From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 23 02:12:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8N6CMJ02566; Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:12:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:12:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409230612.i8N6CMJ02566@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 #442 TELECOM Digest Thu, 23 Sep 2004 02:11:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 442 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Wireless High-Speed Broadband Service in FL (Monty Solomon) Swann Calls Senate Panel 'Cowardly' on Digital TV (Monty Solomon) Did A.G. Bell Say This? (John Wang) RFID tags and The Wal-Mart Supremacy (Jim Haynes) BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains. (jdj) Vonage Voice Terminal Affects Broadband Speed (Suma) Tap for V.90 Modem Line? (Zorpetus) Re: TouchTone Patent (Steve) Re: TouchTone Patent (Jim Haynes) Re: TouchTone Patent (Joseph) Re: TouchTone Patent (Tony P.) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in US? (Bob Vaughan) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (George Mitchell) Re: Out of Area Calls (Joseph) Re: Out of Area Calls (Wolfgang S. Rupprecht) Re: Out of Area Calls (John Levine) Re: Packet8 Users - Curious About the Service (Ian) Re: Vonage and SIP (Steve Sobol) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cannot Switch Local Telco Without Disconnecting Comcast (Sullivan) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 18:12:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless High-Speed Broadband Service in FL Verizon Wireless Launches High-Speed Broadband Service; Broadband Access First Rolls Out To South Florida, Tampa Bay Customers - Sep 22, 2004 03:34 PM (BusinessWire) TAMPA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 22, 2004--Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest wireless company, announced today the launch of BroadbandAccess, a high-speed wireless broadband service, in select national markets including South Florida and the Tampa Bay area. Powered by an Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) third generation (3G) wide-area network, BroadbandAccess is the fastest commercially available high-speed wide-area network in the nation, with typical user speeds of 300-500 kilobits per second (kbps), and capable of reaching speeds in excess of 2.0 mbps. BroadbandAccess provides mobile workers full access to their corporate information, just as if they were attached via a high-speed wired connection, but with the freedom of true mobility. Developed with a range of users in mind, BroadbandAccess allows large enterprises, small-medium businesses and mobile professionals to conduct business anytime, anywhere in the BroadbandAccess coverage area via a secure, reliable, true high-speed data connection. In South Florida, Verizon Wireless has an initial Broadband Access footprint that stretches from North Palm Beach south to Coral Gables in Miami, and west along the State Road 441 corridor. Broadband Access also will be available in Key West. In Tampa Bay, the service now covers north to Land O'Lakes and east to Brandon, with coverage to the west and south throughout most of Pinellas County, including Clearwater, downtown St. Petersburg and the beaches. The company expects to expand its BroadbandAccess network across Florida in coming months. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43793323 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:34:04 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Swann Calls Senate Panel 'Cowardly' on Digital TV Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com, says today's Senate Commerce Committee vote on John McCain's Digital TV bill was "cowardly and ineffective." Swann is available for media interviews. Washington (Sept. 22) -- The Senate Commerce Committee today voted to approve $1 billion in subsidies for consumers to buy devices that would convert digital signals into analog so they could be viewed on current TVs. However, the panel rejected Sen. John McCain's proposal to set a hard deadline that would require local broadcasters to switch their TV signals from analog to digital by 2009. Phillip Swann, president of TVPredictions.com, and a nationally known authority on TV technology issues, released this statement upon hearing the news: http://www.tvpredictions.com/swann092204.html ------------------------------ From: John Wang Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:45:38 -0400 Subject: Did A.G. Bell Say This? (To the Editor: please remove my email address from distribution. Thank you.) I once read in a magazine about this, but I cannot find the original quote. Alexander Graham Bell was supposedly asked in the early days about the possible uses of the telephone. I'll paraphrase his response: "a subscriber can be reached at home to inform that a new telegraph is waiting to be picked up". Has anyone seen an original quote of this? Where may I find it? Thank you all in advance. ------------------------------ Subject: RFID Tags and The Wal-Mart Supremacy Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:19:00 GMT Lots more could be said about changes in demographics and retail business in the past 50 years that is off-topic for this group. Here's something that is closer to being on-topic. I read a while back that when you buy a stock item, such as a man's dress shirt, at Penneys, the information from the bar code and the store location goes straight to a factory in China where they immediately make another shirt in the same size and add it to a pile of things to be shipped to that store. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:43:32 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com A BART cop ordered riders to turn off their FRS radios while in the station and on trains to keep the trains from crashing. This reminds me when they ordered people to turn off receivers or face jail years earlier. At the time they claimed their own radios were "special" and so could be used on trains. I later verified with their own radio shop that there was nothing special about their radios. Of course, the above is fallacious but it occurs to me that similar threats could be made against anyone in possession of a radio while boarding a plane. Eight years ago I was not allowed to board with a general coverage receiver because "it could make the plane crash". They let me keep my Casio stereo radio and a scanner. Has anyone faced a situation where security or police have threatened people with radios? Are there any hams who have boarded planes with radios? I wonder what makes them think that even an unpowered radio is such a threat? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Security and police are often times very heavy-handed, often times just to make up for their personal feelings of inadequacy. Have you ever been told *as a passenger, not the driver* in an automobile not to use your cellular phone because it 'might distract the driver'? I can sort of see why they do not want drivers to use cell phones in cars, but before they enforce that too strongly, they should look at their own radio use in the car: driving a hundred miles an hour chasing someone, while talking on the radio, yet a citizen is not supposed to obey traffic rules and speed limits and talk on a cell phone? PAT] ------------------------------ From: suma702003@yahoo.com (Suma) Subject: Vonage Voice Terminal Bypass Affects my Broadband Line Speed Date: 22 Sep 2004 21:26:57 -0700 I hooked up my fibre optic line from the wall (CAT 5 port )to the Motorola Voice Terminal and connected from VT to my computer's network card The line speed goes down to 392 KBPS with the voice terminal in the middle. While the line speed if I connect from the wall directly to my Network card is 1138 KBPS. Is this a known issue? Why would this happen? Suma [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All I can tell you is that when I followed Vonage instructions to put the TA at the head of the line then from there to my own routers, etc I had nothign but trouble. When I moved the TA back to being one of the holes on my router box instead, as I had done it originally, my service got better. Vonage keeps talking about their QOS (Quality of Service) issues and *their* phone does sound better at the head of the line, but you can't seem to get Vonage QOS *and* general QOS for your other equipment at the same time. PAT] ------------------------------ From: zorpetus@yahoo.com (Zorpetus) Subject: Tap For V.90 Modem Line? Date: 22 Sep 2004 12:11:51 -0700 Is there any modem connection sniffer hardware/software? I mean a device (tap) that could be connected to a phone line, and to record network traffic made over dial-up connection over that telephone line (for V.90 protocol for example). I am not reffering to those "com port sniffer" or "modem sniffers" that have to be installed on the "target" PC, but something that would be used outside the house, by tapping the telephone lines. Any hint and/or link is more than welcome! ------------------------------ From: steve@ttiorg.com (Steve) Subject: Re: TouchTone Patent Date: 22 Sep 2004 19:20:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote in message news:: > John Centralia wrote: >> Would like to find the patent number for DTMF / TouchTone, probably >> issued in the 1940-50 time frame. > I would recommend the Bell Labs history series, Vol II Switching > 1925-1975. I don't know if the book will have the actual patent > number (assuming there is one), but may refer you to another source. > Another source might be the Bell Laboratories records, especially > 1948-1951. The early pushbutton dialing experiment was held in > Media PA along with a new #5 crossbar switch. > The system used then is different than today, and I'm not sure > could be accurately called DTMF or the trademarked "Touch Tone". > I saw a 1959 Bell System ad "for the future" and one of the > phones was a Touch Tone set. It used a 500 base, with a round > unit fitting through the dial hole that contained the keypad (10 button). > I think that design looks more attractive than the bigger squared off > flat front actually used for the 2500 set, but I guess that is a > subjective matter of opinion. > GTE had an ad in the same magazine, showing their red rotary sets > of their distinctive design. I think the 500 set had better lines. Let me know if this helps: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html ------------------------------ Subject: Re: TouchTone Patent Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:09:13 GMT In article , Dave Garland wrote: > Sort of off-topic, but the 500 set was designed by Henry Dreyfuss, a > superstar industrial designer of the era who also was involved in > designing the 302 set (which set the style of telephones for the next > 60 years) and the Trimline, as well as the "Big Ben" alarm clock, > locomotives, and the circular Honeywell thermostat. And since Teletype was part of the Bell System, the Dreyfuss firm also did their industrial design. So you'll notice the resemblance in profile between the 500 type phone and the Teletype Model 32/33/35 equipment. Which IMHO looked pretty awful compared to the Charles Eames stuff that IBM was producing at the time. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: TouchTone Patent Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:14:15 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 21 Sep 2004 13:57:24 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > I saw a 1959 Bell System ad "for the future" and one of the > phones was a Touch Tone set. It used a 500 base, with a round > unit fitting through the dial hole that contained the keypad (10 button). > I think that design looks more attractive than the bigger squared off > flat front actually used for the 2500 set, but I guess that is a > subjective matter of opinion. That retrofit design was used for a good while in Canada and not just for the 10 button touch-tone but for the 12 button as well. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: TouchTone Patent Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:43:39 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > John Centralia wrote: >> Would like to find the patent number for DTMF / TouchTone, probably >> issued in the 1940-50 time frame. > I would recommend the Bell Labs history series, Vol II Switching > 1925-1975. I don't know if the book will have the actual patent > number (assuming there is one), but may refer you to another source. > Another source might be the Bell Laboratories records, especially > 1948-1951. The early pushbutton dialing experiment was held in > Media PA along with a new #5 crossbar switch. > The system used then is different than today, and I'm not sure > could be accurately called DTMF or the trademarked "Touch Tone". MF preceded DTMF and was used mostly on trunks by operators to route calls. It was also used in some DDD systems too. Early versions used metal reeds that vibrated at a specific frequency. I've seen the key assemblies go on Ebay occasionally. > I saw a 1959 Bell System ad "for the future" and one of the > phones was a Touch Tone set. It used a 500 base, with a round > unit fitting through the dial hole that contained the keypad (10 button). > I think that design looks more attractive than the bigger squared off > flat front actually used for the 2500 set, but I guess that is a > subjective matter of opinion. > GTE had an ad in the same magazine, showing their red rotary sets > of their distinctive design. I think the 500 set had better lines. Yes, the early idea was to just retrofit the 500 with a new dial plate and put the keypad in. It would have been cheaper for Bell in the long run but they elected to give the units more space with the 2500 design. ------------------------------ From: techie@tantivy.stanford.edu (Bob Vaughan) Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in US? Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 03:08:41 UTC Organization: Tantivy Associates In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: > However, there might still be some "hobbyist" SXS systems around, > which you "could" dial into, but your rotary dial pulses or hook > flashing are not passed from your (digital) central office to the > called end. You will also have to pay toll charges to call the > person's "hobby" or "museum" SXS switch if such toll would apply to > call to that destination (unless they had it hooked up to an 800 type > number). > I doubt that any working Step or Crossbar PBX systems are still in any > actual "real" use, other than "hobby" or "museum" set-ups. KZSU-FM at Stanford University has a working SxS PBX in regular service. It has about 100 extensions, and 4 outside trunks, and serves the studios, and most of the remote locations on campus where KZSU has circuits. -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie@{w6yx|tantivy}.stanford.edu | kc6sxc@w6yx.ampr.org | P.O. Box 19792, Stanford, Ca 94309 -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 15:39:31 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Lisa Hancock wrote: > Railroad signals: In various places air pressure was used to control > equipment. An example is a cab signal, which gives the engineer a > readout. A noise is sounded to warn of conditions. Into the 1970s, > that noise signal was created by air going through an harmonica-like > unit. Today it is electronic beeps. Also, door closing signals on > psgr trains (if even present) used mechanical bells, today they use > electronic beeps. Today even the big bells at gradecrossings are > electronic. However, the receiver which received the cab signal indication from the tracks represented the first industrial deployment of the vacuum tube. http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761414.PDF (Look at the 1923 entry.) -- George Mitchell (obfuscated email address) ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:12:06 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 21 Sep 2004 13:32:33 -0700, gladyretired@yahoo.com wrote: > I know I am dealing with computers when this happens; My question > is -- is there a way to block these from ever getting to the phone > unless the caller IDs themselves? > MY phone Co. (Comcast) is no help. I know the technology is there to > do this, but, for some reason, my company will not get involved (their > excuses are too much bull to show here). Since your phone company is Comcast I couldn't say for certain whether they offer this service, but AFAIK most of the ILECs offer a call screening service that is in addition to caller ID. When a call comes in your number is answered and you get an announcement something on the order of "if you are a solicitor please hang up and put this number on your do not call list. Other callers please press 1 to complete this call." I've called other numbers where my number was not presented and it made me enter my number before it would process the call. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls From: wolfgang+gnus20040922T131858@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 20:42:26 GMT Pat writes: > Plugged into any phone line, they sat there quietly until there was > the slightest hint of an incoming call (change in voltage, etc) then > they immediatly pounced, picked up the phone line and announced to the > caller, 'please enter your privcode number' (pronounced 'Pr-eye-ve > Code'). Privcode numbers were three digits in length. If the caller > punched in the correct number, his call was passed along, the Privcode > machine would make a warble sound to tell you to answer your phone. One of the joys of running an Asterisk PBX at home is that I can effectively do the same thing with calls that come in on the POTS line. Callers are prompted to either dial 6001 or 6002 depending on which one of two desk phone they are trying to reach. Predictive dialers fail this Turing test and get unceremoniously dropped after failing to dial a number in the alloted 60 seconds. I did have a bit of apprehension of leaving the two desk phone's extension numbers on the greeting msg. After all it would be an even better telemarketer block if I kept the extensions a secret from them. It turns out that it wasn't a problem and no phone-spammer has bothered to jump through that hoop yet. For the curious, I use a Sipura-3000 ATA to digitize and grab the DTMF from the POTS line and send the vitals to Asterisk running on an Openbsd system. The two desk phones are Grandstream Budgetone-101 VOIP/SIP phones. Not only does Asterisk screen the incoming calls, but it also takes care of recording the voicemail and lighting the voicemail leds on the desk phones. Next on the agenda is add a "Calls may be monitored for quality assurance purposes" to the greeting and then record all the calls to disk. Disk space is cheap. -wolfgang ------------------------------ Date: 22 Sep 2004 21:31:10 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> state do-not-call lists. These, for the most part, have worked great, >> cutting my unwanted telemarketing calls down by 90+%. > So you think. This is nothing more than coincidence. The biggest > telemarketers (such as long distance phone companies) are EXEMPT from > these lists. Could you point to the section of the law or FTC regulations that provides the exemptions? Because there is no such exemption, and you're just wrong. If you are getting calls from companies with which you are not currently doing business (or with whom you are doing business and have told them to stop), you can sue them under the TCPA. The only significant exemptions are for established business relationship and non-profits. FYI, I haven't gotten a call from a long distance company in years, even though I'm the sort of high-volume caller you'd think they'd love to have. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've tried your idea of sending all > 'out of area' calls to fax or wherever, I guess you don't get many calls from COCOTs or outside the country. There's a lot more reasons than telemarketers for a call to come up out of area. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye," said Tom, disarmingly. ------------------------------ From: ian@jardine.net (Ian) Subject: Re: Packet8 Users - Curious About the Service Date: 22 Sep 2004 12:46:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com This site is a good place to buy into a P8 service and the text should answer all your questions. http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3988241 FYI my monthly Bill comes to $20.50 that's 19.95 plus 55 Cents Tax. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Vonage and SIP Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 12:56:17 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Carl Navarro wrote: > Packet8 lists Victorville as a rate center. www.packet8.net Missed that. Thanks. JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 22 Sep 2004 20:25:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And I have heard that one reason the > old style Western Union clockswere so popular was because (at the > time) electricity was delivered mostly as direct current. Alternating > current at sixty cycles was not yet very common. PAT] Commercial direct current is an important part of our technological history. I'm far from an expert on that aspect, but I can say this: Early in the electric era there was a debate between advocates of AC and DC commercial supplies. I believe Edison pushed DC while Westinghouse pushed AC. AC eventually won out. However, many power companies and buildings used DC current for many years until eventually converted to AC. (AC has the advtg of easy voltage change. I believe DC was better for basic motors of the early days.) Also, some large buildings and industrial sites generated their own power rather than buy it commercially. It took some years (1920s-1930s) until it was cheaper to buy commercial power rather than generate it yourself for large users. Perhaps someone here can expand on this history. The history of the power industry has many players -- small companies merging into big ones, companies building networks and large scale power stations. In the 1930s there were holding company scandals. One major man, named Insull, ended up charged as a common criminal for his exploits, though he built substantial power and interurban complexes; he may have been acquitted. (Pat, are you familiar with him? Your old bus station in Skokie was once part of his wonderful North Shore Line.) IBM component catalogs of the 1930s show that equipment may be ordered for either DC or AC operation. Perhaps if we had a better understanding of the good and the bad of the history of the power industry, we may have prevented the California power shortages and last year's power blackout from a screwed up Ohio utility. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Samuel Insull *was* a very major player, and a major crook also, as you point out. He was one of the founders of Commonwealth Edison Company (electric supplier) in Chicago. Back in the 1930's in the heart of the great depression, the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (one of several transit companies which merged in 1947 to become Chicago Transit Authority) which was also owned by Samuel Insull was about to go bankrupt. It could not pay its electric bill to Edison to run the trains. Samuel Insull got the bright idea to pay transit's indebtedness by issuing fifty year bonds (which would mature in the 'distant future' in 1984). Insull's other company, Commonwealth Edison wound up buying most of the bonds. Chicago Rapid Transit Company, Loop Elevated Railroad Company, Chicago Surface Lines and a couple others were all 'municipalized' (a very fancy and elegant name for robbery, when a city does it to privately owned businesses in town) in 1947 by the Chicago City Council and placed in a new quasi-government agency called 'Chicago Transit Authority', which is technically a government in its own right, with the power to tax, etc. just as 'Chicago Park District' is also a government in its own right. Not a *government agency*, but a *government*. Sam Insull died around the 1940's sometime, and all those bonds issued to bail Rapid Transit Company out of bankruptcy wound up in Edison's hands. Finally the fifty years goes by, it is now 1984. The CTA -- always a very poorly managed, politically driven outfit -- is having one of its periodic cash crunches. Just like NYTA in New York City, the corrupted workers stole so much of the fare money, CTA was rock bottom poor again. Enters now the Edison Company, waving those bonds around and saying "we want our money. Pay us our money. We gave you fifty years to raise it earlier." CTA responded, 'well, we had planned to raise the fares by ten cents a ride in order to break even. How are we going to pay you as well?' Edison said "we don't care if you have to raise the fares to ten dollars a ride! we want our money, or you will get sued for reneging on and repudiating your earlier debts." Frightened by the real possibility the Chicago Tribune and others would dig into this mess and discover how the workers had ripped off CTA so badly, CTA managed to cover it up, smooth it over and provide Chicago area transit riders with the biggest fare increase they had ever seen; I think the fare went up from one dollar per ride to $1.50 (that, from an organization which started out in 1947 with rides for two cent fares on the street cars, etc. Needless to say, the real bosses in City Hall were furious about it. The Chicago Transit Atrocity has been a long running joke in Chicago for many years. CTA is the landlord of Skokie Greyhound Bus Station by virtue of their take over of all Insull's properties many years earlier, including the North Shore Railroad. The once gorgeous, crown jewel railroad station was partioned into store fronts, one for Greyhound, one for a hot dog stand, and the other part for a dry cleaning store. Then the slumlord CTA did absolutely *nothing for the next thirty years to repair or keep up the place*. Finally when some smart alec got the entire property put on the National Historic Register, and the federal government told CTA to start taking care of their own property a little better, and forbade them to tear the whole place down which is what CTA had planned to do. Please don't get me started on CTA, Commonwealth Edison and Samuel Insull's legacy with both of them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cannot Switch Local Telco Without Disconnecting Comcast Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 03:59:26 GMT In article , johnl@iecc.com says: > Considering that Comcast is the largest CATV company and the largest > cable ISP in the world, it's a wee bit unlikely that they're reselling > DSL. I agree that it is entirely counterintuitive. However, it is the only explanation, how ever unlikely, that seems to fit the facts: namely, that Verizon told Cavalier that the number port for the original poster's voice line can't take place until "Comcast HSI" is cancelled. Verizon would have no reason to refuse a port if the broadband service were provided over a cable modem -- it wouldn't even know whether the customer took cable modem service from Comcast or anyone else. And a bit of "googling" reveals that Comcast does indeed sell DSL-based broadband service in some areas under the "Comcast HSI" label, although this is apparently through resellers, at least in the US. See and . Perhaps they do this where they don't yet have their cable networks upgraded or where they don't have cable. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But, Mr. Sullivan, if what you say is > true, then couldn't he let the Comcast 'high speed' be disconnected, > transfer his service to Cavalier as desired, *then* get the Comcast > 'high speed' service reconnected via Cavalier? Maybe not; I do know > that TerraWorld resells SBC DSL service, under the TerraWorld name, > but if an SBC customer jumps ship and goes with Prairie Steam, SBC > flatly refuses to allow TerraWorld to contine the arrangement with > that customer. PAT] Yes he could, if Cavalier offers DSL and has a deal with Comcast. My guess is that Cavalier is either reselling Verizon service or using Verizon UNE-P; it's possible, but less likely, that they have their own switch. In either any of these scenarios Cavalier would be capable of offering DSL, but they may or may not be capable of offering it jointly with Comcast. For example, if they are reselling Verizon service, they can probably resell the phone service with or without Verizon DSL internet access, under their contract with Verizon, but the fact that Verizon also sells the high-frequency part of its own loops to other DSL ISPs does not mean that Verizon can sell the high-frequency part of loops that are resold through Cavalier; nor does it mean that a DSL ISP would be willing to deal with Cavalier. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ 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'. 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