 number only to get back an intercept from a local telco saying 'the number you dialed xxx-xxx-xxxx is not in service'? Obviously no one bothered to tell the database people to quit pointing the 800 number at the other not-in-service number. Second, you mentioned 'what if someone found this out with 900 numbers. That is a good point, and it has happened where people found out the POTS number to which a 900 number translated. They almost caused the information provider to go bankrupt! :) Several years ago here in Chicago, a big 900 number service located a bunch of its equipment in downtown Chicago in the Opera Building which is om Wacker Drive and quite close to the MCI POP or point of presence. The actual people providing the information or the cheap thrills or whatever were located various places. The traffic got pushed by MCI out the door and over to the Opera Building where these folks had their equipment located. From there it was dialed back out to the IP. Well wouldn't you know it, some phreak got to mousing around on the 312-606 exchange and found a lot of strange stuff there. All sorts of voicemail boxes, lines which did not supervise, you name it. All of a sudden when he dialed 606-xxxx he finds himself talking to some astrologer, or maybe she did phone sex or something. A little further investigation found a bunch of IPs on 312-606-xxxx who *usually* got their calls via 900. I guess you know how it deteriorated at that point. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: 19 Feb 1996 21:58:37 GMT Organization: a2i network phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM wrote: > We have a need to find the local number to which an 800 number maps. The only one who can look that up is the RESPORG assigned to the number, that is, the carrier of that number. They (we for instance) won't reveal the number to anyone other than the subscriber. You need to treat this like a communication problem to the 800 number, and call customer service on the X.25 for assistance. If they don't wish to reveal the POTS number, you are legitimately out of luck. Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - Pope Valley & Napa CA. ------------------------------ From: stemaat@aol.com (STemaat) Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Date: 19 Feb 1996 14:55:28 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: stemaat@aol.com (STemaat) > That'll do, once our customer can find the number, but in the > meantime, is there an easier way? 1-800-YOUR LOCAL # IS or some such? How about picking up a phone connected to the 800 line and dialing the MY-ANI-IS number (which I had on file until my hard drvie crashed)? Best, Scott [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Again, we are assuming here that the line can make outgoing calls. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 07:57:19 -0800 From: Tom Crofford Organization: XETA Corporation Subject: 1411 Information Problem I have noticed a weird problem with 1411 Information here in Tulsa, OK. We're in SBC country. The problem occurs when you hang up and dial the number just given. One normal ring occurs and then immediate fast busy. If you hang up and redial the call goes through. I called SBC over a month ago and reported this problem. There has been nothing done to date. Does anyone out there have experience with a problem like this or insight into what may be occurring? I personally think it has something to do with SS7 (although I have no clue what the problem might be), because I don't think this problem existed here before we switched to it a couple of years ago. Tom Crofford | tomc@xeta.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #69 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 20 10:20:08 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id KAA27891; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 10:20:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 10:20:08 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602201520.KAA27891@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #70 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Feb 96 10:20:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 70 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: New NPA Information Available via FAX-on-Demand (Joe Hentzel) Re: Cheyenne Bitware (bidscan@aztec.co.za) Re: Ethernet and Cable-TV (James Treuhaft) Re: Ethernet and Cable-TV (Henry C. DeBey) Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined (David Woolley) Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined (Alex van Es) How Does a Merlin System Work? (Greg Montgomery) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (David Lewis) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Dale Robinson) 10XXX/101XXXX Question (Rich Padula) Re: Imponderables About Telephones (news@rsvl.unisys.com) Cincinnati Bell (Mark J. Cuccia) 1-NPA-NXX Dialing Mandatory in NJ (John Cropper) Re: Juvenile Bomb Plot Plans Came from Internet (Kevin R. Ray) Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems (John Bade) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jhentzel@red.weeg.uiowa.edu (Joe Hentzel) Subject: Re: New NPA Information Available via FAX-on-Demand Date: 18 Feb 1996 08:13:33 GMT Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Mark J Cuccia (mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu) wrote: > This particular IL gave some contact information for US West, the > Regional Bell Company serving (most) Exchanges & Central Offices in > Minnesota. One of the contact numbers included an 800 number for a Fax > service provided by US West. 800-450-6267 (toll-free too!) reaches a > voice menu of options for selecting a list of (most) new NPA's and > details as to effective dates, or individual documents of Colorado, > Washington, Oregon, Minnesota or Arizona, the states where US West has > recently added or sonn will add a `new format' NPA. If you think that is neat, try calling 800-USW-TODA. Its the toll free line for a uswest internal newsletter "USWEST TODAY". It has everything from a tree of all the uswest companies to operator procedures and lots of other good internal information. This number is nice as it is possible to run through sequentially and request all the documents that are available. An Index is document number 11, but it is far from complete (there are many unlisted documents too!). Joe ------------------------------ From: bidscan@aztec.co.za Subject: Re: Cheyenne Bitware Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 19:07:39 GMT On Wed, 14 Feb 1996 16:25:33 +0100, you wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps someone will kindly translate > this for me and other readers. PAT] Although I don't speak Dutch/Hollands, our local Afrikaans is similiar enough to make it obvious what he wants. Cheers, Frank R ------------------------- > Onlangs zag ik een demonstratie van Cheyenne Bitware, een mooi telecom > programma voor computer assisted telefoon beantwoorden. "I have seen a demonstration of Cheyenne Bitware, a very nice telecom program for computer assisted telephone answering." > Het programma vas vrij meegeleverd bij een gekocht modem .... Not quite sure word for word, but something on the lines of " The program was available for download" > ik kan de bron verder niet achterhalen... "I can no longer recall the source of the program" > kan iemand mij helpen aan een adres waar ik deze > software kan downloaden / kopen ? "Can anyone help me with an address where I can download or buy this software" > Bij voorbaat dank voor reactie, "Thanks in advance" > vr. gr. "Greetings" Erik Wust e-mail: erik.wust@easy.nl fax: 0497-518349 Internet: erik.wust@easy.nl (Erik Wust) EasyBoard Venray V.34: +31 478 512484 Patersstraat 19c ISDN 64kbit data: +31 478 550003 5801 AT Venray Office fax: +31 478 511868 The Netherlands Office voice: +31 478 588454 ------------------------------ From: cablemodem@aol.com (Cablemodem) Subject: Re: Ethernet and Cable-TV Date: 20 Feb 1996 07:07:23 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: cablemodem@aol.com (Cablemodem) Zenith Electronics has been manufacturing RF cable modems for over ten years; our current product sends full suplex, symmetrical Ethernet over the broadband at speeds of 4 Mb/s. PLease contact me for more information. James Treuhaft: Zenith Electronics: 516-431-3220 ------------------------------ From: Henry C. DeBey Subject: Re: Ethernet and Cable-TV Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 06:16:15 -0800 Organization: Netcom Lars Erlandsen wrote: > I'm looking for a "box/switch" which allow the Cable-TV Company to > distribute Ethernet over existing cables in your Cable-TV infrastructure. > The idea is to offer the subscriber various services as LAN-connection, > Internet etc. directly in the wall-jack with speeds up to 10 Mbit/s. You should investigate LanCity, @Home, DirecPC, Zenith's cable modem, Intel's CablePort to suggest a few. These all address the question of putting Ethernet and or Internet types of services on cable, microwave, or satellite TV. Best regards, Henry ------------------------------ From: david@djwhome.demon.co.uk (David Woolley) Subject: Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 23:08:21 GMT In article , Michael Wengler wrote: About watch pagers. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, that really sounds hot! I > would love to get one when they become available here. Care to tell > us about the price, the life of the battery, the paging service > that goes with it, etc? PAT] This sort of thing has been available for a couple of years in the UK, under the Swatch brand name. Swatch do rather garish watches designed for the youth market. The watch/pager costs just over GBP 100 pounds and the paging service is a contract free, caller pays, numeric service, charging GBP 0.39 to 0.49 a minute and with a typical call cost of GBP 0.20. This is the rate from Mercury. BT advertise GBP 0.25, as though it were flat rate. There are also more conventionally shaped contract free pagers, but they all seem styled for the youth market, with either garish colours or translucent cases, so you can see the electronics. I haven't seen battery life figures for the watches, but the smaller conventional ones, using mercury cells don't have a very good life, according to a trade catalogue I have in the office. I'm not aware that the UK ones lock to a radio time signal. The conventionally styled ones don't seem to. David Woolley, London, England david@djwhome.demon.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 15:03:48 GMT From: Alex van Es Subject: Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined drosenba@panix.com (Daniel Rosenbaum) wrote: > The service works on FM sideband, so if you're deep inside an office > building or in a fringe reception area, or in the air between cities, > don't count on getting your pages. Conventional pagers do much better > with reception. Also, the antenna is in the watchband, considerably > limiting your fashion options. You bet! Here in Holland we have the Seiko message watch for quite some time now, and they have been under heavy fire. The reception of the watch is not that good, and the price is quite steep. Here you pay around $5.00 for basic services, and an additional $4.00 to receive the news and weather a few times a day. It sounds great, but the watch only has something like 12 digits, and so the news is usually not more thann one or two words. The Dutch PTT is then now also selling Swatch watches with a built in pager, working on the regular Dutch pager band. You don't pay any subscription, and the reception is much, much better. Both watches are around $175.00 here in Holland. Alex@Worldaccess.NL, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands Phone:+31-55-5421184 GSM:+31-6-53398711 ------------------------------ From: gregm@cc.gatech.edu (Greg Montgomery) Subject: How Does a Merlin System Work? Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:39:56 GMT Organization: Georgia Tech Reply-To: gregm@cc.gatech.edu I work for a small company that has a AT&T Merlin system and I'm curious to know how it works. Is there an actual switch on site or is something like Centrex? The most knowledgable guy at the company said all he knows it is an "Essex" (sp?) system. Also, he said the best quote they got on a voice mail system is $20,000. Surely there's something cheaper out there? There are just two small companies hooked together, for a total of maybe 20-30 extensions. Any idea on how to get a cheaper voice mail system? One last request -- Can anyone recommend any starter books for getting info on the phone industry? I know a little about switches, costing issues (i.e. mileage, bands, software defined networks, etc.), but I need a better overall view of the industry, along with detail into various areas. Thanks, Greg Montgomery - gregm@cc.gatech.edu Home page - http://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/home/gregm Snail Mail: 330450 Ga Tech Station, Atlanta, GA 30332-1325 ------------------------------ From: dlewis@hogpa.ho.att.com Date: Tue, 20 Feb 96 09:10:22 EST Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 Organization: AT&T In article TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > Another phone call I got today came from someone who explained that he > had worked several years for GTE until about 1991. He has some > documents on it he is going to send to me and according to him, 710 is > to be used by authorized persons *and that includes congress critters* > in the event of a national emergency. They would be able to use it > from anywhere in the country, with calls charged back to the appropriate > government agency as per the pin number used. He went on to say that > one of the features *deliberatly designed* into 710 was that calls > were untraceable, or very difficult to trace. Dream on. If a call traverses the AT&T network, we cut an AMA record for it. Said AMA record includes (among other things) the ANI, Dialed Number, and any digits input by DTMF for network features. "Difficult to trace"? As difficult as a database search for calls to a given DN. David G Lewis AT&T Network & Computing Services david.g.lewis@att.com or Network Services Planning deej@taz.att.com Call Processing Systems Engineering The Future: It's a long distance from long distance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well maybe you do, and maybe you don't. I say this only because there seem to be so many irregularities in the way 710 is handled otherwise. Consider for example that any operator you asked insists there is no such thing as 710. Consider how someone dialed it from a Bell payphone a couple days ago and for anything else starting 710 was asked to put in money but with the one single number in question was asked for nothing. Consider how when he dialed 555-1212 the mechanical voice was unable to come up with a money amount for it and the operator who answered manually did show it as completeable but without any money amount given. All I was doing was quoting a former GTE employee who said there were 'many interesting things' deliberatly designed into 710 including difficulty in tracing the call back to its originator. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 14:56:29 +0930 Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710. > I got put into a queue. After two minutes I gave up waiting for > an operator..... > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Answered and put into a queue? You > mean a voice answer, telling you to hold for an operator? PAT] Yes, a voice answer asking me to hold for an operator. The payphone was making the particular musical sound of coins dropping every 20secs, (international is expensive ;-). ). Regards, Dale [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is strange. Are you sure it was an operator at the 710 number keeping you on hold? Too bad you were unable to wait for a response to see where it went from there. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Rpadula@aol.com Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 15:09:23 -0500 Subject: 10XXX/101XXXX Question I am experimenting with some algorithms to parse telephone number strings and came across this puzzlement with 10XXX and 101XXXX strings. If the NPA has a 0 in the middle digit (i.e. 404 here in Atlanta), the 10XXX code has a 1 in the 1st digit of the CIC, and the 101XXXX code has a 0 in the 3rd digit of the CIC, then the following happens: 101XX0404NXXXXXX (1 in 1st digit of CIC) 101XX0X0404NXXXXXX (0 in 3rd. digit of CIC) and the two are indistinguishable, except for number of digts (16 vs. 18) and a timeout will be required. The 0 that indicates a 0+ call in the 101XXXX case will be the 0 in the NPA of 404 in the 10XXX case. Is there a correct way to tell the difference? I guess I also need to back up a step and ask when does the 10XXX/101XXXX switchover occur, and is there a permissive dialing period for both? A friend has told me that one way to tell is to collect the first three digits. If the first three are "101", then inspect the fourth digit. If the fourth digit is 0, 5, or 6, then it will be a 101XXXX code, else it is 10XXX. I hadn't heard of this before. Any truth to it? Thanks much in advance. Rich Padula ------------------------------ From: news@rsvl.unisys.com Subject: Re: Imponderables About Telephones Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:21:50 GMT Organization: Unisys - Roseville, MN In article dmf@c-c.com (Daniel Maverick Falkoff) writes: >> 3. Why are there no windows in many telephone company buildings? (Are >> these all central offices? Are there telco buildins with many employees >> that are also windowless?) > I've been thinbking about a comical horror movie using that fact. > (some secret evil activity inside, such as canibalism). Don't forget > the evil Phone Company plot in 'The President's Analyst'. Now you've got me curious. I wonder if the walls are screened to eliminate electrical eminations and block evesdropping? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 14:28:32 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Cincinnati Bell While I haven't found any `official' Cincinnati Bell website, I ran across the following gem of a webpage: http://www.iac.net/~lanadv/belltell.html which, although *very* brief gives some history of the Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Company. It was founded as the Cincinnati and Suburban *Telegraph* Association in 1873. Some of the older Bell Logos (stating Cincinnati Bell in the outer `ring' around the `bell') are displayed on this webpage, as well as an even older logo for the (Cincinnati) "City and Suburban Telegraph Association". There are even pictures of three old telephones, the first two of which are IMO *ancient*. The pictures are of the `funnel' horn, a magneto wall phone, and the 1920's era black `candlestick' with dial. Hopefully, Cincinnati Bell will elaborate further on this webpage with even more hisorical facts and pictures whenever they start up their own website. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) Subject: 1-NPA-NXX Dialing Mandatory in NJ Date: 19 Feb 1996 20:21:34 GMT Organization: Pipeline USA Bell Atlantic has launched its PR campaign in NJ to notify all residents that effective July 1, 1996, cross-NPA seven-digit dialing will no longer be permitted. The advertisement, run the week of the 12th, is part of BA's attempt to stave off two splits in both the 201 and 908 NPAs until hearings can be held with the PUC about how to implement new NPAs that BA filed with BellCore for in December. As always, the provider is advocating overlays, with public groups favoring splits. More to come ... John Cropper, aka Psyber Nexus Information Services psyber@usa.pipeline.com ------------------------------ From: kevin@mcs.com (Kevin R. Ray) Subject: Re: Juvenile Bomb Plot Plans Came from Internet Date: 19 Feb 1996 15:14:43 -0600 Organization: MCSNet Services rgwillia@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Rick Williamson) writes: > In article , Tad Cook > wrote: >> Boys nabbed, accused of plotting bomb >> BY ELLEN WULFHORST >> Reuters >> NEW YORK -- Three 13-year-old boys have been accused of plotting to >> blow up their school after learning how to build a bomb over the >> Internet, police said Friday. > Perhaps everybody would feel "safer" if they had learned how to do it > off the street? And I suppose this makes the "Net" a bad place even more so now??? When I was 14 I learned how to build several different types of bombs (though I never *DID* anything with the knowledge, I was just curious). But then again I suppose the Library is a "bad" place too because that is where I did all my reading in my youth. I suppose the US government should step in and check out all the libraries and throw away the books which they don't approve of too. Kind of like how they don't allow us to read certain books in high school anymore (public school that is) like Huck Finn. Bad, bad, bad ... Maybe a "V" chip in computers will be the answer. Or how about holding parents responsible (God forbid!) what their kids read, do, see, hear, talk about, etc. I know my mom turned off the TV when I was younger if it was not acceptable material (like the Dukes of Hazard was not allowed). ... and in my teen years, on my good old C-64, the computer was unplugged if I was playing a game which was too violent or viewing pictures which a 14 yr old shouldn't be... But today things are different I guess. It is always SOMEONE ELSES responsibility now ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember as a child that on visits to the library 'certain books' were not where they belonged on the shelf in the stacks. Instead, in their place was a 'dummy plaque'; a small piece of masonite board with something pasted on the front of it giving the name of the book, the Dewey Decimal number and a summary of the book's contents. Then each of these concluded by saying 'Due to abuse this book *must* be requested from the librarian who will pull it for you from locked shelves. Bring this dummy with you to the librarian's desk to request examination of the book, which is non-circulating.' PAT] ------------------------------ From: johnb@melbpc.org.au (John Bade) Subject: Re: ISDN vs Cable Modems Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 08:14:24 GMT Organization: Melbourne PC User Group Inc, Australia Reply-To: johnb@melbpc.org.au Rupert Baines wrote: > In fact -- it is *MUCH* worse. > Standard IP will "choke" at an asymetry of more than 10:1, because of the > need to send an ACK frame. In other words @HOME would only deliver about > 140Kbps downstream !! (To be fair, that is with 'standard' IP, and you > can get around it either by redefining the protocol, or by spoofing; I > suspect this is why @HOME is building its own network - that they are > deviating from standard IP ??) This is belittling the cable - the cable's huge potential bandwith. > ludicrously slow so far, but that will change. And then comes ADSL - > which could crucify cable modems ;) ADSL? > (Yes, I am biassed !!) > Rupert Baines > ADSL Product Marketing OK what's the speil? ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #70 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 20 21:53:47 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA03148; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 21:53:47 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 21:53:47 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602210253.VAA03148@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #71 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Feb 96 21:54:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 71 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Tor-Einar Jarnbjo) Re: Calling an Interesting Number: 710-627-4387 (Scott Montague) Re: Imponderables About Telephones (Seymour Dupa) LEC Origination/Termination Charges (Bill Engel) Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: Southern New England Telephone (Wes Leatherock) Question About User-User IE (Justin Medlock) More Great News From Ameritech Cellular (Gordon Hlavenka) Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Matt LeComte) Re: Cheyenne Bitware (Lars Poulsen) Indian Supreme Court Upholds Telecom Privatisation (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Dial-in Hardware For Sale (Mark Lawton) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: bjote@cs.tu-berlin.de (Tor-Einar Jarnbjo) Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 Date: 21 Feb 1996 01:21:03 GMT Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au wrote: > In TELECOM DIGEST v16 #66, Pat mentioned: >> ...710-NCS-GETS, (710-627-4387), I wonder if it works from overseas >> points.... > Well, the number is answered and I got put into a queue. After two > minutes I gave up waiting for an operator. From Germany some interesting things also happen when dialing this number. Dialing any number in the 710 "area-code" except 627 4387 or 627 4388 (at least the numbers I checked) resultet in a message from German Telecom, saying that the number is not allocated, which means, that ISUP-signalling is available all the way. When dialing 627 4388, I'll either get the same German lady, or a US-originating message telling "The number you have dialled is not in use. 2EF", in the latter case with an ISUP message from my local exchange telling that the call is not end-to-end ISDN (I have an ISDN-line here at home). When dialing the "magic" number 627 4387 I get an immediate ring, and after about two seconds a "call is not end-to-end ISDN" message. How German Telecom and/or whoever is taking care of the call in US are able to route an international call in less than one second using old analouge exchanges must someone else be left to answer. After one ring, the call is answered, but the ringing continue. When the call is answered, a "destination is non-ISDN" message is delivered, which means that the remote exchange wants to tell me that I'm not calling an ISDN-line. For the exchange to be able to tell me that, the call must have been routed all the way using ISUP-signalling, but then, the "call is not end-to-end ISDN" message should never have been delivered. Well, so far, so (almost) good. After another five to eight rings a person answers the call with "May I have your card number, Sir?" I'm not very familiar with using US calling cards, but whenever I've called a calling card operator, they have always answered with their name, not just "May I...". I then asked which number I've dialed, and the man in the other end told me "You have reached an MCI long distance operator." I then said I must have dialed a wrong number and excused me. The "operator" then turned somewhat "over-friendly" and asked if he could help me in anyway, what number I've dialed and so on. I just said that I'll try to dial again, and just hung up. Well, I got an taste of this, so I tried to dial the number using the private GSM-cellular network D2 Mannesman Mobilfunk, in case they routed their calls differently from German Telecom. After one ring, the line seemed to die, but the call was not disconnected. After a while, a voice said "Please hold the line, an operator will be with you shortly.", then it rang a couple more times, the call had still not "connected", and someone answered "US government emergency telephone service, how may I help you." To be sure, I just as well hung up immediately. The I tried to call the number from the cellular network of the German Telecom, and after one ring, a voice said "Please reenter your PIN now". As the call also in this case didn't "connect" I was unable to send any DTMF-tones with my cellular, so I just waited, and after repeating the "Please reenter..." three times, a lot of noise came on the line, and "Your call can not be completed as dialed, please check the numbers and dial again 914 .. and some more". To get the last numbers, I dialed the number again, and got the message "Please hold the line, an operator will be with you shortly." followed by a connect, and "Your long-distance operator does not support this service," and then a looong number 72 70 .. something. I dialed once more, and got the "Please reenter..." loop, and the ID-code at the end of the message was "914 4T". Well, I hope someone is able to enlighten me on this, as I'm not gotten any further in understanding what this number actually is. Regards from Germany, Tor-Einar Jarnbjo, bjote@cs.tu-berlin.de ------------------------------ From: Scott Montague <4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca> Organization: Queen's University at Kingston Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 13:59:46 -0500 Subject: Re: Calling an Interesting Number: 710-627-4387 Reply-To: 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca Hi! Steve Cogorno quoted me as saying: >> 8am - 6pm Monday to Friday >> $1.63 the first minute >> $0.63 additional minutes > I don't think those rates are correct. When I call AT&T to get charges > for this number, the operator had no charges, and the computer said > that it is an invalid number. Well, the AT&T operator initially said that there is no such number, and that she didn't have any rates. I think that in most cases this is where they would give up. However, upon further talking to her, she came upon the rates (I'd imagine by looking up in manual tables, or accessing the billing account, or perhaps she "knows" of other ways). Of course, these were rates from Canada. The operator I was talking to was definately a person who has been around the phone company for a while and she knew her stuff. We chatted about Unitel (AT&T's venture into Canada's telecommunications fray), the renaming of AT&T divisions, and waxed a little nostalgia. I imagine that she was probably finishing off a long shift, and was happy to have an intelligent conversation with someone. I guess I am lucky ... as many people here will attest, when calling US operators, more often than not you will recieve a person who only knows how to type in a Calling Card number. The veteran I recieved probably accessed a little-known database and pulled up the costs while I was talking to her. It took her about two minutes to pull it up, and when she did she only had the "daytime" rates. She had to look up what "daytime" was defined as (from Canada), and had to do a separate search for the evening and weekend rates. I'm confident that her numbers are accurate. I just hope that she didn't pull up any file she "wasn't supposed to have access to". Again, I thank her kindly. She was on par, if not a tad bit better than most Bell Canada operators, and it was a joy talking to her. Scott Montague 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca ------------------------------ From: grumpy@en.com (Seymour Dupa) Subject: Re: Imponderables About Telephones Date: 20 Feb 1996 18:19:44 GMT Organization: Exchange Network Services, Inc. Why no windows? Security. Besides, the switching equipment (for which the building was built) does not need windows. Oh yes -- the people -- they were just an afterthought. ------------------------------ From: engel2@ix.netcom.com (Engel Strategies Group, Inc. ) Subject: LEC Origination/Termination Charges Date: 20 Feb 1996 16:11:22 GMT Organization: Netcom Does anyone know what the various LECs charge the LD companies to originate or terminate a call? All info is much appreciated. Thanks, Bill Engel, President Engel Strategies Group, Inc. * 11414 N. 69th Street, Ste. 103 * Scottsdale, AZ E-mail: Engel2@ix.netcom.com Phone: 602-948-9768 Fax: 602-948-4788 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 09:02:58 CST From: Mark J Cuccia Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number Sometimes this information is considered `proprietary', but the Database Services Management, Inc.(DMSI) in Piscataway NJ or the Numbering Assignment Service Center in NY in the 914 area (I don't have the actual telephone numbers handy) might be able to help. Maybe even Judith Oppenheimer might have some info on this. In some cases, an 800 (or soon 888) number translates to *different* POTS local geographic telephone numbers, depending on the area of the calling party. This frequently is used by companies such as telephone mail order `boiler rooms' or customer service bureaus for large national corporations. These `answering' bureaus might have several locations around the country, and your call is routed to the location nearest to you, or the `least busy' location at the time you are calling, or least cost routings due to discounts in rates due to the time-of-day/day-of-week that you call as well as the location you are calling from. If people from overseas need to call a North American (World Zone 1) 800 (and 888) number, but don't know the geographic/local POTS number, *sometimes* a distant country's telco and the international carrier *will* allow an international call to +1-800, but bill to the *calling* party at international rates. And then there are the recent `caller-pays' special area codes 880 and 881. They are available from some parts of Canada and the Caribbean to call `US-only' toll-free numbers, and I've read that some Australian carriers allow the use of these codes to call US (and Canadian?) 800 (and 888) numbers where the calling party agrees to pay the international charge. So, if you don't know the geographic POTS local number but have only an 800 number, you'd `replace' the 800 with 880 when calling from overseas; 888 numbers would have their 888 `replaced' with 881 when calling from overseas. BTW, when I recently called 800-555-1212, I expected the directory operator to come on the line as "800 Directory, may I help you?" Instead she came on the line "Toll-Free Directory, may I help you?" Also, I've recently seen reference to an 888 Test Number: 888-250-0500. It is supplied by *AT&T* and will go into effect on 1 March 1996, to be disconnected sometime in April. This *is* a help, but it will only let one know that 888 translations work if AT&T is the carrier. There should also be a `carrier-neutral' universal 888 test number which returns a test recording from each LEC's tandem switch and 800/888 translation database. MARK J. CUCCIA PHONE/WRITE/WIRE: HOME: (USA) Tel: CHestnut 1-2497 WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497) Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28 |fwds on no-answr to Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 14:10:00 GMT Subject: Re: Southern New England Telephone edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers) wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: SNET like Cincinnati Bell, was never owned o >> controlled by AT&T therefore the rules of divestiture never did apply to >> those companies. Cincinnati Bell was the only telco with Bell in its name >> that was never part of the Bell System officially. Of course like all the >> other independents in the past half century or so, they were great friends >> with AT&T and had many AT&T contracts including the one several years ago >> which involved old-style AT&T calling cards billed to miscellaneous (no >> direct telco phone number involved) accounts. They may still be doing that >> for AT&T. PAT] > Actually both SNET and Cincinnati Bell were *partly* owned, but not > controlled, by AT&T before divestiture; this is because they were not > controlled by AT&T at the time of the acquisition freeze early in the > century under which AT&T agreed not to compete against independent > telcos but was allowed to buy them out in areas where they competed > against Bell companies. This part ownership was why these two > companies were allowed to use the Bell name and trademarks, and -- > between the 1956 consent decree and "Computer Inquiry II" in 1983 -- > were still legally able to buy equipment from Western Electric when > AT&T was not allowed to sell equipment within the U.S. except to BOCs > or the Federal Government. (Western Electric was also allowed to sell > parts to companies making equipment for sale to the Bell companies or > under Federal contract; for example when Ford Industries started > selling its Code-A-Phone answering machines to BOCs they were able to > buy Western Electric handsets for them.) AT&T owned substantially less than 50 per cent of each of these companies ... somewhere it seems to me it was like 20 per cent of SNET, not sure about Cincinnati Bell. AT&T did not always own some of the associated companies in their entirety; at one time it was around 70 per cent of Pacific Telephone, and you could own stock in Pacific Telephone. Eventually they bought out the minority interest, but not until 10 or 15 years before divestiture, if I remember correctly. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company actually was in the message telegraph business as well as the telephone business. During the 1940s, the business I was at became the Western Union agency, and in looking through the tariffs we were furnished there were a substantial number of places, particularly in California, where telegraph service was provided by Pactel as a connecting company (and the combination of rates applied, not a through rate). If you had to figure one of those, you noticed quickly that the combination of rates was much higher. Very occasionally you'd get a telegram in that showed the origin as "Pactel [Name of town] Calif" That could occur even if the origin town was also served by Western Union, since the sender may have been unaware that it would be cheaper to send it as a single-line telegram or may have found it more convenient to send all telegrams from the Pacific Telegraph office. When I spent a month at AT&T on sort of a familiarization course (late 1950s, probably) and sometimes was given the job of calling around the various associated companies on some project, it was quite apparent that people at SNET and Cincinnati Bell were very well aware that it wasn't "headquarters" calling and that AT&T authority over them extended only to suggestions and advice. Another Bell company of which AT&T owned even less was the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, something like 2 per cent by then, I believe, and they were even more independent of AT&T. What made a Bell company was the "license agreement," which used to be a major issue in rate hearings and various other proceedings. This was the document executed by AT&T and the Bell company granting the telephone company a license to use patents and trademarks, owned by AT&T, including the Bell name, the Bell seal, and all kinds of equipment and apparatus using AT&T/Western Electric patents. I once had in my possession the original license contract, effective in 1905, as I recall, between the Pioneer Telephone and Telegraph Company and AT&T. This documents made the Pioneer company (successor to the Pioner Telephone [no telegraph] Company) a Bell company. The Pioneer Telephone Company was originally established in my hometown of Perry, Oklahoma, as the Arkansas Valley Telephone Company, and as it grew through Oklahoma it changed its name to Pioneer. The Missouri & Kansas Telephone Company, a Bell company, extended its operations into Oklahoma, and in many places the M&K and Pioneer companies were in competition for both local and long distance service. Finally they reached agreement that M&K properties in Oklahoma would be acquired by the Pioneer company, which would become a Bell company (and with substantial AT&T ownership). But the license contract itself was what made the Pioneer company a Bell company. Incidentally, this was not a case of the Bell company swallowing up the independent, as happened many places. The Pioneer company wanted to become part of AT&T and had been negotiating toward this end for several years. Apparently at first AT&T regarded this as a joke, but as time went on and the Pioneer company grew and became more and more a real competitor to the M&K, AT&T changed its mind. The Pioneer company's officers continued to run the Oklahoma operations and in 1907 constructed a headquarters building in Oklahoma City which still stands, although now only as a curious corner of the much larger complex that has resulted over the years. But most of the young Bell employees have no idea why that part of the building is called the Pioneer building and why the floors don't match with the rest. Eventually, of course, the Pioneer Telephone and Telegraph Company became the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (incorporated in Oklahoma) in 1917, when the names of all the companies in what is now Southwestern Bell territory were being changed, and a few years later all the Southwestern Bell companies were merged into the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (incorporated in Missouri). One of the original organizers of the Arkansas Valley Telephone Company eventually rose to serve several years as president and CEO of Southwestern Bell. That was before they had a "chairman" to outrank the president. (I had my hands on the license contract because many of the old records were being purged to save storage space, and they though I might be interested in sending it to the company museum being planned at Southwestern Bell headquarters in St. Louis. I did so, but unfortunately the museum never got off the ground in a serious way and much of the material -- perhaps all of it -- was either damaged or lost.) Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@hotelcal.com wes.leatherock@baremetl.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for a great bit of history today. For anyone interested, the old Illinois Bell (now Ameritech) was never fully owned by AT&T. Ma Bell owned about 98 percent of it, but around two or three percent of the stock was privately owned by people who came along with it from the days of the Chicago Telephone Company, which was IBT's predecessor until 1921 or so. Unlike some AT&T aquisitions which were, as you point out, agreed to by all concerned, the thing with the buyout of Chicago Telephone Company by AT&T was a really rough and tumble affair, i.e. Ma Bell at her finest :) with the lessons taught by Ted Vail still fresh on everyone's mind. At the same time, AT&T wanted to acquire the little outfit on the northwest side of the city (although in those days it was outside the city limits) called Central Telephone of Park Ridge/Des Plaines. AT&T was unable to get that one, and when the topic came up again in the 1960's, by then AT&T was under the earlier decree which forbade them to acquire any more telephone operating companies; the exception being that if a telco was bankrupt or otherwise immenintly in danger of shutting down its operation and no one else wanted it, then AT&T *had* to take it. (Seriously, the Court *really* stuck it to them that time around.) Mainly that ruling came after all the tiny little rural tele- phone cooperative societies which King Roosevelt II had the Rural Electrification Administration start in the 1930's had managed to get their mortgages paid after twenty years; once the debt service was out of the way, AT&T started trying to grab those until the Supreme Court put a kibosh on it ... when was that decree, about 1955? Yes, that was the same AT&T that in the 1930's used to sass and give back-talk to King Roosevelt II all the time saying how rural telephony was 'not at all practical' and far too expensive to be considered. Roosevelt hated Ma Bell and Ma Bell hated him. AT&T used to accuse MCI of 'skimming the cream' back in the late 1970's, and indeed they did; but did you ever wonder how AT&T came to know so much about the topic? (har! har!) It takes one cream-skimmer to know another ... :) ... In the 1930's, AT&T was an experienced practitioner of the art all the while Roosevelt kept kicking them around. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 15:48:24 +0000 From: justin medlock Subject: Question About User-User IE Reply-To: medlock@bnr.ca Organization: BNR Richardson Looking at Q.931, the User-User IE has a protocol discriminator of #03, "reserved for system management convergence function". What exactly is a "system management convergence function"? Would someone provide input and/or spec/rec references as to what this might be used for? Thanks, justin ------------------------------ From: cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us (gordon hlavenka) Subject: More Great News From Ameritech Cellular Organization: Vpnet - Your FREE link to the Internet (708)833-8126 Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 23:01:20 GMT I just got off the phone with Dave at Ameritech Cellular. I'd called about changing some other options on my account and as we were finishing that he says, "I notice from your records that your account doesn't have a PIN." Says I, "I wouldn't have a PIN on my phone if you paid me to take it!" And Dave says, "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but we're going to make PINs mandatory starting in May." This led to a lovely chat which touched on encryption, authentication, GSM, "soft" ESNs, and numerous other topics I won't bother to go into here. When we were all done, Dave winds up with: "So I guess I should put you down for 'No' on the PIN?" He's pretty sharp, Dave is. We'll see what happens come June ... Gordon S. Hlavenka cgordon@vpnet.chi.il.us ------------------------------ From: Matt LeComte Subject: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed Date: 20 Feb 1996 22:18:54 GMT Organization: Bates College, Lewiston, Maine I don't uderstand why when I download something the fastest it transfers is 1.5k/sec, but I'am connected at 14400. So why am I not going faster? I'm not running any other web browsers. I use Netscape 2.0 beta, and I use Windows 95 dial-up networking, then connect ppp. ------------------------------ From: lars@spectrum.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: Cheyenne Bitware Date: 20 Feb 1996 11:27:18 -0800 Organization: RNS - a subsidiary of Meret Optical Communications > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps someone will kindly translate > this for me and other readers. PAT] > Onlangs zag ik een demonstratie van Cheyenne Bitware, een mooi telecom > programma voor computer assisted telefoon beantwoorden. Het programma > was vrij meegeleverd bij een gekocht modem .... ik kan de bron verder > niet achterhalen... kan iemand mij helpen aan een adres waar ik deze > software kan downloaden / kopen ? > Internet: erik.wust@easy.nl (Erik Wust) > EasyBoard Venray V.34: +31 478 512484 > Patersstraat 19c ISDN 64kbit data: +31 478 550003 > 5801 AT Venray Office fax: +31 478 511868 > The Netherlands Office voice: +31 478 588454 It says: Recently, I saw a demonstration of CHEYENNE BITWARE, a terminal program with answering machine functions. This program came for free with a modem that someone purchased. I cannot locate a vendor for it. Can someone help me with an address where I can purchase or download this software? (No, I don't speak Nederlandse either, but it is about as similar to German as Jiddisch, and the non-German words tend to be English rather than Hebrew, so it's not too hard ...) Applying the same resourceful attitude to the problem at hand, I tried to point my WWW browser to "http://www.cheyenne.com/" where there is lots of information about Cheyenne Software, Inc. Under "Product Information / DOS/Windows Solutions", there is a description of "BitWare for Windows". The price is listed at USD 129 (suggested list). "For information, send email to ". Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@RNS.COM RNS / Meret Optical Comm:s Phone: +1-805-562-3158 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Internets designed and built while you wait ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 13:22:54 -0800 From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Indian Supreme Court Upholds Telecom Privatisation The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary, February 11, 1996 Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved February 19: In an unsurprising decision, the Indian Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to privatise telecom services and allow foreign participation (up to 49% holdings) in basic telephony. It also saw no reason to reverse the government's decision to set limits (called caps) on the number of licences awarded to a single bidder, and found no mala fide intentions in that decision. The government will now proceed with granting licences based on the bids. The public-interest suit brought by a number of left-wing and labour organisations was augmented by the support of some opposition members of Parliament late last year. Although the general charge related to the alleged evils of private (and especially foreign) participation in such a "sensitive" area as telecom, the MPs accused the government of favouring one bidder, HFCL. The Court said it was not convinced that HFCL gained from the cap of three licences - set after the bids were opened - nor that the nation lost. This was not without basis - with the caps, HFCL has only saved losing its earnest money for the regions it could not have afforded to take, despite its optimistic bids. This earnest money amounts to some $50 million - not much compared to the $8.8 billion it will have to pay for the licences it does get (albeit over 15 years). The government was naturally delighted. True, the Supreme Court had said that the matter of privatisation was policy and for Parliament to decide. But the ruling Congress party has a majority, and anyway the opposition is feeling too sheepish about the verdict to do anything. True also that the Court said its decision should not encourage the government to act against the public interest, and noted that the forthcoming Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) could override government decisions in the public interest. But the government has already accepted the need for a completely independent regulator, and has issued an ordinance to set it up, perhaps within a month (see http://dxm.org/techonomist/regu.html#TRAI). So, far from being in the least chastised, Communications Minister Sukh Ram has expressed his gratitude to the opposition MPs, as without any judgement the controversy over caps would have caused a "lurking suspicion" about his actions. As it was, the Court found that the decision on caps was made not by the Minister, but by the Tender Evaluation Committee, against whom no charges of mala fide intentions were made (although the Committee was constituted by the government). The Court ruling, though removing the main obstacle in India's telecom reforms, does not solve everything. As no one was willing to match HFCL's unusually high bids for regions it has now vacated (due to the caps), and on the other hand some bids were believed far too low, the government only decided on five licences from the first round of bidding. Four go to HFCL: Delhi, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, as well as the eastern state of Orissa which, not being part of the wealthier A and B categories, is not subject to caps. HFCL, with its foreign partners Bezeq (Israel) and Shinawatra (Thailand) will pay close to $9 billion in licence fees over the next 15 years. The fifth, Maharashtra - which has Bombay as its capital - goes to Ispat, a steel company that has tied up with the US- based Hughes, for $4.4 billion. The government is also expected to give Hughes-Ispat the southern state of Karnataka (including state capital Bangalore) for $1.8 billion, and the desert state of Rajasthan to Shyam Telelink (foreign partner PTT Guangdong, China) for $354 million. These last two bids scraped past the government's reserve prices - announced after the opening of the bids. A second round of bidding, this time with reserve prices announced in advance, took place last month, with a dismal response. Compared to 80 bids from 16 companies in the first round, the second attracted only five - five different companies for five different (and wealthy) regions - all just above the reserve price. This happened just before a Supreme Court hearing on the telecom case, so a poor response was expected. The bidders, whose foreign partners include US West, Nynex and AT&T, are likely to get their licences soon, after the bids are "evaluated" next week. This will leave eight regions without a private operator, along with the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir for which no one bid in the first round either. The government is talking about a third round of bids, perhaps with reduced reserve prices. The remaining regions are by and large small or poor, except perhaps for West Bengal (including Calcutta) and Kerala (supplier of labour to the Arabian Gulf). The Techonomist spoke to Dr N Ravi, who heads the telecom operations of Reliance Industries Ltd, the Indian partner of Nynex and the country's largest private- sector company. Dr Ravi, who has always been pessimistic about the smooth completion of the bidding process, now hopes that his company will soon be awarded the licence for the rich state of Gujarat, for which it bid in the second round. Dr. Ravi does not have high hopes for the third round - despite the fact that Reliance had once bid for all regions, and was the only bidder in many of those left - as the process has already drawn on for a long time. If the government lowers the reserve price significantly (something it is "looking into"), then it would help; in any case, the bidding will be limited to the 16 "shortlisted" companies - those who bid in the first round. Meanwhile, the Communications Minister announced last week that the government has signed letters of intent with most of the winners of the licences for cellular services nationwide - except for the four major cities, each with two competing private cellular services already in operation. For more on the first round of bidding last year, see http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/bids.html The Indian Techonomist: weekly summary. http://dxm.org/techonomist/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab@techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached ------------------------------ From: Mark Lawton Subject: Dial-in Hardware Date: 20 Feb 1996 22:34:06 GMT Organization: The Urban School of San Francisco I have an 8-port TribeLink with an unlimited site license for sale. This product allows up to 8 simultaneous users to connect (via modem) to a network. It provides a PPP connection to the network (and Internet) and also routes Appletalk. The TribeLink manages all user id and password authentication. It also tracks all users and can be used for accounting. Dial in software is included. Because a site-license is included, you can have an unlimited number of accounts set up. This product works very well and is perfect for any organization looking to provide dial-in access. The TribeLink is brand new, has never been used, and includes all of the original documentation. I am selling it because our organization has decided not to provide dial-in access to our network. Price for TribeLink =$1800 Price for Site License = $2000 Any reasonable offer will be considered. Please respond directly to: Mark Lawton mlawt@urban.pvt.k12.ca.us ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #71 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Feb 20 23:30:17 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA11290; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 23:30:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 23:30:17 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602210430.XAA11290@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #72 TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Feb 96 23:30:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 72 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson PC Phone Manager From Algo Communications and SWBT (David MacCallum) Misprogrammed Fax Machine Causes Nuisance (Michael Quinn) The Presidents Bomb Shelter? (Michael Fumich) Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (A Friend) Re: (710) NCS-GETS (Mike P. Storke) 710 From Indiana - NO GO (James E. Bellaire) Book Review: "The Ethernet Configuration Guide" by Spurgeon (Rob Slade) Legitimacy of Paging License Offer (Dave Keeny) Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX (Mike King) Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX (Carl Moore) Ameritech Pay Phone Rate Increase in Michigan (Scott E. Barnett) ADMINISTRATIVE CORRECTION: The previous issue of the Digest went out saying 'issue 71' at the top and 'issue 72' at the very bottom. Please correct to to say '71' in both cases. What you are reading now is the true issue 72. Sorry for the error. PAT ---------------------- 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 Feb 96 11:38:30 EST From: David MacCallum <71553.3203@compuserve.com> Subject: PC Phone Manager From Algo Communications and SWBT Austin, West Texas First to Receive Software Targeted to Small Businesses, PC Enthusiasts ST. LOUIS, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. today became the first former Bell-system company to offer its customers a way to integrate the telephone and the computer, with the launch of its PC Phone Manager(a) product in Austin. This is a significant development for Southwestern Bell because its marks the company's entry into the growing computer telephony integration (CTI) market. PC Phone Manager is a software program that enables users to manage their calls more efficiently by allowing them to graphically recreate their phone on a computer screen, and to perform or access almost any phone function by pointing and clicking with their mouse. It was jointly developed and produced by Southwestern Bell and Algo Communications Corp., a Dallas-based computer telephony integration software company. The product is designed for small businesses, those who work at home and PC enthusiasts -- all growing markets -- and is an example of how the company is meeting customer needs through new and innovative telecommunications products. Austin is the first market where Southwestern Bell has rolled out this new product. The company intends to launch it in other markets in the company's five-state region by mid-1996. Although there are other telephony products on the market, PC Phone Manager is unique because it integrates up to 17 of Southwestern Bell's popular call management services, such as Call Waiting, CallNotes and Caller ID, with traditional CTI features including an automatic log of incoming and outgoing calls and an address book. The product also is one of the few CTI software packages designed for users with one phone line and, at $89.95, is one of the more competitively priced products of its kind on the market. PC Phone Manager comprises a customized version of PhoneKITS(TM), Algo Communications' flagship CTI software suite. It also includes an external dialer hardware -- voted "1995 Product of the Year" by Computer Telephony magazine -- manufactured by Comdial Corp. "PC Phone Manager is perfect for small office and home office businesses that want to increase productivity, efficiency and customer service at a reasonable price," said Rick Wilson, product manager, Southwestern Bell. "This product will help them manage their client data and phone records, and track their time for billing purposes." "PC Phone Manager does for the telephone what word processors did for the typewriter," said Michael Stanford, chairman of Algo Communications. "It enables customers using computers and telephones in their businesses, to integrate these tools and use them more efficiently." PC Phone Manager is Windows based, IBM compatible, easy to install and available in both English and Spanish. It needs the following system requirements: a 486 or higher IBM compatible computer (including Pentium processors), eight mega-bites of Random Access Memory, 3-1/2 inch floppy disc drive, 10 mega-bites of available hard drive space, Windows 3.1 or higher or Windows 95 and a dedicated telephone line. For best use of PC Phone Manager, subscription to at least one call management service, such as Call Forwarding or Caller ID, is recommended. For more information about PC Phone Manager, call 1-800-773-7928 or one of the five Austin-area Southwestern Bell Stores. Also look for details in Southwestern Bell's upcoming "Busy Household Solutions" catalog, which will be distributed to all Southwestern Bell customers by mail. For a preview of PC Phone Manager, access SBC's Internet web site at http://www.sbc.com. Dallas-based Algo Communications Corp. develops Phone KITS(TM), a graphically rich computer telephone integration (CTI) software product designed for sophisticated telephony applications. It complies with both industry standards set for telephony applications -- Telephone Application Programming Interface (TAPI), and Telephony Server Application Programming Interface (TSAPI) -- and runs on Windows and Windows 95. Algo Communications also licenses TAPI system driver software to hardware manufacturers. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., a provider of innovative products and services, is a wholly owned subsidiary of SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE: SBC), one of the world's leading diversified telecommunications companies. Businesses of SBC include wireless services and equipment in the United States and interests in wireless businesses in Europe, Latin America, South Africa and Asia; business and consumer telecommunications equipment; messaging services; cable television interests in both domestic and international markets; and directory advertising and publishing. SBC Communications Inc. reported 1995 revenues of $12.7 billion. (a) NOTE: PC Phone Manager is a registered trademark. CONTACT: Emily-Jane Powell of Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 314/982-9103, or Aimee Baron of Algo Communications Corporation, 214-480-9458. (SBC) CO: Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.; Algo Communications Corporation; SBC Communications Inc. ST: Missouri, Texas IN: TLS CPR SU: Copyright 1996 ------------------------------ From: Quinn Michael Subject: Misprogrammed Fax Machine Causes Nuisance Date: Tue, 20 Feb 96 08:06:00 PST I encountered a minor phenomenom this week that represents an odd convergence of the side effects of area code splits and computer operated office equipment, and speaks to some of the debate over seven, ten, and eleven digit dialing ("toning"?) The day after we activated a new fax machine and number in my office in Arlington VA, we started receiving daily faxes from a medical lab in nearby Herndon. We do mostly DoD work in my office, so it was surprising to be reading about post mortem HIV results (negative, thank goodness), eye cultures, biopsies, etc. As it turned out, they were trying to fax the results to a lab in Pennsylvania, (412) 782-wxyz, but they ( = their computer) were apparently not dialing "1" first, and the first seven (NPA + four) digits happen to coincide with my local fax number. Their CO apparently recognized the first seven digits as a local call, ignored the last three, and suddenly I was on the delivery end, using my non-plain paper as the medium to record information in which we had no interest, to say the least. What was especially curious was their inability, and initial unwillingness, to correct the problem -- instead of being appalled that sensitive information was clearly going astray, one customer service rep actually argued with me and told me that what I described couldn't be happening. I finally spoke with someone who said she would "try" to update their computer's phone registry. Which they have yet to do, I might add. Now, Mark Cuccia or one of your other readers could probably enlighten us about the earlier days of the NANP, when the error space was much larger and area codes couldn't be confused with each other or local exchanges. Although it was pure coincidence that the overlapped numbers both happened to be fax machines, I assume that this is becoming, or will become, an increasingly common occurence. Any thoughts on the solution -- eleven digit dialing for every number in the country, for example? Eliminate computers? Or so-called customer service reps? Cheers, Mike Quinn quinnm@bah.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 96 10:27 EST From: Michael Fumich <0003311835@mcimail.com> Subject: The Presidents Bomb Shelter? Pat, Ever since the discussion of the 710 NPA came up, I have been debating whether even to bring up the story of the "840 Operator". I even con- sidered posting via anon.penet.fi, but I am sure it would have been dismissed as fantasy. The "840 Operator" as discussed here has not been available since the early 80's however, so I guess it is ok to talk about it. Whether the functions have been replaced by or expanded upon by 710 is unknown. In any case I stand by my story. This is NOT an urban legend! Back in the late 70's and early 80's MCI & Sprint would publish directories of callable prefixes available on their respective networks. I used to cross-reference these with other NPA lists I maintained. One thing that I noticed was that the prefix "840" would appear on the MCI and Sprint list but never on any other that I had. There were four cities that showed "840": 804 -> Richmond VA 304 -> Charleston WV 412 -> Pittsburgh PA 704 -> Charlotte NC Being a naturally curious sort (and figuring those weren't typo's) I asked AT&T operators for "Place Names" and they would consult with Rate & Route operators who reported the above cities. When I went to the library to consult the phone books for those cities, "840" was nowhere to be found! Calls to the above NPA's using 840 and random numbers behaved as though *the prefix itself did not exist*! Further phrea ... er ... experimenting did finally reveal that ONLY ten specific numbers would behave as required -123X- , and produce a person who answered "840 Operator". (Who was most uncooperative!) In those days I traveled extensively and had the chance to continue my investigation from the cities involved. I found that in each city 840-123X could NOT be dialed as a 7D local number, despite being listed for that city per AT&T. A "1" was required before the number as though it was "just outside" the local dialing area. Pay phone treatment was even more curious. In Charlotte I dialed 1-840-1234 from a pay phone, and was asked to deposit the *LOCAL CALL RATE*. Of course I put in the money and the call was completed to the "840 Operator". The money was returned when I hung up! No matter which NPA was dialed, the SAME "840 Operator" would answer. There was no doubt in my mind that the calls were terminating at the same place. Switchroom friends at AT&T were perplexed by this. It was just THERE, but no one knew anything about it. Then in a casual conversation with an old friend (since we were 6!), an officer in the USAF, I mentioned this little oddity. My friend virtually choked and turned red in the face, "How do you know about THAT!". He quickly changed the subject and was quite stand-offish for quite a few years after that. The Presidents Bomb Shelter? Ever hear of that "secret" FEMA facility in Virginia called Mt. Weather (reference: TIME Magazine article "Doomsday Hidaway" Issue 12-9-91). I don't know if that is where "840" terminated, but it wouldn't surprise me! I figured later that MCI and Sprint (which BTW could NOT complete the calls since they required 1+ in those respective cities) aqquired a list of "tariffed" exchanges from whatever source, and just blindly published without any checking or editing. Leave it to someone like myself with too much time on his hands to take it from there! Michael Fumich ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Feb 96 11:30:48 PST From: A Friend Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710 Pat, The 710 SAC code (it is a SAC code, not an NPA) is VERY interesting. Why it is there is at least as interesting as the fact that it exists at all. How it works is also quite interesting. Its details are also classified. Note the words that I just used. The details are not private. The details are not "trade secret" or "private Justice Department data". They are classified TOP SECRET by various federal agencies, with special compartment access attached (i.e., just having TS access is not enough). While I generally support sharing information about our national telecommunications infrastructure, be aware that, in this case, you are playing with the Espionage Act and, potentially, 25-life in a federal pen if you coax anyone to divulge classified information. Even if you are not exposed here (you probably haven't signed an Espionage Act non-disclosure agreement) you are, by soliciting this information, placing others at risk of trouble for choosing to answer your query. Just thought that I'd pass that on before you go too far with this one. Make you own decision, but realize that you are playing with matches (really big and dangerous matches ;-). Speaking based on information from a past life. A Friend. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Through the magic of anonymous email, the above arrived in my mailbox a couple days ago. I knew you would all want to read it and meditate on the advice given by Friend. I have made no contracts or promises with the government regarding secrecy. I have yet to be presented with any documents marked or endorsed as 'top secret'. So far, very little other than what one can obtain for a few dollars by placing an order with Bellcore has been printed here. Maybe the government should get after GTE for giving out this information to the public. They might also talk with Harry Newton about publishing something on it in his magazine several years ago. Furthermore I imagine that anyone who could get in trouble for discussing this with me will probably choose not to do so in the first place. If anyone *authorized to do so* contacts me and demonstrates to me that 710 is 'top secret' then like most people under the circumstances I'll stop any further discussion of it. By that I mean a letter on official letterhead with a verifiable phone number from some federal agency, or a phone call I can return a call to. No email please -- it is too easily spoofed. But frankly, I don't think such correspondence will be forthcoming. I think a few bureaucrats and military big-wigs are blowing hot air about the 'top secret' status. They wish everything they did could be top secret; that way they would not have to even give the public the courtesy of any responses at all. 25 years to life, huh ... well maybe the prison chaplain will need an assistant. Since Alcatraz has closed, do you think they will send me to Marion, Illinois? Level Six or nothing, by golly. I wonder if the ACLU will appoint an attorney to represent me. Nah ... my stuff is not pornographic enough. Thanks for writing to me, Friend. If you feel I am making mock of your warning, you are correct. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 11:37:24 PST From: Mike P. Storke Subject: Re: (710) NCS-GETS Organization: Great Basin Public Access UNIX, Reno, NV From here in Reno, I get operators for all of the "big three" (AT&T, Sprint, MCI) and a reorder from my 1+ carrier (CRC, a reseller). The AT&T operator asked me for my card number, so I gave a lame excuse about a wrong number and hung up. But the interesting thing is that this was all done with 1+ dialing, not 0+! Strange. I wonder if we're all gonna end up like Thomas Veil (Nowhere Man) if we keep this up? :) After all, the government needs it's control of the citizenry ... Mike P. Storke N7MSD Snailmail: 2308 Paradise Dr. #134 Inet: storkus@heather.greatbasin.com Reno, NV 89512-2712 ------------------------------ From: James E. Bellaire Subject: 710 From Indiana - NO GO Date: Tue, 20 Feb 96 21:15:50 EST And now the story from Marion, Indiana ... (Ameritech) Every time I dialed 1-710-627 I got the same message, regardless of 10xxx1+ or 1+ dialing (same male voice with no company mentioned). The intecept comes on just after the 627 is dialed, it does not wait for additional digits. "We're sorry but your call cannot be completed as dialed or the number is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again." At least I have permission to try again. :) James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com WebPage now available http://www.holli.com/~bellaire [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You keep trying again and after 'they' get done coming for the Communists and the Jews and the Labor Union people and the pornographers on the Internet they might decide to come for you, and instead of being in Marion, Indiana you'll be in Marion, Illinois doing 25-life. Janet, Hilarious and Uncle Sam will not be mocked! When you get there, find out for me if the prison chaplain needs an assistant. By the way, another international correspondent, this one from Sweden says that he also got a manual response from here in the USA asking 'what is your card number?'. Based on his own knowledge and experience he believes it was NOT a telco operator requesting that information but rather, someone who answered on the line itself. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 12:14:38 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Ethernet Configuration Guide" by Spurgeon BKETCNGD.RVW 960209 "The Ethernet Configuration Guide", Spurgeon, 1996, 1-57398-012-9 %A Charles Spurgeon %C P.O. Box 640218, San Jose, CA 95164-0218 %D 1996 %G 1-57398-012-9 %I Peer-to-Peer Communications, Inc. %O 800-420-2677 408-435-2677 fax: 408-435-0895 cmacintosh@peer-to-peer.com %P 178 %T "The Ethernet Configuration Guide" A local area network is a more complicated beast than a personal computer. But there is no reason for a LAN to be a deep and mysterious secret, guarded by systems integrators who charge a hundred percent markup on every piece of hardware *plus* ninety-dollars-an-hour- with-a-two-hour-callout every time they decide you need a new network interface card. With a little background and some study any reasonably intelligent person can design, build and maintain their own network; particularly the five-to-twelve station systems needed by most small businesses. There are lots of books on how to build a network. (You have to be careful: a large number of them only know one network operating system. But you can get some guidance.) The trouble comes when they start talking about wiring, which, for most systems, is still what holds the network together. (And mostly by Ethernet.) You tend to get such vital information as "twisted pair has two wires twisted around each other, coaxial cable has a wire down the middle and fibre optic cable uses light. We're not sure how. Now go call a contractor." The result is a number of networks which have been patched together without regard to the physical limitations of the cable. Almost all of them work, but not as well as they could. (The systems integrators generally read the same books you did, they just had more gall.) Enter Spurgeon. He has taken the official rules and specifications (IEEE 802.3, for those who care) and extracted the practical and pragmatic guidelines necessary for basic (and some more than basic) networks. There is a tutorial on Ethernet, details of the various 10 Mbps (Mega-bit-per-second) types of cabling media, 100 Mbps, segment configuration guidelines and calculations, hubs, cable specifications and some examples. The important early chapters are clearly written and lucid enough for the determined layman. (Later chapters become more complex, particularly in dealing with trip delay calculations. Taken slowly, though, they should be workable for anyone.) For those planning their own network, this is one essential and practical part. For those still trying to look like systems integrators, this should reduce your Mallox dependency. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKETCNGD.RVW 960209. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Rob Slade's book reviews are a regular feature in the Digest. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ User .fidonet.org Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ From: Dave Keeny Subject: Legitimacy of Paging License Offer Date: 20 Feb 1996 18:54:16 GMT Organization: Telecommunications Techniques Corporation On the radio today (2/20) I heard an ad offering information on how to obtain a paging license. The thrust of the ad was that, for a $7K outlay, you could receive $50K yearly in fees of some sort. I am always suspicious of such "can't lose" opportunities. I wonder if any of this group's readers know what these paging licenses are about, and what the hidden "gotcha!" is (pardon my cynicism). The number given was (800) 890-9898. I called out of curiosity (not a $7K surplus, believe me) but I keep getting an "all operators are busy" message. Dave [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Take care ... this has been exposed as a fraud. I don't have all the details right here, but you will lose on it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King) Subject: Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 11:07:14 PST In TELECOM Digest V16 #64 dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) asked: > If they'd implement 1 + ten digits, rather than ten digits between > area codes, it would probably delay the future splits by adding > approximately 180 possible prefixes per area code. Why are they not > doing this? I think that would only save three prefixes. Ten-digit dialing is only used between area codes for local calls. Texas is a state that uses 1+ to mean "toll," rather than "area code follows." Actually, if the prefixes are assigned such that they're not near an NPA boundary, then they can still be used. Mike King * mk@tfs.com * Oakland, CA, USA * +1 510.645.3152 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 96 12:16:13 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX May I add the comment that if a telephone number is read on the air, you may reach people in a different area code who might be interested in responding. In a related matter, some years ago I heard of a retired person who asked that radio stations be more diligent about saying where they were located; he or she heard something (not necessarily a telephone number) on the radio, and didn't hear what city it was coming from. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is always happening here on WMAQ, News Radio 670-AM. Several times per day they announce their 'Ameritech Cellular Opinion Poll Question'. Whatever the question is, 'from your Ameritech cellular phone, dial star-Y for yes and star-N for no ... from other phones dial 733-67-YES or 733-67-NO.' I have called them a couple times and suggested that since we now have several area codes within their listenership range they might like to say '312' on the front of the number. They still don't. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sebarnett@aol.com (SEBarnett) Subject: Ameritech Pay Phone Rate Increase in Michigan Date: 20 Feb 1996 14:43:59 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: sebarnett@aol.com (SEBarnett) As of today, Ameritech began converting its pay phones in Michigan to charge 35 cents per call. They claim that the rate increase is due to the increased costs of servicing the phones and due to increased vandalism. Interestingly enough, the only indication the public received of this rate increase seemed to be a little article buried on the back page of one of the Sunday {Detroit News/Free Press} sections. Scott E. Barnett Detroit, Michigan USA sebarnett@aol.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #72 ***************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Feb 21 14:42:22 1996 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA07486; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:42:22 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:42:22 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199602211942.OAA07486@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #73 TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Feb 96 14:42:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 73 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Meeting on Toll Free Access (D. Kelly Daniels) Internet Service Providers, Now Common Carrier Status (Bill Sohl) If Phones Were Outlawed ... (Van Hefner) Right From the Bellcore Database (was Re: Presidents Bomb Shelter) (M. Fox) CIUG Call For Papers (Bob Larribeau) CIUG Mail Group (Bob Larribeau) New MCI Mail Policies Announced (Gary Novosielski) Permission to Dial (was 710...) (Ehud Gavron) Employment Opportunities in Nashville, TN (Nancy Hewitt) Telephony For the Deaf? (R. Varkki George) Seeking Communications Standards Documentation (Gregory S. Youngblood) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 08:52:11 -0800 From: D. Kelly Daniels Subject: FCC Meeting on Toll Free Access Report provided to me by Judith Oppenhiemer. BTW Judith and I have tried to convince each other on the positions on replication of 888 numbers, while neither of us is willing to change, we are talking freely. (This from J. Oppenhiemer): Kelly, did you make it to today's conference call? Big item today: Only approximately 10% of the 888 numbers that have been reserved by carriers, have been assigned to users. Database Services Management Inc was expecting between 200,000 to 250,000 (888) numbers to require deployment on March 1. Yet ten days into the "early reservation" process, while the Resp Orgs have taken full advantage (96%+) of the FCC-allowed allocations (121,000 888's per week), only 13,000 of those 888 numbers have been "assigned" -- sold to subscribers -- by the Resp Orgs. This leads to some obvious questions: 1. Was there a need for 888 to begin with? 2. Where is the subscriber demand that was used to justify the early reservation "pent-up demand" process that the Resp Orgs insisted on? (We knew, based on the 800 numbers since June '95, that no "pent-up demand" existed. Now it seems the Resp Orgs have provided evidence themselves!) 3. Why are carriers reserving 888 numbers that don't have subscriber orders attached? You may want to keep your ears open for any fallout, as the FCC already received this DSMI report on 2/19, and the Resp Orgs today were concerned about the "impression" the FCC would get re carrier hoarding, etc. Judith -------------- Kelly's report-- Len says due to a survey of independent telcos that there 888 call processing will be slightly delayed by thirty to sixty days. Survey has revealed global information but and the participants can be contacted a by survey taker after "proprietary release" has been approved. John Moribeto can require the information be released to the FCC but it may not be necessary. The general consideration was while vendors can deliver upgrades for independent telcos, the timing is of concern. APCC, Gregg Halcyon, has notified the smart payphone providers as early as fall of 1995 to load software that would rate 888 calls in a free band. The notice was bolstered by the Telecommunications act requiring the FCC to develop a per call compensation plan for toll free numbers dialed by payphone users. Michael Lewis for MCI corporate policy and human relations, is distributing to the public, notices and educational material. This is similar to a campaign that they performed internally. Newspaper/magazine articles have been written for press-releases. LCI engineering is completed, most other sub-systems are supported. Customer education is going well. Sprint is also adding information to invoices, print ads and web site. AT&T continuing with brochures to general public and internal employees. AT&T original survey at the end of last year showed 1% of population knew of 888, but last week same survey showed 19% new. This is still considered very low. LDDS, Rick Witt, network testing is completed, LEC testing is done, Billing system is done. Employee and customer education is done. Michael Jordan "Basketball" is going to do general population education. United will be ready by the March 1 date. SNET Not available. Cincinnatti Bell is ready. GTE, Brad George is all ready. Pacific Bell, Judy is ready even with NORTEL patch. Ameritech, Charrel, is all on schedule. SBC, Dan Winters is all prepared and on schedule. Bell Atlantic is also on Target. NYNEX is ready. US WEST Patty Bell, is all on schedule. BELL SOUTH final SCP is being done today. Richard Bell what is status of warehousing of 800/888 and then separately toll free 800/888 for 555 NXX. Toll Free DA petition by SNET has incorporated this issue of 800/888 555 into this petition. The FCC replied that 800/888-555 has five issues, 1) Toll Free DA 2) 800-555 Replication 3) 888-555 unavailable 4) Richard Bartel's complaint of 800-555 warehousing levied against MCI and Capital Networks and 5) How to make the numbers available again, after these above issues are resolved. John Moribeto has several letters at the FCC that will either be dealt with or made public record. Next Call February 28th. ------------------------------ From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl) Subject: Internet Service Providers, Now Common Carrier Status Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:46:37 GMT Organization: BL Enterprises Section 3 of the Telecommunications Bill amends 47 USC 153 (the section on definitions) by adding, among other things, these two new sections: (48) TELECOMMUNICATIONS- The term `telecommunications' means the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received. (49) TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIER- The term "telecommunications carrier" means any provider of telecommunications services, except that such term does not include aggregators of telecommunications services (as defined in section 226). A TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIER SHALL BE TREATED AS A COMMON CARRIER under this Act only to the extent that it is engaged in providing telecommunications services, except that the Commission shall determine whether the provision of fixed and mobile satellite service shall be treated as common carriage. (emphasis added to section 49, second sentence). st558@Students.Law.Uh.Edu (Ray Waters) wrote: > Thus, insofar as an ISP provides pure Internet access (meaning > information in the form of bits of data is passed to and from the user > without any kind of filtering or alteration), the company may be > deemed as a common carrier and fall under the regulatory power of the > FCC. Actually, I think it goes further than that. If the ISP is deemed as a common carrier for those services described in section 48, then not only does the FCC get involved (if the FCC so chooses), but the ISP would not be held accountable as a common carrier for any content related questions (e.g. indecent materials) or issues. This could also extend to provisioning of a WEB site if the WEB site provider makes no content decisions and simply sells the space to those that provide and upload their own WEB page material. Clearly, with the telco's new ability to provide content, there is a distinct blurring of what was once purely defined as common carrier (eg, regulated services offered by telcos) and the future which, thanks to the Telecom bill, now frees those telcos to be content providers, ISPs, etc. My guess is that the telcos want to offer Internet Access without having to worry about content, and this appears to do that for them. Of course, if it applies to telcos as ISPs, it applies to any ISP. Now, assuming the ISP aspect of service to be common carrier, it becomes all the more important for ISPs to not engage in self policing the net by censoring newsgroups, etc. If I were an ISP, I'd offer service and WEB sites without regard to content and leave the net censorship issues to those that are bent on pursuing them against the actual providers (the folks that make the material available). Note also, I do not think that establishing an expiration date for newsgroups would be any evidence of content censorship or control, as without such a commonly established practice, the news server for any ISP would become totally unmanageble. Remember ... libraries and book stores make decisions as to what they carry and for how long without being held accountable for content within individual books and periodicals. So, maybe the Washington crowd wasn't as far off the mark as many had thought. Let's see how this plays out. Maybe some of the Sysops can sleep better now. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) billsohl@planet.net Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor Budd Lake, New Jersey ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 05:23:39 -0800 From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS) Subject: If Phones Were Outlawed ... Guidelines likely on using portable phones in hospitals TOKYO, Feb. 20 (Kyodo) -- Alarmed by trouble caused to medical equipment by portable phones, the health and postal ministries have moved to set guidelines for the use of mobile phones in hospitals, ministry officials said Tuesday. The officials said the move was triggered by a recent series of problems caused to auxiliary medical equipment such as pacemakers and artificial respirators by radio waves released from portable phones at hospitals. In one case, a pump used on a medical device came to a halt suddenly in response to radio-magnetic waves released from a portable phone in a hospital in Okayama, western Japan, last April. A similar case was reported at a hospital in Sweden in 1994. The officials said expert groups formed by the Health and Welfare Ministry and the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry have found that radio-magnetic waves released by mobile phones could cause trouble for electronic equipment. The proposed guidelines will impose a total ban on the use of mobile phones, such as the personal handy-phone system (PHS), inside hospital rooms where key equipment such as artificial respirators are in operation, the officials said. They said restrictions will also be imposed on the establishment of radio relay stations for PHS near hospital rooms where vital apparatuses are installed. The officials said provisional guidelines will be laid down by the end of March before a final version is completed in March next year. Van Hefner - Editor Discount Long Distance Digest http://www.webcom.com/longdist/ ------------------------------ From: Mike Fox Date: 21 Feb 96 8:02:36 Subject: Right From the Bellcore Database (was Re: President's Bomb Shelter) In , Michael Fumich <0003311835@ mcimail.com> writes: > Back in the late 70's and early 80's MCI & Sprint would publish directories > of callable prefixes available on their respective networks. I used to > cross-reference these with other NPA lists I maintained. One thing that I > noticed was that the prefix "840" would appear on the MCI and Sprint list > but never on any other that I had. There were four cities that showed "840": > 804 -> Richmond VA > 304 -> Charleston WV > 412 -> Pittsburgh PA > 704 -> Charlotte NC Just thought it might be worth mentioning that here in the 919 area code, exchange 840 belongs to the Raleigh-Durham Airport. I don't know when it was assigned to this use, however. Going to http://www.natltele.com/form.html and searching on the 840 prefix returns the following information: (note: supposedly, this accesses a Bellcore datacase, but it hasn't been updated since 6/30/95) National Telephone and Communication NANP LOOKUP

National Telephone & Communications NANP Lookup

The following regions use "840" as a prefix: 

Area Code     City      State
--------------------------------------
    203             NORWALK   CT
    205                BOAZ   AL
    206            PUYALLUP   WA
    212            NEW YORK   NY
    214             GARLAND   TX
    215               PHILA   PA
    216           CLEVELAND   OH
    301          GAITHERSBG   MD
    303              PARKER   CO
    304          CHARLESTON   WV
    305               MIAMI   FL
    310          CULVERCITY   CA
    312             CHICAGO   IL
    313             DETROIT   MI
    314          POPLAR BLF   MO
    403           GRAND CTR   AB
    404            NORCROSS   GA
    405             BRITTON   OK
    407          WPALMBEACH   FL
    409            BEAUMONT   TX
    410           REISTERTN   MD
    417           SPRINGFLD   MO
    500          PER COM SV   NJ
    501              BENTON   AR
    503          BALDY PEAK   OR
    504          NEWORLEANS   LA
    507             JACKSON   MN
    508          LEOMINSTER   MA
    509           SUNNYSIDE   WA
    510             OAKLAND   CA
    513            EVENDALE   OH
    514            MONTREAL   PQ
    515              NEWTON   IA
    517             JACKSON   MI
    522           JALAPA VE   MX
    525          SNLRTZC FE   MX
    601              TUPELO   MS
    602          SCOTTSDALE   AZ
    604          MANNING PK   BC
    609          MOORESTOWN   NJ
    612          MINNEAPOLS   MN
    616          GRAND RPDS   MI
    617              BOSTON   MA
    701          VALLEYCITY   ND
    703          FREDECKSBG   VA
    705           NORTH BAY   ON
    708             BATAVIA   IL
    713             HOUSTON   TX
    714          HUNTITNBCH   CA
    716             BUFFALO   NY
    717                YORK   PA
    718              QUEENS   NY
    800           DATA BASE   
    801              TOOELE   UT
    803              SUMTER   SC
    804            RICHMOND   VA
    809               PONCE   PR
    813               TAMPA   FL
    816          KANSASCITY   MO
    817            MCGREGOR   TX
    818             BURBANK   CA
    881          LAZACNS MI   MX
    888             PELICAN   AB
    889          LAC BOREAL   PQ
    900          900SERVICE   
    904               OCALA   FL
    905            BRAMPTON   ON
    907          CHIGNILGON   AK
    908          PTPLEASANT   NJ
    919             RALEIGH   NC
Query ID: 840.369801

A total of 70 regions were found in 66903 records.

Back Home! or perhaps Another Lookup! So it's not a mysterious super-secret thingy *everywhere* :) Then, just for fun, I did a search on area code 710. This search is supposed to list all the cities in that area code, with one prefix for each city. Here are the results that I got. National Telephone and Communication NANP LOOKUP

National Telephone & Communications NANP Lookup

The following regions are served by area code (npa) 710:

Low Prefix   City      State
-------------------------------
    555      CLASSIFIED      USM

Query ID: 710.640061
A total of 1 prefixes were found in 66903 
records.


 Back Home! or perhaps  Another Lookup!


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought it was interesting to note
the entries for 881 and 888 in your scan relating to prefix 840. Note
that 881 is assigned to Mexico and 888 is in Alberta.     PAT]

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

From: bob@larribeau.com (Bob Larribeau)
Subject: CIUG Call For Papers
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 05:17:09 -0800
Organization: Larribeau Associates


The California ISDN Users Group will be holding its Spring conference
at the LAX Hilton Hotel on June 5 and 6.  We are looking for people
who would like to make a presentation describing their experiences
implementing ISDN applications.  We are interested in the full range
of presentations including telecommuting, Internet, office networking,
videoconferencing, voice, broadcast audio, etc.

If you are interested in making a presentation please send email to
the address below.

If you would like to receive about the conference send your postal
address and keep your eye on our web page.


Bob Larribeau
California ISDN Users Group
email: info@ciug.org
www: http://www.ciug.org

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

From: bob@larribeau.com (Bob Larribeau)
Subject: CIUG Mail Group
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 05:40:53 -0800
Organization: Larribeau Associates


The California ISDN Users Group has set up a mail group to discuss
ISDN issues.  We will be initially focusing on Pacific Bell's
application to the California Public Utilities Commission to raise its
ISDN tariffs.  These tariff increases target the residential use of
ISDN for Internet access.

We will be posting information about the status of the hearings to
this list.  We will also be using it to make surveys and take straw
polls that will help our protest.

If you are interested in protesting this price increase or are
interested in engaging in a discussion of other ISDN issues you can
subscribe to this list by sending email to "majordomo@internex.net"
with "subscribe ciug" in the body of the message.

We will also be posting information on the status of the CPUC hearings
on our web page.


Bob Larribeau
California ISDN Users Group
email: info@ciug.org
www: http://www.ciug.org

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 01:41:32 -0500
From: GaryNovosielski 
Subject: New MCI Mail Policies Announced


Tad Cook  wrote:

> The news item below looks like the announcement we have been waiting
> for, and it doesn't say anything about incoming email.  I suspect that
> MCI Mail was having a lot of trouble with folks like me who were
> paying $35 a year and getting tons of incoming traffic from
> listservers.  Perhaps this was the source of some of the slow traffic
> periods they have had.  I think that probably they figured they could
> dump a lot of the "deadbeats" who weren't generating any
> revenue-producing outgoing traffic by charging $120 a year.

I'm in the same boat.  A soon-to-be-"former" MCI Mail user.  

And one with a *very* bad taste in my mouth.  

I have no problem with MCI Mail wishing to raise their prices.  They
have every right to figure out what their costs are, and what they
feel their service is worth.  Like Tad, I'm a "light" user of their
outbound mail, but I only subscribe to two mailing lists (including
this one) so I wouldn't say I get "tons" of incoming traffic either.

Still, in the "nice" letter from MCI Mail they referred to me as a
"valued customer," but in the news release quoted by Tad, they refer
to people like me as "abusers."

Well, I clearly have never been an abuser.  I have followed the rules
 -- their rules -- all along.  And I signed up with them early on.  (My
user number starts with a 1.)

But there is one thing that I think is unforgiveable in MCI's handling
of this rate change, and that is the lead time they gave to their
customers.

I have no intention of continuing with them at the new rate of $155
per year, including the $35 annual fee for the user name.  In fact,
when the rumors started circulating about a month ago, I wrote them
and told them that any substantial increase in charges for receiving
incoming mail would require me to look elsewhere for mail service.
(Around my house, a 343% increase is considered "substantial.")

In my e-letter (which they responded to noncomittally, saying that
nothing had been "announced" but not whether anything was in the
works) I asked them to let me know as soon as possible, so I would
have sufficient lead time to make other arrangements.

So when do the new rates go into effect?  March 1st! Two weeks notice!
This is absolutely unacceptable.

Imagine, for comparison, if your phone company made an announcement
today that, they were going to triple their rates in two weeks, and
that if you didn't like that, you could avoid it, but it would mean
changing your area code and phone number.  And the permissive dialing
period had already started, but was *ending* in two weeks.

Clearly the rumor mill, as usual, was not precise, but was accurate.
MCI Mail knew a good month ago that they were putting this price
change into effect.  And I have no quarrel with their decision.  If
they feel that ustomers like me are no longer the type they want, and
they wish to institute incentives to encourage us to leave, then I am
quite happy to go gracefully.  I would not have gone away mad, I would
just have gone away.

But what was the need to purposely refuse to give a reasonable notice,
on the order of 90 days, say, so that those of their "valued
customers" who have been thusly encouraged might have a chance to shop
for another provider, order new stationery and forms, and leave on
good terms?

Apart from greed, there is no explanation for it.  I view it as a stunningly
insulting way to treat to a long-term customer.  I have let MCI know that,
and I enourage other readers to do the same. 


Gary P. Novosielski  GPN Consulting
gpn@villiage.ios.com

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

From: gavron@hearts.aces.com (Ehud Gavron)
Subject: Permission to Dial (was 710...)
Date: 21 Feb 1996 02:01 MST
Organization: ACES Research
Reply-To: gavron@ACES.COM


Some readers seem confused about their right to dial a telephone
number.  They are fearful that The Guvmint might not like them dialing
1-710-NPA-NXXX.

They should remember that in this country, there is no law preventing
the dialing of a telephone number, save those dealing with Intent To
Harrass.

In other words, if your intent is to acquire information, and you have
not been officially asked to stop, have at.


Ehud


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess we'll be seeing you at Marion,
Illinois also. Maybe we should have a reunion there of TD readers.
If you get there first, say hello to all the Communists, Jews, Labor
Union members, Catholics, and pedophiles who were caught spying on
the teenage chat room at aol.com for me; you know, the ones 'they'
rounded up first before they decided to come for you also. 

Do you remember about ten years ago on the net a big topic of dis-
cussion was 'unauthorized email'? It seems a certain very large and
well known telecommunications company had connected itself to the
Internet along with its internal email system. A number of people on
the net chose to write to an executive of that company to lodge
complaints about some policy or procedure of the company. The exec-
utive got tons of email and just about flipped out. His secretary had
to arrange things so that his email got diverted to her first so that
his virgin eyes (and probably brain as well) would not have to view
the stuff from all the 'riff raff' which had found out how to contact
him directly. And we were all given a stern warning that email sent to
that site was 'illegal and unauthorized'. If we did not cease and
desist immediatly as one writer warned me, the site would probably
disconnect itself from the net and we wouldn't want that to happen
would we?. I am sitting here with a straight face saying this; it
really happened. Now it is unauthorized phone calls, eh?    PAT]
  
------------------------------

From: doster@vax.telcores.com
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 08:52:01 -0600
Subject: Employment Opportunities in Nashville, TN


Telemanagement & cable management software vendor Telco Research
Corporation (Nashville, TN) has the following job openings.  Please
respond to Nancy Hewett at hewett@vax.telcores.com or 615-872-9000.
For company and product background info, visit http://www.telcores.com

Technical Support Specialist

This person will be responsible for providing application support for the
PC DOS/Windows/Windows95 product line.  Requirements include thorough 
knowledge of microcomputer hardware and software, MS Windows, and DOS.  
Prior experience in customer support, FoxPro, Windows95 and LAN environments
a plus.  Some travel required.                                                

Premium Services                                                               

Premium Services Specialist (2 positions available)                         
This person will be responsible for providing on-site installation,         
implementation, and training of the TRU SYSTEM product line.  Strong inter- 
personal and communications skills, both oral and written, required.        
Experience with the development and training of computer-related classes,   
DOS, and Windows a must.  FoxPro, Visual Basic, Windows95, Local Area 
Network, and telecom experience a plus.  Extensive travel required. 
                                                                               
Product Training Specialist

This person will be responsible for product training, both in-house
and on-site.  Duties include the development of training materials,
the training program, and all associated handouts.  Strong
interpersonal and communications skills, both oral and written,
required.  Experience with the development and presentation of
computer-related classes, DOS, and MS-Windows, required.  FoxPro,
Visual Basic, Windows95, Local Area Network, and telecom experience a
plus.  Some travel required.

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

From: R. Varkki George 
Subject: Telephony For the Deaf?
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 22:49:54 -0600
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


A deaf friend who is buying a new PC and modem wants to be able to use
her computer as a TTD device and also to record messages left from a
TTD phone. I presume it is just a question of locating the right
software, but after much searching I have had no luck. Could someone
please give me some pointers as to where I might look?

Also, is there software that will allow her to communicate with a
voice call? That is, convert the caller's voice to text and her text
to a voice.


Varkki George
Department of Urban and Regional Planning  | E-mail: varkki@uiuc.edu
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Tel: 217.244.7059

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

From: zeta@skypoint.com (Gregory S. Youngblood)
Subject: Seeking Communications Standards Documentation
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:20:42 GMT


I am looking for documentation on various telecommunications and
wireless communications standards, for example CDMA (IS-53), AMPS
Cellular, IS-41, etc. etc. etc.

The goal is to find these documents in electronic format. 

Obviously it would be really nice to find these for free, however if
the only way to get these is to pay a fee then that is fine also, as
long as it is in electronic format.


Thanks,

Gregory Youngblood

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #73
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 21 15:56:02 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id PAA15262; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:56:02 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:56:02 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602212056.PAA15262@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #74

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 21 Feb 96 15:56:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 74

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    IVTTA Conference - New Submission Information (Murray F. Spiegel)
    Followup to ISDN Questions (Lars Poulsen)
    Re: Misprogrammed Fax Machine Causes Nuisance (Mark J. Cuccia)
    Re: 10-XXX/101-XXXX Question (Mark J. Cuccia)
    Re: How Does a Merlin System Work? (atseagle@aol.com)
    New CT and IVR Listserv (Jeffrey Bonnell)
    NPA 757 Starts Next Year (John Cropper)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
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     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
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Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: spiegel@din.bellcore.com (Murray F Spiegel)
Subject: IVTTA Conference - New Submission Information
Date: 21 Feb 1996 20:18:23 GMT
Organization: Speech Technology Research Group (Bellcore)
Reply-To: spiegel@bellcore.com


We recently posted a reminder notice regarding the IVTTA workshop.
Due to the reorganization of AT&T, mail sent to the previous address
for abstracts (David Roe at AT&T Bell Laboratories) may be delayed
or lost.  To avoid problems, all abstracts should be sent to:

     Dr. George Vysotsky
     IEEE IVTTA '96
     NYNEX S&T
     500 Westchester Ave
     White Plains, NY 10604 USA
     Phone: 1-914-644-2589
     Fax: 1-914-644-2211 or 1-914-686-5574
     E-mail: george@nynexst.com

  Every effort will be made to obtain abstracts currently on their way 
to the AT&T Bell Laboratories address.   If you have received confirmation 
of an abstract already sent, you do _not_ need to send an additional copy
to Dr. George Vysotsky.

  We apologize for this inconvenience.

- The IVTTA workshop committee

For your information, the corrected guidelines and background
information follows:


                           CALL FOR PAPERS

                        THIRD IEEE WORKSHOP ON
                     INTERACTIVE VOICE TECHNOLOGY
                  FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS APPLICATIONS

                           =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

                   September 30 - October 1, 1996
                     The AT&T Learning Center
                         300 N Maple Ave
                    Basking Ridge, NJ 07920 USA
             Sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society

                           =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The third of a series of IEEE workshops on Interactive Voice
Technology for Telecommunications Applications will be held at the
AT&T Learning Center, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, from September 30 -
October 1, 1996.  The conference venue is on 35 semi-rural acres and
is close enough (1 hour) for side trips to New York City. Our workshop
will be held immediately before ICSLP '96 in Philadelphia, PA,
approximately 80 miles from our location.

The IVTTA workshop brings together application researchers planning to
conduct or who have recently conducted field trials of new
applications of speech recognition, speaker identity verification,
text-to-speech synthesis over the telephone network.  The workshop
will explore promising opportunities for applications and attempt to
identify areas where further research is needed.


Topic areas of interest:

- ASR/verification systems for the cellular environment
- User interface / human factors of applying speech to telecommunications tasks
- Language modeling and dialog design for "audio-only" communication
- Experimental interactive systems for telecommunication applications
- Experience in deployment & assessment of deployed ASR/verification systems
- Text-to-speech applications in the network
- Speech enhancement for telecommunications applications
- Telephone services for the disabled
- Architectures for speech-based services

Prospective authors should submit 1-page abstracts of no more than 400
words for review.  Submissions should include a title, authors' names,
affiliations, address, telephone and fax numbers and email address if
any.  Please indicate the topic area of interest closest to your
submission.  Camera-ready full papers (maximum of 6 pages) will be
published in the proceedings distributed at the workshop.  Due to
workshop facility constraints, attendance will be limited with
priority given to authors with accepted contributions.

          For further information about the workshop, please contact:

Dr. Murray Spiegel, Bellcore, 445 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960 USA
Phone: 1-201-829-4519;  Fax: 1-201-829-5963;  E-mail: spiegel@bellcore.com

          For full information, visit our web page:
http://superbook.bellcore.com/IVTTA.html


          Send abstracts (fax or email preferred) to:
             *** NOTE: New Submission Address ***

Dr. George Vysotsky 
IEEE IVTTA '96 
NYNEX S&T 
500 Westchester Ave 
White Plains, NY 10604 USA 
Phone: 1-914-644-2589 
Fax: 1-914-644-2211 or 1-914-686-5574 
E-mail: george@nynexst.com 

                            SCHEDULE

Abstracts due (400 words, maximum 1 page):          Mar 15, 1996
Notification of acceptance:                         May 1,  1996
Submission of photo-ready paper (maximum 6 pages):  Jun 15, 1996
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------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 12:06:25 PST
From: lars@RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Followup to ISDN Questions


A couple of months ago, I asked some ISDN-related questions to the group.
Here is the followup. Apologies for the delay ... the company I work for
was sold in the meantime, which caused some disruptions in the workplace.

(1) Can an ATT 8503 voice terminal be used on the public ISDN network ?
    In order to do that, one would have to program a SPID (service profile
    identifier) into the unit.

   a.	ATT's customer support group says no.

   b.	One reader told me he asked the designers, and they said yes.
	But without documentation, (which is not included in the user
	manuals), I think it is fruitless.

   c.	Hascall Sharp from Teleos (who makes an ISDN PBX) suggests that
	one might try to use the following keystrokes to set the SPID:
	       key(SHIFT=PROGRAM)+key(MUTE)+key(I=4)+key(D=3)
	This is the code used on the ATT 7500 series of telephones.
	I think he means that one would then follow this with the
	10 to 12 digits of SPID and end with key(SHIFT=PROGRAM).
	But since this unit has no display, I doubt that such an
	error-prone mechanism would be built in.

    Finally, a reader suggeted ITT's Cortelco telephone as a replacement
    for my ATT-8503 boat anchor.

    Would someone like to make me an offer for two 8503 boat anchors ?

(2) What is a good small ISDN PBX ?

   a.	TELEOS is often quoted. They are very expensive, though.

	We actually have an old TELEOS unit with just a couple of
	PRIs. We looked into getting a couple of BRI line cards
	and a software upgrade, and the price tag ran close to
	USD 75,000. We decided to throw the unit out, rather than
	to rehabilitate it.

   b.	We have installed a couple of small (2-line) switch simulators,
	which can be programmed to behave like various service profiles
	(5ESS, NI-1, DMS-100, NET3, etc).

   c.	Finally, we have installed a Centrex group of several dozen
	lines from GTE with a variety of service profiles:
	5ESS-point, 5ESS-multi, NI-1

    I am still interested in finding good units in the 4-12 line range
    as well as in the 100-line range.

(3) Standard SPID formats

    The best source of SPID formats is the Ascend Web page.

    5ESS SPIDs are almost always 01-xxx-xxxx-0 (i.e. they incorporate
    the 7-digit directory number) while DMS-100 SPIDs are
    aaa-xxx-xxxx-0-??? i.e. they begin with the 10-digit number,
    then a 0, then  optionally 1-3 additional digits.

(4) Can NI-1 and 5ESS custom lines be provisioned out of the same
    central office ?

    The answer is yes.

    After our GTE salesperson had been insisting for months that
    once the NI-1 software option was loaded on the switch, all the
    custom lines would have to be converted, he finally admitted that
    he had misunderstood something. (After I mentioned to him that I
    knew of one customer who had been given some of each out of the
    same central office that serves our facility.)


Lars Poulsen
RNS - now a subsidiary of Meret Optical Communications

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 13:14:51 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Re: Misprogrammed Fax Machine Causes Nuisance 


In TELECOM Digest v.16#72, Mike Quinn wrote:

> I encountered a minor phenomenom this week that represents an odd
> convergence of the side effects of area code splits and computer
> operated office equipment, and speaks to some of the debate over
> seven, ten, and eleven digit dialing ("toning"?)

> The day after we activated a new fax machine and number in my office
> in Arlington VA, we started receiving daily faxes from a medical lab
> in nearby Herndon.  We do mostly DoD work in my office, so it was
> surprising to be reading about post mortem HIV results (negative,
> thank goodness), eye cultures, biopsies, etc.  As it turned out, they
> were trying to fax the results to a lab in Pennsylvania, (412)
> 782-wxyz, but they ( = their computer) were apparently not dialing "1"
> first, and the first seven (NPA + four) digits happen to coincide with
> my local fax number.  Their CO apparently recognized the first seven
> digits as a local call, ignored the last three, and suddenly I was on
> the delivery end, using my non-plain paper as the medium to record
> information in which we had no interest, to say the least.  What was
> especially curious was their inability, and initial unwillingness, to
> correct the problem -- instead of being appalled that sensitive
> information was clearly going astray......

(snip)

We've received faxes on *our* machine at Tulane Law School which were 
*not* intended for us. The sending fax party mis-dialed a number or even 
had *our* fax number instead of the correct fax number.

A couple of years ago, I answered my line here (504-UNiversity-5-5954) 
and heard `fax beeps' in the handset. I knew that the calling party was 
trying to send a fax, and I hoped that they were listening to 
call-progress tones in their own handset or thru the speaker, instead of 
using an unattended auto dialer or the like. I tried to talk back to the 
calling party (fax) telling them that *I* was *NOT* a fax machine, and 
that 5954 was strictly a *voice* line, and that I would transfer them to 
the fax machine at 5917. It worked, and the received fax cover sheet 
stated "Fax To: 504-865-5954". It was for us, but I called up the company 
and told them that we needed to be faxed at the other number.

And I remember that there was one *medical* fax sent to us (which 
*should* have been private; after we contacted the sender telling them 
that it `went astray' but to an *actual fax machine*, we destroyed the 
received fax. I don't remember who or where the calling fax party was, 
but it wasn't transposed digits, but rather coming from an area that 
recently added `interchangeable' local Central Office Codes, and they 
were also calling a PBX.

> Now, Mark Cuccia or one of your other readers could probably enlighten
> us about the earlier days of the NANP, when the error space was much
> larger and area codes couldn't be confused with each other or local
> exchanges.  Although it was pure coincidence that the overlapped
> numbers both happened to be fax machines, I assume that this is
> becoming, or will become, an increasingly common occurence.  Any
> thoughts on the solution -- eleven digit dialing for every number in 
> the country, for example?

Back in the `good-ole-days', there could have been wrong numbers or
transposed digits, but the problems weren't as common or as complex as
today. However even back then, the dialing plans weren't always
standardized. Some areas dialed seven digits (NNX-XXXX) for local calls
including many metro areas covering portions of two or more
states/NPA's, and using protected NNX Central Office Codes codes; and
also withOUT an initial 1+ for *home* NPA toll), while other areas
dialed 1+ for *any and all* toll calls. Some locations (such as
Lincoln NE, an independent) and British Columbia (associated with GTE)
both used 112+ for toll access well into the 1980's.

I've stated this before and I'll state this again: IMO the *ideal* dialing 
plan is:

*Full* ten digits for *any and all* Local calls (with NO toll charge 
involved), but no 1+ required; 1+ would be permissable. This should be 
*encouraged* by telcos *everywhere* in the NANP while *mandatory* in large 
and complex metro areas. Medium sized cities or towns could still `get 
by' with 7 digits Local, but telco should *still* encourage 10 digits 
everywhere, such as in quoted or printed directory listings, etc.
1+ ten digits would be *required* on any and all NANP toll calls 
(*particularly* PAY-PAY=PAY-per-call 1+900- & 1+NPA-976-; Louisiana's 211 
info calls at 50 cents/call would be 1+504+211+xxxx or 1+318+211+xxxx), 
and the use of 1+ as stated above would be *permitted but not required* 
in front of a ten-digit local call but there would not be a toll charge 
if the NPA-NXX is local. Overlay NPA's *should* be encouraged particularly 
in dense and complex metro areas. And the use of a central office code 
using the same digits as its NPA, adjacent NPA's, or overlaid NPA's would 
be available- i.e. 212-212-xxxx, 212-718-xxxx, 718-718-xxxx, 718-917-xxxx, 
etc).

There *should* be a NANP standard which would still allow an indication 
of toll which would be dialed by the customer. Are the local, state
and federal/national NANP area regulatory bodies out there reading
this really listening?


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 09:49:30 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Re: 10-XXX/101-XXXX Question


In TD v.16#70, Rpadula@aol.com  I am experimenting with some algorithms to parse telephone number
> strings and came across this puzzlement with 10XXX and 101XXXX
> strings.

(snip)
 
> I guess I also need to back up a step and ask when does the
> 10XXX/101XXXX switchover occur, and is there a permissive dialing
> period for both?

> A friend has told me that one way to tell is to collect the first
> three digits.  If the first three are "101", then inspect the fourth
> digit.  If the fourth digit is 0, 5, or 6, then it will be a 101XXXX
> code, else it is 10XXX.  I hadn't heard of this before.  Any truth to
> it?

Yes, if the first three digits are 101, then if the fourth digit is 0, 5 
or 6, then it expects the Carrier FG.D code to be 101-XXXX.

When Bellcore began assigning the 10-XXX codes beginning in the
mid-80's just after divestiture, it happened that there were no codes
of the format 1010X, 1015X or 1016X. By the later 1980's, Carrier
Codes were being used up *faster* than Area Codes ever had been. (Even
today, Area Codes are still 3-digits, just now of the larger format
NXX, which was planned as far back as the late-50's/early-60's). Every
reseller or vendor wanted their *own* 10-XXX Carrier code. So,
sometime in the late 1980's or early 1990's, Bellcore began plans for
4-digit Carrier *Identification* Codes as part of a *seven* digit
Carrier *Access* Code.  As mentioned above, Bellcore noted that there
were some *blocks* of codes unassigned, therefore making migration
easier. I don't know if these blocks were *specifically* unassigned
beginning in 1983/84, or if it just *happened* that way.

Many switches *already* allow the use of 101-XXXX codes. There *are*
some carriers *now* assigned 101-5XXX codes. Existing codes 10-XXX
will (already are) dialable 101-0XXX. This is a permissive dialing
period. I don't know how long the permissive period will last.

AT&T's   existing 10-288 will be (already is) 101-0288
MCI's    existing 10-222 will be (already is) 101-0222
Sprint's existing 10-333 will be (already is) 101-0333
etc.

My apologies to those hundereds of existing carriers/resellers not
mentioned here by name/code. 

BTW, since Minnesota now has InTRA-LATA primary carrier choice, US
West as the inTRA-LATA toll LEC has 101-5123.

A friend who lives there said that:

0 reaches US West Operator (by default);
00 reaches PIC'd InTER-LATA Operator;
To reach the operator of your PIC'd InTRA-LATA Operator (if not US West) 
you need to dial the 10-XXX/101-XXXX of that carrier followed by 0 (or 
0-pound or 00).

0+ten-digits-LOCAL routes to the US West Operator System;
0+ten-digits-InTRA-LATA TOLL routes to the PIC'd InTRA-LATA Opr.System;
0+ten-digits-InTER-LATA (or 01+international) routes to their PIC'd 
InTER-LATA Opr.System.


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: atseagle@aol.com (ATSEAGLE)
Subject: Re: How Does a Merlin System Work?
Date: 20 Feb 1996 20:35:28 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: atseagle@aol.com (ATSEAGLE)


Hello,

You have some interesting questions - concerns.

A Merlin system for your size (20 to 30 sets) is traditionally
referred to as a "key system" which has a control unit (KSU) in a
closet or basement or the like, and a variety of system cards which
eventually provide service for your extensions and lines.  The Control
Unit probably supports 10 lines and 30 phones or 30 lines and 70
phones.  Also, you are probably on a fixed service contract with ATT
for at leats one year with an automatic renewal each year.

While $20,000.00 is a little high for Voice Mail, it is not too far
off.  The Merlin system is one of the worst system to install Voice
Mail on.  Most Voice Mail systems work through an analog phone
extension (house type telephone).  The Merlin doesn't provide analog
extensions, therefore installation of Voice Mail is only supported by
Electronic Merlin phone ports.  The hardware/software is more
expensive and proprietary.  (I would also wonder if that price is
inclusive of automated attendant capabilities and how many ports it is
for.)

In addition, Voice Mail works by being installed on an analog
extension with an extension number everybody can call to retrieve
Voice Mail messages.  The Merlin does not allow DTMF signals (the
tones which generate reponses from Voice Mail systems) on intercom
calls.  Therefore, all phones must have an add on DTMF signal source
installed on them.

And, when all is said and done, you will not get the full benefits of
integrated Voice Mail because the Merlin system will not support Voice
Mail integration to signal the type and condition of a call that it is
sending to the Voice Mail so that the Voice Mail can respond correctly. 
This will lead to sever let down if you have used an integrated Voice
Mail system before.

You can actually find good basic communications books in your local
book store or library.  Also, you can call Teleconnect Magazine'
library at 800 542 7279 and ask for a library catalog.

I hope this was somewhat helpful.  I don't mean to bash the Merlin but
we are a local interconnect and we service many accounts and have
vowed not to install Voice Mail on a Merlin system EVER!!! due to its
boundless limitations.


ATSEAGLE

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

From: Jeffrey Bonnell 
Subject: New CT and IVR Listserv
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:26:25 -0500
Organization: Michael J. Motto Advertising, Inc.


I'd like to make a quick and cordial announcement that DAX Systems, a 
leading manufacturer of computer hardware for computer telephony and
IVR applications has sponsored a listserv for CT professionals.  You
can subscribe by visiting the DAX WWW site at http://www.daxsystems.com
and hitting "forum" from the opening image map.

We are excited to sponsor this unmoderated forum and hope that CT pros 
find it a valuable means of interacting with colleagues.

If you prefer, the listserv can be subscribed to manually by sending an 
email to: majordomo@listserv.daxsystems.com, (subject blank) message:
subscribe daxsystems [your email address]

Looking forward to seeing you there!


Jeffrey Bonnell -- Director, Internet Services     "If it's a 
Michael J. Motto Advertising, Inc.                  worldwide web,
152 Floral Avenue, New Providence, NJ 07974         shouldn't your
[V] 908-665-2500 [F] 908-665-0599                   site be 
E-mail: bonnell@tigger.jvnc.net                     worldclass?"

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

From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper)
Subject: NPA 757 to Start Next Year
Date: 20 Feb 1996 20:10:54 GMT
Organization: Pipeline USA


> BTW, a check of www.bellcore.com shows a "757" NPA listed for 
> Virginia.  Anyone know anything about this one?   
 
BellCore -just- updated their web page once again. By the time you
read this, scant details will be available there. They (Bell Atlantic)
are pretty much looking at implementing 757 sometime in September
1996, with a four to six month permissive dialing period.
 

John Cropper, aka Psyber 
Nexus Information Services 
psyber@usa.pipeline.com

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #74
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 21 18:00:12 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id SAA28484; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:00:12 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:00:12 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602212300.SAA28484@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #75

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 21 Feb 96 18:00:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 75

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Still More Nokia Cell Phone Programming Help Wanted (William C. Bonner)
    Help! How to Find Phone Security Code on Nokia 2110i (Bogdan Grishin)
    Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Steve Forrette)
    Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Tim Shoppa)
    Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number (Peter Corlett)
    Re: (710) NCS-GETS (fernald@pica.army.mil)
    Re: 710 From Indiana - NO GO (george@wythop.ncl.ac.uk)
    Re: Some Interesting News About 710 (Eric Kammerer)
    Re: Using ANI For Credit Card Verification (Glen L. Roberts)
    Re: Using ANI for Credit Card Verification (Ken Levitt)
    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Romain Fournols)
    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (lr@access5.digex.net)
    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Dave Forman)
    Re: More Great News From Ameritech Cellular (Christopher Rosebrook)
    Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular (bill@juniper.terranet.com)
    Australian Committee Reports on Calling Number Display (Dale Robinson)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: William C Bonner 
Subject: Re: Still More Nokia Cell Phone Programming Help Wanted
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:44:16 -0600


Edward A. Kleinhample wrote:

>> Vance Shipley (vances@xenitec.xenitec.on.ca) replys:

>> *3001#12345 

> Next quiz for the Cell phone gurus out there:

> The dealer that programmed my phone, obviously a devout Florida State
> fan, apparently felt like taking revenge on me for rubbing in that my
> Alma Mater, The University of Florida, had a somewhat better season
> than FSU. He proceeded to program a message into my phone that says
> "NOLES RULE!" whenever the phone is powered on.

> This is obviously unacceptable. Does anyone out there in netland know
> how this message is programmed (or more to the point, changed) to
> something more correct with the universe (like perhaps "GATORS RULE!")?

I've got the Programming sheet that came with my Nokia 2120 phone.
(It says "FOR AUTHORIZED DEALER USE ONLY" on the top).

Note 2 on the bottom says "While editing ther "OWN NUM" parameter, a
wake up text message may be added by pressing the [ALPHA] key and
entering the desired message from the keypad."

If there is any demand, I can scan this sheet, front and back, and put
it available on the net or on the web.


Wim.

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

From: bogdan@kth.se (Bogdan Grishin)
Subject: Help! How to Find Phone Security Code on Nokia 2110i
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 21:18:07 +0100
Organization: KMF/KTH


Hi!

I have changed my phone's security number and then forgot it.  Is it
possible to reprogram the security number?

Thanks for any help,

Bogdan ...

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

From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette)
Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number
Date: 20 Feb 1996 01:39:16 GMT
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn


In article , phils@RELAY.RELAY.COM
says ...

> We have a need to find the local number to which an 800 number maps.

There may not be a "local number" equivalent to the 800 number.  For
anyone except a low-volume user, the 800 service is likely to be
carried to the customer via dedicated lines, and not go through the
regular local network on the terminating end.  There may or may not be
a local number that goes to the same place.


Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com

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

From: shoppa@altair.krl.caltech.edu (Tim Shoppa)
Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number
Date: 21 Feb 1996 06:34:07 GMT
Organization: Kellogg Radiation Lab, Caltech


In article , Art Kamlet
 wrote:

> -  finally, just think if this was not done, and you asked for
>    the destination number of a 900 number instead of an 800 number?

To which Pat replied:

> Second, you mentioned 'what if someone found this out with 900 numbers.
> That is a good point, and it has happened where people found out the
> POTS number to which a 900 number translated. They almost caused the
> information provider to go bankrupt! 

Don't most all 900 number services these days do an explicit check for
the ANI, just to make sure that the caller is "billable"?  And
wouldn't it be true that if the service was dialed with the
destination number that the ANI information wouldn't go through?

Of course, if it works by having a central operation "farm out"
requests to individual destination numbers (it sounds like the
MCI/Opera Building connection may have worked this way) they wouldn't
be checking for ANI on calls to the destination numbers.


Tim (shoppa@altair.krl.caltech.edu)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think almost all 900 calls now-days
are as you describe, and are carried over T-1 direct to the information
provider with no local telco lines involved. But in the early days
of 900 scams, they were just dialed out to whatever POTS number the
IP used. One of the first companies in the business was here in Chicago
and known as the 'Nine Hundred Service Corporation'. I think they had
all their equipment in the 20 North Wacker Drive (Opera Building) loca-
tion also.  That would be going back to the middle 1980's.    PAT]

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

From: corlepnd@aston.ac.uk (Peter Corlett)
Subject: Re: Local Number Mapping For 800 Number
Reply-To: corlepnd@aston.ac.uk
Organization: Aston University
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 19:57:10 GMT


> -  finally, just think if this was not done, and you asked for
>    the destination number of a 900 number instead of an 800 number?

In the UK, our 'special services' numbers (0800/0500 equiv. to 1-800,
0891+others equiv. to 1-900) always map to real telephone numbers
AFAIK, as opposed to a leased line or whatever, however this mapping
can change on a per-call and/or geographical basis, and there can be a
second or two wait as the network does a lookup for the real number --
apparently the delay depends on how many exchanges have to be interrogated.

BTW, does the US have similar codes to our 0990 and 0541 codes? These
map to ordinary numbers, but are charged at the highest long distance
rate. In this case BT cream off any difference between the real cost
of the call, and the amount charged (i.e. anything up to at least 100%
markup.) Of course there is the flexible routing as a freebee, but
this will just reduce the distance the call travels (increasing the
profits ...)


** Peter Corlett ** corlepnd@aston.ac.uk ** http://www.aston.ac.uk/~corlepnd **
On death and taxes: Death doesn't come every April.

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

From: fernald@pica.army.mil
Subject: Re: (710) NCS-GETS
Organization: U.S. Army Armament Research Dev. & Eng. Ctr, Dover NJ
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:18:34 GMT


This may be only speculation on my part, but it may explain what 710
is.  710 may be being used to support (segment from the rest of the
phone system) the Department of Defense (DOD).  DOD has a telephone
system that used to be called Autovon and now is called DSN (Defense
Signalling Network or Digital Signalling Network). This network allows
Defense employees to call other posts (bases) dialing only seven digits.
Most military installations have a DSN exchange number.  Usually the
last four digits of the commercial number are the same as the last
four digits of the DSN number.  However, the commercial exchange and
the DSN exchange are not the same number.  Most phones on post cannot
make local calls, so the employees can't phone home and waste the
taxpayers money, can make normal long distance calls and additionaly
have DSN capability.  Use of DSN was encouraged over using a
commercial number.

     I believe that DSN is a part of the "National Communications
System (NCS) Voice Precedence System which became effective 14
February 1970, [and] is directed for use by all authorized users of
the voice communications facilities of the DOD".  The NCS Voice
Precedence System has four levels of call: FLASH, IMMEDIATE, PRIORITY,
and ROUTINE.  However, the President, Sec of Defense and Joint Chiefs
of Staff can pre-empt FLASH calls in progress.

     Getting back to DSN calls.  You could also place calls to 
OCONUS (Outside CONtinental US) bases by dialing a special number 
and having the Letterkenny Army Depot Operator place the call for 
you.  This may not be true now since with all the base closures I'm 
not sure if Letterkenny is still around, however I'm sure dialing is 
still handled in a similar fashion.  

     I hope this helps.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At the Federal Building in downtown
Chicago I notice the phones can do either of the above. Users dial
9 for an outside line, but they dial 8 for a line on the network you
described. After dialing 8, then they dial seven digits for anywhere
in the USA at a federal site. Maybe this network is what we are 
thinking of as 710.   PAT]

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

From: george@wythop.ncl.ac.uk (George)
Subject: Re: 710 From Indiana - NO GO
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 20:00:24 GMT
Organization: York's Atomic Dustbin
Reply-To: george@wythop.ncl.ac.uk


TELECOM Digest Editor noted:

> By the way, another international correspondent, this one from Sweden
> says that he also got a manual response from here in the USA asking
> 'what is your card number?'. Based on his own knowledge and experience
> he believes it was NOT a telco operator requesting that information
> but rather, someone who answered on the line itself.    PAT]

Dialing from the UK, on BT lines, I get a "please enter your PIN"
message, from a machine not an operator. Dialling numbers apart from
the "magic" 627 4387 in the 710 area gives a UK "NU" or Number
Unobtainable tone, sometimes instantly and sometimes after up to 20
seconds of waiting.


George [Fidonet 2:2502/325.7]           | Fergo for governor !  

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 13:37:13 PST
From: erick@sac.AirTouch.COM (Eric Kammerer at Sac Net)
Subject: Re: Some Interesting News About 710


710 is listed in the LERG as U S GOVERNMENT.

While AT&T may have it set up to be "untraceable" I doubt that the
same can be said for all of the LECs.  There are just too many mom &
pop telcos.  I know we can trace 710 calls on the cellular system.  We
do route them, but essentially that means dump the call to the LD
carrier.  We do generate an AMA record, and it will get billed for
airtime by us and any LD charges by the appropriate carrier (I assume
that means billed to the calling card PIN number).  I know I can trace
that call through our system.  I imagine that most other cellular
carriers are set up the same.

Now, a few questions.  What happens with second and third tier billing
LD carriers, resellers, etc.?  What rates would they charge?  Do they
even route 710 calls?

Also a couple of observations.  It would be easy for AT&T to set up 710
as non-billable.  I'm not sure it could be set up as non-traceable, since 
that is built into the switch.  OTOH, I do know that Sprint and MCI
each have special software loads in their DMS switches -- maybe that
capability was added.  Of course, troubleshooting would be a bit more
difficult.

The use of a special NPA/SAC gives the US government a lot of flexibility 
to change the number without having much effect on translations overhead 
in tandem switches. It also allows the govt. to change the number
without telling many people, since only the end-office really needs to
know -- all other switches just route 710 calls to that particular
end-office.  The disadvantage, of course, is that 710 is published in
the LERG, and is therefore public knowledge.

An experiment to consider.  If anyone has a wardialer that recognizes
intercepts, the entire 710 range could be tested to verify that 627-4387 
is the _only_ number used.


Eric Kammerer     erick@sac.AirTouch.com

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

From: glr@ripco.com (Glen L. Roberts)
Subject: Re: Using ANI For Credit Card Verification
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 20:15:37 GMT
Organization: Full Disclosure
Reply-To: glr@ripco.com


John C. Fowler <0003513813@mcimail.com> wrote:

> When I received a replacement credit card in the mail the other day, I
> discovered a new way that credit card companies are using real-time
> ANI on 800 numbers: to verify that you received the card!  A sticker
> on the card asked me to call an 800 number from my home phone line to
> activate the card before using it.  I dialed the number, and a
> recorded voice thanked me and said it was retrieving the phone number
> I was calling from.  After a couple of seconds, it announced that the
> card was ready for use.  I didn't have to dial anything other than the
> 800 number.

> This probably would not stop a determined, intelligent thief, because
> not all home phone numbers will show up correctly with real-time ANI
> (either the switch is too old, or the phone is behind a PBX, or
> someone is using a cellphone as their home number), so the credit card
> company must have another way of activating the card in those cases.
> But I was happy to have the extra level of security against the
> everyday mailbox thief, without having to go through a lot of hassle
> myself.

What happens if you call through a calling-card and they get the ANI
of the calling card trunks?


Links, Downloadable Programs, Catalog, Real Audio & More on Web
Full Disclosure [Live] -- Privacy, Surveillance, Technology!
(Over 140 weeks on the Air!)
The Net Connection -- Listen in Real Audio on the Web!
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~glr/glr.html

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 11:45:21 EST
From: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org (Ken Levitt)
Subject: Re: Using ANI for Credit Card Verification


In TELECOM Digest Volume 16 : Issue 68 John C. Fowler writes:

> When I received a replacement credit card in the mail the other day, I
> discovered a new way that credit card companies are using real-time
> ANI on 800 numbers: to verify that you received the card!  A sticker
> on the card asked me to call an 800 number from my home phone line to
> activate the card before using it.

For reasons too lengthy to explain here, my residence number is a
distinctive ring number off of my business line.

This means that there is no way to ever generate an ANI with my
residence number on it. I do NOT want to get personal calls on the
business number, so I will not give that number to companies who have
have personal business with me.

For this reason, I am always having problems with credit card
companies and ordering Pay-per-view movies on cable.  I have always
been able to complete the transactions, but it's a real pain to have
to go through the process each time.
 

Ken Levitt - On FidoNet gateway node 1:16/390     UUCP: zorro9!levitt
INTERNET: levitt@zorro9.fidonet.org or levitt%zorro9.uucp@talcott.harvard.edu 

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:29:59 +0100
From: FOURNOLS Romain COM/MKT 
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed


It's a mathematical reason !

The speed (14400) is 14400 bits per second.
1 byte (octet in french) contains (usually) 8 bits of data and 1 stop 
bit.

Your average speed (theorical, depends on line quality) is :
14400/9 =3D 1600 bytes per second
and 1 kbytes=3D1024 bytes
the result (in Kbytes) is 1600/1024=3D1.5625 K/sec

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

From: lr@access5.digex.net (Sir Topham Hatt)
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed
Date: 21 Feb 1996 17:18:33 GMT


Matt LeComte (mattma@wa2000.winarea.biddeford.com) wrote:

> I don't understand why when I download something the fastest it
> transfers is 1.5k/sec, but I'am connected at 14400. So why am I not
> going faster? I'm not running any other web browsers. I use Netscape

Netscape reports it's speed in Bytes per second.  14400 is the bits
per second including the stop and start bits plus your eight data
bits.  The best you should expect to obtain therefore is 1440
bytes/sec.

Actually, you should see better than this, even.  When I put in 28.8
modems on a slip line, I wanted to test to see what my effective
throughput was and ftp'd a file.  Zowie, four times my computed
expected rate.  I'd forgotten about compression and the modem very
nicely handled the text file I gave it.  I tried it again with a
gzipped file and got what I expected.

Since WEB stuff is mostly HTML, I'd expect a lot of compression on
text (less so on images which are either JPEG or LZW compressed).


Ron

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

From: dbf@sdc.cs.boeing.com (Dave Forman)
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed
Date: 21 Feb 96 20:16:25 GMT
Reply-To: dbf@sdc.cs.boeing.com
Organization: Boeing Information & Support Services


In article , mattma@wa2000.winarea.
biddeford.com (Matt LeComte) writes:

> I don't uderstand why when I download something the fastest it
> transfers is 1.5k/sec, but I'am connected at 14400. So why am I not
> going faster? I'm not running any other web browsers. I use Netscape
> 2.0 beta, and I use Windows 95 dial-up networking, then connect ppp.

Is it possible that the 1.5K/sec is Bytes?  That would translate to
about 12Kbit which is pretty close to 14.4.


David Forman

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

From: crosebrook@mcimail.com (Christopher Rosebrook)
Subject: Re: More Great News From Ameritech Cellular
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:58:46 GMT
Organization: MCI Communications


I was equally dismayed when roaming in NYC on Bell Atlantic/Nynex
Mobile.  I had to register for a PIN to use my phone there (a fairly
simple VRU process, and an intelligent one, since people in NYC are
apparently able to clone phones just because you have them turned on).

Now, back in DC, I have to still use the PIN and it's a pain in the
neck.

I've switched to the Sprint Spectrum PCS system (LOVE IT!), and only
enter my PIN when I turn the phone on, which is much more convenient
(albeit not necessarily as secure, but at least I have a choice).


Christopher

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

From: Rambutan 
Subject: Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:25:49 -0800
Organization: TerraNet, Inc., Boston, MA, USA


Robert Virzi wrote:

> In article , Wm. Randolph U
> Franklin  wrote:

>> Having read in this group about the latest telecom land mine,
>> caller-pays cellular, I called Nynex to see how to tell whether a
>> number I was calling was one of those.  The first person I called
>> didn't understand what I was getting at.  I called again, and got a
>> really helpful person, who checked with her training supervisor and
>> called me back.  Unfortunately that person had never heard of this,
>> and suggested to try a cellular company.  I did, and got nowhere.

> Most of the calling party pays cellular plans I have heard of work by
> playing an announcement to the calling party.  The announcement
> informs the caller of the charge per minute and invites the caller to
> hang up if the terms are not acceptable.

> There are many variants on this general theme, including provision for
> codes to reverse the charges back to the called party for those in the
> know.

Bob is correct.  Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile and the NYNEX telco have
not instituted Calling Party Pays.  I suspect the unhelpful service
reps do not know that CPP is not available yet.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have to wonder at times why it is not
a job requisite that customer service people at least read industry
newsletters and journals from time to time and try to keep at least a
little abreast of what is going on. Now I admit that is hard to do;
it is even very hard for me to keep up with most of the new concepts
and developments. But you'd think if nothing else, customer service
reps would learn the new terms, or at least have a nearby notebook
handy with a few notes of their own so that when a customer used a
term they were not familiar with or requested a service they were not
totally familiar with at the very least they could look at their notes
and say 'I do not know much about that; here is what I do know; our
telco has not yet started that ...' instead of just the bald-faced 
make-beleive stories some of them come up with.    PAT]

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

From: Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 07:45:33 +0930
Subject: Australian Committee Reports on Calling Number Display


Pat,

Austel, which is Australia's telecommunication's regulation authority,
has a web site at http://www.austel.gov.au/

Among other things, I found this under the Media Releases section:

     Media Release No 7 of 1996

   PRIVACY COMMITTEE REPORTS ON CALLING NUMBER DISPLAY

AUSTEL, the telecommunications industry regulator, today released a
report it has received from its Privacy Advisory Committee on the
introduction of Calling Number Display (CND) services. The report
proposes that when CND is introduced it be offered on an opt out basis
subject to stringent privacy protection requirements.

CND services will allow details of a caller's number to be shown on
the equipment of a person receiving a call who is a subscriber to the
CND service. The report proposes that no number will be shown where
the caller has a silent number; where the caller has advised that the
number is not to be sent; or where the caller dials a code which
prevents the number being sent for that particular call. Thus all
consumers will be able to maintain their current level of
telecommunications privacy at no charge.

No timetable for the introduction of CND for general public use in
Australia has been determined at this stage but CND has been trialled
or in operation in some European and North American countries for up
to six years.

The report, Calling Number Display, is the third produced by AUSTEL's
Privacy Advisory Committee, which has members from the telecommunications 
industry, consumer groups and the Privacy Commissioner.

The Committee considered the level of control callers should have over
the automatic provision of their number to receivers, how consumers
could exercise informed choice, and limitations on the possible uses
to which CND information could be put by receivers, particularly
business and organisations capable of capturing CND information.

The report recommends a privacy protection regime of industry
self-regulatory guidelines, requiring the industry to ensure high
levels of public awareness of CND privacy implications, options
regarding transmission of callers' numbers and ethical use of CND by
business.

AUSTEL Member Sue Harlow, said "The Privacy Advisory Committee
consulted widely on the issue of CND services and noted the strong
support from consumers overseas for CND services and the enthusiasm
expressed by participants in a trial of CND in Wauchope, New South
Wales, during 1994".

"The guidelines recommended by the Committee provide for CND services
to be offered on a basis which delivers a balance between the
effective operation of a useful service and the reasonable privacy
expectations of consumers.  The report establishes privacy protections
for CND services in Australia equal to the highest levels of
international privacy protection", Ms Harlow said.

Copies of the report are available from Mark Leckenby on (03) 9828
7410 and will be available on the Internet at
http://www.austel.gov.au/ on 7 February 1996.

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


Regards, 

Dale.

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #75
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 21 20:04:17 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id UAA09608; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 20:04:17 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 20:04:17 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602220104.UAA09608@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #76

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 21 Feb 96 20:04:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 76

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Wanted: Studies Supporting Low Entry Barriers For ISPs (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh)
    NT Meridian Call Message Record Data Availability (Jonas Hellsten)
    Arlington Crestview CO Isolated and Down For Six Hours (Charles Beard)
    Extension Pickup Help Wanted (Doug Jacobson)
    Re: V&H Coordinate to Lat Long Tool? (Tim Dziechowski)
    Need Computer-Telephone Integration (Oleg V. Melnikov)
    Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX (Jeff Brielmaier)
    Re: Generations of Engineers (John Dearing)
    Re: Generations of Engineers (John N. Dreystadt)
    Re: Southern New England Telephone (John R. Levine)
    Phone Fires Discussion/25 Years Ago (Steven Lichter)
    Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular (John R. Levine)
    Need Zip Code to NPA-NXX Infromation (James J. McDonald)
    Re: The Right to an Address? (Lars Poulsen)
    Domain Name Snatching (Robert McMillin)
    Parallel Fax Transmissions (Devin Hosea)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh 
Subject: Wanted: Studies Supporting Low Entry Barriers For ISPs
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 12:22:27 PST


Although my meeting with the Indian Telecom Secretary went off well,
the Deptartment of Telecom may want additional 'evidence' of the
benefits of not requiring $100,000 annual licence fees from ISPs. I've
suggested a graded scale, starting at under $100, based on
infrastructure (according to the DoT, ISPs include large regional or
nationwide networks).

I know there must be studies in support of low entry barriers in
extended services such as datacom, demonstrating their direct impact
in stimulating growth. Unfortunately I can't find any. I would
appreciate any such reports or studies or other useful hard
'evidence'; pointers to sources would help too. If there are any
readers in Asia, I would like your inputs on datacom policy in your
country, and its adverse/beneficial impact.

My policy proposal, and brief summary of the meeting with the DoT
Secretary, is at http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/ndp1.html

Please feel free to pass this request on to others who may help.


Thanks,

Rishab
The Indian Techonomist - newsletter on India's information industry
http://dxm.org/techonomist/                             rishab@dxm.org
Editor and publisher: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh           rishab@arbornet.org
Vox +91 11 6853410; 3760335;     H 34 C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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

From: jonas hellsten 
Subject: NT Meridian Call Message Record Data Availability
Date: 21 Feb 1996 21:06:36 GMT
Organization: TeleOpti AB, Sweden


I'm looking for ways to retrieve information regarding calls duration and
other items from an NT Meridian switch board. If you can contribute, 
please send me a line.


Jonas

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

From: chb890@aol.com (CHB890)
Subject: Arlington Crestview CO Isolated and Down For Six Hours
Date: 21 Feb 1996 07:13:36 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)


Tuesday AM the Arlington Crestview CO went out and several thousand
customers lost their dial tone.  Story is, while doing maintainence on
the CPU which had gone out - the main one - and running on the spare,
someone looked up the card to pull in their maintainence computer. The
computer indicated the main card rather then the spare.  Guess what
happened!  It was down approximatly six hours. Sounds like poss.ibly
someone might suffer from dyslexia?

Switch belongs to SouthWestern Bell and is located in the DFW Mid
Cities (Arlington) area in North Texas.


Charles H. Beard
CSSI
FAX 817-596-9842
TELCO 817-596-8767

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

From: doug@ee.iastate.edu (Doug Jacobson)
Subject: Extension Pickup Help Wanted
Date: 21 Feb 96 18:42:06 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa


Is there a simple way to detect if someone in another room has picked
up on an extension, or has the extension picked up?  I'm looking to
detect the following:

1. Using the phone and another extension is picked up.

2. Someone answers the phone onm another extension for you, and
you pick up your extension, and they do not hang up.

Please email me any solutions.  I would even be willing and able
to build some custom electronics.


Doug Jacobson    Iowa State University

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

From: tdziecho@uunet.uu.net (Tim Dziechowski)
Subject: Re: V&H Coordinate to Lat Long Tool?
Organization: PictureTel Corp.
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 02:45:46 GMT


In article , lnsg1.miberl01@eds.
com (Michael S. Berlant) says:

> In article , jorr@czn.com says...

>> I am trying to make an accurate map of telco POPs vs our fiber routes.
>> The easiest way to do this is to use the V&H Coordinates from the
>> LERG, convert them to Latitude and Longitude ... 

> You might be able to short circuit your conversions by grabbing the
> lat-longs from NPAW.  It correlates NPA-NXX pairs with lat-longs, so 
> if you know an NXX in the POP you've got the lat-long.

> I don't remember where it's located; maybe the Moderator does.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sorry, I don't. Anyone?    PAT]

The order form which came with NPAW has the following contact
info, and you can download the 1/10/96 version from the web site:

	Robert Ricketts
	The PC Consultant
	PO Box 42086
	Houston, TX 77242-2086
	713/826-2629 voice-mail, leave a msg

	Internet: robert@pcconsultant.com
	Web: www.neosoft.com/~robert/pcc
	(If WWW URL breaks, send e-mail for current URL)

IMO one of the neatest features of this package is the latitude
longitude data for NXX's and the ability to do distance lookups
between sets of NPA/NXX pairs.


timd@pictel.com  (Tim Dziechowski)

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

From: kayani1@ix.netcom.com (Oleg V. Melnikov)
Subject: Need Computer-Telephone Integration
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 06:46:28 GMT
Organization: Netcom


Hi All,

At first please take my big pardon for bad English.  At the present
moment we are going to develop a computer-telephone system for our
firm. And we are going to do some useful things, BUT we don't know
HOW and don't know WHICH EQUIPMENT should we use.  We need the
following:

1. Not very complicated VoiceMail/Automatic Attendant/Fax-on-demand
system. I mean the system which can do the following: 

    - voice prompt for callers
    - redirect incoming calls to departments (with voice menu)
    - in case of all phones in department is busy - customer could
      remain a voice message.
    - redirect incoming calls to extensions ( in case that caller know
      the necessary extension)
    - in case of extension is busy or not answer - customer could
      remain a voice message.
    - send some predefined documents by fax to our customers
      (to order the necessary document user should to press keys on
      touch-tone phone) with voice menu.
    - number of extensions ~ 40
    - number of documents ~ 50

2. Expansion Card with a few modems in personal computer that may be
used as a PBX controlled by computer.  Because all telephone calls
from USA to Russia is cheaper then calls from the Russia to the USA we
need the following: 

Our staff in Russia send E-mail through Internet to some address in
USA. This computer with Card receive a mail, then try to call to
Russia and in case of connecting (long tone) calls to internal
extension and connect Russian part with extension.

All answers please send me by E-MAil     kayani1@ix.netcom.com

Any help will be appreciated.


Oleg V. Melnikov

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

Subject: Re: No Overlay in Houston, TX
From: jeff.brielmaier@yob.com (Jeff Brielmaier)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 04:59:00 -0600
Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569
Reply-To: jeff.brielmaier@yob.com (Jeff Brielmaier)


Dave Levenson (dave@westmark.com) responded to me ...

> Jeff Brielmaier (jeff.brielmaier@yob.com) writes:

>> The 6PM newscast indicate that there will be seven-digit dialing within
>> each AC and ten-digit dialing for 713<->281 dialing.  They also
>> indicate that because of geographic split, it is possible a third AC may
>> have to be added shortly (they will have more hearings on this), and
>> in four to seven years there will be another geographic split due to
>> lack for phone numbers.

> If they'd implement 1 + ten digits, rather than ten digits between
> area codes, it would probably delay the future splits by adding
> approximately 180 possible prefixes per area code.  Why are they not
> doing this?

Unfortunately, the biggest "complaint" the PUC heard at the the public
hearings were from indivuals saying that being required to dial
ten-digits for every call would be too hard for them to do all-of-the-
time.  None of thes people looked ahead four to eight years when
another area code is predicted to required in the Houston metro area.
The PUC heard from a number of business owners that were in favor of
the overlay because of the expense of geographic split (changing their
phone number and updating databases of their customers who would have
their number changed).

It looks like Houston is going end up like other large cities with a
number of AC's in a (relatively) small geographic area.  :(


KingQWK 1.05 # [PK] * I'm NOT addicted.  I just use the modem all the time.
Ye Olde Bailey BBS Zyxel 713-520-1569(V.32bis) USR 713-520-9566(V.34/FC)
   Houston,Texas             yob.com           Home of alt.cosuard

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

From: jdearing@netaxs.com (John Dearing)
Subject: Re: Generations of Engineers
Date: 21 Feb 1996 02:26:10 GMT
Organization: Philadelphia's Complete Internet Provider


Donald MacDonald (100731.3464@CompuServe.COM) wrote:

> I was very taken with the pride that Jane Fraser's dad had in his job.
> This is, I believe, pretty typical of the commitment to service of
> generations of telephone engineers and technicians.  Do the phone
> companies ever stop to think about who made them great?  Who made the
> big bucks for them?

Clearly, they no longer do. Just look at the recent CWA/Bell Atlantic
contract negotiations. SIX MONTHS without a contract. Suspensions,
firings and a lot of hard feelings over nonsense.

But you can rest assured that Ray Smith and the rest of the gang will
get a huge bonus next year along with the stock options, etc, etc,
etc ...

Companies love to say that "people are our greatest asset" but they
don't really believe in it. If they did, they *would* stop and think
about issues like employee morale and dedication and the service
ethic.

As long as big business can't see past the next quarterly stock report, 
it will *never* get any better and will only get worse.

I've got 20+ years in with Bell Atlantic right now. I'm not sure I'll
be around to see 30. I'd very much like to put in 30 or 35 years with
them.  I've had a good career with them and been by most measures a
"good employee". I just don't know if that's enough anymore and I'm
not alone.

Thanks Pat, for letting me vent. I feel better now. 8-)


John Dearing : Philadelphia Area Computer Society IBM SIG President
       Email : jdearing@netaxs.com
   U.S.Snail : 725 Ripley Place, Phila PA 19111-2524 (USA)
 Voice Phone : +1.215.725.0103 (after 5pm Eastern)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Nothing is like it used to be in the
industry. Twenty plus years of employment with telco used to be the
norm rather than the exception as you know. Years and years ago there
were lots of people there who really did care about providing quality
service. Anymore, I just don't know.   PAT]

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

From: johnd@mail.ic.net (John N. Dreystadt)
Subject: Re: Generations of Engineers
Date: 21 Feb 1996 01:42:52 GMT
Organization: Software Services


> As all remnants of the old Bell Labs continue to disappear, I worry
> about what we have lost. 

> My father (who will be 80 in April) worked for Bell Labs for 35 years.
> He was the telephone engineer on the Long Lines when it laid the first
> transatlantic telephone cable in the mid50s. During the time he worked
> there, Bell Labs engineers were encouraged to take equipment home.
> They could take any kind of equipment. The Bell Labs kids were
> recognizable in school by their four-hole notebooks and matching paper.

> As a consequence, I grew up in a household where there was engineering
> stuff just lying around for me to play with, especially phones,
> batteries, connectors, various kinds of meters, etc., etc. Ok, this is
> probably not the only reason I ended up as a professor of engineering
> (being good at math was another reason) but I have to believe that the
> Bell Labs policy of "take the stuff home" made a difference to me. And
> I can't be the only kid who was affected by that policy. 

> It won't happen in the future to other kids. 

Remember though that we are going to be getting a new generation of
people who learned to use and program computers because of the number
of programmers who brought home systems from work (or who bought early
systems). I feel like singing "Sunrise Sunset" for some reason.


John Dreystadt

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 17:43 EST
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: Southern New England Telephone
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y.


> Hasn't SNET been in both the long distance and local telephone
> business since the AT&T breakup? Was it exempted from the restrictions
> placed on other Bells?

> [Pat sez: ...  Cincinnati Bell was the only telco with Bell in its
> name that was never part of the Bell System officially.

The Bell System grew haphazardly in the early part of this century, by
various mergers, takeovers, and other financial shenanigans the
details of which I've never figured out.  It happens that while AT&T
was the majority or 100% owner of most of their local telcos, they
were minority shareholders in Cincinnati Bell and SNET, with the
majority of the stock of those two companies being traded on the NYSE
(as they still are.)

Those two companies were in practice as much part of the Bell System
as were AT&T controlled companies like Illinois Bell and New England
Telephone, using the same Bell trademarks, buying their equipment from
Western Electric, and using the same service standards.  AT&T could
certainly have tendered for the rest of the stock of CB and SNET had
they wanted to, but they presumably figured that since they de facto
controlled both companies, being the largest shareholder of each and
having friendly management and directors firmly in place, why bother.

At the time of the Bell breakup, the telcos which AT&T controlled were
turned into the RBOCs, and the rest of AT&T's minority telco
investments sold off.  Since AT&T didn't legally control CB or SNET,
the consent decree didn't apply to either of them.  This meant that at
the time of the decree, rather than turning into RBOCs they turned
into independent non-Bell telcos.  SNET promptly stopped using the
Bell trademark, replacing it with a sort of squashed starfish, and CB
also changed their logo.  As non-RBOC companies, they're not subject
to consent decree restrictions so they could continue selling long
distance service and doing other stuff forbidden to RBOCs.


John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof

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

From: slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu (Steven Lichter)
Subject: Re: Phone Fires Discussion/25 Years Ago
Date: 21 Feb 1996 15:19:56 -0800
Organization: GINA and CORE+ Services of The California State University


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message from Steve arrived here
just today, buried in a file with a bunch of other stuff due to some
error in handling somewhere. I feel bad about not having it here at
the time he wrote it on February 9, two weeks ago.  PAT]

Remember what happened in Sylmar 25 years ago today? Most have
forgotten.

The above are my ideas and have nothing to do with whoever my employer is.
SysOp Apple Elite II and OggNet Hub (909)359-5338 2400/14.4 24 hours,
Home of GBBS/LLUCE Support for the Apple II. slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Steve, I am sorry to say *I* don't re-
member. What did happen in Sylmar on February 9, 1970?  Tell us please.  PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 23:27 EST
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: Nynex Ignorant of Caller-Pays Cellular
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y.


> This is no more ridiculous than a tariff in some distant place
> affecting me.

Fortunately, long distance companies don't have billing arrangements
with cellular companies.  Caller-pays cellular only works within the
LATA, since the cellular company is having the local telco collect the
charges for them.

In practice, this means that an inter-LATA call to a caller-pays
cellular number is like an inter-LATA call to a 976 number --
depending on the whim of the IXC, either the call completes at the
regular non-surcharged rate, or the call is blocked.

I wonder how people who subscribe to caller-pays cellular will react
when they find out that most people in the country can't call them.

Further thought: as the RBOCs start to get into the LD business, if
you choose, say, US West as your LD company, will you get socked with
the surcharged prices for calls to any caller-pays and 976 number in
US West territory?  After all, they have the billing arrangements.


John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl@iecc.com "Space aliens are stealing American jobs." - Stanford econ prof

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

From: irish@access4.digex.net (James J. McDonald)
Subject: Need Zip Code to NPA-NXX Information
Date: 21 Feb 1996 16:44:15 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA


Looking for a source of information which will equate NPA-NXX to
either Zip code or (Better still) Time Zone Geographic Location.  I
know that the location information is available in various data- bases
(Like the ones used for plotting V&H locations for Mileage estimates
for Leased Lines), but I have not see any information on this in any
other arena.  I would appreciate any information which would lead me
to this information, hopefully on CD ROM in comma deliminated format.


Jim McDonald


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our resident expert here on all aspects
of the one mprovement 
lan started by the Post Office now
some thirty-five years ago is Carl Moore. If anyone knows where to
find the information you are seeking, he probably would.   PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 96 13:09:40 PST
From: lars@RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: The Right to an Address?
Organization: Rockwell International - CMC Network Products


In article  Cor du Fijn from
Erasmus University in Rotterdam writes:

> Being a lawstudent I intend to write a paper on number portability. 

> What happens with my e-mail address when my provider goes bankrupt
> or changes its name?

Let the buyer beware ... the general answer is that your contract with
your provider should address this issue.

In the simple consumer/end-user case, where your mailbox resides on a
service host belonging to your internet service provider (ISP) and is
addressed as "username@isp-host-name", there is no doubt that the
provider can go out of business, leaving you with an address that no
longer functions.

In the not-so-simple case where you have asked the provider to register
a domain name for your account (i.e. the domain "du-fijn.rotterdam.nl"
has been registered for you) and you are receiving mail addressed to
cor@du-fijn.rotterdam.nl, it totally depends on the contract
relationship between you and the ISP. If you thought of this when you
signed the contract, the name "du-fijn.rotterdam.nl" belongs to you, and
you are free to open an account with another ISP, and tell the network
registry (in your case, I guess it would be RIPE-NCC or its designated
local affiliate) to point the translation of the name to your new
service provider. If you did not, it is quite possible, that the name
will be registered to the old ISP, and THEY OWN IT: If you want to use
that name, you must buy service from that provider.

The courts have not had much time to sort this out yet, but I have heard
of cases where an ISP refused to let a business customer leave.
 
> This is not an uncommon problem in the telephone world, but becomes
> more drastic if e.g. your e-mail adress or webpage is changed (since
> your address is only an alpha-numeric translation of a number).

The domain name is the "real" address. The number is just a meachnism to
route the packets. If you change service providers, you will almost
certainly have to renumber every host in your network. Worse yet: If
your local service provider changes to buy THEIR attachment from a
different backbone network, you will most likely have to renumber also.

> Does anyone have suggestions on where to find more about both legal 
> and technical solutions to this problem?

The Internet Society is working on establishing an Internet Law Task
Force (ILTF). The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is lobbying for
intelligent legislation in this area.


Lars Poulsen			Internet E-mail: lars@RNS.COM
RNS / Meret Optical Comm:s	Phone:        +1-805-562-3158
7402 Hollister Avenue 		Telefax:      +1-805-968-8256
Santa Barbara, CA 93117	  Internets designed and built while you wait
 
------------------------------

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Domain Name Snatching
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 21:40:17 GMT


I recently got something from the California govinfo mailing list
about a proposed California law that would make it a crime for a third
party to "hijack" a domain.  It seems the intention is to prevent
someone from grabbing the domain of a well-known company and then
trying to sell it back to them for a "premium". It wasn't clear where
this came from (proposed laws always have potential backers to write
them), but it would be interesting to see such a case actually
prosecuted.  

And how does one go about proving intent in such cases?  The parent
company of my present employer, the French company Thomson Group, has
a name that matches an extant domain that has been on the Net for some
time prior to our investigations.  Were this law passed, could we then
grab their domain because we've got lawyers, deep pockets, and this
law behind us?  Hm ...

Caveat: no way do I speak for Thomson Group, nor would I ever
seriously entertain such an idea even if there were such a law in
force.


 Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
         WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: Devin Hosea 
Subject: Parallel Fax Transmissions
Date: 21 Feb 1996 08:12:34 GMT
Organization: Interimage LLC


Does anyone know of a fax/modem type product that will fax DIFFERENT
faxes on several phone lines at once, e.g. not a broadcast fax, but
rather one which will attempt to fax out the entire buffer using
multiple lines?


Thanks,

DFH

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #76
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 21 21:58:14 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id VAA19847; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 21:58:14 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 21:58:14 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602220258.VAA19847@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #77

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 21 Feb 96 21:58:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 77

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages (Wayne Huffman)
    Re: Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages (Bill Sohl)
    Re: NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion (Robert McMillin)
    Re: Imponderables About Telephones (lr@access5.digex.net)
    Re: Imponderables About Telephones (Wayne Huffman)
    Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool! (Mark Crispin)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Martin McCormick)
    Re: New NPAs for Eastern Massachusetts (Richard Rabinoff)
    Re: Telephony For the Deaf? (Linc Madison)
    Re: Telephony For the Deaf? (James G. Gorman)
    Re: How Does a Merlin System Work? (Robert Wolf)
    AT&T RateGate - What is it? (T.J. O'Connell)
    Phone System For Sale (Steve Collins)
    How Many Telephones Exist? (Curtis Saville)
    Employment Opportunity With GlobalCom (Doug Gurich)
    Want To Buy: Small PBX With Analog, E&M and T1 Cards (Matt Noah)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
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*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
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* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Wayne Huffman 
Subject: Re: Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 05:21:38 -0500


AT&T prepared a film about the New York fire called "Miracle on x
Street" - x was the street the building was on - I don't remember it
exactly. I saw the film at a C&P Telephone open house during the "One
Bell System - It Works" campaign. It showed the massive resources of
the Bell System descending on lower Manhattan to rebuild the CO. I
recall seeing a bank of C&P of West Virginia pay stations in the film.
At the time, my mom worked for C&P, and I was a sophomore in high
school. I went to work for C&P after I graduated from high school, as
I recall partly because of the telephone "family" I saw and liked. I
will admit that the story of this fire and other "Spirit of Service"
stories still choke me up a little. If anyone knows where I can find a
copy of this film please e-mail me at whuffman@intr.net 

I was at an AT&T switching school in Downers Grove, IL for two weeks
during and immediately following the Hinsdale fire. I couldn't call
back to Virginia to tell my boss that I got to the school OK. We
couldn't get in the CO to "enhance" our training, though.


Wayne Huffman

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

From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl)
Subject: Re: Need Information on Telco Disasters/Fires/Outages
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:55:23 GMT
Organization: BL Enterprises


Quad  wrote:

> I'm looking for information (approximate date and city, so I can look
> up references at the library) about any disasters (fires or severe
> outages) in telcos in the United States in the past ten years (the more
> recent the better).  Any help will be appreciated.

> I already know about the one in 1965 that was posted here recently,
> and also the one in 1988 near Chicago.  Others are needed, though.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was also the big fire in New York
> City in the middle 1970's, and the AT&T outage due to a software bug
> back in 1991. This latter incident is in the Telecom Archives.   PAT]

It was 1974 ... the E13 Street Central Office fire.


Bill Sohl (K2UNK)               billsohl@planet.net
Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor
Budd Lake, New Jersey


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And hopefully Steve Lichter will get
back to us soon with the details of Sylmar in February, 1970.  I don't
know if anyone would still be around who has any real knowledge of
the fire in the Chicago suburban central office back about 1950, and
I am positive no one is left who has any details of the large fire
at the Chicago Union Stockyards about 1935 which completely surrounded
(but did not harm other than smoke damage) the 312-YARds (312-925)
central office which sat in the stock yard complex at that time.  PAT]

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Re: NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:20:44 GMT


On 19 Feb 1996 13:06:01 PDT, psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) said:

> 213 Area Code Running Out of Numbers 

> Telecommunications Industry Evaluates Relief Options 

> Los Angeles, CA -- Due to increased demand for telephone numbers, a
> new area code will be introduced in some or all of the Los Angeles
> area that now uses the 213 area code, the telecommunications industry
> has started to announce.

[...]

> Some of the cities currently served by the 213 area code include
> Hollywood, Highland Park, Laurel Canyon, Huntington Park, Montebello
> and all of downtown Los Angeles.

Good grief!  213 is pretty small now.  Dividing it geographically
would, I bet, render Huntington Park, Montebello, and generally the
eastern and southern portions of 213 in the new NPA, while eastern
Beverly Hills (actually in the northwest part of 213), Hollywood, and
Downtown remain 213.  A few questions:

- Does anybody know if this is reasonable?  That is, where has
  the growth in numbers come from?

- Does anyone know how large 213 is now geographically?

- If 213 split along the lines described earlier, would that
  make it the smallest NPA in the country?

- Geographically, what's the smallest NPA now?


    Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
	    WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: lr@access5.digex.net (Sir Topham Hatt)
Subject: Re: Imponderables About Telephones
Date: 21 Feb 1996 16:59:57 GMT


Seymour Dupa (grumpy@en.com) wrote:

> Security.  Besides, the switching equipment (for which the building
> was built) does not need windows.  Oh yes -- the people -- they were
> just an afterthought.

The people don't get anywhere near where the windows might be anyhow.
Actually, the phone company used to put windows in the building, just
for aesthetic rasons.  They were almost completely blocked inside by
the equipment.  One amusing story is that the telephone building in
the Charles Village section of Baltimore (200 block of E. 31 ST) was
one of these windowed buildings in the style that Steve Johnson in his
"Architectural History of the Bell System" referred to as Telephone
Company Gothic.  It was augmented by the new style window-less switch
building next door.  As equipment got smaller, the old building was
abandoned and redeveloped into the "Telephone Apartments."

The AT&T longlines facility in Finksburg MD is underground.  It has
two football field sized floors as when it was built it was designed
for a ten fold increase in capacity.  It had gthree turbine generators
and a whole lot of fuel to keep the place in operation through an
extended power failure.  What they didn't plan for was the fact that
the size of equipment got smaller faster than the capacity growth.
Only about a quarter of one floor is occupied (engineers in slack time
have been known to go to the unoccupied lower level and practice
tennis).  Two of the generators were removed and relocated and they
decided that they didn't need all that fuel that they purchased at 8
cents/gallon prior to the oil crisis and relocated much of that as
well.


Ron


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing to remember also is that
until the 1950's and even into the 1960's central air conditioning
on a scale needed to cool a large office building was not at all 
common. When I worked for UC in the phone room during 1958-61 there
was no air conditioning at all. There were large windows and there
were overhead ceiling fans as part of the overhead incadescent light
fixtures. I recall the accounting office for Commonwealth Edison in
the downtown area in 1960: no computers at all of course, and row
after row after row -- I think ten rows wide with twenty desks per
row, about two hundred clerks in that one large room -- it had no
air conditioning and relied on overhead ceiling fans along with
windows which could be opened in the summer. If it started to rain
or the wind got too strong then people would go close the windows.

I remember the IBT central office at 61st and Kenwood Street known
as 'Kenwood Bell'. In addition to the switches on the first floor
the second floor was devoted entirely to the phone operators. One
very hot night in August, about 1960-61 I was walking past the
building when it was very evident a heavy rain was going to come
soon. With their windows open you could hear those switches a block
away. I do not know how the people who lived across the street 
could deal with it all night long in the summer with all the windows
open. Maybe five seconds of silence every couple minutes when it
so happened no one was dialing a call at that instant or hanging
up on one, etc and the rest of the time a constant clatter as the
switches and relays operated; really quite noisy even outside. 

This was one of those storms in the summer which just start with
very little if any warning: 96 degrees hot at 11 pm, very humid,
a few bursts of lightning and then a downpour. I am reminded of the
music of Sir Edward Elgar in his opera 'King Olaf'  ' ... as torrents
in summer ...' or as the advertisement for Morton Salt used to say,
'when it rains, it pours' ... although they were talking about their
salt and I am talking about the sky overhead.  Across the street at
the Kenwood Bell a man on the first floor is going around closing
all the windows. On the second floor, I see one of the operators
come over to the window and lean out looking upward, then putting
her hand out. Ducking back inside she goes around closing all the
windows on the second floor.  

Until sometime in the 1960's most private homes did not have any form
of air conditioning and offices/commercial establishments just started
getting into it about that same time. Pity the poor office workers or
switchboard operators in those days. Someone asked me how did we ever
get along without air-conditioning working in the phone room at U of C
all night: simple, you sat there and suffered. Now that new modern
equipment needs very close climate control to function properly, and
central heat and cooling is very common, many business places look 
at windows as a nuisance and a security problem.   PAT]

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

From: Wayne Huffman 
Subject: Re: Imponderables About Telephones
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 05:08:23 -0500


Many telco (Bell Atlantic) buildings in the Washington, DC area have
windows in the switchroom. I could look out the window and see my
apartment from the 5ESS room in the Silver Spring, MD CO - an
AT&T/(was) C&P shared location. It was great living so close - I once
got called out for a trouble and was in the office, had the trouble
cleared, and was back in bed in 20 minutes (and got four hours call-out
pay.)


Wayne

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

From: Mark Crispin 
Subject: Re: Seiko Pager and Watch Combined! Too Cool!
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:29:32 -0800
Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing


If anyone in the Seattle, Portland, or LA areas is interested in trying
out a Seiko Messagewatch but doesn't want to pay $90 for the cheapest new
watch, I recently upgraded mine to the newest model and am willing to part
with my old one (first-generation).  The deficiencies of the first
generation watch are: no light, no alarm, no message lock, and limited
alphabetic display, larger size, less battery life.

The time is free; the paging system is $8 - $12/month depending upon
whether you pay annually, quarterly, or monthly.

Email me if interested.

 -- Mark --


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: After receiving Mark's note, I sent him
a short one in return asking a few questions, and he then responded
to me.   PAT]

On Tue, 20 Feb 1996 09:37:03 -0500 (EST), Patrick A. Townson wrote:

> Will your watch work in other parts of the country, such as around
> here in the Chicago area (naturally the pager would have to be
> registered with a paging company) ...

At the present time, from the perspective of someone in Chicago it
would be a physically large and very inferior digital watch.  You can
display the date, time, and a second time, and set these.  That's it.
This perspective would be shared by anyone who is not in the Seattle,
Portland, or Los Angeles markets.

The "paging company" is Seiko Communications; I don't know of any
other company that serves these watches.

> What about the time setting function?

If you are in the markets served, you get the time setting function
for free; the time updates are a broadcast message.  The information
services (weather, financial, sport scores, lottery, etc.) and paging
require you to sign up.

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

From: Martin McCormick 
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Date: 21 Feb 1996 16:39:36 GMT
Organization: Oklahoma State University  Stillwater, OK


The name Lucent Technologies would suggest light as in translucent.

It's a cleaver name.  Think of fiber optics.  Think of all those good
workers who busted various parts of their bodies for them all those
years who are now hoping for light at the end of a long tunnel.


Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 36.7N97.4W
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Data Communications Group

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

From: rabinof@ix.netcom.com (Richard Rabinoff)
Subject: Re: New NPAs for Eastern Massachusetts
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:00:58 GMT
Organization: Netcom


fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush) wrote:

> BTW, a check of www.bellcore.com shows a "757" NPA listed for
> Virginia.  Anyone know anything about this one?  Also, I note that the
> new 268 code for Antigua spells out "ANT," and the new 758 code for
> St. Lucia spells "SLU."  Clever...

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The new area code for the north suburbs
> of Chicago is 847 which spells out VIP, or Very Important Person (People).
> Ameritech has been pushing the 'VIP' thing in their advertising.  PAT]

Well, if that's the case, why is the new NPA for the Bahamas 242 (BHA)
and not 224 (BAH) ?? Out of curiousity, does anyone know if there's
any logical explanation of how BellCore is deciding on new NPAs ?


Richard Rabinoff   CMI

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:23:47 -0800
From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison)
Subject: Re: Telephony For the Deaf?
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Reply-To: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison)


In article  you wrote:

> A deaf friend who is buying a new PC and modem wants to be able to use
> her computer as a TTD device and also to record messages left from a
> TTD phone. I presume it is just a question of locating the right
> software, but after much searching I have had no luck. Could someone
> please give me some pointers as to where I might look?

> Also, is there software that will allow her to communicate with a
> voice call? That is, convert the caller's voice to text and her text
> to a voice.

It is not possible to use a computer and an ordinary modem to connect
to an ordinary TDD.  They are incompatible on a hardware level -- the
tones used to generate the signals are different and the entire format
of the signal is different.  If you ever listen to a TDD, you will
hear its strange warbles while the person is typing, but you will hear
silence during pauses.  A modem, on the other hand, has a constant
"carrier" signal that is always present, with data signals
superimposed.  In addition to that, TDD machines use 5-bit Baudot
encoding instead of 7-bit or 8-bit ASCII encoding for the character
set.  Add to that the fact that TDD machines operate at 45.5 bps,
which is slower than any ordinary modem can cope with.

Many TDD machines have an "ASCII" option (usually at 300 bps) which
can connect to an ordinary computer and modem.  Alternately, you can
buy modems which also have TDD standards built in, but these are rare
and probably fairly expensive, since the demand is very low.

For information, try your local government agency that deals with deaf
folks.  In California, it's usually called DCARA (Deaf Counseling
Advocacy and Referral Associates), and is usually a county agency.
On the Worldwide Web, you might try the National Information Center on
Deafness,   Gallaudet
University is the national university for the deaf, in Washington, DC.
If you don't have Web access, their address is:

Gallaudet University
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington DC 20002-3695
(202)651-5051  (202)651-5052 TTY  (202)651-5054 FAX
Email: nicd@gallux.gallaudet.edu 

By the way, the abbreviations for these things get a little confusing:
TTY = TeleTYpewriter
TDD = Telephone Device for the Deaf
TT  = Text Telephone (the new term, used in the A.D.A. and elsewhere)


Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com

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

From: jg6164@idir.net (James G. Gorman)
Subject: Re: Telephony For the Deaf?
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 01:39:20 GMT
Organization: Internet Direct Communications - Lawrence, Ks - (913) 841-2220


R. Varkki George  wrote:

> A deaf friend who is buying a new PC and modem wants to be able to use
> her computer as a TTD device and also to record messages left from a
> TTD phone. I presume it is just a question of locating the right
> software, but after much searching I have had no luck. Could someone
> please give me some pointers as to where I might look?

> Also, is there software that will allow her to communicate with a
> voice call? That is, convert the caller's voice to text and her text
> to a voice.

First, TTY's (Teletype), TDD's (Telecommunications Devices for the
Deaf), or TT's (Text Telephones) primarily use the Baudot protocol
rather than ASCII.  Most of these companies charge extra for including
ASCII capability.  Consequently, most deaf still use Baudot.  In
addition, Baudot has some advantages since it doesn't use a continuous
carrier like ASCII.

In order to use a PC as a TT or TDD with Baudot you must purchase a
special modem that has this protocol built in.  There are two or three
companies that provide these for the deaf.  In addition, you do need
different software to decode the Baudot characters, although one
company does offer a modem that performs this conversion automatically.  

Some time back the CCITT accepted a specification for regular PC
modems that will also support Baudot.  I believe it was V.16 or V.18.
I don't think many modem manufacturers have designed this into their
modems yet but it might not hurt to call some of them.

Secondly, I am not aware of any software that does an adequate job of
translating speech into text from many people.  The most reliable
software must be 'trained' by only one person.  However, the Americans
with Disabilities Act required that all voice common carriers supply
what is known as a "relay center" for just this purpose.  All 50
states now have relay centers and it should be listed in the call
guide pages of your local directory.  

The relay centers "relay" messages between hearing users and deaf
users.  In other words, they speak what the deaf person types and type
what the hearing person speaks.  The charges for this can be no more
than what a hearing person pays for telephone call i.e. local calls
are free (or rated at the going message unit rate for those areas with
usage based local calls).  Toll calls are rated the same as for a
hearing person dialing 1+ or through the operator (many jurisdictions
discount these calls because it takes longer to pass the same message.)

There is at least one usenet newsgroup that you should post this to:

	alt.support.hearing-loss.

In addition, I know Compuserve has a forum for deaf users but I don't
remember the name.

This is a complicated subject to cover in only a few lines.  If you
need any more info, let me know.


Jim Gorman    jg6164@idir.net

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

From: Robert Wolf 
Subject: Re: How Does a Merlin System Work?
Date: 22 Feb 1996 00:04:01 GMT
Organization: Millennium Telecom


gregm@cc.gatech.edu (Greg Montgomery) wrote:

> I work for a small company that has a AT&T Merlin system and I'm
> curious to know how it works.  Is there an actual switch on site or is
> something like Centrex?  The most knowledgable guy at the company said
> all he knows it is an "Essex" (sp?) system.

It is nothing at all like Centrex.  Centrex is a very large PBX that
is housed in a Telco Central Office.  A Merlin is a premise-based key
system.  The control unit sits in a wiring closet somewhere on your
premises.

> One last request -- Can anyone recommend any starter books for getting
> info on the phone industry?  I know a little about switches, costing
> issues (i.e. mileage, bands, software defined networks, etc.), but I
> need a better overall view of the industry, along with detail into
> various areas.

The phone industry really has two completely distinct parts.
Equipment and services.  One very good book on services is "Long
Distance for Less: by Dr. Robert Self.  Since this industry continues
to evolve, (with the latest change occurring with the signing of the
Telecom Deregulation Bill within the past month) make sure you get a
recent edition.


Robert Wolf        member: Society of Telecommunications Consultants
Millennium Telecom         http://www.keyconnect.com/millennium
818-790-7339               Fax 818-790-7309
Consulting in Voice, Video, and Data Communications


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I read what I believe was the first
edition of Dr. Self's book sometime in the early 1980's and was
very impressed with the tremendous amount of detail he presented
and the ease in making comparisons. I recommend the book, if later
editions are as well prepared as the first one.    PAT]

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

From: tjoconnell@aol.com (TJOconnell)
Subject: AT&T RateGate - What is it?
Date: 21 Feb 1996 19:52:40 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: tjoconnell@aol.com (TJOconnell)


Anyone have information on RateGate, a new service(?) AT&T has been
starting to advertise.  Just curious what it is and how to find out more
information on it.  


Thanks,

t.

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

From: stevec@eapi.com (Steve Collins)
Subject: Phone System For Sale
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:09:02 GMT
Organization: Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc.


I have an old TIE Meritor phone system for sale:

Capacity 12 lines, 36 sets;
20 phones;
Full set of extra cards.

Please call Bob Collins at 708-297-4900 if you are interested.

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

From: curtis saville 
Subject: How Many Telephones Exist?
Date: 21 Feb 1996 23:00:26 GMT
Organization: InfoRamp Inc., Toronto, Ontario (416) 363-9100


Hello,

I'm conducting some research for a corporate video -- and am curious
to find out how many telephones exist WorldWide?  I would also like to
find out how many telephones exist in Canada and the United States
respectively. Any facts, figures or leads would be much appreciated!


Curtis    CKMS M.G.I.

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:26:33 -0800
From: Doug Gurich 
Subject: Employment Opportunity at GlobalCom


GlobalCom International is seeking to fill the following two full time,
on-site positions:

- Lead Switch Technician/Manager

Candidates would be highly experienced in all aspects of switching
systems, with specific experience in Excel switches (or similar) for
call back, VPN and debit card services.  Experience with data, video
and Internet services is a plus.

- Lead Telephony Software Development Engineer

Candidates would have extensive experience with developing telephony
applications such as IVR, call back, debit card, VPN, etc. on Unix
platforms in C.  Experience with Internet applications is a plus, as
is knowledge of NMS hardware.

GlobalCom is a rapidly growing telecommunications company with clients
in over 40 countries.  We are headquartered in beautiful San Antonio,
Texas.  

For more information, contact Doug Gurich at dgurich@glc.net.

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

From: mjn@sage.acti.com (Matt Noah)
Subject: Wanted to Buy: Small PBX With Analog, E&M and T1 Cards
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 01:23:11 GMT
Organization: ACT Networks, Inc.
Reply-To: matt@acti.com


I would like to purchase a small PBX (PC-based is ok, too) with the
following features:

T1 interface
POTS interfaces (FXO and FXS) (4 minimum)
E&M interfaces (2 minimum)
E1 interface (desired but not necessary)
ISDN BRI interface (desired but not necessary)
ISDN PRI interface (desired but not necessary)

Please call or e-mail me at:

Matt Noah
805.388.2474 x111
matt@acti.com

Matt Noah for CA State Assembly 1996 - District 37
noah@west.net   http://www.west.net/~noah/noah96.html

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #77
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Feb 22 11:07:38 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id LAA05468; Thu, 22 Feb 1996 11:07:38 -0500 (EST)
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 11:07:38 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602221607.LAA05468@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #78

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 22 Feb 96 11:07:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 78

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Brett Frankenberger)
    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Eric Bohlman)
    Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed (Robert McMillin)
    No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines (Bob Forsythe)
    Re: More Great News From Ameritech Cellular (Ben Liberman)
    Re: Telephony For the Deaf? (Eric Bohlman)
    Re: Telephony For the Deaf? (Christoph F. Strnadl)
    Assignment of New 888 Numbers (Jeff Bein)
    Budget Bill Seeks Toll Free Number Auction (Newswire via Gary Bouwkamp)
    Re: Ring No Answer on 5ESS and USR Total Control MP16 (James Gorak)
    Need Details of Alarm Panel to Central Station Signalling (Peter Simpson)
    For Sale: Used Alcoa Fujikura Fusion Splicers (John Skenesky)
    Re: Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up? (lowellkim@aol.com)
    Re: Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up? (Steve Carroll)
    Please Send Information on Excel (Robert Shipley)
    The Meaning of "914-4T" (Was Re: 710) (Mark J. Cuccia)
    Meridian SL1-Area Code Change Process (siegertk@aol.com)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: brettf@netcom.com (Brett Frankenberger)
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 03:28:28 GMT


In article , Sir Topham Hatt
 wrote:

> Matt LeComte (mattma@wa2000.winarea.biddeford.com) wrote:

>> I don't understand why when I download something the fastest it
>> transfers is 1.5k/sec, but I'am connected at 14400. So why am I not
>> going faster? I'm not running any other web browsers. I use Netscape

> Netscape reports it's speed in Bytes per second.  14400 is the bits
> per second including the stop and start bits plus your eight data
> bits.  The best you should expect to obtain therefore is 1440
> bytes/sec.

With no error control or compression, this is true.  With error
control (v.42), the data is sent over the 'phone line' synchronously,
so the start bit and stop bit are dropped, so you get 14400/8=1800
bytes/sec.  This assumes the serial port on your PC it set to at least
that ... the start and stop bits still have to get sent over the
serial cable, so if your serial port is set to less than 18000baud
(flames about my use of the word baud will be met with flames
explaining why the use was appropriate in this context :) ) you won't
get 1800 characters per second.

With compression, you can do even better than that.

> Since WEB stuff is mostly HTML, I'd expect a lot of compression on
> text (less so on images which are either JPEG or LZW compressed).

TCP headers, though, don't compress too well ... and HTML has plenty
of them zipping around.


brettf@netcom.com      Brett Frankenberger

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

From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed
Organization: OMS Development
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:37:53 GMT


Sir Topham Hatt (lr@access5.digex.net) wrote:

> Matt LeComte (mattma@wa2000.winarea.biddeford.com) wrote:

>> I don't understand why when I download something the fastest it
>> transfers is 1.5k/sec, but I'am connected at 14400. So why am I not
>> going faster? I'm not running any other web browsers. I use Netscape

> Netscape reports it's speed in Bytes per second.  14400 is the bits
> per second including the stop and start bits plus your eight data
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> bits.  The best you should expect to obtain therefore is 1440
> bytes/sec.

AFAIK, v.32 and above strip off the start and stop bits over the
modem-modem link (the data is actually being sent synchronously, so
they aren't needed), so the byte rate should be the bit rate divided
by 8, not 10, assuming that the computer-modem link at each end is
running faster than than the modem-modem link speed (as it should be),
since the start and stop bits are present on that link.

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Re: Question About 14.4k and Transfer Speed
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:03:56 GMT


On 21 Feb 1996 03:29:59 PDT, FOURNOLS Romain COM/MKT  said:

> It's a mathematical reason !

> The speed (14400) is 14400 bits per second.
> 1 byte (octet in french) contains (usually) 8 bits of data and 1 stop 
> bit.

> Your average speed (theorical, depends on line quality) is :
> 14400/9 =3D 1600 bytes per second
> and 1 kbytes=3D1024 bytes
> the result (in Kbytes) is 1600/1024=3D1.5625 K/sec

Hm.  Since we have the overhead of a start and stop bit, isn't this
2+8 = 10 bits, and therefore 1440 kBps (at least, into the modem)?
Also, since v.32bis is an internally synchronous protocol, does that
mean that we can effectively ignore the start and stop bits for
transport through the phone line? 


Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
	    WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: rf@ZONE.NET (Bob Forsythe)
Subject: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines
Date: 22 Feb 1996 02:12:09 -0500
Organization: ZONE One Network Exchange                212/824-4000
Reply-To: rf@ZONE.NET


Recently, our client has been having difficulties with their new
telephone service.  They use a LEC by the name of Teleport
Communications Group (TCG), whom so kindly dug up the street to
install fiber optics and put the building they're in "on-net".  Here
comes the crux of the problem:

V.34 / 28.8kbps callers to modems connected via "POTS" lines keep
hanging up intermittently.  Sometimes every fifteen seconds or so,
sometimes every couple of hours.  The POTS lines are provisioned via a
5ESS switch over an OC-3 (AT&T DDM-2000) to an AT&T SLC 5 channel
bank.  The nonsense that is being fed our poor client is that the POTS
lines they've been connected with are incapable of data transmission
speeds in excess of 9600bps.  Of course, this sounds like sheer BS
because of a number of factors (including e.g. between the hours of
2AM and 6AM, disconnections rarely, if ever, occur and full speed
transfers sometimes occur flawlessly for hours).  To add insult to
injury, its been mentioned to our client that "... only copper POTS
lines can really support these higher data speeds".  The client
specifically wished to avoid the RBOC in this area due to the long and
distinguished history of extraordinary customer service problems (with
NYNEX).

My question then is whether or not there is some notable option(s)
that need to be selected at the switch, channel bank, or optical
transport level to properly enable higher speed modem data communi-
cations for this set of equipment.

I recall that several years ago there was some discussion in regard to
a phenomenon like this, but I've been unable to dig it up.

Your collective reminders or informed opinions would be most
appreciated.


Regards,

Robert Forsythe   rf@an.net


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Remember when telephone guys coming out
to your house to investigate/repair/make excuses for poor modem conn-
ections would say that 'you are not guarenteed to get better than 1200
baud on a voice line' ... how many times have people written this
Digest to report problems with modem lines and said someone from telco
gave them that excuse?    PAT]

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

From: ben@mcs.com (Ben Liberman)
Subject: Re: More Great News From Ameritech Cellular
Date: 22 Feb 1996 01:08:26 -0600
Organization: Serious Cybernetics...the really nice machine people!


In article , Christopher Rosebrook
 wrote:

> I was equally dismayed when roaming in NYC on Bell Atlantic/Nynex
> Mobile.  I had to register for a PIN to use my phone there (a fairly
> simple VRU process, and an intelligent one, since people in NYC are
> apparently able to clone phones just because you have them turned on).

I had a similar problem just last weekend when I went to Minneapolis.
My cell phone is with Ameritech in Chicago and has a (yecch) PIN which
they insisted on when my phone was cloned two months ago.  After
arriving in MPLS I try to place a call and get routed to some LD
network that will only complete my call with a VISA/MC credit card
number.  

I called the local B side carrier (US West) who said that my phone was
showing up in their database but had to be authorized by Ameritech.  I
called Ameritech who said that they blocked all cell phone numbers
from the 312 and 708 NPA's from roaming in several major metro areas
(MPLS, NYC, and others) and thereby reduced their fraud costs by 90%.
"So, what do I do?" I asked.  The reply was that I'd have to change my
cell phone number to the new 630 NPA and there were only two exchanges
authorized.  I guess I'll just wait until next year when they have PIN
control in place in all major metro areas.


Ben Liberman    ben@mcs.com
                ben@bl.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My cell phone is in area 630, which 
according to Frontier at the time I signed up was the only area code
in the Chicago area they could use for number assignments other than
one exchange in 312. I have only roamed as far as Milwaukee, Wisconsin
and my phone's dual NAM has a Milwaukee 414 number as well as my 630
number. They've never said anything to me about a PIN, nor have I had
ever had problems making calls from Milwaukee, even when I left the
phone in the Chicago mode.  PAT]

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

From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Subject: Re: Telephony For the Deaf?
Organization: OMS Development
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:31:17 GMT


R. Varkki George (varkki@uiuc.edu) wrote:

> A deaf friend who is buying a new PC and modem wants to be able to use
> her computer as a TTD device and also to record messages left from a
> TTD phone. I presume it is just a question of locating the right
> software, but after much searching I have had no luck. Could someone
> please give me some pointers as to where I might look?

Nope, it's not purely a matter of software.  The standard signalling
protocol used by TDD's (or TTY's, or TT's; there are all kinds of
protocol (in the social, not technical, sense) involving the names) is
one that isn't supported by standard modems.  It's a half-duplex AFSK
protocol similar to the ones used for radioteletype (and was in fact
derived from them).  It recently got an ITU v. series number; I think
it's v.19, but I could be wrong.  You can buy special computer-TDD
modems, but they cost more than a low-end standalone TDD would, so
most people are better off buying the latter unless they want to offer
an interactive service to TDD users (the character coding is also done
in Baudot; this could be handled in software, but the signalling issue
would still be there).

Newer, higher-end TDD's have an "ASCII-capable" mode where they can
use a 103 modem to send and receive ASCII at 110 bps.  Those can talk
directly to a computer using a standard modem and communication
program.

BTW, there's a practical reason why the older standard is still in use
(other than the fact that there's still a big installed base of older
equipment): there are many people who can speak but not hear, or vice
versa.  Let's assume the TDD user can't hear, but can speak (reasonable 
assumption for someone who lost his hearing later in life).  Let's
also assume that he's placing the call to a pure-voice user via a
relay service.  Since the old standard is half-duplex, he can use a
feature called "voice carryover" so that when he speaks, his voice is
sent directly to the callee, but when the callee speaks, the relay
operator turns on his modem and types the contents to the caller.
This is obviously faster and more natural than having to type his end
of the conversation as well and have the relay operator read it out.
This isn't possible using a 103 modem, since both channels have to be
active all the time (well, it could be done with a lot of hacking of
the modem to turn carrier on and off dynamically.  It couldn't be done
with anything higher than a 103 because of the need to sync up at the
beginning of a connection).

> Also, is there software that will allow her to communicate with a
> voice call? That is, convert the caller's voice to text and her text
> to a voice.

The latter is possible, but the former isn't yet.  Continuous,
unrestricted speech recognition over telephone-quality channels is
still in the research stage.

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

From: cstrnadl@austria.cp.philips.com (Christoph F. Strnadl)
Subject: Re: Telephony For the Deaf?
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 15:59:19 GMT
Organization: Philips C&P


In article , jg6164@idir.net
(James G. Gorman) wrote:

> Some time back the CCITT accepted a specification for regular PC
> modems that will also support Baudot.  I believe it was V.16 or V.18.
> I don't think many modem manufacturers have designed this into their
> modems yet but it might not hurt to call some of them.

ITU-T (the former CCITT) Recommandation V.18: Operational and interwork-
ing requirements for modems operating in the text telphone mode.

While I do not know about a specific modem manufacturer (ie, a modem
connectible to a serial interface at the PC) implementing V.18, I know
of a Philips Organization, Philips Home Services, which has V.18
implemented on its Philips ScreenPhones P100 for an Italian trial.

You might try to contact Philips Home Services at Eindhoven, NL. Tel:
+31 40 27 0 (for the Philips operator). In case you need assistance
dealing with the Philips concern, just give me a call or a message.


Christoph F. Strnadl                   | "What's a cynic?"
Technical Manager/ScreenPhone Services | "A man who knows the price of
Origin/Philips C&P Wien, Austria       |  everything and  the value of
Tel +43 1 60101/1752 Fax +43 1 6023568 |  nothing."      (Oscar Wilde)
cstrnadl@austria.cp.philips.com        | #include 

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 12:27:39 -0700
From: info@goodnet.com
Subject: Assignment of New 888 Numbers


I have been given written confirmation of reserved 888 numbers from my
carrier. I have also been given written confirmation of my replicated
numbers.

I also got a few numbers that AT&T forgot to reserve for a few Fortune 50
companies. Any takers?


Jeff Bein    jeff@callatn.com
American Travel Network
The Best Calling Card in the Country as seen in Money Magazine (July 1995)
800-477-9692 Service info|   17.5 cents per minute with no surcharges
800-700-4387 Fax machines|   Free to get and no monthly minimums or fees
800-705-4000 Main offices|   1+ rate 9.9 cents and 800 numbers too!
E-MAIL: info@callatn.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You might want to cool your heels until
after the validity of the next message in this issue has been proven.
It may be that some others have big ideas regarding the new 888 code.
If the next message is true, all I can say is won't Judith Oppenheimer
be pleased!  :)     PAT]

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

From: Gary Bouwkamp 
Subject: Budget Bill Seeks Toll-Free Number Auction
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:30:00 EST


Pat,

Here is something of interest from the morning newswire.


Gary Bouwkamp
Frontier Communications

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

Thursday February 22 6:56 AM EST 

Budget Bill Seeks Toll-Free Auction

NEW YORK (Reuter) - Toll-free calling may just be getting more
expensive for the companies that foot the bill.

Congress is planning to auction off some of the most heavily sought
after numbers when the new 888 series of toll free numbers comes on
stream in March, industry sources said on Wednesday.

"The latest now is that Congress is putting a passage in the budget
bill to auction them off," said a source, declining to be identified.

The draft bill would mandate that the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) auction off 375,000 so-called "vanity" numbers that
have been reserved from the pool of seven million 888 numbers.

A spokesman for the FCC acknowledged that the proposal had been
discussed in Congress, and said the agency needed a statute to give it
the authority to arrange an auction.

Vanity numbers, such as 1-800-FLOWERS, are punched out on the
telephone keypad, and the most memorable ones generate millions of
dollars in extra business and are keenly sought after.

The original 800 numbers were available free and have become a huge
money-spinner for long-distance companies that administer the
toll-free calling for client companies.

An auction would be very unpopular with long distance companies as it might 
inhibit the growth in their business. 

"It seems like a bad idea, and it's unfair to small businesses," a spokes-
woman for AT&T said.

The auction idea follows successful airwave auctions for licenses to
use frequencies for new wireless services. These have raised billions
of dollars for federal coffers.

If Congress does decide on an auction it will be the ultimate user of
the numbers rather than the administering long-distance firms that
will have to bid for the numbers.

All available 800 numbers would have been distributed by last summer,
but because rationing was introduced by the FCC there are still
several hundred thousand left.

The 888 series was opened to the public for reservations on Feb. 10,
and is due to begin operation on March 1.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now how do you like that new plan? :)
Can we get some comments from Judith Oppenheimer and others?   PAT]

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

Subject: Re: Ring No Answer on 5ESS and USR Total Control MP16
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 02:44:32 -0600
From: James Gorak 


vaden@texoma.net (Larry Vaden) writes:

> We are experiencing a rather incredible Ring No Answer situation.

> Dialin service is via POTS to USR Total Control MP16 (Courier-based); 
> technically, the service is a hunt group with sequential search from
> the top for a free terminal in the hunt group.  The terminals on the
> hunt group are not individually dialable at this time; overlapping
> DIDs have been ordered ...

Suggest you change the hunt group type from sequential to circular
hunt with uniform call distribution (UCD). That way calls will be
evenly distributed across all modems and if you have a bad line or
modem in the group, it will be unlikely that the same caller will hit
it twice. That will give the callers a better perception of your
service quality. 

Also you can request that a "non-hunt" test number be assigned to each
line. That will make it possible for you to make test calls to each
individual line/modem. If you know that each line and modem is good
and you still get "ring no answer" than the phone company has an
(some) additional line(s) in the hunt group that do not belong there
which, when selected, ring open because they are not connected to
anything.
 

Regards,

James Gorak    jgorak@mcimail.com

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 06:56:14 EST
From: Peter Simpson 
Subject: Need Details of Alarm Panel to Central Station Signalling


I'm looking for details of the common protocols used by an alarm panel
(burglar and fire alarm) to communicate with its central monitoring
station. When I had my house built, I had a burglar/fire alarm
installed.  (It's made by Fire Burglary Instruments (FBI) but these
things are pretty commonly available under several brand names from
independent installers or alarm supply houses.) It's capable of
dialling a central monitoring station when it's triggered, and
reporting the reason for its activation.  (It's also capable of being
remotely configured and reporting different amounts of detail,
periodic link testing and lots of other neat features.)

Right now, I have it programmed to dial my numeric pager, wait a few
seconds for the paging terminal to answer, then send a fixed DTMF
sequence that tells me my alarm's going off.  As far as the alarm's
concerned, it dials the number programmed for its central station
(which happens to include a pause), but the required handshake with
its central monitoring station never takes place.  What I want to
build is a local "central station receiver" to decode the alarm's
reporting of zone number, so I can then dial my pager and send the
reason for the alarm.  If this sounds complicated, don't worry, I know
how to do it.  All except for decoding the signals the alarm panel
sends after it dials the central station number.
 
I have complete programming instructions for the alarm, which allow me
to choose among several signalling protocols: Ademco, FBI, 4x2, 10
pps, 15 pps and 20 pps.  Some of these are probably proprietary, but
others are probably commonly used and documented.  What I need is the
documentation for the communications sequence (for any of these
protocols) that takes place from the time the central station answers
the phone until the connection is terminated.  Apparently there is an
answering/confirmation tone sent by the central station (1500 or 2300
Hz, I think), but I need timing and coding details in order to build a
receiver.  All the books I found in the local library are of the
"burglar alarms are boxes connected to switches and sirens" variety,
with only brief mentions of centrally monitored alarms.

I will, of course, reimburse copying and postage.  Please email reply
to the address below.  


Thanks!
 
Peter Simpson, KA1AXY    Peter_Simpson@3mail.3com.com
3Com Corporation         (508) 264-1719 voice
Boxborough, MA 01719     (508) 264-1418 fax

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

From: johns@computek.net (John Skenesky)
Subject: For Sale: Used Alcoa Fujikura Fusion Splicers
Date: 21 Feb 1996 16:43:15 GMT
Organization: McGrath RenTelco Communications & Fiberoptic Test Eqpt Rentals
Reply-To: johns@rentelco.com


Alcoa Fujikura FSM-20CS FUSION SPLICERS (USED)

* Fully automatic using Profile Alignment splices to .03db loss (SM).
* Splices singlemode and multimode fiber.
* Splice loss estimate on singlemode fiber.
* 3" LCD video screen .
* Automatic altitude compensation.
* 20 different fibers' parameters can be stored.
* Built in splice tube heater.
* Runs off both 85-265 VAC or 10-15 VDC
*  Includes one Fujikura CT-07 High Precision cleaver, spare mirrors and 
electrodes, and
   carrying case.
* 90 Day parts and labor waranty.

Mfr List Price: $29,900 Sale Price: $16,500

Call 800-233-5807 and ask for John or E-mail johns@rentelco.com


John Skenesky                www.rentelco.com
         Communications & Fiberoptic Test Equipment Rentals
         
McGrath RenTelco                                     800-233-5807
1901 N. Glenville Dr. #401A                          214-234-2422
Richardson, TX 75081                             fax 214-680-0070

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

From: lowellkim@aol.com (Lowellkim)
Subject: Re: Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up?
Date: 21 Feb 1996 21:20:40 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: lowellkim@aol.com (Lowellkim)


Pat you certainly seem to have something stuck in your craw as far as
Excel is concerned. Why doesn't this person simply find out what his
bill reads when he gets it. Yes, Allnet (Frontier) is a carrier for
Excel is some areas but, there are hundreds of resellers out there. Is
everyone scrambling to this 1-700 number to check on exactly which
carrier is handling the calls? What's the big deal anyway? If his wife
switched to Excel and not getting Excel then there's a problem. If
he's not getting Excel then a complaint needs to be filed with the
FCC. If his bill says he's getting Excel then that's what he's getting.

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

From: carroll@exis.net (Steve & MJ Carroll)
Subject: Re: Will My Real Long Distance Carrier Please Stand Up?
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 04:37:30 GMT


On Mon, 19 Feb 1996 9:37:13 CST, this appeared in TELECOM Digest:

> Dear Editor Townson and all TD'ers:

> My wife (bless her heart) recently switched our long distance carrier
> from MCI to Excel.  When I dial +1 700 555-4141 (the standard LD
> carrier verification number?) I get a recording that says something to
> the effect: "Thank you for selecting Frontier as your long distance
> carrier."  When I dial +1 700 555-0752 (the verification number
> provided by Excel) I get a message that thanks me for selecting Excel
> as my long distance carrier.  (Before the switchover took effect, the
> 4141 number thanked me for selecting MCI, and the 0752 number resulted
> in a busy signal.)

> What's going on?  Who *is* my long distance carrier?

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your carrier is Frontier -- Allnet --
> as brokered or resold to you by Excel. Bless her heart indeed. Tell
> her if she ever pulls a stunt like that again you'll cut her heart out
> and feed it to the dogs. Since Excel is unable to intercept 4141 and
> send it to their own recording, they use 0752 for that purpose. If you
> asked them what 4141 was, they would probably claim to know nothing of
> the number. I just now tried 0752 and got the AT&T recording since
> they are my carrier. Frontier/Allnet in turn is a reseller for AT&T in
> lots of places. Generally Frontier does okay in concealing their own
> role as a simple reseller/wholesaler. For example in their cellular
> resale of Ameritech Cellular, they have managed to take every single
> prompt or intercept message of Ameritech's and intercept it to one of
> their recordings instead. Star-611 calls get snatched from Ameritech
> and routed to a generic, bland 'You have reached Customer Service.
> Please hold for a representative.' You'll never hear a peep about
> Ameritech unless you bring it up first.  I guess Excel has not figured
> out how to do this yet to make it appear they are selling their own
> thing, or maybe they don't care who knows what they sell.  PAT]

WOW!  It appears there are ALOT of misunderstandings about the content
of this post ...

 #1 ... Frontier/Allnet DOESN'T normally resell AT&T at all. They both
        own and operate seperate fiber-optic cabling the majority of
        the time. 

 #2 ... Excel doesn't NEED to advertise that they're a reseller, most
        of us already know that!

 #3 ... There's nothing wrong with your wife looking to save a few
        cents per minute on long-distance, is there? Actually,    
        there's nothing wrong with using AT&T, as long as you don't
        mind being over-charged and pay the highest rates in the
        LD market!

Respectfully,

Steve 

Steve & MJ Carroll              VoiceMail & FAX:(804)460-4000
Regional Training Directors     Pager: 1-800-225-0256 (#022-1008)
Excel Telecommunications, Inc.  Virginia Beach, VA

 *Working 40+ hrs/week for peanuts? Afraid of Downsizing? Be your own BOSS! 
 *NO Inventory, Delivery, Quotas, Employees, Risk or Experience necessary!
 *Long-Term Residual Income. Have FUN helping people MAKE & SAVE money!
 *Save up to 50% on Long Distance Calls & 65% on Travel/Hotels immediately!
  =---> Erect your toll-booth on the Information Superhighway today! <---=

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

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Since the next message in this issue is
also about Excel from someone who wants details on the service, how 
about I let you write them direct to insure they get correct and 
unbiased information ... I'll not comment on it at all.  PAT]

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

From: rshipley@initco.net (!Robert Shipley)
Subject: Please Send Information on Excel
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 06:14:15 GMT
Organization: Intermountain Internet Corp.


I have been contacted by an Excel Representative. I'm not sure if they
have the best program that involves commissions for telecommmunication
services. If anyone has information or concerns about this company,
please send me further information. 


Thank you.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll let Steve Carroll respond direct
to you to insure you receive fair, unbiased information on their
program rather than any prejudicial and biased details I might give.  PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:00:23 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: The Meaning of 914-4T (was Re: 710)


Regarding Tor-Einar Jarnbjo's article in TD v.16#71, there have
probably been many other identical replies about what 914-4T means,
but here is mine:

914 is the North American Area Code for the Westchester County area of
New York State (just north of the Bronx in New York City), which
includes the town of White Plains NY, for *decades* the location of
several *major* AT&T Long-Lines (Bell System) telephone switches for
both US/Canadian calls *and* International/Overseas.

The identification "914-4T" at the end of the recording meant that
your call from Europe to North America (U.S. Government's 710-number)
had been intercepted in the White Plains NY switch number 4T, in area
code 914.


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: siegertk@aol.com (SiegertK)
Subject: Meridian SL1-Area Code Change Process
Date: 22 Feb 1996 00:18:59 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: siegertk@aol.com (SiegertK)


In reference to the Northern Telecom Meridian SL-1 switch ...

What steps would need to be taken to for example, add a new area code?
What about changing access to a local area network or WAN?

Your TIMELY help would be appreciated!  Please respond via private
EMAIL ONLY!!!


Thank you!

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #78
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Feb 22 13:11:33 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id NAA19206; Thu, 22 Feb 1996 13:11:33 -0500 (EST)
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 13:11:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602221811.NAA19206@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #79

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 22 Feb 96 13:12:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 79

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Area Code 423 Now Required to Reach Phones in East Tennessee (Mike King)
    ADSL Trial Details Needed (Michael A. Pilgrim)
    Web Site on Puget Sound Gives Area Code Options (Glenn Blackmon)
    Re: Phone Fires Discussion/25 Years Ago (Steven Lichter)
    Telecom Panel Discussion Features Twits (Dave Wade)
    Re: Right From the Bellcore Database (Steve Bagdon)
    WiLL (Wireless Local Loop) Vendors Wanted (Bin Lin)
    Caller ID Standards Around the World (Lam Chi Ming)
    Re: MLM vs. Outside Sales Agents (rweiss1954@aol.com)
    Re: MLM vs. Outside Sales Agents (John R. Levine)
    Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results (Tom Watson)
    Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays (Bob Goudreau)
    Telco Bandwitdth Statistics Wanted (Joe Brongo)
    Re: Using ANI For Credit Card Verification (Eric Bohlman)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Michael J. Wengler)
    Looking For Call Diverter (John Williams)
    Need ISDN Callback Router (Oliver Schuetze)
    Last Laugh! Time to Clean Up the Internet (David Smith via alt.2600)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: Area Code 423 Now Required to Reach Phones in East Tennessee
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:35:59 PST


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:37:55 -0500
 From: BellSouth 
 Subject: Area Code 423 Now Required to Reach Phones in East Tennessee
 Reply-To: info@corp.bellsouth.com

Area Code 423 Now Required to Reach Phones in East Tennessee

For additional information:
Patsy Hazlewood, (423) 2652224 

     February 21, 1996

Chattanooga, Tenn. - Beginning next Monday, February 26, callers will
be required to use the new "423" area code exclusively to reach
telephone numbers in the East Tennessee region. This includes calls to
Chattanooga, Knoxville, Johnson City and most of the territory
included in the eastern time zone in Tennessee. At 12:01 a.m. on Feb.
26, 1996 the 615 code will no longer connect calls to East Tennessee
homes and businesses. This concludes a transitional dialing period,
which began last September, during which callers could use either area
code 423 or 615 to complete their calls to and within East Tennessee.

"Whether or not your area code is changing, you may need to reprogram
or replace your telecommunications equipment," said Patsy Hazlewood,
Regional Director for BellSouth. "This includes reprogramming speed
dialers, fax machines, cellular telephones and PBX's. If your PBX
equipment does not recognize the new area code format (with a digit
other than "1" or "0" as the middle digit) you may have to contact
your equipment vendor for additional assistance."

If you experience problems placing calls to the new area code, you can
reach the number you are calling by dialing "0" and asking the
operator to complete the call for you, according to Hazlewood. You may
also reach the number by using an 800 number, if the party you are
calling has one, or by calling from a standard telephone line that is
not connected through a business PBX phone system. The new code is
needed because of the increasing demand for new telephone numbers to
serve pagers, cellular telephones, facsimile machines and other new
services in Tennessee.

Since the beginning of 1995 more than 25 new area codes with the new
format have already been implemented or are planned for areas around
the country. In addition, a new toll free area code 888 will be
implemented to meet the demand for additional toll free telephone
numbers starting March 1, 1996.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: mikep@metronet.com (Michael A. Pilgrim)
Subject: ADSL Trial Details Needed
Date: 22 Feb 1996 16:51:34 GMT
Organization: The Watt Stopper, Inc.


I read two weeks ago a post apparently from a fellow at GTE about a
ADSL test opportunity in the Dallas Fort/Worth market. Along with the
post, there was supposed to be an attached text file which contained
additional details.

Does anyone know anything about this test? If so, can you provide more
information or referrals to appropriate contact persons to discuss
this please? TIA!


Michael A. Pilgrim    mikep@metronet.com

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

From: Glenn Blackmon 
Subject: Web Site on Puget Sound Gives Area Code Options
Date: 22 Feb 1996 16:25:14 GMT
Organization: Washington Utilities & Transportation Commission


The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, along with an
industry committee, is usings its world wide web site to provide
public information on options for alleviating an upcoming number
crunch in the 206 area code that serves the central Puget Sound area.
The URL is:

http://www.washington.edu/wutc/telecom/newcode

If you have any comments about the information there and how it's
presented, please e-mail me directly.  Any comments on how the area
codes should be restructured can be made using the comment form on the
web page.


Thanks,

Glenn Blackmon
Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission
glenn@wutc.wa.gov

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

From: slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu (Steven Lichter)
Subject: Re: Phone Fires Discussion/25 Years Ago
Date: 22 Feb 1996 08:57:15 -0800
Organization: GINA and CORE+ Services of The California State University


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Steve, I am sorry to say *I* don't re-
> member. What did happen in Sylmar on February 9, 1971?  PAT]

Well lets see if this one takes two weeks to get to you.

It was 1971, God fell out of bed and did a major re-arrangement of the 
Sylmar CO along with most of the rest of the East Valley.


The above are my ideas and have nothing to do with whoever my employer is.
SysOp Apple Elite II and OggNet Hub (909)359-5338 2400/14.4 24 hours,
Home of GBBS/LLUCE Support for the Apple II. slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone else remember details on this?  PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:36:22 -0700
From: djw@physics.LANL.GOV (Dave Wade)
Subject: Telecom Panel Discussion With Twits 


I was watching C-SPAN again last night, (never a good sign, 8*) ) and
{The Washington Post} was sponsoring a panel discussion about "The
Telecommunications Act of 1996" with Oxley, Tauxin, and others of
"that ilk".

I began to get excited when these "twits" began to lecture the world
about how we have to "be very careful" (meaning, 'slow down') with
respect to discussions of changes in "spectrum"... because we are
talking about "massive changes" and "making obsolete" all
consumer-owned television sets.  When "the provider goes 'digital'; it
will mean the end of free TV ... everyone will have to buy new TV
sets ... the TV providers will want to have the new spectrum and
maintain the old spectrum as well ...

As I sat there listening to the future being limited by these twits
who had no concept from which to begin looking forward; I thought of
at least four different methods of feeding an analog signal into an
old television from a digital (over the air) source.  If it is true
that a digital signal takes as much as one sixth the space of an
analog signal, then why can't "some enterprising young engineer"
design a "digital to analog expander" tuner box to replace the tuner
on an analog set and permit the old tv sets to be used on the new
digital signals.  

Admittedly, there will be no increase in quality; but, this box can
probably be sold for $30.00.  Now there is no reason for anyone to
"give" the tv-provider another 100 mHz of spectrum just to beam out
the same commercial-laden cruft to the new "digital" tv sets.


Dave


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I find C-SPAN-2 sometimes has more
interesting stuff than the original C-SPAN, although I watch both
of them only on an irregular basis. I prefer the Three Stooges,
finding them to be a lot better humor than what comes out of Our
Nation's (drug and violent crime, to say nothing of Congress!) Capitol.
If the Three Stooges ran for Congress I would probably vote for
them.  PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 06:32:13 EDT
From: bagdon@rust.net (Steve Bagdon)
Subject: Re: Right From the Bellcore Database 


Mike Fox  wrote:

> In , Michael Fumich <0003311835@
> mcimail.com> writes:

>> Back in the late 70's and early 80's MCI & Sprint would publish directories
>> of callable prefixes available on their respective networks. I used to
>> cross-reference these with other NPA lists I maintained. One thing that I
>> noticed was that the prefix "840"  would appear on the MCI and Sprint list
>> but never on any other that I had. There were four cities that showed "840":

>> 804 -> Richmond VA
>> 304 -> Charleston WV
>> 412 -> Pittsburgh PA
>> 704 -> Charlotte NC

> Just thought it might be worth mentioning that here in the 919 area
> code, exchange 840 belongs to the Raleigh-Durham Airport.  I don't
> know when it was assigned to this use, however.

Here's a thought for you. RDU (Raleigh DUrham) airport's north/west(?)
airstrip is almost 10,000 feet long. It has even been used for landing
the Concord -- American Airlines has a few direct flights from RDU to
GTW (Gatwick), since they are a (semi) hub, and I believe that they
got a one-off deal to fly the Concord from London to Raleigh.
Expensive, but fun for the (luckier) locals.

The point being, could this phone number have been used in the calling
plan to place calls to airports that support fields greater then
10,000 feet?  That way government officials could have 'direct' access
that could support strategic aircraft. Does anyone have the aircraft
documents to look up what the lengths of the airport fields are for
these cities? And do these phone numbers go to airport in all of these
cities?


Steve B.     http://www.rust.net/~bagdon/mr2.html

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

From: blin@rtsg.mot.com (Bin Lin)
Subject: WiLL (Wireless Local Loop)
Date: 22 Feb 1996 12:33:10 GMT
Organization: Motorola, Radio Telephone Systems Group


Does anyone have a list of Wireless Local Loop vendors?

Thanks for your help,


Bin   blin@mcdmail1.fwrdc.rtsg.mot.com

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

From: clam@hk.china.com (Lam Chi Ming)
Subject: Caller ID Standards Around the World
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 00:04:46 GMT
Organization: Ideatech Industrial Ltd.
Reply-To: clam@hk.china.com


I am collecting information about the Caller ID standards in the
world, and I am interested to get the Caller ID standards of Brazil
and Israel.  I don't mind paying for that set of document, but I don't
know where I can get this set of document.  Which organization is
responsible for issuing such a standard, and how much, and how to
reach them.


Regards,

Ignatius Lam

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

From: rweiss1954@aol.com (Rweiss1954)
Subject: Re: MLM vs. Outside Sales Agents
Date: 21 Feb 1996 10:07:00 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)


What you are describing is a classic distribution pattern
(manufacturer/wholesaler/retailer i.e. carrier/reseller/agent). In a
true MLM distribution plan the down line is theoretically infinite,
and when you slice a piece of pie or marketing into infinity, everyone
gets dust. This is basically what's wrong with MLM.

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 21:50 EST
From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)
Subject: Re: MLM vs Outside Sales Agents
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y.


> [An MLM recruit] finds a company who will provide for him solid,
> dependable and highly competitive long distance service that will
> allow him to build an organization of other 'customer gatherers'
> interested in the same thing, which in turn brings in thousands of
> customers ...

If only this were true.  MLM enthusiasts tend to be a little weak on
their arithmetic.  If you get in on the top level or two of an MLM,
you can make quite a lot of money.  But by the time you're down a few
levels, the prospects are pretty well picked over, and you're lucky to
get one or two downline agents and a handful of customers.  MLM's
have a lot of dropouts, so if you stay with it, you have to recruit
constantly to replace people who drop out.  (In many MLMs, if one of
your downlines drops out, you lose not just him but also anyone he's
recruited.)  

Remember, if each MLM agent signed up five more agents, by the time
you get to the 12th level, you'll have signed up every man, woman and
child in the country.  There just aren't that many candidates for you
to sign up.

In the particular case of Excel, I'd think that the long term
prospects aren't great, because what they're selling is a commodity
(one long distance connection sounding much like another these days)
and Excel's prices are considerably higher than those offered by
non-MLM outside agents.

Yes, Excel looks great now.  Koscot looked great for a couple of
years, too.  Are they fundamentally different?  Hard to tell from
here.


Regards,

John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Trumansburg NY
Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"
and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be

PS: History suggests that the MLM arguments won't ever be resolved, by
facts or otherwise, so this discussion might better be continued in
alt.business.multi-level.

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

From: tsw@3do.com (Tom Watson)
Subject: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:07:01 -0800
Organization: The 3DO Corporation


Now that Caller ID is coming here to the 'left' coast (with apologies to
Washington and Oregon), I have a couple of questions:

Party 'A' calls Party 'B'.
Party 'B' has its calls forwarded to Party 'C'.

What does Party 'C' get in the box?  Party 'A' (the original caller), or
Party 'B' (the middle guy), or a mixture?

When Party 'B's phone does a "courtesy ring", is any caller ID info (from
caller 'A') available?

What happens if party 'C' is an 800 number (with ANI) what number is
presented?

Is there any clues as to what is what?

Sometimes it would be nice if party 'C' got both 'B' and 'A' information,
but I'm not holding out any hope.


Tom Watson   tsw@3do.com   (Home: tsw@johana.com)

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:02:52 -0500
From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau)
Subject: Re: Massachusetts Area Code Overlays


Bill Ranck (ranck@joesbar.cc.vt.edu) writes:
 
>> AFAIK, nobody in the NANP has mandatory 10-digit dialing yet ...

> Uh, I'm not sure what you mean by mandatory 10-digit dialing, but this
> is darn close to what we have here in 540 (nee 703) for a couple of
> years now.  Any non-local call must include area code.  Even calls to
> the same area-code must include it.

No, that's not what I meant.  The situation you describe is how most
of the NANP (all of it except eight US states) now dials non-local
calls: 1+10D, even for intra-NPA calls.  But "mandatory 10D dialing"
means that *all* calls (including local calls within the same NPA)
must be dialed using ten (or eleven) digits; no more seven-digit
calls, even for local numbers.  This is what was originally proposed
for the Houston plan, before the Texas PUC shot it down.  I still
haven't heard of any place in the NANP where local intra-NPA calls are
not dialable using just seven digits, except possibly the 917 wireless
overlay in New York City, on which I've heard confiliction reports.
Does anyone have another example of mandatory 10D dialing in the NANP?

 
Bob Goudreau			Data General Corporation
goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com		62 Alexander Drive	
+1 919 248 6231			Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA

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

From: jbrongo@vanbc.wimsey.com (Joe Brongo)
Subject: Telco Bandwidth Statistics
Date: 22 Feb 1996 11:52:20 GMT
Organization: Wimsey Information Services


Does anyone know where I can get ahold of statistics which show a
percentage breakdown of data bandwidth sales in North America,
particularly ATM, Frame Relay, ISDN and slow speed dial-up.  Would
also be interested in growth stats and percentage of traffic that is
local(intracity), domestics (intercity) and international in each of
the above areas.  Note, does not need to be a national average, can be
specific to one service provider.

Stats will be used in the design of a network.


Regards.

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

From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Subject: Re: Using ANI For Credit Card Verification
Organization: OMS Development
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:13:06 GMT


John C. Fowler (0003513813@mcimail.com) wrote:

> When I received a replacement credit card in the mail the other day, I
> discovered a new way that credit card companies are using real-time
> ANI on 800 numbers: to verify that you received the card!  A sticker
> on the card asked me to call an 800 number from my home phone line to
> activate the card before using it.  I dialed the number, and a
> recorded voice thanked me and said it was retrieving the phone number
> I was calling from.  After a couple of seconds, it announced that the
> card was ready for use.  I didn't have to dial anything other than the
> 800 number.

I don't really like this.  Imagine that you had a roommate with a
hidden unscrupulous streak and you shared the same phone line.  He
could easily intercept the card and validate it.  Of course, he'd
eventualy get caught (unless he was about to move out anyway), but
what if it was a guest of his?  It sounds like false security to me;
the validation should really be done by a human who can ask for
information that would only be readily available to someone who saw
the application for the card in the first place.

BTW, I find it somewhat disconcerting that most credit card providers
use the ZIP code on the billing address as the verification code for
automated inquiries, rather than using something like a SSN the way
banks do for account information.  The problem is that using the ZIP
code allows merchants or their employees easy access to that informa-
tion, since they'll usually have the ZIP code as well as the account
number.  I'd much rather see a validation code that wouldn't normally
be known to parties like merchants who have legitimate knowledge of
the account number, but shouldn't have access to things like balance
inquiries or requests to issue duplicate cards.

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:15:24 -0800
From: mwengler@qualcomm.com (Michael J. Wengler)
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems


bkdougla@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Bryan Douglas) writes:

>> According to the {Wall Street Journal}, the company formerly known as
>> AT&T Network Systems is now called Lucent Technologies.  Apparently
>> this is the telephony hardware electronics divisions (Western Electric?).

I saw Lucent Technologies and immediately associated with Lucas Electrics,
the company that used to do the electrical systems for Jaguars and
presumably other British cars.

Their electrical systems were so astonishingly unreliable that they were
granted the nickname "Prince of Darkness" by Jaguar owners whose lights
stopped working early and often.

Lucas, Lucent, Lucifer.  Let there be light, and there was, and the top
devil got named.


Michael J. Wengler              mwengler@qualcomm.com
A-290K7 at QualComm, Inc.       Voice: (619) 658-5476
10555 Sorrento Valley Road      Fax:   (619) 658-1033
San Diego, CA 92121-1617        Beep:  (619) 605-3580

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:11:35 -0500
From: surfcom@CAM.ORG (John Williams)
Subject: Looking For Call Diverter


Does anyone out there know where we can purchase a call-diverter that
does the following:

1- Doesn't give a new dial-tone to the inbound line when the outbound
line hangs-up;

2- Allows dtmf's to pass through un-modified;

3- Can dial at least eleven numbers;

4- Can remember its settings after a power failure.

We have tried the following companies to date:

Startel;
Logotronics;
Telematrix;

and we called Mike Sandman ...

No one could help us so far.

Please e-mail at surfcom@cam.org or call at 1-800-815-6295 and ask for
John or Paul or you could also fax at 1-514-766-9916.

Thanks.

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

From: dummy@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de (PcUser)
Subject: Need ISDN Callback Router
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 15:40:04 GMT
Organization: Freie Universitaet Berlin
Reply-To: dummy@fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de


Hi,

I am looking for a isdn multiline callback router which can be placed
before any PBX.

Please e-mail.


Thanks,

Oliver Schuetze    rusirius@zedat.fu-berlin.de

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:47:14 -0800
From: TELECOM Digest Editor 
Subject: Last Laugh! Time to Clean Up the Internet


Seen today in alt.2600.moderated, and passed along for a chuckle.

 Newsgroups: alt.2600.moderated
 From: ab756@torfree.net (Graham Bullers)
 Subject: Shutdown for Internet cleaning
 Organization: Toronto Free-Net
 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:56:30 GMT

*** Attention ***

It's that time again!

As many of you know, each leap year the Internet must be shut down for
24 hours in order to allow us to clean it.  The cleaning process,
which eliminates dead email and inactive ftp, www and gopher sites,
allows for a better-working and faster Internet.

This year, the cleaning process will take place from 12:01 a.m. GMT on
Feb. 29 until 12:01 a.m. GMT on March 1.  During that 24-hour period,
five powerful Internet-crawling robots situated around the world will
search the Internet and delete any data that they find.

In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you
do the following:

1.  Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their Internet
connections.

2.  Shut down all Internet servers, or disconnect them from the Internet.

3.  Disconnect all disks and hardrives from any connections to the
Internet.

4.  Refrain from connecting any computer to the Internet in any way.

We understand the inconvenience that this may cause some Internet
users, and we apologize.  However, we are certain that any inconven-
iences will be more than made up for by the increased speed and
efficiency of the Internet, once it has been cleared of electronic
flotsam and jetsam.

We thank you for your cooperation.

Kim Dereksen
Interconnected Network Maintenance staff
Main branch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sysops and others:  Since the last Internet cleaning, the number of
Internet users has grown dramatically.  Please assist us in alerting the
public of the upcoming Internet cleaning by posting this message where
your users will be able to read it.  Please pass this message on to other
sysops and Internet users as well.  Thank you.


David E. Smith,  c/o Southeast Missouri State University
1000 Towers Circle South MS 1210 Cape Girardeau MO 63701
dsmith@midwest.net,  dave@nym.alias.net,  PGP 0x961D2B09
(573)339-3814    http://www.midwest.net/scribers/dsmith/
"Reality is only for those lacking in true imagination."


=-GRAHAM-JOHN BULLERS=-=AB756@FREENET.TORONTO.ON.CA=-=ALT.2600.MODERATED-=
Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.The courage
to change the things I can.And the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=I had to kill because they pissed me off=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #79
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Feb 23 02:55:16 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id CAA01377; Fri, 23 Feb 1996 02:55:16 -0500 (EST)
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 02:55:16 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602230755.CAA01377@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #80

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 23 Feb 96 02:55:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 80

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time (Tom Betz)
    Labor/EEOC Charges Against BellSouth (Sandra Weaver)
    Secret Phone Numbers (Yeechang Lee)
    Calling Number Available *Now* in California (Mark Stein)
    Questions About 976 NPA (Cameron J. Atkinson)
    Events in Sylmar, CA on Feb 9, 1971 (Heidi Serverian)
    Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines (Steve Uhrig)
    Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines (Robert McMillin)
    Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines (Bruce Tyrrell)
    Re: How Many Telephones Exist? (Robert Shaw)
    Re: How Many Telephones Exist? (Scott Montague)
    Imponderables Thanks (David Feldman)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
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     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Tom Betz 
Subject: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 22:40:41 -0500


We can thank Brock Meeks for uncovering this story; let us hope that
the many "wolf" cries that preceeded it don't prevent us from being
spurred to action.  It's the real thing this time.

See  -- it should be there for the
next two weeks.

An excerpt:

MUCKRAKER
by Brock Meeks

A Kick in the Flat-Fee Access

          The so-called modem tax, once the cyberspace version of
urban myth, is evolving into reality. Only now it's more likely to be
called the "Internet service tax."

          Ten years ago the Federal Communications Commission floated
the idea of charging online services an extra fee for the time their
users spent tying up the phone lines while accessing their services.
The money would have compensated local telephone companies for the
bandwidth these users were supposedly hogging. The fee most often
bandied about then was US$6 per hour.

          The Baby Bells argued that if long distance companies had to
pay "access fees" for using their equipment when connecting those
calls, then online services should pony up, too.

          The proposal sent the online community into a rage. The term
"modem tax" was coined and became the anvil upon which the online
community shaped its first protest movement.

          In the end, the FCC blinked and agreed to exempt online
services, technically called "Enhanced Service Providers" (ESPs), from
having to pay access fees. The commission agreed that the industry was
young and that levying the modem tax would drive up prices, causing
"sticker shock" that would rip the industry to shreds.

          But the Bells never forgot, and they never forgave the FCC
for screwing them out of that revenue. Recently they've been trolling
the commission halls, briefing FCC staff on why the ESP exemption has
outlived its time. And the FCC is listening. One powerful tool at
their disposal is the new Telecommunications Act, which requires a new
definition of Universal Service.  Buried in that bedrock public policy
are the access fee structures.

          The arcane theory behind all this is that residential
telephone rates are priced lower than cost and are subsidized by
higher fees for business and long distance calls. The phone companies
make back from these "subsidies" what they lose by pricing residential
rates below cost.

          Muckraker has obtained a 6 October 1995 document called "ESP
Exemption for Online Service Providers - A Rapidly Growing Subsidy
Paid by Access Rate Payers," written by Pacific Bell and presented to
the FCC. The report says that "if access rates are flowed through" at
60 cents per hour, there would be "minimal market disruption." It
estimates average use of services such as America Online and
CompuServe at six hours per month, thus adding only $3.60 to the bill.
It further estimates that the average Internet user spends 18 hours
online, thus adding a cost of only $10.80 per month.

          These projections of "average use" are bankrupt. Do the
math: 18 hours times 12 months, divided by 365 days = just 36 minutes
of Internet use per day. But this hasn't stopped the FCC from sitting
up and taking notice when drafting the document that would bury
flat-fee access.

          And the Bells are way ahead of the curve on this issue,
having already sat with the staff and made their pitch. The public and
the online industry have been silent. You've all made the Bells very
happy ...  

Read the rest, and pass the URL along.

Whom do we write to, folks?  Anyone have a copy of the old "Modem Tax"
posts?


Tom Betz -----------  ------ (914) 375-1510
 tbetz@pobox.com | tbetz@panix.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This story goes around so often I am a
little gun-shy about ever printing anything on it if you  want to know
the truth. I would like to ask a couple of the old-time subscribers 
here who have followed the 'modem tax' rumors for several years if
they would please respond at this time to this newest variation on 
an old, old story. Fact or fiction? Where do we stand now?    PAT]

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

From: SandraW129@aol.com
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 17:19:29 -0500
Subject: Labor/EEOC Charges Against BellSouth


"The idea of filling jobs by hiring applicants off the street when we
have qualified individuals within the company whose livelihoods are in
jeopardy by BellSouth downsizing just doesn't make sense," says Daryl
Hutchins, president of CWA Local 3605.  The Communication Workers Of
America (CWA), Gastonia, N. C.  Local 3605 and Charlotte, N. C. Local
3603, met with representatives of BellSouth Telecommunications January
29, 1996 concerning more than fifty ongoing grievances as a result of
the questionable hiring and promotion of electronic technicians.
BellSouth promoted temporary employees into permanent positions,
ignoring in-house test-qualified employees.

The Communication Workers of America, both locals representing over
2000 telephone employees in the area, has filed charges with the
National Labor Relations Board, claiming the promotions violated
Sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act.  One
union member stated, "We bargain in good faith to protect our jobs and
we train and test just like the company asks us to. I don't understand
why they have just passed us by."

The CWA has also filed charges with Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission for discrimination based on age and gender in violation of
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The union believes the
practices of downsizing and bypassing qualified employees for
available positions negatively affect the workforce and the entire
community.

For additional information:

Daryl Hutchins, president
CWA Local 3605
Gastonia, N.C.
704/867-5076  or SandraW129@aol.com

Note: So far we've gotten some coverage from a couple of newspapers
(both local and national), a couple of radio stations, and some
wonderful support from folks online.


Thanks,

Sandy Weaver    CWA Local 3605

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

From: ylee@simile.cc.columbia.edu (Yeechang Lee)
Subject: Secret Phone Numbers
Date: 22 Feb 1996 22:03:49 GMT
Organization: Council of Foreign Relations, Covert World Domination Bureau
Reply-To: Yeechang Lee 


Eric Kammerer at Sac Net  wrote:

> While AT&T may have it set up to be "untraceable" I doubt that the
> same can be said for all of the LECs.  There are just too many mom &
> pop telcos.

[Snip]

I'm a comic book reader, and there was a Superman comic book several
years back (pre-Crisis, for those who understand) in which Clark Kent
needs to access the computers at his Arctic Fortress of Solitude, so
goes to a pay phone to dial a special number "known only to himself
and the president of the telephone company."

Now of course this is real life, but reading the comments in this
thread, I wonder -- is such an arrangement for extraordinary
users/uses feasible?  Especially today, with the various RBOCs and the
like?

http://www.columbia.edu/~ylee/ 
icbm://40.83.-73.91/ 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: He probably meant a number similar in
purpose to 710-627-4387 ... but when Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane
and their associates at the {Daily Planet} were around back in the
1940-50 era there was no federal Freedom of Information Act, so his
secret would have been safe between himself and the 'president of the
telephone company'. I am consulting an attorney who is experienced in
the FOIA to see if it is possible to get details on 710 from our modern
day supermen in Washington, DC. I think it would be quite interesting
to use the FOIA to force them to provide information on 710.   PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 11:13:15 -0800
From: marks@osmosys.incog.com (Mark Stein)
Subject: Calling Number Available *Now* in California


I'm sure many readers of this forum are aware of the situation in
California with regard to Caller ID.  Briefly, the California PUC set
rules under which Caller ID could be offered by the local phone
companies.  The phone companies decided not to offer Caller ID
services under those terms.  The FCC subsequently issued uniform
rules, which the courts recently ruled take precedence over state
regulations.  So Caller ID will be offered in California under the FCC
rules effective June 1st.  Nothing new so far.

What seems to be obscured in all this is the fact that the delivery of
calling party number has, in fact, been available in California for
some time.  Regular POTS line calling a local number.  How can this
be, with all the hoopla over Caller ID not being available??

Well, it appears that "Caller ID" is defined sufficiently narrowly
that it does not apply to digital services such as ISDN.  In
particular, customers with ISDN service get calling number delivery as
part of that service.  No fuss, no muss.  Easy to order, widely
available.  And no way right now for a caller to block delivery of
their number when calling a number which happens to be ISDN.  (This
blocking, I'm told, will be implemented as part of Caller ID blocking
when it goes into effect on June 1st.)

I discovered the calling number delivery a couple of weeks ago when I
received a call at work which was made from my home phone.  And there
was my home phone number, displayed on my phone!  Turns out that the
DID trunks in my building had just been cut over to ISDN.  Subsequent
inquiries at Pacific Bell and the CPUC filled in the details outlined
above.  An interesting side note is that when my call to the PUC was
returned, my phone display indicated that the calling number was not
available!  All other calls have delivered a usable calling party
number.  Evidently the PUC does know what's going on here ...

The reason for posting this is not to start yet another discussion
about the merits (or lack of them) of Caller ID.  This has been
discussed at length in many places.  I believe that consumers have
been deliberately misled by Pac Bell to believe that Caller ID applies
to *all* calls made (except 800/900/911 calls, of course), when in
fact it just applies to a subset of available service.  Sure surprised
me, and I try to stay current on these types of telecom issues.

So when they say that Caller ID is not available until June 1st, what
they really mean is that it "is not available until June 1st unless
you have ISDN service.  But we won't tell you who those customers are,
and you callers can't block delivery of your number to them.  No, this
isn't really Caller ID, so we can offer it even though the PUC said we
can't."

Semantics.  Oh, well.  Consumers lost this one after all, and we
didn't even know it.


Mark Stein  


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something which has amazed me for some
time now is that I talk to people in California occassionally and I
get the caller-id on them (or sometimes a message saying 'private')
even though it supposedly has not started there.  Other times the box
says 'out of area'. I don't know what to make of it.   PAT]

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

From: CAMERON.J.ATKINS@Global-One.net
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:22:19 -0500
Subject: Questions About 976 NPA 


Hi there,

Is anybody aware of the service being supplied by Nynex that is
associated with the 976 NPA?

I have next to no details on this and would appreciate any information.


Thanks,
Cameron Atkins   |   Sprint/Global One  |  Tel. 612 2909013 
Account Executive|   Level 11           |  Fax. 612 2909092 
- International  |   45 Clarence St     |  Mob. 0411 240540 
Carrier Services |   Sydney NSW 2000    |  cameron.atkins@global-one.net
                 |   Australia          |  @home. 612 99557462  


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Point of order: are we discussing a
new area code (i.e. NPA) '976' or are we discussing the existing
premium call exchange '976' offered in many existing area codes
around the USA and certainly by Nynex?  If the former, I have to
say I do not beleive there is such an NPA, nor do I think there
will be anytime soon. It would be extremely foolish IMO to have an
NPA numbered that way owing to the bad reputation of (prefix) 976.
Now if you are asking about the prefix 976 as it is used by Nynex
and other telcos, yes, we know a few things about that here. What
are your questions?   PAT]

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

From: HEIDI.SERVERIAN@gte.sprint.com
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:41:23 -0500
Subject: Events in Sylmar, CA Feb 9, 1971


Pat -

First, a correction to your math - 25 years ago would be 1971 (1996-25).

Second, unless I miss my (semi-educated) guess, I believe this to be a
reference to the 1971 Sylmar earthquake.  This was quite a significant
quake measuring above 6 (I think) on the Richter scale.  If someone
from California could share some information, it would be quite
interesting to read a comparison of the 1971 quake damage and effects
versus the 1994 quake in the same area.  The epicenters were within
miles of each other, but 23 years apart.  I don't recall telephone
service being severely impacted for more than 1-2 days in 1994.  How
was it in 1971?  The morning of the 1994 (Northridge) quake, we had to
drive almost 30 miles north to make a cellular call out of state.  Our
relatives had been so well trained by us not to worry about quakes,
that they figured this one was also far from us.  Unfortunately, we
were living about three miles from the epicenter in Valencia, CA and
felt the 1994 quake much more strongly than we wanted.

I wasn't in the area for the 1971 quake.  Any one out there able to
share some recovery stories?

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

From: suhrig@bright.net (Steve Uhrig)
Subject: Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 02:02:27 GMT
Organization: BrightNet Ohio


rf@ZONE.NET (Bob Forsythe) wrote:

> Recently, our client has been having difficulties with their new
> telephone service.  They use a LEC by the name of Teleport
> Communications Group (TCG), whom so kindly dug up the street to
> install fiber optics and put the building they're in "on-net".  Here
> comes the crux of the problem:

> V.34 / 28.8kbps callers to modems connected via "POTS" lines keep
> hanging up intermittently.  Sometimes every fifteen seconds or so,
> sometimes every couple of hours.  The POTS lines are provisioned via a
> 5ESS switch over an OC-3 (AT&T DDM-2000) to an AT&T SLC 5 channel
> bank.  The nonsense that is being fed our poor client is that the POTS
> lines they've been connected with are incapable of data transmission
> speeds in excess of 9600bps.  Of course, this sounds like sheer BS

If the LEC took the cheep route and optioned the SLC5 for voice
compression to get more bang for their buck this could be true.

> because of a number of factors (including e.g. between the hours of
> 2AM and 6AM, disconnections rarely, if ever, occur and full speed
> transfers sometimes occur flawlessly for hours).  To add insult to
> injury, its been mentioned to our client that "... only copper POTS
> lines can really support these higher data speeds".  The client

This is a lot of BS.

> specifically wished to avoid the RBOC in this area due to the long and
> distinguished history of extraordinary customer service problems (with
> NYNEX).

> My question then is whether or not there is some notable option(s)
> that need to be selected at the switch, channel bank, or optical
> transport level to properly enable higher speed modem data communi-
> cations for this set of equipment.

Have they switched to the standby low speed card? This problem appears
to possibly be load dependant. It could be a defective card in the
fiber terminal or the T1 carrier terminal. I would put a TBird or
FireBird in the span and see if there is a problem with slipping or
loss of frame.  Does the carrier terminal alarm card have a peg count
meter that tells how many times the terminal has been in alarm? I have
run into the opposite problem. One of my terminals carrying all 56KB
digital data circuits was failing only at night between midnight and 4
AM. Unfortunately it carried my primary SS7 link.


Steve Uhrig
Chillicothe, Ohio  USA

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 05:14:16 GMT


On 22 Feb 1996 00:12:09 PDT, PAT said:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Remember when telephone guys coming out
> to your house to investigate/repair/make excuses for poor modem conn-
> ections would say that 'you are not guarenteed to get better than 1200
> baud on a voice line' ... how many times have people written this
> Digest to report problems with modem lines and said someone from telco
> gave them that excuse?    PAT]

I have been thinking this over, and have concluded broadband is in a
(hopefully) short-term fix.  The gist of this I have already sent to
{Network World} as a letter to the editor, but the bottom line: the
RBOCs don't want to sell you inexpensive digital broadband services
(forget ISDN -- in this case, they won't even guarantee useable data
lines for analog modems), cable TV has a terminal case of service
incompetence, the LD carriers are missing the last mile, and the Feds
want legalized bribery -- i.e., the spectrum auctions -- to price
wireless out of reach, too.  Yuck.


    Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
	    WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: tyrrell@buttercup.cybernex.net (Bruce Tyrrell)
Subject: Re: No 28.8kbps Over Fiber Optic POTS Lines
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 21:24:40 GMT


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Remember when telephone guys coming out
> to your house to investigate/repair/make excuses for poor modem conn-
> ections would say that 'you are not guarenteed to get better than 1200
> baud on a voice line' ... how many times have people written this
> Digest to report problems with modem lines and said someone from telco
> gave them that excuse?    PAT]

Question -- On what do you base your opinon that this is simply an
excuse. My understanding is that if you are paying for a pots line and
it is carrying your voice communications within the parameters it was
designed for, then you are getting what you paid for. If you wish to get
a guaranteed data rate then spend the money on a data line. It is also
my understanding that the only reason you're able to send data at an
increased rate of speed (28.8k) is due to the wonderful technology of
the modem you purchase and put on your VOICE line. Please tell me where
I've gone wrong here.  

Email at tyrrell@bc.cybernex.net

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

Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 19:02:52 CET
From: shaw 
Subject: Re: How Many Telephones Exist?


> I'm conducting some research for a corporate video -- and am curious
> to find out how many telephones exist WorldWide?  I would also like to
> find out how many telephones exist in Canada and the United States
> respectively. Any facts, figures or leads would be much appreciated!

According to the ITU's 1995 World Telecommunication Report, the number
of "main telephone lines" in 1994 were:

World: 647,127,000 
US: 156,769,500
Canada: 16,756,400


Robert Shaw
International Telecommunication Union
http://www.itu.ch


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most readers are aware that ITU is one
of my generous patrons. Their monthly grant along with that of Microsoft
provides for continued publication of this journal.   PAT]

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

From: Scott Montague <4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca>
Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 22:29:44 -0500
Subject: Re: How Many Telephones Exist?
Reply-To: 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca


> I'm conducting some research for a corporate video -- and am curious
> to find out how many telephones exist WorldWide?  I would also like to
> find out how many telephones exist in Canada and the United States
> respectively. Any facts, figures or leads would be much appreciated!

Well Curtis, I'm in Canada and have two phones.  My parents have five.

Hope this helps ,


Scott

BTW Pat, is this one of those types of messages that doesn't get
published?  :-)

     Scott Montague    / Apukwa of 4th \ Scouting: Improving tommorow
4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca \ Kingston Cubs / through the youth of today.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Retort: Now Scott, do you think that any
message exhibiting the wisdom we see in yours above would not get
published here?  I frankly admit to omitting a lot of one-liners saying
'me too' as often as not accompanied with the full text of the original
message, and I have been known to show some bias against messages which
have been cross-posted to to more than 125 different newsgroups at the
same time. I generally take a pass on the couple-dozen or so every day
which advise (1) how to make money fast; (2) lonely girl in Phillipines
wants you to call and talk dirty to her, all you pay is IDDD toll; (3)
why AOHELL users are all morons; (4) 'With luck (sex) all things are 
possible provided you pass this letter along', and (5) foreign student
wants to mention great deal on magazine subscriptions when ordered
through Kevin Lipsitz. 

And even then Steve, sometimes late at night or early in the morning
I fall asleep at my terminal sitting right here in the middle of a
sentence  and wake up a few hours later still logged in and
in the middle of the issue I was editing, but with 75-100 new messages
having arrived in my inbox while I was asleep. I am sorry if every
last word about every single subject you have ever written somehow
did not all get printed here.  You bet.    PAT]

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

From: feldman@imponderables.com (David Feldman)
Subject: Imponderables Thanks
Date: 23 Feb 1996 00:59:52 -0500
Organization: Imponderables


I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the many members of
this group who have e-mailed me with responses to my three questions
about telephony.  I've requested information of many other newsgroups
before, but have never had the pleasure of receiving as many generous
and informative responses as I've had here.  You've done a yeoman job
of helping to conquer Imponderability, and for that I am most grateful.
 

Dave Feldman 
 

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for your kind note of encour-
agement. We do indeed have a wonderful group of readers here, and this
Digest would not be half the success it is were it not for the many
folks who jump in eagerly willing to answer questions and offer advice. 
So Dave, if you're happy, then I'm happy.    PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #80
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Feb 23 12:53:57 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id MAA05658; Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:53:57 -0500 (EST)
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:53:57 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602231753.MAA05658@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #81

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 23 Feb 96 12:54:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 81

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks; it's For Real This Time (Fred Goldstein)
    Phone Scam Hits Midwest (David A. Berger)
    Expansion on "DSN" (1LT Robert Kulagowski)
    Ten DN's Assigned to a Single BRI? (bkravitz@vtel.com)
    Re: Events in Sylmar, CA Feb 9, 1971 (Steven Lichter)
    Re: Events in Sylmar, CA Feb 9, 1971 (Bob Vaughan)
    Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it? (Mike P. Storke)
    Ignorant Customer Service Types (Leonard Erickson)
    Re: NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion (Mike Morris)
    "Fear and Loathing in San Diego" With Apologies to H. Thompson (Dave Wade)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
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information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
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*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
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* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Feb 96 10:12:20 EST
From: Fred Goldstein 
Subject: Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time


Brock Meeks isn't entirely blowing smoke!  As a semi-official (albe
it self-proclaimed) Debunker Of The Modem Tax Urban Legend, I can
compare this scare with 1988's.

The original 1988 proposal was an FCC plan to treat Enhanced Service
Providers as interstate carriers, rather than as users of the local
network.  An ESP isn't necessarily a modem user, or even data -- voice
storage, for instance, could count, as of course would modemless ISDN.
By the proposed definition, an ESP would be anyone who carried information
across state lines.  Under *current* FCC regs, a private voice network
(corporate tie lines, for instance) that delivers calls to the local
exchange after crossing a state line ("tail-end hop off") *is* subject
to a $25/month/64kbps FCC tariff.  Most tie lines are exempted by
a customer certification that promises not to leak.  At a company I
used to work for, we installed "Feature Group A" *interstate* tariff
lines on a few PBXs, and forwarded interstate traffic onto them.  T hat
is the way carriers operate, and it let us "hop off" without paying
FCC surcharges on the tie lines themselves.

The FCC proposal was shot down, axed, hatcheted, and buried.  Congress
(it was the *Democrats* in charge then) made very clear that the FCC
(apppointed by *Republicans*) should *not*  even *consider* their
proposal any more.  By mid-1988 it was dead; only the undated warning
chain letter lived on.

The current problem is that a) the telcos *hate* this Internet stuff,
which enables some form of interstate communication without paying them
their interstate access fees, and b) some Internet users are flaunting
this and even starting to send real-time voice (almost like telephony)
across the net.  This latter activity triggers the FCC's red flag.

If InternetPhone and related programs actually worked well, then they
could theoretically turn Internet service providers *literally* into
long-distance companies.  By FCC definition, an access facility from a
local exchange carrier into a long-distance company is subject to
a very different treatment than a POTS line.  ("Feature Group A" is
the interstate carrier tariff for a line that's physically just a POTS
line or similar.)  AT&T, MCI and the other IXCs pay huge "minutes of
use" fees to the LECs.  

So if you really could bypass them by sending voice via an ISP, then
it's not irrational to start to view the ISP as an IXC.  And the
easiest way (not the right way, but the easiest) to do that is to
reclassify all ISP access lines as IXC access lines, subject to
incoming *and* outgoing minutes-of-use charges on all calls.  Oh yes,
this isn't a tax -- the FCC and for that matter no other part of the
govt' collects zilch.  The money is a *tariff* paid to the LEC (Bell).
It's just a rate hike, levied under the FCC's jurisdiction.  The new
telecomm bill doesn't change the fact that local service is a joint
federal-state matter.  Both can raise your rate.

Reality is perhaps not what the LECs want to make of it.  IPhone isn't
a substitute for telephone service.  It's more like CB Radio, a
variable-quality "meet me on channel 11" sort of toy.  In fact, it uses
Internet Relay Chat to set up connections.  IRC is in turn based in
part on CompUServe's "CB Simulator".  So we've returned the voice 
part to a "wired CB", but it's no "Reach Out America", if you get my drift.
Nonetheless it is a nose in the tent, and some are trying to use it
to claim that the whole Internet tent is suddently contaminated, and
needs to be torn down to be replaced by something that pays as much as
the Long Distance companies.

This simply points out the corruption in the whole cross-subsidized
house of cards that telecomm is, and remains.  Rural service in general
and local residential service in many cases remains highy subsidized,
and "toll" is the main source of that subsidy.  Therefore it is a big
deal whether or not somebody is a "user" (receives subsidy or at least
doesn't pay into it) or "carrier".  LECs are paid by the IXCs at both
ends of the call.  That's one reason why AT&T and MCI are interested
in going into the LEC business together.  (Sprint is already there;
they own a lot of Teleport Communications Group.)

A contrasting system occurs in the United Kingdom.  They don't make a
distinction between local and toll carriers.  If a BT customer makes
a call to, say, a NYNEX Cablecomms customer, BT pays NYNEX (which 
provides telephone service over its UK CATV operations) a share of the
toll.  If a Mercury customer calls a BT customer, Mercury pays BT a
share. It's a "peer-to-peer" relationship with many players, each
compensating the other for shared traffic.  You can see the advantages
of this scheme, but it doesn't have the subsidy flow that American
telcos expect.

We should not be alarmist, but should stay vigilant.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hope anyone who chooses to circulate
the original message in this latest 'modem tax' thread will also
include Fred's response above. It is *very important* to keep all
this in context and not have wild unfounded stories going around as
occurred beginning in 1988 and for a few years thereafter.   PAT]

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

From: David A. Berger 
Subject: Phone Scam Hits Midwest
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 06:45:35 -0800
Organization: CICNet, Inc.


Ann Arbor, Mich., February 21, 199 6-- If David A. Berger hadn't been
on his toes a month ago, his phone bill would have doubled.  Berger,
who lives in Ann Arbor, is a consultant and author of a best-selling
book, The Cheapest Way to Make Phone Calls, Send Faxes or Use the
Internet.  He prides himself on having a wealth of information about
phone companies ... yet he was almost taken for a ride by a seemingly
credible long-distance scam.

Here's what happened:  A lady who referred to herself as Yolanda called 
Berger asking whether he wanted his long-distance charges to appear on 
his local Ameritech phone bill rather than on a separate bill.  Her 
selling point was the convenience of having to write only one check.  
Berger specifically asked her whether he was being switched to a 
different long-distance carrier.  Furthermore, he asked whether any kind 
of commitment was necessary.  Her answer to both questions was:  
"Absolutely not, we just need your approval to combine the two bills."  

Then she said, "In the near future, Ameritech will be offering 
long-distance services."  As far as he knew, she worked for Ameritech and 
everything seemed legitimate, especially since one thing she said is 
true:  The new telecommunications reform bill grants local phone 
companies the right to compete for long-distance service.

She asked him to say "yes" to authorize the change combining the bills;  
the recorded "yes" would serve as proof of authorization.  After Berger 
agreed, Yolanda said, as an aside, "Within two weeks, you'll never be 
paying more than a quarter a minute."  At that point, Berger asked her 
again whether this had anything to do with switching long-distance 
companies.  This time she said "yes" and hung up.

Berger was able to protect himself by calling the business office of 
Ameritech, his local provider, and ordering a PIC (Primary Interexchange 
Carrier) freeze on all his phone lines, which is a foolproof means of 
preventing long-distance phone companies from switching a customer's 
long-distance service without that person's express consent.

Berger immediately informed Ameritech of this incident, advising them 
that it should be investigated.  It took Berger three phone calls before 
he was connected to someone at an Ameritech office who was willing to 
take down any information about this incident.  He asked them to contact 
him to let him know what action was taken; more than a month later, he 
still has not heard back from Ameritech.

The story goes on ... Berger, an independent representative for UniDial, a 
long-distance reseller of WilTel/WorldCom, got a report from his 
supervisor that a customer of his in Chicago just had one of their lines 
slammed (switched to a different long-distance provider without their 
approval), and that the other lines were switched "at the customer's 
request."  Rather odd, considering this customer was very happy with 
UniDial.  Berger contacted the customer and discovered that they were a 
victim of the exact same scam.  He had the customer call 700-555-4141, a 
toll-free number used to identify which long-distance service they are 
connected to.  Upon calling the 700 number, they found out that they were 
no longer on UniDial but on AT&T, at double the rate.  (Note:  To be fair, 
this does not mean that AT&T was necessarily responsible for this 
incident; most likely it was a reseller practicing these unethical 
selling tactics.)

Berger emphasizes the following points:  (1) selling tactics among some 
organizations have seemingly reached a new all-time low;  (2) those who 
have done the research to find the best deal in long-distance calling 
have the most to lose from this type of scam; and (3) Ameritech's lack of 
follow up has hurt its credibility in his eyes.

Now, unfortunately, Ameritech's name is being dragged into a fraudulent 
sales scheme that encompasses much of its large geographical service 
area, at least from Detroit to Chicago.  Obviously, this type of scheme 
may be practiced in other regions with the names of the respective local 
phone companies used in place of Ameritech.

Berger has compiled the following consumer tips to prevent you from being 
taken by the "combined bill scheme" as well as other schemes:

Tip 1:  Once you're happy with the long-distance service you have, get a 
PIC freeze.  This prevents you from being switched to a different 
long-distance carrier without your express approval; however, it will not 
hinder you from voluntarily switching.

Tip 2:  Call 700-555-4141 periodically to verify your long-distance 
carrier.

Tip 3:  If you get slammed, you are only responsible for paying what you 
would have paid at the rate of your old carrier.

Tip 4:  If anyone calls regarding your long-distance service and insists 
on getting a commitment on the spot, learn to "Just Say No."  You should 
get a phone number and an address so that you can follow up when you're 
ready to make an informed decision.

Tip 5:  Read PhoneNews Online, a free newsletter containing the latest 
information about phone fraud and other related issues via the Internet 
through Berger's personal home page at http://www.cic.net/~davidb.


        \\\|///
       \\ ~ ~ //    David A. Berger author of the best-selling book
       (/ @ @ /)            
_____oOOo_(_)_oOOo____________________________________________________
                       
"The Cheapest Way to Make Phone Calls, Send Faxes or Use the Internet"
      
    .oooO           
    (   )   Oooo.       email:davidb@a2.com
_____\ (____(   )__     URL: http://www.cic.net/~davidb  
      \_)    ) /    __________________________________________________
            (_/
                 Ann Arbor, Mich.

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

Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 16:01:43 GMT
From: 1LT Robert Kulagowski 
Subject: Expansion on "DSN"


While I won't speculate on the 710 area code, I think I can help a little 
with the DSN ("Defense Switched Network") system.

While in the past it was possible to dial with only seven numbers, the
DSN network has been transitioned to use ten digit dialing, with area
codes defining large sectors of the world.  For example, (318) covers
the middle east/Africa, (312) is the United States, etc.  Ordinarily,
to gateway between DSN and the commercial network from overseas, you
would call a DSN operator and ask for a patch through to a local
number to that post.  In that manner morale calls from soldiers
stationed overseas go to a military post in the United States where
you would let the operator know that you're making a morale phone
call.  Since most large military installations in the United States
have both DSN and commercial trunks coming to them they can manually
transfer the call.  I'm not aware of any military operators that will
transfer a call from a commercial number in the United States to an
overseas DSN number in order to prevent abuses.

If you're stationed at a military base, it's usually just a matter of 
dialing an escape code from your phone to determine whether to place a 
call using DSN, commercial or tactical trunks.  The switch you're 
attached to will be programmed with your precedence level and calling 
range, so that people aren't calling all over the world if they don't 
actually need it.  The switches can also be programmed to automatically 
default to a certain area code if that's where most calls go to, so while 
a subscriber may think that they're only dialing 7 digits to reach 
another military post in their home area code the full 10 digits are 
actually involved for call routing and load balancing.


1LT Bob Kulagowski                     | GMT 011-965-487-8822 x5848 (Comm)
http://www.kuwait.army.mil/~rkulagow   | + 3 318-438-5848 (DSN) 318-222-3222

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

From: bkravitz@vtel.com
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 96 09:36:29 cst
Subject: Ten DN's Assigned to a Single BRI?


Dear ISDN gurus,
   
I hope you can give me some good answers to my question about
assigning multiple directory numbers to a single BRI line.  My local
telco representatives (at Southwestern Bell) tell me they can't do
what I want.  I'm just trying to figure out if they don't have a
tariff that covers my request or if it's technically impossible.
   
My question has to do with the ability to have multiple (say 10 or 20)
directory numbers (telephone numbers) assigned to a single BRI line.
For example, I might want to have 20 different telephone numbers all
assigned to a single BRI line which is set up to accept incoming
circuit mode data calls.  (All 20 telephone numbers would be
associated with incoming circuit mode data calls). Of course, I know
that the BRI line can only accept two incoming calls (2B) simultaneously.
   
The reason I want to have all these numbers assigned is so that one device 
(acting sort of like a mini-PBX) that is attached to the BRI line can route 
the incoming circuit mode data call to the correct output port depending on 
the incoming (dialed) telephone number.
   
In answering the question above, please let me know if such a BRI line 
configuration is possible when the BRI line is attached to:
   
1. An AT&T 5ESS providing NI-1 ISDN service;
2. An AT&T 5ESS providing custom ISDN, using pt-pt configuration;
3. An AT&T 5ESS providing custom ISDN, using multipoint configuration;
4. A Nortel DMS-100 proving NI-1 service;
5. A Nortel DMS-100 proving custom ISDN;
6. A Siemens ESWD providing NI-1 service;
   
I believe that each of the six cases above may have a different answer
to my question about "Is it possible to assign 20 different telephone
numbers on a single BRI line which accepts incoming circuit mode data
calls?"
   
Much thanks for any and all help in answering this question.  


Regards,
   
Bruce Kravitz      VTEL Corporation
bkravitz@vtel.com  phone (512) 314-2743

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

From: slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu (Steven Lichter)
Subject: Re: Events in Sylmar, CA Feb 9, 1971
Date: 23 Feb 1996 07:30:27 -0800
Organization: GINA and CORE+ Services of The California State University


HEIDI.SERVERIAN@gte.sprint.com writes:

> First, a correction to your math - 25 years ago would be 1971 (1996-25).

> I wasn't in the area for the 1971 quake.  Any one out there able to
> share some recovery stories?

Service to Sylmar was out in the normal sense for six months, but
within a few days some service was up and working and within a week or
so most could pick up their phone and get an operator. Portable switch
trailers and operator service trailers were brought into the CO
parking lot.

A rather large hole was cut in the wall of the Sylmar CO and a
bulldozer and centermount truck were brought in to remove the
equipment. If you contact the company library they have a video that
was made of the reconstruction and other damage done to the area. If I
can find them I have a few photos that I took, but having moved a few
years ago I think they are still packed. All I remember is that I did
not get a day off for over six months and was working in Sundland at
the time it hit and the day before was working in Sylmar and would
have been there had we not moved on. 


The above are my ideas and have nothing to do with whoever my employer
is.  SysOp Apple Elite II and OggNet Hub (909)359-5338 2400/14.4 24
hours, Home of GBBS/LLUCE Support for the Apple II.
slichte@cello.gina.calstate.edu

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

From: techie@kzsu.Stanford.EDU (Bob Vaughan)
Subject: Re: Events in Sylmar, CA Feb 9, 1971
Date: 23 Feb 1996 03:24:46 -0800
Organization: Stanford University, CA 94305, USA


I don't have details handy, but there is a clipping on the wall of the
KZSU (90.1 FM Stanford) switchroom, showing row upon row of Step-By-Step
switchgear toppled like dominoes. I think it was a GTE office that was 
affected.

(This photo graces the wall of our switchroom, which houses a WE 711B
Step-By-Step PBX - working and in-service.)


Bob Vaughan  | techie@w6yx.stanford.edu | kc6sxc@w6yx.ampr.org
             | (packet radio) KC6SXC@N0ARY.#NOCAL.CA.USA.NOAM

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

From: storkus@heather.greatbasin.com (Mike P. Storke)
Subject: Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it?
Date: 23 Feb 1996 08:11:25 GMT
Organization: Great Basin Public Access UNIX, Reno, NV


In article  is written:

> Anyone have information on RateGate, a new service(?) AT&T has been
> starting to advertise.  Just curious what it is and how to find out more
> information on it.  

Rategate isn't a service, it's AT&T's new TV sales tactic to keep you
from seeing their rate increase (on top of already high rates) by
using the same tactics as the politicians are (i.e., mud-slinging).

Has anyone else noticed in the fine disclaimer print that is says
something to the point of, "Price comparisons of 22 major carriers
EXCLUDING SPRINT" (emphasis mine)?  What a farce ...


Mike P. Storke N7MSD          Snailmail: 2308 Paradise Dr. #134
Inet: storkus@heather.greatbasin.com        Reno, NV 89512-2712

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

Subject: Ignorant Customer Service Types
From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 96 19:36:49 PST
Organization: Shadownet


Pat,

I suspect that there are several reasons for the weird "stories" you
get from customer service. 

First, from my experiences in *internal* user support for a medium
sized company, I can tell you that you'll hear the same thing over and
over again. It takes some care to *notice* that you aren't hearing yet
another case of XX.

Second, unless you really *do* know your stuff, and are humble enough
to admit that you *don't* know everything, it's easy to *think* you
know what a person "really" means... Thus the total nonsense responses.

On a related note, I can state with confidence that most people do
*not* actually *read* things like error messages. Instead they see the
words they *expect* to see. Thus making it hard to rely on what they
tell you.

And worse, people tend to come up with the *strangest* theories as to
why something happened, and then tell you the *theory* rather than the
symptoms. 

So you can see that it gets tempting to assume that when you hear
something that doesn't sound familiar that the person talking to you is
confused. 

And finally, given that too many "service" and "support" jobs are
graded not on how *well* you help people, but on how *many* people they
"help" in a day. So if they can get rid of you with something that
sounds good it's actually a "good" idea. 


Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com	<--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com	<--last resort

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

From: morris@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Mike Morris)
Subject: Re: NPA 213 Nearing Exhaustion
Organization: College Park Software, Altadena, CA
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 06:34:58 GMT


rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) writes:

> On 19 Feb 1996 13:06:01 PDT, psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper) said:

>> 213 Area Code Running Out of Numbers 
>> Telecommunications Industry Evaluates Relief Options 
>> Los Angeles, CA -- Due to increased demand for telephone numbers, a
>> new area code will be introduced in some or all of the Los Angeles
>> area that now uses the 213 area code, the telecommunications industry
>> has started to announce.

>> Some of the cities currently served by the 213 area code include
>> Hollywood, Highland Park, Laurel Canyon, Huntington Park, Montebello
>> and all of downtown Los Angeles.

> Good grief!  213 is pretty small now.  Dividing it geographically
> would, I bet, render Huntington Park, Montebello, and generally the
> eastern and southern portions of 213 in the new NPA, while eastern
> Beverly Hills (actually in the northwest part of 213), Hollywood, and
> Downtown remain 213.  A few questions:
> - Does anybody know if this is reasonable?  That is, where has
>   the growth in numbers come from?

I have been told this by one person and have not verified it.  One of
the reasons is that the cellular companies do not re-use a number if
it has been cloned. This results in a bunch of numbers being retired
(permanently) every day.

> - Does anyone know how large 213 is now geographically?

It's the smallest area code in California -- probably the smallest west
of the Missippi river.


Mike Morris                                morris@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us
#include         I have others, but this works the best.

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

Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 10:11:26 -0700
From: djw@physics.LANL.GOV (Dave Wade )
Subject: "Fear and Loathing in San Diego" With Apologies to Hunter S. Thompson


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Retort: 

> I frankly admit to omitting a lot of one-liners saying 'me too' as often as 
> not accompanied with the full text of the original message, 
> and I have been known to show some bias against messages which have been 
> cross-posted to more than 125 different newsgroups at the same time. 

> I generally take a pass on the couple-dozen or so every day which advise 
>	(1) how to make money fast; 
>	(2) lonely girl in Phillipines wants you to call and talk dirty to 
>	her, all you pay is IDDD toll; 
>	(3) why AOHELL users are all morons; 
>	(4) 'With luck (sex) all things are possible provided you pass 
>	this letter along', and 
>	(5) foreign student wants to mention great deal on magazine
>	 subscriptions when ordered through Kevin Lipsitz. 

I attended several USENIX Birds of a Feather (i.e. BOF) sessions last
month at the Winter meeting.  I was told that the "TELECOM Digest
Editor" was in the audience.  I kept waiting to laugh, or to be
astonished at the "rightness" of someone`s response; but 'twas not to
happen.

The particular BOF that disturbed me the most was a gathering of all
the "richest and most powerful" mailing list moderators.  There was
this four hour meeting of people complaining about "spamming" and
"forging messages from moderated mailing lists", and like that ...

I was astounded to hear these Olde Usenet Denizens (OUDs; as opposed
to IUDs which are used to abort another type of upstart) tell
everybody present that the net will be much better off when all the
moderated software automagically implements Public Key Encryption ...
So the only message that your software will decrypt is one from "me";
and the only person who can read your "deathless prose" is someone on
"our" roster ...

I wonder; I marvel; I am endlessly frightened by the possibilities of
control which are stretching before our eyes. Just a few years ago, I
awakened to the first breath of true intellectual freedom I had ever
known; when I first joined "the net".  Now it is "the web" and it has
sticky, gooey stuff all over the criss-crossing webbing which used to
stop your plunge into oblivion.  Why must someone be "in charge"?

The marvelous fight between "cancelbots" and "cretins" seems to be a
fascinating EPIC adventure worthy of endless sleepless nights, until
the hero and villain finally succomb to the everpresent carresses of
life, loves, and the oldest villain of all, "The pursuit of happiness".


Dave


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can assure you I was **NOT** at any
such meeting; I was **NOT** in the audience or anywhere within a
couple thousand miles of San Diego. I am not involved in any organi-
zation of Usenet/Internet moderators or mailing list maintainers. I
am not sure what to make of your message. I have used encryption on
what goes out to comp.dcom.telecom from this journal since several
months ago when Jeff Slaton made one of his periodic forays and
dumped all over the newsgroup. Now it does not happen any longer
where I am concerned. 

Perhaps all the people at that meeting consisted of the 'richest 
and most powerful moderators' ... I would have no idea. One big
difference between myself and many other moderators is that they
may choose to critique my work and my journal, however I do not
choose to do the same in return. I understand the problems they
may be having and in good faith assume they are handling things
the best they can in their group, the same as I do here. 

It is unfortunatly physically impossible for me to even begin
printing all the messages I receive here; there are a couple
hundred per day. There are days I sit here for *hours* until the
point I am physically exhausted and there are still dozens of
messages waiting in the queue. I try therefore to select the
things which *interest me the most* in the hopes that readers
will enjoy them as well. I don't know how else to do it. I must
wonder if other moderators receive the same volume of traffic
as myself. I am sure some do and others do not. 

Since we do not see each other face to face, I beleive that
spelling and grammar and some modicum of editing are as important
in our faceless meetings as clean clothes and a clean body might
be in a personal meeting. So I spend some time on that in each
issue unlike some moderators. I do not mean to close this issue
sounding very self-righteous, but I do take my role here very
seriously and I am always looking for ways to improve myself and
improve the Digest. For me, it is a full time endeavor.  PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #81
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Feb 26 02:21:28 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id CAA22648; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 02:21:28 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 02:21:28 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602260721.CAA22648@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #82

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 26 Feb 96 02:21:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 82

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Sprint Employees Still Bitter About Office Closing (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    A More Complete History of New Orleans EXchanges (Mark J. Cuccia)
    CPUC ISDN Rate Increase Preliminary Hearing (Bob Larribeau)
    Booming Telecom Market in the Netherlands (Alex van Es)
    *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code (Scott E. Barnett)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 01:24:54 EST
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: Sprint Employees Still Bitter About Office Closing


Imagine if you had a job where you had to raise your hand to get 
permission to go to the bathroom. Suppose your employer did not
allow water or other beverages at your desk, to make it easier
for you to avoid bathroom breaks during the work day. What if
your employer promised you commissions on your sales then later
cheated you out of those commissions making bogus excuses of
one kind or another ... 

Stories like the above were commonplace when Sprint was operating
its telemarketing plant in San Fransisco until almost two years
ago. 

Now suppose if you worked in a place like that, and when you and
your fellow employees began organizing to form a union your
employer retaliated by threatening you, falsifying records about
your work and making plans to close the office completely. What
would YOU do? ...

Sprint retaliated in all the above ways. The company spied on
its workers, ordered supervisors to falsify records and to threaten
employees individually and as a group with the loss of their job
if efforts to unionize continued. 

Sprint has always prided itself on its ability to keep unions out of
its offices and other facilities. The company was sued for its
decision to close its San Fransisco telemarketing office on July 14,
1994, just eight days before a scheduled vote that likely would have
resulted in the introduction of a union into the company. The suit
claimed Sprint's closing of the office was merely a ploy to avoid
union organizing, an unfair labor practice under federal law.

Sprint contends it closed the office because it was losing millions of
dollars per year. The judge who heard the case agreed with that
reasoning although he found considerable fault in Sprint's handling of
the matter. The employees however have continued their agressive
prosecution of the matter, and now legal appeals are going on before
the National Labor Relations Board. The company is continuing to
fight, and as a result now the whole situation is starting to enter an
international arena.

If you ask me, I think Sprint should quit while they are still ahead,
admit their involvement and try to gracefully deal with whatever
happens at this point. If they continue at this point, their already
soiled reputation is going to get sullied even worse.

The San Fransisco telemarketing plant was called 'La Conexion Familiar',
which is Spanish for 'The Family Connection'.  It sold Sprint long-
distance service to Spanish speaking clients, offering them monthly
bills printed in Spanish, and immediate, default access to Spanish
speaking telephone operators. 

Because the 250 employees at the Sprint telemarketing office were
mostly Hispanic women, the case has drawn the attention of the Mexican
government which has decided to make use of an obscure provision of
the North American Free Trade Agreement which allows the three
participating nations to scrutinize and enforce each other's labor
laws. 

NAFTA representatives from Canada, Mexico and the United States will
conduct a public forum in San Fransisco on Tuesday, February 27 to
discuss Sprint's actions. In some respects, the forum will be only
ceremonial, since they offer no remedies for the workers. What the
workers will get however is the satisfaction of being included in a
trinational study to be published on the effects of sudden plant
closures on union organizing. The forum and resulting study are
likely to present Sprint in a very dark light; giving the public a
very bad opinion of Sprint at the start of the vaunted Information
Age.

There is a very powerful irony here. Sprint is a very high-tech
company at the cutting edge of telecommunications, and it is being
associated with employer practices dating back to the 1930's ...
there is also a certain irony in the role NAFTA has acquired in
the Sprint case because of the fact that the trade pact was vigorously
opposed by unions. Through this kind of happenstance, a new legal
channel has opened up for unions, although I doubt anyone ever
thought NAFTA procedures would get used in this way. 

The forum on Tuesday is independent of the litigation currently 
before the National Labor Relations Board. Shortly after Sprint
chose to close the San Fransisco office, the NLRB filed formal
charges against Sprint, charging it with 55 violations of labor law
and ordering the company to re-open the office and reinstate all
workers with back pay. Sprint immediatly appealed that order.

Last August, Judge Gerald Wacknov ruled that Sprint was guilty
of all the charges placed against the company. The judge also
ruled that Sprint had deliberatly falsified company records to
create a phony 'paper trail' demonstrating that Sprint had planned
to close the office prior to any discussion of uninization.

Nevertheless, the judge agreed that Sprint had 'valid and compelling
economic reasons' for closing an office that was losing customers
faster than it was recruiting them and losing millions of dollars
in the process. The union is appealing this decision at the present
time, demanding that Sprint offer to rehire all the workers and
give them back pay.

Sprint has responded saying the worker's claim that the company is
anti-union are outlandish. Sprint claims that its local telephone
service division has been unionized 'for decades' ... but they seem
to have forgotten the company has only been in business for about
twenty years and in local phone service for a much shorter time
than that. Furthermore, the local operations were unionized *under
their previous owners* and not through any decision made by Sprint
since that company has owned the locals ...

Sprint claims the workers had to seek permission to go to the
bathroom only so that the telephone system being used would not
continue to dial residences when workers stepped away from their
desk. That seems to be a rather odd excuse considering technology
involving predictive dialing systems has long been in place allowing
telemarketers to log in and out automatically when they are online
or offline. Additionally, Sprint insists that its employees were
not told to limit their water intake in order to have to 'go to
the bathroom less often when at work'. 

Sprint claims they have an 'excellent record' of complying with
labor laws having received only two minor complaints since they
have been in business. Sprint states that 'to suggest this is
a pattern of willful behavior by the company is a 'fabrication
created by former employees who have their own agenda ...'

When asked for a specific reason why employees would have attempted
to organize, Sprint's response was they really did not know what
prompted the allegations against them.

Lilliette Jiron says she knows why ...

A 22 year old single mother who was recruited by Sprint while she
was in a high school equivilency program, she said she resented
'being spied on' while in the bathroom by supervisors, and being
told 'not to drink so much water, then you won't have to "go" as
often ...'

She says she hated seeing workers fired in full view of the rest
of the staff. And she says that after promising all the workers
they would receive commissions, Sprint then reneged and refused
to pay the workers what they had promised. She said that one day
when the air circulation system malfunctioned and noxious fumes
got into the office with other nearby companies busily evacuating
their employees, Sprint made everyone stay on the job for quite
awhile longer until the employees began leaving without permission.

Ms. Jiron said when Sprint came to the employment counseling office
at her school they flat out lied about the work environment and
the promised wages. 

Asked why she stayed at that job she said it was because she needed
the job to support herself and her child.

She said she was called in to a manager's office one day and told
her new job would be to spy on her co-workers. She was told that
when co-workers were away from their desk she was to go through their
desk and purses, etc looking for union literature. She refused to
accept this new 'job', but at the same time she refused to publicly
support the union because the manager told her 'if she kept quiet
and did not say anything about it' that 'once the union comes we
will close here and give you a better job for Sprint working somewhere
else.'

On the day Sprint closed the operation, employees were given one
hour's notice to collect their possessions and get out of the building.
The employees found it incredible that the company had not given
them any notice or offered to help them find other employment either
within Sprint or at other firms. 

Jeff Miller, spokesman for the Communications Workers of America,
the union which was attempting to organize La Conexion Familiar
employees and is now in litigation with Sprint insists that the
company's message was very clear:

"It was intended as an example for Sprint employees everywhere. It
was an object lesson. Sprint is saying to its other employees that
if they try to organize the same thing will happen to them."

Maybe that is the example Sprint wants their employees to see, but
now with NAFTA involved and the very real possibility that Mexico
will retaliate against the company in arrangements for international
telecommunications traffic, the example and 'object lesson' may 
well backfire. The real loser may be Sprint. Certainly if the
company loses the current appeal before the NLRB, there will be
very real financial consequences for the company.


PAT

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

Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 16:46:34 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: A More Complete History of New Orleans EXchanges


While the following isn't 100% complete, it is much more comprehensive
than what I sent to the Digest last Summer. It gives more detail on
New Orleans from 1879 to approx.1960. Some of this info came from
researching old New Orleans telephone directories and some of it
(particularly the earliest days) came from a pamphlet South Central
Bell sent me back in the 1970's, probably compiled from the Louisiana
Telephone Pioneers.

Enjoy.....


NEW ORLEANS 

(I think that most of the earlier info was prepared by the Louisiana 
Telephone Pioneers).

1879- first exchange magneto
(New Orleans Telephonic Exchange)
located at #47 Camp Street
(this was the *old* New Orleans street address scheme which was changed
in the 1890's to addresses showing a block number)

1880- name change to Louisiana Telephone Company

1881- origianl switchboard replaced with one having several sections

1883- location moved to the `uptown-river' corner of Poydras & Carondelet
A new Western Electric switchboard was installed; girls replaced boys as
telephone operators; name changed to The Great Southern Telephone & Telegraph
Company

1885- a `multiple' board was installed by Western Electric

1897- location moved to the `uptown-lake' corner of Poydras & Carondelet;
AT&T maintained a toll board next door at 527 Carondelet

1898- name change to The Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph Company

1900- magneto board(s) replaced with a common battery board

1903- new exchange split off, the Uptown exchange at 1331 Foucher Street;
original exchange (with remaining customers) called Main

1906- Hemlock exchange (1020 Esplanada Ave)to serve `downtown' area 
(downtown meaning `below' Canal street; the Central Business District is 
the Main)

1906- Algiers exchange to serve the area on the westbank of the Miss.River
(area known as `Algiers'; 513 Opelousas at Verett Streets)

1909- Jackson exchange at Josephine & Carondelet Sts. to supplement the
Uptown exchange

1910- Walnut exchange 1031 Burdette at 7728 Zimple streets (University/
Carrollton areas of uptown New Orl)

1911- Galvez exchange 200(201?) S.Galvez & Cleveland streets to serve the
`back-of-town' area

1913- Southern Bell takes over Cumberland Tel&Tel; consolidation into
Southern Bell completed in 1926

1916- construction for new building for 820 Poydras street

1925- Cedar exchange in Metairie area at 2728 Metairie Road at Gruner St.

Thru 1926, all New Orleans was MANUAL; line numbers could be one to four
digits long; multi-party lines had a letter tacked onto each station on
parties sharing the line. All parties on the same line shared the same
numericals however. 2-party lines differentiated each other with W & J
4-party lines used J, M, R, W

1927- DIAL SERVICE begins to cut-in with 2 manuals cutover(11 June 1927)
all exchanges had their first two letters capitalized to be dialed into.
All `less-than-four' digit line numbers had leading zero(s).
Party lines cutting to dial service had to be renumbered so each party on
the same line had unique 4-digit line numbers.

Hemlock manual replaced by FRanklin (1740 Almonaster St at N.Roman St;
That portion of Almonaster Street also known as Franlin Avenue)

Galvez manual replaced by GAlvez (4420 Cleveland)

21 Jan 1928 RAymond (520 Baronne near Poydras St) added to help the
MAin manual

July 1928 CRescent added to FRanklin

Oct. 1928 AUdubon added to GAlvez

Dec. 1933 (the Depression Years): due to loss of subscribers, all AUdubon
stations moved into GAlvez; AUdubon switches (thousands, hundereds, 
connectors) moved out

Oct. 1936 AUdubon exchange placed in again, adding to GAlvez

28 May 1938 MAin manual cuts to MAgnolia dial (in the RAymond building)

June 1941 CAnal added to RAymond & MAgnolia

2 Aug 1941 all manual JAckson cut to new JAckson & CHestnut dial
(4310 St.Charles Ave); many UPtown manual lines moved to new dial unit.

June 1942 BYwater added to FRanklin & CRescent

March 1947 AMherst added to GAlvez & AUdubon

Aug. 1947 VAlley added to FRanklin/CRescent/BYwater

20 Oct.1947 TEmple (at 115 Gruner St, Metairie) added to old CEdar manual
in adjacent building; many manual CEdar lines cut to TEmple dial.

April 1948 VIctor added to FRanklin/CRescent/BYwater/VAlley

21 June 1948 UNiversity dial at 1807 Burdette at Hickory streets added to
help out WAlnut manual. Many WAlnut lines cut to UNiversity dial

Dec 1948 TUlane added to RAymond/MAgnolia/CAnal

Oct.1949 TYler added to JAckson & CHestnut

18 Nov.1950 CEdar manual cuts to dial, moving to adjacent TEmple building

15 Dec.1951 new EDison dial office on westbank to serve the communities
of Harvey & Marrero (which used to have loops under the river from the
JAckson/CHestnut/TYler office)
new office on Fourth Street at Avenue `J' in Marrero LA.

March 1952 EXpress added to RAymond-MAgnolia-CAnal-TUlane

1 July 1952- coax cable from Jackson MS to Hattiesburg MS to New Orleans 
completed; LIVE national network TV available in New Orleans

11 Oct 1952- new FAirview & EVergreen switch to service the Gentilly area
from 1944 Prentiss Ave at St.Anthony streets. Splits the northern area
of GAlvez-AUdubon-AMherst & FRanklin-CRescent-BYwater-VAlley-VIctor

1 March 1953- New Orleans becomes the second Southern Bell Tel & Tel city
to have Operator Toll Dialing

6 Jan. 1955:
ALgiers manual becomes dial as FOrest-1,6 (at 1020 Hancock St, Gretna LA)
EDison becomes FIllmore-1 (and add FIllmore-7)
St.Bernard LA becomes a CDO (Numbers are 5-xxxx)

6 Nov. 1955- Chalmette LA gets own switch, cutting away from FR-CR-BY-VA-VI
located on Moreau street in Chalmette. EDgewood-1

Between 1955 and 1960, all 2-letter exchanges become 2-letters and a digit;
MOST switches do a consolidation of their names to a new single common name
plus a digit for each of the old exchange names in that switch;

1955 (second to last manual becomes dial, moving to dial building)
CHestnut =========> TWinbrook-1
JAckson ==========> TWinbrook-5
UPtown (manual) ==> TWinbrook-7
TYler ============> TWinbrook-9

1956 (last manual becomes dial, moving to dial building)
WAlnut (manual)   ==> UNiversity-1 (and add UN-5)
UNiversity (dial) ==> UNiversity-6

1956
CEdar ===> VErnon-1 and 5
TEmple ==> VErnon-3

1957                        1957
VAlley ===> WHitehall-3     CAnal ====> JAckson-2
VIctor ===> WHitehall-4     MAgnolia => JAckson-3
FRanklin => WHitehall-5     TUlane ===> JAckson-4
CRescent => WHitehall-7     RAymond ==> JAckson-5
BYwater ==> WHitehall-9     EXpress ==> JAckson-9
(also, a WHitehall-0        (also, OFficial, telco business office becomes
 was introduced in the       known as LAfayette-9, using same inward switch
 newley developing N.O.East  as JAckson-9, but there is also a Step PBX for
 area; this was a split)     Southern Bell Telco business office numbers)

1959                        1960
GAlvez ===> HUnter-2        FAirview ===> ATwood-2
AMherst ==> HUnter-6        EVergreen ==> ATwood-8
AUdubon ==> HUnter-8

1960
Kenner LA had 3 and 4 digit numbers in the 30's (manual)
4-digit dial in the 1940's; TOLL charges, operator connected; later local
free using Tandem access code 21+; By 1950, Kenner had numbers 4-xxxx,
7-xxxx, 71-xxxx, were dialed from New Orleans with the 21+ access code; also
St.Bernard LA's step CDO (5-xxxx) were dialed with the 21+ access code.
In 1960, Kenner's 4- and 7-/71- became PArk-1,9. I don't remember what mapped
to what. St.Bernard's 5-xxxx became 682 around 1962 when other manual `rural'
exchanges became CDO using `6' as the first digit of the NNX (6 became the
digit for routing to the step tandem)

1960
New Orleans East (the older part of the East which still had WH-x numbers and
the newer developed area with WH-0) were all cut over to CHestnut-2, the very
first #5XB switch in New Orleans; This was also a `split' since it took many
original WH-3,4,5,7,9 numbers into it!

1961
EDgewood-1 renamed ARabi-1,9

New wirecenter switches were #5XB beginning in the early 1960's;
New NNX codes to existing switches were *usually* step if the switch was step
New NNX codes to exisiting #5XB switches were #5XB;
One existing step switch (FOrest= 36x) had new NNX's that were #5XB
The VErnon=83x step switch had VE-4 and 837 as a new #5XB but later new NNX's
were step.

By the early 1970's, #1(A)ESS began to be introduced; first as a new switch
with its own new NNX codes `overlayed' to exisitng switches and territory.
Beginning in the mid-70's, step's began to be cut to ESS, and #5XB's 
began to be cut to ESS beginning in the late-70's.

Since about 1990, the remaining #1(A)ESS offices have been being cut 
one-by-one to Digital (DMS & #5ESS), but there are still many #1(A)ESS 
switches remaining in the metro area.


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: Bob Larribeau 
Subject: CPUC ISDN Rate Increase Preliminary Hearing
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 10:44:10 -0800
Organization: Larribeau Associates


Pacific Bell ISDN Tariff Increase Application
CPUC Preliminary Hearing
February 21, 1996

The California Public Utilities Commission held its preliminary
hearing to review the Pacific Bell ISDN Tariff Increase Application.
The purpose of this hearing was to set the schedule for the hearing.
The Administrative Law Judge will set the schedule based on what was
presented in the hearing.  She said she was considering a schedule
where the formal hearings would start on June 26.

The meeting room was full.  There were the normal complement of
lawyers from Pacific Bell, AT&T, and so on.  Intel was there.
Consumer groups like TURN and UCAN.  There were also a lot of regular
people there who are opposing this price increase.  The California
ISDN Users Group signed up as a party to the hearings to protest
the tariff.

The main issue discussed was the Non-Disclosure Agreement that was
distributed by Pacific Bell to receive a copy of the cost data
supporting the tariff.  Pacific Bell has requested that this cost data
be kept under seal.  The Administrative Law Judge did not accept
Pacific's simple statement that this information should be sealed.
She told Pacific that they have to provide justification.

The Non-Disclosure Agreement was particularly onerous.  It includes a
consequential damages clause and requires that the signature be
notarized.  The Administrative Law Judge gave the parties one week to
come to agreement on a Non-Disclosure Agreement or she would issue one
herself on Friday, March 1.  She made it clear that she does not find
consequential damages clauses acceptable.

In response to a question about why Pacific Bell added the
consequential damages clause and the notarized signatures, they said
it was due to the broad interest that this tariff application was
generating.  Normally only Pacific Bell, AT&T, MCI, etc. are involved
in these hearings.  They seem to find all of us regular people there
somewhat scary.  What really scares them is our ability to distribute
information on the Web!

The Administrative Law Judge was also sympathetic to a request to make
an abridged version of the cost data available to the general public.
Strong requests were made to Pacific Bell to publish their methodology
at a minimum.

This hearing was a preliminary skirmish in what looks to be a long and
interesting process.  The CIUG will be doing everything we can to
defeat or ameliorate this price increase.  We need your support.

You can subscribe to our mail group by sending email to
"majordomo@internex.net" with "subscribe ciug" in the body of the
message.  We will also be posting information on our web page at
"http://www.ciug.org".  You can contact us at "info@ciug.org".


Bob Larribeau
California ISDN Users' Group

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

Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 18:53:58 GMT
From: Alex van Es 
Subject: Booming Telecom Market in the Netherlands


At high speed the citizens of the Netherlands are being pushed in
buying mobile phones and pagers. Millions of dollars are spend yearly
to push the telecom product on the Dutch customer. These days every
newspaper, TV channel and many billboards are showing the telecom
product. According to some smart accountants at the PTT, the
Netherlands should have 4 million (more then 25% of the population)
mobile phone connections by the year 2000. At this point phones are
being given away for free, as long as you sign up for at least a year
with service provider Libertel. It may come obvious that many
youngsters take this deal, not taking in consideration the costs
involved using a cellular phone. Another popular thing among
youngsters these days are the so called buzzers. Buzzers are like
pagers, the only difference is that they don't charge any monthly fee.
At this point 60% of all buzzers sold are to youngsters in the
age-group of 18 - 25 years old. Currently selling at a speed of 10,000
buzzers a month.

Libertel (the second GSM provider in the Netherlands) current- ly has
32,000 subscribers. Network coverage of Libertel is still expanding,
having full coverage by the end of oktober this year. Rumours go that
the Libertel network will be technically superiour to the PTT's
network.

Whatever the future will bring us, it will sure be buzzing and
beeping!


Alex van Es
Alex@Worldaccess.NL, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands
Phone:+31-55-5421184		GSM:+31-6-53398711
Try to page me using my homepage at:
http://www.worldaccess.nl/~alex/sms/beep.htm


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What precisely is a 'buzzer' as opposed
to a pager?  Would this be like the old fashioned pagers here which
only beeped when called, without delivering any actual message, the
implication being when it beeped you called a preset number?    PAT]

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

From: sebarnett@aol.com (SEBarnett)
Subject: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code
Date: 25 Feb 1996 06:13:54 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)


Bell Canada's World-Wide Web pages contain a "Products and Services"
guide which includes a list of the *XX codes used to access Bell's
Smart-Touch (Custom Calling) Services.  Beside the standard *69, *70,
etc. codes there is listed a *49 which is described as the "long
distance signal" code.  The same code (*49), according to the chart,
both activates and deactivates this signal.  I was not able to find
any other clear reference at Bell's site telling me exactly what this
signal is for.  Does anyone have any information?


Thanks!

Scott E. Barnett
Detroit, Michigan USA
sebarnett@aol.com

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #82
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Feb 26 13:01:13 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id NAA26772; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:01:13 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:01:13 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602261801.NAA26772@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #83

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 26 Feb 96 13:01:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 83

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Latest NANP, New NPA, and INC Information (Mark J. Cuccia)
    UC Berkeley Short Courses on High-Speed LAN Technologies (Harvey Stern)
    SNET & AT&T Battle it Out - The Beginning of the War (Mike Sandman)
    US Cross-Subsidies (was: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks) (Jeremy Parsons)
    Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time (Tom Betz)
    Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time (R Hoffmann)
    ATT Rate Increase (Lars Poulsen)
    FCC Warns Callback Providers (Jean B. Sarrazin)
    Modem/Countries Compatibility/Approval Information (Lionel Ancelet)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
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*************************************************************************
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* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
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*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:00:51 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Latest NANP, New NPA, and INC Information


Bellcore NANPA finally corrected some of the errors in their webpage the 
other day (http://www.bellcore.com/NANP), and included *two* new Caribbean 
area codes as well!

284 = British Virgin Islands (BVI)
473 = Grenada (GRE)

(I would guess that the island of Carricou is included in Grenada's new 
area code as well).

This now makes a total of *nine* new area codes breaking away from the 
Caribbean.

The dates that these two new codes take effect (permissive dialing 
begins/ends), test numbers, contact people, etc. are yet to be announced.

Some of the following are actually in effect, some have dates announced 
to begin permissive dialing, and some have dates still TBA:

242 Bahamas (BHA)
246 Barbados
268 Antigua (including Barbuda) (ANT)
284 British Virgin Islands (BVI)
441 Bermuda
473 Grenada (GRE) (and Carricou?)
758 St.Lucia (SLU)
787 Puerto Rico (PUR)
869 St.Kitts & Nevis

At *this* point in time, 809 *still* has:

US Virgin Islands
Anguilla
Montserrat
Dominica
St.Vincent & the Grenadines (Bequia, Palm Is, Mustique, Union Is.)
Turks & Caicos Islands
Caymen Islands
Trinidad & Tobago
Jamaica
Dominican Republic

Speculation is that the Dominican Republic will retain 809 and every 
other location will get their own new NPA's, altho' it is possible that 
each island will all want their own codes, and request them all at the 
same time, meaning that 809 as an assigned code could cease to exist and 
thus be `reclaimed' by Bellcore NANPA.

Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic have been *the* two largest 
consumers of NXX central office codes in 809, altho' Puerto Rico tops the 
Dominican Republic. But I've been told that the Dominican Republic didn't 
want to withdraw from 809 for its own new NPA, and Puerto Rico `blinked' 
first. 

I also recently received my monthly mailing from the (Bellcore) INC,
the Industry Numbering Committee. It was *by far* the largest monthly
mailing from them to date since they began their conferences some two
years ago.  There was the regular document (rather thick this time) of
what happened at the January INC meeting as well as the final draft of
the INC NPA Assignment Guidelines document, and a 100+ page final
draft Number Portability document.

There were some *very* interesting points noted in the NPA Assignment
Guidelines document. Much of it was written in `legalese' language,
but it was mentioned that the "N9X" range of area codes (80 codes
total) are being reserved for NANP `expansion' which is predicted to
take place in the second quarter of the next century. It hasn't yet
been finalized whether to go to five-digit line numbers, four-digit
central office codes, four-digit NPA codes, or a combination of two of
these or even all three, but the speculation is that going to
four-digit area codes would be less disruptive to all involved.

Much of the `legalese' text of the document regarded locations which are 
not currently part of the NANP but wish to be included. Those countries 
or locations have to be UN recognized countries  or ITU recognized, 
and at least have a community of interest with *other* NANP countries or 
be located in close proximity with the NANP, or if not an actual sovereign 
country that their parent country should already be a part of the NANP 
(such as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands). Inclusion in the NANP 
also requires that these locations identify their *only* country code as 
`+1', that they *return their existing country code back to the ITU within 
one year of admission to the NANP*, and that they conform to NANP 
dialing/addressing plans. It was noted that the entire resources of the 
NANP would also be made available to them (10-XXX/101-XXXX codes, 800, 
900, 500, etc). Another `legalese' section regarded countries (Caribbean 
obviously) presently sharing an NPA with other countries and the 
procedures for getting their *own* NPA.

The NPA Assignment Guidelines document also stated that the following 
would be *UN*assignable as area codes:

N11 (as they are used for local Service Codes);

950 (due to its conflict with 950 as a seven-digit fg.B carrier access 
number or national `single-number' for places such as Pizza Hut or Dominos);

555 (due to its conflict with 555 as the prefix in seven digit access for 
directory information and now other `info-line' services.


One code which wasn't included in this list of unassignable as area
codes is 976, to my surprise, but maybe they might use 976 as a
special *area* code if 900 begins to fill up. (I would *not* want to
have 976 nor 666 as an area code, nor would I want to actually dial
anything with either as an area code).

Another class of NPA's is "Easily Recognized Codes" which have the same 
figure for both the `B' and `C' digit:

N22, N33, N44, ..., N88. The traditional N00's also fall into this category.
These codes will be used for non-geographic NANP-wide (or large portions 
of the NANP) special functions.

Two blocks of ten codes have been reserved for "meeting some
unanticipated need in the future", probably some unconceivable new
technological service to be developed in the future. The 37X and 96X
range of codes has been set aside for this purpose.

As mentioned earlier, the N9X range is reserved for expansion to a 
`longer-than-ten-digit' NANP number. But nothing was mentioned about the 
89X range- 89 is also used as the first two digits of the `international' 
calling card number.

There was nothing new mentioned in this mailing about what the 
`ring-down' or `non-dial' 88X points are being moved into, but I think 
that those in 881-XXX and 888-XXX are being transferred to other 88X ranges.

And there are still discussions and negotiations on how the NANP will be 
administered. Bellcore is supposed to be transferring numbering to an 
`independent' authority, and there are discussions between Bellcore, the 
FCC, the Industry Forums, and other countries' telcos, regulators and 
forums. The most likely solution is the NANC: North American Numbering 
Council which would *also* take over assignment of local central office 
codes throughout the US (including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and
the US Virgin Islands. Canada and the (non-US) Caribbean locations 
haven't yet decided if they will turn over local c/o code administration 
to a centralized NANP-wide local c/o code administrator.

Anyone can get on the *free* mailing list of the INC (and its `parent' 
forum the ICCF- the Industry Carriers' Compatablity Forum). To get on the 
mailing list of either or both, write to:

Secretary
INC (or ICCF)
Bellcore
3 Corporate Place
Piscataway NJ 08854 (USA)

or fax a request to 908-336-3640

There are also other industry forums sponsored by Bellcore or ATIS, but 
they have their own secretaries and mailing addresses. But mailings from 
these two forums are a start- and they are *free* (at this point in time).


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: southbay@garnet.berkeley.edu
Subject: UC Berkeley Short Courses on High-Speed LAN Technologies
Date: 26 Feb 1996 01:11:44 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley


U.C. Berkeley Continuing Education in Engineering Announces 2 Berkeley
Nationwide Short Courses on LEADING EDGE LAN TECHNOLOGIES (April
25-26, 1996 Boston, MA) (May 15-16, 1996 Herndon, VA)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

As LAN Technologies have matured, their use has expanded both in
numbers of installations, and in the demands placed on them by
emerging applications.  This has spawned the growth of a multitude of
options for new, high-performance LANs.  This course takes an in-depth
technical look at many of the technologies that may be applied to solve
network growth problems, both today and in the future.

The instructor, Rich Seifert, is a developer and co-author of many of
the industry standards for LANs and internetworking.  The course
examines the application and operation of all of the available options
for deploying next-generation LAN systems.  Topics include:
Interconnecting LANs, LAN Switches, Virtual LANs High-Speed LAN
Alternatives: IEEE 802.3/Fast Ethernet: 100Base-T, IEEE
802.12/100VG-AnyLAN, ANSI X3T12: FDDI/FDDI-Over-Copper (CDDItm),
Asynchronous Transaction Mode (ATM LANs), Wireless LANs.  Emphasis is
placed on real-world tradeoffs of cost, product availability and
interoperability in a confusing evolving market.

This course is appropriate for development engineers and managers,
network planners and administrators, MIS managers, product marketers,
and support personnel responsible for making decisions regarding the
deployment of next-generation LAN equipment.  This course is not a
primer in networking; some familiarity with existing LAN technologies
and application environments is assumed.

Lecturer: RICH SEIFERT, M.S.E.E., M.B.A., is President of Networks and
Communications Consulting. Formerly with Digital Equipment Corp. and
Industrial Networking, Inc., he was responsible for the development of
the Ethernet physical layer and specifications, as well as Token Bus
Factory LAN products. He is co-author of the IEEE 802.1, 802.3, 802.4
and Fast Ethernet standards, and is currently working on Wireless
LANs, Internetworking, Protocol design, High Speed networks and new
network architectures. A much sought after lecturer, Mr. Seifert
teaches courses on networking for the University of California at
Berkeley and many private companies.  Networks and Communications
Consulting works with a number of firms developing and manufacturing
network products.


LEADING-EDGE PROTOCOLS (April 23-24, 1996 Boston, MA) (May 13-14, 1996
Herndon, VA)

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This comprehensive course covers the very latest advances in
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) including:
Ipv6 and transition strategies from Ipv4, smoothe address management,
BOOTP and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, problems and issues for
large IP networks, video server requirements, multicast, bandwidth
reservation (RSVP) design and application, IP working with ATM.

Lecturer: BEN TSAO is a leading expert in network protocols and
network design.  As Director of advanced technology for GIWA
International, he specializes in meeting and exceeeding tactical and
strategic business objectives through the effective use of information
technology.  Tsao brings 20 years of teaching and real-world experience to
the classroom.  He has taught Advanced Data Communication courses to
over 5000 IS professionals in the US, Canada, Europe, and China.

For more information (complete course descriptions, outlines,
instructor bios, etc.) send your postal address or fax to:

Harvey Stern  or Jennifer Keup
U.C. Berkeley Extension/Southbay
800 El Camino Real Ste. 220
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Tel: (415) 323-8141  Fax: (415) 323-1438

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

From: mike@sandman.com (Mike Sandman)
Subject: SNET & AT&T Battle it Out - The Beginning of the War
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 02:33:25 GMT
Organization: Mike Sandman Enterprises


Brian O'Reilly wrote a great article in the March 4th (1996) issue of
{Fortune Magazine}, peering into the future "ATB" (after the telecom
bill).

He uses the current fight between SNET and AT&T over long distance and
local service, to give us a clue as to what the future holds.

There are some interesting facts, like AT&T paying about $17 per month
to rent the copper from the CO to the premise from the local phone
company. Gee, how are they going to make money, or how much are we
willing to pay for their service, if they have to put a markup on top
of the rental fee, add switching equipment etc.?

A sidebar tells how a wanna be local service provider, TCG, tried to
rent a 10' by 10' area in a local CO from Southwestern Bell for their
switch. The bill: $400,000 a year. Long distance providers normally
pay around $15,000 a year for the same space.

O'Reilly also tells of AT&T trying to rent space for local service
from Nynex in a local CO. Nynex demanded a certified check for $7,500
before it would talk. Boy, I don't feel like I'm being singled out by
the telcos anymore.

O'Reilly goes on to talk about SNET's entry into the cable business,
including their low tech solution to providing video on demand (your
choice of 2,000 videos within minutes) on their cable network.

It's worth picking up a copy of the magazine to read that article.


Mike Sandman  708-980-7710
E-mail:  mike@sandman.com
WWW:  http://www.sandman.com

Our 48 page catalog of Unique Telecom Products & Tools is now on the
World Wide Web.  We have a fantastic assortment of Cable Installation
Tools and Training Videos to help you use them. NEW "Basic ISDN"
Training Video is now available.

Also check out our Telephony History Page, which contains ads and
articles from telephony related magazines from the first part of the
century.

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

From: Jeremy Parsons 
Subject: US Cross-Subsidies (was: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 06:40:50 -0500


Fred Goldstein  wrote:

> A contrasting system occurs in the United Kingdom.  They don't make a
> distinction between local and toll carriers.  If a BT customer makes
> a call to, say, a NYNEX Cablecomms customer, BT pays NYNEX (which
> provides telephone service over its UK CATV operations) a share of the
> toll.  If a Mercury customer calls a BT customer, Mercury pays BT a
> share. It's a "peer-to-peer" relationship with many players, each
> compensating the other for shared traffic.  You can see the advantages
> of this scheme, but it doesn't have the subsidy flow that American
> telcos expect.

True *and* false!  In the UK, there is no such thing as non-toll -- BT
local calls are chargeable (albeit the area covered by 'local' is
typically much larger than for the US), and interconnect assumes a
usage basis.  A carrier can charge nothing for calls (subject to
relevant competition law etc) but that's their business.

The only things in need of subsidy are (potentially) line rentals, and
(actually) prescribed low user 'social' provision.  As BT faced price
caps (albeit above inflation) on the former, and was mandated to
provide the latter, it reckoned it had an 'access deficit' -- which
was allocated across call types as a charge (which Oftel could waive
under certain circumstances).  So, for instance, the access deficit
component of interconnection would vary between, say, delivery of an
intra-UK call or on-passing of an international call (and even between
international calls to different destinations).

This was a valliant attempt to deal with the subsidy issue, but caused
a lot of problems.  So recently the line rental price cap and the
access deficit regime were abolished together.  BT is essentially free
to raise line rentals at will -- and it will be interesting to see
whether any competitors will allege any sort of malpractice if BT
*doesn't* raise them to cost plus reasonable return.  Meanwhile, BT is
left with social access provision but it is expected that some kind of
competitive tender system can operate here too, with all carriers
contributing to a pool fund.

Of course, there is also a web of other price caps designed for various 
purposes, such as constraints on the median residential bill etc.

Personally, I would think there could be real benefits in the US
following suit by dropping 'free' calls.  Whilst there is apparently
no incremental cost for such calls (certainly where they are truly
intra-switch), neither is it the case that the fixed cost is fixed!
As LECs well know, there are semi-fixed costs based on average and
peak usage criteria -- and so where these levels are jacked up by
Internet etc the LEC will recover the difference from all its
customers.  Definitively a misplaced cross-subsidy, operating from
light local call users to heavy local call users.  I have my doubts
about the effects of optional local usage charging packages here - the
way they have been implemented pushes the problem from the bottom up
and so the most massive users remain untouched.

The important point to bear in mind here is that beginning to charge
for local calls should not represent net new customer charges - it
should obviously operate fairly neutrally.  Economic and social
considerations can be applied to dealing with the reallocation of
funds (lowered line rentals for all or for special needs, lowered toll
or/and access charges etc) to the greatest benefit.  This point always
seems to be missed in the hue and cry whenever universal call charging
is discussed -- people talk as if it will be the poor and disadvantaged
most, while the reality is that it can and should work to their
advantage and it is the heavy users who will pay more.

A knock-on benefit in a competitive market is that an approach of this
sort would actually make sense of the wholesale local service approach
in the Bill.

Interested in constructive reactions!


Jeremy Parsons

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

From: Tom Betz 
Subject: Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:51:35 -0500


Fred Goldstein wrote:

> Brock Meeks isn't entirely blowing smoke!  As a semi-official (albe
> it self-proclaimed) Debunker Of The Modem Tax Urban Legend, I can
> compare this scare with 1988's.

> The current problem is that a) the telcos *hate* this Internet stuff,
> which enables some form of interstate communication without paying them
> their interstate access fees, and b) some Internet users are flaunting
> this and even starting to send real-time voice (almost like telephony)
> across the net.  This latter activity triggers the FCC's red flag.

> If InternetPhone and related programs actually worked well, then they
> could theoretically turn Internet service providers *literally* into
> long-distance companies.  By FCC definition, an access facility from a
> local exchange carrier into a long-distance company is subject to
> a very different treatment than a POTS line.  ("Feature Group A" is
> the interstate carrier tariff for a line that's physically just a POTS
> line or similar.)  AT&T, MCI and the other IXCs pay huge "minutes of
> use" fees to the LECs.

> So if you really could bypass them by sending voice via an ISP, then
> it's not irrational to start to view the ISP as an IXC.  And the
> easiest way (not the right way, but the easiest) to do that is to
> reclassify all ISP access lines as IXC access lines, subject to
> incoming *and* outgoing minutes-of-use charges on all calls.  Oh yes,
> this isn't a tax -- the FCC and for that matter no other part of the
> govt' collects zilch.  The money is a *tariff* paid to the LEC (Bell).
> It's just a rate hike, levied under the FCC's jurisdiction.  The new
> telecomm bill doesn't change the fact that local service is a joint
> federal-state matter.  Both can raise your rate.

Actually, the original "Modem Tax" was also a tariff, not a tax.  It's
just that the word "tax" raises activist hackles better than the word
"tariff" does, which is why it was so useful.

[...]

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hope anyone who chooses to circulate
> the original message in this latest 'modem tax' thread will also
> include Fred's response above. It is *very important* to keep all
> this in context and not have wild unfounded stories going around as
> occurred beginning in 1988 and for a few years thereafter.   PAT]

That's why I included the pointer to Brock's report.  As he details in
the rest of the article I excerpted, this is about revoking the
existing ESP exemption to the IXC fees, and in this era of deregulation, 
it would be an excellent tool for the Telcos to use put independent
ISPs out of business.

As Fred says;

> We should not be alarmist, but should stay vigilant.

And we might want to discretely enquire of the FCC just exactly what is in 
the works in this regard.


Tom Betz   (914) 375-1510 tbetz@pobox.com

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

From: robster2@cris.com (Rob Hoffmann)
Subject: Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks; and it's For Real This Time
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 03:50:10 GMT


On Thu, 22 Feb 1996 22:40:41 -0500, you wrote:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This story goes around so often I am a
> little gun-shy about ever printing anything on it if you  want to know
> the truth. I would like to ask a couple of the old-time subscribers 
> here who have followed the 'modem tax' rumors for several years if
> they would please respond at this time to this newest variation on 
> an old, old story. Fact or fiction? Where do we stand now?    PAT]

Pat ... until there is an FCC docket number (96-xxx), there's nothing
for us to write comments against.

It's not an "official" FCC proceeding until there's a docket number --
or at least, that's what I'd been told last time I looked into the
modem tax rumors.

So ... post the docket number, and I'll fire off letters to the FCC
and my Congressdrones ... until then ... nobody will listen anyway. :)


Rob


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, let's ask Fred or Meek Brocks to
respond. Is there any docket number or specific reference needed to
deal with this at the present time?    PAT]

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

From: lars@spectrum.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: ATT Rate Increase
Date: 26 Feb 1996 01:58:50 -0800
Organization: Rockwell International - CMC Network Products


In article  Gary Novosielski
 writes:

> (Around my house, a 343% increase is considered "substantial.")
> So when do the new rates go into effect?  March 1st! Two weeks notice!
> This is absolutely unacceptable.

> Imagine, for comparison, if your phone company made an announcement
> today that, they were going to triple their rates in two weeks, and

In today's mail there was a bill from AT&T. On the back of the page is
this "Important information about your telephone service":

    Notice: On 2/29/96 AT&T will raise interLATA CA Calling card
    & Operator Handled Service Charges: Customer Dialed AT&T
    Proprietary Card from $.62 to $.80 (increases $.18 or 29%);
    LEC & All Other Cards from $.62 to $1.00 (increases $.38 or
    61%); Operator Dialed Cards from $1.05 to $2.25 (increases
    $1.20 or 114%); Operator Handled-Collect from $1.05 to $2.25 
    (increases $1.20 or 114%); Billed to third from $1.05 to
    $2.35 (increases $1.30 or 119%); Sent Paid from $1.05 to
    $2.30 (increases $1.25 or 124%); Person-to-Person from $3.15
    to $4.90 (increases $1.75 or 56%); and intraLATA Customer
    dialed LEC and All Other Cards from $.62 to $.73 (increases
    $.11 or 19%). These rates are required to cover cost
    and necessary resources to provide these services. You may
    communicate with the California PUC's Public Advisors office 
    regarding these rates within 15 days.

Six days warning ... hardly enough to get another card.  Fortunately,
I already have an ATN/LDDS card with no per-call surcharge.

Why would anyone pay this kind of rate?  Why look for an
ATT-subscribed payphone if they make you pay AOS rates anyway?

AT&T's marketing has killed two computer companies; it looks like
they are trying to kill a phone company, as well.


Lars Poulsen			Internet E-mail: lars@RNS.COM
RNS / Meret Optical Comm:s	Phone:        +1-805-562-3158
7402 Hollister Avenue	 	Telefax:      +1-805-968-8256
Santa Barbara, CA 93117	   Internets designed and built while you wait

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

Date: 26 Feb 96 07:51:52 EST
From: Sarrazin, Jean B <72077.1366@compuserve.com>
Subject: FCC Warns Callback Providers


I read an article in this week's {Communications Week International}
(http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current) which states that the FCC is
currently cracking down on callback operators whose equipment does not
answer incoming activation calls, thereby preventing the customer's
local phone company from charging them. The FCC is threatening hefty
fines for those operators.

Point is, isn't the TollSaver function on most answering machines
doing exactly the same thing? That is not ruled out by the FCC ...


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I had some limited involvement a
few years ago as a callback reseller for US Fibercom in New York City,
one of the complaints lodged by AT&T against the company was just 
what you mentioned: Passing signals or messages without payment of
toll. Then two things were mentioned in rebuttal:  One, since almost
every customer -- indeed, why not all customers? -- of callback services
are originating their calls from other countries, why should the FCC --
an agency which has no authority over foreign telecom administrations --
care what they do? Why wouldn't complaints come from the PTTs in other
countries? The answer to that is, some of them are now complaining about
the loss of income; a few have gone so far as to make callback schemes
illegal in their countries. 

The other argument, and one not so easily rebutted was that if AT&T
was going to complain about callback schemes -- and they were always
mentioned as the villian in this regard -- then how did they explain
or excuse their own participation in such schemes via their 'toll saver'
type answering machines; the kind that answer promptly if the machine
has any messages on it but delay their answer to the fourth ring if
there are no messages, giving the owner plenty of time to disconnect.
The other thing was many or most callback services use AT&T circuits 
to extend USA dialtone to the other countries, so AT&T is making out
like a bandit on the deal also; why would *they* complain about anything
to the FCC in this regard?  

I personally feel that any scheme to deliver a message via coded signals
which avoid payment of toll are unethical. It may be only between
countries at this point but where do you draw the line?  What about when
there is a scheme simply within the USA for the same where I call you
and allow your phone to ring one time and hang up, delivering a pre-
arranged message?  But when AT&T does it on their own brand of answering
machines it becomes hard to convince others not to do it.   PAT]

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

From: la@well.com (Lionel Ancelet)
Subject: Modem/Countries Compatibility/Approval Information
Reply-To: la@well.com
Organization: The WeLL
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 12:50:34 GMT


I am looking for the following piece of information: a table that
would summarize, for each country in the world (1) what kind of modem
works there, (2) what kind of plug is needed, (3) if a PTT approval is
needed.

For example, in UK (1) a US modem works, (2) you need a UK phone plug,
(3) you need a BABT approval.

I searched the Net, I read the FAQs ... I found the information
regarding the plugs, but nothing about the compatible modems or the
approvals.

If someone has this information (or even part of it), I'd appreciate
seeing it posted here or receiving it by email.

Or, if you know of a company that sells that kind of document, I would
appreciate getting the information.

Thanks in advance,


Lionel  URL:http://www.well.com/~la/

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #83
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Feb 26 13:53:10 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id NAA01951; Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:53:10 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:53:10 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602261853.NAA01951@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #84

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 26 Feb 96 13:53:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 84

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code (Kevin Chapman)
    Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code (Jeff Bamford)
    Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code (Scott Montague)
    Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code (Ian Angus)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Dave Levenson)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (John Polcari)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Lynne Gregg)
    Re: Budget Bill Seeks Toll-Free Number Auction (Judith Oppenheimer)
    Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it? (John Cropper)
    Where is the Smallest NPA? (Greg Monti)
    Re: Internet Service Providers, Now Common Carrier Status (K McConnaughey)
    Re: Looking For Call Diverter (Kevin McConnaughey)
    Re: Phone Scam Hits Midwest (rweiss1954@aol.com)
    Network Internet Email Access (Todd A. Grissom)

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
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Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
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All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
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should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 15:33:03 +0000 
From: kevin chapman 
Subject: Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code 
Organization: Bell-Northern Research 


In article , sebarnett@aol.com
(SEBarnett) wrote:

> Bell Canada's World-Wide Web pages contain a "Products and Services"
> guide which includes a list of the *XX codes used to access Bell's
> Smart-Touch (Custom Calling) Services.  Beside the standard *69, *70,
> etc. codes there is listed a *49 which is described as the "long
> distance signal" code.  The same code (*49), according to the chart,
> both activates and deactivates this signal.  I was not able to find
> any other clear reference at Bell's site telling me exactly what this
> signal is for.  Does anyone have any information?

I don't have the feature, but I believe this enables the custom
call-waiting tone for long-distance calls.  A toll call will generate
a tone different from that for regular calls.  Presumably some people
will want to prioritize their calls based on where the call's coming
from -- not me though ...
 

Kevin Chapman
Advanced Collaborative Technologies
Nortel   Ottawa, Canada

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

From: aa423@freenet.hamilton.on.ca (Jeff Bamford)
Subject: Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code
Date: 26 Feb 1996 14:39:48 GMT
Organization: Hamilton-Wentworth FreeNet, Ontario, Canada.


SEBarnett (sebarnett@aol.com) wrote:

> *49 which is described as the "long distance signal" code.  

	If you subscribe to call waiting an incoming long distance
will cause your phone to ring with a different pattern (i.e. a
distinctive ring).  For this service it is one long and then two short
rings.  Since some customers may have equipment which will think that
it is a fax call, for example, the *49 code is used to turn off (or
on) this feature.


Jeff Bamford	Phone: +1-905-570-0130  fax: +1-905-570-1161  
		E-mail: jeffb@audiolab.uwaterloo.ca
Looking for an audio consultant who has studied Ambisonics, Dolby Surround 
and Stereo?  Check out: http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/~jeffb/consult/

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

From: Scott Montague <4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca>
Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:08:56 -0500
Subject: Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code
Reply-To: 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca


*49 turns on and off Bell Canada's REALLY annoying "value-added" free
tack-on to Call Waiting.  In Bell Canada territory, Call Waiting will
ring short-short-long for Long Distance calls, and normally otherwise.
When you are on the line, Call Waiting tones are heard in the same
manner.

The unfortunate error Bell made when introducing this "feature" was in
not announcing it to anyone.  Bell also decided it would be best if
everyone who had Call Waiting automatically had this "feature"
enabled.  Bell sort-of forgot, however, that this feature overrides
Ident-a-Call (distinctive ringing numbers on the same line).  So, in
short order, the Repair office was ringing off the hook.  A new
message was added to the waiting queue: "Call Waiting subscribers can
now know when a long-distance call is coming through.  The ring will
now sound different for long-distance calls.  You can permanently
disable this feature by pressing *49 and can reenable it at any time
by pressing *49 again."

I imagine that there were a lot of baffled looks on people's faces 
when they heard that ring for the first time.


Scott Montague   4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca 

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

From: Ian Angus 
Subject: Re: *49 Bell Canada Smart-Touch Code
Date: 26 Feb 1996 15:14:30 GMT
Organization: Angus TeleManagement Group


sebarnett@aol.com (SEBarnett) wrote:

> Bell Canada's World-Wide Web pages contain a "Products and Services"
> guide which includes a list of the *XX codes used to access Bell's
> Smart-Touch (Custom Calling) Services.  Beside the standard *69, *70,
> etc. codes there is listed a *49 which is described as the "long
> distance signal" code.  The same code (*49), according to the chart,
> both activates and deactivates this signal.  I was not able to find
> any other clear reference at Bell's site telling me exactly what this
> signal is for.  Does anyone have any information?

That code deactivates a now-standard Bell Canada feature -- a
distinctive ring when an incoming call is long distance.

We deactivated it at our house because we also have the
Ident-a-call feature (distinctive ringing for different dialed
numbers, and the LD ring was too similar to one of the ones
we were already using.


IAN ANGUS                       Tel: 905-686-5050 ext 222                  
Angus TeleManagement Group      Fax: 905-686-2655  
8 Old Kingston Road             e-mail: ianangus@angustel.ca 
Ajax Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7     http://www.angustel.ca

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

From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson)
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Organization: Westmark, Inc.
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 15:38:59 GMT


Michael J. Wengler (mwengler@qualcomm.com) writes:

> I saw Lucent Technologies and immediately associated with Lucas Electrics,
> the company that used to do the electrical systems for Jaguars and
> presumably other British cars.

> Their electrical systems were so astonishingly unreliable that they were
> granted the nickname "Prince of Darkness" by Jaguar owners whose lights
> stopped working early and often.
> Lucas, Lucent, Lucifer.  Let there be light, and there was, and the top

A gentleman in a bar once explained to me that Lucas Electrics remains
a successful manufacturing company not because of its notoriously-
unreliable automotive electrical products, but because of its
electrical appliance business.  They remain (he claimed) the largest
English manufacturer of refrigerators.  Their refrigerators are (he
claimed) no more reliable than their automotive voltage regulators,
distributors, or headlamps, but the English like their beer warm!


Dave Levenson		Internet: dave@westmark.com
Westmark, Inc.		UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave
Stirling, NJ, USA	Voice: 908 647 0900  Fax: 908 647 6857
[The Man in the Mooney]

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

From: meatball@tiac.net (John Polcari)
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Date: 26 Feb 1996 02:53:57 GMT


In article , mwengler@qualcomm.com
says:

> Lucas, Lucent, Lucifer.  Let there be light, and there was, and the top
> devil got named.

Sorry, but I can't resist this one:

Q. Why do the British drink warm beer?
A. Because they have Lucas refrigerators.


John Polcari  jpolcari@hifi.com Cambridge SoundWorks Newton MA

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

From: Lynne Gregg 
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 96 07:03:00 PST


mwengler@qualcomm.com (Michael J. Wengler) wrote:

> Lucas, Lucent, Lucifer.  Let there be light, and there was, and the top
> devil got named.

Fine thing to say about your CUSTOMER, don't you think?


Lynne


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Personally I can't see why 'Western
Electric' wouldn't have been chosen. That is a name which has a long
and very proud history; one which would be recognized immediatly for
quality and innovation. All the remarks seen here about Lucent/
Lucas/Lucifer in this and recent issues make me think of Sprint's
inept telemarketing operation in San Fransisco. Do you have to hold
up your hand and be recognized by your supervisor when you want to go
to the bathroom? :)   PAT]

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

From: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)
Subject: Re: Budget Bill Seeks Toll-Free Number Auction
Date: 25 Feb 1996 23:42:48 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now how do you like that new plan? :)
Can we get some comments from Judith Oppenheimer and others?   PAT]

Hi Pat.  I spoke with the Reuters reporter who wrote the story a few
days ago.  His angle was the investor beat and the telecommunications
industry.

The assignment was his first awareness of 888, or any of the issues
surrounding 800, and unfortunately the people he interviewed at the
FCC and AT&T did not bring him current any of the existing controver-
sies surrounding 800 and 888.  He was not aware of the pending
rulemaking or its issues.  Nor did he have any knowledge of exhaustion
issues or how the industry functions.

While the article conveys an erroneous assumption that the 375,000
set-asides represent the "cream" of vanities, this would appear to be the
prevailing assumption of pro-auction lobbyists.  

(In fact, many good vanities were not included, and some of the set-asides
are subscriber-valued numerics.)  

I do have confirmation from a number of sources that there is some
Congressional interest in auctioning 888's, possibly originating from the
office of the Senator from Arizona.

Comments by users conveyed to this office include the sentiment that
it would be insidious for the FCC to have rounded up current users'
vanity numbers (via its January 25 Common Carrier Bureau order) on the
pretense of protecting those users, only to turn around and auction
them off to the highest bidder.  Also, that it would be incredibly
foolish for Congress to do anything without investigating the current
controversies regarding brand and trademark infringements.

However, outside of the 375,000 set-aside numbers, it has been
suggested that auction interest in new 888 vanity numbers represents a
valid official recognition of the commercial value, and marketplace
reality, of vanity numbers.

Resp Orgs, of course, cringe at the thought of relinquishing control
of numbers to any entity, especially other commercial ones.  I've seen
one negative internal AT&T memo issued on Feb. 23rd, and would imagine
similar sentiments are floating around MCI etc.


Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand
A leading source of information on 800 issues.
CallBrand@aol.com, 1 800 The Expert, (ph) 212 684-7210, (fx) 212 684-2714
http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/

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

From: psyber@usa.pipeline.com (John Cropper)
Subject: Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it?
Date: 26 Feb 1996 10:57:31 GMT
Organization: Pipeline USA


> Has anyone else noticed in the fine disclaimer print that is says 
> something to the point of, "Price comparisons of 22 major carriers 
> EXCLUDING SPRINT" (emphasis mine)?  What a farce ... 
 
I noticed that as well, and was ROTFLOL when I saw it. Out of
curiosity, I did my own comparison, based on my patterns, and calling
history during 4Q95 (I have AT&T True Values with True Rewards, which
I convert to LD certificates @ 5c on every LD dollar spent). Here are
results of the big three ...
 
AT&T - base rate I'm charged, factoring in reward plan. 
 
Sprint - 0.03 more TOTAL (quarter), based on calling pattern I use,
using 10c/min plan w/ cash back.
 
MCI - 26.72 more TOTAL (quarter), based on calling pattern w/ similar
savings plan. 
 
My home bills range in the mid-three-digits per month (and yes, I've
checked out LCI et al, and -their- prices were even higher, based on
the calling plans, even with 6 second billing factored, since I track
my exact call lengths).
 
AT&T and Sprint are neck and neck in the ongoing rate war, so I might just
become a "bouncer" should the incentives become lucrative ...   :-) 
 

John Cropper, President   NiS Telecom Division 
POB 277, Pennington, NJ  USA  08534-0277 
voice/fax: 1-800-247-8675  psyber@usa.pipeline.com

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

Date: Mon, 26 Feb 96 01:28:59 PST
From: Greg Monti 
Subject: Where is the Smallest NPA?


On 21 Feb 96, rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) wrote:

>- If 213 split along the lines described earlier, would that
>  make it the smallest NPA in the country?

>- Geographically, what's the smallest NPA now?

Manhattan Island is about 3/4 of a mile wide near the north and about 1.5 
miles wide near the south end.  Let's say the average width is 1.2 miles.  
It's 13 miles long north to south.  That's 15.6 square miles.  

Area code 212, which serves the island (and nothing else), is now
nearing "that gassy, fullish feeling" (as the stomach remedy TV
commercials used to say), and has, perhaps 600 active prefixes in it.
That's an average of 38.46 prefixes per square mile.  Assuming 10,000
numbers per prefix, that's an incredible 384,615 phone numbers per
square mile.  Assuming a square city block (which Manhattan doesn't
have) is about 1/100 square mile, that's 3,800 phone numbers per
block.

And that excludes cellular phones and pagers, which have their own area code.


Greg Monti     Arlington, Virginia, USA     gmonti@cais.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What about DC/202?  Wouldn't it come
pretty close also to being smallest?  PAT]

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

From: Kevin McConnaughey 
Subject: Re: Internet Service Providers, Now Common Carrier Status
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:31:29 -0800
Organization: SPC


Bill Sohl wrote:

> Section 3 of the Telecommunications Bill amends 47 USC 153 (the
> section on definitions) by adding, among other things, these two new
> sections:

> (48) TELECOMMUNICATIONS- The term `telecommunications' means the
> transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of
> information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or
> content of the information as sent and received.

> (49) TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIER- The term "telecommunications carrier"
> means any provider of telecommunications services, except that such
> term does not include aggregators of telecommunications services (as
> defined in section 226).  A TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIER SHALL BE
> TREATED AS A COMMON CARRIER under this Act only to the extent that it
> is engaged in providing telecommunications services, except that the
> Commission shall determine whether the provision of fixed and mobile
> satellite service shall be treated as common carriage.

>    (emphasis added to section 49, second sentence).

I think this definition might bring up another aspect of common
carrier status.  I am specifically thinking of the issue of equivalent
charges among "common carriers" for local access.

U.S. long distance carriers pay a tremendous amount for local
origination and termination of calls (about 50% of revenues, I
believe).  "Value added" networking companies pay business rates that
are frequently much much lower.  There was a huge furor over this a
few years ago when the FCC suggested that online service providers
should be treated the same as (L.D.) common carriers and assessed
access charges.

Does this legislative definition imply that ISPs are to be treated as
common carriers in all respects?  This could be quite costly to ISPs.
One of the aspects of Internet service that is fueling its growth is
that it is much more cost effective than L.D. dial service in many
cases.  If the ISPs are required to have access costs similar to the
L.D. carriers the cost difference to end users could shrink
significantly.

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

From: Kevin McConnaughey 
Subject: Re: Looking For Call Diverter
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:49:08 -0800
Organization: SPC


John Williams wrote:

> Does anyone out there know where we can purchase a call-diverter that
> does the following:

> 1- Doesn't give a new dial-tone to the inbound line when the outbound
> line hangs-up;

> 2- Allows dtmf's to pass through un-modified;

> 3- Can dial at least eleven numbers;

> We have tried the following companies to date:

> Startel;
> Logotronics;
> Telematrix;

> and we called Mike Sandman ...

> No one could help us so far.

> Please e-mail at surfcom@cam.org or call at 1-800-815-6295 and ask for
> John or Paul or you could also fax at 1-514-766-9916.

I'm not certain that this would work but Mitel had a device called the
Centrex Call Controller.  It was programmable and had a wide variety
of DTMF filtering and response options.  For instance it could be set
up to:

1) respond to an inbound call, prompt the user with a tone (or not);
2) accept DTMF input (such as a telephone number);
3) forward the call to the number entered;
4) be available for additional inbound calls.

Since the call is forwarded via centrex features, then when either
party hangs up the call is taken down.

The programming of these devices could be a bit time consuming, but
they are quite flexible, pretty inexpensive, and can be made to handle
a wide variety of functions.

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

From: rweiss1954@aol.com (Rweiss1954)
Subject: Re: Phone Scam Hits Midwest
Date: 26 Feb 1996 12:12:46 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)


Thanks for the heads up.  

The cure for slamming is for the FCC to change the regs so you do not
owe anything to the slammer.  If there was *no money* in slamming, it
would stop.  I can not understand why slamming is different from
someone sending you unordered merchandise in the mail and invoicing
you for it.  The Postal Service regs state that this is a "gift" and
that if you receive unordered merchandise you do not have to pay or
return the goods.  When was the last time you received unordered
goods, aside from junk mail, in the mail.

If you had a contract (even verbal) with a neighborhood kid to mow
your grass for $10, and a lawn service company did it without your
knowledge or permission, and billed you $20, would you pay it?  I
think not.  Would you pay $10?  No chance.  And there isn't a
concilliation court in the land that would force you to pay, either.

So why is slamming different?  This amounts to government sanctioned
theft, that takes from the unwary consumer both money and time, it
steals commissions from sales reps and agents of legitmate carriers
and resellers, and reduces revenues of the honest carriers.  If the
financial incentives for slammers disappeared, so would the slammers.

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

From: tgrissom@pinn.net (Todd A. Grissom)
Subject: Network Internet E-Mail Access
Date: 26 Feb 1996 17:24:30 GMT
Organization: Pinnacle Online - Internet access for Hampton Roads, VA


Howdy,

	I'm running a Novell Network with fifty clients.  We are
looking at world-wide e-mail and limited internet access for the
clients.  How have others approached this.  Management does not want
to "subject our network to outside intrusion", hence we are not going
to be getting our own node and doing the firewall trick.  Short of
this what are the sugestions of the group?

	Also I'm inclined not to go the individual client account
route, so if you're going to suggest that, please give me a good
reason why.  You can respond to either of my e-mail addresses below or
post here in reference.


Thanks,

Todd A. Grissom  tgrissom@pinn.net   tgrissom@seva.net

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #84
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 28 00:59:10 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id AAA18842; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 00:59:10 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 00:59:10 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602280559.AAA18842@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #85

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 28 Feb 96 00:59:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 85

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    PacBell ISDN Tariff News and a Battle Plan (David C. Barry Jr.)
    Urgent - ISDN Pricing Workshop (Ben Stoltz)
    On Line Fraud (Tad Cook)
    Are RBOCs Practicing Seppuku Marketing? (Fred R. Goldstein)
    Tapping Voice Channels (Through a PBX?) (Michael J. Ellis)
    Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks (Eric Smith)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
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Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
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*************************************************************************
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* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: dcbarry@pacificnet.net (David C. Barry Jr.)
Subject: PacBell ISDN Tariff News and a Battle Plan
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 16:11:44 -0800
Organization: My corner of the Universe.....


Well, six weeks and 30,000+ hits later, we have some news for you
concerning PacBell's ISDN filing.  Before we present that, however, I
would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you who took the
time to write to me, and/or register.  Over 2,000 of you have
registered with the site.

Thanks for all the kind words. You might be intesterest in learning
that the Public Advisor's Office of the CPUC informs me that to date
they have recieved over 900 protests via email, a very strong showing
indeed!

The PacBell ISDN Rate Hike protest pages have also recieved some
teriffic publicity as well.  The site was featured on page 1 on the
{San Francisco Chronicle} business section, as well as MacWeek magazine.
It was also a featured "What's New?" site on Yahoo! If you are aware
of any additional publicity the site has recieved, ***please*** drop
me a line!  A new feature I hope to have up and running by this
weekend is a "New Tariff Caluclator", where you can see what your new
bill will look like if PacBell gets its' way!  (This has been a great
excuse for me to work on my awk and PERL programming skills!)

Also, for those of you who are unaware of it, I suggest you check out
the California ISDN Users Group at .  They have
some great information on their server, including instructions on how
to join their own mailing list.

And now, the news ...

On Wednesday, February 21, a pre-hearing conference was held at the
CPUC in San Francisco.  Among the many in atendance or represented
were TURN, UCAN, The California ISDN Users Group, Intel, InterNex,
representives of cable TV interests, Pacific Bell, and myself. Many
others were in attendance, in fact, the hearing room with over 60
seats was filled over capacity!

What should have been a routine meeting to set the schedule for
upcoming hearings, evolved into a minor skirmish over the
non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that Pacific Bell has required all
parties to sign prior to recieving a copy of its' cost study which it
has submitted to the comission under seal. The NDA is much more
restrictive than those that Pacific Bell has drafted in the past for
disclosure of similar material, and imposes much harsher liability for
disclosure, accidental or otherwise.  When asked why the more
restrictive NDA was required, Pacific Bell specifically cited this
website as a potential problem. I expressed to the Administrative Law
Judge (ALJ) that I was fully aware of the meaning of *non-disclosure*
and would never knowingly violate any agreement I signed.

The ALJ has given all the parties a week to come to an agreement and
draft a mutually acceptable NDA. If no agreement is reached, the ALJ
will draft one herself.  In either case, until the issue is resolved,
it is not possible to examine the cost studies.

A motion has also filed to completely reconsider the necessity of
keeping the cost studies under seal. Arguments were presented that
beacause ISDN is currently a non-competive product offering, that this
information should be protected. Pacific Bell expressed concern over
other products that may be competing with ISDN in the near future (in
their opinion), such as "cable modems" and other such.

A suggestion was offered that Pacific Bell could prepare a redacted
(i.e. blacked out) version of the cost study, so that the methodology
Pacific Bell employed in its' cost study could be made available to
the public, while concealing the actutal figures. The ALJ's decision
on this matter will be forthcoming. A schedule for the evedentiary
hearings (EH) will also be forthcoming from the bench.

Clearly Pacific Bell is concerned (and was likely caught-off guard)
about the scrutiny the proceedings have been and will continue to
recieve.

What you can do next  (for only 29 cents)!

Pacific Bell has stated in their filings and other postings that most
Home users will see an increase of 13 percent in their bill.  Most of
us aren't buying that, and I'd like to de-bunk this myth.

I am asking each of you who recieve this notice to dig up your last
(or last 2) ISDN bills, and mail it (or a legible copy) to me. Please
feel free to redact (black-out) any personal information (such as
called numbers).  All I need is the "meat" of the billing - how many
minutes did you use your line? How much was ZUM (local) vs. non-ZUM
calling?  Do you currently subscribe to the "popular" feature package
PacBell is tossing us?  While you are at it, it would also be useful
if you could indicate when your two-year commitmant began/expires.

Please mail your bills (or complete copies) to:

David Barry
ISDN Protest
19400 Wyandotte St. #36
Reseda, CA 91335

I would appreciate if you would include your email address and/or
voice telephone number so that I can contact you should I have any
questions. ****Please be aware**** that I may share the statistical
information with other (anti-rate hike) intervenors in these
proceedings, and by mailing them to me, you consent to my sharing this
information with them. Again, this information will be used only for
the statistical purposes stated.

By the way, to head off any obvious question, yes, it might be easier
to collect this information online, however, to insure the integrity
of the data, this would seem to be the best method, even if it is a
bit "lo-tech".


More you can do ...

It is likely that Pacific Bell will argue that human costs are a
significant portion of its' costs in providing ISDN.  It is my belief
(and shared by many of you, no doubt), that Pacific Bell has in many
cases been incompetant in provisioning lines and providing service in
general.  How many of you had to have multiple service visits or had
to wait several weeks for an installation?  Every time PacBell has to
do something right the second (or third, or fourth) time, that's
wasted dollars!  We've all heard many horror stories.  Now, I want to
hear yours.

If you have had problems with your ISDN install or service which is
clearly due to Pacific Bell incompetance, please briefly but clearly
tell me your tale of woe.  The best letters (evidence) will state
specific information -- What did PacBell do (or fail to do) that cost
them (and now us)!

Please email your horrors to dcbarry@pacificnet.net , or write me at
the address above. Again, this information may be shared with other
intervenors in this proceeding. Please include in your note a daytime
telephone number where you can be contacted.

Again, thanks for your interest, and lets work together to keep ISDN
an affordable technology!  Who knows, PacBell might thank us later!
(Ok, so that was really far-fetched!!!)


Regards,

David Barry
http://www.pacificnet.net/~dcbarry/isdn/main.html

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

From: stoltz@sun.com (Ben Stoltz)
Subject: ISDN Pricing Workshop Needs a Speaker
Date: 27 Feb 1996 23:44:32 GMT
Organization: Internet Commerce Group


NIUF Parties:

I apologize for the late time frame in which I am sending this
information, however, I just received the information myself.  I am
forwarding this URGENT request for a speaker at the February 28 ISDN
PRICING WORKSHOP in Washington, D.C.

They are looking for someone who knows ISDN Technology and can
describe the next generation of products for ISDN to the home.  

If you are interested, contact  (please don't contact the NIUF directly)

          James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
	  love@tap.org or tpaglia@tap.org
          (see contact info at end of message)
          (his home phone is (703) 522-4380)

***************************************************************************
REMINDER:  If you do accept this last minute offer and attend - you 
           will not be officially representing the NIUF.  You are
           more than welcome to present your views.
***************************************************************************

Leslie Collica
NIUF Chair


  From: James Love 
  Subject: Feb 28 ISDN Pricing Worshop - Updated agenda (fwd)

Here is the updated agenda for the Wed workshop on ISDN pricing in 
Washington DC.  We will try to have notes of the presentations available 
on the net later.  jamie



    February 28, 1996 Workshop on ISDN Pricing Controversies
          
          
WHAT:     A workshop on controversies over ISDN pricing. Why is
          residential ISDN priced so high?  What are the public
          policy issues for state regulators of ISDN tariffs?  What
          does it cost a local exchange telephone company to
          provide residential ISDN? What types of services can be
          offered over a residential ISDN platform?  Will ISDN be
          an "open platform" for a new generation of mass market
          information services?  What are the alternatives?
          
WHEN:     February 28, 1996, from 9 am to 12 noon
          
WHERE:    At the Hotel Washington, in Washington, DC.  The address
          of the Hotel Washington is 515 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. 
          It is on the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue.  The
          workshop will be held in the Washington Room.
          
SPONSORS: The workshop is sponsored by the Center for Study of
          Responsive's Consumer Project on Technology and the
          Center for Media Education.
          
SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE:

          James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
          Mark Cooper, Research Director, Consumer Federation of
America
          Scott Rafferty,  President,  Aerie Group
               L'Aaron Johnson, the Annie E. Casey Foundation
          Mark Lilback, Internet Interstate
          Mike Maibach, Intel (invited)

          
Price:    Admission is free.
          
RSVP is not required.


For more information:
          
love@tap.org or tpaglia@tap.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 
voice: 202/387-8030, fax: 202/234-5176
http://www.essential.org/cpt/isdn/isdn.html


----------------------------------------------------------------------
James Love, love@tap.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
Consumer Project on Technology; http://www.essential.org/cpt/cpt.html
Taxpayer Assets Project; http://www.essential.org/tap/tap.html
--
Ben Stoltz 	Mail Stop UPAL01-550
Voice: +1(415)336-0138		Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Fax: +1(415)336-0673		2550 Garcia Avenue
				Mountain View, CA 94043

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

From: Tad Cook 
Subject: On Line Fraud
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 11:03:50 -PST



By Rory J. O'Connor
Knight-Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Chain letters in cyberspace. Unregistered investments on
the Internet. Bogus Web Page builders.

Like the rest of American life, the online world has its share of
fraud. Now, a consumer group that fights telephone and mail fraud is
about to open operations on the information highway.

The National Consumers League already files about 300 reports of
possible consumer fraud each day with law-enforcement agencies,
reports it obtains through its National Fraud Information Center.

The Internet Fraud Project, to be launched by the League on Tuesday,
takes the work another step by adding electronic mail and World Wide
Web access to the existing toll-free phone number for reporting fraud.

"We're always trying to keep up with technology," said spokeswoamn
Clea Manuel.

Staff members at the National Consumers League will also monitor the
Internet and commercial online services for evidence of fraud.

Those instances are still few; in New Jersey, for example, they
comprise just 65 of the 200,000 complaints filed each year. But they
are growing, said Mark Herr, assistant attorney general and head of
the state's Division of Consumer Affairs.

"The most active things are fraudulent investment claims and chain
letters," he said. New Jersey has prosecuted three such schemes so
far, and expects to file another half-dozen suits by summer. Fines can
exceed $100,000, although nothing that big has been levied online yet,
he said.

Among the wilder frauds Herr related are offers to sell germanium for
consumption as a health supplement. The chemical element, principally
used as a component in computer chips, has been banned for human
consumption by the Food and Drug Administration, he said.

While many of them would seem obvious frauds in printed form, the
chain letters that appear online tend to take in many people -- even
though online users tend to be some of the best-educated people in the
country.

"There's a whole other psyche that clicks in when you click online,"
he said.

The service will be paid for by Mastercard International, the credit
card organization. Reports of fraud will be linked by computer to the
Federal Trade Commission and the National Association of Attorneys
General.


(Online fraud complaints can be sent by e-mail to
NFIC(AT)InternetMCI.com, or by calling 1-800-876-7060. Information can
be found at the National Consumer League's World Wide Web home page,
http://www.fraud.org.)

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

tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H | "The game of life demands
that one  assume a beingness  in order to acomplish a  doingness in the
direction of havingness."- L. Ron Hubbard   "This kind of quote demands
that one assume  a queasiness  in order to acomplish  a throwingness in
the direction of up!" - James Chase

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

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:45:12 -0500
From: Fred R. Goldstein 
Subject: Are RBOCs Practicing Seppuku Marketing?


It's not a tax and it's not even about modems, but it's about the
changing relationship of supplier and customer.  The FCC is "rumored"
to be working on new proposals to reclassify all sorts of telephone
network subscribers as long-distance carriers, subject to the
dramatically higher rates that long-distnace companies already pay
for their access to the local exchange.  In 1988 it was mislabeled the
"Modem Tax" and was shot down in months, only to live on as an undated
Internet chain letter.  This time, in 1996, it's still unofficial, but
the rumblings from Washington are there; the FCC is once again looking
to broaden the scope of "carriers".  This time it's Internet Service
Providers who are targeted.

What's behind this?  Why not leave well enough alone, rather than risk
the wrath of a fast-growing industry that seems to have White House
support, not to mention millions of customers whose hourly access fees
for services like AOL and Compuserve would more than double?  It's
probably not the long distance companies -- they're jumping into
Internet at a fast rate.  It looks instead like the RBOCs are at it
again.  They alone will collect any increased revenues that would
accrue from it.  They are probably salivating at the thought of an
additional three cents per minute from every dial-up data network
connection that they carry.

To the RBOC's rather mercantilistic way of thinking, the Internet is a
bad thing.  It generates vast amounts of local calls to ISPs, with
nary a toll minute of use to charge for.  And other data users are
likewise Bad.  Witness their witless ISDN tariffs: Bell Atlantic has
proposed that residential ISDN have only measured minutes of use, even
though analog (POTS) is flat rate, and Pacific Bell has proposed
charging ISDN users *double* the analog measured-service per-minute
local call rate, with a teensy nighttime allowance taking the place of
what are now nighttime flat rates.  It's obvious that they do NOT want
widespread deployment of residential ISDN.  They can't stop people
from hooking up modems, though.  So instead, they will charge at the
receiving end -- almost anything that a modem would want to call up
will be classified as a long distance carrier, and would receive a
per-minute bill for *receiving* calls.  As with the 1988 proposal,
they deceptively can say that the average modem user will not be
charged a thing -- the bill will be sent to the recipient of the call,
who will of course need to recover the charges!

Today's RBOC "minutes of use" rates to carriers are mostly
3-4c/minute, around $2/hour.  Internet prices tend to be lower than
that.  AT&T has just announced $20/month unlimited residential
Internet usage, and the going rate for moderate-volume users is around
$1/hour.  So an RBOC hit of $2 would triple the net cost!  But the
RBOCs may be hurting themselves even more than they imagine.

These access minute charges are for the use of the local telephone
exchange network.  What if you didn't need them?  What if you could
*bypass* (there's a loaded word!) the RBOCs entirely, and legally?
The RBOC monopoly has been a tight one.  But today, alternatives are
starting to pop up.  The CATV industry, long resistant to common
carrier status, is finally starting to wake up.  Cable Modems have
been on the market since 1982 if not longer, but now the CATV
companies may actually start using them in more than the occasional
demo or school situation.  If you hook up your PC to your CATV, then
you can get Internet access with no minutes-of-use charges, and not
even any contact whatsoever with the RBOC!  They will have no way to
charge you for anything, save perhaps ye olde CATV pole attachment
rentals.

So by pressuring the FCC to revive the reclassification of ISPs and
VANs as IXCs (don't you love alphabet soup?), the RBOCs may instead be
creating just the impetus that the CATV industry has been waiting for.
With the announcement of US West's acquisition of Continental
Cablevision (atop US West's acquisition of a few other CATVs), we now
have another major CATV owned by a telecom company who knows that
there's more to life than HBO.  It's probably a trend.  At long last,
CATV will almost be forced by market demand to move into the two-way
transmission business.

And the RBOCs (except perhaps their out-of-region CATV affiliates)
will have put the knife directly into themselves.  They will have gone
too far, just at the time when their monopoly power was crumbling.
Just when they were needing most to learn to "delight customers", they
will have again played their traditional "fleece the monopoly
ratepayer" game.  It will not be marketing, but Seppuku Marketing --
insert knife, twist, fall over dead.

The best defense against this proposed reclassification, then, may
just be a small dose of marketing sanity at the RBOCs.  We may not see
it, but at least we may finally see the RBOCs perform last rites on
themselves.  And it won't be a day too soon.


Fred R. Goldstein      fgoldstein@bbn.com  
BBN Corp.              Cambridge MA  USA    +1 617 873 3850


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

From: mikee@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (Michael J. Ellis)
Subject: Tapping Voice Channels (Through a PBX?)
Date: 27 Feb 1996 23:17:00 -0500
Organization: The George Washington University


Hey folks,

I'm trying to get an idea on how to do the following:

I have the need to take a three way conversation and record the tracks
from each telephone unit separately.

It would be very easy to tap the combined conversation, but separating 
the tracks afterwards would be almost impossible.

This is why I figured it would be best to tap the channels at an
earlier stage.

This is for a fairly small operation, but a small digital PBX or
something like that would certainly be an option.

Are there any PC-based (maybe UNIX-based) boards and solution that
provide this type of functionality?


Many Thanks,

Michael John J. Ellis    Systems Programmer   SCT			

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

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 00:52 PST
From: Eric Smith 
Subject: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks)


In article  Fred Goldstein
 writes:

> If InternetPhone and related programs actually worked well, then they
> could theoretically turn Internet service providers *literally* into
> long-distance companies.

I'm afraid I'm not clear on this point.  I admit that I have very
little understanding of the complex regulations and tariffs involved.
I have two questions:

1) If I lease a "normal" T1 data line (i.e., not some special "Feature
Group" trunk thing) from AT&T between San Jose to Denver , and some
POTS lines and channel banks at each end, and I allow people (for a
fee) to dial into my system at one end and out through a POTS line at
the other end, have I violated any laws, regulations, tariffs, etc.?

Have I become a long distance carrier?

I would hope not, since I am just transporting bits over the service I
have leased from the actual long distance carrier.

If this does makes me a long distance carrier, and subject to the
various regulations thereof, and in particular the requirements to pay
asoorted and sundry fees to the LEC and FCC, isn't this a form of
double taxation?  I'm already paying all the fees on the leased line.

Assuming that this doesn't make me a long distance carrier, what about:

2) I have the setup described in (1), and Joe has the same setup but
between Denver and Chicago, and Fred has the same setup between
Chicago and New York.  If through the combination of these systems we
transport calls from San Jose to New York, have any or all of us
become long distance carriers?

I believe my example two to be very representative of the way most of
the Internet in the US works.  I've heard the LECs bitch and moan that
the Internet is letting people bypass the phone company, and that the
FCC should regulate the Internet and make it pay its "fair share", but
in my opinion it is already paying its fair share, since the data (and
voice) transmitted over it is going over paid telephone circuits the
whole way.  Where exactly are they claiming that the fees are being
bypassed?  If they mean that they don't make as much money on T1
leased lines as they do on dialup calls, doesn't that just mean that
they should raise the T1 leased line rates?

Anyhow, regardless of the answers to my questions, the whole claim
about the Internet offering "free long distance" is ridiculous at
best.  If it really worked (to even a distant approximation of toll
quality), and if any non-trivial number of people tried to use it, the
Internet would collapse under the load.  The infrastructure would have
to be considerably upgraded, which would require a substantial
increase of rates or a change in the pricing structure (i.e.,
usage-based accounting instead of flat rate), which would then make
Internet long distance uneconomical.

Of course, if I'm wrong and in the aftermath the Internet phone
service is *still* cheaper than the long distance companies, it only
would prove that the long distance companies were either gouging, or
that they were using obsolete technology.


Cheers,

Eric

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #85
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Feb 28 13:55:15 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id NAA04163; Wed, 28 Feb 1996 13:55:15 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 13:55:15 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602281855.NAA04163@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #86

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 28 Feb 96 13:54:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 86

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    AT&T Launches Internet Service (Stuart Singer via Stan Schwartz)
    Still Another Player: Motorola/Sun Online Alliance (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    New Caribbean NPA's (was Re: Latest NANP, New NPA Information) (M. Cuccia)
    The Perfect Carrier! (Scott Plichta)
    Rate Comparisons (was AT&T Rategate - What is it?) (Stuart Zimmerman)
    MCI Problem: They Lost Lots of Customer Records (Steve Samler)
    Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax is Back) (Garrett A. Wollman)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:11:47 EST
From: Stan.Schwartz@IBMMAIL.com
Subject: AT&T Launches Internet Service 


via singers@pipeline.com (Stuart Singer)                                      

   AT&T Corp. on Tuesday said it would offer access to the Internet
nationwide, presenting free subscriptions to its existing customers if
they use the global network for less than five hours a month.

   The company will charge $19.95 a month for unlimited access to the
Internet by existing customers. People who use other long-distance or
cellular services will be able to sign up for AT&T's Internet access
at a slightly higher rate.

   The move represents a challenge to existing pricing models for
on-line access, which generally starts with monthly charges of $5 to
$10. It also represents another step in the company's ability to
combine several kinds of telecommunications service.

   The free access is available only for a year to people who sign up
during 1996.

   AT&T is able to offer the low-cost service because it faces lower
costs for signing up customers than companies that just provide
on-line access, said Tom Evslin, vice president of AT&T WorldNet
Service. The highest cost firms such as America Online Inc. and Netcom
face is acquiring customers through marketing.

     "It's a lot cheaper to sell a new service to an existing
customer," Evslin said, noting AT&T has 80 million long-distance
customers.

   AT&T said it would take orders immediately for WorldNet Service,
which begins March 14.

   The company since last September has provided Internet access
services to businesses that dedicate specific lines to the global
network. Its new service will work with people who merely wish to dial
in to the Internet from their personal computers at home, work or
school.

   An estimated 10 million to 20 million Americans now have Internet
access through employers, schools, commercial on-line providers or
Internet-only firms.

     "We believe people, once they have the time to try out the
Internet, will find this a compelling and useful part of their
lives," Evslin said.

   AT&T will distribute access software to people who sign up for the
service, but the software is only available in versions that work on
computers that run Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. An AT&T
spokesman said versions for DOS- and Macintosh-based computers will be
ready soon.

   AT&T will charge people who do not use any of its other phone
services $4.95 for three hours of access per month, plus $2.50 per
hour for each additional hour. Unlimited monthly access will cost
$24.95 to non-AT&T customers.

   Word of AT&T's pricing ideas sparked a response from several
competitors at an industry conference being held several blocks away
from the diner the company used as a backdrop for its announcement.

   David Garrison, chief executive of Netcom, the largest
Internet-only on-line company, said people who use the Internet for
just five hours a month do not present a lucrative opportunity.

   "Our focus is on the heavy and medium user," Garrison said at the
conference, sponsored by Jupiter Communication, a New York research
firm.

   AT&T's Evslin said he anticipates many people who try the Internet
for free will move up fairly quickly to the unlimited plan, where the
company charges fees.


Stuart Singer singers@li.net singers@pipeline.com
102722.3035@compuserve.com

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

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:55:04 EST
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: Still Another New Player: Motorola/Sun Online Alliance


The little house on the cyberprairie is coming closer to reality.
Motorola and Sun Microsystems announced on Monday they are forming a
new company with their combined technologies to deliver high-speed
internet transmissions to homes via cable television companies.

The new system will be available on cable television by the end of
this year. The new system will be known as 'Cyberspace Alliance', and
it will consist of Motorola's CyberSURFR cable modem technology and
Sun's internet server and Java software.

The new product will be sold to cable television operators and
regional phone companies which will install it on their networks and
resell it to their customers. The plan is that having this on the
cable will allow delivery to/from Internet at speeds of 1000 megabits
per second, which is about one thousand times faster than now possible
on conventional telephone lines.

The new product will offer services like America OnLine and Compuserve
as 'channels' on the home Internet connections along with other
informa- tion. Internet service via cable is expected to cost about
$100 to install per customer, and monthly charges will be about $30,
which will be separate from regular cable programming.

There will be options by Motorola/Sun for 'flexibility in pricing' in
local communities allowing the cable provider to 'actively compete
with local Internet Service Providers ...'  It is assumed the much
higher speed of transmission to be offered will be an attractive part
of the plan.

James Phillips, corporate VP at Motorola, which is based in
Schaumburg, Illinois said, "This ushers in a new generation for
personal computers in the home, which have been like Ferraris running
on a gravel road instead of the information superhighway."

Watch for this new service to be available on the television cable in
your community around the end of this year or early in 1997.


PAT

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

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 08:09:03 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: New Caribbean NPA's (was Re: Latest NANP, New NPA)


On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, John R Levine wrote:

>> [new area codes]
>> 284 = British Virgin Islands (BVI)
>> 473 = Grenada (GRE)

> Jeez, at this rate the NXX codes will be used up in no time.  The BVI
> have a population of about 10,000 and have, the last time I checked,
> either 3 or 4 prefixes.  And they rate an entire NPA?  I thought
> Bermuda was bad enough with about 20 prefixes.

> I hope the NANPA exerts some pressure on these micro-NPAs to avoid
> overlapping prefixes so they can have the option to recombine some of
> them later.

I know that in Puerto Rico (soon to be NPA 787) they are going to
assign *new* NXX c/o codes during the `permissive dialing period'
which are *not* going to be available via NPA 809. It is quite
possible that the new Puerto Rican 787 `only' NXX codes (even during
permissive period) could be NXX's assigned elsewhere in 809 or other
`new' Caribbean area codes.

One of the reasons that each Caribbean `geo-political' entity in the
NANP are getting their own NPA is Geo-political/cultural identity, but
another deals with rating & routing. While most originating local and
tandem/toll switches in North America are capable of `six-digit'
translation for routing/rating and geographic identification
(analyzing and translating the six digits of 809NXX), there has been
some problem regarding calls originating from overseas which are
destined for the Caribbean. For at least 20 years, most of the
Caribbean NNX codes were in nice neat numbering blocks. 

About ten years ago, the 809 c/o code administrator (which was AT&T
and since divestiture is now Bellcore) has had to `break-out' of the
traditional numbering blocks when assigning new 809-NXX codes. The ITU
recommendations for digit analysis and translation on international/
overseas calls state that six-digit translation be the minimum. Calls
destined for the NANP (+1) regions of the Caribbean would properly
translate six-digits when 809-NNX codes used to be assigned in compact
numbering blocks. The originating switch in the foreign location would
look at the six-digit string 1809NN (or more generically 1809NX).

Remember that the North American country code +1 is part of this
six-digit string since the call is originating from *outside* of the
NANP. The 1809NN or 1809NX was enough (in most cases) to identify the
actual `geo-political' NANP Caribbean location for rating/routing
purposes. But since c/o code assignments has `broken-out' of the
traditional numbering block, six-digit translation from a foreign
country has been more difficult for specific identification. Some
foreign countries can translate on more than six-digits, but the ITU
recommends only a *minimum* of six-digits for translation. As each
NANP Caribbean entity gets its own NPA code, then six-digit
translation will be possible to specifically identify *which*
Caribbean entity is being called. i.e.  1441NX will mean Bermuda,
1284NX will mean the British Virgin Is, etc.

And as for central office code assignments, each regional Bell has a
c/o code administrator for their NPA's. GTE-Florida assigns c/o codes
for the 813 and new 941 NPA's, GTE-Hawaii assigns 808-NXX codes,
Alascom assigns 907-NXX codes, the major Canadian telcos (in
association with Stentor and the Canadian government's Industry Canada
organization) assigns NXX c/o codes within the Canadian NPA's, SNET
assigns NXX c/o codes in NPA's 203 and 860 (and if NYNEX formerly New
York Tel needs new c/o codes for the long-time NYNEX exchanges of
Byram CT and Old Greenwich CT in 203, they need to request them from
SNET), and Cincinnati Bell assigns the 513-NXX codes (including those
for Ameritech formerly Ohio Bell; however Cincinnati Bell needs to
request new c/o codes for their area of southeastern Indiana in NPA
812 from Ameritech, while CBTel need to request new c/o codes for
their area of northern Kentucky in NPA 606 from BellSouth!). As each
NANP Caribbean entity splits from 809 to create their *own* new NPA,
the telco and/or regulatory/government agency becomes responsible for
local c/o code assignments in their own new NPA's. Bellcore will be
keeping records of those c/o code assignments but won't be the c/o
code assignment authority for those locations anymore.

And while the intended plan by various agencies, forums, organizations, 
etc. is that there be a new `independent' North American Numbering
Council which will be a *single NANP-wide* local c/o code assignment
authority, the FCC could only require that the US (including Alaska,
Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) turn over local c/o
code assignment to this new authority. Canada hasn't yet determined if
they will continue to assign their own local c/o codes; and the new
c/o code assignment in the new individual Caribbean NPA's (at least
the `non=US' Caribbean) could also remain with those Caribbean
entities rather than being turned back over to a centralized
assignment authority.

Interesting times ahead!


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 09:36:07 EST
From: splichta@instalink.com (Scott Plichta)
Subject: The Perfect Carrier!


I have found it, the perfect carrier!  My carrier never has an outage,
or according to the network ops people.  We use MCI as both our dial 1
service, and as a front end to some of our 800 number programs.

Last Friday, around 2:00 pm EDT, we noticed a reorder tone on all 1+
dialed calls outside of our LATA in the Philadelphia area.  I also
attempted to make calls to some of our 1-800 numbers (also MCI) and
was presented with reorder also.  Upon calling the MCI network ops
center, I was told that no problems had been reported, but a trouble
ticket would be opened.  About 20 minutes later, the problem was
resolved and calls routed 100% of the time.  Three hours later, MCI
calls back and would like me to try calling again as they can't
replicate the problem!  I informed them that the problem stopped after
20 minutes, and hadn't recurred, I was told that there were no network
problems today and I probably had misdialed.  [ ok, and my memory
presets had corrupted themselves and then repaired themselves 20
minutes later ].

Oh, I love big carriers.  Take this story and replace [Friday] with
any other day, about twice a month, and it is still true.  We did have
Frontier (Allnet) as a carrier, and they were always very up front
about network problems, the location of a [fiber] cut, the % of
traffic rerouting, and the ETA to full service.

And then came MCI, where I got rid of *ALL* telecom network troubles,
but for some strange reason, I started hallucinating.  I only thought
that my carrier was having problems, but it turns out, I *MUST* have
been hallucinating, because my carrier is perfect!


Scott Plichta    splichta@instalink.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: According to another writer in this
issue, in fact MCI accidentally lost its customer records, or a good
portion of them a few days ago. Right now no one from MCI is willing
to say what happened. Read the rest of this issue for details.   PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 01:42 EST
From: Stuart Zimmerman <0007382020@mcimail.com>
Subject: Rate Comparisons (was AT&T Rategate - What is it?)


John Cropper in TELECOM Digest #84 wrote:

> Out of curiosity, I did my own comparison, based on my patterns, and
> calling history during 4Q95 (I have AT&T True Values with True
> Rewards, which I convert to LD certificates @ 5c on every LD dollar
> spent). Here are results of the big three ...

> AT&T - base rate I'm charged, factoring in reward plan. 

> Sprint - 0.03 more TOTAL (quarter), based on calling pattern I use,
> using 10c/min plan w/ cash back.

AT&T just raised its basic rates by approximately 4.3% (effective on
2/17/96).  (See http://www.wp.com/Fone_Saver/ld.html for the rates.)
The Sprint Sense rate has not changed, therefore, you may what to
reconsider.  Also as PAT frequently points out, Sprint Business Sense
with Fridays are Free is worth considering.  If you make many daytime
calls or can switch much of your calling to Fridays, this may be best.

> MCI - 26.72 more TOTAL (quarter), based on calling pattern w/ similar
> savings plan.

MCI has other plans for consumers and offers a reward program that is
worth between five and ten percent if you have use for frequent flyer
miles.

> My home bills range in the mid-three-digits per month (and yes, I've
> checked out LCI et al, and -their- prices were even higher, based on
> the calling plans, even with 6 second billing factored, since I track
> my exact call lengths).

	Unless your calling patterns are unusual, the advantage of six
second billing saves you 45% of the cost of a minute for ever call you
make.  If you made thirty calls and paid an average of twenty cents
per minute, the difference is $2.70 (30 * .45 * .20)

> AT&T and Sprint are neck and neck in the ongoing rate war, so I
> might just become a "bouncer" should the incentives become lucrative

Repeated switching around has its advantages if you have the time for
it. But most people find that it is not worth the effort.  My company
does the type of analysis you did for consumers and usually finds
consumers with your level of calling can save substantially over True
Savings by using a smaller company or re-seller.  For more information
check out some of the companies listed at http:
//www.wp.com/Fone_Saver/phones.html or send me e-mail and I will send
you a list or information about my company's services.


Stuart Zimmerman                  Fone Saver, LLC
"Helping Consumers Save on Long Distance"
7382020@mcimail.com             1(800)313-6631

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

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:01:44 EST
From: Steve Samler 
Subject: MCI Problem: They Lost Lots of Customer Records


I am hearing that MCI has "accidentally" deleted all their customers
from one of their three Digital Access Points a few days ago.  Does
anyone have any ideas on how something like this happens?  How does a
major carrier like MCI make such a major mistake?

About 1/3 to 1/2 of our phone calls to valid numbers terminate with a
re-order tone.  


Steve Samler
Editorial Manager Communications
Individual, Inc.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As Scott Plichta notes earlier in this
issue, surely you must be hallucinating. Things like that do not
happen, therefore you must be misdialing ... please check the number
and dial again, or ask your operator for assistance ... this is a
recording ... . Would anyone from MCI who knows something about
this care to share the true story? Or would it be better if lacking 
any authoritative statement from MCI, we simply have rumors and
innuendo floating around on the net for awhile instead?   PAT]

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

From: wollman@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett A. Wollman)
Subject: Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks)
Date: 28 Feb 1996 13:04:06 -0500
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science


In article , Eric Smith
 wrote:

> Anyhow, regardless of the answers to my questions, the whole claim
> about the Internet offering "free long distance" is ridiculous at
> best.  If it really worked (to even a distant approximation of toll
> quality), and if any non-trivial number of people tried to use it, the
> Internet would collapse under the load.  The infrastructure would have
> to be considerably upgraded, which would require a substantial
> increase of rates or a change in the pricing structure (i.e.,
> usage-based accounting instead of flat rate), which would then make
> Internet long distance uneconomical.

In a word, no.  People seem to have a very difficult time understanding 
the implications of a few basic facts:

1: When the network is not congested, the marginal cost of sending one
more packet is zero.

2: In a competitive environment free of noxious regulation and
cross-subsidy, services will be sold as close to marginal cost as
possible.

3: The telephone network is very, very underengineered.  (By `under-
engineered', I mean that the network is incapable of handling the
traffic resulting from every person with a phone line calling one
other person simultaneously.)  But, thanks to the magic of statistical
multiplexing, it usually doesn't matter (except on Mothers' Day or
when U2 concert tickets go on sale).

4: There is a basic difference between the Internet and the telephone
network.  In the Internet, you put in a fixed amount of money, and you
get a variable amount of service.  In the telephone network, you put
in a variable amount of money, and if the network is unable to provide
the one and only fixed quality of service that it understands, it will
tell you so and not charge you anything.

5: It is possible to extend the service model of the Internet to one
more like the telephone network, where users can pay a varying amount
of money, and get better service than they would by not paying extra.
Users can trade off the expense versus the desired quality of service,
and when the network is unloaded, they can stop paying extra at all.
The telephone network provides no mechanism to do this, since there is
only one service that it can provide.  There are a significant number
of people (including the ones that I work for) involved in developing
this new Internet service model.

So, back to the original statement:

> If it really worked (to even a distant approximation of toll
> quality), and if any non-trivial number of people tried to use it,
> the Internet would collapse under the load.

This is not true.  Generally speaking, the Internet technology doesn't
``collapse'' under any load; it simply delivers a varying quality of
service.  If `any non-trivial number of people tried to use' the
Internet to bypass the telephone networks, they would no longer be
able to get `a distant approximation of toll quality', because packets
would be delayed and dropped in the network to such an extent that the
`Internet phone' service would break.  (It would also significantly
slow down unrelated users' TCP traffic, but this can be solved by
proper application of classification and queueing technology.)  Users
of this service would then either stop using it, or pony up to their
network providers for a better connection.  Or they might implement
the technology described in (5) above (which, if they are
corporations, they will probably want on their internal networks
anyway).

> The infrastructure would have to be considerably upgraded, which
> would require a substantial increase of rates or a change in the
> pricing structure (i.e., usage-based accounting instead of flat
> rate), which would then make Internet long distance uneconomical.

Again, this isn't necessarily so.  In particular, a lot of the users
of such services can (at least initially) be expected to be companies
with multiple locations.  If they can more efficiently utilize the
network service they are already paying for to connect their sites,
and at the same time reduce their voice phone charges, then it's an
economic win.  It is probably still a win if the company doubled the
size of its capacity purchase, just on the basis of more efficient,
automatic allocation of resources (rather than, for example, buying a
T-1 line from telco and splitting it into 12 voice tie lines and one
770-Mbit data connection).


Garrett A. Wollman    wollman@lcs.mit.edu  

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #86
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Feb 29 04:54:41 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id EAA17913; Thu, 29 Feb 1996 04:54:41 -0500 (EST)
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 04:54:41 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602290954.EAA17913@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #87

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 29 Feb 96 04:54:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 87

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Pacific Bell Mobile Services Makes First Calls (Mike King)
    BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers (Stan Schwartz)
    Thoughts on US West/Continental Merger (Tara D. Mahon)
    Tel America Obtains Injunction Against Competitor (Tad Cook)
    Police Officer Suspended in Phone Spying Case (Mike Pollock)
    AT&T's International Directory Assistance Pricing (David Jensen)
    Six-Digit Translation and SAC's (was Re: New Caribbean NPA's) (M. Cuccia)

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
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Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
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The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
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*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: Pacific Bell Mobile Services Makes First Calls
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:41:03 PST


Forwarded to the Digest, FYI:

 Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:27:30 -0800
 Reply-To: news-list@list.pactel.com
 From: tltinne@legsf.PacBell.COM
 Subject: NEWS: Pacific Bell Mobile Services Makes First Calls

<<<>>>

Pacific Bell Mobile Services Makes First Calls on New PCS Network

Company Expects to Offer New Wireless Service in Early 1997

Contact:  Linda Bonniksen (213) 975-5061		

Pleasanton, Calif. -- Pacific Bell Mobile Services (PBMS) has
completed the first calls on its new PCS-1900 network, a milestone
that signifies how close the company is to offering a new generation
of wireless telecommunications technology that will be accessible and
affordable to more people.

"By this time next year, PCS technology will have redefined the
meaning of wireless," said Lyn Daniels, president and chief executive
officer of Pacific Bell Mobile Services.  "PCS subscribers will enjoy
sound quality, security, service and handset features not available
from cellular today."

PCS stands for Personal Communications Services, a digital technology
that offers superior sound quality and the capacity for multiple
communications services, such as voice conversations, paging, text
messaging and wireless data transmission over lightweight handsets.
PCS is also predicted to cost less than existing cellular service.
    
PBMS will offer PCS in California and Nevada in early 1997.  The
company plans to broadly distribute PCS handsets through drug stores,
consumer electronics stores and warehouse retailers.         
 
PBMS Completes PCS-to-PCS Calls 

PBMS placed the first calls on its network between Jan. 24 and Feb.
26 on handsets located in Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland.  Calls
were received by PCS handsets in Washington, D.C., where American
Personal Communications operates a PCS network, and Honolulu, Hawaii,
where Western Wireless is presently building a PCS network.

PBMS also completed PCS calls to landline phones in several
California cities.  Long-distance service was provided by World Com.

In the next several months, PBMS will test its network's ability to
deliver wireless data, including pages, text messages and Internet
access (services the company plans to offer at commercial launch).   


PCS More Secure, Intelligent Than Cellular 

Subscribers to the new PCS service will discover a technology more
secure and intelligent than cellular, and a handset that integrates
the capabilities of a phone, pager and personal digital assistant.

Based on the newest form of digital wireless technology, PCS will
offer complex encryption techniques to virtually eliminate the
ability to eavesdrop on calls and minimize the risk of unauthorized
users placing fraudulent calls on a PCS phone.
  
Service innovations will include "over-the-air" activation.  After
purchasing a PCS handset, a new subscriber will push the "send" button
to be immediately connected with a PBMS customer care representative,
who, within minutes, will activate the subscriber's service based on a
preferred calling plan.  A customer care representative can also
program a speed dialing list as part of over-the-air activation.
  
With PCS, subscribers will be able to program the network to have
specific calls follow them, store both voice mail and pages in a
universal wireless mailbox, and receive short text messages in
multiple languages.

An advanced service called Wildfire will allow an electronic assistant
to speak to subscribers through their PCS handsets.  Wildfire will
respond to spoken commands, such as "Call the office."  It will also
prompt subscribers for more information (if the subscriber says
"Wildfire, call Mom," the service will ask "Where?"  Wildfire will
also have the ability to whisper that an important call is waiting
without interrupting a conversation in progress.
 
In addition to combining the phone and pager into a single device, PCS
handsets will offer longer battery life and message-waiting icons.

Handsets will also include subscriber identification modules designed
as cards or chips.  These modules will include network information
about the subscribers, such as which features or pricing plans they
use.  The modules can be tailored to special needs, such as giving
children PCS access to home or emergency numbers only.  In the future,
the modules may store electronic cash or personal medical information
that could be delivered to paramedics responding to 911 call.

PBMS and Ericsson announced Feb. 21 that they will work on interim
solutions that will enable people with hearing aids to use new
wireless digital handsets without experiencing interference.  The two
companies will develop and test the solutions in cooperation with Self
Help for Hard of Hearing People, Inc., (SHHH), a leading international
organization representing hand-of-hearing people.
 
PBMS Background 
  	
In March 1995, PBMS won two federal licenses to provide PCS in
California and Nevada with bids totaling $695 million.  The company
followed up its successful bid by signing a five-year $300-million
agreement with Ericsson for PCS 1900 network system.  PCS 1900 network
equipment is based on the Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM) technology, which is already used in 86 countries.  In 1995,
PBMS also signed a memorandum of understanding with GSM providers
around the world.  It will let their customers roam the globe with
PCS.
 
Pacific Bell Mobile Services is the wireless communications subsidiary
of Pacific Bell.  Pacific Telesis Group, the parent company of Pacific
Bell and Pacific Bell Mobile Services, is a diversified telecommunica-
tions company headquarters in San Francisco.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: Stan Schwartz 
Subject: BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 18:28:40 -0500


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

 From: 	BellSouth[SMTP:press@www.bellsouth.com]
 Sent: 	Wednesday, February 28, 1996 16:01 PM

BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers

For additional information:

David Rogers                                                  
BellSouth Telecommunications
404-529-8053

February 27, 1996
     
ATLANTA - On March 1, nearly 7.5 million new toll-free numbers will be
available nationwide.

Toll-free 800 numbers have been available since 1967, but the supply
of numbers is nearly gone. Beginning in March, the telecommunications
industry, including BellSouth, will begin offering "888" numbers.

"When you see a seven-digit phone number preceded by 888, you can
think toll-free," said Mike Lassiter, BellSouth product manager.  "It
works just like an 800 number."

Business customers are reminded that PBX systems and other
telecommunications equipment need to be programmed to accommodate the
new area code format (which has any number from 2 through 9 as the
middle digit) in order to dial 888 numbers. Customers should contact
their equipment vendors if they have questions about their
communications equipment.

"Customers can place orders now for 888 number services, as long as
the effective date of the order is on or after March 1," Lassiter
said.  To place orders for BellSouth toll-free services, customer can
contact their account representative or call their BellSouth business
office.  Business customers who aren't sure what number to call can
dial 1-800-356-3093.

BellSouth offers a variety of toll-free services ranging from service
for cities within your BellSouth calling zone to nationwide service
provided through cooperative agreements with participating long
distance companies.

There has been an unprecedented demand for toll-free numbers in recent
years, due at least in part to the growth of pager services and 800
services for residential customers. The advent of 800 number portability, 
which means businesses can keep the same 800 number when they switch 
telephone companies, is believed to have had an impact as well.

"For the first 26 years after 800 numbers were introduced, the
industry only used 40 percent of the available numbers," said
Lassiter. "But it only took two more years to use up another 40
percent."

And what happens when all the 888 numbers are gone?

The telecommunications industry has agreed to use 877 for toll-free
numbers once the supply of 888 numbers is depleted. After that, 866
would be used, followed by 855, 844, etc., as needed to ensure that
toll-free dialing needs can be met for many years to come. BellSouth
Telecommunications, Inc.  headquartered in Atlanta, provides
telecommunications services in the nine-state BellSouth region, which
encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.


Facts About 800 & 888 Toll-Free Phone Numbers

February 27, 1996
     
Due to the restrictions in place limiting the assignment of new
numbers, the supply of 800 numbers will not be exhausted until June
22.

BellSouth and the telecommunications industry are prepared to offer
toll-free 888 numbers on the March 1 target date.

Implementing 888 will provide about 7.6 million new toll-free numbers,
which is also how many 800 numbers there are.

800 service was first offered in 1967. By May 1993 (26 years later),
the industry had used about 40 percent of the available 800 numbers.

By May 1995, about 80 percent of the available numbers were already
assigned. No one can say for sure what caused the explosion, but there
are several factors that are generally acknowledge:

* the boom in requests for numbers coincides with the 
implementation of 800 number portability, which meant businesses 
could change carriers and keep the same 800 number.

* pager growth-over the last decade, the number of pagers in use has
increased sevenfold to 27.3 million. Many of these have 800 numbers
associated with them.

* in recent years, carriers have been marketing "personal" 800 numbers
to residential customers.

When all the 888 numbers are gone, the industry has established a plan
to use 877 for toll-free numbers, then 866, 855, etc.  as needed.

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

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 96 16:55:15 -0400
From: Tara D. Mahon 
Subject: Thoughts on US West/Continental Merger


Pat,

Thought your readers would like to see a brief write-up we did on US
West/Continental as part of our NewsFirst Telecom service.

Regards,
Tara D. Mahon                       tara@insight-corp.com
The Insight Research Corporation    www.wcom.com/Insight/insight.html
354 Eisenhower Parkway              (201) 605-1400 phone
Livingston, NJ  07039-1023 USA      (201) 605-1440 fax
Comparative Market Research, Competitive Analysis for Telecom Industry


NEWSFIRST EXTRA: Thoughts on the US West/Continental Merger

U S West has always tried to run out in front of the herd, reckoning
that the demographics and geography of the serving area won't let the
company trot along the same path followed by the other RBOCs.  But we
all know you risk taking shots if you run too far ahead, and they did
take hits in the past (their foray into real estate after Divestiture
comes immediately to mind).  While we won't say the $10.8 billion
acquisition of Continental Cablevision announced yesterday is bullet
proof, we do believe the move is going to eventually lead the company
to solid ground because US West is sticking close to its core
competency.

If the merger does indeed go forward, U S West adds 4.2 million
households to its 2.9 million base (the base includes its 25 percent
share of the Time Warner partnership as well as the 500,000 subs it
owns outright in Atlanta).  With certificates of public convenience
from State PUCs in its new major metro areas, U S West Media Group
commands the mass to begin rolling out bundled offerings including
data access and voice over cable without having to worry about
recalcitrant partners.  Moreover, when you start your build out with
the US West name attached to it, chances are your debt offering is
likely to receive a better rating than the kind commanded by a
debt-burdened cable operator.

US West has spent the last two years learning to run with the cable
operators.  Its stake in Time Warner put the company into the thick of
planning process for cable upgrades, giving them real insight into
what it is going to take to turn a these cable systems that run ten
amplifiers deep into something approaching a digital service platform.

The Time Warner experience has been instructive to U S West for
another reason.  The suit that is still pending between U S West and
Time Warner is ostensibly about Time Warner's purchase of Turner
Broadcasting and U S West loss of control in the resulting
partnership. A major factor underlying the dispute is control of the
content owned by Time Warner and Turner, but according to the {New
York Times}, US West may be willing to cede some control over content
for a greater say in the underlying network.  The other alternative,
says an analyst quoted by the {Wall Street Journal}, is to split off 25
percent of the Time Warner base and end the dispute that way.  No
matter how you cut it, Continental's purchase gives U S West leverage;
that leverage will show up in the Time Warner court case, and in the
kinds of deals that the company can cut with sofware developers and
content providers down the road.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although cable television here in Skokie
comes from TCI, quite a bit of the Chicago area is served by Continental.
This merger therefore got a lot of interest in the local newspapers here
on Wednesday.   PAT]

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

From: Tad Cook 
Subject: Tel America Obtains Injunction Against Competitor
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:01:00 PST


California Firm Can't Use Tel America Name
By Ted Cilwick, The Salt Lake Tribune

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 28 -- A Utah federal judge has ordered a California marketing
corporation to stop using its name because it is similar to that of a
Salt Lake City-based long-distance telephone company.

The preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell bars
seven-month-old Tel America International Inc. from using the words
"Tel America" in peddling long-distance telephone service and
products, including prepaid calling cards and designer pagers.

The request for the injunction, as well as a trademark-infringement
lawsuit against Oakland-based Tel America International, were filed by
Tel America of Salt Lake City Inc.

The Salt Lake City entity, which employs about 200 people in Utah,
Arizona and California and was incorporated in 1983, is a long-distance 
telephone company with operators and discount long-distance services.

In granting the injunction, Campbell concluded that the California
marketer "has violated and will continue to violate" federal and state
laws regulating trademarks. "There is a substantial likelihood that
Tel America (of Salt Lake City) ... would eventually prevail on the
merits" of its infringement suit, the judge added.

Campbell issued the injunction Feb. 22. Since then, the California
operation (which enlists 90,000 salespeople) has changed its name to
Destiny Telecomm Inc., said Paul Droz, attorney for Tel America of
Salt Lake City.

However, Droz on Tuesday said it is probable that other issues
involving the preliminary injunction may have to be brought before the
judge again.

For example, Campbell directed attorneys for the California company to
announce during a Feb. 23 meeting in Oregon that the injunction was in
effect and that all materials bearing the words "Tel America" must be
returned.

But Droz, who attended the meeting, said the announcements were not
made and the California marketer intends to notify its 90,000
salespeople through the mail and faxes.

Grant Clayton, a Utah lawyer for the California firm, was unavailable
for comment Tuesday.

In court papers, the Salt Lake City telephone company contended that
since the California marketer's inception in July 1995, consumers are
confused -- and the Salt Lake City company is suffering. The Salt Lake
City company expressed fear that it would be tainted by being mistaken
for the California entity because "many multi-level marketing companies 
are illegal pyramid schemes or are operated in an unethical or unpro-
fessional manner."

In a news release, the Salt Lake City telephone company said one of
the California firm's sales representatives "provides photographs of
nude women."

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

tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H | "The game of life demands
that one  assume a beingness  in order to acomplish a  doingness in the
direction of havingness."- L. Ron Hubbard   "This kind of quote demands
that one assume  a queasiness  in order to acomplish  a throwingness in
the direction of up!" - James Chase

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

From: Mike Pollock 
Subject: Police Officer Suspended in Phone Spying Case
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 00:00:28 -0500


 From the AP 2/26/96, via Mike Pollock, Roslyn Hts, NY
Copyright 1996 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Illinois Policeman Taped Talkers

   SAYBROOK, Ill. (AP) -- It all started when a 10-year-old boy 
accidentally backed a pickup truck into Lorraine Kingsley's house.

   The real trouble started, however, when Mrs. Kingsley began making
calls on her cordless telephone about getting an insurance payment for
the damage.

   The town's lone police officer taped those calls -- leading to her 
suspension and separate investigations into illegal wiretapping by the 
state police and the FBI.

   The scandal has this town of 756 people worried about their privacy.

   "People naturally are somewhat paranoid. They're wondering if
someone is listening in on their phone conversations," said Rusty
Robbins Sr., a telephone company employee.

   After the mishap with a neighbor's son in December, Mrs. Kingsley
got upset at inconsistent statements from police officer Madeline
Nickum about insurance coverage.

   Mrs. Kingsley complained to the town's police commission. Then, Nickum 
and a McLean County sheriff's deputy called her into Nickum's office.

   "She sat down in front of me and said they had a cordless phone 
conversation taped between my neighbor and me," Mrs. Kingsley says. "She 
said it had evidence of insurance fraud, that she had given it to the 
state's attorney's office.

   "She told me I should listen to the tape and I said, 'No, I haven't
done anything wrong,"' Mrs. Kingsley said.

   State prosecutors say they never received the tape, and a complaint
of insurance fraud against Mrs. Kingsley was never lodged.

   About one-fifth of the town's residents signed a petition asking
village officials to discipline Nickum, which they did, suspending her
on Feb. 13 for 30 days.

   The State Police and the FBI are each investigating whether Nickum
broke federal wiretapping laws by recording conversations made on
cordless telephones. A 1994 federal law bans intercepting such phone
calls without a warrant.

   Mrs. Kingsley said FBI agents told her Nickum may have intercepted
her phone conversations using a police scanner or police radio.

   Nickum, 39, has an unlisted home phone number and could not be
reached for comment.

   Her supporters say Nickum has done a good job policing Saybrook,
adding she heroically came back to work after suffering a near-fatal
beating from a drunken driving suspect in 1994.

   During Nickum's suspension, police calls are being handled by the
sheriff's office. Several Saybrook residents say they think the town
should do that permanently.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Saybrook is a very small rural community 
in downstate Illinois. As the above article points out, Ms. Nickum serves
as the sole police officer for the village of 756 people. Calls to 911
in the village are directed to the county sheriff, which, until this
incident had been forwarding calls pertaining to Saybrook to Ms. Nickum
for handling. The entire population of McLean County is only about a
hundred thousand people, making it smaller than many medium size towns
in the United States. Most of that population is in Bloomington and/or
Normal, Illinois, a college town, but the county covers a fairly large
geographic area.    PAT]

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

From: David Jensen 
Subject: AT&T's International Directory Assistance Pricing
Date: 28 Feb 1996 19:15:39 GMT
Organization: Telephone & Data Systems, Inc.


Yesterday when I got my phone bill, I saw that it had an international
directory assistance charge on it. The call had been made, but the
$4.95 charge puts COCOTs and AOSs to shame in market gouging. I called
AT&T in the forlorn hope that there was an error in the bill (maybe
the bill should have been in Pesos or French Francs, even DM). No such
luck.  Apparently, AT&T is the only Int' DA provider in the US, so
they feel they can charge what they want.


Dave

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

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:54:49 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Six-Digit Translation and SAC's (was Re: New Caribbean NPA's)



On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Carl Moore (cmoore@arl.mil) wrote:

> In other words, you are saying that Caribbean countries (the ones
> under +1 809) used to be sorted as 1-809-NX but this pattern had
> to be violated because of need for new prefixes?  Has the system been
> able to continue to work between the start of such violation and the
> spinning off of those Caribbean countries from area 809?

On calls originating from countries *outside* of the NANP, if that
country did only six-digit translation (i.e. only as far as 1-809-NX)
those countries weren't able to `realtime' (at the time the call was
actually being placed) determine rating/billing or a particular
efficient routing/switching. The calls would be placed, but some
countries might have billed the call as terminating in a *different*
Caribbean location, or maybe *identified* the terminating Caribbean
location on the bill different than it really was while billing (toll
charges) itself wouldn't be different. Many rates for several
*different* Caribbean nations are identical, so even if it would have
been identified on the calling customer's bill as Antigua when the
customer called Barbados, the rates would have been the same anyway.

(Reminds me of when my friend in Whitehorse Yukon Canada calls me. His
number shows up okay on my caller ID box 403-668-xxxx but the name
part states ALBERTA)

If the originating country can translate on more-than-six digits, then
there hasn't been any real problems. It can translate 1809NXX (or
longer) even if the 809-NX part has been used by several countries
over the past ten years. But the ITU only recommends a minimum of
*six* digit translation.

Another `special' area code is 456, assigned to "International
Inbound", whatever that will be. (456 is *not* an international caller
agrees pay replace code for North American 800 toll-free numbers). The
`Central Office' codes are to be assigned (by Bellcore?) to carriers
in *blocks of ten*.  i.e. one carrier will have *all* 456-22X codes,
another will have *all* 456-23X, etc. Again, this is due to the ITU
recommendation of only a minimum of *six* digits being translated. So,
originating countries sticking to the recommended minimum of six
digits will be able to translate `1456NX' to route to North America
via the specified carrier assigned that 456-NX(X) code. I know nothing
more about the 456 special area code. I only know what I've mentioned
from an IL from Bellcore NANPA on 456 issued in Summer 1993 and some
mailings from the INC. The LERG and INPG I purchased from Bellcore in
December 1994 had *nothing* on 456-NX(X) assignments except that 456
was identified as "International Inbound" in the alphabetical and
numberical lists of NPAs in Bellcore TRA products and other Bellcore
NANPA materials in print and at their website
(http://www.bellcore.com/NANP).

600-NXX (Canadian Data services and also previously including old TWX
Canadian 610 services) `central office' code assignments dated 22
Dec.1994 are available at Dave Leibold's website
(http://www.io.org/~djcl/area600.txt) but these weren't listed in my
Dec.1994 LERG or INPG I purchased from Bellcore TRA.

Neither were 710-NXX listings in any Bellcore TRA products I've
purchased other than its assignment to the U.S.Federal Government. But
we now know *something* more about 710. The 456 "International
Inbound" might be even `spookier' than 710! ;) Could 456 be the UN's
special area code!?


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #87
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Thu Feb 29 13:29:47 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id NAA20807; Thu, 29 Feb 1996 13:29:47 -0500 (EST)
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 13:29:47 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199602291829.NAA20807@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #88

TELECOM Digest     Thu, 29 Feb 96 13:29:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 88

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Unexplained International Calls on Bill - How? (omni@cy-net.net)
    Pacific Telesis Restructures Executives' Responsibilities (Mike King)
    800 Numbers on T.V. Talkshows (Scott Montague)
    Distinctive Ringing Unavailable From Pac Bell? (S. Bapat)
    AT&T True Rewards Not Available in Cincinnati (Ralph Sprang)
    Prepaid Phone Card Firm Defrauds Users (DLD Digest and Van Hefner)
    Celluar Phone Theft Brings Fraud and Hassles (Richard Keith)
    BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers (Mike King)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers is Propaganda (Michael E. Dudley)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Gordon Burditt)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Robert McMillin)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Eric Bohlman)
    800-Numbers Don't Go Through - Whose Fault? (Joel M. Hoffman)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
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*************************************************************************
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* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: omni@cy-net.net
Subject: Unexplained International Calls on Bill - How?
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 05:37:04 GMT
Organization: Cybercom Corporation
Reply-To: omni@cy-net.net


On my January phone bill, the long distance portion (MCI) included
five calls made to Pakistan between 12 midnight and 3:30 am on Jan 9th.
One of these calls was 178 minutes long. These calls were not made by
anyone in my home (we do not call Pakistan), and neither did any
outsider have access to our home phones.

MCI, after a letter of dispute, has agreed to issue a credit. I am
curious about how this could have happened -- did someone physically
tap into my line, or the MCI exchange, or what? Since then, I have
instructed MCI to block international calls from my number. If I get
this restrictions removed, could this sort of thing happen again?

Thanks for knowledgeable replies.


Irfan


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do the bills indicate the calls were
'direct-dialed' or 'operator-assisted'? If the former, then someone
may have gotten onto your line at some point between your residence
and the local telephone exchange. If the latter, then some one or
more persons gave false billing information to the operator, and she
did not bother to confirm it. For example, they asked to have their
calls charged to a 'third-number' and they gave your number. It is
generally assumed by a lot of telco service reps that if a call was
direct-dialed, there you had to have been the one to make it, or
else you allowed someone to use your phone, etc. Of course we who
participate here know very well that there are opportunities to tap
into lines all over the place. The rep might also very tell you the
call was direct-dialed whether she has any evidence of that or not
just to get you off her case. Try and find out for certain which way
it occurred. Having international restricted should prevent it from
happening againg if it was direct dialed, and having 'billed number
screening' on your line should prevent third-party charges from an
operator from getting stuck on your line again.   PAT]

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

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: Pacific Telesis Restructures Executives' Responsibilities
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:37:53 PST


Forwarded FYI to the Digest:

 From: tltinne@legsf.PacBell.COM
 Subject: NEWS: Pacific Telesis Restructures Executives'
	  Responsibilities

Contact: 	Michael Runzler 415-394-3643

SAN FRANCISCO -- To ensure complete compliance with recently passed
telecommunications reform legislation as it prepares to enter the
long-distance business, Pacific Telesis today announced a
restructuring of its executive management.

Phil Quigley retains his role as Pacific Telesis chairman and chief
executive officer, but has relinquished his responsibilities as
chairman and director of Pacific Bell. Dave Dorman, president of
Pacific Bell, will assume those roles. The realignment separates
Dorman from any operational or supervisory responsibility for the
corporation's long-distance subsidiary.

Under the new Pacific Telesis structure, the corporation's
long-distance subsidiary, Pacific Bell Communications and its
president, Betsy Bernard, will report directly to Quigley.

The change was approved Monday by the Pacific Bell board of directors,
and prompted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law requires
that long-distance affiliates of Bell companies "operate independently
from the Bell operating company," with "separate officers, directors
and employees ..."

Pacific Telesis Group is a diversified telecommunications corporation
based in San Francisco.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: Scott Montague <4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca>
Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 01:55:00 -0500
Subject: 800 Numbers on T.V. Talkshows
Reply-To: 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca


I was just watching Late Night with Conan O'Brian on NBC, and he had a
comedian on who had two CDs out about the OJ Simpson trial.  At the end
he and Conan bantered about the fact that the new FCC regulations
state that he can't give out the 800 number to order his CD's.  Since
Mr. O'Brian seemed sincere and FCC jokes are usually not his forte, I
suspect that he at least believed that this was the case.

Is anyone aware of this restriction?  Was he in violation of the act
when he said (Paraphrasing) 'Well, if at the end of this interview you
were thinking "YES, OJ CD", that would give you a clue as to the phone
number'?  Is this another obscure section of the new Telecommunications 
Act passed lately?  Any ideas? Pat?


Scott Montague, 4sam3@qlink.queensu.ca
URL: http://qlink.queensu.ca/~4sam3/  


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I cannot imagine what he was talking about.
Every late night television program seems to have ads aplenty for all
kinds of things you can order using your credit card and an 800 number.
Now it could be that whatever numerical 800 number he is using can be
perverted in some way so that the letters associated with the numbers
spell out something which in and of itself is an obscene word; the FCC
regulations would prevent him from pronouncing or displaying that word
on television ... perhaps. But I really cannot imagine any FCC rule
which forbids one to read a string of digits referred to as a 'phone
number' over the air. If so as noted above, there are hundreds of
violators night after night on every independent UHF station in the
United States. I just now examined my telepone dial trying to make
some sense out of 'YES OJ CD' (937-6523) and other letters which go
in those dial positions, but I could not make anything of it.  PAT]

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

From: bapat@gate.net (S. Bapat)
Subject: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable from Pac Bell?
Date: 29 Feb 1996 01:52:15 -0500
Organization: CyberGate, Inc.


I'd like to hear from anyone who has Distinctive Ringing Service
on their residential line in any Pacific Bell service area.

In preparation for my move from Florida to California, I called Pac
Bell to start service, but all the service reps seemed mystified when
I asked for three numbers mapped to the same line, with "distinctive
ringing." They tossed me over to marketing, who seemed equally
mystified, until some supervisor got back to me saying "We've never
heard of anything like this."

Can this be really true? I know California is a telecom backwater, but
is it so bad that a standard CLASS service isn't available?  (I've had
distinctive ringing (six numbers, two lines) from BellSouth in Florida
for the last six years, it'll be a bummer if I can't get it again.
What's Pac Bell using, crossbar switches? :-).

(For those who don't know what this is, a distinctive ringing service
is when you can order up to three numbers mapped to the same
residential line, where the phone rings with different ringing
cadences depending on which number was dialed. You can use this to
pre-identify calls coming for your teenager's number, or to
demultiplex off the ring cadence to a fax machine, etc. This service
is marketed in various parts of the country under the brand names
"RingMaster", "IdentaRing", etc.)

If John Higdon or any of the California-based telecom gurus knows
anything about this, I'd appreciate your response. Thanks!


S. Bapat    bapat@gate.net

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

From: RSPRANG@cnmw.com
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 96 09:51:54 EST
Subject: AT&T True Rewards Not Available in Cincinnati


I called to sign up for AT&T true rewards today, and was told that my
local phone company (Cincinnati Bell) does not support this, but that
I could mail copies of my bills to a Mesa AZ address to get credit for
my True Reward points.
          
Any ideas what does the local phone company has to do with this, and 
why I can't get True Rewards?

          
Thanks,
          
Ralph Sprang
           

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Typically in the past, the local telcos
have done the billing for AT&T customers in their territory. Not all
the local companies use the same billing software, and AT&T has pretty
much been at the mercy of the local companies on this. For example a
few years, AT&T offered me a program called 'Reach Out World' with a
certain discount attached. Illinois Bell (Amerittech) sent me the 
bill each month and never could get the discount in there. About every
three months AT&T would put through a manual credit and send me a note
in the mail saying 'here is the discount'.  

Well, that's all over with. I got a note in the mail saying that starting 
in the next month or two, AT&T is going to be billing all Ameritech
customers direct. They are doing that in anticipation of the big fight
coming up with Ameritech over offering local service in the Chicago
area among other places. Likewise in my Ameritech bill which still
included AT&T charges this past month, a note came which said billing
for AT&T was 'being phased out' over the next two or three months, and
that there might be some overlap for a month or two.  I have always
liked the idea of one bill for all telephone service, regardless of
the type of call being made. I guess that's over with now.   PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 07:58:54 -0800
From: VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS 
Organization: VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS  (707-444-6686)
Subject: Prepaid Phone Card Firm Defrauds Users


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This item was seen in the issue of
DLD Digest being distributed at the present time.   PAT]

               DISCOUNT LONG DISTANCE DIGEST
               UPDATE 65-3 February 29, 1996

USA CALLING CARDS INOPERATIVE - USTELCARD ASSOCIATION STEPS IN

Washington, D.C., March 1, 1996 (DLD DIGEST) -- Howard Segermark,
Executive Director of the USTelecard Association, announced that
as of today, ten of its member companies stand ready to exchange
non-working prepaid phone cards issued by the USA Calling company
of Atlanta, Georgia.

  "Recently, our Consumer Hotline number (800-333-3513) received
many calls from consumers who have found that the prepaid phone
cards they bought issued by the `USA Calling' company are non-
operative. These cards were purchased by consumers at K-Mart,
Meijer stores, SERVISTAR stores and Coast-To-Coast stores. The
USTelecard Association believes tens of thousands of the cards
were sold, though we have received complaints from only a fraction
of those customers.

  "We have been in touch with the stores selling these cards and
all have offered to fully refund the purchase price on those cards
and have stopped selling them.

  "Our Association and its members are going one step further to
make those consumers whole. Upon receipt of the nonworking USA
Calling card, consumers will receive a new prepaid phone card
which will provide the same number of minutes of domestic long
distance service as the face value of the USA Calling cards did.

   "I'm glad to announce that today we informed all of those
consumers that contacted us that they will receive new, working
prepaid phone cards.

  "Participating firms providing the refunds will receive an
equal percentage of calls made to 800-694-8242. This offer will
be good through March 25, 1996."

  The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association,
Dr. Lawrence Brilliant, said, "This unfortunate incident, in
which a non-member company has failed to live up to its part of
the bargain after taking consumers' money, is what prompted me
to help found the USTelecard Association. Members of our Association
have the highest ethical standards and best business practices
in the industry. We want to show our concern for the consumer
by what we're doing today."

     The firms offering this service are: SmarTel (Boston), Global
Link (Philadelphia), Mercury Marketing Company (Fair Lawn, NJ),
ConQuest Telecommunications (Dublin, OH), PacBell (San Ramon, CA),
ACMI (Memphis, TN), Ameritech (Chicago), IntelliCommunications
Network, Inc. (McHenry, IL), Quest Telecom (Forest Park, GA), and
TALK N'TALK (Vancouver, WA).

  Segermark also noted, "We have also been in touch with another
firm which had sold and distributed "USA Calling" cards, the
Starquest Corporation of Salem, Oregon. They have made arrangements
to reactivate its cards effective Monday, March 4th, using the
"800" access number printed on the cards. The USTelecard Association
is (the) trade association of the prepaid phone card industry.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Can anyone tell me what this company
did precisely? Did they just take the money and run off or was it
a case of getting into some sort of financial trouble with their
supplier? How are the big retailers who sold the card (you mentioned
K-Mart) dealing with this?    PAT]

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

From: LNUSTC1.ZZ7HLW@gmeds.com
Subject: Celluar Phone Theft
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:41:16 -0500


My phone was stolen, someone used it to make 20+ calls in a six hour
period.  The provider, Ameritech, has a record of all these calls.
Does law enforcement try to catch the thief or is this considered such
an insigificant theft that no one bothers with it?  Also is the type
of theft a federal crime?


Thanks,

Richard Keith
lnustc1.zz7hlw@gmeds.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I know you must be feeling pretty
sick about the loss, and my condolences to you. Sadly, cellular phone
fraud (in a variety of styles, ie cloning, reprogramming, etc) is so
common and so involved these days, it is doubtful Ameritech or federal
authorities are going to give a lot of attention to your case. I am
not saying that to add to your hurt, just trying to speak realistically.
If you get a print out of the calls which were made, try a little bit
of 'self-help' within the law and reasonable boundaries of behavior.
You will get some satisfaction that way, although not much.  When my
Ameritech Calling Card was stolen a few years ago I had lots of fun
with the idiots who were stupid enough to use it to make calls from
a private residence phone later on.   PAT]

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

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 13:54:35 PST


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:01:21 -0500
From: BellSouth 
Subject: BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers


BellSouth Ready to Offer Toll-Free 888 Numbers

For additional information:
David Rogers                                                  
BellSouth Telecommunications
404-529-8053

February 27, 1996
     
ATLANTA - On March 1, nearly 7.5 million new toll-free numbers will be
available nationwide.

Toll-free 800 numbers have been available since 1967, but the supply
of numbers is nearly gone. Beginning in March, the telecommunications
industry, including BellSouth, will begin offering "888" numbers.

"When you see a seven-digit phone number preceded by 888, you can
think toll-free," said Mike Lassiter, BellSouth product manager.  "It
works just like an 800 number."

Business customers are reminded that PBX systems and other
telecommunications equipment need to be programmed to accommodate the
new area code format (which has any number from 2 through 9 as the
middle digit) in order to dial 888 numbers. Customers should contact
their equipment vendors if they have questions about their
communications equipment.

"Customers can place orders now for 888 number services, as long as
the effective date of the order is on or after March 1," Lassiter
said.  To place orders for BellSouth toll-free services, customer can
contact their account representative or call their BellSouth business
office.  Business customers who aren't sure what number to call can
dial 1-800-356-3093.

BellSouth offers a variety of toll-free services ranging from service
for cities within your BellSouth calling zone to nationwide service
provided through cooperative agreements with participating long
distance companies.

There has been an unprecedented demand for toll-free numbers in recent
years, due at least in part to the growth of pager services and 800
services for residential customers. The advent of 800 number
portability, which means businesses can keep the same 800 number when
they switch telephone companies, is believed to have had an impact as
well.

"For the first 26 years after 800 numbers were introduced, the
industry only used 40 percent of the available numbers," said
Lassiter. "But it only took two more years to use up another 40
percent."

And what happens when all the 888 numbers are gone?

The telecommunications industry has agreed to use 877 for toll-free
numbers once the supply of 888 numbers is depleted. After that, 866
would be used, followed by 855, 844, etc., as needed to ensure that
toll-free dialing needs can be met for many years to come. BellSouth
Telecommunications, Inc.  headquartered in Atlanta, provides
telecommunications services in the nine-state BellSouth region, which
encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.


Facts About 800 & 888 Toll-Free Phone Numbers

February 27, 1996
     
Due to the restrictions in place limiting the assignment of new
numbers, the supply of 800 numbers will not be exhausted until June
22.

BellSouth and the telecommunications industry are prepared to offer
toll-free 888 numbers on the March 1 target date.

Implementing 888 will provide about 7.6 million new toll-free numbers,
which is also how many 800 numbers there are.

800 service was first offered in 1967. By May 1993 (26 years later),
the industry had used about 40 percent of the available 800 numbers.

By May 1995, about 80 percent of the available numbers were already
assigned. No one can say for sure what caused the explosion, but there
are several factors that are generally acknowledge:

* the boom in requests for numbers coincides with the implementation
of 800 number portability, which meant businesses could change
carriers and keep the same 800 number.

* pager growth-over the last decade, the number of pagers in use has
increased sevenfold to 27.3 million. Many of these have 800 numbers
associated with them.

* in recent years, carriers have been marketing "personal" 800 
numbers to residential customers.

When all the 888 numbers are gone, the industry has established 
a plan to use 877 for toll-free numbers, then 866, 855, etc. 
as needed.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: Michael E. Dudley 
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers is Propaganda
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 23:26:50 -0800
Organization: The Internet Access Company


Sarrazin, Jean B wrote:

> I read an article in this week's {Communications Week International}
> (http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current) which states that the FCC is
> currently cracking down on callback operators whose equipment does not
> answer incoming activation calls, thereby preventing the customer's
> local phone company from charging them. The FCC is threatening hefty
> fines for those operators.

There is no evidence that the FCC has reversed it position on callback.
I am posting the most recent postition paper released on ICB and it is 
less than eight months old.  Furthermore I found no reference to this at 
the FCC's web site.  I called my contacts at the FCC and Commerce and 
both have no knowledge of where the story got its source.  Furthermore I 
found no reference to a story about callback at the given URL for 
Communications week.(http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current)

My general feeling is that posts and stories like these are consistent 
with the large amount of misinformation about the Callback industry. 


> NEWSReport No. IN 95-15                 INTERNATIONAL ACTION  June 15, 1995

       FCC FINDS INTERNATIONAL CALL-BACK CONSISTENT WITH U.S. AND
                            INTERNATIONAL LAW

     The Commission has adopted an Order on Reconsideration confirming
that international "call-back" service using uncompleted call
signalling violates neither U.S. nor international law. It said that
call-back is in the public interest because the resulting competition
between U.S. call-back providers and foreign carriers charging higher
rates ultimately lowers foreign rates to the benefit of consumers and
industry abroad and in the United States.  The Commission added,
however, that U.S.-based call-back operators may not provide call-back
using uncompleted call signalling in foreign countries where this
offering is expressly prohibited by law.

     "Call-back" offerings enable customers abroad to access U.S.
international service and pay U.S. rates for international calls
rather than the generally higher prices charged by foreign carriers.
One means of accessing U.S. international lines from a foreign country
is by "uncompleted call signalling."  This method allows a foreign
customer to access U.S.  long distance lines by placing a signalling
call to a computerized device in the United States.  The customer
hangs up before the call is completed and thereafter receives a return
call from the device which provides U.S. dial-tone.  The call is then
billed at U.S. rates.

     After the Commission, on April 12, 1994, authorized three U.S.
companies to resell international switched services in this manner,
AT&T requested reconsideration on the grounds that call-back using
uncompleted call signalling violated the federal wire fraud statute
and Sections 201, 202 and 214 of the Communications Act.  The
Commission subsequently expanded the proceeding to address questions
of international law and comity which had been presented by a number
of foreign governments and carriers.

 The Departments of Justice and State submitted views, at FCC request,
on the wire fraud and international issues respectively.

     The Commission concurred with the Department of Justice opinion
that the use of uncompleted call signalling is not wire fraud because
U.S. carriers do not charge for such calls, and further confirmed that
the practice does not violate the Communications Act.

     The Commission also concluded that call-back using uncompleted
call signalling does not violate international law. It agreed with the
Department of State that call-back is not prohibited or otherwise
restricted by International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
regulations.  The FCC noted, however, that some foreign countries have
prohibited this offering within their territories.  It reaffirmed its
view, as a matter of international comity, that U.S. call-back
operators are not authorized to provide uncompleted call signalling in
those countries whose laws explicitly prohibit this offering.
Accordingly, the Commission stated that it would take enforcement
action against U.S. call-back providers which violate such a foreign
prohibition when the foreign government itself has been unable to
ensure compliance.  It also will use its enforcement authority to
identify and sanction those resellers, including call-back providers,
which are operating without proper FCC authorizations.

     The Department of State will communicate the FCC findings to
foreign governments.  Any foreign government which has expressly
adopted a statute or regulation finding international call-back using
uncompleted call signalling to be unlawful, and which has been unable
to enforce its domestic law or regulation against U.S. providers of
this offering, may so notify the U.S. Government.  Notifications
should include specific documentation of legal restrictions on
international call-back, evidence of violations by particular U.S.
carriers, and a description of enforcement measures.  In addition, any
foreign government which seeks to put U.S. carriers on notice that
international call-back utilizing uncompleted call signalling is
illegal in its territory also may convey to the Commission
documentation of its specific statutory or regulatory measure.  The
Commission will maintain a file of all such communications for
reference and appropriate action.

     The FCC order does not address the legality of call-back methods
other than uncompleted call signalling, since they were not the
subject of AT&T's request for reconsideration. The order notes,
however, that several foreign carriers commented that the "hot line"
(or "polling") method of providing call-back causes network
degradation.  The Commission emphasized that such uses of the network
which degrade network performance or impair service offerings would
violate the tariffs of U.S.  facilities-based carriers, and that these
carriers do take measures to stop such practices.


Michael Dudley---- Compass International----  International Callback
http://www.tiac.net/users/mdud

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

From: gordon@sneaky.lerctr.org (Gordon Burditt)
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Date: 27 Feb 1996 23:01:00 -0600
Organization: What organization?


> I personally feel that any scheme to deliver a message via coded signals
> which avoid payment of toll are unethical. 

What about a scheme to deliver a message via coded signals where the
LEC is being paid to deliver this information to the customer?  Or do
you think it's unethical for someone to read their Caller ID display
and, based on the number they see, not answer the call and make some
assumptions about the reason for the call (or perhaps call back
later)?  (This is the modern version of the one ring and hang up to
indicate that son arrived at college OK, with more accurate signalling
than previously available.)

Considering that Caller ID is advertised for just this purpose, isn't
it a little ridiculous for the phone companies to call it unethical?

> It may be only between countries at this point but where do you draw
> the line?  

If callback companies were receiving and using Caller ID as the basis
of the callback (does international Caller ID work at all?), I don't
see how anyone could call this use unethical.  If they are getting
real-time ANI, they are paying for that, too.


Gordon L. Burditt    sneaky.lerctr.org!gordon

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:49:07 GMT


On 26 Feb 1996 05:51:52 PDT, PAT said:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I had some limited involvement a
> few years ago as a callback reseller for US Fibercom in New York City,
> one of the complaints lodged by AT&T against the company was just 
> what you mentioned: Passing signals or messages without payment of
> toll. Then two things were mentioned in rebuttal:  One, since almost
> every customer -- indeed, why not all customers? -- of callback services
> are originating their calls from other countries, why should the FCC --
> an agency which has no authority over foreign telecom administrations --
> care what they do? Why wouldn't complaints come from the PTTs in other
> countries? The answer to that is, some of them are now complaining about
> the loss of income; a few have gone so far as to make callback schemes
> illegal in their countries. 

I'm increasingly convinced the European Union is all about screwing
the citizens of the signatory nations by cutting off access to cheaper
goods and services produced overseas.  Pat, you state later that it is
"unethical" to "deliver a message via coded signals which avoid
payment of toll".  Yet, is it not also unethical for the state-owned
European PTTs to continue to screw, for political reasons, their
captive "customers"?  From what I can tell, the main reason that these
state-owned companies have such stupidly high rates is that they
themselves are beholden to the unions that staff them, unions that
have no interest in lowering the cost of service.  I'm positively
gleeful when callback resellers take a big chomp out of the Euro-
blackmailers' lunch.

Back in the U.S., I was recently reading here about AT&T shedding jobs
(again).  I bet more of this is in store as deployment of self-
adjusting digital circuits (i.e., *DSL) starts to displace traditional
T1.  And you know what?  I'll be completely in favor of it, so long as
it doesn't hurt service and it gets me lower rates.


Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Organization: OMS Development
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 01:00:54 GMT


Sarrazin wrote:

> I read an article in this week's {Communications Week International}
> (http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current) which states that the FCC is
> currently cracking down on callback operators whose equipment does not
> answer incoming activation calls, thereby preventing the customer's
> local phone company from charging them. The FCC is threatening hefty
> fines for those operators.

> Point is, isn't the TollSaver function on most answering machines
> doing exactly the same thing? That is not ruled out by the FCC ...

I suspect the answer is simply "de minimis non curat lex" (the law
does not concern itself with trifles).  The amount of revenue lost to
carriers as a result of using toll-saver answering machines is pretty
minimal, especially considering that many people wouldn't even make
the calls if they knew they were going to be charged whether or not
they had messages.

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

From: excalibur!joel@uunet.uu.net (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: 800-Numbers Don't Go Through - Whose Fault?
Date: 29 Feb 1996 15:23:40 GMT
Organization: Excelsior Computer Services


During the past several days, I've noticed that 1+800 calls result in
a fast busy roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the time.  Whose fault is that?  The
local carrier?  My LD carrier?  The remote end's LD carrier?

9I'm calling from 914/921- via AT&T.)


Thanks,

Joel  (joel@exc.com)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A couple days ago writers here mentioned
symptoms similar to yours and wished to place the blame on the possi-
bility that MCI had 'lost much of its data base at one location'. I
got a letter in the mail today from an MCI spokesperson who said they
wished reports like that would be confirmed first, to help avoid
spreading rumors. I did at that time (of publishing the first comments)
request that if anyone in authority at MCI wished to speak up they
could do so; but so far no one has other than the spokesperson who
wrote asking me to please confirm those things first prior to publi-
cation. So whether your current problems in reaching numbers has
anything to with the earlier alleged incicent or not I do not know.
Does anyone have any further information ... please?     PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #88
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Mar  1 01:12:16 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id BAA21410; Fri, 1 Mar 1996 01:12:16 -0500 (EST)
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 01:12:16 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603010612.BAA21410@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #89

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 1 Mar 96 01:12:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 89

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Internet Censorship (Knight-Ridder Business News via Tad Cook)
    A New RBOC Media Offensive For a "Modem Tax" (John R. Grout)
    AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available) (John Bredehoft)
    Callback Confusion (Robert McDonald, FCC Staff Attorney)
    RF Interference (usexnjv6@ibmmail.com)
    Spurious Ringing Signals From Cheap Phone (Verna Friesen)
    Online Phonebook (USA) (Lenny Tropiano)
    Computer Network Classifications (Rosas Landa Ramos Octavio)
    FCC Spectrum Auction (kristin@cybernautics.com)
    Single Line LD Call Recording (Thomas K. Gibson)
    Allegations About MCI (Leslie M. Aun)
    Terminal Emulation Code Needed (J.D. Fischer)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Tad Cook 
Subject: Internet Censorship
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:08:58 PST


Internet's Possibilities Raises Perplexing Issues for Lawmakers
By Reid Kanaley, {The Philadelphia Inquirer}

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 29--The Internet is an exploding treasure-trove of information
and a cheap, versatile pipeline for communications of all sorts.

In other words, it is a blessing and a curse.

The medium is so open and flexible that the same home computer a child
uses to investigate weather patterns in Africa via the World Wide Web,
or to post e-mail to grandparents, can just as easily be used to view
cyberporn, surf skinhead home pages and download bomb-making recipes.

And that has raised some perplexing issues for lawmakers -- and for
parents.

For lawmakers, the question is this: Should government censor what's
in cyberspace, or should the Internet remain a free-for-all of ideas,
images and information, with individuals and parents taking
responsibility for what they and their children do online?

For parents, the question is: How can children be shielded from the
less-savory aspects of that free-for-all?

The search for answers has heated considerably in recent weeks. Consider:

-- The online service CompuServe banned 200 sex-related Internet
discussion groups and image exchanges in late December at the request
of German prosecutors. It lifted the ban two weeks ago, after making
"smut-filtering" software available for its 4.3 million members to use
on their own.

-- In January, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, reacting to
what it says is a proliferation of neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denial
propaganda, asked for voluntary bans on online hate-group material.
When German officials subsequently attempted to restrict Internet
access to a neo-Nazi propagandist on the World Wide Web, the
information was duplicated at several North American Internet sites to
circumvent the ban in the name of free speech -- a development that
Mark Weitzman, director of the center's Task Force Against Hate,
dubbed "cultural imperialism" by "a bunch of college students."

-- Also in January, two Montgomery County, Pa., boys were injured by a
crude pipe bomb they were making based on formulas they got online.

There ought to be a law, some in the United States said. And the
lawmakers delivered one.

The Communications Decency Act -- which was part of the sweeping
Telecommunications Reform Act signed by President Clinton on Feb. 8 --
bans "indecent" material that might otherwise reach minors over
computer networks.

The indecency provision was backed by religious and family-values
groups, but it met immediately with howls from libertarian-leaning
members of the cyberspace community. Within days, a federal judge in
Philadelphia, acting on a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties
Union and others, blocked implementation of a portion of the act,
declaring that the term "indecent" was too vague.

A second group -- this one a broad coalition of on-line services,
advocates and publishers -- filed a similar lawsuit Monday.

It says that such legislative attempts to control on-line smut "simply
do not work in the quite different medium of cyberspace," and should
be dropped in favor of technological solutions, such as software that
screens on-line material at the discretion of parents or anyone seated
at the keyboard.

Further hearings in both cases are set to start March 21.

Still, the federal law does not address the issues of hate speech and
pipe-bomb formulas. So even if the law is eventually upheld in its
entirety, what is a parent to do?

America Online and CompuServe now offer the most-versatile blocking
methods among the major online services. The Prodigy service announced
just this week an agreement to give its members free screening
software called Cyber Patrol in March or April.

Previously, only adult Prodigy members -- the holders of credit cards
 -- could choose access to areas such as chat rooms and Usenet
newsgroups that might contain adult material, but not with the
selectivity of the other two services.

A parent group called SafeSurf has proposed a voluntary rating system
to identify sites appropriate for children. And an industry-wide
group, the Platform for Internet Content Selection, or PICS, is
testing a system of standards for rating and screening Internet
content.

"So you can have parents and educators deciding what kind of content
they think is appropriate, rather than having the government do it,"
said Kimberly Ellwanger, director of corporate affairs at Microsoft, a
member of PICS.

The PICS standards will allow independent groups, from educators and
libraries to the Christian Coalition, to provide their constituents
with lists of Internet sites they deem appropriate. "You choose that
service and say, 'Fine, the only content from the Internet that's
going to my PC is the one rated by XYZ,"' Ellwanger said.

But not everyone sees these as sufficient measures.

Software "may be a partial solution, but the students are still going
to find access to this material," said William Adair Bonner, president
of the two-year-old National Education Consortium, a conservative
advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. The problem, he said, is that
"many parents might not understand the need or the availability" of
such options.

Bruce Taylor, president of the anti-pornography National Law Center
for Children and Families in Fairfax, Va., said the software works. He
added, though, that replacing the law with smut filters assumes that
the filters will be installed by "corporations like the access
providers, and institutions like schools and libraries and places
where most kids have access" to the Net.

And if they don't, he said, "kids are going to be flocking to the schools and 
down to the library to get on the Internet."

So, no matter what sort of blocking mechanisms are constructed, the
people fighting over the decency laws and content of the Internet
remain convinced that they are fighting over the future of the nature
of communication in America and the world.

"The price of using 21st-century technology like the Internet ought
not to be the liberty of the last 200 years," said Stefan Presser,
chief counsel for the office of the ACLU in Philadelphia, where the
lawsuit was filed.

Backers of the law think they ultimately can prevail in court with
evidence of freely available online smut.

"This is such a good law," Taylor said. "Eventually, we'll win."

A complex debate has developed over definitions of vague terms in the
legislation such as "indecent" and "patently offensive." That debate
has also been about the nature of the Internet, a new medium that
combines aspects of print and broadcasting, private conversation, the
telephone, and the soapbox in the public square.

"The battle is just beginning, and with a worldwide system of
communication, the old ways that we dealt with pornography and
obscenity are being tested far beyond their limits," Bonner said.

Critics of the law, however, say it reaches too far. "What I can
communicate on my telephone hotline, what is protected in the U.S.
mails and in the print media, should not suddenly become criminalized
on the Internet," said Kiyoshi Kuromiya, director of the
Philadelphia-based Critical Path AIDS Project.

Kuromiya, a plaintiff in the suit against the Communications Decency
Act, thinks the law could be used to shut down his organization's
World Wide Web site, which provides graphic information about AIDS
prevention and safer-sex practices and is targeted in part at sexually
active teenagers.

"We're providing a necessary service, and it would be a very big
public health mistake to pursue this policy of setting a new set of
standards for cyberspace," Kuromiya said.

Another plaintiff, Patricia Nell Warren, author of the 1974 gay novel
"The Front Runner," a portion of which is posted on the Web site for
her Beverly Hills publishing company, Wildcat Press, said the term
"indecent" is potentially "so broad that anybody in the country that
found (her work) objectionable by local standards could file charges
against me, and those books are available in any bookstore in the
country."

"I can't imagine that she should be worried," Taylor said. "It has to
be a knowing distribution to children, or a knowing display to
children. It shouldn't really bother legitimate works, and it's not
going to have anything to do with "Catcher in the Rye," or the Sistine
Chapel or nudes in the Louvre."

Taylor and other supporters of the law say the ACLU is using scare
tactics.  "The people who are free-speech advocates are doing the most
damage here, by scaring legitimate users and educators into thinking
this law is going to threaten protected speech," he said.

It is an outrage to some, and an awkward embarrassment to others, that
prurient material, which may account for only about one percent of the
Internet's content, is among its most-popular attractions.

"Everybody wants to be on the cutting edge of sex on the Internet,"
said Justin Hall, a Swarthmore College student who kept a lengthy list
of "sex links" on his personal Web site until last month, when 7,000
log-ins per day proved more than his computer equipment could handle.

                               -----

ON THE INTERNET:

Visit Philadelphia Online, the World Wide Web site of The Philadelphia
Inquirer.  Point your Web-browsing software to http://www.phillynews.com

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

tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA 

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

From: j-grout@glibm5.cen.uiuc.edu (John R. Grout)
Subject: A New RBOC Media Offensive For a "Modem Tax"
Date: 29 Feb 1996 19:14:13 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Reply-To: j-grout@uiuc.edu


In today's {New York Times}, Pacific Bell president and CEO Dave
Dorman called for access charges to be imposed on Internet service
providers (such as AT&T) to protect them from unfair competition, and
states that the "exemption [which forbids the imposition of such
charges] is no longer justified."  According to the story, the RBOCs
tried and failed to impose such access charges in 1987 and 1989.

Now that IXCs like AT&T are getting into the ISP business, it seems
inevitable that the RBOCs will eventually succeed in imposing such
charges ... I hope they won't end up being a tollbooth across the
whole information superhighway.


John R. Grout	Center for Supercomputing R & D		j-grout@uiuc.edu
Coordinated Science Laboratory     University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:02:52 +0800
From: johnb@bird.Printrak.Com (John Bredehoft)
Subject: AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available in Cincinnati)
Reply-To: johnb@Printrak.Com
Organization: Printrak International Inc.


In article  you write:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Typically in the past, the local telcos
> have done the billing for AT&T customers in their territory. 
[snip]

> Well, that's all over with. I got a note in the mail saying that starting 
> in the next month or two, AT&T is going to be billing all Ameritech
> customers direct. They are doing that in anticipation of the big fight
> coming up with Ameritech over offering local service in the Chicago
> area among other places. Likewise in my Ameritech bill which still
> included AT&T charges this past month, a note came which said billing
> for AT&T was 'being phased out' over the next two or three months, and
> that there might be some overlap for a month or two.  I have always
> liked the idea of one bill for all telephone service, regardless of
> the type of call being made. I guess that's over with now.   PAT]

Similar things have already happened in my area. I live in Southern
California and receive local service from GTE and long distance
service from AT&T. We have just completed the 'phase out' period, and
are now receiving separate long distance bills from AT&T.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Today's mail brought another postcard
reminder from AT&T saying 'your first bill direct from us is going to
be mailed to you in a few days ... there may possibly be charges from
AT&T on your next bill from Ameritech as well one last time.'   PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:58:14 -0500
From: Robert McDonald 
Subject: Callback Confusion


I just thought I'd address the comments made in recent issues
regarding international callback service.  There seemed to be some
confusion regarding the position of the FCC on callback.  First of
all, the FCC has issued an Order that finds callback to be in the
public interest and that providing telecommunications service using a
callback configuration is a violation of neither U.S. nor
international law.

(http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/International/Orders/fcc95224.txt). 

At the same time, we recognized that certain countries have outlawed
international callback service and that by virtue of the fact that
U.S. callback providers generally have no presence in the foreign
country, foreign governments are often unable to enforce these
prohibitions.  Because the FCC did not deem it proper to authorize
U.S. licensees to violate the laws of foreign countries from U.S.
soil, the order prohibits U.S. carriers from providing service to
countries in which callback specifically has been ruled illegal.

The second matter I'd like to address is answer supervision
suppression.  On February 12, 1996, the FCC's International Bureau
announced an investigation into a practice whereby U.S. callback
providers allegedly configure their equipment to fail to provide the
required answer supervision signalling when calls are completed.  Such
a configuration allows customers of U.S. callback companies to place
completed calls to the callback provider's switch without being
charged in the foreign country.  This practice, in contrast to the
uncompleted call signalling method of providing callback, is a clear
violation of FCC rules.  (47 C.F.R. ? 68.314(h)) Once again, the rules
requiring that equipment provide answer supervision signalling in no
way prohibit traditional uncompleted call signalling callback.  I hope
this clears up a bit of the confusion regarding callback.


Robert C. McDonald   Staff Attorney
International Bureau
Federal Communications Commission


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for taking the time to
write us with something authoritative on the topic of International
Call Back Services.  PAT]

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

From: usexnjv6@ibmmail.com
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:41:22 EST
Subject: RF Interference


Pat,

For a while now we have all been aware of the RF interference
likely to occur when a digital cellular telephone (GSM) is operated
near other digital installations such as PCs, file servers, PBXs,
medical equipment, CD players, etc. We ban the use of all cellular
telephones in our computer rooms accordingly to prevent the possible
crash of critical equipment.

However, is anyone aware of RF interference into equipment from
conventional, hand-held, narrow-band FM, VHF & UHF radios (say 1 to
5W)? Are there any documented cases of interference with sensitive
digital equipment that would cause these devices to be banned as well?


Thank you,

Skorj

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

From: vjfriese@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca (Verna Friesen)
Subject: Spurious Ringing Signals From Cheap Phone
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 15:51:07 GMT
Organization: University of Waterloo


	I have this cheap phone that makes a sort of chirping noise
whenever you hang it up, or whenever another extension in the house is
picked up/hung up.  I don't know why it does this, but it seems to be
a feature.  I've kept this phone in my bedroom for about three years,
and these are the only instances of the chirping that I've noted.

	Last night at precisely 4:00 a.m., this chirping woke me up.
There were about four or five intermittent "chirps".  I picked up the
phone, it was dead for about half a second, and then there was a dial
tone.  Normally I would wonder why someone else in the house was
making a phone call at 4:00 in the morning.  However, I've lived
*alone* in an apartment for about four months now, and so I
immediately freaked out, thinking someone had broken in or something.
After a few moments of panic, I thought about it and realized there is
no way someone could walk across the floor in my livingroom (where the
other phone is) without me hearing it (I have *VERY* squeaky hardwood
floors).

	Anyway, can anyone explain this occurence?  Since I'm not sure
what mechanism the phone uses to trigger this chirping, I don't know
if it's something that will occur again (in which case I'll move the
phone out of my room at night!).

	Thanks for any help.



Verna Friesen			
Dept. of Computer Science	
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario CANADA       http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~vjfriese/


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think the answer lies in your description
of it as a 'cheap phone'. Less expensive phones use less precise com-
ponents, and while better quality phones will not respond to very
slight changes in voltage, your phone apparently does respond, with the
'chirp' you described coming from the electronic ringer. Hanging up the
phone causes a small fluxuation internally. 

Most likely what happened in the middle of the night was your local telco
was in the process of doing line testing. Usually all subscriber lines
are tested from time to time and this testing takes place during over-
night hours to cause minimal disruption in service when very few people
are likely to be using the phone. This line testing involves changing
the amount of voltage sent to the phone and back to the central office.
Again, because you are using a phone make with less than precise
components, the phone will react as you described when line testing is
going on. When you awoke to the 'chirping', testing had started on your
line. During the short time the line appeared to be dead, some sort of
testing was taking place. You have nothing to worry about as far as
some intruder making calls or tapping of your phone. If anything, you 
might want to simply get a better quality instrument.    PAT] 

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

From: Lenny Tropiano 
Subject: Online Phonebook (USA)
Organization: ICUS Software Systems, Austin, Texas
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:04:32 GMT


A coworker pointed me to this today ... a new web site that can be used to
search anywhere in the USA for phone numbers and/or addresses.

It's located at:

   http://www.switchboard.com/

If you register, you can update the information -- or have your name
deleted from the register.  No fee involved.  It appears to be a jump
off point to sell new Windows based e-mail software.


Lenny Tropiano           ICUS Software Systems             lenny@icus.com
                 2301 Spring Wagon Lane, Austin, TX 78728                
------------------- URL:  http://www.icus.com/~lenny/ -------------------

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 19:48:43 CST
From: Rosas Landa Ramos Octavio-IIE 
Subject: Computer Networks Classifications


Hi there,

I've been reviewing Andrew S. Tanenbaum's book on Computer Networks
and found that there are several kinds of classifications for
networks, depending on what element or aspect of their functioning is
to be highlighted. For example, Tanenbaum says that computer networks
can be classfied on the basis of the distance between processors, and
therefore, there would be LANs (from 1m to 1 km), MANs (1 km to 100
km) and WANs (100 km to 10,000 km). There would also be several other
kinds of classifications, according to their design, type of
connection, transmission control mechanism, etc.

But I was wondering, since he doesn't give any hint on the subject of
size, would there be a classification according to the size of the
network? If there is, what aspects of the network would stand out as
most relevant? Are there any other classifications (for example,
according to speed, security, etc.) which he isn't taking into
account?

And one other thing. Was ARPANET the first computer network ever
existed?  What kind of network would it be? WAN?

I'm recurring to the list because my knowledge on the matter is
limited (I'm an economist of profession), but my interest on the
development of networks (historical and technical) has become a kind
of obsession.


Thanks,

Octavio Rosas Landa
Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas, UNAM
Mexico City.   orr@servidor.unam.mx

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

From: kristin 
Subject: FCC Spectrum Auction
Date: 1 Mar 1996 00:34:12 GMT
Organization: Cybernautics


To those interested in the FCC Spectrum Auction, BRP, Inc. along with 
TRI is tracking the activity on their website - http://brp.com.  Hope 
this info is of interest.


Kristin 

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:27:17 EST
From: Thomas K. Gibson 
Subject: Single Line LD Call Recording


I have a line where mutiple users are making LD call overseas.  I
would like to automatically record the time, length, and number of the
calls.  I would also like to restrict access with a four or five digit
access code before they even get a dial tone.  Is there an INEXPENSIVE
device that will do this?  Stand alone or PC based?  How about a used
hotel recorder?  How did the old PBX systems record calls?  I am
presently using a stepping (two digit) Strowger PBX from the 1940's that
could access the outside line.  

Please reply via e-mail to tgibson@ycp.edu.


Thank you, 

Tom Gibson

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 96 12:43 EST
From: Leslie M. Aun <0006610111@mcimail.com>
Subject: Allegations About MCI


Mr. Townson:

We are concerned that these types of unsubstantiated comments about
MCI are showing up on TELECOM Digest:


> I am hearing that MCI has "accidentally" deleted all their customers
> from one of their three Digital Access Points a few days ago.  Does
> anyone have any ideas on how something like this happens?  How does a
> major carrier like MCI make such a major mistake?

> About 1/3 to 1/2 of our phone calls to valid numbers terminate with a
> re-order tone.  

> Steve Samler
> Editorial Manager Communications
> Individual, Inc.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As Scott Plichta notes earlier in this
> issue, surely you must be hallucinating. Things like that do not
> happen, therefore you must be misdialing ... please check the number
> and dial again, or ask your operator for assistance ... this is a
> recording ... . Would anyone from MCI who knows something about
> this care to share the true story? Or would it be better if lacking 
> any authoritative statement from MCI, we simply have rumors and
> innuendo floating around on the net for awhile instead?   PAT]

Our reputation is very important to us and obviously we don't like to
see false rumours portrayed as fact.

At traditional print publications, editors and journalists are careful
to confirm potentially harmful stories such as this one before they
are published. While I realize the rules on the internet are
different, I assume you are interested in maintaining the accuracy and
integrity of your news group.  And as a professional courtesy, in the
future we'd really appreciate it if you could check with us first when
stories like this crop up. I can be reached 24 hours a day by pager
and I promise a quick response to your questions.

As you know, this is a very competitive business and harmful rumours
can come from a variety of less than reliable sources.  We are
investigating this alleged story about our DAPs, and will provide you
with the correct information as soon as possible.


Leslie Aun  Manager
MCI Public Relations  


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for your prompt
response. As you know, since receiving this note from you early on
Thursday, you wrote me a second time saying 'several people are
working on this' and that you would again be in touch soon. I hope
you'll be in a position to write again in a day or so. Believe me,
I am not interested in spreading rumors, nor I suspect, is Steve
Samler. Perhaps with your help we'll end it right here.   PAT] 

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

From: JDFischer <76165.710@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Terminal Emulation Code Needed
Date: 29 Feb 1996 18:51:23 GMT
Organization: CompuServe, Inc. (1-800-689-0736)


Does anyone know where I can find sample source code for a basic
terminal emulation program like the one that comes with Windows?

Any information would be appreciated.  


Thanks, 

JDF

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #89
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Fri Mar  1 02:47:16 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id CAA26468; Fri, 1 Mar 1996 02:47:16 -0500 (EST)
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 02:47:16 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603010747.CAA26468@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #90

TELECOM Digest     Fri, 1 Mar 96 02:47:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 90

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks) (F Goldstein)
    Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax is Back, Folks) (Eric Smith)
    Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results (Clayton R. Nash)
    Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results (Elmer G. Croan Jr.)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Robert McMillin)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Joel M. Hoffman)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Mayasandra Srikrishna)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Craig Nordin)
    Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it? (Les Reeves)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Kevin McConnaughey)
    Re: Last Laugh! Time to Clean Up the Internet (Bill Higgins)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
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*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: fgoldstein@bbn.com (Fred R. Goldstein)
Subject: Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks)
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:33:00 EST
Organization: BBN Corp.


In article  Eric Smith
 writes:

fg>> If InternetPhone and related programs actually worked well, then they
>> could theoretically turn Internet service providers *literally* into
>> long-distance companies.

> 1) If I lease a "normal" T1 data line (i.e., not some special "Feature
> Group" trunk thing) from AT&T between San Jose to Denver , and some
> POTS lines and channel banks at each end, and I allow people (for a
> fee) to dial into my system at one end and out through a POTS line at
> the other end, have I violated any laws, regulations, tariffs, etc.?

> Have I become a long distance carrier?

Most certainly!  Under FCC regulations, every leased line is subject
to a $25/month/channel charge for "leakage" into the local exchange.
This can be waived by a customer's certification that they do NOT
leak, but the application listed above is 100% leakage.  Leakage is
defined as a call originating in one state terminating on a local
exchange (POTS) line in another state.  If the call terminates on a
Feature Group (interstate access line), then the $25/month can be
waived, but this brings in the minutes-of-use charges.

The "channel" is 64000 bps, so a T1 is treated as 24 channels, or
24*$25 per month.  It matters not if you carry 24 PCM calls, 44 ADPCM
calls, or 200 low-bit-rate "hoot'n'holler" voice calls.  A leaky T1
pays $600/month.

> If this does makes me a long distance carrier, and subject to the
> various regulations thereof, and in particular the requirements to pay
> asoorted and sundry fees to the LEC and FCC, isn't this a form of
> double taxation?  I'm already paying all the fees on the leased line.

It's not taxation at all.  Not a cent goes to the gummint.  The money
goes to your Local Bell into whom you're leaking!  When you buy a
leased line from a long distance carrier, you are NOT paying a
"contribution" to the Universal Service Fund, which is pooled by the
*local* carriers.  By delivering a call INTO the Bell, you're quite
literally becoming a long distance switched-service (toll) carrier,
and that's what pays the Bells.  The $25/month fee is actually aimed
at *incidental* leakers, so if you do this as a business, Bell will
rightfully reclassify all of the affected POTS lines as Feature Group
lines, under interstate (FCC) tariff.  BY DEFINITION it is not POTS,
even if it is electrically the same (that's "Feature Group A").

> I believe my example two to be very representative of the way most of
> the Internet in the US works.

Well if that's really true (and I categorically deny it), then Fowler
was right and ISPs are long-distance carriers.  But that's not what
the Internet is about.  Voice is incidental, and virtually none of
that "leaks".  If however anybody builds an I-phone "dial pool", then
they are absolutely subject to Feature Group treatment.  The problem
could still multiply, because Feature Group is supposed to apply to
*both* ends of a call, so dial-in ISPs who don't even know you're
using I-phone could be (this is getting remote but it's within the
RBOCs view of things) inadvertently becoming LD carriers, and thus the
RBOCs would try to reclassify all of us and charge for the incoming
calls!

I think an ISP who makes a good-faith effort to block I-phone should,
no matter what, be exempt.  Of course the 1987 Fowler proposal went so
far as to treat store-and-forward UUCP e-mail as contaiminting
"interstate traffic"...  By that standard, so's almost everything.

As I said in another post, the whole telecomm cross-subsidization
scheme is a mess.  


Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein@bbn.com 
Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc., Cambridge MA USA +1 617 873 3850

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

Date: Wed, 28 Feb 96 19:49 PST
From: Eric Smith 
Subject: Re: Internet vs. IXCs (was Re: The Modem Tax if Back, Folks)


In article  wollman@halloran-
eldar.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett A. Wollman) writes:

> This is not true.  Generally speaking, the Internet technology doesn't
> ``collapse'' under any load; it simply delivers a varying quality of
> service.

I'm afraid I'll have to disagree.  There may not be any single point
of failure that you can point to and say "oops ... the Internet
collapsed", but the effect will be the same.  The quality of service
will be reduced to the level that is perceived by users to be a
failure.

There has been a fair bit of effort spent to try to prevent denial of
service attacks.  This has usually been intended to counter deliberate
attacks, but the same problems can and do arise inadverently.

If everyone and his brother tries to use the Internet as a voice (or
worse, video) phone service, the result will be equivalent to a denial
of service attack.  The backbones will be saturated, and two things
will happen:

1) The quality of the phone service will degrade to zero.

2) As an unintended side effect, the congestion will cause 'legitimate'
   traffic to be discarded.  The routers don't discriminate between
   voice traffic and FTP sessions.

The consequence of the first effect is that fewer people will try to
use the Internet as a phone service.  There is obviously some
sustainable amount of phone service that can be provided without major
enhancements to the infrastructure.  As long as the cost is lower than
that of actual long distance phone service, the Internet phone usage
will approach this sustainable level.  This has the undesirable effect
of raising the average load considerably, resulting in higher delays
and higher levels of packet loss for traditional internet services.

> It would also significantly slow down unrelated users' TCP traffic,
> but this can be solved by proper application of classification and
> queueing technology.

It is not clear that this could solve the problem in the short term.
Many (most?) routers and hosts do not implement IP Type of Service.
Also, if Type of Service were implemented, and ISPs and backbones
tried to limit telephone service using it, the people writing the
phone software would obviously deliberately misclassify the traffic in
order to circumvent the restrictions.


Cheers,

Eric

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

From: claytonn@onramp.net (Clayton R. Nash)
Subject: Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 96 02:41:18 GMT
Organization: personal internet service


In article , tsw@3do.com (Tom
Watson) wrote:

> Now that Caller ID is coming here to the 'left' coast (with apologies to
> Washington and Oregon), I have a couple of questions:

> Party 'A' calls Party 'B'.
> Party 'B' has its calls forwarded to Party 'C'.

> What does Party 'C' get in the box?  Party 'A' (the original caller), or
> Party 'B' (the middle guy), or a mixture?

> When Party 'B's phone does a "courtesy ring", is any caller ID info (from
> caller 'A') available?

> What happens if party 'C' is an 800 number (with ANI) what number is
> presented?

> Is there any clues as to what is what?

> Sometimes it would be nice if party 'C' got both 'B' and 'A' information,
> but I'm not holding out any hope.

 From what I understand, the number that you get depends on two items.
First of all, it can be set in the CO to pass the first forwarded
number or the last forwarded number.  I know this applies to voice
mail, but have not verified it for caller ID -- I would appreciate
confirmation.

As I understand it, if the CO is set for first forwarded number, then
the first number appears; if it is set on last then the last number
appears. (In the example above, first number would be "A".  In the
pathalogical case of forwarding several time in the "last number case
it would be the last forwarding phone) I don't know what each RBOC is
doing.

There is nothing in the current protocol that I am aware of that would
allow for two numbers (unless you replaced the name display with
another number).  Anyone know more about the details of the protocol?


claytonn@onramp.net

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

From: Elmer G. Croan Jr. 
Subject: Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 02:52:03 -0800
Organization: LDS iAmerica


Tom Watson wrote:

> What does Party 'C' get in the box?  Party 'A' (the original caller), or
> Party 'B' (the middle guy), or a mixture?

> When Party 'B's phone does a "courtesy ring", is any caller ID info (from
> caller 'A') available?

> What happens if party 'C' is an 800 number (with ANI) what number is
> presented?

Caller Id will always display the Calling Party and since that didn't
cahnge even on a forwarded call it will retain the correct information. 

However there is now an additional field for the redirecting number.
AT&T switches have some differences from the spec in the area of the
optional fields. So best guess is not knowing the type of switch is
most likely the orginal calling party will show up on Caller id.

Caller Id is sent between the first and second rings and the courtesy
ring actually is not a connection, that is to say you can't actually
answer this call so no Caller Id ... now there is a chance you other
CLASS feature such as last number dial or recieved from feature might
work I just don't know on this on.

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: AT&T to Offer Internet Services
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:16:02 GMT


Well, we all knew it was coming.  Like Pacific Bell, everyone wants to
get into the ISP business, and AT&T is no exception.  According to
today's {Los Angeles Times}, there's a front-page article in the
business section discussing AT&T's new Internet offerings.  The
company will provide its residential customers free Internet access
for the next year on a trial basis.  To assist customers, the telecom
giant will operate a 24-hour help desk.  Service will begin March 14.

It may be some indication of the kind of response this is getting, but
as of 7:12 PST, I couldn't get in to the AT&T web site.  If you want
to know about Pac*Bell's Internet offerings (currently in Beta test),
check out http://www.pbi.net.


Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
	    WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html

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

From: excalibur!joel@uunet.uu.net (Joel M. Hoffman)
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service
Date: 28 Feb 1996 22:09:17 GMT
Organization: Excelsior Computer Services


In article  Stan.Schwartz@IBMMAIL.
com writes:

> via singers@pipeline.com (Stuart Singer) 

> The company will charge $19.95 a month for unlimited access to the
> Internet by existing customers. People who use other long-distance or
> cellular services will be able to sign up for AT&T's Internet access
> at a slightly higher rate.

Will this be fixed- or dynamic-IP?  (I suspect the latter; if so, will
AT&T offer the former at all?)


Joel    (joel@exc.com)

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

Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:31:40 +0000 
From: mayasandra srikrishna 
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service 
Organization: BNR Inc. 


Stan.Schwartz@IBMMAIL.com wrote:

> via singers@pipeline.com (Stuart Singer)

> AT&T Corp. on Tuesday said it would offer access to the Internet
> nationwide, presenting free subscriptions to its existing customers if
> they use the global network for less than five hours a month.

Do you have the number to call to get this service from AT&T?


TIA ...

Srikrishna

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

From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin)
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service
Date: 29 Feb 1996 19:26:41 -0500
Organization: Virtual Networks 


AT&T should have to open its books and announce officially how much it
is paying itself for long-distance and telco connections.

I bet the rate is good and my little ISP should get it as well ... 


http://www.vni.net/    cnordin@vni.net  

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

From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves)
Subject: Re: AT&T RateGate - What is it?
Date: 29 Feb 1996 11:58:16 -0800
Organization: CR Labs


John Cropper (psyber@usa.pipeline.com) wrote:

> My home bills range in the mid-three-digits per month (and yes, I've
> checked out LCI et al, and -their- prices were even higher, based on
> the calling plans, even with 6 second billing factored, since I track
> my exact call lengths).

LCI is selling a lie.

For most customers, six second billing means very little to the
bottom line.  Cost per minute is what matters, period.  

I used actual SMDR records for customers billing 1,000, 25,000 and
250,000 minutes per month.  The extra cost of one-minute-rounding 
versus six-second billing was about two percent for the small 
user, and less than one percent for the > 100k minute/month user. 

LCI's President is a former division Vice-President of MCI.  
He learned how to create marketing hooey from the best in the biz.


Les Reeves  --  lreeves@crl.com   lreeves@america.net
P.O. Box 7807, Atlanta, GA 30357        404.881.8279     

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

From: Kevin McConnaughey 
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:54:00 -0800
Organization: SPC


Sarrazin, Jean B wrote:

> I read an article in this week's {Communications Week International}
> (http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current) which states that the FCC is
> currently cracking down on callback operators whose equipment does not
> answer incoming activation calls, thereby preventing the customer's
> local phone company from charging them. The FCC is threatening hefty
> fines for those operators.

> Point is, isn't the TollSaver function on most answering machines
> doing exactly the same thing? That is not ruled out by the FCC ...

   The FCC has formally affirmed that they do not consider signalling
via unanswered calls as illegal.  This is not at issue in this case.

   As I understand it the FCC has a problem with operators in the USA
that are deliberately NOT returning answer supervision even though a
voice path has been completed.  This sort of thing is not legal in the
US and I believe that most US LD carriers do not establish a voice
path until their orignating switch receives answer supervision to
eliminate just such problems.

   From the limited information that I have, it appears that some
foreign administrations do not yet do this and some call back
operators are taking advantage of this weakness.  This type of fraud
can only occur when the terminating party to the call is responsible
for returning answer supervision (such as a call terminating on a PBX
platform).

To confirm the FCC position on Callback; this is from the FCC's Web
Page (www.fcc.gov):

                       CALL-BACK SERVICES 

On June 15, 1995, the Federal Communications Commission issued an
order which confirmed that call-back service using uncompleted call
signalling violates neither U.S.domestic nor international law (10 FCC
Rcd 9540 (1995)). The order provided, however,that U.S. call-back
providers are not authorized to provide service to customers in
countries which expressly have declared the service to be illegal. To
facilitate U.S. carrier compliance with this provision, the Commission
stated that it would be prepared to receive documentation from any
government which seeks to put U.S. carriers on notice that
call-backservice using uncompleted call signalling has been declared
expressly illegal in its territory.

The International Bureau maintains a public information file for such
submissions. This public file is designated as "International
Call-Back: Foreign Law," and is located in the International Bureau's
public reference room, at 2000 M Street, N.W., Room 102,Washington,
D.C. 20554. The public file and list of countries are for informational 
purposes only. Inclusion in the public file does not constitute Comm-
ission judgment on the issue of whether a submission by a foreign
government would be valid evidence of illegality in a Commission
proceeding. The public file contains information on the legal status
of call-back service for the following countries:

                                     COUNTRY LIST 

      China 
      Colombia 
      Honduras 
      Indonesia 
      Netherlands Antilles 
      Peru 
      Saudi Arabia 
      Uruguay 
      Venezuela 

Copies of the information may be obtained from the Commission's contractor 
for public service records duplication: ITS, Inc. 2100 M Street, N.W., Suite 
140, Washington, D.C. 20037, (202)857-3800.

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

From: higgins@fnalv.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins -- Beam Jockey)
Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Time to Clean Up the Internet
Date: 29 Feb 96 13:46:20 -0600
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory


Yesterday was the day for the quadrennial Leap Day cleaning of the
Internet.  

In article  in the newsgroup
comp.dcom.telecom, Patrick Townson (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu)
passes along something posted by Graham Bullers (ab756@torfree.net) to
alt.2600.moderated, who got it from David E. Smith (dsmith@midwest.net), 
but it claims to originate from Kim Dereksen at MIT, but this name
doesn't match anybody when I FINGER DEREKSEN@MIT.EDU, so who *knows*
who really wrote it?

> As many of you know, each leap year the Internet must be shut down for
> 24 hours in order to allow us to clean it.  
[...]
> In order to protect your valuable data from deletion we ask that you
> do the following:

> 1.  Disconnect all terminals and local area networks from their Internet
> connections.

[etc.]

I hope you have read this admirable announcement in its entirety.

To me, this was a familiar scenario.  I can't locate my copy of H.
Allen Smith's wonderful book *The Compleat Practical Joker*, so I'll
have to relate these pranks from memory.  They could have happened any
time this century -- I think the book was published in the Fifties or
Forties -- but imagine, if you like, a quaint 1920s home with one or
two candlestick-style phones.

A telephone customer gets a phone call from someone claiming to
represent the phone company.  "We'll be blowing out the phone lines
this afternoon to clean them, and we wanted to warn you to take
precautions."

"What precautions?" asks the victim.

"Well, when we blow out the lines it  could force the dirt out of the
lines and through your phone.  We recommend you take a pillowcase or
bag and tie it over your phone.  That way, the blast of dirt or grime
won't splatter all over your walls and furniture.  Be sure to do this
for every phone in your house!"

If the "maintenance" person is persuasive enough, perhaps sprinkling a
few technical terms into the conversation (today we would call this
"social engineering"), the earnest victim will bundle all extensions
with pillowcases or burlap or whatever.  

Sometime after the appointed time, the phone rings.  And keeps
ringing.  Either the victim ignores the ringing, and gets more and
more uneasy about missing a call, or he fumbles with the wrapping,
removes the bag, and answers the phone, shouting, "Can't talk now! 
They're blowing out the lines today!"  

I'm also reminded of a simpler prank ... "We've got men working on the
lines today.  Whatever you do, don't answer the phone, or you could
electrocute the repairman!"

Then you call back ... maybe an hour or two later ... and if the
victim answers, just give your best bloodcurdling scream.  And hang
up.


Bill Higgins   Internet: HIGGINS@FNAL.FNAL.GOV 
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory   


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As long as this issue is closing in a
humorous vein, let me tell this one. You may have seen this cartoon
in the papers some time ago ... in the first frame, a Dirty Old Man
standing at a payphone in some remote place late at night. He is 
talking on the phone and wearing a trench coat which is open enough
that it is apparent he is ummm ... exposing himself.

In the second frame, a telephone switcboard; the operator appears to
be a hateful witch; she is shown plugging in a connection on the
board.

In the third frame, a confused old woman is standing at the phone with
a puzzed look on her face. The clock says it is three in the morning;
she is standing there in a bathrobe with her hair in curlers; she was
awakened by the ringing phone. A bubble above her head has words being
spoken over the phone by the witch operator who is saying to her, "I
have an obscene call for anyone at this number; will you accept the
charges?"

Maybe I should quit for now and call it a week, eh?  See you all in
a couple days I guess.    PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #90
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Sat Mar  2 00:30:31 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id AAA02226; Sat, 2 Mar 1996 00:30:31 -0500 (EST)
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 00:30:31 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603020530.AAA02226@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #91

TELECOM Digest     Sat, 2 Mar 96 00:29:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 91

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Frontier Cellular Service Mixup (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    Re: Allegations About MCI (Ray Hazel)
    Re: Allegations About MCI (Clifton T. Sharp)
    Re: Allegations About MCI (Scott Plichta)
    800 Numbers on TV Talkshows (Gary Novosielski)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers is Propaganda (John Sullivan)
    Old EXChange Names Used in Paris (Mark J. Cuccia)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
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     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
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should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 23:29:36 EST
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Subject: Frontier Cellular Service Mixup


Maybe someone at Frontier will see this who will then choose to help get
it straightened out. All I can do is hope I guess. 

I have previously praised Frontier cellular service as a very good deal
in the Chicago/Ameritech market. At ten dollars per month and rates of
35/18 per minute, it has always been a good deal. Plus, Ameritech is
very technologically advanced; a very forward looking company. Their
coverage range around here is very good. Heretofore, their automatic
roaming throughout their five state area has been a nice thing.

The problem is their customer service s-u-c-k-s ... they are completely
unable to handle simple requests without causing a complete mixup in
the process. I go through the Call Home office in Southfield, Michigan,
so I can't say Frontier is bad in other locations, but they really seem
to be mixed up in Southfield.

When I had my cellular phone first activated, they were very prompt and
accurate in turning it on. When I tried to get the alternate NAM turned
on there was a lot of hassles.

Between Call Home and their 'cellular department' they kept saying the
second NAM had been activated when it had not been. This went on for
about two weeks until I finally threatened to quit the service entirely
as well as turn off my 800 number and the one line I have defaulted
to them for long distance. Then finally a supervisor called me and got
the second NAM (a number in Milwaukee) operating.

I should have known better than try and change anything ... :(  but here
is what has happened now:

At the time I first signed up, they had no AC-708 numbers available.
All new customers were being assigned in AC-630 or 312. Even though 847
was only a couple months away at that point, they had no 847 numbers
available. I took a number 630-726-xxxx on a temporary basis.

Since almost everyone I call is in 847, and since almost all cellular
calls I receive come from 847, I wanted seven digit dialing. Once they
opened up prefix 847-727 and 847-404 I decided to move over there.
There was another consideration as well:  Ameritech is going with a
mandatory pin system as of about May. Frontier knows this, and told
me their customers were going to be notified 'soon'. Furthermore, for
all intents and purposes, Ameritech is discontinuing the roaming
feature entirely later this summer for *most* customers. If you want
to roam you will need to have a number in either 630-319 or 630-399.
Those will be the *only* 630 prefixes allowed to roam. If you are
over in the Skokie area like me, roaming will only be available on
847-727 and 847-404. If you don't ever anticipate roaming, then you
can have other numbers. If you do plan to roam, you have to be on
certain very specific prefixes per the above. 

So I figured now is a good time to kill two birds with one stone.
I'll ask for an 847-727 number and not only get seven digit dialing
to/from my cell phone in most instances but also will be equipped to
roam if I go anywhere this summer other than Milwaukee where I already
have my dual NAM programmed.

Lots of luck!  I started this project Wednesday afternoon with a call
to Call Home. The representative Jerry Smith provided me with a new
number 847-727-xxxx. Unfortunatly, any new numbers at this point do
require a pin; not my favorite way to handle it but I have to go along
with it like everyone else.

He assured me it would go through in 'a matter of a couple hours or
so' and to prorgram my phone to the new number at my leisure. Less
than 15 minutes after talking to him, he called me back to say the
new number 'did not stick for some reason' and he was trying again
to 'get it into the system'. 

On Thursday throughout the day I spoke with him three or four times,
and he was investigating. He had someone in his office helping him
on it. He said the 'cellular department' told him I would be without
service for 'several days', which did not make a lot of sense to me.

I told him have them turn on the new number and when it is installed
let me know and *then* I will program the phone itself from the old
to the new number. 

Now you would think that would be quite easy. Not only did we talk
about it a few times on Thursday, he kept struggling with it all day
Friday as well; each time the 'cellular department' telling him that
it was all finished and the new number now working.

Nope, nope, nope!  The new number kept producing an intercept saying
'the number you dialed is not in service'. Note, I did *not* get an
intercept saying 'the subscriber is not available or has traveled
outside the service area', etc. Had I gotten the latter recording
I would have immediatly programmed the phone to the new number and
made the tower aware of my presence. 

The 'cellular department' called me at one point and insisted the 
number was working and the only reason I was getting that intercept
was because I had not yet programmed the phone. Well, okay, sometimes
I can be wrong also so I programmed the phone then and there with 
the new number and tried to make a few test calls.

    "We do not recognize your phone as a customer; if you are a
    new customer and got bounced to this recording in error, 
    please hang up and dial star-611. If you are not a customer
    but wish to make a call now, please stand by for the Roamer
    Plus operator who will accept a credit card to place a call ..."

Furthermore, dialing into my number to reach my (newly programmed
at their insistence) phone still produced the same intercept about
the number not being in service. I told this to the  'cellular
department' and immediatly put my phone back on the old 630-726
number (which was still quite dialable and still quite useable).

A couple more conversations with Jerry Smith who said he was going
to get the supervisor in the 'cellular department' involved. Once
again about 7:30 PM EST Friday night he called me (via my old
630-726 number, which I thought was quite humorous) to tell me
that 'everything is fixed and working now; I got this message
direct from the supervisor. Allow a few minutes please, and all
should be working.'

Shortly thereafter the 630-726 number started going to intercept
as a non-working number **but the new number remained not-in-
service as well.**

Now the phone does not work on the old number or the new number.
Programming the phone to either 630-726-xxxx or the new number I
was given 847-727-xxxx merely gets me a 'we do not recognize you'
message from the tower and a request to stand by to place your
call with the Roamer Plus Operator, at, I might add, $1.95 per
minute with a $1.95 surcharge for the call itself. 

I call back immediatly once again to Call Home at 800-594-5900
only to get a recording saying 'now closed for the weekend'.

So now the cellular service is bungled up and down for the weekend
at least, thanks to the incompetence of the people at Call Home
and their 'cellular department'. 

Now I understand why they only charge ten dollars per month for it and
give it away with no contracts. They obviously have not learned how to
operate the service yet with any degree of reliability. What I don't
understand is why I did not sign up with a reputable vendor in the
first place.

Can someone tell me what should be so difficult about removing one
number from a cell phone and replacing it with a different number?
Why should it require several phone calls over three days and going
a weekend with no service at all?  

A very similar thing happened when I had the second NAM in my phone
programmed to Milwaukee. Call Home's 'cellular department' went on
and on for days with me in limbo, them alleging the work was finished
and everything was 'just fine'; me getting no service in or out on
the phone.

I *do* know how to program cellular phones. I *do* know the difference
between an intercept message telling me a given phone number is not
in service versus 'the subscriber is unavailable now'. 

On Monday morning there will be one final call to them to eiher have
it up and running correctly *within minutes* or to discontinue all
my accounts with them period.  I have dial one plus with them, I have
an 800 number with them and two cellular numbers. 

At this point I positively could not recommend Frontier cellular
service to anyone; they are just too confused and mixed up in their
handling of customer service and order changes, etc.


PAT

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

From: razel@net.com (Ray Hazel)
Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI
Date: 1 Mar 1996 21:38:00 GMT
Organization: N.E.T., Inc.


Pat,

     I mentioned in an earlier note I had worked for Sprint, and also
S.P.  Transportation.  MCI was and is the railroads long distance
carrier.  I may be prejudiced, but my experience with MCI outages have
led me to believe that they use the passing of time to downplay
outages.

     I had made calls to MCI about outages on behalf of the railroad.
I'm very confident of my ability to determine that MCI had an outage.
Fiber cuts would occur along the right-of-way, and I at one time told
MCI where the cut was.  When I called it in, it was "We know of no
outage".  Granted, the contacts I had weren't in the right place to
know immediately, but when I called about other outages, at first was
the quasi-denial, then as time went by, (and I was taken seriously)
they just investigated and then confirmed the outage.  But there
wereoccasions where the outage wasn't necessarily someplace I could
confirm outside of MCI, and some of those "never happened".  

So, while all of this is heresy, I have to smile when I read MCI's
response to you. First, they claim they are being hurt by rumors, then
they will investigate ... probably (MHO) followed by confirmation that
there was something that happened, but that will come at a time when
the smoke has cleared a little and the impact of the news is lessened
by stretch of time needed to confirm.

     I don't need to reiterate (but I will), people reading this
publication are smart enough to know the outage that "allegedly"
occurred wouldn't take this long to confirm or deny.  I _personally_
have the opinion that they already know.


Ray Hazel


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some of the carriers do seem to take
thier customers for fools; they present the most preposterous reasons
and answers to things you ask about. MCI is not the only one though;
as per my earlier message in this issue Frontier would like me to know
that if only I knew how to program my cellular phone correctly it
would somehow automagically cause a switch to quit intercepting a
number as 'not in service'. And recall how AT&T loves playing games
with their calling cards, how they practice illegal discrimination
against some customers with calling cards based on their country of
origin. Try making a call from a payphone in certain neighborhoods in
Chicago using an AT&T calling card to call Israel for instance or some
other middle east countries and listen as the operator and her
supervisor dance around and refuse to give a straight answer to your
question, 'are you saying this card (or myself) is fraudulent?' I had
one lady at the AT&T Pittsburgh IOC actually have the nerve to lie to
me saying, "Israel does not accept AT&T calling cards ..." as if that
*possibly* could have made a difference since the call originated sent
paid from the USA, and as if it could have possibly been the truth,
which it wasn't.

I did not yet receive a response from Leslie Aun at MCI, but if/when
I do, I shall be glad to share it with you. I very much dislike rumors
also; I only wish it were possible and within my means to verify every
last thing which appears here. I have to depend on the rest of you to
do that many times.  PAT]

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

From: clifto@indep1.chi.il.us (Clifton T. Sharp)
Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI
Organization: as little as possible
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 21:55:04 GMT


The initial reply from MCI did more to slander them in MY mind than
the rumor about customer-list deletion ever could have.

It appears to me that Leslie Aun has no idea what the real story is,
yet has no problem with denying the "story" that was given, presumably
in the name of spin control.

It's not that I took the original article to heart; it was a rumor,
pure and simple. And PAT intimated as much through his humorous comments.
It's that MCI seems to be alleging that the article was stated as
fact, and impugns the honesty and integrity not only of PAT and Telecom
Digest, but by implication the entire internet [sic] and its denizens,
for passing it along.

I'll be interested to see what Leslie Aun and "several people" produce
by way of explanation. I'd also be interested in time stamps from the
articles submitted, to get a feel for how long it took them to rebut
the "story" that was obviously rumor to everyone but MCI.


   Cliff Sharp                  There are days when no matter which
     WA9PDM                      way you spit, it's upwind.
  clifto@indep1.chi.il.us       --The First Law of Reality

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

Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 12:36:24 EST
From: splichta@instalink.com (Scott Plichta)
Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI


Pat, 

  Here is the letter that I sent to MCI.  I have deleted names and
proprietary corporate information (and noted where I have done so).
It appears that the problems that I encountered are separate from the
problems that Steve Samler had encountered.  I will be looking into my
call records to see if any of my service appears to have been affected
by the Monday/Tuesday problems reported by Steve.  It includes no
rumors, only facts that my engineering department observed.  There is
one speculation on who the "several people" are working on the problem
at MCI.

Scott Plichta
Western Interactive Media

 ----- Begin Included Message -----

 Date: Fri, 1 Mar 96 12:26:29 EST
 From: splichta@ray (Scott Plichta)
 To: 0006610111@mcimail.com
 Subject: Re: Trouble with your service.

On Friday, February 23, 1996 between 2:00PM EST and 3:45PM EST we
received two problems.  The first problem was that our 1+ dialing
(through MCI) presented reorder on nearly every call outside of our
LATA.  Since calls inside our LATA routed properly and only calls
outside of our LATA (MCI handled calls) received re-order we
determined that either MCI was having troubles or the Bell Atlantic to
MCI handoff had troubles.  Using the 10ATT prefix, calls outside of
our LATA routed properly.  This problem occured on about 90% of the
outbound attempts.  

We placed a trouble report with [deleted] in California (the location
of our home office where our 1+ dialing service is ordered from).
Since we also run an inbound voice response system answering calls on
approximatly [ deleted] toll free numbers, all ringing through MCI, we
immediately began testing our 800 service.  On nearly 80% of the
calls, we received reorder.  FYI, we have [ deleted ] ISDN-T1 spans
which rarely if ever fill.  We checked the call volume on our switch
and verified that we were far below full capacity on our switch.  Our
reseller for MCI is [deleted] in Salt Lake City, UT which is the
location of our switch.  We bring [deleted] ISDN T1's into the
facility in [deleted] facility in SLC.  [ deleted ] placed a trouble
call to [deleted] in the Colorado trouble reporting center, where the
ticket number was [deleted] (on 2/23/96).  Eventually the problem
cleared up and by 4:30pmEST, 100% of the calls were routing properly,
both 800 service and 1+ dialing.

The above described events are somewhat typical in the telecom
industry.  I have been around the industry to know enough that every
carrier has downtime and there are Fiber cuts that cause serious
outages and problems.  As our business relies on our 800 number
service, we require high levels of service.  When we have these
outages, I have to answer to over [deleted] companies on why their
service was disrupted.

Here is where my problem lies:

When we utilized the services of Allnet Communications, we had
outages, as with any carrier. The difference was that I could contact
Allnet and receive a description of the problem, where was affected,
and the ETA to repair [ or best estimate].  Almost always I received
this information within five minutes of a trouble report if not at the
time of trouble reporting.  With MCI I have had a completely different
experience.  EVERY time we have experienced a problem with MCI service
and have reported it, we have received the same response: Within a day
or two after the problem has been resolved, some MCI rep calls
reporting that they can not duplicate the problem and would we please
retest on our end.  Of course, there is no problem 20 hours later! [
If so, my business would already be in the progress of moving ].  They
then report that no network troubles were found during the time in
question and that nothing was wrong.  MCI's "perfection" has become a
running joke throughout the office, as MCI has never once admitted a
network problem or any affected service.  Yet, I still have these
outages.

Even your own note to the TELECOM Digest that these "rumors" should be
substantiated is completely useless.  You have chastised Pat for
publishing rumors, but one week later you still haven't provided the
"reality".  Even if "several people" are working on it, the fact is
the problems that Steve and I had occurred and were fixed.  Someone
must have had some involvement in fixing the problem, so the truth
should be easily and quickly attainable.  Unless the "several people"
are PR represtatives and lawyers looking for the proper spin to put on
the truth.

Steve and myself are technical people, looking for true technical
answers.  We both have customers to answer to, and most of these
customers won't wait a week for an answer on why their service was
out.

One of the benefits of the TELECOM Digest, has been for a truthful
exchange of information among people in the telecom community who
understand the LD network.  While most LD sales people and customer
service reps (who are the front end to the carrier) know very little
about long distance service, and therefore provide little helpful
information; the readers/writers/publishers of Telcom Digest can often
provide useful information on problems and how to avoid them in the
future.  So until carriers can provide the information that we need,
all we have is the collected information (or "rumors") from the
readers of TD.  Feel free to give me a call to discuss this further.


Scott Plichta
Director, Operations and Development
Western Interactive Media


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And believe me, when something comes in
on this from MCI, I'll be more than happy to run it ASAP.   PAT]

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

Date: Fri, 01 Mar 1996 14:14:12 -0500
From: Gary Novosielski 
Subject: 800 Numbers on TV Talkshows


At 01:29 pm 2/29/96, in TELECOM Digest V16 #88, Patrick A. Townson wrote:

> ...I really cannot imagine any FCC rule which forbids one to read a
> string of digits referred to as a 'phone number' over the air. If so
> as noted above, there are hundreds of violators night after night on
> every independent UHF station in the United States. I just now
> examined my telepone dial trying to make some sense out of 'YES OJ CD'
> (937-6523) and other letters which go in those dial positions, but I
> could not make anything of it.

The only words I could find were:

Two letters:            Three letters:       
------------            --------------
WE nnnnn                YEP nnnn                
YE nnnnn                YES nnnn
nn SO nnn               n FRO nnn
nnn OK nn               nn SOL nn
nnnn LA n               nnnn LAD
nnnnn AD
nnnnn BE

I found no four-letter words at all, which argues against a "decency" angle.

I suspect that the prohibition on 800 numbers is not an FCC proscription 
at all, but rather a network rule against advertising anything on
their talk shows without paying them big bucks.  They might even hint
to their employees that their own rules were actually "FCC policy" if
they thought it would make them easier to enforce.

But there may still be some regulations hanging around arising out of
the "Payola" scandals in, what was it, the 1960s?  Product "plugs" on
talk shows, which were fairly common before that, were seriously
frowned upon afterward.  That too could have been network policy,
designed to head off trouble, rather than any actual FCC regulation.

Besides, I can't imagine any of those rules having survived the deregulation 
fever of the intervening decades.


Gary Novosielski      GPN Consulting             PGPinfo:  keyID A172089
                      gpn@village.ios.com        2C 5C 32 94 F4 FF 08 10
                      finger for public key      B6 E0 DE 4F A2 43 79 92


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even so, talk show hosts and producers
have considerable editorial latitude regards their choice of guests
on the program and what they will talk about, etc. There are plenty
of authors on shows late at night 'reviewing' (or plugging is more
like it) their own books, etc.    PAT]

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

From: pp001983@interramp.com
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers is Propaganda
Date: Fri, 01 Mar 96 19:43:13 GMT
Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link


In article , Michael E. Dudley
 wrote:

> There is no evidence that the FCC has reversed it position on
> callback.  I am posting the most recent postition paper released on
> ICB and it is less than eight months old.  Furthermore I found no
> reference to this at the FCC's web site.  I called my contacts at the
> FCC and Commerce and both have no knowledge of where the story got its
> source.

> Furthermore I found no reference to a story about callback at the
> given URL for {Communications Week}. (http://techweb.cmp.com/cwi/current)

> My general feeling is that posts and stories like these are
> consistent with the large amount of misinformation about the Callback
> industry.

All right, once more.  I haven't been able to track down the ComWeek 
article either, oddly enough, but based on what I've heard about it,  
either a) ComWeek was widely misunderstood by their readers or b) 
ComWeek was talking about a real thing but misunderstood it and got 
their details wrong.  (Hey, it happens sometimes, although clearly I 
like it more when it happens to the other guy.)

Here's what really happened, and I swear to God it did happen.  My
source was FCC's daily digest, which referred to International Bureau
Report IN 96-5, which was released on Feb. 12.  I also have a copy of
this "report" (it's one page).  It was supposed to be on their web
site as nrin6004.txt, but it wasn't there when I looked for it.
There's presumably some backlog of getting all those paper documents
keyed in and put on the web.  It may be there by now.

Anyway, we ran the correct version in AIN News.  (Hey, you get what 
you pay for ...)

Basically, as you learned, FCC have NOT changed their position that
callback using uncompleted call signaling DOES NOT violate US or
international law.  Let's say that together, shall we: FCC have NOT
changed their position that callback using uncompleted call signaling
DOES NOT violate US or international law.

What they are going after is what seems to be an uncommon but not 
unknown practice of avoiding the calling back portion of callback 
services by simply completing the customer's original call, and not 
sending answer supervision back to the originating carrier.  This is 
clearly fraudulent, illegal in the US, and generally a sign of karmic 
imbalance, as well as a direct violation of existing FCC rules.

I am also led to understand that this only works in a few cases where 
the originating carrier isn't especially sophisticated -- US carriers 
wouldn't set up a call until they got answer supervision and would 
also notice large call volumes into a number with no answer but long 
talk times.

So anyway, that's what's got everybody all upset.  In ComWeek's
defense (if they need it) the report is pretty easy to misread, but a
closer reading and some questions to consultants in the field cleared
it up quickly enough.


John Sullivan
Editor, AIN News
a Phillips Business Information Publication
sullivan@interramp.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When Mr. Dudley first wrote me to complain
that the article in CommWeek appeared to be unfounded, he made a point
of telling me that he intended to have an authoritative answer from the
FCC to me soon, and indeed a day or so later that message came from 
the FCC attorney which I printed here. I hope that did not backfire
for him ... the ICB he operates out of area 813 does just what the FCC
would seem to forbid: they do in fact answer but fail to supervise.
Dudley said to me, 'well, but it is only for a couple seconds while
we verbally acknowledge the caller and instruct them to immediatly
hang up and wait for call back ...' and he said if the caller chooses
to stay on line more than that first couple seconds in order to do
maintainence on the account (i.e. change the callback number or the
voice greeting to PBX attendants, etc) that then they do begin to
supervise. I don't think the FCC allows 'just a couple seconds where
we do nothing but acknowledge and tell the party to hang up'; I 
think the rule is that any actual answer requires supervision. Well
of course the attorney that Dudley had write to me said the very same
thing as you are saying above. It is a matter of degree I guess;
Dudley insists his ICB provides no service to the caller at all during
the unsupervised interim; that, he says, makes it okay. I have been
on his system and know a little about how it operates. Since when I
used his system I did stay on line five minutes or so at a time in
the maintainence mode, I shall watch with interest to see if I get
any toll charges from 813 on my bill at all this month.  ... 
If I don't, then perhaps someone is mistaken.      PAT]

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

Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 14:41:53 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Old EXChange Names Used in Paris


PARIS TELEPHONE EXCHANGE NAMES used prior to October 1963:

The Paris dial was an expansion of the UK dial.

The UK and Paris dials differ from North America in that:

the `0' figure in the UK and Paris had the letter `O'
the `6' figure in the UK and Paris have the letters `MN'
while in North America the `6' has `MNO' while `0' either has no letters 
but some older US/Canada dials had a letter `Z' on the numeral `0'.

Some *old* London dials also had the word `OPERATOR' on the numeral `0' as 
well as the letter `O'.

The Paris dial expands on the UK dial in that the numeral `0' also 
has the letter `Q' in addition to the letter `O'.

The following old Paris Exchange Names are listed in `numerical' order 
along with their numericals. Anything which had a significant letter `O' 
or `Q' (i.e. the digit `0' generating ten dial pulses) is listed 
numerically *after* any significant `9' names/letters.

Also, Paris had 3-digit Central Office Codes which began with a `0'
when they still used 7-digit local numbers.

This information comes from a mid-1960's Paris telephone directory
which I found in the out-of-town telephone directories at a local area
library sometime back in the 1970's. From what I could determine from
the French language text, Paris went to `ANC' (All-Number-Calling) on
1 Oct. 1963. An alphabetical list of exchange names and their
numericals was included to help subscribers translate names/letters to
numbers.

Paris used `3L-4N' numbering. The exchange names used the first
*three* letters as significant dialed letters of the name. There was a
maximum of 112 exchange names in use in Paris by September 1963. I
don't know which neighberhoods were served by which exchanges, nor do
I know the trunking patterns used, but I think that Paris used
Step-by-Step switching at that time with some form ofcommon-control
`director' tandem, similar to London and other large UK cities.

Since this list is ASCII text of a US Character set, there won't be
any French punctuation, accents, etc. Only the significant dialed
first three letters are capitalized. Hyphenated and double word
exchange names are all shown as hyphenated names but the second word
is not capitalized here since the letters are not significant dialed
letters. Neither are words with an apostrophe if the letters are not
significant dialed letters. My apologies to French language and
cultural purists.

222 BABylone      343 DIDerot     587 JUSsieu      782 STAde
224 BAGatelle                                      783 SUFfren
225 BALzac        352 FLAndre     506 LONgchamp    
227 CARnot        359 ELYsees     508 LOUvre       797 PYRenees
228 BATignolles   350 FLOrian                      
                                  622 MAC-mahon    702 ROBinson
235 BELle-elpine  368 ENTrepot    624 MAIliot      704 POIncare
236 CENtral                       627 MARcadet     705 SOLferino
237 BERny         387 EURope      628 NATion       706 POMpadour
                  380 ETOile                       707 PORt-royal
242 CHArlebourg                   633 MEDicis      700 ROQuette
243 CHEnier       306 FONtenoy    636 MENilmontant 
                  307 DORian      637 MERmoz       824 TAItbout
253 ALEsia                                         825 VAL-d'or
254 CLIgnancourt  425 GALvant     642 MIChelet     828 VAUgirard
256 ALMa                          647 MIRabeau     
250 BLOmet        468 INValides                    842 VICtor
                                  605 MOLitor      845 VILlette
265 ANJou         472 GRAvelle    606 MONtmartre   
                  473 GREsillons  607 NORd         873 TREmblay
272 ARChives                                       874 TRInite
273 BREtagne      482 ITAlie      722 SABlons      878 TRUdaine
270 BROssolette   488 GUTenberg   726 RAMeau       870 TROcadero
                                  727 PASsy        
283 BUFfon        402 GOBelins                     887 TURbigo
284 AVIation      408 GOUnod      733 REDoute      
287 AVRon                         734 SEGur        805 VOLtaire
288 AUTeuil       522 LABorde     735 PELletan     808 TOUrelle
                  523 LAFfitte    736 RENan        
204 BOIleau       526 LAMartine   737 PEReire      924 WAGram
205 BOLivar       527 JASmin      738 SEVigne      
206 COMbat        528 LAVoisier                    023 OBErkampf
207 BOSsuet                       742 RIChelieu    027 OBServatoire
208 BOTzaris      532 LECourbe    744 PIGalle      
                  535 KELlermann                   033 ODEon
324 DAGuerre                      752 PLAine
326 DANton        548 LITtre                       073 OPEra
328 DAUmesnil                     770 PROvence     076 ORNano
                  553 KLEber
333 DEFense


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But you forgot OPEra ... They had Opera
for a long time; I distinctly remember calling an Opera number in 
Paris sometime back in the sixties.  PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #91
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Mar  4 17:07:02 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id RAA02597; Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:07:02 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:07:02 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603042207.RAA02597@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #92

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 4 Mar 96 17:06:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 92

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Cellular Phone Back in Service (TELECOM Digest Editor)
    Sprint's Business Sense Program (Sam Kappagantula)
    Sprint Extends Fridays Are Free (Les Reeves)
    BellSouth Opens Fire in Local Service Market in Florida (Mike King)
    Class Action Lawsuit Against NYNEX (Rudi Halbright)
    AT&T Announces "888 Contest" (Van Heffner)
    Cyberspace Scams (Tad Cook)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 14:38:41 EST
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor)
Subject: Cellular Phone Back in Service


I got a call quite early this morning (Monday) from a nice lady at 
Frontier who explained the problem with getting my new number turned 
on was that the Ameritech switch was rejecting it on account of it
seeing the ESN assigned elsewhere (to my Milwaukee number).

Apparently if you have a dual or quad-NAM phone, the same ESN applies
to all the NAMs, and if you want a second or third NAM activated with
a phone number, it is not quite as simple as just turning on the
original number. Someone has to specifically override the prohibition
against the ESN being used with more than one number. 

Frontier *was* sending my request in to Ameritech and Ameritech *was*
putting it in, but the switch was rejecting it either without telling
anyone or else telling a human being but the human not paying any
notice to it.

The reason for wanting my number changed was because since I am in 847
and about ninety percent of my calls are to/from 847, it allows seven
digit dialing to/from my cell phone in most cases. Furthermore I am 
told that beginning a bit later this year, Ameritech is going to 
eliminate almost all roaming entirely, requiring that people who wish
to roam be on certain very specific exchanges, i.e. 630-319 and 630-399
or else 847-727. 

(Rumor control kicking in: Is it true that early in January Ameritech
got a bill from Nynex for cellular roaming for about five million
dollars and that four point eight of that was fraud?  ... a little
elf who works for Ameritech and reads this Digest reported that juicy
tidbit ... and Ameritech's response was to just close out large blocks
of numbers from any sort of roaming, period ... throwing their customers
to the wolves at 'Roaming Plus', a company which will be glad to handle
your calls at $1.95 per minute plus $1.95 surcharge, billed to a valid
telephone calling card or major credit card.  ... on the 'A' side
Cellular One Chicago now invites non-subscribers passing through town
to dial 'star-toll' [*8655] if you wish to make calls and that gets you
the same bunch of bandits Ameritech is using for roamers.)

Oddly though, even though I was told last week that any new number
issued at this point (or change of number) would definitly require a
PIN to use, once the new 847-727 number started working on my phone
today a pin was not required. A lady at the Call Home office of Frontier
said that a PIN would be mandatory 'soon'.

Anyway, I learned something new today and I suspect some reps at 
Frontier did also about dual-NAM phones and the relationship of the
ESN and the switch. All is fixed and working well. I do believe that
in general, Frontier's cellular service is about the best there is, at
least price-wise. Ten dollars per month and rates of 35/18 are hard
to beat. I know in other markets it is higher, but even then, Frontier
has their service priced at wholesale rates (in those markets). 

Now just one last thing: In their Chicago market, they need to clear
up a couple of minor bugs in the system --

Dialing *711 (normally used for roaming information) gets a peculiar
recorded intercept saying 'the number you dialed 758-8958 has been
disconnected'. (Meaning 708-758-8958). They need to intercept that
over to their own customer service the way they have done *611. I
guess this is left over from when 758-8958 used to be one of the
direct numbers into Ameritech Cellular customer service quite a long
time ago. You have to be a Frontier customer in the Ameritech Chicago
area to get this crazy intercept message.

Dialing 1-700-anything also gets strange results. It always lands
you in the voicemail box of the same individual, John Felix (?). No
matter if its 700-555-1212 or 555-4141 or even 700-225-5636 which was
an old number of mine. Poor John Felix ...  This is the results
in every case from the Chicago or the Milwaukee NAM when in the
Chicago area. I have not tried it from Milwaukee.

Dialing 0-700-anything always goes to a fast re-order tone which is
what I think they intended to happen with 1-700 as well, but maybe not.
I think ten digit-anything defaults to 1-ten digits-anything, thus
700-anything responded like 1-700 but not like 0-700.

When 'roaming' in Chicago (that is, using my Milwaukee NAM here in the
Chicago area) *611 and *711 both go to Ameritech customer service
rather than Frontier customer service. When in Milwaukee *611 goes to
'customer service' when on the appropriate NAM but when using the
Chicago NAM in Milwaukee (i.e. 'roaming') the situation is in reverse:
Star 611 gets me Ameritech. Apparently they only intercept your
customer service call and forward it to Frontier when you are in your
home area, otherwise letting it go to the carrier in whatever place
you happen to be.

I am just being picky. Frontier is a good deal considering no monthly
contracts required and very low rates; definitly a better deal than
either Ameritech or Cellular One here.


PAT

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

From: skappag@uhc.com (sam kappagantula)
Subject: Sprint's Business Sense Program
Date: 4 Mar 1996 14:50:32 GMT
Organization: United HealthCare Corporation


I know this was discussed previously and I missed it. Sorry for
repeating the same again, but can someone give me details about this
deal which Sprint is offering: Friday calls free up to $1000/month with
a minimum of $50/mo. How reliable is it?


Thanks,
 
Sam

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Les Reeves first brought this program
to our attention earlier this year, and it appears it has been 
extended beyond the announced February 29 deadline and will be 
offered throughout March as well. The next message in this issue 
explains how to sign up and use it. In addition, some notes are
included discussing some early experiences with the service.   PAT]
 
------------------------------

From: lreeves@crl.com (Les Reeves)
Subject: Sprint Extends Fridays are Free
Date: 4 Mar 1996 05:41:56 -0800
Organization: CR Labs


Sprint's "Fridays are Free" program, which was originally scheduled to
offered through February 29 has been extended.  They are now offering
it through March 31.

My original post describing the program is attached below.

The only thing I can add is that Sprint is practicing very obvious
discrimination against potential customers with heavy foreign accents.

I personally received over thirty calls from individuals who had been
told by Sprint that they could not sign up for the plan unless they
were a business.  This IS NOT true.  The program is a part of their
"Business Sense" calling plan, but it is available all customers,
business *or* residence, in the continental US.

In every case, I asked my callers "I guess you are interested in
calling India, right?".  They usually said "Yes, but how did you
know?".  Not a single caller spoke without an accent, so it seems
pretty clear what Sprint was up to.

One other thing about the program.  Be sure you have made some calls
*at least* eight days before the first Friday that you plan to pig
out.  Sprint's billing system does not activate the account until the
first call record, and it takes several days after that first call for
the Free Fridays to be applied.

And by all means, call 1 700 555 4141 to be sure that you got switched
to Sprint.  It took my LEC five weeks to get my ISDN lines moved from
AT&T to Sprint.

Happy dialing!!

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

[This is the message which appeared in the Digest about a month ago
describing the program.]

Fridays are FREE

Sprint has gone nuts.  Their beancounters have consumed too much
champagne.

They are offering a limited time (through 2-27-96) offer that may be
just the ticket for you TD readers who lust for the days of free toll
calls.  The offer is available for all customers (res or bus) who call
800.347.3300

You sign up for Sprint Business Sense, which gives a flat rate of
$0.16 / minute.  This is a good rate during the day.  It is a bit high
after 5:00 pm, and many carriers will give you < $0.16 / minute with
no strings attached.

But wait, there's more.

FRIDAYS ARE FREE !!

No kidding.  Free to anywhere.

Anywhere means International anywhere.

So, you get a $50 per month minimum bill from Sprint.  They limit you
to $1000 in *FREE* Friday calling per month.

Let's give those beancounters a headache.  Sign up now.


Les Reeves  --  lreeves@crl.com   --

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

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note added 3-4-96:  As Les points out, if
they get a hint that you are going to be making *lots* of *long*
international calls on Friday they may try to steer you away from
this program. The bottom line is $950 in free calls every month for
a year or $11,400 in free calls over a year provided you make the
calls on Friday and deduct the $50 minimum they are going to bill
you each month. It is very hard to do that on domestic calls alone
when you can only do it one day per week. I am certain Sprint did
not set this program up intending to have everyone max it out to
the fullest, but that is the way they have it written up: you pay
them fifty dollars per month and they give you up to a thousand
dollars in calls made on Friday for free each month. There is no
relationship between the amount you spend and the amount you get
for free; i.e. no deal where you spend $100 and get $100, etc ...

Les called me to say he has received many inquiries from people
'obviously in the USA from India' who claim when they called 
Sprint to sign up they were told they could not do so ... remember,
you want the Sprint 'Business Sense' program you have seen advertised
and you have been told it is *NOT* limited just to business phones.
Experiences from others who sign up will be welcome here.    PAT]

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

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: BellSouth Opens Fire in Local Service Market in Florida
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 10:16:34 PST


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE			FOR MORE INFORMATION:
					Tim Klein, 404-249-4135
					Kevin Doyle, 404-249-2793

	BELLSOUTH OPENS FIRE IN LOCAL SERVICE MARKET IN FLORIDA;
	  BEGINS JOINT MARKETING OF CELLULAR AND LOCAL SERVICE

ATLANTA -- March 4, 1996 -- Moving quickly to maximize freedoms won
under the new Telecommunications Act of 1996, BellSouth Corporation
(NYSE: BLS) today filed for permission to provide local telephone
service in portions of Orlando, Fla., and also began joint marketing
of cellular and local telephone service to customers in Macon, Ga.

In a move signaling that the new telecommunications era has really
begun, today BellSouth filed with the Florida Public Service Commission
to provide local telephone service to business customers in parts of
the Orlando metropolitan area not currently served by BellSouth.

BellSouth also began selling cellular telephone service to customers in
Macon, Ga., through local telephone company sales offices, making
BellSouth the first regional Bell to offer such one-stop shopping.
Starting today, BellSouth customers in Macon can order cellular
telephone service from the same BellSouth service representative they
have always called to order local telephone service.

"Customers want the convenience of one-stop shopping for all their
telecommunications needs and they trust the BellSouth name.  Beginning
today, we're making it easier for customers to meet all their
communications needs with a single phone call to a trusted name --
BellSouth," said John L. Clendenin, chairman and chief executive
officer of BellSouth.

"No one knows our customers better than we do, and no one is better
positioned to serve them.  The step we're taking today will provide
greater convenience for our customers and will let BellSouth market
services more efficiently," Clendenin said.

By the end of 1996, BellSouth, the premier communications company in
the Southeast, expects to extend one-stop shopping for local and
cellular service to all markets where it currently provides both local
and cellular service. Customers in those markets will be offered the
option of getting one bill for both services beginning later this
year.

BellSouth's joint marketing initiative will make ordering service more
convenient for customers and provide BellSouth a powerful new
economical distribution channel for cellular products and service.  The
company will use its experience in Macon to further refine customer
options and streamline internal sales order processes before extending
joint marketing to other markets.

In its filing in Florida, BellSouth said it will initially provide
network facilities in the Orlando area to serve major businesses.  The
new BellSouth network facilities will include fiber rings which will
provide state-of-art telecommunications services to these customers.
These services will be available to the first business customer in
approximately 120 days.

"Numerous business customers in this area have expressed a strong
interest in doing business with BellSouth and we're pleased to be able
to give them the type and quality of service they want," said Jere
Drummond, president and chief executive officer of BellSouth
Telecommunications, BellSouth's telephone operations unit.

"We're fulfilling the intent of the new telecommunications law with the
filing," Drummond said. "BellSouth intends to be the premier
telecommunications provider to all customers and show that with
BellSouth, it's truly all here."

The two BellSouth initiatives are part of a comprehensive, overall
effort by the company to reinforce its position as the premier
communications company in the Southeast.  Last fall, BellSouth
consolidated and strengthened its market identity, unifying all service
offerings under the BellSouth brand and launching an aggressive
advertising campaign to remind customers: "It's all here."

The company has moved aggressively to use freedoms won in the recently
enacted Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase marketing and
operating efficiencies.

Other BellSouth initiatives include the joint marketing of
long-distance service and wireless communications.  BellSouth was the
first regional Bell operating company to make a cellular long-distance
call, completing a call from Atlanta to Los Angeles just moments after
the bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.  BellSouth will
also jointly market long-distance service with new personal
communications services (PCS), a new generation of wireless
communications.  BellSouth plans to aggressively market PCS and will
jointly market the service through local telephone sales offices to
customers in the Carolinas and East Tennessee when we turn those
systems up midyear.

BellSouth is a $17.9 billion communications services company providing
voice, video, data and wireless communications, directory publishing
and other information services to more than 25 million customers in 16
countries.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: Rudi Halbright 
Subject: Class Action Lawsuit Against NYNEX
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 1996 22:28:59 -0500
Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link


I'm planning to initiate a class action lawsuit again NYNEX for their
failure to provide ISDN service advertised and promoted.  I have had
ISDN service installed in my home and the process has been agonizing
and painful.  Firstly during the intial install NYNEX neglected to
test their work.  My line was out of service for over 8 days while I
called incessantly trying to get them to dispatch a technician to
resolve the problem.  I ended up spending litterally hours on hold,
being hung-up on, being transferred to incorrect departments, waiting
at home for technicians who hadn't even been dispatched, etc.

Now, one month later, my ISDN line is working, but I'm still trying to
get all the features I want configured properly.  I've been told to
call 1-800-GET-ISDN to get help (just a recording), been given another
800 number to call (waited on hold for > 3 hours).  I've been numerous
promises about when the features would get activated, none have been
fulfilled.

Nynex has spent a lot of money promoting ISDN service for the home, and 
has claimed that it is available now and is easy to get. NYNEX claims to 
have "Made getting ISDN at home as easy as possible." In truth, few 
NYNEX employees are trained in ISDN and they do not have any support 
infrastructure in place.  This is truely false advertising and is a 
complete failure by NYNEX to provide the service they have promised.  

If you have an ISDN or other experience related to NYNEX's failure to 
provide proper customer support, send me a message including a brief 
summary of what happened to you.  If I get enough responses I'll contact 
a lawyer and begin the process.


Rudi Halbright
eld00864@interramp.com

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 04:41:04 -0800
From: vantek@northcoast.com (VANTEK COMMUNICATIONS)
Subject: AT&T Announces "888 Contest"


AT&T ANNOUNCES 888 CONTEST AND TOLL-FREE 888 "TEST NUMBER"

 From a recent AT&T Press Release concerning the implementation of new
toll-free 888 numbers:

AT&T will be continuing public education on Toll-Free Day on March 13,
when free bridge tolls and tokens will be distributed in New York
City, Chicago, and San Francisco. Toll-Free Day also marks the start
of The Really Big Contest. Between March 13 and March 31, people can
call 1-888-888-IWIN to hear the contest rules and guess how many
toll-free calls will be carried by the AT&T network in the first 8
days of April. After March 15, contestants can also register guesses
on the Internet at http://www.att.com/888rbc/. The 88 callers who come
closest to the right answer will each win $888.

BTW, this number seems to be unreachable at the moment. At least it is
from here in Northern California (Pac Bell). Our own 1-888 number (on
WilTel) seems to work just fine from across the country.


Van Hefner - Editor
Discount Long Distance Digest
http://www.webcom.com/longdist/

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

From: Tad Cook 
Subject: Cyberspace Scams
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 17:02:26 PST


Scams are Speeding Through Cyberspace
By Audra D.S. Burch, {The Miami Herald}

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 3 -- Fraud has reached the final -- or at least the latest --
frontier.

Scams have gone high-tech, thriving in the wide-reaching world of
cyberspace, a computer marketplace fraught with tricks and traps.

Just ask Susan Bagley. In January, she answered a Fort Lauderdale
firm's work-at-home ad. It said people could earn $400 to $800 a week
by selling online programs.

Bagley paid a $60 start-up fee. She had questions about the
information she received. Her calls went unreturned.

"It sounded great, but when I read the papers, I found a lot of hidden
fees I had to pay to be in the program. They didn't return any of my
calls, I think it's a scam," said Bagley, of Canton, Ga.

She's not the only one who got taken. Just last week, a national
consumer group launched The Internet Fraud Watch, a toll-free hotline
for reporting online fraud complaints. The goal: a crime-free
Internet.

"We are definitely seeing fraud and deception on the Internet. Real
problems are on the horizon," said Lucy Morris, of the Federal Trade
Commission.

The schemes are not new. Computer networks and electronic bulletin
board services distribute the same insidious rip-offs, from bogus
business opportunities in ostrich farming to worthless weight-loss
products, that are peddled over the phone, in advertisements and
through the mail.

Nabbing these online outlaws isn't easy:

Their identities often amount to hieroglyphics, a mysterious
combinations of letters, numbers, periods and slashes.

Burned consumers often don't file complaints.

The giant computer network, drawing 15 million users in the United
States alone, is unregulated.

"The Internet is the wave of crime's future. This new technology has
the potential to rip off millions at a shot," said Rosemarie Bonta,
spokeswoman of the Better Business Bureau of South Florida.

Federal officials say questionable advertising falls into two
categories: classified and "disguised." Suspicious classified
advertisements read the same as those in newspapers and contain
misleading claims. The most popular ads promote work-at-home schemes
("use your PC to make money fast in your spare time") and business
opportunities in communication technologies such as "900" telephone
services.

Disguised advertisements are more difficult to recognize because it's
not always clear if something is being pushed. In bulletin boards and
chat forums, statements are made about the quality of a product or
service -- but some of those participating in the exchange have
financial ties to the company selling the product. The consumer may
not realize the supposedly open discussion is actually a sales pitch.

The dark potential of the Internet has not gone unnoticed.

Attorneys general from around the country are meeting in May in
Washington, D.C., to develop strategies to tackle online scams. The
group has already formed several Internet fraud committees and is
conducting several multistate investigations involving Florida
consumers.

Last April, the FTC held an online consumer protection workshop. In
August, the agency released the first computer consumer-protection
brochure, "Online Scams."

State and federal officials say they have staff dedicated to cruising
the Internet for questionable advertisements and solicitations.
Florida's branch Office of the Attorney General in Hollywood is even
sending investigators online as uncover consumers. They respond to ads
and have information sent to them for review.

Such efforts have led to several investigations of firms under
deceptive business practices laws.

In the first federal online case about 15 months ago, the FTC settled
with Chase Consulting, a credit repair company advertising through
America Online. The owner agreed to refund $1,917 to consumers for a
$99 program that advised customers to take illegal steps to repair
their credit.

The state is currently probing a Sunrise-based business opportunity
company advertising on CompuServe.

"We have to be creative in fighting this type of fraud," said Cece
Dykas, who heads the attorney general's Economic Crime Division in
Hollywood. "The objective is to limit how many people these operations
can get to."

On Tuesday, the National Consumers League launched the Internet Fraud
Watch.  Funded by a $100,000 grant from MasterCard International, the
center fields online fraud complaints and reports them to enforcement
agencies.

"This system will definitely help the consumer cops by quickly
alerting them to where and when scams on the Internet are occurring,"
said Susan Grant, executive director of the National Association of
Consumer Agency Administrators.

Still, consumer officials worry that consumers believe these scheme
are legitimate because they appear on a computer screen.

"These cons are just as illegal, no matter how they are packaged,"
said Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth. "Consumers can avoid
falling prey to con artists by applying old-fashioned common sense to
their use of new-fashioned technology."

Cyberspace is the newest arena where con artists peddle their schemes.
Federal and state officials warn that online advertisements and
promotions should be viewed with the same skepticism as those in the
print and broadcast media. Here are some signs of questionable online
solicitations:

Overstated claims of a product's performance or effectiveness. For
example: "Cures or improves 27 different conditions, some forms of
cancer, age spots, ulcers, lowers weight..."

Exaggerated claims of potential earnings or profits for business
opportunities.  Use of loaded words such as "hot" and "guaranteed."

Claims of "inside" information, which is almost always false. And if
the report is true, use of it is probably illegal.

"Pump and dump" promotions of cheap stocks and promises of high returns.

Promotions for unusual investments such as ostrich farming or gold
mining.

Beware of promotions that ask you to disclose your checking account or
credit card number. Do not distribute financial or personal data at
any Web site or online service location -- unless you are absolutely
sure where the data will be directed.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All the above are old, old scams just
adapted for the new technology. In my half century on earth I have
read all the above in printed form sent through the mail. All the
chain letters, all the 'make money fast' letters; they have been
around as long as I can recall. Years ago all those scams did quite
well via the postal service. The postal inspectors would get after the
perpetrators and they would respond by moving out of one maildrop/remail
service and into a different one with a new name.

Particularly heartbreaking to me are the ones which prey on very lonely
people seeking new friends or penpals. So far those have not been seen
a lot on the net -- not that I am aware of -- but I am sure they will
be soon. A variation on this involves the use of adult 'swinger' maga-
zines such as you can buy in adult bookstores. Loaded with ads and
pictures of naked women looking for husbands, the respondent is invited
to write to the person pictured therein. Countless teenage boys and
older very lonely and naive men write wanting to meet the woman, or
to invite her to come and visit them. 'She' (yes, you read my quote
marks correctly) writes back saying the man is the nicest person she
ever met and she really would like to come and visit; or even move
in with him. But, there is a problem: 'she' needs money to get the
bus ticket to get there. At the bus station they told her a ticket
to Podunk -- and these guys are always from small town America --
would cost $75. Would you please advance the money for me to get 
there; I promise to pay it back as soon as I get settled and get a
job. 

Well the smart 'consumer' would go to the bus agent in his community
and purchase a prepaid, non-refundable transportation order and have
it sent through Greyhound interline services in Omaha to the agency
where the 'woman' was waiting for it to arrive. He could even send a
small cash advance with it so his new friend would have money to eat
at stops on the the two-day bus trip. The agent in the distant town
would put the money in the passenger's hands at the same time the
ticket was handed over which had been purchased elsewhere. But no one
ever said these guys were smart. They send off cash in the mail to
their new friend, whom they never hear from again. One fellow who
wrote to the Illinois Attorney General said that because he had
limited finances, he had to save money from his paycheck each week for
about a month to get the money necessary to send the 'woman' for her
ticket. 'She did not even write back and say thank you,' he noted
sadly in his letter. Most of the guys who get scammed in this way
are too embarassed to tell anyone what happened to them.

To some extent, the people who respond to the 'make money fast'
schemes and then get ripped off -- I hate to say it -- deserve
what they get; they also planned to benefit from the scam. But to
take a lonely and trusting person, build up their hopes and their
natural desires and then abscond with their money is pretty rotten.
Sadly, a lot of Americans are well, just plain D-U-M-B. By virtue 
of this new medium being fairly expensive and complicated for a number
of years, most Americans were left out of the loop. Prices have come
down and the technology is a lot easier to understand and use. All
the hicks are pleased as punch and proud as they can be to have their
very own first computer ... and you -- you SOB's! -- I want you to
leave them alone and quit trying to rip them off.

The prophet said 'there is nothing new under the sun' ... no, there
is not. Only the method of communication has changed; the ancient
old frauds and ripoffs continue unabated, and perhaps harder to detect
and stop than ever before. And when efforts are made to start 
policing the net in the way the postal inspectors do with paper mail,
we hear from the Old Guard on the net with their journals like 
Computer Underground Digest and similar who tell us what an awful 
thing it is when we attempt to 'censor' others and how organizations
like the Cyber Angels (equivilent of the Guardian Angels) are not
wanted. Well, congratulations on the start of the Internet Fraud
Watch. I wish the new organization much success, although I am sure
many on the net will be violently opposed to it as they are to anything
which forces some accountability and civility around here.   PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #92
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Mar  4 17:52:05 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id RAA07255; Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:52:05 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:52:05 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603042252.RAA07255@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #93

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 4 Mar 96 17:52:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 93

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Mixed Messages From MCI / aka Do As We Say - Not As We Do? (J Oppenheimer)
    At Bell Atlantic 888-555-1212 Doesn't Work. Neither Does 611 (P Robinson)
    Here's What Happens With 1-888-555-1212 (Paul Robinson)
    What's Behind Those Walls, Anyway? (Dave O'Shea)
    Please Tell The Story Again (Fred Schimmel)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)
Subject: Mixed Messages From MCI / aka Do As We Say - Not As We Do?
Date: 4 Mar 1996 09:33:06 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, let us March Forth with another
edition in this continuing saga ... grin .. I hope MCI does not write
and accuse me of picking on them again. Instead of saving comments
for after the entire article, this time around the comments from 
Judith Oppenheimer are edited into the article, interwoven as she
wrote them for clarity.   PAT]

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

Pat, I'm forwarding the entirety of this MCI press release so as not to be
accused of responding to anything out of context.  My comments/questions
are in [brackets].

Judith


LOS ANGELES -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Feb. 29, 1996 -- Ready or not, the
all-new 888 toll-free exchange is going into nationwide service on
March 1.

Predicated by the country's seemingly insatiable appetite for
toll-free numbers -- virtually all of the 7.6 million 800 numbers in
the U.S. are already spoken for -- the introduction of the 888
exchange creates a new set of toll-free numbers as well as a new set
of challenges for American business.

"Companies that rely on toll-free services need to address this issue
now to minimize initial customer confusion and prevent potential 888
dialing difficulties of their own," said Robert Hartnett, regional
president for MCI Business Sales and Service.  "Early awareness and
action can spell the difference between making, or missing, important
business connections in the future."

To help companies meet these challenges, MCI offers a few basic tips: 


ALWAYS INCLUDE IN ADVERTISING THAT 888 IS A TOLL-FREE CALL.

Initially, many consumers may be unsure that 888 calls are free.  In
order to eliminate the misconception that 888 is in any way different
from 800, communications companies like MCI are launching nationwide
consumer education programs -- along those same lines, businesses
should always clearly state in their advertising, verbally and in
print, that an 888 call is a toll-free call.


REPROGRAM YOUR BUSINESS PHONE SYSTEM TO ALLOW 888 TOLL-FREE DIALING.

The introduction of the new 888 exchange may present dialing problems
like those experienced when local phone companies introduced new area
codes in many parts of the country last year.  Scores of businesses
found that their office phone systems could not recognize and dial the
new codes.  The solution, in most cases, was to have their business
phone equipment reprogrammed to recognize the new codes.  That
solution should be repeated for 888 to ensure that your office can
dial the new toll-free numbers that your vendors and suppliers will
offer.

MAKE YOUR CUSTOMERS AWARE THAT 800 AND 888 CALLS ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

J.O. Note:
[except for MCI's 888 COLLECT, AT&T's 888 COMPARE, etc.?  See below.]

It is important that customers are aware that although 800 and 888
will function in exactly the same way, the two exchanges are not
interchangeable.  For example, a call to 800-123-4567 and a call to
888-123-4567 will, in most cases, connect the caller with two
different companies.  The exception to this will be 800 and 888
"vanity" numbers.

J.O. Note:
[You've read my postings for the past year.  I'm striving to avoid sarcasm
here.]

Toll-free vanity numbers are those with numeric combinations or
"spellings" that are highly recognizable and marketable to customers.
One example is 1-800-COLLECT, a brand-name vanity number for an MCI
service that offers convenient collect calling at substantial savings.
Like many other companies, MCI has already reserved the 888 equivalent
of its 800 vanity numbers -- including 1-888-COLLECT -- to ensure
customer access in both toll-free exchanges.

J.O. Note:
[Is 888 COLLECT reserved and pending - as of this morning it doesn't work
- or is it included in the set-asides to be decided upon by the FCC, as
noted below?  Can an MCI person please clarify this?

For MCI to imply that "other companies" had the same access to both the
set-aside and early reservation processes that it enjoyed, is preposterous.]


IF YOUR COMPANY HAS NOT RESERVED THE 888 EQUIVALENT OF ITS 800 VANITY
NUMBER, CONTACT YOUR CARRIER IMMEDIATELY.

The assignment of 888 vanity numbers is a major concern for companies with
existing 800 vanities.  For example, if a company other than MCI were to
acquire 1-888-COLLECT the potential for customer confusion and business
loss would be considerable.  

J.O. Note:
[Really!]

Thus, any company that has not reserved the 888 counterpart of its 800
vanity number should contact their long distance carrier immediately.  

J.O. Note:
[This is surely a new position for MCI.]

At present, all 888 equivalents of 800 vanity numbers are being withheld
from service by the FCC while the agency determines how it will assign
these valuable toll-free numbers.

J.O. Note:
[I asked above - will repeat here - does this include 888 COLLECT?  Is 888
COLLECT's fate also to be determined by the FCC, equitably along with
customers' vanities?  AT&T may want to comment here re 888 COMPARE and
it's vanities, Sprint re 888 PIN DROP and 888 THE MOST, etc.]

["All" is a misnomer.  The FCC just reopened the set-aside process because
subscribers were not made privy to the set-aside process by carriers --
including MCI.  Indeed, subscribers now have until March 15 to process
their set-asides directly with DSMI -- a first.]

[By the way, when did MCI become pro-replication and pro-user-interest in
numbers?  How nice to see MCI, long expousing the "all numbers are equal"
position along with AT&T, publicly recognizing the marketplace reality of
numbers.]

Press release continues:
Toll-free calling is a time-tested, market-proven tool that allows
businesses -- large and small -- to offer consumers and business-to-
business customers convenient regional or nationwide access to their
sales, service or support organizations.  In addition, many businesses
also use toll-free lines for intracompany calling between distant
offices, for telecommuting or field-based employees to contact the
office, or for dial-up access to modem pools used for data communications.
 
"The scarcity of 800 numbers, combined with the universal understanding 
that 800 calls are toll-free, increases the value of every 800 number
a company holds," said Omar Leeman, regional president of MCI Business
Sales and Service.  "Businesses should be reviewing their deployment
of existing 800 numbers -- as well as planning for new 888 numbers --
to maximize their external and internal communications potential."

In order for companies to realize maximum benefit and value from their
existing 800 numbers, MCI offers these suggestions: 

CONSOLIDATE MULTIPLE 800 NUMBERS TO A SINGLE NUMBER.

Many companies have individually assigned separate 800 numbers for
multiple services or business locations -- an inefficient approach
that needlessly consumes scarce 800 numbers.  MCI offers advanced 800
call routing features like automated menu systems that allow callers
to a single 800 number to select from a variety of services or
departments with a simple touchtone key stroke.  MCI's intelligent
network also allows customers calling a single 800 number to be
automatically connected to the office or store location nearest to
them by instantly determining the origination point of the incoming
call.

This complimentary strategy can "create" new 800 numbers to support new
customer applications. 

MOVE EXISTING INTERNAL EMPLOYEE SERVICES FROM 800 TO 888 NUMBERS.

J.O. Note:
[Separate domains!  Why didn't MCI back this suggested solution to
exhaustion when we first presented it at INC?  Why didn't MCI recommend
this in its comments to the NPRM?]

Companies that use 800 numbers for internal voice and data communications
should consider migrating those applications to 888.  This action allows a
company to reassign its more identifiable toll-free 800 numbers to
important new external customer services.

J.O. Note:
["more identifiable toll-free 800 numbers" - ie, the brand of 800. 
Couldn't agree more.]

RECYCLE EXISTING 800 NUMBERS WITH LITTLE OR NO USAGE.

J.O. Note:
[Dare I suggest that MCI follow its own advice?]

Businesses sometimes have 800 numbers lying dormant.  Used for
one-time applications, discontinued services, or former locations,
such 800 numbers can easily be overlooked.  These numbers are an
untapped resource that can be immediately turned-up to support new
customer services.

MCI Business Sales and Service representatives are expert in the use
of 800 and 888 toll-free services for business.  For more tips or
information on the full line of advanced toll-free services for
business, please call 1-800-444-2222 for the location of the MCI
Business Sales and Service office nearest you.

MCI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's largest
and fastest growing diversified communications companies.  With annual
revenue of more than $15 billion, MCI offers consumers and businesses
with a broad portfolio of services including long distance, wireless,
local access, paging, Internet software and access, information
services, outsourcing, business software, advanced global telecommuni-
cations services, and music distribution and merchandising.


Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand
A leading source of information on 800 issues.
CallBrand@aol.com, 1 800 The Expert, (ph) 212 684-7210, (fx) 212 684-2714
http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/

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

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 08:41:48 EST
From: Paul Robinson 
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc. Silver Spring, MD USA
Subject: At Bell Atlantic 888-555-1212 Doesn't Work. Neither Does 611


Friday morning, Cable News Network (CNN) reported that Area Code 888 was
now operational for the additional toll-free area code in the U.S. (and
presumably Canada and other parts of World Telephone Zone 1). 

So, that day I decided to see if the area code had been installed yet, by
trying 1-888-555-1212.  According to what I had read in an FCC report, the
Directory Assistance number for 888 is supposed to ring into the 800 DA
number (which makes sense) in order that either number could be used for
reaching DA. 

On dialing the number, there is an *immediate* "click" after the last
digit, about 1/10 second.  This means that Bell Atlantic's switch has
completed or intercepted the call, rather than a lookup of a database
or transfer to a long-distance carrier's switch.  (When dialing any
1-800 number, such as 1-800-555-1212, there is a minimum one second of
delay before the click occurs, longer if it has to lookup the number.)

The recording told me the number is not in service. Let me see if I
can find out why.  I'll explain in a followup message what is
happening with 1-888-555-1212.  The rest of this message will explain
what happened when I tried to report being unable to dial the above
number.

Okay, so maybe CNN is wrong and 1-888 is not operational yet.  Maybe
it starts April 1, not March 1.  Or maybe Bell Atlantic doesn't have
888 installed in its switches yet.  (I reported here a few months ago
that Area Code 500 was not installed correctly here a few months back,
so it is possible.)

So I decided to call 611 and see.  I dial it, and I get the voice-mail
system that asks me to press "1" ("NOW") if I am on a touch-tone
phone, and I do.  Then it asks me to press "1" if I am reporting a
problem, or "2" if I am trying to get service changed or installed.  I
press "1".

A few clicks as I wait, and wait.  Then, the most interesting one,
which I recognize: the sound of a call dropping off the network!  (It
used to be that when a call dropped off the network, you were returned
to dial tone, but the system is smart enough not to let that happen
any more, or someone could steal dial-tone on a call and get around
toll-restriction devices or other rules.)

So, that means that I can't even call 611!  :)

To make a long story short, I called back and I did get through.  But
it brings up a rather interesting thought, which never occurred to me
before: if 611 isn't working, who do you report THAT to?  :)

 
Paul Robinson
General Manager
Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ameritech does not seem to have 888
turned on here yet either. I tried a few things at random beginning
888 and got intercepted in every case by the local switch.   PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 18:45:59 EST
From: Paul Robinson 
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc. Silver Spring, MD USA
Subject: Here's What Happens With 1-888-555-1212


Earlier I discussed what happened Friday when I tried to see if the
report on Cable News Network (CNN) that the 888 area code was now in
service, was correct.  As I humorously indicated, I couldn't get
through to 611 the first time I called.

On the second call to 611, I got through to an attendant, who,
apparently didn't even know what area code 888 was.  When I explained
that it was the additional area code for toll-free calls, she
transfered my call to someone in another department at Bell Atlantic,
or so it seems.

This person informed me, when she looked up the database, that this
number is not operational, period.

So I decided to find out if maybe 888 simply isn't in service yet,
contrary to what CNN says.  I called MCI, and after going through
several layers of people I discovered the following.

The industry decided that 1-888-555-1212 would not be placed into
service, apparently because they felt it would set a bad precedent of
encouraging people to duplicate their 800 numbers in 888.

Accordingly, no matter which of the two area codes a toll free number is
in, you still have to use 1-800-555-1212 to look up the number, then dial
the number whether it's 1-800 or 1-888. 

I said I thought this was stupid.  To me, it seems, if it is possible
to look up numbers in an area code, then one should be able to dial
the DA number for that code, and it goes to whatever location handles
DA for that region.

For example, whenever someone dials 411 anywhere in the Washington
Metropolitan Area, i.e. the 202 area code plus the portions of the 301
and 703 area codes that are within that local dialing area. plus a few
extended sites, their call is directed to Bell Atlantic's Directory
Assistance Center, which happens to be in West Virginia.

I would presume that 1-202/301/703-555-1212 calls from elsewhere in
the country are routed to that location as well.

So, it would stand to reason that, since directory assistance is
available for numbers in the 888 area code (unlike, say 900 for which
there is no longer such a feature), dialing 1-888 or 1-800 plus the DA
number should simply terminate in the same place.

I said to the clerk that it was stupid not to do it this way.  She
simply said that there really aren't that many numbers in 1-888 yet
anyway, and that there were no plans to implement 1-888-555-1212.

If that is the case, then why doesn't the number terminate to a
recording telling people to dial 1-800 for this number instead?
Someone sets up a (defunct) number which doesn't supervise, and plays
a recording saying the number was changed to "1-800-555-1212".  On the
other hand, it seems like it would be silly to do that (they could
have implemented the DA routing in the first place), but a lot of
things done these days make little or no sense anymore.

If something as rudimentary as DA is unavailable from 888, what other
features are missing?  Will people start getting bills for calls from
local telcos or long distance companies with errors in the billing
software in their switches?  Will calls go through properly?  Would
anyone really want to use a service that is treated with less respect
to a supposedly equivalent one?

I had considered duplicating one of my 800 numbers in 888, but looking
at this situation, I see that I probably shouldn't bother.  888 is
apparently of lower quality since it can't even have a directory
assistance code.  I'll stick with the "higher quality" 800 area code
whenever possible until the 888 carriers clean up their act.

To me, it seems, failing to have equivalent DA features makes 888 look
even less desirable as "low rent territory" or the "retarded stepchild" of
toll-free access codes. 



Paul Robinson
General Manager
Tansin A. Darcos & Company/TDR, Inc.

Among Other things, we sell and service ideas.  Call 1-800-TDARCOS from 
anywhere in North America if you are interested in buying an idea to solve 
one of your problems.

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

From: dave.oshea@wilcom.com (Dave O'Shea)
Subject: What's Behind Those Walls, Anyway?
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 20:48:07 CST


Having always been curious about what went on behind the fortress-like
walls of the many central offices that I have some business with in
the form of DS1 and DS3 lines, as well as ordinary phone traffic, I
wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to tour one of Southwestern
Bell's CO facilities - the Clay St. central office, which I am told is
the largest in the Houston area. Here are a few of the interesting
facts that I managed to note during my visit.

The first impression I had of the place was that it was utilitarian in
the extreme, and well-kept. Not a single penny has been spend
decorating either the inside or outside of the building. The purpose
of the building - connecting tens of thousands of residential
customers, as well as a large number of corporate customers - was
obviously taken seriously by the people who work there.

The basement of the building contains the cable vault, a dark space
running probably 200 feet long by 15 feet tall by 50 feet wide. This
is where the various cables, both fiber and copper, come in from the
underground conduits leading out to various distribution facilities. I
was surprised to see that the majority of the space is unused. This, I
am told, is directly attributable to the use of fiber to replace many
thousands of strands of copper cable. More on that later. The entire
cable vault was dimly lit - more so than the rest of the building -
and the lone inhabitant - a fiber tech splicing cables working with a
single dim flourescent bulb - was nowhere to be seen. Visions of
light-phobic gnomes did cross my mind. :-)

The first (ground) floor contained a huge room filled with 15-foot-tall 
cable racks. One rack running the length of the building was the first
termination point for every piece of twisted pair copper coming into
the building. This rack allows for the cables to be tracked, as well
as providing electrical (surge) protection in the form of some plug-in
module for each pair. From here, the cable is cross-connected to patch
panels that feed it off to DACS, channel banks, or upstairs to one of
the switches.

In another sections of the same room was the DACS (Digital automated 
cross-connect system?). These come in two flavors (at least at this CO). 
The first, called a "1x0" ("one by oh") DACS breaks DS1 signals down to 
DS0 levels, and allows them to be brought over to various other services. 
If you have a T1 that provides both voice and data, or more than one data 
connection, it most likely goes through one of these systems. Each "bay" 
(roughly a 14-inch high, rack mounted unit) held enough cards to handle 
about a DS3 (44mb/sec, or 28 DS1s) worth of traffic.

The other DACS, known as a 3x1, performed a similar function, but is used 
for breaking down DS3 lines to DS1 levels for cross-connection.

SW Bell initially used fiber for all their DS3 traffic, even internally, 
but switched to coax cable, which is easier to handle, terminate, and 
cheaper. 

For inter-CO and inter-city traffic, multiplexers are used to pack large 
amounts of data onto fiber cables. Currently, a single fiber pair carries 
up to 48 DS3's worth of traffic - a little over 2 gigabits a second! And 
this is usable up to distances of about 100km. 

For many CO-to-customer links, carriers are switching from proprietary 
mux technology to SONET, an open standard that's based on a ring 
topology, lending itself to redundant links and more efficient use of 
bandwidth. The DS3's going into my own switch room use SONET, affording 
us diverse routing and other benefits.

We then went up to the third floor, and looked at the power room. This is 
the room where the city power is converted to -48vdc, the standard in 
central office equipment. Banks of huge rectifiers, which convert DC to 
AC, indicated that the entire plant was using a little over 2000 amps, or 
almost a megawatt. (Amusing to me was that the SWBell employees were the 
most energy-conscious I have ever seen, turning off lights the second 
they left an area, even if only for a few minutes. I was thinking that 
the savings must be small given the number of amps sucked down by the 
tons of equipment, but now it occurs to me that in a blackout, having the 
lightest load possible might buy an extra minute or two of battery time.)

Much of the power room was taken up by batteries, large clear cylinders 
filled with some sort of clear fluid and metal plates. I'm told that the 
batteries started their life as power cells for WW2-era diesel-electric 
submarines. Overhead bus bars, huge copper rails which must have weighed 
hundreds of pounds, carried the current off to various power handling and 
distribution equipment.

On the other side of that floor was an AT&T 5ESS switch. For all the 
power and technology that this switch has, it was obviously not designed 
by marketing types: Not a single flashing light, no fancy console, 
nothing except hundreds of linear feet of undistinguished blue on whita 
cabinets, with overhead wiring troughs not showing an exposed wire anywhere.
A pair of unexceptional PC's acted as consoles for the switches, allowing 
operators to make changes. I've seen a more impressive user interface on
a Gravis joystick. :-)

On the next floor down was their old switch: A 1aESS, installed sometime 
around 1976. Upon entering the room, I thought the light mist I had seen 
earlier than morning had turned to hail, but the noise was actually the 
clatter of tens of thousands of relays opening and closing. The 1ESS is 
probably the last "big" switch which could be fixed with simple hand 
tools and a soldering iron. I was amused to see that many of the relays 
had a folded piece of paper stuck into them - what I thought might have 
been a label, but was actually to help stop "bounce" of the contacts 
caused by weakening springs and old age.

The 1ESS has an pair of consoles that reminded me a lot of the old IBM 
360 and 370, and looked (probably deceptively) like a layman could 
understand their operation easily.

Also in this room were several wall-mounted phones used for testing 
setups, including a pay phone that had the coin box removed, allowing the 
tech to get his quarter back. I was tempted to stick a few bucks in it 
and act like I hit a slot machine.

90 percent of the staff was working on the first floor, mostly doing 
cross-connects and wiring/maintenance tasks. The two switches are 
virtually self-maintaining, only requiring one or two people for roughly 
60,000 telephone customers.

Much like an IXC CO I visited a couple of years back, these people are 
fanatical about neatness. Not a single chunk of loose cable, nor a stray 
power cord was anywhere to be seen. Given the hundreds of thousands of 
wires in the building, this is probably A Good Thing.

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

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 10:48:17 EST
From: Fred Schimmel 
Subject: Please Tell the Story Again


Pat:

Can you do me a favor and repost an article I recall from a few years
ago?  It was a funny story about a telephone repair call (in the U.K.)
and a barking dog.

I think it would bring a smile to any of the new TELECOM Digest readership.

[plus I could use a laugh right now...]


Thanks,

Fred Schimmel     (609)461-8100  ext. 5060  |    email: schimmel@gandalf.ca
Gandalf Systems Corporation                 |------------------------------- 
501 Delran Parkway                          |      Objects in mirror are
Delran  NJ  08075    USA                    |     closer than they appear!


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I never thought that story was all
that funny, but if someone wants to write it up and send it in I will
run it again. It has been a few years now since it was published here.
It is the story of the repair guy who finds the dog tied to the tree
out in the back yard ... anyone want to tell it?    PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #93
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Mar  4 18:51:03 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id SAA12292; Mon, 4 Mar 1996 18:51:03 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 18:51:03 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603042351.SAA12292@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #94

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 4 Mar 96 18:51:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 94

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    SRAM Scam and Personal Computers (Mercury News via Tad Cook)
    High Volume Called Numbers (Dale Robinson)
    Telstra Telecard (an Australian Calling Card) (Dale Robinson)
    Idea for Additional Telemarketing Restrictions (Tom Allebrandi)
    Long Distance Nightmare (Neal Miller)
    Bizarre Billing Problem at WorldxChange - Can Anyone Explain? (M Halperin)
    Extended Deadline Smart Card Conference CARDIS 1996 (Pieter Hartel)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
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                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
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     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Tad Cook 
Subject: SRAM Scam and Personal Computers
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 18:12:25 PST


Fast-Growing 'SRAM' Scam Slowing Personal Computers
By Dean Takahashi, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 4 -- CHARLES Salzenberg thought he was getting "SRAM" when he got
his new computer. But what the Palm Harbor, Fla., resident believes he
really got was a "SCAM."

The high-powered computer Salzenberg bought in November didn't have
the oomph he expected. Salzenberg, a programmer, had the wits to test
what he paid for, only to find out that the computer's cache -- a set
of secondary memory chips, or static random-access memory, that stores
frequently used data -- didn't work.  The computer's diagnostic system
had been altered to disguise the scam.

So Salzenberg took the computer back and ordered a new one from
another computer dealer. This generic computer was also deceptively
cacheless. It had, as one industry insider called the fake chips,
"empty bullets."

"At first I was in denial," Salzenberg said. "There must be some
mistake.  Then I was angry: I've been ripped off."

But customers routinely are given the "option" of selecting
"cacheless" computers at the Computer Craft store where Salzenberg
bought his first PC, said Daniel Horna, president of the store in St.
Petersburg, Fla. Horna said customers have several types of computers
to choose from, including ones with no working memory chips. But Horna
insists he is not misleading customers.

"Some people call it fake," Horna said. "If you don't specify that you
want real SRAM, this is what you get. If you have a problem with this,
take it up with the manufacturers in Taiwan and China. Everybody is
selling the same product."

He declined to say which companies sold him the machines with fake
cache. In advertisements on the Internet, Computer Craft lists various
motherboards that all contain "256K cache," which is not what
Salzenberg says he received.

Although the fraud is hard to detect because the computer still
operates properly, savvy computer users in places as far removed as
England, Vancouver, New Zealand, Massachusetts, Australia and, of
course, San Jose, have complained of cacheless computers.

But it isn't clear how widespread the practice is or just exactly who
is supplying the fake parts. Local law enforcement officials say they
haven't heard much about the scam nor have the largest manufacturers
of memory chips. The geographic diversity of the complaints, rather
than the numbers, is the biggest sign of widespread fraud that could
 -- and probably already has -- infiltrated into the homes of computer
users everywhere.

Its proliferation underscores the growing demand for everything
electronic -- and how customers and suppliers are willing to take
"shortcuts" to cut prices.  Last week, another price-cutting technique
was short-circuited when federal and local law enforcement authorities
arrested dozens of suspected gang members for stealing computer chips
and other high-tech equipment.

In this latest form of computer fraud, in which customers are sold
non-existent storage capabilities, distributors or computer component
makers profit or pocket a few extra dollars in the cutthroat PC
industry, where profit margins are low and competition is high. It is
frustrating not only to consumers, but to retailers and computer
manufacturers as well.

Steve Singer, owner of Regnis Distributors, a Tampa, Fla., computer
dealer who was familiar with Salzenberg's case, says the chip scam
allowed competitors to sell their machines for lower prices.

"We tested one in the store, and the chips were just fake," he said.
"I'm not selling this board, but I believe my competitors are."

Victims like Salzenberg are concerned that the opportunities for fraud
are getting bigger as computers reach the non-technical public. Many
consumers don't know enough about their computers to figure out if
they've been victimized or not. These people are fodder for the
computer industry's underground economy, which profits from their lack
of technical expertise. Protecting yourself from scams can be
extremely time-consuming.

"These thieves will stop at nothing," said Marylu Korkuch, a
spokeswoman for the Technology Theft Prevention Foundation. "They're
so clever, they just change their scam slightly and move on to
something new."

So far, no brand-name computer makers have been implicated in the SRAM
scams.

"The people most vulnerable are the small players that buy components
and put systems together," said Martin Reynolds, analyst at Dataquest
Inc., a market research firm in San Jose. "I think it will be a fairly
small-scale thing because you'll go out of business if you sell a lot
of them and get caught."

Cache can boost the performance of your computer by 20 percent or
more.  Normally, programs and data are stored in main memory, or
dynamic random-access memory, known as "DRAM." But while these chips
can hold a lot of data, they aren't very speedy.

Computer designers get around that problem by allowing the
microprocessor, or the brain of a computer, to fetch data from a
secondary memory, known as static random-access memory, or SRAM.

These chips store smaller amounts of memory but can access data many
times faster than the DRAM chips. The cache stores frequently used
data, which most of the time is all that a user needs when running
simple programs.

By faking the cache, the defrauders are showing a keen understanding
of computers. If they tried to fake microprocessors or DRAM, the
computers would simply fail to work and the consumer would immediately
know that something is wrong with the machine. The fake cache,
however, is virtually invisible to the novice because it only slows
the computer down.

If the microprocessor needs data, it looks in the cache first and
retrieves that data quickly. But if it can't find the data in the
cache, it goes to the slower DRAM memory chips or perhaps to the
permanent storage device, the hard disk drive, which is even slower.

When Intel Corp. launched its Pentium chips in 1993, computer makers
started buying a lot more cache, ranging from 256 kilobytes to one
megabyte, so that the systems could keep up with the blazing speed of
the microprocessors.

One electronics company executive, who asked not to be identified,
said a large chip manufacturer from Taiwan offered to sell him
motherboards, or main circuit boards that contain the microprocessors
and other chips, with defective cache for low costs. He said a
salesman promised he could make bigger profits with the so-called
empty bullets, or defective cache chips disguised to look real.

He displayed one board that was advertised as storing 256 kilobytes of
cache in eight SRAM chips. The chips were soldered into the slots on
the motherboard and taped together with a label that said the warranty
was void if the tape was removed.

His technician analyzed the board by removing the chip that contained
the control software, or the basic input output system, known as BIOS.
The BIOS, which most people only know as the program that flashes on
the screen when you turn your computer on, showed that the machine had
256 kilobytes of cache. The technician plugged in another BIOS chip
that he knew was functioning properly and it showed that there were,
in fact, only 64 kilobytes. In essence, the fake BIOS chip was altered
to show a fake reading.

That computer used chips that had been stamped with the label,
Paradigm Technology Inc. in San Jose, a maker of SRAM chips. Paradigm
officials said they had no knowledge of such fake chips, and it seemed
clear that the smudged label, stamped with an inaccurate serial
number, was counterfeit.

BIOS software companies like Phoenix Technologies Ltd. in Santa Clara
say that it takes a pretty clever thief to take the trouble to alter
the BIOS software.

"We can never underestimate the cleverness of copiers," said George
Adams, a vice president at Phoenix.

The elaborate scams might seem tempting for would-be criminals. In the
cutthroat computer industry, any extra profit you make can be the
difference between bankruptcy and survival.

Intel can collect hundreds of dollars in profits on chips. But on an
older generation 486 motherboard, profits can be as little as a few
dollars on an $80 board.

That means that for everyone besides Intel in the food chain, from the
makers of support chips to the motherboard makers to the distributors
and the dealers, there could be strong temptations to substitute poor
quality parts to save on costs.

Each player can pull off various degrees of scams. A chip maker could
sell dud chips on the black market. Such chips probably would be
traced back to the company. Or an unscrupulous chip maker could
illegally copy someone else's chip, produce it in a shoddy manner and
ship it under a deceptive label. Or a motherboard manufacturer could
buy a bunch of blank chips and stamp them with false labels. For the
consumer who gets left holding the bag, tracing the fake chip can be a
bewildering lesson in the global economy because of the large number
of manufacturers and distributors who get a piece of the action.

Any one of these players could cut $20 to $50 by leaving out the cache
chips. If someone discovers the fraud, the culprits can always deny
the charge, saying that they only sell the stuff and don't make it.
Someone else in the food chain must have pulled a fast one. Sometimes
they say the computer won't work without some kind of chip installed.

During the past year, the pressures on suppliers grew worse. Intel
started making millions of computer motherboards, forcing many small
motherboard companies in Taiwan and other places out of business.

The scam experience has soured some consumers on the idea of buying a
computer from small computer dealers, who dominated the industry until
big-name companies such as Compaq, Dell and Packard Bell arose.

There are ways to fight back. Salzenberg has been warning people who
buy their computers on Internet bulletin boards to test the machines
before buying them.

Ray Van Tassle, a programmer in Algonquin, Ill., wrote a program
called "Cache Check" that analyzes a system and tells you how fast the
cache works or if it is installed at all. The program can be accessed
on the Net at ftp://oak.oakland.edu/SimTel/msdos/sysinfo/cachchk2.zip.

"From all the messages I've received from around the world, I'd say
this scam is big," Van Tassle said.

You can also buy the chips and install them yourself, or insist that
your dealer install the chips personally.

The anonymous electronics company executive said that motherboards
that carry unusually low prices should generate suspicion among
legitimate suppliers in the chain. Retailers should also take the
trouble to test the computers before putting them on sale.
Accountability in the food chain can save companies from big
liabilities if widespread scams surface.

Chip makers also have techniques for discovering fraud. If a customer
returns a machine and the problem is traced to defective chips, the
chip maker can dismantle the chip and examine it under a microscope.
Usually, there are telltale signs, known as digital fingerprints, that
prove whether the chip is real or if it was counterfeited by another
factory.

Dan McCranie, vice president of marketing and sales at SRAM
manufacturer Cypress Semiconductor Corp. in San Jose, says such
problems are a good reason for people to flock to the name-brand
computers. It is unlikely that large computer makers would risk
pulling such scams, he thinks, because of the number of customers who
could quickly discover the fraud.

"The large computer companies do a lot of tests on their components so
I would be surprised if any of them could be fooled by this scam,"
said McCranie.  "I've heard of the scam. I don't think this is
widespread beyond a few motherboard companies in Taiwan."

Another form of relief is coming from the market itself. In the past
two months, prices on SRAM chips have fallen dramatically. Thus, it
costs less to put the SRAM chips in the computer, and the benefit of
the scam is diminished. But victims aren't easily convinced that the
scam will disappear.

"I'm a believer that the magnitude of this fraud is startling,"
Salzenberg said.


tad@ssc.com | Tad Cook | Seattle, WA | KT7H |    "There will always be
dissident voices perceiving gloom on every side and  seeking influence
without responsibility. But today, other voices are heard in the land-
voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality.  They fear the
supposed  hordes  of  civil  servants  far more than  actual hordes of
opposing armies. We cannot expect that everyone will talk sense to the
American  people,  but we  can hope  that fewer  people will listen to
nonsense."   -JFK, *planned* speech, Dallas, Texas,  November 22, 1963

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

From: Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 16:02:12 +0930
Subject: High Volume Called Numbers


The message about 800 numbers on T.V. Talkshows (Scott Montague, T.D.
V16 88) raises a question I've often thought about:

How do the telco's work around the sudden increase to a called number?

To explain hopefully further:

The manufacturers of Taco Fred's want the public to try their new
range of Mexican food, so on a T.V. advertisement, they say:

Free Mexican Food Now!

We want you to try our new Mexican food for Free!!!  Just call
1-800-FREE-MEX within the next 10 minutes!  For the first 100 callers,
we'll throw in a set of steak knifes!  .  Call 1-800-FREE-MEX
now!!!

So suddenly the switch which has 1-800-FREE-MEX mapped to it is
deluged with calls.

Do the telco's do any pre-planning with high called volume numbers, or
is it a case of the network expanding seemlessly to cope with the
load?


Cheers,

Dale Robinson


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That does happen from time to time.
The switch gets swamped with calls and all sorts of problems arise.
An example would be one of the major ticket-selling agencies in
the USA. Some entertainer is announced to be at a certain arena
on a certain day and that tickets will go on sale at a certain
time. Often times ticket sales for some major sporting event cause
this congestion. The phone companies try to avoid that by asking
customers who plan such promotions to discuss it with them in 
advance; they then set them up on circuits especially designed for
'mass calling'. An example of such an exchange in Chicago is 312-591.
Things are arranged so that exchanges all over the city feed only
a limited amount of their traffic into 591 at the same time. They
'buffer' what is handed over to 591 and bounce the rest of the
calls back to the originator with a fast busy signal.

One purpose of the 900 'area code' when it was first developed
many years ago was to help prevent such massive overflows on a
national basis. In fact I think the first use of 900 was when a
US President had a 'call-in' thing where he spoke directly with
citizens from all over the USA who wanted to talk to him. A very
old phone book around here actually refers to 900 as 'mass calling
code'. 

Now not everyone bothers to notify telco of their plans in advance
and so there are times the things you describe happen, but then I
think the network control people see it occurring and hastily 
arrange to route traffic around the affected area and block as much
incoming traffic to the affected exchange as possible, from as
distant a location as possible. Sometimes it is a natural disaster
which causes this to happen. A severe earthquake in California gets
people on the east coast stirred up and busy on the phone looking
for their loved ones on the west coast, etc. The network control
people are on duty for reasons just like that: to identify unusual
traffic patterns, locate network outages, and in general see to 
it that the network operates as effeciently as possible.    PAT]

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

From: Dale.Robinson@DWNPLAZA.NCOM.nt.gov.au
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 16:02:08 +0930
Subject: Telstra Telecard (an Australian Calling Card)


After three weeks of waiting, I finally received my Telstra Telecard.

The Telecard is a calling card which allows you to call anywhere and
have the call cost billed to your telephone bill.

I wanted one of this things for three reasons:

     a) Tired of carrying coin around for payphones;
     b) The pre-paid magnetic payphone cards (Phonecards) are only usable
        in payphones;
     c) Don't like using my employer's phone for personal calls!

Call cost are as follows (in Australian currency):

  Local              40 cents (which is the same as a payphone call)
  Long Distance      40 cents + normal long distance rates
  International      40 cents + normal international rates

Supposedly I can dial into Australia from some overseas countries and
pay Telstra's ISD rate.  Not knowing the prices of other International
providers; I can't say whether this is a bargain or not.  (With the
proliferation of US Callback providers, I suspect not).

International Access from the U.S.A. is provided from 800 numbers thru
AT&T, MCI, Sprint & Worldcom Inc. (have never heard of Worldcom before).

One strange thing that I have noticed is that I have international
access with this card.  Strange because:

     a) it's optional and I didn't ask for it, and
     b) I don't have international access on my home phone.

Which leads me to think that they must have been generous on the day!

The downside of all this is that I have ANOTHER P.I.N. to remember.  I
wish there was some way to have the same P.I.N. for everything.


Cheers,

Dale Robinson

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

From: Tom@Tass.Com (Tom Allebrandi)
Subject: Idea For Additional Telemarketing Restrictions
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 22:32:45 GMT
Organization: TA Software Systems/Frontline Test Equipment


Hi!

I have three phone lines at home. One of the lines has a published
phone number, the other two do not. These lines are "non published",
you cannot get them from Directory Assistance. I pay extra for this
service to insure that I do not get unwanted calls on these lines.

Enter the telemarketers and their blind dialers. My FAX machine rang
with a voice call for the third time today just a few minutes ago. A
few times, I have answered the other two lines just to find out who is
there and how they got the number. When it is a telemarketer, the
answer is always "That number just came up on my screen."

The annoying ones are the ones who call and say "You are not currently
a customer of our newspaper/magazine/service". When I ask how they
know that, the answer is "your phone number is not listed in our
database." Of course it is not, the line they called on is non
published and is not the number I would give them if I were a
customer!

The local newspaper, to which we already subscribe, called me on both
of the non-published numbers to ask if I wanted to become a
subscriber!!  (Since those numbers are not in their database ...)

So, my idea is this:

Telemarketers should be barred from calling unlisted and non published
phone numbers.

What do you think of the idea?

Are there any states that have already instituted such restrictions?
I'd love an example when I send a letter suggesting this idea to my
state and federal representatives.


Tom Allebrandi
Frontline Test Equipment  |  TA Software Systems  | Valparaiso, IN USA
tallebrandi@fte.com       |  tom@tass.com         | +1-219-465-0108
http://www.fte.com        |                       |

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

From: Neal 
Subject: Long Distance Nightmare
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 07:17:43 -0600


I sell long distance and just went through a real nightmare with a
customer on Friday.  This business just moved to a new location about
30 miles away from their old location.  When I gave the long distance
provider the new phone numbers, they cancelled service on the old
numbers.

Now here's where the real problem started.  The business is having all
calls to their old location (and old phone number) forwarded to their
new location.  After the long distance was turned off on the old
number, the calls were no longer forwarded and anyone who called got a
"number disconnected" message.  But here's the thing ... It is not a
long distance call from their old location to their new one.  It is a
local toll call normally handled by Ameritech!  I am absolutely
certain of this!!  Why would disconnecting their long distance have
this affect?  Ameritech had to "re-pic" the long distance carrier's
code to this customer's old phone number.  I welcome all comments from
anyone who thinks they can make any sense out of all this!

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 00:33:36 -0500
From: msh@world.std.com (Mark S. Halperin)
Subject: Bizarre Billing Problem at WorldxChange - Can Anyone Explain?


I have two phone lines, one business and the other residential. In
November, I noticed calls on both my LEC bills for calls made to the
same Seattle number that were billed by US Billing on behalf of
CTS/WorldxChange.
 
The only way these calls could have been charged is if I had forced
the PIC to WorldxChange.  As I had no idea what their PIC was, I was
confident that I had never made these calls.
 
When I called customer service at WorldxChange, the customer service
agent immediately recognized the problem and admitted that they had
experienced a problem with their Seattle switch.  Moreover, he
volunteered that many customers had experienced the same problem which
was manifested by erroneous billing to the same Seattle number.
Needless to say, he assured me that I would be credited for these
calls I never made.
 
I articulated my concern about the many customers who may not have
read their bill carefully and paid for these erroneous charges.  The
customer service agent recognized that WorldxChange would have
received monies for calls never made.  When I asked him why, if they
were aware of the problem, they didn't simply reverse out all of the
charges to this same Seattle number, he had no answer.
 
Well, lo and behold, I just received my January bills and both had
WorldxChange billing to the same number in LaJolla, California! I was
dumbfounded.  When I called WorldxChange, they could offer no
explanation.
 
What I want to know is how this could possibly happen.  I have never
been a customer of WorldxChange.  Moreover, my two lines are
separately billed, one as a residential line and the other as a
business line.  Anybody have an explanation?  I am tempted to file a
complaint with the appropriate regulatory authorities because I am
certain there must be some number of people who have never even
realized they have been misbilled.  Any advice?


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is a strange puzzle. I am assuming
the calls showed up in all cases as 'direct dialed'; that is, there
was no operator assistance and the passing of a third number or
calling card number, etc. Forgetting for a moment about the rep telling
telling you 'they had a problem with their Seattle switch' what we
need to know is where *you* are located and what *your local telco*
had to say about this if anything. It would be good to know what was
at the other end of the Seattle number and the LaJolla number if you 
happen to know. It would be helpful to know the times of day for the
calls. Were the two Seattle calls at the same time or different times?
What about the LaJolla calls?  Did you make any legitimate calls to
Seattle or LaJolla at the times in question?  Could you tell us what
is the PIC for WorldxChange? Do you, through whatever LD carrier you
use have your two lines consolidated for the purpose of aggregating
discounts, etc?  (Reason: local carriers often times bill for LD and
the varying types of software they have for this would astound you.)
I imagine this can be solved, but you need to tell us a bit more.  PAT]

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

From: pieter@fwi.uva.nl (Pieter Hartel)
Subject: Extended Deadline Smart Card Conference CARDIS 1996
Date: 4 Mar 1996 10:54:19 GMT
Organization: FWI, University of Amsterdam


The deadline for the submission of papers to CARDIS 1996, the second
Smart Card research and advanced application conference, which is to be
held on September 18-20, 1996, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has been
extended to:

                          March 31, 1996

The complete call for papers may be found at:

                      http://www.cwi.nl/~brands/

Considering the tight schedule we are on you are kindly requested to
submit papers (and the accompanying information) electronically to:

                         cardis@fwi.uva.nl

The format required is uuencoded, compressed postscript, plain
postscript or latex.

Pieter Hartel, General chair

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #94
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Mon Mar  4 23:30:12 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id XAA08925; Mon, 4 Mar 1996 23:30:12 -0500 (EST)
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 23:30:12 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603050430.XAA08925@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #95

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 4 Mar 96 23:30:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 95

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    555 Line Number Survey (D. Kelly Daniels)
    Noise Spectra_ Beyond Hoth (David dal Farra)
    800 Protection (Judith Oppenheimer)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Ed Ellers)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Gary Novosielski)
    Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers (Michael Franz)
    Re: Allegations About MCI (dave@westside.net)
    Re: Allegations About MCI (Tom Allebrandi)
    Re: 800-Numbers Don't Go Through - Whose Fault? (Mike Hale)
    Re: New Caribbean NPAs (Bob Goudreau)
    Re: Booming Telecom Market in the Netherlands (A. Veller)
    New Publication: Cable Datacom News (Michael W. Harris)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
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*************************************************************************
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* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 15:48:34 -0800
From: D. Kelly Daniels 
Subject: 555 Line Number Survey


Below is a survey produced by our firm and two companies who were
suspect of the way US WEST and some of BellCore's clients had decided
to roll-out the 555 line number range.  Amazingly almost all of the
RBOCs felt the only reasonable way to roll-out the line number range
was Advance Intelligent Network or any new-fangled way, other than how
they deliver the calls to themselves.  Yes, I have an axe to grind ;-).

Our clients were DA providers who could not get a coparable connection
(i.e., the same one an RBOC provides itself in any short-term).  But
the RBOCs could come up with many limited availability arrangements
that if the rate payers budget will allow, they will develop (the
killer AIN application).

Well after most RBOCs claim to have no orders from their competitors  for
inter-connection, we went ahead and surveyed the 555 assignees if they
wanted another 900 number range.  We can post the survey or provide it if
you would like.  But for now here are the results.

Distribution: 

Carriers (LEC,IXC,CAP,Wireless) TRG (BellCore "555 Survey Contractors")
State Commissions		Cluff & Associates (SBC "555 Survey Team")
All 555 Assignees	 	BellCore 555 Product Teams
ICCF 38 Attendees 		FCC IAD, CCB Enforcement, Mass Media
EWP Forum			DA Providers
Internet Reader groups


                            Announcement
         Survey Results of 555 Exchange Implementation Options

    On January 30, 1996 a blind, vote controlled, two page survey was
mailed to over four hundred 555 assignees.  It was sent out in an
attempt to clarify the industry position as to how the 555 exchange
should be utilized.

The results, as of February 28, 1996, are as follows:

86.2% of the respondents are in favor of the 555 exchange being
implemented as a free service that is accessible to the caller who
will only pay the cost (if any) of a regular telephone call. The
only cost to receive the call would be call forwarding charges, if
any.  Pacific Bell's "California Calling" was describe as the specific
model to follow -- except on a nation-wide basis with uniform seven digit
access.  The one exception, if possible, to this "cost of a regular
call model" would be the allowance of Alternative Directory assistance
at a cost to the consumer of no more than the what they already pay to
their local RBOC.

10.4% of the respondents wanted to know if the 555 exchange could be
both an unrestricted pay-per-call service and a free-to-call service.

3.4% of the respondents wanted the 555 exchange to be implemented exactly
along the lines of the current Directory Assistance model.

0% voted for the 555 exchange to be implemented  "As a pay-per-call service,
with or without a price per call cap."

For more information regarding the survey and these results, please contact
Telco Planning at (503) 224-1989.

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 21:04:13 +0000 
From: david dal farra 
Subject:  Noise Spectra_ Beyond Hoth 
Organization: Bell Northern Research 


The ITU-T and IEEE continues to use Hoth spectrum noise in its
specifications.

Hoth noise was a representation of the long term spectral average of
the typical office environment.  Hoth's study was conducted in 1941.
There's apparently been a few changes in the office environment in the
last 50 years.  :-)

Where can I find a more recent study of office noise?  

I'd love to see one that includes the typical automated, computerized
office, with data represented either as a long term spectral average
or (preferably) with some temporal and amplitude constants included.


Cheers,

Dave Dal Farra (gpz750@bnr.ca)
Nortel Technology    Audio Design Group            

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

From: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)
Subject: 800 Protection
Date: 4 Mar 1996 09:56:54 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)


(From a February 29, 1996 letter from the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau
to Database Services Management, Inc.)

"On January 25, 1996, the Common Carrier Bureau directed Database
Service Management Inc. (DSMI) to place in "unavailable" status those
888 numbers identified by 800 subscribers as numbers that those
subscribers may want to replicate in 888.  The purpose of the Bureau's
Order was "to assure interim protection for all equivalent 888 numbers
designated by current 800 subscribers by setting those 888 numbers
aside during the initial 888 reservation period."

The Bureau did not decide whether these numbers ultimtely should be
afforded any permanent special protection or right.  Rather, the
Bureau merely deferred any decision about the permanent protection
pending a resolution of that issue by the full Commission in CC Docket
No. 95-155.

Disputes have now arisen regarding whether certain 888 numbers should
have been made "unavailable" as a result of the Bureau's Order.  Some
800 subscribers have indicated that DSMI or their Responsible
Organizations ("RespOrgs") erroneously omitted from the list of
"protected" numbers certain numbers identified by the 800 subscribers
as numbers that the subcribers wish to protect in the 888 code.

To ensure that these subscribers are protected in the manner
contemplated by the Bureau's Order, DSMI is directed to reclassify as
"unavailable" a number not set aside in this category and subsequently
identified by an 800 subscriber or its RespOrg as a number that was
erroneously omitted from the pool of "unavailable" numbers as long as
that number is still not in "working" status.  Such a request must be
in writing from either: (a) the 800 subscriber of the 888 number at
issue; or (b) such subscriber's RespOrg, and received by DSMI no later
than 11:59 p.m. March 15, 1996, at which time we shall reassess the
situation and determine whether this authority should terminate to be
continued for another specified period.

We emphasize that a number's classification as "unavailable" is an
interim measure pending a decision by the Commission regarding the
disposition of all numbers classified as "unavailable" as a result of
the Bureau's Order."

Database Service Management Inc. can be reached at by phone 908
699-2100, by mail at:


Michael Wade, President
Database Service Management, Inc.
6 Corporate Place
Room PYA - 1F286
Piscataway, NJ  08854-4157


Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand
A leading source of information on 800 issues.
CallBrand@aol.com, 1 800 The Expert, (ph) 212 684-7210, (fx) 212 684-2714
http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And I believe you said earlier that
customers are now permitted to call DSMI direct on this; they no longer
need to go through their carriers, is that correct?  Would you encourage
end users at this point to contact DSMI to 'stake their claim'?   PAT]

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

From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers)
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Date: 4 Mar 1996 05:48:11 GMT
Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire]


In article , rlm@netcom.com says:

> I'm increasingly convinced the European Union is all about screwing the 
> citizens of the signatory nations by cutting off access to cheaper goods and 
> services produced overseas.  

A good example I saw in a British video magazine is the way they treat
camcorders.  Since several manufacturers make VCRs in EU countries but
none (yet) make camcorders in Europe, the tariffs on the former are
much higher.  The problem is that the EU rules class any camcorder
with an external video input as a VCR and impose the higher protective
tariffs on it.  As a result, most PAL camcorders (most of which are
sold in Europe) are not capable of recording from an external source,
even though the corresponding NTSC models often let you do this.

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

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 18:57:37 -0500
From: Gary Novosielski 
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers


In TELECOM Digest V16 #90, Kevin McConnaughey  wrote:

> The FCC has formally affirmed that they do not consider signalling
> via unanswered calls as illegal.  This is not at issue in this case.

To push the envelope a bit further, does anyone know the legal status
of using unaccepted collect calls to convey information?  This would
seem to be a pretty blatant case of obtaining services without paying,
but it only differs from unanswered-ring signaling in degree, i.e., in
bandwidth.

Ironically, this is much easier to do than it was in the past, due to
the automating of collect services, such as MCI's 1-800-COLLECT.  In
the old days, when the operator said, "I have a collect call for
anyone from John Doe," she wouldn't pass any information apart from
the name (or reasonable pseudonym) of the calling party.

But 1-800-COLLECT automatically records the callers name, plays it to
the called party, gets acceptance (or rejection) by a touch-tone
digit, or spoken "Yes," and completes (or rejects) the call, all
without human intervention.  When the system says "Please state your
name," it can't distinguish between "Anna Maria Alberghetti" and "I
need a ride from the library."  As long as the message is fairy short,
the content can essentially be anything.  "Two bucks on Ma Bell in the
3rd at the Meadowlands" might just make it under the wire, for
instance.

Furthermore, the calling party gets verbal feedback on the progress of
the call.  If the line is busy, or not answered, a voice reports the
status to the caller, with the option to try another number.  But if
collect call from "We arrived home safely, Good Night," does get
through, but is not accepted, the caller is told "We were unable to
gain acceptance for this call," which effectively tells them the
message got through.

I'm sure this won't rival cellular ESN snatching for the title of "Top
Telecom Fraud of the Year", but I'd be curious if there are any
industry estimates (public ones or shrewd guesses) on how much of a
problem this is, and if there are any innovative ideas on plugging the
leak.


Gary Novosielski      GPN Consulting             PGPinfo:  keyID A172089
                      gpn@village.ios.com        2C 5C 32 94 F4 FF 08 10
                      finger for public key      B6 E0 DE 4F A2 43 79 92


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But unaccepted collect calls do involve
more than just unanswered ringing. Someone has to answer in order to
receive a message to which they respond. Whatever you can accomplish
within the narrow framework of ringing a phone with no one answering
on the other end is considered legal by FCC rules. As someone pointed
out to me though, I think the only reason the FCC has given this much
latitude on it is because of some heavy pressure put on them by certain
international groups.

In the old days when an operator asked your name and then relayed your
name to the called party, it was pretty difficult to convince the oper-
ator that your name was 'need ride home from the library'. Personally
I think whatever 'savings' the telcos realized by cutting back on the
live operators in favor of robots are false. The robots are unable to
make any real judgment about the customer; something the operators
were able to do easily. Perhaps the telcos feel the operators were so
expensive (salary and benefit-wise) that it will take a whole lot of
petty chiseling (people lying and causing the robots to unwittingly
pass messages) before it becomes a real problem. I don't know how true
it is, but I have heard that some auditing is done on unaccepted collect
calls. If the charges are not accepted, the robot gives whatever was
recorded along with the calling number, the called number and the date/
time to a human being for review. Just as audits are done and eyebrows
raised when an 'excessive' (that is, higher than some statistical 
average) number of 800 calls originate from a certain line; I think
the auditors of unaccepted collect calls have certain parameters they
work with. Why is ac-xxx-xxxx always receiving collect calls they
refuse to accept, etc?  Why did they get a dozen last month when most
people get a dozen in a lifetime?  

And unlike your phone conversation itself, which *cannot* be monitored
legally except under very narrow administrative circumstances and can
*never* be used against you unless the tap (monitoring) was done with
a warrant, etc ... administrative messages not part of your conversation 
itself are under no such privacy restrictions. Telco is always free
to monitor its operators (robot operators) in the performance of their
duties. Therefore it is perfectly legal for auditors to listen to the
tape-recorded things you said to the robot; you were after all saying
it to telco and not to the called party. I doubt that they catch or
even care about every single instance of this, but I would not be sur-
prised if from time to time they make an example of someone who plays
these games a lot.  PAT]

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

From: Michael Franz 
Subject: Re: FCC Warns Callback Providers
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 15:11:35 -0800
Organization: UC Irvine


In article , gordon@sneaky.lerctr.org
(Gordon Burditt) wrote:

> If callback companies were receiving and using Caller ID as the basis
> of the callback (does international Caller ID work at all?), I don't
> see how anyone could call this use unethical.  If they are getting
> real-time ANI, they are paying for that, too.

In some countries, you have to pay for the transmission of CID. Until
very recently, I used to live in Switzerland. About a year ago, Swiss
Telecom changed the rules for calling ISDN numbers. Since a calling
party identification is transmitted even if the call is never
answered, or is busy, the caller is now charged even if the call
doesn't complete. This seems to apply whenever you call an ISDN number,
even in another country such as Germany. (In most places in Europe,
CID is available only with ISDN, and is used as a marketing argument
for selling ISDN)


Michael Franz


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One could say that Caller-ID is a good
way in the USA to pass messages without paying for them. You see my
number and know that it is me calling and choose not to answer. I
guess the FCC ruling allowing it only to the point of ring-no answer
makes sense; there is too much of that going on already with 'toll
saver' answering machines, bogus 'collect' calls and caller-id. It
would be unfair to not allow the callback services that much latitude.

Remember the old-fashioned pagers, the ones that could only emit a
tone signal when they were called?  Quite a few or most of them had
their own DID number, and people used to cheat on those by calling
the operator and asking to make a 'collect call' to the pager number.
The operator would do her thing, get your name (Joe Blow) and release
the call only to have it ring once and respond with the bleating noise
which told you the pager had been or was being signalled. The operator
knew immediatly you had tricked her out of a free call.    PAT]

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

From: dave@westside.net
Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI
Date: 4 Mar 1996 01:33:23 GMT
Organization: The Westside


I don't know if it's coincidence, but we experienced an outage for a
half day on our MCI Internet T1 connection.  We first called the
trouble in to MFS (handles the local loop) who determined the problem
to be at MCI's end.  We called the trouble in to MCI, who, after four
hours or so, reported back that "NO" trouble was found ... Uh huh. If
MFS's circuit was clean and they saw nothing from MCI, the Out of
Service alarm was on our dsu, and traffic couldn't pass thru our site,
what happened ... did our MCI circuit go for a three martini four hour
lunch?


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well excuse me for being rude, but with
MFS, isn't the trouble always someone else's fault?  I mean, how do
you know that MFS, in their perfection (grin) ... hadn't gotten something
botched up?  MFS may be everyone's folk hero now in the very early
days of local loop competition, but wait until they have been around
a few years and aren't on their best behavior any longer.    PAT]

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

From: Tom@Tass.Com (Tom Allebrandi)
Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 07:53:01 GMT
Organization: TA Software Systems/Frontline Test Equipment


clifto@indep1.chi.il.us (Clifton T. Sharp) wrote:

> The initial reply from MCI did more to slander them in MY mind than
> the rumor about customer-list deletion ever could have.

Yeah, me too. Good to see that I am not alone.

> It appears to me that Leslie Aun has no idea what the real story is,
> yet has no problem with denying the "story" that was given, presumably
> in the name of spin control.

> It's not that I took the original article to heart; it was a rumor,
> pure and simple. And PAT intimated as much through his humorous comments.
> It's that MCI seems to be alleging that the article was stated as
> fact,

After reading MCI's response, I carefully re-read the quoted original
posting. It went something like this: (I don't have the MCI rebuttal
or the original posting on my machine anymore ...)

1) I hear rumor of...
2) How DID this happen...
3) Why DID MCI let it happen...

Unfortunately, of the three sentences in the paragraph, the last two
switched from "what if" to "how did".

But, the entire pitch of the posting, plus PAT's "let's not go overboard
until we hear from MCI" clearly put the posting in the land of rumor.

MCI's response sure seemed to me to be smoke to cover the fire ...


Tom Allebrandi
Frontline Test Equipment  |  TA Software Systems  | Valparaiso, IN USA
tallebrandi@fte.com       |  tom@tass.com         | +1-219-465-0108


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As of Monday evening, I have had no
further word from MCI's Ms. Aun ... perhaps she was simply too busy to
write to me today. Or perhaps people there have not yet responded to
her. Since today was a holiday here in Illinois (Casimir Pulaski Day)
perhaps their offices were closed. Perhaps she has been trying to call
me on the phone but cannot reach the 847 area code and when she asks
technicians there about it they say they never heard of an area code
'like that'. I'm sure she will get back to us soon.   PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 16:19:26 
From: rambo@aslan.com (Mike Hale)
Organization: Aslan Control Technologies,Inc.
Subject: Re: 800-Numbers Don't Go Through - Whose Fault?


Don't know about AT&T, but my WilTel LD lines from 914/897 and my
WilTel T-1 from 914/897 to 914/592 were down on Friday. WilTel says
that they had three major DS-3 lines cut in New York. All lines were back
up in about 12 hours.


Mike Hale

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

Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 11:02:40 -0500
From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau)
Subject: Re: New Caribbean NPAs


John R. Levine worries about the breakup of NPA 809:

> Jeez, at this rate the NXX codes will be used up in no time.  The BVI
> have a population of about 10,000 and have, the last time I checked,
> either 3 or 4 prefixes.  And they rate an entire NPA?  I thought
> Bermuda was bad enough with about 20 prefixes.

I can't see what the worry is.  It is true that "at this rate", all 19
of the countries and territories originally in NPA 809 will very soon
each have their own NPA.  Assume that new distinct area codes are also
assigned for Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories, the
Yukon Territory and the future Nunavut (sp?) Territory in Canada, plus
Guam and American Samoa in the Pacific (both of which supposedly want
to join the NANP).  So what?  That's still only a net increase of 24
NPAs, or about 3 percent of the overall area code space.  And for
almost all of those places (possibly excepting Puerto Rico, Jamaica
and the Dominican Republic) no new NPAs will probably ever need to be
assigned in the future.  If it made sense to assign separate NPAs to
each of the sparsely-populated states and provinces in western North
America fifty years ago when fewer than 150 total NPAs were available,
then it surely makes sense to complete the process now that the NPA
pool has quintupled, thus removing the routing and administrative
annoyances posed by NPAs that cover more than one political unit.


Bob Goudreau			Data General Corporation
goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com		62 Alexander Drive	
+1 919 248 6231			Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA

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

From: aveller@vnet3.vub.ac.be (A. Veller)
Subject: Re: Booming Telecom Market in the Netherlands
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 17:34:32 +0100
Organization: Brussels Free Universities VUB/ULB


In article , Alex van Es
 wrote:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What precisely is a 'buzzer' as opposed
> to a pager?  Would this be like the old fashioned pagers here which
> only beeped when called, without delivering any actual message, the
> implication being when it beeped you called a preset number?    PAT]

The difference is the charging regime. A pager would be charged to the
owner of the device and you would have a relatively high rental charge.

"Buzzer" owners do not pay rental charge. You simply buy the device and
you are buzzed by others who then pay a relatively high usage fee. It's
extremely popular with kids, they don't have to pay for the device apart
from the purchase price. Their friends can buzz them, but don't pay for
the communications either, because their parents pay the home subscription
:-). 

If you do have to pay from your own pocket it costs -per buzz- 1.95
guilders during the day and 0.75 guilders in the evening and night,
which is fairly expensive. PTT Telecom has recently (January 1996)
raised the suscribtion tariffs for ordinary pagers for so-called
"frequent users". I don't have exact figures, but according to a Dutch
newspaper article tariffs went up from a few ten guilders to a couple
of hundred and in some cases even thousand guilders a month. PTT
Telecom introduced the new tariff principles to solve the problem of
network overload which was caused by sub-addressing the pagers.
Several pagers could be linked to one subscription and this caused
traffic overload in some instances (or so PTT Telecom claims).

Regarding the buzzers, there has indeed been a huge advertising
campaign, by PTT Telecom, the incumbent operator, and to a lesser
extent Motorola.  The buzzers are no longer the boring drab grey or
black pagers used to be, but they are produced in flashy colours. The
ads range from hip to funny e.g. featuring codes you could use for
buzzing:

12 = I love you
23 = Help, the baby is coming!
34 = Come home, dinner is served.
45 = Come home, dinner is cold!
56 = Drink up that glass and come home immediately!
67 = Don't bother to come home, I've found myself a more reliable boyfriend.

etc.

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 20:26:23 -0800
From: mwharris@ix.netcom.com (Michael W. Harris)
Subject: Cable Datacom News


Patrick,

I've enjoyed TELECOM Digest for some time now and been encouraged by
your success. So much in fact, I've been bitten by the e-publishing
bug myself.

I just launched my own e-pub CABLE DATACOM NEWS.  Info follows.  Other
TELECOM Digest readers may find it interesting given the recent hoopla
surrounding cable modems.

I'd welcome any feedback an e-pub/telecom veteran like yourself may
have on the newsletter or Web site.

Best regards,

Michael Harris
Editor, CABLE DATACOM NEWS

 
   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
   * CABLE DATACOM NEWS LAUNCHES ON THE INTERNET *
   * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
                    
CABLE DATACOM NEWS, a new monthly newsletter tracking the development
of cable modems and high-speed cable data services, is now being
published via Internet e-mail and on the World Wide Web.

The March issue of CABLE DATACOM NEWS includes an inside look at the
Internet Channel, the new service of MSO Jones Intercable that plans
to offer high-speed and dial-up Internet access. Also, in a feature
interview, Forrester Research Senior Analyst Emily Nagle Green
predicts ISDN will lose out to high-speed cable connections by the end
of the decade.

The newsletter is available free at launch by sending an e-mail
message to [majordomo@primenet.com].  Leave the subject line blank,
and in the body of the message type:

		subscribe cdn [your e-mail address]

For example, a proper subscription request sent by 
[johnsmith@internet.com] would read as follows:

		subscribe cdn johnsmith@internet.com

In addition to the monthly newsletter, CABLE DATACOM NEWS provides
e-mail NewsFlash Updates throughout the month, delivering breaking
news as it happens.

CABLE DATACOM NEWS has launched a new World Wide Web site at
[http://CableDatacomNews.com] featuring a comprehensive list of 
cable datacom trials and commercial services, information about 
cable modem specs and vendors, cable modem FAQ, and links to 
cable datacom Internet resources.

For More Information Contact: 

Michael W. Harris, Editor, Cable Datacom News
E-mail:  editorial@CableDatacomNews.com
Phone:   (602)598-9500 


[Feedback From a Veteran: You want my opinion? Run for your life.
It is too late to save me, but there is still time for you to
escape with your sanity, holding up your trousers with one hand
as you run off to safety. You say you are 'encouraged by my 
success' and as long as success is not = money then fine; be
encouraged all you like. I do this because I love doing it, but
believe me you, it has been a more expensive habit than any illegal
drug I can think of and twice as addictive. I am always in debt,
and always going to my principal patrons Microsoft and ITU to ask 
for more money. They give me a few thousand dollars; I immediatly
go and pay off a bunch of past due bills and start over again. I
haven't been taking as many weekend shopping trips in New York as
I used to do years ago, nor do I dine in the more elegant public
houses as I used to do in the 1970's, lingering after dinner with
coffee and a fruity or mint-flavored liquor while critiquing that 
week's performance at the Chicago Symphony or discussing the writing
and philosophy of Jean-Paul Sarte and Ayn Rand. Those days are long
gone. 

When I first started communicating with computer via bulletin boards
and the Internet in its early days, things were much, much different.
No one had any idea things would be as they are today. When I had
been out of high school twenty years in 1980 (I graduated high school
in 1960) I taught my high school algebra teacher Paul Wilkinson how
to program in BASIC on an Apple ][+. By then he was in his seventies,
having retired a few years earlier from a lifetime of teaching high
school mathematics. He lived only a few blocks away from me then and
it was easy to run over there all the time and see him. I said to
him one day, "Paul, wouldn't it have been so wonderful if we had had
these machines when you were teaching school and I was in school." He
was fascinated with the number-crunching ability of the computer I
bought for him, and would sit there for hours playing with it, as
I did and many others in those days. 

Part of my 'success' if you want to call it that has come, I think,
out of my general interest in being an information provider and an
educator of sorts. From 1972 to 1976 I ran the first telephone recorded
information service (other than time/weather) in the history of Illinois
Bell. The people at IBT were even fascinated with it, and they were
the ones who installed it, since in those days no one was allowed to
own any phone equipment of their own. Banks of big, very heavy answering
machines (actually, machines that were used by telco for intercept
messages) were installed. I had twenty-plus lines in a rotary hunt
group starting at 312-HArrison-7-1234 and proceeding upward. I logged
a couple thousand phone calls daily and gave a three minute message
about events in Chicago. Whenever visitors from AT&T or some other telco
happened to be in town, my account rep at Illinois Bell would always
bring them over to my office on Dearborn Street to show off this
installation. IBT had to write a tariff to cover the service they gave
me; it had never been done before like I had it. 

'Success' is what you make of it I guess. Some days I don't feel very
successful at all. I know the time is coming when I am going to have
to relinquish some control on this Digest; simply turn some aspects
of it over to others and trust their judgment in how it is handled.
I am not looking forward to it, but it is getting to the point there
is far too much for one person to do, even when he has the very
generous patrons which I have, plus support from subscribers.  

I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor, but if you decide to
stick it out, don't say in a few years I didn't warn you to get
out while you could.         PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #95
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Mar  5 00:49:15 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id AAA15942; Tue, 5 Mar 1996 00:49:15 -0500 (EST)
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 00:49:15 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603050549.AAA15942@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #96

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 5 Mar 96 00:49:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 96

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (franko32@aol.com)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Dave Richards)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Ed Ellers)
    Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service (Phil Karn)
    Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services (Craig Nordin)
    Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services (Jack Hamilton)
    Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services (Tom Betz)
    Information Wanted on Benchmarks (Vonderay)
    Changing the Way the Call Progress Tones Sound (D.K. Wong)
    Unadvertised MCI Deal During March (Jeremy Schertzinger)
    Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable From Pac Bell? (Mike Sandman)
    Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable From Pac Bell? (Steve Cogorno)
    ISDN in New Jersey (Peter Mokover)
    European CT-1 and CT-2 (Douglas J. Sorocco)
    Communication Jobs Newsletter (Leslie Farrell)
    Information Wanted on Teleglobe (Chris D. Paulse)
    New Website for High Tech Garage Sale (garsale@mindspring.com)
    Apple Internet Router-Free or Buy? Good? (Joe Witkin)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
  ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu

Our archives are located at ftp.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using
anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email
information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to
use the information service, just ask.

*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: franko32@aol.com (FRANKO32)
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service
Date: 4 Mar 1996 22:00:48 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: franko32@aol.com (FRANKO32)


To call for information or to order AT&T's Worldnet Internet Service
call 1-800-WORLDNET.


Regards,

FrankO

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 10:33 CST
From: dr@ripco.com (David Richards)
Subject: Free Internet From AT&T
Followup-To: rci.general


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is a message Dave Richards of
Ripco in Chicago sent out to all his subscribers.   PAT]
	
What other provider would tell it's customers about cheaper competitors?
	
In James Coates Sunday {Chicago Tribune} column he covers AT&T's new
Internet access offering, which provides _free_ access at 14.4/28.8
for one year.
	
The catch? You must be an AT&T long-distance customer.
	
The first five hours each month are free, additional hours are $2.50,
or untimed access is $20/month. There are no additional 'access fees'
or monthly base fees.
	
To get access, call (800) 967-5363. AT&T will mail you a special
version of Netscape Navigator for MS-Windows 3.x. The lines will open
March 14th.
	
The account includes e-mail (downloaded automatically, no long-term
storage), and everything you can access from Netscape -- most(?) other
winsock-compatible software should work as well.
	
Since it's a free service, you have nothing to lose as long as you
keep careful track of your online time (to avoid going beyond the five
free hours), and you'll want to keep another account available since
AT&T does not appear to offer online storage, home pages, etc.
	
After the one year free period, their rates will increase ...
	
------------------------------

From: edellers@shivasys.com (Ed Ellers)
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service
Date: 3 Mar 1996 22:32:21 GMT
Organization: Pennsylvania Online [Usenet News Server for Hire]


In article , cnordin@vni.net says...

> AT&T should have to open its books and announce officially how much it is 
> paying itself for long-distance and telco connections.

> I bet the rate is good and my little ISP should get it as well ... 

First of all, since AT&T doesn't own any telcos it's paying tariffed
rates for telco connections, so there's no question of AT&T "paying
itself" here.

Secondly, AT&T is by no means a monopoly long-distance carrier any
more; why should its use of its own fiber for Internet connections be
any different than that of MCI, Sprint or WilTel?

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

From: Phil Karn 
Subject: Re: AT&T Launches Internet Service
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 18:41:49 -0800
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc


Does anyone have details on exactly what kind of service AT&T will
provide? Their website is pure marketing blather, remarkably
content-free even for AT&T.

The original implication of the service announcement was that the
service is simply dialup PPP, but they make mention of not yet
supporting the Mac. If it's just standard PPP, that wouldn't matter.


Phil

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

From: cnordin@vni.net (Craig Nordin)
Subject: Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services
Date: 4 Mar 1996 03:08:06 -0500
Organization: Virtual Networks 


Lets hope that AT&T does better with Internet services than it did
with computers. It almost killed a great business once called NCR.


http://www.vni.net/
cnordin@vni.net     Fly VNI:  Send E-Mail to  info@vni.net

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

From: jfh@acm.org (Jack Hamilton)
Subject: Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 16:23:11 GMT
Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access


rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin) wrote:

> It may be some indication of the kind of response this is getting, but
> as of 7:12 PST, I couldn't get in to the AT&T web site.  

I was able to get in, and found their sign-up form.  You know what?  
You *have* to select a courtesy title, what they call a "prefix", 
and it has to one of "Mr.", "Ms.", or "Mrs.".  

I can't imagine any service-related need for that information.  

The requirement for choosing one of those titles might discourage
potential users who qualify for "Dr", "Rev", or "Col".  Perhaps that's
the idea -- eliminate customers who might might be educated or
accomplished.  They'll just expect good service anyway, and that would
be a hassle.

> If you want to know about Pac*Bell's Internet offerings (currently
> in Beta test), check out http://www.pbi.net.

I filled out their form 2 months ago; haven't heard a thing from them.


Jack Hamilton   jfh@acm.org

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

From: Tom Betz 
Subject: Re: AT&T to Offer Internet Services
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 11:32:02 -0500


Robert McMillin wrote:

> Well, we all knew it was coming.  Like Pacific Bell, everyone wants to
> get into the ISP business, and AT&T is no exception.  According to
> today's {Los Angeles Times}, there's a front-page article in the
> business section discussing AT&T's new Internet offerings.  The
> company will provide its residential customers free Internet access
> for the next year on a trial basis.  To assist customers, the telecom
> giant will operate a 24-hour help desk.  Service will begin March 14.

And already this ties into the Brock Meeks story on the end of the ISP 
exemption, as the Baby Bells complain that AT&T will be making unfair 
use of same.

See  for
details.  (If you haven't registered as a subscriber, do so -- it's
free for US residents, and well worth the price.)

An excerpt:

          Bell Companies Assail AT&T's Internet Plan

          By JOHN MARKOFF 

               SAN FRANCISCO -- A day after AT&T
               announced its ambitious new strategy to offer
          millions of consumers low-cost access to the Internet, its
          archrivals, the local Bell telephone companies, were
          crying foul. 

          As it turns out, AT&T plans to use a little-known
          loophole in the nation's telephone accounting rules that will
          force the seven regional Bell companies to provide
          Internet customers with free local connections to AT&T's
          network. 

          Unlike telephone voice calls, for which AT&T now pays
          the Bells billions of dollars a year in "access charges" to
          connect local customers to AT&T's long-distance
          network, computer connections made over those same
          local phone lines are exempt from these access charges. 

          That exemption is the result of a ruling the Federal
          Communications Commission made in 1983, when
          computer modems were still a novelty item and the
          Internet was an arcane technology experiment used
          primarily by military researchers and university scientists. 

          "The exemption from access charges was meant to be
          temporary exemption for what was then a fledgling
          industry," said Dave Dorman, president and chief
          executive of Pacific Bell, which provides local service in
          California and Nevada. "The line-services market has
          now matured. With giants like AT&T entering the market,
          it is no longer a fledgling industry, and the exemption is no
          longer justified." 

          The local telephone companies attempted in 1987 and
          again in 1989 to have the exemption lifted, but failed, in
          part because of significant consumer resistance to paying
          higher rates for on-line and electronic data-base services. 

          But now that more than 11 million consumers use the local
          phone network to connect to on-line services like
          America Online and Compuserve, and AT&T plans in
          March to begin marketing Internet access to its nearly 20
          million customers who have computer modems, the Bell
          companies contend that they are subsidizing their
          competitors in a business they themselves plan to enter. 


mayasandra srikrishna wrote:

> Stan.Schwartz@IBMMAIL.com wrote:

>> via singers@pipeline.com (Stuart Singer)

>> AT&T Corp. on Tuesday said it would offer access to the Internet
>> nationwide, presenting free subscriptions to its existing customers if
>> they use the global network for less than five hours a month.

> Do you have the number to call to get this service from AT&T?

1-800-WORLDNET.  A colleague of mine called to place his order and said it 
was voicemail.


Tom Betz ---------  ------ (914) 375-1510 --
tbetz@pobox.com  | tbetz@panix.com

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

From: vonderay@aol.com (Vonderay)
Subject: Information Wanted on Benchmarks
Date: 4 Mar 1996 20:55:06 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: vonderay@aol.com (Vonderay)


I believe there is a Telecommunications Industry benchmarking
consortium (TBI or TBC???).  Will someone please provide the proper
name (acronym), phone number, e-mail address, and/or mail address so
that I may contact them.


Thanks,

Von Cameron   vonderay@aol.com

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

From: D.K. Wong 
Subject: Changing the Way the Call Progress Tones Sound
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 08:14:16 +0800


Hi everybody who can help me.  I have a question.

I currently have a three Line Panasonic PBX. For some time now, I am
getting bored with the way the dialtone, ringing tone, and busy tone
sounds. The tones the PBX gives are the same as the ones we hear from
North American telephone exchanges. I want to hear something diffenent
for a change, such as a dialtone from France. Do I have to change the
tone generator?

I want to change the different tones to the way of European, or Asian
phone systems sound like.  For example, the dialtones in Germany,
China, France etc sounds like the Sprint calling card tone (dial
800 877 8000, and you can hear what I mean).

The ringing tone in the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong etc. sounds
different by having short double tones, instead of the long single
tones we hear in North America. Also, when their phones ring, they
ring in a double ring pattern, as opposed to the single ring pattern
we have in North America. Is there a way to change the way the phone
rings?

Please send a E-mail to :
a15283@mindlink.bc.ca   aka   a15283@mindlink.net

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

From: jeremyps@eskimo.com (Jeremy Schertzinger)
Subject: Unadvertised MCI Deal During March
Organization: Emerald City Business Services
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 22:57:43 GMT


MCI has a deal for their customers that is not publicized anywhere (at
least that I've found).  Residential customers can make up to $75.00
of free calls on Saturdays in March for *free*.  This is all 24 hours
on Saturdays, not just certain hours.  If you don't believe me, call
MCI Customer Service yourself at 800-444-1616 and ask about it.  I
also understand they are going to have another unadvertised deal in
April.


Jeremy Schertzinger - Emerald City Business Services - jeremyps@eskimo.com
631 NW 53rd St. - Seattle, WA  98107 - (206) 365-3886 - (206) 782-5766 FAX

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

From: mike@sandman.com (Mike Sandman)
Subject: Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable from Pac Bell?
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 01:35:17 GMT
Organization: Mike Sandman Enterprises
Reply-To: mike@sandman.com


bapat@gate.net (S. Bapat) wrote:

> In preparation for my move from Florida to California, I called Pac
> Bell to start service, but all the service reps seemed mystified when
> I asked for three numbers mapped to the same line, with "distinctive
> ringing." They tossed me over to marketing, who seemed equally
> mystified, until some supervisor got back to me saying "We've never
> heard of anything like this."

It's funny, I called Ameritech and asked them to put distinctive
ringing on a line. They said they no longer offer distinctive ringing.
Not believing what I was hearing, I asked for a supervisor who told me
the same thing. I was sure I was in the Twilight Zone -- how could they
be discontinuing a popular new service?

After talking to lots of people over a few hours, someone finally told
me that with Ameritech's distinctive ringing, your phone would ring
differently depending upon who was calling you. One ring for your
mother, two short for your bookie etc., but they all would be dialing
the same number. When I explained to this person that was not what I
was calling distinctive ringing, they volunteered that the service I
was looking for was called Ringmaster (or Callmaster - I can't
remember). After all that, they told me I couldn't have it anyway,
because it's not tariffed for our Centrex. Strange.



Mike Sandman  708-980-7710
E-mail:  mike@sandman.com
WWW:  http://www.sandman.com


[TELECOM Digest Editoor's Note: There are two services which are quite
similar here: One allows for a list of up to ten different numbers to
be kept by yourself and updated at any time. When any of these ten
numbers call you -- assuming they are all SS7, else the network reply
is 'this number cannot be added to your list' -- your phone gives a
special ring meaning one of those ten special numbers is calling you.
If you are already on a call then you get a different call waiting
signal as well. I think this is called Priority Ringing.

The other service allows for up to three phone numbers to be programmed
permanently at the switch to ring on your one single line. Each of
these three numbers would cause a special ring to occur. So instead
of having up to ten numbers on a list you maintained waiting for them
to call you and cause a special ring, you divided your friends and
associates up in three categories and gave each category a number to
call. For example personal friends got one number; another number
might be for business calls so you would use a different answer phrase;
and still a third number might be the one ou published in the phone
book but never answered at all or always let it go to your answering
machine. This may be the one they discontinued, although now that 
all the new area codes have started with so many new numbers now
available, it is possible they are offering it again.   PAT]

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

From: cogorno@netcom.com (Steve Cogorno)
Subject: Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable from Pac Bell?
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 16:53:24 PST


S. Bapat said:

> Can this be really true? I know California is a telecom backwater, but
> is it so bad that a standard CLASS service isn't available?  (I've had
> distinctive ringing (six numbers, two lines) from BellSouth in Florida
> for the last six years, it'll be a bummer if I can't get it again.
> What's Pac Bell using, crossbar switches? :-).

This is true.  We do have a service called Distinctive Riging, but it
is not what you are talking about.  Pacific Bell does not allow the
service because of a numbering shortage in California.  With the new
area codes, it's possible that PacBell will begin to offer the
service.

If you ask for Distinctive Ring here, you will probably get "Priority
Ringing."  This allows you to set up a list of numbers that will cause
your phone to ring two short rings if a call comes in from a listed
number.  You need not know the number to put it on priority ring.

On the other hand, phone service here is cheaper than most other states.
Our basic (unmeasured) service is $11.25 per month.


Steve   cogorno@netcom.com

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

From: pmokover@ix.netcom.com (Peter Mokover)
Subject: ISDN in New Jersey
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 21:41:12 GMT
Organization: Netcom


The issue of Bell Atlantic's proposed rates for Residential ISDN
service in New Jersey is now on the agenda for the March 13 meeting
Board of Public Utilities.

Basically, Bell Atlantic is proposing a monthly fee of about $30.00
plus usage fees of two cents/minute/channel daytime and onecent/minute/
channel at night.  The usage fees apply to all calls on an ISDN line 
including voice and fax calls.

If you feel these proposed rates are excessive and/or unjustified, NOW
is the time to write a letter to the Board stating your opinions.

Send your letter to:

Mr. James Nappi
Board of Public Utilities
Two Gateway Center
Newark, NJ 07102

Be sure to send a copy of your letter to:

Ms. Blossom Peretz
Division of Ratepayer Advocate
31 Clinton St
Newark, NJ 07102

Refer to Docket TT95090453.  This will ensure that your letter goes to
the right place.

The Board and the Ratepayer Advocate are interested in hearing the
public's opinions on this matter.  Your letter does not have to be
lengthy or fancy, just state your opinions.

If you have any questions or would like more information about this,
please get back to me via E-mail.  If you need some help getting
started with your own letter to the Board, I can e-mail you a copy of
the one I wrote.


Peter Mokover

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

From: dso189@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Douglas J. Sorocco)
Subject: European CT-1 and CT-2
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 96 21:17:22 GMT
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.   USA


If anyone could please direct me to somewhere I might find the
specifications for the European CT-1 and CT-2 cordless telephone I
would be extremely grateful.


Thanks,

Douglas J. Sorocco
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.   USA
dso189@casbah.acns.nwu.edu

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

From: twbiweekly@aol.com (TWBIWEEKLY)
Subject: Communication Jobs Newsletter
Date: 4 Mar 1996 21:56:51 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: twbiweekly@aol.com (TWBIWEEKLY)


Telephony Works Bi-Weekly is an employment newsletter for
telecommunications industry workers.  We are staffed entirely by
industry people and volunteers who provide feature articles related to
alternative employment options.

We are looking for people willing to share their downsizing and /or
early out experience.  Our April issue will summarize what everyone
has provided so that others facing the same thing in the near future
may be more prepared to make that important decision.

TWB provides free job wanted ads to individuals that are seen by 500
HR Staffing Managers monthly.  These ads are encoded to provide
privacy.

We also summarize classified ads monthly by employer, job title and
location.

If you would like to receive a free hard copy of TWB, please provide
us with mailing instructions email: twbiweekly@aol.com and it will be
posted within 24 hours.

Thanks for your participation!


Leslie Farrell
Publisher/Editor
817/444-8125
fax: 817/444-8137

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

From: cpaulse@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Chris D Paulse)
Subject: Information Wanted on Teleglobe
Date: 4 Mar 1996 14:15:08 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University


To what extent does Teleglobe contol long distance traffic entering
and leaving Canada?  Does their market include calls to and from the
US, or just all other counties besides?  


Thanks in advance.  

Chris Paulse

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

From: garsale@mindspring.com (High Tech Garage Sale)
Subject: New Website for High Tech Garage Sale
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 15:36:28 GMT
Organization: MindSpring Enterprises
Reply-To: garsale@mindspring.com


FYI, since there are some interesting telephone things in the list ...

There's a new Website for the High Tech Garage Sale:

	www.mindspring.com/~garsale.

The Garage has hundreds of new and used computer, audio, security and
home automation products -- some one-of-a-king unusual prototypes,
some regular production models new in the box. Everything's at garage
sale prices. Simple page. Simple business.

If you like, you can join the new automated Garage Sale mailing list
by sending mail to:

        majordomo@lists.mindspring.com

with the following line in the BODY of the message:

        subscribe garsale

You'll get periodic (about monthly or so) advance updates on new
Garage Sale products. You can unsubscribe anytime of course. (If
you've been on the list before, please re-subscribe using this new
method.)

See you in the Garage.

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

From: jwitkin@cts.com (Joe Witkin)
Subject: Apple Internet Router - Free or Buy? Good?
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 07:39:21 -0800
Organization: CTS Network Services


I have heard about "Apple Internet Router" as a possible software
solution for connecting my two ethernet-connected macs to an ISDN line
via a Bitsurfr modem.

Where do I find this program, and how much does it cost?

I presume it still uses the mac's serial port. How much speed can I
gain, if any, on my remote mac which is currently using a Supra 28.8
modem via the Bitsurfr's POTS jack? I would think there would be
considerable overhead for a software router.

Comments appreciated!

(I have two macs in my home connected via ethernet-this is a low-budget
situation!)


Joe Witkin (jwitkin@cts.com)
San Diego, California

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #96
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Mar  5 10:12:03 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id KAA15365; Tue, 5 Mar 1996 10:12:03 -0500 (EST)
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 10:12:03 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603051512.KAA15365@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #97

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 5 Mar 96 10:12:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 97

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Computer Networks Classifications (Lars Poulsen)
    Re: What's Behind Those Walls, Anyway? (Some guy using a vax account)
    Re: Here's What Happens With 1-888-555-1212 (Scott Robert Dawson)
    Re: Telstra Telecard (an Australian Calling Card) (Nawal Aggarwal)
    Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area (Roavery)
    Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results (Lynne Gregg)
    Re: AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available) (Dave Habedank)
    Re: AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available) (M. Tenenbaum)
    Orange County, CA Area Code Splits (Robert McMillin)
    Re: Are RBOCs Practicing Seppuku Marketing? (Dan O'Conor)
    Re: Information Wanted on Teleglobe (Ian Angus)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax 
or phone at:
                      Post Office Box 4621
                     Skokie, IL USA   60076
                       Phone: 500-677-1616
                        Fax: 847-329-0572
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*************************************************************************
*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the              *
* International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland    * 
* under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES)   * 
* project.  Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-*
* ing views of the ITU.                                                 *
*************************************************************************

     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
     to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in 
     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages
should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 18:03:48 PST
From: lars@RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen)
Subject: Re: Computer Networks Classifications
Organization: Rockwell International - CMC Network Products


In article , Octavio Rosas Landa
writes:

> Was ARPANET the first computer network ever existed?
> What kind of network would it be? WAN?

In the 1960's, technology to link computers at a distance from each
other became commercially practical. These devices used circuits
rented from the telephone companies to carry signals between
computers.  In the late 1960's, it became clear that by linking
several computers together, one could build systems that took on new
properties. Somewhere in that timeframe, one could say that a
transition was made from inidividual links to the beginning of
NETWORKS as a new entity. I believe the ARPAnet started in 1969.

> Tanenbaum says that computer networks
> can be classfied on the basis of the distance between processors, and
> therefore, there would be LANs (from 1m to 1 km), MANs (1 km to 100
> km) and WANs (100 km to 10,000 km). There would also be several other
> kinds of classifications, according to their design, type of
> connection, transmission control mechanism, etc.

> But I was wondering, since he doesn't give any hint on the subject of
> size, would there be a classification according to the size of the
> network? If there is, what aspects of the network would stand out as
> most relevant? Are there any other classifications (for example,
> according to speed, security, etc.) which he isn't taking into
> account?

These tend to go together. For example, a LAN is generally within one
building and one company, causing less need for security within the
network.

A WAN can be private or public; when using a public WAN to link sites,
security is of paramount concern.

Speed tends to follow distance, also. To maintain very high speeds
over long distances tends to be prohibitively expensive.


Lars Poulsen			Internet E-mail: lars@RNS.COM
RNS / Meret Optical Comm:s	Phone:        +1-805-562-3158
7402 Hollister Avenue 		Telefax:      +1-805-968-8256
Santa Barbara, CA 93117		Internets designed and built while you wait

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

From: chesson@scsud.ctstateu.edu (Some guy using a vax account)
Subject: Re: What's Behind Those Walls, Anyway?
Organization: Southern Connecticut State University - Computer Center
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 02:17:00 GMT


In article , dave.oshea@wilcom.com
(Dave O'Shea) writes:

[big ol' snip]

> Much like an IXC CO I visited a couple of years back, these people are 
> fanatical about neatness. Not a single chunk of loose cable, nor a stray 
> power cord was anywhere to be seen. Given the hundreds of thousands of 
> wires in the building, this is probably A Good Thing.

As the offspring of an AT&T Network Systems technician, I've had the
chance to see many of the CO's and other switching facilities of SNET.
I must say, SW Bell seems to have a *much* higher standard of neatness
than SNET. Old punch cards, cable sheathing, old equipment, and other
crap is frequently strewn on the floors of most SNET CO's in at least
one room (always seems to be toll for some reason). In the larger
buildings (eg Orange St. in New Haven) neatness runs very high, but
other buildings (Milford & Orange come to mind) seem much more lax in
their standards. Maybe it's smaller offices everywhere, or maybe it's
just SNET, but the level of neatness you describe seems pretty rare.

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

From: srdawson@interlog.com (Scott Robert Dawson)
Subject: Re: Here's What Happens With 1-888-555-1212
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 06:31:29 GMT
Organization: InterLog Internet Services
Reply-To: srdawson@interlog.com


Paul Robinson  wrote:

> Earlier I discussed what happened Friday when I tried to see if the
> report on Cable News Network (CNN) that the 888 area code was now in
> service, was correct.  As I humorously indicated, I couldn't get
> through to 611 the first time I called.

[snip]

> The industry decided that 1-888-555-1212 would not be placed into
> service, apparently because they felt it would set a bad precedent of
> encouraging people to duplicate their 800 numbers in 888.

> Accordingly, no matter which of the two area codes a toll free number is
> in, you still have to use 1-800-555-1212 to look up the number, then dial
> the number whether it's 1-800 or 1-888. 

I was reading in the newsgroup tonight about people in some areas
having trouble when dialing 1-888-555-1212 DA.  So I tried it, at 1.15
EST, (i. e. in the morning). There was a one-second silent pause, then
ringing, six times. Then a polite male voice answered, 'Toll-free
Directory Assistance'. I said that I had dialed 1-888-555-1212, and he
said that the DA was shared between 800 and 888. I guess Bell Canada
is handling this better than AT&T or whatever in the States ...

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

From: Nawal Aggarwal 
Subject: Re: Telstra Telecard (an Australian Calling Card)
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 13:04:28 +0100
Organization: Alcatel/Bell


It seems you have just ASSUMED the cost of international calls made
from outside Australia to any other country other than Australia is
the "normal" international rate to that destination.

There is a lot of misrepresentation in this sales pitch.

I made lot of International calls using the Telstra Telecard assuming
that calls were charged at the NORMAL rate. I discovered when I got
the bill that international calls made from outside Australia cost
more than three times the normal international rates.

For example: 	Australia to India - $1.92 peak time
		Belguim to India thru' Telstra - $5.90 off-peak
	
This basically means that Telstra is charging for two international
destinations e.g. Belguim-Australia, Australia-Belguim.

Ironically it's cheaper to call from Belguim to India directly. I
won't be surprised if it's cheaper to call thru' local carrier to
anywhere in the world.

Also they take 45 days to process the billing for calls made thru'
Telecard. Which means you'll never know how you've spent in the last
45 days thru' this card.

As far as calls to Australia are concerend, OPTUS is cheaper any time.

I don't see why anyone should use Telstra card in any situation.


Cheers,
 
Nawal Aggarwal

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

From: roavery@aol.com (Roavery)
Subject: Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area
Date: 5 Mar 1996 08:29:38 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: roavery@aol.com (Roavery)


Deer Isle, Maine residents are trying to get their local calling area
extended to several adjacent mainland towns.  3000 people live on the
island (half mile offshore) year round, but every call off-island
whether to the local hospital, relatives, stores or computer access is
an expensive toll call.

Last year Maine PUC adopted a rule formalizing "basic calling areas";
the net effect for rural areas was to freeze their existing local
area, unless the town could meet an unrealistic threshhold of calls to
the adjacent areas.  The town has petitioned for a waiver of the
threshhold requirement.

In the half year since receiving our petition, PUC and NYNEX's responses
have been:

  a) please go away;
  b) we need more data;
  c) if the island wants wider access, it will have to pay for it.  

The suggestion under (c) above is that the town will have to pay an
extraordinary premium calling rate so as to totally compensate NYNEX
for lost toll revenues.  Our response is that this "solution"
perpetuates the basic unfairness of a legacy toll structure (adjacent
mainland towns pay a low basic rate to reach a larger area and more
phones).

As we finally meet with NYNEX (and PUC), what are NYNEX's pressure
points and concerns, particularily vis a vis the new telecommunications 
bill?  Do we have to rely on political pressure?  Does the telecommun-
ications world think we should just accept history and pay up?

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

From: Lynne Gregg 
Subject: Re: Call Forwarding and Caller ID Results
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 96 06:14:00 PST


claytonn@onramp.net (Clayton R. Nash) wrote:

> From what I understand, the number that you get depends on two items.
> First of all, it can be set in the CO to pass the first forwarded
> number or the last forwarded number.  I know this applies to voice
> mail, but have not verified it for caller ID -- I would appreciate
> confirmation.

> As I understand it, if the CO is set for first forwarded number, then
> the first number appears;...

> There is nothing in the current protocol that I am aware of that would
> allow for two numbers (unless you replaced the name display with
> another number).  Anyone know more about the details of the protocol?

You're correct.  In the current protocol, it's ONE Calling Party
Number.  The CPN of the CALLER (where the call is originating from as
opposed to Call Forward number) is sent for display.


Regards,

Lynne

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

From: Dave Habedank 
Subject: Re: AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available)
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 23:32:27 -0800
Organization: Netcom


John Bredehoft wrote:

> In article  you write:

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Typically in the past, the local telcos
>> have done the billing for AT&T customers in their territory.
> [snip]

>> Well, that's all over with. I got a note in the mail saying that starting
>> in the next month or two, AT&T is going to be billing all Ameritech
>> customers direct. They are doing that in anticipation of the big fight
>> coming up with Ameritech over offering local service in the Chicago
>> area among other places. Likewise in my Ameritech bill which still
>> included AT&T charges this past month, a note came which said billing
>> for AT&T was 'being phased out' over the next two or three months, and
>> that there might be some overlap for a month or two.  I have always
>> liked the idea of one bill for all telephone service, regardless of
>> the type of call being made. I guess that's over with now.   PAT]

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Today's mail brought another postcard
> reminder from AT&T saying 'your first bill direct from us is going to
> be mailed to you in a few days ... there may possibly be charges from
> AT&T on your next bill from Ameritech as well one last time.'   PAT]

Not necessarily so.  You can call the 800 number on the letter AT&T
sent you and request the billing remain with Ameritech, thus you only
need one check.  I called and AT&T readily switched me back, and I
have six phones (three landline and three cellular).


Dave


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The letter to me did not offer that
option, of calling them and getting switched back. It said the
consolidated billing was over with; done.    PAT]

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

Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 13:57:26 -0600
From: Mark Tenenbaum 
Subject: Re: AT&T Billing (was Re: AT&T True Rewards Not Available)


In article  is written:

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Typically in the past, the local telcos
> have done the billing for AT&T customers in their territory. 
[snip]

> Well, that's all over with. I got a note in the mail saying that starting 
> in the next month or two, AT&T is going to be billing all Ameritech
> customers direct. They are doing that in anticipation of the big fight
> coming up with Ameritech over offering local service in the Chicago
> area among other places. Likewise in my Ameritech bill which still
> included AT&T charges this past month, a note came which said billing
> for AT&T was 'being phased out' over the next two or three months, and
> that there might be some overlap for a month or two.  I have always
> liked the idea of one bill for all telephone service, regardless of
> the type of call being made. I guess that's over with now.   PAT]

We were told at GTE that in instances where AT&T is notifying
customers about their "billing takeback," our customers have a choice
to receive one bill.  Maybe you have that choice with Ameritech.

I know that at least in California, Florida and Texas, AT&T has begun
takeback notification.  For everyone's info, in order for GTE
customers to keep receiving one bill for local and interlata, they can
call the toll-free number on AT&T's change notice or the AT&T number
on their GTE Bill and tell AT&T that you prefer the one bill issued by
GTE.


MARK D. TENENBAUM
Plano, Texas


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I did not see any such 'take back'
option in their letter.   PAT]

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

From: rlm@netcom.com (Robert McMillin)
Subject: Orange County, CA Area Code Splits
Organization: Charlie Don't CERF
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 08:41:29 GMT


Today's {Orange County Register} reports that a split of the 714 area
code is coming.  Currently, 714 has 5.2 million numbers assigned, with
650,000 new numbers expected to be assigned in 1996.  GTE and Pacific
Bell would prefer an overlay, but the California PUC has already
rejected such a proposal for the coming 310/562 split.  The new NPA is
unknown at this time.

The article outlined five potential geographic splits.  Proposal 1 has
north county remaining in 714, with the dividing line along the
southern borders of the cities of Anaheim, Orange, parts of Santa Ana
and Garden Grove, with the beach cities and south county changing to
the new area code.  Proposal 2 is the mirror image of this, with south
county and the beach cities retaining 714.  Proposal 3 is the same as
proposal 1, with the city of Orange moving to the new NPA.  Proposal 4
has all cities from the Los Angeles County border south and east to
Costa Mesa, Tustin, Orange, and Anaheim remaining in 714, with cities
south and east of these going to the new NPA.  Proposal 5 is the same
as proposal 4 but Irvine and Newport Beach become the southern
boundary of 714.

The article notes that Pacific Bell has hired Field Research Corp to
poll Orange County residents to find out which plan they prefer.

My guess is that proposal 5 is what we're going end up with.  The city
of Irvine has too many influential businesses that will want to
minimize confusion for their customers.  Still, something tells me
that Irvine and Newport Beach are probably fueling much of the demand
for phone numbers these days, so another split will be needed, oh,
about five months after this split settles in.

At this rate, my house should have its own NPA in about 20 years.
Watch for it!


Robert L. McMillin  | rlm@helen.surfcty.com | Netcom: rlm@netcom.com
   WWW: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/rl/rlm/home.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Hey, maybe the rooms in your house will
have their own area code, and you can petition the authorities to
allow you to have seven digit dialing between your bathroom and your
kitchen.    PAT]

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

From: doconor@winternet.com (Dan O'Conor)
Subject: Re: Are RBOCs Practicing Seppuku Marketing?
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 21:13:37 GMT
Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc
Reply-To: doconor@winternet.com


On Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:45:12 -0500, Fred R. Goldstein  wrote:

> It's not a tax and it's not even about modems, but it's about the
> changing relationship of supplier and customer.  The FCC is "rumored"
> to be working on new proposals to reclassify all sorts of telephone
> network subscribers as long-distance carriers, subject to the
> dramatically higher rates that long-distnace companies already pay
> for their access to the local exchange.  In 1988 it was mislabeled the
> "Modem Tax" and was shot down in months, only to live on as an undated
> Internet chain letter.  This time, in 1996, it's still unofficial, but
> the rumblings from Washington are there; the FCC is once again looking
> to broaden the scope of "carriers".  This time it's Internet Service
> Providers who are targeted.

Check your PUC and state legislature, too, for other signs of this
nonsense.

> So by pressuring the FCC to revive the reclassification of ISPs and
> VANs as IXCs (don't you love alphabet soup?), the RBOCs may instead be
> creating just the impetus that the CATV industry has been waiting for.
> With the announcement of US West's acquisition of Continental
> Cablevision (atop US West's acquisition of a few other CATVs), we now
> have another major CATV owned by a telecom company who knows that
> there's more to life than HBO.  It's probably a trend.  At long last,
> CATV will almost be forced by market demand to move into the two-way
> transmission business.

And not only the CATV companies, but all the other alternative
carriers will move even more quickly into the residential and small
business markets. I'm reviewing a business plan right now for a
regional competitive dial tone provider that will do just that. The
plan is based on putting a switch in a corn field and buying lots and
lots of bandwidth from a regional equal access provider which now
provides connection services from rural telcos to national IXC's. Then
interconnecting to the local wireline exchange. The target areas are
exurban towns (within one hour's driving distance of a major
metropolitan area) now served by RBOC's, GTE and Sprint-United. The
bulk of the revenues would come from the IXC's in the form of per
minute access charges at rates 50-70% below the incumbent carrier.
Should the FCC re-classify ISP's as IXC's (we're all going to drown in
this alphabet soup) it just creates a whole new market for these
services.

> And the RBOCs (except perhaps their out-of-region CATV affiliates)
> will have put the knife directly into themselves.  They will have gone
> too far, just at the time when their monopoly power was crumbling.
> Just when they were needing most to learn to "delight customers", they
> will have again played their traditional "fleece the monopoly
> ratepayer" game.  It will not be marketing, but Seppuku Marketing --
> insert knife, twist, fall over dead.

The RBOC I once worked for practices what I can only term "Destroy the
village in order to save it" marketing. Instead of deploying higher
quality services and charging premium prices for those services, they
re-package old services, offer them at a lower price, then scratch
their heads and wonder why the revenue curve runs below the lines in
service curve. All in the name of protecting the base from competitive
erosion.


Regards,

Dan O'Conor

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

From: Ian Angus 
Subject: Re: Information Wanted on Teleglobe
Date: 5 Mar 1996 14:51:51 GMT
Organization: Angus TeleManagement Group


cpaulse@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Chris D Paulse) wrote:

> To what extent does Teleglobe contol long distance traffic entering
> and leaving Canada?  Does their market include calls to and from the
> US, or just all other counties besides?  

Teleglobe has a legal monopoloy for all telecommunications traffic
between Canada and other countries, EXCEPT for the U.S. Traffic
between Canada and the U.S. is handled on a bilateral basis by the
carriers involved.

Teleglobe's overseas monopoly is now under review by the federal
government. It may be ended in 1997.


IAN ANGUS                       Tel: 905-686-5050 ext 222                  
Angus TeleManagement Group      Fax: 905-686-2655  
8 Old Kingston Road             e-mail: ianangus@angustel.ca 
Ajax Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7     http://www.angustel.ca

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #97
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Mar  5 20:06:18 1996
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Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id UAA10744; Tue, 5 Mar 1996 20:06:18 -0500 (EST)
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 20:06:18 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603060106.UAA10744@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #98

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 5 Mar 96 18:06:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 98

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    BellSouth: FCC Must Drop "Bill and Keep" Compensation Scheme (Mike King)
    BellSouth Charging Into 1996 After Landmark Year in 1995 (Mike King)
    Re: Latest NANP, New NPA, and INC Information (Mike Fox)
    Misuse of the Internet? (Stuart Zimmerman)
    Buffalo (NY) War On Drugs (Howard S. Wharton)
    Caller ID Pricing Questions (Matthew G. Monsoor)
    AT&T Worldnet for Macintosh Real Soon Now? (John Bredehoft)
    Frame Relay Protocols: SNA and X.25 (aljon@spectra.net)
    Reaching My LD Carrier On My Cellular (Fred Atkinson)
    Last Laugh! An Unusual Telephone Service Call (David McCord)

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
public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America
On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated
newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 

Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual
readers. Write and tell us how you qualify:

                 * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu *

The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick
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     In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft
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     the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily
     represent the views of Microsoft. 
     ------------------------------------------------------------

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All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any
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should not be considered any official expression by the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: BellSouth: FCC Must Drop "Bill and Keep" Compensation Scheme
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 15:13:44 PST


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

 Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:33:53 -0500
 From: BellSouth 
 Subject: BellSouth: FCC Must Drop "Bill and Keep" Compensation Scheme

March 5, 1996

For additional information:
Bill McCloskey - Director Media Relations, BellSouth Corp
Internet: mccloskey.bill@bsc.bls.com
Voice: 202-463-4129

WASHINGTON-BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS) has told the Federal
Communications Commission it must abandon its controversial "bill and
keep" proposal and allow the affected companies to continue
negotiating with each other for completing calls initiated on the
other company's network, irrespective of their associated costs. The
FCC's proposal governs interconnection of Commercial Mobile Radio
Service (CMRS) providers with incumbent local exchange carriers.

In its comments to the FCC (Docket 95-185) filed late Monday,
BellSouth noted that the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which became
law after the FCC made its bill and keep proposal, prevents the
Commission from mandating this proposal as a replacement for
negotiated interconnection compensation.

"In the 1996 Act, Congress has adopted a single, uniform
interconnection policy that is equally applicable to wireless and
wire-based telecommunications carriers. In light of this new statute,
there is no legal basis for the Commission to adopt its proposed 'bill
and keep' policy," BellSouth said. The new law requires parties be
given freedom to negotiate such interconnection under state
jurisdiction as the primary oversight authority, not by federal
mandate.

Wireless calls completed to telephones on the wired network far
outnumber calls completed going from wireline to wireless phones.
BellSouth is negotiating voluntary interconnection agreements with
potential competitors, as the new law requires.

"The law effectively requires the Commission to terminate this
proceeding, freeing it to devote its resources to other aspects of the
Act which will bring consumers the benefits Congress intended," said
David J. Markey, BellSouth Vice President Governmental Affairs. Freely
negotiated interconnection agreements between wireless and local
exchange companies have been working satisfactorily for years," he
said.  If there was ever an example of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix
it,' this is it," he said.

In addition to pointing out that the new law prevents the FCC from
moving forward with this proposal, BellSouth said, "There is simply no
valid factual or policy basis for the Commission to impose a 'bill and
keep' requirement."

BellSouth is a $17.9 billion communications services company. It
provides telecommunications, wireless communications, directory
advertising and publishing, and information services to more than 25
million customers in 16 countries worldwide.

Internet users: For more information about BellSouth Corporation visit 
the BellSouth Webpage http://www.bellsouth.com

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: BellSouth Charging into 1996 After Landmark Year in 1995
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 15:14:14 PST


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

 Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:33:26 -0500
 From: BellSouth 
 Subject: BellSouth Charging into 1996 After Landmark Year in 1995


For additional information:
		Bill Todd 1-800-803-2236
	        or 972-2984 (Birmingham)

"It has been compared to breaking down the Berlin Wall,"
BellSouth-Alabama president Neal Travis said, concerning the sweeping
national telecommunications legislation that was recently signed into
law.

The "walls" coming down, he said, are those red-tape barriers that
until now have kept BellSouth (NYSE: BLS) from fully competing in
markets such as long distance service.

"The Telecommunications Act of 1996 now means that consumers will have
more choices, not only for local service, but for long distance and
cable services as well.  We are going 'full speed ahead' in
immediately offering BellSouth long distance service to our cellular
customers, and within a year or so we can offer it to our residential
and business wireline customers.  In fact, we've set up BellSouth Long
Distance as our company to offer these services," Travis said.

"We want our customers to associate our name with all their
telecommunications needs, which is the biggest reason we changed our
name to BellSouth from South Central Bell last year.  And even though
this new law is probably the single biggest event in modern
telecommunications history, we can't minimize this name change and
other landmark events that BellSouth and our Alabama customers saw in
1995.

"For instance, we became the first state in the country to convert to
a new type of area code during 1995.  The '334' area code in south
Alabama will allow us to satisfy the state's ever-increasing demand on
telephone, fax, paging and cellular numbers for years to come.

"Hurricanes Erin and Opal also cannot be forgotten.  The overwhelming
majority of BellSouth's customers had uninterrupted telephone service
during these devastating storms.  But then, we've invested a great
deal in our network to make sure it's the best one possible.

"In fact, we are currently spending more than $300 million in Alabama
each year, upgrading and maintaining our state-of-the-art network, and
adding new services to make our customers' lives easier.  During 1995,
some of these services included enhancements to our Caller ID,
MemoryCallSM and Call Waiting services, with sales of Caller ID
service increasing by some 185%.  And we continue to serve customers
at their convenience, by having our residential customer call centers
open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"In 1995, the number of subscriber lines increased by 3.8 percent, and
we expect that growth to continue.  Nearly half of that growth is
coming from customers ordering additional lines for their homes and
businesses, as computer modems and fax machines are helping drive that
need.

"BellSouth's new price regulation plan, approved by the Alabama Public
Service Commission last August, makes sure our ever-growing
'information society' doesn't create 'information have-nots' in
Alabama.  First, the plan caps all BellSouth monthly telephone basic
rates for the next five years -- they can't go up, and in many cases
they'll go down," Travis said.  "Secondly, we will continue to serve
our rural and low-income customers in Alabama, even if a rival
telephone company doesn't compete to serve them.

"We are extremely excited as we head into 1996," Travis continued.
"Not only are we helping change the face of telecommunications, we are
also a corporate sponsor of the Olympic Games, which not only include
the Atlanta Games but also the Birmingham soccer venue.  We're excited
about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase our state and
region.  "This year promises to be a very challenging one for
BellSouth in Alabama.  We want our customers to continue to count on
us as both the provider of all their telecommunications needs, and as
an outstanding corporate citizen in the communities we serve."

BellSouth is a $17.9 billion communications services company.  It
provides telecommunications, wireless communications, directory
advertising and publishing, and information services to more than 25
million customers in 16 countries worldwide.

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

Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152

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

From: Mike Fox 
Date: 5 Mar 96 16:09:49 
Subject: Latest NANP, New NPA, and INC Information


In , Mark J Cuccia  writes:

> Bellcore NANPA finally corrected some of the errors in their webpage 
> the other day (http://www.bellcore.com/NANP), and included *two* new 
> Caribbean area codes as well! 

> 284 = British Virgin Islands (BVI)  
> 473 = Grenada (GRE)       

> Some of the following are actually in effect, some have dates announced
> to begin permissive dialing, and some have dates still TBA:

> 242 Bahamas (BHA)   
> 246 Barbados     
> 268 Antigua (including Barbuda) (ANT) 
> 284 British Virgin Islands (BVI)
> 441 Bermuda                                                  
> 473 Grenada (GRE) (and Carricou?)
> 758 St.Lucia (SLU)
> 787 Puerto Rico (PUR)     

This isn't just happening in the Carribean.  I just noticed that the
352 area code, which includes parts of Central Florida, spells FLA.

I wonder if that was intentional, and if there are other neat
spellings like that out there that we haven't noticed. I glanced at a
couple of others and couldn't see any other neat spellings, but maybe
they're there ...

I always wondered how they came up with these new area codes.  I
always thought they tried to pick one that wasn't already being used
as an exchange prefix in the area it's going to cover (but that was
just a guess on my part). I would be interested in hearing any other
insight on how they come up with these magical three-number
combinations (besides the ones that spell something).


Mike 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here in the north suburbs of Chicago we
have the villages of Wilmette, Winnetka and Kenilworth directly north
of me where it is believed a considerable amount of wealth is to be
found, and *our* area code is 847, which Ameritech is fond of telling
us spells VIP for Very Important People.  PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 96 15:23 EST
From: Stuart Zimmerman <0007382020@mcimail.com>
Subject: Misuse of the Internet?


Pat -

What follows is an interesting whine  I mean, press release.  I
do not agree with their proposed solution.  However, they have a valid
point.  Note, though, they only count the cost of one side of an
Internet telephone conversation in their analysis.

FCC PETITIONED TO STOP MISUSE OF THE INTERNET!

WASHINGTON, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The America's Carriers
Telecommunication Association (ACTA), a trade association of
competitive, long distance carriers today petitioned the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to stop companies from selling
software and hardware products that enable use of the Internet to
voice long distance services.

    A growing number of companies are selling software programs with
ancillary hardware options that enable a computer to transmit voice
conversations.  This, in fact, creates the ability to "by-pass" local,
long distance and international carriers and allows for calls to be
made for virtually "no cost."  For example, on-line service providers
generally charge users around $10.00 for five hours of access and then
around $3.00 for each additional hour.  Five hours equals 300 minutes,
divided by $10 is 3.3 cents per minute.  The average residential long
distance telephone call costs about 22 cents per minute or seven times
as much.

    The Internet is a unique form of wire communications. The rapid
growth of the Internet is stressing the capacities of the Internet
itself. The Internet access points are growing at 50% per month with
subscriber growth running close to 30% per month.  Individuals are
accessing the Internet for more and more business applications such as
market research, news, and advertising with corporate web sites
exploding, to say nothing about using the Internet for E- mail
applications.

    ACTA submits that it is incumbent upon the FCC to exercise
jurisdiction over the use of the Internet for unregulated interstate
and international telecommunications services.  Long distance and
international carriers must be approved by the FCC to operate and must
file tariffs before both the FCC and state public service commissions.
All of these requirements are stipulated in the Communications Act of
1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

    Technology may once again be surpassing government's ability to
control its proper use.  However, the misuse of the Internet as away
to "by-pass" the traditional means of obtaining long distance service
could result in a significant reduction of the Internet's ability to
transport its ever enlarging amount of data traffic. Therefore, ACTA
has petitioned the FCC to define the type of permissible
communications which may be effected over the Internet.

    America's Carriers Telecommunication Association was founded in
1985 by independent long distance companies to serve the needs of
small businesses and to advance the goals of more effective
competition. ACTA's membership today includes over 130 companies
engaged in providing telecommunications services.


CONTACT:  Charles H. Helein, general counsel, 703-714-1301, or Jennifer Durst-
Jarrell, executive director, 407-332-9382, both of America's Carriers
Telecommunication Association

forwarded by:
Stuart Zimmerman                           7382020@mcimail.com  
Fone Saver, LLC                            http://www.wp.com/Fone_Saver
"Helping Consumers Save on Long Distance"  1(800)313-6631


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well let me ask you this Stuart ...
Since your business is 'helping consumers save on long distance' do
you ever recommend I-Phone as one way for them to do so, or do you
recommend only the traditional types of carriers?  Does it seem odd
that ISP's whine about having the giants like AT&T and MCI getting
into the business of selling Internet services while thinking nothing
of computer users having I-Phone as an inexpensive way to communicate
voice?  It seems like everyone is getting into each other's business
these days. Maybe someone should write to the FCC and petition them
about 'misuse of the telephone network' whenever telco decides to try
and cut in on the cableco or the local ISP. 

A sign on the wall in a local tavern comes to mind. Although the
intent of the message is a bit different, it discusses businesses
getting into venues which traditionally 'belong' elsewhere. "We have
an understanding with the local bank. They do not sell Booze, and we
do not extend credit."  Yes, I know what the tavern was saying, but it
is an interesting thought. If AT&T can be in the credit card business,
why shouldn't Visa operate a telephone company?  But if they tried,
you know the telcos would be angry. Personally I see the ISPs of today
as the telcos in the early twentieth century; making more money than
they know what to do with. Just as telephones earned billions and
gazillions of dollars for their stockholders in the first half of this
century I think ISPs are going to be very wealthy in twenty years.  PAT]

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

From: yhshowie@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Howard S Wharton)
Subject: Buffalo (NY) War On Drugs
Date: 4 Mar 1996 20:32 EST
Organization: University at Buffalo


On the latest war on drugs in Buffalo, NY, the police have targeted 20
pay phones for either removal or modification on city street corners
in the Broadway-Fillmore area along Genesee Street between Fillmore
and Bailey Avenues. This area is a high crime area located in the
cities east side. NYNEX which owns most of the phones removed some and
the rest will be modified that will prohibit calls to beebers and
cellular phones. In addition, the phones will automatically turn off
at night. The only calls allowed during the night will be either to a
operator or 911. Business people and residents of the area support the
plan that will remove drug trafficking from the area.  Many people who
wanted to use the phones were intimidated by the dealers who hung
around the phones.

  Last year the Common Council gave the police control over public pay
phones and they must be licensed and the police can have the phones
removed or require restrications on them if they feel it's necessary.

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

From: Matthew G. Monsoor 
Subject: Caller ID Prcing Question
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 15:52:03 -0800
Organization: California State University Sacramento


Hello to the group, 

Here in California caller ID will become available starting June 1,
1996 thanks to the court.  Anyway Pacific Bell is going to charge
$6.50/mo. for this service, GTE is going to charge $7/mo (pending PUC
approval), and Roseville Telephone (local telco) is going to charge
$3/mo (also pending PUC approval). What I would like to know from most
of the users here, who have had this service for awhile since
California is the last to offer, what does your telco charge??

Please EMail me as I don't want to clutter up the newsgroup and I 
don't get to read most of the articles here anyway.  Thank you.


Matthew G. Monsoor - CSU Sacramento - monsoor@csus.edu
University Telecommunication Services - (916) CSU-MATT
To my Amateur Packet Radio:  n6zsk@km6px.clselis.com 

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 09:51:09 +0800
From: johnb@bird.Printrak.Com (John Bredehoft)
Subject: AT&T Worldnet for Macintosh Real Soon Now?
Organization: Printrak International Inc.
Reply-To: johnb@Printrak.Com


(1) Has anyone heard an *authoritative* timetable for Macintosh support for
Worldnet? 

I called the (800) 967-5363 number and was told that Mac support
should be available in June, but the woman was obviously reading a
scripted response. By the way, she was ready to take my software order
anyway (I declined).
 
(2) In their current Windows software offer, why are they providing a
"special" version of Netscape Navigator for Windows? What are the
differences between this version and a "standard" version?

I'm somewhat leery of placing "custom" software on my computer, and
I'm wondering whether there is some technical reason that I can't use
my own software, or if there's something else going on. (I have
paranoid visions of the AT&T software "cleaning up" drivers from other
applications, or of seeing a Prodigy-esque AT&T advertisement on the
bottom of every Netscape screen ...)

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

From: aljon@spectra.net
Subject: Frame Relay Protocols: SNA and X.25
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 96 13:11:14 GMT
Organization: Spectra.Net Communications, Inc.


Can anyone tell me where I might find some technical information about
two of the protocols, SNA and especially X.25 that run under the Frame
Relay multiprotocol encapsulation standards? Are there any groups or
ftp sites where information like this is stored?

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

Date: Tue, 05 Mar 96 09:18:59 CST
From: Atkinson, Fred 
Subject: Reaching My LD Carrier On My Cellular


I just switched my long distance carrier (on my cellular phone) from
Sprint to LDDS.  After switching, I attempted to dial the LDDS
operator (to verify I was switched to LDDS).  Bell Atlantic Mobile
Systems does not allow 700, 900, or 976 calls so I can't dial the
700-555-4141 number.
     
I am unable to reach the LDDS operator.  Every time I dial '00', I get
three loud beeps (not a busy or a re-order) over the speaker of the
cell phone, then it disconnects.
     
I contacted Bell Atlantic Mobile systems to complain.  They assure me
I've been switched to LDDS.  They took a trouble on it last week and
promised me a call back on Monday (yesterday).  I have received no
call.  When I checked with customer service last night I was told I
would be called when they corrected the problem.
     
I have had a lot of problems trying to get resolutions to problems
with Bell Atlantic Mobile systems.  I've been attempting to get them
to address why they typically take three to four weeks to post my
payment, sometimes lose my payment, and sometimes deposit my check
without posting it to my account for several years and have still not
gotten it resolved.  It's interesting that no one else that I do
business with has these types of problems.
     
Additionally, the touch tone accessed 'balance' machine now transfers
me to customer service every time I try to pull my balance (without
giving it to me, of course).  I have also opened a trouble ticket on
that but never get any resolution.
     
Does anyone have suggestions for resolving the above problems?  Also,
does anyone know a name and address for an upper management person at
Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems?
     
Help.  


Fred

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 09:35:53 PST
From: david_mccord@INS.COM (David McCord)
Subject: Last Laugh! An Unusual Telephone Service Call


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For all the people who asked to see the
story about the barking dog once again, here it is. Now I hope not to
bother with it again for at least a couple more years. It is not my
favorite joke anyway.  PAT]
     
                  ----------------------

This story was related by Pat Routledge of Winnepeg, ONT about an unusual
telephone service call he handled while living in England.

It is common practice in England to signal a telephone subscriber by
signaling with 90 volts across one side of the two wire circuit and ground
(earth in England).  When the subscriber answers the phone, it switches to
the two wire circuit for the conversation.

This method allows two parties on the same line to be signalled without
disturbing each other.

This particular subscriber, an elderly lady with several pets called to say
that her telephone failed to ring when her friends called and that on the
few occations when it did manage to ring her dog always barked first.  Torn
between curiosity to see this psychic dog and a realization that standard
service techniques might not suffice in this case, Pat proceeded to the
scene.  Climbing a nearby telephone pole and hooking in his test set, he
dialed the subscriber's house.  The phone didn't ring.  He tried again.
The dog barked loudly, followed by a ringing telephone.

Climbing down from the pole, Pat found:

     a. Dog was tied to the telephone system's ground post via an iron
chain and collar.

     b. Dog was receiving 90 volts of signalling current.

     c. After several jolts, the dog was urinating on ground and barking.

     d. Wet ground now conducted and phone rang.

Which goes to prove that some grounding problems can be passed on.

This anecdote excerpted from Syn-Aud-Con Newsletter, Vol4, No 3, April 1977.


david_mccord@ins.com          |        International Network Services
+ 1 510 831 4743 voice        |            San Ramon, California, USA
+ 1 510 743 3777 fax          |            Network Systems Consultant

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #98
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Tue Mar  5 22:24:58 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id WAA22812; Tue, 5 Mar 1996 22:24:58 -0500 (EST)
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 22:24:58 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603060324.WAA22812@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #99

TELECOM Digest     Tue, 5 Mar 96 22:25:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 99

Inside This Issue:                         Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Unadvertised MCI Deal During March (Christopher Rosebrook)
    Re: Unadvertised MCI Deal During March (John Meissen)
    Re: Cellular Phone Back in Service (Clifford D. McGlamry)
    Re: 800 Protection (Judith Oppenheimer)
    800 / 888 Replication Madness (Ken Weaverling)
    800 Numbers From ATT (Jon Solomon)
    Re: AT&T Billing (Joseph M. Hillebrandt)
    FCC Ponders Cellular Enhanced 911 Service (Monty Solomon)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Eric Bohlman)
    Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems (Lynne Gregg)
    LEC-CMRS Interconnection (Calvin S. Monson)
    Re: Changing the Way the Call Progress Tones Sound (Chris Boone)
    Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable From Pac Bell? (Mike King)

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

From: Christopher.Rosebrook@mci.com (Christopher Rosebrook)
Subject: Re: Unadvertised MCI Deal During March
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 20:21:28 GMT
Organization: 1-800 MUSIC NOW Online Marketing
Reply-To: Christopher.Rosebrook@mci.com


The Friends & Family Fanfares program is free and available to all MCI
residential customers.  There is a new promotion every month.

Instead of calling the number below (for calling card customer
service), please call the automated enrollment VRU at 1-800 FRIENDS.
You'll be able to process your request more quickly that way and it's
easier to remember.  Call 1-800 FRIENDS for future Fanfares offers
too.

Jeremy, thanks for sharing the news that MCI has yet another unique
benefit available exclusively for MCI residential customers.  Hope you
enjoy it!


Regards,

Christopher Rosebrook
1-800 MUSIC NOW

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 96 22:05:01 GMT
From: jmeissen@pyramid.com (John Meissen)
Reply-To: jmeissen@pyramid.com
Subject: Re: Unadvertised MCI Deal During March


jeremyps@eskimo.com writes:

> MCI has a deal for their customers that is not publicized anywhere (at
> least that I've found).  Residential customers can make up to $75.00
> of free calls on Saturdays in March for *free*.  This is all 24 hours
> on Saturdays, not just certain hours.  If you don't believe me, call
> MCI Customer Service yourself at 800-444-1616 and ask about it.  I
> also understand they are going to have another unadvertised deal in
> April.

Since I have MCI and hadn't heard of this, I called to verify. It's
true, but it's for 'Friends & Family' customers. I had them switch me
to that package.

Evidently MCI is running various monthly specials. In February they
allowed free calls on Valentine's Day.

Note: The free saturdays is domestic US calls only, no overseas calls.
(I didn't ask about calls to Hawaii or Alaska).


John Meissen    jmeissen@teleport.com

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

Date: 05 Mar 96 11:09:25 EST
From: Clifford D. McGlamry <102073.1425@compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Back in Service


> Can someone tell me what should be so difficult about removing one
> number from a cell phone and replacing it with a different number?
> Why should it require several phone calls over three days and going
> a weekend with no service at all?  

I won't say I told you so Pat :-), but the problem here goes back to
what I said when you were an excited new customer.  Frontier, AKA
Allnet, AKA whatever else they want to call themselves, is a long
distance reseller. They have tried to be a cellular reseller in a
number of markets, but they just can't seem to understand the support
issues involved with cellular customers.

The base problem you are having was caused thus: in a cellular switch,
an Electronic Serial Number can be assigned to one, and only one,
number at a time.  There is no way they could activate the second
number without disconnecting the existing number first.  They should
have known this, but remember they are really a long distance company
(and LD doesn't work this way).  Due to the nature of the way
Frontier is set up, they are most likely faxing over activation/change
orders to Ameritech for processing.  When this request hit Ameritech,
it COULDN'T be processed (as the number was still active).  The
activations section is a busy place, so they can't follow up when one
won't go through.  The follow up process belongs to the reseller (in
this case Frontier).

Pat, my company, Robin Hood Telecommunications based in Atlanta, was
the first successful cellular reseller in Atlanta.  We have been the
price leader from day one.  We watched Allnet try this the first time
here, and fail.  They didn't learn much from that experience.  The
training my people have to go through makes the carriers shudder at
the expense.  My people are ALL trained to the level of THEIR
technical support staff, and our customers know it too.  One our
customers call in, they get an answer from the person who answers the
phone (no voice mail jails, no ACD ques, real people answer the
phone).  We have direct links into the carriers computer systems, so
we submit our own orders and troubleshoot our own problems.
Troubleshooting can be completed in less than 20% of the time the
carrier takes to do the same function because our people know what
they are doing.

There are good cellular resellers, but I have to seriously question
someone who thinks they can do it without an office in the area they
are serving.  The good resellers throughout the country have certain
traits in common: They have an office open to the public in the area.
They don't operate out of their basements.  They have their own repair
and programming facilities or they have contracts in place to provide
the services they don't have.  The ones that have direct access to
activate and deactivate their own lines (computer links instead of
faxing requests) are the ones that are truely on the fast track.

Due to the nature of cellular, a reseller probably can provide better
customer service, and can usually provide very competitive pricing on
the service.  But wireless communications will always require more
customer service than a long distance company is accustomed to
handling.  Much of this is due to the way a customer views the
cellular phone (it's just a glorified cordless phone right?  WRONG!).
90% of our roaming questions and 40% of the local service area
questions are driven by people who don't understand the technology,
and that's okay.  We are set up to handle this.  But if you are doing
this as an absentee company, how are you going to understand what the
customer is talking about when they mention having a problem in the
area of this or that shopping mall?

There are some unfortunate lessons to be learned here, but one of the
oldest is probably the most sucinct: CAVEOT EMPTOR!


Cliff McGlamry
Robin Hood Telecommunications
Tucker, GA


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, excuse me, but I have found that
in general, Frontier cellular service has been pretty good. Now much
of the credit may go to Ameritech, granted, since that is who they are
reselling around here, but the way I look at it I am getting Ameritech
cellular service at a very good discounted, wholesale rate. 

Regards the one number per ESN, how do you suppose they handle phones
with dual- or quad-NAMs?  You *can* have more than one number per ESN,
it just requires supervisory override at the switch. That was the
problem here all along it seems. Now I'll grant that I know more about
cellular service than the 'typical' customer, and the 'typical' customer
might have been very befuddled by it all as I was. Frontier should
have known about that and flagged the order in that way when it was
sent to Ameritech. On the other hand, Ameritech should have caught it
also but didn't. And based on my earlier experience, when I had my
Milwaukee 414-573 number installed on the second NAM and how that got
stalled the same way, I probably should have tipped off Frontier in
the beginning that I had two numbers in the phone but I failed to do
so.

Even though all my Frontier accounts (two cellular numbers on one phone,
an 800 number and one of my residence lines defaulted to one plus on
Allnet) are billed together apparently it is not obvious when the
rep talks to a customer that more than one number is involved. You
would think they would cross reference the numbers to each other on
any one of the accounts they pulled up. Maybe they do and the rep still
did not know an override was needed to force both numbers on.

I don't think they fax Ameritech; they seem to do it right from their
own terminals like a lot of dealers I have seen. When I first requested
the change from 630-726 to 847-727 the Frontier rep typed it in and
pulled up a number for me then, and initially claimed it would be
'up and running' in an hour or two.

Side note: as one might suspect, the NEC 110 phone has been through a
lot of programming the past few days  ... and allegedly it
should have locked out by now, at least if the Bishop book documentation
is to be believed. Bishop claims it locks after five re-programmings.
As a matter of fact, it did not. I can sit here now and diddle with it
as I wish. Curious ... Overall I am satisfied with Frontier and the
Ameritech service they are selling me. I wish they would correct those
bugs with *711 and 700 calls however.   PAT]

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

From: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)
Subject: Re: 800 Protection
Date: 5 Mar 1996 11:36:54 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Reply-To: callbrand@aol.com (CallBrand)


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And I believe you said earlier that
> customers are now permitted to call DSMI direct on this; they no longer
> need to go through their carriers, is that correct?  Would you encourage
> end users at this point to contact DSMI to 'stake their claim'?   PAT]

Pat, yes, they can go directly to DSMI (from the middle of the fourth
paragraph of the order, "Such a request must be in writing from
either: (a) the 800 subscriber of the 888 number at issue; or (b) such
subscriber's RespOrg,...")  FYI, DSMI's phone number is 908 699-2100.
They'll require a written request, including confirmation that the
caller is the holder of the comparable 800 number.

That subscribers can go to DSMI directly is a rather groundbreaking
part of this order, and would appear to formally recognize the
conflict of interest that Resp Orgs have evidenced in their
mishandling of so many subscribers' orders.

And yes, I would encourage end users to seek replication.  It would be
a shame if only the largest and most savvy subscribers, originally
included in the set-aside, received protection for their 800 numbers.

Since the choices are to take their chances on duking it out with
reservations via Resp Orgs, or go with the set-aside, the set-aside
seems safer, even with the "threat" of auction.  We have determined
that 888 COLLECT, MUSIC NOW, COMPARE, THE MOST, PIN DROP, etc. are
included in the set-aside file with DSMI.

So that it would appear to be in the carriers best interests to put
their best (self-serving, and incidentally-subscriber-serving) efforts
toward having replication granted.


Judith

        --------   the original item repeated below -----

(From a February 29, 1996 letter from the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau
to Database Services Management, Inc.)

"On January 25, 1996, the Common Carrier Bureau directed Database
Service Management Inc. (DSMI) to place in "unavailable" status those
888 numbers identified by 800 subscribers as numbers that those
subscribers may want to replicate in 888.  The purpose of the Bureau's
Order was "to assure interim protection for all equivalent 888 numbers
designated by current 800 subscribers by setting those 888 numbers
aside during the initial 888 reservation period."

The Bureau did not decide whether these numbers ultimtely should be
afforded any permanent special protection or right.  Rather, the
Bureau merely deferred any decision about the permanent protection
pending a resolution of that issue by the full Commission in CC Docket
No. 95-155.

Disputes have now arisen regarding whether certain 888 numbers should
have been made "unavailable" as a result of the Bureau's Order.  Some
800 subscribers have indicated that DSMI or their Responsible
Organizations ("RespOrgs") erroneously omitted from the list of
"protected" numbers certain numbers identified by the 800 subscribers
as numbers that the subcribers wish to protect in the 888 code.

To ensure that these subscribers are protected in the manner
contemplated by the Bureau's Order, DSMI is directed to reclassify as
"unavailable" a number not set aside in this category and subsequently
identified by an 800 subscriber or its RespOrg as a number that was
erroneously omitted from the pool of "unavailable" numbers as long as
that number is still not in "working" status.  Such a request must be
in writing from either: (a) the 800 subscriber of the 888 number at
issue; or (b) such subscriber's RespOrg, and received by DSMI no later
than 11:59 p.m. March 15, 1996, at which time we shall reassess the
situation and determine whether this authority should terminate to be
continued for another specified period.

We emphasize that a number's classification as "unavailable" is an
interim measure pending a decision by the Commission regarding the
disposition of all numbers classified as "unavailable" as a result of
the Bureau's Order."

Database Service Management Inc. can be reached at by phone 908
699-2100, by mail at:


Michael Wade, President
Database Service Management, Inc.
6 Corporate Place
Room PYA - 1F286
Piscataway, NJ  08854-4157

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

Judith Oppenheimer, President, Interactive CallBrand
A leading source of information on 800 issues.
CallBrand@aol.com, 1 800 The Expert, (ph) 212 684-7210, (fx) 212 684-2714
http://www.users.nyc.pipeline.com:80/~producer/

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

From: weave@hopi.dtcc.edu (Ken Weaverling)
Subject: 800 / 888 Replication Madness
Date: 5 Mar 1996 14:50:08 -0500
Organization: Delaware Technical & Community College


This entire nonsense of duplicating numbers in 888 that already exist
in 800 is absolutely ridiculous.

Why not just let companies who are fearful of under-handed tactics
regarding 888 just register their 800 number and their area of trade.
That number would then not be assigned to a similar business in 888.

So 1-888-356-9377 would then be available for assignment to any
company to use that doesn't sell flowers, for example.

By duplicating 888 numbers, we'll be running out of 888 sooner and
have the same problem in other toll free codes. Of course, this is
stating the obvious.

If Apple Computer and Apple Records can co-exist, then so can
1-800-FLOWERS and 1-888-356-9377. Just ensure they don't tread into
each other's markets.


Ken Weaverling,  Delaware Tech               weave@hopi.dtcc.edu   (WHOIS: KJW)
                   finger me for PGP and home page info.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The proponents of replication seem to
feel that it will be harder for consumers to discern the difference
between '888' and '800' than it is for the same consumer to discern
the difference between computers and phonograph records. They believe
that since the public is being told that 800 and 888 are 'the same
thing' (for the purpose of instilling confidence in persons who dial
an 888 number) that therefore the same people are likely to think
that 888-anything will reach the same business as 800-anything. The
task they have is convincing the public that 800 and 888 are the same
and that at the same time, 800 and 888 are 'different'. While they
accomplish the same end -- a 'toll free' call to the called party --
they reach *different* called parties. Obviously even a rather dumb
person would not go into a store selling phonograph records and seek
to buy a computer but apparently this same reasoning does not quite
stretch enough to include dialing numbers on the phone. 

Now whose interests should come first? That of large businesses who
seek to preserve the purity of their vanity number or that of the
telephone network and its rapidly depleting stock of available numbers?
You are correct in noting that if *every* 800 subscriber chose to be
replicated in 888, then 888 would also be about out of numbers at 
this point. That is just simple math. May I suggest if you really
want to show what madness the 800/888 replication thing is, then you
should encourage *everyone* to replicate. 

Charles Ives, an American composer in the first half this century
hated with a passion the musical style known as 'variations' and he
said it was his plan in writing the classic work 'Variations on
America' (or 'God Save the Queen') that he would 'make the variations
so ridiculous and so vulgar it would bring this form of composition to
a halt once and for all.' History will tell if he was successful at
that but if you want to show how ridiculous it is to replicate 800
into 888 ** then let's all do it now **.  Yes, everyone! Let's all
call DSMI today and fax or mail them our requests to have our various
800 numbers replicated in 888.  Tell them you want your 800 number
protected and if necessary remind them that the FCC says it is your
right to have it done. Let's get 888 as filled up as much as we can
now and cause them to barely get the public educated on using it
before they have to open 877 and start all over again!

If any readers decide to call DSMI on Wednesday or Thursday and
get replicated into 888, be sure and write to let us know how it was
handled. If they get curious and ask 'what word or trade name is created
by the digits of your 800 number?' tell them the letters form an
abbreviation of the new company you are planning on starting. Or just
tell them you want to make sure you don't get a lot of wrong number
calls intended for the 'other toll free exchange'. If American Express,
'Flowers' and MCI can have their itsy-poo numbers replicated, then
so can you.  Have fun with this one!  Afterward let's compare notes.  PAT]

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

From: jsol@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 15:36:20 -0500
Subject: 800 Numbers From ATT


I was able to acquire an 800 number from AT&T as recently as one month
ago.

Just thought you'd like to know. Sprint refused to issue me one, and I
didn't ask MCI.


TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And it was a reader late last year who
said on calling AT&T *they* told him they had no more available. It
looks like 800 numbers are still around, although the supply is getting
scarce. Anyone who hasn't gotten one yet might like to sign up now
before they become historical artifacts. 

And Jon, whatever you do, don't forget to call tomorrow and get your
new 800 number replicated in 888. You don't want someone trying to
impersonate you or get calls intended for you.

For new readers who don't recognize his name, Jon Solomon was the
founder of this Digest back in 1981 and the Dirty Old Man who got
me addicted to it. ("want to run a digest on the internet little boy?")
He's been out of the loop for so long now he probably has forgotten
what it is like to be abused by the Usenetters.   PAT]

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

From: jmh@magicnet.net (Joseph M. Hillebrandt)
Subject: Re: AT&T Billing
Date: Sun, 03 Mar 1996 18:19:57 GMT
Organization: MagicNet, Inc.


They're in the process of changing over to direct billing in the
Orlando area, but for commercial customers only at this time.  I found
this out purely by accident as they are not sending ANY notifications
by mail, either from their end, or within the local telco bill.

My "notification" arrived in the form of a bill from AT&T for a 63
CENT telephone call, plus a five DOLLAR "minimum bill" service charge.
When I contacted AT&T using the number provided, they informed me that
they were in the process of changing all of their accounts (commercial
and residential) to the new billing plan, and that I would indeed be
charges five dollars per month as a minimum charge in addition to
actual usage if I did not meet the minimum.

While I agree that the billing costs must be recaptured somehow, I
cannot agree to pay $9.50 (PLUS TAXES!) if I only make $4.50 in LD
calls during a billing period.  I also object to the immediate
cut-over without warning to the new minimum plan.  Naturally, I was
quite happy with the old arrangement of billing actual usage through
the local bill.

I have used AT&T exclusively for LD services across all seven of my
access lines, both personal and business.  This particular line
happens to be one that rarely places outgoing LD calls; several of the
others account for approximately $500/month in LD service.  Due to the
method that AT&T chose to handle this changeover, my LD business is
now handled by two other services, per their suggestion!


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: True to their word, my first AT&T bill
arrived today, and it is really something. Actually a very pleasant
and easy to read, nicely designed format. When I called them to ask
about going back one single bill as was mentioned here by someone, the
rep said I could do so, but she noted, 'we are now competitors with
Ameritech and I cannot say how much longer there will be any option
available for billing via that company.' I asked her when they planned
to start local service here and she said in the next several months.  PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 08:34:52 -0500
From: Monty Solomon 
Subject: FCC Ponders Cellular Enhanced 911 Service
Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM


Excerpt from Edupage, 22 February 1996

FCC PONDERS ENHANCED 911 SERVICE

The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and public safety
groups are asking the FCC to approve Enhanced 911 service for cell
phones that would allow operators to quickly pinpoint the origin of
the call and send help.  In its initial stages, the system would
identify only the caller's cell site, but in five years specific
locations would traceable.  Two-thirds of cellular users say safety is
one of the reasons they bought their phones.  (Investor's Business
Daily 21 Feb 96 A4)

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

From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman)
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Organization: OMS Development
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 1996 00:44:51 GMT


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Personally I can't see why 'Western
> Electric' wouldn't have been chosen. That is a name which has a long
> and very proud history; one which would be recognized immediatly for
> quality and innovation. All the remarks seen here about Lucent/
> Lucas/Lucifer in this and recent issues make me think of Sprint's
> inept telemarketing operation in San Fransisco. Do you have to hold
> up your hand and be recognized by your supervisor when you want to go
> to the bathroom? :)   PAT]

The problem with "Western Electric" is that it wouldn't appeal to the
sorts of people who "design" "corporate identities."  It suggests that
the primary purpose of the business is to produce products or provide
services, rather than simply to make money.  When you come from the
mindset where "operations" is a dirty word and you wish that companies
could be purely financial entities that didn't have to actually *do*
anything to make money, you try to avoid names that suggest anything
about the actual business the company is in (which is, of course,
completely interchangable until the Golden Era arrives and you can get
rid of operations completely; a name like "Western Electric" wouldn't
be useful if you wanted to shift your primary business to underwriting
insurance or running casinos).

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

From: Lynne Gregg 
Subject: Re: New Name for AT&T Network Systems
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 96 16:37:00 PST


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Personally I can't see why 'Western
> Electric' wouldn't have been chosen. That is a name which has a long
> and very proud history; one which would be recognized immediatly for
> quality and innovation.

I do not speak for the Company and do not have visibility to the
rationale behind the name.  All I can say is that some folks look
forward, some look backward.  Seems to me that the new name takes a
forward look.

With all of the discussion of the name, Lucent is sure getting some
free publicity.


Regards,

Lynne


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your point is well taken about forward
and backward looking. The thing is, most people don't look back when
they are excited about going forward and are not fearful of the future.
When we become uncertain of where we are heading and fearful of the
many changes we see around us then we look backward for the comfort
and serenity it brings us through pleasant memories.   PAT]

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 10:25:00 EST
From: Calvin S. Monson 
Subject: LEC-CMRS Interconnection


Strategic Policy Research has prepared an analysis of LEC-CMRS
interconnection issues.  It was attached to the United States
Telephone Association's comments filed with the FCC yesterday.  The
report is available online at SPR's web site:

        http://www.spri.com

Follow the link to Publications.  The report is then listed as:

Jeffrey H. Rohlfs, Harry M. Shooshan III, Calvin S. Monson, Bill-and-Keep: A
Bad Solution to a Non-Problem, filed before the Federal Communications
Commission, In the Matter of Interconnection Between Local Exchange Carriers
and Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers (CC Docket No. 95-185) and
Equal Access and Interconnection Obligations Pertaining to Commercial Mobile
Radio Service Providers (CC Docket No. 94-54), Attachment to the Comments of
the United States Telephone Association, March 4, 1996. [report in PDF]

Please contact me with any questions.


Calvin S. Monson, cmonson@spri.com
Strategic Policy Research, Inc.
7500 Old Georgetown Rd., Suite 810, Bethesda, MD 20814
+1-301-215-4029 voice, +1-301-215-4033 fax

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

From: Chris Boone <72732.2610@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: Changing the Way the Call Progress Tones Sound
Date: 5 Mar 1996 15:22:46 GMT
Organization: ENTERGY/Gulf States Utilities


I like the ROLM CBX dialtone ... 525/660 Hz.  And their DoNot Disturb
is 770/880Hz with same on/off pattern of busy.

Makes troubleshooting/maintenance easier from a Tech standpoint.

I changed the internal dialtone in a Siemens HCM200 (now ROLM 9200 but
its NO ROLM!) to 480/620Hz but continuous ... the users had OPXs off a
ROLM CBX before the 9200 got installed and were used to different
internal dialtone ... now they have it again (and its NOT exactly but
close to a ROLM).


Chris

Senior Telecommunications Technician  72732.2610@CompuServe.com
ENTERGY/Gulf States Utilities         1:106/4267 FIDOnet
WB5ITT - Advanced Class		      BBS- 409-447-4267 (WBBS)	
PG-9-5322  FCC Commercial             409-525-2001 PhoneMail 24hr 


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To respond to the original writer's
question, could you tell him what he needs to do to make the same
kind of changes you made?    PAT]

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

From: mk@TFS.COM (Mike King)
Subject: Re: Distinctive Ringing Unavailable From Pac Bell?
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:10:08 PST


In TELECOM Digest V16 #88, bapat@gate.net (S. Bapat) asked:

> Can this be really true? I know California is a telecom backwater, but
> is it so bad that a standard CLASS service isn't available?

CLASS services are available in most Pac*Bell areas, with the exception
of distinctive ringing.  I've not discovered any P*B territory where
it's offered.

I've heard two theories.  One, that since the NPAs in CA are so
crowded that there are already three splits planned in the next two
years, adding more numbers for any given line is counter-productive to
number conservation.  Two, P*B pushes second lines for residential
service, and giving a second number to a phone line is counter-productive 
to revenue.

You can decide which you want to believe, deciding on your level of
cynicism.


Mike King   *   mk@tfs.com   *   Oakland, CA, USA   *   +1 510.645.3152


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is not really 'counter-productive
to revenue'. They don't give the additional numbers away for free,
although they are less expensive than an actual second line. Of course
they are also more limiting to the user than an actual second line.  PAT]

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #99
*****************************
    
    
From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu  Wed Mar  6 12:35:02 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.3/NSCS-1.0S) 
	id MAA12714; Wed, 6 Mar 1996 12:35:02 -0500 (EST)
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 12:35:02 -0500 (EST)
From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson)
Message-Id: <199603061735.MAA12714@massis.lcs.mit.edu>
To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #100

TELECOM Digest     Wed, 6 Mar 96 12:34:00 EST    Volume 16 : Issue 100

Inside This Issue:                          Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    MCI Service Problems/RESOLVED (Leslie M. Aun)
    800 Number Assigned to Two Subscribers in Error (Meghan A. Middleton)
    PCS Phones Disrupting Hearing Aids? (Monty Solomon)
    Special Area Code 456 (Mark J. Cuccia)
    Employment Opportunity: Marketing Communications Manager (Greg Celmainis)
    Anyone Got Information on Trunk Radio or Q Trunk? (Terry Hardie)
    Re: Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area (Mike Fox)
    Re: Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area (Lisa Hancock)
    Seeking ATM Subscriber List (Teoh Teik Huat)
    Free VPC-1000, Gammalink CP Boards (Brian Brown)

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

Date: Wed, 6 Mar 96 10:47 EST
From: Leslie M. Aun <0006610111@mcimail.com>
Subject: MCI Service Problems/RESOLVED


In response to postings about problems experienced by two MCI
customers last week (below), I offer the explanation below as
promised.

I apologize for the length of this message, but thought it would be
best to let Scott Levine, who is the telecom manager for Individual,
tell his story in his own words. See below how the problems (yes,
there were several) were resolved by our technical people to Mr.
Levine's satisfaction.  

Regarding Steve Samler's comments (he also works at Individual), we
apparently did have difficulties processing a portion of Individual's
calls through one of our Data Access Points, but no other customers
were impacted.  MCI did NOT accidentally delete ALL our customers from
one of our DAPs -- if we had, I can assure you the sound of our
customers' screaming would have been audible across the land.
Admittedly, Mr. Samler was apparently given incorrect information
about the problem by one of our technical people who is not a DAP
manager -- the people who manage the DAP tell me that MCI deleted 321
INACTIVE accounts while doing upgrades. This had no impact on
Individual's account.

As for Mr. Plichta, there is much more to the story than meets the
eye.  I'm not going to go into all the details on-line, but his
company, Western Interactive Media, is not even an MCI customer --
they purchase their telecommunications service from a reseller.
Nonetheless, our customer service group attempted to resolve the
difficulties reported by Mr. Plichta, and the problems apparently
righted themselves within 20 minutes.

I hope this resolves the issues brought up in this forum by these
customers last week. I would also like to thank everyone on this
Digest who had better things to do with their time over the past week
than send me hate e-mail.


Leslie Aun
PR Manager
MCI Communications

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

(The original message was):

> From: Steve Samler 
> Subject: MCI Problem: They Lost Lots of Customer Records

> I am hearing that MCI has "accidentally" deleted all their customers
> from one of their three Digital Access Points a few days ago.  Does
> anyone have any ideas on how something like this happens?  How does a
> major carrier like MCI make such a major mistake?

> About 1/3 to 1/2 of our phone calls to valid numbers terminate with a
> re-order tone.  

> Steve Samler
> Editorial Manager Communications
> Individual, Inc.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As Scott Plichta notes earlier in this
> issue, surely you must be hallucinating. Things like that do not
> happen, therefore you must be misdialing ... please check the number
> and dial again, or ask your operator for assistance ... this is a
> recording ... . Would anyone from MCI who knows something about
> this care to share the true story? Or would it be better if lacking 
> any authoritative statement from MCI, we simply have rumors and
> innuendo floating around on the net for awhile instead?   PAT]

Forwarded message:

This message is being posted with Mr. Levine's permission.

Date:     Tue Mar 05, 1996  1:44 pm  EDT
Source-Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 11:11:33 -0500 (EST)
From:     Scott Levine
          EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
          MBX: slevine@individual.com
 
TO:     * Leslie M. Aun / MCI ID: 661-0111
TO:       Guy J. Sherr / MCI ID: 432-2955
CC:       Steve Samler
          EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
          MBX: steve@individual.com
Subject:  MCI Service Problems

I'm sorry for not getting back sooner. I was very busy preparing for a
presentation on Friday and out yesterday on personal business.

Many different problems happened to us last week.

First, I personally was having trouble dialing a "new area code". The
new area code was 423. I believe the area code is in North Carolina.
Once I determined that the trouble was not our PBX (by doing a direct
trunk access and dialing the number direct), I then tried our T1's in
the channel banks, local 1MB lines as well as the T1's on the PBX. I
opened up a ticket with MCI repair at 800-444-1111 giving them the
problem of getting a recording while dialing area code 423. Within
minutes, fellow employees were telling me of another problem.

Problem #2. I was told that numbers that people dial quite frequently
were coming back with a "cannot complete your call" recording. I tried
it with a fellow employee and the call went through fine. I chalked it
up to user error. Several minutes later I was bombarded with Email
telling me of intermittant dialing problems. So I went and visited
several of those people and determined that we indeed were having some
form of dialing problem.  I then went to work to determine if the
problem was a particular T1 or something like that. I then placed ten
calls to San Francisco weather and to my home in New Hampshire. I
received the said recording between 2 and 4 times for each number.

Once this was determined, I immediately called Scott Trefethen and
Patrick Geen of the Manchester, NH MCI office. They immediately
started tracking the calls that I had made by tracing the number and
the times dialed.

I called several times throughout the afternoon to get updates and was
told that they were still working on the problem. The 423 area code
problem was fixed in the middle of the afternoon. I was paged at about
5:45 and once I called back was told that the problem was fixed and
that I could begin testing. I then called my office and asked the
person who picked up the night bell to make several test calls "out of
state". All calls went through fine. And all was well for Monday
night.

Problem #3. Upon arrival to work on Tuesday morning I was hit again by
Email and voicemail. This time it was that NO international calls
could be completed via the PBX. I then went to work to determine the
root cause of the problem. I then found out that all three T1's in one
of the two trunk groups on the PBX was at fault. Domestic calls were
fine, but that ALL international calls failed and was given the same
intercept recording as on Monday. I immediately called back to the
Manchester office and reported the NEW problem that had occured. It
seemed as though that when one problem was fixed, it created another.

Probem resolutions. It was determined that the trunk group that failed
on Monday (trunk group #1915) was having all calls rejected from DAP
#1 in New Jersey. DAP's #2 and #3 were handling calls fine for this
trunk group.  When DAP #1 was fixed, all three DAP's were set to only
allow calls to the 48 contiguous states. Once all three DAP's were set
to allow international calls (range privilages), then calls were
completing fine to all destinations around the world.

**** I was very upset that the problems occured. I'm sure that these
problems were of severe enough nature to allow for possible revocation
of the contract. One of the saving graces to keeping MCI as our vendor
is that we had complete and total honesty throughout this repair
process. There was no "sweeping" the problem under the rug. I admire
when a company stands up to "face to music". That is why I believe
that this is one of the reasons we will continue to have MCI as a
major "partner". *****

If you require any further information or would like to talk in person,
please do so. 


Sincerely,

Scott Levine
slevine@individual.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for reporting back that the
problems were solved, and thanks to Ms. Aun for getting involved and
coordinating a response to the Digest. Part of what makes this Digest
a valuable resource on the net is the speed with which problems can
get resolved when the 'right people' see the messages. Obviously,
Ms. Aun has the ability to put the right people in touch with one
another for the good of her company and its reputation, etc. I hope
that when Ms. Aun sees other things written here with which she is in
disagreement -- or with which she agrees but wants to see corrected --
she will write us again, and become a regular part of our readership.  PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 08:40:30 EST
From: Meghan A. Middleton 
Subject: 800 Number Assigned to Two Subscribers in Error


On January 15, 1996, I called SNET to reserve an 800 number that would
go into service on March 1st, 1996.  SNET called me back on January
16th with the 800 number they had reserved for me, and confirmed all
details.

Yesterday I called the 800 number to confirm that it was ringing in
the correct office here on campus.  It was not even in service.

SNET was finally able to give me an explanation on what happened.
They say that 800 number was assigned to two different RespOrgs, and
that the other one reserved that number for a customer two days before
SNET reserved it for me.

SNET is trying to "get this number back" for me, but they are not
optimistic about it.

Is it possible for the same number to have been assigned to two
different RespOrgs, or is SNET just giving me a line?

Can anyone tell my what my rights are?  Do I have any rights here?  I
hadn't actually paid any bills for this number, but my college has
advertised it, and stands to lose many potential new students and
their tuition money!

Any advice would be welcome.  Please e-mail me at the address below.


Thank you.

Meghan A. Middleton | Telecommunications Supervisor | Connecticut College
  W:(860)439-2355   |      mamid@conncoll.edu       |   F:(860)439-2359  
         http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/mm.folder/index.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing which might work is to politely
inquire who did get the number 'two days before you' and contact that
person or organization directly asking for their assistance. A lot of
people under the circumstances would agree to release the number to
your school. Generally the rule is you are not 'guarenteed' any particular
800 number until it is actually up and running, so you probably jumped
the gun a little by advertising it when it was not in service. There 
are just too many things which can go wrong in the assignment and turn-on
of an 800 number for it to work any other way but to wait until it is
actually in service and behaving exactly as you want it before you begin
publicizing it. I am assuming this was not a 'vanity' number with any
special significance to your school; that would make this an even more
bitter pill to swallow. Unfortunatly, I don't think you have any legal
recourse here. Somewhere in the fine print -- or the tariff, which is
always the final authority regardless of what people may informally
commit to among themselves -- is probably a mention that you have no
property rights in the number and that no guarentees are made of its
availability, etc until it is actually in your possession. Is it now
to late to do a hasty editing job on some of your proposed advertising
or has it already all gone to press and distribution?   PAT]

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

Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 01:04:08 -0500
From: Monty Solomon 
Subject: PCS Phones Disrupting Hearing Aids?
Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM


Forwarded to the Digest FYI:

> Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 14:16:35 GMT
> From: stgeorge@USA.PIPELINE.COM
> To: Multiple recipients of list DEAF-L 
> Subject: PCS 1900 static - a LTR for your local newspaper

Please consider sending your own variation of this letter it to your
local newspaper before PCS 1900 digital phones end up causing
disruption to your aids when you are a bystander and make it
impossible for you to use an ALD.

Please post this on every list that you know of people who care about
this issue.

Thanks.

Dear Editor,

If you have a hearing loss and wear an expensive hearing aid, new
digital pagers and digital phones used by others cause loud static
that makes your aid useless.

Worse yet, you can no longer use an Assistive Listening Device when
digital communications are in use next to you because of static and
noise.  As far as using a digital phone yourself, forget it.  It is
like trying to hear and talk standing next to a leaf blower.

Twenty-five million Americans have a hearing loss.  Digital
communications that produces severe static robs these people of the
ability to rely on their aids.  Worse yet, it exposes them to chaotic
disruption, physical pain, distress and the risk of physical injury,
by the random, unexpected and startling blasts of loud noise they
cannot escape.

Cellular phones that cause noise pollution should not be allowed to
ruin anyone's ability to hear when other technology is available that
does not cause noise pollution.

A full study is now underway by the FTC.  Everyone who wears hearing
aids should write the Federal Trade Commission, attention digital
phones/hearing aids, Washington, D.C. 20015 and make their voice
heard.

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

Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 19:43:59 CST
From: Mark J Cuccia 
Subject: Special Area Code 456


I have been informed that the Special 456 area code listed as
"International Inbound" is to be used for International Inbound
*Switched 56 Kbps Data services*. It might seem that the code was
formed from the letter `I' (International? Inbound?) and the digits
`56'.

Another special area code is being planned for NANP=wide ATM/SMDS data
services. The code numericals have not yet been decided upon, but the
NXX `central office' code assignments will be assigned to carriers,
similar to the way NXX `c/o' codes are assigned within special area
codes 500, 900, 600 and 456, and the way 800 *used* to be prior to
portability.


MARK J. CUCCIA   PHONE/WRITE/WIRE:     HOME:  (USA)    Tel: CHestnut 1-2497
WORK: mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu |4710 Wright Road| (+1-504-241-2497)
Tel:UNiversity 5-5954(+1-504-865-5954)|New Orleans 28  |fwds on no-answr to
Fax:UNiversity 5-5917(+1-504-865-5917)|Louisiana(70128)|cellular/voicemail

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

From: Greg Celmainis 
Subject: Employment Opportunity: Marketing Communications Manager
Date: 6 Mar 1996 00:35:21 GMT
Organization: Castleton Network Systems Corporation


Castleton Network Systems Corporation, a newly created affiliate of
Newbridge Networks Corporation, develops sophisticated, managed
telecommunication systems for telephone operating companies and
enterprise networks.  We are currently seeking a creative and
innovative individual to join us in the exciting growth phase of our
Company.  This immediate opening will be based out of Vancouver or
Ottawa.

Essential Qualifications:

-> Two or more years of experience in marketing communications or a
related position with proven work experience in the following areas: 
generation of marketing / communications plans and associated marketing
colateral, coordinating trade shows and corporate image management.

-> Excellent oral and writen English communication skills including the
ablility to communicate with clarity, tact and persuasiveness.

->  Ability to plan, organize, and handle multiple tasks while
 maintaining overall focus of goals.

-> A post secondary education which could include: Commerce/Business,
MBA, Engineering/Computer Science or equivalent work experience


Desirable Qualifications:

-> Technical background in telecommunications industry including 
ATM, ISDN, Frame Relay, X.25, PSTN.

-> Fluent in additional languages.

In return for your investment of time, energy, and expertise, we offer
equity positions, a generous benefit plan and outstanding opportunities 
for advancement. Please apply in confidence with an ascii version of
your resume to karen_mcdiarmid@castleton.com, with a subject heading
of "Castleton-Marketing".  If you prefer, send or fax your resume to
the following address:

	"Castleton-Marketing"
	Castleton Network Systems Corp.
	Suite 1234, Metrotower II
	4720 Kingsway Avenue
	Burnaby, B.C., V5H 4N2
	FAX (604) 430-1695

PLEASE - NO PHONE CALLS.
We regret that only successful candidates will be contacted.

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

From: terryh@iconz.co.nz (Terry Hardie)
Subject: Anyone Got Information on Trunk Radio or Q Trunk?
Date: 6 Mar 1996 04:41:53 GMT
Organization: Internet Company of New Zealand


Has anyone got any info on Trunk radio or Q trunk they could send me?

If so, please reply to me at root@bytes.gen.nz or on either of the
addresses below.


Thanks!

Terry Hardie                      terry@iconz.co.nz    terryh@iconz.co.nz
System Administrator              Please note new Mobile number:
Internet Company of New Zealand   V: +64-9-358-1186   M: +64-21-781-626

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

From: Mike Fox 
Date: 6 Mar 96  8:00:33 
Subject: Re: Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area


In , roavery@aol.com (Roavery) writes:

> Deer Isle, Maine residents are trying to get their local calling area
> extended to several adjacent mainland towns.  3000 people live on the
> island (half mile offshore) year round, but every call off-island
> whether to the local hospital, relatives, stores or computer access is
> an expensive toll call.

> Last year Maine PUC adopted a rule formalizing "basic calling areas";
> the net effect for rural areas was to freeze their existing local
> area, unless the town could meet an unrealistic threshhold of calls to
> the adjacent areas.  The town has petitioned for a waiver of the
> threshhold requirement.

> In the half year since receiving our petition, PUC and NYNEX's responses
> have been:

>  a) please go away;
>  b) we need more data;
>  c) if the island wants wider access, it will have to pay for it.  

> The suggestion under (c) above is that the town will have to pay an
> extraordinary premium calling rate so as to totally compensate NYNEX
> for lost toll revenues.  Our response is that this "solution"
> perpetuates the basic unfairness of a legacy toll structure (adjacent
> mainland towns pay a low basic rate to reach a larger area and more
> phones).

Is this really unfair?  Sure, there probably are some areas on the
mainland with bigger calling areas in pure square miles, but have you
considered the cost of carrying calls over/under/whatever 1/2 mile of
water (with probably no revenue producing subscribers in that 1/2 mile
stretch)?  Let's face it, if you choose to live in a remote area there
are many compensations, but there are some costs too.

I live in a larger metropolitan area.  It seems like every couple of
months or so, I get notified that some rinky-dink rural town is being
added to our local calling area, and everyone's phone bill is going up
a few cents as a result.  Since the number of calls coming in from
these outlying areas is probably going to be a lot more than the
number of calls going out, in effect the people in these small towns
are forcing those of us in the larger cities to subsidize their
calling.

In your case, how many people on the mainland are clamoring for free
local calls to your island?  Probably few to none. But if you get what
you want, will everyone's bill in the new local calling area go up,
including those on the mainland?  If the answer is yes, then you are
in effect requesting that they be forced to subsidize your desire to
call them for free. Or are you just requesting that NYNEX eat it?
Since you don't want to pay any more, you're obviously requesting that
SOMEONE besides you eat it. Who?

> bill?  Do we have to rely on political pressure?  Does the telecommun-
> ications world think we should just accept history and pay up?

If you want a new and valuable service you should pay for it, and not
force others to pay for something that will mostly benefit your
community.

Sorry for the flame.  I'm just annoyed by the notice that my Raleigh,
NC phone bill is going up so that Pittsboro can be added to our local
calling area. Our bills are only going up a few pennies, but if the
Pittsboro were paying for it, it would cost each of them a lot more.
It's a classic case of a small constituency widely distributing the
costs of something whose benefits will be concentrated on them.  It's
how our government got into the mess it's in now, IMO.


Later,

Mike


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone care to offer a rebuttal?
Mike raises some good points, but I think there are equally good
points on the other side of the coin.   PAT]

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

From: hancock4@cpcn.com (Lisa)
Subject: Re: Maine Island Seeks Wider Calling Area
Date: 6 Mar 1996 03:28:36 GMT
Organization: Philadelphia City Paper's City Net


I think part of the issue is the cost of carrying said calls.  How far
is the island from the mainland, and what is involved in installing a
new cable to carry the traffic?


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do they *need* a new cable to carry
the traffic?  Aren't we talking here more about bookkeeping entries
than we are any significant increase in traffic? Of course there is
a theory which says people do not need a particular telecom service
until they have it, then once it is available they use it a great
deal. So it is possible I guess that if the 'free' calling range is
expanded there will suddenly develop a lot more traffic than prev-
iously. But an entirely new cable being required?    PAT]

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

From: peter@viking.nii.ncb.gov.sg (Teoh Teik Huat)
Subject: Seeking ATM Subscriber List
Date: 6 Mar 1996 05:44:30 GMT
Organization: Information Technology Institute, Natl. Computer Board, S'pore


Can someone please tell me the subscription list address for ATM?


Peter Teoh 				Information Technology Institute
Internet : peter@iti.gov.sg		Science Park II
Tel : 65-7705585			11 Science Park Road
Fax : 65-7791827			Singapore 117685

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

From: brianb@cfer.com (Brian Brown)
Subject: Free VPC-1000, Gammalink CP Boards
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 17:10:38 GMT
Organization: ConferTech, International


You pay the shipping.  The boards are:

VPC-1000 (Voice Processing Company) - full documentation and software,
as well as three daughter cards.  I believe this is some sort of
speech recognition card, probably over four or five years old.

Gamma CP - Single analog line card, still works with latest version of
Gamma drivers (which I could also send).

I'm gonna toss 'em in a week, so email me if you're interested.
(brianb@cfer.com)


Brian Brown    ConferTech, International

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

End of TELECOM Digest V16 #100
******************************