From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 5 16:05:47 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i75K5lx10738; Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:05:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:05:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408052005.i75K5lx10738@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 #367 TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:06:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 367 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phillip Gross Recognized With Internet Society's Postel (Peter Godwin) How Hipsters Stay in Touch (Monty Solomon) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Steve Schefter) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Paul Vader) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Justin Time) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Charles Cryderman) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Lisa Hancock) Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? (Jack Adams) Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera (Hank Karl) Re: US West History (Charles Cryderman) Re: US West History (Benjamin Lukoff) 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: Peter Godwin Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 15:44:08 +0200 Organization: Internet Society Subject: Phill Gross Recognized With Internet Society's Postel Award PHILL GROSS RECOGNIZED WITH THE INTERNET SOCIETY'S POSTEL AWARD 2004 award goes to co-founder of the Internet Engineering Task Force Geneva, Switzerland - August 5, 2004 - The Internet Society today announced that Phill Gross is this year's recipient of the prestigious Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. A co-founder of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Gross has been instrumental in defining and shaping the way in which the IETF standards process functions. He was awarded the Postel Service Award in recognition of his early leadership of the IETF and for firmly establishing the principles that are essential for its success. The Postel Award will be presented on August 5th, during the 60th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in San Diego, California. "The Internet Society is pleased to recognize Phill's significant contribution to the area of Internet standardization by awarding him this year's Postel Award," said Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St.Amour. "The continued success of the Internet Engineering Task Force's consensus-based processes shows the importance of Phill's pioneering work in developing the IETF's foundations." According to Steve Crocker, noted Internet authority and chair of this year's Postel award committee, "Many of the IETF's current structures, including Working Groups, Technical Areas, Proceedings and Internet Drafts came about thanks to Phill's dedication and passion for the Internet standards area. And we're delighted to be presenting the award to Phill in San Diego, the location of the first ever IETF meeting back in 1986." Gross, who is currently Director of Academics and Technology for the Northern Virginia ECPI College of Technology, has worked with the Internet community for over 20 years. His career has taken him from working with government-funded research projects through to networking engineering responsibilities for large corporations and startups, including leading the development of MCI Corporation's first national network. In 1986 Gross helped found the Internet Engineering Task Force. He became the first official chair in 1987 -- a position he held for seven years. During his chairmanship, the IETF evolved from a government-sponsored research group to an industry-wide Internet standards body. As well as contributing to developing the IETF standards process itself, Gross played an active role as co-chair of the IETF Routing and Addressing Working Group. This group led to solutions for growth-related Internet problems and was instrumental in specifying the initial direction for the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6) in RFC 1719. He also served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from 1987 to 1996. Expressing his appreciation for the award, Gross said "It was very gratifying to be there at the beginning and to work with such an incredible group of people. And, working with Jon over the years gives me a special appreciation for the honor that comes with this award." The Jonathan B. Postel Service Award was established by the Internet Society to honor those who have made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community. The award is focused on sustained and substantial technical contributions, service to the community, and leadership. With respect to leadership, the nominating committee places particular emphasis on candidates who have supported and enabled others in addition to their own specific actions. The award is named after Dr. Jonathan B. Postel, who embodied all of these qualities during his extraordinary stewardship over the course of a thirty-year career in networking. He served as the editor of the RFC series of notes from its inception in 1969, until 1998. He also served as the ARPANET "numbers Czar" and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority over the same period of time. He was a founding member of the Internet Architecture Board and the first individual member of the Internet Society, where he also served as a trustee. Previous recipients of the Postel Award include Jon himself (posthumously and accepted by his mother), Scott Bradner, Daniel Karrenberg, Stephen Wolff and Peter Kirstein. The award consists of an engraved crystal globe and $20,000. # # # About ISOC The Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org) is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1991 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. ISOC is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and other Internet-related bodies who together play a critical role in ensuring that the Internet develops in a stable and open manner. For over 12 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time. FOR FURTHER DETAILS Internet Society: http://www.isoc.org Peter Godwin Senior Program Manager E-mail: godwin@isoc.org Internet Society 4, rue des Falaises 1205 Geneva Switzerland ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:15:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How Hipsters Stay in Touch By WALTER S. MOSSBERG When gadget lovers talk about combination cellphone and e-mail devices, the conversation usually turns to high-priced, business-oriented devices like PalmOne's Treo 600 or Research in Motion's BlackBerry phone models. But there's a stealth competitor. Like the Treo and BlackBerry phone, it has robust e-mail capabilities, complete with a built-in keyboard. It also makes a great instant-messaging or text-messaging device, and does a good job with Web surfing. It's called the Sidekick, and it tends to fly under the radar because it is aimed at young consumers, not business people; it has an unusual design; and it is sold by just one cellphone carrier, T-Mobile. Since its launch in October 2002, the Sidekick has built a small, cult-like following among its target youth audience, and in Hollywood. It has been used during television interviews by the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Demi Moore, and, according to its maker, has also appeared in music videos and on Jessica Simpson's reality TV show. Recently, teen movie actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed carrying a Sidekick encrusted with crystals. Now, the gadget's manufacturer, a small Silicon Valley firm called Danger Inc., is about to roll out a new version, the Sidekick II, which T-Mobile plans to start selling early this fall for $299, plus $20 a month for unlimited data on top of any voice calling plan. Ms. Lohan's crystals, alas, are neither a standard feature nor an option on the new Sidekick. My assistant Katie Boehret and I have been testing the new model, and we generally like it, though we found that it's much better for e-mail and messaging than for making phone calls. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040804.html ------------------------------ From: steve_schefter@hotmail.com (Steve Schefter) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 08:35:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote in message: > Do I not have the right to choose a provider with less reliability > than the Baby Bells, if there is some other factor that would make > me feel that's a good choice for me? Why are you trying to limit my > freedom of choice? That's kinda what laws and regulations do. Bummer. VOIP isn't unique in that it can provide a lower cost of service if we do away with some of the telco regulations. It would seem more reasonable to question whether everyone, CLECs, Bells, VOIP included should be allowed to offer a lower reliability service. Personally, I can see merit with both sides of the argument. Steve ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:02:49 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Jack Decker writes: > Lisa, you may not consider yourself a shill for them, but if one were > to apply the "duck test" ... well, let's just say that sometimes it > would be awfully hard to discern the difference between what you write > and what a shill for the phone company might write. How incredibly rude! Just because someone has the opposite opinion that you do, that doesn't make them a 'shill'. A shill is paid to do something in public. Are you seriously implying that Lisa is being paid to advocate traditional telecoms? If this is the quality of your opinion, I'm more happy than ever that I killfiled the 'voip news' posts. Get over yourself! * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 05:57:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote in message news:: > Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. > On 4 Aug 2004 07:24:19 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: I have kept quiet on this issue for quite a while, but now I'm going to weigh in with some facts and not just opinions being bantered around. Yes, VoIP does work. It is a technology that is currently evolving, and can at some point in the future, be a viable alternative to traditional wireline communications. But to give you a better idea of where my viewpoint is coming from is that we are currently in the process of deploying a system that is capable of providing both traditional telephone service and VoIP service. Will VoIP be provisioned on our system -- not at this time. That doesn't mean it won't be provisioned in the future, but we have just too many mission critical services to rely on a "bleeding edge" technology that lacks any real standardization or interoperability. We have need to support little things like a PSAP -- Public Safety Answering Point, and guess what -- VoIP doesn't work with when your life may be in danger. Why, because VoIP can't provide a known connection point from which an address can be derived. Well, let me expand a little further. We know where the router is, but where is the connection being made from to the router on the user side? One of the touted advantages of using an IP phone is "all you need is a LAN connection." If the phone is configured on the LAN, then when you change locations, you just move your phone and plug it in and the system automatically reconfigures and provides telephone service. Now, expand that to a commercial building, say one of about 15 stories with a router in the MPOP. For this example we will say there are 3,000 people working at desks in the building and one of them needs emergency service. Where do you send the help? The only physical location is that for the router. For those of you with converged systems -- meaning you want to run voice, video and data over the same connection to your desktop. How can you allocate the bandwidth demands being made by the various services? How can you guarantee that your system provided by company X will use the same QOS signalling used by company Y without standards? How will you ensure that someone will not be on the system with a device that does not abide by the arbitrary rules and hogs the available bandwidth of the backbone? We have our own fiber network, currently running as an OC-48 with dedicated rings for voice traffic -- and we still won't move mission critical services because the reliability just isn't there. Will the reliability be there? Sure, some day. It has taken the "phone company" over 100 years to get to a point where they are able to offer the "5 nines" of system reliability. And for those of you who want to try to raise the straw man of cellular calls, the problem is being actively worked. A 9-1-1 dispatcher now has, for the most part, the 10 digit number of your cell phone when you call and the location of the tower handling your call. By the way, it is the location of the tower that first handles your 9-1-1 call that determines the jurisdiction for routing. In some instances it can be even more directional based on the set of receivers receiving the call. With new phones being GPS enabled, soon they will be able to pinpoint your location to within 30 feet. But this takes time and money to implement. The short side of all this is VoIP may work for you, but it can't be scaled to handle large concentrations of users in a metropolitan area in its current iterations. And this is "the dirty little secret" the VoIP manufacturers don't really want to talk about. So, am I a shill for the traditional phone companies? Everybody has their problems and the traditional phone companies do have a pretty bad reputation as far as customer service is concerned, but where would your VoIP phone call be if it weren't for the infrastructure owned and operated by the traditional phone companies? Or doesn't that compute in your mind? Rodgers Platt [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Rodgers, where would *anyone* be regards telecom if it were not for the massive amount of infrastructure orginally installed and maintained at major cost (albiet in the money values of the early 1900's) by Traditional Bell? If something happened to that infrastructure today (i.e. fire, flood, earthquake, vandalism, etc) could even Traditional Bell begin to replace it all? The way we lived in the 1900's and what we were paid as salaries for our work, etc are *not* close to the way we work or live today. How could anyone come close to replacing it all, if that was necessary? But Traditional Bell got paid handsomely over the years for their work at building the infrastructure (albiet not only the money values of the early 1900's but also the way in which workers were treated), so maybe it is fair if the rest of us get to share it now. If it matters any, at least Vonage -- to name one of the more recent interlopers in telecom -- is attempting to be consistent in the 'build your own infrastructure argument' when they can: a call between two Vonage subscribers does not touch the Bell infrastructure at all. That is to say Vonage customer in Florida does not hop off the Vonage 'network' at some point, travel over Bell to reach Alaska then get back on Vonage. It never gets off Vonage at all. Trouble is, at present that's only at best 2-3 percent of all Vonage traffic, most of which goes 'off [Vonage] net' at some point, and that will probably be the case for many more years. Regards your example of the 15 story commercial office building and a high concentration of VOIP equipment and the need for emergency intervention: While what you say is true, many or most such properties have local, well trained security people to take temporary charge as needed, and escort the 'regular' emergency people to the location where help is needed. We discussed this topic here once before when we were looking at huge office buildings/factories/campuses, which prefer to intercept 911 and after deciding whether to pass it along or not, begin their own professional intervention as needed in the meantime. There are solutions for most every problem, some of which we have yet to discover. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:48:41 -0400 In TD V23 #365 Jack Decker quoted Lisa Hancock: > I look at their record as a subscriber and what "competition" has > done for me. Lisa I have to disagree, competition has done many things for you. You appear to have access to the internet. I'd expect that none of us would had competition not come into play with telecommunications. CID, call waiting and many other innovations wouldn't have been pursued if it weren't for competition. One of the problems with a monopoly is stagnation and AT&T was very stagnate. They had no reason to improve things for the users. Their only improvements came in maximizing profits. Jack stated: > If you feel that competition has not helped you, you are certainly > entitled to stick with the traditional telephone company. What I > can't understand is why you feel the need to try and pull the rest > of us back into the same lobster pot along with you. Agreed Jack, there are many things I wouldn't choose yet do not wish to restrict others in their choices. Like the State of Missouri did to our Esteemed Moderator. Lisa: > 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers > pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. Jack: > Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? Personally, I > think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way to fund such > things. I agree that E911 is a important service but I also agree with Jack. This is a local issue and should be paid for my the locals. Some of these fees paid to the telephone companies are nothing more then extra money for them. The Universal Service Fund is a rip off. If you choose to live in a area that is high cost so be it. It is your choice and I shouldn't have to pay for it. I live outside the city of Detroit and have every little interest in the city. The way Lisa seems to think I should have to pay New York City taxes because things cost more there. Lisa again: > 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major events > generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. A private enterprise has the right to build their business as they see fit for their customers. Believe me, the LECs networks couldn't handle everyone of their customers being on the telephone at one time. You build it to the level you find satisfactory, not how some regulator thinks it should be done. Lisa: > Earlier Pat described the dedication and resourcefulness of > telephone company employees -- a monopoly -- in keeping service > going in difficult conditions. Today in a competitive environment, > do you think those people and their employers would do that? I > don't. I find this to be an insult. I work for a telecommunications company and everyone I work with is very dedicated to establishing and maintaining a secure reliable network. To generalize that if I don't work for the LEC I won't be dedicated is pure BS. I have had contact with a lot of LEC folks in 25 years in communications and have had more issues with the lack on concern on the part of the Baby Bells then any of their competitors. Lisa: > MCI was a scam from day one. It was unregulated while AT&T was > regulated, so it could take the high profit cream and leave AT&T > with the high overhead waste (like any call needing operator > service). Lisa, AT&T wasn't being such a nice guy as you think. What they were doing is subsidizing their major customers on the backs of the little guys and residential customers. What MCI did was bring that truth in the open. I was once a customer of theirs and had no issues with the service I received. But that was before WorldCom took them over and ruined their customer service and network. > Then of course it wiped out its stockholder and lenders when it > filed for a huge bankruptcy. No such thing as a free lunch, and all > those people are screwed. Now WorldCom was a scum company and the reason they went bankrupt had little to do with the company's operation but with bookkeeping. With the help of Wall Street, WorldCom and a few others filed for bankruptcy. One company for example was able to get a IPO from Wall Street when it had never shown a profit. Before the early nineties no company would have been given that opportunity without first showing they knew how to make money. Now my example company got their IPO and made the COB the fastest billionaire in history. Gave the company enough money to go on a buying spree. Bought a few other companies and crashed with mounting debt that it was unable to service. The shareholders were wiped out and the creditors control have the new common stock. The thing is, the company was run well and had 18,000 very dedicated employees but had Wall Street not given it the IPO they would never had been able to pick up these other companies with their debt and it would never had crashed. Competition had nothing to do with most of the telecom bankruptcies in the last few years. The reason they all went down is because of Wall Street greed, cheap interest rates in the early nineties with a swift rise in the late nineties and the Clinton Administration not watching what was going on or better said didn't want to watch what was going on because everyone was happy making money on paper (except most of the big guys, they sold high and got the cash). Now Jack slammed Lisa a bit more and no reason for me to rehash it. I did agree with what he said but think he could have been a little less confrontational in how he presented it. Chip Cryderman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What did the State of Missouri do to the Esteemed Moderator? Or were you thinking about the People's Republic of Chicago, Illinois? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 12:09:15 -0700 Jack Decker wrote: >> To be truly HONESTLY competitive: That means, for VOIP (or anyone else) to be a truly competitive service to traditional phone company services, it would have to meet these standards. If it fails to, it is not as competitive as the hype reported in this newsgroup claims. >> 1) VOIP users may not have any traditional lines as "backup". > Not sure what you mean here. That VOIP will function as reliably and provide all services at all times as traditional lines, so a subscriber wouldn't need a traditional line at all. >> 2) VOIP providers must provide the same service reliability ... > Why? Because you say so? Do I not have the right to choose a > provider with less reliability than the Baby Bells. You have the right to choose less reliability if you want. But the hype has implied otherwise, and I'm not sure uneducated customers understand that. Look at retailing. Customers going into a swanky store/restaurant expect to pay more but get more personalized service in nice surroundings. Customers going into a discount warehouse/hot dog stand expect to pay less and don't expect personalized service. People CAN make a choice with their wallets and it is usually _pretty obvious_. Bloomingdales is not Walmart; the Waldorf-Astoria is not McDonalds. But the hype about VOIP and other newcomer services were that they were just as good as traditional. The fact is they weren't -- there are/were still a lot of bugs to be worked out. But unlike Walmart, this poor quality isn't easily evident to customers. > Besides, you know full well that a VoIP company that uses the public > Internet has absolutely zero control over how reliable the customer's > ISP is. No, I don't know that, and I suspect other subscribers wouldn't know it either. More on this 'compartmentalization' below. >> 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers >> pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. > Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? No because traditional companies have to pay them and to have a level playing field newcomers should pay the same. Likewise, they should meet social obligations (ie carrying deadbeats) that traditional carriers must meet. > Personally, I think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way > to fund such things. Your opinion on taxes is irrelevent here. What is relevent is that those taxes do exist and as such, should be applied to ALL concerns in the business. If you get the taxes off, they should come off for all. >> 4) VOIP providers must provide the same reports to state and federal >> regulators that other companies provide on their services. > Why? So they are burdened by paperwork? Again, so it is a level playing field. Everybody has to have the same obligations. >> 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major >> events generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. > Sure, this is desirable. But maybe I'm willing to not have phone > service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day As above, that should be clear to consumers in advance. I wonder if any service contracts say that in plain, clear language right up front: "No service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day". > But who are you to say that no one should be allowed to buy the less > reliable, but less expensive service? It's ok as long as the customers know they're buying from a discount house up front and will expect less: "no service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day". > I happen to believe that consumers should be able to choose > which risks they will take in the marketplace, When I buy something in a supermarket, the price is marked as is the contents and ingredients. When I make a telephone call, especially from a payphone, there is NOTHING. There have been countless articles about people being burned by outrageous calling card charges from long distance at pay phones, and count me in on that. The old Bell System gladly gave you rates before a call, no one does now (unless you can wait hours for a customer rep who probably won't even know anyway.) The newcomers want to have it both ways. They want the advantages of the regulated days where they can muscle in (such as how a company showed a switching station where it was not zoned because the company claimed it was a "utility" and had such power), as well as not posting specific prices. But they want to the advantages of deregulation where no one asks them any questions. Well sorry, it can't work that way. If you want to provide a very costly long distance service at a pay phone, stick a damn price list on the phone. > but it was because of MCI (and Sprint and all the others who came > after) that now most of us don't have to worry about what a long > distance call is going to cost anymore. First off, before competition AT&T was continually lowering toll rates as new technologies lowered its cost. I sure do have to worry about toll costs. A payphone call for 3 minutes 15 miles away $10.00? Isn't that a little rip off for today? Another call for 10 minutes $25.00? (I screamed like h--- and didn't pay those charges, but I never should've charged them in the first place.) Also, I remember short distance interstate toll calls costing as low as 4c a minute, now they are up to full rate. Those people who coast-to-coast during business hours are making out great. Those of us who call only occassionally locally are paying more than before. > You're grasping at straws to make a point here, > because you don't really have one - you simply want to see VoIP > companies taxed or regulated out of existence, Will paying the same taxes and complying with the same regulations of traditional carriers drive VOIP out of business? If so, then they don't deserve to be in business. Otherwise, stop giving them a free ride. > So you admit you don't like competition, but prefer a regulated > monopoly. You apparently do not care that this has historically > resulted in very high prices for end users, as well as innovation that > moves at about the pace of a constipated snail. That is absolute nonsense. Telephone service prices were falling before divesture. Innovation was continuing, indeed, that resulted in lower prices. Service quality was superior. Today we have great innovation, like digital cell phones that have lots of dead spots. To ALL new competitors (not just Mr. Decker): Please don't lie to me and tell me I'm paying less for when all you've done is shifted fees from one part of my phone bill to another or added new fees. Don't tell about your great deals that actually are lousy due to service charges. Please don't lie to me about free choice when you lobby regulators to disallow traditional carriers from offering services to "boost competition" (in other words, legally forcing me to buy from someone I don't want to). Or forcing me to choose an LD carrier when I don't want any and paying a minimum LD charge no matter what. Please don't lie to me and tell me my service quality is better when you've conveniently compartmentalized services so you can point the finger at someone else (as you did in denying responsibility for stuff that one's own ISP should be doing, or fraud that was controlled under a regulated monopoly structure). Please don't lie to me and tell me your business plan is so wonderful because you happen to avoid paying taxes your competitors have to pay. ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Date: 5 Aug 2004 05:51:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) wrote in message news:: > In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out > to a customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or > the equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a > couple of vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always > wondered what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with > it. > Anybody know? > jhhaynes at earthlink dot net Going back almost 4 decades, I recall a teletype method called "Selective Signaling" which allows the equivalent of multidrop machines on a private line circuit. It was fairly popular with law enforcement as I recall. The tubes (I'm guessing here, no first hand knowledge) may have performed the dicriminator function (think of FM discriminators) of station identification on the private line? Speaking of vintage equipment, you might want to check out: "The Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, now known as The Museum of Communications, is sponsored by Charles B. Hopkins Chapter 30, TelecommPioneers. We are located at 7000 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, Washington, 98108. The museum can be reached on (206) 767-3012 and is open every Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and by appointment other days." From my visit there, I remember tons of data (teletype models from 15 and earlier) equipment. The folks there keep it operational and thus would have the final word on this. http://www.scn.org/tech/telmuseum/ or contact them by email at: telmus@scn.org If you find yourself in the Seattle someday with some time to spare and want to visit a true gem, go down by Boeing field and pay them a visit. I can't wait to go back and talk to some of the switchmen who still keep an old Panel office from Mercer Island running! Jack ------------------------------ From: Hank Karl Subject: Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 11:19:08 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are any cellular picture phones at the > point of producing good enough pictures yet to make them worthwhile? > Now I suppose if I was trying to sneak a few pictures out of a men's > locker room, I would take what I could get and be grateful for that > limited quality. But can even the newest and most expensive cell > phones with built in cameras produce decent digital photos or .jpg > images as of yet? I have not seen one yet I was very impressed with. > PAT] How about the SPH-2300, Samsung's 3.2 megapixel camera phone? Of course, the lens on this model is quite noticeable http://www.gsmarena.com/index.php3?sRedir=http://www.gsmarena.com/newsdetail.php3?idNews=56 Casio's A5406CA has 3.2 megapixels and a "twilight" setting. see http://www.casio.co.jp/k-tai/a5406ca/ See also http://forum.mypdacafe.com/viewtopic.php?t=13466 for others. I don't know if any of these have hit the US yet, but its only a matter of time. And in the next year or two: Qualcomm introduces chipsets for six megapixel camera phones http://www.wirelessmoment.com/2004/05/qualcomm_introd.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think any of those models are commonly (if at all) available here in USA as of yet. But they do look like good equipment. The last time I was downtown checking out camera cell phones from our local dealers (Cingular Wireless, Dobson Cellular One, Alltel [both the corporate kiosk at Walmart and Radio Shack, their local agent], and United States Cellular), none of them had anything I felt was worth bothering with. They all had picture phones but they were all tiny litle pictures and not very good, IMO. I will go check again in six months to a year when quality will be better and the price will have come down also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: US West History Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:05:19 -0400 In TD V23 #365 Doug Faunt inquired: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? And > what happened to the company, if so? Yes Doug, there is a Santa Clause, I mean yes, US West (aka: US Worst) was one of the baby bells. It was bought by Qwest a few years back and goes by the Qwest name and is still in operations in it's original 14 states. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ From: bd087@scn.org (Benjamin Lukoff) Subject: Re: US West History Date: 5 Aug 2004 11:57:22 -0700 Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message news:: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? Yes, they were. They were bought by Qwest a while back. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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