From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 25 16:37:54 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0PLbrq13969; Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:37:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:37:54 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401252137.i0PLbrq13969@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 #39 TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:38:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 39 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cellular Disconnect (Monty Solomon) Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again (Monty Solomon) Airlines Weigh How to Alert Passengers to Disclosure Rules (M Solomon) That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News (Monty Solomon) DISH Network $999 HDTV Promo (Monty Solomon) Amazon.com's Latest Product Category: Politicians (Monty Solomon) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Joseph) Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers (Paul Robinson) Cingular and LNP (Mark@fonehometomars.com) Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business (Carl Navarro) Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business (SELLCOM Tech) 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 is 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: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:39:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellular Disconnect Congress tried to help. But major wireless carriers still find themselves snared in legal fights with towns over erecting towers to plug 'dead spots' in service. By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 1/25/2004 CONCORD -- For years, it was known as one of the most excruciating wireless valleys of death. Rounding the downhill curve on Route 2 headed from Lincoln toward Walden Pond, mobile phone customers of most wireless carriers -- but particularly AT&T Wireless Services Inc. -- could count on losing whatever connection they had, with virtually no hope of reconnecting for at least another mile. Starting in early 1998, AT&T began seeking a location for a cellular tower to fill in this notorious "dead spot." It soon turned into a protracted battle between the carrier, Concord officials, and Walden Woods preservation activists committed to salvaging a town dump where town officials first recommended building a cell tower. Only after AT&T won a federal lawsuit did the town let the carrier erect a tower disguised as a chunky flagpole next to a Mobil gas station. It took four years. The (wireless) battle of Concord exemplifies the kind of contentious, litigation-riddled process Congress hoped to eliminate when it rewrote federal telecommunications laws in 1996. The idea was to let local officials partially regulate -- but not forbid outright -- siting of new towers that are crucial to ensuring the nation's 154 million cellphone owners can get more reliable service. But over the past four years, five big national wireless carriers have brought more than 100 lawsuits in US District Court in Boston -- several of which dragged on through appeals -- to get cell-tower installations approved, a Boston Globe review has found. While the pace of lawsuits filed has dropped to about half the number brought in 2000, carriers still head to court on average every 18 days to try to overturn rejections by local officials. More than 20 suits are currently pending. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/01/25/cellular_disconnect/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:46:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again Politics of the Web: Meet, Greet, Segregate, Meet Again By AMY HARMON January 25, 2004 THAT the Internet is newly teeming with grass-roots political activists of all stripes is one of the truisms of this campaign season. But to Melissa Kramer, a Wesley Clark supporter who spends hours online every day, it doesn't feel that way. On Ms. Kramer's Internet, the politics are all General Clark, all the time. As soon as she drops her children off at school, Ms. Kramer logs on to Clark04.com, the official campaign Web log, to check the campaign press releases. Then it's on to the Clark "community" blogs, to post information about local Clark news in Dayton, Ohio, and read the views of other Clark supporters around the country. Later, she might visit the Web log of the film director Michael Moore, who recently endorsed General Clark. The only time Ms. Kramer comes across, say, a Dean supporter is when one ventures onto the Clark Web site's discussion area. These partisan visitors, known among political bloggers as "trolls," are typically seen as trying to disrupt productive discussion, and regulars know to shun them. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25harm.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:13:11 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Airlines Weigh How to Alert Passengers to Disclosure Rules By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post, 1/25/2004 WASHINGTON -- Major US carriers are scrambling to create disclosure policies that inform customers they might share personal data with the federal government, in response to two highly publicized cases in which airlines secretly handed over private passenger information. The airlines are working swiftly to alert passengers and protect themselves from liability as the US government is poised to force the carriers as early as next month to turn over data as part of a computerized passenger screening program called CAPPS II. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/25/airlines_weigh_how_to_alert_passengers_to_disclosure_rules/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 13:48:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News SP@M SHEN@NIG@NS!! By GEORGE JOHNSON January 25, 2004 IF you could sit back with Zen-like detachment and observe the dross piling up in your electronic mailbox, the spam wars might come to seem like a fascinating electronic game. Like creatures running through a maze with constantly shifting walls, spammers dart and weave to sneak their solicitations past ever wilier junk mail filters. They are organisms, or maybe genomes, grinding out one random mutation after another, desperately trying to elude the Grim Reaper. Viagra becomes "vi@gra" or "v-i-@-g-r-a." Then, as the filters adapt, "v1@gr@" and even "\/l@gr@." Currently, the Internet is swarming with mutants like this: "Cheap Val?(u)m, Viagr@, X(a)n@x, Som@ Di3t Pills Many M3ds RIZfURqgHr77B," the final string of gibberish hanging like an appendage of junk DNA. Taking a different approach, a come-on for barnyard pornography devolves into "faurm galz bing e rottic." Another pitch promises to reveal "Seakrets of ((eks-eks-eks)) stars." Dispiriting as it is to start the morning with a hundred of these orthographic monsters crouching in your in-box, there is reason to take heart. Measured in bits and bytes, the sheer volume of spam may not have diminished. But advanced filtering software, which learns to recognize the mercurial traits of junk e-mail, is having an effect. The spammers' messages are becoming harder and harder to decipher. Sense is inevitably degenerating into nonsense, like a pileup of random mutations in an endangered species gasping its last breaths. Earlier this month, when Internet experts met in Cambridge, Mass., for the 2004 Spam Conference (available as a Web broadcast at spamconference.org), they showed just how far the science of spam fighting has come. For all the recent talk of suing spammers and compiling a national do-not-spam list, most speakers were putting their hopes in technological, not legal solutions. The federal government's new junk e-mail law, the Can Spam Act, barely rated a mention. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/weekinreview/25john.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:10:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DISH Network $999 HDTV Promo http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/products/system/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 15:34:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Amazon.com's Latest Product Category: Politicians By Reed Stevenson SEATTLE, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Shoppers at online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) can now spend money on something new -- U.S. presidential candidates. A new feature that debuted on Friday collects campaign contributions of up to $200 for U.S. presidential candidates. The Seattle, Washington-based retailer, which claims 37 million active accounts, said on its Web site that it is "trying to take the friction out of grassroots contributions to presidential candidates." For that reason, Amazon said it is not endorsing any candidates and is charging each campaign its usual processing fees for the payments, which it will donate to a non-profit, non-partisan civil group. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40302224 ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 22:09:25 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NOcom On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:57:13 -0500, Michael Quinn wrote: > One of the items that caught my eye in the advisory was access from > overseas via an "OCONUS (Outside the CONtintal US) universal free > phone at 800-5404-xxxx (with appropriate country specific toll free > access codes)". Note the number is 11 digits, not 10 like here in > the US. I've heard of intra-country toll free numbers, but not > this. Anyone know how this works, or what a country-specific-toll- > free-code consists of? International "free phone" is sort of "country code 800." You access it the same way you access any other international call. If you were in North America you'd dial 011-800-NXXX XXXX. If you were in Europe you'd dial 00-800-NXXX XXXX if you were in Australia you'd dial 0011-800-NXXX XXXX. It's like other national free phone/toll-free that the end party pays for the cost of the call. I don't think it's possible to make international freephone calls from mobile phones. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - remove NO from .NOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Paul Robinson Organization: elusive-butterfly.net Subject: Re: Overseas Toll Free Numbers Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 19:38:15 GMT Alan Burkitt-Gray wrote: > The idea is that a +800 xxxx xxxx number can be dialed free of > charge from anywhere in the world. The system is already in use by > many of the main hotel chains. For example the Hilton group gives > +800 4445 8667 on its website (the numbers translate to +800 > HHILTONS, and it's very similar to its US toll-free number +1-800 > 445 8667). The number 011-800-4445-8667# when dialed from an Arlington, Virginia home telephone produced a US style ring, and after about 10 or 12 rings went to a recording identifying itself as Hilton Honors, in essence I was being put into a queue. I hung up, having confirmed that the numbers do work here. When I tried dialing it from my Sprint PCS phone (without the # since you send all the digits before you push 'send'), I got the recording "Your account is not authorized to make calls to this number" so it implies that Sprint isn't aware of it yet or doesn't know how to authorize that 'country code' to be considered a local call. This at least confirms that international 800 numbers can be dialed from U.S. wireline locations (presuming they include US access for the particular number.) -- Paul Robinson "Above all else... We shall go on..." "...And continue!" "If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us." ------------------------------ From: Mark@fonehometomars.com Subject: Cingular and LNP Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 03:03:48 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications I signed on to Cingular last December 12, switching from Verizon Wireless. I ported my wife's Verizon number fairly easily. But, it is 6 weeks later and I have hit a stone wall in trying to get my qualified land-line number ported to my Cingular number. The customer service is nonexistent. There is no effective escalation process. I finely located the name and address of the Senior VP of Customer Service in Alanta and wrote her about it at the end of December. Nada. I filed an FCC informal complaint at the end of December but those move like glaciers. I see were the California PUC fined Cingular over $12 million recently for lousy customer service. Apparently, stonewalled arrogance is the model for Cingular. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 16:03:27 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 24 Jan 2004 18:56:46 -0800, CROPSEYIRONWORKS@AOL.COM (VITO) wrote: > We are changing our current telephone service from three incoming > lines down to one line with call forwarding call, waiting, and > conferance calling. We're also adding dsl service to replace an > existing telephone line dedicated to our computors dial up. We now use > an 'AT&T Merlin System' that previously "rolled over" incoming calls, > forwarded calls, provided conferencing, and also provided our 'PA' > system.. Now with the advent of call waiting, call forwarding, > conferance calling, we really want to 'strip out' the existing system > and hope to simplify and cut service costs i.e. additional lines, > without losing any of our existing features. We operate a small > ironworks shop and due to the frequent high noise levels we installed > "phone flashers" & buzzers to the shop. Three questions. 1)What's a > good business phone with a max of two incoming lines? 2) Do 'hold' > buttons work between three extensions? Can we have intercom without > having a proprietary system included i.e. Avaya? 1. Just round up the usual suspects. Panasonic makes a 2-line phone with intercom (kxt-3282) for about $110 retail. You can also get into the corded/cordless models. 2. Yes. 3. Yes I don't know how much traffic you have on your phone lines, but you're making a huge mistake to go to a single line with CF/CW/and Conferencing. Call Waiting and Conferencing are mutually exclusive. In fact, Call Waiting and Hold are exclusive. Save call waiting for your residence line and put either voice mail or a second line in, or just go with a single line. I have one of those 2 line offices. If I'm on the phone, I can put the caller on hold and answer the second line or ignore it and let it fall to voice mail. I have CID enabled so that I can see who is calling on the other line which also helps me determing if I want to break my current call. When you install Call Waiting, you give up all the options. Since the outside party is hearing a ring, you HAVE to answer the CW or the person calling will think you're out of business. That's pretty rude to the caller you're talking to. Lastly, why would you want to take out a working phone system? If you're under a lease or maintenance agreement, it's time to look for something newer. If you own the system, eBay is full of Partner/ Merlin/Legend equipment that doesn't take a rocket scientist to tall. You can usually pick up a system with 3 or 4 phones for less than $300. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Need Telephone Selection Advice for Small Business Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 18:12:44 GMT CROPSEYIRONWORKS@AOL.COM (VITO) posted on that vast internet thingie: > We are changing our current telephone service from three incoming > lines down to one line with call forwarding call, waiting, and > conferance calling. We're also adding dsl service to replace an > existing telephone line dedicated to our computors dial up. We now use > an 'AT&T Merlin System' that previously "rolled over" incoming calls, > forwarded calls, provided conferencing, and also provided our 'PA' > system. Now with the advent of call waiting, call forwarding, > conferance calling, we really want to 'strip out' the existing system > and hope to simplify and cut service costs i.e. additional lines, > without losing any of our existing features. We operate a small > ironworks shop and due to the frequent high noise levels we installed > "phone flashers" & buzzers to the shop. Three questions. 1)What's a > good business phone with a max of two incoming lines? 2) Do 'hold' > buttons work between three extensions? Can we have intercom without > having a proprietary system included i.e. Avaya? You may need a 4 line system to get the features that you need and want, but that should not be a problem. I invite you to have a look at our TMC ET4000 system http://www.sellcom.com/tmc.html We like it so well we use it here at SELLCOM. We also can have cordless phones integrated to the TMC. We are using the new 5.8GHz Motorola cordless phones. Another nice system but possibly more than you need is the Talkswitch system. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Talkswitch, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Minuteman UPS systems If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #39 *****************************