From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Sep 3 14:56:13 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i83IuCf00793; Fri, 3 Sep 2004 14:56:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 14:56:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409031856.i83IuCf00793@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 #412 TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Sep 2004 14:55:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 412 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Competing TV Provider (Monty Solomon) Sender ID Finds Followers Ahead of Approval (Monty Solomon) Focal IVAD (Justin) Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service (Paul Timmins) Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service (Jack Decker) Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service (Hank Karl) Re: Vonage Dual Ring; was Considering VoIP For Home (charlie3) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Neal McLain) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Lisa Hancock) September Share Day (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. =========================== 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: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 11:04:02 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Competing TV Provider It uses broadcast TV infrastructure to compete with TV stations. It's not an ISP, but its business model is unique, fascinating, and strangely familiar. by Gerry Blackwell ISPs are not the only players hoping to muscle in on the lucrative pay TV services market, and as start-up U.S. Digital Television Inc. (USDTV) has shown, delivering alternative TV services over IP networks-as inevitable as it may seem to ISPs-is not the only option. IP is an option USDTV is considering for the future, says Bret Westwood, the company's vice president of Internet services and information technology. But for now, the Utah-based company is concentrating on quite a different business and technology model. In March, USDTV launched a consumer pay TV service in Albuquerque NM, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas, offering a package with multiple time-shifted relays of 12 popular cable TV channels for $19.95 a month. Subscribers purchase a USDTV set-top box from Wal-Mart for $99, which also pulls in free local digital broadcasts. The company is partnering with local TV stations, transmitting on their unused digital broadcast spectrum and using their transmission infrastructure. Its ambitious plan is to expand to 100-plus markets over the next three years. The stations subscribers get with the USDTV service include Disney, ESPN, Fox News, The Learning Channel (TLC), and Discovery Channel. With time-shifted transmissions and local stations, the receiver brings in close to 40 digital channels, with image and sound quality superior to analog and comparable to digital services from satellite and cable companies. Some offer high definition TV (HDTV) programming as well. The number of channels is obviously far fewer than with cable and satellite. Will USDTV add more? It might, Westwood says, but that's not really the point. http://www.isp-planet.com/business/2004/usdtv.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 11:07:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sender ID Finds Followers Ahead of Approval By Jim Wagner As a new Sender ID specification for beating back spam wends its way through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), some e-mail software vendors are not waiting around for its final approval before implementing the system. They could be taking a gamble. Or they could be acting in confidence that the IETF will eventually bless a specification that will be used on e-mail systems throughout the world. One of the contributors to the Sender ID specification, Microsoft (Quote, Chart), has patents pending on certain components of the Sender ID technology it has donated to the IETF's efforts. Microsoft has repeatedly said that -- even if it is granted a patent on the technology -- it would "make licenses available on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." But the issue has some in the open source world talking. The drive in the business community to press ahead with Sender ID comes at a time when some in the open source community are claiming the licensing stipulations around Sender ID don't interoperate with the most popular open source license variant, the General Public License (define). In a post to the IETF's MARID (MTA Authorization Records in DNS) discussion list the chairman of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), Greg Stein, called Microsoft's Royalty-Free Sender ID license agreement a barrier to any ASF project. http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3402921 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What exactly is the problem with the Open Source proponents? That *they* did not think of it first? That Microsoft may get the credit? It is really a damn shame when these intelligent men and women fight and squabble among themselves while the rest of the world has to fight with the spammers. But oh well, most of them probably never even see spam (save one or two pieces each day which slip past the myriad of filters used by their secretary to get rid of it), and those one or two pieces which they do have to view makes them angry enough to squabble with other professionals about it, but not so angry that they would even consider for a minute getting off their own high horses in order to wade through the sewer that the net has become with the rest of us. Do most of those people even realize how tragic and awful the problem of spam has become? I don't think so, otherwise they surely would not be blocking the restoration efforts as much as they do, would they? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Overdrive79@hotmail.com (Justin) Subject: Focal IVAD Date: 3 Sep 2004 06:28:33 -0700 Is anyone using Focal IVAD service?? I know it is a sort of VOIP system, hence the ability to provide 32 voice channels and up to 1.5mbps on one T1, but does anyone know about the quality/reliability of the service. The pricing is really attractive, but I want to make sure I am not tying myself into a contract with something shoddy. I would really appreciate any information you have. Thanks, Justin ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service From: Paul Timmins Organization: Telcodata.US Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:33:58 -0400 On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 16:57, editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's an old trick, but quite effec- > tive. Place (and enforce) the blame on the last person or entity in > the line unless *they* can push it further along. And believe me, > when push comes to shove, they *will* find someone further down > the line to hand the hot potato to. You give them one or two passes > with a firm warning there will be no further excuses allowed, then > watch how the conditions so prevalent in much of telephony get > corrected/cured in a hurry. I for one, cannot see why *any* user > or subscriber should ever be allowed to tamper with their own > caller ID. Because the place that is calling, might not be the place to accept calls. If I hire a firm in India to do all my call solicitations, I'd rather people reply back to a number in the US, wouldn't you? > Ditto with spam and virii hassles. If Microsoft, and the makers of > hardware got together and devised a nearly foolproof method of > *absolutely without question identifying every piece of equipment > out there* then spam and virus writing/spreading would come to a > screaming halt. Consider the ESN (electronic serial number) on your > cellular phone. Some one steals it, and just a phone call from you to > the carrier blacklists it forever. It will never again talk or > recieve calls, as the number propogates through the hot lists. I > don't hear anyone complaining that the propogation of their cell > phone's ESN is somehow a 'violation of privacy rights' when a cell > tower picks up the user's transmission and deals with it. Why should > anyone (except spammers of course) complain when an ISP passes > their traffic and looks at the computer 'electronic serial number' > which has been burned in the hardware, and while not totally > impossible to diddle with would frustrate most spammers totally. Unfortunately, there's more to it than that. Every device connected to the internet would need this serial number. And there'd have to be some way of not being able to spoof it, which would require some sort of PKI (because otherwise, I could just simulate the serial number in software, and pick what I want). There are several major issues: 1. The current protocol doesn't support any sort of serial number. You'd probably have to develop a whole new protocol, or admit the idea that if you put it in an RFC-1822 header, it could be spoofed by anyone who cared. 2. Everyone would have to replace all their hardware. 3. Most of the systems on the internet that don't have people at their console (like mailservers, routers, webservers, databases) don't run Microsoft software. These send the majority of email, things like notifications, alerts, etc. 4. You're implementing this in software the user can control (and anyone who has physical access to their system can control the hardware, and thus the software on it). Those that are malicious would circumvent this by either replacing the driver that reads the chips' serial number, or simply using someone else's machine, and their serial number. People's machines are already being used to relay spam without their knowledge, it'd be just one more step to include their identifier in it. And more importantly, and this is a big one: This doesn't buy us anything we don't already have. Spam CAN be tracked down to its source, and it regularly is. Grandma's computer does get its internet shut off when it's massively sending spam. But is it helping? No. The scale of the attacks are far too great, and there's always something vulnerable. The problem of the matter is that sure, you get a lot of problems from (let's just say) Comcast users. Block them. Disconnect your paths to them. If you use them, switch to someone else. If you're an ISP, cut your peering to them. Good. Hope your customers don't need to receive any business from Comcast users. So when your customers call to complain that they can't reach their website you host from their house, what are you going to tell them? Comcast told them you were blocking them. Now what? Tell them that because 2% (in other words, thousands) of Comcast's users were sending spam that you disconnected one of their hundreds of links to the internet, the link between them and you? As is often said on NANOG-L: "I wholehardedly encourage my competitors to do this." > But back to the statement at hand: I receive spam or virii and look > for the untampered with ESN of the person or place which sent it to > me. Good, I found you. You are the guilty one and your machine goes > on the hotlist. If you are in a position to buy a new computer every > week or two just to be able to continue sending out your crapola then > god bless you! Add that little economic incentive to the pressure we > put on ISPs who willfully encourage that sort of customer. PAT] This only works because the networks are closed, and operate on privately owned airwaves that it's illegal to even transmit on without the permission of the carrier. You can't build your own phones to run on their network, because at that point, you're already violating federal law. Tell people they have to buy computers that are sealed up, coated in epoxy, and unchangeable and unupgradeable from their ISPs. Then you want to violate the section of federal law where they've explictly made it a crime to possess or use "access devices" that aren't yours (18 USC Section 1029), which includes ESN/MIN pairs, SIM cards, or anything else used to restrict access to the network (this already includes passwords and credit card numbers as well, so...), and use them to impersonate someone else's phone. And you want to do this with a transmitter that betrays your current location every time it tries to work? (Any transmitter can be located, given directional recievers, and simple trigonometry -- and cell companies have equipment custom made for the purpose) So, you have a choice: Buy the cheap phone at your local supermarket and have a blast, or spend tons of time and effort to clone someone else's phone, and be charged with at least 2 felonies for each person's phone you do it with. And in the end, neither prevents you from making prank calls. And just try to track down the user of a prepaid phone. It'll never work for anyone you want to. Sure, the legit people will give proper information, but people who don't want to get caught will give false information, and even if there's an ID requirement, they'll make fake ID. Even if that's verified, for the right price paid to the right people, it can be accurate (or just take someone else's valid ID data, and change the photo). Identity thieft happens every day, so verifying the identity of a user won't help much. But the "pass the buck" strategy works so well. That's why we don't have any problems with underage drinking, underage smoking, or drug trafficing. Paul Timmins Telcodata.US [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Of course we still have problems with underage drinking, and smoking, and problems with drug trafficing. But I suggest we have *fewer* problems than we would were not some coordinated efforts made to stop those problems. If legislators were like internetters, and went into lock-mode everytime one humble suggestion or another was made to cut back on underage anything (oh we can't require ID, all the kids will make their own and anyway that would be an invasion of privacy to require things like that, and the only people it would stop would be good people who were greatly inconvenienced and anyway we could never control all those foreign country web sites which sell cigarettes and drugs and sex and you name it and with the first two at least drop ship to Americans through the mail.) As Geoffrey Welsh states it in the Digest masthead each day, "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." But let anyone make a humble suggestion about something *anyone* can do to make a dent here or there, and I can assure you there will be any number of netters who will jump all over the person and be glad to explain why 'it just will not work, thus and so'. Well then, have your spam- and virii-ridden net. About twenty years ago, we saw CB radio go up in flames the same way when it became useless for any type of interaction between people. At that same time, twenty years ago, when the government put tremendous heat on Motorola to quit manufacturing and selling the infamous '02-A' programmable chip for CB radios and an equal amount of pressure on Radio Shack to make their clerks quit offering to 'do the mods' for customers who bought their radio at a local RS store things did quiet down quite a bit. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:42:53 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service Pat, please conceal my e-mail address again. You wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Jack, you sound like a typical netter > with all your objections and all your reasons why a reasonably good > plan will not work so there is nothing do except sit around wringing > our hands and wait until the ratio gets as close to one hundred > percent garbage as possible. Pat, I think perhaps you don't realize that many of us don't get anywhere near the level of spam that you do. The problem you have is that you publish your e-mail address openly, you put it on your web site in a way that's easy for spam harvesters to pick it out, and you haven't changed it for years, AFAIK. So while you perceive it as a huge problem, many of us consider it a minor annoyance. Indeed, when I had my old address a few years ago, jack (my ISP).com, I had a huge problem with spam also. At one time that address had been on several web pages, and it was also my first name, which is a common first name, making it vulnerable to a dictionary attack. I've taken steps to limit the ways in which spammers can get my e-mail address (including using a primary address that would never be found in anyone's dictionary!) and it has helped tremendously. > I will suggest if people can use home brew computers to get on the > net, why can't people quit paying for cell phone service entirely > and work entirely from home brew cell phones. Unfortunately that's not how computers have evolved. Cell phones have always been a standalone unit, designed to conceal their "guts" from the user. Computers, on the other hand, started out as something that the home hobbyist almost had to assemble from parts and gradually evolved into the sort of "appliance" computer we see today. Also, bear in mind that computers are not designed from the outset to be used with a "pay" service. That is one thing they CAN do, but there are also many computers used in "standalone" applications that never connect to the 'net. > Ah, but you say without a valid ESN their home brew or other- > wise cell phone won't get out. Every tower in the world will stop > them dead in their tracks. And people can jerry rig all the cellphones > they want, but that magic ESN is embedded in a bit of glue buried on > the mother board somewhere, burned in at the factory and no one but > a damned fool or a masochist would try to swap it out. Ah ... right! > So a result, only damned fools and masochists try to swap out ESNs > and still expect the phone to work. Ergo, while fraud with stolen > cell phones *does* exist, its a relatively minor problem. Hackers, > etc do tamper with cellphone software, the telephone numbers assigned > to cell phones, etc, but as a worst case scenario, when cellco has > had enough fraud that particular unit becomes useless. The tower is > told just do not accept anything more from that ESN regardless. At > that point, you the fraudster have a choice of tossing the phone or > attempting (if you have the experience) to change the burned in ESN > or selling or paying someone else to do it for you. In any event, it > costs you money and slows you down. True. But again, we're dealing with a product that was designed from the outset to be used with a pay service. Until about the mid 1990's, IF you could connect to the Internet at all it was probably a "free" connection, by which I mean you were probably not using a commercial ISP. Then just prior to the burst of the "dot-com" bubble there were again ISP's that offered their services for free (sometimes in exchange for exposing you to various forms of advertising). And also, what you pay for is "Internet access", not "e-mail". Nobody has charges for e-mail as a separate item, and I doubt they ever will because the first company that tries it will suffer a massive loss of customer fleeing to competitive providers that don't charge. > Now let us assume the computer factory (Apple or whoever) embeds a > little chip on the mother board somewhere and buries it in wax and > glue, making it almost impossible to get out or replace, much as cell > phones are constructed. Yes, a damn fool or a masochist *probably could > get it out, (maybe the same guys who do it with cell phones) and to > the average user, the end result would be a busted up, shorted out > mother board. If a computer hardware person took the whole computer > apart and looked at the mother board, they would see that ugly looking > waxed up glued over little chip. Now what kind of a number would be > burned into that little chip, its CSN or 'computer serial number'? I > suggest something like Microsoft has done with the latest version of > XP. The number would be a mathematical formula constructed on the > various parts of the computer: two hard drives, one floppy, some type > or another of monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. In other words, the > factory sells you an OEM, with all the above parts, and burns that > number combination in the chip. But who would *buy* such a motherboard? Perhaps you envision that the government would force these upon us? Well, bear in mind that existing motherboards would not have this chip, and all the spammers would have to do is lay in a supply of non-chipped motherboards, which would probably continue to be available for a very long time. > But you say you built your own computer with a hard drive here, a > floppy from there, an old TV set for a monitor, a mouse you got from > Best Buy and a camera you bought at Walmart. Motorola cell phones had > an answer for that also. The end user was permitted to reprogram a > few variables *three times only* before it would lock up entirely, > and (in theory at least) the unit had to go back to the factory or > an authorized dealer for a reset, which involved some hardware to > be attached. Not impossible, just a pain in the butt for guys. Yeah, a real pain in the butt if the motherboard comes from some manufacturer in Korea or China or someplace like that, and doesn't have a presence in the U.S. But in any case, what makes you think that any self-respecting spammer (now that should be an oxymoron!) would not have an "authorized dealer" on his payroll. I don't think this would be anywhere near the pain in the butt *for the spammer* that you make it out to be, but it would sure as heck inconvenience regular computer users who never buy completely new systems, but instead simply upgrade parts as they get out of date or wear out. > Now here is here Microsoft or Linux or Apple or whichever software > maker whose operating system you plan to install in your home brew > computer enters the picture: You put in your copy of XP or Linux or > whatever. Just as the OS now demands you insert an *accurate* > rendering of your 'product key' based on its own on the fly > calculation of your system (remember how if the system is 'changed > substantially' Microsoft demands it to be re-registered), the > operating system -- and operating system only -- would rewrite or > burn that little waxed over, glued on little chip a second time, > or even a third time, or hell, to be generous if you wish, a fourth > time, then it locks up. No more re-writes short of hauling the entire > thing back to an 'authorized dealer' ..... Whom the spammer would have in his back pocket ..... > who attaches his little odd cable somewhere and 'zeros out' the > counter -- not writes in the number, which the operating system > calculates based on peripherals, etc -- just zeros it out so you can > start over. Do you truly think the Linux community would go along with this? Cracking this scheme would become the new "holy grail" for every hacker out there. And the "little odd cable"? Available on eBay for $4.95 plus shipping. I'm serious about that, I've seen it happen. One of the video game manufacturers decided that they didn't like people buying just anyone's hard drives and installing them in their system (to increase storage capacity), so they came out with a hard drive that used oddball connectors. That apparently spawned a cottage industry of people selling less expensive hard drives that had been modified to have the "oddball" connectors. > No one knows how the OS calculates those number, no one except > Microsoft (as in XP) or the factory as in an OEM shipped out for > the first time. It just happens is all. Well, someone has to know. If necessary someone will set up a distributed computing project to figure it out. I don't think you appreciate that it's not the spammers that would hate this scheme -they will simply do whatever it takes, including having the so-called "authorized dealer" on their payroll. The people who will really hate this scheme are the people who like to tinker with their computers. Most of those people currently use Linux as their OS, which is why I say that I expect that the Linux community will be especially uncooperative. So, you might say, pass a law that they have to support it? They will laugh heartily as all the distros become available only on servers outside the U.S. Remember, ANYTHING that depends on legislation to make it work cannot work if the scheme can be thwarted simply by downloading software from outside the U.S. (or wherever this scheme is implemented). Further, it will do nothing to stop the spam that originates on servers outside the U.S. > The final one or two digits > in the CSM would be mathematical proof on the remainder of the CSM > which was generated by the OS or the factory based on your equipment > and perhaps part of your usual IP address. In other words an extremely > complex arrangement of letters and numbers. If you attempted to bluff > your way past your own firewall it would be very unlikely you could > get the check digits correct even if you did figure out how the OS > looked at your peripherals. > So you say you will just look for that string at your firewall and > omit it entirely ... uh, uh ... or you will just substitute a new > string of alphanumerics... uh, uh ... the ISP will be under much > pressure to disallow any blank or mathematically miscalculated strings > coming from your firewall to him, and your computer OS simply won't > function at all without that correct CSM. So if your computer does > not stop you, or with much effort you bluff your way past it, then > the ISP stops you. The ISP looks at the math, and your computer > generates the 'math problem'. If every ISP has to have the software to decode this, I give it 24 hours to fall into the hands of the hackers, who will then simply apply "brute force" methods to find acceptable keys (assuming that they can't immediately back-engineer the system). But also, WHY would any sane ISP implement this? They would only drive away business from people using older computers that don't support this scheme. The only pressure would be economic - the fear of losing customers - and that pressure would be very much against supporting anything like this. > Either part of it goes wrong, and you > don't get to do your spam for today. Remember, the little waxed over > glued in place microchip (just touch the solder and it all falls > apart in your hands) contains both the 'math problem' and its > check-sum solution. I guess I am saying there has to be a partnership > between computer factories and people like Microsoft on the one side > and the ISPs on the other side. Bingo. What is the incentive for such a partnership to happen, considering that many end users won't want to touch this with a ten-foot pole, especially since it will seem too "big brotherish" to many people? > The ISPs would continue to do their usual stumbling blocks for > spammers as well on no open relays, etc. > I am suggesting much could be done to make casual spamming a very > time consuming and expensive task; something that would put a large > number of spammers out of business. For the reasons I have given above, I really doubt this. Remember, the spammers have a profit motive to bypass this scheme as easily and quickly as they can, and the people who like to tinker with the guts of their computers are going to hate this and will undoubtedly find ways to spread enough FUD among the rest of us to make us not want it either. Also, one of the biqgest problems we have right now is "spam friendly" ISP's, particularly those outside the U.S., who will accept e-mail from the spammers with no questions asked (as long as the bills are paid). Those ISP's will not cooperate, they will simply ignore your checksum or whatever. You might say that other ISP's would not accept mail from such ISP's, but today we often know which ISP's are spam-friendly (at least the people who track the source of spam do) and yet most ISP's will not block e-mail coming in from those ISP's, because legitimate mail might get refused or thrown out (I'm okay with that, but a lot of other people aren't). > And then Jack, your 'pass the buck > along up the ladder' would also add good pressure. Plus which, some of > these prima donnas with their constant whining are going to have to > give in to the other side as well. I am reminded of why so little of > any positive value happens in politics: everyone involved thinks that > if a good thing happens the other guys will get the credit; but if > something bad happens, *they* will be the ones to catch hell for it. > That is the same way on the net. PAT] The problem you have is that you have to get a bunch of disparate interests, many of whom couldn't agree on what color is the sky, to come together to make this scheme work . Sure, you might get (for example) Microsoft and Dell Computers and Earthlink to all agree to support this. So the spammer simply uses Linux, or a no-name computer, or another ISP (it wouldn't surprise me if some spammers start up their own ISP if necessary). The only ones who really get inconvenienced are the people who don't spam, but who do make frequent changes in their systems. Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I covered your mantra pretty well earlier in this issue so won't go into it again. "It won't work, it isn't perfect, there are loopholes, *I didn't think of it first*". And yes, Jack, I -DO- get huge amounts of spam, hourly. Sometimes when I check mail the index shows me where several pieces of spam arrived in the same one minute period. When I get ready to release this issue of the Digest in a few minutes, I go back as always and review the spam bucket just before I flush it; there will be a few dozen new spams waiting there. And no, I will not change my email address. I voluntarily choose to wade around in my hip-boots through this cesspool called the net since I like trying to help people with telecom questions. And I do appreciate every little thing that some insignificant netizen does to make my work easier. For example, for a few months I had been seeing daily, almost hourly defacing of the Archives by spammers and virus writers who were emailing a 'secret address' allegedly used only by myself internally to move files around in the Archives by email. Sometimes in zapping it out, more would show up even before the first batch had been totally cleaned out. Then one day recently, that attack on the archives ended. The spam just quit reaching me. (fingers crossed, hoping I am not speaking too soon). I *think* the sysadmin here at csail.mit.edu did some diddling of his own to protect me! No Jack, I am not going to change my address or try to hide myself. I know how frustrated new users can become attempting to find someone who can help them here at times. I was a new user once myself. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Hank Karl Subject: Re: Website Offers Caller I.D. Falsification Service Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:48:43 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ > Allowing these outgoing calls to be given the appropriate Caller ID for > the function A, B or C associated with the given call, no matter who > makes 'em or from where, seems perfectly sensible to me. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Can't you think of any more hypothetical > examples why you must be allowed to tamper with your caller ID? I > mean, that's all totally ridiculous. Tell your people to walk over to > an 'A' phone or a 'B' phone or a 'C' phone and use the appropriate > line for the particular business. PAT] Pat, this is not hypothetical with me. I represent four companies, and have only one phone line. There are a number of "reps" out there who represent more than one company. Some will try and establish their own company identity, others work as part of the company they represent (like a consultant). So the above example is by no means hypothetical. Also, calling name may be considered to be a part of caller id. A company may desire: 1. The president's line gives the president's name, but the president's secretary's number. Or the calling name can be the person's title (but this pretentious). 2. Sales personnel's lines may give the company name but a direct number to the sales person. 3. Tech support lines may give the department name and a general department number (or an "800" type number"). For example, you may not recognize the name or number of someone calling from India, but you would recognize "Dell Support" and an 800 number. 4. Some employees would have a number that gives their name and DID number. Others would have a line that gives the company name and switchboard number. 5. Remote sales personnel (or employees who travel a lot) may supply an 800 number that is the company's PBX, which forwards the calls to them via VoIP or cellphone. 6. The company's billing name may not be the name they are commonly known by. Or the company may want to use a brand name in the outgoing calls. For example, calls from a General Motor's site may supply calling name as "Chevrolet". IANL, but I've read the Telemarketing Sales Rule guide put out by the FTC (or FCC). This is the legislation that implemented the national do not call list. They say that the caller-id does not have to be the ID of the actual line, but the number supplied does have to be answered by a human who can put you on the organization's do-not-call list. This makes a lot of sense if you consider that many calls are made from outgoing-only T1 lines. ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Vonage Dual Ring, was Considering VoIP For Home Date: 3 Sep 2004 07:53:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Your script that sends an instant message to your cell phone sounds good. Any possibility you would post how that's done here? It sounds like something Vonage should create for it's customers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2004 05:34:48 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Lisa Hancock (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) wrote: > Regarding the comment about high construction costs -- our > cable company was able to quickly replace its coax with fibre > system wide without too much trouble. It ran into some > neighbor objections by placing large junction boxes in unwanted > locations -- it easily could've worked with the community (it > did with us) for better locations. I assume you're referring to my comment at Paragraph 2 in TD V23#394 . Did your cable company really replace its coax "system wide" with fiber? If so, it built an FTTP network just like Verizon is building. I think it's far more likely that your cable company added fiber only where it was necessary to connect those "large junction boxes" to its headend. This is the way most HFC (hybrid fiber-coax) networks are built these days; furthermore, it's consistent with your own statement in V23#404 : "... cable uses fibre to the neighborhood only, then coax to the house (which is how cable serves my area)." I suspect that most -- if not all -- of the cable company's new fiber was placed overhead, rather than underground. Underground utility lines in residential neighborhoods are usually connected to overhead utility lines running on polelines along main roads. This topology is typical of electric power and telephone networks as well as cable TV. When a cable TV company converts an all-coax network to HFC, it doesn't replace the existing coax; it just adds fiber to "nodes" in the existing coax plant, and feeds individual neighborhoods using the existing coax in those neighborhoods. It's a fairly simple matter to add ("overlash") fiber to existing overhead coax plant running along main roads. By judicious design, the company can often figure out a way overlash all of the fiber to existing overhead coax, and avoid putting any of it underground. For an illustration of how a fiber cable can be overlashed to existing coax cables, see . By contrast, a cable (or telco) company building an FTTP network must install fiber to every home, including homes in neighborhoods with underground facilities. And that's where the big costs come in. Lisa continued (discussing programming license fees): > Would there be any resource to look at the wholesale costs of > various cable shows? I'm curious as to what things like Nick, > TV Land, A&E, Hist, VH1, MTV, Family, Disney, CNN, FoxNews, etc > cost. Not that I know of. Wholesale pricing information is a closely- guarded secret; indeed, a cable (or satellite) company usually has to sign an NDA before it even gets to see a sample contract. Larger cable and satellite companies typically get better prices, based on their bulk purchases. Several years ago, several small cable companies banded together to form the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) in an attempt to negotiate bulk pricing for member companies. At the outset, it had good success negotiating group health insurance and equipment purchases, but it took quite some time to get the programmers to cooperate. I'm not sure where things stand today (I retired three years ago, so I've lost contact with NCTC). > A lot of these [cable networks] are owned by the same company. Indeed. Columbia Journalism Review's "Who Owns What" site lists properties owned by most of the major media companies. > I'm also troubled by high wholesale costs because all of these > channels liberally include commercials. > What about TCM (Turner Classic Movies)? They're commercial free. Well, that's the way the business operates. Most cable/satellite programmers fund their operations through two revenue streams: advertising and license fees. It's the same business model used by most magazines and newspapers. The compelling force behind this model isn't just the sum of two revenue streams; it's the way in which the two streams reinforce each other: - Revenue from consumers increases the value of the advertising. There's an old advertising-industry adage that goes something like this: advertising in a medium that the viewer/reader pays for is worth more (to an advertiser) than advertising in a free medium. - More valuable advertising provides more revenue to the programmer, which funds more/better programming, which increases the value of the programming to the consumer. Of course there are exceptions. Commercial broadcast stations are 100% advertising-supported. Shopping channels are 100% funded from product sales; indeed, they even pay commissions to the cable/satellite/broadcast companies that carry them. At the other end of the scale, several cable and satellite program services are completely (or mostly) commercial-free: - TCM is 100% supported by license fees. This was a business decision that Turner Broadcasting made when it launched TCM. - Digital music services (DMX Music and Music Choice) are 100% supported by licensee fees. Again, these were business decisions made by the respective programmers. - So-called "premium channels" (HBO, Showtime, Starz!, and all of their related spinoffs) are 100% supported by special separate-line-item license fees. The original HBO has been fee-supported since the early 1970s, when it was distributed throughout northeastern states by terrestrial microwave. This model proved to be so successful that its owner (Time, Inc.) decided to distribute it by communications satellite to reach a national audience; thus, in 1975, HBO became the first cable TV channel to be distributed by satellite. - C-SPAN and its siblings are mostly supported by license fees, although they get some foundation support. - NASA-TV is funded from NASA's budget. - The Pentagon Channel is funded by the Department of Defense. - PBSYOU is funded by CPB, the Annenberg Foundation, and PBS. - Religious channels and WORLDLINK TV are funded by direct contributions from viewers. - Classic Arts Showcase is funded by The Lloyd E. Rigler - Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation. - RFD-TV is partially funded by advertising, but it also relies on viewer memberships ($30/year, including a program guide and a baseball cap). Study this list, and you'll notice that there are very few commercial-free video channels that rely exclusively on license fees. Most of them receive additional support from other sources: separate-line-item fees, viewer contributions, taxpayers, or foundations. I trust this explains why the majority of the channels you receive from your cable company are funded by that dual-revenue stream. Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Date: 3 Sep 2004 06:55:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Isaiah Beard wrote: > I suppose it depends on region. Here in central NJ, the story is very > different. Dial tone has been slow in many instances, and last years' > northeast blackout took out phone service with it (apparently their > battery setup at the central office was not operational when the > blackout hit, and neither local nor LD calls could not route even for > a few hours after power was restored; cell phone service actually was > MORE reliable than wireline during that period). I thought last year's blackout only hit northern NJ and towns near the NY border, otherwise most of the state was ok. I don't recall reading that phone central offices were out, normally their battery backups and diesels are reliable (they are tested regularly). Actually, I don't think telephone service runs off A/C at all but always from the battery, A/C charges the battery. So, if commercial power dies the battery will keep service running for a while. > The last straw was when somehow, my local calling area shrunk to > about half what it used to be, and suddenly calls that used to be > local (including my cell phone which was provisioned in the same > city, the number to which hasn't changed in over seven years) all of > a sudden weren't. That also surprises me, in my region of the country Verizon has been _expanding_ local calling areas, not reducing them. We think it's just easier for them to make the calls free rather than timeclock then and bill 4c phone calls. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 00:42:53 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: September Share Day 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. 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