From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 5 09:06:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA14178; Tue, 5 Aug 1997 09:06:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 09:06:09 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708051306.JAA14178@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #201 TELECOM Digest Tue, 5 Aug 97 09:06:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 201 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Los Angeles on Cutting Edge of Public Telecom (Tad Cook) Pay per Use: Three Way Calling (Ken Jongsma) Toronto To get New Area Code (Kevin Smith) BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Judith Oppenheimer) Remote Telephone Line Access (rickch19@sgi.net) External Call Barred Networks (P. Graves) Cell Phone Triangulation (Tom Trottier) Seeking Information on IntraLATA Equal Access (P.B. Schechter) World Telephone Numbering Guide Update is Ready (Dave Leibold) Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area (Michael J. Ellis) Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area (Martin Lucina) Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area (Georg Schwarz) Re: Is VAT Included in Interconnect Access Charges? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Area Code Splits: Long Term Solution? (Mark D. Foster) Re: 351 a Possible NPA for 504 Relief (Dave Perrussel) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Los Angeles on Cutting Edge of Public Telecom Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 11:25:06 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) INNOVATION L.A. is on cutting edge of public telecom systems BY JONATHAN WEBER Los Angeles Times The notion that government needs to be more entrepreneurial is a popular one in this age of triumphant high-tech capitalism, but the proponents of this idea may not have figured on a little-known agency in the city of Los Angeles bureaucracy taking them quite so seriously. The Information Technology Agency, formed two years ago by the consolidation of three other agencies and led by a veteran information systems manager named John Hwang, is charged with improving city agencies' computer and communications systems, and with using technology to improve the delivery of city services and spur economic development. Hwang and his deputies aim to accomplish these tasks, in part, by getting the city into the telephone business. Already, the city owns an extensive fiber-optic communications network -- some of it installed by the Department of Water and Power to manage utility operations, some of it built to connect city police stations, and some of it designed to improve communications among other city agencies and offices. Now Hwang and his deputies are taking it to the next level, developing plans to create partnerships with the private sector and extend the network to new parts of Los Angeles. It's an effort that puts the city at the forefront of a national trend, and it could both enhance city services and lead to new communications choices for both residents and businesses. But does it really make sense for the city to do something like this? Pacific Bell, for one, doesn't think so. "You have to question whether it's a proper use of taxpayer dollars," says John Donner, Pac Bell's area vice president for Los Angeles. "There is a pretty robust telecom infrastructure in L.A. Why would the city want to enter a very capital-intensive marketplace?" Donner would say that, of course. The city's likely partners are companies that hope to compete with Pac Bell in the local telephone services business. Companies like Worldcom Inc., which recently acquired MFS Communications -- a national leader in developing local phone systems to compete with the entrenched Bell operating companies. Pac Bell's new parent company, SBC Communications Inc., has already shown its willingness to play political hardball in blocking municipal telecom projects. Los Angeles' current foray into the telecommunications business began in the early 1990s, when it struck a deal allowing MFS to use an abandoned, city-controlled oil pipeline as a fiber-optic cable route in exchange for giving the city some of the circuits. Hwang says the city needs to look at expanding its network because the private sector alone isn't doing the job. The federal telecommunications law passed last year was supposed to spur competition in local phone markets, but the results have been very disappointing. And Pac Bell has abandoned an ambitious effort to build a state-of-the-art high-speed network across much of the region. "If you leave it to the private concerns," Hwang said, "they'll perpetuate the distribution problem," building networks only in wealthier parts of the city and widening the gap between the information haves and have-nots. Some people cringe at the idea of public officials second-guessing the market-driven decisions of private businesses. But building telecommunications networks isn't as distant as it seems from the traditional functions of a municipal government. Cities build and maintain all kinds of infrastructure, from roads to ports to electricity grids; in a few places they even own the cable TV system. Fiber-optic communications networks, which use lasers to carry voice and data and video communications at extremely high speeds, are increasingly vital for many types of economic and social activity, and there's no reason in principle that local governments shouldn't be involved. Although the upfront investments can be substantial, there are also plenty of potential revenue sources and financing options. "It's really very similar to municipal utility planning," said David Rozzelle, president of Media Connections Group, a San Francisco telecommunications consulting firm that has worked extensively with cities. The ability to move information is now as essential a service as providing water or power, he argues, and it's logical for government to help build the facilities. A few small California cities are already demonstrating some of the possibilities. Palo Alto is about to complete a 26-mile fiber-optic network that will serve the needs of city agencies and also offer capacity for lease to private businesses. Anaheim has partnered with a San Diego-based start-up company called Spectranet in a remarkably ambitious effort to use a 50-mile fiber-optic network built by the municipal power company as the backbone for a completely new telecom network connecting every business and residence in town. Big cities, though, have declined to take the plunge. Several years ago San Diego set out to build a municipal telecom network, but by the time it was ready to go forward, officials concluded that the phone companies had already installed plenty of capacity. In Texas, Austin was forging ahead with a plan to build a municipal fiber network when it collided head-on with the formidable political power of the local phone company. The state legislature -- acting at the behest of Southwestern Bell, according to Paul Smolen of Austin's office of cable and regulatory affairs -- passed a law that barred any city from owning and operating a telecommunications network. Since Southwestern Bell's parent, SBC, now owns Pacific Bell, the maneuver in Austin stands as a warning to officials in Los Angeles and elsewhere in California that they'd better move carefully. Politics aside, though, the basic question remains: Would the Information Technology Agency's initiative be good for Los Angeles? The agency is preparing a series of requests for proposals from the private sector for various phases of the network, with the first one expected to go out within 60 days. Without knowing a lot more about the exact state of the various communications networks -- both public and private -- that already crisscross Los Angeles, and until companies respond to the ITA's request for proposals, I can't really offer a very strong opinion on what the city should do. But there are a few general guidelines that might be useful in evaluating the effort as it progresses. First, all parties should avoid the temptation to cast the issue in ideological terms. Municipal governments, and especially those that already own power utilities, have a legitimate role to play in developing communications infrastructure. A business that is still heavily regulated and heavily dependent on public rights of way -- such as the local phone business -- isn't entirely a free-market enterprise anyway, and could use some intelligent prodding by government. Second, the city should define clearly what pieces of the project are designed to serve what ends. Improving city services, providing good infrastructure to attract businesses, and increasing the range of telecom services available to businesses and residents by spurring new competition are very different goals. Finally, the various political decision-makers, as well as the public, to the extent possible, will have to sweat the details on all this. There are many possible levels of city involvement, ranging from simple lessor of raw fiber-optic capacity to full-blown network operator and telecommunications service provider. ------------------------------ From: 73115.1041@NOSPAMcompuserve.com (Ken Jongsma) Subject: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 01:09:50 GMT US West mailed out a card to New Mexico subscribers announcing the pending availability of pay per use Three Way Calling. This follows the introduction about a year ago of pay per use Return Call (*69) at .75 per use. The card indicates that Three Way Calling will be billed the same way. I see a major problem here, given the user interface required to activate the feature, i.e. the switchhook flash. I've stumbled over this interface at the office way too many times. I can see many situations where you receive or initiate a call, hang up momentarily and then initiate a new call not realizing that the previous call is still on the line. I dare say the vast majority of residential users are not going to realize what a stutter dialtone is and that it means they've just incurred a .75 charge. I think there's a substantial difference between a feature that requires a specific key initiation sequence and one that could be accidentially initiated. The *very* fine print on the card indicates that pay per use features can be deactivated by calling the billing office, but does not indicate if individual features such as Three Way can be disabled without affecting access to ones such as *69. The same fine print says that modems and fax machines may need to be reprogrammed to force a two second (!) delay between calls. Ken Jongsma 73115.1041@compuserve.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ameritech recently installed this feature on all phones in Skokie, IL among other places. It took me three calls to the business office to get it deactivated on the business phone lines of an associate of mine who accidentally used it a couple times in the interim. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 12:14:21 -0400 From: Kevin Smith Organization: New Link Subject: Toronto To get New Area Code Toronto (Mega City, Ontario) is going to get a new area code. The former cities of (old)-Toronto, York, and East York will keep the 416 area code Etobicoke, North York, and Scarbough will move to the new area code. Bell Canada nor its parent company Bell Canada Enterprises has said what the new area code will be. Maybe another leak at Bellcote will happen as it did with the Montreal split. This area code will be the first of the new type area codes for Ontario. Bell will release the information soon. The split is similar to inner/outer split that London has (171 and 181 split.) ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Subject: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 08:13:44 -0400 Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Anyone familiar with 900 service want to comment on this? Seems to me especially if BellSouth has a local monopoly provisioning 900 service, it has no right meddling in how companies or organizations utilize it. Judith Oppenheimer BellSouth Prohibits Charities From Using 1-900 Numbers 1-900 For Psychics, Not Charities It's an uncomfortable position to be in because it looks like we're against something that is compassionate. But you have to make a business decision. Barry Copeland, BellSouth By Steve Visser The Associated Press A T L A N T A Psychics do it, astrologers do it. But charities? BellSouth won't let them use 1-900 numbers to raise money. BellSouth, which provides local service in nine Southern states, says it would be an administrative burden; children calling without parental approval and charities everywhere hoping to use the service. "It's an uncomfortable position to be in because it looks like we're against something that is compassionate and makes sense. But you have to make a business decision," company spokesman Barry Copeland said. Telephone companies that provide service to charities include U.S. West, which serves 14 western states, and Nynex Corp., which serves seven northeastern states. Make Charity Easy A caller can dial the 900 number and have $10 billed to their phone bill. "You see a disaster on television, think `I can afford $10,' and pick up the phone and call," said John Katopodis, a former county commissioner in Birmingham, Ala., who formed a charity foundation. He thought he could make charitable giving easy, impulsive and affordable. Katopodis said he was negotiating with AT&T to be the long-distance carrier for the number, and with the AT&T Foundation to underwrite the costs, when he learned that BellSouth collected bills only for for-profit businesses. ICB TOLL FREE News. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com. Today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. ICB TOLL FREE Consultancy. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com/icbinfo.html. joppenheimer@ICBTOLLFREE.com. 1 800 The Expert. +1 212 684-7210. ------------------------------ From: rickch19@sgi.netxx Subject: Remote Telephone Line Access Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 15:02:42 GMT Organization: Western PA Scanner I am looking for device which I can connect to my telephone line to do the following: 1) Call my line via my 800# 2) Enter a 4-10 Digit Password 3) Device will connect a 2nd line for outbound calls 4) Compatitable with CallerID, VoiceMail, Answering Machines 5) Compatitable with ISDN service to use the 2 POTS ports on some ISDN TA/Routers to accomplish this. (The outbound line would be one of the POTS ports. Inbound would still be POTS, although the ability to use pure ISDN would be a plus. Will AT&T let you assign an 800# to a ISDN DN?) The device would allow me to make local calls to ISP, return calls etc while travelling at my reduced LD rate on my 800# versus using Credit Cards, Dial Direct LD etc.. It also simplfies dialing as some business /pay phones will block out LD 10xxx codes, CC dialing etc. The device when connected with a voicemail/answering machine would let the the voicemail/answering machine answer and if it gets a code like: #*# <- Attention code for device, so voicemail/answering machines will ignore. Some VM/AM will hang up when they get extra DTMF. So the device would need to keep line connected. xxxx <- Password access. At this point you would get dialtone from the second line and could dial outbound. # <. The ability to use the standard "#", ala Calling Card Dialing, key to signal and end to a call and allow another call to be made. *#* <-Hang up Code _____________ Line #1 IN | | To CID/AM/VM devices ----------------------| |-------------------- Line #2 In | | ---------------------|_____________| Any company make such a device? Thanks in advance. ** Remove xx in email address to email me! ** Western Pennsylvania Scanner Frequency Page http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1060/ Radio Scanner Web Ring - Find a scanner web site quickly! http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1060/scnrng.htm Spice Girls ! ! http://channel3.vmg.co.uk/spicegirls Pursuant to US Code, Title 47, Chapter 5, Subchapter II, '227, any and all nonsolicited commercial E-mail sent to this address is subject to a download and archival fee in the amount of $500 US. E-mailing denotes acceptance of these terms. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 23:38:41 -0700 From: P Graves Reply-To: peter.graves@cableinet.co.uk Subject: External Call Barred Networks Organization: Cable Internet (post doesn't reflect views of Cable Internet) Help, I work for a large UK company with many branches nationwide. My present premises was moved quite recently and the phone system changed. Instead of being able to make calls to the outside world, they are limited to other phones on premises or to the other shops (by means of a three digit code). I have found that a BT chargecard can be used but was wondering if it was possible to bypass the barring (all engineers leave a back door)! Any information is welcome, even if it's to tell me it's not possible Thanks, Liam [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If some reader wants to help you learn how to defraud your employer and make unauthorized phone calls on his system, I am sure they will write you directly, however bear in mind your employer probably has the phone system set in such a restrictive way for a good reason. Have you tried asking your supervisor or manager for authorization to make the desired phone calls? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Trottier Subject: Cell Phone Triangulation Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 13:56:39 -0400 There were some comments earlier about whether the cell phone companies could triangulate on phones. There was a story recently in the {Ottawa Citizen} newspaper about it. "Developed by Rankin Research in conjunction with Bell Mobility, a black box no bigger than a television remote control is hidden in a car and can pinpoint its location anywhere in North America where there is a cellular phone network. And designers claim it can do it in under 40 minutes. The way the system works is this: Once a car is reported stolen to police, the owner phones a 1-888 number to activate a personalized search from Rankin's headquarters in Montreal. The box emits a signal which is triangulated down to several city blocks using signals from cell phone towers. An unmarked tracker vehicle (or, in Montreal, one of two helicopters) is dispatched to locate the car to within less than a metre, and call in the law. Since starting up in April, Rankin has recovered 16 cars and acquired more than 2,800 customers, each paying $500 per unit including installation, and $107 in annual monitoring fees. Rankin charges the insurance company a $250 recovery deductible for each car found. Ottawa does not have its own tracker vehicle yet, but Mr. Boulay says it will once enough units are sold. Unlike expensive U.S. systems that read a car's location using Global Positioning System satellites, Rankin claims the Canadian invention "... will work in a garage or metal container and is accurate enough to be used to obtain a search warrant. " http://www.ottawacitizen.com/city/970729/1019031.html Ciao, Tom Trottier, MBA Senior Technical Architect SHL Systemhouse Ltd. Ottawa Global Development Centre 50 O'Connor St. Suite 501, Ottawa K1P 6L2 Canada +1 613 236-6604x5539 fax 232-5182 ttrottier@shl.com ------------------------------ From: pb@morse.Colorado.EDU (PB Schechter) Subject: Seeking Information on IntraLATA Equal Access Date: 4 Aug 1997 18:17:41 GMT Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder I am looking for information on intraLATA equal access. Does anyone have any pointers? I would appreciate pointers to technical as well as policy issues. Also, I assume that int*er*LATA equal access is probably relevant, so I'd be happy to hear about pointers to that topic, as well. Thanks in advance, PB Schechter pb@colorado.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 23:22:25 EDT From: Dave Leibold Subject: World Telephone Numbering Guide Update is Ready The 3 Aug. '97 World Telephone Numbering Guide should now be available for browsing. WTNG is an attempt to track telephone numbering news and resources, particularly with numerous numbering plan changes throughout the planet. WTNG should be reachable on the web at: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/8818/wtng.html The updates generally consist of fixing up broken links and adding bits of news like an overview of the Mexico material some time ago. Reports of broken or missing links are welcome, since many of the references have a tendency to change their file paths or just simply pull the file from web access. :: David Leibold -+- dleibold@else.net ++ aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca :: ------------------------------ From: Michael J. Ellis Subject: Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area Date: 4 Aug 1997 13:11:23 GMT Organization: Telstra Internet Browse Server > There is a similar service in Europe whereby listening to an > advertisement every 3 minutes, your phone call is free. The service > makes its money from the ads. This is coming to Australia in 1997/1998. Mr. Michael J. Ellis Mobile: 0414 588 266 Voice Mail: 0416 42 92 42 E-Mail: Ellis@y-net.com.au UIN: 1906841 Although I may disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to hear me tell you how wrong you are. ------------------------------ From: Martin Lucina Subject: Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area Date: Tue, 05 Aug 1997 00:00:00 GMT I heard about this feature, about a couple of months ago, on the program "All Things Considered" which airs on my local National Public Radio station in Los Angeles, KCRW. I don't know the exact country, but it was one of the Scandanavian countries. The web site for KCRW is www.kcrw.org; for NPR, it is www.npr.org. ------------------------------ From: schwarz@physik.tu-berlin.de (Georg Schwarz) Subject: Re: Free Calls in Seattle Area Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 19:43:31 +0200 Organization: Institut f. Theoretische Physik, TU Berlin Afshin David Youssefyeh wrote: > There is a similar service in Europe whereby listening to an > advertisement every 3 minutes, your phone call is free. The service > makes its money from the ads. I wonder if such services can be used for modem connections? (Unfortunately to the best of my knowledge it does not exist in Germany.) Georg Schwarz schwarz@physik.tu-berlin.de, kuroi@cs.tu-berlin.de Institut f=FCr Theoretische Physik +49 30 314-24254, FAX -21130 Technische Universit=E4t Berlin http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/ ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Is VAT Included in Interconnect Access Charges? Date: 04 Aug 1997 23:55:33 -0400 Organization: Panix Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Rudy Torres wrote: > I have a simple question regarding interconnect access charges and VAT > taxes, and I was wondering what other telco providers do regarding > this question. > If a network carrier (A) charges an interconnect access charge to a > service provider (B) to complete a call for a customer of that service > provider (B), is it usual for the interconnect access charge to > contain VAT (Value Added Taxes/Sales Tax) when charging the service > provider (B)? Even though the over-all charges for the call to the > customer by the Service Provider (B) also contains VAT? Some countries don't *have* VAT, as odd as it might seem to a European. The "sales taxes" we do have generally only apply to specific categories of goods and services, and I can't readily think of an example of a wholesale telecom service such as an access charge on which sales tax is charged. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?" ------------------------------ From: Mark D. Foster Subject: Re: Area Code Splits: Long Term Solution? Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 00:15:40 -0400 Organization: MDF Associates Relaxing the middle digit was instigated because of a concern about eventual NANP (North American Numbering Plan) exhaust, but the consumption rate of new numbers (actually CO codes) has continued to accelerate since then. Adding new areacodes is due to exhaust of CO codes in an existing areacode and not the result of consuming all of the line numbers in an areacode. There are generally three reasons: continued strong growth in the wireless industry; unanticipated growth in additional lines for fax/data/internet and explosion of ISDN-BRI; and CO code consumption by new competitive LECs (CLECs) preparing for local competition. These factors have been compounded because the existing CO code administrators have not been getting consumption forecasts from all of the CO code holders because it constitutes competitive information -- the CO code administrators are all currently incumbent LECs. Also, the forecasting algorithms have assumed linear consumption rates, which have proven to be more aggressive than that. Mark D. Foster | mdfassoc@mindspring.com MDF Associates | Tel: +1(703) 404-2258 Telecoms Consulting | Fax: +1(703) 404-2591 ------------------------------ From: bbscorner_removethis@juno.com (Dave Perrrussel) Subject: Re: 351 a Possible NPA for 504 Relief Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 12:13:43 GMT Organization: Diamond Mine / BBS Corner John Cropper wrote: > 504-351 is already assigned (my records show New Orleans, but Mark > Cuccia verified it was Hammond, as a cellular prefix), and also > permits 7D dialing across the LATA boundary into the Baton Rouge LATA. If BellSouth did assign 351 as a relief NPA for 504, it wouldn't be the first time a new NPA was an existing prefix in the existing area code. Bell Atlantic, when it recently split 757 from 804 - already had 757 as an assigned prefix on 804 (La Crosse, Virginia). Confusing? Possibly - but hopefully the 757 prefix wasn't near the border of 804/757. There it would cause some confusion! Dave Perrussel ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #201 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Aug 7 09:02:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA27222; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 09:02:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 09:02:05 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708071302.JAA27222@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #202 TELECOM Digest Thu, 7 Aug 97 09:02:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 202 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Meridian Maintenance Modem (Louis Raphael) Re: Meridian Maintenance Modem (Christopher W. Boone) Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? (Paula Pettis) Pay Booths For Internet Access (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: BRI -ISDN Key System or PBX Available in North America (acarr@aol.com) "Transport-only" Service (John J. Brassil) Statistics on Digital Switches (Katie Wright) Re: Premature Rejoicing (AOL to Sell Customers Phone Numbers) (Bill Walker) Re: Possible Last Two Miles T1 Airborne? (Enrico Schuerrer) Re: Latest Anti-Spam Technology (Eric Florack) Re: NJ Escort Services Complain Lawyer Calls Hurt Business (Brian Doreste) Switch Partitioning (Scott Yoneyama) Re: Unit to Connect Two POTS Lines (Christopher W. Boone) Re: New Calling Card Surcharges? (Stanley Cline) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: raphael@willy.cs.mcgill.ca (Louis Raphael) Subject: Re: Meridian Maintenance Modem Date: 7 Aug 1997 02:46:27 GMT Organization: McGill University Computing Centre On my USR Courier 14.4K: ATZ^M~~~AT S7=60 E1 &K1 &M4^M~ seems to work wonders. Then again, a plain "ATZ" would probably work just as well. If you've got voice-mail with stutter dial-tone, put "X0" ("ATX0") in there, which will make the modem ignore the absence of dial-tone. Also, I've never had much success in answering with "ATA". I find that it's better to set "ATS0=1" instead. Maybe you're waiting for a RING and issuing an ATA? (And since we're on the subject of modems, I'll insert a shameless plug for the comm software I use - Telix, version 3.12, copyright 10-30-88... and I *still* haven't found anything worth upgrading to...) Louis ##rdavidwhite@worldnet.att.net remove the ## above to respond (spam avoidance) ------------------------------ From: Christopher W. Boone Subject: Re: Meridian Maintenance Modem Date: Mon, 04 Aug 1997 18:56:55 -0500 Organization: ABC Radio Networks Engineering Dept - Dallas, Texas Reply-To: cboone@earthlink.net David White wrote: > I have an Option 61 and would like to upgrade the maintenance modem > from an ancient 300 baud. I have changed the switches on the SDI card > but cannot get US Robotics modem to work. Does anyone know the correct > initialization string for a US Robotics Courier? I would just use ATZ on it ... did you reinit the switch after resetting the dip switches? (Damn Meridian almost always needs it for the little things!) Our modem is running at 9600 baud (7E1). Chris ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Paula Pettis Subject: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 22:28:36 -0400 I've had conversations with several of my local BellSouth reps regarding running full duplex data over T-1's. According to them the total COMBINED 2-way throughput on a T-1 is 1.544 Mbps. They say that if you are transmitting at a rate of say 1 Mbps, you can only receive data at a rate of 0.544 Mbps because the bandwidth is shared between the transmit and receive channels. So in the true sense of "full duplex", a T-1 is NOT full duplex. This seems to meet the definition of half duplex. I was under the impression that since this was a 4 wire circuit (1 transmit pair and 1 receive pair) you could transmit at 1.544 Mbps and receive at 1.544 Mbps simultaneously without one path interrupting the other. Thus a combined aggregate throughput of 3.088 Mbps. Does anyone have any information which would support or dispute this theory of "shared bandwidth" on a T-1 ? What do you call this pseudo "full duplex" transmission medium? Paula Pettis Stuff Software 1249 Silver Palm Drive Altamonte Springs, FL 32714 Voice: (407) 290-2301 Fax: (407) 290-0079 www.stuffsoftware.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 20:42:46 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: Pay Booths For Internet Access Too cool. And I don't impress that easy. Judith ONLINE / Pay Booths For Internet Access Atcom/Info, a vender of public Internet access systems, says it has perfected an access device that fits into a public payphone, for people who absolutely must check in for e-mail, stock market quotes or to conduct other Internet-based tasks. The access system, called a Payphone Cyberbooth, replaces standard pay telephones in locations such as airports. Neil Senturia, the firm's chief executive officer, described the system as ideal where demand has risen for access to Internet services but space is limited. http://www.atcominfo.com ----------- ICB TOLL FREE News. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com. Today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. ICB TOLL FREE Consultancy. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com/icbinfo.html. joppenheimer@ICBTOLLFREE.com. 1 800 The Expert. +1 212 684-7210. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1997 22:12:28 -0400 From: acarr@aol.com Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: BRI -ISDN Key System or PBX Available in North America? Rolm had a BRI Key system at one point. I don't think it supported plugging in other ISDN devices such as a Bitsurfer. ------------------------------ From: John J. Brassil Reply-To: John.J.Brassil@vanderbilt.edu Subject: "Transport-only" Service Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 05:34:07 -0500 I happened to be sitting nearby (working on the NMS) when a conference call of the Vandy bigwigs dicussing I2 broke up. Turning to me, they said, "What do we need in order to connect transport-only service into our backbone?" I'll be the first to admit that my wide-area background is fairly weak, so it wasn't too big of a blow to my ego to have to admit that I didn't have the faintest idea. We have an ATM backbone here (newly installed FORE gear), so I have some idea of how to provision circuits using ATM, but from what I understand, the "transport-only" service they are considering is in lieu of a much more expensive WAN ATM pipe, so we would need to bridge the gap at some point. Again, the details were a bit sketchy, but apparently we'd be given a certain amout of bandwidth and the rest would be up to us. A couple of questions arise from this: I assume the option under discussion is some sort of SONET-only capability. Where can I go to find out how bandwidth is allocated at that level? Is that even an appropriate question? More to the point, what sort of binding/interface is needed to tie the campus ATM backbone into this type of service. For example, can I buy a WAN card for a FORE switch that would bring the service "up the stack" at whatever point the TO fibers are terminated? Any pointers you can think of would be greatly appreciated. John J. Brassil | Network Manager, Vanderbilt ACIS Networks | 615.322.2496 ------------------------------ From: Katie Wright Subject: Statistics on Digital Switches Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 03:45:23 -0300 Organization: University of New Brunswick I am doing research on digital switches and I would like to know how many digital switches (not number of users or lines) are in use in the US and in the rest of the world. I am mostly focusing my research on Nortel (DMS-100, DMS-200, etc) and Lucent (5ESS) switches but would appreciated statistics on other switches as well. Thank you, Katie Wright Katie.Wright@asg.unb.ca ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: Premature Rejoicing (AOL to Sell Customers' Phone Numbers) Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 00:53:44 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , Brownsta@concentric.net (Stan Brown) wrote: > So how exactly is this any kind of victory for consumers? Seems to me > if you're getting telemarketing calls on behalf of non-AOL companies, > just because you're an AOL customer, it doesn't matter who makes the > calls. And since you have a business relationship with AOL, I believe > you can't even ask to be put on their do-not-call list. AOL has an "opt-out" list for telemarketing calls and junk mail (keyword: MARKETING PREFERENCES for you AOLers out there), which I've been led to believe applies whether or not the calls are on the behalf of a non-AOL company. Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ From: enrico.sch@magnet.at (Enrico Schuerrer) Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 01:45:12 +0200 Subject: Re: Possible Last Two Miles T1 Airborne? Organization: Magnet Online Service Here in Austria is a company called Datentechnik, which has an optoelectronic link (4 different optical links parallel) up to STM-1 (155 MBit/s) and up to 5 km (appr. 3.1 miles). The equipment has an optical in-/output, which have to be connected with optical modems on both sides - so you can define the bandwith from 1.56 MBit/s up to 155 MBit/s. If you are interested in this equipment don't hesitate to mail me. Enrico ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 06:02:40 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: Re: Anti-Spam Technology In #198, Kriston J. Rehberg posted: >> For the benefit of Spambots everywhere: >> webmaster@localhost >> abuse@localhost >> postmaster@localhost >> I'm told it works like a charm, too. > > And it will work until the next release of the spambot software. > Don't you believe that spambots already filter out these kinds of > obviously bogus emails? Hi, Kriston, Well, perhaps /some/ do. It'd be illogical for me to suggest else. But I think you over-estimate the technical expertise of most spam artists, if you think that's the /general/ situation. You're logically correct in that some spam generators will adjust for this, of course, but not all ... and those I can help take out, I will help take out. And while they're adjusting I'm adjusting, too. I'm currently treating SPAM as one would a virus ... you have to keep updating your strings to stay ahead of the game. > And don't they already filter "NOSPAM" and translate "user at blah dot > com" from email addresses, too? Isn't this a trivial change, indeed? Of course ... but then most Spambots are pretty trivial in programming, from what I've seen. > I use various UNIXes as well as Windows. Of course, procmail works > great on UNIX. On Windows, Forte (www.forteinc.com) has just released > version 1.5 of Agent, which has a plain language *AND* a regular > expression filter for incoming email. Individual filters can be > applied to any header field in the message, the message body, and the > entire raw unformatted message as a whole. The filter creation dialog > is straightforward and easy to understand. But, good as that is, that utterly fails to solve the problem of the noise level on my incoming line, to say nothing of lowering the noise level (nee, bandwidth waste) on the net as a whole. And as I recall, that's well over half the issue, and what my solution attempts to directly attack. I'm not being unrealistic here; I doubt I've significantly lowered the amount of spam directly coming my way, but I think I can guarantee that at least one if not more, spam mailers have been shut down by their repective Domain masters, which was my purpose. Call it a public service. Do you suppose this would be less of an issue were more people to take a similar approach? I'd like to think so. I wonder (and perhaps Pat can address this more directly) how much bandwidth is being wasted by spammers? I'm willing to gamble that the number isn't trivial. Side note: Your comments about MS's mail tools are well-taken; I'm on OUTLOOK at home, and the old-style MS-MAIL here at work, because of the way Xerox's Mail system works; they're not running SNTP here, inside the system. (Though if needed I can send via SNTP... that's another story.) OUTLOOK is nice, but falls to the ground when dealing with SNTP in a lot of areas, such as text formatting conventions. Given that failure of what I consider to be a fairly simple function, I'd not expect it to be fully 'on' when dealing with more complex issues, such as spam control. /E ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 06:49:11 EDT From: Brian Albert Doreste Subject: Re: NJ Escort Services Complain Lawyer Calls Hurt Business Organization: University of Delaware In article Mark Naftel wrote: > The owner of the escort service, who lived in Arizona, also refused to > accept a new number and was very rude to the service representatives > and me - unusual as the proprietors of these types of business were > usually very polite and among our best customers, given their > dependence on telephone service. We ended up giving both customers > new numbers and imposing a split intercept. When a call was made to > the disputed number, a live operator would come on the line and > inquire "who are you calling, please?" The appropriate new number > would then be given. Here is another story about a split intercept that Bell Atlantic-DE (Diamond State Tel) had to do for me last September. Last school year, I had to set up phone service for my new apartment at school. I had requested that I be given a phone number that ended in 3669 because that is what my number at my house in New Jersey ends with. Anyway, my service was set up with the phone number (302) 456-3669. Since there was a month in between when I had the service set up to when I actually moved into the apartment with my roommates, I decided to set up my answering machine on the line for a month to see what kind of calls I would receive. When I checked my machine at the end of the month when I moved in for school, I had about a dozen messages, but curiously enough, they were all for different people. That was only the beginning of my problems. For the first two weeks of school, I was consistently getting about half-a-dozen calls _daily_ for this local pharmaceutical company; usually the first call at around 8:30 am (ugggh - I didn't have class until 11 am) It turned out that their phone number is (800) 456-3669, and as these calls were showing up, they were local to the calling area, and I just thought that these people were mistakenly dialing NPA 302 instead of 800 since 456 is a local exchange. (is it common to dial an 800 number as a local number when the 800 number has a local prefix? please follow up if anyone else has heard of this) Not until about a week later, one afternoon, some number from Kansas showed up on my box (btw, only the number came up, no name) and this lady asked for the same pharmaceutical company. I naturally asked if she dialed 800 instead of 302, and she assured me that she did indeed dial 302. It turned out that she was a nurse at this hospital in Kansas and the pharmacist at the hospital looked up the number in some directory for pharmaceutical companies, and it was mistakenly printed as _my_ number. Of course I didn't let her go until I found out the name of the company that printed the directory, and relayed this information over to the guy in charge of the switches over at the pharmaceutical company. I then got a hold of the BA-DE business office and spoke to an extremely helpful rep that went out of her way to set up a split intercept with a special operator for me, since I had already had checks printed with my new telephone number, and the student directory had already been printed. The she was so nice that she even reversed the $25 charge for choosing the 3669 number, and let me choose a new number for free; with the same last digits (6040 - real easy for everyone to remember; even my new prefix is a palindrome of my old one!) of the number I had in my dorm room for the previous two years. I think I like my new number better... Brian A Doreste * Remove |REMOVE_THIS| in address to reply * 85 Kershaw Street my email address: bdoreste 'at' brahms.udel.edu Newark, DE 19711-2244 USA Univ of Delaware Civil Engineering Undergraduate Usual disclaimers apply Delaware Dept of Transportation - Div of Planning ------------------------------ From: Scott Yoneyama Subject: Switch Partitioning Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 01:26:14 -0700 Organization: Starcom Service Corporation Reply-To: yone@wolfenet.COM I'm doing some research and need help. If we were to install a switch (say a DMS) and fund some of it by partitioning it for the use of other L.D. companies, what would be a fair price for a port? Any ideas? Please respond to my e-mail address below. Thanks for the help! Scott Yoneyama yone@wolfenet.com ------------------------------ From: Christopher W. Boone Subject: Re: Unit to Connect Two POTS Lines Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 06:55:36 -0500 Organization: ABC Radio Networks Engineering Dept - Dallas, Texas Reply-To: cboone@earthlink.net Joe, Teltone sells the M106E ... fully programmable and security passwords ... works on Loop or ground start lines ... about $600 or so. Also Viking sells a cheaper version (the RAD-1) ... sells for about $150 or so ... does use password but NOT as secure as the Teltone. Only problem with the Teltone is the DTMF decoder in it is sometimes too easy to talk off and causes the box to hang up ... tried to change a resistor Teltone suggested but it didnt help. IF they would supply me a schematic, I could have figured it out myself. Its probably too much audio hitting the DTMF chip. BTW this box is still in use at my former company ... tied two analog extns on a ROLM CBX together ... (DISA on the ROLM doesnt allow hookflash and conferencing. The M106E does, and also recall dialtone for another call without hangup!) Chris ------------------------------ From: roamer1@RemoveThis.pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: New Calling Card Surcharges? Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 01:44:28 GMT Organization: An antonym for Chaos Reply-To: roamer1@RemoveThis.pobox.com > billing (after the first minute). He told me that he had never heard > of such a thing and besides, "Starting next week, all calling card > calls made from a pay phone will be billed an extra 30 to 35 cent > surcharge, no matter which company you get your calling card from. All the confusion is a direct result of the FCC's payphone compensation rules, which IIRC were struck down in court, and the FCC has to rewrite them. AT&T and BellSouth/GA have already started tacking on surcharges for calling card calls from payphones -- 35c for AT&T, and 25c for BellSouth. AT&T is also surcharging PIN-billed 500 calls made from payphones with the same 35c/call. The question looming is, though: Will payphone compensation be passed directly onto business 800 customers, paging providers, etc. (by imposing a surcharge of 35c/call or whatever from each call from a payphone to a specific 800 number), or will carriers average the compensation into their overall rates (the better choice, IMHO)? I expected most carriers to average the payphone compensation crap into *all* their rates, instead of explicitly surcharging. I expect that at least some carriers will make small adjustments in overall rates to deal with the payphone compensation, but others will pass the surcharge directly on to those calling from payphones. > This is to cover costs that were previously absorbed by the phone > company. (Of course MCI already has this built into their rate, so > there will be no additional charges from us...)" MCI may take a loss on their normal surcharge to cover the payphone providers. As stated earlier, AT&T and BellSouth are *not* doing this. Never mind that IMO, the compensation to payphone owners is far too much, especially given what some of them have raked in from AOSleaze commissions and local-call overcharges. Stanley Cline (Roamer1 on IRC) ** GO BRAVES! GO VOLS! CLLI MRTTGAMA42G NPA 770 #5ESS ** (wk) scline(at)mindspring.net (hm) roamer1(at)pobox.com ** http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ **NO SPAM!** http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ and http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #202 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 9 09:27:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA25985; Sat, 9 Aug 1997 09:27:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 09:27:53 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708091327.JAA25985@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #203 TELECOM Digest Sat, 9 Aug 97 09:25:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 203 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CPUC News Release re: Slamming (Anthony Argyriou) GSM Alliance in North America (J.F. Mezei) Book Review: "Linux Network Adminisrator's Guide" by Kirch (Rob Slade) 602 Overlay? (Dave Stott) FCC to Reform International Toll Rates (Tad Cook) Book Review: "Financial Professional's Internet Guide" (Rob Slade) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Nicholas Marino) BellSouth Creates New Subsidiary (Mike King) Bogus Directory Assistance Provider (P. Thomson) Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling (Hillary Gorman) Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling (Moe Kunkle) Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling (Sean E. Williams) Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling (Lee Winson) Re: Toronto To Get New Area Code (Chris Farrar) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 08 Aug 1997 22:37:24 -0700 From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: CPUC News Release re: Slamming California Public Utilities Commission 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102-3298 CONTACT: Armando Rend August 1, 1997 CPUC-072 415-703-1366 (A96-03-007) CPUC SEEKS TO TOUGHEN RULES ON SLAMMING; ISSUES 'ZERO TOLERANCE' WARNING TO TELCOS Warning telephone companies it has "zero tolerance" for slamming, the unauthorized switching of a consumer's long distance service, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) today opened a full-scale inquiry to fashion tougher rules that will better protect the state's consumers from such predatory practices. A workshop and pre-hearing conference is set for Thursday, September 4, at 9:00 a.m. in the State Office Building, 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. A CPUC Administrative Law Judge will preside and issue a schedule for the rest of the proceeding. In issuing today's order, the Commission stated: "we would like to make California the most hospitable place to do utility business, ... but entrants into this market ought to know, that we have zero tolerance for business strategies that are abusive of consumer rights." To protect customer choice and ensure a strong, competitive market, the order added, detection must take place earlier in order to trigger corrective action more quickly. Today's order invites comments to a series of questions covering various aspects of the slamming issue. Pre-hearing conference statements noting issues that parties would like to address in the proceeding should be filed by August 28 with the CPUC Docket Office. The set of questions may be obtained by writing or calling 415-703-2669 or off the CPUC WebPage: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov. The Commission cited four recent cases involving slamming allegations. Sonic Communications was prosecuted for numerous slamming violations in order to obtain refunds for customers but it filed for federal bankruptcy protection. In September 1996, Cherry Communications was ordered to cease operations for two years and pay $20 each to customers that had disputed their change of service. In May 1997, the Commission suspended Communications Telesystems International (CTS) permit for three years, fined the company $2 million and ordered it to refund another $2 million to its customers. CTS had over 56,000 disputes filed against it, and apparently had targeted other-than-English speaking consumers. In December 1996, the Commission ordered Heartline Communications and its affiliate, Total National Telecommunications, to suspend retail operations for 40 months after more than 34,000 consumers alleged that their services were switched by TNT without their authorization. Prosecuting these cases was expensive and time-consuming, largely due to the incomplete data available on the rate at which slamming was occurring. At present, customers who believe they've been slammed can be returned to their carrier of choice by a request either directly to their old carrier or to their local phone company. Only requests to the local phone company alleging an illegal switch are logged as instances of slamming, so only part of the problem is exposed. The Commission seeks comment on the effectiveness of SB 1140, which became law January 1, and added new language in Public Utilities Code Section 2889.5, that requires independent third party verification of a change in long distance service. Some of the other key questions are: Do any CPUC rules and policies need changing in order to assure the law is effectively and efficiently applied? Should the Commission adopt rules specifically applicable to sales agents and marketers? Are specific rules needed for soliciting customers who are other-than-English speaking? Also, exactly who may validly authorize a change in long distance carrier? and, in what way? Should a customer receive notice before a change becomes effective? If so, how? Should the CPUC require local phone companies and long distance carriers to file standard dispute reports? If so, how often and in what form? Should the fees charged to long distance carriers for disputed switches be increased to make slamming less attractive? Should rules adopted in this proceeding apply to local exchange carriers and competitive local carriers? Several other questions deal with penalties and reporting duties. ------------------------------ From: jf mezei <[non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca> Subject: GSM Alliance in North America Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 22:16:40 -0500 Organization: VTL Reply-To: [non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca Reuters had an interesting article about GSM in North America. http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/970805/tech/stories/wireless_1.html An alliance was formed of GSM operators in Northe America, and this alliance was supposedly backed by Intel. Members of the GSM Alliance include Aerial Communications, BellSouth's Mobility DCS unit, Microcell Telecommunications Inc. , Omnipoint Corp's Communications unit, SBC Communications' Pacific Bell Mobile Services, Powertel and Western Wireless. Microcell (Fido) has also indicated to me that a deal with "Pocket" in the ST-Louis area would be in effect by the end of September. Another interesting tidbit: GSM in the USA supposedly has about 646,000 subscribers; CDMA in the USA supposedly has about 420,000 subscribers. It would be interesting to see if this market share ratio is similar in Canada where Fido/Microcell was almost a year ahead of Cantel in introducing PCS services (Bell Mobility still does not have a service). ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 23:01:42 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Linux Network Adminisrator's Guide" by Kirch BKLNXNAG.RVW 970302 "Linux Network Administrator's Guide", Olaf Kirch, 1994, 0-916151-75-1 %A Olaf Kirch %C P. O. Box 55549, Seattle, WA 98155 %D 1994 %G 0-916151-75-1 %I Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc. (SSC) %O 206-FOR-UNIX 206-527-3385 fax: 206-527-2806 sales@ssc.com %P 289 %T "Linux Network Administrator's Guide" Linux is gaining popularity in all kinds of areas. Most frequently, though, I hear people speaking of it in connection with the idea of grabbing an old 386 from somewhere and setting up a trial Internet hub, router, server, firewall, or other such network beast. If that is your area of interest, Kirch's guide (part of the Linux Documentation Project) will be immensely helpful. The work covers all the bases; networking concepts, TCP/IP issues, hardware, configuration, name service, protocols, applications, Network Information System (NIS), Network File System (NFS), UUCP, email, sendmail, and news. In other reviews, I have talked about the relative value of buying a printed copy of a file freely available online, so I won't reiterate that here. I do, however, find this book to be somewhat confusing in that regard. The Preface mentions an O'Reilly and Associates version which I haven't seen -- it doesn't mention SSC. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKLNXNAG.RVW 970302 ====================== roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 02:11:12 -0500 From: Dave Stott Subject: 602 Overlay? In a recent (8/6/97) {Tempe (AZ) Tribune}, there is a page one story on the next 602 split. The AZ Corporation Commission will hold a public meeting on August 13th at 9am to discuss a geographic split vs an overlay. David Janofsky, the Commission's assistant director in the utilities division, is reported to have said that the ACC has no preference at this time. My personal opinion is that no matter what the public or the industry wants, the ACC will opt for a split using the Salt River as the 602/new NPA boundary. I don't think that there are too many CO's serving both sides of the river anymore (at least in the heavily populated area of the Valley) since our 3 'hundred-year floods' a decade ago. Also, I expect the north side of the river will get to keep 602 since most state, county, and city government is there, as well as all of Sun City, Scottsdale, and Paradise Valley -- the most conservative (and monied) parts of the valley. Most large businesses are located north of the river as well. We'll see. Since so many people associate 10-digit dialing with long distance, it should be interesting to see how U S WEST handles the split. Dave Stott *********************************** * RCKT MN -- Drive fast, have fun * *********************************** ------------------------------ Subject: FCC to Reform International Toll Rates Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 02:57:33 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) FCC adopts plan to drive international phone rates down BY JEANNINE AVERSA Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators adopted a plan today intended eventually to lower international telephone rates and possibly save American callers billions of dollars. Chairman Reed Hundt of the Federal Communications Commission extolled the plan as a monumental achievement that will over time create "a radical, radical drop in prices." The FCC voted 4-0 to approve the plan. The plan is designed to bring international phone rates closer to the actual costs of providing calls by setting benchmarks above which U.S. companies would not pay foreign carriers. After a phase-in period, U.S. companies would not pay developed countries like members of the European Union, Japan or Singapore more than 15 cents a minute to complete calls. For less-developed countries like Mexico, U.S. companies would not pay more than 19 cents a minute to complete calls. For developing countries like some in Africa, U.S. carriers would not pay more than 23 cents a minute. The FCC says U.S. consumers pay more than they should for international calls because foreign telephone companies, on average, charge American phone companies fees at least 50 percent above costs for completing calls. U.S. consumers on average pay 99 cents a minute for international calls. about $60 billion a year is spent on international calls worldwide. The FCC's plan doesn't specify what action, if any, the U.S. government would take if a foreign carrier charges higher than the benchmark rates. "We've left that open," an FCC attorney said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. carriers sending calls to wealthy countries, such as the United Kingdom, could try to negotiate new rates starting Jan. 1, 1999, or one year after the rule's adoption, FCC attorneys said. U.S. carriers sending calls to upper middle-income countries like Greece or Brazil would have two years after the rule is adopted to negotiate new rates. The new rates deadline would be three years after adoption of the rule for lower middle-income countries such as Turkey, four years for low income countries such as India and five years for the poorest developed countries in Africa. If foreign governments, however, adopt rules bringing international phone rates closer to costs and yielding results similar to the FCC's, "then we're happy to go with that," a commission attorney said. Separately, the FCC carried out a mandate from Congress by adopting rules requiring television broadcasters and cable TV providers to air closed captions -- subtitles -- with programs. Most carriers have already voluntarily begun using closed captions. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 10:42:16 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Financial Professional's Internet Guide" BKFNPRIG.RVW 970308 "Financial Professional's Internet Guide", John Graves/Kim Hill Torrence, 1996, 0-57398-044-6, U$39.95 %A John Graves johng@kentis.kent.oh.us %A Kim Hill Torrence khill@mail.concentric.net us002405@interramp.com %C 155 N. Water St., Suite 205, Kent, OH 44240 %D 1996 %G 0-57398-044-6 %I Kent Information Services Inc./Peer-to-Peer Communications, Inc. %O U$39.95 +1-330-673-1300 fax: +1-330-673-6310 email@kentis.com %O http://www.kentis.com 800-420-2677 fax: 408-435-0895 info@peer-to-peer.com %T "Financial Professional's Internet Guide" More and more professions and specialty groups are becoming wired, and are therefore needing guides to the net dedicated to their niche. Financial professionals already have "Free Business Stuff on the Internet" (cf. BKFRBUST.RVW) and maybe "How to Grow Your Business on the Internet" (cf. BKHGYBOI.RVW) but there is still room for additional works. Although, maybe, not this one. Most specialty books do include a general section on using the Internet. This work, though, goes rather overboard in that regard. I was willing to overlook some of the errors (Novell does not make antiviral software; you can't use boolean search terms with archie) in a quick guide. The content seemed a bit terse, with numerous important omissions, but I figured that this could, again, be forgiven in an overview. After all, the important thing is the accounting information, right? Wrong, apparently. The generic Internet guide, lame as it is, comprises about ninety percent of the book. The section on accounting resources, in fact, is shorter than the list of ISPs. The resource listings are fairly extensive but only marginally annotated, and are mostly Websites of unknown usefulness. Seen as a general Internet guide, this book is unsatisfactory. As far as a reference for financial resources, it is limited in usefulness. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKFNPRIG.RVW 970308 Please note the Peterson story - http://www.freivald.org/~padgett/trial.htm Genesis 4:9/Proverbs 24: 11,12 - your choice ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 11:54:36 -0400 I've been in the 900 business for 10 years, so I think I can explain the basis for BS's decision. Way back in the early 1990's, there were a few 900 information providers that were ripping people off. It wasn't a major problem, and it was a very small percentage of all 900 lines, but various politicians got hold of the issue and made a big deal about it. The result of this big stink can be seen on you local phone bill, if you happen to have made a 900 call during the month. On the page that lists the charge for the 900 call, you will see an FCC-mandated statement that basically says: "We know you made this call to a 900 number, but you really don't have to pay for it because there's no way that this telephone company can disconnect your service for failure to pay a 900 number bill." Anyone who calls a 900 number can call their local telephone company and have the charge taken off. You don't even have to deny making the call, although many people do and the telco doesn't question it. You can also say that you didn't think you got your money's worth from the call. You can say just about anything. But that's not the end of it. Even when a person gets his 900 bill reversed, the local and long distance telcos do not lose any money. They collect the 'transport and billing' charge for the call regardless of whether they collect any money. It's the 900 information provider that gets screwed. If I set up a $10 donation line, I pay the telcos about 50 cents per call. If 1000 people call the line, and they all refuse to pay when they get the bill, I still have to shell out $500 for billing and transport. The telcos can't lose. The upshot of all this? The telcos have no incentive to encourage people to pay for 900 calls. They get their share of the call regardless of whether the customer pays. It's not unusual for 900 IPs to have a 40% uncollectable rate. The reason that Bell South allows for-profit 900 numbers and disallows charity 900 numbers is that they are perfectly willing to screw a for-profit 900 IP out of the money, but they are ethically unwilling to screw a charity. Did I read that right, BellSouth? So you can thank your elected representatives for enacting knee-jerk legislation to combat "phone sex", thereby killing a perfectly good application for 900 services. ------------------------------ Subject: BellSouth Creates New Subsidiary Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 12:33:24 PDT From: mk@nospam.wco.com (Mike King) Reply-To: mk@wco.com ----- Forwarded Message ----- Date: Tue, 5 Aug 1997 09:42:29 -0400 (EDT) From: BellSouth Subject: BELLSOUTH CREATES NEW SUBSIDIARY BELLSOUTH CREATES NEW SUBSIDIARY; INTENDS TO FILE AS COMPETITIVE LOCAL EXCHANGE CARRIER ATLANTA -- BellSouth Corporation announced today that it has created a new subsidiary that intends to file for competitive local exchange certification to allow it to achieve the same pricing and geographical flexibility as its competitors. Pending regulatory approval, the new company will be another way for BellSouth to offer its customers an integrated BellSouth package of services, including local service, long distance service, wireless communications, Internet, cable TV and entertainment services but with enhanced pricing freedom and the ability to offer the services in more areas than its traditional primary operating territory. The new BellSouth subsidiary will soon file for certification as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in states inside and outside BellSouth's traditional nine-state market. It will allow the company to meet new telecommunications competitors on equal footing, buying communications services from the incumbent providers and combining them in fully integrated and innovative packages. Subject to state approval from state regulators, the new subsidiary is expected to be fully operational by mid-1998. "Currently, we must file and seek approval of complicated pricing tariffs before adjusting prices," said Dick Anderson, vice president of marketing for BellSouth. "As a CLEC, we would be able to react to market conditions just as our competitors do," said Anderson. "Furthermore, the new subsidiary would allow us to extend service to select markets throughout the Southern U.S. that we don't currently serve, and give us the ability to follow our customers to markets outside the Southern U.S. where those customers need integrated communications service." The new subsidiary will be headquartered in Atlanta but is also expected to have offices elsewhere in the Southeast, with staffing levels to be determined over the next few months. BellSouth (NYSE:BLS) is a $19 billion communications services company. It provides telecommunications, wireless communications, directory advertising and publishing, video, Internet and information services to more than 28 million customers in 20 countries worldwide. For more information about BellSouth, visit the BellSouth Web page at http://www.bellsouth.com. Also, BellSouth news releases dating back one year are available by fax at no charge by calling 1-800-758-5804, ext. 095650. For more information, contact: Kevin Doyle: 404-249-2793 doyle.kevin@bsc.bellsouth.net Tim Klein: 404-249-4135 klein.tim@bsc.bellsouth.net --------------- Mike King * Oakland, CA, USA * mk (at) wco (dot) com ------------------------------ From: P. Thomson Subject: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 14:43:00 -0400 Organization: Mid Hudson Valley Network Reply-To: mmommsen@mhv.net I wrote to Mark Cuccia: > I have a problem. > Years ago our company had a main number of > (914)XXX-XXXX. About 4 years ago a restructuring resulted in new > numbers for different branches, and we dropped the XXXX number. For > a year or so, the LEC (NYNEX) provided a message giving a new number, > then that service expired. > Now the XXXX number has been re-issued to a homeowner a couple of > miles down the road, and she complains that she gets numerous calls > every day for our company. She says "directory assistance" gives out > that number to people asking for our company. > Well, I immediately called our NYNEX contact, and he verified that all > our records show the new number, (914)YYY-YYYY. He did a scan of > their directory assistance database, and found no occurences of XXXX > under our name. > When I call +1 914 555 1212 (default carrier is LDDS/Worldcom) I > usually get NYNEX's automated "Directory Assistance, what city?" > message, and if I specify my city and company name, I get the > correct (new) number. HOWEVER, about 1 time out of 10 I get a > human operator, and about 1 in three of those give me the old number! > The question is: WHO are the other direcory assistance providers, and > HOW can they be reached directly to correct a listing? > Any hints? Mark then responded to me: Well ... I've posted this many times before, but AT&T does _NOT_ route NPA-555-1212 calls to the GENUINE local telco's directory for that called NPA - at least AT&T doesn't do this on _most_ (interstate) calls to directory assistance for NPA's within the 50-states/DC (and that includes AK & HI). I know that via Sprint and MCI, I have always gone to a genuine LEC for their directory assistance. It seems that LDDS/Worldcom sends their 'overflow' traffic to AT&T, OR your PBX is sending some 'overflow' to AT&T. The BOGUS SCHLOCKY company that AT&T uses is "ExcelAgency". The last time someone I know checked, they are in Arizona (Phonenix and Tempe), at 800-553-8163. AT&T's HQ's in Bernardsville NJ takes complaints, most of them on ExcelAgency. Call them COLLECT as a '0-' call via an AT&T operator (they do accept collect calls made via the AT&T network), at 908-221-4191. Make SURE you get a LIVE AT&T operator on the line (try 800-321-0288, and then enter 0# to get a live operator, and tell her to stay on the line to announce the call collect LIVE). This 908-221 number is NOT changing to NPA 732. It is answered first by a machine that states that it accepts collect calls placed via the AT&T network, therefore you need to get a live AT&T opr to announce the collect call LIVE. Then you sit on hold, until someone takes your complaint. Personally, I hope someone brings regulatory and/or legal complaints (maybe a lawsuit) against AT&T for this PHONY/BOGUS/SCHLOCKY 555-1212 'service' (?) that they have been using. ExcelAgency gets their listings NOT from the local telco, but from other resources, including credit reporting agencies (TRW, Equifax, Transunion), and others. I've heard that they even give out NON-pub's! Since they don't really access the local telco's listings database, they have no real way of knowing if a number has been changed, is nonpublished, and likewise, new customers' numbers can take FOREVER to get into their database. This past Spring, USA-Today did an expose' on AT&T and ExcelAgency. ExcelAgency - we do NOT live up to our name! The real problem is when calling from non-Equal Access areas, such as from rural parts of the US or Canada - unless you know how to use Sprint/MCI (but from Canada?) with a card (using 800-COLLECT for MCI or 800-210-CARD for Sprint). From such non-Equal-Access areas, calls 'default' to AT&T, which means ExcelAgency for 555-1212. I wonder what happens when calling US directory from overseas, whether +1-NPA-555-1212 is allowed for customer access directly from foreign (non-NANP) countries or if not, via the operator in the calling non-NANP country? ----------- MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: hillary@hillary.net (Hillary Gorman) Subject: Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: 8 Aug 1997 15:10:20 GMT Organization: You LART'em, we cart 'em In , Ken Jongsma <73115.1041@NOSPAMcompuserve.com>, told thousands of people: > I see a major problem here, given the user interface required to > activate the feature, i.e. the switchhook flash. I've stumbled over > this interface at the office way too many times. I can see many > situations where you receive or initiate a call, hang up momentarily > and then initiate a new call not realizing that the previous call is > still on the line. I dare say the vast majority of residential users > are not going to realize what a stutter dialtone is and that it means > they've just incurred a .75 charge. Yes, this is definitely a problem. I have 3-way calling on my home phone line, and I do this all the time. However, we pay a monthly fee to Bell Atlantic, PA, for the privilege of unlimited 3-way calls, so it's not a big deal. If it were a pay per use item, I'd be royally pissed off. The thing is, a lot of times I'll have the phone at arm's length when I'm hanging up/dialing the new number, and I don't hear if it is a stutter or regular dial tone. hillary gorman...........Official Token Female..........hillary@netaxs.com "So that's 2 T-1s and a newsfeed....would you like clues with that?" hillary@hillary.net: for debugging your net or deworming your pet Net Access...The NSP for ISPs....The NOC that rocks around the clock. ------------------------------ From: moe@ro.com (Moe Kunkle) Subject: Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 11:09:30 +0700 Organization: Renaissance Internet Services Reply-To: moe@ro.com FWIW, Bellsouth installed this in N. Alabama. I didn't realize it until I found several 3-way call charges on my bill. It seems that my wife was doing some banking and when her max time was reached, she hung up and went off hook rather fast (flashhook) to redial. Bellsouth removed it within two hours of my request. I was credited for the mistaken 3-way calls. I bet they make a lot of money on those who don't realize thay accidently activated a 3-way call. Moe Kunkle ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: Fri, 8 Aug 97 13:44:24 -0500 From: Sean E. Williams 73115.1041@NOSPAMcompuserve.com (Ken Jongsma) wrote: > I see a major problem here, given the user interface required to > activate the feature, i.e. the switchhook flash. Here in RochesterTel / Frontier-land, the feature works a bit differently. Users who are not monthly subscribers to the Three-Way calling feature must enter a two-digit star code after pressing the "flash" key. Attempting to dial a second party without first pressing the star code will not result in a Three-Way call. Of course, those users who are subscribers to Three-Way calling simply press flash, dial the second party, then press flash to bring the initial party back into the conversation. Sean E. Williams |sew@dos.nortel.com (Internet) | Information Systems|sew@nhmbs1f.humb.nt.com (Intranet)|N O R T E L Rochester, NY USA |+1 716 224-7850 (ESN 432) |Northern Telecom Mailstop R11-113 |+1 716 654-2881 (FAX) | ------------------------------ From: lwinson@bbs.cpcn.com (Lee Winson) Subject: Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: 8 Aug 1997 23:04:05 GMT Organization: The PACSIBM SIG BBS I can definitely see disadvantages of activating 3-way calling with merely a hookswitch flash, especially when the subscriber doesn't know it's available. A lot of every day people who don't work for large companies are unaware of 3-way calling and the meaning of a stutter dial tone. I can see a lot of unnecessary long distance billings as a line is kept open unintentionally. More troublesome, someone could set up a 3-way and not be aware of it, and discuss something with person "B" unaware that person "A" is still on the line and listening. This could be quite embarrassing in social calls, and downright unacceptable in business calls (for example, when price negotiations are going on, or in discussions by a lawyer with different sides.) However, on the flip side, as a POTS user, I would love the occassional use of 3-way calling on a pay-as-you-go basis. Even at 75c a month (originally 25c not long ago), I love 1169-Return Call--I use it 2-3 times a month, and it beats $6/month for caller ID. What local companies offer it as pay-as-you-go? Another feature I'd like on an a la carte basis is Call Forward. This is something I'd use very occassionally, but there are times when I need it, such as expecting a critical phone call, and having to be in another location for equally critical reasons. My local phone directory is confusing on this -- I think I have it for calls _coming from a _specific_ number_, I'd want it for all calls coming from _any_ number. ------------------------------ From: Chris Farrar Subject: Re: Toronto To Get New Area Code Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 16:51:57 -0400 Organization: Sympatico Reply-To: cfarrar@sympatico.ca Kevin Smith wrote: > Toronto (Mega City, Ontario) is going to get a new area code. The > former cities of (old)-Toronto, York, and East York will keep the 416 > area code Etobicoke, North York, and Scarbough will move to the new > area code. > Bell Canada nor its parent company Bell Canada Enterprises has said > what the new area code will be. Maybe another leak at Bellcote will > happen as it did with the Montreal split. This area code will be the > first of the new type area codes for Ontario. Bell will release the > information soon. > The split is similar to inner/outer split that London has (171 and 181 > split.) Do you have a source on this? It was previously announced by Bell that 416 was getting an overlay, not a split. Chris Farrar | cfarrar@sympatico.ca | Amateur Radio, a VE3CFX | fax +1-905-457-8236 | national resource PGPkey Fingerprint = 3B 64 28 7A 8C F8 4E 71 AE E8 85 31 35 B9 44 B2 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #203 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 9 14:00:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA08925; Sat, 9 Aug 1997 14:00:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 14:00:01 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708091800.OAA08925@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #204 TELECOM Digest Sat, 9 Aug 97 14:00:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 204 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Sprint Jacks Up Rates, Doesn't Tell Customers (David W. Tamkin) Colorado PUC Mandates 303 Overlay, Stresses Conservation (Donald Heiberg) Serenity, Savetrees, and Spam - Good News For Jerks (Robert A. Pierce) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 08 Aug 1997 14:50:04 CDT From: dattier@wwa.com (David W. Tamkin) Subject: Re: Sprint Jacks Up Rates, Doesn't Tell Customers Reply-To: dattier@wwa.com (David W. Tamkin) Organization: TIPFKAG [World-Wide Access, Chicago, Illinois 60606-2804] Charles Earley wrote: > Sprint raised the cost of using their phone cards from .25/min. to > .30/min and did not tell their customers. I discovered this when I > got my bill this month. When I called, I was told that Sprint is not > required to tell customers when they raise their rates. That is fine, > but what about common courtesy or customer service? They also > informed me of a new surcharge of .30/call to be added to the cost of > using a Sprint phone card. It may be too late for Mr. Earley (pun unintended, but what the hey), but on July 31 I received a postal card from Sprint announcing the very rate change that had surprised him on that bill (and also the new per-call surcharge amount). In fact, it begins, "At Sprint, we are committed to keeping you completely informed about your account." However, it says that the change is effective August 1, 1997, so if it has been applied to calls that Mr. Earley has already placed, something is amiss. ------------------------------ From: Donald M. Heiberg Subject: Colorado PUC Mandates 303 Overlay, Stresses Conservation Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 17:47:36 -0600 Full decision may be downloaded from http://www.puc.state.co.us/docket/97a103t.html [...] indicated portions omitted below. Also, all footnotes were omitted. ---------------------------------------------- Decision No. C97-761 BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF COLORADO DOCKET NO. 97A-103T IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION AND FINAL RECOMMENDATION OF THE NUMBERING PLAN ADMINISTRATOR FOR RELIEF OF THE 303 AREA CODE. DECISION AND ORDER Mailed Date: July 31, 1997 Adopted Date: July 29, 1997 TABLE OF CONTENTS [...] I. BY THE COMMISSION A. Procedural Background [...] B. Ruling on Outstanding Motions [...] C. Public Participation [...] D. The 303 NPA Relief Options [...] 4. It should be noted initially that the reason the Administrator believes area code relief for the 303 NPA is necessary is not because of a lack of 303 numbers, but rather a lack of or rapid consumption of NXX codes, which are the three digit prefixes that immediately follow the area code in each telephone number. The remaining supply of available NXX codes is being rapidly consumed in part because of the current configuration and use of NXX codes. NXX codes are associated with specific points in the telecommunications network known as rate centers and are, therefore, limited in use to the specific area surrounding the rate center. There are presently 42 rate centers in the 303 NPA. As a result of this configuration, new telecommunications service providers, including wireless, paging, and competitive local exchange companies ("CLECs"), in many cases are each assigned 303-NXX codes which correspond to each rate center in which they intend to offer service or to each distinct type of service, like wireless or paging. Many of these NXX codes, each of which contains 10,000 numbers are, under current practice, being assigned up to 20 NXX codes at a time to providers that may have only a few customers and may have foreseeable use for only a small fraction of the assigned blocks of numbers. The result is that NXX codes are being assigned long before the telecommunications service provider has put to use any significant portion of the 10,000 associated with each NXX code. E. 303 NPA Relief Should Be Implemented Through The Overlay Method 1. The Commission finds first that the overlay method (Option 2) should be used to relieve the 303 NPA at the time that such relief is needed. While there are still many numbers available in the 303 NPA, the exhaust of available 303-NXX codes, if the current pace of assigning seven to eight 303-NXX codes per month were to continue, would occur within one year. Conservation measures, as more fully described below, may indefinitely, and should significantly, delay the introduction of the new NPA from the perspective of the end user by lengthening the expected life of the 303 NPA; however, it is prudent for the Commission to select a relief option in this proceeding so that appropriate preparation can begin. 2. The Commission's selection of the overlay plan is based on a weighing of the myriad of positive and negative factors associated with the options presented. For the reasons set forth below, the Commission finds that the overlay method best comports with the interest of the public of the State of Colorado and best comports with national trends in telecommunications. 3. The overlay method's primary benefit is that no portion of an existing telephone number in the 303 NPA will need to change, [...] Moreover, disruption of the ordinary course of business in the greater Denver metropolitan area will be largely prevented. Once the new NPA is actually introduced, consumers will need to dial the NPA in front of the seven-digits presently dialed to place a local call. As such, ten-digit dialing will be required to complete a local call in those areas served by the 303 NPA following the conclusion of the permissive dialing period. This is the principal change affecting consumers under the overlay, and it will only become mandatory after the 303 NPA is exhausted and the new NPA is introduced. 4. Additionally, the introduction of number portability, whether within a rate center or on a nationwide basis, beginning as early as July 1, 1998, and the movement towards a national ten-digit dialing pattern will make the relief option selected by the Commission more convenient to end users in the long run. Colorado consumers will be well prepared for these changes through the customer education and technical preparation which will occur as a result of this Decision and Order. [...] 7. Since the overlay method utilizes NXX codes with new NPA for growth codes only, the effect of the overlaid NPA will not become apparent until the first NXX code in the new NPA is either required or requested. This is another benefit of selecting the overlay method of relief. Under the overlay, the effect on end users could be delayed well into the future with the implementation of conservation measures, and certainly will not occur prior to May 31, 1998. Contrarily, under the double split option, the new NPAs would have been activated on December 1, 1997, even though permissive dialing, whereby all calls could still be completed by the use of seven-digit dialing, would last for at least six months. Thus, by selecting the overlay method of relief, the status quo (one NPA and seven-digit dialing, albeit permissive) will not end on December 1, 1997, and could potentially last well beyond May 31, 1998. By maintaining the status quo for at least an additional seven months, there is a much greater potential for successfully implementing one or more of the conservation measures described in Part H of this Decision, thereby even further delaying the actual introduction of the new NPA. [...] F. This Overlay Plan Is Not Anti-Competitive [...] G. Coordinated Customer Education Effort Is Required [...] 5. Since the local dialing pattern will be changing, the Commission finds that, at a minimum, a six-month permissive dialing period is needed. It is hoped that permissive dialing could commence on December 1, 1997. During the following six month period, customers would have an opportunity to get accustomed to ten-digit local dialing, even though a local call placed using only seven digits would still be connected, while knowing that the first three-digits are 3-0-3. Additionally, this period of time would be used for reprogramming, if needed, of autodialing equipment, fax machines, modems, alarm boxes, etc.; teaching those in need of special assistance of the change; and reprinting stationary and modifying advertising. Emphasis should be on making the necessary changes/adjustments as soon after the commencement of permissive dialing as possible due to the lack of a finite date for the end of the permissive dialing period. Then, once the industry knows it will need to introduce a telephone number assigned to the new NPA, the permissive dialing period would end at the time of that requirement. It is hoped that permissive dialing could continue for longer than six months through the conservation measures described in Part H below. 6. To the extent the Commission and industry believe that the nationwide uniform dialing pattern will convert to a ten-digit pattern, the Commission desires the parties to consider and report the benefits and drawbacks to introducing permissive ten-digit local dialing on a statewide basis simultaneously with the introduction of permissive ten-digit dialing in the 303 NPA. As presently conceived, the permissive dialing period for all three NPAs in Colorado would last until the need to actually overlay a new NPA over an existing or subsequently geographically divided NPA. 7. Finally, as part of the conversion to a ten-digit as opposed to a seven-digit number, it will be necessary for all affected telephone directories to contain each customer's entire ten-digit number. If possible this should be accomplished prior to the commencement of permissive dialing, i.e., prior to December 1, 1997. Additionally, both local and long distance directory assistance shall be unified whereby a single call can be used to obtain telephone numbers in either of the overlaid NPAs. In this manner a person dialing 1-303-555-1212 to obtain long distance directory assistance shall be able to obtain a number commencing with the new NPA and vice versa. H. Conservation Measures Regarding NXX Code Assignments Shall Begin Immediately 1. The evidence in this docket clearly demonstrates that relief for the 303 NPA is needed because of the present method for assigning NXX codes, as exacerbated by the advent of competition in the local exchange market, and not because nearly all of the 7.92 million possible numbers in the 303 NPA are in use. While only 124 NXX codes, representing a possible 1.24 million telephone numbers, are unused or unassigned in the 303 NPA, it is estimated that there are more than 3 million unused telephone numbers available in the 303 NPA. To alleviate this problem, minimize customer disruption, and to potentially delay the introduction of a telephone number with the new NPA, the Commission finds that immediate consideration of and prompt implementation of NXX code conservation measures is required. The import of the need to implement conservation measures is clearly set forth in the unopposed motion of the OCC to open a docket to investigate number conservation measures; however, this motion will only be partially granted in that the Commission will impose an even more aggressive timetable. 2. The Commission is particularly interested in the following types of NXX code conservation measures: -- recapturing of unused NXX codes that have already been assigned or codes used for special purposes such as testing -- requiring the assignment of numbers in an existing NXX code to be limited to each 1000 number block until exhaust of that block (including addressing the impact on the assignment of "vanity" numbers) -- assigning new NXX codes as NXX-X (even though the remaining NXX-X codes in that particular NXX would, at the present time, be unavailable except to the same provider) -- rate center consolidation -- number pooling (including, central office code sharing at the "thousands' digit level, also referred to as NXX-X) -- the return by ILECs of previously assigned NXX codes if service provider number portability and/or NXX-X assigning is available prior to June 1998. -- the impact of service provider number portability which should be implemented on or before July 1, 1998 in the Denver Metropolitan Statistical Area -- the impact of service provider number portability throughout the geographic area defined by the 303 NPA -- the impact of a prohibition of snap-back/the use of numbers made available through churn.20 Additionally, the Administrator, in conjunction with the industry, should consider whether to initially use the new NPA only for test codes, special industry purposes, "transparent" phone numbers such as those which make up a hunt group, and/or in a "transparent" overlay as described in Exhibit 1 to the OCC's motion to open an investigatory docket on conservation measures. In this manner, additional 303-NXX codes could potentially be freed up and the date for introducing the new NPA and commencing mandatory 10-digit dialing could be moved out on an incremental basis. 3. To assure that competition is not impeded by an unavailability of 303 numbers, conservation measures proposed to be implemented must make available the remaining 303 numbers, as conserved, first to CLECs so that facilities-based local exchange competition is neither constrained nor disadvantaged. 4. In order to further this end, the Administrator shall be required to file a report as more fully described in Ordering Paragraph No. II.A.10 below. The Administrator shall consult with other holders of NXX codes in preparing this report and include their comments, where applicable, to show alternative viewpoints. As a result, the report should present the view of the industry and not just the Administrator. 5. Additionally, in order for the Commission to monitor number utilization and conservation, the Administrator shall require all holders of NXX codes to submit to him a monthly report detailing the utilization rate for each NXX assigned to that provider. The Administrator, in turn, shall compile this information and file a report with the Commission. 6. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Commission finds that the public interest requires the Administrator to apply all implemented conservation measures to all holders of NXX codes. Successful conservation, with the resulting benefit of minimizing customer disruption, will only be realized if every NXX code holder cooperates. II. ORDER A. The Commission Orders That: [...] 6. The overlay method, as proposed in this docket and fully described in this Decision, shall be implemented as the relief plan for the 303 Numbering Plan Area. 7. All parties to this docket, excpet for the City and County of Denver and the Elizabeth Area Chamber of Commerce, shall form a committee to generate an "Implementation Plan" focusing on the necessary customer education required to implement the overlay ordered herein. Additionally, all other providers of telecommunications services, especially cellular, personal communications service and paging providers, holding or planning to hold 303-NXX codes should participate and share in the cost of the customer education effort. The first meeting of this committee should be set up and facilitated by Jack Ott, the Numbering Plan Administrator for Colorado. The "Implementation Plan" shall be filed in this docket for informational purposes on or before September 4, 1997. The "Implementation Plan" shall, at a minimum, fully describe the scope (statewide, nationwide), methods, and estimated cost of the customer education effort, identify the allocation of costs of the education program between the contributing entities, set forth a calendar through the introduction of the first number with the new NPA (May 1, 1998 at the earliest), identify the necessary changes to the telephone directories, and address the notion of permissive ten-digit dialing on a statewide basis. 8. All affected telephone directories shall set forth the entire ten-digit telephone number for all customers. This shall be accomplished wherever possible prior to the start of permissive dialing on December 1, 1997. Additionally, prior to the introduction of the new numbering plan area, local and long distance directory assistance shall be unified such that the inquiring party is not affected by the overlay. In this manner, both 303-NXX-XXXX numbers and new-NPA-NXX-XXXX numbers shall be available from the same inquiry. To the extent necessary, this information should be set forth in the next edition of the telephone directory. 9. The motion of the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel to open a docket to investigate number conservation measures, as supplemented, is granted to the extent it is consistent with this Decision. 10. On or before August 29, 1997, the Numbering Plan Administrator for Colorado, Jack Ott, shall file a report identifying the various conservation measures set forth in the discussion above, as well as any additional proposals to conserve NXX codes, in rank order of preference with specific estimated implementation dates and costs. Within each measure, all sub-elements and respective dates and costs should be identified. The report should also identify for how long the permissive dialing period could be extended through the timely implementation of the various conservation measures identified. The report shall identify any limiting legal, technological, or economic factors associated with each conservation measure. All analysis in the report shall be Colorado specific, and if necessary, may also include a discussion of the impacts of any national studies, timetables, etc. This report shall be filed as an application seeking authority to implement all feasible conservation measures. Per the above discussion, this report shall include comments from other holders of NXX codes. 11. Commencing on September 1, 1997, and monthly thereafter, the Numbering Plan Administrator for Colorado, Jack Ott, shall be in receipt of NXX code utilization information from all holders of NXX codes. The Numbering Plan Administrator for Colorado shall then compile this information and file a report with the Commission no later than the 15th of each month. These reports shall be filed monthly until the Commission finds them unnecessary in a future order. 12. To the extent future supervision by the Commission concerning customer education, implementation schedules, conservation measures, etc. is necessary, the Commission will conduct appropriate proceedings, including but not limited to status conferences, and/or the filing of additional reports. 13. The 20-day period provided for in A7 40-6-114(1), C.R.S., within which to file applications for rehearing, reargument, or reconsideration begins on the first day following the mailed date of this Decision and Order. 14. This Order is effective upon its Mailed Date. B. ADOPTED IN COMMISSIONERS' DELIBERATIONS MEETING July 29, 1997. THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF COLORADO Commissioners ------------------------------ From: no-spam@pobox.com (Robert A. Pierce) Subject: Serenity, Savetrees, and Spam - Good News For Jerks Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 14:10:20 GMT Organization: EarthLink Network, Inc. Reply-To: no-spam@pobox.com This was recently noted on a mailing list dealing with spammers. You can add serenityworld to the list of domains to filter out. AOL kicked you off,and Hotmail cancelled your service? Then this is for you! This was announced via a bcc spam attack, of course: >From: Serenity@serenityworld.com >Date sent: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 02:35:20 -0700 >To: fryourinfo@savetrees.com >Send reply to: Serenity@serenityworld.com >Subject: [may be junkmail -pobox] NEWSFLASH!! Press Release! (FREE GOLD GIVEAWAY!) [some snipping] > NETWORK MARKETING MAGAZINE names Company of the MONTH!!!! > HOTTEST NEW MLM ON THE NET! > 1. No products to sell Huh? Even Amway expects to sell products, even if some distributors don't. >To get complete info RIGHT NOW our Autoresponder will send back info to you >within minutes. Please put SEND INFO in subject area. > Send to: GENERAL101@ANSWERME.COM > http://worldofserenity.com > Bullet Proof Web Hosting and Web Creations I checked out their web page and found this: > SERENITY PINMAIL - SECURE EMAIL SERVICES (p1 of 2) > [INLINE] > Safe-Secure Email > We at Serenity understand a need to be able to contact prospective > customers without the added worry or concern of the possible > consequences of accidently giving your home Email address to one of > those undesireables out there that seem to no have no life and plenty > of time to hazzle your ISP, whether it be AOL or some other provider. How DARE people take offense at spamming! > This has nothing to do with legalities, but most ISP's are too busy to > deal with hassling and derogatory email that come from a few of those > undesireables out there in the Cyber World. So if you are involved > with Mass Emailing the chances of you getting your Internet service > shut off is more than just slight. I am crying so hard my keyboard is arcing and sparking! > Those FEW people who seem to have no life to speak of seem to have > plenty of time to spend hours creating large and foul Email to send to > your ISP. Wait -- are they talking about themselves here? > "FORWARD or PICKUP" your Email to your home base without exposing your > location and a place where you can "SEND" email also without them > knowing where you truly are located. This can be a lifetime Email > So whether you are into Mass Email marketing or just someone who wants > the same Email address not matter who your ISP address is Serenity > Only $20.00 U.S. per Year! ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #204 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 11 08:55:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA19649; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 08:55:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 08:55:09 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708111255.IAA19649@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #205 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Aug 97 08:55:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 205 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Halifax Exchange History (David Leibold) Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer (Fred R. Goldstein) SWBell Fiber Cut Clogs Houston's Interoffice Tandems (Bill Garfield) What Happens When You Forget the 1-800/888- in Front (David Leibold) Connecticut's New Area Codes: 475 and 959 (Greg Monti) Telephone Pioneers Web Site (David Leibold) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Jude Crouch) Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? (Frank Weatherford) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 21:28:49 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: Halifax Exchange History Halifax, Nova Scotia Exchange History 10 August 1997 This is an attempt to trace the telephone exchange history of the Halifax, Nova Scotia region, including the adjoining communities of Dartmouth and Bedford. This should indicate the approximate timelines of development for the manual and automatic telephone systems in the region. A sampling of telephone directories serving the Halifax area were checked from old telephone and city directories (as available at Halifax or Dartmouth libraries). A few of the earliest directories (1880-86) were available on the Bell Canada microforms. Some information has not been analysed thoroughly, nor have various topics been fully documented. For instance, not every single change to the communities listed in each directory may be tracked. Some directory editions were not available for consultation. Research time constraints meant that many intermediate years were omitted; an attempt was made to follow five-year intervals when consulting telephone or city directories. This means findings for a given year may have actually occurred a few years earlier. The directory coverage areas have also changed over time. Please send correspondence and contributions regarding this history to David Leibold: aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca or dleibold@else.net. The timeline begins with the earliest-encountered telephone listings ... 1880 - "Bell Telephone Exchange" list of subscribers. - 35 entries, listed in no particular order. 19 May 1880 - Dominion Telegraph Co. was the exchange operator. - More entries than the prior 1880 list, but still not much alphabetical order. Mar 1886 - 26 pages - Bell Telephone Company of Canada operated the exchange at that time. - Halifax exchange was in the Hesslein Building, Hollis Street, 3rd floor. It was open "both day and night". - Alphabetic order was used now, with a new page for each new starting letter. - Windsor exchange was noted (Windsor, Wentworth, Hantsport, Falmouth). - Hants and Halifax Tel. Co. was noted. - Rates included a Halifax to all other offices rate of 25 cents. It was noted that "Subscribers to Bell Telephone exchanges will have a reduction of 5 cents from above rates". 1911 - McAlpine's Halifax City Directory lists only one exchange. No separate offices were yet noted. 1 Dec 1915 - Halifax District directory, from Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Co. - MT&T Executive Offices: 88-92 Hollis Street. - Manual exchanges: Harbour (Dartmouth), Lorne (Halifax), St Paul (Halifax). - Communities in this directory: Bedford, Hammond Plains, Sackville District (Upper Sackville, Middle Sackville, Beaver Bank), Chezzetcook, Eastern Passage, French Village (Indian Harbour, Tantallon, Boutilliers Cove, Peggy's Cove, Seabright, Head St Margaret's, West Dover), Musquodoboit Harbour (Petpeswick Harbour, West Jeddore, Smith Settlement, Oyster Pond Jeddore, Ostria Lake), Sambroo, St Margaret's, Ship Harbour, Spryfield, Tangier, Wellington. - Manual ring suffixes used: J, L, R, W - Some numbers could have form 243-11 (-11 is type of ring) or 123-J2 (plus exchange name). - Dalhousie College numbers St Paul 3011 (main number), St Paul 800 (President), St Paul 905 (Medical school). - Warning ad in this phone book advises callers not to call up the operator to ask where any fire is. June 1919 - St Paul exchange name changed to Sackville - Lorne and Harbour (Dartmouth) exchanges still in effect - Ring suffixes explained: J & W represent 1 ring, L & R represent 2 rings. - Other listings: Bayside District (central office - Halifax Sackville), Lawrencetown and Mineville District (central office - Dartmouth). - Bay Road exchange ("class H"), Bedford (continuous service), Hammonds Plains District (Bedford central office), Sackville District (service there operated weekdays 7am-9pm, Sunday/holidays 9-10am and 1:30-3pm). - Other listings: Chezzetcook, Eastern Passage, French Village, Musquodoboit Harbour, Sambroo, St Margaret's, Ship Harbour, Spryfield, Tangier, Wellington. Jan 1921 - "Automatic Telephone Service" (dial service) announced, more than two years before Bell Canada's Toronto-GRover dial exchange. - Lorne exchange was converted to dial and exchange name converted to a leading letter e.g. Lorne 5201 would become L5201. - Dial numbers were lettered as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 --- S B L A H W F L.D. Opr. - Numbers on the 'A' exchange were also established, most of these apparently from the Lorne manual exchange area. e.g. A5579 was Lorne 1466W. There appeared to be no noticeable conversion pattern from manual to dial numbers. - Dial customers reaching Harbour or Sackville numbers would dial 6 or 2 respectively, then reach a switchboard operator to complete the call. - Dial Service Numbers: Telephone company: 1000 Information: 1002 Trouble (repair): 1003 Emergency: 19 (ambulance, fire, police) 2-party ringback: 181 multi-party ring: 17## (## was ring suffix number, such as 21) - Hubbard's Exchange, Mount Uniacke, Ship Harbour and Ship Harbour Lake listings added to directory. Dec 1925 - Sackville, Harbour exchanges still manual. - Pink-coloured classified pages included. - Dalhousie University: Sackville 800. Jul 1930 - The A exchange seems to have vanished, possibly absorbed into L (Lorne) exchange. - B exchange (Bishop) is in service. Some old Sackville manual numbers appear to have changed to dial exchange numbers on B. - Emergency numbers: Police: B8181, Ambulance: B6321, Fire: call nearest station. - Classified section now has yellow pages. - Exchanges: Bishop, Harbour, Lorne, Sackville. Jul 1936 - From Halifax dial numbers (B, L), dial 8 to reach suburban exchanges (presumably to an operator to whom the called suburban number is given). - Special services - dial 0. - Long distance - dial 9. - Harbour still manual? - Sackville district - 211 reaches operator. - Bedford dial service available. No letters involved, just 3-digit numbers (followed by a ring suffix digit if applicable). - Ring suffixes to Bedford numbers: -2 2 short -3 3 short -4 4 short -5 1 long 1 short -6 1 long 2 short -7 1 long 3 short -8 1 long 4 short -9 2 long 1 short -0 2 long 2 short - Dalhousie University: B-7495. Jan 1940 - Blue pages for PABX services included. - PABX used 9 for outside line - 9 + number to reach B, L or H numbers. - 9117 from PABXes reached the Bishop office test desk. - 9113 from PABXes reached Directory Assistance, 9114 reached Repair. - 74 from PABXes reached Harbour Office test board - 0 reached PABX operator - 181 other party call, 17## multi-party call remains on general dial system - Emergency Numbers: Police: B8181 (Halifax), B8161 (Halifax after-hours service), H2233 (Dartmouth); Fire: 123 (Halifax), H5151 (Dartmouth); Ambulance: B6321 (Halifax and Dartmouth). - Porter's Lake exchange listings added. - Ship Harbour Lake exchange listings dropped. - Dalhousie University: B-7495. - Lake Charlotte, Porter's Lake listings added. - Ship Harbour Lake listings apparently deleted. Jan 1944 - Conversion to all-number 5-digit format in Halifax and Dartmouth: B(ishop)-xxxx became 3-xxxx L(orne)-xxxx became 4-xxxx H(arbour)-xxxx became 6-xxxx [Dartmouth] - 2-xxxx numbers introduced - apparently expansion on the Bishop exchange territory. - Halifax to Sackville, Beaver Bank - dial 8 then give number to operator. - Dalhousie University: 3-7495. Jun 1954 - Halifax dial numbers: 2-xxxx, 3-xxxx, 4-xxxx, 5-xxxx (5-xxxx exchange was apparently introduced around 1952) - Dartmouth dial numbers: 6-xxxx - Bedford dial service was 4 digits: xxxx - some numbers had ring suffixes: e.g. 4-xxxx-22 where 22 was kind of ringing - Bedford to Halifax calls - dial 9 + number, for "Extended Area" subscribers who paid a premium for the local access - Halifax emergency numbers: Fire 123, Police 3115, Ambulance 2-7371 - Dartmouth emergency numbers: Fire 6-2423, Police 6-2233, Ambulance 2-7371 - Dalhousie University: 2-4406 Jun 1960 - Halifax to Bedford calls - dial 82 + number - Bedford to Halifax calls - dial 9 + number - Bayside District becomes Prospect Road - 9-xxxx apparently new or expansion numbers Dec 1960 - Might's 1960 Halifax city directory contained a note of the dial changes to take place in December 1960. A 7-digit, all-number scheme would be established from the old 5-digit exchanges: 2-xxxx became 422-xxxx 3-xxxx became 423-xxxx 4-xxxx became 454-xxxx 5-xxxx became 455-xxxx 6-xxxx became 466-xxxx 9-xxxx became 469-xxxx Bedford xxxx became 835-xxxx - New 477-xxxx exchange opened for the Spryfield area. 1965 - Might's directory of 1965 listed new 429-xxxx exchange. 27 Jun 1965 - According to MT&T directory, still no DDD, but map of NPAs is available - statement that no area code is required for Prince Edward Island - 113, 114 still used for directory assistance, repair respectively - Bay Road dial exchange - 876 - Bedford dial numbers - 835 - Sackville dial numbers - 865 - manual exchanges: Blandford, Chezzetcook, French Village, Hubbards, Lake Charlotte, Mount Uniacke, Musquodoboit, Prospect Road, St Margaret's, Tangier, Wellington - Ship Harbour now under Lake Charlotte listings 1970 - Might's directory lists these Halifax/Dartmouth NXX: 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 429, 453, 454, 455, 463, 466, 469, 477 - Government of Canada used many 426 numbers 1975 - Might's directory: 434, 435, 443 added since 1970 1980 - Might's directory: 375, 421, 428, 445, 479 added to Halifax/Dartmouth. 1985 - Might's directory - exchanges are now: 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 428, 429, 434, 435, 443, 445, 453, 454, 455, 463, 465, 466, 469, 477, 479 - 428 used by some large businesses: CIBC, General Hospital, etc. 1990 - Might's directory - exchanges are now: 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 434, 435, 443, 445, 453, 454, 455, 457, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 468, 469, 477, 479, 494 1995 - Polk's directory - exchanges are now: 420, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436, 442, 443, 445, 450, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 468, 469, 473, 475, 477, 479, 481, 492, 494, 496, 497, 499 - Bedford: 832, 835 - Sackville: 865 -- the end -- David Leibold aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 22:16:22 -0400 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer This is a cute spam. It pretends to be a threatening letter from a California law firm (a real one), but it's worded such that if it were for real, the lawyers would be in deep doodoo for making such asinine threats. But at first it looks quite real, so you're strung along getting REALLY MAD at the lawyers, unless/until you catch on. The law firm's phones were really bombarded yesterday from the many recipients calling them to complain! The letter purports to represent Samsung, a major Korean firm, but was routed through the mailserver of a different Korean firm, Kia, and like most spams, has a uu.net dial-up in its headers too (real or forged). >Received: from www.kia.co.kr by BBN.COM id aa06366; 9 Aug 97 16:01 EDT >Received: from www.kia.co.kr (1Cust19.max42.los-angeles.ca.ms.uu.net [153.34.91.19]) by www.kia.co.kr (8.6.12h2/8.6.9) with SMTP id FAA21267; Sun, 10 Aug 1997 05:00:39 +0900 From here on the forgery gets obvious: >From: webmaster@compuserve.com >Received: from mips-1.sailahead.com (mips-1.sailahead.com [199.107.95.10]) by sailahead.com (8.8.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id GAA08903 for ; Sat, 09 Aug 1997 10:47:20 -0600 (EST) >Date: Sat, 09 Aug 97 10:47:20 EST >To: suspected_flamer@somewhereincyberspace.com >Subject: Cease And Desist Flaming >Message-ID: <5.0.52.19970526663666.666a6e97@sailahead.com> >Reply-To: khskllp@aol.com >X-PMFLAGS: 34666848 0 >X-UIDL: 3273376668a65eb1890m0762123a >Comments: Authenticated sender is >Status: > On behalf of our client, Samsung America Inc., ("Samsung") > we hereby request that you cease and desist all > inflammatory internet hacking, telephone hacking, flaming, > jamming, and other illegal activities. > If you have responded aversely to a recent bulk email > message from our client, Samsung America, Inc., or from any > of its subsidiary companies, then you may be one of the > people who has performed fraudulent and actionable > transgressions, thereby causing severe harm to our client. I'm not aware of Samsung being involved in spam; they're a big company and probably wouldn't be so foolish. > Your email name was provided as being suspected of > connection to various acts of internet terrorism. Your acts > are illegal. A real lawyer wouldn't use the word "terrorism" loosely or say "illegal" to a bulk-mail address, especially who is merely "suspected". > Several messages have suggested that Samsung and/or its > subsidiaries, including but not limited to Sailahead Global > Emporium, www.sailahead.com, and Samsung Electronics, > www.sosimple.com, violated US Federal Laws through > activities commonly called "spamming." This allegation is > unfounded in the law, as spamming is a protected activity > under the laws of free speech. That's hard-core flame bait! > Our client has asked us to inform you that all of your > future correspondences should be directed to their counsel: Now the revenge target shows up (I edited out a little): > Russell L. Allyn, Attorney at Law > California Sate Bar Number (SBN) xxxxx > Katz, Hoyt, Seigel & Kapor LLP > Los Angeles, CA > khskllp@aol.com > 310-473-xxxx > 310-473-xxxx (fax) > All incidents of internet terrorism will be prosecuted > where possible, and reported to appropriate law enforcement > authorities as warranted. > Please consider this as your notice to cease all attempts > to harm multi-national corporations who conduct legitimate > commerce on the internet. > Russell L. Allyn, Attorney at Law Obviously somebody wants Allyn to look worse than Canter & Siegel. If Allyn catches the spammer, I suspect this _real_ act of "internet terrorism" will be dealt with harshly. Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein@bbn.com +1 617 873 3850 Opinions are mine alone. Sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: wdg@hal-pc.org (Bill Garfield) Subject: SWBell Fiber Cut Clogs Houston's Interoffice Tandems Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 02:21:46 GMT Details as of this moment are still sketchy. What we know is that at approximately 1:10 PM CST Friday afternoon (8 Aug 97) a construction crew operating a large backhoe near the intersection of Richmond Ave and Dunlavy St on the near SW side of Houston, TX severed a major fiber optic cable route (Multiple cables x multiple fibers) interconnecting two of Houston's busiest switching offices, National and Jackson. The Jackson office (DMS-100 + a large 5E) serves as a tandem for many of the surrounding exchanges and provides switched services for Houston's most affluent River Oaks area. It was also one of the first offices in town to provide ISDN PRI services and so many area ISPs are served from Jackson. The National office (a large 5E and a large 1A) provides switched services for Houston's trendy and upscale Galleria and Greenway Plaza areas which are also home to several major energy companies. From almost the very beginning SWBell appears to have been trying to downplay the seriousness of this outage, initially stating that only 4800 customers were out of service and as many as another 15,000 indirectly affected. However, Warner Cable's emergency alert system was called into play to scroll advisory messages of the outage across subscriber's television screens and late word now is the President of SWBell has been flown in to oversee repair operations. Difficult to imagine this much hullabaloo over a mere 15,000 subscriber problem. From local news media coverage it was obvious to the trained eye that the damage was far more serious than press releases might indicate. SWBell has remained adamant in their assertion that only 15,000 subscribers are affected. However, interoffice tandems providing alternate routing around the cut were hopelessly clogged most of the weekend and many cellular customers were without service. Customers of SWBell's "Major Account Center" were being told as late as Sunday morning that repairs could take until Tuesday or possibly Wednesday. In the immediate vicinity of the cut SWBell has erected several emergency pay phones. More details to follow as they become available. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 21:45:36 EDT From: David Leibold Reply-To: David Leibold Subject: What Happens When You Forget the 1-800/888- in Front {The Toronto Star} had a Saturday business section article (9 August 1997) about the woes of a few people whose conventional numbers matched those of some popular toll-free numbers in the last seven digits. Unfortunately, many callers seem to think that the leading 1-800 or 1-888 is optional with a toll-free number and thus reach wrong numbers. The article should be on line for about a month at: www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED19970809/money/970809BUS03_FI-PHONE9.html David Leibold aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It was a good article, David. Thanks for giving us the pointer. Yes, some people think 1-800 is 'optional' but then, for them I suspect having a brain is optional as well. The flip side of the coin are the people who are admittedly victimized regularly the 'optional dialing' folks who themselves have crazy ideas on how to solve the problem. For instance, the late Mike Royko beleived that since his 312-seven digit number was the same as a very well-known and commonly used AT&T 800 number it was up to AT&T to change *their number* so that *he* would not get calls from other idiots like himself. A far better solution would be to take those folks who steadfastly refuse to learn how to correctly dial a phone and subject them to torture and/or other bodily harm. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 15:59:52 -0400 From: gmonti@mindspring.com (Greg Monti) Subject: Connecticut's New Area Codes: 475 and 959 Through a roundabout route, I received a short clipping from the _Boston Globe_ about the fight over Connecticut's next two area codes. Connecticut will need to go from its current two area codes (203 and 860) to four codes next year. As expected, SNET, the incumbent LEC for most of the state, favors an overlay to each of the existing codes. Competitive carriers want a split and have published a survey in which they claim that four of every five businesses and residents favor a split. SNET says the study is inaccurate. The two new codes will be 475 and 959. Greg Monti Jersey City, New Jersey, USA gmonti@mindspring.com www.mindspring.com/~gmonti/home.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 22:43:56 EDT From: David Leibold Subject: Telephone Pioneers Web Site The Telephone Pioneers service organisation have their website ... http://www.telephone-pioneers.org/ David Leibold aa070@freenet.toronto.on.ca ------------------------------ From: Jude Crouch Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: 10 Aug 1997 15:12:12 GMT Organization: Crouch Enterprises, Oak Park, IL In comp.dcom.telecom Nicholas Marino wrote: > But that's not the end of it. Even when a person gets his 900 bill > reversed, the local and long distance telcos do not lose any > money. They collect the 'transport and billing' charge for the call > regardless of whether they collect any money. It's the 900 information > provider that gets screwed. If I set up a $10 donation line, I pay the > telcos about 50 cents per call. If 1000 people call the line, and they > all refuse to pay when they get the bill, I still have to shell out > $500 for billing and transport. The telcos can't lose. > The upshot of all this? The telcos have no incentive to encourage > people to pay for 900 calls. They get their share of the call > regardless of whether the customer pays. It's not unusual for 900 IPs > to have a 40% uncollectable rate. Provided the nonprofit understands the terms, there is no problem. If they get 1000 calls, but only 600 are valid they get $6,000, minus the $500 for transport, or $5,500. It's hardly likely to have 100% refusal-to-pay. AND the 40% uncollectable is likely not a true figure for nonprofits, rather for sex lines, fortune tellers and the like. > The reason that Bell South allows for-profit 900 numbers and disallows > charity 900 numbers is that they are perfectly willing to screw a > for-profit 900 IP out of the money, but they are ethically unwilling > to screw a charity. How charitable of them! Do they also make up the $5,500+ that the charity no longer can collect? > Did I read that right, BellSouth? > So you can thank your elected representatives for enacting knee-jerk > legislation to combat "phone sex", thereby killing a perfectly good > application for 900 services. Nope. It's not the legislation. It's BellSouth. Jude Crouch (jcrouch@pobox.com) - Computing since 1967! Crouch Enterprises - Telecom, Internet & Unix Consulting Oak Park, IL 708-848-0145 URL: http://www.pobox.com/~jcrouch ------------------------------ From: Frank Weatherford Subject: Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 22:44:02 +0600 Organization: CyberNews Network Reply-To: fweather@pobox.com Paula Pettis wrote: > I've had conversations with several of my local BellSouth reps regarding > running full duplex data over T-1's. > According to them the total COMBINED 2-way throughput on a T-1 is 1.544 > Mbps. > They say that if you are transmitting at a rate of say 1 Mbps, you can > only receive data at a rate of 0.544 Mbps because the bandwidth is > shared between the transmit and receive channels. So in the true > sense of "full duplex", a T-1 is NOT full duplex. > This seems to meet the definition of half duplex. I was under the > impression that since this was a 4 wire circuit (1 transmit pair and 1 > receive pair) you could transmit at 1.544 Mbps and receive at 1.544 > Mbps simultaneously without one path interrupting the other. Thus a > combined aggregate throughput of 3.088 Mbps. Paula, I don't know who the "Bell reps" you talked with but they certainly don't know anything about a T1 line! They must have been in marketing. YOU are correct in that a T1 is a four-wire circuit and transmits 1.544MB in both directions. I don't agree with your logic that because you can send 1.544MB in each direction that this amounts to a throughput of 3.088MB. I think throughput only refers to how much data one can send. Frank ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #205 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 11 09:31:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA21683; Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:31:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:31:26 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708111331.JAA21683@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #206 TELECOM Digest Mon, 11 Aug 97 09:30:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 206 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Rise of the Stupid Network (Ken Levitt) Spanish Telco and Railroad Phone Booths (John Hewitt) Telecom Managers Association Being Started (John Felts) Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling (Gary Breuckman) Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider (Chris Farrar) Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider (pevans@globalnet.co.uk) Call Forwarding by Verbal Number Request (Doug Terman) Life With Luigi (Adam H. Kerman) Another Year of it (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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 10:26:08 From: Ken Levitt Subject: The Rise of the Stupid Network I just found a great article written by David S. Isenberg, a 12 year vetern of AT&T Labs. The article is called "The Rise of the Stupid Network" which explains why the current way phone companies network information is all wrong. The article can be found at: http://www.computertelephony.com/ct/att.html Ken Levitt stop.abuse@usa.nospam (.nospam is really .net) ------------------------------ From: jhewitt@ctv.es (John Hewitt) Subject: Spanish Telco and Railroad Phone Booths Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 09:54:32 GMT Organization: Unisource Espana NEWS SERVER The following is an excerpt of a news item from an English Langauge Radio Staion broadcasting on the Costa del Sol, Spain. A Spanish Consumers Associatiom has denounced the Spanish Telephone Company (Telefonica) for a recent deal it made with the Spanish National Railway Company (RENFE) to "operate" it's pay telephones at Railroad Stations. The pay telephones are owned by the Railroad, but the dial tone service to them must be supplied by a Telco. The RR awarded a contract to Telefonica to operate and service the booths. Nothing unusual about that - at this time there's only one telco (Though within two months there will be a competitor - so perhaps there was an indecent haste). However the calling rates Telefonica will charge to Joe Public will be 30% higher than similar pay fones just outside in the street!! Looks like a monopoly begats a monopoly. Now I wonder what the rates are to use a payfone in other 'non-public areas' , ie. Spanish Airports, Ferry Terminals, etc. John Hewitt Malaga Spain jhewitt@ctv.es [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What about here in the United States where the rotten, corrupted 'justice' department runs the pay phones in all the prisons? Can't get a much more captive consumer base than that. Or the county jails of the United States, where people who have been found guilty of nothing (as of yet) awaiting trial get to make three dollar per minute collect phone calls to their family to notify them that they have been arrested, etc? Spain's government has nothing on us! PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Felts Subject: Telecom Managers Association Being Started Date: 11 Aug 1997 02:56:19 GMT Organization: Silicon Beach - Business Internet Services I am interested in creating an association of Telecommunications managers. I would like to gather a list of managers and other interested parties across the nation and across the world to share information and ideas. If you are interested at all please email me with any ideas or suggestions. Thank you, John Felts Felts@silcom.com ------------------------------ From: puma@execpc.com (Gary Breuckman) Subject: Re: Pay Per Use: Three Way Calling Date: 9 Aug 1997 18:50:48 GMT Organization: Puma's Lair In article , Lee Winson wrote: > More troublesome, someone could set up a 3-way and not be aware of it, > and discuss something with person "B" unaware that person "A" is still > on the line and listening. This could be quite embarrassing in social > calls, and downright unacceptable in business calls (for example, when > price negotiations are going on, or in discussions by a lawyer with > different sides.) That shouldn't happen. The first hook flash gets you a new (stutter) dialtone, and you dial the new (2nd) number. This I agree is easy to do by accident. At this time only you and the 2nd call are in the conversation. In order to add the 1st call back in and make it a three-way call you need to flash again. You aren't likely to ever do that by accident. Also, you really intended to end that 1st call, right? That caller probably hung up by now anyway. puma@execpc.com ------------------------------ From: Chris Farrar Subject: Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 17:30:16 -0400 Organization: Sympatico Reply-To: cfarrar@sympatico.ca P. Thomson wrote: > The real problem is when calling from non-Equal Access areas, such as > from rural parts of the US or Canada - unless you know how to use > Sprint/MCI (but from Canada?) with a card (using 800-COLLECT for MCI or > 800-210-CARD for Sprint). From such non-Equal-Access areas, calls > 'default' to AT&T, which means ExcelAgency for 555-1212. Well, 1-800-CALL-ATT (1-800-225-5288) does work from Canada and can be used to get you an AT&T operator, or to make a LD call (Calling Card or Collect) into the US. However trying 1-800-CALL-ATT to make a call from Canada to a Canadian destination doesn't work. Chris Farrar | cfarrar@sympatico.ca | Amateur Radio, a VE3CFX | fax +1-905-457-8236 | national resource PGPkey Fingerprint = 3B 64 28 7A 8C F8 4E 71 AE E8 85 31 35 B9 44 B2 ------------------------------ From: pevans@globalnet.co.uk.removethispart Subject: Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 18:14:18 GMT P. Thomson wrote: > I wonder what happens when calling US directory from overseas, whether > +1-NPA-555-1212 is allowed for customer access directly from foreign > (non-NANP) countries or if not, via the operator in the calling non-NANP > country? Pat, this won't work from England - 011-604-555-1212 is blocked. BT charges me for international directory assistance, and I don't even get to talk to the foreign operator. When I called UK directory from New Brunswick I at least got hear a funny accent (but it was still routed through a local operator). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 09 Aug 1997 15:36:08 -0400 From: Doug Terman Subject: Call Forwarding by Verbal Number Request Dear Telecom Folks, We have the need to hook up with something like an answering service which would be called by our clients who would then verbally give a US toll or 800 number to be dialed. The Operator would then manually dial the call, observe that it connected, then drop out of the loop. (In the event that you're wondering, it's quite legit. Just that our clients *can't* dial touchtones.) Our firm would pay for the calls (single point of billing and collection). Quality of the connection is an issue. Normally, an analog POTS line into and out of the "answering service" is not adequate due to the db drob. Should be digital service, T-1, etc. If you know of someone who offers this service reasonably, please contact me directly at my email address. Number of minutes a month would be in excess of 5,000. Many thanks, Doug Terman Operations Manager Antilles Engineering, Ltd. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 15:45:32 CDT From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Life With Luigi Operator What number, please? Luigi Evanston 481 Operator Oh, that's suburban. I'll connect you with the toll operator. Luigi (thinks to himself) Hm. Here in America, they've got tall operators and short operators. Tall operators must be for long distance. Closing his letter to his mother, after a date with the operator: Mama, I am very greatful to Alexander Graham Bell for inventing the telephone operator. From the radio program "Life With Luigi", January 4, 1949. Starring J. Carrol Naish and Alan Reed (as Pasquale) The program was set in Chicago, but the operator had a Brooklyn accent! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:13:34 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Another Year of it This issue of the Digest begins the sixteenth year of this e-journal. Jon Solomon started the Digest in August, 1981. The net has changed quite a lot over the years. Today alone, I had more spam in the telecom mail queue than there were total messages in a week's time when the Digest first started. In fact, there were about 200 spams today. In the past week also, I've been attacked twice by out of control autoresponders, this latest one (the one I found today) being the second such attack by Citicorp, a good net neighbor if there ever was one (said with a straight face). Here's to another sixteen years or so ... thanks for being part of it. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #206 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 12 09:03:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA09163; Tue, 12 Aug 1997 09:03:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 09:03:25 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708121303.JAA09163@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #207 TELECOM Digest Tue, 12 Aug 97 09:02:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 207 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Terminal Games" by Perriman (Rob Slade) AT&T Wireless Digital (Steve Kass) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Ed Ellers) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Nicholas Marino) Re: Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer (Brian Leyton) Re: Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer (James Bellaire) Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? (Robert MacNab) Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? (William Bigelis) Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider (Jeremy Rogers) So I Was Off by a Year (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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 11 Aug 1997 11:00:21 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Terminal Games" by Perriman BKTERGAM.RVW 970327 "Terminal Games", Cole Perriman, 1994, 0-553-57243-1, U$5.99/C$7.99 %A Cole Perriman %C 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10103 %D 1994 %G 0-553-57243-1 %I Bantam Books %O U$5.99/C$7.99 212-765-6500 http://www.bdd.com %P 546 %T "Terminal Games" First off, Cole Perriman is said to be the pseudonym of another writer. I rather suspect that it is the pseudonym of at least two other writers, since that is the easiest explanation of the rather dichotomous writing involved here. In some places there is a very nice feel for technology, some other passages demonstrate the usual flights of, well, fantasy. The terminal games of the title revolve around an online service called Insomnimania. The description of the technology fits an expansion of MUD (multi-user domain) gaming: basically conversation between online users. The addition of cartoon "virtual reality" is well within acceptable limits, and the "bots" (automated response programs) are credible as well. The online conversations are reasonably characteristic of what goes on in MUDs and IRC (Internet Relay Chat), although all the users seem to be B1FF clones. Everything is upper case, most of the conversation is trivial, and it is hard to accept construction like "REEEEEEEL WURLD" as the kind of timesaving abbreviation convention that professional businesspeople would use. I'm pleased to see that at least one writer realizes that computer crackers and phone phreaks do not come in the same package. The business model for Insomnimania doesn't quite work. There is no mention of networks: everybody is direct dial, even those (many) from across the country. The two asocial nerds who run the place are unlikely to be the types to provide a level of service necessary to keep such a tony (and well heeled) clientele online. There also doesn't appear to be any reason for the business hours shutdown of the service: this harks back to the early days of CompuServe and the Source (remember them?) when hobbyist systems ran on the unused time of business systems. The psychology of the plot is a bit better. Real time chat, in whatever guise, is extremely popular as a recreation. The denizens of Insomnimania seem to be remarkably polite; there doesn't appear to be any flaming, spamming, or loud activity by determinedly obnoxious newbies; but I've seen similar levels of interaction on many different systems and technologies. The plot makes much of an affect "pulling" users increasingly "into" the virtual world. I'm not quite as comfortable with that. The book speaks of users "hearing" conversations typed online: I have, myself, auditory memories of dialogues that were only typed, but I suspect that the phenomenon has more to do with memory encoding than personality disorder. The big surprise twist ending is a) not to hard to figure in advance and b) a little too far out. There is also a laughable description of a virus "zoo" in the book. Whether the writer(s) know it or not, zoo is actually the term used to describe a collection of sample computer viruses. A real zoo, though, is simply a pile of disks, or a directory full of files. There is absolutely no need whatsoever to keep viruses "alive" on running computers. In fact, a collection of obsolete computers *couldn't* keep viruses alive, since very few of those old machines had any viruses written for them. (Oh, and one more thing. If you do keep a virus zoo, it isn't necessary to keep feeding the little beasts accounting programs to keep them alive. They don't "consume" code.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKTERGAM.RVW 970327 roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke http://www2.gdi.net/~padgett/trial.htm ------------------------------ Subject: AT&T Wireless Digital From: Steve Kass Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 11:01:51 -0400 Reply-To: skass@icosa.drew.edu Organization: Drew University After several months of unacceptable quality cell service, I am switching from AT&T Wireless Digital PCS service back to analog service. While AT&T advertises its digital service as superior to analog, this was not the case for me. Because of constant dropouts and breaking up of transmission, it was nearly impossible for me to successfully check voicemail, and in conversations, I had to constantly ask those I spoke with to repeat themselves. Despite quoting a new policy (as of August 1) prohibiting customer service representatives from offering compensation for poor service, a supervisor was able to offer me a 300-minute "time bank" to be applied to my service, which will be converted back to analog once I resurrect my analog phone. Interestingly enough, my conversation with customer service took twice as long as necessary, since I had to ask the representative to repeat much of what he said three or four times before I could understand him. I'm not happy to have spent $199 for a digital phone that I cannot return, nor did I appreciate hearing that no compensation was available according to company policy, when this was not the case in the end. Are others out there dissatisfied with AT&T's digital service? And has anyone been able to return their expensive telephones for a full refund? I find it remarkable that AT&T can advertise a service that manifestly cannot deliver what it promises. I would be happy to participate in a class action suit against AT&T for false advertising and failure to provide acceptable service, if I am not alone. Steve Kass, All Trades Computing steve@all-trades.com, skass@icosa.drew.edu (973) 514 1187 ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 22:36:02 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Nicholas Marino wrote: > Anyone who calls a 900 number can call their local telephone company > and have the charge taken off. You don't even have to deny making the > call, although many people do and the telco doesn't question it. You > can also say that you didn't think you got your money's worth from the > call. You can say just about anything. > "But that's not the end of it. Even when a person gets his 900 bill > reversed, the local and long distance telcos do not lose any money. They > collect the 'transport and billing' charge for the call regardless of > whether they collect any money. It's the 900 information provider that gets > screwed. If I set up a $10 donation line, I pay the telcos about 50 cents > per call. If 1000 people call the line, and they all refuse to pay when they > get the bill, I still have to shell out $500 for billing and transport. The > telcos can't lose." And they shouldn't, because as common carriers they have no power to weed out the crooks and make 900 service available to only reputable information providers. You forgot to mention that when a customer refuses to pay a 900 bill, the information provider has the same legal recourse against the customer that it would if it had billed the customer directly. What it does not have is the ability to hang that duty around the neck of the telco. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Additionally, the information provider has the right to obtain the necessary billing data from telco for the purpose of billing direct *whether your number is published or non-published*. The IP is treated the same as any 'carrier' in that your local telco is required to make your name and address available *for billing purposes only* -- no marketing allowed! -- in the event direct billing is needed. Some IPs won't hesitate for a minute to place you with a collection agency when your bill with them is high enough or outrageous enough. One IP here in the Chicago area for many years -- maybe they are still around -- was the Nine Hundred Service Corporation. They always used that same bunch of sleazeballs that AT&T is so fond of, GC Services out of Houston, Texas, formerly known as Gulf Coast Services and before that Gulf Coast Collection Agency. There is a limited return on collection agency placements of only a couple dollars but some IPs will bill you two or three hundred dollars and then immediatly place you with an agency as soon as local telco recourses them or gives them a chargeback on it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:50:31 -0400 Jude Crouch wrote: > Nope. It's not the legislation. It's BellSouth. My point is that the legislation forces BellSouth (or any other local telco) into a position where they can't force customers to pay their bills, and even if they could, they wouldn't make any more money to offset the added collection expense. BTW, the actual cost of the 900 numbers is about 50 cents per minute, plus 10% of the billed amount, so a $10 900 number call which lasts one minute puts $1.50 into the pockets of the local and LD companies. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 18:01:53 -0400 From: bleyton@aol.com (Brian Leyton) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer In article , Fred R. Goldstein writes: > This is a cute spam. It pretends to be a threatening letter from a > California law firm (a real one), but it's worded such that if it were > for real, the lawyers would be in deep doodoo for making such asinine > threats. But at first it looks quite real, so you're strung along > getting REALLY MAD at the lawyers, unless/until you catch on. The law > firm's phones were really bombarded yesterday from the many recipients > calling them to complain! > The letter purports to represent Samsung, a major Korean firm, but was > routed through the mailserver of a different Korean firm, Kia, and > like most spams, has a uu.net dial-up in its headers too (real or > forged). > I'm not aware of Samsung being involved in spam; they're a big > company and probably wouldn't be so foolish. SAILahead is a subsidiary of Samsung that is in the business of designing and hosting web commerce applications. The original problem started when they became the target of a revenge spam, I believe by one of their former customers. The sysadmin from SAILahead has been participating in the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup, where he has explained some of the details of the original revenge attack. He indicated that he knew who was responsible, and the FBI was involved. It appears that the revenge spammer has now targeted their law firm as well. Brian Leyton MIS Manager, Commercial Petroleum Equipment ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 17:18:49 -0500 From: James Bellaire Subject: Re: Revenge Spam Pretends to be From a Lawyer Fred R. Goldstein wrote: > This is a cute spam. It pretends to be a threatening letter from a > California law firm (a real one), but it's worded such that if it were > for real, the lawyers would be in deep doodoo for making such asinine > threats. But at first it looks quite real, so you're strung along > getting REALLY MAD at the lawyers, unless/until you catch on. The law > firm's phones were really bombarded yesterday from the many recipients > calling them to complain! [SNIP] >> If you have responded aversely to a recent bulk email >> message from our client, Samsung America, Inc., or from any >> of its subsidiary companies, then you may be one of the >> people who has performed fraudulent and actionable >> transgressions, thereby causing severe harm to our client. > I'm not aware of Samsung being involved in spam; they're a big > company and probably wouldn't be so foolish. I received a sailahead.com spam on behalf of 'Samsung America'. I responded adversely to it (and the reply did not bounce). But I haven't received the threat from the lawyers, yet. Could Samsung really be stupid enough to spam? The original 'Samsung' spam read (in part): > Received: from irvine.ast.com (1Cust86.max44.los-angeles.ca.ms.uu.net [153.34.92.86]) by ast.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) with SMTP id CAA24829; Thu, 7 Aug 1997 02:59:16 -0700 (PDT) > From: webmaster@sailahead.com > Received: from mail.sosimple.com (alt1.sosimple.com(206.1.562.666)) by sales@sosimple.com (8.8.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id GAA02392 for ; Thu, 07 Aug 1997 00:33:07 -0600 (EST) > Date: Thu, 07 Aug 97 00:33:07 EST > To: sosimple@Globalemporiumshopper.com > Subject: A Warm Welcome The Samsung Family Of Companies > Message-ID: <288523806666342786@sosimple.com> > Reply-To: ywkoo@la.sai.samsung.com > X-PMFLAGS: 34666848 0 > Comments: Authenticated sender is > X-UIDL: 3273376668a65eb1890m0762123a > Status: RO > On behalf all of Samsung Electronics America, please come and visit > us at > http://www.sosimple.com > which is hosted by our comrades and coworkers at > http://www.sailahead.com > We are sure you'll not only find our site informative but entertaining > and easy to navigate. [SNIP] > How to Contact Us > SAILAhead Internet Services is located in the city of La Mirada, > California, USA, in the Samsung America, Inc., L.A. Office building. > Our office is located just off the Santa Ana freeway (US 5) at the > Valley View exit. You may contact us via any one of traditional means > (mail, telephone fax), via e-mail, or feel free to stop by. > Address: 14251 East Firestone Blvd > La Mirada, CA, 90275 > Telephone: (800) 943-4252 > (562) 802-2211 Fax: (562) 802-3011 > E-mail: info@sailahead.com > sales@sailahead.com It was an odd spam. Ususally I receive two copies of each spam (one for each 'public' address). This time only one address received the spam. Now, I have received further information of interest on this: http://www.sosimple.com/spam.html says: > Samsung Electronics America's website has recently fallen prey to a > ruthless hacker. This person, or persons, took information from our > www.sosimple.com website and distributed it at random via electronic mail > (spamming). > We would like to make it clear that Samsung has no association with this > fraud and is not party to this activity. If you've received such electronic > junk mail please accept our apologies, and ignore it. > We are working with local and federal authorities to help catch and stop > whoever is responsbile for this. > Please help us remove spamming from the Internet. We know you might be > upset, but please do not spam us also. > Thank you for your cooperation on this matter > Sincerely, > Samsung Electronics America, Inc. James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Telecom Indiana Webpage http://members.iquest.net/~bellaire/telecom/ * Note new server - old URL should still work * ------------------------------ From: w4xg@nova.org (Robert MacNab) Subject: Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 17:10:05 GMT Organization: This Space for Rent Reply-To: w4xg@nova.org On Wed, 6 Aug 1997 22:28:36 -0400, Paula Pettis wrote: > I've had conversations with several of my local BellSouth reps regarding > running full duplex data over T-1's. > According to them the total COMBINED 2-way throughput on a T-1 is 1.544 > Mbps. It carries 1.544 in both directions at the same time. Full duplex. ------------------------------ From: pal@eskimo.com (William Bigelis) Subject: Re: Is a T-1 Full or Half Duplex? Date: 11 Aug 1997 17:01:27 GMT Organization: Eskimo North (206) For-Ever Paula Pettis (stuff@gdi.net) wrote: > I've had conversations with several of my local BellSouth reps regarding > running full duplex data over T-1's. > According to them the total COMBINED 2-way throughput on a T-1 is 1.544 > Mbps. What you write is kind of scary - SEVERAL Bellsouth reps not even knowing what they sell. If you're buying a dedicated, private line T1, you get 1.544 Mb/s in each direction. Guess I'm lucky I'm not in Bellsouth territory. Bill B ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Rogers Subject: Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 19:19:07 +0100 pevans@globalnet.co.uk.removethispart writes: > P. Thomson wrote: >> I wonder what happens when calling US directory from overseas, whether >> +1-NPA-555-1212 is allowed for customer access directly from foreign >> (non-NANP) countries or if not, via the operator in the calling non-NANP >> country? > Pat, this won't work from England - 011-604-555-1212 is blocked. I think you mean 00 1 604 555 1212. I get NU trying this via BT and AT&T, but get connected ("Welcome to BC Tel Directory Assistance") using ACC. Jez ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: So, I Was Off by a Year Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 08:30:00 EDT Clive and a couple other readers pointed out that actually now this Digest is starting its SEVENTEENTH year rather than its sixteenth year as I noted yesterday. I guess I subtracted 81 from 97 and came up with 16, which is correct, but it is 16 completed years. I dunno, the past couple of years have spun by so rapidly for me that there are times things are just a blur for me. Someone also asked me (in person) the other day how old I was and I actually had to stop and think for a minute. :( Seriously ... Do you old-time readers remember back in the early nineties when I sent out as many as a thousand issues of this Digest per year for a couple years straight? For about the past year, I've been working elsewhere full time ten to twelve hours per day and doing this Digest as a 'part time' thing, which is why this year you will only get somewhere around 300-350 issues, more or less one per day on average. I know you did not really believe me when I said the post office delivers my mail from readers twice a day in number one bags sent in a semi-trailer truck and dropped on my loading dock ... :) Actually, there are days when the tiny little box I rent at the postal sub-station in Orchard Plaza is quite barren. Thus, to live in the style to which I am accustomed -- don't I wish it was still the 1960's with weekend shopping trips to New York City -- and to keep up with my neighbors the Joneses and not have to rely on the food pantry and the social worker the Joneses and their neighbors provide for interlopers like me in the north suburbs of Chicago -- I took a full time job around a year ago where I am subject to the public's abuse day after day in a rather hectic environment. I am still working on getting telecom-digest.org restarted. Someone took complete charge of the matter a month ago and nothing further has happened. I guess I will call and bug them today. Please send me some mail today. Your mail to me at PO Box 4621, Skokie, IL 60077 is more important than you realize. Now onward for another year of this Digest. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #207 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sat Aug 16 09:20:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA06813; Sat, 16 Aug 1997 09:20:40 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 09:20:40 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708161320.JAA06813@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #208 TELECOM Digest Sat, 16 Aug 97 09:20:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 208 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Remote Access Essentials" by Robbins (Rob Slade) AT&T Revises Intralata Calling Card Rates (Babu Mengelepouti) Awwww ... What a Shame... (Babu Mengelepouti) Samsung's Position on Spamming (Andrew Kritzer) 602 Split/Overlay (Dave Stott) Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? (Andrew Gerald) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Nicholas Marino) Callback Banned in South Africa (Rob Hall) AOL May Track User Clicks (Monty Solomon) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 15 Aug 1997 10:59:27 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Remote Access Essentials" by Robbins BKRMACES.RVW 970120 "Remote Access Essentials", Margaret Robbins, 1996, 0-12-691410-9 %A Margaret Robbins %C 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101-4495 %D 1996 %G 0-12-691410-9 %I Academic Press Professional %O 619-231-0926 800-321-5068 fax: 619-699-6380 app@acad.com %P 237 %T "Remote Access Essentials" Remote access covers a lot of territory, and the book does fall under that category. But essentials? In practical terms, almost everything is missing. There are tidbits here and there, but if you need any help to get a modem installed, a call set up, or an application working, you are not going to find much assistance, here. In technical terms, a lot is missing as well. Technical depth is an arguable point, perhaps, but the material here is just once-over-lightly, with almost none of the references that even an intermediate telecommunications user would need. Illustrations are unhelpful or flatly wrong. In conceptual terms, the book does touch on a number of the important topics. The operative words are "touch on". copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKRMACES.RVW 970120 ====================== roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke http://www2.gdi.net/~padgett/trial.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 18:00:19 -0400 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: AT&T Revises Intralata Calling Card Rates An ad appeared in today's {Seattle Times} which reads as follows: NOTICE TO AT&T CUSTOMERS WITHIN WASHINGTON STATE Effective August 30, 1997 AT&T's usage rates and service charges for intrastate calls billed at AT&T and Local Exchange Company Calling Cards will be changed as follows: o usage rates for both customer dialed and operator dialed card calls are changed to $.26 for both the initial and each additional minute for all rate periods and mileage bands o the service charge for customer dialed calls which access the AT&T network via 1 800 CALLATT and are billed to an AT&T Calling Card is reduced from $.60 to $.35 o the service charge for customer dialed calls which access the AT&T network via 1 800 CALLATT and are billed to a Local Exchange Company Calling Card is reduced from $.95 to $.60 per call. The above changes may result in increases or decreases in Customer charges depending on the distance, the duration, the time of day, and the method used to access AT&T's network as well as the type of calling card used. Residential customers with questions should call AT&T at 1 800 222-0300; business customers should direct their questions to their AT&T Account Executive, or 1 800 222-0400. ------------- It seems that at a time where other carriers are substantially increasing their calling card surcharges, AT&T is decreasing them in favor of a very high per-minute rate. . /|\ //|\\ Welcome to the rainforest... ///|\\\ dialtone@vcn.bc.ca ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 23:09:20 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Awwww ... What a Shame... Spammer servers under siege By Courtney Macavinta August 12, 1997, 11:00 a.m. PT The most well-known spammer on the Net, Cyber Promotions, is under siege. The bulk email company's servers were hacked Sunday, leaving its Web site inaccessible, and many internal files and email were erased as of today. The hack is not an isolated incident, according to Cyber Promotions president Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, who said he has pointed the FBI to at least one suspect: a person who posted an online offer of $1,000 to anyone who could shut down Cyber Promotions for at least a week. "Somebody posted one of our password files to the newsgroup 'news.admin.net-abuse.email' last week," Wallace said today. "They were calling up our customers in the middle of the night and terrorizing them. The same hacker went back into our system this weekend and erased many of our files." The bulk emailer's site was back up at 11 a.m. PT; most of its internal system will be back up by the end of the day, Wallace noted. The erased files included customer orders and email accounts, he added, but didn't stop spam from going out. "One thing they did not interfere with is our actual ability to send email. Our Cyber Bomber is operational," Wallace said. An status update on Cyber Promotions' Web site stated the following: "Autoresponders will be restored within a few hours. Cyber Bomber will be completely functional within a few hours. Web page accounts and virtual pop box accounts will have to be set up again. We will open up the phone lines tomorrow." As the company uploads its backup files, some spam haters were rejoicing about the hack on the "net-abuse.email" newsgroup. Others charged that Cyber Promotions staged both hacks. "If the hack was real, then I can sum up my sympathies for this company and the others that refuse to leave people alone, even after they repeatedly ask to be left alone. In two words: 'Oh well,'" stated a post. But some spam foes were against illegal acts to stop unsolicited email. "The point is this: It does not matter who posts what in the way of hacked passwords -- those machines are not ours, they are his. We do not have the right, legally or morally, to behave as they do." Cyber Promotions left a recorded message for customers today informing them of the "hack" and contends that both attacks are not media stunts. "We didn't stage this whole thing. If we did, we would have put up a press release," Wallace said. "It is not in our best interest to upset 11,000 customers." ------------------------------ From: Andrew Kritzer Subject: Samsung's Position on Spamming Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 17:15:11 -0700 Organization: Samsung Electronics America, Inc. Since July 19, an unknown party has mass distributed a number of fraudulent e-mail messages under the name of Samsung Electronics America. As most of you know at this time, Samsung neither authored nor condoned these e-mails. As policy, Samsung is strongly against spamming. We respect the integrity of the Internet and the rights of Internet users. We are working with Federal authorities to identify the individual(s) responsible for this hoax and intend to take legal action against the perpetrator(s). Of course, we will keep you informed as we resolve the situation. In the meantime, we appreciate your understanding and support. This situation has confirmed that the Internet community must work together to exterminate spamming and other forms of fraud that jeopardize the future of the Internet. If you have questions, comments or suggestions regarding this situation, please contact me, at akritzer@sea.samsung.com. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely, Andrew Kritzer Senior Manager of Marketing Communications Samsung Electronics America, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 09:14:22 -0500 From: Dave Stott Subject: 602 Split/Overlay In today's (8-14-97) {Tempe, AZ, Tribune} the results of the AZ Corporation Commission's initial NPA meeting are discussed. As expected, both the overlay and split were discussed. The story reports that "most of the East Valley, including Apache Jct, Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale, and Tempe would switch to the new area code, while most of Phoenix would remain 602." I'm surprised that Scottsdale was included in the new NPA for the reasons discussed in my last post. Also, there was no mention of the West Valley, so I'm not sure what the intention is for that part of 602. Curiously, Jack Ott, the U S WEST "executive" (who is making quite a name for himself in the Western states lately, it seems) suggests that "Because an overlay has never been fully done anywhere in the United States, no one really knows if it will work well." C'mon Jack, what about New York? PAGENET supports the overlay, but MCI said it's anti-competitive and would "prevent it and other outside carriers from getting their fair share of the local market." (Which raises the question, what is their 'fair share'; is it some pre-determined percentage of the total line count, or is it the number of sub- scribers a carriers can win over by marketing effort and pricing?) Finally, the story says "a recommendation will made (sic) to the commission by U S WEST in mid-September." Like they don't already have one in mind. Let's go with the overlay and get this whole thing done with! Dave Stott ------------------------------ From: ccsystems$@worldnet.att.net (Andrew Gerald) Subject: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 01:21:36 GMT Organization: CCSystems Reply-To: ccsystems$@worldnet.att.net I'm interested in hearing from ISDN customers specifically in the New York City area but welcome complaints of the same nature as mine from any NYNEX-serviced area. Also, if any telephone professionals can disprove NYNEX's claims about the NorTel DMS-100 switch I would appreciate hearing about it. Today I had a very encouraging discussion with a well known reporter for a well known NYC AM radio news station. The subject was specifically related to my dispute with NYNEX but I believe that many other NYNEX ISDN customers may be having similar difficulty. It would help all of us if I had some supporting complaints to forward to the reporter. I will forward ALL responses I receive to the reporter. It is NOT necessary to provide private contact information. If the reporter wishes to speak to any respondents either he or I will e-mail the respondent with his name and telephone number. Additionally, I am working with my NY State Senator's office on the NYNEX issue and will forward all responses there as well. It's time that NYNEX be put in the public spotlight and shown for what it really is -- a PROUD OF ITSELF, IGNORANT, ARROGANT BULLY -- among many other things which I'll leave unsaid. This could turn out to be a great opportunity for us to hit them hard. I wouldn't be spending my time (or yours) if I didn't think so. My dispute: (Very abbreviated, believe it or not.) In December, 1995, I ordered my two POTS lines converted to ISDN. At this time I asked whether or not the "PhoneSmart" features I already had would work with ISDN. I was told that they would, especially since I already had them, so I could be sure of it. After significant troubles and a PSC complaint the installation was attempted on March 13, 1996. After many days and much difficulty NYNEX got the lines working. At this point I discovered that the "PhoneSmart" features did NOT work. I did not have the use of *57, *66, *69, *82, Anonymous Call Reject, or Caller-ID (the incoming number was always "out of area".) Amazingly I now had CALL-WAITING which I didn't have before nor did I order! After about a week of complaining I was able to get NYNEX to remove the Call-Waiting feature. The problem was that they insisted Call-Waiting and ISDN were not compatible. It wasn't until I proved to them that I actually had Call-Waiting that it was removed. I was told by NYNEX that the reason why the PhoneSmart features weren't working must be a configuration error, on my part, with my TA. "Your TA is not interpreting the (*) correctly" was their response. First I told them this was BS then I got Motorola to tell them it was BS too. They were now clueless. After a few weeks and more complaints to the PSC they managed to get *82 working. Keep in mind that during this time I couldn't call anyone who had ACR enabled because I couldn't un-block my number. About two months of complaints later they got *57 and Caller-ID working. They were now insisting that PhoneSmart and ISDN were not compatible and so I could not have those features. I then explained how a friend of mine in Brooklyn had ISDN and PhoneSmart. After a few weeks of complaints their new answer was that the NorTel DMS-100 in my C.O. (central office) could not offer PhoneSmart to ISDN lines. I then called NorTel tech support and was told that the DMS-100 can and does offer the features NYNEX calls PhoneSmart but possibly the switch is running older software which would need to be upgraded. I reported this to NYNEX and after several weeks of harassing them for an answer they reported that the switch was indeed in need of an upgrade. The good news was that they located an internal bulletin stating that the switch would be upgraded some time in the fourth quarter of 1996. Sometime in June, 1996, after more complaints to NYNEX and the PSC they sent a "DMS specialist" to fix the Caller-ID. He called me to check that the Caller-ID was indeed working and informed me that it had been a C.O.-wide configuration error. It seems that no one with ISDN had Caller-ID. In January, 1997, after many complaints to NYNEX and the PSC the story was changed. They now had no idea when, or if ever, the switch would be upgraded to offer PhoneSmart to ISDN. All they could do to solve the problem is convert me back to POTS. I was told that "it was not economically feasible to upgrade the switch just to satisfy one customer." Never mind that every ISDN subscriber in Staten Island was without PhoneSmart features. Off and on I've been fighting with various "business" units of NYNEX mainly because I've refused to pay the bill since September of 1996. I have advised them in writing and over the phone that I will pay the bill in full when the promised service is delivered. Usually they have backed down but now the account collections unit says that they don't give a damn about the open PSC complaint, my problems, my threats to file a complaint with the NYS Attorney General, my threats to go to the press, or the lousy service and the poor way I've been treated. They are going to disconnect my phones on Tuesday come hell or high water unless I pay in full. NYNEX collections: "None of what you've just told me justifies your withholding payment. You are not being billed for any of the services you mentioned. Therefore the order to disconnect your service on Tuesday still stands." Later on: "Sir, whether or not you've filed any complaints with the PSC doesn't matter. You are expected to pay your bill." To this I replied "And you're expected to deliver a service, which you have not delivered, therefore I will not be making any payments until the service is delivered." Translation: NYNEX: We screw you, then you pay us. Sounds to me like a whore with a gun. I should add that during my last conversation with the PSC, about two weeks ago, they informed me that my case was indeed still open and since it was open for over a year they were sending a directive to NYNEX to (as best I can recollect) "make whatever software and/or hardware changes and/or updates necessary to deliver the promised services as stated in the complaint." Apparently this is all just a big joke to NYNEX. Shutting off my phones is probably retaliation for the PSC directive. So are we going to be wimps or are we fighting back? Andrew Gerald Custom Communications Systems Staten Island, NY *** NOTE: TO REPLY REMOVE THE "$" FROM THE E-MAIL ADDRESS. This e-mail address is a 'facsimile receiver' as defined by Title 47 USC. Sending unsolicited commercial e-mail to this address is a violation of US Federal Law. ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 18:02:07 -0400 Ed Ellers wrote: > And they shouldn't, because as common carriers they have no power to > weed out the crooks and make 900 service available to only reputable > information providers. As a (reputable) IP, I am paying the telco for BILLING and COLLECTION. What am I getting in return? If you are looking for crooks, try the people who call 900 numbers with no intention of paying their bills. > You forgot to mention that when a customer refuses to pay a 900 bill, > the information provider has the same legal recourse against the > customer that it would if it had billed the customer directly. What > it does not have is the ability to hang that duty around the neck of > the telco. Well that's my point, isn't it? I do not have the ABILITY to force my telco to collect my money, but I certainly have the RIGHT! That is what I am paying them to do. I could set up a normal phone number, and tell you when answer the phone that if you want to talk to me it will cost $N per minute. But it would be inconvenient for both of us to arrange a payment method, especially if the amount is less than $10, as many 900 calls are. The 900 pay-per-call business is supposed to help me forget about complicated billing and collection procedures. I'm supposed to leave that up to the telco. That is what I am paying them to do. When I pay someone to clean my bathroom, I'm not "hanging that duty around the neck" of my cleaning lady - she's holding up her end of the agreement. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Additionally, the information provider > has the right to obtain the necessary billing data from telco for > the purpose of billing direct *whether your number is published or > non-published*. The IP is treated the same as any 'carrier' in that > your local telco is required to make your name and address available > *for billing purposes only* -- no marketing allowed! -- in the event > direct billing is needed. Some IPs won't hesitate for a minute to > place you with a collection agency when your bill with them is high > enough or outrageous enough. One IP here in the Chicago area for > many years -- maybe they are still around -- was the Nine Hundred > Service Corporation. They always used that same bunch of sleazeballs > that AT&T is so fond of, GC Services out of Houston, Texas, formerly > known as Gulf Coast Services and before that Gulf Coast Collection > Agency. There is a limited return on collection agency placements of > only a couple dollars but some IPs will bill you two or three hundred > dollars and then immediatly place you with an agency as soon as local > telco recourses them or gives them a chargeback on it. PAT] Ah, so you admit that it is impractical for the IP to bill and collect small amounts of money! I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. ------------------------------ From: Rob Hall Subject: Callback Banned in South Africa Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 18:22:31 +0800 Business Day (South Africa) August 13, 1997 Callback operators to be banned Robin Chalmers CALLBACK operators will be banned in SA from September 1 in terms of a surprise first ruling by the newly formed SA (South Africa) Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra). The move has outraged callback operators, who provide cheaper international calls than Telkom by basing the call in countries like the US. The operators effectively have two weeks to close down their local businesses, which generate an estimated R18m a month. They have vowed to fight the ruling, which also appears to have caught Telkom executives by surprise. However, Post, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Minister Jay Naidoo strongly supported Satra's decision. There had been complaints that callback operations were undermining Telkom's ability to generate the revenue necessary to meet the telecommunications needs of underserviced (sic) communities, he said yesterday. Other concerns included that callback operations were degrading Telkom's network, that government could not levy value-added tax on their services and that they were not contributing to economic development. "We wish to attract investment to SA, but of the type offered by SBC Communications and Telecom Malaysia, which have invested an enormous amount into telecommunications" he said. Satra chairman Nape Maepa said in terms of the Telecommunications Act telecommunications services could be provided only by licensed entities. Telkom was the only organisation in SA licensed to provide international telecommunications services on an exclusive basis for a five- to six-year period. Contravention of the law could result in a fine of up to R500,000 or two years' imprisonment, or both, he said. Maepa said a major objective of the act was to allow Telkom a period of exclusivity to provide telephones to previously disadvantaged areas as well as give Telkom the opportunity to rebalance its tariffs and to prepare for a competitive environment. Both Maepa and Naidoo said they were confident the ruling could be policed, although details of this would be released later. Initial methods would include preventing the advertising and marketing of overt callback services, and gaining the support of overseas regulatory authorities. Gianfranco Cicogna, chairman of the recently formed SA Callback Association and MD of Ursus, the largest callback operator in SA, labeled the move a "direct attack" on US business interests in SA and a "conspiracy" to prop up Telkom's monopoly. Callback operators would fight the ban. Cicogna said hundreds of people employed in the callback industry would lose their jobs and the businessmen and companies, including government departments and leading SA groups, which had made significant savings using callback, would suffer losses. He estimated that callback services generated R18m in revenue a month or more than 7% of Telkom's revenue from international services, which rose only 4% to R2,79bn in the year ended March this year. Telkom, which said callback services were a factor in the sluggish growth in international revenue, has estimated that callback accounts for 3% of its international revenue. Telkom spokesman Amanda Singleton said banning callback operators would improve Telkom's service to international destinations. "Telkom is committed to continuing with its programme of lowering international call rates as evidenced by recent tariff adjustments". Satra has defied callback as "a call originating in SA on any SA telecommunications access service provider network, intended for outside SA, that through various means results in the majority of the call being financially allocatable (sic) to other than an SA telecommunications access service provider". ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 05:21:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AOL May Track User Clicks Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Inter@ctive WeekAugust 8, 1997 AOL May Track User Clicks By Will Rodger America Online Inc. is under pressure again, this time from privacy advocates who said the company still hasn't fulfilled its pledge to respect subscribers' privacy. Observers said the new Terms of Service agreement AOL plans to issue next week reveals the company's intention to track members' mouse clicks in order to compile mailing lists for third parties. "This is potentially a far more serious privacy violation than the sale of phone numbers," said David Sobel, counsel to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy rights group. "This is a detailed profile which divulges salient details about people's lifestyle and habits." Even if not disclosed to third parties, he said, the very existence of such profiles could cause problems. "The problem isn't that it's being shared. The problem is it's being collected and maintained," he said. But officials at AOL said there's little to worry about, suggesting that critics should read the forthcoming policy before passing judgment. "We are not using that information to target our members," AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said. "To the extent we use it, we'll use it in the aggregate." AOL officials last month backed away from a plan to share customers' phone numbers with its marketing partners after a barrage of criticism. Part of the consumer outrage stemmed from the way AOL introduced its plan. Instead of directly informing subscribers that their account information would be given to telemarketers, the company planned to state its intentions in the new Terms of Service agreement - a multipaged, densely worded legal document posted on AOL that informs members about the company's operations. A July 25 letter from EPIC asking for clarification of the policy went unanswered through today. AOL can be reached at www.aol.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #208 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Sun Aug 17 14:03:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA21478; Sun, 17 Aug 1997 14:03:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 14:03:22 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708171803.OAA21478@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #209 TELECOM Digest Sun, 17 Aug 97 14:03:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 209 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Gregory Johnson) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (James Bellaire) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (AES) UCLA Short Course: Communication Systems Using Digital Signal (B. Goodin) A Strategy Contra Spammers? (Eric Ewanco) Year 2000 Problems (Y2K) (John Shaver) Last Laugh! Just Kidding of Course ... (Babu Mengelepouti) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: gkj@panix.com (Gregory Johnson) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: 16 Aug 1997 09:35:29 -0400 Organization: Panix Public Access Internet & Unix, NYC In article Nicholas Marino writes: > Ed Ellers wrote: >> And they shouldn't, because as common carriers they have no power to >> weed out the crooks and make 900 service available to only reputable >> information providers. > As a (reputable) IP, I am paying the telco for BILLING and > COLLECTION. What am I getting in return? If you are looking for > crooks, try the people who call 900 numbers with no intention of > paying their bills. And you are getting what you are paying for. The telco bills and collects remittances for you. [snip] > I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently > down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the > FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone > service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. This would be bad public policy. Telephone service is an essential utility. Information services are not. Your local phone company should not be able to discontinue providing service "A" which is essential, because you are unwilling/unable to pay for service "B" which is not, and is provided by a third party. Analogously, do you think if American Express subcontracted its billing to your local electric company, that the electric company should be able to stop supplying you with electric power because you paid your electric bill but not your American Express bill? I don't think that would be good policy either, even though it would substantially decrease the number of people who failed to pay their American Express bills. --Greg ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 10:31:11 -0500 From: James Bellaire Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Nicholas Marino wrote: > As a (reputable) IP, I am paying the telco for BILLING and COLLECTION. > What am I getting in return? If you are looking for crooks, try > the people who call 900 numbers with no intention of paying > their bills. [snip] > I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently > down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the > FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone > service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. How about a compromise? Any user who refuses to pay the 900 portion of their bill has an immediate 900/976 block placed on their line. Then they cannot make any more calls they do not intend to pay for. And the bill must be contested within one billing period. That should at least reduce the risk for the reputable IPs. Another option would be to default users to NO access to 900/976 until they call the phone company to authorize the calls. But that would probably cut down the number of impulse calls to your information. James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Telecom Indiana Webpage http://members.iquest.net/~bellaire/telecom/ * Note new server - old URL should still work * [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ameritech here in Illinois does in fact require an immediate block on the line of anyone who claims they did not authorize the 900 call. They do not require a block merely on the basis that the person claims the information recieved was worthless. Also I think someone here in the Digest pointed out some time ago that a couple of the telcos which use 900-999 specifically for very raunchy hardcore sex stuff do in fact block that one exchange (999) unless the subscriber requests it. Imagine how humiliating and morti- fying that would be; having to call the business office asking to be allowed access to those real raunchy services. PAT] ------------------------------ From: siegman@ee.stanford.edu (Anthony E. Seigman) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 20:57:46 -0700 Organization: Stanford University I'm interested and glad (no sarcasm intended) to have 900-service-operator Nicholas Marino respond to criticisms of those services, especially his statements that: > As a (reputable) IP, I am paying the telco for BILLING and > COLLECTION. What am I getting in return? If you are looking for > crooks, try the people who call 900 numbers with no intention of > paying their bills. > Well that's my point, isn't it? I do not have the ABILITY to force my > telco to collect my money, but I certainly have the RIGHT! That is > what I am paying them to do. > I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently > down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the > FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone > service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. ... because this really comes to the point. Sure, billing and collection through the telco for NON-telco services is convenient (for the IP, at least, and even, to some extent, for the customer). Sure, people who deliberately stiff IPs are crooks. But when I contract with the telco for phone service, I'm contracting with them for TELEPHONE service, period. If I stiff them on any of my TELEPHONE charges, they're certainly entitled to cut me off. But once I've paid them for the TELEPHONE services that they've provided me, they should be out of my life. I'm certainly not about to give the telco powers of attorney over ANY of my other financial affairs, or powers to hold my phone service hostage for any of my other non-telco financial transactions -- even if done over the phone. If I order a sofa from the local furniture mart over the phone, accept delivery, and then try to stiff the vendor, he'll have to try to collect on my debt through the appropriate, legally provided mechanisms -- which do NOT include telling the local phone company (or the gas company, or the electric company, for that matter) to turn off my service. If I behave similarly with one of Mr. Marino's numbers, he has every right to be mad at me, and to come after me for payment through any of the same legal channels. In doing this he can certainly negotiate whatever business arrangements he can with the telco. BUT HE CAN'T TAKE CONTROL OF MY PHONE SERVICE, SO LONG AS I'M CURRENT WITH THE PHONE COMPANY ITSELF FOR THE SERVICES *THEY* PROVIDED TO ME -- despite the fact that the ability to do this would certainly be convenient for him. He has to solve his problem with me through normal channels, just like the furniture dealer. If I understand Mr. Marino's message correctly, he doesn't understand this last point. That's why the FCC has had to make that point clear, and why they'll have to continue making it clear. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem is, there are no *convenient* 'legal channels' for Mr. Marino or other IPs to use. Typically the IP works with customers five and ten dollars at a time. A sofa on the other hand costs a few hundred dollars and makes collection activity somewhat worthwhile. Even suing you for an unpaid sofa would be a marginal thing at best. You talk suit only when the debt is at least several hundred dollars and the debtor is local to you, or maybe a thousand dollars or more if the debtor is in another state and you need to retain counsel in that state or jurisdiction to proceed, etc. Collection agencies only make money on mass processing of thousands of small accounts, and then, many agencies are reluctant to handle claims where there is no signature on file nor any tangible item to be repossesed or accounted for, etc. That is why if Mr. Marino and other IPs do not have telco's assistance, they may as well close up shop. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course: Communication Systems Using Digital Signal Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 17:53:04 -0700 On November 10-14, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Communication Systems Using Digital Signal Processing", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Bernard Sklar, PhD, Communications Engineering Services, and frederick harris, MS, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University. As part of the course materials, each participant receives a copy of the text, "Digital Communications: Fundamentals and Applications", by Bernard Sklar. This course provides comprehensive coverage of advanced digital communications. It differs from other communications courses in its emphasis on applying modern digital signal processing techniques to the implementation of communication systems. This makes the course essential for practitioners in the rapidly changing field. Error-correction coding, spread spectrum techniques, and bandwidth-efficient signaling are all discussed in detail. Basic digital signaling methods and the newest modulation-with-memory techniques are presented, along with trellis-coded modulation. Many traditional communication applications such as modulation/demodulation, channelization, channel equalization, synchronization, and frequency synthesis are being implemented with new digital signal processing techniques to achieve high performance. The course analyzes these techniques, including multirate filters, I-Q sampling, and conversion between I-Q and real signals. UCLA Extension has presented this highly successful short course since 1990. The course fee is $1595, which includes the text and extensive course notes. These course materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses/ This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ From: Eric Ewanco Subject: A Strategy Contra Spammers? Date: 16 Aug 1997 22:11:21 -0400 An idea occurred to me about how to approach the problem of spammers. One consequence of forging return addresses is that it is not possible for spammers to determine which addresses are good and which are bogus. Consequently they are unable to guarantee the quality of their lists. At some point, bulk mailing lists will become sufficiently unreliable and untrustworthy -- especially if the automated mechanisms they use to collect them (such as phony "remove me" mailboxes) pick up a substantial portion of bogus addresses. (It's also possible that con artists will open (or are already opening) fraudulent spam mills using entirely bogus address lists. Think of it: the fewer real addresses you use, the more you can guarantee your client minimal backlash. :-)) The expectation is that at some point would-be customers will develop enough suspicion about the quality of the mailing lists used that they will avoid spamming mills or even reconsider their spamming strategy. If spam mills acquire a shady reputation even among their clients, the business will not thrive; and if it does not thrive, it will likely not survive, at least not in a form perilous to the infrastructure of the 'net. Part of our strategy has to involve a degree of countermarketing: spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the industry so as to deter would-be spam clients. The media would prove indispensible to carrying out this strategy: a few articles stressing the specter of impotent or even wholly fraudulent mailing lists in the light of the unverifiability of true audience penetration may instill sufficient concern among would-be clients to prove a worthy deterrent for the majority. On a related topic, rumor has it that a magazine printed an email address of the Federal Trade Commission for consumer inquiries and fraud reports; the address is consumerline@ftc.gov and seems an appropriate destination for forwarding all those spams you get for illegal or even just dubious products or business opportunities. Already I have forwarded several to the address; I've received nothing back, but that includes bounce notifications. # __ __ Eric Ewanco # IC | XC eje@world.std.com # ---+--- http://www.wp.com/Eric_Ewanco # NI | KA Framingham, MA; USA ------------------------------ From: John Shaver Subject: Year 2000 Problems (Y2K) Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 15:07:34 -0700 Pat, A friend of mine is the former chief of Information management for a large local organization. Now retired, she is developing a data base of local large organizations such as banks, utilities, stock brokers, car manufacturers, etc. She is interested in hearing from large organizations to include telephone and long distance suppliers as to their plans and why their plans will successfully solve the problem. She has started locally at the phone-in customer service phone numbers and has in some cases gotten to officers of corporations who could not understand her questions and had not heard of the problem. She would be interested in hearing from technical persons who could assist her in evaluating plans that are in place and how they might solve the problem. She can be reached at slorenz@juno.com. Juno does not allow large file transferred, please contact her with summaries of the information which you feel may be of value to her and make arrangements to ship large volumes after the initial contact. Thanks, John ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 18:37:16 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Last Laugh! Just Kidding of Course ... from the dcstuff mailing list ... From: atuttle@interplay.com (Tuttle Alton) Subject: figured you would dig this Spammer servers under siege By Courtney Macavinta August 12, 1997, 11:00 a.m. PT The most well-known spammer on the Net, Cyber Promotions, is under siege. [snip, sad ending of Cyberpromo remaining in existence deleted] I know how to make the story better, to wit: *************************************************************** Sanford Wallace found dead in home By Szechuan Death August 12, 1997, 11:00 PM AT The most well-known spammer on the Net, Sanford Wallace, AKA "Spamford", was found dead in his house today. He was apparently electrocuted during a hanging, cut down, shot several times, staked through the heart, decapitated and dismembered, then set on fire. Police are questioning the approximately one million cheering computer users surrounding the morgue where his charred remains are held. Sources say approximately one hundred thousand people have come forward claiming to have committed the murder, if it in fact was a murder. Some of the deceased's neighbors have told police they didn't see anything, and heard mad gibbering by Sanford wanting to "End it all" the night before he was found. Some people do feel sorry for him, however. America Online's president was heard to say this at a conference following the announcement: "The Internet mourns the loss of a true pioneer today, and try as we might, we may not be able to carry on in his footsteps." He attempted to give a further eulogy, but was booed and pelted with both opened and unopened Mountain Dew cans and AOL subscription CDs, and had to be led offstage in tears. ************************************************************** Ahh. That sounds a lot better. finger sdeath@ackphft.matsu.alaska.edu for PGP key PGP fingerprint: 448A2FA09E2BB00DC621D9E24D319C28 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for that very inspirational and thoughtful message to close this issue of the Digest. Yes, I agree that Steve Case and Spamford Wallace are like two peas in a pot, as Stan Laurel once said until his straight man Oliver Hardy tried to correct him: "Stanley, that's two peas in a pod ... P-O-D --- paw-duh, not 'pot' ..." but it is true, they both seem to come from the same mold. Talking about spam, what a laugh I had today! In addition to the usual couple dozen spam letters I get each day, today there was a letter from postmaster@znet.com advising me that this Digest was 'spam' and to cease and desist sending it. In fact, he returned several copies each of several issues recently telling me to cut it out. I wrote him back and told him sweetheart, you just bought yourself a ticket to my bit bucket; henceforth all mail from znet.com will go straight to /dev/null and flushed away with the rest of the raw sewage I get each day. If Spamford ever does show up dismembered, burned alive or whatever, someone please let me know so I can run a special edition here. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #209 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Mon Aug 18 00:04:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA23751; Mon, 18 Aug 1997 00:04:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 00:04:04 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708180404.AAA23751@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #210 TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Aug 97 00:04:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 210 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: A Strategy Contra Spammers? (Eric Bohlman) Re: A Strategy Contra Spammers? (Rick DeMattia) Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? (Bill Levant) Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? (kilgor@wt.net) ATM Mailing List Being Started (Babul Miah) Re: AT&T Wireless Digital (Richard Neveau) Re: AT&T Wireless Digital (Corky Sarvis) Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider (Peter Corlett) Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? (Stephen B. Kutzer) Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? (circuit@worldnet) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman) Subject: Re: A Strategy Contra Spammers? Organization: OMS Development Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 21:00:44 GMT Eric Ewanco (eje@world.std.com) wrote: > An idea occurred to me about how to approach the problem of spammers. > One consequence of forging return addresses is that it is not possible > for spammers to determine which addresses are good and which are > bogus. Consequently they are unable to guarantee the quality of their > lists. If they were legitimate businesses, this would be a concern for them. But they're not. There are really two types of major spammers: the "spam for hire" companies and the "information providers" (usually operators of 900 numbers or pay websites). The spammers-for-hire generally market their services to small businesses (in many cases small-time scammers themselves) that don't know anything more about the Internet than what they read in the mainstream press. They usually make extravagant promises to them. Most of those clients wouldn't know the difference between a deliverable and non-deliverable address. The quality of the list makes no difference in how much money the spammer-for-hire makes by selling the list. Most of their clients are one-timers and don't communicate with each other. Those who have legitimate products and services to sell usually realize, after the fact, that they've been ripped off. The "information providers" who spam on behalf of themselves also don't care about the quality of their lists. Spamming 200,000 people costs them negligibly more than spamming 100,000 people. As long as there are *any* non-bogus addresses in the lists they compile for themselves, they're not hurt by the presence of bogus addresses. The *entire* reason that spam is such a problem is that it's the *only* form of direct marketing where there's no cost to the marketer in contacting someone who isn't interested in what you're marketing. If you're snail-mailing brochures to people on a list, you lose the cost of postage and printing for every non-deliverable or uninterested person on the list. If you're telemarketing and you have a low-quality list, you have to pay your telemarketers to sit there and listen to intercepts and refusals. Thus snail-mailers and telemarketers have a strong economic incentive to limit their lists to "qualified prospects." But spammers have no such financial incentives. Spamming to a list of 100 qualifieds and 500,000 duds costs no more than spamming to just the 100 qualifieds. The effort and expense in trimming out the duds carries *no* payoff to them; there's no economic reason for them to do it, and every reason for them not to. Of course, when I say "costs no more" I mean "costs no more *to the spammer*." In reality, the spammers are simply offloading their costs to Net users in general, just as a polluter offloads the costs of cleaning up his mess to his neighbors. Both of them aren't so much *making* money as *taking* money; they're profitable only because they're receiving involuntary subsidies. ------------------------------ From: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Subject: Re: A Strategy Contra Spammers? Reply-To: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Organization: Railnet BBS +1 216 786 0476 Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 01:27:02 GMT As quoted from by Eric Ewanco : > An idea occurred to me about how to approach the problem of spammers. > One consequence of forging return addresses is that it is not possible > for spammers to determine which addresses are good and which are > bogus. Consequently they are unable to guarantee the quality of their > lists. I should think that the quality of the lists is irrelevant. As a system administrator I see regular bounces (from spam) for addresses that have not been valid for YEARS. Literally. So I think that it's probably only the gullible who pay money for these distribution lists. Of course, if P.T. Barnum was correct, we're not likely to run out of the gullible in our lifetimes! Rick DeMattia ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? Date: 16 Aug 1997 19:25:44 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Thu, 14 Aug 1997 01:21:36 GMT, Andrew Gerald wrote: > Off and on I've been fighting with various "business" units of NYNEX > mainly because I've refused to pay the bill since September of 1996. > I have advised them in writing and over the phone that I will pay the > bill in full when the promised service is delivered. Usually they > have backed down but now the account collections unit says that they > don't give a damn about the open PSC complaint, my problems, my > threats to file a complaint with the NYS Attorney General, my threats > to go to the press, or the lousy service and the poor way I've been > treated. They are going to disconnect my phones on Tuesday come hell > or high water unless I pay in full. > NYNEX collections: "None of what you've just told me justifies your > withholding payment. You are not being billed for any of the services > you mentioned. Therefore the order to disconnect your service on > Tuesday still stands." Later on: "Sir, whether or not you've filed > any complaints with the PSC doesn't matter. You are expected to pay > your bill." To this I replied "And you're expected to deliver a > service, which you have not delivered, therefore I will not be making > any payments until the service is delivered." Translation: NYNEX: We > screw you, then you pay us. Sounds to me like a whore with a gun. DISCLAIMER: I Am Not A Lawyer Inform the person you're talking with that unless they abey the disconnect order on your service until the dispute is settled, you will file a civil action for treble damages against the President of NYNEX under the terms of 42 USC 1983, the 1871 Civil Rights Act, for violation of your right to due process, since, as a government sanctioned monopoly, they are "acting under color of law". I'd suggest you read the section, and try to find a copy of a book called "Super Threats: How to Sound Like a Lawyer and Get Your Own Way". Excellent book, comes with citations. Hit www.law.cornell.edu to see the statute. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth High Technology Systems Consulting Ashworth Designer Linux: Where Do You Want To Fly Today? & Associates ka1fjx/4 Crack. It does a body good. +1 813 790 7592 jra@baylink.com http://rc5.distributed.net NIC: jra3 ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 08:46:24 EDT Subject: Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? In Digest issue 208, Andrew Gerald said a bunch of things, ending with ... > So are we going to be wimps or are we fighting back? As of 8/15/97, NYNEX is no more. Now you have a whole different phone company to fight with. I don't think Bell Atlantic is materially brighter than NYNEX; it took them the best part of two weeks (and four visits, two from the "toaster repairman" subcontractors, and two from genuine thirty-year Bell guys) to fix a noise-and-disconnect problem on our main fax line (which the "real" Bell guys claim was caused by a misconfigured channel card), but you can always hope. Bill ------------------------------ From: kilgor@wt.net Subject: Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? Date: Sun, 17 Aug 97 00:37:36 GMT Organization: MDC Inc. Uh... I am a little confused. You refuse to pay for any services rendered because you don't have all of the services you were told you were going to have? You have ISDN ... are you paying for that, and not paying for the Phonesmart features? Or are you refusing to pay for the whole thing? Did you ever pay for one month? If you did, you will be screwed because a cancelled check is often considered acceptance of a contract. I am not a lawyer. Don't get me wrong, I hope you get your problems fixed. My experiences with ISDN have been similar, I found that the Pac-Tel tech guys were more than happy to figure out solutions and have me test them for them. It's new for them and full of problems that they have to overcome. NYNEX blew it by promising something it couldn't deliver. They should have just said sorry, but we can't do it, we made a mistake and worked out a deal with you. ------------------------------ From: Babul Miah Subject: ATM Mailing List Being Started Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 18:48:56 +0100 Organization: Telecom Lab, Engineering Dept, QMW, UoL Reply-To: b.miah@qmw.ac.uk Hello, A new mailing list has been created for ATM at the Mailbase site. I invite you all to join this group and make full use of it. Below is a brief description of what this is all about. To join the list send email to "mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk" with the message "join atm " as the sole body of the mail (subject text does not matter); see "http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/atm" for more detail. Thank you. Babul Miah ============================================= The purpose of the atm mailing list is to create a bulletin/discussion board for people interested in telecommunications in general and in ATM in particular; it is open to managers, researchers and developers a like. I hope that the list will enable exchange and sharing of information, ideas and views related to the topic. As far as I am aware of, this is the first mailing list of its kind and provides us with an opportunity to supplement the many conferences and seminars in this topic. ATM certainly is a hot topic in telecommunications at the moment and there is no shortage of issues to discuss so I invite everyone to share their thoughts with the others by mailing to the list; if you are talking to friends or colleagues about anything related to ATM send copies to the list as well. And finally, since I have only just set this up we need more participants to make this a lively and fruitful discussion list. So please do encourage others to join as well. Note that Mailbase archives all emails sent to the list for a period of time and provides various other facilities. Contact mailbase for further information ("mailbase-helpline@mailbase.ac.uk" or "http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/atm"). ------------------------------ From: Richard Neveau Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Digital Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 02:38:37 -0500 Organization: bitsmiths Reply-To: rsn@airmail.net Steve Kass wrote: > After several months of unacceptable quality cell service, I am > switching from AT&T Wireless Digital PCS service back to analog > service. While AT&T advertises its digital service as superior to > analog, this was not the case for me. When my wife first got her AT&T Digital "PCS" phone the rep spent a while explaining how to lock the Nokia Phone to only use the "Analog" service 100% of the time. When I commented that kind of defeated the reason AT&T was rolling out the digital service (better bandwidth utilization) he of course was unable to understand. I know that option is still in the phone. The only hassle is you need to turn it on every time you turn on the phone. With the digital phones using less power I leave them on 24 hours a day but with analog I guess I would need to shut the phone off or carry a few spare batteries (Hey - that's one reason digital IS superior to analog !!) > I'm not happy to have spent $199 for a digital phone that I cannot > return, nor did I appreciate hearing that no compensation was > available according to company policy, when this was not the case in > the end. Why don't you: 1) Lock your phone to analog only. Only you will know. -OR - 2) Use it anyway as an analog only phone for your new service. Just lock out the digital mode. You didn't get a FREE phone since you had no contract. A fair exchange for most of us. > Are others out there dissatisfied with AT&T's digital service? And > has anyone been able to return their expensive telephones for a full > refund? I returned my Dual Mode phone on 29th day. Their policy is 30 days and less than 1 hour talk time and returns are no problem. I knew the rules and followed them. I didn't have any problems with the phone (an Ericsson DF388) I just wanted to pick up a Dual Mode / Dual Band phone instead so I can get TDMA "PCS" service @ 1900 MHz also once it rolls out. > I find it remarkable that AT&T can advertise a service that > manifestly cannot deliver what it promises. I pretty much got what I expected from both my wife's service and mine. We both are on the 1500 minute free w/ "everything" else service. I wanted the "E-mail" short message service that I am still waiting for on my Sprint CDMA PCS service (talk about vapor-ware - I want my alpha paging on a Q Phone NOW !!!!). If Sprint / Qualcomm can't get these loose ends finished I will probably stick with AT&T. For now I am using both services to compare. I will admit the Sprint PCS (Qualcomm CDMA Digital) does sound a LOT better but I can still - use - the AT&T TDMA Digital. Check out the 900 MHz phone threads in news:comp.dcom.telecom.tech and see how even this technology most of us find 'better' drives some people up the wall. All cellular service schemes have good and bad points. I'm just glad there are so many choices! The AT&T service is best for my wife as she is not a techno-geek and just wants to pick up the phone ANYWHERE and use it. AT&T gives her that AND cost less than analog AND lets me send her alpha messages. I don't travel much so the limited coverage of CDMA isn't a problem for me but I do want the alpha paging soon or I'll be giving up my Sprint PCS service. I am thinking of going 100% wireless as I very seldom use our POTS line anymore. > I would be happy to > participate in a class action suit against AT&T for false advertising > and failure to provide acceptable service, if I am not alone. You are not alone but ... didn't you kind of get a hint in the first 30 days you didn't like the service quality? The original reason I got the AT&T service for my wife was lower price with NO CONTRACT. That is worth a lot in turbulent times like these! You still got out with no cancellation penalty and have a pretty good phone most likely to use for your next service. I fail to see why you should be so upset. ------------------------------ From: Corky Sarvis Organization: Our Lady of the Lake University Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 09:42:39 CDT Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Digital Pat, I read in this morning's issue about the challenges and problems that one of your readers is having with AT & T Wireless Digital Service. About 90-days ago, I made the switch from Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems analog cellular service to Sprint PCS here in San Antonio, Texas. The "gimmick" for switching was a very great amount of airtime for a flat monthly fee. I believe I have 2100-minutes of airtime per month for about $100 including taxes and fees. My occupation takes me all over the San Antonio, metropolitan area. I have been keeping careful notes of coverage as well as system downtime / outages. Since I have been on Sprint PCS, here is what has happened. Twice they have had major system failures that lasted several hours in the middle of the business day. They did finally get voice-mail activated. It seems to work as advertised. Just lately, within the last week, I cannot get a call to connect on the first try. It usually takes two or three attempts! I have noticed some severe coverage problems within the major areas of the San Antonio city limits. To wit, Loop 410 near the Medical Center area, between Babcock and Fredericksburg Road. Pity the poor physician speaking to a colleague and happens to hit this hole! It is an absolute drop-out, with no coverage. On the outskirts of the city, approximately the "outer loop" or Loop 1604, the 'phone does not usually work inside buildings, only out-of-doors. The downtown area usually has fairly good coverage, except in some of the larger office buildings. I liken this coverage problem that Sprint PCS is having with what we used to go through with many of the VHF repeater stations of 20-25 years ago. The rule back then was, "Know your coverage limitations and don't travel in that particular area without backup or a buddy in a vehicle to act as relay on a simplex channel". I have decided to be patient with Sprint PCS, even though the Customer Service Number is usually not answered or busy. In all fairness, the salesman that prospected me and sold me the 'phone and service has been most responsive, to the extent that he knows what's going on. Sprint PCS came to San Antonio amid great fanfare and slick marketing. I believe that they are simply waiting for the technology and the number of towers they have to catch-up with the advertising. I'll give them until the end of this year and make a decision at that time. Corky Sarvis, Director Weekend College and Special Programs Our Lady of the Lake University San Antonio, Texas [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few months ago I had a similar problem with a certain tower which I nearly always seem to use for my cell phone rejecting most of my calls ... just taking the information, pausing a couple seconds then disconnecting. It took me two or three persistent calls to get it straightened out, but it turns out Ameritech was able to solve it by 'fingerprinting' my phone. A lady called me on the cell phone, said who she was, and that she wanted me to press 'Function' plus certain other keys on my phone. I did so and she worked on something at her end and presently said to me I was 'all set', and that I should have no further problems making calls ... and I haven't. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Peter Corlett Subject: Re: Bogus Directory Assistance Provider Date: 17 Aug 1997 23:25:44 +0100 Organization: The Haunted Fishtank In article , wrote: > Pat, this won't work from England - 011-604-555-1212 is blocked. BT > charges me for international directory assistance, and I don't even > get to talk to the foreign operator. When I called UK directory from > New Brunswick I at least got hear a funny accent (but it was still > routed through a local operator). I'm not sure if that is a typo, or whether there is a genuine problem with the networks. If you did dial 01160 from the UK, your call would be rejected, as 0116 is the code for Leicester, and the 0 being an invalid first digit for a local number. Oftel's numbering database lists 01160 as "Unusable". I made a test call to 001-604-555-1212 using First Telecom as the carrier, and got through fine. AT&T UK are no worse than usual calling this number, and I have reports that Energis works too (and is much cheaper than using BT's International DQ service.) I can't speak for calling over BT, since their international rates are in fantasy land, and I won't use them. It is possible that BT has "decided" that +1 xxx 555 xxxx is an invalid number, and won't waste network bandwidth attempting the call. There's probably not a lot you can do about this, bar raise the issue with either BT themselves or Oftel. \/ http://www.verrine.demon.co.uk/ * "peter" is a news-only account and bounces Tel.: +44 7020 954422 ("d" rate) * mail. To contact me, substitute "tomcat". echo Today is $((($(date +%s)-$(date -d 31-aug-93 +%s))/86400)) September 1993. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 16:19:39 -0400 From: Stephen B. Kutzer Subject: Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? A silly question, no doubt. What's really meant by the term "local loop"? As a related question, of the four wires in my phone, I know that two are used per number. Is one for "send" and another for "receive", and do they form the "loop"? Feeling loopy, Steve [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, they form the loop, but 'send' and 'receive' are not the correct terms. One of the two wires comes out to your phone from the central office. Your switchhook, mouth and earpiece are connected in series through that wire which then loops back to the central office. Electrical current coming down the wire to your phone cannot complete the circuit and go back to the central office while your phone is on hook. When your phone goes off-hook, a contact in the phone connects the incoming and outgoing wires, (known usually as 'tip' and 'ring') so that the current can flow back to the telephone exchange. When the current gets back to the other end, it trips other relays which tells the phone exchange that you have lifted the receiver and wish to make a call. The two wires used for the first line are usually green and red, while the two wires used for the second line are usually yellow and black. I do not know the difference between 'loop' and 'local loop'. I think they are used interchangeably. PAT] ------------------------------ From: CIRCUIT@worldnet.att.net Subject: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 11:35:08 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Reply-To: CIRCUIT@worldnet.att.net Hi, I have two separate cordless phones in my residence, both AT&T cordless phones, of different models. I have recently been experiencing something strange. When I pick up one or the other phone, I get a low tone "beepbeep", as if it can't find an open channel. One of the phones is a 10 channel, the other a 25 channel. Then as mysteriously as it appeared, it disappears and both phones are fine. Could this be some sort of FCC regulated interference by someone with possibly a ham radio? If so, what can I do about this and/or verify the problem? Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Circuit@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #210 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Tue Aug 19 01:00:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA15289; Tue, 19 Aug 1997 01:00:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 01:00:43 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708190500.BAA15289@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #211 TELECOM Digest Tue, 19 Aug 97 01:00:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 211 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? (Michael Bryant) Re: Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: AT&T Wireless Digital (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: AT&T Wireless Digital (Tim Russell) Re: AT&T Wireless Digital (J.F. Mezei) Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? (Michael Sullivan) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Joseph Singer) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Bill Levant) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Eli Mantel) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Nicholas Marino) Re: Last Laugh! Just Kidding of Course ... (Art Walker) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Michael Bryant Subject: Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 16:22:37 -0400 The local loop can also be referred to as the "loop" or "subscriber loop". They all refer to the same thing which is the circuit between a subscriber's premises and the serving central office. In other words, the loop can be considered the exchange access portion of an overall telecommunications circuit. The local loop has traditionally been metallic copper pairs but it can also be optical fiber, radio links or hybrid-fiber coax(HFC) and in these cases is usually in use with a digital loop carrier(DLC). It sounds as if you have two lines and a two line telephone instrument. Yes, two wires are necessary for one telephone line(circuit). As the editor notes, the terminology "send" and "receive" are not appropriate. Telephone instruments and switches are four-wires. Many years ago it was decided cost prohibitive to run four-wires to each phone. Therefore every phone has a hybrid transformer to convert the four wires to two wires and vice-versa. Should you take apart your phone you will find that the transmitter has two wires and the receiver has two wires. Hence, your four wire telephone set. Your voice is changed to electrical current and over the local loop. The editor also noted that the first line in a home is normally red/green and the second yellow/black. This is the old quad wiring. It is unacceptable in this day and age and the FCC is about to make it mandatory for all new wiring to be at least a category 3 type. Newer wiring contains twisted pairs versus the old quad wiring. Complaints of crosstalk are an every day complaint to phone companies and the FCC for folks still using quad wiring and that have two lines in the same cable jacket. Just a small tidbit for the day. Michael Bryant ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Is a "Local Loop" a Loop? Date: Mon, 18 Aug 97 03:22:17 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. Reply-To: Michael D. Sullivan On Sun, 17 Aug 1997 16:19:39 -0400, Stephen B. Kutzer wrote: > A silly question, no doubt. What's really meant by the term "local > loop"? As a related question, of the four wires in my phone, I know > that two are used per number. Is one for "send" and another for > "receive", and do they form the "loop"? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, they form the loop, but 'send' > and 'receive' are not the correct terms. One of the two wires comes > out to your phone from the central office. Your switchhook, mouth > and earpiece are connected in series through that wire which then loops > back to the central office. Electrical current coming down the wire > to your phone cannot complete the circuit and go back to the central > office while your phone is on hook. When your phone goes off-hook, > a contact in the phone connects the incoming and outgoing wires, > (known usually as 'tip' and 'ring') so that the current can flow > back to the telephone exchange. When the current gets back to the > other end, it trips other relays which tells the phone exchange > that you have lifted the receiver and wish to make a call. The > two wires used for the first line are usually green and red, while > the two wires used for the second line are usually yellow and black. > I do not know the difference between 'loop' and 'local loop'. I > think they are used interchangeably. PAT] In other words, when you pick up your phone, you complete a loop: the green wire from the telco is connected through your phone to the red wire to the telco. Any electric circuit involving a power source (e.g., the battery in the central office) and resistance between the battery terminals (e.g., the telco's copper wires and your phone) is known as a loop. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Digital Date: Mon, 18 Aug 97 03:18:16 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. Reply-To: Michael D. Sullivan On Sun, 17 Aug 1997 09:42:39 CDT, Corky Sarvis wrote: > About 90-days ago, I made the switch from Southwestern Bell Mobile > Systems analog cellular service to Sprint PCS here in San Antonio, > Texas. > The "gimmick" for switching was a very great amount of airtime for a > flat monthly fee. I believe I have 2100-minutes of airtime per month > for about $100 including taxes and fees. > I have noticed some severe coverage problems within the major areas of > the San Antonio city limits. To wit, Loop 410 near the Medical Center > area, between Babcock and Fredericksburg Road. Pity the poor > physician speaking to a colleague and happens to hit this hole! It is > an absolute drop-out, with no coverage. On the outskirts of the city, > approximately the "outer loop" or Loop 1604, the 'phone does not > usually work inside buildings, only out-of-doors. The downtown area > usually has fairly good coverage, except in some of the larger office > buildings. You may want to try going to the local cellular carrier. Some carriers have a promotional trade-in policy. I recently saw Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile folks taking Sprint Spectrum PCS phones in trade for cellular phones and service. I suspect they have a deal that is very good. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ From: russell@probe.net (Tim Russell) Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Digital Date: 18 Aug 1997 17:16:03 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Internet Services Corky Sarvis writes: > Since I have been on Sprint PCS, here is what has happened. Twice > they have had major system failures that lasted several hours in the > middle of the business day. They did finally get voice-mail > activated. It seems to work as advertised. Here in Omaha, the system seems to work well, within the limitations I would expect from a new service offering. Coverage is a problem in outlying areas, however, I've also been surprised at having coverage in several areas I didn't expect, such as a state park some fifteen miles south of the metro area. I have reported one glaring dropout zone in town (84th & Center) and received a call that a new site would be put in during July. It's August and the problem remains, but I'm willing to wait some. I know the difficulties of getting new sites installed, especially since I believe Omaha has placed a moratorium on new cell sites. Overall, I'm more than happy to put up with small problems, because I absolutely /love/ the battery life on this phone. My AMPS phone was constantly low on power even though I used the largest NiMH battery I could find. My Qualcomm phone, on the other hand, has been on standby for over 24 hours and still had plenty of capacity for several 5-minute calls. The additional privacy is an added bonus. This morning, my voicemail box had a message from Sprint PCS stating that they will be installing an entirely new voicemail system on August 24th. I'll certainly be interested to see how it performs - the current system, which was finally rolled out to all customers, has performed passably except for a long delay between when the message is placed and when I get notified of it. The only BIG complaint I have had thus far in four months of service has been the long hold times for customer support. Recently I was a little late sending in payment and consequently had my phone shut off. Fine, I deserved that. However, it took me SIX HOURS on hold (I exaggerate not) to get through to a rep to make payment. The explanation was a big marketing push, however I find this entirely unacceptable, especially since the phone system has prompts to inform it that one is a current customer. I spent twenty minutes talking to a supervisor, explaining to him that it would behoove Sprint to concentrate a little more on keeping current customers happy than on getting new ones. He comiserated, but didn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of keeping a group of operators dedicated to current customer use on the support lines. When my one year of double minutes is up, I'll look at them MUCH more critically. Right now, I'm happy overall. Tim Russell System Admin, Probe Technology email: russell@probe.net PGP RSA: C992 109C 6D7F 8D91 062E 817E 00D3 287A "The worst censorship is self-censorship, because fear has no limits." -- Grady Ward ------------------------------ From: jf mezei <[non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca> Subject: Re: AT&T Wireless Digital Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 18:46:35 -0500 Organization: VTL Reply-To: [non-spam]jfmezei@videotron.ca Corky Sarvis wrote: > My occupation takes me all over the San Antonio, metropolitan area. > I have been keeping careful notes of coverage as well as system > downtime / outages. I have been with FIDO/Microcell (GSM) in Montreal Canada for about two months now. Coverage is definitely not up to snuff yet. And I "hear" outages that last a few seconds to a couple of minutes at night near midnight (phone beeps when it looses touch with the network). Inside a certain downtown buildings (with copper tinted glass), the phone won't work unless it is right at the window. In that same building analog phones from AT&T (Cantel) also have great difficulty. As a cyclist, I am often outside the city and I have monitored the coverage area. I reported a problem with no coverage on a side road that was parallel to a highway about 300m away, and that highway was on the coverage map. Lo and behold they called me vback about two weeks later to tell me that they had sent a technician who confirmed that the antennas were very focused to the highway only. I was impressed that they would even bother to call me back! I must say that I have been pretty impressed by their customer support. Rarely wait long, and the folks are pretty knowledgeable. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Any NYNEX ISDN Customers Having Trouble With NYNEX? Date: Mon, 18 Aug 97 03:11:30 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. Reply-To: Michael D. Sullivan On 16 Aug 1997 19:25:44 GMT, Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > DISCLAIMER: I Am Not A Lawyer > Inform the person you're talking with that unless they abey the > disconnect order on your service until the dispute is settled, you will > file a civil action for treble damages against the President of NYNEX > under the terms of 42 USC 1983, the 1871 Civil Rights Act, for > violation of your right to due process, since, as a government > sanctioned monopoly, they are "acting under color of law". You certainly are not a lawyer. The 1871 Civil Rights Act, or Anti-Klu-Klux-Klan Act, 42 U.S.C. 1983, is applicable only to denial of civil rights by *government* workers acting under color of law. Having a local telephone exchange franchise has never been held to subject a company to Section 1983 liability. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 17:38:44 -0700 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Pat wrote recently in TELECOM Digest: > Also I think someone here in the Digest pointed out some time ago > that a couple of the telcos which use 900-999 specifically for very > raunchy hardcore sex stuff do in fact block that one exchange (999) > unless the subscriber requests it. Imagine how humiliating and morti- > fying that would be; having to call the business office asking to > be allowed access to those real raunchy services. PAT] A few years ago when I was living in Texas telco initiated a '976' type service that would only be for "adult" type entertainment and assigned it the 766 prefix. To be able to call this prefix however required that you had to call Southwestern Bell and request the ability to call this special prefix. I imagine it did not work partially for the reason you state at the end of your comment above, but imagine also that 976 type services for the 'adult' entertainment industry was on the way out and they'd more likely use 900 services, services in Caribbean 809 area or one of the international 'adult' services in Guyana (011-592-XXX.) Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] PO Box 23135, Seattle WA 98102 FAX +1 206 325 5862 ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 07:51:19 EDT Subject: Humiliating and Mortifying? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [prelude snipped] > Imagine how humiliating and mortifying that would be; having to call > the business office asking to be allowed access to those real raunchy > services. PAT] Some years ago, Bell of Pennsylvania (Lord only knows what they're called *this* week) moved all the raunch-o-phone services from 215-976-XXXX to 215-556-xxxx (a non-standard NXX for the purpose, as far as I know) with a default setting of "no access". If you wanted that sort of thing, you had to call the business office and sign up. I did; I was neither humiliated nor mortified, though the Bell rep did say I was the first one she'd processed. It's been about eight years now; I've **never** had occasion to call **any** of the 556-XXXX's, and most likely, never will. To me, it's a matter of principle; First Amendment and all that. I don't need the telephone company to *protect* me from anything, thanks very much. Bill ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 21:03:01 PDT Nicholas Marino (nmarino@comcastpc.com) wrote: > I am convinced that if [the telcos] had the ability to turn > off phone service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone > would benefit. And I am convinced that "everyone would benefit" if we would just get rid of telco-billed pay-per-call services altogether. Who would benefit by allowing termination of phone service for failure to pay a 900 bill, besides the information providers? Would the charges for these services actually decline if collection costs went down? If that were the case, then there should be different charges for these calls depending on how they were paid for. On the other hand, there has been a plethora of problems created by telco billing of such services. How many customer disputes have resulted from this? How many warnings from the FCC, the FTC, the BBB, and local consumer reporters have been issued? How many PBX's and how many customer-owned pay phones had to be reprogrammed to prevent unauthorized use of 900 services? How many different rules did the FCC create to provide consumer protection? And last AND least, how many calls have the IPs had to eat the charges for? TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu) wrote: > ...there are no *convenient* 'legal channels' for Mr. Marino > or other IPs to use. Typically the IP works with customers > five and ten dollars at a time... This issue is really a straw man. There are plenty of other businesses that have small dollar sales to people on credit. Music clubs, book clubs, and magazines are a few examples. IPs always have the choice to require credit cards to provide service. They can also protect themselves by exchanging credit information with other IPs, as well as requiring prepayment or written pre-authorization for use of their services. In any case, the fact that IPs may have difficulty in billing and collection of their services is no excuse to impact the users of other telephone services in any way. If we had 900/976 blocking by default, I expect that the percentage of customers who opt to remove such blocking would be exceedingly small. Fine with me! Eli Mantel, mantel@hotmail.com Cagey Consumer site: http://www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I left the mention of hotmail.com in Eli's .signature above because I want to mention a problem today I had with a spammer at that site who sent me *forty* copies of the very same spam over a one hour period. Now it seems we not only have to endure spammers and their nonsense, we also have to endure spammers whose mailing programs do not work correctly. I simply batched the whole thing up -- all forty or so copies consisting of several thousand lines and sent it all back to postmaster@hotmail.com asking if he would try to get his user under control. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 14:56:49 -0400 Gregory Johnson wrote: > And you are getting what you are paying for. The telco bills and > collects remittances for you. Pre-1992, the telcos were agressive about forcing customers to pay their 900 bills. They could turn your phone service off. Today they can't, and you are right -- all they do is include my charges on a piece of paper along with the rest of your bill. Did they reduce the amount of money that they charge for billing? Not on your life. >> I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently >> down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the >> FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone >> service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. > This would be bad public policy. Telephone service is an essential > utility. Information services are not. Your local phone company > should not be able to discontinue providing service "A" which is > essential, because you are unwilling/unable to pay for service "B" > which is not, and is provided by a third party. The 'bad policy' came from the FCC in 1992. Not only did it emasculate the telcos, it also forced them to put that little disclaimer on your phone bill reminding you that you won't be disconnected for failure to pay your bill. What is the purpose of that disclaimer? Wouldn't a mandated policy be enough? It was a purely political move on the day it was required, to appease the vocal minority. Today it is simply ridiculous. It is in the best interest of the telcos to discourage deadbeats, whether they are my customers, or Nynex's or AT&Ts. Nine times out of ten when someone stiffs an IP out of hundres of dollars in 900 charges, he is also stiffing the local and long distance companies out of thousands of dollars in toll charges. ------------------------------ From: walker@phantom.onesourcetech.com (Art Walker) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Just Kidding of Course ... Date: 17 Aug 1997 19:58:54 GMT Organization: OneSource Technologies - Omaha, NE Reply-To: Art.Walker@onesourcetech.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for that very inspirational > and thoughtful message to close this issue of the Digest. Yes, I agree > that Steve Case and Spamford Wallace are like two peas in a pot, as > Stan Laurel once said until his straight man Oliver Hardy tried to > correct him: "Stanley, that's two peas in a pod ... P-O-D --- > paw-duh, not 'pot' ..." but it is true, they both seem to come from > the same mold. An apt choice of words. They both remind me a lot of things I occasionally find growing under my 'fridge. - Art [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A different kind of mold I guess. I see it growing around the drain in my bathtub now and then and I always scrub it away as soon as it appears. Speaking of molds, I saw some cheese at a store today and thinking I might purchase it I examined it a bit more closely ... it almost made me pass out, that's how horrible the odor was. I have never seen or smelled a cheese like that before, and hope to never again. Limburger is mild by compar- ison. I wonder if Spamford and Steve Case ever thought of merging their shops? It seems it would be an ideal arrangement for both of them. Then the rest of us could just disconnect the new conglomerate and hopefully forget about it, and hope to never smell anything like it again. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #211 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Aug 20 00:48:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA07774; Wed, 20 Aug 1997 00:48:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 00:48:01 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708200448.AAA07774@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #212 TELECOM Digest Wed, 20 Aug 97 00:48:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 212 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson UCLA Short Course: "Mobile IP and Mobile Networking" (Bill Goodin) CPSR Urges DNS Reform (Monty Solomon) Annoying Calls? Pac Bell Center Has the Answer (Tad Cook) The Telecom Side of 56K (Clifton T. Sharp, Jr.) Two Dialups Supported Under 95? (Eric Florack) Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Charles Cremer) ACD Help Needed (Ramona Chavez) SITA / Sprint X.25 Gateway (Paul J. Smith) Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? (John Stafford) Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? (Brian Leyton) Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? (Tom Thiel) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course: "Mobile IP and Mobile Networking" Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 11:21:19 -0700 On November 17-19, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Mobile IP and Mobile Networking", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructor is Charles Perkins, MA, Senior Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems. As part of the course materials, each participant receives a copy of the text, "Mobile IP: Design Principles and Practice", by Charles Perkins. As the Internet continues its phenomenal growth, mobile computers are likewise gaining unprecedented popularity. When mobile computers move and attach themselves to new networks within the Internet, they can use mobile IP as a means to achieve seamless and transparent roaming to application software. In this context, 'transparent' means that the applications don't need to be recompiled or reconfigured, while 'seamless' means that roaming from one place to another occurs without inconvenience to the user. As long as a physical path exists for communication, the user might not even be aware when a cell boundary has been crossed. This course lays out the necessary protocol technology to allow mobile computers to use mobile IP, and describes the relevant operation of other protocols which can be used to aid mobility (such as DHCP and Service Location Protocol). The course explores in detail all aspects of mobile IP and other standard protocols that further simplify the operation of mobile computers on the Internet, including: o Mobile agent advertisements o Registration procedures o Tunneling mechanisms o The role of security o Home agents o Foreign agents o How to set up a home network o Getting care-of addresses via DHCP o Route optimization o Smooth handoffs o Mobility vs. portability o IPv6 mobility support o Service Location Protocol o Finding printers, faxes, filesystems Participants also look at an architectural model for supporting nomadic users currently under development within the Cross-Industry Working Team (XIWT) in the 'Nomadicity' group. The course is intended for anyone seeking to understand how to use mobile IP; how to create a home network for mobile users within their organization; or how to explore new Internet protocols and mobile computing. This interest group includes programmers, administrators, network managers, and mobile computer users who are already familiar with using the Internet. The course fee is $1195, which includes the text and extensive course notes. These course materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses/ This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 22:04:15 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CPSR Urges DNS Reform Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 23:16:53 -0700 From: Susan Evoy Subject: CPSR Urges DNS Reform August 18, 1997 For More Information: Glenn B. Manishin 202.955.6300 Aki Namioka 206.587.6825 Computer Professionals Urge "Open, Consensus-Based" Approach for Internet Naming System "The Internet system of domain names (DNS) is too important to the structure of the Internet for `reform' to proceed in a hasty or ill-conceived manner," Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) said in a filing today before the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). "Whatever its merits, the IAHC process was closed, rushed and unbalanced, leading to a proposal that should not be endorsed by the US government," said CPSR President Aki Namioka. She called for more input from "consumers and other users of the Internet." "There is no present `crisis' in DNS administration that require expedited implementation of any system for DNS reform, including those proposed by the Internet Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and others," Namioka stated. CPSR said in its filing that "the DNS reform process should be slowed in order to permit the achievement of a consensus approach ... No `rush to reform' is necessary." "The US government should not endorse, and should actively oppose, intervention by ITU and WIPO in the DNS administration process," CPSR stated. CPSR asked the US and other national governments to "encourage open, consensus-based Internet self-governance, intervening only to assure public debate and to prevent any single segment of the Internet community from asserting its special interests above those of all Internet users." It suggested that "the U.S. government can act as a catalyst in assisting the creation of the new self-governance organizations (open and balanced consortia of Internet professionals, providers and users) that will be necessary to complete the transition to a fully non-governmentally administered Internet." DNS is a combination of software, protocols, and computers that translate Internet computer names like "www.cpsr.org" to Internet numbers like 198.207.136.10. These numbers are then used by email clients, web browsers, and server software to deliver data to its intended destination. Since 1993, domain names in the most popular "top-level" domains ".com", ".org", and ".net" have been issued by Network Solutions, Inc.(NSI) , under the terms of a contract with the National Science Foundation. NSI has recently come under attack for failing to protect the rights of trademark holders while exercising monopolistic control over the top-level domains. In February of 1997, the Internet Ad-Hoc Committee (IAHC) issued a plan for reform of DNS management, including creation of new top-level domains, which would be shared by multiple entities, known as registrars, who would be able to assign names in these domains. This plan, known as the "Generic Top-Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding" (gTLD-MoU) calls for a bureaucratic structure for DNS management and a set of procedures for resolving disputes over domain names, along with the participation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The CPSR submission to NTIA said that "international quasi-governmental organizations (ITU, WIPO, OECD, etc.) should have no formal role in Internet governance or domain name registration," and that "the extensive new bureaucracy for domain name management and oversight proposed by IAHC, including a Swiss-based Council of Registrars (CORE) and a higher level interim Policy Oversight Committee (iPOC), are unnecessary and counterproductive." "CPSR believes that the recent fascination of many parties with trademark rights to Internet domains is a short-run issue only in the Internet community," the organization said in its filing. It warned against holding "the important and competitively crucial matter of introducing competition to DNS administration hostage to a quixotic desire to create a new, international law of Internet trademark rights or to perfect an "efficient" trademark dispute mechanism that displaces national courts." "DNS has a profound effect upon the way that end users access the Internet," said Harry Hochheiser, a member of CPSR's board of directors. "Changes to DNS should be made on the basis of what's best for all constituencies involved, instead of simply focusing on the narrowly-defined needs of trademark owners or those who hope to build domain-registration businesses". # # # Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (www.cpsr.org) CPSR is a public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others interested in the impact of computer technology on society. CPSR's goal is to direct public attention to difficult choices concerning the applications of computing and how those choices affect society. > Duff Axsom * Executive Director > http://www.cpsr.org/home.html > Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility > P.O. Box 717 * Palo Alto * CA * 94302 > Phone: (650) 322-3778 * Fax: (650) 322-4748 * Email: duff@cpsr.org ------------------------------ Subject: Annoying Calls? Pac Bell Center Has the Answer Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 23:31:19 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) by DENNIS ROCKSTROH San Jose Mercury News Annoying calls? Pac Bell center has the answer. ELECTRONIC terrorism by telephone is on the rise. I know a man in San Jose who was just victimized by this insidious invasion of our homes. "One night our telephones started ringing at 11 p.m.," he said. When he put the receiver to his ear, he heard the telltale sound of a fax machine calling out to another fax machine. He hung up. Seven minutes later, the telephone rang again. And for the next four hours, every seven minutes, the phone rang. He slept little that night as the telephones played their maddening computer-ordered chorus. This was a case for Pacific Bell's Annoyance Call Bureau. "It's a growing problem," said David K. Miller, manager of the 39-person bureau. It is against the law to make an annoying telephone call. The San Ramon-based bureau has picked up state-wide responsibility for tracking down annoying machine-made calls. Before that, the office handled only human annoyance calls. The bureau's been around since 1993 when it covered just the Bay Area. Over the years, responsibility for annoyance calls throughout the state moved from the local business and repair offices to the central site in San Ramon. The system works like this: Victims should first call their local Pac Bell business offices to report obscene, threatening, maddening and otherwise annoying calls, human or machine. On the spot, Pac Bell can change your number. But if the problem can't be solved in the first go-around, it is handed over to the bureau. Forty-five percent of Pac Bell's annoyance calls are machine-generated: faxes, modems, computers, abandoned telemarketing operations, faulty burglar alarms, medical alerts and incorrect telephone numbers on credit cards swiped through a reader. Most of the annoying calls are simply wrong numbers. "A human programmed in the wrong number," Miller said. Earlier this year, the bureau handled 800 calls a day. Today it's handling more than 1,400, with the increase coming from culprit machines. "We started getting 1,100 calls a day, then 1,300, then 1,400. One day we got more than 1,500. It's a great problem," said Miller. MOST machine complaints are resolved in a matter of days. Pac Bell puts a trap on the victim's line and registers information on incoming calls. The victim keeps a log and calls the bureau to report what time the annoying calls came in. Pac Bell checks the number and calls the offending company or fires off a letter asking it to take the victim's number out of its machine. "They usually comply," said Miller. "If not, we send a more strongly worded letter. That usually does it." A similar system handles annoying calls from humans. "Most of these are a relationship gone bad," Miller said. Obscene and threatening calls also should be reported to the police. In his four years with the bureau, Miller said, he knows of two telephone terrorists who went to jail. Pac Bell sets about 350 new traps a day. Miller said his staff gets no special training to handle the complaints. He just has good listeners like Lilia Pasual, 24. "I get a lot of irate people," Pasual said. "I try to do all I can." It is not uncommon for someone to spend 30 minutes with a victim, Miller said. "It gives you a really good feeling when you solve it," said Pasual. Other times, it's just a stressful job. "Sometimes you have to get up from your desk, go outside and take a deep breath," she said. -------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of the incident several years ago involving a fax machine at the First National Bank of Chicago. A fax machine was programmed to 'poll' several other fax machines in branches of the bank between about six and seven p.m. each night. Some fool had programmed the machine with a wrong telephone number -- in Germany! So every night for a couple weeks, this poor distraught family in Germany was being awakened from their sleep at about two in the morning their time by a ringing phone every few minutes and dead silence or an occassional chirp on the other end. They reported it to B'post and asked for assistance. B'post soon enough had it tracked down to coming from the United States and asked AT&T to look into the matter on this side. When AT&T found it coming from Chicago they had Ameritech take over the case. An Ameritech rep who was the primary contact between the bank and telco called a few different people at the bank asking for assistance and getting nowhere. She might as well have stood in front of the bank and talked to the brick wall. Finally someone in the bank's telecom department said they would take care of it. Imagine her surprise then when several days later from B'post via AT&T via her supervisor comes word that nothing had been done at all; that the family in Germany was still being harassed night after night after night, a couple dozen times per night. At that point a sharply worded letter went to First National Bank saying that the offending line had been disconnected and would not be restored unless/until bank filed a formal appeal to the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Commission ordered Ameritech to restore the service. Then she sent a disconnect order on it to plant for handing. Several days later a phone call from some clerk in the bank's telecom department: "one of our lines is out of order, it appears to be dead. We called repair and they said they could do nothing and for us to call our account representative." That was, you might say, the frosting on the cake. Her supervisor's supervisor got in contact with the bank's Vice-President, Telecom and read him the riot act. I guess he in turn went to the department where the offending fax machine was located and literally unplugged it and carried it away. After reprogramming the entire thing and a long discussion with the Ameritech rep, the line was reconnected. Ah, but the best part was yet to come. No one bothered to tell any of this to the clerks who spend their days reconciling the huge phone bill each month from Ameritech and when the next bill came, there were, naturally, hundreds of one minute calls to Germany from that line. Bank pays all the phone bill except for those calls and has someone call rep asking for credit on 'what obviously has to be some really big screw up on our bill by the phone company.' The Ameritech rep -- I am sure she wished *she* could have been the one to deliver the message -- goes back up the line to the supervisor's supervisor who calls back to the bank's VP-Telecom with a short, very precise and succinct message: pay the bill, pay it today, have a check on my desk this afternoon for those calls, or tomorrow it will go to Legal and that line will be disconnected again. First National sent a check over a couple hours later. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 15:55:57 -0500 From: Clifton T. Sharp, Jr. Reply-To: clifto@megsinet.net Organization: as little as possible Subject: The Telecom Side of 56K I've been doing a bit of perusing the web after getting a new K56Flex modem. The following tidbit from Ascend (http://www.ascend.com/737.html) left me scratching my head: ------------------ If you've got noise and a low line level, you need to contact your Telco provider. Explain to them that you are using a modem on your line, you are getting poor cct quality figures from your modem, and that the line level is low. You are entitled to have this problem corrected. Make sure that you say there is nothing wrong with your normal voice communications (if that is the case...) otherwise they will just do a normal line check. If you are on a digital exchange, ask them if you can have the AGC (automatic gain control) turned OFF and your line setting at the exchange, set to position "5". In most cases this should give you a good cct and level and cure your connect problems at a stroke. ------------------ 1. What the heck is 'cct'? 2. What happens when telco "sets my line setting to 5"? And some related questions: 3. If and when I manage to persuade someone at Ameritech to do all this stuff, how do I get them to reduce or remove digital padding? The modem is telling me it detects 6 dB of padding, and though I can't find a straight answer on that subject, I suspect less or no padding would be better. Modem reports -13 to -14 dBm levels; unrelated, my loop current is high (I took out the two 390 ohm resistors I put in to drop it to 25 mA, this raised the level from -19 dBm). 4. The old firmware I had consistently reported a robbed-bit signaling pattern of "7A". The new stuff *usually* reports 11. I thought I read in this newsgroup some time ago that there should be no robbed-bit signaling where SS7 is implemented, and that one could be reasonably sure SS7 was in anyplace where ADSI level 3 was supported. (The experts now know I'm out of my element. :-) I believe I've also been told that Ameritech has SS7 implemented throughout most all of the Chicago MSA. What's at work here, and which (if either) of the firmware versions is likely to be correct? (And which parts did I remember wrong? :-) 5. The bottom line: given good help at telco (I'm usually pretty lucky), what do I ask them to do so that I get optimum modem performance out of the 56K with my dedicated modem line? If it matters, I understand 847-928 is #5ESS. Cliff Sharp | president@the-dma.org is not my address, it's WA9PDM | just one I noticed today... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 06:35:58 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? I'm starting to hear some low-level static about the ISDN accelerator package that MS is allowing us to download. What I'm hearing is rather striking. It will allow two dialups lines of whatever speed on the same computer, to be dialed into the same source, thereby allowing you to double your throughput ... assuming of course you've got a computer with a bus mouse and the ability to put modems on both ports. This would be consistant with what I know of ISDN lines, and the way they work in individual channels. I wasn't aware the package would allow it with modem channels, though. I guess the driver is written on the basis is a connection is a connection ... (parts is parts, etc) Question: Do most ISP's allow this kind of connection via modem? Do ANY? If so, this may be an answer to my customers who don't have ISDN available at reasonable cost in their area. IE; two dialups are cheaper than an ISDN line and assuming two 56k connections, or even two 33.6 connections, the throughput gains would make the moderate added cost of the added line worthwhile. Comments? /E ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 23:42:27 -0400 From: Charles Cremer Subject: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID SBC Communications announced 14-August-1997 that slightly more than 50 percent of its Texas customers have subscribed for Caller ID service. This makes Texas the state with the greatest acceptance of the Caller ID service. Either our demographics include a lot of techies or perhaps we are the state most afflicted by telemarketers which create a need for the service. Charles Cremer Austin TX ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 13:37:06 -0700 From: Ramona Chavez Subject: ACD Help Needed Currently I am working an ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) system for a customer that currently has four operators (or agents) answering the phone for a whole department. Simple enough - transferring the calls to a queue for equal distribution of incoming calls. However, we're trying to make this transition as transparent as possible. Not so easy. Let me explain the current way they operate and then what we're trying to achieve through ACD. Currently: An incoming call comes in to the operator station and goes to a hunt group. An operator picks up the call and puts it on hold. She pages for "Joe" to "pick up on line '2-3'" Joe goes to any phone in the building and presses "2-3" and receives his call. Duplicating through ACD: At this point we cannot do so without a very cumbersome process. Because it is in the ACD we do not have hunt groups. We would point the incoming calls to go to a queue. The first available operator would pick up the call. She would then have to transfer the call outside the ACD (a secondary line) pick up the transfer and put it on hold. Two extra steps. Other option - Park the call in the switch: Another cumbersome process. To park the call in the switch (we have a 5ESS 10), the operator would have to access call park by dialing a code , e.g. "#8" then dial the DN that the call will be parked at. The person retrieving the call would have to do the same, dial a code to access call park, then the DN the call is parked at. Has anyone worked with ACD in this manner? Any solutions? The ACD system we have is Pinnacle. Thanks for your help. RAMONA CHAVEZ Telecommunications Systems Department Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ------------------------------ From: Paul J. Smith Subject: SITA / Sprint X.25 Gateway Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 17:03:35 -0500 I have a SITA X.25 connection and want to send packets to / receive packets from a Sprint X.25 network address. Is there any way to do this? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 18:42:30 -0400 From: John Stafford Subject: Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? CIRCUIT@worldnet.att.net wrote: > I have two separate cordless phones in my residence, both AT&T > cordless phones, of different models. I have recently been > experiencing something strange. When I pick up one or the other phone, > I get a low tone "beepbeep", as if it can't find an open channel. Sounds like the security feature on the phones, the purpose and operation of which are somewhat unclear (apparently, it prevents to a certain extent other phones from dialing out of your base by requiring an internally set code). All I know is mine used to get it on occasion (especially when I was in a much higher density area). Solution is to leave the phone in the cradle for five to ten seconds and the code will reset. There's a FAQ that somewhat describes it on Lucent's website (they took over consumer phone equipment from AT&T). John ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 20:03:36 -0400 From: bleyton@aol.com (Brian Leyton) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? In article , CIRCUIT@worldnet.att.net writes: > I have two separate cordless phones in my residence, both AT&T > cordless phones, of different models. I have recently been > experiencing something strange. When I pick up one or the other phone, > I get a low tone "beepbeep", as if it can't find an open channel. > One of the phones is a 10 channel, the other a 25 channel. Then as > mysteriously as it appeared, it disappears and both phones are fine. > Could this be some sort of FCC regulated interference by someone with > possibly a ham radio? If so, what can I do about this and/or verify > the problem? I have an AT&T 49mhz cordless, and I have exactly the same problem. It seems that if you put it back on the base and pick it up again, then it will sometimes work properly, sometimes not. I chalked it up to interference from another phone, baby monitor or the 50KW radio station around the block. Strange, since it worked fine for months, then started acting up. The last week or so it has worked fine, though. Brian Leyton MIS Manager, Commercial Petroleum Equipment ------------------------------ From: tthiel@slonet.org (Tom Thiel) Subject: Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? Date: 20 Aug 1997 01:51:03 GMT Organization: Call America Internet Services +1 (800) 563-3271 If an AT&T Cordless base unit loses power while the handset is out of the cradle, it will scramble the digital coding. Simply put the handset back in the charging cradle, disconnect the AC power transformer, count to 10, and plug it back in. Everthing should sync back up. Soft of like re-booting your computer. Tom Thiel (tthiel@slonet.org) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #212 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Wed Aug 20 09:13:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA28607; Wed, 20 Aug 1997 09:13:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 09:13:07 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708201313.JAA28607@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #213 TELECOM Digest Wed, 20 Aug 97 09:13:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 213 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today (Mark Cuccia) Checking UART-Registers (Andreas Mueller) Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? (Bill Newkirk) Lucent 56k Drivers to NT4 (billa@jetdrivers.com) AT&T Merlin Questions (Steve Bagdon) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. 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Cuccia Subject: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today The following submission to TELECOM-Digest includes a transcript of "Numbers 'Round the World", an article which appeared in the Sept/Oct. 1964 issue of one of Bell Labs magazines, "The Reporter" (_not_ the "Bell Labs Record", which was the better known Labs magazine). The article is only one page of text, with a facing page of various dialfaces from different parts of the world. There is a picture of a dialface from: - The United Arab Emirates - Iran - Kuwait (these three had the 'original' Arabic numbering, but the Kuwaiti dial also had the contemporary/Western Arabic numbering as well) - Brazil (numbers only - no letters) - Hong Kong (contemporary "Arabic" numbers in addition to Chinese numbers) - The Isle of Guernsey - in the English Channel (This dial had the _full_ names of exchanges spelled out, 'wrapped' around the following digits, similar to the way the word 'Operator' is usually spelled out wrapped around the '0' on North America's dialfaces) 2 = Central 3 = St. Martin 4 = St. Sampson 5 = Catel 6 = St. Peter (The 1, 7, 8, 9, 0 had no names/letters associated with them.) All six dials pictured on the first page were of the "A.E." variety, with the '0' digit down at the 'six-o'clock' position. In the very center of the arrangements of the six dialfaces is a sketch of one side of a 'globe', with only the latitude and longitude lines drawn. A copy of this article was recently sent to me by one of my Bell Labs retiree friends. Any comments of mine will be enclosed in square brackets []. After the transcription of the original 1964 article, I will have some more information regarding international numbering/dialing and automation from the mid/late 1960's through today (1997). -------(From 1964 article)-------- Someday in the near future, nearly every American will be able to pick up his phone and dial any of the 100-million telephones in the world. Such calls will be made possible by world-wide direct customer dialing. The Bell System is already studying international direct dialing. If the tests go well, customer world-wide will be introduced, on a limited scale, by 1968 and expanded steadily until it becomes available for most of the world's phones in the 1970's. Until recently, a person wanting to make a call overseas would have to contact the overseas operator. She, in turn, called an operator in the foreign country who completed the call. This system was speeded up by connecting U.S. overseas operators directly with telephones in England, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria. Later this year, direct operator dialing will be expanded to Italy and Japan. The first major step to eliminate operators altogether on station-to- station calls was taken at a meeting of delegates from 68 member nations of the International Telecommunications Union in Rome, Italy. They gave preliminary approval to a plan which assigns telephone numbers to each country. The plan calls for dividing the globe into eight major dialing-code areas. For example, all areas adjacent to and including Australia will have a two or three digit code beginning with 6. Thus, tiny Niue Island in the South Pacific, with 102 telephones, was given the code number 668. [In 1964, Niue was _actually_ assigned +688, _not_ +668, as Thailand has had +66 ever since 1964. Niue's country code was changed from +688 to +683 sometime after 1976 and before 1980. By 1980, +688 was assigned to Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. Gilbert Islands, now known as Kiribati, became +686.] Calling abroad would then be as simple as calling from New York to Chicago. A New Yorker calling Paris, for example, would first dial a domestic code number to connect him with the overseas system. [From the US and Canada, this has been 011+ for direct dialed 'station' international calls]. Then he'd dial '33', France's [country] code, plus the local [domestic/national] number he's calling. The Rome agreement also provides that a customer will only dial a maximum of 12-digits once he's connected with the international network. [i.e. 12-digits _after_ the international/overseas 'exit' code. The possible maximum number of 'significant' digits, as per ITU standards, has increased to 15-digits beginning 01-January-1997. This date had been set about ten years prior, and hopefully most of the telephone networks in various countries have been preparing their networks and/or local originating switch translations for the increase in significant maximum digits of the worldwide number. Some countries _already_ have worldwide numbers over the 'old' 12-digit maximum of significant digits.] To make this possible, two of the eight areas will have a single initial digit [country-code]: North America (except Panama and Cuba) will have the single digit '1'; the Soviet Union will have the single digit '7'. Thus it will someday be possible to reach the Kremlin by dialing '7' and then the Kremlin's number 444-772. [Moscow's local numbering is now seven-digits, and Moscow's national city/area code is '095'.] [Throughout the later 1960's, the Central American countries were assigned their _own_ country codes of the +50X form, as well, some _other_ Caribbean/Atlantic islands (Haiti, French Islands, Dutch Islands including Aruba) have also been assigned their _own_ country codes +59X or +50X. Mexico is also not really part of the NANP (+1), and was assigned +52 as their country code around 1968. At one time, back in the later 1950's and throughout the 1960's, AT&T/Bell-System _really_ had wanted to incorporate Mexico as part of the NANP/DDD network. However, except for the 'pseudo' NPA access to Mexico City (and environs) as +1-90-5-etc from 1969/70 through 1991, the fifteen or so northwest Mexican border towns _really_ were a part of the AT&T/Bell-System NANP/DDD network as +1-903- from 1962/63 through 1980. In October of 1980, these border towns were 'evolved' to the Mexican (+52) numbering and dialing plan (as +52-6nx-x-etc) and now used 'pseudo' NPA access as +1-70-6-nxx-etc, the 'pseudo' NANP 70-6 access being eliminated in 1991 along with 90-5. When pseudo NANP 70-6 access was in effect from 1980 through 1991, _much_more_ of Mexico's own +52-6nx-x-etc. was pseudo-NANP dialable as 70-6 than was dialable under +1-903-. Also, Mexico's _own_ network and numbering and dialing plans always had developed _separately_ from the NANP / DDD / AT&T (Bell-System) network, although for years, AT&T had really wanted to completely include Mexico into the NANP, +1.] There are some problems, of course. The global dialing agreement assumes that all-number dialing will completely replace central office name designations. Americans use 24 Roman letters on their dial, but the Russians use Cyrillic letters. Translation problems would be innumerable. There are other subtle differences as well. The Danes, for example, have no 'W' on their dial, making it difficult [for them] to dial a WAlnut exchange [in the US/Canada or even UK]. Americans have no 'Q' on their dial, so dialing a ROQuette exchange in Paris could prove troublesome. On the English [UK, and French] dial, the letter 'O' is in the zero [finger]hole, while on the American dial the letter 'O' is in the '6' [finger]hole. Most countries, such as Sweden and New Zealand have no letters at all on their dials. Conversion to all-number calling will eliminate such problems in most countries of the world. About 85-per-cent of the phones outside the United States are already on all-number calling. In the U.S., the switch to all-number calling will be two-thirds completed by the first of 1965. But some Middle Eastern phones will still have troubles. They use Persian and Arabic symbols. Some automatic number translating equipment will also have to be installed. In Sweden, for example, the zero is at the top of the dial, and consequently triggers a single electrical [dial]pulse rather than ten electrical [dial]pulses as in most other countries. New Zealanders will really confuse things. They completely reverse the numbers on their dial. Special equipment will be needed to translate these differences. [Of course, most toll, and virtually _all_ international/overseas inter-office signalling doesn't use dialpulses, but has always used a _variety_ of (tone) signalling, such as MF-KP (for international purposes, the ITU/CCITT System #5 was standardized, and is an 'extension' of the AT&T NANP/DDD MF system), DTMF (touchtone), R-2, etc. In the 1970's, CCITT System #6 was being developed and standardized, which is a 'common-channel' system. Both CCITT System #6 and the more current System #7 (SS7) is 'out-of-band' with all of the signalling trunks between two switching offices or a signalling node or database bundled together in a data connection. Dialpulse signalling between international points has never really been used to any significant extent.] There are other minor details to be worked out. Two reflect the Cold War situations. The ITU wanted separate codes for East and West Germany. The West Germans, however, still hoping for reunification, insist on a single German code. And Red China [sic], although not allowed to send a delegate to the meeting, was assigned a country code, 86. [East Germany was politically reunified with West Germany, circa 1990. Shortly after that, +37 for the East was consolidated into (West) Germany's +49. When mainland (communist) China became 'recognized', Taiwan became 'de-recognized'. Today's country-code list indicates the island of Taiwan as +86-6, as if it were part of mainland China's country-code. In practice, in dialing and routing, most countries of the world indicate Taiwan as its own country-code, +886. The current ITU country-code lists indicate +886 as 'reserved', with _no_ footnotes. +38 Yugoslavia has split up both politically and telephonically. Czechoslovakia (+42) first split politically a few short years ago, and earlier this year, telephonically, as +420 Czech Republic and +421 Slovakia. Starting in the early 1990's, the former Soviet 'republics', one-by-one, have been assigned their own country codes, being activated for inbound access from outside locations at later dates. There are many other examples of how the recent (later 1980's, and 1990's) political situation has affected the telephone country-code situation, but assignment and activation of particular country codes has varied over the decades, in general. Dave Leibold's "History of Country Codes" in the TELECOM-Archives as well as at his own website gives more details.] A.T.&.T. estimates that direct dialing, plus more circuitry, will be major factors boosting U.S. international telephone messages to nearly 100 million calls a year by 1980, or about 20 times the present level. [end of original 1964 article] ----------------------------------------- In June 1966, in Philadelphia PA, at an IEEE meeting, there was a demonstration of customer international dialing. Last Summer, I submitted a post to TELECOM Digest regarding this demonstration, where AT&T Long-Lines and other Bell System personnel _dialed_ calls to Europe on one particular day of this IEEE convention. A #5XB office (LOcust) was converted to handle the international dialing, which remained in effect for one or two days. Everyone served out of the LOcust #5XB office had the capability to dial to the handful of countries in Europe which were dialed in the demonstration. However, 'normal' IDDD dialing procedures weren't used. Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and possibly France were all dialed at the IEEE convention in Philadelphia. The only numbering or dialing examples that I found publicized in newspaper articles was for the call to an ITU representative in Geneva, Switzerland, dialed as a 'pseudo' NANP ten-digit call: 200-223-3011, and _not_ as the future (standard) IDDD dialing string: 011 + 41 + 22 + 23-30-11. Even the articles at that time indicated that 'standard' dialing procedures were _not_ being used that day for the international dialing demos. For several months in beginning in March, 1967, several _high_ volume international/overseas customers in midtown Manhattan (New York) such as CBS, NBC, ABC, Mutual Radio, AP, UPI, some travel bureaus and travel related companies (airlines, etc), all served out of the same #5XB office, were able to dial to some international overseas points. The first locations were only London (England) and Paris (France), using _standard_ IDDD dialing procedures (011+ country-code + city- code + local-number, for station. "Special Billing" calls, such as 'person', collect, credit-card, etc. were also possible, using 01+ as the access code rather than 011+). Other (major) cities in the UK and France, as well as other European countries were added to the list of customer dialable locations before the end of the experiment. From what I've been told, the IDDD experiment was only to last three, maybe four months, but it ran a bit longer, probably six to eight months. However, the trial period did come to an end, until 'regular, officially tariffed' IDDD could be officially started, sometime circa 1970. From what I've been told, In the interim these heavy users of international/overseas telephone service were provided with some (toll-free) _non_-published 800- numbers to reach the International/ Overseas centers in New York City and White Plains NY. They would come in on a special trunk to the cordboards, identify themselves, and could be provided with 'special' treatment. Other customers who needed to place overseas calls would have to dial the local/toll '0' operator and ask for 'overseas' to whatever particular country. The '0' local/toll operator would then hand the call over to the overseas cordboard operator in a particular overseas operating center in the US (or Canada). However, beginning in the later 1960's, since there already was some form of automation to certain specific countries, even many (originating) local cordboard operators could 'dial' (key) directly to those specific overseas locations. This would be handled by two- stage dialing/signaling/keying. Beginning in 1970, 'regular tariffed' customer IDDD began in New York City, from several high-volume #5XB offices in Manhattan. Also, the first electronic switching offices were being installed (#1ESS), which had customer IDDD software translations and outward signaling as part of its generics. Slowly, originating customer IDDD was being made available throughout the Bell System. Even Step (SxS) offices would be able to originate 011+ (and 01+) calls, _IF_ their local operator services included a TSPS/TOPS. The ESS-like operator switch acted like a 'buffer' which collected all of the customer dialed digits (dialpulses) in realtime, and did the proper translations and 2-stage signaling through the DDD network, to the gateway switch. However, #5XB offices required much additional hardwired hardware to provide customer IDDD, and it was decided early to abandon IDDD implementation from such switches (even though the _very_first_ switches in the Bell System to provide experimental or actual originating customer IDDD were #5XB!). It was also intended that many #5XB offices would soon be replaced by ESS/Digital offices, anyhow. (Similarly, it was _rare_ to find fg.D 10-xxx+ originating Equal Access from #5XB offices in the later 1980's). The number of countries or country codes which could be reached by originating customer IDDD from the US (and Canada) has steadily increased over the decades. There have been some instances where a country (code) was made customer dialable from the US, but later was _removed_ from customer IDDD, probably due to governmental politics. +7 USSR, for the capital of Moscow (only), city-code '095' was customer IDDD-able for about a year, in the early 1980's, but then was removed from customer IDDD. Similarly, there was a brief period where +964 Iraq was customer IDDD-able in the early 1980's, but then it wasn't. And even though Canada and the US are both part of the NANP, there have been countries customer dialable from Canada, but not as such from the US (Cuba, for instance). Also, there had been situations where another country could dial _to_ the US/Canada, but not be customer dialable _from_ the US/Canada. These days, 1997, _virtually_every_ country or country code is customer IDDD-able _from_ the US, at least via AT&T. This includes +7 Russia, +964 Iraq, as well as some countries which were dialable from Canada but not the US (+53 Cuba, +850 North Korea), and certain (Communist) countries which, at one time or another, 'officially' did _NOT_ even have telephone service at all with the US (such as +355 Albania, +84 Vietnam, +855 Cambodia, +856 Laos, +86 mainland China, etc). Also, Burma +95 was not customer IDDD-able from the US until just a few years ago. Every 'assigned' ITU country-code in Africa, in the +2NX range is now customer-dialable from the US, including +290 (St. Helena, which didn't have a country code of its own until the early 1990's), +249 Sudan and +252 Somalia (both of which became customer IDDD-able about a year or two ago). The only countries/regions which from the US (and Canada) remain 'operator-handled' (via AT&T from the US, and the Stentor local telco operator in association with Teleglobe and/or AT&T from Canada) that I am aware of are: Afghanistan (ITU country-code +93) Easter Island Pitcairn Island Western/Spanish Sahara Tokelau (ITU country-code +690) Midway/Wake Afghanistan has had +93 as its assigned country-code +93 since the original ITU/CCITT worldwide assignments in 1964, but still remains non-dialable operator-handled (from the US), although I think that it can be dialed from some European countries. Easter Island, located in the eastern South Pacific, is politically part of Chile. I don't know if when it becomes automated/dialable, it will have its 'own' country code, or if it will be part of Chile's +56 country code. Pitcairn Island, also located in the eastern South Pacific - see my recent article in TELECOM Digest for its telephone status. Western/Spanish Sahara, located on the northwest coast of Africa, is occupied by +212 Morocco (also presently unused +210 and +211), but also claimed by bordering +222 Mauritania. I don't know if this region is going to eventually get its own ITU country code in the +29X range, or if it will become dialable under (one of) Morocco's country-codes - or maybe +222 for Mauritania. Tokelau is a small island group located in the western/central South Pacific, administered by New Zealand. It has had +690 assigned since sometime after 1980 and before 1984. I don't know what its telephone status is - does it even have some form of small manual/magneto local telephone system with HF-Radio connection to the rest of the world? I _have_ been told that they are supposed to be getting a satellite connection. I don't know if this is going to be a +872 Inmarsat dialed code (similar to what Pitcairn also has), or a dialable connection under its own +690 country-code. Midway/Wake - I understand that _some_ of the telephones on these two islands are 'FX-loop-connected' with the PBX/Centrex of Pearl Harbor in Honolulu (Hawaii), and you can dial to these lines, _IF_ you happen to know to thousands/hundreds digits or -xxxx line number ranges within the Pearl Harbor PBX/Centrex. But AT&T still maintains an operator handled connection to Midway/Wake as the 'publicized' way to reach theses two islands, by telephone. For at least twenty years, there were two 'mark-sense' billing identification codes listed in routing/rating documents of AT&T (and later Bellcore): 808-998 Wake and 808-999 Midway. These are _not_ dialing codes for customers nor even operators, but rather billing identification codes. The Bell-System (AT&T) operator would reach these calls via the (GTE-Hawaii) Honolulu inward operator, 808+121. AT&T's International Operator Center, located in Pittsburgh (PA), is used for placing calls to these non-dialable international/overseas locations. It is most likely still a manual cordboard with HF-Radio trunks, 'delayed-call' trunks, and ringdown trunks. Even if this center still uses a cordboard, there are also (computerized) OSPS-like terminals at each operator's position. And while International Maritime Satellite service is automated with the country codes +871 through +874 (for various ocean regions), AT&T (Pittsburgh) can still provide manual operator-handled connections to "high-seas" ships as well as to aircraft. There are also some various miscellaneous islands in the South Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. I don't know if these islands have any human population, and even if they do, I don't know if there is any actual local (magneto/manual) telephone service. From 'west-to-east', these islands are: South Orkney Island, South Georgia Island, South Sandwich Island (all east of the Falkland Islands (+500) in the central South Atlantic, and all associated with the UK). Tristin de Cunha (in the eastern South Atlantic, associated with +291 St. Helena, which is in turn associated with the UK). Bouvert Island (in the eastern South Atlantic, politically associated with Norway). Prince Edward Island (in the western southern Indian Ocean and politically associated with South Africa - not to be confused with Canada's Prince Edward Island province). Crozet Island (in the southern Indian Ocean, politically associated with France; there are also about three other "French" islands nearby). South McDonald Island, Heard Island (in the southern Indian Ocean, politically associated with Australia; Australia does have country-code +672 for the Australian External Territories, but I don't know if these two islands are part of +672). And in the eastern South Pacific, just east of Easter Island, also associated with Chile, is "Sala y Gomez Island". Finally, while a country-code might be dialable doesn't necessarily mean that every location _within_ that code or country is dialable. Such calls (from the US) must be placed through the AT&T '00' domestic toll operator. In most cases, where the country-code 'itself' is customer-dialable, the originating '00' operator can reach the 'inward' operator in that desired country, who will then 'ringdown' an operator in (or near) the called location/village, or _even_ directly ringdown the desired customer. But sometimes, it might be necessary to hand the call over to the AT&T international operator in Pittsburgh. Even within the NANP (and also +52 Mexico) there still remain a large number of remote NON-customer-dialable (nor operator 'dialable' locations, mostly in Nevada, California, Alaska, and remote parts of Canada. Many of these isolated outposts are forest / ranger / fire / etc. stations, with connections with the outside world via HF-Radio. Some of them might still be ring-down party-lines. Calls with these locations must still be placed via the AT&T (or when calling from Canada, the local/toll Stentor operator), who reaches an 'inward' operator near the desired location, who will then 'ringdown' the called line or party. So, while most every (though still not yet all) country/territory in the world is now customer dialable, it seems that there will always be a number of miscellaneous isolated remote outposts here and there, which if there even exists some form of local telephone (or electronic communications), calls to such points must still be placed through an operator, for a still undeterminable period of time. ---- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Andreas Mueller Subject: Checking UART-Registers Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 22:58:44 -0400 Organization: GSO-FH Nuernberg Hi!! I've got the following UART-Problem: I want to find out whether there is an established connection via a modem or not (only outgoing calls should be registered). This checking should run permanently as long as the program is running. In that case, is it sufficient to check the UART-modem status register for the following bit settings???: DCD = 1 DSR = 1 CTS = 1 all others = 0 Hope there's anyone out there knowing an answer :) Please answer by EMail! Thanks, Andreas Mueller E-Mail: unix135@ai.fh-nuernberg.de Homepage: http://www1.ai.fh-nuernberg.de/~unix135 ------------------------------ From: Bill Newkirk Subject: Re: Cordless Phones Interference, FCC Guidelines/Followup? Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 18:15:42 -0400 Organization: Rockwell Collins, Inc. Reply-To: wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com CIRCUIT@worldnet.att.net wrote: > I have two separate cordless phones in my residence, both AT&T > cordless phones, of different models. I have recently been > experiencing something strange. When I pick up one or the other phone, > I get a low tone "beepbeep", as if it can't find an open channel. Does the problem continue if one of the phones is turned off (and I mean off, not just hung up)? (Do this while the problem is present.) I am thinking that the phones are hearing each other and both trying the same method to find a spot. > One of the phones is a 10 channel, the other a 25 channel. Then as > mysteriously as it appeared, it disappears and both phones are fine. Does this have a schedule? (Like only during the week and not on the weekends?) > Could this be some sort of FCC regulated interference by someone with > possibly a ham radio? It's probably not amateur radio. Bill Newkirk Collins General Aviation Division Publications Department Rockwell Collins, Inc., Melbourne Florida wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com ------------------------------ From: billa@jetdrivers.com Subject: Lucent 56k Drivers to NT4 Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 22:55:10 GMT Organization: Internet Partners, Inc. I just bought an HP PAvillion. Anyone know where to go to get drivers for NT for the built-in Lucent k56flex winmodem? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: bagdon@rust.net (Steve Bagdon) Subject: AT&T Merlin questions Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 21:04:37 GMT Organization: Ford Motor Company Reply-To: bagdon@rust.net After three month of learning all about 'northern' homes and how they are constructed, I have finally made headway in wiring up my home. Took me that long (off and on) to find the proper place to run the cable from the basement to the attic (interior walls are a maze!). When I'm finished, I figure I'll have almost 3000feet of Cat III/V and RJ-6 cable, so I wanted to make sure it was run correctly. Questions: Can anyone see any reason to wire up my networking cable with Cat V vs. Cat III? The local Greybar wants $77/1000ft of Cat III, but $280/1000ft for Cat V. I know it's good to plan for the future, but this project is getting out of hand! The phone cable will be Cat III (regular POTS lines, possible ISDN or other digital service in the future, probably other key sets as my interests change). I don't plan on running 100BaseT in my house in the next couple of decades, and all the techs I spoke with say Cat III is fine for 10BaseT. Any opinions? Should I just bit the bullet and pay the extra money, for the 1% off chance I'll need Cat V? Or is the general consensus that I can live with Cat III? Anybody have a cheap source for more stations for my Merlin system? I have (2) SP-34s I'd like to trade for (1) BIS-34, or maybe (2) BIS-34s plus cash. Also in search of a bunch of BIS-10s or BIS-20s. I'd like a 90day warranty on the BIS-34(s), but the BIS-10/20s only have to work when they get here (no DOAs!). Thanks, to anyone else who has suvived a major wiring job like this, and lived to tell about it, and has some suggestions for me! Steve B. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #213 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Aug 21 09:22:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA26834; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 09:22:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 09:22:03 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708211322.JAA26834@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #214 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Aug 97 09:22:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 214 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Easter Isl. / Chile: Telephone Numbering/Dialling Update (Mark Cuccia) Ameritech's Annoyance Call Bureau (Adam H. Kerman) Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Lisa Hancock) "Ground Start" Lines (Ted Klugman) Bellcore-NANPA Webpage Update: Changed CA NPA Test Numbers (Mark Cuccia) Looking for Wiltel Service Techs (Cliff Scheller) DNS NOI Notable Filing List on Web (Craig A. Johnson) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (phelper) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Will Nott) Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today (Ed Ellers) Re: Callback Banned in South Africa (A.J. Levy) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 20 Aug 1997 13:39:46 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Easter Isl. / Chile: Telephone Numbering/Dialling Update Easter Island (known in the native Polynesian tongue as "Rapanui"), that mysterious island of huge stone face-statues, located in the South Pacific Ocean, several thousand miles due-south of El Paso TX, several hundred miles east of Pitcairn, and several thousand miles west of Chile, is politically associated with Chile. Associated with Easter Island is "Sala y Gomez" island, a few hundred miles to the east, but these are uninhabited. In Spanish, Easter Island is known as "Isla de Pascua", and in other Latin/Roman languages (when translated into English) would be known as 'Paschal Island', the official name of "Easter" in Catholic areas is known (in English) as Paschal-tide. In French, the island is still known as "Ile de Paques", with a 'circumflex' (or 'up-carrot') symbol above the /a/ in Paques. The island is called "Easter Island" since the first recorded European landing was on Easter Sunday of 1722 by Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen. Easter Island became a part of Chile on 9-Sept-1888. Telephonically, Easter Island has been indicated as _non_ dialable (from the US), with all calls having to be routed via the AT&T domestic/toll '00' Operator, who can either call the Santiago (Chile) inward operator (ENTEL), who then rings forward to Easter Island, _or_ the (originating) AT&T operator can hand the call over to the AT&T IOC (Overseas) operator in Pittsburgh PA. I did some websearches, and found a few websites with information on Easter Island. One of the better ones was "Rapanui (Easter Island)", authored by Dr. Grant McCall, Center for South Pacific Studies, University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUSTRALIA. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ogden/piir/pacific/Rapanui.html Under the section on "Communications" on that website, it mentions that ENTEL (Chile's national telco/carrier) has provided fully automated service of about 400 main stations, and that since June 1992, Easter Island has automated service _to_ most parts of the world, but calls _from_ other parts of the world (and I assume even from within mainland Chile), the call must be handled by a Santiago ENTEL operator. There are telephone numbers on Easter Island which are indicated on that webpage, all of the form 223XXX. The remaining XXX portion of the Easter Island numbers of the form 1XX, 2XX, 3XX (and I would assume 4XX and maybe 5XX). The AT&T operator still maintains that from the US, calls to Easter Island must be operator-handled, but Dave Leibold informed me of some Bell-Canada / Stentor / Teleglobe tariff (re-)filings with the CRTC, dated in Spring, 1997, that _from_Canada_, Easter Island is now customer-dialable, using Chile's +56 country-code. I checked with the (Bell-Canada/Stentor/Teleglobe) Canada-Direct operator (from the US, reached as 1-800-555-1111), who told me that _from_ Canada_, one dials 01(1)+56+32+local-number to reach Easter Island. She also told me that a national number in Chile could be 'no longer than eight digits total', but didn't have the 'exact' possible length of digits used on Easter Island. I also checked the Telecom Archives for WZ-5's country and city code listings, and found that within Chile (+56), there were many cities/towns/villages under +56-32-, and other city-codes in Chile also had several locations under each code. And, I checked with several other "home-country-direct" operators to see if they had any customer or operator numbering/dialing info for Easter Island (the 1-800- numbers listed are available from the US, and _maybe_ from Canada): 1-800-682-2878, Telstra's Australia-Direct 1-800-248-0064, N.Zed Telecom's New Zealand-Direct 1-800-445-5667, BT's UK-Direct (note that: -2878 for Telstra/Australia spells out 'AUST'; -0064 for NZ-Telecom ends '64', New Zealand's country-code; -445- for BT's UK-Direct begins with '44', UK's country-code) Each of these operators told me that Easter Island _is_indeed_ customer-dialable from their respective countries, as if one were dialing to Chile, as: +56 + 32 + 100-xxx. I haven't yet tried to dial anything in this format via AT&T, MCI, or Sprint, so I don't know if such a dial-string is considered 'valid' by the US-based carriers. And I did call ENTEL's Chile-Direct (from the US, 1-800-552-0056, note that Chile's country-code '56' is part of the last four digits), and first heard some prompts "en-Espanol". One of them was to press 'cero', which I did, and cut-through to a live ENTEL operator, who I assume was in Santiago. She answered "en-Espanol", but she did speak English as well. I asked her about Easter Island, and she told me that _indeed_ it is customer-dialable from mainland Chile, and is numbered as +56-32-100-xxx. She told me that _maybe_ AT&T isn't allowing or encouraging customer dialing to Easter Island because there are very few (switched) trunk circuits between the island and the mainland. And when I mentioned that I had seen references to numbers on Easter Island as 223-xxx, she told me that early this year they were _changed_ to 100-xxx. She also told me that all national numbering in Chile is 'fixed' at eight digits total. Santiago (and vicinity) has city/area-code '2', followed by a fixed seven-digit number. All other locations in Chile have two-digit city/area-codes, followed by fixed six-digit numbers. Of course, for Easter Island, since there are less than 1000 lines, it _might_ be possible that calls are locally dialed on a three-digit basis. And since most of the 2-digit city/area-codes have several cities/towns/villages as indicated in Chile's numbering file in the Telecom Archives, I guess that there are several individual local charge areas, each indicated by the first two or three digits (i.e., central-office / exchange /switch code) of the six-digit 'local' number. Also, the file in the Archives indicates city-code '9' for cellular/mobile, but I forgot to ask the ENTEL/Chile operator about the current numbering/dialing of wireless phones. Chile's ENTEL website, http://www.entelchile.net/ has a "Telecom" section, http://www.entelchile.net/entelprod1607/homeproducto.html which is mostly in Spanish, but there are some sections available also available in English. From their telecom pages, it seems that their local service-codes and toll access-prefixes are of the "1XX" format. Domestic toll-free numbers seem to be a total of nine-digits of the form 800-xxx-xxx. From the Easter Island webpage (mentioned earlier) with telephone numbers of the 223XXX form, the telco department numbers on Easter Island were: 223103 (now 100-103 ?) Directory Enquiries 223182 (now 100-102 ?) Booking an Overseas call 223183 (now 100-183 ?) Booking a Chile domestic call 223202 (now 100-202 ?) Telephone Business Office and +56-2-690-2674, a service to send a FAX to anyone on Easter (Rapanui) Island. Since this appears to be a Santiago-based number, I assume there is some form of electronic-relay or postal-courier (or maybe telex/email?) to get the fax/message transmission to the person/company actually on Easter Island. ------------------- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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, 20 Aug 1997 14:49:44 CDT From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Ameritech's Annoyance Call Bureau It seems that Pac Bell goes out of its way to help, but Ameritech no longer does. Three or four years ago, a residential customer could simply call "611" (aargh, a number regulated out of existance) and report a problem with a fax machine attempting to send to a voice line. They were most cooperative. If the newly-introduced "*57" feature could be used to capture the fax machine's number, a maintenance technician would immediately take care of the problem and give the offending office a call. He would waive the fee. I think Ameritech was motivated by 2 factors: They were trying to be good corporate citizens and they were attempting to encourage more widespread acceptance of fax machines, especially in homes. The Annoyance Call Bureau always insisted on a police report filed before they would take action, which apparently wouldn't be anything more than forwarding the information to the police investigator. Clearly, it would be unethical of a telephone consumer to file a police report when malice isn't suspected. Then, Ameritech changed policy a couple of years ago. The maintenance techicians refused to pull the *57 record, and would only offer maintenance traps on the line. At the time, I was having a problem with fax calls coming in around 10 am every few days, making several tries, and then giving up. I guess my line was being polled. By the time the maintenance trap could be set up (oh, no more than three or four hours), there would be nothing to trap. I wasn't about to give Ameritech carte blanche to leave one up for weeks at a time. Lately, I've noticed that Repair won't handle the situation at all, and refers callers to the Annoyance Bureau, which would require a police report. Fax machines eventually became so widely accepted that even I bought one. Since I installed it, I have not been troubled by even a single fax sent in error. Ah, the wonders of technology. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: 21 Aug 1997 04:09:27 GMT Organization: Net Access BBS I know what coaxial cable is -- we use lots of it at work to connect our terminals. (Coax cable has a center conductor surrounded by an insulator tube, which in turn is surrounded by a braided conductor.) The big advantage of coax is that it can accomodate a much larger "bandwidth" (volume of traffic) than traditional twisted pair wires. For instance, you can multiplex many more telephone conversations or television signals (TV takes up a lot of bandwidth) on coax. Could someone explain how it works, in laymen's terms? How does the physical arrangement enable it to have so much capacity. Also, when was it invented? Was it invented by the Bell System or someone else? Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? (If I understand fiber-optic correctly, all it is is an extremely single high speed digital pulse transmission, with ultra pure glass fibers and a laser allowing an extremely fine pulse duration and no noise interference. How they can turn a laser on and off so fast that the giga-Hz (billions per second) pulse rates is beyond me! ------------------------------ From: ted_klugman@usa.net.NOSPAM (Ted Klugman) Subject: "Ground Start" Lines Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 15:01:54 GMT Put simply, what is a "ground start" line? We have an 800 number that forwards to a four-line hunt group for our support department. All four of these lines are "ground start" (as opposed to "loop start"?) and the only way I've been able to get a dialtone on these lines is to connect a phone to them and then short one of the wires to another point on the 66-block (shorting the pair does nothing). The only assumption that I can make is that they were installed to be incoming-only lines. Our phone system can't create this "ground start", so they never get a dialtone. Am I on the right track? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If they were intended to be incoming- only lines, then when you went off hook on those lines you would detect 'battery' on the line but never get a dialtone, even after the wire shorting process you describe. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 10:16:38 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Bellcore-NANPA Webpage Update: Changed CA NPA Test Numbers Bellcore NANPA's website (http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/) is updated as of 18-August-1997. No 'new' announcements of NPA's nor dates, but the test number for Mississippi's 601 split-off of 228 has been 'officially' announced as 228-388-8186. BellSouth has had this test number active for about a month now, which _can_ be reached via NPA 601, since 228-388 is an already existing prefix as 601-228, until mandatory dialing of 228 takes place. However, there are modifications to the _test_ numbers for any already announced new NPAs for California in 1998. Bellcore NANPA's webpage for 1997 PLs (Planning Letters, at US$10.00 each) indicates that PL#80 is now available, which is to indicate the _changed_ test numbers for California's new (1998) NPAs. (Webpage listing the PLs is http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/97ils.html) The main new NPA page (http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/newarea.html) also indicates the updates for these four California 1998 NPA splits, and you can click to the individual split-info pages for the following details. Only the "NXX" portion of the test number is changing. The dates of permissive and mandatory dialing, as well as the last four digits (-xxxx) of the NPA test number remain the same. All of these (as have most of the test numbers for California's new 1997 NPAs) use a 'line' number of: '0' plus the numericals of the new NPA. 510/925: permissive 14-Mar-1998, mandatory 12-Sep-1998 CHANGED TEST NUMBER: 925-341-0925, to be activated 14-Feb-1998 (was to be 925-666-0925) 714/949: permissive 18-Apr-1998, mandatory 17-Oct-1998 CHANGED TEST NUMBER: 949-482-0949, to be activated 16-Mar-1998 (was to be 949-777-0949) 213/323: permissive 13-Jun-1998, mandatory 16-Jan-1999 CHANGED TEST NUMBER: 323-946-0323, to be activated 09-Mar-1998 (was to be 323-999-0323) 408/831: permissive 11-Jul-1998, mandatory 20-Feb-1999 CHANGED TEST NUMBER: 831-669-0831, to be activated 13-June-1999 ------------- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Cliff Scheller Organization: http://www.compuquestinc.com Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 08:43:22 -0600 Subject: Looking for Wiltel Service Techs I'm trying to make contact with PBX Service Technicians from Wiltel, or even Centel, before they "got together". If anyone on the list is or has been involved in the customer-site PBX maintenance activities at Wiltel, please email me privately, as there is no need to bother the list. Thanks, Cliff Scheller http://www.compuquestinc.com ------------------------------ From: Craig A. Johnson Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 10:18:49 +0000 Subject: DNS NOI Notable Filing List on Web Pat, FYI. You may want to post this; it is a fairly comprehensive catalog of the DNS filings. Best, Craig ------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 16:14:19 -0400 Reply-to: amr@chaos.com From: Tony Rutkowski Subject: DNS NOI notable filing list on web At the site , there is a structured list of most known "notable" filings in the DNS proceeding - all in individual html versions that have either been provided as URLs or files, or converted from the submitted filing. The NTIA server concatenates all the filings of the day into a daily file as well as a larger master concatenation - which makes it difficult to be aware of and access specific filings. Caveats: 1) the large number of filings on the last day, 18 August, are not listed - unless otherwise separately announced on diverse lists or provided. These will be added when they're provided on the NTIA site or otherwise made known. 2) There are many dozens of form letters and what are little more than short EMail messages. These are not individually listed. A number of submissions representative of "the trenches" or otherwise unusual have also been included. 3) Any submission not in this compendium will be listed and linked (or probably even hosted) if the information is provided. Cheers, Tony ------------------------------ From: phelper@onramp.net Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 16:04:54 GMT Organization: OnRamp Technologies, Inc.; ISP > SBC Communications announced 14-August-1997 that slightly more than 50 > percent of its Texas customers have subscribed for Caller ID service. > This makes Texas the state with the greatest acceptance of the Caller > ID service. > Either our demographics include a lot of techies or perhaps we are the > state most afflicted by telemarketers which create a need for the > service. Could be. I'm sick as hell of telemarketers. I'm cussin' them out now. I generally don't answer the phone if CID reports BLOCKED, OUT OF AREA, PRIVATE, or whatever. I only answer the phone if I see a name/phone number I recognize. Yet there are a couple of businesses that call me over and over and over, and have been for months. They never leave a message. I'm just so tired of telemarketers. When they do get me, it's just so inconvenient and they are always hasslers. Nope, I don't take it anymore. On one side note, I don't use AT&T since I went to work for their competition. I liked AT&T, but I just wanted to show a little pride in the company I work for. AT&T calls about twice a month wanting me to switch back. They hassle me. They just don't want to accept "no thank you." I always figured I'd switch back to AT&T when I left this job, but now I'll never switch to AT&T. Their telemarketers lost this customer. I don't want any flames regarding telemarketers as people who need work or people who have families to support. Prostitutes and drug dealers fall in to that category too. If I was out of work, I'd never whore myself out to a telemarketing firm. ------------------------------ From: Will Nott Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Organization: Compaq Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 20:25:23 GMT Charles Cremer wrote in article : > SBC Communications announced 14-August-1997 that slightly more than 50 > percent of its Texas customers have subscribed for Caller ID service. > This makes Texas the state with the greatest acceptance of the Caller > ID service. > Either our demographics include a lot of techies or perhaps we are the > state most afflicted by telemarketers which create a need for the > service. Being one involved, I'd judge it's largely the latter, but coupled with the fact that SW Bell had an agressive campaign to sell the service, even using tactics which might be described as "preying on fear" (really got my wife concerned). A sideline - they also tried to bundle in "anonymous reject", for only another $0.50 but I read them the riot act over that - we had some calls from COCOT's bolcked when they were, in fact, important. My personal take is that SW Bell spent much more effort on selling than informing; maybe that's a sad commentary on Texas consumers!! Regards, Bill ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 21:22:04 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Mark J. Cuccia (mcuccia@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu) wrote: > (quote from 1964 article) > There are other subtle differences as well. The Danes, for example, > have no 'W' on their dial, making it difficult [for them] to dial a > WAlnut exchange [in the US/Canada or even UK]. Americans have no 'Q' > on their dial, so dialing a ROQuette exchange in Paris could prove > troublesome. On the English [UK, and French] dial, the letter 'O' is > in the zero [finger]hole, while on the American dial the letter 'O' is > in the '6' [finger]hole. Most countries, such as Sweden and New > Zealand have no letters at all on their dials. FWIW, the ITU apparently now has a worldwide recommendation for lettering telephone dials, with all the letters of the North American plan in the usual places and the Q and Z on the 7 and 9 keys (finger holes?) respectively. Some AT&T brand business phones, such as the Partner series, have these designations now. > When mainland (communist) China became 'recognized', Taiwan became > 'de-recognized'. Today's country-code list indicates the island of > Taiwan as +86-6, as if it were part of mainland China's > country-code. In practice, in dialing and routing, most countries of > the world indicate Taiwan as its own country-code, +886. The current > ITU country-code lists indicate +886 as 'reserved', with _no_ > footnotes." Last time I heard, that's the one thing both Chinese regimes agree on -- that Taiwan should be part of China, under one government. (The question, of course, is *which* government. :-) > Even Step (SxS) offices would be able to originate 011+ (and 01+) > calls, _IF_ their local operator services included a TSPS/TOPS. The > ESS-like operator switch acted like a 'buffer' which collected all of > the customer dialed digits (dialpulses) in realtime, and did the > proper translations and 2-stage signaling through the DDD network, to > the gateway switch. > However, #5XB offices required much additional hardwired hardware to > provide customer IDDD, and it was decided early to abandon IDDD > implementation from such switches (even though the _very_first_ > switches in the Bell System to provide experimental or actual > originating customer IDDD were #5XB!). It was also intended that many > #5XB offices would soon be replaced by ESS/Digital offices, anyhow. I guess that explains why the JUniper office in downtown Louisville originally supported IDDD only on the SXS switch (installed in 1930) and not on the crossbar switch. They went to a 1A ESS in 1976, which solved that problem as well as the split between prefixes with Touch-Tone capability and prefixes that couldn't handle it. > The number of countries or country codes which could be reached by > originating customer IDDD from the US (and Canada) has steadily > increased over the decades. There have been some instances where a > country (code) was made customer dialable from the US, but later was > _removed_ from customer IDDD, probably due to governmental > politics. +7 USSR, for the capital of Moscow (only), city-code '095' > was customer IDDD-able for about a year, in the early 1980's, but then > was removed from customer IDDD. At the time the Soviets claimed that they had problems with their international toll switches that precluded IDDD. Strangely enough there was a period in the 1980s when the USSR was customer-dialable from Britain but not from the U.S., which would tend to put the lie to that claim. ------------------------------ From: A.J. Levy Subject: Re: Callback Banned in South Africa Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 23:00:20 +0200 Clearly, what the South African government, SATRA and Telkom are doing is unconstitutional and illegal. The entrenchment of Telkom as the exclusive service provider of international calls and the 'banning of callback' directly interfere with The Constitution - Act 108 of 1996. Specifically: Chapter 2: 1) Rights 7.(1)(2) is violated 2) Application 8.(1) is violated 3) Privacy 14.(d) is violated 4) Freedom of association 18. Is violated 5) Freedom of trade, occupation and profession 22. Is violated In plain English, 1) The South African government/SATRA/Telkom [all government bodies] are not respecting, protecting, or promoting the rights mentioned in 3) through 5) of the constitution that they drafted. The enshrined democratic principle of freedom is not worth anything if legislation to protect Telkom violates points 4) and 5). 2) I quote 8.(1) "The Bill of Rights applies to all law, and binds the legislature, the executive, the judiciary and all organs of state." - If this is to be taken seriously, then the Telkom monopoly entrenchment is unconstitutional for the violation of the rights violations cited in 3) through 5). 3) The right to Privacy is being violated. Telkom is a 70% government owned phone company. [Sidebar: A 30% stake was recently sold by the South African government to a Malaysian company - the circumstances of this deal, namely that there was only one bidder and the restrictions on the use of The South African government's use of the proceeds of the sale make this deal stink to high heaven.] Now back to the privacy issue: Because of the major interest that the government has in Telkom, they have very easy access to the call details of any of Telkom's accounts. To aggravate this intolerable situation, if the government wanted to 'legally' obtain a Telkom subscribers telephone account, or any other private information, all they need to do is trump up drug trafficking or money laundering charges to get warrants of search and seizure. What will go a long way to restoring individuals freedom is competition to Telkom in the form of Callback service providers who direct market the Callback service where the service provider, most likely in the US, directly bills the subscriber and the ITC or agent does not see the customer's account. 4) The Freedom of association violation by the proposed banning of Callback comes about because individuals are being forced to make use of Telkom's services. Individuals are not allowed to make their choice of who to associate with as their long distance service provider. 5) Freedom of trade, occupation and profession. This violation affects those ITCs and agents of Callback service providers from operating their businesses. The government is proposing a R 500,000.00 fine to be imposed against agents and ITCs and or their customers for promoting or using Callback. Whatever pressure that can be brought to bear on the South African government by people, organizations and Governments from both locally and abroad at all levels including sport, cultural and economic will assist the democracy in South Africa to defend it's constitutional rights. I urge you to do whatever you can to see to it that these violations of fundamental democratic rights is not allowed to take place. If these violations are allowed free passage, as sure as nuts, countries around the world that have not yet deregulated, and that is most countries today, will start the same crap in their countries and against the spirit of democracy and decency. If the South African government/SATRA/Telkom defends its position in terms of Act 108 of 1996 then this constitution is not worth the paper it's written on. Any law that is not for the benefit of the Democracy is invalid. AJ Levy Country Director, One World Communications (South Africa). ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #214 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Aug 21 22:10:59 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA20137; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 22:10:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 22:10:59 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708220210.WAA20137@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #215 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Aug 97 22:10:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 215 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Steve Uhrig) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (rocourtney@worldnet.att.net) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Brian Cox) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Steve Randall) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Garry Manning) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Michael Bryant) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Henry Baker) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Steve Bagdon) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Bill Newkirk) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (John Many Jars) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Rick DeMattia) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: suhrig@bright.net (Steve Uhrig) Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 18:27:16 GMT Organization: BrightNet Ohio On Wed, 20 Aug 1997 15:01:54 GMT, ted_klugman@usa.net.NOSPAM (Ted Klugman) wrote: > Put simply, what is a "ground start" line? We have an 800 number > that forwards to a four-line hunt group for our support department. > All four of these lines are "ground start" (as opposed to "loop > start"?) and the only way I've been able to get a dialtone on these > lines is to connect a phone to them and then short one of the wires to > another point on the 66-block (shorting the pair does nothing). Ground start lines are just what the name implies. The customer provides the ground to the telco equipment to activate it. On a loop start line the CO provides both the battery and ground on the line. The line is activated by completeing the loop. > The only assumption that I can make is that they were installed to > be incoming-only lines. Our phone system can't create this "ground > start", so they never get a dialtone. Ground start is only needed on two way lines. It's main purpose is to prevent call collisions. On either a one way in or one way out lines there is no danger of a call collision so ground start is not needed. I assume from your message that you can call both ways on the lines in question. You can have the phone company convert the lines to loop start, but don't complain to them if your employees calling out connect to a customer calling in instead of getting dial tone. Steve Uhrig Chillicothe, Ohio USA Send mail to suhrig@bright.net ------------------------------ From: rocourtney@worldnet.att.net Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Circuits Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 14:53:22 -0500 One reason long distance carriers use ground start on incoming trunks is to force customer equipment to disconnect when caller hangs up (especially if caller was on eternity HOLD). You will notice this if you place a volt meter across holding line. Voltage drops shortly after caller hangs up. You may not have ordered the trunks correctly for your outbound service, check with your account rep if you have outbound WATS service. rocourtney@worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: Brian Cox Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:25:35 -0400 Organization: Fair, but improving Ted Klugman wrote: > Put simply, what is a "ground start" line? We have an 800 number > that forwards to a four-line hunt group for our support department. > All four of these lines are "ground start" (as opposed to "loop > start"?) and the only way I've been able to get a dialtone on these > lines is to connect a phone to them and then short one of the wires to > another point on the 66-block (shorting the pair does nothing). > The only assumption that I can make is that they were installed to > be incoming-only lines. Our phone system can't create this "ground > start", so they never get a dialtone. > Am I on the right track? The more common type of line, such as in your residence, is a loop start line. When you go off hook you are completing the loop back to the central office and starting dial tone. Hence, loop start. All pay phones used to be ground start lines. When you first picked up the receiver there was no dial tone. Dropping in a dime operated a relay which hit the tip side of the line with a momentary ground, thus starting dial tone. This type of line requires a ground to start dial tone, so the term ground start. You will still find wide use of ground start lines for PBX applications. If you touch a ground to the tip side of the line while off hook you will then hear a dial tone on your ground start lines. In phone system applications ground start lines were usually used for outgoing calls, although they can also be used as 2-way lines. Regards, Brian ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: 21 Aug 1997 18:34:36 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Wed, 20 Aug 1997 15:01:54 GMT, Ted Klugman wrote: > Put simply, what is a "ground start" line? We have an 800 number > that forwards to a four-line hunt group for our support department. > All four of these lines are "ground start" (as opposed to "loop > start"?) and the only way I've been able to get a dialtone on these > lines is to connect a phone to them and then short one of the wires to > another point on the 66-block (shorting the pair does nothing). Lines which are "ground-start" usually aren't. Lines, that is. They're usually trunks. Different load engineering you understand. They're ground-start because it reduces the potential for glare -- the possibility that an outbound caller will pick up a line that's gone active, but not actually _rung_ yet. > The only assumption that I can make is that they were installed to > be incoming-only lines. Our phone system can't create this "ground > start", so they never get a dialtone. > Am I on the right track? Nope, they're not incoming only, but they were installed on the assumption that the phone system would be able to cope. If it can't, and you can't (or don't want to) fix that, you'll have to have the telco mutate them back to loop-start, which probably means back to lines. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If they were intended to be incoming- > only lines, then when you went off hook on those lines you would > detect 'battery' on the line but never get a dialtone, even after > the wire shorting process you describe. PAT] This much is tru-u-ue. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:25:57 +0100 From: Steve Randall Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines I am sure that many more competant correspondants than me will reply in greater detail but Ground Start trunks are exactly what they say they are. Instead of the CO detecting loop current as an "off-hook" signal, it looks for one of the legs (Tip, I think) to be grounded. At one time, all UK PABX lines were configured this way (it's a simple strap or jumper option in the CO) although I am not sure why. If your system cannot handle ground-start, ask your telco to re-configure them as loop-start; shouldn't be a problem for them. Steve Randall PQM Consultants, Suite C, 17 Moor Street, Chepstow, NP6 5DB, UK tel: +44 1291 626 180 fax: +44 1291 626 190 email: steve@pqm-cons.demon.co.uk url: http://www.pqm-cons.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------ From: Garry Manning Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: 21 Aug 1997 11:13:14 EDT Organization: Mitel Corporation Reply-To: manningg@nospamnetcom.ca Ground start lines require a grounding of the ring side of the line (I believe) to pull up dial tone. Most PBX's use ground start lines and are able to do this when an outgoing line is requested. Some key systems can only use loop start lines and are unable to "ground start" the lines. In a pinch you could buy a loop to ground converter module for your key system. These are used on PBX's for powerfail phones. Powerfail trunks are usually directly connected to certain single line phones. This was fine to all incoming calls during a powerfail, but the single line phones could not generate the "ground" either for the ground start lines. We used to add a button to these powerfail phones and connect ground to the black wire of a quad station cable. The powerfail set would then push the button to ground the attached trunk and an outgoing call could be made. Now modules are made that will sense the powerfail set going off hook (ie loop start) and applies a ground to the trunk to get dial tone. You may be able to use one of the units if you can't get the lines converted to loop start. ------------------------------ From: Michael Bryant Subject:Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:25:04 -0400 Ground start is a signaling method. It is applicable only to outgoing calls. Incoming calls are not affected by signaling schemes such as loop-start, ground-start or E&M. In order to place a call on a ground start trunk, a momentary ground is applied to the ring side of the circuit. This signals the switch to provide dial tone. You have discovered that by jumpering between the ring side of one of your four lines and the tip (which is ground) of another line that you get dial tone. Thus you have applied the concept of ground-start. If your phone system is incapable of supporting ground start lines, then why did your company order them? Ground-start circuits are normally used with PBX trunks between the CO and the PBX to prevent glare. Glare is the phenomenom when you are using a PBX station and dial "9" for an outside trunk and at the precise moment you are accessing the trunk an incoming caller is dialing in and thus you would be answering his call. Ground-start trunks eliminate this occurance. Michael Bryant ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:41:48 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > I know what coaxial cable is -- we use lots of it at work to connect > our terminals. (Coax cable has a center conductor surrounded by an > insulator tube, which in turn is surrounded by a braided conductor.) > The big advantage of coax is that it can accomodate a much larger > "bandwidth" (volume of traffic) than traditional twisted pair wires. > For instance, you can multiplex many more telephone conversations or > television signals (TV takes up a lot of bandwidth) on coax. Technically, this is not quite correct. The main advantage of coax is preserving the waveform shape over a long distance, even as the resistance of the coax attenuates the signal. In the days when 'equalization' was expensive and difficult, this was very important. With today's DSP's, which can measure the 'impulse response' of a system and correct for it, the preservation of the waveform shape is less important than the attenuation itself. For example, high-speed xDSL modems with sophisticated processing can send information at megabits per second over lines only designed for a bandwidth of 4KHz. Of course, sophisticated processing is both expensive and slow, and since coax is relatively cheap, it still makes sense. > Could someone explain how it works, in laymen's terms? How does the > physical arrangement enable it to have so much capacity. Coax properly balances resistance, inductance and capacitance for each small segment of the cable so that the waveform shape is preserved as it propagates down the cable. > Also, when was it invented? Was it invented by the Bell System or > someone else? Coax was invented to allow faster telegraph signalling across the transatlantic cables. Heaviside is usually credited with the basic idea in abou 1887. The fact that the American patent office gave Michael Pupin a patent on Heaviside's invention should be considered a major scandal in the American patent system. ATT licensed Pupin's patent, while Heaviside remained penniless. (Brittain, James E. "The Introduction of the Loading Coil: George A. Campbell and Michael Pupin." Technology and Culture 11 (1970), 36-57.) > Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? (If I understand > fiber-optic correctly, all it is is an extremely single high speed > digital pulse transmission, with ultra pure glass fibers and a laser > allowing an extremely fine pulse duration and no noise interference. > How they can turn a laser on and off so fast that the giga-Hz > (billions per second) pulse rates is beyond me! No. An excellent little book (119 pages) on coax, waveguides and fibers is: Cronin, Nigel J. "Microwave and Optical Waveguides". Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1995. ISBN 0-7503-216-X. ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: 21 Aug 1997 19:09:15 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On 21 Aug 1997 04:09:27 GMT, Lisa Hancock wrote: > I know what coaxial cable is -- we use lots of it at work to connect > our terminals. (Coax cable has a center conductor surrounded by an > insulator tube, which in turn is surrounded by a braided conductor.) Roughly. > The big advantage of coax is that it can accomodate a much larger > "bandwidth" (volume of traffic) than traditional twisted pair wires. > For instance, you can multiplex many more telephone conversations or > television signals (TV takes up a lot of bandwidth) on coax. Well, not exactly. > Could someone explain how it works, in laymen's terms? How does the > physical arrangement enable it to have so much capacity. The advantage of coaxial cable over twisted pair is that, being shielded, it doesn't require so much care in the electrical design of the signals you push through it in order to avoid unwanted radiation along the length of the cable. When you attempt to shove high speed signals through a conductor, it will try to act as an antenna. The two primary approaches to avoiding this are shielding, and balance. 10BaseT and its ilk take the second, balancing the electrical current on each side of the wire ti cancel out radiated interference. > Also, when was it invented? Was it invented by the Bell System or > someone else? Damned if I know. I suspect it might have come out of Bell Labs. > Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? (If I understand > fiber-optic correctly, all it is is an extremely single high speed > digital pulse transmission, with ultra pure glass fibers and a laser > allowing an extremely fine pulse duration and no noise interference. No, because even now, fiber is more expensive to work with than coax. Transceivers, and splicing labor, and such. It's getting cheaper, but it's also worth noting that coax can carry power, and fiber can't. Sometimes this is a feature, sometimes it's a bug. > How they can turn a laser on and off so fast that the giga-Hz > (billions per second) pulse rates is beyond me! They don't. They use electro-optical devices called Q-switches that block the beam intermittantly. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 15:19:26 -0400 From: Steve Bagdon Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID > Charles Cremer and a lot of other people said: Speaking about telemarkerters, and how irriating they can be. The local radio stations a few weeks ago played blurbs of a new CD titled 'Revenge of the Telemarketers' (or that might be 'on'). One radio station even had an interview with the creator. From what I was able to gather from the interview, a gentleman in Tennessee(?) started working out of his house, and was inundated with unsolicited calls. Frustrated with the entire situation, he started getting back in the best way -- by seeing how long he could keep them on the phone. He would think fast, and every new company would get a new speech. The best from his first album was the call from the carpet cleaning company, as he went into a nervous sounding conversation about 'I've got blood everywhere, and I need it out fast'. He said he's working on his next cd, and his best bit is the direct sales call from the pre-paid funeral home - something about being prepared with a starter's pistol, and him telling the telemarketer it's was 'a sign from God it's time to go'. Absoltuely gut-busting funny. If you can find it, buy it. Steve B. ------------------------------ From: Bill Newkirk Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:12:16 -0400 Organization: Rockwell Collins, Inc. Reply-To: wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com phelper@onramp.net wrote: > I'm just so tired of telemarketers. When they do get me, it's just so > inconvenient and they are always hasslers. Nope, I don't take it > anymore. I wish i still had that {Mad Magazine} article from the 1960s. It had plans for how to deal with telephone solicitors even then. I think it was one of those things mom and dad tossed when I moved to college. The thing I remember from the article was mainly tying the phone company up in knots since, after all, they're a "co-conspirator" with the telemarketers...8). Like calling repair service while shaving with an electric razor and complaining of buzzing on the line. Or calling a telco number and telling them that they've won a free prize if they would call another telco number in 5 minutes ... that sort of thing. Of course on the other side it was like ordering lots of stuff for non-existant people and addresses when they call. And, there is that guy that's been on the "John Boy and Billy" show who turns the tables on the callers ... "If you have a case of beer delivered to me, I'll buy your product ..." Bill Newkirk Collins General Aviation Division Publications Department Rockwell Collins, Inc., Melbourne Florida wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com ------------------------------ From: hanuman@clark.net (John Many Jars) Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Date: 20 Aug 1997 15:43:59 GMT Organization: Hanumanji In article , Charles Cremer wrote: > SBC Communications announced 14-August-1997 that slightly more than 50 > percent of its Texas customers have subscribed for Caller ID service. > This makes Texas the state with the greatest acceptance of the Caller > ID service. Strangely, it's only calls from Texas which consistently *don't* display CID! Most of my family live in east Texas (Centel?), and calls from them always generate an "Anonymous" ID. Other calls from throughout the country display perfectly. jmj ------------------------------ From: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Reply-To: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Organization: Railnet BBS +1 440 786 0476 Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 22:36:18 GMT As quoted from by Charles Cremer : > This makes Texas the state with the greatest acceptance of the Caller > ID service. > Either our demographics include a lot of techies or perhaps we are the > state most afflicted by telemarketers which create a need for the > service. Or maybe SBS is offering a better rate for the service?? Here in northeast Ohio, Ameritech charges $8.50/month for calling name and number. I have the service and like it, but I think it's a mite steep. Lovely though to be able to say that I haven't spoken to a telephone solicitor in months! Rick DeMattia ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #215 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Thu Aug 21 23:55:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA26507; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 23:55:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 23:55:12 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708220355.XAA26507@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #216 TELECOM Digest Thu, 21 Aug 97 23:55:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 216 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson GTE Strikes Out Again! (Curtis Bohl) CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Kathy Kost) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Isaac Wingfield) NC Utility Commission Chooses Splits Instead of Overlays (Bob Goudreau) Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast; Today (Jay Ashworth) Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? (Jon Gauthier) Re: The Telecom Side of 56K (Steven V. Christensen) Re: AOL May Track User Clicks (MWeiss7401) Re: 900 MHz Digital Update / U.S. Robotics, etc. (Nick Larsen) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Tom Watson) Re: ACD Help Needed (Bill Levant) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Curtis Bohl Subject: GTE Strikes Out Again! Date: 21 Aug 1997 13:38:56 GMT Organization: First National Bank Here's another example of how GTE costs customers time and money! Yesterday, one of our staff comes to me with a fax that he needs to get out, but every time he dialed the number (NPA 850) from any of our fax machines, he gets a "unable to reach" intercept message; same thing when using the old 904 area code. But, he says that he can dial the new number OK through our PBX. Well, I know that we send our PBX LD traffic on a T-1 directly to our IXC, so it's time to consider it might be a GTE problem. But first, get the Fax sent out. Find a 25 foot phone cord to tie the fax into a PBX extension. Got it sent OK. Then turn the problem over to our phone manager. Later, he tells me that "GTE hadn't loaded the new NPA into the tables." "Just forgot to load it in our tables" (quote from GTE tech). The total time our staff wasted was probably two hours on this. Given that the permissive period started June 23 (two months ago) I wonder how many others in our area (24 exchanges) had problems that they chalked up to a IXC problem or that someone had given them a wrong number. Gee. No, GTE. Curtis Bohl cbohl@fnb-columbia.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In fairness to GTE, a lot of telcos forget an area code here and a prefix there, etc from time to time. About three years ago, Ameritech somehow forgot about a new exchange which opened in Wisconsin's 414 ... you could reach it by dialing any of the LD carriers direct on their 800 numbers to go through their switches, but one-plussing it always got an intercept from Ameritech saying it was no good. Telling Ameritech about it always produced the expected response: it must be your long distance carrier that is at fault ... telling AT&T of course got the standard line from them that the matter had to be taken up with Ameritech. I did finally get through to an AT&T guy based out of Denver and told him about it. He said it would be corrected 'very shortly'. I told him Ameritech tended to go off on tangents of their own and listen to no one. His response was 'they will listen to me and do as I say ...' And indeed, the next morning the call did go through with one-plus and no more intercept sass-back from Ameritech. It is all in who you talk to I guess, and the Business Office is frequently the last place to go to get things fixed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) Subject: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 21 Aug 1997 19:14:48 GMT Organization: Intermec, Inc. I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can point me to, please do. Currently I'm with AT&T Wireless with an analog service and I want to go digital. I'm not a technical idiot (I'm a Unix sys admin that does both hardware and software support), but doggone it if I can get a straight answer out of any vendor's mouth about the differences between their cellular services. I've narrowed the field to AT&T Digital PCS, Air Touch's Powerband (CDMA), and Sprint PCS. Here are the questions: 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. Is that correct? 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine this would change (?) 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that they're using TDMA and a different service. From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology but any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! Kathy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:28:35 -0700 From: Isaac Wingfield Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > I know what coaxial cable is -- we use lots of it at work to connect > our terminals. (Coax cable has a center conductor surrounded by an > insulator tube, which in turn is surrounded by a braided conductor.) Right so far, although some coaxes have a solid outer conductor. It can get pretty big, too. I've used nine inch diameter coax to carry a third of a million watts of signal up the tower to a TV transmitting antenna. > The big advantage of coax is that it can accomodate a much larger > "bandwidth" (volume of traffic) than traditional twisted pair wires. > For instance, you can multiplex many more telephone conversations or > television signals (TV takes up a lot of bandwidth) on coax. > Could someone explain how it works, in laymen's terms? How does the > physical arrangement enable it to have so much capacity. Actually, it's just another transmission line, having neither better or worse performance than other topologies; in fact, the attenuation is higher than some others (e.g. parallel line, such as the "300 ohm twin lead" used for TV antenna connections). Its bandwidth is not inherently superior either; 100BaseT and Gigabit Ethernet work on twisted pairs. The advantage of coaxial construction is shielding -- both to protect the signal inside from outside interference, and to prevent radiation of the signal to the outside environment. It isn't that you can stuff more data down a coax, it's that if you try it with another topology, there will likely be more inward and outward interference. Symmetry and regularity of construction are very important for wide-bandwidth transmission lines; coax maintains this better when pulled, draped, heated, stretched, placed near metal, etc. The symmetry of twisted pair is easier to disturb under such treatment, leading to a degradation of performance. > Also, when was it invented? Was it invented by the Bell System or > someone else? I believe it was Bell Labs, but am not certain. 1920's? It was surely ubiquitous by WWII. Whenever you don't know where some telecomm technology was invented, Bell Labs is a good guess. > Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? By no means. The cost of "termination equipment" (whatever it takes to get the signal in or out of the transmission line) is significantly less for coax or other copper-based methods. As the length of the line goes up, of course, this becomes less important. The maximum data carrying capacity of fiber is many orders of magnitude greater than that of copper transmission line, but again, only with much more expensive transmitters and receivers. > (If I understand fiber-optic correctly, all it is is an extremely > single high speed digital pulse transmission, can be analog, too; the > cable TV people do that routinely these days, transmitting all the TV > channels you can receive as one very wide band analog signal (50-800 > MHz, round numbers). .... > with ultra pure glass fibers and a laser allowing an extremely fine > pulse duration and no noise interference. Ultra pure only so it's ultra clear; that allows longer runs between amplifiers, for example. Sometimes it's made like a coax, with different kinds of glass layered concentrically. This tends to "steer" wayward light rays back into line, so that no rays take a longer path than others (which they would do if they were "bouncing off the walls", so to speak). > How they can turn a laser on and off so fast that the giga-Hz > (billions per second) pulse rates is beyond me! At the highest bandwidths, the laser is frequently not turned on and off; there's some kind of a "shutter" or "valve" in front of it to control things. This also allows analog modulation of the intensity. You can always get more data down the pipe if you allow for values between "on" and "off". Isaac Wingfield Staff System Engineer isw@hdvs.com TV/COM International Vox: 408-232-8530 3103 N. First Street Fax: 408-232-8145 San Jose, CA 95134 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 13:50:58 -0400 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: NC Utility Commission Chooses Splits Instead of Overlays Today's issue of Raleigh's newspaper _The_News_&_Observer_ reports that the North Carolina Utility Commission decided in a 6-1 vote yesterday that the state's three new area codes will be split from the three existing ones rather than overlaid on top of them. Each of the three existing NPAs will be split into two codes, mostly along or near county boundaries: The western two-thirds of the current 704 NPA (Asheville, Hickory, and most of the mountains) will receive a new code, while Charlotte, Gastonia and environs stay in 704. The northern half of the current 910 NPA (including Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) will receive a new code, while the southern half (including Wilmington and Fayetteville) keeps 910. The eastern three-fourths of the current 919 NPA (including Greenville, New Bern and Rocky Mount) will receive a new code, while the Research Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and evirons) and Sanford retain 919. Bellcore is supposed to assign the three new numerics in the next four to six weeks, and the telcos will submit an implementation schedule by mid-September. However, the Commission expects all three new codes to take effect some time in the first quarter of 1998, with a permissive period of about four months. Hopefully, this will be soon enough to relieve 910, which currently has only 77 unassigned NXX prefixes left; there was no word on whether 919 or 704 are in jeopardy. Other than the split vs. overlay decision, the main issue the Commission members had to debate was which part of the current 910 zone got to keep that code. The arguments of Sprint Carolina Telephone, which serves most of the eastern part of the state, ultimately prevailed. Since most of Sprint's northern service area will have to change area codes as a result of the 919 split, the Commission thought that it would be unfair to burden the company's southern service area (in 910) with such a change too. Therefore, the northern part of 910, which is mostly served by BellSouth, will have to change, even though it contains what is by far the largest metropolitan area (the Piedmont Triad of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) in the current 910. Triad residents are none too pleased, since it was only four years ago that 910 was split off from 919. For the complete story, including a color map of the new boundaries, see . Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today Date: 21 Aug 1997 18:49:26 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Wed, 20 Aug 1997 21:22:04 -0400, Ed Ellers wrote: > FWIW, the ITU apparently now has a worldwide recommendation for > lettering telephone dials, with all the letters of the North American > plan in the usual places and the Q and Z on the 7 and 9 keys (finger > holes?) respectively. Some AT&T brand business phones, such as the > Partner series, have these designations now. AARRGGHHHH! Is _that_ where this idiocy came from?? What nuclear physicist decided to single-handedly break every dial-the- user's-name phone directory on the planet? There was _already_ a standard for this: "Q", "Z", and " " go on the 1 key. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ From: Jon Gauthier Subject: Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 19:56:05 -0400 Organization: Just Me! Reply-To: jgauthier01@nospam.snet.net Eric Florack wrote: snip, snip... > What I'm hearing is rather striking. It will allow two dialups lines > of whatever speed on the same computer, to be dialed into the same > source, thereby allowing you to double your throughput .. > Question: Do most ISP's allow this kind of connection via modem? Do > ANY? > If so, this may be an answer to my customers who don't have ISDN > available at reasonable cost in their area. IE; two dialups are > cheaper than an ISDN line and assuming two 56k connections, or even > two 33.6 connections, the throughput gains would make the moderate > added cost of the added line worthwhile. Comments? One manufacturer has jumped on this and is advertising a "67kbps" modem, which is just a two line V.34+ modem, and uses Windows/NT/95's Multilink PPP (MLPPP) support. It's not new - it's in NT 3.5 under RAS. Multilink PPP has been used by router manufacturers for years to bond multple 56kbps leased lines into a logical 112kbps or better line. I can't remember the modem manufacturer's name, but it was in serveral ot the networking trade rags a couple of months ago. If you buried deep enough into the fine print of the add, you could "deduce" that they were talking two lines, not 67kbps over one! Jon Gauthier Connecticut ------------------------------ From: Steven V. Christensen Subject: Re: The Telecom Side of 56K Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 00:11:38 -0500 Organization: Caterpillar, Inc. Reply-To: chrissv@pobox.com [ snip, discussions from ASCEND on having MODEM problems ...] > You are entitled to have this problem corrected. Make sure that you > say there is nothing wrong with your normal voice communications (if > that is the case...) otherwise they will just do a normal line check. Whoa! I subscribe to Ameritech (Central Illinois, no choice in the matter), and I doubt they share Ascend's comments on what I am "entitled to." I lived in an apartment a couple of years ago, and couldn't get *squat* with my 14.4 modem - lots of retraining, and eventually it would drop. Voice quality was fine. By elimination, I figured out it wasn't in my MODEM. I called Ameritech, got bounced between the consumer and business service people (??), and basically was told that all they (Ameritech) have to guarantee is voice quality. If I didn't have any problems with the voice quality (and I wasn't), they couldn't/wouldn't do anything about it. However ..., I could opt to have them install a $200 filter (at my cost) on my line at their office, but they specifically didn't guarantee it would help, and if it didn't help, tough! I felt that this was a canned speech I was getting. I had to wait until I _moved_ to a house before I got a decent line. Steven P.S. When she said all they would guarantee is voice quality, I said, "errr... I hear some crackling in the line too..." (which there was none, but I thought they might switch a pair or something). A service person came out, but it didn't help. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 16:04:35 -0400 From: mweiss7401@aol.com (MWeiss7401) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: AOL May Track User Clicks > Instead of directly informing subscribers that their account information > would be given to telemarketers, the company planned to state its > intentions in the new Terms of Service agreement - a multipaged, densely > worded legal document posted on AOL that informs members about the > company's operations. As an AOL subscriber, I have been growing suspicious of AOL's refusal to respond to good suggestions for eliminating SPAM e-mail from user's mailboxes. I have shown them that a simple cgi script and use of their mail controls address filter could eliminate totally, any SPAM e-mail from entering a person's account. A letter detailing this was sent to Steve Case, AOL's president, as well as e-mail related forums on AOL. To date, no responses have been tendered. Other information indicates that AOL is at break-even on profit margin, so it lends credibility to the notion that AOL is seeking revenue from other avenues, such as selling marketing information and even taking a cut of the profits from SPAMers which are given access to anonymous accounts on AOL, which can blind carbon copy millions of AOL users without using their names at all. If it weren't for the fact that I have a significant web presense that would be severely disrupted by changing ISPs, coupled with the fact that no other local ISP offers five e-mail address, each with two megs of FTP space, I would be out of here immediately. Steve Case does not strike me as an ethical businessman. Mark The "Peg-legged" Bass Pig http://users.aol.com/amn92/amn.htm "I support the micropower broadcasting movement and freedom of the airwaves" ------------------------------ From: Nick Larsen Subject: Re: 900 MHz Digital Update / U.S. Robotics, etc. Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 20:54:01 -0400 Organization: prc Reply-To: larsen_nick_nospam@prc.com I talked with someone at USR about their stillborn 900MHz cordless phones a few months back. He told me they were never released because internal testing showed them to be poor performers, but that USR still planned to introduce new cordless phones later this year (probably not the 310 or 520 models that were advertised for so long, but new designs) unless 3Com nixes them. USR has released a few full-duplex speakerphones (w/o handsets); I bought, and returned, both the CS1000 and CS850. Neither sounded as good at the other end of the line as many regular speakerphones. The 310/520 both were to have integral full duplex speakerphones. I own Uniden's two-line digital 900Mhz cordless/speakerphone, which I find to be quite satisfactory, although I would still like the features that were to be in the USR phones (full duplex, call waiting, speakerphone in handset). There's also new Panasonic SSD cordless out, which isn't as full featured as I would expect for the price. NL ------------------------------ From: tsw@cagent.com (Tom Watson) Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 19:27:43 -0700 Organization: CagEnt, Inc. In article , Michael Bryant wrote: > Ground start is a signaling method. It is applicable only to outgoing > calls. Incoming calls are not affected by signaling schemes such as > loop-start, ground-start or E&M. In order to place a call on a ground > start trunk, a momentary ground is applied to the ring side of the > circuit. This signals the switch to provide dial tone. This is NOT true. Although the lines are started by grounding RING conductor the central office RESPONDS with a ground on the TIP conductor to acknowledge the start (thus completing the loop). When the central office starts the line, they apply ground to the TIP conductor, and the station equipment responds with ground on the RING conductor (usually thru the loop of the station) to answer the phone. What this means is that on a ground start line you can have an instrument across TIP & RING and when the CO siezes the line, you 1) get loop current, and 2) provide an answer entry, and 3) can begin talking. No "ringing" signal need apply (or be heard). Nowdays the option is provided by a programming option in the electronic switch (entry on the console). With SxS exchanges, there was an insulator on the line relay/line finder. tsw@cagent.com (Home: tsw@johana.com) Please forward spam to: annagram@hr.house.gov (my Congressman), I do. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 02:50:52 EDT Subject: Re: ACD Help Needed [preliminary explanation snipped] > Because it is in the ACD we do not have hunt groups. We would point > the incoming calls to go to a queue. The first available operator > would pick up the call. She would then have to transfer the call > outside the ACD (a secondary line) pick up the transfer and put it on > hold. Two extra steps. > Another cumbersome process. To park the call in the switch (we have a > 5ESS 10), the operator would have to access call park by dialing a > code , e.g. "#8" then dial the DN that the call will be parked at. > The person retrieving the call would have to do the same, dial a code > to access call park, then the DN the call is parked at. Wait a minute. Are you perhaps making this more difficult than necessary? If your operators have phone sets with user-programmable buttons, why not set up a single-button "park" key. That's one key-stroke. Then, you "park" the calls on arbitrary "phantom" extensions (ones that exist logically in the switch, but aren't connected to real telephones; as far as I know, on at least some systems, you can park a call on ANY extension, not necessarily the one the call is presently connected to). Then, you page "Joe, dial 1234 for a call" where "1234" is the phantom number where you parked the call. Taking it one step further, maybe each operator has a pool of four or five "park" extensions that he/she uses exclusively, and which appear on his/her console (with indicator lights) but are otherwise "phantom". Operator #1 parks on 1234, 1235, 1236 and 1237; operator #2 parks on 1238, 1239, 1240 and 1241, for example. Then, he/she can watch the lights to make sure that calls that he/she parked are eventually answered. Only problem is, what if all of the "parking places" are taken, and ANOTHER call comes in? Gotta have enough slots to simultaneously park the largest number of calls that would ever be holding at a given time, bearing in mind that as soon as a parked call is picked up, the "phantom" extension number it was parked on becomes free to be used again. Obviously, if you have ten incoming lines, then ten total "parking places" is probably plenty. If you have 100 incoming lines, then you need to find someone who remembers how to do Poisson distributions, since I forgot shortly after the final exam back in college years ago. I think that some systems can assign the "park" locations automatically, using a pre-determined range of numbers, and displaying the location used on the display (assuming that your operators have phones with display capability). Then, it's a one-button "park", followed by a page to the number that comes up on the display. Bill ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #216 ****************************** From ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Fri Aug 22 09:25:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA20364; Fri, 22 Aug 1997 09:25:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 09:25:13 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199708221325.JAA20364@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #217 TELECOM Digest Fri, 22 Aug 97 09:25:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 217 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Area Code Dispute in PA Now Stalled! (John Cropper) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Kim Brennan) Re: AT&T Merlin Questions (Dale Laluk) CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay (Stephen B. Kutzer) Minnesota PUC Split on Split (Charles Gimon) Your Teletypewriter History and My Museum (Don Robert House) Help Needed With Phones in Offsite Office (phoneguy@hawkeyerec.com) More Thoughts on 900 and IP Billing (R v Head) Ameritech's New Service - Three Way Calling (Michael Stutz) 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: * telecom-request@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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/ They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: John Cropper Subject: Area Code Dispute in PA Now Stalled! Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 05:54:25 -0400 From the Associated Press: DIAL 'D' FOR DEADLOCK ON AREA CODE PLAN WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal advisory panel deadlocked yesterday on Pennsylvania's proposal to avert the need for three new area codes by breaking up partially used blocks of phone numbers. Fourteen members of the North American Numbering Council supported the plan with conditions, while eight opposed. Because the group normally operates by concensus, co-chairman Alan Hasselwander sent the issue to the Federal Communications Commission without a recommendation. Although the FCC wants to quickly rule on the case, it has set no timetable. If the commission decides to launch a round of public commenting given the split among council members, Pennsylvania could miss its September target for implementing the plan. Pennsylvania expects to run out of numbers for area codes 215, 610 and 717 in the eastern half of the state as early as next spring. Last month, the state Public Utility Commission approved carving area code 724 out of Pittsburgh's suburbs, because the region was in crisis. Because of a growing appetite for fax machines, computer modems and other gadgets, phone companies across the country are rapidly running out of numbers. The problem is aggrevated by the introduction of competition to local phone service because of the inefficient way numbers are assigned. The Industry assigns numbers to switching centers in blocks of 10,000, and each emerging phone competitor needs the entire block for each service area, whether it has 10 customers or 10,000. Pennsylvania has approved more than a dozen local competitors. John Hanger, a member of the Pennsylvania PUC, estimates that at least 5 million numbers out of the 7.9 million possible combinations are not being used. To avert the need for new area codes, which forces many consumers to buy new stationary and reprogram their burglar alarms, Pennsylvania wants to reassign some of the unused numbers by creating "transparent" area codes. Under such a mechanism, customers would dial a number in their existing area code, and computers would automatically forward that call to the assigned number with the new code. Callers would not have to change their routines, and in most cases would not even know of the new code. A new area code was created for the Philadelphia area less than three years ago, and already the region is facing a shortage. The 717 area code, which serves south-central and northeastern Pennsylvania, also needs relief. The FCC is considering ways to carve up the 10,000-number blocks but is not expected to implement a plan for a few more years. By then, eastern Pennsylvania would have run out of numbers. The proposal is heavily opposed by wireless service providers. ----------------- LINCS' note: A few friends at Bell Atlantic are thinking that if the transparent issue fails, we could be looking at either across-the-board splits of all 3 codes, splits of 717 & 610 and an overlay of 215, or all overlays (least likely). If the transparent overlay DOES go through, look for a conversion to GENERAL overlay six months AFTER transparent codes are assigned, since portability will not be feasible for a couple years, and the feeble attempt to stave off REAL relief will only give each code about a year's additional life at the very most ... In other BA behind-the-scenes news, BA-NJ is looking at further relief for 201 (still in permissive) sometime in 1999 or 2000. This is due in part to the grandfathering of wireless services into 201 and 908, coupled with continued demand for numbers. As for 609, hearings will be held in early September. A recommendation to split is expected ... John Cropper voice: 888.76.LINCS LINCS fax: 888.57.LINCS P.O. Box 277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 ICQ: 2670887 Great LD rates: http://www.lincs.net/longdistance/ FREE areacode info: http://www.lincs.net/areacode/ $16.95 internet: http://www.lincs.net/internet/dialupacs.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 01:21:40 -0400 From: kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Kathy Kost inquires: > I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm > totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and > need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can > point me to, please do. {Byte Magazine} had an article on digital phones in a recent issue, but for the life of me, I can't find it on the Byte web site. Ah, I see now, why ... Oh, well, you'll just have to pick up the August 1997 issue, or wait three months for the web to reveal the full issue. In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. As I recall, TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of coverage. CDMA has been getting a lot of the recent attention from the phone companies and in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it still (apparently) has some problems. Both of these phones types operate in the 900Mhz range. GSM, which is the European standard, is just getting off the ground in the states. Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with Spring PCS) uses GSM technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe uses 1.9 Ghz). The coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the other two. The full article goes into a lot more detail. I have a GSM Sprint Spectrum phone personally. Kim Brennan (kim@aol.com) Duo 2300c, Red VW Fox Wagon GL, Black VW Corrado SLC http://members.aol.com/kim Duo Information Page: http://members.aol.com/kim/computer/duo Questions should include "Duo" in the subject, else they'll be deleted unread ------------------------------ From: Dale Laluk Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 07:31:48 +0000 Subject: Re: AT&T Merlin Questions A response to Steve Bagdon: For a leading edge house like yours I would go ahead with putting in the Cat. 5 wiring, with home runs to each location that you want wired. Some of the benefits, in the long run that I can see for you is running 100 Mbps data (Live video, conferenceing, security monitoring or just mega data) I have clients who have 100 Mbps in their homes and they are maxing out and now we are going to Switched 100 Mbps Hubs. With a small transceiver from ATT&T and other manufacturers you would be able to run Cable TV over your Cat. 5. As far as the price is issue check for the Cat. 5 price is it was for FT-4 (Riser) or FT-6 (Plenum) (Sorry this is the Canadian Term for the fire rating I don't know what the US equv. is). Riser is good enough for most any installation, Plenum has to be used when the air around the cable is being sucked back into an Heating and Vent system for re-use in the house. FT-6 is 3 x more expensive. FT-4 Cat.5 cable from a good manufacturer runs $80US here in Canada per 1000 ft. Hope this helps. Dale Laluk, C.E.T. Lunar Communication Services P.O. Box 569, Hudson's Hope, B.C. V0C 1V0 250-783-5365 or 1-800-227-5912 voice 250-783-5790 fax lunarcom@netbistro.com internet ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 09:55:06 -0400 From: Stephen B. Kutzer Subject: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay I am trying to understand an issue raised by Sprint's frame relay salesforce in comparison to that of MCI's. According to Sprint, they sell and route virtual circuits based on "port speed"; if you buy a 56K port from them, you'll get 56K from first bit to last. Also according to Sprint, MCI and AT&T's frame connection are routed based on committed information rate. They tell me that this involves starting out at 16kbps and then "throttling up" to the CIR (e.g. 56k). So a couple of questions: is this true? And, does it really matter? I'm planning a network that is going to be pure FTP (file transfers); the files are about 2MByte in size, and will be coming into a central location from 20 satellite locations. The software will send a file as soon as it's ready to go, so I'm going to have an on/off kind of line utilization. I'm worrying that if the "throttling" that Sprint is talking about (with MCI) takes a significant amount of bits per file transfer, that my effective throughput will be diminished. Finally, can anyone give me pointers to materials (books, URL's, magazine articles) that help debunk and demystify frame relay salesspeak? Many thanks, Steve Kutzer ------------------------------ From: Charles Gimon Subject: Minnesota PUC Split on Split Date: 21 Aug 1997 14:30:44 GMT Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc. The Minnesota PUC is debating the split/overlay thing for 612 this week. The Commission is supposed to have five members; apparently at the moment there are only four due to a resignation. The current four are split two-to-two on the issue. Local media are covering the story: http://www.startribune.com http://www.wcco.com Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not | gimonca@skypoint.com Italian, not French, but an entirely | Minneapolis MN USA new and different taste treat that's | http://www.skypoint.com/~gimonca waking up the world! | A lean, mean meme machine. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 23:32:08 -0700 From: Don Robert House Reply-To: dhouse@abac.com Subject: Your Teletypewriter History and My Museum I enjoyed reading the teletypewriter history. I was part of it. I started my Bell System career as a Teletype repairman on 9/19/66 in Wheeling, Illinois. I operate a data communications museum with many many examples of Teletype products, datasets, test sets, and associated manuals, literature,etc. I also have a complete DDS mini-hub and end office equipment and a portable D-4 system. Highlights about me and my museum will be on Pacific Bells website (www.pacbell.com) in about three weeks. I am always looking for donations of equipment, literature, photographs, etc. Don Robert House Curator, North American Data Communications Museum 3841 Reche Road Fallbrook, CA 92028-3810 dhouse@abac.com (primary address) dhouse@usa.net (secondary address) http://www.hem.com/nadcomm (museum website) (760) 723-9959 Telephone (760) 781-5161 Facsimile (760) 781-5153 Teletype (8 level,110 baud) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Good luck with your museum. I hope readers are invited to contact you and visit when they are in the area. The teletypewriter history you refer to appeared here in the Digest quite a long time ago. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 15:14:32 -0500 From: phoneguy@hawkeyerec.com Reply-To: phoneguy@hawkeyerec.com Subject: Help Needed With Phones in Offsite Office We may be locating an offsite office about a mile from our main office. We currently have: - Norstar modular 8x24 key system - Novell LAN with token ring :-( - a tower right outside the back door with enough heighth for line of sight into the remote location. We would like to be able to: - transfer telephone calls back and forth from main location to remote location and make intercom calls, of course. - connect computers at the remote site into our LAN. Is this a WAN? - would like to try wireless connections for all of this. - wired is not out of the question as remote site is between telco and main office. About three blocks from CO to remote site. About one mile from CO to home office. Any thoughts? Thank you! Jim ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 14:45:04 -0500 Subject: More Thoughts on 900 and IP Billing From: rvhead@juno.com (R v Head) > IPs always have the choice to require credit cards to provide > service. They can also protect themselves by exchanging credit > information with other IPs, as well as requiring prepayment or > written pre-authorization for use of their services. You'd better be VERY careful before you go "exchanging credit information". The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act as well as the Fair Credit Reporting Act are both quite punitive if you're caught violating them. On a marginally-related note: Those off-shore "FREE" phone sex lines are obviously local to SOMEWHERE - Are the residents of Guyana able to call a local number to avail themselves of such services without incurring LD charges? > In any case, the fact that IPs may have difficulty in billing > and collection of their services is no excuse to impact the > users of other telephone services in any way. If we had 900/976 > blocking by default, I expect that the percentage of customers > who opt to remove such blocking would be exceedingly small. Fine > with me! Why should 900 numbers be blocked at all? Any person calling them is per se aware that he is not making a local call. Don't FCC regs now require the IP to announce that the call is a pay service, how much that service will cost and allow a period of time in which the caller can hang up without incurring any charges? If the regs don't currently so provide, they SHOULD. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 14:51:25 EDT From: Michael Stutz Subject: Ameritech's New Service - Three Way Calling Not long ago, Ameritech started offering a new "service," Three-way Calling administered on a "pay-per-use" basis. Of course, since it was a feature certainly welcome by all, they implemented it to everyone. Even before the announcements came in the monthly phone bill announcing the service and its price. I found out about it the day it happened because when my modem, after dialing a local number and getting a busy signal, hung up and redialed, this time getting that same busy signal conferenced in with the new call. Sure enough, any form of rapid redialing -- modem or not -- was now off limits. If I'd make a call to, say, the local weather number, and then hang up right away and dial someone else, the weather line would be conferenced in with us. And I'd be getting charged. Calls to Ameritech yielded nothing. I told them that I was given Three-way Calling and that I didn't want it, but customer service operators at Ameritech knew nothing. Two days later my phone bill came. In fine print on one of the printed-out pages was an announcement of the new pay-per-use service, with a date of inception a week into the future. So I called Ameritech again and told them I didn't want it. They told me it was a repair issue, and sent me over to the Repair line. After one of their guys looked over my phone lines, they said nothing was wrong and that I'd have to discuss my feature set with the Business Office, and that if the programming on their switches had changed to include this new "feature" for everyone, there was nothing they could do about it. Calling the Business Office yielded surprise -- "That's not supposed to be active for another week" -- but no solution. I explained that it not only interfered with my normal dialing activities (sorry, but having to wait 2-3 seconds between making calls is not an option) as well as with my modem and other equipment (fax machine redialer too). They said they were sorry, but that it was changed for all POTS lines and I'd have to live with it. So I called the PUCO and explained the situation, and they told me to call the Ameritech Business Office again, giving me a direct number to the people I should speak with, and told me to tell them that I'd spoken with the PUCO about it. Within 24 hours, the pay-per-use Three-Way Calling "feature" was removed from all of my analog lines. Since then, I've spoken with friends and family around here who've experienced "weird dialing problems" that were no doubt this Three-Way Calling in action; I only wonder how many people still have it active and still have to pay for these dialing mistakes because of it. Sometime this summer, a few months after all this happened, Ameritech sent out a glossy flyer with their monthly statement announcing this "service." email stutz@dsl.org Michael Stutz . [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Same thing here! All of a sudden one day some business phones I am responsible for (and frequently use in rapid succession -- click/offhook/new call in two or three seconds -- began presenting me with the triple tone spurt. I *knew* what it was -- perhaps many people would not know -- and called Ameritech immediatly saying get it off the lines. It took two or three calls to the business office before I could get it removed, and then they acted sort of resentful that I was unwilling to have it on the lines. But the rules for those particular phones are that there are to be *NO* additional charges for 'frivilous' features. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #217 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 25 09:18:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA18332; Mon, 25 Aug 1997 09:18:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 09:18:02 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708251318.JAA18332@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #218 TELECOM Digest Mon, 25 Aug 97 09:18:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 218 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Frontier Telco Accused of Racketeering (Ray Normandeau) Telephone Psychics (Tad Cook) Area Code Fun and Games in Massachusetts (oldbear@arctos.com) Sprint PCS Overloaded in Florida (Tad Cook) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (George Gilder) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: 24 Aug 97 09:51:14 EDT From: Ray Normandeau <110260.251@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Frontier Telco Accused of Racketeering CONTACT: Ray Normandeau 718-392-1267 Telcom Giant Frontier Accused of Racketeering ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On August 20, Rochester, NY based Frontier Corporation (NYSE: FRO) announced that Ronald L. Bittner had elected to step down as Chief Executive Officer of the company due to continuing "health challenges". Frontier Corporation's media representative, Randal A. Simonetti, 1-716-777-5886, neglected to mention in his press release that in Miami, FL, in July, Blackstone Calling Card Inc., a Miami-based manufacturer and distributor of pre-paid calling cards, filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and racketeering against Frontier. According to Long Distance Digest (http://www.THEDIGEST.COM), Frontier Corp. knowingly arranged for Blackstone to purchase the network services and PIN numbers for pre-paid calling cards through a senior sales representative of a Frontier subsidiary. Blackstone then manufactured and sold its pre-paid calling cards through its existing network of approximately 2,800 distributors and retailers. "... Frontier Corp. knowingly defrauded Blackstone Calling Card Inc by canceling access to pre-paid PINs for long distance calling." The lawsuit, which was filed in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court in Dade County, Fla. by Catlin, Saxon, Tuttle and Evans, P.A., demands $27 million in damages from Frontier Corp. Blackstone Calling Card Inc's media representative is; SAMCOR Communications Co., Cori Rice, Roxanne St. Claire, 1-305-443-5454. For Catlin, Saxon, Tuttle and Evans, P.A.: Jim Catlin, 1-305-371-9575. Late last year, the household of Raymond B. Normandeau in Long Island City Queens was slammed to Frontier/Allnet following a "welcome" letter from another company saying "thanks for switching." An investigation yielded a FORGED "Letter of Agency" with Mrs. Normandeau's name not only forged but misspelled. I am interested in talking about telcom abuses, including not only slamming but the growing scourge of unsolicited commercial E-mail. Ray Normandeau, Rita Frazier Normandeau ray.normandeau@factory.com http://www.buzznyc.com/actors/res.normandeau.raymond.html http://www.buzznyc.com/actors/res.frazier.rita.html ------------------------------ Subject: Telephone Psychics Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 23:32:06 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Telephone Psychics are a Gold Mind for Some, Source of Fraud for Others BY JAMES MCNAIR, THE MIAMI HERALD Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Aug. 23--"I can't believe it! She knew all about me -- and all I told her was my name and my birth date! "These psychics are incredible! I never thought that someone I never met could know so much about your life!" -- "Rainelle," in a TV ad for Psychic Solutions USA. Sound familiar? It should if you watch TV talk shows, soaps or late-night cable fare. Ads and infomercials for telephone psychics become epidemic after midnight. Change channels? Sorry, the psychics are there, too. In the mystic realm of dial-a-psychics, millions of Americans look for help, hope and happiness every month from the other end of a telephone line. In their moment of need, the advice of a friend, relative or counselor just won't do. So when Billy Dee Williams or Dionne Warwick says their soothing lines at 2 a.m., calling a psychic for $4 or $5 a minute seems the right route to go. Psychic advice hotlines are to the telephone business what the Klondike was to gold panners. The cash generated by pay-as-you-go 1-900 phone calls for entertainment and information services is estimated to reach $1.4 billion a year by 2000, up from $670 million in 1994, says Telemedia News & Views, and is catching Wall Street's eye. Obviously, the Rainelles of the world can't live without their psychics. But callers may be shocked to find where their money is going. If they came to Fort Lauderdale's posh Harbor Beach section and drove past a three-story $3.5 million house at 14 Isla Bahia Dr., surrounded by lush landscaping, a fleet of exotic cars and a docked 40-foot luxury powerboat, they would have a fair idea. The palace belongs to Steven L. Feder, a 47-year-old New Jersey native who has struck it rich in the psychic hotlines biz. Feder owns Psychic Readers Network, which supervises "several thousand" independent home-based psychics around the country. PRN claims to handle more calls and log more minutes than any of its rivals, including the Warwick-endorsed Psychic Friends. Feder isn't one to boast in public and he declined to be interviewed for this article. In private, though, Feder relishes showing off the spoils of his success. Psychics say he brags about his jewelry and his black 1997 Bentley convertible. At his birthday party in March, where Feder was said to be "dripping in diamonds," singer Gladys Knight treated his guests to a private performance. Feder's anonymity notwithstanding, Psychic Readers Network is known to millions. Who can resist when celebs like Billy Dee Williams, ex-Miami Vice star Philip Michael Thomas, actress-astrologer Joyce Jillson and South Floridaradio personality Bo Griffin are urging people to call? Almost without exception, callers are enticed by offers of 5, 10 or 15 minutes of free readings. But once those free minutes are up, the meter starts ticking away at $4.99 a minute. At that rate, a 30-minute reading will show up on someone's telephone bill as a $124.75 charge. As you might expect, it often has a laxative effect. Deborah Herman of Centerville, Va., said she lost her telephone service -- and her gift-basket business -- because of a disputed charge by a PRN psychic. "They told me I had been given 10 free minutes, but they never specified whether it started at the beginning or the end of the reading. I ended up with a $215 bill from them," she said. Herman successfully contested the charge. But the momentary loss of her telephone number was fatal. "My company has already bitten the dust over this," she said. "I had a $30,000 Yellow Page ad that I was still paying for." Cathryn Radeff of Sheffield Lake, Ohio, responded to a TV spot for three free minutes with a PRN psychic. The mother of seven was billed $78, but didn't pay. Instead, she called regulators. "In the conversation with the gentleman, I asked, `This isn't going to cost me anything?' and three different times he said no," Radeff said. "He lied to me." Complaints pour in from all over the country. The New York attorney general's office has more than 100 on file, Washington, 24. The Florida attorney general's office, with 12 complaints in hand, said it is investigating PRN. "The focus of our investigation is with regard to what's offered -- the free minutes," assistant attorney general Bob Buckner said. "Either they (customers) hadn't gotten it or they were misled about when it started." Unlike other telemarketeers, PRN is quick to make redress. Buckner and other regulators said most complaints lead to refunds. Peter Stolz, a PRN vice president and Feder's cousin, said customer satisfaction is a big concern. "We try to be extra, extra careful, clean and above and beyond reproach," Stolz said. "We give callers complete credits on any complaints. We don't want anybody to be dissatisfied in any way." Yet many of PRN's psychics are in disharmony. According to interviews with eight PRN psychics -- all of whom asked not to be named for fear of losing their jobs -- and documents obtained by The Herald, PRN has cut payouts to its top-earning psychics by 20 percent to 30 percent in the past year. PRN psychics receive flat rates of 20 cents to 25 cents for every minute they are logged on to the company's computerized calling system from their homes. Many work the psychic lines to supplement other sources of income. Last December, PRN raised the call-length averages that triggered per-minute bonus pay. In May, PRN canceled bonuses altogether. When the company raised rates to $4.99 from $3.99 a minute two months ago, psychics didn't receive a penny more. And when free calling time was upped to five minutes, callers took their readings and ran, hanging up at the five-minute beep and killing psychics' chances to make money. Psychics who average less than 12 minutes a call can lose their job, said one veteran of the PRN hotlines. More and more, they liken themselves to telemarketing agents. At the start of every call, psychics must obtain callers' names, addresses and phone numbers, all of which feed into computer databases to become leads for the sale of other products, psychic-related and not. In the current Astrological Society of America sales script obtained by The Herald, PRN psychics offer a $9.95-a-month membership -- good for a cassette player, tarot cards, a magazine, a personalized astrology chart and 15 minutes of psychic readings -- and saythe word "free" 18 times. "It's kind of sad because I feel the intent has been polluted," another PRN psychic in Florida said. "Instead of supplying answers or direction for people in need, they're sold, sold, sold." Another Florida psychic said she enrolled in the Astrological Society of America to see what her callers were getting. She said the cassette player ate the very first tape. The tarot deck was incomplete, and she received neither the magazine nor the personalized astrology chart. Afterward, she said she was inundated by junk mail. "I feel they're hiring people just to get money and the vast majority are not psychic at all and are making things up just to keep people on the line," she said. "It gives us a bad name. It makes me ashamed of what I have to do." According to company policies, PRN will "to the best of its ability hire only qualified psychics who have been tested and interviewed by PRN, not `chat' operators." But a former employee who managed PRN's psychics said that wasn't the case when he was there. "A good 90 percent of these people are horse s--t," the employee said. "They're just trained to pick up on certain things and go from there." That manager and one other said PRN's psychic ranks suffer from high turnover. Those who stay on have a sense of powerlessness. For all their psychic powers, they haven't the power to overcome their treatment as telemarketing pawns, they said. "I'm not going to put hexes on anyone," a Miami psychic said. "If I did, my husband would be writhing in boiling oil." Loretta Nichols, a teacher of psychic power in St. Louis, said she worked for PRN for two weeks in July but quit because she "couldn't stomach it." "Once I realized there was no essence of good to it and that they didn't care about their people or their psychics, I quit," she said. Wall Street connection PRN's money trough extends to Wall Street, which will latch onto most any business concept these days to make money. The link comes in the form of a limited liability company founded by Feder, Thomas Lindsey (his business partner and co-owner of the $3.5 million house) and Peter Stolz, a PRN vice president and Feder's cousin. The three men sold their 50 percent stake in New Lauderdale L.L.C. to the other half-owner, Quintel Entertainment of Pearl River, N.Y., last September. If you cancel AT&T long-distance service and get a call urging you back, odds are it's Quintel calling. New Lauderdale is the company that spreads most of the word about PRN's telepsychics. It owns 1-800 and 1-900 telephone lines. It owns membership clubs, like the Astrological Society of America and its Spanish-language counterpart, La Sociedad Astrologica de America. It hires celebrities and runs the TV spots and infomercials. And when callers' names and addresses roll in from PRN's telepsychics, it churns out junk mail for Quintel's sister products, like cellular phones, music, shampoo and, of course, more psychic readings. Quintel books the revenue. The sale of New Lauderdale turned Feder, Lindsey and Stolz into multimillionaires. According to SEC filings, Feder, Lindsey and Stolz received 3.2 million shares of Quintel's common stock. On the day of the deal, those shares were worth $6.50 apiece, or $21 million. A year later, as investors catch on to Quintel's money machine, the stock trades for $14. The PRN trio has already cashed in $5 million in stock and has a balance of $42.3 million as of Friday's close. The deal was especially lucrative for Feder. Feder's stake in New Lauderdale, exchanged for 1.424 million Quintel shares, is worth $18.3 million. In return for devoting 50 percent of his time managing New Lauderdale -- which is one floor below PRN in the International Building on East Sunrise Boulevard -- he was rewarded with a five-year contract starting at $187,000 a year, 10 percent annual raises, four weeks of paid vacation and the usual perks of a full-time executive job. Meanwhile, Quintel is on a roll. In the three-month period ended May 31, the company posted net income of $5.8 million on sales of $53.3 million -- more than half of which came from the New Lauderdale operation. Its customer database includes 30 million names and addresses culled from psychic readings, voicemail services and other 1-900 telemarketed products. Those names, of course, are rented to other companies with products of their own to sell. "They put me on every junk mail list selling psychic readings, crystals, pyramid cones and pills to increase psychic awareness," said Bonnie Yeager of Bartlett, Ohio. "I was probably getting five pieces of junk mail a week." The busier his psychics, the wealthier Feder becomes. For every $4.99 a minute that the psychics chalk up in sales, PRN keeps 39 1/2 cents, according to a Quintel document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Aug. 20. For every dollar Quintel's share price rises, Feder becomes $1.4 million richer on paper. To his psychics, the dollar amounts are beyond belief. That Feder is part owner of one of the nation's largest independent telemarketing companies is not. "He's definitely a telemarketer, the way he talks to people and pumps them up," a PRN psychic in North Carolina said. "He doesn't have a clue as to handling psychics." Herald researcher Michael Clark contributed to this report. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 22:26:21 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Area Code Fun and Games in Massachusetts The following is excerpted from a copyright story which appeared in the {Boston Globe} on Saturday, August 23, 1997: Cellucci to review new area codes By Bruce Mohl and Doris Sue Wong Globe Staff With the state's top phone regulator threatening to scrap two proposed area codes and adopt a whole new approach, Acting Governor Paul Cellucci said yesterday that he now wants to take a closer look at the Legislature's redrawn boundaries for new area codes. "As I said yesterday, I am probably going to sign what the Legislature has put before me," Cellucci said. "I'm not inclined to second-guess them unless there is some serious problem. And that is what we will have to see, if there is some serious problem." John Howe, chairman of the Department of Public Utilities, warned yesterday that the Legislature's area code plan would lead to substantially inferior phone service in Massachusetts, with 19 communities, including most of Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Needham, Newton, and Worcester, unable to get new phone listings for a five-month period starting next May. "Life in Massachusetts would be like life in a Third World country," Howe said. "You would have to wait months for a new phone number." Howe said he would be left with little choice but to scrap the geographical area code framework, as redrafted by the Legislature to include 10 more communities in 617, and replace it with the so-called overlay approach he earlier rejected. The overlay approach would allow existing customers to keep their current numbers while new customers would be assigned the new area codes. The plan would require everyone to dial 10 digits for all local calls and could result in customers on the same street, or even with two lines in the same house, having different area codes. Republican critics privately suggested Cellucci's willingness to overrule his own Department of Public Utilities was motivated by a desire to win votes in 1998 and legislative support for tax cuts. Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, a gubernatorial candidate who opposed the overlay approach in a Public Utilities hearing on area codes last year, urged Cellucci to veto the Legislature's changes. "I hope the acting governor will think long and hard about the statewide confusion and significant costs that could arise from his actions," Harshbarger said. "No one likes change, especially when it comes to their phone numbers, but a short-term gain in convenience for a few communities could produce long-term headaches for millions elsewhere in Massachusetts." Many businesses already have reprinted stationery and repainted signs in anticipation of the Sept. 1 conversion to the new area codes. Bell Atlantic mailed area code maps to customers last week that did not include the Legislature's recent additions. And some of Bell Atlantic's phone books have already gone out with area code maps as previously drawn. According to Howe and officials at Bell Atlantic, the Legislature's decision to add 10 more communities to 617 would mean the area code would exhaust its supply of numbers again in 1999 and another area code would need to be created. Without the 10 communities included, officials estimate another new area code would not be necessary for five to seven years. The Legislature's changes would also require Bell Atlantic to reprogram 200 switches, a process that could take until next November, and boost the $20 million cost of changing area codes to $30 million. The utilities plan to cover the costs by hiking rates. In the meantime, 19 communities would start running out of new numbers next May. Howe said he would be inclined to go with an overlay approach despite its disadvantages because it could be implemented more quickly. "That is a serious issue," Cellucci acknowledged. "I want to get to the bottom of that, whether that is true or whether that's a Washington Monument-type argument." Asked what a Washington Monument-type argument was, Cellucci said, "It's like they're blowing up something to what it isn't. ... When you peel it away, it really isn't as much of an objection as it seems." The state needs two new area codes to accommodate the rapid proliferation of lines for fax machines, modems, pagers, and cellular phones. The Public Utilities decision to carve 781 and 978 out of the existing 617 and 508 area codes caused little controversy until Belmont and Watertown tucked an amendment into the state budget that put them back in 617. Then-Governor William F. Weld approved the amendment with no objection from either Public Utilities or Bell Atlantic. Lawmakers then added an amendment putting Medford, Winchester, Woburn, Revere, Arlington, and Malden back into 617 to a deficiency budget. House and Senate negotiators, who are supposed to only resolve differences between bills passed by the two branches, then decided to toss in Lynn, Waltham, Lexington, and Lincoln. Senator Edward J. Clancy Jr. of Lynn acknowledged that it was highly unusual for a legislative conference committee to add elements to a piece of legislation that had not been included in either the House or Senate versions. Senate Ways and Means Chairman Stanley C. Rosenberg said it was hard to say no after Belmont and Watertown were allowed into 617. "Given that the first two were allowed and made it into law, how do you say no to the others?" he asked. Representative Joseph C. Sullivan, a Democrat from Braintree, filed a bill yesterday to force the 10 communities to pay the added cost of the last-minute changes. ------------------------------ Subject: Sprint PCS Overloaded in Florida Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 19:56:47 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Sprint Wireless Network Overwhelmed after Special Offer BY DAVID POPPE, THE MIAMI HERALD Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Aug. 23--An aggressive promotional deal by Sprint PCS has helped the upstart wireless telephone company sell thousands of phones in its first two months of service. But it has also led to frequent disruptions for customers as Sprint can't handle the resulting heavy volume of calls. Sprint PCS launched its wireless phone service July 1, about seven months behind the other PCS phone company in South Florida, PrimeCo Personal Communications. To attract customers, Sprint recently began a promotional deal offering new customers 1,500 minutes a month of calling time for a flat monthly $75 fee for two years with the purchase of a new phone, which costs about $200. The rate amounts to five cents a minute for wireless calling, substantially less than the 35 cents to 40 cents a minute typically paid by cellular telephone customers. But Sprint acknowledges the offer has boosted sales more than expected, so that the company's network has been overwhelmed from Oakland Park to Key West. "The demand for service has been tremendous," says Dan Olmetti, Sprint PCS' area vice president. "It's exceeded our expectations in this market. We probably are leading the country in all of the Sprint markets for adding new customers." Olmetti said Sprint's wireless equipment supplier, Northern Telecom, is working around the clock on a $10 million expansion of the system. "We hope to have the upgrade completed by early next week," Olmetti said. "That should alleviate the problem." Sprint PCS stopped the $75 promotion on Wednesday, but is still running a promotion that offers 500 minutes of service per month for $50. Juan Carlos Barreto, partner in Genesis Communications Systems in South Miami and a dealer for Sprint PCS, says the promotional rate sparked more demand than Sprint anticipated. His own customers have been reporting troubles since Monday, but Barreto said he was confident Sprint would resolve the problem soon. "They are working very hard at it," he said. The Herald received complaints from three Sprint PCS customers on Friday. Efforts to call those customers back on their Sprint phones were generally unsuccessful as circuits were busy on Sprint's network. One Sprint PCS customer who didn't want to be named said he'd had problems making and receiving calls on his phone for two weeks. "They tremendously oversold the $75 deal and the ad is still running," he complained. Olmetti asked customers to be patient. "It's something we understand," he said of customer frustration. "We're doing everything we can to catch up." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 03:31:56 -0400 From: George Gilder Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Kim Brennan writes: > In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three > digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. Not exactly, since GSM is TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). The distinction you want is between compatible TDMA (IS-136), retrofitted to US AMPS analog, and incompatible TDMA (mostly GSM in the US). > TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of coverage. CDMA > in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it still > (apparently) has some problems. Both of these phones types operate in > the 900Mhz range. TDMA operates in the 900MHz range, in the 1.9 GHz range, and in the form of Nextel's iDEN dispatch oriented special mobile radio system, is now moving toward full cellular services in 55 cities using several bands around 800 MHz. However, in all forms, TDMA still suffers from serious problems. CDMA (IS-95) is Code Division Multiple Access, a spread spectrum system that operates in the 900 MHz range compatible with AMPS as an overlay and in the 1.9 GHz band for PCS. The beauty of CDMA is that the very pseudo noise code used to spread the signal for transmission is inverted and used to despread the signal at the receiver, popping up the message and simultaneously spreading any real noise or interference spikes. This results in strikingly superior acoustics and dramatically lower power. Like all digital wireless technologies, CDMA is undergoing growing pains, but not as many as American TDMA, stubbornly offered by ATT wireless whose technical chief long depicted CDMA as a violation of the laws of physics. CDMA uses some 100 times less transmit power than TDMA and employs all the allocated spectrum all the time and thus is much more efficient for bursty data than any Time Division system. TDM, whether in wire or wireless form, wastes empty time slots whenever data is scant and drops bits during data bursts. > GSM, which is the European standard, is just getting > off the ground in the states. Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with > Sprint PCS) uses GSM technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe > uses 1.9 Ghz). The coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the > other two. Sprint Spectrum, a system inherited in DC from Personal Communications (as I recall, a Washington Post diversification failure), plans to join the rest of Sprint PCS as a CDMA system at 1.9 GHz (when it does, you will notice the superior acoustics and longer battery life). With a five year head start, GSM has global coverage (137 countries, I believe, mostly at 1.8 GHz). CDMA currently prevails in South Korea, where I last week examined the system in Seoul, with some 2 million users the most heavily loaded cellular system in the world. CDMA also thrives in Hong Kong, where it outperforms GSM head to head with half as many base stations. CDMA has recently been endorsed in Japan for its next generation service. When the GlobalStar satellite service is launched, CDMA will also command global coverage. > The full BYTE article (August 1997) goes into a lot more detail. Snowed by Ericsson, the BYTE geeks blew it, accepting the idea that CDMA is a technically dubious gamble. The article showed no idea of what is at stake, failing to recognize that CDMA is the compute intensive system that benefits most from the advance of Moore's Law and best accommodates computer data. In an upset, Ericsson -- the leading GSM TDMA exponent -- has nevertheless now endorsed CDMA for the next generation of data intensive wireless networks. QED. George Gilder ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #218 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 27 00:36:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA02927; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 00:36:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 00:36:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708270436.AAA02927@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #219 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Aug 97 00:36:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 219 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Extending Lives of Area Codes (Tad Cook) Learning to Live With `650' (Tad Cook) Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay (Greg Monti) Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay (Lars Poulsen) 56k Circuit and Problems (Rick Sommer) Recent Caller ID Changes? (Mike Fox) Looking For Information About X.25/CCS7 Convertor (Lee, Hyun Min) Free Wireless Comms Newsletter (Richard Schwarz) LD Carrier 10056 -- Any Stories? (Jim Van Nuland) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Extending Lives of Area Codes Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 09:47:24 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) (Proposals mentioned in this article bring up some interesting questions regarding calculating distance between wire centers based on the area code and first three digits of the phone number. Tad Cook tad@ssc.com) Texas Regulators Seek Key to Extending Lives of Area Codes BY JENNIFER FILES, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Aug. 26--Contrary to popular belief, Dallas and its suburbs are not running out of phone numbers. Nor is out-of-control consumption of telecommunications technology the reason the vicinity probably will need two new area codes in 1998. The 214 area code contains nearly 8 million usable seven-digit phone numbers, and 972 added nearly 8 million more last year. That should be more than enough, mathematically, for every person in each area code to have two phone lines, a pager, a cellular phone and a fax machine. Companies that sell those services only wish demand were so high. Telecom businesses have been assigned 11 million numbers in the 214 and 972 area codes with the idea that they'll pass them on as customers need them. While Southwestern Bell estimates 75 percent of those numbers are being used, regulators and competing phone companies say only about one in three is actually in service. So what was that about needing more? "Something is very wrong here," said Leslie Kjellstrand, a spokeswoman for the Public Utility Commission of Texas. "You just got 8 million new numbers, and now you need 16 million more. It doesn't take a mathematical genius to say, Wait a minute we haven't had that many new pagers."' Simply put, a 45-year-old system that assigns numbers to phone companies in blocks of 10,000 regardless of need hasn't kept up with the times. Whether a carrier has one customer or one million, to provide basic phone service throughout the 214/972 region, it needs at least one block of numbers in each of 71 smaller zones, called rate centers. As a result, phone companies routinely reserve hundreds of thousands of numbers more than they can use at any given time. Regulators now refer to the seven-digit phone number as a scarce resource, and "number conservation" has become one of their biggest challenges. The PUC predicts that dialing any local call in the Dallas area will take 10 digits before the end of next year. Some say that could increase to 14 or 15 digits by 2025 unless the number crisis is solved soon. On Tuesday, commission officials in Austin will meet with representatives from major phone companies and from other states to begin devising an antidote. Chairman Pat Wood, still a bit bruised from public outcry against recent area code additions in Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth, has made area code reform a pet issue. "I want to be that prophet on the mountain that's just screaming, Guys, we just have to solve that problem before it's too late,"' he said. Bill Adair, the Southwestern Bell employee in charge of assigning Texas phone numbers, says a reasonable person could not have predicted the problem five years ago. The fact that it has so taken phone industry officials by surprise is proof of the startling speed at which the telecom industry is changing, he said. Until recently, assigning phone numbers in Southwestern Bell territory was a ho-hum job. All the work was done on paper ledgers, and there were no categories for competing local-phone companies. Numbers were distributed according to the North American Numbering Plan, a system put in place in 1951 that uses phone numbers as addresses for routing phone traffic and billing customers for their calls. The first three digits, the area code, identify a city or part of a state. The next three digits are unique to a group of computers, or "central office," located in a smaller zone called a rate center. Phone companies charge for long-distance service based on which rate centers are at either end of the call. Numbers are doled out in blocks of 10,000, such as (214) 977-0000 through (214) 977-9999. Because all the numbers in each group are in one rate center, all calls to numbers starting with those digits are billed at the same rates. For more than 40 years, one local-phone company in a given area took up almost all the assigned phone numbers because only that company provided local-phone service. When a town added a new block of phone numbers, it was a big deal because it meant the population was growing. Paging and wireless phone companies needed their own numbers when their technology took off in the 1980s. But the way they charge for calls hasn't traditionally required them to have a presence in each rate center, so the increase in assigned numbers was gradual. Then came the promise of local-phone competition, formalized 18 months ago when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Now new companies that build part of their own networks need phone numbers, too. And though they may cherry-pick their customers passing over consumers for the more profitable business market most still opt for a relatively broad geographic service area. And to do that today, they must acquire far more phone numbers than they have customers. MCI Corp., which won't start selling local-phone service for months, already has more than 250,000 phone numbers on hold. Other would-be competitors are claiming a rising share of numbers long before customers can sign up for their service. To try to solve the problem, regulators on Tuesday will consider reprogramming computers to route phone calls on the four digits after the area code, rather than the current three digits, so that numbers could be assigned in groups of 1,000. Another idea is combining rate centers so that a group of numbers could serve a larger region. Regulators also will look at ways to loan unused numbers back to other companies and examine the effects of a new, federally mandated system that some say is the most fundamental change to the numbering system ever. Called "number portability," it will allow people to keep their phone numbers even when they change phone companies. Federal regulators have ordered the system in place in Dallas by May, and it should vastly reduce the amount of new numbers competitors need. "We're right on the teetering edge of having this solved," said Southwestern Bell's Mr. Adair. "With the solutions that the industry and the commissions are looking at, that relief will last well into the next millennium. We'll have an opportunity to do this right and do it once." ------------------------------ Subject: Learning to Live With `650' Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 11:09:47 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Learning to live with `650' New area code has some out of sync BY MICHELLE GUIDO Mercury News Staff Writer Let's face it: Change is tough. The Peninsula's new area code -- 650 -- has raised the ire of some people who are simply trying to conduct business as usual. Luckily for them, there are still 23 weeks left in the grace period. Peninsula dwellers -- and the people who call them -- should be happy to know that these minor annoyances are par for the course. Area code and phone officials say most of the problems people experience are with private -- mostly business -- phone systems, which have to be manually reprogrammed to accept new area codes. What that means is that people making calls from work -- or other places with private systems -- are getting that annoying, really fast busy signal much more often than those using their home phones. "We've only been telling people that we were going to (split the area code) for 15 months," said Doug Hescox, the California-Nevada code administrator. "But I still hear a lot of yelling." Hescox said that when someone calls to complain that they can't get through using the 650 area code, the first thing he asks them is, "Are you at a business location?" If they are, he asks if there's a private phone system, and if so, whether it is programmed correctly. That takes care of most problems, Hescox said. But the fact is, most people are not even bothering to dial 650 because they know they have over five months to make the transition. And it's a good thing they do, because in Silicon Valley, it's not just a matter of letting friends know you have a new number. People must change their stationery, business cards and advertising; they must also update fax machines and reprogram speed dialers, auto dialers, alarms and private phone systems. After that, they have to retool out-dial lists on personal computers and check with wireless phone and paging service providers to find out if they must reprogram those, too. Not everyone is complaining. Some people have actually been proactive about the change. Helen Person, manager of Congdon and Crome Inc. stationers in Palo Alto, said they alerted customers six months ago that the change would be happening by posting bright orange signs all over the store. Person said some of her regular customers put in early orders for new stationery or rubber stamps with their new phone numbers. She suspects business will pick up as the Jan. 31, 1998, cutoff date approaches. "We didn't even do our own business cards until last week," Person said. "And we only did it then because we thought we'd better set an example." But don't rush out and order a lifetime supply of business cards or stationery. Even the new 650 area code -- which extends to Mountain View and Los Altos and along the coast south of Pescadero -- is expected to last only 12 years before it splits again, Hescox said. The 415 designation had been the Peninsula area code since 1947, but because of the explosion in multiple-use telephone services, new area codes are springing up everywhere. Earlier this year, the utilities commission approved plans to split the 408 area code to create an 831 code for most of Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties. That will take effect next July. During this six-month get-acquainted period, if you still dial 415 when calling the Peninsula -- or if you omit the 415 when calling San Francisco or Marin from the Peninsula -- you'll get through. After January, there will be a three-month mandatory dialing period. This means that if you persist in dialing 415 when you mean 650, you'll hear a tape telling you that you've dialed the wrong area code. Hang up, and use the correct area code. After that, you're on your own. At Stanford University, where 29,000 telephone lines are home to 40,000 telephone numbers, the change has been relatively painless, according to Maureen Trimm, the university's assistant director of communication services. Stanford has its own telephone switch, which has already been reprogrammed to accept the new area code. But Trimm said that on Aug. 2, the first day of the changeover, there were people who were unable to make calls into the 650 area code from other places in the country. There's a trouble number on campus that people can call if they're having difficulty, but Trimm said that line hasn't seen much action. "I think that's because we put a lot of planning into this," Trimm said. "But it is summer. We'll see what happens when all of our faculty and students get back next month." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 01:27:36 -0400 From: gmonti@mindspring.com (Greg Monti) Subject: Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay On Thu, 21 Aug 1997, Stephen B. Kutzer wrote: > According to Sprint, they sell and route virtual circuits based on > "port speed"; if you buy a 56K port from them, you'll get 56K from > first bit to last. > Also according to Sprint, MCI and AT&T's frame connection are routed > based on committed information rate. They tell me that this involves > starting out at 16kbps and then "throttling up" to the CIR (e.g. 56k). It's more complicated than that. Frame Relay service has three components: 1. the "port" that talks in and out of the Frame Relay network (sometimes called the "cloud" because it's diagrammed that way); 2. the "permanent virtual circuits" that talk between ports inside the Frame Relay "cloud"; 3. the local loops, which connect each of the cloud ports to your customer premises. You, as customer, can order the "speeds" of any of these elements to be any of a series of numbers the common carriers offer. They don't have to be numerically related to each other. However, you should pick the cheapest combination that gets the job done. Ports have a fixed speed, which you specify at time of order. In this case, which I'll call City A, it sounds like you will be ordering a 56kbit/sec port speed. This is the speed at which data will pass into and out of the Frame Relay cloud in City A. You then have to pick a speed for the local loop in City A. You could pick 56k, which would match the port speed. But you might want to pick a faster number (see below for why). You then have to pick the port speed and local loop speed for City B. Then you have to pick the speed of the permanent virtual circuit between City A's port and City B's port. Permanent Virtual Circuits (PVCs) have TWO speeds associated with them. There is a minimum data rate, which you are always guaranteed to get, called the Committed Information Rate (CIR). And, optionally, there can be a second "speed" for the PVC, which is called the "burst speed". This is the data rate you can achieve on the PVC if the network is not particularly busy. Often, the burst speed is set to be twice the CIR. If data is passing at the burst speed and the network suddenly becomes too busy to handle it, some random packets will be thrown away until your net speed is throttled down to the CIR again. The packets that are lost are called "discard eligible." It's up to you as the end user to figure out which packets got lost and resend them. If you are doing FTP sessions over TCP/IP this detection and retransmission are automatic. But it's provided outside of the Frame Relay network. Now, why might you want the local loop speed to be higher than the port speed? Because it may be the only economical way to implement the network. In some cities, the monthly rate for a 256 kbit/sec circuit is only slightly cheaper than a 1.544 Mbit/sec T-1 circuit. Ripping out the 256 and converting it to T-1 will incur an installation fee far exceeding several months' price difference between the two. It might be worth installing the T-1 now. Also, the port speeds don't need to equal the CIR's of the PVCs that are being connected to that port. Let's suppose you add a City C to the network. And suppose you order a CIR from A to C of 56 kb. And a CIR from A to B of 56 kb. What should the port speed at A be? If you set it to 56k, and both B and C try to send at their full 56k rate to A, each will only get half of the 56k rate to City A. Because the slowest shared element in the system will determine speed. You might want to set City A's port speed to 256. Then, even when bursty traffic is arriving from B and C, both at the burst rate of 112 kb/s (a total of 224 kb/s from both sites), Port A will not "run out" of bandwidth and will not be the bottleneck. It comes down to how important instant delivery is. If you can wait 30 seconds, or 2 minutes, even those 2 MB files you mentioend will eventually get through. You'll have to consider the business application (can you wait that long?). Greg Monti Jersey City, New Jersey, USA gmonti@mindspring.com www.mindspring.com/~gmonti/home.htm ------------------------------ From: lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Relay Date: 25 Aug 1997 20:54:28 -0700 Organization: RNS / Meret Communications In article Stephen B. Kutzer writes: > According to Sprint, they sell and route virtual circuits based on > "port speed"; if you buy a 56K port from them, you'll get 56K from > first bit to last. > Also according to Sprint, MCI and AT&T's frame connection are routed > based on committed information rate. They tell me that this involves > starting out at 16kbps and then "throttling up" to the CIR (e.g. 56k). Fundamental to Frame Relay networks is the notion that you can subscribe to a guaranteed bandwidth from each point on the network to each other point on the network. If this commited information rate is low, the network is generally inexpensive. Certainly, a lower CIR should be less expensive than a higher CIR. The CIR is priced separately from the access pipe (the leased line from your premises to the nearest frame relay switch on the network). If Sprint is truly unable to provision a CIR less than your access line, I would expect their service to be A LOT more expensive than their competition. If you really need fast transfer rates, why are you considering only 56K access lines? Many network operators will let you take a T-1 access line; contract for a 56K Committed Information Rate and let you use the excess on an "as available" basis, i.e. you can try to send more, but when the network is busy, they reserve the right to toss the bits you haven't paid for. Then if at the end of the month it turns out that you have been using the headroom a lot, they may try to sell you a higher CIR. As always, your best deal is never with ANY of the big ones. For frame relay, you definitely need to make sure your market research includes LDDS/WilTel, PSI and UUnet. Oh, and since you mentioned that your application is based on FTP ... how did you decide that you need FR service, not IP service ? Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@OSICOM.COM OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit, formerly RNS) 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Telephone: +1-805-562-3158 ------------------------------ From: Rick Sommer Subject: 56k Circuit and Problems Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 11:43:05 -0400 Organization: Concentric Internet Services Reply-To: rsommer@concentric.net We have a problem with one of our 56k PPP connections. One CSU/DSU is showing a network alarm (not working) and the other shows a good connection. Now we figure that if you don't get a good connection, both CSU/DSU's will show an alarm. This was the case in a lab environment where we simulated our connection with a crossed CAT5 (1,2-7,8 reversed) which simulates a 56k connection, only we need to use the clock from one of the CSU/DSU's for timing, whereas a 56k connection provides the timing to the dcom equipment. If we changed cat5 cable to straight through, both CSU/DSU's would show an alarm. We figured that would be the case in the real world also. (Note: our other 56k connections work fine and are needed so there can be no experimentation there). We are avoiding Ma Bell (for now ...) if at all possible. Does anybody have any experience that could shed some light on this? Thanks for the reply. Rick rsommer@concentric.net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 08:42:05 -0400 From: Mike Fox Reply-To: mikefox@ibmREMOVETHIS.net Subject: Recent Caller ID Changes? Between August 20th and now (August 26th) I have noticed some changes in caller id that make that feature a little less useful. On 8/20 and before, calls that were received from areas where the number is available but not the name (for example, from cell phones that support CID and from cities with other phone companies) would display the name as "CITY NAME, ST", where ST is the two-letter state abbreviation. Starting yesterday, 8/25, I have noticed that now they display as STATE NAME, with no city information. For example, scrolling through the memory of my CID box, I see a call received on 8/20 identified as: ROCKYMOUNT, NC 919-977-XXXX But when I got a call from the same person yesterday (8/25), it displayed as: NORTH CAROLINA 919-977-XXXX My carrier is Bellsouth. Rocky Mount, NC, is in Sprint territory I think. But it's not just Sprint->Bellsouth. I have a Bellsouth DCS digital mobile phone. When I called my home phone from it, it used to display as: RALEIGH, NC 919-272-XXXX Now it displays as: NORTH CAROLINA 919-272-XXXX So it appears to be a universal change? Or is it a change in how Bellsouth interprets the information? Has anyone else noticed it? This is much less useful to me, especially since I have a Nortel Maestro phone that just shows the name for incoming calls, and you have to press a button to get it to show the number. Just seeing NORTH CAROLINA is obviously not very useful. Later, Mike Spam busting: to send e-mail, delete capital letters from my address. By the way, I am not: webmaster@cyberpromo.com So don't extract the above address if you want to reach me! ------------------------------ From: Lee, Hyun Min Subject: Looking For Information About X.25/CCS7 Convertor Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 11:34:24 +0900 Organization: SK Telecom Reply-To: hmlee@sktelecom.re.kr I'm an engineer of SK Telecom in South Korea. SK telecom is a major wireless communication service provider has four million mobile phone subscribers and 6.5 million paging subscribers. I'm engaged in project about international roaming. And I'm gathering information about X.25/SS7 convertor, its price, shape, capacity and more detail. Give me a e-mail. Mail address is mailto:hmlee@sktelecom.re.kr Name : Hyun Min Lee Tel : 82-42-865-0613 Fax : 82-42-865-0530 e-mail : hmlee@sktelecom.re.kr ------------------------------ From: Richard Schwarz Subject: Free Wireless Comms Newsletter Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 10:36:17 -0400 Organization: APS Reply-To: aaps@erols.com A free online wireless comms newsletter is now available from SIGTEK at: http://www.sigtek.com/sigtek/Q3_97.html It contains some free downloads and Website reccomends, as well as an article on Multipath fading. You can subscribe to the the newsletter for free by responding to this email with the words WIRELESS SUBSCRIBE in the subject header. Richard Schwarz ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 01:21:36 PDT From: Jim Van Nuland Subject: LD Carrier 10056 -- Any Stories? I received an offer from a long-distance carrier -- 10056 -- that looks very interesting. 10 cents plus 12 or 10 cents/minute for day/evening calls. Within California 9.5 or 6.5/minute plus the 10-cent surcharge. Billing in 6-second increments. No monthly fee or minimum. Noticeably cheaper than my present LCI service, unless the call is rather short. Since I don't make many calls, this seems like a very good deal, unless there are some hidden "features". Has anyone some experience with these folks? The company name is "Qwest Communications" [sic]. Jim Van Nuland, San Jose (California) Astronomical Association ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #219 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 27 08:36:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA23307; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 08:36:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 08:36:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708271236.IAA23307@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #220 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Aug 97 08:36:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 220 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson California Telecom Deregulation and Pay Phones (Tad Cook) Where Do the Free Off-Shore Calls Go? (clintcrg@aol.com) Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem (Paul Bandler) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Payton Chung) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Ken Moselen) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Juha Veijalainen) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Jason Lindquist) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Kathy Kost) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Kate Knill) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: California Telecom Deregulation and Pay Phones Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 11:02:46 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) California Telecom Deregulation May Mean End of 20-Cent Pay Call BY REBECCA SMITH, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, CALIF. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Aug. 24--Say goodbye to one of the last certainties of a tumultuous telephone industry: the 20-cent local pay-phone call. Starting Oct. 7, owners of public pay phones can charge consumers whatever they want for local calls -- defined as those terminating within 12 miles of the caller. Same goes for 411, or local directory- assistance, calls. They must, however, continue to offer free 911 emergency service. Industry-watchers expect prices to jump -- perhaps dramatically -- at many of California's 280,000 pay phones. Some fear price-gouging where vendors have captive customers, such as in airports or shopping centers, as well as in poor neighborhoods. "This will have a tremendous impact on the poor," said John Gamboa of the Greenlining Institute in San Francisco, a consumer advocacy group. "Home-telephone penetration has been falling among the poor, pushing them onto coin phones. Now they'll be open prey for unscrupulous companies." If prices lurch upward or if service declines after Oct. 7, don't blame the California Public Utilities Commission. It fought the order issued in September 1996 by the Federal Communications Commission that deregulates coin rates for nearly 2 million public pay phones nationwide. The 87-page FCC order implemented a congressional directive to remove barriers to "fair compensation" of pay-phone providers "to promote the widespread deployment of pay-phone services to the benefit of the general public." It was intended to unleash competitive ingenuity and address industry complaints that owners weren't being compensated adequately for an explosion in toll-free calling and for local calls. Though it's been an ardent free-market advocate in recent years, the state PUC joined nine other states and asked an appellate court to block the order. The states argued that the federal mandate constituted "an unwarranted pre-emption of state authority" and would obstruct states' efforts to defend the public interest. California particularly worried about people who rely on pay phones for basic phone service. New York officials further cautioned that pay-phone deregulation would be met by "extreme customer reaction and antagonism" -- in other words, phone rage. Nevertheless, an appeals court last month upheld the FCC order. If the experience of states that already have deregulated coin calls means anything, the worst-case scenarios may not materialize. Nebraska took the deregulatory step a decade ago and "there was no real chaos," said John Burvainis, deputy director of the Nebraska Public Service Commission. "Prices," Burvainis said, "settled at 25 cents and we haven't heard `boo' about pay phones in years. The sky didn't fall in." Pay-phone providers haven't announced rate changes for California, but a price of 35 cents pops up frequently in industry discussions. "Thirty-five cents seems tolerable," said Tracie Nutter, executive director of the California Payphone Association. "Anything above that seems less tolerable." Thirty-five cents is the price that has become the norm in the four other Midwestern states that have deregulated local coin rates. Pacific Bell, which has 65 percent of California's pay-phone market with 140,000 units, says consumers want uniform pricing so they won't have to fish for the right change every time they approach a phone booth. "I don't know what we're going to charge," said Tom Weber, head of Pacific Bell's pay-phone business in San Ramon. "But I do know it's highly unlikely we'll charge different prices at different locations." Of course, that still leaves nearly 6,000 other pay-phone providers in California who may choose to follow some other strategy. If California's past experience is any guide, some pay-phone providers will take advantage of their newfound powers to jack up rates dramatically. For a brief period from late 1987 to mid-1990, independent pay-phone providers were allowed to charge whatever they wanted for local calls. The subsequent public outcry prompted a PUC investigation. And, in 1990, independent operators agreed to a settlement that imposed a 20-cent ceiling on local calls of less than 15 minutes. "We have no idea what's going to happen now," said Mary Cooper, a telecommunications specialist for the ratepayer-advocacy division of the PUC. "What's to stop them from charging $1 in locations where they have an exclusive contract, such as airports?" Consumer advocates fear that the deregulation won't benefit anyone but pay-phone providers because the market isn't competitive enough to unleash competitive benefits. Even though Pacific Bell has lost 35 percent of its pay-phone market to competitors, that competition has centered on high-volume locations. For example, MCI won the multimillion-dollar pay-phone contract for the state of California four years ago. AmTel Communications -- now in financial trouble -- won over Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). But instead of offering competing phones, side by side, competition simply has allowed different companies to sew up key locations so consumers still have only one choice when they want to make a call. "The main issue I have with the FCC order is that it pre-empts the ability of states to protect consumers from outrageously high rates, particularly at exclusive locations," said Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action in San Francisco. "It creates an environment that will drive prices up, not down." That's because pay-phone providers split the revenues with site owners, often paying commissions equal to 15 percent or more of the revenues. Buried in the FCC order is another provision that could push prices up: Companies like Pacific Bell are prohibited from subsidizing their pay-phone operations with revenues from other sources. Pay-phone operators say there are many forces that will discourage price increases. The most basic is a desire to be seen as a good company. "We have no plans to raise our rates," said Taylor Ramsey, regional manager for GTE in Bellflower, near Long Beach, operator of 20,000 public pay phones in California. "We want to keep prices low to create brand recognition and loyalty." Site owners who contract with pay-phone providers to install phones care about their image, too, says the president of a national independent pay-phone trade group. Most see pay phones as a service to customers -- not as a profit center to be exploited. "As a pay-phone operator, I'm not going to want to tick off customers who will get mad at a store where I have my phones," said Vince Sandusky, president of the American Public Communications Council in Virginia. "If I make the site owner mad, I may lose the contract the next time around." For its part, the FCC says a growing cellular phone industry should help keep pay-phone prices in line. (Higher-than-average cellular phone rates in California may undercut this as much of a countervailing force, though.) If there's evidence of market abuse, the FCC has said, it will consider amending its order, but on a state-by-state basis. "We expect there will be unique circumstances where there will be market failures," said John Muleta, chief of enforcement for the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau in Washington, D.C. "We're willing to look at data the states provide and tailor individual solutions." It is not clear who will do that monitoring in California. The FCC order, though it usurps some state powers, leaves one potent tool for ensuring pay-phone availability: "public-interest telephones" that can be publicly subsidized. The FCC has instructed the states to develop policies on public-interest pay phones and report back by November 1998. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 00:05:54 -0400 From: clintcrg@aol.com Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Where Do The Free Off-Shore Calls Go? I was recently in Sao Tome (Republica Democratica San Tome and Principe-two small islands off the coast of equitorial West Africa-Country Code 239). Co-incidently, the day before I left I received a spam advertising a "Hot Tub" line at +239 12 9XXXX. While on Sao Tome, population 300,000, I tried dialing 9XXXX. All city lines are 2XXXX, island of Principe 5XXXX, another small town 3XXXX. Of course the 9XXXX call got reorder. Communications with the local telephone operator assured me there were no 9XXXX numbers. +239 12 is the numbering plan for all numbers as there are no city codes. All communications to Sao Tome arrives by a satellite link through Portugal (excellent service). Thus a call to Sao Tome would switch to this satellite in Portugal. Therefore, if the 9XXXX numbers are NOT on the island, where do the calls go? What happens to the billing separations if the call does not route to the true destination? Is this fraud in the ITU plan of separations as I am sure the calls never go to the island? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The same technique is used with calls to certain conference bridges, etc operating in the USA. With the connivance of certain long distance carriers, calls are intercepted at the LD carrier's switch and routed over special circuits to some other place which may or may not be geographically related to the code being dialed. The conference bridge operator is paid for his work in the form of commissions by the LD carrier for the traffic he generates on their network. That's why there is no charge to the user of the service other than normal long distance rates. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul Bandler Subject: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 22:54:03 +0100 Organization: Compass Software Engineering I have a home office with a single phone line shared between my fax, phone/answer machine and dial-out modem on a PC. I would like to know if there is any way I could make a data-call to this line and ensure that it is answered my the modem on my PC as opposed to the fax machine. That is will my fax machine (which I understand listens to all calls and picks them up if it here's the 'right' signal) pick up the call when it hears a modem on the other end, or is there a distinction between fax and ordinary data call hand-shakes? Thanks in anticipation, Paul Bandler ------------------------------ From: paytonc@planetall.remove.com (Payton Chung) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 26 Aug 97 04:58:20 GMT Organization: The Happy Zoo - http://www4.ncstate.edu/eos/users/c/chung/payton George Gilder wrote: > Sprint Spectrum [APC]... plans to join the rest of Sprint PCS as a > CDMA system at 1.9 GHz (when it does, you will notice the superior > acoustics and longer battery life). After getting a new phone, I presume! > With a five year head start, GSM has global coverage (137 countries, I > believe, mostly at 1.8 GHz). Most are at 900 MHz. 1.8 GHz (DCS 1800) service is available in a few European countries but is licensed in China and parts of Southeast Asia. > When the GlobalStar satellite service is launched, CDMA will also > command global coverage. Iridium, ICO, and Globalstar all plan to offer global GSM roaming (that is, beyond the $60 billion in infrastructure already present). However, most of today's wireless users probably won't need to roam to Siberia, much less pay the considerable sum necessary to purchase a MSS-compatible handset, plus the airtime charges. > In an upset, Ericsson -- the leading GSM TDMA exponent -- has > nevertheless now endorsed CDMA for the next generation of data > intensive wireless networks. QED. Not CDMA as in IS-95, but CDMA as incorporated into UMTS. The GSM MoU organization and the UMTS Forum recently signed a cooperation agreement that will make evolution from GSM to UMTS much less frightful than a TDMA->CDMA transition sounds. In any case, UMTS will be heavily based on existing GSM technology. CDMA proponents in the U.S. appear to be winning in their proposal to make cdmaOne the third generation wireless standard. AT&T and BellSouth still want an IS-136 based TDMA standard, which is quite stupid for all involved excepting themselves. It will be interesting to see whether GSM providers in the U.S. "graduate" to cdmaOne or to UMTS -- the latter meaning that the U.S. will have competing wireless technologies well into the future. In any case, the Europe/U.S. incompatibility will be with us for a long while, excepting dual-band UMTS phones. (Payton Chung opines for himself * http://www.mainquad.com/web/paytonc) ------------------------------ From: Ken Moselen Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 08:26:40 +1200 In Issue #218, George Gilder wrote... [...deletia] > However, in all forms, TDMA still suffers from serious problems. Really? I hadn't noticed. (I use GSM-900 here in New Zealand, and I have yet to notice a "serious problem" with it.) If TDMA (and by implication GSM as GSM is a form of TDMA) still has serious problems, why is it in use in over 140 countries, when CDMA is only in use in a handful? [...Brief description of CDMA deleted] > This results in strikingly superior acoustics and dramatically > lower power. I'm afraid the acoustics of the phone service (on digital cellular) owe NOTHING to the air-interface (be it Digital-AMPS, GSM, or CDMA) and everything to the Vocoder; if the standard calls for a not-so-great Vocoder (because that's all that was invented when the standard was written) of course it won't sound as good as the latest whizz-bang Vocoder in the latest whizz-bang standard. [...] > TDM, whether in wire or wireless form, wastes empty time slots > whenever data is scant and drops bits during data bursts. TDMA does not drop bits during data bursts; however it may (depending upon implementation) waste timeslots if it has nothing to transmit. True CDMA is theoretically more efficient, but in practice; TDMA has the larger capacity today; and if you say "but CDMA will improve" the answer is so will TDMA. [Brief reply to who has what in TDMA/CDMA etc.] GSM is the Generic term for all implementations of GSM at any frequency. GSM-900 Used in 140 odd countries excluding North America GSM-1800 Used in many of the GSM-900 countries as capacity expansion. GSM-1900 Used in some North American TDMA implementations IS-95 (CDMA) is used mostly in North America, and a handful of other places. [...] > what is at stake, failing to recognize that CDMA is the compute > intensive system that benefits most from the advance of Moore's > Law and best accommodates computer data. In an upset, Ericsson -- > the leading GSM TDMA exponent -- has nevertheless now endorsed CDMA > for the next generation of data intensive wireless networks. QED. Yes, but all that really says is Ericsson thinks they can make a bit of money off the CDMA market, not that it will be a success or a failure, but simply will make them some money; and besides, no matter what you do, even CDMA is not exempt from Shannon's law. Regards, Ken Moselen CAD Administrator, City Design, Christchurch City Council, PO Box 237, Christchurch, New Zealand. Ken.Moselen@ccc.govt.nz Tel: +64.3.3711708 Fax: +64.3.3711783 Gsm: +64.21.337963 ------------------------------ From: Juha.Veijalainen@iki.fi (Juha Veijalainen) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 01:04:16 +0300 Organization: Jkarhuritarit George Gilder (gg@gilder.com) wrote in : > Kim Brennan writes: >> In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three >> digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. > Not exactly, since GSM is TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). The > distinction you want is between compatible TDMA (IS-136), retrofitted > to US AMPS analog, and incompatible TDMA (mostly GSM in the US). GSM is much more than just the radio interface, which uses TDMA -- a different version from the 'TDMA' in USA. Standards cover many aspects of the network. GSM's version of TDMA is compatible in all other continents than the Americas. AFAIK the press seems to report that GSM technology does not have all the licensing problems CDMA has single source holding main patents, lots of current and pending lawsuits. Technologically the CDMA radio interface looks good, but it has suffered from the initially claimed unrealistic performance figures. Juha Veijalainen, Helsinki, Finland http://www.iki.fi/juhave/ Mielipiteet omiani / Opinions personal, facts suspect ------------------------------ From: linky@see.figure1.net (Jason Lindquist) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 26 Aug 1997 01:05:52 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign An infinite number of monkeys masquerading as Kim Brennan wrote: > In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three > digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. For reference, GSM is a TDMA technology. Several PCS (1900 MHz) carriers in the United States, such as Pacific Bell Mobile Services, are using GSM, selling phones made by Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia. Some use the smart card (commonly referred to as a "SIM card") common to GSM phones sold in Europe, some do not. Qualcomm still has the lion's share of the CDMA handset market in the United States and much of the rest of the world. However, Samsung and Motorola, I believe, have also announced the release of their own CDMA phones, though I have yet to see them here in the States. Samsung I know is definitely selling overseas. > As I recall, TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of > coverage. Many cellular (800 MHz) carriers have been offering TDMA service for some time, based on TIA standard IS-136. This is not GSM, it's a TDMA implementation grafted onto the existing analog cellular system. (Cellular One in Chicago and the San Francisco area are examples.) > CDMA has been getting a lot of the recent attention from the phone > companies and in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it > still (apparently) has some problems. As with any new technology, CDMA systems are having their growing pains, as the major infrastructure vendors (such as Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, and Qualcomm) work out the early problems in their hardware, and the providers troubleshoot and optimize their new networks. Cellular providers adopting CDMA and TDMA have the obvious advantage of already- proven setups, while many PCS carriers, GSM and CDMA both, must solve geographic and RF dilemmas. Remember, as analog cellular grew a decade or more ago, many of the same problems were common. (It's interesting to note that some PCS carriers, such as Sprint PCS in San Diego, have set up miniature cells that hang from cable television lines. Building the well-recognized triangular tower isn't always an option, and it's forced the carriers to be more inventive.) > Both of these phones types operate in the 900Mhz range. Not in the United States. There is spectrum around 800 MHz allocated for two carriers, which has been used for analog systems, and is now being migrated to include digital systems. There is also spectrum allocated around 1900 MHz, divided into six blocks, used by GSM and CDMA (J-STD-008) systems. If there are systems operating ~900 MHz, these are likely SMR (Specialized Mobile Radio) systems, such as those run by Nextel. The original poster was examining a choice between Airtouch PowerBand service (800 MHz CDMA), AT&T Wireless (800 MHz TDMA, 1900 MHz GSM as well?), and Sprint PCS (1900 MHz CDMA). There are two questions that might merit consideration while you shop for service... the technical and the business/political aspects of coverage. At present, 800 MHz phones are dual-mode, meaning they will fall back to analog service when they cannot find their respective digital service. Roaming with a dual-mode 800 MHz phone is just as easy as roaming with the plain analog phone you've had for years. Roaming with 1900 MHz phones is a bit more limited. PCS carriers don't have roaming agreements as robust as the cellular carriers quite yet. (Buy a PrimeCo, Sprint, or PacBell phone, and go to a non-{PrimeCo, Sprint, PacBell} city, and you might be out of luck.) And as PCS networks are still in their infancy, so when you run out of their range, for the moment you might also be without service. The PCS phone manufacturers are beginning to offer dual- and tri- mode phones. Ericsson has a dual-band/tri-mode phone that supports 1900 MHz GSM, 800 MHz TDMA, and 800 MHz analog systems. Qualcomm has announced a dual-band/dual-mode phone that will support 1900 MHz CDMA and can fall back to 800 MHz analog cellular. Jason A. Lindquist linky@see.figure1.net ========================NOTE============================ Senders of unsolicited commercial/propaganda e-mail subject to fees. Details at http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/jlindqui ------------------------------ From: kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 26 Aug 1997 18:38:23 GMT Organization: Intermec, Inc. Hello everybody, I just wanted to publicly thank everyone who answered my questions on the subject of Digital services. I now know a *whole lot* more than I did before and in some ways it made my decision more difficult because I could see all the various permutations! I ended up going with AT&T's TDMA service, using a Nokia 2160 phone and I fully realize that the voice quality won't be up to CDMA and/or GSM. AirTouch in the Seattle area was my first choice because they have CDMA and analog in all of Washington State, but the idiots wanted a one year contract, which none of the other telecom companies wanted. Sprint PCS seemed good, but unless you stayed along the I-5 corridor, you wouldn't get any service which was unacceptable to me. AT&T, until this weekend, didn't have any rates that were competitive and so I was actually considering the one year AirTouch contract. Turns out that over the weekend, AT&T came up with a plan for existing customers only to get 600 minutes airtime for $50/month, and that includes paging/alpha-numeric to your phone. The deal is good for a year, but you have no yearly contract. So, even though I consider the AT&T technology behind the times and CDMA (as well as GSM) far more interesting technically, right now I need connectivity more than voice quality. Either way I had to invest $200 in a phone, and without a yearly contract, that's really the worst of my risk. I also have a hard time believing that AT&T will remain behind the times for long, so hopefully they'll come up with some better voice decoder technology sooner than later. For now I'll sit back and see what happens in the future months and at some point in my life will think about changing again. Thanks again for all the help. Kathy ------------------------------ From: Kate Knill Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 11:11:47 -0700 Organization: Nuance Communications Kathy Kost wrote: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? As mentioned by others the PCS services are TDMA. PCS was originally intended to signify 1900MHz operation, but is now used for both that and 900MHz. > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) IMHO, in terms of speech quality I would rate the 3 digital systems as: 1. CDMA - the 13kHz vocoder system sounds excellent, I believe there are some 8kHz vocoder systems (e.g. LA) which will have worse quality; 2. 1900Mhz GSM/PCS - suffers inside buildings from more dropouts; 3. TDMA (IS-136) - by far and away the worst. Coverage: 1. TDMA; 2. CDMA - combined with analog beats GSM but GSM may have wider digital coverage; 3. GSM/PCS. Extra features: 1. GSM/PCS 2. TDMA PCS 3. CDMA TDMA is the oldest technology so has the best coverage. For both TDMA and CDMA you should be able to get dual analog-digital phones. So the overall phone coverage is the same, you just won't get as opportunites for digital service features with a CDMA phone. Triple-mode GSM phones are supposed to be coming - actually Ericcson at least are advertising them on their webpages. This field is developing very quickly with new cells and phones being launched all the time. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. The Nokia 2180 is a dual-mode CDMA/AMPS phone. Couldn't find a CDMA phone on the Ericcson website. (see http://www.nokia.com/americas/phones/index.html for Nokia phones) (see http://phones.ericsson.se/phones/eridigph.html for Ericcson phones). Hope this helps. Kate Knill Phone: +1 650-614-8284 Nuance Communications Fax: +1 650-462-8201 333 Ravenswood Ave., Bldg. 110 Menlo Park, California 94025. E-mail: remove nospam from above ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #220 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 27 09:28:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA26005; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:28:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:28:02 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708271328.JAA26005@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #221 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Aug 97 09:28:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 221 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Ryan Tucker) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (msof@sprynet.com) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Boyd Roberts) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Chris Boone) Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? (Dale Botkin) Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? (Will Pierce) Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame (Oren Minzer) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Barton F. Bruce) Re: "Ground Start" Lines (Chris Boone) Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID (Bill Newkirk) Re: Sprint PCS Overloaded in Florida (Ron Kritzman) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: rtucker@billgates.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 25 Aug 1997 19:00:48 GMT Organization: TTGCITN Communications, Des Moines, Iowa (www.ttgcitn.com) On Sun, 24 Aug 1997 03:31:56 -0400, George Gilder was possessed to write: > Not exactly, since GSM is TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access). The > distinction you want is between compatible TDMA (IS-136), retrofitted > to US AMPS analog, and incompatible TDMA (mostly GSM in the US). GSM is also a set of standard features and protocols, which is it's biggest gain. The thing that drew me to VoiceStream (a GSM provider owned by Western Wireless) is the standard nature of GSM. The technology has had quite a while to mature, and shows it. When VoiceStream first launched here (2 days after I renewed my year-long Airtouch contract, oddly enough -- that was a fun battle), it worked, and had all the features you'd expect. Two way alphanumeric paging, voicemail, caller ID, fairly good quality (i.e. better than Airtouch), etc. From what I've heard from the Sprint PCS side, they're just now getting voicemail -- for me, that would be intolerable. I don't know the status of alphanumeric paging either, but that was another major draw. For me, the dream system would be GSM over CDMA. While I love the clarity and quality of CDMA, I couldn't live without the features of GSM. Running those two protocols together would be most excellent :-) -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ UIN: 1976881 finger rtucker at ttgcitn.com for PGP pub key/contactinfo Attention Usenet Shoppers: Remove Satan from address to reply. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now Ryan, that very last line was quite snide, and not at all necessary! Funny though ...:) PAT] ------------------------------ From: msof@sprynet.com Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 23:42:24 -0700 Organization: Sprynet News Service All you people just ignore that the average consumer couldn't care less about technology. He or she wants a small phone with a good battery life and a low monthly subscription cost. GSM's handset are still at least one generation ahead of CDMA. Sprint's service sucks. This is really what counts at the moment. Michael [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Michael, what we have on this list are not 'average consumers'; they are 'average geeks' maybe ... but you are correct that like so much on the market which is telephonically related, the companies involved will sell much of their stuff based on hype and the theory that the public could care less as long as they can communicate with some reliability. The best prices and best customer service will probably prevail. PAT] ------------------------------ From: boyd@france3.fr (Boyd Roberts) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 27 Aug 1997 12:46:34 GMT Organization: France 3 In article , kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) writes: > Kathy Kost inquires: > Both of these phones types operate in > the 900Mhz range. GSM, which is the European standard, is just getting > off the ground in the states. Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with > Spring PCS) uses GSM technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe > uses 1.9 Ghz). The coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the > other two. GSM normally operates on 900 Mhz. It's DCS 1800 which operates on 1.8Ghz. Boyd Roberts UTM N 31 447109 5411310 ``Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.'' -- rob This week's Spam Address Troll (SPAT): mraction@mail.connectcorp.net ------------------------------ From: Christopher W. Boone Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:01:39 -0500 Organization: ABC Radio Networks Engineering Dept Dallas TX Reply-To: cboone@earthlink.net Kathy Kost wrote: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? AT&T is TDMA in the 800 Mhz cellular band...they have NO 2Ghz PCS operations that I know of ... Sprint is CDMA nationwide, so is PrimeCo and both are 2Ghz but their service territories are not as vast as AT&T for now (and in some places we call it AT&T Worthless!) > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) TDMA has a longer delay in the transmission for the audio. CDMA is faster and cleaner audio (TDMA has a "underwater" sound, even DJs at radio stations here in Dallas can pick up on it). TDMA requires less RF bandwidth for the same number of channel so they (AT&T) can operate it in the 800 cellular band (at the cost of analog channels!). CDMA is wideband and requires ther 2Ghz PCS spectrum. Yes, eventually CDMA 2Ghz PCS will have the coverage 800Mhz cell and TDMA have, but it will take time. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. I dont think Sony is the only one right now. > From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine > state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems > to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about > outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, > regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology > but any advice would be appreciated. Depends on how far you intend to use it. IF you want quality audio, CDMA is the way to go; if you want coverage everywhere, TDMA is it for now but eventually CDMA will catch up. Kim Brennan wrote: > In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three > digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. As I recall, > TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of coverage. CDMA has > been getting a lot of the recent attention from the phone companies > and in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it still > (apparently) has some problems. Both of these phones types operate in > the 900Mhz range. GSM, which is the European standard, is just getting To my knowledge, CDMA is not used in the 800-900 Mhz range. TDMA is the preferred choice there because of the bandwidth limititations of both modes and the lack of channels in the 800-900 Mhz cellular band (where AT&T TDMA operates). > off the ground in the states. Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with > Spring PCS) uses GSM technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe > uses 1.9 Ghz). The coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the > other two. CDMA is the leader right now in the 2Ghz PCS range; eventually GSM may take over. ------------------------------ From: dbotkin@elwood.probe.net (Dale Botkin) Subject: Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? Date: 27 Aug 1997 04:31:09 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Inc. Eric Florack (Eric_Florack@xn.xerox.com) wrote: > Question: Do most ISP's allow this kind of connection via modem? Do > ANY? Being that I run an ISP, I can aswer for one, anyway. I have tested this, and it does work IF the ISP's equipment properly handles it. I had two modems chattering for several hours at 52.8K total (thanks, U S Worst). Will we allow it for all of our users? Doubtful. Why? Well, first off, we'd have to charge more, since you'd be using two modem lines (big issue) and twice the bandwidth (very small issue, really). That's all well and good UNTIL you're paying extra and can't get the second line up, or whatever other reason you might have for feeling you weren't getting your money's worth. Add to this the fact that about .5% of average users are capable of making it work but 20% would want to try it, and 50% would call asking for all the details ... you get the picture. My tech support crew would be burning me in effigy before the weekend. Also, we run several access servers. The Ascend Max 400x we use will do stacking and allow MPP connections spread over multiple boxes, but at a heavy price in complexity, stability, and Ethernet traffic. Not worth it for the very, very small number of customers who would actually use it. We will, however, make arrangements for the occasional business customer who wants to do it on a dedicated basis. The cost would rapidly approach ISDN -- assuming you can pry a working BRI out of U S Worst in this area. Dale Botkin, President | Voice: (402) 593-9800 Probe Technology Inc. | FAX: (402) 593-8748 Omaha, NE | Email: dbotkin@probe.net ------------------------------ From: willp@nova.dreamscape.com (Will Pierce) Subject: Re: Two Dialups Supported Under 95? Date: 27 Aug 1997 06:00:01 GMT Organization: Dreamscape Online, LLC. Eric Florack (Eric_Florack@xn.xerox.com) wrote: > I'm starting to hear some low-level static about the ISDN accelerator > package that MS is allowing us to download. Sure, this is called multilink PPP. It's been in routers for ages, but now MS has it. > What I'm hearing is rather striking. It will allow two dialups lines > of whatever speed on the same computer, to be dialed into the same > source, thereby allowing you to double your throughput ... assuming of > course you've got a computer with a bus mouse and the ability to put > modems on both ports. This would be consistant with what I know of > ISDN lines, and the way they work in individual channels. I wasn't > aware the package would allow it with modem channels, though. I guess > the driver is written on the basis is a connection is a connection > ... (parts is parts, etc) > Question: Do most ISP's allow this kind of connection via modem? Do > ANY? Sure, not many though. Usually you pay extra (if not always). > If so, this may be an answer to my customers who don't have ISDN > available at reasonable cost in their area. IE; two dialups are > cheaper than an ISDN line and assuming two 56k connections, or even > two 33.6 connections, the throughput gains would make the moderate > added cost of the added line worthwhile. Comments? Look into ascend Maxes -- they can do multilink PPP across multiple Maxes. www.ascend.com The max 4048 is probably what you want. Will Pierce System Administrator Dreamscape Online, LLC. willp@dreamscape.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Aug 97 10:49:01 -0500 From: Oren Minzer Organization: eci Subject: Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame > According to Sprint, they sell and route virtual circuits based on > "port speed"; if you buy a 56K port from them, you'll get 56K from > first bit to last. > Also according to Sprint, MCI and AT&T's frame connection are routed > based on committed information rate. They tell me that this involves > starting out at 16kbps and then "throttling up" to the CIR (e.g. 56k). In frame relay, there are two factors: Port Speed - determines the *maximum* rate in which you can transmit CIR - determines the *minimum* rate which the service provider commits to carry, even at times of congestion in the network. You can even have a service contract with CIR=0. Depending on the service provider, smaller CIR usually costs less, even when port speed stays the same. When CIR equals port speed (as it seems Sprint are touting), you actually pay for the maximum information rate *all the time*. > So a couple of questions: is this true? And, does it really matter? > I'm planning a network that is going to be pure FTP (file transfers); > the files are about 2MByte in size, and will be coming into a central > location from 20 satellite locations. The software will send a file as > soon as it's ready to go, so I'm going to have an on/off kind of line > utilization. I'm worrying that if the "throttling" that Sprint is > talking about (with MCI) takes a significant amount of bits per file > transfer, that my effective throughput will be diminished. It seems as if your needs are indeed a bursty service, and so I would guess that a CIR which is lower than port speed would be more cost-effective to you. Of course, if your file transfers are time-critical, and you cannot afford to wait some because of congestion, than paying more would probably be best. > Finally, can anyone give me pointers to materials (books, URL's, > magazine articles) that help debunk and demystify frame relay > salesspeak? Try http://www.techguide.com/comm/index.html You need to register (for free), and then you can download technology guides (in PDF format) which are quite good. There is a "Frame Relay Service" guide, which though sponsored by AT&T could shed some light on this matter. Good luck, Oren Minzer ECI Telecom ------------------------------ From: bruce@eisner.decus.org (Barton F. Bruce) Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Lines Organization: CentNet, Inc. Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 21:41:33 GMT In article , tsw@cagent.com (Tom Watson) writes: > When the central office starts the line, they apply ground to the TIP > conductor, and the station equipment responds with ground on the RING > conductor (usually thru the loop of the station) to answer the phone. Well, the station (PBX) equipment responds that way when it chooses to answer the call, but in the interim that ground is a flag to the PBX that the CO has siezed the trunk and so this trunk should NOT be used for a dial-9 outbound call at this instant. The actual incoming ring might not happen for 4 seconds on older exchanges where the previous ring cycle had just ended. Also, if the PBX hangs up first on one call, no new outbound call will ever accidentally connect to that trunk that may still be connected to some remote place if the PBX waits for the ground to dissappear on TIP before trying another outbound seizure on that trunk. And a good PBX will also notice if a trunk does NOT return the TIP ground when it seizes the trunk for an outbound call and will drop it and try another trunk. Several such seizure failures should raise a minor alarm and possibly force that trunk to be ignored for subsequent outbound use until reset or until an incoming call on it indicates it is worth trying again. All the things a normal PBX just does that a key system doesn't. ------------------------------ From: Christopher W. Boone Subject: Re: "Ground Start" Circuits Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:10:11 -0500 Organization: ABC Radio Networks Engineering Dept Dallas, TX Reply-To: cboone@earthlink.net rocourtney@worldnet.att.net wrote: > One reason long distance carriers use ground start on incoming trunks > is to force customer equipment to disconnect when caller hangs up > (especially if caller was on eternity HOLD). You will notice this if > you place a volt meter across holding line. Voltage drops shortly > after caller hangs up. Actaully, the use of Ground Start trunks was started to prevent "glare" on outbound calls. Loop start lines have no signaling on inbound calls other than the ring voltage. If a PBX grabs a loop start line before the ring voltage appears, it can answer the call prematurely causing confusion and hangups. The Ground Start trunk puts PERM on the line (taking Tip to DC Gnd); this causes the PBX to IGNORE this trunk for any outbound calls. BTW the Calling Party disConnect signal (know as CPC or other terms) can provide a hangup signal on loop start trunks. The Loop VOLTAGE is broken (about 300ms max) so the equipment on the called end can see the loss of voltage entirely and hang up (also works on loop current). ------------------------------ From: Bill Newkirk Subject: Re: Texas Leads Nation in Caller ID Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 17:04:58 -0400 Organization: Rockwell Collins, Inc. Reply-To: wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com I don't have the name handy, but I believe he's been on The John Boy and Billy Big Show (www.thebigshow.com). They might have a listing for it. Absolutely devastating -- wish I was this fast. He gets a call from one of the cop associations, picks up the phone, makes a sound like inhaling a joint, starts arguing with his wife about sending the kid to the convienence store to buy beer. Phone solicitor tries to back out and makes a comment that it's bad to send an underage kid to buy beer ... "You Tryin' To Tell Me How To Raise My Kid??!!" Bill Newkirk Collins General Aviation Division Publications Department Rockwell Collins, Inc., Melbourne Florida wenewkir@collins.rockwell.com ------------------------------ From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Sprint PCS Overloaded in Florida Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 23:39:56 -0500 Organization: Kritzman Communications Tad Cook wrote: > ....To attract customers, Sprint recently began a > promotional deal offering new customers 1,500 minutes a month of > calling time for a flat monthly $75 fee for two years.... > The rate amounts to five cents a minute for wireless calling, > substantially less than the 35 cents to 40 cents a minute typically > paid by cellular telephone customers. > "The demand for service has been tremendous," says Dan Olmetti, Sprint > PCS' area vice president. "It's exceeded our expectations in this > market.... In the words of Homer Simpson, "DOH!" You think they figured out something that the rest of us didn't already know? Where's my megaphone? Listen up, wireless guys, the public is screaming at you loud and clear: Forget the caller ID, the three way calling, the voicemail, the voice dial, the key chains, the sports logo carrying cases and the cute little newsletter stuffed in with the bill. If giving up any of those things will lower the cost per minute of using your product, THAT is the deal we want for our wireless service. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #221 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 27 21:22:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA11817; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 21:22:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 21:22:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708280122.VAA11817@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #222 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Aug 97 21:22:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 222 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Modems for Dummies" by Rathbone (Rob Slade) Clinton Goes Toll Free (Judith Oppenheimer) Casual Calling is Dead (73115.1041@compuserve.com) Australian GSM - an Outsider's Observations (Peter Simpson) SL-1 Message Waiting Indicator? (Jon Gauthier) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Randall H. Smith) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Craig Macbride) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 27 Aug 1997 10:26:40 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Modems for Dummies" by Rathbone BKMDMDUM.RVW 950127 "Modems for Dummies", Rathbone, 1993, 1-56884-223-6, U$19.99/C$26.99/UK#18.99 %A Tina Rathbone 76004.3267@compuserve.com tinotin@aol.com rathbone@cerf.net %C 155 Bovet Road, Suite 310, San Mateo, CA 94402 %D 1994 %G 1-56884-223-6 %I IDG Books Worldwide, Inc. %O U$19.99/C$26.99/UK#18.99 415-312-0650 fax: 415-286-2740 %P 463 %T "Modems for Dummies" For those who are not reading this online, trust me. An almost iron-clad, gold plated, guaranteed way to turn your local computer guru into a mumbling idiot is to give him or her a modem to set up. Computer communications is extremely easy -- on the second call. (Even then, I'm not so sure. A friend calls the same BBS I do and uses the same settings I do. My messages go out OK using the word wrap on the editor, his have to have a carriage return at the end of every line. Then, there is the national public data network that we have here in Canada. I have to give my high tech modem a forty character command to convince it to act brain damaged in order to use it as all. Even then, the flow control doesn't work (Ceterum censeo Datapac delendam esse). All of this is to say that I have only the best wishes towards those who try to explain modems in simple terms. You cannot simply explain modems; you also have to talk about telephone service, telephone jacks, serial cables, serial connectors, conflicts and communications software. And that is only to test and see if the modem is working. The installation and setup is the hardest part: usage is relatively easy. Thus, parts one and two of Rathbone's work are somewhat disappointing. Only relatively speaking: it is easily as good as anything by, say, Baaks (BKPRTCOM.RVW, BKMDMREF.RVW) or Pournelle (BKPCCOMB.RVW). (It is also a lot more fun: at least we will assume that you will find bad puns amusing when you are banging your head about installing software.) Organization of presentation is critical with newcomers. Rathbone has organized the material, but, in spite of extensive efforts to make this a non- technical manual, the design is best understood by those who already understand data communications. This fits in with the statement in the Introduction that this book is a reference, but neophytes don't need a reference. They need either a tutorial or a cookbook. Part three is substantially better. An overview of whom to call, it has excellent comparative coverage of Prodigy, CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie. Delphi fares worse, being lumped in with MCI Mail and other specialized also-rans. Rathbone's presentation is substantially better balanced than other works, though, with the inclusion of discussions of BBSes and the Internet. Rathbone's initial hostility to the Internet seems to have abated. Part four gives some very helpful troubleshooting lists organized by symptom. In conjunction with parts one and two, and a section from the BBS chapter, there is likely more material altogether than in other books. However, without the more practical organization of Gianone's "Using MS-DOS Kermit" (BKUMSKMT.RVW) or LeVitus and Ihnatko's "Dr. Macintosh's Guide to the Online Universe" (BKDMBTOU.RVW), this may not be of much help to the beginning user. One very good point, though, is the lack of system bias. Rathbone covers both Mac and MS-DOS specific points without denigrating one or the other. (A passing comment on the cartoons in the "...For Dummies" series. These seem to be assigned by the publisher rather than the individual authors. They also indicate a strong commitment to recycling on the part of IDG. May of the cartoons reappear in different books, with minor modifications to either the captions or elements of the pictures. There also doesn't seem to be much thought to matching cartoon to content: a picture of an evil looking djinn arising out of the smoke from a monitor which has obviously been rubbed the wrong way introduces not the chapter on GEnie but "other guys.") For the novice, one would still have to recommend Gianone or LeVitus and Ihnatko in order to get the best chance for connection. Rathbone, however, is still a good work for an overview of where to call once you have "OK" to your "AT". copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994, 1995 BKMDMDUM.RVW 950127 roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke http://www2.gdi.net/~padgett/trial.htm ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Subject: Clinton Goes Toll Free Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 15:16:46 -0400 Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Toll-free hot lines and Internet sites ``are the ways that Americans communicate these days, how they get information about the things they care about,'' White House spokesman Barry Toiv said. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19970827/V000184-082797-idx.html Clinton Prods With Number Pitches By Sandra Sobieraj Associated Press Writer Wednesday, August 27, 1997; 1:50 a.m. EDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton wasn't hawking collectible ceramic kittens or cubic zirconia pendants. Still, he seemed a bit embarrassed as he assured his audience: ``We have a toll-free number. It's 1-888-USA-JOB1.'' Under Clinton, the presidential bully pulpit can resonate like the Home Shopping Channel, with speeches increasingly laced with references to toll-free hot lines and Internet sites. Three times during a recent speech in St. Louis, Clinton repeated the 1-888 phone number for businesses interested in hiring welfare recipients. He then confessed with a self-conscious chuckle: ``I feel like I'm hawking something on one of those channels on television.'' One faction of White House officials argues that it's an effective communications ploy in keeping with changing technology. Other aides -- and some historians -- wince. ``It too heavily smacks of hucksterism,'' said Stephen Hess, presidential scholar with the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank. ``He's not promoting widgets but he's using the same technique and it's a cheapening technique,'' Hess said. ``He should break himself of it if that's not part of the legacy he wants to leave.'' As Miami businessmen are being investigated for a pyramid scheme that used the president's photo to help advertise home necklace-making kits, Clinton's own promotional ventures -- no matter how worthy the cause -- raise eyebrows. At least three top White House aides have privately grumbled that it's tacky and have tried to excise the references from Clinton's speeches. Four days after the St. Louis speech, Clinton was at it again, prodding parents in his weekly radio address to call an 800 number for Education Department information on scholarship programs and new tuition tax breaks. It worked: That weekend, Education officials answered 1,900 calls -- 13 times the average weekend volume. The welfare-to-work hot line took 400 calls, or quadruple the daily average, on the day of Clinton's St. Louis speech. Toll-free hot lines and Internet sites ``are the ways that Americans communicate these days, how they get information about the things they care about,'' White House spokesman Barry Toiv said. ``When it's appropriate -- and only when it's appropriate -- the president can do a better job than anybody else of publicizing that.'' Republican media consultant Alex Castellanos saluted, in general, the strategy of inviting people to contact officials. ``It's another way to say that we listen to you,'' Castellanos said. But, he added, it demeans the office of the president. ``To drag the presidency any lower, he'd have to do the limbo,'' Castellanos said. As uncomfortable as Clinton sounds slipping into pitchman mode, his mere willingness to make the pitch surprises some longtime aides. Veterans of his 1992 campaign remember how, despite staff-level commitments to have the would-be president hawk a fund-raising hot line for state Democratic parties, Clinton refused. Rival candidates Jerry Brown and Ross Perot -- neither of whom Clinton considered role models for a serious campaign -- were spouting their own toll-free phone numbers at the time. Without Clinton's cooperation, Democratic National Committee officials made a game of printing the number on banners and placards, and offering prizes to staffers if the number showed up in news footage from Clinton campaign stops. But then, Clinton only had eyes for the White House. These days, he looks beyond. Advertising an Internet link for information on celebrations of the upcoming millennium, Clinton joked to an audience at the National Archives: ``I decided that I have a future giving out 800 numbers and Web sites.'' ICB TOLL FREE (800/888) News. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com. (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 The Expert. 800/888 Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com "The great advantage [the telephone] possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus [is] that it requires no skill to operate the instrument." Alexander Graham Bell, 1878, foretelling the success 100 years later, of the U.S. toll free industry and 800 marketing. ------------------------------ From: 73115.1041@NONONOcompuserve.com Subject: Casual Calling is Dead Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:13:36 GMT Recently, I moved from one location to another. I kept the same phone number and long distance carrier. Unfortunately, US West decided to notify SPRINT that I was disconnecting service completely, hence SPRINT dropped my direct "plan" billing. US West was kind enough to bill me for "casual" calls, still via SPRINT. What a difference in rates! A one minute interstate daytime call was $1.60 A four minute interstate evening call was $2.06 A one minute interstate night call was $1.46 It appears that SPRINT is charging the equivilent of a calling card surcharge of approximately $1.00 for every call on top of rates that are double their infamous "dime a minute." Note that these were not 10XXX calls. The line was PIC'd to SPRINT and the calls were made 1+. If the comments made by others that 60% or more of the country is not on a "plan" are true, no wonder the IECs are pulling in the money. BTW, a call to SPRINT got them to agree to rerate the calls I made, so I don't have any complaints about my situation. I'm sure that the other majors do the same thing. It appears that they have found a way to make casual calling uneconomic for the caller by forcing you to sign up for a plan. Ken 73115.1041@compuserve.com ------------------------------ From: Peter_Simpson@3com.com (Peter Simpson) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 09:27:32 -0400 Subject: Australian GSM - an Outsider's Observations I just returned from a visit (holiday) to Australia. One observation I made was that almost everyone had a small handheld cellphone hanging from their waistband. And they were using them quite freely! The most prevalent style was the "TV remote control" flat unit, with Ericsson and Japanese vendors. I asked a few people I met how the Australian system worked. Specifically, I wondered what made the Australian cellphones so popular. I discovered that, aside from one technical issue, the difference between the Australian system and the US system appears to be one of how the system is administered. First of all, mobile phones have a special "area code". For some reason, this is seen as a "bad idea" by the US cellular regulators and/or vendors. It does seem to have benefits in Australia, however. The major technical difference is that *no matter where you are* in Australia, if your supplier (there are three, with Telstra, the former government telephone monopoly and Optus, a private company, being the major ones) has coverage there, you have service, *and* you are reachable by anyone dialling your cellphone number. That's right! No roaming! Anywhere you have service, you can be reached without any "extra" steps. No roaming, no fraud prevention, no hoops to jump through. What a concept! My friend, from Western Austalia, actually got a call from Sydney, offering him a job, as he was walking with me in a small town in northern Queensland. The caller had no idea where we were until my friend told him. According to my informant, the billing works a bit differently, too. He said that he wasn't charged "airtime" on incoming calls. He told me that there is a concept of "local calls" which means that wherever he is when he makes a cellular call, if the destination is within a certain distance of where he is located, the call is billed as a "local" call. Makes sense to me. I guess the lesson here is that if you build a system that's easy to use, sensibly priced, and seamless, people will flock to it. The differences between the system I saw in use in Australia and the system in the US (which I do not use) are so remarkable, that I thought Telecom readers might be interested. I also visited a pub in the small town of Peeramon, which had a wall full of antique telephone sets. I took a photo which I can scan and forward if anyone's interested. Peter Simpson 3Com Corp ------------------------------ From: Jon Gauthier Subject: SL-1 Message Waiting Indicator? Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:16:49 -0400 Organization: Just Me! Reply-To: jgauthier01@nospam.snet.net What method does the Nortel SL-1 PBX use to light the message waiting indicator in an analog phone (hotel/motel scenario)? I've got to connect some phones through an intelligent channel bank connected to the SL-1 via HDSL lines, and need to know what line card to use. I'm at home now, and I don't remember the specific model of phone, but I think it does use the second pair to power the light. Yeah, it is kinda old! I've been told that AT&T's Definity PBX (now Lucent) used a tone on the first pair to light the indicator, not requiring the second pair. If you have any ideas, email me at jon.gauthier@gdc.com. Thanks, Jon Gauthier General Datacomm, Inc. http://www.gdc.com ------------------------------ From: smithrh@cig.mot.com (Randall H. Smith) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 27 Aug 1997 19:56:49 GMT Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group In article , Christopher W. Boone writes: > Kathy Kost wrote: >> 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. >> Is that correct? > AT&T is TDMA in the 800 Mhz cellular band...they have NO 2Ghz PCS > operations that I know of ... Are you _sure_ of this? :^) > Sprint is CDMA nationwide, so is PrimeCo > and both are 2Ghz but their service territories are not as vast as > AT&T for now (and in some places we call it AT&T Worthless!) >> 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that >> Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the >> service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine >> this would change (?) Yup, the coverage area is spreading (pun intended) every day! > TDMA requires less > RF bandwidth for the same number of channel so they (AT&T) can operate > it in the 800 cellular band (at the cost of analog channels!). Uh, in a word, no. Actually, CDMA has far better capacity than TDMA ... did you mean that the RF channel width is less for TDMA; if so, that's true. > CDMA is wideband and requires ther 2Ghz PCS spectrum. CDMA has _no_ frequency band requirements; it's operating around the world in all sorts of bands, including 800 MHz, 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 Ghz. It _is_ wideband, true. But this doesn't mean that it can't be deployed in a Analog system (in fact, when it was developed, I don't think the PCS idea was around yet, CDMA was thusly developed to drop into an Analog system). >> 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they >> sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or >> reality? There _are_ other manufacturers, but Sony/Qualcomm leads the pack right now. Samsung is an option for Sprint... >> AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that >> they're using TDMA and a different service. Yes, this is the case. > Kim Brennan wrote: >> In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three >> digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. As I recall, >> TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of coverage. CDMA has >> been getting a lot of the recent attention from the phone companies >> and in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it still >> (apparently) has some problems. Both of these phones types operate in >> the 900Mhz range. GSM, which is the European standard, is just getting There are two types of "air interface" (the digitation and vocoding techniques used to transmit the signal): TDMA and CDMA. GSM is a type of TDMA. > To my knowledge, CDMA is not used in the 800-900 Mhz range. TDMA is the > preferred choice there because of the bandwidth limititations of both > modes and the lack of channels in the 800-900 Mhz cellular band (where > AT&T TDMA operates). CDMA is _certainly_ used in the 800-900 Mhz range, ask AirTouch! Again, are you _really_ _really_ sure that AT&T is in the 800 MHz cellular band? :^) >> off the ground in the states. Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with >> Spring PCS) uses GSM technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe >> uses 1.9 Ghz). The coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the >> other two. > CDMA is the leader right now in the 2Ghz PCS range; eventually GSM may > take over. Folks, what "GSM" is is a _specification_ for an entire *TDMA* network, including the base stations, mobile stations, switch and other adjunct products. Right now there's a lot of effort in GSM-land to see if perhaps the spec should be expanded to include a CDMA air interface to the network. It could be argued that the GSM spec is getting a _bit_ old (mature?) and doesn't take into account new technologies now available; CDMA has some serious momentum behind it at this point, especially with Japan selecting CDMA as it's next generation of digital cellular after PDC. (Lots of subs over there!) For more CDMA info, check out http://www.cdg.org. Randall H. Smith Motorola, Inc. smithrh@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Product Information Group Digital Systems Division x2-7707 Arlington Heights, IL USA ------------------------------ From: craig@rmit.EDU.AU (Craig Macbride) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 27 Aug 1997 18:42:24 GMT Organization: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. George Gilder writes: > However, in all forms, TDMA still suffers from serious problems. Really? GSM seems to work fine in Australia and Europe and ... well, all over the world, actually. CDMA may be a nicer technology, but there will always be nicer technologies coming along, and somewhere you either draw the line, or have an expensive plethora of competing standards churning over. > CDMA currently prevails in South Korea, where I last week examined the > system in Seoul, with some two million users the most heavily loaded > cellular system in the world. CDMA also thrives in Hong Kong, where it > outperforms GSM head to head with half as many base stations. CDMA has > recently been endorsed in Japan for its next generation service. That makes three countries. Rather a late run by CDMA, I'm afraid. Last time I saw figures mentioned here (Volume 17, Issue 44), in Feb, kk@iki.fi (Kimmo Ketolainen) quoted penetration rates late last year of 28.09% in Finland, 27.81% in Sweden, 26.75% in Norway, Australia almost 28%, United States at 17% and Japan near with 15 %. No doubt the number of mobile phones has only gone up, and the countries saturated with GSM equipment, the ones with the high ownership numbers, are hardly likely to give it up quickly. Better standards for TV have been around for a long time than NTSC, but the US is slow to make any changes. Unfortunately for all users, it looks like the US will end up as a mass of different competing cellular standards, while the rest of the world uses GSM and maybe slowly heads towards a CDMA technology over time. Craig Macbride URL: http://www.bf.rmit.edu.au/~craigm Carla: "Yes, Captain, destiny is calling." Kremmen: "Tell them I'll call them back." ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #222 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 27 22:25:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA15427; Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:25:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:25:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708280225.WAA15427@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #223 TELECOM Digest Wed, 27 Aug 97 22:25:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 223 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Dave Levenson) CBTA Conference/TeleCon Trade Show, Toronto, Sep 15-18 1997 (Nigel Allen) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Bill Sohl) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Alan Boritz) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Marty Bose) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Scott Townley) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Tim Russell) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (John R. Covert) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Dan J. Declerck) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Henry Baker) CDMA, TDMA & GSM (Robert Walker) Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? (Kevin R. Ray) Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? (Jeffrey Rhodes) New Wireless Reality Seminar (Jerry Kaufman) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 20:55:38 EDT From: Dave Levenson Organization: Westmark, Inc. Reply-To: dave@westmark.com We've all experienced or heard of large telephone bills for calls to 900 numbers. Many of these are billed by Integretel. When I saw their name show up on a bill from Bell Atlantic, I studied the bill very carefully. There was a charge for a 900 number operated by Capital Gains (d/b/a Psychic Power Connection) and billed by Integretel. The bill showed a one-minute call placed a midnight to their 900 number. The telephone to which this call was billed is a COCOT which is programmed to block calls to 900 numbers. The COCOT also keeps a record of the numbers dialed -- and no call was placed at midnight on the date of the call. Clip-on fraud? No physical evidence of it, and the line for this installation is well-protected by conduit, located well above a normal person's reach, and on a busy street. I called Integretel and requested credit for the call. They granted it. I also asked them if they pay attention to the class-of-service indicator they get with the ANI-spill, which for this line indicates a payphone. The Integretel agent explained to me that in this case, the caller had dialed an 800 number, probably some other date of the same month, and probably not at midnight, and "that's just the way we bill it". Credit was issued. I thought the matter was closed. A month later, another call to the same 900 number appeared on the bill -- also at midnight, and on the last business day of the month. Again there was no call-detail record that matched the date and time. This time, when I called Integretel, I learned something new. The 800 number which had been called the previous month can, apparently, subject the originating number to a recurring monthly charge. This charge is billed by Integretel, and appears on the customer's LEC bill as a single call to a 900 number, dated the last working day of the month, and time-stamped at midnight. Integretel says they will cancel the recurring charge (but it will take them up to six weeks) and issue additional credits for any months they billed, but before they can do that, I'll have to call them again, next Wednesday, at 8:00 AM EDT. Isn't it great? They allow their customer to convert an 800 call into a recurring monthly 900 call, then admit that they owe me credit when somebody does it to my line without my authorization, and then insist that I call them again at their convenience to allow them to arrange credit! Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. Voice: 908 647 0900 Web: http://www.westmark.com Stirling, NJ, USA Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 00:30:28 -0400 From: ndallen@interlog.com (Nigel Allen) Subject: CBTA Conference/TeleCon Trade Show, Toronto, Sep. 15-18 1997 Digest readers in the greater Toronto area may want to attend the Canadian Business Telecommunications Alliance conference and TeleCon '97 trade show in mid-September. Registration for the conference is expensive; admission to the trade show alone is free if you register in advance through the registration page at http://www.tradeshowreg.com/CBTA/cbta_reg2.htm CBTA is the lobby group for corporate telecommunications users in Canada. Further information about the CBTA and the conference is available on the CBTA web site at http://www.cbta.ca/ or by contacting Canadian Business Telecommunications Alliance 161 Bay St., Suite 3650, Box 705 Toronto, Ontario M5J 2S1 Canada Tel: +1-416-865-9993/+1-800-668-CBTA Fax: +1-416-865-0859 Internet: office@cbta.ca Nigel Allen ndallen@interlog.com (No affiliation with the CBTA.) http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1383/telecom.html ------------------------------ From: billsohl@planet.net (Bill Sohl) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 16:06:51 GMT Organization: BL Enterprises siegman@ee.stanford.edu (Anthony E. Seigman) wrote: > If I behave similarly with one of Mr. Marino's numbers, he has every right > to be mad at me, and to come after me for payment through any of the same > legal channels. In doing this he can certainly negotiate whatever > business arrangements he can with the telco. BUT HE CAN'T TAKE CONTROL OF > MY PHONE SERVICE, SO LONG AS I'M CURRENT WITH THE PHONE COMPANY ITSELF FOR > THE SERVICES *THEY* PROVIDED TO ME -- despite the fact that the ability to > do this would certainly be convenient for him. He has to solve his > problem with me through normal channels, just like the furniture dealer. > If I understand Mr. Marino's message correctly, he doesn't understand this > last point. That's why the FCC has had to make that point clear, and why > they'll have to continue making it clear. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem is, there are no *convenient* > 'legal channels' for Mr. Marino or other IPs to use. Typically the IP > works with customers five and ten dollars at a time. A sofa on the other > hand costs a few hundred dollars and makes collection activity somewhat > worthwhile. Even suing you for an unpaid sofa would be a marginal > thing at best. You talk suit only when the debt is at least several > hundred dollars and the debtor is local to you, or maybe a thousand > dollars or more if the debtor is in another state and you need to retain > counsel in that state or jurisdiction to proceed, etc. Collection > agencies only make money on mass processing of thousands of small > accounts, and then, many agencies are reluctant to handle claims where > there is no signature on file nor any tangible item to be repossesed > or accounted for, etc. That is why if Mr. Marino and other IPs do > not have telco's assistance, they may as well close up shop. PAT] I'm not sure, other than adding some detail relating to collections involving small dollar amounts, exactly what Pat's point is. The bottom line is exactly as Mr. Seigman stated (the TELCO can't cut off telephone service for any uncollected service fee other than direct Telco charges for local service. The Telco can't even terminate service for unpaid long distance charges. That is exactly as it should be since the Telco doesn't provide any service aspect other than acting as a biling service. Now some people may not like that, but the Telco billing is not a credit card equivalent, so the adding of additional billing services for non-Telco services should never be tied to cut-off of the basic telco service for nonpayment of any non-telco provided service. That seems pretty basic to me and it is exactly why the FCC prohibits termination of service for uncollected charges unrelated to Telco service charges. Bill Sohl (K2UNK) billsohl@planet.net Internet & Telecommunications Consultant/Instructor Budd Lake, New Jersey [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My point was, quite simply, there is no way to do what the IPs do (give out 'information' for pay) without the cooperation of the telcos. There is no convenient or practical collection mechanism. They have to have the long arm -- or would you say strong-arm -- of telco in order to succeed. Therefore if the telcos quit handling billing, the IPs will cease existing for all intents and purposes. Sure, some will go to credit card billing and the setting up of an 'account' for credit-worthy customers who are then billed direct, but they will be few and far between. That was my point: if the telcos quit cooperating, the problem goes away. PAT] ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 23:54:17 -0400 In article , siegman@ee.stanford. edu (Anthony E. Seigman) wrote: >> As a (reputable) IP... An oxymoron? > If I order a sofa from the local furniture mart over the phone, accept > delivery, and then try to stiff the vendor, he'll have to try to collect > on my debt through the appropriate, legally provided mechanisms -- which > do NOT include telling the local phone company (or the gas company, or the > electric company, for that matter) to turn off my service. > If I behave similarly with one of Mr. Marino's numbers, he has every right > to be mad at me, and to come after me for payment through any of the same > legal channels. In doing this he can certainly negotiate whatever > business arrangements he can with the telco. BUT HE CAN'T TAKE CONTROL OF > MY PHONE SERVICE, SO LONG AS I'M CURRENT WITH THE PHONE COMPANY ITSELF FOR > THE SERVICES *THEY* PROVIDED TO ME -- despite the fact that the ability to > do this would certainly be convenient for him. He has to solve his > problem with me through normal channels, just like the furniture dealer. A big difference between those two scenarios is that a consumer financing company is sometimes denied "holder in due course" protection for certain kinds of purchases. Telephone customers are sometimes denied that kind of protection for consumer fraud depending upon the state of residence, and the corporate attitude at the telco. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem is, there are no *convenient* > 'legal channels' for Mr. Marino or other IPs to use. Typically the IP > works with customers five and ten dollars at a time. A sofa on the other > hand costs a few hundred dollars and makes collection activity somewhat > worthwhile. Sound like a good incentive to NOT be an IP. In article , Nicholas Marino wrote: > Gregory Johnson wrote: >> And you are getting what you are paying for. The telco bills and >> collects remittances for you. > Pre-1992, the telcos were agressive about forcing customers to pay > their 900 bills. They could turn your phone service off. Today they > can't, and you are right -- all they do is include my charges on a > piece of paper along with the rest of your bill. Did they reduce the > amount of money that they charge for billing? Not on your life. Sounds like a good incentive to NOT be an IP. >>> I don't want to seem as down on the telcos as you guys are apparently >>> down on IPs. The telcos have been forced into this position by the >>> FCC. I am convinced that if they had the ability to turn off phone >>> service for failure to pay a 900 bill, everyone would benefit. >> This would be bad public policy. Telephone service is an essential >> utility. Information services are not. Your local phone company >> should not be able to discontinue providing service "A" which is >> essential, because you are unwilling/unable to pay for service "B" >> which is not, and is provided by a third party. > The 'bad policy' came from the FCC in 1992. Not only did it emasculate > the telcos, it also forced them to put that little disclaimer on your > phone bill reminding you that you won't be disconnected for failure to > pay your bill. What is the purpose of that disclaimer? Wouldn't a > mandated policy be enough? It was a purely political move on the day > it was required, to appease the vocal minority. Today it is simply > ridiculous. It's not "ridiculous" to NOT force a single parent into bankruptcy because an unscrupulous IP entices a minor to call a 900 service without full awareness of the financial consequences. The disclaimer is to remind consumers that they have recourse against unscrupulous IP's. It needs to be there since most telephone customers are not as well informed of their rights as we are. > It is in the best interest of the telcos to discourage deadbeats, > whether they are my customers, or Nynex's or AT&Ts. Nine times out of > ten when someone stiffs an IP out of hundres of dollars in 900 > charges, he is also stiffing the local and long distance companies out > of thousands of dollars in toll charges. The only "best interest" for telcos is to provide reliable and affordable basic telephone service ... PERIOD. Damn good incentive to NOT be an IP. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:42:14 -0700 From: Marty Bose Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion > I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm > totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and > need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can > point me to, please do. Currently I'm with AT&T Wireless with an > analog service and I want to go digital. I'm not a technical idiot > (I'm a Unix sys admin that does both hardware and software support), > but doggone it if I can get a straight answer out of any vendor's > mouth about the differences between their cellular services. I've > narrowed the field to AT&T Digital PCS, Air Touch's Powerband (CDMA), > and Sprint PCS. Here are the questions: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? No; Sprint PCS is also CDMA > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) CDMA coverage varies a lot geographically, but ultimately Sprint PCS has licenses to go nationwide with CDMA. It will take quite a while, however, probably a number of years. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. I know that Sprint PCS has already announced agreements with at least two other venders to produce CDMA phones, so choices should be available shortly. > From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine > state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems > to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about > outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, > regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology > but any advice would be appreciated. Be sure that you are aware of what frequency you are talking about when you talk about "digital" and "PCS". Officially PCS service is at 1800 mHz, while conventional cellular is at 900. A number of carriers have been muddying the waters by talking about digital and CDMA service in the 900 mHz range, where it competes with analog. Marty Bose ------------------------------ From: nx7u@primenet.com (Scott Townley) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 26 Aug 1997 22:11:01 -0700 Organization: TRAC Engineering, Gilbert, AZ In article , kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) wrote: > I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm > totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and > need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can > point me to, please do. Currently I'm with AT&T Wireless with an > analog service and I want to go digital. I'm not a technical idiot > (I'm a Unix sys admin that does both hardware and software support), > but doggone it if I can get a straight answer out of any vendor's > mouth about the differences between their cellular services. I've > narrowed the field to AT&T Digital PCS, Air Touch's Powerband (CDMA), > and Sprint PCS. Here are the questions: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? Not entirely. Posts to the contrary notwithstanding, AT&T PCS is indeed TDMA, but Sprint PCS is CDMA in all markets EXCEPT Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD, where they are TDMA (although a different flavor of TDMA from AT&T PCS). One thing that will be confusing to you is that the AT&T Wireless that's in Seattle is NOT AT&T PCS; it's the same cellular that's been around awhile. However, AT&T Wireless does offer a digital (TDMA) service as you've noted. > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) I should like to comment on this but I am not an unbiased observer. If you want biased comments from an engineer contact me directly. Unfortunately this is "where the rubber meets the road" for most people. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. Nokia only JUST came out with a CDMA phone, but it may not be available in a widespread fashion for some time. Failing that, Sony is the only show in town. Your guess on AT&T is correct. > From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine > state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems > to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about > outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, > regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology > but any advice would be appreciated. > It's true that AT&T offers a large "home" service area in the western US. One consideration for Airtouch is that in pretty much the same area, you can also roam on CDMA in the major metro areas (Denver, LA, SD, Salt Lake, Portland, Phoenix). I'm not entirely sure what the rate is but it's no higher than $0.99/min and may very well be less. The standard disclaimer: I am not an unbiased observer, and my comments do not necessarily reflect the stated opinions or policies of my employer. I'm not paid enough for that! Scott Townley nx7u@primenet.com ------------------------------ From: russell@probe.net (Tim Russell) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 27 Aug 1997 22:41:37 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Internet Services Both TDMA and CDMA-type services can operate either in the standard cellular (829mHz and up) bands, or the 1.9gHz PCS band. Qualcomm is pushing CDMA to existing cellular carriers as a way to expand capacity, because the system allows for a very large number of customers in a 2.5mHz chunk of spectrum. About the only problem I've experienced with my PCS phone thus far is that it sometimes takes two or three power cycles of the phone to get it to register service. I turn my phone on and off frequently rather than leaving it on all the time, as I could since it has a dramatically increased standby time over AMPS phones (easily 36 hours with the standard battery). That's mostly a bad habit from years of AMPS use, I'm sure I'll grow out of it. I could easily see myself using my CDMA phone as my only voice telephone service if it were cheap enough. Overall, I'm extremely happy with the phone service and pricing. Customer service, on the other hand, is still up in the air. Much more (highly) technical information can be had on CDMA by finding links to it under Phil Karn's page, http://people.qualcomm.com/karn. Tim Russell System Admin, Probe Technology email: russell@probe.net PGP RSA: C992 109C 6D7F 8D91 062E 817E 00D3 287A ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 97 19:35:50 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Kim Brennan (kim@aol.com) wrote: > Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with Spring PCS) uses GSM technology. > This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe uses 1.9 Ghz). Backwards. North America is 1.9 GHz; Europe runs GSM on 900 MHz and 1.8 GHz. Specifically, the frequencies allocated for GSM in North America are in the 1.850-1.990 GHz range. But there are also TDMA and CDMA services there as well. See below. > Both of these phones types [CDMA and TDMA] operate in the 900Mhz range. Wrong. In the U.S., 900 MHz is for cordless. AMPS cellular is in the 850MHz range, specifically 824.040 to 848.970 for Mobile Tx and 869.040 to 893.970 for Mobile Rx. This is where the traditional analogue carriers have operated, and they have introduced both TDMA and CDMA in their existing frequency ranges, co-existing with analogue cellular. In general, so-called non-wireline (A) carriers have been likely to implement TDMA, and began doing so as much as two years ago. So-called wireline carriers (B) have just very recently started rapidly rolling out CDMA. In some cases, where carriers who have primarily (B) licenses in their major service area also have (A) licenses elsewhere, the (A) systems will be CDMA. Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile in Connecticut is an example of this. Up in the 1.9 GHz range, you will not only find GSM, but you will also find both TDMA (from companies like Sprint PCS, which, btw, calls itself Sprint Spectrum everywhere except the DC area, where the GSM system is properly called Sprint Spectrum APC to differentiate it from the TDMA service) and CDMA being rolled out from companies like U.S. West Communications (which no longer seems to own the old Airtouch 850 MHz system). In this area there are six bands, ABCDEF, where ABC are 30MHz wide and DEF are 10 MHz wide. These can be allocated to up to six different carriers in each geographical area, but usually less than six, because up to 40MHz can be given to a single carrer in any market. Which band is GSM or TDMA or CDMA will depend on which carrier got the license in a specific market. john ------------------------------ From: declrckd@cig.mot.com (Dan J. Declerck) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 27 Aug 1997 22:04:08 GMT Organization: Motorola In article kim@aol.com (Kim Brennan) writes: > Kathy Kost inquires: >> I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm >> totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and >> need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can >> point me to, please do. > {Byte Magazine} had an article on digital phones in a recent issue, > but for the life of me, I can't find it on the Byte web site. Ah, I > see now, why ... Oh, well, you'll just have to pick up the August 1997 > issue, or wait three months for the web to reveal the full issue. > In a nutshell (and pardon any lapses of memory), there are three > digital cellular phone technologies. TDMA, CDMA, and GSM. As I recall, > TDMA was established first, and has fair amount of coverage. Not exactly true. GSM was introduced in Europe at 900 MHz in 1990, and is now available at 1800 MHz (DCS1800). The TDMA you refer to, is called IS-136 or US TDMA, and was introduced in the US at 800 MHz about five years ago (1992 or so). The first commercial CDMA system went on the air in September, 1995. > CDMA has been getting a lot of the recent attention from the phone > companies and in theory has about as much coverage as TDMA, but it > still (apparently) has some problems. This is debate-able as to how much capacity it really has ... (in short, I don't want to go into debate in this forum over capacity claims) I believe CDMA at any frequency has better sound quality than IS-136, and is in a race with GSM (which is only available in the US at 1900 MHz.) > Both of these phones types operate in the 900Mhz range. GSM, which > is the European standard, is just getting off the ground in the > states. GSM operates at 900 and 1800 MHz outside the US. In the US it operates at 1900 MHz only. CDMA operates at 800 and 1900 MHz in the US and other frequencies in other countries. IS-136 operates at 800 MHz (most plentiful) and will be running at 1900 MHz shortly (if not now). This doesn't mean that a CDMA other technology phone will run at both 800 and 1900 MHz, just that the interface standard exists at each of those frequencies. > Sprint Spectrum (not to be confused with Sprint PCS) uses GSM > technology. This is in the 1.8 Ghz range (Europe uses 1.9 Ghz). The > coverage for GSM is not as broad as either of the other two. > The full article goes into a lot more detail. I have a GSM Sprint > Spectrum phone personally. PCS vendors (1900 MHz) don't have the coverage of 800 MHz cellular, yet. If you don't do a lot of travelling, PCS phones will probably be a better choice, as they will probably have a cost savings. If you travel, service may be unreliable (no coverage for the technology you chose in the area you travel to) Dan DeClerck | EMAIL: declrckd@cig.mot.com Motorola Cellular CSD | The truth to CDMA... is spreading" | Phone: (847) 632-4596 ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 20:22:04 GMT In article , kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) wrote: > I'm sure this subject has been discussed in length here, but I'm > totally confused now that I'm shopping for new cellular service and > need some advice. If there are some archives or articles that one can > point me to, please do. Currently I'm with AT&T Wireless with an > analog service and I want to go digital. I'm not a technical idiot > (I'm a Unix sys admin that does both hardware and software support), > but doggone it if I can get a straight answer out of any vendor's > mouth about the differences between their cellular services. I've > narrowed the field to AT&T Digital PCS, Air Touch's Powerband (CDMA), > and Sprint PCS. Here are the questions: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? ATT PCS is 'TDMA' and Sprint (outside of WashDC) is 'CDMA'. In WashDC, Sprint is 'GSM'. > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) Go to Ericsson's and ATT's and Qualcomm's web pages for info. http://www.ericsson.com/ http://www.attws.com/ http://www.qualcomm.com/ > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. From the user's perspective, the main issues are battery life and speech quality. Speech quality used to be an issue, but I believe that the newest systems all have about the same voice quality. Battery life is highly variable depending upon how close you are to a base station, so it's difficult to believe what you read without actually talking with other users. > From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine > state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems > to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about > outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, > regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology > but any advice would be appreciated. I believe that all of ATT's phones are 'dual' -- i.e., have both analog and digital capabilities -- but you should check this out. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:01:20 -0400 From: Robert Walker Reply-To: dialtone@elwha.evergreen.edu Organization: US Secret Service Subject: CDMA, TDMA & GSM > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? In the Seattle area, ATTWS uses TDMA, Sprint uses GSM, and Airtouch uses CDMA. > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that > Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the > service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine > this would change (?) TDMA divides one channel of bandwidth into four "lanes," and sends your packets on the appropriate "lane" digitally. CDMA functions more like a packet switched network. TDMA has much poorer sound quality; a neighbor of mine who is an AT&T reseller tells me that people are buying the TDMA phones to get AT&T's lower rate but then force them into analogue mode. Other ATTWS customers have experienced similar results and posted similar stories to the Digest. Also ATTWS's TDMA uses a vocoder that doesn't eliminate redundancies. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or > reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that > they're using TDMA and a different service. ATTWS uses TDMA. Airtouch uses CDMA. There are currently five Airtouch CDMA markets: Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and Portland. You can use CDMA if you roam to any of those markets. The Sony CMD500 is the only CDMA phone currently in existance that works with the Airtouch system; I don't know if it is the only CDMA phone in general though. In the Seattle market, it sells for $203 with a 1 year contract through 1-800-BUY-TIME, and I belive a high-volume price plan is available offering 2000 minutes for $100 a month. Be sure to ask what high-volume plans are available. > From what I can gather, AT&T has the benefit in that they give a nine > state (I'm in Seattle) service area without roaming. Air Touch seems > to be better in the state of Washington, but I'm not sure about > outside of the state. Both appear to have limited Digital areas, > regardless of service type. I'm leaning towards the CDMA technology > but any advice would be appreciated. In Washington and Oregon Airtouch has better coverage. Airtouch gives you home rate roaming from the Canadian border through Cottage Grove, Oregon along the I-5 corridor and is the only carrier with coverage on the Oregon coast. The CDMA service is pretty good; it is very clear and quiet because the vocoder samples and does not send redundant noise. Thus talking on your car phone while your car is driving doesn't send the road noise that you hear on an analog system. This vocoder is also nice because it reduces the amount of data transmitted, meaning 8 CDMA calls can comfortably fit in the same bandwidth as 1 AMPS call or 3 NAMPS calls. The CDMA phone will seamlessly switch from digital to analog even in the middle of a call and works in legacy analog markets. Roaming prices outside of the Washington/Oregon I5 corridor run from 69 cents per minute to $3/day and 99c/min. This is theoretically slated to change soon, but when I am not sure. Airtouch CDMA is the best quality digital service in the Seattle area; they have 150 towers while sprint PCS has only 50. And with the higher volume plans it's competitive with GTE and Sprint, but you have to ask specifically for the high volume plans or they'll try to sell you a more expensive lower volume plan. Also, there's a $50 web coupon on their website, which I think is http://www.west.airtouch.com (just off the top of my head). If you order from 1800buytime, say you saw the web offer and they'll give you $50 off. **note** While I am currently contracted to Airtouch I am not an employee and nothing that I say is in any way official. **note** . /|\ //|\\ Welcome to the rainforest... ///|\\\ dialtone@vcn.bc.ca ------------------------------ From: Kevin R. Ray Subject: Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? Date: 27 Aug 1997 13:36:59 GMT Organization: The Windy City Mike Fox wrote: > number is available but not the name (for example, from cell phones > that support CID and from cities with other phone companies) would > display the name as "CITY NAME, ST", where ST is the two-letter state > abbreviation. Starting yesterday, 8/25, I have noticed that now they > display as STATE NAME, with no city information. > For example, scrolling through the memory of my CID box, I see a call > ROCKYMOUNT, NC > But when I got a call from the same person yesterday (8/25), it > NORTH CAROLINA > My carrier is Bellsouth. Rocky Mount, NC, is in Sprint territory I > But it's not just Sprint->Bellsouth. I have a Bellsouth DCS digital > So it appears to be a universal change? Or is it a change in how > Bellsouth interprets the information? Has anyone else noticed it? Here in Ameritech hell (IL) with my CID it has always shown the state name or simply OUT-OF-AREA. I believe that it is the SENDING end that is responsible and THEN the receiving end to add any missing gaps. The same friend calling me from the same number has shown both their full anme (AT&T) and only the state (SPRINT) -- the number showed on both calls. I see it as sprint now sending any name info but this end filling the gap based on the CID AC (correct me -- I'm NOT a inside phone techie! :). Many calls today from within the state (IL) that are down south (LD) show up as "Illinois Call". I always thought that was amusing. Cellular One (BellSouth) calls show as "Cellular Call" on the CID. Ameritech Cell shows simply as "Illinois Call". On the lighter note: I *do* have to say against my first sentence that Ameritech here [recently] has been doing a wonderful job in service and reliability. It's just going to take probably ten years or so for me to get the bad taste out of my mouth from the past few years of major screw ups in service, etc ... :) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 10:31:24 -0700 From: Jeffrey Rhodes Organization: AWS- Aviation Communications Division Subject: Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? Given the evidence presented, it appears that Bellsouth has updated their Caller Name (aka Reverse Whitepages) SCP database. The way caller id works (which is an enhanced version of calling number that includes a name, unlike your cellphone which can only show a number or only show a name that matches a number stored in its internal speed dial list) is a delivered, nonprivate calling number is used by the called LEC to lookup the name from a Caller Name SCP. That's right, SS7 signaling sends the calling number forward and then SS7 uses that number to go back for the name. If the called LEC has an agreement with the calling LEC to share dips to each other's Caller Name SCP, then the display will be the most current information available and will be more specific than NORTH CAROLINA. In the mean time, without an agreement, the called LEC's Caller Name SCP has a generic name for a given NPA-NXX in their own SCP. Maybe Bellsouth wants to simply this generic naming in their SCP to avoid constant maintenance for area code splits? Caller Name lookup is an excellent candidate for Global Title Translation. While not required, GTT makes the administration of routing to an SCP so much less labor intensive by confining routing changes at the STPs, rather than having to make a change at each and every end-office. That way when a LEC gets a name agreement with another LEC, only SS7 routing in Bellsouth's STPs needs to change! This by far is the most useful aspect of GTT, even though it also supports backup routing for redundant operation of SCPs. Wait until Number Portability comes. The reverse name lookup gets really complicated then. Expect even more generic names. Jeffrey Rhodes at jeffrey.rhodes@attws.com ------------------------------ From: Jerry Kaufman Subject: New Wireless Reality Seminar Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 17:24:29 -0700 Organization: Alexander Resources Reply-To: JerryKaufman@worldnet.att.net THE NEW WIRELESS REALITY A Critical Analysis and Educational Seminar covering the Fundamentals, Applications & Limitations of The Wireless Revolution * The NEW Cellular, PCS, Satellite, & Fixed Wireless Access networks and services * The WIRELESS Technologies, standards, spectrum, and modulations schemes * The REALITY: Fact & Fiction, Applications & Limitations At this seminar you will learn: * The basics, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of various terrestrial and satellite wireless: - Technologies - Network architectures - Air interface standards - Spectrum choices - Modulation techniques * The role of land line networks and services in the new wireless reality * The hurdles to integrating/interfacing various wireless networks and services * The reality of using new wireless technologies to replace or augment traditional wired voice and data networks * Where wireless increases productivity, produces a ROI and where it doesn't * What it takes to make one phone number and one phone per user a reality * The differences between single, dual, and triple mode phones, networks and services * The capabilities of single (private or public), dual, & triple domain networks, systems, phones and services * How new wireless technologies will impact existing private and public networks and services ------------------- At the New Wireless Reality seminar you will not only gain a fundamental understanding of these new networks and services but be armed with the knowledge to separate fact from fiction. 1997-1998 SEMINAR SCHEDULE Dallas, TX December 11-12, 1997 Washington, DC January 22-23 1998 Phoenix, AZ March 9-10, 1998 The New Wireless Reality seminar was developed and is sponsored exclusively by Alexander Resources Contact: Carole Kaufman Telephone: 972-818-8225 Fax: 972-818-6366 The two day seminar will be taught by Jerry Kaufman, President of Alexander Resources. Mr. Kaufman is an internationally recognized consultant, lecturer, author and researcher on wireless communications and the foremost authority on wireless telephone systems. Alexander Resources Co. 15851 N. Dallas Pkwy, Suite 500 Dallas, TX 75248 USA ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #223 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 28 08:43:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA11416; Thu, 28 Aug 1997 08:43:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 08:43:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708281243.IAA11416@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #224 TELECOM Digest Thu, 28 Aug 97 08:43:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 224 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Government Telcos (Mark Naftel) 11 Digits, 10 Digits or 7 Digits: Who Knows? Not BellSouth (Blake Droke) Re: California Telecom Deregulation and Pay Phones (Alan Boritz) Re: Australian vs. US Cellular (John R. Levine) Re: Australian GSM - an Outsider's Observations (msof@sprynet.com) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Stanley Cline) Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM (Jason Lindquist) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Mark.NAFTEL@is.belgacom.be Date: Thu, 28 Aug 97 8:49:40 CDT Subject: Government Telcos Here in Europe the historically government-owned PTTs are moving towards privatization. BT was first, and its success and the pressures caused by the dawning of full telecoms competition in 1998 have caused most European governments to sell at least a portion of the government stake in the telecoms organizations. Deutsche Telecom had a successful public stock offering, and France Telecom and Telecom Italia will follow soon. With this trend, I think it is interesting to observe how government is getting back into the telecoms business. In Europe "carriers' carriers" are emerging using rail or energy (mostly government or quasi-government owned) infrastructure to carry large volume calls. Tad Cook's recent posting about California payphones included a reference to BART's attempt to win a contract for California State Government payphones. I recall reading that a government entity (I think in Washington D.C.) is also entering the telephone business, but I believe it was more in the nature of just selling its right of way to an existing telephone company. There has been a discussion on the ABA Antitrust Lawyers' site of whether public schools should be allowed to become ISPs and resell Internet access provided with taxpayer funds (and probably supported in the future by universal service funds and other government projects). The consensus of the antitrust lawyers seemed to be that it is probably not illegal for schools to sell this service, but it is not fair because private business should not have to compete with taxpayer subsidized entities. How widespread is government entrance into the telecommunications market? Should it be allowed? Are special safeguards appropriate? Will government regulators be truly fair when considering the interests of another government entity? ------------------------------ From: Blake Droke Subject: 11 Digits, 10 Digits or 7 Digits: Who Knows? Not Bellsouth Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:11:22 -0500 Reply-To: bdroke@sprintmail.com Starting on September 15th, area code 931 will be activated for middle Tennessee outside the Nashville metro area. I know this mainly from the internet; I've heard very little about it from Bellsouth, even though I live in Memphis, 120 miles from the area, and the company I work for has an office in Clarksville which will be in 931. No notification there either. Since I've not heard a word from BellSouth, I decided to call them yesterday, to verify that our Clarksville office is changing codes. The answer is definitely yes, but it took them ten minutes to give me the answer. (Clarksville is a city of 75,000 so you'd think they'd know the answer immediately). Fine, now I know the code is changing. Now I have another question which Bellsouth seems to have no answer. Our company subscribes to a measured rate EAS type service (region serve) which makes calls to Nashville cost about eight or nine cents/min, and allows seven digit dialing to Nashville (Normal procedure would be 1+615+7 digits). I asked Bellsouth what the new dialing procedure would be on calls using region serve from Clarksville to Nashville. "Duh, what do you mean? ... Oh, you just have to dial the seven digits", they answer. OK, I ask, if you continue to allow seven digit dialing between Clarksville and Nashville why move Clarksville to 931? "What do you mean?" they reply. I then explain that in order to do this, you will have to "protect" the Clarksville exchanges in Nashville and vice versa, this would waste codes in both 931 and 615, & would make the split useless. Silence, then "All I can tell you is that region serve dialing is seven digit." I then tell her that I doubt this will be true. She then transfers me to "Customer Support". On hold about five minutes. Then new person on the line, I have to explain the whole thing over again. She says "Oh, we'll have to change your region serve plan because Bellsouth can't carry calls between area codes, these calls have to be carried by your long distance carrier." Silence on my part. Then I explain that area codes have nothing to do with LEC versus IXC carriage, and that Clarksville will still be in the Nashville LATA. Silence on her part, then "I'll connect you to repair service, tell them you need to talk to the Translations Dept.". On hold five minutes. Then a man answers, "Repair service what number are you reporting?" I give him the number in Clarksville and explain. He says "Why are you calling repair svc. the business office would know." I say, the business office transferred me, could you let me talk to someone in the Translation Dept. He says "Why would they tell you to ask for them? They don't deal with customers, only internal Bellsouth calls." Well could you ask them for me. In a very rude tone he says "I'll be back with you." Hold 15 minutes. He comes back and says "Its long distance from Clarksville to Nashville, you have to dial 1+615 already"; I say not with region serve. He says (as hatefully as possible) "That's a dialing plan, I don't deal with those, that's the business office". I hang up, call the business office back and start over again. This rep says, "Oh that's no problem, I'm in Chattanooga, and we have local calls to area code 706 in Georgia with seven digits." I say that I'm in Memphis and we can call parts of Arkansas and Mississippi the same way, but that's not the same situation. Can you find someone who can give me a definite answer. On hold 20 minutes. She then comes back and says that they think that I should dial the call as 1+615 and the billing software will know what to charge. I'm afraid of trying this, because in the Memphis area, dialing the area code can, in some cases, result in charges for what should be local calls (at least it did a couple of years ago.) That wasn't a real answer, just the consensus of the people she asked, no one really knows. My plan for now is to continue with seven digit calling until it isn't allowed, then trying 615 + seven digits, if that doesn't work, then 1+615+number, if that doesn't work, quit calling Nashville. It's conversations like this that make you wonder if anyone at the phone company actually knows how the phone system works. And if they don't, who makes it work? ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: California Telecom Deregulation and Pay Phones Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 20:07:44 -0400 In article , tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) wrote: > California Telecom Deregulation May Mean End of 20-Cent Pay Call ... > If prices lurch upward or if service declines after Oct. 7, don't > blame the California Public Utilities Commission. > It fought the order issued in September 1996 by the Federal > Communications Commission that deregulates coin rates for nearly 2 > million public pay phones nationwide. The 87-page FCC order > implemented a congressional directive to remove barriers to "fair > compensation" of pay-phone providers "to promote the widespread > deployment of pay-phone services to the benefit of the general > public." > It was intended to unleash competitive ingenuity and address industry > complaints that owners weren't being compensated adequately for an > explosion in toll-free calling and for local calls. I am convinced that the FCC Common Carrier Bureau has absolutely no concept of "public interest." Toll-free and local call commissions are an issue best left for carrier regulation, since regulatory agencies can control them. Toll-free calls don't prevent the owners from collecting revenue, and local sent-paid calls always bring in cash revenue. The justification just doesn't exist, just like the "evidence" that deregulation benefits the general public. > Though it's been an ardent free-market advocate in recent years, the > state PUC joined nine other states and asked an appellate court to > block the order. The states argued that the federal mandate > constituted "an unwarranted pre-emption of state authority" and would > obstruct states' efforts to defend the public interest. California > particularly worried about people who rely on pay phones for basic > phone service. > New York officials further cautioned that pay-phone deregulation would > be met by "extreme customer reaction and antagonism" -- in other > words, phone rage. Nevertheless, an appeals court last month upheld > the FCC order. The City of New York did a study of public pay phone competition about ten years ago and found that if it weren't for franchise regulation, New York Telephone would have pulled pay phones out of all "high-risk" neighborhoods. Imagine what would happen if someone who lives in one of those "high-risk" neighborhoods now has to deal with COCOTS (after telco pulls out) charge +$1.00/per call, as they do in, for example, Amherst, MA. > If the experience of states that already have deregulated coin calls > means anything, the worst-case scenarios may not materialize. I submit that some of the worst-case scenarios may have already materialized. But why bother to complain to a regulatory agency if the top Federal telecommunications regulatory agency refuses to do anything for the public on COCOT issues? > Nebraska took the deregulatory step a decade ago and "there was no > real chaos," said John Burvainis, deputy director of the Nebraska > Public Service Commission. >"Prices," Burvainis said, "settled at 25 cents and we haven't heard >`boo' about pay phones in years. The sky didn't fall in." How would the Nebraska PSC know? Why would anyone complain to them about payphones if they haven't regulated them for 12 years? > "As a pay-phone operator, I'm not going to want to tick off customers > who will get mad at a store where I have my phones," said Vince > Sandusky, president of the American Public Communications Council in > Virginia. "If I make the site owner mad, I may lose the contract the > next time around." I'm sure this will give some people "warm fuzzies," but what percentage would you think are concientious businessmen, and what percentage are selfish, uncaring, opportunists? > For its part, the FCC says a growing cellular phone industry should > help keep pay-phone prices in line. (Higher-than-average cellular > phone rates in California may undercut this as much of a countervailing > force, though.) And just how is the cellular (or PCS, for that matter) industry going to help people who live in poor neighboorhoods, now poorly (if at all) served by public payphones? The entire cellular industry couldn't even help you, if you were mugged in front of New York City's new 911 headquarters in Brooklyn, since there's no portable cellphone coverage there. If you were driving nearby, you couldn't use your vehicular cellphone (since they won't work there, either), and you can't find a working payphone you could use until you got to the more "high-risk" neighborhoods that surround Metrotech Center, in Brooklyn, unless you go into Manhattan, or find a $$$$ COCOT going in the other direction. > If there's evidence of market abuse, the FCC has said, it will consider > amending its order, but on a state-by-state basis. There's something inherently wrong with a Federal agency that goes through a long elaborate rulemaking procedure, reviews numerous comments and lawsuits from parties also in the regulatory business who warn of impending danger to the public, and STILL does whatever they want. The only way the FCC could help the public on payphone matters is to put the entire Common Carrier Bureau on the unemployment line. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 1997 04:23:34 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Australian vs. US cellular Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > First of all, mobile phones have a special "area code". For some > reason, this is seen as a "bad idea" by the US cellular regulators > and/or vendors. It does seem to have benefits in Australia, however. Australia is a much smaller country than the US (in population, not area) with a single monopoly telephone company. The US has 15 times as many people and a zillion different phone companies. The US divided up the country into several hundred small cellular areas and granted two franchises per area, one to a local telco from the area and one to someone else, now typically a local telco from somewhere else or AT&T. This provided lots of competition, at the cost of severe disorganization. AT&T invented AMPS and set firm technical standards for local cellular service, but didn't give as much thought to integration with the landline network. (This work started pre-divestiture, so they probably figured they'd be able to figure it out later.) What developed was that cell systems hooked to the local landline like large PBXes, since that is a well-defined interface that landline telcos all offer, and roaming was implemented by a bunch of band-aids that worked from badly to very badly. Airtime was charged to the cell user on both incoming and outgoing calls because there was and is no way to pass airtime charges back to landline callers (other than a few local caller-pays hacks that don't work with calls from outside the LATA.) By comparison, Canada has the same AMPS standards as the US but granted the non-wireline franchise for the entire country to a single carrier, Rogers Cantel, who from what I hear offers seamless roaming across Canada with no extra charges other than the regular toll rates to forward your calls from where your phone number is to where your phone is. In retrospect, the US would have been better served by having much larger cellular franchise areas, perhaps the sizes of the RBOCs' service areas, and paying more attention earlier to roaming and landline integration. In fairness to AT&T, nobody inside or outside AT&T foresaw back in the 1970s how quickly the cellular market would grow and how much roaming people would do. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: msof@sprynet.com Subject: Re: Australian GSM - an Outsider's Observations Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 22:02:41 -0700 Organization: Sprynet News Service You are probably not aware that this is the way mobile telephony works almost everywhere in the world except for North America. Almost every other country has a special "mobile phone" area code, and almost everywhere mobile phones work on a caller-pays basis, and the subscriber pays nothing while in his or her home network (which usually covers a whole country). You forgot to mention, however, that the CALLER pays a high surcharge when calling a mobile phone in such a system. Also, there is an anomaly: the surcharge is not imposed when calling the mobile phone from another country. Hence, it may be cheaper calling an Australian mobile phone from the U.S. than from within Australia itself. Having been a heavy mobile phone user in Europe until recently, I think I favor the "air time" scheme of the U.S., because it avoids these anomalies. Michael ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 28 Aug 1997 03:19:26 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On 27 Aug 1997 19:56:49 GMT, Randall H. Smith wrote: > Again, are you _really_ _really_ sure that AT&T is in the 800 > MHz cellular band? :^) Yes. AT&T has been marketing their (badly-misnamed) "Digital PCS" in this market for about a year now. I've seen the handsets. I'm certain they're not dual-band. IE: they're 900MHz TDMA. Note that this does _not_ say that AT&T/McCaw/CellOne/whatever they're calling themselves this month doens't operate TDMA/1800/1900 _anywhere_, simply that they _do_ operate TDMA/900. Those are _not_ mutually exclusive propositions. > Folks, what "GSM" is is a _specification_ for an entire *TDMA* > network, including the base stations, mobile stations, switch and > other adjunct products. Does GSM in fact _require_ TDMA at this point? > Right now there's a lot of effort in GSM-land to see if perhaps the > spec should be expanded to include a CDMA air interface to the > network. It could be argued that the GSM spec is getting a _bit_ old > (mature?) and doesn't take into account new technologies now > available; CDMA has some serious momentum behind it at this point, > especially with Japan selecting CDMA as it's next generation of > digital cellular after PDC. (Lots of subs over there!) I persoanlly have believed for _years_ now (at least 15; I've been a ham for most of those) that CDMA (DS/SS), in a _properly engineered and architected system_ was by far a better way to go than _any_ other available modulation scheme. I just wish PrimeCo would get that "_properly engineered and architected_" part down ... Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 03:24:33 GMT Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:01:39 -0500, in comp.dcom.telecom was written: > AT&T is TDMA in the 800 Mhz cellular band ... they have NO 2Ghz PCS > operations that I know of ... Sprint is CDMA nationwide, so is PrimeCo Not quite ... 1) They are not using GSM at 1900 MHz, but are using IS-136 TDMA (which isn't compatible w/ GSM) instead. 2) AT&T has 1900 MHz IS-136 systems in Atlanta and one other city (Phoenix?) And neither Sprint nor Primeco will cover all cities in the US! For example, neither has any plans I'm aware of to serve Atlanta. > it in the 800 cellular band (at the cost of analog channels!). CDMA > is wideband and requires ther 2Ghz PCS spectrum. Yes, eventually CDMA CDMA is being deployed at 800 as well (AirTouch Powerband, for example; other carriers, including GTE, will be using CDMA at 800) > CDMA is the way to go; if you want coverage everywhere, TDMA is it > for now but eventually CDMA will catch up. TDMA/CDMA doesn't determine coverage -- frequency does. 1900 MHz systems aren't widespread yet, hence their coverage is worse. 800 MHz can always back down to analog AMPS, which *is* widespread. HOWEVER, at 1900, T vs. C is an issue -- some areas (New Orleans appears to be one of those places) will have no GSM at 1900, and some areas, namely Atlanta, will have no CDMA at 1900, for the foreseeable future. CDMA 1900 phones can use 800 systems (once dual-freq phones are available), GSM can't (since there are no GSM 800 systems.) > To my knowledge, CDMA is not used in the 800-900 Mhz range. TDMA is the Wrong (see above.) > CDMA is the leader right now in the 2Ghz PCS range; eventually GSM may > take over. Actually, I believe the more widespread acceptance of GSM systems (BellSouth, PacBell, Omnipoint, Powertel, Western Wireless, etc.), combined with the ability to SIM-roam and eventually use the same phone overseas, will push it ahead of CDMA at 1900, at least in some circles. AT&T Wireless' use of IS-136 will expand to cover most of the US (some areas at 800, others at 1900) *but* that's -one- company. (For roaming purposes, that might be better than the larger number of PCS carriers, and the *sea* of cellular carriers, some of whom I predict will die, mainly because of stupidity when it comes to roaming rates and service. I, for one, am sick of the continual squabbling between certain cellular carriers [some of which has been discussed in the Digest in the past] which makes cellular roaming a big headache.) Stanley Cline somewhere near Atlanta, GA, USA roamer1(at)pobox.com http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ spam not wanted here! help outlaw spam - see http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ From: linky@see.figure1.net (Jason Lindquist) Subject: Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM Date: 28 Aug 1997 04:37:50 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign An infinite number of monkeys masquerading as Robert Walker wrote: > ATTWS uses TDMA. Airtouch uses CDMA. There are currently five > Airtouch CDMA markets: Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, > and Portland. You can use CDMA if you roam to any of those markets. Add Detroit, San Diego and Los Angeles to that list. Airtouch's first CDMA system went up in LA for its earliest friendly-user tests, and San Diego was one of the first commercial launches after that. > The Sony CMD500 is the only CDMA phone currently in existance that > works with the Airtouch system; Samsung and Nokia have announced the release of their own CDMA phones, which should probably show up in stores in the next few months. The Sony phone referred to is also known as the Qualcomm QCP-800. However, I have yet to see Airtouch selling Sony-branded phones ... either way, aside from that cosmetic mark, they're identical. (Flip the earpiece up on the Sonys. :-) ) > The CDMA service is pretty good; it is very clear > and quiet because the vocoder samples and does not send redundant > noise. Thus talking on your car phone while your car is driving > doesn't send the road noise that you hear on an analog system. This > vocoder is also nice because it reduces the amount of data > transmitted, meaning 8 CDMA calls can comfortably fit in the same > bandwidth as 1 AMPS call or 3 NAMPS calls. CDMA's improved capacity over (N)AMPS is not just related to vocoder efficiency, but also to frequency reuse and co-channel interference. "There's only one thing that will make them stop hating Jason A. Lindquist you. And that's being so good at what you do that they linky@see.figure1.net can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now <*> you damn well better be." -- Col. Graff (Card, _Ender's Game_) =================================NOTE======================================== Senders of unsolicited commercial/propaganda e-mail subject to fees. Details at http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/jlindqui ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #224 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 29 09:23:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA05919; Fri, 29 Aug 1997 09:23:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 09:23:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708291323.JAA05919@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #225 TELECOM Digest Fri, 29 Aug 97 09:23:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 225 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson CDMA/TDMA/GSM Security (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Re: GSM, TDMA, CDMA (John R. Covert) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Bradley Ward Allen) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Dustin Christmann) Sprint PCS Deal in Philadelphia About to Expire! (W. Levant) Book Review: "Modems Made Easy" by Hakala (Rob Slade) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: CDMA/TDMA/GSM Security Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 02:16:18 +0530 Further to the CDMA/TDMA/GSM debate, I'd like to add to the comments of the few who've noted that GSM is far more than a modulation protocol. CDMA may have good modulation and a good vocoder, but the rest is lousy. Global roaming with one SIM card locked to your handset, standard pre-defined translations to all the X.yy and V.yy data protocols are just _some_ of GSM's advantages as a "mature" standard. Well thought-out, more like it. See, for example, this note on security: CDMA/TDMA/AMPS have rotten encryption, which was demonstrated as such in March. GSM on the other hand has a pretty sophisticated authentication/encryption protocol which has never been cracked (publicly) in all its years of widespread use. This is not always an advantage - Pakistan shut down Motorola's GSM network in Karachi for a while a couple of years ago because the government couldn't tap into on-the-air traffic. FWIW my description of GSM's auth/crypt protocol has been floating around for years, you'll find it on the L0pht (www.l0pht.com) and elsewhere by searching for GSM crypto. Rishab PS: For the differently-memoried, a copy of Bruce Schneier's March 20 press release and my comments to a reporter who covered it is attached. -----Original Message----- From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Date: 22 March 1997 02:44 Subject: newest _American_ cellphones cracked [referring to a WIRED news - www.wired.com - article] I suppose I ought to be glad that the Indian govt imposed the GSM standard on everyone here. As Bruce points out, it's not that the TIA couldn't have come up with something better. True, GSM isn't the greatest thing on earth, but there's been no comparable hack, despite GSM's much wider usage, and though some weak ciphers were leaked, nothing as ridiculous as the CMEA's Vigenre cipher! Best, Rishab http://www.counterpane.com/cmea-press.html Press Release MARCH 20, 1997 CONTACTS:Bruce Schneier Counterpane Systems 612 823-1098 (voice) 612 823-1590 (fax) schneier@counterpane.com (email) Robert Sanders, PR University of California. Berkeley 510-643-6998 (voice) 510-643-7461 (fax) rls@pio.urel.berkeley.edu (email) David Wagner University of California, Berkeley 510-643-9435 (voice) 510-642-5775 (fax) daw@cs.berkeley.edu (email)Lori Sinton Jump Start Communications 415-938-2234 (voice) 415-938-2237 (fax) lsinton@aol.com (email) FLAW IN CELL PHONE ENCRYPTION IDENTIFIED; DESIGN PROCESS BLAMED Telecommunications Industry Association algorithm for digital telephones fails under simple cryptanalysis MINNEAPOLIS, MN. AND BERKELEY, CA., March 20, 1997 - Counterpane Systems and UC Berkeley jointly announced today that researchers have discovered a flaw in the privacy protection used in today's most advanced digital cellular phones. This discovery points to serious problems in the closed-door process used to develop these privacy measuers. This announcement is a setback to the US cellular telephone industry, said Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Systems, a Minneapolis, MN consulting firm specializing in cryptography. The attack can be carried out in a few minutes on a conventional personal computer. Schneier and John Kelsey of Counterpane Systems, along with graduate student David Wagner of the University of California at Berkeley, plan to publish their analysis in a paper entitled "Cryptanalysis of the Cellular Message Encryption Algorithm (CMEA)." Legislators are scheduled to hold hearings today on Rep. Goodlatte's "SAFE" (Security And Freedom Through Encryption) bill, HR695. The problem affects numbers dialed on the key pad of a cellular handset, including any telephone, PIN, or credit cards numbers dialed. The system was supposed to protect the privacy of those dialed digits, but the encryption is weak enough that those digits are accessible to eavesdroppers with a digital scanner. The cryptographers blame the closed-door design process and excessive pressure from U.S. military interests for problems with the privacy standard. The cellular industry attempted to balance national security with consumer privacy concerns. In an attempt to eliminate recurring security problems, the cellular standards arm of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) privately designed this new framework for protecting cellular phones. The system uses encryption to prevent fraud, scramble voice communications, and protect users' privacy. These new protections are being deployed in today's digital cell phones, including CDMA, NAMPS, and TDMA. Not a new problem As early as 1992, others - including noted security expert Whitfield Diffie - pointed out fatal flaws in the new standard's voice privacy feature. The two flaws provide a crucial lesson for policy makers and consumers, the researchers said. These weaknesses are symptomatic of broad underlying problems in the design process, according to Wagner. Many have criticized the National Security Agency (the U.S. military intelligence agency in charge of electronically monitoring foreign powers) for insinuating itself into the design process, pressuring designers to cripple the security of the cellular encryption technique and hamstringing emerging cellular security technology. "The result is weaker protection for everybody," Kelsey said. "This is another illustration of how U.S. government efforts to control cryptography threaten the security and privacy of Americans," said David Banisar, attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. This is not the first report of security flaws in cellular telephony. Today, most cellular phone calls can be intercepted by anyone in the area listening to a scanner, as House Speaker Newt Gingrich learned this past January when someone with a scanner recorded one of his cellular calls. According to FCC estimates, the cellular telephony industry lost more that $400 million to fraud and security problems last year. CMEA Technology CMEA is a symmetric cipher, like the Digital Encryption Standard (DES). It uses a 64-bit key, but weaknesses in the algorithm reduce the key to an effective length of 24 or 32 bits, significantly shorter than even the weak keys the U.S. government allows for export. Greg Rose, program chair of the 1996 USENIX Security Symposium, put the results in context: "This break does not weaken the digital cellular fraud protections. And it's still true that digital cellular systems are much harder to casually eavesdrop on than analog phones. But it's clear from this break that a determined criminal with technical resources can intercept these systems." Counterpane Systems is a Minneapolis, MN-based consulting firm specializing in cryptography and computer security. Bruce Schneier is president of Counterpane and author of three books on cryptography and security. David Wagner is a founding member of the ISAAC computer security research group at UC Berkeley. In the Fall of 1995, the ISAAC group made headlines by revealing a major flaw in Netscape's web browser. The authors also hasten to thank Greg Rose for his advice. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Aug 97 10:11:39 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: GSM, TDMA, CDMA I was wrong when I stated that Sprint PCS was TDMA/1.9GHz in every market except D.C., where it is GSM (this part is correct, it is GSM in DC). And another poster was wrong when he announced that in Seattle, the carriers are ATTWS with TDMA (this is correct), Airtouch with CDMA (this is correct), and Sprint is GSM (this is not correct). Both the ATTWS and Airtouch systems operate in the conventional cellular band at 850 MHz and offer both Analogue and their respective types of Digital service in the conventional band. See Sprint's WWWeb site at www.sprintpcs.com, which makes the very clear statement that Sprint PCS is CDMA/1.9GHZ throughout its service area (not bothering to make it very clear that Washington is not part of its service area). Also notice that Sprint PCS WWWeb sites are ) 1996, 1997 Sprint Spectrum L.P., which makes it clear that Sprint PCS and Sprint Sprectrum are one company. Note that the Sprint Spectrum (Washington, D.C.) WWWeb site at http://www.sprintspectrum-apc.com/ is Copyright 1996 American PCS, L.P. Up in Seattle, GSM/1.9GHz will be offered by VoiceStream (Western Wireless), but not for about another year. Just across the border in Vancouver, B.C., Fido (Microcell) GSM 1.9GHz service is already available. The whole thing continues to be confusing. For example, BellSouth Mobility DCS in Eastern Tennesee, North Carolina, and South Carolina is GSM/1.9GHz. In Atlanta, where you'd expect BellSouth to offer it, the carrier will actually be Powertel, currently on-line in Alabama, Mississippi, and Northern Florida. The primary GSM carriers in North America, Aerial Communications, Inc., BellSouth Mobility DCS, Microcell Telecommunications Inc., Omnipoint Communications Services, Inc., Pacific Bell Mobile Services, Powertel, Inc., and Western PCS Corporation (VoiceStream) have formed "The GSM Alliance" (see http://www.omnipoint.com/pr/8797.htm) to ensure that their customers have uniform and uninterrupted service wherever they go in North America. Other companies offering GSM service will be "licensed affiliates" of the alliance. To see existing North American roaming agreements, go to Omnipoint's map at http://www.omnipoint.com/roaming/roam_usa.htm. Omnipoint has arranged for roaming with every existing North American GSM provider, and this map will show you where there currently is GSM/1.9GHz service. Hopefully it will look much better in another twelve months! For international roaming, of all the GSM carriers, only Omnipoint has real, live, two-way roaming agreements that actually work overseas. I've used their service in Germany, England, and France, and it has worked flawlessly, with instantaneous (2-3 seconds) registration and full access to my home custom calling features (ability to control forwarding and even inquire as to forwarding status) from the handset, and even receipt of SMS messages. Omnipoint currently has international GSM/900MHz roaming available with both Cellnet and Vodaphone in the U.K. (and may soon have Orange/1.8GHz), with Eircell in the Irish Republic, with Telecel in Portugal, with Telefonica Moviles in Spain (including the Azores), with France Telecom in France, with Swiss Telecom in Switzerland, with both Libertel and PTT Telecom in the Netherlands, with Mannesmann (D2) in Germany, with Eurotel Praha in the Czech Republic, With Polska Telefonica in Poland, with North-West GSM in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Telecom Finland in Finland, with both Comvik and Europolitan in Sweden, and with both Hong Kong Telecom and SmarTone in Hong Kong. I've had Omnipoint service with a New York number since April even though I've only used my SIM card in Europe (and don't even presently own a North American GSM phone!). It's purely for use when travelling, as I expect it to soon work in almost every country in the world that has chosen the GSM standard at 900MHz/1.8GHz/1.9GHz and to continue to work seamlessly even after GSM embraces a CDMA system, just by sticking my SIM card into the right kind of phone. john ------------------------------ From: Bradley Ward Allen Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 29 Aug 1997 05:32:52 -0400 Organization: Q In response to Kathy, Hi. You made good decision to go non-month-to-month. I make suggestion, now about 15 phones later than my first (LA Cellular, with TDMA), that you get the best service + phone for your needs *NOW*. Usually, things do not change that fast that one year will make it worth not having a contrat. I got a Bell Atlantic service with one year contract so I could get $100 off my phone. I am very happy with the AMPS service (my first; I've previously had TDMA (which sucks) and GSM (which sucks less)). I want CDMA, but am pissed that NYNEX (Bell Atlantic) went with a worse vocoder than what Pac Bell (Pac Tel) has. If you are new to everything, though, getting a month-to-month will allow you to realize what is best and switch to that in less than a year. I think you *might* find that you want better voice quality. But don't forget, digital features are sometimes higher in the phones with lower voice quality. What you need is more up to you. I need high voice quality and high coverage. Bell Atlantic is best, here, with AMPS service. Wish I knew that all along. (I had McCaw (Cell 1, now AT&T), which was worse, worst is that I had TDMA phones, no digital services.) I even get CID and VM message waiting indicator on my AMPS service. Very nice. Most people think I'm at home (less fuzz on my AMPS service than on any of my digital services (TDMA, GSM, and testing CDMA); yes, you read that right, *LESS FUZZ ON MY AMPS SERVICE!!!!*) My mantra: I want low latency high fidelity telephones with lots of features. ------------------------------ From: Dustin Christmann Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 29 Aug 1997 01:38:42 GMT Organization: Nortel Wireless Networks, Richardson, TX In article , Stanley Cline wrote: > On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 21:01:39 -0500, in comp.dcom.telecom was written: >> AT&T is TDMA in the 800 Mhz cellular band ... they have NO 2Ghz PCS >> operations that I know of ... Sprint is CDMA nationwide, so is PrimeCo > Not quite ... > 1) They are not using GSM at 1900 MHz, but are using IS-136 TDMA > (which isn't compatible w/ GSM) instead. > 2) AT&T has 1900 MHz IS-136 systems in Atlanta and one other > city (Phoenix?) Phoenix. And they started 1900 MHz service in Chicago in the last week or two. > And neither Sprint nor Primeco will cover all cities in the US! For > example, neither has any plans I'm aware of to serve Atlanta. Actually, Sprint WILL have nationwide coverage -- eventually. They were able to fill in the gaps with the BTAs they won in the D and E band auctions, and have at least 10 MHz of spectrum in every BTA in the continen- tal USA. Off the top of my head, I can't remember if they have the D band, E band, or both, in the Atlanta BTA. However, it'll take them a while to start service. In any case, the FCC web site has an Excel chart online with the winners in each BTA and MTA. The URL is: http://www.fcc.gov/wtb/auctions/summary/abcdef.xls >> it in the 800 cellular band (at the cost of analog channels!). CDMA >> is wideband and requires ther 2Ghz PCS spectrum. Yes, eventually CDMA > CDMA is being deployed at 800 as well (AirTouch Powerband, for > example; other carriers, including GTE, will be using CDMA at 800) Likewise, Bell Atlantic/NYNEX Mobile and Ameritech. >> CDMA is the way to go; if you want coverage everywhere, TDMA is it >> for now but eventually CDMA will catch up. > TDMA/CDMA doesn't determine coverage -- frequency does. 1900 MHz > systems aren't widespread yet, hence their coverage is worse. 800 MHz > can always back down to analog AMPS, which *is* widespread. But one thing that many 1900 MHz carriers will do until they have better coverage is sell dual-band/dual-mode phones. AT&T Wireless has already started doing this in their 1900 MHz markets. > HOWEVER, at 1900, T vs. C is an issue -- some areas (New Orleans > appears to be one of those places) will have no GSM at 1900, and some > areas, namely Atlanta, will have no CDMA at 1900, for the foreseeable > future. CDMA 1900 phones can use 800 systems (once dual-freq phones > are available), GSM can't (since there are no GSM 800 systems.) Well, for the near term, I understand that there will soon be dual-mode, dual-band GSM/AMPS phones available Real Soon Now. I know that Western Wireless is interested in them, since they are a major cellular carrier in the rural West (operating under the ubiquitous Cellular One brand), and such phones would give their VoiceStream customers much better coverage in rural areas. But after the D/E/F auctions, it appears that the holes in coverage by the major companies and technologies were theoretically filled. Most places that didn't get a GSM carrier in the A/B/C auctions got one in the D/E/F auctions. So GSM will be in use nationwide -- eventually. And as I mentioned earlier, Sprint PCS filled in their coverage holes in the D and E auctions, so they'll be nationwide -- eventually. However, much of the GSM coverage depends on the ability of some "small business" C band carriers to get off the ground. For example, the GSM carrier in Dallas/Fort Worth is Pocket Communications, a C band carrier. Unfortunately, they filed for Chapter 11 in April. So GSM in Dallas and in many other Pocket markets, including New Orleans and Chicago, is in limbo. But the PCS market is developing in a direction such that no matter what technology (GSM, IS-136, CDMA) or carrier you choose, you'll be able to get nationwide coverage, either through one carrier, or an alliance of carriers. The competitive pressures are just so great that not having nationwide co- verage would be a fatal flaw for a carrier. >> To my knowledge, CDMA is not used in the 800-900 Mhz range. TDMA is the > Wrong (see above.) >> CDMA is the leader right now in the 2Ghz PCS range; eventually GSM may >> take over. > Actually, I believe the more widespread acceptance of GSM systems > (BellSouth, PacBell, Omnipoint, Powertel, Western Wireless, etc.), > combined with the ability to SIM-roam and eventually use the same > phone overseas, will push it ahead of CDMA at 1900, at least in some > circles. In terms of raw subscriber numbers, however, CDMA will likely eventually push ahead, simply due to the fact that there are so many more CDMA providers. In most places there'll be two or three CDMA providers and one GSM provider. But in the long run, GSM will be a very strong #2 in the USA, due to the advantages that you cited. There's a definite market for GSM in North America. > AT&T Wireless' use of IS-136 will expand to cover most of the US (some > areas at 800, others at 1900) *but* that's -one- company. (For > roaming purposes, that might be better than the larger number of PCS > carriers, and the *sea* of cellular carriers, some of whom I predict > will die, mainly because of stupidity when it comes to roaming rates > and service. I, for one, am sick of the continual squabbling between > certain cellular carriers [some of which has been discussed in the > Digest in the past] which makes cellular roaming a big headache.) One thing that AT&T is doing that I like is that they're selling dual-band phones from the start, giving them very good IS-136 coverage from the start. For example, if you subscribe to AT&T Wireless' 1900 MHz service in Chicago, my understanding is that if you go to Dallas, you'll get IS-136 service at 800 MHz automagically with the same phone through AT&T Wireless. If you go to Washington, you'll get 800 MHz IS-136 service through Cellular One. And if you go somewhere without IS-136 service at either frequency, you'll at least get analog coverage. In other words, since IS-136 is fairly widespread at 800 MHz, AT&T can give their customers good digital coverage through their 800 MHz markets or through their 800 MHz roaming partners, while they're building their own network. Thanx, Dustin Christmann ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 21:16:14 EDT Subject: Sprint PCS Deal in Philadelphia About to Expire! For anyone who's in or around the Philadelphia area, Sprint PCS is running a fantastic deal -- buy a Qualcomm phone for $200.00, and you can sign up for a plan that gives you 1,500 local-area minutes (that's right, fifteen hundred minutes) a month for a flat $75.00 fee (which, I believe, includes monthly access, but not landline or toll charges where applicable). There is no distinction between peak and off-peak usage. The rate is guaranteed until the turn of the century, and there's no contract required. They haven't announced it, but I understand from my firm's cellular dealer that the promotion ends on August 31st. They also offer 500 minutes for $50.00; no word on whether that plan will be withdrawn as well. I had a chance to borrow a colleague's phone the other day to try it out. In Philadelphia proper, the coverage is fantastic; signal strength is always peaked, and outgoing calls "hit" the tower first time every time. It even works on the commuter trains with (as you might expect with digital service) no interference from the 13.2kV power lines overhead). In the nearby suburbs, it's somewhat spottier, but in my experience, perfectly acceptable, and in any event no worse than my conventional cellular phone. In the far suburbs, the signal fades badly about 30 miles west of the city, then abruptly dies entirely, and remains dead all the way to (and in) Lancaster, PA, about 50 miles wsw from the point at which coverage is lost. My firm has decided to get phones for a bunch of us, since they've been paying between $100.00 and $1,000.00 a month for our cellular usage as it is. Because of the dead spots, the firm will keep two or three conventional cellular phones for trips outside the PCS coverage area. I'm getting my PCS phone tomorrow, and then getting rid of one of my two conventional cell phones. Since 1500 peak minutes on the lowest cellular corporate rate plan available costs $540.00, this one's a no-brainer. Gripes : 1) the phone gets awfully hot after five or ten minutes of usage; 2) the vocoders in Sprint's system could use a bit of tweaking, especially in the Blue Bell/Plymouth Meeting area (is anyone from Sprint reading this?), since the echo chamber effect is sometimes quite pronounced; and 3) the earpiece on the Qualcomm phones seems to be a bit position-sensitive; if it isn't ALL the way up, the audio cuts in and out. And no, I don't work for Sprint or Sprint PCS, and have no association whatsoever with either company, except as a customer. Bill ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 10:37:34 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Modems Made Easy" by Hakala BKMDMDEZ.RVW 960123 "Modems Made Easy", David Hakala, 1995, 0-07-882116-9, U$21.95 %A David Hakala 74720.3377@compuserve.com david.hakala@boardwatch.com %C 2600 Tenth St., Berkeley, CA 94710 %D 1995 %G 0-07-882116-9 %I McGraw-Hill/Osborne %O U$21.95 510-548-2805 800-227-0900 lkissing@osborne.mhs.compuserve.com %T "Modems Made Easy" This is a good, short, solid overview of what you can do with modems. Newcomers to the online world will likely need not only some help with installation, the first few calls, tuning, and troubleshooting, but with an introduction to all aspects of microcomputer communications. An overview of modems does a good job of explaining protocol concepts with real world analogies. A chapter on buying a modem is quite brief, but realistic, as is the advice on software. Chapter five, on setting up your modem, is short and practical. Chapter six, on software installation, should be considerably expanded in order to assist first-time users. The concepts have been explained, in chapter two, but the specifics of how that works out are lacking. There is a good section on identifying COM ports (often missing in other works), but little advice on how to identify incorrect parameter settings. Appendix B, on troubleshooting, does have some advice but it, too, is quite terse. Chapters seven to twelve give you a rundown on what to do with a modem: call a BBS, call a commercial online service, call an electronic mail service, call the Internet, call another private computer, or set up your own BBS. The material on the different types of services is quite reasonable and unbiased, and gives you good advice on what to expect. "Remote access", the ability to use your home or office computer from another remote computer, is the only missing application. A new chapter thirteen provides advice on how to set up your own BBS. The last three chapters offer some helpful, related advice on money-saving tips, communications-related shareware, and the communications aspects of Windows. There are also a number of resource lists, including the ASP BBS list, the "Boardwatch 100" list, and communications hardware and software vendors. Those buying and setting up modems for the first time may want additional sources of buying advice and help, but this is very definitely worth consideration as a general advisor and entre to the online world. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 BKMDMDEZ.RVW 960123 DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca BCVAXLUG Envoy http://www.decus.ca/www/lugs/bcvaxlug.html ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #225 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 31 14:00:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id OAA22337; Sun, 31 Aug 1997 14:00:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 14:00:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199708311800.OAA22337@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #226 TELECOM Digest Sun, 31 Aug 97 14:00:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 226 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Relief Needed for Southeast LA's NPA 504 (Mark J. Cuccia) CLEC Service Reaches Ohio (John Cropper) Confusing AT&T Rate Revision (Babu Mengelepouti) Colorado PUC Numbering Management Task Force (Donald M. Heiberg) Re: 11 Digits, 10 Digits or 7 Digits: Who Knows? (Stanley Cline) Last Laugh! Jobs, Satan Announce Deal (Eric Florack) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 10:38:25 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Relief Needed for Southeast LA's NPA 504 News of impending relief for southeastern Louisiana's 504 area code are now hitting the local media. The local newspaper, the New Orleans {Times Picayune} has had several articles recently. I usually don't get a chance to read the Baton Rouge {Morning/Sunday Advocate}, but I assume that they have had similar articles as well. The newspapers in some other smaller towns also within 504 have had some articles now for a few months already regarding forthcoming relief for NPA 504. And local radio/TV news have reported that 504 will need to be split or overlayed, as well. New Orleans is the largest city/metro area in 504 (and the state), and also most well known (of course, considering the crime/political problems, the most INfamous, depending on your opinion); Baton Rouge, also in 504 is the state capital, and is usually listed as the second largest metro area in Louisiana. So far, there have been three articles in the local paper. The first was on Thursday, 21-August-1997 (on the front page). There were two articles in the 'Money' section of the Sunday (24-August-1997) paper. All three articles were written by Keith Darce', Business Writer, of the {Times Picayune}. I am _not_ going to transcribe the articles in the {Times Picayune}, but will summarize the relief plans and situation. The usual issues were mentioned - that increased new technology and services have demanded new telephone lines, numbers and prefixes: cellular / paging / wireless, telephone-based alarm systems, computer modems and Internet usage (both the end-user's modem lines _and_ the lines for the modem pools of Internet/Online providers), "Ringmaster" numbers (multiple incoming telephone numbers each ringing in different cadences but all on the same line), PBX / Centrex / Business systems, extra lines/numbers for Fax machines, etc. _ALSO_ mentioned in the articles was the increase of _potential_ local telco competition! Each Competitive-LEC can request at least one distinct NXX prefix per billing ratecenter, regardless of the number of _actual_ lines or customers served. Each NXX c/o code prefix can have up to 10,000 possible line-numbers, however, many NXX codes are _far_ underused in their line-number fill. There are four options for providing relief of NPA 504: Option #1: Split off the Baton Rouge LATA (and adjacent ratecenters/wirecenters in 504, but served from the Jackson MS LATA) into its own new NPA, while the remaining 504 area (New Orleans LATA and other adjacent ratecenters/wirecenters also in 504, but served from the Jackson MS LATA or Mississippi Gulfcoast LATA) stays 504. Option #2: OVERLAY the entire existing 504 area with a second new NPA code. Most new numbers and virtually ALL new NXX prefixes needed will come from the new NPA code. All existing lines using NPA 504 will remain 504, however mandatory ten-digit dialing will be required for all local calls which some consider to be "too much of a burden". Option #3: Split off the Baton Rouge LATA (etc.) as above in Option #1, but also split off the parishes (counties) "northshore" of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas (i.e. north of the immediate New Orleans area) into this new NPA. Those parishes just "northshore" of New Orleans are also in the New Orleans LATA, and also include one rate/wire-center each, in 504, one served from the Jackson MS LATA ("South Osyka LA") and the other served from the Mississippi Gulf Coast LATA ("Pearlington LA"). While the newspaper article didn't indicate a particular (older) popular geographic name for this option, it could be called "The Baton Rouge LATA and Florida Parishes" split. (I will define "The Florida Parishes" further down). (BTW, prior to divestiture, most all of the "northshore" area was homed on the Baton Rouge toll switch for toll and operator functions. At divestiture, when LATAs were being carved out, the "northshore" parishes east of the Baton Rouge metro area was placed under the New Orleans LATA and access-tandem/toll switches.) Option #4: Split off the immediate New Orleans metro area (including Jefferson Parish, and its communities of Kenner and Metairie, both suburbs of New Orleans) into a separate NPA code, while everything _else_ presently in NPA 504 will retain 504. The exact boundaries of such a split weren't detailed, so I don't know 'exactly' how large or small the "New Orleans" split would be. This option is considered the least likely split (thank goodness, since _I_ would be affected). Of course, the usual tug-of-war and political feuding is taking place. The Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) is expected to rule on a plan in its October 1st meeting in Baton Rouge. BellSouth wants to introduce the new NPA by mid-December (1997) at the earliest, or at least in early 1998. At its current rate, the 504 NPA is expected to exhaust its supply of available NXX prefixes in twelve months, next year in September 1998, if no relief plan is approved to be implemented. Some Baton Rouge interests want to see New Orleans get split to the new NPA (remember that there is political influence in Baton Rouge, being the state capital). Other Baton Rouge interests want to see an overlay relief plan, but some of them have backed off when told that mandatory ten-digit local dialing would be required. However, it is known that mandatory ten-digit local dialing and overlaying for NPA relief will eventually become the norm, particularly in preparation for full number portability (both among service-providers _and_ geographically), and when the NANP needs to expand numbers to ones longer-than-ten-digits. The PSC member from Covington LA (on the "northshore") represents most of that area and some of the metro New Orleans area. He is pushing hard for the Baton Rouge area (only) to get the new NPA, under Option #1. However the PSC member who represents the Baton Rouge area first was pushing for Option #2 (the overlay), since Baton Rouge's existing customers (as well as New Orleans) would both retain 504, however, he didn't like the mandatory ten-digit dialing. On the local news on radio on Thursday morning (28-Aug), he wants BellSouth to consider Option #4 (the "New Orleans" split). If Option #1 were adopted, the new NPA for Baton Rouge could last at least ten-years. However, the smaller 504 area, serving the New Orleans LATA/etc. area would need relief _again_ by 2002. Personally, I prefer the overlay method, since ten-digit local dialing will become necessary in virtually _all_ parts of the NANP early in the 21st century. Adopting overlays and ten-digit local dialing _NOW_ will make numbering and dialing much more uniform and the assignment and administration more efficient. If we _wait_ until some point in the future, while doing endless splits in the meantime, the situation will be in a worse state when overlays and ten-digit dialing will _have_ to be done. The newspaper articles did mention that that new NPA code's digits have _not_ yet been officially announced by BellSouth. While the article _did_ discuss the process for choosing a new NPA code (i.e., making sure that the digits of the new NPA code don't conflict with any existing central-office code digits in the splitting off area, or in any adjacent area code where an existing central-office code has identical digits if permissive seven-digit local / EAS / optional- billing-plan dialing is allowed to such a prefix ... the articles did _NOT_ try to make any 'hints' or guess-at what the new NPA code could possibly be. However, it was mentioned that the new NPA is _not_ going to be 578. That numerical spells out LSU (Louisiana State University), and the article mentioned that some of the new NPA codes are chosen such that the digits correspond to alphabetical mnemonics representing local/regional culture. One of the local newspaper's articles did quote Stan Washer, the BellSouth central-office code administrator and NPA-code relief co-ordinator (in Birmingham); and also quoted Ron Conners, the director of (presently still Bellcore's) NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administration, in Piscataway NJ. If Option #1 or #3 is chosen, the new NPA code will include territory of the following independent telcos: Star Telephone Company, EATEL (East Ascension Telephone Company), and one other small local independent telco in the Baton Rouge LATA which only has one or two exchanges (I can't recall its name at the moment). If Option #2 (overlay) is chosen, the Reserve Telephone Company and LATELCO (Lafourche Telephone Company) will also be affected. Both of these are in the New Orleans LATA, but some distance outside of the immediate New Orleans metro area. As for my indicating the "northshore" area as "The Florida Parishes", this is a geographic/historical term I frequently used to hear back in local / state / regional history/geography class in school, in the 1960's/70's/80's. Also, many locals/natives (and local media/press) used the term "Florida Parishes" back then as well. Unfortunately, the term "Florida Parishes" seems to have fallen into disuse over the past ten or fifteen years. In the 18th and early 19th Centuries, prior to becoming part of the U.S., The 'panhandle' of Spanish-held Florida actually extended all the way west to the Mississippi River, including the southernmost (Gulfcoast area) counties of Alabama and Mississippi, and also that portion of Louisiana north of the "Isle d'Orleans", as far west as the Baton Rouge area. Some old maps refer to this long panhandle area as "Spanish West Florida", thus the counties -er- _parishes_ north of New Orleans (and Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas), east of the Mississippi River, and on the same latitude as the (present) Florida 'panhandle' have been called "The Florida Parishes". And now, for some of Louisiana's history of 504, DDD, etc: Half-a-century ago (October 1947), when AT&T finalized the area code plan of the initial 86 area codes, for _eventual_ customer long distance dialing (DDD), the entire state of Louisiana was to have a single NPA, 504. Ten years later, by 1957, as more and more telephone central offices were being established for local service (the "postwar" boom), or were being automated for local customer dialing and inward _operator_ toll dialing, and (eventual) customer DDD, there were more area codes across the US and Canada, since the original assignment of 86. Louisiana's original 504 area code was split in 1957, with the new 318 being introduced. (318 was also used, _temporarily_ as the numericals of the area code for San Francisco and west-Bay numbers, for a couple of years in the _early_ 1950's, when Englewood NJ customers could _dial_ certain metro areas across the US. This temporary use of 318 was most likely stopped in 1953, when the Card-Translator box was introduced to do more 6-digit translation of the dialed NPA-NNX code. All of the numbers in the "west-Bay" area which were _temporarily_ reached by area code 318 were moved 'back' to 415 at that time). NPA 504 now covered the southeast portion of the state (New Orleans and Baton Rouge, as far southwest as Houma, Thibodeaux, Morgan City, and as far west as the Atchafalaya River). NPA 318 covered the rest of the state, in the central/western portions, including Lafayette, Lake Charles, Alexandria, Shreveport, Monroe, etc. Originating customer DDD was introduced from the New Orleans metro area around 1962/63, and most all of the state had both inward and outward customer DDD by the mid-to-late 1960's. Only a handful of exchanges were not customer dialable in the early 1970's. One was Lake Providence LA in the extreme northeastern part of the state, which was still common-battery manual until around 1972/73. Another was Bayou Pigeon LA, near White Castle LA, not that far from Baton Rouge. White Castle had customer DDD as well as local two-way dialing with Bayou Pigeon, but all other traffic (in both directions) with Bayou Pigeon (including their calls to Information, Repair Service, South Central Bell's Business Office, etc) had to be placed via the '0' operator. There were one-digit or two-digit 'access' codes for customer (local) dialing between the two small SxS offices serving White Castle and Bayou Pigeon, until sometime in the later 1970's, when all of the Bayou Pigeon customers were consolidated into the White Castle local NNX-code's line-numbering, probably also consolidated into the White Castle SxS switch as well. The other remaining areas in Louisiana which remained operator handled for the longest included some "toll-stations" serving maritime or fishing settlements located at the 'mouth' of the Mississippi River, or in the swamps along the Louisiana Gulf Coast area, such as Pilottown, Head-of-Pass, Southwestern Pass, South-Pass, Port-Eads. By the 1980's, all of the marine business in these settlements had microwave "FX" service to New Orleans or a nearby town (usually Venice LA) via some "Other Common Carrier", and these points were officially removed from the telco tariff as operator handled "toll-stations", except for Pilottown, which was still 'officially' being rated/tariffed as an operator-handled point until probably the early 1990's. Today, all remaining "residential" and business customers in the Pilottown area now have BellSouth provided "extended" dial loops with the central-office in Venice LA, some 40-miles north along the river, and some business customers still maintain an "FX" microwave service (provided by OCCs) for 'local' New Orleans dialing (over 70-miles away). I don't think that _any_ SxS nor #5XB switches exist anywhere in Louisiana, whether BellSouth or 'independent' telcos. The last SxS offices in the immediate New Orleans area were cutover to #1AESS by 1982/83. The last two #5XB offices in New Orleans cutover to digital in September 1987 ("Michoud" cutover to a DMS-100; "Broadmoor" cutover to a #5ESS). Remaining SxS CDOs and small #5XB's serving smaller towns and rural areas, some even EAS/local with New Orleans and other metro areas fully ESS, were cut to digital offices and remotes around 1990/91. And now (1997), with the increase in technology and new services, including potential local telco competition, 504 needs relief. --------------- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: John Cropper Subject: CLEC Service Reaches Ohio Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 11:53:11 -0400 From UPI: COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio has announced that people within selected local telephone exchanges in 33 counties now have more than one company from which to choose as their local telephone service provider. The counties are: Athens, Belmont, Butler, Clark, Columbiana, Coshocton, Cuyahoga, Erie, Fairfield, Franklin, Gallia, Greene, Hancock, Lake, Lucas, Madison, Mahoning, Miami, Montgomery, Muskingum, Perry, Portage, Sandusky, Seneca, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, Tuscarawas, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Wood and Wyandot. The commission today said the increased telephone company presence in Ohio is the result of the PUCO's ``fresh look'' rules, adopted more than a year ago in an effort to encourage competition for local telephone exchange service. Under the ``fresh look'' rules, telephone customers under long-term contracts with incumbent telephone companies are given a 180-day window during which they may terminate their existing contracts to take advantage of offers from competing companies. The ``fresh look'' window begins five days after the first alternative local service provider enters a market and begins offering its services to the public. New providers must notify the PUCO when they complete their first commercial call. To be eligible for fresh look, customers must have more than two years remaining on their contract. John Cropper voice: 888.76.LINCS LINCS fax: 888.57.LINCS P.O. Box 277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 ICQ: 2670887 Great LD rates: http://www.lincs.net/longdistance/ FREE areacode info: http://www.lincs.net/areacode/ $16.95 internet: http://www.lincs.net/internet/dialupacs.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 10:23:13 -0400 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: Confusing AT&T Rate Revision This appeared in the Saturday (8/30) {Seattle Times}, in a small ad: NOTICE TO AT&T COMMERCIAL LONG DISTANCE (CLD) SUBSCRIBERS: AT&T has filed tariff revisions with the Fderal Communications Commission to restructure its direct dial domestic interstate and international rates under its Commercial Long Distance (CLD) service. The interstate schedule will collapse both mileage band and time of day periods into a single per minute rate of 34 cents.(*) Under this restructure, four of the five peak (Mon-Fri, 8A-5P) rates will decrease. Long distance calling in these decreasing mileage bands (56+ miles) accounts for approximately 65% of CLD traffic. Former mileage band 1 rate (55 miles and less) and off-peak rates (all milage bands) will increase. Direct dial international CLD rates will undergo a similar restructure, collapsing peak and off-peak rates into a single rate,(*) which varies depending on the country called. These changes become effective September 1, 1997. (*) The volume discount which is applied to these and other qualified call types is not affected by these changes. <--> Precisely what service is covered is not clear, but the resulting rate is very high--more than triple the domestic LDDS Worldcom rate that I resell. Even prepaid calling cards are usually cheaper! If even 20% of commercial AT&T long distance subscribers are on this rate, the resulting increase (I hope) will mean more business for me... :) dialtone@vcn.bc.ca ------------------------------ From: Donald M. Heiberg Subject: Colorado PUC Numbering Management Task Force Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 16:36:45 -0600 http://www.puc.state.co.us/docket/97m329t/!97m329t.html COLORADO PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION Colorado Numbering Management Task Force This Colorado Numbering Task Force was established by the Commission to provide solutions to a more efficient management of telephone numbers in the state. This Task Force has been given the objective of providing the Commission with a recommended solution to the long-term efficient use of telephone numbers within the area codes in Colorado; an objective timeline for the implementation of this long-term solution; and recommendations for interim conservation measures consistent with the long-term solution. Any interim measures recommended by the Task Force are to take into account those measures which are the subject of the application to be filed by the Numbering Plan Administrator pursuant to Commission Decision No. C97-761. The Commission's Decision is available in MS Word format (97m329t.bin). The members of this Task Force should not be limited to a specific number of representatives. It should contain representatives from all persons interested in deciding the long-term solution to the efficient use of telephone numbers in an area code. It should be comprised of at least one representative from each of the following: the Colorado Numbering Plan Administrator, a large Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC), a small ILEC (or its association), a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC), an interexchange carrier, a wireless providers (including cellular, PCS and/or paging), a 9-1-1 service representative, the Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel, and the Staff of the Commission. A member of the Staff of the Commission shall participate as a full member and serve as facilitator. To the extent possible meetings will remain open to the public and representatives of any other entity may attend meetings and provide input. Any interested persons or entities shall submit names of proposed members and alternates to the Commission within 20 days after the effective date of this Order. The Commission shall consider appointments of members of the Task Force at its next regularly scheduled weekly meeting following the 20-day period for receipt of proposed members. Members of the Task Force should be willing and able to address the technical issues associated with telephone numbering and to make firm commitments to the final report or recommendations of the Task Force. The Commission encourages the Task Force to reach consensus on all issues; however, for issues where consensus cannot be reached, a vote may be taken wherein each member of the Task Force shall have one vote and the majority will rule. For those issues where consensus cannot be reached, the Task Force may elect to provide majority and minority reports to the Commission in the final report. Attendance at all meetings is imperative. If a representative or a designated alternate cannot attend, that member shall be designated as absent. Decisions, including consensus decisions, may be made by the representatives present during any scheduled meeting. Absentee votes may be considered by the Task Force. The Task Force shall take detailed minutes of all meetings and, upon approval by the Task Force, provide copies of those minutes to all members and the official file in this docket. Upon direction of the Task Force, any other information, reports, or items of importance to the Task Force may be provided to the official file for this docket. As a part of the process, the Task Force should monitor and evaluate efforts for telephone number management at the national level and other state jurisdictions. The Task Force should meet as often as necessary to accomplish its objectives. Each meeting agenda shall be distributed to all members at least one week prior to the meeting and shall be posted on this internet web site (http://www.puc.state.co.us/). Current Meeting Announcements (announce.html) Commission Decision Establishing Task Force (97m329t.bin) Carrier Liaison Committee (CLC) Report to the North American Numbering Council (NANC) - Short-term Technical Alternatives to NXX Exhaust (adhoc.bin). Industry Numbering Committee (INC) - Uniform Dialing Plan (dialplan.bin,dpatta.bin,dpattb.bin). Industry Numbering Committee Report on Number Pooling (plgrpt.bin, sr105_3.bin). Questions may be directed to: Bruce Armstrong - Task Force Chair (303) 894-2000 ext 372 Fax: (303) 894-2065 Bruce.armstrong@dora.state.co.us ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: 11 Digits, 10 Digits or 7 Digits: Who Knows? Not Bellsouth Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 18:59:10 -0400 Blake Droke wrote: > Starting on September 15th, area code 931 will be activated for middle > Tennessee outside the Nashville metro area. I know this mainly from > the internet; I've heard very little about it from Bellsouth, even This is strange. The 615/423 NPA split for Chattanooga and Knoxville was well announced ... I have no idea what's up with 931, other than the fact that much of the territory changing to 931 is independent telco (Citizens Telecom, Dekalb Co-Op, Ben Lomand Co-Op, possibly TDS). But Clarksville and the Tullahoma/Manchester area *are* Bell. So why are they not publicizing it more? > yesterday, to verify that our Clarksville office is changing codes. > The answer is definitely yes, but it took them ten minutes to give me Correct. > Our company subscribes to a measured rate EAS type service (region > serve) which makes calls to Nashville cost about eight or nine > cents/min, and allows seven digit dialing to Nashville (Normal > procedure would be 1+615+7 digits). I asked Bellsouth what the new > dialing procedure would be on calls using region serve from > Clarksville to Nashville. "Duh, what do you mean? ... Oh, you just I'm guessing it will be either 10 or 11 digits. In general, with RegionServ, calls BETWEEN area codes are usually dialed as 11 digits. > have to dial the seven digits", they answer. OK, I ask, if you That's a lot of hot air, considering the fact that they are in different NPAs. > again. She says "Oh, we'll have to change your region serve plan > because Bellsouth can't carry calls between area codes, these calls Clearly wrong. > office back and start over again. This rep says, "Oh that's no > problem, I'm in Chattanooga, and we have local calls to area code 706 > in Georgia with seven digits." I say that I'm in Memphis and we can > call parts of Arkansas and Mississippi the same way, but that's not > the same situation. The reason that Chattanooga can call parts of northwest Georgia (i.e., Catoosa, Walker, and half of Dade counties -- the indep in the other half of Dade doesn't want to be local to Chattanooga) and Memphis can call West Memphis and Desoto County is because those arrangements have been in place for *years*, with NXXs that may conflict with seven-digit dialing not assigned in the local calling area. For example, I used to be in 706-861, in the Georgia side of the Chattanooga local calling area -- 615-861 before the 615/423 split, and now 423-861, were not used for a Chattanooga local NXX. Likewise, 706-629 was not used for a Georgia local NXX (it went to Calhoun, GA instead) because there was already a (615/423)-629 NXX in Chattanooga. HOWEVER, it appears that 10-digit dialing in the Chattanooga area (between 706 and 423) will be needed. A 423-937 NXX has shown up for Chattanooga in a couple of places -- but there is ALREADY a 706-937 NXX (Ringgold, GA in Catoosa County) which is LOCAL to Chattanooga! So there has to be some way to distinguish between 706-937 and 423-937. (423-937 does not work from inside the Chattanooga LATA yet, but goes to recordings from BellSouth Mobility's Chattanooga switch when dialed over AT&T, MCI, or Sprint [but not WorldCom or LCI] from Atlanta. AT&T operators have given the "nameplace" for 423-937 as Chattanooga! Apparently 423-937 has been assigned to BSMob, but not "turned up" yet. Curiously, neither BellSouth, nor Ringgold Telephone Co. [the LEC in 706-937], knew anything about this about a month ago.) > minutes. She then comes back and says that they think that I should > dial the call as 1+615 and the billing software will know what to > charge. I'm afraid of trying this, because in the Memphis area, That seems sensible. > dialing the area code can, in some cases, result in charges for what > should be local calls (at least it did a couple of years ago.) That It should not anymore, *UNLESS* you force the call through an IXC with a 10XXX/101XXXX code. IntraLATA PIC could trip this up, too, but intraLATA PIC isn't available in TN yet -- all intraLATA calls go by default via BellSouth, unless you dial a 10* code, and you have no choice in the matter. So UNLESS you dial a 10* code BellSouth will handle the call, and should not bill toll on local calls. > My plan for now is to continue with seven digit calling until it isn't > allowed, then trying 615 + seven digits, if that doesn't work, then > 1+615+number, if that doesn't work, quit calling Nashville. It's Perfectly sensible. > conversations like this that make you wonder if anyone at the phone > company actually knows how the phone system works. And if they don't, > who makes it work? At least when it comes to rates and occasionally dialing patterns, your friendly state regulators. SC ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Aug 1997 13:22:54 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: Last Laugh! Jobs, Satan Announce Deal Source is unknown. /E Jobs, Satan Announce Deal "The era of competition between good and evil is over," Steve Jobs told a keynote audience at MacWorld Expo today. "We have to let go of the notion that for good to triumph, evil must perish." In a presentation that had been anxiously awaited by the Mac community, Jobs announced a historic deal between Apple Computer and Beelzebub, Lord of Darkness and Supreme Ruler of the Empire of Evil. During his short speech to a stunned crowd, Jobs said that Satan will be purchasing $150M worth of Apple staff's souls, at the current market price. "I have Lucifer's word that he will not use his control over these souls to influence the direction we take in any way." Furthermore, said Jobs, the Devil will not be able to cash in any of the immortal souls for three whole years. The Antichrist then addressed the room via a live link from the Pits of Hell, and said that the Empire of Evil is committed to developing major pestilences for the Mac platform -- including Office 98 -- for at least the next five years. A collaboration on destroying the Sun is also part of the deal with the Lord of Darkness. Jobs said that Mac users should be grateful for the happiness that an honest, widely-respected and much-loved organization like The Eternal Pit of Torment will bring to the Mac community. In the wake of the announcement, Apple's stock lept 30 pieces of silver over the previous day's high. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #226 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 1 09:33:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA14782; Mon, 1 Sep 1997 09:33:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 09:33:25 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709011333.JAA14782@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #227 TELECOM Digest Mon, 1 Sep 97 09:32:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 227 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Pager Message Theft Charged (TELECOM Digest Editor) India to Allow Private ISPs, no Licence Fees (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) NADCOMM ... More Information (Don Robert House) Area Code Fun and Games in Massachusetts - Part Deux (oldbear@arctos.com) Caller ID - Business Names (Brent Best) Help Needed: Rac on SX-200 (Dave Harrison) Remembering Labor Day's Purpose (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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 1 Sep 1997 09:07:16 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Pager Message Theft Charged A New Jersey-based news service was charged last week in what I think is the first-of-a-kind federal case of illegally intercepting pager messages sent to public officials and selling the information to the media. Federal prosecutors have charged Breaking News Network of Ft. Lee, NJ and three individuals with intercepting pager messages sent to senior officials of the New York City Police and Fire Departments, the mayor's office, a district attorney's office and even one of the company's competitors. BNN sends information to pagers it provides to broadcast and print news organizations in Baltimore, New Jersey, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. BNN sends alphanumeric messages -- in other words, communications using words and/or numbers to its clients concerning fires and significant police events. US Attorney Mary Jo White said the defendants were charged with intercepting messages by using unlawfully cloned pagers to obtain sensitive law enforcement information. The allegation is that the company had pagers cloned to receive the information at the same time police and other city officials were sending it to each other. Then employees of BNN who were monitoring these pagers in turn passed the received information on to their clients. An unusual case, to be sure. Someone familiar with the case has suggested the way BNN got caught was that a deliberatly bogus message -- or a message with at least a few deliberatly incorrect details -- was transmitted. BNN passed it along and would have had no other basis for obtaining the bogus information except by reading the cloned pagers. When BNN passed along the bogus infor- mation, the question immediatly arose, 'where did you get that from if not from the trap which had been set?' I have to wonder how a distinction will be made between radio scanners set to listen to police/fire frequencies all the time by news media and these pagers. I guess pager transmissions are not intended for the general public, but then at the same time I have always heard that radio transmissions are not for acknowlegement either, or that at least we are not to benefit from what was heard. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: India to Allow Private ISPs, no Licence Fees Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 18:18:15 PDT From: rishab@dxm.org (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Reply-To: rishab@dxm.org Organization: Deus X Machina, New Delhi The Indian Techonomist - bulletin, August 31, 1997 Copyright (C) 1997 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh India to allow private ISPs, no licence fees * Independent telecom regulator to cover Internet too * Competition, not content, is the issue * VSNL makes money on Internet services * Tariffs may drop to 40 cents an hour, flat-rates unlikely The Indian government will shortly announce its new Internet policy, waiving new, private service providers from paying any licence fees for at least two years. In a series of "promotional measures" - the words of the Department of Telecommunications; in truth these measures remove pointless obstacles - the tariff structure for leased telecom bandwidth, which currently penalises networks, is expected to be rationalised. For years, the government hadn't even heard of datacom; in 1994 it decided to "permit" datacom services, and announced licences for e-mail providers and electronic bulletin board systems, at $150000 and $80000 per annum, quickly reduced by half. Some e-mail operators paid up, no BBSes did. In August 1995, state- run international communications monopoly VSNL started providing Internet "gateway" (direct link to the US) services, partly against the wishes of the DoT. In 1996 the DoT was about to announce $150000 p.a. ISP licences, but was dissuaded by the Techonomist, which suggested alternatives with lower entry barriers. The DoT was distracted by its mismanagement of the bigger telecom (wireline and cellular) privatisation process for about a year, then suddenly woke up to the Internet's existence again this year. After several committees set up to study the issues and meetings with non-DoT people, the DoT reluctantly accepted in July that while the Internet was a good thing, licence fees were not. It has been stalling over the public announcement of its new policy, although everyone from the Telecom Minister - "down to the mid-level DoT officers (the ones who really matter) seems to accept that the new policy is a done deal (albeit "promotional"). The Minister said - on August 9th - that the policy would be announced "very soon" - but it is now waiting for clearance by the cabinet, the highest, inter-ministerial level of government. This is quite unusual for such a small decision involving no money, but obviously nobody in the DoT wants to be blamed for something as revolutionary as a waiver of licence fees. Independent telecom regulator to cover Internet as well The new policy explicitly gives the independent Telecom Regulatory Authority of India jurisdiction over Internet issues. Although TRAI Chairman Justice S S Sodhi told the Techonomist that the regulators "are very new" and have no experience in datacom issues, they have proved to be fast learners. The TRAI has been hurting the DoT over complaints brought by cellular operators, and will be combative on Internet issues as well. According to the TRAI Act, the regulator has powers to rule on tariffs and interconnectivity, but only "recommend" terms of licences and policy for new services. By not charging licence fees, the DoT is giving away its control over something clearly within its domain. Disputes over tariffs, quality of service and interconnectivity rules - to VSNL, say - can be taken to the TRAI which should resolve them quickly, generally in favour of consumer interests. Content is not an issue, competition in telephony is Unlike many countries - notably its Asian neighbours - issues of content and censorship have never been a sticking point in the Indian debate on Internet policy. In 1996, then DoT Secretary clearly stated that content on the Internet would not require any new policy; existing laws would apply as well as they can be enforced. Not that enforcement is a priority: indeed, state-run VSNL's news server continues to carry USENET erotica that is presumably illegal. What worries the government is money, and control over money. Specifically, the money made by its state-owned telecom monopolies - which are profitable and receive little support from the Treasury. The DoT is losing its control over local and regional telephony to private competition; its national long-distance monopoly ends in 1999, with competition planned from not just private telecom companies but the electricity and railways. The DoT does not want to give data network operators an edge in telephony, which a good high-bandwidth infrastructure provides. And DoT-owned VSNL, the international monopoly, worries about Internet telephony, though not very seriously. VSNL, the state-controlled international communications monopoly currently provides India's only commercial Internet service with over 20 points of presence, in cooperation with the Department of Telecom (and Digital, which supports much of the network's computer equipment). With the new policy, VSNL will remain a monopoly provider of international connectivity - something it will retain until the year 2004, according to government promises repeated most recently during a $500 million global equity issue earlier in the year. Despite VSNL's monopoly, new private ISPs may be able to route their traffic through point-to- point links provided by VSNL, rather than through VSNL's own IP network. This is a matter of concern to many potential large network providers, such as Sprint, who would rather not share VSNL's Internet gateway - which is on several pipes straight into MCI's network in the US. Other than the cost compared to a point-to- point link - connectivity through VSNL's Internet gateway used to be priced similarly, but is now about half - some ISPs-in-waiting worry about poor quality of service, due to technical incompetence or pure malice. This is perhaps unwarranted. VSNL has demonstrated a surprising adherence to the rationality of commerce in the past: as long as they're making money, they have cheerfully provided service even for purposes that go against the spirit of archaic government policies. An example is the unconstitutional ban on private TV broadcasters - whose studios are linked by VSNL to satellite uplink centres abroad. Unlike the DoT, VSNL also shows an understanding of network economics. Although publicly against the US Federal Communications Commission's drive to lower international phone tariffs (or at least inter-provider settlement rates), VSNL admits that lower tariffs boost usage and even its own revenues. VSNL applies the same logic to the Internet. They planned a 30% internal rate of return on Internet services, despite the subsidy on dirt- cheap (and poorly serviced) "student accounts" at 3 US cents an hour. Within the first year of service, in Delhi alone they earned some $1. million in subscriptions. Rapid subscriber growth - from zero to over 40,000 in two years - has resulted in increased spending on infrastructure and somewhat lowered expectations for a (still fairly profitable) future. ISP dial-up tariffs may drop to 40 cents an hour, flat-rates unlikely Despite increased investment needs, VSNL wants to cut end-user rates to between 67 and 44 cents an hour for dial-up IP connections (down 20%-47% from the current 84 cents; service started in 1995 at $1.70) and phase out its dial-up login shell accounts (priced at 27 cents an hour) altogether. For the moment the DoT, which provides the service in smaller cities where VSNL itself has no presence - and thinks pricing Internet service is like pricing soap - hasn't agreed to VSNL's proposed price reductions. Thankfully for the financial health of potential Internet providers, India has no history of flat-rate pricing in any telecom services, and VSNL, despite declining prices has stuck to usage-pricing. This will not necessarily hurt consumers, though: if VSNL gets its way an Indian subscriber could pay under $20 per month for 90 minutes a day of dial-up IP, comparable to effective real use at an American flat-rate ISP. The Indian Techonomist - http://dxm.org/techonomist/news Copyright (C) 1997 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Reproduction permitted with this notice attached ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 20:31:19 -0700 From: Don Robert House Reply-To: dhouse@abac.com Subject: NADCOMM ... More Information As previously noted, I have started a museum for data communications. It is called NADCOMM or the North American Data Communications Museum. In the collection we have many Teletypes, from the 15 to the 40s. We also have maintenance spare typing units (28 & 35s) and over 400 pounds of TP parts from the 4 digits to the 6 digits. We have 60 volumes of Bell System practices on Teletype products and data communications. I am a former (1966-74) Bell System Communications Serviceman (Data-TTY) with lots of experience on 28,33,35,37 and paper tape Dataspeed units, Types 2,4,5. From 1975 to 1996 I served Illinois Bell as a network systems engineer in various capacities from circuit designer to transmission engineering manager. The NADCOMM collection also contains a DDS (Dataphone Digital Service) Hub and End Office, many different "Dataphones and Datasets" aka early modems, transmission test sets from 1937 to 1983, and many more things (from an early TTY for the deaf to the early ISDN NT1s and 'terminals' [ANSI standards will not allow them to be called Telephones]. The museum is for those interested in the history of data and special services telecommunications, especially the networking equipment and theory of operation. Our board of directors has over 130 years of combined data communications experience and are located in Illinois and Ohio as well as Southern California. We are interested in demonstrating RTTY. I have a Kenwood SWR set up with a 28 RO that is equiped with a 3 speed gear shift. I need a FSK to current loop (20 or 62.5 milliamp) convertor to make it operate. You can visit our website for a good overview of the collection. Also on the website is a list of things we are looking for to enhance the collection. Needed more than anything else is a Teletype repaiman's tool kit with tools and 5 and 8 level paper tape. We accept cultural donations. Currently the only spending of money is related to preservation of the collection and the picking up of additional equipment, documentation, and memorabilia donations. Pacific Bell is featuring me and our museum on their website in the near future at http://www.pacbell.com Come on down and see us sometime! You can call me Rob, or you can call me Don, or you can call me Doctor, but please don't call me crazy! Don Robert House North American Data Communications 3841 Reche Road Fallbrook, CA 92028-3810 dhouse@abac.com (primary address) dhouse@usa.net (secondary address) http://www.hem.com/nadcomm (website) (760) 723-9959 Telephone (760) 781-5161 Facsimile ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 23:32:12 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Area Code Fun and Games in Massachusetts - Part Deux Cellucci backs DPU plan on area codes By Doris Sue Wong {Boston Globe} 08/29/97 Acting Governor Paul Cellucci today will veto a legislative proposal to put 10 communities back in the 617 area code, ending a week of worrying for business owners and residents. Cellucci decided to torpedo the measure a week after he said he was inclined to approve it, a change of heart that made once-irate business owners grateful. "That is really fantastic," said Kim Whittaker of Baby Faire in Winchester. "I really applaud this decision. It is a brave one." The on-again, off-again area code change in recent days left Whittaker in a costly quandary. She had spent $5,000 to print company literature with the 781 area code. Cellucci chose to stand by the Department of Public Utilities' plan to shift about 130 communities in 617 and 508 to new area codes 781 and 978 after being flooded with calls from business owners. He was also warned by state regulators that the legislative meddling could cause some communities to run out of phone numbers next year. Cellucci's backpedaling, however, irked some lawmakers representing the 10 communities who had hoped to stay in 617. The communities are Arlington, Lexington, Lincoln, Lynn, Malden, Medford, Revere, Waltham, Winchester, and Woburn. Representative William G. Reinstein, a Democrat from Revere, fumed, "If Cellucci comes to Revere looking for votes, he better dial 911. We are not going to be very helpful with the governor, since he wasn't very helpful with us." Telephone customers in Belmont and Watertown, meanwhile, will have to wait longer before they know their fate. Cellucci said he will file a bill calling for the two communities to be shifted to the 781 area code as state regulators originally planned. "I think in fairness, the Legislature should be given the opportunity to set it straight if they choose to do so," Cellucci said. Sources said the governor is offering the measure at the behest of Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham, a Chelsea Democrat, with whom he spoke before announcing his intentions yesterday. The governor said Birmingham and House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, a Mattapan Democrat, have assured him the bill would be taken up when the Legislature goes back into session in mid-September. To give legislators time to act on the bill, Cellucci said he was asking the Department of Public Utilities, an independent state agency, to delay implementation of area code changes for one month, from Sept. 1 to Oct. 1. DPU officials said yesterday they had not received the governor's request. If the changes are postponed, Bell Atlantic officials said, customers will feel no immediate impact. Bell Atlantic has built in a three-month grace period, when calls will be put through whether numbers are dialed using old or new area codes. When the grace period ends, customers who do not call the correct code will hear a recording saying it has changed. Voice mail, fax machines, beepers, cellular phones, and computer modems have caused the demand for phone numbers to mushroom in recent years. With all phone numbers in the 617 and 508 area codes to be depleted next May, the DPU ordered Bell Atlantic to shift about half of the communities to new area codes. State House observers saw some political machinations behind subsequent legislative tinkering. Having failed to persuade state regulators to keep Belmont and Watertown in 617, Senator Warren E. Tolman, a Watertown Democrat, did an end-run around DPU by tucking an amendment into the fiscal 1998 budget letting the two towns keep their old area code. That move opened the door for other communities to attempt to take flight from the impending area code changes. And observers say Birmingham, the Senate president, allowed senators to add a provision in a supplemental budget passed last week to exempt 10 more communities from new area codes. Cellucci on Wednesday criticized the Department of Public Utilities and Bell Atlantic for failing to object when Belmont and Watertown were allowed to return to 617 via an amendment to the state budget. That exception opened the door for other lawmakers to win 617 status for their communities. While his criticism of Bell Atlantic may have some merit, his attack on the DPU was off base. The DPU did privately object to returning Belmont and Watertown to 617, but was overruled and told not to speak out by the state's consumer affairs office and ultimately by former Governor William Weld. Sources say Cellucci criticized the DPU because he felt DPU chairman John Howe embarrassed him by publicly attacking his decision to let the Legislature wreak havoc with the codes. Both Bell Atlantic and DPU officials praised the governor's decision yesterday, but urged the Legislature to make a decision about Belmont and Watertown by October 1. "We want this resolved as quickly as possible," said John P. Hoey, spokesman for Bell Atlantic. "The real issue is to make sure we are ready in May." Bruce Mohl of the Globe staff contributed to this report. ------------------------------ From: Brent Best Subject: Caller ID - Business Names Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 12:08:18 -0700 Reply-To: bjbest@interlog.com This question concerns the 16 character limitation for CID name info. Caller-ID data for private lines is straightforward - if the customer's last name in the directory listing is 14 characters or less, then there is enough room on the display to show a space and at least the first character in the customer's first name. Long last name are merely cut off at the 16th character. But calls from businesses often have abbreviated names. For example, when a call is received from a certain office of the Government of the Province of Ontario, the message "ONT GOVT" appears. Similarly, junk sales call from Deluxe Window Industries come as "DELUX WIND IND". Most of the time, when a call from a Bell Canada coin phone is received, the CID message "BELL PAYPHONE" appears, but occasionally "PUBLIC TEL" does. How is the appreviation accomplished for bussiness names, as opposed to truncation of private names? Does Bell Canada have acomputer algorithm to shorten names from its directory, or is this work farmed out to "data-entry sweatshops" in China or India? ------------------------------ From: Davew@cris.com (Dave Harrison) Subject: Help Needed: Rac on SX-200 Date: 1 Sep 1997 11:51:13 GMT Organization: Concentric Internet Services I have 2 RAC's installed on an SX-200 (generic 2.17) and can't, for the life of me, figure out how to translate the Canadian instructions into valid keystrokes! The 2 RAC's are in Shelf 1, slots 13 & 14, starting at Equipment 098 (I assume). The Hunt Group (with Option 117 set) consists of 2 analog ports. Hunt Group 1, Access Code *7, Hunt Group Sequence 005 006 098. There is a message recorded on the first Rac. Purpose: We have 2 voice mail ports (005 & 6) and 10 trunks. If both ports are in use, calls should be answered by the system, held, and sent to the next free analog port. I get stuck when trying to set options 242 and 243 from the attendant console. Thanks in advance for any help! Dave ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Remembering Labor Day's Purpose Date: Mon, Sep 1 1997 09:00:00 EDT Remember, if you will, the purpose of the Labor Day holiday which was started about 1890 or so. True, it is a day for one final fling in the sun and partying before summer ends and the fall season -- at least in the northern hemisphere -- begins, but more important it is an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of working men and women which have made our country what it is. Specifically for us, that would be the men and women of the telecommunications industry. Thank you, one and all, for your dedication to your tasks, and do not forget that our work is still incomplete. There is a lot more to do. PAT ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #227 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 1 23:01:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA01603; Mon, 1 Sep 1997 23:01:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 23:01:28 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709020301.XAA01603@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #228 TELECOM Digest Mon, 1 Sep 97 23:01:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 228 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Tim Shoppa) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Rich Mulvey) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Henry Baker) Former Metromedia (Worldcom) "Ring Time" Billing Question (S. Friedlander) ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? (Robt McMillin) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Jason Lindquist) Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM (Bill Walker) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Bill Walker) Pointer to Oscilloscope.FAQ (John Seney) Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem (Hudson Leighton) Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem (Dave Close) Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem (Rick Strobel) Caller-ID Question (Glen Roberts) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Date: 1 Sep 1997 15:29:49 GMT Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility In article , TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > US Attorney Mary Jo White said the defendants were charged with > intercepting messages by using unlawfully cloned pagers to obtain > sensitive law enforcement information. In the past, I've "cloned" pagers for friends of mine who wanted to get the same message on several different pagers. Did I break the law (Canadian or US) by doing this? I did not know that there were any laws against modifying receive-only devices like pagers. Or is this one of those cases where "pager cloners" are only charged when the cloned pager is used in a crime? Like how only drug addicts are charged for posession of syringes, while the rest of us can own as many as we want? And ordinary people can own crowbars, but if a burglar is caught with one he is charged with "posession of burglar's tools"? > I have to wonder how a distinction will be made between radio > scanners set to listen to police/fire frequencies all the time by > news media and these pagers. I guess pager transmissions are not > intended for the general public Several years ago -- before voice pagers became so ubiquitous -- anyone with a UHF TV could pick up voice-based pager broadcasts by tuning in between the channels. (This method still works with older UHF TV's to pick up nearby cellphones, BTW.) > but then at the same time I have always heard that radio > transmissions are not for acknowlegement either, or that at least we > are not to benefit from what was heard. In the US, there have been limits (since at least the 1930's) on divulging the contents of an intercepted transmission. It wasn't until the adoption of the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) that owning, buying, or using a scanner to listen to broadcasts became illegal in the US. The complete text of the ECPA is available at http://nsi.org/Library/Comm/ecpa.htm and many of the issues regarding the legality of owning radio receivers are discussed in "rec.radio.scanner". Tim (shoppa@triumf.ca) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 16:19:19 -0400 From: Rich Mulvey Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Organization: Mulvey Home Node Reply-To: mulveyr@frontiernet.net On Mon, 1 Sep 1997 09:07:16 EDT, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > I have to wonder how a distinction will be made between radio > scanners set to listen to police/fire frequencies all the time by > news media and these pagers. I guess pager transmissions are not > intended for the general public, but then at the same time I have > always heard that radio transmissions are not for acknowlegement > either, or that at least we are not to benefit from what was heard. Actually, there is a bill coming up before Congress that will make it illegal to listen to *huge* swaths of the RF spectrum. The Communications Acts of 1934 and 1996 had already made it illegal to disclose anything that you read via radio, with the exception of Broadcast and Amateur stations. However, even if you're a bed-ridden invalid who likes to listen to the local Police channels to add a little excitement during the day, you'll end up being classified as a criminal. For that matter, if you have a TV set that was manufactured before the mid-1980's, and has one of the 82-channel UHF tuners, you had better not turn it on, lest you hear a cell-phone conversation that occupies those upper UHF channels, now. Of course, the physics of wide-band scanner construction are such that you can usually receive signals other that the ones that you might have programmed into your scanner (otherwise known as "image reception", caused by the RF mixing oddities in the scanner.) If the bill goes through, it will essentially eliminate all possibility of manufacturing a receiver than can tune into anything other than the broadcast AM/FM bands. Of course, the public has no business monitoring the activities of government (i.e., the Publics) employees, do they? Rich Mulvey mulveyr@frontiernet.net Rochester, NY USA http://www.frontiernet.net/~mulveyr Amateur Radio: aa2ys@amsat.org, aa2ys@wb2wxq.#wny.ny.usa [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is no need for you to worry about what the government is doing (i.e. listen to their radio transmissions) because they know what is best for you; especially the police. There, aren't you glad you don't have to worry about it any longer? What a relief, a load off your mind, huh? Unlike you, I don't need to inform the readers when my sarcasm mode goes on and off, because when talking about the government in general and the police in particular, my sarcasm mode stays on most of the time. I suppose one reason the police would support a law forbidding listening to their transmissions is because they won't have to be careful about what they say on the radio any longer. So many of their transmissions now -- especially in minority, inner-city neighborhoods -- verge very close to being racist and very sarcastic when discussing the 'citizens' (that's you and me) they allegedly serve and protect. From where I sit, I can monitor most of the twenty or so Chicago Police frequencies along with an equal number of suburban communities. Now most of the time I don't bother -- it gets boring after 30 minutes or so, but I have heard some doozies of transmissions. Aren't you glad the servants will be taking care of things leaving you and I not having to worry about it? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 08:13:31 -0800 From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged In article , ptownson@massis.lcs. mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: > A New Jersey-based news service was charged last week in what I think > is the first-of-a-kind federal case of illegally intercepting pager > messages sent to public officials and selling the information to the > media. Look in the back of any radio magazine on the newsstand for (inexpensive) software that runs on any DOS-PC that decodes intercepted pager messages. There is no attempt to encrypt these messages whatsoever. They are transmitted as much 'in the clear' as Morse Code. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well yeah, but telephone calls are transmitted 'in the clear' also but I really don't have the right to tap in and listen to yours. I am not sure that in or out of the clear should be the way to base the decision. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Friedlander Subject: Former Metromedia (Worldcom) "Ring Time" Billing Question Date: 2 Sep 1997 00:22:31 GMT Organization: MCSNet Services Is anyone familiar with the former Metromedia billing for "ring time". In other words, dialing a long distance number, letting it ring 10-20 times and hanging up when no one answers, then being billed for the call. I need former engineers, employees or anyone with proof of these practices for litigation that is in process. Please call or e-mail directly. Thank you, Steve Friedlander stevef@mcs.com 1.888.594.6782 ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillin Subject: ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 14:27:33 -0700 Organization: Syseca, Inc. Reply-To: rlm@syseca-us.com We have an Ascend Max 200+ with two ISDN lines for a total of four B channels. We are trying to use this as a company-wide dialup for our customer sites, which typically have Ascend Pipeline 130's and ISDN connectivity. Some time ago, I ordered up a rotary (hunt group) for the various channels from GTE, our LEC. Said rotary in place, I have yet to get it to work. Ascend says it's a GTE problem (I'm inclined to believe them), and GTE says it's an equipment problem on our side. For my part, we (and GTE) always see cause code 18 whenever we try to dial into the main number if it's busy, that is, it appears as though we're getting a ring-no-answer. On the Max 200+, I never see an "answer" when an outside router (or GTE, for that matter) tries to call into the primary number when it's busy. Has anyone out there dealt with this kind of thing before? Any good contact numbers I can call up to get some relief on this? GTE claims their equipment reports the rotary working fine (which I have no way of verifying). ------------------------------ From: linky@see.figure1.net (Jason Lindquist) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 01 Sep 1997 17:22:13 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign An infinite number of monkeys masquerading as Bradley Ward Allen wrote: > I want CDMA, but am pissed that NYNEX (Bell Atlantic) went with > a worse vocoder than what Pac Bell (Pac Tel) has. I would recommend checking on this again. There's really no excuse for not supporting the 13-kilobit vocoder now. Airtouch Los Angeles is upgrading their system now, as it's the oldest commercial CDMA system in the US (to the best of my knowledge) and I'd be honestly surprised to hear that any infrastructure vendor or carrier isn't using it. If PacBell's offering their GSM service where you're at, I'm pretty sure those phones are still using an 8kbit vocoder. The Qualcomm/Sony, Nokia, and Samsung CDMA phones will do 13 whenever possible. > Most people think I'm at home (less fuzz on my AMPS service than > on any of my digital services (TDMA, GSM, and testing CDMA); yes, > you read that right, *LESS FUZZ ON MY AMPS SERVICE!!!!*) That's surprising ... Bell Atlantic must have some network set up there, or your digital carriers must have really dropped the ball. Knowing what I know now about digital cellular service, I flat refuse to deal with AMPS unless CDMA is unavailable or the carrier is seriously brain-damaged. Jason A. Lindquist linky@see.figure1.net Senders of unsolicited commercial/propaganda e-mail subject to fees. Details at http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/jlindqui ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 10:26:06 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , dialtone@elwha. evergreen.edu wrote: >> 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. >> Is that correct? > In the Seattle area, ATTWS uses TDMA, Sprint uses GSM, and Airtouch uses > CDMA. Correction: the _only_ place that Sprint uses GSM is in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore Sprint Spectrum APC system. Sprint uses CDMA everywhere else. >> 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? I know that >> Qualcomm's CDMA is supposedly newer and better but I'm sure the >> service area is not very extensive for the moment. I would imagine >> this would change (?) > TDMA divides one channel of bandwidth into four "lanes," Three, actually. Six, if you want to get picky, but each call uses two of them. > and sends > your packets on the appropriate "lane" digitally. CDMA functions more > like a packet switched network. TDMA has much poorer sound quality; a > neighbor of mine who is an AT&T reseller tells me that people are > buying the TDMA phones to get AT&T's lower rate but then force them > into analogue mode. Other ATTWS customers have experienced similar > results and posted similar stories to the Digest. Also ATTWS's TDMA > uses a vocoder that doesn't eliminate redundancies. >> 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they >> sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. Is this bull or >> reality? AT&T sells Nokia and Ericsson which leads me to believe that >> they're using TDMA and a different service. > ATTWS uses TDMA. Airtouch uses CDMA. There are currently five > Airtouch CDMA markets: Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, > and Portland. See my other post on this. My information shows 21 current Airtouch CDMA markets. I can personally vouch for San Diego and LA, which aren't on your list. > You can use CDMA if you roam to any of those markets. > The Sony CMD500 is the only CDMA phone currently in existance that > works with the Airtouch system; I don't know if it is the only CDMA > phone in general though. See my other post. The Sony phone is the only one Airtouch is currently selling in Seattle. In San Diego, they sell the essentially identical Qualcomm QCP-800. [...nice testimonial of Airtouch's CDMA coverage deleted...] > This vocoder is also nice because it reduces the amount of data > transmitted, meaning 8 CDMA calls can comfortably fit in the same > bandwidth as 1 AMPS call or 3 NAMPS calls. Not exactly, but probably close enough to right for the layman. AMPS uses 30 kHz channels (one per call), NAMPS uses 10 kHz channels (one per call), CDMA uses a 1.25 MHz channel that carries many calls (about 10 times what AMPS could carry using that same bandwidth). [...Airtouch Seattle details deleted...] Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 13:24:13 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , roamer1@pobox.com wrote: > And neither Sprint nor Primeco will cover all cities in the US! For > example, neither has any plans I'm aware of to serve Atlanta. Sprint has the D block license for Atlanta. I don't know what their deployment schedule is, but I'd have to say they "have plans to serve Atlanta", or they wouldn't have bought the license. BTW, 4 of the 6 PCS license holders in Atlanta are companies that use CDMA. Whether the smaller ones will find the money to pay for their licenses and build their networks remains to be seen, but I think Sprint is a pretty safe bet. As for Primeco, well, Primeco partner Airtouch has one of the cellular licenses for Atlanta. Primeco's strategy seems to be to provide PCS coverage only where the Primeco partners don't provide cellular coverage. Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ From: john@wd1v.mv.com (John Seney) Subject: Pointer to Oscilloscope.FAQ Organization: WD1V Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 21:34:22 GMT Oscilloscope.FAQ is located on my home page. If you'd like an Email version sent to you as an attached text file (50k), send an Email with SCOPE FAQ on the SUBJECT LINE. Best regards, John Seney http://www.mv.com/ipusers/wd1v ------------------------------ From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 21:45:40 -0500 Organization: Minnesota Railroad Research Project In article , Paul Bandler wrote: > I have a home office with a single phone line shared between my fax, > phone/answer machine and dial-out modem on a PC. I would like to know > if there is any way I could make a data-call to this line and ensure > that it is answered my the modem on my PC as opposed to the fax machine. What I have as a setup is to have distinctive ringing on my line and then using a Multi-Link SR3 I have the following setup: Real phone number (one ring) is data; Alternate number 2 (two rings) is fax; Alternate number 3 (three rings) is voice. The place I got my Multi-Link is gone but I have see them in the Hello-Direct Catalog. They also have a Two number version. Having the "real" number as the data line has some advantages, it's the number in the phone book, and all the aluminum siding salesmen get to know my modem real well . ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem Date: 01 Sep 1997 22:58:50 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California Paul Bandler writes: > That is will my fax machine (which I understand listens to all calls > and picks them up if it here's the 'right' signal) pick up the call > when it hears a modem on the other end, or is there a distinction > between fax and ordinary data call hand-shakes? You need one of the simple switch boxes available at most computer or electronics stores, even at Sam's Club, for between $60 and $100. But beware: there are two types. Choose the right one for you. 1. Switch always answers every call after one ring, then puts it's own internally-generated ringback sound on the line and generates ring voltage to your answering machine. While ringing the answering machine, the switch listens for either fax calling tones or special DTMF tone sequences. If either is heard, the switch disconnects from the answering machine and sends ringing to either the fax or the modem as appropriate. If neither is heard, presumably the answering machine will eventually pick up. 2. Switch is passive and waits for the answering machine (or a person) to pick up. It then monitors the call, listening for fax calling tones or special DTMF tone sequences. If either is heard, the answering machine (or phone) is disconnected and ringing is sent to the fax or modem as appropriate. I strongly prefer type 2 but type 1 may be somewhat cheaper. With type 2, your answering machine's toll-saver feature still works; with type 1, it is useless. Also type 1's internally-generated ringback usually sounds pretty phoney and just confuses the caller. If the caller hangs up while listening to the false ringback, he is still charged for the call since the switch did answer it. If your modem is also used to receive fax calls (with appropriate software, of course), either switch will still work. The modem can determine which type of call is arriving by listening for the fax tones. I suspect a type 1 switch will make caller-id useless. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA Seeking employment or consulting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 Software architecture / management dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu Available September 1 ------------------------------ From: rstrobel@infotime.com (Rick Strobel) Subject: Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 00:26:49 GMT Organization: InfoTime, Inc. In article , Paul Bandler wrote: > I have a home office with a single phone line shared between my fax, > phone/answer machine and dial-out modem on a PC. I would like to know > if there is any way I could make a data-call to this line and ensure > that it is answered my the modem on my PC as opposed to the fax machine. > That is will my fax machine (which I understand listens to all calls > and picks them up if it here's the 'right' signal) pick up the call > when it hears a modem on the other end, or is there a distinction > between fax and ordinary data call hand-shakes? The best way to do this, in my opinion, is with distinctive ring service. You'll still have one phone line, and can be assigned one or two new numbers for that line. You'll need a distinctive ring detection switch also, around $40 - $80. Lets assume your phone number is 555-1111. When someone calls this you'll get the normal ringing sound. With distinctive ring you'll get two new numbers 555-2222 and 3333. When someone wants to send you a fax they'll dial 555-2222. When your line rings you'll hear two short rings. You'll know its a fax, and your fax will only pick up these calls because its plugged into the 2nd port on the distinctive ring switch. Ditto for 555-3333. 555-1111 : phone/answering machine 555-2222: fax 555-3333: data modem I've written a more extensive description of this problem/solution that's available on our my web site at http://www.infotime.com Rick Strobel | | InfoTime Fax Communications | Fax-on-Demand | 502-426-4279 | & | 502-426-3721 fax | Fax Broadcast | rstrobel@infotime.com | Services | http://www.infotime.com | | ------------------------------ From: glr@ripco.com (Glen Roberts) Subject: Caller-ID Question Date: 01 Sep 1997 19:07:22 GMT Organization: Ripco Internet Services- Chicago I signed up for caller-id with GTE in Pennsylvania this week. (814) 676-xxxx. I received a phone message from GTE saying that the service was installed and working. My box does not display anything. I called GTE repair and they checked into it and said that I could not have caller ID. They however, did state that "some people in Oil City have it." I understand that there is only one switch in Oil City. They claimed that since some people have caller-id in Oil City, they are complying with the FCC requirements that they provide caller-id. They suggested it might take six months for me to get caller-id. How can the local phone company be required to provide caller-id and only have to provide it to some, but not all customers? Glen L. Roberts -- "political provocateur" -Newsday (3/30/97) The Stalker's Home page: http://www.glr.com/stalk.html "His ironically named Stalker's Home Page has become the definitive source for information about how your privacy can be violated online" - Time Magazine ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #228 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 2 00:07:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA05848; Tue, 2 Sep 1997 00:07:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 00:07:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709020407.AAA05848@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #229 TELECOM Digest Tue, 2 Sep 97 00:07:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 229 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: 56k Circuit and Problems (Steve Smith) Area Code Confusion (Monty Solomon) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Victor Escobar) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Travis Dixon) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Nicholas Marino) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Australian vs. US Cellular (Damien Haas) Setting Up Lucent Callmaster III Phone (Gordon Watt) CallerID and BANM Cellular (phs3@watvm.uwaterloo.cn) Telecom Changes in Austria (Enrico Schuerrer) Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame (Matthew Leeds) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: smsmith@pobox.com (Steve Smith) Subject: Re: 56k Circuit and Problems Date: 1 Sep 1997 06:22:21 GMT Organization: The Federal Communications Commission, SPAM Prosecution Dept On Tue, 26 Aug 1997 11:43:05 -0400, Rick Sommer wrote: > We have a problem with one of our 56k PPP connections. One CSU/DSU is > showing a network alarm (not working) and the other shows a good > connection. > Now we figure that if you don't get a good connection, both CSU/DSU's > will show an alarm. This was the case in a lab environment where we > simulated our connection with a crossed CAT5 (1,2-7,8 reversed) which > simulates a 56k connection, only we need to use the clock from one of > the CSU/DSU's for timing, whereas a 56k connection provides the > timing to the dcom equipment. If we changed cat5 cable to straight > through, both CSU/DSU's would show an alarm. > We figured that would be the case in the real world also. (Note: our > other 56k connections work fine and are needed so there can be no > experimentation there). This will work on the bench, as you have the entire circuit under your control. In a real-world application, however, your DSU's are talking to different hardware over different cables, and problems do crop up. To illustrate, think of it with, say, an ethernet network, where you have two machines that can talk just fine to each other on that same crossover CAT5 cable, but can't talk to each other when in their own respective offices, which are on different floors in the same building: +-------------+ +-------+ ! 3rd fl. hub !-----! PC #1 ! +-------------+ +-------+ | | +-------------+ ! 2nd fl. hub ! +-------------+ | | +-------------+ +-------+ ! 1st fl. hub !-----! PC #2 ! +-------------+ +-------+ If there were a problem in the backbone between any of the floors, or within the 2nd floor hub, your PC's would not be able to communicate, yet they would each show a good link light -- the problem is in between. > We are avoiding Ma Bell (for now ...) if at all possible. The telephone system is a network quite similar, yet much bigger. If the hardware is working on the bench, but does not work in the field, the phone network somewhere (usually the local loop on the non-working device) is suspect. Do yourself a favor ... call in a trouble ticket on the line. Be prepared with circuit numbers for both ends, as well as locations. They will run tests and even call you back with progress. I have in the past been able to dial into a Unix server at a client's business, telnet into the Micom MUX, and watch the alarms on the line as the telco ran tests ... this proved quite helpful to the phone company. Of course, this isn't always possible to do. :-\ >Thanks for the reply. Of course. Hope it sheds some light on things. It's no fun when this stuff doesn't work as expected. The last few 56k WAN problems I have had have been either a) traffic accident, lines down, or b) crossed lines in telco equipment, accidentally by inexperienced technician adding lines, etc. (Telco. tech). Steve Smith - smsmith@pobox.com - http://www.pobox.com/~smsmith/ Advanced Technical Services Software Services of Delaware, Inc. steve@ssdel.com - http://www.ssdel.com/ Junk email automatically returned to sender with various corefiles attached. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 14:04:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Area Code Confusion Excerpt from page B02 of the {Boston Globe} on 08/31/97. Area code confusion Now that the politicians are finished fooling around with the new 781 and 978 area codes, the real test begins. Starting tomorrow, you can dial numbers the new way or the old way to get the feel of the new framework. After Dec. 1, dialing the wrong way will spur a voice prompt telling you how to do it correctly. After May 1, you're on your own. The decision was made to carve the two new area codes out of 617 and 508 because it was believed that approach would cause the least consumer confusion. But Bell Atlantic officials, who never favored the so-called geographical split, are concerned that people will be scratching their heads. ''We think this is going to be very, very confusing to customers,'' said Jack Hoey of Bell Atlantic. ''Not only do they have to learn new area code boundaries but new ways of dialing numbers.'' Right now there are two ways to dial a number in Massachusetts: dial seven numbers for calls inside your local calling area, or 11 numbers (1 plus the area code plus the number) for calls outside the local calling area. Generally, your local calling area is your town and every contiguous town, although the local calling area for Boston-area residents is bigger. Check the front of your phone book for the exchanges in your calling area. With the new area codes, a third calling option is added. You have to dial 10 numbers (area code plus the number) for calls inside your local calling area but to a different area code. Salem residents, for example, will dial seven numbers to reach someone in neighboring Danvers (which is in 978) but 10 numbers to reach someone in neighboring Lynn (which is in 781). It's even more confusing for Waltham residents. They dial seven digits to reach Canton, which is five towns to the south. But they dial 10 digits to reach Milton, which is next door to Canton. ------------------------------ From: sydbarrett@mindspring.com (Victor Escobar) Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 16:50:05 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises On Wed, 27 Aug 1997 20:55:38 EDT, Dave Levenson wrote: > We've all experienced or heard of large telephone bills for calls to > 900 numbers. Many of these are billed by Integretel. When I saw > their name show up on a bill from Bell Atlantic, I studied the bill > very carefully. There was a charge for a 900 number operated by > Capital Gains (d/b/a Psychic Power Connection) and billed by > Integretel. The bill showed a one-minute call placed a midnight to > their 900 number. I have a very similar story. I'm here in Bell Atlantic-VA land and used to live in an apartment complex. Currently I have in dispute up to *$700* in 900 porn-line charges billed by some company called VRS Billing Systems (they never answer their customer service number, BTW). When I talked to a biz office drone at Bell Awful, she said, `Sir, even though you've had 900 block since you started service these companies can still bill via an 800 number. I know it's frustrating, but there's really nothing we can do unless you talk to this company yourself.' Apparently someone clipped into the network interface on the side of the building (which houses ~75 apartments) and randomly chose my terminal. So is the apt. complex legally liable? I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay $700 for some guy who masturbated at my expense. That crap that these 900 numbers are pulling should be seen as fraud and made illegal. Victor Escobar Internet Consultant [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only do you need to have 900/976 blocks in place on your lines, you also need to have Billed Number Screening. This is a feature telcos offer which places your number in a database of numbers which cannot be used for collect or third- number billing, which is what the 800-converted-to-900 people do. The database used by telcos is also honored by Sprint/AT&T/MCI and many other carriers. Integratel maintains its own similar database. You have to get listed on theirs separately, but your long distance carrier or local telco can place you on the one used by most. What will happen then is that when someone dials an 800 number which is used in the way you describe, the 'ANI splash' seen by the porno IP will indicate that you cannot be billed and most likely you (or whoever attempts to make the call) will not even connect with the initial 800 number, instead getting an intercept that says 'the number dialed cannot be reached from the telephone you are using.' PAT] ------------------------------ From: travisd@saltmine.radix.net (Travis Dixon) Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: 31 Aug 1997 20:29:17 GMT Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Dave Levenson (dave@westmark.westmark.com) wrote: > We've all experienced or heard of large telephone bills for calls to > 900 numbers. Many of these are billed by Integretel. When I saw I've been seeing for the past couple of months a $25US charge from Integretel for "messaging service" - no indication at all of what number was dialed. I've asked them to block both of my lines from getting any of their services, and they always offer to credit the charge -- they can't tell me what it's for though, other than a "service" -- like psychic readings, etc. This is on residential service. travis ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sun, 31 Aug 1997 23:17:29 -0400 Organization: @Home Networks Alan Boritz wrote: > It's not "ridiculous" to NOT force a single parent into bankruptcy > because an unscrupulous IP entices a minor to call a 900 service > without full awareness of the financial consequences. The disclaimer > is to remind consumers that they have recourse against unscrupulous > IP's. It needs to be there since most telephone customers are not as > well informed of their rights as we are. > The only "best interest" for telcos is to provide reliable and > affordable basic telephone service ... PERIOD. Damn good incentive to > NOT be an IP. There is a strong tendency among liberal-minded folks to prop up a weak argument with a sob story. Mr. Boritz is a clear example. In addition, his attempt at humor shows his very anti-business bias. All suggested improvements in the telco-IP billing mechanism are designed to combat persistent, intentional offenders. Mr. Boritz' single mother's son could commit any number of crimes with horrible consequence to himself and his family, but that does not mean that we should not discourage people from committing those crimes. I entered into a business arrangement with the local/ld telco companies which required them to use their best efforts to bill and collect my money. Currently, they are not doing that, yet they are still charging me for it. I believe that it is wrong and unfair to me to encourage certain people to not pay their 900 bills. The FCC mandated statements on phone bills do just that. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sun, 31 Aug 97 22:37:45 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. Reply-To: Michael D. Sullivan On Sat, 16 Aug 1997 20:57:46 -0700, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Anthony E. Seigman: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem is, there are no *convenient* > 'legal channels' for Mr. Marino or other IPs to use. Typically the IP > works with customers five and ten dollars at a time. A sofa on the other > hand costs a few hundred dollars and makes collection activity somewhat > worthwhile. Even suing you for an unpaid sofa would be a marginal > thing at best. You talk suit only when the debt is at least several > hundred dollars and the debtor is local to you, or maybe a thousand > dollars or more if the debtor is in another state and you need to retain > counsel in that state or jurisdiction to proceed, etc. Collection > agencies only make money on mass processing of thousands of small > accounts, and then, many agencies are reluctant to handle claims where > there is no signature on file nor any tangible item to be repossesed > or accounted for, etc. That is why if Mr. Marino and other IPs do > not have telco's assistance, they may as well close up shop. PAT] There are plenty of non-cash businesses that do business $5 or $10 at a time without having the ability to shut off your phone service if you don't pay. They accept payment via credit cards. Yes, there's an expense involved, but there is with telco billing as well. When I go to my dry cleaner and pick up my shirts, I charge the $7.50 to Mastercard. So do a large number of other customers. In Banff, Alberta last summer I went to an unattended parking lot where you stuff a credit card into a machine for an hour of parking for CA$1.00 and out pops a ticket you put on the dashboard. I buy my groceries at a store that takes MC/Visa/AmEx/ATM cards without a minimum; I *never* pay cash there. Rent a video for a few bucks, charge it on plastic. None of these merchants needs to threaten my phone service to ensure payment. The dial-up "information" providers and porn shops don't need to, either. Whether they use the telco or a credit card for billing, I should be able to dispute the bill and refuse to allow payment without having my other affairs (e.g., my ability to use the phone or my ability to charge my groceries) interfered with. If they don't buy my reasons for non-payment and don't feel it's worth going after me for collection, they can refuse to do business with me until I pay my arrears. In this regard, I note that the cable TV company I used a few years ago was grossly deficient in providing the service, so I refused to pay. After a while they cut me off. They sent a few notices, to which I responded with my grievances. They ignored my responses and then sent a letter via what appeared on the face to be a collection agency threatening suit (I suspect it was actually an in-house outfit); when I explained my position, they stopped writing; then an attorney (who I think was also in-house) wrote me a threatening computer-generated letter, to which I also responded with an explanation. No suit, no more letters. All this over a total disputed amount of $200. If I had actually owed the amount I would certainly have paid it at some point, just to stop the hassle. The same would be true if I had incurred a legitimate debt to an information merchant. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ From: eldamo@shell01.ozemail.com.au (damien haas) Subject: Re: Australian vs. US Cellular Date: 31 Aug 1997 08:35:43 GMT Organization: OzEmail Ltd. John R. Levine (johnl@iecc.com) wrote: > Australia is a much smaller country than the US (in population, not > area) with a single monopoly telephone company. The US has 15 times > as many people and a zillion different phone companies. John, Australia hasn't had a single monopoly telephone company since 1992. Telecommunications deregulation has been phased in over a six year period and now anyone can setup a comms company if they want to. All you need is the equipment and a licence (which is NOT a hoop jumping exercise). The two main players in the GSM market are Telstra, and Optus. Other smaller companies also compete. Analogue cellular will be phased out beginning in 1998 (I think) and that part of the spectrum reallocated. Technically I'm impressed with the Oz cellular network and penetration, however when my screening of 'Austin Powers International Man of Mystery' is REPEATEDLY interrupted by a 16 year old girl's phone two rows back CONSTANTLY ringing, i sometimes long for simpler times. Damien Haas ............................................................................. b n e ,-, , el damo - eldamo@ozemail.com.au ,-, , e a ,- ~ \ ,- ~ \ t c \ | 'the ideas man' \ | w h -~~-, / -~~-, / o ~ editor and publisher of ~ r b ~ ~ k o 'Electric Bacon' y x s the intercontinental ezine p l f Canberra, A.C.T. Australia o a r n 'There comes a time when all decent men feel the need to spit on e ! their hands, hoist the jolly roger and begin slitting throats.' r [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Many entertainment places refuse admiss- ion to a person carrying a pager or cellular phone -- especially the latter -- unless it is turned off completely. For example, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra warns patrons that cellular phones are not permitted and that pagers must be set only to 'vibrate' and not actually make any sounds. On the other side of downtown at Lyric Opera, the management is equally stern: a phone or pager hidden away in an inner pocket won't be confiscated (after all, they really can't strip search you) but if it makes the slightest peep during a performance and they can tell where it came from, you'll be asked to leave the auditorium. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gordon Watt Subject: Setting Up Lucent Callmaster III Phone Date: 1 Sep 1997 00:48:33 GMT Reply-To: premcomp@hotmail.com Hi, I work with a Lucent Callmaster III phone terminal, and wish to set it up so that the phone will ring first, before I answer calls. Can someone please help by providing some instructions? Thanks, Gordon Watt ------------------------------ From: phs3@watvm.uwaterloo.ca Subject: CallerID and BANM Cellular Date: Sun, 31 Aug 97 01:42:52 GMT Organization: Erol's Internet Services We have (non-digital) Bell Atlantic/NYNEX cellular service, and just got a flyer with our bills saying that callerid was coming, and explaining *xx to turn it off, per-line blocking, etc. Made me wonder ... anyone know if this means we'll be getting calling numbers listed for incoming calls? I realize they're not necessarily symmetrical, but it's always bothered me that I get to pay for calls from unknown numbers ... TIA, ..phsiii ------------------------------ From: enrico.sch@magnet.at (Enrico Schuerrer) Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 20:49:31 +0200 Subject: Telecom Changes in Austria Organization: magnet Online Service Reply to: Mark.NAFTEL@is.belgacom.be Here in Austria, exactly 29 days ago the new telecom law was born. It is a law which should do liberalization, but it only helps the government-owned PTT (PTA). We are a new telecom-operator here in Austria -- tele.ring -- and have to struggle for life. There is at the moment no interconnection agreement between the monopolist and the new entrant -- and the PTA-offered price for terminating a call is nearly twice the price of one minute in the city area for a customer. There is a big market for the new entrants -- but the access to the customers is in only one hand - the hand of the PTA. Now this is the way of liberalization in Europe. Another alternative telco was founded by the power companies -- state owned. BTW tele.ring is a subsidiary of Austrian Railroad, a private company, but owned by the Republic of Austria. Austrian Railroad has the second largest network in Austria; more than 80% of the network is digitized in the voice network. Enrico ------------------------------ From: Matthew Leeds Subject: Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 10:41:47 -0700 Organization: Broderbund Software Reply-To: nobody@broder.com > According to Sprint, they sell and route virtual circuits based on > "port speed"; if you buy a 56K port from them, you'll get 56K from > first bit to last. > ... can anyone give me pointers to materials (books, URL's, > magazine articles) that help debunk and demystify frame relay > salesspeak? I highly recommend _The Guide to Frame Relay Networking - How to Evaluate, Implement, and Maintain a Frame Relay Network_ by Christine A. Heckart, Flatiron Publishing, ISBN 0-936648-63-5. This is an excellent guide to all aspects of Frame Relay, and will answer just about all the questions anyone planning to implement Frame Relay may have. Matthew Leeds Technical Services Manager Broderbund Software mleeds@nospam.broder.com -remove the nospam to send mail- ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #229 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 3 22:48:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA05138; Wed, 3 Sep 1997 22:48:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 22:48:43 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709040248.WAA05138@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #230 TELECOM Digest Wed, 3 Sep 97 22:48:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 230 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Alberta's New NPA Will Be 780 (Mark J. Cuccia) OK, What's Going On? (ed932@worldnet.att.net) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Mike Pollock) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Adam H. Kerman) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Tim Russell) Re: Australian vs. US Cellular (Tor-Einar Jarnbjo) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Gary Stebbins) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service (Eli Mantel) Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular (Fred Schimmel) Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular (Mark Smith) ICB Toll Free News: New Look, More Info (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Last Laugh! Jobs, Satan Announce Deal (Jonathan I. Kamens) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 03 Sep 1997 09:02:11 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Alberta's New NPA Will Be 780 Telus (formerly AGT, Alberta Government Telephones) has announced the new NPA code for Alberta. It is announced on their website, at: http://www.telus.com/14.4vers/newsworthy/1997nr/9.02.97.html It is expected to take effect on 25 January 1999, with a public awareness campaign throughout 1998. The website didn't indicate whether 25-Jan-1999 is a 'permissive' dialing date, or the 'mandatory' date. Communities north of Stettler and Red Deer will change from 403 to the new 780 NPA, while those of Stettler and Red Deer, and everything southward, will retain 403. Calgary will retain NPA 403, while Edmonton (the provincial capital) will change to 780. While Calgary and Edmonton are both large metro areas, Calgary does seem be more of a financial/business center than does Edmonton. Calgary has more toll/international traffic than does Edmonton. Thus, Calgary will retain the 403 area code. (The announcements last year originally indicated that central and northern AB, including Edmonton, would retain 403; while southern AB, including Calgary, would change to a new NPA. This past Spring, a decision was made to 'reverse' which parts of AB would keep 403 and which would change). This will be Canada's fifth new area code in recent times. Ontario's 416 split off 905 (outside of Toronto metro) in late 1993. Then most of British Columbia changed from 604 to 250 in October 1996 (with the immediate Vancouver metro area remaining 604). In the last week of October 1997 (next month), the northern territories of Yukon (presently using Alberta's 403 NPA) and _all_ of the Northwest Territories (western/southern using AB's 403, with eastern/Arctic using one of Quebec's NPA's, 819) will change everything to area code 867, which spells out 'TOP' (of the world). This northern Canada area code change will become mandatory in late April of next year, which will clear the way for Alberta's own area code split. The fourth NPA split or change will be next Summer, when NPA 514 in Quebec will split, with the immediate Montreal metro area retaining 514, with everything else changing to 450. Alberta's NPA split will be the fifth recent one (so far). And then, Toronto metro is expected to need further NPA relief, but nothing is still 100% final on whether it will be a split or an overlay; nor have the NPA code's numericals been announced. And with the potential competition of local telephone companies in Canada (similar to that in the US), other NPAs across Canada (particularly in Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan) will soon need relief (BC's now 'smaller' 604 will also need _further_ relief soon, maybe an overlay this time). --------------- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: ED932@worldnet.NOSPAMatt.net Subject: OK, What's Going on? Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 22:25:25 EST Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services PAT, any help your readers (or you) could provide would be greatly appreciated. I posted this on telecom.tech, and probably should have forwarded it to you instead. Am I suspicious, YUP! The telco has of course disavowed all knowledge. I am going through some investigative work in the telco I work for (not the same); sorry I can't be more explicit than that, other than I am not to my knowledge a target of any trap and trace from law enforcement and that not all investigations are bad. I have some reason to believe that my boss does not want me to receive calls from anyone. Actually, I'm under "job arrest". But this is not the quality type of work that any security department or law enforcement agency would do. I'll summarize and forward to Dilbert later. The message I posted on c.d.t.t. follows: I have two lines in my house. One I use for data, the other voice. Last week, I noticed that while trying to page my voicemail from my car phone that I would dial my voice line and the connect would never go through, dead air on the car phone for as long as I wanted. When I got home, I noticed a lack of messages waiting for me and as I sat down, the phone with my voice line gave two very short rings and then nothing. I thought someone had either caught themselves mis-dialing, or had another call come in. I picked up the phone about five seconds later and got dial-tone. As soon as I hung up, I got two short rings again. This time I picked it up and the local computer store had called and said they had tried to call several times, but never got a ring, even when I answered. Tonight, I tried calling from one line to the other. Same thing, dead air on the outgoing line with no audible ring, and two short rings on the incoming line. The outgoing line went right to dial-tone after about ten seconds. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I have underground utilities, and the connection point only has my lines on it. Due to some personal issues that are going on, I find the timing extremely curious. It almost seems if my calls are being forwarded to another number. I used to have call forwarding on from the voice line to the data line, but that no longer works either. Any help would be appreciated. Delete NOSPAM from the email return address. Thanks, Ed ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Date: Tue, 02 Sep 97 10:17:34 PDT I'm a Breaking News Network subscriber. It's worth noting that BNN's services are available to anyone who's willing to pay for it, not just news organizations. My pager beeps throughout the day with messages like ... 79: BRONX POLICE OFCR SHOT -ORCHARD BEACH- OFCR ACCIDENTLY SHOT IN HAND REMOVED IN STABLE COND. TO JACOBY HOSP BY RMP 580 8/18/97 12:08 AM HOLBROOK NY SUFFOLK - SERIOUS MVA WITH PIN - SUNRISE HWY C/S VETS HWY - FD, EMS, ESU RESPONDING NFI BNN296 8/18/97 12:09 AM BRONX (43RD PCT) *PERP SEARCH* STRATFORD AV & WESTCHESTER AV, PERP WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH A SHOOTING THAT OCCURRED AROUND 2000 HRS, ESU RESPONDING. BNN135 (These items are actually lifted from their website at www.breakingnews. com) This kind of info is obviously available right over the scanner. I have noticed, however, messages about press conferences, funeral services for police officers and major mobilizations that don't seem like to have been heard over the air. The various press reports I have read mention that they do have some legitimate sources with the PD and FD that could provide such info, however. I will say that, in my six months as a subscriber, I don't recall seeing any messages regarding the whereabouts of crime witnesses, as mentioned in the press. If you live within their coverage area, I definitely recommend checking them out, whether or not you own a scanner. I intend to become one of the ir dozens of information-providing volunteers, too. I would prefer to thi nk that they're not reselling illegally acquired information, but we'll have to see how this whole thing shakes out. For more info on the Breaking News Network, visit their website at http://www.breakingnews.com or call 1-888-875-6100. ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Date: 2 Sep 1997 15:13:06 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Mon, 01 Sep 1997 08:13:31 -0800, Henry Baker wrote: > In article , ptownson@massis.lcs. > mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) wrote: >> A New Jersey-based news service was charged last week in what I think >> is the first-of-a-kind federal case of illegally intercepting pager >> messages sent to public officials and selling the information to the >> media. > Look in the back of any radio magazine on the newsstand for > (inexpensive) software that runs on any DOS-PC that decodes > intercepted pager messages. There is no attempt to encrypt these > messages whatsoever. They are transmitted as much 'in the clear' as > Morse Code. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well yeah, but telephone calls are > transmitted 'in the clear' also but I really don't have the right > to tap in and listen to yours. I am not sure that in or out of the > clear should be the way to base the decision. PAT] The controlling piece of law _used_ to be Section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934, which prohibited you from _divulging_ any private communications you happened to hear. It didn't prevent you from _listening_; the only statute that does that is the (possibly Constitutionally-ill-considered) Electronic Communications & Privacy Act provision -- written, no surprise here, by cell industry lobbyists -- that makes it illegal to {listen to, sell equipment to listen to} cellular phone calls, unless you're a law enforcement agent with appropriate paperwork. As I recall the necessary paper is a wiretap warrant from a judge, as opposed to _cordless phone_ calls, which are specifically exempt from such a requirement. Now, of course, the TCA'96 has changed all this, but I'd bet cash it didn't get _looser_. OTOH, news agencies have listened to public safety communications for such reasons for _years_; I forget whether there's an exemption for such things on the same grounds as the copyright exemption allowing anyone to use government created printed matter without violation. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 22:49:59 CDT From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Henry Baker wrote: > Look in the back of any radio magazine on the newsstand for (inexpensive) > software that runs on any DOS-PC that decodes intercepted pager messages. > There is no attempt to encrypt these messages whatsoever. They are > transmitted as much 'in the clear' as Morse Code. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well yeah, but telephone calls are > transmitted 'in the clear' also but I really don't have the right > to tap in and listen to yours. I am not sure that in or out of the > clear should be the way to base the decision. PAT] I disagree. That is an excellent reason why it should not be illegal to receive radio signals. It is wrong of Congress to lull users into a false sense of security that these are personal communications over "private" channels. The radio spectrum is a shared resource and must always be looked at in that manner. What will the government do next? Outlaw ultraviolet light? ------------------------------ From: russell@probe.net (Tim Russell) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Date: 2 Sep 1997 18:48:20 GMT Organization: Probe Technology Internet Services ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) writes: > I have to wonder how a distinction will be made between radio > scanners set to listen to police/fire frequencies all the time by > news media and these pagers. I guess pager transmissions are not > intended for the general public, but then at the same time I have > always heard that radio transmissions are not for acknowlegement > either, or that at least we are not to benefit from what was heard. Under the ECPA, pager transmissions fall under the same status as cellphone calls -- it's not only illegal to divulge the contents, it's illegal to even decode the transmissions. Far be it from me to say that this is right or fair, but IMHO they got properly spanked for flagrantly violating the law. If only those who broke the law by intercepting political figures' private calls and then divulging that information to the news media had gotten the same treatment. Note that cloning pagers was definitely a low-tech (and, I'm sure, expensive) way to accomplish this -- any scanner magazine advertises several boxes that will decode a multitude of encoding, including GOLAY and POCSAG pager transmissions. I haven't seen any that will decode Motorola Flex, though, so maybe that's what these individuals' pagers were using. Tim Russell System Admin, Probe Technology email: russell@probe.net PGP RSA: C992 109C 6D7F 8D91 062E 817E 00D3 287A "The worst censorship is self-censorship, because fear has no limits." -- Grady Ward ------------------------------ From: bjote@cs.tu-berlin.de (Tor-Einar Jarnbjo) Subject: Re: Australian vs. US Cellular Date: 2 Sep 1997 20:25:33 GMT Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany damien haas (eldamo@shell01.ozemail.com.au) wrote: > Technically I'm impressed with the Oz cellular network and penetration, > however when my screening of 'Austin Powers International Man of > Mystery' is REPEATEDLY interrupted by a 16 year old girl's phone two rows > back CONSTANTLY ringing, i sometimes long for simpler times. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Many entertainment places refuse admiss- > ion to a person carrying a pager or cellular phone -- especially the > latter -- unless it is turned off completely. For example, The Chicago > Symphony Orchestra warns patrons that cellular phones are not permitted > and that pagers must be set only to 'vibrate' and not actually make > any sounds. On the other side of downtown at Lyric Opera, the management > is equally stern: a phone or pager hidden away in an inner pocket won't > be confiscated (after all, they really can't strip search you) but if > it makes the slightest peep during a performance and they can tell > where it came from, you'll be asked to leave the auditorium. PAT] Actually Telenor Mobil (a Norwegian GSM-provider) has a rather funny ad at the cinemas at the moment. It start with a black screen and the sound of a cell phone ringing. Then it says on the screen: "This is the sound of a jerk in a cinema", then it continues with "Use your mail box if you don't want to disturb people. Telenor Mobil" Tor-Einar Jarnbjo, bjote@cs.tu-berlin.de Fetschowzeile 11 13437 Berlin, Germany [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By 'mailbox' I assume they are referring in this instance to voicemail. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gary Stebbins Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 17:33:20 -0700 Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc. Travis Dixon wrote: > I've been seeing for the past couple of months a $25US charge from > Integretel for "messaging service" - no indication at all of what This past month I received a $25 charge on my credit card for "Call Depot" of Miami, FL. I called my credit card customer service and asked if there were any other names for this company. One was "Fax Services". None of the names mentioned are familiar to me, all seemed to be telecom related, and I don't recognize any as a company that I've ever done business with. Has anyone else seen any such charge on their credit card? Does anyone know more about Call Depot? Thanks, -gary- ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 20:26:15 PDT Nicholas Marino (nmarino@home.com wrote: > I entered into a business arrangement with the local/ld telco > companies which required them to use their best efforts to bill > and collect my money. Currently, they are not doing that, yet > they are still charging me for it. When you entered into this business arrangement, what did you think was meant by the term "best efforts"? Did you expect them to break somebody's kneecaps if they didn't pay? Did you expect them to harass the person by calling them at 3 a.m.? Did you expect them to cut off the person's local phone service? Of course not, because you were only expecting them to use =legal= efforts to collect your money. The above actions are not legal, nor is threatening to do them legal. It is also illegal (as defined by current regulations) for them to attempt to collect the IP charges without notifying the customer that their service cannot be disconnected for non-payment. Therefore, you do not have a valid beef with the telco for billing customers in accordance with the law. > All suggested improvements in the telco-IP billing mechanism > are designed to combat persistent, intentional offenders. There's no law requiring you to continue to accept calls from people who have refused to pay for previously-billed calls, so why aren't you blocking them? In any case, you must live with the fact that the local phone company is not allowed to disconnect service for failing to pay these bills, and there is no public sentiment to modify these rules to make things any easier for IPs. Thus, it is unlikely that the FCC rule will be changed to suit your preferences. If you don't want to do business under these conditions, you don't have to. The world will not mourn your passing. Eli Mantel Cagey Consumer www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ From: Fred Schimmel Subject: Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 18:51:31 -0400 Organization: Prodigy Internet Reply-To: fws@Prodigy.Net phs3@watvm.uwaterloo.ca wrote: > We have (non-digital) Bell Atlantic/NYNEX cellular service, and just > got a flyer with our bills saying that callerid was coming, and > explaining *xx to turn it off, per-line blocking, etc. > Made me wonder ... anyone know if this means we'll be getting calling > numbers listed for incoming calls? I realize they're not necessarily > symmetrical, but it's always bothered me that I get to pay for calls > from unknown numbers ... I believe they were referring to the fact that cellular carriers are required by the FCC (as of October 1, 1996) to transmit the cellphone number on an outbound call. Per Line Blocking can be set free of charge, with *82 to unblock on a per call basis. If Per Line Blocking is not set on your service, the number can be blocked on a per call basis with *67. Per Line Blocking is in home service area only. They suggest when roaming to use *67. If you want to receive Caller-ID for incoming, you need to subscribe to Caller-ID, and have a Caller-ID capable phone. I have BANM as well, and signed up for Per Line Blocking. I never get Private on my CID at home when I call, I get Out-of-Area. I think the exchange prefix of my cell phone is not yet delivering CID outbound properly (609-605). *82 does not affect this either. Who do I complain to? I tried BANM, but they said call your local phone company. (Oddly enough, my local phone company is Bell Atlantic. Now I know why you guys always call them Bell Titanic) Fred Schimmel | *Updated* Russian space station docking | collar warning label: "Objects in MIR fws@prodigy.net | are closer than they appear." ------------------------------ From: Mark Smith Subject: Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular Date: Wed, 03 Sep 97 18:30:05 PDT Organization: New Jersey Computer Connection, Lawrenceville, NJ In article , write: > We have (non-digital) Bell Atlantic/NYNEX cellular service, and just > got a flyer with our bills saying that callerid was coming, and > explaining *xx to turn it off, per-line blocking, etc. > Made me wonder ... anyone know if this means we'll be getting calling > numbers listed for incoming calls? I realize they're not necessarily > symmetrical, but it's always bothered me that I get to pay for calls > from unknown numbers ... Nope. We've had caller ID in NJ for a year or more on BANM (digital AND analog), and the bills still don't tell you much more. Mark ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 18:28:21 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: ICB Toll Free News: New Look, More Info CONTACT: Judith Oppenheimer 212-684-7210 joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com http://www.icbtollfree.com NEW YORK, NY -- September 2, 1997 (ICB) -- ICB TOLL FREE NEWS, the premier online journal of toll-free news and information, enters fall '97 with beefed-up content, a 15 day FREE trial subscription offer, and a new partnership with a renowned international market research firm, making its inaugural guest-column appearance on ICB this month! Updated daily, ICB delivers: Industry Headlines & Summaries. Topical, timely heads-up. ICB News & Commentary. Critical, digestible, indispensable, cutting edge. News & Info from Other Sites, an invaluable archival collection. News Briefs. Sound bites, outtakes and shortcuts. Regulatory Reading Room. What's legal, what's not. And what it means to you. ASK THE EXPERT. 800, 888, 877, global800. You got questions, we got answers. Industry Links. Select, roll-up-your-sleeve bookmark recommendations for industry and corporate execs. and ICB Book Store, with recommendations covering toll-free, telephony, marketing, call center and regulatory. Plus a new market-research guest column, debuting this month! In a volatile toll-free marketplace, telecom and non-industry execs alike find ICB invaluable. Chris Barton, President of Wholesale Carrier Services, says, "ICB is a critical source of information for staying up-to-date on the ever-changing 800/888 toll-free industry." "ICB sorts through an unbelievable pile of telecom information and events and tell me what I need to know in an easily understandable fashion." agrees Phill White, Operations Support, Trimark Investment Management Inc., and Jeffrey J. Walker, Regulatory Counsel for Preferred Carrier Services, Inc., who says, "ICB Toll Free News is the only up to date, on line information source devoted to toll free service." The bottom line for corporate marketers? According to Nelson Thibodeaux, President, Universal Directory Services Inc., "ICB is on the cutting edge of information concerning today's regulatory actions that surely will affect tomorrow's marketing decisions." For more information and your 15 day FREE trial subscription, visit ICB TOLL FREE NEWS at http://www.icbtollfree.com. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 09:47:09 -0400 From: jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens) Reply-To: jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Jobs, Satan Announce Deal In article , was written: > Source is unknown. Nowadays, when everything on the Usenet is archived at numerous Web sites and the Web itself is searchable at numerous sites, it really is unforgiveable to post an article without attribution without taking five minutes to find out who wrote it and give them proper credit. In this case, it took me less than a minute to go to the DejaNews "Power Search" bookmark in my browser, search for "competition between good and evil", and learn that this article was first posted to the Usenet by "meta@pobox.com (mathew)" on August 14. Jonathan Kamens | Veritas Software Corporation | jik@cam.ov.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #230 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 4 08:27:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA27373; Thu, 4 Sep 1997 08:27:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 08:27:14 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709041227.IAA27373@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #231 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Sep 97 08:27:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 231 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Updated GSM-List 09/02/97 (Jurgen Morhofer) Re: Updated GSM-List 09/02/97 (Romain Fournols) Rockwell Hook Flash (Mike Duffy) Re: OK, What's Going on? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular (Bradley Ward Allen) Re: Caller-ID Question (Ed Ellers) Re: Caller-ID Question (Bubba-Bear@worldnet.att.net) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 02 Sep 1997 14:33:01 +0200 From: Jurgen Morhofer Subject: Updated GSM-List 09/02/97 For the latest edition of this list look at my Web-Site: http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/gsm-list.html kindly supplied by Jutta Degener. And if you're already on the Web, take a look at my commercial site: http://deltos.net/globaltel I really would appreciate your business! (Changes in the list marked by "*") Date 09-02-1997. Country Operator name Network code Tel to customer service ------ ------------- ------------ ----------------------- Albania AMC 276 01 Andorra STA-Mobiland 213 03 Int + 376 824 115 Argentina Armenia Armentel Australia * Optus 505 02 Int + 61 2 9342 6000 Telecom/Telstra 505 01 Int + 61 18 01 8287 Vodafone 505 03 Int + 61 2 9415 7236 Austria Mobilkom Austria 232 01 Int + 43 664 1661 max.mobil. 232 03 Int + 43 676 2000 Azerbaidjan Azercell 400 01 Int + 994 12 98 28 23 Bahrain Batelco 426 01 Int + 973 885557 Bangladesh * Grameen Phone Ltd ??? ?? Belgium Proximus 206 01 Int + 32 2205 4912 Mobistar 206 10 Bosnia Cronet 218 01 PTT Bosnia 218 19 Botswana Brunei DSTCom 528 11 Jabatan Telekom 528 01 Bulgaria Citron 284 01 Int + 359 88 500031 Burkina Faso OnaTel Cambodia CamGSM Cameroon PTT Cameroon Cellnet 624 01 Chile China Guangdong MCC 460 00 Beijing Wireless China Unicom 460 01 Zhuhai Comms DGT MPT Jiaxing PTT Tjianjin Toll=20 Congo * African Telecoms Croatia HR Cronet 219 01 Int + 385 14550772 Cyprus CYTA 280 01 Int + 357 2 310588 Czech Rep. Eurotel Praha 230 02 Int + 42 2 6701 6701 Radio Mobil 230 01 Int + 42 603 603 603 Denmark Sonofon 238 02 Int + 45 8020 2100 Tele Danmark Mobil 238 01 Int + 45 8020 2020 Egypt Arento=20 Estonia EMT 248 01 Int + 372 6 397130 Radiolinja Eesti 248 02 Int + 372 6 399966 Ritabell Ethiopia ETA 636 01 Fiji Vodafone 542 01 Int + 679 312000 Finland Radiolinja 244 05 Int + 358 800 95050 Telecom 244 91 Int + 358 800 17000 * Alands Mobil 244 05 * Telivo Ltd. France Itineris 208 01 Int + 33 1 44 62 14 81 SFR 208 10 Int + 33 1 44 16 20 16 Fr.Polynesia Tikiphone 547 20 Fr.W.Indies Ameris 340 01 Georgia Superphone * Geocell 282 01 * Magticom 282 02 Germany D1, DeTeMobil 262 01 Int + 49 511 288 0171 D2, Mannesmann 262 02 Int + 49 172 1212 Ghana Franci Walker Ltd * ScanCom 620 01 Gibraltar GibTel 266 01 Int + 350 58 102 000 G Britain Cellnet 234 10 Int + 44 753 504548 Vodafone 234 15 Int + 44 836 1191 Jersey Telecom 234 50 Int + 44 1534 882 512 Guernsey Telecom 234 55 Manx Telecom 234 58 Int + 44 1624 636613 Greece Panafon 202 05 Int + 30 94 400 122 STET 202 10 Int + 30 93 333 333 Guinea Int'l Wireless * Spacetel Hong Kong HK Hutchison 454 04 SmarTone 454 06 Int + 852 2880 2688 Telecom CSL 454 00 Int + 852 2888 1010 Hungary Pannon GSM 216 01 Int + 36 1 270 4120 Westel 900 216 30 Int + 36 30 303 100 Iceland Post & Simi 274 01 Int + 354 800 6330 India Airtel 404 10 Int + 91 10 012345 Essar 404 11 Int + 91 11 098110 Maxtouch 404 20 BPL Mobile 404 21 Command 404 30 Mobilenet 404 31 * Skycell 404 40 Int + 91 44 8222939 RPG MAA 404 41 Usha Martin Modi Telstra Sterling Cellular Mobile Telecom Airtouch BPL USWest Koshiki Bharti Telenet Birla Comm Cellular Comms TATA Escotel JT Mobiles Indonesia * TELKOMSEL 510 10 Int=A0+ 62 21 8282811 PT Satelit Palapa 510 01 Int + 62 21 533 1881 PT Kartika =20 Excelcom 510 11 Iraq Iraq Telecom 418 ?? Iran T.C.I. 432 11 Int + 98 2 18706341 Celcom Kish Free Zone Ireland Eircell 272 01 Int + 353 42 38888 Digifone 272 02 Int + 353 61 203 501 Italy Omnitel 222 10 Int + 39 349 2000 190 Telecom Italia Mobile 222 01 Int + 39 339 9119 Ivory Coast Ivoiris 612 03 Int + 225 23 90 00 Telecel 612 Comstar 612 01 Int + 225 21 51 51 * Loteny Telecom 612 05 Japan Jordan JMTS 416 01 Kenya Kenya Telecom=20 Kuwait MTCNet 419 02 Int + 965 484 2000 La Reunion SRR 647 10 Laos Lao Shinawatra 457 01 Latvia LMT 247 01 Int + 371 256 2191 Lebanon Libancell 415 03 Cellis 415 01 Lesotho Vodacom 651 01 Liechtenstein Natel-D 228 01 Lithuania Omnitel 246 01 Bite GSM 246 02 Int + 370 2 232323 Luxembourg P&T LUXGSM 270 01 Int + 352 4088 7088 Lybia Orbit Macao CTM 455 01 Int + 853 8913912 Macedonia PTT Makedonija 294 01 Madagascar * Sacel Malawi TNL 650 01 Malaysia Celcom 502 19 Maxis 502 12 Malta Advanced 278 ?? * Telecell 278 01 Marocco O.N.P.T. 604 01 Int + 212 220 2828 Mauritius Cellplus 617 01 Int + 230 4335100 Monaco Itineris 208 01 Int + 33 1 44 62 14 81 SFR 208 10 Int + 33 1 44 16 20 16 Office des Telephones Mongolia MobiCom=20 Mozambique Telecom de Mocambique=20 Namibia MTC 649 01 Int + 264 81 121212 Netherlands PTT Netherlands 204 08 Int + 31 6 0106 Libertel 204 04 Int + 31 6 54 500100 New Caledonia Mobilis 546 01 New Zealand Bell South 530 01 Int + 64 9 357 5100 Nigeria EMIS Norway NetCom 242 02 Int + 47 92 00 01 68 TeleNor Mobil 242 01 Int + 47 22 78 15 00 Oman General Telecoms 422 02 Pakistan Mobilink 410 01 Int + 92 51 273971-7 Philippines Globe Telecom 515 02 Int + 63 2 813 7720 Islacom 515 01 Int + 63 2 813 8618 Poland Plus GSM 260 01 Int + 48 22 607 16 01 ERA GSM 260 02 Portugal Telecel 268 01 Int + 351 931 1212 TMN 268 06 Int + 351 1 791 4474 Qatar Q-Net 427 01 Int +974-325333/400620 Reunion * Romania MobiFon 226 01 Int + 40013022222 MobilRom 226 10 Int + 40012033333 Russia Mobile Tele... Moscow 250 01 Int + 7 095 915-7734 United Telecom Moscow NW GSM, St. Petersburg 250 02 Int + 7 812 528 4747 Dontelekom 250 ?? KB Impuls 250 ?? San Marino Omnitel 222 10 Int + 39 349 2000 190 Telecom Italia Mobile 222 01 Int + 39 339 9119 SaudiArabia Al Jawal 420 01 EAE 420 07 Senegal Sonatel 608 01 Seychelles SEZ SEYCEL 633 01 Serbia Singapore Singapore Telecom 525 01 Int + 65 738 0123 MobileOne 525 03 Slovak Rep Eurotel 231 02 Int + 421 903 903 903 Globtel 231 01 Int + 421 905 905 905 Slovenia Mobitel 293 41 Int + 386 61 131 30 33 Digitel 293 ?? South Africa*MTN 655 10 Int + 27 11 301 6000 Vodacom 655 01 Int + 27 82 111 Sri Lanka MTN Networks Pvt Ltd 413 02 Spain Airtel 214 01 Int + 34 07 123000 Telefonica Spain 214 07 Int + 34 09 100909 Swaziland * Sweden Comviq 240 07 Int + 46 586 686 10 Europolitan 240 08 Int + 46 708 22 22 22 Telia 240 01 Int + 46 771 91 03 50 Switzerland PTT Switzerland 228 01 Int + 41 46 05 64 64 Syria SYR MOBILE 417 09 Tahiti * Taiwan LDTA 466 92 Int + 886 2 321 1962=20 Tanzania Tritel 640 01 Thailand TH AIS GSM 520 01 Int + 66 2 299 6440 * Total Access Comms 520 18 Tunisia * Tunisian PTT Turkey Telsim 286 02 Int + 90 212 288 7850 Turkcell 286 01 Int + 90 800 211 0211 UAE UAE ETISALAT-G1 424 01 UAE ETISALAT-G2 424 02 Int + 971 4004 101 Uganda Celtel Cellular 641 01 Ukraine * Mobile comms 255 01 * Golden Telecom 255 05 * Radio Systems * Kyivstar JSC Vatican Omnitel 222 10 Int + 39 349 2000 190 Telecom Italia Mobile 222 01 Int + 39 339 9119 Vietnam MTSC 452 01 * DGPT 452 02 Yugoslavia Mobile Telekom Pro Monte Zaire African Telecom Net Zimbabwe NET*ONE 648 01 ------------------------------ From: Romain Fournols Subject: Re: Updated GSM-List 09/02/97 Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 17:50:40 -0000 Dear Jurgen, Please note some mistakes in your list: Ivory Coast Ivoiris 612 03 Int + 225 23 90 00 Telecel 612 Comstar 612 01 Int + 225 21 51 51 * Loteny Telecom 612 05 Telecel and Loteny Telecom are the same! Telecel is the network name and Loteny is the company name. The MCC+MNC is right. Phone number is +225 32 32 32 Note that "Reunion" country is the same as "La Reunion" country in your list and "Tahiti" country is the same as "French Polynesia". Tahiti is a town of French Polynesia. Regards, Romain FOURNOLS Societe Ivoirienne de mobiles 11 BP 202, Abidjan 11, Cote d'Ivoire TEL (+225) 23 90 15 / GSM (+225) 07 90 15 FAX (+225) 23 90 11 Email : romain.fournols@fcr.france-telecom.fr ------------------------------ From: Mike Duffy Subject: Rockwell Hook Flash Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 12:34:59 +0100 Organization: Advanced Network Solutions Ltd Reply-To: mike@adv-net-sol.co.uk I'm having difficulty getting a Rockwell based modem to send a hook flash during a call. The hook flash is part of the dial string and is therefore disabled during a call. If I send a hang up command first, the exchange I am on drops the call (British Telecom, Feature Line). If anyone knows a way around this problem, I would greatly appreciate your help. If you know of a different brand of modem that would solve the problem then this would be helpful. The old modem used to work on our last exchange, simply by issuing an h0 before dialling. However, the period the modem hangs up for is too long for the new exchange we have moved to, and the exchange terminates the call. Thanks, Mike Duffy (mike@adv-net-sol.co.uk) Network Consultant Advanced Network Solutions Ltd (http://www.adv-net-sol.co.uk) ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: OK, What's Going on? Date: 4 Sep 1997 04:33:04 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates On Tue, 2 Sep 1997 22:25:25 EST, ED932@worldnet.NOSPAMatt.net wrote: > PAT, any help your readers (or you) could provide would be greatly > appreciated. I posted this on telecom.tech, and probably should have > forwarded it to you instead. And he apparently has a lousy newsfeed too, as I thought I replied to this over there. Owel, here we go again ... > I have two lines in my house. One I use for data, the other voice. > Last week, I noticed that while trying to page my voicemail from my > car phone that I would dial my voice line and the connect would never > go through, dead air on the car phone for as long as I wanted. When I > got home, I noticed a lack of messages waiting for me and as I sat > down, the phone with my voice line gave two very short rings and then > nothing. I thought someone had either caught themselves mis-dialing, > or had another call come in. I picked up the phone about five seconds > later and got dial-tone. As soon as I hung up, I got two short rings > again. This time I picked it up and the local computer store had > called and said they had tried to call several times, but never got a > ring, even when I answered. Tonight, I tried calling from one line to > the other. Same thing, dead air on the outgoing line with no audible > ring, and two short rings on the incoming line. The outgoing line > went right to dial-tone after about ten seconds. This is almost certainly a ring-trip problem. In certain circumstances, the resistance between the two wires of a pair can drop far enough that outgoing calls will still complete, but the high-voltage ringing signal on an incoming call will draw enough current to trip the sensor on the line card at the CO, making it think that the call's been answered. I just had this problem on a client's line, and that switch (an AT&T/Lucent 5E) was bright enough to signal it: one burst of ringback to the caller, followed by busy signal). Not all switches are that polite. Anyway, it's exceedingly unlikely to be anything suspicious, especially since it's a LEC CO line ... that sort of thing requires writing from judges. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth High Technology Systems Consulting Ashworth Designer Linux: Where Do You Want To Fly Today? & Associates ka1fjx/4 Crack. It does a body good. +1 813 790 7592 jra@baylink.com http://rc5.distributed.net NIC: jra3 ------------------------------ From: Bradley Ward Allen Subject: Re: CallerID and BANM Cellular Date: 04 Sep 1997 00:54:50 -0400 Organization: Q phs3@watvm.uwaterloo.ca writes: > We have (non-digital) Bell Atlantic/NYNEX cellular service, and just > got a flyer with our bills saying that callerid was coming, and > explaining *xx to turn it off, per-line blocking, etc. That's perfectly odd. I've been raving about Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile for about half a year, now, and one of its selling points was callerid on AMPS service. When I signed up, all my outgoing calls were "privacy", and I immediately found out I could *82 them and called and asked them to switch it to permanent non-blocking (so now I have to *67 it whenever I want it private, which is how I like all my phones). So, to me, it seems like you are probably in a backwater someplace which is just getting the stuff that the people in areas like NYC have already had. But even that doesn't make sense, since I assumed something like their entire network had this up at about the same time. The no caller-id on cell phones problem has always irked me, since they have been able to support it for so long. They didn't want us to not answer certain calls, but you see the plan I got CID with was the very same plan that BANM introduced first-minute-free, so CID went right along with the idea that screening incoming calls was an ok thing to do which was part of the entire first-minute-free package, a package who's goal was to bring BANM's service to the everyday customer, taking away the fears and tribulations from cellular service even so far as being able to give your cellular phone number out. This service was named "EZ MAX", and as a receiver of many calls, I was sold. Finally, the $5/month for up to 1000minutes/month airtime on Saturday and Sundays is fabulous; I can yack with near freedom for 2/7ths of the week (they misleadingly call them weekends, but as someone whose weekends have been known to extend often from Thursday to Tuesday (especially in a region where holidays are queen), I protest that idea much.) The hifi lolatency AMPS service through the high quality Audiovox phones is superb, as is the coverage inside and out buildings; it is the only service to work inside my entire apartment, no other service even comes close, and this scenereo is repeated throughout the area (oh, god, why didn't I have BANM service ever since I moved here? I would be so much better off ...). A recent brochure says my phone service provider lets me use their service in a variety of tunnels now (Brooklyn, Queens, North and South New Jersey, or whatever the heck they're all called -- I'm not a driver). So, in short, I'm confused: how can they just be adding something to your phone that they've already had? Perhaps, they only had those SS7-CID-like features on certain packages and handsets, and somehow they're extending that. Other CID info for NYC: AT&T Wireless calls come to you using CID regardless of Digital/AMPS; Omnipoint came Out Of Area when I stopped using them; AT&T Wireless could not *receive* CID last I used them which is about when Death Star took over; and finally, Omnipoint does receive CID. So, questions remain: has AT&T Wireless gotten CID coming in to AMPS, TDMA, or their digital offerings?; has Omnipoint got CID going outbound?; does Sprint have it coming in & out? Finally, NextTel. To be fair, I miss the features of the Omnipoint handsets: the 150 or so number directory, and the short crummy emails in & out (I executed commands on my home computer from that thing, and the computer would send me alerts when something was wrong). Also, are there any plans from the NYC cellular providers to have number portability before required? That alone would make me switch to another provider, but I'm quite a unique spiritually argumentative geek so I'm sure I don't represent the whole market (else I'd be doing audiovisual hifi conversations all the time mobile a long, long time ago). > Who do I complain to? I tried BANM, but they said call your local > phone company. (Oddly enough, my local phone company is Bell > Atlantic. Now I know why you guys always call them Bell Titanic) Seems NJ really *did* put up with worse than NY. Amazingly, as bad as NYNEX is, I think the NYNEX customers are finding that they are improving Bell Atlantic rather than the much touted other-way-around. Perhaps NJ peoples' lifestyles have lower expectations. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Caller-ID Question Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 08:46:53 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Glen Roberts wrote: > I signed up for caller-id with GTE in Pennsylvania this week. (814) > 676-xxxx. I received a phone message from GTE saying that the service > was installed and working. My box does not display anything. I called > GTE repair and they checked into it and said that I could not have > caller ID. They however, did state that "some people in Oil City have > it." I understand that there is only one switch in Oil City." Ask them what prefixes these customers' phone numbers have. If they're also 676 numbers they're *absolutely* on the same switch you're on; if they start with 67 but have a different third digit they are likely to be in the same building but *might* be on a different switch. > They claimed that since some people have caller-id in Oil City, they are > complying with the FCC requirements that they provide caller-id. They > suggested it might take six months for me to get caller-id. How can the > local phone company be required to provide caller-id and only have to > provide it to some, but not all customers?" AFAIk there is no FCC requirement that the phone companies provide Caller ID service to their customers. The recent FCC rules have to do with making Caller ID work on long distance calls, basically by requiring local companies that provide Caller ID to pass the data to long distance carriers on outgoing calls and from carriers to their customers on incoming calls, and require long distance carriers to transport that data. ------------------------------ From: Bubba-Bear@worldnet.att.net Subject: Re: Caller-ID Question Date: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 15:50:21 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services On 01 Sep 1997 19:07:22 GMT, glr@ripco.com (Glen Roberts) wrote: > They claimed that since some people have caller-id in Oil City, they > are complying with the FCC requirements that they provide caller-id. > They suggested it might take six months for me to get caller-id. How > can the local phone company be required to provide caller-id and only > have to provide it to some, but not all customers? I will never voluntarily live in an area served by GTE or US West, these two have to be the WORST major telcos at providing uneven services and features. I used to live in US West's telco area and it was a big thing to finally be able to dial using Touch Tone long after most of the state already had electronic switches. They used a Touch Tone convertor on the line finders on the SxS switch. We were able to dial using only 5 digits to any of the local NNX codes though ;) . Bubba ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #231 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 4 09:18:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA00505; Thu, 4 Sep 1997 09:18:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 09:18:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709041318.JAA00505@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #232 TELECOM Digest Thu, 4 Sep 97 09:18:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 232 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Billing of Cellular Calls (msof@sprynet.com) Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem (Antonio Lam) Reputable Firm Needs 900 Number (Joe Turco) WILTEL (nee NORTEL) Service Degraded (Tom Betz) Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame (Patrick Stingley) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Henry Baker) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Scott Townley) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Bill Walker) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Gary Stebbins) Re: GSM, TDMA, CDMA (msof@sprynet.com) Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? (Jeffrey Rhodes) The New Bell Atlantic Passing Call ID (Mike Pollock) Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Call Depot (was A new Low, Even For Integratel) (Eli Mantel) Re: 56K Circuit and Problems (Rick Sommer) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: msof@sprynet.com Subject: Billing of Cellular Calls Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 00:01:19 -0700 Organization: Sprynet News Service When I first moved to the U.S., I used to have analog service with LA cellular. They billed by the second, starting when I pressed the SEND button. I was billed even when the call was never completed, either because nobody picked up at the other end, or because the other end was busy. I was told this was normal practice in the U.S. and got used to it. Now I have migrated to PacBell's GSM service. Surprisingly, (and I have made some test calls before getting my last bill to verify this), they do not seem to charge for unanswered or busy outgoing calls. Is this because the GSM software is of European design, where such practices have not been incorporated into the billing system, or is it PacBell being user-friendly? If this is an intentional feature, why is PacBell not marketing it heavily? This is a BIG improvement over analog cellphones! Michael ------------------------------ From: laman@accsoft.com.au (Antonio Lam) Subject: Re: Dialing Into a Line Shared by Fax and Data-Modem Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 17:15:41 +1000 Organization: Customer of Access One Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia Reply-To: laman@accsoft.com.au In article , Paul Bandler wrote: > I have a home office with a single phone line shared between my fax, > phone/answer machine and dial-out modem on a PC. I would like to know > if there is any way I could make a data-call to this line and ensure > that it is answered my the modem on my PC as opposed to the fax machine. > That is will my fax machine (which I understand listens to all calls > and picks them up if it here's the 'right' signal) pick up the call > when it hears a modem on the other end, or is there a distinction > between fax and ordinary data call hand-shakes? It is possible on some fax machines. The minimum requirement is that the fax must be able to support the connection of external answering machine. In this case you have two phone connectors on your fax machine, one goes to the socket on the wall, and the other goes to the modem, and the phone. The fax is programmed to check the type of incoming call after, says four rings; and the modem is programmed to pick up the call after, says two rings. When an incoming call arrives, the modem picks up the call after two rings, and at the same time the fax listens to the line to see if a fax is coming or not. If it is a fax call, it interrupts the line connecting to the modem and reveive the fax itself. With this configuration, you can actually make a data call to your modem and follow with a fax transmission without hanging up the call. This can be done without the distinctive ringing, or having two or three numbers. And this is what I am doing in Australia. Don't know if the same configuration will work anywhere else in the world. However this will create some problems if you also want to use the line for voice as well. As I mentioned above, the modem will pick up the calls after two rings, even if it is a voice call, unless you are using software program to take care of the voice calls. Hope it helps. Thanks, Antonio laman@accsoft.com.au ------------------------------ From: Joe Turco Subject: Reputable Firm Needs 900 Number Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 21:38:52 -0500 Organization: Optimum Data, Inc. Reply-To: jturco@optimumdata.com We are thinking about offering Tech Support via a 900 number on a switched line. Does anyone know what it cost to set up and operate a 900 number? Who are some of the better providers? Joe Turco Phone: (402) 575-3000 Optimum Data, Inc. Fax: (402) 575-2011 5018 Leavenworth St. http://www.optimumdata.com/ Omaha, Nebraska mailto:jturco@optimumdata.com ------------------------------ From: tbetz@panix.com (Tom Betz) Subject: WILTEL (nee NORTEL) Service Degraded Date: 3 Sep 1997 14:48:13 GMT Organization: Society for the Elimination of Junk Unsolicited Bulk Email Reply-To: Send me no junk email and I'll send you no flames! I've been a Nortel customer since it was NYNEX/Meridian Systems. I've watched it go through some changes. Service quality was just a cut above NYNEX standards originally, then when it became Nortel, service quality improved considerably -- though technicians STILL showed up without an appointment, they showed up promptly, within a day or two of the repair order being placed. However, since Wiltel bought Nortel, I've noticed a serious degredation in service quality. Technicians may show up within a week, but it may take me two or more calls to get them here. And they still don't give me a date and time that they will show up. Has anyone else noticed a similar change, or is it just in my area? Tom Betz, Generalist Want to send me email? First, read this page: ------------------------------ From: Patrick Stingley Subject: Re: CIR v. Port Speed in Frame Date: 3 Sep 1997 13:30:31 GMT Organization: DIGEX, Inc. In reference to Sprint's 0-CIR policy, I guess it's a matter of faith. They're saying that they will always be able to provide you with your port speed. If they aren't they will add bandwidth to their infra- structure. I have bought F/R circuits with other providers with high CIRs and low CIRs, depending upon the needs at the time. For instance, when sending SNA traffic, which is very time dependent and can time out easily, I generally get a CIR pretty close to my expected SNA traffic rate. (for instance, if I know that I will be sending 9.6K max of SNA traffic, I will set a CIR at at least that rate. The telcos usually offer CIRs in powers of 2, so 16K would do. Then I prioritize my SNA traffic so that it goes immediately, with any IP traffic being sent over the remaining bandwidth.) With NT or IPX traffic I would use a CIR that is around 1/4 of the port speed because those protocols are very chatty, but it's not essential that all of their traffic gets through. Sprint's network might be perfect for this application because even if you aren't a "believer" it really doesn't matter if IPX or NBP packets get dropped, so save the money and smile. Best Regards, Patrick Stingley ------------------------------ From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 06:07:10 GMT In article , linky@see.figure1.net (Jason Lindquist) wrote: > If PacBell's offering their GSM service where you're at, I'm pretty > sure those phones are still using an 8kbit vocoder. Actually, I think that PacBell GSM is universally the 14 Kbit 'enhanced full rate' ('EFR') vocoder. This vocoder is the same bit rate as the 'full rate' ('FR') vocoder for GSM, but has noticeably better voice quality. I think that PacBell pushed _very_ hard on their vendors to get this, and some of the other US GSM systems (e.g., BellSouth) may not have this 'EFR' vocoder yet, but still use the older 'FR' vocoder. The old ('half rate') 'HR' GSM vocoder really sucks, and I don't think that many systems use it any more. I found the quality of the GSM EFR vocoder to be about the same as the CDMA 14 Kbit vocoder. Both were pretty good, but not what I would call 'wire-line' quality. ------------------------------ From: nx7u@primenet.com (Scott Townley) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: 2 Sep 1997 19:27:01 -0700 Organization: TRAC Engineering, Gilbert, AZ In article , Bill_Walker@qualcomm. com (Bill Walker) wrote: > As for Primeco, well, Primeco partner Airtouch has one of the cellular > licenses for Atlanta. Primeco's strategy seems to be to provide PCS > coverage only where the Primeco partners don't provide cellular > coverage. Not strategy, legal requirement. You can't own a PCS and a cellular license in the same market. Scott Townley nx7u@primenet.com ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 05:09:59 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , nx7u@primenet.com (Scott Townley) wrote: > One thing that will be confusing to you is that the AT&T Wireless > that's in Seattle is NOT AT&T PCS; it's the same cellular that's been > around awhile. However, AT&T Wireless does offer a digital (TDMA) > service as you've noted. Which they are marketing as "AT&T Digital PCS", regardless of whether it's operating at 800 MHz or 1.9 GHz (whether or not this is a fair use of the term "PCS" has been debated endlessly in alt.cellular-phone- tech). See their own FAQ at (if this link doesn't work for you, just go to and navigate from there). And they _do_ offer it in Seattle. It's IS-136 TDMA, in both bands. And Airtouch and Sprint PCS offer CDMA in Seattle. Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ From: Gary Stebbins Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 00:15:56 -0700 Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc. Tim Russell wrote: > About the only problem I've experienced with my PCS phone thus > far is that it sometimes takes two or three power cycles of the phone > to get it to register service. I turn my phone on and off frequently > rather than leaving it on all the time, as I could since it has a > dramatically increased standby time over AMPS phones (easily 36 hours > with the standard battery). Aha! I'm not the only one. I've noticed that if I go through an area of weak or no signal, my Nokia 2160 frequently continues to say "no service" when I'm back in an area where I know there is service and the signal strength meter is showing adequate signal. Any idea what causes this? -gary- ------------------------------ From: msof@sprynet.com Subject: Re: GSM, TDMA, CDMA Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 21:27:38 -0700 Organization: Sprynet News Service In article , John R. Covert wrote: > I've had Omnipoint service with a New York number since April even > though I've only used my SIM card in Europe (and don't even presently > own a North American GSM phone!). It's purely for use when > travelling, as I expect it to soon work in almost every country in the > world that has chosen the GSM standard at 900MHz/1.8GHz/1.9GHz and to > continue to work seamlessly even after GSM embraces a CDMA system, > just by sticking my SIM card into the right kind of phone. That's interesting. I live in California and have a UK Vodaphone number solely for travelling outside of the USA. I expect that eventually I won't need this account any longer -- this will really depend on what PacBell charges us for roaming in Europe ... Michael ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 11:56:04 -0700 From: Jeffrey Rhodes Organization: AWS- Aviation Communications Division Subject: Re: Recent Caller ID Changes? Kevin R. Ray wrote: > Here in Ameritech hell (IL) with my CID it has always shown the state > name or simply OUT-OF-AREA. I believe that it is the SENDING end that > is responsible and THEN the receiving end to add any missing gaps. The > same friend calling me from the same number has shown both their full > name (AT&T) and only the state (SPRINT) -- the number showed on both > calls. I see it as Sprint not sending any name info but this end > filling the gap based on the CID AC (correct me -- I'm NOT a inside > phone techie! :). Well, the CLASS feature for Calling Name as described by Bellcore documentation, does include the method you describe, to forward a Calling Party Name parameter AND a Calling Party Number parameter with SS7 ISUP to avoid a subsequent reverse lookup for the name at the called LEC. Maybe AT&T is able to transfer this information on their network but Sprint is not? Thanks for reporting this. I was not aware that any US carrier's network is able to pass the caller name forward. One other possibility is that the Global Title Translation that I describe in my previous post, must pass back through the same SS7 STP network that is used to deliver the calling number. It is possible that AT&T is routing this GTT back to the called LEC's name SCP and that, for whatever reason, the GTT that is headed for Sprint's SS7 network, goes to some other SCP name database that only has a generic name available. Hope that helps the public's understanding of caller id irregularities. I do know that about a year ago Ameritech and several other LECs agreed to share each other's name SCP data. That may mean that the information is replicated at each LEC's SCPs, but that process is subject to an update cycle to maintain concurrency and is not as accurate, or reliable, as a real time lookup in the SCP of the caller's LEC. Jeffrey Rhodes at jeffrey.rhodes@attws.com ------------------------------ From: Mike Pollock Subject: The New Bell Atlantic passing Call ID Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 21:37:24 -0400 Now that the merger of NYNEX and Bell Atlantic has been consummated, it's had an interesting effect on my Call ID with Name: I'm in the 516 area of New York, which was former NYNEX (now Bell Atlantic North) territory. I just received a call from a regular caller in the 717 area of Pennsylvania, which has historically been Bell Atlantic (now Bell Atlantic South) territory. Whereas in the past (or at least up until 8/17, which was their previous call to me) my call ID box would only display PENNSYLVANIA. However today the box correctly displayed . Apparently Bell Atlantic North and South are now sharing the lookup database. Mike ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Subject: Re: International Telephone Service - 1964 Forecast, and Today Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 20:24:03 -0400 Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Responding to Jay Ashworth: The ITU passed the standard US phone pad format, with the addition of the Q=7 and Z=9, two years ago, at which time the US upgraded its standard to include the Q and Z as well. Which is why the mostly-MCI-promulgated "there are no letters on international phone pads anyway" excuse for denying US user interests in grandfathering their 800 numbers into universal freephone 800's, was such a joke. Judith Oppenheimer ICB TOLL FREE (800/888) News. http://ICBTOLLFREE.com. (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 The Expert. 800/888 Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: Call Depot (was A New Low, Even for Integretel!) Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 05:47:23 PDT Gary Stebbins (Gary.Stebbins@bigfoot.com) wrote: > This past month I received a $25 charge on my credit card > for "Call Depot" of Miami, FL. ... Has anyone else seen any > such charge on their credit card? Does anyone know more > about Call Depot? Take a look at the Call Depot web site at http://www.calldepot.com Perhaps you bought one of their $25 prepaid calling cards. Eli Mantel Cagey Consumer http://www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 ------------------------------ From: Rick Sommer Subject: Re: 56k Circuit and Problems Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 08:51:10 -0400 Organization: Concentric Internet Services Reply-To: rsommer@concentric.net Problem fixed ... but -- Would like to thank Mr. Smith and everybody who replied to my little problem. I am new to the DCOM field, but anticipate a fun ride. I will say this: I got more replies from this forum (and two others) on this question, than I would have rec'd from a dozen posts on other forums. Seems like you DCOM guys are really helpful towards one another. I appreciate that enormously. Richard E. Sommer Network Specialist MidMichigan Health Midland MI, 48670 rsommer@concentric.net ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #232 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Sep 5 09:10:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA19253; Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:10:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:10:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709051310.JAA19253@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #233 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Sep 97 09:09:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 233 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Fresno Battles to Keep 209 NPA (Tad Cook) First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia (Bill Levant) Sprint PCS Follow-up (Corky Sarvis) Spammers Sued In Michigan (Chip Cryderman) Book Review: "How Intranets Work" by Gralla (Rob Slade) Directory Assistance - Wrong Number (Jon Barber) Toll-Free Number Rationing - Again (Judith Oppenheimer) NYNEX Morphs Many Local Calls to LD (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) Regarding Telephone Standards Under the ADA (Jon Stahl) Re: Billing of Cellular Calls (Robert Johnstone) Re: Billing of Cellular Calls (Rudy Torres) Re: Billing of Cellular Calls (Mark Brukhartz) Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One (geneb@ultranet.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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fresno Battles to Keep 209 NPA Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 22:42:37 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) Fresno, Calif., Officials Battle to Keep 209 Area Code BY GEORGE HOSTETTER, THE FRESNO BEE, CALIF. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Sep. 5--Fresno County officials are looking to Yogi Berra for inspiration in their effort to win the 209 area code battle. The California Public Utilities Commission announced Wednesday that the southern half of the 209 area code will get a new area code by November 1998. The south includes Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare counties. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors has filed a formal complaint with the PUC, claiming that the south should retain the old area code and the commissioners should reconsider their decision. If the complaint fails, the south would get a new area code still to be determined. The complaint is a long shot, said Fresno County Supervisor Juan Arambula. But, he added, the game isn't over yet. "So, while it may be the bottom of the ninth inning, as Yogi Berra used to say, `It ain't over 'til' it's over," Arambula told reporters on Thursday. The PUC has been studying a split of the 209 area code for about a year. The area's 7.9 million different telephone numbers are expected to be exhausted in 1999 as customers use more faxes, cellular phones and computer modems. Civic and business leaders on both sides of the dividing line have been lobbying the PUC to keep the old area code. The main reasons presented by each side are the cost of changing phone numbers and customer inconvenience, especially when people are trying to call vital numbers such as hospitals and government offices. Arambula said the south has more immigrants who are familiar with the 209 area code. He said a new area code also could hurt the south's foreign export business, which is more than twice as big as the north's. The impact of a new area code would be greatest on the south, so it should keep 209, Arambula said. He said potential impact is part of the PUC's criteria in making its decision. Arambula said he called the news conference to reassure South Valley residents that the supervisors and their allies are working hard to change the PUC's decision. The first step is a prehearing meeting on Fresno County's complaint today in San Francisco, which will be attended by county staff, Arambula said. A full hearing before an administrative law judge will be held later, perhaps in October or November. Arambula said the county is asking that the hearing be in Fresno. The PUC will reconsider its decision if directed by the administrative law judge. The south has about 60,000 more people than the north and a greater concentration of government offices. Arambula said the PUC may have given the old area code to the north because Medic Alert, the nation's leading emergency medical information service, is located in Turlock. Under the PUC's decision, Turlock would keep the 209 area code. County officials said the north also got a head start in the lobbying battle. "I think the people in the north started out every early with a heavyduty campaign," said Dennis Marshall, assistant counsel for Fresno County. ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com (Bill Levant) Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 22:50:55 EDT Subject: First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia Well, I got my Sprint PCS phone (Sony/Qualcomm 1.9gHz, CDMA) last week, on the 1500 minutes for $75.00-a-month plan, and have used it both in and around the city all week. Impressions, in no particular order: Signal strength in downtown Philadelphia is fabulous; in the suburbs, it's kinda spotty. Coverage is, for the moment, limited to metro Philadelphia (you run out of signal about 35 miles west of downtown). Because it's digital, you don't get much warning before a call drops when the signal is getting weak...no static, no fading; just something ... and then nothing. Happens a lot out here in the sticks; happens not at all downtown. The vocoders could use some adjusting. The echo effect varies from barely noticeable to downright annoying. It seems to be somewhat worse in the outlying areas, but that may simply mean that Sprint got more complaints from people downtown than from out here in the sticks. There seems to be a momentary hesitation in transmitting voice and keypad tones; it's almost like a satellite call, with the half-second delay before the other side hears you. When I do bank-by-phone or voice-mail using the DTMF keypad, the other end reacts more slowly than usual, as if the transmission had been slightly delayed. Caller ID : incoming local -- displays number; incoming LD (at least on a call from Maryland/410-584-xxxx to my 610 PCS phone; probably AT&T, but not sure) -- displays number; incoming call from "blocked" number -- displays "restricted number". First incoming minute is free; don't know when charging starts for outgoing, but at .05/minute, who cares? On my TDMA/800 mHz cell phone (Comcast), there's no charge for busy or unanswered calls, **provided that you hang up within 40 seconds** Anyone else using this system with thoughts to share ? Bill ------------------------------ From: Corky Sarvis Organization: Our Lady of the Lake University Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 15:27:21 CDT Subject: Sprint PCS Follow-up Pat, I submitted an article to your very fine journal a short while back concerning the ongoing trials and tribulations that Sprint PCS was having here in the South Texas Area. As a follow-up, I thought that I would send this along for whatever it is worth. Over the Labor Day Weekend, my family and I made a trip from San Antonio, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia via Continental Airlines. About two-weeks prior to our departure, I began to search for coverage information for Sprint PCS in Atlanta. I had printed information from when I purchased the phone. I figured some updates might have been posted. I called a number of times, using the '*2' from the handset and the 888-Customer Service (?) number from a land telephone, to ask someone if they had service in Atlanta. Across a two-week period prior to departure, I called at varying times during the day as well as a couple of times in the middle of the night. I was never able to reach any human-type assistance. Finally, it was time to leave for the trip. So, on an outside chance that the handset might work in Atlanta, I took it along. Surprise, Surprise! No coverage at all in Atlanta! I'm not too concerned about the lack of coverage in Georgia. After all, they do actively advertise that they are " ... building a network." I am very concerned about the non-response of Sprint PCS Customer Service (?). Have others using Sprint PCS found this to be true? BTW, the "call-not-connected; redial-a-bunch-of-times" problem that I reported earlier seems to have been fixed, at least here in San Antonio. Do we need to consider starting a support group for people that are having "bad" experiences when dealing with Sprint PCS and non-Customer Service? Corky Sarvis ------------------------------ From: ccryderman@ccm.frontiercorp.com (Chip Cryderman) Date: Thu, 04 Sep 97 17:19:23 -0500 Subject: Spammers Sued In Michigan Pat, In today's {Detroit Free Press} there was an article about an ISP, RustNet, based in Livonia, MI. who has filed suit in US. District Court. US District Court Judge Paul Borman issued a restraining order against brothers, Benjamin & Randell Bawkon, owners of Bawkon Development Company, forbidding them from engaging in any spamming. Their computer records were sized by federal Marshals last Friday. RustNet President Steve Corso claims in his suit that the brothers sent out hundreds of thousands of e-mails in August falsely using RustNet's return address. According to the article, RustNet has been getting thousands of complaints and has even lost customers to these spams. I hope he takes them to the cleaners. I hope the case goes to court and RustNet gets their homes and cars and anything else they may have a value. Hell, maybe the brothers can start a tag team in prison. Chip Cryderman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's great! It really is good news in the fight against the insects and rodents who have infested the net over the past couple years. I hope if they have a victory in court it will serve as encouragement for other ISP's to use the same tactics. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 11:01:26 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "How Intranets Work" by Gralla BKHINTRW.RVW 970126 "How Intranets Work", Preston Gralla, 1996, 1-56276-441-1, U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95 %A Preston Gralla %C 201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290 %D 1996 %G 1-56276-441-1 %I MacMillan Computer Publishing (MCP) %O U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95 800-858-7674 317-581-3743 http://www.mcp.com %P 206 %T "How Intranets Work" As Gralla points out, the fact that intranets are limited and private internets means that they are more complicated than the Internet, not less. The Internet technology is compressed into part one, and the security, groupware, and applications are added on. It can be little surprise, then, that the book is difficult to understand in places. The explanation of CGI (Common Gateway Interface), for example, is either poorly executed or flatly wrong. The discussion of viruses has some good points, but a number of gaping holes. Overall, this book does a poorer job of explaining its topic than others in the series. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKHINTRW.RVW 970126 roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca ------------------------------ From: Jon Barber Subject: Directory Assistance - Wrong Number Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 08:58:26 -0700 Organization: Rice Memorial Hospital Reply-To: jbar@kill-spam.rice.willmar.mn.us I have a difficult problem that needs a speedy resolution, but I am having a *ell of a time getting it resolved. Here's a 'nutshell' description: We're a hospital, with 7*24 coverage at the switchboard. We have been getting a *lot* of calls, especially from out of state, from people asking about, or wanting to speak to, family or friends who are patients. Not unusual, you say. I agree, but here's what is - many people are getting an incorrect number from DA. It's a number here at the hospital, but not a phone with 7*24 coverage, and not a department that has any knowledge concerning our patient population. Very frustrating for these callers. Last night, a very distressed woman left a message asking someone to please, please page her daughter so she could find out if her grandson was still alive! Had she reached the operator, she would have been able to speak to her. As it is, she may well be in the dark, yet. I have called (and others here have, too) USWest (local provider) and AT&T (LD provider) and talked to probably ten people, and received ten different versions of the truth. Yes, our listing is correct; Anyone calling DA will get the listing in *our* database; No, each LD provider has their own database; No, we can't/won't contact the LD companies to fix it, you'll have to wait 'till they update *their* database, eventually, whenever they choose to do so; bla; bla; bla. Damn, it's frustrating! How can I, without calling *every* long distance provider in North America, get this fixed? I got a number from USWest this morning for a "National Directory Assistance" something-or-other. When dialed, there was no answer for 10+ rings, then a poorly-made non-human voice said "The.. unit.. is.. off", then a beep, presumably for leaving a message. I didn't leave one. I will keep calling this number, but does anyone have any suggestions for me? Please email, as well as posting, as our ISP has really awful news service; sometimes only 1-5 articles per day in groups that I know have 50+ postings. Thanks for anything you can offer! You probably know enough to remove the "kill-spam" from the address. Jon Barber jbar@rice.willmar.mn.us Telecommunications Dept. Rice Memorial Hospital, Willmar, Minnesota, USA ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 18:21:38 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: Toll-Free Number Rationing - Again SMS reports that in August '97 alone, 671,947 888-numbers were pulled from the database by the nation's carriers, leaving only 2.89 million 888 numbers left in the database as of last week. Result: look for a repeat of the FCC-mandated 800 conservation measures, with too few numbers to go around among more and more RespOrgs (current total RespOrg count is 212, with approximately 30-35 new ones having been certified in the past 18 months.) Also, a probable moratorium on new RespOrg certifications. Will last through April '98, when 877 gets introduced. Speaking of 18 months, how come it took 30 years to deplete 800 - and only 18 months to deplete 888? Are there really that many more users, using up that much more traffic? Or just more data products being sold by telco vendors, for which they need ever greater inventories in hand of toll-free numbers? It's never too late for separate domains ... One final thought about rationing - RBOCS just entering the LD business, who've been creating new Resp Org entities to compete in the 800/888 arena, will feel the impact of rationing big-time. And the beat goes on ... 800/888 ICB TOLL FREE NEWS 800/888 ...today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. Click for 15-Day Free Trial Subscription: http://icbtollfree.com (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 THE EXPERT. ICB Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com ------------------------------ From: wrfuse@mab.ecse.rpi.NOSPAM.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) Subject: NYNEX Morphs Many Local Calls to LD Date: 4 Sep 1997 19:20:51 GMT Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, USA Reply-To: wrfuse@mab.ecse.rpi.NOSPAM.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) According to {Forbes}, Sept 8 1997, page 234, a NYNEX billing "error" changed many area-code 212 calls to 201. For the reporter, this changed a lot of calls from local to long distance. The NYNEX person told him that there had been many cases of this. You might want to check your bills. Wm. Randolph U Franklin, WRFUSE at MAB.ECSE.RPI.DELETETHIS.EDU ------------------------------ From: aljon@worldnet.att.net (John Stahl) Subject: Regarding Telephone Standards Under the ADA Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 03:18:01 +0000 There are a number of standard telephone functions that presently may not be included under the ADA with regards to Hearing Impaired individuals. The functions I refer to are defined as voice intercept functions that the telephone companies offer to hearing individuals using their phones to call people who have moved or voluntary changed their phone numbers. Hearing people receive a generated voice telling them that..."The number you have dialed '555-3456' has been changed to '555-7654' ." Or most recently, with all of the area code splits in various parts of the country, the voice intercept that notifies the caller that the called party has "changed area code", is another example. Does anyone know if there any requirement under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) to have these same intercept "messages" available to the hearing impaired in TT (or TDD) code so their typewriter's display these messages? It would seem that telephone calls originated by one hearing impaired person to another might reach an intercept that could not be "heard" by their TDD unless the "telephone system" can also output the appropriate tones to the TDD device. John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecommunications and Data System Consultants email: aljon@worldnet.att.net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As a matter of fact, Ameritech at least does recognize this problem and many, perhaps most, of the intercept messages here now sound like this: (statement of condition, not in service, disconnected, etc followed by) "The following tones are for the hearing impaired" (followed by the usual hisses and squeals). PAT] ------------------------------ From: Robert Johnstone Subject: Re: Billing of Cellular Calls Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 12:47:06 -0700 Organization: American Infometrics Reply-To: johnstoneNO@RUTGERS.EDU, SPAM@catlover.com I have AT&T's PCS cellular service (California) and have noticed similar. If I make a very short call (under a minute) I am not billed. I asked the tech at the AT&T store and he told me that if the call is under a minute AT&T assums that it was not clear enough to continue or was dropped by the switch. Now all I have to do is learn to talk faster ;) Robert $$$ Please remove NO SPAM from my return address to reply $$$ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | Visit the Stanislaus Macintosh Computer Club | | Our URL is; http://www.ainet.com/smcc/ | =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- \----------------------------------\ \ Robert Johnstone \ __ \ johnstone@catlover.com \ | \ > Modesto, California >------| \ ______ / / --- \_____/**|_|_\____ | / PowerPC rules & Pentium drools / \_______ --------- __>-} /----------------------------------/ / \_____|_____/ | * | {O} ------------------------------ From: Rudy Torres Subject: Re: Billing of Cellular Calls Date: 4 Sep 1997 15:07:03 GMT Organization: Swiss Telecom Reply-To: Rudy Torres > msof@sprynet.com wrote ... > When I first moved to the U.S., I used to have analog service with LA > cellular. They billed by the second, starting when I pressed the SEND > button. I was billed even when the call was never completed, either > because nobody picked up at the other end, or because the other end > was busy. I was told this was normal practice in the U.S. and got used > to it. > Now I have migrated to PacBell's GSM service. Surprisingly, (and I > have made some test calls before getting my last bill to verify this), > they do not seem to charge for unanswered or busy outgoing calls. > Is this because the GSM software is of European design, where such > practices have not been incorporated into the billing system, or is it > PacBell being user-friendly? It really has nothing to do with the design of the Mobile Network standard being European, and definitely not with the design of the GSM Software [sic]. BTW, the billing system software is independent from the software used to operate the mobile network. It probably (speculation) has more to do with generating revenues (Operator/ Provider pricing policy), or an oversight at the MSC or NMT switch for producing CDRs for uncompleted calls (Vender and/or Operator implementation). Your being charged for uncompleted calls on your billing invoices has more to do with the functionality of the billing system (again, based on the pricing policy requirements of the Operator/Provider), particularly the "message processing" leg. If the NMT switches (for Analog) are producing CDRs for calls not completed, the "message processing" part of the billing system can be changed to not rate and discard these CDRs. The same goes for a billing system that receives such CDRs from an MSC for GSM (BTW, there are billing systems that handle both types instream). Of course, your billing system should not have to receive such CDRs in the first place if upfront these CDRs weren't created for such events (uncompleted calls). Check the pricing rates of your service contract to see if it really is a pricing policy to charge for uncompleted outgoing calls. If it is not, maybe you should call the Customer Service of your local NMT (Analog) Network Operator/Provider to complain? You may be looking at a rather large "credit" in your favor on your next billing invoice. Cheers! rudy ------------------------------ From: mark_brukhartz@il.us.swissbank.com (Mark Brukhartz) Subject: Re: Billing of Cellular Calls Organization: Swiss Bank Corporation Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 19:55:53 GMT Uncompleted call charges vary by cellular carrier. They also vary when roaming beyond your local service area. Here in Chicago, Ameritech Cellular does not charge for unanswered calls or calls to busy numbers. They do charge for answered calls, though, from the time that the SEND button was pressed. Cellular call forwarding charges also vary widely between carriers. (I use it to direct unanswered calls to a special voice mail, so this was worthy of a little research.) For Ameritech subscribers, forwarding is free within their system (to their regular voice mail, Access Line voice mail or another Ameritech subscriber), $0.03 per minute within their local service area, or just the long distance charge to beyond their service area (i.e.; with no Ameritech surcharge). For Primeco PCS subscribers, forwarded calls incur full airtime charges plus any applicable long distance fees! The one small break is that the first minute of forward to a local number is free, apparently as a side effect of their free first minute policy for incoming calls. AT&T Wireless said that they charge $0.07 per minute for call forwarding to local numbers. Mark ------------------------------ From: geneb@ultranet.com Subject: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One Date: 5 Sep 1997 02:36:01 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Reply-To: geneb@ma.ultranet.com Does anyone else find it creepy that James Earl Jones is now the "voice" of Bell Atlantic Nynex? "Welcome to Bell Atlantic Nynex", in that instantly recognized baritone, greets me now whenever I call Directory Assistance, or call a cell phone that isn't on. Will AT&T hire Lily Tomlin to compete? Gene ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #233 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Sep 5 09:47:18 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA21404; Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:47:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 09:47:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709051347.JAA21404@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #234 TELECOM Digest Fri, 5 Sep 97 09:46:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 234 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM (Douglas Reuben) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Payton Chung) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service (Nicholas Marino) Re: Billing of Cellular Calls (73115.1041@compuserve.com) Re: Caller ID - Business Names (Maurice Dykes) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: dreuben@tiac.net (Douglas Reuben) Subject: Re: CDMA, TDMA & GSM Date: 5 Sep 1997 09:29:44 GMT Organization: Interpage Network Services Inc., www.interpage.net, 510.254.0133 In article , dialtone@elwha. evergreen.edu wrote: (describing experiences with digital cellular service): > and sends > your packets on the appropriate "lane" digitally. CDMA functions more > like a packet switched network. TDMA has much poorer sound quality; a > neighbor of mine who is an AT&T reseller tells me that people are > buying the TDMA phones to get AT&T's lower rate but then force them > into analogue mode. This is definitely true on the East Coast as well, with Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's (or rather BAM / BAMS now?) digital service, a CDMA system, as least in the northeast region. I signed up for digital service myself, but it wasn't for the sound quality (the old analog GTE Airphone sounded better), it wasn't because I liked the Sony/Qualcomm phones (they are OK, but they freeze up when alpha messages are received), nor for the silent handoffs or other "advantages" of digital CDMA service. Indeed, the slight audio delay and almost half-duplex characteristic of a digital call (they don't appear to be half-duplex in how they operate, but in regular use it just "sounds" that way), as well as calls just being dropped without warning, cause me to just switch the phone to analog mode more often than not. The reason I opted for the digital plan was simply due to the rateplan: for about $19.95 per month, plus $10 for unlimited off-peak airtime, I *supposedly* get: 1. Unlimited off-peak calling in BAMS/CT (A Side) 00119 system, as well as the ATTWS/Litchfield 01101 system. (The A-side in CT is painfully divided into two systems, the significantly larger one owned by BAMS, with the smaller one owend by ATTWS. They are poorly integrated, BAMS does not offer "same-rate" roaming for all of its customers who roam out of BAMS territory into Litchfield, and in general, gives SNET, the B carrier, a significant advantage by SNET's being the only carrier to offer coverage for the whole state of CT, and ALL of Western Mass.) 2. The same unlimited off-peak calling in the: BAMS/Boston/RI/NH 00028 system, BAMS/VT 00300 system, BAMS/Orange County NY 00404 system, BAMS/Dutchess Poughkeepsie 00486 system, BAMS/Albany 00078 system, and BAMS/ Catskills 01516 system, (except that certain BAMS/CT 00119 customers can't seem to place calls there, and there is no call delivery, so they suggest to use the A-side 01515 system instead and they will credit calls -- or so they say.) Parts of southern Maine may also be covered; I don't have the map with me so I can't be sure. 3. The first minute of incoming airtime is free in all these markets, but there may be call delivery (toll charges from your home switch to where you are roaming) charges unless callers reach you via a roamer access number while you are roaming in the above markets. If you are in your home system, the first minute of incoming service is always free. 4. No toll charge in all of CT (203/860) and a good part of Western Mass (413). Additionally, again, supposedly, there is no toll charge in the other markets (above) or landline charges if you place a call to a number in (roughly) the area which that given system covers. Thus, if I were in Boston and called a Boston number, there is supposedly no toll/landline charge. A call placed in the CT system to Boston would incur a toll charge, however, as it is between two separate systems. (Note that I do not believe that they are *required* to charge this anymore, ie, BAMS could, if they wanted to, transport the call themselves and not charge the customer, but, well, why give up money when they force customers to use BAMS long distance or pay $1 per month for the privilege to use an alternate carrier? A rediculous policy, the legality of which I am currently investigating.) 5. Free Caller ID, which only works if you are in CT or Springfield Mass; if you are anywhere else in your home (00119) system, such as Pittsfield, caller ID shows "Out of Area". Note: try using the roam ports -- they return caller ID just fine. I went to Philadelphia and dialed my BAMS/CT 00119 number directly -- via a LD carrier known to send caller ID from state-to-state which resulted in correct caller ID's while my phone was in CT -- but when in BAMS/Philly 00008 got "out of area". I then called the B side roam port, (215) 870-7626, entered my BAMS/CT (860) 604-xxxx number, and the caller ID showed up fine! Basically, for $29.95 per month, I get unlimited calling in most of BAMS New England system (with the exception of the 01516 system, which is or was owned by someone else and has not been very well integrated into the rest of their systems). Before purchasing the phone, I made a number of calls to BAMS, and got so many different answers on the free airtime throughout New England that I just got a brochure, read all the fine print, talked to the sales people at the store, and after I couldn't fine a way for them to NOT give the free airtime in all the above systems based on all of their literature and what the sales reps. said (ie, they can't weasel out of what appears to be a great deal), bought the phone. But the MAIN reason I purchased it was for the good airtime deal, not for digital. The digital component of the service made no difference to me, and my subsequent use of the service in digital mode demonstrates (to me at least) that the combination of CDMA and the availability of ONLY .6 watt (or .2 for digital) handheld phones is actually a detraction from the service, not a benefit. As to the free airtime over a large area, we'll see when the bill comes; I've made calls in all the systems and want to see if they keep their word! Indeed, they really aren't giving up too much, as not all that many people roam as much as I do, and do not use their phones in off peak hours. Additionally, the Hudson Valley and Albany BAMS systems have pretty poor coverage, making it hard to use the Sony/Qualcomm phone which can only put out .6 watts (analog). These markets (with the exception of Boston) are also likely not to be very heavily used, and thus giving away free airtime to BAMS Digital customers really won't affect their traffic loads too much. (Except perhaps for all the dropped analog calls due to the poor coverage in the Hudson Valley/Albany markets! :) ) Generally, though, in terms of the digital aspect of the service, the CDMA systems which BAMS has in CT, New England, and even NYC, Philly, and DC (note the last three are NOT included in the aforementioned plan, even though some BAMS reps say they are) simply do not provide the same degree of quality which the analog service does. From the lack of a 3 watt alternative CDMA phone for those who may want one (me!), to the dropped calls and tin-can like quality which some of the calls have, as well as the delays and distortions of voices precludes me from being all too interested in digital at this time. I don't believe that I should give up the benefits of the current analog technology (however flawed it may be) in order to reap what appears to be the illusory benefits of the current state of CDMA technology, at least as BAMS has implemented it. So yes, I bought a digital phone and think it is great, but not because I really have *anything* good to say about digital, but because BAMS is giving me (supposedly) such a good deal on unlimited off peak airtime in a large number of their systems. The ability to receive alpha messages, e-mail, and caller ID is nice too, yet non-digital alternatives are available at siginficantly lower costs. Overall, if any good comes from this, and people do become interested in the digital service due to the great pricing, it will encourage BAMS to begin offering such regionwide packages in other areas, such as DC to NY, etc. But it is a shame that they need to entice people to utilize a IMO poorer quality (digital) service by tempting them with significantly better regional pricing plans as compared to what has previously been available. Both digital service AND region-wide, low-cost/unlimited off peak roaming have utility, and should both be actively pursued. Offering such seemingly generous roaming plans to digitial customers while denying them to those who prefer analog indicates to me that BAMS too is aware of the problems of its digital service, and needs to lure people to use it not based on its alleged benefits, but via what is essentialy a bribe. Doug Reuben / Interpage Network Services Inc. / www.interpage.net dreuben@interpage.net +1 (510) 254-0133 (Please note: replies to me should be sent to the "interpage" address above; I use the "tiac" address ONLY to post mail so I do not receive the literally thousands of unsolicited e-mails which I had from previous posts on the net. It's a very sad day when I have to sign up with an ISP just to be able to post and not have to worry about junk mail in my mailer, on my pager, in my POP account, etc. Those who perpetrate unsolicited e-mail should be ashamed at the state of affairs they have created...but of course people like that usually don't care about such things. :( ) ------------------------------ From: paytonc@planetall.remove.com (Payton Chung) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Fri, 05 Sep 97 08:16:24 GMT Organization: The Happy Zoo - http://www4.ncstate.edu/eos/users/c/chung/payton kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) wrote: > 1. I'm assuming that AT&T PCS and Sprint PCS is TDMA and *not* CDMA. > Is that correct? AT&T PCS is a funny service. Here's the story: The FCC decided to auction off six blocks of "new" (i.e. unused) spectrum in the 1900 MHz range for what's called "PCS" or Personal Communications Systems. "Cellular" is defined as the two carriers the FCC had already licensed in the 850 MHz range. Three blocks -- A, B, and C -- have 30 MHz total (15+15). D, E, and F have 10 MHz total (5+5). They were sold in various ways, mostly through auction -- but some companies snagged A blocks early through "pioneer's preference" (namely Sprint Spectrum/American Personal Comms in WDC/Baltimore) and a host of "entrepreneur" companies got blocks in the C spectrum through a special deal. AT&T paid mega-moolah to get huge chunks of spectrum in the ABDE blocks, but initially didn't use ANY of it. In fact, the new "PCS" service that they offer primarily uses their existing 850 MHz bandwidth where it's offered. True, they use dual-band phones -- once the 850 MHz spectrum fills, customers are defaulted to the 1900 MHz. But there's been some controversy over AT&T marketing its 850 MHz -- technically "cellular" -- as "PCS" when it operates at 1900 MHz only some of the time. Sprint PCS, on the other hand, is an all-new network being built out with CDMA (IS-95). This is also odd because Sprint Spectrum in Washington/Baltimore -- the very first PCS system in America -- uses GSM, a TDMA variant. The story here is that once American Personal Comms snagged the spectrum under Pioneer's Preference, they built their network using the ONLY available digital phone technology at the time -- GSM, which has been operating superbly in Europe (albeit at 900 MHz and now 1800 MHz) for most of this decade. Later on, Sprint bought a 49%? 51%?, well, controlling interest in APC so that they could get in on the fun. Later still, Sprint decided that it would use its PCS licenses to build a CDMA network -- apparently leaving its Washington (APC) customers out in the cold, as GSM and CDMA are completely incompatible. (Dual-mode phones to switch between GSM and CDMA are reportedly under development, but expect to pay more.) Complicating this more is that the US has two cell-phone spectrums: 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. Europe also has two: 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. The higher spectrum is called "DCS" in Europe and "PCS" in the States, yet BellSouth insists on calling their 1900 MHz GSM system (Carolinas and Tennessee) "DCS." Aagh! > 2. What are the pros and cons of TDMA versus CDMA? PCS networks are being furiously built across the US; if there's not coverage where you live, there will be soon. Or at least the telcos say. TDMA vs CDMA vs GSM is an almost religious battle to some. A lot of very cheap shots -- even venturing into "American" versus foreign and free-market versus government control name calling -- have been issued over this. The simplest way to put it is that CDMA offers more capacity. Theoretically, an infinite amount more. In reality, perhaps eight times analog cellular (AMPS). (GSM about 3x, TDMA about 5x.) This means (to consumers) potentially lower rates, because the CDMA carrier doesn't have to put up as many towers. The chief advantage of TDMA and GSM is that they're older and more established. They offer more features, *now*. GSM has the possibility to roam to 109 countries as of today; CDMA only a handful. If you go to Europe with the card inside your GSM phone (GSM has a "smart card" embedded in each phone that currently doesn't leave the phone often but might in the future as smart cards become more prevalent), your voicemail will follow. Data services are already available with GSM; TDMA will take another year and CDMA data will be ready in a few months. Little differences: GSM is a little bit more secure than TDMA and CDMA. CDMA has slightly better voice quality than TDMA or GSM. GSM and CDMA will, in a few years, be essentially equal in terms of features offered except for the capacity, the security, and voice quality. Newer versions of GSM might solve the capacity issue in the future, but this technology is currently (in the US) so new that dropped calls and other symptoms of overload are currently very infrequent for all systems. This may change as the percentage of Americans with wireless phones triples or quadruples, as it's expected to do as PCS rolls out nationwide. Generally, there won't be much difference to end users between the phones, between the services offered, or even much of a difference with price. TDMA isn't, however, a very robust technology. The fight is usually GSM or CDMA. > 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they > sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. That's what PrimeCo also says, but there's now a Samsung phone as well. (Sprint PCS offers it.) Most cell-phone makers are in the process of building CDMA phones. Currently, CDMA is mostly found in Hong Kong, South Korea, and parts of the US. One advantage of TDMA (also known as D-AMPS) is that it has a small base of customers already in the US. GSM, of course, has a tremendous base of customers in Europe, and has the widest selection of digital phones. Major cell-phone vendors have been building GSM equipment for years; a relatively simple "upbanding" is all that's needed to market that in the US. (Simple compared to switching between TDMA and CDMA, that is.) > Both appear to have limited Digital areas, regardless of service type. If you believe the telcos, CDMA and GSM will have 95% or better coverage of the US population in two years. However, this is contingent on those C-block "entrepreneurs" staying in business; already, NextWave (the biggest bidder, with $4.2 billion in licenses; NextWave has ties to Qualcomm and plans to build a "wholesale" CDMA network which would sell airtime to resellers) has run into financial trouble while #2 Pocket Communications ($1.4 billion, committed to GSM) filed for bankruptcy on 1 April. Buildout will take a bit more time, in other words. In Seattle, you will eventually have a choice of all three technologies. AT&T holds the D block, "WirelessCo" (AirTouch) holds the B, NextWave the C, Western Wireless (a GSM provider) the D, and Cook Inlet the F. Construction of the C-block network is just starting. DEF haven't started yet. Some A and B providers are already up, but not all. I'm personally partial to GSM, and Pocket would be my provider in Chicago, but I guess I'll have to wait for them. In your case -- if you have to pick between two technologies right now -- I'd choose CDMA, purely on a technical basis. But that also depends on your travel patterns -- where do you travel to frequently? Do those cities have coverage? If so, how much does it cost? You can probably get this information on the Web; try http://www.attws.com (AT&T Wireless) http://www.airtouch.com (AirTouch) http://www.sprintpcs.com (Sprint PCS) You can also bug Western Wireless into getting Seattle hooked up to GSM. http://www.wwireless.com (aka Voicestream) (Payton Chung opines for himself * http://www.mainquad.com/web/paytonc) ------------------------------ From: Nicholas Marino Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 01:36:38 -0400 Organization: @Home Networks Mr. Mantel's response reveals several misconceptions about 900 numbers, their sponsorship, and their billing, so I will attempt to clarify them. Eli Mantel wrote: > When you entered into this business arrangement, what did you > think was meant by the term "best efforts"? > Did you expect them to break somebody's kneecaps if they didn't pay? I did not suggest that at all. > Did you expect them to harass the person by calling them at 3 a.m.? That is not done by any phone company. > Did you expect them to cut off the person's local phone service? That should be a last resort. > Of course not, because you were only expecting them to use =legal= > efforts to collect your money. The above actions are not legal, nor > is threatening to do them legal. It is also illegal (as defined by > current regulations) for them to attempt to collect the IP charges > without notifying the customer that their service cannot be > disconnected for non-payment. Therefore, you do not have a valid beef > with the telco for billing customers in accordance with the law. The current FCC mandate does require the telcos to continually remind it's customers that their service cannot be interrupted. I think this is a mistake, as I have explained before. > There's no law requiring you to continue to accept calls from people > who have refused to pay for previously-billed calls, so why aren't you > blocking them? I cannot block them. The telco must block them. I have no way to block incoming calls, nor am I legally able to do so. My contracts with various local and ld telcos requires that I answer every call. > In any case, you must live with the fact that the local phone company > is not allowed to disconnect service for failing to pay these bills, > and there is no public sentiment to modify these rules to make things > any easier for IPs. Thus, it is unlikely that the FCC rule will be > changed to suit your preferences. If you don't want to do business > under these conditions, you don't have to. The world will not mourn > your passing. > Eli Mantel > Cagey Consumer > www.geocities.com/wallstreet/5395 Could you step off of that high horse for a minute, Mr. Mantel? The services I provide via pay-per-call numbers are not related in any way to sex or pornography. Does that surprise you? There are many good uses for pay-per-call numbers. Perhaps if you weren't so easily influenced by outrageous media stories you would be more open minded. Most major software companies have a 'priority' customer support service via 900. It appeals to people who's time is too valuable to waste waiting in a long queue. If your need is urgent enough, and you can afford it, you call the 900 number and are connected instantly. Does that offend you? ------------------------------ From: 73115.1041@NOSPAMcompuserve.com Subject: Re: Billing of Cellular Calls Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 03:35:55 GMT msof@sprynet.com wrote: > When I first moved to the U.S., I used to have analog service with LA > cellular. They billed by the second, starting when I pressed the SEND > button. I was billed even when the call was never completed, either > because nobody picked up at the other end, or because the other end > was busy. I was told this was normal practice in the U.S. and got used > to it. > Now I have migrated to PacBell's GSM service. Surprisingly, (and I > have made some test calls before getting my last bill to verify this), > they do not seem to charge for unanswered or busy outgoing calls. Is > this because the GSM software is of European design, where such > practices have not been incorporated into the billing system, or is it > PacBell being user-friendly? It's called competition. The LA basin is/was one of the most congested areas for cellular usage. Because of this, cellular users in LA have had to put up with higher charges and goofy policies (like charging from Send to End regardless of answer status). I'm not aware of any other area in the US that charged for unanswered calls. Now, because of the competition for PCS service, some of those policies are changing. Ken ------------------------------ From: mhdykes@thinkage.com.nospam (Maurice Dykes) Subject: Re: Caller ID - Business Names Reply-To: mhdykes@thinkage.com.nospam Organization: MTN Inc. Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 13:10:22 GMT Brent Best wrote: > This question concerns the 16 character limitation for CID name info. > Caller-ID data for private lines is straightforward - if the > customer's last name in the directory listing is 14 characters or > less, then there is enough room on the display to show a space and at > least the first character in the customer's first name. Long last > name are merely cut off at the 16th character. > But calls from businesses often have abbreviated names. For example, > when a call is received from a certain office of the Government of the I am guessing from reviewing my call logs that there is a little hand crafting at some stage (maybe service commencement?). Just a nitpick but all names (bus and home) are 15 chars max. Regards, Maurice mailto:remove_mhdykes@thinkage.com | preferred email http://www.golden.net/~identfon | IdentaFone: Caller ID software Eschew obfuscation. - Unknown For the spammers... root@localhost admin@localhost ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #234 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Sep 7 00:14:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id AAA06226; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 00:14:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 00:14:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709070414.AAA06226@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #235 TELECOM Digest Sun, 7 Sep 97 00:14:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 235 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Perfectly Wonderful Book to Read (TELECOM Digest Editor) Planet Telecom - What a Neat Idea! (David Chang) China: Growth in Telecom Infrastructure (oldbear@arctos.com) Book Review: "Elements of Hypertext Style" by Pfaffenberger (Rob Slade) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Gordon Burditt) Re: Sprint PCS Follow-up (Phillip Dampier) Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One (Jeffrey William Sandris) Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One (Melvin Klassen) Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One (John Cropper) Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One (Randy Miller) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 13:56:12 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: A Perfectly Wonderful Book to Read I was quite pleased to receive some interesting books a few days ago sent to me by Mike Sandman and one in particular was a fascinating, very heartwarming history and series of antecdotes written by the oldest son of the family which owned Bryant Pond Telephone Company for thirty-three years and saw it cutover from magneto/crank manual phone service to automatic service in 1983; the last of its kind in the United States. Bryant Pond, Maine and its telephone company were the subject of discussion in this Digest on various occassions in the early 1980's including these articles if you wish to go back and read them: Volume 1, Issue 56 Wednesday, Nov 11 1981 "Don't Yank the Crank" - A report on the sale of Bryant Pond Telephone Company and the plans to change it to automatic service. Volume 1, Issue 58 Friday, Nov 13 1981 "Bryant Pond and Mayberry" - John Covert wrote a reply to the original item, and added more details. Volume 2, Issue 100 Tuesday, Sep 08 1982 (message date) "Bryant Pond Update" - Martin Minnow reported on the situation there as conversion to dial continued with the construction of a new building, etc. For some reason this article appears in that issue but is not listed in the table of contents at the start of the issue. Volume 2, Issue 112 Thursday, Sep 02 1982 (message date) "Don't Yank the Crank" - Bret Marquis mentions the community efforts in Bryant Pond to save the old telephone company and its operations. Volume 2, Issue 115 Friday, Sep 10 1982 (message date) "Bryant Pond is Really the Last" - John Covert wrote a followup to the articles earlier that month. Volume 2, Issue 137 Monday, Dec 13 1982 "Toll Stations - Calling Non Dialable Points" - In an unrelated article, John Covert makes mention of calls inward to Bryant Pond. Volume 3, Issue 74 Friday, Oct 14, 1983 "Poor Bryant Pond" - A report on the new step-by-step central office which had opened just a few days earlier. --------------------------------------- And now, the full story, written by Michael R. Hathaway, the oldest son of Elden and Marie Hathaway, owners of Bryant Pond Telephone Company from 1950 until the end 'as they knew it' in 1983. "Everything Happened Around the Switchboard" Copyright 1996 by Michael R. Hathaway Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-92972 ISBN 0-9654159-1-0 Published by Reflection Publications PO Box 705 Conway, NH 03818 Printed by Cardinal Printing Company Route 117 PO Box 115 Denmark, ME 04022 The forward to the book was written by Marie Hathaway, and it is dedicated in particular to Elden Hathaway who passed away in 1993 at 76 years of age and to Robert McKeen, Jr. who served the company faithfully for over thirty-five years beginning in 1946 as a young man of 24 who was the sole telephone operator for the previous owners and the man who agreed to go to work for the Hathaways when they bought the company in 1950. He passed away at his home in Bryant Pond in 1996 at the age of 74. The book gives a short history of telephone service in Bryant Pond beginning with the start of this century up to the point in 1950 when the Hathaways took over and the switchboard was moved into their home. Most of the book tells the story of the company from 1950 up to the sale and conversion to dial in 1983. We read of a very happy and most generous, community-minded family of mother, father and three kids and how their life changed when the community's central switchboard became part of their daily lives. The family took turns tending the switchboard with Bob McKeen taking one shift each day as operator so that the family could spend at least some time together as a family away from their duties. Bob was like part of the family over the years, as were the other phone operators who came and went as time went on. In the 1950's and 1960's it all seemed pretty manageable, but those were different times. Marie Hathaway did the billing and took turns at the switchbaord relieving Bob from time to time; her husband Elden did the repairs, stringing and repairing the wires, and other stuff in addition to his full-time job for the Canadian National Railroad; the children, including the author of this book would 'work the board' from time to time. As the years passed, phone traffic became much heavier and the complexities and economics of running a small-town telephone company became unmanageable. Where originally Bob McKeen was the operator for four or five hours per day while the family got together for meals and an occassional social event, toward the end the company needed two full time operators at all times and could have used more except that they only had a two-position switchboard. From the beginning, the Hathaways expected things would change; there were few nights they could spend the night alone together; they seldom sat down as an entire family to eat ever again, and at holiday-time dinners were served in the room where the switchboard was located so the family member on duty that day could enjoy the meal as well. But then Bryant Pond, like all of America, began to use the phone more and more while demanding better and more sophisticated service. By the middle- to late-1970's the work load on everyone was becoming oppressive. Two operators were always on duty at a board which resembled a mound of spaghetti with lots of connections always up. Attempting to comply with the regulations of the state commission became more tedious and where in the early days 'New England' (as they called the main phone company in the territory) had sent them a check each month for toll settlements, toward the end the Hathaways were sending New England large sums of money each month. Neither Elden nor Marie Hathaway drew a salary from the company in the final years of operation. Every nickle went to pay the several operators and keep spare equipment in stock. To have continued manual service would have eventually bankrupted them. We read how with many regrets and after much very serious thought on the effect 'going dial' would have on their little community, the Hathaways decided to sell the company. This book came to me on Thursday; after doing 'Chinese carryout' for dinner Thursday evening with a friend and seeing him off on the bus to his home in New Jersey I sat down and read the 190 pages of "Everything Happened Around the Switchboard" from start to finish; it was that good. It is not fancy, elegant writing, but just a simple, very human story of how small, rural area phone companies operated in the earlier years of the century we are now seeing come to an end. Time and again, it was the sole endeavor of a family like the Hathaways to keep telecommunications working in little towns and villages across America. It has a lot of pictures of the family and the 'extended family' of folks who were part of Marie and Elden Hathaway's company. There were folks like Tom Thurston who showed up one day at the door in 1971 as a tourist and stayed on as an employee running the switchboard. There are stories of tragedies in Bryant Pond such as the massive fire at the sawmill and how Bob McKeen was on duty at the switchboard at the time. Several times in reading the book I had to stop and laugh at the humorous things that happened, and a couple times I had to stop and wipe my eyes which were becoming moist. There are accounts of raising the doctor in the middle of the night to attend to sick people and of the times when Elden would put in a full day's work at his full time railroad job to come home at night and put in several hours repairing lines ravaged by New England winter storms only to then find himself 'on duty at the board overnight' as well. He'd fall asleep and the operators at Norway, Maine would try to rouse him for incoming calls. And then Friday night, I sat down and read it all a second time. And a second time I laughed and a second time I cried. Some folks might not appreciate books like this as much as myself, but then so much of my early years from the time I was a teenager through the time I was in my late twenties was spent as a telephone operator under quite similar circumstances: 'working the switchboard', overnight hours at work, and stories you would have to have seen in person to understand and appreciate. I only wish I could have personally met Bob McKeen, Elden and Marie Hathaway, Tom Thurston and some of the other folks who gave Bryant Pond Telephone Company a place in American history and in the history of this industry. I highly recommend "Everything Happened Around the Switchboard" to all of you. My copy came from Mike Sandman, whose company here in the Chicago area specializes in unusual telephone-related equipment and supplies. The cost is $13.95 plus shipping. Credit cards are accepted. Order by telephone only! Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert 804 Nerge Road, Roselle, IL 60172 *Phone* 630-980-7710 And when you call, ask for your free personal copy of the September, 1997 edition of the catalog for his company. Mike has been a very long-time, very generous supporter of TELECOM Digest and he will appreciate knowing you read about him here. Don't be concerned about supplying your credit card number, etc; his firm is very reputable and each time I mention him here, lots of you have requested his catalogs which, even if you don't order from them, make extremely interesting and informative reading. BTW, my copy of "Everything Happened Around the Switchboard" was personally autographed by Mike Hathaway. Maybe your copy will be also. But plan to sit down and read it all; you'll have a hard time breaking away until you have finished. Have a few chuckles as you follow the happy little family's adventures during the three-plus decades they 'tended the board', but keep a Kleenex or two nearby also. Patrick Townson ------------------------------ From: dchang3@juno.com (David Chang) Subject: Planet Telecom - What a Neat Idea! Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 19:29:28 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Hi to all! I just saw this article and I was wondering if anyone had some more information on this product/concept. I this it sounds like a winner. INTERCTIVE WEEK[Image]August 4, 1997 Building The Next-Generation Phone Company By Paula Bernier For the past year, Al Niven (alniven@earthlink.com) has been hard at work putting together what he calls "a next-generation telco." The company he refers to is actually a global consortium of Internet telephony gateway owners that, beginning next month, will sell its low-cost international phone, fax and unified messaging services under the name Planet Telecommunications Inc. So far, Planet has signed 85 gateway owners, 70 percent of whom are based in Third World countries, Niven says. There will initially be eight U.S.-based Internet telephony gateway nodes, which connect and translate traffic between the analog telephone network and the Internet, in Boston, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Diego and San Francisco. "I'm interested in areas like Russia and India where per capita [usage of the public telephone network] might be low," he says. "But if the price is right it will increase." Niven has hand picked all the gateway owners, or "nodemeisters" as he calls them, which have each invested at least $10,000 in gateways, software and membership fees. The members will initially use gateways from Array Telecom Inc. (www.telecom.array.com). He has met more than half of the nodemeisters personally and held extended meetings over the Internet with the others. Niven met Todd Morris, a software writer for a company in the networking business, on CompuServe. Morris now owns Net telephony gateways in San Francisco and Bombay, India, through a company called Safehouse Technology that he runs out the basement of his home in Evergreen, Colo. Niven's organization let me get in very early and help steer the direction of the organization. The other organizations I looked into were very static. We're a group of entrepreneurial anarchists," Morris says. About half the nodemeisters come from the interactive voice response or computer telephony integration industries; the other half is divided among Internet service providers (ISPs), call-back agents, traditional telephone companies and general entrepreneurs. In addition to founding the consortium and being majority owner of its New York gateway, Niven will provide network management and settlement services to Planet Telecommunications. Internet telephony guru Jeff Pulver of pulver.com credits Niven as being among the first to pull together a global Internet telephony consortium and settlements business. While the nodemeisters set the guidelines for settlements -- or landing charges -- between one another and will set their own retail rates, Niven's clearinghouse will get 9 percent of the retail fee for fax transmissions and 5 percent of retail for phone transmissions. Niven is one of many trying to make a business of providing settlements and network management to groups of Internet voice gateway operators. But don't compare his setup to that of other providers. Unlike most, Niven says he believes in a bottom-up approach, where gateway ownership is separate from the settlements-network management function. Some clearinghouses operate like franchises, leasing gateways, providing settlements and determining rates for operators, which in return may hand over the majority of their revenue to clearinghouses, he says. "The Planet Telecommunications consortium can hire a different clearinghouse at a moment's notice. So it's more competitive. We have to earn your business everyday," Niven says. Niven is also leery of close ties between clearinghouses and gateway equipment vendors, calling it "a gross conflict of interest." "I'm very critical of the ITXC [Corp.] approach," he says, referring to the Internet telephony settlements and routing company that AT&T WorldNet Vice President Tom Evslin recently announced he was launching with financial backing from vendor VocalTec Communications Ltd. (www.vocaltec.com). Carriers won't want to buy equipment from a particular vendor if that vendor has a stake in a carrier or settlements provider that is a potential competitor, Niven says. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 11:10:42 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: China: Growth in Telecom Infrastructure The following is excerpted from a copyrighted story which appeared in last Friday's {Wall Street Journal}. The Wall Street Journal August 28, 1997 Beijing Puts a Wall Around Its Thriving Phone System by Joseph Kahn BEIJING -- This week, China's Ministry of Post and Telecommunications will plug in the digital switch to support its 100 millionth phone line. Authorities plan a low-key celebration, but the milestone is extraordinary. Twenty years ago, privileged bureaucrats still kept crank-operated phones in locked boxes and urban residents bicycled downtown to call long distance. Since then, China's national phone network has expanded 100-fold, city dwellers buy private lines on demand, and China Telecom, a state company, has eclipsed AT&T Corp. as the world's largest provider of mobile-phone services. Perhaps even more extraordinary, China did it alone, without the aid of foreign companies clamoring for a share in the market. Control of the telecommunications network and every yuan of revenue it produces have remained in the hands of one of the world's most conservative bureaucracies, a monolith of more than one million people who put telephone just after tank in the hierarchy of national security. The ministry is now so confident that it promises to wire every farm village by 2000. Foreign companies such as Siemens AG, NEC Corp., Motorola Corp. and many others have secured niches in the China market, usually as equipment suppliers. But China has defied expectations that it would have to allow foreign investment in services or even foreign ownership if it hoped to serve its booming economy. On the contrary, telecommunications growth has far exceeded that of the economy overall -- China lays enough new phone cable each year to rewire California. And the ministry has become less dependent on foreign money and technology. "Liberalization is a mental problem for China. They want to keep everything in their own hands," says Louis Witters, chief of market research for Alcatel Alsthom SA of France, a China pioneer and to date the most successful foreign telecommunications equipment supplier. "We keep waiting for them to open up; they keep becoming more self-sufficient." Optimists still believe China will sooner or later have to relax its grip. The country charges much more for some services, especially long-distance calls, than many developed countries do. The ministry's bloated bureaucracy is clumsy at times. The central government has authorized a small rival phone company, China Unicom. And China's determination to join the World Trade Organization will force the ministry to allow a level playing field, the optimists say. "China has done wonders with hardware but doesn't have the software," says Wilson Wang, chief representative for Sprint Corp. "Sooner or later they will have to turn to us for help." Yet even minor concessions have proved elusive so far. Wu Jichuan, the minister in charge of telecommunications, is widely considered the most conservative member of China's industrial hierarchy outside the military, where many of the ministry's top engineers are recruited. Mr. Wu, who is partial to dark glasses, rarely makes a speech or greets foreign guests without stressing national security and China's determination to retain "100% control" over the public phone network, people familiar with him say. Such self-reliance doesn't always produce spectacular results. Foreign telecommunications experts say the ministry demands state-of-the-art digital equipment, but rarely uses it to full effect. The fractured telecommunications bureaucracy bought one mobile-phone network from Motorola and another from Sweden's Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, only to find that the two did not "talk" to one another. China also has a long way to go before its huge population is wired to Western standards; there are still only seven phones lines for 100 people nationwide. Despite those problems, many foreign observers give the ministry grudging respect. Even in some cutting-edge areas, the ministry seems in step with international trends, they say. It has improved its once-dismal customer service, offered directory assistance, provided banks with a data-exchange network, set up an Internet backbone, and leapfrogged into digital mobile systems. Through it all, foreign telecommunications companies have been kept on the sidelines. Unlike other industries where investment is welcome, China takes a fund-it-ourselves approach to telecommunications. Some three-fourths of the capital for telecommunications expansion is sourced domestically, according to a study by the Hong Kong Telecom Project. To help fund its planned $60 billion expansion through 2000, the ministry will raise foreign cash, but this time through the public listing of its subsidiary, China Telecom. Analysts expect the Hong Kong listing to value several cellular networks of China Telecom at a hefty $8 billion and raise $2 billion for the minority shares on offer. China has moved toward self-sufficiency in equipment, too, with foreign help. By last year, China made most of its own fixed-line equipment; a decade ago, it was dependent on foreign suppliers. Some 16 joint-venture manufacturers -- many majority-Chinese owned -- make a complete array of equipment, from integrated circuits to digital public exchanges. Domestic production hasn't come at the expense of high prices. Quite the opposite: The ministry pays less for equipment than counterparts in any other country. Heated competition among China's many foreign partners has kept prices well below world averages. Digital switches, for example, cost about 30% below comparable equipment in the U.S., allowing China to lay its thousands of miles of wire cheaply. The losers are the foreign manufacturers. Shanghai Bell Telephone Equipment Manufacturing Co., a joint venture between Alcatel and the ministry, has seen profit margins on some equipment drop to almost zero, says Yuan Xin, a deputy general manager. But that well-established company has fared better than late arrivals, such as AT&T and Northern Telecom Ltd. of Canada. Those companies made big China splashes in the early 1990s, investing heavily to help China develop autonomy in research and production. But they have failed to win market share. The future may be dominated by wholly-owned domestic companies. Closely held Huawei Technologies Co., based in Shenzhen, is an upstart with top-level backing. An ex-army officer, Ren Zhengfei, founded the company in the late 1980s to produce high-tech telecommunications equipment locally. Last year, Huawei's share of the switch market reached 20%, second only to Shanghai Bell's. Revenue hit 2.7 billion yuan ($324 million). At the company's busy Shenzhen headquarters, engineers in jeans and shirtsleeves mix Chinese with English technical terms. At an average age of 27, they talk about "Internet access" and "R&D." But the obsession with self-sufficiency reaches here, too. Huawei has never bought technology abroad. "In the early days, China relied on sales from foreign companies," says Fei Min, company spokesman. "China can't develop that way. We have to solve our own problems." The ministry's refusal to allow foreign investment in telecommunications services has left foreign providers with one hope: China Unicom. The domestic rival to China Telecom is more open to foreigners. But results have lagged, in part because the telecommunications ministry puts Unicom networks on hold by declining to link them to the national phone system. Signed deals rarely turn into full-scale projects, foreign partners say. U.S. Baby Bells, in particular, have had a sour experience with Unicom. BellSouth Corp. signed an agreement to provide cellular services in Beijing and Tianjin, but the U.S. company withdrew from the alliance at a late stage, people familiar with the deal say. Ameritech Corp. retreated from a $20 million cellular project in Shanxi province in July. Company sources said the Chicago Baby Bell gave up on China entirely after deciding the near-term outlook for profits was dismal. Some foreign executives think Unicom will turn into a genuine second phone company. Li Huifen, Unicom's new president, has focused on core projects and won explicit backing from China's cabinet to challenge the telecommunications monopoly, they say. Sprint allied with Unicom to take on the ministry in traditional phone services in Tianjin this summer, a first. But Mr. Wang of Sprint Beijing thinks the ministry shows few signs of giving up the fight. "They think they can do it their way," he says. "So far, they've been right." Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 11:11:10 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Elements of Hypertext Style" by Pfaffenberger BKEHPTST.RVW 970126 "The Elements of Hypertext Style", Bryan Pfaffenberger, 1997, 0-12-553142-7, U$24.95 %A Bryan Pfaffenberger %C 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101-4495 %D 1997 %G 0-12-553142-7 %I Academic Press Professional %O U$24.95 619-231-0926 800-321-5068 fax: 619-699-6380 app@acad.com %P 297 %T "The Elements of Hypertext Style" Overall, there are a number of good suggestions here for Web designers, particularly those new to the game. There is, though, little to distinguish this book from any number of others on the market. There is the same emphasis on graphics, flash, and novelty. To be fair, there is the suggestion to create text-only versions of Web pages. There is also a chapter on writing for the Web--but only a short one, and it's chapter ten. Of the many general "how to" Web guides this is a superior specimen -- but only of a rather poor species. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKEHPTST.RVW 970126 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 05:01:07 CDT From: gordon@sneaky.lerctr.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged > US Attorney Mary Jo White said the defendants were charged with > intercepting messages by using unlawfully cloned pagers to obtain > sensitive law enforcement information. The allegation is that the > company had pagers cloned to receive the information at the same time > police and other city officials were sending it to each other. Then Is it really necessary to CLONE pagers? It seems to me that just building one "promiscuous listener" receiver would be sufficient to receive (and log) *ALL* pager traffic in the area. (Perhaps that function is available in some kind of debug mode of some existing pagers?) Then you look for the interesting stuff amongst the trash. > I have to wonder how a distinction will be made between radio > scanners set to listen to police/fire frequencies all the time by > news media and these pagers. I guess pager transmissions are not > intended for the general public, but then at the same time I have > always heard that radio transmissions are not for acknowlegement > either, or that at least we are not to benefit from what was heard. The FCC tries to distinguish between purposes of different radio bands. Certainly you CAN legally benefit from what you heard on the Channel 5 news, but not from receiving cellphone broadcasts (even if they happen to come out of your TV with no tinkering with the TV, just channel surfing). I'm sure pager transmissions are in the "private" category, although they may not have the same protection as cellphone conversations. Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lerctr.org!gordon ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 11:51:29 -0400 From: Phillip Dampier Subject: Re: Sprint PCS Follow-up Corky Sarvis wrote in article : > I'm not too concerned about the lack of coverage in Georgia. After > all, they do actively advertise that they are " ... building a > network." I am very concerned about the non-response of Sprint PCS > Customer Service (?). Have others using Sprint PCS found this to be > true? I have had a Sprint PCS phone since they started offering service in the Rochester area with fair results. Here in Brighton, one of the "upscale" suburbs, the signal quality is not very good, probably owing to the political power of the town's wealthy to keep cell towers out of the residential areas, putting them instead in more commercial areas which simply don't provide decent service to the residential areas. Also, their network here is not complete, and northwestern suburban areas are just now able to obtain service for the first time. When signals are good, the service is excellent, with better audio quality than analog cellular, no real static, and just occasional artifacts (echo, extremely low volume in weak areas, etc.). Incidental services are another matter. The voicemail service employed here in this market has just been changed for the fourth time in five months. In fact, the apology letters could fill the walls here. There have been a lot of problems with messages going missing, the computer system is down, the message indicator function doesn't work, messages that you delete never going away, or leaving only to return once again as new messages, etc. have been ongoing problems here. With the last changeover, things seem to be more stable. Customer service can be a problem, especially now that their network has grown. Hold times can be extremely lengthy, and their automated customer care service is frequently offline or leaves you holding forever. They offer substantial discounts for new customers here who sign up for the service, in part because they admit they are still having problems, so customers tend to be informed before signing up. Phillip M. Dampier Rochester, New York The Genesee Gateway: The Genesee Valley's Source for Community Information http://www.ggw.org ------------------------------ From: sandris@shore.net (Jeffrey William Sandris) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One Date: 5 Sep 1997 15:22:53 -0400 Organization: Chin@#&^(; [ CENSORED ] In article , wrote: > Does anyone else find it creepy that James Earl Jones is now the > "voice" of Bell Atlantic Nynex? I'm waiting for Bell Atlantic to update the Directory Assistance Call Completion prompting in Jones' voice: "The number you have requested *will* be automatically dialed for an additional charge of thirty-five cents. I will not tolerate dissent. Say yes now." Jeffrey William Sandris sandris@shore.net ------------------------------ From: klassen@UVic.CA (Melvin Klassen) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One Date: 5 Sep 1997 13:22:56 -0700 Organization: University of Victoria "Gene" writes: > Does anyone else find it creepy that James Earl Jones is now the > "voice" of Bell Atlantic Nynex? "Welcome to Bell Atlantic Nynex", in > that instantly recognized baritone, greets me now whenever I call > Directory Assistance, or call a cell-phone that isn't on. Will AT&T > hire Lily Tomlin to compete? Better her than the actress Fran Drescher (see: http://us.imdb.com/cache/person-exact/b25403) of "The Nanny" and "Beautician and the Beast". :-) If Ella Fitzgerald's voice can break a glass, what can Fran's voice do? :-) ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 20:33:07 -0400 James Earl Jones has been the "voice of BA" for quite some time now (several years; as far back as 1989, if memory serves). With their recent acquisition of NYNEX, his voice simply reaches a larger audience now. May the farce be with you (if you think Bell ever REALLY broke up)... :-) John Cropper voice: 888.76.LINCS LINCS fax: 888.57.LINCS P.O. Box 277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 ICQ: 2670887 ------------------------------ From: Randy Miller Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Darth Vader on Line One Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 12:08:10 -0400 Organization: What's organization? Reply-To: zvyyre@pbzcrk.pbz James Earl Jones was supplying the voiceover to Bell-Atlantic long before there was a Bell Atlantic (I remember him doing voiceovers for Bell of PA, as well as NJ Bell and Diamond State Telephone. Can't say for sure if he ever did anything for See and Pee. ;-)) Randy S. Miller rsmiller@worldlynx.net Headers ROT-13'ed to screw autospammers miller@compex.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #235 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Sep 7 20:39:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA24978; Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:39:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 20:39:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709080039.UAA24978@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #236 TELECOM Digest Sun, 7 Sep 97 20:39:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 236 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Pay-Per-Call Services (was Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service) (Eli Mantel) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Bob Holloway) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service (Gary Novosielski) USWest/GTE Differences (Babu Mengelepouti) RS232 Question (John Johnson) More on NPA 780 Split (Joey Lindstrom) Nextel Cellular? (Ben Parker) PSTN/Internet: How Does it All Work? (Ben Parker) ISP, Leased Telecom Global Cost Comparison? (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Re: First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia (Hillary Gorman) Private Phones / Intercom (Michael Leamer) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Eli Mantel Subject: Pay-Per-Call Services (was Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service) Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 10:29:36 PDT Nicholas Marino (nmarino@home.com) wrote: > I cannot block [calls from people who have refused to pay for > our services]. The telco must block them. I have no way to > block incoming calls, nor am I legally able to do so. My > contracts with various local and ld telcos requires that > I answer every call. Other pay-per-call services seem to be able to do this. Maybe you need to find another service provider, or alternatively, you could deny service to the caller after answering the call. > Could you step off of that high horse for a minute, Mr. Mantel? > The services I provide via pay-per-call numbers are not related > in any way to sex or pornography. Does that surprise you? ... > Most major software companies have a 'priority' customer > support service via 900. One of the problems with pay-per-call services is that the customer becomes obligated to pay for a call regardless of whether he gets what he's paying for. This is true just as much for technical support lines as it is for entertainment services, though I do have a problem with businesses that sell products that require calls to their technical support department, then attempt to turn a cost center into a profit center by understaffing their "free" technical support number. > The current FCC mandate does require the telcos to continually > remind it's customers that their service cannot be interrupted. > I think this is a mistake, as I have explained before. There are really several public policy questions involved: 1. Is allowing pay-per-call services good public policy? 2. Is allowing pay-per-call services to be billed to someone (i.e. the telephone subscriber) without obtaining explicit authorization good public policy? 3. Is including telephone subscriber-billed calls on the local phone bill good public policy? 4. Is disconnection of phone service for non-payment of pay-per-call services good public policy? 5. Is educating and informing consumers of their legal rights good public policy? Mr. Marino, we know where you stand on these issues: "yes" to every one of these except for informing consumers of their legal rights. Here's where I disagree: 1. Although there is some value in allowing pay-per-call services, there are many negatives as well, such as tech support lines. But this issue is really beyond regulation. 2. Billing someone without explicit authorization is clearly a bad thing. By allowing this, telephone subscribers have unfairly been forced to bear the costs of anti-fraud measures. 3. Allowing pay-per-call charges to be included on the local phone bill is a convenience for both the IP and for people who have no credit card to charge the call to. This convenience is outweighed both by the authorization that IP's assume they have received when a 900-call is placed, and by the implication that refusal to pay for the call (which could be for a legitimate reason, such as not receiving the services promised) might result in loss of phone service. 4. Possible loss of phone service for non-payment of pay-per-call charges would put the consumer at an untenable disadvantage. 5. If it's a good thing for consumers to have certain rights, then it's good for them to know about those rights. Eli Mantel ------------------------------ From: crh1@trsvr.tr.unisys.com.SpamCan (Bob Holloway) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 17:48:13 -0400 Organization: Unisys Corp. Nicholas Marino wrote: > All suggested improvements in the telco-IP billing mechanism are > designed to combat persistent, intentional offenders. > I believe that it is wrong and unfair to me to encourage certain > people to not pay their 900 bills. The FCC mandated statements on > phone bills do just that. I've been following this thread with considerable interest as I am currently disputing several 900 number charges. Mostly the discussion up to this point by Mr. Marino has assumed that the person making the calls is in fact the telephone subscriber (or a member of his/her family) and that refusal to pay is unwarrented/unjustified. There is also the other side of the coin: calls to 900/976 numbers by someone that is not the phone subscriber or someone he/she is responsible for. This is the case I currently find myself in. The calls if referred to above were apparently made last October. As soon as the bill came in I called the phone company to find out what the numbers were -- they were sex line numbers. I checked our activities and no one was home at the time these calls were made. The phone company removed them from our bill, and we also immediately put a block on for 900/976 numbers. I thought that was the end of it, but no! Four months later, I get a bill from the service provider. I call and tell them I didn't make the calls, and they say the calls came from my number so I have to pay for them. I asked who made the calls; they said they didn't know and didn't care. I asked if it was a child or an adult; again they said they didn't know and didn't care. A couple of rounds with them and they turn it over to a collection agency. We tell them the same thing and get the same response plus they are reporting it as a bad debt to the credit bureaus. With that background, I think there are a couple of problems with the 900/976 services as they currently operate: 1) 900/976 calls are, by default, allowed from virtually every phone in the telephone network (with some obvious exceptions) unless the subscriber explicitly asks to have it blocked. This puts every subscriber at risk of incurring at least some calls on his phone bill before he realizes that someone has found a way of charging those calls to his bill without his knowledge or authorization. The worst part is that this risk is not one that the subscriber knowingly and explicitly entered into; it was inherited by having a telephone! 2) there is no easy way, currently, for 900/976 service providers to know whether the person calling is authorized to use the phone that he/she is calling from. Obviously, they would like to assume that they do -- but this isn't always the case. I see this as particularly a problem that prevents sex lines from screening their calls to make sure they are from adults (communities go out of their was to prevent children from having free access to "adult store" materials, but there's currently no way to know that they don't have easy access to telephone sex lines). For example, I believe there are quite a few ways that calls can be made without a subscribers permission or authority: tapping the copper line anywhere between the CO and the subscribers phone, using a cordless phone on the same frequency as one already on the line, actually entering the house (or business for that matter) without permission (breaking and entering or just walk in if the door is open and use the phone) ... I presume that someone with a little more knowledge of the telephone network than I have could come up with even easier ways that don't even require close physical proximity to the subscribers line/house. I believe that the current laws/regulations protect consumers who find themselves in this predicament, but only to the point of not losing their phone service. It's still possible for an ISP to louse up some ones credit rating, and presumably cause a lot of hassle by actually taking a person to court if the amount was high enough. I don't know if there have been any court cases that would uphold an ISP in this situation since they couldn't prove that the call was authorized. I would hope that current law would not make a person, or business, or whoever, liable for calls made by some unknown third party, just because the phone company records say a call came from that subscribers line. It may seem like I'm a little upset as the result of my personal experience -- and I am, but I can also sympathize with Mr. Marino and other ISPs who have to put up with calls that they are going to get stiffed for. It seems easy to say "that's the cost of doing business", and maybe it is today. But that doesn't mean that someone, a lot of someones, shouldn't try to come up with a better way: debit cards, pre-authorized credit, a secure phone (i.e. like https protocol on the Internet web), automated blocking of numbers by the ISP when they've already been stiffed by calls from a particular number,... {get down off soap box now *-)) Bob Holloway, Unisys Corp., 2476 Swedesford Rd., Paoli, PA 19301 {For personal replys, delete "SpamCan" from address} ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 17:28:03 -0400 From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service In TELECOM Digest V17 #234, Nicholas Marino wrote: > Most major software companies have a 'priority' customer > support service via 900. It appeals to people who's time is too > valuable to waste waiting in a long queue. If your need is urgent > enough, and you can afford it, you call the 900 number and are > connected instantly. Does that offend you? Now that you mention it, yes! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 14:18:59 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: USWest/GTE Differences Bubba-Bear@worldnet.att.net wrote: > I will never voluntarily live in an area served by GTE or US West, > these two have to be the WORST major telcos at providing uneven > services and features. I used to live in US West's telco area and it > was a big thing to finally be able to dial using Touch Tone long after > most of the state already had electronic switches. They used a Touch > Tone convertor on the line finders on the SxS switch. We were able to > dial using only 5 digits to any of the local NNX codes though ;) . USWest and GTE's Pacific Northwest operations are quite different from one another. USWest seems intent on wringing as much money out of its customers as possible, while investing as little in its network as possible, before an inevitable decline. For instance, USWest sought a rate increase two years ago from $10.50 a month to nearly $30 a month for phone service in Washington state. They were rebuffed by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, as USWest's own figures showed that not only do they profit immensely in Washington state, they send profits from this state to build infrastructure in OTHER states! Last year, they STILL made more money than their allowed profit on the $10.50 a month rate, but that has not stopped them from seeking a 25% rate increase. They claim that they can't update infrastructure without additional revenues, but they're not bothering to invest in infrastructure with the revenues they have presently. In fact, USWest was one of the telcoes leading the recent hubbub over blocking on switches serving ISP's. Meanwhile, GTE recently spent millions of dollars building a fiber-optic ring around its westside service area in the Portland suburbs. They now have a fully redundant network as well; while Oregon City (a USWest service area) can be cut off from all other CO's by one fiber cut, GTE's self-healing network connects each CO/RSU to at least two others. Thus one fiber cut can't knock out inter-CO calls to GTE customers. GTE, in my experience dealing with both LECs, also has consistently better customer service and while they still are interested in making as much money as possible, don't blatantly lie like USWest does in many circumstances. I don't really see any comparison between the two. I have heard GTE horror stories in the Midwest; for instance one area outside of Rockford, IL where there is *no* flat-rate dialing plan available. However, they seem to be doing a reasonable job in the Northwest. ------------------------------ From: John Johnson Subject: RS232 Question Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 21:46:51 -0700 Hi, Does anyone have any information on converting RS232 signals into data signals that can be transmitted over a 10-baseT LAN? I need information on any devices that would interface with a RS232 DB9 OR DB25 port, and also provide a RJ-45 jack to connect the LAN cable. Any software programs that might do such conversions are also a help. I am not quite literate on protocols or signal formats. So it would be helpful if information was available in layman terms. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Sun, 07 Sep 97 06:44:26 -0700 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: More on NPA 780 Split Trying to get information from Telus is like trying to pull teeth. However, I've managed to dig up the following: The date of January 25th 1999 is, as suspected, the beginning of permissive dialing. Mandatory will follow six months later, followed by three-months worth of intercepts telling people to dial the correct code. I can't (yet) seem to get a list of exchanges affected. I know that Calgary, Red Deer, Stettler, and Coronation are staying in 403, while Edmonton and everything north switches to 780 - but no master list is yet available. When I get it, I'll pass it along. Telus has published a toll-free number for "more information" -- that number is 1-888-223-0300, but I have no idea whether or not it works outside of Alberta. Mark Cuccia reports that it does NOT work from New Orleans. :-) From: The Desk Of Joey Lindstrom +1 (403) 606-3853 EMAIL: joey@lindstrom.com numanoid@ab.imag.net lindstrj@cadvision.com WEB: http://www.netway.ab.ca/worldwidewebb/ ------------------------------ From: bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) Subject: Nextel Cellular? Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 19:27:44 GMT Organization: Best Effort Co. Reply-To: bparker@interaccess.com All the discussion in the Digest here recently on CDMA/TDMA/GSM and various cellular and PCS carriers and such has been very interesting and informative. However, nobody has mentioned Nextel in this discussion yet and I'd like opinions about there place in the overall scheme. Nextel seems to offer a nationwide digital/analog network (TDMA) that is free of roaming charges. Additionally their phone sets offer text paging functions and also have a unique 2-way radio capability that allows you to connect to specific handsets anywhere in their network for much less than usual rates. In essence this is long-distance radio, using their cellular (850mhz) network. Seems like it delivers today what most PCS promises for tomorrow. Too good to be true? I would like to hear of any real experiences with them, as well as technical observations, (such as which (ABCDEF) frequency bands they actually use), etc. Ben Parker .....(Oak Park IL -> Denver CO) ..... bparker@interaccess.com ------------------------------ From: bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) Subject: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 19:27:47 GMT Organization: Best Effort Co. Reply-To: bparker@interaccess.com In a discussion with my son (Systems Administrator for a local ISP, charged with implmenting multi-pop access points in cities around the country) the question came up: If the 'internet' is basically packet-switched traffic and PSTN is basically channelized traffic, but they seem to share largely the same physical plant infrastructure (most dedicated lines copper or fiber are actually run to/from Telco CO's) how is the traffic separated or combined at the CO for trunk and larger integration levels for transit across the country and/or around the world? Is there really parallel but separate infrastructure for data/voice or is the voice traffic 'packetized' as well, and shipped to destination comingled with data traffic, then re-assembled to go separate ways? How is it separated at the CO/switch level (if it is)? Ben Parker .....(Oak Park IL -> Denver CO) ..... bparker@interaccess.com ------------------------------ From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: ISP, Leased Telecom Global Cost Comparison? Date: Sun, 7 Sep 1997 03:49:03 +-5-30 I'm looking for data on comparative rates for Internet bandwidth (from a primary-provider) and long-distance leased telecom capacity across a spectrum of countries. I want to figure out exactly how bad India's DoT (PTT) and VSNL (overseas comms monopoly, currently also only primary ISP) are. VSNL charges, for bandwidth + local leased line they arrange through DoT: (bps) setup + annual (in US$) 64k: 557 33435 128k: 557 50153 512k: 1114 100306 1M: 1114 167177 2M: 1337 278629 This is for regular commercial users. Software exporters get 20% off. Unlike ISPs in, say, the Europe or Singapore, VSNL isn't charging just for bandwidth into it's network, but through its "gateway" service. It guarantees at least 50% consistent throughput to the "Internet" - i.e. MCI NAPs in Boston/Seattle - which implies a 1:2 matching transcontinental bandwidth increase for each customer (though in practise it's thought to be more like 1:4). It is significant, then, that VSNL's been dropping ISP tariffs well below point-to-point transcontinental _telecom_ bandwidth (which you also get from VSNL); the latter is now almost 50% higher. Although I suspect VSNL could be persuaded to reduce rates, possibly with a drastically lowered tariff structure for customers who need less than 1:2 guarantees for transcontinental carriage, I'd like to compare the existing structure with tariffs elsewhere. Thanks in advance, Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: hillary@hillary.net (hillary gorman) Subject: Re: First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia Date: 7 Sep 1997 01:56:14 GMT Organization: Debugging our net or deworming your pet ... On Thu, 4 Sep 1997 22:50:55 EDT, Bill Levant wrote: > Well, I got my Sprint PCS phone (Sony/Qualcomm 1.9gHz, CDMA) last > week, on the 1500 minutes for $75.00-a-month plan, and have used it > both in and around the city all week. > Impressions, in no particular order: > Signal strength in downtown Philadelphia is fabulous; in the Well, not really. I find that with our Sprint PCS phone, which we've had all summer, the phone decides there is no signal pretty much at random as I walk around downtown, especially through/around Rittenhouse Square. It isn't just my phone, because everyone I work with has these phones, and we've all noticed the same thing. Furthermore, it doesn't work at all in my house (not an apartment building, a house) unless I put it on the windowsill. Similarly, it doesn't work inside the Borders at 18th and Walnut except upstairs by the windows in the cafe, and I lose signal in lots of other buildings as well. I *do* still find the service acceptable, but I was disturbed enough about the signal loss I see to ask the staff in the PCS store on Market St about it, and the people there told me that they think coverage in Philly really "sucks" and that they're installing new towers over the next four months to fix it. > suburbs, it's kinda spotty. Coverage is, for the moment, limited to > metro Philadelphia (you run out of signal about 35 miles west of > downtown). Also, it works fine in Blue Bell (about 15 mi from Philadelphia), and not at all in Bryn Mawr (about 9 mi from Philadelphia), but they have never claimed to have any kind of decent coverage in Lower Merion, so there you go. It's a great deal, it's saving our company thousands of bucks a month. It's just not acceptable for "mission critical" duty yet, because calls DO get missed when you walk around downtown Philly during lunch ... hillary gorman...........Official Token Female..........hillary@netaxs.com "So that's 2 T-1s and a newsfeed....would you like clues with that?" hillary@hillary.net: for debugging your net or deworming your pet Net Access...The NSP for ISPs....The NOC that rocks around the clock. ------------------------------ From: Michael Leamer Subject: Private Phones / Intercom Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 23:29:44 -0500 Hi, I'm fairly new here, but have a little experience as an electronics hobbyist. I have a question that I cannot work out from reading the archives. A local museum has a children's area that has seven or eight phones. These are linked so that if you push a button corresponding to the other phone (to make phone one ring, push button one). I believe that when you pick up any phone, you are connected to all others that are off hook. OK. My question: Can I set up a smaller version at home between two bedrooms (only two phones) within a reasonable budget, and if so, how? Thanks for the help! Please respond to the e-mail address below - anti spam tactic. Mike Leamer mleamer@swbell.net ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #236 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 8 22:33:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA17286; Mon, 8 Sep 1997 22:33:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 22:33:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709090233.WAA17286@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #237 TELECOM Digest Mon, 8 Sep 97 22:33:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 237 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax (Monty Solomon) UCLA Short Course: Design Patterns, Frameworks and CORBA (Bill Goodin) Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release (Anthony Argyriou) Another Telecom Discussion Forum (Marc Socol) Re: First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia (J. Macassey) Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? (Brett Frankenberger) Re: Nextel Cellular (Andy Abramson) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 8 Sep 1997 01:04:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Begin forwarded message: Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 22:59:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh Subject: FCC rescinds rule requiring you to ask permission to fax [Think of this in terms of spam and the implications for free speech if so-called "anti-spam" laws are passed. --Declan] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 17:05:11 -0400 From: Matthew Gaylor To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu From: Craige McMillan Date: Fri, 5 Sep 1997 14:41:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: EXCLUSIVE--FCC Rescinds 'Permission Slip' Requirement Conservative Consensus(tm) ************************************************************************ Events * Analysis * Commentary * Forecasts * Readers' Opinions ************************************************************************ http://www.eskimo.com/~ccnrs/news.html Serving the 'Net 4 Years n News Flash - EXCLUSIVE * V3X30 * 5/Sep/97 * ISSN 1074-245X FCC RESCINDS 'PERMISSION SLIP' REQUIREMENT FOR FREE SPEECH Agency had barred citizen from contacting elected officials via facsimile without prior express permission The Conservative Consensus (http://www.eskimo.com/~ccnrs/news.html) has secured a major free-speech victory for computer and facsimile users. Responding to complaints by the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, the Federal Communications Commission had ordered an Alabama man to "cease the unauthorized transmission of fax messages unless and until you receive permission from the recipients ... further violation will result in immediate punitive action, which may include monetary forfeiture." Pretty strong words from a federal government agency, especially when delivered on FCC letterhead via certified mail. The letter, dated July 11, 1997 came from John Santy, Public Affairs Agent with the FCC's Compliance and Information Bureau in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. When Conservative Consensus received a copy of the letter from the recipient, Mr. Stephen Ames, Jr., of Gadsden, Alabama, we decided to investigate. Conservative Consensus was especially alarmed at the chilling effect on political speech, if citizens were required to obtain the permission of government officials prior to contacting them via facsimile to express their views. (We have already noticed a trend among some senators to block faxes from numbers they do not wish to hear from.) Courts have repeatedly ruled that political speech represents the most protected form of free speech, under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This appeared to us to be a direct assault against any type of political dissent. Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher's office refused to respond to inquiries from Conservative Consensus during our investigation. When we contacted the FCC, we were informed by Robin Search of the Compliance and Information Bureau, that "The specific wording that applies: 'No person may: ... (3) Use a telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine.'" [FCC cited CFR Title 47, Part 64,1200a:3] We were troubled by the fact that Mr. Ames was not sending advertisements, but political speech. In fact, FCC regulations revealed the definition of "unsolicited advertisement" to be "any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services..." Yet the agency had attempted to adapt a ban on commercial solicitation to apply to political discourse. When Conservative Consensus pointed out to Ms. Search the troubling aspect of the FCC's misrepresentation of the law, our investigation was referred to Mr. Lawrence R. Clance, Assistant Bureau Chief, Law, at the Compliance and Information Bureau. Following an internal investigation by Mr. Clance, the FCC on September 3 wrote to Mr. Ames, rescinding the July 11 letter. The documents were made available to Conservative Consensus today. The full text of both letters will be available on the Conservative Consensus website. This investigation leaves a number of unanswered questions, which we still find deeply disturbing. First, how and why did Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher's office persuade the FCC office at Langhorne, Pennsylvania, to intimidate a citizen from speaking out politically? As the state's highest law enforcement officer, the attorney general is sworn to uphold the law -- not distort it to violate the civil rights of citizens. Second, why did the FCC deliberately distort the meaning of an existing regulation in an attempt to deny Mr. Ames his civil right of free speech? This appears to us to indicate the extreme politicization of a "neutral" regulatory agency. Third, why did the nation's major media outlets ignore a move by a powerful federal agency to extinguish political speech? Could it be that the nation's most powerful media no longer care to protect speech they disagree with? If so, then free-speech and political dissent in America are indeed, both endangered species. Finally, Conservative Consensus would like to extend thanks to FCC attorney Lawrence R. Clance for investigating this matter when it was brought to his attention, and upon determining the facts, acting to correct this most egregious action by a regulatory agency. Look for details in the upcoming issue of Conservative Consensus. _________________________________________________________________ COPYRIGHT 1997 by Conservative Consensus, unless otherwise noted. Please redistribute widely with headers and trailers intact. For an understanding of how propaganda is being used to manage the news and suppress dissent, visit our Website and check out information on The McMillan Letter. Go ahead --- satisfy your curiosity! To find out what the monthly issue of Conservative Consensus looks like, click here, or visit our Website at the address below. Join this list! Email SUBSCRIBE to consensus-L- request@eskimo.com or visit our WEBSITE at http://www.eskimo.com/~ccnrs/news.html for details. Conservative Consensus & The McMillan Letter Bridge Over Troubled Waters TV Show, Seattle 6:30pm Fri. Ch.29 Email: ccnrs@eskimo.com * Infoline: (206)230-5227 * Fax: (206)783-3243 ************************************************************************ This list is public. To join fight-censorship-announce, send "subscribe fight-censorship-announce" to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu. More information is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/ ------------------------------ From: Bill Goodin Subject: UCLA Short Course: Design Patterns, Frameworks and CORBA Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 15:12:15 -0700 On December 8-10, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "Using Design Patterns, and CORBA to Develop Object-Oriented Communication Systems", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructor is Douglas C. Schmidt, Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Washington University. This course describes OOD/OOP techniques and software that have been successfully used to reduce the complexity of developing large-scale concurrent communication software. These systems include online transaction processing, telecommunication switch management applications, network management for large-scale global personal communication systems, electronic medical imaging systems, and high-performance parallel communication protocol stacks, among others. The course illustrates how to significantly simplify and enhance the development of software that effectively utilizes concurrency and network services via the use of object-oriented design techniques such as design patterns, layered modularity, and information hiding; C++ language features such as abstract classes; inheritance, dynamic binding, and parameterized types; tools such as object-oriented communication frameworks and object request brokers (ORBs); advanced operating system mechanisms such as event de-multiplexing, multi-threading, multi-processing, and explicit dynamic linking; and emerging standards for distributed object computing such as OMG CORBA and Network OLE/COM. The course is intended for software developers who design and implement telecommunication switch management systems, video-on-demand services, network management applications, personal communication systems, client/server management information systems, WWW servers, upper-layer communication protocols, and other similar services. The fee for the course is $1195, which includes extensive course notes. These course notes are for participants only, and are not for sale. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 07:15:46 -0700 From: Anthony Argyriou Subject: Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release For CPUC news releases, go to http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/news/news_index.html California Public Utilities Commission 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102-3298 NEWS RELEASE CONTACT: Dianne Dienstein September 3, 1997 CPUC - 98 415-703-2423 CPUC APPROVES 209 AREA CODE SPLIT - NORTH KEEPS 209 The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) today approved a geographic split of the 209 area code, effective November 14, 1998. The 1.28 million residents in Amador, Calaveras, Merced, Mariposa, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tuolumne plus small portions of Alameda, Alpine, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Sacramento, and Santa Clara counties keep the 209 area code. A new area code, yet to be determined, will be assigned to the 1.34 million residents in Fresno, Kings, Madera, Tulare, King, and small portions of Kern, Inyo, Monterey, and San Benito counties, which currently have the 209 area code. This geographic split was proposed by an industry team developed to solve the problem of rapid depletion of phone numbers in the 209 area code (expected in 1999), and with consideration of public input obtained during several local jurisdiction and public meetings held in 1996. The team consisted of the Numbering Plan Area Code Relief Coordinator, California Code Administration staff, California Public Utilities Commission representatives from the Telecommunications Division and Office of Ratepayer Advocates, and current and future code holders including local phone companies, long distance phone companies, wireless carriers and competitive local carriers. The team concluded that this split involves the least overall disruption to the public and is the best balance of affected interests of the six alternatives considered. The primary reason for their proposal to keep the 209 area code for the north was concern about the potential life-threatening consequences of changing the MedicAlert area code. There are 3.8 million people who wear MedicAlert bracelets or neck medallions with the emergency assistance phone number containing the 209 area code. MedicAlert is based in Turlock, in the northern area. The decision to keep the 209 area code for MedicAlert was to avoid the risk of improperly completed phone calls to MedicAlert which could have life-threatening consequences. In addition, the team believes the population in the northern portion of the 209 area code would experience a greater impact if their area code were to change than if the southern portion's area code changed, because of the high degree of interaction between the northern population and surrounding area codes. The 209 area code split will be implemented in the following stages: November 14, 1998 Start of Permissive Dialing May 15, 1999 Start of Mandatory Dialing August 21, 1999 End of Mandatory Dialing. In approving this area code split plan, the Commission believed it met the criteria of: minimizing impact to existing customers in the 209 area code, balancing impact to the telecommunications industry, having an equitable impact on all existing and potential code holders, optimizing life of both the old and new area codes, and having a solution in place prior to exhaustion of phone numbers in the current 209 area code, as well as allowing enough time for adequate notification of changes to customers. Notice to the public will begin by October 1997. The County of Fresno has filed a formal complaint with the Commission seeking to have the plan revised to permit the area south of the Mariposa/ Madera County line to retain the 209 area code. The Commission is currently considering that complaint and intends to act on it expeditiously. Depending upon its decision regarding the complaint, the final assignment of the 209 area code to various areas may be modified. The notice that customers will receive about the planned area code split will advise them about Fresno County's pending complaint, and possible modification depending upon the Commission's decision regarding that complaint. [submitter's comment - I wholeheartedly agree with allowing the northern part of 209 to keep 209. The MedicAlert issue is enough reason, but, as stated in the release, the northern part interacts with other areas more. For most people in the Bay Area or the Sacramento area, 209 calls are going to friends or co-workers or businesses in Stockton or Tracy, both of which are becoming commuter suburbs for the Bay Area and Sac.] ------------------------------ From: root@out1.ibm.net (Marc Socol) Subject: Another Telecom Discussion Forum Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 04:08:10 GMT Organization: IBM.NET Another discussion forum relating to telecommunications and videoconferencing can be found at: http://www.semsamerica.com/discussion/index.html ------------------------------ From: julian@tele.com (Julian Macassey) Subject: Re: First Week's Impressions of Sprint PCS in Philadelphia Date: 7 Sep 1997 21:33:51 -0500 Organization: Dave Rhodes Investment Club In article , hillary gorman wrote: > On Thu, 4 Sep 1997 22:50:55 EDT, Bill Levant wrote: >> Well, I got my Sprint PCS phone (Sony/Qualcomm 1.9gHz, CDMA) last >> week, on the 1500 minutes for $75.00-a-month plan, and have used it >> both in and around the city all week. >> Impressions, in no particular order: >> Signal strength in downtown Philadelphia is fabulous; in the > Well, not really. I find that with our Sprint PCS phone, which we've > had all summer, the phone decides there is no signal pretty much at > random as I walk around downtown, snippo > I *do* still find the service acceptable, but I was disturbed enough > about the signal loss I see to ask the staff in the PCS store on > Market St about it, and the people there told me that they think > coverage in Philly really "sucks" and that they're installing new > towers over the next four months to fix it. I have a Sprint PCS (Sony/Qualcomm) unit that has been lent to me for testing. I find the handset uncomfortable, but I dislike all small dainty handsets. In and around Milwaukee, the performance is fine. Call completion is pretty fast. As I am not someone who is out and about all day, I don't have much use for it. This explains why I have never owned a mobile phone, but have used plenty of them. Julian Macassey 920.208.8051 ------------------------------ From: brettf@netcom.com (Brett Frankenberger) Subject: Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Organization: Netcom On-Line Services Date: Mon, 8 Sep 1997 02:34:38 GMT In article , Ben Parker wrote: > In a discussion with my son (Systems Administrator for a local ISP, > charged with implmenting multi-pop access points in cities around the > country) the question came up: If the 'internet' is basically > packet-switched traffic and PSTN is basically channelized traffic, but > they seem to share largely the same physical plant infrastructure > (most dedicated lines copper or fiber are actually run to/from Telco > CO's) how is the traffic separated or combined at the CO for trunk and > larger integration levels for transit across the country and/or around > the world? > Is there really parallel but separate infrastructure for data/voice or > is the voice traffic 'packetized' as well, and shipped to destination > comingled with data traffic, then re-assembled to go separate ways? > How is it separated at the CO/switch level (if it is)? You can packetize the voice and intermingle it with data packets -- this is what ATM switches, for example, can do. But that's generally only done privately, where the economics of bandwidth are much different than they are for a telco. Telcos, generally, channalize everything. When you dial your ISP, the telco provides a 64KBps channel for your modem tones to get to the ISP. The ISP then receives that, runs it through their modem to get data, and sends that data into a router. That router then routes data to and from the internet, over, say, a T1. That T1 then goes to the telco and from the telco to the ISPs upstream, eventually to a network service provider, and so on. At the telco level, it's all channels. Basically, the hierarchy (prior to SONET) was: DS0 -- 64KBps -- one voice circuit DS1 -- 24 DS0's DS2 -- 4 DS1s (rarely used except for short distances across the backplane of mux equipment). DS3 -- 7 DS2's (or 28 DS1s). FOTS -- Fiber Optic Transmission Equipment that took some number of DS3s and send them across fiber -- not standards based -- you had to have the same vendor's FOTS on each end of the link. So, from one CO to another, a telco might have a certain number of DS3s available. Some of those would be broken down into 64KBps channels and provided to the voice switch for regular analog phone calls. Some would be broken down into 64Kbps channels and provided to people leasing dedicated point-to-point 56Kbps circuits. Since would be broken down to just the T1 level, and provided to people who leases a T1 point-to-point circuit. Same with DS3's. (The present usage of SONET doesn't change much -- generally, it just serves as a standards based layer than is faster than DS3 -- it's actually more powerful than that -- but the majority of SONET today in the US still carries DS3s -- it's just a standards-based way of going faster than DS3). The point is, it's all channels to them. They don't see it as packet data at all. The local T1 from your son's employer to it's upstream is just another channel. It so happens that he chooses to run packetized data over it, but the telco neither knows nor cares. They could jsut as easily put some kind of multiplexor on that same T1 and have 24 voice channels available over it. And the same goes for the "ISP arms" of the telco. For example, Sprint has an ISP (or network service provider) arm (sprintlink). But the packet side of things is separate -- basically Sprintlink is nothing more than a customer of the "telco side" of spring -- sprintlink gets channelized DS3s, DS1S, DS0s, whatever they need, from the telco side they same as anyone else does (although they probably get really good rates :) ). Brett Frankenberger brettf@netcom.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular Date: Sun, 7 Sep 97 21:31:47 -0700 From: Andy Abramson Ben Parker wrote regarding Nextel: > I would like to hear of any real experiences with them, as well as > technical observations, (such as which (ABCDEF) frequency bands they > actually use), etc. I've been a subscriber of Nextel in San Diego for about three months. Here's what I like about it. Twelve cents a minute and same rate when you roam until end of the year. The integrated pager and text messaging which is available now with PCS and some hybrid analog/digital cell phones and services. As San Diego is so competitive I also have a 14 cents a minute rate with GTE wireless on my other "analog" plus free nights and weekends so I use the Nextel largely my pager in SD until I go on the roaming road in LA, Orange County or anywhere in the USA. When you're in a very established market the digital service is great. But in San Diego and some parts of LA area reception is brutal. Drop outs, bad reception, etc. And no real warning. You just lose the call. I was in Sacramento and SFO and had great reception. Same for Detroit. It's good in Philly. As they build their sites it can only get better. What I don't like ... very bad customer service. They call it "Customer Care." I call it Customer I don't Care. When I first signed up we had many problems. My rep and I became phone buddies. It took more time and effort than it should have. They gave me a good deal of credit as a result of discussions we had. That had me dealing with the VP of all West Coast operations. Like anywhere with a customer service attitude the folks at the top value your business. I've also had good dealing with senior ops people inside the company, but their basic staff is very inexperienced and they lack strong follow-up systems. Most of my problems were related to the paging, voice mail and roaming during the first month. It always took a lot of calls to reps and senior management to get things fixed. BUt like I said they took care of me with credits in both airtime and access charges for a month. The phone is heavy. A Startac style phone is due out in 1998 (2nd qtr???) To the phone's credit (Motorola) it has very good battery life. They do not offer an account code billing option (but neither does GTE or Air Touch). That's an option I would like since I can bill call by project or party I'm calling. Like any start-up they have their growing pains. I'm an early adopter so I'm hanging in. I believe they have a good plan. And for the money you can't beat the price. But you have to be vigilant. When their are service related problems I call my Account Rep, not customer service. As long as they issue me blocks of credit for bad service I'll hang in. Andy Abramson STRATEGY PLUS E-Mail: andya@cts.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #237 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 9 20:17:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA26506; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:17:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:17:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709100017.UAA26506@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #238 TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 Sep 97 20:17:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 238 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax (Jim Bellaire) Re: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax (John Levine) Re: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax (L. Raphael) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Stanley Cline) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Bill Walker) Re: PSTN/Internet: How Does it All Work? (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: Nextel Cellular? (Brian Leyton) Re: Nextel Cellular? (faville@ibm.net) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 09 Sep 1997 08:47:18 -0500 From: James Bellaire Subject: RE: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax > [Think of this in terms of spam and the implications for free speech > if so-called "anti-spam" laws are passed. --Declan] > FCC RESCINDS 'PERMISSION SLIP' REQUIREMENT FOR FREE SPEECH Rescinds what? They never had a requirement. In one isolated case they reversed a letter asking a citizen to cease faxing. A letter written July 11th and rescinded Sept 3rd. How many people were asked to get permission for free speech? ONE so far. > Agency had barred citizen from contacting elected officials via > facsimile without prior express permission ONE citizen was barred. > The Conservative Consensus (http://www.eskimo.com/~ccnrs/news.html) > has secured a major free-speech victory for computer and facsimile > users. Responding to complaints by the Pennsylvania attorney general's > office, the Federal Communications Commission had ordered an Alabama > man to "cease the unauthorized transmission of fax messages unless and > until you receive permission from the recipients ... further violation > will result in immediate punitive action, which may include monetary > forfeiture." > Pretty strong words from a federal government agency, especially > when delivered on FCC letterhead via certified mail. The letter, dated > July 11, 1997 came from John Santy, Public Affairs Agent with the > FCC's Compliance and Information Bureau in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. > When Conservative Consensus received a copy of the letter from the > recipient, Mr. Stephen Ames, Jr., of Gadsden, Alabama, we decided to > investigate. I wonder how many faxes Mr. Ames, Jr. had to send to get the attention of the FCC. One? Two? One or two hundred? This was not the FCC stomping out free speech, it was an attempt to prevent further harrass- ment from a particular bad user. > (We have already noticed a trend among some senators to block faxes > from numbers they do not wish to hear from.) Show me the requirement for senators to operate a fax machine at all. Next the "Conservative Consensus" will require personal email response. There are other established ways of contacting a senator. > When we contacted the FCC, we were informed by Robin Search of the > Compliance and Information Bureau, that "The specific wording that > applies: 'No person may: ... (3) Use a telephone facsimile machine, > computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a > telephone facsimile machine.'" [FCC cited CFR Title 47, Part 64,1200a:3] Maybe we need to add "Use a telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to harrass." to Title 47 (and remove that 'to a telephone facsimile machine' bit so we can use Title 47 against spammers who send to computers and those who fill voicemail boxes or set a modem to keep redialing a voice line.) The FCC letter was only wrong because of the specific wording. I doubt if it was the content that attracted their attention. BTW: Most SPAM I receive is advertising based, from 'buy a copy of the list I used to spam you', to visit my website. I have only received one political message, from a canadate running for a local office in the city where my ISP is based. Most of the recipiants couldn't vote for her even IF they liked her spam. She lost! Serves her right ... James E. Bellaire (JEB6) bellaire@tk.com Telecom Indiana Webpage http://members.iquest.net/~bellaire/telecom/ * Note new server - old URL should still work * ------------------------------ Date: 9 Sep 1997 15:08:01 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 22:59:36 -0700 (PDT) > From: Declan McCullagh > Subject: FCC rescinds rule requiring you to ask permission to fax > [Think of this in terms of spam and the implications for free speech if > so-called "anti-spam" laws are passed. --Declan] I've been thinking, and I can't see any implications at all. The most restrictive of the anti-spam bills, the Smith bill, extends the existing junk fax ban to junk e-mail, i.e., no commercial messages to people unless they've solicited them or there is an existing business relationship. In this note, the FCC reminded us that the junk fax ban extends only to commercial faxes, not to personal nor political ones. The Smith bill uses the same wording, and equally doesn't apply to political or personal speech. The Torricelli and Murkowski bills put even fewer restrictions on commercial e-mail (too few, in the opinion of many people including me) and also say nothing whatsoever about personal or political e-mail. So what's the problem? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: raphael@willy.cs.mcgill.ca (Louis Raphael) Subject: Re: FCC Rescinds Rule Requiring You to Ask Permission to Fax Date: 9 Sep 1997 03:20:40 GMT Organization: McGill University Computing Centre > [Think of this in terms of spam and the implications for free speech if > so-called "anti-spam" laws are passed. --Declan] It might not be de facto improper for *anyone* to be able to obtain a restraining order against a particular individual sending him further fax messages (unlike junk-faxes, which should be banned from the start). Picture the situation where, for example, someone decided to send his representative the complete text of the Bible, with a view to converting him to proper Christian thought (or whatever). And this this on a daily basis. As the representative's fax paper is involved, I consider it proper for said representative to have a recourse short of unplugging his fax machine, and losing his other communications. I understand that this is a somewhat scary proposition, as some representatives might do this plug-pulling on anybody they didn't want to hear from, so this type of abuse would have to be defined very carefully. Either that, or provisions should exist for the *sender* to be made to pay for the fax paper in these cases. Otherwise, someone trying to block their representative from hearing views contrary to their own could flood their fax machines intentionally. That being said, there's always postal mail, which is strictly sender-pay, and thus should never be subject to any such regulations. My guess is that the case being discussed was probably something of this nature. I can feel the heat of a flame war starting ... just remember - what I'm saying is that the owner of the fax machine has the right to *some* control over what is done with his fax paper, just as the owner of the e-mail account does. Louis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 13:07:20 -0400 From: Stanley Cline Organization: Hormel Spam(R) is OK. UCE SPAM is not. Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Scott Townley wrote: > Not strategy, legal requirement. You can't own a PCS and a cellular > license in the same market. At least one company, Powertel, does -- they own both a PCS license and a cellular license (InterCel) covering areas between Atlanta and Montgomery, AL (Newnan, West Point, LaGrange, GA; Opelika/Auburn, AL -- all along Interstate 85.) The Atlanta MTA license, which includes most of the above areas, as well as Chattanooga, TN, was originally held by GTE -- if they had held onto it, GTE would have both cellular and PCS in Chattanooga (which now, Powertel seems to have no intention of serving anytime soon :( .) There is also occasional "spillover" where an MTA/BTA boundary doesn't match a MSA/RSA boundary well, and where one or two usually rural counties land up with both cellular and PCS from the same carrier. The AL/GA Powertel overlap is much larger -- so large, in fact, that I'm surprised their holding of two licenses hasn't been disputed by BellSouth (who has had many complaints from its customers about InterCel, largely because ONE county in the Atlanta LOCAL calling area is ROAMING) or others. SC ------------------------------ From: Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com (Bill Walker) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 16:01:59 -0700 Organization: QUALCOMM, Inc. In article , paytonc@planetall. remove.com (Payton Chung) wrote: > kkost@intermec.com (Kathy Kost) wrote: [...] >> 3. Air Touch is giving me the story that the Sony CM-D500 that they >> sell is the only CDMA phone in existence right now. > That's what PrimeCo also says, but there's now a Samsung phone as > well. (Sprint PCS offers it.) But the Samsung phone is a 1900 MHz phone. Airtouch is correct in that the Sony CM-D500/Qualcomm QCP-800 is the only 800 MHz CDMA phone currently available in the U.S. market. > In Seattle, you will eventually have a choice of all three > technologies. AT&T holds the D block, "WirelessCo" (AirTouch) holds > the B, NextWave the C, Western Wireless (a GSM provider) the D, and > Cook Inlet the F. I believe you'll find that "WirelessCo" is Sprint PCS (one of several names Sprint's PCS partnership went through before they settled on one. Airtouch is a partner in PCS PrimeCo). Since Airtouch, via their merger with US West, is a cellular carrier in Seattle, they were not allowed to bid on PCS licenses there (at least not in the A or B blocks, and other restrictions kepts them out of the C block). Bill Walker, QUALCOMM, Inc., San Diego, CA USA Bill_Walker@qualcomm.com Support the anti-spam amendment. Join at ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Date: 9 Sep 1997 22:34:38 GMT Organization: Ashworth & Associates In article , Ben Parker wrote: > Is there really parallel but separate infrastructure for data/voice or > is the voice traffic 'packetized' as well, and shipped to destination > comingled with data traffic, then re-assembled to go separate ways? > How is it separated at the CO/switch level (if it is)? A very good question. Brett Frankenberger replied: > Telcos, generally, channalize everything. When you dial your ISP, the > telco provides a 64KBps channel for your modem tones to get to the > ISP. The ISP then receives that, runs it through their modem to get > data, and sends that data into a router. That router then routes data > to and from the internet, over, say, a T1. That T1 then goes to the > telco and from the telco to the ISPs upstream, eventually to a network > service provider, and so on. [ . . . ] > The point is, it's all channels to them. They don't see it as packet > data at all. The local T1 from your son's employer to it's upstream > is just another channel. It so happens that he chooses to run > packetized data over it, but the telco neither knows nor cares. They > could jsut as easily put some kind of multiplexor on that same T1 and > have 24 voice channels available over it. But, while Brett's explanation is excellent as far as it goes, he doesn't take it far enough. Those of us who've been regulars on the Digest for years have seen the fallout from the rantings of the RBOC's in the past year that their switches were melting down because of the massive increase in average call holding times due to the popularity of the Internet. Hidden in that complaint is the fact that the only currently practical way for the unwashed masses to _reach_ the Internet is via a circuit switched call to an analog modem dialup. This is, of course, the problem. In many cases, and _particularly_ in the case of consumer dialup websurfing type traffic, the percentage of time that the end user is actually moving data is, on a long term average, maybe 10-15%, possibly less. But, since that last mile is currently a circuit switched connection, the link must be tied up continuously, which does in fact screw up the traffic engineering calculations used to size the switch. Hence, the telco's complaint, since the ISPs are the reason for it, they ought to pay for the privilege of _terminating_ a call, something that is almost unheard of for retail customers in America. Also, the telco's are having to upsize their switching equipment to deal with the problem. I hope they don't move too fast. In an issue of {Boardwatch} about two months back, Editor Rotundus Jack Rickard opined that the attempt of AOL to go flat rate would put them out of business because they would end up in "modem ratio hell". They'd try masterfully to lower their modem ratio ... and by the time they'd spent all the money, it would be too late, no one would care, and they'd go out of business. The RBOCs may well be backing themselves into the same hole. The _answer_ you see, is to take that last mile _off_ the circuit switched network completely. There are several approaches to this, and predictably, the RBOCs are against all of them, because they don't understand them. One is xDSL, various forms of Digital Subscriber Line, a method of shoving high bandwidth signals down commonly available (read: crappy) pairs of copper. Try to buy dry copper from a telco. I dare you. Where it used to be tarriffed, they're fighting like wildcats to get the tarriffs yanked. You see: _they_ can't offer it ... so no one else should be able to either. This is what comes of letting the RBOCs into the ISP business, I guess. Can you say "restraint of trade"? Anyway, the other alternative is advancing rapidly, and that's wireless. One of the major progenitors of this approach is AT&T/Lucent, who want to get into the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier business in the _worst_ way ... but _are_ smart enough not to pay for the copper a second time. They sent the Bell Labs folk back into the labs with pizza and Mountain Dew, and said find us a solution. They did. I was going to go get details off their website ... but it's all frames based, and my VT100 doesn't know what to do with those. When _will_ people learn. Anyway, the idea is that they've developed a box that hangs on the eaves of your house, and provides two voice circuits and a packet-switched Internet connection, with a 128KBps peak speed. They're not the only ones in the market, either. Metricom's Ricochet network, currently available in the Silicon Valley, Redmond, Washington (guess who's a major stockholder :-), Washington DC, and with buildout's scheduled for the Northeastern Corridor offers such a solution, using microcellular digipeaters, and a newcomer called AlphaCom in Ohio will reportedly be offering flat-rate wireless Internet service via the licensed cellular carriers' CDPD networks. (Yes, there's some controversy about whether that's feasible; yes I'm equipped to judge the information and it's quality; yes, I'll have more when I know more. :-) So, anyway, if the wireless people move at exactly the same speed the LECs do, then the LECs, who are known for being experts at spotting trends in the market (:-}) will be left with massive overcapacity and nothing to do with it. Oops. Of course, they really haven't much choice: if the wireless people _don't_ get it going, the LECs will be in deeper crap ... and they're unlikely to bet their farm on (relatively) young upstarts. It's going to be interesting ... Anyway, that's my polemic on the topic for now; I hope you've found it comprehensible, rather than compost. Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth High Technology Systems Consulting Ashworth Designer Linux: Where Do You Want To Fly Today? & Associates ka1fjx/4 Crack. It does a body good. +1 813 790 7592 jra@baylink.com http://rc5.distributed.net NIC: jra3 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 14:01:54 -0400 From: bleyton@aol.com (Brian Leyton) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular? In article , bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) writes: > All the discussion in the Digest here recently on CDMA/TDMA/GSM and > various cellular and PCS carriers and such has been very interesting > and informative. However, nobody has mentioned Nextel in this > discussion yet and I'd like opinions about there place in the overall > scheme. > Nextel seems to offer a nationwide digital/analog network (TDMA) that > is free of roaming charges. Additionally their phone sets offer text > paging functions and also have a unique 2-way radio capability that > allows you to connect to specific handsets anywhere in their network > for much less than usual rates. In essence this is long-distance > radio, using their cellular (850mhz) network. Seems like it delivers > today what most PCS promises for tomorrow. Too good to be true? > I would like to hear of any real experiences with them, as well as > technical observations, (such as which (ABCDEF) frequency bands they > actually use), etc. My company recently signed up with Nextel, so I have a couple of first-hand observations: They are obviously still working on building out their networks. While they have come a long way, there are still quite a few areas where they have dead spots or marginal service. This is pretty typical for all of the digital services these days, but it is pretty annoying for those of our users who don't really care whether it's digital or analog, just whether they can make a call. The other main complaint is that the phone is rather large and heavy. I assume this will change over time, as Motorola continues to develop the technology. In fact, I just noticed on the Nextel home page that they have introduced three new phones (a ruggedized version, a flip-phone and a car-mounted mobile). The two-way radio capability is pretty neat, but it does not work nationwide. You can only use two-way within a particular market. In our case, the Southern California market goes from San Luis Obispo all the way to the Mexican border, and even includes Las Vegas (as well as Interstate 15 between Las Vegas & Ontario). Unfortunately though, it doesn't include our locations in Arizona and Northern California (in fact, the Arizona network is not even operational yet). I'd say that other than filling out the gaps in the network, this would be the one thing I'd ask them to work on, though my rep told me that they have no plans to allow nationwide two-way. They also have a "group call" feature, where you can go on a group channel and use the phones as two-way radios with everyone in the group being able to listen and talk. The problem with this feature is that when one person keys down, everyone in the group is pulled into the group channel, and will pay for airtime. Airtime is quite a bit less expensive than cellular, and it is billed by the second, so it can be pretty cost-effective if you're careful about how you use it. We chose not to enable any group channels. The "no-roaming" policy is probably the best aspect of Nextel, and if they cover the cities that you need, and you travel at all, then Nextel will probably be a lot less expensive than analog cellular. Brian Leyton ------------------------------ From: faville@ibm.net Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular? Reply-To: faville@ibm.net Date: 9 Sep 97 14:56:41 GMT I use Nextel and have been very happy with the quality, service and pricing. I recently was on a business trip that took me through Greenville, S.C., Raliegh, N.C. and New York City. I had no problems what so ever, making or receiving calls. Call quality was excellent. I also really like the paging capabilities built into the phone. It allows me to give people my paging number, when I may not want to give out my cell number. So far, I am a big fan! Oh, by the way, I heard someone complaining about Sprint PCS's customer service being unavailable. Just before I went on my last business trip, I had received my Nextel phone but it was not operational. I called Nextel customer service. Got right through to a rep. who expedited the trouble based on the fact that I was leaving my home area that day. The trouble was fixed quickly and the customer service rep. called me back to test the unit. That won some loyalty points from me. Jonathan ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #238 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 9 20:38:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA27892; Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:38:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:38:50 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709100038.UAA27892@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #239 TELECOM Digest Tue, 9 Sep 97 20:38:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 239 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (Darius) Bellcore-NANPA: More Info on NPA 780 Alberta (Mark J. Cuccia) Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Re: Private Phones / Intercom (Carl Navarro) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 17:20:53 -0400 From: darius@world.std.com (Darius) (via The Old Bear ) Subject: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market =============================================== EEEEE N N OOO DDDD EEEEE E NN N O O D D E EEEE N N N O O D D EEEE E N NN O O D D E EEEEE N N OOO DDDD EEEEE =============================================== To subscribe to this newletter on information technology and society, send the message "subscribe e-node" to majordomo@igc.apc.org. To signoff the list, send the message "unsubscribe e-node" to the same address. Vol 2, No. 4 July 1997 THE HYPOCRISY OF ISP WELFARE AND THE MYTH OF THE CYBER FREE MARKET by Nathan Newman, Progressive Communications, newman@garnet.berkeley.edu With the Clinton administration's announcement of a drive for a "free trade zone" in cyberspace, it might be the time to ask how long we are going to keep the ISPs and other Internet corporations on welfare? And how long do we have to hear hypocritical drivel about the success of the "free market" of cyberspace even as those engaged in the hype lobby for continued subsidies and government regulation that benefits them. Since the privatization of management of the Internet from 1992 to 1995, the industry around the Internet has been trumpeting their success as proof of how unregulated market competition had helped explode the size of Internet participation. No players have done more to trumpet the success of this new "free market" than the independent Internet Service Providers, or ISPs in the incessant lingo of the industry. From veteran Whole Earth Networks to upstart Netcom to giant American On-line, these Internet providers not only beat back proprietary networks like Microsoft's initial foray, they delivered to their customers (local businesses and mostly upper-income individuals) an unlimited "all-you-can-eat" flat-rate price for service that made the high prices for long distance phone service seem laughable in the face of the new technology. Internet phone calls, made essentially for free over the Net, began to bypass traditional long distance phone services and the Net seemed to promise limitless connections at a price the mastodons of the old regulated phone system could only dream about. FCC decisions in May 1997, however, would undermine the "free market" bravado of the ISPs as these Internet free-marketers made loud, extremely public appeals for the Federal Communications Commission to protect them from market prices in order to "save the Internet" (and their own profit margins.) The ISPs along with AT&T, Apple Computer, Netscape, Microsoft, Compaq Computer, IBM, and a host of other computer companies demanded and won continued FCC intervention to prevent market pricing on local telephone company services used by ISPs to reach their customers in the first place. Since the initial breakup of AT&T back in 1983, the FCC has exempted Internet providers from paying the same kind of per-minute access charges to local phone companies that long distance companies have to pay to connect their customers. This has allowed Internet providers to pay the flat business rate to local phone companies that ordinary local business customers pay -- which in turn has allowed them to offer flat-rate service for the Internet to their customers. What this means is that in connecting a customer to an Internet provider, FCC-regulated payments by ISPs to Pacific Bell, as one example, average only $0.00073 per minute (less than one-tenth of a penny) versus $0.014 per minute paid to the local phone company for handling connections to a long distance carrier -- a 95% discount for Internet usage. This is all despite the fact that the costs for handling each kind of call on a per-minute basis are exactly the same for the local phone company. Even worse for the local phone companies is the fact that Internet calls average much longer than either local or long distance phone calls. According to Pacific Bell, 30% of the total time of customers' use of the phone system generated by dial-up Internet traffic comes from calls lasting 3 hours or more and 7.5% came from calls lasting 24 hours. This compares to an average voice call lasted only 4 to 5 minutes. Pacific Bell cites one Silicon Valley ISP hub where traffic levels in late 1996, driven by a single ISP, undermined service in the whole area. The ISP represented only 3.6 % of total office lines, but accounted for about 30% of use during the busiest hours of the day. The result was that 1 out of 6 phone calls were being blocked due to the congestion. Pacific Bell claims it spent $3.1 million cost to fix that one hub alone, and estimates that it will have spent $100 million on Internet traffic upgrades in 1997 and will spend $300 million on upgrades by the year 2001--while Pacific Bell maintained it would earn only $150 million from additional revenues in that period due to ISP traffic. Now, you don't have to take Pac Bell's numbers as gospel to recognize that with phone rates designed by regulators to yield minimal profit on basic service (with profit to be made on toll calls and extra services), long local Internet calls are a disproportionate drain on resources with little additional revenue, thereby sucking investments away from the rest of the network. Defenders of the ISP subsidy argue that local Bell companies benefit by the addition of dedicated Internet phone lines, but this is a bit like arguing that what the phone companies lose in costs on each Internet line, they can make up in volume. Worse than the actual costs of the upgrades for ISPs is the fact that those investments are being made in traditional analog voice phone lines and switches, instead of the phone system moving the ISP phone traffic onto high-speed digital switching systems right at customers homes, an approach that would be more efficient and create the basis for upgrading all data traffic. Most of the Baby Bells began offering such high-speed digital services for ISPs in 1997, but the Internet providers have little incentive to pay for such services as long as they can convince the FCC to allow them to use the local phone lines like ordinary business users. And in May 1997, the FCC, under intense lobbying from both computer companies and Internet users, agreed to continue the ISP exemption from access charges, with essentially minor concessions given to the local phone companies in raising all charges on second phone lines, the logic being these would likely be used for Internet connections. Some of the smaller Internet providers complained that the additional charges on all their incoming phone lines would hurt them, but larger ISPs like America Online declared victory: "We will see an increase in our charges, but we do see that on balance we need to accept the additional charges because they are flat and they are nominal," said Jill Lesser, America Online's deputy director of law and public policy. "A permanent access charge would have been orders of magnitude worse for AOL. Even at one cent per minute, we would have incurred a charge that would have been in the neighborhood of $100 million and which we would have had to pass on to the customer. So when you look at an increase that is 1/10 of that, that's a fairly modest increase." The broad coalition of computer companies had successfully protected the subsidized status of Internet providers. The irony of the whole decision is that the Internet industry has pictured the privatization of the Internet as the "end of government subsidies" where the free market had successfully stepped into the gap. The reality, as this decision highlighted, is that the profits of the private Internet industry have derived substantially from the cannibalization of past and present investments in the local phone infrastructure. Local phone users, mostly lower-income users without a computer in the home, are seeing investments diverted to industry and higher- income Internet users that could have been targeted for upgrading the overall network or delivering new technology for schools, hospitals or other public places serving the whole public. Instead, the specific private subsidies for the Internet industry have helped fracture planning for the overall local phone system and blocked the general upgrading of data traffic. Where federal investments and regulations once fueled overall economic and technological advancement in regional telephone networks, these new "market competition" policies end up sucking funds from the infrastructure serving low-income and local users to subsidize those using the Internet for national and international purposes. And the forced segmentation of "competition" into their own boxes of long distance, local service, ISP and other regulated divisions have so fragmented phone service as to make comprehensive investments for upgrading the overall system nearly impossible. Now, if this had been a small sin to help the Internet get off the ground, it might be a minor, even admirable hiccup in regulatory history, but this is the pattern dating back to the first attacks on the integrated AT&T Bell system. And with competition and "deregulation" of telecommunications becoming the metaphor and model for other network-based industries like electricity, it is worth understanding that the original success of MCI and Sprint was based not on being more efficient than AT&T but on regulatory subsidy and infrastructure cannibalization. MCI became a billion-dollar company based on the FCC forcing the Bell System to give it access to its networks, even as MCI was paying little to help maintain that local infrastructure that made its business possible. MCI and Sprint were paying only half the charges than AT&T's own long distance service paid to maintain local phone service - meaning that MCI and Sprint had what amounted to an automatic 20% price discount in offering long distance service. Contra the mythmaking of history, these "free market" successes were free riders who could literally be less efficient than AT&T yet, thanks to regulations supposedly supporting the "market," have cheaper prices. The fact is that competition on day-to-day prices undermines long-term investments in infrastructure that have historically been served better by regulated monopoly. Many proponents of competition pooh-pooh concerns over investments in telecommunications infrastructure, noting that in the early decades of this century, full-throated competition led to a massive expansion of phone service across the country. Which is true. But ... After AT&T's original patents derived from Alexander Graham Bell expired in 1893, full-scale warfare broke out between the Bell System and 3000 independent phone companies to compete in building infrastructure across the country, with AT&T retaining only half the market of a vastly expanded 6 million phones by 1907. But it was an infrastructure that frustrated most of the customers, since they could not call friends in the same city if they belonged to competing networks and would be unable to call whole cities if those towns were controlled by networks hostile to the hometown service. The Bell System was the only service that provided anything approaching a comprehensive long distance phone network. For the rest, competition made most of that expanded infrastructure unavailable across lines of hostile businesses -- a state that led to pressures towards consolidation and regulated utilities. As AT&T began to also purchase other phone companies, AT&T officials reversed Bell policy and accepted government regulation of the industry in order to maintain high- quality technology and uniform pricing. A 1913 consent decree with the Justice Department officially put AT&T purchases of other phone companies under the regulation of the government and required non-Bell companies to be connected into AT&T phone lines, all in the context of negotiated agreements that turned AT&T and the independents from competitors to collaborators in maintaining the phone infrastructure. State utilities commissions strongly supported the movement to consolidation and 1921 federal legislation, the Willis-Graham Act of 1921, placed AT&T under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission (whose jurisdiction was handed to the FCC in 1934) and exempted it from antitrust restrictions on purchasing other telephone companies. AT&T would purchase 223 independents in the next thirteen years. Latter-day market advocates argue that all that was needed were regulations requiring mandatory interconnection between services, and the country could then have preserved the benefits of both competition and interconnection (much as is promised today with phone and Internet competition). The problem with this retrospective viewpoint (and present advocacy) is it ignores the basic economic implications of Metcalfe's Law -- the rule-of-thumb that the value of a network increases not arithmetically but geometrically with the number of participants in that network. What this means is that the economic value of interconnection for small networks to much larger systems is astronomically high, while the main value of the investments in infrastructure by large networks is precisely the fact that they can offer such a large geometric network value where smaller networks cannot. Mandate interconnection and much of the value of that larger network's infrastructure (and the incentive to create it in the first place) disappears. Regulation of customer phone service rates may be eliminated under "deregulation" but government regulation is still pervasive in establishing the rates paid for interconnection between different business networks, an intervention that will either be too high to encourage new entrants to the marketplace or, more likely given larger networks' preference for no interconnection (i.e. an infinite price), result in a price set too low for the larger network to maintain the quality and breadth of its infrastructure for all users. In such a situation, the most profitable position is to be a smaller network servicing high- income, high-profit individuals or businesses who can, as needed, reach the low-profit customers of the larger network due to mandatory interconnection regulations. This is the position of cannibalization where Internet providers are presently positioned. A number of services like Netcom have already begun working to concentrate their customer base in higher-income and business users to maximize their profits. Others will continue to use subsidies from the local phone companies to expand their customer base but that will last only as long as the subsidies from the local phone companies continue; at that point, low-profit customers will be dropped fast. What is lost in this whole system of ISP welfare is any broad planning to assure that all citizens will have access to the next generation of high-speed connections to telecommunications services. Over twenty years ago, AT&T began moving towards converting the whole phone network to high-speed digital connections but the breakup of the Bell system undermined that planning, leaving the US with the same old analog connections leading to the home. The fracturing of the Internet due to privatization has led to the "World Wide Wait" we all love and cherish where no comprehensive planning is possible to give Internet users the same instantaneous "dial tone" connections we once took for granted on the old integrated Bell phone system. It is no coincidence that the enthusiasm for "markets" in the Internet is promoted by those receiving this welfare and regulatory support, but what is disturbing is how many ordinary Internet users have bought the myth (also known as the lie) that the Internet's recent expansion was based on the "free market" rather than based on government policy. Government design and subsidies created the Internet and government-mandated subsidies from local phone companies to ISPs have been the heart of its expansion. This all may be wonderful use of government power, but let's all remember the government's role now when those receiving welfare today cry "market competition" tomorrow in trying to block government mandates and spending to assist lower-income working families in getting access to the system. ------------------------------------------------------- ENODE: to loose, untie a knot; to solve a riddle. E-NODE is a monthly column about the Internet. To subscribe to E-NODE, send the following email to majordomo@igc.apc.org: subscribe e-node To singoff the list, send the message :unsubscribe e-node" to majordomo@igc.apc.org. ENODE is brought to you by Progressive Communications, a policy research and computer consulting firm. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 09:30:20 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Bellcore-NANPA: More Info on NPA 780 Alberta Bellcore's NANPA website is updated again, dated 9-September-1997. http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/newarea.html The split of Alberta's existing 403 NPA is detailed on: http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/780.html As also indicated at the Telus (Alberta) website, permissive dialing is to start on 25-January-1999. Bellcore NANPA's site also indicates mandatory dialing to start on 12-July-1999, and the test number to be 780-459-2325 effective on 23-November-1998. (403-459- is presently in St.Albert AB). Bellcore's page also describes the split geography, with the boundary being a horizontal line north of Red Deer AB and Stettler AB. Localities south of this boundary will remain with the 403 area code, while localities north will change to the new 780 area code. NANPA's page indicating available NANP Planning Letters (each NANP PL avaialable at US$ 10.00, each) has also been updated as of 8-September-1997. (http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/97ils.html) The Alberta 403->403/780 split is PL-NANP-084. Other new PLs include: PL-NANP-081, 615->615/931 Tennessee area code split. (this split takes effect in permissive dialing next Monday, 15-September-1997, test number is 931-684-2460, as shown in the latest update on the NANPA new area code page) PL-NANP-082, Extra-ordinary conservation measures for PA's 610 NPA (All three of eastern PA's current NPA codes (215, 610, 717) are in a 'jeopardy' situation, and the plan for "temporary shadow overlays" is presently 'on-hold' by the INC/FCC/NANC/etc) PL-NANP-083, Jeopardy situation in Florida's 813 area code (Only two years ago, the original 813 area code for southwestern FL was split, with 941 taking the southern part, including _all_ of Sprint's United-FL, and some of GTE-FL just south of the Tampa Bay area. The remaining 'smaller' 813 covered the metro Tampa Bay area, and except for any new competitive local telcos, is _exclusively_ GTE-Florida. "Bell" (Southern Bell, now known as BellSouth) traditionally has had no local exchanges in area code 813, even before area code 941 split off.) -------------- NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 05:32:47 GMT bparker@interaccess.com (Ben Parker) writes: > Is there really parallel but separate infrastructure for data/voice or > is the voice traffic 'packetized' as well, and shipped to destination > comingled with data traffic, then re-assembled to go separate ways? > How is it separated at the CO/switch level (if it is)? Only IP is connectionless ("packetised"). Many data protocols, such as ATM, are essential connection-based ("channelised"). MCI, for instance, is building lots of ATM networks; IP internet traffic is layered over the ATM protocol. Similarly, IP is layered over analogue or digital telecom lines, quite often the same ones that carry voice traffic (especially if they're digital lines). IP packets go over your analogue phone line through a modem, they can happily go through a connection-switched network instead of a packet-routed one. A few companies (eg MFS/UUNet) specialise in data networks. Usually -- especially for high-volume and expensive-to-build international capacity -- it's more efficient to run voice and data on the same digital optical fibre. So the short answer is that no, voice traffic is not normally packetised; it works the other way round, data traffic is "channelised". It's unclear where the issue comes up in the first place: Net traffic is either on dedicated point-to-point leased lines (in which case there's no switch, it's data all the way, even if the _physical_ fibre carries digital voice traffic as well) or on the phone network (when you dial an ISP from an analogue line). In the latter case, you're making an analogue voice call as far as the CO is concerned. Your modem thinks otherwise, but the network switches your voice _connection_, no packets at that level. Best, Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: cnavarro@wcnet.org (Carl Navarro) Subject: Re: Private Phones / Intercom Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 04:02:39 GMT Organization: INTERNET AMERICA On Sat, 6 Sep 1997 23:29:44 -0500, Michael Leamer wrote: > Hi, I'm fairly new here, but have a little experience as an electronics > hobbyist. > I have a question that I cannot work out from reading the archives. > A local museum has a children's area that has seven or eight > phones. These are linked so that if you push a button corresponding to > the other phone (to make phone one ring, push button one). > I believe that when you pick up any phone, you are connected to all others > that are off hook. > OK. My question: > Can I set up a smaller version at home between two bedrooms (only two > phones) within a reasonable budget, and if so, how? For intercom only, you can set up an old single path intercom from a key telephone system. Usually 10-station intercoms and stuff like that show up in flea markets or warehouses :) for less than $50. One might be able to show up at your place for the price of shipping if you e-mail me. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #239 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 10 09:04:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA01348; Wed, 10 Sep 1997 09:04:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 09:04:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709101304.JAA01348@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #240 TELECOM Digest Wed, 10 Sep 97 09:04:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 240 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (F Goldstein) Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? (Ed Ellers) Re: ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? (R Schnell) Re: RS232 Question (Jeff Silverman) Re: RS232 Question (Phillip Soltan) Re: RS232 Question (David Devereaux-Weber) Re: RS232 Question (Matt Silveira) Re: Nextel Cellular (Dave Stott) 811-2323? (Babu Mengelepouti) Expert Presenters in Fiber-Optics, ATM and ISDN Fields Wanted (G Brown Jr) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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.|nospam.|com (Fred R. Goldstein) Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: 10 Sep 1997 02:53:16 GMT Organization: GTE Internetworking - BBN Technologies Nathan Newman, Progressive Communications, flames, > FCC decisions in May 1997, however, would undermine the "free > market" bravado of the ISPs as these Internet free-marketers made > loud, extremely public appeals for the Federal Communications > Commission to protect them from market prices in order to "save the > Internet" (and their own profit margins.) > The ISPs along with AT&T, Apple Computer, Netscape, Microsoft, > Compaq Computer, IBM, and a host of other computer companies demanded > and won continued FCC intervention to prevent market pricing on local > telephone company services used by ISPs to reach their customers in > the first place. Since the initial breakup of AT&T back in 1983, the > FCC has exempted Internet providers from paying the same kind of > per-minute access charges to local phone companies that long distance > companies have to pay to connect their customers. This has allowed > Internet providers to pay the flat business rate to local phone > companies that ordinary local business customers pay -- which in turn > has allowed them to offer flat-rate service for the Internet to their > customers. Cripes, not this again! This Newman guy must have read a press release or two from last year's $7M PacBell "the sky is falling" campaign. It's so wrong that to argue it point-by-point is to validate its invalid structure. Let's just get down to it: There is no "market price" for local telephone service; what we have is a regulated monopoly that's just beginning to see competition. The rules of the monopoly are baroque and rife with explicit and implicit cross-subsidies. One particularly notable rule is that there is a huge "bright line" distinction between a) Local Exchange Carriers (LECs); b) Local Exchange Subscribers, and c) Interexchange Carriers (IXCs). Historically, going back to the AT&T monopoly on LD, the price of LD included a generous subsidy to local service. This grew relatively bigger over the years as the labor-intensive cost of local wiring grew and the technology-intensive unit cost of LD fell. Rather than let prices match costs, regulators put more and more of the burden of local service onto the LD carriers. With the 1984 divestiture, this became more explicit. IXCs pay when subscribers *originate* calls to them via LEC networks, and IXCs pay when they *terminate* calls to subscribers via LEC networks. In other words, Bells win at both ends of the call. Figure today around 6c/minute. Internet Service Providers are treated for regulatory purposes as subscribers. They tend not to originate calls, but don't pay to receive them either -- the caller pays for the entire call, which is the normal US model for local service. (Flat rate subscribers pay for the average user's cost.) This doesn't involve any subsidy -- the ISPs typically pay a business rate which covers the entire fixed cost of the line, and often more, and their callers are responsible for the usage cost. But ISPs aren't milked dry like IXCs. PacBell and Bell Atlantic started a campaign (revived a 1987 FCC idea, actually, which was nixed under strong Congressional pressure) to reclassify ISPs to be treated as IXCs. The FCC rightly rejected this idea. Newman doesn't apparently believe that prices should follow costs, something Adam Smith said occurs in a free market. Some facts: Typical local usage costs run around 0.3 cents/minute, in Bell cost studies, but off-peak usage is almost free, and Internet usage peaks at night (vs. usual daytime peak hour). IXCs pay 3 cents/minute to receive calls. Which is closer to cost -- pay 0 to receive a call, or pay 3 cents, when the cost is 0.3 and the caller is already paying either for the call or for a usage plan? Also note that the average resi subscriber originates maybe 10-20 hours a month, which at an average cost of 18 cents per hour, costs telco much less than the typical flat-rate usage plan (where it's broken out of the bill). You do the arithmetic. > What this means is that in connecting a customer to an Internet > provider, FCC-regulated payments by ISPs to Pacific Bell, as one > example, average only $0.00073 per minute (less than one-tenth of a > penny) versus $0.014 per minute paid to the local phone company for > handling connections to a long distance carrier -- a 95% discount for > Internet usage. This is all despite the fact that the costs for > handling each kind of call on a per-minute basis are exactly the same > for the local phone company. The IXC is getting milked. That doesn't mean that the ISP should be milked. If you are mugged, should everyone on your block be mugged in order to make you feel better? ISPs are subscribers, not IXCs, and pay subscriber rates which typically are WAY above telco cost. (Telcos who don't charge full cost for business lines are themselves to blame.) Oh yes, here's another doozie: > Mandate interconnection and much of the value of that larger > network's infrastructure (and the incentive to create it in the first > place) disappears. Oh, I get it. He's trying to justify some telcos' opposition to local competition by using language that makes it sound like a "taking". Sorry, no sale. If you believe in free markets, you have to lay down rules so that monopolies can be opened up. This is not a "taking" any more than outlawing mugging takes away a thug's right to your wallet. > What is lost in this whole system of ISP welfare is any broad > planning to assure that all citizens will have access to the next > generation of high-speed connections to telecommunications services. > Over twenty years ago, AT&T began moving towards converting the whole > phone network to high-speed digital connections but the breakup of the > Bell system undermined that planning, leaving the US with the same old > analog connections leading to the home. That is an astonishing work of historical revisionism. AT&T *resisted* digitization tooth and nail, after they figured out that a given coax route would carry more telephone calls running analog L-carrier than digital T3 carrier. "Ma Bell" installed analog CO switches (1AESS) right up until 1983, though digital switches were out elsewhere since 1976 or so. But then there is so much factual error in the original article that I can't begin to correct it all. The sad part is that this guy from Progressive Communications is really aiming his bullet squarely at his own body, an inseam or so above his feet. If ISPs had to pay IXC rates for access, only the wealthy would have access. Don't believe it? Look at poor penetration rates in Europe, where local phone usage rates are very high and ISP penetration is very low. America's flat-rated phone system may well be the primary impetus for our leadership in the global Internet business. Fred R. Goldstein k1io fgoldstein"at" bbn.com +1 617 873 3850 Opinions are mine alone; sharing requires permission. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 20:05:17 -0400 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Brett Frankenberger (brettf@netcom.com) wrote: > At the telco level, it's all channels. Basically, the hierarchy > (prior to SONET) was: > DS0 -- 64KBps -- one voice circuit > DS1 -- 24 DS0's > DS2 -- 4 DS1s (rarely used except for short distances across the > backplane of mux equipment). > DS3 -- 7 DS2's (or 28 DS1s). A DS1 is also the capacity of a T1 circuit. DS3s are increasingly being used for point-to-point video transmission (from ABC's Washington studio to New York, for example), though the cost of multiple "drops" still makes it less economical than satellite transmission for feeding a couple hundred local stations or a few thousand cable headends. ------------------------------ From: ronnie@twitch.mit.edu (Ron Schnell) Subject: Re: ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? Date: 10 Sep 1997 07:10:55 GMT Organization: MIT In article rlm@syseca-us.com writes: > connectivity. Some time ago, I ordered up a rotary (hunt group) for > the various channels from GTE, our LEC. Said rotary in place, I have > yet to get it to work. Ascend says it's a GTE problem (I'm inclined > to believe them), and GTE says it's an equipment problem on our side. > Has anyone out there dealt with this kind of thing before? Any good > contact numbers I can call up to get some relief on this? GTE claims > their equipment reports the rotary working fine (which I have no way of Well, I did just get through dealing with something *like* this, but not exactly. Hopefully, it will help, though. I had the same problem, but it was a BRI line, not PRI (two B channels only). Also, it was BellSouth, not GTE. I assume the issues should be similar, though, as phone companies tend to not have a good understanding of ISDN. With BellSouth switching to Metered ISDN, I have my ISP call me now, instead of Visa Versa. Unfortunately, since their Ascend MAX can only have one phone number per profile (stupid, in my opnion), I needed to set up a rotary for my two little B channels. I called the ISDN service center for BellSouth, and told them I wanted hunting on my line. They said, "You want call-forwarding-busy?" I said, well, I guess so ... I want one B Channel to ring to the other if it is in use. They said it would be done by 6 PM that day. I called back every day for the following two weeks to report that it wasn't working. Each day they said that it would be fixed by 6pm. A couple of times they told me that it was working fine. I told them to three-way in the number, and when it was busy, I said, "No, it isn't working fine." Eventually, I found someone who could read the order and figure out the problem. Apparently, when you program the switch, there is a difference between a data rotary and a voice rotary. That was one problem. Another problem was that the B channels were set up to handle multiple calls on each, instead of just one on each. This, apparently, is not an issue unless you want to do hunting. This was another problem. And, finally, the person who was putting in the order had it as a "Business" order as opposed to "Residential", so the order entry people decided to ignore it when they noticed the line was not business -- FOR TWO WEEKS! Anyway, hope this can be of help. Since you are in GTE land, you are probably on a DMS-100, but it should look similar to the 5ESS we have here. From my past experience with GTE I would also believe that it is their problem as opposed to Ascend's. Try moving up the supervisor chain as much as possible. Tell them you've composed a letter to the PUC because you are astounded at the trouble you have had getting something this simple to work. I always find it helpful to start out each conversation with the words, "I'm trying to remain calm here ..." This way they know you could blow at any moment, and they will try not to let that happen. Ron ------------------------------ From: Jeff Silverman Subject: Re: RS232 Question Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 17:07:01 -0700 Organization: Mathsoft, Data Analysis Products division Reply-To: jeffs-ANTISPAM@statsci.com John Johnson wrote: > Does anyone have any information on converting RS232 signals into data > signals that can be transmitted over a 10-baseT LAN? What you want is a terminal server. They are made by Digital Equipment Corporation and Xyplex among others. DEC terminal servers use DEC's proprietary LAT protocol as well as TCP/IP; all terminal servers sold today use the TELNET protocol which runs on top of TCP/IP. > I need information on any devices that would interface with a RS232 > DB9 OR DB25 port, and also provide a RJ-45 jack to connect the LAN > cable. Any software programs that might do such conversions are also > a help. There is no software involved -- it's in the box. I should point out that RS-232 and LANS are fundementally different - RS-232 is point to point and a LAN is multiple access. Very, very different. > I am not quite literate on protocols or signal formats. So it would be > helpful if information was available in layman terms. Go get two terminal servers. Jeff Silverman ------------------------------ From: Phillip Soltan Subject: Re: RS232 Question Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 21:52:06 -0700 Organization: Internet Access of Ventura County 805.383.3500 Reply-To: psoltan@vcnet.com John Johnson wrote: > Does anyone have any information on converting RS232 signals into data > signals that can be transmitted over a 10-baseT LAN? > I need information on any devices that would interface with a RS232 > DB9 OR DB25 port, and also provide a RJ-45 jack to connect the LAN > cable. Any software programs that might do such conversions are also > a help. > I am not quite literate on protocols or signal formats. So it would be > helpful if information was available in layman terms. What your looking for is generally called a "terminal server". You might take a look at one by Xyplex(Whittaker) http://www.xyplex.com/product/hbook-accsr/eh416.html Hughes LAN Systems (now Whittaker) has/had a terminal server in a stand-alone chassis that would probably be more economical. Unfortunately I can't remember the model name. ------------------------------ From: David Devereaux-Weber Date: Mon, 08 Sep 97 11:01:43 +0600 Reply-To: David Devereaux-Weber Subject: Re: RS232 Question On Sat, 06 Sep 1997 , John Johnson wrote: > Does anyone have any information on converting RS232 signals into data > signals that can be transmitted over a 10-baseT LAN? John, There is no Ethernet/EIA-232 converter as such. The problem is that there are too many different things which can be done with serial data, so there is no one device which can do them all. However, there is a device known as a terminal server, which is a special purpose device which connects serial lines to Ethernets. You can conect one or more modems to the serial ports on a terminal server and "dial in" to an Ethernet network. You can configure one or more of the serial ports for outbound use, and connect them to serial ports on computers or other network devices and then "telnet" to the terminal server and select one of the serial ports to connect to. Many vendors make terminal servers, including Xylogics (now Bay Networks) whose web site is: ; Another is Cisco . David Devereaux-Weber, P.E. djdevere@doit.wisc.edu The University of Wisconsin - Madison http://clover.macc.wisc.edu Division of Information Technology Network Engineering (608)262-3584(voice) (608)265-5838(FAX) ------------------------------ From: Matt Silveira Subject: Re: RS232 Question Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 09:29:46 -0700 Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Roseville John, > Does anyone have any information on converting RS232 signals into data > signals that can be transmitted over a 10-baseT LAN? Yes. > I need information on any devices that would interface with a RS232 > DB9 OR DB25 port, and also provide a RJ-45 jack to connect the LAN > cable. Any software programs that might do such conversions are also > a help. Well, what you need is a "terminal server" which is a device that converts Rs-232 data signals into 10-BASE-T for LAN interconnection. Xyplex, 3COM, Cisco, and other reputable firms produce these and they are relatively inexpensive. > I am not quite literate on protocols or signal formats. So it would be > helpful if information was available in layman terms. Surf the web or email me for more info. Matt Silveira, IT Engineer| / | "The betterment of our society Hewlett-Packard, Roseville| /_ __ | is not a job to be left for a Phone: 916-785-1959 | / //_/ | few; it is a responsibility to Pager: 916-536-6209 | / | be shared by all." Personal: 916-802-4226 | | -David Packard, The HP Way ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Sep 1997 08:18:47 -0500 From: Dave Stott Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular In TELECOM Digest #236, bparker@interaccess.com wrote: > All the discussion in the Digest here recently on CDMA/TDMA/GSM and > various cellular and PCS carriers and such has been very interesting > and informative. However, nobody has mentioned Nextel in this > discussion yet and I'd like opinions about there place in the overall > scheme. Nextel is actually offering service over an Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio (ESMR) system operating in two frequency blocks between 896-940Mhz. It is a digital system and does allow dialing to and from the PSTN, though it's not the only application for ESMR; some systems are set up as 'dispatch' systems, rather than 'interconnect' systems. Dispatch systems do just what the name implies -- they connect a base to many mobiles for dispatch functions. Interconnected systems generally route calls from a mobile unit to a base that connects them to the PSTN directly. Nextel actually combines the two and lets mobile users con- ference many other mobiles onto their 'call.' > Nextel seems to offer a nationwide digital/analog network (TDMA) that > is free of roaming charges. Additionally their phone sets offer text > paging functions and also have a unique 2-way radio capability that > allows you to connect to specific handsets anywhere in their network > for much less than usual rates. In essence this is long-distance > radio, using their cellular (850mhz) network. Seems like it delivers > today what most PCS promises for tomorrow. Too good to be true? Not quite sure what their full offerings are, because AFAIK they don't offer full service yet in Phoenix. At least there are no ads for them. I have seen their ads that promise much of what PCS can do (and more) but haven't seen anything about connecting 'to specific handsets anywhere in their network'; unless, that is, you call the seven digit number associated with that handset. Other readers will probably offer more info on this point. > I would like to hear of any real experiences with them, as well as > technical observations, (such as which (ABCDEF) frequency bands they > actually use), etc. As mentioned earlier, they are SMR, not PCS, so they aren't in any of the A-F blocks. Hopes this helps. Dave Stott (602) 831-7355 dstott@2help.com http://www.2help.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Sep 1997 22:47:54 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: 811-2323? I use the Vancouver Community net (vcn.bc.ca) for my email, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia. This message has appeared since February upon logging in: --cut here-- BC-Tel has supposedly implemented some new service which plays havoc with re-dialers. Instead of a busy signal you will get a message from BC-Tel asking you to pay $0.50 and they will set their system to redial for you and call you back when it has got through. You can stop this from happening by calling BC-Tel at 811-2323 and asking them to remove the service from your line. --cut here-- Something has always bothered me about it, other than the content (which is disturbing enough). Then it finally hit me today. 811-2323?! What sort of phone number begins with 811? Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? This raises all sorts of interesting questions. :) If you're in BC, and know anything about this, please let me know. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In many parts of California the telco business office and various other departments were (still are?) reachable by dialing 811-xxxx, and in California's case at least, I do not think those numbers were dialable from outside the local calling area served by the telco. PAT] ------------------------------ From: itv@Glue.umd.edu (Glenn M Brown Jr) Subject: Expert Presenters in Fiber-Optics, ATM and ISDN Fields Wanted Date: 9 Sep 1997 13:29:22 -0400 Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland, College Park, MD The University of Maryland is in search of knowledgeable individuals to design and present short courses, (five or ten hours in length), in the Internet / Intranet / Network topic area. These courses will be transmitted to a satellite network of corporate and government sites throughout North America. Desired courses include, but are not limited to the following: - Intranet Design - System Security - Local and Wide Area Networks - Routers and Switches - Network Architectures and Protocols - ATM - ISDN - Fiber-Optic Communications - TCP/IP Presenters must possess clear communication skills and expert knowledge in chosen topic. Compensation is in the form of guarantee sum or percentage of course revenue. To learn more about this opportunity, please visit our web site at http://www.glue.umd.edu/itv/speaker.html To submit a proposal, please include the following information: - Course Title - Program Description - Speaker Biography - Benefits to Business and Industry - Intended Audience Questions and proposals can be e-mailed to Denise Belisle at: Allow one to two weeks for response as proposals go through a committee selection process. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #240 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 11 20:38:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id UAA06010; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:38:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:38:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709120038.UAA06010@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #241 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Sep 97 20:38:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 241 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) (Mark J. Cuccia) 1 800 BLUMEN1? (Judith Oppenheimer) Privatizing the Global Telecommunications Industry (Beth Arritt) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (R. Ghosh) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (V. Escobar) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (Dave Stott) Re: 811-2323? (Blake Droke) Re: 811-2323? (Morian) Re: 811-2323? (Linc Madison) Re: 811-2323? (Stanley Cline) Re: 811-2323? (Tor-Einar Jarnbjo) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 11 Sep 1997 09:13:47 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) roamer1@pobox.com wrote: > dialtone@vcn.bc.ca wrote: >> by calling BC-Tel at 811-2323 and asking them >> Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of >> years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih >> 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > PacBell uses (used?) 811-xxxx for reaching telco departments as well. > BellSouth uses two different NXXs for reaching telco departments: <557-xxxx numbers available from the five-states of former South Central Bell> <780-xxxx numbers available from the four-states of former Southern Bell> > In the upcoming Atlanta 404/770/678 overlay, I've heard that the 780 > numbers will need to be dialed WITH the area code, such as > 404-780-2355. (770/678-780-xxxx will be allowed permissively.) The original reports I heard from my BellSouth contacts were that even in the forthcoming Atlanta NPA overlay, telco departments would continue to be reached as _seven_ digits, 780-xxxx. However, I recently have been told by BellSouth that according to the FCC regulations on overlays and ten-digit local dialing, it will _have_ to be dialed as NPA-780-xxxx. Atlanta-area customers will have to dial 404-780-xxxx, and permissively dialed as well as 770-780-xxxx and/or 678-780-xxxx. > These numbers do NOT work from outside the BellSouth nine-state > region, non-BellSouth LATAs (i.e., Lexington KY and Tampa FL, which > are both GTE, and northeast Tennessee which is Sprint/United), nor > from *most* independent or CLEC territory within BellSouth LATAs. A > few indeps and CLECs, including some indeps in Louisiana and the > MediaOne CLEC in Atlanta, *do* allow the 557/780 numbers. 557 will > not work from a 780 area, and vice versa. Most (but not all) wireless > carriers whose MTSOs home on BellSouth tandems or COs do allow them. > If I dial 423-557-xxxx or 604-811-xxxx on AT&T, I am blocked by AT&T's > #4ESS in "northwest" Atlanta. Using MCI (really the 10-321 product > from MCI/Telecom*USA), 423-557 is blocked in MCI's Atlanta switch, but > 604-811 WAS ALLOWED, evidently because of Stentor's connection with > MCI! With Sprint, I was blocked in the BellSouth Atlanta-Buckhead > tandem switch. >> especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that >> 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what >> about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, >> Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? > At least on MCI, 604-811-xxxx works. I assume I'll get billed, but I > won't know 'til I get my phone bill. There are many other 'oddball' prefixes used within area codes throughout the NANP. Some of them can _only_ be reached from within a local or regional area, usually as seven-digits, while others can be reached from outside. There are 'local' prefixes in use for cable-TV pay-per-view auto-ordering, radio/TV/media stimulated-calling high-volume numbers using "choke" prefixes, single-number services (BellSouth's Zipconnect and Uniserve), alternate directory/information prefixes, PAY-per-call services (in addition to 976), prefixes for local access to high-speed data, etc. It is _quite_ inconsistant as to how these prefixes are implemented in metro areas. Sometimes, a "local-only" prefix is duplicated across all NPAs in that metro area, with all line-numbers on that prefix also duplicated - i.e. 404-780-1234 will reach the _very_same_ service as 770-780-1234 would. Sometimes, the prefix can _not_ be dialed (for that function) using an adjacent prefix. Many of Canada's NPAs have the 310 prefix (seven-digit numbers as 310-xxxx), where for example, Pizza Hut can have a 310-xxxx number, and when dialed from anywhere in that city (or NPA, province, or LEC telco serving area), you reach the closest Pizza Hut to you, or at least the store that isn't as busy. Many of the Stentor/Canada telcos _also_ use 310-xxxx for 'official' telco departments (business office, repair, etc), similar to the way BellSouth uses 557 and 780. When ten-digit dialing (and overlay area codes) becomes more the norm, about the _only_ prefix (plus last four digits) which can continue to be dialed on a seven-digit basis - will probably be 950-xxxx numbers. Even though the old-style fg.B service is fading, it still is tariffed and in place. There are also "locally-defined" NXX prefixes used for test functions (ring-back, ANAC, testboard, etc). And while N11 codes are usually considered to be "3-digit-only short-codes" used in local areas, there are areas which have used seven-digit numbers N11-xxxx. Most of it is what BC-Tel and Pac*Bell have done with 811-xxxx for telco departments, but I think some areas have also used 611-xxxx for reaching _specific_ telco repair departments (i.e. one particular 611-xxxx number reaches residential repair, while another 611-xxxx number reaches business customer repair). Unless you actually live in a particular area, it can be difficult to determine each and every "local" or "special" prefix. At this time, not every local telco reports (some/all of) its local/special NXX prefixes to AT&T or Bellcore for inclusion into numbering/routing/rating documents. And if AT&T (or most every other LD carrier) doesn't have that particular NXX prefix in _its_ records/translations, it will appear to them that the prefix doesn't exist in the dialed NPA. Therefore, calls to that NPA-NXX-xxxx will fail in the 6-digit translation of the NPA-NXX, at the originating end. There is presently some discussion in the industry for _EACH_AND_ALL_ of the special/local NXX prefixes to be reported to Bellcore for inclusion in numbering/routing/rating documents/databases (i.e. the LERG, etc). One reason is that while local NXX c/o code administration is presently handled locally by each (major) local telco, the new NANPA (whenever it is eventually determined) will not only handle area code assignments (and other NANP-wide numbering resources, such as 101-xxxx codes, etc), but also handle _ALL_ NXX central-office-code assignment and administration in all area codes serving "US areas". (i.e. the fifty states and DC, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern Mariana Is; Canada is supposed to consolidate administration of NXX c/o codes in their NPAs into a single independent third-party Canadian Numbering Administrator; each of the non-US NANP-Caribbean areas is going to do its own NXX c/o code administration). By indicating all 'special' or 'local-only' NXX prefix, the NANP numbering/routing/rating documents will be _much_ more comprehensive as numbering administration evolves to different parties or entities, and as there is more and more competition, and divided/segmented responsibility for NANP resources. Of course, even if each and every NXX code used in a particular area code becomes identified and reported in Bellcore documents, and even if fully implemented in a LD company's network for calling to that number from outside, it is always possible that the called-end local telco might not allow inward external access to that prefix/number, for various routing and/or rating reasons. NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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, 10 Sep 1997 18:26:13 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: 1 800 BLUMEN1? Toll free vanity numbers are being introduced in Germany as of January 1, 1998, and according to one German ad agency exec, "We now register 'tons of names', just to be first in line." It appears there's strong interest on the part of marketers, both within and outside of Germany, to capture the next 800 FLOWERS - or is that 800 BLUMEN1? 800/888 ICB TOLL FREE NEWS 800/888 ...today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. Click for 15-Day Free Trial Subscription: http://icbtollfree.com (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 THE EXPERT. ICB Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com ------------------------------ From: Beth Arritt Subject: Privatizing the Global Telecommunications Industry Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 16:25:14 -0400 Organization: The George Washington University, Washington DC The George Washington University presents PRIVATIZING THE GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY: Will Privatization Make Telecommunications Firms Competitive? November 2 - 4, 1997 Arlington, VA Who Should Attend? Telecommunications Industry Executives Investors Industry Consultants Government and Regulatory Officials -- Hear about the industry's experience solving problems of post-privatization management; -- Meet leaders from the top global telecommunications firms; -- Learn about the latest issues of financing telecommunications privatization; -- Receive current research on privatization trends and issues in the telecommunications industry; -- Discuss issues of corporate governance and the regulatory framework; -- Join international telecom executives as they develop the agenda for successful transitions to privatization. The Conference: Privatizing the Global Telecommunications Industry: Will Privatization Make Telecommunications Firms Competitive? will serve as a forum for generating strategies to address urgent management issues now facing the industry. This two-day meeting will bring together the leaders of the global telecommunications industry to share experiences, discuss strategies, and identify policies that will support a sustainable, privatized telecommunications industry. The Imperative of Post-Privatization Management: The privatization of the global telecommunications industry is headed down a complex and uncertain path with no clear map available to lead newly privatized firms to a successful transition ... until now. The International Research and Conference Series on Post-Privatization Management is dedicated to the successful transition of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to competitive firms operating in market economies. After the conference, the dialogue will be sustained in several ways. The Institute will use the conference to launch a Post-Privatization Network (PPNet). PPNet will use the Internet to provide up-to-date research findings and information as well as for the exchange of ideas within the post-privatized management telecommunications community. For more information, visit our website at: http://www.gwu.edu/~cms/telecom or contact our office by e-mail at betha@admin.dup.gwu.edu or by phone at (202) 973-1110. Beth Arritt Promotions Coordinator Conference Management Services The George Washington University betha@admin.dup.gwu.edu or betha@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu ------------------------------ From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 02:25:42 +-5-30 Fred R Goldstein wrote: > The sad part is that this guy from Progressive Communications is > really aiming his bullet squarely at his own body, an inseam or so > above his feet. If ISPs had to pay IXC rates for access, only the > wealthy would have access. Don't believe it? Look at poor penetration > rates in Europe, where local phone usage rates are very high and ISP > penetration is very low. America's flat-rated phone system may well > be the primary impetus for our leadership in the global Internet > business. I think your missing Newman's point. If you've read any other of his pieces -- and even in this one -- it's clear he's left-of-centre. He strongly believes the government has a role to play in the development of Internet infrastructure (at least in regulation, if not in actual _physical_ construction). He is against what he sees as a growing libertarian movement asking the government to leave the net alone -- for a number of reasons. In this particular article, all he wanted to demonstrate was that a) without government intervention, the net wouldn't be what it is and b) those who want less of it are happy to ask for government help against telcos. It would have been nice if Newman got his facts right -- but it's not really necessary. While correcting his errors, all you've done is reiterate the need for government regulation to ensure that prices bear some relation to costs (your comparison with Europe is apt) and to ensure free competition. That probably makes Newman satisfied. Of course he's largely cutting down a straw man. Although some of the Net's loudest voices are anti-government libertarians (though I don't know if they find asking for government regulation of monopolies ironic) I don't believe the large companies actually building the infrastructure are like that. They pay their taxes, they lobby, they show up at international inter-government meetings and keep friendly with the govt-appointed regulators. You could hardly expect otherwise. Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: sydbarrett@mindspring.com (Victor Escobar) Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 02:01:41 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises On Tue, 09 Sep 1997 17:20:53 -0400, darius@world.std.com (Darius) (via The Old Bear ) wrote: > THE HYPOCRISY OF ISP WELFARE AND > THE MYTH OF THE CYBER FREE MARKET > > by Nathan Newman, Progressive Communications, > newman@garnet.berkeley.edu This Newman guy probably bends over, grabs his ankles, and lets the Baby Bells give it to him. Bah. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 10:24:29 -0500 From: Dave Stott Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market In TD#240, Fred R. Goldstein wrote: > Also note that the average resi subscriber originates maybe 10-20 > hours a month, which at an average cost of 18 cents per hour, costs > telco much less than the typical flat-rate usage plan (where it's > broken out of the bill). You do the arithmetic. I did the arithmetic a little differently. If I'm an ISP and buy a business line for $35 (the going rate in Phoenix from U S WEST), hook a modem up to it for incoming calls, then receive calls every single minute of every single day in a typical 30 day month (43,240 busy minutes), then I'm paying 0.081 cents/minute for access. If, more typically, I use the specific line 75% of the time (32,400 busy minutes), then I'm paying .108 cents/minute for access. If IXCs are paying PacBell >> versus $0.014 per minute paid to the local phone company for >> handling connections to a long distance carrier then there isn't that much difference. Oh sure, it adds up over the course of millions of lines and years of usage, but the point is, the ISP is not getting anywhere near a free ride. The telco already charges both parties for the line -- that ought to be enough. Dave S. (602) 831-7355 dstott@2help.com http://www.2help.com ------------------------------ From: Blake Droke Subject: Re: 811-2323? Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 09:52:52 -0500 Reply-To: bdroke@sprintmail.com Babu Mengelepouti wrote: > Something has always bothered me about it, other than the content > (which is disturbing enough). Then it finally hit me today. > 811-2323?! What sort of phone number begins with 811? > Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of > years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih > 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? BellSouth's numbers in Alabama, Tennessee, Misssissippi, Louisiana and Kentucky start with 557. This doesn't look like an odd exchange, but in these states it is. These numbers cannot be dialed from outside a Bellsouth service area, and are routed differently depending on the state you are calling from. Example: business office number 557-6500, if I call this number from my house in Tennessee, I get the Tennessee business office. If I need to ask them about a number in Mississippi they can't help me. If I call 557-6500 from Mississippi, I get the Miss. business office, and they can't do anything with Tennessee. If I dialed 1-601-557-6500, I get a recording "Your call cannot be completed as dialed." BellSouth has 800 numbers for each state's business and repair offices. These must be used when calling from outside the Bellsouth service area, or from out of state. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 06:22:54 -0700 From: Morian Subject: Re: 811-2323? On Tue, 09 Sep 1997 at 22:47:54 (-0700), Babu Mengelepouti (dialtone@vcn.bc.ca) wrote > I use the Vancouver Community net (vcn.bc.ca) for my email, which is > based in Vancouver, British Columbia. This message has appeared since > February upon logging in: > Something has always bothered me about it, other than the content > (which is disturbing enough). Then it finally hit me today. > 811-2323?! What sort of phone number begins with 811? > Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of > years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih > 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? Actually, they have now changed it to 1-888-811-2323, and I believe that they have disconnected the old +604-811-2323 number, which is unfortunate on the off chance that you need to call them from outside the province. (OTOH, I have to wonder why VCN didn't just tell you to dial *02 which disables the recording asking you if you want to use the redial :) > This raises all sorts of interesting questions. :) If you're in BC, > and know anything about this, please let me know. Hmmmm ... I don't know all that much :-) but feel free to ask if I may be of assistance :) Regards, Morian For some unknown reason , my reply-to and from addresses have been ROT-13 encoded... look in my sig for an email address :) Morian -- morian from pobox dot com -- http://www.pobox.com/~morian Finger for copyright statement/disclaimer & PGP public key. - "Why does New Jersey's commissioner of motor vehicles go on an AOL forum to read the hundreds complaints about abysmal service at DMV offices... - And isn't it ironic that AOL is where you go to participate in a forum about someone else's poor service." - Bill Howard, PC Magazine, May/97 ------------------------------ From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.NOSPAM (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: 811-2323? Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 17:19:47 -0700 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , dialtone@vcn.bc.ca wrote: > I use the Vancouver Community net (vcn.bc.ca) for my email, which is > based in Vancouver, British Columbia. This message has appeared since > February upon logging in: > --cut here-- > [ Call BC-Tel at 811-2323 to stop annoying feature ] > --cut here-- > 811-2323?! What sort of phone number begins with 811? > I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In many parts of California the > telco business office and various other departments were (still are?) > reachable by dialing 811-xxxx, and in California's case at least, > I do not think those numbers were dialable from outside the local > calling area served by the telco. PAT] Pacific Bell used 811-xxxx numbers for several years, but I just tried one that I know specifically used to work (811-7600), and I got an intercept. The practice here was that the same seven-digit number worked when calling from any phone in California served by either Pac Bell or other cooperating local telco. There were specific numbers for repair and billing for residential and business customers, for each of a number of service territories. Thus, if I dialed 811-7600 from almost anywhere in California, I would be connected to the Berkeley repair/order center. This practice was killed by the CPUC due to concerns about its effects on possible future competing local telcos. Pac Bell now uses 800/888 numbers for these purposes. In any case, 811 numbers were toll-free, requiring no coin deposit at payphones, but did not work outside California. They *did*, however, work from several GTE areas where I tried them. I have also noticed that if you dial '611' in Pacific Bell territory, one of the options now is to order new service or changes to existing service. Another footnote: the intercept recording I got just now said, "The number you have reached, , is not in service," instead of "The number you have reached, 8-1-1-7-6-0-0 ..." ** Do not spam e-mail me! ** Linc Madison * San Francisco, Calif. * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best-com >> NOTE: if you autoreply, you must change "NOSPAM" to "com" << ------------------------------ From: roamer1@pobox.com (Stanley Cline) Subject: Re: 811-2323? Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 01:30:28 GMT Reply-To: roamer1@pobox.com On Tue, 09 Sep 1997 22:47:54 -0700, in comp.dcom.telecom was written: > stop this from happening by calling BC-Tel at 811-2323 and asking them > to remove the service from your line. > Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of > years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih > 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather PacBell uses (used?) 811-xxxx for reaching telco departments as well. BellSouth uses two different NXXs for reaching telco departments: 557 Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Rossville, GA area (which is served by Chattanooga, TN COs.=20 For this area, the numbers are really "423"-557, instead of 706-557 which is Rutledge, GA.) 780 Georgia (other than Rossville), Florida, and the Carolinas For example, 557-6111 is repair service for the former South Central Bell areas, and 780-2355 is residential customer service for the former Southern Bell region. In the upcoming Atlanta 404/770/678 overlay, I've heard that the 780 numbers will need to be dialed WITH the area code, such as 404-780-2355. (770/678-780-xxxx will be allowed permissively.) These numbers do NOT work from outside the BellSouth nine-state region, non-BellSouth LATAs (i.e., Lexington KY and Tampa FL, which are both GTE, and northeast Tennessee which is Sprint/United), nor from *most* independent or CLEC territory within BellSouth LATAs. A few indeps and CLECs, including some indeps in Louisiana and the MediaOne CLEC in Atlanta, *do* allow the 557/780 numbers. 557 will not work from a 780 area, and vice versa. Most (but not all) wireless carriers whose MTSOs home on BellSouth tandems or COs do allow them. If I dial 423-557-xxxx or 604-811-xxxx on AT&T, I am blocked by AT&T's #4ESS in "northwest" Atlanta. Using MCI (really the 10-321 product from MCI/Telecom*USA), 423-557 is blocked in MCI's Atlanta switch, but 604-811 WAS ALLOWED, evidently because of Stentor's connection with MCI! With Sprint, I was blocked in the BellSouth Atlanta-Buckhead tandem switch. > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? At least on MCI, 604-811-xxxx works. I assume I'll get billed, but I won't know 'til I get my phone bill. Stanley Cline somewhere near Atlanta, GA, USA roamer1(at)pobox.com http://scline.home.mindspring.com/ spam not wanted here! help outlaw spam - see http://www.cauce.org/ ------------------------------ From: Tor-Einar Jarnbjo Subject: Re: 811-2323? Date: 10 Sep 97 23:36:58 +0100 Organization: Technical University of Berlin, Germany On 10-Sep-97 06:47:54, Babu Mengelepouti wrote in comp.dcom.telecom: > Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of > years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih > 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? Well, at least I got BCTel Customer Service when calling this number from Germany, so I would suppose it is reachable from anywhere in the NANP too, possibly with a toll charge. Tor-Einar ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #241 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 11 21:43:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id VAA10612; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:43:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 21:43:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709120143.VAA10612@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #242 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Sep 97 21:43:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 242 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Newton's Telecom Dictionary" by Newton (Rob Slade) ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Eric Florack) Re: Nextel Cellular? (Nathan Duehr) Internet Telephony Conference & H.323 Workshop - Sep. 22-26 97 (S. Combs) HP3000 Datacom Parts (Steve Bagdon) 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges (Rick Vista) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Al Varney) Re: Pager Message Theft Charged (Peter Laws) Re: 811-2323? (Louis Raphael) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Phil Ritter) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Juha Veijalainen) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 10 Sep 1997 10:53:35 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Newton's Telecom Dictionary" by Newton BKNTTLDC.RVW 970421 "Newton's Telecom Dictionary", Harry Newton, 1997, 1-57820-008-3 %A Harry Newton harrynewton@mcimail.com %C 12 West 21 Street, New York, NY 10010 %D 1997 %G 1-57820-008-3 %I Flatiron Publishing, Inc. %O U$29.95 212-6918215 800-LIBRARY fax 212-6911191 www.flatironpublishing.com %P 750 %T "Newton's Telecom Dictionary", 12th Edition All right, John, admit it. You only wanted me to review this because your boss gets mentioned in the Acknowledgements section, right? But, I forgive you, since you introduced me to this interesting, amusing, and useful reference. I've already used it twice today alone, once to look up an area code (see "North American Area Codes"), and once to look up the filename for cookie storage in Internet browsers. It's massive. There are lots and lots of telecommunications terms, with a fair preponderance of telephony and internet listings. Computer jargon gets a fair amount of space, with MS-DOS related material getting the lion's share. The forward slash (/) is said to have been made famous by Lotus, with no mention of it as the UNIX directory separator. BOB is defined only by the unlamented Microsoft product although "breakout box" is listed elsewhere. "Virus" is in there, and it isn't bad. Management is remembered with the "Osborne Effect" and "Seagull Manager", and the description of "Digital Cash" is written by someone with a firm grasp of reality. The numeric entries for 1791 through 1996 constitute a quick history of telecommunications. The entry for "Call Waiting" refers to the trouble it may give to modems, misses the *70 command (which may or may not work), and advises the setting of the S10 register (which probably will). Then there is telecommunications trivia, such as the part played by radio in the saving of the Eiffel Tower, the contribution of the telephone to the English language, and reflections on the Titanic disaster and telecom-related biographies. (You can even learn some erstwhile English terms.) In this, the twelfth edition, there is an apology for moving to a smaller typeface than in previous editions. I had no problems with it, and I doubt that anyone used to newspaper sized type would. The reduction in font size has allowed the book to be trimmed back from 1500 pages to a mere 750, which probably makes it easier to handle, as well as mail. The volume is understandable, however, given Newton's note that he is adding an average of 100 new terms to the work every week. After twelve editions, I imagine it adds up. The listings are quite current, including items such as "SATAN", "RimmJob", and "cookie" (with the associated controversy). The reader will also find some esoteric technical entries, like "Hydrogen Loss" and "Zener Diode". While reviewing the book, I left it at a reception desk for fifteen minutes. That was long enough for the staffer at the desk to inform me, on my return, that the author was a pretty funny guy. Quite true. A number of the definitions are fairly lighthearted, and Newton isn't afraid to throw in subjective comments. A number of listings are *completely* off the wall. What does "Apocalypse, Four Horsemen of" have to do with communications? Or "Apologize", "FORD", or "Get a Life" for that matter? Apparently if you are a friend or relative of Newton, there is grave danger that you will end up listed in here. Some of the humorous content does have a closer technical connection, like "Bogon" and "Psychic ANI". The book is not without flaws. "Skunkworks" owes its origins to Li'l Abner, not a lack of soap. "SIMM"s are used in more than just Macs. "Kermit" is again chastised for being too slow. And I can cut eight characters out of your "Fox Message." I was surprised not to see any entries for Mailstorm, REXX, or cascaded virtual circuit. "Freeware" is listed, but not shareware or public domain. (Indeed, the definition of "Sysop" confuses freeware and public domain software.) "Granularity" cites only an internal Microsoft slang, and "BLAST" does not note that it is a proprietary technology. (I *am* willing to forgive a lot to a dictionary that gets "Hacker" right.) While extensive, the work is neither complete nor exhaustive. The book could use some discipline, not in excluding the humour, but in including more extensive, or more accurate, definitions in places. Still, regardless of shortcomings, this is easily one of the two best telecommunications dictionaries available today, and, for breadth of scope, probably *the* best. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997 BKNTTLDC.RVW 970421 DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca BCVAXLUG Envoy http://www.decus.ca/www/lugs/bcvaxlug.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 06:16:34 PDT From: Eric Florack Subject: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh In TELECOM Digest #239, our friends at Berkeley came up with: > Now, you don't have to take Pac Bell's numbers as gospel to > recognize that with phone rates designed by regulators to yield > minimal profit on basic service (with profit to be made on toll calls > and extra services), long local Internet calls are a disproportionate > drain on resources with little additional revenue, thereby sucking > investments away from the rest of the network. Defenders of the ISP > subsidy argue that local Bell companies benefit by the addition of > dedicated Internet phone lines, but this is a bit like arguing that > what the phone companies lose in costs on each Internet line, they can > make up in volume. Yes, it is ... and the argument is quite correct. The local telco's income has doubled, in every house that an extra line for computer use has been installed. In my own case, their income has tripled, and though I don't have the figrues to hand, I suspect I'm far from alone. > Worse than the actual costs of the upgrades for ISPs is the fact > that those investments are being made in traditional analog voice > phone lines and switches, instead of the phone system moving the ISP > phone traffic onto high-speed digital switching systems right at > customers homes, an approach that would be more efficient and create > the basis for upgrading all data traffic. Ah, but you see, to a large degree they are in fact moing to digital paths ... off the phone networks, and with it, the income generated by all the internet traffic is moving out of the Local telco's pockets. Things like Cable_TV based ISP's, WIreless internet Providers like CAI here in Rochester, etc. are growing by leaps and bounds. They will doubtless be groing even faster if the Telcos ever get their way, and are allowed to price themselves out of the market. And that last snipe is a point you don't seem to understand; What you're proposing would price the locals out of the traffic and actually *cut* their income. At which point, of course the alternate services, established to get around the high cost of doing business with the local telcos will have to be taxed by the government, to 'support' the local telcos. Wonder how much of that subsidy will actually make it to the LEC's pocket, huh? > Most of the Baby Bells began offering such high-speed digital > services for ISPs in 1997, but the Internet providers have little > incentive to pay for such services as long as they can convince the > FCC to allow them to use the local phone lines like ordinary business > users. The real reason most ISP's didn't move on it is their customer base couldn't take advantage of it. To a large degree, that's still true. The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that 56k requires. > And in May 1997, the FCC, under intense lobbying from both > computer companies and Internet users, agreed to continue the ISP > exemption from access charges, with essentially minor concessions > given to the local phone companies in raising all charges on second > phone lines, the logic being these would likely be used for Internet > connections. Some of the smaller Internet providers complained that > the additional charges on all their incoming phone lines would hurt > them, but larger ISPs like America Online declared victory: "We will > see an increase in our charges, but we do see that on balance we need > to accept the additional charges because they are flat and they are > nominal," said Jill Lesser, America Online's deputy director of law > and public policy. "A permanent access charge would have been orders > of magnitude worse for AOL. Even at one cent per minute, we would have > incurred a charge that would have been in the neighborhood of $100 > million and which we would have had to pass on to the customer. So > when you look at an increase that is 1/10 of that, that's a fairly > modest increase." The broad coalition of computer companies had > successfully protected the subsidized status of Internet providers. Objection: Your use of the word "subsidy" suggests that the money lost to this (How can you lose something you never had?) is being gotten from some other source. That's simply not true. And yet, the telco's are hardly going broke over this. > The irony of the whole decision is that the Internet industry has > pictured the privatization of the Internet as the "end of government > subsidies" where the free market had successfully stepped into the > gap. The reality, as this decision highlighted, is that the profits > of the private Internet industry have derived substantially from the > cannibalization of past and present investments in the local phone > infrastructure. Local phone users, mostly lower-income users without a > computer in the home, are seeing investments diverted to industry and > higher- income Internet users that could have been targeted for > upgrading the overall network or delivering new technology for > schools, hospitals or other public places serving the whole public. > Instead, the specific private subsidies for the Internet industry have > helped fracture planning for the overall local phone system and > blocked the general upgrading of data traffic. Ah, so at last it comes out. This is not about padding the pockets of the local telco, as it appears, this is really about *helping* *the* *poor*?? The rich (I suppose I'm rich, huh? Gee, I'll have to tell my wife about this!) ... The rich are stealing from the poor again. Break out the shotguns, Maw. (No, wait that's not PC, is it?) Next, we'll hear about it's protecting the children. Sorry. This mantra you're chanting has been disproven several times over. Eventually, I suspect the news will get into our houses of supoosedly higher learning. Until then, I suppose we'll just have to deal with this nonsense once in a while. Just don't expect us to take it seriously. /E ------------------------------ From: Nathan Duehr Subject: Re: Nextel Cellular? Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 15:18:02 -0600 Organization: ConferTech International > All the discussion in the Digest here recently on CDMA/TDMA/GSM and > various cellular and PCS carriers and such has been very interesting > and informative. However, nobody has mentioned Nextel in this > discussion yet and I'd like opinions about there place in the overall > scheme. Ben, Our company decided to start using Nextel service in the Denver Metro market area a number of months ago for our Network Operations staff's daily use communications tools, and as backup phones in case of power loss at any of our call centers. We've found a few things good and a few things bad: Good: Service sounds pretty good -- voice quality is good everywhere except fringe areas, which I talk about below. Two-way is a GREAT feature for technical groups, as technicians can hang this unit on their belt in the switch room or in an IDF closet and keep working without having to get interrupted by a ringing phone. They can decide whether to answer or not by who's voice comes out of the set ... and they can usually do it without removing the unit from their belts if they yell loud enough while pushing the xmit button on the side of the phone with one hand. Group service is excellent for emergencies and disaster recovery scenarios. We have three call centers in three different locations in the Denver Metro area, all connected via T3 service to a NMOC/POP downtown where our conferencing and ACD equipment is located. Outages occur on our equipment, and our most major client-affecting problem is long term power outages at the call centers, even with UPS' and generator backup. It's very disruptive, and the phones make life all the more bearable when things go down for the techs working the issue. We also have a group channel for the managers, so the techs can work the issues, and the managers can do their thing at the same time with no interferance. Down side: Our new building is on the outskirts of Denver on the north side. The new building is attached to our old building up here with a walkway, but the construction materials contain a lot more metal in the new building. Constant dropout conditions exist in the new building. Luckily, it's an Engineering building, so the call center techs usually aren't over here and aren't as affected by it, but it would be nice if Nextel would drop a cell site a little bit closer to us for signal strength purposes. Also, someone else mentioned this one ... there is no warning on these digital phone of impending doom of your call. It just drops. When using the radio features, this is annoying, as you aren't always talking, and you just get a low beep from the unit the next time you key up telling you that you can't reach the network. Very frustrating in a fringe area, like our new building. Anyway, in my opinion, they're still the best tool we've EVER purchased our Network group. They appear to really enjoy them. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 09:15:25 -0700 From: Sandy Combs Reply-To: scombs@together.net Organization: VON Coalition - http://www.von.org Subject: Internet Telephony Conference & H.323 Workshop - Sep. 22-26 97 Digest readers with a keen interest in INTERNET TELEPHONY and related H.323 issues may want to attend the Voice On the Net(tm) VON conference, September 22 through 26, 1997 in BOSTON. One of the key highlights of the conference will be a combined presentation by VINT CERF and MAJEL BARRETT RODENBERRY who will be presenting a tribute to GENE RODENBERRY and his vision of technology unfolding into the future ... The conference will be focusing on the businesses, technologies and issues facing the VON industry today. Special focus will be given to the Future of VON Technologies. Complete information about the conference is available online at - http://www.pulver.com/von97 or by contacting: VON Industry Conference Fall '97 Pulver.Com 20 N. Santa Cruz Los Gatos, CA 95030 Tel: 1.408.354.3569 Fax: 1.408.354.2571 mailto: von97@pulver.com http://www.pulver.com/von97 Sandy Combs mailto:sandy@von.org Director 1.802.879.3751 VON Coalition http://www.von.org Essex Junction, Vermont ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 16:36:15 -0400 From: Steve Bagdon Subject: HP3000 Datacom Parts Almost free for the taking; you have to at least pay for packing and shipping. If you're HP3000, you'll know what this is. Series 70 backplane RS-232 and RS-242 port plugs. Shaped like a DB-9, but with 3 pins for the 232 and 5 pins for the 242. RJ-45 on the other end, so you can plug in a standard RJ-45 network cable and patch it to a patch panel. I've been sitting on these for 5+ years, figuring someone would want them sooner or later. It's now later, and if I can't give them away in a few weeks, they get recycled. Some other misc. telecom gear for wiring up a -232 HP3000, but you get the idea. These things were darn pricey five years ago, please give them a home! Thanks! Steve B. ------------------------------ From: vista@earthling.net (Rick Vista) Subject: 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 11:20:15 -0400 Organization: AT&T Reply-To: vista@earthling.net (Rick Vista) How much does DSS (Digital Spread Spectrum) really add to the range of a 900 Mhz phone? Can I really expect to get 3000-4000 feet out of one of these phones? I'd like to pick one up, but at the prices I've seen (most are in the upper $200s or lower $300s), I want to make sure that they will perform as advertised. Also, does anybody have recommendations as to what DSS 900 Mhz phones to buy and which ones to avoid? Thanks, R. Vista ------------------------------ From: varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: 10 Sep 1997 21:03:06 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies, Naperville, IL Reply-To: varney@lucent.com In article , Isaac Wingfield wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >> I know what coaxial cable is -- we use lots of it at work to connect >> our terminals. (Coax cable has a center conductor surrounded by an >> insulator tube, which in turn is surrounded by a braided conductor.) > Right so far, although some coaxes have a solid outer conductor. It > can get pretty big, too. I've used nine inch diameter coax to carry a > third of a million watts of signal up the tower to a TV transmitting > antenna. Right so far, although some coax has a hollow INNER conductor as well. The word co-axial applies: Two circular conductors sharing a common center. >> Could someone explain how it works, in laymen's terms? How does the >> physical arrangement enable it to have so much capacity. > Actually, it's just another transmission line, having neither better > or worse performance than other topologies; in fact, the attenuation > is higher than some others (e.g. parallel line, such as the "300 ohm > twin lead" used for TV antenna connections). Its bandwidth is not > inherently superior either; 100BaseT and Gigabit Ethernet work on > twisted pairs. [quoting for transmission engineering handbook] Attenuation (with other factors held constant) for the same material in both conductors, varies with square root of frequency -- the minimum for gaseous/low-loss-insulation occurs when the radius to the inside of the outer conductor is 3.6 times the radius to the outside of the inner conductor. Such a coax has half the inductance of two parallel lines separated by the outer conductor radius, and twice the capacitance of such parallel lines with line diameter equal to the inner conductor diameter. Theory says characteristic impedance should be about 77 ohms at high frequencies. With polyethylene insulation, it's about 75 ohms. [Reference available.] > The advantage of coaxial construction is shielding -- both to protect > the signal inside from outside interference, and to prevent radiation > of the signal to the outside environment. In telephony, it's both together. Coax reduces the energy radiated outside the coax, and reduces the effects of the energy that does radiate. In other words, it reduces cross-talk, which is typically the limiting factor (not noise) in transmission systems where lots of cable/coax are run together for miles. Most Bell System analog coax systems bundled 18-22 coaxes in a single 3.5-4 inch diameter cable. >> Also, when was it invented? Was it invented by the Bell System or >> someone else? > I believe it was Bell Labs, but am not certain. 1920's? It was surely > ubiquitous by WWII. Whenever you don't know where some telecomm > technology was invented, Bell Labs is a good guess. Not Bell Labs, because it didn't exist in 1920. But see the history below ... the original trans-Atlantic telephone cable was NOT coaxial (1956), but the second one (1959) was coaxial. Standard Telephones and Cables [part of Cable and Wireless now, I believe] and the British Post Office worked with Bell Labs on both designs. >> Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? In some markets, fiber-optics has made coax so obsolete that coax was retired in place -- it costs too much to remove, and costs too much to power/align/maintain to continue using it. For example, the original TAT-1 cable had 306 tubes in the under-sea amplifiers, and carried 36 channels (TASI increased this to 100 channels in 1957). TAT-2 also carried 36 channels initially. TAT-7, the last analog trans-Atlantic cable, was laid in 1983 and carried 8500 channels. They're dead now -- retired in 1994. The tubes in TAT-1 never failed. But they can't pay their way, with fiber handling 320,000 channels (TAT-12). My Dad's farm has an 18-coax cable under it. Laid in 1969, it was retired by AT&T in 1995. It's useless, and not worth the cost of digging it up. (The main every-seven-mile repeater equipment was worth recycling.) >> (If I understand fiber-optic correctly, all it is is an extremely >> single high speed digital pulse transmission, can be analog, too; the >> cable TV people do that routinely these days, transmitting all the TV >> channels you can receive as one very wide band analog signal (50-800 >> MHz, round numbers). Coax was originally ALL analog -- for good reason. A typical long coax (AT&T's L5E, for example) supports either DS-4 (274.176 Mbps) digital or 70 MHz analog Frequency Division Multiplexing with 1-mile repeater spacings. That translates to: 1) 4,032 voice channels for DS-4 or 2) 13,200 voice channels for FDM If you were paying for the coax, and the right-of-way, and endpoint equipment cost was a small part of the equation, you'd have to be insane to chose digital. Now you know why going digital was painful for AT&T long distance. Without fiber, digital costs you capacity. Al Varney - just my opinion ------------------------------ From: plaws@kiowa.wildstar.net (Peter Laws) Subject: Re: Pager Message Theft Charged Date: 10 Sep 1997 10:19:45 -0500 Organization: Wildstar Internet Services gordon@sneaky.lerctr.org (Gordon Burditt) writes: > Is it really necessary to CLONE pagers? It seems to me that just > building one "promiscuous listener" receiver would be sufficient to PC + Sound card + software off the net, bingo. Read all the pagers you want. It's not like thy're encrypted or anything. Apparently, BNN stated at their press conference that, in fact, none of the "cloned pagers" displayed at the DA's press conference were seized from any members of BNN. > bands. Certainly you CAN legally benefit from what you heard on the > Channel 5 news, but not from receiving cellphone broadcasts (even if > they happen to come out of your TV with no tinkering with the TV, just The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 made it a crime to listen to common carrier pager and cellphone frequencies. AFAIK, that was the first time that Americans had been prohibited from listening to certain portions of the RF spectrum, at least since WW-I. Congress is now trying to prevent Americans from listening to the "Commercial Mobile Radio Service", an umbrella name for just about every kind of radio service other than public safety/amateur/broadcast. Of course, since many of those frequencies (particularly in the 800 MHz band) are shared with public safety, many Americans will no longer be able to listen to their local public safety agencies at work. All this is being done under the guise of "privacy". I'm sorry, but if you want privacy on the public radio spectrum, then it's your responsibility to encrypt, not mine to electronically hold my hands over my ears. Neither ECPA nor HR1964/2369 do anything to protect privacy at all, of course, because there are already millions of receivers for these frequencies in circulation already. If Congress really wants to protect RF spectrum users privacy, why not force common carriers to provide encryption? I don't know the answer to that, but a good place to do research might be the contributor's lists for the sponsors of these resolutions (Markey, D-MA and Tauzin, R-LA). Peter Laws Norman, Oklahoma ------------------------------ From: raphael@willy.cs.mcgill.ca (Louis Raphael) Subject: Re: 811-2323? Date: 10 Sep 1997 13:54:13 GMT Organization: McGill University Computing Centre Babu Mengelepouti (dialtone@vcn.bc.ca) wrote: > BC-Tel has supposedly implemented some new service which plays havoc > with re-dialers. Instead of a busy signal you will get a message from > BC-Tel asking you to pay $0.50 and they will set their system to > redial for you and call you back when it has got through. You can > stop this from happening by calling BC-Tel at 811-2323 and asking them > to remove the service from your line. You can also dial *02 or *03, I can't remember which. The Operator can tell you. > Something has always bothered me about it, other than the content > (which is disturbing enough). Then it finally hit me today. > 811-2323?! What sort of phone number begins with 811? This *is* strange. I think that in some localities, "811" is used for the business office. Possibly, BCTel/GTE has instructed their switches to consider the 811 series as a normal prefix, and is using them for various customer-service-related functions. > Upon reviewing my BC directory collection for the past couple of > years, I see that indeed BCTel does have some numbers that begin wtih > 811. I am curious how common a practice this is in the NANP, rather > than a toll-free number for reaching repair or customer service. And > especially numbers as odd as an "811" number. I imagine that > 604-811-2323 is toll-free from within the Vancouver area, but what > about outside of it? Can 811-2323 be reached from the Lower 48, > Alaska, etc? If so, is there a toll charge? I wouldn't know. In many places, 310-BELL is the standard customer- service number, BTW. > This raises all sorts of interesting questions. :) If you're in BC, > and know anything about this, please let me know. I'm not, and I don't, but I did anyways :-). > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In many parts of California the > telco business office and various other departments were (still are?) > reachable by dialing 811-xxxx, and in California's case at least, > I do not think those numbers were dialable from outside the local > calling area served by the telco. PAT] The purpose of this arrangement, IMHO, is probably to make sure local inquiries go to local offices, or some such. Louis ------------------------------ From: Phil.Ritter@zool.AirTouch.COM Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 08:58:06 -0700 Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Stanley Cline wrote: > Scott Townley wrote: >> Not strategy, legal requirement. You can't own a PCS and a cellular >> license in the same market. > At least one company, Powertel, does -- they own both a PCS license > and a cellular license (InterCel) covering areas between Atlanta and > Montgomery, AL (Newnan, West Point, LaGrange, GA; Opelika/Auburn, AL > -- all along Interstate 85.) The FCC rule is that you cannot own more than 40 Mhz of spectrum dedicated to voice Commercial Mobile Wireless Service (CMRS) in he same market. CMRS services include Cellular, E-SMR (like Nextel) and PCS. Since a cellular license is for 25 Mhz and the D-F block PCS licenses are 10 Mhz each, you most certainly can own both celluar and PCS in the same market (e.g., Cellular plus D block PCS is 35 Mhz). Some carriers, notably AT&T, have taken this a bit further and argued that proportionate shares of ownership are what matters (e.g., if you own 50% of a cellular market, you only "own" 12.5 Mhz). Based upon this argument, they purchased both the D&E block PCS licenses in Los Angeles in spite of being 50% owner of LA Cellular. Phil Ritter ------------------------------ From: Juha.Veijalainen@iki.fi (Juha Veijalainen) Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 19:49:14 +0300 Organization: Jkarhuritarit Gary Stebbins (Gary.Stebbins@bigfoot.com) kirjoitti artikkelissa > Aha! I'm not the only one. I've noticed that if I go through an area > of weak or no signal, my Nokia 2160 frequently continues to say "no > service" when I'm back in an area where I know there is service and > the signal strength meter is showing adequate signal. Any idea what > causes this? (Assuming that you are talking about GSM flavor of PCS) Each cell site broadcasts its identity at fixed power level. If this power level is set at maximum, your handset will receive this signal, but it won't be able to log on to the network or place calls (for example, cell site at 20 W and handset at max. 2 W - sorry, I do not know the correct PCS-GSM maximum values). Also, sometimes the delays in logon could be because of various power saving features used in the handsets. For example, handset may only try to logon once in three minutes. Juha Veijalainen, Helsinki, Finland http://www.iki.fi/juhave/ Mielipiteet omiani / Opinions personal, facts suspect ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #242 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 11 22:24:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA13420; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 22:24:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 22:24:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709120224.WAA13420@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #243 TELECOM Digest Thu, 11 Sep 97 22:24:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 243 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FBI Seeks Wiretap, Other Expansions (Babu Mengelepouti) Re: Pay-Per-Call Services (Bob Holloway) Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (Tom Gronke) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Nathan Duehr) Re: Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release (John R. Levine) Voice Over International Frame Relay (Herman Ho) Remote Alarm Indication (Glenn Gobeli) Request For Recommendations: Cordless Phones With CallerID (rick19@sgi) Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion (Michael D. Sullivan) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 09 Sep 1997 16:29:07 -0700 From: Babu Mengelepouti Reply-To: dialtone@vcn.bc.ca Organization: US Secret Service Subject: FBI Seeks Wiretap, Other Expansions Forwarded to the Digest: _____ _____ _______ / ____| __ \__ __| ____ ___ ____ __ | | | | | | | | / __ \____ / (_)______ __ / __ \____ _____/ /_ | | | | | | | | / /_/ / __ \/ / / ___/ / / / / /_/ / __ \/ ___/ __/ | |____| |__| | | | / ____/ /_/ / / / /__/ /_/ / / ____/ /_/ (__ ) /_ \_____|_____/ |_| /_/ \____/_/_/\___/\__, / /_/ \____/____/\__/ The Center for Democracy and Technology /____/ Volume 3, Number 12 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A briefing on public policy issues affecting civil liberties online --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CDT POLICY POST Volume 3, Number 12 August 11, 1997 CONTENTS: (1) Civil Liberties Groups Ask FCC To Block FBI Electronic Surveillance Proposal (2) Summary of CDT/EFF FCC Petition (3) CALEA Background and The Industry Standards Setting Process (4) How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe (5) About CDT, contacting us ** This document may be redistributed freely with this banner intact ** Excerpts may be re-posted with permission of ** This document looks best when viewed in COURIER font ** ____________________________________________________________________________ (1) CIVIL LIBERTIES GROUPS ASK FCC TO BLOCK FBI ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE PROPOSAL The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation today filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission to block the FBI from using the 1994 "Digital Telephony" law to expand government surveillance powers. The law, officially known as the "Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act" (CALEA), was intended to preserve law enforcement wiretapping ability in the face of changes in communications technologies. In their filing, CDT and EFF argue that the FBI has tried to use CALEA to expand its surveillance capabilities by forcing telephone companies to install intrusive and expensive surveillance features that threaten privacy and violate the scope of the law. The CDT/EFF petition follows a July 16 petition by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), which asked the FCC to intervene in the implementation of CALEA. Under a provision of CALEA designed to ensure public accountability over law enforcement surveillance ability, CDT and EFF urged the Commission to accept the CTIA request and expand its inquiry to cover privacy issues. CALEA specifically prevents law enforcement from dictating the design of telecommunications networks. Instead, CALEA created a public process for developing technical standards through industry standards bodies. However, since CALEA was enacted, the FBI has sought to force industry to agree to standards that would dramatically expand law enforcement surveillance power. The full text of the CDT/EFF petition, links to the CTIA petition, as well as background on the debate over CALEA implementation, are available online at http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/ (2) SUMMARY OF CDT/EFF FCC PETITION CDT and EFF allege that the FBI is using CALEA to expand its surveillance ability well beyond what the law allows and in ways that pose serious risks to privacy: * ACCESS TO CONTENTS OF DIGITAL MESSAGES WITHOUT SEARCH WARRANT: In packet switching systems (currently used on the Internet, but likely to be the future of voice switching as well), the FBI wants delivery of the entire packet data stream in response to a pen register order, which is issued on the most minimal of justifications, relying on law enforcement to "minimize" the content to get at the addressing information. This would effectively obliterate the distinction between call contents and 'signaling' information, and would amount to a substantial expansion of law enforcement surveillance authority, and falls well beyond the intent of CALEA. CDT and EFF urge the Commission to delete this provision from the proposed standards. This is one of the most far reaching aspects of CALEA implementation. * REAL-TIME LOCATION TRACKING INFORMATION ON WIRELESS PHONE USERS: CDT and EFF asked the FCC to block FBI and industry proposals for location information in wireless networks. The proposed standard would effectively turn the cellular network into a nationwide, real time location tracking system. CDT and EFF argue that the proposal goes too far and violates CALEA. * MONITORING OF ALL PARTICIPANTS IN A CONFERENCE CALL, EVEN AFTER THE TARGET IS NO LONGER PARTICIPATING: The FBI wants to expand the standard to include this feature. Such monitoring, CDT and EFF argue, would violate the limits of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. * ACCESS TO A BROADER RANGE OF INFORMATION UNDER SO-CALLED PEN REGISTERS AND TRAP AND TRACE DEVICES: Law enforcement can obtain approval for these devices, which are supposed to collect only dialed number information, under a very low legal standard, much lower than the showing required to intercept the content of communications. The FBI is urging the industry to put more detailed "profiling" information on the signaling channel, on the assumption that it would be accessible under the lower legal standard. CDT and EFF urge the Commission to address privacy concerns about access to transactional data. Specifically, CDT and EFF ask the Commission to require the telephone companies to ensure that law enforcement only gets the information it is authorized to receive. CDT and EFF believe that the FCC must intervene to ensure that privacy is protected as CALEA is implemented. The full text of the filing is available online at http://www.cdt.org/digi_tele/ (3) CALEA BACKGROUND AND THE INDUSTRY STANDARDS SETTING PROCESS The digital telephony law, officially known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), was adopted in 1994 and requires telephone companies to ensure that their systems can accommodate law enforcement wiretaps. The law also includes a privacy provision, requiring law enforcement and industry to implement the surveillance requirements in a manner that "protect[s] the privacy and security of communications ... not authorized to be intercepted." CALEA defers in the first instance to industry standards-setting bodies to develop technical standards for implementing the law's general surveillance assistance requirements. Industry bodies have developed a draft standard, to which the FBI vociferously objected on the grounds that it did not give law enforcement enough surveillance powers. The FBI's objections have prevented the adoption of a consensus standard. The CDT/EFF filing relies on Section 107(b) of CALEA, which provides: "If industry associations or standards-setting organizations fail to issue technical requirements or standards or if a Government agency or any other person believes that such requirements or standards are deficient, the agency or person may petition the Commission to establish, by rule, technical requirements or standards that ... (2) protect the privacy and security of communications not authorized to be intercepted ... " The Commission has yet to decide whether it will address CALEA issues. The Commission may solicit further comments on the CTIA, CDT, and EFF pleadings, issue a Notice of Inquiry, or issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. CALEA is scheduled to take full effect on October 25, 1998 with our without a standard being adopted. End Policy Post 3.12 08/11/97 ------------------------------ From: crh1@trsvr.tr.unisys.com.SpamCan (Bob Holloway) Subject: Re: Pay-Per-Call Services Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 10:46:08 -0400 Organization: Unisys Corp. Eli Mantel wrote: > Nicholas Marino (nmarino@home.com) wrote: >> The current FCC mandate does require the telcos to continually >> remind it's customers that their service cannot be interrupted. >> I think this is a mistake, as I have explained before. > There are really several public policy questions involved: > 1. Is allowing pay-per-call services good public policy? > 2. Is allowing pay-per-call services to be billed to someone > (i.e. the telephone subscriber) without obtaining explicit > authorization good public policy? > 3. Is including telephone subscriber-billed calls on the > local phone bill good public policy? > 4. Is disconnection of phone service for non-payment of > pay-per-call services good public policy? > 5. Is educating and informing consumers of their legal > rights good public policy? > ...Here's where I disagree: > 1. Although there is some value in allowing pay-per-call > services, there are many negatives as well, such as tech > support lines. But this issue is really beyond regulation. I think this is a free market issue as I think you implied above. As long as the consumer is free to choose without fear of unreasonable risk, I think that many pay-per-call services will be profitable because they provide a good service at a reasonable price. The problem is with the "without fear of unreasonable risk": I have 900/976 numbers blocked on my phone now as a result of having been billed for calls that I didn't make; not only billed, but raked over the coals by a collection agency, and nasty comments in my credit record. I will not remove the block until there are legal safeguards to prevent a similar situation again. It's a risk I'm not willing to take. > 2. Billing someone without explicit authorization is > clearly a bad thing. By allowing this, telephone subscribers have > unfairly been forced to bear the costs of anti-fraud measures. I whole-heartedly agree. Off-hand, I can't think of any other commercial situation where this happens. In some ways it's like buying something at a store where part of the store's markup is to offset shoplifting. There are several differences though: the markup is across all products and you only pay for the "shoplifting offset" as a percentage of the cost of what you buy; also, the consumer has a choice -- if the cost is too high, buy somewhere else. With the pay-per-call services, I get billed, and am expected to pay, for calls charged to my phone number whether I made them or not. I think this cost appropriately belongs to the ISP -- if you go into business, part of the cost of doing business is to account for losses, whether it's shoplifting or theft of service. > 3. Allowing pay-per-call charges to be included on the local > phone bill is a convenience for both the IP and for people > who have no credit card to charge the call to. This > convenience is outweighed both by the authorization that IP's > assume they have received when a 900-call is placed, and by > the implication that refusal to pay for the call (which could > be for a legitimate reason, such as not receiving the > services promised) might result in loss of phone service. I think the convenience is worth it *IF* there are adequate legal safeguards. If it doesn't happen, a few ISPs (I hope I'm being fair here), that "go after" consumers with a vengeance to get them to "pay up or else," will kill this goose-that-layed-the-golden-egg. Yes, in spite of my experience, I believe these are worthwhile services and should be given a fair chance, but there have to be some legal bounds to protect consumers. I would think that the ISPs that are trying to be fair and know that it is possible for the calls to be unauthorized, or that there are other legitimate reasons why a caller may not feel he/she is getting the service they are being billed for, would want these legal protections for consumers also. If it doesn't happen, the number of blocked phones will far exceed ones that allow the use of pay-per-call services. > 4. Possible loss of phone service for non-payment of pay-per-call > charges would put the consumer at an untenable disadvantage. I for one, am glad that at least this much protection is already in place. > 5. If it's a good thing for consumers to have certain rights, > then it's good for them to know about those rights. Absolutely!! There's no point in providing protection and then hiding it! Rights I'm not aware of is no protection at all. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Marino could think that this is a mistake. Is it "a mistake" to require warning messages on consumer products if they're dangerous? Is it "a mistake" to require that a person be told his rights when s/he is arrested? Is it "a mistake" to require lending institutions to tell customers that have been denied credit where the credit reports came from and that they have a right to get a copy of it? And on and on ... To reiterate: I believe that if the good service providers and/or government regulators don't do something to make consumers more at ease with allowing 900/976 calls from their phones, the bad ones, combined with fraudulent callers, will eventually cause a significant portion of the customer base to dry up and go away. Bob Holloway, Unisys Corp., 2476 Swedesford Rd., Paoli, PA 19301 {For personal replys, delete "SpamCan" from address} ------------------------------ From: tgronke@teleport.com (Tom Gronke) Subject: Is Boston 617/781 area code split in permission period? Date: 11 Sep 1997 14:58:34 -0700 Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in Boston? I work in a company based in Oregon, and our Burlington, MA office reports the 781 area code went into effect 01-Sept-97, but they've received complaints of callers from Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Denver being unable to reach them using the new area code, but still able to reach them using the old 617- number. I found I can reach them both by the 617 and 781 numbers from the 503 area code. ------------ PepsiCo and Telefones de Mexico have announced a joint venture for selling fast food and long distance called Taco Bell. ------------------------------ From: Nathan Duehr Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 11:37:45 -0600 Organization: ConferTech International In response to message about credit card billings of telephone charges: I have a corporate credit card with Midland Marine Bank, and I received a call after using the card on a recent business trip from a GTE Airphone. Seems that the bank calls any customer who has a telephone-related charge on their bill before the bills go out to confirm that the customer actually made those calls. If policies like these are in place at banks, it's pretty obvious that we really need legislation to protect consumers from these bloodsuckers, in my opinion, and I'm not one to ever request new legislation if I can help it. Thankfully, the charge was mine, but I still appreciate Midland Marine for calling to check. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Sep 1997 15:11:33 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > ... There are 3.8 million people who wear MedicAlert bracelets > or neck medallions with the emergency assistance phone number > containing the 209 area code. MedicAlert is based in Turlock, in the > northern area. The decision to keep the 209 area code for MedicAlert > was to avoid the risk of improperly completed phone calls to > MedicAlert which could have life-threatening consequences. > [submitter's comment - I wholeheartedly agree with allowing the > northern part of 209 to keep 209. The MedicAlert issue is enough > reason, ... Huh? There may be good reasons to keep one part or the other in the old code, but that's an awfully flimsy argument. PacBell could easily reserve the one number that appears on the bracelet and forward it to whatever MedicAlert's new number was when they reuse that prefix. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: Herman Ho Subject: Voice Over International Frame Relay Date: 12 Sep 1997 00:18:36 GMT Organization: iSTAR Internet Incorporated Hi, Telecom Media International Italy-Canada Inc. is a subsidiary of Telecom Italia ,the sixth largest carrier worldwide. Telecom Media International is pleased to announce its participation in the Telecom '97 Exhibition presented by the CBTA in Toronto. This is the biggest telecom exhibition every year in Canada. The event will be held from 16th to 18th September 1997 at Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Telecom Media International will have a booth at #401. This year, TMI will be demonstrating the voice over frame relay technology. A frame relay PVC of 64K port will be configured round the world inside our global frame relay network, connecting through Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, New York, and returning toToronto. Visitors can experience the voice quality, face to face without travel to other countries. TMI Tele Media International is our name in the worldwide market. TMI runs over 100 points of presence worldwide to provide global service, e.g. International Managed bandwidth, Frame Relay, Outsourcing, X.25, etc ... For more information, please contact me at (604) 689 8118 or by e-mail at hho@telecom-media-int.ca You can also visit our business web site at: http://www.telecom-media-int.ca Rgds, Herman Ho ------------------------------ From: Glenn Gobeli Subject: Remote Alarm Indication Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 16:58:42 -0400 Organization: Nortel ISDN protocol specifications require an RAI signal to be transmitted for the duration of the alarm condition, but for at least one second (see ANSI T1.403, section 9.1). I am seeking to determine why there is the "at least one second" clause. Any input would be appreciated. Glenn Gobeli respond here or at: gobeli@technologist.com ------------------------------ From: rickch19@sgi.netxx Subject: Request for Recommendations: Cordless Phones With CallerID Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 13:03:11 GMT Organization: W. PA Scanner http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1060/ Looking for recommendations on cordless phones that meet the following guidelines: Must Have: 1) Caller ID Display on remote handset 2) Scrambled Audio (Secure Clear, SecureGuard etc.) or Digital Spread Specturm, NO clear voice analog phones considered. The following are additional criteria: 3) 900MHz preferred, but 46/49MHz will be considered if 1 & 2 are met. 4) Prefer Panasonic, others considered. 5) Do not need voice mail, pager forward etc. just a cordless phone. My Nortel 9516 phone will do the answering as soon as it arrives from Damark; 6) A two line version would be a major plus, but not required. 7) All digital 900MHz would be a major plus too, but again not required. If you've got a phone like this your comments welcome. Sources for phones that meet the above are welcome too. Thanks in advance. ** Remove xx in email address to email me! ** Western Pennsylvania Scanner Frequency Page http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1060/ Radio Scanner Web Ring - Find a scanner web site quickly! http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1060/scnrng.htm Spice Girls ! ! http://channel3.vmg.co.uk/spicegirls Pursuant to US Code, Title 47, Chapter 5, Subchapter II, '227, any and all nonsolicited commercial E-mail sent to this address is subject to a download and archival fee in the amount of $500 US. E-mailing denotes acceptance of these terms. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: CDMA vs. TDMA Confusion Date: Thu, 11 Sep 97 22:03:33 -0400 Organization: DIGEX, Inc. On Wed, 10 Sep 1997 08:58:06 -0700, Phil.Ritter@zool.AirTouch.COM wrote: > The FCC rule is that you cannot own more than 40 Mhz of spectrum > dedicated to voice Commercial Mobile Wireless Service (CMRS) in he > same market. CMRS services include Cellular, E-SMR (like Nextel) and > PCS. Since a cellular license is for 25 Mhz and the D-F block PCS > licenses are 10 Mhz each, you most certainly can own both celluar and > PCS in the same market (e.g., Cellular plus D block PCS is 35 Mhz). > Some carriers, notably AT&T, have taken this a bit further and argued > that proportionate shares of ownership are what matters (e.g., if you > own 50% of a cellular market, you only "own" 12.5 Mhz). Based upon > this argument, they purchased both the D&E block PCS licenses in Los > Angeles in spite of being 50% owner of LA Cellular. The rule *used to be* 40 MHz, with a maximum of 10 MHz PCS + 25 MHz cellular. Before the D/E/F block auction, however, it was changed to 45 MHz total of PCS, cellular, and SMR, with no special cellular/PCS limit. So unless ATT owns some SMR, they are fully entitled to hold an attributable interest in 25 MHz cellular and two 10 MHz PCS blocks, as in your example in LA. Michael D. Sullivan, Bethesda, Maryland, USA mds@access.digex.net, avogadro@well.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #243 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Sep 14 08:11:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA22969; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 08:11:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 08:11:54 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709141211.IAA22969@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #244 TELECOM Digest Sun, 14 Sep 97 08:11:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 244 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Canadian Government Contract to AT&T "A Slap in the Face": Union (N Allen) California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert (Mark J. Cuccia) Caller-pay Cellular in Canada (Tom Trotter) AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen (Dave Fiedler) Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities (Alan Boritz) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (S. Kleinedler) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (P. Thomson) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (Jerry Wolf) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (The Old Bear) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (Jon I. Kamens) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (John 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 00:08:36 EDT From: Nigel Allen Subject: Canadian Government Contract to AT&T "A Slap in the Face": Union Organization: 8 Silver Ave., Toronto, Ontario M6R 1X8, Canada Here is a press release from the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represents technicians and operators at Bell Canada. I don't work for or belong to the CEP, but I thought that the press release might be of interest to readers of this newsgroup. (As a footnote, unionized employees at AT&T Canada Long Distance Services Company, the former Unitel, are represented by a rival union, the Canadian Association of Communications and Allied Workers. The press release ignores the distinction between AT&T Corporation and its partly-owned Canadian affiliate AT&T Canada Long Distance Services Company, but nonetheless makes some interesting points.) GOVERNMENT CONTRACT TO AT&T ``A SLAP IN THE FACE'' OTTAWA, Sept. 12 -- Canada's largest telephone workers' union is outraged at the federal government's decision to award a major contract for its lucrative long-distance telephone business to American-based AT&T. Minister of Public Works Alfonso Gagliano announced today that AT&T will receive a $20-million contract, while Bell Canada will receive a $10 million contract for phone service. ``At a time when Bell Canada and the Stentor group of Canadian phone companies are struggling to live up to regulations that keep jobs and affordable service in Canada, here comes this slap in the face from their own government,'' says Fred Pomeroy, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which represents 30,000 telephone workers across the country. ``With unemployment hovering around nine percent, the government should be doing all it can to promote the employment of Canadians,'' he says, ``instead of filling the coffers of American multinationals.'' ``AT&T employs few Canadians. It operates largely from across the border, using mostly sales personnel here. ``On the other hand, Bell Canada and the other phone companies which are members of the Stentor group, are major job providers here in Canada.'' In addition, Pomeroy notes that ``because of the government's own regulations, Bell invests heavily in Canadian research and development, and is required to provide universal service at affordable rates. ``AT&T, meanwhile, is under no obligation to provide service across the country.'' For further information: Michelle Walsh, (613) 230-5200 or 230-5800, ext. 232 ------------ Forwarded to the TELECOM Digest by Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ndallen@interlog.com http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1383/telecom.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:14:21 -0500 From: Mark J. Cuccia Subject: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert Re, the recent reports of next year's split of California's 209 NPA: MedicAlert's main offices are in the Stocton CA area in the northern part of what is presently 209, while Fresno CA (a more populated area) is in the southern part of current 209. So, it seems that due to the large number of MedicAlert pendants and bracelet auto-dialers, _supposedly_ pre-programmed with a 209-nxx-xxxx number, that the northern part of current NPA 209 will retain the 209 code, while Fresno and the southern part will change to a (yet to be announced) new code. Could someone explain to me exactly _HOW_ these MedicAlert devices work? I was under the impression that a _LOCAL_ telephone number of a _local_ hospital or emergency reporting center would be dialed upon pressing the 'panic' button, _or_ at least a toll-FREE 800 (or 888) number would be programmed-in to be dialed. Do all MedicAlert signaling devices throughout the US dial-out to a California 209 (toll) number? If a toll-free 800/888 number is auto-dialed, as long as the reporting center doesn't change their toll-free number or translated "POTS" number, and the number is _properly_ programed into the toll-free portability databases, and translated and routed in the LEC/LD networks, then splitting NPA 209 with the southern/Fresno area keeping 209 and the Stocton (MedicAlert) area changing should only require the NPA translation/routing changes in the 800/888 database and in the particular LD carrier's switches itself. If a _local_ number is dialed upon hitting the 'panic' number, _any_ area undergoing an NPA split might require the MedicAlert CPE-based signaling equipment to be reprogrammed, if that number is in the splitting-off area. Of course, where overlays are implemented, _mandatory_ ten-digit dialing must come about. This does _NOT_ require _any_ changes of existing area codes in _existing_ telephone numbers, which means calls routing to the affected area from _outside_ don't have to do anything different. However, all local dialing _within_ the affected area now _HAS_ to be dialed on a mandatory ten-digit basis. Of course, this means that _ALL_ auto-dialing devices _MUST_ be set to dial the (existing) area code on existing pre-programmed numbers. Eventually, overlays (with associated mandatory ten-digit dialing) is going to _HAVE_ to become the norm. This endless splitting and carving up of area codes -- (a) including ones already recently split -- (b) AS WELL AS splitting an area code which ITSELF had split off from an existing area code only a few years ago -- is ridiculous and maddening! (a) OH 216 split off 330 in 1996, and then split off 440 a few months ago. FL 904 split off 352 in 1995, and then split off 850 a few months ago. WA 206 split off 360 in 1995, and then split off _both_ 425 and 253 earlier this year. TN 615 split off 425 in 1995, and is not splitting off 931 this month. The Caribbean 809 splits could be counted here, too - but that is a 'special' case. (b) NC 910 took effect only in _LATE_ 1993 - _it_ will split soon! MI 810 took effect only in _LATE_ 1993 - _it_ split just a few months ago! TX 210 took effect only in late 1992 - it had a 3-way split earlier this year! (And let's not forget the maddening splits in the Chicago metro area, including the forthcoming relief needed for the 'new' 847 NPA; and also the crazy split routines throughout the rest of California!) There are going to be more and more of these types of splits for several more years, until people/government/etc. _FINALLY_ realize that overlays and ten-digit dialing is the better way to go. In the meantime, I'm afraid that the NANP/DDD network is first going to scream: I'M FALLING, AND I CAN'T GET UP! ------------ NWORLASKCG0 (BellSouth #1AESS Class-5 Local "Seabrook" 504-24x-) NWORLAIYCM1 (BellSouth-Mobility Hughes-GMH-2000 Cellular-MTSO NOL) NWORLAMA0GT (BellSouth DMS-100/200 fg-B/C/D Accss-Tandem "Main" 504+) NWORLAMA20T (BellSouth DMS-200 TOPS:Opr-Srvcs-Tandem "Main" 504+053+) NWORLAMA04T (AT&T #4ESS Class-2 Toll 060-T / 504-2T "Main" 504+) JCSNMSPS06T (AT&T #5ESS OSPS:Operator-Services-Tandem 601-0T 601+121) MARK_J._CUCCIA__PHONE/WRITE/WIRE/CABLE:__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: Tom Trottier Subject: Caller-pay Cellular in Canada Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 13:35:47 -0400 FYI - In Bell Canada's "Bell Mobility" cellular service, they are offering a 600 area code where the caller pays for the airtime charges. Ciao, Tom Trottier, MBA Senior Technical Architect SHL Systemhouse Ltd. Ottawa Global Development Centre 50 O'Connor St. Suite 501, Ottawa K1P 6L2 Canada +1 613 236-6604x5539 fax 232-5182 ttrottier@shl.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 09:37:47 CDT From: Dave Fiedler Subject: AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen Hi Pat: We've talked in the past about cellular antennae being put in church towers and disguised as pine trees. I wanted to share with you what is happening by us. I live in West St. Louis County, Missouri. I do free-lance writing for the local paper, and so I attend a lot of the city council meetings in the local municipalities. It turns out AT&T wants to donate a flagpole to be placed in the local city park in Ballwin, MO. Patriotism, honor, and all that. What caught my attention is that as the flagpole's height will exceed the local maximum for such things, to put it up will require a special use permit, public hearings, and all that. When I heard them say that the *minimum* height of the flagpole is 50 feet, I nearly fell out of my chair. What kind of flagpole is this, I wondered. And why the big deal about the height? What AT&T (and the City of Ballwin) wants to keep quiet, I think, is that this gracious gift to the City is in actuality a cell-phone tower. Has this approach been tried elsewhere? Dave Fiedler St. Louis, MO ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: BellSouth Refuses 900 Service to Charities Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 21:54:49 -0400 In article ,crh1@trsvr.tr.unisys. com.SpamCan (Bob Holloway) wrote: > Nicholas Marino wrote: ... >> I believe that it is wrong and unfair to me to encourage certain >> people to not pay their 900 bills. The FCC mandated statements on >> phone bills do just that. > I've been following this thread with considerable interest as I am > currently disputing several 900 number charges. Mostly the discussion > up to this point by Mr. Marino has assumed that the person making the > calls is in fact the telephone subscriber (or a member of his/her > family) and that refusal to pay is unwarrented/unjustified. There is > also the other side of the coin: calls to 900/976 numbers by someone > that is not the phone subscriber or someone he/she is responsible for. > This is the case I currently find myself in. Excuse me, but we DID cover the issue of the caller not being the subscriber, and Mr. Marino insisted that it made no matter. Mr. Marino's position was very clear: > Alan Boritz wrote: >> It's not "ridiculous" to NOT force a single parent into >> bankruptcy because an unscrupulous IP entices a minor to >> call a 900 service without full awareness of the financial >> consequences. The disclaimer is to remind consumers that >> they have recourse against unscrupulous IP's. It needs to >> be there since most telephone customers are not as >> well informed of their rights as we are. > There is a strong tendency among liberal-minded folks to prop > up a weak argument with a sob story. Mr. Boritz is a clear > example. In addition, his attempt at humor shows his very > anti-business bias." Mr. Marino doesn't care WHO made the calls for which he generates billing, he just wants to get paid, whether the subscriber is cheated, or deceived, or not. > The calls if referred to above were apparently made last October. As > soon as the bill came in I called the phone company to find out what > the numbers were -- they were sex line numbers. I checked our > activities and no one was home at the time these calls were made. The > phone company removed them from our bill, and we also immediately put > a block on for 900/976 numbers. I thought that was the end of it, but > no! Four months later, I get a bill from the service provider. I > call and tell them I didn't make the calls, and they say the calls > came from my number so I have to pay for them. I asked who made the > calls; they said they didn't know and didn't care. I asked if it was > a child or an adult; again they said they didn't know and didn't care. > A couple of rounds with them and they turn it over to a collection > agency. We tell them the same thing and get the same response plus > they are reporting it as a bad debt to the credit bureaus. Your experience is not at all unique. I've found more often than not that the local telco may be slow to implement 900 blocking, or may simply blow you off, assuming that it's no problem at all to write off the fraud, than to listen to you. What Mr. Marino doesn't realize is that after the moment that your telco confirms 900 blocking, you have absolutely NO responsibility to pay for the billed VAN service no matter WHO made the call. More often than not, the blocking service is ordered because the customer, for one reason or another, is unable to do the blocking, themselves. We had the same problem with City of New York accounts, where NY Tel had promised to block the calls, and the same problem with C & P on foreign exchange service in the Washington, DC, area. In that case the customer couldn't implement any kind of area code blocking, since it was (original) Centrex service that had no selective blocking through COS (it was terribly crude, but a great incentive for interconnect systems ;). I had the same problem at another place at which I worked, since the Horizon switch had only rudementary blocking features by COS. We had to pay NY Tel for the blocking service (tariff permitted it, so I couldn't challenge it), but it took MONTHS for NY Tel to implement it on all of our DDCO's. In the meantime, I turned back EVERY 900 and 976 call that appeared on the bills (even had to fight with a customer service supervisor, while she was manning the phones during a strike). While some telco's would tell you to take a leap if the customer continues to call and be billed for 900 numbers after asking for blocking, this situation was a little different, since NY Tel had sold us the switch (before the AT&T split). As the customer, I don't care; I ordered the call restriction, it was available, per PSC900, and I wanted it done. I have absolutely NO sympathy for the VAN's who were stiffed for their services, since the billing should not have been generated in the first place. NY Tel caused the problem (by not implementing the blocking service), so they can take it up with them, or go out of business, entirely their choice. > For example, I believe there are quite a few ways that calls can be > made without a subscribers permission or authority: tapping the copper > line anywhere between the CO and the subscribers phone, using a > cordless phone on the same frequency as one already on the line, > actually entering the house (or business for that matter) without > permission (breaking and entering or just walk in if the door is open > and use the phone) ... I presume that someone with a little more > knowledge of the telephone network than I have could come up with even > easier ways that don't even require close physical proximity to the > subscribers line/house. It can also happen at the central office, as has been covered in this forum more than once. There are many ways fraud can appear on your phone bill. Follow up all fraud billings, and harassment, with written complaints to your telco's regulatory agency in your state. Telco's management raises, and rate increases, are keyed to those complaints. The more complaints, the less freedom the telco has to do what they want. Give them a reason to do something about harassment over fraud charged through your telephone billing account. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure it can happen at the central office! Rare perhaps, but some telco employees have been known to abuse and misuse their privileges. I have to sympathize a little with Mr. Marino however. If a call is generated from an actual subscriber instrument -- i.e. not from the frames and not from the pole behind your house or someone down the block who gets into a multiple on the cable -- and the IP delivers his services in good faith, however little value some people may place on the service provided, then the IP has a right to expect payment. The IP is not really in a position to detirmine if the subscriber instrument is in the hands of 'a single parent whose imbicile and bratty child cannot be controlled' or if it is in hands of a legitimate user who happens to like and intends to pay for his service. He can make that detirmination once the line is blocked of course, but until then the IP really can do little but try to be very cautious of cases where fraud might occur. There is, it seems to me, far too many cases of consumers who are either just plain dumb, have a bit of larceny in their heart or both who are more than willing to pass their mistakes off and get someone else to pay for them. It can range from the example we are discussing now -- where a subscriber actually makes a call and gets billed, and then does not understand why they are being expected to pay -- to things as minor as losing a coin in a payphone due to misdialing and wanting someone to give you the quarter back. I've seen people lose coins in vending machines because they pressed the wrong buttons and then raise *such* a stink that the world had to stop while they got refunded. I see this with people who cannot -- literally do not understand how to -- use payphones correctly. They feel telco or the owner of the phone or anyone, really -- anyone but them -- should be responsible. Their answer is always the same: "I did not know it would do that"; "No one ever explained to me .."; "How was I supposed to know, it is your obligation to tell me". Always it is some kind of sob-story and aren't you ashamed for ripping off this consumer. When I say the word 'consumer' sometimes I have to almost spit it out of my mouth with some disgust. I'll grant you there are dishonest IP's. But quite a few are honest even if their information or service is essentially useless and they deserve within reason to be paid if you choose -- note I said *you*, not your neighbor who got into your pairs or your PBX user who found a way to defraud the switchboard -- to avail yourself of what was offered. When the *true subscriber* makes such a call, then he ought to get sued for payment if necessary and when his response is he did not know or was never told or cannot control his children or whatver the response would be that life can get pretty expensive for a person such as him- self since no one is going to keep covering for him. PAT] ------------------------------ From: srkleine@midway.uchicago.edu (Steven R. Kleinedler) Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Organization: The University of Chicago Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:12:44 GMT In article , Tom Gronke wrote: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? I work in a company based in Oregon, and our Burlington, MA > office reports the 781 area code went into effect 01-Sept-97, but > they've received complaints of callers from Detroit, Philadelphia, > Washington DC, and Denver being unable to reach them using the new area > code, but still able to reach them using the old 617- number. I found > I can reach them both by the 617 and 781 numbers from the 503 area > code. Yes. It's permissive till December 1, but they're trying to get the permissive period to go to January 1, because of the dilemma of Watertown and Belmont -- they were originally to go in 781, but then the legislature okayed them to stay in 617. Then a bunch of other suburbs wanted to stay in 617, the legislature okayed it, but the acting governor vetoed it. Then, he said, in fairness that Watertown and Belmont should have to go to 781 too, even though they were told a few months back that they could stay in 617. Right now, Watertown and Belmont are in limbo, and that's why they want to extend the permissive period, because no one's sure what will happen. All the more reason this stupid split should have been an overlay instead. Pah! My generation isn't meaningless. It has a FAQ. Steve Kleinedler ------------------------------ From: Pierre Thomson Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 08:42:28 -0400 Organization: Bruderhof Communities Reply-To: pthomson@bruderhof.com Tom Gronke wrote: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? I work in a company based in Oregon, and our Burlington, MA > office reports the 781 area code went into effect 01-Sept-97, but > they've received complaints of callers from Detroit, Philadelphia, > Washington DC, and Denver being unable to reach them using the new area > code, but still able to reach them using the old 617- number. I found > I can reach them both by the 617 and 781 numbers from the 503 area > code. Hi Tom, The details of this area code split can be found at: http://frodo.bruderhof.com/areacode/ac781.htm and 50 or so other splits since 1/1/95 and into the near future: http://frodo.bruderhof.com/areacode/ Yes, the permissive dialing period has started. But, as is often the case, not all carriers across the country are ready for it. Each has to make additions to routing tables in their switching equipment. Sometimes this only happens weeks into the permissive dialing period. The appropriate remedy is for callers who cannot reach the new area code to call their local telco trouble number, and report the problem. They may find that the trouble operators have no clue about the split. I have heard of cases where even high level supervisors need a lot of explanation before they catch on! Good luck, Pierre Thomson Telecom Manager Rifton Enterprises ------------------------------ From: wolf@xyz.bbn.com (Jerry Wolf) Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 08:51:58 -0400 Organization: GTE Internetworking, Powered by BBN In article , tgronke@teleport.com (Tom Gronke) wrote: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? I work in a company based in Oregon, and our Burlington, MA > office reports the 781 area code went into effect 01-Sept-97, but > they've received complaints of callers from Detroit, Philadelphia, > Washington DC, and Denver being unable to reach them using the new area > code, but still able to reach them using the old 617- number. I found > I can reach them both by the 617 and 781 numbers from the 503 area > code. I heard on WBZ (Boston station) earlier this week that AT&T long distance apparently hasn't enabled 781 access (in some areas, perhaps?). My mom in AC 610 (Pennsylvania, using AT&T) hasn't been able to dial us using 781, but can using 617. ** Remove xyz. from my address to reply by e-mail (spam defense). ** ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 10:15:54 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? In TELECOM Digest, Tom Gronke wrote: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? I recently had someone else ask me the same question, so let me just forward a copy of my response which should answer your questions: At 08:58 PM 9/3/97 -0400, Pete Lurie wrote: > Sorry to bug you, but I have a quick question and figured you'd know. > Do you know if the two new area code changes for MA actually went into > effect 9/1 or were they delayed until 10/1 as was discussed on the > news and paper last week? The most current article in the {Boston > Globe} doesn't say. The folks who were in the parts of 508 that were being changed to 781 and 978 were indeed changed. But the two 'controversial' changes of those in the 617 to 781 did not happen yet, pending final resolution of the Watertown/Belmont issue. This is how it appears to have settled out (with the still pending exceptions of Watertown and Belmont): Communities remaining in 617 Belmont(*), Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Newton, Milton, Quincy, Somerville, Watertown(*), Winthrop (*)Belmont and Watertown were supposed to change to the 781 area code, but were exempted by a rider which was inserted into legislation approving the Massachusetts state budget. Subsequent attempts by the legislature to keep a number of additional towns from being changed to the new 781 area code were ultimately overturned. Because the Belmont/Watertown exception was enacted separately, the matter remains in limbo pending further action of the legislature, the governor and the P.U.C. Communities remaining in 508 Ascushnet, Ashland, Attleboro, Auburn, Avon, Barnstable, Bellingham, Berkley, Blackstone, Bourne, Boylston, Brewster, Bridgewater, Brockton, Brookfield, Carver, Charlton, Chatham, Chilmark, Dartmouth, Dennis, Dighton, Douglas, Dover, Dudley, E. Bridgewater, E. Brookfield, Eastham, Easton, Edgartown, Fairhaven, Fall River, Falmouth, Foxboro, Framingham, Franklin, Freetown, Gay Head, Gosnold, Grafton, Harwich, Holden, Holliston, Hopedale, Hopkinton, Leicester, Lakeville, Mansfield, Marion, Marlborough, Mashpee, Mattapoisett, Medfield, Medway, Mendon, Middleborough, Millbury, Milford, Millis, Millville, Nantucket, Natick, New Bedford, New Braintree, Norfolk, N. Attleboro, Northborough, Northbridge, N. Brookfield, Norton, Oak Bluffs, Oakham, Orleans, Oxford, Paxton, Plainville, Plymouth, Provincetown, Raynham, Rehoboth, Rochester, Rutland, Sandwich, Seekonk, Sherborn, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Southbridge, Somerset, Spencer, Sturbridge, Sutton, Swansea, Taunton, Tisbury, Truro, Upton, Uxbridge, Walpole, Wareham, Wayland, Webster, Wellfleet, Westborough, W. Boylston, W. Bridgewater, W. Brookfield, Westport, W.Tisbury, Worcester, Wrentham, Yarmouth Communities in 978 Acton, Amesbury, Andover, Ashburnham, Ashby, Athol, Ayer, Barre, Berlin, Beverly, Billerica, Bolton, Boxborough, Boxford, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Clinton, Concord, Danvers, Dracut, Dunstable, Essex, Fitchburg, Gardner, Georgetown, Gloucester, Groton, Groveland, Hamilton, Harvard, Haverhill, Hubbardston, Hudson, Ipswich, Lancaster, Lawrence, Leominster, Littleton, Lowell, Lunenburg, Manchester, Maynard, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, Newbury, Newburyport, New Salem, N. Andover, N. Reading, Orange, Peabody, Pepperell, Petersham, Phillipston, Princeton, Rockport, Rowley, Royalston, Salem, Salisbury, Shirley, Sterling, Stow, Sudbury, Templeton, Tewksbury, Topsfield, Townsend, Tyngsboro, Warwick, Wendell, Wenham, Westford, Westminster, W. Newbury, Wilmington, Winchendon. Communities in 781 Abington, Arlington, Bedford, Braintree, Burlington, Canton, Cohasset, Dedham, Duxbury, Halifax, Hanover, Hanson, Hingham, Holbrook, Hull, Kingston, Lexington, Lincoln, Lynn, Lynnfield, Malden, Marblehead, Marshfield, Medford, Melrose, Nahant, Needham, Norwell, Norwood, Pembroke, Plympton, Randolph, Reading, Revere, Rockland, Saugus, Scituate, Sharon, Stoneham, Stoughton, Swampscott, Wakefield, Waltham, Wellesley, Weston, Westwood, Weymouth, Whitman, Winchester, Woburn I am located in one of the communties remaining in the 617 area code. Now here is an interesting experiment I just did. I phoned a friend in Hull (was 617, now 781) 925- and it works dialing either way. Similarly, a call to Needham (was 617, now 781) 444- works fine with the new 781 area code. This is as expected during the 'permissive dialing' period. However, a call to Watertown 855-2151 cannot be dialed with the new 781 area code. The result is an intercept after the 1-781-855- is dialed saying "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again." Same result when calling Belmont as 1-781-484- . So, indeed these two towns are still in the 617 area code and not in the 781. Meanwhile, we have this permissive dialing for three months. (And, here was the one place the legislature could have done something useful by negotiating a six-month permissive dialing period to give folks more time to use up business cards, letterhead, etc.) Cheers, Will The Old Bear ------------------------------ From: jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us (Jonathan I. Kamens) Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Date: 12 Sep 1997 20:10:49 GMT Organization: OpenVision Technologies, Inc. Yes, the switch of some towns in 617 to 781 has begun, and yes, both area codes are supposed to work right now. Jonathan Kamens | Veritas Software Corporation | jik@cam.ov.com ------------------------------ Date: 12 Sep 1997 02:42:44 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. In article is written: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? The permissive period started 9/1 and runs through 12/1. The test number is 781-575-6748. There were some silly last minute political shenanigans that tried to stuff most of 781 back into 617, until telco and the DPU reminded people that they'd run out of 617 phone numbers by the end of the year and nobody could get a new phone. (Quotes in the papers used the phrase "third-world" a lot.) The last I heard, most but not all of it was unwound, but since it was tacked onto two separate bills in the legislature, some of 781 may be waiting for that to be wrapped up. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #244 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Sep 14 08:52:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA24788; Sun, 14 Sep 1997 08:52:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 08:52:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709141252.IAA24788@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #245 TELECOM Digest Sun, 14 Sep 97 08:52:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 245 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson GSM Encryption and the U.S. Congress (John R. Covert) "Exchange Boundary" Roadside Signs (Ken Eikert) Re: 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges (Lars Poulsen) Re: ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? (L. Poulsen) Re: SITA / Sprint X.25 Gateway (Gunter Gruhser) Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? (Eli Mantel) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (Dan Seyb) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Eric Ewanco) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Brian Elfert) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Sat, 13 Sep 97 12:39:22 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: GSM Encryption and the U.S. Congress Has the U.S. Congress, which appears to be about to pass the first-ever law restricting the use of encryption (previously laws only restricted the _export_ of encryption products) just made it impossible to continue use of the GSM standard in the United States? A bill which was intended to _ease_ restrictions on export of crypto was amended on Thursday, 11 September 1997, to instead place further restrictions on export and to restrict for the first time what is permitted within the country. The media are reporting that it requires all encryption products which are manufactured in, used in, or imported into the United States to store a trapdoor key with some entity which would give the key out to law enforcement in the event of a court order. Since GSM encryption is a standard implemented within the SIMcard, it may not be possible to do this. Of course, GSM encryption is only mobile to base station, and the authorities can certainly (with a court order) wiretap in the mobile switch, but that may be neither sufficient for their intent nor provided for in the pending law. This whole thing is stupid, of course, because if the crooks are smart enough to use encryption, they will be smart enough to use an encryption product without key escrow. "When keys are outlawed, only outlaws will have keys." /john ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 13:03:31 -0700 From: Ken Eikert Subject: "Exchange Boundary" Roadside Signs Here in metro Atlanta, Southern Bell used to erect small "Exchange Boundary" roadside signs at the outer limits of the Atlanta local calling area. There are, of course, many exchanges *inside* the Atlanta local calling area, but I've only seen these signs posted at the Atlanta local calling area frontier. (I've also seen these signs in former Southern/South Central Bell territory outside metro Atlanta.) The Atlanta local calling area was greatly expanded in 1995, but there are many of the old "Exchange Boundary" signs still standing. What was the purpose of these signs? I've surmised that they may have been erected to let builders know exactly where the local/LD frontier was, since the issue of local calling to Atlanta was (and still is) a contentious issue in the exurbs. I can also see where they might be useful in marking the boundary between different LECs, though in Atlanta's case they were often erected at the boundary between two Southern Bell exchanges. How common are telco boundary roadsigns? Are there places in the U.S. with signs marking area code or LATA boundaries? ------------------------------ From: lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges Date: 13 Sep 1997 17:44:49 -0700 Organization: RNS / Meret Communications In article vista@earthling.net (Rick Vista) writes: > How much does DSS (Digital Spread Spectrum) really add to the range of > a 900 Mhz phone? Can I really expect to get 3000-4000 feet out of one > of these phones? I'd like to pick one up, but at the prices I've seen > (most are in the upper $200s or lower $300s), I want to make sure that > they will perform as advertised. > Also, does anybody have recommendations as to what DSS 900 Mhz phones > to buy and which ones to avoid? I have had really bad experiences with cordless phones. Different brands; different generations of technology. Despite the promises on the boxes of "maximum legal range" and "300 to 600 feet" I usually had a bad buzz when I was halfway out of the bedroom with the base (i.e. 10 to 20 feet away from the base). Same in the remote access test lab at my workplace. So I had basically given up, when I got motivated to try again. At my workplace, we are in an almost windowless building in a business park. Outer walls of reinforced concrete slab hung on a steel frame. Interior walls bolted together out of steel and aluminum stachions covered with sheetrock. Drop ceilings suspended on a steel grid. Everything grounded. Since my boss and half of the people on my project are 3000 miles away, I get a lot of urgent calls when I'm roaming the building, supervising a dozen engineers. When I didn't pick up, and did not hear the paging speakers through closed doors in the offices of co-workers, my boss suspected me of not being here. Not that he'd mention it so I could set him straight, of course. I needed a cordless that worked. I picked up a $350 Lucent 9510, which now sits on my desk, in parallel with my Panasonics speakerphone, its headset it my pocket. It covers the entire building, and about a block down the street, and my problem is solved. It works so well, that my principal hardware design engineer went and got one at once when he saw it in action. Several more will undoubtedly show up soon. Since the first store I visited didn't carry the Lucent 9510, but did carry a Sanyo 900 MHz digital SS unit for $127, I would probably have bought the Sanyo, had they not been out of stock. My next visit was to Sears, which did have the Sanyo sitting next to the Lucent, so I could compare boxes. The Sanyo claimed the same 300 feet as the 49MHz units, the Lucent claimed 4000 feet. Unfortunately, they were out of stock on the Lucent. On to Staples, which had the Lucent on the shelf, and after 20 minutes of waiting, I even got someone to take it out of the locker so I could buy it. I am not sure that it is the 900 MHz SS technology per se that provides the range; just that the first 900 SS units happened to be designed for markets that needed high power. It looks like the SS chipset is now moving to less expensive devices, and I would expect these to have no better range than the 49MHz models. As for whether the range is near 4000 feet: Probably not, unless you put the base in the attic of a farmhouse on a hilltop and measure across an open field. But getting 200 feet through a maze of grounded steel grid sure beats getting 20 feet of raspy buzz out of a "300-600 ft" unit. Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@OSICOM.COM OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit, formerly RNS) 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Telephone: +1-805-562-3158 ------------------------------ From: lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) Subject: Re: ISDN Hunt Groups in GTE-land: is Ascend Stupid, or is GTE? Date: 13 Sep 1997 18:18:24 -0700 Organization: RNS / Meret Communications In article rlm@syseca-us.com writes: > connectivity. Some time ago, I ordered up a rotary (hunt group) for > the various channels from GTE, our LEC. Said rotary in place, I have > yet to get it to work. Ascend says it's a GTE problem (I'm inclined In article ronnie@twitch.mit.edu (Ron Schnell) wrote in response: > I had the same problem, but it was a BRI line, ... > ... since [my ISP's] Ascend MAX can only have one phone number per > profile, I needed to set up a rotary for my two little B channels. > ... Apparently, when you program the switch, there is a > difference between a data rotary and a voice rotary. > ... Another problem was that the B channels were set up to > handle multiple calls on each, instead of just one on each. This, > apparently, is not an issue unless you want to do hunting. Been there, done that. I can get really emotional, and start looking for someone to strangle when I think too much about my encounters with GTE provisioning. They never get anything right the first time, and even after they finally get it right, it is likely to get messed up next time there is a change order either somewhere in one of OUR centrex groups, or on someone else's line that has a number or a circuit-ID similar to ours. 1) Would you believe that during a period when we were not using the voice features on any of our lines, they dropped their voice capabilities? 2) Would you believe that they never issued us a written list of how our 50 BRI lines are configured, and now that we are asking for one, so that we can review it, and request changes as needed to make sure that they will support the services that we are migrating to them, they say it will take at least a month and a substantial service charge to provide such a list *IF IT IS AVAILABLE AT ALL, WHICH THEY CAN"T SAY FOR SURE, EVEN TWO WEEKS AFTER WE FIRST REQUESTED IT* ? 3) I am a design engineer, putting the final touches on a device quite similar to the above mentioned Ascend MAX family. Would you believe that GTE apparently does not have any technical planning engineers that they can put me in contact with, to learn what limitations apply and what guidelines they would like us to write for out customers on how to request provisioning for such devices in a manner that would be the least painful for both the telco and its ISP customer? In the absence of a qualified reply from GTE through channels, maybe someone reading the Digest can tell me: - Are there any GTE employees with the knowledge I need? If so, would you be willing to give me their name and phone number? (Anonymous contributions are welcome!) - Do the switch manufacturers have support representatives who could help out with such questions as well? As an example of the kind of question I need answered, here is just one: - Our unit can provide a bank of 4 to 24 Basic Rate ISDN ports, capable of serving digital HDLC calls (from ISDN terminal adapters) or digitally delivered modem calls from users with V.34 modems. It would obviously be simpler for everyone concerned if the whole bank of lines could be a single hunt group. Since the calls from ISDN TA's usually are tagged as 64 Kbps data, and the modem calls arrive tagged as voice, this hunt group needs to be capable of receiving both kinds of calls. Our experience so far seems to indicate that the hunt group for data is a different class of service than the hunt group for "voice" (modems). a) Is it really not possible on a 5ESS to configure a hunt number for "universal service"? b) If it is technically doable, is it likely that the tariff is written to prohibit it, or is this just lack of knowledge in the business office? c) If a single pilot number is not feasible, is it possible to configure this with two separate pilot numbers that hunt to the same set of lines? d) for each of the useful configurations, what are the "good words" that will get the right thing configured? I have asked our GTE sales representative if we can have copies of the relevant sections of the provisioning operator manuals for the 5ESS so that we can learn the vocabulary used by the provisioning techs who are just as frustrated as our own engineers when we spend hours - sometimes days - on conference calls to sort out why things are not woirking right. But they say that this documentation is not available to the public, but is provided by Lucent to its carrier customers only under a non-disclosure agreement. For ISDN buffs: Did you know that if your line has "additional call offerings" enabled on a 5ESS switch, you cannot make outgoing voice calls unless your terminal equipment's ISDN signalling stack supports the "terminal management feature" which appears to be the Q.931 name for what the ISDN User Forum calls EKTS (Electronic Key Telephone Services)? But no such restriction applies to data calls? Lars Poulsen Internet E-mail: lars@OSICOM.COM OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit, formerly RNS) 7402 Hollister Avenue Telefax: +1-805-968-8256 Santa Barbara, CA 93117 Telephone: +1-805-562-3158 ------------------------------ From: gu.gru@speed.f.shuttle.de (Gunter Gruhser) Subject: Re: SITA / Sprint X.25 Gateway Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:09:20 GMT Reply-To: gu.gru@speed.f.shuttle.de On Tue, 19 Aug 1997 17:03:35 -0500, Paul J. Smith wrote: > I have a SITA X.25 connection and want to send packets to / receive > packets from a Sprint X.25 network address. Is there any way to do > this? Hi, Yes there is. Interconnections between X.25 networks are realized over X.75 gateway. Every X.25 Carrier has a own DNIC (data network id code), 4 digits dnic and max 11 digits for the rest of x.25 address. With that DNIC are carriers able to route your SVC over an X.75 Gatway to the right (hopefuly) destination network. but you should clarify the folowing items with your Service Provider Equant (former SITA): - whether sita has a possibility to find the way to sprint or vice versa (depends on who initiate the request setup for svc switched virtual circuit) configurations must be done in the routing table (Nortel DPN100 technologie) - has your access point or port by sita the international permission (configuration could be necessary, parameter: in international access and out international acces) - it will only working if you use svc and not pvs - think about the costs (Billing). All the best, Gunter Gruhser Gu.Gru@speed.f.shuttle.de ------------------------------ From: Eli Mantel Subject: Re: Is Boston 617/781 Area Code Split in Permission Period? Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 09:11:47 PDT Tom Gronke (tgronke@teleport.com) wrote: > Does anyone have info or pointers on the 617/781 area code split in > Boston? Here are three useful links: Bellcore maintains details on area code splits at: http://www.bellcore.com/NANP/newarea.html You can get a list of which prefixes are moving to the new area code from Rifton Enterprises at: http://frodo.bruderhof.com/areacode For a list of links to other area code pages, you can check out my own page at: http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/5395/areacode.html > ... our Burlington, MA office reports the 781 area code > went into effect 01-Sept-97, but they've received complaints > of callers ... being unable to reach them using the new area > code... The local and long distance phone companies are =supposed= to get all their equipment programmed to accept the new phone number by the cut date, though there are certainly oversights that do occur, in which case the person experiencing the problem should report the problem to the phone company handling the call. If the people who are having problems are behind a PBX, the most likely cause is that the PBX administrator hasn't gotten around to adding the new area code. I suppose the PBX administrator can claim he has until the end of the permissive dialing period (in thise case, 12/1/97) and still be doing his job properly. Eli Mantel ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 15:31:12 -0400 From: Dan Seyb Rishab Aiyer Ghosh notes: > It would have been nice if Newman got his facts right -- but it's not > really necessary. Actually, I would think getting the facts right would be vital! Otherwise, I could argue that Newman's (and Ghosh's) arguments are worthless because they are both invading Martians. Or I could argue that Goldstein's and Florack's arguments must be believed because their words were passed down from God on golden tablets. (Were they, guys??) More seriously, if the facts are wrong, which even Ghosh admits, any arguments relying on these facts can be correct only by accident. This is not the best way to plan a major overhaul of communications. ------------------------------ From: Eric Ewanco Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: 12 Sep 1997 15:14:49 -0400 Organization: 3Com [this post represents strictly my own opinions] In article Eric Florack writes: >> Most of the Baby Bells began offering such high-speed digital >> services for ISPs in 1997, but the Internet providers have little >> incentive to pay for such services as long as they can convince the >> FCC to allow them to use the local phone lines like ordinary business >> users. > The real reason most ISP's didn't move on it is their customer base > couldn't take advantage of it. To a large degree, that's still true. > The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to > standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k > modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial > incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that > 56k requires. I'm a bit confused here; what do you mean the ITU's "refusal to standardize 56k"? Last I heard they were working hard on it, and pretty quickly for a European bureaucracy. Sure, there are some obstacles (no names mentioned), but it's not like the ITU is "refusing" to standardize 56k. If there is a reason why 56k is delayed, the blame certainly can't be attributed to some volitional deficiency on the part of ITU. >> And in May 1997, the FCC, under intense lobbying from both >> computer companies and Internet users, agreed to continue the ISP >> exemption from access charges, with essentially minor concessions >> given to the local phone companies in raising all charges on second >> phone lines, the logic being these would likely be used for Internet >> connections. Some of the smaller Internet providers complained that >> the additional charges on all their incoming phone lines would hurt >> them, but larger ISPs like America Online declared victory: "We will >> see an increase in our charges, but we do see that on balance we need >> to accept the additional charges because they are flat and they are >> nominal," said Jill Lesser, America Online's deputy director of law >> and public policy. "A permanent access charge would have been orders >> of magnitude worse for AOL. Even at one cent per minute, we would have >> incurred a charge that would have been in the neighborhood of $100 >> million and which we would have had to pass on to the customer. So >> when you look at an increase that is 1/10 of that, that's a fairly >> modest increase." The broad coalition of computer companies had >> successfully protected the subsidized status of Internet providers. > Objection: Your use of the word "subsidy" suggests that the money > lost to this (How can you lose something you never had?) is being > gotten from some other source. That's simply not true. And yet, the > telco's are hardly going broke over this. Here I absolutely agree with you: the author employs a subtle shift in language. He refers to price controls as "subsidies". So simply because the tariffs are set low, he declares this a subsidy. A subsidy is when the government forks over money to keep a profitless but necessary effort afloat. It's not when it regulates a monopoly's prices. Even if we were to grant this, a flaw in his argument is that because ISPs don't pay per minute for receiving calls, this amounts to a "subsidy". But this is the same tariff all businesses pay. If the ISPs are subsidized, so are other businesses. If it really did cost the telco some rate per minute to maintain a connection, then they'd be losing money on other business calls, too. But one can hardly argue that the LECs would structure their business rates below cost! Besides, the model for telco charges is that the one who places the call usually pays for it. If the telcos are losing money, then why do they offer flat rate residential service, that makes this possible? Wouldn't the responsibility lay more logically with flawed tariff structures on the calling end, rather than on the receiving end? The question is whether ISPs should be charged like regular businesses, or like IXCs (who are, by the way, charging the caller per-minute rates, unlike most ISPs). Never mind the fact that IXCs use bandwidth that goes out of the LEC entirely, but ISPs almost exclusively connect to customers of that LEC and, moreover, usually distribute their POPs so as to be near the customers as possible (often using very cheap intra-CO bandwidth). Never mind the fact that ISPs pay big bucks for PRIs and T1s for incoming lines, for outgoing Internet connections, and for connecting POPs. Never mind the fact that they maintain several POPs in a given LEC, all of which money goes to the LEC. Never mind the fact that most of an ISP's customers are in the same LEC, and often pay extra money for more lines and better calling plans (unlike an IXC's customers, which by definition are in another LEC). Never mind the fact that the whole Internet is run on digital telephone lines, which must be a revenue bonanza for the telcos. # __ __ Eric Ewanco # IC | XC eje@world.std.com # ---+--- http://www.wp.com/Eric_Ewanco # NI | KA Framingham, MA; USA ------------------------------ From: belfert@citilink.com (Brian Elfert) Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: 12 Sep 97 20:25:12 GMT Eric Florack writes: > The real reason most ISP's didn't move on it is their customer base > couldn't take advantage of it. To a large degree, that's still true. > The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to > standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k > modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial > incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that > 56k requires. The CCITT no longer exists. It was replaced by the ITU. The ITU is not refusing to standardize 56K. They are currently working on the standard, possibly to be called V.PCM. Because the ITU is a political committee, it does take them quite a while to decide on a standard. Brian ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #245 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 15 08:17:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA27064; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:17:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:17:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709151217.IAA27064@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #246 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Sep 97 08:17:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 246 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bell Atlantic Mobile Alpha/Voicemail Problems & Evaluation (Doug Reuben) Free Voice-mail Introduced in the Netherlands (Hendrik Rood) Re: "Exchange Boundary" Roadside Signs (Richard Taylor) Re: AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen (Stanley Ulbrych) Re: AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen (Robert Casey) Telephone Network Tutorials/Books (MHK) Who Has Experience With CTI on a Samsung DCS PBX? (Marc vd Hoogen) Phoning Home to 5 (Charles Cremer) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dreuben@tiac.net (Douglas Reuben) Subject: Bell Atlantic Mobile Alpha/Voicemail Problems & Evaluation Date: 14 Sep 1997 23:05:09 GMT Organization: Interpage Network Svcs. Inc / +1 510 254-0133 /www.interpage.net I recently posted a message regarding BAMS's new service/pricing plans in conjunction with their service offerings in their New England market(s). In the post, I noted that the alpha messaging service seemed to have a fair share of problems. After some more tests, and a few conversations with product managers at their corporate center in NJ, here's what I found out. First off, the alpha messaging system operates similar to a standard alpha pager: You may "self-dispatch" to it or have an NDC (National Dispatch Center) operator answer messages for you and then type them to the paging terminal for display on your pager. Both services are unlimited, and provide 800 access. (This is a good deal if you need operator dispatch -- NDC is by far the best operator dispatch company in the country. We've tried a lot, and have never been happy with the ones we have tried. NDC is too expensive to offer to our customers, and does not offer an unlimited option, which we wanted for our customers. But apparently BAMS worked out a deal for unlimited messages, or at least that is what they are offering their customers. If the alpha service didn't have as many problems, or if and when they do correct them, the unlimited NDC service would be a very good deal.) BAMS charges $12.95 for the self-dispatch feature, and $23.95 for the operator service. I elected to take the $12.95 since we can self-dispatch and have our own operators, so the rest of this post concerns the self-dispatch feature primarily, but can be applied in most cases to the operator dispatch service as well. There is no "numeric" style service available; a major problem IMO since many people prefer NOT using the operator when they need to enter a simple numeric message. Hopefully, they will offer a numeric interface shortly. (I wrote one on an Apple //e, it couldn't be THAT hard to do! :) ) The messaging service is also limited in that it only allow 55 characters per page. This can be a significant drawback if you require detailed messages, such as e-mail and news items. Most paging companies offer at minimum 80 characters, and we only contract with those which offer 200+. 55 characters is simply too small an allocation to be useful, IMO. (I circumvented this and now send multiple pages per e-mail so I can see more of the actual message, however, this has problems too, as indicated below). The digital phone itself only stores a limited number characters, but there is no reason why if it can store 24 * 55 character messages it can't store 10 * 150 character messages as well. Again, this limit is a MAJOR drawback and something BAMS should seriously reconsider. I don't think it would be all that hard to configure their terminal to accept longer character messages, but perhaps there are some hardware problems I am not aware of. It should, with all deliberate speed, be modified to allow at least 100 characters, if it is to ever be a useful competitor to traditional alpha paging services. (And with some carriers offering 500 characters per page, 55 is simply not competitive.) As to the actual service, I conducted a series of tests using our operators at random, having regularly timed and random e-mails sent to me, and scheduling stock and other timed messages from our system. These tests were sent to the BAMS phone, a MobileComm pager, a Pagenet pager, and a Pagemart pager. I set our system so that all pages will go out at the SAME TIME. Thus, if an e-mail arrived, it was sent to all the systems at the same time. Unless one terminal didn't answer or was busy, all pages were dispatched at exactly the same time. Over the past month or so, I have received in excess of 10,000 messages, so any irregular timing issues would have been averaged out over the period. In the Connecticut BAMS-A system (00119), the system works quite well. Pages are received almost instantly on the BAMS phone, while the paging companies took their usual respective times (generally 30 seconds or less for MobileComm, 50 seconds for Pagenet, and about 70 seconds for Pagemart.) In many cases, I would send a page from my console, and view the logs as pages went out. *Literally* 2 seconds after we dropped the connection the page appeared on my BAMS pager. It never took more than 5 seconds. I really like the speed of delivery -- when it is working, it is consistently faster than any other paging device which we dipatch to. I've heard from our UK/European customers that SMS is also quite fast, but I still think that this is the fastest I've ever seen. The problem is, however, that it does not always work. Both myself and a friend of mine in New Haven (who subsequently dropped the alpha service due to the message limitation of 55 characters and spotty coverage), have experienced delays when, at times, the system simply doesn't work in areas where it is known to work. The messages are accepted at the terminal, but do not appear on the phone. Generally, the problem clears up in an hour or so, but the irregular timing in *known* coverage areas somewhat of a concern. A greater problem, however, is that is simply doesn't work in many areas. These aren't "dead spots" or areas where there is no coverage, but simply areas which are covered or served by MTSOs (or whatever a switch is called now) which can not support the alpha service. I was told that "G2" switches can not support the alpha service, while 5ESSs can. I am not familiar with these switches in terms of cellular; I assume they are various configurations of the AT&T Autoplex switch (which I thought were branded "I", and "II", with various software revisions available for either). I believe all of BAMS is Autoplex now, except for (maybe) ex-Contel Cellular/00300 in northern VT which at one time was a Motorola EMX (I miss those is some ways ... thank- fully, Cell One-Atlantic Cell of VT/00313 still has an EMX, and has integrated in nicely into the NACN.) In any event, areas which are not served by the newest switch (the cellular 5ESS variant), will NOT receive alpha messages. I've outlined the areas which will and will not receive the messages, below: (Note: you MUST switch your phone to the B side outside of the CT/Western Mass areas to receive alpha messages. It is a good idea to do so anyhow for the better rates.) Will receive alpha: Boston area (00028) Connecticut (00119) (note this is not all of CT., ATTWS serves Litchfield and besides poor integration with BAMS does not carry the alpha messages.) Western Mass(00119) (but not Franklin County, now owned by Cell One/VT) (Also, be careful in Great Barrington on US-7; the Catskills/A 01515 comes in strongly in spots, and not only will you not receive messages, but if you place/ receive a call, you'll pay high roam rates.) New York Cty(00022) Works ONLY in New York County (Manhattan), northern Nassau County (I-495/NY-25 corridor and north), and Suffolk County. Does NOT work in Queens, Brooklyn, Richmond (Staten Island), Kings (Bronx), Westchester, Rockland, and lower Putnam counties, all part of the NY Metro System/00022 in NY state. Northern NJ (00022) Seems to work everywhere in this "always" BAMS area, ie, BAMS always owned and operated the switches there. Even seems to work in the 01484(?) system in Western NJ. (Used to have intregration problems there. Southern NJ (00008) Parts of the Philly system especially on the NJ side, seem to work. Philly may or may not work; results varied. Along I-95, ie, near NJ, I received messages, on the "Sure-Kill" expressway (errr, can't spell it, perhaps "Schyukill"?, I-76) I don't get anything. I do get them on US-30 heading to Lancaster. Baltimore/DC (00018) Seems to work everywhere I've gone in this system, but I've mainly stayed on the I-95 and I-270 corridors, so I can't be too sure. Albany (00078) Just recently turned on due to a switch upgrade. Poughkeepsie (00486) Also started working recently, seems to be operating off the Albany switch. Orange Cty. (00404) Same as 486, above. Will NOT receive alpha: (Non BAMS areas will not receive messages, neither will Litchfield, CT 01101, which will likely be a long, long time before it does.) Providence RI (00028) Will not work anywhere in RI SE Mass (00028) Not really an area, but the A side has a delineation for this area, so I use it for the B. (BTW, the delineation is IMO stupid and SNET, the CT B carrier which owns the ex-BAMS A side in RI, should just sell it to Cell One Boston. On the other hand, CO/Boston has rip-off roaming policies, so I'm not upset to see them hurt since they can't cover the the same coverage that BAMS can in the area.) Vermont (00313) Catskills,NY (01516) This system is not fully owned by BAMS, and it shows. No call delivery, some BAMS customers can not even place calls, and no features are available. Pathetic -- BAMS should get the whole system and run it properly. It's annoying how bad this system is. BAMS told me to just use the A side and they will credit me when I am in that area. New York Cty (00022) Queens, Booklyn, southern Nassau, Westchester, Kings, Richmond, Rockland and Putnam Counties, see above. Philadelphia (00008) Can't be sure, needs more testing. BAMS Carolinas(?????) I am told that these ex-Metro Mobile areas do not receive messages either; haven't verified it myself. I think that's about it for the areas that I know about. One of the main problems with this is that if you venture into an area with no alpha service, and a lot of messages come in, you are then literally bombarded, at times for hours, with new messages that were stored while messages could not be delivered to you. Since new messages can freeze up the phone for a few seconds as they are being received, this can be an annoyance and distraction while driving. A nice feature, though: You can receive pages while in the Boston, NYC, and Baltimore tunnels, which you can't receive with your pager. Overall, though, if you need alpha service, get a good local or regional carrier. Although BAMS can store missed messages, it does very little good if you are in one of the rather numerous and large areas which is not presently covered. The annoyance of having to clear out missed pages which are later retransmitted is also a problem, although the "missed page" feature IS fundamentally useful. The phone should offer an option to just "dump" messages if they take up too much space -- currently, you must manually clear out messages if your phone is full before new messages will come in. (The system will store them, though, they are not lost.) The alpha system is currently not a competitive product with other alpha services: The price is good for unlimited pages, but the service is too spotty outside of CT (and there are some coverage probs in CT as well, but that is true of any messaging system), and the 55 character limitation is cumbersome. If anyone has BAMS digital service and alpha, and are willing to do some testing and report where they do and do not receive alpha messages (as well as other details, such as caller ID and voicemail notification), I'll give them a free e-mail/news/weather/etc. account on our system to use with the BAMS phone. (This offer good until 10/31/97, or maybe I'll extend it; I just don't want a million people to use it! I guess I also need a limitation, so "First 100 respondents only". I'm sure I really don't need to say that, though, I doubt there are that many alpha customers anyhow;)) ) I also mentioned voicemail and voicemail notification above. This is simpler: It basically works in CT/Western Mass, but not in Litchfield, and not anywhere else, even in BAMS areas. (There is also a stutter dial tone which is played when you have new voicemail, which you can set from your voicemail system. This works everywhere in BAMS, except for the Catskills 01516 system. Maybe not in VT/00313 as well, but I think it can on an EMX). Additionally, there is currently no integration between the voicemail and the display on the phone. If you receive a notice on the display screen, and then acknowledge it, the system keeps messaging/beeping you on the phone until you listen to the message. It does NOT signal back to the voicemail system that you are aware that a voicemail was left and do not want to keep being notified. The screen can (in theory) also display the caller ID of callers who went to voicemail while the phone is off, and list the number of voicemails. I don't think it does either. So not much in terms of an elegant mobile phone-based interface to manage/control your voicemail messages. It has a lot of potential, but needs work. This is generally true of all the enhanced services (alpha, digital CDMA, and voicemail.) I suspect that they will all be improved as time goes on, but right now, due to the 55 character limitation of the alpha service, and the basically non-existant voicemail integration with the handset, neither of these services are anything worth getting the service for. Again, the only reason I got it was for the good service prices and extended home roam (and free off-peak) airtime, no local charges, and free first incoming minute throughout New England. In my opinion, due to the problems with digital, the outages in alpha service and the character limitations, the lack of a numeric interface and poor voicemail integration with the handset, price the only reason to consider BAMS's digital service at this time. Regards, Doug Reuben / Interpage Network Services Inc. / http://www.interpage.net dreuben@interpage.net +1 (510) 254-0133 ------------------------------ From: hrood@xs4all.nl (Hendrik Rood) Subject: Free Voice-Mail Introduced in the Netherlands Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:11:52 GMT Organization: XS4ALL, networking for the masses Reply-To: hrood@xs4all.nl Since September 1st PTT Telecom is introducing free voice-mail for all their voice-subscribers (PSTN and ISDN). The voice-mail service provides them with a voice-mail box pro PSTN line/ISDN (Multiple Subscriber) Number. There is no monthly subscription fee, no forwarding fee to the voice-mail box and no metering fee for listening to the voice-mail messages from the home. This services is intentioned to be paid for by the extra amount of answered calls, which are all metered in the Netherlands. Up to now the number of answering machines in the Netherlands have been around 15% growing with not more than 1% annually. Prior to offering this service PTT Telecom underwent a government evaluation of the service by the Dutch regulator. The Dutch minister of transport and water management, who oversees telecommunications decided that PTT Telecom was only allowed to provide this service if they provide other companies willing to offer voice-mail services the same terms of interconnection/special-access tot the PSTN/ISDN as their own voice-mail division. Which means competitive providers of voice and fax-mail can install systems and receive a termination fee from the incumbent PTT Telecom for every terminated call. The service can be activated by typing *61*0842-333# on the keypad. Before activation people has to dial a freephone number with an Interactive Voice Response menu to configure the service, record an announcement and register a Personal access code. 0842-333 is the service-code of the PTT Telecom voice-mail service. Other providers can get another 0842-xyz number from the government and ask PTT Telecom for the interconnect/special-access service. The public consultation procedure about this new service resulted in an opposition of the new entrants in the voice-market, but there was also a strong support of the Dutch consumer interest union. As a consequence the Dutch Minister decided that PTT Telecom is allowed to provide the service, but it also has got the obligation that the service is profitable (by stimulating income from additional traffic to a higher level than the costs to provide the service). When it is not profitable PTT Telecom has to terminate the service, because they are not allowed to cross-subsidize new services with income from their dominant market position in basic voice telephony. As far as I know this is the first time voice-mail is offered commer- cially in this way. Hendrik Rood ------------------------------ From: Richard Taylor Subject: Re: "Exchange Boundary" Roadside Signs Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 11:03:57 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Ken Eikert wrote: > How common are telco boundary roadsigns? Are there places in the > U.S. with signs marking area code or LATA boundaries? There's one on US 15-501 between Chapel Hill (BellSouth) and Durham (GTE), NC. This area is associated with Chapel Hill, but is served by Durham. This particular boundary evolved decades ago when Chapel Hill was served by the Chapel Hill Telephone Company, owned by the University of North Carolina (sold to BellSouth in 1977). The very small Chapel Hill Telephone did not have the resources to serve much outside of town, thus the neighboring GTE was given the area to the edge of Chapel HIll. Now BellSouth serves Chapel Hill, but the Exchange Boundary still exists. The sign is there so customers (mostly businesses in this area) will know where the BellSouth/GTE boundary lies. Most of the business in this area would like to be on BellSouth, but have no choice. Richard Taylor Carrboro, NC ------------------------------ From: stanri@worldnet.att.net (Stanley Ulbrych) Subject: Re: AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 15:31:57 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services > What AT&T (and the City of Ballwin) wants to keep quiet, I think, is that > this gracious gift to the City is in actuality a cell-phone tower. > Has this approach been tried elsewhere? In Barrington, Rhode island, the local high school football field has new lights for night time play. Paid for mostly (if not all) by the local cell phone company. If you look close, one light tower has cell phone antennas attached. ------------------------------ From: wa2ise@netcom.com (Robert Casey) Subject: Re: AT&T: A Model Corporate Citizen Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 06:42:07 GMT In article Dave Fiedler writes: > What AT&T (and the City of Ballwin) wants to keep quiet, I think, is that > this gracious gift to the City is in actuality a cell-phone tower. > Has this approach been tried elsewhere? Though not for cell phone service, amateur radio (ham) operators have done similar things to disguise antennas to circumvent "no antennas" rules and laws. Presumidly, the radio frequency energy from the flagpole/cell antenna will be concentrated at the top, 50 feet above any people in the area. So, no real RF radiation hazard. ------------------------------ From: MHK Subject: Telephone Network Tutorials/Books Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:01:59 -0700 Organization: UBC Hi, Can anyone suggest some introductory material to the telephone network and SS7. Thanks, MHK [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suggest checking out the books for sale in Harry Newton's Telecom Library. Newton, long-time publisher of {Teleconnect} magazine is a reader of this Digest, so perhaps when he sees your message he will be in touch with some suggestions for you. Of course, other readers may respond as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Marc vd Hoogen Subject: Who Has Experience With CTI on a Samsung DCS PBX? Date: 14 Sep 1997 11:51:45 GMT Organization: NL-NIC Are there people or companies who work with a Samsung DCS telephone switch including a CTI-Solution (Computer Telephony Integration)? We are intrested in success stories; please let me know! Samsung Telecom Mr. Marco van den Hoogen P.O. box 2137 3700 CC ZEIST The Netherlands Tel: 0031-30-6936405 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 00:39:00 -0400 From: Charles Cremer Subject: Phoning Home to 5 Last week, Jimmy Rodgers, a guest analyst on cable financial news channel {CNBC} told an anecdote dating from his arrival in New York from rural Georgia to attend college in the 1960's. He arrived on a Sunday and immediately tried to put through a call to his family in Georgia just to inform them of his safe arrival. He got the New York LD operator on the line and asked to be connected to 5 in Americus, Georgia. The operator asked "5 what? - all fives as in 5-5555?" "No," Jimmy said, "Just 5." After several attempts at explanation, the New York operator finally understood that indeed the number he was calling was just 5 and, though still seeming skeptical, began to put through the call. Presently the Americus operator came on the line and the New York operator said "I have a collect call for 5." The Americus operator immediately replied: "Oh, they're not at home right now. They are at church." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Very good! Which reminds me in conclusion for this issue of the Digest to remind you to order your copy of Mike Hathaway's new book, "Everything Happened Around the Switchboard". This book is the history of the Bryant Pond Telephone Company, in Bryand Pond, Maine which was the last of the old magneto/ crank telephone systems in America. It finally went out of business in 1983 as we noted in the Digest at that time. The book is the very interesting history of the company and the Hathaway family which ran it from their home for more than thirty years. The complete review appeared in V17 #235 on September 7. You really need to read this book to learn about old-time telephone systems from earlier this century. Mike Sandman has copies available in his shop and is taking telephone orders for it. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #246 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 15 08:58:35 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id IAA28920; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:58:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 08:58:35 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709151258.IAA28920@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #247 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Sep 97 08:58:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 247 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Hendrik Rood) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (Ed Ellers) Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh (John Cropper) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (R. McMillin) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (D. Jensen) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (R. Ghosh) Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market (D. Hughes) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 05:10:40 GMT Eric Florack writes: > The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to > standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k > modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial > incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that > 56k requires. Aside from the corrections re the role of the ITU (ex-CCITT), I should point out that you've got things mixed up here. The author was referring to "high-speed _digital_" lines. 56k - assuming you're referring to USR, Rockwell etc - is just another analogue modem. Presumably the author meant ISDN. In which case of course the fault lies largely with the telcos, not ISPs, because the telcos took such a long time to work out a reasonable tariff structure that few consumers want the service. Eric Ewanco writes: > Here I absolutely agree with you: the author employs a subtle shift in > language. He refers to price controls as "subsidies". So simply > because the tariffs are set low, he declares this a subsidy. A > subsidy is when the government forks over money to keep a profitless > but necessary effort afloat. It's not when it regulates a monopoly's > prices. Actually a subsidy, in economic terms, is whenever the government distorts the market to change prices from their "normal" (i.e. without govt interference) level. So economists generally see price controls, tax breaks and the like as subsidies, because the govt is using its power as an extra-market authority to interfere with the markets. It's another matter that with large telecom monopolies, there's not much of a "market" to begin with. The monopoly, by its existence, distorts the market, and the government attempts to "correct" the distortion. Generally governments fail in correcting "problems" with markets, in the long run the best solution is to encourage free competition, which the US government has been incredibly slow to do in telecoms. Ideally you'd see a situation where every region has 3-4 competing LECs, and ISPs benefit from price-competition, and _don't_ go running to the government for price controls. Obviously this is not necessarily in the interests of any incumbent telecom ex-monopoly. > Never mind the fact that the whole Internet is run on digital > telephone lines, which must be a revenue bonanza for the telcos. Note that in a free market, it doesn't matter if someone's rolling in money; that's no reason to force them to price "fairly". The correct reason for government regulation in telecoms is to counter an existing monopoly situation. If there really _were_ several competing telcos then the government shouldn't be involved in setting "fair" prices (unless there's evidence of collusion, a cartel instead of competition). If all the competing telcos _still_ charge high prices, then it's because they do not find the investment worth the risks without those high returns (and it's a fact that telecoms is a high-return business!). As you see, I'm one of those Newman doesn't agree with - I _don't_ think the government should have much of a role in Internet infrastructure - even as a regulator - and of course this must mean telecoms as well. Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: hrood@xs4all.nl (Hendrik Rood) Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:45:16 GMT Organization: XS4ALL, networking for the masses Reply-To: hrood@xs4all.nl Eric Ewanco enlightened me about: > In article Eric Florack > writes: >> The real reason most ISP's didn't move on it is their customer base >> couldn't take advantage of it. To a large degree, that's still true. >> The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to >> standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k >> modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial >> incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that >> 56k requires. > I'm a bit confused here; what do you mean the ITU's "refusal to > standardize 56k"? Last I heard they were working hard on it, and > pretty quickly for a European bureaucracy. Sure, there are some > obstacles (no names mentioned), but it's not like the ITU is > "refusing" to standardize 56k. If there is a reason why 56k is > delayed, the blame certainly can't be attributed to some volitional > deficiency on the part of ITU. These remarks brought a smile on my face. Mainly because modem standardization (or the lack off it) in the ITU is a discussion between USA manufacturers. You hardly see Europeans in that business anymore. On the other hand it must also be said that ITU studygroups have the habit of refusing standardization of technologies when there is only one manufacturer who produces it (license/patent issues). I think that is a wise position. Just a simple look at the PC-software industry learns what happens with dominant technologies of a single source. I think the main reason for the need for 56 kbps modems in the USA is the lack of afordable priced ISDN. When I compare the current ISDN prices in the Netherlands with the prices reported in the USA, I see a remarkable difference: An ISDN BRI call over here has the same tariffs as voice for a 64 kbps call. Monthly rental of ISDN BRI is lower than two analog voice lines. Since 2 weeks ISDN is standard provided with 4 Multiple Subscriber Numbers (so you can use different numbers for incoming analog voice and fax calls. When you order ISDN and return an analog line, the installation fee is halved to around 100$. Returning two analog lines brings the installation fee to zero dollars. There is also a possibility for an ISDn retailer to use the ISDN premium from the operator to subsidize a/b adaptors. Most ISDN lines nowadays are sold with a passive ISDN ISA-card for the PC. These cards have a price tag of $100 - $150. ISDN telephone equipment is sold for typical prices of $150. Of course we do not enjoy the unmetered local calls here, but this has led to some remarkable new deals in the ISP-world. One of the major ISP's has announced to move to a competitor of the Dutch PTT because this local PTT-competitor pays them a percentage of their interconnect termination fee for every call to their modembanks and ISDN routers. This is exactly the opposite of the USA situation! A rough estimate on some Internet traffic figures reveals they can expect a fee of around $1 million pro year for terminating calls on this large PoP (Large for the current Dutch situation). Other innovations in the Dutch market introduced four days after competition officially was allowed is a statewide free routing of Internet-calls by a new long distance provider. Again this is financed by the fee the Dutch PTT has to pay to their competitors for terminating calls to numbers on their network. This leds to the interesting consequence that a small ISP can get a nationwide vritual local presence by connecting his modem-pools directly to a long distance provider, who also has received local geographic numbers for direct connections to companies (to bypass local telco's). Up to a few months ago I tought that metered calls were a severe hinderance for the take up of datanetworking service. With the new competition acting in the ways above it might become a blessing at least for the smaller startup ISP's not owned by large telco's. At least it can be argued that the metering off the calls has blocked complaints of our local incumbent up to now. Also it provides a serious incentive for cable-modem and ADSL-deployment (IP-dialtone), because Internet-enthusiasts are willing to pay a monthly fee to circumvent the metering tariffs of the telephone network. It could become an ironic situation when uptake of high-speed Internet-access will go faster here then in the USA, due to the historic local flat rate pricing policies in the USA. Hendrik Rood ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: 14 Sep 1997 20:47:16 GMT Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Brian Elfert wrote: > The CCITT no longer exists. It was replaced by the ITU. AFAIK the CCITT (and CCIR) were already part of the ITU (which, incidentally, is a lot older than the United Nations). The two committees were reorganized into the Telecommunication and Radiocommunication Sectors of the ITU, ITU-T and ITU-R respectively. ------------------------------ From: John Cropper Subject: Re: ISP Subsidy? Heheheheh Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 11:19:16 -0400 Brian Elfert wrote: > Eric Florack writes: >> The real reason most ISP's didn't move on it is their customer base >> couldn't take advantage of it. To a large degree, that's still true. >> The log at the center of this jam is the CCITT's refusal to >> standardize 56k. Once this is done, and a sufficient user base of 56k >> modems is installed and being used, the ISP's will have a financial >> incentive to move to the higher-speed, and more complex hookups that >> 56k requires. > The CCITT no longer exists. It was replaced by the ITU. > The ITU is not refusing to standardize 56K. They are currently > working on the standard, possibly to be called V.PCM. Because the ITU > is a political committee, it does take them quite a while to decide on > a standard. Actually, a legal challenge for the copyright to 56K technology was introduced by Brent Townshend, an independent inventor who claims to have patented 56K signalling technology back in 1993, then sold that patent to USR in 1995. Lucent, Townshend's former employer, is disputing these claims, and the whole mess could push back the standard up to a year, if the court cases interfere with the ITU approval process. It looks to be another case of two corporate giants fighting over a technology standard, while the end-users get shafted by having to shell out megabucka to BOTH of them to be compatible. With any luck the ITU will approve a HYBRID standard forcing BOTH companies to make good on their promise to upgrade. (Do I sound fed up with this process and the players involved, or what? :-/) John Cropper voice: 888.76.LINCS LINCS fax: 888.57.LINCS P.O. Box 277 mailto:jcropper@lincs.net Pennington, NJ 08534-0277 ICQ: 2670887 ------------------------------ From: Robert L. McMillin Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 10:56:18 -0700 Organization: Syseca, Inc. -- a Thomson company Fred R. Goldstein wrote: > Nathan Newman, Progressive Communications, > flames, >> FCC decisions in May 1997, however, would undermine the "free >> market" bravado of the ISPs as these Internet free-marketers made >> loud, extremely public appeals for the Federal Communications >> Commission to protect them from market prices in order to "save the >> Internet" (and their own profit margins.) [...] > Cripes, not this again! This Newman guy must have read a press > release or two from last year's $7M PacBell "the sky is falling" > campaign. It's so wrong that to argue it point-by-point is to > validate its invalid structure. > Let's just get down to it: There is no "market price" for local > telephone service; what we have is a regulated monopoly that's just > beginning to see competition. The rules of the monopoly are baroque > and rife with explicit and implicit cross-subsidies. Yup. I have heard more than enough from Nathan Newman; the wonder is that Pat keeps publishing his screeds. I think he would like nothing more than to have all telephony (and every other kind of intercourse between consenting adults) regulated to the last iota. > Oh yes, here's another doozie: >> Mandate interconnection and much of the value of that larger >> network's infrastructure (and the incentive to create it in the first >> place) disappears. > Oh, I get it. He's trying to justify some telcos' opposition to local > competition by using language that makes it sound like a "taking". > Sorry, no sale. If you believe in free markets, you have to lay down > rules so that monopolies can be opened up. This is not a "taking" any > more than outlawing mugging takes away a thug's right to your wallet. What I have to wonder about here, though, is the idea that monopolies are necessarily bad. In the long run they tend to be unsustainable; and in any event, anti-trust legislation seems to me to be a blunderbuss aimable at any politically convenient target (unions were the first such target in the U.S.). >> What is lost in this whole system of ISP welfare is any broad >> planning to assure that all citizens will have access to the next >> generation of high-speed connections to telecommunications services. >> Over twenty years ago, AT&T began moving towards converting the whole >> phone network to high-speed digital connections but the breakup of the >> Bell system undermined that planning, leaving the US with the same old >> analog connections leading to the home. > That is an astonishing work of historical revisionism. AT&T resisted > digitization tooth and nail, after they figured out that a given coax > route would carry more telephone calls running analog L-carrier than > digital T3 carrier. "Ma Bell" installed analog CO switches (1AESS) > right up until 1983, though digital switches were out elsewhere since > 1976 or so. Presumably, Newman relied once again on his feelings rather than actually researching what was happening. I keep expecting him to tell me that the 1AESS was actually invented in Russia, that Stalin wasn't such a bad fellow, and we should all be grateful for Social Security. Sheesh. Robert L. McMillin | Not the voice of Syseca, Inc. | rlm@syseca-us.com Personal: rlm@helen.surfcty.com | rlm@netcom.com Put 'rabbit' in your Subject: or my spam-schnauzer will eat your message. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, the reason I keep 'publishing his screeds' is because all the readers have said they enjoy the jokes I print from time to time ... :) ... I have to admit he can be a little off-the-wall sometimes but with a few grains of truth now and then. PAT] ------------------------------ From: djensen@madison.tds.net (David Jensen) Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 03:09:07 GMT Reply-To: djensen@madison.tds.net On Thu, 11 Sep 1997 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > I think your missing Newman's point. If you've read any other of his > pieces -- and even in this one -- it's clear he's left-of-centre.... > In this particular article, all he wanted to demonstrate was that a) > without government intervention, the net wouldn't be what it is and b) > those who want less of it are happy to ask for government help against > telcos. a) That is true, but he failed to show that the net would be better off with more regulation. b) True, but the government gave us the telcos that we want to be protected from. Who else can break a government developed monopoly? > It would have been nice if Newman got his facts right -- but it's not > really necessary. While correcting his errors, all you've done is > reiterate the need for government regulation to ensure that prices > bear some relation to costs (your comparison with Europe is apt) and > to ensure free competition. That probably makes Newman satisfied. Landline telephones have traditionally been expensive in Europe. They were part of the PTT with expensive and inefficient labor and they were milked to subsidize other "government provided goods". The results in Europe only explain that, however bad the regulation by pupulist PUCs in America, it could be worse, we could have had a PTT also. > (though I don't know if they find asking for government regulation > of monopolies ironic) Let's not forget those were government created and protected monopolies. The short, jaded version of it is this: Theodore Vail grabbed as much as he could of the American telephony market. Occasionally, his behavior did not run afoul of traditional fair trading or, at that time, newfangled antitrust laws. On more than one occasion, it did. His circle of real friends was not large. At the point that there was a danger of effective backlash against AT&T, Vail made a deal. He would become a good citizen if he were guaranteed profits. Decades passed. Populist PUCs realized that they could be popular by giving away residential service and forcing businesses and toll customers to pay for it. MCI, jumping on Carterfone, realized that the subsidy programs kept LD rates artificially high and exploited this public subsidy that they would not have to pay (at least initially). The only way AT&T could continue to compete was to create seven local monopolies and make the toll subsidies explicit, but there still are subsidies, and large businesses now bypass the local switches to avoid the cost of those subsidies, connecting directly to the IXC. The next step, available in a larger city near you, is for large businesses to bail out of the high cost of business lines. Once again, these artificially high costs have been imposed by the PUCs. An approximation of the free market keeps making a shambles of irrational pricing decisions by the PUCs and the FCC. If we make the costs high enough for the ISP's they will move to unswitched MAN's for commercial. If you are a residential ISP customer, you might want to hope that you're along the SONET route. ------------------------------ From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 04:44:32 GMT Dan Seyb said: > Actually, I would think getting the facts right would be vital! They would be, if they were relevant ... > More seriously, if the facts are wrong, which even Ghosh admits, any > arguments relying on these facts can be correct only by accident. > This is not the best way to plan a major overhaul of communications. Well from my reading of some of Newman's other articles, he's certainly not keen on increasing fees for ISPs or letting semi-monopolistic telcos slip out of the regulatory control of the FCC. I understood that he would like _more_ regulatory involvement to keep ISP costs _down_. The article starts by attacking the "myth" that the Net has not taken advantage of government assistance (subsidy/regulation). That is the position Newman has consistently attacked in previous writings, and it should be clear if you _read_ the whole article, as I did when it came out in July, that the rest of the piece is intended as rhetoric. I.e. it is intended to show that today's Internet does depend on government regulation - restraint on monopolistic pricing tendencies from telcos if nothing else. As I pointed out in my post, hardly anyone doubts this - you may believe that the Net _should_ be free of government interference, but you can't deny that it is _not_ - so his supporting "facts" are unnecessary, because this is not the aim of his argument - he's in favour of continued government involvement in the Internet, and recent events show that so are the biggest players in the Internet infrastructure game, so everyone's happy, and his "facts" are irrelevant. The argument does not rely on these "facts" because there is no argument. He's simply expressing his sense of irony at the _fact_ that ISPs have asked the FCC to help against the telcos, while at the same time (Newman believes) "hypocritically" denying the government a role in the Net. rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: hicom@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes) Subject: Re: Hypocrisy of ISP Welfare and Myth of Internet Free Market Date: 15 Sep 1997 01:52:54 GMT Organization: Old Colorado City Communications Reply-To: dave@oldcolo.com In , darius@world.std.com (Darius) (via The Old Bear ) writes: > THE HYPOCRISY OF ISP WELFARE AND > THE MYTH OF THE CYBER FREE MARKET > by Nathan Newman, Progressive Communications, > newman@garnet.berkeley.edu > With the Clinton administration's announcement of a drive for a > "free trade zone" in cyberspace, it might be the time to ask how long > we are going to keep the ISPs and other Internet corporations on > welfare? And how long do we have to hear hypocritical drivel about > the success of the "free market" of cyberspace even as those engaged > in the hype lobby for continued subsidies and government regulation > that benefits them. What is Nathan (and indeed the RBOCs who cry in their beer about overloaded switches) going to say when the 4,500 ISPs in the US wake up to the fact that they can already, and soon will be able to do ever faster and cheaper, drop the use of local loop telco services and convert their customers to no-licence digital wireless? Bypassing the local wired common carriers entirely? As an small ISP in Colorado, we already have dropped US West's 56kbs frame relay data circuit from our ISP premises to our upstream Internet provider, replacing it with 384Kbps secure, no licence, (FCC Part 15 spread spectrun radios) wireless plugged directly into the Cisco router downtown, which in turn is connected by the long distance carrier to Denver. No US West involved in our local link. While the old 56Kbps frame realy was pretty low cost - $83 a month, now it is zero cost for seven times more bandwidth. (The radios cost less than the DSU/CSU and Router required to use the frame relay) Then I am coming to you from my home-office at 1Mbps, also at zero cost, through our ISP office, with another brand no-licence radio. Admittedly these radios, ranging from $1,200 to $3,000 are not mass market priced yet. They can connect institutions - and lan-connected workstations within them. But as soon at the Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio group (TAPR) releases its 512Kbps, 20 mile radio for less than $500, we will start yanking all our dial up, $50 a month lines, and replace them to our customers with no-licence wireless modems. And show all the other ISPs in the world how to do the same - until the 'free market' sees its opportunity, just as it did when the first commodity level Hayes modems came out, and starts cranking them out for $200 apiece. The $10,000 a year we will save by terminating our local business-rate telephone modem service will continue to buy lots of wireless devices. And unlike voice-lines and modems, more than one remote radio user can talk to single base radios at once. Like 24 at once, delivering 56kbs to each. No busy signals. Metricom is already doing this in the Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington, DC. But the way I am describing it, it won't take a 'municipal' company like theirs. Any ISP will be able to do it by just buying marketplace radios, selling or leasing them to their local subscribers. When the shoe is on THAT foot, watch the RBOCs start bitching about the 'bypass' technologies, and Internet phone. *REAL* competition and open marketplace anyone? Dave Hughes dave@oldcolo.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #247 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 15 09:27:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA00618; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:27:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 09:27:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709151327.JAA00618@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #248 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Sep 97 09:23:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 248 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert (Jay Hennigan) Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert (Jeffrey J.B. Carpenter) Re: 811-2323? (transman@centuryinter.net) Re: Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) (Ryan Tucker) Re: 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges (Richard Kaszeta) Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? (Robert McMillin) Re: FBI Seeks Wiretap, Other Expansions (Alan Boritz) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Alan Boritz) Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? (Tony Harminc) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Gary Stebbins) Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! (Louis Raphael) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) Subject: Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert Date: 14 Sep 1997 16:26:00 GMT Organization: West.Net Communications Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Re, the recent reports of next year's split of California's 209 NPA: > MedicAlert's main offices are in the Stocton CA area in the northern > part of what is presently 209, while Fresno CA (a more populated area) > is in the southern part of current 209. > So, it seems that due to the large number of MedicAlert pendants and > bracelet auto-dialers, _supposedly_ pre-programmed with a 209-nxx-xxxx > number, that the northern part of current NPA 209 will retain the 209 > code, while Fresno and the southern part will change to a (yet to be > announced) new code. You mean someone actually BOUGHT the "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up" gadget? And it costs them a long distance call every time the neighbor opens his garage door? And they're still working? Somehow, these have always seemed to be in the same realm as Chia pets and the Clapper. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 13:36:51 -0400 From: Jeffrey James Bryan Carpenter Subject: Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert Hi Mark, Based on news reports that I saw on this before, the Medic Alert people said that patients throughout the US and Canada had Medic Alert bracelets with the +1 209 xxx-xxxx number printed on them. They said that they could not be sure that they could have them all be updated. jeff ------------------------------ From: transman Subject: Re:811-2323? Date: 14 Sep 97 15:11:47 GMT Organization: CENTURYinter.net 811 in not an NPA code in the NANP. 211,311,411,511,611, 711 & 811 codes have traditionally been reserved for use in local limited use services. In the Great Lakes region where I am responsible for translations on about 80 end offices and two tandems we use: a) 811 and 711 for local number identifaction. b) 411 for information (directory) service c) 511 for new central office NXX testing code. Some years back in a few exchanges 311 was used for fire bar access and 611 was the code used for police. Bellcore still lists most #11 & #00 numbers as reserved/NA. Transman. SS7 works great ... whadaya mean the damn links are down! ---------- The marketing manager said "I don't care what it costs to implement the feature in the switch. I already got a signed contract and my commission is riding on it. We'll just eat the cost." ---------- ------------------------------ From: rtucker@crasher2.ttgcitn.com (Ryan Tucker) Subject: Re: Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) Date: 14 Sep 1997 03:14:19 GMT Organization: TTGCITN Communications, Des Moines, Iowa (www.ttgcitn.com) On Thu, 11 Sep 1997 09:13:47 -0500, Mark J. Cuccia was possessed to write: > There are 'local' prefixes in use for cable-TV pay-per-view > auto-ordering, radio/TV/media stimulated-calling high-volume numbers > using "choke" prefixes, single-number services (BellSouth's Zipconnect > and Uniserve), alternate directory/information prefixes, PAY-per-call > services (in addition to 976), prefixes for local access to high-speed > data, etc. That reminds me ... Way Back When [tm], I was installing Windows 95 on my machine, and decided to have it auto-register itself. The number it dialed to access the Microsoft Network was something like 515-950-xxxx (I'm reasonably sure about the prefix, but that was when I was young and foolish [obviously], so I don't remember the rest of it ;-). That number doesn't look familiar, and a quick glance at the phone book doesn't show anything on it. Is that one of those numbers? If so, is it "universal"? Thanks :-) -rt Ryan Tucker http://www.ttgcitn.com/~rtucker/ UIN: 1976881 finger rtucker@ttgcitn.com for PGP pub key/contact info there's something quite bizarre i cannot see.. -Mansun/Wide Open Space Origin address not hidden. Why? http://www.internz.com/SpamBeGone/ ------------------------------ From: Richard Kaszeta Subject: Re: 900 Mhz DSS Cordless Phone Ranges Date: 14 Sep 1997 22:10:18 -0500 Organization: University of MN ME Dept lars@anchor.RNS.COM (Lars Poulsen) writes: > I picked up a $350 Lucent 9510, which now sits on my desk, in parallel > with my Panasonics speakerphone, its headset it my pocket. It covers > the entire building, and about a block down the street, and my problem > is solved. It works so well, that my principal hardware design engineer > went and got one at once when he saw it in action. Several more will > undoubtedly show up soon. I can back this one up with some similar data (although highly non-scientific :) ). Over a series of two weeks I bought almost two dozen cordless phones, ranging from a 49.95 Sanyo 49MHz up to a Lucent 9510 DSS at $299, and found that almost without exception the dominant variable in performance was the brand, not analog/digital, price, 900 vs 49mHz (!), or with/without DSS. I tested them by walking out of my building and down the street (just a mile away from downtown Minneapolis) until the signal started to sound fuzzy. The best two performers, by a long shot, were the Lucent 9510 and 9110. The 9510 works clearly in my neighborhood for a distance of approximately 4000 ft (and that's with a building or two in the way). The 9110 (900 mHz digital, non DSS, which is actually much cheaper than most of the phones I tested at $117) did almost as well, with ~3000ft. And right behind that at ~2000 ft was the Lucent 9105 (900 mHz analog, $90). I tested quite a few Unidens, and most of the 900 mHz ones did almost as well as the 9105. Sonys and Sanyos did lousy, mostly performing along with the 49mHz phones (even the DSS ones). I was only really testing line quality and distance, didn't really test anything else (features, caller id, etc...) So, in a nutshell, I'd probably recommend the Lucent 9110 as a good mix of range, line quality, and price. Let me dig through my receipt drawer, and I can probably assemble a list of the the phones I tested. Richard W Kaszeta Graduate Student/Sysadmin bofh@me.umn.edu University of MN, ME Dept http://www.menet.umn.edu/~kaszeta ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillin Subject: Re: PSTN/Internet How Does it All Work? Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 11:55:33 -0700 Organization: Syseca, Inc. Reply-To: rlm@syseca-us.com Jay R. Ashworth wrote: [in regards to LEC companies offering dedicated Internet access via dry copper pairs] > You see: _they_ can't offer it ... so no one else should be able to > either. This is what comes of letting the RBOCs into the ISP business, > I guess. Can you say "restraint of trade"? Even more interesting are the rumors I've heard from our ISP that Pac*Bell has been sued by one or more ISPs because pbi.net is colocating their ISP hardware with Pac*Bell CO's, while refusing to allow ISPs to do the same. It would be an interesting way to get around the problem of charging themselves less for their own network hardware (which they're not allowed to do). ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: FBI Seeks Wiretap, Other Expansions Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:08:41 -0400 In article , Babu Mengelepouti wrote: > Forwarded to the Digest: ... > (1) CIVIL LIBERTIES GROUPS ASK FCC TO BLOCK FBI ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE > PROPOSAL > The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier > Foundation today filed a petition with the Federal Communications > Commission to block the FBI from using the 1994 "Digital Telephony" law to > expand government surveillance powers... Probably a well-meaning effort, but also a waste of time. FCC has no jurisdiction over the FBI. Dept. of Justice oversee's privacy issues mandated by the Communications Act of 1934, and specifically the ECPA. ------------------------------ From: aboritz@CYBERNEX.NET (Alan Boritz) Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:15:54 -0400 In article , varney@ihgp2.ih. lucent.com (Al Varney) wrote: >>> Lastly, has fiber-optic cable made coax obsolete? > In some markets, fiber-optics has made coax so obsolete that coax > was retired in place -- it costs too much to remove, and costs too > much to power/align/maintain to continue using it. No, Al, coax is not obsolete and most certainly is NOT more expensive to power or maintain (there's nothing to align). Fiber ALWAYS costs more to run (mux's need power, and it may not be available at a customer premise), they cost more to splice, and OTDR equipment (to test the cable's condition) is always more expensive than metallic TDR equipment. And it costs no more to remove coax, than to rip out fiber cable (both need to be removed when no longer needed to free up space in crowded areas). The inherent advantages of metallic cable over fiber cable notwith- standing, fiber is ALWAYS more expensive to operate than an equivalent length of coax. ------------------------------ From: tzha0@juts.ccc.amdahl.com (Tony Harminc) Subject: Re: Coax Cable - How Does it Work? Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 16:19:28 GMT Reply-To: tzha0@juts.ccc.amdahl.com In comp.dcom.telecom, varney@ihgp2.ih.lucent.com (Al Varney) wrote: > [quoting for transmission engineering handbook] > Attenuation (with other factors held constant) for the same material > in both conductors, varies with square root of frequency -- the minimum > for gaseous/low-loss-insulation occurs when the radius to the inside of > the outer conductor is 3.6 times the radius to the outside of the inner > conductor. Such a coax has half the inductance of two parallel lines > separated by the outer conductor radius, and twice the capacitance of > such parallel lines with line diameter equal to the inner conductor > diameter. Theory says characteristic impedance should be about 77 ohms > at high frequencies. With polyethylene insulation, it's about 75 ohms. > [Reference available.] Fascinating. This seems to be saying that (roughly) 75 ohm coax has the lowest attenuation possible (or rather that the coax with the lowest attenuation will have characteristic impedance of 75 ohms). So why are cables of several other impedances in common use, notably 50 ohm (in at least two physical sizes) for Ethernet, and 90 ohm (RG62?) for connecting IBM 3270-type terminals to their controllers? Tony Harminc ------------------------------ From: Gary Stebbins Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 19:41:10 -0700 Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc. Nathan Duehr wrote: > I have a corporate credit card with Midland Marine Bank, and I > received a call after using the card on a recent business trip from a > GTE Airphone. Seems that the bank calls any customer who has a > telephone-related charge on their bill before the bills go out to > confirm that the customer actually made those calls. Unfortunately, my bank doesn't.Someone did someway get my credit card number. They made two charges to Call Depot and three to other internet-related companies before I got my card blocked. I don't know where the leak was. I thought the only charges I've made were to secure servers. Sure hope the merchants track this guy when the payments to them are rejected, but I don't expect that to happen. -gary- ------------------------------ From: raphael@willy.cs.mcgill.ca (Louis Raphael) Subject: Re: A New Low, Even for Integretel! Date: 15 Sep 1997 03:44:17 GMT Organization: McGill University Computing Centre Nathan Duehr (nduehr@cfer.com) wrote: > Thankfully, the charge was mine, but I still appreciate Midland Marine > for calling to check. I also got a call from National Bank [of Canada] after doing the same thing. Indeed, I made the call from a public phone (I was calling InterNIC, of all places!), and National Bank called my house within *hours* wanting to know if I'd made the call, as it isn't in my typical usage pattern. I was impressed, and rather thankful that they are organized enough and make the effort to cut out possible frauds right away. Then again, Quebec's consumer protection act, which limits consumer responsibility for credit-card fraud to $50 might have something to do with it ... :-) Louis ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #248 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 15 22:53:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id WAA24039; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:53:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:53:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709160253.WAA24039@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #249 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Sep 97 22:53:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 249 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless ISPs and Free Competition (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) UCLA Short Course on "IS-95 (CDMA) US Digital Cellular" (Bill Goodin) HDML/CDMA Tester Needed For 30 Seconds of Testing! (Scott Yanof) Liberating European Telecom Markets ... it Seems to Work (Joed Elich) Everything Happened Around the Switchboard (David B. Horvath) Line Busy-Out Device (Mike Granger) Employment Opportunity: Prospero Call Billing, Berks, UK (Justin Hughes) GTE/Ascend Max 200+ ISDN Hunt Group: Resolution at Last (Robert McMillin) Re: Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) (John R. Levine) Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert (Jack Hamilton) Re: Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release (Leonard Erickson) Help Needed: Citizen 120D Serial Cfg For SMDR? (Robert Patrick MacKinnon) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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: Wireless ISPs and Free Competition Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 21:59:00 GMT hicom@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes) writes: > What is Nathan (and indeed the RBOCs who cry in their beer about > overloaded switches) going to say when the 4,500 ISPs in the US wake > up to the fact that they can already, and soon will be able to do ever > faster and cheaper, drop the use of local loop telco services and > convert their customers to no-licence digital wireless? Bypassing the > local wired common carriers entirely? I guess Nathan will find his convoluted argument falling apart, but as for the RBOCs -- well, after the new telecom act aren't they supposed to be facing local competition from other providers? ISPs are hardly the only ones who'll use wireless, or alternative routes. This week, in the Economist's excellent survey of telecoms (if you don't have it in print, see it online at www.economist.com) starts with an illustration of what telecoms could be like one day, with REAL competition: "...go to Cambridge (England, not Massachusetts). There, most homes can choose among four different connections to a local telephone service. [...] fixed copper from [ex-monopoly] BT, [...] Cambridge Cable, [a local TV network] to install fixed-line service, as British cable companies have been free to do since 1991. [Or alternative telco] Ionica, with its wireless system using a small aerial fixed in the home. Or they can use one of Britains relatively inexpensive mobile wireless systems such as Orange or One2One." Obviously ISPs should network themselves with the most cost-effective technology possible, and the FCC part 15 spectrum is great for that. > Then I am coming to you from my home-office at 1Mbps, also at zero > cost, through our ISP office, with another brand no-licence > radio. Admittedly these radios, ranging from $1,200 to $3,000 are not > mass market priced yet. Depends, doesn't it. After all regular modems weren't too cheap just a few years ago! Now how many 28.8k modems would you fit into $1,200? The bandwidth increase on wireless over existing telcos' copper service is significant. > lan-connected workstations within them. But as soon at the Tuscon > Amateur Packet Radio group (TAPR) releases its 512Kbps, 20 mile radio > for less than $500, we will start yanking all our dial up, $50 a month > lines, and replace them to our customers with no-licence wireless > modems. And show all the other ISPs in the world how to do the same - Who's manufacturing these modems? I don't suppose they relies on proprietary technology? > When the shoe is on THAT foot, watch the RBOCs start bitching about > the 'bypass' technologies, and Internet phone. > *REAL* competition and open marketplace anyone? Once there's sufficient competition, there shouldn't be too much in the way of price controls, which are not justified in a "*REAL*" competitive market. RBOCs may still bitch, but they shouldn't be too unhappy. Look at the experience of BT in Britain, where the strictness of the regulator Oftel has been one of the main reasons for the development of fairly good competition there. BT (obviously) tries to keep as much of its remaining monopoly power as it can, but it's turned itself around into an agressive and competitive global player. Thanks to the competition at home... Rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: bgoodin@unex.ucla.edu (Bill Goodin) Subject: UCLA Short Course on "IS-95 (CDMA) US Digital Cellular" Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:47:25 GMT Organization: University of California, Los Angeles On October 20-22, 1997, UCLA Extension will present the short course, "IS-95 (CDMA) US Digital Cellular Standard and Wideband CDMA Proposals", on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles. The instructors are Babak Daneshrad, PhD, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, UCLA, and Zoran Kostic, PhD, MTS, Wireless Communications Systems Research Department, AT&T Labs-Research. Spread spectrum data communication has seen a revival in recent years. Two of the main driving forces behind its current interest have been the opening of the ISM bands by the FCC in the mid-1980s and the standardization of the IS-95 (CDMA) U.S. digital cellular standard. Currently available wireless LAN products operating in the ISM bands are based on either direct sequence or frequency-hopped spread spectrum technology (WaveLAN, RangeLAN, etc.). Spread spectrum systems are also being used in the implementation of wireless local loops (AirTouch) as well as for digital cellular communications where field trials and limited service are already being offered in various sites in the U.S. and Asia. With recent announcements by PrimeCo (PCS consortium, Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, etc.) regarding its intent to use a CDMA-based system for its future PCS network, it is expected that spread spectrum communication will become more prominent in the future. This course is intended for individuals involved in CDMA product design and system deployment, and provides a foundation for the design of direct-sequence spread spectrum systems (DSSS) for wireless communications. A wide range of issues are covered, ranging from system (cellular) engineering to hardware design and partitioning. The course is motivated by the IS-95 (CDMA) U.S. digital cellular standard--one of the more complex DSSS systems in use today. This course also looks at proposals for IMT-2000 global wireless communications based on CDMA technology. All parts of the standard relating to the physical layer as well as the MAC layer protocols are covered. The course also provides a thorough treatment of the wireless channel and mechanisms involved in radio wave propagation. The course begins with an overview of the cellular industry and the differentiating factors between the various cellular standards, followed by an introduction to the mechanisms of code division multiple access (CDMA), its limitations, and the concepts in the IS-95 standard to overcome them. Physical layer issues are discussed, such as the importance of timing synchronization among users, as well as the CRC, coding, and interleaving schemes used in the IS-95. Key issues in the implementation of a typical IS-95 transceiver are also examined. The course fee is $1295, which includes all course materials. These materials are for participants only, and are not for sale. For additional information and a complete course description, please contact Marcus Hennessy at: (310) 825-1047 (310) 206-2815 fax mhenness@unex.ucla.edu http://www.unex.ucla.edu/shortcourses/ This course may also be presented on-site at company locations. ------------------------------ From: Scott Yanoff Subject: HDML/CDMA Tester Needed For 30 Seconds of Testing! Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:30:04 -0500 Organization: Internet Connect, Inc. http://www.inc.net usenet@news.inc.net Reply-To: yanoff@alumni.cs.uwm.edu I would GREATLY appreciate it if someone with a PCS-style phone that can receive HDML cards/files would quickly look at the URL: http://www.strong-funds.com/strong/hdml/daily.hdml and let me know if it works (if you get the cards and can select a fund from the option list and get a NAV/price for the fund). It should only take a half a minute to test, but it would really help us since we have only tested via a simulator program so far. In return, we'd be willing to offer you a warm Strong Funds sweatshirt or polo shirt and a possible mention in our press release. Your help is greatly appreciated, thanks, Scott Yanoff ------------------------------ From: Joed Elich Subject: Liberating European Telecom Markets ... it Seems to Work Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 17:25:13 +0200 Organization: NLnet Reply-To: jelich@sbi.nl After Great Britain, Sweden and Finland, all other European Community countries are gradually opening up their telecom markets. The official date is January 1st, 1998. It is not an easy thing: discussion about interconnection tarifs is but one hot issue. The Netherlands has officially opened up its telecom market since July 1st. Dozens of new (local) operators have entered the market. Two remarkable things have happened since. One of the new operators, Enertel, has started to offer international calls at a much lower rate (up to 25% less) than PTT Telecom in July. Now PTT Telecom slashes it tarifs with 25 - 50 % from October 1st. And Enertel has undercut those tarif again from September 15th. International calls are as low as US$0.38 a minute to the US, US$ 0.30 to Germany and US$ 0.70 to Australia. Also PTT Telecom now offers a free voicemail service to all customers with fixed lines (it did exist for mobile phones already). Free means: no subscription fees, free number (0842 333) to listen to your messages. We are still a long way behind the UK/US/Sweden ... but we are getting better services at lower costs. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 18:24:19 -0400 From: dhorvath@cobs.com (David B. Horvath, CCP) Subject: Everything Happened Around the Switchboard > The complete review appeared in V17 #235 on September 7. You really > need to read this book to learn about old-time telephone systems from > earlier this century. Mike Sandman has copies available in his shop > and is taking telephone orders for it. PAT] After reading your review, I decided I had to have the book. I called Mike and he still had some *signed* copies around. I had it my hands by Thursday or Friday and I've already read it. Definately one of those books you can't put down. David B. Horvath, CCP dhorvath@cobs.com Consultant, Author, International Lecturer, Adjunct Professor (also: dhorvath@cgisystems.com, dhorvath@dca.net, davidh@decus.ca, and several other places) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The photos did a lot to add to the story. "A picture is worth a thousand words" is definitly true in this case. My favorite photo in the book was the one of Bob McKeen and Tom Thurston sitting together 'working the board' late in the evening. They both have smiles that are absolutely infectious. The photo was dated 1971 and it was hard, looking at Bob McKeen to accept him being 48 years old in that picture; he looked *considerably* younger. Tom was in his early twenties at the time; I wonder what he is doing for a living and where he is now. But then the 1979 photo of Bob out in the front yard of the Hathaway home (and telephone office as the sign in the picture notes) shows that he aged a great deal over the next eight years. We are told in the book however that the 1970's were sheer hell for all of the 'family'; the operation had grown to the point that twelve hour work days, seven days per week were the norm. It was in that period of time they had to start hiring a lot of 'outsiders'; women to work eight hour shifts around the clock running the board. The entire 'bookkeeping' operation had taken Mrs. Hathaway and Bob McKeen four hours per *month* back in 1950. Toward the end a bookkeeper worked there forty hours per week. The kids had all grown up and left home; there was no biological family there any longer. Then the final year or year and a half of operation in the early 1980's the company had been sold and belonged to Oxford Telephone, another small telco, however it remained in the Hathaway's home pending construction of the new central office building and the conversion to dial. Now to me, *that* would have been a bummer, as it must have been to Marie, Elden and Bob ... total strangers had taken over their home (operators and clerks from Oxford Tel) while McKeen and the Hathaways watched it all vanish. In the final hour of the old system, Elden placed the last, symbolic call, while Marie, Bob and one of the kids worked the board 'one last time.' Then the clock struck two, a switch was thrown and dismantling of the switchboard began almost immediatly. Mike Hathaway relates in the book how years later his mother and dad would have guests in their home and point out the place 'where the switchboard used to be.' Anyway, thanks for your note. A couple other people have written to say they also got their copies and fell in love with the Hathaways almost from page one and sat reading it all the way through to the bitter end, thirty plus years after it started. Mike Sandman will fill orders for the book; see issue 235 of 9/7/97 for details. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mike Granger Subject: Line Busy-Out Device Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 13:42:30 -0600 Organization: University of Colorado / University Management Systems Reply-To: Mike.Granger@cusys.edu A question for those of you who are sharp on the hardware end of things: we have Voice-Response computer system here that has a very standard type of connection scheme for cabling the telephone lines to the system; that is, the lines are cross-connected to a Telco- connectorized 66-block, then from the block via a standard 50-pin Telco cable to a patch-block that breaks out each of the 24 lines with an RJ-11 jack, then from this patch-block via another Telco cable to the system. The patch-block is in the stream in order to have a convenient physical means of busying out these lines; that is done by using little RJ-11 shorting plugs that are inserted into the appropriate RJ-11 jack in the patch-block, shorting tip and ring to cause the busy condition. In the past, I've called some Telecom vendors to aks if they are aware of a device that would make this busying out process a little easier. For instance, a gadget to replace the patch-block that instead has simple dip switches, so that if you wanted a line to be busied, you'd just flip the switch. This would make the process of testing the hunting of a phone hunt group alot easier and quicker for me than dealing with the plugs. If any of you know of any such thing as I've described, or something similar to it, please let me know, and reply directly to: mike.granger@cusys.edu. Thanks very much. ------------------------------ From: justinh@towers.co.uk (Justin Hughes) Subject: Employment Opportunity: Prospero Call Billing, Berks, UK Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 16:26:27 GMT Organization: Towers Recruitment Reply-To: justinh@towers.co.uk Prospero Consultants Contractors with experience of Prospero call rating system or similar systems required for long term contract based near Reading, Berkshire. Previous experience of using this system in the telecoms industry would be very desirable to our client. Only contractors with UK working visas please. Rate: Very Attractive Rates. Start: ASAP Duration: 6 months++ Please contact, Justin Hughes Towers Recruitment Services, Chiltern Chambers, St Peters Avenue, Caversham, Reading, Berkshire, RG4 7DH FAX: (01189) 461137 TEL: (01189) 461200 ext 218. EMAIL: justinh@towers.co.uk Visit our web site: www.towers.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 11:09:58 -0700 From: Robert L. McMillin Subject: GTE/Ascend Max 200+ ISDN Hunt Group: Resolution at Last David Ashbaugh , a GTE employee, was kind enough to write me regarding my previous dilemma concerning getting hunt groups on a BRI ISDN working with my Ascend Max 200+. It turns out that the problem really was with the 200+ documentation. The configuration data was not provided in any of the paper documentation, but Ascend does provide it on their web site: http://www.ascend.com/719.html -- configuring hunt groups for BRIs http://www.ascend.com/890.html -- voice and data hunting on a 5ESS I would like to thank David for responding; it's all too often that GTE has, in the past, simply flushed out trouble tickets without even a cursory configuration check. Robert L. McMillin | Not the voice of Syseca, Inc. | rlm@syseca-us.com Personal: rlm@helen.surfcty.com | rlm@netcom.com Put 'rabbit' in your Subject: or my spam-schnauzer will eat your message. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Sep 1997 16:15:00 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Local-Only NXX Prefixes (was Re: 811-2323?) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg, N.Y. > access the Microsoft Network was something like 515-950-xxxx 950-xxxx is reserved for Feature Group B access to long distance companies. (It's trunk access, so the connection is high quality and the LD company gets as much data about the call, e.g. realtime ANI, as they care to pay for.) Originally it was used for access to long distance carriers in areas that didn't have equal access dialing. Now it's used for all sorts of stuff for short calls from all over the country. For example, my credit card terminal calls a 950 number to do charge validations. I'm not surprised MS would use it for a signup, it's a number that's good all over the country and lets them know reliably the calling number. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ------------------------------ From: jfh@mail.org.uk (Jack Hamilton) Subject: Re: California's 209 NPA Split and MedicAlert Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 15:44:53 GMT Organization: Copyright (c) 1997 by Jack Hamilton On Fri, 12 Sep 1997 11:14:21 -0500, Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > Could someone explain to me exactly _HOW_ these MedicAlert devices work? If MedicAlert now has dialing devices, they're new. The traditional MedicAlert product is a metal bracelet (or other piece of jewelry) containing very basic information about the wearer, along with the area code 209 number to call for more information. The basic information might be something like "diabetic, O+ blood type", and the 209 number would provide access to more information, such as the name of your regular doctor. According to a recent article in the local paper, MedicAlert does not use 800 numbers because such numbers aren't dialable from everywhere in the world, whereas a regular number is. MedicAlert is concerned that the delay and confusion caused by a number change might contribute to increased injuries or fatalities. Imagine a non-English-speaking doctor trying to get the new number from overseas directory assistance. Jack Hamilton Sacramento, California jfh @ alumni . stanford . org PGP ID: 79E07035 FP:156BBDDC 77FAB77F D1CAC4BA 70765C63 ------------------------------ From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) Subject: Re: Area Code 209 Split - CPUC News Release Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 11:47:37 PST Organization: Shadownet Anthony Argyriou writes: > The 209 area code split will be implemented in the following stages: > November 14, 1998 Start of Permissive Dialing > May 15, 1999 Start of Mandatory Dialing > August 21, 1999 End of Mandatory Dialing. Excuse me? *End* of Mandatory dialing? I think someone at the CPUC is using a bit too much "medical" marijuana. :-) If not, they are even less knowledgable about phone matters than we've suspected. Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow) shadow@krypton.rain.com <--preferred leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com <--last resort ------------------------------ From: rpmackin@ashley.ivey.uwo.ca (Robert Patrick MacKinnon) Subject: Help Wanted: Citizen 120D Serial cfg for SMDR? Date: 15 Sep 1997 12:13:01 GMT Organization: Ivey Business School - London, Ontario I have a serial interface module for my Citizen 120-D printer. It's hooked up to the SMDR of my ITT3100, but the 3100 won't send 8 data bits. So it's currently at 1200/7/E/1. The printer was set to 1200/8/N/1, it works but theevery few characters it flips to italic print and back again. I don't have the dip settings for the serial module. (2nd bank of switches to the right on the pull out card) Anyway, if someone has the data sheet on the serial unit I would really appreciate your help. Just the dip table is required. Thanks! Pat MacKinnon fax:519 472-7510 London, Ontario, Canada ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #249 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 15 23:42:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id XAA26719; Mon, 15 Sep 1997 23:42:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 23:42:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199709160342.XAA26719@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #250 TELECOM Digest Mon, 15 Sep 97 23:42:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 250 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson For Once, AT&T and ICB Appear to Be On the Same Side (Judith Oppenheimer) SW Bell Asks for Slamming Crackdown (Tad Cook) Re: Phoning Home to 5 (Jeremy Rogers) 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: * telecom-request@telecom-digest.org * 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: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * 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. * ************************************************************************* 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. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. 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, 15 Sep 1997 22:07:30 -0400 From: Judith Oppenheimer Reply-To: joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com Organization: ICB TOLL FREE - 800/888 news... commentary... consulting... Subject: For Once, AT&T and ICB Appear to Be On the Same Side For once, AT&T and ICB appear to be on the same side of this issue. John Cushman, Director of Toll-Free Services for AT&T supports ICB's view that specific toll-free numbers have an intrinsic value. As Cushman says, "I believe that the arguments ICB makes, relative to toll-free number value, are supported by the history of the toll-free industry, current RespOrg to RespOrg practices, and our customers' positions on vanity number protection." AT&T also supports a recommendation to continue to resolve toll-free numbering issues, by helping to put an existing toll-free number customer of record in touch with a "number seeker". While he stopped short of supporting a proposal to legalize the private commercial exchange of numbers, Cushman did indicate a desire to pursue this area. "We are putting our heads in the sand if we believe that number brokering is not taking place in the marketplace today", Cushman adds. ------- REMEMBER DOMAIN! by Dan Miller, Publisher, Telemedia News & Views "Remember The Maine!" was the rallying cry behind the Spanish-American War near the last turn of the century. Perhaps "Remember Domain!" will raise awareness of better ways to assign and manage toll-free numbers. It took about 27 years for the demand for toll-free numbers to deplete the inventory of roughly 8 million 800 numbers. Yet the numbers made available when a new toll-free service area code (SAC), 888, was introduced last year, will be devoured in less than one-tenth of that time. Federal authorities sniff the scent of conspiracy. The FCC issued its Second Report and Order on Toll-Free services last April. The document has become infamous because it concludes that number depletion is largely the result of 'warehousing' by so-called RespOrgs (i.e., companies who are 'responsible' for making changes in the database of toll-free number assignments) or 'hoarding' of precious numbers by toll-free end-users (who claim more numbers than they intend to use). The Commission's tough talk placed carriers and their customers on the defensive. For the first time in recent memory, the major carriers and the largest users of 800 numbers find themselves on the same side of this contentious issue. Yet, through all the tough talk, it is apparent that the FCC is coming around to see that not all numbers are created equal. Industry participants, including the subscribers to toll-free services, their carriers, and RespOrgs (the bulk of whom are carriers) are not so sure that anti-hoarding measures solve the underlying problems. They have a tangible point. In spite of the introduction of draconian rules, 888 numbers are evaporating before our eyes, precipitating the introduction of 877 numbers in 1998. ICB, a staunch advocate of toll-free subscribers' rights, points out in comments to the FCC, "the Commission's entertainment of the idea of 1-888 replication of 1-800 numbers is an acknowledgment, whether or not a conscious one, that a toll free subscriber may enjoy a legally protected private interest in a particular 1-800 number." For once, AT&T and ICB appear to be on the same side of this issue. John Cushman, Director of Toll-Free Services for AT&T supports ICB's view that specific toll-free numbers have an intrinsic value. As Cushman says, "I believe that the arguments ICB makes, relative to toll-free number value, are supported by the history of the toll-free industry, current RespOrg to RespOrg practices, and our customers' positions on vanity number protection." AT&T also supports a recommendation to continue to resolve toll-free numbering issues, by helping to put an existing toll-free number customer of record in touch with a "number seeker". While he stopped short of supporting a proposal to legalize the private commercial exchange of numbers, Cushman did indicate a desire to pursue this area. "We are putting our heads in the sand if we believe that number brokering is not taking place in the marketplace today," Cushman adds. Toll-Free's Unsolved Mysteries When a new toll-free exchange is introduced, it launches discussions involving the second Great Unsolved Mystery. This one revolves around a simple question: 'Do so-called 'vanity' numbers deserve special treatment when new a SAC is launched?' The issue has been condensed into arguments surrounding 'replication' and the right-of-first-refusal. Advocates of replication believe that many toll-free subscribers have built equity in a specific number through advertising and marketing campaigns. They believe that these firms should be able to protect the equivalents of their existing numbers in a new area code. Thus 1-800-FLOWERS should have right-of-first-refusal on 1-888-FLOWERS, and so on. Opponents to replication and its variations see the protection of existing numbers as unnecessary. They also believe it institutionalizes number depletion by taking numbers out of the available inventory unnecessarily. The FCC's Report and Order deferred rulemaking on the vanity number issue, and invited further comments from interested parties. During the ensuing four months, the rapid depletion of the 888 SAC, coupled with evidence of consumer confusion and misdials which penalize both big and small users of toll-free numbers has led to a new way to look at the vanity numbers and the underlying issues: Who owns them?; How do you define them?; and, perhaps most importantly, Can they be bought and sold? Spelling It Out The issue of ownership of toll-free numbers has been contentious since the inception of competitive toll-free services. It reared its head most dramatically when 800 Numbers became portable on P-Day (May 1, 1993). Prior to P-Day, because 800 numbers were assigned in blocks of NXXs, end-users had to change 800 numbers if they wanted to switch carriers. Prior to P-Day, in the absence of control by end-users, there was very little controversy surrounding ownership of numbers. Portability granted whole new rights to 800 service subscribers. The numbers felt more like property. What's more, in spite of regulatory and legal prohibitions, both end-users and carriers periodically brokered toll-free numbers. Property or not, they were up for sale often with very positive results. For instance, {Inc. Magazine} recently carried the story of an entrepreneur named Ken Hawk, who saw the revenues from his automobile battery business sky-rocket, based on a simple change in his 800 number. Hawk ran an electronic service that brought battery customers together with manufacturers. He told Inc. that he bought a new 800 number and the trademark 1-800-BATTERIES at a Comdex show in November 1995. Prior to the acquisition, his 800 number was the less memorable 1-800-POWER-EX. He changed the name of his company to 1 800 BATTERIES, and is finding that revenue growth is far outstripping his projections. 1996 revenues were $4.6 million, versus a projected $2.1 million. Hawk credits the growth to an increase in referrals, 'because it's easier to remember our name.' He also notes that (as this article demonstrates) 'it's impossible to write about us without mentioning our 800 number.' Finding an 800 service subscriber who admits to purchasing a number is uncommon. The early 1990s were an era of Prohibition and plausible deniability. Brokering took place surreptitiously, and TNV always heard third-hand that numbers like 1-800-COLLECT or 1-800-OPERATOR were obtained from third-parties on the open market. The leading 800 carriers were staunch supporters of the view that numbers are a public resource which cannot be subject to ownership, and that it is the role of the FCC to manage the allocation of the resource in a fair and equitable manner. In the wake of the April Report and Order, concerned parties who have traditionally been on opposite sides of the ownership issue are finding some middle ground by taking a stark look at reality. Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB, also notes that the Commission's idea that numbers are all the same and could be allocated by lottery, would negate the possibility of 1-800-BATTERY. That number 1-800-228-8379 could just as easily have been a pager number, with no net effect on a retail business. In comments to the Commission, ICB elaborates on the theme that companies who have built value in their 800 Numbers deserve to have those numbers protected when subsequent SACs are introduced. It gives half-hearted endorsement of replication and rights-of-first-refusal (that is the set-aside of identified numbers on a new SAC), but notes that it should not be viewed as an ideal or permanent solution, admitting that keeping numbers out of inventory while trying to grow that inventory is likely to be counterproductive in the long-run. ICB characterizes replication with right-of-first-refusal as a necessary evil because 'In the near term, at least, the immediate need for protection of existing users' rights outweighs the inherent inefficiency of replication.' ICB postulates that the Commission certainly is not so naive as to believe that most, or even a significant number, of the well known toll free brands in use today are based on numbers assigned to their current holders based purely on the luck of the draw. It feels strongly that the April Report and Order, represents a Commission in denial. Market savvy firms are constantly launching new campaigns built on toll-free numbers. When they do, they often obtain a memorable toll-free number to accompany their efforts. What would MCI's five-cent Sundays be without the number 1-800-SUNDAYS, a number which, we guarantee, did not come out of the inventory of available toll-free numbers. Preaching to the Choir Marketing literature from AT&T's 800 Services Group has recognized the value of vanity numbers for some time. In a Press Release on the 25th anniversary of toll-free 800 service, AT&T celebrated the fact that easy-to-remember 800 numbers create a 'global storefront' for firms of all sizes, noting that "The advent of 'vanity' numbers such as 1-800-MET-LIFE, 1-800-MATTRES and 1-800-4-CAVIAR have allowed businesses to create unique and easily recognized identities." To support the growth of vanity-number-based toll-free commerce by its customers, AT&T may even go so far as to create an environment in which a number seeker can get in touch with one of its toll-free number customers who is customer of record for a desirable toll-free number. After asserting that replication with right-of-refusal is a near-term solution, ICB advocates 'a system of partitioning or assigning domains' to toll-free numbers as 'an appropriate long term remedy.' ICB further notes that the idea had already occurred to the FCC staff when it drafted the Report and Order. At that time, the Commission noted that it 'may wish to require a partitioning of toll free service, leaving business entities and the majority of vanity number holders to use the 800 code and assigning a specific toll free code to subscribers for personal and pager use.' ICB holds out management of domain names for Internet-based electronic mail and Web-based activity as a model for number plan administration. Clearly there are some challenges in this regard. Ironically, domain name registration and management is managed by an organization called InterNIC, which is operated under contract by a division of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). If anyone is familiar with the vagaries of partitioning and domain name management, SAIC is the one. ICB acknowledges that the domain name system is not perfect, and is currently addressing its own set of problems and pressures. Its beauty, from ICB's point of view is that it is an established system that has worked well for quite some time and that it was developed largely without the benefit of government intervention. The most attractive aspect of the Internet's domain management system, however, is its openness. All Internet users can gain access to the InterNIC database and query it to learn of the availability or status of a given domain name. Internet users can also fill out their own forms in order to register their own domain name. On the Internet, they may not know if you're a dog, but they know for sure that you are not a RespOrg. Users often choose to use their Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as agents for establishing their domains, but that is their choice. In general, it is something that can be done electronically and in full view of other members of the Internet community. It must be remembered that the FCC's approach to regulating the toll-free industry is built around the idea of preserving the availability of numbers. Its concern over vanity numbers on subsequent SACs is part of an overall theme against holding numbers in reserve without a specific use or user. It is becoming apparent that a bigger factor in depleting the inventory of numbers on any telephone exchange is the proliferation of communicating devices, coupled with the growth of personal communications services [with small letters], which rely on toll-free access. Such numbers generate very little traffic when compared to high-volume inbound telemarketing or teleservicing call centers. Yet they take numbers out of general circulation, all the same. Given the rate at which numbers are flying out of inventory, it seems as if data communications, paging, and other personal communications services can absorb as many numbers as regulators are willing to put into circulation. They will expand to take up as much room as is made available. ICB sees partitioning as a way of protecting the rights of existing 800 SAC users of all sizes. Critics of property rights for 800 numbers had a habit of saying that the rules were much ado about a few, large marketing companies. Yet many of the comments filed with the FCC subsequent to the launch of the 888 SAC indicated that many small companies were the dolphins caught in the gill net of non-replicated numbers. The Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, some of the largest users of 800 numbers sees misdials of 800 number equivalents in the 888 toll-free code as frequent and frustrating in spite of intense advertising programs. Such misdials are a sword that cuts both ways. Let's say consumers dial an 800 number, even though they see an 888 number in a direct response promotion. In that case, the advertiser misses a call (and a potential sale), while the company that receives the call ends up paying the freight. Personal uses are tangibly different from old-guard toll-free programs. For one thing, numbers are not embedded in marketing, advertising or promotional campaigns. Given that the recipient pays for the inbound traffic, most of them are unpublished. Partitioning opens the opportunity for recipients to build mnemonic numbers based on their name, hobby, or company. ICB's proposal is built on the fundamental philosophy that a significant number of telephone users regard 800 numbers as 'more than an access code, it is a brand.' Thus partitioning 800 provides a framework in which all carriers and their 800 service customers can return to promoting toll-free 800 services. ICB also contends that partitioning toll-free access into domains protects existing toll-free services from encroachment with a minimum of regulatory and administrative involvement by the Commission and DSMI, the subsidiary of Bellcore chartered to oversee management of the computer system known as the 800 Service Management System. ICB closes its argument by asserting that partitioning 800 Services into domains is a much more efficient use of toll free numbers. By contrast a replication scheme takes numbers out of circulation. Under a domain or partitioning scheme, the only numbers taken out of service in a new code are those that are needed for service. There is no question that domain names have been bought and sold. There are also a number of trademark and intellectual property suits swirling around InterNIC and its conduct. Yet the hallmark of the system is the free availability of information and open access to database and registration processes. The contrast with the present methodology for assignment of vanity 800 numbers is striking. ICB closes by requesting that the FCC look into incorporating the publicly beneficial aspects of the Internet domain name system. ------------------- 800/888 ICB TOLL FREE NEWS 800/888 ...today's regulatory news for tomorrow's marketing decisions. Click for 15-Day Free Trial Subscription: http://icbtollfree.com (ph) 212 684-7210. (fx) 212 684-2714. 1 800 THE EXPERT. ICB Headlines Autosponder: mailto:headlines@icbtollfree.com ------------------------------ Subject: SW Bell Asks for Slamming Crackdown Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 19:04:09 PDT From: tad@ssc.com (Tad Cook) (Of particular interest in this article is the item about "virtual billing", and also the one-time use of a 10XXX code in response to a direct mail offer creating a monthly billing minimum.) ---------------- Southwestern Bell Asks for Crackdown on `Slamming' By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News Sep. 16--Stung by a substantial increase in long-distance marketing scams aimed at Southwestern Bell's local telephone customers, the company on Monday asked for new federal laws to crack down on "slamming." Southwestern Bell officials said complaints about slamming are up 30 percent this year. Slamming is a relatively common practice in the telecommunications business in which a customer is switched from one long-distance company to another without his or her consent. The company expects to handle almost 500,000 complaints in 1998 -- about 1,400 a day -- from customers in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The company handled 378,000 complaints last year. Slamming complaints have increased by 50 percent in Kansas since Jan. 1. Complaints in Missouri are up 20 percent. SBC Communications Inc., Southwestern Bell's parent company, asked the Federal Communications Commission for new rules to penalize long-distance companies that switch customers illegally. In filing its proposals, SBC was responding to a request from the Federal Communications Commission for public comment on slamming issues. Slamming is the commission's top complaint, and federal officials said they expect to issue a new set of slamming rules before the end of the year. "Slamming has just gotten out of hand," said Debbie Beamer, a spokeswoman for Southwestern Bell. "It's been determined that the only way to stop it is to remove the economic incentive." The SBC proposal calls for fines of up to $10,000 per slam. Slamming is a major issue for Southwestern Bell and other local telephone companies because federal law requires local phone companies to change customers from one carrier to another when requested. But, when customers see their telephone bills and find they've been slammed, they call Southwestern Bell to complain. Long-distance companies use a variety of scams to slam customers. Some switch customers by forging their signatures -- sometimes those of dead family members -- on authorization forms. Another common scam asks shoppers to fill out sweepstakes entries which, in small print, authorize the switch. Beamer said some new scams cropped up this year. In some cases, she said, customers are being slammed by companies saying they represent Southwestern Bell. They tell the customer the company needs to "consolidate" their telephone bill. In other cases, Beamer said, customers are being sent cards in the mail with a five-digit long-distance access number offering lower rates. Once used, the company continues to charge the customer a monthly access charge, she said. Some companies also do virtual billing, in which a customer's account is legally "sold" by one long-distance company to another, SBC officials said. Slamming of business customers also is on the rise. About 20 percent of all complaints were from businesses. SBC is asking the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a "three strikes" enforcement program that would affect any long-distance company where a set number of slamming complaints are logged in any month. If more than 2 percent of the customer switches requested by a long-distance company are disputed by customers, the carrier would be placed on six-month probation during which it would be required to take steps to bring those disputes below 2 percent. If the disputes continued, the company could be fined $5,000 per slam. A third violation would include a fine of $10,000 per slam, and the company would be suspended from switching additional customers. "Rogue companies have given the entire telecommunications industry a bad name, and consumers and businesses want a stop to the slamming madness," said Royce Caldwell, operations president for SBC. --------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some one or more of you can correct me if I am wrong, but I think the term 'slamming' orignated here in this Digest several years ago. I do not recall it being used at all until someone used it as a way to describe what had happened to them on their home phone line; that would have been around 1990 perhaps or maybe a year or two before that. As I said, correct me if I am wrong: did we 'invent' the term here which is now commonly used to describe the practice? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Rogers Subject: Re: Phoning Home to 5 Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 20:02:35 +0100 Charles Cremer from: > ... "I have a collect call for 5." The Americus > operator immediately replied: "Oh, they're not at home right now. They > are at church." This reminded me of a story told by a former director of BT, who had started as a lineman in 1948. In the late 1970s he dropped in unexpectedly on an old aunt of his, who was well into her 80s. She was pleased to see him, but was concerned that she didn't have enough food in the house, so she picked up the phone and dialled 100 for the operator. "This is Mrs X, please connect me to my grocer," she said, and within seconds she was putting her order to him. Her nephew asked why she had called the operator, rather than doing it herself. "Oh, I could never get the hang of numbers and dials," she replied. He checked up later, and found that a list of the people she called regularly was on every operators' position at the (large) exchange centre at Reading. Jez [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The very same kind of service one came to expect in Bryant Pond, and one of the contributing factors that finally caused the demise of the company. Ah ... but I am not going to do still another promotion of the book again in this issue. Needless to say, personal service everywhere has become a very expensive proposition. Telcos don't do it any longer; very few companies do. And those that do charge a fortune for it or they go out of business very soon. Sad but true. :( PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #250 ******************************