From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Nov 27 13:09:49 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iARI9nX06015; Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:09:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:09:49 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200411271809.iARI9nX06015@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 #570 TELECOM Digest Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:10:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 570 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Chairman Powell Issues Statement On SBC's Tiptop Service (L. Minter) An Explosive Year For VOIP (Lisa Minter) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (Dave Garland) Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate (jdj) Re: Dropping SBC For a VoIP Solution - Vonage or Packet8? (charlie3) Re: FCC Watching SBC Web Phone Charge (Scott V) Re: 'Frontline' Files an Eye-Opening Credit Report (DevilsPGD) Re: Routing Problems To the Cayman Islands (Budwich) Last Laugh! Sayings from Chairman Dubya Bush (A Friend) 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: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 18:20:02 -0500 Subject: FCC Chairman Powell Issues Statement On SBC's Tiptop Service http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-254681A1.pdf NEWS Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W. Washington, D. C. 20554 This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC. 515 F 2d 385 (D.C. Circ 1974). Internet: http://www.fcc.gov FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 26, 2004 NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS Richard Diamond: 202-418-0513 Mark Wigfield: 202-418-0253 CHAIRMAN POWELL ISSUES STATEMENT ON SBC's TIPToP SERVICE FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell issued the following statement concerning SBC's new interstate connectivity service, known as TIPToP. "SBC's interstate tariff for TIPToP service comes at time when VoIP services are continuing to grab consumer attention by offering more choice, lower prices, greater value, and enhanced features. I am committed to ensuring that this Commission avoids any action that might slow the IP-services revolution. "Against this backdrop, the Commission, state utility commissions, and the courts all are considering the question of whether legacy access charges should apply to VoIP services. SBC's tariff makes clear that TIPToP is not a mandatory offering and VoIP providers may continue to utilize alternatives to exchange their traffic. Should we conclude that this tariff is being used to justify the imposition of traditional tariffed access charges on VoIP providers or to discriminate against SBC's competitors, the Commission will take appropriate action including, but not limited to, initiating an investigation of SBC's interstate tariff and any other tariff that proposes similar terms. Nothing in this tariff should be interpreted to force a set of compensation relationships on VoIP providers and their connecting carriers either at this Commission or in other venues. "SBC's tariff arrives at the Commission while we have before us three proceedings that raise issues related to the charges applicable to VoIP services, a petition filed by Level 3, our larger intercarrier compensation proceeding and a rulemaking on IP-enabled services. I look forward to considering these pending proceedings." -FCC- ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 18:24:09 -0500 Subject: An Explosive Year for VOIP Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1732544,00.asp By Ellen Muraskin Remember 2004 as the year that VOIP finally penetrated mass consumer consciousness, as friends in normal walks of life began to gain a dim awareness of the stuff I write about. Give the lion's share of credit to Vonage. Jeff Citron's ad budget bought him banners on such general-interest sites as CNN.com, as well as space on all of the techie online hangouts. Covad aired commercials for its hosted business VOIP on prime-time television. Cable companies did likewise with their consumer VOIP (voice over IP) offerings, and even the traditional telcos -- both regional Bells and the long-distance triumverate -- were forced to follow suit this year, igniting a consumer price war. Perhaps equally important, VOIP adapters started taking up shelf space at stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, Frye's Electronics and Staples, bundled together with service. Service providers also started marketing through e-tailers. Give credit, too, to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), whose hands-off policy on VOIP regulation encouraged more providers to enter the marketplace, and early entrants to expand their networks. By now, we know that whatever regulation is to be imposed on VOIP will be decided at the federal level. But we still don't know exactly what those rules will be -- or how much they will force prices to rise. Full story at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1732544,00.asp ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 23:52:39 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: > Should I turn the system completely off when I am asleep/not home? Assuming you're doing (Windows, antivirus, spyware) updates regularly, you're doing all the right things. (If you're not running one, you might think about a software firewall like ZoneAlarm or Kerio to serve as a second line of defense. If you did become compromised that would likely block the outbound spam.) It's the people who don't do that stuff that become zombies. I've got servers on my LAN that run 24/7 for years, and have never had any problems. I've never seen a piece of spam that actually traced back to you (as opposed to just claiming that it was from you on the "From" line, which as has been noted is easy to forge). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do have Zone Alarm on all my machines as well, and I managed to finally convert my Toshiba Satellite CDS-220 which was running Win 95 as OEM over to Win 98 by just zapping the entire hard drive, then loading a fresh Win 98 then going around the net obtaining all the Toshiba Satellite CDS 220-specific drivers I needed and could remember. Don't ask me how I did it with only 32 K of ram and a speed of only 122 meg. I don't honestly know; I just kept plugging away at it. It, and one of the old Think Pad Win 95 machines (also converted to Win 98) share a hub now via my old Linksys router feeding into my newer Net Gear router. When Toshiba was running Win 95 that was the one machine that Zone Alarm would not work on until I got Win 98 on it also. For me, it was really a lot of trial and error. But if anyone ever traces back an actual spam that my computers ever sent out, I would surely appreiate knowing about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Trial Shows How Spammers Operate Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 00:11:39 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Looks like Lycos has got the idea: The Register reports that Lycos Europe is distributing a screensaver that is intended to drive traffic on a verified spam site up to very expensive levels: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/lycos_europe_spam_blitz/ Almost the same idea as mentioned here except that the screensaver does not hit the sites in response to received spam. I found a Sourceforge project that just set up shop with the intent to request images from spam sites in response to received spam. Sorry, I lost the project info. It has just set up and has no software yet. Looks like spammers will now be the ones going on the defensive instead of the other way round. This is going to get interesting ... ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Dropping SBC For a VoIP Solution -- Vonage or Packet8 ?? Date: 26 Nov 2004 20:59:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I dropped my SBC home phone for Vonage last spring. I'm satisfied. I tested Vonage before dropping the SBC phone and waited until I had a cell phone that worked at home for backup (Verizon). There were a few hiccups and things to sort out but the service is a routine part of life now. Vonage lets me set things up to ring the cell and home phones simultaneously so either phone can be used to take a call. No one needs the cell phone number or even needs to know I have a cell phone. If my broad band connection goes down Vonage automatically forwards to the cell phone. The cell and vonage services are a powerful combination for me. Charlie ------------------------------ From: Scott V Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 00:26:13 -0500 Subject: Re: FCC Watching SBC Web Phone Charge If they're going to tax that or put charges that are extra onto that, heck, why don't we make charges for every website, email, better yet, how bout every word we see or picture we see. Get my point about this? Its just my opinion though. I mean, the ISP fees sure are there, but once you have it, its free, so why not keep VOIP the same, FREE except for those monthly charges? Ya know what I mean? Thanks, Scott > http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/26/news/fortune500/sbc_fcc.reut/ > FCC watching SBC Web phone charge > Firm's new connection charge for calls made over the Internet is being > watched, Powell says. > November 26, 2004: 3:26 PM EST > WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SBC Communications Inc.'s new connection charge for > calls made over the Internet is being watched, Federal Communications > Commission Chairman Michael Powell said Friday. > Powell said SBC's "TIPToP" plan shouldn't be used to force higher > connection charges on voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) services or to > discriminate against SBC competitors. > "Should we conclude that this tariff is being used to justify the > imposition of traditional tariffed access charges on VoIP providers or to > discriminate against SBC's competitors, the commission will take > appropriate action... ," Powell said in a statement. > Full story at: > http://money.cnn.com/2004/11/26/news/fortune500/sbc_fcc.reut/ ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: 'Frontline' Files an Eye-Opening Credit Report Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:26:16 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com In message Andrew wrote: >> Secret History of the Credit Card >> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/ > Very interesting. Both Discover and Citbank seem to be using two > different techniques desribed in the article to try to screw me. One > way the issuers screw cardholders is by not reporting the cardholders' > credit limit to the reporting agencies. This is an intentional attempt > to keep your FICO score low to prevent other card issuers from > poaching you. A big part of your fico score is your debt to credit > limit ratio. Equifax/Experian/Transunion substitute your historical > higest balance for purposes of calculating your debt/credit limit > ratio when the card issuers withhold your credit limit. Discover does > not report my $11k credit limit --my credit report just shows my high > balance of $2400 instead. Interesting. This can work to your advantage too -- I have a couple line of credits, one at 8.5% (with my bank) and one at 29% (with a legal loan shark ...) I went in to talk to the bank about increasing my credit limit on the line of credit and reducing my Visa's credit limit, and they said no on the grounds that even though the 29% line of credit is currently at $0, if I were to run it up to the maximum the next day it would make me an unacceptable credit risk (because my overall debt load would be too high.) It would have worked significantly to my benefit of the 29% line of credit only reported the balance ($0) instead of the credit limit. > A review of my credit report also show that Citibank is pulling my > credit report each and every month. This is no doubt an attempt to > take advantage of 'universal fault', i.e. use a late car payment or > utility payment as an excuse to raise your credit card rate even if > your credit card payment history is spotless. I have never ever > carried a balance on any of my credit cards, so in my case, it's > rather pointless of them to try to dig up a late payment to one of my > other creditors. A punitive credit card rate would not affect me. Interesting, I thought that "universal fault" schemes had been outlawed due to the risk of one creditor fucking up their records. I had a department store credit card when I was younger. Some months after it was paid and the account was closed, they added a note to my credit file that the account was 1 month overdue on a $29 payment. The notes say that they're reporting for the September monthly period, my last payment was in February, but somehow I'm only a month late AND have a $0 balance. This would trip a "universal fault" clause and hurt my other interest bearing accounts, if I had any that tried the universal fault crap. As it is, any time I'm at the bank discussing interest, I have them read the notes, they laugh and remove it from their internal copy of the credit report (so it doesn't affect me, since it's clearly impossible), so it hasn't actually impacted me, although if I changed to another bank it might. Do not taunt zombie badgers ------------------------------ From: Budwich Subject: Re: Routing Problems To the Cayman Islands Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:56:24 -0500 Let me understand this ... you test calls from a "all tier 1" carrier coming in and there is no problem. AND they are "officially" the only carriers allowed in (have either direct trunking / connections in or coming thru a "gateway"). "Other" carriers ("non-official") that are coming thru (have to be coming thru some gateway since you wouldn't have direct groups to someone who isn't official ... right???) are having problems. Why is this your problem? Is it not a gateway issue? Sound "interesting" ... especially the "test numbers" ...:-) good luck but I would go back to the gateway. Paul Barnes wrote in message news:telecom23.569.5@telecom-digest.org: > Hi All: > I work for Cable and Wireless in the Caribbean, and we have received > several complaints that in the past 3-4 weeks, that persons in many > parts of the world (including the US and Canada) who try to call > cellphone NXX codes in the Cayman Islands have been experiencing > difficulties. > Some of the experiences received when placing the calls are dead > air, fast busies, reorder tones, pretty much everything else besides > a completed call. Note that the cellular infrastructure is back on > its feet after the passage of Hurricane Ivan in September, RF > problems are not contributing to this issue. > We have arranged for test calls to be made to the Cayman cellphone > NXX ranges from all of the major Tier 1 international carriers with > whom C&W has agreements to bring traffic into the region: ATT, > IDT, MCI, Sprint, BT, Teleglobe and CWC. All of these test calls > were successful. We think that these problems may have resulted > from some least-cost routing arrangement that a tier 2 or 3 > carrier is engaged in. C&W has no direct relationships with any > such carriers. I was hoping that someone in the group might be > able to offer some advice on how we could proceed to get some help > in fixing this routing problem. I have listed below some test > Cayman cellular numbers, if any one in the group would be so good > as to dial these numbers and let me know if they were successful in > reach the party in Cayman, I would appreciate it. > Cayman Islands NPA, 345 (part of the North American Numbering plan) > Test numbers: 345 516 0810 > 345 525 0006 > 345 916 2850 > 345 914 0303 > Thanks in advance for any feedback, advice, ideas, etc. Regards, > Paul Barnes Manager, Technology & Operations Cable & Wireless > Carrier Services Tel: 246-292-1297 Email: paul.r.barnes@cw.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 08:14:58 +0800 Subject: Last Laugh! The Collected Wisdom of Dubya Bush From: A Friend Dubya Quotes (Actual Quotes From George W. Bush) "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." ..George W. Bush "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." ..Governor George W. Bush "Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." ..Governor George W. Bush "Mars is essentially in the same orbit ... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." ..Governor George W. Bush, 8/11/94 "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." ..Governor George W. Bush, 9/15/95 "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change." ..Governor George W. Bush, 5/22/98 "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'." ..Governor George W. Bush, 12/6/93 "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." ..Governor George W. Bush, 11/30/96 "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." ..Governor George W. Bush "The future will be better tomorrow." ..Governor George W. Bush "We're going to have the best educated American people in the world." ..Governor George W. Bush 9/21/97 "People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." ..Governor George W. Bush "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." ..Governor George W. Bush to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/93 "We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe." ..Governor George W. Bush "Public speaking is very easy." ..Governor George W. Bush to reporters "I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican." ..Governor George W. Bush "A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls." ..Governor George W. Bush "When I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in LA, my answer has been direct & simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame." ..George W. Bush "Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it." ..Governor George W. Bush 5/20/96 "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur." ..Governor George W. Bush 9/22/97 "For NASA, space is still a high priority." ..Governor George W. Bush, 9/5/93 "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children." ..Governor George W. Bush , 9/18/95 "The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that George Bush may or may not make." ..Governor George W. Bush "We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made." ..Governor George W. Bush "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." ..Governor George W. Bush "[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system." ..Governor George W. Bush ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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