From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Apr 25 00:53:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i3P4rM618118; Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:53:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:53:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404250453.i3P4rM618118@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 #207 TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Apr 2004 00:52:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 207 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Flirts; Investors Wonder About Date (Monty Solomon) The Bullying Pulpit (Monty Solomon) TV on Steroids (Monty Solomon) 'Crazy Like a Fox': From Start-Up to Upstart (Monty Solomon) Out-Foxed / How Rupert's Red-State Cable Channel Waved Flag (M Solomon) Google and Akamai: Cult of Secrecy vs. Kingdom of Openness (M Solomon) Oh, Yeah, He Also Sells Computers (Monty Solomon) Re: Bad Weather Storm; Vonage Goes Out (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Bad Weather Storm; Vonage Goes Out (Stanley Cline) Re: Taxes on VOIP Service? (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review (Stanley Cline) Re: Honesty from Earthlink (Edson C. Hendricks) Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Phone Found on Street (Mike Koerner) Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Phone Found on street (Stanley Cline) Re: 'Old Style' Telephone Call Recording Device (Diamond Dave) Re: Book Review: 19th Century Telegraphers (Lisa Hancock) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:03:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Flirts; Investors Wonder About Date By JOHN MARKOFF SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 - Google, the Web search company that has developed a huge following around the world, is expected to take a tentative first step next week toward a public stock offering, a person close to the company said Friday. But it is likely to stop short of filing a formal registration to sell shares, the person said. In recent days speculation on Wall Street and Silicon Valley has reached a fever pitch over Google's long-awaited offering, which has become the most highly anticipated event in the technology world here since the dot-com boom collapsed in early 2000. But Google, which prides itself on its quirky and secretive corporate culture, appears prepared to drag out any public offering as long as possible. Google is being driven to disclose basic financial details of its operations next week by an obscure provision of securities law. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/24/technology/24google.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:27:46 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Bullying Pulpit By Art Brodsky, TomPaine.com In the first quarter of the year, about 100,000 people each month decided they were fed up with what broadcast radio stations were feeding them. They were fed up with the same songs played dozens of times a day, fed up with car dealers screaming at them in commercials. So, these people signed up for XM Radio, a pay-radio service broadcast by satellite. This year, XM added something new to its more than 100 channels of music and talk-local traffic and weather information. That new development was too much for the powerful broadcasting lobby, which sees the local market, and local ad revenue, as its own. Rather than recognize a weakness in their programming and try to find a way to hang on to their listeners, the broadcasters instead went to their friends in Congress as part of a campaign that would restrict consumer choice. As a result, Rep. Charles "Chip" Pickering, R-Miss., and Rep. Gene Green, D-Tex., with little fanfare, introduced H.R. 4026, the Local Emergency Radio Service Preservation Act of 2004. It's the type of a bill that's unfortunately quite common, but illustrates one of the fundamental weaknesses of our economy that you won't hear discussed in the presidential campaign. There are some American industries that are just plain afraid to compete in the marketplace. For all of the talk in favor of "the free market" and doing what's best for consumers, this bill is the poster child for the ability of one industry to try to use Members of Congress to put the screws to a competitive industry. http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/10209 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:48:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TV on Steroids So Long to Analog Broadcasting and Hello to Digital, Which May Spell Good News for Viewers -- And Plenty of It BY NEIL HICKEY Columbia Journalism Review Since the dawn of television, almost six decades ago, every TV station in America has had the capacity to beam out just one program at a time -- Gunsmoke or The Huntley-Brinkley Report or Survivor or 60 Minutes. That was then; welcome to now: the Digital Era of broadcasting. The so-called analog, one-channel version of television will soon be as archaic as a 1950 Studebaker. Since the passage in 1996 of a new Telecommunications Act, all of the country's television stations are allowed to reach their viewers on as many as six channels -- simultaneously! Benefits for the public have been slow in coming, but suddenly "multicasting" -- that's the hot new word -- is on the lips of everybody in TV land. Take WRAL in Raleigh, North Carolina, for example, a pioneer in the new age of broadcasting. Last year, on one of its new digital outlets, a service called NewsChannel, the station aired live, full coverage of the murder trial of a well-known local figure accused, and eventually convicted, of killing his wife. It was a story of broad local interest, but one for which the station would not have preempted popular CBS shows on its lone analog channel. http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/2/hickey-tv.asp ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:11:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'Crazy Like a Fox': From Start-Up to Upstart By DAVID CARR IN little more than seven years, Fox News set itself a place at the cable news table and then promptly upended it. All manner of convention -- presuming lack of bias, leaving the patriotism to the politicians and regarding institutions with suspicion -- has been battered by the runaway success of a news division that was initially received with up-the-sleeve snickering by its competitors, CNN and MSNBC. In 'Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN,' Scott Collins renders the fight for cable-news dominance as a schoolyard throw-down. CNN is the brainy scholar who oozes superiority, MSNBC is the new kid at school, endlessly trying to please, and then along comes Fox News, the loudmouth at the back of the class who trashes the rules everyone else lives by. By triangulating the story among the three competitors -- the book opens with the ''glitzy show'' announcing the formation of MSNBC -- Collins goes beyond transcribing the ticktock of events and infuses the story with drama. The book is breezy but avoids coming off as facile, skipping quickly across big stretches of history and landing hard on critical inflection points. ''Crazy Like a Fox'' is less about network tectonics and more about a hearts-and-minds battle for a new audience, one that sees the remote as a kind of voting machine to express disaffection with mainstream media and politics. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/books/review/18CARRLT.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:12:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Out-Foxed / How Rupert's Red-State Cable Channel Waved the Flag Out-Foxed How Rupert's red-state cable channel waved the flag and beat CNN. By Geraldine Sealey April 24, 2004 | Caution, you're about to enter a No Spin Zone. Or is it the Twilight Zone? We'll report, and you decide, based on this recent "unspun" news update from Fox News' flagship primetime program "The O'Reilly Factor." "Why are some Americans hindering the war on terror?" O'Reilly barked at the camera. "As we predicted, President Bush's poll numbers have gone up after last week's press conference. The elite media wanted Mr. Bush to grovel, but he remains defiant and determined to fight the terror war his way. Today the Supreme Court heard arguments that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay should have lawyers and due process. Predictably, the New York Times wants lawyers for the accused terrorists, editorializing that some of them 'may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.' "Sure. They just took a wrong turn into Uzbekistan and wandered onto the battlefield. How ridiculous is that?" Remember, the Spin Stops Here. There was a time, not too long ago, when Fox News was a joke -- albeit a bad and sick one -- to liberals and TV journalists raised on Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley. But even those who rue the success of Rupert Murdoch's flag-waving cable channel have to admit: The old boy has done it. CNN founder Ted Turner once famously mocked Murdoch, saying he'd squish his cable news rival like a bug. We all know now who has squished whom. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/04/24/fox/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:19:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google and Akamai: Cult of Secrecy vs. Kingdom of Openness The king of search is tapping into what may be the largest grid of computers on the planet. And it remains extraordinarily secretive about its core technologies -- perhaps because it senses a potential competitor in dotcom era flameout Akamai. By Simson Garfinkel April 21, 2004 http://www.techreview.com/articles/wo_garfinkel042104.asp ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 22:47:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Oh, Yeah, He Also Sells Computers By JOHN MARKOFF April 25, 2004 Cupertino, Calif. STROLL the corridors and the atriums on Apple Computer's corporate campus these days and you will notice that something is missing. Gone are the posters and graphics accenting the company's sleek personal computers. In their place, in the main lobby, is a striking, three-story-high billboard celebrating Steven P. Jobs's brand-new billion-dollar consumer electronics business -- the iPod digital MP3 music player. In just two and a half years, Mr. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, has managed to take a well-designed hand-held gadget, add software connecting it to Macintoshes and Windows-based personal computers and convince the recording industry that he has found an elegant solution for ending its nightmare of digital piracy. In doing so, he has shifted the emphasis of Apple from what made it famous -- hip, even lovable computers -- to what he hopes will keep it relevant and profitable in the future: products for a digital way of life. In fact, the wild success that Mr. Jobs has enjoyed with the iPod may have come in the nick of time. For all the acknowledged design and ease-of-use advantages of the Macintosh, Apple's overall PC business is still growing more slowly than that of its Microsoft- and Intel-based competitors. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/business/yourmoney/25jobs.html ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:56:24 EDT Subject: Re: Bad Weather Storm; Vonage Goes Out In a message dated 4/24/04 7:36:19 PM Central Daylight Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: > I did not see the water until later on a battery-powered television > set with Tulsa area news and it was shown. Battery-powered? Well > yeah, even though I am less than six blocks from the Independence > electric power plant at Maple and Cement Streets (eastern city > limits) my electric power went out for several hours as well -- > along with 27 other people here in town according to the service rep > manning the customer service line I spoke with. What else would you use than a battery-powered TV set when you're hiding in an interior closet or bathroom because all three TV channels are running nothing but the radar of the storms coming for you and the picture from their spotters in the field showing the funnel coming down and the hail hitting the ground (and cars and carports). Our yard in Oklahoma City -- and many others -- was covered with hail so it looked like snow. There were even hail stone drifts in the yard. Fortunately, from watching the battery-powered TV, we were able to see from the radar and the commentary when it was safe to come out. At one time, before going into shelter, I had the battery-powered TV on one channel and the regular AC-powered TV on another channel. This was, I think, the same night as the storm hit Independence. Our power didn't go off, but it has a number of times in bad storms. Not our SBC phone service, however. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our storm was yesterday (Friday) night. The hail seemed to jump around us however; Parsons, Kansas, up the road a short distance from us got a large amount of hail yesterday morning, then the hail skipped past us and went to Coffeyville which like us had rotten weather all day, but they also got hail. But the *real* storm was Friday night when water was running down the streets and particularly about 10 pm when the electric went out and the Verdigris River spilled over and dumped itself by the Water Works and the Sewage Treatment Plant at the north end of Second Street. No sign of any tornadoes lately however, but this is the time of year for them. I was hoping you might have answered my question however: assuming cable or phone/DSL is working (ours was) but the computer and electricity is off in a power situation, couldn't a standby battery be used to keep the Vonage phone, MTA box and router running so the Vonage would stay alive? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Bad Weather Storm; Vonage Goes Out Organization: Myself, in Dunwoody/Sandy Springs/Atlanta, GA, USA :) Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 04:01:05 GMT On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:30:00 CDT, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > My questions are: since battery will keep computers going temporarily, > and assuming one's cable line/or phone and DSL line was working, I am > wondering if one could not run a battery to the Motorola MTA and the > router and keep your Vonage on line even when the computers otherwise > are shut down? I made do with my cellular phone overnight so it was Sure -- but if you maintain power to the MTA with a UPS, you need to also maintain power to any other device the MTA's IP traffic passes through (Ethernet hub or switch, DSL/cable modem, firewall, etc.) If you use Vonage with a Motorola MTA in their recommended configuration (between DSL/cable modem and firewall/switch) you only have to power the MTA and DSL/cable modem. In my case, my Sipura SPA for VoicePulse is behind a DSL modem, a Linux firewall, and an Ethernet switch, and to keep the phones going I have to keep power to all four devices (SPA, DSL modem, Ethernet switch, and firewall.) Believe it or not, I just bought a large (1500 VA) UPS *today* for those very devices (as well as a satellite multiswitch -- I'm geeky enough that I have my TiVos on UPS too!) for when I move in a new house next month. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> Subject Re: Taxes on VOIP Service? Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:29:20 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com John Levine wrote: > The real question is why, other than preferring that other people pay > taxes instead of you, anyone should think that a VoIP phone should pay > different taxes from other phones. Well, personally, I don't think anyone should be paying a tax that was imposed on what was then a luxury to finance a war that has been over for over 100 years. That said, your note motivated me to see if I could find out a bit more about this tax. It's not a pretty picture ... The web site http://www.itaa.org/taxfinance/fedexctx.htm has a short history of the tax. Congress has promised to get rid of it almost a dozen times, but have backed out and raised the rates instead, and made it "permanent" about 14 years ago. The IRS http://www.irs.gov/publications/p510/ar02.html#d0e734 has a really broad definition on what it can cover - and who can claim an exemption. An interesting point: Those really cheap phone cards you buy would be even cheaper -- the tax is included on those. Which also means sales tax is being charged on a federal tax. Good news though! No tax is required for coin paid local calls. So, why should such a trivial little tax still survive? As with most things political -- follow the money. Excise taxes were intended to be temporary taxes designed to discourage the use of the product they were applied to. (Standard tax theory says that taxes should be set at a rate that does not discourage use of the product.) The revenue from excise taxes should be applied to counter the negative aspects of said product. For example: An excise tax on tires might be useful if rubber only came from a country that we did not care to support or were at war with and revenue from said tax was used to develop a synthetic or alternate substitute. Back to reality: According an IRS spreadsheet at http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=96539,00.html for the year 2002, the federal government took in $67B (that's billion) in excise taxes from various sources. Some of the more interesting sources are: Automotive Luxury Tax $342M Fur Luxury Tax $1K Apparently, someone didn't get the word that the luxury tax on boats, aircraft, jewelry and furs was repealed in 1993. Gas Guzzler Tax $78M Highway Tire Tax $355M Gas Fuel Tax $21B (that's Billion) Diesel Fuel Tax $8B Telephone Tax $5.6B Air Travel Tax $6.9B So, at the top of the excise tax hit parade, coming in right behind motor fuel and air travel taxes, is our 100 year old temporary friend, the telephone service tax. Another interesting point -- the spreadsheet shows the total revenue generated from the telephone tax has been expanding tremendously over the past 8 years -- around $500M a year. This despite the fact that certain phone rates have dropped over that same time period. Presumably this comes from broadening the definition of what a telephone service is ... By the way -- the next time someone tries to argue that Amtrak should be getting a direct subsidy to level the playing field with all those public highways and interstates, you might point them to the $30 Billion every year that US taxpayers are paying for those roads. You might also ask why we aren't spending $30B a year on maintaining those roads, but that truely is a different subject. ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:32:58 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com John Levine wrote: > Nice review. Thank you. >> Packet8 supports Local Number Portability, so theoretically, you >> could get you current number reassigned. > Are you sure? I didn't see anything about it on their web site, and I > know they didn't in the past. As far as I know, Vonage is the only > one that does LNP. You are correct -- my mistake. I saw the heading for LNP on their website and assumed it meant they supported it. When I went back and read the detail, they stated they do not. > When I've sniffed the packets on my Vonage connection, I've noted that > all the outgoing calls go to headquarters, and the incoming calls come > from the phone switch in Syracuse where my phone number is assigned. > As far as I can tell, all VoIP providers do something like that. An email response I received from Packet8 kind of implies this as well. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review Organization: Myself, in Dunwoody/Sandy Springs/Atlanta, GA, USA :) Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 04:04:30 GMT On 24 Apr 2004 19:16:04 -0000, John Levine wrote: > Cable companies typically provide high quality phone service with > dedicated bandwidth, backup power, and real 911, rather than the lower > quality service that Packet8, Vonage, and other pure VoIP providers > do. But they still have no trouble bundling in unlimited long > distance and pricing it lower than the phone company. Here in Atlanta, Comcast's phone service (which I can't get at my current apartment, and may or may not be able to get at the house I'm moving into next month) is not much cheaper than BellSouth's. :( (Note that Comcast's phone service here in Atlanta, which is provided in conjunction with AT&T Local, is traditional circuit-switched service that runs over RF/coax, not a VoIP-based service like what Time Warner, Cox, and others are rolling out right now.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:48:15 -0700 From: Edson C. Hendricks Subject: Re: Honesty From Earthlink I'm not saying that Earthlink is deliberately not fixing any bug of theirs, nor even that I believe they actually have any such bug. My implication was meant to reflect my judgment that they are not telling the truth, whatever the truth may be. I believe at least that much can be reliably deduced from the exchange. Since you've raised the question, if I had to guess, it would be that there is no real bug involved, but instead it's all a deliberate policy on their part to send marketing material to people who've asked them not to send it, while pretending not to realize they're doing it. But that's just my guess, I definitely don't believe I know. ------------------------------ From: Michael G. Koerner Subject: Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Telephone Found on the Street Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:57:10 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com dold@HowXtoXRet.usenet.us.com wrote: > Don Saklad wrote: >> How would you return a lost cellular telephone you found ?... > If it's been lost more than a day, it's probably shut off, and a new one > acquired. From that phone, you could dial 611 and ask. > Or maybe look for stored phone number called "home". > Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 When I got my current cell phone (a Motorola V60I) last year, the local agent advised me to place my name and another number where I could be contacted somewhere on the phone. Mine is on the inside of the battery cover. Regards, | |\ ____ | | | | |\ Michael G. Koerner May they | | | | | | rise again! Appleton, Wisconsin USA | | | | | | ______________________________________ | | | | | | _______________ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sorry, Michael; I think your ascii-art in your signature got hosed by accident. On my cell phone I replaced the default greeting text 'Nokia' and my phone number with the phrase 'Stolen From Patrick Townson' and my home phone number. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Telephone Found on the Street Organization: Myself, in Dunwoody/Sandy Springs/Atlanta, GA, USA :) Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 03:55:21 GMT On 23 Apr 2004 18:56:42 -0400, Don Saklad wrote: > How would you return a lost cellular telephone you found ?... If there are numbers in the phone for "home" or something similar, try calling the phone's owner. If not, or if you don't want to try to contact the owner yourself, figure out what carrier it is active on (or was last active on) and contact that carrier and see what they'd like you to do. It's funny you mention it -- I got a rental car earlier this week (since my car is having some damage from falling tree limbs repaired) and I found someone's active Verizon Wireless cell phone under one of the seats. Since it didn't have any numbers stored in it, I talked to VZW customer service (I'm a VZW customer myself) and they told me to drop it by a local store, which I did. I also called the rental car company and told them I'd found a phone and gave a description of it, and told them I'd handed it over to VZW. The one time I misplaced a phone (in L.A., when the StarTAC I had at the time popped out of its holster while getting out of a car at a restaurant) a manager of the restaurant found it and called the entry listed as "Mom" in my phone; my mother called me at my L.A. office and told me to go back to the restaurant and get my phone! :) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ From: Diamond Dave Subject: Re: 'Old Style' Telephone Call Recording Device Organization: The BBS Corner / Diamond Mine On-Line Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 23:14:58 -0400 On 24 Apr 2004 15:15:57 -0400, richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) wrote: > No idea about the ring; another type I have seen and used is a pickup > that is approximately 1x4x.25 that you put under the phone and it > inductivly couples to the coil in the phone. > I am guessing that Rat Shack would have it (but haven't looked). I > probably have one in my junk box. Again, that is one of those "suction cup" ones that don't work worth a darn. I don't need another one of those, I own two already. Dave [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The suction cup things never work very well. Why don't you switch to a modular style phone then get one of the wired things which hooks directly into your computer sound card. Mike Sandman http://sandman.com has those in stock for cheap. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Book Review: 19th Century Telegraphers Date: 24 Apr 2004 20:13:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > For your casual reading this weekend, another in the series of Digest > Archive reprints; this time on telegraphy in the 19th century. Thank you for rerunning this report. Very interesting. I'd like to know more about Western Union from the postwar era (WW II) to the present. In the 1960s they had a microwave network, they even launched satellites, and they had government defense contracts to handle data networks. It would seem a natural for them to handle the growing computer data transmissions, but it all ended up to AT&T. The only WU history I have is "The Story of Telecommunications" by George Oslin. It is a starting point, but a weak one. Oslin somewhat glosses over some very critical issues. He blames the FCC for favoring AT&T at the expense of Western Union, poor management, labor troubles, and the forced wartime merger of Postal Telegraph, but does not get into adequate detail and the time periods are somewhat merged together. We know long distance phones rates declined after WW II. At some point the cost of a voice call became cheaper than sending a telegram; I wonder when that point was reached (my guess is the late 1950s). It's amazing how in old movies people contact home with urgent messages by telegram rather than voice long distance, but in the 1940s long distance was still very expensive, especially for more distant calls. (I think short haul long distance was more affordable.) FWIW, WU says a telegram today costs $15 to send, it will be delivered by an express company. I _think_ a telegram still has more legal weight as an "official" message over a fax; kind of the equivalent of a certified letter where you need proof of sending and receipt of your message. I don't know how many people send telegrams today; their business is money transfers and other bill paying services. Note the original Western Union went bankrupt some years ago which was covered up by creating a parent corporation to file to keep their name clean. ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #207 ******************************