From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 3 18:07:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i33N7gj14480; Sat, 3 Apr 2004 18:07:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 18:07:42 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404032307.i33N7gj14480@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 #159 TELECOM Digest Sat, 3 Apr 2004 18:07:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 159 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Feds Tell States 'VoIP is Ours' (VOIP News) AT&T, Comcast Support VoIP Legislation (VOIP News) New Sipura SPA Version 2.0 Firmware Available (VOIP News) Re: Excel Communications (Gary) Re: Vonage, Bad Experience, Really is Terrible, Maybe Worst (Frank) Re: Vonage, Bad Experience, Really is Terrible, Maybe Worst (S Garland) Re: Western Union Clocks (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Sununu Bill Allows Voice Over Internet Protocol (Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business (Clarence Dold) Re: Wireless Equivalent to Crossover Network (Kenneth P. Stox) Walmart Card Balancing Mix up Causes Major Headache (TELECOM Editor) Media For Sale (Mike L) iTunes Case Study - Digital Media Project (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. =========================== 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 are 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: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 11:56:41 -0500 Subject: Feds Tell States 'VoIP is Ours' Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Jack Decker note: (I sent this out earlier with a bad subject line - that'll teach me to do cut-and-paste operations when I'm half awake. Sorry for the duplication, but I did want to get this out with a proper subject line). http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5184603.html By Ben Charny and Declan McCullagh CNET News.com Sen. John Sununu announced on Friday long-awaited Internet phone legislation that would effectively eliminate state and local authorities' ability to tax and regulate broadband phone calls. The bill, which is expected to draw fire from state governments, says all authority over regulating VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services is "reserved solely to the federal government." The measure, VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act, also imposes some curbs on the Federal Communications Commission's ability to extend to VoIP much of the thick quilt of rules and requirements that govern the traditional phone network. For instance, it bans imposing certain "access charge" taxes, but does require the FCC to levy VoIP universal service fees that will be redirected to provided discounted analog phone service to low-income and rural Americans. Sununu's proposal also addresses the controversial issue of VoIP wiretapping, saying that VoIP companies that provide links to the existing telephone network -- a category that would include Vonage, for instance -- must provide some "access to necessary information to law enforcement agencies." But the access requirement, a key concern of the FBI, would not apply to instant messaging applications or peer-to-peer services like Skype. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5184603.html 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/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 12:13:05 -0500 Subject: AT&T, Comcast Support VoIP Legislation Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Two press releases commenting on the VoIP legislation introduced by Senator Sununu and Congressman Pickering: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-02-2004/0002140211&EDATE= AT&T Welcomes Introduction on VoIP Legislation WASHINGTON, April 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The following statement may be attributed to Peter Jacoby, AT&T Vice President of Congressional Affairs: Sen. Sununu and Congressman Pickering have demonstrated a strong vision for the future with the introduction of this legislation today. These bills provide an excellent place for the Congress to join the discussion on VoIP. They have presented a deregulatory approach that both acknowledges the need to reform the current subsidy system and allows this nascent service to flourish and bring the benefits of competition and innovation to the telecommunications marketplace. SOURCE AT&T Web Site: http://www.att.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-02-2004/0002140315&EDATE= Statement From Comcast Corporation PHILADELPHIA, April 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast issued the following statement today regarding legislation introduced today by Senator John Sununu and Rep. Chip Pickering: We commend Senator Sununu and Rep. Pickering for their leadership on VOIP telephony policy. Consumers will benefit if this exciting technology is free to develop without burdensome regulation. VOIP will help cable companies to provide widespread facilities-based phone competition, leveraging the $85 billion we have collectively spent on network upgrades since 1996. Keeping VOIP free of the kind of regulation developed for a monopoly telephone era is essential to ensure that VOIP investment will continue and competition will grow. SOURCE Comcast Corporation Web Site: http://www.comcast.com ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 00:02:02 -0500 Subject: New Sipura SPA Version 2.0 firmware available Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Highlights of the upgrade are here: http://www.sipura.com/Documents/SPA_Version_2_Highlights.txt Sipura states that it is not necessary to upgrade to version 2.0 unless you require one or more new features. Also, it is not necessary to upgrade your SPA if your device is remotely provisioned by a service provider. But if you own a Sipura and you're not using it with a commercial VoIP service, and you need one of the new features, you can find the upgrade at this address: http://www.sipura.com/support/index.htm ------------------------------ From: roadtoadkw@msn.com (gary) Subject: Re: Excel Communications Date: 2 Apr 2004 20:32:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com J Kelly wrote in message news:: > On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 23:11:00 -0600, John A. Weeks III > wrote: >> 2) Excel pays commissions in advance. >> Excel does not pay out a single dime until a sales person makes a >> sale to a number of customers, and those customers use the service >> to generate revenue and commissions, > You seem to contradict yourself here. It's obivious you don't know what your talking about jkelly, unless you know the way the residuals are paid, you don't know what your talking about. As soon as someone switches over to the Excel's telecom services, a check or record is made and the rep or sponsering rep and uplines are paid by the end of the week on some commissions and by the month on some of the commissions, there are weekly and monthly weeks that are generated when a new customer or marketing rep has joined or requested the telecom service. If your with any other telecom service provider you're still paying at or near the same as Excel price, Excel just pays it back to the rep, while your other telecom pays it back to their big marketing or sales scheme's including big name athletes, etc.; you're paying one way or the other, just with Excel you're getting a part of it back and the more customers or reps you have the more money you get back. Ask your telecom back for some of the monies you payed for your services and they will laugh you in the face so to speak, so become a customer and help someone else recieve a residual income that will last forever, or become a rep and get a piece of the pie yourself; that's what it's all about. www.payyourselfnow.com/garyowens www.excelir.com/gowens2 ------------------------------ From: Frank@nospam.biz Subject: Re: Vonage, Bad Experince, Really is Terrible, Maybe the Worst Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 06:11:25 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications G wrote: > Vonage has some serious problems and here they are ! > You phone does not work for ALL the following reasons, which > cumulatively can amount to more than a few HOURS a week! > 1. If power is out; > 2. If cable is out; > 3. Every once in awhile Vonage system is down; > 4. If Vonage modem has a glitch; > 5. If your cable has a glitch. > If your phone loses dial tone you do not get it back unless you > reboot the Vonage modem, which you do not know is out of order unless > you check it. Once you reboot it, it takes two or three minutes, > because Vonage only poles you one every few minutes, NOT ONCE EVERY > FEW SECONDES, like any normal system would do. Voip is a great > technology for campus wide utilization, but Vonage is going to go belly > up fast with this application of the technology. > Beware of saving a few dollars and losing a lot of business/friends > with this technology. You sound like you work for a competitor, perhaps AT&T? I have had Vonage for 13 months, now, on a cable modem and it is up and running almost 100% of the time. Then again, only two people call me on it. Otherwise it is for extensive outbound calls. I keep a wireline presence for my incoming calls. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Vonage not so terrible From: no_email_address@hotmail.com (Sara Garland) Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 20:38:56 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > You phone does not work for ALL the following reasons, which > cumulatively can amount to more than a few HOURS a week! > 1. If power is out; > 2. If cable is out; > 3. Every once in awhile Vonage system is down; > 4. If Vonage modem has a glitch; > 5. If your cable has a glitch. I've had Vonage since August and I've had about 4 hours of downtime total. My cable company is apparently very good, and I've never experienced Vonage being down while I was home. I've had to reset the cablemodem a few times, but that wasn't a Vonage-specific problem. I have experienced problems with some of the features, though. I can't get *69 to work well, but the website does give accurate information (after the fact) about calls that came in. I have no complaints, but I've got some money saved because of Vonage. Your mileage may vary. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 14:35:59 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Western Union Clocks Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > My Panasonic sets the time when you power it *off*, not on. It seems > to me that it actually said that in the manual, too. I suspect the > reason is that the process can take a bit of time and they didn't want > to keep you from doing whatever you were trying to do when you turned > the VCR on, so they wait until you're no longer using it. [way off topic, of course, but:] Or perhaps the reason is that the only time you need an accurate clock on a VCR is when you're recording, and most VCR's only record when they're off. Personally, I've always HATED this "feature," having many times programmed my VCR (perhaps even successfully) to record, but then left it on. I suspect many other people also don't record what they want because they leave the VCR on. -Joel ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 14:49:22 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Sununu Bill Allows Voice Over Internet Protocol Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > Key provisions in the bill will: > Protect VoIP data from federal and state taxation. Imposing > oppressive taxes on VoIP will serve only to block further emergence of > this technology. It's "reporting" like this that does injustice to the truth. Of course "oppressive taxes" are bad. But (1) not all taxes are oppressive; (2) the taxes will not "serve only to block...", as, for example, they could also serve to level the playing field with other telephony conduits or require that people using VoIP contribute their fair share to the common network whose use they enjoy; but most importantly, (3) the second sentence is not a provision; it's propaganda. Protecting VoIP from taxation may or may not be a good idea, but without clear reporting and without a differentiation between data an opinions, it will be hard to have a serious discussion. -Joel ------------------------------ From: dold@Hot-SpotXW.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Hot-Spot Wi-Fi Business Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 20:26:54 UTC Organization: a2i network Tony P. wrote: > First think of the infrastructure. Yuo'd need some type of well equipped > Wi-Fi router or two, and the access points associated with it. Then of > course you'll need some form of security above and beyond basic WEP and > not broadcasting the SSID. For that I'd suggest BlueSocket but it isn't > in any way cheap. Why would you want to have security like WEP? No public hotspot that I've used has any encryption. > Equipment, I'd say is about $15K to $30K or so. We have a different idea of what he's trying to do, I guess. I would say closer to 10% of that. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: Kenneth P. Stox Organization: Imaginary Landscape, LLC. Subject: Re: Wireless Equivalent to Crossover Network Date: Fri, 02 Apr 2004 23:30:51 GMT Daveman750 wrote: > Is there any cheap way to get a wireless equivalent to a simple > crossover network for sharing a dialup connection and files between > only two computers? You will need to configure both machine's wireless interfaces to use ad-hoc mode. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 22:46:30 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Walmart Mix Up Balancing Credit Cards Causes Major Hassle On Thursday evening, a major problem happened with Walmart Stores and their credit/debit card processing. I do not usually shop at Walmart Supercenter here in Independence but on Thursday evening had to get some ink for my printer after the stores which carry it downtown were closed. I love to use my PayPal debit card, since Paypal pays 1.5 percent cash back on sales, and I can check its status right on line anytime. Of course I can use it 'like a credit card' for purchases on the net, and I never have more than a few dollars in it at any time. Anyway, I went out to Walmart SuperCenter, got my printer ink and a ream of paper. The purchase came to $36.72 (I do not know WHO keeps claiming that Walmart is 'so much cheaper than the stores downtown' but they do.) Anyway, today, Friday, I was checking my PayPal account and saw not one! not two! but three charges from Walmart for the $36.72, leaving me $72.44 in the 'hole', since I *only* move what money I need to that PayPal account, plus or minus a couple dollars. Naturally I got on the phone right away to PayPal and asked them, "how did that happen, the account is a debit card with a 'credit limit' of only the balance in the account. How did those additional two charges get approved instead of declined as I would have expected." Pay Pal said the reason it showed as 'approved' rather than 'declined' was because Walmart had 'forced it' in order to balance their card sales totals for the night. She blamed it on Walmart, saying 'they had a big mix up Thursday night in their card balancing.' I called Walmart/Independence and the customer service lady said it was not their fault, it was their credit card processor who screwed everything up. She said every Walmart store got a memo on the fax today explaining what had happened and that it 'was being corrected over the weekend, and to tell any customers who asked that it was NOT Walmart's fault'. I still decided to check with the credit card processor, who because the size and severity of the screw up opened an 800 toll free line to deal with customers tonight who happen to use their computers to examine their credit/debit card balances, and went crazy when they saw the mess. Just as I suspected, the credit card processor refused to confess to the blame either, saying "it was not us, it was Walmart who caused this mess, and we are not going to have Walmart blaming us for causing this." PayPal also had a standard response to read to customers saying that **everyone will get full credit either overnight or by Monday for the incorrect charges**. Walmart and the credit card processor said the same thing. They all said 'do not pay attention if your computer screams at you about 'get money in your account to cure this negative balance mess'. Apparently either Walmart Stores or the card processor ran the 'batch' two or three times instead of ONCE Thursday night, and a lot of people were affected. Credit cards were charged two or three extra times, and debit cards the same way. Debit cards which went negative as a result or credit cards which went over limit as a result were 'forced' to balance. Its all being ironed out now. I hope Walmart and/or the card processor find out who caused this and make a human sacrifice of them. (Update, Saturday afternoon, 4:30 PM CST: I got a phone call from the credit card processing office people. They are still working feverishly trying to get this straightened out; it was much worse than just Walmart Stores apparently. ) PAT ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 03:59:19 GMT From: Mike L Subject: Media For Sale Organization: Shaw Residential Internet I have several different media for sale: 5" 640 MB optical disks (aka PD disks) 3" 125 MB optical disks (sometimes referred to as optimagneto) 3" 230 MB optical disks (sometimes referred to as optimagneto) 720K floppy disks 1.44 MB floppy disks without read/write tab For info call (780) 437-1253 or email ebenezer@shaw.ca Thanks. Mike L ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 16:28:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: iTunes Case Study - Digital Media Project iTunes Case Study Overview In recent months, iTunes, Apple's Online Music Store, has become the pacesetter in the digital media marketplace. Its business model responds to many of the current legal and technological challenges in online media distribution. The Digital Media Project's Green Paper, iTunes: How Copyright, Contract, and Technology Shape the Business of Digital Media, provides an in-depth look at this service from the perspective of comparative law. Members of the Digital Media Team examined different legal and regulatory regimes from a range of countries to deterimine how iTunes and services like it are likely to fare under different sets of norms. By focusing on the specific iTunes example, the Case Study offers a concrete view of the way law, technology, and business model interact in the post-Napster world. The Case Study has focused on four important regulatory issues: * Interaction between Copyright and Contract Law * Digital Rights Management * Digital First Sale Doctrine * Fair Use Doctrine http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/itunes ------------------------------ 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. 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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