From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Nov 2 19:37:41 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iA30bfu24192; Tue, 2 Nov 2004 19:37:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 19:37:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411030037.iA30bfu24192@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 #527 TELECOM Digest Tue, 2 Nov 2004 19:38:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 527 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC: Forum Will Examine Impact of VoIP, New Services (Lisa Minter) Vonage: Recipe For Success? (Lisa Minter) Can an NEC IPK 192 Report DID to CallAnalyst? (Dave Rupp) Any News on the Feds v. Norvergence? (Satchel Paige) Re: Pre-recorded Phone Should be Illegal (John Mayson) Re: How to Make The Right Call On Cell Plans (CharlesH) Re: Semiconductors | The End of Moore's Law? (w_tom) The Global Way (No-Charge E-book Edition for Students) (The Global Way) The Remodeled Archives Web Site (Jeffrey Mattox) Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip (The Wondrous One) Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip (Fritz Whittington) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 13:08:45 -0500 Subject: FCC: Forum Will Examine Impact of VoIP, New Services on Numbering http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-253829A1.pdf NEWS MEDIA CONTACT: Mark Wigfield, 202-418-0253 Email: mark.wigfield@fcc.gov FCC's WIRELINE COMPETITION BUREAU HOSTS NUMBERING SYMPOSIUM Forum Will Examine Impact of VoIP, New Services on Numbering System Washington, D.C. the impact of emerging technologies on the nation's telephone numbering system will be explored in a symposium to be hosted on Thursday, Nov. 4 by the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau. In the face of increased demand for numbers for cell phones, fax machines and new local competitors, the FCC since 2000 has implemented policies designed to extend the life of the numbering system. By working with state commissions and the telecommunications industry, the FCC substantially increased the estimated life of the system, known as the North American Numbering Plan. But emerging new technologies such as Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, raise new demand for numbers and new challenges. Among those challenges are 'portable' VoIP services that use the same number no matter where the customer is located geographically. The symposium is entitled 'The Future of Numbering: Will New Technologies, Innovations and Services Affect Number Administration and Optimization.; Questions for the panels can be e-mailed in advance or during the symposium to FutureOfNumbering@fcc.gov. When: Thursday, Nov. 4, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Where: FCC Headquarters, 445 12th St. SW, Commission Meeting Room. Moderators: Robert Atkinson, Chairman of the North American Numbering Council (NANC), and Sanford Williams, FCC, designated federal officer to the NANC. Panels: Status of the North American Numbering Plan (NANP), with John Manning, NANP administrator and Amy Putnam, Pooling Administrator. Is there a likelihood of exhausting numbers under the NANP in the foreseeable future? John Manning and Amy Putnam. New number sources and substitutes for NANP numbers, with Scott Marcus, FCC Office of Strategic Planning. New technologies/services that may require numbering resources, with Mike Altschul, Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association; Penn Pfautz, AT&T; Hank Hultquist, SBC, and Todd Daubert, VON Coalition. Numbering resource optimization, with Adam Newman, Telcordia; Ken Havens, ATIS Industry Numbering Committee; Elliott Smith, Commissioner, Iowa Utilities Board; Helen Mickiewicz, California Public Utilities Commission, and David Bench, Nortel Networks. -FCC- News about the Federal Communications Commission can also be found on the Commission's web site, www.fcc.gov. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 13:33:28 -0500 Subject: Vonage: Recipe For Success? Jack Decker's Note: Although this article deals with Vonage specifically, it talks about future trends and the possible future direction of VoIP regulation, things that would be applicable to all VoIP providers. I tend to avoid sending out "puff pieces", that is, articles that are thinly-disguised promotions from a company's product that don't say anything we haven't heard before, but this article raises some interesting issues that I suspect are of interest to everyone that has an interest in VoIP. I would simply note that although Vonage may be the best-known VoIP company, it may not offer the best value for all customers. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/02/vonage_voip/ Vonage: Recipe For Success? By Faultline Published Tuesday 2nd November 2004 11:05 GMT Analysis say 'Vonage' to anyone in the communications industry and they say: "Oh the VoIP people." Ask if they'll make it, and you may get responses like, "well the RBOCs hate them and they have hundreds of lookalike competitors." The salvation of Vonage is that when you ask anyone to name one of these 20 or 30 start ups that have copied the Vonage model, they usually hesitate, stammer and go to look them up. Perhaps being first into a revolutionary market, even if you don't have much in the way of breakthrough technology, may well be enough. But the headline numbers say everything about the company that virtually invented paid consumer VoIP services across America. In 2002, the year it launched, it acquired just 7,500 customers. A year later it had 85,000. Now it boasts 300,000 accounts, each paying roughly $30 a month, which makes its run rate for revenue around $108m for a rolling 12 month period. With 600 staff that only gives them a revenue per employee of 180,000, pretty low for a technology company, but it is partly explained because it is currently ramping revenues. It is also ramping staff and said this week it will add 600 more employees between now and Q1 2005. Full story at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/02/vonage_voip/ ------------------------------ From: a0157202@yahoo.com (Dave Rupp) Subject: Can an NEC IPK 192 Report DID to CallAnalyst? Date: 2 Nov 2004 08:01:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com We have an NEC Electra Elite IPK 192 with some card, sorry I don't know more, which connects via a serial cable to a PC running CallAnalyst, http://www.triviumsys.com. We got the card + s/w so we could do DID reporting, but now our phone provider tells us the NEC doesn't report the "called number". Does anyone have a URL or information on whether or not this key system can provide this? Even if I need a different card(or 2) in the NEC I'm open. TIA, Dave ------------------------------ From: dor@writeme.com (Satchel Paige) Subject: Any News on the Feds v. Norvergence? Date: 2 Nov 2004 09:49:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am just trying to find out any information on what the Federal government or state governments are doing about Norvergence, the Salzano brothers and other Norvergence officers. Although my opinion is that the leasing companies were working along with Norvergence, at this point I just want to know about criminal investigations and proceedings into Norvergence's officers. Anyone with information please inform. ------------------------------ From: John Mayson Subject: Re: Pre-Recorded Phone Should be Illegal Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:19:50 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One real, actual problem has been with > the advance voting allowed in so many states. Florida is a good > example. A gazillion old people live in Florida and quite a few of > them have already voted. How the question is you voted last week, then > you die yesterday or today (as many folks have already done; died, I > mean.) Do you count the votes or not? Everywhere has a law saying In Texas the law is clear. Your vote counts. It's no different than if you dropped dead immediately after voting on Election Day. Once you've cast your ballot, it's cast. John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ From: hoch@exemplary.invalid (CharlesH) Subject: Re: How to Make The Right Call On Cell Plans Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 20:17:59 GMT In article , Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Analog is what gave cell phones a bad name: It kills a phone's > battery life, sounds lousy and will run up massive roaming charges. Someone else suckered into the analog = roaming model spread by SprintPCS. SprintPCS is itself all-digital. Until recently, they disabled digital roaming on cellular systems, such as Verizon Wireless, forcing the phone to use the cellular provider's analog service, even if that provider had compatible digital service. So on SprintPCS, if you were digital, you were on SprintPCS; if you were analog, you were roaming (and paying for it). But in reality, analog has NO CONNECTION to roaming charges. It all depends on the roaming agreements between your provider and the provider you are roaming on, and the specifics of your rate plan, not the modulation scheme. As a Verizon Wireless customer, there are quite a few analog roaming providers included in my rate plan, and quite a few digital providers who are not. Similarly if you lose the digital coverage on a cellular provider and fall back to their analog system; if your call was included when you were using digital, it still will be if you fall back to that provider's analog service. And concerning sound quality, you wouldn't believe the number of people on the cellular Usenet groups who complain about the artificial sound of digital service and sing the praises of the natural-sounding analog service. And if the signal gets weak, analog gets static, and digital has drop-outs; why is one better than the other in this respect? There are a lot of good reasons to use digital, but roaming costs and sound quality are not among them. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 01:22:09 -0500 From: w_tom Subject: Re: Semiconductors | The end of Moore's law? | Intel has a serious problem. Notice the backgrounds of Noyce, Moore, and Grove. Compare that to Barrett's background. Same lesson is provided by Hewlett Packard. Dave Packard literally had to return to HP to rescue the company from John Young's management. Again, notice Young's background. Apple Computer was originally created by computer guys. When Apple was on the verge of a demise, well, what were the backgrounds of Sculley and Spindler who took them there -- and how did the entire Apple board of directors (BoDs) change? For that matter, what were the words shouted by stockholders at the BoDs before those BoDs would change their mind -- and fire Spindler. These are damning facts. To find failure, start with the background of top management. Trend is not limited to the computer industry. First Energy of Ohio singlehandedly created the 14 Aug 2003 NorthEast blackout -- a fact that virtually no one seems to know. Again the background of Anthony Alexander, his entire corporate staff, and everyone in the First Energy BoD. Again, management with no background nor knowledge of the core business nor of any related industry. This is simply part of the answer to where Intel is going. There exists a serious technical problem inside Intel in which the management is aggravating. The Economist magazine articles did provide a warning for layman but not enough information to understand why. Serious problems exist for Intel. But to understand why, one must first have 'dirt under the fingernails' and not a stockbroker's bean counter perspective. Why did IBM literally flirt with bankruptcy only to come back decades later so strong? If one can answer that question, then one is ready to see where Intel may or may not be going. Why are Xerox and AT&T all but bankrupt. To understand why, one must literally start the story in the 1970s. Again, the lessons of these stories might be applicable to Intel. Intel has a problem - and it is not AMD. Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3321802 > http://economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3D3321802 > Semiconductors > What Intel's latest stumble means for the chip industry's rule of thumb. > I'm so sorry, says Barrett > IT IS not often that the chief executive of one of the world's > biggest companies gets down on one knee and begs for forgiveness. > Yet that is what > Craig Barrett of Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, did this week > at an industry conference in Florida. He was only joking, of > course. But his apology for Intel's decision to cancel the next > version of its flagship Pentium 4 chip highlights the latest in a > series of stumbles by the company, which has once again been forced > to follow the lead of its much smaller but increasingly feisty > competitor, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). > At issue is the best approach to making faster chips. For years, Intel > has steadily increased the clock speed of its processors, the fastest > of which now run at 3.4GHz, or 3.4 billion ticks per second. But it > has now fallen victim to the law of diminishing returns. Although > boosting the clock speed increases performance, it also increases the > power consumption of the chip and the need for cooling. (Some of the > very high-speed PCs used by serious gamers are even water-cooled.) > So, rather than concentrating on clock speed, Intel has decided to > boost the performance of future chips in other ways, such as > increasing the amount of on-board cache memory and, in the coming > years, switching its chips to a multi-core design. This means putting > multiple cores in effect, complete processors into a single > chip. These cores can run more slowly, consume less power and > generate less heat, while collectively providing more processing > power than a single core. Multi-core is a way to achieve additional > performance without turning up clock rates, says Dean McCarron, an > industry analyst at Mercury Research. This idea is not new: IBM, > Sun and Hewlett-Packard already sell high-end computers powered by > their own multi-core chips. But it is only recently that PC software > has been able to exploit multiple processors. > Intel's decision to de-emphasise clock speeds is just the latest > example of how the company has reluctantly ended up following where > AMD has previously= led. (Earlier this year, AMD forced Intel to make > a U-turn in its=20 64-bit-chip strategy.) AMD has long argued that > there is more to=20 performance than clock speed, and gives its chips > model numbers giving some= idea of their power. Its new Athlon 64 > 4000+ chip, for example, announced=20 this week, runs at 2.4GHz, but > its name implies rough equivalence with a w4GHz Intel chip. Intel is > now adopting similar model numbers. > Having abandoned its obsession with raw speed, Intel is embracing the > multi-core approach with great enthusiasm. Paul Otellini, Intel's > number two, who is expected to take over from Mr Barrett next May, > said last month that he expects 40% of desktop chips sold, and 80% of > server chips, to be multi-core by the end of 2006. The switch to > multi-core is, he says, a sea change in computing and a key inflection > point for the industry . > What does all this mean for Moore's law, the rule of thumb coined by > Gordon Moore, Intel's co-founder, which states that the amount of > computing power available at a given price doubles every 18 months? > For most people, Moore's law manifests itself as a steady increase in > clock speed from one year to the next. The cancellation of the 4GHz > version of the Pentium is Intel's clearest admission yet that clock > speed is no longer the best gauge of processor performance: > henceforth, it will increasingly take a back seat to other > metrics. But the law itself, the death of which has been announced > many times, will live on. Mr Barrett insisted this week that it would > continue to apply for at least another 10-15 years. That is because > multi-core designs mean chips' performance can continue to increase > even if the formerly much-trumpeted clock speed does not. ------------------------------ Reply-To: info@theglobalway.net From: The Global Way e-book Subject: The Global Way (No-Charge E-book Edition for Students) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 03:42:01 -0800 Organization: Global Way Development Center An on-line preview of the complete book "The Global Way" is being offered at no charge to university and college students prior to its hardbound first edition release in the Spring of 2005. Here's why: The total number of readers who log on to the book site will help the publisher determine the initial quantity of books to print. You may read "The Global Way" either on-line or print it out from the following site**: http://www.theglobalway.net/The%20Global%20Way%20Internet%209.28.04.pdf You may read more about the evolution of "The Global Way" and its author on the following site**: http://www.theglobalway.net/ Feedback? Reply to this email and be sure to enter "Global" in the subject line. Many thanks. Have a good read! **copy-paste the site address in your browser's ADDRESS BAR ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 01:04:42 -0600 From: Jeffrey Mattox Subject: The Remodeled Telecom Web Site Pat: I'm glad I'm able to help. I hope the front page will be more useful now and visitors will say longer. We'll see -- the Google ads will help keep score. PAT then asked: > Do you want any mention at all of your work in the next issue of the > Digest? Name okay; but no email address. Jeff [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wish to publicly say 'thanks' to Jeff Mattox for his work on the *new* Telecom Digest & Archives web site. I am sorry the net in general is so miserable these days that Jeff does not want his address published here; who can blame him in view of the amount of trash the spammers and others send around. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:26:27 -0600 From: The Wondrous One Reply-To: The Wondrous One Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip The video clip is from an ad campaign in that started in Germany but now there are US-English versions. http://www.k-fee.com/de/index_center.html http://www.k-fee.com/en/index_center.html In my opionion, the wording of the English-language versions has been altered from the original German, probably for cultural and marketing reasons. My personal bent on the translation of the clip posted is: So wach (so awake) warst (were) du (you) noch nie (not ever) :==: You've never been so awake. Kafee in hohen Dosen :==: Coffee in tall cans. {TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for that further explanation, and I hope it helped make a nicer Halloween for you also. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 15:05:41 -0600 From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Our Weekend Auto Trip On or about 2004-11-01 19:22, Fritz Whittington whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response on or about 2004-11-01 09:02 > to Tim@Backhome.org by whipping out a trusty #2 pencil: >> Patrick Townson wrote: >>> Over this Halloweeen holiday weekend, I took a ride with some friends >>> through the countryside, and made a little movie for you to see. >> Great camera work. You must have a huge film crew. >> Really nice hills, too. What part of Kansas is that? >> >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Me thinks maybe you missed the point >> of the exercise. It was Halloween, after all. I don't honestly know >> where the .mpeg clip came from; it was e-mailed to me a couple days >> earlier as a joke by Lisa Minter. She identified it as 'a new guy >> who I met when I was traveling to my grandparent's house last week.' >> Identify it however you like, but be sure to tell the prospective >> viewer to have their sound up loud and be watching closely when the >> car comes out of the bushes. Can anyone read the language on that >> notice on the screen at the very end? PAT] > First screen: So wake yourself up like never before! > Last screen: Coffee in convenient cans. > Fritz Whittington > "You need only two tools. WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and > it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape ..." > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for that translation, Fritz. > What language was it in? PAT] Sorry. Obvious to me, it's German. Fritz Whittington Let each man exercise the art he knows. (Aristophanes, Wasps, 422 B.C.) ------------------------------ 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #527 ******************************