From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 25 18:14:04 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6PME4m27855; Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:14:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:14:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407252214.i6PME4m27855@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 #350 TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 350 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Huge Phone Bill for France Telecom (Paul Coxwell) AOL Spam Federal Case (Ray Normandeau) Free Wifi Hotspot Directory (Riverwalk Mobile) Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (arjay) Re: Area code unavailable for Vonage (vidman99-ggltest@yahoo.com) Re: Phone Card Inquiry (John R. Levine) Re: Phone Card Inquiry (Ray Normandeau) Re: Phone Card Inquiry (Robert Bonomi) Re: Phone Card Inquiry (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill (Mike_The_Bike) Re: Phone for Noisy Environment (Phil Earnhardt) In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) "My Beef With Big Media / How Government Protects Big Media (M Solomon) Hot-Button Issue (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: Paul Coxwell Subject: Huge Phone Bill For France Telecom Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:23:55 +0100 http://www.ukip.org/abc_news/gen12.php?t=1&id=919 Brussels finds itself on another collision course with Paris after it ruled yesterday that France Telecom must repay up to 1.1 billion euros gained in illegal state aid. After a year-long investigation, the Commission decided that the company must pay back between 800 million euro and 1.1 billion euro in taxes on which it was granted breaks by the French government between 1994 and 2002. These tax breaks were intended to help out the company, which had run up huge debts while bidding for licences to run third generation mobile technology, but constitute illegal state aid, Brussels decided. After interest, the actual amount owed by France Telecom could be as much as 1.7 billion euro according to Spanish paper Cinco Dias and would be one of the highest repayment demands ever issued by the European authorities. Competition commissioner Mario Monti said that the decision was "an important step forward in giving coherence and completeness to state aid in the EU". Battle rejoined But the ruling will again bring Brussels into conflict with French authorities, which immediately expressed regret at the judgment, saying it would use "all appeal possibilities", according to Reuters France. The judgment comes after a long battle over engineering giant Alstom, which resulted in a compromise solution. And France Telecom itself also vowed to appeal against the ruling, describing it as "without economic or legal foundation". However, the company was spared nine billion granted by the French government to bail out France Telecom during a financial crisis suffered by the company in 2003. ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: AOL Spam Federal Case Date: 24 Jul 2004 23:04:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Was YOUR Email addy sold? To read all about how it was done, see: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0623042aol1.html ------------------------------ From: asnicholasjr@comcast.net (Riverwalk Mobile) Subject: Free Wifi Hotspot Directory Date: 24 Jul 2004 18:16:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Our FREE monthly directory is the best way to find a WiFI Hotspots when you are offline looking to go online. We support a variety of formats able to be read on Palm OS, PocketPC and of course Laptops. www.riverwalkmobile.com ------------------------------ From: vidman99-ggltest@yahoo.com (arjay) Subject: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage Date: 24 Jul 2004 19:19:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My area code is not available for Vonage. I can choose another, but I assume that anyone who calls from within my own area code will be charged for long distance. Is that correct? I have been unable to get an answer from Vonage. TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone who calls you, either within your area code or outside your area code will pay to call you accoding to the rules of their own telco. In general, the answer to your question would be 'yes'. But, as I pointed out to you in email, among the various 'virtual numbers' you can get from Vonage, you can also get a 'virtual 800 number', so the people who call you don't wind up paying for anything. Virtual numbers from Vonage cost about $5 per month; I have my Kansas area 620 number, a Chicago area 773 number, and a 'virtual toll free' area 888 number. I think for the $5 per month on the virtual toll free number, Vonage gives me many minutes of use at no additional charge, then about 5 cents a minute after the allotment is used. Since Vonage allows the minutes to be spread over all the various virtual numbers (although all my outgoing minutes are on the area 620 number) I personally never wind up spending anything extra each month. So you tell everyone who is not in the local calling area *of the number which is assigned to you* to call in on your toll- free number. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 22:12:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Subject: Re: Area code unavailable for Vonage [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Arjay (above) then wrote me again and said what his main concerns were. PAT] Thanks, Pat. If I decide to do it I will ask for the coupon. You might as well make something out of it. My other real concern is 911 service. I have some health problems and I am not yet satisfied that the 911 service will be adequate. I will do more research, unless you have some good answers already. Thanks again for your excellent help. Richard [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I further explained to arjay that when I installed my Vonage phone, my first order of business was to get established on the 911 database. Within two or three days, I got a letter in snail mail from Vonage **addressed exactly as I had given it to them** saying 'please make sure you installed yourself correctly and let us know if any errors.' I think the day after that I got a letter from City of Independence Police Department asking me the same thing. Of course, this is a small town; the dispatchers know every nook and cranny, who is at every address, etc and I would not comment on larger places, but it seems to work fine here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Phone Card Inquiry Date: 24 Jul 2004 22:01:43 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I'm looking for a prepaid phone card to call from the US to Europe. > Without any payphone surcharges. What would you recommend? I would be amazed if you could find a card without payphone surcharges unless the rates were already high enough to include the surcharge in the first minute. The actual surcharge paid to the payphone owner is on the order of 29c, so that's what the surcharge to you should be. There's a bazillion different phone cards, and the answer depends on whether you expect to be mostly calling one country or a range of countries. Personally, I use Cognigen's Cognicall card which isn't prepaid, they bill you every month on your credit card, but the rates are reasonable and there's no monthly mininum or other nonsense. You can find it at http://ld.net John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: Re: Phone Card Inquiry Date: 24 Jul 2004 19:14:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Bill wrote in message news:: > I'm looking for a prepaid phone card to call from the US to Europe. > Without any payphone surcharges. What would you recommend? With https://www.onesuite.com/ there is no payphone surcharge if you don't use the 800 number access. But you will have to drop the normal coin[s] to dial a local dial-up number. It is basically a prepaid phone card but you can do away with the PIN for calls from home [if you always use the same payphone]. Program it as a speed dial, you don't even have to remember their #. No monthly fee or minimum. If you use the promotion code "034720367" we both get some free miniutes. We have it programmed into our cell phones for international calls. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Phone Card Inquiry From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 09:37:15 +0000 In article , Bill wrote: > I'm looking for a prepaid phone card to call from the US to Europe. > Without any payphone surcharges. What would you recommend? Such an animal probably *doesn't* exist. =UNLESS= they have _local_ (i.e., _non_ toll-free access numbers in the area(s) you'd be calling _from_) And, since you didn't specify _where_ you would be calling from, nobody can tell if there's anything like that in your area. The reason: For *EVERY* call to a 'toll free' number from a pay-phone, the toll-free number operator must pay the pay-phone operator something in the range of 25-35 cents (I don't have the exact figure off the top of my head), for the 'use' of the pay-phone for that call. Either the card issuer (a) charges a surcharge for those pay-phone originated calls that incur the extra costs, or (b) builds recovery of those costs into the charges for *every* call. Guess which one lets them advertise lower rates? The card issuer surcharge for pay-phone calls =is= more than the pass-thru cost, because they have to pay the pay-phone operator _even_if_ the call doesn't complete to the far end. And for 'wrong numbers', and for calls where the calling-card number is entered wrong, and for calls where the calling card doesn't have enough money on it to place the call, etc. etc. Plus the additional administrative overhead of tracking the pay-phone billings. ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Phone Card Inquiry Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 20:27:55 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Bill wrote: > I'm looking for a prepaid phone card to call from the US to Europe. > Without any payphone surcharges. What would you recommend? Don't call from a pay phone. Any reasonably priced phone card will charge enough minutes as a surcharge to cover the roughly 60 cents that the phone owner collects. If the card doesn't collect a pay phone surcharge, the per minute rates won't be competitive. ------------------------------ From: Mike_The_Bike Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill Reply-To: DaGroup@syrcnyrdrs-03.nyroc.rr.com Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 05:27:10 GMT Organization: Road Runner On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 13:20:04 -0400, VOIP News wrote: > http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=18936 > by Heather Forsgren Weaver > WASHINGTON The Senate Commerce Committee Thursday morning gutted a > bill that attempted to pre-empt states from imposing access charges > and universal service fees on Voice over Internet Protocol services. > Additionally, the committee added a 911 obligation to VoIP services in > an amendment offered by Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), chairman of the > Congressional E911 Caucus. The Burns amendment imposed an E911 > obligation that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), incoming chair of the > Senate Commerce Committee, said was more stringent than what is > imposed on the telecommunications industry at large. > [Comment: This is what you get when you have legislators that don't > understand technology. They might as well impose a 200 > mile-per-gallon fuel consumption limit on new cars; E911 on VoIP is > about as achieveable. I guess we can only hope that this bill in its > present form doesn't pass, or that the Burns amendment somehow gets > thrown out or watered down before it passes into law.] > Full story at: > http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=18936 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What is wrong with using a GSM type > device which is built into the 'adapter box' which, when a call is > made to 911, broadcasts its whereabouts to the 911 dispatcher? PAT] Sorry to disagree with the original author's comment but ... First a level set. What I'm discussing here are VoIP services where the CPE is assigned a phone number and is capable of terminating a VoIP call on the PSTN. Vonage would be an example of this type of service. Computer to computer "calls" are probably an intractable problem. I'm also going to set aside VoIP roaming for the time being although it is a problem that can probably be solved. Most if not all of the technology bits needed to make 9-1-1 work with a VoIP network are available. VoIP networks routinely terminate calls in the PSTN and they can be made to routinely terminate 9-1-1 calls there as well. What are missing in a spectacular fashion are the operational processes needed to do this on a national scale and the commercial processes that will fund all of this activity. Subscriber information needs to be gathered and scrubbed and scrubbed. Then there are many databases to be updated including those in the incumbents Selective Routing tandem switches. IMHO 9-1-1 for VoIP networks can be made to work with a minimal amount of upheaval but it will require some kind of a national overlord to standardize the processes and put the funding mechanisms in place. 9-1-1 for the PSTN probably wouldn't have happened had it not been largely designed by WECO in the bad, bad days before Judge Harold Greene. And so, if Americans want 9-1-1 on their VoIP service (only an assumption on my part) someone is going to have to herd the cats and figure out how to collect the pennies to pay for it. ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: Phone for Noisy Environment Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:09:27 -0600 Organization: http://newsguy.com On 22 Jul 2004 12:27:01 -0700, a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) wrote: > The best answer for you is a headset. Lots of cabled headsets are > available that will work in your price range, but you will probably > want one with a noise-cancelling microphone if the noise level is such > that can be heard over a normal phone. I just noticed that there's a new headset option out there (new to me, anyhow). Etymotic Research is a well-known manufacturer to the high-fidelity community of in-the-ear headphones. Their ER-4 headphones provide somewhere between 33dB and 44dB of passive noise exclusion (presuming you have them correctly inserted). The famous quote about the ER-4 headphones goes something like "...not only could I hear the cellist breathing through his nose, but I could tell that he had recently clipped his nose hairs." These are superb high-fidelity headphones to use in noisy environments. They definitely take some time to get used to, but I think they're worth it. You can also get your local audiologist to make custom earmolds for Etymotics. Etymotic now sells a mobile headphone headset with the same passive NR properties of their headphones. You can see a picture/description at http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/etycom-ts.asp . The only thing this headset (earset?) doesn't cover is the noise you'll pick up from your other ear. However, Etymotic also sells earplugs which provide more-or-less flat attenuation across the entire audio spectrum. http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er20.asp If you've never experienced flat-attenuation earplugs, you will probably be plesantly surprised by these guys. The main warning: the seals of the plugs are uncomfortable for most when they first use them and may be intolerable for some. Again, if you really like the concept but can't tolerate the fit, they sell a slightly different product that will work with custom earmolds. I really like my Etymotics. I have the ER-4s and earplugs. phil ------------------------------ From: mjs2032@rochester.rr.com Subject: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:56:33 -0400 Patrick, Thank you for your response by way of the news group. Unfortunately it seems that I'm only getting through by using your email address given on www.telecom-digest.org . I did not get the Auto-Ack so I'm guessing that my posting is just going into the ether. I used to post sporadically a few years back and it seems that I remember that there was a special TO: address required. I've been out of circulation for a while but now find myself back in the telecom space. Tonight I resent the same post that I sent out a couple of days ago. Again, I did not get the auto-ack. I'm using Forte Agent V1.93 as a news reader and I'm using the 'Post Follow Up Message' as a response command. The pertinent information from the response is: Posted to comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill From: Mike_The_Bike Reply-To: DaGroup Thanks, Mike Sutter ENP - Ctek Inc Aka Mike_The_bike [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I observe a couple things. For one, when your messages reach me, they always seem to have a ton of HTML junk on the end; at least 100-150 lines of it to be chopped away. Also, maybe your news reading client does not know how to deal with reply messages. Maybe your news reading client thinks it is to reply with HTML ? In other words, your original message in ASCII text was immediatly followed by a repeat of itself in HTML. If you could stop doing that, I would be grateful. Try this experiment: send me a one or two line note purely in ASCII text, using some mail client, Outlook Express or whatever. Use my various addresses: ptownson@telecom-digest.org (or) editor@telecom-digest.org (or) ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (or) ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu You *should* get back an auto-ack for each test message. If you do get back an auto-ack then the problem would seem to be in the news client you are using. And your news reading/replying client should have telecom as a moderated group, flagged to send mail to me. There is no 'www' in front of telecom-digest, although it should not matter, and there is no 'editor' mailbox account at the massis site which DOES matter. Try all that and let me know. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:05:42 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: My Beef With Big Media / How Government Protects Big Media By Ted Turner In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market. I acquired it. When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte--this one worse than the first--my accountant quit in protest, and the company's board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase -- when I sold it 10 years later -- gave me the capital to launch CNN. Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch -- independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change. It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks--CBS, ABC, NBC -- wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition. So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That's how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That's how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Superstation was born. That was then. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:28:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hot-Button Issue With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's job? By Charles P. Pierce, Globe Staff | July 18, 2004 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/07/18/hot_button_issue/ ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. 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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. 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 #350 ******************************