From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 22 17:29:31 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iBMMTVf23425; Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:29:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:29:31 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200412222229.iBMMTVf23425@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 #614 TELECOM Digest Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:28:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 614 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson T-Mobile Cripples the Blackberry (Monty Solomon) Broadband Tops Dial-Up Use in Homes, Nielsen Says (Telecom dailyLead) Voicemail Recommendations (xasdfg123456@yahoo.com) Re: Access of Calling Card Dial in Number From Prepaid Cellular (hbr) Re: What Tandem in Telcom Means? (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Cell Phone Company Records Tower Handling Call (Howard Eisenhauer) Re: Cell Phone Company Records Tower Handling Call (Fritz Whittington) Re: Cromwell vrs. [sic] Sprint Settlement (BobGoudreau) Re: VOIP (ukcats4218016@yahoo.com) Re: Motorola MD481 Cordless (Rich Greenberg) Re: Hanging Up On Wireless Spam (Fritz Whittington) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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 Dec 2004 17:11:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile Cripples the Blackberry Jason D. O'Grady Blackberry's Crippled by T-Mobile. In his article "T-Mobile Tells BlackBerry Users: GetLess!" PowerPage editor Emory Lundberg reports about how T-Mobile effectively crippled the Blackberry smartphone on its network by disallowing outbound requests on TCP port 80. A real sin considering that T-Mo Blackberry users pay US$40 per month for "BlackBerry Unlimited w/Enterprise E-mail" that includes "Unlimited Web Browsing." http://www.powerpage.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/powerpage.woa/wa/story?newsID=13375 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:43:49 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Broadband Tops Dial-Up Use in Homes, Nielsen/NetRatings Says Telecom dailyLead from USTA http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=18294&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Broadband tops dial-up use in homes, Nielsen/NetRatings says BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * CompUSA to sell VoIP service from Vonage * Cablevision halts plan to spin off Rainbow assets * EMC buys SMARTS for $260 million * RIM earnings jump, Qualcomm raises fiscal first-quarter forecast USTA SPOTLIGHT * SIP Demystified Now Available in the Telecom Bookstore EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Alcatel, Microsoft said to mull IPTV deal * UWB standard elusive REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Plea deal denied in AOL e-mail address theft case Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=18294&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: xasdfg123456@yahoo.com Subject: Voicemail Recommendations Date: 22 Dec 2004 12:33:39 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi. I am looking to replace my current voicemail system (KeyVoice on DOS) with something far easier to configure, and am hoping to get some recommendations from the group. I think KeyVoice is overkill for what we need, (20-person office, old Panasonic DBS). I am not a phone tech, but a sys admin, so of course something I could easily setup myself by reading the manual would be great, too. I know a little bit about DBS programming so I am looking to do this all myself. Thanks a bunch. Bill ------------------------------ From: hbr Subject: Re: Access of Calling Card Dial in Number From Prepaid Cellular Date: 22 Dec 2004 05:21:09 -0800 Maybe this provider could work for you - http://dynasky.com/ (I just discoverd them and think they are great for many reasons). Good luck! Heidi Mark Crispin wrote: > On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Marek Tomczyk wrote: >> I like the offer of AT&T Wireless very much as it provides a long >> validity of one year for balances starting at $100. > That's news to me. I used to have AT&T Wireless Free2Go on my Alaska > phone (now Dobson Cellular One). The expiration period was 45 days, > although it would rollover if you recharge in time. > AT&T Wireless was recently bought by Cingular, so this may have > changed. In any case, Free2Go uses TDMA digital, which is on its way > towards extinction. Most TDMA phones are also SOC locked, so you > can't use them with another carrier. > I suggest that you consider either a prepay GSM SIM card for your > home country phone (assuming you have an unlocked tri-band or > quad-band phone), or one of the CDMA prepaid services. > Under CDMA prepay, Verizon's is on their network, the phones are > unlocked, and can be used with monthly service. Virgin has ultra > cheap prepay using Sprint's network (which almost certainly means > that the phones are locked but there are ways of getting Sprint > unlock codes). > Another advantage of Verizon is that, overall, it probably has the > best coverage in the continental US (48 states), especially if you > pick a phone with analog capability. If you go to Alaska, you'll > need a TDMA/analog phone, although GSM has finally appeared in > Alaska. There is very little CDMA in Alaska. >> So the idea is to use a calling card service for this matter. The >> AT&T documents say that prepaid calling card service is not >> possible with Free2Go. Besides this AT&T says in its terms that >> certain numbers can be blocked if "abuse" to the network happens. > Don't worry about it; your plan is fine. > When you call one of the cheap international calling card companies, > the cellular company still gets to charge you for the airtime, so > they are happy. > What they are concerned about are calls to numbers with delayed > surcharges and fraud issues. Calls to the premium 900 area code, and > to the local 976 premium exchange, are almost always blocked to cell > phones. > Most cell phones have international calls blocked unless you ask > customer service to unblock it. Most people consider that to be a > good thing, and also do that on their wired phones (although the > default for wired phones is to allow international calls unless the > customer asks for it to be disabled). > However, "international calls" really means "calls outside of country > code 1"; that is, the 011 North American international dialing prefix > is disabled. That doesn't always help. > Remember that country code 1 is quite a few countries. You get a > message "urgent, please call me at (555) 555-5555" which looks like > an ordinary US or Canada number, but is really an expensive > pornography service in the Caribbean that charges $10/minute. The > customer complains about the bill and refuses to pay. Usually, the > phone company refunds the charge and takes the loss itself, but it > then blocks future calls to that number. > From the prepaid cell phone company's point of view, they are > probably happy if you use a calling card for international calls, > because then the problem (of how much to charge you for the > international call) is some other company's problem. The cell phone > company just charges you for the airtime, which they know how to do > quite well. > -- Mark -- > http://staff.washington.edu/mrc > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. > Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 09:26:26 EST Subject: Re: What Tandem in Telcom Means? In a message dated Wed, 22 Dec 2004 03:49:19 GMT, John McHarry writes: > On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 18:31:01 -0500, Jack wrote: >> I am new to telcom. I came across the term Tandem many times (eg. LEC >> Access Tandem). >> What exactly does Tandem mean? > PAT's reference is correct, but, in the meantime, a tandem office is a > telephone switching machine that stands between two end offices, the > latter serving subscriber lines. In the olden days, a couple decades > ago or less, end offices couldn't handle long distance accounting and were > connected with toll tandems that could. In very large cities there were > also, as I recall, some inter local tandems that allowed hub and spoke > arrangements of local switching. Aw, c'mon folks. Manual tandems existed before there were dial offices, and a concern in big cities was the delay as in some cases phone numbers had to be passed manually from the originating operator to a tandem operator, then another tandem operator, and finally to the terminating office. The first dial offices to get DDD ("long distance accounting") were end offices, and it was only later that tandems with CAMA ("Centralized Automatic Message Accounting") were used to provide customer toll dialing to end offices not equipped for any kind of accounting, such as step-by-step offices. In the late 1940s I made a call from a coin box in Los Angeles, and the operator had to go to rate-and-route to learn which (manual) toll tandem to plug into which had trunks toward the destination. L.A. had so many outgoing manual toll trunks that they had to be distributed among various tandems; as I recall, for my call the operator was director to (manual) toll tandem No. 4. which had trunks for the MX (multi-switch) routing to the destination. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Howard Eisenhauer Subject: Re: Cell Phone Company Records the Tower Handling Call Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:45:52 GMT Indeed they do, it's part of the billing information they use to compute your bill. Each billing record for an outgoing call records the calling number (so they know who to bill- duh), the number called, the cell the call originated on, start time and duration. The originating cell info & the called number are used by the billing process to determine if the call is billed as local or long distance. Same thing only different for incoming calls. Howard. On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:06:01 GMT, phoner@company.com wrote: > Cell phone companies record the tower that handles each call, and then > keep that info for at least a short time. > That came out in the recent arson case in Maryland. The suspect > claimed that he was at home. However, he had a cellphone call during > his alibi time. His provider's records showed that the cell tower > handling his call wasn't near his house. > This had to have been a routine log since the suspect wasn't yet a > suspect at the time of the call. > (Putting my tinfoil hat on:) I have a theory that the location of > every cellphone that is turned on is being routinely recorded, say > every minute, and saved for later data mining. I have no direct > evidence. However, this is technically feasible, and is a logical (to > me) extension of what we know was done decades ago. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:15:03 -0600 From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Cell Phone Company Records the Tower Handling Call On or about 2004-12-21 08:49, Dave VanHorn whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > I have seen my cellphone do some bizarre things at times. > Once, I was standing in Auburn Ca, and my phone switched to > "roam". I was well within my home area, so I called 611 to see what > was up ... They said I was in Chico. Look at a map. So Chico looks to be about 100 miles away, but you've got some elevation. Perhaps the cells along I-80 were saturated with traffic, and the Chico tower was the closest one with capacity to spare? So your phone would lock onto it, and then appear to be roaming. Fritz Whittington Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. (Edgar Allan Poe, "Eleonora") ------------------------------ From: BobGoudreau@withheld on request Subject: Re: Cromwell vrs. [sic] Sprint Settlement Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 12:25:08 -0500 [As always, please remove my email address from the message and from the digest table of contents. Thanks.] Steve Sobol wrote: > Safeway, Kroger and Federated are all huge companies with lots of > buying power -- Kroger, in particular, is by far the largest grocery > company in the country, if not in the world. > And we all know how big Wal*Mart is=2E Apparently not all of us do. In particular, it has been a few years since Kroger has been "by far the largest grocery company in the country". Kroger is now a distant second to Wal-Mart's grocery business. See http://www.progressivegrocer.com/progressivegrocer/images/pdf/pg-top-50-2004pdf= Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: ukcats4218016@yahoo.com Subject: Re: VOIP Date: 22 Dec 2004 11:11:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm not sure how many phones my service (SunRocket) will support, but they do offer two separate phone numbers for one price. I only have one phone hooked up, but with the two numbers, you would automatically be able to double the quantity. ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Motorola MD481 Cordless Date: 22 Dec 2004 14:18:23 -0500 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Weston Fire 22 wrote: > Well, I was suspecting as much, so I decided I would email their > support and see what they gave me, well, here is their response. It > must be the company line: > Dear Bruce, > Thank you for choosing Motorola! If your phone is dialing on pulse > dialing and not tone dialing, you will need to check with your phone > service provider to see if the line is digital or analog b/c if it is > not a digital line then the phone is not going to dial on tone > dialing. I would hazzard a guess that *IN THIS USAGE*, "digital line" == "touchtone capable line" Try telling them that you have confirmed that the line is "a digital line". Have you tried a known good TT phone? Rich Greenberg N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 13:59:52 -0600 From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: Hanging Up On Wireless Spam On or about 2004-12-22 00:31, Steve Sobol whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > T. Sean Weintz wrote: >>> what's next; SPAM deliveried to your TV via your cable box? >> Um, isn't that what commercials are? > This comment demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of what spam > is. Spam is not 'advertising I don't like'. The defining > characteristic of spam is that it is an attempt by the advertiser to > shift advertising costs onto the recipient, and when was the last time > you were forced to pay for someone's television or radio ad? Every time you buy a product that is advertised on TV or radio, some fraction of the price you pay goes to paying for those ads. Even if you buy a bottle of "generic" aspirin at a 7-11, some fraction of the price you pay goes towards 7-11's ads. You'd almost have to live on a desert island and be completely self-sufficient to not ever pay something for advertising. (But then, of course, you probably wouldn't have radio or TV anyway.) Fritz Whittington "Build a man a fire and he will be warm for the rest of the night. 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