From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Mar 23 22:29:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i2O3Tt604292; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:29:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:29:55 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200403240329.i2O3Tt604292@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 V23 #137 TELECOM Digest Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:30:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 137 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Chief Comments on Voice Over Internet (VOIP News) Call Centers' Early Warning Systems (Eric Friedebach) Blackberry Not Receiving Messages - Please Help! (James Lynx) New Way of Doing QOS on VOIP Networks (Art Reisman) Re: Lawsuit Regarding Excessive Prison Phone Charges (Charles Cryderman) Re: Lawsuit Regarding Excessive Prison Phone Charges (Clarence Dold) Re: Western Union Clocks (Reed) Re: Western Union Clocks (Howard S. Wharton) Re: Last Modern Towns to Go Dial? (John R. Covert) Re: Last Modern Towns to Go Dial (Lisa Hancock) Re: Google Local is cool (Steven J Sobol) Re: Google Local is cool (jbl) Re: Triumph of the Telcos (Burris) Re: Variety of Phone Numbers -- 1950s (Skinner) Time to Pass the Hat Once Again - March Share Day (Patrick Townson) 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. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: VOIP News Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 12:37:15 -0500 Subject: FCC Chief Comments on Voice Over Internet Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com ATLANTA - Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell called Monday for a "light regulatory touch" on Voice over Internet Protocol technology. "I think the government will take a hands-off approach to it," he said, speaking to a crowd of several thousand wireless industry professionals at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's annual meeting. Full story at: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040322/ap_on_hi_te/powell_voip_1 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoIPnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: VoIPnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Call Centers' Early Warning Systems Date: 23 Mar 2004 16:37:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Michael Freedman, 03.23.04, Forbes.com LONDON - You've heard the refrain: "This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." Chances are good the company behind it is NICE Systems. A leader in the call center market, this Israel-based company was established a decade ago, and its recording devices and software packages are now used in some 30,000 call centers, financial institutions and government outfits and emergency hot lines like 911. More could be on the way. Every year, companies and government agencies spend an estimated $500 million buying equipment to record telephone calls, data and screen images. The information is used to analyze customer behavior and to train call center agents. http://www.forbes.com/networks/2004/03/23/cz_mf_0323nice.html [Note from Eric: I had to call the FCC this afternoon when I was having trouble logging into their ULS website. After the standard "your call will be recorded" announcement, I had to listen to a loud beep every few seconds as if I was calling a 911 center when a tech came on line. I wonder why the announcement at the beginning of the call was not sufficient.] Eric Friedebach /Tonight's Skywarn training cancelled due to... weather?/ ------------------------------ From: SafronJasmine@yahoo.com (James Lynx) Subject: Blackberry Not Receiving Messages - Please Help! Date: 23 Mar 2004 15:01:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am in charge of the distribution and installation of Blackberries at my organization. We are using the 7230 model of Blackberry. We are using the T-Mobile as our data carrier. We have probably about 50 of these on our network and of those about 5 of them are not receiving messages from about 6:30 PM and on. Then when these end users check their BBs in the morning there are still no new messages (even tho there are some in the queue that seem not to deliver) received by the unit. The user seems to be able to kick the thing in by emailing himself from the BB and then a bunch of messages come in that were originally queued up and haven't been delivered. Mind you, these end users say that they don't live in areas that there is little or no reception. They have four out of five bars indicating great reception. Weird that every night from about 6:30 and on they don't receive messages at all and the reception is four out of five bars. I checked with T-Mobile and they don't know what the problem is and I check with RIM and they don't know. We use Blackberry Enterprise Server and we are on Microsoft Exchange for our email. Have you experienced this and how did you fix the issue? Just strange that only about five of 50 users have this problem. Thanks, James ------------------------------ From: astormchaser2002@yahoo.com (Art Reisman) Subject: New Way of Doing QOS on VOIP Networks Date: 23 Mar 2004 15:15:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com We have developed and released a new product called the Netequalizer QOS which has the ability to control data traffic and let voice traffic run on a converged network . And it is really plug and play. Check out www.netequalizer.com for details FAQs and information. ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: Lawsuit Regarding Excessive Prison Phone Charges Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 13:37:08 -0500 hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote about Re: Lawsuit Regarding Excessive Prison Phone Charges on 22 Mar 2004 19:40:41 saying: > "While I'm far from an expert, I have had exposure to the criminal justice > system and telecommunications and I must offer some observations: > 1) Prison phone calls are a big profit for the states. IMHO, that's > unfair and bad policy." Agreed, all government agencies should be non-profit making business. "2) Families do not "choose" to be associated with prison inmates, as one poster suggested. Stuff happens." Again I must agree, unfortunately stuff happens all the time. (Other comments deleted) "As to telephones for inmates, it is a good idea, it is good for society, and it ought to be charged at cost." This on the other hand I do not agree with. While station with the US Army in Japan one military publication had an article about Japanese prison. First a few facts from the article. In Japan the average prison sentence is 5 years, time served is 3 years. The return rate to prison is about 3%. In the USA the average prison sentence is about 20 years, time served is 15 years. The return rate to prison is about 90%. When you are sent to a Japanese prison you have no contact with anyone. The guards will not even talk to you and you get no visitors (unless you were US military at the time you were sentence to prison. Then you get one visit per year from the Commander of your last unit and once a year from your last unit's Chaplain.) Each day you get one hour to walk around in a prison yard by yourself (rain or shine). Two meals each day which normally consists of fish soup and rice. You can write letters but will get none in return and all mail is reviewed prior to being sent. They do not beat their charges as some may think. They punish, not pretending to rehabilitate, their prisons are there to punish those the commit crimes against society. Rehabilitation is the responsibil- ity of the convicted not society. With a return rate as low as 3% this is something we as a country need to think about. Which is better, having a revolving door at the entrance of your prisons or truly making a situation that no one wants to return to. For many, prison is a place where they get three meals each day a bed and cable TV. Why is it that most intercity schools lack a better library then most prisons? I would rather get to the point that prisons are a place that those convicted of a crime are again punished. Letting them call mommy when ever they want to will not reduce the number of crimes committed. Putting the criminal in a place they never want to go back to will. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ From: dold@LawsuitXRe.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Lawsuit Regarding Excessive Prison Phone Charges Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 22:19:58 +0000 (UTC) Organization: a2i network Stanley Cline wrote: > I know quite a few people who would be unable to call *anyone* if they > were to be arrested because the only numbers they have for friends and > family are cell phones, CLEC or VoIP numbers, etc. (I still have a When my son went to Japan, he couldn't call home because the only phone number he had used to call me, for years, was an 800 number. William Warren wrote: > who'd have thought?), the added expense of having technicians service > equipment in an environment where they can only have one tool on their > person at a time (sometimes with a 610 foot walk back to the truck, > through security each way, when they need a different one), and the ... I carried my toolbox with me. I did have someone with me constantly, was never in a room with anyone else, and had to pass through locked doors every few feet, but I had my complete toolkit with me. I don't recall that anyone even searched it, although I suppose they did. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: Reed Subject: Re: Western Union Clocks Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 13:59:34 -0600 Mike, Back in the 60's I worked as an engineer in a TV/FM broadcast facility. We had about a dozen of these clocks all over the building, all synchronized by the hourly pulse from Western Union. Sometime around 1970 we designed a circuit based on the NE555 (?) PLL chip that would listen for the hourly tone from our dual-redundancy WWV receiver and generate the sync pulse to all of the clocks. It was a very simple design, but I don't recall the specifics. More recently someone else had the great idea of using a computer, synchronized to one of the online NBS time servers, that would send an hourly X10 signal to an X10 relay module to synchronize his WU clocks. Look here for his article: http://www.ubr.com/clocks/sync/syncwu.html -Reed ------------------------------ From: Howard S. Wharton Subject: Re: Western Union Clocks Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:58:03 -0500 Organization: The University at Buffalo Besides clock systems, IBM also made fire alarms. Still have two IBM systems in service on our south (Main Street in Buffalo) campus. Sometime in the 1950's IBM sold their clock service plus the fire alarms to Simplex Time Recorder Company. Today they are called SimplexGrinnell merging with Grinnell Sprinkler Co. after they were purchased by Tyco few years ago. Howard S. Wharton Fire Safety Technician Occupational and Environmental Safety Services State University of New York at Buffalo ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:58:58 -0500 (EST) From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Last Modern Towns to Go Dial? While Bryant Pond was the last full scale local exchange to go dial (and also had the distinction of being the last magneto exchange -- most local manual exchanges had been common battery), there were still several other kinds of manual service which lasted well into the 1980s. Fred Goldstein says "toll stations don't count" so we'll ignore them -- although my favorite one was a private phone at some ranch in Texas: I used to drive operators nuts asking them to connect me to "Bill Smith" in "Longhorn, Texas" (sorry, that's neither the correct name for the line which was listed BY NAME with rate and route, nor the correct town). "I need his phone number." "He doesn't have a phone number." "Then you can't call him." "Yes you can. Ask Rate and Route." "Rate and Route doesn't have phone numbers, I'll have to connect you to Directory Assistance." "No, Rate and Route DOES have Bill Smith's phone number." Along the Salmon River, near Shoup, Idaho, there was one of the last "Farmers' Lines". This was neither a manual exchange nor a toll station. It was a single wire ground return magneto system. Subscribers to the service were all on the same wire, and could call each other by dialing their neighbors' ringing codes (2 longs and a short, etc.) and made outside calls with a long continuous ring, which would summon the operator at a local toll board. Incoming calls were placed via this same operator. The last time I called, I ended up with a charge for a call to Egypt on my bill, since the operator filled out the ticket incorrectly, and the "20" of the first two digits of Idaho's area code were interpreted as the "20" country code for Egypt by the billing system. An earlier message mentioned a number of the format nnnn-F2. That was the format used for a Farmers' line. There were also, until some time in the mid-80s, a number of towns (particularly in California) which had dial service which was not compatible with the toll network, which meant that incoming calls had to be placed through an operator. There were at least two reasons that inbound service would not be provided. First, if the equipment was incapable of properly reporting answer supervision for billing, then only manual incoming toll service could be provided. Second, unless it was possible to dial calls within the local exchange on a seven digit basis, AT&T would not officially connect the exchange to the toll network. That is, unless you had a seven digit number which could be dialed by your neighbor, then you didn't officially have a ten-digit number. In a few cases, the number that was going to eventually be assigned to that exchange would actually work, but this was not encouraged. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wasn't Lafayette, Indiana and its neighbor West Lafayette a similar situation? Long after that part of Indiana was in the 317 area code, and largely dialable, I recall we still had to go through the operator to get Lafayette from the Chicago area. So was Fort Wayne, Indiana I think, in the 219 area. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Last Modern Towns to Go Dial Date: 23 Mar 2004 13:27:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com BV124@aol.com wrote > Even more amazing (and I may be wrong here, but the memory is pretty > clear) is that I recall WE (in Berwyn) could dial THEM (in Chicago) > direct, but they needed the operator to get ALL of their calls. When the Bell System began to install dial phones, it developed a method by which dial customers could dial people served by manual exchanges instead of dialing zero and having the operator do it. When a dial subscriber dialed a manual exchange, the switch sent coded impulses to a special switchboard in the manual exchange. These impules either lit up a visual indicator with the number or activated an audio announcement (using strips of sound motion picture film on a drum recorded with digits). An operator in the manual exchange got the desired number this way and made the connection. This is described in detail in one of the Bell Labs histories (1875-1925). However, I know not all manual exchanges were reached this way. I don't know why, but at least in the Phila area during the transition years, some manual exchanges were dialable yet others required calling the operator (0) and asking for the number. For example, in the Phila phone book, it would say "FLanders 2-1234" (a dialable manual exchange) but "Willow Grove 1234" a non-dialable manual exchange. [IIRC, Willow Grove and FLanders (Upper Darby) were the last Phila suburbs to go dial, converting around 1962.] One of the tough challenges the Bell System faced in the 1950s was the vast variety of equipment in its switching centers -- most dating from a time switches were installed to meet a community's needs only without much concern to a bigger picture. Converting to dial in the mid 1950s meant not only replacing existing equipment in kind, but assessing future growth and providing a building and equipment accordingly. Plenty of towns undoubtedly got second-hand SxS gear from other towns upgraded to XBar, and probably a few got additional manual board positions to tide them over for a while. Remember that SxS lines didn't peak out until 1974. We take the telephone for granted these days, but it wasn't so long ago that even making a local call was considered serious business, not to be done frivilously, and many people didn't have phones at all. If you want into a store or public place today and ask for a phone, there's a good chance they'll let you use their phone if it's a quick local call. Years ago that was unheard even for employees, most places had at least one pay phone, often banks of them, for the public or employees to make personal calls on. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: About fifty years ago, when Hammond, IN was just getting converted to dial, to reach Whiting, IN (still manual) one dialed '911' and talked to the Whiting operator to get the desired number. But in Whiting when you asked the operator for a Hammond number you would then hear 'beep beep beep' as she punched it in to get the Hammond number. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Google Local is Cool Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:44:54 -0600 John Cummings wrote: > wrote in message > news:telecom23.132.15@telecom-digest.org: >> In a message dated Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:26:06 -0700, Phil Earnhardt >> writes: >>> One wonders what countermeasures the Baby Bells -- and other >>> owners of Yellow Pages services -- will launch. >>> SmartPages.com is an SBC operation. >> SmartPages.com is an SBC operation. > RealPages.com is a BellSouth operation. And Verizon has SuperPages, and Qwest has DEX (IIRC). Both are available in traditional phonebook format as well as online. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, Apple Valley, CA PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net Domain Names, $9.95/yr, 24x7 service: http://DomainNames.JustThe.net/ "someone once called me a sofa, but i didn't feel compelled to rush out and buy slip covers." -adam brower * Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows 98/2000/2003 ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: Google Local is Cool Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 14:03:40 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , John Cummings wrote: > wrote in message > news:telecom23.132.15@telecom-digest.org: >> In a message dated Fri, 19 Mar 2004 08:26:06 -0700, Phil Earnhardt >> < pae@dim.com> writes: >>> One wonders what countermeasures the Baby Bells -- and other >>> owners of Yellow Pages services -- will launch. >>> SmartPages.com is an SBC operation. >> SmartPages.com is an SBC operation. > RealPages.com is a BellSouth operation. Superpages.com is a Verizon operation (from GTE) Qwest has Qwestdex.com /JBL ------------------------------ From: burris Subject: Re: Triumph of the Telcos Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 17:17:16 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > Internet telephony advocates are predicting that free long distance > means the downfall of Big Telecom. But it won't be so easy to topple > the king. > By G. Pascal Zachary > March 23, 2004 | Technology pundits would have us believe that > Internet telephony, which enables "free" phone calls for those with > broadband and the proper equipment, is going to topple the established > phone companies. But the future may not turn out to be so > one-sided. Instead, Internet telephony (commonly referred to as VOIP, > for "voice over Internet protocol") may represent just another > battleground for the usual fights between the Baby Bells, the > long-distance telephone companies and the cable companies. > While the outcome is uncertain, Internet telephony, despite its > insurgent, revolutionary credentials, stands a good chance of being > co-opted by the oligarchy that rules over telecommunications in > America. > http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/03/23/voip/ Unfortunately, one must subscribe to read the article. Perhaps you could copy it and post that way. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: j_s_skinner@hotmail.com (Skinner) Subject: Re: Variety of Phone Numbers -- 1950s Date: 23 Mar 2004 15:03:28 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Up until the 90's the CO in my small town used an old step-by-step and we could dial 4 digits to call within town. This stopped when it was replaced with a Stromberg-Carlson remote. When questioned, a lineman told me that "there's too many numbers these days" to have four-digit dialing. In fact, the population of the town has gone down since that time, and we're the only town in our exchange, so probably the set of numbers has gotten smaller too. I guess that's just the way it is. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here in Independence, KS *everyone* has a 620-331 number where landlines are concerned. When giving out your number socially around town, most folks here just quote the last four digits, since the 331 part is assumed. Then City of Independence got a centrex for all their stuff, and it went on 332 for police, city hall, all the schools, parks, etc. The Montgomery County Sheriff is odd, having *330*-1000 as their number. Cell phones are also on 330 and some on 332. But there are a bunch of other prefixes (714 comes to mind) 'assigned' but no one is on any of them. Another oddity is our local ISP, TerraWorld (which also owns our phone company, Prairie Stream) and even though TerraWorld and Prairie Stream both conduct business on 331 numbers, TerraWorld's 56K dialup (also used by AOL and anyone else who leases 56K dialups from them) go through 714-0005, which so far as I can tell is the only working number in the 714 exchange. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Time to Pass the Hat Once Again Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 21:00:00 CST Its that time of the month once again, when I come to you very humbly asking for financial assistance in publishing this Digest day after day. How much you give is up to you. Your letters and gifts are very important to me, and are frequently used the same month they are recieved. Being on a fixed income from Social Security Disability is not a lot of fun, but somehow I get by each month, with additional gifts from readers who find this a useful newsgroup, and one that is mostly free of spam, etc. You can contribute as you see fit through PayPal on our home page http://telecom-digest.org where at the very bottom of the home page is a PayPal button for credit card donations. If you prefer to send a check you may do that also at this address: Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, KS 67301-0050. You will get a thank you acknowledgment in either case, plus this advance thank you from me now. 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, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. 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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 V23 #137 ******************************