From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jun 16 22:18:48 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i5H2ImS00886; Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:18:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:18:48 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200406170218.i5H2ImS00886@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 #294 TELECOM Digest Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:18:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 294 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Your Problems With Norvergence (Steve Lopes) Re: Your Problems With Norvergence (Karen Kosoy) Norvergence Problems (pricepc.com) Re: Be Careful About Quoting Scanner Messages (Charles B. Wilber) Emerging Telecom / Wireless / Security Technolgies (Subrahmanyam Arya) LEC in SLICs? (Nearly Blind) Re: Ravings (Nick Landsberg) Re: It May be Time to Answer the Call of Voice Over Internet (Jack Decker) Office Tour Photos (Steve Stone) Can I Buy an External NIC With Wi-Fi (Lani) PFIR Statement on Access to WHOIS Data (Monty Solomon) Share Day Message for June, 2004 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: Steve Lopes Subject: Your Problems With Norvergence Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:06:52 -0400 I am forwarding this e-mail to a gentleman in Maryland who is working on collecting everyone's experiences with Norvergence and presenting them to the New Jersey State Attorney General and federal regulators for some action. Even if you have resolved your differences with Norvergence, I encourage you to devote just a small portion of your time (less than 1 hour) to help prevent what happened to you to happen to anyone else ever again. I have devoted a lot of time to helping many of you with your Norvergence issues. Let us help to prevent this from ever happening to some else ever again. I am looking for nothing from Norvergence. I am just tired of seeing them prey on small business owners like myself. Help out a fellow business owner. Steve Lopes ------------------------------ From: Karen Kosoy Subject: Re: Your Problems With Norvergence Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 20:26:45 -0400 Steve, Funny you should write today. I was hoping against hope that Norvergence would solve the problems, but as of today things have gone from bad to worse. Today, at noon, our long distance went out. I called a couple other Norvergence customers and they, too, reported the outage. Qwest, the carrier, advised that we go to our local carrier to get long distance and said that Norvergence is no longer providing long distance with them. Some folks are reporting their T-1 lies are out. I'm expecting the cell phones to go down, as well, so in preparation, we're thinking of setting up service elsewhere and leaving a message on our Norvergence cells so our customers can reach us. The dedicated phone number to Norvergence customer service gets a fast busy as if the service is down there too. If you dial the general number, you can get through, but the customer service people are no help. They say it is an outage and that service would be back by 7 PM. Well, it's 8:20 and still no service. There is no way Norvergence can arrange for another long distance carrier to take over, as I had to provide the pic code myself to my local phone company. Norvergence gives nothing but lip service and lies. Most of all, I'm upset at all the time I waste trying to get the Norvergence issues resolved. I would like to see them sued for fraud, but I want out of the contract, as I can't do business like this anymore. I would also like to see the principals criminally prosecuted. Karen Kosoy ------------------------------ From: galip@hotmail.com (pricepc.com) Subject: Norvergence Problems Date: 16 Jun 2004 13:01:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com We have been a customer of Norvergence for a year now and had many problems. Now the worst problem ever, it looks like the company is going out of business. Today Qwest dropped all of their customers from the network. No Internet access no phone calls. Also last week accidentally I hit the button on my cell phone and get the billing information and Norvergence has $1.7 M past due balance to Sprint PCS. Any similar experiences or any ideas? Please let us know. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Jun 2004 17:14:45 EDT From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles B. Wilber) Subject: Re: Be Careful About Quoting Scanner Messages --- Robert Bonomi wrote: > Governmental 'public service' and law-enforcement frequencies are > specifically exempted from the privacy rules in _federal_ > statutes.Listening to, and repeating what you heard on those > channels is not a problem -- at the FEDERAL level, at least. --- PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I was rather certain Charlie was in > error on those laws **where police and fire radios were concerned**, > simply because there are at least two or three web sites where you can > listen to police calls from other cities, and no one gets after them > for doing that. PAT] Not exactly. From the U.S.C.: "Section 705 (47 USCA 605) states that it is unlawful to disclose the content of radio transmissions overheard unless they are amateur radio traffic, broadcasts to the public or distress calls. It is unlawful under this section to use traffic monitored for personal gain. This might include a tow truck operator going to accident calls heard over a scanner if a response has not been requested, or a taxicab driver jumping calls dispatched to other companies." However, an email reply from the FCC to a request for clarification of the statute from a private citizen gave a much more liberal interpretaion of the so-called "Right to Privacy" statute: From: "FCC FCCTSR17" To: Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 8:13 AM Subject: Re: FCC Consumer Center Response - Ref# 02777194 Mr. Nolen: Section 705 of the Communications Act generally does not prohibit the publication on the Internet of fire department and police department radio broadcasts. The interception of these radio communications is legal under the criminal wiretap statute, 18 U.S.C. 2510 et seq., to the extent the communications are readily accessible to the general public, which police and fire department radio communications generally are. Therefore, the rebroadcast of police and fire department radio communications that are obtained legally does not constitute a violation of section 705 of the Communications Act." Actually, 18 U.S.C. 2510 states the following: "It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person - (i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public;" It does not, however, specifically mention disclosing or "publishing" that intercepted communication. Furthermore, the phrase "readily accessible to the general public" is open to interpretation. Police communications that are easily monitored by anyone with a simple scanner will become much less "readily accessible to the general public" if the police department switches to a trunked radio system. The nature of the communications remain identical but the interception of them becomes much more complicated, requiring more sophisticated equipment and additional expertise. Does this make interception of those communications an offense where it was not formerly an offense? In summary, while disclosing to another party any communications overheard on the radio that are not "amateur radio traffic, broadcasts to the public or distress calls" is specifically forbidden by federal statute, one FCC representative chose to interpret that statute very liberally. I suppose a different FCC representative could interpret it in a completely different manner. As always, the final interpretation of any statute in dispute rests with the courts. While that final interpretation "becomes" the statute for all practical purposes, as written the statute clearly forbids the *disclosure* of overheard radio transmissions that do not fall into the three clearly-defined categories previously mentioned. State statutes only serve to make the matter even more cloudy. Charlie Wilber Dartmouth College ------------------------------ From: avsrk@mailcity.com (Subrahmanyam Arya) Subject: Emerging Telecom / Wireless / Security Technolgies Date: 16 Jun 2004 14:20:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello Folks, Can anybody give a brief introduction to what are the current state of the art in telecom / networking / wireless / security . That is where is this industry heading towards / what is theh work still left to be done in terms of R & D . I like to here more specificall how mature is VOIP (voice over ip ) . How secure are our current wired / wireless networks , is there still scope for R & D in these areas . Are there any other emerging technlogies in these areas, something other than giga / terabit routing and optical networking . These are the beaten out buzz words . I want to know if there any other technolgies on the horizon towards which this industry is heading towards . Sorry if am my questions looks like newbie kind. Appreciate any response / links to info. Thanks in advance, subra ------------------------------ From: nearly_blind@yahoo.com (nearly blind) Subject: LEC in SLICs? Date: 16 Jun 2004 14:29:45 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Are there digital line echo cancellers in the slics for a typical local loop? If not, for the PSTN (not VoIP or cellular), where are the digitial LEC's located in the network? Are they switched in just for long distance calls? ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: hukolau@NOSPAM.att.net Subject: Re: Ravings Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:28:07 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet David Esan wrote: Just a comment on the date(s) for Easter, below: > 1. Canada and the US observe Thanksgiving on two different days > because the holidays have different origins. The US Thanksgiving > traces itself back to the Pilgrims choosing to give thanks for their > harvest, imitating the Jewish holiday of Succoth. The Canadian > Thanksgiving had its origins in the recovery of the Prince of Wales > (later Edward VII) from a serious illness. See > www.pch.gc.ca/progs/cpsc-ccsp/jfa-ha/index_e.cfm for details on all > Canadian holidays. I was surprised to see that Victoria Day is > actually the celebration of the Queen's birthday. > 2. PAT - You stated that "Pope Gregory declared that henceforth the > more modern Anglicized Easter holiday would be celebrated by the > church." Gregory XII was born in Italy. The schism between the > Catholic and Anglican Churches occured during his lifetime -- Henry > VIII was died in 1547. I doubt you could call his reform of the > calendar Anglican. Especially since the Anglicans ignored it for > nearly 200 years. > 3. One of the other sources for the date of Easter was the Jewish > holiday of Passover. Originally, Easter was on the first Sunday of > that holiday, and, in fact, you will often find that the two holidays > still coincide. IIRC, there is still some connection between > Passover's date and the date of the Orthodox church's Easter > celebration. However, in order to distance itself from Judaism, the > early church chose to have its own calculations on when to have > Easter, and so sometimes the two holidays don't coincide. My understanding (which may be incomplete) is that the Catholic church (and Protestant denominations) compute Easter as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (beginning of Spring, usually falls on March 21-23). The Orthodox Church has a different computation based on the date of Passover. Passover always falls on a full moon using the Hebrew lunar calendar. The Last Supper (by tradition a Thursday), was supposed to have been a passover "seder" (I hope I spelled that correctly). Thus, if the full moon happens on a Friday or Saturday, Orthodox Easter is delayed until the following week. In this case you get a 1 week difference in the celebration of the holiday. In the case where the date would be *prior* to March 23rd by the Julian Calendar, the holiday is deferred until the next full moon when you get either a 4 week or 5 week difference. This year, they happened to coincide. (At least this is my understanding of it. I may have missed a few of the details above.) > 4. US Memorial Day never really had a fixed reason associated with > that date, unlike Independance Day or Armistice Day. Moving the date > around to create a 3 day weekend really isn't tampering with history. > According to one web site I visited, Memorial Day wasn't even > celebrated in the South until after WWI, since they had their own days > to honor the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. > 5. Those who continued to celebrate New Year's at the end of March, > when the rest of the country had moved to January, were called April > Fools! "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 18:43:10 -0400 From: Jack Decker VOIP News wrote: >> http://www.suntimes.com/output/worktech/cst-fin-andy15.html >> But now I may have to change my attitude, or at least come up with a >> new line. There's a new alternative to wireless and traditional >> landline technologies: the Voice over Internet Protocol. > I read the full article and there remain very serious drawbacks: >> First among them is cost. Vonage (www.vonage.com), the current VoIP >> leader, will sell you a startup kit for $79, and after paying a modest >> setup fee, you get unlimited local and national long-distance for a >> flat rate of $29 a month with no contracts or commitments. That's even >> cheaper than it sounds because there are no added costs. Digital voice >> mail, CallerID, Call Forwarding and all those other features you'd >> normally pay extra for are included (that's typical for VoIP >> providers), and because the FCC is eager to push this technology >> forward, VoIP is exempt from added federal taxes and tariffs. > If I open a fruit stand in the parking lot of my local supermarket, > I'll be able to undercut their prices. I won't be paying any of their > overhead charges (like maintaining the parking lot itself), collecting > govt sales taxes, govt licensing and inspection, not taking food > stamps, etc. Eventually I'll have to pay my true costs, charge > appropriate taxes, etc. And what, exactly, does this have to do with VoIP? Were you reading an article about UNE-P written by one of the pointy-heads at the Cato Institute (I'll get back to them in a moment) and decided that the same logic applies to VoIP? This comparison is so invalid that I can't even think of enough of a similarity to make the point that it's invalid. VoIP isn't camped in anyone's parking lot -- certainly not the ILEC's, and to the extent they use CLEC facilities, THEY PAY THE SAME AS ANY OTHER CUSTOMER. In other words, if the CLEC has to pay taxes, fees, etc, and passes that on to their customers, the VoIP company has to pay, and that gets passed along to their customers (though sometimes not as a separate item on the bill). > The traditional phone companies carry many regulatory burdens, such as > maintaining service to deadbeats, serving unprofitable areas, meeting > service standards, etc. Should they fail, the newspapers and govt hit > them hard. In contrast, the VOIP providers have no such obligations > at all. Neither do cell phone companies, for the most part. Should we abolish wireless phone service? Look, Lisa, no ILEC has to stay in business. Anytime they feel the regulatory burdens are too great, their stockholders are free to have the company go into the cookie-making business, or perhaps more relevant, the broadband business or even the VoIP business (and you just watch, they will do exactly that the minute they figure out that it gets them out from under some of the regulations you mentioned -- of course it will take them twenty years to do it and they will fight tooth and nail to keep everyone else out of the business in the meantime). By the way, what phone company do you think is required to provide service to deadbeats? As far as I know, all the ILEC's charge a hefty security deposit to anyone they think is a questionable credit risk, and they do shut off service for non-payment. > Eventually this will catch up to them and their prices will go up or > they'll go broke just like MCI did. Dream on. Even if that were to happen, and I doubt it will (although I'm sure a few companies that don't understand the competitive nature of the business won't last long -- every now and then you see an incredibly stupid offering from some new wannabe VoIP provider), that doesn't mean all those VoIP customers will ever go crawling back to the wireline phone companies. But honestly, VoIP just makes so much sense (for a number of reasons) that if you really think it is going away, you are living in a fantasy land. They said the same thing about MCI when it first stated out, and even with all of its troubles it's still around (whether it SHOULD be or not is another matter, but I won't touch that right now). >> If your call has to be routed through a heavily trafficked part of >> the Internet, you'll experience some small but annoying lags. A power >> outage at your house knocks out your phone service as well (though >> Vonage automatically re-routes your calls to a designated number >> whenever it can't locate your phone adapter on the Internet). > I don't know about you folks, but I'm always experiencing momentary > lags in Internet response time, regardless of what terminal I'm using > (home, work, library, etc.) When using the computer, often I have two > screens up at the same time while so I pass the time waiting for an > Internet screen to come through. That won't be practical in voice > conversation. I take it you've not spent too much time actually using VoIP on a good broadband connection. It works well enough. Is it perfect? No, but it's one heck of a lot better than listening to someone talk on a cell phone. I have a friend that talks to me from a VoIP line frequently; he's also called me from cell phone lines. I can tell you that even though every now and then there might be a few short (usually just a few milliseconds) dropouts in audio, it's FAR more "listenable" than the "flanging" and static I used to get from his cell phone. VoIP already IS practical, Lisa - both residential and business customers are using it every day. But admittedly, if you insist on having as close to absolute perfection as possible, you may want to stick with your ILEC for a while yet. Many of us aren't that picky. >> 911 service is pretty scary, too. None of the Advanced 911 System's >> features work with VoIP, so while your provider might be able to route >> your call to a local response center, you'd still better hope that you >> never experience an emergency in which you can't clearly state your >> address. > In our suburban area, 911 was handled by the county seat. Before the > address database, we had to give the operator detailed information > about our location; some people don't even know the suburban > municipality they live in, esp if they're new since the postal name is > more often used. We have adjacent boroughs and townships with the > same name that add to confusion. Anyway, with advanced 911, those > problems went away. I question whether the VOIP would even know where > to route a 911 call. All I will say at this point is that this issue IS being addressed, and what comes out of this could potentially be a BETTER grade of 911 service than we have now. You (and other interested readers) may wish to peruse the "IP PSAP 9-1-1 System Features and Capabilities - Operational Information Document (OID)" at http://www.nena.org/9-1-1OperPractices/OpsInfoDocs/NENAopsOIDipPSAP060404final.pdf (this is a .PDF file; you'll need the Adobe Acrobat Reader or equivalent to view it). Lisa, your whole problem is that you want to hold a technology that's less that two years old (in terms of any degree of actual use by residential consumers) to the same standards as a technology that's been around for over 100 years and that is getting rather long in the tooth. When the first telephones were installed, most people still rode via horsepower or steam engines, the airplane and communications through the airwaves were considered the stuff of science fiction, and nobody had a clue what the back side of the moon looked like. I'll bet it will take less than ten years for VoIP to work every bit as well as traditional telephony, and better in many ways, providing it isn't regulated to death (as you seem to be advocating). Anyway, I mentioned the Cato Institute above. There is a very good article that just came out on Tech Central Station that among other things, takes on one of the prognosticators at the Cato Institute (and in my opinion, it's high time someone did). It's entitled, "Not So Fast, Grave Diggers!" by James K. Glassman and it's an excellent read: http://www.techcentralstation.com/061604J.html ------------------------------ From: Steve Stone Subject: Office Tour Photos Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 00:32:50 GMT Here is a link to photos from a recent tour of a non Verizon suburban NYC telco office. I did not take these pictures. Another gentleman on the tour provided me with the photos. Steve http://www.citlink.net/~spfleck/sub2.htm ------------------------------ From: Lani_lani2000@hotmail.com (Lani) Subject: Can I Buy an External NIC With Wi-Fi Date: 16 Jun 2004 17:37:35 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a D-Link Airplus G cardbus adapter for my notebook. 802.11g 2.4GHz ... Am I limiting my access with this card? also 802.11b compatible model # DWL-G630 It works fine at my job but will I be abe to use it anywhere else, like the places with Wi-Fi? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 18:11:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PFIR Statement on Access to WHOIS Data http://www.pfir.org/statements/whois-access PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility PFIR Statement on Access to WHOIS Data June 16, 2004 We are extremely concerned that restricting non-bulk access to detailed WHOIS contact data could potentially have dramatic negative impacts on the security, stability, and reliability of the Internet. These concerns extend to "ad hoc" proxy registration and other obscuring techniques now being deployed by individual registrars, and to any changes proposed by ICANN or other authorities that would impact non-bulk access to WHOIS data. We are not addressing issues of WHOIS data accuracy in these comments, except to note that we believe that reasonable accuracy in this data is also crucial to Internet stability, security, and reliability. While it is true that privacy-related problems can and do occur in relation to WHOIS -- and we have a long history working to promote privacy issues -- it is also true that the domain name system was not designed as a means of obscuring responsible parties participating in the cooperative that is the Internet. The lack of formal centralized control over Internet operations (a situation that many would be loath to change even if it were technically possible to do so) means that in most cases of problems relating to Internet operations, site administrators are frequently on their own to track down often serious problems. Access to WHOIS data -- especially including contact telephone numbers but often physical addresses as well -- can be critical in such situations. http://www.pfir.org/statements/whois-access ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For June Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 22:00:00 EST Instead of changing the Digest over to an advrtising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #294 ******************************