From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 8 00:25:50 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g784Por12675; Thu, 8 Aug 2002 00:25:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 00:25:50 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208080425.g784Por12675@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #351 TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Aug 2002 18:45:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 351 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates (Adam Kerman) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates (G. Wollman) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates (Kim Brennan) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (P. Wallich) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (Wm. Warren) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (John Galt) Re: The Roots of MCI (Adam H. Kerman) Old TV's (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong and No One Can Seem to Fix It (John Levine) Re: FollowUp: High Speed Access in Campbell, California? - Yes! (C Dold) Re: FollowUp: High Speed Access in Campbell, California? - Yes! (Higdon) Re: Allegations About MCI (David B. Horvath, CCP) Re: Wireless Bridge (Scott Dorsey) IMT SS7 Trunk Question (Qwerty) Toll Free Business Directory (Steven Lichter) Another Set For the Directory, May Be Repeats (David B. Horvath, CCP) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 19:42:55 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com John Higdon wrote: > In article telecom20.348.3@telecom-digest.org, Tom Schmidt wrote: >> So why is paying more for a TV service I don't care about being pushed >> through Congress and the FCC? > Because your government is just itching to sell off the old TV > spectrum and get the cash. The consumer (and taxpayer) be damned. > The whole point of this exercise is to cash in the old TV spectrum. To > do this, you the taxpayer, are being bribed with all the flash and > trash of HDTV. Problem is, the debacle is falling apart at the seams, > and you the taxpayer are not interested in the bribe, at least not as > presently constituted. Why shouldn't the tv spectrum be sold? Current license holders shouldn't be getting this privilege for so little. Taxpayers don't benefit from that. In the early '50's, did no one want UHF? Was that a fiasco? The FCC forced the public to buy more expensive tv sets to be able to tune that in. Some have said that UHF was better suited to television broadcasting, that VHF should have been given up for another use decades ago. ------------------------------ From: wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates Date: 7 Aug 2002 00:10:17 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , <73115.1041@compuserve.com> wrote: > In this case, the federal govt sees big bucks in selling off the > current VHF TV spectrum Not so. The 'core spectrum' set aside for post-transition TV broadcasters includes all current VHF-TV channels. The spectrum being auctioned off consists of two blocks of high-end UHF channels. Digital TV operating currently in Boston uses channels 19, 20, 30, 31, 42, and 43. It is anticipated that all of the VHF stations will move back to their 'home' band if the DTV transition is ever completed, as the propagation characteristics and operational costs on VHF are far superior for broadcasting; their current transitional DTV channels will be made available to other users (possibly broadcast, possibly not) on an auction basis. In some other markets, broadcasters' DTV allocations will allow them to move from UHF to VHF. It is expected in these cases that the broadcasters will return their original, less-desirable UHF spectrum. Garrett A. Wollman | [G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of wollman@lcs.mit.edu | chemical processes. Genes do not make ``novelty- Opinions not those of| seeking'' or any other complex and overt behavior. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) ------------------------------ From: kimbrennan@aol.comfrtz.com (KimBrennan) Date: 06 Aug 2002 19:07:32 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates > The whole point of this exercise is to cash in the old TV spectrum. To > do this, you the taxpayer, are being bribed with all the flash and > trash of HDTV. Problem is, the debacle is falling apart at the seams, > and you the taxpayer are not interested in the bribe, at least not as > presently constituted. Hey! I am too interested. I'm an early adopter of HDTV. I have six tuners capable of receiving HDTV broadcasts and one (the only one) VCR capable of recording HDTV broadcasts. There is some really nice content in HDTV. It is irksome though that various commercial groups have given a half hearted (at best) support for HDTV. ABC in Washington D.C. (WJLA) broadcasts a digital over the air signal (OTA), but does NOT broadcast ANY widescreen, or HDTV material (even when ABC National did ... such as Monday Night Football.) Fox (national) does not broadcast HDTV material; (they do broadcast widescreen however, on certain programs, such as the X-Files.) NBC only broadcasts the Tonight show and a few rare sporting events in HDTV. CBS and PBS are the good guys. They have a lot of programming in HDTV. UPN has FILMED some programming ("Enterprise" for example) in HDTV, but does not broadcast ANY digital signal in this market, let alone an HDTV signal. PAX does not broadcast HDTV, but instead broadcasts 6 SDTV (standard definition) channels. There are no (US market) recording devices for HDTV broadcasts currently being sold. This is a DIRECT consequence of the MPAA. In my house I get digital signals from 3 Baltimore stations (unless it is raining very heavily), plus 4 Washington DC stations ... without rotating my Antenna. Rotate it and I can pick up two additional stations (PBS, and PAX). Throw in HDNet on DirecTV for one additional High Def channel. Very few people have SEEN HDTV. It isn't shown in many consumer electronic stores on any of the demo TVs (something about no content being broadcast in HDTV during the shopping hours ...) Some may complain that there is no interest, but interest is often sparked by ADVERTISING. Right now the ADVERTISING isn't working because 1) no content broadcast during shopping hours, 2) no way to record content and re-view it during shopping hours 3) high price of equipment. The high price of equipment won't change until VOLUME manufacturing kicks in. In the end, this is all a Chicken and Egg problem. Broadcasters won't do content, because there is no audience. Audience won't be there because no affordable equipment. Equipment won't go down in price because there is little content. PS. Two years ago the SuperBowl was broadcast in HDTV. Last year it was not (it was widescreen, but NOT HighDef.) "I'm sorry, all my money is tied up in currency." W.C.Fields ------------------------------ From: Paul Wallich Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 15:57:19 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In article , johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) wrote: >>> And just when you think >>> things can't get worse, Congress and the Federal Communications >>> Commission (FCC) are now readying new rules to roll the burden of >>> rolling out a service nobody wants >> Expostulate! What?! >> Who the hell is this guy? > I think that by "wants" he means "wants enough to pay for it". > Lots of people would be happy to have HDTV if it cost the same as NTSC > TV. Very few seem prepared to pay extra. > This should come as no surprise. Consider how lousy the picture is on > most cable systems and videotapes. How many people drop cable service > or stop renting tapes as a result? Give or take a thousandth of a > percent, none. That's because (with the barely credible exception of DVD) there aren't any real alternatives. You can watch what's there, or you can watch nothing. I know that since my household was forcibly switched to digital cable, with the accompanying increase in ugly artifacts, reading a book has become much more appealing than it was. What I don't understand is why (other than the fact that it's so much easier just to bribe congresscritters and pack the FCC) no one has come up with a viable business model that would avoid trying to get consumers to shell out hundred of bucks up front for something of questionable value. You would think that set-top box manufacturers would have the sense to include HDTV-to-whatever convertors and that people who put set-top boxes in homes would be willing to put in those boxes for just a tiny premium. Given how badly degraded a signal you get from conventional video sources, I'm willing to bet that converted HDTV would be visibly better on even a regular TV, much less the old monitors so many people have kicking around. And once the camel's nose was under the tent ... paul of course it would help if there were shows worth watching ------------------------------ Reply-To: William Warren From: William Warren Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Organization: Church of the Swimming Bullfrog Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 03:37:44 GMT John R Levine wrote in message news:telecom20.349.9@telecom-digest.org: [snip] > Lots of people would be happy to have HDTV if it cost the same as NTSC > TV. Very few seem prepared to pay extra. > This should come as no surprise. Consider how lousy the picture is on > most cable systems and videotapes. How many people drop cable service > or stop renting tapes as a result? Give or take a thousandth of a > percent, none. Well, I think that's cart-before-horse. People didn't "want" color sets until someone they knew got one, and then they couldn't buy them fast enough. People don't "want" HDTV because they're not used to the quality and perspective, but once they see their friends using it, they'll want it *right now*, TYVM. The visceral reason for the slow adaptation of HDTV is, IMNSHO, the fact that there isn't any programming available in the new medium. TV stations have long relied on ancient sitcoms (Mister Ed looks on as Wilbur tells his wife she should keep her skirts long enough so that her knees stay "in the family") to fill the time between incredibly profitable advertisements - but Mister Ed and Wilbur are facing a late retirement with HDTV, and the ever-greedy station owners are loath to part with royalties for anything more recent, especially since the contract players who drifted into TV from the Hollywood studios have been replaced by media savvy entrepreneurs with expert agents on their side. But, profits aside: the odd part of the HDTV debate - and it's one that no one seems to be noticing - is that the technology is, by its very nature, going to put a lot of national network personalities out of work, and may even shift the balance of power in media away from the networks and back to local stations and local talent. Consider: the current TV standard predates World War 2, and the current color mechanism (NTSC: "Never Twice the Same Color") was a retrofit to the original B&W system. The format is so bad that the original six channels (1) had to be expanded to twelve, because no two stations could coexist in adjacent channels (2) without dramatically interfering with each other. That this technical disaster was predicted by Howard Armstrong, and the advice ignored, should come as no surprise: RCA wanted to sell TV's, and David Sarnof knew a lot of politicians. We've been seeing the results of RCA's actions ever since, and an entire industry has grown up around the maintenance of status quo. More importantly, and surprisingly, the adaptation of High Definition television is going to cause a dramatic shift in media power and control, for reasons that nobody except yours truly have voiced. The current system has such poor quality that the camera has to work within inches of the subject, and that means that only professional actors can look good on it. Think about that. What, in the final analysis, is Dan/Tom/Peter Rather/Brokaw/Jenning's primary skill? It's certainly not journalism: every print reporter in the world holds TV's blow dried airheads in the same low esteem. It's not insight, nor cleverness, and certainly not intelligence or education. It's simply that they look good on television. Of course, that's "television" with a small "t" - not the high definition kind. With HDTV, there's enough bandwidth to allow ordinary people to look as good on the tube as they are face-to-face, and the pool of intelligent, well spoken people with something to say is going to expand so dramatically that the old "personalities" will find themselves in museums beside the steam locomotives and Ford Tri-Motor airplanes. It's not only news anchors who'll be aweigh, but most of the current pool of "talent" as well: everyone from soap-opera idols to cop-show cowpokes is going to be looking for other work. Needless to say, there are other players, but I don't think any of them can see this change coming. Perhaps humans have a blind spot for anything that's going to gore *their* ox, I don't know. Like the railroads, which should logically have pioneered air travel, and Western Union, which was offered a chance to buy the patent on the telephone, the current crop of TV experts can't see the change coming. Remember TV in its infancy? There were local programs that drew profitable audiences. There was a code of conduct and etiquette that broadcasters followed, and (dare I say it?) a standard of decency in what they said. It was the "golden age", not because it was profitable by today's standards, but because those running the stations were still connected to the communities they served - they had to be. It wasn't until the pushers of stylized violence and "tits and ass" panderers took over the national distribution networks that TV became the uber-culture of America, but to bring about that change, Hollywood had to introduce a standard of shallow good looks, vapid know-nothing smarminess, kindergarten dialog, and thirty second expertise - in other words, cartoon content for a medium that was never capable of showing ordinary human emotion, reactions, and interest. HDTV is going to make Dan/Tom/Peter/Whomever appear for what they *are*: bumps on a log whose only talent is that they look good on old TV sets. That means that the future will hold a new, and much wider, entryway to on-air exposure, and now the city in the clouds is going to come crashing to earth. FWIW. YMMV. Bill Warren (1) Channel One was, IIRC, never used: it was taken for other services shortly after the assignments were given out. (2) VHF TV channels four and five are a special case: they can coexist "next" to each other because there is another, older service in between them -- aircraft marker beacon transmitters. ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:37:24 -0700 Organization: Diogenes the Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society John R Levine wrote: > Lots of people would be happy to have HDTV if it cost the same as NTSC > TV. Very few seem prepared to pay extra. > This should come as no surprise. Consider how lousy the picture is on > most cable systems and videotapes. How many people drop cable service > or stop renting tapes as a result? Give or take a thousandth of a > percent, none. I would much rather live with the picture quality I have now than subject myself to digital rights management under the DMCA, which restricts the copying of tapes -- even if they're my wedding pictures -- and allows a broadcaster to make it impossible to record certain shows. I'll skip HDTV and DVDs to keep my fair use rights, thanks. And I bet most US consumers feel the same way. If the FCC tries to force the issue by shutting down analog broadcast TV as scheduled, we'll still have cable and satellite. If they make it illegal to manufacture new analog TVs, someone will smuggle them in. ------------------------------ From: Adam H. Kerman Subject: Re: The Roots of MCI Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 20:07:11 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to larb0@aol.com who wrote: >> Gordon, you are still a Chicago hanger-on I think, you know about I-55, >> commonly known as the Dan Ryan Expressway, a *major* truck route up there, >> which runs south to St. Louis. > Actually, I-55 is the Stevenson Expressway ... I-94 is the Dan Ryan. I-90, too, at least till it splits off on the Chicago Skyway. Only the Cook County and Chicago portions of the highway are named. The highways built later by the start are numbered, only. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well that goes to show my ignorance. I > do not drive a car; don't know how to drive and don't have a license. > I am talking about the highway that comes from St. Louis up to Chicago > through Joliet. When my father passed in 1991 my brother and I went > from Chicago down here to Independence for his funeral, then drove > back to Chicago. Coming back to Chicago, we left Independence about > 9:00 PM and drove straight back. We made excellent time on that hot > summer night all the way through Kansas, Missouri and central > Illinois. Highway 54 from Joplin up to near St. Louis then across > into Illinois and on to this god-foresaken highway which was not too > bad until we got near Chicago. By this time it was nine or ten in the > morning, and there were trucks *everywhere*. We crawled along at five > miles an hour, stop and start. My little nephew was then about a year > old and he screamed all the way from then until we *finally* pulled > into our driveway in Skokie about noon or 1 PM in the worst heat I > have ever seen. The car overheated somewhere along there in Chicago. > We were five hours from Joliet into Chicago/Skokie. I remember we > drove past Comiskey Park; a White Sox game was just starting which > accounted for much of the traffic. I thought my brother Dan said it > was the 'Dan Ryan' expressway he was cursing at, but I could have > been mistaken. No, you are not mistaken. If you went by the ball park, you were on the Dan Ryan. Perhaps southwest of Joliet you went east on I-80, then north on I-57, then north on the Dan Ryan? > We had to stop somewhere and put water in the car. I was in charge of my > little nephew during this trip, and it was all a hellish thing. Now you > say it was the Stevenson? Not from that description. ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:11:50 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Old TV's On Tue, 6 Aug 2002 14:37:33 -0400 (EDT), Vince Mulhollon wrote: >>> So why is paying more for a TV service I don't care about being pushed >>> through Congress and the FCC? > When analog is phased out, no one will be able to watch TV without > buying a new TV. Therefore, the manufacturers in Taiwan and Korea > will sell a huge number of TVs, at least several dozen million. I'm > sure they've made the proper "campaign donations" to make sure that > happens. While I agree that there seems to be a bit too much government intervention here, in something that should be market-driven, but let's cut the scare tactics, ok? This statement of yours is completely false, for one simple reason: people with older TV's who don't want to get rid of them won't have to. They can simply purchase a set-top box that will decode a digital signal and "downgrade" it to a regular NTSC signal. Such boxes are already available, for about $350 CAD, and I would expect that by the time we reach 2006, the price on them will be significantly lower. (They can be made with or without an over-the-air HDTV tuner, so if you just wanna connect your old TV to your cable or satellite feed, you don't need to buy the tuner option). HDTV gear is expensive now because the demand is low. When demand increases, the prices will come down - just as they did with analog TV back in the 50's and 60's. Just as they did with computers. Just as they did with (insert your own used-to-be-expensive tech here). I bought my first DVD player two years ago for $550 CAD. Now I can buy one for $160 CAD that is JUST AS GOOD. I admit, however, that I'm rather champing at the bit to see some actual, honest-to-God HDTV content. I've already spent the cash on a nice Sony HDTV widescreen, now I just wish I had some content that could take advantage of its capabilities. Watching NTSC signals on this thing REALLY sucks. :-) BTW, HDTV big-screen TV's are priced pretty much comparably with NTSC big-screen TV's, so it's not a question of the technology being THAT much more expensive, inherently. It won't be long before you'll be able to buy a 24" HDTV for not much more than the analog model you'll be replacing. But this is only gonna happen once the market reaches some sort of critical mass. I'm not sure that government intervention is the way to achieve it - on that point, I'll agree with just about everybody here. :-) But the sky isn't falling: this stuff will get cheaper and cheaper, and nobody's going to see their old equipment get "orphaned". It's quite interesting to me that there's a lot of whining about this, but nobody's bitching about the fact that their VHS units are going to be orphaned pretty darned soon. Hello, DVD. Joey Lindstrom - Laird's Flooring joey@lairdsflooring.com ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2002 16:37:12 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong and No One Can Seem to Fix It Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> faxes directory assistance info to VZ, for example) but I suspect AT&T, >> being a newcomer to the local tel biz, has no clue." > AT&T? A newcomer to the local telephone business? What a bizarre notion. It's not bizarre at all. At the time of the Bell breakup, everyone and everything related to local service went to the baby Bells, leaving AT&T with Long Lines, Western Electric (which may have been called American Bell at that point), Bell Labs and a few other odds and ends. This time around they're starting from scratch. The fact that their local service is just resold RBOC service* doesn't help, since nobody at the RBOCs understands that, either. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" Information Superhighwayman wanna-be http://iecc.com/johnl Sewer Commissioner "Just how much hay did we buy?" asked Tom, balefully. * - Maybe a little of it is on the cable systems they're spinning off, but that also has problems liasing with the ILEC. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of how Sprint took over the local exchange service in Junction City, Kansas (buying out United Telephone) then began describing themselves as 'over a century in the telecom business' based on that purchase of United which served Fort Riley and Junction City. Other communities in the vicinity were and remained Southwestern Bell. I thought that sounded bizarre also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@61.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: FollowUp: High Speed Access in Campbell, California? - Yes! Date: 6 Aug 2002 22:06:47 GMT Organization: Wintercreek Data Lesley Davidow wrote: > I can't believe how fast this kind of connection is. I've only been > experimenting for about two hours now but I know this is faster than > what we have at work. I still can't believe the thruput. Instant Remember that what you have at work is shared by X people, with lots of email attachments and Exchange resynchs going on all the time. There might also be a firewall that isn't fast enough for the load, effectively throttling the bandwidth. If "work" considers a T1 fast, then your DSL will be fast, anyway. Uploading probably is a lot slower, but still faster than dialup. Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 16:08:19 -0700 Subject: Re: FollowUp: High Speed Access in Campbell, California? - Yes! From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.350.1@telecom-digest.org, Lesley Davidow wrote: > I can't believe how fast this kind of connection is. I've only been > experimenting for about two hours now but I know this is faster than > what we have at work. I still can't believe the thruput. Instant > streaming and viewing of movie trailers that look like they are off my > hard disk (this is via the RealOne player). ATT Broadband may be > losing market share big time in San Jose/Campbell by delaying this > long to upgrade to cable modems(those who live in this area know what > I'm talking about) because DSL is a dedicated connection. Hopefully, > SBC will prove a reliable provider (you read good and bad on this). > The silly thing is is that I can have both my laptop and desktop > connected to the Internet at once (the laptop wirelessly over DSL and > the desktop PC to my ATT Worldnet account via dial up modem on my > voice side of the line. Yes, I live in the area (but on the east side of 17 and within spec distance of SJ14, one of the two offices serving Campbell). In my opinion, DSL has several advantages over cable modems. First and foremost is the ability to select your own Internet provider. A colleague once quipped that AT&T couldn't sell drugs at a Grateful Dead concert, and it is true even today. Instead of upgrading the thirty-five year-old cable system that serves our area, they have been squabbling with the city of San Jose over dotted tees and crossed eyes in the franchise contract fine print. AT&T would rather settle for the money it can extort out of the TV watchers (who are still willing to settle for the lousy quality) on the antiquated system than invest anything in providing "modern" services. By the time AT&T ever gets around to doing anything, DSL will probably be enjoying a very high penetration in most of the San Jose area. The fact that it is available to you via remote from the SJ12 office now confirms SBC's commitment to offer a product to its customers, which is far more than what you get out of AT&T, who says "not available in your area [click]". I'll be letting my friends and associates in the west Campbell area know that DSL may be now or at least may soon become available and that they need to inquire. Most have already dropped AT&T Broadband in favor of DSS for television reception. I'm enjoying watching the marketplace at work! John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | AIM: plodder5 | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 20:06:42 -0400 From: dhorvath@cobs.com (David B. Horvath, CCP) Subject: Re: Allegations About MCI > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, I know that sounds strange, but > MCI has had many fictional employees at one time or another. So does > Sprint. As does just about any major company. They don't want to use real names because people move about within and between companies. Once some VP gets to move to marketing or something "important" out of the customer service area, he/she doesn't want to hear from the unwashed masses (customers). It also means that the really sick upset customers don't have a target to go after directly (identity theft, stalking, photographing houses/spouses/kids, physical attacks. David B. Horvath, CCP Consultant, Author, International Lecturer, Adjunct Professor Board Member: ICCP Educational Foundation, ICCP Test Council, and Philadelphia Association of Systems Administrators [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well David, what goes around, comes around. In your context, I would say the 'really sick, upset customers' frequently got that way because of poorly they were treated by the companies who screwed up their accounts so badly, nickle and dimed them (or worse) taking money from the customer accounts, etc. I use the Commerce Bank in Independence and have always had very good customer service, record keeping, etc. Not once has a nickle been taken from my account under the guise of some 'fee' to handle my account. Nothing like the mess I dealt with frequently at the First National Bank of Chicago. All the people at the bank I use have name plates on their desks, etc. They call me by name when I go in the door. Customer service does not have to be bad. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Wireless Bridge Date: 7 Aug 2002 13:04:27 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , LaserMan wrote: > I'm looking for a wireless bridge solution that would enable me to > link two points 12 miles apart. This solution should also support > multiple OC3 worth capacity between these two points. Do anyone know > of a product that meets my criteria? Thanks in advance! In what kind of environment? City or rural? Flat or hilly? How large a tower are you willing to work with and what are your reliability needs? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: qwerty Subject: IMT SS7 Trunk Question Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 15:50:45 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises I have a Portmaster3 with a PRI connected to a local CO that my customers (all around the city) dial up to the PM3 and get connected to the internet. Will I see any degradation of performance if all the IMT trunks going from that particular CO (where the PRI connecting to the PM3 is) to all the other CO's are SF(D4)/AMI circuits with 56K trunks? All the IMT's are using SS7 signalling. Is there a tutorial anywhere for troubleshooting ISP disconnects based on non optimal trunking? Like with what I just described as well as for digital padding over the T-1's as well. Thanks, Bo ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Subject: Toll Free Business Directory Date: 6 Aug 2002 18:00:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ This spammer can't even spell, by the way, you get real fools!!!! ... to teach this individual about the cost of owning an Toll Free number ... -----Original Message----- Wowww Look at this deal. We jsut recieved Calling cards. These calling cards are good for national and international calls.It will give you 326 minutes of National calls , International rates vary. 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A Rot In Hell Company. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 21:09:06 -0400 From: dhorvath@cobs.com (David B. Horvath, CCP) Subject: Another Set For The Directory; May Be Repeats The subject said it all: DID YOU FORGET? DVD Player & Directv is yours 866-655-0642. Another one offers help getting off of SPAM lists: > If you have previously cancelled and are still receiving this message, or > need to speak with us regarding this email, you may call our ABUSE CONTROL > CENTER immediately Toll Free at 1-888-425-6788 or email DELETED, > You may also write us at nomore 9835-16 Lake Worth Road #227 - Lake Worth, > FL 33467 If you need toner or ink cartridges, you might want to try these folks: > Call us Toll-Free @ 1-800-758-8084! > *90-day warranty on remanufactured > cartridges. Free shipping on orders over $40 David B. Horvath, CCP Consultant, Author, International Lecturer, Adjunct Professor Board Member: ICCP Educational Foundation, ICCP Test Council, and Philadelphia Association of Systems Administrators ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #351 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 8 21:23:05 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g791N5c16677; Thu, 8 Aug 2002 21:23:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 21:23:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208090123.g791N5c16677@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #352 TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Aug 2002 21:15:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Subscriber-Owned DSL Co-op (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (John D Galt) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (G. Wollman) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (Ken P. Stox) HDTV (Ken Hoehn) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates (Ed Ellers) Re: Old TV's (Ed Ellers) Re: Old TV's (John Higdon) Re: Old TV's (J Kelly) IMT SS7 Trunk Question (qwerty) Any Affordable ACD Software For NBX100 (Rolando) Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (lisarea@dim.com) Re: Cheap Calling Cards Within Spain and France? (Rob) Internal Wiring Closet and 66 Block (Brad Houser) Issues With the Sprint Backbone (Casey) For WorldCom, Acquisitions Were Behind Its Rise and Fall (Monty Solomon) Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor and Conference Coordinator (Ed Ellers) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 17:54:15 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Subscriber-Owned DSL Co-Op "Mayberry DSL" When Qwest balked at bringing broadband to a rural town, locals didn't just get mad. They did it themselves. By Joe Ashbrook Nickell, August 2002 Issue http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,42126,FF.html From the desk of Joey Lindstrom I went to the eye doctor and found out I needed glasses for reading. So, I got some flip-up contact lenses. --Steven Wright ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:37:24 -0700 Organization: Diogenes the Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society John R Levine wrote: > Lots of people would be happy to have HDTV if it cost the same as NTSC > TV. Very few seem prepared to pay extra. > This should come as no surprise. Consider how lousy the picture is on > most cable systems and videotapes. How many people drop cable service > or stop renting tapes as a result? Give or take a thousandth of a > percent, none. I would much rather live with the picture quality I have now than subject myself to digital rights management under the DMCA, which restricts the copying of tapes -- even if they're my wedding pictures -- and allows a broadcaster to make it impossible to record certain shows. I'll skip HDTV and DVDs to keep my fair use rights, thanks. And I bet most US consumers feel the same way. If the FCC tries to force the issue by shutting down analog broadcast TV as scheduled, we'll still have cable and satellite. If they make it illegal to manufacture new analog TVs, someone will smuggle them in. ------------------------------ From: wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: 8 Aug 2002 03:19:59 GMT Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Paul Wallich wrote: > You would think that set-top box manufacturers would have the sense > to include HDTV-to-whatever convertors and that people who put > set-top boxes in homes would be willing to put in those boxes for > just a tiny premium. Several off-the-shelf DirecTV receivers do in fact come with ATSC digital decoders. That only helps for about 10% of the market. Cable companies do not want to carry digital TV signals. They have deliberately engineered their networks to preclude this possibility, so that they can then go crying to the courts and Congress if the FCC requires them to carry DTV signals about how expensive it would be to retrofit their (brand-new) networks to deliver these signals. (The US DTV standard was approved well in advance of most of these 'digital cable' system upgrades.) It's a smokescreen: their real goal is to lock consumers into their proprietary set-top boxes, and to maintain their leverage over non-affiliated cable network and local station operators. Consider: if full DTV must-carry were implemented, then broadcasters who also own basic-cable services would be able to add some of them to their stations' DTV multiplexes, and then sell the local spot time through their existing sales force instead of letting the cableco do it. If many stations in a market did this for the most popular services (e.g., Viacom channels on the CBS and UPN stations, AOL channels on the WB stations, Disney channels on the ABC stations, etc.), then -- combined with the improved quality of the digital signals for those who can receive them -- many consumers would have no reason to subscribe to cable or satellite services at all. -- Garrett A. Wollman | [G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of wollman@lcs.mit.edu | chemical processes. Genes do not make ``novelty- Opinions not those of| seeking'' or any other complex and overt behavior. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) ------------------------------ From: Kenneth P. Stox Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 00:21:10 -0500 Organization: Imaginary Landscape, LLC. William Warren wrote: > (2) VHF TV channels four and five are a special case: they can coexist > "next" to each other because there is another, older service in between > them -- aircraft marker beacon transmitters. Isn't there another case? I don't remember the assignments off the top of my head, but isn't the entire FM Radio band between channels 6 and 7? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes it is. TV channels 2-6 are in the low end of the VHF band. Channel 7 then comes in a bit higher up in the VHF band. FM radio in the meantime slips in between 87.5 megs and 108 megs. Then comes the aircraft radio area, a bunch of government radio frequencies, more VHF stations, *then* channel 7 on TV and upward, around 180 megs; somewhere in that area. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ken Hoehn Subject: HDTV Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 01:00:19 -0400 I've been away from the TELECOM Digest for a long time. It's nice to be back. I'm reading with interest the various comments on HDTV. I think overall many of the folks here are missing the point. We speak of the reasons WE like HDTV, but we lose track of the fact that we here are the 'upper crust' of the population, speaking technically. 98% of the television viewers out there could not configure their computers to read our comments here on this mailing list, let alone appreciate (and more importantly, be motivated financially to get) HDTV. We are not better, just more technical. What we are NOT, however, is a representative sample of TV viewers. The Soccer Moms, Gen-x'rs, Joe Six-packs, etc. out there, which account for most viewers, don't watch TV for quality, or resolution, or color accuracy. They watch TV to see who Ally McBeal slept with last night. The fact that she is green or pink, has a hum bar, a little ghosting, or maybe some adjacent channel 'corduroy' interference while they are watching is simply irrelevant to them. They simply DON'T CARE about quality past a certain low threshold. Look at the poor cable company quality many, many folks put up with. Way back in college days, I delivered pizzas. When invited in to the entry way of a home for payment, I remember noting that no two television sets in two homes were the same color, tuned properly, converged accurately, etc. Yet, my customers were happily watching. They watched for CONTENT, not QUALITY. It's no different today. Since HDTV is not a quantum leap to the non-technical viewer, like color was, HDTV will only make it if it's forced down the throats of the consumers, and the government and equipment manufacturers recognize that. Acceptance has NOTHING to do with advertising, quality, program selection, or the like. Most people simply don't understand the difference. Add that to the technical limitations of cable systems, the greed of the broadcasters, the haphazard implementation, and the ho-hum attitude of the public, and you have the mess we have today. Now, if there were SPECIFIC CONTENT (certain shows, types of programming, etc.) that were ONLY available on HDTV, things would be different ... just like high powered computers. Folks would still not have a clue about WHAT they are buying, just that it will let them [insert as appropriate] (play the game) (watch the show) they want. It does not surprise me in the least that Billy Tauzin is leading the charge here. It seems to me that every time I hear his name in legislative matters, it is a story about him supporting the special interests of a very big, high technology industry. I wonder why that is ...? Ken ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse: TV Set and Cable Mandates Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 02:01:41 -0400 Garrett Wollman wrote: > It is anticipated that all of the VHF stations will move back to > their 'home' band if the DTV transition is ever completed, as the > propagation characteristics and operational costs on VHF are far > superior for broadcasting; their current transitional DTV channels > will be made available to other users (possibly broadcast, possibly > not) on an auction basis. That's likely to be true for high-band stations (channels 7-13), but there has been talk that at least some low-band stations (channels 2-6) may choose to go to UHF because of the effects of static (both from lightning and electrical devices) on reception. > In some other markets, broadcasters' DTV allocations will allow them > to move from UHF to VHF. It is expected in these cases that the > broadcasters will return their original, less-desirable UHF > spectrum. This may not be feasible in all cases, because at least some of the UHF-to-VHF DTV assignments have been in situations where the UHF station's power and range are already limited. For example, WBNA-TV in Louisville is now on channel 21, and their DTV channel is 8, which is already occupied by WISH-TV in Indianapolis, only a hundred miles or so away. This is only possible because WBNA's tower is not too tall (and is south of Louisville, and therefore further from Indianapolis), their power is quite a bit lower than the maximum allowed for a UHF station, and WISH's tower is on the north side of Indianapolis. If WISH chooses to keep channel 8 for DTV after dropping NTSC, there's just no way that WBNA would be able to also keep channel 8 without severely restricting its coverage to protect WISH. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Old TV's Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 01:15:44 -0400 Joey Lindstrom wrote: > It's quite interesting to me that there's a lot of whining about > this, but nobody's bitching about the fact that their VHS units are > going to be orphaned pretty darned soon. Hello, DVD. Big difference -- a VHS VCR can still be used for off-air recording, as long as blank tapes are still available, and for playback of existing tapes. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 23:44:27 -0700 Subject: Re: Old TV's From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.351.8@telecom-digest.org, Joey Lindstrom wrote: > But the sky isn't falling: this stuff will get > cheaper and cheaper, and nobody's going to see their old equipment get > "orphaned". Except maybe the early adopters in HDTV. Hollywood is pushing very hard to close the analog "hole". In other words, they want equipment out there that disallows converters to analog hole. They are developing a taste for "total control" and they don't want folks skirting the locks by just converting it to NTSC composite or component video and then recording it or doing what they will. > It's quite interesting to me that there's a lot of whining about this, > but nobody's bitching about the fact that their VHS units are going to > be orphaned pretty darned soon. Hello, DVD. Might not be so attractive when you discover that "broadcast flags" and other restrictions will dictate how many times you can watch what you've recorded (if you are allowed to record it at all). You need to keep up on Hollywood's wish list. -- John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Old TV's Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 14:26:24 -0500 Organization: PileofMonkeyCrap On Tue, 06 Aug 2002 14:11:50 -0600, Joey Lindstrom wrote: > people with older TV's who > don't want to get rid of them won't have to. They can simply purchase > a set-top box that will decode a digital signal and "downgrade" it to > a regular NTSC signal. Right, so my TV will not work without having to purchase additional gear to make it work. Lets see, five TVs, five new pieces of hardware I don't want to buy ... > I admit, however, that I'm rather champing at the bit to see some > actual, honest-to-God HDTV content. Have fun waiting. Like I've mentioned before, HD is not mandated in the States, only DTV. > It's quite interesting to me that there's a lot of whining about this, > but nobody's bitching about the fact that their VHS units are going to > be orphaned pretty darned soon. Hello, DVD. You will not likely be able to record TV on anything if the MPAA gets their way, and it looks like they will. You WILL hear people bitching when they figure this out. So much for fair use. ------------------------------ From: qwerty Subject: IMT SS7 Trunk Question Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 15:50:45 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises I have a Portmaster3 with a PRI connected to a local CO that my customers (all around the city) dial up to the PM3 and get connected to the internet. Will I see any degradation of performance if all the IMT trunks going from that particular CO (where the PRI connecting to the PM3 is) to all the other CO's are SF(D4)/AMI circuits with 56K trunks? All the IMT's are using SS7 signalling. Is there a tutorial anywhere for troubleshooting ISP disconnects based on non optimal trunking? Like with what I just described as well as for digital padding over the T-1's as well. Thanks, Bo ------------------------------ From: roland@webdatagroup.com (Rolando) Subject: Any Affordable ACD Software for NBX100 Date: 7 Aug 2002 14:53:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Does anyone know of an affordable (yeah, I know that's relative!) ACD package that I can run with my NBX100 phone system? I don't need lots of bells and whistles; in fact, all I'm really looking for is a queuing function that will let calls stack up and be answered in the order in which they were received. (Please excuse the cross-posts.) ------------------------------ From: lisarea@dim.com Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 17:54:43 -0600 Subject: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question I used to know this, but I've been out of telco for a few years now, and apparently, I've overwritten that portion of my long-term memory. I feel awful bugging you, but I've searched and searched to no avail. What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? Grace something? Mary something? I need to start reading the Digest again, obviously. Thanks, Lisa [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Readers, can you supply the answer to this to Lisa? Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Re: Cheap Calling Cards Within Spain and France? Date: 7 Aug 2002 16:22:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Ho Ko wrote in message news:: > I'm going on vacation in Spain and France. Coin calls from public > phones are quite expensive. Are there any cheap calling cards that I > can use to make calls FROM Spain or France, either domestic or > international? You'll find that most public telephones in France are only operated by cards, usually issued by France Télécom, but there should be other operators now offering pre-paid cards. Spain, I know, used to have mainly coin-operated public phones rather than card operated, but I presume that, like the rest of the EU, Telefonica now allows other operators's phone cards to be used. HTH! ------------------------------ From: Brad Houser Subject: Internal Wiring Closet and 66 Block Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 00:59:03 GMT I am building a new house and I have two cat-5's running from the outside box and NIC to the inside wiring closet. All the home runs are in a box in the wall, that looks just like the one on the outside of the house. It has a metal cover, it mounts between two studs, and inside is a wooden back. The problem is this. The wires are fine inside the box, they come up through the insulated wall. I need to get the wires to the outside of the box, and I can't do that with the cover in place. I want to mount my 66 block and PBX on the wall above this box, and I don't know if it is OK to leave the box open and just have the wires run out from it, or do I need to cut the box or the cover? The box protrudes about 1/2" from the wall, so there is some room on the side to cut an opening, but this seems kind of crude, and doesn't look right. Is there some other arrangement that won't get me in trouble with the inspector for having an opening in the wall that isn't covered? For example, should I put in more boxes and put the plates with the circular opening on them? Brad Houser ------------------------------ From: Casey Subject: Issues With the Sprint Backbone. Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 21:37:49 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com I've been running a traceroute every 15 minutes for the past few hours and I have found there to be an issue with a network on the Sprint Backbone or one near it. This is a sample of what I am getting: Wed 08/07/2002 9:15p Tracing route to NTCCIS1 [216.212.208.182] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.1.1 2 30 ms 20 ms 10 ms 10.128.144.1 3 10 ms 30 ms 10 ms 24.214.0.245 4 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms eth1-1-1.Mont.AL.US.knology.net [24.214.0.65] 5 20 ms 20 ms 30 ms gig3-1-0.Atla.GA.US.knology.net [24.214.2.25] 6 20 ms 40 ms 20 ms 205.215.2.65 7 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms g6-2.core01.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.28.201] 8 * * * Request timed out. 9 * * * Request timed out. 10 * * * Request timed out. 11 * * * Request timed out. 12 * * * Request timed out. 13 110 ms 100 ms 100 ms sl-gw9-rly-3-2.sprintlink.net [144.232.184.133] 14 101 ms 110 ms 100 ms sl-bb23-rly-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.14.37] 15 100 ms 100 ms 101 ms sl-bb21-rly-9-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.14.133] 16 110 ms 120 ms 120 ms sl-bb20-atl-10-1.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.198] 17 130 ms 110 ms 120 ms sl-gw21-atl-9-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.12.110] 18 * 131 ms 130 ms sl-a2-21-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.214.206] 19 120 ms 141 ms 130 ms 216.212.208.238 20 141 ms 150 ms 130 ms {MYWORKSERVER} Trace complete. This is causing issues for anyone who is trying to connect to our network from the internet. As you can see there are problems with some routers along the way. Who can I contact about getting this fixed? This issue has been continuing for months now and I don't know how to get this fixed. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 23:54:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: For WorldCom, Acquisitions Were Behind Its Rise and Fall August 8, 2002 For WorldCom, Acquisitions Were Behind Its Rise and Fall By KURT EICHENWALD Bernard J. Ebbers, the onetime high school coach and Canadian milkman who rose to chief executive of WorldCom, stepped to the lectern at the National Press Club to applause from scores of Washington journalists. With delight he described how he had transformed an obscure long-distance phone company into one of the country's fastest growing corporations. It was Jan. 12, 2000, and the mood in this room full of journalists was celebratory. Mr. Ebbers talked of how his company had grown enormously through no fewer than 65 mergers, capped by the granddaddy of them all, its acquisition of MCI. Now, his company was proposing a multibillion-dollar acquisition of the giant Sprint Corporation. But even as Mr. Ebbers boasted of WorldCom's successes and even as enraptured investors drove up the company's stock price, behind the scenes the company was already a financial and operational shambles, according to interviews with current and former executives, lawyers and government officials, as well as internal documents and court and government records. Dozens of acquisitions were never consolidated into a single, seamless enterprise, leaving the company incapable of functioning properly. Moreover, because of accounting maneuvers, each new acquisition allowed the company to report higher per-share profits, even when its core business was barely growing, or losing ground. Leading it all was Mr. Ebbers, a man who insiders and analysts said was out of his league in the rough and tumble world of telecommunications. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/08/technology/08TELE.html ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor and Conference Coordinator Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 13:27:32 -0400 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: > Trouble is, I am not a *new* DISH subscriber. I do have 'Sky Angel' service > from Dominion, which is delivered over the international DISH satellite > located at 16.5 degrees southeast. 61.5. FWIW that satellite is used for some less-important local stations in some areas (which you won't see on your receiver unless you're in one of those areas) and HDTV programming (which you won't see on the list because you don't have an HD-capable receiver). The latter includes HBO and Showtime (no extra charge over and above the regular packages of those networks), Discovery HD Theater (something like $7/month) and WCBS-DT from New York (only available if Viacom owns your local CBS affiliate). > If you subscribe to Sky Angel, you get the DISH satellite dish at no charge > from Dominion, however you are technically a DISH subscriber also. Because DISH subsidized part of the cost of that receiver -- in your case, in the hope that you'll add DISH service. > To make matters worse, I was out in my backyard the other day when the > local Time-Warner cable man came down the street in his truck fixing the > cable wires. He saw that dish on my roof and gave me hell for that. "What, > our cable service here in Indy is not good enough for you anymore?" I'd say he's right in a way, since you're taking a package of religious programming that, AFAIK, no cable company even tries to match. (If he were really smart, he'd be able to tell by looking that you aren't getting the normal DISH service, though he wouldn't know if you were going for Sky Angel or international programming.) > I wonder what they would say about me if I went over to Walmart this > afternoon and came back with a high-definition TV reciever." *I'd* be very surprised to find an HDTV product at Wal-Mart. (Sam's Club might be a different story; in the few times I've been there -- I'm not a member -- I've seen quite a few consumer electronics products that are too rich for Wal-Mart's blood.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Pardon my typo on the 16.5 <> 61.5 degree thing. We don't have a Sam's Club here except for the few Sam's Club brand items (called Sam's Choice) that Walmart sells. Walmart however is *quite* busy it seems. The parking lot is always full, and whenever I am over there I see people coming out with all sorts of electronics, new television sets, etc, much to the chagrin of the local merchants who know 'for certain' that Sam Walton is going to put them all out of business. They (Walmart) were in the local paper several times today. Their usual Thursday advertising supplement was in the paper (Independence Reporter) today; a picture and a small story told of their most recent five thousand dollar donation to Independence High School (general manager quoted as saying, "well, as members of the community we feel a responsibility to the schools, etc"), another announcement that senior citizens get bingo and free coffee every Tuesday in the restaurant there; all the local merchants say, 'bah, humbug'; two short announcements about police activity there and shoplifters who were arrested, one with a new CD player. For things like police and Walmart, the local merchants smirk and say 'better Walmart getting hit than us.' Everyday in the police activity column in the paper I see something about someone arrested out there for shoplifting, etc. Since the Walmart Supercenter opened on West Main Street in July, 2000 things haven't been the same downtown. For about seven months, we did not even have a full service supermarket in this town of 8842 people, after the two grocery stores both went out of business, except for the Walmart store. The Walmart-haters didn't like it, but they had to go out there to get their groceries until Marvin's opened up in the old Safeway spot two months ago. Marvin's is an Oklahmoma chain of grocery stores which decided to come in and do battle with the Walmart way of doing business. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. Access to Premium (P) links requires upgrade to a paid subscription. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. LEGAL STUFF: TELECOM Digest (sm) is owned by Patrick Townson. Copyright 2000 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #352 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 8 23:42:33 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g793gXJ17661; Thu, 8 Aug 2002 23:42:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 23:42:33 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208090342.g793gXJ17661@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #353 TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Aug 2002 23:42:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 353 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Going Online Can Net You Savings on Telephone Calls (unspammable-4719) Phone System Wanted (jangnim) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (J Kelly) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (Wm. Warren) Re: History of MCI (Marcus Didius Falco) Intercept Recordings (AgentX) Sprint-United, was Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong (John R. Levine) Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers (Sanjay Punjab) How Can we Obtain ASN.1 Description/Text of ITU-T TCAP & ANSI (PeixuZhu) Wireless Extender (Steve M) Help Needed on Fore ASX-200BX VPT Configuration (Asnani) Power Control for EDGE (Helen) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 16:40:24 -0400 From: unspammable-4719@workbench.net Subject: Going Online Can Net You Savings on Telephone Calls My comments follow this excerpt from a Chicago Sun-Times article: August 8, 2002 BY HOWARD WOLINSKY BUSINESS REPORTER Joe Nettikaden, a Chicago Web developer, and his new bride Suneetha have slashed their long-distance bills to call their parents in India and the United Arab Emirates to $20-to-$25 a month from $150 to $200, essentially saying goodbye to MCI. Tom Pirelli, long-time Chicago-area entrepreneur, pays a flat $20 a month for 500 minutes covering long-distance as well as local and toll calling after pulling the plug on his second Ameritech line. That's down from the $250 a month he had been paying. Internet-based phone services, known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), are making the difference for Pirelli, founder of ArialPhone, the Mundelein wireless phone manufacturer, and Nettikaden. [.....] Pirelli uses a different VOIP approach for phone-to-phone calling. He is a customer of Edison, N.J.-based Vonage, which provides a box that enables Pirelli to turn his regular phones into Internet phones that plug into his AT&T broadband cable modem service. "The unique thing about Vonage compared to Net2Phone and all the others is that Vonage has a quality of service that rivals a regular phone line," Pirelli said. "The savings did not come from just long-distance calls, but also local calls over 8 miles, including calls to our ArialPhone offices from home." Pirelli pays $20 a month, but Vonage also offers consumers a bottomless bucket of long-distance and local minutes for $40 a month. He also has put in two small-business Vonage lines in his Mundelein office, costing $70 a month, while saving more than $500 a month. Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's chairman and founder, who previously built the online brokerage, Datek, said, "We've positioned Vonage as a second-line phone service. Most people keep their primary line." Vonage advises its customers to hold onto at least one local phone for 911 emergency services, which are not yet available from Vonage. Full story at: http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-phone08.html Now here are my comments: I've been keeping an eye on Vonage because it seems to me that they are just about the only non-wireless solution for people who want unlimited long distance calling and live in an area where neither Z-Tel's Z-LineHOME Unlimited Plan or MCI's Neighborhood Complete service is available (personally I would not consider the MCI service anyway, due to Worldcom's recent financial problems, and the many allegations I've read of MCI's slamming and poor customer service). And, at $10 a month less than either the Z-Tel or MCI "unlimited long distance" offerings, Vonage may well be a better choice than either of the above services for a non-primary line, provided you have a good solid broadband Internet connection (just about any cable modem service would probably qualify, if the reliability is good enough for your needs - it would only be as reliable as your cable modem service, after all). The major negative thing I've heard about Vonage, and I do not know if it is still true, is that they will only bill to a credit card. Why they would not accept prepayment for their unlimited long distance service (including a reasonable deposit for the device they send you that allows you to connect your telephones to their service -- a Cisco ATA 186 for those who are familiar with that device) is beyond me, and I'll bet they lose many potential customers because of that, unless they have changed their policy. If anyone signs up and discovers that they no longer require a credit card, I wish they'd post a reply and let us know. Another interesting thing about Vonage is that you do get a telephone number for incoming calls, but the bad thing (or possibly good thing, depending on your particular needs) about that is that incoming numbers are probably not available in the area code where you live, unless you're in one of the following area codes (these are the ones where incoming numbers are available): California: 408 - 415 - 510 - 650 - 707 - 831 - 925 - 213 - 310 - 323 - 562 - 626 - 661 - 714 - 760 - 805 - 818 - 909 - 949 Florida: 561 - 305 - 954 - 786 Georgia: 404 - 706 - 678 Massachusetts: 617 - 781 - 978 - 508 New Jersey: 201 - 732 - 908 - 973 New York: 212 - 516 - 631 - 646 - 718 - 914 - 917 Of course, being able to get a number in one of these area codes could be an advantage for some people, such as those who do a lot of business with people in New York or California, or who have relatives in Florida. By the way, the above info comes from the Vonage web site, at http://www.vonage.com/digitalvoice/areacodes.phtml The other thing I find interesting about Vonage's offering is that for the first time it gives residential customers the opportunity for redundancy - by that I mean, if you have a storm that takes out either your main phone line or your cable service, but not both, you would still be able to make calls (of course, if the main phone line and the electricity both go out, you'll still be dead in the water as soon as your Uninterruptable Power Supply gives out. What do you mean, you don't have a UPS?). Despite the drawbacks, Vonage's service could be the wave of the future, particularly for customers served by telephone companies that can't or won't offer any unlimited nationwide long distance calling plans. The article that I excerpted above mentions some other options that use computers to place phone calls, but Vonage's offering seems to be the only one that lets you use plug in and use real telephones, and at this point in time, I think that's important to customers. Using a computer's microphone and speakers (or even a headset) is just too difficult for most people, and unless you're trying to avoid making an expensive overseas call (or you talk for hours at a time), it's probably not worth the trouble. By the way, on a totally unrelated subject ... I know we all hate spam, but I have found that recently a lot of my outgoing e-mail is being bounced by overzealous spam filters (and I know that I don't send spam, so I have no idea what they are reacting to). I wonder how much TELECOM Digest mail never reaches its intended recipient? Anyway, Rob Clark (who posted a message to the Digest with the subject "Call For Expressions of Interest: Project TIN-POT") e-mailed me privately a couple of days ago and so far, I have been unable to figure out how to reply without the message getting bounced. Has e-mail just about reached the point of being totally useless because the spammers have ruined it for everyone? If this CNN article is to be believed, it may have: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/08/04/spammed.overview.ap/index.html Jack (My e-mail address in the From: line will only be good until the spammers find it, but for now, it IS a good e-mail address, and as far as I know, is NOT behind any filters that use an overzealous "black hole" service that seems to think everybody is probably guilty unless they decree them innocent). Visit the Resources for Michigan Telephone Users page: http://michigantelephone.workbench.net/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Jack, I no longer handle the mailing list for the Digest. John Levine has handled it now for some time with majordomo. I held out for years against using majordomo or a similar automated system, because I preferred a more personal approach. And that worked well in the 1980-90's. At the time I had my brain aneurysm (November 29, 1999) I was getting two to three hundred bounces per day due to people who thought I was sending spam or people who had moved and left no address, etc. I kept battling it then I went to the hospital. When I came back, John had very nicely put it all on majordomo. Now if someone cannot be delivered two or three times in a row, they are simply bounced from the list. I no longer try to find them, change their address, etc. The message at the bottom of each issue tells people how to subscribe/unsubscribe using majordomo. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jangnim Subject: Phone System Wanted Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 17:38:55 -0400 Hi there. I have been asked to check into a phone system that will have six extensions, two outside lines coming in, extension numbers and voice mail. I don't really know how to begin such a search but would greatly appreciate a contact. I don't have much capital to do this project, and the office is actually all in a single room. Can you stear me in the right direction? Thanks for your time. Carl Huth Sr. ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 14:22:34 -0500 Organization: PileofMonkeyCrap On Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:37:24 -0700, John David Galt wrote: > I would much rather live with the picture quality I have now than subject > myself to digital rights management under the DMCA, which restricts the > copying of tapes -- even if they're my wedding pictures -- and allows a > broadcaster to make it impossible to record certain shows. I'll skip HDTV > and DVDs to keep my fair use rights, thanks. And I bet most US consumers > feel the same way. Amen to that. Besides, who ever said that DTV had *anything* to do with high definition?? HD is not mandated by the FCC, only that the signal be digital using 8VSB. Broadcasters can just convert NTSC to a DTV signal at the same old resolution and send that out. My guess is many will do that, especially since they can fit several different programs into the data stream that way. ------------------------------ Reply-To: William Warren From: William Warren Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] Organization: Church of the Swimming Bullfrog Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 02:28:53 GMT Kenneth P. Stox wrote in message news:telecom20.352.4@telecom-digest.org: > William Warren wrote: >> (2) VHF TV channels four and five are a special case: they can coexist >> "next" to each other because there is another, older service in between >> them -- aircraft marker beacon transmitters. > Isn't there another case? I don't remember the assignments off the top > of my head, but isn't the entire FM Radio band between channels 6 and > 7? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes it is. TV channels 2-6 are in the > low end of the VHF band. Channel 7 then comes in a bit higher up in > the VHF band. FM radio in the meantime slips in between 87.5 megs and > 108 megs. Then comes the aircraft radio area, a bunch of government > radio frequencies, more VHF stations, *then* channel 7 on TV and > upward, around 180 megs; somewhere in that area. PAT] Pat's right: channel seven starts much higher. My point was that the ORIGINAL assignments couldn't be used for stations on adjacent channels, with the exception of channels four and five. There is, of course, a gap between six and seven, since channels seven through thirteen were added to "cure" the co-channel interference problem that plagued channels two through six. The reason for the split is that the original assignments proved, as I said, unworkable: American TV video is transmitted using AM, and is, for that reason, much more prone to interference, including the infamous "ghosting" where one powerful TV station could be seen superimposed on the image of a weaker link. By the time the FCC and Congress got around to acting on the problem, the space above channel six was already gone for other services. The technology of VHF radio was exploding in many areas at once, and by the time the TV debacle was acted on, the "new" assignments had to be moved much higher in the spectrum. IIRC: Channel 2: 54-60 MHz Channel 4: 66-72 Channel 5: 78-82 Channel 6: 82-88 (1) FM Radio: 88-108 Aircraft: 108-132 Other: 132-174 (Amateur, Military, Taxi, Fire, Police, Industrial, etc.) Channel 7: 174-180 MHz ~ Channel 13: 210-216 MHz All said and done, frequency Gerrymandering is an old and well-practiced art in Washington. The current HDTV scene is just the latest act in the play. ww (1) In fact, if you listen slightly below the FM band, at 87.75 MHz, you can hear TV channel six's audio. P.S. *CABLE* TV is able to make use of adjacent channels, because the technology of cable (as opposed to over-the-air transmission) allows for much tighter control of relative amplitudes and frequencies. TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And regards (1) above, the opposite is true also. Back in the late fifties and early sixties when FM radio was a fairly new thing, one of the first stations on in those days was WYCA, an FM station in Hammond, Indiana. People used to make jokes saying if you wanted to listen to WYCA you did not need to have an FM receiver. All you had to do was put your television set on Channel 6 then screw around with the fine tuning knob a little until WYCA came in. In my article in this Digest from about 1990 or so entitled "Praise the Lord and Pass the RF Filters" I told all about Crawford Broadcasting and WYCA. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 03:33:03 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: History of MCI The book I remembered buying is: Philip L. Cantelon The history of MCI: the early years (1968-1988) Dallas: The Heritage Press, 1993 (Copyright owned by MCI Corporation) It's a big trade paperback, with no ISDN, and the copyright page gives MCI's address, so it was probably distributed by MCI. I found it in a used book store some years ago. Can't say I've actually read it. Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below: falco_marcus_didius yahoo.co.uk ------------------------------ From: AgentX Subject: Intercept Recordings Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 10:39:24 -0400 I am looking for downloads of intercept recordings from various times and places, if anyone knows where I can get ahold of them. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Aug 2002 11:26:43 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Sprint-United, was Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of how Sprint took over > the local exchange service in Junction City, Kansas (buying out United > Telephone) then began describing themselves as 'over a century in the > telecom business' based on that purchase of United ... United really did buy Sprint, but changed the name of the company to keep the Sprint name. I imagine that they preferred to explain a name change to their local service customers, who had nowhere else to go and had been pretty well served over the years anyway, than to their LD customers who'd just been treated to high-profile ads with Candace Bergen and dropping pins. -- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: piclistguy@yahoo.com (Sanjay Punjab) Subject: Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers Date: 8 Aug 2002 08:49:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ I am searching for an general FAQ for strategy on how to get rid of telemarketers. Now I am not talking about a special device or a great thing to say when they call. I heard you can get on do-not call lists and that there are certain things you can say to your credit card and phone company that will force them to stop giving your name and number to third parties. I would appreciate some tips. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: zpx@suntektech.com (PeixuZhu) Subject: How Can We Obtain ASN.1 Description/Text of ITU-T TCAP & ANSI Date: 8 Aug 2002 10:17:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ I am studying on topic of TCAP, however, it's some difficult to get a description of TCAPs in ASN.1 notation. Would you please tell the path to get such materials? Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: stevem@ctlinc.com (Steve M) Subject: Wireless Extender Date: 8 Aug 2002 11:03:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Hello My Company's name is CTL Inc. http://www.ctlinc.com http://www.ctlinc.com/AboutCTL/News.cfm http://www.ctlinc.com/Products/Wireless/Overview.cfm?Product=INBOX We are a Telephony solutions integrator and developer. Products include: Wireless Extenders, Unified Messaging, Voice Mail, Auto Attendant, Fax Mail, Fax Server, Fax on Demand, and IVR. We have just released a product that delievers a customers corporate Microsoft Exchange/Outlook or Lotus Notes Inbox, Contact List, and Calendar to their cell phone. They can then reply or modify this data. They can also send instant messages to other users in the network. This product is called our Wireless Email Extender it is a stand alone software product that gets installed on a PC on the customers network. We currently sell this product on a site basis not per user. The pricing is very attractive. We also have our Wireless Unified Inbox Extender this allows all of the above plus the ability to receive your corporate voice mail, and fax mail messages as well. This product is offered as part of our NT/Unified messaging solution. CTL has the ability to OEM, or Private label products to retro fit your needs. Please visit the links I provided above. For further info contact me direct at: 203-925-4266 x333 Best Regards, Steve [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The above message comes real close to being spam, don't you think, Steve? No more, thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: san__j@hotmail.com (Asnani) Subject: Help Needed on Fore ASX-200BX VPT Configuration Date: 8 Aug 2002 12:04:59 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Need to know how many vpt's can be configured on an Fore asx-200bx ATM interface at a time? I have an OC3 interface and ForeThought Software i am using is release 6.0.x . Currently, the system allows me create/add maximum of 12 vpt's from vpi 0-11 when the maxvci is set to 511. But no way beyond that. I get the following error message on the console when i try to create the next vpt/vpi: ?ERROR: (SNMP3) : write_out_term_path_entry(): pvc_open_path failed. Path may be in use by PVP or SVP or SPVPC or SVC dynamic path or Bandwidth allocation faile d. The vpi which I specify are not being used anywhere in any VCC's or VPC. So i dont understand how to fix the problem. HAs anybody seen this problem. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks, Asnani ------------------------------ From: junciu@yahoo.com (Helen) Subject: Power Control for EDGE Date: 8 Aug 2002 12:33:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Hi There, I am doing some design on power control closed/open loop with EDGE. As far as you know EDGE uses 8PSK. I searched online, but I could not find useful information about it. Can anyone do me a favor to tell me some useful books or links about EDGE power control closed/open loop design. Thanks a lot! ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. Access to Premium (P) links requires upgrade to a paid subscription. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. LEGAL STUFF: TELECOM Digest (sm) is owned by Patrick Townson. Copyright 2000 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #353 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 9 16:23:16 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g79KNGT21799; Fri, 9 Aug 2002 16:23:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 16:23:16 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208092023.g79KNGT21799@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #354 TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Aug 2002 16:22:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 354 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Frequency Allocation [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] (Steve Brack) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (lisarea@dim.com) (Marcus Jervis) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (Steve Brack) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (PaulCoxwell@aol.com) Re: Intercept Recordings (Paul Coxwell) Re: Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers (John Higdon) Re: Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers (Scott Dorsey) DTV Multiplex Programming (Neal McLain) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Continued) (Neal McLain) Re: The HDTV Fisaco Gets Worse (Wes Leatherock) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Brack Subject: Frequency Allocation [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse] Organization: Society for the Preservation of Steve Brack Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 13:29:50 GMT Fair Warning - Technotrivia ahead... William Warren wrote in message news:telecom20.351.5@telecom-digest.org... > John R Levine wrote in message > news:telecom20.349.9@telecom-digest.org: [clip] > Consider: the current TV standard predates World War 2, and the > current color mechanism (NTSC: "Never Twice the Same Color") was a > retrofit to the original B&W system. The format is so bad that the > original six channels (1) had to be expanded to twelve, because no two > stations could coexist in adjacent channels (2) without dramatically > interfering with each other. > That this technical disaster was predicted by Howard Armstrong, and > the advice ignored, should come as no surprise [clip] > (1) Channel One was, IIRC, never used: it was taken for other services > shortly after the assignments were given out. > (2) VHF TV channels four and five are a special case: they can coexist > "next" to each other because there is another, older service in between > them -- aircraft marker beacon transmitters. While there is a 10MHz gap between channels 4 & 5, to accommodate 75MHz marker beacons (which ironically are all-but-out of use for en-route navigation) there is an even larger gap between channels 6 (at 83.25 MHz) and 7 (at 175.25 MHz). Some of the services in that gap: 88-108 ..... FM Broadcast 108-118 ..... Aviation Navigation (VOR stations) 118-136 ..... Aviation Communication (Air Traffic Control, etc.) 136-156 ..... VHF General Purpose (garage door openers, etc.) 156-162 ..... VHF Marine Radio (ships & shore stations) 162-162 ..... NOAA WeatherAlert Radio 162-174 ..... VHF General Purpose & Public Safety As a matter of fact, as a lad, I used to use the fine tuning on my TV set -- remember TVs with knobs and real controls? -- to tune in some of the audio in-between channels 6 & 7. Another point to remember: UHF channels 70-83 were taken from the broadcast TV spectrum for use by wireless phones and 800MHz "trunked radio" systems now favored by public safety and other operators, so this isn't the first time that broadcasters have faced these sorts of issues. (And yes, I used to tune into cellular phone calls every now and then, too.) ------------------------------ From: Marcus Jervis Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (lisarea@dim.com) Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 04:30:03 +0000 lisarea@dim.com wrote: > I used to know this, but I've been out of telco for a few years now, > and apparently, I've overwritten that portion of my long-term > memory. I feel awful bugging you, but I've searched and searched to no > avail. > What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on > the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? > Grace something? Mary something? You are probably thinking of Jane Barbie, who did the old standard recordings for the Bell System. There was also a Jane Barbie who was an operatic mezzo-soprano. Anyone know if she was the same woman? ------------------------------ From: Steve Brack Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question Organization: Society for the Preservation of Steve Brack Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 04:53:33 GMT Her name was (is?) Jane Barbe, often misspelled as Barbie. I recall seeing her on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson, not Johnny-come-lately). She has also done voice prompts for Octel voicemail, WWV, and other speaking applications. As usual, probably too much information ... I verified my memory with http://www.calpoly.edu/~kdoll/trivia82399.html and http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~bingbin/ . And from 1992, we have the Digest thread on this topic (which I also contributed to ... have I been here too long?). Among others, PAT, John Higdon and John "Captain Crunch" Draper contributed to this area of telecom trivia, contained in Vol. 12 of the Digest, #500-550 As an aside, the Archives are a tremendous resource. Thanks PAT! (Here is one of the very old messages we had here in this Digest.) From: helfman@aero.org (Robert S. Helfman) Subject: Re: Jane Barbie (was The Purpose of the Three Tones) Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1992 21:16:54 GMT In article shaun@octel.com (Shaun Case) writes: > Jane Barbie is the real name of the woman who did the American > English Aspen prompts. There's a signed B&W photo of her up in our > voice lab, which I just viewed scant moments ago. Jane also did voice > work for Pac Bell, specifically directory assistance (411) and > time-of-day (767xxxx). Yah, she's the Time Lady. If we had a scanner > handy, I'd post a GIF, but ... alas. Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). > [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in > Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the > phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were > then patched together as appropriate. PAT] If anyone would like to hear the voice of Jane Barbe, she appeared in March on the NPR quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me." http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/waitwait/20020330.waitwait.04.ram wrote in message news:telecom20.352.12@telecom-digest.org: > I used to know this, but I've been out of telco for a few years now, > and apparently, I've overwritten that portion of my long-term > memory. I feel awful bugging you, but I've searched and searched to no > avail. > What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on > the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? > Grace something? Mary something? ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 11:38:45 EDT Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question On Wed, 7 Aug 2002 17:54:43 -0600 lisarea@dim.com wrote: > I used to know this, but I've been out of telco for a few years now, > and apparently, I've overwritten that portion of my long-term > memory. I feel awful bugging you, but I've searched and searched to no > avail. > What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on > the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? The answer to this would be the place and time. In some small offices in Southwestern Bell territory (both independent and Bell) the local Plant guy made the recordings. The ones usually furnished by what was then called the Traffic Department were often rather stilted, and in Oklahoma we wrote some less stilted scripts and engaged a local (male) radio announcer to record them. Among other things, he had show where he called various listeners, usually selected from the phone book, and he said (only half jestingly) that he found it very annoying to find his own voice telling him that a number he dialed had been disconnected or was no longer in service. ------------------------------ From: PaulCoxwell@aol.com Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 04:41:52 EDT Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question > What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on > the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? > Grace something? Mary something? I'm not sure if she was the original, but I believe Jane Barbie (spelling?) did a lot of recordings for the Bell System. ------------------------------ From: PaulCoxwell@aol.com Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 04:41:58 EDT Subject: Re: Intercept Recordings > I am looking for downloads of intercept recordings from various times > and places, if anyone knows where I can get ahold of them. Thanks. Try these two sites for a start: http://www.dmine.com/phworld http://www.wideweb.com/phonetrips/index2.html The latter is full of narrated recordings with lots of other interesting info. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:24:58 -0700 Subject: Re: Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.353.8@telecom-digest.org, Sanjay Punjab wrote: > I am searching for an general FAQ for strategy on how to get rid of > telemarketers. Now I am not talking about a special device or a great > thing to say when they call. > I heard you can get on do-not call lists and that there are certain > things you can say to your credit card and phone company that will > force them to stop giving your name and number to third parties. A service such as SBC's Privacy Manager will gets rid of 99% of telemarketers. Your phone won't even ring. John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Looking For Tips to Get Rid of Telemarketers Date: 9 Aug 2002 12:43:17 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , Sanjay Punjab wrote: > I am searching for an general FAQ for strategy on how to get rid of > telemarketers. Now I am not talking about a special device or a great > thing to say when they call. > I heard you can get on do-not call lists and that there are certain > things you can say to your credit card and phone company that will > force them to stop giving your name and number to third parties. I try to sell them products. "Oh, are you a telemarketer? Did you know nine out of ten telemarketers suffer from ear problems due to ill-fitting headsets? My company's headset can solve all of your problems! At the end of the day, do you go home ..." --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 11:24:19 -0600 From: Neal McLain Subject: DTV Multiplex Programming Garrett Wollman wrote: > Consider: if full DTV must-carry were implemented, then broadcasters > who also own basic-cable services would be able to add some of them to > their stations' DTV multiplexes, and then sell the local spot time > through their existing sales force instead of letting the cableco do > it. If many stations in a market did this for the most popular > services (e.g., Viacom channels on the CBS and UPN stations, AOL > channels on the WB stations, Disney channels on the ABC stations, > etc.), then -- combined with the improved quality of the digital > signals for those who can receive them -- many consumers would have no > reason to subscribe to cable or satellite services at all. If that were true, then why are there so many unused UHF allocations? Why wouldn't "broadcasters who also own basic-cable services" broadcast those "most popular services" on new broadcast stations instead of selling them to cable and satellite companies? Because the revenue they can get from selling "local spot time" isn't nearly as much as the revenue they get in the form of license fees paid by cable and satellite companies. The vast majority of the non-broadcast video programming carried by cable and satellite is supported by two revenue streams: advertising and license fees. But the real significance of this dual-revenue stream isn't simply the sum of the two streams; it's the old advertising adage that "paid advertising is worth more than free advertising." Advertising carried in media *which the reader/viewer pays for* is worth more that advertising carried in media distributed free. Consider the parallel with print publications: - At one extreme are the "free" services. In the print world, we have free newspapers distributed in public places and freebie "community advertisers" that land on our doorsteps or in our mailboxes whether we want them or not. In the video world, we have ad-supported broadcast stations over the air, and home-shopping channels on cable and satellite. - At the other extreme are paid-for services that don't carry advertising. The print world has textbooks and most trade pubs. The video world has HBO, Showtime, et al. - And in between these two extremes are the dual-revenue services. The print world has newspapers, magazines of every description, and even some books. The video world has the same thing, except that they're called "channels" instead of magazines. The vast majority of publications, both print and video, fall into this category. Why? Precisely because of that old advertising adage: it's the business model that brings in the most revenue for the publisher, whether the medium is paper or video. Those license fees, of course, are passed on through to subscribers by cable and satellite operators. License fees keep going up, which is the main reason your cable/satellite bill keeps going up. License fees vary widely. The most expensive cable channel is ESPN, which runs around $1.50 to $2.00 per subscriber per month (large operators get big discounts). On the other hand, some services are offered free to cable/satellite operators: home shopping channels, religious channels, and NASA-TV. Home shopping channels even pay sales commissions to cable companies. So it is indeed true that "If many stations in a market did this for the most popular services ... many consumers would have no reason to subscribe to cable or satellite services at all." But I think it safe to say that they won't do it -- they want that dual-revenue stream. Postscript: So-called superstations (broadcast stations that are "secondarily transmitted" to cable systems by satellite) are the exception here: their revenue is exclusively from advertising, and, because of an old FCC rule, they can't charge license fees. This situation has precipitated a curious irony: "TBS superstation" is not a superstation. It switched to non-broadcast status in 1988. (http://www.sbe24.org/archive/c24may98.html#six). Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:25:34 -0600 From: Neal McLain Subject: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Continued) William Warren wrote: > (1) Channel One was, IIRC, never used: it was taken for other services > shortly after the assignments were given out. Television Channel 1 (50-56 MHz) was removed from the television service for a technical reason: the second harmonic of the visual carrier of a TV transmitter operating on Channel 1 (51.1 MHz) would have fallen at 102.2 MHz, right in the middle of the new FM broadcast band (88-108 MHz) that the FCC was creating at the same it deleted TV Channel 1. The spectrum vacated by Channel 1 was, as Warren notes, assigned for other services, but that's not the primary reason for its removal. On the other hand, several UHF television channels have been removed from the television service and assigned to other users: Channel 34 was assigned to radioastronomy. Channels 70-83 were assigned to land mobile. Warren also wrote: > (2) VHF TV channels four and five are a special case: they > can coexist "next" to each other because there is another, > older service in between them -- aircraft marker beacon > transmitters. and then later added: > All said and done, frequency Gerrymandering is an old and > well-practiced art in Washington. The current HDTV scene > is just the latest act in the play. As other readers have noted, VHF Channel 6 (82-88 MHz) and VHF Channel 7 (174-180 MHz) aren't adjacent either. Similarly, VHF Channel 13 (210-216 MHz) and UHF Channel 14 (470-476 MHz) aren't adjacent. These gaps are not the result of "gerrymandering"; they exist for the same reason Channel 1 was deleted: avoidance of second-harmonic interference from one TV channel into other TV channels or into the FM band. Each of the three television broadcast bands (VHF-Low, VHF-High, and UHF) falls entirely within one octave, and each band is separated from adjacent bands by "blank" bands (bands used for services that can be worked around second harmonics). Thus: 54-88 MHz. . . . VHF-Low (TV Channels 2-6) 88-108 MHz. . . . FM Broadcasting Note that 54-108 equals exactly one octave. Thus, no channel within this range can produce a second harmonic into any other channel within this range. 108-174 MHz. . . . Blank (several other services) Note that all second harmonics from Channels 2-6 fall in this band (including Channel 6: the visual carrier is at 83.25, so the second harmonic is 166.5, well below the lower edge of Channel 7). 174-216 MHz. . . . VHF-High (TV Channels 7-13) No television-transmitter second harmonics fall in this band, although second harmonics from FM transmitters do. However FM second-harmonic interference can be avoided on a market-by-market basis by judicious assignment of FM frequencies. Note that 108-216 equals exactly one octave, so again, no carrier within this range can produce a second harmonic into any other channel within this range. 216-470 MHz. . . . Blank (several other services) All second harmonics from Channels 7-13 fall in this band. 470-890 MHz. . . . UHF (TV Channels 14-83) This band is less than one octave, so once again, no carrier within this range can produce a second harmonic into any other channel within this range. (Of course, this band no longer extends out to Channel 83: the FCC started lopping off UHF channels years ago.) Barry Mishkind ("The Eclectic Engineer") has posted a good history of TV (and FM) channel assignments at http://www.oldradio.com/current/bc_freqs.htm. A complete list of channel allocations (both analog and digital) is posted at http://www.transmitter.com/FCC98315/chanplan.html. Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: wesrock@aol.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: 09 Aug 2002 15:32:35 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: HDTV > Way back in college days, I delivered pizzas. When invited in to the > entry way of a home for payment, I remember noting that no two > television sets in two homes were the same color, Hence the nickname "Never the Same Color" for "NTSC." But, as you notice, almost none of the audience cares; just techies. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #354 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 10 17:48:20 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7ALmKf06395; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:48:20 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:48:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208102148.g7ALmKf06395@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #355 TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Aug 2002 17:47:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 355 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Launches Bundled Services (Monty Solomon) Mile High Telecom???? (CNS - Derek Calanchini) Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong and No One Can Seem to Fix It (Rich Kennedy) Re: HDTV (Robert Casey) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Patrick L. Humphrey) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Ed Ellers) Re: DTV Multiplex Programming (Ed Ellers) Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco] (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Phone System Wanted (Paul Erickson) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (Wes Leatherock) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (Henry Cabot Henhouse III) Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone (Robert Bonomi) Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor Conference Coordinator (Wes Leatherock) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 01:25:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Launches Bundled Services By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 8/7/2002 Reacting to new offers by AT&T and WorldCom, Verizon Communications yesterday began offering Massachusetts and New York customers its first discount-priced bundle of local, long-distance, and wireless phone service, plus high-speed Internet access. Verizon said it expects that as it expands its 'Veriations' package throughout its northeastern US service territory and other parts of the United States, it could generate $100 million to $200 million a year in new revenues. Verizon had net income of $8.2 billion on revenues of $68 billion last year. One version of the plan now available in Greater Boston includes unlimited local calls with voice mail and enhanced calling services, 300 weekday daytime calling minutes on Verizon long-distance and Verizon Wireless, unlimited off-peak wireless and long distance, and digital subscriber line broadband Net for $140 a month. That price is $64 less than buying the same services bought separately, Verizon said. Unlimited wireless and long-distance calling is restricted to 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekdays and 9 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Monday. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/219/business/Verizon_launches_bundled_services+.shtml ------------------------------ From: derekc@cnets.net (CNS - Derek Calanchini) Subject: Mile High Telecom???? Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 13:13:47 -0700 Regarding your article ... http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_Online/1003.ht ml Did you find anything else out..I got a fax from them soliciting a 20K investment for a 100K annual return??? Sounds really fishy??? Best Regards, Derek Calanchini CEO Creative Network Solutions CTO Gateway Systems, Inc Phone: 916-852-2890 Fax: 916-852-2899 ------------------------------ From: Richie Kennedy Subject: Re: Caller ID Name is Wrong and No One Can Seem to Fix It Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 21:32:43 -0000 Organization: route56.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of how Sprint took over > the local exchange service in Junction City, Kansas (buying out United > Telephone) then began describing themselves as 'over a century in the > telecom business' based on that purchase of United which served Fort > Riley and Junction City. Other communities in the vicinity were and > remained Southwestern Bell. I thought that sounded bizarre also. PAT] Um, wasn't it the other way around [United bought out Sprint, then adopted their name] -- Richie Kennedy route56@route56.com ˇ www.route56.com "This ol' highway's getting longer" ------------------------------ From: Robert Casey Subject: Re: HDTV Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 19:43:40 -0400 Organization: wa2ise Ken Hoehn wrote: > Since HDTV is not a quantum leap to the non-technical viewer, like > color was, HDTV will only make it if it's forced down the throats of > the consumers, and the government and equipment manufacturers > recognize that. Acceptance has NOTHING to do with advertising, > quality, program selection, or the like. Most people simply don't > understand the difference. Ever drop by the TV dept of Sears or Circuit City or such similar retail electronics joint? Odds are that all the TVs are being fed by a VCR playing a tape. Even the "HDTV" sets. Same crappy image on all sets. People see that and may conclude that HDTV is just the same crummy picture but bigger and wider. Thing is that anyone with enough knowledge of TV and video engineering are likely to take much better paying jobs than what Sears pays. So you get sales droids that can do little than read the sales tag. Or if you went to Crazy Eddie's, you could dicker with the sales guy. It was said that the store stock number on the tag was really the minimum price they would let themselves be argued down to multiplied by 2 or was it 200. Or they would complete a deal and then they'd phone the guy in the stockroom, and then tell you it's out of stock. Yeah.... In college, when looking for summer jobs, these places wouldn't hire me, I knew too much. "The phone company's got your number!" "I was a wrong number when I worked at the phone company." ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Contin From: patrick@eris.io.com (Patrick L. Humphrey) Organization: Illuminati Online Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 22:55:50 GMT Neal McLain writes: > William Warren wrote: >> (1) Channel One was, IIRC, never used: it was taken for other services >> shortly after the assignments were given out. > Television Channel 1 (50-56 MHz) was removed from the television service > for a technical reason: the second harmonic of the visual carrier of a > TV transmitter operating on Channel 1 (51.1 MHz) would have fallen at > 102.2 MHz, right in the middle of the new FM broadcast band (88-108 MHz) > that the FCC was creating at the same it deleted TV Channel 1. The > spectrum vacated by Channel 1 was, as Warren notes, assigned for other > services, but that's not the primary reason for its removal. Wasn't Channel 1 48-54 MHz? (That would still have put the second harmonic of the video carrier at 98.2 MHz, still almost right in the middle of the modern FM broadcast band.) Channels 2 to 4 take from 54-72 MHz, and then you've got the 4 MHz gap in there between Channels 4 and 5, with 5 and 6 occupying the space between 76 and 88 MHz. > On the other hand, several UHF television channels have been removed > from the television service and assigned to other users: > Channel 34 was assigned to radioastronomy. Wasn't that Channel 37? (I seem to remember a few TV stations on 34 -- one in Georgia to this day, as a matter of fact.) --PLH, old enough to listen to Channel 6 audio on FM, back before FM was really used for much of anything ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Contin Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 06:14:42 -0400 Neal McLain wrote: > Television Channel 1 (50-56 MHz) was removed from the television service > for a technical reason: the second harmonic of the visual carrier of a TV > transmitter operating on Channel 1 (51.1 MHz) would have fallen at 102.2 > MHz, right in the middle of the new FM broadcast band (88-108 MHz) that the > FCC was creating at the same it deleted TV Channel 1. The spectrum vacated > by Channel 1 was, as Warren notes, assigned for other services, but that's > not the primary reason for its removal." Nope, nope, nope. Channel 1 after the war was to have been 44-50 MHz; it wasn't immediately available since FM stations had to be cleared out of the old 42-50 MHz band first, so it was reserved for low-power community stations in smaller towns (which probably made it easier to avoid the harmonic at 90.5 MHz). By the time the FM stations were gone, in 1948, the need for more land mobile spectrum was apparent and the demand for small-town TV stations, so channel 1 was deleted for that reason. The record is clear on this. > "Channel 34 was assigned to radioastronomy. 37. > Channels 70-83 were assigned to land mobile. Previously they had only been used for low-power translators (relaying distant full-power stations) and experimental stations. There were a few medium-power stations on channels 70-83 in the 1950s, but they were all moved down to lower channels within a few years once the poor propagation in the high end became apparent. Since translators and experimental stations are secondary services, the FCC had no trouble moving them out. (Reportedly there are still a few translators operating in this band in remote areas where no land mobile operators have yet demanded that they vacate their channels.) Also note that channels 14-20 are shared with land mobile, but only in a few large metropolitan areas where the 450-470 MHz band was overcrowded; only one such channel is used in any area, and the channel has to be one that doesn't conflict with TV assignments (for example, channel 14 -- 470-476 MHz -- is used in Chicago, where the nearest TV station is on channel 20). ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: DTV Multiplex Programming Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 05:55:04 -0400 Neal McLain wrote: If that were true, then why are there so many unused UHF allocations? There are very few unused UHF allocations any more. The UHF band only *appears* to be sparsely populated, because of the restrictions on allocations to prevent interference (due to the inferior performance of many UHF tuners, especially older ones). For example, if you have a station on channel 40, you can't have a station within 19.5 miles on channels 32, 35-38, 42-45 or 48; within 54.5 miles on 39 or 41; within 59.5 miles on 26, 33, 47 or 54; or within 74.5 miles on channels 25 or 55. That's eighteen other channels that are affected by a given assignment, compared to two (the adjacent channels) on VHF. Low-power stations (those with their channel number in the callsign, such as W49AA, or Class A stations with calls ending in -CA, such as WBKI-CA), can be dropped in in situations where they will not cause interference to full-power stations (but might receive interference *from* them), so for example WBKI-CA (channel 28) in Louisville co-exists with WLKY-TV (channel 32) in the same city. Digital TV stations (call signs ending in -DT) can also be dropped in, again where they will not cause interference to full-power analog stations, so again in Louisville we have WKPC-DT on channel 17 even though WKPC-TV is on channel 15. (It's even possible to have a DTV station on an adjacent channel if it is located on the same tower, and the FCC has done this whenever possible; for example, WISH-TV in Indianapolis is on channel 8, and its DTV station is on channel 9.) > The vast majority of the non-broadcast video programming carried by cable > and satellite is supported by two revenue streams: advertising and license > fees. But the real significance of this dual-revenue stream isn't simply > the sum of the two streams; it's the old advertising adage that "paid > advertising is worth more than free advertising." Advertising carried in > media *which the reader/viewer pays for* is worth more that advertising > carried in media distributed free. I think the major broadcast networks would disagree to some extent -- they are the only TV outlets that reach *every* American TV home, one way or another, and that in itself makes their ad time more valuable than that of basic cable networks that, at best, reach 77% or so. And the networks also provide a lot more original entertainment programming, often with larger budgets (for more popular stars and better production values), than do basic cable networks. (And those shows are more widely promoted.) > At one extreme are the "free" services. In the print world, we have free > newspapers distributed in public places and freebie "community advertisers" > that land on our doorsteps or in our mailboxes whether we want them or not. > In the video world, we have ad-supported broadcast stations over the air, > and home-shopping channels on cable and satellite. Apples and oranges, at least with reference to broadcast networks. Look at it this way -- if you had, in your community, a free newspaper that was delivered to every home *and* had high-value content (AP wire copy and photos, local reporting from a large and competent staff, major syndicated columns, etc.) and a paid-for newspaper with only fluff and ads which was only read by a fraction of the population, which would be the more desirable product -- and therefore the more desirable ad medium? > Postscript: So-called superstations (broadcast stations that are > "secondarily transmitted" to cable systems by satellite) are the > exception here: their revenue is exclusively from advertising, and, > because of an old FCC rule, they can't charge license fees. It's not an old FCC rule -- it's a relatively recent clause in Federal law, initially in the Cable Act of 1992. Any commercial TV station can demand compensation from cable operators (and now, satellite providers), but superstations were exempted if (A) they were being distributed by satellite to cable operators on a certain date (thus freezing the group of stations to which it applies) and (B) the cable system gets the station by satellite, or for DBS, the viewers are outside the station's market. These stations now include WGN in Chicago; WWOR in Secaucus, New Jersey, and WPIX in New York; WSBK in Boston; KWGN in Denver; and KTLA in Los Angeles. (WGN, KWGN, WPIX and KTLA are all owned by Tribune Broadcasting.) > "This situation has precipitated a curious irony: "TBS superstation" > is not a superstation. It switched to non-broadcast status in > 1988." 1998. The Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act amended this grandfather clause specifically to remove WTBS from the list; otherwise, cable companies could arrange to have WTBS' signal fed to them independently and avoid paying fees for TBS. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 11:40:21 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Organization: Crash Electronics, Inc. Subject: Re: Neanderthal Alert [was Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse...] > TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... People used to make jokes > saying if you wanted to listen to WYCA you did not need to have an FM > receiver. All you had to do was put your television set on Channel 6 > then screw around with the fine tuning knob a little I once owned a television set with a bizarre tuner. (It was an "old" TV in the mid-1970s ...) The detents on the knob (remember tuner knobs?) were not evenly spaced, and you had to do a LOT of fine-tuning. There was a wider gap between "6" and "7" on the knob; this area was labeled "FM RADIO" and you could tune the whole FM band there. There was a "Radio" switch on the set which turned off the video ... Remember the hooraw when it became "illegal" to own a device which could receive the analog cellular band? Many TVs could (still can! :-) pull in analog cell calls with careful adjustment of the fine tuning in "certain" UHF channels. -- Gordon S. Hlavenka O- nospam@crashelex.com Burma! ------------------------------ From: Paul Erickson Subject: Re: Phone System Wanted Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 11:55:37 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Based on the recommendation of a friend in the telecom business, for our office I purchased a Comdial DSU II : http://www.comdial.com/systems/dsuii.asp with their Key Voice Corporate Office (LT I think): http://www.comdial.com/messaging/messaging_matrix.asp and a 4 line Who's Calling Caller ID box from www.sandman.com. This provides the data for name+number caller ID display on all your extension phones. The DSU II supports 4 incoming lines and 8 extensions. You can get an expansion unit to add another 4 incoming lines and 8 extensions. The Key Voice voice mail is a little DOS-based PC affair with two lines coming in and supports a number of mailboxes. Attach a keyboard and color monitor to the voice mail PC and you can setup mailboxes and set those parameters fairly easily. I more or less installed the system myself with a little phone help from my friend. The system has been very reliable and easy to use. I can connect a laptop to the DSU via serial cable and make configuration changes if needed. If memory serves, the DSU II + voice mail + 4 impact extension phones was in the $3000 - $5000 ballpark.... "Contact Comdial for a dealer near you" You can find some of this equipment on Ebay at a discount, but at your own risk of course. Good luck! -- Paul jangnim wrote in message news:telecom20.353.2@telecom-digest.org: > Hi there. I have been asked to check into a phone system that will > have six extensions, two outside lines coming in, extension numbers and > voice mail. I don't really know how to begin such a search but > would greatly appreciate a contact. I don't have much capital to do > this project, and the office is actually all in a single room. Can > you stear me in the right direction? > Thanks for your time. > Carl Huth Sr. ------------------------------ From: wesrock@aol.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: 10 Aug 2002 00:46:55 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question > Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for > WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). >> [Moderator's Note: Her voice was also used for Time of Day here in >> Chicago for many years (312-CAThedral-8000). She had recorded the >> phrase 'at the signal, the time will be' and the digits which were >> then patched together as appropriate. PAT] The time-and-temperature machines were leased by Bell System companies (and presumably other companies, too) from the Audiovox Corp. (I think that was their name) in Atlanta. The time-and- temperature machines came equipped with the recording Pat mentioned and worked just as he said. The recording was not furnished by the Bell System. The time-and-temperature machines were ultimately determined to be station apparatus and so could no longer be furnished by a Bell Company. This was a considerable annoyance to many of the sponsors of the time-and-temperature recordings, because they didn't really want to have to deal with the Audiovox (?) company (or any company other than the telephone company). The intercept and other recordings were telco recordings, but they were not uniform throughout the country or even throughout one associated company. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Henry Cabot Henhouse III Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 12:19:38 GMT The AT&T lady is Pat Fleet. Not under exclusive contract, you can pay her to say anything you want. wrote in message news:telecom20.354.5@telecom-digest.org: >> What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on >> the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? >> Grace something? Mary something? > I'm not sure if she was the original, but I believe Jane Barbie > (spelling?) did a lot of recordings for the Bell System. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone. Organization: Not Much From: bonomi@c-ns (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 15:11:36 GMT Bingo the clown simply doesn't know what he's looking at. There is *nothing* wrong, Just several 'intermediate devices' that do not send 'ttl expired' messages. *NOTHING* requires such status messages to be sent. The 'offending' machines would appear to be cogentco network. An additonal 100 ms latency between Alabama and New York is entirely reasonable. In article , Casey wrote: > I've been running a traceroute every 15 minutes for the past few > hours and I have found there to be an issue with a network on the > Sprint Backbone or one near it. This is a sample of what I am > getting: ------------------------------ From: wesrock@aol.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: 09 Aug 2002 15:20:21 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor and Conference Coordinator > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Pardon my typo on the 16.5 <> 61.5 > degree thing. We don't have a Sam's Club here except for the few Sam's > Club brand items (called Sam's Choice) that Walmart sells. Are you sure Sam's Choice was ever intended specifically as a Sam's Club brand? As far as I know Sam's Club was selected as the Wal-Mart private label brand, and you'll find Sam's Choice pop (soda for Easterners), peanuts, potato chips and (in superstores) all kinds of Sam's Club private label grocery articles. While both Sam's Club (originally Sam's Wholesale Club) and Sam's Choice were both obviously named for (and probably by) Sam Walton (when he was still alive), I don't think there's any other specific connection between Sam's Club and Sam's Choice brand. > ... For about seven months, we > did not even have a full service supermarket in this town of 8842 > people, after the two grocery stores both went out of business, except > for the Walmart store. The Walmart-haters didn't like it, but they > had to go out there to get their groceries until Marvin's opened up > in the old Safeway spot two months ago. Marvin's is an Oklahmoma > chain of grocery stores which decided to come in and do battle with > the Walmart way of doing business. PAT] Marvin's just got some appreciable attention in Oklahoma business circles when they bought the former Winn-Dixie stores that Winn-Dixie was shedding in Oklahoma. Apparently Marvin's has been very successful in smaller towns in Oklahoma (and apparently over the line in Kansas, too) in acquiring grocery store sites that their previous owners had given up on, often citing competition from Wal-Mart as the reason they gave up. Wal-Mart is the No. 1 grocery retailer in many metropolitan markets, too, and often a close No. 2 in those where they aren't No. 1. Independence must be a lively business area to get a Wal-Mart supercenter in a town of 8,842. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our Walmart has all the Sam's Choice items in the grocery section such as soda, potato chips, etc. We had three major grocery stores in town until about a year ago. We had Dillons, County Mart and Safeway. One by one they closed up and went out of business. Then people began to notice: we don't have a single grocery store in town any longer. Oh, we have a few quick stop places like grocery/liquor/gas station combos; all rather expensive and limited in stock places. If you want groceries you have to go 'all the way out on West Main Street' to Walmart. Then last April, after several months like that, a realtor in town sold the old Safeway store on 10th and Laurel. The next day the Independence Reporter told us we were getting a new grocery store. I found out about it the day before from the taxicab driver who was taking me out to Walmart to get my groceries. After two months of readying the place, it opened for business about the first of July. A friend who went in on opening day to shop came out with close to a hundred dollars in groceries and noted, 'they are not as expensive as I expected' which was another way of saying Walmart (at least in groceries) was not as cheap as they claim. The downtown stores are still as gracious as ever, carrying people on credit, bringing merchandise out to your house, making returns with no hassles, etc. When you go downtown to shop, you get in and out with no delays, since there are only a few other people shopping. Although Walmart Supercenter is good on no-hassle returns, and their prices *seem* to be a little better in some categories, there is something missing it seems. How about merchants (like downtown) who call you by name, look up your account with no fuss when you walk in the door, and not only deliver to your house on request with no charge, but in my case at least offer to drive me home as well. Walmart is always ice-cold with their air conditoning (one good feature) and they have a no-hassle return policy (another good feature), free coffee and bingo for senior citizens, and they give away money and food to the food banks and churches, and the schools, etc (all good features). Their parking lot there at the Supercenter is *always* filled to overflowing, and people grumble about them but continue to go. Even the cab driver tells me he gets trips out there and back from there a dozen times daily. And the police? Where the newspaper used to have two or three items per week about crime in this rural county of thirty- one thousand people (8800 of them in Independence and most items being about DUI or other rowdy behavior) now there is at least one incident daily of shoplifting from Walmart reported by police in the paper. Independence, Kansas is a very *well-kept secret* it seems to me. A small town but very lively in many ways. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #355 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 12 13:57:52 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7CHvqh18074; Mon, 12 Aug 2002 13:57:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 13:57:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208121757.g7CHvqh18074@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #356 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Aug 2002 13:57:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 356 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #344, August 12, 2002 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone (Koos van den Hout) VoIP via Frame Relay From IXC (NUGIT) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (Wes Leatherock) Re: Phone System Wanted (Paul Erickson) Anyone Having Problems With AT&T Local Services (Naturelover) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 10:26:54 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #344, August 12, 2002 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 344: August 12, 2002 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AT&T CANADA http://www.attcanada.com ** BELL CANADA http://www.bell.ca ** GROUP TELECOM http://www.gt.ca ** LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES CANADA http://www.lucent.ca ** PRIMUS CANADA: http://www.primustel.ca ** Q9 NETWORKS: http://www.Q9.com ** TELUS: http://www.telus.com ** UNISPHERE NETWORKS: http://www.unispherenetworks.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** BCE Raises $2 Billion in Equity ** WorldCom Finds US$3 Billion More Misstated Profit ** UBS Buys 9% of Look ** Telcos File Business Rate Changes ** Microcell Operating Profit Rises ** Fido Cuts Prepaid Rates ** Inukshuk Internet -- R.I.P. ** CRTC Upholds Cableco Winback Rules ** AT&TCalgary Dispute on Hold ** Competitor DNA Proceeding Amended ** Cygnal to Distribute Aastra Phones ** New Owners for Global Crossing ** Cisco Sales Rise 12% ** RIM Develops E-Mail Attachment Viewer ** MTS Builds Advanced IP Network ** Primus EBITDA Increases ** Sabotage Hits Videotron Cable Service ** Com Dev Sells Broadband Unit ** Aliant Mobility Launches Two-Way Messaging ** Northern Tel Extends High-Speed Internet ** Wi-LAN Sales Slip ** Angus Telecom Briefings -- Register Now and Save BCE RAISES $2 BILLION IN EQUITY: BCE has raised $2.08 billion, about $500 million more than expected, in a share offering that closed today. The proceeds will pay for part of the buyback of SBC Commmunications' minority stake in Bell Canada. (See Telecom Update #339) WORLDCOM FINDS US$3 BILLION MORE MISSTATED PROFIT: WorldCom admitted August 8 that it overstated EBITDA earnings by US$3.3 billion between 1999 and early 2002, in addition to the $3.8 billion reported last month. WorldCom said its restated financials may also write off $50.6 billion in assets. (See Telecom Update #339, 343) UBS BUYS 9% OF LOOK: Unique Broadband Systems is acquiring a 9% stake in Look Communications, convertible to 23%, through a $5 million investment. As part of the deal, Look has agreed to buy $2.4 million of products and services from UBS. TELCOS FILE BUSINESS RATE CHANGES: In their first tariff filings under the new Price Cap rules, Canada's incumbent telcos have proposed increases in rates for some business local services, and reductions for Digital Network Access service. ** The September issue of Telemanagement will provide details on the new rates, which, if approved, will be retroactive to June 1. MICROCELL OPERATING PROFIT RISES: Microcell Telecom had second quarter EBITDA of $26.1 million, compared to $9.4 million negative EBITDA in the same quarter last year. Sales rose 9% to $146 million. ** Microcell says it may not be able to comply with debt covenants in the foreseeable future, placing in question its ability to continue as a going concern, and has retained Rothschild as financial advisor. FIDO CUTS PREPAID RATES: On August 13, Microcell's Fido service will introduce two prepaid calling vouchers with a per-minute rate of 15, half the previous rate. The vouchers are good for 15 or 30 days, half the previous period. INUKSHUK INTERNET R.I.P.: In March 2000, Microcell subsidiary Inukshuk Internet won licences to provide high-speed Internet service across Canada using MCS wireless technology. Microcell has now written off the entire value of the licences, citing rising costs and its inability to find a partner to finance the project. (See Telecom Update #226) CRTC UPHOLDS CABLECO WINBACK RULES: In Telecom Decision 2002- 47, the CRTC turns down Videotron's request to rescind the rule that requires major cablecos to wait 90 days before trying to win back Internet customers who have transferred to another ISP using the cablecos' access service. (see Telecom Update #269, 275). http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/dt2002-47.htm AT&T CALGARY DISPUTE ON HOLD: CRTC Telecom Decision 2002-46 suspends AT&T Canada's application to amend its access agreement with the City of Calgary (see Telecom Update #340) until the Commission has ruled on general issues regarding such agreements. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/dt2002-46.htm COMPETITOR DNA PROCEEDING AMENDED: Responding to requests by Call-Net (see Telecom Update #338), CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2002-4 combines all issues relating to Competitor Digital Network Access into a single proceeding with two parts: a policy portion and a tariff portion. The Commission has expanded the policy discussion to consider whether channelizing and inter-exchange service within local markets should be part of CDNA. ** The Commission says that resellers as well as carriers are entitled to use CDNA service. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2002/pt2002-4.htm CYGNAL TO DISTRIBUTE AASTRA PHONES: Cygnal Technologies now distributes Aastra Technologies' line of business and residential phones, which includes Vista and other single- line phones previously made by Nortel. NEW OWNERS FOR GLOBAL CROSSING: Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications Ltd. and Singapore Technologies Telemedia have agreed to pay US$250 million for 61.5% of Global Crossing on its emergence from bankruptcy, expected early in 2003. Banks and creditors will receive 38.5% ownership, plus $300 million in cash and $200 million in notes. Existing shareholders receive nothing. CISCO SALES RISE 12%: Cisco Systems reports revenue of US$4.8 billion in the quarter ended July 27, level with revenue in the previous quarter and 12% more than last year. Net income was $772 million, up from $7 million a year ago. ** Cisco says it has installed Voice over IP systems in more than 20 Canadian educational institutions. RIM DEVELOPS E-MAIL ATTACHMENT VIEWER: RIM will soon begin customer trials of a BlackBerry application that enables users to securely view e-mail attachments. MTS BUILDS ADVANCED IP NETWORK: Manitoba Telecom Services is building a IP-based MultiProtocol Label Switching network to serve government offices in 85 locations across the province. The Cisco-based network will be completed in 2003. PRIMUS EBITDA INCREASES: Primus Canada, which claims 800,000 retail customers, reports second-quarter EBITDA of $16 million, up from $3.9 million a year ago. Revenue of $63 million was down 5% from the previous quarter. ** Primus has acquired Passport Online, an Internet Service Provider to businesses in the Toronto area. SABOTAGE HITS VIDEOTRON CABLE SERVICE: Videotron says that 18 vandalism incidents last week affected cable service to 748,000 of its 1.45 million customers. The cables were cut hours after a mediator declared an impasse in efforts to end a strike of 2,200 employees. (See Telecom Update #340) COM DEV SELLS BROADBAND UNIT: Com Dev International has sold majority ownership of its Broadband subsidiary, which was developing the M/Ergy infrastructure for high-speed wireless data, to Axio Wireless, a new company based in California and owned by former Com Dev managers. ALIANT MOBILITY LAUNCHES TWO-WAY MESSAGING: Aliant Telecom Mobility now offers two-way text messaging across its digital coverage area. Users can exchanges messages with subscribers of the other three wireless carriers. (See Telecom Update #308) ** Aliant plans to launch its higher-speed 1XRTT wireless network in Halifax in early November. NORTHERN TEL EXTENDS HIGH-SPEED INTERNET: Northern Telephone, which serves northeast Ontario, has extended high-speed Internet service to Cobalt, Earlton, Englehart, and four other small communities. WI-LAN SALES SLIP: Wi-LAN, which makes broadband wireless equipment, had sales of $5.8 million for the three months ended July 31, down from $6.2 million the previous quarter and $7.6 million a year ago. Wi-LAN says its market share is growing because competitors did even worse. ANGUS TELECOM BRIEFINGS -- REGISTER NOW AND SAVE: Don't miss these exclusive briefings by Angus Dortmans Associates and Angus TeleManagement Group: ** Reinventing Enterprise Communications: Setting Your Strategy for IP Telephony ** Beyond the Meltdown: A Report Card and Forecast for Canadian Telecom These hard-hitting half-day programs will be offered once only, in Toronto, on October 16. To guarantee that a seat is reserved for you -- and to receive your early registration discount -- download the Preview Announcement at http://www.angustel.ca/Angus-Seminars.pdf and register before August 31. HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: TelecomUpdate@add.postmastergeneral.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: TelecomUpdate@remove.postmastergeneral.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2002 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Koos van den Hout Subject: Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone. Date: 12 Aug 2002 11:57:06 GMT Organization: Van den Hout Creative Communications Casey wrote: > I've been running a traceroute every 15 minutes for the past few hours > and I have found there to be an issue with a network on the Sprint > Backbone or one near it. This is a sample of what I am getting: > 7 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms g6-2.core01.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com > [66.28.28.201] > 8 * * * Request timed out. > 9 * * * Request timed out. > 10 * * * Request timed out. > 11 * * * Request timed out. > 12 * * * Request timed out. > 13 110 ms 100 ms 100 ms sl-gw9-rly-3-2.sprintlink.net > [144.232.184.133] [..] > 18 * 131 ms 130 ms sl-a2-21-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.214.206] > 19 120 ms 141 ms 130 ms 216.212.208.238 > 20 141 ms 150 ms 130 ms {MYWORKSERVER} > Trace complete. > This is causing issues for anyone who is trying to connect to our > network from the internet. How is this causing issues ? Or what issues do you have that you think are related to this ? > As you can see there are problems with some routers along the way. No. The routers just decided to not respond to your traceroute. Other actions (like routing real traffic) have higher priority on big routers. Maybe sprintlink has filtered certain things to/from their routers to keep people from constantly monitoring their network. > Who can I contact about getting this fixed? One of the providers (your home provider or your work provider) seems to use sprintlink as their uplink. They can contact sprintlink about any performance issues. -- Koos van den Hout, PGP keyid RSA/1024 0xCA845CB5 via keyservers koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl or DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 -?) Fax +31-30-2817051 Visit the site about books with reviews /\\ http://idefix.net/~koos/ http://www.virtualbookcase.com/ _\_V ------------------------------ From: NUGIT Subject: VoIP via Frame Relay From IXC Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 21:49:28 GMT Does anyone have any experience with an IXC that provides their service over Frame Relay Circuits? What type and manufacturer of an interface is used between the router and the switch (PBX)? Thxs: Pokey ------------------------------ From: wesrock@aol.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: 11 Aug 2002 00:34:34 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse On Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:25:34 -0600 Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com wrote: > On the other hand, several UHF television channels have been removed > from the television service and assigned to other users: > Channel 34 was assigned to radioastronomy. Curious. The WB station in Oklahoma City, KOCB-TV, is on channel 34. Last night it had the NFL pre-season game between Dallas and Oakland. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wish we got WB here in Independence. The newspaper thing in the Sunday paper which has TV listings for the week says WB is n/a here. Several months ago our 'expanded basic' group of channels was expanded from 55 to 62 (actually 60 since channel 1 and 4 are not occupied at all that I can see) and now includes things like Disney, A&E, Bravo, and a couple others. I will make an entire list here soon for comparison. One and Four are not used at all. but they don't have WB (or WGN-TV superstation) there at all. $34.95 for extended basic seems like a good price. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul Erickson Subject: Re: Phone System Wanted Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 08:35:37 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Based on the recommendation of a friend in the telecom business, for our office I purchaed a Comdial DSU II : http://www.comdial.com/systems/dsuii.asp With thier Key Voice Corporate Office (LT I think): http://www.comdial.com/messaging/messaging_matrix.asp And a 4 line Who's Calling Caller ID box from www.sandman.com. This provides the data for name+number caller ID display on all your extension phones. The DSU II supports 4 incoming lines and 8 extensions. You can get an expansion unit to add another 4 incoming lines and 8 extensions. The Key Voice voice mail is a little DOS-based PC affair with two lines coming in and supports a number of mailboxes. Attach a keyboard and color monitor to the voice mail PC and you can setup mailboxes and set those parameters fairly easily. I more or less installed the system myself with a little phone help from my friend. The system has been very reliable and easy to use. I can connect a laptop to the DSU via serial cable and make configuration changes if needed. If memory serves, the DSU II + voice mail + 4 impact extension phones was in the $3000 - $5000 ballpark. "Contact Comdial for a dealer near you" You can find some of this equipment on Ebay at a discount, but at your own risk of course. Good luck! -- Paul jangnim wrote in message news:telecom20.353.2@telecom-digest.org... > Hi there. I have been asked to check into a phone system that will > have six extensions, two outside lines coming in, extension numbers and > voice mail. I don't really know how to begin such a search but > would greatly appreciate a contact. I don't have much capital to do > this project, and the office is actually all in a single room. Can > you stear me in the right direction? > Thanks for your time. > Carl Huth Sr. ------------------------------ From: Naturelover Subject: Anyone Having Problems With AT&T Local Services Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 20:14:48 GMT Six months ago I switched from PACBell to AT&T local service in California and since then my telephone lines went dead twice. Is it normal? It never happened before when I was with monopoly carriers. The outages were anywhere between two hours and today it is six hours and no service update from AT&T yet. Any experiences? ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #356 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 12 16:37:40 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7CKbef19847; Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:37:40 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:37:40 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208122037.g7CKbef19847@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #357 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:37:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 357 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (John) So You've Got Your HDTV; Now What's There to See? (Monty Solomon) Protecting/Reclaiming the Commons (Monty Solomon) News Headlines of Interest 8/12/02 (Monty Solomon) Cell Phones (dibliss@telusplanet.net) Re: Worldcom MCI Raises Rates (ellis@no.spam) Re: Mile High Telecom (Chris Kantarjiev) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (John Stahl) Re: Anyone Having Problems With AT&T Local Services (John Higdon) Re: VoIP via Frame Relay From IXC (Albo) Re: Toll Free Business Directory (Steven Lichter) Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor; Conference Coordinator (Stan Schwartz) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Subject: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 17:42:46 GMT I have one phone line, primarily used for voice. Once in a while I may receive or send a fax to/from a family member, and my fax machine is also my answering machine. Naturally it is always on, although the fax function is transparent to voice calls. I was away for a few days (in the hospital). When I came home, I found a blank sheet of fax paper on the fax machine. Completely blank. The next day, it started. The phone would ring and it would be a fax machine. I let the fax machine take a few, and you guessed it: fax ads. Apparently my number is now known as a fax number, and I am doomed. The phone numbers printed in the ads only end up at a voice mail system, and there was no way to find out who called. The number was "unavailable" of course from *69 service. I switched on the anti-junk feature of my fax machine to reject unknown fax machines. It does not receive the fax if the fax machine number is not in the speed dial. (I'm not sure what will happen if I have the number as 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx in the speed dial, and the friendly fax machine is set to xxx-xxx-xxxx yet). So at least I won't be wasting fax paper on these losers. Of course it still connects to the fax machine to get the transmitting fax number before it disconnects. I have my modem set to disconnect when it detects call-waiting, so that I don't miss a call. Naturally it is very annoying to be disconnected only to find it is a fax machine. I did fill out online complaint forms with both the FCC and my state (MA). I don't know how much it will do though, with only their 800 numbers on them. MA just passed a telemarketer do-not-call list law, although it is not yet implemented. Hopefully that will help, eventually. I noticed that PA's new law gives the do-not-call numbers to the DMA, who they contract with. So I better send this before another junk fax call disconnects my Internet connection. Are there any tricks I can do to stop this nonsense? I really don't want to have to change my number. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Better list them in your speed dial both as number and 1+number to get them both ways. Also, use any wild-card features your speed dial has to eliminate unwanted messages. You might also try adding a front end answering machine to your line, one that gives the three SIT tones (such as what Mike Sandman sells through sandman.com followed by a short message saying 'this is not a FAX machine. To reach a human, please hold a few seconds' then arrange to pick up the line after the SIT tones and message. That will get rid of a few more. And save those scraps of paper with the caller ID numbers and send them in on your complaints. Remember how years ago people used to complain that caller ID was an invasion of privacy. I see it as a valuable tool in cases like yours. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 13:36:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? By DAVID EVERITT AFTER years as little more than a showpiece at electronics trade conventions, high-definition television is finally becoming practical. HDTV sets still don't qualify as basic appliances, but with prices as low as $1,000, they're now within the realm of possibility for many consumers. But here's the important question: when the gizmo is hooked up and ready to display its wide-screen, high-quality pictures, what will there be to watch? Until recently, the answer would have been, not much. For years, the technology had been caught in something of a Catch-22: the Federal Communications Commission pressured networks to broadcast more high-definition shows, but most networks were reluctant to spend the money on this programming because the manufacturers were not selling enough sets. For their part, manufacturers were unable to sell many sets because consumers were waiting for more shows to become available. Today, the stalemate seems to be over. Now that prices have come down, the audience for high-definition television programs has grown, encouraging networks to increase the number of programs shown in the new format. As of last season, CBS and ABC were broadcasting all of their prime-time comedies and dramas in high definition. This coming season, NBC will broadcast 10 prime-time shows in the new format. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/arts/television/11EVER.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 13:40:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Protecting/Reclaiming the Commons Why we need to protect our public resources from private encroachment.* David Bollier One of the great questions of contemporary American political economy is, who shall control the commons? "The commons" refers to that vast range of resources that the American people collectively own, but which are rapidly being enclosed: privatized, traded in the market, and abused. The process of converting the American commons into market resources can accurately be described as enclosure because, like the movement to enclose common lands in eighteenth-century England, it involves the private appropriation of collectively owned resources. Such enclosures are troubling because they disproportionately benefit the corporate class and effectively deprive ordinary citizens of access to resources that they legally or morally own. The result is a hypertrophic market that colonizes untouched natural resources and public life while eroding our democratic commonwealth. The commons and enclosure are archaic, unfamiliar terms. But this strangeness is appropriate. We currently lack a vocabulary for identifying a wide range of abuses that harm public assets and social ecology. When such abuses are acknowledged, they tend to be viewed as isolated and episodic, rather than systematically related. A discussion of the commons and enclosure helps bring into sharp focus a dramatic but largely unexamined phenomenon of contemporary American society: the forced privatization and marketization of large swaths of shared wealth and social life. We already have a familiar and sophisticated language for talking about economic exchange, focused on market efficiency. We need to develop a similarly rich body of knowledge about the commons, in order to appreciate the value of our civic patrimony and to develop strategies that will help us fortify and extend it. ... http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR27.3/bollier.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 13:41:15 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Headlines of Interest 8/12/02 Verizon launches bundled services By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 8/7/2002 Reacting to new offers by AT&T and WorldCom, Verizon Communications yesterday began offering Massachusetts and New York customers its first discount-priced bundle of local, long-distance, and wireless phone service, plus high-speed Internet access. Verizon said it expects that as it expands its ''Veriations'' package throughout its northeastern US service territory and other parts of the United States, it could generate $100 million to $200 million a year in new revenues. Verizon had net income of $8.2 billion on revenues of $68 billion last year. One version of the plan now available in Greater Boston includes unlimited local calls with voice mail and enhanced calling services, 300 weekday daytime calling minutes on Verizon long-distance and Verizon Wireless, unlimited off-peak wireless and long distance, and digital subscriber line broadband Net for $140 a month. That price is $64 less than buying the same services bought separately, Verizon said. Unlimited wireless and long-distance calling is restricted to 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekdays and 9 p.m. Friday through 6 a.m. Monday. ... UPDATE 1-OpenTV (NASDAQ:OPTV) no longer sees profitability in Q4 - Aug 9, 2002 11:10 AM (Reuters) (adds comparison period for revenue forecast in paragraph one) AMSTERDAM, Aug 9 (Reuters) - OpenTV (AMS:OPTV), maker of software for digital interactive TV, said it no longer expects to achieve "pro-forma profitability" in the fourth quarter, and does not see revenue growing in the second half of 2002 compared to the first half. The company, which will soon be controlled by U.S. cable mogul John Malone's Liberty Media (NYSE:L), issued the earnings warning late Thursday as it posted a 38 percent drop in revenue in the second quarter and a net loss of $30.8 million. OpenTV made a loss of $120.2 million in the same period last year, but that included $97.7 million goodwill amortisation. http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28214168 Congress Diverts Unwanted E-Mail By Brian Krebs, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Thursday, August 8, 2002; 3:05 PM Congress is becoming more adept at stemming the tide of e-mail bound for Capitol Hill, using technology to filter junk messages and facilitate alternative online communications with constituents, a study released Wednesday found. In 2001, U.S. congressional offices waded through a daily average of 320,000 e-mails, an increase from 2000 of 78 percent for House offices and 22 percent in the Senate, according to the Congress Online Project, a two-year program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. At the time, the Project and lawmakers warned that, left unchecked, the amount of spam and misdirected e-mail - in addition to normal levels of postal mail - threatened to undermine lawmakers' abilities to respond to constituent concerns. More than halfway through this year, however, that trend has slowed considerably - at least in the House. Based on volume for the first six months 2002, the amount of e-mail headed for the House is projected to increase just 2.5 percent, according to the latest Congress Online Project survey. The Senate, which has not been quite as aggressive in combating unwanted e-mail, is projected to receive 24 percent more e-mail than last year, the study found. However, the Senate is in the midst of replacing its 12-year-old e-mail system with a more configurable Microsoft-based service, a process the House finished more than four years ago. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60019-2002Aug8 FCC hangs up on analog phones Non-digital wireless service to be phased out August 9, 2002 Posted: 11:45 AM EDT (1545 GMT) NEW YORK, New York (AP) -- The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said that in five years it will stop requiring cellular companies to provide non-digital wireless service for 20 million people who still use "analog" mobile phones. The decision, part of the FCC's biannual review of its regulations, drew praise from the industry, which can save money by not providing two types of wireless service and free up scarce network capacity used for less-efficient analog calls. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/08/09/analog.cellular.ap/index.html How Al-Qaida Site Was Hijacked By Patrick Di Justo 2:00 a.m. Aug. 10, 2002 PDT A Maryland hacker used simple Web tools like whois and traceroute -- as well as online translation software and an anti-cybersquatting service -- to take over the domain name of al-Qaida's website. And he's ready to do it again. Jon Messner, the Internet entrepreneur who perpetrated the recent domain hijacking, used SnapName's Snapback service to obtain ownership of the domain www.alneda.com. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,54455,00.html Japanese Drop Out of New ID System Sunday, August 11, 2002 10:11 a.m. EDT By YURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer TOKYO (AP) - Ever since their computerized ID system switched on a few days ago, Japanese citizens have dropped out in droves from what many resent as a "big brother" monitoring of the people. The dozens of protest groups that have popped up are planning a rally Monday at which demonstrators will show their outrage by ripping up the papers being sent out by the government to assign every citizen an 11-digit number. "To start with, giving a number to people is a violation of our individual human rights," said Eiji Yoshimura, one of the protesters. "We have absolutely nothing to gain from this system." Several local governments have refused to participate in the system, which began last Monday. Yokohama, a Tokyo suburb of 3.4 million people, is giving its residents a choice of hooking up or not. The government is assigning each of Japan's 126 million citizens an ID number that will link into a nationwide computer system. The idea is to streamline Japan's cumbersome bureaucracy by making it easy to obtain basic personal information during administrative procedures. Critics worry about loss of privacy, and some fear government officials will misuse the information. http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=news&storyId=488406 Immigrants See Path to Riches in Phone Cards By SUSAN SACHS Sitting behind a smudged glass counter in his Chinatown shop, briskly sticking personal identification numbers on the backs of prepaid phone cards, Nong Hui Jiang does not immediately bring to mind the image of a telecom mogul. But Mr. Jiang, an immigrant from Fujian Province in China, has ambitions. In 12 years in the United States, he has gone from selling phone cards on the street to distributing as many as 20,000 cards a day to his own network of immigrant retailers. He produces a private label phone card and now owns his own connection, or switch, into the global phone network. Mr. Jiang, 39, has accomplished this despite knowing limited English. "I'm going to go step by step to become a big company," he vowed through a translator, sounding every bit the budding capitalist. "If I need people to speak English, I'll hire them." He is hardly the exception in the cutthroat world of prepaid phone cards. The business may be driven by the seemingly infinite desire of homesick immigrants to stay in constant touch with the family they left behind. But it has also, improbably, become a career ladder for immigrants with as little experience and as much bravura as Mr. Jiang. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/nyregion/11PHON.html Rip, Mix, Burn: The Politics of Peer to Peer and Copyright Law by Kathy Bowrey and Matthew Rimmer Abstract Whereas Lessig's recent work engages with questions of culture and creativity in society, this paper looks at the role of culture and creativity in the law. The paper evaluates the Napster, DeCSS, Felten and Sklyarov litigation in terms of the new social, legal, economic and cultural relations being produced. This involves a deep discussion of law's economic relations, and the implications of this for litigation strategy. The paper concludes with a critique of recent attempts to define copyright law in terms of first amendment rights and communicative freedom. Contents The Story So Far A Different Kind of Politics Part One - Peer To Peer: The Napster Experience Part Two - The DMCA Litigation: DeCSS and Beyond Part Three - Dmitry, the Con and the Constitution Part Four - Some Questions about Law, Politics, and the Politics Of Law http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_8/bowrey/ The Second-Level Digital Divide of the Web and Its Impact on Journalism by Wiebke Loosen Abstract The so-called digital divide is one of the most important issues in connection with the increasing development and distribution of the Internet and its technologies. Assumptions concerning the effects on social, economic and educational development are based on certain ideas about the technical principles of the organisation of the Web. The paper discusses the fundamental ideas of the Web such as openness, freedom, and equality, and analyzes their scopes under increasing economic and technical influences which definine the World Wide Web infrastructure and its potentials. This includes a comparison of specific functions of different search engines within a fast growing search industry that may be responsible for a distortion of Internet content and for a certain mode of Web traffic. Equally important are intentions of self-regulation and the monitoring of contents under these circumstances. This discussion will focus on the varied economic and technical aspects that will strongly influence the quality of the Web - which can be called a 'second-level digital divide'. It includes an analysis of relevant aspects in conjunction with online journalism and its role relative to this new situation. Contents Introduction The Promises of the Internet and its Infrastructure Technological Constraints Economic Constraints Conclusions and Implications for Journalism http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_8/loosen/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 01:16:11 -0600 From: dibliss@telusplanet.net Subject: Cell Phones Would you please help me. Who can I contact to learn how or whether I can recover deleted numbers form my cell phone's memory. When I delete numbers from the calls received list, for example, a trash can icon appears. How do I open the trash can and recover an inadvertantly deleted number? I have a Nokia Model 5125. Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Can you view the contents of the trash can? That is usually the purpose of having a trash can, in order to view its contents. Go in to view it, manually write down whatever you want, then enter it in the speed dial directory. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ellis@no.spam Subject: Re: Worldcom MCI Raises Rates Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:57:37 -0000 Organization: S.P.C.A.A. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I may respond for John > (although he might reply also) I would suggest bailing to > any company with lower rates, a likelyhood of being around > for awhile (let's face it, MCI is almost gone), and honest, > reasonably intelligent customer service people. You can EASILY > get long distance service these days for five cents per minute > or less in a few cases. Unlike MCI/Sprint/AT&T, some of > competitors actually want to see you stay around and care about > your business. (Admittedly, this final point is more rare, but > it does exist.) Good Lord, Ellis, bail to *anyone* just about. > PAT] I was actually wanting suggestions. I'm using Qwest right now and they are beginning to annoy me. -- http://yosemitenews.info/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I personally use SBC and whenever possible make LD calls on my cell phone which gives LD for free. It comes from Cingular Wireless, although all or most cellular phones give LD for free. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 11:03:30 PDT From: Chris Kantarjiev Subject: Re: Mile High Telecom I got a fax solicitation from them a while back, too. I called them to try to figure out what the scam is. Got their video tape and materials. They seem to be legit -- whether or not their biz plan is a long term runner is a different matter. In brief, they're offering an outsourced integrated services package (two phone lines, long distance, DSL, cellular) to consumers in Qwest country, trying to capitalize on Qwest's lousy service of consumers in favor of businesses. They claim pretty good subscription rates, but I had a very difficult time verifying their claims. I passed. Time will tell whether or not that was the right decision. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:18:40 -0400 From: John Stahl Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question In several previous issues, this heading was discussed. Since I worked for the outfit in question, I figured I could set the record straight! >> Jane Barbie was also the female voice heard on the voice-overs for >> WWVH (the Hawaiian version of WWV). > The time-and-temperature machines were leased by Bell System > companies (and presumably other companies, too) from the Audiovox > Corp. (I think that was their name) in Atlanta The responsible company for all of the telephone audio equipment and Jane Barbie's voice is ETC (URL: http://www.etcia.com) with a branch office/recording studio in Atlanta. I worked for ETC for three years back in the late 90's and sold a bunch of their CO switch (on Lucent #5, EWSD and Nortel DMS series switches) based digital audio announcers to the (then) up and coming CLEC's (like PaeTec, Choice One, Hyperion, ACC - the pre-cursor to the CLEC version of AT&T and several others) all with the digitally stored version of Jane's voice making all the POTS announcements and some even making CLASS announcements, too. ETC has probably been the biggest supplier of voice announcers to the CLEC market. Jane (and her male counterpart) have been under contract to ETC (a Waukesha, WI, based, family run company) for many, many years. ETC manufactures (and own the trademarks for) the 60+ year old product line called Audichron (sounds like Audiovox doesn't it(?) - but no connection between the two companies), There were a bunch also used by ILEC's all over the NE which still use them. For a while ETC tried to "bury" the Audichron name but now (see web site) they are highlighting the name again with their newest product offering. Jane makes recording down in Atlanta at ETC's recording studio -- I even met her once or twice! For the most part, the telcos buy these systems, as do a lot of commercial companies who want an announcement system on their phones lines. For example, there is a Chrysler car dealer in Geneva, NY, with a (old) Audichron, still giving weather and time announcements to those who use it -- I was told that a lot of farmer's use their system for good reliable forecast info. ETC has quite a business making all of these additional announcements for all of the electronic announcement systems throughout the country. In fact ETC even makes recorded announcements for their (only) competitor's (Cognitronics) systems and a bunch of other's announcers for commercial establishments with Jane's voice. Jane's voice is on the Atlanta metro rail system (MARTA) making station stop announcements, too. > The time-and-temperature machines were ultimately determined to > be station apparatus and so could no longer be furnished by a Bell > Company. This was a considerable annoyance to many of the sponsors of > the time-and-temperature recordings, because they didn't really want > to have to deal with the Audiovox (?) company (or any company other > than the telephone company). Not really true; Bell companies never built this equipment but depended on outsiders. In fact, Audichron was one of the first add-on's to a CO switch which Bell allowed. Bell actually had a lot of equipment from outside companies in their "system", ordered under "KS" and other P/N's but in a lot of cases had the Bell System logo on the box - supplier's name was buried inside. ETC does many announcements for other commercial companies; in fact they used to get real busy around Christmas with special announcements made by Santa ... ETC also supplies most of the time and temperature systems (both the WE-6-1212 and TI-xx type telephone numbers -- incidentally, these are quite valuable telephone numbers in most of the larger AC's, having quite a bit of value due to the added sales of commercial announcements as part of the time and temperature) throughout the telephone industry. ETC also sells a weather service (based again in Atlanta) which automatically uploads (number of times/day depends on the level of service purchased) the updated weather forecast to the announcer system as a series of digits which tell the digital box what words to "speak". For local temperature, etc., there are locally mounted sensors which feed digits to system to "speak" the temperature, etc. The time system uses local sources to sync the time -- GPS signal used most of the time now since the old T1 inter-office signals no longer travel over copper path -- light path now for the most part. > The intercept and other recordings were telco recordings, Again, not true. Jane's voice is in the "standard" vocabulary loaded in software in the Audichron announcer. Earlier systems had magnetic tape (and wire) recorders which allowed pickup of pre-selected words by a moving pickup. The connection to the CO switch tells the box which words to "speak". For example, when a telco customer dials a telephone number which has been changed (called an intercept), the CO switch tells the box what the number dialed was AND what the correct number is. The box "speaks" the phrase with the info from the switch filling in where the *'s are: Jane's voice says: " I'm sorry but the number you have dialed, *555-3456* , has been changed to, *555-5678*, please make note and dial again" - repeats.... Actually the system can be programmed (by sort of a WYSIWYG control interface - you plugged a notebook into a port and programmed the unit) to say just about anything and be keyed to certain signals from/to the CO switch. The commercial systems can also be programmed but are much simpler in that for extra announcements they use pre-recorded lines which are uploaded to memory. There are some real old Audichron systems in CO's of some ILEC's which have been in operation making POTS announcements for more than 30 years - remember the old "Bell System" requirement for equipment longevity of a minimum of 25 years(?) Hope this sets the record straight on these announcers and announcements. John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultant [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Back in the 1970's when I had a little business venture for giving community announcements over the telephone number 312-HARrison-7-1234 and subsequent numbers, I had about twenty of those machines on racks in my office. People calling HArrison 7-1234 *or* Enterprise 5768 reached my Audicron system where they heard a three minute recorded message in my voice giving community announcements. 1234 hunted to 1235, 1236, 1237 and upward. The enterprise number (like a toll-free 800 number today was directed onto the main number, 1234 then hunted like other calls. I also had a few business establishments with 'direct lines' to the system; that is red phones with non-dial or blank faceplates which auto-dialed my number when they were taken off hook. I received 20-25 thousand calls each day and sold the first thirty seconds of time for advertising. If you were a patron in one of those establishments you could sit down beside the red phone and listen to my messages. Every Audicron machine had a clicker to keep track of the number of calls it got; the final machine in the series also served as a record of how many times all lines were used; telco also gave me a circuit which would pulse a clicker each time they (telco) returned a busy signal to callers (all-busy) so I could see the need to install additional machines, etc. The red 'direct line' phones were set to come in on 1233, so they got in effect an 'extra chance' to get in since telco could not 'hunt backwards' in those days, and the clicker on 1233 gave a good idea of how many calls came from those establishments since no one else knew of that number. The total count on 1233 divided into the overall total said how many calls came in on those red phones, i.e. the percentage of calls, etc. Those old Audicron machines were very noisy, just like an old fashioned crossbar switch. Click, bang! whir. Click, bang! whir, all day long except between around 4-6 in the morning when it was pretty quiet. To record a new message each day, I only had to record one time. There were beehive lamps indicating which lines were in use and I had a small toggle switch which would busy-out all lines. I would flip that switch then sit and wait until all the beehive lamps went off, meaning all callers were gone, obviousy in three minutes, usually less. Then pressing another button, I would dictate my message ONCE into one of the phone instruments and when satisfied would flip the busy out switch the other way. Within usually two or three seconds the calls would start coming in again and the callers got the new day's message. All the lines were one-way incoming only. Lifting the receiver on the associated phone when no call was there produced only battery, no dial tone. I was really the life of the party where Illinois Bell was concerned. They loved my call volume. Visiting executives from the various Bell companies always found an excuse to come and look at my setup when they were visiting Chicago and Illinois Bell. Those old Audicron machines were quite heavy; more than a hundred pounds each. They had large mylar-coated drums inside which would spin around with a little finger which would fall down and touch the spinning drum when a call came in. Those were the good days. Too bad I went close to bankrupt and had to close it down in 1976. Bell said I was the first person in history to use those machines for other than 'dial a prayer' purposes, and never did they see anyone who had twenty or thirty such machines all wired in a hunt group. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 11:21:08 -0700 Subject: Re: Anyone Having Problems With AT&T Local Services From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.356.6@telecom-digest.org, Naturelover wrote: > Six months ago I switched from PACBell to AT&T local service in > California and since then my telephone lines went dead twice. Is it > normal? It never happened before when I was with monopoly carriers. > The outages were anywhere between two hours and today it is six hours > and no service update from AT&T yet. Ironically, despite the name and its legacy, AT&T does not, in any of its divisions, behave like the old Bell System. Repair departments do not treat reliable service as an essential part of doing business. I have used AT&T for point-to-point T1s, cable TV, long distance, and wireless service. None of these have been given service and repair considerations that apply to the regulated monopoly companies. This is one of the reasons that I have no immediate plans to jump ship on SBC in favor of AT&T ... even if it becomes available in the near future. -- John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ From: Albo Subject: Re: VoIP via Frame Relay From IXC Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 20:24:50 +0200 Organization: Planet Internet Try INFONET, they have an Global Voice over Frame Relay network called GMS try on WWW.infonet.com Albo NUGIT wrote in message news:telecom20.356.3@telecom-digest.org: > Does anyone have any experience with an IXC that provides their > service over Frame Relay Circuits? > What type and manufacturer of an interface is used between the router > and the switch (PBX)? Cisco Router 3620 E1/T1 interface G703 ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Subject: Re: Toll Free Business Directory Date: 10 Aug 2002 22:02:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ To teach this individual about the cost of owning an Toll Free number ... -----Original Message----- Here Are TheBallman's Latest Offerings Of Lowered Prices On Our LIKE NEW Pro Line Golf Balls. Call 888-507-7566 for additional information. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Remember it is against the law to harrass anyone by telephone. Also you should use a payphone so that the operator can make a little money. Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE,support for the Apple II and Macintosh 24 hours 2400/14.4. OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one! Have you hunted one down today? (c) I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Company. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are right, Steven; they do have balls, don't they. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor and Conference Coordinator Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 19:11:46 -0400 >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Pardon my typo on the 16.5 <> 61.5 >> degree thing. We don't have a Sam's Club here except for the few Sam's >> Club brand items (called Sam's Choice) that Walmart sells. > Are you sure Sam's Choice was ever intended specifically as a > Sam's Club brand? As far as I know Sam's Club > was selected as the Wal-Mart private label brand, and you'll find Sam's > Choice pop (soda for Easterners), peanuts, potato >chips and (in > superstores) all kinds of Sam's Club private label grocery articles. > While both Sam's Club (originally Sam's Wholesale Club) and Sam's > Choice were both obviously named for (and probably by) Sam Walton > (when he was still alive), I don't think there's any other specific > connection between Sam's Club and Sam's Choice brand. The Wal-Mart store brand here in the Charlotte, NC area has quietly changed over to "Great Value" for grocery items and "Equate" for sundries. I haven't seen "Sam's Choice" for some time. I don't know if this was in order to lose the Sam's Club connection (even though they're still owned by the same company), or because of similar names used by other companies ("America's Choice" by A&P companies, "President's Choice", which is a brand licensed to many supermarkets by Loblaw of Canada, etc). Wait ... isn't "America's Choice" also a Verizon Wireless plan? I guess no one owns the exclusive rights to the name. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Walmart does have a lot of 'Great Value' merchandise (usually food) also. Its no cheaper than anything else in their grocery section. We have that and also 'Equate' stuff in the grocery section of the Supercenter here. Now when I call for the taxicab to come and get me to go to Walmart the dispatcher asks 'do you want the grocery side or the main store.' It is *very busy* out there most days. Ditto when I call to get the driver to come and get me to go back home. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #357 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 13 18:48:58 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7DMmw927019; Tue, 13 Aug 2002 18:48:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 18:48:58 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208132248.g7DMmw927019@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #358 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Aug 2002 18:50:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 358 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (David Wolff) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (Norm) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (johna@onevista.com) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (Steven Lichter) Avaya IP Office & Nortel BCM (cim2@slf.ca) Frozen Phone Lines (Steve Brack) Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? (John Higdon) Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone (Casey") Re: Cell Phones (nde_plume@hotmail.com) Re: Mile High Telecom (John R. Levine) Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Lisa) TV Channel 37 (Neal McLain) Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse (John David Galt) Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question (joe@obilivan.net) Garage Construction of VSAT Terminal (Tuhin) Looking For a Good Two Line Featured Telephone (Tom Bateman) Dialogic DSE PBX on Meridian Can't Transfer Inbound Call (BCh) Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor; Conference Coordinator (Stan Schwartz) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SNDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dwolffxx@panix.com (David Wolff) Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 22:24:53 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. In article , John wrote: > I have one phone line, primarily used for voice. Once in a while I > may receive or send a fax to/from a family member, and my fax machine > is also my answering machine. Naturally it is always on, although the > fax function is transparent to voice calls. > I was away for a few days (in the hospital). When I came home, I > found a blank sheet of fax paper on the fax machine. Completely > blank. The next day, it started. The phone would ring and it would > be a fax machine. I let the fax machine take a few, and you guessed > it: fax ads. Apparently my number is now known as a fax number, and I > am doomed. The phone numbers printed in the ads only end up at a > voice mail system, and there was no way to find out who called. The > number was "unavailable" of course from *69 service. Leave your phone number and offer to buy whatever their product is. When they call back, get a real phone # or address (try, "This is a long distance call for me, do you have an 800 number?"). Then explain why they now owe you $500 and how you will file in small claims court unless you receive a check. Repeat until wealthy, and send a donation to PAT. Thanks -- David Wolff (remove "xx" to reply) Disclaimer: Hey! It's my opinion! Yesclaimer: Esperanto: four times easier to learn. Call (800) ESPERANTO or email info@esperanto-usa.org for free info and free lesson. Witclaimer: Clever but long saying reduced to a microdot -> "." ------------------------------ From: Norm Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 19:11:22 -0400 Organization: in spasms John wrote: > So I better send this before another junk fax call disconnects my > Internet connection. Are there any tricks I can do to stop this > nonsense? I really don't want to have to change my number. Nice to know my paranoia is justified I've always front-ended the fax with the answering machine. It means that I have to know when a fax is being sent but I'm not in business anymore so that's not a hardship. Norm -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from masochism ------------------------------ From: johna@onevista.com Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 23:46:29 GMT Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In article , John wrote: > I have one phone line, primarily used for voice. Once in a while I > may receive or send a fax to/from a family member, and my fax machine > is also my answering machine. Naturally it is always on, although the > fax function is transparent to voice calls. > I was away for a few days (in the hospital). When I came home, I > found a blank sheet of fax paper on the fax machine. Completely > blank. The next day, it started. The phone would ring and it would > be a fax machine. I let the fax machine take a few, and you guessed > it: fax ads. Apparently my number is now known as a fax number, and I > am doomed. The phone numbers printed in the ads only end up at a > voice mail system, and there was no way to find out who called. The > number was "unavailable" of course from *69 service. > I switched on the anti-junk feature of my fax machine to reject > unknown fax machines. It does not receive the fax if the fax machine > number is not in the speed dial. (I'm not sure what will happen if I > have the number as 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx in the speed dial, and the friendly > fax machine is set to xxx-xxx-xxxx yet). So at least I won't be > wasting fax paper on these losers. Of course it still connects to the > fax machine to get the transmitting fax number before it disconnects. > ... > I did fill out online complaint forms with both the FCC and my state > (MA). I don't know how much it will do though, with only their 800 > numbers on them. MA just passed a telemarketer do-not-call list law, > although it is not yet implemented. Hopefully that will help, > eventually. I noticed that PA's new law gives the do-not-call numbers > to the DMA, who they contract with. > So I better send this before another junk fax call disconnects my > Internet connection. Are there any tricks I can do to stop this > nonsense? I really don't want to have to change my number. Change your number? No reason to do that. Replace your modem with a fax modem and add some fax software to your computer. Turn the fax machine off except when you want to send a fax. That will save a large amount of paper. Get one of those new boxes that handle call waiting while keeping the modem line active. That will allow you to hangup on any fax call that interrupts your modem use, but allow you to handle a voice call. ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Date: 13 Aug 2002 02:33:47 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare > I was away for a few days (in the hospital). When I came home, I > found a blank sheet of fax paper on the fax machine. Completely > blank. The next day, it started. The phone would ring and it would > be a fax machine. I let the fax machine take a few, and you guessed > it: fax ads. Apparently my number is now known as a fax number, and I > am doomed. The phone numbers printed in the ads only end up at a > voice mail system, and there was no way to find out who called. The > number was "unavailable" of course from *69 service. One Irvine, Calif. company just got fined 4.5 million. They claim the fine is a violation of their right of free speech. Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE, support for the Apple II 24 hours 2400/14.4. An OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one!!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) Kill Spammers, Inc. A Hope You Roast In Hell Company. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So many folks get confused about free speech as a political thing versus commercial speech which does not have as much leeway as other forms of speech. PAT] ------------------------------ From: cim2@slf.ca (cim2@slf.ca) Subject: Avaya IP Office & Nortel BCM Date: 12 Aug 2002 13:14:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ My office is looking at purchasing either a Nortel BCM or Avaya IP Office (we've looked at many systems, from Key System to full blown PBXs and we've narrowed the choice down to one of these two), and I've been looking for some comparison of the two online. Unfortunately, while I've found several very positive reviews of both systems, I haven't been able to find a single comparisson. Would anyone know where I can find these two systems compared? I was also wondering if anyone might have anything to add to my dilemma of choosing one of these two excellent products? My office is an accounting firm with approximately 100 phones, where no one except the receptionist is on the phone all the time. The partners may spend 2-3 hours a day on the phone, while most staff spend less than 1 hour. We do not expect to make any extensive use of the IP features of either of these at the moment. ------------------------------ From: Steve Brack Subject: Frozen Phone Lines Organization: Society for the Preservation of Steve Brack Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 20:37:08 GMT From http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/cleaning.htm : A 1974 version featured "frozen" phone lines: A radio announcer told his audience that, since the community had experienced several nights of unusual below-zero temperature, the telephone company, at a specified time, would put "heat-a-lators" on all the telephone lines to thaw them out. The disk jockey told his listeners to put their phone receivers in an empty bucket so that, as the lines thawed out, water wouldn't run out and ruin their rugs. So many people took their phones off the hook that the central office was in a "no tone" condition for four minutes. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 17:23:17 -0700 Subject: Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.357.2@telecom-digest.org, Monty Solomon wrote: > Today, the stalemate seems to be over. Now that prices have come down, > the audience for high-definition television programs has grown, > encouraging networks to increase the number of programs shown in the > new format. As of last season, CBS and ABC were broadcasting all of > their prime-time comedies and dramas in high definition. This coming > season, NBC will broadcast 10 prime-time shows in the new format. Well, that sure sounds exciting. Does high definition make watching broadcast movies (which are interrupted every seven to ten minutes for commercials, and brutally edited for time and "objectionable" content) more enjoyable to watch? -- John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ From: Casey Subject: Re: Issues With the Sprint Backbone Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 19:51:37 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Koos van den Hout wrote in message news:telecom20.356.2@telecom-digest.org: > Casey wrote: >> I've been running a traceroute every 15 minutes for the past few hours >> and I have found there to be an issue with a network on the Sprint >> Backbone or one near it. This is a sample of what I am getting: >> 7 20 ms 20 ms 20 ms g6-2.core01.atl01.atlas.cogentco.com >> [66.28.28.201] >> 8 * * * Request timed out. >> 9 * * * Request timed out. >> 10 * * * Request timed out. >> 11 * * * Request timed out. >> 12 * * * Request timed out. >> 13 110 ms 100 ms 100 ms sl-gw9-rly-3-2.sprintlink.net >> [144.232.184.133] > [..] > > > 18 * 131 ms 130 ms sl-a2-21-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.214.206] >> 19 120 ms 141 ms 130 ms 216.212.208.238 >> 20 141 ms 150 ms 130 ms {MYWORKSERVER} >> Trace complete. >> This is causing issues for anyone who is trying to connect to our >> network from the internet. > How is this causing issues ? Or what issues do you have that you think > are related to this ? We have problems connecting to our Citrix server and some web servers on our network mostly at night. I've tried to think of everything I know of to fix the issue, but it constantly hard to get in from 7pm CST to 4:30am CST. I've just been trying to pinpoint the issue and this seems to be a possable culprit. I'm quite new at networking, so please forgive me if I'm mislead by my tracert reports. I know Sprint is usually very good at taking care of problems, but I haven't been able to figure out what could be the issue w/ getting to my servers at work. >> As you can see there are problems with some routers along the way. > No. The routers just decided to not respond to your traceroute. Other > actions (like routing real traffic) have higher priority on big > routers. Maybe sprintlink has filtered certain things to/from their > routers to keep people from constantly monitoring their network. >> Who can I contact about getting this fixed? > One of the providers (your home provider or your work provider) seems to > use sprintlink as their uplink. They can contact sprintlink about any > performance issues. Thanks. I've tried contacting Sprint and Cogentco. I haven't had any luck in determining the bottle neck that is causing my problem. ------------------------------ From: nde_plume@hotmail.com Subject: Re: Cell Phones Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 22:25:10 -0400 Organization: Bell Sympatico On Mon, 12 Aug 2002 01:16:11 -0600, dibliss@telusplanet.net wrote: > Would you please help me. Who can I contact to learn how or whether I can > recover deleted numbers form my cell phone's memory. When I delete > numbers from the calls received list, for example, a trash can icon > appears. How do I open the trash can and recover an inadvertantly > deleted number? I have a Nokia Model 5125. > Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Can you view the contents of the trash > can? That is usually the purpose of having a trash can, in order to > view its contents. Go in to view it, manually write down whatever you > want, then enter it in the speed dial directory. PAT] If your bill doesn't already provide details (time/number/etc) about the call you could try contacting your service provider to see what can be done about prior bill periods. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Aug 2002 23:04:56 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Mile High Telecom Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article you write: > I got a fax solicitation from them a while back, too. I called them to > try to figure out what the scam is. Got their video tape and > materials. They seem to be legit -- If they're sending junk faxes, they've identified themselves as fools, crooks, or more likely both. I'd be extremly dubious about anything they might offer. -- John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Mcgeorgia@yahoo.com (Lisa) Subject: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: 12 Aug 2002 20:23:47 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. Thanks, Lisa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 21:49:45 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Organization: Ann's Garden Subject: TV Channel 37 Wes Leatherock wrote: > On Thu, 08 Aug 2002 22:25:34 -0600 Neal McLain > nmclain@annsgarden.com wrote: >> On the other hand, several UHF television channels have been >> removed from the television service and assigned to other users: >> Channel 34 was assigned to radioastronomy. > Curious. The WB station in Oklahoma City, KOCB-TV, is on > channel 34. Last night it had the NFL pre-season game between > Dallas and Oakland. As two other readers have noted, radioastronomy is Channel 37, not 34. See footnote (c) at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=47&PART=73&SECTION=603&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT. My mistake (and a mighty embarrassing one at that). Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: The HDTV Fiasco Gets Worse Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 22:50:49 -0700 Organization: Diogenes The Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Wes Leatherock: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wish we got WB here in Independence. > The newspaper thing in the Sunday paper which has TV listings for the > week says WB is n/a here. Several months ago our 'expanded basic' > group of channels was expanded from 55 to 62 (actually 60 since > channel 1 and 4 are not occupied at all that I can see) and now > includes things like Disney, A&E, Bravo, and a couple others. I will > make an entire list here soon for comparison. One and Four are not > used at all. but they don't have WB (or WGN-TV superstation) there > at all. $34.95 for extended basic seems like a good price. PAT] Oh, you poor dear. I get 135 channels on SureWest's expanded basic for about the same price. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But where they get us is we don't have any *local over the air* channels, other than channel 6 from Pittsburg, Kansas, and it is not a very good signal from so far away. Tulsa, OK is about 95 miles; Wichita, KS is 110 miles; Topeka, KS is about the same; Kansas City, MO is much further away. Those are the television markets. So they have no competition except satellite. On the cable, they have three CBS affiliates (Pittsburg KS, Tulsa, and Kansas City), so there are times that three cable channels have the same thing going on during primetime hours. Ditto, two NBC affiliates, two PBS affiliates, one from Tulsa and one from Kansas City. CBS is the only one that seems to have everything at the same time in all markets. Thank goodness for A&E, Bravo, AMC, TVLand, Disney, Discovery, History Channel, CNN, and those channels; also Trinity Broadcasting (which I guess some people watch), Home Shopping Network, Eternal Word and others. The college has a channel, the city of Independence has a channel as does the high school, and TV Guide has a channel. And there are a bunch of others such as ESPN, C-Span 1 and 2, Fox News and Fox regular enter- tainment, ala Jerry Springer, FX, a couple of movie channels in addition to AMC. That's 'extended basic', $34.95. So I get all I want; more than enough. But I agree the price is predicated on demand. The local movie theatre has five screens and the $5.00 admission is not a bad deal. Riverside Park with its swimming pool and the Zoo are free; the associated Carousel, and trolley train ride all around the park costs 25 cents; the minature golf costs a dollar, but membership in the municipal golf course and club costs more; Independence Community College gives *huge* discounts (funded by the city of Independence) to residents, and taxicab rides all over town to anywhere cost four dollars except for disabled people like myself or senior citizens who pay $1.50 per ride using coupons and an ID card issued by the city. Rates set by the city. The library has several thousand books, and interloan arrangements with all other libraries. The people are very friendly and I can walk all over town (2 miles X 3 miles) with not a worry in the world about crime, etc if I wish. I like it here, and the people who have moved here in the past couple years all seem to like it also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: joe@obilivan.net Subject: Re: Hello, Pat! Really Basic Question Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 09:06:20 GMT Organization: Cox Communications I always thought it was Ernestine ;-) Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > On Wed, 7 Aug 2002 17:54:43 -0600 lisarea@dim.com wrote: > > > I used to know this, but I've been out of telco for a few years now, > > and apparently, I've overwritten that portion of my long-term > > memory. I feel awful bugging you, but I've searched and searched to no > > avail. > > > What is the name of the woman who was the original recorded voice on > > the disconnect messages and time & temp, etc.? ------------------------------ From: tuhin@creative-bd.com (Tuhin) Subject: Garage Construction of VSAT Terminal Date: 13 Aug 2002 02:52:25 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Is it possible to construct VSAT terminals with of-the-shelve equipments? What's really needed? What are the "standard" issues here? Can used equipments be used? etc. etc. I will really appreciate input from this esteem group. Thanks, Tuhin ------------------------------ From: Tom Bateman Subject: Looking For a Good 2 Line Featured Telephone Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 13:01:54 GMT Organization: Aliant Internet I am looking for a reasonable quality , reasonably priced two line (analog PSTN lines) phone with some or all of the following attributes: - Caller ID capability on one or both lines - Callers Log - Directory - Set based conferencing between the two lines - USB call control link to a computer - TAPI Drivers to work with the above USB link compatible with Win 95,98,2000,XP - Windows Compatible Software to manage Callers Log and directory The closest phone I've found to date was a Nortel Networks 9617 USB set but it appears to have been sold off to Aastra Telecom and not supported past Win 98. Any leads or suggestions would be welcomed. E-mail me directly - preferred. Tom.Bateman@aliant.ca or post to this newsgroup. ------------------------------ From: lists@burakcetin.com (BCh) Subject: Dialogic DSE PBX on Meridian Can't Transfer Inbound Call Date: 13 Aug 2002 10:21:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ We're trying to build an intelligent Auto-Attendant system which recognizes who's calling who, and who failed to reach who and such questions. The problem is: I can't transfer/redirect the inbound call to the DSE, to our IVR server - that call which will be directed to the DSE because of "No Answer" on some other two lines connected to the Meridian swither. The environment is: Nortel Meridian Switcher, two Dialogic 120 JCT's, and a DSE PBX on a Windows 2000 Server with SR 5.01. The TAPI version doesn't initialize (Why?). The Configuration Manager doesn't launch (says "Not a valid Win32 Application") (Why again?), but the service runs. So I have to use the native API. I tried the "vb_xfer" (SUPER/UNSUPER modes),also I tried setting "key states" combined with "vb_dial" and doing the transfer "manually", no help. When I do it by hand on the console, I make the transfer, so how come I can't do it on a very expensive board which is supposed to emulate it all? ------------------------------ From: Stan Schwartz Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Financial Advisor and Conference Coordinator Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 16:57:31 -0400 Organization: what do you want > TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Walmart does have a lot of 'Great > Value' merchandise (usually food) also. Its no cheaper than anything > else in their grocery section. We have that and also 'Equate' stuff > in the grocery section of the Supercenter here. Now when I call for > the taxicab to come and get me to go to Walmart the dispatcher asks > 'do you want the grocery side or the main store.' It is *very busy* > out there most days. Ditto when I call to get the driver to come and > get me to go back home. PAT Our latest Wal-Mart SuperCenter opens this week. I've been tempted to call a cab just to get from the main store to the grocery side. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We only have two cab companies with two drivers (one each company) on the day shift and two spare drivers for the one company which operates 24 hours daily, and they are always very busy. If I did that, they would think I was crazy. I found out just a month or so ago that the $1.50 rate for senior/disabled riders does not apply on trips after 10 pm except to the hospital or a doctor and at no time on trips to/from taverns. We do have emergency ambulance service from the Fire Department of course, but you should not use it unless it is a true emergency, thus the $1.50 rate applies for trips to Mercy Hospital anytime. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #358 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 15 13:39:00 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7FHd0h09192; Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:39:00 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:39:00 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208151739.g7FHd0h09192@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #359 TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:36:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 359 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) (Neal McLain) Re: Avaya IP Office & Nortel BCM (Dave Phelps) Appellate Court Decision re Municipal Utilities (Neal McLain) Re: Worldcom MCI Raises Rates (David L) Massive Telephone Problems (Barb Western) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Joe Singer) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (S. Lichter) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Justin Time) Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? (Ed Ellers) Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? (Steve Elias) News Headlines of Interest (Monty Solomon) Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Virtual Lab Rat) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (jaarons) SMS Gateway (Carl Gilbert) FS Norstar Mics OX32 Phone System (Ronald) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 22:21:13 -0600 From: Neal McLain Subject: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [...] > I wish we got WB here in Independence. [...] > channel 1 and 4 are not occupied at all [...] > One and Four are not [...] The "Channel 1" on your TV set (or converter box) probably won't ever be occupied because it isn't at the same frequency as the long-defunct Broadcast Channel 1 recently discussed here on TD. Cable Channel 1 fills the blank space between Channels 4 and 5. But because that space is only 4 MHz wide (unless Independence has an extremely unusual cable system), it can't be used for a TV channel anyway. Here's the history as I understand it: In the early days of the cable TV industry, only Channels 2-13 were used. Just as in the over-the-air broadcast world, second-harmonic distortion was a potential problem; however, the fact that Channels 2-13 were split into two separate octaves rendered this problem moot: all second harmonics fell outside of the bands of interest. But as the industry grew, more channel space was needed, so channels 14-22 were added in the midband (120-174 MHz). Once those were used, more channels were added in the superband (above channel 13). These new channels were vulnerable to, and created, all sorts of distortion products that fall in other channels. These products are classified as follows: SECOND ORDER DISTORTION: F1 +/- F2 (including second harmonics). Example: the sum of the channels 3 and 4 visual carriers: 61.25 + 67.25 = 128.5 MHz. This combination produces a spurious signal at 128.5 MHz, which falls 1.25 MHz above the visual carrier of cable channel 15, right in the middle to the video sidebands, where it causes rolling horizontal lines in the picture. THIRD ORDER DISTORTION: F1 +/- F2 +/- F3 Example: channels 7, 8 and 9 visual carriers: 175.25 + 181.25 - 187.25 = 169.25 MHz This combination produces a distortion product at 169.25 MHz, approximately at the visual carrier frequency of cable channel 22. But (assuming that the three carriers are generated by independent oscillators), this product will not fall precisely on the visual carrier, so it produces a "thumbprint" in the desired picture. If the oscillators drift, the thumbprint dances around. These problems became particularly severe as amplifier cascades became longer: the more amplifiers in a cascade, the worse the distortion at the end of the line. (The design goal for most cascades was a maximum of 20 amplifiers, but I once heard of a cable system in California that had a 67-amp cascade!) To solve (or at least hide) these problems, various schemes were developed for locking the visual carrier frequencies together at the headend. The goal was to force the distortion products caused by the interaction of visual carriers to fall precisely on top of other visual carriers, effectively masking them. Two schemes were developed: - INCREMENTALLY RELATED CARRIERS (IRC) (not to be confused with Internet Relay Chat) This scheme phaselocks all visual carriers to a master oscillator operating at F0 = 6.0000 MHz according to the formula F = F0 * N + 1.2625 where N is an integer and 1.2625 is a constant (it was originally 1.25, but it was offset to 1.2625 to avoid conflict with aeronautical communications -- but that's a different story). Thus: Channel 2 visual falls at 55.2625 N = 9 Channel 3 visual falls at 61.2625 N = 10 Channel 4 visual falls at 67.2625 N = 11 Channel 5 visual falls at 79.2625 N = 13 Channel 6 visual falls at 85.2625 N = 14 This scheme solves the third-order distortion problem, although it doesn't solve the second-order problem. Note that this scheme moves Channels 5 and 6 up by 2 MHz. Consequently, this scheme only works if special arrangements are made to accommodate this shift. Some cable operators provided special IRC converters; others just left 5 and 6 vacant. Some "cable-ready" TV sets were equipped with obscure little switches (or menu options) that made the shift. The converter that PAT described here several years ago was apparently able to receive Channels 5 and 6 at both standard and IRC frequencies. It received standard 5 and 6 on positions labeled 5 and 6, but it received IRC 5 and 6 on positions labeled something else (55 and 56 as I recall). Because the standard channels overlap the IRC channels, it's not possible to use both. And that's why PAT was told that he couldn't use Channels 55 and 56 if he used Channels 5 and 6. Note that this scheme leaves a 6-MHz gap (72-78 MHz) between Channels 4 and 5. Which just happens to equal one television channel. And that's cable Channel 1, with a visual carrier at 73.2625 MHz. - HARMONICALLY RELATED CARRIERS (HRC) (not to be confused with Hillary Rodham Clinton) This scheme phaselocks all visual carriers to a master oscillator operating at F0 = 6.0003 MHz +/- 1 Hz (that's right: plus-or-minus ONE HERTZ) according to the formula F = F0 * N where N is an integer. The master oscillator frequency was originally 6.0000, but it was offset to 6.0003 to avoid conflict with aeronautical communications -- again, that's a different story. Thus: Channel 2 visual falls at 54.0027 N = 9 Channel 3 visual falls at 60.0030 N = 10 Channel 4 visual falls at 66.0033 N = 11 Channel 5 visual falls at 78.0039 N = 13 Channel 6 visual falls at 84.0042 N = 14 This scheme solves both the second order and the third-order distortion problems. Note that this scheme moves everything down by (about) 1.25 MHz, except for Channels 5 and 6 which move up by 0.75 MHz. Like IRC, this system only works if special arrangements are made to accommodate the shift. Some cable operators provided special HRC converters, and some cable-ready TV sets were equipped with switches or menu options. This scheme also leaves a 6-MHz gap (approximately 70.75- 76.75 MHz) between Channels 4 and 5. So again, we have cable Channel 1, this time at 72.0036. In recent years, the use of fiber optics in cable TV networks has dramatically reduced the need for long amplifier cascades (some networks now have cascades as short as two amplifiers). This in turn has virtually eliminated the need for IRC and HRC frequency schemes. So most cable TV systems now use the "standard" frequency allocation scheme: cable channels 2-13 fall at the same frequencies as broadcast channels 2-13. And "cable channel 1" has been relegated to the dustbin of ancient history. So, unless your cable system in Independence uses either IRC or HRC, there is no cable Channel 1. Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think I said before that regards broadcast over the air channels, all we can get so far out here from nowhere is Channel 6 from Pittsburg, Kansas, and not very clearly. Thus, when Time-Warner offered a little cable service several years ago people jumped at it. The *original* cable was 22 channels, of which 3 were CBS affiliates in KC, Joplin, MO and Tulsa, OK, 2 were NBC affiliates, etc. In other words, the same program many times on different cable channels, plus a channel each for municipal, the high school and Independence Community College. The few left-overs were TBN, two PBS affiliates (Topeka and Tulsa) and I think they had the weather channel. The cost was eighteen dollars per month. Long before any cable at all -- in the 1970's -- Indepedence had a very low-power TV channel which all the time was focused on some weather gauges somewhere, with classical music in the background. I think that was some UHF broadcast channel. Then Time-Warner added about 30 more channels, some of which were in what was called 'extended basic' (the original was renamed 'basic') and this 'extended basic' included things like AMC, Discovery, History and similar. The price for those became $34.95 per month which included the original 22 channels. In addition, a few new channels were 'premium service' including HBO and Cinemax. Then they came along last year and expanded the 'extended basic' to include at no extra charge (above $34.95) channels like Disney, FX, Women's Entertainment, Black Entertainment, both C-SPANS, etc. We are now up to 60 channels in 'extended basic', with a couple dozen pay per view and/or premium channels at additional cost, and radio musical background on a few others. 'They' say they are going to add cable-modem service 'soon'. Two weeks ago in the Independence Reporter a story said Time-Warner was going to split -- leave town -- and that some other cable company was taking over. I asked the woman in the office what was going to become of them; she said that she and her husband (the technical and field repair guy) were being hired by the new company. She told me the company name which I have forgotten. The idea is apparently that Time-Warner wants to get out of small, rural markets like this one, and traded S.E. Kansas and another small market to some cable company in exchange for taking over some large city TWC wanted. She asked me again, 'do you wanna bring me that dish off your roof and turn it in here so I can tell DISH to come and get it? I can give you a great deal on some premium stuff, if you turn in the dish here in our office. Three months free and no installation charges.' The *old* original 'basic' apparently left the original broadcasters in the same place on the dial where they were over the air when possible. Cable 2 was b'cast 2 and CBS. Cable 11 was b'cast 11 and PBS, etc. But imagine having the same show on cable 2, 8 and 9 all the time because of them each being CBS, other than local news, etc. On the radio, there are umpty-zillion AM stations of course, especially at night when I can even get WGN from Chicago sometimes and WHO from Des Des Moines and KMOX in St. Louis. But I do not listen to AM radio. KOA in Denver comes in like gang-busters all the time at night. The four local-area radio stations are KIND (1010 AM) and KIND-FM (102.7 FM) both owned by Bill Curtis of A&E fame (he is a native of Independence; they have his pictures all over at the radio station, even though the FM side is mostly satellite from Los Angeles and the Clear Channel Company), and KGGF (690 AM) and KGGF-FM both of Coffeyville, owned by the Coffeyville Journal newspaper. I don't listen to them either. I mostly listen to the public radio station from the state university in Pittsburg, Kansas 89.9 FM which comes in pretty well. Public Radio in Tulsa 88.9 does not come in very well at all. Fortunatly my computers keep me busy. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Phelps Subject: Re: Avaya IP Office & Nortel BCM Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 00:51:35 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In article , cim2@slf.ca says: > My office is looking at purchasing either a Nortel BCM or Avaya IP > Office (we've looked at many systems, from Key System to full blown > PBXs and we've narrowed the choice down to one of these two), and I've > been looking for some comparison of the two online. Unfortunately, > while I've found several very positive reviews of both systems, I > haven't been able to find a single comparisson. > Would anyone know where I can find these two systems compared? > I was also wondering if anyone might have anything to add to my > dilemma of choosing one of these two excellent products? > My office is an accounting firm with approximately 100 phones, where > no one except the receptionist is on the phone all the time. The > partners may spend 2-3 hours a day on the phone, while most staff > spend less than 1 hour. We do not expect to make any extensive use of > the IP features of either of these at the moment. I can't give you a comparision of the products, but a question you may need to consider is support and maintenance contract costs. Avaya contracts are usually just a bit on the high side. From what I've seen, you could simply buy a new system after just a few years of paying Avaya for their support contract. And with Avaya PBXs, they will disable things like some administrator permissions if you terminate a support contract. I would guess that would carry over to their IP Telephony products as well. Nortel support costs will vary by vendor, and you should have several vendors to choose from in your area. -- Dave Phelps Phone Masters Ltd. deadspam=tippenring ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 02:40:30 -0600 From: Neal McLain Subject: Appellate Court Decision re Municipal Utilities Forwarded message: On Wednesday August 14th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued a decision reversing the FCC's prior determination that it could not preempt a Missouri law that prohibited municipalities from providing telecommunications services to the public (Missouri Municipal League v. FCC, U.S. Ct. of App. 8th Cir., No. 01-1379, issued Aug. 14, 2002). In strong language very similar to that in the Bristol decision last year, the Eighth Circuit interpreted Section 253(a) of the Telecom Act of 1996 in holding that Congressional intent was clear - that Congress intended that "any entity", plainly including municipalities, should be able to provide telecommunications service. The Eighth Circuit decision goes on to explain why the other Federal Appellate Court decision in this matter (City of Abilene v. FCC, D.C. Circuit 1999) was improperly decided. In other words, in the 8th Circuit's opinion, states can't pass laws that prohibit municipal entry into the telco business. ------------------------------ From: davidlind@my-deja.com (David L) Subject: Re: Worldcom MCI Raises Rates Date: 15 Aug 2002 04:25:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ ellis@no.spam wrote in message news:: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I may respond for John >> (although he might reply also) I would suggest bailing to >> any company with lower rates, a likelyhood of being around >> for awhile (let's face it, MCI is almost gone), and honest, >> reasonably intelligent customer service people. You can EASILY >> get long distance service these days for five cents per minute >> or less in a few cases. Unlike MCI/Sprint/AT&T, some of >> competitors actually want to see you stay around and care about >> your business. (Admittedly, this final point is more rare, but >> it does exist.) Good Lord, Ellis, bail to *anyone* just about. >> PAT] > I was actually wanting suggestions. I'm using Qwest right now and > they are beginning to annoy me. I'll admit to being an LD cheapskate. Got a no monthyly fee LD carrier. TMC, last time I checked anyway. Something like 5 cents instate and then use a calling card 99% of the time. Bigzoo.com, Onesuite.com and Pincity.com have all worked. Just get a speed dial phone and register your phone number for No PIN dialing. Only the local access number and destination number have to be speed dialed as the system uses ANI. $.029 cents LD through dialing on their local access nuber!!! No tax or extras! Note: local access numbers can be missing in some areas of the country and the 800 access cost a bit more. Bigzoo worked OK, but had some quirks. Current favorite is Pincity. Onesuite is good too. Never had a billing or credit card problem. Added LD to my Verizon cell phone but the call quality just isn't as good as a landline. David DavidNOLindiSPAM(at)hotmail(dot)com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 11:19:43 -0400 From: Barb Western Subject: Massive Telephone Problems I signed on with Allegiance Telecom a couple of months ago, and I am having the same problems. Our lines sometimes say "all circuits busy" and now they have somehow changed our hunt groups so that we can only get one line at a time. Bell Atlantic is trying to take over service, but our business has now been running with one phone line for 2 weeks. Horrible, horrible service, and their managers are always "in a meeting." ------------------------------ From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 17:50:13 -0700 Organization: Drizzle Reply-To: joeofseattle@yahoo.com On 12 Aug 2002 20:23:47 -0700, Mcgeorgia@yahoo.com (Lisa) wrote: > I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with > has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without > having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a > phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. > I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. You don't indicate what service or kind of mobile service you have, but you can go to http://store.yahoo.com/cellpoint/ . They sell both GSM and TDMA phones. If you're looking for the latest GSM phones I have a contact if you need it. Personal replies most likely will not be read. Please reply in the newsgroup. ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: 14 Aug 2002 06:26:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Mcgeorgia@yahoo.com (Lisa) wrote in message news:: > I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with > has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without > having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a > phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. > I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. You are going to have to find one that will work on your system. That can be a problem, with at least 3 types of systems now in use, plus some have chips which make it almost impossible to work on another system. You can get a new phone, but you will pay full price. Sprint for one lets you upgrade the phone. I guess your company does not want to keep you, or they would at least offer you a new phone to replace yours. Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE,support for the Apple II and Macintosh 24 hours 2400/14.4. OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one! Have you hunted one down today? (c) I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Company. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: 14 Aug 2002 06:46:51 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Mcgeorgia@yahoo.com (Lisa) wrote in message news:: > I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with > has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without > having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a > phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. > I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. The low cost for cellular phones is partially due to the provider being able to sell you a fixed amount of airtime. Since the advertised price of the cell phone is a "subsidized" price, the actual retail price is quite a bit higher. And yes, you can buy cell phones at the full retail price, you just have to be certain that the model you want is one that is supported by your carrier. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 02:54:42 -0400 John Higdon wrote: > Well, that sure sounds exciting. Does high definition make watching > broadcast movies (which are interrupted every seven to ten minutes for > commercials, and brutally edited for time and "objectionable" content) more > enjoyable to watch? From what I've seen (and heard from others who have HDTVs), filmed programming is much less impressive in HD than live/taped material; the film samples I've seen in HD, on consumer displays, aren't *that* much clearer than a good DVD played through a good line doubler. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? From: Steve Elias Date: 14 Aug 2002 10:27:39 -0400 John Higdon writes: >> new format. As of last season, CBS and ABC were broadcasting all of >> their prime-time comedies and dramas in high definition. This coming >> season, NBC will broadcast 10 prime-time shows in the new format. > Well, that sure sounds exciting. Does high definition make watching > broadcast movies (which are interrupted every seven to ten minutes for > commercials, and brutally edited for time and "objectionable" content) > more enjoyable to watch? Yes it sure does. I'd shunned watching live broadcast TV for decades but now with DTV/HDTV I find watching TV without timeshifting to be a joy -- including the commercials. And I find the goofy primetime sitcoms and drama shows to be quite enjoyable now that they are sourced for 720p or 1080i 16:9. NTSC-sourced material is also vastly improved by the affiliates' conversion to 1080i/720p. I don't watch plain NTSC any more - life's too short to watch fuzzy pictures. I've watched only DVDs & DTV since I got a partial-HD DTV. At some point I'll have my DTV setups enabled for DTV-timeshifting too. But recording HDTV is currently quite an expensive proposition - around $500 for a settop box, and $1200 for the JVC D-VHS vcr ... I'll also be investigating recording the settop box 480i output into the philip dvdr985 dvd recorder -- possibly that will yield acceptable quality for recorded DTV programs (should be DVD quality). NTSC-non-viewer, [H]DTV-viewer, /eli ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:00:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Headlines of Interest 8/15/02 ECHOSTAR The Charlie Ergen Show Echostar's founder is one tough operator who will soon take control of the satellite TV industry -- if Washington lets him. FORTUNE Monday, September 2, 2002 By Marc Gunther For the past decade or so, ever since engineers figured out how to beam hundreds of TV channels from satellites orbiting 22,300 miles above the earth down to pizza-sized dishes perched on roofs, powerful media and technology companies have battled for control of the skies. There was industry pioneer DirecTV, which is owned by General Motors' Hughes Electronics Corp., and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and cable operators led by John Malone, and MCI before it became WorldCom, as well as, briefly, General Electric's NBC and the Dolan family's Cablevision. Microsoft and AOL lurked on the edges, looking for openings. The epic struggle isn't over yet, but to almost everyone's surprise, the executive who today stands poised to take command of the $10-billion-a-year satellite-TV business is a country boy from Tennessee -- his words, not ours -- named Charles W. Ergen. ... http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=209032 Germany: Deep Linking Lunacy Continues By Christian Kohlschütter, NewsClub.de Posted: 13/08/2002 at 12:22 GMT Guest Editorial Mainpost, a publishing subsidiary of German group Verlagsruppe Holtzbrinck, is suing NewsClub.de, a news headline aggregator, over deep linking. It claims that NewsClub.de infringes German copyright law by doing this. Here is NewsClub's argument. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26656.html Wireless industry pushes FCC to undo license sale - Aug 14, 2002 04:16 PM (Reuters) WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. wireless industry trade group urged federal regulators on Wednesday to release carriers from a $15.9 billion wireless license auction that is in legal limbo which could free money for improving services. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association asked the Federal Communications Commission to allow companies like Verizon Wireless and VoiceStream Wireless to back out of the sale that was concluded in January 2001. That sale but thrown into disarray when a federal appeals court ruled the licenses belonged to NextWave Telecom Inc. , which is in bankruptcy protection. Attempts at a settlement were made but failed after Congress refused to sign off on a deal. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28285252 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not usually add any discussion to Monty's news reports, but the 'deep linking' argument above caught my eye. Someone should explain to Guest Editorial Mainpost how the internet works. *Anyone* is free to link *anywhere* as long as they do not alter the contents or claim unrightfully that the presentation is their creation. If Guest Editorial Mainpost does not want to have people looking at their stuff that they themselves did not sell (to the viewer) then they can refuse to show the page to any referrer who did not come from their own starting page. That is the way it is done, not with harrassing lawsuits. I have deep linked many times, and will continue to do so as I see fit. I do not make any claims about ownership or authorship, I just point at things I think people might like to see. Of course, according to one of our Canadian readers here, I am a 'bully' because I stand up for little folks rather than the system. Watch the German courts try to twist around the intent of the net with a screwball decision. Eventually people will forget about *how and why* the internet was created and buy into these bizzare copyright ideas. PAT] ------------------------------ From: me@virtuallabrat.com (Virtual Lab Rat - No Spam Please) Subject: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference Date: 14 Aug 2002 17:35:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ I am looking for a database where I can list the all of the telephone area code and exchanges in a specific geographic area. Preferably a zip code to telephone prefix exchange listing. Alternatively a county or city to telephone prefix exchange listing. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 11:54:12 -0400 Organization: Bell Sympatico Steven Lichter wrote: > One Irvine, Calif. company just got fined 4.5 million. They claim the > fine is a violation of their right of free speech. This is also a common defense among spammers. The problem with this argument should be blatantly obvious, and it isn't even as subjective as the 'political vs. commercial' theme that PAT suggests -- it's that your right to speak your mind does not take precedence over my right not to listen, let alone my right to decide that my equipment should not be used -- at my expense, no less -- to spread your word. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You and I do not have any more rights where large companies and government agencies are concerned. The sooner you start remembering that the better off we will be. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jaarons@hotmail.com (jaarons) Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: 15 Aug 2002 08:25:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ fax.com junk faxes I get hundreds of un-solicited faxes every day to our Phone System from fax.com. It ties up ports, and wastes resources. If you call the 1-800 number on the bottom of the fax you get a fast busy. I've send several TCPA notices to the FCC, maybe they can help stop fax.com http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020807/ap_on_hi_te/junk_faxes_fine_4 www.junkfaxes.com http://www.junkfaxes.com/ ------------------------------ From: Carl Gilbert Subject: SMS Gateway Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:03:25 +0100 Organization: ntl Cablemodem News Service Does anyone know if it possible to send bulk SMS between my server and a UK mobile network provider, such as O2 without having to use a third party to relay the messages? Cheers, Carl ------------------------------ From: malibu64@gte.net (Ronald) Subject: For Sale: NORSTAR MICS OX32 Phone System Date: 14 Aug 2002 22:17:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ MICS OX32 PHONE SYSTEM Excellent condition Norstar system recently removed from office, $1000 Main box NT7B62fa-93 Power Supply NT7B53fa MICS 0X32 Control Unit NTBB08ga-93 RAM Cartridge (Software Component) NT7B64au System Software V 4.0 NT7B75ga-93 Trunk Card NT7B75gb-03 Trunk Card 2 port fiber expansion card Secondary box NT7B75ga-93 Trunk Card NTBB20fb-93 12X0 Trunk Module ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Fax 3: 530-309-7234 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Access to Premium (P) links requires upgrade to a paid subscription. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. LEGAL STUFF: TELECOM Digest (sm) is owned by Patrick Townson. Copyright 2000 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #359 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 16 00:46:02 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7G4k2i12569; Fri, 16 Aug 2002 00:46:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 00:46:02 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208160446.g7G4k2i12569@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #360 TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Aug 2002 00:45:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 360 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson ISOC Releases Statement On Digital Rights Management (Julie Williams) Re: SMS Gateway (Clarence Dold) Re: SMS Gateway (Joseph Singer) Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Charles G Gray) Bully For You :-) (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Clarence Dold) Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Wes Leatherock) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (John Galt) Re: Appellate Court Decision re Municipal Utilities (John Stahl) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Julie Williams Subject: ISOC Releases Statement On Digital Rights Management Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 16:48:26 -0400 August 15, 2002 Contact: Julie Williams 703-326-9880, x111; 703-402-6715 cell STATEMENT OF THE INTERNET SOCIETY ON DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT Washington, D.C. - The Internet Society strongly opposes attempts to impose governmental technology mandates that are designed to protect only the economic interests of certain owners of intellectual property over the economic interests of much larger portions of society. The current debate in many countries of the world regarding digital rights management (DRM) has illustrated the inevitable conclusion of technology mandates in law: a world where all digital media technology is either forbidden or compulsory. The effect of these mandates is to grant veto power over new technologies to special interest groups who have continually opposed innovation. There are many policy reasons that can be advanced to oppose government intervention in technology. Society at large has a powerful economic interest in promoting research resulting in the creation of new products and services as well as new jobs. Many of the legislative proposals currently under consideration would shackle technology and the research needed to support it, solely for the benefit of one small group. From the standpoint of sound public policy, intellectual property rights must be respected but must also be kept in balance with other rights and interests. In particular, copyright law is a kind of "bargain" between rights owners and consumers. Copyright, except in rare instances, is not perpetual, and there are a wide range of fair use exceptions to copyright that limit its restraints. Without these limits, copyright would soon become an oppressive burden on creativity and freedom of expression. The Internet Society acknowledges these policy considerations, but also believes that there are other even more persuasive arguments, based on sound engineering and technological principles, that show the folly of government mandated technology. Technology mandates are inherently anti-innovative. The entire concept of a mandate is that it freezes a particular technology at a point in time, and inhibits research and development on new and better technology. Technological standards are desirable and even necessary for widespread implementation of new technology, but all standards sooner or later must give way to new standards. This process should not be impeded by legislation that effectively prohibits research and development. A classic illustration of the dangers of DRM legislation may be found in legislation enacted by many countries as part of their treaty obligations under the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) copyright treaties. The so-called Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed by the United States Congress in 1998, is an example. Under the WIPO treaties, the United States, like the other countries bound by the treaties, had an obligation to "provide 'legal protection and effective legal remedies' against circumventing technological measures, e.g., encryption and password protection, that are used by copyright owners to protect their works from piracy ..." [See S. Rep. No. 105-190, at 8, 10-11 (1998)]. The DMCA, in responding to this obligation, illustrates the "law of unintended consequences." While purporting to help copyright owners, it seriously threatens research in the field of encryption for security. The DMCA prohibits "circumvention" of existing technological measures (such as encryption) that control access to a work and encryption; it prohibits "trafficking" in technology designed to circumvent access control; and it prohibits "trafficking" in technology designed to circumvent copying. These prohibitions are subject to certain exceptions; the DMCA acknowledges rights of fair use, so that, in certain limited circumstances, circumvention of copying protection for purposes of fair use of an encrypted work does not violate the act. Another important exception is the separate provision of the DMCA that allows circumvention of access controls for the purpose of encryption research to identify flaws and vulnerabilities of encryption technology. This provision is narrowly drawn with explicit conditions relating to good faith in performing research. Most significantly, the exception is for access only; it does not permit what the act refers to as trafficking in such research. The danger to research presented by statutes like the DMCA is best illustrated by a real world example of a researcher in the field of encryption. Just because cryptography can be or is being used for purposes other than copyright protection, does not mean it is not also used for copyright protection and therefore subject to the provision of the DMCA. Although a researcher may be looking at a certain type of cryptographic technology that is used to protect packets containing information in the public domain, that same technology might also be used to protect other packets that contain copyrighted data, unknown to the researcher. Likewise, a researcher might attempt to break the protection on an item without realizing that the protected item is a copyrighted work, which may not be discovered, if at all, until it is too late. But the issue isn't whether the researcher has cracked the protection - the issue is what the researcher may do with the resulting information. A central question for encryption researchers is whether publishing the results of their research amounts to disseminating something whose primary purpose is to circumvent copyright protection. Under the DMCA, the act of circumventing access controls for good faith research, standing alone, is, generally speaking, legitimate. This does not present great problems to researchers. However, when the researcher then wishes to publish the results of the research, the DMCA provides a test of the intent of the original circumvention that depends on whether the subsequent publication is made to "advance the state of knowledge" of encryption research, or whether it is made "in a manner that facilitates infringement." In other words, if the researcher acts in good faith to circumvent access control and publishes with the intent of reaching other researchers, but the information ends up being "disseminated in a manner that facilitates infringement," then the original circumvention of the access controls may have been illegal. Since there are both civil and criminal remedies available to copyright owners, the researcher faces serious dilemmas in deciding whether, how and when to publish. There are already court decisions in the United States and elsewhere involving both civil and criminal aspects of the publication of encryption research. Many prominent figures in the field have already spoken out against the chilling effect of legislative interference with research in technology. The Internet Society calls on the legislatures of the world to limit the damage caused by shortsighted legislative efforts, intended to carry out the seemingly high-minded purposes of the copyright treaties, that instead threaten the advancement of science and technology. About ISOC The Internet Society is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1991 to provide leadership in the management of Internet related standards, educational, and policy development issues. It has offices in Washington, DC and Geneva, Switzerland. Through its current initiatives in support of education and training, Internet standards and protocol, and public policy, ISOC has played a critical role in ensuring that the Internet has developed in a stable and open manner. It is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and other Internet-related bodies. For over 10 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries which have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country that has connected to the Internet during this time, while at the same time working to protect the Internet's stability. ISOC is taking the next step in this evolution with the recent announcement of its intent to bid for the .ORG registry based on the belief that a thriving non-commercial presence is a key element in developing a strong social and technical infrastructure in all nations. For additional information see http://www.ISOC.org. Press@isoc.org http://www.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/press ------------------------------ From: dold@05.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: SMS Gateway Date: 15 Aug 2002 21:16:03 GMT Organization: Wintercreek Data Carl Gilbert wrote: > Does anyone know if it possible to send bulk SMS between my server and > a UK mobile network provider, such as O2 without having to use a third > party to relay the messages? That sounds like spam, which generally isn't encouraged in this newsgroup. Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: SMS Gateway Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 18:35:21 -0700 Organization: Drizzle Reply-To: joeofseattle@yahoo.com On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 17:03:25 +0100, Carl Gilbert wrote: > Does anyone know if it possible to send bulk SMS between my server and > a UK mobile network provider, such as O2 without having to use a third > party to relay the messages? I hope you're not planning on setting up a spam scheme. Personal replies most likely will not be read. Please reply in the newsgroup ------------------------------ Subject: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? From: Charles G Gray Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 12:37:00 -0500 I just spent a week in Arizona and New Mexico and noticed that there is still a lot of open telegraph/telephone wire. Most, but not all, of it is alongside railroad tracks. I am wondering if any of it is still in use for telephone carrier service. Some of it may still be used by the railroad for signals, but I don't have any way of knowing. Do you (or any of the subscribers to your excellent service) know if any open wire carrier is still in use? I did note some cable/fiber pedestal boxes and repeater huts along major highways, but there were long stretches, mostly on the Indian Reservations, where I saw only open wire. I teach a couple of graduate-level courses in telecommunications management, and I like to give my students some historical insights about how the telecom industry has evolved. Any information you can provide/obtain will be most appreciated. Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess you know that's largely how SPRINT got started in the late sixties/early seventies. The outhern

acific ailroad likewise had a lot of wires/poles along their tracks. They wanted to upgrade their nternal etwork elecom- unications and in the process of doing so, they wound up with so much excess capacity they decided to sell the excess space on their network to other businesses. Eventually, by the time SPRINT changed to serve all the public (not just businesses) they had been spun off. The Southern Pacific Railroad Telecommunications office became a separate company, first owned by the railroad, then eventually by others. Now this multi-billion dollar corporation has a multi-billion dollar heaquarters 'campus' on several dozen acres in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, where they remain as independent and arogant as ever. Who else knows anything about old railroad telephone/telegraph wires who can contribute to this conversation? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 15:40:59 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: Bully For You :-) On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:39:00 -0400 (EDT), editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not usually add any discussion to > Monty's news reports, but the 'deep linking' argument above caught my > eye. Someone should explain to Guest Editorial Mainpost how the > internet works. *Anyone* is free to link *anywhere* as long as they > do not alter the contents or claim unrightfully that the presentation > is their creation. If Guest Editorial Mainpost does not want to have > people looking at their stuff that they themselves did not sell (to > the viewer) then they can refuse to show the page to any referrer > who did not come from their own starting page. That is the way it is > done, not with harrassing lawsuits. I have deep linked many times, > and will continue to do so as I see fit. I do not make any claims > about ownership or authorship, I just point at things I think people > might like to see. Of course, according to one of our Canadian readers > here, I am a 'bully' because I stand up for little folks rather than > the system. I resemble that remark. :-) Pat, that wasn't why I called you a "bully" and you should know it. If not, I didn't do a good enough job of getting my point across. > Watch the German courts try to twist around the intent > of the net with a screwball decision. Eventually people will forget > about *how and why* the internet was created and buy into these > bizzare copyright ideas. PAT] I definitely back you 100% on this one. Shouldn't it be a simple matter to go look up the original documentation (RFC's, etc.) that outlined just what "the world wide web" is? Specifically, anything pertaining to access via port 80. I'm fairly sure there should be language in there that specifically says that such access is, by default, unauthenticated - meaning that if you put a server on the internet with services on port 80, you should expect unauthenticated access unless you take steps to stop it (using the methods you mentioned, for example). So far as I know, every US court case involving deep-linking has eventually been resolved in favour of the deep-linker. Granted this is a German case, but Germany and the US subscribe to the same international copyright conventions, thus should have SIMILAR laws. And on that basis, the findings of US courts in the past should be relevent to this case: the web is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC unless you specifically set up your server otherwise. Which hasn't been done in this case. To borrow a phrase from the "South Park" movie: What the **** is wrong with German people? :-) Joey Lindstrom - Laird's Flooring joey@lairdsflooring.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Joey, what I resent is the fact that we little folks here in the USA have to go through this same argument time and again, just to keep **what is ours**. And I guess we are supposed to be thrilled that here in the USA we get a 'free and open' trial if the idiots decide to sue us for deep-linking even if it costs many thousands of dollars we don't have. You'll pardon me, I hope, if I turn a blind eye on those in my profession (but with considerably more intelligence than myself) who choose to simply hack and destroy the public serpents who run this country. And I really do not like being called a 'bully' for that blind eye, and quiet applause in support. It amazes me, Joey, that you seem to have the wrong notion on exactly who the real bullies are in the United States. Consider the case of Andy Williams: an emotionally disturbed fifteen year old boy who last year fired a gun at some school mates in California. Police and prosecutors were very pleased to announce today to all the news media that they had gotten him *three life prison sentences* with no chance of parole. I am sure all concerned went out from court today patting each other on the back for their good work. I wonder if those prosecutors will get a promotion. After all, three life sentences for a fifteen year boy is enough to earn any police officer/prosecutor a big round of applause by the other public servants. Poor Andy will live in hell for the rest of his life here on earth, which probably won't be very long. Joey, if you will *think for a minute* of the vast and limitless potential the government here in the United States has to wreak havoc on people's lives you may begin to understand who the *real bullies* are. What do you care if one of their web sites gets defaced or some hacker breaks in? I personally would not do it (my deseased brain, post-aneurysm doesn't leave me smart enough to do that anyway); but I applaud them for fighting back in probably the only way they can. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@98.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference Date: 15 Aug 2002 19:14:46 GMT Organization: Wintercreek Data Virtual Lab Rat - No Spam Please wrote: > I am looking for a database where I can list the all of the > telephone area code and exchanges in a specific geographic area. > Preferably a zip code to telephone prefix exchange listing. > Alternatively a county or city to telephone prefix exchange listing. There is a free resource from NANPA. It doesn't have Zip codes, but it does have city names, sort of: http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/co_code_assignments.html http://www.nanpa.com/nanp1/AllCodes.zip ALLCODES.MDB CA 707 257 AS 9740 PACIFIC BELL NAPA NAPACA01DS0 Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA. ------------------------------ From: wesrock@aol.com (Wes Leatherock) Date: 16 Aug 2002 00:04:43 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference On 14 Aug 2002 17:35:38 -0700 me@virtuallabrat.com (Virtual Lab Rat - No Spam Please) wrote: > am looking for a database where I can list the all of the telephone > area code and exchanges in a specific geographic area. Preferably a > zip code to telephone prefix exchange listing. Alternatively a county > or city to telephone prefix exchange listing. You will be disappointed, because telephone central office boundaries, exchange boundaries, and even area codes are not coterminous with zip codes, cities or counties. If you go far enough back to remember an annual AT&T publication called "The World's Telephones," which listed major cities throughout the world and the number of telephones. It had four footnotes, and one of those four was applicable to each city: "Serves the entire city and does not serve beyond the city" "Serves part of the city and does not serve beyond the city" "Serves part of the city and serves beyond the city." "Serves the entire city and serves beyond the city." Practically every city in the U.S.A. had the fourth footnote, but some had the third. With various telephone companies today serving the same or different parts of cities in the U.S.A., the situation would be even more muddled. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 20:11:38 -0700 Organization: Diogenes The Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society Justin Time wrote: > The low cost for cellular phones is partially due to the provider > being able to sell you a fixed amount of airtime. Since the > advertised price of the cell phone is a "subsidized" price, the actual > retail price is quite a bit higher. And yes, you can buy cell phones > at the full retail price, you just have to be certain that the model > you want is one that is supported by your carrier. All carriers I know of insist that you buy the phone from them. This is because the phones they offer are specially programmed by them to lock out features they don't want you to have (such as the ability to roam on some other carrier in a place where the signal from their own tower is very weak, or the ability to register the same phone with more than one carrier). It would be nice if the anti-trust people put a stop to this practice. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 14:54:04 -0400 From: John Stahl Subject: Re: Appellate Court Decision re Municipal Utilities On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 02:40:30 -0600, Neal McLain contributed: Forwarded message: > On Wednesday August 14th, the United States Court of Appeals for the > Eighth Circuit issued a decision reversing the FCC's prior > determination that it could not preempt a Missouri law that prohibited > municipalities from providing telecommunications services to the > public (Missouri Municipal League v. FCC, U.S. Ct. of App. 8th Cir., > No. 01-1379, issued Aug. 14, 2002). It seems from this news report and news from other sources regarding recent legal interpretations and other issues which the FCC has been involved with, that the FCC seems to be leaning towards the incumbent telcos when it comes to telephone services competition. Recently we have heard all sorts of news about loss of competition when CLEC's have been forced by the economics of this downturn in the industry to either abandon a service area or just go out of business. The Telecommunications Act seems to be something that the FCC would rather not involve itself with, instead letting off pressure on the incumbents so they can further contrive ways to prevent or just eliminate competition - with long delays in service orders, cancelling supplier's orders or delaying deliveries, all of these methods designed to strangle the industry, cutting off investments thus causing the whole pyramid of dominoes to topple. I lost my low priced CLEC last year when the crunch began, having to convert back to the incumbent only to pay almost twice as much for the same service. CLEC's have had a try at it, let the small utilities try to save their customer's some money. They are established, probably have lots of working capital, own the rights-of-way and therefore can get into the telecom business with a small amount of effort. What's next? Will the FCC "work" to eliminate competition so that the low cost long distance services we are all can currently enjoy, will go away too? I personally like to pay less than $0.04 per minute rates to anywhere in the country; can I keep that? I sure don't want to go back to the old rates like $1.00 for the first minute and $0.30 per minute for the remainder of the call depending on which "band" your called number was in - remember those rates from before divestiture from our Old Ma Bell? Congress had a good idea, flawed as it was written, with the Telecommunications Act. The FCC should let it alone and just do what is required -- enforce the statue. John Stahl Aljon Enterprises Telecom/Data Consultants ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #360 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 16 23:06:45 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7H36js19315; Fri, 16 Aug 2002 23:06:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 23:06:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208170306.g7H36js19315@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #361 TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Aug 2002 23:06:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 361 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist (Monty Solomon) Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) (E Ellers) Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) (J Galt) Business Directory Update (David B. Horvath, CCP) Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Jerry Harder) Re: Caller ID in a 911 Call (Carl Moore) Re: SMS Gateway (Chris Kantarjiev) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Sprint) (Marcus Jervis) Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? (John Higdon) Re: SMS Gateway (mike.hartley@ntlworld.com) PBX Connection (WIll) Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits (Bryce Davis) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Geoffrey Welsh) Another MCI Complaint (Patrick Townson) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Joe Singer) The Bully Pulpit (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Ed Ellers) Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Andrew Kauffman) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 23:30:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist By Paul Boutin 2:00 a.m. Aug. 15, 2002 PDT A recent lawsuit filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Gilmore against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, United Airlines and several others challenges the requirement that airline flyers present government-issued identification in order to travel within the United States. The suit claims unpublished federal regulations have created an "internal passport" for Americans in violation of the U.S. Constitution. As it turns out, there may be no such law on the books. Instead, carefully worded rules and statements allow airlines to make it seem that way. Under current federal regulations, they're only required to ask for ID, not to make it a condition of travel. ... http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54464,00.html ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 23:39:03 -0400 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: > The *old* original 'basic' apparently left the original broadcasters > in the same place on the dial where they were over the air when > possible. Cable 2 was b'cast 2 and CBS. Cable 11 was b'cast 11 and > PBS, etc. But imagine having the same show on cable 2, 8 and 9 all > the time because of them each being CBS, other than local news, > etc. That's common in areas with poor over-the-air reception, but in places close to VHF stations it's common to put those stations on different channels -- to avoid ghosting caused by those stations' strong signals leaking into the cable -- and use their "normal" channels for lesser-used stuff such as access channels. In Louisville, where we have only two full-power VHF stations -- NBC on channel 3 and ABC on 11 -- the cable company puts them on channels 2 and 4 respectively and uses 3 for The Weather Channel and 11 for C-SPAN. This isn't possible in New York or Los Angeles, where there are seven local VHF stations (and only five blank spots on the VHF dial), and impractical in places like Chicago where so many channels would have to be left fallow, so some viewers there have to use converters if their TV sets or VCRs are inadequately shielded. (In fact the first cable converter, Oak Industries' Focus-12 introduced in the late 1960s, only covered channels 2-13 and was built specifically to fix the "ingress" problem in Manhattan.) ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 20:19:31 -0700 Organization: Diogenes The Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society Neal McLain wrote: > The "Channel 1" on your TV set (or converter box) probably won't ever > be occupied because it isn't at the same frequency as the long-defunct > Broadcast Channel 1 recently discussed here on TD. Cable Channel 1 > fills the blank space between Channels 4 and 5. But because that > space is only 4 MHz wide (unless Independence has an extremely unusual > cable system), it can't be used for a TV channel anyway. Channel 1 exists on both cable systems here in Sacramento (SureWest and AT&T). On SureWest it is a menu of optional features, on AT&T it is Home Shopping Network. Both systems require the use of the company's converter box to tune channels except those in the Economy Basic range. (I've always assumed that is because the rest are scrambled.) The EB range does not include channel 1 but does include all of 2 through 13. So wherever channel 1 is located, it is not 72-76 MHz unless they've found some way of compressing a full cable channel into that range. My guess is that it is the original 48-54 MHz channel. This should not cause a conflict with anybody if the cable signal is prevented from radiating over-the-air; and I'm sure it is, or thousands of people would start getting "free rides" by putting up antennas. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 19:45:26 -0400 From: dhorvath@cobs.com (David B. Horvath, CCP) Subject: Business Directory Update I recently got email trying to sell me a CD with 20 Million email addresses: > O R D E R N O W . . . SAME DAY SERVICE (M-F) if your order > is received before 6pm Eastern. If you have any further questions or to > place an order, you can call us toll free and direct at: > 1-888-800--6339 ext. -1010- They claim that they've filtered email addresses to eliminate: > 4. Next we used our private database of thousands of known > "extremists" and kicked off every one we could find. NOTE: > We maintain the world's largest list of individuals and > groups that are opposed to any kind of commercial > e-marketing ... they are gone, nuked! So, how come I still get their SPAM? I also recently learned about a prepaid legal service: > Please call my toll free # below. > LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SERVICE, > CALL 1(888) 784-8474 option 1. > After message you will be prompted > for my extension # 1308 ... And if you have trouble with your Teeth, these folks have a dental plan for you: > To contact us: > Phone: 800-711-8817 > Fax: 800-752-4040 > Email: DELETED > 1525 Mesa Verde East, Suite 107 > Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Hey, they're in California, I wonder if they followed all the rules? Or you can expand your business: > If you're serious about expanding your business visibility, > fill out our contact form, or call us direct at (800)441-9523 The next one may be a repeat but they keep sending me SPAM: > If you have previously unsubscribed and are still receiving > this message, you may email our ALREADY CANCELED EMAIL ADDRESS > Abuse Control Center, or call 1-888-763-2497, or write us at: > NoSpam, 6484 Coral Way, Miami, FL, 33155". And what do you think of Sprint? They had some promo offer so I switched my second line. To get no-monthly-fee, I had to signup for everything online (statements, bill-pay, etc.). In my normal case of paranoia, I created a special email account solely for use with the Sprint account. I created it in my own domain -- it had never received SPAM before. 2 or 3 months after signing up, I started getting SPAM to that account via topica.com "Free Prize Palace Newsletter". I never used that email address before signing up with Sprint and have not used it anywhere other than the Sprint web pages. I never posted or emailed from that account! And I clicked the "don't send me offers" button. I tried the online customer support on this issue but never got a response. I was one of the folks who actually had no problem with them during the Eagle Modem promotion years ago! - David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AOL is another bunch which provides spammers with their customer list. I installed a new AOL screen name one day, and *within minutes* spam had arrived for that name. So why are you surprised that Sprint does it also? PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: Jerry Harder From: Jerry Harder Subject: Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference Organization: WEBUSENET.com Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 23:54:48 -0500 Virtual Lab Rat - No Spam Please wrote in message news:telecom20.359.12@telecom-digest.org: > I am looking for a database where I can list the all of the telephone > area code and exchanges in a specific geographic area. Preferably a > zip code to telephone prefix exchange listing. Alternatively a county > or city to telephone prefix exchange listing. You can get a free listing of CO codes, area code and exchange, cross referenced by city and state names at http://www.nanpa.com/nanp1/AllCodes.zip. This is updated periodically and so far is free. For a number of reasons, ZIP and CO boundaries do not neatly match. There may be some databases out there, but I suspect they will cost you. Check with MapInfo among others. I know they have CO boundary maps. They and their competitors offer ZIP code centroids. One way to get at your problem would be to get each wire center location and then assign each ZIP code to the nearest wire center. Good luck, Jerry Harder remove spamnein from address to reply ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 14:32:19 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Caller ID in a 911 Call Oh, a jurisdictional problem cropping up when a 911 call is made near a political boundary. In places where *I* am not aware of any incidents, in Delaware as well as lots of other places, phone prefixes will spill into areas outside a city limits (even in Wilmington), and I know that there have been some problems (at least with the "countywide" local calling scheme) resulting from part of the Smyrna exchange (oldest prefix in that is 302-653) spilling over into far southern New Castle County. From the point of view of Wilmington, you'll find that Philadelphia and Baltimore are the closest cities which distinguish between city and suburban prefixes. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I told here a couple weeks ago about Norwood Park Township/the Village of Norridge/the City of Chicago and the thing with 911 service. Norridge and Norwood Park Township are NOT part of Chicago but they are completly surrounded by Chicago on all four sides. Norridge is correctly identified as area 708 (suburban) but Norwood Park Township partly has a 773 area code and partly a 708 area depending on where you are calling from. In any event, residents in this unincorporated area (where the boundary line with Chicago juts down back allies and through the middle of a city block) who are (by telco thinking) considered to be in the 773 area instead of the 708 area have a special prefix just for themselves which does not ring Chicago Police; instead it goes to Cook County Sheriff which is the police authority for that area. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 11:35:54 PDT From: Chris Kantarjiev Subject: Re: SMS Gateway Typically, the answer is "no", unless you can get a direct link to the carrier. They're usually not interested in doing that for anyone except third party aggregators. So you either need to get an SMS "modem" (basically, a phone with a serial port) and send them that way - which is slow, since the phones are slow, or use a third party (typically with a web interface). ------------------------------ From: Marcus Jervis Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Sprint) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 05:36:44 +0000 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess you know that's largely how > SPRINT got started in the late sixties/early seventies. The outhern >

acific ailroad likewise had a lot of wires/poles along their > tracks. They wanted to upgrade their nternal etwork elecom- > unications and in the process of doing so, they wound up with so > much excess capacity they decided to sell the excess space on their > network to other businesses. Eventually, by the time SPRINT changed > to serve all the public (not just businesses) they had been spun > off. The Southern Pacific Railroad Telecommunications office became > a separate company, first owned by the railroad, then eventually by > others. Now this multi-billion dollar corporation has a multi-billion > dollar heaquarters 'campus' on several dozen acres in Shawnee Mission, > Kansas, where they remain as independent and arogant as ever. Wasn't the story about Sprint being an acronym debunked here in Telecom Digest years ago? I've seen PAT repeat this a number of times, but I thought that at one time someone pointed out that Sprint was never an acronym. Sorry I don't have a reference. Also, the multi-billion dollar corporation which owns the campus in Kansas calls itself Sprint, but actually bought Sprint the long distance carrier and renamed itself from the much larger United Telephone because the much smaller Sprint was better known to the public. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Whether or not SPRINT was an acronym for Southern Pacific Railroad's Internal Network Telecommunications Department has been debated here in the past. It seems highly odd to me that the railroad revamped and expanded its telecom facilities about that time, *was* the original owner of Sprint, decided to sell its expanded telecom facilities to business users yet did not think of that acronym for a name. I've heard the 'mere coincidence' argument many times also, but I don't buy it, and it never has been proven either way that I know of. And yes, the multi-billion dollar mega-corporation which has the campus in Shawnee Mission, KS was the combined Sprint/United Tel thing. As to *who* bought *who*, I am not sure. They go by the name or d/b/a Sprint at this present time. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 23:50:00 -0700 Subject: Re: So You've Got Your HDTV. Now What's There to See? From: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows In article telecom20.359.10@telecom-digest.org, Steve Elias wrote: > Yes it sure does. I'd shunned watching live broadcast TV for decades > but now with DTV/HDTV I find watching TV without timeshifting to be a > joy -- including the commercials. And I find the goofy primetime > sitcoms and drama shows to be quite enjoyable now that they are > sourced for 720p or 1080i 16:9. To each his own. I'm afraid that I'm going to need far more than the novelty of HD. It might be fun to watch the usual insipid fare once or twice in HD, but to spend real money to have it full-time? I don't think so. I, like you, have pretty much abandoned NTSC, but it isn't the lack of resolution or the color variability that turned me off; it was the content. > At some point I'll have my DTV setups enabled for DTV-timeshifting > too. But recording HDTV is currently quite an expensive proposition - > around $500 for a settop box, and $1200 for the JVC D-VHS vcr ... I'll > also be investigating recording the settop box 480i output into the > philip dvdr985 dvd recorder -- possibly that will yield acceptable > quality for recorded DTV programs (should be DVD quality). I can't even imagine on what you would find worthy of wasting the time, money, or the recording media. For now, I have a very impressive home theater in which I watch DVDs and (if unavailable on DVD) laserdiscs. Since I purchase the programming on a title by title basis, I obviously find it worth watching. The 120" forward-projection system is HD-capable, but I doubt that I will ever connect it to a DTV receiver. Why would I? There is nothing there worth the expense or the effort. For the sake of the industry (in which I happen to work), I hope there are more people out there like you who actually enjoy the broadcast drek, or at least are so jazzed by the technology that they would sit in rapture watching the intellectual equivalent of color bars. -- John Higdon | Email Address Valid | SF: +1 415 428-COWS +1 408 264 4115 | Anytown, USA | FAX: +1 408 264 4407 ------------------------------ From: Subject: Re: SMS Gateway Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 11:20:32 +0000 > Does anyone know if it possible to send bulk SMS between my server and > a UK mobile network provider, such as O2 without having to use a third > party to relay the messages? > That sounds like spam, which generally isn't encouraged in this > newsgroup. Not necessarily, there are many opt-in SMS services available here in Europe -- for example I get weather forecasts and news headlines via SMS. Regards, Mike ------------------------------ From: willpski@hotmail.com (WIll) Subject: PBX Connection Date: 16 Aug 2002 07:11:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Hello. I am looking at implementing a Voice over Frame solution using Cisco routers to connect two of our branch offices. I am having some trouble understanding how the Router will connect with the PBX. The PBX that we have currently is an Avaya Definity Version G3V3i. From what I understand I would use an RJ-48 cable to physical connect the two and I would configure the Cisco router to emulate a T-1 connection What signaling type should I use CAS, E&M etc. Also if anyone has any experience with this type of configuration your input would be appreciated. Thanks, Will ------------------------------ From: commpdx@hotmail.com (Bryce Davis) Subject: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits Date: 16 Aug 2002 08:53:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ I'd like to know if anyone has ever experienced 'bouncing' circuits. We have a Wide Area Network which connects approximately 300 remote locations to our headquarters. We have a FRAME Relay network - circuit speed is 128k at the remote site, with 16k CIR. Each circuit comes into one of five T-1s at our headquarters (soon to be 12 muxed T-1s). What we're seeing is a whole lot of lost connectivity. We'll lose connectivity for a minute or two, then a circuit will come back up. It's random, impacting 5-10 sites per day, but it seems to not impact the same site day after day. We see this in our router traplogs. One funny thing is the circuits drop for 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc. - but almost always in 60 second increments (e.g., it will drop at 07:47:23 and come back up at 07:49:23). Our Carrier (a large carrier you would all recognize, but who can remain unnamed for now) didn't see this at first. They said it didn't exist, until we sent them our traplogs. Then, when they looked at their switch, lo and behold, they saw the problem too. They claim none of their other customers have this problem, but that's what they said about us as well. It could be that none of their other customers are watching their traplogs. We use Cisco 2610 routers in our remote locations and we have a Cisco 7204 and a Cisco 3604 in our headquarters. We built our router configurations with Cisco's assistance. The carrier recently reviewed and signed off on the configurations, as part of their trouble-shooting procedure. To date - they haven't been able to identify a single cause, but they're adamant the problem is not within their network. Our enterprise currently uses our WAN for file-transfers, a little email, and a little Internet usage. Soon we're going to a real time application, and a 60-second outage will be noticed at our remote location right away. Has anyone seen anything like this before. Do you monitor your traplogs? I'd appreciate any feedback I can get. Thanks, Bryce ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 12:42:35 -0400 PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess you know that's largely how > SPRINT got started in the late sixties/early seventies. The outhern >

acific ailroad likewise had a lot of wires/poles along their > tracks. They wanted to upgrade their nternal etwork elecom- > unications and in the process of doing so, they wound up with so > much excess capacity they decided to sell the excess space on their > network to other businesses. Eventually, by the time SPRINT changed > to serve all the public (not just businesses) they had been spun > off. Hold on -- Isn't Qwest [also] a descendant of SP Telecom, spun off around 1990 or soon thereafter?!? Has SP spun off _two_ major carriers -- one which was bought by the Brown Telephone Company and one which went on to buy USWorst? ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Another MCI Complaint Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 11:48:28 -0500 Here is a complaint received at the Digest from Connie Masson, a resident of San Jose, CA who wrote about 'a little mixup at MCI long distance.' From: Connie Masson [cmasson@oneworkplace.com] I telecommute 2 days/week and also work online at least 2 hours every night. Suddenly in April my MCI bill skyrocketed to $300+ and I finally traced it to a long distance number they said I was using to access Compuserve. I live in San Jose, Ca and there are many local phone numbers available to access my provider. I've been online for years and have always watched the dial up process compulsively to make sure it's using the appropriate number. I would never use a long distance number!! That's just plain stupid!! How can this happen, from a technical perspective?? The number on my screen shows the local San Jose and the bill is for a long distance Compuserve access number. Any ideas?? When I called MCI they told me they couldn't help me in any way. They "don't have a clue how it's happening" but they want their money. Meanwhile each month the bill was sky high even though I repeatedly confirmed my dial up numbers were local San Jose. I finally cancelled my MCI account but still have an outstanding balance of $300+ and also want a refund of the $900+ I paid from April to June. This has been a nightmare and I don't know whom I should contact. Can you please help?? Connie Masson Cmasson99@cs.com ------------------------------ From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 10:02:28 -0700 Organization: Drizzle Reply-To: joeofseattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 20:11:38 -0700, John David Galt wrote: > All carriers I know of insist that you buy the phone from them. This > is because the phones they offer are specially programmed by them to > lock out features they don't want you to have (such as the ability to > roam on some other carrier in a place where the signal from their own > tower is very weak, or the ability to register the same phone with > more than one carrier). > It would be nice if the anti-trust people put a stop to this practice. This is *not* true at least for GSM carriers. Any GSM phone with the right frequency (1900 Mhz in North America and 900 or 1800 Mhz most everywhere else) will work provided that the "subsidy" lock is defeated. If there is no subsidy lock you can use any compatible SIM in any GSM phone provided that it's on the correct frequency. GSM phones have the ability to use any compatible phone and that's why even if your carrier doesn't offer the latest and greatest handset you can go to an independent dealer and get whatever handset you want. You are not constrained by the offerings of a carrier or a dealer. Of course when you get a handset independent of the carrier you will generally pay a good deal more for the handset. Carriers subsidize the price of handsets to encourage people to use their service. To keep people from getting a cheap handset and fleeing their service and going to the competition they lock their handsets so that they can only be used with the original service where they got their phone. Many companies have generous unlocking policies and will arrange for you to get the unlock code with as little as three months of good service. There are some carriers that indeed will not let you use any other equipment on their service other than what they do or did sell. Rogers/AT&T will not let you register an ESN that was used on AT&T or Cingular in the US. The new company Virgin Mobile USA will only allow you to use phones that have been on the Virgin Mobile USA network or has been bought from Virgin Mobile USA. You can buy CDMA and TDMA phones off network though you'll pay a premium for them. Personal replies most likely will not be read. Please reply in the newsgroup. ------------------------------ From: Joey Lindstrom Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 14:57:06 -0600 Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Subject: The Bully Pulpit On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 00:46:02 -0400 (EDT), editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Joey, what I resent is the fact > that we little folks here in the USA have to go through this same > argument time and again, just to keep **what is ours**. Ah. So the parts of the internet not physically within the United States are also "ours"? How about all the internet routers and fibre-optic cables up here in Canada? Those belong to you too? This is a case of one German outfit going after another German outfit, under German law. While you and I agree the case is pretty darned stupid, it is, nevertheless, the right of the German people to make laws, even bad ones like this, as they see fit, so long as they don't try to apply them outside of Germany (which, admittedly, may be the next step -- good luck, cuz that shit won't fly). Please elaborate on just what it is you're defending here, Pat. I think I've got an idea but maybe you need to spell it out. For what it's worth, I'll probably agree with most of it -- but I'm sure that I won't agree with all of it. :-) > And I guess we are supposed to be thrilled that here in the USA we > get a 'free and open' trial if the idiots decide to sue us for > deep-linking even if it costs many thousands of dollars we don't > have. You'll pardon me, I hope, if I turn a blind eye on those in > my profession (but with considerably more intelligence than myself) > who choose to simply hack and destroy the public serpents who run > this country. And I really do not like being called a 'bully' for > that blind eye, and quiet applause in support. It amazes me, Joey, > that you seem to have the wrong notion on exactly who the real > bullies are in the United States. I count among the "bullies" those who would advocate harming people whose only crime is being stupid. THAT is what you did. Yes, there are other bullies, but if John hits Fred, does that make it okay for Fred to turn around and hit Tim? > Consider the case of Andy Williams: an emotionally disturbed fifteen > year old boy who last year fired a gun at some school mates in > California. Police and prosecutors were very pleased to announce > today to all the news media that they had gotten him *three life > prison sentences* with no chance of parole. I am sure all concerned > went out from court today patting each other on the back for their > good work. I wonder if those prosecutors will get a > promotion. After all, three life sentences for a fifteen year boy > is enough to earn any police officer/prosecutor a big round of > applause by the other public servants. Poor Andy will live in hell > for the rest of his life here on earth, which probably won't be > very long. Joey, if you will *think for a minute* of the vast and > limitless potential the government here in the United States has to > wreak havoc on people's lives you may begin to understand who the > *real bullies* are. Some, including me, would argue that liberals who insist that scum like this be set free, to live in our communities so that they can OFFEND AGAIN, would count as bullies also. I note that in your statement above, you stated that Andy Williams "fired a gun at some school mates". Doesn't really sound all that bad, now does it? But it sure as hell sounds a lot worse if you tell it like it really happened: the kid walked into his school and started Columbining the place. Two of his classmates are DEAD and more than a dozen were injured. THIS KID, EVEN THOUGH HE'S ONLY 15, DESERVES THE CHAIR. He won't get the chair under California law -- instead, he'll get the three life sentences. Oh, the poor misunderstood lad. He's really harmless. Yeah, right. Pat, sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you can't save everybody. Some people are simply beyond redemption. Dennis Miller said this of Timothy McVeigh: "Some anti-death penalty advocates say that McVeigh's execution won't bring closure to the survivors of the bombing. Maybe not, but it will bring closure to McVeigh's eyes, and frankly, that's all I need right now." (Full text of this rant at http://www2.suite224.net/~ressig/Rants/dmvictims.htm) So yeah, the system is "screwing" with Andy Williams. But Pat, the system is doing that on behalf of "the people", and among "the people" are the families of two kids who didn't come home that day, and won't ever come home. Andy Williams deserves what he's going to get. Justice has been served. > What do you care if one of their web sites gets defaced or some > hacker breaks in? I personally would not do it (my deseased brain, > post-aneurysm doesn't leave me smart enough to do that anyway); but > I applaud them for fighting back in probably the only way they can. > PAT] OK, when you say "their", you're obviously talking about the government and any part of "the system" (ie: "public serpents" to use your terminology) that can screw with Americans with impunity. I won't condone this "fighting back" but I won't condemn it either. But Pat, when I originally called you a bully it was because you were advocating this treatment of ANYBODY who was too stupid to secure their websites. Well, Pat ... wouldn't it be funny if somebody found a security hole in the TELECOM Digest website, and decided to "teach you a lesson" and take it down? Yeah, we'd all be laughing our asses off. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Seeing a conspiracy everywhere you look might get you a guest role on The X Files, but it also damages your credibility. Y'see Pat, when you see examples of the government "bullying" some citizen, you get a feeling of indignation, of moral outrage. "HOW DARE THEY?!" you ask. Well, when I see examples of people defending hackers who take down commercial websites, or defending sub-human vermin who think it's cool to walk around school blasting away at classmates, well, I get that very same feeling of indignation and moral outrage. And that's where I get off calling you a "bully". Joey Lindstrom - Laird's Flooring joey@lairdsflooring.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hardly know where to begin a response. As I was editing this issue, my first reaction was to break between your paragraphs and answer each item as you went along. But then I said no, that's not acceptable, editorially or ethically or morally. Let him speak his mind entirely, the same as everyone else. Obviously, we are not going to see eye to eye on this, or many other topics. Here are just a few clarifications to my message which was misunderstood: My use of 'ours' was not intended to steal your property or anyone else's. I was using the term 'ours' to refer to the social culture we have come to regard as 'netizens'. Substitute the word 'netizen' for the word 'our' and see if you agree with that. I regard myself as a 'netizen' or member of a community that is larger than any country with political boundaries. You could be a USA netizen, a German netizen, or a Canadian netizen. We have 'our' rules; 'our' ways of doing things, and to the extent these rules and ways of doing things are not in gross violation of the laws of some political entity called a 'country' I think they should be honored. We netizens have mutually agreed that deep-linking is okay. Someone who does not think it is okay should not be part of 'our' community. I think it is very unfort- unate that outsiders are forever coming into 'our' community and attempting to instruct us. Porn sites hate it when people come in through a side door; any *greedy* web site operator hates it when he cannot collect the admission fee or have all the glory that the front entrance would give him. I do not believe a death penalty sentence is *ever* appropriate for anyone. The government simply makes too many mistakes on things like this and has no incentive to correct the mistakes. They *don't have to correct anything*, they are the government, remember? This comes up time and again also. Last year here in our neighboring state Oklahoma the government had for years employed a woman as a forensic technician to investigate and give evidence in death penalty cases. It turns out that Joyce (one of you Okla guys provide her complete name please) was a total, out and out liar. She said her employer the police had pressured her to make the forensic evidence come out 'favorably' for them. Oklahoma readers will know this case well; it was all over the news for several months, in Tusla and Oklahoma City. She claimed the blood at the scene matched when it didn't. She claimed the semen found at the scene matched. It didn't. How many men were on death row in Oklahoma because of the damnable lies this woman made up at the behest of the police? Did the police apologize even once? No sirree, we're police, we don't have to apologize to anyone for anything. Arogance is the name of their game. We will let them out of prison, grudgingly; we dare not continue to hold them, but to hell with any apologies, or restitution, etc. An unusual example you say? Not at all ... the *Chicago Tribune* ran a series of stories two years ago on prosecutorial misconduct. If the Tribune ran the story, it had to be true! (pause now while everyone gets a good laugh). But the prosecutors *did* admit it was true, and they screamed bloody murder 'that the Tribune screwed up a major case we were working on by running that series.' It turns out the state of Illinois and specifically the city of Chicago had *27* (count 'em) innocent men on death row as a result of prosecutor misconduct in their cases. The Illinois governor put a moratorium on the death penalty and still is trying to settle with the men. How do you think the original innocent victims (the families of the murdered folks, the families of the rape/murder victims), the parents of the innocent children who were abducted/molested felt??? How does it make you feel Joey, knowing that here in the good old USSA (that was not a typo!) many of 'our' fellow citizens won't hesitate to lie, cheat and do whatever they need to to get their pound of blood when their good friends the police have made an arrest? Not every case is a Perry Mason thing, I agree, but when that many false arrests/convictions show up, some of us feel the death penalty may be a little harsh. Most folks, after all, cannot afford *good, competent* legal counsel. They have to settle for the rubber stamp job the public pretender -- oops, I mean public defender -- an employee of the prosecutor's office -- does for them. "Plead guilty, I will cut a deal with the prosecutor to get you two years, but plead innocent and make us work at it, we will demand a life sentence." No Joey, I do not think any kind of death sentence (either a merciful one relatively immediatly by injection [or as you put it, 'the chair'] or a slow, long drawn out one by torture such as 15 year old Andy Williams will get) is *ever* appropriate. Not when you have liars for a police force and two-bit prostitutes working as forensic investigators for the prosectors. The main reason I moved out of Chicago was things there were causing me to vomit too often; putting my stomach in knots. Oh, I do not expect you to agree with me Joey. After all you live in Canada, where there is still (for awhile hopefully) a modicum of civility by police and other government public servants toward the people they serve. If they get a conviction up there, I can assume there is a stong likelyhood the person is *actually guilty* and that punishment will be appropriate to the crime. Three life sentences with no chance of parole is not an appropriate answer for any fifteen year old boy, sorry. And he is not, as you phrased it, 'scum'. He was an emotionally disturbed young man. I know full well the crimes he committed. But therapy, help, forgiveness are not items on the menu of police/prosecutors. Now no one is going to help that kid, and you know it. When police get their jollies on cases like this, as you should know they do here in the USSA, it should make you as sick as it makes me. Somehow I don't think it does. And regards someone finding a hole in TELECOM Digest: well, you just had to add that personal note didn't you? It never fails; conservatives like yourself always have to add that personal note, i.e. 'how would you like it if X, Y or Z happened to you, would you want to see the person get off with (select one) a good talking to, a slap on the wrist, a minor prison sentence, etc. Of course the conservative assumes that your 'liberal' nature will change immediatly. The old saying is, a conservative is someone who used to be a liberal until he got personally offended (beat up, robbed, etc). Well Joey, just FYI, do you take me for a fool? I admit my deseased brain hasn't been much good in the last few years; but I have TD locked up tight. I consider that my obligation to the readers here specifically and the net community in general. If someone finds a way to hack my web site or this Digest, I would feel ashamed of myself. I would not want to see the offender get a lifetime in prison as our resident president is calling for just because *his* web site and the bully pulpits of his cronies got attacked because of their stupidity. I would learn from the lesson and try to fix things so it never happened again. What would YOU say if your computer was hacked into and defaced/ruined? I bet you would try for the death penalty (if Canada has one, I don't know for sure) or at the very least a lifetime of hell behind prison walls wouldn't you? That's the difference between us, Joey. I would never expect us to agree. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 17:18:13 -0400 John David Galt wrote: > All carriers I know of insist that you buy the phone from them. VoiceStream, AFAIK, does not. At least Powertel didn't; when the Handspring VisorPhone first came out (and before Powertel started marketing it), my boss bought one, put his SIM card in and started using it right off, with no difficulty. (Now things might have been different if he had not already had a Powertel phone.) ------------------------------ From: Andrew Kauffman Subject: Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference Organization: AT&T Broadband Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 22:44:55 GMT As a consultant I do many special research projects. Recently I compiled a database with the information you are looking for, I think. Basically, I have the following for the US market: This is a database that includes the following information: CLLI code Switch type (e.g. DMS100, 5ESS) Operating company street address of CO (with Zip code) V & H coordinates. of the CO I found that there were several databases that have some, but not all the information. I had to use several different sources for the info. If you are interested in purchasing this database please contact me. Andrew Kauffman Telecommunications Consulting www.ahk.com Virtual Lab Rat - No Spam Please wrote in message news:telecom20.359.12@telecom-digest.org: > I am looking for a database where I can list the all of the telephone > area code and exchanges in a specific geographic area. Preferably a > zip code to telephone prefix exchange listing. Alternatively a county > or city to telephone prefix exchange listing. ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #361 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 17 13:57:30 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7HHvUG24315; Sat, 17 Aug 2002 13:57:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 13:57:30 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208171757.g7HHvUG24315@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #362 TELECOM Digest Sat, 17 Aug 2002 13:57:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 362 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Not Quite Spy vs. Spy: Ugly Internet Routing Lawsuit (Danny Burstein) Record labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site (Monty Solomon) Re: The Bully Pulpit (John Meissen) Re: Another MCI Complaint (joe@obilivan.net) Re: Another MCI Complaint (Bill Levant) Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits (Dale Farmer) Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits (Dave Phelps) Re: PBX Connection (Dave Phelps) Re: PBX Connection (Albo) Analyzing Sound - Algorithms (Anil Punjabi) Cingular to Allow Customers to Rollover Minutes (Monty Solomon) Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare (Al Gillis) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (David L) Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (Paul Coxwell) Re: Business Directory Update (Steven Lichter) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: danny burstein Subject: Not Quite Spy vs. Spy: Ugly Internet Routing Lawsuit Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 00:12:55 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. [snip] Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as UMG Recordings, a unit of Vivendi Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corp ( news - web sites); The RCA Records Label, a unit of Bertelsmann AG ( news - web sites) BMG; and Warner Brothers Records, a unit of AOL Time Warner . (take note of that last name ...) Defendants in the suit are AT&T Broadband Corp., a unit of AT&T ; Cable & Wireless USA, a unit of Cable & Wireless, Sprint Corp ., Advanced Network Services and UUNET Technologies, a unit of WorldCom. (Take note that AOL is not a defendant. Hmm ... wonder if they're already blocking access...) [ snippety snip ] Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 22:58:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site Record labels sue Internet providers over site - Aug 16, 2002 06:09 PM (Reuters) By Gail Appleson NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site. ... - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28332599 ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@shell1.aracnet.com (John Meissen) Subject: Re: The Bully Pulpit Date: 17 Aug 2002 08:02:48 GMT Organization: Aracnet Internet In article , editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > My use of 'ours' was not intended to steal your property or anyone > else's. I was using the term 'ours' to refer to the social culture we > have come to regard as 'netizens'. Substitute the word 'netizen' for > the word 'our' and see if you agree with that. I regard myself as a > 'netizen' or member of a community that is larger than any country > with political boundaries. You could be a USA netizen, a German > netizen, or a Canadian netizen. We have 'our' rules; 'our' ways of > doing things, and to the extent these rules and ways of doing things > are not in gross violation of the laws of some political entity called > a 'country' I think they should be honored. We netizens have mutually > agreed that deep-linking is okay. Someone who does not think it is > okay should not be part of 'our' community. I think it is very unfort- > unate that outsiders are forever coming into 'our' community and > attempting to instruct us. Porn sites hate it when people come in > through a side door; any *greedy* web site operator hates it when > he cannot collect the admission fee or have all the glory that the > front entrance would give him. Well, Pat, this story leaves me speechless. I really don't know how to respond to this. I think our society is out of control ... http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020816/wr_nm/media_copyright _dc_4 NEW YORK (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The article is worth reading, if for no other reason than to demonstrate just how low we've sunk. john- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, it really is worth reading, which is why I put it first today. Read this carefully: the record companies have **ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS ON THE NET UNLESS THEY WISH TO COMPLY WITH THE CONCEPTS, ETC THAT WE HAVE ESTABLISHED HERE OVER THE YEARS.** 'We' set up our system, don't make any secret of the hows and whys of the net, 'our' community or place where most of 'us' live. But then comes the record companies, big businesses, porn dealers, etc. They look at 'our' system and say "oh no, this will never, never do, we and all our money will corrupt as many judges as necessary, buy off as many politicians as necessary, and damn any of these netizens who try to get in our way. This community belongs to us now. Damn the netizens or anyone who tries to stop us. This is the USA and that sort of corruption is perfectly acceptable here." Then groups like ICANN, who serve as a tool for this sort of corruption come in with their cheering squad. I have said I sit and silently cheer and urge on the hackers who would try and put a stop to much of this nonsense. For this I am known as a 'bully'. But the USA government is cheering also but for the other side. Although I sort of turn a blind eye to hackers, not really giving an iota if whitehouse.gov gets hacked, the government turns a blind eye toward spammers and virus writers/spreaders. I think the government secretly (or not so secretly) hopes that the rest of us -- the everyday users of email and information on the net -- will get so burned out from the commotions that we will abandon it all. Nothing would suit them better than that the community known as 'netizens' would quietly go away so that Acme-mega-universal-corporation could move in and take it over entirely. Do you really think Dubya and his cronies care about the massive amount of spam and viruses going around now? Its helping them in the struggle to regain what they decided to take over, as the rest of us grow disgusted and weary. I wonder why the recording companies did not include all the telcos in their lawsuit? After all, they (telcos) help facilitate the illegal copying of records by establishing the connections don't they? PAT] ------------------------------ From: joe@obilivan.net Subject: Re: Another MCI Complaint Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 11:54:07 GMT Organization: Cox Communications That CompuServe software can sometimes have a "mind" of its own about selecting the number to dial. There is no way that number would be on your phone bill unless that, in fact, it is the number that was dialed. An isolated number or two can be a billing error, but not a whole bunch of them. Patrick Townson wrote: > Here is a complaint received at the Digest from Connie Masson, a > resident of San Jose, CA who wrote about 'a little mixup at MCI > long distance.' > From: Connie Masson [cmasson@oneworkplace.com] > I telecommute 2 days/week and also work online at least 2 hours every > night. Suddenly in April my MCI bill skyrocketed to $300+ and I > finally traced it to a long distance number they said I was using to > access Compuserve. > I live in San Jose, Ca and there are many local phone numbers > available to access my provider. I've been online for years and have > always watched the dial up process compulsively to make sure it's > using the appropriate number. I would never use a long distance > number!! That's just plain stupid!! > How can this happen, from a technical perspective?? The number on my > screen shows the local San Jose and the bill is for a long distance > Compuserve access number. Any ideas?? > When I called MCI they told me they couldn't help me in any way. They > "don't have a clue how it's happening" but they want their > money. Meanwhile each month the bill was sky high even though I > repeatedly confirmed my dial up numbers were local San Jose. > I finally cancelled my MCI account but still have an outstanding > balance of $300+ and also want a refund of the $900+ I paid from April > to June. This has been a nightmare and I don't know whom I should > contact. > Can you please help?? > Connie Masson > Cmasson99@cs.com ------------------------------ From: Wlevant@aol.com Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 10:36:37 EDT Subject: Re :Another MCI Complaint This probably *isn't* MCI's fault. I had the same thing happen to me about two years ago, when AOL added some local numbers. One of them was in a new CLEC prefix, local to me (same wire center, in fact) yet about $130.00 in calls to it turned up on my MCI bill. Turns out Verizon hadn't entered the new prefix into the translation table in my local switch, and (sensibly enough) anything that isn't marked "local" in the translation table is handed off to the IXC, which happily completes the call and bills accordingly, since THEY don't know it was supposed to be a local call. I called VZ, spoke to someone there, and got a call back the next day saying I was right. They simply gave me $130.00 in credit on my local bills, since MCI, having been handed the calls, was entitled to complete them and bill them. Call your local phone company and tell them their "translation" for the particular prefix in question is wrong. I doubt they'll let you speak with a technician (who could fix it in about three seconds) but you might need to ask for a supervisor. Bill ------------------------------ From: Dale Farmer Subject: Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 11:05:44 -0400 Organization: The new clue zoo Bryce Davis wrote: > I'd like to know if anyone has ever experienced 'bouncing' circuits. > We have a Wide Area Network which connects approximately 300 remote > locations to our headquarters. We have a FRAME Relay network - > circuit speed is 128k at the remote site, with 16k CIR. Each circuit > comes into one of five T-1s at our headquarters (soon to be 12 muxed > T-1s). > What we're seeing is a whole lot of lost connectivity. We'll lose > connectivity for a minute or two, then a circuit will come back up. > It's random, impacting 5-10 sites per day, but it seems to not impact > the same site day after day. > We see this in our router traplogs. One funny thing is the circuits > drop for 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc. - but almost always in 60 second > increments (e.g., it will drop at 07:47:23 and come back up at > 07:49:23). > Our Carrier (a large carrier you would all recognize, but who can > remain unnamed for now) didn't see this at first. They said it didn't > exist, until we sent them our traplogs. Then, when they looked at > their switch, lo and behold, they saw the problem too. > They claim none of their other customers have this problem, but that's > what they said about us as well. It could be that none of their other > customers are watching their traplogs. > We use Cisco 2610 routers in our remote locations and we have a Cisco > 7204 and a Cisco 3604 in our headquarters. We built our router > configurations with Cisco's assistance. The carrier recently reviewed > and signed off on the configurations, as part of their trouble-shooting > procedure. To date - they haven't been able to identify a single > cause, but they're adamant the problem is not within their network. > Our enterprise currently uses our WAN for file-transfers, a little > email, and a little Internet usage. Soon we're going to a real time > application, and a 60-second outage will be noticed at our remote > location right away. > Has anyone seen anything like this before. Do you monitor your > traplogs? > I'd appreciate any feedback I can get. > Thanks, > Bryce You need to get at the telco side error logs to see what error codes are being spewed. What you can do is make spreadsheets of the outages to look for patterns. Are they affecting the T-1s at HQ or the individual circuits at the far ends? Times of day, days of week? Load dependent? At the affected buildings: Check the UPS units serving the the routers and the CSU/DSUs. Ensure that everything is actually plugged into the UPS, not the regular wall plug. That the UPS is not overloaded so that if you get a power hit the UPS cannot support the load and instantly drops offline. Check the wiring in the affected buildings of the circuits. Pay particular attention to the patch panels that are in the wiring closets, and the crap leaning against the punch down blocks that may be shorting out pairs if the wiring closets are also being used by the cleaning crews. --Dale ------------------------------ From: Dave Phelps Subject: Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 23:17:34 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com What is indicating the problem? Are the interfaces actually going down, or is the routing protocol detecting the failure? In article , commpdx@hotmail.com says: > I'd like to know if anyone has ever experienced 'bouncing' circuits. > We have a Wide Area Network which connects approximately 300 remote > locations to our headquarters. We have a FRAME Relay network - > circuit speed is 128k at the remote site, with 16k CIR. Each circuit > comes into one of five T-1s at our headquarters (soon to be 12 muxed > T-1s). -- Dave Phelps Phone Masters Ltd. deadspam=tippenring ------------------------------ From: Dave Phelps Subject: Re: PBX Connection Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 23:15:33 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com First choice, PRI. Second choice, E&M. You may try www.cisco.com for sample configs. They should have quite a few. You could also try comp.dcom.sys.cisco. In article , willpski@hotmail.com says: > Hello. I am looking at implementing a Voice over Frame solution using > Cisco routers to connect two of our branch offices. I am having some > trouble understanding how the Router will connect with the PBX. The > PBX that we have currently is an Avaya Definity Version G3V3i. From > what I understand I would use an RJ-48 cable to physical connect the > two and I would configure the Cisco router to emulate a T-1 connection > What signaling type should I use CAS, E&M etc. Also if anyone has any > experience with this type of configuration your input would be > appreciated. -- Dave Phelps Phone Masters Ltd. deadspam=tippenring ------------------------------ From: Albo Subject: Re: PBX Connection Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 15:08:27 +0200 Organization: Planet Internet Hi, I don't know for US (I 'm from Europe), but here we connected the router via a E1 connection (in US: T1) and configured it as an ISDN PRA connection. This was very simple to do, (as it is a well used standard here) (we connected Siemens Hicom and Ericsson MD110 switches) CAS, E/M etc.. are old standards, try to configure it as ISDN PRA T1 connection. Albo WIll wrote in message news:telecom20.361.11@telecom-digest.org: > Hello. I am looking at implementing a Voice over Frame solution using > Cisco routers to connect two of our branch offices. I am having some > trouble understanding how the Router will connect with the PBX. The > PBX that we have currently is an Avaya Definity Version G3V3i. From > what I understand I would use an RJ-48 cable to physical connect the > two and I would configure the Cisco router to emulate a T-1 connection > What signaling type should I use CAS, E&M etc. Also if anyone has any > experience with this type of configuration your input would be > appreciated. ------------------------------ From: anilo@hotmail.com (Anil Punjabi) Subject: Analyzing Sound - Algorithms Date: 16 Aug 2002 19:37:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Does anyone know of existing algorithms for analyzing sound(analog or digital)? Given a sound sample I would like to differentiate between loud, slow, soft, music, changes in loudness, etc. and if possible break them into smaller sound samples. Any pointers to other reading materials would also help. Thanks, Anil Punjabi ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 22:56:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular to Allow Customers to Rollover Minutes Cingular to allow customers to rollover minutes - Aug 16, 2002 05:03 PM (Reuters) ATLANTA, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Cingular Wireless, the second-largest U.S. wireless telephone company, on Friday said customers on their local service plans will be able to carry over unused minutes into the next month starting on Sunday. Cingular said it will be the first company to launch this kind of feature nationwide. Cingular's predecessor, BellSouth Mobility, had introduced a similar rollover feature in nine states in 2000. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28331563 ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Unsolicited Fax Nightmare Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 20:07:33 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Surely you must be joking! The Federal Government actually DO something? jaarons wrote in message news:telecom20.359.14@telecom-digest.org: > fax.com junk faxes > I get hundreds of un-solicited faxes every day to our Phone System > from fax.com. It ties up ports, and wastes resources. If you call the > 1-800 number on the bottom of the fax you get a fast busy. I've send > several TCPA notices to the FCC, maybe they can help stop fax.com http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020807/ap_on_hi_te/junk_ faxes_fine_4 > www.junkfaxes.com ------------------------------ From: davidlind@my-deja.com (David L) Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: 17 Aug 2002 02:37:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Mcgeorgia@yahoo.com (Lisa) wrote in message news:: > I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with > has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without > having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a > phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. > I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. I've bought a bunch of phones on Ebay for use on Verizon. Both new and used. Ebay sellers are not created equally and used stuff is always a gamble, so a little research and prudence is advised. Verizon (in most locations) allows a customer to do an "ESN Swap" with a compatible handset over the phone. Customer Service needs the Electronic Serial Number and they will lead you through a short programming process. It's usually free. GSM carriers can be even easier. Just pop your SIM in an unlocked handset. Other providers allow activation of compatible handsets, usually only those that were originally sold and programmed for use on their specific network. Activation fees may vary, and policies may change, even from one CS rep to another, especially from phone CS to a _company_ store rep. That kiosk at the mall is not a Company store, they are independant agents. Some smaller regional carriers may be reluctant to activate any outside purchased compatible phone, for IMO, what seem to be economic reasons only. David DavidNOLindiSpam(at)hotmail(dot)com ------------------------------ From: PaulCoxwell@aol.com Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 07:29:01 EDT Subject: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong U.S. telephone jacks: 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? 2. Somewhat harder, but does anyone know of a source for the jacks and plugs? I believe they are still standard in some parts of the Middle East, so I assume they are still being made somewhere. Many thanks. Paul Coxwell Eccles On Sea, Norfolk, U.K. ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Date: 17 Aug 2002 06:20:34 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Business Directory Update > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AOL is another bunch which provides > spammers with their customer list. I installed a new AOL screen name > one day, and *within minutes* spam had arrived for that name. So why > are you surprised that Sprint does it also? PAT] I thought that about AOL, but now know that is you have an easy screen name, like mine, in a matter of minutes after you set it up you will have spam. There are spammers who use software that just uses common names. This posting address never gets e-mail unless they are on my list. Found out that some spammers use your e-mail address as the 'from' since some users use their own user name to get mail. I took that out and now no spam. I have an e-mail address here on AOL that never get junk since it is a user name that is numbers letters and such that it would take years of the generators to get to. I have Sprint for both LD and Cell phone, and have yet to get any mail to their address I use other then my notice to let me know I have a bill. I'm no lover of Sprint; I'm sure many of you remember PC Pursuit and how they had us users build and test the network only to have them take it away for use with businesses. Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE, support for the Apple II 24 hours 2400/14.4. An OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one!!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) Kill Spammers, Inc. A Hope You Roast In Hell Company. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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End of TELECOM Digest V20 #362 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 19 01:39:56 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7J5duT04856; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 01:39:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 01:39:56 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208190539.g7J5duT04856@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #363 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Aug 2002 00:30:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 363 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site (Jeff Hecht) Re: Another MCI Complaint (Ed Ellers) In Search of 900 Number Provider With Good Rates (Tom Williams) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (Ed Ellers) Re: The Bully Pulpit (Ed Ellers) Allegiance Telecom Problems (Larry Kooper) Extending the Range of a Cell Phone (Marcus Didius Falco) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (Reed) Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits (Jay Hennigan) Yellow Pages Frequency and Rates? (Kit) Re: PBX Connection (WIll) White Paper - Video Over DSL (via broadbandbananas.com) (Lesley Davidow) News Headlines of Interest 8/18/02 (Monty Solomon) Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference (Clarence Dold) Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? (Reed Blake) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 14:15:22 -0400 From: Jeff Hecht Subject: Re: Record labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site Pat - FYI, I tried going to the Listen4ever.com web site and got an error message "No web site is configured at this address". The site is cached at Google, so it's possible to see some of what was up. Interestingly, they seem to have ads from DoubleClick (mentioned in their privacy policy which is cached on Google). Why didn't the record labels try suing DoubleClick? Jeff Hecht, science & technology writer jeff@jeffhecht.com; http://www.jeffhecht.com Boston Correspondent: New Scientist magazine Contributing Editor: Laser Focus World, WDM Solutions 525 Auburn St., Auburndale, MA 02466 USA v. 617-965-3834; fax 617-332-4760 ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Another MCI Complaint Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 16:29:43 -0400 wrote: > I had the same thing happen to me about two years ago, when AOL > added some local numbers. One of them was in a new CLEC prefix, > local to me (same wire center, in fact) yet about $130.00 in calls > to it turned up on my MCI bill. > Turns out Verizon hadn't entered the new prefix into the translation > table in my local switch, and (sensibly enough) anything that isn't > marked "local" in the translation table is handed off to the IXC, > which happily completes the call and bills accordingly, since THEY > don't know it was supposed to be a local call. Yet another argument for toll alerting. If that were in place you would have gotten the "You must dial a 1 or 0 ..." recording when you tried to call this new number ... and the telco would have been deluged with trouble calls. wrote: > That CompuServe software can sometimes have a "mind" of its own about > selecting the number to dial. Actually it's that AOL software, since CompuServe (which is owned by AOL) simply uses a modified version of the AOL client, and this section is identical for both. In the phone number setup area there is a provision for selecting which phone numbers to use in which order, and this also allows you to delete numbers that are not local to you. ------------------------------ From: dejausenet@yahoo.com (tom williams) Subject: In Search of 900 Number Provider With Good Rates Date: 17 Aug 2002 13:43:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Looking for 900 service that is reasonable in rates, and is legitimate. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 16:53:04 -0400 wrote: > A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong > U.S. telephone jacks: > 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? Dunno, but if you manage to find some of the jacks they should be marked as to which wire goes where. The two pins with wider spacing (usually at the top) are the first pair. ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: The Bully Pulpit Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 16:57:34 -0400 PAT, the TELECOM Digest Editor, noted: > I wonder why the recording companies did not include all the telcos > in their lawsuit? After all, they (telcos) help facilitate the > illegal copying of records by establishing the connections don't > they? Because, as common carriers, they have immunity from copyright liability in such cases. ISPs don't. ------------------------------ From: lkooper@yahoo.com (Larry Kooper) Subject: Allegiance Telecom Problems Date: 17 Aug 2002 14:02:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ My workplace uses Allegiance Telecom as its ISP -- they also are the DNS authority for our web site. Over the past several weeks service has been particularly bad, with several interruptions of ISP service and DNS problems during business hours. Anyone else experiencing something similar? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 22:37:32 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Extending the Range of a Cell Phone Problems of extending the range of cell phones, particularly the modern hand-held versions, are a common problem, often mentioned on this list. The following is slightly edited from a friend who lives in a very rural part of Indiana, an hour or an hour and a half west of Indianapolis. The following suggestion may be of use to others with that problem. * Original: FROM..... Kent What is the average range of the typical cell phone? The average cell tower? I know the true range would depend on a zillion variables, but let's assume flat, open land. I really don't know the answer to this one. Different cellular phones seem to exhibit a wide variety of signal strengths. For what it's worth, I went to a local CB shop and bought a Wilson Cellular Trucker antenna and put the damn thing on the peak of my house. Had to buy a little extra coax and ran it into our home office. The pigtail plugs into my wife's cell phone and we went from 0-25% signal (one little bar, or sometimes no bar at all) to at least 75% signal (three indicator bars) at all times. This lets us use the phone with dependability and clarity. The antenna itself was $54, the coax was around $18, the pigtail adaptor was $12 or so. Different phones require different adaptors. We were happy enough with it that I bought a slightly smaller Wilson Cellular Trucker and put it on my wife's car. No more dead spots on her way home from work now. In an emergency, she can call from anywhere on her commute. Whatever happened to all that business about satellite phones for the average consumer? There was a lot of press about it for a while, then it seened to die out. Did the cost of lofting comats overwhelm the companies or what? Even satellite phones would have their limitations, although they'd be a helluva lot more dependable than current cell phones. There are places in this old world where GPS systems don't work and my guess is satphones would have trouble too. I can't keep a GPS lock in some of the deep rocky valleys that run through this part of the state. I've even had trouble using GPS in dense forest with heavy canopy cover. (No cheap unit either -- this was with a Magellan 2000.) Go ahead. Call me a hick or a luddite. But CB radios and plain old compasses serve me better than these gizmos 95% of the time. Kent, often wandering around lost Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below: falco_marcus_didius yahoo.co.uk ------------------------------ From: Reed Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 22:10:38 -0600 Organization: None Whatsoever A possible source in the USA is at http://www.winstonele.com/04-%20Wall%20Plates%20&%20Adapters.htm Re pin out, looking at the Plug from the back, Gn----Red Bl--Yel Jack from back is opposite, Red----Green Yel--Black reed PaulCoxwell@aol.com wrote: > A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong > U.S. telephone jacks: > 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? > 2. Somewhat harder, but does anyone know of a source for the jacks > and plugs? I believe they are still standard in some parts of the > Middle East, so I assume they are still being made somewhere. > Many thanks. > Paul Coxwell > Eccles On Sea, Norfolk, U.K. ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Subject: Re: Bouncing FRAME Relay Circuits Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 05:25:35 GMT On 16 Aug 2002 08:53:17 -0700, Bryce Davis wrote: > I'd like to know if anyone has ever experienced 'bouncing' circuits. > We have a Wide Area Network which connects approximately 300 remote > locations to our headquarters. We have a FRAME Relay network - > circuit speed is 128k at the remote site, with 16k CIR. Each circuit > comes into one of five T-1s at our headquarters (soon to be 12 muxed > T-1s). Consider a T-3, probably cheaper at that scale. > What we're seeing is a whole lot of lost connectivity. We'll lose > connectivity for a minute or two, then a circuit will come back up. > It's random, impacting 5-10 sites per day, but it seems to not impact > the same site day after day. > We see this in our router traplogs. One funny thing is the circuits > drop for 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc. - but almost always in 60 second > increments (e.g., it will drop at 07:47:23 and come back up at > 07:49:23). This indicates a problem within the frame cloud itself. Frame-relay uses a method of identifying PVCs called generically "LMI", of which there are variants such as ANSI and Cisco/Consortium. One common standard is that LMI sends a "keepalive" message every ten seconds. Every sixth such message is a "Full status" message which tells the end router (UNI) the status of all PVCs as seen by the switch. If a circuit id reported as inactive (configured in the cloud but remote UNI is down) or deleted (not configured on that circuit) the change in state will be shown by the end equipment only on a full status update, every sixty seconds. On a Cisco, either will show as a "down" subinterface. As this only affects certain random PVCs, it would tend to rule out the local loops and switch endpoitns and point to trouble within the frame cloud. If a local loop were to fail, the loss of LMI would cause all of the PVCs on that interface to bounce in unison. > Our Carrier (a large carrier you would all recognize, but who can > remain unnamed for now) didn't see this at first. They said it didn't > exist, until we sent them our traplogs. Then, when they looked at > their switch, lo and behold, they saw the problem too. > They claim none of their other customers have this problem, but that's > what they said about us as well. It could be that none of their other > customers are watching their traplogs. Sounds like telco-speak. If your routers aren't too heavily loaded, turn on "debug frame-relay lmi" sync your logs to NTP, and capture data from the debugs on a couple of endpoints. If you see certain PVCs status changing on both ends at the same time with the rest stable, that pretty much proves it into the frame cloud. Other useful commands are "show frame-relay lmi" for overall link health to your closest frame switch, and "show frame-relay pvc" for status of each PVC and last time it changed. > We use Cisco 2610 routers in our remote locations and we have a Cisco > 7204 and a Cisco 3604 in our headquarters. We built our router > configurations with Cisco's assistance. The carrier recently reviewed > and signed off on the configurations, as part of their trouble-shooting > procedure. To date - they haven't been able to identify a single > cause, but they're adamant the problem is not within their network. And they don't have any accounting or billing problems either, right? Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay@west.net NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323 ------------------------------ From: adrook@yahoo.com (Kit) Subject: Yellow Pages Frequency and Rates? Date: 17 Aug 2002 23:18:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ How often are yellow pages usually published (Southwestern Bell, Great Western Directories, et cetera)? Also, what do the rates run for a single line, regular listing? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most of them are published annually. Ours comes out in May each year. If you have a business rate telephone then in the case of Southwestern Bell at least, you get a single line in 'regular style' print for free in any one category. PAT] ------------------------------ From: willpski@hotmail.com (WIll) Subject: Re: PBX Connection Date: 18 Aug 2002 08:43:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ What would be the disadvantage to using the old standards. One of the PBX's is an Old definify that is unable to take a PRI w/o a major upgrade. THe pbx on the other side is a new Merlin Magix and configuring the line as an ISDN PRI would work great. Thanks! Will Albo wrote in message news:: > I don't know for US (I 'm from Europe), but here we connected the > router via a E1 connection (in US: T1) and configured it as an ISDN > PRA connection. This was very simple to do, (as it is a well used > standard here) (we connected Siemens Hicom and Ericsson MD110 > switches) CAS, E/M etc ... are old standards, try to configure it as > ISDN PRA T1 connection. > Albo WIll wrote in message > news:telecom20.361.11@telecom-digest.org: > I am looking at > implementing a Voice over Frame solution using Cisco routers to > connect two of our branch offices. I am having some trouble > understanding how the Router will connect with the PBX. The PBX > that we have currently is an Avaya Definity Version G3V3i. From > what I understand I would use an RJ-48 cable to physical connect the > two and I would configure the Cisco router to emulate a T-1 > connection. What signaling type should I use CAS, E&M etc. Also if > anyone has any experience with this type of configuration your > input would be appreciated. ------------------------------ From: Lesley Davidow Subject: White Paper - Video Over DSL (via broadbandbananas.com) Organization: Giganews.Com - Premium News Outsourcing Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 20:57:51 GMT The link below is about the best doc I've seen that in as plain a language as it can be done in, explains the business model of how DSL can overtake the competition of satellite and cable TV, plus niche single service competitors such as fixed wireless broadband (high speed internet access to large areas using satellites and foot high antennas), alternative local/long distance phone service, etc. to provide to residences over simple DSL: quality of service unparalled reliability scalability always on connection dedicated and private connection (consistent speed and hacker resistant) 'any distance" phone service natively compatible with IP (internet protocols) interoperability using worldwide standards future proofing for providing telephone, broadband internet services, plus TV (to either or both a TV set or PC) including interactive TV (see www.broadbandbananas.com for examples in place now around the world of ITV),and video on demand. And with use of advanced TV desktop boxes, can also provide an integrated personal video recorder (what TiVo is). A key teleco advantage is their phone system is already in place, extremely reliable, and has always been a two way system (vs the one way native nature of satellite and cable TV which was built on architecture to deliver the signal downward only). All this can be aided by new wireless technology (already existing or just starting to be deployed) to provide broad home networking as well so multiple devices such as TVs, phones, PCs can be networked into one big mesh of devices, all connected ultimately to your DSL line using wireless Ethernet. Staggering convergence really. One thing left out is mobile phone service which telecos are deeply involved in already, albeit using different methods. All this over dedicated copper wires everyone with old fashioned phone lines now have. Since DSL speeds are dependent on how close the home is to the teleco DSL connection, the major capital expenditure is to extend DSL availability where necessary. But after reading this article, I can't see how telecos can find the expenditure unworthwhile if they are willing to pursue "the whole enchilada" as described in this white paper. I used to think cable TV was going to win the war, but now I think the telecos are or could if they'd invest now before their profits get even slimmer. FYI and comments, Lesley http://www.broadbandbananas.com/videodsl.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 20:42:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Headlines of Interest 8/18/02 Hush-Hush Hooray, Says NYC By Elisa Batista 2:00 a.m. Aug. 17, 2002 PDT As much as New Yorkers love to talk, they appear to be inclined to support legislation that prohibits people from using their cell phones in public. In what would be the first such ban in any U.S. city, New York City Councilman Philip Reed recently proposed legislation that prohibits the use of mobile phones in "places of public performance," such as movie theaters, art galleries and libraries. The bill makes an exception for emergency phone calls, but punishes people who infringe on the law with a $50 fine. Reed's bill is gaining momentum and has a good chance of passing. ... http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,54608,00.html A Star Analyst Exits Loudly. Others Hide Backstage. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON JACK B. GRUBMAN, the former star telecommunications analyst who resigned on Thursday from Salomon Smith Barney, wants your sympathy. Sure, he made $20 million a year urging investors to buy untested telecom stocks even as they nose-dived. And yes, he is walking away with almost $32 million in cash and stock even after most of the companies he followed are in tatters. Still, Mr. Grubman wants you to know that he, too, is a victim. If investors need any more evidence that many folks in high places on Wall Street still don't get it and may never, they need read no further than Mr. Grubman's resignation letter. It contains just one parenthetical reference to his woeful record in stockpicking, which was his job to get right, not wrong. The rest of the letter was a whinefest worthy of a 6-year-old. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/18/business/yourmoney/18WATC.html OPINION Guarding online patrons' privacy will build trust By Arvind Krishna, 8/18/2002 Generally, that well-practiced tango between anonymity and disclosure goes on smoothly in the real world. But in the virtual world, it can sometimes have scary consequences, including the loss of your privacy and identity. If you are shopping in the real world, you aren't carrying a sign with your address on it. But in the virtual world, even if you're just window shopping, more and more Web sites require that you register or accept a ''cookie'' so they can track your Internet travels. The end result is that consumers are wary of the Web. They know a Social Security number entered online could wind up in an identity thief's hands. They know a phone number or e-mail address given for ''questions about your order'' could quickly turn into dinnertime sales pitches or junk e-mails flooding their in-boxes. And they want it to stop. And so the next time consumers go to a Web site and are asked to fill in their name, address, age, and income levels, they give a bogus identity to avoid being tracked - such as Albert Einstein with an income of $5 and an e-mail address of e=mc2. What are consumers really saying when they do that? They're saying they don't trust the security of the site, and they don't trust that the owner of the site is going to respect their privacy and not abuse or sell their personal data. ------------------------------ From: dold@98.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Zip Code to NPX-NXX Exchange Cross Reference Date: 19 Aug 2002 02:39:34 GMT Organization: Wintercreek Data Andrew Kauffman wrote: > I found that there were several databases that have some, but not all > the information. I had to use several different sources for the info. All of that data is available for purchase from trainfo.com The problem with Switch Zip Codes is that calling areas are not aligned on Zip Code Boundaries, City Boundaries, or any other particular info that can be had from anyone (that I know of) other than Mapinfo. And they charge an annoyingly high amount for the data thtat they provide. Add to that the CLECs, whose switches are located in one place, with POPs in different cities, and the Zip Codes are worthless. Where does 360-960 reside? I don't think you can tell strictly from any information other than the 911 database. And in this case, I don't think it is right. Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA. ------------------------------ From: Reed Blake Subject: Re: Can You Buy a Wireless Phone Without Buying a New Plan? Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 22:15:30 -0500 Organization: Global Network Services - Remote Access Mail & News Services Lisa wrote in message: > I have a current wireless phone plan. The phone they supplied me with > has died, and I was wondering if you can buy a wireless phone without > having to buy any new plan. My current provider wants to sell me a > phone to replace the old one, but I'd like to shop around for a phone. > I can't seem to find any that don't require signing up with a plan. I use AT&T wireless. When my phone started having problems, I purchased another AT&T phone from a pawn shop. If you do this, provide your carrier with the phone's ESN before buying it. This lets you be sure that the phone is not stolen, and can be activated. Also, make sure that you know any security or lock codes, or can get these codes reset. I was able to find the reset instructions for my phone on line. Regards, Reed ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Fax 3: 530-309-7234 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #363 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 19 13:25:46 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7JHPkt09523; Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:25:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:25:46 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208191725.g7JHPkt09523@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #364 TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:25:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 364 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #345, August 19, 2002 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site (Internet Observer) White Paper - Video Over DSL (via broadbandbananas.com) (Lesley Davidow) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (David L) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (Scott Dorsey) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Alan Burkitt-Gray) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 10:11:23 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #345, August 19, 2002 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 345: August 19, 2002 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AT&T CANADA http://www.attcanada.com ** BELL CANADA http://www.bell.ca ** GROUP TELECOM http://www.gt.ca ** LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES CANADA http://www.lucent.ca ** PRIMUS CANADA: http://www.primustel.ca ** Q9 NETWORKS: http://www.Q9.com ** TELUS: http://www.telus.com ** UNISPHERE NETWORKS: http://www.unispherenetworks.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** AT&T Canada Writes Down Assets ** MTS Gets TV Distribution Licence ** Telus Mobility Expands in Atlantic Canada ** CATA Petition Calls for Broadband for All ** Rogers Goes to Court in Airport Dispute ** Agere Exits Fibre Optics, Lays Off 4,000 ** AT&T and Edmonton Dispute Municipal Access ** Bell Enters Telus-Quebec Territory ** Rogers' Internet Ads Broke Broadcast Rules ** CRTC Puts Aliant College Deal on Hold ** CRTC Denies Special DNA Tariff ** Bell Service Charge Waiver Upheld ** Persona Buys Sudbury ISP ** Avaya Reorganizes Business Groups ** Financial Reports AirIQ Look Minacs TIW ** The IP-PBX Revolution ============================================================ AT&T CANADA WRITES DOWN ASSETS: AT&T Canada has written off $2.7 billion in assets, including $1.5 billion in goodwill. AT&T's second-quarter revenue of $385 million was 2.6% higher than last year. Operating income of $50.5 million was double the same quarter last year. Net loss: $1.35 billion. MTS GETS TV DISTRIBUTION LICENCE: The CRTC has granted MTS Communications a licence to offer cable TV service in Winnipeg and surrounding areas. MTS, which is currently conducting a 200-home trial, intends to broadcast TV over DSL. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/db2002-235.htm TELUS MOBILITY EXPANDS IN ATLANTIC CANADA: Telus Mobility, whose digital coverage in Atlantic Canada has been limited to Halifax, says a roaming agreement with Aliant now extends digital service across the four provinces. Telus is opening four new wireless retail stores in the region and will add 20 dealers by year-end. CATA PETITION CALLS FOR BROADBAND FOR ALL: The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance has posted an electronic petition calling on the federal government to act on the National Broadband Task Force recommendations and make broadband services available to all Canadians by 2004. (See Telecom Update #313) http://www.cata.ca/ecanada/policy/policyplank.cfm ROGERS GOES TO COURT IN AIRPORT DISPUTE: Rogers Wireless has asked the Ontario Superior Court to force the Greater Toronto Airport Authority to allow Rogers to upgrade cellular equipment in the Sheraton hotel at Pearson airport. The hotel has agreed, but the airport owns the land. (See Telecom Update #340) AGERE EXITS FIBRE OPTICS, LAYS OFF 4,000: Agere Systems, a telecom components maker spun off by Lucent in 2001, plans to eliminate 4,000 jobs, about a third of its work force, and exit the optical components business. Agere says total world fibre optics components sales this year will be only a third the level in 2000. (See Telecom Update #277) AT&T AND EDMONTON DISPUTE MUNICIPAL ACCESS: AT&T Canada wants to install an under-street conduit to serve a large Edmonton customer who needs service by September 12, but says the City has demanded terms that contravene CRTC rules. Responding to an application by AT&T, the CRTC has ordered both parties to file arguments this week. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2002/8690/a4-05.htm BELL ENTERS TELUS-QUEBEC TERRITORY: Bell Canada has signed dealership agreements with nine companies in Eastern Quebec -- its first in Telus-Quebec (formerly QuebecTel) territory. Bell has also opened six retail stores in the region. ROGERS' INTERNET ADS BROKE BROADCAST RULES: The CRTC says that messages broadcast on Rogers' community cable channel earlier this year to assist customers in switching from @Home to @Rogers service violated the company's broadcasting licence. The messages did not qualify as public service announcements, since they actively promoted Rogers' commercial Internet service. Rogers must now file quarterly compliance reports for three years. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2002/pb2002-44.htm CRTC PUTS ALIANT COLLEGE DEAL ON HOLD: In response to a complaint by EastLink, the CRTC has told Aliant that it must obtain tariff approval before providing the Nova Scotia Agricultural College with a bundled local phone, TV, and high-speed Internet service for students. EastLink says that Aliant's $45 price would not pass an imputation test. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2002/dt2002-48.htm CRTC DENIES SPECIAL DNA TARIFF: The CRTC says Telus has been violating the Telecom Act for the past year by providing "large capacity digital network access" to a Telus affiliate after the applicable customer-specific tariffs had expired. Telus applied for a new special facilities tariff last December, but the CRTC has turned it down, saying the service should be in the general tariff. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2002/o2002-334.htm BELL SERVICE CHARGE WAIVER UPHELD: The CRTC has turned down a request by Bell Canada to stop waiving service charges to re- establish service at a customer's premises when the service interruption is caused by damage beyond the customer's control. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2002/o2002-338.htm PERSONA BUYS SUDBURY ISP: Persona Communications, a St. John's-based cableco, is buying Cyberbeach-Isys, an Internet service provider with 8,000 customers in the Sudbury area. AVAYA REORGANIZES BUSINESS GROUPS: Avaya is merging its Converged Systems and Applications units into a single business group, headed by Mike Thurk. Products for small and mid-sized business will be handled by a separate unit, led by Dave Johnson. ** Steve Markham, head of the current Applications unit, is leaving Avaya. FINANCIAL REPORTS: The following results are for the second quarter: ** AirIQ, a Pickering, Ontario-based supplier of fleet tracking systems, had revenue of $1.36 million, 122% higher than a year ago and 16% higher than the previous quarter. At mid-year, AirIQ had 18,270 installed tracking units. Net loss: $3.7 million. ** Look Communications revenue of $15.1 million was down 3% from the previous quarter and 23% from a year ago. EBITDA was $433,000, compared to negative EBITDA of $1.8 million for the same period last year. Net loss: $1.4 million. ** Minacs Worldwide's revenue of $62 million was more than double last year's and about equal to the previous quarter's. Net income was $350,000, down from $1.2 million in January-March. Minacs says its 2002 profits will be one-half to two-thirds of previous forecasts. ** Telesystem International Wireless revenue of $156 million was 34% higher than a year ago; it has 3.5 million subscribers in Romania and the Czech republic. A $130 million loss on discontinued Brazilian operations resulted in a net loss of $90 million. TIW reported cash reserves of $94 million and warned again of a coming cash crunch. THE IP-PBX REVOLUTION: While supplies last, "The IP PBX Revolution," an anthology of Telemanagement feature articles, will be included with every introductory subscription to Telemanagement. The 15 reports present: ** Case studies from early adopters. ** Reports and evaluations of next-gen phone systems. ** Debates on where (and whether) the new systems make sense. ** Guidelines on preparing your data networks for voice. Download full information at: http://www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm-IP_PBX_Bonus.pdf PDF File: 208 KB. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at http://www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: TelecomUpdate@add.postmastergeneral.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: TelecomUpdate@remove.postmastergeneral.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2002 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: baboulas@subdimension.com (Internet Observer) Subject: Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site Date: 18 Aug 2002 21:11:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Has Listen4Ever.com ceased operation? The site that seems to be up is http://www.Listen4Ever.net Anyone know the latest? Thank you! > NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies > sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging > their routing systems allow users to access the China-based > Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. > The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, > seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet > communications that travel through their systems to and from the > Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to > determine who owns the Web site. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28332599 Listen4Ever.com seems to be back up in some form of site, not what the article describes though. The site that was up earlier (while the .com was down, or blocked?) was http://www.Listen4Ever.net Thank you ! danny burstein wrote in message news:... > [snip] > (Take note that AOL is not a defendant. Hmm ... wonder if they're already > blocking access...) > [ snippety snip ] ------------------------------ From: Lesley Davidow Subject: White Paper - Video Over DSL (via broadbandbananas.com) Organization: Giganews.Com - Premium News Outsourcing Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:05:24 GMT I'm going to try editing my own post below which somehow got mangled between my writing it and how it looks after posting: Lesley Davidow wrote in message news:telecom20.363.12@telecom-digest.org: > The link below is about the best doc I've seen that in as plain a > language as it can be done in, explains the business model of how DSL > can overtake the competition of satellite and cable TV, plus niche > single service competitors such as fixed wireless broadband (high > speed internet access to large areas using satellites and foot high > antennas), alternative local/long distance phone service, etc. to > provide to residences over simple DSL: #quality of service #unparalled reliability #scalability #always on connection #dedicated and private connection (consistent speed and hacker resistant) #"any distance" phone service #natively compatible with IP (internet protocols) #interoperability using worldwide standards #future proofing for > providing telephone, broadband internet services, plus TV (to either > or both a TV set or PC) including interactive TV (see > www.broadbandbananas.com for examples in place now around the world of > ITV),and video on demand. And with use of advanced TV desktop boxes, > can also provide an integrated personal video recorder (what TiVo > is). A key teleco advantage is their phone system is already in place, > extremely reliable, and has always been a two way system (vs the one > way native nature of satellite and cable TV which was built on > architecture to deliver the signal downward only). > All this can be aided by new wireless technology (already existing or > just starting to be deployed) to provide broad home networking as well > so multiple devices such as TVs, phones, PCs can be networked into one > big mesh of devices, all connected ultimately to your DSL line using > wireless Ethernet. > Staggering convergence really. One thing left out is mobile phone > service which telecos are deeply involved in already, albeit using > different methods. > All this over dedicated copper wires everyone with old fashioned phone > lines now have. Since DSL speeds are dependent on how close the home > is to the teleco DSL connection, the major capital expenditure is to > extend DSL availability where necessary. But after reading this > article, I can't see how telecos can find the expenditure unworthwhile > if they are willing to pursue "the whole enchilada" as described in > this white paper. > I used to think cable TV was going to win the war, but now I think the > telecos are or could if they'd invest now before their profits get > even slimmer. > FYI and comments, > Lesley > http://www.broadbandbananas.com/videodsl.pdf [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message originally appeared a couple days ago, but got mangled in processing. Sorry. PAT] ------------------------------ From: davidlind@my-deja.com (David L) Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Date: 19 Aug 2002 03:05:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ PaulCoxwell@aol.com wrote in message news:: > A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong > U.S. telephone jacks: > 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? > 2. Somewhat harder, but does anyone know of a source for the jacks > and plugs? I believe they are still standard in some parts of the > Middle East, so I assume they are still being made somewhere. > Many thanks. > Paul Coxwell > Eccles On Sea, Norfolk, U.K. I'm looking at "Bell system" (lettering on front) one here. The top two pins are further apart than the bottom 2. Pair 1 Top right=Red Top left=Green Pair 2 Bottom right=yellow Bottom left=Black Also have a modular-4 PIN adapter. But it's not coming apart easily. David, DavNOLindiSPAM(at)hotmail(dot)com ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Date: 19 Aug 2002 12:52:51 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong > U.S. telephone jacks: > 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? The two closer-together pins are tip and ring. The other two pins are the second pair. > 2. Somewhat harder, but does anyone know of a source for the jacks > and plugs? I believe they are still standard in some parts of the > Middle East, so I assume they are still being made somewhere. My local electronics parts supplier has a basement full of them. Cain Electronics in Hampton, VA. They also have boxes of key system cards and a warehouse full of TV set flybacks from the 1950s. scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? Date: 19 Aug 2002 12:49:03 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Marcus Jervis wrote: > Wasn't the story about Sprint being an acronym debunked here in > Telecom Digest years ago? I've seen PAT repeat this a number of > times, but I thought that at one time someone pointed out that Sprint > was never an acronym. Sorry I don't have a reference. It stands for: SO PAINFUL, REALLY I'VE NO TELEPHONE. scott -- C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 12:53:50 +0100 Geoffrey Welsh wrote: "Hold on -- Isn't Qwest [also] a descendant of SP Telecom, spun off around 1990 or soon thereafter?!? Has SP spun off _two_ major carriers -- one which was bought by the Brown Telephone Company and one which went on to buy USWorst?" Yup, that's right. Philip Anschutz bought Southern Pacific for $1.6 billion in 1988; then split off SP Telecom in 1995, moved it to Denver and renamed it Qwest. Alan B-G Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business Euromoney Institutional Investor plc, Nestor House, Playhouse Yard, London EC4V 5EX, UK tel +44 20 7779 8518 fax +44 20 7779 8492 e-mail aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com www.globaltelecomsbusiness.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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Fax 3: 530-309-7234 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. Access to Premium (P) links requires upgrade to a paid subscription. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. LEGAL STUFF: TELECOM Digest (sm) is owned by Patrick Townson. Copyright 2000 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #364 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 21 01:02:14 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7L52Eq21238; Wed, 21 Aug 2002 01:02:14 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 01:02:14 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208210502.g7L52Eq21238@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V20 #365 TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Aug 2002 01:00:00 EDT Volume 20 : Issue 365 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Overview of PBX's: Lucent Definity and Faciility Index (deeply_confused) ICANN to Give .org to ISOC: Insiders Win Again? (Judith Oppenheimer) Canadian CO (Prefix) Assignment Database? (David) Programming DSS Keys on DTP-32D NEC IVS2000 (billp) Where to Get a Bong Tone? (Robert Switzer) Re: Allegiance Telecom Problems (Meng Tsai) Fried Modem: Telco Responsibility (Bob K.) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (Paul Coxwell) Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks (joe@obilivan.net) Re: News Headlines of Interest 8/18/02 (Ed Ellers) Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Steven Lichter) Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? (Jeremy Beal) Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site (Steve Brack) Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) (Roberts) Cable Channel 1 (Continued) (Neal McLain) Haiku'da Been a Spam Filter (Monty Solomon) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. WE DO NOT PERMIT NAME/EMAIL ADDRESS HARVESTING FROM THIS JOURNAL. 'SALTED' EMAIL ADDRESSES APPEAR HEREIN TO VERIFY THIS. YOU GET SUED IN SMALL CLAIMS COURT IF YOU GET CAUGHT SPAMMING OR SENDING VIRUSES. DON'T DO IT. See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: ben_annett@hotmail.com (deeply_confused) Subject: Overview of PBX's: Lucent Definity and Faciility Index Date: 20 Aug 2002 05:19:44 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Hi, Is there a website out there that gives an overview of these two switches. I just need two or three strengths and weaknesses of the two systems. Thanking you in advance. Regards, Ben ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Subject: ICANN to Give .org to ISOC: Insiders Win Again? Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 18:58:03 -0400 See http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=904 . Also http://www.lextext.com/icann/2002/08/19.html#a677 and http://www.lextext.com/icann/2002/08/20.html#a678 . One pundit feigned surprise "that the Staff Report recommended a winner, rather than simply handing the raw data to the Board." ICANN wants comments on the "draft" report by August 29 - that's nine days for public comment. But its press announcement reveals the obvious, that its done deal: In operating the .org registry, ISOC will team with Afilias, an operating registry that recently launched the .info top level domain (TLD) that was authorized by ICANN as one of seven new TLDs over this past year. Afilias [see http://www.fitug.de/atlarge-panel/0208/msg00282.html] will provide ISOC with the necessary experience at operating a large registry, said [ICANN pres Stuart] Lynn. The .info registry already houses about 1 million domain names, which is on a scale that approaches the much older .org registry. Though it was no doubt a done deal from the start, ICANN has never been one to turn away a dollar: eleven bidders plunked down $35,000 each for the privilege. But ISOC wins the prize: its proposal states it will take money from .org registrants to support ISOC. With more than 2.3 million .org registrations already in place, its a nice little money machine. Judith Oppenheimer http://JudithOppenheimer.com http://ICBTollFreeNews.com http://WhoSells800.com 212 684-7210, 1 800 The Expert Visit 1-800 AFTA, http://www.1800afta.org ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:58:35 -0700 From: David Subject: Canadian CO (Prefix) Assignment Database? Organization: Highly Improbable I have been searching in vain for hours now trying to find a link to a database, website or other downloadable resource that will reveal the current exchange assignments by company or corporation for CANADA. Various links lead back to NANPA.com but exhaustive browsing there only returns the complete information for the USA & Territories, which I have previously downloaded. The motivation for all this is to determine what specific companies are providing telephone service for those ubiquitous and invariably unlisted phone numbers that are the only "contact" in relentless fraud/spam/scam emails, since the ISPs that host or relay this trash are usually totally non-responsive to complaints and requests to cease and desist polluting the net and stealing the resources of our private and self-financed email accounts (and computers). This is almost universally true of those servers located in Eastern Europe, Korea, China, and So. America! Any assistence in my personal war against spam will be appreciated! David Ross North Beach ------------------------------ From: billp Subject: Programming DSS Keys on DTP-32D NEC IVS2000 Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 20:53:19 UTC Organization: Global Crossing Internet For the life of me, I can't figure out how to reprogram the DSS keys on a NEC DTP-32D phone (IVS2000 system.) Does anyone have the key sequence handy? bill ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:54:18 -0400 From: Robert Switzer Organization: OPENet Subject: Where to Get a Bong Tone? Does anyone know where I can get a .wav file containing a standard Bong Tone? Regards, Robert S. ------------------------------ From: meng tsai Subject: Re: Allegiance Telecom Problems Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:13:16 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Yes, we have similiar problem for the last three months. We are in NY city. I am in the process of migrating the service to others. But it will not be for another 30 days. ALGX sent us a letter for Aug 10 to be down for 8 hours started 1AM - 8AM. It turned out to be down for 72 hours. (A), I never saw a T1 carrier that need a maintenance down for 8 hours. 2 hours is the worst that I heard befor ALGX. See what 99.999 means (B) ALGX is helpless in T1 internet data service, as far as I experienced. Very sad to speak for their investors. Meng BTW: We can now deploy T1 service on the East Coast , for about $500 per site and it is distance in-senstitive. IF you like to know more, email me separately. This service is good for multi-branch office that want to run data/voice back to HQ office. Larry Kooper wrote in message news:telecom20.363.6@telecom-digest.org: > My workplace uses Allegiance Telecom as its ISP -- they also are the > DNS authority for our web site. Over the past several weeks service > has been particularly bad, with several interruptions of ISP service > and DNS problems during business hours. Anyone else experiencing > something similar? ------------------------------ Subject: Fried Modem: Telco Responsibility From: Bob K. Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 21:15:15 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net The other day while I was away, we had a terrible thunderstorm. The electricity was out for 4 hours, and my computer modem was fried. There must have been a big jolt over the phone lines because the numbers I'd programmed into the speed-dial buttons on my phone were wiped out, too. The phone itself and my answering machine were otherwise OK. I'm wondering what kind of liability lies with Verizon, my local telco. To me, it looks like they didn't have enough lightning protection on the lines to my apartment building. But getting money out of them might be like getting blood out of a stone. What do you think? (I hear they make surge protectors that cover the phone line. I'll have to get one.) Bob K. ------------------------------ From: PaulCoxwell@aol.com Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 17:00:03 EDT Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Thanks to all who responded with the pin-out. It looks as though Winston will fit the bill for supply as they carry both plug and wall jack. http://www.winstonele.com/04-%20Wall%20Plates%20&%20Adapters.htm Many thanks, Paul ------------------------------ From: joe@obilivan.net Subject: Re: Four-Prong Telephone Jacks Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 22:15:07 GMT Organization: Cox Communications The red and green are tip and ring, and the yellow and black are A and A1 (for 1A2 Key System control). David L wrote: > PaulCoxwell@aol.com wrote in message > news:: >> A couple of questions regarding the old-style four-prong >> U.S. telephone jacks: >> 1. Can anyone provide a correct pin-out connection diagram for these? >> 2. Somewhat harder, but does anyone know of a source for the jacks >> and plugs? I believe they are still standard in some parts of the >> Middle East, so I assume they are still being made somewhere. >> Many thanks. >> Paul Coxwell >> Eccles On Sea, Norfolk, U.K. > I'm looking at "Bell system" (lettering on front) one here. > The top two pins are further apart than the bottom 2. > Pair 1 > Top right=Red > Top left=Green > Pair 2 > Bottom right=yellow > Bottom left=Black > Also have a modular-4 PIN adapter. But it's not coming apart easily. > David, > DavNOLindiSPAM(at)hotmail(dot)com ------------------------------ From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: News Headlines of Interest 8/18/02 Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 21:42:18 -0400 Monty Solomon quoted from a Wired story by Elisa Batista: > In what would be the first such ban in any U.S. city, New York City > Councilman Philip Reed recently proposed legislation that prohibits > the use of mobile phones in "places of public performance," such as > movie theaters, art galleries and libraries. The bill makes an > exception for emergency phone calls, but punishes people who > infringe on the law with a $50 fine." I hope they also (A) define "use" to only include those uses where bystanders can easily hear speech -- so someone can still send text messages, check their voice mail, etc. -- and (B) exempt lobby areas, restrooms, etc. where conversation is normally carried on. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 23:15:39 -0400 Internet Observer wrote: > The site that seems to be up is http://www.Listen4Ever.net That doesn't appear to be in China - I reach it via a Savvis IP address. ------------------------------ From: stevenl11@aol.com (Steven Lichter) Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? Date: 19 Aug 2002 20:23:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Charles G Gray wrote in message news:: > I just spent a week in Arizona and New Mexico and noticed that there > is still a lot of open telegraph/telephone wire. Most, but not all, > of it is alongside railroad tracks. I am wondering if any of it is > still in use for telephone carrier service. Some of it may still be > used by the railroad for signals, but I don't have any way of knowing. There was one still in service and an old GTE office in Sunland, Calif, near LA. It was an old Linkurt system for the US Forest Service. Don't know if it is still around, haven't been there in a few years. Geoffrey Welsh wrote in message news:... > Hold on -- Isn't Qwest [also] a descendant of SP Telecom, spun off around > 1990 or soon thereafter?!? > Has SP spun off _two_ major carriers -- one which was bought by the > Brown Telephone Company and one which went on to buy USWorst? Sprint was first part of GTE, later is was merged with United Telephone which later took control of Sprint and changed its name. Never heard Qwest had anything to do with it, Qwest was formed out of US West a few years ago. Apple Elite II 909-359-5338. Home of GBBS/LLUCE,support for the Apple II and Macintosh 24 hours 2400/14.4. OggNet Server. The only good spammer is a dead one! Have you hunted one down today? (c) I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Company. ------------------------------ From: thejbeal@netscape.net (Jeremy Beal) Subject: Re: Any Open Wire Carrier Left? Date: 19 Aug 2002 15:45:58 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Responding to Alan Burkitt-Gray's Message (hasn't appeared yet on google) > Yup, that's right. Philip Anschutz bought Southern Pacific for $1.6 > billion in 1988; then split off SP Telecom in 1995, moved it to Denver > and renamed it Qwest. IIRC Anschutz also bought up as many old/outdated/unused railroad rights of way as he could, with more interest in the right-of-way access to lay new fiber than existing wiring. Jeremy Beal ------------------------------ From: Steve Brack Subject: Re: Record Labels Sue Internet Providers Over Site Organization: Society for the Preservation of Steve Brack Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 03:13:38 GMT Considering that this is comp.dcom.telecom, it surprises me that this point hasn't been made yet: The backbone providers are common carriers. They carry traffic without discrimination as to the meaning of its content. If they can be sued for merely carrying listen4ever.net then what's to stop me from suing SBC/Ameritech over telemarketing calls that they carry? Do we really want our common carriers policing our use of their facilities, monitoring our communications, and acting on the information they observe? Steve Brack Internet Observer wrote in message news:telecom20.364.2@telecom-digest.org: > Has Listen4Ever.com ceased operation? > The site that seems to be up is http://www.Listen4Ever.net > Anyone know the latest? > Thank you! >> NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The world's largest record companies >> sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging >> their routing systems allow users to access the China-based >> Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. >> The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, >> seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet >> communications that travel through their systems to and from the >> Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to >> determine who owns the Web site. >> - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=28332599 > Listen4Ever.com seems to be back up in some form of site, not what the > article describes though. > The site that was up earlier (while the .com was down, or blocked?) > was http://www.Listen4Ever.net > Thank you ! > danny burstein wrote in message news:... >> [snip] >> (Take note that AOL is not a defendant. Hmm ... wonder if they're already >> blocking access...) ------------------------------ From: markrobt@hotmail.com (Mark Roberts) Subject: Re: Cable Channel 1 (Not to be Confused With B'cast Channel 1) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 03:14:36 -0000 Organization: 1.94 meters Ed Ellers had written: > That's common in areas with poor over-the-air reception, but in places > close to VHF stations it's common to put those stations on different > channels -- to avoid ghosting caused by those stations' strong signals > leaking into the cable -- and use their "normal" channels for > lesser-used stuff such as access channels. Here's what I have seen over the years: Columbia, Mo.: KOMU/8 placed on cable 7; cable 8 used for weather radar for a long time, now blank; KRCG/13 on cable 12; cable 13 used for municipal access. Ingress a MAJOR problem on 8; relatively minor on 13 but the builders of the system took no chances and that's been carried down through the successor companies. Kansas City: WDAF/4 on cable 6; KCTV/5 on cable 3; KMBC/9 on cable 12. Kansas City has most of its TV towers in the center city area. Ingress is a major problem and the Kansas City cable system was old and creaking (couldn't go up past cable 37) until about 1997. Oddly enough, then-KYFC/50 was shunted off to cable 9 where it suffered interference from KMBC if you lived in the urban core (as I did, just five miles from most of the sites). Cable 4 became a leased-access channel. Cable 5 has been used for various things over the years. Chicago: The TCI/AT&T system put WBBM/2 on cable 3 (cable 2 was blank) but left the other channels alone. The quality of the system varied tremendously. At my first Chicago location, ingress and ghosting were a big problem on the other V's. Then I moved five blocks away to the other side of Broadway. The quality suddenly became much better. I suspect that, at my first location near Sheridan Road, there may have been quite a bit of leakage due to theft of service. The 21st Century (now RCN) system was brand-new, did not move any channels, and there was no ingress or ghosting. San Francisco: No changes. Likewise in Oakland, a problem for us because we live at a location whose elevation is above the elevation of the main antenna on Mt. Sutro. -- the house is as line-of-sight as it can be! We can't use our cable upstairs -- I've tried several strategies for shielding and and attentuating -- and none has worked. This was true even after AT&T installed new lines with better signal strength in our neighborhood. Yet downstairs there are no problems. Either there's something in the house wiring or we have enough natural shielding from the hillside to make it work there. We do see some minor interference, I believe from UHF 26, on cable 71 (the Travel Channel, woohoo). I haven't compared the two sets of frequency to see what the precise overlap is. There's something similar on our cable 77 which is used as a preview channel for AT&T to flog its digital-cable channels. Of course, upstairs, rabbit ears are sufficient for the channels transmitting from Sutro and San Bruno -- the two U's from San Bruno hardly even need that. Mark Roberts | "This is local television. Get off your high horse!" Oakland, Cal.| -- Gary Radnich to Wendy Tokuda on KRON-TV's NO HTML MAIL | 9 pm newscast (said in jest), August 9, 2002 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something weird about our cable here. We get channels 2 through 62 (channel 4 is skipped) and from 63 upward, I get a blue (no signal) blank screen the rest of the way up to channel 125 on my television. Except 'channel' (or position) 70 on the VCR/TV combo I have. Channel 70 was picked up in the auto- tuning process and is still there with a *black* (in use) screen. Something somewhere is leaking through a bit I guess. Channel 70 never has anything on it, just that dark and occasional flickering screen. I was hoping that maybe fine tuning of the set would get me some hint of programming there, but no go. I get two channels for the inputs on the VCR, known as L-1 and L-2 should I wish to plug in a video camera, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 21:26:19 -0600 From: Neal McLain Subject: Cable Channel 1 (Continued) I wrote [addressing PAT]: > The "Channel 1" on your TV set (or converter box) probably won't ever > be occupied because it isn't at the same frequency as the long-defunct > Broadcast Channel 1 recently discussed here on TD. Cable Channel 1 > fills the blank space between Channels 4 and 5 [...] Whereupon, John David Galt wrote: > Channel 1 exists on both cable systems here in Sacramento (SureWest > and AT&T). On SureWest it is a menu of optional features, on AT&T it > is Home Shopping Network. [...] So wherever channel 1 is located, it > is not 72-76 MHz unless they've found some way of compressing a full > cable channel into that range. [...] My guess is that it is the > original 48-54 MHz channel. I doubt it: 48 MHz is outside the bandpass of the downstream amplifiers. In a two-way cable TV network, the downstream bandpass extends from 54 MHz (or slightly lower) to whatever the highest channel is, and the upstream bandpass extends from 5 MHz to about 30 MHz. The space between 30 and 54 is occupied by crossover filters (located in the amplifier housings) to keep the two bands separated. So the lower edge of the 48-54 band would fall in the skirts of the crossover filters. Furthermore, according to Ed Ellers (and I concede that he's right), Broadcast Channel 1 wasn't 48-54 MHz anyway; it was at 44-50 MHz. I posted John's comments about Sacramento to SCTE-LIST (the discussion list of CATV techies) and received the following response. This response was forwarded to me by Steve Allen, a resident of the Sacramento area, and Senior Broadband Technologist with Kramer.Firm , a cable TV consulting firm. Steve's response: > Channel 1 in Sacramento is simply a display channel on the > converter box. Many cable systems, including those in Sacramento, > map their channels. When the converter is displaying channel 1, > it is actually tuning to another channel (the AT&T system has > QVC mapped to channel 1, QVC actually resides on EIA 95, A-5 @ > 91.25mhz). Further explanation of this response: Although Cable Channel 1 is officially (by the FCC) assigned to the space between Channels 4 and 5, "channel mapped" analog converters can display any "channel" number for any actual channel. The converter displays a virtual channel number, and refers to an internal lookup table to determine the actual channel it should tune to. The lookup table can be downloaded from the headend so the cable company can revise it. Channel mapping lets cable companies place signals more or less at random throughout the downstream bandpass, while identifying them with virtual channel numbers that meet administrative or marketing objectives. One common application of this technique is used for local broadcast stations. The stations' signals are not distributed on their actual channels; instead, they are placed elsewhere, and mapped to their actual channel numbers. This technique avoids interference from direct pickup of the stations' off-air signals by poorly-shielded customer TV sets or signal leaks in the cable network itself. So-called "Digital Cable" converters carry this process even further: several digitized video signals are combined into a single 6-MHz digital stream, but each separate video signal has a separate virtual channel number. It appears from Steve's response that both SureWest and AT&T use analog channel-mapped converters in Sacramento. In AT&T's case, "Channel 1" is really Cable Channel 95 at 90-96 MHz. And yes, that's in the FM band. For an excruciatingly detailed explanation of Cable TV Channel numbers, see . So where is Cable Channel 1 in Independence, Kansas? If the converters aren't channel-mapped, it's probably the 4-MHz between Channels 4 and 5, and, hence, unusable for a video signal. If the converters are mapped, it could be anywhere. Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: After skipping over 1, we use 2 and 3 then skip 4 and use 5 through 62. The premium channels require special converters, etc and are numbered such as '307', '425' etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 23:35:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Haiku'da Been a Spam Filter Haiku'da Been a Spam Filter By Michelle Delio Refined poetry and ruthless legal prosecution have been brought together in the latest effort to stop spam. A hidden scrap of copyrighted poetry embedded in e-mails will be used to guarantee that any message containing the verse is spam free. And if spammers dare to hijack the haiku, they will be aggressively sued for copyright infringement. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54645,00.html ------------------------------ 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-870-9697 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 775-306-8390 Fax 3: 530-309-7234 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. Access to Premium (P) links requires upgrade to a paid subscription. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Only subscribers or registered users of ICB Toll Free News web site will be able to access all or some of the full text of URLs provided. LEGAL STUFF: TELECOM Digest (sm) is owned by Patrick Townson. Copyright 2000 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. End of TELECOM Digest V20 #365 ******************************