From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Feb 7 15:24:16 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i17KOGI27248; Sat, 7 Feb 2004 15:24:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 15:24:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200402072024.i17KOGI27248@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 #61 TELECOM Digest Sat, 7 Feb 2004 15:24:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 61 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Comcast Has Limits For Heavy Internet Users (Wesrock@aol.com) Vonage Motorola VT1000 Box (John Schmerold) "Out of Area" Caller ID Law (Mike) Re: New Telemarketer Law, Caller ID, Anonymous Call Reject (Mary@bent) Re: New Telemarketer Law, Caller ID, Anonymous Call Reject (Dink) Re: Panasonic 616 Toll Restriction (Carl Navarro) Re: VoIP Gateway (Ron Kritzman) Re: Faked CallerID Info? (Gail M. Hall) Call Centres (Rob) Re: "No Internet Voting" (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: "No Internet Voting" (Thomas A. Horsley) A How-To Guide for Hackers (Monty Solomon) TiVo-Nielsen Deal Could Aid Advertisers (Monty Solomon) IDT America Unlimited - Pros/Cons? (Zebra) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 09:36:54 EST Subject: Comcast Has Limits For Heavy Internet Users Pat, I'm surprised no one has made mention of this in Telecom Digest. Forwarded from another list. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Warning letters trouble broadband subscribers Comcast targets heavy users, but some say limits aren't clear Associated Press SAN JOSE, Calif. By all accounts, George Nussbaum demands a lot from his Internet connection. He streams video and transfers large files from his office. His family downloads movie trailers, and his stepson listens to and buys music online. Mr. Nussbaum subscribes to his cable TV provider's high-speed Internet service, which, he thought, was built for such high-bandwidth activities. Then, in November, he got a letter from the provider, Comcast Corp., ordering him to dial down his usage or face service termination. Until last summer, the service was advertised as "unlimited." But Comcast, citing its "acceptable use" policy, is cracking down on the heaviest users on the premise that their consumption could degrade their neighbors' service. A number of broadband providers are beginning to offer different tiers of service, charging high-volume users more. Some, particularly wireless providers, charge extra for heavy use. Comcast, critics say, is trying to impose limits without telling consumers that the service is limited. Looking for answers Mr. Nussbaum, who had no idea how many gigabytes he used, was willing to cut back. He called to find out by how much, but customer service had no answer. Then he asked how much he used. Again, Comcast wouldn't provide a number. Last month, Mr. Nussbaum got a second letter threatening suspension or termination, so he decided to sign up for a digital subscriber line offered by his phone company, Verizon Communications. "How am I supposed to know what my limits are?" said Mr. Nussbaum, an engineer from Plaistow, N.H. "It was actually kind of ridiculous." 'Changing the rules' "They have the right to control their service and offer different services to different people," said David Willis, an analyst at the Meta Group. "The problem is you can't keep changing the rules all the time." Most broadband companies have vague policies, but Comcast's appear to be the most aggressively enforced. It provides no tools for monitoring bandwidth and does not give any specific guidance. Comcast says the people who receive the warning letters typically consume 100 times more than the average user. "The total number of customers who have had their service disconnected is well below one one-hundredth of 1 percent of our overall Internet customer base," said spokeswoman Dana Ryan, reading from a prepared statement. But the nation's largest cable company refused to reveal the average consumption among its 4.8 million high-speed Internet subscribers. Ms. Ryan also would not say how many received warnings or exactly how many have had their accounts suspended or terminated. Excessive use is a problem for Comcast and other providers because they must predict bandwidth use and buy the capacity. If too much is consumed, it can bog down the local network and also affect profit margins. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Associated Press Syndicate. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 22:20:23 -0600 From: John Schmerold Subject: Vonage Motorola VT1000 Box The 1+ dialing is a Vonage deal killer for me. I tried a couple of dialers behind the Cisco boxes Vonage used to use -- they didn't work. Anyone know if there is a dialer compatible with the VT1000 to automatically insert the 1 needed with Vonage? ------------------------------ From: littleboyblu87@yahoo.com (Mike) Subject: "Out of Area" Caller ID Law Date: 6 Feb 2004 22:39:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I registered on that Do Not Call list back when it first came out. When it went into affect we stopped receiving all those annoying telemarketing phone calls. But ever since that new law came out that requires telemarketers to display info on the caller id, we've been getting about 3 "out of area" calls everyday at the same times they used to call. Does anyone know what that's all about? It's really annoying. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It goes to show that the telemarketers are keeping up with the times. Telemarketers are not going to be easily thwarted. :) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mary@bentmetal.biz Subject: Re: New Telemarketer Law, Caller ID, and Anonymous Call Reject Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 05:35:43 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Your feature sounds more like Privacy Manager than Anonymous Call Rejection. Michael Quinn wrote: > A few weeks back in the long thread on spoofed caller ID, someone > mentioned a recently enacted federal law that requires telemarketers > to deliver a caller ID number (whether accurate or not). > Here in Nothern VA, we have been using Verizon's Anonymous Call > Reject, which does not allow "out of area" numbers to even ring the > phone unless the caller provides some additional information (or > enters a PIN); we pay $7.50 per month or so for this. > I think it was about this time that I started to notice a significant > increase in telemarketing calls which now display the number and the > name, although sometimes the name says "out of area" or "not > available" (or even "ohio"), which of course ACR doesn't look at -- as > long as they deliver a number, however inaccurate, ACR lets the call > through. The net result is that our dinner and evening hours are now > once again filled with ringing phones. Before this, there was a fair > chance that an incoming call was from someone we wanted to hear from, > so we'd pick up after looking at caller ID; now we have to deal with > at least double or triple the number of calls. > Has anyone else noticed this phenomenom? I guess for the small number > of folks with ACR it's a step backward, even though it may be an > improvement for the majority. I'm wondering what will happen if I > cancel ACR -- even more calls I suppose. > Regards, > Mike Quinn > Springfield VA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That was a very big hassle I had with > SBC (Southwestern Bell Tel) when they had my phone service. They > claimed (the chairman's office, yet, when I appealed) that they had > met all requirements to subscribers of anonymous call blocking and > last call reject 'as long as the calling party supplies some number.' > No matter if it was all zeros, if the name was bogus or missing, etc. > SBC still wanted the couple bucks per month for providing 'anonymous > call rejection'. They claimed 'the call was not anonymous, we did give > you the number and often times the name.' Yet, even though the call > was not 'anonymous' by telco's definition, they still were not able to > block future calls from the same 'number'. > I think what you will find, Michael, is that telco makes too much > money from telemarketers to abuse them too badly. Telco turns a blind > eye to the way they rig their phone systems (with skimpy or non- > existent details of ID) because the telemarketers would suffer from it. > PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dink Subject: Re: New Telemarketer Law, Caller ID, and Anonymous Call Reject Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 18:23:22 -0600 Organization: Frijoles Refritos On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 11:19:41 -0500, Michael Quinn wrote: > A few weeks back in the long thread on spoofed caller ID, someone > mentioned a recently enacted federal law that requires telemarketers > to deliver a caller ID number (whether accurate or not). > Here in Nothern VA, we have been using Verizon's Anonymous Call > Reject, which does not allow "out of area" numbers to even ring the > phone unless the caller provides some additional information (or > enters a PIN); we pay $7.50 per month or so for this. > I think it was about this time that I started to notice a significant > increase in telemarketing calls which now display the number and the > name, although sometimes the name says "out of area" or "not > available" (or even "ohio"), which of course ACR doesn't look at -- as > long as they deliver a number, however inaccurate, ACR lets the call > through. The net result is that our dinner and evening hours are now > once again filled with ringing phones. Before this, there was a fair > chance that an incoming call was from someone we wanted to hear from, > so we'd pick up after looking at caller ID; now we have to deal with > at least double or triple the number of calls. > Has anyone else noticed this phenomenom? I guess for the small number > of folks with ACR it's a step backward, even though it may be an > improvement for the majority. I'm wondering what will happen if I > cancel ACR -- even more calls I suppose. > Regards, > Mike Quinn > Springfield VA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That was a very big hassle I had with > SBC (Southwestern Bell Tel) when they had my phone service. They > claimed (the chairman's office, yet, when I appealed) that they had > met all requirements to subscribers of anonymous call blocking and > last call reject 'as long as the calling party supplies some number.' > No matter if it was all zeros, if the name was bogus or missing, etc. > SBC still wanted the couple bucks per month for providing 'anonymous > call rejection'. They claimed 'the call was not anonymous, we did give > you the number and often times the name.' Yet, even though the call > was not 'anonymous' by telco's definition, they still were not able to > block future calls from the same 'number'. > I think what you will find, Michael, is that telco makes too much > money from telemarketers to abuse them too badly. Telco turns a blind > eye to the way they rig their phone systems (with skimpy or non- > existent details of ID) because the telemarketers would suffer from it. > PAT] From a posting I made in another newsgroup on Jan. 29th: Subject: US: Telemarketers Unmasked From: Dink Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:58:10 -0600 From today, telemarketer calls are required to display information on caller ID displays. Such calls previously showed on Caller ID as "out of area." Now the name displayed by Caller ID must be either the company trying to make a sale or the firm making the call. The display must also include a phone number that consumers can call during regular business hours to ask the company to place their number on the company's internal do not call list. Dink ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Panasonic 616 Toll Restriction Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 21:34:38 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America On 6 Feb 2004 14:48:35 -0800, javi@wizardes.com (Javier Gonzalez Ferreyra) wrote: > The manual says that I've to dial * to complete the 3 digit code for > toll restriction, but nothing appears on the LCD and I can not store > the two digit code. How can I fix it? I can program everything else > but not toll restriction which is the most improtant for me ... please > help. On the bottom of the KSU is a silver tag. Read it. Is there a 3 in a circle on it? Was it made in Great Britain? Is it a 616-D? The software is different for each release. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 00:21:29 -0600 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: VoIP Gateway Andrew Bell wrote: > I know there a lots of commercial offerings to do this, but I'm hoping > to get away with just the cost of an FXO card for a proof of concept > right now. > Has anyone here done something like this already? Have you looked into Asterisk? Its an Open Source, Linux based PBX with VOIP capability built right in. Ron ------------------------------ From: Gail M. Hall Subject: Re: Faked CallerID Info? Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 04:25:29 -0500 Reply-To: gmhall@apk.net On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 21:36:24 -0600, in comp.dcom.telecom message , Herb Stein wrote: > Daniel W. Johnson wrote in message > news:telecom23.57.8@telecom-digest.org: >> TELECOM Digest Editor added in message >> news:: >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess so, if you feel that exposing >>> yourself on national TV is 'normal' behavior. What I don't understand is the part of the "exposure" that really bothered me, and that is the appearance of grabbing the girl's clothes off of her. Grabbing and groping against her will is just a lower form of imposition and the type of thinking that leads to rape. This sort of thing glorifies abusing other people. As for the appropriateness or not, there are times and places for different activities. Forcing adult type material during GP times is inconsiderate and crude. This is just another form of "in-your-face" stuff that telemarketers and spammers do. They are going to force you to see it whether or not you want to. If a person *wants* to see that stuff, they should be able to go to the so-called adult channels and see it. But don't intrude on general TV channels during prime time when our kids are likely to see it. Don't teach our kids that grabbing a girls clothes off her is OK or funny! >> I haven't read anything about indecent exposure on the part of LaToya, >> just the incident with her younger sister Janet on the Super Bowl >> halftime show. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My bad ... I should have said 'Janet' >> instead of 'LaToya'. PAT] > LaToya was in Playboy/Penthouse/Hustler/ or one of them a few years > ago. Of course, the reader of the magazine found the spread anything > but indecent. :-) > Herb Stein > herb@herbstein.com Apparently the one whose pictures were published in the magazine chose to expose herself in an appropriate place -- in a magazine that specializes in that sort of thing. People who don't want to see that can choose not to buy the magazines. People who are watching a football game with their kids probably don't want to see that kind of thing. Also, it's more likely that the magazine pictures show her posing in an "alluring" position, VOLUNTARILY, not being shown as being forced against her will. I didn't see the pictures, so I am just guessing about that. At any rate, they are not showing this on national TV on a program that is not labeled as R or X. BTW, all the repeats of the Justin and Janet scene on all the news shows demonstrates how hypicritical so many people in this country are. If it's all that bad, they shouldn't be showing it over and over and over and over and ... Gail in NE Ohio USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: According to the radio news today, a lady in California (I think) has filed a class action lawsuit on this incident. She named as the members of the Class 'anyone who watched the Stupid Bowl and saw the incident'. I wonder how much will be asked in damages for each member of the Class for the offense done to their eyes? The same radio news said that the network is also rather 'livid' about the incident and was quoted as saying "if the FCC sticks it to us with a fine, we most assuredly will sue Jackson to recover the amount of the fine imposed on us." And apparently at least one of the major advertisers on the Stupid Bowl is now stalling on paying their advertising bill, on the premise they did not intend to sponsor an 'X-rated production.' I think we will hear more about this affair for a long time. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: Call Centres Date: 7 Feb 2004 03:03:52 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know what the situation is in the US/Canada as far as call centres being transferred abroad is like? It's *BIG* news over here at the moment, with many companies, such as insurance companies, telco's (including BT), some 118 Directory Assistance companies, National Rail Enquiries, and AOL, opening up call centres in India, primarily Kolkutt and Mumbai. Basically they're *MUCH* cheaper to run and operate over there than call centres here in the UK, but that's at the expense of job losses as well. At the moment they're being used as overflow for the call centres here -- but as I say, that's at the moment. BTW, the reason I know that AOL have opened a centre in India is because I had to call them a few weeks ago, only for my call to be answered (eventually) by a guy with a very strong Indian accent -- you don't hear Indian accents in Waterford, Ireland, where AOL have their main European office! TIA! Rob ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2004 09:05:59 EST Subject: Re: "No Internet Voting" In a message dated Fri, 6 Feb 2004 15:36:46 -0500 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Robert Pierce's message: > I don't know of any large corporation back in the 1960-70's as > computers were taking over everything which did not run in > parallel for at least a month or two for just that reason. I know > telco and Amoco credit card did that. PAT] This does not seem to be typical of government, state, local, etc. In Oklahoma there have been at least three cases in the last few years where this apparently not even considered and the new system was supposed to run straight out of the box. One was a combined system for state government, which took six weeks or so to get where it would even issue pay checks to state employees ... another was the Oklahoma City school district which did similarly and employee pay checks were delayed for a number of days, and payments to vendors for many weeks, to the extent that some vendors cut them off, and another case involving Oklahoma County payrolls. Probably much of the other data on those systems, some of which might be quite important for continuing operations, would be similarly screwed up. This is probably the norm for most states all over the country. Didn't the IRS or SSA have a similar screwup that delayed tax refunds or SSA payments for several days? From my experience with Southwestern Bell, and its insistence on always running parallel systems, sometimes for months, before being satisfied the new system is working right and switching over to it for real, the first one (state payrolls and other information) of those struck me as feckless. But then the others came along and it would appear governmental agencies, at least, don't take such things seriously. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even if the software worked perfectly out of the box -- not impossible, but unlikely if the software is custom built as much of it is -- there is still the hassle of getting the database correctly built the first time around. Does anyone here besides me remember when VISA (when it was known as BankAmericard and was the 'local' credit card program of Bank of America in San Francisco) decided to put it all on computers (yes, there was a time when Visa -- as it is known now -- was totally manual) and make it a national system of credit cards through various banks? Around 1960 or so, BankAmericard went national but they kept that trade name for a few more years before becoming Visa. Ooooh, did all the banks get hit with **severe** fraud as a result! First National Bank of Chicago alone got hit with about 30 million dollars in fraud over a five or six year period. The way the banks built their databases for BankAmericard cards was to just take every account in their bank and put them on the database. Then they dumped all those little plastic cards in the postal mail, including accounts opened for tiny babies at the bank, trust fund and escrow accounts, estates of dead people, etc. I suppose about a third of the cards never reached their rightful owners, and maybe half of the remainder were innaprop- riatly issued to dead people with estates, babies and litle children, etc. Really, such an approach is the only sensible way to build a national database (of voters, for instance or credit card account holders). Bottom line is what they go by. I guess they felt it would cost less money to (in effect) throw all the plastics in the air, and weed out the deadbeats and fraud as it happened than to go to the expense of running bureaus on everyone who applied, if they ever did. But when Bank of America and then the national association they started made an attempt to build a national database of customers it wound up costing them plenty. Ditto with Sears, when they started 'Discover Card', it was not without a lot of frustration and expense in constructing the database. Sears had to eat about forty million in fraud before the Discover card was totally up and running. And with the latest movement to totally computerize the process of voting, I suspect the same thing will happen. 'Experts' will decide how far (and with how much expense) they want to go to 'purify' the results. No one ever said there would never be fraud in an election; only that the goal was to keep a reasonable ratio between fraud and administrative costs. You can always put FBI and similar in charge of punishing fraud as it is caught. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: "No Internet Voting" From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 15:19:17 GMT > But I think we are going to get to the point where electronic voting > becomes a necessity before too long, What could possibly be necessary about it? You know all that spam you get in your electronic mailbox? You know how you *don't* have a freightcar full of advertising circulars and come-ons in your postal mail box every day? That's because electrons can be cheaply and easily arranged into unlimited patterns at almost no expense. Paper,' printing, and postage, on the other hand requires time, energy, and money to manipulate. All electronic voting will do is make manipulating elections as cheap and easy as sending spam. No thanks. (I'm still fighting a hopeless campaign to get Palm Beach County to sell the stupid touch-screen machines they just bought to Iraq or someplace and buy scanners instead where real voters fill out real ballots which can be touched and looked at, and would at least put someone to a great deal more effort to fake than numbers that exist only in a computer that the same people who designed butterfly ballots tell us are foolproof :-). ==>> The *Best* political site ==>> email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Responding to 'What could possibly be necessary about (electronic voting)'? Well, please take the advice of someone who has grown up in an *entirely non-computerized* world to an almost entirely computerized one. There is very little you can do *without computers* that can't be done better *with computers*, including detecting fraud and other crimes. Please accept this rephrasing of your question: What could possibly be better about paper ballots which take a long time to tabulate and confirm? Did you know that the election held on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in November will only have projected results the next day? It only becomes *official* a month or so later when it has been certified by (in Chicago at least) the Board of Election Commissioners. That is after they have weeded out tons of fraud, illegible ballots, recounted the ballots at least once or twice, etc. How could computers possibly do worse? The fact that a little bit of *new style fraud* enters the picture in the process of purifying and expediting the results otherwise shouldn't matter. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 22:17:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A How-To Guide for Hackers By Michelle Delio Already bored with all the presents you got for the holidays? Hack them into new-and-improved presents. Got piles of now-outdated gifts from past festive occasions carefully stashed away because you might need the parts someday? Hack them, too. Don't know how to hack or need some inspiration? Get yourself a copy of Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty. It has 576 pages of detailed instructions that will show you how to re-engineer almost every inanimate object in your home or office. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62089,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 23:05:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo-Nielsen Deal Could Aid Advertisers By Sam Diaz, Knight Ridder, 2/6/2004 TiVo and Nielsen Media Research, the television ratings company, announced a deal Wednesday in which TiVo will provide a breakdown of how its customers are using their digital video recorders. That means Nielsen will find out whether viewers are watching "American Idol" live or watching it a day later and, more importantly, which commercials they're skipping and which were watched a second time. http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2004/02/06/tivo_nielsen_deal_could_aid_advertisers/ ------------------------------ From: Zebra Subject: IDT America Unlimited - Pros/Cons? Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 12:18:35 -0500 IDT America Unlimited offers the following for $39.95 ($40) a month: Unlimited Local - Unlimited Regional - Unlimited Long Distance - Popular Calling Features - Caller ID - Call Waiting with Name - 3-Way Calling - Speed Dial (8 Numbers) http://www.idt.net/products/unlimited/ Has anyone tried this service? Can you share your experiences? Is this company reliable? Do your calls go through? Is it a nightmare? AT&T wants $55 for the basically same offering, and Verzion wants $60. Before I take the plunge, I would love to get some feedback -- searching the newsgroups has not found anything pro or con on this offering. Thanks in advance from NY. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our local telco here in Independence, KS called 'Prairie Stream Communications' offers basically the same package for $29.95 per month. The main difference is instead of 'unlimited regional' and 'unlimited long distance' they have those two merged into 'long distance'. In addition to unlimited local, Prairie Stream allows 100 minutes (an hour plus 20 minutes) of 'long distance' in the package. Additional minutes are two cents each. Does IDT allow you to port or keep your local number? Is this the same IDT that used to do TV commercials saying long distance is only five cents per minute if you dialed their 1010 code? PAT] ------------------------------ 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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