From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Apr 13 13:57:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i3DHvvZ12063; Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:57:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:57:58 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404131757.i3DHvvZ12063@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 #184 TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:58:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 184 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Proposed Internet Phone Rules Upset SaskTel (VOIP News) Canada: Vonage Holdings Launch Internet Telephony (VOIP News) VoIP Regulation Heating Up (VOIP News) Telecom Tops Corporate To-Do Lists (VOIP News) Re: CRTC: VoIP is Just Phone Service (John Levine) Re: Spam Issues (sin nombre) Re: Spam Issues (Dave Phelps) Re: Spam Issues (Daniel W. Johnson) Response to Request for PSTN Info (Charles G 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. =========================== 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: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:42:16 -0400 Subject: Proposed Internet Phone Rules Upset SaskTel Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/info/business/story.html?id=39881174-A0E5-4BC9-A4EC-1073E86ADF1C Kevin O'Connor Saskatchewan News Network; Regina Leader-Post REGINA -- Saskatchewan Telecommunications is upset about proposed new rules for Internet phone service that it says may scuttle plans for an expansion of the service inside the province. Last week, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) released its preliminary views on how Net phone service -- also known as Voice over Internet Protocol or VOIP -- should be regulated. A final decision is expected later this year. VOIP, perhaps the biggest thing to hit the telecommunications industry since cell phones, allows people to make cheap voice calls over a high-speed Internet connection using a special "IP" phone or a conventional phone-set attached to an adapter. The CRTC says if SaskTel and other "incumbent" phone companies want to introduce VOIP for the home user, they'll have to apply to the federal agency to have prices and service offerings approved. However, according to John Meldrum, SaskTel's vice-president for regulatory affairs, that creates an unlevel playing field between SaskTel and some newer VOIP companies, such as Primus and Vonage -- which aren't subject to the same requirements. "We're not happy with this non-symmetrical regulation they have in mind," Meldrum said. "It sucks." Full story at: http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/info/business/story.html?id=39881174-A0E5-4BC9-A4EC-1073E86ADF1C 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: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:32:09 -0400 Subject: Canada: Vonage Holdings Launch Internet Telephony Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=cd5af497-56e2-40de-9d9c-63a7026f5ece Vonage holdings launch Internet telephony service Offers standard features: To compete with Primus; others readying in wings Mark Evans Financial Post Consumers looking to jump on the Internet telephony bandwagon now have another option after Vonage Holdings Corp. launched its much-speculated service in Canada yesterday. The Edison, N.J.-based company said the service, which uses Voice over Internet Protocol technology to send voice traffic over high-speed networks, will cost $19.99 to $45.99 a month. The service includes such features as voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, and the ability to choose from 14 local area codes in 13 markets. The move by Vonage, the brainchild of chief executive Jeffrey Citron, into Canada adds another player into the increasingly competitive VoIP market, which picked up momentum in January when Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc. rolled out the first VoIP service. Yak Communications Inc., AOL Canada Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. are expected to enter the fledgling market later this year. Rogers Cable Inc. is talking about offering VoIP service next year while Bell Canada is doing internal technology testing. As VoIP makes inroads, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is working to establish a new regulatory framework. Last week, the CRTC said it is leaning toward regulating incumbent carriers such as Bell Canada and Telus Corp. while letting competitive carriers such as Vonage set their own prices. This preliminary approach reflects the CRTC's mandate to encourage competition in a market that, until recently, had been tightly controlled. Not surprisingly, the incumbent carriers are pointing to VoIP and new rivals such as Primus as a sign competition is vibrant so regulatory restrictions should be loosened. The CRTC is accepting submissions about VoIP until April 28, and it will hold a two-day discussion session May 19-20. It expects to unveil regulations in the fourth quarter. One of the challenges facing Internet telephony providers is Canada's inexpensive local service prices due to CRTC policies, which eliminate a key marketing tool -- lower prices -- used by Vonage in the United States to attract more than 135,000 customers. Full story at: http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=cd5af497-56e2-40de-9d9c-63a7026f5ece ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:24:05 -0400 Subject: VoIP Regulation Heating Up Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33403.html By John P. Mello Jr. TechNewsWorld "We went for over 200 years without the federal government preempting the states' taxing authority until the moratorium came along on Internet access," Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association in Washington, D.C., told TechNewsWorld. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mulls over what to do about services for making phone calls on the Internet, two legislators have decided that the U.S. Congress should get into the act. Sen. John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Mississippi) have filed bills in their respective legislative branches to place regulatory control of Voice over IP (VoIP) technology squarely under the federal government. Called "The VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act of 2004," the measure restricts state or local taxation or regulation on the technology and delegates regulatory authority over it to the FCC, according to a statement from Pickering's office. The statement said the legislation defines a VoIP application as the use of hardware, software or network equipment for real-time, two-way or multidirectional voice communications over the public Internet or a private network utilizing Internet Protocol (IP). It excludes VoIP applications that both originate and terminate on the public switched telephone network. "VoIP is the next step in voice communications," Pickering, who is vice chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement. "As this efficient technology grows, consumers will benefit from advanced services and reduced costs," he continued. "But for the industry to develop and prosper, we must have a national standard that prevents patchwork regulation from stifling innovation." Full story at: http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/33403.html ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:21:06 -0400 Subject: Telecom Tops Corporate To-Do Lists Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2004/tc20040413_5910_tc146.htm SPECIAL REPORT: A CEO'S GUIDE TO TECHNOLOGY Telecom Tops Corporate To-Do Lists As businesses start exploring services like Wi-Fi and VoIP, experts say "tread cautiously" till this fast-changing tech settles down Over the past year or so, telecommunications has been at the heart of nearly every technology decision Gerald Cohen has been involved in. A month ago, Information Builders, a business-intelligence software company that Cohen runs, began testing voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), a technology for making phone calls over the Web. That came a few months after he began looking into buying more advanced wireless gadgets for his mobile workers -- who want to answer voice calls and check e-mail on a single device while traveling. For the past few years, telecom has been among the driest of corporate technologies, a sector characterized by strategies that revolved around cost-cutting. That goal may not have changed much, but suddenly telecom projects head many execs' to-do lists. A recent Morgan Stanley survey of 225 chief information officers in the nation's 1,000 largest companies revealed that wireless infrastructure and VoIP are even higher corporate priorities than last year, when in the same survey both made it into the top six. Full story at: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2004/tc20040413_5910_tc146.htm ------------------------------ Date: 13 Apr 2004 03:52:06 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: CRTC: VoIP is Just Phone Service Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA Quoting John Covert in issue 182: > Well, not exactly. My FWD phone also has a WA state (area code 360) > number that any phone can call and also has a UK number (0870) which > any phone can call. Really? How did you set that up? Pulver got the FCC to declare that FWD isn't taxable because it's not real phones. If FWD phones really are dialable, this could get interesting. R's, John Levine ------------------------------ From: sin nombre Subject: Re: Spam Issues Date: 12 Apr 2004 20:15:16 -0700 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] In article , SELLCOM Tech support says: > jmeissen@aracnet.com posted on that vast internet thingie: >> While you may be frustrated with the list maintainers, your complaint >> should be with the administrator of the site you're trying to email. >> It's their choice to use the list that's negatively impacting their >> email system. At the least you should be able to get them to whitelist >> you. If the site administration has left themselve unreachable email >> or phone then they are truly irresponsible. > The administrator of the site was quite cooperative and generous with > his time. The point is that many administrators just see "spam > blackhole lists" and apparently don't know how to evaluate the > quality. The admin had no idea what "FIVETEN" was. When I first set > up our servers I really had no clue about blackhole list quality (till > one went berserk and blocked our main supplier). >> It's a shame that spammers have caused site administrators to feel that >> it's necessary to use such drastic and draconian measures. > Oh, I use several blackhole lists on our servers and it blocks a lot > of spam. That is the more reason that I am concerned about lazy or > incompetent people running them irresponsibly and advertising them > like "FIVETEN". These trash are willing to wholesale interfere with > legitimate companies and to some their greatest concern is that I call > them "trash" rather than what they are doing. > Irresponsible trash like FIVETEN may well end up mucking things up for > the legit blackhole list providers. I know about the standard > "disclaimer" that only the admins make the decision to block email > yada yada but I really don't think that would hold up in court since > they KNOW that their list will be used by third parties to block > email. How do you spell "negligence"? > (Remember here that my sympathies lie WITH the legit black hole > operators!!! and other anti-spam utils etc.. We use several of them.) > I also don't think a spammer could prevail in court against one. But > you let some legitimate business suffer some real damage because of > irresponsible trash like FIVETEN and sue and win that could have a > dampening effect on what is a very valuable resource against real > spammers. > FIVETEN has us blackholed because of spam from X.X.208.x and we are > x.x.22.x. Think how you would feel if your email to customers was > being blocked without cause. AHA! Your network provider has probably failed to take action against the spammer at x.x.208.x And FIVE-TEN's policies include: "6. spam-support - Networks that refuse to remove their spammers, otherwise known as spam support. In this case, you will need to find another provider, or you will need to convince your current provider to remove their spammers." I say hooray for FIVE-TEN; and stop whining and dump your spam- friendly provider. Blocklisting an entire /16 or /24 block of IP's will sometimes get a provider's attention when all normal measures such as abuse@ notifications have failed. > BTW, we spend way more time out of the day that we should taking the > time to report spammers. We also don't even use email advertising to > our own customers since the environment has been so trashed by > spammers. > Steve at SELLCOM ------------------------------ From: Dave Phelps Subject: Re: Spam Issues Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:08:59 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In article , barmar@alum.mit.edu says: > What they're advocating is irrelevant -- the similarity is in the fact > that they advocate something. They try to absolve themselves of blame > by claiming that they're just providing information, and what the > readers do with this information is out of their hands. (Excuse me while I jump into the middle of this thread that I haven't been following.) I fail to see the relationship between advocating something and carrying blame for someone else's actions. The old classic, adjusted for this discussion, would be "if I advocate jumping off of a bridge, and you do it, is it my fault?" Nope. You didn't excersize due diligence. Dave Phelps DD Networks www.ddnets.com deadspam=tippenring ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net (Daniel W. Johnson) Subject: Re: Spam Issues Date: 13 Apr 2004 10:00:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Barry Margolin wrote in message news:: > Isn't this similar to the argument given by people who operate web > sites that list abortion doctors, when they are included as > conspirators or accessories when these doctors get murdered? In both > cases, the list operators know full well what purpose their lists will > be put to, they're hardly just innocent publishers. They compile > these lists with the express purpose of encouraging others to use them > for a specific purpose. A conspiracy requires that an actual crime be committed or planned. A conspirator puts a bullet through the head of a doctor (or plans to): Illegal in most, if not all, jurisdictions. A "conspirator" refuses permission for outsiders to use the "conspirator"'s own private property (e.g., mailserver): I challenge you to name three jurisdictions where this would be a crime. ------------------------------ Subject: Response to Request for PSTN Info From: Charles G Gray Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:34:00 -0500 This is in response to William Warren's query on 7 Apr (Vol 23, Issue 169). The opinions expressed here are my own, and not necessarily those of Oklahoma State University. Let me preface my comments by saying that virtually all of my work experience has been in the voice arena ? radio and telephone. The Army sent me to school with AT&T for a year in New Jersey, so I may still be somewhat prejudiced in my view of the reliability and ubiquity of the circuit-switched PSTN. 1.) Will VoIP become a serious alternative to circuit-switched telephony? I think VoIP will become an important alternative, but not a replacement. After all, there are still telephone users who have dial-pulse phones; so even DTMF has not been a total "replacement" for earlier technology. Two further examples: 1) My Mother is 84 years old, and she sat in front of a key-punch (data entry) machine for over 20 years. She will not allow a computer in her house even though I offered her a free one. I can't see her ever doing anything besides POTS. 2) I saw my doctor last week, and just off-hand asked him if he had his PDR (Physician's Desk Reference) on a PDA. He said, "That is some kind of computer, isn't it?" I confirmed that it was, and he says he never touches a computer of any kind. He is not an "old fogy" like I am he is probably mid-40s. So there are examples of at least two kinds of people who probably will not (at least voluntarily) use VoIP. For me, I am one of those people who expect to have dial tone even when the lights go out every time. I am not willing to put my phone service (local or long distance) on a PC. I am now paying about a nickel a minute for long distance, and my total bill is about $25.00 per month. Corporations who operate their own intranet can probably successfully migrate to VoIP, since they can control latency, delay and QoS on their own network. However, note that Communications News magazine for April 2004 (page 10) reported that companies experience an average of 501 hours of network downtime every year, costing about 3.6% of annual revenue. Applications problems were the single largest contributor, followed by human error. When I worked at American Airlines our entire telecommunications budget worldwide was less than 3.6% of annual revenue. As an "old telephone guy" I would not be willing to risk my corporate network to this kind of failure rate to save a penney a minute. We haven't yet hit congestion in the public internet due to an overload of voice calls, but it can (will) happen. Granted, it will no longer require a full 64 Kbps channel to handle circuit-switched voice calls, but the lower useful limit of current coding algorithms is probably 16 Kbps. I know that some cell phones use 8 Kbps, but the voice quality is not acceptable to me. In my previous career we used 16 KBps coding for internal company calls, but would never go below 32 KBps for customer contact. Even at 16 KBps it will take significant expansion in the internet backbone to handle even a quarter of the current PSTN circuit switched traffic. However, that said, note that I have a current student whose employer was in the process of implementing VoIP for their corporate network. Last weekthey ripped out what they had done thus far and went back to a PBX, due to unacceptable performance. They may take another run at VoIP in the future, but for now they feel "burned". I do not recall who their supplier was. On a slightly different tack, I read (don't remember the source) about two years ago that over 50% of all voice calls in the PSTN at that time were to toll-free numbers. I don't know how this amount of traffic fits into a VoIP business model. The large users of toll-free service for call centers are probably paying about three cents a minute ? certainly not over four cents for domestic toll-free service. Circuit-switched calls to India, which seems to be driving the fury toward outsourcing work there, cost only about half a cent a minute more than domestic calls, even using a full 64KBps channel. Where can VoIP deliver a profit in this scenario? I honestly don't know. 1.A) If VoIP is viable, do you predict it'll be used with a dedicated "telephone" or with PCs? A combination? Most certainly, at least for my lifetime, it will be a combination. Even if some people agree to use VoIP on the back end, they will still want a "telephone" in the house. In my case I have eight telephones in the house, and it is not clear to me how VoIP would replace all of that. 1.B) If VoIP is not the future transport mechanism, what is? Maybe some of us should go to Supercomm 2004 in Chicago and listen to what Vint Cerf has to offer. I personally don't have any idea what might replace VoIP. 2.) Will the SS7 network be replaced by IP? IP will not replace SS7 any time soon, but will almost certainly be configured to transport SS7 messages using Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). The IETF is working on standardization. See IEEE Communications Magazine, April 2004, page 64, for an article by Shaojian Fu and Mohammed Atiquzzaman (University of Oklahoma) for details, and an excellent discussion of the hurdles that must be overcome. SS7 is an ITU (International Telecommunications Union) standard (Q.706) that has been adopted by carriers worldwide to facilitate international calling, as well as for inter-carrier billing. It is also the bedrock of signaling for roaming in cellular networks. Some of the reliability requirements of SS7 (that are not now met by IP) include: 1. Time needed to switch to another link upon link failure < 800 ms. 2. Availability of 99.9988% (Maximum downtime of ten minutes per year). 3. No more than one in 10**7 messages lost due to failure in the MTP layer. 4. No more than 10**10 messages to be delivered out of sequence to the user part due to failure in the MTP layer. 3.) Do you support the Negroponte Switch. . .? I'm not sure that everything that is wired will become wireless, and vice versa, but some of that is happening, and will continue to do so. In less developed countries (LDCs) wireless cell phones or wireless local loop (WLL) will almost certainly predominate. There are still thousands of villages in China and India that do not have a single wireline telephone. The best way to serve them in my view is to install a phone booth in each one, with solar power and a LEO satellite connection (e.g., Iridium). There is still the situation (some would say "problem") with over-the-air broadcasters not being willing to give up their hammerlock on frequencies for local markets. To some extent television, and certainly radio stations, are not willing to give up their local franchises and run the risk of being overcome with purely satellite TV or radio. Besides, we haven't completely solved the problem of spectrum scarcity. See the IEEE Spectrum March 2004 issue, page 49 for an article by Gregory Staple and Kevin Werbach that discusses anticipated developments that will supposedly "End Spectrum Scarcity" (their words). However, we aren't "there" yet and there is a lot of government (United States and the ITU) inertia to overcome. Don't forget, the ITU allocated spectrum in 1999 and 2000 for third- generation cell phones, and the European carriers bid well over $100 billion dollars for licenses. There still aren't any large-scale implementations of 3G outside of Japan and even there the market is quite small. 4.) What does the growth in fiber capacity mean for the traditional LECs? I don't really know about this one. I'm still mulling over these developments, and do not think I am prepared to pontificate here. Maybe next year. 4.) Will there be a backlash against the idea of "always on" connectivity? Yes, and it may have already started. As an aside, see "Blondie" in the Sunday Funnies for 11 April where Dagwood gets up his courage to confront a loud talker in a restaurant. The New York Times for 8 April also has a very good article on blocking cell phone usage in public places. There is some discussion there of the legality of jamming a cell phone signal, with reference to the Communications Act of 1934. Jamming is legal in many other countries of the world. The "electronic leash" is a two-edged sword. Of course, the FCC issued their NPRM on cell-phone location requirements for E911 calls in 1996, and here we are eight years later and we still do not have accurate location capability for E911 calls, with the possible exception of Rhode Island, and one or two major cities. The FCC presents location capability as strictly a positive result and for E911 calls I would agree. Supposedly however, the cell phone industry would like to have location-specific information (always on) to allow targeted advertising. Their plan is to sell the advertising capability, say to shopping malls, to entice passersby into stores with on-line real-time advertising for sales and specials. This application seems highly invasive to my privacy, and I would personally take a negative view of a merchant using my cell phone minutes to "pitch" a product or sale. It might be acceptable if the capability was "opt in". I definitely think that as long as we in the US use the current payment scenario (cell phone user pays for all) that this will not go over well with many people. In most other countries of the world cell phones are billed "caller pays", so the cost there might not make a difference, but there are still privacy issues. I have not explored the ramifications of the European Union "Data Directive" on location technology, but the Directive places what many Americans consider to be extremely stringent limits on collecting and processing data with regard to individual rights. Then there are the (I think valid) arguments by the civil liberties advocates that say that if Sears or Starbucks can tell where you are, then so can the FBI, the CIA, Interpol, and your local police. I think for now, most people don't really consider the "always on" capability. The real backlash will start when people are bombarded with unsolicited advertising, and especially if the system is "opt out". Look at the federal "do not call" list. Even though it is "opt out", something like 54 million people have added their numbers. I would see a parallel in the "always on" scenario for cell phones. I apologize for the length of this, it just kind of "grew" as I worked on it. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 ------------------------------ 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'. 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