From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 26 14:13:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6QIDMp09372; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:13:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:13:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407261813.i6QIDMp09372@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 #351 TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:11:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 351 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Regulating VoIP in the US (VOIP News) 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (johndee) Dedicated Internet Line (mike3) Network Usage Friendly PC to PC Voice Software (RJANKIR) Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) (John Levine) Re: Hot-Button Issue (Tony P.) Re: Hot-Button Issue (Frank@Nospam.com) Re: Motorola and AT&T Wireless Bringing 3G/UMTS to No. America (Warnock) MyDoom Virus Search Engine Use (Monty Solomon) Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (John Covert) Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (Frank@Nospam.com) National Cell Phone Courtesy Month (Carl Moore) Re: Meridian Norstar - Caller ID (Marise_A_Klapka@withheld on request) Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged (Hammond of Texas) Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill (Paul Vader) 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: VOIP News Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 11:47:53 -0400 Subject: Regulating VoIP in the US Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=regulatingvoipint1090836687&area=news The influential US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee effectively re-wrote a draft bill dealing with the regulation of VoIP on Thursday, transferring some powers from federal to state regulators. The draft VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act, introduced into the Senate in April by Republican Senator John Sununu, was intended to reserve the right to regulate IP telephony, also known as VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol, to Federal Government. But two amendments, introduced respectively by Republican Senator Conrad Burns and Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan, mean that US states will now be able to force VoIP companies to provide emergency 911 services, to contribute to the funding of low income or rural-based subscribers, through what are known as universal service fees, and to pay intra-state access charges. Full story at: http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=regulatingvoipint1090836687&area=news http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/s2281report.pdf How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 18:47:37 -0500 From: johndee Subject: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Its my impression the only 911 you can get is you are forwarded to a 7 digit number in the center which defeats the system, its just a phone call on a line that administrators use to call for pizza and get calls from their children you could get a busy if they are using it. I called it here and it took 15 rings and it had no caller ID so if I couldn't speak I would be dead. They said ATT and others would not spend the money to get in the "system". Oh, they said it took so long to answer because they were on E911 calls. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: First, let me say my circumstances here may be somewhat different, in a town of 8800 residents and a mostly rural county of 28,000 people. The *ONE* person (per shift, per day of the week) who takes 911 calls (one or two per day, always on a priority basis should various calls arrive at the same time) is also the police department receptionist/phone operator (on general non-emergency calls) and radio dispatcher. That person also responds for Montgomery County (of which we here in Independence, KS are the 'county seat') Sheriff 911 calls. The Montgomery County Detention Center (which many folks refer to as the 'jailhouse' has a capacity of 50-55 inmates, and rarely if ever is close to capacity. In summary, ours is not a busy 911 center. The mother of our police chief lives directly across the street from my house. I often times see Lee, her son, over in his mother's yard cutting the grass in the summer. With all the above in mind, I would like to say the administrative line for police (620-332-1700) and sheriff (620-330-1000) works just fine for Vonage-style '911' calls. That may not work everywhere, but in our case, the dispatchers are **very well trained** at knowing every nook and cranny in our county -- especially our town -- and the database they refer to on calls has every address listed. If you go in the basement of City Hall (where the 'communications center' is located) the phones never ring twice without a courteous answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mike4ty4@yahoo.com (mike3) Subject: Dedicated Internet Line Date: 25 Jul 2004 19:29:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly into the Internet? ------------------------------ From: rjankir@hotmail.com (RJANKIR) Subject: Network Usage Friendly PC to PC Voice Software Date: 26 Jul 2004 08:34:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My friend recently subscribed to broadband service in India which restricts the number of bytes that can be transfered (upload and download) per month (255 MB per month). Sofware like Yahoo and MSN take up about 12 MB for single hour of conversation. I was wondering if there are any PC to PC voice software that does a better job of compression and optimize on the number of bytes exchanged. I read about the GSM 6.10 codec that can be used. Please advice. TIA ------------------------------ Date: 25 Jul 2004 22:48:04 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Posted to comp.dcom.telecom > Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill > From: Mike_The_Bike > Reply-To: DaGroup How do you expect the ack-bot to send you an acknowledgement if you give it a forged return address? It's not clairvoyant. > Again, I did not get the auto-ack. I guess we should feel complimented that he expects the automatic response-bot to know how to turn the forged return address in his message into his actual return address. If you look at the mail logs on the MIT machine, you will doubtless find mail to mjs2032@helpivefallenrochester.rr.com, the forged address that he puts on his newsgroup messages. Some people think that putting fake return addresses in messages is benign. They are mistaken. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Hot-Button Issue Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:37:45 GMT In article , monty@roscom.com says: > With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard > Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at > WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a > 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ > -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's > job? > By Charles P. Pierce, Globe Staff | July 18, 2004 > http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2004/07/18/hot_button_issue/ Having started an eight year on/off career in broadcasting in 1985 I can tell you how the technology changed. First radio station I was at didn't have a gate (That's what the device is known as by the way.) so whatever was said was said and no big deal made of it. But by 1990 or so the gate became a common feature at all radio stations. I believe the FCC should be stripped of it's censorial powers and quickly. Squelching that which the opposing political party finds distasteful is scary. I should also mention this in my post: Why don't we take advantage of the FCC's liberal complaint procedures. Complain that radio is so bland and homogenous now that we find it offensive. Were enough of us to do such a thing, perhaps the FCC would see the error of its ways. How does the saying go, if you can't dazzle them with the truth you can always bury them in bullshit. ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: Hot-Button Issue Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:25:17 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Monty Solomon wrote: > With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard > Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at > WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a > 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ > -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's > job? It's *this* government's job, just like all the other facist governments that have preceded them throughout the world. If the country (re)elects Bush it will only get worse. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Motorola and AT&T Wireless Bringing 3G/UMTS to North America Organization: Rob Warnock, Consulting Systems Architect From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 23:25:59 -0500 > Can someone clarify, isn't UMTS the EDGE technology ATTWS has already > rolled out? No, UMTS is somewhat faster than the current EDGE offering, though not nearly as fast as the EV-DO that Verizon is currently field-testing in Washington and San Diego. Here's what AT&T WS claims for UMTS: ...average download speeds of 220-320 kbps with bursts up to 384 kbps, compared to an average of 25-40 kbps for GPRS. So on the chart at , this would place their UMTS offering in the "EDGE Phase 2 / GERAN" box. [But look at the "1xEV-DO Phase 1" box!! Rates of 500kb/s to 1 Mb/s would seem more EV-DO's speed.] > I thought EDGE currently is only about 115Kbps and might max out > practically speaking at 230Kbps if they allocate enough "slots" per > user at the tower (which has been debated may not happen for a long > time for various technical and business reasons). I think it depends a lot on where you are. I've been using ATTWS EDGE for several months now in the San Francisco Bay area [mostly in the Redwood City/Menlo Park/Palo Alto areas]. Some time ago I upgraded the firmware on my EDGE card (using a download from the Ericsson site) from GPRS Class 8 (3 slots down + 1 up) to Class 10 (4 down + 2 up). Since then, I've been routinely seeing large-file downloads with peaks [5-second sliding averages] just over 230 kb/s (once I even saw 240 kb/s), though I definitely didn't get rates that good before upgraded the firmware. [I have no hard data on large-file upload speeds, except that I saw frequent ~100 kb/s one-second peaks during a 780 KB upload once.] But that's just one user in one part of one metro area ... > When I did research on this a couple months ago, from what I read > about EDGE on ATT's own customer forums, the initial implementation > does not sound good (slow and buggy). Well, I do have to say that the interactive round-trip time (e.g., "ping" times or typing-to-echo when using "vi" or "emacs") is simply *terrible*, especially the first few packets after any period of more than a few seconds without traffic: % ping rpw3.org # my home system PING rpw3.org (66.93.131.53): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=1594.527 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=659.644 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=580.201 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=530.536 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=610.537 ms 64 bytes from 66.93.131.53: icmp_seq=5 ttl=53 time=560.538 ms ... [Note: They seem to be doing some sort of fast-connect circuit-switching on the transitions from idle to traffic and back, rather than true packet-switching.] But as one who once-upon-a-time had to deal with the "rubber-band" feeling of 110-baud full-duplex ASR-33 Teletype (on a PDP-10), I've gotten somewhat used to it again ... ;-} ;-} [And as it happens, I'm composing this reply in "vi" while logged into my home system with SSH. It's usable for such. Mostly.] And except for that initial ~1 sec. startup delay, web browsing is more-or-less unaffected. The browsing speed for complex pages is *certainly* way better than dialup! The EDGE plan, while somewhat expensive ($80/month), is at least "flat-rate" (with nationwide free roaming), unlike some GPRS plans that are $0.02/KB!! At the latter rate, you would burn $80 with only 4 MB! [I use more than that on a single busy day.] Rob Warnock 627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:47:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: MyDoom Virus Search Engine Use http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=700 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/26/1649245&tid=217&tid=1 http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-07-26 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 12:07:51 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage In Pat's note at the end of the original question, Pat wrote: > Vonage allows the minutes to be spread over all the various virtual > numbers" Except for "800 Service" numbers, there are no minutes at all associated with any incoming calls to Vonage numbers. Vonage does not charge Vonage customers (either the called Vonage customer or the calling party if also a Vonage customer) anything for calls to regular or virtual Vonage numbers. Each virtual number assigned in geographic area codes costs $4.99 per month plus a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee. (Vonage charges $1.50 as a regulatory recovery fee per assigned number regardless of the type of service associated with the number.) Calls by non-Vonage subscribers to Vonage geographic numbers (virtual or regular) are billed at whatever rate would be charged by the caller's carrier for a call to that geographic location, as determined by the area code plus first three digits of the number. Each Vonage "800 Service" number costs $4.99 per month plus a $1.50 regulatory recovery fee. Additional incoming minutes are 4.9 cents per month. I do not see any indication that the minutes are pooled if you have more than one 800 number, but they might be. However, additional minutes on a single 800 number are only $4.90 for another 100, and you pay only for those you use, whereas another 800 number would be $6.49 for 100 minutes, whether you use them all or not. /john ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 06:23:08 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications arjay wrote: > My area code is not available for Vonage. I can choose another, but I > assume that anyone who calls from within my own area code will be > charged for long distance. Is that correct? > I have been unable to get an answer from Vonage. Don't know why? The answer is pretty simple. You have to ask yourself: Why do I want Vonage? To be the only telephone in my home? Or, is it to have unlimited calling and a second line? I have had Vonage since March of 2003 and receive calls on it from only one person. Other than that it is an outgoing line only. And, I'd sure hate to have it as my only phone, because it is so much more vunerable to failures than my primary inbound line from SBC. Just last week carpet installers cut my cable service, so I was out of Vonage for two days. I tired plugging everything into my remaining cable outlet that was still working but the signal wasn't sufficent there for the cable modem. With DSL you're a little better off, but still dependent upon household electrical power being up and running. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Couldn't the carpet installers just as easily have sliced your telephone line and left you without SBC service for a couple days? Or consider last Saturday here when a drunk driver on Second Street crashed his car into a utility pole, knocked it over completely and left an entire city block on Second and Walnut Streets without electricity or phone or cable for a couple hours after police arrived and took the man away with them in a drunken stupor. Crews from SBC, electric and CableOne came out and uprighted the pole and re-established their services an hour or two later. Stuff happens. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:30:15 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: National Cell Phone Courtesy Month I just found (via KYW news-radio site) that July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month. It says to make sure your environment is comfortable for you to make a cell call (considering yourself, others near you and the person you are calling). And it suggests shutting your cell phone off if you are away from your office and "not involved with business and with other people". And it says "don't pick up your cell phone and carry on a conversation with someone else standing there"; it sounds stupid to me to use a cell phone when the other person is physically right there. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Meridian Norstar - Caller ID Install for Only One Line From: Marise_A_Klapka@Withheld on request Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 10:04:44 -0500 Please do not print my address. rich@virtuallearning.net (Rich) wrote about Meridian Norstar - Caller ID Install For Only One Line on 22 Jul 2004 08:59:35 -0700: > Hello, > I have eight(8) lines coming into my Meridian phone system. The 8th > line is going directly to a phone set bypassing the Vmail and the > Autoattendant. > The user of the phone set wants Caller ID. I have called the BELL and > had them install it on the line. However, I can't seem to get Call > ID/Call Display to work on the set. > I have used Feature 811 but it only shows me the name of the line that > the incoming call is using. > I don't know how to set the Call ID/Call Display in the Admin Console > for Meridian. > Can anyone help me out? > Thanks, > Rich Rich -- In addition to using the feature code, the trunk cards must be Caller ID capable. We recently added Caller ID to a Norstar MICS 4.0. The label on the trunk card will have the letters "C I" on it. If it doesn't, you won't get caller ID no matter what info the LEC sends. Marise ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 08:20:10 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged Ray wrote: > It does contain a virus ... beware ... NO! Really? Ya think? ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 15:53:14 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations anonfwd774@witheld at request writes: > I'm not really sure how handheld GPS receivers work and I've never > owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work too well inside buildings! They don't work AT ALL inside buildings. As you guessed, they need an unobstructed line-of-sight to the satellite. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #351 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 26 20:43:25 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6R0hPA13662; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:43:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:43:25 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407270043.i6R0hPA13662@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 #352 TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:43:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 352 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #441, July 26, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (Scott Dorsey) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (John R. Levine) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (Barry Margolin) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (DevilsPGD) Re: Dedicated Internet Line (Hammond of Texas) Re: Phone for Noisy Environment (J Kelly) Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill (CharlesH) Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) (News Feed) Re: Phone Card Inquiry (T. Sean Weintz) Clarification on 'Vonage Not in my Area Code' Thread (Patrick Townson) 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: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 16:19:01 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #441, July 26, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 441: July 26, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Sprint Launches Internet Phone Service ** Telus Extends Microcell Offer Again ** Primus to Offer Wireless Phones ** Bell Techs to Vote on "Final Offer" ** MTS to Operate as MTS Allstream ** Allstream Offers Wholesale VoIP ** EastLink Loses Bundling Complaint ** VoIP Hearing Extended ** Reverse Search Directory Service Permitted ** Telesat Launches Largest Communications Satellite ** Rogers Begins "Road Runner" Phase-Out in Nfld. ** GT Exec Moves to Vonage ** No Buyer for AT&T's Rogers Shares ** Rogers Wireless Offers Yahoo Internet Suite ** Bell Sued Over Modem Hijacking ** Telcos and Affiliates Subject to Same Rules ** Court Denies Landlord Appeal ** BCE Sells Yellow Pages Stake ** Telecom Conference Announces Speakers ** Should VoIP Be Regulated? ============================================================ SPRINT LAUNCHES INTERNET PHONE SERVICE: Sprint Canada's new Internet Phone Service, designed for residential and small/home-office customers, is available on six price plans, ranging from $19.95 to $31.95 a month. Numbers are available from Ontario area codes 416, 647, 905, and 519. A gateway device sells for $75, including four months of basic service. ** Sprint President Bill Linton describes the services as "Canada's first Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) compliant broadband phone service." TELUS EXTENDS MICROCELL OFFER AGAIN: Telus has extended its offer to purchase all Microcell Telecommunications shares to August 20. By the last deadline, July 22, Telus had been offered 288 class A restricted voting shares, 15,785 class B non-voting shares, 71,917 Warrants 2005, and 51,080 Warrants 2008. ** Microcell says it "continues to seek maximization of value to security holders by actively considering strategic and financial alternatives to the Telus offers." PRIMUS TO OFFER WIRELESS PHONES: Primus Telecommunications Canada and Microcell Solutions have signed a multi-year deal giving Primus access to Microcell's national PCS network as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator. Primus says it will begin offering wireless service in the fall. BELL TECHS TO VOTE ON "FINAL OFFER": The bargaining committee representing 7,097 Bell Canada technicians is recommending rejection of a contract proposal the company describes as a "final offer." Results of the membership vote will be announced August 16. ** Earlier this month, the union members rejected a previous offer and approved strike action. MTS TO OPERATE AS MTS ALLSTREAM: Manitoba Telecom Systems has asked the CRTC to change all tariff references to its operating units -- MTS Communications, MTS NetCom, and Manitoba Telephone System -- to MTS Allstream Inc. ALLSTREAM OFFERS WHOLESALE VoIP: Allstream's VoIP Access service allows VoIP service providers to connect to the public telephone network. It includes 9-1-1, 7-1-1, 4-1-1, Local Number Portability, and Operator services. EASTLINK LOSES BUNDLING COMPLAINT: The CRTC has rejected an EastLink complaint about Aliant's "value packages," because the telco no longer requires customers receiving the services to subscribe to its local phone service. (See Telecom Update #440) www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-44.htm VoIP HEARING EXTENDED: To accommodate all the parties who want to speak at the CRTC's public consultation on VoIP, the hearing will now take place over three days, September 21-23. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2004/pt2004-2-1.htm REVERSE SEARCH DIRECTORY SERVICE PERMITTED: The CRTC will allow telcos to offer a "reverse search directory assistance" service that provides the city, town, or postal code associated with a given telephone number, but not the street address. Only one search per call will be permitted and subscribers' express consent must be obtained. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-49.htm TELESAT LAUNCHES LARGEST COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE: After several delays, the world's largest commercial communications satellite, Anik F2, was successfully launched on July 17. Telesat says the satellite will provide two-way broadband Internet service as well as television. ROGERS BEGINS "ROAD RUNNER" PHASE-OUT IN NFLD: Rogers Cable has begun converting the e-mail addresses of its "Road Runner" Internet customers in Newfoundland to "@nl.rogers.com" addresses. The change is the first step in migrating customers to the Rogers Hi-Speed service offered elsewhere in Canada. GT EXEC MOVES TO VONAGE: Bill Rainey, formerly Senior VP of Commercial Services at Group Telecom, has been named president of Vonage Canada. He reports to Jeffrey Citron, CEO of the U.S. parent company. NO BUYER FOR AT&T'S ROGERS SHARES: When the deadline expired June 18, AT&T Wireless had failed to find a buyer for its 34% interest in Rogers Wireless. AT&T cannot now sell the shares without once again offering Rogers an opportunity to make an offer. (See Telecom Update #431, 434) ROGERS WIRELESS OFFERS YAHOO INTERNET SUITE: Rogers Wireless now offers a suite of Yahoo Internet services, including e-mail, instant messaging, and news reports, all with no additional charges. BELL SUED OVER MODEM HIJACKING: An Ontario customer has launched a class action suit against Bell Canada, charging that the telco should have known about and prevented the modem hijacking scams that have resulted in thousands of dollars in long distance charges for many customers. (See Telecom Update #439) TELCOS AND AFFILIATES SUBJECT TO SAME RULES: In its follow-up to Decision 2002-76, the CRTC has confirmed that telco affiliates are subject to the same tariffing and bundling rules as the incumbent telco itself. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-50.htm COURT DENIES LANDLORD APPEAL: The Federal Court has dismissed an appeal by the Canadian Institute of Public and Private Real Estate Companies and the Building Owners and Managers Association against the CRTC's statement that it can order access to buildings if carriers and building owners cannot agree on terms. The Court said that the statement, in Decision 2003-45, can't be appealed because the CRTC has not actually made such an order. http://decisions.fca-caf.gc.ca/fca/2004/2004fca243.shtml BCE SELLS YELLOW PAGES STAKE: BCE Inc. has sold its 11.1 million remaining shares of Yellow Pages Income Fund for approximately $123 million. The telco sold 90% of the company in 2002. TELECOM CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES SPEAKERS: Nearly forty speakers have been confirmed for Telemanagement Live!, which be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, October 20-21. Details on the program and registration are available at www.telemanagementlive.com. ** Telemanagement Live! is organized and presented by Angus Dortmans Associates and PW Ritchie & Associates. SHOULD VoIP BE REGULATED? The current issue of Telemanagement features Lis Angus's exclusive review and analysis of the telecom industry's debate on CRTC proposals for regulation of Voice over IP phone service. Also in this issue: ** Planning for High Availability Networking ** Is There a Future for Frame Relay and ATM Networks? ** Key Issues for Telecom Disaster Recovery To become a Telemanagement subscriber -- including unlimited access to Telemanagement's extensive online content -- visit www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm-sub-online.html or call 800-263-4415 ext 500. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line Date: 26 Jul 2004 15:44:42 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) mike3 wrote: > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? Sure. Most sites do. Why? Scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line Date: 26 Jul 2004 15:52:02 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? Considering that "the Internet" doesn't exist as a single physical thing, no. It's easy enough to get a dedicated line to any of the ISPs and NSPs that comprise the Internet, of course. ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 17:24:37 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com mike3 wrote: > Hi, > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? That question does not actually make sense. Firstly, there is no single object known as the "internet" - it is a collection of many many many different networks that are all interconnected. Taking my above point into account, you could argue that any leased line connection to an ISP is exactly that - a dedicated hard line to the internet. I mean wouldn't a T1 line (not frame - pt to pt) to a major ISP qualify as exactly that? Esp if you run BGP over it? One could even argue that if you are running BGP, you not only have a direct hard line to the internet, but that your local network actually is part of the internet. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line Organization: Symantec Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 19:35:23 -0400 In article , mike4ty4@yahoo.com (mike3) wrote: > Hi, > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? Yes. Just run a serial or ethernet cable directly from an ISP's router to your computer. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To those of you who have participated in this particular thread ('dedicated hard line to the Internet') shouldn't we define our terms? For example how many folks know the difference between the 'Internet' (with an uppercase /I/) and the 'internet' (with a lowercase /i/) and what we frequently refer to just as the 'net', I have always heard that the 'internet' consists of many interconnected networks, of which the 'Internet' (itself a collection of networks) is but one part. I have always assumed I was hardwired to the net because of my 'always on' cable or DSL connection as opposed to what we all used to do years ago, with dial-up. Any comments? PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line Reply-To: bond-jamesbond@crazyhat.net Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:28:32 GMT In message mike4ty4@yahoo.com (mike3) wrote: > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? What is "the Internet" A DSL line could easily qualify, depending on what exactly you're trying to do. Nobody ever lost money underestimating the human intelligence. -- P.T.Barnum ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 13:53:39 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: Dedicated Internet Line mike3 wrote: > Hi, > Is it possible, physically, to build a dedicated hard line directly > into the Internet? No. If it were, the Matrix would have you in minutes. ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Phone for Noisy Environment Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:16:58 -0500 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy.com On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:22:44 -0600, Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> wrote: > J Kelly wrote: >> Can anyone recommend a GOOD quality phone for use in a noisy >> environment? Most phones sold today are total pieces of crap. >> Requirements are a volume control for the earpiece, be able to >> withstand a reasonable amount of abuse (dropping the handset, etc, not >> purposely abusing it), works with a POTS line, and hopefully costs >> less than $50. Don't need speaker phone, memory dialing, etc, but >> some of that might be nice, as would be noise cancelling. This is >> used in an area that has a lot of very large fans and motors running >> making a lot of noise. Even the 'office area' in this facility has a >> lot of noise and I'm half deaf besides. > Back in the days of TPC ("The Phone Company"), you could get something > called a "Confidencer" that was a replacement screw on transmitter for > standard handsets. It worked very well by reducing the sidetone (ie > noise) from the area you were in. > Standard phones and TPC have gone the way of the Dodo bird, so I have > no idea where you would go now. Reducing sidetone would be a BIG help. Good phones just do not seem to exsist anymore. On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:09:27 -0600, Phil Earnhardt wrote: > On 22 Jul 2004 12:27:01 -0700, a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) > wrote: >> The best answer for you is a headset. Lots of cabled headsets are >> available that will work in your price range, but you will probably >> want one with a noise-cancelling microphone if the noise level is such >> that can be heard over a normal phone. > I just noticed that there's a new headset option out there (new to me, > anyhow). > The only thing this headset (earset?) doesn't cover is the noise > you'll pick up from your other ear. A headset is not the solution I was hoping to find. I do far to much running around this facility to be able to monkey with putting on and taking of a headset, I want to grab the phone, hear the message, tell them what I'm doing, set it down and go about my business. If I need to walk around to look at some piece of equipment I want to just quickly set the phone on the desk and do so. 99% of the time I am not on the phone, so I can't just leave the thing on. I'm half deaf in one ear, so that helps a little. ------------------------------ From: hoch@exemplary.invalid (CharlesH) Subject: Re: Senate Committee Guts VoIP Bill Date: 26 Jul 2004 20:01:44 GMT Organization: http://newsguy.com In article , Paul Vader wrote: > anonfwd774@witheld at request writes: >> I'm not really sure how handheld GPS receivers work and I've never >> owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work too well inside buildings! > They don't work AT ALL inside buildings. As you guessed, they need an > unobstructed line-of-sight to the satellite. * Some cell phones (e.g., Verizon, Nextel) use something called aGPS (assisted GPS). With this, the cell site the phone is talking to does the complicated part of the GPS protocol, and feeds information to the phone so that the phone can get some timings for specific GPS satellites. The phone feeds this info back to the cell site, which computes the location of the phone and reports it to the E911 center. With the cell site doing most of the work, and knowing the location of the cell site, one can get a location fix on the phone with a much weaker signal and fewer satellites than required for a standalone GPS unit, allowing it to work indoors and between tall buildings. The "assisting" site has to be physically near to the phone (as is the case for a phone talking to a cell site), so it and the phone are "seeing" the same satellites and with nearly the same timings. See www.snaptrack.com. Of course this has nothing to do with VOIP, since with IP, you don't have anything like a "cell site" which is geographically close to the phone which could "assist" it. ------------------------------ From: News Feed Subject: Re: In Regards to Help - Please (Mike Sutter) Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 17:18:53 -0400 My stupid. I've got that in there because I post a couple of un-moderated groups and I'm trying to avoid becoming a "harvesting" victim. Sorry to take up your time. Regards, Mike Sutter PS - I don't suppose even a NAK-BOT could have gotten back to me under these circumstances. :) John Levine noted: > How do you expect the ack-bot to send you an acknowledgement if you > give it a forged return address? It's not clairvoyant. > Regards, > John Levine, postmaster@telecom-digest.org > (and postmaster of about 200 other domains) ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Phone Card Inquiry Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 17:31:41 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > Such an animal probably *doesn't* exist. =UNLESS= they have _local_ > (i.e., _non_ toll-free access numbers in the area(s) you'd be calling > _from_) And, since you didn't specify _where_ you would be calling > from, nobody can tell if there's anything like that in your area. > The reason: > For *EVERY* call to a 'toll free' number from a pay-phone, the > toll-free number operator must pay the pay-phone operator something in > the range of 25-35 cents (I don't have the exact figure off the top of > my head), for the 'use' of the pay-phone for that call. > Either the card issuer (a) charges a surcharge for those pay-phone > originated calls that incur the extra costs, or (b) builds recovery of > those costs into the charges for *every* call. Guess which one lets > them advertise lower rates? > The card issuer surcharge for pay-phone calls =is= more than the > pass-thru cost, because they have to pay the pay-phone operator > _even_if_ the call doesn't complete to the far end. And for 'wrong > numbers', and for calls where the calling-card number is entered > wrong, and for calls where the calling card doesn't have enough money > on it to place the call, etc. etc. > Plus the additional administrative overhead of tracking the pay-phone > billings. That's where knowing ways of bypassing ANI come in handy. Used to be you could get around it by dialing 10-10-ATT, then hitting zero and convincing the ATT op to dial the 800 number (definitely a social engineering challenge) for the phone card for you -- the ANI would come up with an ATT number, not the payphone number. Doesn't work with ATT any more, but may work with other carriers. ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Clarification on 'Vonage Not in my Area Code' Thread Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 20:00:00 EDT John Covert commented on my earlier response to the fellow who wondered what do do since Vonage had no service (as of yet) in his specific area code. I suggested getting a 'virtual toll free' number so his friends and family could call him with ease, at no charge to them. I said that Vonage allowed me to combine all my minutes and use them. John noted, rightly, that Vonage did not charge for incoming calls except in the case of toll free, in which they gave you an allotment of 100 minutes per toll-free number/month. But unlike many of you with Vonage 'unlimited useage' accounts, I have a 500 minutes per month account -- older style plan -- for $15.00 per month, which is plenty for me. 500 minutes per month on outbound (which is all funnelled through the area 620 number) plus the charges per month on the virtual Chicago 773 number and the charges on the virtual toll- free 888 number. I do get 100 incoming minutes toll free and 500 minutes outbound. 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. 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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #352 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jul 27 16:20:44 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6RKKiS23314; Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:20:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407272020.i6RKKiS23314@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 #353 TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:21:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 353 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Avaya Unveils New Wireless IP Telephony Products (Monty Solomon) AT&T Wireless to Provide Wireless Priority Service (Monty Solomon) Cingular Customers Get Wireless E-Mail in New York Minute (M Solomon) Verizon Communications Report 6% Second-Quarter Revenue Growth (Solomon) Motorola's OFDM Field Tests and Research Prove Capability (M Solomon) Motorola Reports Second-Quarter 2004 Financial Results (Monty Solomon) Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes Music Player to Motorola (Monty Solomon) Motorola Makes Seamless Mobility Real (Monty Solomon) Re: Hot-Button Issue (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (charlie3) Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage (Frank@Nospam.com) Re: Phone for Noisy Environment (Justin Time) Re: Phone for Noisy Environment (SELLCOM Tech support) Are NorVergence MATRIX Leases to be Voided? (David O. Rodriguez) Re: More on 1970s British Numbering (Paul Coxwell) Re: VOIP-Based IVR Broadcasting?? (bingoo) Will the FCC Let VOIP Flourish? (VOIP News) Will Internet Chat be Forced to Pay the Tax Man? (Jack Decker) Last Laugh! Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged (Linc Madison) 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: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:33:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Avaya Unveils New Wireless IP Telephony Products For Converged Avaya Unveils New Wireless IP Telephony Products For Converged Mobility Throughout - and Beyond - an Enterprise * New Voice-over-Wireless Gateway and Access Points Are Key Components of Converged Mobility Solution Delivering Seamless Communications Across Private WLANs and Public Cellular Networks * New Avaya Converged Mobility Products Drive Increased Security, Reliability and Voice Quality in Enterprise Wireless Communications BASKING RIDGE, N.J., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Avaya (NYSE:AV), a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services, today unveiled new converged mobility products that help extend the key advantages of office communications to employees traveling throughout - and beyond - an enterprise. These products play a critical role in the converged Wi-Fi and cellular solution architecture Avaya is developing with Motorola and Proxim. Avaya's new products seamlessly extend IP telephony - a software-based technology that uses voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) to transmit voice over a data network - to wireless networks. The new products are designed to improve the delivery of IP applications and voice communications for a mobile workforce, driving enhanced productivity, new cost efficiencies and greater security in enterprise wireless communications. The new products -- the Avaya W310 WLAN Gateway and Avaya W110 WLAN Access Points -- incorporate co-developed technologies from Avaya and Proxim. The gateway and access points, along with Avaya's award-winning IP telephony software, Communication Manager, deliver a voice over wireless LAN (VoWLAN) solution that will support the Motorola CN620, a new dual-network Mobile Office Device announced today by Motorola. Avaya has been collaborating with Motorola and Proxim on the creation of an enterprise seamless mobility solution, which supports continuous communications to users across business wireless networks and public cellular networks. This enterprise seamless mobility solution helps organizations boost productivity by enabling employees to use the Motorola dual-network device to conduct wireless conversations that will not fade or drop as they move to various locations throughout a work campus, as well as away from their office building. Users of the enterprise mobility solution will also have seamless access to advanced IP capabilities, such as listening to e-mail, accessing corporate directories and overseeing multi-party teleconferences, as they move across a WLAN and onto public cellular networks. Seamless mobility can also drive greater cost-efficiency for enterprises through device consolidation and centralized management of an organization's WLAN infrastructure. For example, highly mobile employees who switch between office phones, cell phones or other devices for communications can now use one Motorola dual-network device to make VoIP-based calls as they travel within an enterprise or to an outside destination. The Avaya W310 Wireless LAN Gateway and W110 Access Points also let information technology (IT) administrators centrally manage and monitor an enterprise's wireless networking capabilities from one location, resulting in lower labor and administration costs. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42721747 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:37:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless to Provide Wireless Priority Service Service Helps National Security and Emergency Preparedness Personnel Communicate in Emergencies BASKING RIDGE, N.J., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T Wireless announced today that it has signed a contract to provide Wireless Priority Service (WPS), which helps national security officials, emergency responders, and those in critical infrastructure industries communicate during times of emergency. WPS works by giving a limited number of government-authorized wireless phone users priority access to the wireless network. If wireless network capacity is strained during an emergency, the authorized users' emergency calls are the first to go through. In essence, these calls are moved to the "front of the line" so that they may be completed using the next available wireless channel. The National Communications System (NCS) oversees the WPS program. The NCS approves key personnel for WPS in accordance with criteria approved by the Federal Communications Commission. In order to take advantage of WPS, the government-authorized users simply dial *272 before placing a call. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42719964 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:40:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Customers Can Get Wireless E-Mail in a New York Minute Cingular's Xpress Mail(SM) With BlackBerry(R) Goes Retail; Locations in Metro NYC to Feature New Products for Mobile Professionals NEW YORK, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The days of spending your daily commute staring out the train window, teeth grinding, worried about the e-mail piling up in your inbox are over. Now, thanks to Cingular Wireless, you can have instant access to your e-mail anytime - and getting the service is as simple as walking into any Cingular store in New York City. To meet demand from small businesses and mobile professionals, Cingular Wireless is now offering in retail stores its flagship wireless e-mail and phone offering, Xpress Mail(SM) with the BlackBerry 6280(TM) and BlackBerry 7280(TM) wireless handhelds. Because BlackBerry handhelds maintain a constant connection to Cingular's wireless network, customers don't have to "dial up" to get their e-mail. Retail locations throughout the metro area will have retail space dedicated to these and other business products. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42717133 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:44:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Communications Reports 6% Second-Quarter Revenue Growth, Verizon Communications Reports 6% Second-Quarter Revenue Growth, Led by Wireless Revenue Growth of 25% Results from Growth Businesses and Continued Strong Operating Margins Produce Quarterly Earnings of $1.8 Billion, or 64 Cents per Diluted Share SECOND-QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS * Total Company: 6.0 percent growth in operating revenues; 64 cents in diluted earnings per share; consolidated operating income margin (operating income divided by operating revenues) of 20.9 percent * Free Cash Flow (non-GAAP, cash from operating activities less capital expenditures and dividends): $1.6 billion in the quarter, up 25.2 percent * Wireless: industry-record 1.5 million total net customer additions, 40.4 million total customers; 25.0 percent growth in total revenues; company-record margins, up 570 basis points; company record-low churn (customer turnover) of 1.45 percent per month * Broadband DSL (digital subscriber lines): 280,000 net additions in the quarter, contributing to 5.7 percent growth in total data revenues; more than 1 million net additions over the past year, for a total of more than 2.9 million lines * Long-Distance: 14.7 percent growth in revenues Notes: Growth percentages cited above compare second-quarter 2004 with second-quarter 2003. See the schedules accompanying this news release and http://www.verizon.com/investor for reconciliations to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the non-GAAP financial measures mentioned in this announcement. NEW YORK, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) today reported second-quarter 2004 earnings of $1.8 billion, or 64 cents per diluted share. The results were driven by top-line consolidated revenue growth of 6.0 percent compared with second-quarter 2003 and 25.0 percent revenue growth for Verizon Wireless over the same period. Consolidated operating revenues were $17.8 billion in the second quarter 2004, compared with $16.8 billion in the second quarter 2003. Growth businesses, such as wireless, data and broadband, accounted for 52 percent of Verizon's second-quarter 2004 revenues, compared with 46 percent of the company's second-quarter revenues last year. Wireless total revenues were $6.8 billion in the second quarter 2004, compared with $5.5 billion in the second quarter 2003. This was the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit, year-over-year wireless revenue increases. Domestic Telecom operating revenues were $9.6 billion in the second quarter 2004, a 2.9 percent decrease compared with the second quarter 2003 and a slight increase compared with the first quarter 2004. Second-quarter results included an increase of 14.7 percent in revenues from all long- distance services, which were $1.0 billion compared with $0.9 billion in the second quarter 2003, and an increase of 5.7 percent in total data revenues, which were $1.9 billion compared with $1.8 billion in the second quarter 2003. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42714069 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:45:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola's OFDM Field Tests and Research Prove Capability Motorola's OFDM Field Tests and Research Prove Capability to Achieve 300 Mbps Mobile Broadband Data Rates Pioneers development of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) solutions for ultra high-speed next generation wireless networks. SCHAUMBURG, Ill., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT), by combining results from field experiments and research conducted by Motorola Labs, has proven existing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology can support high-speed mobile networks with a peak downlink speed of up to 300 Mbps. This research demonstrates that future all-IP mobile networks using OFDM technology have the capability to provide a broadband user experience that was previously thought to be unattainable. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711073 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:29:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola Reports Second-Quarter 2004 Financial Results - Second-quarter 2004 sales of $8.7 billion, up 41 percent compared to second-quarter 2003 sales of $6.2 billion. - Second-quarter 2004 GAAP pre-tax earnings of $800 million, up 614 percent compared to second-quarter 2003 GAAP pre-tax earnings of $112 million. - Second-quarter 2004 GAAP loss of $203 million, or ($.09) per share(1), compared to second-quarter 2003 GAAP earnings of $119 million, or $.05 per share. Second-quarter 2004 GAAP results include: (1) a non- cash tax expense of $898 million, or ($.38) per share, related to the establishment of a deferred tax asset valuation reserve associated with the initial public offering of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., an entity comprised of the company's semiconductor operations, (2) a tax benefit of $197 million, or $.08 per share, resulting from the reversal of tax reserves due to the settlement of certain tax audit items, and (3) other items described in this release. - Second-quarter 2004 positive operating cash flow of $994 million, allowing the company to complete the quarter with net cash of $1.8 billion, compared to net debt of $41 million at the end of 2003.(2) SCHAUMBURG, Ill., July 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) today reported sales of $8.7 billion in the second quarter of 2004. This is a 41 percent increase from sales of $6.2 billion in the second quarter of 2003. Motorola reported pre-tax earnings of $800 million, presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), up 614 percent compared to second quarter 2003 pre-tax earnings of $112 million. Motorola reported a GAAP net loss of $203 million, or ($.09) per share, in the second quarter of 2004 as second-quarter 2004 results include: (1) a non-cash tax expense of $898 million, or ($.38) per share, related to the establishment of a deferred tax asset valuation reserve associated with the initial public offering of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., (2) a tax benefit of $197 million, or $.08 per share, resulting from the reversal of tax reserves due to the settlement of certain tax audit items, (3) income of $22 million pre-tax resulting from the reversal of reserves relating to exit and severance costs, income of $21 million pre-tax resulting from the reversal of loan reserves relating to uncollected receivables, and income of $20 million pre-tax resulting from the reversal of reserves relating to the previous sale of a business, totaling $63 million pre-tax, or $.02 cents per share, (4) expense of $41 million pre-tax, or ($.02) per share, for separation costs relating to the company's semiconductor operations, (5) income of $20 million pre-tax, or $.01 per share, relating to the partial recovery of a previously impaired investment, and (6) expense of $15 million pre-tax, or ($.01) per share, relating to in-process research and development costs from an acquisition. Motorola reported GAAP net earnings of $119 million, or $.05 per share, in the second quarter of 2003. As reported in Motorola's second-quarter 2003 earnings release, second-quarter 2003 earnings included income of $100 million after-tax, or $.04 per share, relating to special items. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42609155 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:29:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes Music Player to Motorola's Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes(R) Music Player to Motorola's Next-Generation Mobile Phones ROSEMONT, Ill., and CUPERTINO, Calif., July 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and Apple(R) (Nasdaq: AAPL) today announced they are partnering to enable millions of music lovers to transfer their favorite songs from the iTunes(R) jukebox on their Mac(R) or PC, including songs from the iTunes Music Store, to Motorola's next-generation 'always with you' mobile handsets, via a USB or Bluetooth(R) wireless connection. Apple will create a new iTunes mobile music player, which Motorola will make the standard music application on all their mass-market music phones, expected to be available in the first half of next year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42709096 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:52:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola Makes Seamless Mobility Real Company Announces World's First Integrated, Dual-Network Phone, Slimmest Clam, Apple iTunes(TM) Alliance, Home Remote Control, His-and-Hers TV, and Fingerprints-on-Demand - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711006 Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes(R) Music Player to Motorola's Next-Generation Mobile Phones - Jul 26, 2004 09:05 PM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42709096 Motorola A780 Helps Mobile Professionals Gain Significant Edge - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711031 Untether Yourself With the New Motorola MPx220 - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711038 Introducing the Motorola RAZR V3 - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711045 Motorola Announces New V551 -- The Hard-Working Handset With a Playful Edge - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711052 Motorola Takes 3G Technology to the Masses - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711059 Your Phone. Your Mail. Your Plans. Sync it With MOTOSYNC(TM) - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711066 Motorola's OFDM Field Tests and Research Prove Capability to Achieve 300 Mbps Mobile Broadband Data Rates - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711073 Motorola Turns Enterprise Business Communications Inside Out - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711020 Motorola Wins VIVO Award for All Its Near Term Mobile Switching Center (MSC) Deployments in Brazil; Commercial Deployment Already Underway in Londrina - Jul 27, 2004 01:10 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42711021 Media Event Hosted by Chairman and CEO Ed Zander and Presentation by Motorola Executives to be Webcast - Jul 21, 2004 03:04 PM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42637178 ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Hot-Button Issue Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 02:07:46 GMT In article , Frank@Nospam.com says: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> With the FCC issuing fines in record numbers to everyone from Howard >> Stern to Bubba the Love Sponge, the "dump" button, like this one at >> WEEI, has taken on newfound importance because it allows for a >> 10-second delay to censor out naughty words. Never mind %!*$ or #%*@ >> -- even the word "effin' " is off-limits. But is this the government's >> job? > It's *this* government's job, just like all the other facist > governments that have preceded them throughout the world. If the > country (re)elects Bush it will only get worse. The only problem with the latter position is that the biggest advocate on the FCC for fining stations for profanity is Commissioner Copps, a Democrat, rather than the Republicans who respond to Bush. Rumor has it that Copps would be in line for the Chairmanship under Kerrey. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Date: 26 Jul 2004 20:20:53 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Cell phones have been around for years and have similar problems to VOIP phones; more and more cell phones and VOIP phones are going into use and many will replace traditional copperline phones, regardless of 911 concerns. Public officials will find solutions to 911 calls originating from cell and internet phones. I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old POTS phone when I can get five times the functionality and unlimited US minutes for a lower price from Vonage. With a cell phone for backup my internet phone does not have perform exactly like a traditional phone. ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: Area Code Unavailable For Vonage Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 01:39:28 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Frank@Nospam.com: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Couldn't the carpet installers just > as easily have sliced your telephone line and left you without SBC > service for a couple days? Or consider last Saturday here when a > drunk driver on Second Street crashed his car into a utility pole, > knocked it over completely and left an entire city block on Second > and Walnut Streets without electricity or phone or cable for a > couple hours after police arrived and took the man away with them > in a drunken stupor. Crews from SBC, electric and CableOne > came out and uprighted the pole and re-established their services an > hour or two later. Stuff happens. PAT] No. Telco inside wiring is normally twisted pair well up inside the wall, not along the baseboard. Plus, line charateristics for a POTS line are a lot less critical than signal strength on cable for broadband. Although I still had a working cable outlet providing acceptable television it would not support the cable modem. And, had one convention telco jack gone bad chances are another one (or more) would still be working. As to damage to outside plant like you mention, that was fixed in a few hours. You're right, stuff does happen. But, you're far more apt to have a Vonage go down for local reasons than you are a POTS telco line. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But if security of local, inside wiring is an important issue, then why not stuff the cable wire in the wall also or at least leave it somewhere besides running across the carpet or tacked on the wall. Basically all one can do is protect the stuff within your own local reach, and hope the outside plant otherwise stays together as it should. For instance, my own cable (television and internet and radio line) comes from the drop to the side of my house, is mounted securely on the outside wall to the base of the house, then goes to the lightning protector and from there to two demarcs; one goes immediatly through a hole drilled for it under a window into the computer room area; the other side of the wire (outside line) goes under the house to the front of the house where it enters through a hole drilled under a window and into the bedroom and another tap: to the bedroom television and the tap goes to the main living room area for the other television set and the radio. The phone does a lot the same: from the demarc on the side of the house to under the house where it splits in various directions to serve the three phone outlets (computer room, bedroom and dining room/kitchen area.) I try to protect all my wiring for the reasons you mention. PAT] ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Phone for Noisy Environment Date: 27 Jul 2004 06:15:54 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com J Kelly wrote in message news:: > On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:22:44 -0600, Clark W. Griswold, Jr. > <73115.1041@compuserve.com> wrote: >> J Kelly wrote: >>> Can anyone recommend a GOOD quality phone for use in a noisy >>> environment? Most phones sold today are total pieces of crap. >>> Requirements are a volume control for the earpiece, be able to >>> withstand a reasonable amount of abuse (dropping the handset, etc, not >>> purposely abusing it), works with a POTS line, and hopefully costs >>> less than $50. Don't need speaker phone, memory dialing, etc, but >>> some of that might be nice, as would be noise cancelling. This is >>> used in an area that has a lot of very large fans and motors running >>> making a lot of noise. Even the 'office area' in this facility has a >>> lot of noise and I'm half deaf besides. >> Back in the days of TPC ("The Phone Company"), you could get something >> called a "Confidencer" that was a replacement screw on transmitter for >> standard handsets. It worked very well by reducing the sidetone (ie >> noise) from the area you were in. >> Standard phones and TPC have gone the way of the Dodo bird, so I have >> no idea where you would go now. > Reducing sidetone would be a BIG help. Good phones just do not seem > to exsist anymore. > On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 23:09:27 -0600, Phil Earnhardt > wrote: >> On 22 Jul 2004 12:27:01 -0700, a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) >> wrote: >>> The best answer for you is a headset. Lots of cabled headsets are >>> available that will work in your price range, but you will probably >>> want one with a noise-cancelling microphone if the noise level is such >>> that can be heard over a normal phone. >> I just noticed that there's a new headset option out there (new to me, >> anyhow). >> The only thing this headset (earset?) doesn't cover is the noise >> you'll pick up from your other ear. > A headset is not the solution I was hoping to find. I do far to much > running around this facility to be able to monkey with putting on and > taking of a headset, I want to grab the phone, hear the message, tell > them what I'm doing, set it down and go about my business. If I need > to walk around to look at some piece of equipment I want to just > quickly set the phone on the desk and do so. 99% of the time I am not > on the phone, so I can't just leave the thing on. > I'm half deaf in one ear, so that helps a little. Well, you used to be able to get PTT - pusb to talk - handsets, but they kind of died out when cheap phones started flooding the market and people wouldn't pay for quality. ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Phone for Noisy Environment Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 17:15:09 GMT J Kelly posted on that vast internet thingie: > A headset is not the solution I was hoping to find. I do far to much > running around this facility to be able to monkey with putting on and > taking of a headset, I want to grab the phone, hear the message, tell > them what I'm doing, set it down and go about my business. If I need > to walk around to look at some piece of equipment I want to just > quickly set the phone on the desk and do so. 99% of the time I am not > on the phone, so I can't just leave the thing on. It appears that your enemy here might be physics. (I am trying to be helpful here so please don't misunderstand.) If the vibration and sound pressure is so high tht you can't use a phone then you might want to consider what that sound pressure is doing to your ears. The only thing that I can think of would be a head set designed for such an environment which would also have the advantage of hearing protection. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Mini-Splitter log splitter! If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: David O. Rodriguez Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:02:37 -0500 Subject: Are NorVergence MATRIX Leases to be Voided? Pat, I read a post on ripoffreport.com that states that a judge may void all of the leases for NorVergence's MATRIX boxes. I am trying to confirm this. Hopefully someone has information and will reply. David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But in the interim, while waiting for the court to void all the paper, (effectively forcing the bank/lender/ loan-leasing companies who prepaid Vonage for some period of time to get in line with the Bankrupty creditor's commitee) be certain to **freeze all accounts payable to Norvergence until advised otherwise by your attorney or a judge. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: More on 1970s British Numbering Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:34:47 +0100 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Paul Coxwell for this very > interesting and comprehensive report on 1970's British dialing. This > report will be filed in our archives in the history section, for > further rereference as needed. PAT] Pat, Glad you found this interesting enough to archive. This being the case, perhaps I should add a couple of other points which I didn't mention in my first post. An arrangement known as the "Linked Numbering Scheme" was also very common by the 1970s. This was a system where two or more exchanges which had separate local numbering in the past were combined into a kind of shared numbering space. This was often done as numbers had digits added to make them up to 5 or 6 digits in length. A subscriber on any of the linked exchanges could then dial any of the others with just the listed number. This had the advantage of eliminating local routing codes for a lot of calls, but made calls within one's own office longer as the full number had to be dialed. It was very common with neighboring small-to-medium sized towns, then spread to include the linking of village UAX offices into the nearby town's numbering range. I'll continue with the Truro area as an example. I've already mentioned that there were several small village UAXs served from Truro, each with a 5x routing code and 3-digit local numbers, and each having access to Truro trunks by dialing 9. One such exchange had been Three Waters, located about 5 miles from Truro itself, with the local routing 56 and the usual 3-digit UAX numbering. The shop my parents ran still had rubber stamps and other items which showed the old exchange and number: Three Waters 305. By the time we moved there in 1980, however, Three Waters had already been changed into a linked scheme with Truro. All numbers had been changed to 6 digits, 560xxx, and the official exchange and number was then Truro 560305. As far as dialing was concerned, calls from the Three Waters office were then placed exactly as if dialing from Truro itself, i.e. you called Truro as just the 4, 5, or 6-digit number, no 9 first. This amalgamation of numbers would continue in the years that followed. I used Zelah as an example before, when in 1980 it was still a UAX with 3-digit local numbers, reached from Truro with the local routing code 54. If you look at that area today, you'll see that Zelah numbers are listed as (01872) 54xxxx. As I mentioned, quite often neigboring towns would also use a linked numbering scheme. A few miles west of Truro, for example, are two almost-combined towns of Redruth and Camborne. By 1980 they were also using a linked numbering scheme with, as I recall, 7xxxx numbers being Camborne and 2xxxx being Redruth. (I think there were mixed 5- and 6-digit numbers at that time, and I believe Redruth might have had 3xxxx and/or 4xxxx numbers as well, but it's been a few years!). Redruth/Camborne also shared an STD code: 209 (or 0209 as it was always printed here). Note that in some cases a small office "swallowed up" by a larger one took the parent name, as in the case of Three Waters which became part of the Truro numbering range. But, many small exchange names continued after their inclusion into a linked scheme. The village of St. Day, for example, had previously been a dependent of Redruth. In typical UAX fashion, it had had 3-digit local numbers, reached its parent exchange by dialing 9, and Redruth subscribers called St. Day with a local routing code: 82. Callers from elsewhere in the country would have been told to call St. Day as (0209-82) plus the 3-digit number. But by 1980 this had also been added to the Redruth/Camborne linked numbering scheme, numbers in the village then being listed as St. Day 820xxx. That meant that calls within the village then had to be dialed as 6-digits, but they could call Redruth and Camborne with just the 2xxxx or 7xxxx number and no 9 first. Quite what criteria were used to determine whether an exchange linked in this way kept its name or adopted the name of the larger town, I don't know. Both Three Waters and St. Day exchanges served rural villages, yet Three Waters was converted to Truro 560xxx while St. Day was still listed as St. Day 820xxx, not Redruth 820xxx. If anyone has any ideas on what determined the choice of whether to rename or not, I'd be very interested. The fact that the required local routing codes varied depending upon which exchange one was calling from resulted in the GPO issuing separate dialing code booklets to all subscribers, different editions of the book for each location. There was generally a page which would show all the local routings needed. For example, the Truro booklet would tell subscribers to dial 92 plus the number to call St.Day, whereas the Redruth booklet would say something like "St. Day ... Dial number only." As well as the local routings, the booklets at this point in time also indicated which STD areas were callable at the reduced long-distance rate. By the late 1970s, there were just three basic charge rates. Anything outside the local calling area up to about 35 miles distant was STD "a" rate. Beyond the 35-mile limit, calls were charged at "b" rate, no matter whether calling 40 miles or to other end of the country. So the dialing code booklet for a given exchange would also list which STD codes were located in the "a" zone, and then point out that calls to all other STD codes would be charged at the "b" rate. (Note that anything dialed via the local routing codes would automatically be a local call, although of course in the U.K. in the 1978/79 period local calls were already charged and timed!) Although I touched briefly on the concept of dependent exchanges and the group switching centers, there were in fact many other designations used, and also some minor exchanges which were somewhat in between in terms of hierarchy (but which still largely depended upon the GSC to handle STD calls). The development of STD and the trunk transit network in Britain is quite a complex subject. There's some more information on it at the excellent Light Straw website for anyone who's interested, starting at this page: http://www.lightstraw.co.uk/ate/main/inland/index.html One final note with regard to the dialing of calls in the 1970s. DTMF, or "TouchTone" dialing did not yet exist in Britain. The GPO had in fact had push-button phones available for some years, but all they did was store the digits and dial-pulse them out. The buttons on those early GPO phones were also very large and took a hefty stab to push. DTMF dialing was not to appear until the 1980s, after the privatization of the network and the coming of BT in place of GPO Telephones. Regards, Paul Coxwell [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for this additional report on 1970's dialing in the UK. It will be filed as an archives update along with your first report. PAT] ------------------------------ From: box11@udyog.com (bingoo) Subject: Re: VOIP-Based IVR Broadcasting?? Date: 27 Jul 2004 10:47:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks, Steven, for the suggestion. If we use Asterisk, which VOIP gateway does it use? --B11 Steven J Sobol wrote in message news:: > bingoo wrote: >> We are currently using an IVR application to dial numbers and play a >> recorded message thru a dial-up telephone line. >> We are looking for a VoIP solution by which our PC/software (connected >> to DSL/T1 line) could dial a telephone number through a VoIP gateway >> and, when connected, play the recorded message. > Asterisk can do this. I'd use Asterisk, but there are probably a number > of other IP-based PBXen that can do it just as easily. > 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: VOIP News Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:48:28 -0400 Subject: Will the FCC Let VOIP Flourish? Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.techcentralstation.com/072704D.html By Kevin Werbach The 1996 Telecommunications Act was hailed as a dramatic update to the musty sixty-year Communications Act. With the worlds of communications and computing rapidly converging through a great digital migration, the World Wide Web taking off, and new technologies promising to transform the very meaning of telecom, such a rewrite was certainly necessary. It's hard not to conclude that the 1996 Act as been a failure. New technologies such as VOIP are indeed poised to revolutionize communications. The promised local phone competition, however, has largely failed to materialize. The central thrust of the 1996 Act was to complete the 1984 breakup of the old monopoly AT&T, opening up local markets to competition while freeing the Baby Bell incumbents to compete in other markets such as long-distance and video. Eight years in, the industry is still fighting in courts over regulatory arcana, with no end in sight. Local competition, such as it is, has developed largely on the basis of the unbundled network element platform (UNE-P) rules adopted by the FCC and state regulators. Thanks to a series of court and FCC decisions, however, UNE-P may well disappear by the end of this year. Where did the authors of the 1996 Act go wrong? Contrary to the line the Bells are promoting, the flaw in the Act wasn't its requirement that incumbents open their networks. Simply eliminating rules designed to address market power, without addressing the reality of that market power, produces nothing more than unregulated monopolies. That was true in 1996, and it's true today. Full story at: http://www.techcentralstation.com/072704D.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:19:51 -0400 Subject: Will Internet Chat be Forced to Pay the Tax Man? Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,39122623,00.htm by Declan McCullagh If the US Congress has its way, yes ... New US legislation would require businesses to pay taxes for offering internet chat and collaboration -- even if they're located outside the US. CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh asks: Does the government have any right to do this? Tiago Bittencourt Silva started an ambitious programming project last month: an open-source utility that lets small groups of internet users communicate through instant messages, video links and audio chat. Silva's project, called p2pCommunity, is designed to appeal to groups of 2 to 100 people who want to collaborate on writing papers or designing software applications. He's already made a pre-alpha release available at no cost on the SourceForge distribution site. Thanks to a bizarre move by the US Congress last week, p2pCommunity and hundreds of similar projects could end up paying taxes to state governments to prop up the antediluvian scheme of running copper wires to rural households for analog phone service. Existing law imposes those taxes on cellular and landline customers to subsidize rural customers, and state officials are hungrily eyeing the internet as a rich additional source of untapped revenue. "Open-source software like mine can't pay any taxes, so the audio chat features of the program may need to be taken off of the program, or the users will need to pay the tax to use it," Silva says. It's not clear why programmers like Silva and companies offering commercial voice software must subsidize rural telephone companies. By that logic, Congress should have forced Henry Ford to pay for horse troughs. It should have also extorted cash from laser printer manufacturers on behalf of the dying manual-typewriter industry. Full story at: http://comment.silicon.com/0,39024711,39122623,00.htm ------------------------------ Subject: Last Laugh! Re: Truth or Fiction? Osama Found Hanged Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:31:38 -0700 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed In article , Linc Madison wrote: > In article , > wrote: >> Osama Bin Ladin was found hanged ... >> http:// ... /OsamaFoundDead.zip > I haven't checked the file myself, but a report in uk.telecom > indicates that the file contains the "HackArmy" (a.k.a. "HacArmy") > virus. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder, Linc ... If I were to start > a message going around on the net saying that Mr. Hitler was in fact > alive in Brazil ..., how many viruses do you suppose I could foist > off? I wouldn't dare sign my name to it; everyone knows I am a > cracked pot. Could I use your name for the message, Linc? PAT] Hitler is working at a 7-11 in upstate Michigan; he trades shifts with Elvis. In any case, it has now been revealed that the body found hanged was incorrectly identified. It was *NOT* Osama bin Laden. It was actually California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, confirmed by the suicide note found alongside the body. It must be true -- I found it on Usenet, pointing to the same servers that hosted the earlier incorrectly identified photos. Just remember: everything you read on the Internet must be true, or else it wouldn't be there. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com All U.S. and California anti-spam laws apply, incl. 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Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #353 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jul 28 13:15:11 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6SHFA104327; Wed, 28 Jul 2004 13:15:11 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 13:15:11 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407281715.i6SHFA104327@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 #354 TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Jul 2004 13:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 354 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Avaya Reports Increased Revenues, Operating Income (Monty Solomon) Akamai Reports Record Revenue and Profits (Monty Solomon) Comcast Adds New 4Mbps ('4Meg') Speed Option to High-Speed (M Solomon) Telefonica Reports Solid Growth of 5.6% in Operating Revenues (Solomon) Comcast Reports Second Quarter 2004 Results (Monty Solomon) Wi-Fi Service Expands Its Reach (Monty Solomon) PluggedIn: Back-to-School Gadget Prices Take a Fall (Monty Solomon) Re: Will the FCC Let VOIP Flourish? (John McHarry) Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? (Phil Earnhardt) Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging (Day Bird Loft) Any Good, Simple Home Phone Systems? (John) 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, 28 Jul 2004 11:41:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Avaya Reports Increased Revenues, Operating Income and Cash Flow Avaya Reports Increased Revenues, Operating Income and Operating Cash Flow From Continuing Operations in Third Fiscal Quarter Of 2004 -Revenues Increased Nine Percent Year-Over-Year to $1.016 Billion -Operating Income and Cash Flow Show Strong Improvements BASKING RIDGE, N. J., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Avaya Inc., (NYSE:AV) a leading global provider of business communications software, systems and services, reported income from continuing operations of $58 million or earnings of 12 cents per diluted share in the third fiscal quarter. Included in the 12 cents was a four cents per diluted share charge for the repurchase of senior secured notes in the third fiscal quarter. The company reported its sixth straight year-over-year increase in quarterly operating income, an increase driven by profitable results from all three business segments. In the same quarter last year, the company said it reported a loss from continuing operations of $3 million or a loss of one cent per diluted share. Included in those results was a three cent per diluted share gain from the extinguishment of debt and a gain on an asset sale. Third fiscal quarter 2004 revenues increased nine percent to $1.016 billion compared to $929 million in the same period last year. The company noted higher revenues and gross margin, coupled with lower selling general and administrative (SG&A) expenses contributed to a 53 percent sequential increase to $92 million in operating income, bringing operating margin to nine percent of sales. This is up from break even operating income a year ago. Operating cash flow from continuing operations in the quarter was $215 million. Gross margin increased year-over-year to 48 percent from 43 percent, and SG&A expenses were 30 percent of sales, down two percentage points from the second fiscal quarter of 2004. The company said including results from discontinued operations, net income for the third fiscal quarter of 2004 was $61 million or 13 cents per diluted share compared to net income of $8 million or two cents per diluted share in the third fiscal quarter of 2003. Avaya said discontinued operations includes its former Connectivity Solutions segment, substantially all of which had been completely divested as of June 30, 2004, and the segments of the Expanets business it had divested. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42730487 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:42:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Akamai Reports Record Revenue and Profits CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 27, 2004-- -- Revenue of $50.8 million, up 5 percent over previous quarter and up 35 percent year-over-year -- GAAP net income more than doubles over previous quarter to $6.8 million, or $0.06 per share -- Normalized net income(a) of $10.4 million, or $0.08 per share, an increase of 89 percent over previous quarter Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKAM), the global leader of distributed computing solutions and services, today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2004. Revenue for the second quarter 2004 was $50.8 million, a 5 percent increase over first quarter 2004 revenue of $48.4 million, and a 35 percent increase over second quarter 2003 revenue of $37.8 million. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42730338 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:49:04 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Adds New 4Mbps (`4Meg') Speed Option to High-Speed Comcast Adds New 4Mbps ('4Meg') Speed Option to High-Speed Internet Service Offering Comcast Also Increasing e-mail Storage to 1.7GB PHILADELPHIA, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast brings speed to the market. Today the company officially announced a 4Mbps speed tier as a new option for its High-Speed Internet service. This announcement comes within a year of Comcast doubling customer downstream speed to 3Mbps, at no additional cost - and establishing an industry benchmark. Comcast High-Speed Internet customers now can choose between two high- speed options: 4Mbps and 3Mbps. Combined with Comcast's world-class content and built-for-broadband applications, these two speed tiers empower users to enjoy the broadband experience that is best for them and their families. The new 4Mbps option is particularly ideal for households engaged in numerous high-speed-enabled activities, such as: streaming audio; multi-player and online gaming; large file downloads; and networking. Upon selecting their speed, customers can then choose between standard High-Speed Internet service (one connection) or Comcast Home Networking (up to five devices), now available on both speed tiers, at no additional monthly service cost. The 3Mbps and 4Mbps services are available for $42.95 and $52.95* per month, respectively, for current cable television customers. [Prices may vary slightly by market.] The new '4Meg' (4Mbps) speed tier will be available to all Comcast High- Speed Internet customers by September, when it is expected to be rolled out system-wide. Comcast 4Meg is already available in a number of Comcast markets, including: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42725945 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 12:21:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Telefonica Reports Solid Growth of 5.6% in Operating Revenues Telefonica Reports Solid Growth of 5.6% in Operating Revenues and 6.9% in EBITDA * The annual impact of the Headcount Reduction Programme, which the company has charged in full to 1H accounts, leaves net profit at 1,254.2 million euros (-12%). Stripping out this effect, net profit growth would reach 15.9%. * The company boosts its profitability in 1H 2004 with an EBITDA margin of 44.5% * Growth of operating revenues (+5.6%) to 14,324,5 million euros and EBITDA (+6.9%) to 6,367.3 million euros reflects the steady expansion of Group operations. On a comparable basis excluding fx and changes in the consolidation perimeter, revenues would have risen by 9.4% and EBITDA by 8.2%. * Free cash flow generation (EBITDA-CapEx) amounts to 5,016.9 million euros year to date, a 13.4% increase on the same period in 2003. * First-half operating profit was 3,421 million euros, 21.4% more than in the year-ago period. * Telefonica enlarged its worldwide customer base by 12.6% to 103.8 million. Of this total, 55.8 million are cell phone clients. * ADSL connections surged to 3.7 million from 1.9 million in June last year. Two million lines are now operative in Spain and more than 1 million in Latin America. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42740704 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 12:23:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Reports Second Quarter 2004 Results Cable Revenue Increased 10.4% to $4.839 Billion Cable Operating Cash Flow Increased 20.1% to $1.920 Billion 2004 Guidance for Cable Operating Cash Flow Increased to Approximately $7.5 Billion or 18% Growth Consolidated Operating Income Doubled to $852 Million $750 Million of Stock Repurchased Stock Repurchase Program Increased by $1 Billion PHILADELPHIA, July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) today reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2004. Comcast will discuss second quarter results on a conference call and webcast today at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. A live broadcast of the conference call will be available on the investor relations website at http://www.cmcsa.com and http://www.cmcsk.com . - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42742776 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 17:12:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wi-Fi Service Expands Its Reach BUSINESS TRAVEL By JANE L. LEVERE Wi-Fi is finally rolling into America's airports. In the last couple of years, Wi-Fi, or high-speed wireless Internet access, has invaded Starbucks stores and McDonald's restaurants as well as Marriott and Wyndham hotels. But it has been hard to find in airports, the one place that business travelers are most likely to have time on their hands. That is partly because so many potential users - not only the throngs of passengers passing through airports, but also airlines and tenants like retailers and restaurants - have had to jockey for access to wireless networks. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/business/27wifi.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:48:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PluggedIn: Back-to-School Gadget Prices Take a Fall By Caroline Humer NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters) - Students hoping to fill their backpacks with notebook-sized computers, portable DVD players, digital personal assistants and other gadgets are getting a pleasant surprise. Many of these popular items are now more affordable. Back-to-school sales and promotions kick off the consumer electronics buying season, which runs through the December holidays, and go a long way toward livening up the otherwise-slow summer period. Because many popular electronics products have been around for a few years, their prices are dropping and their quality is improving, making them both more attractive and more affordable for students, analysts said. Overall prices for hot consumer electronics gadgets like handheld digital assistants, digital music players and keychain-sized flash data storage devices have declined 5 percent to 10 percent from a year ago, said Stephen Baker, director of industry analysis for market research firm NPD Group. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42725850 ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Will the FCC Let VOIP Flourish? Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:22:51 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net VOIP News wrote: > Where did the authors of the 1996 Act go wrong? Contrary to the line > the Bells are promoting, the flaw in the Act wasn't its requirement > that incumbents open their networks. Simply eliminating rules designed > to address market power, without addressing the reality of that market > power, produces nothing more than unregulated monopolies. That was > true in 1996, and it's true today. I don't think that was a flaw. I think it was the intent. The Bells spent a lot of money to get that law written the way it was, and the IXCs spent enough themselves that the Congress could not plausibly plead unintended consequences. ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 08:20:46 -0600 Organization: Kaos OnLine Coalition Yesterday, Motorola announced a GSM phone that also works with Wi-Fi. From the 7/27 Wall Street Journal: > Motorola Inc. yesterday unveiled a phone that combines cellular > and wireless Internet-calling capabilities. The device, called the > CN620, which could be the first mobile phone that combines > wide-area GSM cellular technology with shorter-range technology > known as Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, could open the floodgates for > users to steal away significant minutes from cellular networks > and place free calls over the Internet. I was talking with the owner of a local cafe that provides Wi-Fi for its customers about this yesterday. I was wondering how these little shops would cope with such phones when they start to become widely available. Will they have to buy new base stations that will disable their network for such devices? Start limiting bandwidth to each MAC address? Do any reasonably-cheap base stations provide such capabilites today? --phil ------------------------------ From: loft@pigeons.ws (Day Bird Loft) Subject: Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging Date: 28 Jul 2004 07:34:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging From newspapers to television shows, from small business to the world's largest corporations, and from religion to politics, everyone is riding the blog power sphere. WASHINGTON DC (IPR Wire) 28 July 2004 --- With the coming of age in blogging, people can demonstrate strength in numbers. With the power of blogs it is apparent that it's time for personal knowledge to be recorded and published. In the past five years, blogs have gone from the backroom to the boardroom. More recently during the previous six months, blogs have begun to dominate the information highway. Lately, blogs have become the mainstay of grassroots' politics. However, on the subject of blogging, one might ask "What about business applications?" According to Hans Schnauber, Internet Web Guru, "Blogs are the future of online business . . . they are a structure of communication that will change the way people come together." Mr. Schnauber stated "With news articles in the press appearing hourly on the subject of blogs, it is time for everyone to join the power of blogging, the power of numbers, the power of the people. Blogs can revolutionize the web and blogging presents an opportunity for social networking in topics where knowledge and innovation play an important role." After discovering in 2001 that hyphens work great for blog technology, Mr. Schnauber waited patiently and then began registering more than six thousand blogs on Blogger (Google's free service) and as a result has created the world's largest mega-blog. The mega-blog guarantees that everybody will be treated equally and without favoritism. It is a proven formula that assures every person a voice in the future. As an 1998 ISOC nominee, he has centered the focal point of the mega-blog on subjects that span business, education, and politics. With Google's free Blogger and Feedburner service, it is time for everyone to register their own blog and connect to friends, family, and familiar faces. Business blogs include: http://auto-dealers.blogspot.com, http://corporate-law.blogspot.com, and http://newspaper-publishers.blogspot.com Educational blogs include: http://business-schools.blogspot.com, http://law-schools.blogspot.com, and http://state-university.blogspot.com Political blogs include: http://democratic-party.blogspot.com, http://republican-party.blogspot.com, and http://election-coverage.blogspot.com Mr. Schnauber will reveal his plans for the global mega-blog in the upcoming Fall of 2004. Many will remember this cunning individual as the driving force in the domain name craze utilizing hyphenated domains and registering thousands of names at a price of $100 per domain. Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging see: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb144837.htm Technology Editor / IPR Wire http://iprwire.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:59:40 GMT From: John Subject: Any Good Simple Home Phone Systems? Reply-to: dejolaNOSPAM@optonline.net Organization: Optimum Online I'd like to learn about any good and simple telephone systems for my home. Looking for one that is user-friendly and that won't require a service call for every little problem. Looking for a system up to maybe 3 x 10. Thanks. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #354 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 29 02:28:34 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6T6SYV09793; Thu, 29 Jul 2004 02:28:34 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 02:28:34 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407290628.i6T6SYV09793@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 #355 TELECOM Digest Thu, 29 Jul 2004 02:27:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 355 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson PayPal Notice: Pendency of Class Action; Proposed Settlement (M Solomon) Dial 411 for a Category Search (Monty Solomon) Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings (Monty Solomon) Inside Wiring (was Area Code Unavailable For Vonage) (Neal McLain) How Does Vonage Sound (Ed Abbott) Samsung DS616? (John) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (Mike Donnelly) Re: Any Good Simple Home Phone Systems? (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? (John Levine) Re: Virtual PBX Competitors (Paul the phone guy) Calling a Stolen Cell Phone (Carl Moore) Special Request For Berrien County, Michigan Residents Only (Scrapper-D) Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Lisa Minter) 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, 28 Jul 2004 16:39:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PayPal Notice of Pendency of Class Action and Proposed Settlement https://www.paypal.com/settlement/ http://www.settlement4onlinepayments.com/ Welcome to the In re PayPal Litigation Settlement Website You have reached the website of the claims administrator for the class action settlement in In re PayPal Litigation, Case No. 02 1227 JF PVT, pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose. On July 12, 2004 the Court preliminarily approved the proposed settlement and directed that class members be given notice of the settlement. Copies of the settlement documents, as well as a list of Frequently Asked Questions and Answers, are available through the navigation bar on the left side of this page. Claims for settlement payments must be submitted through this website. Please review the Notice of Pendency of Class Action and Proposed Settlement to determine which Claim Form you should submit, then click on the appropriate link on the left side of this page. Please note that online claim forms must be completed by October 23, 2004 in order to qualify for payment. http://www.settlement4onlinepayments.com/ FAQ http://www.settlement4onlinepayments.com/faq.php3 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I strongly recommend everyone with a PayPal account review this class action settlement file. You might very well wind up with **fifty dollars** credited to your Paypal account, if you get to that site and can make certain statements about your dealings with PalPal or PayPal Debit/Credit cards, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:16:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Dial 411 for a Category Search Need a Florist in Freehold or Fort Worth? Dial 411 for a Category Search No Need to Ask for a Specific Listing; Operators Will Offer Choices Based on the Business Category and Locality NEWARK, N.J., July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Customers in New Jersey can now dial Verizon's Local and National 411 and ask for a bookstore in Morristown or a caterer in Cincinnati, without a specific name or street address, using Verizon's Business Category Search service. With the new service, customers can ask for a type of business in a locality or city, and the Verizon operator will offer three choices randomly selected from telephone listings for the area. For $1.25 per request, customers can get the number and street address for any one or all three choices. Non-published numbers will not be provided via this service. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42752562 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:41:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES, July 28 (Reuters) - Fewer Americans are tuning into the Democratic National Convention than did four years ago as the major broadcast networks treat the event as hardly worth watching, according to ratings issued on Wednesday. But gavel-to-gavel coverage offered by CNN, the Fox News Channel and MSNBC is drawing bigger audiences than in 2000, a sign that broadcasters are losing politically minded viewers to the cable news outlets. Critics say that's no surprise given that ABC, CBS and NBC are limiting coverage of the Democratic and Republican conventions to just three hours a night for three nights -- and skipping one evening of the event altogether. At the same time, the journalists themselves continually convey the message that conventions have evolved into little more than political advertisements and that viewers are better off watching "Fear Factor," "Big Brother" or summer reruns. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42765577 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember very well the 1952 conventions, which were the first ones to be on television. We had four TV channels in those days in Chicago (2-5-7-9) or maybe it was 4-5-7-9, I don't remember, but in any event they had total coverage on all four channels afternoon and evening sessions each of the four days of the convention. There was nothing else to watch even if you had wanted to. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 14:11:28 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Inside wiring (was Area Code Unavailable For Vonage) Frank@Nospam.com wrote: > Just last week carpet installers cut my cable service, so I was > out of Vonage for two days. I tired plugging everything into my > remaining cable outlet that was still working but the signal > wasn't sufficient there for the cable modem. With DSL you're a > little better off, but still dependent upon household electrical > power being up and running. Then PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Couldn't the carpet installers > just as easily have sliced your telephone line and left you > without SBC [DSL] service for a couple days? ... And Frank@Nospam.com responded: > No. Telco inside wiring is normally twisted pair well up inside > the wall, not along the baseboard. Not necessarily: it depends on the age of the building. In the early years of the 20th century, few buildings were prewired for any kind of electrical service. Wiring in these buildings was almost always installed after construction was completed, often surface-mounted. Sometime around 1910 or 1920, builders began prewiring new residential and commercial buildings with hidden electric power and telephone wiring (a hallmark of the arts-and-crafts bungalow was a wood-framed telephone alcove in the hall, complete with a 42A block discretely placed nearby). This pattern continued through WWII, and well into the postwar home-construction boom of the 50s and 60s. By the late 60s, cable television was gaining popularity. In existing buildings, cable wiring was often surface-mounted, either on the outside of the building or internally, in basements and attics, along baseboards, or under carpets. Cable television companies began offering prewire service for new construction. At the outset, most cable companies did the prewiring work themselves because the traditional electrical contractors of the day simply couldn't understand why cable companies insisted on such things as 75-ohm coax, 100% shielding, and home-run wiring. But as time passed, electrical contractors learned the requirements for coax wiring, and eventually took over the job of prewiring new buildings. Today, virtually all new residential buildings, and most new commercial buildings, are prewired for coax during initial construction, often by the same contractors that install power and telephone wiring. Note the shift in terminology in the previous paragraph: coax wiring inside buildings is no longer "cable TV" wiring. It's all generic coax, available for use by any video provider: cable TV company, "private cable" company, OVS operator, MMDS operator, backyard-dish installer, or DBS installer. Even if a cable TV company originally installed it, competitive video providers now have the right to use it. . So it's not necessarily true that coax wiring is normally exposed, while telco wiring is hidden inside walls. It all depends on the age of the building. Footnote: many college towns have "student ghettos": blocks of pre-WWII frame houses that have been chopped up into student apartments. Coax wiring in such buildings is often run around the outside of the building -- partly because it's easier to install that way; partly because it's easier to make the once-a-semester changes when students move; and partly to deter signal theft (wiring on outside walls is more difficult for students to tamper with, and easier for the cable company to inspect). Cable companies call these installations "MUFH jobs" (as in Multi-Unit Frame House), aptly pronounced "muff job." Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: poepauv@yahoo.com (Ed Abbott) Subject: How Does Vonage Sound Date: 28 Jul 2004 12:35:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old POTS phone when > I can get five times the functionality and unlimited US minutes for a > lower price from Vonage. With a cell phone for backup my internet > phone does not have perform exactly like a traditional phone. Hi Charlie, As a Vonage user, how is the sound? I have 3 questions in this regard: Is the sound as good as a POTS line? Or is it somewhere between POTS and a cell phone in terms of audio clarity? Or is the sound quality as bad as a cell phone? I'm interested in finding out how clear phone calls are via VoIP. Perhaps you would be willing to enlighten me. Anyone else who has used VoIP who would like to chime in please do so. I'm seriously thinking of going in this direction. Any Lingo or Vonage users out there? Thanks in advance, Ed Abbott [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My experience with Vonage has been that the quality is generally decent; about the same as POTS. I've had POTS lines that sounded pretty awful with Vonage lines that sounded great and vice-versa. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 01:32:16 GMT From: John Subject: Samsung DS616? Organization: Optimum Online Samsung DS616 ... Any good for a home installation? Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:15:13 GMT From: Mike Donnelly Subject: Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) wrote in news:telecom23.353.10@telecom-digest.org: > Cell phones have been around for years and have similar > problems to VOIP phones; more and more cell phones and VOIP > phones are going into use and many will replace traditional > copperline phones, regardless of 911 concerns. Public > officials will find solutions to 911 calls originating from > cell and internet phones. > I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old POTS > phone when I can get five times the functionality and > unlimited US minutes for a lower price from Vonage. With a > cell phone for backup my internet phone does not have > perform exactly like a traditional phone. Hope you never need emergency services any time in the near future. BTW, what happens to VOIP when there is a power outage? Is there anything similar to "lifeline service"? My 100 year old POTS phone still works. I know because I have had to use it several times during outages. Mike Donnelly [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well there is no reason one cannot use a battery backup with a Vonage phone. The same kind of battery backups used to provide for an orderly shutdown of computers when the power goes out could be installed on the Vonage unit as well. Obviously, limit your useage to emergency calls until the power comes back on. And regards emergency services be sure your Vonage phone is registered in your local community's database which Vonage encourages you to do when you first get your adapter box. PAT] ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Any Good Simple Home Phone Systems? Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:17:12 GMT John posted on that vast internet thingie: > I'd like to learn about any good and simple telephone systems for my > home. Looking for one that is user-friendly and that won't require a > service call for every little problem. Looking for a system up to > maybe 3 x 10. A very popular system for us has been the TMC ET4000 system. It has optional modules to add features like a cordless phone port and other optional addons. It has very nice intercom and paging built in. You can have 16 devices in the system. http://www.sellcom.com/tmc.html Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Mini-Splitter log splitter! If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Jul 2004 20:36:07 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Motorola Inc. yesterday unveiled a phone that combines cellular >> and wireless Internet-calling capabilities. The device, called the >> CN620, which could be the first mobile phone that combines >> wide-area GSM cellular technology with shorter-range technology >> known as Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, > I was talking with the owner of a local cafe that provides Wi-Fi for > its customers about this yesterday. I was wondering how these little > shops would cope with such phones when they start to become widely > available. Will they have to buy new base stations that will disable > their network for such devices? I wouldn't worry about it anytime soon. The Moto phone is is intended to do WiFi on a corporate LAN-based PBX, not on the public Internet. A phone that knew how to contact Vonage or a similar retail VoIP carrier would be somewhat more complicated both to build and to administer, at least until cell carriers and VoIP carriers sell combo plans. On the other hand, I know people who plug a USB phone into their laptop now and make all their calls from public hotspots, and it doesn't seem to have killed them. Phone calls take a lot of bandwidth, but I suspect the ones that people will make from hotspots will be relatively short. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: paulthephonewiz@yahoo.com (Paul the phone guy) Subject: Re: Virtual PBX Competitors Date: 28 Jul 2004 17:00:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are lots of hosted communications services. VirtualPBX.com has been around the longest and has a great business service with advanced ACD capabilities. If you want to run a serious company -- these guys are well worth talking too. They recently won the Commweb award for 2004. Some drawbacks like no voip yet, but calls rates seem low compared to others Other vendors like gotvmail, freedomvoice, accessline offer services that are suited for a very small group of people where you really want a follow me service and dont need the more sophisticated capibilties. Paul the phone guy John Bartley wrote in message news:: > Who are the major competitors to Virtual PBX, for folks who don't want > to maintain their own phone switch? > Anyone here have experience with the Virtual PBX service? > Thank you kindly. > John Bartley K7AAY > Talk More, Pay Less with Net2Phone Direct(R), up to 1500 minutes free! > http://www.net2phone.com/cgi-bin/link.cgi?143 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:48:50 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Calling a Stolen Cell Phone This came in from KYW news-radio in Philadelphia: A woman's purse was swiped, then "within minutes" a store employee brought the missing purse in. A cell phone and money were missing from it. The store manager did his own investigation, and called the cell phone, and it started ringing in that employee's pocket (which turns out also to have the missing money). The employee was fired, arrested, freed on bail, then did not appear in court, so police are looking for him per arrest warrant. ------------------------------ Subject: Request For Berrien County, Michigan, Residents Only From: Scrapper-D Reply-To: daryl@qtm.net Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:53:46 GMT I'm so glad I was able to put this on the Internet. I've never done this before. If I upset someone for the cross posting ... please understand that I will never be doing this again. This is a desperate plea for help. All I ask is that if you are from Berrien County, Michigan, then please visit http://www.edheyn.com and please vote for him in the Primaries on August 3rd of this year. Ed is my new Son-in-Law and he needs the job. Happy news grouping ... All the best, Daryl [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This one time only, Daryl. Please, and thank you. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:01:35 PDT From: Lisa Minter Subject: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins A few thousand years agom as incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year (May and October)! Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy. In more recent years, common entertainment included playing cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards but only applicable to the "Ace of Spades." To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren't "playing with a full deck." In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However, how to prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem ... how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding or rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations. However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." (All this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.) ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #355 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 29 23:10:10 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6U3AAO19710; Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:10:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:10:10 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407300310.i6U3AAO19710@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 #356 TELECOM Digest Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:10:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 356 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Group Warns DVRs Endangered (Monty Solomon) Attention, Shoppers: You Can Speed Straight Through Checkout (M Solomon) FBI CALEA Petition on FCC Agenda for August 4 (Jack Decker) Telco Video & VOIP Stakes Rising (Jack Decker) Grand Haven, Michigan, Cuts the Cord (Jack Decker) AT&T CallVantage (2000) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (Jack) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (Fritz Whittington) Vonage Compared to AT&T CallVantage? (Chip G) Anyone Using Avaya Communication Manager API? (Chip G) Re: Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings (Paul Coxwell) Re: How Does Vonage Sound (Rob Levandowski) Re: Dial 411 for a Category Search (Joseph) Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency: Class Action; Proposed Settle (Joseph) Re: Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging (Day Bird Loft) New Jersey Labor Board page for NorVergence Employees (David Rodriguez) Problem With Recycled Cell-Phone Numbers (jmayson@nyx.net) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Henry) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit (Jack Adams) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Bill Turlock) 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: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 08:48:49 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Group Warns DVRs Endangered By Katie Dean Television fans who like to choose when and where they watch their favorite programs are in for a rude awakening next year when new copy controls encoded in digital television streams will limit such freedoms. Broadcasters have been steadily moving from broadcasting content in analog to digital format over the past several years, as required by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. To protect this digital content from piracy, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a rule that digital television tuners recognize copy controls, called the broadcast flag (PDF), encoded in content streams. Digital video-recording devices would detect the broadcast flag, and the flag would prevent users from making multiple high-quality copies of the programs for illegal distribution. As of July 1, 2005, it would be illegal to manufacture or import devices that can receive digital programming without responding to the broadcast flag. To fight the impending rule and to stoke backlash from TV viewers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month launched the Digital Television Liberation Project to guide people on how to make their own personal video recorders from off-the-shelf parts. The digital-rights group is encouraging people to buy digital TV, or DTV, tuner cards for their PCs, and is distributing instructions on how to build TiVo-like digital video recorders. The idea is to get people hooked on the charms of time-shifting -- recording a program and then watching it at a later time -- and to help them understand what they would be missing once the broadcast flag rule goes into effect. http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64309,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 09:05:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Attention, Shoppers: You Can Now Speed Straight Through Checkout Radio-frequency chips are retail nirvana. They're the end of privacy. They're the mark of the beast. Inside the tag-and-track supermarket of the future. By Josh McHugh Issue 12.07 - July 2004 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/shoppers.html ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 12:59:03 -0400 Subject: FBI CALEA Petition on FCC Agenda for August 4 Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com This is from The Jeff Pulver Blog at: http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/index.html July 29, 2004 FBI CALEA Petition on FCC Agenda for August 4 The August 4th FCC Meeting may be a historic one, now that the FBI/DOJ/DEA CALEA Petition has made it to the meeting agenda. The FCC's ruling on this petition will have a direct effect on the state of IP Communications in the US and will influence pending the VoIP legislation in the House and Senate. Posted by jeff at 10:13 AM ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:49:21 -0400 Subject: Telco Video & VOIP Stakes Rising Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=57021 Traditional telcos are gearing up for the battle of the century, and triple-play service over DSL is the main weapon of choice, according to new research from Heavy Reading, Light Reading's research service. The capability to build and deploy new services such as VOIP and video over copper networks is already here, thanks in part to vast improvements in DSL technology. And with the cable competition coming fast, telcos see their DSL triple-play strategies as the key to this fight, according to the report -- Telco Triple Play: the DSL Imperative. Already this week, financial results have backed up this view. Service provider Goliath Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) logged a solid quarter this week, citing DSL services as one of its new engines of growth to counter the erosion of legacy voice services (see Verizon Boosted by DSL, Wireless). Heavy Reading says this is likely to be an acclerating trend in 2004 and 2005, given that the largest local providers in the U.S. are only just now starting to realize the business benefits of a long-term investment in broadband. They're now likely to focus on more revenue per broadband customer, through the bundling of new services such as video and VOIP. What's driving the new urgency? Quite simply, competition. VOIP and broadband services have driven the collision betwween cable MSOs (multiple systems operators) and traditional telcos, a war that's likely to grow more intense in the next few months. Full story at: http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=57021 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 13:47:30 -0400 Subject: [VoIP News] Grand Haven, Michigan, Cuts the Cord Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004039.html Grand Haven, Mich., makes splash with full-city Wi-Fi coverage: This seems like yet another city announcement, but it might be the first city with this scale of access that 100-percent live and commercially available. (Dissenters, please write in.) While there are plans for Cerritos, Santa Clara, and Chaska (Minnesota) to have full coverage, Grand Haven may have beaten them to full deployment. The folks at Ottawa Wireless sent out a press release full of the technical details, such as their support for 802.11a, b, and g, and the fact that their service extends 15 miles into Lake Michigan, providing access for boaters and marinas. The coverage extends six square miles across the town, and its optimized to handle VoIP; a beta test is in progress right now that will cost $30 per month for unlimited calling nationwide. The service has 300 subscribers at its formal launch out of a local population of 12,000. However, the town sees two million -- yes, million -- visitors a year. Customers include the city, and public safety and health groups will eventually use the network. [Comment: And I think about 1½ million of those visitors all try to jam into the town during the Coast Guard Festival the first part of August. That would create problems in any small town, but Grand Haven is basically surrounded on three sides by water (Lake Michigan on the west, the Grand River on the north and east) and there is only ONE aging drawbridge across the river, and every so often it gets stuck open and you have to go about 15 miles east-southeast to get to the next river crossing at Allendale. US-31 goes right through the center of the city but it is a divided highway with traffic lights; there are plans to build an expressway bypass that would go to the east of the city but the Granholm administration temporarily put that project on hold, virtually assuring something close to gridlock conditions continue to exist during the Coast Guard Festival for the foreseeable future.] Full story at: http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004039.html ------------------------------ From: 2000@osaf.org (2000) Subject: AT&T CallVantage Date: 29 Jul 2004 12:24:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com AT&T CallVantage (broadband phone) service does not support Motorola and Siemens phones. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 04:07:02 -0400 From: Jack wrote: > charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) wrote in > news:telecom23.353.10@telecom-digest.org: >> Cell phones have been around for years and have similar >> problems to VOIP phones; more and more cell phones and VOIP >> phones are going into use and many will replace traditional >> copperline phones, regardless of 911 concerns. Public >> officials will find solutions to 911 calls originating from >> cell and internet phones. >> I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old POTS >> phone when I can get five times the functionality and >> unlimited US minutes for a lower price from Vonage. With a >> cell phone for backup my internet phone does not have >> perform exactly like a traditional phone. > Hope you never need emergency services any time in the near > future. You know, every time I read a comment like this, my gut reaction is to want to strangle the writer (figuratively speaking, of course). First for the obvious reason that he is trying to impose his own sense of values on others, but also because it's such a pathetically stupid statement. I mean, to me people who say things like this sound like they want us to live in a rubber room with a 100% reliable phone with a big red speed dial button programmed for "911." One could just as easily say "I hope you never go outside to check your mail without taking a cordless phone along" or "I hope you never decide to take a walk in the woods." The point I am making, in case it isn't obvious, is that (if we are reasonably normal people) we ALL have times -- and probably many more than we think about -- where we are NOT near enough to a telephone that it would do us any good if we had a heart attack or some other emergency. I don't have a wireless phone (in my situation I really have no pressing need for one). I sometimes take walks in the woods, I go out to the outside shed and putz around or do some task outside, and I never have a phone with me and am often out of view of anyone else. Oh the horror, I might have a heart attack and not be able to call 911! Well you know what, if that's my time to go, it's my time to go, and I don't need any goody two-shoes know-it-alls trying to tell me that I am being irresponsible by not having the level of communica- tions that they think I should have. In fact, people like that sometimes almost make me wish I could check out a bit sooner. If they succeed in making the world a perfectly safe place to live, but one in which you have no options left because someone else has dictated all aspects of how you must live, why would I want to keep on living? I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't escape a world like that fast enough! I'm just waiting for these people to start trying to get "unsafe" recreational activities banned, like hang-gliding or rock climbing or motorcycling or any of the hundreds of other things people enjoy doing but that have the potential to get them killed. > BTW, what happens to VOIP when there is a power outage? Is there > anything similar to "lifeline service"? My 100 year old POTS phone > still works. I know because I have had to use it several times during > outages. Bully for you. No one is asking you to give up your 100 year old POTS phone if that's what floats your boat. But you have absolutely no right to decide that I or anyone else needs to have that level of service. I don't WANT to be 100% safe 100% of the time. A life like that would be boring as hell, not to mention that the cost of living would be far higher. What about the Amish people who don't even have telephones, nor for that matter cars to drive to a hospital at 70 MPH in an emergency? Would you be the one to tell them that they need to conform to your acceptable way of living? If I, or anyone else wants to have phone service from VoicePulse or Vonage or any of those companies, and we know what the limitations of 911 are and are willing to accept them, it is none of your damn business! Take your finger-wagging to someplace where it's appreciated, though I cannot imagine where that might be. Sorry if the above seems a bit strong, but sometimes I just get really sick of hearing from people who want to suck all the LIFE out of living because all they can think about is safety, and not only for themselves, but they want to pass their obsession on to others. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Jack, the possible, but unlikely problem of 'what to do in an emergency when all you have is Vonage' is just a red herring anyway. The main problem with so many of those people is that they are shills for an old, dying method of communi- cations where 'the telephone company' is the be-all, end-all way of doing business. They have such a love affair with POTS; a system which won't die soon enough IMO. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Fritz Whittington Subject: Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:48:24 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet On or about 2004-07-28 13:15, Mike Donnelly whipped out a trusty #2 pencil and scribbled: > charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) wrote in > news:telecom23.353.10@telecom-digest.org: >> Cell phones have been around for years and have similar >> problems to VOIP phones; more and more cell phones and VOIP >> phones are going into use and many will replace traditional >> copperline phones, regardless of 911 concerns. Public >> officials will find solutions to 911 calls originating from >> cell and internet phones. >> I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old POTS >> phone when I can get five times the functionality and >> unlimited US minutes for a lower price from Vonage. With a >> cell phone for backup my internet phone does not have >> perform exactly like a traditional phone. > Hope you never need emergency services any time in the near > future. > BTW, what happens to VOIP when there is a power outage? Is there > anything similar to "lifeline service"? My 100 year old POTS phone > still works. I know because I have had to use it several times during > outages. > Mike Donnelly My POTS phones were out for 6 hours this morning, along with the electric service. That's because in my neighborhood, groups of a few blocks are served by an ONU (Optical Network Unit) in the alley. It's basically a mini-CO with a fiber connection back to the traditional CO. Done because there is so much demand for copper pairs that don't exist. (The upside is, I could have a great xDSL connection, since I'm only 300 feet from the CO. Downside is having to pay a one-time fee of $200 for SBC to install a DSL modem at the ONU.) In any case, this whole ONU CO runs off of the regular power lines, so if the transformer running it quits, so does your phone. Oddly, we still had battery on the line, because they use real batteries in the ONU so you don't get hum. But there's no dial tone. That's why we have one cell phone for each person in the house. Well, one of the reasons, anyway. ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Vonage Compared to AT&T CallVantage? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:00:25 GMT I recently received solicitation from AT&T to join their CallVantage program which appears to be similar to the Vonage offering. I am trying to decide which (if either to try). If you have experience with both of these and could provide commentary, I would truly appreciate your insights. Thank you, Chip [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: First of all, I do hand out Vonage e-coupons for a month of free service. I don't come anywhere close to earning a living from it, so I hope that does not cloud what I say here. But regards Vonage customer service, I have never caught them lying to me or trying to stall me or prod me for personal infor- mation. With AT&T on the other hand, with their audacious voicemail hell system (you never ever get the same rep twice), I have had them lie to me, pry for personal information, insist I did not know what I was talking about, tell me I did not know who my local phone company was or how much I had to pay, etc. They in most cases refuse to discuss their service unless you tell them your local phone number first (an unlimited, blanket plan should be an unlimited blanket plan; what difference does it make *who* my local carrier is), and they are just like SBC in the sense that one rep makes you promises on something then the next rep denies ever hearing of such a plan. Do as you wish, but for what little phone service I need these days, Vonage works just fine. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Anyone Using Avaya Communication Manager API? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:00:26 GMT I am considering shifting my application development efforts from TSAPI to the new Avaya CMAPI since all of my business seems to be with Avaya switches lately. Does anyone have experience with the CMAPI? Please let me know what your take is on it. I know TSAPI works with multi-vendor systems and the CMAPI only works with Avaya but it seems like CMAPI opens up a lot of capability that I have wanted but not been able to get from TSAPI. Here is all the info I have found so far about the CMAPI. If you have any other info, please post it or send it to me. http://www1.avaya.com/enterprise/sig/devconnect/cmapi.html Thanks! Chip ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:41:20 +0100 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I remember very well the 1952 > conventions, which were the first ones to be on television. We > had four TV channels in those days in Chicago (2-5-7-9) or maybe > it was 4-5-7-9, I don't remember, but in any event they had total > coverage on all four channels afternoon and evening sessions each > of the four days of the convention. There was nothing else to > watch even if you had wanted to. PAT] Pat, It looks as though station WBKB was on channel 4 around that time. I found this rather fascinating site on the history of TV in the Chicago area: www.chicagotelevision.com Regards, Paul [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, there was a channel 4 in Chicago in the early 1950's, and no channel 2. Then eventually Channel 2 started as WBBM-TV, and Channel 4 was taken away and given to the Milwaukee Journal newspaper where it became WTMJ and what had been on Channel 4 (WENR) then became WBKB; Balaban and Katz movie theatre chain) operating on Channel 7. Channel 5 remained on 5 as the NBC outlet in Chicago, and Channel 9 was (and still is) WGN, since the Chicago Tribune is and always was the (W)orld's (G)reatest (N)ews- paper. No one would hear of Channel 11 -PBS- (W)indow (T)o (T)he (W)orld for a few more years, until it went on the air about 1955 as an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, broadcasting five or six hours from the auditorium of the museum Monday through Friday. A couple years prior to the 1952 politcal conventions which were full time coverage on all channels daily, they had a similar commotion on television daily on all channels for several *months* without interuption: the 1950 'Senator McCarthy Hearings'. Those damn things went on five days per week from about 9 AM Central to around 3 PM central time, with a break for lunch around noon central, at which point channel 9 would run 'Bozo Circus' for about 30-45 minutes then back to the McCarthy hearings. Joe McCarthy, as older readers will recall, was the deluded Republican Senator from Wisconsin who found 'Communists' everywere he looked and in his daily congressional hearings must have grilled and interogated every public servant in Washington, DC. His belief was everyone working for the federal government was either a 'Communist' or a homosexual or both which he said was often the case. One thing we could count on was McCarthy recessing his lurid Congressional hearings each day about 3 central/4 eastern when he grew bored and wanted to get on with his own life which meant going out to cruise all the gay bars (in those days) in Our Nation's Capitol. McCarthy and his foolishness has been well documented in many places. Then the television stations could get back to their regular programming. Poor Senator McCarthy ... deluded old man. When Channel 11 first started broadcasting they were on Monday to Friday only, I think a few hours each afternoon with classroom lessons for school kids. They were dark -- off the air -- on weekends with the exception of Sunday evening from 7:55 PM to 9:05 PM. They would turn on their power at 7:55 PM, play the National Anthem, and the announcer would give their call sign and say, "Now, this weeks program from Chicago Sunday Evening Club at Orchestra Hall." After that religious service ended at 9 PM, the same announcer would come back on and sign the station off the air with the obligitory announcements about station, owner, frequency, power, etc and again the National Anthem. They stayed at Museum of Science and Industry until the early or middle 1960's when one of their major patrons, Edward L. Ryerson, then chairman of Inland Steel Company gave them money to build the 'Edward Ryerson Television Center' on the campus of Northern Illinois University on the northwest side of Chicago. With their move to NIU and the Ryerson Television Center, WTTW went on the air full time and their original weekend program (Sunday Evening Club) is still with them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Rob Levandowski Subject: Re: How Does Vonage Sound Organization: MacWhiz Technologies Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 12:22:47 GMT In article , poepauv@yahoo.com (Ed Abbott) wrote: > I'm interested in finding out how clear phone calls are via VoIP. > Perhaps you would be willing to enlighten me. > Anyone else who has used VoIP who would like to chime in please do so. > I'm seriously thinking of going in this direction. In general, the audio quality is indistinguishable from a standard phone line. In some cases, it's better quality, because your analog "local loop" is six feet instead of a few miles. Vonage seems to have added a small amount of artificial noise since I first started using the service -- fewer people now wonder if I've hung up if I stop talking. However, I do have one complaint about the call quality. The echo cancelling is hit-or-miss. Some calls are just fine. Every once in a while, I'll have a call where I can hear the other party fine, but when I speak, my voice is echoed back to me on about a 0.75-second delay, sometimes at a loud volume. The other party doesn't hear this, but it sure can interrupt your train of thought. If it's really bad, hanging up and re-dialing usually fixes it. It seems more common on calls I place rather than calls I receive. I believe this is an artifact of the analog-to-digital devices that Vonage and its ilk use. When I worked for Global Crossing, we used the Cisco VoIP desk sets internally, and they had no such problem. Of course, you may also have call-quality issues if you're hammering your broadband line with other traffic. I understand the newer Vonage adapters are supposed to help with this. If your router supports any form of QoS, that may help you as well. I've also had difficulty getting timely technical support from Vonage. Thankfully, other than initial setup issues -- as the first person in my exchange, I got to discover that Vonage's CLEC and the ILEC hadn't set up call routing 'twixt each other right -- I've not had much need to get technical support. Rob Levandowski robl@macwhiz.com ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Dial 411 for a Category Search Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:23:29 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:16:53 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote: > Need a Florist in Freehold or Fort Worth? Dial 411 for a Category > Search > No Need to Ask for a Specific Listing; Operators Will Offer Choices > Based on the Business Category and Locality > NEWARK, N.J., July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Customers in New Jersey can now > dial Verizon's Local and National 411 and ask for a bookstore in > Morristown or a caterer in Cincinnati, without a specific name or > street address, using Verizon's Business Category Search service. > With the new service, customers can ask for a type of business in a > locality or city, and the Verizon operator will offer three choices > randomly selected from telephone listings for the area. T-Mobile's "T-Mobile connect" (411) service has had this service for a good while now. In addition they will connect your call to a local two state area included in the cost of the call in addition to normal airtime charges. They also include directory information for Canada as well. remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency of Class Action; Proposed Settlement Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:27:19 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:39:43 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor noted in response to Monty Solomon's posting: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I strongly recommend everyone with a > PayPal account review this class action settlement file. You might > very well wind up with **fifty dollars** credited to your Paypal > account, if you get to that site and can make certain statements > about your dealings with PalPal or PayPal Debit/Credit cards, etc. PAT] And as in other class action suits you can bet your bippy that the lawyers will buy a new Lexus with what *they* get. Class action suits only put a hardship on companies. The end "user" usually gets close to bupkes (zero.) remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Cell Phones Using Wi-Fi; How Will Hotspots Cope? Date: 29 Jul 2004 11:42:18 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Phil Earnhardt wrote: > Yesterday, Motorola announced a GSM phone that also works with Wi-Fi. > From the 7/27 Wall Street Journal: >> Motorola Inc. yesterday unveiled a phone that combines cellular >> and wireless Internet-calling capabilities. The device, called the >> CN620, which could be the first mobile phone that combines >> wide-area GSM cellular technology with shorter-range technology >> known as Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, could open the floodgates for >> users to steal away significant minutes from cellular networks >> and place free calls over the Internet. > I was talking with the owner of a local cafe that provides Wi-Fi for > its customers about this yesterday. I was wondering how these little > shops would cope with such phones when they start to become widely > available. Will they have to buy new base stations that will disable > their network for such devices? Start limiting bandwidth to each MAC > address? Do any reasonably-cheap base stations provide such > capabilites today? Any of the cheap base stations that have "firewalls" will do the job already. You can easily filter whatever port is being used. Already they should be filtering a lot of traffic to and from the outside, most notably forcing outgoing e-mail through a filtering server to prevent spammers from taking advantage of their services, and blocking the Microsoft network ports for security reasons. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: loft@pigeons.ws (Day Bird Loft) Subject: Re: Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging Date: 29 Jul 2004 09:39:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com New Drinking Game [ A little Humor ] Thanks to the Telcom post yesterday [ see below ] Net Fusion has come up with a new game on counting the number of times blog is used in their article. see http://www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/layer8/005801.html#005801 Cheers :-) Telcom Post 28 July 04 loft@pigeons.ws (Day Bird Loft) wrote in message news:: > Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging > From newspapers to television shows, from small business to the > world's largest corporations, and from religion to politics, everyone > is riding the blog power sphere. > WASHINGTON DC (IPR Wire) 28 July 2004 --- With the coming of age in > blogging, people can demonstrate strength in numbers. > With the power of blogs it is apparent that it's time for personal > knowledge to be recorded and published. > In the past five years, blogs have gone from the backroom to the > boardroom. More recently during the previous six months, blogs have > begun to dominate the information highway. Lately, blogs have become > the mainstay of grassroots' politics. > However, on the subject of blogging, one might ask "What about > business applications?" According to Hans Schnauber, Internet Web > Guru, "Blogs are the future of online business . . . they are a > structure of communication that will change the way people come > together." > Mr. Schnauber stated "With news articles in the press appearing hourly > on the subject of blogs, it is time for everyone to join the power of > blogging, the power of numbers, the power of the people. Blogs can > revolutionize the web and blogging presents an opportunity for social > networking in topics where knowledge and innovation play an important > role." > After discovering in 2001 that hyphens work great for blog technology, > Mr. Schnauber waited patiently and then began registering more than > six thousand blogs on Blogger (Google's free service) and as a result > has created the world's largest mega-blog. > The mega-blog guarantees that everybody will be treated equally and > without favoritism. It is a proven formula that assures every person a > voice in the future. > As an 1998 ISOC nominee, he has centered the focal point of the > mega-blog on subjects that span business, education, and politics. > With Google's free Blogger and Feedburner service, it is time for > everyone to register their own blog and connect to friends, family, > and familiar faces. > Business blogs include: http://auto-dealers.blogspot.com, > http://corporate-law.blogspot.com, and > http://newspaper-publishers.blogspot.com > Educational blogs include: http://business-schools.blogspot.com, > http://law-schools.blogspot.com, and > http://state-university.blogspot.com > Political blogs include: http://democratic-party.blogspot.com, > http://republican-party.blogspot.com, and > http://election-coverage.blogspot.com > Mr. Schnauber will reveal his plans for the global mega-blog in the > upcoming Fall of 2004. > Many will remember this cunning individual as the driving force in the > domain name craze utilizing hyphenated domains and registering > thousands of names at a price of $100 per domain. > Telecommunications: Blogs, Bloggers, and Blogging > see: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/7/prweb144837.htm > Technology Editor / IPR Wire > http://iprwire.net ------------------------------ From: David O. Rodriguez Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:38:56 -0500 Subject: New Jersey Labor Board Page for NorVergence Employees This may now be old news, but the following link is a page that was set up by the New Jersey Labor and Workforce Development Department exclusively for (former) NorVergence employees. http://www.state.nj.us/labor/press/2004/0707NorvRapidResponse.htm ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:53:35 -0500 From: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: Problem With Recycled Cell-Phone Numbers Organization: Nyx Net, The Spirit of the Night http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article838263.ece A 16-year-old Hokksund girl has received text messages meant for Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and is constantly being called by journalists. She says she has been tempted to pretend to be the PM's secretary, but so far has just fielded the calls with a smile, newspaper Drammens Tidende reports. John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 10:05:50 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Lisa Minter wrote: > Thus, it was quite > literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." An expression I've always liked even better -- because very very few people have ever heard it before -- is 'as cold as Blue Flujin'. It comes from a Herman Melville novel called _White Jacket_, and refers to a far-away (i.e., mythical) place where it is so cold that even _fire_ freezes! Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit Date: 29 Jul 2004 11:58:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Yet another interesting origin of a phrase, this time as reported in Harry Newton's Telecommunication Dictionary: Edited for brevity ... In the 16th and 17th centuries, most things were shipped by boat. Among the products so shipped was dried manure (tightly bailed) as commercial manufactured fertilizers weren't yet invented. Shipping it dry reduced its weight yet produced another problem. Once the bails of manure got wet, the fermentation process started with the byproduct of methane gas (highly flammable). Several accidents occurred as the result of bails of manure being stowed low in the hold of the ship and getting wet due to water in the low part of the ship. These accidents usually occurred when a crewman decended into the hold with a lantern ... ka BOOM! Investigations soon revealed that these manure bail should be kept out of the water, or on the upper or higher decks. The labeling used on the bails was Ship High In Transit, which became S.H.I.T., which became .... Lisa Minter wrote in message news:: > A few thousand years agom as incredible as it sounds, men and women > took baths only twice a year (May and October)! Women kept their hair > covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and > wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They > couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf > of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The > heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." > Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone > appears to be or is powerful and wealthy. > In more recent years, common entertainment included playing > cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards > but only applicable to the "Ace of Spades." To avoid paying the tax, > people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require > 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they > weren't "playing with a full deck." > In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters > carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It > was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However, how to > prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method > devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on > four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 > cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the > cannon. There was only one problem ... how to prevent the bottom layer > from sliding or rolling from under the others. The solution was a > metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations. > However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly > rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass > Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and > much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature > dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the > iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite > literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." (All > this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.) ------------------------------ From: Bill Turlock Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 14:19:57 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Lisa Minter wrote: > A few thousand years agom as incredible as it sounds, men and women > took baths only twice a year (May and October)! Women kept their hair > covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and > wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They > couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf > of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The > heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." > Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone > appears to be or is powerful and wealthy. > In more recent years, common entertainment included playing > cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards > but only applicable to the "Ace of Spades." To avoid paying the tax, > people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require > 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they > weren't "playing with a full deck." > In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters > carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It > was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However, how to > prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method > devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on > four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 > cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the > cannon. There was only one problem ... how to prevent the bottom layer > from sliding or rolling from under the others. The solution was a > metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations. > However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly > rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass > Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and > much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature > dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the > iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite > literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." (All > this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.) http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I found this rather incredible and hard to believe but some plumbers in speaking about the process of inserting air pressure into old, clogged up lime encrusted hot water pipes to make them a little more useable refer to the process of blasting air pressure into the pipes as 'giving a blow job' (!! ?) 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #356 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 30 21:27:33 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i6V1RWD00607; Fri, 30 Jul 2004 21:27:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 21:27:33 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200407310127.i6V1RWD00607@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 #357 TELECOM Digest Fri, 30 Jul 2004 21:28:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 357 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Jeff Pulver's Planned Opening Remarks For Panel I of FCC (VOIP News) Gatekeeper to Gatekeeper in Linux (kelvinkmk) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) (Paul Coxwell) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit (Ted Klugman) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Paul Vader) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Charles Cryderman) Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency of Class Action (William Robison) Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency of Class Action (K9TOOLS@aol.com) Money Tranfer, was Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency (Del9L@aol.com) Re: Any Good Simple Home Phone Systems? (John) Experience of a New Primus VoIP Customer (Ted Koppel) For Sale: Cisco VoIP Gateways, Gatekeepers, IP Phones (Frank Kim) 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: VOIP News Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:50:05 -0400 Subject: Jeff Pulver's Planned Opening Remarks for Panel I of FCC Forum Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com This is from The Jeff Pulver Blog at: http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/index.html July 30, 2004 My Testimony at the FCC Global Forum: Panel I - July 30, 2004 The following are my planned opening remarks for panel I of the FCC Global Forum taking place later today at the FCC in Washington, D.C. The entire event will be available for viewing via the FCC webcast. ------------------------ Thank you for inviting me to participate today in the Commission's Global IP Forum. I'm Jeff Pulver. As the President and CEO of pulver.com, I oversee about 20 operating companies, each of which is involved, in one way or another, in promoting IP communications. I manufacture IP communications devices, both wireless and wireline; I produce software to help facilitate IP communications; I publish VON Magazine, a magazine devoted to exploring the issues surrounding Voice on the Net. I also host the Voice on the Net Conferences. Each VON Conference draws thousands of attendees from dozens of countries and hundreds of companies around the world. I like to think that, through the VON Conferences, pulver.com has helped to spur the growth of IP communications and has provided essential thought leadership for the emerging industry, spurring innovation and more rapid adoption of IP communications. I became a full-time VoIP hobbyist in 1995, combining my passion for community and technology and connecting my Ham Radio to the Internet to communicate with people around the world. This overall perspective drives my passion for Free World Dialup, which over the years has evolved into a peer-to-peer IP communications application. Today Free World Dialup provides IP-based communications services to more than a quarter-million Internet enthusiasts in some 185 countries around the world. Free World Dialup was, in fact, the subject of the Commission's first order, and perhaps the world's first positive regulatory statement, on IP communications. I applaud this Commission for its timely adoption of the pulver Order. If other countries would follow the lead established by the pulver Order, I am optimistic about the future and possibilities that IP communications affords. I, however, am concerned that many countries might not follow the lead established by this Commission. Frankly, I am even concerned that this country might backtrack from the forward-looking thinking that inspired the pulver Order. I see Canada's CRTC taking a critical looking at VoIP and suggesting that some carriers should not be allowed to take full advantage of IP technology to provide innovative services. I see the European Union suggesting that VoIP services might be subjected to onerous regulatory restriction. A similar proceeding has been opened in Australia and more will follow around the world. And now there are rumblings here in the United States, both at the state and Federal level, that the nascent industry should be subject to archaic telecom regulations that never contemplated the empowering capabilities of IP communications. Just last week, in a bizarre last-minute procedural maneuver, an amendment was attached to what was intended to be the Sununu VoIP Freedom Bill, that would, arguably, subject even X-Boxers to paying into the universal service and intercarrier compensation support systems, simply because X-Box utilizes a voice application. This certainly runs counter to the logic of the pulver Order, and will only serve to stifle the growth of IP communications. This leaves me in the position to lead the charge against the bill if it were to be put up to vote as amended. I expect the 2005/2006 season to be a pivotal one for IP Communication regulation around the world. Finally, I want to mention at the outset of this discussion, that I have established the Global IP Alliance, an international consortium of IP-based communications providers committed to realizing the promise of interconnecting IP-based communications. Among other things, the Global IP Alliance is committed to establishing industry-based solutions to the operational hurdles and social issues confronting the emerging IP communications industry. It is my hope that regulators around the World will look to the Global IP Alliance and recognize that the IP industry is capable of self-governance and will not feel compelled to intercede before a clear demonstration of a problem that cannot be fixed by industry and competitive market forces. Thank you for allowing me to participate here today. I look forward to your questions and this discussion. Posted by jeff at 07:03 AM How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: kevinkmk@hotmail.com (kelvinkmk) Subject: Gatekeeper to Gatekeeper in Linux Date: 30 Jul 2004 03:30:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dear all, I have two gatekeepers (GNUGK) running on Linux in different locations. And now I want to connect both two so that both gatekeeprs can talk and divert calls to respective zones. I dunno how to configure the gatekeeper. The only one related parameter I can find is Gatekeeper in [Endpoint]. However, I have no idea how to configure it properly.Hope someone can give me a hand. Thanks. Regards, Kelvin ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings) Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:55:13 +0100 I find it fascimating to read about the history of radio and TV broadcasting. It's interesting enough here in Britain, but obviously much more restricted due to very tight state-control that existed then. American broadcast history has so many more interesting turns to investigate thanks to the multitude of companies and networks that were operating. > Chicago Tribune is and always was the (W)orld's (G)reatest (N)ews- > paper. No one would hear of Channel 11 -PBS- (W)indow (T)o (T)he > (W)orld for a few more years, until it went on the air about 1955 as > an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, broadcasting five or > six hours from the auditorium of the museum Monday through Friday. Presumably WTTW-TV was an independent station for the museum at that time. Didn't PBS start sometime around the late 1960s? > When Channel 11 first started broadcasting they were on Monday to > Friday only, I think a few hours each afternoon with classroom lessons > for school kids. They were dark -- off the air -- on weekends with > the exception of Sunday evening from 7:55 PM to 9:05 PM. They would > turn on their power at 7:55 PM, play the National Anthem, and the > announcer would give their call sign and say, "Now, this weeks program > from Chicago Sunday Evening Club at Orchestra Hall." After that > religious service ended at 9 PM, the same announcer would come back > on and sign the station off the air with the obligitory announcements > about station, owner, frequency, power, etc and again the National > Anthem. They stayed at Museum of Science and Industry until the early What exactly were the FCC rules regarding required announcements in those days? Obviously stations had to announce their call signs at appropriate times (a practice which still leaves many British tourists not used to U.S. broadcasting somewhat confused!), but what about other details? Were station, power etc. required at regular intervals, or just at start-up and closedown? Paul [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know the history of PBS/NPR (the later is the radio version of PBS. PBS = public television and NPR = public radio.), but I know it has changed a lot over the years also. Maybe someone who knows PBS/NPR history better than I could comment? I *think* WTTW, Channel 11 began as a project of the Museum of Science and Industry, as an endowed exhibit. At some point or another ownership transferred to PBS. I cannot say for sure, but I think PBS in Chicago got started as the result of a gift from Mr. Ryerson. What was called WBOE (as in Board of Education [of the City of Chicago]) became an NPR affiliate about the same time in the late 1960's. I do know that the earliest PBS stuff was black and white (like all television) and even when they moved into the Ryerson Televison Center they still had only limited hours of operation. In the late 1950's when WTTW, Channel 11 broke away from their almost constant schedule of classroom teaching programs (very, very dull IMO) and 'remote' broadcasting was still relatively a new concept, WTTW did three or four 'remote' programs each week, almost exclusively from Orchestra Hall, Michigan and Adams Sts. in downtown Chicago. They did the Symphony every Thursday night; the 'Allied Arts' piano recitals every Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday Evening Club programs, which were all at the Hall. You always knew they were going to do some live broadcast from the Hall, because in the alley behind Michigan Avenue between Adams and Jackson Blvd. every Thursday evening and most of the day on Sunday you would always see the rather humongous trailer truck with 'Illinois Bell Telephone Company' on its side, and the very thick (like your wrist) cable come snaking out the stage door of Orchestra Hall into the trailer truck, then out of the trailer truck and down into a manhole on Adams Street. Somewhere in the same alley was always a truck which said 'WTTW, Window to the World' on its side as well, also with cables running from it to the 'remote' cameras they had installed in two 'boxes' (formerly patron seating areas) in the mezzanine area. No cameramen around, the units were run remotely from the truck in the alley. Regards station ID and such, the rules have changed some also, and I do not know exactly how it works, but at least once per day when they are broadcasting, stations have to give details about themselves and at other regular intervals they need to say their call signs, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:49:50 +0000 (GMT) From: Ted Klugman Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit Organization: Optimum Online On 29 Jul 2004 11:58:09 -0700, adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) wrote: > Yet another interesting origin of a phrase, this time as reported in > Harry Newton's Telecommunication Dictionary: > ....labeling used on the bails was Ship High In Transit, which became > S.H.I.T., which became .... Bogus. http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/shit.asp > Lisa Minter wrote in message > news:: >> ....literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." (All >> this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.) Also bogus. http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 15:17:17 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Lisa Minter writes: > However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly > rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass > Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and At least this one is a definite urban legend, as has been amply researched on the net. Beware pithy origin stories - most of them are complete fabrications. adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) writes: > Yet another interesting origin of a phrase, this time as reported in > Harry Newton's Telecommunication Dictionary: There's this little icon on your desktop that runs an internet browser. Check it out! > In the 16th and 17th centuries, most things were shipped by boat. The word in question, which I won't use to avoid content filters, has it's origins in English at least 300 years earlier than that. Research people, research! * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Cryderman, Charles Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:42:08 -0400 Another acronym from days of old that is now considered a word: In England many years ago to procreate you had to have the permission of the King. Once received you placed a sign on the door of your dwelling: "Fornication Under Consent of King." I am sure you can figure out what the word used today is. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ From: William Robison Subject: Re: PayPal Notice of Pendency of Class Action; Proposed Settlement Organization: Universitry of Iowa Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:50:44 GMT On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:27:19 -0700, Joseph wrote: > On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 16:39:43 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor noted in > response to Monty Solomon's posting: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I strongly recommend everyone with a >> PayPal account review this class action settlement file. You might >> very well wind up with **fifty dollars** credited to your Paypal >> account, if you get to that site and can make certain statements >> about your dealings with PalPal or PayPal Debit/Credit cards, etc. PAT] > And as in other class action suits you can bet your bippy that the > lawyers will buy a new Lexus with what *they* get. Class action suits > only put a hardship on companies. The end "user" usually gets close > to bupkes (zero.) Putting a "hardship" on the offending company is EXACTLY what the lawsuit is intended to do. We don't enter into these suits to recover our trivial lost funds, but to encourage the defendant to avoid and eliminate the offensive behaviour (from what I've seen of PayPal, the judgement is well deserved). -Willy ------------------------------ From: K9TOOLS@aol.com Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:38:36 EDT Subject: Re: Paypal Settlement It is impossible for me to fill out a claim form if I can not fill out the forms. It says there is an error in finding the web site. Michelle [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Trouble is, Michelle, the web site is **totally swamped** most times in these early days of the settlement. They have responded to your complaint (and that of many other users) on their web site today saying you do not have to submit the claim until sometime late in September and you are invited to try sometime next week or maybe early morning, etc after the traffic has slowed down a little bit. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Del9L@aol.com Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:49:42 EDT Subject: Money Transfer via Paypal I don't know if I am at the right place but I had a problem with the money transfer with Paypal where I was charged double. How do I get info on the class action settlement? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Follow the crowds to the Paypal settlement site. Use Google and type in 'PayPal Settlement' and as explained to Michelle in the other message in this issue on it, allow *lots of time* to get through to them where you fill out a form, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 01:15:10 GMT From: John Subject: Re: Any Good Simple Home Phone Systems? Organization: Optimum Online Thanks for the info, Steve. Looks a lot like the AT&T 954, but probably better. I'll keep it in mind as I continue my research. On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:17:12 GMT, SELLCOM Tech support wrote: > John posted on that vast internet > thingie: >> I'd like to learn about any good and simple telephone systems for my >> home. Looking for one that is user-friendly and that won't require a >> service call for every little problem. Looking for a system up to >> maybe 3 x 10. > A very popular system for us has been the TMC ET4000 system. It has > optional modules to add features like a cordless phone port and other > optional addons. It has very nice intercom and paging built in. You > can have 16 devices in the system. > http://www.sellcom.com/tmc.html > Steve at SELLCOM > http://www.sellcom.com > Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens AT&T Panasonic, Motorola > Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! > Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Mini-Splitter log splitter! > If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:35:36 -0400 From: Ted Koppel Subject: Experience of a New Primus VoIP Customer Did my homework and narrowed down my choices to the only two VOIP retailers who (a) could service area code 540 (b) would let me port my old phone number and (c) weren't ridiculously priced for benefits received (as in, no Verizon and no AT&T). I chose Primus. I filled out the new customer form on their web site last Saturday night. Had an email within 24 hours *as well as* a phone call confirming the particulars. Had an email with a number porting PDF document (for signature and faxing) on Tuesday. Was given access to customer web site on Tuesday was well (in order to check on order status and billing). Was sent email Wednesday morning with UPS tracking number. ATA Adapter arrived Thursday (next day, but then I live only about 50 miles from their office!). Plugged in the adapter behind my router. Waited for adapter to synch and get assigned an address - it took 4 seconds. (Primus instructions say to wait as long as 15 minutes). Dial tone. Piece of cake. Works like a charm. No hassle on outgoing calls, can't complain about voice quality. Have made several phone calls; they immediately post to the Primus web site for examination. FUnctionally just fine. Minor complaints/problems: a. Nowhere do their instructions say how to pick up voice mail. That took a phone call. b. Outgoing calls do not carry callerID information (mixed blessing, I want mine to do so.) c. Incoming calls only carry caller ID numbers not names d. Once (so far) incoming call was diverted to voice mail despite phone being on hook. Unplugged adapter, it reset OK. My suspicion is that the adapter and my router are somehow failing to communicate. I may experiment with putting the adapter in front of the router or increasing the router's DHCP lease periods for its ports. None of these are major issues yet. Still to be established: a. do all the other features (call wait, call forward, etc., work)? b. What does the "LINE" phone jack on the back of the adapter actually do? (There is a PHONE 1 jack, a PHONE 2 jack, and a LINE jack) SO, after 24 hours, the important stuff works and there are a few things to be figured out. Ted ------------------------------ Subject: For Sale: Cisco VoIP Gateways, Gatekeepers, IP phones From: frank@loudpacket.com (Frank Kim) Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 09:49:38 GMT For Sale: Cisco VoIP Gateways, Gatekeepers, IP phones All prices are negotiable. If you need other items that are not on this list, let me know so I can send you a quote. These AS5350, AS5400 and AS5400HPx gateways are in stock, ready to ship. Our CCIE VoIP Guru will configure these gateways for you for FREE to get you running right away. Also, we will give you these equipment in exchange for termination minutes. For example, if you have Cuba, Thailand, Jamaica, Costa Rica and so on, let us pump those minutes and we will ship you any of these equipment that has parallel monetary value. ## in stock, ready to ship (5) Cisco CP-7935 IP phone $700/each (NEW) (25) ATA186-I1 $145/each (NEW) ## These will arrive in two weeks. (50) CP-7960G $285/each (NEW) (50) CP-7940G $235 (NEW) (25) CP-7912G $185 (NEW) ###Perfect for Gatekeepers and edge-routers$$$$$$ Cisco 7204VXR NPE300 IO-FE controller with Fast Ethernet Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 128meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $5250/each Cisco 7204VXR NPE400 I/O-2FE controller Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 128meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $8150/each Cisco 7204VXR NPE-G1 Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 64meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $11,950/each ### Two weeks lead time on these$$$$ Cisco 7206VXR NPE300 IO-FE controller with Fast Ethernet Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 128meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $5650/each Cisco 7206VXR NPE400 I/O-2FE controller Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 128meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $9150/each Cisco 7206VXR NPE-G1 Single AC power supply 256meg dram, 64meg flash 12.2 ios enterprise Rackmount kit and cables Condition: Brand new with accessories Price: $12,450/each (2) NPE-225 w/ 128meg dram, $1500/each (new pulls) ### Used with 90 days warranty**** (1) PA-MC-2T3+ $7000/each (2) CISCO3662, DUAL AC, $5000/each **DC power supplies are optional.** **We can upgrade you to dual power supplies for AC or DC.** AS535-2T1-48-AC-V With 2T1 And 48 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (1) AS535-DFC-2CT1= (1) AS535-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $7,500.00 AS535-4T1-96-AC-V With 4T1 And 96 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (2) AS535-DFC-2CT1= (1) AS535-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $12,500.00 AS535-8T1-192-AC-V With 8T1 And 192 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (1) AS535-DFC-8CT1= (2) AS535-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $21,500.00 AS535-2E1-60-AC-V With 2E1 And 60 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (1) AS535-DFC-2CE1= (1) AS535-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $7,750.00 AS535-4E1-120-AC-V With 4E1 And 120 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (1) AS535-DFC-4CE1= (2) AS535-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $12,950.00 AS535-8E1-210-AC-V With 8E1 And 216 Voice Channels 128mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5350-AC= (1) AS535-DFC-8CE1= (2) AS535-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $22,000.00 AS54-8T1-192-AC With 8T1 And 192 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CT1= (2) AS54-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $24,500.00 AS54-12T1 288 AC With 12 T1 And 288 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CT1= (1) AS54-DFC-4CT1= (5) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $30,500.00 AS54-16T1-384-AC With 16T1 And 384 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC (2) AS54-DFC-8CT1= (3) AS54-DFC-108NP (1) AS54-DFC-60NP Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $35,500.00 AS54-8E1-240-AC With 8E1 And 240 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (4) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $26,500.00 AS54-8E1-240-AC With 8E1 And 240 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (2) AS54-DFC-108NP= (1) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $27,500.00 AS54-16E1-480-AC With 16E1 And 480 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (2) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (4) AS54-DFC-108NP= (1) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $39,500.00 AS54-CT3-648-AC With Channelized T3 And 648 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-CT3= (6) AS54-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $42,500.00 AS54HPX-8E1-240-AC With 8E1 And 240 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (4) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $31,500.00 AS54HPX-8E1-240-AC With 8E1 And 240 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (2) AS54-DFC-108NP= (1) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $32,500.00 AS54HPX-10E1-300-AC With 10E1 And 300 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (1) AS54-DFC-2CE1= (5) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $30,500.00 AS54HPX-16E1-480-AC With 16E1 And 480 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (2) AS54-DFC-8CE1= (4) AS54-DFC-108NP= (1) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $44,500.00 Cisco AS5400HPX (High Performance) Series Voice Gateways - (T1 Options): AS54HPX-8T1-192-AC With 8T1 And 192 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CT1= (2) AS54-DFC-108NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $28,500.00 AS54HPX-12T1 288 AC With 12 T1 And 288 Voice Channels 256mb Of DRAM, 32mb Of Flash (1) AS5400HPX-AC= (1) AS54-DFC-8CT1= (1) AS54-DFC-4CT1= (5) AS54-DFC-60NP= Condition: Brand New In Cisco Box With Accessories Price: $32,500.00 Cheers, Frank Kim Loud Packet, Inc. / TelePacket, Inc. 27455 Tierra Alta Way, Suite A. Temecula, CA 92590 Mobile: 909-757-2248 [Note: new number ] Direct: 714-263-9099 Fax: 909-494-4425 Email: frank@loudpacket.com frank@telepacket.com Web: http://www.loudpacket.com http://www.telepacket.com ***Free 5mbps tier 1 internet bandwidth at One Wilshire, Los Angeles*** http://www.telepacket.com/docs/Free_Internet.doc ### Discussion for VoIP related topics ### *** http://www.VoIP-Forums.com *** *** http://www.SIP-Forums.com ** ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #357 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 1 02:22:47 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i716MkG11834; Sun, 1 Aug 2004 02:22:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 02:22:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408010622.i716MkG11834@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 #358 TELECOM Digest Sun, 1 Aug 2004 02:23:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 358 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Australia: New Phone Technology is Voice of Tomorrow (VOIP News) POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (VOIP News) Thanks for Vonage Info. What about Lingo? (Ed Abbott) Killer Phone Numbers in Nigeria (jmayson@nyx.net) Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY) (Joel Hoffman) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) (Garrett Wollman) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage)(Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Voice Logic VP 206 Manual Addendum - Internal Battery (Roger Jacobs) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (Fred Atkinson) Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best (Mike Donnelly) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Bill Burns) Visit www.VOIPSupply.com for Cisco, Sipura, Grandstream (Cory Andrews) Latest Conspiracy: Nick Berg Alive (jasonhardy@washingtonpost.com) 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: VOIP News Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 12:54:46 -0400 Subject: Australia: New Phone Technology is Voice of Tomorrow Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/31/1091080487356.html By Richard Webb August 1, 2004 A Melbourne-developed technology is set to revolutionise the home phone, allowing users to talk for free over the internet, any time, anywhere. The idea of the Surrey Hills-based Freshtel is simple and cheap: it costs $89 for a handset, takes less than 20 minutes to set up, and uses any broadband or asymmetric digital subscriber-line internet connection. Freshtel will begin promoting the new phone to the home market from mid-August. It already has 96,000 users through word of mouth and limited media exposure since the product was trialled six months ago. It is adding new users at a rate of 1000 a day, according to chief executive Michael Carew. While the internet phone system is not new, what appears to be making Freshtel's Firefly "softphone", short for software telephone, attractive is that you don't sound like a Dalek when you speak through it -- it's as clear as a bell -- and it's a doddle to set up and activate. Independent telecommunications consultant Paul Budde said he believes the underlying technology, called voice over internet protocol (VoIP), is the way of the future. "The technology has come to maturity," he said. "The quality and reliability is all there; it's become a serious alternative." Mr Budde said the attractive price would enable the product to quickly establish itself on the market and would soon come packaged with many more services than a standard telephone service could offer. "The technology is going to overtake the current technology very quickly," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that this is the way phones are going to go." Full story at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/31/1091080487356.html (Free registration required) How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 18:27:10 -0400 Subject: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which incumbent telephone company provides service in your area. In this thread on BroadbandReports.com, participants take turns commenting on the reliability of traditional phone service, and for several it's not exactly the "five nines" (99.999% uptime) that the phone companies would like you to believe. http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,10914037~mode=flat How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: poepauv@yahoo.com (Ed Abbott) Subject: Thanks for Vonage Info. What about Lingo? Date: 31 Jul 2004 06:47:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Rob, Thanks so much for your detailed reply. Much obliged. Can anyone answer threeq questions about Lingo VoIP telelphone service? I'm trying to decide between Lingo, Vonage, and other VoIP providers. 1 -- Does Lingo sound as bad as a cell phone? 2 -- Does Lingo sound better than a cell phone but worse than regular telelphone service (POTS)? 3 -- Does Lingo sound as good as a POTS line? Thanks so much to anyone who takes the time to reply, Ed ------------------------------ From: jmayson@nyx.net Reply-To: jmayson@nyx.net Subject: Killer Phone Numbers in Nigeria Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 01:09:28 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3906607.stm John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 01:16:56 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY) Organization: Excelsior Computer Services I just moved to a building that requires a local phone number for the door-intercom system to work. Everyone knows my old (cell) phone number, and I have no reason to change it or stop using it, and I have no need for any home telephone service other than my cell phone, but I need a local number. So I'm wondering: what's the cheapest way to get a local phone number which will forward to my cell? Thanks. -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Telcos which provide (Enterphone) service or private contractors which provide (Interphone) service usually generally have it rigged up so that door-to-apartment calls *cannot* be forwarded off premises. You probably would not want to have someone be able to remotely open your door when you were not there; it is a security matter, that is why no forwarding is available on Enter (Inter) phone service. If telco is supplying the service, it works sort of like a gerry-rigged centrex. The lobby phone gets dial tone from the central office and the caller dials usually a two or three digit number associated with your name in the lobby directory. You must tell your visitor your apartment number; it is not obvious from the dialed code number. When you agree to admit the caller and dial a '4' or '6' or whatever, the central office pulses the front door latch to allow it to open so the caller can hang up the phone and walk into the building. If you do not have external phone service, then telco's contract with the building management (which pays for the service) calls for telco to provide you with a phone to operate the door only. Now if your building has the service from a private contractor it is called Interphone since the telco (at least years ago) had a patent on 'Enterphone'. The private contractor usually has a 'computer like box' in the basement or wherever telco enters the premises and the 'box' functions like a little switchboard sort of like telco and all the house pairs terminate in this box with the outside trunk lines coming in. It is quite transparent in that the 'box' just sits there silently when you make an outgoing call; but when an incoming call **from the front door** comes in the box does two things: it tests your line for busy; if you are not talking it gives you a distinctive ring (same as telco; to aid you in identifying the source of the call) and if your line *is* busy it sends you a distinctive call waiting tone (again, same as telco, even if you do not already have call-waiting) so you can flash, the box puts your outside call on hold and gives you the door call. Like telco's (non-subscriber) service where any old phone can be plugged into the place on the wall where the phone plugs in, **no actual phone number is needed** since telco (or the private contractor) provides battery as needed to operate the phone when it gets called from the door. So if your building has one of those two types of service (Enter/Interphone) don't bother with calling telco to get phone service; just plug some cheap phone into the jack; it will ring as needed and allow talking as needed for the front door intercom function. When there is not someone at the door talking to you, the phone will otherwise be dead. In any event (Enter or Inter) **call forwarding will not work**. Contractor's box won't do it and telco won't provide it, mainly for security reasons. But there is a *third* type of front door service, always private contractor. Sort of cheesy, IMO. In that system, front door person dials your code (never actual apartment number) and the premises 'box' does a quick look up of your real seven-digit number then places a phone call to that seven-digit number and bridges them together when you answer (if you are home and do answer). Its sort of like a fancy speed dial type thing. On that kind, you *can* do what you want and have it call forwarded or run to an answering machine or wherever, although IMO it is ill advised for security reasons. Do you want the visitor to know you are not home because the door (speed dial type phone) forwards to wherever? There is an exception to the **no for- warding** rule: If you have a telco centrex type system (the first one, above) fully connected and taking incoming/outgoing calls, etc then TRUE incoming calls (not front door calls) can be call forwarded. Turn call forwarding on as desired, but the front door will still give its funny little ring-ring on the phone and not forward. I guess that is because the programming decision whether or not to forward is made at telco long before the decision as the origin of the call. So find out from your new landlord **what kind** of front door intercom service they have. If it is 'cheap' you want then you may be able to get by just plugging a dead phone into a modular jack and letting the front door do its own thing (types one and two above). If you have to have an *actual phone number* (as in type three) then bear in mind the front door will be as limited as the cheap phone service is. If your line is busy (cheap phones do not get call waiting) then the front door will get a busy signal also, and this 'cheap phone you never use since everyone has your cell phone' may turn out to be sort of expensive as you install call waiting (to pamper the front door) and call waiting to forward everyone else (but hopefully not a bad guy burglar, etc) to your cell phone when you are away from home. If you are dealing with type three above and absolutely must get a working phone number from telco, then I would say never give the number out to anyone (the people who matter would have your cell phone anyway). Just let the phone sit there idly 99 percent of the time. At this point you probably know more about Front Door Intercom Service than most landlords and building managers. Oh, and regards repairs: standard telco contracts on these devices call for a *thirty minute* repair time turnaround if/when the front door intercom goes out of order. Various reasons; all the pairs from central office to the building and the jumpers, etc are *supposed to be dedicated and plainly marked in the c.o.* and in the building basement, but it is not uncommon to get a dorkus installer tech who rips off pairs in older neighborhoods, nor is it uncommon for the cellanoids unlatching the front door to go bad, and telco understands it is a rush/24 hour per day repair job. Hopefully private contractors sense the urgency also. If the landlord does not understand what kind of front door intercom system he has, then try plugging in a dead phone to a jack first and see if it works; if it does then all is cool. Some of them say 'oh, you gotta have a phone to make the door work' and they don't really know what they are saying. Then get back to us as needed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 02:32:34 UTC Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Paul Coxwell wrote: > comment? I *think* WTTW, Channel 11 began as a project of the Museum > of Science and Industry, as an endowed exhibit. At some point or > another ownership transferred to PBS. PBS does not own any stations, and never has. It is a membership cooperative. WTTW and WFMT are owned by WTTW, Inc., a self-perpetuating non-profit corporation. > Regards station ID and such, the rules have changed some also, The rules haven't changed significantly in many years. Stations are required to announce their callsign and community of license hourly, and at sign-on and sign-off of the transmitter. They were formerly required to identify on the half-hour as well, but this was considered such a burden (particularly to non-commercial stations broadcasting classical music) that the rules were changed about thiry years ago to halve the frequency.[1] The legal form of a station identification is the callsign (as shown on the license), followed optionally by the name of the licensee (as shown on the license) and/or the frequency and/or channel number of the station, followed by the community of license (as shown on the license), followed (except at sign-off) by program material (which may include the names of other communities served by the station). In the words of section 73.1201, ``No other insertion is permissible.'' In a small number of cases, announcement of the frequency or channel is not optional (although many stations which are required to do it, don't, and vice versa). > do not know exactly how it works, but at least once per day when they > are broadcasting, stations have to give details about themselves and No, there is no such requirement (except during the public-comment period while a license renewal or station sale is pending). Some TV stations still choose to do this; most full-time radio stations don't. -GAWollman [1] Stations are only required to identify 'as close to the hour as feasible, at a natural break' in programming. Some program directors mistakenly interpret this requirement (assuming they are even aware of it) as meaning that they can define a 'natural break' as the interval between the tenth and eleventh spots in a 16-unit stop set running at :42 after the hour. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003) ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 05:57:47 GMT In article , paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk says: > I find it fascimating to read about the history of radio and TV > broadcasting. It's interesting enough here in Britain, but obviously > much more restricted due to very tight state-control that existed > then. American broadcast history has so many more interesting turns > to investigate thanks to the multitude of companies and networks that > were operating. >> Chicago Tribune is and always was the (W)orld's (G)reatest (N)ews- >> paper. No one would hear of Channel 11 -PBS- (W)indow (T)o (T)he >> (W)orld for a few more years, until it went on the air about 1955 as >> an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, broadcasting five or >> six hours from the auditorium of the museum Monday through Friday. > Presumably WTTW-TV was an independent station for the museum at that > time. Didn't PBS start sometime around the late 1960s? There were noncommercial educational stations long before there was a PBS. I believe PBS emerged in the late 1960s (or possibly early 1970s), after the major educational stations, such as WNET (NY), WGBH (Boston), WETA (Washington), etc. had begun exchanging high-quality program content, and there was interest in Washington to get some of that programming onto educational stations in cities that didn't produce programming. As I recall, it started out with some government funding, but that subsequently dried up. >> When Channel 11 first started broadcasting they were on Monday to >> Friday only, I think a few hours each afternoon with classroom lessons >> for school kids. They were dark -- off the air -- on weekends with >> the exception of Sunday evening from 7:55 PM to 9:05 PM. They would >> turn on their power at 7:55 PM, play the National Anthem, and the >> announcer would give their call sign and say, "Now, this weeks program >> from Chicago Sunday Evening Club at Orchestra Hall." After that >> religious service ended at 9 PM, the same announcer would come back >> on and sign the station off the air with the obligitory announcements >> about station, owner, frequency, power, etc and again the National >> Anthem. They stayed at Museum of Science and Industry until the early > What exactly were the FCC rules regarding required announcements in > those days? Obviously stations had to announce their call signs at > appropriate times (a practice which still leaves many British tourists > not used to U.S. broadcasting somewhat confused!), but what about > other details? Were station, power etc. required at regular > intervals, or just at start-up and closedown? Station ID announcements (call sign, city, channel) were ordinarily required every half hour. I think there was a requirement of a more detailed announcement (ownership, mainly) once a day, which was typically done at either startup or shutdown, or both. The inclusion of specific frequencies (beyond the channel), power, and other information was not required by FCC rules, as far as I can recall. Nor was there any FCC requirement of a national anthem. The anthem plus the detailed announcement was a tradition widely followed, however. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know the history of PBS/NPR > (the later is the radio version of PBS. PBS = public television and > NPR = public radio.), but I know it has changed a lot over the years > also. Maybe someone who knows PBS/NPR history better than I could > comment? I *think* WTTW, Channel 11 began as a project of the Museum > of Science and Industry, as an endowed exhibit. At some point or > another ownership transferred to PBS. I cannot say for sure, but I > think PBS in Chicago got started as the result of a gift from Mr. > Ryerson. What was called WBOE (as in Board of Education [of the City > of Chicago]) became an NPR affiliate about the same time in the > late 1960's. I do know that the earliest PBS stuff was black and > white (like all television) and even when they moved into the Ryerson PBS doesn't own any stations. It is a funding mechanism for program development and distribution. PBS, likewise. They are the functional equivalent of networks, but without any owned and operated stations. The stations are owned by local nonprofits. For example, WETA in Washington is not owned by PBS; it is owned by the Washington Educational Television Association. WTTW was started in 1955 by the Chicago Educational Television Association; the organization is now "Window To The World Communications, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation governed by 45 trustees representing the greater Chicago community." . According to the website, its first broadcast was from a temporary studio in the Banker's Building in Chicago, not the museum. It worked with the Board of Ed to produce college courses and other educational programs. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: raj@lauhala.com (Roger Jacobs) Subject: Re: Voice Logic VP 206 Manual Addendum Internal Battery Replacement Date: 31 Jul 2004 00:20:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com More good news: The lead acid backup battery was worn out -- I successfully replaced it with a RadShack #23-952 6V 600 mAh and the unit can now survive a power failure without forgetting it's settings. raj@lauhala.com (Roger Jacobs) wrote in message news:: > I bought a VP 206 on eBay and was pretty confused until I found this > very helpful manual addendum. It was in google cache and might not be > around for long, so I have reposted it here: > http://omnisphere.com/support-docs/voice-pro-manual-addendum.pdf ------------------------------ Reply-To: Fred Atkinson From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 09:55:28 -0400 As for the power outage effect on Vonage, I've thought about that issue as well. However, you can probably come up with a lot less expensive solution than a full universal power supply. The Vonage unit doesn't require much power. I'd suggest that you also use the backup power to power the cable modem. It won't do you any good to backup the power on the Vonage unit and not do it to the cable modem, too. I worked for a company that sent data over a satellite. They spent an enormous amount of money to install a diesel generator to support their computers (the ones that were primarily for sending data to the satellite link. They were linked to the satellite uplink site via a telco provided leased data line. When the day finally came that the commercial power failed, the computers kept right on processing. Then we got calls from the customers who weren't getting their data. It appeared that the satellite uplink had failed. Upon investigation, they discovered a telco station package in the basement. It was plugged into commercial power only. The truth was, they had anticipated this. And to that end, they had run an AC receptacle from the generator to the telephone room in the basement and had telco plug their station package into it. But, apparently some telco guy had come in there at a later time and for some unknown reason, he'd moved the unit from the orange receptacle to a standard receptacle on the building power. By the time they figured out what had happened, the commercial power was already restored. All that money had been spent only to suffer another outage. They moved telco's station package back to the orange receptacle and put up a sign cautioning the telco guys not to move the unit off the generator to standard commercial power (perhaps it would have been better to remove the commercial receptacles from the wall altogether leaving only the orange receptacle from the generators as a source of AC power). But, there was not a repeat performance, thankfully. People don't think about the fact that the providers of these services have to run their equipment on the same power when they consider redundant power for their equipment. Speaking of forethought, I once worked for a paging company that had paging transmitters deployed in a lot of different places across the country. When we would employ an electrician to run a new AC breaker to our transmitter, we insisted on single gang receptacles (not duplex) on each circuit. Why? Because someone comes into that area and sees an available plug (on a duplex receptacle) wouldn't think anything about plugging into it. Suddenly, the power requirements of whatever he has plugged into it (a utility light or equipment that pulls a few amps of current) and our transmitter operating on the same breaker is now over the current rating of the AC breaker and the breaker blows. Now, your paging transmitter is down and your customers are unhappy. All because some workman came along and plugged into your power circuit. Of course, you still run the risk of having someone unplug it to use the receptacle (they may not realize the impact of unplugging your equipment) and your equipment is down. But, we rarely experienced someone unplugging someone else's equipment. For the most part, workmen and other radio technicians working in the same area tend to shy away from unplugging equipment not belonging to them. You may not think these things are all that important during the planning stages. But when the day comes that you suffer an outage because you didn't think about it up front, it can be painful. And even if you did consider these issues, there is always the chance that there was something you didn't consider. Fred ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 02:53:32 +0000 (GMT) From: Mike Donnelly Subject: Re: 911, Only Simple 911 at Best Pat, I am not interested in starting a flame war in your newsgroup. Feel free to pass this along to Jack at address withheld. Jack Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. > On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:15:13 GMT, Mike Donnelly > wrote: >> charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) wrote in >> news:telecom23.353.10@telecom-digest.org: >>> problems to VOIP phones; more and more cell phones and >>> VOIP phones are going into use and many will replace >>> traditional copperline phones, regardless of 911 >>> concerns. Public officials will find solutions to 911 >>> calls originating from cell and internet phones. >>> I'm simply no longer willing to pay for a 100 year old >>> POTS phone when I can get five times the functionality >>> and unlimited US minutes for a lower price from Vonage. >>> With a cell phone for backup my internet phone does not >>> have perform exactly like a traditional phone. >> Hope you never need emergency services any time in the >> near future. > You know, every time I read a comment like this, my gut > reaction is to want to strangle the writer (figuratively > speaking, of course). First for the obvious reason that he > is trying to impose his own sense of values on others, but > also because it's such a pathetically stupid statement. > I mean, to me people who say things like this sound like > they want us to live in a rubber room with a 100% reliable > phone with a big red speed dial button programmed for > "911." One could just as easily say "I hope you never go > outside to check your mail without taking a cordless phone > along" or "I hope you never decide to take a walk in the > woods." The point I am making, in case it isn't obvious, > is that (if we are reasonably normal people) we ALL have > times -- and probably many more than we think about -- > where we are NOT near enough to a telephone that it would > do us any good if we had a heart attack or some other > emergency. > I don't have a wireless phone (in my situation I really > have no pressing need for one). I sometimes take walks in > the woods, I go out to the outside shed and putz around or > do some task outside, and I never have a phone with me and > am often out of view of anyone else. Oh the horror, I might > have a heart attack and not be able to call 911! Well you > know what, if that's my time to go, it's my time to go, and > I don't need any goody two-shoes know-it-alls trying to > tell me that I am being irresponsible by not having the > level of communica- tions that they think I should have. > In fact, people like that sometimes almost make me wish I > could check out a bit sooner. If they succeed in making > the world a perfectly safe place to live, but one in which > you have no options left because someone else has dictated > all aspects of how you must live, why would I want to keep > on living? I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't > escape a world like that fast enough! I'm just waiting for > these people to start trying to get "unsafe" recreational > activities banned, like hang-gliding or rock climbing or > motorcycling or any of the hundreds of other things people > enjoy doing but that have the potential to get them killed. >> BTW, what happens to VOIP when there is a power outage? Is >> there anything similar to "lifeline service"? My 100 year >> old POTS phone still works. I know because I have had to >> use it several times during outages. > Bully for you. No one is asking you to give up your 100 > year old POTS phone if that's what floats your boat. But > you have absolutely no right to decide that I or anyone > else needs to have that level of service. I don't WANT to > be 100% safe 100% of the time. A life like that would be > boring as hell, not to mention that the cost of living > would be far higher. I didn't decide anything for you or anyone else. I am responsible only for what I imply. YOU are responsible for what YOU infer. I am only suggesting that people need to understand the limitations of the newer technologies. > What about the Amish people who don't even have telephones, > nor for that matter cars to drive to a hospital at 70 MPH > in an emergency? Would you be the one to tell them that > they need to conform to your acceptable way of living? > If I, or anyone else wants to have phone service from > VoicePulse or Vonage or any of those companies, and we know > what the limitations of 911 are and are willing to accept > them, it is none of your damn business! Take your > finger-wagging to someplace where it's appreciated, though > I cannot imagine where that might be. > Sorry if the above seems a bit strong, but sometimes I just > get really sick of hearing from people who want to suck all > the LIFE out of living because all they can think about is > safety, and not only for themselves, but they want to pass > their obsession on to others. Nope, not at all. I'm just arguing for informed consent. I am sure Vonage customers are told what they are getting in the way of new features, but do all of them realize what they are doing without? If you want to live on the edge KNOWLINGLY, that's OK. I don't really care. I am not the one with the obsession. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Jack, the possible, but unlikely > problem of 'what to do in an emergency when all you have is Vonage' > is just a red herring anyway. The main problem with so many of > those people is that they are shills for an old, dying method of > communications where 'the telephone company' is the be-all, > end-all way of doing business. They have such a love affair with > POTS; a system which won't die soon enough IMO. PAT] Heck I'm no shill for anybody. Been retired for five years. I just suspect that not all Vonage customers have the technical understanding of the folks in this group. Mike Donnelly [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is a good point. I think as a worst case scenario some people discover the power line behind their house is down and they cannot use Vonage 911 'automatically' to call authorities tp report it. I've suggested before that 'there outta be a law' requiring *everyone* to take a year or so of lessons at telephone school as part of their general education. The world would be a better place as a result. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bill Burns Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: 31 Jul 2004 16:19:09 GMT Organization: FTL Paul Vader wrote: > Lisa Minter writes: >> In the 16th and 17th centuries, most things were shipped by boat. > The word in question, which I won't use to avoid content filters, > has its origins in English at least 300 years earlier than that. > Research people, research! The first cite of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated Y1K -- the year 1000! Bill Burns, Long Island, NY, USA mailto:billb@ftldesign.com Undersea Cable History Website: http://atlantic-cable.com ------------------------------ From: sales@b2llc.com (Cory Andrews) Subject: Visit www.VOIPSupply.com for Cisco, Sipura, Grandstream, VOIP Gear Date: 31 Jul 2004 09:57:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com www.VOIPSupply.com offers a wide selection of VOIP related hardware at great discounts. www.VOIPSupply.com ------------------------------ From: jasonhardy@washingtonpost.com Subject: Latest Internet Rumor: Nick Berg Alive Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 02:12:38 GMT Organization: Cox Communications Conspiracy theories of Nick Berg being alive and well in Iraq have today been proven true. Aljazeera have released video footage of the supposedly beheaded American captive. The clip was first "discovered" on an Islamic website in Malaysia and has now been released by American Journalists colaborating with Aljazeera. The evidence speaks for itself and can be viewed firsthand here. http://www.greentea.625.co.kr/NickBerg.zip [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only can the evidence speak for itself and can be viewed, as a special gift to new readers at greentea.625.co.kr we will give you -- whether you ask for it or not -- a virus and add you to our spam mailing list. 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. 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #358 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 2 01:11:41 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i725Bew20596; Mon, 2 Aug 2004 01:11:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 01:11:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408020511.i725Bew20596@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 #359 TELECOM Digest Mon, 2 Aug 2004 01:10:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 359 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Time Warner Cable Loses Sports Channels (Monty Solomon) South Korea's Daum to Buy Lycos (Monty Solomon) Lingo (Michael Hynes) SIP and TAPI (JustSomeGuy) Re: Latest Internet Rumor: Nick Berg Alive (KarlJ) Re: Latest Internet Rumor: Nick Berg Alive (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) (Paul Coxwell) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago (Russell Blau) 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: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 11:16:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Time Warner Cable Loses Sports Channels NEW YORK, August 1 (Reuters) - New York sports channels Fox Sports New York and MSG were dropped from Time Warner Cable systems on Sunday after it failed to reach a deal with channel owners, leaving more than 1.4 million New York area cable customers without popular baseball, basketball and hockey game broadcasts. Time Warner said it plans to pay a $2.00 rebate a month to subscribers. Cablevision Systems Corp (NYSE:CVC), which owns the two regional sports channels demanded hikes on rates it charges operators to carry its networks that were as high as 38 percent for channels targeting New York customers, a source familiar with the talks said. The two channels broadcast the games of New York Mets baseball, the New York Knicks basketball and the New York Rangers hockey teams. The disagreements also include a third channel, Metro Channel, which carries local news and some sports. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42832416 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 23:52:38 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: S.Korea's Daum to Buy Lycos for $95 Mln By Jean Yoon and Rhee So-eui SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's top Web site operator Daum Communications Corp., said on Monday it would acquire Lycos Inc., the U.S. business of Spain's Terra Lycos, owner of popular sites such as Wired News and Tripod, for $95 million. ... http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5839577 ------------------------------ From: Michael Hynes Subject: Lingo Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 03:17:38 -0400 I would avoid Lingo at all costs. The service never worked. I called tech support at which they promised to call me back within 48 hours (48 hours!) but in point of fact it took them 6 days days days to return my call. I cancelled and sent everything back for a refund. Which I haven't recieved yet. I've recontacted them about same. No response. I'll be contacting my credit card company next ... avoid them. Oh -- PS -- my Vonage service hasn't exactly been great lately either ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Lingo I cannot help you with. And although I am not employed by Vonage, I can only make some suggestions about them now and them. What exactly is your problem with Vonage? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 17:04:18 GMT From: JustSomeGuy Subject: SIP and TAPI Organization: Shaw Residential Internet I'm sorta new to the VoIP standards. I see there is SIP and H.323. As I understood it H.323 was a video teleconfrencing standard. Reading more I see that it can also be used to do an IP to PSTN session. I have found Microsofts TAPI 3.0 and I am wondering if I need to study SIP in detail as well or is TAPI sufficient? ------------------------------ From: kjones0509@aol.com (KarlJ) Subject: Re: Latest Internet Rumor: Nick Berg Alive Date: 1 Aug 2004 02:41:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Virus. Just a virus and nothing else. Rather lame one though isnt it, got about as far as the door mat before getting trod over. Look forward to be added to your spam list, though god knows how your gonna figure out my email addy ;) sonhardy@washingtonpost.com wrote in message news:: > Conspiracy theories of Nick Berg being alive and well in Iraq have > today been proven true. Aljazeera have released video footage of the > supposedly beheaded American captive. The clip was first "discovered" > on an Islamic website in Malaysia and has now been released by > American Journalists colaborating with Aljazeera. The evidence speaks > for itself and can be viewed firsthand here. > http://www.greentea.625.co.kr/NickBerg.zip > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only can the evidence speak for > itself and can be viewed, as a special gift to new readers at > greentea.625.co.kr we will give you -- whether you ask for it or not -- > a virus and add you to our spam mailing list. PAT] ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Latest Internet Rumor: Nick Berg Alive Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 16:54:06 GMT jasonhardy@washingtonpost.com posted on that vast internet thingie: > Conspiracy theories of Nick Berg being alive and well in Iraq have > today been proven true. Are you sure? http://www.allahislam.com shows different Steve at SELLCOM (Opinions expressed are not necessarily the opinions of those who disagree or of the staff management or affiliates of the major networks express or implied.) http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Uniden 2line 5.8GHz cordless If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 08:36:14 +0100 Thanks for the replies everyone. > There were noncommercial educational stations long before there was a > PBS. I believe PBS emerged in the late 1960s (or possibly early > 1970s), after the major educational stations, such as WNET (NY), WGBH > (Boston), WETA (Washington), etc. had begun exchanging high-quality > program content, and there was interest in Washington to get some of > that programming onto educational stations in cities that didn't > produce programming. As I recall, it started out with some government > funding, but that subsequently dried up. In recent years I've also seen quite a few documentaries which indicate they're a joint production between WGBH Boston and the BBC. Paul. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:48:07 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for > the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS > ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not > necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. I think c.d.t is a wonderful place for dialog, and the VoIP vs. POTS debate is clearly the defining telco debate of our time, but it helps no one to hide opinion behind the title "news." In this case, suppose all of the posters "VOIP News" refers to *never* had any service. Suppose even that there are 75 such people with 100% downtime rates. I don't know how many POTS lines are in use in the U.S., but let's supose that there are only 10 million. Then we'd have a collective downtime from these 75 hypothetical people of 0.00075% (yes, percent, also known as a downtime of 0.0000075). In other words, even 75 reports of intermittent failure in the U.S. doesn't bring the reliability rating below what the OP called "the 5 nines." Seventy-five reports of 100% downtime doesn't even bring the reliability rating below those 5 nines. (And, as it happens, the posts in the chatroom are roughly divided between which is more reliable, POTS or VOIP.) In short, a handful reports in a random forum is statistically irrelevant for downtime rates. This is not news. And VOIP went one step further by taking the story out of context and misinterpreting it for us. To be clear, I have no problem with a poster doing this to advoate VOIP. But hiding behind "news" is disingenuous. Everyone else uses their real name here. Why can't "VOIP news"? -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, not everyone here uses their real name or real email address. FYI, for those who do not know it, 'VOIP News' is Jack Decker, of Michigan, a long time correspondent here. Occassionally he uses his real name and invariably asks for his email address to be munged which I do. He and I have an agreement where the news items in (his) VoIP-related news group in Yahoo are concerned, and that is that when each item of his newsgroup gets here, I am to automatically delete the entire 'From:' line and replace it with the phrase 'VOIP News' so he does not have to go along message by message repeatedly asking me to delete his email address. So, there is no such entity as 'VOIP News'; it is a figment of my imagination designed to cooperate with Jack Decker as much as I can. But -- Monty Solomon also sends me a lot of news and uses his true name and email. I know Monty gets spammed out of existence sometimes, all of us who use real names do. But Jack tries to avoid it in his case. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Russell Blau Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2004 16:28:43 -0400 Pat - A few weeks ago you printed a vividly detailed description of the communications arrangements at the 1904 Republican Convention, at which Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for his second term. I assume you weren't there, or at least weren't old enough at the time to remember all those details , but you didn't identify the source of your information. Your narrative included the following: > But in 1904, a hundred years ago, things were different when Theodore > Roosevelt was nominated at Chicago Colliseum. On the stage sat the > band, the song leader, the master of ceremonies and of course, Mr. > Roosevelt. > The first row of seats and the > area in front of the stage were reserved for the most important people > there: the stenographers, the telegraph operators and the telephone > operator. The delegates got to sit behind the ladies and gentlemen who > communicated the whole thing to the rest of the world. In those long > ago days before tape recording equipment, etc it was up to > stenographers to copy it all down. *They* of course got priority since > they had to hear it all correctly. > Speeches were made, Roosevelt was nominated, and made his acceptance > speech. Then the master of ceremonies declared that "as we close our > convention, Mr. Zundel will lead us as we rise to sing 'Battle Hymn of > the Republic' then following our dismissal, Mr. Roosevelt will linger > at the steps leading from the stage so that delegates who wish to do > so may personally greet him or ask questions." Mr. Zundel began to > lead the singing and Mr. Roosevelt studied his program through the > owl-shaped style eye glasses he wore. Then something must have crossed > his mind, because he looked over his glasses at the stenographers and > telegraphers who filled the first row of seats, and decided to visit > with them and made his way down the stairs from the stage. > He approached the ladies, sort of courteously acknowleged them and > began greeting them. The stenographers as a group stood to acknowledge > him also and shook hands with him. They represented various newspapers > and magazines, etc which would print his entire acceptance speech in > their next issues, etc. Then his attention went to the nearby > telephone operator with a switchboard and he must have been curious > about how telephones worked or what they did, because the operator > explained that the overflow crowd of people who had not been able to > get in the coleseum to hear him speak were all at the Central Music > Hall downtown where his voice could be heard over loudspeakers "at the > very same time you are speaking here, Mr. Roosevelt, citizens at the > Music Hall, about two miles away are hearing you." Then the telegraph > operators rose to greet him, and he apparently asked them something > about their work and how their devices operated also, which they > demonstrated for him. By this point, the singing of 'Battle Hymn' was > concluding and the master of ceremonies walked over to him and > motioned for him to stand in a certain place where the delegates and > members of the public fortunate enough to get a seat could come by and > speak to him as they filed out. > Mr. Roosevelt must have been suitably impressed by all the 'fancy' > equipment there that history states he was the first president to > install a switchboard in the White House, and he insisted that it be > located right outside his office, where the 'girl' could bring him any > messages received promptly. Earlier telephones in the White > House had been single line magneto crank instruments. All this is quite fascinating, and the description of Roosevelt's speech, his visit to the stenographers and telegraphers, and particularly the opportunity for delegates to walk by and shake the President's hand at the end of the session were all most intriguing. There is just one, slight problem. President Roosevelt did not attend the Republican National Convention in 1904. According to Edmund Morris' biography, _-Theodore Rex_ (Random House 2001), Roosevelt "received the news of his nomination ... just after lunch, as he sat with Edith [his wife] and Alice [his daughter] on the White House portico. ... With kisses on his cheeks, he walked happily to his office and met a congratulatory crowd of newsmen." (p.337.) Sources for this passage are Alice's journal and the New York Times of 24 June 1904. For Roosevelt to have attended the convention in person would have been a terrific breach of protocol. To have made an acceptance speech in person would have been unheard-of. (Both of these traditions were later violated by TR's distant cousin, FDR.) Roosevelt did not formally accept the nomination until 27 July (when he was officially notified by a party delegation), over a month after the convention ended. The first GOP nominee to make an acceptance speech at a convention was Dewey in 1944. An interesting telecom note from that 1904 Republican convention, though -- "Long before proceedings began on Tuesday, word spread that the President would monitor every minute of every session, via a special telephone line running direct from his office to the basement of the Coliseum. Delegates began to get uneasy feelings of remote control." (Morris, p. 332.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No I was not quite that old, thank you! I had previously heard this same conflict (did he or did he not attend 1904 convention), but then a book I read some time ago mainly dealing with the history of the Bull Moose party, (which Teddy Roosevelt defected to when he got angry at the Republicans) said he *did* attend 1904 and speak up. But your Alice Roosevelt diary and the NY Times report from the same year are very powerful sources also. I dunno. Thanks for writing me on it however. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #359 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 2 23:43:45 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i733hi401418; Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:43:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:43:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408030343.i733hi401418@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 #360 TELECOM Digest Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:44:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 360 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VoIP Provider Vonage Suffers Outage (VOIP News) Sprint Expands VoIP Reach (VOIP News) TiVo Slumps as Rival DVR Maker Has DirecTV Deal (Monty Solomon) Vonage Service Interruption (Peter Pearson) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Jack Decker) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Ron Chapman) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Carl Navarro) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Lisa Hancock) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Tim Shoppa) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime (Charles B. Wilber) Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago (Lisa Hancock) MCHSI Fibre/Fire Outage? (Clarence Dold) Re: S.Korea's Daum to Buy Lycos for $95 Mln (Scott Dorsey) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) (Scott Dorsey) Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Paul Vader) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit (Bart) 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: VOIP News Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 15:02:10 -0400 Subject: VoIP Provider Vonage Suffers Outage Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5293439.html By Ben Charny and Robert Lemos CNET News.com Net phone service provider Vonage confirmed that it suffered its first outage in 18 months on Monday, due to problems at partner Global Crossing. Customers could still receive calls, but a small percentage of Vonage's 200,000 total subscribers couldn't make outbound calls from around 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. PDT, at which time the problem was fixed. The outage didn't sit well with at least one Vonage customer. Jay Ackerman was thinking of doing exactly what the company wants: dropping his traditional landline for Vonage's voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)-based service. Now, he said in an e-mail to CNET News.com, he's not so sure. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5293439.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 15:05:59 -0400 Subject: Sprint Expands VoIP Reach Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5293231.html By Matt Hines CNET News.com Telecommunications giant Sprint has signed a deal with regional cable and Internet service provider USA Companies to provide voice services in three states. Under the five-year agreement, announced Monday, USA Companies will offer voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services to some 62,000 customers in California, Montana and Nebraska. Executives at Kearney, Neb.-based USA Companies lauded the deal as giving it the ability to introduce VoIP without being forced to construct its own infrastructure. Financial terms of the agreement were not immediately disclosed. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5293231.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 18:41:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Slumps as Rival DVR Maker Has DirecTV Deal NEW YORK, Aug 2 (Reuters) - TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO) shares slipped 6 percent on Monday after a rival said it would next year supply television recording device technology to satellite television company DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE:DTV), TiVo's biggest source of new customers. British digital TV technology firm NDS Group Plc (NASDAQ:NNDS), which like DirecTV is controlled by media conglomerate News Corp. Ltd., told Reuters on Monday that it plans to ship digital video recorder technology to DirecTV in the first quarter of 2005. The increasing NDS-DirecTV partnership follows several events that have shaken investors' confidence in Tivo's relationship with DirecTV, including DirecTV's sale of its stake in TiVo in June, and the resignation of DirecTV's chairman from TiVo's board. TiVo, which has a contract to supply digital video recorders (DVRs) to satellite firm DirecTV (NYSE:DTV) through 2007, has previously said that given a choice, DirecTV subscribers would pick TiVo's DVR service, which has unique features, programming and home networking options. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42854843 ------------------------------ From: Peter Pearson Subject: Vonage Service Interruption Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 16:10:20 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: ppearson@are.see.enn.com According to a Vonage bulletin, at 10:45 EDT today Global Crossing "experienced a data routing issue," which resulted in a variety of malfunctions. In my case, a couple of voice messages appear to have vanished. A bulletin visible to Vonage users who log into the Vonage server says, ... individual customers' success of [sic] making and receiving calls remained sporadic depending on where a particular customer was located on the Internet. The systems which were effected [sic] during the outage were: voicemail, voicemail email notification, vonage web login and network availability number. Overall, I'm quite happy with Vonage service. There are occasional audio quality problems (dropout, echo), but cell phones have forced us to adapt to such problems and worse. It is indescribably delightful to be able to report a problem to one's phone company and, within minutes, be speaking with a technically knowledgeable person who really cares about fixing the problem. - Peter To email me, replace the three words with the letters R, C, and N. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 05:07:39 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Pat, please conceal my e-mail address as usual. On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:48:07 GMT, joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: >> As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for >> the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS >> ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not >> necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which > Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which > continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" > story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. > I think c.d.t is a wonderful place for dialog, and the VoIP vs. POTS > debate is clearly the defining telco debate of our time, but it helps > no one to hide opinion behind the title "news." I quess I should point out that VoIP News is the title of the Yahoo Group in which these posts originate. I picked that title because it was originally my thought that most of the posts would be pointers to news items that mention VoIP from various online sources. Now, in many towns near where I live, there is a publishing company that puts out a product called a "newspaper." Some of these products even have the word "news" in the title, such as the Detroit News, the Ann Arbor News, or the Saginaw News. Every one of these carries news from various sources, but also a variety of other things that are arguably not news - including, usually, at least one or two pages of opinions. And that's not even counting things like movie reviews, which are also opinion. But is Mr. Hoffman picking at them because they have the word "news" in the title? As for Mr. Hoffman's assertion that some of my posts "look like propaganda for VoIP", well you see, it's a group about VoIP (from which Pat selects articles to repost in the Telecom Digest) and I don't think very many people would want to read it if I was constantly knocking VoIP, now would they? But "propaganda" is an interesting word. I went to look it up on Google, using their "define:" feature, and it presented a wide range of definitions, which anyone interested can view at: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=define%3Apropaganda But the definition I liked the best, for probably obvious reasons, was this one: n. All utterances by the opposition, particularly if true. In describing my own posts, I would simply say that I am an advocate of the VoIP option, but only for so long as I actually believe it's a good option for consumers. I realize it's not for everyone, and particularly it's not for those who have no need or desire for broadband Internet service. But, the shills for the big phone companies are trying to spread a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about VoIP right now, and it seems to me that if they had their way, they'd simply remove the VoIP option from the consumer (at least until they can come out with their own VoIP offerings). The only point I was really trying to make is that you cannot generalize about reliability -- that is, you cannot say that for any given customer, or that in every situation a POTS line will be more reliable than VoIP. Some customers seem to have gold-plated POTS service and lousy cable broadband service, so for them POTS might indeed be far more reliable. But others, particularly those living in rural areas or in big cities where the wiring is so old that Mr. Watson might have helped inspect it, may find that VoIP is more reliable, particularly if (as is not infrequently the case) the cable company has recently strung all new fiber optic cable throughout the area so they could offer broadband and digital cable. > In this case, suppose all of the posters "VOIP News" refers to *never* > had any service. Suppose even that there are 75 such people with 100% > downtime rates. I don't know how many POTS lines are in use in the > U.S., but let's supose that there are only 10 million. Then we'd have > a collective downtime from these 75 hypothetical people of 0.00075% > (yes, percent, also known as a downtime of 0.0000075). In other > words, even 75 reports of intermittent failure in the U.S. doesn't > bring the reliability rating below what the OP called "the 5 nines." > Seventy-five reports of 100% downtime doesn't even bring the > reliability rating below those 5 nines. (And, as it happens, the > posts in the chatroom are roughly divided between which is more > reliable, POTS or VOIP.) So let me get this straight, Mr. Hoffman is willing to allow us to count those who posted to that thread (which was on BroadbandReports.com, not in VoIP News) as having had 100% downtime, but only if we let him count everyone else who did not post in that thread (including everyone who has never even heard of that particular forum) as having had 100% uptime? Give us a break -- we didn't all just fall off the turnip truck yesterday, you know! > In short, a handful reports in a random forum is statistically > irrelevant for downtime rates. This is not news. And VOIP went one > step further by taking the story out of context and misinterpreting it > for us. Who was talking statistics? I was simply reporting that this thread existed, and that at least some of those who posted were apparently not getting the fabled 99.999% uptime. Mr. Hoffman is setting up a straw man here. Perhaps I should have run a disclaimer saying that the statements expressed in that thread were those of the people who posted them, but I guess I thought that any reasonably intelligent person could figure that out. > To be clear, I have no problem with a poster doing this to advoate > VOIP. Why do I have a hard time swallowing that statement? > But hiding behind "news" is disingenuous. Everyone else uses > their real name here. Why can't "VOIP news"? Pat has already explained this and he pretty much said what I would have said, so I'll let his answer stand. I will ask, however, why Mr. Hoffman is so interested in someone's name? I've always figured that a post should stand or fall on its own merits. If he had known who I was, would he have perhaps responded with an ad hominem attack, instead of being forced to respond to the content of the post itself? Anyway, I have always said, no one is forced to read my "propaganda" if that's what they think it is. That's what kill filters are for; people should feel free to use them if they don't like what I write, or don't find the information useful. But just as Pat sometimes adds comments to articles that are sent directly to him, or sometimes writes his own commentary, I likewise sometimes add comments to items that appear in VoIP News, and sometimes even write a message that is primarily my own commentary. If that doesn't sit well with anyone, they should feel perfectly free to ignore anything and everything that has "VoIP News" or my name in the message headers. Jack ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 08:06:11 -0400 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime In article , joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: > Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which > continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" > story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. > I think c.d.t is a wonderful place for dialog, and the VoIP vs. POTS > debate is clearly the defining telco debate of our time, but it helps > no one to hide opinion behind the title "news." I read this through the Usenet, and I killfiled "VoIP News" a long time ago. The Digest became a much more pleasant read. In fact, I forgot all about that guy -- until I read the above. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 15:33:54 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:48:07 GMT, joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: >> As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for >> the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS >> ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not >> necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which > Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which > continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" > story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. > I think c.d.t is a wonderful place for dialog, and the VoIP vs. POTS > debate is clearly the defining telco debate of our time, but it helps > no one to hide opinion behind the title "news." <> > To be clear, I have no problem with a poster doing this to advoate > VOIP. But hiding behind "news" is disingenuous. Everyone else uses > their real name here. Why can't "VOIP news"? The noise to signal ratio in c.d.t. has pretty much doubled with VOIP news being added to it. Never mind that this group is getting those postings over one of the other 48,000 plus newsgroups. I have already suggested to the moderator that VOIP News would fit better in the voice-over-IP group. It fell on deaf ears so I have a very fast delete key. In fact, lately, I can read the 3 or so messages that interest me and bulk delete the rest. FWIW if I had poor telephone service, I'd call the one place where someone cares, not post it to 5000 or 10,000 people on the internet who could care less about the weather or quality of phone service in an apartment building in Manhattan. Perhaps that poster should spend some time reading the phone book instead of the chat room mail :-) My last call to the Public Utilities Commission must have made Verizon (nee GTE) flag their account, but my parents get excellent service from Verizon to this day. As far as using an alias or not, I guess the more you post the more you get spammed. Mailwasher lets me bounce mail before it is filtered and it seems to know what is spam. Carl Navarro [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Carl did make that suggestion; I mentioned to Jack Decker, but the decision reached was to keep those messages (which originate with people posting to Yahoo Groups) here. I think it was based on the volume of readers here as opposed to Voice Over IP. Jack did want to have those messages appear in a moderated news group. But the Voice Over IP group is a good choice as well if there was a moderator there; a job which Jack could probably handle. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Date: 2 Aug 2004 09:42:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote > Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which > continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" > story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. I have to agree. Certainly the VOIP people are entitled to their opinion, but it does seem there's a constant flood of messages that are rather shrill in their support of VOIP and criticizing existing lines, and without much substantiation to them. If there are problems that would knock out POTS, it is likely the same problems will knock out VOIP. When the errant truck knocks down a utility pole, all the wires on it -- POTS, fibre, cable, etc., all come down and go out of service. My cable TV, served by fibre-optic lines, is definitely not that reliable. > In short, a handful reports in a random forum is statistically > irrelevant for downtime rates. This is not news. And VOIP went one > step further by taking the story out of context and misinterpreting it > for us. Also true. It seems too many posts refer to a single example of someone liking their VOIP, but that in itself is not meaningful. FWIW, my own experiences with VOIP have been most unsatisfactory-- terrible unreliable connections. ------------------------------ From: shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime Date: 2 Aug 2004 10:06:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com VOIP News wrote in message news:: > As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for > the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS > ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not > necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which > incumbent telephone company provides service in your area. In this > thread on BroadbandReports.com, participants take turns commenting on > the reliability of traditional phone service, and for several it's not > exactly the "five nines" (99.999% uptime) that the phone companies > would like you to believe. > http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,10914037~mode=flat Unfortunately the availability of the switch isn't the same as the availability of the service. But the many-nines numbers always refer to switch availability. Depending on the model/frame the availability for making a call is probably lower than the availability for keeping a connected call connected. When I had dial-up net access via a 24x7 dedicated analog-line modem several years ago, I had one call that was continuously connected for over six months. When it did disconnect it was because my ISP was upgrading its modem banks. The switch(es) I was going through probably went through several upgrades and reconfigurations in those six months. Tim. ------------------------------ Date: 02 Aug 2004 15:57:06 EDT From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU (Charles B. Wilber) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Even more telling and sly was the title of the posting. Calling the opinion piece "POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime" is apparently an effort to predispose readers to a certain point of view. I have read many interesting posts in this forum but have learned to treat them as opinion, never as fact, unless I can verify them myself. That sort of "yellow journalism" is the reason why. Charlie Wilber Dartmouth College --- You wrote: In short, a handful reports in a random forum is statistically irrelevant for downtime rates. This is not news. And VOIP went one step further by taking the story out of context and misinterpreting it for us. --- end of quote --- ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Date: 2 Aug 2004 07:33:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I wonder how many telephone lines, if any at all, were installed and used for the convention? The Bell System used to always announce the big installation jobs it had to do for each political convention -- hundreds of telephones and lines for the politicians and press. I wonder what is involved today. I presume they still need a number of conventional land line telephone circuits. But they likely also get high speed data lines. I wonder if any additional cellular capacity is added; I presume a good number of delegates and press are on the cellphones, either talking about the latest political gossip or ordering in pizza. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't it really bizzarre that an event > like a political convention -- allegedly a democratic process -- and > a 'public' event is totally closed to the general public? Our political system is not a pure "democracy" (where everyone gets to participate) but rather a _representative_ republic. That is, we elect representatives who act on our behalf. Actually, with the widespread use of the primary election, the conventions are more public and open than ever, since everyone can express their view in the primaries. Years ago, the party itself would choose the nominees and the primaries could be ignored. What troubles me is the tolerance of disruptive behavior. In 2000, protesters made it quite clear their objective was to disrupt, even shut down if they could, the conventions. That was the end objective in itself. The pundits seemed to excuse this behavior as a healthy exercise of free speech even though no one had a clue as to what message the protesters were sending. To me, it sounded like mob rule. Of course, when such shutdown protests are aimed at the pundits themselves (as happened when a newspaper was picketed by a big crowd), then it's another story. ------------------------------ From: dold@MCHSIXfibr.usenet.us.com Subject: MCHSI Fibre/Fire Outage? Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 14:59:09 UTC Organization: a2i network My MCHSI cable internet has been out since Saturday. I called and the service number notes that there is an outage in my area. This morning I stayed on hold, and they tell me that there is an area-wide outage caused by a fire, and it is affecting the AT&T feed into the cable headend. Okay. That's not their fault. But, MCHSI has no status page, AT&T doesn't have a status page that I can find, and searching the local news pages doesn't mention a fire or large AT&T outage near Lakeport/Clear Lake, CA. Is there a status page that I can check? I used to have a PacBell status page, but that doesn't work anymore. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: S.Korea's Daum to Buy Lycos for $95 Mln Date: 2 Aug 2004 11:25:08 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Monty Solomon wrote: > By Jean Yoon and Rhee So-eui > SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's top Web site operator Daum > Communications Corp., said on Monday it would acquire Lycos Inc., > the U.S. business of Spain's Terra Lycos, owner of popular sites > such as Wired News and Tripod, for $95 million. Daum being one of the ten major spam sources (slightly behind Korea's Kornet and Hananet), does this mean Lycos is now going to turn into a spam factory as well? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) Date: 2 Aug 2004 11:27:34 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Paul Coxwell wrote: > Thanks for the replies everyone. >> There were noncommercial educational stations long before there was a >> PBS. I believe PBS emerged in the late 1960s (or possibly early >> 1970s), after the major educational stations, such as WNET (NY), WGBH >> (Boston), WETA (Washington), etc. had begun exchanging high-quality >> program content, and there was interest in Washington to get some of >> that programming onto educational stations in cities that didn't >> produce programming. As I recall, it started out with some government >> funding, but that subsequently dried up. > In recent years I've also seen quite a few documentaries which > indicate they're a joint production between WGBH Boston and the BBC. And can anyone explain to me what ITV was? I remember seeing a lot of documentaries (clearly film-to-tape jobs) when I was a kid, which claimed to be from ITV and had the ITV logos. This is no relation to the British outfit of the same name, but was the "Instructional Television" operation, whose programming was broadcast by the PBS affiliate. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Date: 2 Aug 2004 09:35:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote > I've got a hunch -- just a hunch -- that the Republican convention > this time around will be as much of a 'riot' as the Democratic > one in 1968 was. I strongly doubt it. I don't think the interest is there. > just as Chicago police considered everyone an 'anti-war protestor' > in 1968 as they cracked heads open assembly line style as they > gassed them and dragged them off to Cook County Jail. Many thousands > of gentle people whose crime was they disagreed with those in power. Several good books ("The Century" by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster and "Reds" by Ted Morgan) discussed the 1968 riots. Both books describe in detail how the protest (riot) organizers worked hard to train their followers to provoke a police response -- that was their goal. I'm not sure calling the protesters merely "gentle people" is accurate. It was not right for the cops to react so violently, but it was also not right for the protesters to go to such extremes to intentionally provoke the cops. In 2000, protesters again attempted to riot at the convention. Again, their purpose was not to express a political message, but rather disrupt the convention and the host city. The police were extremely well trained and refused to react even when directly assaulted -- TV news showed protesters shoving cops off their bikes and slaming the bikes down onto the cops. There was considerable damage to private property, much of it owned by poor people. Ironically, the protesters supposedly were concerned about the poor, but none of them offered to pay to replace the damages. When I express these views, people criticize me for being "a facist" or "suppressing all dissent". Not true at all. What bothers me is that there are plenty of legal ways to protest, but protesters avoid them because they're boring. Supporters of mob rule think it was how social reforms were made; but this isn't true. It was the assault on _totally peaceful strollers_ in Birmingham that outraged the nation; and it was mob rule in the 1870s that overturned Reconstruction in the South. > and the telephone operator. ... Then his attention went to the > nearby telephone operator with a switchboard [I missed this part in my other post.] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY) Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 17:26:46 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Telcos which provide (Enterphone) > service or private contractors which provide (Interphone) service > usually generally have it rigged up so that door-to-apartment calls > *cannot* be forwarded off premises. You probably would not want to > have someone be able to remotely open your door when you were not > there; it is a security matter, that is why no forwarding is > available on Enter (Inter) phone service. If telco is supplying the > service, it works sort of like a gerry-rigged centrex. The lobby > phone gets dial tone from the central office and the caller dials > usually a two or three digit number associated with your name in > the lobby directory. You must tell your visitor your apartment number; > it is not obvious from the dialed code number. When you agree to > admit the caller and dial a '4' or '6' or whatever, the central > office pulses the front door latch to allow it to open so the caller > can hang up the phone and walk into the building. If you do not have > external phone service, then telco's contract with the building > management (which pays for the service) calls for telco to provide > you with a phone to operate the door only. > Now if your building has the service from a private contractor it > is called Interphone since the telco (at least years ago) had a patent > on 'Enterphone'. The private contractor usually has a 'computer like > box' in the basement or wherever telco enters the premises and the > 'box' functions like a little switchboard sort of like telco and > all the house pairs terminate in this box with the outside trunk > lines coming in. It is quite transparent in that the 'box' just sits > there silently when you make an outgoing call; but when an incoming > call **from the front door** comes in the box does two things: it > tests your line for busy; if you are not talking it gives you a > distinctive ring (same as telco; to aid you in identifying the source > of the call) and if your line *is* busy it sends you a distinctive > call waiting tone (again, same as telco, even if you do not already > have call-waiting) so you can flash, the box puts your outside call > on hold and gives you the door call. > Like telco's (non-subscriber) service where any old phone can be > plugged into the place on the wall where the phone plugs in, **no > actual phone number is needed** since telco (or the private > contractor) provides battery as needed to operate the phone when it > gets called from the door. So if your building has one of those two > types of service (Enter/Interphone) don't bother with calling telco to > get phone service; just plug some cheap phone into the jack; it will > ring as needed and allow talking as needed for the front door intercom > function. When there is not someone at the door talking to you, the > phone will otherwise be dead. In any event (Enter or Inter) **call > forwarding will not work**. Contractor's box won't do it and telco > won't provide it, mainly for security reasons. > But there is a *third* type of front door service, always private > contractor. Sort of cheesy, IMO. In that system, front door person > dials your code (never actual apartment number) and the premises > 'box' does a quick look up of your real seven-digit number then places > a phone call to that seven-digit number and bridges them together when > you answer (if you are home and do answer). Its sort of like a fancy > speed dial type thing. On that kind, you *can* do what you want and > have it call forwarded or run to an answering machine or wherever, > although IMO it is ill advised for security reasons. Do you want the > visitor to know you are not home because the door (speed dial type > phone) forwards to wherever? There is an exception to the **no for- > warding** rule: If you have a telco centrex type system (the first > one, above) fully connected and taking incoming/outgoing calls, etc > then TRUE incoming calls (not front door calls) can be call forwarded. > Turn call forwarding on as desired, but the front door will still > give its funny little ring-ring on the phone and not forward. I guess > that is because the programming decision whether or not to forward > is made at telco long before the decision as the origin of the call. > So find out from your new landlord **what kind** of front door > intercom service they have. If it is 'cheap' you want then you may > be able to get by just plugging a dead phone into a modular jack and > letting the front door do its own thing (types one and two above). If > you have to have an *actual phone number* (as in type three) then > bear in mind the front door will be as limited as the cheap phone > service is. If your line is busy (cheap phones do not get call > waiting) then the front door will get a busy signal also, and this > 'cheap phone you never use since everyone has your cell phone' may > turn out to be sort of expensive as you install call waiting (to pamper > the front door) and call waiting to forward everyone else (but > hopefully not a bad guy burglar, etc) to your cell phone when you are > away from home. If you are dealing with type three above and > absolutely must get a working phone number from telco, then I would > say never give the number out to anyone (the people who matter would > have your cell phone anyway). Just let the phone sit there idly 99 > percent of the time. > At this point you probably know more about Front Door Intercom Service > than most landlords and building managers. Oh, and regards repairs: > standard telco contracts on these devices call for a *thirty minute* > repair time turnaround if/when the front door intercom goes out of > order. Various reasons; all the pairs from central office to the > building and the jumpers, etc are *supposed to be dedicated and > plainly marked in the c.o.* and in the building basement, but it is > not uncommon to get a dorkus installer tech who rips off pairs in > older neighborhoods, nor is it uncommon for the cellanoids unlatching > the front door to go bad, and telco understands it is a rush/24 hour > per day repair job. Hopefully private contractors sense the urgency > also. If the landlord does not understand what kind of front door > intercom system he has, then try plugging in a dead phone to a jack > first and see if it works; if it does then all is cool. Some of them > say 'oh, you gotta have a phone to make the door work' and they don't > really know what they are saying. Then get back to us as needed. PAT] I am in the property management business, and in my experience the most common type of these building entry systems are made by a company called "doorking". The base models (they do make a "NO phone bill" system which I do not discuss here) simply have 1 outgoing phone line. These are "option 3" as you note above. There is a database of phone numbers mapped to entry codes (or apartmenet numbers). When you enter the code (or apt number) on the panel, all it does is call the number that matches it it's database. No special contracts with the telco, no special switching equipment on site. And the kicker is, if you know the number of ther phone line it dials out from, you can call into it and press whatever DTMF is assigned to open the door. (And also you can program the database by dialing in, if you know the security code assigned. 9999 is the default I think.) Lousy security, very low tech, and, unfortunately, VERY common. And bottom line is you MUST have telco service for it to work for your apartment. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that at the time of divestiture, telco was forbidden (under divestiture) to actively solicit new subscribers to the Enterphone Front Door Security System, but all existing customers were grandfathered, and there are still some of those older (20 years) systems. Interphone is also a classy type of system and not too many buildings can (or want to) afford them, so regretfully, the 'option 3' systems are in use a lot. The Enterphone set up from Illinois Bell used build in the wall style nice looking stainless steel plates and armored handsets. Cheap they weren't, but extremely good security. Mr. Weintz, are your tenants aware of just how insecure, how woefully lacking in security their downstairs front door is? And who comes around to maintain it as needed? PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 17:15:41 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Bill Burns wrote: > Paul Vader wrote: >> Lisa Minter writes: >>> In the 16th and 17th centuries, most things were shipped by boat. >> The word in question, which I won't use to avoid content filters, >> has its origins in English at least 300 years earlier than that. >> Research people, research! > The first cite of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated > Y1K -- the year 1000! > Bill Burns, Long Island, NY, USA > mailto:billb@ftldesign.com > Undersea Cable History Website: > http://atlantic-cable.com Most "S" word likely derives from the germanic Scheisse. A lot of words that are considered vulgar today were ordinary regular words 1000 years ago. True for most vulgar words connected with anatomy and body functions. It was only later when the Latin speaking nobility began to excercise some control of the local (ie: english) language that we got the current latin derived words for these same body parts and body functions - and now they are considered the "proper" words to use for these, while the earlier germanic derived words are now considered vulgar. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 22:09:08 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Bill Burns writes: >> has its origins in English at least 300 years earlier than that. >> Research people, research! > The first cite of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated > Y1K -- the year 1000! I wish I had an OED handy (they have a ridiculously expensive subscription service -- I don't see paying it just to tell neophiles who wrong they are on word origins), but I did find references on the web to the 1300's, which was good enough to blow the stupid "ship high in transit" thing out of the water. Who makes up this crap anyway? So to speak. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Bart Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins - Ship High In Transit Date: Mon, 02 Aug 2004 07:33:19 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: spam@icpage.com On 29 Jul 2004 11:58:09 -0700, adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) wrote: > Yet another interesting origin of a phrase, this time as reported in > Harry Newton's Telecommunication Dictionary: > Edited for brevity ... > In the 16th and 17th centuries, most things were shipped by boat. > Among the products so shipped was dried manure (tightly bailed) as > commercial manufactured fertilizers weren't yet invented. Shipping it > dry reduced its weight yet produced another problem. Once the bails > of manure got wet, the fermentation process started with the byproduct > of methane gas (highly flammable). Several accidents occurred as the > result of bails of manure being stowed low in the hold of the ship and > getting wet due to water in the low part of the ship. These accidents > usually occurred when a crewman decended into the hold with a lantern > ... ka BOOM! Investigations soon revealed that these manure bail > should be kept out of the water, or on the upper or higher decks. The > labeling used on the bails was Ship High In Transit, which became > S.H.I.T., which became .... > Lisa Minter wrote in message > news:: >> A few thousand years agom as incredible as it sounds, men and women >> took baths only twice a year (May and October)! Women kept their hair >> covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and >> wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They >> couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf >> of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The >> heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." >> Today we often use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone >> appears to be or is powerful and wealthy. >> In more recent years, common entertainment included playing >> cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards >> but only applicable to the "Ace of Spades." To avoid paying the tax, >> people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require >> 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they >> weren't "playing with a full deck." >> In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters >> carried iron cannons. Those cannons fired round iron cannon balls. It >> was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. However, how to >> prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method >> devised was a square-based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on >> four resting on nine, which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 >> cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the >> cannon. There was only one problem ... how to prevent the bottom layer >> from sliding or rolling from under the others. The solution was a >> metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations. >> However, if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls would quickly >> rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass >> Monkeys." Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and >> much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature >> dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the >> iron cannonballs would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite >> literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey." (All >> this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you.) ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #360 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 3 13:57:48 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i73Hvmc08819; Tue, 3 Aug 2004 13:57:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 13:57:48 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408031757.i73Hvmc08819@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 #361 TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 Aug 2004 13:57:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 361 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #442, August 3, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) In a Surprising Turn of Events (johndee) Norvergence Bankruptcy Leads to Charges of Scam (David O. Rodriguez) Vonage Hit by Nationwide Calling Disruption (VOIP News) Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago (Gary Novosielski) Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago (Hammond of Texas) 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: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 10:38:39 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #442, August 3, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 442: August 3, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Nortel Needs More Cost Cutting ** Videotron Promises VoIP by Mid-2005 ** Bell Offers Secure IP Net to Small Business ** Sirois Replaced as TIW Chair ** CRTC Outlines VoIP Hearing Process ** Telus Union Wins a Round ** CRTC Okays Bell IP Centrex Tariff ** Local Interconnection Simplified ** Wireless Internet Expands in Rural N.B. ** Persona Ups Internet Speed ** CRTC Deregulates SaskTel EMI Services ** Phone Prefix in 819 to Be Reclaimed ** Rutherford to Head Cygnal Network Group ** Call-Net Sales Rise ** Strike Cuts Into Aliant Profits ** Avaya Revenues, Profits Rise ** Keeping Your Network Alive ============================================================ NORTEL NEEDS MORE COST CUTTING: Nortel Networks CEO Bill Owens says he expects the company's revenues to grow faster than the market this year, but that its costs remain too high. He says he will provide information on "the actions that we will be taking to put into place an improved cost structure" by mid-August. ** There are widespread rumours that Nortel will move its headquarters from Brampton to Ottawa this year. VIDEOTRON PROMISES VoIP BY MID-2005: Videotron Ltee and Videotron Telecom Ltd say they will launch VoIP-based residential telephone service in Quebec during the first half of 2005. The company, which expects to spend $80 million to roll the service out over the next four years, plans to bundle phone service with digital TV and high-speed Internet. BELL OFFERS SECURE IP NET TO SMALL BUSINESS: Bell Canada today announced ProConnect, a managed private IP network service for connecting the offices of small and medium businesses. A basic package starts at $150/month, including equipment, connectivity and management. SIROIS REPLACED AS TIW CHAIR: Charles Sirois, founder of Telesystem International Wireless, has resigned as Chairman to "pursue other business interests." CEO Bruno Ducharme assumes the post of TIW Chairman; Al Tolstoy becomes President and COO. ** TIW reports second quarter revenue of $286.5 million and net income of $13.9 million. CRTC OUTLINES VoIP HEARING PROCESS: The CRTC has issued direction on the process to be followed at the VoIP public hearing September 21-23, along with a list of parties who will submit oral views, in order of their appearance. The list will be posted on the CRTC site this week. www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/process/2004/sep21_t.htm TELUS UNION WINS A ROUND: The Federal Court of Appeal has denied Telus's application for a stay of the order that made the Telecommunications Workers Union the bargaining agent for Telus Mobility employees in Ontario and Quebec. (See Telecom Update #434, 439) http://decisions.fca-caf.gc.ca/fca/2004/2004fca268.shtml CRTC OKAYS BELL IP CENTREX TARIFF: CRTC Telecom Order 2004- 256 approves Bell Canada's tariff for Managed Internet Protocol Telephony (MIPT) service. Centrex customers will receive volume discounts based on the total number of their Centrex lines and MIPT ports in service. ** The CRTC turned down the telco's proposal to waive MIPT installation fees until the end of 2004, because such promotions are being reviewed under Public Notice 2003-1-1. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-256.htm LOCAL INTERCONNECTION SIMPLIFIED: In mid-July, the CRTC ruled that local competitors no longer have to interconnect with incumbents' networks in every exchange, but can do so at a single point within larger "local interconnection regions." Competitors have long argued that such a change would significantly reduce their costs. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-46.htm WIRELESS INTERNET EXPANDS IN RURAL N.B.: Wireless Internet provider Aernet Wireless says it now offers 1 Mbps service in 23 rural communities across New Brunswick. www.aernet.ca PERSONA UPS INTERNET SPEED: Persona Communications, which serves 220,000 cable subscribers in seven provinces, has increased Internet download speeds for most Ontario customers to 5 Mbps. ** A deal for Persona's sale to a group of investors headed by TD and CIBC has received CRTC approval. (See Telecom Update #418) CRTC DEREGULATES SASKTEL EMI SERVICES: The CRTC has forborne from regulating SaskTel's electronic messaging and information services (providing transmission, storage, and retrieval of text communications), subject to some conditions. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-51.htm PHONE PREFIX IN 819 TO BE RECLAIMED: CRTC Telecom Decision 2004-52 is too complex to be summarized here, but it should be required reading for anyone who suggests: (a) that managing phone numbers is easy; or (b) that the telecom industry would run smoothly if we just got rid of interfering regulators and subcommittees. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-52.htm RUTHERFORD TO HEAD CYGNAL NETWORK GROUP: Todd Rutherford, head of marketing for Cygnal's Network Solutions Group, has been named the division's President. He earlier served with Norstan, Lucent, and White Radio. CALL-NET SALES RISE: Call-Net sales, which had been flat for two quarters, rose in the second quarter to $200.8 million, 4% higher than a year ago. Call-Net's loss for the quarter was $33.1 million, $6.4 million of which was due to shifts in foreign exchange rates. Call-Net ended the quarter with $27.3 in cash or cash equivalents. STRIKE CUTS INTO ALIANT PROFITS: Aliant reports second quarter revenues of $526 million and net income of $50.1 million, down 18.2% from the same period last year. The telco says costs linked to the strike of 4,300 employees, which began April 23, reduced profits by $13.9 million. AVAYA REVENUES, PROFITS RISE: Avaya had April-June revenues of US$1,016 million, a 9.4% increase from the same period a year ago. Income from continuing operations was $58 million, compared to a $3 million loss a year ago. Net income increased to $61 million from $8 million. KEEPING YOUR NETWORK ALIVE: The July-August issue of Telemanagement features an in-depth report for enterprise network managers on "defining, measuring, and improving availability in your network." It's one of three reports on network survival in 2004: the others look at planning for telecom disaster recovery, and the future of networks based on Frame Relay or ATM. ** Telemanagement is available by subscription only. To become a Telemanagement subscriber--including unlimited access to Telemanagement's extensive online content--visit the Telemanagement website or call 800-263-4415 ext 500. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:38:05 -0500 From: johndee Subject: In a Surprising Turn of Events A well-publicized piece of legislation -- sponsored by U.S. Senator John Sununu (R-NH) and backed by IP voice providers -- intended to deregulate VoIP services was radically changed during a mark-up session by the Senate Commerce Committee last week. In a surprising turn of events, the Committee voted 13-9 to amend the bill to require VoIP providers to be subject to intrastate access charges, universal service obligations, E-911 and CALEA responsibilities. The action taken by the senators is an important step toward ensuring the long-term stability of the universal service system and the overall fairness of intercarrier compensation. It also signifies a subtle shift in focus from technology interests to public interests. Prior to the mark-up, Senator Sununu was expected to be successful in passing his bill. The amended version of S. 2281 -- the "VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act of 2004" -- reflects many concessions to rural consumers. Important among these concessions is the amendment by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) preserving state commissions' authority over intrastate universal service and access funding. This amendment helps ensure that all carriers, regardless of the technology they use, will support universal service and pay for their use of other companies' networks to reach their customers. ------------------------------ From: David O. Rodriguez Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 01:52:21 -0500 Subject: Norvergence Bankruptcy Leads to Charges of Scam Pat, Just wanted to make sure you received a copy of this. David ----- Original Message ----- > Novergence bankruptcy leads to charges of scam > Sunday, August 1, 2004 By MARTHA McKAY STAFF WRITER At the center > of a massive New Jersey bankruptcy that dealt a blow to 11,000 small > businesses in more than 20 states is a small box called "The Matrix." > Newark-based NorVergence, a privately held phone-service reseller, > boasted that the box was packed with enough of the very latest > telecommunications technology to deliver cheap, unlimited local and > long-distance phone, cell service, and high-speed Internet access. > In fact, the box was a gimmick. In some cases, it had no practical > use at all. > "It's an unbelievable scam," said Meredith Wood, who runs an > industrial services business in West Milford. "I wish I'd thought > of it," she said with a rueful laugh. "I'd be calling you from my > private island." Wood bought unlimited long-distance and cellphone > service from NorVergence last year and signed a lease for a Matrix > box that NorVergence never even plugged in. > Now, Wood is stuck owing a five-year, $45,000 equipment lease to > U.S. Bancorp for her Matrix, a piece of gear worth about $600. The > story of how Wood and thousands of other small-business owners were > victimized began to unfold last month, when NorVergence flamed out > in a Chapter 7 liquidation in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark. The > company, which once boasted $200 million in annual revenues, left > 1,300 employees without jobs, large phone companies such as Qwest, > Sprint, and T-Mobile owed at least $30 million, and lawyers > wondering where all the money went. Qwest has received the court's > permission to shut off service to NorVergence's former customers, > leaving Wood and the thousands of other business owners potentially > without phone service but still owing hundreds of millions in > payments to banks and finance companies who paid NorVergence > millions for the leases. > Christopher Menkin, editor of Leasing News, believes the NorVergence > case is "one of the biggest leasing scandals in the last 25 years." > Corporate culture Drawn in by NorVergence's deeply discounted phone > service and slick, reassuring marketing materials, many > small-business owners probably didn't think to delve into the > company's background. > If they had, they might have turned up court records showing the man > who ran NorVergence, Thomas N. Salzano, had piloted another > telecommunications company that ended in bankruptcy, where creditors > accused him of illegally funneling $2.7 million of company funds > into a Swiss bank after filing for Chapter 11 protection. By all > accounts, Salzano, who was NorVergence's chief managing officer and > was listed as a director in a Securities and Exchange Commission > filing, ran the company despite the CEO title of his brother, Peter > J. Salzano. He's described by those who know him as a high-energy > executive with a quirky style who rarely wore ties, instead favoring > white leisure suits and colorful printed shirts. He's got "a lot of > marketing savvy" and "a lot of ego," those people said - an arrogant > charmer with a creative business mind. > Neither of the Salzano brothers responded to requests for an > interview. By mid-2003, just two years after it was founded, > NorVergence was buying millions of dollars worth of phone and > Internet service from some of the nation's largest carriers, > including Qwest, Sprint, and T-Mobile, and reselling at a deep > discount to thousands of small businesses. > The company hired hundreds, packing so many workers onto two floors > at 550 Broad St. in Newark that the building's air conditioning was > overwhelmed and NorVergence had to rent more floors. Salespeople, > many of whom had previously worked in the telecommunications > industry, were attracted by promises of hefty commissions. The > sales teams followed a pitch based on a series of scripts hammered > home during a two-week sales tryout in Newark. Kirk Dennis, a top > salesman in the Chicago area, recalls a boot camp-like atmosphere > where memorizing the script made the difference between getting a > job and getting kicked out. > The NorVergence trainers made you sweat with their intimidating > behavior, said Dennis, describing how they would "catch you in a > hallway and say, 'Give me your script.'Y" Anyone who floundered was > escorted out. Of the 90 people who began with Dennis, only 30 were > offered a job. Described by customers as highly polished and > aggressive, NorVergence salespeople fanned out across the country as > their employer rapidly opened well-appointed offices in 36 cities. > The pitch, the catch Armed with their sales pitch, and backed up by > a flashy Web site, the company went after small-business owners with > good credit records, most of whom did not have a telecommunications > expert on staff. The salespeople, known as screening managers, used > dense, acronym-rich telecommunications jargon in their descriptions > of the cheap, unlimited phone services that the "MATRIX unlimited > calling solution" would deliver. According to a sales script > obtained by The Record, a screening manager would tell a prospective > customer "because we're swamped with so many new requests, my job is > to screen for only qualified applicants down to just the few allowed > for each area." > "They let you know if they were going to accept you > as a customer -- that was their marketing gimmick," said Carol > Marubio, owner of an Illinois roofing company that signed up. But > by far the bigger gimmick was the Matrix box. To sell phone service > to their small-business customers, NorVergence, a reseller, bought > it wholesale from large carriers such as Qwest and Sprint. But when > the sales team pitched the company's "solution" to customers, the > Matrix box was key. What many eager customers apparently missed was > the fact that the "unlimited" phone and Internet service NorVergence > sold them had no direct relation to the box, which performed a > limited function in some customers' cases (it allocated bandwidth > over a T1 line), and no function in others. > Many apparently believed that the box could be used by other phone > providers. Most customers didn't think NorVergence would go out of > business. One former salesman said they were told that if a customer > asked what would happen if the company ran into trouble, to "just > say nothing" and dismiss the possibility. And some customers > interviewed had no idea that NorVergence would sell their Matrix > lease -- for cash -- to banks and finance companies, in much the same > way a bank might sell a mortgage to a third party. Those sales > funneled millions to NorVergence, and locked its customers into > long-term relationships with a bank. > "In my opinion, [NorVergence's] whole setup was designed to sell > equipment leases," said Dan Baldwin, spokesman for TelecomAgent, a > non-profit organization that represents sales agents in the > telecommunications business, who has been looking into NorVergence's > business since early last year. As for the box, David Silverman, a > NorVergence salesman based at the company's Broad Street > headquarters, told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court at a recent hearing > that the Matrix box was useless. "These boxes serve no purpose; > they're worthless," he told the court. Scores of local companies > and organizations -- even the New Jersey Republican State Committee > offices in Trenton -- signed up for NorVergence service, lured by > those promises of deep discounts. It was hard to turn down. The > company installed customers at the rate of 350 a week -- averaging > about $6 million in weekly sales -- practically up to the bankruptcy > filing, said Oscar Delatorre, a former NorVergence employee who > oversaw installations. That's an estimated $132 million in sales > for the first five months of 2004 alone. > According to a former NorVergence vice president who supplied sales > figures to The Record, new customers signed contracts for $409 > million worth of phone systems from January through June 4. Of that, > an estimated 40 percent actually were installed, bringing the total > sales closer to about $164 million. > Last gasp: The whole company was focused on marketing and sales, > former employees said. As its debts rose, NorVergence ratcheted up > its sales effort, and other parts of the business began to > deteriorate, they said. "Customer service and installation was an > afterthought," said Jeff Carlsen, vice president of facilities > engineering. Around January, the company told employees it was > looking for investors, but that effort apparently failed. On the > seven floors at 550 and 570 Broad St., the signs of disorganization > were disturbing. "There were tables stacked with piles of folders; > there was no particular order to customer files," said Carlsen. "It > was unbelievably unorganized." > Technical problems arose with a new 800 service the company tried to > introduce. It had to pay its mounting bills to Qwest and others -- > nearing $2 million a week toward the end -- to cover service for its > existing customer base. So it kept adding more and more new > customers, selling their leases to banks, and collecting the cash. > It pushed its sales staff hard. By some estimates, NorVergence > signed up as many as 4,000 customers over the last six months, > without connecting their phone service. > After it fell behind in its payments to Qwest, the Colorado-based > carrier shut off service for two days in mid-June. Several days > later, NorVergence bounced hundreds of payroll checks, but asked its > employees to keep working. As creditors closed in, the normally > feisty Tom Salzano appeared defeated, according to one person who > met with him then. On June 30, the company was forced into an > involuntary Chapter 11 filing by three banks. > It laid off about 1,000 people that day, owing hundreds back pay and > commissions. As the Salzanos moved to get the word out, the news > spread to other floors and a few angry, now ex-employees tried to > leave the building with office equipment, former employees said. > Two days later, in bankruptcy court again after a failed attempt by > some banks to inject cash to prop up the operation, NorVergence > converted to a Chapter 7, closing for good and liquidating assets. > The aftermath: Qwest received permission from the judge to shut off > service to NorVergence customers, setting off a mad scramble among > customers to find new phone service. A trustee took possession of > NorVergence offices and began the process of selling any assets. (It > remains to be seen if there will be anything left. So far, Qwest is > the largest unsecured creditor, with at least $15 million owed, > followed by Sprint with at least $10 million. But before they get > anything, secured creditors will get paid, along with former > employees who file claims.) About two weeks ago, frustrated > customers began to receive letters from banks and finance companies > holding the Matrix leases that they'd better keep paying. Dozens of > NorVergence customers have formed a legal co-op, hiring a lawyer to > fight the banks and get them out of their leases. There is talk of a > class-action suit. > Meanwhile, it's still not clear whether the banks and finance > companies that bought the Matrix leases understood what they were > getting. One source said it appears that some of the finance > companies were not aware, for example, that the Matrix box could not > be used by another phone provider in the event NorVergence shut > down. One source familiar with the group of 35 banks and finance > companies said they purchased at least $220 million worth of > NorVergence customers' leases. Some banks are trying to line up new > phone-service providers for NorVergence customers. A spokeswoman for > Adtran, which made the boxes and sold them to NorVergence, said her > company was working with the banks to try to fix the problem. > "Transferring telecommunications services from NorVergence to a > different carrier likely requires modification or replacement of > equipment [the Matrix box] owned primarily by equipment leasing > companies," she said. A spokeswoman for Popular Leasing, a finance > company owned by Banco Popular, said the company had no comment on > the NorVergence situation. So did Wells Fargo. And the CIT Group. > Also unclear is the role Robert J. Fine played in the NorVergence > debacle. Fine was NorVergence's director of bank relations, who > apparently made the connections between the banks and > NorVergence. He recently resigned as president of the trade group > Eastern Association of Equipment Lessors (EAEL), according to > Leasing News. Before joining NorVergence, Fine held numerous > positions in the leasing industry. The EAEL did not return repeated > phone calls, and Fine could not be reached for comment. > On the last day of NorVergence's existence last month, Tom Salzano > did not appear in court but his brother Peter, the CEO, did. His > face beaded with perspiration, Salzano left the courtroom to jeers > by former employees who came to the hearing. He kept his head down > and walked away. > * * * NorVergence mastermind no stranger to bankruptcy > Sunday, August 1, 2004 > By MARTHA McKAY STAFF WRITER > Running a phone company into bankruptcy is nothing new for Thomas N. > Salzano. Before his ill-fated venture, Newark-based NorVergence, > folded last month, Salzano headed up a different phone company. In > the early 1990s, after running a freight consulting business, > Salzano founded Minimum Rate Pricing Inc. in Bloomfield, a reseller > of residential long-distance phone service that eventually hired > hundreds of people but ran afoul of federal regulators in 1998 when > customers complained that MRP illegally switched their > long-distance, a technique known as slamming. A settlement was > reached, and MRP agreed to pay a $1.2 million fine to the Federal > Communications Commission. But over the next few months, MRP's > business imploded. The company, which bought its long-distance > service wholesale from WorldCom (now MCI), racked up $67 million in > debt, according to court papers, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy > protection, along with some related companies, in February 1999. > "It was out of control," recalled Brian Engle, a turnaround > specialist brought in by the creditors. "They weren't looking at > their costs; the philosophy was, more revenue will solve the > problem." Months later, creditors battled in court for the > remaining scraps, saying in court papers that Salzano set up "The > Telecom Education Trust," a college trust fund for Salzano's five > children, into which was funneled $250,000 in company funds. Warren > Martin, a New Jersey lawyer who represented the creditors' > committee, said a judge ordered that money returned. Creditors also > accused Salzano of transferring $2.7 million in company funds to a > Swiss bank while the company was in bankruptcy proceedings. But the > creditors decided it wasn't worth the cost and effort to pursue > those charges, Martin recalled. > "Essentially, the business went away and there was nothing left but > a bunch of lawsuits," he said. In the end, the bankruptcy court > allowed WorldCom, the largest creditor, to buy the remaining MRP > customers, using part of its debt as payment, Engle said. MRP > customers became WorldCom customers. And Salzano started to plan > his next venture: NorVergence. > Martha McKay Staff Writer The Record > 150 River St. Hackensack, NJ 07601 201-646-4326 *** 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, The Record and other sources. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And everyone, it seems, is living in misery, former employees without a job or a paycheck, banks and leasing companies unable to collect their money because most of the former customers of Norvergence who have probably formed legal coop- eratives to fight them and at the very least have **FROZEN ALL ACCOUNTS PAYABLE** to Norvergence pending decisions by the lawyers and the judges involved, the customers who went without phone service for however long or waited in an endless queue for 'customer service' about the time this bad joke got rolling, etc. Everyone, that is, except the Solzano people who had an extra glass of wine with their steaks for dinner last night and debated where to strike next. If nothing else positive happens as a result of this spectacle, this debacle, I hope people learn more about their phone service and how telephones work. PAT] ------------------------------ From: VOIP News Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:31:54 -0400 Subject: Vonage Hit by Nationwide Calling Disruption Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5850476 Vonage Hit by Nationwide Calling Disruption LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Subscribers to telephone services over high-speed Internet connections provided by privately held Vonage suffered widespread outages across the United States on Monday due to a routing problem with network carrier Global Crossing, a Vonage spokeswoman said. Edison, New Jersey-based Vonage, which has over 200,000 customer lines, told subscribers on their account Web pages the problem lasted for about 90 minutes and attributed the outage to an error in Global Crossing's network that had data being routed to the wrong places. "We had an issue with Global Crossing, one of our carrier partners," spokeswoman Brooke Schulz told Reuters, adding the problem primarily affected outgoing calls. But Global Crossing denied any problems on their end. Full story at: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=5850476 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 04:23:57 GMT Lisa Hancock wrote: > Several good books ("The Century" by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster > and "Reds" by Ted Morgan) discussed the 1968 riots. Both books > describe in detail how the protest (riot) organizers worked hard to > train their followers to provoke a police response -- that was their > goal. I'm not sure calling the protesters merely "gentle people" is > accurate. Well, I was pretty plugged in to the movement back then, and I don't recall any such training sessions on how to provoke the cops. That would be idiotic. Oh, and I don't remember seeing Peter Jennings there, either. It's just more revisionist b.s. trying to justify the '68 Police Riots. Give it up. The whole world WAS watching, and saw what happened. The Big Lie isn't gonna work on this one. And speaking of provocation, if we don't get back to telecom stuff soon we all know where this thread is going, right? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 08:35:30 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Lisa Hancock wrote: > TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: >> I've got a hunch -- just a hunch -- that the Republican convention >> this time around will be as much of a 'riot' as the Democratic >> one in 1968 was. > I strongly doubt it. I don't think the interest is there. And suddenly, this has what-all to do with the telecom ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Pretty much nothing, except that the 1968 Democratic National Convention *still has not* (now 35 years later) ever paid their phone bill to the Illinois Bell Telephone Company or its successor companies. After the convention ended, they split town leaving several local merchants holding the bag. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #361 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 3 15:02:49 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i73J2nX10237; Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:02:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:02:49 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408031902.i73J2nX10237@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 #362 TELECOM Digest Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:03:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 362 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Know Your Enemy", Honeynet Project (Rob Slade) Opportunity to Become an Embedded Professional (Sagar Singh) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Frank@Nospam.com) Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage) (Joseph) Computer Programmers in Telecom (Sumit Chawla) Share Day for August, 2004 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 07:59:29 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Know Your Enemy", Honeynet Project BKKNYREN.RVW 20040618 "Know Your Enemy", Honeynet Project, 2004, 0-321-16646-9, U$49.99/C$71.99 %A Honeynet Project project@honeynet.org www.honeynet.orb/book/ %C P.O. Box 520, 26 Prince Andrew Place, Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 %D 2002 %G 0-321-16646-9 %I Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. %O U$49.99/C$71.99 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321166469/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321166469/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321166469/robsladesin03-20 %P 768 p. + CD-ROM %T "Know Your Enemy, Second Edition: Learning About Security Threats" The first edition of "Know Your Enemy" was a lot of fun, and it also contained some valuable advice if you were brand new to the idea of a honeypot, and wanted to get started quickly. This second edition has taken advantage of another couple of years in the development of honeypots and honeynets, and provides guidance on a new generation of the technology. More than that, it promises, and mostly provides, more detailed information on the analytical aspects of honeynet operation, including the all-too-often neglected topic of network forensics. The page count has more than doubled. I have frequently said that any book with "hack," or any variant thereof, in the title is automatically suspect. This work helps prove my point, first, because the Honeynet Project members have not used the term (they refer to attackers as blackhats), and the text also notes the problems with "exploit" type books: they list old and known attacks, most of which are protected against, and say nothing about the attackers and how they work. Part one describes the honeynet. Chapter one points out the value of "knowing the enemy" and the history of the Honeynet Project. Chapter two explains what a honeypot is, leading to details on how a honeynet works, in terms of architecture, policies, and the risks and responsibilities of operating one, in chapter three. Building a first generation honeynet, in chapter four, presents specific details, although a number of concepts have already been given. The lessons from the early years of the project have led to a second generation of design, which is outlined in chapter five. Using a single machine to create a virtual network of simulated machines is described in chapter six. Chapter seven extends all of this into distributed networks of machines. A number of legal issues are discussed in chapter eight: specific citations are primarily from US laws, but general concepts are also examined. Part two concerns the analysis of data collected from the Honeynet. Chapter nine looks at the various sources of evidence. Network forensic ideas and tools are reviewed in chapter ten, although the material does tend to jump abruptly from Networking 101 to an assumption that the reader can parse Snort captures. Fundamentals of the data recovery aspects of computer forensics are given in chapter eleven, leading to the specifics of UNIX recovery in chapter twelve, and Windows in thirteen. (These chapters contain details of up to date tools not available in most of the standard computer forensic texts.) I was delighted to see that chapter fourteen addresses reverse engineering, although only in a limited subset of the full range of software forensics. Chapter fifteen reiterates the sources from chapter nine, and suggests centralized collection and management of data. Part three explains what the project has determined about "the enemy" by the types of attacks that have been launched and detected. Chapter sixteen takes a random crack at several topics related to the blackhat community: a number of points are interesting, but few are very helpful. A general overview of attacks in given in chapter seventeen. Specific attacks, and analyses, on Windows, Linux, and Solaris are detailed in chapters eighteen to twenty. Future trends are projected in chapter twenty one. The repetition of material that plagued the first edition has been cleaned up to a great extent, although the text would still benefit from a tightening up of the material in some chapters. In addition, the early examples are not thoroughly explained, making the reader initially feel that only a firewall audit log specialist would be able to understand what is being said. However, as with the first edition, most of the book is written clearly and well, and it is certainly worth reading. In addition, the new material definitely makes this not merely an interesting read, but something that has the potential to be a serious reference in the forensic field. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004 BKKNYREN.RVW 20040618 rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing. - Gamel Abdel Nasser http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: Sagar Singh Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 23:27:56 PDT Subject: [telecom-news] Opportunity to Become an Embedded Professional Reply-To: telecom-news@yahoogroups.com Embedded Systems 'The Future Lies Here' The Embedded Technology sector is currently amongst the fastest growing sectors within the IT segment, and is likely to remain for a long time to come. As a consequence, there is a rising demand in this field for Professionals who can deliver on the challenging requirements in this field. Professionals trained in embedded systems technologies happen to be a rare commodity in the recruitment marketplace. Considering the vast scope of the field, ranging from telecom to consumer electronics to aerospace, the demand for embedded systems engineers for product development and application, will continue to grow in the years to come. According to an IDC report the international market as a whole expects product development worth $75 billion, which will require as many as 150,000 trained professionals in embedded systems development by the year 2005. While India is a known player in the software services space, the image of the country has been so far as a low-cost service provider. This is where embedded software development, which requires specialised skill sets, can make the difference. It is a sector promising a fast track career, which is only for the brightest and the best. From handheld devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart cell phones, to automobiles and rocket propellers, embedded computing systems are in the heart of all. The demand for embedded systems is in fact rising in the areas of integrated embedded solutions spanning across various industry verticals. "As the world is experiencing groundbreaking research in the area of hardware technology (e.g. Nano technology and Quantum Mechanics), packing more power into a single chip will become possible in the near future. Researchers are trying to implement more than one core in a single chip. Once these kinds of chips become a reality, it will lead to further miniaturisation of the ICs. This in turn will pave the path for the development of SOC's (System on Chip)," Embedded Systems Training in Bangalore: United Technologies offers a four-month full-time course consisting of two levels and an industry relevant project work. The students of electronics and computer engineers picked out through an entrance test. The test focuses on electronics concepts and C language. It is necessary for all candidates to have good understanding of basic electronics and C programming. Career sectors for embedded systems engineers Telecom/ Mobile communications Industrial engineering Computers/ Peripherals Consumer electronics Aerospace Military Automotive/ Transportation Medical equipment Electronic equipment Fresh batch starts on 9th Aug 2004. For details contact Sanish@utltraining.com ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 06:03:41 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications So, what do you think the traditional telcos do about VOIP? Charles B. Wilber wrote: > Even more telling and sly was the title of the posting. Calling the > opinion piece "POTS' Dirty Little Secret: Big-Time Downtime" is > apparently an effort to predispose readers to a certain point of > view. I have read many interesting posts in this forum but have > learned to treat them as opinion, never as fact, unless I can verify > them myself. That sort of "yellow journalism" is the reason why. > Charlie Wilber > Dartmouth College > --- You wrote: > In short, a handful reports in a random forum is statistically > irrelevant for downtime rates. This is not news. And VOIP went one > step further by taking the story out of context and misinterpreting it > for us. > --- end of quote --- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The traditional telcos and their shills hate VOIP. Admittedly, the VOIP News 'story' had some problems with it to say the least, but Traditional Bell hardly has its hands clean, either, just a 125 year head start at going to the toilet in our drinking water. A century ago when Bell took a very agressive attitude against any new comers and 25 years ago when Bell renewed and reaffirmed its hatred, now they have started on VOIP in the same way. The original enemies in 1900 had become bosum buddies by the 1970's when they recruited them (original enemies of 1900) in a fight against the two newest interlopers, MCI and Sprint. Now, Traditional Bell, which has been there/done that, seen it all many times around, and its original enemies (the independent telephone cooperaties of the 1900's), along with its newer enemies Sprint and MCI, have chosen to gang up on Vonage and the little players on its team. The '911 angle' is just a new side to the whole thing, but will soon pass away also, just as the "our phone company won't interconnect with your phone company" argument around 1900 eventually went away, or the "get one over on Bell with our cheaper rates" argument went away a few years ago. And just as Traditional Bell always has had its cheer-leaders and cheering squad -- for it is the furthest back any of us can remember; none of us living today were around to take sides in the phone wars of the Ted Vail dynasty at AT&T -- Vonage will also have its cheer- leaders -- some would call them 'shills' as time marches on. In fifty or seventy five years from now -- let's say 2050 or 2060 -- when the latest new comers have gotten integrated into the game and thoroughly joined with the 'Traditional Bell' to fight off the interlopers of the 22nd century, what will we read in the issue of TELECOM Digest for August 3, 2075? Probably the main story that day will be how the government is trying to split up Vonage, getting them divested after they successfully bought up all the little players in the VOIP business 'back in 2040' by threatening them with refusal to connect to them if they did not go along. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: History of TV (was Bare-Bones DNC Coverage Draws Lower Ratings) Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 08:04:00 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 05:57:47 GMT, Michael D. Sullivan wrote: > I believe PBS emerged in the late 1960s (or possibly early > 1970s), after the major educational stations, such as WNET (NY) WNET (13) was originally WNDT and is the flagship station of PBS. remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com (Sumit Chawla) Subject: Computer Programmers in Telecom Date: 3 Aug 2004 07:35:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm a computer engineer. I want to pursue a career in the telecom sector. Please suggest diffrent options (programming for telecom sector) and various resources available. You can mail me direcly on sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day For August, 2004 Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 2:00:00 EDT During the summer months, when our readership is lower than usual and more people are on vacation and holiday breaks, contributions to the Digest run slower than at other times in the year. So I am asking if you have not made a contribution recently to please consider doing so at this time. And just a couple days ago I was approached by Google asking me to go along with their system of advertising presented based on reader's keystrokes. I think you know the routine: You enter some phrase in our search engine and Google pops back an 'appropriate' advertising message along with the answers. It was very tempting to say the least. Instead of changing the Digest over to an advertising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these Google Advertising-messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the some time each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #362 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 4 17:12:38 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i74LCcb25526; Wed, 4 Aug 2004 17:12:38 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 17:12:38 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408042112.i74LCcb25526@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 #363 TELECOM Digest Wed, 4 Aug 2004 17:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 363 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Queries Provide Stolen Credit Cards (Monty Solomon) RFID Hack Could Allow Retail Fraud (Monty Solomon) Phone-PDA Combo That Works On Wi-Fi Is Bulky but a Winner (M Solomon) Two Million Scans Uncover 55 Million Instances of Spyware (M Solomon) T-Mobile Sidekick II (Monty Solomon) Qwest Communications Introduces Flexible Wireless Plans (Monty Solomon) Credit Firms Resist Anti-ID Theft Measure (Monty Solomon) It's BlackBerry Season, but Maybe Not for Long (Monty Solomon) Obituary: Richard Gabel Dead at 84 (Marcus Didius Falco) Trying to Identify 1940's Equipment (Prison Phone?) (John Stafford) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Lisa Hancock) Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom (Jack Adams) Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom (Bit Twister) Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Lisa Hancock) Re: In a Surprising Turn of Events (John McHarry) Free Broadband Service in our Country Now! (Jason) Re: Opportunity to Become an Embedded Professional (Nathan Strom) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (Brian Inglis) VoIP Reach Goes Rural (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Why VoIP Regulation Looks Dead This Year (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Jeff Pulver: FCC Adopts the CALEA NPRM (Jack Decker - VOIP News) 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, 4 Aug 2004 01:17:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Queries Provide Stolen Credit Cards By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com Simple queries using the Google search engine can turn up a handful of sites that have posted credit card information to the Web, CNET News.com learned on Tuesday. The lists of financial information include hundreds of card holders' names, addresses and phone numbers as well as their credit-card data. Much of the credit-card data that appears in the lists found by Google may no longer be valid, but CNET called several people listed and verified that the credit cards numbers were authentic. The query, the latest example of "Google hacking," highlights increasing concern that knowledgeable Web surfers can turn up sensitive information by mining the world's best-known search engine. http://news.com.com/2100-1029-5295661.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 02:02:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RFID Hack Could Allow Retail Fraud By Mark Hachman LAS VEGAS-A German consultant has released a tool that its creator says will allow modifications of the code stored within RFID tags, theoretically allowing consumers to wreak havoc in future retail deployments. The RFDump software allows a user equipped with an RFID reader, a laptop or PDA, and a power supply to rewrite the data stored in ISO 15693 tags, the most common tags used to host the EPC (Electronic Product Code) information traditionally stored in bar codes. Although each RFID tag carries with it a unique product ID, the EPC is stored in the "user area" portion of the chip, which allows it to be rewritten. That poses problems to both consumers and retailers, RFDump's author, Lukas Grunwald, a senior consultant with Hildesheim, Germany-based DN-Systems Enterprise Solutions GmbH, said: On one hand, consumers could defraud a retailer by reprogramming a premium item as a cheap commodity. On the other hand, consumers would have to worry about the items in their shopping carts being read by "Big Brother," or at least the many retailers in a shopping mall. The tool was released as part of a talk at the Black Hat Briefings here, dedicated to IT security. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1628696,00.asp ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 02:10:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Phone-PDA Combo That Works On Wi-Fi Is Bulky but a Winner By WALTER S. MOSSBERG For people who rely on a smart phone or wireless PDA to do e-mail and access the Web, the Holy Grail has been to get a device that can work on both a cellphone network and on faster Wi-Fi wireless networks. The idea is that when you are near a Wi-Fi transmitter, your device will work at high speed, and when you're not, you still will be able to get online, albeit at slower speeds, via the much more widespread cellphone network. The cellphone industry has been working on such combo devices, and Nokia and Motorola have announced specific models. But this week, Hewlett-Packard, the computer giant, and T-Mobile, the cellphone carrier, announced what they say will be the first combined Wi-Fi/cellphone to reach the public. A wireless PDA that can also make phone calls, rather than a traditional cellphone, it's called the HP iPAQ h6315. The device is a Microsoft-based Pocket PC with an antenna on top. It goes on sale Aug. 26 for $499, plus either $79.99 or $89.99 a month, depending on which T-Mobile rate plan you choose. I tested the 6315 over the past few days. It worked very well and was smart enough to switch smoothly between the Wi-Fi and cellphone networks for Internet access with little or no input from me. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040729.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:00:46 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Two Million Scans Uncover 55 Million Instances of Spyware EarthLink and Webroot Release Six-Month SpyAudit Report CoolWebSearch Identified as the Most Virulent Adware Program ATLANTA and BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Today EarthLink (Nasdaq: ELNK), one of the nation's leading Internet service providers, and, Webroot Software, a producer of award-winning privacy, protection and performance software, released their third SpyAudit Report, which has tracked the growth of spyware on consumer PCs for the first half of 2004. Since the SpyAudit report's inception on January 1, 2004, more than two million scans have been performed. The scans discovered approximately 54.8 million instances of spyware, for an average of 26.5 traces per SpyAudit scan. Scans nearly doubled from the first to the second quarter. For each category, the instances of adware increased month-over-month, while adware cookies, system monitors and Trojans decreased slightly overall. The complete report is available at . - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42899777 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:01:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile Sidekick II T-Mobile USA Flips the Lid Open on the T-Mobile Sidekick II HOLLYWOOD--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 2004-- Building on Success of first Sidekick(TM), Marquee Device Features Slimmer Design, Integrated Camera and Built-In Speakerphone, Some of the Many Upgraded Features Some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment will be walking the red carpet here tonight. But the brightest spotlight will be squarely focused on the biggest star -- the T-Mobile(R) Sidekick II -- successor to the original hit of Hollywood and action sports stars -- the original Sidekick from T-Mobile. One of the most highly anticipated sequels to hit Hollywood this year, the T-Mobile Sidekick II will be making its debut at an exclusive, VIP party featuring a performance from The Black Eyed Peas. In conjunction with the beginning of the ESPN X Games X, this star-studded event will feature celebrity Sidekick fans from sports, television and film and musicians from all over. The public will be able to get its hands on the T-Mobile Sidekick II this fall. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42899600 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:12:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Qwest Communications Introduces New Flexible Wireless Plans DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 2004--Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE:Q) today introduced business shared plans -- a new set of wireless calling plans for medium-sized and large-business customers. Available to customers in Qwest's local service region, the plans offer shared nationwide wireless service to help business customers improve communication with their customers and colleagues. Qwest's business shared plans offer customers unique bundling of wireless services with their existing Qwest wireline and data services, resulting in convenient billing and competitive pricing. The plans start as low as $220.49 for 3,500 minutes when customers combine their wireless service with any other Qwest service on a single bill. Studies indicate Qwest wireless business customers use nearly 29 percent of their minutes to call colleagues' and employees' wireless phones. To help customers save on those costs, Qwest's business shared plans include free, unlimited nationwide calling between plan members while on the network. Additionally, when customers combine their office and wireless services on one bill, Qwest offers free, unlimited calls between their main office numbers and their wireless phones while on the network. The primary use location of all phones on the plan must be within the same local service area. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42901204 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 15:51:00 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Credit Firms Resist Anti-ID Theft Measure By Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer | August 1, 2004 NEW YORK --Little by little, a weapon against identity theft is gaining currency -- but few people know about it. It's called the security freeze, and it lets individuals block access to their credit reports until they personally unlock the files by contacting the credit bureaus and providing a PIN code. The process is a bit of a hassle, and the credit-reporting industry believes it complicates things unnecessarily. But it appears to be one of the few ways to virtually guarantee that a fraudster cannot open an account in your name. The freeze became an option in California and Texas last year, and Louisiana and Vermont will allow it beginning next July. However, the Texas and Vermont laws apply only to people who already have been victimized by identity theft. Only 2,000 Californians and 150 Texans have taken advantage of the freeze, according to Experian Inc., one of the three major credit bureaus. But identity theft watchdogs say usage is low simply because the credit bureaus don't publicize the option. With identity theft apparently growing, the advocates hope the freeze gains national momentum. Congress resisted calls for a freeze rule during debate over a major credit law last year. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/08/01/credit_firms_resist_anti_id_theft_measure/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 14:05:26 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: It's BlackBerry Season, but Maybe Not for Long By RANDALL STROSS MAXWELL SMART could hold his shoe to his ear and talk quite naturally. But he was the inimitable Agent 86, and the shoe phone -- the original Smart phone =- was a running gag in the 1960's television comedy "Get Smart." (Operator: "What is the number of your shoe?" Smart: "It's an unlisted shoe, operator!") Its phone-in-disguise successor is the BlackBerry, the squat, rectangular gizmo that provides e-mail on the go, and includes, incidentally, a cellphone. Holding it to the ear to make a call feels like calling with a wallet, which is about the same size. But when held in both hands to read and fire off e-mail, it works like a dream. Introduced in 1999, the BlackBerry brand has become synonymous with the concept of ultraportable e-mail. More than one million subscribers are paying for the service, which costs between $35 and $50 a month. BlackBerry's maker, Research in Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, is profitable, and the gadget has been touted by celebrities.Oprah, for one, has stated her personal opinion of the BlackBerry forthrightly: "Love it! Love it! Love it! Love it!" That all said, it's not too early to point out that, looking down the road a bit, the hand-held BlackBerry's future is dim. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/business/yourmoney/01digi.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 03:01:37 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Obituary: Richard Gabel Dead at 84 Richard "Dick" Gabel died Sunday at age 84. He was active until shortly before the end, despite serious health problems for some years. As you may recall, he got his start in telephony with the Army Signal Corps during WW II. After the war he became the first employee of the Telephone Division of the Rural Electrification Administration. In this capacity he helped establish rural telephone cooperatives and small telephone companies throughout the western United States. Then he went to the General Services Administration where he helped establish the first federal telephone system. He also worked briefly at the Federal Communications Commission. He worked in the White House during the Nixon Administration. I believe it was during this period that he did a lot of the work involved in the sale of "White Alice" to RCA Alascom. "White Alice" was the telephone system the Air Force had built in Alaska during the second World War. It was used partly by civilians by the time it was privatized. He then went to the Brookings Institution where he wrote his classic book, "The Development of Separations Principles in the Telephone Industry." This remains the most comprehensive discussion of the financial arrangements that led to the enormous expansion and great success of the telephone industry between World War II and the divestiture (Consent Decree) in 1982. For those who are too young to remember, "separations" was the allocation of the telephone companies' costs into "intrastate" and "interstate" pools. On the basis of this allocation, the Bell Companies engaged in "division of revenues," and also conducted "toll settlements" with the non-Bell "independents." Because of niceties in the way costs were measured and allocated, settlements were actually quite lucrative for small telephone companies. Much of the current controversy in access charges (the system that supplanted settlements after divestiture) has to do with eliminating some of the hidden subsidies that developed during the years after 1949. Mr. Gabel helped develop the 1974 antitrust case against AT&T, and retired from government so he could help the government's witnesses. He was also scheduled to be a witness. After leaving the government Mr. Gabel acted as a consultant and witness for state commissions and consumer counsels, and also for a variety of consumer organizations. Much of this work was done pro bono. Those of us who knew him and benefited from his experience and knowledge and friendship will miss him. The death notice in the Washington Post for Monday, August 2, 2004, p. B4, reads: Gabel, Richard On Sunday August 1, 2004 at Arlington VA. Loving Husband of Louise, father of Susan (Donald) Poretz, Jon (Judith) Gabel, Carol (Chuck) Barlin and David (Janet) Gabel; brother of Harold (Addie) Gabel; grandfather of Jeffrey, Michelle, Stephen, Joshua, Brad, Karen, Eric, Deborah and Terrence. He is also survived by six great-grandchildren and loving neices and nephews. A Funeral Service [was] held on Tuesday, August 3, 1:30 PM at Beth El Hebrew Congregation, 3830 Seminary Rd., Alexandria, VA. Interment King David Memorial Gardens. In lieu of flowers memorial contributions may be made to the Amnesty International, USA, 304 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Washington DC 20003; the Arlington YMCA, 3422 N. 13th St., Arlington VA 22201, and/or Doctors without Borders, USA, PO Box 1856, Merrifield VA 22116-8056. ------------------------------ From: usenet.persona@earthlink.net (John Stafford) Subject: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: 4 Aug 2004 08:40:52 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm trying to identify a piece of telecom equipment that appears to be from the 1940s. It consists of a suitcase with dividers that contains two Stromberg Carlson telephones and a battery-operated amplifier. The phones plug into the amplifier using one quarter inch plugs. The amplifier has a rotary off/on volume control, a speaker, and an output jack (marked record). When both phones are taken off hook they're connected to each other and can be used like ordinary phones, both sides of the conversation are also audible through the amplifier speaker. The amplifier is powered by a six volt "battery" that is a cardboard box that indicates that it contains 4 AA cells, as well as by a "standard" 9 volt battery. There are no markings that I can see on any of the equipment (other than on the phones). It does appear that the suitcase was custom-made because the rivets that hold the dividers are the same as those that hold the suitcase together. The suitcase handle does say made in the USA on one side and has the numeral 6 (or 9) on the other. The latches are marked with a flying airplane logo. Please see pictures at http://www.flortraits.com/wii/ My current guess is that it is some sort of "portable prisoner to outside phone". I will summarize and post any information I received. Thank you. John "but then I've been wrong before" Stafford ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 4 Aug 2004 07:24:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The traditional telcos and their shills > hate VOIP. Admittedly, the VOIP News 'story' had some problems with it > to say the least, but Traditional Bell hardly has its hands clean, > either, just a 125 year head start at going to the toilet in our > drinking water. Given everything that's been discussed here lately -- from apt house intercoms to Norvergence -- I'm surprised to read this. I am not connected with the phone company nor do I consider myself a "shill" for them. I look at their record as a subscriber and what "competition" has done for me. To be truly HONESTLY competitive: 1) VOIP users may not have any traditional lines as "backup". 2) VOIP providers must provide the same service reliability as the baby bells. That is, if a flood washes out lines, they must be replaced in the same time frame. The service must continue in the event of a commercial power failure. 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. 4) VOIP providers must provide the same reports to state and federal regulators that other companies provide on their services. 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major events generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. As mentioned in the apt house calling system, the Bell System had developed a wide array of excellent products and services but then got shackled by arbitrary rules to sell them. The System successors couldn't sell that stuff so they withered away (such as Lucent and AT&T). Customers, instead of having strong sturdy reliable and maintainable equipment, got junk instead. Earlier Pat described the dedication and resourcefulness of telephone company employees -- a monopoly -- in keeping service going in difficult conditions. Today in a competitive environment, do you think those people and their employers would do that? I don't. I note the big fire and lack of watchmen occured AFTER divesture. Literally thousands of customers decided it was too expensive to pay Baby Bell prices so they jumped to a cheaper alternative -- Norvergence. No such thing as a free lunch, and all those people are screwed. (Of course, we didn't see Qwest being concernred about Norvengence's future fiscal health when it gladly offered to support them.) MCI was a scam from day one. It was unregulated while AT&T was regulated, so it could take the high profit cream and leave AT&T with the high overhead waste (like any call needing operator service). Then of course it wiped out its stockholder and lenders when it filed for a huge bankruptcy. No such thing as a free lunch, and all those people are screwed. Remember, one of Enron's big entities was cheapo electric power generation. When Enron went broke, some PUCs ordered that the existing power company take over its customer as the cheaper Enron rate. Was that fair to existing companies? There were good reasons to establish a chartered regulated monopoly to a utility like telephone service. In my town, thanks to competition, they had to double the size of the phone central office building, destroying some historic houses in the process. This was to provide room to house competitive line termination equipment in separate locked rooms. It didn't add new capacity or provide us any new or better services. That 125 year head start -- that people think is a bad thing -- is years of experience doing things right and doing the right things. Of course it wasn't always perfect. But being a chartered regulated monopoly gave it some breathing room to provide that extra measure of service and stability. When Norv ran into trouble, it shutdown immediately, leaving its employees unpaid and its customers screwed. When NY Telephone ran into trouble, it brought it Bell System people nationwide on an emergency project to clean up its troubles. People think "competition" will always work better than a regulated monopoly because of the magic of the marketplace. That is economic garbage. The marketplace finds an equilibrium, but that level is not at all necessarily where people might want it to lie -- as we are learning the hard way, the marketplace equilibrium (match point of demand and supply of cost) can be quite high. Norvergence and MCI took advtg of competition by undercutting its competitors and look what we got. ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom Date: 4 Aug 2004 07:34:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com This is a fairly broad question. In fact, a comprehensive answer would consume far too much bandwidth within this newsgroup. My suggestion is do some more research about the industry and formulate a more focused question(s). To start with, lurking around this (and other) newsgroups will reveal much information, albeit over a period of time. Try perusing the archives as well. Good luck to you. sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com (Sumit Chawla) wrote in message news:: > I'm a computer engineer. I want to pursue a career in the telecom > sector. Please suggest diffrent options (programming for telecom sector) > and various resources available. You can mail me direcly on > sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com ------------------------------ From: Bit Twister Subject: Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom Organization: home user Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 19:08:33 GMT On 3 Aug 2004 07:35:52 -0700, Sumit Chawla wrote: > I'm a computer engineer. I want to pursue a career in the telecom > sector. Move to China, Vietnam, India where the outsourcing is going. I wish you luck; ALCATEL France, came over, bought a telecom company, took the good projects back to Europe, outsourced other jobs, layed everyone else off except enough to keep the sales/service office up and running. Suggest moving your expertise into the medical field. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY) Date: 3 Aug 2004 13:58:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com T. Sean Weintz wrote > I am in the property management business, and in my experience the > most common type of these building entry systems are made by a company > called "doorking". The base models ... simply have 1 outgoing phone line. > These are "option 3" as you note above. There is a database of phone > numbers mapped to entry codes (or apartmenet numbers). When you enter > the code (or apt number) on the panel, all it does is call the number. My mother lived in a facility served by the cheapo system. It took the place forever to add her name to the directory (handled by the security dept at the main facility in another location). Until then I would just wait until someone walked out and opened the door. When she moved out, we waited for the movers. They called and announced their arrival. We punched in the access code. They kept calling back and said the door wouldn't unlock. Finally I went down to get them. It turned out they were calling us on their cell phone, not the entry phone on the wall. The cheapo system is lousy when you call someone and they're on the phone -- you get a busy signal. Lots of people do NOT have caller ID. Apt. bldg. security isn't that good. As mentioned, in most you can easily walk in when someone else leaves. (As we left the aforementioned NYC bldg, some people came in doing just that, I hope they weren't burglars.) I've dialed the wrong unit and got buzzed in anyway. My place has a private entrance and that's a good asset over a hallway even when shared by only a few people. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that at the time of divestiture, > telco was forbidden (under divestiture) to actively solicit new > subscribers to the Enterphone Front Door Security System, Pat, thanks for the history of this fine Bell System product. I've used it to get into nicer apt houses. My first exposure was back in 1968 in a NYC building, and the lobby unit had a Touch Tone pad which was a novelty at the time. The residents dialed (rotary phone) a 4 for admission. It's quite a shame the companies were not allowed to continue marketing it after divesture as it clearly offers superior service to the other cheapo service more widely used. I remember another large apt building with a 1960s Bell System auto dialer. It was a small desktop unit, about 1" high with a window showing a name and a red index ine, and about 5" wide and deep. To use it, you pressed a key to start a motor that whirled the directory and used the index line for the alpha letter desired. You then used a manual wheel to select the exact name. You pressed a button and the party was dialed. I wonder what dialer this was? (I've also seen them at airport motel directory displays, which had ads for multiple traveler services, and a similar unit to autodial the desired one.) It seemed these dialers had a high capacity in a compact unit; I don't know how they stored the number. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, there is no doubt, IMO, that the *old* Bell System was a class act, with very good products. There were 'some problems' (to put it politely) with customer service but the equipment and network was superb. The old, entirely central office- based Enterphone service was a very good example. Older, more elegant apartment buildings still using it (who would have gotten it installed prior to 1983 or so, when the rules were changed) still have the best system. In those days (pre-1983) Illinois Bell as one example, charged *the building* fifty dollars per month for the system and nothing to individual tenants who either had phones of their own or not. Typically, an 'extension' of the door system also went to the management office so the person in the office could also admit a visitor to the building, and some long, obscure string of digits on the lobby phone functioned like a 'ringback code' which would click once or twice in the caller's ear then unlatch the door automatically. I think it was called 'Fire Department Service' and was intended to admit emergency entrance to firemen as needed. That same string of digits would also ring a designated phone (such as the building manager) to advise that an emergency enter had occurred. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: In a Surprising Turn of Events Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 22:19:44 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net johndee wrote: > A well-publicized piece of legislation -- sponsored by U.S. Senator > John Sununu (R-NH) and backed by IP voice providers -- intended to > deregulate VoIP services was radically changed during a mark-up > session by the Senate Commerce Committee last week. In a surprising > turn of events, the Committee voted 13-9 to amend the bill to require > VoIP providers to be subject to intrastate access charges, universal > service obligations, E-911 and CALEA responsibilities. The action > taken by the senators is an important step toward ensuring the > long-term stability of the universal service system and the overall > fairness of intercarrier compensation. It also signifies a subtle > shift in focus from technology interests to public interests. This sounds like incumbent telco propaganda. I suppose the other side would say it is a major attempt to kill off an infant industry before it can become a serious threat. ------------------------------ From: lovzy@hotmail.com (Jason) Subject: Free Broadband Service in Our Country Now! Date: 3 Aug 2004 21:50:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Enjoy free broadband here in our country!absolutely no gimmicks. All you need is a telephone line. Click on link to find out more on this service! Limited application available! http://www.juiceboosted.com/index.php?RequestId=1&Id=xc3ns [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It sounds like some kind of a trick to me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nstrom@ananzi.co.za (Nathan Strom) Subject: Re: Opportunity to Become an Embedded Professional Date: 4 Aug 2004 06:31:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Sagar Singh wrote in message news:: > Fresh batch starts on 9th Aug 2004. For details contact > Sanish@utltraining.com Don't confuse this "United Technologies" from India with the real United Technologies, http://www.utc.com/. I fear they're trying to capitalize on a well-known company name in the United States. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 06:45:34 GMT From: Brian Inglis Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Organization: Systematic Software On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:42:08 -0400 in comp.dcom.telecom, Cryderman, Charles wrote: > Another acronym from days of old that is now considered a word: > In England many years ago to procreate you had to have the permission > of the King. Once received you placed a sign on the door of your > dwelling: > "Fornication Under Consent of King." > I am sure you can figure out what the word used today is. Rubbish! Most of the so-called four letter or swear words were normal Anglo-Saxon words, not too different from modern German, which were considered vulgar by the French and Latin speaking Norman lords and bishops who invaded England, presumably as the phrases were addressed to them by the previous landowners. Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 12:24:57 -0400 Subject: VoIP Reach Goes Rural Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/9304543.htm Phone companies outside Twin Cities to offer Internet phone connections BY LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO Pioneer Press VoIP, the telecommunications technology most often associated with the trendy and cutting edge, is about to go country. St. Louis Park-based Onvoy Inc. says it will launch a service called "Bandwagon" starting next month that will allow small rural phone companies to offer VoIP, the acronym for "Voice over Internet Protocol" a way for customers to make phone calls over their high-speed Internet connections. The service is another sign that the "digital divide" between rural and urban Minnesota is shrinking, even while the telephone market itself is fleeing from the nation's more than century-old analog phone system. "Our customers are no different from anybody else," said Rick Keane, manager of the Pine Island Telephone Co., a small local phone company north of Rochester, Minn., that has been testing Bandwagon for several months. Full story at: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/9304543.htm (Free registration required) How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 11:59:07 -0400 Subject: Why VoIP Regulation Looks Dead This Year Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=108413 By: Al Senia America's Network Enews The latest debate over VoIP and the role federal and state regulators should play with the technology underscored the point that there is little chance Congress is going to do much with the divisive and thorny VoIP issue this year. Just a little over a week ago, a sharply divided Senate Commerce Committee approved the VoIP Regulatory Freedom Act, which in its original form would have protected VoIP services from any regulation, by a 13-9 vote. Problem is, the lawmakers amended the final bill to preserve some regulatory authority for the states, essentially allowing them to impose taxes on VoIP calls to pay for universal service and for line access charges. That action divided not just the committee, but also much of the industry itself. State regulators were jubilant at maintaining at least partial access to an important tax revenue source. Executives from VoIP companies such as Vonage, however, expressed disappointment with the result, noting that the last-minute amendments were very problematic for their industry. Full story at: http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=108413 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 12:43:53 -0400 Subject: Jeff Pulver: FCC Adopts the CALEA NPRM Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com This is from The Jeff Pulver Blog at http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/index.html As expected, they adopted the CALEA NPRM at their August 4th meeting. Below are the words of FCC Chairman Powell regarding CALEA: STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MICHAEL K. POWELL Re: In the Matter of Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act and Broadband Access and Services, RM-10865, ET Docket No. We are entering a dynamic space in the evolution of Internet voice services and applications. As technologies re-shape communications, this Commission must continually assess the needs of the law enforcement community under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). More and more people are taking advantage of these new and exciting competitive voice offerings, and we are starting to see substantial consumer and economic benefits emerge. The development and success of the Internet has been a result, in part, of our desire to maintain its minimally regulated status. Above all, law enforcement access to IP-enabled communications is essential. CALEA requirements can and should apply to VoIP and other IP enabled service providers, even if these services are information services for purposes of the communications Act. The NPRM we issue today demonstrates that the interests of the law enforcement community can be fully addressed for potential information ser vices and these interests need not be an excuse for imposing onerous common carrier regulations on vibrant new services. Previous Commission action on CALEA has focused primarily on circuit-mode technology. Today's item takes a major step in implementing CALEA, particularly with respect to new packet-mode technologies, by tentatively concluding that broadband Internet access services and managed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services are subject to CALEA. The item also tentatively concludes that non-managed, or disintermediated, VoIP and Instant Messaging are not subject to CALEA, and that it is unnecessary to identify future services and entities subject to CALEA. Additionally, the item addresses important compliance and cost issues, and requests comment on (1) the feasibility of carriers relying on a trusted third party to manage their CALEA compliance obligations; and (2) whether standards for packet technologies are deficient and preclude carriers relying on them as safe harbors for complying with CALEAs capability requirements. Finally, in the companion Declaratory Ruling grants in part a Law Enforcement request in the Petition and clarifies that commercial wireless push-to-talk services are subject to CALEA, regardless of the technologies that Commercial Mobile Radio Service providers choose to apply in offering them. I write to make clear that our tentative conclusion is expressly limited to the requirements of the CALEA statute and does not indicate a willingness on my part to find that VoIP services are telecommunications services under Title II of the Communications Act. We have before us a pending rulemaking and several petitions for declaratory ruling that address themselves to the classification of VoIP services and nothing in this item prejudices the outcome of those proceedings. Our support for law enforcement is unwavering; it is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support Homeland Security. The Commission will devote the necessary resources to expeditiously and responsibly complete this task. In the interim, carriers, the law enforcement community and the Commission must continue to work in partnership to ensure that law enforcement retains access to the information they have now and to ensure that they have the tools they need in this ever changing environment. Posted by jeff at 10:16 AM ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #363 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 4 18:45:39 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i74Mjcp26680; Wed, 4 Aug 2004 18:45:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 18:45:39 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408042245.i74Mjcp26680@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 #364 TELECOM Digest Wed, 4 Aug 2004 18:46:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 364 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Net Phone calls Must be Able to be tapped - U.S. FCC (Monty Solomon) Cingular Wireless Can Now Help You 'Escape-A-Date' (Monty Solomon) Tivo Gets Nod For Users to Share Digital Shows (Monty Solomon) FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones (Monty Solomon) Internet Considered Crucial For Educational Success (Monty Solomon) U.S. FCC Deregulates Fiber Optics to Apartments (Monty Solomon) US Looks to be Master of Aussie IP (Monty Solomon) Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (T. Sean Weintz) Re: SIP and TAPI (T. Sean Weintz) Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera (David Blumenstein) Share Day, August 2003 (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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, 4 Aug 2004 16:28:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Net Phone Calls Must be Able to be Tapped - U.S. FCC WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Internet phone carriers such as Vonage should set up their systems so U.S. law enforcers can monitor suspicious calls, the Federal Communications Commission tentatively ruled on Wednesday. By a vote of 5-0, the FCC said "voice over Internet protocol," or VoIP, providers should be subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which ensures that law enforcers will be able to keep up with changing communications technologies. VoIP service is likely to replace much traditional phone service over the coming years, the commission said. The Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have argued that they must be able to monitor suspicious calls no matter how they are made. Technology advocates have worried that the fast-growing service, which promises to slash costs by routing phone calls over the Internet, could be harmed by excessive regulation. The ruling does not affect other regulatory questions surrounding VoIP service, such as how it should be taxed, FCC Chairman Michael Powell said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42904448 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:34:05 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Wireless Can Now Help You 'Escape-A-Date' New service gives daters the perfect alibi if things go sour. DALLAS, Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Ever have a blind date where all your hopes and dreams for the perfect match came crashing down at your feet? We've all been there at one time or another. The dilemma for most "dates gone bad" is you have no choice but to endure the situation until you can find an opportunity to call it a night. Cingular Wireless has taken its Voice Connect service where no other wireless carrier has dared to tread with "Escape-a-Date," one of several new options that are part of the company's Voice Connect line of information services. "Escape-A-Date" is the perfect service to use when you are afraid that your blind date may not be just right for you. This new service allows you to schedule a "rescue" phone call at a pre-set time. That way, you'll be called at the time you specify. The service tells you exactly what to say to set the tone for a speedy escape. There are eight randomly generated humorous scripts. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42906692 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:35:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Tivo Gets Nod For Users to Share Digital Shows By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO), maker of popular digital television recording devices, on Wednesday received approval for technology that would permit users to send copies of digital broadcast shows over the Internet to a few friends. The Federal Communications Commission voted to certify digital protections on TiVoToGo, which is not yet available but would enable a user to record and send a digital broadcast television show to up to nine other registered people who have a key allowing them to see it. The approval came despite concerns by the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Football League about the risks of unfettered distribution of copyrighted shows and illegally airing sports games outside of authorized markets. The FCC last year adopted rules to limit distribution of digital, over-the-air television programs over the Internet in an effort to prevent mass illegal copying and sharing, a problem plaguing the music industry. Most current television shows are shown in an analog format and can lose some quality when recorded. But recorded digital programs do not suffer from that problem, leading to industry concerns about unfettered mass redistribution on the Internet. The FCC last November required companies to develop measures to prevent consumers from indiscriminately distributing the higher quality digital television shows over the Web. In addition to approving TiVo's application, the FCC certified 11 other technologies proposed, including ones by software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), Sony Corp. (TOKYO:6758), and RealNetworks Inc. (NASDAQ:RNWK) for protecting distribution of digital television broadcasts. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42905617 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:39:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it would set up a list of Internet domains used by mobile-phone carriers to help keep unwanted "spam" messages off consumers' phones. Marketers that don't want to run afoul of a national anti-spam law will be able to check the list to make sure they're not sending unsolicited messages to mobile phones, the FCC said in a rule that was adopted by a unanimous vote. Congress passed a law last year that prohibits spamming mobile phones unless consumers have given permission first. The FCC was assigned to figure out how to implement that law. The Federal Trade Commission determined in June that a "do not e-mail" list would only lead to an increase in spam, but the FCC said such a list would work in the wireless world if it only consists of domain names such as sprintpcs.com, and not the names of individual accounts, such as customer@sprintpcs.com. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42908363 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:45:33 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Internet Considered Crucial For Educational Success National Survey Finds Kids Give High Marks To High Speed; Internet Considered Crucial For Educational Success SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 4, 2004-- Students overwhelmingly turn to the Internet to find information not provided in school books; majority seek fast connections to complete homework assignments Children credit teachers for Internet knowledge, teens think they know best From elementary to high school, the Internet has revolutionized how and where kids learn, and enhanced their success rate in school. According to a new survey of 6- to 17-year-old students, high-speed Internet access has become a valuable and sought-after resource for schoolwork, with nearly 90 percent of all school-aged children considering a broadband connection like DSL either important or very important for completing school assignments. The national survey of 1,002 6- to 17-year-olds, conducted for SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) was designed to identify usage patterns and attitudes about the Internet for educational purposes. The survey reveals changes in how the Internet is used throughout elementary to high school, providing a unique and in-depth look at their Internet habits and attitudes as they get older. Internet Helps Kids Succeed in School Across all age groups, students overwhelmingly believe that having Internet access helps them succeed in school with more than 70 percent of all kids surveyed saying it helps them make better grades and be stronger students. As children grow older, the Internet becomes even more integral for schoolwork. The survey finds that nine in 10 teens use the Internet to look for information for class assignments and more than 70 percent of 6- to 11-year-olds use it for that purpose. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42905982 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:46:42 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. FCC Deregulates Fiber Optics to Apartments WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Local U.S. telephone carriers may deploy fiber optic networks for high-speed Internet services to residential apartment complexes without having to share the connections with rivals, U.S. regulators ruled on Wednesday. The Federal Communications Commission voted to free fiber networks built to predominantly residential buildings by carriers like Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) from access requirements that apply to existing copper telephone networks. Carriers like Verizon hope to roll out fiber to residential buildings to improve the reach of their high-speed Internet service and better compete against cable companies, which already have made significant inroads at apartment buildings. Verizon and SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC), two of the four big local telephone companies known as the Baby Bells, have said they plan to spend several billions of dollars on building new fiber optic networks across the country. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42905274 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 17:19:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US Looks to be Master of Aussie IP By Ashlee Vance in Chicago Australia has edged closer to embracing some of the least favorable aspects of US intellectual property law, including the DMCA, by agreeing to a trade agreement between the two countries. Aussie Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush today promoted the free trade pact that will remove tariffs on a number of goods, affecting sales of manufactured products, medicine, film and television and intellectual property Down Under. The IP issue is of particular concern to some technophiles who do not want Australia to be restricted by the DMCA, which is basically what the agreement requires. It is, however, the pharmaceutical and media issues that appear to have Australian legislators more concerned than the IP measures. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/03/us_aussie_tradepact/ ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Cheapest Incoming-Only Phone Service? (Westchester, NY) Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 17:10:46 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com T. Sean Weintz wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Weintz, are your tenants aware of > just how insecure, how woefully lacking in security their downstairs > front door is? And who comes around to maintain it as needed? PAT] One of the things done under my watch (not my dept - I'm the IT guy, but I like to think my input had something to do with it) was to rip out the "option 3" type system and replace it with what Door King calls their "no phone bill" system, basically a barebones PBX type thing. There is a switch that sits between the pairs going up to each apt and the telco demarc -- all calls from the front panel are handled via that switch. If the tenant has phone service, the switch passes the regular pots line thru when no call is coming for that apartment from the panel. The switch has a call waiting type feature built in, so that if a call comes from the panel and there is already a call in progress on the pots lines, the tenant hears a call waiting tone and can asnwer the panel, even if they do not subscribe to call waiting from the local telco. STILL not the system I'd have chosen, but it was a big improvement, especially since in some of our buildings as many as 30% of the tenants had no phone service. And an "option 3" type system won't work for those tenants. We also used to have issues with tenants getting their phone service cut off and not telling us -- not THAT big a deal, until the telco re-assigns the number to someone else (they seem to re-assign numbers after only about three months or so here) -- One time this happened, we didn't know about it, the number was still in the database of the panel. People would go to visit that tenant at some pretty odd hours (ie: 3:00am - I think the tenant was likely a drug dealer), press the number on the panel, and some poor sod on the other end who just happens to have a new phone number gets woken up. That person who had been re-assigned the number finally filed a complaint with the police, who contacted us (because the calls of course were coming from our phone line). HOWEVER the police refused to tell us the phone number of the person complaining, so there was no way to know what number needed to be deleted from the database. 250 tenants in the building and we were supposed to figure out magically which one had had their service cut and never bothered to tell us about it. Positively SCARY. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Congratulations on your upgrade to what is essentially Interphone service. Since you did not have Enterphone (telco-style front door service) prior to 1983 you can't have it now. Telco not permitted to be in that business any longer, but they do have grandfathered customers around from more than twenty years ago. (although I do not know why in one sense: Ameritech had (and still has) a Security Alarm business as a separate subsidiary which guards stores, etc via customer premise equipment. It is still around today, even though the phone side has gone to SBC. I think it has something to do with rules against subsidiary companies having access to central office equipment, which is a no-no, since there could be 'unfair competition' as a result. But Interphone, originally a Canadian company (or whoever owns the name 'Interphone') does these things the way they should be done, which is via the **house pairs** to each apartment with no regard to the phone numbers. Up until 1983 or so, when apartment buildings went with the 'competitor' Interphone instead of telco's Enterphone Service, they naturally had to get an okay from telco for bridging into the house pairs, which according to the law in those days also belonged to telco. Sometime in the middle 1980's as divestiture was being slowly and surely implemented in this very technical business, telco (in theory at least) 'abandoned' the house pairs to the owner of the property who then became responsible for maintaining them. But the precise spot where the 'demarc' occurs in large apartment buildings has always been a matter of debate. Is it the box on the wall in the tenant's apartment (which is all the tenant really has control over) or is it a (house inside terminal box) down the hall somewhere for all the phones on that floor; or is it the big inside terminal box on the first floor or the basement (which telco claims in recent years has now been wired 'straight through' on a permanent basis to all apartments, or where Interphone has interjected their box in the basement to 'camp on to' all the house pairs, or where? When apartment dwellers call to report their phone out of order, some of the older (who are the only ones with any brains) techs come out to the premises and are puttering around down in the basement of the building trying to unravel the spaghetti like bundles of wires and deciphering the ancient tags tied onto pairs by other techs long since passed from this world. I recall this **very old, very ancient** high rise apartment building in Chicago where I used to live many years ago where I installed an intercom (an old Melco PBX actually) to a friend nearby. In a phone box on the first floor I found a cluster of pairs which disappeared down through the floor with a little paper tag and a string tying them all together. The tag had handwritten on it in old, elegant early 1900's handwriting, a note saying "This fifty pairs services the building switchboard at 7456 North Greenview" (a half block away). The switchboard at that address had been gone for many years. And the tagged note was dated 'January, 1922' and signed by a man who I am sure had long since gone to telco-tech heaven. Obviously, rules about 'before the demarc our problem, after the demarc your problem' would not apply. But its a good testimony to the way Bell System used to operate that 80 year old outside plant is still around and in use many times. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: SIP and TAPI Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 17:18:02 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com JustSomeGuy wrote: > I'm sorta new to the VoIP standards. > I see there is SIP and H.323. As I understood it H.323 was a video > teleconfrencing standard. Reading more I see that it can also be used > to do an IP to PSTN session. I have found Microsofts TAPI 3.0 and I > am wondering if I need to study SIP in detail as well or is TAPI > sufficient? It depends on what you want to do. If you are only going to be working in the Micro$oft Windoze world, TAPI may suffuce for a lot of things. But TAPI is not a protocol, it's an API. If you are looking to write VOIP software, TAPI won't do it for you. You need to decide whether your VOIP will use SIP or H.323, and learn one of those. MOST emerging VOIP applications seem to be using SIP, but there are exceptions. The Inter-tel PBX VOIP phone sitting on my desk right now, for instance, uses H.323. More recent versions of the same phone, however, offer a choice between h.323 and SIP. ------------------------------ From: david.blumenstein@gmail.com (David Blumenstein) Subject: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera Date: 4 Aug 2004 14:01:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Let me upfront about this. I make no money off of this. In conjunction with YAHOO, there is an opportunity to possibly earn $10,000 in the name of your favorite charity by taking pictures and uploading them with your camera phone. I have put a banner on my website: www.david.com It links back to the YAHOO information page with all of the necessary information. This is a great use of mobile technology and an even greater idea. Thank you for your indulgence. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are any cellular picture phones at the point of producing good enough pictures yet to make them worthwhile? Now I suppose if I was trying to sneak a few pictures out of a men's locker room, I would take what I could get and be grateful for that limited quality. But can even the newest and most expensive cell phones with built in cameras produce decent digital photos or .jpg images as of yet? I have not seen one yet I was very impressed with. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 17:26:10 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Share Day, August 2003 I have recently been approached by Google asking me if I wanted to participate in their cooperative advertising program. That is where when you use our search engine at http://telecom-digest.org the Google people put up 'appropriate' advertising for you to see. And according to Google, I would make lots of money by giving them this forum (Digest OnLine, and search engine) to use. I do not think I want to do that, but it is tempting. Instead of changing the Digest over to an advertising supported forum, I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this because of financial support from readers here, and if you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio, which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses. Out of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please provide some help here financially. You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50, Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this Digest has any value for you. Thank you very much. Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher TELECOM Digest ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #364 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 5 00:32:16 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i754WG529754; Thu, 5 Aug 2004 00:32:16 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 00:32:16 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408050432.i754WG529754@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 #365 TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Aug 2004 00:32:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 365 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Jack Decker) Old Bell System TTY Guys? (Jim Haynes) T Writes Down Assets (Anonymous) Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones (Joseph) US West History (Doug Faunt N6TQS) 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, 04 Aug 2004 21:52:33 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. On 4 Aug 2004 07:24:19 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The traditional telcos and their shills >> hate VOIP. Admittedly, the VOIP News 'story' had some problems with it >> to say the least, but Traditional Bell hardly has its hands clean, >> either, just a 125 year head start at going to the toilet in our >> drinking water. > Given everything that's been discussed here lately -- from apt house > intercoms to Norvergence -- I'm surprised to read this. > I am not connected with the phone company nor do I consider myself > a "shill" for them. Lisa, you may not consider yourself a shill for them, but if one were to apply the "duck test" ... well, let's just say that sometimes it would be awfully hard to discern the difference between what you write and what a shill for the phone company might write. > I look at their record as a subscriber and what "competition" has > done for me. If you feel that competition has not helped you, you are certainly entitled to stick with the traditional telephone company. What I can't understand is why you feel the need to try and pull the rest of us back into the same lobster pot along with you. > To be truly HONESTLY competitive: > 1) VOIP users may not have any traditional lines as "backup". Not sure what you mean here -- if this is a statement of fact, in other words, if you are saying that a person might have VoIP as their sole form of voice communication, I would say that is correct, and wonder why you would want to limit their choice if that is their choice. Are you against freedom of choice? On the other hand, if this is something you would like to see enacted into policy or law, saying that a person who has VoIP is not entitled to have any traditional lines as backup, I would definitely wonder where you were coming from. I'm going to assume that the first interpretation is what you meant. > 2) VOIP providers must provide the same service reliability as the > baby bells. That is, if a flood washes out lines, they must be > replaced in the same time frame. The service must continue in > the event of a commercial power failure. Why? Because you say so? Do I not have the right to choose a provider with less reliability than the Baby Bells, if there is some other factor that would make me feel that's a good choice for me? Why are you trying to limit my freedom of choice? Besides, you know full well that a VoIP company that uses the public Internet has absolutely zero control over how reliable the customer's ISP is. You might as well say that automobile manufacturers must be held responsible if potholes and road washouts are not fixed within a specified timeframe, even though the automakers don't legally own the roads and are not permitted to work on them! > 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers > pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? Personally, I think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way to fund such things. Even the telephone industry apparently agrees on that point, at least here in Michigan where I live -- see http://www.telecommich.org/Documents/911_white_paper.pdf > 4) VOIP providers must provide the same reports to state and federal > regulators that other companies provide on their services. Why? So they are burdened by paperwork? Because you say so? Maybe the paperwork is another thing that should go away for all providers, but in any case, maybe I don't care if my voice service provider has to file a bunch of ridiculous paperwork or not. > 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major events > generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. Sure, this is desirable. But maybe I'm willing to not have phone service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day if it makes my phone service more affordable. Who are you to tell me I should not have that choice? Why are you trying to limit my freedom of choice? > As mentioned in the apt house calling system, the Bell System had > developed a wide array of excellent products and services but then got > shackled by arbitrary rules to sell them. The System successors > couldn't sell that stuff so they withered away (such as Lucent and > AT&T). Customers, instead of having strong sturdy reliable and > maintainable equipment, got junk instead. Maybe they consider it acceptable. Some people say that a lot of phones on the market are junk now, yet a lot of people buy them. Why? Because they are inexpensive and provide an acceptable, though not gold-plated, level of service. If people were willing to pay more for better phones, manufacturers would make better phones. But people exercise their freedom of choice, and buy cheap phones. Maybe they could be characterized as "junk" but it's the customer's choice. > Earlier Pat described the dedication and resourcefulness of telephone > company employees -- a monopoly -- in keeping service going in > difficult conditions. Today in a competitive environment, do you > think those people and their employers would do that? I don't. You're just speculating. The truth is that some would be more dedicated to restoring service than others. Those who develop a reputation for having poor service would start to lose customers. Those who develop a reputation for providing great service might be able to charge more. But who are you to say that no one should be allowed to buy the less reliable, but less expensive service? > I note the big fire and lack of watchmen occured AFTER divesture. > Literally thousands of customers decided it was too expensive to pay > Baby Bell prices so they jumped to a cheaper alternative -- > Norvergence. No such thing as a free lunch, and all those people > are screwed. Norvergence wasn't the only cheaper alternative, and most of those who have chosen cheaper alternatives have done just fine. Yes, there was a bad apple out there, but there were all sorts of big red flags on the way that company did business from the very beginning. People got suckered in by greed and by not doing their homework. But it's always been like that. I've bought a couple used cars in my lifetime where if I'd had them inspected first, I'd have saved myself a lot of grief, but you don't hear me saying that the sale of used cars should be banned. I happen to believe that consumers should be able to choose which risks they will take in the marketplace, although when outright fraud is involved then the government has a legitimate interest in bringing the perpetrators to justice, in order to discourage further outright scams. > (Of course, we didn't see Qwest being concernred about Norvengence's > future fiscal health when it gladly offered to support them.) > MCI was a scam from day one. It was unregulated while AT&T was > regulated, so it could take the high profit cream and leave AT&T > with the high overhead waste (like any call needing operator > service). You just don't like any sort of competition in the telecommunications market, do you, Lisa? I remember when I lived in Northern Michigan and it cost about 35 cents a minute to call anywhere else in the state. I am very glad those days are long gone. As for saying that MCI was a scam from the very beginning, absent some hard evidence to the contrary I would strongly disagree with you. They were no more of a scam than AT&T. You may not have liked the way they did business, but it was because of MCI (and Sprint and all the others who came after) that now most of us don't have to worry about what a long distance call is going to cost anymore. In fact I remember when I got my mother on MCI -- she was finally willing to call her sisters who lived in other states once a week, instead of only on special occasions like Christmas and their birthdays. Later on I had to switch her off of MCI, when they started charging a ridiculous monthly minimum, but for many years MCI was the best deal out there and their low rates (compared to AT&T) made a lot of people very happy. But you don't like happy people, do you, Lisa? You'd rather see them all pay through the nose just so your principles can be enforced. > Then of course it wiped out its stockholder and lenders when it filed > for a huge bankruptcy. No such thing as a free lunch, and all those > people are screwed. So a good organization went bad. It happens. I'm not minimizing the tragedy for those who were wiped out, but do you really think MCI started their business some quarter of a century ago with the intent of someday coming to financial ruin? All I am saying is that I think you attribute a lot of undeserved malice to that company. I do think that once they went into bankruptcy, they should not have been allowed to emerge from it until they paid every creditor every last cent they owed, but unfortunately that's not how our bankruptcy laws work (which brings up a whole other subject - why is it that large corporations can get away with doggone near anything? - but I'll spare you that tirade). > Remember, one of Enron's big entities was cheapo electric power > generation. When Enron went broke, some PUCs ordered that the > existing power company take over its customer as the cheaper Enron > rate. Was that fair to existing companies? Al Capone used to force small business owners to buy "protection" from him -- was that fair to the small business owner? What has any of this got to do with VoIP? You're grasping at straws to make a point here, because you don't really have one - you simply want to see VoIP companies taxed or regulated out of existence, so you're dragging in every sort of wrongdoing in business you can think of in the hope that some of the guilt will rub off by association. > There were good reasons to establish a chartered regulated monopoly > to a utility like telephone service. Maybe in 1930 there was. Those reasons are no longer valid. [... more of Lisa's cheering for the old Bell System snipped ...] > People think "competition" will always work better than a regulated > monopoly because of the magic of the marketplace. That is economic > garbage. So you admit you don't like competition, but prefer a regulated monopoly. You apparently do not care that this has historically resulted in very high prices for end users, as well as innovation that moves at about the pace of a constipated snail. > The marketplace finds an equilibrium, but that level is not at all > necessarily where people might want it to lie. People = Lisa Hancock in the above sentence. Oh, sure, I know you could find a few others who would agree with you, many of whom probably benefited in some way from the old Bell System monopoly. But I think the majority of Americans place a high value on low prices. When you think of the largest chain store in America (Wal-Mart), the average consumer associates them with low prices. People moan and cry about how Wal-Mart and similar "box store" retailers put the smaller merchants out of business, but in the end they opt to pay the lower prices rather than shop on principle (and, candidly, they may admit that they think the smaller merchants have been overcharging them all along). > -- as we are learning the hard way, the marketplace equilibrium > (match point of demand and supply of cost) can be quite high. > Norvergence and MCI took advtg of competition by undercutting its > competitors and look what we got. Again, you're taking two of the worst examples and holding them up as though they are the norm. They are not. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of competitive local and long distance phone companies in America that are doing right by their customers. Pat has talked often about his good experiences with Prairie Stream (I think that's the name of the company he uses). But in Lisa's world, everyone would be forced to buy phone service from the incumbent local phone company whether they want to or not. I've been accused of being too positive toward VoIP -- well, if that is true, it isn't as though Pat doesn't run opposing viewpoints, because I doubt that any two people could hold more opposing views than Lisa and I. Lisa seems to hate VoIP with a passion, to the point that she tries to smear the industry by referencing the misdeeds in other parts of the telecommunications industry. Neither Norvergence nor MCI were VoIP companies (at least not in the way that we think of VoIP companies today). Once you get beyond that, we are left with a laundry list of all the nasty things Lisa would impose on VoIP if she had her way. In some cases these are things that aren't even currently being imposed on the cellular telephone industry, and perhaps ought to be done away with altogether. What really bothers me about Lisa's posts is that she really seems to be against the consumer having freedom of choice in the marketplace. Whatever Lisa's choice is, ought to be everyone's choice, I guess, or maybe she just wants the government to tell us all what level of service we must buy. Sorry, but I disagree in the strongest possible way. Jack ------------------------------ Subject: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 01:35:53 GMT In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out to a customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or the equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a couple of vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always wondered what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with it. Anybody know? jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 02:08:19 GMT From: Anonymous Subject: T Writes Down Assets Organization: Optimum Online Bloomberg News AT&T May Write Down Assets, Record 3rd-Qtr Expense August 4, 2004 17:07 EDT -- AT&T Corp., the largest U.S. long distance company, may write down the value of assets after its decision to stop seeking new residential customers. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 19:22:32 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Wed, 4 Aug 2004 16:39:39 -0400, Monty Solomon wrote: The article states: > WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Communications > Commission said on Wednesday it would set up a list of Internet > domains used by mobile-phone carriers to help keep unwanted "spam" > messages off consumers' phones. > Marketers that don't want to run afoul of a national anti-spam law > will be able to check the list to make sure they're not sending > unsolicited messages to mobile phones, the FCC said in a rule that was > adopted by a unanimous vote. Gee, why doesn't the government give the spammers which office codes are for each carrier? If you're going to make it easy for spammers to spam you might as well not make it inconvenient for them! remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: Doug Faunt N6TQS Subject: US West History Date: 04 Aug 2004 23:47:05 -0400 Organization: at home, in Oakland, California Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? And what happened to the company, if so? 73, doug ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #365 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 5 14:32:05 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i75IW5N09336; Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:32:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:32:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408051832.i75IW5N09336@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 #366 TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:32:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 366 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Net Phone Calls Must be Able to be Tapped -U.S. FCC (Jack Decker-VOIP) FCC Takes Step Toward VOIP Wiretapping Regulations (Jack Decker-VOIP) FCC: Web Phone Calls Must Allow Wiretaps (GuitarMan) FCC Rules on Wireless Outage Reporting and CALEA Compliance (Jack Adams) EPIC Alert 11.15 (Monty Solomon) Comcast Video Mail (Monty Solomon) HP and Philips Begin Licensing Video Content Protection (Monty Solomon) Old Bell System TTY Guys? (jsw@ivgate.omahug.org) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (John Stafford) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (jdj) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (Bart Lederman) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (Scott Dorsey) Re: US West History (Steven J Sobol) Re: US West History (John Levine) Re: US West History (Jack Adams) Re: US West History (Hammond of Texas) Re: US West History (Joseph) 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: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 02:27:37 -0400 Subject: Net Phone Calls Must be Able to be Tapped - U.S. FCC Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=42904448 WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Internet phone carriers such as Vonage should set up their systems so U.S. law enforcers can monitor suspicious calls, the Federal Communications Commission tentatively ruled on Wednesday. By a vote of 5-0, the FCC said "voice over Internet protocol," or VoIP, providers should be subject to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, which ensures that law enforcers will be able to keep up with changing communications technologies. VoIP service is likely to replace much traditional phone service over the coming years, the commission said. Full story at: http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=42904448 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 02:29:05 -0400 Subject: FCC Takes Step Toward VOIP Wiretapping Regulations Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.itworld.com/Man/2697/040804fccvoip/ Grant Gross, IDG News Service, Washington Bureau The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday took the first step toward requiring voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) providers to comply with law enforcement wiretapping requests. The FCC voted to begin an examination of the policies needed to ensure that VOIP providers comply with the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which allows U.S. law enforcement agencies to listen in on telephone conversations. The commission's decision on Wednesday included a tentative finding that communications services offered over broadband pipes, including VOIP, are subject to CALEA requirements to comply with law enforcement wiretap requests. The tentative rules would also cover managed communications services offered over broadband connections, including managed instant message or video services, said Ed Thomas, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. Nonmanaged peer-to-peer (P-to-P) services, including consumer-grade instant messaging services and noncommercial VOIP services, would likely not be subject to CALEA regulations under the proposed order, FCC staff said. Full story at: http://www.itworld.com/Man/2697/040804fccvoip/ ------------------------------ From: GuitarMan Subject: FCC: Web Phone Calls Must Allow Wiretaps Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 12:21:58 GMT Here's some more interesting news concerning VoIP: WASHINGTON - Internet phone carriers such as Vonage should set up their systems so U.S. law enforcers can monitor suspicious calls, the Federal Communications Commission tentatively ruled on Wednesday. More Here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5603020/ ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: FCC Rules on Wireless Outage Reporting and CALEA Compliance Date: 5 Aug 2004 10:31:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com See the following: http://www.ctia.org/news_media/daily/pub_view.cfm?pub_id=1&issue_id=1927&type=html for the full report from CTIA. In brief, the FCC voted unanimously to require wireless service providers to provide network outage statistics just as their wireline brethren have been doing since Hector was pup. Separately, they also said that ALL service providers (broadband, wireless, VoIP, etc.) must comply with CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Agencies). ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 09:59:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 11.15 ======================================================================= E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================= Volume 11.15 August 4, 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.15.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] EPIC Report: Homeland Security Given Census Data on Arab Americans [2] White House Responds to 9/11 Commission Report [3] Court Rejects Agency Effort to Withhold CAPPS II Info From EPIC [4] Agencies Issue Rules on Homeless Tracking; Bank Customer ID [5] Congress Considers Bills to Strengthen E-Mail Privacy [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: A Little Knowledge [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_11.15.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 13:47:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Video Mail Comcast Introduces Video Mail - An Exciting New Way to Connect With Family and Friends Comcast Announces `Great American Getaway' Sweepstakes Sharing Special Moments Has Never Been Easier - Just Record, Preview and Send PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast, the nation's number one broadband Internet provider, today announced the launch of Comcast Video Mail, a fresh and electrifying new way to communicate online. Comcast Video Mail enables Comcast High-Speed Internet customers to easily create video messages up to 45 seconds in length, using their personal computer and a webcam. Customers can also use Comcast Video Mail to send personalized video greeting cards and to share their digital photos via narrated photo slideshows. Imagine sending a unique video message to celebrate the birthday of an oldest childhood friend -- or being able to share the experience of baby's first tooth with grandparents 3,000 miles away. With Comcast Video Mail, users can connect with families and friends online like never before. Comcast Video Mail is available to all Comcast High-Speed Internet customers at no additional charge, and the service is designed to be easy to use and enjoy. Sending Video Mail messages is as simple as 1-2-3 - that is, record, preview and send. With the Greeting Card feature, customers can insert their special video message into more than 50 different cards covering various occasions and sentiments, including birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. Video Mail's Photo Narrator function allows users to import up to 10 of their digital photos and narrate their own personal slideshow, with the ability to get creative and toggle between a live recorded image of themselves and the actual pictures. Comcast Also Makes It Easy to Connect with Webcams Comcast has also made it easy for customers who do not already own a webcam to obtain one. Current High-Speed Internet customers will have the opportunity to purchase select webcams at discounts of up to 35 percent, beginning with Logitech's popular QuickCam Messenger and QuickCam Pro4000 models. Free shipping and free toll-free support are included, and additional brands will be available soon. Details are available at: http://www.comcast.net/products/webcamoffer/ . Additionally, users who sign up for Comcast High-Speed Internet service throughout the month of August will receive a free Logitech webcam, as supplies last. Details are available at: http://www.comcast.net/freewebcam/ . - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42927483 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 13:50:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: HP and Philips to Begin Licensing Video Content Protection System PALO ALTO, Calif. & AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 5, 2004-- Technology Enables Recording of Digital Television Broadcasts with the Broadcast Flag HP (NYSE:HPQ)(Nasdaq:HPQ) and Philips (NYSE:PHG) today announced that their Video Content Protection System (VCPS), formerly called Vidi, has received approval from the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and will now be offered to manufacturers through a license program. VCPS-enabled products will allow consumers to record video from digital television (DTV) broadcasts under the FCC's Broadcast Flag regulation. VCPS is designed to be used with DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL optical discs. The FCC adopted the Broadcast Flag rules as a content protection mechanism for digital broadcast television. The Broadcast Flag is a digital code that can be embedded into a digital broadcasting stream and signals DTV reception equipment to prevent indiscriminate redistribution of digital broadcast content over the Internet. The use of VCPS in digital video discs and recorders makes it possible for consumers to record digital broadcasts that are protected by the Broadcast Flag onto a DVD+R/+RW disc, and enjoy TV programming protected by the FCC rules. After July 2005, FCC regulations require manufacturers of digital video recorders to use FCC-approved content protection technology when recording U.S. digital television broadcasts that are marked with the Broadcast Flag. VCPS provides a transparent solution for consumers -- there is no change in how the customer records and views their favorite TV program -- while automatically adhering to these regulations. VCPS is easily integrated in PCs, DVD recorders and players and in optical discs. The use of this technology does not increase the cost of the manufacturing process of DVD+R/+RW discs. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42922053 ------------------------------ Subject: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 11:22:22 CDT From: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org Reply-To: jsw@ivgate.omahug.org > In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out to a > customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or the > equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a couple of > vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always wondered > what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with it. > Anybody know? Not to show my age, but the 35L6 was a beam power tube that was used for (other than the obvious audio output) such things as relay/sole- noid drivers and servo controllers. I don't remember them in any teletype gear (I'm not *that* old) but I do remember them in 60's vintage card sorters. They were popular because the heaters of three of them could be wired in series across the standard 120v AC line, saving the need for a filament/heater transformer. Good day JSW ------------------------------ From: usenet.persona@earthlink.net (John Stafford) Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: 4 Aug 2004 23:32:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com With suitable embarrassment (since I do know that transistors are not 1940s technology) ... The phones look 1940s-ish to me; but the electronics are newer (Doug Faunt suggests the 60s) ... I will be quiet now :-) usenet.persona@earthlink.net (John Stafford) wrote in message news:: > I'm trying to identify a piece of telecom equipment that appears to be > from the 1940s. > It consists of a suitcase with dividers that contains two Stromberg > Carlson telephones and a battery-operated amplifier. The phones plug > into the amplifier using one quarter inch plugs. The amplifier has a > rotary off/on volume control, a speaker, and an output jack (marked > record). > When both phones are taken off hook they're connected to each other > and can be used like ordinary phones, both sides of the conversation > are also audible through the amplifier speaker. > The amplifier is powered by a six volt "battery" that is a cardboard > box that indicates that it contains 4 AA cells, as well as by a > "standard" 9 volt battery. > There are no markings that I can see on any of the equipment (other > than on the phones). It does appear that the suitcase was custom-made > because the rivets that hold the dividers are the same as those that > hold the suitcase together. The suitcase handle does say made in the > USA on one side and has the numeral 6 (or 9) on the other. The > latches are marked with a flying airplane logo. > Please see pictures at http://www.flortraits.com/wii/ > My current guess is that it is some sort of "portable prisoner to > outside phone". > I will summarize and post any information I received. > Thank you. > John "but then I've been wrong before" Stafford ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 23:55:10 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Wed, 04 Aug 2004 08:40:52 -0700, John Stafford wrote: > I'm trying to identify a piece of telecom equipment that appears to be > from the 1940s. > It consists of a suitcase with dividers that contains two Stromberg > Carlson telephones and a battery-operated amplifier. The phones plug > into the amplifier using one quarter inch plugs. The amplifier has a > rotary off/on volume control, a speaker, and an output jack (marked > record). This appears to be a telephone training set from the early 1960's. The transistor amplifier with a "B" battery and the jet airplanes on the case latches put it well after 1950 and the phenolic printed circuit board and components push it more likely past 1960. It is used in scenarios such as training brokers to handle phone orders, or training telephone salespeople. Ma Bell produced a similar system with a ring feature so that either phone could be made to ring, adding a bit of realism to the training. ------------------------------ From: lederman@star.enet.dec.DISABLE-JUNK-EMAIL (Bart Z. Lederman) Reply-To: lederman@encompasserve.DISABLE-JUNK-EMAIL.org Organization: Personal Opinions Only Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 12:35:12 GMT I wanted to send email directly, but it doesn't appear that this post had a valid address. I'm reluctant to post anything here (though I used to), because the last time I did so several years ago Pat insisted in putting a "real" return E-mail address and I've been "spammed" regularly ever since. But if and only Pat is willing to leave my return address in a 'munged' state I will reply here. I looked at the photographs on the web site posted, and there is no way this was built in the 1940s. The transistorized board for the amplifier is late 1950s or even early 1960s technology. I'm reasonably certain that the "standard" 9 volt battery shown was developed for the transistor radios of thh 1950s: I've never seen one in a 1940s device. Hopefully this will help in tracking down the origen of this device, which looks to me as if it was built as a "one-off" or prototype and was not a commercial unit. B. Z. Lederman Personal Opinions Only Posting to a News group does NOT give anyone permission to send me advertising by E-mail or put me on a mailing list of any kind. Please remove the "DISABLE-JUNK-EMAIL" if you have a legitimate reason to E-mail a response to this post. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Years ago, B.Z., I did not know as much about the net and trouble makers as I know today. Believe it or not, B.Z., at one point in my old age, I actually wanted to have as perfect a Digest as I could, a place where readers would feel free to express their ideas and engage in public and/or private email teaching and learning from others. I do not feel that way any longer. Now I mostly leave the munging alone and let everyone fight the spammers the best way they can, in the way they feel best. If the guys cannot reach each other effeciently any longer because of spam, that's really too bad, but I am burned out worrying about it. Just sitting here now, waiting patiently for the day when the spam traffic reaches 95-98 percent of the total traffic each day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: 5 Aug 2004 10:02:11 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) In article , John Stafford wrote: > I'm trying to identify a piece of telecom equipment that appears to be > from the 1940s. > It consists of a suitcase with dividers that contains two Stromberg > Carlson telephones and a battery-operated amplifier. The phones plug > into the amplifier using one quarter inch plugs. The amplifier has a > rotary off/on volume control, a speaker, and an output jack (marked > record). > When both phones are taken off hook they're connected to each other > and can be used like ordinary phones, both sides of the conversation > are also audible through the amplifier speaker. > The amplifier is powered by a six volt "battery" that is a cardboard > box that indicates that it contains 4 AA cells, as well as by a > "standard" 9 volt battery. Are you sure this is from the 1940s? Where does the B+ for the tubes come from? > My current guess is that it is some sort of "portable prisoner to > outside phone". My guess is that it is much newer than you think it is, and that it is intended for hostage negotiation if not prisoner use. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: US West History Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 00:17:32 -0500 Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? Yes. US West was an RBOC. Is now Qwest. 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. ------------------------------ Date: 5 Aug 2004 06:08:44 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: US West History Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? Yup. > And what happened to the company, if so? During the bubble, bubbilicious long distance carrier Qwest Communications bought the much larger US West and renamed the combined company Qwest. Glorious leader Joe Naccio ran the company into the ground, to within a hair's breadth of bankruptcy, which is quite an accomplishment for a company that is still the de facto monopoly telco in a big chunk of the country running from Washington and Minnesota to New Mexico. Now that Naccio is gone, it's recovered somewhat but it's still called Qwest. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: Re: US West History Date: 5 Aug 2004 05:58:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message news:: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? > 73, doug Yes, the short answer is that it encompassed Mountain Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell which covered almost the entire Northwestern quadrant of the continental US. Somewhere along the way, Quest was formed (basically renaming US West), Joe Nachio took over, and it went to *#@+ in a handbasket. For details on this and other divestiture shenanigans, visit David Massey's http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/ A website created as a memorial to the people, history, technology and the "Spirit of Service" of what was known as the "Bell System" prior to 1984. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 08:39:52 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: US West History Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? > 73, doug Yes, US West, originally Pacific Northwest Bell, was one of the "baby bells". They are now Qwest. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: US West History Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 09:08:53 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 04 Aug 2004 23:47:05 -0400, Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? In 1984 when the "Bell System" was split up USWest was one of the "baby bells" that was formed along with NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, Ameritech and Pacific Telesis (if I've omitted any others it's unintentional.) Since that time there has been some consolidation and name changes. NYNEX was absorbed by Bell Atlantic. Bell Atlantic then combined themselves with former GTE companies and became Verizon. Southwestern Bell became SBC and bought Pacific Telesis and Ameritech. Qwest which was a long distance only company bought USWest. Big fish/little fish :) remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #366 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 5 16:05:47 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i75K5lx10738; Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:05:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:05:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408052005.i75K5lx10738@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 #367 TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:06:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 367 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phillip Gross Recognized With Internet Society's Postel (Peter Godwin) How Hipsters Stay in Touch (Monty Solomon) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Steve Schefter) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Paul Vader) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Justin Time) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Charles Cryderman) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Lisa Hancock) Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? (Jack Adams) Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera (Hank Karl) Re: US West History (Charles Cryderman) Re: US West History (Benjamin Lukoff) 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: Peter Godwin Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 15:44:08 +0200 Organization: Internet Society Subject: Phill Gross Recognized With Internet Society's Postel Award PHILL GROSS RECOGNIZED WITH THE INTERNET SOCIETY'S POSTEL AWARD 2004 award goes to co-founder of the Internet Engineering Task Force Geneva, Switzerland - August 5, 2004 - The Internet Society today announced that Phill Gross is this year's recipient of the prestigious Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. A co-founder of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Gross has been instrumental in defining and shaping the way in which the IETF standards process functions. He was awarded the Postel Service Award in recognition of his early leadership of the IETF and for firmly establishing the principles that are essential for its success. The Postel Award will be presented on August 5th, during the 60th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in San Diego, California. "The Internet Society is pleased to recognize Phill's significant contribution to the area of Internet standardization by awarding him this year's Postel Award," said Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St.Amour. "The continued success of the Internet Engineering Task Force's consensus-based processes shows the importance of Phill's pioneering work in developing the IETF's foundations." According to Steve Crocker, noted Internet authority and chair of this year's Postel award committee, "Many of the IETF's current structures, including Working Groups, Technical Areas, Proceedings and Internet Drafts came about thanks to Phill's dedication and passion for the Internet standards area. And we're delighted to be presenting the award to Phill in San Diego, the location of the first ever IETF meeting back in 1986." Gross, who is currently Director of Academics and Technology for the Northern Virginia ECPI College of Technology, has worked with the Internet community for over 20 years. His career has taken him from working with government-funded research projects through to networking engineering responsibilities for large corporations and startups, including leading the development of MCI Corporation's first national network. In 1986 Gross helped found the Internet Engineering Task Force. He became the first official chair in 1987 -- a position he held for seven years. During his chairmanship, the IETF evolved from a government-sponsored research group to an industry-wide Internet standards body. As well as contributing to developing the IETF standards process itself, Gross played an active role as co-chair of the IETF Routing and Addressing Working Group. This group led to solutions for growth-related Internet problems and was instrumental in specifying the initial direction for the next generation Internet Protocol (IPv6) in RFC 1719. He also served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) from 1987 to 1996. Expressing his appreciation for the award, Gross said "It was very gratifying to be there at the beginning and to work with such an incredible group of people. And, working with Jon over the years gives me a special appreciation for the honor that comes with this award." The Jonathan B. Postel Service Award was established by the Internet Society to honor those who have made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community. The award is focused on sustained and substantial technical contributions, service to the community, and leadership. With respect to leadership, the nominating committee places particular emphasis on candidates who have supported and enabled others in addition to their own specific actions. The award is named after Dr. Jonathan B. Postel, who embodied all of these qualities during his extraordinary stewardship over the course of a thirty-year career in networking. He served as the editor of the RFC series of notes from its inception in 1969, until 1998. He also served as the ARPANET "numbers Czar" and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority over the same period of time. He was a founding member of the Internet Architecture Board and the first individual member of the Internet Society, where he also served as a trustee. Previous recipients of the Postel Award include Jon himself (posthumously and accepted by his mother), Scott Bradner, Daniel Karrenberg, Stephen Wolff and Peter Kirstein. The award consists of an engraved crystal globe and $20,000. # # # About ISOC The Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org) is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1991 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. ISOC is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) and other Internet-related bodies who together play a critical role in ensuring that the Internet develops in a stable and open manner. For over 12 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time. FOR FURTHER DETAILS Internet Society: http://www.isoc.org Peter Godwin Senior Program Manager E-mail: godwin@isoc.org Internet Society 4, rue des Falaises 1205 Geneva Switzerland ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:15:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How Hipsters Stay in Touch By WALTER S. MOSSBERG When gadget lovers talk about combination cellphone and e-mail devices, the conversation usually turns to high-priced, business-oriented devices like PalmOne's Treo 600 or Research in Motion's BlackBerry phone models. But there's a stealth competitor. Like the Treo and BlackBerry phone, it has robust e-mail capabilities, complete with a built-in keyboard. It also makes a great instant-messaging or text-messaging device, and does a good job with Web surfing. It's called the Sidekick, and it tends to fly under the radar because it is aimed at young consumers, not business people; it has an unusual design; and it is sold by just one cellphone carrier, T-Mobile. Since its launch in October 2002, the Sidekick has built a small, cult-like following among its target youth audience, and in Hollywood. It has been used during television interviews by the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Demi Moore, and, according to its maker, has also appeared in music videos and on Jessica Simpson's reality TV show. Recently, teen movie actress Lindsay Lohan was photographed carrying a Sidekick encrusted with crystals. Now, the gadget's manufacturer, a small Silicon Valley firm called Danger Inc., is about to roll out a new version, the Sidekick II, which T-Mobile plans to start selling early this fall for $299, plus $20 a month for unlimited data on top of any voice calling plan. Ms. Lohan's crystals, alas, are neither a standard feature nor an option on the new Sidekick. My assistant Katie Boehret and I have been testing the new model, and we generally like it, though we found that it's much better for e-mail and messaging than for making phone calls. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040804.html ------------------------------ From: steve_schefter@hotmail.com (Steve Schefter) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 08:35:32 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote in message: > Do I not have the right to choose a provider with less reliability > than the Baby Bells, if there is some other factor that would make > me feel that's a good choice for me? Why are you trying to limit my > freedom of choice? That's kinda what laws and regulations do. Bummer. VOIP isn't unique in that it can provide a lower cost of service if we do away with some of the telco regulations. It would seem more reasonable to question whether everyone, CLECs, Bells, VOIP included should be allowed to offer a lower reliability service. Personally, I can see merit with both sides of the argument. Steve ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:02:49 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Jack Decker writes: > Lisa, you may not consider yourself a shill for them, but if one were > to apply the "duck test" ... well, let's just say that sometimes it > would be awfully hard to discern the difference between what you write > and what a shill for the phone company might write. How incredibly rude! Just because someone has the opposite opinion that you do, that doesn't make them a 'shill'. A shill is paid to do something in public. Are you seriously implying that Lisa is being paid to advocate traditional telecoms? If this is the quality of your opinion, I'm more happy than ever that I killfiled the 'voip news' posts. Get over yourself! * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 05:57:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jack Decker wrote in message news:: > Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. > On 4 Aug 2004 07:24:19 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: I have kept quiet on this issue for quite a while, but now I'm going to weigh in with some facts and not just opinions being bantered around. Yes, VoIP does work. It is a technology that is currently evolving, and can at some point in the future, be a viable alternative to traditional wireline communications. But to give you a better idea of where my viewpoint is coming from is that we are currently in the process of deploying a system that is capable of providing both traditional telephone service and VoIP service. Will VoIP be provisioned on our system -- not at this time. That doesn't mean it won't be provisioned in the future, but we have just too many mission critical services to rely on a "bleeding edge" technology that lacks any real standardization or interoperability. We have need to support little things like a PSAP -- Public Safety Answering Point, and guess what -- VoIP doesn't work with when your life may be in danger. Why, because VoIP can't provide a known connection point from which an address can be derived. Well, let me expand a little further. We know where the router is, but where is the connection being made from to the router on the user side? One of the touted advantages of using an IP phone is "all you need is a LAN connection." If the phone is configured on the LAN, then when you change locations, you just move your phone and plug it in and the system automatically reconfigures and provides telephone service. Now, expand that to a commercial building, say one of about 15 stories with a router in the MPOP. For this example we will say there are 3,000 people working at desks in the building and one of them needs emergency service. Where do you send the help? The only physical location is that for the router. For those of you with converged systems -- meaning you want to run voice, video and data over the same connection to your desktop. How can you allocate the bandwidth demands being made by the various services? How can you guarantee that your system provided by company X will use the same QOS signalling used by company Y without standards? How will you ensure that someone will not be on the system with a device that does not abide by the arbitrary rules and hogs the available bandwidth of the backbone? We have our own fiber network, currently running as an OC-48 with dedicated rings for voice traffic -- and we still won't move mission critical services because the reliability just isn't there. Will the reliability be there? Sure, some day. It has taken the "phone company" over 100 years to get to a point where they are able to offer the "5 nines" of system reliability. And for those of you who want to try to raise the straw man of cellular calls, the problem is being actively worked. A 9-1-1 dispatcher now has, for the most part, the 10 digit number of your cell phone when you call and the location of the tower handling your call. By the way, it is the location of the tower that first handles your 9-1-1 call that determines the jurisdiction for routing. In some instances it can be even more directional based on the set of receivers receiving the call. With new phones being GPS enabled, soon they will be able to pinpoint your location to within 30 feet. But this takes time and money to implement. The short side of all this is VoIP may work for you, but it can't be scaled to handle large concentrations of users in a metropolitan area in its current iterations. And this is "the dirty little secret" the VoIP manufacturers don't really want to talk about. So, am I a shill for the traditional phone companies? Everybody has their problems and the traditional phone companies do have a pretty bad reputation as far as customer service is concerned, but where would your VoIP phone call be if it weren't for the infrastructure owned and operated by the traditional phone companies? Or doesn't that compute in your mind? Rodgers Platt [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Rodgers, where would *anyone* be regards telecom if it were not for the massive amount of infrastructure orginally installed and maintained at major cost (albiet in the money values of the early 1900's) by Traditional Bell? If something happened to that infrastructure today (i.e. fire, flood, earthquake, vandalism, etc) could even Traditional Bell begin to replace it all? The way we lived in the 1900's and what we were paid as salaries for our work, etc are *not* close to the way we work or live today. How could anyone come close to replacing it all, if that was necessary? But Traditional Bell got paid handsomely over the years for their work at building the infrastructure (albiet not only the money values of the early 1900's but also the way in which workers were treated), so maybe it is fair if the rest of us get to share it now. If it matters any, at least Vonage -- to name one of the more recent interlopers in telecom -- is attempting to be consistent in the 'build your own infrastructure argument' when they can: a call between two Vonage subscribers does not touch the Bell infrastructure at all. That is to say Vonage customer in Florida does not hop off the Vonage 'network' at some point, travel over Bell to reach Alaska then get back on Vonage. It never gets off Vonage at all. Trouble is, at present that's only at best 2-3 percent of all Vonage traffic, most of which goes 'off [Vonage] net' at some point, and that will probably be the case for many more years. Regards your example of the 15 story commercial office building and a high concentration of VOIP equipment and the need for emergency intervention: While what you say is true, many or most such properties have local, well trained security people to take temporary charge as needed, and escort the 'regular' emergency people to the location where help is needed. We discussed this topic here once before when we were looking at huge office buildings/factories/campuses, which prefer to intercept 911 and after deciding whether to pass it along or not, begin their own professional intervention as needed in the meantime. There are solutions for most every problem, some of which we have yet to discover. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:48:41 -0400 In TD V23 #365 Jack Decker quoted Lisa Hancock: > I look at their record as a subscriber and what "competition" has > done for me. Lisa I have to disagree, competition has done many things for you. You appear to have access to the internet. I'd expect that none of us would had competition not come into play with telecommunications. CID, call waiting and many other innovations wouldn't have been pursued if it weren't for competition. One of the problems with a monopoly is stagnation and AT&T was very stagnate. They had no reason to improve things for the users. Their only improvements came in maximizing profits. Jack stated: > If you feel that competition has not helped you, you are certainly > entitled to stick with the traditional telephone company. What I > can't understand is why you feel the need to try and pull the rest > of us back into the same lobster pot along with you. Agreed Jack, there are many things I wouldn't choose yet do not wish to restrict others in their choices. Like the State of Missouri did to our Esteemed Moderator. Lisa: > 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers > pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. Jack: > Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? Personally, I > think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way to fund such > things. I agree that E911 is a important service but I also agree with Jack. This is a local issue and should be paid for my the locals. Some of these fees paid to the telephone companies are nothing more then extra money for them. The Universal Service Fund is a rip off. If you choose to live in a area that is high cost so be it. It is your choice and I shouldn't have to pay for it. I live outside the city of Detroit and have every little interest in the city. The way Lisa seems to think I should have to pay New York City taxes because things cost more there. Lisa again: > 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major events > generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. A private enterprise has the right to build their business as they see fit for their customers. Believe me, the LECs networks couldn't handle everyone of their customers being on the telephone at one time. You build it to the level you find satisfactory, not how some regulator thinks it should be done. Lisa: > Earlier Pat described the dedication and resourcefulness of > telephone company employees -- a monopoly -- in keeping service > going in difficult conditions. Today in a competitive environment, > do you think those people and their employers would do that? I > don't. I find this to be an insult. I work for a telecommunications company and everyone I work with is very dedicated to establishing and maintaining a secure reliable network. To generalize that if I don't work for the LEC I won't be dedicated is pure BS. I have had contact with a lot of LEC folks in 25 years in communications and have had more issues with the lack on concern on the part of the Baby Bells then any of their competitors. Lisa: > MCI was a scam from day one. It was unregulated while AT&T was > regulated, so it could take the high profit cream and leave AT&T > with the high overhead waste (like any call needing operator > service). Lisa, AT&T wasn't being such a nice guy as you think. What they were doing is subsidizing their major customers on the backs of the little guys and residential customers. What MCI did was bring that truth in the open. I was once a customer of theirs and had no issues with the service I received. But that was before WorldCom took them over and ruined their customer service and network. > Then of course it wiped out its stockholder and lenders when it > filed for a huge bankruptcy. No such thing as a free lunch, and all > those people are screwed. Now WorldCom was a scum company and the reason they went bankrupt had little to do with the company's operation but with bookkeeping. With the help of Wall Street, WorldCom and a few others filed for bankruptcy. One company for example was able to get a IPO from Wall Street when it had never shown a profit. Before the early nineties no company would have been given that opportunity without first showing they knew how to make money. Now my example company got their IPO and made the COB the fastest billionaire in history. Gave the company enough money to go on a buying spree. Bought a few other companies and crashed with mounting debt that it was unable to service. The shareholders were wiped out and the creditors control have the new common stock. The thing is, the company was run well and had 18,000 very dedicated employees but had Wall Street not given it the IPO they would never had been able to pick up these other companies with their debt and it would never had crashed. Competition had nothing to do with most of the telecom bankruptcies in the last few years. The reason they all went down is because of Wall Street greed, cheap interest rates in the early nineties with a swift rise in the late nineties and the Clinton Administration not watching what was going on or better said didn't want to watch what was going on because everyone was happy making money on paper (except most of the big guys, they sold high and got the cash). Now Jack slammed Lisa a bit more and no reason for me to rehash it. I did agree with what he said but think he could have been a little less confrontational in how he presented it. Chip Cryderman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What did the State of Missouri do to the Esteemed Moderator? Or were you thinking about the People's Republic of Chicago, Illinois? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 5 Aug 2004 12:09:15 -0700 Jack Decker wrote: >> To be truly HONESTLY competitive: That means, for VOIP (or anyone else) to be a truly competitive service to traditional phone company services, it would have to meet these standards. If it fails to, it is not as competitive as the hype reported in this newsgroup claims. >> 1) VOIP users may not have any traditional lines as "backup". > Not sure what you mean here. That VOIP will function as reliably and provide all services at all times as traditional lines, so a subscriber wouldn't need a traditional line at all. >> 2) VOIP providers must provide the same service reliability ... > Why? Because you say so? Do I not have the right to choose a > provider with less reliability than the Baby Bells. You have the right to choose less reliability if you want. But the hype has implied otherwise, and I'm not sure uneducated customers understand that. Look at retailing. Customers going into a swanky store/restaurant expect to pay more but get more personalized service in nice surroundings. Customers going into a discount warehouse/hot dog stand expect to pay less and don't expect personalized service. People CAN make a choice with their wallets and it is usually _pretty obvious_. Bloomingdales is not Walmart; the Waldorf-Astoria is not McDonalds. But the hype about VOIP and other newcomer services were that they were just as good as traditional. The fact is they weren't -- there are/were still a lot of bugs to be worked out. But unlike Walmart, this poor quality isn't easily evident to customers. > Besides, you know full well that a VoIP company that uses the public > Internet has absolutely zero control over how reliable the customer's > ISP is. No, I don't know that, and I suspect other subscribers wouldn't know it either. More on this 'compartmentalization' below. >> 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers >> pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. > Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? No because traditional companies have to pay them and to have a level playing field newcomers should pay the same. Likewise, they should meet social obligations (ie carrying deadbeats) that traditional carriers must meet. > Personally, I think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way > to fund such things. Your opinion on taxes is irrelevent here. What is relevent is that those taxes do exist and as such, should be applied to ALL concerns in the business. If you get the taxes off, they should come off for all. >> 4) VOIP providers must provide the same reports to state and federal >> regulators that other companies provide on their services. > Why? So they are burdened by paperwork? Again, so it is a level playing field. Everybody has to have the same obligations. >> 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major >> events generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. > Sure, this is desirable. But maybe I'm willing to not have phone > service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day As above, that should be clear to consumers in advance. I wonder if any service contracts say that in plain, clear language right up front: "No service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day". > But who are you to say that no one should be allowed to buy the less > reliable, but less expensive service? It's ok as long as the customers know they're buying from a discount house up front and will expect less: "no service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day". > I happen to believe that consumers should be able to choose > which risks they will take in the marketplace, When I buy something in a supermarket, the price is marked as is the contents and ingredients. When I make a telephone call, especially from a payphone, there is NOTHING. There have been countless articles about people being burned by outrageous calling card charges from long distance at pay phones, and count me in on that. The old Bell System gladly gave you rates before a call, no one does now (unless you can wait hours for a customer rep who probably won't even know anyway.) The newcomers want to have it both ways. They want the advantages of the regulated days where they can muscle in (such as how a company showed a switching station where it was not zoned because the company claimed it was a "utility" and had such power), as well as not posting specific prices. But they want to the advantages of deregulation where no one asks them any questions. Well sorry, it can't work that way. If you want to provide a very costly long distance service at a pay phone, stick a damn price list on the phone. > but it was because of MCI (and Sprint and all the others who came > after) that now most of us don't have to worry about what a long > distance call is going to cost anymore. First off, before competition AT&T was continually lowering toll rates as new technologies lowered its cost. I sure do have to worry about toll costs. A payphone call for 3 minutes 15 miles away $10.00? Isn't that a little rip off for today? Another call for 10 minutes $25.00? (I screamed like h--- and didn't pay those charges, but I never should've charged them in the first place.) Also, I remember short distance interstate toll calls costing as low as 4c a minute, now they are up to full rate. Those people who coast-to-coast during business hours are making out great. Those of us who call only occassionally locally are paying more than before. > You're grasping at straws to make a point here, > because you don't really have one - you simply want to see VoIP > companies taxed or regulated out of existence, Will paying the same taxes and complying with the same regulations of traditional carriers drive VOIP out of business? If so, then they don't deserve to be in business. Otherwise, stop giving them a free ride. > So you admit you don't like competition, but prefer a regulated > monopoly. You apparently do not care that this has historically > resulted in very high prices for end users, as well as innovation that > moves at about the pace of a constipated snail. That is absolute nonsense. Telephone service prices were falling before divesture. Innovation was continuing, indeed, that resulted in lower prices. Service quality was superior. Today we have great innovation, like digital cell phones that have lots of dead spots. To ALL new competitors (not just Mr. Decker): Please don't lie to me and tell me I'm paying less for when all you've done is shifted fees from one part of my phone bill to another or added new fees. Don't tell about your great deals that actually are lousy due to service charges. Please don't lie to me about free choice when you lobby regulators to disallow traditional carriers from offering services to "boost competition" (in other words, legally forcing me to buy from someone I don't want to). Or forcing me to choose an LD carrier when I don't want any and paying a minimum LD charge no matter what. Please don't lie to me and tell me my service quality is better when you've conveniently compartmentalized services so you can point the finger at someone else (as you did in denying responsibility for stuff that one's own ISP should be doing, or fraud that was controlled under a regulated monopoly structure). Please don't lie to me and tell me your business plan is so wonderful because you happen to avoid paying taxes your competitors have to pay. ------------------------------ From: adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) Subject: Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Date: 5 Aug 2004 05:51:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) wrote in message news:: > In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out > to a customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or > the equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a > couple of vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always > wondered what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with > it. > Anybody know? > jhhaynes at earthlink dot net Going back almost 4 decades, I recall a teletype method called "Selective Signaling" which allows the equivalent of multidrop machines on a private line circuit. It was fairly popular with law enforcement as I recall. The tubes (I'm guessing here, no first hand knowledge) may have performed the dicriminator function (think of FM discriminators) of station identification on the private line? Speaking of vintage equipment, you might want to check out: "The Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, now known as The Museum of Communications, is sponsored by Charles B. Hopkins Chapter 30, TelecommPioneers. We are located at 7000 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, Washington, 98108. The museum can be reached on (206) 767-3012 and is open every Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and by appointment other days." From my visit there, I remember tons of data (teletype models from 15 and earlier) equipment. The folks there keep it operational and thus would have the final word on this. http://www.scn.org/tech/telmuseum/ or contact them by email at: telmus@scn.org If you find yourself in the Seattle someday with some time to spare and want to visit a true gem, go down by Boeing field and pay them a visit. I can't wait to go back and talk to some of the switchmen who still keep an old Panel office from Mercer Island running! Jack ------------------------------ From: Hank Karl Subject: Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 11:19:08 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are any cellular picture phones at the > point of producing good enough pictures yet to make them worthwhile? > Now I suppose if I was trying to sneak a few pictures out of a men's > locker room, I would take what I could get and be grateful for that > limited quality. But can even the newest and most expensive cell > phones with built in cameras produce decent digital photos or .jpg > images as of yet? I have not seen one yet I was very impressed with. > PAT] How about the SPH-2300, Samsung's 3.2 megapixel camera phone? Of course, the lens on this model is quite noticeable http://www.gsmarena.com/index.php3?sRedir=http://www.gsmarena.com/newsdetail.php3?idNews=56 Casio's A5406CA has 3.2 megapixels and a "twilight" setting. see http://www.casio.co.jp/k-tai/a5406ca/ See also http://forum.mypdacafe.com/viewtopic.php?t=13466 for others. I don't know if any of these have hit the US yet, but its only a matter of time. And in the next year or two: Qualcomm introduces chipsets for six megapixel camera phones http://www.wirelessmoment.com/2004/05/qualcomm_introd.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think any of those models are commonly (if at all) available here in USA as of yet. But they do look like good equipment. The last time I was downtown checking out camera cell phones from our local dealers (Cingular Wireless, Dobson Cellular One, Alltel [both the corporate kiosk at Walmart and Radio Shack, their local agent], and United States Cellular), none of them had anything I felt was worth bothering with. They all had picture phones but they were all tiny litle pictures and not very good, IMO. I will go check again in six months to a year when quality will be better and the price will have come down also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: Re: US West History Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 14:05:19 -0400 In TD V23 #365 Doug Faunt inquired: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? And > what happened to the company, if so? Yes Doug, there is a Santa Clause, I mean yes, US West (aka: US Worst) was one of the baby bells. It was bought by Qwest a few years back and goes by the Qwest name and is still in operations in it's original 14 states. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ From: bd087@scn.org (Benjamin Lukoff) Subject: Re: US West History Date: 5 Aug 2004 11:57:22 -0700 Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message news:: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? Yes, they were. They were bought by Qwest a while back. ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #367 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 5 23:49:06 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i763n6w14257; Thu, 5 Aug 2004 23:49:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 23:49:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408060349.i763n6w14257@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 #368 TELECOM Digest Thu, 5 Aug 2004 23:49:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 368 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft to Release Big Windows Upgrade (Monty Solomon) A Question About Video Cell Phones (Lloyd Fonvielle) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (Doug Faunt) Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) (Tim Shoppa) Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera (DevilsPGD) Re: US West History (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: US West History (Scott Dorsey) Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones (Gary Novosielski) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (DevilsPGD) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Jack Decker) 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: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 17:42:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft to Release Big Windows Upgrade Microsoft to Release Big Windows Upgrade By ALLISON LINN AP Business Writer REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- Almost since the day Microsoft Corp. released its Windows XP computer operating system nearly three years ago, it has been a favorite target of hackers and critics eager to stress its numerous security shortcomings. Now, more than two years after promising to do something about it, Microsoft is about to release the biggest update ever for Windows. The free upgrade is designed to make users safer from cyberattacks by sealing entries to viruses, better protecting personal data and fending off spyware. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the upgrade, dubbed Service Pack 2, revises less than 5 percent of the millions of lines of code that make up Windows XP _ but adds more value than any update the company has ever done. Some of the nearly $1 billion that's gone into Service Pack 2 also will be used on future versions of Windows. But Gates said it was absolutely necessary to give away the security advances now because of the barrage of attacks plaguing Windows-based computers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42933801 ------------------------------ From: Lloyd Fonvielle Subject: A Question About Video Cell Phones Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:06:35 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Will someone have mercy on a technologically challenged person and explain something to me about the way video cell phones work? With video on demand, when a caller requests a download, how is his or her call routed, where is the video content hosted and how is it directed to the phone? Do cell phone service providers simply furnish the channel for the video transfer or do they host content themselves -- and where is the download charge assessed and by whom? Is the hosting of content and central exchange hub a website or part of the phone service provider's network? I know so little about this that even these questions might not make sense but I would be grateful for any help, or for direction to a source for this kind of basic information. ------------------------------ From: Doug Faunt N6TQS Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: 05 Aug 2004 16:28:44 -0400 Organization: at home, in Oakland, California usenet.persona@earthlink.net (John Stafford) writes: > With suitable embarrassment (since I do know that transistors are not > 1940s technology) ... > The phones look 1940s-ish to me; but the electronics are newer (Doug > Faunt suggests the 60s) ... I'm almost certain that the amplifier was sold by Lafayette Radio in the early '60's as a complete module. I stumbled across a article about a similar amplifier in a very quick look at my stash of Popular Electronics from the era. The one in the images has two transformers, so has a push-pull output stage for more power. The article, page 49 January 1962 Popular Electronics, says the amp used sells for $3.75. This is NOT the same amp, but shows a distinct commonality. If anyone has a Lafayette catalog from the time, I suspect you'll find it easily. 73, doug ------------------------------ From: shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Subject: Re: Trying to Identify 1940s Equipment (Prison Phone?) Date: 5 Aug 2004 14:33:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com usenet.persona@earthlink.net (John Stafford) wrote in message news:: > I'm trying to identify a piece of telecom equipment that appears to be > from the 1940s. > It consists of a suitcase with dividers that contains two Stromberg > Carlson telephones and a battery-operated amplifier. The phones plug > into the amplifier using one quarter inch plugs. The amplifier has a > rotary off/on volume control, a speaker, and an output jack (marked > record). > When both phones are taken off hook they're connected to each other > and can be used like ordinary phones, both sides of the conversation > are also audible through the amplifier speaker. This appears to be a more generic (and later, probably made in the 60's) version of the Western Electric "Tele-Trainer". I used one of these in grade school, on loan from the local phone company, to "learn" how to use a phone. Tim ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Socially Responsible Use of Your Cellphone Camera Reply-To: bond-jamesbond@crazyhat.net Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 22:40:33 GMT In message TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to david.blumenstein@gmail.com (David Blumenstein): > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are any cellular picture phones at the > point of producing good enough pictures yet to make them worthwhile? > Now I suppose if I was trying to sneak a few pictures out of a men's > locker room, I would take what I could get and be grateful for that > limited quality. But can even the newest and most expensive cell > phones with built in cameras produce decent digital photos or .jpg > images as of yet? I have not seen one yet I was very impressed with. > PAT] It depends on how you define "decent" -- There are plenty of "not bad for web display" cameras, even my Palm can take a 0.7megapixel picture. If you're talking about "acceptable for print", it can't and won't happen without much larger lens then we can currently produce in a device you'd be willing to hold up to your ear. There is a lot more then raw megapixels. Take a Canon Digital Rebel, set it to 0.7MP and compare the output to a typical Palm/Phone/$20 disposable digital and you'll see the difference even though the actual megapixel rating is the same. UNIX Sex {look;find;talk;grep;touch;finger;find;flex;unzip;mount;workbone; fsck;yes;gasp;fsck;yes;eject;umount;makeclean;zip;split;done;exit} ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 20:46:17 EDT Subject: Re: US West History In a message dated 5 Aug 2004 05:58:19 -0700, adamsjac@telcordia.com (Jack Adams) writes: > Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message > news:: >> Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? >> And what happened to the company, if so? >> 73, doug > Yes, the short answer is that it encompassed Mountain Bell and Pacific > Northwest Bell which covered almost the entire Northwestern quadrant > of the continental US. What happened to Mountain Bell's operations in New Mexico and Arizona, both contiguous to the Mexican border and hardly in the "Northwestern quadrant of the continental U.S."? Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: US West History Date: 5 Aug 2004 15:41:55 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > And what happened to the company, if so? It was. It is now Qwest, a large provider of unreliable telephone service and frequently-abused internet service. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:51:41 GMT Joseph wrote: > Gee, why doesn't the government give the spammers which office codes > are for each carrier? They do. Well, not the government, but NANPA does. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Reply-To: bond-jamesbond@crazyhat.net Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 22:40:10 GMT In message TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time): > If it matters any, at least Vonage -- to name one of the more recent > interlopers in telecom -- is attempting to be consistent in the 'build > your own infrastructure argument' when they can: a call between two > Vonage subscribers does not touch the Bell infrastructure at all. That > is to say Vonage customer in Florida does not hop off the Vonage > 'network' at some point, travel over Bell to reach Alaska then get > back on Vonage. It never gets off Vonage at all. Trouble is, at > present that's only at best 2-3 percent of all Vonage traffic, most > of which goes 'off [Vonage] net' at some point, and that will probably > be the case for many more years. However, if the various VoIP providers were to band together to work out mutual peering (either full peering using dedicated loops between them, or just 'over-the-net' peering which just dodges the PSTN) it would increase the percentage significantly. UNIX Sex {look;find;talk;grep;touch;finger;find;flex;unzip;mount;workbone; fsck;yes;gasp;fsck;yes;eject;umount;makeclean;zip;split;done;exit} ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 20:57:24 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Pat, once again please conceal my e-mail address. On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:02:49 -0000, pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote: > Jack Decker writes: >> Lisa, you may not consider yourself a shill for them, but if one were >> to apply the "duck test" ... well, let's just say that sometimes it >> would be awfully hard to discern the difference between what you write >> and what a shill for the phone company might write. > How incredibly rude! Yeah, I'm just a rude kinda guy sometimes ... I say what I really think instead of sugarcoating it. Been that way for years, probably won't change anytime in the near future. > Just because someone has the opposite opinion that you do, that > doesn't make them a 'shill'. A shill is paid to do something in > public. Are you seriously implying that Lisa is being paid to advocate > traditional telecoms? No. Had you read what I wrote carefully before putting fingers to keyboard, you might have understood what I actually said. I most certainly did NOT say that Lisa is being paid to advocate traditional telecoms. What I said was that if we had Lisa and someone who WAS being paid to advocate traditional telecoms standing side by side, it would be hard to tell the difference between them, at least from what they were advocating re: VoIP. It's that whole duck test thing -- at a distance something could look like a duck and appear to waddle like a duck, but the possibility exists that it might be a goose or some other duck-like bird. > If this is the quality of your opinion, I'm more happy than ever that I > killfiled the 'voip news' posts. Get over yourself! * Hey, when I read posts like yours, I go into Rush Limbaugh mode -- I'm right, and you're so wrong it's pathetic. :-) (just kidding!). I do wonder, though, how you are responding to my posts if you have me killfiled? Personally I am happy that you have killfiled VoIP News, but since you think I'm so incredibly rude, why not go all the way and killfile my personal posts as well? I have no desire for anything I write to wind up on the screen of someone who doesn't want to read it! On 5 Aug 2004 12:09:15 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > Jack Decker wrote: >>> To be truly HONESTLY competitive: > That means, for VOIP (or anyone else) to be a truly competitive > service to traditional phone company services, it would have to meet > these standards. If it fails to, it is not as competitive as the hype > reported in this newsgroup claims. Okay, Lisa, let me ask this: Is your objection simply that some companies (notably Vonage) actively market themselves as a replacement for traditional telephone service? Because if that's the case, we might have actually found some common ground (is that the earth I feel moving?). I have always personally felt its a very bad idea for a VoIP company to try and market themselves as a direct replacement to traditional wireline service. It isn't and it will never be. In some ways it's better, in some ways it's not, and in some notable ways (such as the inability to precisely locate the user geographically) it's just different, in a way that might be helpful to some and detrimental to others. >>> 1) VOIP users may not have any traditional lines as "backup". >> Not sure what you mean here. > That VOIP will function as reliably and provide all services at all > times as traditional lines, so a subscriber wouldn't need a > traditional line at all. Maybe someday that will happen (though I rather doubt it will ever exactly match traditional phone service, and why would we want it to?), but it sure isn't going to be this year. One of the points I keep trying to make is that this industry is, for all intents and purposes, less than a couple years old (in its current incarnation). Cell phone service isn't reliable as traditional phone service (when was the last time you had a dropped call on your wireline phone?) but people accept that. The reason I disagree with you on this point is because, despite any marketing hype, I do not see VoIP as a direct replacement for a traditional line, but it is still "good enough" for some people, the same way that cell phones are "good enough." >>> 2) VOIP providers must provide the same service reliability ... >> Why? Because you say so? Do I not have the right to choose a >> provider with less reliability than the Baby Bells. > You have the right to choose less reliability if you want. But the > hype has implied otherwise, and I'm not sure uneducated customers > understand that. That's in part because the service is new. Honestly, I think that in recent months the press has gone out of its way to educate consumers about the limitations of VoIP. I can't begin to count all the articles I've seen (that almost appear to be the same original article reworded, and in different media outlets) that mention how 911 works differently, and that you need a backup power supply and it still might not work in a power outage, and so on. I don't pass on every one of these articles because they would very quickly get boring, since they all have essentially the same content. Go to news.google.com and type this into the search box as shown: +VoIP +"power outages" +911 Then remove the "s" from "outages" and try again. You will see several recent articles that all make essentially the same points. Consumers ARE being educated about the limitations, and I expect this to occur more often as VoIP picks up steam. > Look at retailing. Customers going into a swanky store/restaurant > expect to pay more but get more personalized service in nice > surroundings. Customers going into a discount warehouse/hot dog stand > expect to pay less and don't expect personalized service. People CAN > make a choice with their wallets and it is usually _pretty obvious_. > Bloomingdales is not Walmart; the Waldorf-Astoria is not McDonalds. > But the hype about VOIP and other newcomer services were that they > were just as good as traditional. The fact is they weren't -- there > are/were still a lot of bugs to be worked out. But unlike Walmart, > this poor quality isn't easily evident to customers. Well, the problem is that one person's hype is another person's reality. One could say that VoIP is better than traditional phone service, and they'd be right. One could say that VoIP is worse than traditional phone service, and they'd also be right. Like the blind men touching different parts of an elephant, it would depend on what you're focusing on. I think the main reasons that VoIP is better than traditional phone service are that it finally offers flat-rate, untimed calling plans at prices that the average person can afford - the big phone companies could have offered that years ago, but chose not to. And, VoIP companies also include most or all of the features their switch is capable of supporting in the base price. The traditional phone companies didn't have to try and price features ala carte and then charge what I have always felt is an outrageous monthly rate for each one, but they did. So where VoIP is superior is that it gives people what they want, and without trying to nickel-and-dime them to death. And also, another big advantage in my opinion is that you are not told that you have to have a number in a certain ratecenter just because you happen to live on the wrong side of some arbitrary geographic line. Anyway, whether you or I may like it or not, we live in an age where it is customary for marketers to emphasize the advantages and forget to mention the disadvantages. Did you ever hear a car company advertise that a certain SUV gets lousy gas mileage, or that a particular car fared poorly in crash tests, or a particular pickup truck has a poorly shielded gas tank that might be prone to explosion? Such information is available, but consumers are expected to seek it out, and not rely on the company to advertise it. >> Besides, you know full well that a VoIP company that uses the public >> Internet has absolutely zero control over how reliable the customer's >> ISP is. > No, I don't know that, and I suspect other subscribers wouldn't know > it either. More on this 'compartmentalization' below. I would think that the typical broadband user would understand this. Remember, Lisa, VoIP is marketed to people who already have broadband service. These are people who presumably know how to use a computer and already know something of how the Internet functions, even if it's only a very sketchy understanding. So, I disagree that most VoIP users would not be aware of this distinction. >>> 3) VOIP subscribers must pay all the taxes that traditional subscribers >>> pay such as 911 fees, deaf relay fees, etc. >> Why? Because you have decided we need a nanny state? > No because traditional companies have to pay them and to have a level > playing field newcomers should pay the same. Likewise, they should > meet social obligations (ie carrying deadbeats) that traditional > carriers must meet. Well, Lisa, that is your opinion. I disagree. The playing field is actually not level, it is still very much stacked in favor of the incumbents. Now in many cases I would say that it might be high time to free some of the traditional phone companies from some of these obligations as well, if that would truly level the playing field. I just don't think that bad policies should be extended to potential replacement technologies -- instead we should take the opportunity to do away with the bad policies! >> Personally, I think that taxes on phone lines are the least fair way >> to fund such things. > Your opinion on taxes is irrelevent here. I find this statement ironic since you present your opinions as though they were the last word. I think my opinions are at least as relevant as yours, thank you very much. > What is relevent is that those taxes do exist and as such, should be > applied to ALL concerns in the business. If you get the taxes off, > they should come off for all. I'm all for taking them off for all. But either way, I'm not for extending bad policies to replacement technologies. >>> 4) VOIP providers must provide the same reports to state and federal >>> regulators that other companies provide on their services. >> Why? So they are burdened by paperwork? > Again, so it is a level playing field. Everybody has to have the same > obligations. Now you are really sort of living in a fantasy land. Every type of business has somewhat different kinds of required paperwork to deal with. If VoIP providers market themselves as being a highly reliable form of communications, to the point that people and businesses begin to depend on them for critical usage, then maybe AT THAT POINT it might be valid to see if they are delivering what they advertise. We aren't anywhere near that point yet. Besides, there's a slippery slope here -- if this requirement is made of VoIP providers, what next? Will ISP's be required to report on how much e-mail got delivered and how much fell into the bit bucket? Will AIM and ICQ have to keep statistics of messages sent and received? These sort of reporting requirements really don't accomplish much (in fact I suspect that many of the reports never even get read) but they cause a significant cost that has to be passed on to the consumer. I think that very small telephone companies, and most CLEC's are exempt from a lot of the reporting requirements imposed on the bigger ILEC's so unless there is a very urgent need, I see no reason to even attempt to impose such requirements on a VoIP company. In fact it's things like this that make me question your motives. Why would you even want to see such requirements imposed on VoIP companies? It sounds very much like the ONLY reason you want to see this is to drive their costs up, not to accomplish anything really useful or necessary. >>> 5) The networks must have adequate spare capacity so that major >>> events generating lots of phone calls will not cause call delays. >> Sure, this is desirable. But maybe I'm willing to not have phone >> service available for a few hours on Christmas and Mother's Day > As above, that should be clear to consumers in advance. I wonder > if any service contracts say that in plain, clear language right > up front: "No service available for a few hours on Christmas and > Mother's Day". No, they don't, because the service IS available, it's just that a certain percentage of calls will be blocked. This happens with some long distance companies, also. It used to happen with the mighty AT&T -- I can remember redialing and redialing (on a rotary dial phone, no less) trying to get a call through on Christmas day. >> But who are you to say that no one should be allowed to buy the less >> reliable, but less expensive service? > It's ok as long as the customers know they're buying from a discount > house up front and will expect less: "no service available for a few > hours on Christmas and Mother's Day". Make that "partial service available" -- but again, my point about only emphasizing the good and downplaying the bad in marketing applies here. Do you get upset that some cell phone companies aren't able to complete calls after snow or ice storns? People who live in an area for a while can generally figure out whose phones go down and whose phones keep working during major congestion events, and purchase their service accordingly. But I've never seen, for example, a cell carrier say something like "you may not be able to complete calls during severe weather" in their advertising. >> I happen to believe that consumers should be able to choose >> which risks they will take in the marketplace, > When I buy something in a supermarket, the price is marked as is the > contents and ingredients. Food is a special case due to the potentially extreme negative consequences of ingesting the wrong kinds of food. But all almost all food companies will say or imply that their food is good-tasting, and I can tell you from experience that with some percentage of the food products on the supermarket shelf, that is an outright lie. But also note that while I may think that some food tastes horrible and should be banned from the shelves, someone else might actually like it. So why should I be able to say they cannot buy it? > When I make a telephone call, especially from a payphone, there is > NOTHING. There have been countless articles about people being > burned by outrageous calling card charges from long distance at pay > phones, and count me in on that. The old Bell System gladly gave > you rates before a call, no one does now (unless you can wait hours > for a customer rep who probably won't even know anyway.) You know, Lisa, it never ceases to amaze me how you can bring irrelevant "red herrings" into a discussion. I think we would all agree that there are ripoff pay phone companies out there. I grant that point fully. But what, exactly, does that have to do with VoIP? Have you heard of any VoIP company that is ripping off consumers in a similar manner? Please be specific if you have! > The newcomers want to have it both ways. They want the advantages of > the regulated days where they can muscle in (such as how a company > showed a switching station where it was not zoned because the company > claimed it was a "utility" and had such power), as well as not posting > specific prices. But they want to the advantages of deregulation > where no one asks them any questions. Well sorry, it can't work that > way. If you want to provide a very costly long distance service at a > pay phone, stick a damn price list on the phone. And now that you have taken off on pay phones, away you go. Not one single thing in the above paragraph seems the least bit applicable to any VoIP company that I'm aware of. If a truck pulls over into your lane and forces you off the shoulder of the expressway, do you start complaining that all motorcycles ought to be banned from the roads? >> but it was because of MCI (and Sprint and all the others who came >> after) that now most of us don't have to worry about what a long >> distance call is going to cost anymore. > First off, before competition AT&T was continually lowering toll > rates as new technologies lowered its cost. Yes, but at a snail's pace. And, as others have pointed out, it was rare that residential customers ever got a good deal on toll from the old Ma Bell -- all the big price breaks were reserved for the big companies. > I sure do have to worry about toll costs. A payphone call for 3 > minutes 15 miles away $10.00? Isn't that a little rip off for today? > Another call for 10 minutes $25.00? (I screamed like h--- and didn't > pay those charges, but I never should've charged them in the first > place.) Yes, these are definitely ripoffs. The people who charge such rates should be tarred and feathered. And still this has not a single thing to do with VoIP. > Also, I remember short distance interstate toll calls costing as low > as 4c a minute, now they are up to full rate. Those people who > coast-to-coast during business hours are making out great. Those > of us who call only occassionally locally are paying more than before. If you are paying more than 4 cents a minute from your home phone, you should immediately go to a long distance rate comparison site (I happen to like abtolls.com, but there are several others) and find a long distance carrier that offers a reasonable rate. The deals are out there, and with the Internet it's not at all hard to find them. >> You're grasping at straws to make a point here, >> because you don't really have one - you simply want to see VoIP >> companies taxed or regulated out of existence, > Will paying the same taxes and complying with the same regulations of > traditional carriers drive VOIP out of business? If so, then they > don't deserve to be in business. Otherwise, stop giving them a free > ride. See, you may not care if VoIP companies are driven out of business. But I and many others would. Also, it's not uncommon to give new businesses various breaks -- where I live, some companies can get a break from paying state and local taxes for many years, simply by locating their business in some place that the state would like to see redeveloped (what they call "brownfields", often former industrial sites). Free rides don't last forever but sometimes they are appropriate for a time. And meanwhile, maybe we could eliminate some of those taxes and regulations altogether. >> So you admit you don't like competition, but prefer a regulated >> monopoly. You apparently do not care that this has historically >> resulted in very high prices for end users, as well as innovation that >> moves at about the pace of a constipated snail. > That is absolute nonsense. Telephone service prices were falling > before divesture. Funny, I didn't really see those prices falling much, except as a very long-term trend. > Innovation was continuing, indeed, that resulted in lower prices. > Service quality was superior. Yeah, and you could have any model 500 or 2500 set you wanted. Long cords, a colored housing (white was considered a color), or especially any phone that might have been considered stylish was extra, and I mean an extra charge every month. Unless, of course, you knew where to buy such phones and how to keep the phone company from knowing you had them. > Today we have great innovation, like digital cell phones that have > lots of dead spots. Yeah, let's just throw some more unrelated crap and see if it sticks. > To ALL new competitors (not just Mr. Decker): HOLD IT! Why do you label me as a competitor? I'm not selling a doggone thing! > Please don't lie to me and tell me I'm paying less for when all you've > done is shifted fees from one part of my phone bill to another or > added new fees. Don't tell about your great deals that actually are > lousy due to service charges. Oh, you mean like the traditional phone companies do? Exactly which VoIP companies do this, Lisa? > Please don't lie to me about free choice when you lobby regulators to > disallow traditional carriers from offering services to "boost > competition" (in other words, legally forcing me to buy from someone I > don't want to). Or forcing me to choose an LD carrier when I don't > want any and paying a minimum LD charge no matter what. *Sigh* here we go again. What VoIP has ever forced you to buy from them? And what does the practices of long distance carriers have to do with VoIP? > Please don't lie to me and tell me my service quality is better when > you've conveniently compartmentalized services so you can point the > finger at someone else (as you did in denying responsibility for stuff > that one's own ISP should be doing, or fraud that was controlled under > a regulated monopoly structure). You've almost completely lost me by now. This thing about "conven- iently compartmentalized services" really gets me, though. Do you expect each VoIP provider to build their own Internet backbone or something? > Please don't lie to me and tell me your business plan is so wonderful > because you happen to avoid paying taxes your competitors have to pay. VoIP companies do not, generally speaking, avoid taxes that their competitors have to pay. They may not pay some taxes that traditional phone companies pay, but that is because they are not traditional phone companies. When you drive your car, you don't pay jet fuel tax. One point that you and many others keep ignoring is that VoIP companies are customers of licensed CLEC's -- they have to be in order to get incoming phone numbers for their customers. And as customers of the CLEC's, they pay required taxes to the CLEC's, which then (hopefully) remit them to the government. I happen to believe that the government taxes people far too much, and they sometimes add taxes to services as a way to get around legal limitations that would prohibit them from taxing people directly for the same purpose. So my belief is that these taxes should go away, not be applied to replacement technologies. You are more or less saying that if there is a tax on tea and everyone switches to milk in order to avoid the tea tax, we should then tax milk! Maybe, instead, we should look at why people will go out of their way to avoid that tax, take the hint and eliminate the tax! Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With this rebuttal from Jack Decker we shall close the discussion on VOIP versus traditional Bell, unless Lisa Hancock wishes to make any final rebuttals to Jack. 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'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #368 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 7 02:53:06 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i776r6026458; Sat, 7 Aug 2004 02:53:06 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 02:53:06 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408070653.i776r6026458@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 #369 TELECOM Digest Sat, 7 Aug 2004 02:53:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 369 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson PDAs Under Attack (Monty Solomon) EFFector 17.28: Freedom Fest Is Here! (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Releases Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Monty Solomon) Best Phone For Use With Vonage Service? (CHL) Number Transportability For VOIP? (Dan) Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Chris Chang) Looking For Phones to Use With Centrex (Julie at CG) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Paul Vader) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Lisa Minter) Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones (Michael D. Sullivan) Cinti. Bell buys ATTWS's 19.9% Share of Wireless Network (Steven Sobol) Re: Tune In, Turn On, Skype Out (baracooda) Liability for Neglegent Storage of Data (Lincoln J. King-Cliby) Re: US West History (No One) 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: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 11:29:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: PDAs Under Attack Kaspersky Labs 05 Aug 2004 Kaspersky Labs has detected Backdoor.WinCE.Brador.a, the first backdoor for PDAs running under PocketPC (based on Windows CE). Brador is a classic Trojan backdoor program: it opens the infected machine for remote administration. Brador is 5632 bytes in size and it infects handhelds running Pocket PC. After the backdoor is launched, it creates an svchost.exe file in the Windows autorun folder, thus maintaining full control over the system every time the handheld is turned on. Brador then identifies the machine's IP address and sends it to the author, informing him that the handheld is in the Internet and the backdoor is active. Finally, Brador opens port 2989 and awaits further commands. Brador is created to allow the master full control over the infected PDA via the port that the Trojan opens. Brador is programmed to upload and download files and execute a series of further commands. Like all backdoors, Brador cannot spread by itself: it can only arrive as an email attachment, be downloaded from the Internet or uploaded along with other data from a desktop. http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=151142122 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 01:19:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.28: Freedom Fest Is Here! EFFector Vol. 17, No. 28 August 4, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 300th Issue of EFFector: * Freedom Fest Is Here! * JibJab Files Suit to Defend Fair Use Rights * EFF Urgues FCC to Resist a "Broadcast Flag" for Radio * Ohio E-Voting Update: Progress for Election Integrity * EFF Court Docket: What's Next? * Defcon 12 Makes a Splash for Online Freedom * EFF Thanks Automated Workflows * MiniLinks (12): Powell Drops the Regulatory Hammer on VoIP * Staff Calendar: 08.04.04 - EFF Freedom Fest 2004, San Francisco, CA * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/28.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 18:12:49 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Releases Windows XP Service Pack 2 Company Urges Windows XP Customers to Turn on Automatic Updates to Get the Stronger Security, Greater Manageability and Improved Experiences of Landmark Service Pack REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced the release to manufacturing of Windows(R) XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies. This free service pack delivers the latest security updates and innovations from Microsoft, establishes strong default security settings, and adds new proactive protection features that will help better safeguard computers from hackers, viruses and other security risks. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42956051 ------------------------------ From: leejp@excite.com (CHL) Subject: Best Phone For Use With Vonage Service? Date: 5 Aug 2004 23:48:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just signed up with Vonage. I installed it tonight and the voice quality was excellent. So far so good. I have 1 "line powered" phone and will be getting a UPS to hold up my cable modem and the Vonage box during power outages. Now ... my understanding is that the phone line coming out of the vonage box can pretty much be used like the line from the phone company. Great! I'll simply disconnect the phone line from Verizon and connect it to th box. I'll be looking for a new cordless phone to go with my new service. Is there a phone/phone system that is particularly suited for making/receiving calls, setting up/retrieving phonemail ... for Vonage Service? I prefer the multi handset type cordless. Also ... the voicemail features are pretty slick. Anyone still using your own answering machine? Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I spent all of $4.95 (four dollars, ninety-five cents) at the Dollar General store downtown for a desk- style Trimline phone for my Vonage. And it has Caller ID in the handset, with three memory buttons, a flash button and a redial button. It was some kind of overstock thing on sale. It even has a 'visual message waiting' indicator on it. (Actually, just a tiny flashing light that blinks off and on each time there is a change in the caller ID display (which means each time the phone rings; the person may have not left a message, but I usually got their number and name that way anyway). A major investment in a phone, yes? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dan04@comcast.net (Dan) Subject: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: 6 Aug 2004 07:10:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Will I ever be able to sign up for VOIP and keep my existing POTS (landline) phone number? When? Thanks, Dan [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can do that now, Dan, at least on Vonage and assuming you are in a town of some size, although Independence, KS is not that large at 8000 people. PAT] ------------------------------ From: chrispchang@yahoo.com (Chris Chang) Subject: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Date: 6 Aug 2004 07:14:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I'm new to this group but seems like there are a number of knowledgeable telecom folks here. I am opening a small office (6 people with potential to expand to max of 15). In looking at phone systems, we want basic voicemail functionality, caller id and call waiting caller id. I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button stuff. Appreciate any responses. Chris ------------------------------ From: jvandore@commonground.org (Julie at CG) Subject: Looking for Phones to Use with Centrex Date: 6 Aug 2004 10:10:54 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I am a computer person who has had telecom foisted upon her. We have a new small office in Connecticut, less than 6 phones. We have decided to go with Centrex for the phone service, and maybe to use SBC's voicemail. I know that I can use ordinary analog phones with centrex, but then in order to access the features the users have to depress the hang-up button and enter codes. These users will find that troublesome. I asked SBC how much the phones were and they said that they would be $250. I am writing to find out if I have a less expensive option. I need: Phone that can easily access centrex features (call transfer, 4-digit dialing, putting callers on hold, etc.) Phone that **either** has message indicator that will talk with SBC's voicemail, to indicate that there is voicemail --OR-- has digital mailbox built in. Phone that can have at least two lines (a "main" line and the user's line) coming in. I have tried to find out whether particular phones have these features, but have been unsuccessful. Any help would be greatly appreciated. julie Director IT Common Ground Community www.commonground.org ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 15:43:06 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Jack Decker writes: > Yeah, I'm just a rude kinda guy sometimes ... I say what I really > think instead of sugarcoating it. Been that way for years, probably > won't change anytime in the near future. Oh yes, the particular breed of ass who thinks being one is a virture. Welcome to my killfile, loser. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your killfile must be faulty in some way, Paul, since you have obviously received and replied to the last two or three messages from Jack. Call me curious I guess. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 6 Aug 2004 10:46:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > But Traditional Bell got paid handsomely over the years > for their work at building the infrastructure (albiet not only the > money values of the early 1900's but also the way in which workers > were treated), so maybe it is fair if the rest of us get to share it > now. I'm not sure I call the Bell's profit "handsome". As a regulated monopoly, its prices were set by the government. It was of course to Bell's advantage to have low prices to attract as many customers as possible, HOWEVER, their prices could've been higher without loss of their customer base. In other words, without regulation, they would've made a lot more money. Compared to other technology businesses over the years, the Bell System's profits were quite low. One did not get rich working for or investing in the telephone company. I don't have stock histories, but I dare long term return on investment of the Bell System was much lower compared to say a GE or RCA or IBM. Being regulated did not guarantee success. Railroads were a strictly regulated monopoly but still went broke. Western Union went broke. As to how workers were treated, in the early years I think Bell was the same as other growing industrial concerns. Once WW II started, I think Bell System workers had it better than most other similar workers. They did not get rich, but they had good job security, opportunities for advancement, good training, and safe and pleasant working conditions. For instance, I don't think field installers or repairmen were under tremendous pressure to work fast as some other companies' field crews (at least basee on my own observations and conversations). It also must be noted that Bell spread the costs of its infrastructure over a wide customer base. Bell served everyone in reasonably built-up areas. Today, cable TV and cellular carriers have plenty of unserved zones -- in built-up areas -- since the cost of serving those few zones happens to be very high and it isn't worth it to them to spend the money. Bell certainly had high cost customers it served just the same. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I guess it depends on how you define 'handsome'. I know that AT&T is the **only** company which has had a single letter ('T') as their stock symbol and they have **never** missed a dividend (frequently large) in over a hundred years. In fact, older (1930-ish) magazines and newspapers had adver- tisements which glorified telco's stocks; for example the ad they ran over and over showing an old lady sitting in a rocking chair with a contented look on her face and the caption said how lucky she was that her AT&T stock dividends were looking after her in her old age during the depression. PAT] Then Lisa continues, quoting Charles Cryderman who wrote: > Lisa I have to disagree, competition has done many things for you. You > appear to have access to the internet. I'd expect that none of us > would had competition not come into play with telecommunications. CID, > call waiting and many other innovations wouldn't have been pursued if > it weren't for competition. The Bell System developed and deployed CID, Call Waiting, etc., long before competition. These features were forseen as benefits from Electronic Switching which the Bell System began working on in the 1950s. > One of the problems with a monopoly is stagnation and AT&T was very > stagnate. They had no reason to improve things for the users. Sorry, but that is not accurate at all. Bell Laboratories under the Bell System was well known for continuing inventions and technology development. Otherwise we'd still be using manual candlestick phones. It was the Bell System that developed ESS and cellular mobile telephones. It was the Bell System that continually searched for ways to improve the carrying efficiency of circuits, such as digital transmission and switching. The Bell System's electronic switching systems were so far advanced that Bell had to develop the hardware itself to make them work -- the then state of the art in computer hardware was not adequate to meet their needs. At the time of divesture, the Bell System was quite advanced and was a very different company than even 10 years prior. As to the Internet, that was developed many years ago. The Bell System's data transmission services provided the initial links. The widespread use of the Internet today is the result of cheap electronics. That allowed cheap routers and servers, cheap home computers, cheap phone switching gear, and cheaper mainframes. The cost of electronics has been dropping ever since the transistor was invented. The breakup of the Bell System did not create that price drop. > Their only improvements came in maximizing profits. That's what business is about. As a regulated monopoly, quality service was top priority, even at the expense of profits. In a free market, profits are the only issue. We've seen the loss of many services once provided because they are not profitable in a competitive world. > I agree that E911 is a important service but I also agree with > Jack. This is a local issue and should be paid for my the locals. Some > of these fees paid to the telephone companies are nothing more then > extra money for them. The Universal Service Fund is a rip off ... As I replied, all that is irrelevent. Whatever taxes and obligations there must be met by ALL carriers. If such taxes/fees are wrong, discontinue for all. But at this time, those taxes and obligations do exist. > Lisa, AT&T wasn't being such a nice guy as you think. What they were > doing is subsidizing their major customers on the backs of the little > guys and residential customers. What MCI did was bring that truth in > the open. AT&T's flat pricing policy wasn't a secret -- it was mandated by the government as part of the regulation. Obviously on some sectors AT&T made money but also obviously AT&T lost money on other sectors -- again because the government ordered it so. MCI exploited the fact that AT&T was regulated and it was not. It didn't have to serve high cost city-pairs or provide operator services -- it left that high expense to AT&T which by law had to handle it at low prices. If I open a hotdog stand in front of a luncheonette and don't bother paying taxes, providing my customers restrooms, having my cart health inspected, etc., it will be easy for me to undercut the luncheonette's prices and steal their business. Oh yes -- keep in mind that the government ordered the luncheonette to be open 24/7 even where there's little business to justify that cost, and to carry a varied menu even though there's little demand for some items. As a stand, I need only be there during the most profitable times and sell only the high profit items. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: FCC Moves to Ban Spam on Mobile Phones Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 23:41:35 GMT In article , gpn@suespammers.org says: > Joseph wrote: >> Gee, why doesn't the government give the spammers which office codes >> are for each carrier? > They do. > Well, not the government, but NANPA does. Not that the CO code tells one much about who is the service provider, or even if it is mobile service, now that we have number pooling and number portability. That's (presumably) why the FCC required carriers to list the internet domains used with the phone numbers for incoming SMS (e.g., vtext.com in the case of Verizon Wireless). Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Cinti. Bell Buys ATTWS's 19.9% Share of its Wireless Network Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 18:03:45 -0500 From Cincinnati Bell's Website: http://www.cincinnatibell.com/corporate/news/news.asp?page=20040805.asp CB gets a good deal on roaming rates from AT&Tingular as part of this deal. 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: wayne.chiang@gmail.com (baracooda) Subject: Re: Tune In, Turn On, Skype Out Date: 6 Aug 2004 19:11:47 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com The point that I am trying to get across is that current PC aren't too far away from being a mobile robotic videoconference machine ... wayne.chiang@gmail.com (baracooda) wrote in message news:: > I have a Deskoid Robotic PC design that is ideal for Skype. Check it > out at http://funkycoldamoeba.blogspot.com . I need partners to > co-develop this idea, if anybody is interested, let me know. > VOIP News wrote in message > news:: >> http://www.techcentralstation.com/070104F.html >> Tune In, Turn On, Skype Out >> By Kevin Werbach Published 07/01/2004 TCS >> Somewhere between Sweden, Estonia, and London, a small band of software >> developers is fomenting a revolution. Their product, Skype, >> has been downloaded fifteen million times worldwide in less than a >> year, without any marketing budget. It is provoking consternation >> among government officials. And it has large incumbents worried. >> If that sounds like the profile of peer-to-peer (p2p) file-sharing >> programs like Napster and Kazaa, it should. Not only is Skype a >> product of the same team that launched Kazaa, the most popular p2p >> file-sharing application, Skype is a p2p tool itself. ------------------------------ From: chsvideo@hotmail.com (Lincoln J. King-Cliby) Subject: Liabiltiy For Neglegent Storage of Data? Date: 6 Aug 2004 23:17:21 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi Pat & All - I need some advice & I know it's not completely on topic, but it is kind of close and of all the newsgroups/forums I participate in, this is the closest to being on topic. I realize few of y'all are lawyers, so I won't take any of this as legal advice, but ... I was notified yesterday that my personal data (SSN, name, etc.) was included in a fairly-highly-publicized loss of data (er, "misplacement of data") on the part of the California State University-Office of the Chancellor. A few of the articles on the subject include: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/3618605/detail.html http://www.kfmb.com/topstory27924.html http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/08/04/news/top_stories/23_18_308_3_04.txt or just go to http://news.google.com/ and enter "Cal State Hard Drive" What really peeves me is even though the CSU talking heads claim the data was "password protected" the section of the Civil Code cited in the letter for the notice only requires disclosure if the data lost is not encrypted ... Eek! I _WILL_ be filing a claim with the State Board of Control (the first step before one can sue a state agency) on, among other things, the basis that the Auditor (and by extension the Office of the Chancellor, Civ. Code 2338) was grossly negligent in that: a) The data was allowed on a laptop hard drive to begin with, without my knowledge or consent [It's not entirely clear how they got my SSN to begin with]; b) The data was not encrypted; c) The data was not adequately secured or supervised, and the Auditor should have been plainly aware that the data was not adequately secured; d) My [state] Constitutional Right to Privacy was violated (Cal. Const. Art. 1, Sec. 24); e) The use of my SSN since (IIRC) Jan 1, 2004 may violate certain provisions of California Law (depending on what they were using it for ... I certainly never received the notice also required by those provisions); ... among other things. The primary questions I have are: - As to bullet B, am I unreasonable to expect that IF the data was allowed "out in the wild" it would be encrypted in some way? [I figured this group would be one of the best places on the net to pose this question]; - Any idea of the damages I should seek in the claim? I'm still looking through CA law/case law, and have not yet located any statutory guidance as far as penalties are concerned. - Any claims I've missed? I'm not usually this ... angry ... but quite frankly what was done here was stupid and unnecessary, lacking even basic protection for the data. I've never said this before, but I almost hope some idiot looses their job over this. Thanks for any help, Lincoln [Feel free to reply directly to lking-cliby +@+ lincoln.homeip.net if you prefer] [PS - for those that care, re: Bullet C, the hard drive was left unattended in an office, sitting near a garbage can. There are at least a dozen places on campus that would have provided more security for the data, including several that involve locked safes AND card key access control. One was directly above the office that the data disappeared from. I have access to a miniscule amount of confidential data compared to this and secure it in a much more paranoid manner when not in use: Encrypted on a Jaz disk locked in a lock box, in a locked file cabinet, behind two card access doors -- not far from a CCTV camera. And I work on/attend the same campus as the data disappeared from.] ------------------------------ From: CCIE8122 Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 23:50:15 -0600 Organization: XMission http://www.xmission.com/ Subject: Re: US West History > In a message dated 5 Aug 2004 05:58:19 -0700, adamsjac@telcordia.com > (Jack Adams) writes: >> Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message >> news:: >>> Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? >>> And what happened to the company, if so? >>> 73, doug >> Yes, the short answer is that it encompassed Mountain Bell and Pacific >> Northwest Bell which covered almost the entire Northwestern quadrant >> of the continental US. > What happened to Mountain Bell's operations in New Mexico and > Arizona, both contiguous to the Mexican border and hardly in the > "Northwestern quadrant of the continental U.S."? > Wes Leatherock > wesrock@aol.com USWest merged with Qwest Communications. Qwest a tier-one IXC as well as the LEC/RBOC/baby bell (whatever you want to call it) for the 14-state western region including WA, OR, ID, UT, AZ, MT, WY, CO, NM, ND, SD, NE, MN, IA. kr ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #369 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 7 23:20:44 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i783KhM06616; Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:20:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:20:44 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408080320.i783KhM06616@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 #370 TELECOM Digest Sat, 7 Aug 2004 23:20:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 370 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Security Cavities Ail Bluetooth (Monty Solomon) Onion Routing Averts Prying Eyes (Monty Solomon) Re: Porn Blogs Manipulate Google (Monty Solomon) Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate (Monty Solomon) Leader: RFID in Prisons - Does Anyone Care? (Monty Solomon) The Wireless Industry and the 411 (Monty Solomon) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Tony P.) Re: PDAs Under Attack (Tony P.) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (sin nombre) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Tim Shoppa) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Fred Goldstein) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Arthur Kamlet) 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: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:20:31 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Security Cavities Ail Bluetooth By Kim Zetter Serious flaws discovered in Bluetooth technology used in mobile phones can let an attacker remotely download contact information from victims' address books, read their calendar appointments or peruse text messages on their phones to conduct corporate espionage. An attacker could even plant phony text messages in a phone's memory, or turn the phone sitting in a victim's pocket or on a restaurant table top into a listening device to pick up private conversations in the phone's vicinity. Most types of attacks could be conducted without leaving a trace. Security professionals Adam Laurie and Martin Herfurt demonstrated the attacks last week at the Black Hat and DefCon security and hacker conferences in Las Vegas. Phone companies say the risk of this kind of attack is small, since the amount of time a victim would be vulnerable is minimal, and the attacker would have to be in proximity to the victim. But experiments, one using a common laptop and another using a prototype Bluetooth "rifle" that captured data from a mobile phone a mile away, have demonstrated that such attacks aren't so far-fetched. Laurie, chief security officer of London-based security and networking firm ALD , discovered the vulnerability last November. Using a program called Bluesnarf that he designed but hasn't released, Laurie modified the Bluetooth settings on a standard Bluetooth-enabled laptop to conduct the data-collection attacks. Then, German researcher Herfurt developed a program called Bluebug that could turn certain mobile phones into a bug to transmit conversations in the vicinity of the device to an attacker's phone. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64463,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:22:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Onion Routing Averts Prying Eyes By Ann Harrison Computer programmers are modifying a communications system, originally developed by the U.S. Naval Research Lab, to help Internet users surf the Web anonymously and shield their online activities from corporate or government eyes. The system is based on a concept called onion routing. It works like this: Messages, or packets of information, are sent through a distributed network of randomly selected servers, or nodes, each of which knows only its predecessor and successor. Messages flowing through this network are unwrapped by a symmetric encryption key at each server that peels off one layer and reveals instructions for the next downstream node. In contrast, messages traveling across the Internet are generally not encrypted, and the path of a message can be seen easily, linking users to activities like website visits. The Navy is financing the development of a second-generation onion-routing system called Tor , which addresses many of the flaws in the original design and makes it easier to use. The Tor client behaves like a SOCKS proxy (a common protocol for developing secure communication services), allowing applications like Mozilla, SSH and FTP clients to talk directly to Tor and route data streams through a network of onion routers, without long delays. Onion routing does not guarantee perfect anonymity. But it helps protect users from eavesdroppers who aren't watching both the initiator and recipient of the message at the time of the transaction. Developers say Tor can be used to prevent websites from tracking their users; block governments from collecting lists of website visitors; protect whistleblowers; and circumvent local censorship by employers, ISPs or schools that restrict access to certain online services. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,64464,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:32:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: Porn Blogs Manipulate Google CyberQuest Disavows Porn Blogs By Daniel Terdiman A series of blogs used in a cross-linking strategy to boost the Google page ranking of three porn sites run by adult site operator CyberQuest was the unauthorized creation of an affiliate, the company said Wednesday. CyberQuest owner Fade Saab told Wired News that he had, until Wednesday, been unaware of the blogging strategy . He also said that the effort -- in which dozens of cross-linked Blogspot blogs were set up to directly promote three CyberQuest porn sites -- was in fact the brainchild of a Vancouver, British Columbia, affiliate partner. Saab said he has demanded that the affiliate immediately remove any links to the CyberQuest porn sites, as well as any images from those sites. He also said CyberQuest will likely attempt to reclaim any profits the affiliate gained from the use of the blogging strategy. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64468,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:39:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Passport ID Technology Has High Error Rate By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer The State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error. Federal researchers, academics, industry experts and some privacy advocates say the government should instead use more-reliable fingerprints to help thwart potential terrorists. The enhanced U.S. passports, scheduled to be issued next spring for people obtaining new or renewed passports, will be the first to include what is known as biometric information. Such data, which can be a fingerprint, a picture of parts of eyes or of facial characteristics, is used to verify identity and help prevent forgery. Under State Department specifications finalized this month for companies to bid on the new system, a chip woven into the cover of the passport would contain a digital photograph of the traveler's face. That photo could then be compared with an image of the traveler taken at the passport control station, and also matched against photos of people on government watch lists. The department chose face recognition to be consistent with standards being adopted by other nations, officials said. Those who drafted the standards reasoned that travelers are accustomed to submitting photographs and would find giving fingerprints to be intrusive. But federal researchers who have tested face-recognition technology say its error rate is unacceptably high -- up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting. They say the error rate is far lower for fingerprints, which could be added to the chip without violating the international standard. The new system would differ from U.S. requirements for many foreign travelers, who are fingerprinted when they apply for visas to visit the United States. The visitors then have their fingers scanned when they enter the country to compare against the data on the visa. Similar requirements are to be imposed for travelers from countries whose citizens do not need visas to come to the United States, who will be fingerprinted when they arrive in the country. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43944-2004Aug5.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:44:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Leader: RFID in Prisons - Does Anyone Care? by silicon.com US prisons have started using RFID chips to keep track of prisoners, protect staff and increase security. To date this technology has been mired in privacy concerns. Most notably, German shoppers have taken to the streets to protest their shopping habits being tracked via RFID and silicon.com readers have voiced their own fears over whether schoolchildren should be tagged. So in some ways it makes sense that RFID is taking hold in a population which has, at best, limited rights of privacy. Some may argue that this is right and good. Convicted criminals have broken laws and thus do not deserve the right to privacy earned by law-abiding citizens. Admittedly, the uses of RFID in one Ohio prison do not sound overly invasive -- prisoners will wear RFID transmitters on their wrists and staff will wear them on their belts so their location within prison grounds can be tracked. If prisoners try to remove their transmitter or warders are knocked down, computers will be alerted. Compare this to US hospitals' plans to implant chips in the arms of patients and staff. http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39122815,00.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 16:45:58 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Wireless Industry and the 411 By Yuki Noguchi Washington Post Staff Writer Darlene Mickey is among a minority of cell phone users: She actually wants her wireless number listed with directory assistance. "I live by my cell phone," said Mickey, an Arlington real estate agent who takes most of her calls from her car. "It's my lifeline for my business. I'd like my clients to be able to find me." Almost 90 percent of the 160 million U.S. cell phone consumers have another opinion. They don't want their numbers listed, according to a survey by a market research firm. Nonetheless, the cell phone industry plans to launch a database to list numbers at customers' request. Within the next few months, most customers will be asked by their carriers whether they want to be included in such a database of numbers and addresses. New customers will be asked when they sign up for service. Established customers can expect a form in the mail. The directory service is scheduled to begin early next year. It would allow people to call directory assistance services such as 411 or 555-1212 to get cell phone numbers, along with wire-line phone numbers. Consumer groups say that such a directory would open a door to unwanted marketing and other harassing calls that not only would hassle cell phone users but also cost them valuable minutes for incoming calls. Members of Congress are considering bills to regulate the collection of cell phone information. And the chief executive of the nation's largest provider of wireless communications, Verizon Wireless, derided the directory assistance plan as a "dumb idea." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46711-2004Aug6.html ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 17:29:32 GMT In article , chrispchang@yahoo.com says: > Hi, I'm new to this group but seems like there are a number of > knowledgeable telecom folks here. I am opening a small office (6 > people with potential to expand to max of 15). In looking at phone > systems, we want basic voicemail functionality, caller id and call > waiting caller id. > I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of > purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions > from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible > display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button > stuff. > Appreciate any responses. From an accounting perspective, the Centrex is a month to month expense, while buying a system gives you the depreciation over time plus the cost of the loops as a monthly expense. I don't like Centrex because you're on the hook to Verizon until you decide to put your own system in. Right now you can get systems that will expand to what you need for < $1000. You don't mention how many CO lines you'll be using. There is a difference. WIth Centrex, every phone is a CO line that you'll pay for. With you own system, you only pay for those CO lines you tie into the KSU or PBX. Let's say you have 6 extensions with 4 CO loops at $30 a month using a KSU or PBX. Your initial cost going in is $1000, with a recurring monthly expense of $120, or $1,440 a year. So your cost in the first year is $2,440. Subsequent years would be $1,440. At year three you fully staff to 15 people and add 5 CO lines. Perhaps you'll spend $800 or so to upgrade the switch. Monthly your cost would now be $300 a month, $3,600 a year. Six Centrex loops at $25 a month, plus a rental fee on the phones of roughly $10 each per month comes out to $210 a month, or $2,520 a year. All subsequent years would cost approximately the same. When you fully staff, the cost now comes to $525 a month, or $6,300 a year. So you can see that in the long term, Centrex is a losing bet. Unless of course you want to increase your expenses. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: PDAs Under Attack Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 17:30:39 GMT In article , monty@roscom.com says: > Kaspersky Labs > 05 Aug 2004 > Kaspersky Labs has detected Backdoor.WinCE.Brador.a, the first > backdoor for PDAs running under PocketPC (based on Windows CE). > Brador is a classic Trojan backdoor program: it opens the infected > machine for remote administration. Brador is 5632 bytes in size and it > infects handhelds running Pocket PC. > After the backdoor is launched, it creates an svchost.exe file in the > Windows autorun folder, thus maintaining full control over the system > every time the handheld is turned on. > Brador then identifies the machine's IP address and sends it to the > author, informing him that the handheld is in the Internet and the > backdoor is active. Finally, Brador opens port 2989 and awaits further > commands. > Brador is created to allow the master full control over the infected > PDA via the port that the Trojan opens. Brador is programmed to upload > and download files and execute a series of further commands. Like all > backdoors, Brador cannot spread by itself: it can only arrive as an > email attachment, be downloaded from the Internet or uploaded along > with other data from a desktop. > http://www.kaspersky.com/news?id=151142122 Hence why I will NEVER buy a Win CE PDA. ------------------------------ From: sin nombre Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 7 Aug 2004 05:32:48 -0700 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] In article , Lisa Hancock says... >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I guess it depends on how you > define 'handsome'. I know that AT&T is the **only** company which has > had a single letter ('T') as their stock symbol and they have > **never** missed a dividend (frequently large) in over a hundred > years. In fact, older (1930-ish) magazines and newspapers had adver- < tisements which glorified telco's stocks; for example the ad they > ran over and over showing an old lady sitting in a rocking chair with > a contented look on her face and the caption said how lucky she was > that her AT&T stock dividends were looking after her in her old age > during the depression. PAT] s. Re stock symbols -- "A" is Agilent (the HP spinoff), "C" is citigroup, and "L" is Liberty Media. There may be others ... :-) "T" is having a very tough time. Consumer long distance is practically worthless. http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040805/at_t_asset_writedown_4.html Associated Press, Thursday August 5, 4:31 pm ET AT&T May Write Down Value of Some of Its $43.8B in Assets; Company May Be Takeover Target NEW YORK (AP) -- AT&T Corp. said it may write down the value of some of its $43.8 billion in assets, intensifying speculation that the nation's largest long-distance phone company is a takeover target. ------------------------------ From: shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 7 Aug 2004 06:16:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) wrote in message news:: > We have need to support little things like a PSAP -- Public Safety > Answering Point, and guess what -- VoIP doesn't work with when your > life may be in danger. Why, because VoIP can't provide a known > connection point from which an address can be derived. Well, let me > expand a little further. We know where the router is, but where is > the connection being made from to the router on the user side? How is that different than the way many traditional PBX-type systems are installed? Sure, the new ones are technically capable of providing the necessary 911 information, but many aren't set up correctly to do so. And there are still older PBX's where this isn't even technically possible. Tim. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 12:27:36 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret I don't like to get into long debates or anything (yeah, right) but I just thought I'd correct a few errors for the record. On 6 Aug 2004 10:46:39, Lisa Hancock wrote: > I'm not sure I call the Bell's profit "handsome". As a regulated > monopoly, its prices were set by the government. It was of course > to Bell's advantage to have low prices to attract as many customers > as possible, HOWEVER, their prices could've been higher without > loss of their customer base. In other words, without > regulation, they would've made a lot more money. Wait a second. The Bell System made several deals with the government that gave it the right to monopolize telephone service. Between 1912 (when there was still considerable local competition -- "CLEC" is not a new concept) and 1930, the competitors pretty much failed or were bought out, and between the time of the passage of the Communications Act of 1934 (which created the FCC) and the Carterfone decision of 1968, the monopoly was very strict indeed, and enforced. The quid pro quo was that absent competitive forces to control prices, the regulated telephone companies' prices would have to be approved by the government. They were "allowed to earn" specific rate-of-return targets, which were calculated to be roughly equivalent to what that amount of capital should earn in a competitive marketplace. It wasn't bad dosh, and the phone company stocks were a good "widows and orphans" investment. Now without regulation, they could have earned more, but then any unregulated monopoly can earn more than a regulated one -- that's why there are antitrust laws, for instance. Unregulated monopolies are bad for the economy. (I note that some extreme right-wing fringe elements don't like antitrust and think monopolies are just dandy, but then some folks think worms are good food. I'd rather eat a worm.) > Being regulated did not guarantee success. Railroads were a strictly > regulated monopoly HUH? Regulated, but still very competitive! There were LOTS of railroads. They eventually had competition from over-the-road vehicles. > but still went broke. Some did, but some carry on successfully. See, for instance, CSX. *Passenger* railroads had trouble, but that's a complex story. > Western Union went broke. Indeed; their picture is also in the dictionary next to "badly managed company". > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I guess it depends on how you > define 'handsome'. I know that AT&T is the **only** company which has > had a single letter ('T') as their stock symbol Except for, oh, Agilent, Barnes Group, Citigroup, Dominion Resources, ENI, Ford, Gillette, Kellogg, Liberty Media, Inco, Realty Income Corp, Qwest, Ryder, Sears, Vivendi, US Steel, and Alleghany. Rumor has it that "M" is reserved by the NYSE as an incentive to get a certain very big software house to move over there from the NASDAQ. This stuff is pretty easy to look up on the Internet. > and they have **never** missed a dividend (frequently large) in > over a hundred years. In fact, older (1930-ish) magazines and > newspapers had advertisements which glorified telco's stocks; for > example the ad they ran over and over showing an old lady sitting in > a rocking chair with a contented look on her face and the caption > said how lucky she was that her AT&T stock dividends were looking > after her in her old age during the depression. PAT] There are benefits to having safe investments. Bank CDs didn't exist in those days. I personally think investing in small, well-run banks is a good safe way to earn more than a bank deposit, while investing in tech stocks is a good all-weather alternative to horses. Both types of investments have their value. >> One of the problems with a monopoly is stagnation and AT&T was very >> stagnate. They had no reason to improve things for the users. > Sorry, but that is not accurate at all. Bell Laboratories under > the Bell System was well known for continuing inventions and > technology development. Otherwise we'd still be using manual > candlestick phones. It was the Bell System that developed ESS > and cellular mobile telephones. It was the Bell System that > continually searched for ways to improve the carrying efficiency > of circuits, such as digital transmission and switching. Nice propaganda, but hardly accurate. Bell Labs did raw science, government work, and some telco work. Not always unrelated. It is unfortunately that there's nobody today to fund such activities on such a scale, but that's not a reason to stifle competition in the telecom sector. But it was not AT&T that led most progress in applied telephony. Strowger invented the dial phone in 1893. GTE's predecessors introduced dial service in 1896. Ma Bell didn't have dial until the 1920s -- the independents and competitors were often dial first! Bell did pioneer digital transmission technology (T1, for short-haul use), but did not maintain the lead; Long Lines thought analog was more efficient and stuck with it through the 1970s. AT&T was very late to the party with digital switching. Their whole management philosophy was to maintain old equipment until it broke, and not to promote obsolescence by introducing disruptive technology. Competition does that. > The Bell System's electronic switching systems were so far > advanced that Bell had to develop the hardware itself to make > them work -- the then state of the art in computer hardware was > not adequate to meet their needs. That is rather hilarious. They did develop their own *bizarro* computing architecture, to be sure, with mag core RAM and ferrite-sheet EPROMs, but the 1ESS still used reed relays for the switch elements. They stuck with reed relays into the 1980s. >> Lisa, AT&T wasn't being such a nice guy as you think. What they were >> doing is subsidizing their major customers on the backs of the little >> guys and residential customers. What MCI did was bring that truth in >> the open. > AT&T's flat pricing policy wasn't a secret -- it was mandated by the > government as part of the regulation. Obviously on some sectors AT&T > made money but also obviously AT&T lost money on other sectors -- again > because the government ordered it so. It was a joint decision -- ever hear of "regulatory capture"? AT&T figured out long ago that "universal service" would make their network more valuable, so they set up cross-subsidies to fund it. This grew worse over time, peaking in the 1970s and even into the 1980s. Economists will point out that non-cost-based pricing creates economic inefficiency in the greater economy. Much effort was wasted by companies trying to get around Bell overcharges. (Though it was good for me, professionally, as a telecom manager and consultant.) Now back to the original topic: There's a lot of baggage attached to "POTS" and "VoIP". Truth is, all other things held constant, TDM for voice is almost always more reliable and better quality than IP, and often cheaper. But all other things aren't being held constant; *implementations* of TDM tend to be older, while VoIP wasn't around long enough to have old gear providing it! There are also current opportunities for regulatory arbitrage that make VoIP look cheaper. VoIP as raw technology can provide good service or mediocre-to-poor service, depending on how it's used. So can TDM! The weak points in more telephone networks are at the raw transmission level -- wires on the pole -- and when a drunk driver (or careless cement mixer operator) takes down a pole, the wire doesn't care what protocol runs across it. People confuse VoIP technology with VoIP service providers, such as Vonage. That's like confusing "wine" with "Gallo Hearty Burgundy". One's a subset of the other. You may like Coors beer more than Gallo Hearty Burgundy, or vice-versa. But you can't generalize from Vonage to define all VoIP. That's a mistake many regulators are making. my real email is fgoldstein at, uh, ionary dot com. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There follow a couple of correction messages about my error on 'one letter stock abbreviations' but after those, we really should close this thread on 'POTs Dirty Little Secret' once and for all; thank you to all who participated in it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 7 Aug 2004 15:23:27 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , Lisa Hancock wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I guess it depends on how you > define 'handsome'. I know that AT&T is the **only** company which has > had a single letter ('T') as their stock symbol and they have > **never** missed a dividend (frequently large) in over a hundred > years. There are other one-letter stock symbols. This link is about 15 months old and changes have occurred, but you get the idea: Subject: Trivia - One-Letter Ticker Symbols on NYSE Last-Revised: 18 Mar 2003 Contributed-By: Art Kamlet (artkamlet at aol.com), Doug Gerlach (gerlach at investorama.com) Some of the largest companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange have 1-letter ticker symbols, and some relatively unknowns do also. Not all of the one-letter symbols are obvious, nor does a one-letter symbol mean the stock is a blue chip, a US corporation, or even well known. Originally when the symbol had to be written down on transaction slips, it was faster to write down the real big companies, like T (Telephone), F (Ford), K (Kellogg), G (Gillette), X (Steel), and Z (Woolworth, recently morphed). But later just anyone it seems was able to get 1-letter symbols. Yet when Chrysler (C) was absorbed by Daimler to become DCX, note that Citicorp (which had just merged Citibank with Travelers) jumped to claim the C for themselves. This page shows all of the one-letter ticker symbols listed on the NYSE. Since the US exchanges avoid overlaps, this means that only the NYSE uses one-letter ticker symbols. In the following list, the ticker links will take you to the appropriate page at Yahoo! Finance with a current quote and price chart. Ticker Company A Agilent Technologies (split-off from H-P; previously Astra AB) B Barnes Group C Citigroup (previously, Chrysler had 'C') D Dominion Resources E Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi SpA (ADR) F Ford Motor Company G Gillette H Harcourt General I None - formerly First Interstate Bancorp - merged into Wells Fargo J Jackpot Enterprises K none - (formerly Kellogg ) L Liberty Media M None - formerly M-Corp - merged into BancOne N Inco, Ltd. O Realty Income Corp P Phillips Petroleum Q Qwest Communications R Ryder Systems S Sears, Roebuck & Company T AT&T Corp U vacant (fcormerly US Airways) V Vivendi Universal W vacant (formerly Westvaco) X US Steel Y Alleghany Corp. Z vacant (formerly Woolworth who is now Foot Locker) The Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange has publicly said that he is holding the symbols "M" and "I" for two companies he hopes to convince to switch from Nasdaq to the NYSE -- Microsoft and Intel. http://invest-faq.com/articles/triv-one-letter-tick.html Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #370 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 9 14:18:02 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i79II1K25813; Mon, 9 Aug 2004 14:18:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 14:18:02 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408091818.i79II1K25813@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 #371 TELECOM Digest Mon, 9 Aug 2004 14:18:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 371 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #443, August 9, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Next-Generation Wireless Net Eyed For Nantucket (Monty Solomon) File-Sharing Imperils US Secrets / Use of the Software (Monty Solomon) Disney Asks FCC to Control All Digital Music (Monty Solomon) CDT Headline: FCC Approves Content Protection Systems (Monty Solomon) Policy Post 10.13: Email Privacy Called into Question (Solomon) TiVo Cuts Set-Top Prices to Lure More Subscribers (Monty Solomon) Freescale Receives First FCC Certification for Ultra-Wideband (Solomon) NBC Olympics; AT&T Wireless Partner to Create First-Ever U.S. (Solomon) AT&T Wireless Unveils Annual Unlimited Plans For Federal (Monty Solomon) Verizon Warns Consumers: Beware of Online Phishing Scam (Monty Solomon) AOL Instant Messenger Vulnerability (Monty Solomon) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Richie Kennedy) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (Dave Close) FCC Restricts Reports on Telecom Disruptions (bernieS) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? (Mike Riddle) Re: Vonage Compared to AT&T CallVantage? (SS) Opinions on ExpressPin? (OneNetNut) Internet Connection (CodeMonkey74) Up and Down, All Around (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 10:42:47 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #443, August 9, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 443: August 9, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Profits Soar at BCE, Telus ** Hard Times for AT&T, MCI ** Shaw Files CLEC Tariff ** Ontario Suspends New Broadband Funding ** Alliance Seeks Fixed/Mobile Convergence ** Bell-MTS Transfer Complete ** Telus Permits Free Migration from Centrex ** Sympatico Adds Anti-Spyware Service ** O.N.Telcom Changes Name ** Avaya to Buy Conferencing Supplier ** Bell & Call-Net File GT Customer Agreement ** Call-Net Wants Lower Rates on Link to Newfoundland ** CRTC Nixes SaskTel Bid to Deregulate Voice Messaging ** Telecom Suppliers Sponsor Major Conference ============================================================ PROFITS SOAR AT BCE, TELUS: Canada's two largest telecom companies reported sharply higher profits in the second quarter. BCE's net rose 20% to $554 million, while Telus's more than doubled, to $172 million. ** In both cases, the growth was driven by wireless sales: Bell's wireless revenue was up 15% and Telus's rose 20%. HARD TIMES FOR AT&T, MCI: Times are tough at two largest long distance carriers in the United States, and both are rumoured to be seeking a buyer. In recent weeks: ** AT&T has pulled out of the consumer business, had its bonds rated as "junk" by Standard & Poor's, and is reported to be considering a multi-billion dollar asset writedown. ** MCI reported a 15% revenue drop in the second quarter, and an accompanying US$71 million loss compared to an $8 million profit a year ago. SHAW FILES CLEC TARIFF: Shaw has asked the CRTC to approve its Competitive Local Exchange Carrier tariff by September 1, "in order that it may start business at that time." Shaw plans trials of local phone service this fall, and retail service in early 2005. www.crtc.gc.ca/8740/eng/2004/S61.htm#200408009 ONTARIO SUSPENDS NEW BROADBAND FUNDING: The Ontario Government will not fund any new projects under the Connect Ontario: Broadband Regional Access (COBRA) program in the current fiscal year (see Telecom Update #370). Three already- approved projects are going ahead. ALLIANCE SEEKS FIXED/MOBILE CONVERGENCE: Rogers Wireless has joined five other large telecom carriers--Brazil Telecom, BT, Korea Telecom, NTT Com, and Swisscom--in creating the Fixed- Mobile Convergence Alliance, to enable seamless handoffs between fixed and mobile wireless networks. BELL-MTS TRANSFER COMPLETE: Bell Canada now owns 100% of Bell West Inc. Under the deal, completed August 3, Bell paid MTS $645 million for its 40% interest, and MTS paid Bell $75 million to get out of contractual commitments. (See Telecom Update #440) TELUS PERMITS FREE MIGRATION FROM CENTREX: CRTC Telecom Decisions 2004-263 and 2004-264 change existing Telus Centrex contracts. Early termination charges will be waived for customers who replace Centrex with network access services of equal or greater value than the remaining value of the contract. The Commission approved a similar change to Bell Canada's Centrex contracts in Telecom Decision 2004-100 in March. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-263.htm www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-264.htm www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-100.htm SYMPATICO ADDS ANTI-SPYWARE SERVICE: Bell Sympatico now offers its customers anti-spyware software from Montreal- based Zero-Knowledge Systems. O.N.TELCOM CHANGES NAME: O.N.Telcom, the provincially owned telco in northeast Ontario originally known as Ontario Northland Telephone, is changing its name to Ontera. AVAYA TO BUY CONFERENCING SUPPLIER: Avaya has agreed to buy Spectel, a Dublin-based conferencing supplier with 210 employees and 500 customers, for about US$103 million. BELL & CALL-NET FILE GT CUSTOMER AGREEMENT: Bell Canada has asked the CRTC for September 15 approval of its agreement with Call-Net regarding the Group Telecom customers in Eastern Canada who will be transferred to Call-Net when Bell buys 360/GT's Canadian assets (see Telecom Update #435). www.crtc.gc.ca/8340/eng/2004/bell/040730.zip CALL-NET WANTS LOWER RATES ON LINK TO NEWFOUNDLAND: Call-Net has asked the CRTC to rule that Aliant must provide digital service between Halifax and St. John's to competitors at "essential service" rates (cost plus 15%), or failing that, must reduce the markup currently charged. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2004/8661/8661_04.htm#200407462 CRTC NIXES SASKTEL BID TO DEREGULATE VOICE MESSAGING: The CRTC has turned down SaskTel's request that the Commission forbear from regulating its voice messaging services. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-54.htm TELECOM SUPPLIERS SPONSOR MAJOR CONFERENCE: The organizers of the coming TeleManagement Live! conference have announced that Allstream, Avaya, Bell Canada, Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies, OneConnect, Siemens, Telus, and the United Telecom Council have joined the event as key sponsors. ** The Conference and Exposition will be held in Toronto, October 20-21. There's an "Early Bird" $100 discount for early registration, and an ADDITIONAL $100 DISCOUNT for Telemanagement subscribers. See www.telemanagementlive.com. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 02:04:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Next-Generation Wireless Net Eyed For Nantucket Island start-up aims to cover 800 acres with WiFi devices By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | August 4, 2004 As soon as next month, Nantucket could be known as a hotspot for another reason: high-speed wireless Internet access. Plans by island start-up Wi-Blast Inc. would make Nantucket one of New England's first examples of a next-generation approach to WiFi net access. Instead of offering ''wireless fidelity" hotspot service just in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, Wi-Blast will offer subscribers coverage across more than 800 acres by networking WiFi transmitters together. The arrival of widespread WiFi access on the playground of beautiful people and billionaires would mark a watershed in commercial WiFi technology, which Pyramid Research of Cambridge expects to total 16,000 US locations by year's end. Nantucket visitors and residents signing up for the service -- to be marketed as ACKBlast in honor of the island airport's famous three-letter code -- would be able to carry a laptop or handheld computer virtually anywhere in the heart of town, or sit on a boat in the nearby harbor. And they could connect to the Internet at speeds of 1 megabit per second or higher, or a rate that's 20 times faster than standard dial-up. The service would be delivered through transmitting devices made by Tropos Networks Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., that are small enough to hang from street lights and telephone poles. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/08/04/next_generation_wireless_net_eyed_for_nantucket/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 10:38:45 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: File-Sharing Imperils US Secrets / Use of the Software By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | August 5, 2004 Sensitive military secrets may be available through the same file-sharing software used by millions to swap illegal music and movie files. Rick Wallace, a computer user in Germany whose wife serves with the US Army there, said he has used the popular file-swapping program LimeWire to download military duty rosters, discussions of tactics, and other secret files. He said the problem is probably caused by military personnel who use LimeWire to download music files, unaware that they are also exposing secret information stored on their computers. A terrorist or enemy combatant with Net access could obtain valuable information about US military operations merely by downloading it, he said. Wallace said that since first finding the sensitive material in May, he has repeatedly contacted officials at the Pentagon, the FBI, and the CIA, but secret materials remain available over the LimeWire network. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/08/05/file_sharing_imperils_us_secrets/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 13:33:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disney Asks FCC to Control All Digital Music posted by Dan Gillmor The EFF has posted this astounding note about the music industry's latest move toward controlling all digital music content. Disney is the stalking horse for the cartel's wishes. "Disney wants the FCC to regulate all devices capable of recording from any audio broadcasting medium or from the Internet. FM radio, XM, Sirius, Streamripper, Total Recorder, you're all in the crosshairs. It's the Hollings Bill all over again." http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010675.shtml http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001805.php ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 13:40:48 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CDT Headline: FCC Approves Content Protection Systems The Federal Communications Commission today approved 13 content protection technologies under its new broadcast flag rules for digital television (DTV), including a controversial proposal by TiVo. TiVo's system would allow consumers to view recorded programs from any of 9 devices they register. Under the flag rules, DTV receivers sold after July 2005 will have to include one of the approved technologies to protect programs from indiscriminate redistribution online. Today's approvals were a victory for consumers, but concerns remain about the use of the flag rules to stifle innovative new uses of television in the digital age. August 04, 2004 All Eyes on TiVo: The Broadcast Flag and the Internet [PDF], July 26, 2004: http://www.cdt.org/copyright/20040726tivoflag.pdf CDT's Broadcast Flag Introduction: http://www.cdt.org/copyright/broadcastflag/introduction.shtml Implications of the Broadcast Flag: A Public Interest Primer, March 12, 2004: http://www.cdt.org/copyright/031216broadcastflag.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 13:42:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Policy Post 10.13: Email Privacy Protection Called into Question CDT POLICY POST Volume 10, Number 13, July 30, 2004 A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online from The Center For Democracy and Technology (1) Email Privacy Protection Called into Question by Federal Appeals Court Decision (2) Loophole for Law Enforcement Access to Internet Communications (3) ISPs Can Access Email in Transit Without Violating Wiretap Act (4) Legislative Fixes Being Considered http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_10.13.shtml . ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 00:38:18 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Cuts Set-Top Prices to Lure More Subscribers TiVo cuts set-top prices to lure more subscribers - Aug 9, 2004 12:01 AM (Reuters) NEW YORK, Aug 9 (Reuters) - TiVo Inc.(NASDAQ:TIVO) on Monday cut prices for its digital television recorder to as low as $100, under its $50 million plan to rapidly increase subscribers to its service. The San Jose, California-based company, whose fee-based digital video recorder service lets users pause live TV and customize viewing choices, said it would offer a $100 mail-in rebate on its 40-hour set-top box, which sells for $200. The price drop comes amid growing investor concern about TiVo's growth potential, especially as close partner DirecTV(NYSE:DTV) prepares to offer other digital video recorder (DVR) options to its satellite TV subscribers next year. TiVo's stock fell to a 16-month low on Friday, closing at $4.78 on Nasdaq. The lower set-top box prices, effective Aug. 11, also apply to other TiVo models, including those sold by electronics makers Toshiba Corp.(TOKYO:6502) and Humax Co. Ltd.(KQ:028080) In addition, TiVo said it updated the design of its Series2 models, developed to reduce manufacturing costs, and will sell the boxes in more national retail chains, such as Costco Wholesale Corp.(NASDAQ:COST) and CompUSA stores. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42977333 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 09:07:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Freescale Receives First FCC Certification for Ultra-Wideband Consumer Products Connect with Ultra-Wideband as Early as the Holiday Season AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 2004--Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL) is the first company to receive Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification for its Ultra-Wideband (UWB) communications solution. With this certification, Freescale can begin commercial shipments of its XS110 chipset immediately. This enables Freescale's customers to design UWB technology into their consumer electronics applications for unlicensed operation anywhere in the United States. UWB allows consumers to create a home theater environment without cables. It also provides instantaneous, wireless transfer of images from a digital camera to a PC/laptop or television. Employees can connect laptops and projectors without wires and music fans can transmit multiple megabytes of MP3 audio from laptops to MP3 players. Initial consumer applications are expected to include large screen displays (plasma, LCD), digital video recorders and set-top boxes, with mobile applications such as portable hard drives and digital cameras to follow later in 2005. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42980297 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 09:35:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: NBC Olympics and AT&T Wireless Partner to Create First-Ever NBC Olympics and AT&T Wireless Partner to Create First-Ever U.S. Wireless Olympic Games Promotion - Aug 9, 2004 09:01 AM (PR Newswire) Companies unveil most comprehensive wireless program in U.S. Olympic history NEW YORK and REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NBC Olympics and AT&T Wireless (NYSE:AWE), a U.S. Olympic Team sponsor, today announced that they will offer customers the most extensive collection of Olympic Games content ever available on mobile devices in the United States. This comprehensive wireless program will include on-air text message polling, video highlight clips, mobile access to television listings and results, alerts, trivia, an exclusive sweepstakes, and more. A number of elements from the NBC-AT&T Olympics wireless program are available now, including highlights from NBC's coverage of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, NBC promotional clips, weekly Olympic trivia, and a sweepstakes offering the chance to win $25,000 in gold. The features and content of the program will expand this week and throughout the duration of the Games. In addition to its program with NBC, and in response to the growing demand for its wireless data services, AT&T Wireless has introduced two Olympic- themed bundled service offerings which combine some of the company's most popular data services along with voice calling minutes. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42983621 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 10:54:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T Wireless Unveils Annual Unlimited Plans AT&T Wireless Unveils Annual Unlimited Plans For Federal Government Customers; Yearly Unlimited Data Usage Plans for Select Modems, PDAs, and Smartphones - Aug 9, 2004 10:00 AM (BusinessWire) REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 2004-- Yearly Unlimited Voice and Data Plans for BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds(TM) Budget conscious federal government agencies can now plan with greater certainty for their yearly wireless usage costs with today's introduction of annual, unlimited, wireless service plans from AT&T Wireless. Through these annual service plans, federal departments can now pay a once-a-year, per user fee that gives individuals unlimited wireless data service on select devices. In addition, those selecting BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds can also sign-up for unlimited voice calling plans along with unlimited wireless data service. There are new annual government plans available for the following devices: -- All five models of the popular BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds offered by AT&T Wireless - the 7780, 7280, 7230, 6280 and 6710; -- The EDGE-enabled Sony-Ericsson GC-82 and GC-83 wireless modem cards, providing access to fastest national wireless data network in the United States, or the GPRS-enabled Sierra Wireless AirCard 750 wireless modem card; -- Numerous PDAs and smart phones including the palmOne(TM) Treo 600, palmOne Tungsten W, Audiovox(R) PPC4100 Pocket PC, and Motorola MPx200. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42985136 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 10:58:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Warns Consumers: Beware of Online 'Phishing' Scam Newest Scam Involves Attempts to Collect Credit Card Numbers and Other Sensitive Information Through Fake Web Site AUGUSTA, Maine, Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon customers should be aware of a new wave of scams that try to pry personal information from consumers, which can lead to identity theft and other crimes. The newest scam involves an authentic-looking e-mail from someone posing as a Verizon representative. The e-mail asks Verizon customers to update their personal billing information -- such as credit-card or social security numbers -- and directs them to a Web site that is designed to look like a Verizon Web site. The phony Web site is actually operated by the scammers. The e-mail falsely warns the consumer that, in order to continue receiving Verizon services, he or she must visit the fake Web site and avoid paying a "processing" fee by updating personal and account information. Verizon does not do business in this fashion, nor does the company charge consumers to update their information. This latest wave of scams directing consumers to phony Web sites -- known as "phishing" -- has targeted a number of other industries and companies over the past year. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42986453 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 11:58:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AOL Instant Messenger Vulnerability AOL Instant Messenger aim:goaway URI Handler Buffer Overflow Vulnerability http://idefense.com/application/poi/display?id=121&type=vulnerabilities&flashstatus=false AOL Instant Messenger "Away" Message Buffer Overflow Vulnerability http://secunia.com/advisories/12198/ ------------------------------ From: Richie Kennedy Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 00:25:27 -0000 Organization: route56.com kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) wrote in news:telecom23.370.12@telecom- digest.org: > P Phillips Petroleum Not anymore. Phillips merged with Conoco to become ConocoPhillips. Symbol is COP . Richie Kennedy route56@route56.com www.route56.com "There's always a stage and a beautiful babe to squeeze my lime..." ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: 8 Aug 2004 19:38:06 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California dan04@comcast.net (Dan) writes: > Will I ever be able to sign up for VOIP and keep my existing POTS > (landline) phone number? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can do that now, Dan, at least > on Vonage and assuming you are in a town of some size, although > Independence, KS is not that large at 8000 people. PAT] But beware: the telcos don't seem to communicate with Vonage, or Vonage has some internal problems dealing with such communications. I transferred a number last week. The number was out of service for about 30 hours until I called Vonage (20 minute hold time, 40 minutes total) to complain. Email sent after about 4 hours out of service may still be in their queue; it hasn't been answered. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA +1 714 434 7359 dave@compata.com dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu "Political campaigns are the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises." -- Teresa Heinz Kerry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Aug 2004 23:46:14 EDT From: bernieS Subject: FCC Restricts Reports on Telecom Disruptions And at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Communications Commission yesterday agreed to restrict public access to reports of telecommunications disruptions, Congressional Quarterly Homeland Security reported today. DHS argued that information about communications outages could provide -- what else? -- "a roadmap for terrorists." "The commission concluded that the information needs to be not routinely available for public inspection, and the commission is treating all outage reports filed as being presumptively confidential under the Freedom of Information Act," FCC official Kent Nilsson told CQ Homeland Security. ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 05:22:06 GMT chrispchang@yahoo.com (Chris Chang) posted on that vast internet thingie: > I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of > purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions > from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible > display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button > stuff. I hope that you might consider the TMC ET4000 if you do go that route. I believe that you will find that it is a phone that Verizon recommends because it works so well with their Centrex. http://www.et4000.com if you wish to have a look. Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Uniden 2line 5.8GHz cordless If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: Mike Riddle Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Subject: Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 09:27:28 -0500 jsw@ivgate.omahug.org wrote: >> In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out to >> a customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or the >> equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a couple >> of vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always >> wondered what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with it. >> Anybody know? > Not to show my age, but the 35L6 was a beam power tube that was used > for (other than the obvious audio output) such things as relay/sole- > noid drivers and servo controllers. I don't remember them in any > teletype gear (I'm not *that* old) Of course you are!!!! > but I do remember them in 60's vintage card sorters. They were > popular because the heaters of three of them could be wired in > series across the standard 120v AC line, saving the need for a > filament/heater transformer. Some of the later model TTYs actually had electronics! It depended on what signalling method was in use (20 ma, 60 ma, or some kind of modem/modulator, in military use often "low-level" where the internals were sometimes low current or voltage-switched). I don't remember which tube types we used, but I do remember the occasional tube in DC power supplies, etc. Mike Riddle Former AF 36370/30672/G3016 To reply replace "nospam" with "mriddle" in address line. ------------------------------ From: sridhara@yahoo.com (SS) Subject: Re: Vonage Compared to AT&T CallVantage? Date: 9 Aug 2004 07:29:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have Callvantege. There is a lot of stutter and clicks in local calls but international calls are surprisingly crystal clear! I have no experience with Vonage. SS Chip G wrote in message news:: > I recently received solicitation from AT&T to join their CallVantage > program which appears to be similar to the Vonage offering. I am > trying to decide which (if either to try). If you have experience with > both of these and could provide commentary, I would truly appreciate > your insights. > Thank you, > Chip > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: First of all, I do hand out Vonage > e-coupons for a month of free service. I don't come anywhere close > to earning a living from it, so I hope that does not cloud what I > say here. But regards Vonage customer service, I have never caught > them lying to me or trying to stall me or prod me for personal infor- > mation. With AT&T on the other hand, with their audacious voicemail > hell system (you never ever get the same rep twice), I have had them > lie to me, pry for personal information, insist I did not know what > I was talking about, tell me I did not know who my local phone company > was or how much I had to pay, etc. They in most cases refuse to > discuss their service unless you tell them your local phone number > first (an unlimited, blanket plan should be an unlimited blanket > plan; what difference does it make *who* my local carrier is), and > they are just like SBC in the sense that one rep makes you promises > on something then the next rep denies ever hearing of such a plan. > Do as you wish, but for what little phone service I need these days, > Vonage works just fine. PAT] ------------------------------ From: onenetnut@hotmail.com (OneNetNut) Subject: Opinions on ExpressPin? Date: 9 Aug 2004 07:44:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello world ... Wondering if anyone has any experience (good or bad) with ExpressPin either for calling cards or other telecom solutions? Heard good things about their calling card solutions but not much on the conferencing, long distance, or T1 services. (Looks like they are a VAR for someone.) The URL for their cards is http://pointme.to/expresspin I think the URL for their other stuff is http://pointme.to (One of my I.T. guys is looking at them for conferencing so I'm just doing research.) ------------------------------ From: codemonkey74@yahoo.com (CodeMonkey74) Subject: Internet Connection Date: 9 Aug 2004 09:19:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Just thought I'd drop by and say thanks to all the people who tried to help me with my internet problems. AAARGH!!!! I almost missed turning in my HUGE psych paper, and Kenna was suffering from nickjr.com withdrawals ;). I finally just gave up and switched (in case you were wondering, it's Comcast 19.99 for 6 months, 75 bucks cash back and a free modem http://specials.comcastoffers.com). The guy I talked to said the online place was the only way to get the free modem. Anyway, it's fast!!!! I downloaded a coloring book for Kenna in like 2 secs. Thanks again, time to study. KM ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 13:39:55 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Up and Down, All Around You may have noticed there was no issue of the Digest on Sunday. No matter, it would have been a little thin anyway, as weekends often are here, with spam so high and the real meat lower on weekends. But my real complaint is one I ask for yor comments on: the frequency with which the network (internal LAN) blows up, quits running, has to be rebooted. The configuration is this: in from the cable line into the cable modem which is 192.168.100.1 . From the cable modem into the Motorola TA box for Vonage (192.168.102.1), out of the Motorola into a Netgear Wireless router (192.168.0.1 [from the inside], 192.168.102.101 [when it looks at the Motorola TA]) and out of the router via wires to the various computers (192.168.0 [.2 through .5], one of which is the 'wireless' device (192.168.0.3 most of the time). So in other words, there are *two* firewalls sitting next to each other, the Motorola TA box then the Netgear router right behind it. About once per day, the whole thing crashes. Computers cannot reach the net and cannot see each other. Normally a reboot solves the problem but the reboot has to be done a very specific way: 1) *everything* turned completely off 2) cable modem and both firewalls unplugged, shut down 3) then the process reverses, with a) cable modem allowed to reset, plugged back in, restarted b) Motorola TA plugged back in, allowed to reset to cable modem c) Netgear router plugged in, allowed to reset to Motorola d) various computers turned on, they find one another and the net If I do not do it in that order, or if I 'rush the process' by restarting the Motorola before the modem has correctly initialized or the Netgear before the Motorola is happy, or the computers before the Netgear --> Motorola --> cable modem have each initialized and are waiting, then it just won't work and has to be done over. Or like yesterday, over and over and over and over and over, fifteen minutes or so each reboot. My question: is that 'normal', that a network looks/acts like a house made out of playing cards, forever falling apart and requiring massive amounts of time, in a precise way, to get restarted? Shouldn't it stay together a little better than it does or have to be deliberatly tampered with to make it fall down? My comment: given my partial paralysis, my inability to function like more than a half-human being due to the brain aneurysm in 1999-2000 (which I bitterly refer to as my diseased brain), and how hard it is for me to get up and down out of my chair, crawl under my work area looking at cables (some marked, some unmarked), should't there be a *better way* for things to be handled? Yesterday, Sunday, after about a dozen false starts at getting things booted (fifteen/twenty minutes per attempt) I finally decided to look at the cable connections behind and under my desk, laid down on the floor under my desk **and could not get back up or out** until two friends found me there and pulled me out. Meanwhile of course spam kept flooding in to all my accounts causing Outlook Express to get 'wedged' as it tried to pull the mail (both huge in size and volume) out of my accounts. Another computer has a local issue where it won't access the CD Rom; the Bios has to be adjusted. In short, 15-16 hours of total hell yesterday; one of the by-products of my brain disease is growing tired and impatient very easily. All logic failed me; I was reduced to chanting and cursing God for every- thing. Is that the way 'computers' are for everyone, or am I missing something? 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #371 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 10 01:16:04 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7A5G3m03250; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:16:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:16:04 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408100516.i7A5G3m03250@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 #372 TELECOM Digest Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:16:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 372 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Competition, New Technology Take Sting Out of Long-Distance (VOIP News) Fahrenheit FBI (VOIP News) A Global Call For Help (Eric Friedebach) Forsee: Sprint Gambles On Charge Waiver Deal (Eric Friedebach) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Up and Down, All Around (Robert Bonomi) Re: FCC Restricts Reports on Telecom Disruptions (Tony P.) U.S. TV Networks See Young Men Return to The Fold (Monty Solomon) US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent (Monty Solomon) SBC, DSL and the Local Phone Service Bunble (Kevin Blackwell) Re: Liabiltiy For Neglegent Storage of Data? (Lisa Hancock) 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: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 13:03:55 -0400 Subject: Competition, New Technologies Take Sting Out of Long-Distance Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04222/358706.stm By Christopher Stern, The Washington Post "Shush, it's long-distance!" For decades, a long-distance call was something special -- and expensive. It could instantly quiet a dinner-table conversation and infuse a household with an aura of anxiety or romance. Over time, long-distance became cheaper and more routine. And now it appears close to disappearing entirely as its own category, thanks to the popularity of unlimited telephone packages. For millions of people, it no longer makes a difference if they call across the country or across the street. What began as a slow change has been accelerating in the past year or so, upending an industry long viewed as a steady utility. A combination of deregulation and new technologies has spawned a sometimes bewildering choice of pricing plans for consumers from different players -- traditional phone giants, wireless firms, cable systems and Internet companies. Most of them offer connections for much less than what separate local and long-distance used to cost. Further roiling the industry, consumers have begun to embrace a technology that allows them to make calls over their high-speed Internet connections instead of phone lines. Such services are driving prices down further. The technology has been waiting in the wings for several years but has begun to take off now that 25 percent of the nation's homes have subscribed to a high-speed Internet service. In the past few months, Verizon, AT&T and other large telephone companies have introduced Internet-based offerings. The technology is already popular with businesses that have been able to cut their long-distance bills by as much as 50 percent. American West Transportation, a furniture shipping company in California, used to pay $30,000 or more as it kept in touch with customers and employees nationwide. But in December, American West signed a contract with Covad Communications Group Inc. to move all of its telephone traffic onto the Internet. Now American West's monthly long-distance bill is around $20,000, and when the transition is complete -- sometime next month -- costs should drop to about $15,000, said Curt Scott, who is in charge of American West Transportation's phone system. Full story at: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04222/358706.stm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 13:55:18 -0400 Subject: Fahrenheit FBI Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-5302080.html By Declan McCullagh CNET News.com COMMENTARY--A new U.S. government decision extending wiretapping regulations to the Internet raises far more questions than it answers. The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide police with back doors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are expected by early next year. But the commissioners didn't give the FBI and its allies at the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration everything they wanted. In the police agencies' original request, submitted in March, they asked the FCC to force surveillance back doors into instant-messaging programs and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications that do not use the traditional telephone network. The FCC politely declined, with Chairman Michael Powell saying those services were exempt from the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and that it was "unnecessary to identify future services and entities subject to" mandatory wiretapping requirements. So what happens next? Here are some questions that could be asked of Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller: Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-5302080.html ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: A Global Call For Help Date: 9 Aug 2004 11:31:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Marianne Hayes, 08.09.04, Forbes.com NEW YORK - When disaster strikes in a place where there isn't a working mobile phone close at hand, calling for help can be a challenge. So it is for hikers, boaters and mountain climbers and others who find fun or work beyond the bounds of civilization. The global equivalent of the 911 call for pilots and mariners has for years been the COSPAS-SARSAT International Satellite System for Search and Rescue. In an emergency, a beacon can be triggered that sends a call for help and gives its location by taking a reading from Global Positioning System satellites. Upon detection of a signal from a beacon, authorities on the ground then contact search-and-rescue authorities in the relevant area. In a little more than 20 years of operation, the system has been credited with saving more than 15,000 lives in more than 4,000 incidents. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2004/08/09/cx_mh_0809tentech.html Eric Friedebach /Favorite OnStar commercial: crying woman drops keys in toilet/ ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Forsee: Sprint Gambles On Charge Waiver Deal Date: 9 Aug 2004 12:21:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Greg Levine, 08.09.04, Forbes.com Like an officer who bunks with the enlisted men, Sprint is tying its success to its customers' good fortune with the service. Helmed by Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Forsee, 53, the telecommunications firm said it will offer service-level deals to both new and renewing business wireless subscribers with a strong guarantee: If users suffer more than "minimal" hurdles with their voice service, up to 30% of that month's recurring charges will be wiped out. With Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Nextel part of the heavy competition, the gauntlet has been thrown down to Sprint to seize a larger wedge of business customers. http://www.forbes.com/2004/08/09/0809autofacescan02.html Eric Friedebach /Favorite OnStar commercial: crying woman drops keys in toilet/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Date: 9 Aug 2004 12:44:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com chrispchang@yahoo.com (Chris Chang) wrote: > Was wondering if anyone had any opinions from experience with using > this? Works fine, always reliable no matter what. Fast connections -- that is, other PBXs sometimes have a few second pause before the number is passed through. I don't know about cost, but I suspect Verizon will do things for you instead of you hiring someone to do them. That can save you the salary/cost of an inhouse telco administrator, depending on the size and nature of your business. If you get your own system, you'll have to shop around and evaluate quality and reliability and service. Presumably you've heard of the many problems of that Newark-based private company. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Up and Down, All Around Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:51:05 +0000 In article , TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > You may have noticed there was no issue of the Digest on Sunday. No > matter, it would have been a little thin anyway, as weekends often are > here, with spam so high and the real meat lower on weekends. But my > real complaint is one I ask for yor comments on: the frequency with > which the network (internal LAN) blows up, quits running, has to be > rebooted. > The configuration is this: in from the cable line into the cable modem > which is 192.168.100.1 . From the cable modem into the Motorola TA box > for Vonage (192.168.102.1), out of the Motorola into a Netgear > Wireless router (192.168.0.1 [from the inside], 192.168.102.101 [when > it looks at the Motorola TA]) and out of the router via wires to the > various computers (192.168.0 [.2 through .5], one of which is the > 'wireless' device (192.168.0.3 most of the time). So in other words, > there are *two* firewalls sitting next to each other, the Motorola TA > box then the Netgear router right behind it. > About once per day, the whole thing crashes. Computers cannot reach > the net and cannot see each other. Normally a reboot solves the > problem but the reboot has to be done a very specific way: > 1) *everything* turned completely off > 2) cable modem and both firewalls unplugged, shut down > 3) then the process reverses, with > a) cable modem allowed to reset, plugged back in, restarted > b) Motorola TA plugged back in, allowed to reset to cable modem > c) Netgear router plugged in, allowed to reset to Motorola > d) various computers turned on, they find one another and the net > If I do not do it in that order, or if I 'rush the process' by > restarting the Motorola before the modem has correctly initialized > or the Netgear before the Motorola is happy, or the computers before > the Netgear --> Motorola --> cable modem have each initialized and > are waiting, then it just won't work and has to be done over. Or like > yesterday, over and over and over and over and over, fifteen minutes > or so each reboot. > My question: is that 'normal', that a network looks/acts like a house > made out of playing cards, forever falling apart and requiring massive > amounts of time, in a precise way, to get restarted? Shouldn't it stay > together a little better than it does or have to be deliberatly > tampered with to make it fall down? For a badly-designed / badly-implemented one, yes, such failures are absolutely 'typical'. I've had _two_ device lock-ups on my network in somewhat over three years. power-cycling the _single_ affected device restored 100% operation. Unsupported, unscientific, WAG -- It appears likely that you're using multiple layers of DHCP, and that things are getting screwed up when the 'leases' expire. [[.. munch ..]] > .... Meanwhile of course spam kept flooding in to all my accounts > causing Outlook Express to get 'wedged' as it tried to pull the mail > (both huge in size and volume) out of my accounts. Moral of story -- use a _real_ mail-reader program. Which excludes, by definition, _anything_ put out by MicroSoft. 'The Bat!' is one very good option. Google for it > Another computer > has a local issue where it won't access the CD Rom; the Bios has to be > adjusted. A very common situation. > In short, 15-16 hours of total hell yesterday; one of the by-products > of my brain disease is growing tired and impatient very easily. All > logic failed me; I was reduced to chanting and cursing God for every- > thing. Is that the way 'computers' are for everyone, or am I missing > something? Several varieties of cable-modem and firewall-type boxes have known 'lock up' problems when certain kinds of hostile events occur. There are various 'fixes' for those problems, ranging from uploading new software into the box to modifying _and_ disabling certain services on the box (note:in some cases, _just_ disabling the service is *NOT* enough -- the box is still 'listening', even though it isn't 'acting' on the packets, and 'listening' is enough to induce the problem.) You should _not_ have to *unplug* anything. Tturning the power off, waiting 15 seconds or so, and turning power back on (in the right order) should be sufficient. You should =not= have to power-cycle everything. Just the box or two that have locked up. The most likely culprits are the vonage box, and the cable modem. The next time it happens, _before_ mucking with things, try the 'ping' command (from a DOS 'command' prompt, or a LINUX shell prompt), to the _other_ addresses internally on your network. See which device(s) respond, and which do not. Try it from several _different_ machines, that are hooked in at different places. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The three devices which pain me the most -- the cable modem, the Vonage Motorola TX box, and the Netgear Wireless router box -- do not have 'off/on switches' on them to toggle as needed. They simply have plugs from power supplies (plugged in wall outlets) to the back of the units. You want to power the device down you have to unplug them from the back of unit or the wall. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: FCC Restricts Reports on Telecom Disruptions Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 02:29:50 GMT In article , bernies@netaxs.com says: > And at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal > Communications Commission yesterday agreed to restrict public access > to reports of telecommunications disruptions, Congressional Quarterly > Homeland Security reported today. > DHS argued that information about communications outages could provide > -- what else? -- "a roadmap for terrorists." > "The commission concluded that the information needs to be not > routinely available for public inspection, and the commission is > treating all outage reports filed as being presumptively confidential > under the Freedom of Information Act," FCC official Kent Nilsson told > CQ Homeland Security. While they're at it, they better take down Telcodata, etc. Look, CO's are usually big boxes/buildings and breakout boxes, fiber runs etc. are all well marked. But I've noted that Verizon of RI seems to be having some trunking problems. Lots of fast busies lately. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:07:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. TV Networks see Young Men Return to The Fold By Ben Berkowitz LOS ANGELES, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Television networks that cried foul almost a year ago over data that suggested young men were renouncing television are breathing easier this summer -- the guys are back and may never have left after all. The fall 2003 television season kicked off a controversy between the networks and ratings tracker Nielsen Media Research, which reported a sharp drop-off in viewing, especially among young men. But for the first eight weeks of this summer season, in prime-time the four major networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox -- were down only 3 percent in the rating for male audiences ages 18 to 34 compared to a year earlier. Each rating point represents 1 percent of the total audience being measured. And while the audience may have been slightly smaller, actual TV usage -- the total of collective time spent watching television by the group -- was up 3 percent over the same period. The rating decline is much smaller than at the start of the 2003-2004 season last fall and one the networks say can be explained away by changes to the way viewers are measured. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43003877 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 22:11:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators have denied complaints that TV stations violated indecency rules when they aired episodes of NBC's "Will and Grace" and UPN's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with fake lesbian and heterosexual sex, according to orders released on Monday. The Federal Communications Commission ruled that two women kissing and faking sexual intercourse on "Will and Grace" did not violate regulations that limit indecent material to late night hours and bans outright obscene material. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=42997369 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 13:04:31 -0500 From: Kevin Blackwell Subject: SBC, DSL and the Local Phone Service Bumble In June or July, http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-sbc10jun10,1,4839600.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business The firm is ordered to cease its practice of refusing to provide the service to people who switch phone carriers. By James S. Granelli, Times Staff Writer I live in Illinois, and SBC won't provide DSL unless you have them as a local carrier. Does anyone know what the above decision means for the DSL subscribers in Illinois? Kevin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not positive about this but I heard two versions: version one says SBC claims the ruling only applies to people in California, and version two says SBC has not obeyed the ruling at all and has not decided if/when/how to appeal. I know here in Kansas, SBC has taken the same posture of using DSL as their hostage or trump card to keep people on their lousy and expensive phone service. When people challenge them on that (at least around here) SBC's response is "well, you could always sue us like happened in California." Of course SBC knows full well no one in their right mind is going to bother with that expense. Duane, (owner of Prairie Stream Communications and TerraWorld [our local ISP]) simply laughs and tells folks, "let me handle your phone service, and Mike Flood (Cable One local manager) will handle your high speed internet. So what's the big problem?" The problem is people who are unfamiliar with telling Traditional Bell to shove off are afraid they will 'get in trouble' doing that bypass. Kevin, have you considered dumping DSL and SBC for far better service from a cable provider? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Liabiltiy For Neglegent Storage of Data? Date: 9 Aug 2004 14:20:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com chsvideo@hotmail.com (Lincoln J. King-Cliby) wrote > I was notified yesterday that my personal data (SSN, name, etc.) was > included in a fairly-highly-publicized loss of data (er, "misplacement > of data") on the part of the California State University-Office of the > Chancellor. I would recommend consulting with an attorney with experience in this particular field. You may find different attorneys give different answers which makes the issue all the much tougher. When you say "lost", do you mean they no longer have the files and must re-enter the information in them, or, do you mean the files were released unto the world. If it's the first (data destroyed), I don't think you have much of a claim. > I _WILL_ be filing a claim with the State Board of Control (the first > step before one can sue a state agency) on, among other things, the > basis that the Auditor (and by extension the Office of the Chancellor, > Civ. Code 2338) was grossly negligent in that: If someone were to make use of your data, then you could sue for damages. But for all we know, the lost disk drive is in a dump never to be seen again. > a) The data was allowed on a laptop hard drive to begin with, without > my knowledge or consent [It's not entirely clear how they got my SSN > to begin with]; Unless that is expressly prohibited by statute, I am not aware of any restriction as to where personal data may reside. Your personal data is also on pieces of paper in file cabinets or in someone's briefcase. > b) The data was not encrypted; Again, I am not aware of a statute requiring this. > c) The data was not adequately secured or supervised, and the Auditor > should have been plainly aware that the data was not adequately > secured; IMHO, if you were to sue for damages this would support your claim of negligence. You would have to provide an acceptable definition of what "adequately secured" means and then prove they failed to uphold it. The situation has described is kind of a gray area, it's not like someone left a laptop with the data in a public restaurant. > d) My [state] Constitutional Right to Privacy was violated (Cal. > Const. Art. 1, Sec. 24); A lawyer would have to answer that one. > e) The use of my SSN since (IIRC) Jan 1, 2004 may violate certain > provisions of California Law (depending on what they were using it > for ... I certainly never received the notice also required by those > provisions); You would have to know exactly what the law requires and what the SSN uses were. This situation sounds irrevelent to the loss of the disk drive; they were or were not permitted to use your SSN in this particular data application. > - As to bullet B, am I unreasonable to expect that IF the data was > allowed "out in the wild" it would be encrypted in some way? Because it is personal data, I would expect some reasonable form of protection on it, though not necessarily encryption. If someone could say pull up the data in unformatted raw form (just long strings of numbers), I'm not sure if that constitutes a release of data. Somebody would need considerable skill to (a) bypass a password and use a file dump to get to data and (b) interpret unformatted number strings into real usable information. > - Any idea of the damages I should seek in the claim? I'm still > looking through CA law/case law, and have not yet located any > statutory guidance as far as penalties are concerned. A laywer would have to advise you. As I (a layman) understand tort law: 1) you actually have to suffer damages; that is, someone actually has to find and make use of the stolen data. I suppose "potential" damages have been won in some cases, but they're tough. 2) Actual damages would be the real costs you incurred as a result of someone using the stolen data. That can vary tremendously. 3) "Punitive damages" is to punish the institution for its negligence. A lawyer would have to discuss that with you considering the actual loss. > I'm not usually this ... angry ... but quite frankly what was done here > was stupid and unnecessary, lacking even basic protection for the > data. I've never said this before, but I almost hope some idiot looses > their job over this. My gut feeling is that the disk drive was inadvertently thrown out in the trash and will never be seen again. I'd be surprised if this turns into identity theft. From what I've read, identity thieves work more in retail environments, and do stuff like make copies of your credit card when you pay your restaurant check, or copy your driver's license when you try out a car at a dealer. Whatever, please keep us posted as to what transpires. My big objection to identity theft is the easy way credit companies issue credit on the spot. Not that long ago you filled out an application and signed it for a credit card; it was checked and approved, then a card mailed to you. Now they give you instant credit at a store and that makes things very ripe for abuse. Big companies (banks, stores, utilities) used to have branch offices in the neighborhood where you'd walk in person and discuss things. They all discourage that now and want it all done over the phone. That opens up the risk. Some companies are very sloppy with ID, some are very secure. It bothers me that I can use my community swimming pool photo ID as 'official identification' in some places. Some forged driver licenses are obvious fakes if someone looks carefully and is trained to look. Another problem I've read is that companies/cops don't bother going after small losses, so criminals get away with it very easily. The newspaper had a story of someone screwed through ID theft but since the overall lost money wasn't that high they company and police didn't bother chasing it down. I realize they can't go after a person who might steal a quarter, but this was serious. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. 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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #372 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 10 16:52:18 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7AKqHi12582; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:52:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:52:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408102052.i7AKqHi12582@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 #373 TELECOM Digest Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:52:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 373 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Monty Solomon) VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You (Dave Garland) I Have the Same Problem (Wesley) New Report Released - Toll Free Usage Growing (Judith Oppenheimer) Net Phone Customers Brace For 'VoIP Spam' (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent (Hammond Texas) Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent (Lisa Hancock) Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret (Justin Time) Re: Norvergence - How Do I Get Out (Lisa Chambers) Re: Norvergence (Susan Rogers) Searching Digest Archives for Norvergence (RJ Strauss) A Calling Card Type Solution Needed (sekhar) How do I Subscribe to Telecom Digest (Peter Lee) 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: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 02:41:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Aug 5 2004 3:35PM In what prosecutors say is likely the first criminal conviction for wardriving in the U.S., a Michigan man plead guilty Wednesday to a federal misdemeanor for using the Internet through an open wi-fi access point at a Lowe's home improvement store in suburban Detroit. Paul Timmins, 23, pleaded guilty to a single count of unauthorized access to a protected computer. He was cleared of more serious charges of participating in a scheme organized by his roommate and another man to later use the wireless network to hack into Lowe's computers and siphon credit card numbers. Timmins, who works as a network engineer, and his then-roommate Adam Botbyl, now 21, initially stumbled across the unsecured wireless network at the Southfield, Michigan Lowe's in the spring of 2003, while driving around with laptop computers looking for wireless networks -- the geek sport of "wardriving." Timmins immediately used the network to check his e-mail, not knowing that it wasn't intended for public access, he claimed in an a telephone interview with SecurityFocus Thursday. Then when he tried to surf the Web, and found himself connected to a Lowe's corporate portal instead, he realized it was a private corporate network, and he disconnected, he says. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9281 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have never met Mr. Timmins and I do not wish to be judgmental. But his excuse 'wanted to check email, did so, tried using net, discovered it was a private net, etc' is so damn flimsy, so awful. Neither do I drive a car, but *if I did, and I felt I had to have a computer present* I would probably use a cellular modem type connection. When Mr. Timmins was driving around, his computer turned on and he saw that visual indicator on his screen that he within range of *some radio signal*, what could he have possibly thought it was? Some store, out of the goodness of their heart offering free connectivity to computer users? Was it an internet cafe he was approaching? He had to have known that whatever the source of the signal, it was not intended for the general public to use. Either he was very dumb or he was very smart, and I suspect the latter. He was not just 'average' because the 'average American' does not drive around with a computer in his vehicle turned on for the purpose of checking email if he happens to find someone else's nickle to use for his connection. As I said above, I do not even drive a car, so allow me to be a little biased here, but by the time I got my laptop out of a carrying case, booted up and started looking for radio signals, I would already be wherever the Independence taxi was taking me. And no email -- probably all spam anyway -- is that important to have my computer in my (non-existant) car, always booted up, etc. I would suggest that in the absence of a cellular modem, if I were the judge, I would not have believed that excuse at all; apparently the judge didn't accept it. If you guys are going to go around war-driving, at the very least cover yourselves by having a cellular modem also installed and turned on, so your excuse can be you thought you were getting its signals, not the signal from a WiFi card. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:57:12 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information "If you are thinking of ditching a land-line for a VOIP provider such as Vonage or Net2Phone, you might want to think again. Software 'End User license Agreements' have gotten a lot of attention in the past over their onerous and restrictive terms, but who would expect such things from your phone company? The prime example is Vonage, which states among other things that 'If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.'" (Slashdot article with discussion in the customary food-fight fashion) http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/0023210&tid=158&tid=215&tid=126&tid=218 ------------------------------ From: wesley_lefebvre@hotmail.com (Wesley) Subject: I Have the Same Problem Date: 10 Aug 2004 00:07:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can someone please explain to the what PR1 and PR3 mean? I have seen alot of this on search engine talk but have no idea what it means. Thanks a ton. Wesley wes@cellphonefinder.com http://www.cellphonefinder.com ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Subject: New Report Released - Toll Free Usage Growing Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 11:26:47 -0400 Organization: ICB Inc./WhoSells800.com New Report Released - Toll Free Usage Growing Boonton, NJ, August 9, 2004 (ICB TOLL FREE NEWS) - The growth of online services and e-commerce is actually increasing demand for 800 or toll free services, says a new research study released by the Insight Research Corporation. According to the report "Call Center Operations and the 800 Services Market 2004-2009", Insight projects that total toll-free services revenue will grow from $10.9 billion in 2004 to almost $14.5 billion in 2009. Call centers, the specialized organizations within an enterprise that have traditionally been big buyers of to toll free to provide customer service, are adapting to online growth by providing Web-based customer services. Though migrating customer service from a voice-oriented toll-free service to Web-enabled customer service costs the enterprise less per transaction, online shopping and customer service continues to drive demand for voice-based customer service. "As consumers shift from brick and mortar shopping to shopping on-line the need for service doesn't go away," says Insight's president Robert Rosenberg. "When shoppers migrate away from brick and mortar stores to make an online purchase, they know they cannot go back to a store clerk to resolve a problem. In this context, the toll-free call that the customer can make to register a complaint or resolve an issue takes on an even more strategic role that the 800 call did when first used to build recognition in the late 1980s" Rosenberg concluded. ---------------- This report is particularly interesting as we at ICB Consulting (www.800Consulting.com) have been observing a steady rise in service providers and marketing companies entering the toll free industry. A free report excerpt, table of contents, and ordering information for "Call Center Operations and the 800 Services Market 2004-2009" can be found online http://www.insight-corp.com/reports/callcenter.asp. The full, 101-page report is available immediately for $3995 (hard copy)**. Adobe Acrobat (PDF) report licenses are also offered. **To inquire about a Special Discount for ICB Toll Free News readers, email editor@icbtollfree.com, subject TOLL FREE REPORT. http://ICBTollFreeNews.com _ http://800Consulting.com 160 East 26 Street, Suite 6E New York, New York 10010 212 684-7210, 1 800 The Expert ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 12:23:11 -0400 Subject: Net Phone Customers Brace For 'VoIP Spam' Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5302988.html By Ben Charny CNET News.com If you're sick of spam, imagine wading through dozens of prerecorded porn and Viagra messages on your voice mail. Some computer security and privacy experts are warning that such a day may not be far off for customers of new Internet phone services, which marry the immediacy of a voice call with the conveniences -- and inconveniences -- of e-mail. That could be unwelcome news for those who believe telemarketing is already so bad it can't possibly get any worse. "The fear with VoIP spam is you will have an Internet address for your phone number, which means you can use the same tools you use for e-mail to generate traffic, said Tom Kershaw, a vice president at security specialist VeriSign. "That raises automation to scary degrees." So-called voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services have begun winning converts thanks to cheap rates and a slew of features that traditional phone companies can't match. But consumers who adopt the technology could pay a steep price if "VoIP spam" takes hold. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-5302988.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:21:12 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent Monty Solomon wrote: > The Federal Communications Commission ruled that two women kissing and > faking sexual intercourse on "Will and Grace" did not violate > regulations that limit indecent material to late night hours and bans > outright obscene material. One wonders just what IS considered indecent ... Oh, right. It's anything that Howard Stern says, or the display of a female nipple on prime-time TV. Now THAT's scandalous. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent Date: 10 Aug 2004 08:28:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators have > denied complaints that TV stations violated indecency rules when they > aired episodes of NBC's "Will and Grace" and UPN's "Buffy the Vampire > Slayer" with fake lesbian and heterosexual sex, according to orders > released on Monday. Well, let's talk about sex. Having watched both shows, I do not think of them as being "indecent" as charged in this situation. However, I feel there is a awful lot of broadcasts that I would call "inappropriate" for children to see. Using B/VS as an example, "appropriateness" standards dropped considerably during the seven year run of the show. Toward the end of the run, sex and profanity among the characters was very common. Indeed, Buffy, instead of being the vampire slayer, was nicknamed the vampire -- [without the "s"]. One episode had B and her boyfriend under a spell and they spent the whole episode in bed having sex. Basically, I wish this kind of fare would air later in the evening so that younger kids don't see it. I think shows where profanity or sexual situations are shown so loosely send a message to impressionable kids that this stuff is ok. The networks like to claim they show "safe sex" and proper situations, but it's still sex. At one time TV did hold off its more risque offerings until later in the evening. I also think standard cable TV, now that it is extremely common, ought to be under the same standards as broadcast TV. (Premium pay channels like HBO could do what they want). IMHO, the show B/VS was strongest in its earliest three seasons before the characters became sluts. Buffy actually had sex with her first vampire boyfriend but it was handled a lot better than the violent sex shown in later seasons. In other words, it was part of the story rather than being the story itself. Cheap sex lessened the show's quality. What is especially troubling is that whenever anyone suggests this sort of thing, people get real defensive and scream "censorship!" "imposition of religion!". That's ridiculous. No one is talking about bringing back bland shows like "Leave it to Beaver" or make every show nice and sweet like Full House or Seventh Heaven. On the other hand, it seems like TV writers go out of their way to use profanity and sex stories just because they can get away with it. [But it is an interesting tell on how times have changed: Beaver could take his new 13 y/o love interest up to his room, and June didn't give them a second thought because most kids in those days were pretty innocent. Today June would not be so comfortable. Back then Beaver's new friend wore a full dress; indeed, she probably wore more underwear than today's girls wear as their whole outfit. Look at "Summerland"; I think June Cleaver would've fainted.] ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: POTS' Dirty Little Secret Date: 10 Aug 2004 09:51:45 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com shoppa@trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) wrote in message news:: > a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) wrote in message > news:: >> We have need to support little things like a PSAP -- Public Safety >> Answering Point, and guess what -- VoIP doesn't work with when your >> life may be in danger. Why, because VoIP can't provide a known >> connection point from which an address can be derived. Well, let me >> expand a little further. We know where the router is, but where is >> the connection being made from to the router on the user side? > How is that different than the way many traditional PBX-type systems > are installed? Sure, the new ones are technically capable of > providing the necessary 911 information, but many aren't set up > correctly to do so. And there are still older PBX's where this isn't > even technically possible. > Tim. Been away for a few days. But, traditional PBX systems normally do not cover large areas such as an entire building. A PBX will typically handle only a few workgroups that are located on a few floors, but again, because they are served by trunks, the location of the trunks are known and reported to the PSAP on the ANI/ALI data dip. ------------------------------ From: Lisa Chambers Subject: Re: Norvergence - How Do I Get Out Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 01:14:17 -0400 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Steven J Sobol : Please don't release my email address. I happened upon this website after meeting with an aquaintance earlier tonite, and hearing about his business experience with Norvergence. Since I've seen the contract, I thought maybe I could add my opinion to this thread. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not a lawyer and cannot give >> legal advice. With that being said, I still maintain that an >> agressive and litigous debtor is the best debtor in this case. **Do >> not** just give in to bank's demands for payment from you; they are >> hoping their bullying tactics will do the job. **If** it comes to >> the point of suit which is not at all certain, at the very least >> countersue, which will send many banks (and collection agencies) >> running for the hills. > I would tend to agree, but first I would review the contract very > carefully with a good attorney. > Other than that, I'm pessimistic. Without knowing the actual > loan agreement, everything below is speculative. I've seen the contract. There is NOTHING in the contract to connect the 'lease' of the equipment with the promise of service. As a matter of fact, the contract specifically states, in BOLD print, that the lease is non-cancelable. Other interesting clauses state that the equipment is used specifically for business (no consumer protection there) AND that the signer waives the right to jury trial. Also interesting was a clause that the contract could be changed at anytime, and the renter would be bound to the changes. I'm not a lawyer -- it seems impossible you could sign away all rights forever -- but that IS what the contract says. >> Maybe it was not a *deliberate* act (i.e. fraud) by the bank, but it >> was extremely careless of the bank not to completely investigate what >> they were being asked to finance. Either bank knew (was part of fraud) >> or **should have known** what was going on. > I'm not sure if that's accurate, it depends on the terms of the > loan and lease. The bank DID, I am sure, investigate what they were financing. They were financing a lease agreement. The poor folks who signed the 60 month leases were most likely thoroughly investigated as to their credit worthiness. > In general, when a bank lends you money, you are responsible > to pay it back, regardless of whatever you did with that money. > For instance, if you buy some land and it turns out to be worthless > or even a liability, the bank is not responsible, you are. Actually -- there was no 'loan' of money, at least not in an obvious way. There was a lease agreement on a piece of equipment. > Any prudent buyer of a lease should and would know about early > termination options and quality guarantees, especially on a > five year lease. Normal business contracts have termination > clauses. >> Another warning sign should have been that Norvergence wanted the >> bank to pay them a full five year's worth before even one year (or >> a few months) had been honored on the contract. So end-users are >> expected to be responsible for the mistakes idiots at the bank >> make? There was no 'mistake' made at the bank. The 'idiots' who suggested purchasing the lease agreements from Norvergence probably got promotions and a nice bonus year-end. The banks probably purchased the financing options at a deep discount. And here, Norvergence has gone out of business, and the money still flows. > Unless the bank was acting as Norv.'s agent or was certifying > the reliability of the company, the end-customer is ultimately > responsible to pay the loan. I strongly doubt a bank made > any representation as to the fitness or applicability of the > produce/service. Again, they did not finance a service. They sure as s**t did NOT make ANY representations about the equipment. > When you take out a loan on something, the bank will check it > out to see that it basically actually exists and has some value > to it (that you're not buying thin air with their money). Clearly > this company existed and was running. I doubt a bank goes > beyond that; they certainly don't go poking around the switchroom. > As best I can tell, the bank loaned the customer money, nor Norv. Well, here is where it may get sticky for the banks ... the equipment DID exist -- but it was leased to different businesses at different prices. The price of the contracts had no relation to the price of the equipment -- and was, in fact, based on the business phone/cellular/and internet bills. An average was taken, and 20% was discounted. An insurance policy was also required -- at an additional cost -- that valued the equipment at the five year contract price. If anything, THAT might indicate collusion with the bank and Norvergence. Surely, nothing in the contract or in ANY of the literature sent out by Norvergence indicated an agreement to provide phone service. Yet, the equipment valuation was BASED on phone bills. > Every business takes a risk with every supplier and customer it deals > with. If a customer or vendor screws a business and goes bankrupt, > the business is stuck with the bill. The only recourse is to get in > line at bankruptcy court. UNLESS there was an intent to commit fraud -- and the banks were complicit in that attempt. >> Although it is likely and probable that many end-users signed off on >> the obscene contract presented to them by the Norvergence sales rep >> under much pressure. > I have to ask why commercial customers were willing to sign under such > pressure. I asked. What I was told was that they never realized it was a lease agreement - even tho the papers were clearly marked. The way it worked was this: The Norvergence folks contacted them to tell them about this great network that would provide them with a 20% savings over their current bills -- guaranteed for the next five years. There were various AirMail overnites to determine if they were WORTHY of this great opportunity. The news comes in -- YES! they qualify. The rep comes over. The contract is passed for the owner to sign. Equipment rental? Oh yes, that is for the "magic box" -- the item that makes the cost savings possible. The pen is pulled out, the contract is signed, the deal is done. > To be frank, it's hard for me to be sympathetic with such > commercial customers who'd were so anxious to save money they jumped > on a too-good-to-be-true contract. Any business person should know > whom they're dealing with, and dealing with a start-up entails extra > risk. Going out of business is NOT unusual. Why was it too-good-to-be-true? Heck, long distance companies call me (often) with promises to reduce my monthly bills -- by combining services under one company. And here was this company with a new technique -- a piece of equipment and accompanying software -- that promised faster (and therefore cheaper) throughput. Now, for those of you who think Norvergence was a victim -- a start-up who just happened to go out of business ... consider this: Even tho the sales reps were speaking about the 20% reduction -- the literature only refers to "Free" unlimited service. That's right, free. There is NO "service" contract. Not for any of these folks. The ONLY contract is the lease. So, how can you sue Norvergence? There is no 'breech' of service contract - THERE IS NO SERVICE CONTRACT. The scheme was a scam from the get-go. Oh, there were some who got away relatively unscathed. The company HAD to provide services in order to stay in business long enough to bilk thousands of customers. As in most pyramid schemes, it was the ones who signed on last who TRULY got taken. My friends had a year and a half of service -- but the lease on their equipment still has $16,000.00 to go. There are some who signed leases only days ago -- and will still be held liable. As to how/why 'commercial' folks got taken: There are hundreds of honest hardworking small business owners. People who never had an urge to defraud or steal. Perhaps it never occurred to them someone else could -- and would get away with it -- and to such an incredible magnitude. I know I was floored when I heard the story, and read the communications from Norvergence. The Norvergence folks deserve to be in jail. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And in the meantime, if/until we get to that point, that someone is in jail or the truth is made definitive and explained fully in a court of law, smart end users (readers like yourselves perhaps) will mitigate their own losses by putting a freeze on all accounts payable regards Norvergence 'leases', and pay out not a nickel to the various crooks, shysters and others who caused this to happen. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Susan Rogers Subject: Re: Norvergence Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 08:48:15 -0400 Organization: Investigative Solutions, Inc. Has anyone signed up with Norvergence that had a lease less than 60 months with U. S. Bancorp? U. S. Bancorp is trying to have us settle for a lesser amount quickly. We have never had operational land line service or T1 service from Norvergence. Susan C. Rogers Investigative Solutions, Inc. 3620 Dekalb Technology Parkway Suite 2118 Atlanta, GA 30340 (770)220-1912 (770)220-1918 Fax [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: **DO NOT** settle with US Bancorp or any other idiot lenders who want to get this out of their hair. They know that *their* bosses, the ones who recommended purchasing the agreements from Norvergence -- the ones who got increased salaries and year-end bonuses -- are the damn fools who ought to be obliged to eat the losses -- the entire thing; not the men and women who fell for the scam, small business owners, etc. I suggest you tell Bancorp that only your own attorney is authorized to receive phone calls from them, and that you will pay only the full amount which he tells you to pay, or a judge orders you to pay. US Bancorp is *not* your friend, they are only looking out for themselves. When US Bancorp hears that your attorney is now involved, I am sure they will back off. And if you get this rot from them about how 'all the end users via Bancorp have agreed to the deal except yourself and there is no settlement deal until you go along also' I urge you to not give in to that pressure. Repeat, Bancorp is not your friend. They are not asking you to settle in your best interest. They are looking out only for *their* best interest. PAT] ------------------------------ From: RJ Strauss Subject: Digest Archives Search on Norvergence Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 10:00:11 -0500 Is there a way to search any information that has been published in the Digest about Norvergence? Thank You, RJ Strauss ABC Printing Co. 5654 N Elston Ave Chicago, Illinois 60646 rjs@abcprint.com www.abcprint.com 773-774-8282 fax: 773-774-8290 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, there is a way. You go to our web site http://telecom-digest.org, then select one of our various search engines and search for the articles. Or, use any search engine of your choice; some are better than others, I cannot recommend one over another. There are plenty of articles in the past several months, most are very negative about the company. Or, if you prefer, forward your certified check or money order for $100 (one hundred dollars) to our office at TELECOM Digest, PO Box 50, Independence, KS 67301-0050 and I will have someone do all the searching work for you and send you print outs of a dozen appropriate articles. But a bit of free scolding in the meantime, RJS. How much did they clip your company for? A five year lease? How many thousand dollars is that? A bit of free advice comes with every scolding: **Put a total freeze on accounts payable to Norvergence and Shyster Associates until your attorney or the court instructs you to make payment.** PAT] ------------------------------ From: mail@sekhar.net (Sekhar) Subject: A Calling Card Type of Solution Needed Date: 10 Aug 2004 12:22:05 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have two telephone lines - one a US telephone number and the other one a Indian telephone number. I need a device which would allow users connected through the US line to be able to dial and use the Indian line and vice versa. Does it seem to be a calling card type of a solution, how best could this be accomplished? Thanks in advance. Sekhar ------------------------------ From: Peter Lee (NBC Universal) Subject: How Can I Subscribe to the Telecom Digest Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 15:34:47 -0400 Dear Patrick, I used to be a subscriber but our company's email address has changed. I have attempted to subscribe again but am not on your mailing list. Could you please manually enter me in, thank you. Peter Lee Sales Coordinator NBC Universal (312) 970-2125 peter.lee@nbcuni.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can enter yourself on the mailing list if you prefer to read this *ASCII text only* version of the Digest by sending email to telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org with a one word subject 'subscribe your name@email'.No other text needed or even read. -- Make certain your spam filter has me whitelisted so I do not get garbaged each time an issue comes out -- . You can also read this Digest through our web site in the 'latest issue' link or through the 'Digest Online' link which is similar to Usenet or on Usenet itself in the 'comp.dcom.telecom' newsgroup. Or if you prefer, read us regularly on Yahoo Groups in the Telecom News area. And if you like reading these daily words of wit, consider helping financially from the home page http://telecom-digest.org at the bottom of the page where the PayPal clicker is located. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #373 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 10 23:30:26 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7B3UQb16098; Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:30:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:30:26 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408110330.i7B3UQb16098@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 #374 TELECOM Digest Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:30:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 374 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VOIP Carriers Calculate Tap Tariff (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Clarence Dold) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Paul Vader) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Steven J. Sobol) Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent (Paul Vader) Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent (Tony P.) Re: Ups and Downs (Clive Dawson) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Tony P.) Nortel v. NorVergence (Nyran Rose Pearson) NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me (PelcoSales) Re: Norvergence (Paul Vader) Re: The Convention a Hundred Years Ago (John David Galt) Re: Number Transportability for Transfer to VOIP (John McHarry) What Missouri Did (Charles Cryderman) 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: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 18:36:58 -0400 Subject: VOIP Carriers Calculate Tap Tariff Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=57583 Could future law enforcement requirements put an end to cheap and easy VOIP service? The question hangs in the air as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) drafts rules to make it easier for the government to "wiretap" VOIP phone calls. VOIP providers now wonder whether they'll have to make expensive changes to their systems. Meanwhile, public interest groups worry the new rules could inhibit Internet innovation and encroach on consumer privacy rights. Until the FCC explains itself a bit more, however, most carriers won't lift a finger. "For now, we'll just have to wait and see. We may already be in compliance with the new CALEA [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act] -- we just don't know," says Michael McKeehan, director of technology policy at Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). The FCC concluded last week that VOIP providers should be subjected to CALEA -- the law that has forced traditional telephone carriers to redesign their systems to make it easier for the police to eavesdrop on suspected criminals. CALEA, passed by Congress in 1994, also forced the telecommunications companies to pay for the restructuring. In its 96-page notice of proposed rulemaking released Monday, the FCC suggests that VOIP providers would bear any costs for the surveillance equipment. Those costs could be passed onto consumers at a time when VOIP phone services are wooing customers based on price by charging between $20 and $30 a month for unlimited calls. VOIP providers have argued that CALEA should not apply to them. They claim the law was only for telecommunications companies, not information providers (see FCC Rules on VOIP Sort Of). They question the FCC's authority to make a decision without input from Congress and worry whether government agencies, misunderstanding the Internet, will force arduous requirements on their systems. Full story at: http://www.boardwatch.com/document.asp?doc_id=57583 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: dold@Wardriving.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:11:03 UTC Organization: a2i network > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you guys are going to go around > war-driving, at the very least cover yourselves by having a cellular > modem also installed and turned on, so your excuse can be you > thought you were getting its signals, not the signal from a WiFi > card. PAT] In some areas, "open" WiFi is quite popular, and listed on various sites. San Francisco is one such area. Most of the advertised open spots are in residential areas, and are easily confused with someone's inadvertently open network. I don't think that particular argument holds well in the Lowe's parking lot, though. If our featured wardriver had a T-Mobile account, he could claim that he thought he was hooked to the Starbucks on the other side of the parking lot, and didn't realize which network had picked him up. On the other hand, I don't think Lowe's would ever have known he was there if he just checked email and surfed the web at large. And in fact, that isn't the case. He was arrested in along with someone who was seriously hacking Lowe's "... proprietary piece of software called tcpcredit ". This case doesn't really lean one way or the other for convicting someone of wardriving as a standalone offense. They arrested him, possibly in error, as part of a scheme involving some of his poorly chosen associates. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think in any shopping center parking lot his argument would be very convincing. Please correct me on this as needed, but I have been told that wireless routers only have an optimal range of 200-300 feet. When I put mine in recently, I was told I could go outside my house and maybe the house on either side of me or the house across the street and still reach it. But the house on my west side is vacant, a large size double lot separates me from the house on the east side, and I know the people directly across the street from me are very unlikely to know about or care about computers at all, let alone wireless ones. When I go out on my own back porch with a laptop, depending exactly on how I sit in my chair allows me to keep or lose the connection. And this is a very rural area; I would notice almost immediatly any car parked in front of my house or in the alley on my west side. Plus which I have told the router to only respond to the name given to the card, and I have told the card not to broadcast its name, plus I use some encryption, so I feel relatively safe. Now my friend who got me the card and wireless router did say if I mounted a highly directional antenna out of my window I could probably go 'one mile or so' and still get the signal. Is that correct? So when a person parks in a parking lot at a shopping center, how likely is it they will receive signals from some store in the mall? My frame of reference is the only thing like it we have here in town, the Walmart Super Center on the west side of town, and I just cannot picture such a scene there, but maybe I am wrong. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:08:37 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Monty Solomon writes: > modem type connection. When Mr. Timmins was driving around, his > computer turned on and he saw that visual indicator on his screen that > he within range of *some radio signal*, what could he have possibly > thought it was? Some store, out of the goodness of their heart Not knowing how the Lowe's set up their wi-fi gateway, it's hard to say. Most corporate wifi admins know to name their base stations something recognizable at least, and more often, know to secure it better than this one was. That doesn't shift any of the blame though! A note to wardrivers: Between transparent proxies and Kismet, connecting to apparently open nodes is a great way to get yourself in lots and lots of trouble. At worst, you're in jail like Mr. Timmins. Short of that, if you go to any protected sites, you can assume quite safely that any passwords are now sitting in the owner's logs waiting to be messed with. Welcome to the revenge of the wi-fi owners -- I know at least two people who are running routers that APPEAR to be default-configured open wireless access points, but in fact exist to snare info from dummies who think they can't be traced. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 18:36:12 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Aug 5 2004 3:35PM > In what prosecutors say is likely the first criminal conviction for > wardriving in the U.S., a Michigan man plead guilty Wednesday to a > federal misdemeanor for using the Internet through an open wi-fi > access point at a Lowe's home improvement store in suburban Detroit. How much easier life would be for the goobers who run the big corporations if they'd just SECURE THEIR NETWORKS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Open WiFi networks can be used as an attack vector (viruses, trojans) and anyone leaving their WiFi setups open like this should be held criminally liable. Not that Timmins was right to use the network -- he had no business using it, it wasn't his. But stuff like this can be avoided. EASILY. 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: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:13:22 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) writes: > Using B/VS as an example, "appropriateness" standards dropped > considerably during the seven year run of the show. Toward the end of This is what the v-chip is for. If you want to shelter your children, turn it on. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: US FCC Denies Will and Grace, Buffy Shows Indecent Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:36:50 GMT In article , spambait@spamcop.net says: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> The Federal Communications Commission ruled that two women kissing and >> faking sexual intercourse on "Will and Grace" did not violate >> regulations that limit indecent material to late night hours and bans >> outright obscene material. > One wonders just what IS considered indecent ... > Oh, right. It's anything that Howard Stern says, or the display of a > female nipple on prime-time TV. Now THAT's scandalous. It's all based on community standards. I hate that. This country has such a sick attitude about sex -- it's why we get people like Stern, or Janet's wardrobe malfunction etc. They all try to push the envelope. If they didn't have that to push there wouldn't be a problem. In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators have >> denied complaints that TV stations violated indecency rules when they >> aired episodes of NBC's "Will and Grace" and UPN's "Buffy the Vampire >> Slayer" with fake lesbian and heterosexual sex, according to orders >> released on Monday. > Well, let's talk about sex. > Having watched both shows, I do not think of them as being "indecent" > as charged in this situation. > However, I feel there is a awful lot of broadcasts that I would > call "inappropriate" for children to see. As I've said before, if it wasn't for the sick and twisted attitude about sex that seems prevalent in the United States there wouldn't be an issue. > Using B/VS as an example, "appropriateness" standards dropped > considerably during the seven year run of the show. Toward the end of > the run, sex and profanity among the characters was very common. > Indeed, Buffy, instead of being the vampire slayer, was nicknamed the > vampire -- [without the "s"]. One episode had B and her boyfriend under > a spell and they spent the whole episode in bed having sex. Sounds like the writing staff must have changed. > Basically, I wish this kind of fare would air later in the evening so > that younger kids don't see it. I think shows where profanity or > sexual situations are shown so loosely send a message to > impressionable kids that this stuff is ok. The networks like to claim > they show "safe sex" and proper situations, but it's still sex. Later would work. The networks are in it to make money, plain and simple. > At one time TV did hold off its more risque offerings until later > in the evening. > I also think standard cable TV, now that it is extremely common, ought > to be under the same standards as broadcast TV. (Premium pay channels > like HBO could do what they want). The answer is in almost every television set made since the mid 90's. It's called the V-Chip. Every show that goes over the public airwaves is flagged with a rating that the V-Chip understands. There's also a way to change the channel, or even shut the television off. There's an idea, instead of moaning and griping to the FCC be proactive about it. There are very few broadcast channels on cable now. It's almost all non-broadcast that gets carried over networks like USA, etc. > What is especially troubling is that whenever anyone suggests this > sort of thing, people get real defensive and scream "censorship!" > "imposition of religion!". That's ridiculous. No one is talking > about bringing back bland shows like "Leave it to Beaver" or make > every show nice and sweet like Full House or Seventh Heaven. On the > other hand, it seems like TV writers go out of their way to use > profanity and sex stories just because they can get away with it. You're wrong. It's you imposing your morality on everyone. That offends me. > [But it is an interesting tell on how times have changed: Beaver could > take his new 13 y/o love interest up to his room, and June didn't give > them a second thought because most kids in those days were pretty > innocent. Today June would not be so comfortable. Back then Beaver's > new friend wore a full dress; indeed, she probably wore more underwear > than today's girls wear as their whole outfit. Look at "Summerland"; > I think June Cleaver would've fainted.] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A couple years ago, Barbara Billingsley was interviewed on TV Land about the old 'Beaver' series and she said that as immensely popular as the show had been in those days and the countless reruns of it now, there could never be a whole new series 'built from scratch' these days which resembled it. People just would never believe it, she said. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:03:53 -0500 From: Clive Dawson Subject: Re: Ups and Downs Pat, If and when you do get to the bottom of your problems with the cable modem and various boxes, please summarize your findings and solution in the Digest. I'm sure many folks will find the info useful. Thanks, Clive Dawson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have more or less given up on anything to do with networking until my Canadian advisor gets back from his vacation in mid-August. Unlike King Midas, where everything he touched turned to gold, everything I touch turns to shit it seems. I am just limping along with what there is until he gets back, since I want to have *at least one working computer* until then. I cannot handle another day like last Sunday where for a few hours I wound up having nothing, then by accident and the grace of God I got one computer going. It was all so unreal. I still do not know what I did that got it running again, and what there is now, is barely hanging on, sort of thread bare in my opinion. I'll wait until he gets back from vacation and pay for two or three more several hours-long phone calls as he walks me through it once again. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:34:27 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > chrispchang@yahoo.com (Chris Chang) wrote: >> Was wondering if anyone had any opinions from experience with using >> this? > Works fine, always reliable no matter what. Fast connections -- that > is, other PBXs sometimes have a few second pause before the number is > passed through. > I don't know about cost, but I suspect Verizon will do things for you > instead of you hiring someone to do them. That can save you the > salary/cost of an inhouse telco administrator, depending on the size > and nature of your business. > If you get your own system, you'll have to shop around and evaluate > quality and reliability and service. Presumably you've heard of the > many problems of that Newark-based private company. Lucent/Avaya gear lasts forever. I'm talking the Partner and even Definity stuff here. I've never had to replace a card on a Partner system. And on the Definity systems I think I replaced maybe one 8 station analog card once. Otherwise, it just ran and ran. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 13:44:18 PDT From: Nyran Rose Pearson Subject: Nortel v. NorVergence Dear Mr. Townson: I have enjoyed your site quite a bit. In a previous post you mentioned that you had a letter from Nortel Newtorks disavowing any partnership with NorVergence. You were going to make it available, but I have not figured out how to get it. Could you please send it to me, or let me know how to find it online? Also, any information you might have regarding the rumored lawsuit by Nortel against NorVergence would be appreciated. Thank you very much! Nyran Pearson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh my, such a long time ago. I don't think I said that *I* have such a letter, I think it was a reader here who said he had that letter. In any event fast-forward to the present time. Nortel's suit, if it was ever filed, is now moot, since Norvergence itself was forced into involuntary bankruptcy and its remains are threatening its former customers and in turn being sued. Forget about Nortel, that part is ancient history. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Pelco Sales & Service Subject: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 14:52:35 -0700 NorVergence sent our Equipment in and three days later they went under. Now Popular Leasing out of Missouri is threatening me to pay up or else. What can I do? I haven't even had the equipment hooked up. Sincerely, Jeanette [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: First of all, some first aid: I hope you did not give Popular Leasing any information on your bank accounts or any hints on how to ACH your bank. If you did, then **immediatly** tell your bank to kill off any ACHs that Popular Leasing may have, or that Norvergence may have given them 'as a courtesy to you.' Any checks out to Popular Leasing not yet cleared your bank, stop payment on them as needed. Next, put a total freeze on your accounts payable relating to Norgergence and Popular Leasing. Then when you have taken care of these semi-emergency tasks, turn over all your paperwork on the matter to your attorney, and make sure the attorney gets all the paperwork, and any representations you may have made to Popular Leasing, or Norvergence. Then put the Matix box or whatever they call it away for safe keeping. **You do have a lawful obligation to keep their property safely for someone to claim it at some future point if they wish if they wish to do so. You of course can charge a reasonable fee for the storage of their equipment.** Now sit back and wait. When they call again, which they probably will, advise them in a courteous manner that the entire thing has been turned over to your attorney who has instructed you to have their calls referred to his office. If it is appropriate, suggest to them that they not talk as smart and rude to attorney as they have to you or they may wind up getting nothing at all. Ensure that everything is plain to them, then instruct them to not contact you further, and replace the telephone receiver. If they again try to call you, insure they heard your instructions (of no further contact) correctly, and replace the receiver again. At that point, if they persist in calling after they have been told your attorney is handling the matter, then *you* have a case against *them* for harassment, etc. It would be a good idea to set aside some sum of money each month to show your good faith in the event the court rules you have to pay something; not to them however, keep the money safe until the court rules or the attorney pronounces, whichever happens first. Oh, and no trickery about settlements either, like US Bancorp is trying to pull off. Let your attorney make those decisions. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Norvergence Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 22:10:59 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations writes: > Has anyone signed up with Norvergence that had a lease less than 60 > months with U. S. Bancorp? U. S. Bancorp is trying to have us settle > for a lesser amount quickly. We have never had operational land line > service or T1 service from Norvergence. Ha! That's criminal. From what we've seen on other sites concerning the Norv agreements, nothing is in force until service starts. If you have a lawyer, now is the time to use up some retainer. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: The Convention in 1904, One Hundred Years Ago Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:53:32 -0700 Organization: Diogenes the Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society Lisa Hancock wrote: > Several good books ("The Century" by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster > and "Reds" by Ted Morgan) discussed the 1968 riots. Both books > describe in detail how the protest (riot) organizers worked hard to > train their followers to provoke a police response -- that was their > goal. I'm not sure calling the protesters merely "gentle people" is > accurate. This was certainly true, and I can't blame the police for responding as harshly as they did. Indeed, lots of groups use the same or worse tactics today, and I would like to see the police respond much more forcefully to any protest that destroys property, deliberately blocks the movement of lawful traffic, or disrupts a group's use of its own paid-for meeting hall. The target's freedom to continue business as usual is every bit as much a civil and human right as the protestor's freedom to express his views. Still, today's practice of banning people from a campaign appearance in a public park, and even from the sidewalks outside a convention, because they belong to the other party or are wearing T-shifts that disagree with the organizer's message, seems to me excessive. As long as they don't try to disrupt the sponsor's activities or enter his paid-for venue, they have a right to be there and be seen. Limiting protest speech to an enclosure miles away is not the kind of tactic a genuine democratic country would do. And neither is the kind of campaign-speech restriction that McCain- Feingold has saddled us with. I'm glad the OSCE will be sending observers to our election. I'm rapidly losing all trust in the honesty of our system. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our primary election here in Kansas was last Tuesday, and I went over to our polling place (which used to be at the SEK Senior Citizens Center but they moved it this time to the basement of the Montgomery County Correctional Center. In primary elections of course you have to declare affiliation (not so in November, only in the primary) so I asked the lady for a Libertarian ballot. She said to me "I am sorry, but this time there is not a single Libertarian running for office in Kansas. Make another choice." So I asked for and received a Democratic ballot, and the majority of the ballot was totally blank. Only had electors listed for the President/VP choice, one or two other offices, and one sheriff. I filled in the boxes, returned it to the lady and said may I stand here and take a peek at the Republican ballot? She said okay and held it up for me to see. Chock full of names for various offices, etc. She said "if there had been a single Libertarian running for office I could have given you their ballot, and usually there is one or two running for office, but not this time." As I examined the Republican ballot in her presence (had already gone in the voting area behind the curtain to do my Democratic voting; obviously could not vote again) she said to me, "as you can see, everyone votes Republican around here; all that is except for my neighbor here at the table, who is the Democratic judge of election and a few of you oddballs (a wink in her eyes) who come around every time." We all had a good laugh, and she said "I think there will be some surprising things happen in November." We all (myself, and the three ladies working at the table) agreed with what John Galt said in this message, it is getting very difficult to trust the election system in this country. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 01:03:32 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Dave Close wrote: > But beware: the telcos don't seem to communicate with Vonage, or > Vonage has some internal problems dealing with such communications. I > transferred a number last week. The number was out of service for > about 30 hours until I called Vonage (20 minute hold time, 40 minutes > total) to complain. I noticed about the same thing with a transfer to Packet8. I just wrote it off to BS trying to make matters as difficult as possible. They appear to have disconnected after business hours on Friday. It came back up on Packet8 some time on Monday. What have people experienced with other transfers, to CLECs or wireless? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our local CLEC, Prairie Stream Communi- cations does it all the time. Existing customers who move away from SBC on our local 620-331 exchange keep the very same number. The transfer is transparent. When Prairie Stream first went into business, they assigned totally new (non SBC) subscribers numbers the 620-714 exchange. But Duane, (owner of Prairie Stream) told me he no longer takes 'off the street walk ins'. He says he prefers to let SBC do his credit checking for him. "Let them keep the deadbeats; I only want the good customers and I hate to waste money doing a credit check." PAT] ------------------------------ From: Charles Cryderman Subject: What Missouri Did Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 10:52:43 -0400 Pat, Good day to you. What I was talking about when I mentioned the State of Missouri I was talking about the recent election when they made it Constitutionally as marriage between a man and a woman. Knowing your preference, you are no longer a full citizen because you no longer have the right of marriage for your choice. Michigan is also trying to do that. Personally I am not gay nor to I think it is right, but I also know I have no right to dictate to you your choices. Take care old man. Chip Cryderman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, talk about going off topic! Some people say I get off-topic here now and then, but I do not believe a person's sexual preferences are anyone's business but that person. Regards the preferences of persons who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered (hereafter referred to as GLBT) I have never discussed my own persuasions -- thinking them no one's business but my own -- until a few months ago when a former reader/participant here felt it should be announced. Anyway, to address your 'concerns': GLBT persons did not suddenly become 'less than full citizens' because of the Missouri changes in its laws. Have GLBT persons *ever* been free to marry in the way you felt they wanted? I don't think so. Therefore, by logical extension, were they ever 'full citizens' instead of only partial citizens? GLBT people are as free to marry as anyone else. When you go to get a license to be joined in Holy Matrimony, the clerk does not ask if you are GLBT; the only inquiry is if your partner is of the opposite gender. If so, then you are free to wed. And believe me, you, there are many gay guys married to lesbian women (or sometimes non-lesbian women; those women are known in street parlance as 'fag hags'), in many cases just to make mock of the government and social requirements of our society, and there are many other GLBT people who don't make an issue of it at all, and just live with whom they wish to live. Then you assure us that you are not gay, and that you don't think it is 'right', which is your right to believe, and you continue by concluding that you 'have no right to dictate the choices of others -- oops! -- I think you said 'your choices'. I agree you do not have that right -- on a personal, one by one level to make my decisions for me nor I for you. This is the 21st century, as my erstwhile reader and writer here in the Digest said, and we should have better things to worry about than the way someone else puts the parts together in the privacy of the bedroom. But, given that we all have to live together in 'society' if you would suggest, as you seem to do, that 'we cannot legislate morality' then I would have to ask you, if we cannot legis- late morality, then what -- pray tell -- *can* we legislate? Or should everything be a simple matter of what you want and what I want? 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #374 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 11 15:32:39 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7BJWdN26396; Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:32:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:32:39 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408111932.i7BJWdN26396@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 #375 TELECOM Digest Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:33:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 375 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Must-Download TV (Monty Solomon) Logging On at 30,000 Feet (Monty Solomon) Drivers Let Big Brother In to Get a Break (Monty Solomon) Product Review: Windows XP Battens Down Hatches (Monty Solomon) 'Cable A La Carte' TV Picks Up Steam (Monty Solomon) Linksys Supplies Networking Hardware to Build Ultimate (Monty Solomon) Strange Spoof E-Mails (Neal McLain) Re: Internet Connection (Gary Novosielski) Vonage Traffic Clarification (aswath66) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Dave Garland) Follow-up Note re Toll Free Report (Judith Oppenheimer) Neat Little Book For Telephone History Buffs (Jim Haynes) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Justin Time) Remote Serial Port Connection - Manage Devices Over Internet (newsguy) Spam Harvesting From Telecom Digest (John R. Covert) Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins (John David Galt) 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, 11 Aug 2004 11:43:27 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Must-Download TV The latest developments in TV-show-trading technology mean you don't need TiVo to watch what you want, when you want. By Farhad Manjoo Aug. 11, 2004 | When the Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing on Aug. 4 to a new TiVo service that Hollywood has opposed, the decision was widely hailed as a triumph for techies. The news was both unexpected and unlikely -- these days, government officials rarely move against the wishes of giant media companies. TiVo's upcoming service, called TivoToGo, will allow users to send recorded TV shows across the Internet to PCs or to other TiVo machines, a functionality that TiVo says customers have long demanded. Although TiVo has imposed a host of restrictions on the system, media firms told the FCC that TivoToGo would cause immense harm to their bottom line. The FCC didn't buy it, and geeks were ecstatic: "Three words ... There is a GOD!" wrote one Slashdot reader in a typical note of glee. The closer one looks, however, the less divine the FCC's approval of TiVo begins to appear. For one thing, the new TiVo service seems pretty hard to fall in love with. It's strapped down by a surfeit of copy-protection mechanisms that many people will probably find tedious if not odious. For instance, the service will allow users to transfer shows only to a small number of machines registered on a single customer account; technically, says James Burger, an attorney for TiVo, the system is meant to let users move shows from one of their TiVo systems only to another (say from a summer home to a winter home), and not even to friends or family. TiVo was required to lock down its system and to seek the government's approval in order to comply with the "broadcast flag" rule, which the FCC adopted last year. The rule is designed to prevent the widespread trading of television shows as we enter the age of high-definition digital television. Hollywood's nightmare scenario is that high-def TV will become "Napsterized," with shows available online to anyone, anytime, for free -- which may sound, to some TV fans, less like a nightmare than a heavenly dream. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/08/11/must_download_tv/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:53:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Logging On at 30,000 Feet PRACTICAL TRAVELER By BOB TEDESCHI In late May, Ortwin Freyermuth readied himself for an 11-hour flight from Munich to his Los Angeles home -- a journey typically preceded by a flurry of last-minute e-mail messages, in anticipation of a day's worth of traveling incommunicado. This time, though, Mr. Freyermuth eased onto his Lufthansa flight less harried than on previous trips. When his plane reached cruising altitude, he opened up his iBook, logged onto the Internet and answered messages from 30,000 feet. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/travel/08prac.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 01:33:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Drivers Let Big Brother in to Get a Break By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY In two new tests, car owners will be able to let insurance companies monitor their driving via new technology in exchange for lower rates. The technology will track some combination of when, where, how far and how fast they drive, giving insurers a way to reward low-risk driving. Now just experiments, the technology might be a glimpse of the future of car insurance. The trials will begin this year: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2004-08-08-insure_x.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:25:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Product Review: Windows XP Battens Down Hatches By MATTHEW FORDAHL AP Technology Writer With the latest update to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP operating system, personal computers will soon join parents, bosses, teachers and spouses as a source of nagging in your life. But as mom always said, it's for your own good. You'll get nagged at startup if you're not running an antivirus program or it's out of date. You'll get a warning if a firewall isn't turned on. Other messages pop up when you try to download, install or run software from that sea of malware called the Internet. The nagging is among the more obvious changes made by Service Pack 2. There are others _ ranging from an Internet browser popup blocker to components that will no longer interact with strangers _ that will make computing more secure and, despite the warnings, less annoying. For a company that managed to create both the most widely used operating system and No. 1 hacker target, Microsoft has done remarkably well with SP2. Unlike previous patches, this update doesn't just fix a glitch or two but boosts security overall. Something had to be done. For years, Windows users have been attacked because the software was designed to be open, simple and feature-rich. Then came always-on Internet connections and evildoing hackers looking for easy prey. They found it in Windows. Not only is it on nearly every personal computer, but it's got a deadly combination of openness, sometimes buggy code and more than a few users who think they hold a privileged place in the universe and don't need to run antivirus software. Service Pack 2 doesn't include antivirus software, but it makes managing such programs easier. It also includes numerous under-the- hood improvements that plug vulnerabilities, making computing safer and more reliable. What SP2 doesn't do is go overboard and turn your computer into a micro police state. There are still plenty of choices to make, including bad ones. Users, provided they bother to read the warnings, can now make more informed decisions before they click. If you're running Windows XP, you can get SP2 simply by turning on automatic updates. Anyone who has automatic updates enabled already will be getting the download directly. Microsoft also is giving away free update CDs at no charge to anyone who asks. This upgrade's importance can't be overstated. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43031412 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:32:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'Cable A La Carte' TV Picks Up Steam All Things Considered With studies saying most U.S. households watch less than 20 of the sometimes hundreds of available channels, a movement is building for "cable a la carte." Some of its backers are those offended by cable channels they find bundled with channels they do want. Some observers say such a system would just wind up costing consumers more and cut down on content diversity. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports. http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3844719 http://www.npr.org/dmg/audioplayer.php?prgCode=ATC&showDate=10-Aug-2004&segNum=18 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:49:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Linksys Supplies the Networking Hardware to Build the Ultimate Linksys Supplies the Networking Hardware to Build the Ultimate Gaming Event - QuakeCon 2004 QuakeCon's 2004 Gaming Tournament LANs Built Entirely on High Performance Linksys Switches IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Linksys(R), a Division of Cisco Systems, Inc., the leading provider of broadband, wireless and networking hardware for the consumer and Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) markets, today announced it will supply all the networking hardware to build the gaming network for the 2004 QuakeCon(TM) video game festival and tournament in Grapevine, Texas, August 12 - 15, 2004. Linksys will provide two-hundred 24-Port 10/100 Ethernet Switches with Gigabit expansion slots and two-hundred Gigabit Ethernet Modules for gigabit connectivity to the network backbone. The Linksys switches will provide up to 4,600 connections for gamers to play their favorite id titles against one another. Gamers from all over the world will be coming to play head-to-head gaming at this massive LAN party. This year's Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) gaming network is the largest in the nation. With over 3,500 computers and servers, participants can bring their own computers and play games such as DOOM 3(TM), QUAKE III Arena(TM), Return to Castle Wolfenstein(TM), Enemy Territory(TM) and other games. Gamers who bring their own computers equipped with LAN cards simply plug into the switches which will be set on all the table tops in the BYOC area. The switches will be the gamer's link to the network operations center (NOC) in which they can play well over 400 games hosted on the game servers simultaneously. QuakeCon's 2004 sponsors include id Software, NVIDIA, Activision, AMD, Chenbro, VIA and Linksys. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43035873 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 05:35:40 -0500 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Strange Spoof E-Mails Within the past week, I've received two spoof e-mails, one purporting to be from CityBank and one from USbank (and I'm not even a USbank customer). They're obviously fake attempts to get me to enter confidential information. But they differ from previous spoofs I've received in two curious respects: - They include a couple lines of random words that aren't visible in the message (white text on white background, I assume). Example (from the USbank spoof): "in 1842 Geena Davis Not bad. Leonardo Di Caprio in 1814 in 1969 Download in 1900 Nascar Personals Tool Atkins Diet NY Yankees Harley Davidson." - The actual message is a .gif image, not text. Furthermore, it isn't even a link, so I couldn't click on it even if I wanted to! I have duly reported these spoofs to the respective banks, using the spoof-reporting pages on their respective websites. In these reports, I've quoted the entire source code of the original message (since I obviously can't "quote" a .gif image in a text message). Anybody else receiving spoofs like this? Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh my goodness, Neal, all the time. There is not a day goes by I do not receive one, or sometimes three spoof emails here at massis purporting to be from some bank or another, PayPal, EBay, etc informing me my account information has to be re-entered or my account will be closed because of suspected abuse, or sometimes that 'my account' with that institution has already been closed and I have to reapply to have it re-opened. Such bald-faced liars and charlatans, one and all. Oh, at one point I used to go to the trouble of diligently copying them out and forwarding them to the respective sites in case anyone wanted to bother looking into the matter. But I think most (legitimate) sites, banks, etc got so burned out fighting it -- I know I have -- that they quit responding to complaints like that recieved by their help desks and fraud investigative units, etc. I think now most people are just waiting for the proverbial 'death of the net' when the spam, virus, fraud message rate reaches as close as it can to a hundred percent. What is email now, about 85 percent spam, viruses, etc? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Internet Connection Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 04:38:13 GMT Okay, enough of this spam. This story is fictional. CodeMonkey74 wrote: > Just thought I'd drop by and say thanks to all the people who tried to > help me with my internet problems. AAARGH!!!! I almost missed > turning in my HUGE psych paper, and Kenna was suffering from > nickjr.com withdrawals ;). I finally just gave up and switched (in > case you were wondering, it's Comcast 19.99 for 6 months, 75 bucks > cash back and a free modem http://specials.comcastoffers.com). The > guy I talked to said the online place was the only way to get the free > modem. Anyway, it's fast!!!! I downloaded a coloring book for Kenna > in like 2 secs. Thanks again, time to study. KM [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Where did you get that one? I saw it also, but you did NOT get it from TELECOM Digest. I did not pass it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: aswath66 Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 21:14:50 -0000 Subject: Vonage Traffic Clarification Reply-To: telecom-news@yahoogroups.com In one of the posts PAT had mentioned that Vonage to Vonage traffic goes completely over Vonage network. Vonage claims that they do not have any network infrastructure. Is my understanding of Voange's claim wrong or Vonage's traffic is carried over public IP network? Thanks in advance for your clarification. (PAT: Can you please suppress my email id.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We need to define the term 'infrastuc- ture'. Vonage does not have a 'typical' infrastructure, that is, outside wires and cables from one place to another place. They do not have various 'central offices' or telephone exchanges around the nation or world. What they *do* have is a room full of computers in their New Jersey headquarters. Everyone who has a Vonage account has a space, or 'mailbox' thing there. Whoever your own high speed ISP is, when you install a Vonage phone, the phone finds its way, transparently to the New Jersey office of Vonage, where you get terminated on one of various computers in the machine room there. You go to make a Vonage phone call. You dial it in, your local high speed ISP passes the bits and bytes along to the computer (on which you are 'housed') in New Jersey. That computer does a 'lookup' to see what it is you want. If it finds a 'mailbox number' or address of the person you are calling amongst its own things, it just passes you across to that place and handles the call itself. But that's only a miniscule percentage of the time at present. Usually it does not find what it wants amongst it own things, so it goes looking on the outside network (what would be called the telephone network or infrastructure), and hands your traffic over there for completion. So Vonage is correct, they do NOT have any 'infrastructure' or outside plant. But they do have lots of computers and use them to handle calls as much as possible, handing off the traffic to the 'infrastructure' (of outside telcos) only as needed. Someone pointed out here the other day that if Vonage and the other VOIP companies would cooperate in sharing their subscriber bases, handing each other traffic as appropriate, then reliance on Traditional Bell for call completion could be much less than it is now. I would think they would cooperate with each other against the common enemy (Bell) instead of fighting with each other. That's what happened at the start of the 20th century as the independent telcos were setting up shop. They said damned if they would interconnect with Bell if there was any other way of doing it, but often times there wasn't, so they did. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:53:36 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: > Now my friend who got me the card and wireless router did say if I > mounted a highly directional antenna out of my window I could probably > go 'one mile or so' and still get the signal. Is that correct? At the recent DEFCON hacker convention in Vegas, a couple of teenagers managed to get 55.1 miles, and said they probably could have gotten more if they hadn't run out of road. Granted, the antennas were 10 foot satellite dishes, so that would adversely impact the portability of your laptop :). Two women who improvised an antenna out of "cardboard, duct tape, and a car sun visor" managed 0.82 miles. The world record is 192 miles, but Swedish Space Corporation used a weather balloon and RF amplification so that was sort of cheating. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I think the 'couple of teenagers' at Vegas were too smart for their own good. Is the idea to be able to stand on the roof of your house naked and show everyone all your stuff or is the idea to be able to get some kind of convenient mix between flexibilty and privacy? So they got 55 miles? Sounds very impressive until you realize how many people in the span of that 55 miles were eager to see what those boys were doing with their computers and had WiFi cards of their own they could use to explore the boys' computers in more detail. After all, the more people who get in the middle between the base station and yourself, the greater the likelyhood of *someone* -- at least one malcontent -- along the way spying on you successfully, encryption and answering to one non- broadcasted MAC address only not withstanding. Of course, finding the proper mix between flexibilty and privacy is dependent on your circumstances, but 55 miles? Or the two women with eight tenths of a mile? That seems to be stretching a good thing a bit to far. Because I live in a rural area midst many folks who are not terribly computer-literate (to put it politely), I'd feel safe with maybe another city block or two, using the usual security precautions, but not much more than that. Well, no matter, its all moot to me right now, everything busted up and not working at least until later this month when my Canadian consultant gets back from vacation. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Subject: Follow-up Note re Toll Free Report Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:30:27 -0400 Organization: ICB Inc./WhoSells800.com Pat, "Re New Report Released - Toll Free Usage Growing", please post a follow-up note: If someone orders the Toll Free Report directly from Insight Research (either by phone, 973-541-9600, or online at http://www.insight-corp.com/reports/callcenter.asp), they should use discount code B08B96, in order to get their ICB Discount. They can get an ICB Discount on anything they order at Insight. Judith http://ICBTollFreeNews.com _ http://800Consulting.com 160 East 26 Street, Suite 6E New York, New York 10010 212 684-7210, 1 800 The Expert ------------------------------ Subject: Neat Little Book for Telephone History Buffs Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:05:47 GMT Several copies are available through www.abebooks.com at quite reasonable prices. "The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone" by Thomas A. Watson, an address delivered before the third annual convention of the Telephone Pioneers of America at Chicago, October 17, 1913, printed by AT&T. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This would make a good companion book to the one the SBC Archives has about the hundred year history of Ameritech/Illinois Bell/Chicago Telephone Company. If you did not yet get your copy you can order it directly from the author. PAT] The SBC Archives and History Center is pleased to offer the book entitled, Snapshots in Time: A Photographic History of Ameritech. This 192-page soft-cover book chronicles the evolution of telecommunications in the SBC Midwest (former Ameritech) five-state region through select historical images. It offers more than 225 captioned photos of switchboard operators, crews with their vehicles and technicians testing central office equipment. The book begins with an 1876 portrait of Alexander Graham Bell and ends in 1999, on the eve of the SBC/Ameritech merger. The cost for each book is $25.00, plus $4.95 for shipping. To order, fill out the form below. If you have questions, please call Bill Caughlin at (210) 524-6192. Or send him an e-mail at wc2942@sbc.com --------------------------------------------------------------- ORDER FORM FOR Snapshots in Time: A Photographic History of Ameritech NAME __________________________________________________ BUSINESS UNIT ________________________________________ ADDRESS _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________ CITY _________________________ STATE _____ ZIP __________ PHONE NUMBER (______)_________________________ I would like to order _______ copy(ies) each at $25.00, plus $4.95 shipping, for a total of _____________. No cash, please. Make your check or money order payable to SBC Services, Inc. and send it to: SBC Archives and History Center 7990 IH-10 West Floor 1 San Antonio, Texas 78230 ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Date: 11 Aug 2004 05:31:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tony P. wrote in message news:: > In article , chrispchang@yahoo.com > says: >> Hi, I'm new to this group but seems like there are a number of >> knowledgeable telecom folks here. I am opening a small office (6 >> people with potential to expand to max of 15). In looking at phone >> systems, we want basic voicemail functionality, caller id and call >> waiting caller id. >> I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of >> purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions >> from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible >> display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button >> stuff. >> Appreciate any responses. > From an accounting perspective, the Centrex is a month to month expense, > while buying a system gives you the depreciation over time plus the cost > of the loops as a monthly expense. > I don't like Centrex because you're on the hook to Verizon until you > decide to put your own system in. > Right now you can get systems that will expand to what you need for > < $1000. > You don't mention how many CO lines you'll be using. There is a > difference. WIth Centrex, every phone is a CO line that you'll pay > for. With you own system, you only pay for those CO lines you tie > into the KSU or PBX. > Let's say you have 6 extensions with 4 CO loops at $30 a month using a > KSU or PBX. > Your initial cost going in is $1000, with a recurring monthly expense > of $120, or $1,440 a year. So your cost in the first year is $2,440. > Subsequent years would be $1,440. At year three you fully staff to 15 > people and add 5 CO lines. Perhaps you'll spend $800 or so to upgrade > the switch. Monthly your cost would now be $300 a month, $3,600 a year. > Six Centrex loops at $25 a month, plus a rental fee on the phones of > roughly $10 each per month comes out to $210 a month, or $2,520 a > year. All subsequent years would cost approximately the same. > When you fully staff, the cost now comes to $525 a month, or $6,300 a > year. > So you can see that in the long term, Centrex is a losing bet. Unless of > course you want to increase your expenses. What you have failed to account for in your business case is the cost of maintenance on the PBX unit. Service calls on your PBX will cost you an hourly rate that will vary depending on the local area and the vendor providing the service. If you opt for a maintenance contract, then it is an annual charge that may be billed on a monthly basis. Costs for maintenance contracts vary depending on the type of coverage required, but average, at least in our market, around $180 per port. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ From: newsguy@jimprice.com Subject: Remote Serial Port Connection - Manage Devices over the Internet Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:06:38 -0500 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com I ran across this a while back, and it looked pretty cool ... If you're trying to get remote (i.e., over the Intenet) access to a serial-controlled device of any sort that you've deployed at a remote site (a customer's or one of your own), this might be of interest to you. http://www.traversix.com/ The Traversix connectivity product family offers a complete end-to-end solution for securely connecting to legacy serial devices over the Internet without having to change your existing serial application, and without requiring any special firewall configuration. This is achieved by installing the Traversix Connectivity Server at the remote location and the Traversix Connectivity Client on your PC. These two products connect to the Traversix Connectivity Gateway, and allow seamless communication between your PC and the serial device, whether it's in the next room, or on another continent. The data between your PC and the device is encrypted. Also, because the Connectivity Client creates a virtual serial port on your PC that behaves just like a hardware serial port (i.e., COM1, COM2, COM3, etc.), it is completely compatible with any existing serial application. It handles not just RX/TX, but all RS-232 control signals. What could be simpler!!! Possible uses: Managing a PBX Modem Replacement Monitoring an elevator Checking on an HVAC system Capturing data from a lab experiment Upgrading an industrial controller They're selling a starter kit with one Connectivity Server, the software, and a 3-month license to use their Gateway on their web site. If you've got a tough remote connecitivity problem, it's definitely worth checking out. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 08:26:37 -0400 (EDT) From: John R. Covert Subject: Spam Harvesting From Telecom Digest On 21 Jul 2004 03:45:31 EDT I posted for the first time using nospamtd@covert.org instead of nospam@covert.org just to be 100% sure that it had appeared nowhere but here. I think that's true of the older address, but I wanted to clear the slate. I also posted on 26 Jul 2004 12:07:51 EDT, and then not again until the message you are now reading. Email to this address is rejected by my SMTP server upon attempted delivery as invalid recipient, but the attempt is logged. The spam to this address is already coming in: 24-JUL-2004 08:04:02.23 Host: 212.74.114.37 mk-smarthost-1.mail.uk.tiscali.com 6-AUG-2004 13:27:53.25 Host: 192.118.71.128 omail6.walla.co.il 8-AUG-2004 17:48:05.71 Host: 192.118.71.126 omail4.walla.co.il. 10-AUG-2004 12:00:07.45 Host: 216.155.196.71 web60808.mail.yahoo.com There may have been other attempts that were rejected by RBL lookups or other checks which took place before the sender was even prompted to provide recipient addresses. Since the 21st of July I've rejected 2911 out of 3606 messages that early in the protocol exchange. Only about 67 actual spams got through my filters, mostly by coming in from a forwarded address where my filtering is less effective than to my real address. Spammers suck. Since the mail is rejected before any of the text is received, trying to collect on Pat's "contract" for $100 on these past messages would be impossible, but I'd be glad to forward "nospamtd" to anyone who would like to actually take the time and effort to pursue the spammers. Since the [you] CAN-SPAM act explicitly forbids harvesting addresses, these messages are also clear violations of the act, since this address has NEVER appeared or been used anywhere but in TD. /john [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Good for you, John! *Anyone* who wishes to use CAN-SPAM to their financial advantage is more than welcome to do so. All of you are hereby appointed as my agents for this limited purpose. I'll contribute 100-150 spams per day to anyone who wishes to pick through them looking for some meat. I've gotten to burned out to worry about it much any longer, but any user (attornies especially) who wish to pick what meat they can from all this crap is welcome to get started on it. You know, it occurs to me that a full time spam investigator/processor willing to work purely on his own with some imagination and creative- ness could acccept the tons of this crap that come through each day and make a reasonable living suing the sources. Oh, I know there are spam-traps out there, but they are mostly into researching it for the various software filtering programs aren't they? Even if the end result only netted pennies for each successful/collectible lawsuit, the person would make up for it in sheer volume of lawsuits. I wish *I* could make a penny for each piece of spam I see here in a day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Interesting Origins Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:12:06 -0700 Organization: Diogenes the Cynic Hot-Tubbing Society The "brass monkey" story is an urban legend, long since disproven. http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #375 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 11 18:16:05 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7BMG5A28205; Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:16:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:16:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408112216.i7BMG5A28205@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 #376 TELECOM Digest Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:15:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 376 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Old London Telephone Exchange Names (Paul Coxwell) Can You Depend on Vonage 911 Service in Emergency? (Jack Decker - VOIP) Re: A Calling Card Type of Solution Needed (Brad Houser) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Paul Vader) Re: Up and Down, All Around (Ankur Shah) Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me (L) Re: US West History (Joseph) Re: US West History (Hammond of Texas) Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? (Mike Riddle) Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom (sumit chawla) 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: Paul Coxwell Subject: Old London Telephone Exchange Names Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:00:41 +0100 I received an e-mail recently inquiring about the old exchange names in London, and thought a general posting might be of interest. London used a 3L-4N system, making the selection of suitable names somewhat harder in later years than in U.S. cities with their 2L-5N system. The list below represents the exchange names as they stood immediately prior to the change to all-figure numbering. It is taken from the GPO booklet "Dialling Instructions and Call Charges, London, 1968." Notice that at the time of the change many exchanges were assigned a new prefix, while others retained their existing code, now expressed as all digits. The list shows the new prefixes resulting from the change to all-figure numbering. Note that on British dials the letter "O" was located on the zero, with just "MN" on the digit 6. While this removed any possible confusion between zero/letter-O, it also meant that no exchange names starting with O could be employed. Many names are geographical, taken from a district, road name, or some well-known building or landmark. The age of exchanges such as NORth and WEStern can be seen by the fact that they serve what are now really the northern and western parts of central London rather than further out. I've added my own notes in square brackets where the exchange name is not obvious from the listed area served and where I'm aware of the source. There are no doubt many other names which would be meaningful to local residents of the area in question. My family lived in north London, and were thus surrounded by such exchanges as ENField, KEAts, PALmers Green, FOX Lane, and EDMonton. Many Londoners would also be aware of the locations of many of the exchanges serving the central business districts of the city, e.g. MAYfair, REGent, and GERard, but not so much with those in other far-away suburbs. The most famous London telephone number of 3L-4N days was surely WHItehall 1212, the number for Scotland Yard, Police Headquarters. In addition to the exchange prefixes, there were also 3-digit service codes assigned for various uses. For example, TIM was used to connect to the speaking clock, and the reason why some older Londoners might still refer to "Calling Tim" to check the time. ---------------------------------------------------------------- LONDON DIRECTOR EXCHANGE NAMES Old Name New Area served --- ---- --- ----------- 222 ABBey 222 Westminster [Westminster Abbey] 220 ACOrn 992 Acton [Acorn Gardens] 233 ADDiscombe 654 Addiscombe & South Norwood 238 ADVance 980 Bow & Mile End [*1] 252 ALBert Dock 476 Plaistow & Canning Town [Dock in the East End] 257 ALPerton 998 Perivale, Alperton & North Ealing 262 AMBassador 262 Paddington [Foreign embassies in area] 264 AMHerst 985 Hackney [Amherst Road] 272 ARChway 272 Holloway [District/Bridge] 276 ARNold 904 North Wembley 285 ATLas 568 Isleworth 283 AVEnue 283 City of London [Throgmorton Avenue] 225 * BALham 672 Tooting [district] 227 BARnet 449 Barnet 228 BATtersea 228 Battersea 229 BAYswater 229 Bayswater 232 * BECkenham 650 Beckenham 235 * BELgravia 235 Belgravia 237 BERmondsey 237 Bermondsey 239 BEXleyheath 303 Bexleyheath 247 BIShopsgate 247 City of London [name of street] 258 BLUebell 656 Addiscombe & South Norwood 209 BOWes Park 888 Twickenham 274 BRIxton 274 Brixton 278 BRUnswick 278 Kings Cross 282 BUCkhurst 504 Woodford & Buckhurst Hill 287 BUShey Heath 950 Bushey Heath 297 BYRon 422 South Harrow [*2] 299 BYWood 668 Purley & Kenley [woodland in area] 226 CANonbury 226 Highbury [district] 236 * CENtral 236 City of London 242 CHAncery 242 Holborn [Chancery Lane] 243 CHErrywood 540 Merton & South Wimbledon 244 CHIswick 994 Chiswick 248 * CITy 248 City of London 253 CLErkenwell 253 Clerkenwell 254 CLIssold 254 Dalston [Clissold Park] 250 CLOcktower 552 East Ham 205 * COLindale 205 Colindale 206 CONcord 864 South Harrow 200 COOmbe End 949 New Malden 207 COPpermill 520 Walthamstow [Coppermill Lane] 208 COVent Garden 240 Covent Garden 273 CREscent 550 Barkingside & Redbridge 270 CROydon 688 Croydon 279 CRYstal Palace 659 Sydenham & Penge [famous landmark] 286 CUNningham 286 Maida Vale 326 DANson Park 304 Bexleyheath [Danson Park] 337 DERwent 337 Worcester Park 342 DICkens 359 Highbury [*2] 345 DILigence 903 Wembley 305 DOLlis Hill 450 Cricklewood & Dollis Hill 306 DOMinion 592 Dagenham 373 DREadnought 373 Earls Court [*3] 378 DRUMmond 908 North Wembley 379 DRYden 204 Kingsbury 385 DUKe 385 Fulham [*4] 386 DUNcan 690 Catford 325 EALing 567 Ealing 327 EASt 987 Poplar [area to east of central London] 334 * EDGware 952 Edgware 336 * EDMonton 807 Edmonton 354 ELGar 965 Harlesden 356 ELMbridge 399 Surbiton [Elmbridge Avenue] 357 ELStree 953 Elstree 358 ELTham 850 Eltham 362 EMBerbrook 398 Thames Ditton 367 EMPress 603 West Kensington 363 ENField 363 Enfield 368 ENTerprise 368 Southgate 387 EUSton 387 Euston 393 EWEll 393 Ewell 324 * FAIrlands 644 Sutton & Cheam 335 * FELtham 890 Feltham & East Bedfont 343 FIEld End 868 Pinner & Eastcote 346 FINchley 346 Finchley 348 FITzroy 348 Hornsey & Highgate [Fitzroy Park] 352 FLAxman 352 Chelsea 353 * FLEet Street 353 Fleet Street 350 FLOral 878 Mortlake 300 FOOts Cray 300 Sidcup [district] 307 FORest Hill 699 Forest Hill 308 FOUntain 677 Streatham 309 FOX Lane 882 Palmers Green [Fox Lane] 372 FRAnklin 669 Wallington & Carshalton 373 FREmantle 373 Earls Court [*3] 370 FRObisher 370 Earls Court 385 FULham 385 Fulham [*4] 425 GALleon 330 Worcester Park 430 GEOrgian 579 Ealing 437 GERard 437 Soho [Gerard Street] 442 GIBbon 789 Putney 447 GIPsy Hill 670 Gipsy Hill & West Norwood 452 GLAdstone 452 Cricklewood & Dollis Hill 400 GOOdmayes 599 Seven Kings & Goodmayes 472 GRAngewood 472 East Ham 473 GREenwich 858 Greenwich 474 GRImsdyke 954 Stanmore 470 GROsvenor 499 Mayfair, Grosvenor Square 485 GULliver 485 Kentish Town 423 HADley Green 440 Barnet [district] 424 HAInault 500 Hainault 426 HAMpstead 435 Hampstead 427 HARrow 427 Harrow 428 HATch End 428 Hatch End 429 * HAYes 573 Hayes (Middlesex) & Cranford 432 HEAdquarters 432 City of London, [GPO Headquarters, *5] 436 HENdon 202 Hendon 444 HIGhgate Wood 444 Muswell Hill [district] 445 HILlside 445 North Finchley 448 * HITher Green 698 Catford & Bellingham [district] 404 HOGarth 749 Shepherds Bush 405 HOLborn 405 Holborn 407 HOP 407 Southwark [area with several hop merchants] 408 HOUnslow 570 Hounslow & Heston 409 HOWard 804 Ponders End 483 HUDson 572 Hounslow & Heston 486 HUNter 486 St. Marylebone 487 HURstway 462 Hayes, Kent [several streets with Hurst name] 493 HYDe Park 493 Mayfair, Hyde Park 453 ILFord 478 Ilford 467 IMPerial 467 Chislehurst & Bickley 475 ISLeworth 560 Isleworth & Brentford 482 IVAnhoe 505 Woodford & Buckhurst Hill 489 IVYdale 394 Ewell 586 JUNiper 586 St. Johns Wood 532 KEAts 366 Enfield [*2] 535 KELvin 673 Balham 536 KENsington 589 South Kensington 545 KILburn 328 Kilburn & Maida Vale 546 KINgston 546 Kingston 547 * KIPling 857 Mottingham & Grove Park [*2] 564 KNIghtsbridge 584 South Kensington [district] 522 * LABurnum 360 Winchmore Hill [Laburnum Grove] 523 LADbroke 969 Kensal Green [Ladbroke Grove] 525 LAKeside 947 Wimbledon [lake in Wimbledon Park] 526 LANgham 580 Bloomsbury [Langham Place] 527 LARkswood 527 Highams Park [district] 528 LATimer 802 Stamford Hill [Latimer Road] 533 LEE Green 852 Lewisham 539 * LEYtonstone 539 Leytonstone 542 LIBerty 542 Merton & South Wimbledon 548 * LIVingstone 653 Norwood [Livingstone Road] 506 LONdon Wall 588 City of London (Moorgate) [*6] 507 LORds 289 Lords & Maida Vale [Lords Cricket Ground] 508 LOUghton 508 Loughton 509 LOWer Hook 397 Chessington [district] 577 LPR 432 City of London [London Postal Region, *5] 587 LTR (RHQ) 587 Vauxhall [London Telephones Region, *5] 583 * LUDgate Circus 583 Fleet Street [road junction] 622 MACaulay 622 Nine Elms 624 MAIda Vale 624 Kilburn, Maida Vale & South Hampstead 625 MALden 942 New Malden 626 MANsion House 626 City of London (Monument) [famous building] 627 MARyland 534 Stratford & Forest Gate 629 MAYfair 629 Mayfair 632 MEAdway 458 Golders Green [name of road] 635 MELville 643 Sutton & Belmont 638 * METropolitan 638 City of London (Monument) 645 MILl Hill 959 Mill Hill 646 MINcing Lane 623 City of London (Monument) [name of street] 648 MITcham 648 Mitcham & Morden 605 MOLesey East 979 Molesey & Hampton 606 MONarch 606 City of London 600 * MOOrgate 600 City of London, Moorgate 608 MOUntview 340 Hornsey & Highgate 685 MULberry 889 Wood Green 686 MUNicipal 686 Croydon 687 MUSeum 636 Bloomsbury [area of British Museum] 628 NATional 628 City of London (Moorgate) 639 * NEW Cross 639 Peckham & New Cross 602 NOBle 602 West Kensington 607 NORth 607 Barnsbury [northern part of central London] 683 NUFfield 848 Hayes & Cranford 723 PADdington 723 Paddington 725 PALmers Green 886 Palmers Green 727 PARk 727 Bayswater & Notting Hill [Hyde Park] 732 PECkham Rye 732 Peckham & New Cross 737 PERivale 997 Perivale, Alperton & North Ealing 746 PINner 866 Pinner & Eastcote 758 PLUmstead 855 Woolwich & Plumstead 705 * POLlards 764 Norbury Pollards Hill 707 * POPesgrove 892 Twickenham 774 PRImrose 722 St. Johns Wood [Primrose Hill] 770 PROspect 876 Mortlake 788 PUTney 788 Putney 724 RAGlan 556 Leytonstone 728 RAVensbourne 460 Bromley [name of river] 733 REDpost 733 Brixton 734 REGent 734 Soho [Regent Street] 735 RELiance 735 Kennington & Walworth (Vauxhall) 736 RENown 736 Fulham 742 RIChmond 940 Richmond (Surrey) 747 RIPpleway 594 Barking 748 RIVerside 748 Hammersmith [area by River Thames] 703 RODney 703 Camberwell & Walworth [Rodney Road] 709 * ROYal 709 City of London & Wapping [Royal Mint] 726 SANderstead 657 Sanderstead & Selsdon 720 SCOtt 720 Nine Elms 738 SEVen Kings 590 Seven Kings & Goodmayes 743 SHEpherds Bush 743 Shepherds Bush 740 SHOreditch 739 Shoreditch 745 SILverthorn 529 Chingford 759 SKYport 759 London Airport Heathrow & Harlington [airport] 750 SLOane 730 Sloane Square 762 SNAresbrook 530 Wanstead [district] 708 SOUthall 574 Southall 772 SPArtan 249 Dalston 773 SPEedwell 455 Golders Green 777 SPRingpark 777 West Wickham [Spring Park] 782 STAmford Hill 800 Stamford Hill 783 STEpney Green 790 Stepney Green 780 STOnegrove 958 Edgware 787 STReatham 769 Streatham 785 SULlivan 799 Westminster 786 SUNnyhill 203 Hendon 794 SWIss Cottage 794 Hampstead [district] 793 SYDenham 778 Sydenham & Penge 822 TABard 822 Fleet Street [Tabard Inn] 828 TATe Gallery 828 Victoria [name of art gallery] 829 TCY 829 Waterloo [Telephones CitY, *5] 833 TEDdington Lock 977 Teddington 836 TEMple Bar 836 Covent Garden, Temple Bar 837 TERminus 837 Kings Cross [railway station, end of line] 840 * THOrnton Heath 684 Thornton Heath 843 TIDeway 692 Deptford [Thames Tideway] 808 TOTtenham 808 Tottenham 809 TOWnley 693 Dulwich & Camberwell [Townley Road] 872 TRAfalgar 839 Whitehall [Trafalgar Square] 873 * TREvelyan 553 Ilford 870 TROjan 870 Wandsworth 879 TSW 879 Wimbledon [Telephones South West, *5] 883 TUDor 883 Muswell Hill 885 * TULse Hill 674 Tulse Hill & Brixton Hill 887 TURnham Green 995 Chiswick [district] 894 TWIckenham Green 894 Twickenham 863 UNDerhill 863 Harrow [located below Harrow-on-the-Hill] 875 UPLands 660 Purley & Kenley [area of higher ground] 877 UPPer Clapton 806 Clapton 825 VALentine 554 Ilford 826 VANdyke 874 Wandsworth 842 VICtoria 834 Victoria 844 VIGilant 642 Sutton & Belmont 845 VIKing 845 Northolt & Yeading 847 VIRginia 349 Finchley 925 WALlington 647 Wallington & Carshalton 926 WANstead 989 Wanstead 927 WARing Park 302 Sidcup [Waring Park] 928 WATerloo 928 Waterloo 929 WAXlow 578 Greenford [Waxlow Crescent] 935 WELbeck 935 St. Marylebone [Welbeck Street] 936 WEMbley 902 Wembley 937 WEStern 937 Kensington [western part of central London] 944 WHItehall 930 Westminster [name of street/district] 943 WIDmore 464 Bromley [Widmore Road] 945 WILlesden 459 Willesden 946 WIMbledon 946 Wimbledon 900 WOOlwich 854 Woolwich & Plumstead 907 * WORdsworth 907 Kenton [*2] * "Some subscribers on these exchanges were given a new telephone number or had their exchange name replaced by figures other than those shown above when they were given their all-figure number." LDCB68 My added notes: *1. The original name chosen was BEThnal Green, a district in the east end of London. Objections to the downmarket name resulted in the alternate name ADVance. *2. Toward the end of named exchanges when it was becoming harder to come up with suitable names for vacant prefixes, the poetical/literary series of names were used: BYRon, KEAts, WORdsworth, etc. *3. The 373 exchange served an area which includes Olympia, the site used for regular exhibitions. FREmantle was the normal exchange, while the alternate name DREadnought was used for temporary lines during exhibitions. *4. Another prefix with an alternate name DUKe as a substitute for the more downmarket FULham. *5. The GPO used several prefixes for their own telephone systems. HEAdquarters speaks for itself, while other prefixes were LPR (London Postal Region), LTR (London Telephones Region), TCY (Telephone CitY), and TSW (Telephones SouthWest). Some prefixes were used for direct dialing in to GPO PABX systems, and mapped to other prefixes. *6. Named for the old London Wall, the boundary of London in historic times. The name Moorgate comes from one of the former entrances to the city. Paul Coxwell Norfolk, England. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Paul for this special report which will be specifically filed in the Archives history area. I should point out that Chicago, Illinois also used the 3L-4D method of numbering until about 1950 when it changed to 2L-5D for about ten years before going entirely 7-D. Thanks again, Paul. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:19:51 -0400 Subject: Can You Depend on Vonage 911 Service in an Emergency? Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com In a message on the BroadbandReports.com VoIP Forum, user "HardwareGeek" writes: > Brooklyn Vonage Users do not dial 911 > I just dialed 911 because of a car accident. And I got a 5 minute > lecture on how I should dial 911. I told the person I did dial 911 > and she immediately said don't tell me your using Vonage. So just an > FYI don't dial 911 in Brooklyn NY if your dying. Because you will > DIE and I was also told that the number I was transferred too after > 10PM that the phone isn't answered. So my advice run to a pay phone > if you don't have a cell phone handy and hope your not dying. I had > a similar Problem a few months ago and Contacted Vonage about it and > they assured me they had fixed it. Apparently not. Thank God for my > cell. In a later followup message, the person who posted the above message indicated that he'd been told that the call had been routed to the NYPD Administrative Offices. In one of the several followup messages, one user ("Fat Guy") offers this opinion: > There really should be some sort of mechanism for testing 911, given > that hundreds of thousands of North Americans are now VOIP > customers. Not exactly sure how it should be arranged, but it seems > preferable to the PR disaster that will happen when somebody dies > because VOIP 911 routed a call to a call center that has been shut > down for the night. The entire thread, which includes some suggestions on testing your VoIP provider's 911 implementation, can be found here: http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,11017575~mode=flat And for those readers who read these messages via the Telecom Digest and seem to think I never publish anything negative about VoIP, how do you explain this one? But of course, I must add a sunny, optimistic comment: I think this problem will be resolved sooner or later; there is too much at stake to let it go unresolved. However, it would be a lot more helpful if 911 centers would accept the fact that people are slowly moving away from traditional wireline phone service and that as long as there is a need for 911 centers, there will be a need for them to adapt to new technology, at least if saving lives and protecting property is really their primary goal. Exactly why the person who answered the Brooklyn 911 call thought it would be helpful to give someone who had just been in a car accident a long lecture about dialing 911 is beyond me. In my mind, the question is not whether VoIP is the likely successor to traditional wireline phone service, the only question is how long the transition will take. Granted that the traditional phone companies and the regulators could collude to slow down the transition (probably with an adverse effect on the competitiveness of the United States vs. the rest of the world) but at best that would only buy the 911 center operators a little time, and the potential for loss of life would still exist if 911 centers insist on lecturing callers that come in on the "wrong" line as opposed to perhaps taking a more positive approach, such as contacting the caller's VoIP provider to let them know they have a problem, and (if possible) working with them to fix it so that 911 calls are routed correctly in the future. In any case the emergency, if any, should still be handled as quickly as possible. I'm not saying that the VoIP providers have no responsibility here, but I wonder sometimes if they have difficulty getting the correct numbers. Just this week someone in Michigan asked me if I knew where they could get a list of PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) for Michigan, or where might the best place to go looking for that information might be. I drew a total blank on that one; as far as I know that information is not publicly available anywhere -- in fact it may be deliberately kept out of easy reach of the public due to security concerns. But, that lack of availability may also be making it difficult for VoIP providers who want to connect their customers to the "best" number at each PSAP, but who can't even get a list of the PSAPs in each state. I wonder if large multi-state CLECs have similar problems, or do they just toss all 911 calls off to the local incumbent phone companies? How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I really have to wonder what 'Hardware Geek' and 'FatGuy' who posted in Broadband Reports feel Vonage is expected to do when a Police Department closes for the night at 10 PM or a police employee chooses to give a five minute lecture rather than immediatly transfer the call to a trained dispatcher for handling. I have heard various complaints about New York City's handling of 911 calls; how people are told to call another time or they are answered with a type of voice mail and expected to press buttons routing themselves through the police department system. So suppose all calls via Vonage to 911 were actually sent to 911. Would Hardware Geek and FatGuy be happy then? Even a tiny, dinky little town full of Local Yokels like Independence, Kansas can deal properly with emergency calls requiring immediate police intervention. Why can't Brooklyn, NY? Our four full-time police dispatchers (one per shift, one floating as needed to cover days off) are trained to know *everything* about our town; every street, every house. And although it may seem like an overkill, the dispatch area has a special phone -- PSAP -- a 7-D number which is handled with 911 priority. Why in the hell couldn't Brooklyn, NY have a 'seven digit 911 line' right where the dispatchers were located (thus, I presume, to be answered 24/7 by experienced persons who have been trained to deal with emergency calls)? Let Vonage route to that seven digit phone used as the PSAP? Why in hell did Brooklyn stick their PSAP line on a switchboard where an overworked, busy and frequently rude and unctious person would answer it as time permitted until they closed down at 10 PM each night? What does HardwareGeek think Vonage could do about that? Is it Vonage's fault (or the other VOIP providers) that large city police departments are so beaurocratically inflexible and ineffecient in their operations that citizens have to suffer? When Vonage sets up their database of PSAP locations, should they first ask the responding person if they have been trained to answer the phone and work with citizens? In this tiny little town (Independence, population about 8000 people) and rural Montgomery County (25,000 people but huge in geographic area) which would fit in a few square miles of Brooklyn, NY, when I signed up with Vonage 911 service, Vonage installed it, notified the City of Independence and the Montgomery County Sheriff (of which Indy is the 'county seat') and three days later I got email from Vonage and snail mail from City of Independence telling me I was installed. I cannot see why that is such an obstacle in a larger city. Oh, by the by, we also have a 7-D but 911 style phone in the dispatcher area here which is used for people on TTY machines (hearing/speech impaired, etc). A TTY machine auto answers it, repeats its message two or three times, while the dispatcher on duty walks over to it and cuts in with typing. The hearing/speech impaired person does have to dial a 7-D number to reach it however. An overkill, perhaps, but folks here feel it is a way for GOOD government to be responsive to citizens and their needs. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Brad Houser Subject: Re: A Calling Card Type of Solution Needed Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:50:59 -0700 Organization: Intel Corporation Sekhar wrote in message news:telecom23.373.12@telecom-digest.org: > I have two telephone lines - one a US telephone number and the other > one a Indian telephone number. I need a device which would allow users > connected through the US line to be able to dial and use the Indian > line and vice versa. You want something called a "Call Forwarding System". Radio Shack used to have one, the CFS-200. There is a similar product on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1503&item=5713364082&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW Brad Houser ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 20:13:46 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I think the 'couple of teenagers' > at Vegas were too smart for their own good. Is the idea to be able > to stand on the roof of your house naked and show everyone all your > stuff or is the idea to be able to get some kind of convenient mix > between flexibilty and privacy? So they got 55 miles? Sounds very > impressive until you realize how many people in the span of that > 55 miles were eager to see what those boys were doing with their You're not understanding the experiment. This wasn't an omni-directional broadcast -- it was point-to-point between two VERY directional dishes. While you could have a literal man-in-the-middle attack if somebody poked an antenna precisely between the two dishes, this form of transfer is for the most part more secure than a normal access point, because outside of the beam, you get almost nothing. 55 miles is pretty darn impressive, and in some places, very useful. > Because I live in a rural area midst many folks who are not terribly > computer-literate (to put it politely), I'd feel safe with maybe > another city block or two, using the usual security precautions, but > not much more than that. Well, no matter, its all moot to me right > now, everything busted up and not working at least until later this > month when my Canadian consultant gets back from vacation. PAT] There are actually a number of simple things you can do to slightly change the shape and range of your wi-fi coverage area. Here's a neat example: http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/ With a little cardboard and tinfoil, you could probably fix your back porch coverage problem. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:00:41 -0400 From: Ankur Shah Subject: Re: Up and Down, All Around > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The three devices which pain me the > most -- the cable modem, the Vonage Motorola TX box, and the Netgear > Wireless router box -- do not have 'off/on switches' on them to toggle > as needed. They simply have plugs from power supplies (plugged in > wall outlets) to the back of the units. You want to power the device > down you have to unplug them from the back of unit or the wall. PAT] The cable modem, of all things, should not be affected by the network setup you have, since its sitting on the "outside". If it is indeed not working properly, it could just be that your cable modem is causing you all the grief with your network. Either way, I'd do the following to troubleshoot: 1. Call your ISP to check if your cable modem is (still?) compatible with their network. i.e. If your ISP's network is DOCSIS (1.0/2.0), and your cable modem isn't, you're bound to run into network problems. Also, make sure they have the correct binary (config) file set for your specific cable modem in their system. 2. Check to see if you can still access the cable modem's web interface using http://192.168.100.1 from within your LAN. If that works, look at the various RF attributes to make sure they're "fine", particularly the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) and (upstream) transmit levels. If your CM goes outside the "normal" range, you may have problems intermittently. Just my $0.02 worth, -- Ankur ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:58:17 GMT From: L Subject: Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Organization: Optimum Online Pelco Sales & Service wrote in message news:telecom23.374.10@telecom-digest.org: > NorVergence sent our Equipment in and three days later they went > under. Now Popular Leasing out of Missouri is threatening me to pay > up or else. What can I do? I haven't even had the equipment hooked > up. If you are like my friends ... you have a NON CANCELABLE lease for equipment. There is NOTHING in any of your paperwork that indicates you get service. Oh, sure, the lease amount was based on 80% of your monthly telephone bill -- but the FIVE YEAR contract you signed never promised service. What to do? I suggest contacting an attorney. And, depending on how highly you value your business credit rating, and what your corporate structure is, you might consider withholding payment. You will most likely lose any court case, however. This is the problem ... you have what I've seen referred to as a 'Hell and High Water' lease. NOTHING gets you out of it ... NOTHING. Now, there are tons of telecom companies circling the waters trying to pick up your service contract, who will tell you they will use that equipment you have, but the services are not free. And free service is what you need if you are going to pay for the equipment and manage to save 20% over your previous telecommunications bills. Look back at the literature Norvergence sent you. Did they ever mention providing telephone services for 80% of what you are paying? Look carefully. NOPE. You were invited to join a program which would give you FREE unlimited service. Can you sue Norvergence for discontinuing a free service? I suspect not. Was fraud involved. Oh yeah. Most definitely. Do you have any consumer rights? NOPE. The contract you signed for the equipment lease specifically states you are a BUSINESS and WILL NOT be using it for personal use. Businesses don't have consumer protection laws. I'm not a lawyer, but I write good letters. I have had a car lease reversed after I went home and read documents showing the dealer (I thought mistakenly) had ADDED the money for my trade-in TO the lease. So, not only did I lease the car for the full sticker price.. I also was PAYING for my trade-in, in addition to having to turn in my vehicle. When I went in the next day to point out the 'mistake' the dealer laughed. I persisted in what I felt was right. The lease company never got a payment, and the car dealer eventually renegotiated a sale for 2k less than sticker with credit for my trade-in. I didn't pat myself on the back too much tho, that is the same deal I could have had if I had researched and bought the vehicle with my eyes open. It took 3 months and the help of my state BBB to mitigate my own stupidity -- and the whole time I was without a car. Persistence is the only way you are going to lessen ANY of the damages you incurred when you signed a contract to lease a 'magic box' (retailing for $400-$2,500, depending on model) for $20,000.00 (based on phone bills of $400/month) or more. Firstly, you need insurance for that equipment. The sales spiel was that you were not obligated to purchase from the leaseholder, you could research getting your own. As you have most likely found out, your insurance company could not provide insurance for 10-60 times actual value. Your leaseholder does. That smacks of insurance fraud to me ... and wouldn't it be the civic thing to provide your state's insurance board with copies of your insurance policy and lease agreements for that equipment? Some properly worded letters, CC'd to the leaseholder of course, might raise some state agency eyebrows. Don't forget to send a complete description of the problem to the media and the congressmen of the states whose banking rules allow for those leases (look at your lease agreement). Norvergence was a NJ corporation -- it is not an anomaly that the lease agreements are governed by laws OUTSIDE of NJ. The liberal banking laws in these states bring money to the state's coffers ... at the expense of honest hardworking folk. And what about the fact that the equipment is leased at different amounts to different businesses. Doesn't that point to some complicity on the part of the lending agencies? Of course, the banking commission might be interested in a lease that is so overvalued ... what happens if you default and the bank has to repo the equipment? Banks usually have strict guidelines as to how much risk they can take. Of course, I wouldn't be TOO hopeful. You see, the leaseholder's risk is pretty low. YOU were what they were buying. Your contract, at the urging of Norvergence, to pay 60 months worth of phone bills directly to the leaseholder. You had to be pretty special to qualify for this program. You had to have enough income so that you wouldn't bankrupt over the loss, and you had to have enough interest in your business credit rating that you wouldn't simply stop paying. Additionally, your income from your business should be necessary to your paying your bills -- so that you won't simply shut down your corporation to get yourself out from under an onerous fraudulent agreement you were hoodwinked into signing. In short, you are a small business owner. And look who you are against. Some of the biggest lending agencies in the nation. GE Capitol, Wells Fargo, and other big names. SOMEONE has got to pay for all the money Norvergence took -- and 'take' is the right word -- those leases were SOLD for big money. Who do you think the powers that be will stand up for? The small business folks who where shim-shammed by trained professionals and who were foolish enough to sign LEASE agreements for equipment when buying telecommunications services? Or, the lending companies who bought discount money from Norvergence based on those small business folks very excellent credit ratings and promises to pay. If the banks take a hit, who pays for it? Multiply your loss, by the over ten thousand 'customers' Norvergence had when it went down. We are talking millions of dollars -- another Enron, perhaps? Losses, prosecution, lawsuits, legal changes ... Probably MUCH easier for the powers that be to let each little individual take his own loss. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why I suggested the small business owner *freeze all accounts payable to Norvergence and Scam Associates* and mitigate their own losses by paying **nothing** until instructed to do so by a court or their attorney. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: US West History Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 08:10:57 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 20:46:17 EDT, Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 5 Aug 2004 05:58:19 -0700, adamsjac@telcordia.com > (Jack Adams) writes: >> Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message >> news:: >>> Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? >>> And what happened to the company, if so? >>> 73, doug >> Yes, the short answer is that it encompassed Mountain Bell and Pacific >> Northwest Bell which covered almost the entire Northwestern quadrant >> of the continental US. > What happened to Mountain Bell's operations in New Mexico and > Arizona, both contiguous to the Mexican border and hardly in the > "Northwestern quadrant of the continental U.S."? I'm not sure what you mean by "what happened?" They're two southern states which happen to be part of Qwest. Qwest stretches from Washington state to New Mexico and goes through the midwest to Nebraska and Iowa. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 10:13:37 -0700 From: Hammond of Texas Subject: Re: US West History Scott Dorsey wrote: > It was. It is now Qwest, a large provider of unreliable telephone service > and frequently-abused internet service. Let me guess, you used to right those "about " paragraphs for press releases, right? Nicely worded, sir. BTW, you left out " ...involved in research and development of new ways deliver poor customer service in our call centers..." ------------------------------ From: Mike Riddle Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Subject: Re: Old Bell System TTY Guys? Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 13:49:31 -0500 jsw@ivgate.omahug.org wrote: >> In my youth one of my telephone company friends sometimes went out to a >> customer site to work on the Teletype. I never saw the site or the >> equipment, but some of the stuff he took with him included a couple of >> vacuum tubes, commercial types 35L6 and 50Y6. I've always wondered >> what the equipment was and what the tubes had to do with it. >> Anybody know? > Not to show my age, but the 35L6 was a beam power tube that was used > for (other than the obvious audio output) such things as relay/sole- > noid drivers and servo controllers. I don't remember them in any > teletype gear (I'm not *that* old) Of course you are!!!! > but I do remember them in 60's vintage card sorters. They were > popular because the heaters of three of them could be wired in > series across the standard 120v AC line, saving the need for a > filament/heater transformer. Some of the later model TTYs actually had electronics! It depended on what signalling method was in use (20 ma, 60 ma, or some kind of modem/modulator, in military use often "low-level" where the internals were sometimes low current or voltage-switched). I don't remember which tube types we used, but I do remember the occasional tube in DC power supplies, etc. Mike Riddle Former AF 36370/30672/G3016 ------------------------------ From: sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com (sumit chawla) Subject: Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom Date: 6 Aug 2004 12:32:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks for your response. Actually I am doing training in Lucent Switch. I just wanted to know how I could apply my software development skills in the respective industry. Sumit Chawla E-mail (sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com) Bit Twister wrote in message news:: > On 3 Aug 2004 07:35:52 -0700, Sumit Chawla wrote: >> I'm a computer engineer. I want to pursue a career in the telecom >> sector. > Move to China, Vietnam, India where the outsourcing is going. > I wish you luck; ALCATEL France, came over, bought a telecom company, > took the good projects back to Europe, outsourced other jobs, layed > everyone else off except enough to keep the sales/service office up and > running. > Suggest moving your expertise into the medical field. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #376 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 12 15:24:52 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7CJOpn09874; Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408121924.i7CJOpn09874@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 #377 TELECOM Digest Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:24:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 377 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Jack) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Eric Friedebach) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (charlie3) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (John McHarry) Re: Strange Spoof E-Mails (Barry Margolin) Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? (Tony P.) Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification (John Levine) Re: NorVergence Having Popular Leasing Hound, Threaten Me (nospamwanted) US to Allow SBC, BellSouth to Buy Back Spectrum (Monty Solomon) Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone (Solomon) Check 21 (Marcus Didius Falco) Correction by Editor: was Re: Internet Connection (Gary Novosielski) 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: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:20:02 -0400 From: Jack Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Pat, please conceal my e-mail address. Before things get too far out of hand, I'd like to comment on some of the comments that have been made by you and Mr. Paul Vader. Both of you seem to have missed an important paragraph in the original story that Monty Solomon sent. It clearly stated: Paul Timmins, 23, pleaded guilty to a single count of unauthorized access to a protected computer. HE WAS CLEARED OF MORE SERIOUS CHARGES OF PARTICIPATING IN A SCHEME ORGANIZED BY HIS ROOMMATE AND ANOTHER MAN TO LATER USE THE WIRELESS NETWORK TO HACK INTO LOWE'S COMPUTERS AND SIPHON CREDIT CARD NUMBERS. (Emphasis added) Now, I happen to know Paul Timmins' uncle (and have known him since he was in high school), and I've also met Paul and have talked to him directly on a few occasions, although not that much about this case. However, what I've been able to deduce from various comments that have been made over the past few months is that the only reason Mr. Timmins was involved at all was due to a case of mistaken identity. Paul definitely knew the two men who were in the car at the time the crime was committed, but he was not personally present (in fact he was in the process of leaving for a business trip to the west coast). As I understand the situation, when the attempt to steal the credit card numbers occurred, there were two men in the car in the Lowes parking lot. One of the men, the passenger, was the one who allegedly attempted to hack into Lowes system and steal credit card numbers. The other, the driver, just happened to be Paul's roommate. There were FBI field agents present at the store and they managed to obtain a description of the car (including the license plate number) and the two occupants, but did not apprehend the perpetrators at the scene. One of the occupants, the passenger (who was the one who actually attempted the break-in) had long sideburns and this was noted in the FBI's description. Mr. Timmins has never had long sideburns. The FBI then ran the license plate, and this led them to the apartment complex in which the driver and Mr. Timmins lived. They then proceeded to run every license plate of every car parked in the apartment complex. Now, in Michigan, when you apply for a driver's license they take a digital photograph, and that record is tied in the database to the records of all the vehicles you own. So apparently, the FBI could pull up each plate and then display the driver's license photo of the owner. Unfortunately, when they ran the plate on Paul's car, his photo somewhat matched the description of the passenger in the car in the Lowes parking lot, and when they discovered that Paul and the driver of the car at Lowes happened to be roommates, they just assumed (incorrectly) that Paul had been the passenger. Of course, Paul didn't have the long sideburns, either on his drivers license photo or at the time they apprehended him, and both he and his roommate were able to give the FBI the correct identity of the passenger in the car, and at least in Paul's case he did so without hesitation. So you would think that once the FBI discovered the mistake, they might apologize and release Mr. Timmins and that would be the end of it, right? Especially since Paul fully cooperated, and without his assistance they probably would have not been able to successfully prosecute the real offender (or at least would have had a much more difficult time of it). Well, except that I guess that would have been embarrassing, and the FBI had already spent a considerable sum of money on the investigation (some estimates put it at well over a million dollars), and besides, somehow it came out that Paul had once loaned the perpetrator a wireless network card -- not the one that was used at the scene of the crime, mind you, but apparently that was sufficient to tie him to the other two in some way, *********************************************** and thereby save the FBI the embarrassment of having to drop the charges against Mr. Timmins completely. In the final analysis, it appears that Paul may have agreed to a plea bargain for a very minor charge, a misdemeanor, rather than going through the trouble and expense of having to pay more than the legal fees he had already spent (in excess of $35,000) trying to fight "the man." The access mentioned in the article (where he checked e-mail) had occurred months earlier, and had it not been for the events that transpired later, would probably never have been noticed. ************************************************** [Offset emphasis added by TELECOM Digest Editor.] Unfortunately, too many of the stories that have been published on this incident have mentioned Mr. Timmins' name without mentioning that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime, and that he probably had no foreknowledge of what the perpetrator was planning (in fact, I'm told that even the driver of the car really had no idea of what his passenger was actually up to -- I don't say that to excuse them, because I'm sure that both driver and passenger knew they were doing something illegal; I'm just not sure that the driver was aware that his companion was planning to heist credit card numbers. Apparently the courts felt that was the case because the driver only got a five year sentence, whereas the actual perpetrator will probably spend a good portion of his life in prison). Mr. Vader's moralizing, where he says, "at worst, you're in jail like Mr. Timmins" shows his total ignorance of the case. My understanding is that Mr. Timmins was in jail only long enough to be booked and arrange bail, and if he somehow winds up spending any more time in jail over this it will be a real travesty of justice, given that many people (including writers for various magazines) have done exactly the same thing that Mr. Timmins did, which is to take his laptop and see if he could access any open networks. If you were to do a Google search, I'll bet you could find a lot of people who openly admit to having done exactly the same thing that Paul did. In fact, I'm told by Paul's uncle that the local FBI agents apparently even expressed some interest in using Mr. Timmins as an expert witness in future cases, because of the level of cooperation he gave them in this case. So it seems to me that the whole plea bargain thing was a way for everyone to extract themselves from a bad situation without "losing face", as they say in parts of Asia. Mr. Timmins never should have been charged; had the driver of the car not been his roommate, or if his physical appearance had been significantly different from that of the perp, or if he'd never loaned that wireless card (which as I understand it was a cheap, low-grade card to begin with) to the perp at some point in the past, he might never have been charged at all. Had he been rich and able to afford better legal representation, his case would probably never have gone to trial (I'm not saying he had bad lawyers, but I can't imagine a rich person being put through this under similar circumstances). Something to think about -- if you sit in the parking lot outside a business that offers a wi-fi "hotspot" and check your e-mail, have you committed a crime? Remember, if that access is provided for customers of that business, and if you're just sitting in the parking lot, you're technically not a customer. Well, as best I can tell, that's just about the extent of what Paul did all those months ago (granted that Lowes doesn't advertise wireless access, but on the other hand they don't put up signs saying "do not access our wireless network", and apparently they didn't bother much with security either). Now admittedly, what I have written above is partly my own speculation based on hearsay. For a long time Paul avoided discussing the case at all, on the advice of his attorney. So a little bit of what is above I heard from him directly, and some was from his uncle or someone else familiar with the case, and some is probably me trying to fill in the blanks. Some of the above may even be wrong, but I'll bet it's a lot more factual than some of the stories I've seen in the press. One reason I have an interest in this is that all of this had a ripple effect that affected me personally. A few years ago my friend (Paul's uncle) had set up a web server that housed several web sites, including (among other things) my "Resources for Michigan Telephone Users" page and the associated MI-Telecom mailing list. After some time this server was moved to Paul's apartment, because he had better connectivity there. Well, the night all this happened, the FBI apparently raided the apartment and carted off all the working computers (I guess if a computer was powered up, they took it). And those computers have yet to be returned to Mr. Timmins. So my web site and the mailing list went down for several weeks until I could get them re-established elsewhere, and I suspect that several other people were similarly inconvenienced -- including users of the telcodata.us database, which was on a different computer at Paul's apartment that was also seized. Pat, imagine how you would feel if one night you tried to access the Telecom Digest web site and archives and found that they were gone, and your entire subscriber list was gone, and your mailing list software was gone -- in short, everything that is the Telecom Digest was gone through no fault of your own. And then you found out that the server was carted off in the middle of the night by the authorities. It is a real sickening feeling. I had backups of the web site but no place to put them. I had a very stale list of subscribers to the mailing list, and no way to contact anyone who'd subscribed in the few months prior to the seizure. I have to tell you that I was pretty depressed for a few days. Not only that, but since Paul had been advised not to discuss the case with anyone, I couldn't even explain to anyone why the site went down, because I didn't have all the facts myself. And beyond all that, I have a theory that some segments of the media attempt to sensationalize stories of this type as much as possible, because they realize that people who spend time on the Internet might not feel the need to buy their newspapers or watch their television news. So any time they can say anything bad about the Internet or the people who use it, they're right there and they don't tend to let silly things like facts get in the way of their sensational story! In this case, there was some incorrect information released by the authorities to the press early on, which implicated Mr. Timmins as one of the actual perpetrators. Most later stories have simply copied and built upon the incorrect information in the earlier stories. How would you like it if any time someone did a Google search on your name they'd pull up news stories saying that you were, for example, a major car thief when all you had ever really been convicted of was a minor traffic offense? So maybe people should not be so quick to rush to judgment based on what they read in a newspaper or on some wire service. And that's all I will say about it. Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Jack, I know **exactly** what you speak of; the observations I made in my note were based on the assumption that Paul *was* in the car; after all, the newspapers do not lie or take short cuts on stories. They get their data from police, and police do not lie or take short cuts in justice either. And I assumed that if Paul pleaded guilty, he must have been guilty. With his excellent legal representation (police are certain to give that to everyone, the very finest in public pretenders -- oops, I meant defenders -- in the system), I was certain the thought of pleading guilty just to expedite the matter instead of being detained for years on end and having an equal number of years of his life ruined by prison, and spending many thousands of unavailable dollars on a lawyer whose work would mainly consist of making a swap of one guy for another with the prosecutor (plead that one guilty but let me have this one be innocent) never occurred to him. If he pleaded guilty, then By God, he must have been guilty, because police and prosecutors do not lie about those things and neither do any citizens who care about Truth, Justice and the American Way. Yes, Jack, please excuse me for my asssumptions; I spend far too much time reading the trash in the newspapers also, and believing in the honesty and concern in newspaper reporters and their unimpeachable sources, the police. PAT] ------------------------------ From: friedebach@yahoo.com (Eric Friedebach) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: 11 Aug 2004 23:59:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com PAT noted in TELECOM Digest V23 #374: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think in any shopping center > parking lot his argument would be very convincing. Please correct me > on this as needed, but I have been told that wireless routers only > have an optimal range of 200-300 feet. When I put mine in recently, I > was told I could go outside my house and maybe the house on either > side of me or the house across the street and still reach it. But the > house on my west side is vacant, a large size double lot separates me > from the house on the east side, and I know the people directly > across the street from me are very unlikely to know about or care > about computers at all, let alone wireless ones. When I go out on my > own back porch with a laptop, depending exactly on how I sit in my > chair allows me to keep or lose the connection. And this is a very > rural area; I would notice almost immediatly any car parked in front > of my house or in the alley on my west side. Plus which I have told > the router to only respond to the name given to the card, and I have > told the card not to broadcast its name, plus I use some encryption, > so I feel relatively safe. > Now my friend who got me the card and wireless router did say if I > mounted a highly directional antenna out of my window I could probably > go 'one mile or so' and still get the signal. Is that correct? So when > a person parks in a parking lot at a shopping center, how likely is it > they will receive signals from some store in the mall? My frame of > reference is the only thing like it we have here in town, the Walmart > Super Center on the west side of town, and I just cannot picture such > a scene there, but maybe I am wrong. PAT] I would guess that the type of equipment that Lowe's uses are a bit more robust than consumer grade stuff as far as signal range goes. A friend of mine works for Lowe's, traveling to various stores doing audits. I'll ask him just what the expected range he gets with his company laptop. Quite a few truck stops offer wireless connections, and they are *huge*. They would need to have signal coverage bigger than a few hundred feet. Last month, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car doing some work on my own new laptop while driving through a metro interchange. It amazed me how many spots kept popping up. Where they protected? Who knows. Since then, I have disabled the connection. I have my own PCMCIA card from Sprint, so I don't need to search for available spots for reasons other folks have posted in response to the original article. Eric Friedebach /Favorite OnStar commercial: crying woman drops keys in toilet/ ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: 11 Aug 2004 17:59:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just got through a number porting glitch between SBC and Vonage. I did the paper work then went out of town. I took my Vonage box along and left the home phone forwarding to the Vonage box. Then several days went by without any incoming calls. Turns out SBC disconnected my home phone service but the home phone number was not immediately connected to Vonage. People who tried to call me got a busy signal. I called Vonage when I noticed this and they got things fixed in 24 hours. Appears to me the number porting process is a big headache for everyone involved. I'm glad I can keep my old SBC number. I'm not being hard on SBC or Vonage about this, it's over. In the meantime if you port a number to a VOIP service be alert to the possibility that the number doesn't port properly and no one can call you on the ported number until you notice that and alert the new carrier and they fix it. Having said all that, on balance, I'm very satisfied with my Vonage service despite a few glitches. (I would not rely on VOIP without a backup, cell phone, land line, or nearby pay phone regardless of who is the provider.) But, advantages like simultaneous ring and portabil- ity of the Vonaage box more than compensate for the few glitches I've seen so far. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 01:48:34 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > What have people experienced with other transfers, to CLECs or wireless? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our local CLEC, Prairie Stream Communi- > cations does it all the time. Existing customers who move away from > SBC on our local 620-331 exchange keep the very same number. The > transfer is transparent. Does Prairie Stream do their own switching, or are they a reseller? If the latter, there would be no change in call routing, just in the billing arrangements. Maybe I should have confined my enquiry to wireless. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They have been a UNI-P type CLEC, which is to say they lease *everything* (not just a few parts) from the incumbent carrier, SBC. But they are now in the process of converting to a full-fledged carrier in their own right. They are now in the process of pulling fiber through the utility holes around town and constructing a central office directly across the alley from the SBC central office at 6th and Maple. They hope to have the conversion finished at the end of this year or early in 2005. At the present time they work out of a cage at the SBC switch, and SBC, in true fashion, is making it extremely difficult and expensive for them to continue the arrangement. New -- that is non-SBC or other telco customers -- who wish to go with Prairie Stream were being assigned numbers in the 620-714 exchange. Existing -- that is SBC Independence customers, all of whom are in the local exchange (out of 6th and Maple) -- wishing to go with Prairie Stream keep their existing 620-331 number. After all, 'EDison-1' (331) is the only exchange here in town with a few exceptions for centrex subscribers and cell phone customers who are '330' or '332', and people want to keep their same number if possible. I know when I switched to Prairie Stream now more than a year ago, SBC made a terrible stink about it: They told Duane (PS owner) "you can't have him since he is a DSL customer". I told SBC in that case just pull the DSL out. Mike Flood over at CableOne put me on internet the same day by tapping a few keys on his computer, and when SBC finally got around to 'allowing it', Duane cut me onto Prairie Stream with a few taps on his keyboard. Never a minute of downtime on phone or internet. Prairie Stream 'mirrors' my entire phone account on their system for $24.95 per month, not the hundred dollars plus per month that SBC wanted. Would you believe I still, now a year later, keep getting 'we want you back' letters in the mail from SBC with one kind of outrageous offer and another? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Strange Spoof E-Mails Organization: Symantec Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:14:09 -0400 In article , Neal McLain wrote: > Within the past week, I've received two spoof e-mails, one purporting > to be from CityBank and one from USbank (and I'm not even a USbank > customer). They're obviously fake attempts to get me to enter > confidential information. But they differ from previous spoofs I've > received in two curious respects: > - They include a couple lines of random words that > aren't visible in the message (white text on white > background, I assume). Example (from the USbank > spoof): "in 1842 Geena Davis Not bad. Leonardo Di > Caprio in 1814 in 1969 Download in 1900 Nascar > Personals Tool Atkins Diet NY Yankees Harley Davidson." > - The actual message is a .gif image, not text. > Furthermore, it isn't even a link, so I couldn't > click on it even if I wanted to! These are both attempts to get past spam filters. If the filter looks for words in text, it won't be able to find them in the GIF image (unless spam filters start using OCR technology). And the random white-on-white sentences are presumably intended to make Bayesian filters screw up. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: "Tony P." Subject: Re: Any Experience With Verizon NJ Centrex? Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:39:35 GMT In article , a_user2000@yahoo.com says: > Tony P. wrote in message > news:: >> In article , chrispchang@yahoo.com >> says: >>> Hi, I'm new to this group but seems like there are a number of >>> knowledgeable telecom folks here. I am opening a small office (6 >>> people with potential to expand to max of 15). In looking at phone >>> systems, we want basic voicemail functionality, caller id and call >>> waiting caller id. >>> I am thinking about using Centrex offered by Verizon NJ instead of >>> purchasing a phone system. Was wondering if anyone had any opinions >>> from experience with using this? We intend to get Centrex compatible >>> display phones so users don't have to deal with switchook/flash button >>> stuff. >>> Appreciate any responses. >> From an accounting perspective, the Centrex is a month to month expense, >> while buying a system gives you the depreciation over time plus the cost >> of the loops as a monthly expense. >> I don't like Centrex because you're on the hook to Verizon until you >> decide to put your own system in. >> Right now you can get systems that will expand to what you need for >> < $1000. >> You don't mention how many CO lines you'll be using. There is a >> difference. WIth Centrex, every phone is a CO line that you'll pay >> for. With you own system, you only pay for those CO lines you tie >> into the KSU or PBX. >> Let's say you have 6 extensions with 4 CO loops at $30 a month using a >> KSU or PBX. >> Your initial cost going in is $1000, with a recurring monthly expense >> of $120, or $1,440 a year. So your cost in the first year is $2,440. >> Subsequent years would be $1,440. At year three you fully staff to 15 >> people and add 5 CO lines. Perhaps you'll spend $800 or so to upgrade >> the switch. Monthly your cost would now be $300 a month, $3,600 a year. >> Six Centrex loops at $25 a month, plus a rental fee on the phones of >> roughly $10 each per month comes out to $210 a month, or $2,520 a >> year. All subsequent years would cost approximately the same. >> When you fully staff, the cost now comes to $525 a month, or $6,300 a >> year. >> So you can see that in the long term, Centrex is a losing bet. Unless of >> course you want to increase your expenses. > What you have failed to account for in your business case is the cost > of maintenance on the PBX unit. Service calls on your PBX will cost > you an hourly rate that will vary depending on the local area and the > vendor providing the service. If you opt for a maintenance contract, > then it is an annual charge that may be billed on a monthly basis. > Costs for maintenance contracts vary depending on the type of coverage > required, but average, at least in our market, around $180 per port. Ah, that's my experience showing through. Haven't met a PBX or KSU that I couldn't fix yet. That's without the vendor. Usually having the vendor docs is all you need. Allocate what, a couple hundred a year for broken phones etc. Otherwise it's less expensive over time. $180 per port is ridiculous. At my last job we had a Definity G3i -- and Avaya was raping us on maintenance, charging pretty much what you state for 280 port system. Thing was, another agency got rid of their G3i and we took it. Had all the line cards, station cards, tone clocks, CPU's etc. that we'd ever need. And we had the craft password for the system so we could reset alarms. In the end we cut our maintenance from almost $4000 a month to $800 a month. All we covered were the CPU, tape drive and power supplies. Still excessive as far as I'm concerned but a heck of a savings. ------------------------------ Date: 11 Aug 2004 22:11:10 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article you write: > In one of the posts PAT had mentioned that Vonage to Vonage traffic > goes completely over Vonage network. Vonage claims that they do not > have any network infrastructure. Is my understanding of Voange's claim > wrong or Vonage's traffic is carried over public IP network? All of Vonage's traffic is carried over the public IP network. If you call a normal phone, it goes from your terminal adapter box over the net to Vonage's servers in New Jersey, where it hops onto the regular phone network. If someone calls you, the call goes to the CLEC switch that handles your phone number, which (as far as I can tell) then sends the call to your TA over the net. In my case, for example, I have an Ithaca, NY number and the switch is in Syracuse, in the same building as all the other toll switches for this LATA. But if one Vonage customer calls another, Vonage tells the two TAs to talk directly to each other over the net, without routing the call through Vonage's servers at all. This is nice and efficient, but makes calls hard to tap since there's no central switch where one could make a copy of the data. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: nospamwanted Subject: Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:52:02 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:58:17 GMT, L wrote: > Pelco Sales & Service wrote in message > news:telecom23.374.10@telecom-digest.org: > Do you have any consumer rights? NOPE. The contract you signed for the > equipment lease specifically states you are a BUSINESS and WILL NOT be > using it for personal use. Businesses don't have consumer protection > laws. In theory, a business owner should be a bit more (intelligent? knowledgeable?) than the small percentage of consumers who are at the lower end of the IQ scale. Certainly, business owners should have insisted on an escape clause, and rejected many of the (alleged) terms of the lease. > Firstly, you need insurance for that equipment. The sales spiel was > that you were not obligated to purchase from the leaseholder, you > could research getting your own. As you have most likely found out, > your insurance company could not provide insurance for 10-60 times > actual value. Your leaseholder does. That smacks of insurance fraud to > me ... and wouldn't it be the civic thing to provide your state's > insurance board with copies of your insurance policy and lease > agreements for that equipment? Some properly worded letters, CC'd to > the leaseholder of course, might raise some state agency eyebrows. Sounds like a sure-fire proposition ;-> > And what about the fact that the equipment is leased at different > amounts to different businesses. Doesn't that point to some complicity > on the part of the lending agencies? Of course, the banking commission > might be interested in a lease that is so overvalued ... what happens > if you default and the bank has to repo the equipment? Banks usually > have strict guidelines as to how much risk they can take. The fact that the equipment is leased at different amounts is not really an issue. Telecom equipment may often be leased at different amounts because it has different capabilities. e.g. a PBX may have 4 or 400 lines. Plus, the down payments may differ. Norvergence made a lot of noise about "patented technology" and having a unique solution. So how was the bank supposed to know the fair market value of the equipment? Norvergence was the only distributor, and Adtran's name was not mentioned. The banks and leasing companies probably just used the values other people paid for the equipment. Thus, the people who signed the leases put the value on the equipment for themselves, and for each other. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why I suggested the small > business owner *freeze all accounts payable to Norvergence and Scam > Associates* and mitigate their own losses by paying **nothing** until > instructed to do so by a court or their attorney. PAT] Pat, Occasionally, someone would find my name in the archives and call me to ask about Norvergence. I've kept my eye on Norvergence from the beginning, although at first their proposition seemed reasonable -- they claimed to use VoATM to save 20% on your phone bill. (However, I'll bet many small businesses can save 20% just by changing carriers.) As the questionable practices started to become public, a few people called. I mentioned the lease, and they were not concerned by it, they were only concerned with saving money. One guy was more concerned by the fact that he had to act within the week or he'd have to wait another three months. I don't have as much sympathy for the guys who signed the leases as you do. These people should have read the leases, and should have been able to understand them. If they rejected Norvergence's offer entirely, the worst that would have happened would have been that they continued to pay for telecom services at their existing rate. Instead the customers were also motivated by greed. Norvergence is not without blame, but then neither is the customer. Is there anyone who did a proper contract review, and asked "what happens if the service is so lousy I can't use it, or Norvergence goes out of business" and then still signed up with Norvergence? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I tend to support the little guy. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:21:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: US to Allow SBC, BellSouth to Buy Back Spectrum WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust authorities said on Wednesday they would allow SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC) and BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS) to buy back some of the wireless licenses they were forced to divest when forming Cingular Wireless four years ago. The Justice Department said it had agreed to modify a 2000 agreement with the companies that had barred them from reacquiring spectrum licenses in California and Indiana, removing a potential obstacle to the deal. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are still reviewing Cingular's $41 billion cash bid for AT&T Wireless Services Inc.(NYSE:AWE) The department's antitrust division is studying whether it would hobble competition in the wireless business. Without the modification, Cingular's proposed acquisition of AT&T Wireless would put SBC and BellSouth in violation of the earlier agreement, the department said. The change is subject to the condition that the companies not buy control of some other spectrum currently being used by AT&T Wireless in parts of Indiana, the department said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43051683 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 17:20:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone Cisco Systems Ships Its Millionth Internet Protocol Telephone in Europe to BEC Denmark - Aug 11, 2004 02:44 PM (BusinessWire) COPENHAGEN, Denmark--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2004-- Danish Customer Bankernes EDB Central (BEC) to Deploy IP Communications in 78 Banks; Largest Project of its kind in Denmark Cisco Systems today announced that it has shipped its one millionth Internet Protocol (IP) telephone in Europe. The recipient is Bankernes EDB Central (BEC), a leading Danish technology provider to 78 banks in the country. The millionth IP phone is part of a shipment of 6,000 IP phones being installed over the next three years, making this the single largest IP telephony project in Denmark to date. To mark this milestone, Tim Stone, Head of IP Communications Marketing for EMEA, Cisco Systems, awarded Leo Svendsen, Director, BEC, with a commemorative phone at a special ceremony at BEC headquarters in Roskilde, Denmark on 9th August. With the majority of BEC's customers being small- to medium-sized banks in Denmark, it is important the solutions provided to them are cost effective and installed with minimum disruption to business. In a close alliance with Cisco Systems and NetDesign, a leading Danish IT and telephony systems integrator, BEC now has the full capability to deliver IP enabled solutions including data centres, PCs, routers and operational systems, which Danish banks of any size can take advantage of. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43047145 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 19:40:44 -0400 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Check 21 Consumer's Union recommends that you have your bank send you "substitute checks" for all your checks, and that you find a bank that will do this for free. They say that legally, a photocopy of a check isn't actual proof, but a substitute check will be. * Original: FROM..... Dave Farber Begin forwarded message: From: Monty Solomon < > Date: August 11, 2004 1:31:33 AM EDT Subject: Check 21 Questions and Answers About the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, "Check 21" http://www.consumersunion.org/finance/ckclear1002.htm Banks No Longer Will Return Original Cancelled Checks http://www.consumerlaw.org/initiatives/check21.shtml NCR Check 21 Resource Center http://www.ncr.com/solutions/payment_solutions/check21.htm Federal Reserve http://www.frbservices.org/Retail/check21About.html http://www.frbservices.org/Retail/Check21.html ABA http://www.aba.com/About+ABA/CheckTruncationAct.htm Electronic-Check.org http://electronic-check.org/ ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Correction From Editor: was Re: Internet Connection Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 21:00:54 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Where did you get that one? I saw it > also, but you did NOT get it from TELECOM Digest. I did not pass it. > PAT] Well, it sure as heck LOOKS like I got it from Telecom Digest. Here are the headers: Path:nwrddc04.gnilink.net!cyclone2.gnilink.net!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!128.230.129.106!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!telecom-digest.org!ptownson Date: 9 Aug 2004 09:19:19 -0700 From: codemonkey74@yahoo.com (CodeMonkey74) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Internet Connection Message-ID: Organization: http://groups.google.com Sender: editor@telecom-digest.org Approved: [comp.dcom.telecom/e29e4a8fbb9059c4356072c008715cf1] X-URL: http://telecom-digest.org/ X-Submissions-To: editor@telecom-digest.org X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 23, Issue 371, Message 20 of 21 Lines: 11 Xref: cyclone1.gnilink.net comp.dcom.telecom:21469 X-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:13:56 EDT (nwrddc04.gnilink.net) Just thought I'd drop by and say thanks to all the people who tried to help me with my internet problems. AAARGH!!!! I almost missed turning in my HUGE psych paper, and Kenna was suffering from nickjr.com withdrawals ;). I finally just gave up and switched (in case you were wondering, it's Comcast 19.99 for 6 months, 75 bucks cash back and a free modem http://specials.comcastoffers.com). The guy I talked to said the online place was the only way to get the free modem. Anyway, it's fast!!!! I downloaded a coloring book for Kenna in like 2 secs. Thanks again, time to study. KM [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct; I stand corrected and apologize. Now and again spam does get through. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #377 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 13 13:43:01 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7DHh0c20314; Fri, 13 Aug 2004 13:43:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 13:43:01 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408131743.i7DHh0c20314@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 #378 TELECOM Digest Fri, 13 Aug 2004 13:43:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 378 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Ex-Verizon Wireless Employee Charged (Monty Solomon) DoubleClick Announces Compliance With Sender ID for Email (M Solomon) T-Mobile USA Reports Second Quarter 2004 Results (Monty Solomon) Teen Pleads Guilty to Releasing Blaster Worm Variant (Monty Solomon) VeriSign To Integrate Sender ID Specifications Into Email (M Solomon) News Corporation Reports Third Consecutive Year Double-Digit (Solomon) EFFector 17.29: Calling All Tech-Savvy Lawyers! (Monty Solomon) DirecTV Slashes PanAmSat Price by $200 Million (Monty Solomon) Verizon Wireless Motorola V710 Megapixel Camera Phone (Monty Solomon) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Paul Vader) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Robert Bonomi) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Jack) Telogy and TI platform phones (ImOkYoureNot) Re: US West History (Al Gillis) Re: US West History (Lisa Hancock) Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification (John R. Covert) 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: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:49:50 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Ex-Verizon Wireless Employee Charged By DON THOMPSON Associated Press Writer SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- A former Verizon Wireless employee was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on charges he stole more than $20 million from the company's prepaid cellular telephone service. Timothy Charles Mattos, 32, of Folsom, was indicted on 10 fraud and money laundering counts. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. As a customer service representative, Mattos had access to a password-protected Verizon computer account in which the company kept a record of prepaid cell phone minutes. Customers on the plan could buy cards on which were printed 15-digit personal identification numbers. They would then call a telephone number to activate the prepaid minutes to make a telephone call. Mattos is alleged to have copied more than $20 million worth of the 15-digit numbers and sold them on his own between November 2002 and March. He continued accessing the Web site and copying the numbers even after he left the company in November 2003, the charges allege. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43083910 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:57:26 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DoubleClick Announces Compliance With Sender ID for Email -- Company Embraces Authenticated Email Solution to Help Counter Spam, Email Spoofing and Phishing -- NEW YORK, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DoubleClick Inc. (Nasdaq: DCLK), the leading provider of technology solutions for marketers, advertising agencies and web publishers, today announced that its DARTmail email management system is fully compliant with Microsoft's Sender ID framework. DoubleClick is the first Email Service Provider to announce its compliance with Sender ID. The announcement was made today at the Email Service Provider Coalition's (ESPC's) Sender ID Summit at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Sender ID, which is designed to eliminate domain spoofing and better enable email recipients to identify and filter junk mail, allows the recipient to verify that each e-mail message originates from the Internet domain it claims to come from based on the sender's server IP address. As such, compliance with the Sender ID framework ensures email sent by DoubleClick's customers will be more easily identifiable as coming from a legitimate source rather than from spoofed domains commonly associated with spam and phishing scams. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43065171 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:00:05 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: T-Mobile USA Reports Second Quarter 2004 Results BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 12, 2004--T-Mobile USA, Inc.: -- 1.092 million new net customers added in Q2 2004 -- New net customers totaled 2.27 million during the first half of 2004, up from 1.53 million for the first half of 2003 -- Customer base currently at 15.4 million, compared to 11.4 million mid year 2003, an increase of 4 million for the 12 months -- $717 million in Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortization (OIBDA) in Q2 2004, up 46% from Q1 2004 T-Mobile USA, Inc. ("T-Mobile USA") the U.S. operation of T-Mobile International AG & Co. KG ("T-Mobile International"), the mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG ("Deutsche Telekom") (NYSE:DT), today announced second quarter 2004 results. All financial amounts are in USD and are based on accounting principles generally accepted in the United States ("GAAP") in order to provide comparability with the results of other U.S. wireless carriers. T-Mobile USA results are included in the consolidated results of Deutsche Telekom, but differ from the information contained herein as Deutsche Telekom reports its financial results in accordance with German generally accepted accounting principles. In the second quarter of 2004, T-Mobile USA added 1,092,000 net customers, compared with 1,174,000 added in the first quarter of 2004 and 606,000 in the second quarter of 2003. About 86% of the growth in the second quarter of 2004 came from new postpay customers, which currently comprise 89% of the customer base. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43059239 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:01:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Teen Pleads Guilty to Releasing Blaster Worm Variant Teen pleads guilty to releasing Blaster worm variant SEATTLE, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A teenager pleaded guilty on Wednesday for unleashing a variant of the Blaster worm that infected computers worldwide last year and targeted computers at Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), prosecutors said. Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, of Hopkins, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Seattle, and faces a maximum of 37 months in prison and financial restitution that could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sentencing is scheduled for November. Parson said in the plea agreement that he created his "B" or "teekids" variant of the Blaster worm and used it to access fifty computers which he then used to launch a broader attack on more than 48,000 computers. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43057167 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 10:58:32 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: VeriSign To Integrate Sender ID Specifications Into Email Verified Domains List, an Added Layer of Protection Against Spam, Will Be Made Available by VeriSign to Further Complement Sender ID MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and REDMOND, Wash., THE ESPC SENDER ID SUMMIT, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), the leading provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced it will work to integrate Microsoft's Sender ID Framework specifications into VeriSign's Email Security Service. This move is part of the industry-wide effort to implement authenticated email solutions to combat the growing problem of spam. Sender ID, a draft technical specification submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), will verify that email messages actually originate from the Internet domain shown in the address. Based on the sender's server IP address, Sender ID aims to eliminate domain spoofing, helping legitimate senders to protect their domain names and reputations and allowing recipients to more effectively identify and filter junk email. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43063552 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 11:03:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Corporation Reports Third Consecutive Year of Double-Digit NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2004--The News Corporation Limited (NYSE:NWS, NWSA): -- EARNINGS RELEASE FOR THE QUARTER AND FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 2004 IN U.S. DOLLARS PREPARED FOR THE U.S. MARKET. AUSTRALIAN READERS SHOULD REFER TO THE AUSTRALIAN DOLLAR EARNINGS RELEASE -- NET PROFIT INCREASES 57% TO A RECORD $1.6 BILLION AND RECORD CASH FLOW FROM OPERATIONS OF $2.4 BILLION GROWS 47% OVER FISCAL 2003 -- FULL YEAR OPERATING INCOME INCREASES 21% TO A RECORD $3.1 BILLION ON REVENUE GROWTH OF 20% -- FOURTH QUARTER OPERATING INCOME OF $747 MILLION, A 31% INCREASE, ON REVENUE GROWTH OF 20% FULL YEAR HIGHLIGHTS -- Record Filmed Entertainment operating income up 38% on continued strength of home entertainment sales of film and television titles and string of theatrical hits. -- Strong advertising growth at Fox News and FX and higher affiliate revenues at the Regional Sports Networks drives record operating income up 43% at Cable Network Programming. -- Television segment operating income up 12% as higher pricing increases advertising revenues at the broadcast network and fuels record operating income at television stations and STAR. -- All print businesses report higher earnings contributions: advertising and circulation revenue gains in the U.K. and Australia drive record operating income at Newspapers, higher contributions from free-standing inserts volume lifts Magazines and Inserts; array of bestsellers fuels record operating income at Book Publishing. -- Completed acquisition of a 34% interest in The DIRECTV Group. -- Announced plan of reorganization that would change the Company's place of incorporation to the United States by the end of calendar 2004. QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS -- Tenth consecutive quarter of revenue and operating income growth. -- Higher earnings contributions across nearly all operating segments led by double-digit growth at Television, Cable Network Programming and Newspapers segments. -- SKY Italia operating losses decline $49 million from a year ago as subscriber base expands to nearly 2.7 million with over 90% of new subscribers opting for a premium-programming tier. The News Corporation Limited (NYSE:NWS, NWSA) today reported fourth quarter consolidated revenues of $5.5 billion, a 20% increase over the $4.6 billion in the prior year, and full year revenues of $21.0 billion, an increase of 20% over the $17.5 billion reported a year ago. Consolidated operating income for the fourth quarter of $747 million was up 31% over the $570 million reported a year ago. For the full year, operating income was a record $3.1 billion, an increase of 21% over the $2.5 billion reported in fiscal 2003 despite the inclusion of $267 million in losses from SKY Italia during the current year. Fiscal 2003 results included $68 million in losses from SKY Italia for the two months ended June 30, 2003. The Company's 31% fourth quarter growth and record full year operating income were driven by double-digit increases across nearly all of its operating segments. Net profit for the fourth quarter was $399 million, an increase of $29 million over the $370 million reported in the fourth quarter a year ago. For the full year net profit was $1.6 billion, an increase of $601 million over the $1.0 billion in fiscal 2003. Net profit before other items in the fourth quarter increased to $429 million ($0.29 per ADR) versus $320 million ($0.24 per ADR) reported in the prior year and full year net profit before other items increased to $1.7 billion ($1.20 per ADR), an increase of $585 million over the $1.1 billion ($0.83 per ADR) reported in fiscal 2003. Fourth quarter and full year increases were primarily due to higher consolidated operating income and significant improvement in net profit from associated entities. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43049882 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 01:09:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.29: Calling All Tech-Savvy Lawyers! EFFector Vol. 17, No. 29 August 12, 2004 ren@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 301st Issue of EFFector: * Calling All Tech-Savvy Lawyers! * Sunshine Sought for Texas Election Systems Examiners * Maryland E-Voting Suit Pushes to Decertify Diebold Machines * EFF Supports Distribution of INDUCE Hearing on P2P * Freedom Fest 2004 - Another Great Success! * MiniLinks (9): The Revolution Will Be Downloaded, then Televised * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/29.php ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 19:07:19 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DirecTV Slashes PanAmSat Price by $200 Million PHILADELPHIA, Aug 12 (Reuters) - DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE:DTV) on Thursday agreed to sell its satellite affiliate for 7 percent less than previously negotiated as a discount to cover the failure of one of its satellites. Recent technical troubles on one of PanAmSat Corp.'s (NASDAQ:SPOT) 24 satellites, which shortened its expected operating life-span to about three years from seven years, had given its buyers the right to walk away under the terms of their agreement. As a result, satellite TV company DirecTV agreed to reduce the price it would be paid for its stake in PanAmSat -- which transmits television programming and telecommunications traffic -- by $200 million to $2.6 billion. The buyers -- Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Providence Equity Partners and Carlyle Group -- still would pay the original $23.50 per share price to the other PanAmSat shareholders, DirecTV said. That would bring the total value of the deal to about $3.35 billion, based on the original purchase price of $3.55 billion. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43068003 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:33:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Wireless Motorola V710 Megapixel Camera Phone Sleek Flip-Phone Delivers Extreme Photo Functionality Coupled with Cool Cutting-Edge Bluetooth(R) Wireless Technology BEDMINSTER, N.J. and LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Aug. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Attention gadget-loving customers, the wait is over -- Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless service provider, and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT), a global leader in wireless communications, announced the availability of the highly- anticipated Motorola V710 wireless phone. With integrated 1.2 mega-pixel camera, video playback, record and messaging, along with integrated Bluetooth wireless technology, the Motorola V710 is available exclusively to Verizon Wireless customers. Looking to do more with a phone than talk? The Motorola V710 delivers a complete package for today's mobile customers with its sleek look and popular features. One of the first CDMA mega-pixel camera phones in the United States to date, the Motorola V710 is the perfect convergence device. The phone's integrated 1.2 mega-pixel camera allows customers to snap better photos than ever before, as well as shoot and playback video clips. Coupled with the separately purchased custom designed Bluetooth headset, the wireless, cordless device is the must-have device of the year. The Motorola V710 is also Get It Now(R)-enabled, offering customers even more options in an already full-featured device. With several shopping aisles to choose from, Get It Now provides access to a plethora of downloadable applications including games, ringtones, productivity tools and more. Customers can quickly and easily select from 500 downloadable applications in the Get It Now virtual store. Features The Motorola V710 features include: * 1.2 mega-pixel camera * Video capture, playback and messaging * Bluetooth wireless connectivity * Speaker independent voice dialing * Office quality speaker phone * Stereo sound * TransFlash memory expansion slot * Mobile Web 2.0(SM) capable * Get It Now capable * Large 2.2" internal color display * Large 1.3" external color display * PIM functionality with picture caller-ID * Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) * E-mail: POP3, SMTP, IMAP4* - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43070239 ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:45:47 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Jack writes: [long tale of woe deleted] > Mr. Vader's moralizing, where he says, "at worst, you're in jail like > Mr. Timmins" shows his total ignorance of the case. My understanding I was responding to a digest article, which quoted a story in the news. And I fail to see where 'moralizing' even enters into it. I don't have any basis, even a name, to document your story, but we have the news article. Which are you going to believe at a glance? This isn't a court of law -- it's a frelling news digest. I hope things work out for your friend, but you don't do him any favors by flying off the handle. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:00:11 +0000 In article , Dave Garland wrote: > It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: >> Now my friend who got me the card and wireless router did say if I >> mounted a highly directional antenna out of my window I could probably >> go 'one mile or so' and still get the signal. Is that correct? > At the recent DEFCON hacker convention in Vegas, a couple of teenagers > managed to get 55.1 miles, and said they probably could have gotten > more if they hadn't run out of road. Granted, the antennas were 10 > foot satellite dishes, so that would adversely impact the portability > of your laptop :). > Two women who improvised an antenna out of "cardboard, duct tape, and > a car sun visor" managed 0.82 miles. > The world record is 192 miles, but Swedish Space Corporation used a > weather balloon and RF amplification so that was sort of cheating. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I think the 'couple of teenagers' > at Vegas were too smart for their own good. Is the idea to be able > to stand on the roof of your house naked and show everyone all your > stuff or is the idea to be able to get some kind of convenient mix > between flexibilty and privacy? So they got 55 miles? Sounds very > impressive until you realize how many people in the span of that > 55 miles were eager to see what those boys were doing with their > computers and had WiFi cards of their own they could use to explore > the boys' computers in more detail. After all, the more people who > get in the middle between the base station and yourself, the greater > the likelyhood of *someone* -- at least one malcontent -- along the > way spying on you successfully, encryption and answering to one non- > broadcasted MAC address only not withstanding. Of course, finding the > proper mix between flexibilty and privacy is dependent on your > circumstances, but 55 miles? PAT, you don't know what you don't know. I've seen the gear the guys that got the 55 mi point-to-point distance used. A 'standard' system, at virtually any point in-between those two *very* special antennas would -not- have been able to get into the network. If someone trying to intercept the traffic were relatively close to one end or the other, they might, using *VERY*SPECIALIZED* equipment, be able to passively listen in to _one_side_ of the traffic. "standard" equipment, just like a modern high-speed modem, won't show -anything- without some 'negotiation' between the two ends. With Diffie-Hellman key exchange, or similar practices, being able to listen to only one side of the traffic gives you *nothing* to work with. With the actual antenna equipment they used, anybody trying to 'intercept' any part of the traffic would have had to had their receiving antenna _very_ close to the straight-line path between the two antennas. like no more than about 20', horizontally or vertically. Also, anybody 'in the middle' who had up "enough antenna" to capture a 'usable' signal would almost assuredly have interfered enough with the 'end-to-end' signal strength to the point that the end-to-end connection would not have been usable. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:46:12 -0400 From: Jack Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Pat, please conceal my e-mail address as usual. I have one correction to my earlier post and some additional information. First, I had said that I was told by Paul's uncle that the local FBI agents apparently even expressed some interest in using Mr. Timmins as an expert witness in future cases, because of the level of cooperation he gave them in this case. That *was* what I was told, but it was inaccurate -- actually it was Paul's attorney that wanted to use him as an expert in future cases, not the FBI. The AP issued a correction earlier this week that is starting to be picked up by some of the papers that carried the original story (wonder how far back in the papers it got buried, though). You can read it at: http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw102484_20040809.htm A far more interesting and enlightening article (though perhaps just a bit dated) is this one by Kevin Poulsen at SecurityFocus: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9281 A couple of significant excerpts from that article: [Excerpt #1:] "I tried to discourage Adam several times," says Timmins. "He kept saying, 'They won't catch us.' I'm like, 'Whatever. Don't do it here.'" [Adam was the guy who actually did the hacking.] [Excerpt #2:] Cyberlaw lawyer Jennifer Granick, director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, agrees with the government that Timmins' is likely the first wardriving conviction. But she isn't convinced that he actually committed a crime. "Using an open wireless access point isn't the same thing as using a computer illegally," says Granick. "Convictions for this type of thing are possible where it's part of a larger criminal case, but it shouldn't happen in the absence of some other criminal purpose, like stealing credit cards, or knowledge that the network is closed. Wardriving isn't criminal." "All he did was check his e-mail and try to browse the Internet," said Botbyl. "That's the only connectivity he had with their network. He didn't do anything at all... I think the only reason they charged him is because they arrested him." [End of excerpts] My thought on this is that even if the simple act of access were technically illegal, to me this almost seems on the order of walking across the corner of a neighbor's yard, where technically you might be guilty of trespass but unless you had scaled a fence or something (or had at least been warned not to do it in some way), you'd be very shocked to actually get arrested for trespassing, let alone convicted of it. You really have to wonder about our system of justice sometimes -- we have so many laws on the books that are never enforced unless it's convenient for the authorities to do so, then some poor sap who's doing the same thing that maybe thousands of other people have done (very often quite openly) gets in trouble for it. Ah, well, I'd best climb off the soapbox before I get going again. Personally, I like the security of wired networks, and wonder why any retail establishment would ever use wireless in the first place -- are they just too lazy/cheap to run networking cable to their cash registers? As a customer, I would not feel very secure know that my financial information is just floating through the air on a poorly secured system. I suppose that for most customers, "ignorance is bliss", though. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Jack, one thing perhaps you do not understand is that police have to have those jillions of 'technical' rules on the books. There has to always be some way of arresting the person(s) they dislike or are 'suspicious' of. Like your 'cutting across the corner of a lawn; get arrested for trespass' illustration. My favorite is the catch-all 'disorderly conduct'. It is used time and again when police feel they need some excuse to legitimatize their own conduct in arresting someone. Better if we had just a totalitarian country (don't we really, anyway?) where police could do as they wanted (isn't that the practical effect anyway?) Then maybe half of the foolish laws on the books could be removed. You may say well then we would live in an anarchy. Don't we anyway? ------------------------------ From: j_macaroni@yahoo.com (ImOkYoureNot) Subject: Telogy and TI platform Phones Date: 12 Aug 2004 10:22:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know of any manufacturers who use the TI platform and Telogy in their phones? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: US West History Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:35:08 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Jack Adams wrote in message news:telecom23.366.15@telecom-digest.org: > Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote in message > news:> Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? >> And what happened to the company, if so? >> 73, doug > Yes, the short answer is that it encompassed Mountain Bell and Pacific > Northwest Bell which covered almost the entire Northwestern quadrant US West's make up also included the former Bell System operating company, Northwestern Bell, which operated in several states including the Dakota's, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska. Pacific Northwest Bell had Oregon, Washington and part of Idaho. Mountain Bell (whose correct name was Mountain Statest Tel & Tel, as I recall) had the states in the mountain west. Overall, US West had pretty much the entire west except California and Nevada. The fun pretty much ended when Qwest International bought US West, changed the name and began sucking the money out of it. Al ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: US West History Date: 12 Aug 2004 18:58:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: > Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? I recommend the book "Muttering Machines to Laser Beams" by Herbert Hackenburg Jr, published by Mountain Bell. While primarily a history of Mountain Bell, it is also a good history of the Bell System. A good book. It has a particularly good account of nonsense frustrations the plant people had to go through to divy up between Bell and AT&T at the time of divesture. Marking tape ran literally through switching frames. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 01:39:59 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Vonage Traffic Clarification > But if one Vonage customer calls another, Vonage tells the two TAs to > talk directly to each other over the net, without routing the call > through Vonage's servers at all. While SIP has this capability, Vonage does not use it. Even Vonage to Vonage calls send the audio traffic via Vonage's switches, not directly between the TAs. I suppose this facilitates Vonage's ability to comply with court-ordered wiretaps. /john ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #378 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 13 19:16:09 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7DNG8k23874; Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:16:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:16:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408132316.i7DNG8k23874@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 #379 TELECOM Digest Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:15:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 379 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials (Anthony Bellanga) Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound;Threaten Me (L Hancock) Re: VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You (Frank@Nospam.com) OneSuite Now Available For Call Originating in Canada (Ray Normandeau) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Gordon S. Hlavenka) NBC Olympic Profits Seen Reaching $50 Million (Monty Solomon) Re: US West History (Tony P.) Some VoIP Calls Being Blocked (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Covad Tries an End Run (Jack Decker - VOIP News) 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: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 01:53:31 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Subject: 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials Reply-To: anthonybellanga@gonetoearth.com To protect myself against spam, PLEASE do NOT show my email address! Paul Coxwell wrote regarding old London UK telephone exchange names: > London used a 3L-4N system, making the selection of suitable names > somewhat harder in later years than in U.S. cities with their 2L-5N > system. The list below represents the exchange names as they stood > immediately prior to the change to all-figure numbering. It is taken > from the GPO booklet "Dialling Instructions and Call Charges, London, > 1968." > Notice that at the time of the change many exchanges were assigned a > new prefix, while others retained their existing code, now expressed > as all digits. The list shows the new prefixes resulting from the > change to all-figure numbering. Note that on British dials the letter > "O" was located on the zero, with just "MN" on the digit 6. While > this removed any possible confusion between zero/letter-O, it also > meant that no exchange names starting with O could be employed. Prior to the implemntation of STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling in the late 1950s or early 1960s, with "area codes" of the 0XX(X(etc)) format, the UK used '0' as a standalone digit code to reach the Operator, just like in the US and Canada. When STD Codes beginning with '0' came about, the local assistance operator in the UK was changed to '100'. (snip) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Paul for this special > report which will be specifically filed in the Archives history area. > I should point out that Chicago, Illinois also used the 3L-4D method > of numbering until about 1950 when it changed to 2L-5D for about ten > years before going entirely 7-D. Thanks again, Paul. PAT] In the US, there were only a total of four major cities that ever used 3L-4N. There were none ever in Canada. New York City (changed to 2L-5N circa 1930/31) Philadelphia (changed to 2L-5N circa Summer 1946) Chicago (changed to 2L-5N circa 1948/49) Boston (changed to 2L-5N circa 1949) In the UK, there were six "director" urban areas that used full seven- dial-pull dialling/numbering, all listed as 3-4N, these six having '0N1' format STD codes of the 1960s/70s/80s/early 1990s: 01 London (which split into 071 and 081) 021 Birmingham 031 Edinburgh 041 Glasgow 051 Liverpool 061 Manchester And the only other place in the world I can think of that had 3L exchange names (and a last four digits, for a "7-dial-pull" number, 3L-4N) was Paris (FRANCE). In Paris, the numeral '0' had the letter 'O' (as in the United Kingdom) as well as the letter 'Q'. Since the Operator and other special service codes, back in the old Exchange Name days, were two-digit codes '1X' in France, there was no "conflict" with starting off an Exchange Name with the letter 'O' (or 'Q'), thus the first digit of the office code being '0'. Paris had exchange/office codes/names OPEra (073) and ODEon (033) among others. Other towns in the UK and France had LESS than 7 "digit" (dial-pull) numbering or dialing back then. While I don't think any other parts of the world ever had any 3L-4N numbering (or at least 3-letter Exchange Names), in Denmark (at least in Kobenhaven), the dial had 3-letters for most of the digits on the dial, just like in the US, Canada, UK (at least the "director" areas). and France (at least Paris). The lettering was slightly different than the North American and even UK/France dial: 1 = 'C' (for "Central" ??) 2 = A B D 3 = E F G 4 = H I K 5 = L M N 6 = O P R (individual letters, not an abbreviation for Operator) 7 = S T U 8 = W X Y 9 = AE, (shashed-O) 0 = 'HJAELP' ("help", for Police, Fire, Ambulance, etc) Other parts of the world, at one time or another prior to the 1960s/70s did have "Exchange Name" dialing, and lettered dials, but all I've seen is one-letter-per-digit dial faces, or dialing ONLY the FIRST letter of the Exchange Name. It was only Paris (FRANCE), the six "director" cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester), and only those four major urban areas in the northeast/midwest US (New York City NY prior to 1930, Philadelphia PA prior to 1946, Chicago IL prior to 1948, Boston MA prior to 1949) that ever had 3L-4N numbering and dialing, as far as I can tell. Kobenhaven (Denmark) did have a three-letter-per- digit dial face, but they had less-than-seven-digit (dial-pulls) local numbers, and possibly exchange names using only the first letter of the name to be dialed. Other parts of the US (and Canada) may have had seven-digit (dial-pull) numbers but they were 2L-5N (and even the four 3L-4N cities changed to 2L-5N at the year indicated), or 2L-4N, 1L-4N, and other less-than-seven-digits (dial-pull) local numbering. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just like the earlier article this past week, this latest article will be put in the archives. Thanks to Anthony Bellanga for the submission. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Date: 13 Aug 2004 10:43:35 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com nospamwanted wrote > In theory, a business owner should be a bit more (intelligent? > knowledgeable?) than the small percentage of consumers who are at the > lower end of the IQ scale. Certainly, business owners should have > insisted on an escape clause, and rejected many of the (alleged) terms > of the lease. I hate knock people who may be facing a big financial loss, but I have to ask the same question: Why did people sign up on a long term lease without an escape clause? This wouldn't be for just telecom services, but any business service. I am not in a business, but to me, escape and redress (for bad service) clauses would be a basic part of any contract to protect yourself. As to leasing of any equipment or machinery, what is the recourse if the machinery turns out to be junk and unusable? What happens if the business changes and a particular machine is no longer needed? (I had a friend who leased some electronic equipment that he didn't really need. He had no escape clause and had to pay out the lease; but fortunately the payments weren't too bad a burden for him, though obviously he lost plenty of money.) >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why I suggested the small >> business owner *freeze all accounts payable to Norvergence and Scam >> Associates* and mitigate their own losses by paying **nothing** until >> instructed to do so by a court or their attorney. PAT] I definitely agree to that. > As the questionable practices started to become public, a few people > called. I mentioned the lease, and they were not concerned by it, > they were only concerned with saving money. One guy was more > concerned by the fact that he had to act within the week or he'd have > to wait another three months. Again, I'm surprised. Any business offer of "act now or you lose" is usually too good to be true. > I don't have as much sympathy for the guys who signed the leases as > you do. These people should have read the leases, and should have > been able to understand them. If they rejected Norvergence's offer > entirely, the worst that would have happened would have been that they > continued to pay for telecom services at their existing rate. Instead > the customers were also motivated by greed. Again I feel bad for people who may lose a lot of money, but I do have to agree with the above. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I tend to support the little guy. PAT] I do too and I don't want to blame the victim. Owning a business involves risk and responsibility, more than if you work for someone else. The payoff is the potential to make much more money from your business if it succeeds. Anybody in business has to have a good understanding of their suppliers--to ensure they will be able deliver the contracted services and products as expected. Suppliers do screw up for all sorts of reasons. I know of several builders who had long excellent track records, but fouled up big time on the last project screwing their customers. The point is that business people must be agile and always ready for an alternative plan if a supplier screws up (or if the market changes). When IBM was building its early tube-based computers, it found that radio tubes then used weren't good enough for digital work and everything was held up. IBM set up a lab to test tubes and considered making them themselves. In the end it showed tube makers how to get the quality required and the new computers were built. ------------------------------ From: Frank@Nospam.com Subject: Re: VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 14:36:49 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications A person with manners and common sense has nothing to concern them with such language. As a matter of law, Vonage has that ability in any case. It's the rude and abusive folks out there that cause such language to become a part of that service agreement. Dave Garland wrote: > "If you are thinking of ditching a land-line for a VOIP provider such as > Vonage or Net2Phone, you might want to think again. Software 'End User > license Agreements' have gotten a lot of attention in the past over > their onerous and restrictive terms, but who would expect such things > from your phone company? The prime example is Vonage, which states among > other things that 'If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you > have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the > objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and > your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities > for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such > forwarding.'" > (Slashdot article with discussion in the customary food-fight fashion) > http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/0023210&tid=158&tid=215&tid=126&tid=218 ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: OneSuite Now Available for Call Originating in Canada Date: 13 Aug 2004 10:43:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Onesuite now available for calls FROM Canada. See https://www.onesuite.com/ Long distance at MAXIMUM 2.9 Cents Per Minute for intra-USA calls. USA-Canada for 3.5CPM. If you don't use the 800# access, rate is even cheaper; E.G.:USA-Canada 1.9CPM! It is basically a prepaid phone card but you can do away with the PIN for calls from home. Program it as a speed dial, you don't even have to remember their access #. No monthly fee or minimum. There is a surchage for calls from payphones. Apparently there is NO PAYPHONE SURCHARGE if you are calling FROM CANADA. If you use the promotion code "034720367" we both get some free miniutes. We have it programmed into our cell phones for international calls. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:41:33 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Jack wrote: > Personally, I like the security of wired networks, and wonder why any > retail establishment would ever use wireless in the first place -- are > they just too lazy/cheap to run networking cable to their cash > registers? Yesterday I bought a TV set at the local Target store. There was a demo unit on the shelf, and the salesguy "shot" the tag with his handheld wireless barcode scanner and immediately knew that there was another one in stock, and exactly where it was in the back room. Could he do this without wireless? Sure -- several ways I can think of, but none as convenient and efficient as using a handheld scanner with a wireless link to the store database. Using a wireless LAN for cash registers allows the store to set up kiosks, do sidewalk sales, and so on without having to run cables or settle for non-realtime data. I do feel a store is responsible for securing their data, however it's being slopped around the premises. Legally there are different "levels of care" that a business is required to observe when in custody of a customer's property. For example, they have little responsibility to guard your wallet if you leave it on a display case and drive home. But they are held to a higher standard if you've left the wallet with them for monogramming. Seems to me (IANAL, of course) that your credit information should be treated as "property" that requires a fairly high standard of care while in the custody of the merchant. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 17:20:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: NBC Olympic Profits Seen Reaching $50 Million LOS ANGELES, Aug 13 (Reuters) - NBC could reap as much $50 million in profits from its coverage of the Athens Olympics that began on Friday, putting it roughly in line with the 2000 Sydney games but off the pace of the more recent Winter Olympics, sources familiar with NBC's plans said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43108228 ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: US West History Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:30:54 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > Doug Faunt N6TQS wrote: >> Am I correct in believing that US West was one of the "baby bells"? > I recommend the book "Muttering Machines to Laser Beams" by Herbert > Hackenburg Jr, published by Mountain Bell. While primarily a history > of Mountain Bell, it is also a good history of the Bell System. A > good book. > It has a particularly good account of nonsense frustrations the plant > people had to go through to divy up between Bell and AT&T at the time > of divesture. Marking tape ran literally through switching frames. I knew someone who worked for New England Telephone at the time. He was telling me how they had to determine the demarcation between the local network and long distance network. In Providence (PRVDRIWADS0) it was fairly easy because at the time AT&T had all their TD-2 microwave gear in the blockhouse at the top of the building. Today I was at a building whose windows looked at the empty towers that used to hold those TD-2 horns. I do note however that the block is now studded with 1/2 and full wave vertical dipoles. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:13:59 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Some VoIP Calls Being Blocked http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5307232.html By Ben Charny and Robert Lemos CNET News.com Some broadband customers who use the Internet for phone conversations are complaining that their incoming calls are being blocked. The problem, which surfaced about two weeks ago, apparently prevents some Net phone users who are also broadband customers of Adelphia Communications, Citizens Communications' Frontier and various rural cable providers from receiving calls, according to sources familiar with the situation. A handful of AT&T's CallVantage Net phone subscribers are among those affected. "We are seeing, sporadically, some instances of blocking by some cable company networks," AT&T spokesman Gary Morgenstern said. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-5307232.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:13:32 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Covad Tries an End Run http://news.com.com/Covad+tries+an+end+run/2100-1034_3-5306231.html By Jim Hu Kicked around for years by regulators and local phone giants, broadband pioneer Covad is taking its future into its own hands. Covad -- one of the few start-ups to survive the telecom shakeout -- on Tuesday said it had begun selling Internet phone service to customers in 42 cities. At first glance the announcement read like another product release, but Covad's entry into the VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) market underscores the company's efforts to preserve its future as its present business is threatened by an uncertain regulatory landscape. Born from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Covad has made a strong run at selling broadband DSL access to consumers and small companies. But much of this consumer business is in jeopardy because parts of the Telecom Act are being dismantled. "The problem for Covad is they've been a regulatory football," said Scott Cleland, chief executive at market research firm Precursor Group. Covad's rise, fall and resurgence mirror the convoluted course of the nation's telecommunications laws. The Telecom Act, which forced the Baby Bell phone companies to lease their copper lines to start-ups at regulated rates, allowed Covad to tap into the growing demand for fast Internet access. The Federal Communications Commission hoped the Telecom Act would allow a hundred start-ups to blossom on the backs of the Baby Bells' copper wire networks. But the Bells, which built these networks, were not happy about it and complained to regulators that supporting these start-ups hurt their businesses. Eight years later, the pendulum is swinging favorably for the Bells, a group that includes SBC Communications, Verizon Communications and BellSouth. Many of the rules spelled out by the Telecom Act are in preliminary stages of elimination. Most pressing for Covad is the threat to pull back "line sharing" and to remove regulated lease rates for third parties. If line sharing disappears, Covad would have to hike prices for new DSL customers. Full story at: http://news.com.com/Covad+tries+an+end+run/2100-1034_3-5306231.html ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #379 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 14 01:37:22 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7E5bMu26962; Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:37:22 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:37:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408140537.i7E5bMu26962@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 #380 TELECOM Digest Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:37:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 380 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mosquito Trojan: Copy Protection Gone Wrong (Monty Solomon) Mosquito Software Bites Smart Phones (Monty Solomon) Cell Phone Porn Magazine (Lloyd Fonvielle) Re: DoubleClick Announces Compliance With Sender ID Email (Steven Sobol) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Nick Landsberg) Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Levi) California Urged to Use Open Source, VoIP (Jack Decker - VOIP News) 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: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:53:25 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mosquito Trojan: Copy Protection Gone Wrong [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you liked that Porn Machine I put here for you to download several months ago you may enjoy this latest trojan horse variation which loads onto your cell phone when you are not watching. The next three messages, from Monty Solomon and Lloyd Fonvielle explain how it can happen to Nokia series 60 Smart Phones. Like most of that stuff, there can be a high price tag attached if you are not careful. PAT] Mosquito Trojan: Copy Protection Gone Wrong By Erika Morphy Wireless NewsFactor A new smartphone Trojan, which is disguised as a cracked version of a game called "Mosquitos," delivers a nasty sting in the form of a very expensive phone bill. The Trojan was not originally a Trojan at all but a copy-prevention mechanism placed by Ojum, the developer of the Mosquito game. Antivirus firms are reporting a new twist to the recent Trojan dialer for the Nokia Series 60 smartphones. As it turns out, security experts are saying, the Trojan was not originally a Trojan at all but a copy-prevention mechanism placed by Ojum, the developer of the Mosquito game. The only problem is, it went awry and began calling premium numbers. It is an unexpected plot twist to what has become a depressingly routine story of malware infecting an operating system. http://wireless.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=26310 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 21:49:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Mosquito Software Bites Smart Phones By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com A new possible Trojan horse making the rounds forces some cell phones based on the Symbian operating system to generate pricey text messages. The software resides in an illegal version of the cell phone game "Mosquito" that is now available at no cost on the Internet and peer-to-peer networks, according to a statement from Symbian, the company that licenses the operating system of the same name. Symbian, which has identified the problem as a Trojan horse, said the software did not seem to have been created with malicious intent. Rather, the feature was incorporated in early versions of the game by the legitimate manufacturer, Ojom, as an experimental licensing and copy protection mechanism. The illegal copies are based on an early version of the game and still include the message feature, Symbian said. But others, including security company F-Secure, have called into question whether the software is a Trojan horse at all. Some reports describe it as an antipiracy feature that forces phones that illegally download the Mosquito software to make a costly call. Once installed, the game may cause phones to send text messages to premium rate numbers in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland without the user's approval or knowledge, Symbian said. Deleting the game rids users of the problem, the company said. http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5308164.html ------------------------------ From: Lloyd Fonvielle Subject: Cell Phone Porn Magazine Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:58:11 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Just announced: http://www.symbiosgroup.co.uk/pr-bendover2.html?flash=true The magazine represents a partnership with the content creator and the Symbiosis Group, which creates web platforms for businesses. Does anyone know how video cell phone content is hosted -- does it work like a web site which is just routed to the cell phone? And does a platform partner like Symbiosis simply create the web site? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In any event, our European readers in particular -- and who knows, maybe our USA readers as well, with Nokia Smart Phones best take caution with the Mosquito game. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: DoubleClick Announces Compliance With Sender ID for Email Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 18:30:09 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > -- Company Embraces Authenticated Email Solution to Help Counter > Spam, Email Spoofing and Phishing -- > NEW YORK, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DoubleClick Inc. (Nasdaq: > DCLK), the leading provider of technology solutions for marketers, > advertising agencies and web publishers, today announced that its > DARTmail email management system is fully compliant with Microsoft's > Sender ID framework. Good - they're a bunch of thieves and anything that makes them easier to ID also makes them easier to block. 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: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (NOTSPAM) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:31:42 GMT Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote: > Jack wrote: >> Personally, I like the security of wired networks, and wonder why any >> retail establishment would ever use wireless in the first place -- are >> they just too lazy/cheap to run networking cable to their cash >> registers? > Yesterday I bought a TV set at the local Target store. There was a > demo unit on the shelf, and the salesguy "shot" the tag with his > handheld wireless barcode scanner and immediately knew that there was > another one in stock, and exactly where it was in the back room. > Could he do this without wireless? Sure -- several ways I can think > of, but none as convenient and efficient as using a handheld scanner > with a wireless link to the store database. > Using a wireless LAN for cash registers allows the store to set up > kiosks, do sidewalk sales, and so on without having to run cables or > settle for non-realtime data. > I do feel a store is responsible for securing their data, however it's > being slopped around the premises. Legally there are different > "levels of care" that a business is required to observe when in > custody of a customer's property. For example, they have little > responsibility to guard your wallet if you leave it on a display case > and drive home. But they are held to a higher standard if you've left > the wallet with them for monogramming. Seems to me (IANAL, of course) > that your credit information should be treated as "property" that > requires a fairly high standard of care while in the custody of the > merchant. On a similar note and to use an analogy. If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal trespass" and theft. (And probably "spitting on the sidewalk" just in case the cops wanted to have a longer list of charges.) I believe there is a similarity here. The store was probably negligent in not securing its wireless network (leaving the door unlocked), but it does not condone the electronic equivalent of the above. Just my $0.02. NPL > Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com > "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, > we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: lee317@yahoo.com (Levi) Subject: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: 13 Aug 2004 20:02:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Just registering my complaint so others will consider my experience before choosing Vonage. I had huge problems with technical support at Vonage. I faxed my number transfer form 4 times and was still told that it was not processed correctly. As a result I lost my old number. After hours on the phone with incompetant and often unfriendly agents at support I have decided to cancel the service. You get what you pay for. I am not willing to devote hours of my weeks to troubleshooting and developing contingency plans for dealing with outages just to save a few bucks a month. Look at other VOIP providers before considering Vonage. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'm sorry to hear about the problems you have had with a company that has generally done okay for me. Anyone who wants to try Vonage and get an e-coupon good for a month of free service can ask me. This is NOT for people who get a Vonage telephone adapter from a store; you need to use the link in the email coupon I send to you sign up, but if you want to do it that way by email and get the adapter a few days later by Fed Express you can do it through me, get the number assigned, etc and whatever kind of service you sign up for, you get the second month free. Write and ask for your e-coupon. ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 19:08:19 -0400 Subject: California Urged to Use Open Source, VoIP Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://news.com.com/California+urged+to+use+open+source,+VoIP/2100-7344_3-5309476.html By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com The Governator may terminate California's reliance on proprietary software and traditional telephone systems, if a recently published state report is heeded. A body of independent auditors and experts recommended last week that the state consider open-source software and voice over Internet Protocol telephony as two measures to cut costs. The suggested measures are a small part of the voluminous California Performance Review, released Aug. 2. "If all of these recommendations are implemented, they have the potential to save more than $32 billion over the next five years," the directors of the group of appointees told California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in an letter introducing the report. The savings from using the two technologies would make up a small fraction of that total. Moving to VoIP could reduce the state's phone bill by between $20 million and $75 million a year, the report said. While there were too many variables to estimate the savings from a switch to open-source software on California's systems, the report's authors did cite two state pilot projects that cut costs by $300,000 each by using the community-developed software. The report said VoIP technology has competitive features that would benefit the state. Internet-based phone calling has built-in benefits such as integrated caller ID, flexibility and network management tools that provide real-time monitoring of bandwidth. Departments and agencies currently use a variety of digital and analog networks and technologies from different manufacturers. Full story at: http://news.com.com/California+urged+to+use+open+source,+VoIP/2100-7344_3-5309476.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #380 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 15 20:35:57 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7G0Zvo14015; Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:35:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:35:57 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408160035.i7G0Zvo14015@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 #381 TELECOM Digest Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:36:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 381 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Information About Mosquitos Trojan (Monty Solomon) FTC Seeks Comments on Proposed Can-Spam Rules (Monty Solomon) Number Not in Use (Ned Protter) Simple Question For AVAYA CMS R9 (Jack) Old Phone Number Dating (debra@petinfo4u.com) Q and Z on Dials - Standards? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Danny Burstein) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Michael Neary) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Shalom Septimus) Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Tony P) Re: Up and Down, All Around (Dave Close) Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound; Threaten (Jay Hennigan) Re: Digest Archives Search on Norvergence (Jay Hennigan) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Isaiah Beard) 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: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 01:57:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Information About Mosquitos Trojan http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040810.html Information about Mosquitos Trojan Symbian is aware that an illegally adapted or 'cracked' game called Mosquitos is being distributed by 'warez' websites (illegal software download sites) and on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This game has been illegally adapted from the legitimate Mosquitos game developed by Ojom. If installed by the user, the illegal game may cause the phone to send text messages to premium rate numbers without the user's approval or knowledge. Symbian offers the following summary information and advice: http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040810.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 10:30:05 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FTC Seeks Comments on Proposed Can-Spam Rules http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/08/canspamfrn.htm Comments Will be Accepted Until September 13, 2004 The Federal Trade Commission will publish a Federal Register Notice on Friday, August 13, 2004, seeking public comment on proposed rules regarding commercial electronic mail messages. The CAN-SPAM Act, which took effect January 1, 2004, requires that the Commission issue regulations "defining the relevant criteria to facilitate the determination of the primary purpose of an electronic mail message." In this Federal Register Notice, the FTC introduces proposed criteria to facilitate the determination of when an e-mail message has a commercial primary purpose, and seeks comments in response to this proposal. Beginning August 13, comments can be filed electronically by following instructions on a Web-based form available on the following Web site: https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-canspam. Commenters may address as many or as few issues as they wish by writing what they choose in a text box available via the Web-based form, or by using the form to attach a separate document for submission to the record. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to be published in the Federal Register Notice on August 13, 2004, proposes criteria for determining the "primary purpose" of an e-mail message. This is the second step in this rulemaking process, following an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" published in the Federal Register on March 11, 2004. In the earlier notice, the FTC sought comment on the mandatory "primary purpose" rulemaking, and on several other issues, including certain areas of discretionary rulemaking authority established in the Act, several compliance issues that have been raised by industry since passage of CAN-SPAM, and several reports that CAN-SPAM requires the FTC to prepare and submit to Congress. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/08/canspamfrn.htm http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/08/canspamfrn.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/08/canspamfrnprivimp.pdf ------------------------------ From: Ned Protter Subject: Number Not in Use Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:31:51 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Today my answering machine received a telemarketing message telling me to press 1 if I was interested. I was interested. I got the number from Call Return. I wrote it down and reread it when they announced it the second time. I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed again with the same result. How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You got that recording because the company which called you diddled with their caller ID to keep you from finding out what number they were really at. Its a very common technique telemarketers use. I do not know if your comment 'I was interested' was because you really were interested or if it was tongue in cheek and you actually more interested in making trouble for the telemarketer, but in any event they assumed you would not be interested and took measures to assure you would not get back to them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nuclearjack@hotmail.com (Jack) Subject: Simple Question For AVAYA CMS R9 Date: 15 Aug 2004 00:51:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am a supervisor using Avaya to monitor skill status and change agent's skills. I am trying to find a list of skills for all agents whether they are logged into the phone or not. As an example if an agent is accidentally changed to the emergency skill I would rather not have to wait until they log in to find them. Can anyone out there be able to help? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Subject: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:31:29 -0700 Hi! I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone number located in Brooklyn New York: TRiangle 5-7871 Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = luck. Any help is appreciated, Debra ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Q and Z on Dials - Standards? Date: 14 Aug 2004 19:28:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com We know that the letters on telephone dials and keypads date from the days that exchanges had names, not digits. The Bell System destroyed the last remnant of this in Philadelphia in 1980. Dials would have gone all numeric and been easier to read, but by that time many companies used all letters as easy-to-remember phone numbers (ie DIAL-LAW for a lawyer or 1-800-USA-RAIL for Amtrak, so letters remained. I noticed on the most modern dials the letters Q and Z were added to 7 and 9 respectively. This makes sense. However, on earlier Bell System dials, the Z was over the zero-operator, so it does mark a change. I just curious, with the demise of the Bell System, if there was any organization that sets standards for phones, esp new models, and decided that indeed Q and Z would go over 7 and 9. In a separate post, someone discussed London dials. What do modern dials look like today in the rest of the world. Do they even have letters? If so, are they over the same digits as us? [public replies please] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 05:39:24 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Nick Landsberg writes: > On a similar note and to use an analogy. > If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front > door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of > guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and > entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal > trespass" and theft. I'll take your analogy and raise you one better: You own a drive-in movie theater with two acres of land. You've got a waist high chain link marking your property. The screen is visible for hundreds of feet around. And the radio signal you're using for the audio is similarly detectable. People park outside your fence and watch and listen to the movie. What's the crime? (Note that I'm most specifically NOT excusing the credit card theft, etc. Which, I guess to follow the analogy, would be the folk outsde the fence coming in and stealing your hotdogs ...) _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you were using the old-style audio, where you pulled up in car next to a little loud speaker which you had to open your window slightly and clip the speaker on your window, I suppose you could deprive the outside audience of *hearing* the movie at least with no little speaker box to clip onto the car window. But try this one on for size: We all know there are certain types of radio transmissions we are not supposed to 'tune in' period, such as cell phone conversations. Yet those transmissions, like all radio waves, permeate my property continually; all sorts of radio waves are coming through this room in my house all the time. Do I have the 'right' to examine anything passing through my property, regardless of the intentions of the owners of the property. Suppose someone built a house or owned property right next door to Lowes as an example. Are they required to ignore those WiFi signals which are on their property and not examine them? Or could I rightfully demand that Lowes not 'come onto my property' with their radio signals? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 13:48:34 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Organization: Excelsior Computer Services >>> Personally, I like the security of wired networks, and wonder why any >>> retail establishment would ever use wireless in the first place -- are >>> they just too lazy/cheap to run networking cable to their cash >>> registers? > If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front > door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of > guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and The difference, as I understand it, is between what's illegal and what's provable. It's every bit as illegal to take someone's possessions from behind an open door as it is from behind a locked door, just like it's every bit as illegal to sneak onto someone's private unencrypted wireless network as it is onto someone's encrypted network. But, in the case, say, of taking a wallet from an unlocked locker in a public space, any defense lawyer would (probably successfully) argue that the thief saw an unsecure wallet and took it for safekeeping, to prevent a real thief from getting it. That argument is a bit harder to make in the case of a wireless network ("I took the bytes and the bandwith for safekeeping"???) but it wouldn't be hard to argue that a cracker saw an open network, a potentially dangerous situation, and for the public good wanted to check things out. Once we're so far off topic, I'll add that it seems to me that the common notion that people shouldn't do something illegal (or immoral) only because they might get caught is increasingly plaguing the U.S., and the case (interesting -- we're back on topic) of breaking into a wireless network is symptomatic of the much larger problem that many US citizens feel the only reason not do something is that they might get punished. In Japan, by contrast, citizens commonly hand over to authorities tiny sums of change that they've found; they wouldn't consider keeping it, apparently, because taking someone else's property is wrong, even without any chance of getting caught. Just some musings ... -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But what about radio transmissions which cross **my property** in the process of going elsewhere? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 09:58:10 EDT Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case In a message dated Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:31:42 GMT, Nick Landsberg writes: > On a similar note and to use an analogy. > If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front > door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of > guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and > entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal > trespass" and theft. (And probably "spitting on the sidewalk" just in > case the cops wanted to have a longer list of charges.) It is my recollection that any use of force to enter a place fulfills the requirements to make it a burglary -- turning a knob, pushing the door open, or any other such action. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suppose then even without a door to be broken down to enter, turning on a computer or tuning in a WiFi card could consist of using force? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 12:25:29 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Nick wrote: > If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front > door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of > guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and > entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal > trespass" and theft. (And probably "spitting on the sidewalk" just in > case the cops wanted to have a longer list of charges.) > I believe there is a similarity here. True. But what if you not only left the door unlocked, but carted your property out and placed it on the front lawn? It's still on your property, but it sure is tempting! How about if you start piling your stuff in the street? It's still your stuff; you haven't given it away. So anybody taking any of it (ignore litter cleanup crews :-) is stealing. But would they be prosecuted? This is a better analog to the Lowes case, because the WiFi signal goes out of the store and inhabits the public airwaves. It happens that the access in this case occurred in the parking lot which is Lowes property. However it _could_ have happened elsewhere, because the WiFi signal is not limited to the Lowes property. > The store was probably negligent in not securing its wireless > network (leaving the door unlocked), but it does not condone the > electronic equivalent of the above. They certainly were negligent! Wireless signals are inherently "public", in that they propagate where they will. In order to ensure complete coverage of a store, the RF signal _must_ propagate beyond the store. Therefore it must be assumed that the signal can (and thus will) be received by people not authorized to access the data it carries. So the store is obligated to secure that data before broadcasting it. They should leave a proxy on port 80 that announces this is a closed system. Everything else should be passworded and/or encrypted. The proxy serves as a "No Trespassing" sign and the other safeguards are a fence. Now they can make a case for prosecuting people wandering across their LAN(d). Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: Michael Neary Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 15:10:43 -0700 Reply-To: mike@neary.com Earlier, an analogy was offered about the Timmins case, and it's simply wrong. He plead guilty to "unauthorized use of a protected computer system". This is a lie, because the computer he accessed was NOT protected!!!! If I leave my door unlocked, and Mr. Timmins walks in, takes NOTHING, makes one local phone call (not toll) on my phone, I would NOT expect him to be prosecuted. It would be wrong in my eyes, but the worst I would expect to happen to him is that I (or a cop) get in his face for a while. If his room mate later uses information to burglarize me, throw the book at the room mate. It's incomprehensible that the criminals in this case were (allegedly) offered reduced sentences on the condition that they testify against Mr. Timmins! -Mike ------------------------------ From: Shalom Septimus Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:07:42 -0400 Reply-To: druggist@pobox.com On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:46:12 -0400, Jack wrote: > Personally, I like the security of wired networks, and wonder why any > retail establishment would ever use wireless in the first place -- are > they just too lazy/cheap to run networking cable to their cash > registers? The cash registers at my workplace generally have a direct Ethernet connection to the store's front end computer. The wireless access is used for the hand-held terminals (like the one at http://www.symbol.com/products/mobile_computers/mobile_kb_pdt_6800.html) that the stock boys go around with to check inventory, reorder merchandise etc. It's hard to imagine using a wired connection for one of those; you'd need three or four jacks in each aisle. I once tried to access my company's wireless network with my laptop, but it wanted a password (or an encryption key, something like that) that I couldn't oblige with, and it threw me out. I also remember one manager doing the biweekly cigaret inventory, which had to be entered into the Telxon gun, thereby tying it up so that no other work could be done with it. He wrote out the list in longhand instead, then took the terminal home with him and tried to enter it there. He couldn't understand why it didn't work, until I pointed out the little antenna sticking out of the office wall. Shalom ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 23:30:50 GMT Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell carriers to their knees. Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls land on wired switches. ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Up and Down, All Around Date: 14 Aug 2004 16:08:45 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The three devices which pain me the > most -- the cable modem, the Vonage Motorola TX box, and the Netgear > Wireless router box -- do not have 'off/on switches' on them to toggle > as needed. They simply have plugs from power supplies (plugged in > wall outlets) to the back of the units. You want to power the device > down you have to unplug them from the back of unit or the wall. PAT] Well, in your special circumstances, you might get more than average benefit from using X-10 adapters on those connections. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "If I seem unduly clear to you, dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 you must have misunderstood dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu what I said." -- Alan Greenspan [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I have thought about X-10 switches but I do not think they are supposed to *all* go back on at the same instant, which would require three X-10 adapters to go on this already overcrowded desk. I know this mess is about to drive me completely crazy. I read a message here in the Digest last week from someone who said his firewalls and routers stayed up for a *long time* and he thought maybe it was the DHCP leases expiring and getting uncoordinated in how they got renewed, and he recommended I tweak things a little better. If that person would engage in some private conversation with me, I would be most appreciative. I do know that given my inability since the brain aneurysm to concentrate very well or learn anything new I have just about come to the decision to stay out -- stay away completely -- from any form of networking. That little problem seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back as the saying goes. I'd love to be able to do various jobs at one time, such as my weather station, my continuously on cams, etc, and of course the several hours per day I spend on this Digest and sweeping away spam. I'd love to sit in my yard with a laptop to work on the Digest as well but to do all that requires the ugly word n-e-t-w-o-r-k-i-n-g, and as I said when I started this thread, the problems I have seen with that have just about blown my fuse for the last time. Can anyone help me set it up once and for finally? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: NorVergence is Having Popular Leasing Hound and Threaten Me Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:27:02 -0700 On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 14:52:35 -0700, Pelco Sales & Service wrote: > NorVergence sent our Equipment in and three days later they went > under. Now Popular Leasing out of Missouri is threatening me to pay > up or else. What can I do? I haven't even had the equipment hooked > up. If you haven't had it hooked up, did you sign an acceptance letter indicating that it was delivered and working? If so, why would you do that!?!? If not, then tell the leasing company that the equipment was never accepted or installed, and that they're welcome to it once they sign a letter drafted by your lawyer that they'll never bother you again. Also, request copies of all leasing documents from the hound. Check to see if initials or signatures have been forged indicating acceptance of terms or of the equipment itself. ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Digest Archives Search on Norvergence Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:32:00 -0700 On Tue, 10 Aug 2004 10:00:11 -0500, RJ Strauss wrote: > Is there a way to search any information that has been published in the > Digest about Norvergence? http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=norvergence&as_ugroup=comp.dcom.telecom ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 02:56:47 -0400 Levi wrote: > You get what you pay for. I am not willing to devote hours of my > weeks to troubleshooting and developing contingency plans for dealing > with outages just to save a few bucks a month. > Look at other VOIP providers before considering Vonage. This seems to be typical experience for anyone who dives head first into a new technology and expects to rely on it as their primary mission critical application. And you are right, you get exactly what you deserve when you do that. Likewise, I've been seeing complaints on dslreports about Vonage that go something like "We use Vonage for our business and this outage is unacceptable! We're looking elsewhere for service." [ See: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,11032185~root=voip~mode=flat] When I read drivel like that, I say, damned right you're looking elsewhere! Vonage has its place, but not yet as a utility, and certainly not a replacement to five-nines service. Right now it's a convenient way to save money in applications that *aren't* critical. I can easily see Vonage in use for a business as, say, a tie line to cut down on interoffice LD costs, or as part of a telephone hunt group that at least starts with a standard POTS line that will stay up when Vonage is down. In either case, it'll be an annoyance but not a calamity when the service breaks. But no, despite being well aware of the risks, it seems like businesses don't care and throw caution to the winds ... and then cry to high heaven when things don't work out. Yes, such outages might be unacceptable. But *I* find it unacceptable to do business with a company that will take such risks without taking the time to have a backup plan in place. FWIW, I signed up with Vonage today. After playing around with it a bit, I have to say I'm impressed with the sound quality, call handling and the web interface and built-in features, which are way superior to anything a CLEC or ILEC can offer or at least, is willing to offer. Even so, I'm not dumping the landline just yet. After removing all the calling packages Verizon offered and dumbing the landline down to just a simple bare-bones dial-tone at about $7 a month, I'm still saving money AND I have a basic failsafe that I can plug my phone into for when (not if) Vonage has another outage. And even if I decide to drop the landline altogether, I'll still have my cell phone with its roaming package, so when (again, not if) Vonage has an outage, I at least have my pick of three wireless carriers to make and receive my calls with. And FWIW, Verizon hasn't exactly given me five nines lately. Slow dial tone has been common in my area, and apparently Verizon doesn't seem to care that much about maintaining its CO batteries as our service has always been a bit finicky (or even nonexistent) after brownouts or power outages (dial tone was out for a good 2-3 hours during the northeast blackout last year, even though our lights only went out for 10 seconds here when the blackout hit). I'm in Central NJ, so it's not like Verizon would find it not cost effective to maintain service here. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'm sorry to hear about the problems > you have had with a company that has generally done okay for me. > Anyone who wants to try Vonage and get an e-coupon good for a month > of free service can ask me. This is NOT for people who get a Vonage > telephone adapter from a store; you need to use the link in the email > coupon I send to you sign up, but if you want to do it that way by > email and get the adapter a few days later by Fed Express you can do > it through me, get the number assigned, etc and whatever kind of > service you sign up for, you get the second month free. Write and > ask for your e-coupon. ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu PAT] Damn, I wish I had remembered this from the last time you mentioned it Pat. Ah well, Best Buy was offering a rebate that will end up saving me $50 compared to what I'd have paid if I signed up for the service online, so I guess that's still not too shabby. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have not had nearly as many requests for e-coupons since Vonage started retailing through Best Buy and other retailers. Basically it is the same deal; either you placed the order through me, had the TA dropped shipped to you from Vonage and in the process got the 'e-coupon' to redeem, or else (now) you can buy it from Best Buy, use the same credit card if you wish, and packaged with the TA is a coupon to get you a free month of service. I've had some people get it from Best Buy, do all the paperwork and get their month of free service, *then* come on the net and ask me for an e-coupon to get a free month via me as well. You should know Vonage will not honor my e-coupons that way. There is no such thing as *two* free months of service. Either go through me and have the TA box drop shipped to you in the mail and get your free month from me, or get the TA box at various retailers and let *them* give you your free month. And speaking of Vonage, I wonder if that 'new' Motorola TA box is the source of my grief with my network lately. I never, or rarely, had these up and downs when I had Vonage as a port on the router instead of at the head of the line as it is now. Although the phone seems to 'sound better' as it is now at the head of the line, I may sacrifice that to not have so many LAN up and downs, unless someone out there takes pity on an old man and helps me do the tweaks as needed. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #381 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 16 15:05:09 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7GJ58U23243; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:05:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:05:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408161905.i7GJ58U23243@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 #382 TELECOM Digest Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:05:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 382 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #444, August 16, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Another Try at Inventing Superphone (Monty Solomon) Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby. (Monty Solomon) Satellite TV Gains in Race Against Cable (Monty Solomon) Let the Web Games Begin (Monty Solomon) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Steven J Sobol) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (DevilsPGD) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (John Levine) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Fred Goldstein) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Isaiah Beard) 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: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 10:14:49 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #444, August 16, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 444: August 16, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** MTS Reduces Allstream Income Forecast ** City Fido Boosts Microcell Revenue ** Nortel to Release Results This Week ** VoIP Interrogatory Responses Filed ** Bell Opens Wireless Research Centre ** MTS to Provide Ethernet Service for Competitors ** B.C. Cablecos Launch Internet Phone Service ** Cablecos Want R.O.W. in Kawartha Lakes Region ** VoiceIQ in Bankruptcy Protection ** BCS Global Buys VoIP Company ** Cisco Reports 41% Profit Jump ** Should VoIP Be Regulated? ============================================================ MTS REDUCES ALLSTREAM INCOME FORECAST: Manitoba Telecom has lowered its forecast for Allstream EBIDTA in 2004 by 12%, and has made corresponding reductions in Allstream's capital spending. MTS blames the "strong competitive environment" and "cost associated with workforce reduction." ** MTS had second quarter revenues of $314 million and a net loss of $6.7 million. The loss includes a $75 million payment to Bell Canada to settle a lawsuit related to the Allstream merger. (See Telecom Update #440) ** MTS says it will buy back $800 million worth of stock this year. CITY FIDO BOOSTS MICROCELL REVENUE: Microcell's City Fido wireline replacement program accounted for 42% of new postpaid subscribers in the second quarter, contributing to a net gain of 16,652 subscribers. Total revenues of $161 million were 16% higher than a year ago. The net loss was $11.2 million, including $2.2 million in costs related to Telus's purchase offer. ** CEO Andre Tremblay says that the Competition Bureau's review of the Telus offer may not be completed until October. NORTEL TO RELEASE RESULTS THIS WEEK: Nortel Networks says it will release preliminary results for the first two quarters of this year on August 19. Financial statements for these quarters and the year 2003 are to be filed by the end of September. ** Nortel has appointed a committee to investigate a suit by some shareholders claiming that the company issued false financial statements in 2003. (See Telecom Update #434) VoIP INTERROGATORY RESPONSES FILED: Last week, parties in the CRTC's VoIP proceeding (PN 2004-2) submitted replies to interrogatories posed to them by the Commission and by each other. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2004/8663/c12_200402892.htm#5 BELL OPENS WIRELESS RESEARCH CENTRE: Bell Canada has launched a 5,000-square-foot Wireless Innovation Centre in Mississauga. During the last year, Bell has also opened research centres on IP/MPLS (Toronto), fibre optics (Montreal), and managed IP telephony (Ottawa). MTS TO PROVIDE ETHERNET SERVICE FOR COMPETITORS: The CRTC has given interim approval to an MTS Allstream tariff for Ethernet Access and Ethernet Transport Service, to be available to competitors as of August 26. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2004/o2004-274.htm B.C. CABLECOS LAUNCH INTERNET PHONE SERVICE: Seven small cable TV companies in British Columbia owned by Mascon Communications have begun offering NetCall, a VoIP-based "second-line telephone service" developed by Vancouver-based Galaxy Telecom. CABLECOS WANT R.O.W. IN KAWARTHA LAKES REGION: Four small Ontario cablecos have asked the CRTC to order the City of Kawartha Lakes to allow them to build and operate a fiber optic line along the Victoria Rail Trail corridor between Fenelon Falls, Lindsay, and Bethany, on terms consistent with the principles in Decision 2001-23. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2004/8690/8690_04.htm#200408353 VOICEIQ IN BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION: VoiceIQ, a Calgary-based developer of digital recording systems, has received creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. The company says it will transfer its assets to a subsidiary, then convert itself into a gas and oil production company to take advantage of $25 million in tax losses. BCS GLOBAL BUYS VoIP COMPANY: BCS Global Networks, a video conferencing supplier based in Richmond Hill, Ontario, has bought Toronto-based IPConvergence, which provides wholesale VoIP telephony. CISCO REPORTS 41% PROFIT JUMP: Cisco Systems had net income of US$1.38 billion for the three months ended July 31, 41% higher than the same period in 2003. Revenue of $5.9 billion was 26% higher than a year earlier. ** CEO John Chambers commented that customer optimism had declined compared to three months earlier, and this sparked a 10.6% fall in the price of Cisco stock. SHOULD VoIP BE REGULATED? Next month, the CRTC will hold public hearings on a proposed regulatory framework for IP- based telephone services. In this month's Telemanagement, Lis Angus identifies the real issues at stake in a contentious debate. Also in this issue: ** Planning for High Availability Networking ** Why Has PBX Acquisition Become So Complex? ** Bell Unveils IP Centrex Telemanagement is available by subscription only. To become a Telemanagement subscriber -- including unlimited access to Telemanagement's extensive online content -- visit the Telemanagement website or call 800-263-4415 ext 500. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:12:09 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Another Try at Inventing Superphone STATE OF THE ART By DAVID POGUE HOW'S your relationship going? Do you find yourself baffled by your partner's opaque and quirky personality? Does the object of your affection keep you waiting when you're in a hurry? And above all, how well do the two of you communicate? No, not your personal relationship -- that's easy stuff. How's your relationship with your cellphone? As with humans, it's not easy to find a cellular companion that does everything you ask, cheerfully and reliably, and never lets you down. That doesn't mean manufacturers aren't trying, though. This year, communicators are all the rage: hybrid palmtop-phones with tiny thumb-driven keyboards for tapping out quick messages. It's quickly becoming obvious, however, that nailing down a no-compromise design isn't easy. For example, the Treo 600 is slim and gorgeous, but its screen is very small, and its keys are the size of carbon molecules. Or, if body image isn't so important, you could get a Pocket PC phone or a BlackBerry -- but then you feel as if you're talking into a VHS cassette. Then there's the Sidekick II, announced yesterday by T-Mobile ($300) and available in the fall. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/technology/circuits/05stat.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:23:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby. By KATIE HAFNER LIKE many people these days, Jason Kim and Linda Crasco rely heavily on e-mail for their work, running a small educational research and evaluation company in Norwood, Mass. And like many people, they get plenty of spam, some 400 pieces of unwanted e-mail daily. So when their company, Systemic Research, first installed a spam filter 18 months ago, they were impressed by the noticeable reduction in the amount of spam they received. Several months ago, Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco were at a meeting when they ran into a program director they knew from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She greeted them coolly. Puzzled, Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco asked what they might have done to offend her. As it turned out, she had sent Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco an e-mail message suggesting that they work together on a grant application. The application deadline had since passed, and the acquaintance was more than a little miffed that she had gotten no response from them. The two entrepreneurs were flabbergasted. Not only did they have no idea the e-mail had been sent, they had no idea that it had been snuffed out as junk. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/technology/circuits/05filt.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is the reason why I at least give a cursory glance at everything in the spam bucket before dumping it out. There is that occassional item in the spam bucket which should not be there. (I wish it was true the other way around also, but it is not.) And for all the improvements and sophistication which have gone into mechanical message filtering in recent years, the English language (at least) is just to complex in its actual usage to build in all the filter rules as perfectly as we would like. No matter what you are attempting to filter out, from occassional obscene words which have a jillion ways to spell them incorrectly and parse them inappropriatly in order to avoid the filter, through entire messages or entire web sites; like the millions/billions variations on DNA, there just is no way to catch it all without catching 'too much' in the processs. Nothing will ever replace the human brain, an equally complex and sophisticated organ in combating (either pro or con) the filters put up by machines, since, after all, humans were the inventors of those machines and their filters anyway. Even my eyes, in their cursory examination of 'what is spam' misses some of it now and then. If anything, I would rather impose on myself a little to avoid cases such as in this message from Monty. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:17:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite TV Gains in Race Against Cable By SANDY SHORE AP Business Writer DENVER (AP) -- Thousands of Americans have defected to satellite TV as the providers have reported hefty gains while the cable industry has declined. Consumers likely will see aggressive marketing promotions in the next six months as companies jockey for customers, analysts say. The battle comes down to service and price: Cable companies offer video-on-demand features, high-speed Internet and, in some cases, telephone service. Satellite providers have all-digital service and channel packages that can be cheaper and broader than digital cable. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43124562 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:40:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Let the Web Games Begin By Ann Harrison Among the unplanned international sporting events at the 2004 Summer Olympics could be the dodging of regional Internet broadcast restrictions and the unsanctioned relay of live online Olympic broadcasts to Americans. The Summer Olympics, which began Friday in Athens, is the first Olympic Games to be broadcast from a collection of websites. The BBC and other European networks are offering live, on-demand Internet video streaming of Olympic events to broadband viewers. But the BBC and fellow members of the European Broadcasting Union are required by their Olympic broadcast contracts to block U.S. Internet users and others from outside their home counties. NBC paid $793 million for the exclusive U.S. Summer Olympic broadcast rights, and NBCOlympics.com is the only U.S. website licensed by the International Olympic Committee to broadcast video coverage of the games. The network is offering 1,210 hours of Olympic coverage -- live and tape-delayed -- on NBC, CNCB, MSNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a high-definition channel. Despite its contractual lock on Olympic footage, NBCOlympics.com is offering only highlights of selected events after they have been broadcast on one of the network's TV channels. U.S. customers of AT&T Wireless' mMode information service will also get video clips. By contrast, those online in the United Kingdom can watch live simulcast coverage from BBC TV's five video streams. American TV stations not affiliated with NBC can show up to three 2-minute Olympic video clips a day. But U.S.-based Internet news sites that are not backed by NBC are barred from showing any competition video and can only air news conferences with a 30-minute delay. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64562,00.html ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:22:55 -0500 Tony P. wrote: > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. > Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls > land on wired switches. It could be argued that it's not the cellular carriers' fault that the telco didn't bill them. I think the cell carriers could probably successfully fight this. 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As a matter of fact, they did more than just successfully argue against it. In the article linked for us to read we see the cell carriers got am injuction against them being forced to pay or getting disconnected. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Reply-To: bond-jamesbond@crazyhat.net Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:41:21 GMT In message Tony P. wrote: > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. > Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls > land on wired switches. > http://www.kcrg.com/article.aspx?art_id=87258&cat_id=123 What happens when there are multiple landline telcos, do they pay any interconnect charges? Just sit through this NRA meeting Marge, and if you still don't think guns are great then we'll argue some more. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Aug 2004 02:37:01 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. > Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls > land on wired switches. > http://www.kcrg.com/article.aspx?art_id=87258&cat_id=123 Seems that this little co-op is getting a wee bit too big for its britches. For one thing, I would be surprised if any cell carriers were interconnecting and not paying anything unless they had a negotiated bill-and-keep agreement with the LEC. They may not be paying as much as the co-op wants, but that's a different question. For another, this co-op offers GSM PCS service via an agreement with Iowa Wireless, including a plan for $35/mo that offers unlimited local calling. Gee, what did they expect people to do? And most importantly, this little co-op charges unbelievably low prices. Check them out at http://www.eastbuchanan.com. Their normal monthly rate for residence service is $9/month, including the subscriber line charge, which is pretty low. But since it's a co-op, at the end of the year, they rebate the profits to the members as a percentage of what they've paid. Is the rebate 2%? 5%? 10%? No, it's averaged 51%. That's right, half of what you pay, you get back, so the monthly rate is really only $4.50/mo and the unlimited cell phone rate is $17.50. I don't mind using USF money to provide affordable rural service, since that's what it's for. But this is ridiculous. Like it said in the article: "If the company doesn't get paid by cell phone users, then we don't get any revenue to get our dividend checks, either." Oh, no, then they'd have to pay the as much for phone service as everyone else in the country. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John, I am curious about something. In an area where there is a predominant LEC (everywhere, I suppose) and it negotiates things regards its customers (such as 'bill and keep' as one example) what about the independent telcos in the same area? Are they obligated to go along with what the LEC 'negotiates'? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 23:20:43 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Tony P. wrote, > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. > Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls > land on wired switches. > http://www.kcrg.com/article.aspx?art_id=87258&cat_id=123 That article says, > The East Buchanan Telephone Company in Winthrop says it's lost half a > million dollars from cell phone companies not paying for use of its phone > lines over the last five years. So E.B.T.C. bought a machine that blocks > all incoming cell phone calls to land lines in town and plans to use it > starting Monday. Talk about a 'tude! These rules are a bit complex, but it sounds to me like East Buchanan Tel just doesn't like playing by the rules. > E.B.T.C. general manager Butch Rorabaugh said it won't block cell > phone users from calling other cell phones or from calling > 9-1-1. Rorabaugh says other long distance carriers like AT&T pay a > fee to use their line. But cellular phone carriers do not. He says > it's a huge nationwide problem that's tied up in the courts, but the > tiny town of Winthrop is actually trying to do something about > it. He told TV9, "We're using our facilities, our plant, our > investment to complete these calls, and we'd simply like to get paid > for that." Sure. But let's review the federal rules. (Note IANAL. This is just my understanding, not a legal opinion.) Way back when, when cellular first came out, it was really expensive, and the FCC allowed the cellular companies to interconnect to the local exchange carriers via the latters' *Access* tariffs. Access is the tariff used for interexchange carriers like AT&T and MCI to purchase the last mile from local carriers. It's generally expensive, carrying some subsidies above direct cost. Especially in small rural telephone companies. The Telecom Act of 1996 changed the rules. It redefined cellular (CMRS, to be precise -- that also includes paging, PCS, and Nextel-like ESMR carriers) carriers to be co-carriers of local calls, peers rather than monopoly ratepayers. So the CMRS carriers are expected to pay a cost-based rate for the calls that they send to the LEC, but the LEC is expected to pay the *same* rate to the CMRS carriers for calls made to the CMRS subscribers. In general, cellular-originated calls are more than twice the volume of cellular-received calls, so the local telco still comes out ahead. But not as far ahead as under Access, because that tariff charges the other carrier (like AT&T) for *both* directions. So calls to cell phones used to be charged to the cellular carrier but for most of a decade have been charged to the local carrier. And at lower rates. East Buchanan Tel apparently doesn't like this. As a cooperative, they're exempt from most of the competition rules -- they don't have to permit CLECs to operate in their territories at all! But while CMRS gets CLEC-like peer interconnection, CMRS gets it by right, in all places, to all carriers, with or without a contract. And now with number portability. And CMRS is to some slight extent competition; some people don't need wireline phones if they have a cell phone. Not many -- it's not real competition in the general sense -- but a few percent, maybe, can go that route. Not good to someone who expects to have 100.000% of the market share, and who is *not* happy with only 98%. East Buchanan can charge CMRS carriers for the use of their facilities. It might take some negotiation or even, at the extreme, FCC action, but they're entitled to be paid to deliver calls. But of course they then have to pay for calls that are delivered on the cellular carriers' networks. Cellular networks need to be paid too! But note that most small rural telephone companies collect only a small share of their expenses from their own subscribers. They collect a larger share from access charges (getting much more per minute that the Bells do) and from the FCC's Universal Service Fund, which is funded by a tax (its rate set by the FCC, not Congress, I think it's now around 8.9%) on interstate telecom services. I suppose they see CMRS peer interconnection as a risk end to its gravy train, of providing wireline phone service at low prices, with its very high costs funded by the rest of the country. ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 10:51:24 -0400 Tony P. wrote: > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. > Who knew that they didn't pay the interconnect charge when cell calls > land on wired switches. I always thought they had. At the very least, Verizon Wireless (back when it was Bell Atlantic Mobile) most certainly made me believe so, as back in '96 they used to tack on a "landline interconnect fee" to local calls that was in addition to any airtime allotment you had (and they were miniscule back then), or overage charges. In many areas it was $.10 per call regardless of duration, but in the New York Metro area (where I lived) the fee was 5 cents PER MINUTE. And this was just for the privilege of having Bell Atlantic, the landline phone company, carry your call from Bell Atlantic, the Cellular carrier. Of course I knew it was BS when PCS carriers came on the scene and I switched, only to discover that no other cellular or PCS carrier saw it necessary to assess this fee to connect calls over the same Verizon network. ------------------------------ 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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If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #382 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 16 16:32:59 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7GKWxa24498; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:32:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:32:59 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408162032.i7GKWxa24498@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 #383 TELECOM Digest Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:33:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 383 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Dave Close) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Isaiah Beard) Re: Information About Mosquitos Trojan (Jack) Re: 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials (Neal McLain) Re: Q and Z on Dials - Standards? (Joseph) Re: Dating an Old Phone Number (Joseph) Re: Competion, New Technologies Take Sting Out (Dave Close) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Nick Landsberg) Re: Number Not in Use (Ned Protter) 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: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: 15 Aug 2004 18:19:16 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And speaking of Vonage, I wonder if > that 'new' Motorola TA box is the source of my grief with my network > lately. I never, or rarely, had these up and downs when I had Vonage > as a port on the router instead of at the head of the line as it is > now. Although the phone seems to 'sound better' as it is now at the > head of the line, I may sacrifice that to not have so many LAN up > and downs, unless someone out there takes pity on an old man and > helps me do the tweaks as needed. PAT] I know that the Vonage instructions tell you to put the ATA between your router and the Internet. That won't work when, as in my case, DHCP is served by one of my internal machines, not by my router, since the ATA can't get an address and won't work without one. When I asked Vonage how to solve the problem, I was told to just put the ATA inside the local LAN. The alleged reason for putting it outside is to allow it to manage QOS, but tech support said that doesn't work anyway. Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "If I seem unduly clear to you, dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 you must have misunderstood dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu what I said." -- Alan Greenspan ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 22:59:01 -0400 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Isaiah Beard: > And speaking of Vonage, I wonder if that 'new' Motorola TA box is > the source of my grief with my network lately. I never, or rarely, > had these up and downs when I had Vonage as a port on the router > instead of at the head of the line as it is now. Although the phone > seems to 'sound better' as it is now at the head of the line, I may > sacrifice that to not have so many LAN up and downs, unless someone > out there takes pity on an old man and helps me do the tweaks as > needed. PAT] Wish I could help, but so far this has not happened to me yet. I also have a Motorola. If it does happen, I'll see what I can find out abdout what causes it. ------------------------------ From: nuclearjack@hotmail.com (Jack) Subject: Re: Information About Mosquitos Trojan Date: 15 Aug 2004 23:50:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Yesterday Symbian put out a statement which contributed to the impression that malign code was inserted into 'cracked' versions of the game by members of the computer underground. However it turns out that the hidden SMS functionality, along with a message written in the best vernacular VXer speak, was put in the game from the beginning by the original games publisher Ojom. "The premium rate contracts for the phone numbers have been terminated, so although old versions of the game still send hidden SMS messages, it only costs the nominal fee of sending the message itself. Current versions of this game no longer have this hidden functionality, but 'cracked' versions of Mosquitos still float in P2P network -- and they still send these messages," it adds. http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/mquito.shtml http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/11/mosquitos_malware_myth/ Monty Solomon wrote in message news:: > http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040810.html > Information about Mosquitos Trojan > Symbian is aware that an illegally adapted or 'cracked' game called > Mosquitos is being distributed by 'warez' websites (illegal software > download sites) and on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. This game has > been illegally adapted from the legitimate Mosquitos game developed by > Ojom. > If installed by the user, the illegal game may cause the phone to send > text messages to premium rate numbers without the user's approval or > knowledge. > Symbian offers the following summary information and advice: > http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2004/pr040810.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wondered about that 'little problem', that premium charge telephone numbers, while not totally gone, are sort of odd: the premium charge to call only applies from within the same calling area. From outside the calling area, either the call will not complete at all, or it completes but at the normal toll rate. I got to thinking about that alleged scam several years ago where some fool was sending out text messages on pagers telling the owner to return a phone call to 212-540-xxxx. Remember that one? And *supposedly* business people from everywhere (California, Illinois, wherever) were calling into that number innocently, hearing an obscene rejoinder, and getting clipped on their phone bill (actually their company was paying the phone bill) for some obscene amount of money. Telecom managers everywhere were up in arms, sending out messages telling their people to *not* return those phone calls. Remember all that? The only telecom managers who had any real worries were those in the New York City exchange. Everyone outside that exchange only got a toll charge if anything. I must have gotten a couple dozen such 'warning' messages to be placed in the Digest from well-meaning telecom managers in those days. I wonder if Monty Solomon's 'hacked Mosquito game warning message' will get that much notoriety? I dunno how the Europeans handle premium charge calls from cell phones or if indeed, text messages sent out have any sort of semblance to USA text messages sent/recieved. I don't mean to sound crass or casual about what *could* be a problem for some phone users, however. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:46:56 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: RE: 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials Anthony Bellanga wrote: > While I don't think any other parts of the world ever had > any 3L-4N numbering (or at least 3-letter Exchange Names), in > Denmark (at least in Kobenhaven), the dial had 3-letters for > most of the digits on the dial, just like in the US, Canada, > UK (at least the "director" areas) and France (at least Paris). > The lettering was slightly different than the North American > and even UK/France dial: > 1 = 'C' (for "Central" ??) > 2 = A B D > 3 = E F G > 4 = H I K > 5 = L M N > 6 = O P R (individual letters, not an abbreviation for Operator) > 7 = S T U > 8 = W X Y > 9 = AE, (shashed-O) > 0 = 'HJAELP' ("help", for Police, Fire, Ambulance, etc) A photo of the Danish dial is posted at: . Note that the "1" position is labeled "Central," as Bellanga surmised. The two characters in the "9" position are the 27th and 28th letters of the 29-letter Danish alphabet. . The embossed image in the center of the dial is the "The Danish National Coat of Arms." . Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Q and Z on Dials - Standards? Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:24:53 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 14 Aug 2004 19:28:34 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > I just curious, with the demise of the Bell System, if there was any > organization that sets standards for phones, esp new models, and > decided that indeed Q and Z would go over 7 and 9. The present standard 2 ABC, 3 DEF, 4 GHI, 5 JKL, 6 MNO, 7 PQRS, 8 TUV, 9 WXYZ was agreed upon by the ITU. > In a separate post, someone discussed London dials. What do > modern dials look like today in the rest of the world. Do they > even have letters? If so, are they over the same digits as us? Sometimes it matters where the phones are from, but generally the ITU standard makes it so that all dials can have letters with the numbers. Generally if you'll see that phones have the letters as above but generally will not have anything on the 0 key even though in the US and in Canada the 0 position by itself used to have the word Operator or abbreviated Oper. in the zero spot. Northern Electric/Northern Telecom/Nortel has not had operator on any of their sets even the 2500 sets for many many years. I think their 500 sets had the word diagonally Operator but I think that was the end of it for Northern Electric/Northern Telecom/Nortel. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:30:31 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:31:29 -0700, wrote: > I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" > phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone > number located in Brooklyn New York: > TRiangle 5-7871 > Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = > luck. Unless you have access to a history of when central office exchanges were put into service it's unlikely that you'll find this information. When I was in high school in 1970 I got hold of a publication from New England Telephone (hand typed!) that gave a history in the state of when the many and various COs were installed with magneto, common battery and dial offices. The book gave the dates when the various towns' service changed from one thing to another. Unless you can get hold of that information from someone who has connections to Verizon/Bell Atlantic/New York Telephone you may not be able to get the information. It's sad but the present "owners" of plant don't appear to be very concerned about their past and not a lot of effort has been put into documenting that past. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2004 18:19:59 -0700 From: Dave Close Subject: Re: Competition, New Technologies Take Sting Out of Long-Distance Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California Jack Decker quotes Christopher Stern of The Washington Post: > For millions of people, it no longer makes a difference if they call > across the country or across the street. And yet I haven't noticed any apologies from those who still insist on toll-alert dialing. Isn't it time to abolish that useless annoyance? Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "If I seem unduly clear to you, dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 you must have misunderstood dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu what I said." -- Alan Greenspan ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:13:39 GMT Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:31:42 GMT, Nick Landsberg > writes: >> On a similar note and to use an analogy. >> If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front >> door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of >> guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and >> entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal >> trespass" and theft. (And probably "spitting on the sidewalk" just in >> case the cops wanted to have a longer list of charges.) > It is my recollection that any use of force to enter a place > fulfills the requirements to make it a burglary -- turning a knob, > pushing the door open, or any other such action. > Wes Leatherock > wesrock@aol.com > wleathus@yahoo.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suppose then even without a door to > be broken down to enter, turning on a computer or tuning in a WiFi > card could consist of using force? PAT] Given Wes' note above, it would seem so. I am not a lawyer and have never been on either side of a burglary (thank God!), but what I initially posted was what I thought might be. Thus, to pursue the analogy to telecom. "Home Depot" (or some other store) installs a wireless network for their own convenience (serving the bar-code readers, the cash registers and whatnot, and letting them put cash-registers out in front of the "seasonal" department in the springtime when all those homeowners are buying the flats of flowers to plant. Note that these same cash-registers are transmitting the customers' credit card numbers to the MasterCard and Visa sites for validation.) Whoever installed their WiFi network was, to overstate the case, "clueless" with regards to security. In the specific case in point, I don't think it was actually "wardriving" (or whatever the term is). Given the circumstances as I have seen them described in this forum, several individuals "set up shop" in the parking lot of this store. (Correct me if I'm wrong on the details please.) One individual with a laptop computer was actively engaged in "finding a way in" to this store's wireless network. They found it (because the store was negligent in securing their network). I find it exceedingly hard to disbelieve that the other occupants of the car did not know the prupose for which they had "set up shop" in the parking lot of this particular store. Someone is guilty of the electronic equivalent of "breaking and entering," "burglary," "identity theft" (if they actually got credit-card info), etc. The others in the car are what I presume the lawyers would call "accessories to the fact." Now, this isn't a legalese newsgroup, so I'm probably off-base on some of my points, but I again fall back on the analogy to an unlocked house. Just because the front door is unlocked, does that make you any less guilty? If you're the driver in the car waiting by the curb, does the fact that the house was unlocked make you any less guilty? Danny Burstein wrote: > In Nick Landsberg > writes: >> On a similar note and to use an analogy. >> If one were to (intentionally or unintentionally) leave their front >> door unlocked and got burglarized, would that absolve the burglars of >> guilt? The burglar probably could not be charged with "breaking and >> entering" but he sure as hell could be charged with "criminal >> trespass" and theft. > I'll take your analogy and raise you one better: > You own a drive-in movie theater with two acres of land. You've got a > waist high chain link marking your property. > The screen is visible for hundreds of feet around. And the radio signal > you're using for the audio is similarly detectable. > People park outside your fence and watch and listen to the movie. > What's the crime? > (Note that I'm most specifically NOT excusing the credit card theft, > etc. Which, I guess to follow the analogy, would be the folk outsde the > fence coming in and stealing your hotdogs ...) I think the point is in the stealing of the hot dogs. :) In your extension of the analogy, the "crime" is benign in that it does not deprive anyone else of anything. (With the exception of the admission charge not paid to the proprietor.) But then, see Pat's comment below about the speakers being on a wire in the drive-in movies I was used to in my youth. Drive-in's are a thing of the past, as far as I can tell. The movie theaters nowadays gouge you not so much on the price of admission as on the price of hot dogs and popcorn. :) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you were using the old-style > audio, where you pulled up in car next to a little loud speaker > which you had to open your window slightly and clip the speaker on > your window, I suppose you could deprive the outside audience of > *hearing* the movie at least with no little speaker box to clip > onto the car window. But try this one on for size: > We all know there are certain types of radio transmissions we are not > supposed to 'tune in' period, such as cell phone conversations. Yet > those transmissions, like all radio waves, permeate my property > continually; all sorts of radio waves are coming through this room in > my house all the time. Do I have the 'right' to examine anything > passing through my property, regardless of the intentions of the > owners of the property. Suppose someone built a house or owned > property right next door to Lowes as an example. Are they required to > ignore those WiFi signals which are on their property and not examine > them? Or could I rightfully demand that Lowes not 'come onto my > property' with their radio signals? PAT] "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: Ned Protter Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 15:28:57 -0400 In article , Ned Protter wrote: > Today my answering machine received a telemarketing message telling me > to press 1 if I was interested. > I was interested. I got the number from Call Return. I wrote it down > and reread it when they announced it the second time. > I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an > announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed again with > the same result. > How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You got that recording because the > company which called you diddled with their caller ID to keep you from > finding out what number they were really at. Its a very common technique > telemarketers use. I do not know if your comment 'I was interested' > was because you really were interested or if it was tongue in cheek > and you actually more interested in making trouble for the telemarketer, > but in any event they assumed you would not be interested and took > measures to assure you would not get back to them. PAT] Do they diddle with their caller ID because it's illegal for them to block it? Is it illegal to fake their caller ID? Could the phone company trace them anyway? Can they fake the area code and exchange as well as the OCN? The message intrigued me for two reasons. First, all I got was the last few seconds. She said it was a medical and dental discount plan for $129 a month. My machine's announcement is only four seconds, so it seems as if their message must have started before my machine answered. Second, the going rate for discount plans seems to be $129 per year, not per month. A couple of weeks ago, my machine recorded a message saying I'd won a trip. There was a thirteen-second delay before it started, and it was very distorted. It had come from a cell phone, as if somebody had dialed me and held the cell phone over an answering machine that played back a telemarketing message. I wonder if the discount-plan message was also a prank. In the exchange area I got from Call Return is a household where the father and son are IT professionals who love games. The message may have been designed to raise eyebrows if it had not started prematurely. If their computer was set to tell callers the number was out of service, Caller ID would give them a list of people who had been intrigued enough to call back. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its not illegal for them to block their number; that is what *67 is used for. But many recipients of telephone calls choose not to answer calls with blocked ID; in fact telco also sells a 'blocking blocked ID' service just to accomodate those folks. But if a person subscribes to 'blocking blocked ID service'it will *not* work if the caller puts any sort of squibble at all in your caller ID device. In other words, if they give their name as "NOTCHUR BIZ" and their 'phone number' as 000-000-0000 some of the telcos will insist (SBC is notorious in this way) that a 'valid number and valid ID has been presented' therefore block-blocking does not apply. SBC says "we did our part of the deal, now you do your part and pay your damn phone bill". I've had calls from Notchur at his office and gotten similar very insolent and arrogant comments from the flunkies at SBC who respond in the name of their chairman. The only thing no one is able to lie about is the pairs used for the connection, but telcos won't give that information out. I'd much rather see something like "Chicago-Kedzie, cable 2933, pair 2711" on my caller ID instead of some of the Bologna that shows up now, but telcos won't do that. Maybe it has something to do with 'terrorism' which is everyone's favorite red herring these days. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #383 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 16 22:35:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7H2Zwe27641; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:35:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:35:58 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408170235.i7H2Zwe27641@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 #384 TELECOM Digest Mon, 16 Aug 2004 23:35:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 384 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Comcast to Launch NFL Network For Video on Demand (Monty Solomon) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (John Levine) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Paul Vader) Re: Number Not in Use (Paul Vader) Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom (Ray) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Paul Vader) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Paul Vader) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Charlie) Guidance Wanted in Starting Telecom Service Business (Marcel Riley) Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT, Sept 29-30, 2004 (Jason Pontin) 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: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 16:52:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast to Launch NFL Network For Video on Demand NEW YORK, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA) on Monday said it plans to launch the National Football League Network this month as part of a plan to bolster the operator's video-on-demand offerings. The NFL network will be added to the Philadelphia-based cable operator's digital cable service, featuring 54 preseason games, a deep trove of historic games, and other programs. Although analysts do not view the current deal as a major boon to Comcast's business, they said it could be a precursor to a more extensive agreement to gain access to lucrative Sunday games, as it seeks to lure more television watchers back to cable. DirecTV Group Inc. (NYSE:DTV) currently owns on an exclusive basis the NFL's most prized asset -- the cable broadcast rights to Sunday games, through 2005. Cable operators have vowed to lure back video subscribers, which they lost to rival satellite television services at a higher than expected rate in the second quarter. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43147307 ------------------------------ Date: 16 Aug 2004 20:59:23 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John, I am curious about something. In > an area where there is a predominant LEC (everywhere, I suppose) and > it negotiates things regards its customers (such as 'bill and keep' > as one example) what about the independent telcos in the same area? > Are they obligated to go along with what the LEC 'negotiates'? PAT] The interconnection agreements among ILECs all date from the regulated era, so they were all overseen by state utility commissions. Since they were supposed to be cost-based, they often depended on how many miles of the interconnecting trunks were owned by each telco. Now that we have wireless, paging, and CLECs, and transmission costs have gotten so low that it's common to switch calls 50 or 100 miles from the subscriber's location, it's all gotten a lot more complicated. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:32:35 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Tony P. writes: > Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell > carriers to their knees. More likely, to get sued into a smoking crater. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:43:31 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Ned Protter writes: > Do they diddle with their caller ID because it's illegal for them to > block it? Is it illegal to fake their caller ID? Could the phone > company trace them anyway? It's been illegal for the last 6 months to block or alter caller ID on a telemarketing call -- the number must show, and must be the 'get me off your dang list' number. If you know the company that's calling, file a complaint with the FTC -- it's an $11,000 per occurrence fine. > Can they fake the area code and exchange as well as the OCN? Anything at all in a caller-id record can be faked. > A couple of weeks ago, my machine recorded a message saying I'd won a > trip. There was a thirteen-second delay before it started, and it was > very distorted. It had come from a cell phone, as if somebody had > dialed me and held the cell phone over an answering machine that played > back a telemarketing message. The real boiler-room operators (and you can definitely count the free-trip ones in that category) are often running old crappy equipment. Think of it as the telemarketing equivalent of the massively misspelled spam email. It might attract your attention, but not in a GOOD way. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its not illegal for them to block their > number; that is what *67 is used for. But many recipients of telephone Not for telemarketers. They can't block the number, period. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: rayj00@yahoo.com (Ray) Subject: Re: Computer Programmers in Telecom Date: 16 Aug 2004 16:14:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I tend to agree with previous posters ... I should have went to law school! :) As a side note, when Lucent first started working on the 5E, they hired a bunch of college Comp Sci folks. Well, I don't care how good you are at software development, if you don't have the telephony background, it will be a struggle to say the least. Most of them did not even know the basics of call routing! Good luck ... Ray sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com (sumit chawla) wrote in message news:: > Thanks for your response. Actually I am doing training in Lucent Switch. > I just wanted to know how I could apply my software development skills > in the respective industry. > Sumit Chawla > E-mail (sumitkchawla@rediffmail.com) > Bit Twister wrote in message > news:: >> On 3 Aug 2004 07:35:52 -0700, Sumit Chawla wrote: >>> I'm a computer engineer. I want to pursue a career in the telecom >>> sector. >> Move to China, Vietnam, India where the outsourcing is going. >> I wish you luck; ALCATEL France, came over, bought a telecom company, >> took the good projects back to Europe, outsourced other jobs, layed >> everyone else off except enough to keep the sales/service office up and >> running. >> Suggest moving your expertise into the medical field. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:28:27 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net writes: > Whoever installed their WiFi network was, to overstate the case, > "clueless" with regards to security. You don't know that. Given that the unauthorized people, whoever they were, were caught red-handed, you can't rule out someone watching the server logs. It might just APPEAR to be an open network. On the other hand, running things that way might put you into 'attractive nuisance' territory. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby. Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:36:57 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Monty Solomon : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is the reason why I at least give > a cursory glance at everything in the spam bucket before dumping it > out. There is that occassional item in the spam bucket which should Feh. The fault is solely the other people for not USING A PHONE to back up an email contact, especially if the two parties have never communicated before. It sounds like a made-up story anyway, or at least a garbled one. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, Paul, I am not in a position to use the telephone either to call submitters and let them know their message was received, nor to receive telephone calls from people who want to know did I receive their message and when if ever it will be used in the Digest. What kind of email volume do the people involved in this story get in a day's time. I've had people write here who do not know an auto-ack is sent out who have been quite indignant with me for allegedly 'ignoring' them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: 16 Aug 2004 19:22:07 -0700 I read all the Vonage posts I could find before signing up and decided the people who are disappointed had bad luck or unrealistic expectations. I made sure the new Vonage line number was local to my POTS line then, when the Vonage box was working I call forwarded the POTS line to Vonage and set Vonage to ring my cell phone simultaneously. After a month of experience I put in the order to port my home phone to Vonage and have never looked back. I've had a few glitchy calls; I experienced the several hour outage same as everyone else. My cell phone is always at the ready to receive calls or allow me to make calls if necessary. The overwhelming majority of the time the Vonage phone has behaved exactly like the old POTS line. Nobody seems to notice they are talking to me on a VOIP line (at 50kbs) unless I tell them -- I usually don't. I happen to have a remote rural location where I like to spend as much time as possible. The cost of land based wireless broad band service there is the same as the house phone plus the dialup internet service I needed there. So the vonage box travels with me. I can sit in a shady spot in the yard with a cordless phone and wireless notebook and take care of business. The only thing that gives away my location is the song birds. If I want to take a walk in the woods I pick up the cell phone and go. VOIP service is not a substitute for every POTS phone. It's fool hardy to drop the house phone without testing VOIP for several months in your location and completely understanding and accepting the tradeoffs. I recommend Vonage because I believe it's the right product at the right price and it's the one I know. If there's a better one go buy it. Charlie ------------------------------ From: marcel_riley@yahoo.com (Marcel Riley) Subject: Guidance Wanted in Starting Telecom Service Business Date: 16 Aug 2004 18:57:40 -0700 I am exploring starting a business to offer services to companies to install/repair/etc. their business telephone systems. I would like to ask people who are engaged in this type of work to offer their perspective: 1) What aspect of this business is more lucrative and has less headaches (sales or service, etc.)? 2) How can someone who is entering the business new, diffrentiate himself from companies that are already in the game? 3) Any other aspects? pros, cons, etc. Thanks, Marcel Riley ------------------------------ Subject: The Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT, September 29-30, 2004 Reply-To: edeployments@technologyreview.com From: Jason Pontin, Technology Review Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 14:39:56 PDT Explore the technologies poised to make a dramatic impact on our world. 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One Main Street, 7th Floor Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #384 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 17 14:15:17 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7HIFH416074; Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:15:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:15:17 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408171815.i7HIFH416074@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 #385 TELECOM Digest Tue, 17 Aug 2004 14:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 385 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Jack Decker) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Linuxfreak) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Paul Vader) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (L) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Steven J Sobol) Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Dating an Old Phone Number (sin nombre) Re: Dating an Old Phone Number (Lisa Hancock) Re: Number Not in Use (Robert Bonomi) Outdated Operator Inward Codes (Merri Clinton) ALTIGEN PBX With 58 Nortel Sets - For Sale (Phone System) 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: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 23:02:47 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Pat, please conceal my e-mail address as usual. On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:13:39 GMT, Nick Landsberg wrote: > In the specific case in point, I don't think it was actually > "wardriving" (or whatever the term is). Given the circumstances as I > have seen them described in this forum, several individuals "set up > shop" in the parking lot of this store. (Correct me if I'm wrong on > the details please.) One individual with a laptop computer was > actively engaged in "finding a way in" to this store's wireless > network. They found it (because the store was negligent in securing > their network). I find it exceedingly hard to disbelieve that the > other occupants of the car did not know the prupose for which they had > "set up shop" in the parking lot of this particular store. One reason there is so much confusion on this case is because the press insists on republishing old, inaccurate information which makes it appear as though two separate incidents were all one incident. This may work when you're making a film loosely based on historical events, but it is never good journalism. Paul Timmins was nowhere near the store on the night of the break-in. He was in fact minding his own business, getting ready to go on an out-of-town business trip to the west coast, one that he had been looking forward to I might add. The incident in which Paul had accessed Lowes wireless network, checked his e-mail and attempted to do some web surfing (which he discontinued when he realized he was on Lowes corporate network) happened months earlier. Since a lot of folks are using analogies, here's one that probably comes pretty close. You're walking home one night and you walk into the wrong house by mistake. Since the door was unlocked and your mind is preoccupied on other things, it takes you a minute or to realize you're in the wrong house. So you quickly leave and hope no one notices. When you actually do get home, you say to your roommate, "The strangest thing happened tonight -- I walked into that house two blocks down the street by mistake, and I was able to do it because the homeowner left the door wide open!" In other words, you are simply commenting on the carelessness of the homeowner in leaving his doors unlocked so anyone can walk in. But your roommate, after sitting on this information for a few months, for some unknown reason takes this as an invitation to go down and have a look for himself, despite the fact that you didn't encourage him to do so at all. Maybe he's just curious about how someone else decorated their house, but he still has no business entering it. And worse yet, he invites his friend who turns out to be a thief, and while he's admiring the wall hangings his friend is helping himself to the jewelry in the bedroom (still in a totally unlocked house). Now the police happen to figure out "who dunnit" and they come after your roommate and his friend, only at first they mistake you for his friend, the jewel thief. So they haul you and your roommate in, and charge you both, and go crowing to the press about how they caught a major jewel thief, naming you as the thief. After the cops figure out that they made a mistake and nab the real thief, they have the problem of what to do with you -- after all they told the press you were guilty of a crime, and the story went all around the world. But in the process of the investigation your roommate mentions that had probably would not have had the idea to enter that house had you not mentioned in passing that you'd mistakenly entered it months ago. Well! Entering a house is technically trespassing, and you did it, even if you left without causing any damage or taking a single thing of value. So they charge you with that, "forget" to mention to the press that it happened months earlier as part of a totally separate incident, and because the press has totally forgotten how to do any sort of meaningful fact-checking they just make the best sense they can out of the information they've been spoon-fed by the police, which of course is designed to above all not make the police look bad. Now as I say, it's not a perfect analogy but I think it comes pretty close. Some may say that anyone who is "wardriving" is in fact worthy of jail; I just wonder if such people think that people should be jailed for going five miles over the speed limit. My limited understanding is that "wardriving", when done without malicious intent, really is about as close as you can get to a victimless crime (granted you're exchanging minuscule amounts of data with a network, but in the grand scheme of things it's next to nothing, like finding a penny on the sidewalk and taking it without attempting to find the rightful owner). Of course, stealing credit card numbers is several magnitudes worse. But, Paul never stole credit card numbers, he never suggested that anyone else should go and steal credit card numbers, and he certainly wasn't present when the credit card numbers were being stolen. I probably should stop there, but I guess I'm either too stupid or too pigheaded to do that, because I'm going to express another opinion that will probably be unpopular. It really bothers me that we have so many laws nowadays, many of which specify punishments far out of proportion to the act committed. But what REALLY bothers me are the people who, the moment they see any HINT of wrongdoing, are ready to yell, "Off with his head!" Either these are perfect people (which they cannot be, because they have no sense of mercy) or they are not willing to acknowledge that they themselves have at times broken the law (perhaps unintentionally, or perhaps in a minor way, or perhaps because "everyone else does it" and gets away with it) and somehow were spared the same strict punishment that they would wish to see inflicted on others. When a society starts putting "law and order" above all else, that is very likely what they will get -- very severe laws and very stiff penalties for going against the established order. Such societies have existed, though sometimes they don't last very long. But I am reminded of what Jesus said about 2,000 years ago: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Yet people read a newspaper article, and even knowing how inaccurate the press can be, still rush to judgment without really knowing any of the facts. And worse yet, once they have formed an opinion, when the facts DO finally come out they make certain not to let those facts get in the way of that preconceived opinion. NOW I'll stop. Jack [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: **Thank you very much**, Jack, for phrasing it better than I could in recent years. Under the terms of a financial settlement I received now about three years ago from the Cook County, Illinois government and the Skokie Police Department I am forbidden to say *in detail* much about a situation I had with them; one that turned out quite embarassing for them and very disasterous for me. Suffice to say, that was where one of my three heart attacks came from and my brain aneurysm came from. The settlement money -- a mere pittance compared to the hell I went through -- has long since been spent to pay toward my hospital stay at Storemont Vail Medical Center in Topeka, and the nursing home which followed, where it was assumed I would spend the rest of my life; and where I sometimes now feel I would have been better off remaining. Did YOU ever get a hospital bill with a bottom line of -three hundred thousand- dollars? Police of course could care less; take the pittance remittance we give you and be grateful, you scum. Fortunatly, Kansas SRS paid the rest of the bill so I did not have to. But Skokie police, with their fingers pursed strongly on their lips say "you promised to keep quiet". Indeed I did, so I shall. I promised that when I signed the check they handed me, forgoing any acts of revenge against them (and the pen, they say, is mightier than the sword any day). So Jack, you are correct when you note how people tend to gobble up anything the press or the talking heads on television/radio tell them. The same is true of the internet, even more so I think, since television/radio have some constraints on them socially and legally which internet is sorely lacking. But Jack, I have a < l-o-n-g > memory, and desite my brain disease, I *do* remember a few incidents both recently and twenty or thirty years ago which won't be forgotten anytime soon, as I work to self-defend myself through life. And your allusion to Jesus and the Christian religion were duly noted also. You should know that Jesus or anything to do with Christianty -- true Christianity at least -- are not in vogue on the net or in society these days. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Linuxfreak Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: 16 Aug 2004 22:47:36 -0500 Organization: Linuxfreaks Of Tuxas. Monty Solomon posted this first bit of an article: > As it turned out, she had sent Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco an e-mail > message suggesting that they work together on a grant application. > The application deadline had since passed, and the acquaintance was > more than a little miffed that she had gotten no response from them. Excuse me, but you send an email, receive no response within a reasonable period of time, and this means so little to you that you don't follow it up with a phone call? Guess what, people! Email is unreliable! It doesn't work 100% of the time! It doesn't work at the speed of light 100% of the time! And, while it might work most of the time, it doesn't work ALL the time! There are multiple ways that email can fail. For example, my ISPs SPAM filter has been set too tight and email from my father-in-law never made it into my inbox. This has since been corrrected, of course. I have been the victim of (what I consider) a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack which has filled my inbox to the point where my email provider would accept no more email for my address until I cleared out my inbox. This has happened to my yahoo.com email account, due to a virus let loose to infect machines running Microsoft Outlook. There are the people who take their time and answer email at their leisure. Of course, some them are so busy, you'll never hear from them! And then, there are the people I know who receive MUCH more email than I do (and I'm talking about real email, not SPAM). I don't know how they keep up with it. Sometimes, they don't. Or can't. So, if I need to communicate with them, I call them or walk over to their desk and talk to them! (Imagine, communication via talking! Who'da thunk it! Oh, wait a second, this is my favorite telephone newsgroup! Telephones! Talking! Yeah!) If the message is that important, you may want not want to use email. You may want to use the telephone instead! And, for old time's sake, put that 554 beige rotary wall phone back in service on the kitchen wall, and confuse the younger folk by asking them if they know how to block Caller ID on a per-call basis from a rotary phone! End of messag&$*%#)&%...... NO CARRIER ...... ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:04:01 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader): > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, Paul, I am not in a position > to use the telephone either to call submitters and let them know their > message was received, nor to receive telephone calls from people who I wasn't talking about you -- I was talking about the digest item, where some bonehead researcher was mad at an acquaintance because they didn't return their email and they lost a grant because of it. Gee, writing it out like that makes it REALLY obvious that this was a made-up story. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:07:42 +0000 (GMT) From: L Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Organization: Optimum Online Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom23.382.3@telecom-digest.org: > By KATIE HAFNER > LIKE many people these days, Jason Kim and Linda Crasco rely heavily > on e-mail for their work, running a small educational research and > evaluation company in Norwood, Mass. And like many people, they get > plenty of spam, some 400 pieces of unwanted e-mail daily. > So when their company, Systemic Research, first installed a spam > filter 18 months ago, they were impressed by the noticeable reduction > in the amount of spam they received. > Several months ago, Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco were at a meeting when > they ran into a program director they knew from the American > Association for the Advancement of Science. She greeted them coolly. > Puzzled, Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco asked what they might have done to > offend her. > As it turned out, she had sent Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco an e-mail > message suggesting that they work together on a grant application. > The application deadline had since passed, and the acquaintance was > more than a little miffed that she had gotten no response from them. > The two entrepreneurs were flabbergasted. Not only did they have no > idea the e-mail had been sent, they had no idea that it had been > snuffed out as junk. > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/technology/circuits/05filt.html Are you aware? The above link does not work unless you register. Please don't promulgate reference links that require payment and/or the providing of HOUSEHOLD income -- or, if you do, warn us in advance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was, at one time, an account set up for people to use when they wished to read my competitor, the New York Times, which did *not* invade their privacy. I think it had a user name of telecomdigest and a password of telecomdigest. Anyone was free to use it. That way, telecomdigest got all the spam and spy cookies the Times gives out as free souveniers to people who come to visit. Then some bonehead went and changed the password on it. If someone wishes to once again set up a community reading account name on NYT please do so and tell the rest of us what it is. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 22:28:49 -0500 Paul Vader wrote: >> Seems this little co-op phone company is about to bring the cell >> carriers to their knees. > More likely, to get sued into a smoking crater. * On what grounds? Restraint of trade? 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: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Interconnect Fees Get Ugly Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 12:51:15 GMT Fred Goldstein wrote: > But let's review the federal rules. (Note IANAL. This is just > my understanding, not a legal opinion.) Way back when, when cellular > first came out, it was really expensive, and the FCC allowed the > cellular companies to interconnect to the local exchange carriers via > the latters' *Access* tariffs. Access is the tariff used for > interexchange carriers like AT&T and MCI to purchase the last mile > from local carriers. It's generally expensive, carrying some > subsidies above direct cost. Especially in small rural telephone > companies. Cellular carriers came into being before the access charge regime existed. There were significant differences of opinion about how and whether cellular carriers should be charged for local call termination. In 1985, the FCC's common carrier bureau issued a decision holding that they should be treated as co-carriers, akin to independent local telcos, for interconnection purposes. (I was one of the authors of that opinion.) A few years later, when LECs tried to impose access charges on cellular carriers, the FCC held that cellular carriers were *not* subject to access charges. Nevertheless, the rates telcos negotiated with cellular carriers were resembled access charges more than independent LEC arranagements. > The Telecom Act of 1996 changed the rules. It redefined > cellular (CMRS, to be precise -- that also includes paging, PCS, and > Nextel-like ESMR carriers) carriers to be co-carriers of local calls, > peers rather than monopoly ratepayers. So the CMRS carriers are > expected to pay a cost-based rate for the calls that they send to the > LEC, but the LEC is expected to pay the *same* rate to the CMRS > carriers for calls made to the CMRS subscribers. In general, > cellular-originated calls are more than twice the volume of > cellular-received calls, so the local telco still comes out ahead. > But not as far ahead as under Access, because that tariff charges the > other carrier (like AT&T) for *both* directions. So calls to cell > phones used to be charged to the cellular carrier but for most of a > decade have been charged to the local carrier. And at lower rates. Again, it has been FCC policy that cellular carriers are co-carriers since 1985, not only since the 1996 Telecom Act. But even since passage of that Act it has been difficult for cellular carriers to get compensated for terminating calls. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: sin nombre Subject: Re: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: 17 Aug 2004 01:31:19 GMT on 8/15/2004 in comp.dcom.telecom wrote: > Hi! > I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" > phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone > number located in Brooklyn New York: > TRiangle 5-7871 > Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = > luck. > Any help is appreciated, > Debra http://www.nyhistory.org/library/nyhsqa.html#tele When were New York City telephone exchanges switched from a combination of letters and numbers to all numbers? The first all-number telephone exchange was assigned in 1960, to the offices of Western Electric, as part of the New York Telephone Company's long-range plan to avert an anticipated shortage of phone numbers. And a long-range plan it was: not until 1978 were lettered exchanges eliminated from the white pages directory, followed by the switch to all-number exchanges in the yellow pages directory in February, 1979. Still, many New Yorkers, for reasons of status, habit or sentiment, continued to state their numbers with the obsolete prefixes of PLaza 5, REgent-7 or TRafalgar-3 well into the 1980s. Sources: "All-Number Numbers for Phone Begun Here." New York Times, 6 December 1960. Ferretti, Fred. "PHone EXchanges LOse THeir LEtters." The New York Times, 24 July 1978. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: 17 Aug 2004 09:21:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com wrote > I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" > phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone > number located in Brooklyn New York: TRiangle 5-7871 > Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = > luck. Unfortunately, there is not enough information. I don't know when that particular exchange went into service in NYC, but the picture could easily date from the 1930s until whenever the old telephone set shown was replaced by a modern set. If we knew the model of the telephone set we might be able to define a start date (that is, if it is a modern 500 set (basically the same kind used today except with Touch Tone) we would know the picture was after 1950s. But if it was an older sets we'd have to guess because older sets remained in service for many years. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Number Not in Use From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:56:37 +0000 In article , Ned Protter wrote: > In article , Ned Protter > wrote: >> Today my answering machine received a telemarketing message telling me >> to press 1 if I was interested. >> I was interested. I got the number from Call Return. I wrote it down >> and reread it when they announced it the second time. >> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed again with >> the same result. >> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You got that recording because the >> company which called you diddled with their caller ID to keep you from >> finding out what number they were really at. Its a very common technique >> telemarketers use. I do not know if your comment 'I was interested' >> was because you really were interested or if it was tongue in cheek >> and you actually more interested in making trouble for the telemarketer, >> but in any event they assumed you would not be interested and took >> measures to assure you would not get back to them. PAT] > Do they diddle with their caller ID because it's illegal for them to > block it? Historically, such operations have 'diddled' with their caller-ID info because the telco they connected through would insert _accurate_ data if they didn't provide 'something'. Recent rule-making by the FTC requires that caller-ID info be presented, 'whenever technically possible'. > Is it illegal to fake their caller ID? By the same FTC rule-making *accurate* info is required. > Could the phone company trace them anyway? That is a complicated question. For inter-carrier "settlement" purposes, your local telco maintains a record of all calls between their network and any other telco. The local telco _could_ identify _where_ (carrier, trunk, circuit) that call 'came from' -- as far as the carrier that delivered the call _to_ them. They will, however, resist any demand for such information. A court order would be needed. _Then_ you get to repeat the whole process with the next 'upstream' carrier. Again, and again, until you reach the 'originating' carrier who can identify the customer who actually originated the call. > Can they fake the area code and exchange as well as the OCN? Yup. with the right equipment and telco-connection, the _entire_ caller-ID data is under the control of the customer. They can make it say _anything_ they want it to. > The message intrigued me for two reasons. First, all I got was the last > few seconds. She said it was a medical and dental discount plan for > $129 a month. My machine's announcement is only four seconds, so it > seems as if their message must have started before my machine answered. > Second, the going rate for discount plans seems to be $129 per year, not > per month. > A couple of weeks ago, my machine recorded a message saying I'd won a > trip. There was a thirteen-second delay before it started, and it was > very distorted. It had come from a cell phone, as if somebody had > dialed me and held the cell phone over an answering machine that played > back a telemarketing message. > I wonder if the discount-plan message was also a prank. In the exchange > area I got from Call Return is a household where the father and son are > IT professionals who love games. The message may have been designed to > raise eyebrows if it had not started prematurely. If their computer was > set to tell callers the number was out of service, Caller ID would give > them a list of people who had been intrigued enough to call back. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Its not illegal for them to block their BZZZZT! Thank you for playing. It *IS* illegal for a telemarketer to block their number. Recent FTC rule-making *requires* the marketeers to (a) provide caller-ID info 'whenever technically possible', and that the data provided MUST BE ACCURATE. Penalties of up to $11,000 _per_call_ in violation. ------------------------------ From: merri.clinton@comporium.com Subject: Outdated Operator Inward Codes Date: 17 Aug 2004 09:52:05 -0700 I am a supervisor of a telecommunications company. We have very outdated operator inward codes and would like any information on how to obtain updated ones. ------------------------------ From: altigensystem@yahoo.com (Phone System) Subject: ALTIGEN PBX With 58 Nortel Sets - For Sale Date: 17 Aug 2004 09:14:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5715560497 ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. 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 #385 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 18 00:36:28 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7I4aSi01556; Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:36:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:36:28 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408180436.i7I4aSi01556@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 #386 TELECOM Digest Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:37:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 386 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Nine Phone Firms Back Revamped Fees (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Internet Calls Add Foreign Accent (Jack Decker - VOIP News) LecStar Uses Power Lines For VoIP Trial (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Phone Fraud! Beware of extremeISP.com (Raj) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Lisa Hancock) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Dave Garland) Re: Number Not in Use (Owain) Re: Number Not in Use (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Nick Landsberg) Number of Corporate Phone accounts? (Robert J. Dennison) Re: Outdated Operator Inward Codes (William Warren) wipphone.com is The Best Deal Out There (Erez Davidov) RCN Mach 7 Launch Underway Ahead of Schedule (Monty Solomon) FCC Official Says Wary of Cingular-AT&T Concern (Monty Solomon) 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: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 12:11:03 -0400 Subject: Nine Phone Firms Back Revamped Fees Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-08-16-phone-fees_x.htm By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY Long-distance bills likely would fall and local phone rates rise under a sweeping industry-backed proposal to federal regulators to overhaul the fees phone companies pay each other to connect calls. The plan, unveiled by a group of nine leading local and long-distance companies after more than a year of talks, would likely mean lower bills for chatty long-distance callers but higher tabs for those who make fewer long-distance calls. The proposal's prospects are uncertain because it must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. Three of the four regional Bell companies, Verizon Communications, BellSouth and Qwest Communications, did not sign on and that could prompt the FCC to make changes. Also, states may challenge it in court because it eliminates in-state fees under their control. Still, the fourth Bell, SBC Communications, and all three big long-distance companies, AT&T, MCI and Sprint, were among those endorsing the plan. Participants expect it at least to form the basis of FCC action. [.....] local phone companies are losing access-fee revenue as long-distance calling shifts to wireless and Internet-based phone services, which pay low or no connection fees. Full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-08-16-phone-fees_x.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 12:43:31 -0400 Subject: Internet Calls Add Foreign Accent Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-08-15-voip_x.htm By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY Can't make it to France this summer? In the digital age, the next best thing to being there might be this: a French phone number. Primus Telecommunications on Monday will become the first major broadband phone provider to add an international flavor to anything-goes, Internet-based calling. Customers of Primus' Lingo Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service will be able to choose a local number in cities including London, Paris and Tokyo in more than a dozen countries. The number, which costs $9.95 a month, can be used only for incoming calls as a second line to basic Lingo service. At $19.95 a month, Lingo users already get unlimited local and long-distance calls, including unlimited calls to Canada and Western Europe. Full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-08-15-voip_x.htm ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:55:10 -0400 Subject: LecStar Uses Power Lines For VoIP Trial Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040817S0010 By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News LecStar Telecom Inc. on Tuesday said it is testing the use of broadband over power lines in providing Internet-based telephone services. LecStar, the Atlanta-based communications subsidiary of Fonix Corp., launched a trial of the voice-over-Internet service using power lines of a Southeastern United States electric utility company, which LecStar declined to identify. The trial, which started earlier this month, involves about 165 homes in the utility's service region. Two other companies that provide other Internet-based services are also participating in the trial to an equal number of homes, Michael Britt, vice president of channel development for LecStar said. Full story at: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040817S0010 ------------------------------ From: rajmatazz@gmail.com (Raj) Subject: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? Date: 17 Aug 2004 20:32:08 -0700 This person called repeatedly on a too good to be true offer claiming to represent xtremeisp.com. The offer was for dialup OR broadband service(he did not know the difference or did not care) for 2 years at a flat rate $285 USD. In exchange he offered a Dell computer, Nokia phone, vacation package and 1000 USD online shopping package. He only wanted my checking account number. I hung up on him saying that I would research and get back to him. The numbers he left me with are 1-866-751-9360 and 1-510-248-4104, which he claimed to be calling from New York; on checking was found to be from Oakland, CA. I suspect fraud. Any clues ? thanks! Raj [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sounds to me to a bit rotten also. And another one to watch out for is the television ad for 'get a new computer with no credit check. If you have a telephone and a checking account you can have a new computer for just $35 per week.' $35 per *week* for 52 weeks and they debit/ACH your checking account each week. That's a scam also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: 17 Aug 2004 11:06:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote: > Feh. The fault is solely the other people for not USING A PHONE to > back up an email contact, especially if the two parties have never > communicated before. I agree, the other people are wrong to be upset. Phone or conventional mail, and if the project was vitally important, certified mail. While I use email often and find it a convenience, I absolutely do not consider it to be an "official" or highly reliable method. If I send an important message and I don't receive a response, I will telephone or write the recipient. If critical, I will use certified mail with return receipt. Email gets lost for lots of reasons: People are constantly changing their email address. My employer changed my address at least four times for various reasons since we got email. My postal address has been changed only once (we moved our location), and even if you sent postal mail to my old location someone would look me up and forward it to me. While we had forwarded for a brief time when email changed, now old-addressed messages are just discarded. Servers fail and messages are lost. I have had that happen severals times to both my employer and my private email. People who get a lot of spam may delete the message by accident. Due to viruses, some people (including me) don't open and delete all messages from anyone they don't know. Some people check their email constantly, others check it only occassionally. Some people don't use their email for important stuff, only to send jokes and the like. You can mispell a postal address and the letter will still arrive, but you must get every character of an email address correct. While sometimes undeliverable or delayed messages are reported back, not all are (and some messages are still delivered despite a non-deliverable message). Email is a useful tool, but it has limitations. When I shot slides, I mailed them to Kodak. I shot a great many rolls and none were ever lost. I wish email had their reliability but the reality is it does not. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, Paul, I am not in a position > to use the telephone either to call submitters and let them know their > message was received... I think you're comparing two different things. As a website moderator, you'll handling a high volume of postings as well as spam. Undoubtedly you get things not even relevant to telecom sent by honest mistake or an intentional all-call flood. ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:33:06 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Paul Vader wrote: > I wasn't talking about you -- I was talking about the digest item, where > some bonehead researcher was mad at an acquaintance because they didn't > return their email and they lost a grant because of it. > Gee, writing it out like that makes it REALLY obvious that this was a > made-up story. * > * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something > like corkscrews. Made up or not ... we have had the EXACT same scenerio described happen here. The non-profit that I work for gets ALL of it's funding from federal grants. Our spam filter has thrown a monkey wrench into the works more than once -- other non-profits we deal with tend to use the cheapest ISP they can find, which means the ISP they choose to use is likely to be a spamhaus, which means their IP address space is usually on one or more blocklists. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:35:58 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote: > come to visit. Then some bonehead went and changed the password on > it. If someone wishes to once again set up a community reading > account name on NYT please do so and tell the rest of us what it > is. I was going to suggest http://www.bugmenot.com , a site that supplies account information that may be borrowed for use by people who prefer not to register directly. But they've been down for the last day. Feel free to use user=operator10 pw=operator10 at least until some moron messes with it. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for doing this. Everyone who likes to check out the NYT feel free to use operator10 for user name and password. And http://www.bugmenot.com is another good source if it is going to stay up. PAT] ------------------------------ From: spuorgelgoog@gowanhill.com (Owain) Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: 17 Aug 2004 11:55:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Ned Protter wrote: > I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an > announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed > again with the same result. > How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to ring first. Owain ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:29:32 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > Yup. with the right equipment and telco-connection, the _entire_ > caller-ID data is under the control of the customer. They can make it > say _anything_ they want it to. Oh yeah, with a VOIP extension at home to our PBX here at work, which has two PRI's for it's outgoing/incoming calls, I have been sorely tempted to play prank call games at night with friends. The potential is unlimited. I mean what would YOU do if you got call at 3:00am from some idiot insisting that he wants to order a pizza, and caller ID said it was from the whitehouse ... People just don't know how easy it is to spoof caller ID if ya got ISDN. ANI is another matter, of course. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 19:30:26 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > Pat, please conceal my e-mail address as usual. > On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:13:39 GMT, Nick Landsberg > wrote: [SNIP] I had said .... > ... Given the circumstances as I have seen them described in this > forum, several individuals "set up shop" in the parking lot of this > store. (Correct me if I'm wrong on the details please.) One > individual with a laptop computer was actively engaged in "finding > a way in" to this store's wireless network .... [SNIP] Jack's partial reply: > One reason there is so much confusion on this case is because the > press insists on republishing old, inaccurate information which makes > it appear as though two separate incidents were all one incident. > This may work when you're making a film loosely based on historical > events, but it is never good journalism. > Paul Timmins was nowhere near the store on the night of the break-in. > He was in fact minding his own business, getting ready to go on an > out-of-town business trip to the west coast, one that he had been > looking forward to I might add. The incident in which Paul had > accessed Lowes wireless network, checked his e-mail and attempted to > do some web surfing (which he discontinued when he realized he was on > Lowes corporate network) happened months earlier. > Since a lot of folks are using analogies, here's one that probably > comes pretty close. [MORE SNIPPAGE of GOOD STUFF] > Now as I say, it's not a perfect analogy but I think it comes pretty > close. Some may say that anyone who is "wardriving" is in fact worthy > of jail; I just wonder if such people think that people should be > jailed for going five miles over the speed limit. My limited > understanding is that "wardriving", when done without malicious > intent, really is about as close as you can get to a victimless crime > (granted you're exchanging minuscule amounts of data with a network, > but in the grand scheme of things it's next to nothing, like finding a > penny on the sidewalk and taking it without attempting to find the > rightful owner). > Of course, stealing credit card numbers is several magnitudes worse. > But, Paul never stole credit card numbers, he never suggested that > anyone else should go and steal credit card numbers, and he certainly > wasn't present when the credit card numbers were being stolen. Thank you Jack. That was a plausible explanation. One which had not been put forth before as far as I recall. I did not recall the part about Mr. Timmins NOT being at the scene on that particular day. Given that, I agree that Timmins got a raw deal. The "thief" in your analogy should be prosecuted, as I am sure you will agree. My understanding of the incident was flawed and I thank you for your correction. [Jack and Pat also made some other good points which I will not get into here.] NPL [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to quoting police and newspapers on 'crime' reports. And the sad thing is, I *should know better* due to my own case, and furthermore if you cannot trust police for (at least) an accurate account of their activities if not necessarily their internal motives, then who in hell can you trust? Does *anyone* tell the truth any longer? Maybe not. That's not a question to answer out loud, just to think about. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rjdennison@hotmail.com (Robert J. Dennison) Subject: Number of Corporate Phone Accounts? Date: 17 Aug 2004 11:25:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Any idea how I can find out how many corporate phone accounts exist in North America (or U.S. only)? This is essentially a market sizing exercise, but I thought a few of you guys might be able to steer me in the right direction ... Thanks, R. ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Outdated Operator Inward Codes Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 02:43:50 GMT wrote in message news:telecom23.385.10@telecom-digest.org: > I am a supervisor of a telecommunications company. We have very > outdated operator inward codes and would like any information on how > to obtain updated ones. Merri, They're in the LERG. HTH. HAND. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies.) ------------------------------ From: edavidov007@yahoo.com (Erez Davidov) Subject: wipphone.com Is The Best Deal Out There Date: 17 Aug 2004 14:02:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Guys, I have read your postings and I did try Vonage (I didnt like it). after doing some on line search I came up with this web site: www.wipphone.com They have the best rate. I did like the live support,it seems to good to be true. dont take my word for it- just check it. They have a downloadable soft phone that comes with 30 minutes phone calls in the US.(The 30 minutes is free.) I tried it - I loved it. All my family has one so we talk for free (no money between wipphone and wipphone -- it is free.) Check also their calling plans that they have it is the DEAL that everyone looking for. Please comment on this after you check it. Peace out. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 17:36:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RCN Mach 7 Launch Underway Ahead of Schedule Fastest Residential Cable Modem on Market Provides Speed for Cutting-Edge Applications PRINCETON, N.J., Aug. 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- RCN Corporation announced today that it had officially launched MegaModem Mach 7(SM), two weeks ahead of its original schedule. This represents RCN's second free speed upgrade in the last 12 months, solidifying the company's broadband advantage. Customers with MegaModem Mach 5(SM), RCN's cable modem service with 5 Mbps download speeds, will be automatically upgraded to MegaModem Mach 7, with an industry-leading 7 Mbps download speed. Customers with MegaModem Mach 3, RCN's standard cable modem service with 3 Mbps download speeds, will be automatically upgraded to MegaModem Mach 5. Both speed tiers will enjoy industry leading upload speeds of up to 800 Kbps. http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=200408171801_PRN__PHTU026 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 18:53:20 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Official Says Wary of Cingular-AT&T Concern WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (Reuters) - A top U.S. communications regulator on Tuesday expressed skepticism that Cingular Wireless' proposed purchase of another major wireless carrier would be complicated by its owners' main business of traditional land line service. Cingular, owned by BellSouth Corp. (NYSE:BLS) and SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC), proposed buying AT&T Wireless Services Inc. (NYSE:AWE) for $41 billion in cash and become the largest U.S. wireless carrier. They argue it would improve service and lead to new offerings. The Consumer Federation of America and other opponents of the deal say the deal would instead reduce competition and push prices higher. The CFA also said that, in many states, telephone services would mostly come from one company. The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division and the Federal Communications Commission are both weighing whether the deal would benefit or harm consumers and have sought a myriad of industry data. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43173568 ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #386 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 18 16:00:26 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7IK0Q116906; Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:00:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:00:26 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408182000.i7IK0Q116906@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 #387 TELECOM Digest Wed, 18 Aug 2004 16:01:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 387 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mobile Device Developments 2004-Other Upcoming Conferences (Elena Colle) NomadISP Announces Nomadic WiFi Hotspot Franchise for RV and (Editor) Crypto Researchers Abuzz Over flaws (Monty Solomon) World Payphones (Thomas J. Fletcher) Avaya ODBC - CentreVu Reports (Eric B.) Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (JustSomeGuy) Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it (qazmlp) Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? (Steven J Sobol) Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? (Isaiah Beard) Re: Number Not in Use (Steven J Sobol) Re: Number Not in Use (Robert Bonomi) Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case (Scott Dorsey) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Paul Vader) Coalition Proposing Lowering Rate Phone Companies Pay (Jack Decker-VOIP) 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Mobile Device Developments 2004-Other Upcoming Conferences Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 17:02:06 +0100 From: Elena Colle Mobile Device Developments 2004 *****Other Upcoming Conferences: Push-to-Talk, WLAN, Participation TV**** 1-3 September 2004 Contact mailto:elena.colle@visongain.com for Hilton Kensington, London ***************** FULL AGENDA BELOW ***************** Following up on the success of Mobile Device Developments 2003 visiongain B2B Conferences are please to announce the 2nd annual event examining the current state of the market for mobile devices (smartphones, phone-enabled PDA, communicators, 2.5G and 3G handsets), and the opportunities for growth both in market size and ARPU (average revenue per user). This event will yet again be the meeting point for Mobile Operators, Handset Manufacturers & Application Developers. Key themes include: *What features and applications are going to be tomorrow's standard *What brands are going to lead the market? *Which handsets/devices are revolutionising the mobile offer? *Developing features to boost customer use and ARPU *Adapting devices for all networks and standards of connectivity: 2G, 2.5G, 3G, Bluetooth, WiFi, VoIP, EDGE *Managing strategic alliances for maximum revenue for all players involved *Marketing new devices: market segmentation, pricing, promotional alliances Confirmed Speakers -Eric Shadduck, Group Manager Mobile E-Mail and Messaging, International Business Marketing IM2, T-Mobile International -Marcos Eguillor, Handsets & Smart Cards Expert, Telefnica Mviles -Jukka Helin, Head of MediaLab, TeliaSonera -Cdric Nicolas, Mobile Multimedia and i-mode Expertise and Roadmap manager, Bouygues Telecom -Ed Candy, Technology Director, 3 UK -Alex Hum, Programme Head, New Human Interaction Technologies, Orange Group Research and Innovation -Thijs Altena, Marketing Business Markets, KPN Mobile -David Werezak, Vice President Marketing, Research in Motion -Myrddin Jones, Manager Business Display Group, Hitachi Europe Ltd -Mike Phillips, Director of Marketing Wireless & Broadband Systems, Motorola/Freescale Semiconductors -Orly Nesher, Director of Marketing, Emblaze Mobile -John Williamson, Vice President Technology, Carrier Devices Testimonials from the event: 'Good event: well organised, good speakers, and good content', P.P., TIM 'Very compelling content, good variety of speakers with different angles', K.M., Belgacom Mobile 'Very interesting, very good networking opportunities', S.T., Alcatel 'Excellently prepared conference', G.W, Sun Microsystems 'Useful event - good range of topics and questions', N.H., TDK Systems This years event is planned to bigger and better with more attendees, more exhibitors and more opportunities to discuss, network and learn. Places at this event are strictly limited so BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW. To make a booking on this event, please contact me via phone or email. Book early to secure a place. - PRICING - Attend the: 2 Day conference with interactive workshop - ONLY GBP1600 plus VAT 2 Day conference - ONLY GBP1299 plus VAT Workshop only - ONLY GBP650 plus VAT - BOOKINGS - Booking is easy, simply contact Elena Colle on: Telephone: +44 (0)20 8767 6711 Fax: +44 (0)20 8767 5001 Terms and conditions apply - see below Email: mailto:elena.colle@visongain.com Please find below the conference agenda. To book your place at simply give me a quick ring or email me stating whether you require a single place or a group booking. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Regards, Elena Colle Account Manager Visiongain b2b Conferences Tel: +44 (0) 20 8767 6711 http://www.b2b-conferences.com mailto:elena.colle@visiongain.com ****AGENDA**** PRE-CONFERENCE INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP Developing devices and features for business customers Wednesday 1st September 2004 Led by: Del Alibocus, VP Business Development, UIQ Technology AB ------------------------------------- DAY ONE - THURSDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER 2004 ------------------------------------- Conference Chair Alan Hadden President Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) 8:40 Registration and coffee 9:10 Opening remarks from the Chair DEVELOPING NEW DEVICES: STRATEGIES AND REQUIREMENTS 9:20 Optimising devices opportunities for the business market * Device segmentation from voice to data and what is in between * Features sets that sell devices and have an impact on their price points * Service and device bundles - the advantages and disadvantages * Services and revenue in the business market Eric Shadduck Group Manager Mobile E-Mail and Messaging International Business Marketing IM2 T-Mobile International 10:00 The role of devices in Telefnica Mviles' business strategy: the advantages of branded handsets * Determining the key features to develop a handset offer to suit end-users needs * Managing working partnerships with manufacturers to develop branded handsets * Adapting the offer to varied markets * Developing handsets to enable personalisation and interactivity Marcos Eguillor Handsets & Smart Cards Expert Telefnica Mviles 10:40 Coffee and discussion 11:00 Building a varied device offer to meet users needs * Update on the current trends and dynamics within the mobile device market * Analysing the segments of the device market, and how to combine features and functionality to meet differing user needs * Ensuring the usability of new handsets: how to make it work for business and entertainment users? * Developing successful partnerships with operators and software developers * Strategies for future devices: what features are going to lead the market and what devices will dominate? David Werezak Vice President Marketing Research in Motion 11:40 Challenges in software integration and testing for handset manufacturers * Issues in technology choices when developing new mobile devices * Interoperability and how it influences the development of applications * Technology solutions to enhance the usability and profitability of mobile devices Colin Aitken Vice President Marketing & General Manager Europe Sasken Communications 13:00 Lunch PERSONALISATION AND INTERACTIVITY 14:10 The importance of personalisation and interactivity for mobiles * Boosting revenues with personal and interactive offering * Key features to provide the right level of interaction and personalisation * Working with device manufacturers to develop the features Alex Hum Programme Head, New Human Interaction Technologies Orange Group Research and Innovation 14:50 Enabling key content and personalisation services * Balancing standardisation and differentiation/personalisation * The technology needed to allow a full range of applications, location services, e-payments, multimedia messaging and video * Designing the user interface: making the use of new services and applications more appealing to users * How can device designs lead to an increase of ARPU? Johan Lodenius Senior Vice President Europe Business Relations Qualcomm 15:20 Case Study: Orange Israel, Alpha P8 * Market need for a segmented customized device * Targeting the youth market with the Alpha P8 * Unique features in the Alpha P8 * Emphasis on usability for uptake of operator services * Understanding the market for customized operator devices Orly Nesher Director of Marketing Emblaze Mobile 15:50 Coffee and discussion 16:10 Enhancing mobile devices with successful displays * Review of the display market * Current and emerging display technologies for mobile devices * New display technologies for video and wide viewing * Review of display resolutions and sizes used in mobile devices * Display customisation Myrddin Jones General Manager, Display Products Group Hitachi Europe Ltd 16:40 Smart Card solutions to boost update of mobile data services * New solutions for multi-media services and devices * Removing the complexity for the end-user * The benefits for operators and handset manufacturers * Ensuring security for wireless applications Cyril Annarella EMEA Marketing Director - BU Telecom Gemplus 17:10 Close of Day One ----------------------------------- DAY TWO - FRIDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER 2004 ----------------------------------- 8:40 Registration and coffee 9:10 Opening remarks from the chair: Alan Hadden, President Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) 9:20 Challenging convention to deliver innovation in the mobile device offer * Using the latest technology to deliver innovative devices * Delivering a mobile offer to support operators' brand development * Striking the right balance between innovation, performance and usability * The importance of design, style and features in creating a range of devices Eric Pite Vice President Smartphones Sendo ADAPTING DEVICES TO NEW NETWORKS AND NEW CONTENT 10:00 Developing a handset offer to drive 3G services * 3UK's experience of working with manufacturers to develop suitable handsets * Determining the key requirements to design handsets according to the services offered * What features drive mobile usage and 3G services * Providing the right balance between new technology and usability * Future handset technologies for 3 and the relevance to customers Ed Candy Technology Director 3 UK 10:40 Coffee and discussion 11:00 Technology requirements for next generation devices * What are the new handset requirements for next generation services (3G, EDGE) and how to make the step from 2.5G? * Determining what drives market demand for enhanced data services and identifying the relevant handset requirements * The current choice of handsets for next generation services and their distinguishing features: are they living up to the expectations? Brian Dally Director Product Marketing, Client Software Openwave Systems 11:40 Streaming and Broadcasting Services for Mobile Handsets * How handset vendors, software vendors, network operators and service operators can all benefit from the introduction of mobile video services * Mobile streaming and broadcasting technology overview and requirements for GPRS/EDGE/W-CDMA/DVB-H networks & handsets * Streaming, downloading or broadcasting: which technology to use for different services? * Assessing the quality aspects in mobile video services * Mobile video broadcasting for DVB-H terminals: experiences from the Finnish trial * TeliaSonera's first commercial video services for cell phones Jukka Helin Head of MediaLab TeliaSonera 12:20 Lunch 13:40 Adapting to EDGE: developing handsets for a new technology and new services * Why Bouygues Telecom selected EDGE technology for its network * What services will be introduced with EDGE * What are the links with Bouygues Telecom's i-mode main offer? * How the EDGE handsets were designed with vendors * What is the evolution path from EDGE to 3G ? Cdric Nicolas Mobile Multimedia and i-mode Expertise and Roadmap manager Bouygues Telecom 14:20 Platforms solutions to enable mobile digital broadcasting (DVB-H) * Designing standards for the delivery of digital television and data services * What are the market enablers, who are are the key parties who will create the DVB-H market ? * What services and revenues can be expected from the development of mobile DVB? * The technology behind digital broadcasting to mobile handsets * Possible platform solutions for subscriber equipment Mike Phillips Director of Marketing Wireless & Broadband Systems Motorola/Freescale Semiconductors 15:00 Coffee and discussion 15:20 A new brand for a new generation of mobiles: i-mate(tm) * The I-mate offer: smartphones and pocket-PCs * Designing devices: usability and portability * Developing devices for next generation networks (3G, EDGE, Bluetooth) * Enabling wireless services with Windows Mobile * Accessories and features John Williamson Vice President Technology Carrier Devices 15:50 KPN's experience of handset developments for businesses * The fundamentals of building a successful relationship with vendors * Using devices to achieve differentiation in a competitive marketplace * Determining the key selling-point of a new device and developing it accordingly: mobile office, video content, gaming Thijs Altena, Marketing Business Markets KPN Mobile 16:20 Close of conference Terms & Conditions NB - Due to high demand, we do not 'reserve' or 'hold' places - a request for an invoice to be raised will be treated as an official booking and will be subject to the cancellation policy as outlined below. Cancellations/substitutions and name changes: All bookings carry a 50% liability after the booking has been made, by post fax, email or web. There will be no refunds for cancellations received on or after one month before the start of the conference (e.g. cancellation on or after 20th January for a conference starting on 20th February). If you decide to cancel after this date the full invoice remains payable. Conference notes, which are available on the day, will be sent to you. Unfortunately we are not able to transfer places between conferences and executive briefings. However if you are unable to attend the event you may make a substitution/name change at any time as long as we are informed in writing by e-mail, fax or post. Name changes and substitutions must be from the same company and are not transferable between companies or countries. Indemnity: visiongain Ltd reserve the right to change the conference/executive briefing content, timing, speakers or venue without notice. The event may be postponed or cancelled due to acts of terrorism, war, extreme weather conditions, industrial action, acts of God or any event beyond the control of visiongain Ltd. If such a situation arises we will endeavour to reschedule the event. However, visiongain Ltd cannot be held responsible for any cost, damage or expenses, which may be incurred by the customer as a consequence of the event being postponed or cancelled. We therefore strongly advise all customers to take out insurance to cover the cost of the registration, travel and expenses. To unsubscribe please reply with unsubscribe in the subject line. Data protection: Visiongain Ltd gathers and manages data in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. Information contained about you may be used to update you on visiongain Ltd products and services via post, telephone, fax or email, unless you state otherwise. We may share your data with external companies offering complimentary products or services. If you wish your details to be amended, suppressed or not passed onto any external third party, please send your request to the Database Manager, visiongain Ltd, 40 Tooting High Street, London, SW17 0RG. Alternatively, you can visit our website www.visiongain.com and amend your details. Please allow approximately 30 days for your removal or update request, you may receive additional pieces of communication from visiongain Ltd during the transitional period, whilst the changes come into effect. To unsubscribe please reply with unsubscribe in the subject line. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 22:11:53 +0400 From: Editor Subject: NomadISP Announces Nomadic WiFi Hotspot Franchise for RV http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com NomadISP Announces Nomadic WiFi Hotspot Franchise for RV and Coach Owners! Allows Coach & RV owners to sell WiFi Internet services wherever they go! Boise, Idaho - Aug 18, 2004 (PRN): NomadISP, the fastest growing provider in WiFI services to the recreational industry, announced at FMCA today the availability of the Nomadic WiFi Hotspot Franchise to Coach and RV owners. The announcement facilitates owners of Coaches and RVs to own a NomadISP franchise allowing them sell and deploy WiFi services at any location within North America that they visit. The franchise includes all equipment, training, and support for an owner to have a profitable business aboard their vehicle, selling WiFi service to adjoining campers, guests or anyone else, wherever they go. "In keeping with our goal of making WiFi available everywhere for the recreational industry, we have created a solution that allows the WiFi hotspot business to be carried by the true Nomads of America, the full-timers that are living within their coaches. This franchise allows them to have a solid, profitable business wherever they go, and to sell that service at any location within North America." stated Kelly Hogan, CEO, NomadISP. The franchise is a complete business, including a high-speed portable Satellite Internet system, the NomadISP HotSpot Gateway, antennas and mounting hardware for their coach, and training on commissioning and managing the system when arriving at their location. Franchises start at $3,995 for manually configured systems, and $9,995 for fully robotic positioning versions. Franchisees have the ability to set their own pricing based on the WiFi market, which promotes a fair market, and several early adopters have seen up to $1,500 per month in net income from the ownership of the systems, as well as tax advantages of having a business based in their coaches. "This solution innovates the WiFi business for the recreational industry by insuring that High-Speed Internet follows the natural migration of the Nomadic owners within America and that a competitive market exists for the consumers of the service. Our solution is complete, allowing for scheduled departure based pricing, quick deployment, and we have even insured that if two or more NomadISP systems are in vicinity of each other, that they bridge together to insure that the WiFi experience is improved for all the users. We even include a VOIP satellite phone for the owner! It just doesn't get any better than this, truly Nomadic connectivity!" continued Hogan. Owners can purchase the Nomadic Franchise through NomadISP's extensive dealer network of over 300 dealers located in every state, which includes personal, local training on how to deploy their equipment. For more information, contact nomadwifi@nomadisp.com or Franchise support at 1-877-254-6672, ext 203. About NomadISP: NomadISP is a systems integration ISP marketing directly to businesses with challenging ISP requirements. They specialize in Satellite connectivity, 802.11 WiFi hotspots, and offer their products to remote housing areas, campgrounds, RV Parks, Marinas, and Truck stops. They are headquartered in Boise Idaho, with offices in Portland and Medford OR. For more information, contact: NomadISP 3100 N. Lake Harbor Lane, Suite 116 Boise, ID 83703 Phone: 208-342-1789 ext. 203 Email: nomadwifi@nomadisp.com Website: http://www.nomadisp.com editor@pressreleasenetwork.com http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:51:24 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Crypto Researchers Abuzz Over Flaws By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com Encryption circles are buzzing with news that mathematical functions embedded in common security applications have previously unknown weaknesses. The excitement began Thursday with an announcement that French computer scientist Antoine Joux had uncovered a flaw in a popular algorithm called MD5, often used with digital signatures. Then four Chinese researchers released a paper that reported a way to circumvent MD5 and other algorithms. While their results are preliminary, these discoveries could eventually make it easier for intruders to insert undetectable back doors into computer code or to forge an electronic signature -- unless a different, more secure algorithm is used. A third announcement, which was even more anticipated, took place Tuesday evening at the Crypto 2004 conference in Santa Barbara, Calif. The other papers also were presented at the conference. Eli Biham and Rafi Chen, researchers at the Technion institute in Israel, originally were scheduled to present a paper identifying ways to assail the security in the SHA-0 "Secure Hash Algorithm," which was known to have imperfections. In a presentation Tuesday evening, however, Biham reported some early work toward identifying vulnerabilities in the SHA-1 algorithm, which is believed to be secure. Biham's presentation was very preliminary, but it could call into question the long-term future of the wildly popular SHA-1 algorithm and spur researchers to identify alternatives. Currently considered the gold standard of its class of algorithms, SHA-1 is embedded in popular programs like PGP and SSL. It is certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and is the only signing algorithm approved for use in the U.S. government's Digital Signature Standard. SHA-1 yields a 160-bit output, which is longer than MD5's 128-bit output and is considered more secure. http://news.com.com/2100-1002-5313655.html ------------------------------ From: t.fletcher@ramsa.com (thomasjfletcher) Subject: World Payphones Date: 18 Aug 2004 11:57:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Am looking for technical history of payphones for website www.worldpayphones.com Anybody have any further info? ------------------------------ From: ericboyd_71@yahoo.com (Eric B.) Subject: Avaya ODBC - CentreVu reports Date: 18 Aug 2004 07:31:29 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm hoping for some info here. As far as I know, the Avaya switch uses Informix as the database, but please correct me if I'm wrong. What is the default username and password for accessing the Avaya switch using ODBC. I know for a Siemens switch, it's 'u_odba', but what about Avaya. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 04:01:56 GMT From: JustSomeGuy Subject: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Organization: Shaw Residential Internet How do RTP packets travers a NAT? ------------------------------ From: qazmlp1209@rediffmail.com (qazmlp) Subject: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: 18 Aug 2004 08:53:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from each other. In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. Kindly clarify! ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:31:36 -0500 Raj wrote: > This person called repeatedly on a too good to be true offer claiming > to represent xtremeisp.com. The offer was for dialup OR broadband > service(he did not know the difference or did not care) for 2 years at > a flat rate $285 USD. In exchange he offered a Dell computer, Nokia > phone, vacation package and 1000 USD online shopping package. He only > wanted my checking account number. I hung up on him saying that I > would research and get back to him. The numbers he left me with are > 1-866-751-9360 and 1-510-248-4104, which he claimed to be calling from > New York; on checking was found to be from Oakland, CA. I suspect > fraud. I'll say. He wanted to dip into your checking account, I'm sure. You may want to inform xtremeisp of this too. 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: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:23:36 -0400 TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Raj: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sounds to me to a bit rotten also. And > another one to watch out for is the television ad for 'get a new > computer with no credit check. If you have a telephone and a checking > account you can have a new computer for just $35 per week.' $35 per > *week* for 52 weeks and they debit/ACH your checking account each > week. That's a scam also. PAT] Yeah, people who jump into these things don't do the math. I saw the ad too, and if you do the math, after 52 weeks (one year) of $35.99 payments, you've got an old outdated computer that you paid $1871.48 for. Dell's top of the line consumer model currently sells for $1679, and something that is comparable in specs to what this scam was offering can be had for a mere $449. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To make matters a bit worse, some years have *53* weeks in a year; well they all do including years with a February 29 in them. And depending on the day of the week when they start their ACH debits you get about three chances out of seven that your 'billing/debiting cycle' will get hit 53 times instead of 52. So as a practical matter, budget an extra $36 into your math, or about $1900 total cost. And not to worry, they will make sure you get started in the right cycle. Rip offs! And that black lady who does their promotions on television is an accomplished actress who once did appearances on "Twilight Zone". Remember her? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:32:17 -0500 Owain wrote: > Ned Protter wrote: >> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed >> again with the same result. >> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? > Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company > announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the > line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to > ring first. In my experience, if a number is disconnected, the line may ring once before you get the telco intercept message. YMMV 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. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 07:32:22 +0000 In article , Owain wrote: > Ned Protter wrote: >> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed >> again with the same result. >> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? > Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company > announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the > line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to > ring first. Your expectations are *NOT* in line with reality. Mobile (cell) phone carriers are notorious for having 'slow' and *inconsistent* cut-in of intercept messages. I had occasion to call a friend the other day, who's phone had gotten temporarily cut off. First time, the intercept kicked in _after_ three rings. Of course, it doesn't say _what_ number was called, so, I suspected a mis-dial. Re-dialed, and the intercept took over _before_ the 1st ring. In the _middle_ of the 'not in service' message. Just for grins, tried it again about 5 minutes later -- 3 rings and then the intercept. (Two days later, the number _was_ working, and the friend confirmed that it _was_ a carrier cut-off/intercept.) Or, for example if the number is in a DID block assigned to an "answering service's" PBX. The telco 'thinks' the number _is_ in service, and pipes it down the (analog) trunk to the PBX. which, after rummaging in it's database decides it it _not_ assigned, and plays its 'not in service' message. The _caller_ may hear 'ringing' from the point the telco starts to pipe the call down the DID trunk to the PBX, *before* the PBX figures out 'what to do' with the call. Those issues don't arise _if_ the signalling is 'pure digital' (i.e., SS7 and/or ISDN) all the way to the _last_ switch. Anything that "looks" like analog circuits, including DS-0's on a channelized T-1 (or above), and the fun-and-games _does_ commence. In article , T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Robert Bonomi wrote: >> Yup. with the right equipment and telco-connection, the _entire_ >> caller-ID data is under the control of the customer. They can make it >> say _anything_ they want it to. > Oh yeah, with a VOIP extension at home to our PBX here at work, which > has two PRI's for it's outgoing/incoming calls, I have been sorely > tempted to play prank call games at night with friends. The potential is > unlimited. > I mean what would YOU do if you got call at 3:00am from some idiot > insisting that he wants to order a pizza, and caller ID said it was > from the whitehouse ... "I'm sorry, Mr. Gore. Your credit card does not match the address you've given us. We are unable to accept your order. " _Next_ question? But, then, I've had to, over the years, deal with a _lot_ of strange calls. Many pranks, some deadly serious. Like a hospital emergency room trying to locate the physician of an only-partially coherent patient. Couldn't get a precise ID from the victim, and were calling anybody who's name appeared "close" to what they understood her to be saying. At the time, I was the _only_ person listed in the entire greater Chicago area, with my last name. (heck, there's less than 200 people with that name in the entire U.S. :) How life gets _really_ confusing. This all started _late_ one evening. I'm working that nite at 'xyz software labs'. The call comes in at home. My room-mate, *sleepily* answers the phone. Hears the name, and says 'He's at work. call XXX-XXXX', so they do. I answer the 'nite line' from the computer room, with all the attendant background noise. In that kind of environment, "Doctor' can sound an awful lot like 'Robert'. They _know_ they've reached a 'lab' facility, and are talking to the 'Doctor'. I'm really a computer-systems guy, running tests of new software, that has to be done in 'non-production' time. "Massive confusion" would be a gross understatement for describing the first moments of -that- call. Now, the 'small world' department intervenes. A high-school acquaintance had recently moved to town, joining the nursing faculty at one of the local med schools. Had, a week or so previously, told me that she'd seen a listing for somebody with "my" last name, in the med school faculty, and the department that he was in. Thus I could tell that ER caller that "there _is_ a Doctor by that name, on the teaching faculty of .... Hospital, in the .... Dept." I got about that far, and they interrupted, saying, with great relief, that that probably _was_ the person they were looking for. (The departmental affiliation apparently matched an ongoing medical condition of the ER patient.) > People just don't know how easy it is to spoof caller ID if ya got ISDN. A -lot- depends on the connecting carrier, too. The sloppy ones will pass along 'anything' that the customer puts on the line. The 'good' ones monitor the data, and replace anything 'invalid' (i.e. -not- something that the customer actually 'owns') with 'actual' identification. Unfortunately, the sloppy carriers vastly outnumber the good ones. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Wardriving Guilty Plea in Lowe's Wi-Fi Case Date: 18 Aug 2004 09:20:59 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Danny Burstein wrote: > I'll take your analogy and raise you one better: > You own a drive-in movie theater with two acres of land. You've got a > waist high chain link marking your property. > The screen is visible for hundreds of feet around. And the radio signal > you're using for the audio is similarly detectable. > People park outside your fence and watch and listen to the movie. > What's the crime? Before 1986, there was no crime. The Communication Act of 1934 made it legal to listen to any radio communications as long as you did not divulge private information to a third party. This made things very interesting ... reporters could use scanners to locate crime scenes, but they could not write about information they heard on the police radio unless they had also got the information in some other way. With the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, listening to that drive-in signal becomes illegal. This is a very poorly thought-out law that was drafted by the cellphone lobby; rather than actually securing communications, it was cheaper for them to make monitoring illegal. Wi-Fi hijacking is definitely an ECPA violation... but then if you read the ECPA literally, use of WiFI at all is an ECPA violation. It definitely makes listening to subcarriers of broadcast channels illegal without explicit permission, which basically makes it illegal to listen to FM stations in stereo or to television with the sound turned up. It was drafted by folks with no real understanding of radio technology. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 14:23:47 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations T. Sean Weintz writes: > federal grants. Our spam filter has thrown a monkey wrench into the > works more than once -- other non-profits we deal with tend to use the > cheapest ISP they can find, which means the ISP they choose to use is > likely to be a spamhaus, which means their IP address space is usually > on one or more blocklists. Then use a phone. Email was never intended, even before spam, to be reliable. That's simply the way it is - if you rely on email as your sole point of communication on critical issues, you're in trouble. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:56:25 -0400 Subject: Coalition Proposing Lowering Rates Phone Companies Pay One Another Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.x-changemag.com/hotnews/48h17161747.html By Josh Long A coalition representing a wide range of U.S. telecommunications companies has submitted a plan to the FCC proposing to radically change the system governing how carriers pay one another to complete calls. AT&T Corp., Level 3 Communications Inc., SBC Communications Inc. and Valor Telecommunications LLC are among the group of companies supporting a plan submitted by the Intercarrier Compensation Forum (ICF). The ICF, which has been working to develop a proposal for more than a year, says the current rules were written two decades ago and do not reflect changes in the industry such as the popularity of wireless and growth of Internet-based phone service. The coalition on Monday submitted a filing to the FCC outlining the proposal and intends to file a more comprehensive plan in the next week or so. Abolishing Fees The ICF has proposed moving to a unified rate structure and drastically reducing the 'access charges' and other fees carriers pay one another to complete calls -- eradicating the fees altogether in July 2011. The decreases in rates would begin to take effect next summer and there would be reductions over the next seven years. [...] Under the ICF proposal, the unified rate also would apply to Internet phone traffic in 2008, although the coalition does not say how the proposed rules would affect Internet phone service before that date. The FCC is mulling how to regulate Internet phone service in a number of proceedings, and one of the dilemmas the agency faces is whether companies routing traffic over the Internet should be required to pay other carriers access charges for completing calls. [...] In addition to reforming intercarrier compensation rules, the ICF also has proposed changing the method by which carriers contribute to the Universal Service Fund, the multi-billion dollar pot of money used partly to subsidize telecom services in rural areas where the cost of providing local phone service is high. End users would pay a flat fee every month to support the fund based on every phone number and high-speed Internet connection they have. That means cable companies and DSL providers also would charge high-speed Internet customers a fee. [Comment: So in effect, someone who has a broadband Internet connection and either broadband OR traditional wireline phone service would get dinged twice (and if you have an "alternate number" you'd get hit yet again, although the need for those would probably disappear as long distance charges go away), and you'd be paying just to give corporate welfare to the greedy bastards that run the small monopolistic local phone companies. I say it's high time we kill this subsidy - tell these phone companies they have five years to either figure out how to become profitable, or sell their companies, but the handouts ARE going to stop come hell or high water. I realize there are some good small phone companies (and they will probably figure out how to survive without the subsidies) but then there are the greedy ones that try to inhibit access to ISP's owned by anyone other than "the phone company", and use other dirty tricks to capture every last dollar they can from their captive custo mers. I would REALLY like to know why these rural phone companies have the idea that they should be guaranteed any particular income level - businesses start and fail all the time. These phone companies for the most part are monopolies in their service areas, and have done everything possible to fight off competition EXCEPT lower their rates and improve their service offerings (again, there are very striking exceptions to this -- small companies that have treated their customers more than fairly -- but they are few and far between). Even if they are forced to sell because the handouts of OUR money will be cut off, they have made a very nice little income for many years. Did anyone ever guarantee them the right to continue to rip off their customers AND the customers of larger phone companies forever? They should be glad to have received what they have already received, and maybe start looking for a new line of business to get into if they really think they cannot survive in the telephone business.] Full story at: http://www.x-changemag.com/hotnews/48h17161747.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #387 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 19 13:39:41 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7JHdfM01853; Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:39:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:39:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408191739.i7JHdfM01853@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 #388 TELECOM Digest Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:40:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 388 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson U.S. Broadband Connections Reach Critical Mass (Monty Solomon) DISH Network Ranks No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction (Monty Solomon) More Software Aims To Make Web Safer for Kids (Monty Solomon) Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Monty Solomon) How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From My Phone Company? (Kyler Laird) Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (MR) FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition (Neal McLain) Connecting to a SMS Gateway, How? (Rik Dekyvere) Rotary Step Relays (John Schuch) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Robert Bonomi) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Nick Landsberg) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Justin Time) Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? (Robert Bonomi) Re: LecStar Uses Power Lines For VoIP Trial (John McHarry) Re: Number of Corporate Phone Accounts? (Justin Time) Re: 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials (Paul Coxwell) Re: Q and Z on Dials - Standards? (Paul Coxwell) 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, 18 Aug 2004 15:20:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. Broadband Connections Reach Critical Mass U.S. Broadband Connections Reach Critical Mass, Crossing 50 Percent Mark for Web Surfers, According to Nielsen//NetRatings Young Adults and Kids Boast Highest Broadband Penetration; Seniors Still Log-on via Narrowband NEW YORK, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nielsen//NetRatings (Nasdaq: NTRT), the global standard for Internet audience measurement and analysis, reported that broadband connections for the first time reached 51 percent of the American online population at-home during the month of July, as compared to 38 percent last July (see Table 1). Sixty-three million Web users connected to the Internet via broadband during July 2004 as compared to 61.3 million accessing the Internet through narrowband. Overall growth for broadband connections rose 47 percent year-over-year, while narrowband dropped 13 percent annually. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43184583 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:25:43 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DISH Network Ranks No. 1 in Customer Satisfaction in J.D. Power Associates Satellite/Cable TV 2004 Study ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 18, 2004--EchoStar Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:DISH) announced today that its DISH Network(TM), the fastest growing multichannel TV provider in the last four years, has been ranked No. 1 in customer satisfaction among satellite and cable TV subscribers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2004 Syndicated Cable/Satellite TV Customer Satisfaction Study(SM). This marks the third time in six years that DISH Network has received the J.D. Power and Associates No. 1 ranking. DISH Network received the highest score (725 out of 1,000 points) in the 2004 J.D. Power and Associates study. The average for cable and satellite TV providers tracked in the study was 664 points. This year's J.D. Power and Associates study is based on responses from 8,668 satellite TV and cable households nationwide. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43182464 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:38:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: More Software Aims To Make Web Safer for Kids By WALTER S. MOSSBERG The Internet can be a dangerous playground for kids and teens. Unlike the physical world, where it is relatively easy for parents to keep children out of pornography shops and away from hate groups, the Web makes it simple for minors to visit their digital equivalents. So, many parents are looking for ways to bar their kids from inappropriate Web sites, while still allowing them to partake of the Internet's many benefits. The best, and most complete, parental controls on children's online activities are offered by AOL and MSN, the big Internet service providers. Their customizable filters allow parents to block inappropriate Web pages, and to limit and tailor kids' use of e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms. But these online services are expensive, and not everyone wants to subscribe to them. For parents who use other services, and who are mainly concerned about porn and hate sites on the Web, a number of add-on filtering products are available. This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested three such programs: Net Nanny 5 by LookSmart Ltd., CyberPatrol 6.2 by SurfControl PLC and FilterLogix At Home. CyberPatrol and FilterLogix cost $39.95 and $34.95, respectively, for a yearlong subscription. Net Nanny's program costs $39.95 for a lifetime license. In our tests, CyberPatrol and FilterLogix did the best job of weeding out bad sites, though we preferred FilterLogix, because it required the least tweaking. Net Nanny failed to block some blatantly inappropriate Web pages, so we can't recommend it. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040818.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:47:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern By TERESA RIORDAN IMAGINE being able to set up a tollbooth on the Internet. Now imagine collecting a small fee every time anyone in the United States clicked on the Web to watch a video of a car advertisement, to listen to an audio clip of a garage band or to review an updated credit card statement. Sound far-fetched? Acacia Research Corporation, an obscure but well-financed company in Newport Beach, Calif., has a portfolio of patents that, it claims, allows it to do exactly that. Acacia holds five patents covering streaming video and audio. The earliest one, numbered 5,132,992, was issued in 1992. In 2002, the company began sending out letters demanding licensing fees, largely from the lucrative online pornography industry. But of late, it has stepped up pressure on financial and educational institutions and news organizations, including The New York Times Company, which has received a letter from Acacia relating to its corporate Web site. In June, Acacia sued nine cable and satellite companies, including Comcast, DirecTV and EchoStar Communications. In late July, it sent out more letters demanding licensing fees from educational organizations that offer Web-based classes. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/technology/16patent.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read NY Times articles, many Digest readers use our group reading name: operator10 and password operator10 in order to preserve their own privacy and prevent spam. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? From: Kyler Laird Organization: Insight Broadband Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:09:13 GMT I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack at getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on my home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? How do I find that person? Thank you. --kyler [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Might you be thinking of the term 'Winkstart'. I am not sure of all the details but there is a condition where one trunk line 'winks' at another trunk or station. I do not recall how it works but remember seeing the term. PAT] ------------------------------ From: post_it_instead@hotmail.com (MR) Subject: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: 18 Aug 2004 15:24:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. My first two statements have been incorrect by HUNDREDS of dollars. I have wasted hours sorting this out on the phone with their reps. And after these corrections the website still reflects the wrong billing amounts. Every time I make a call I get a very loud static ticking before connection. The minutes usage portion of the website is indecipherable even to their service reps. After ten minutes of explaining and back pedaling the rep only made things worse by making me realize I have a two year contract with a@#holes. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:18:33 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition At its meeting on August 4, the FCC adopted a Report and Order "that implements several steps necessary for the continued progress of the conversion of the nation's television broadcast system from analog technology to digital television." http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-250542A1.doc This R&O covers many aspects of the transition, but I found the procedure for selecting the final digital channel assignments particularly interesting. The FCC is proposing a three-round channel-selection process: - ROUND ONE (December 2004) - Stations currently assigned two channels (one analog + one digital) in the "core" group of channels (2-51) can choose either of those channels (and, by implication, vacate the other one once the digital transition is complete). Stations with only one in-core channel can either choose it, or wait for Round Two. - ROUND TWO (July 2005) - Stations that don't yet have an in-core channel can choose any in-core channel still available after Round One. - ROUND THREE (January 2006) - Stations that still don't have an in-core channel (or that are assigned a low-band channel) may choose any in-core channel still available after Round Two. Between each round, the FCC will announce which channels are protected, which are in conflict, and which are available. Stations with interference conflicts can either accept the interference and remain on their chosen channels or move to the next election round. Assuming everything stays on schedule, the FCC will issue a final Table of Allotments in August 2006. Note that although low-band channels (2-6) are in the core group, the FCC is allowing any low-band station to move to a higher channel during Round Three. The Commission's Public Notice doesn't explain why this provision was included (and the actual R&O hasn't been published yet). There may be several reasons why a station would want to be in the high band (7-13) or the UHF band (14-51), but the two most obvious are: - To avoid channels 2, 3, and 4, which are often used as output channels for consumer devices (cable boxes, satellite receivers, VCRs, DVRs, etc.). - To more closely match the propagation characteristics of competitive stations operating in the higher bands (note that the low band is four octaves below UHF, but the high band is only two octaves below UHF). Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: info@wellow.nl (Rik Dekyvere) Subject: Connecting to a SMS Gateway, How? Date: 19 Aug 2004 06:41:45 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi there, I have to connect to a gateway in order to send and receive SMS messages. The gateway was built by this company where our firm bought the SMS bundles. My problem is that I have no experience on this. I'm a web designer and I'm used to create concepts of websites and I also build them, including database driven websites. They handed me a short manual but it does not help me enough, and calling them does not resolve my problems neither, because they are too technical. This is what is in the manual: "To send SMS messages via the Gateway, your client application is required to establish a network connection (over HTTP) with the Gateway." I can't use pre-made api's like Clickatell, I've already looked into that. I'm using PHP on all the websites I'm making, can anyone give me a hing, please. Rik Dekyvere www.wellow.nl Webdesign & Development ------------------------------ From: John Schuch Organization: Earth Subject: Rotary Step Relays Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:59:04 GMT Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. I searched the web ad-nausium with no luck. Thanks, John ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:36:17 +0000 In article , qazmlp wrote: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. > Kindly clarify! The first bit of the first byte of the data leaves node 1 at time 'X'. The first bit of the first byte of the data reaches node 2 at time 'X' + 'D'/speed-of-light ASSUMING that node 1 can output a _continuous_ stream of bits, *at*the* bandwidth of the link, then it will take 'A'/'T' seconds to send the first bit through the last one. Each bit will arrive at node 2 at a time 'D'/speed- of-light after it was sent. The delays are -not- cumulative. So the last bit arrives at node 2 at 'A'/'T' + 'D'/speed-of-light seconds after the 1st bit _leaves_ node 1. So much for the theory. In practice, using standard Internet protocols, you don't get the 'continuous stream of bits'. 'ACK' delays, etc., not to mention propagation delay through intermediate equipment, etc., all serve to reduce the throughput, *and* increase the latency. IF you have a situation where RTT delays contribute, then _those_ delays *are* cumulative. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:51:37 GMT qazmlp wrote: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. > Kindly clarify! For short distances the "speed of light" delay is probably "in the noise." What is probably more significant is how many "hops" the messages makes between the nodes, i.e. how many routers and things like that it passes through. A heuristic I use for coast-to-coast network delay (about 3,000 miles or about 5,000 km. in North America)) is approximately 15 ms. (speed of light delay) and about 5 ms. per "hop" *each way*. For a 250 km. distance, the latency due to speed of light will be under a millisecond, but the latency introduced by hopping through routers will still stay at 5 ms. per hop. Note that this heuristic is for a relatively unloaded network (operating at no more than 25% of rated bandwidth). Past that point, you have to bring out the queueing theory experts to explain what happens (and I'm not one of them). If you already have the network in place, you might want to try a "ping" between the endpoints to verify this. A "traceroute" would be helpful to determine the number of hops the messages make. Hope This Helps, NPL "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:22:05 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com qazmlp wrote: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. > Kindly clarify! Distance generally makes no difference. What does make a difference is the capacity of the circuit between the two nodes (sometimes the capacity can be dependant on distance, as is the case with aDSL, but in most cases it is NOT the case) The other thing that matters GREATLY is what protocol will be used to transfer "'A' MB of data" between the two nodes. And there are multiple layers. At the physical and datalink layers, are you running ethernet over fiber, t1 circuits, or what? Frame Relay? ATM? Are these PT to PT connections, brigdged, routed in any way? And it gets even more diverse going up the layers toward the application layer -- Are you sending the data using NCP (netware native) or SMB (microsoft compatible) or NIS (unix protocol)? Are you using TCP/IP? If so is it native or encapulated? If using IP, What MTU (packet size) is being used? What about recieve window size? Or are you not using IP at all but IPX/SPX? How is that configured? Packet burst, etc. There are too many variables involved for there to be a simple answer to your question. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: 19 Aug 2004 06:02:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com qazmlp1209@rediffmail.com (qazmlp) wrote in message news:: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. > Kindly clarify! Electrons move at the speed of light. How long does it take an electron to travel 200 or 300 Km? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:10:50 GMT From: joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) Subject: Re: Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby Organization: Excelsior Computer Services > Feel free to use > user=operator10 > pw=operator10 > at least until some moron messes with it. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for doing this. Everyone who > likes to check out the NYT feel free to use operator10 for user name > and password. And http://www.bugmenot.com is another good source if > it is going to stay up. PAT] In light of the recent thread about using a company's WiFi network just because it happened to be open, I have to ask: why isn't it the same thing to use a public username/password combo for a site that asks for individual registration? -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The username 'operator10' and password 'operator10' when reading the New York Times web site are available out of self defense when dealing with spam and spy- cookies. Self defense is always allowed when one faces a real threat which is the case with spam and spying on the net. If NYT would cease the practice of spamming their readers with unwanted advertisements on the net and distributing their user list to anyone with some money to spend for same, then a group name/password would not be needed. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Phone Fraud: xtremeISP.com ? Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 20:03:53 +0000 In article , Isaiah Beard wrote: > TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Raj: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sounds to me to a bit rotten also. And >> another one to watch out for is the television ad for 'get a new >> computer with no credit check. If you have a telephone and a checking >> account you can have a new computer for just $35 per week.' $35 per >> *week* for 52 weeks and they debit/ACH your checking account each >> week. That's a scam also. PAT] > Yeah, people who jump into these things don't do the math. I saw the ad > too, and if you do the math, after 52 weeks (one year) of $35.99 > payments, you've got an old outdated computer that you paid $1871.48 > for. Dell's top of the line consumer model currently sells for $1679, > and something that is comparable in specs to what this scam was offering > can be had for a mere $449. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To make matters a bit worse, some years > have *53* weeks in a year; well they all do including years with a > February 29 in them. A normal year is 52 weeks plus _one_ day. A leap year is 52 weeks plus _two_ days. > And depending on the day of the week when they > start their ACH debits you get about three chances out of seven that > your 'billing/debiting cycle' will get hit 53 times instead of 52. Make that 1 chance in 7 for regular years, 2 chances in 7 for leap years, or an 'average' of 5 chances in 28. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: LecStar Uses Power Lines For VoIP Trial Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:08:23 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Jack Decker wrote: > LecStar Telecom Inc. on Tuesday said it is testing the use of > broadband over power lines in providing Internet-based telephone > services. > LecStar, the Atlanta-based communications subsidiary of Fonix Corp., > launched a trial of the voice-over-Internet service using power lines > of a Southeastern United States electric utility company, which > LecStar declined to identify. This is probably because they don't want people to know why their radios suddenly quit working. ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Number of Corporate Phone Accounts? Date: 19 Aug 2004 06:09:13 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com rjdennison@hotmail.com (Robert J. Dennison) wrote in message news:: > Any idea how I can find out how many corporate phone accounts exist in > North America (or U.S. only)? This is essentially a market sizing > exercise, but I thought a few of you guys might be able to steer me in > the right direction ... > Thanks, > R. How about counting the number of business / government listings in a few telephone directories (on-line ones that can be parsed would be a lot faster), dividing that by the reported population of the cities counted and then applying the percentage against the population of the US? But remember 46.7% of all statistics are made up - Justin Time ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: 3L-4N Cities, Exchange Names, Lettered Dials Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:56:43 +0100 > Prior to the implemntation of STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling in the > late 1950s or early 1960s, with "area codes" of the 0XX(X(etc)) > format, the UK used '0' as a standalone digit code to reach the > Operator, just like in the US and Canada. When STD Codes beginning > with '0' came about, the local assistance operator in the UK was > changed to '100'. In most parts of the country, callers just dialed 0 to place any long-distance call through the operator, but in London (and possibly other director areas) subscribers were instructed to dial TOL or TRU to reach the appropriate operator for toll and trunk calls (toll being short-haul, trunk being to anywhere else in the country). The 0 code was still used to reach a general assistance operator. I've often wondered why the decision was taken to use 0 as the STD prefix. Maybe the logic was that most people were already used to dialing 0 for reach an operator to place a long-distance call, so why not use zero for STD? The change of operator code to 100 was mirrored by a change of other service codes to the 1 level as well: 191 for general inquiries, 192 for "DQ" (Directory enQuiries), 151 for engineering, etc. ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Q and Z on Dials - Standards? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:57:07 +0100 > In a separate post, someone discussed London dials. What do > modern dials look like today in the rest of the world. Do they > even have letters? If so, are they over the same digits as us? Lisa, As far as British dials are concerned, there were some variants in the very early days, but they were soon standardized as follows (notice that the location of the letter "O" is the only difference between this and the standard U.S. dial): 1 - 2 ABC 3 DEF 4 GHI 5 JKL 6 MN 7 PRS 8 TUV 9 WXY 0 O / Operator Not all telephones were supplied with lettered dials however. They were required for London and the other 3L-4N cities, and for areas which could dial directly into these urban centers, but as letters were not used in most other areas the GPO supplied phones fitted with dials which had just numbers. When the STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing) system started to go into service in the late 1950s, letters were employed (e.g. 0PL2 = Plymouth), so phones with STD access then needed lettered dials. By the mid 1960s, however, the decision had been made to drop letters entirely, so this use was short-lived, and for many areas letters had gone before STD service was available. Thus many parts of the country never had any need for lettered dials at all. The introduction of STD also resulted in 0 being used as the access prefix, so "Operator" was dropped from the zero position and "Q" was added, although little -- if ever -- used. So by the end of the 1960s there were no letters in STD codes, and all-figure numbering in the cities that were previously 3L-4N. From that point onward the GPO issued telephones with number-only dials. Their push-button phones followed suit, having only numbers on the buttons (by the way, these weren't TouchTone at this time, but a store/pulse-dial arrangement). Number-only dials/keypads became the norm right through the 1970s and well into the 1980s after privatization and the formation of British Telecom. Letters have only made a re-appearance in comparatively recent years with the vast range of imported equipment now on sale. This new generation of lettered keypads (now DTMF) uses the now-international system with 6=MNO, 7=PQRS, 9=WXYZ. That should be confusing for any youngsters looking at old exchange names and not realizing that some letters were assigned differently on the old dials. By the way, the use of letters as a convenient way to promote your business ("Call 222-TAXI" etc.) never really got off the ground over here. As letters were not universally printed on dials, and from the late-1960s on the GPO issued number-only dials to everyone, that's not surprising, of course. A few businesses have taken to this approach recently, but it's still nothing like as common as in the United States. Naturally, any business advertising in this way would really need to consider the fact that they're going to make life much harder for the many people who still use 1980s phones with no letters. Paul ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #388 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 19 16:13:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7JKDtj03968; Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:13:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:13:55 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408192013.i7JKDtj03968@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 #389 TELECOM Digest Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 389 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson VOIP Phone Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers (Decker-VOIP) Covad Releases White Paper: Future of Voice Over Internet (Decker-VOIP) AT&T: Gold-Medal Hyperbole (Jack Decker - VOIP News) AT&T Dials Up VoIP Service With Cable Deals (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Vonage(R) Offers 311 Dialing For City Information Services (Decker-VOIP) Re: Vonage(R) Offers 311 Dialing For City Information (Paul Timmins) Considering VoIP For Home? Think Twice About AT&T CallVantage (Chip G) Choosing AT&T Wireless a Big Mistake (Ankur Shah) Re: Transmission Time Delay (Wolfgang R.) Free World Dialup: Configuration Tool FWD With Asterisk on MacOSX (BK) Re: DSL Steel or Copper (Scott Dorsey) Re: Number Not in Use (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (T. Sean Weintz) 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: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:12:30 -0400 Subject: VoIP Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://news.com.com/VoIP+firm+tussles+with+states+over+phone+numbers/2100-7352_3-5316368.html By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com A dispute between SBC IP Communications and state utility agencies over how to distribute phone numbers promises to shape regulations that are key to the future of the fledgling Net telephony industry. SBC IP Communications, a subsidiary of SBC, wants to sidestep the usual procedures and get telephone numbers directly from the North American Numbering Plan Administration, without first obtaining a state telephone operator's license. Last month, SBC IP asked the Federal Communications Commission for a temporary waiver of the licensing requirement. Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be hampered. NANPA is the organization that maintains the comprehensive telephone-numbering plan for the United States, its territories, Canada and the Caribbean. Several state regulators have since vigorously objected to SBC IP's plan, saying the licensing process is necessary to keep carriers from gobbling up the dwindling supply of phone numbers assigned to North America. They told the FCC earlier this week that NANPA isn't required to enforce federal or state telephone number conservation measures. That task is left to the states, which impose restrictions on carriers as part of the licensing process. Federal agencies estimate that the United States, Canada, Guam, Bermuda and Trinidad will run out of 10-digit numbers, which include area codes, by 2025. "The lack of certification will frustrate (our) ability to directly enforce any number of conservation requirements," the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio told the FCC in a statement. "By requiring state certification, the Ohio commission and FCC are able to ensure that numbers are assigned to carriers only when the carrier has made a commitment to serve and the company is authorized to operate." Full story at: http://news.com.com/VoIP+firm+tussles+with+states+over+phone+numbers/2100-7352_3-5316368.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:47:20 -0400 Subject: Covad Releases White Paper on Future of Voice over Internet Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Aug/1066714.htm SAN JOSE, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Aug. 19, 2004 -- Industry Innovation and Facilities-Based Competition Can Turn the VoIP Revolution into Reality Covad Communications Group, Inc. (OTCBB:COVD), a leading nationwide provider of integrated voice and data communications, today released a white paper offering recommendations for the future of regulations for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and on key social policy issues facing this technology. The paper, the second in a series, concludes that VoIP can and should be free of excessive retail-level regulation provided that competition is maintained by assured access to underlying facilities. "Facilities-based providers like Covad are poised to make the VoIP revolution a reality," said Charles Hoffman, president and chief executive officer of Covad. "VoIP should be viewed as an unregulated information service, free from outdated and excessive regulations that may stunt its growth. Important social policy challenges should be met by industry-led efforts, while competition and innovation are best maintained by ensuring access to the local loops that connect America's homes and businesses." Full story at: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Aug/1066714.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 11:47:14 -0400 Subject: AT&T: Gold-Medal Hyperbole Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/layer8/006025.html OK, we admit it -- we've been watching the Olympics. Hey, nothing's on and we're in between Netflix rentals. Anyway, we almost spit out our Coco Puffs last night when we saw this . These three ridiculous AT&T engineers pull up a chair and try to explain VoIP to we stupid Americans. It actually starts out with one of them sighing, saying, "How can I explain this?" then it shows two tin cans connected with string. Ay yi yi. Full story at: http://www.nwfusion.com/weblogs/layer8/006025.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 13:41:39 -0400 Subject: AT&T Dials Up VoIP Service With Cable Deals Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-08-19-att_x.htm By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY AT&T is teaming with America's big cable TV operators to offer phone service over their broadband Internet lines, marking the telecom giant's first big move since it announced plans to abandon its traditional consumer long-distance business. To drive deployment of its CallVantage Internet-phone service, AT&T has struck marketing agreements with Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Charter Communications. Mediacom, a New York-based cable TV operator with 1.5 million customers in 23 states, also is participating. The five cable operators together have more than 40 million customers. Under the plan, AT&T will refer callers seeking to sign up for its CallVantage package to the appropriate cable operator to set up broadband Internet access. With Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling, the phone is connected to a broadband line rather than a traditional copper phone line. AT&T sales representatives will ask for the caller's ZIP code and direct them accordingly. "As many customers as they'll drive our way, we'll take them," says Dave Andersen of Charter. [Comment: I feel it is worth noting that once the first six months of service (the introductory period) have gone by, AT&T's service is among the most expensive of the VoIP services. Is it really worth $5 to $15 per month extra to have the AT&T brand name? I'm sure that it will sway some people, but anyone who knows even a little bit about VoIP would doubtless do well to at least investigate other options.] Full story at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/techcorporatenews/2004-08-19-att_x.htm ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 12:32:22 -0400 Subject: Vonage(R) Now Offers 311 Dialing For City Information Services Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-18-2004/0002233919&STORY&EDATE= EDISON, N.J., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage, the leading broadband telephony provider today announced it is now offering its subscribers 311 dialing for city information services. Calls dialed to 311 are routed to the public information center in the customer's area enabling them to receive information such as public transit and garbage collection schedules, as well as tourism and parks and recreation information. "Vonage is pleased to offer its customers the convenience of 311 dialing for city information services. This is just another example of Vonage answering its customers needs," stated Jeffrey A. Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage. The 311 dialing feature is available at no charge to all customers who have activated their dialing 911 service. Vonage customer access to 311 services is available in 13 markets across the US including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Dallas and Washington DC. [COMMENT: Is it my imagination, or is Vonage really using the wrong code for this purpose? I always thought that city information services were supposed to be on 211, while 311 was reserved as a non-emergency alternative to 911. So is Vonage wrong here or am I?] Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-18-2004/0002233919&STORY&EDATE= ------------------------------ Organization: Timmins Technologies, LLC From: Paul Timmins Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:20:12 -0400 Subject: Re: Vonage(R) Now Offers 311 Dialing For City Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.nanpa.com/number_resource_info/n11_codes.html 211 Community Information and Referral Services (US) 311 Non-Emergency Police and Other Governmental Services (US) 411 Local Directory Assistance 511 Traffic and Transportation Information (US); Reserved (Canada) 611 Repair Service 711 Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) 811 Business Office 911 Emergency -Paul On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 12:32, Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-18-2004/0002233919&STORY&EDATE= > Vonage(R) Now Offers 311 Dialing For City Information Services > [COMMENT: Is it my imagination, or is Vonage really using the wrong > code for this purpose? I always thought that city information > services were supposed to be on 211, while 311 was reserved as a > non-emergency alternative to 911. So is Vonage wrong here or am I?] Paul Timmins Timmins Technologies, LLC ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Considering VoIP For Home? Think Twice About AT&T CallVantage Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:01:57 GMT I share this experience with you because there has been a lot of conversation about various VoIP providers. I truly appreciate all the comments that I have seen in this forum and hope that my contribution will help you if you are considering VoIP for your home. I requested the AT&T CallVantage service in response to a promotional program that I received in the mail. The representative seemed to be fairly knowledgable and handled my request for the service. I received a D-Link terminal adapter a couple of weeks later via FedEx. My experience has always been very good with FedEx regarding timely delivery so I can only guess that it took AT&T a little less than a couple of weeks to get the device into FedEx for delivery. The device came with quick start instructions which very clearly delineated the process to connect the device and included color coded cables to connect the device between my cable modem and my router. This is where I discovered my first surprise. I periodically ask people to "call" me on my PC via my IP Address provided from my ISP in order to use Netmeeting or to conduct large file transfers using FTP. Due to the required architecture using the D-Link adapter between my router and the cable modem, my router now gets allocated a private IP address from the D-Link adapter. This makes it impossible for people to reach my router directly from the Internet. Next, I spent many hours getting bounced through various AT&T representatives and getting transferred with very long waits between them trying to get the service working. After talking to 5 different representatives, I was informed that they had no record that I am a customer and that their records did not indicate that I had requested any services from AT&T CallVantage not withstanding the multiple pieces of mail I have received explaining the various billing requirements and the miscellaneous charges that I would incur (which had never been discussed or articulated to me during the sign-up process). I was transferred through a couple more people who could not help. After bouncing around through a variety of very friendly but not helpful representatives, I connected with a gentleman who explained to me that they had setup my phone services on a certain telephone number and the AT&T CallVantage program on a different number so that the two could not work together. According to him, this was part of the reason why the services were not working. He explained that it should not have been setup in that way and that he would make sure to get the problem corrected within two months. I explained that this was not acceptable and requested that everything be cancelled. At this point, I am a little gun-shy but back to evaluating potential alternative providers ... Lingo and Vonage are in the running but I will keep watching this group for more experiences before taking the leap again. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I can assure you that for all the bad feelings there are about Vonage by some people, one thing you never get is 'bounced around between various reps.' If your name is not Patrick Townson and you don't have a screen full of 'next month free' credits waiting on your account when they pull it up to awe them with as they say they have never seen anyone with that many credit memos, then you prolly have to wait a while for service. One of the to be expected problems in life is that as a company grows faster than new employees can be trained the time spent waiting is bound to get miserable. Then because you get miserable while waiting in the queue, you cuss them out and write them off for their 'miserable service'. And if you think the customer service at Vonage is bad news, then you should try the queue for tech service sometime. But I do think overall, Vonage is better than AT&T almost always. Maybe I am prejudiced a little. I've never had long waits in line there, nor do I have any 'special numbers' to call in on which bypass the queue. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400 From: Ankur Shah Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake MR wrote: > Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. > first two statements have been incorrect by HUNDREDS of dollars. I > have wasted hours sorting this out on the phone with their reps. And > after these corrections the website still reflects the wrong billing > amounts. > Every time I make a call I get a very loud static ticking before > connection. The minutes usage portion of the website is > indecipherable even to their service reps. After ten minutes of > explaining and back pedaling the rep only made things worse by making > me realize I have a two year contract with a@#holes. I've a few friends who use AT&T wireless, and though they haven't had any billing issues (yet), they're not too happy with the overall service. That said, you may be able to "break" the contract by paying a preset amount (usually ~$250). It should be in your contract, you may wanna actually read your contract this time :P -- Ankur ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it From: wolfgang+gnus20040819T111755@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:48:33 GMT a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) writes: > Electrons move at the speed of light. Not really, and we should be very glad that they don't. TV's of old already had a problem with X-rays being emitted when the relatively slow-moving electrons from the cathode slammed into something hard at the front of the CRT. Now picture what would happen if an electron moving at *relativistic* velocities did that. The energy released would be immense. (Edward Teller is probably smiling in his grave just thinking about the "interesting" uses such an electron would have.) I suspect you might be thinking the speed of an electrical *signal* in wire. The speed of a signal in typical electronic wiring is anywhere between half of the speed of light in a vacuum to just short of the speed of light in a vacuum. Substances with very low propagation velocities (eg. much slower than the speed of light in a vacuum) also exist and are heavily studied. -wolfgang ------------------------------ From: akabeni@gmail.com (BK) Subject: Free World Dialup: Configuration Tool With Asterisk on MacOSX Date: 18 Aug 2004 15:09:16 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com FYI: just out -- pre-release of FWD Assistant, for automated FWD configuration of Asterisk on MacOSX. This is open source GPLed software. For further details see the Wiki ... http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+Assistants+for+MacOSX ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: DSL Steel or Copper Date: 19 Aug 2004 11:07:53 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Paul A Lee wrote: > In TELECOM Digest V23 #338, ruddager99@hotmail.com (rud) wrote (in part): >> Does anyone know if you can use steel communication wire to >> run a DSL line? The cable is Belden LL7874/E108998/9504. I've >> got a brand new 500' spool of the stuff ... > Not likely it's steel. About the only places you'll find steel wire in > communication, control, or electronic cables are as a messenger > (supporting) wire or cable, or as a copper-clad center conductor in > some coaxial constructions. Actually, Army field wire is copper-clad steel, in order to make it much more mechanically strong than a copper cable. Big deal if you are running it on the ground beside a road in an improvised install. And it is just fine for DSL. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:00:27 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Owain wrote: > Ned Protter wrote: >> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed >> again with the same result. >> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? > Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company > announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the > line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to > ring first. > Owain Likely was a real telco recording. Back here, the recorded "not in service" messages ALWAYS ring first -- sometimes as many as five or six times before the message plays (one time I counted 8 times!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Five or six times? Eight times? By that point most people would be ready to assume their party was not at home, rather than had the phone turned off. I am reminded of when Chicago-Wabash central office was very old, back in the panel/step-switch days. If you called someone whose line was busy only occassionally would you get a busy signal right away; usually it would ring one or two times *then* cut into busy. If the handful of 'busy noise makers' were all in use, you could wait four or five 'rings' before you got cut into one. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:06:17 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com JustSomeGuy wrote: > How do RTP packets travers a NAT? Same way UDP packets do. Nothing special about it. The address just gets translated. Now since RTP is basically UDP, which is connectionless, some NAT boxes will have problems. (It's harder to track NAT tables for a connectionless protocol.) I remember back in the mid 90's, most nat solutions wouldn't handle UDP at all. Nowadays most do, but some do better than others. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #389 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 20 02:04:39 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7K64dg11086; Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:39 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:39 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408200604.i7K64dg11086@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 #390 TELECOM Digest Fri, 20 Aug 2004 02:04:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 390 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson EFFector 17.30: EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Monty Solomon) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (John McHarry) Re: Dating an Old Phone Number (Arthur Kamlet) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Jim Haynes) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Al Gillis) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Neal McLain) Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? (Daniel McDonald) Re: FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition (G. Wollman) Re: Number Not in Use (Nick Landsberg) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Levi) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Joseph) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Robert Bonomi) 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: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:05:12 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 17.30: EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P EFFector Vol. 17, No. 30 August 19, 2004 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 302nd Issue of EFFector: * EFF Scores Landmark Win for P2P * Hypocrite, Thy Name Is Real * Texas Secretary of State Backs Down, Agrees to Postpone Closed E-voting Meetings * EFF Releases "Best Practices" Guide for Online Service Providers * EFF Weighs in on Plan to Improve Public Access to Government Documents * EFF Welcomes Four New Hires * MiniLinks (7): Blacklisted Lately? * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/17/30.php ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:16:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Paul Brown, environment correspondent Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by offended governments. The problem has damaged the company's reputation and the "trust rating," which is seen as key to keeping the company competitive, has dropped, a senior Microsoft executive revealed yesterday at the International Geographers Conference in Glasgow. In a frank assessment of the company's problems in trying to be a global player without offending local sensibilities, Tom Edwards, its senior geopolitical strategist, said employees' lack of basic geography was to blame. The company has now launched geography classes for its staff to avoid further bloomers which have caused embarrassment and cost money on a grand scale. He said that as a geographer himself it was depressing that Americans had a reputation for being particularly unaware of the rest of the world. The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of the Pacific Ocean. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286066,00.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone could tell you how downright awful American citizens when it comes to geography. Do the schools even bother to teach geography any longer? Not only does Microsoft embarass everyone with their stupid and inconsiderate employees, the old AT&T employees were the same way in the traffic department. I used to shudder when I had reason to place an international call through one of the operators in White Plains or later Pittsburgh. While operators in other countries were very polite and courteous in explaining things, the American operators were frequently just atrocious. And if a customer happened to be able to speak the foreign language (when the USA operator could not) if he *dared* to speak up and talk directly (in that language) to the foreign operator the USA operator would shut him up in a hurry. The fact that Americans are arrogant and (among other things) totally ignorant on geography should come as no surprise. Now you would think that USA troops in other countries could and would respect the sensibilities of their host nations, the same way you or I would behave ourselves if we went to someone's home. But that's not true; and they wonder why Americans are hated in so many places. I am reminded of a book from several years ago which was entitled 'The Ugly Americans' where some tourists from USA went to some country and proceeded to act like rude, ignorant pigs, and made fun of the local customs and things like that. The fact, as Monty points out, that a large number of people do not know where the Pacific Ocean is located is not amazing at all. Those are the same people who do not realize Hawaiian people and Puerto Rico people are American citizens either. Disgusting! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 19 Aug 2004 20:40:29 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. > Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. Nope. Cingular has an agreement to buy AT&T Wireless, but it's waiting for regulators to OK it. Until then, the two companies are operating separately. It's not out of the question that the regulators will turn them down, since that'd be a merger of two of the three largest wireless companies in the country. When AT&T spun of AT&T Wireless, part of the deal was that AT&T woudn't compete with their namesake under the AT&T brand. Since the plan is that ATTWS will be absorbed into Cingular and use the Cingular name, after that AT&T is free to start using the AT&T name for wireless service, which they say they will. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:03:43 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400, Ankur Shah wrote: > MR wrote: >> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. > Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. Not *yet* they don't! AT&T has hardly turned over the keys at this time. They are still two distinct companies and are still doing business independently even though there are reports that some AT&T subscribers are able to use the cingular network in *some* locations. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:26:45 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada qazmlp wrote: > Two nodes are connected in the same IP network. > The average bandwidth of the IP link between those 2 nodes is 'T' > MB/sec. These 2 nodes are 'D'(maybe, 200 or 300 km)km apart from > each other. > In that case, how much time it will take for transferring 'A' MB > amount of data from one node to the other one? I am just confused > about how the distance need to be considered for calculating this. It doesn't, really, because you specifically said an IP network and the time it takes for a signal to travel three hundred kilometers (about one millisecond each way, IIRC) is only a small part of the round trip time that affects throughput. That throughput depends on the protocol you choose for two reasons: overhead and capacity utilization. Generally speaking, the overhead is small compared to the question of whether you're actually taking advantage of the capacity of the link. For instance, if your transfer protocol is XMODEM, which requires you to send a 128-byte block of data and wait for an acknowledgement before continuing, and your round-trip time is 50 milliseconds, then no matter how fast your link is or how little time it takes for each end to send or receive data, compute checksums, and move on, you're simply not going to get speeds in excess of 2,560 bytes/second (50 milliseconds per exchange means no more than 20 128-byte blocks transferred per second.) At 300 or even 1200 bps, the time required to send 128 bytes of data made the pause during which nothing was sent (and capacity was wasted) very small and Ward Christensen was a hero. However, at even dialup speeds today, using XMODEM is a waste of criminal proportions and thus it is never used over high speed links; I describe it here only to illustrate the issue in ridiculous extreme. For things like web surfing, HTTP is used, and it in turn uses TCP. TCP has what is known as a "receive window", which defines how far a sender should let transmission get ahead of the receipt acknowledgements it gets. If the acknowledgement of the first segment of data gets back to the sender before the amount of unacknowledged data reaches the size of the receive window, then the sender never stops transmitting and the throughput of the connection approaches the bandwidth of the link. To accomplish that, the receive window must be as large as (or slightly larger than) the amount of data that can be transmitted before the acknowledgement of the first segment gets back to the sender, which will be at least the round-trip time multiplied by the overall link speed (possibly the speed of the slowest link.) Since it still takes some time to send data, to read it, compare checksums, etc. the actual acknowledge time will be at least slightly greater than the ping time. Now for a possible bad side effect for the average user: the above calculation is for using the entire capacity for a single TCP connection, such as an ftp transfer, and usually results in a pretty large window. If you have a high-speed link such as cable or DSL and configure your TCP receive window to be that large, what do you think is going to happen when you have multiple connections open, as when you are downloading a couple of different files plus surfing the web plus getting your USENET fix? You've just told umpteen servers each to blast you enough data to fill the slowest link (for most consumers, that's your last mile), and (ideally) the data will queue up at the bottleneck and increase the round-trip time for your link; no matter, you have multiple connections going so the fact that each might pause intermittently is not going to affect your total throughput. However, no queue is infinite in capacity (even less so for consumer broadband access servers) and eventually data will be dropped. Your receiver will notice sequences missing and request retransmission, which will set your download back a bit ... and cause even more data to be sent, and again some will be lost, etc. etc. etc. Generally users should think twice about tuning their TCP receive window to guarantee maximum throughput even from servers hundreds of milliseconds away. I'm guessing that I've gone far beyond your original question and the warning may not apply to you but I wanted to finish the answer properly for those who would be tempted to set their TCP receive window in the gigabytes and then tell me that it's my fault their system doesn't work well anymore. Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 00:19:20 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net wolfgang+gnus20040819T111755@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com wrote: > a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) writes: >> Electrons move at the speed of light. > Not really, and we should be very glad that they don't. TV's of old > already had a problem with X-rays being emitted when the relatively > slow-moving electrons from the cathode slammed into something hard at > the front of the CRT. Now picture what would happen if an electron > moving at *relativistic* velocities did that. The energy released > would be immense. (Edward Teller is probably smiling in his grave > just thinking about the "interesting" uses such an electron would > have.) > I suspect you might be thinking the speed of an electrical *signal* in > wire. The speed of a signal in typical electronic wiring is anywhere > between half of the speed of light in a vacuum to just short of the > speed of light in a vacuum. Substances with very low propagation > velocities (eg. much slower than the speed of light in a vacuum) also > exist and are heavily studied. The reference has to be to photons, or any emf for that matter (lower frequency photons are rather porcine and more wave like at our scale) in a vacuum. They are always somewhat slower in media, since, like dogs, they tend to pause to sniff things as they pass. Transmission lines tend to give 65-80% of c as velocity constants. ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: Dating an Old Phone Number Date: 16 Aug 2004 16:39:08 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , Joseph wrote: > On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 14:31:29 -0700, wrote: >> I am hoping you can help ... I have an old picture that has a "antique" >> phone number. I am trying to date the picture. Below is the phone >> number located in Brooklyn New York: >> TRiangle 5-7871 >> Can you date this phone number? I have searched the internet with no = >> luck. My best guess is East New York around late 40s early 50s. Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:35:09 GMT There is a Yahoo group named "strowger" which deals with old telephone systems and the like. Mostly English membership, but some U.S. members might be able to get you a lead. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/strowger A number of years ago I got some from Herbach & Rademan, in the form of some junked equipment containing them. Probably long gone by now. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:56:10 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com You might look at www.surplussales.com under switches. They didn't have any telephone-type rotary switches nor Strowger switches but they had some "moterized" switches than might have enough noise and motion to draw the attention of the unwashed masses. If you really need an actual Strowger switch you may be in for a loog look! Al John Schuch wrote in message news:telecom23.388.9@telecom-digest.org: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. > I searched the web ad-nausium with no luck. > Thanks, > John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:10:05 -0500 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays John Schuch wrote: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old > relays. Search for "strowger" on eBay. Strowger switches seem to pop up every few weeks. As of today (8/19/04), two connectors, some mounting hardware, and several diagrams are listed. A word of warning however: if you want a complete Strowger switch, *including* the contact bank, contact the seller before bidding to make sure it's included. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:39:13 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Nothing special about it. The address just gets translated. Now since > RTP is basically UDP, which is connectionless, some NAT boxes will > have problems. (It's harder to track NAT tables for a connectionless > protocol.) I remember back in the mid 90's, most nat solutions > wouldn't handle UDP at all. Nowadays most do, but some do better than > others. Essentially, they treat UDP conversations as if they were connections, but use idle timeouts to guess when the conversation is over. Unfortunately, a 'one size fits all' timeout could be too short for some applications, causing them to lose touch with each other, and too long for others, causing the NAT device to leave an inbound channel open after it is no longer needed. The latter doesn't sound like a problem at first, but applications which make many UDP-based queries to a wide variety of destinations (my fave example is Half-Life querying online game servers for status information) fill the NAT connection table and prevent any more UDP (or possibly any protocol) connections out until all of the UDP 'connections' in the NAT table time out; this was a common problem with early broadband routers/NAT boxes and I believe the fix was to close the least recently used UDP connection prematurely, which was deemed a lesser sin than being unable to make any more outbound connections for a fixed period of time. Sorry, I seem to be determined to earn a "too much information"/"who asked you anyway" prize today. Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Anyone Know Anything About RTP and NAT Traversal? Organization: io.com From: djmcdona@fnord.io.com (Daniel J McDonald) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:31:59 -0500 In article , T. Sean Weintz wrote: > JustSomeGuy wrote: >> How do RTP packets travers a NAT? > Same way UDP packets do. Not quite. RTP uses a dynamic negotiated port range. The NAT device has to know to listen in on that conversation and adjust all of the ports, particularly when dealing with PAT. I'd suggest you contact your NAT equipment vendor. Cisco in particular recently released new code for the PIX firewall to fix a bunch of RTP problems. Daniel J McDonald CCIE # 2495, CNX Visit my website: http://www.austinnetworkdesign.com ------------------------------ From: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: FCC Takes Next Steps To Promote Digital TV Transition Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:25:30 UTC Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Neal McLain wrote: > Note that although low-band channels (2-6) are in the core group, the > FCC is allowing any low-band station to move to a higher channel > during Round Three. The Commission's Public Notice doesn't explain > why this provision was included (and the actual R&O hasn't been > published yet). The problem with Band I is that there is an enormous amount of EMI on those channels, and the digital transmission system is not as robust against this noise as the stations would like. Band III has the transmission efficiency characteristics that one would like (in terms of cost to operate) while being out of the range of most of this noise. Band III is also not subject to sporadic-E propagation, the effects of which on digital reception are not well-studied.[1] (It is, however, subject to other propagation anomalies, although not to the same extent as in UHF where tropospheric ducting has already caused significant conflicts among broadcasters, and between broadcasters and other spectrum users such as land-mobile radio.) -GAWollman [1] There are documented receptions of Band I digital TV stations by this mode in the TV DX community. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@lcs.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those of| search for greater freedom. MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA| - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003) ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:14:12 GMT T. Sean Weintz wrote: > Owain wrote: >> Ned Protter wrote: >>> I dialed it. After two rings I got three shrill tones and an >>> announcement that the number was not in service. I dialed >>> again with the same result. >>> How could I receive a call from an out-of-service number? >> Are you sure the announcement was a genuine telephone company >> announcement, or had the telemarketer put an answering machine on the >> line with a fake annoucement? I'd expect a genuine announcement not to >> ring first. >> Owain > Likely was a real telco recording. Back here, the recorded "not in > service" messages ALWAYS ring first -- sometimes as many as five or > six times before the message plays (one time I counted 8 times!) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Five or six times? Eight times? By > that point most people would be ready to assume their party was > not at home, rather than had the phone turned off. I am reminded > of when Chicago-Wabash central office was very old, back in the > panel/step-switch days. If you called someone whose line was busy > only occassionally would you get a busy signal right away; usually > it would ring one or two times *then* cut into busy. If the handful > of 'busy noise makers' were all in use, you could wait four or five > 'rings' before you got cut into one. PAT] Most folks in this forum already know this, but it may be worth repeating. When you hear ringing, you're not actually hearing the phone you just dialed ringing, you are hearing a "ring-back tone" being played from the CO or other piece of equipment in the network. So, Pat is right, if the "busy tone generators" were all busy you might hear any number of rings until one of them became clear to provide the buzzing sound. Similarly, you may hear any number of rings while the far-end system is trying to complete the call, only to eventually hear " We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service, please hang up and try again. Code 9523" By the way, I had heard an urban legend that "ring back tones" were established in order to try to prevent what the Telco termed "theft of service." Consider the following example: "Mom, I'll call you when I get there and hang up after exactly two rings. I should be there around 8 PM or so." Some say that the Telco's were concerned that they were losing money because the customers were communicating "out of band" but never completing a billable call. Can anyone confirm this (or deny this)? Can anyone put an approximate date when they started using "ring back tones" rather than you hearing the electrical buzz from the actual ringer on the far end phone? Thanks, NPL "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The way I heard it was, telco only put the (artificial) ringing on the line because they did not want people thinking the line was of order. On the old style manual switchboards you did not hear ringing tone, just silence after asking the operator for a connection until eventually either your party responded and spoke up or the operator returned to say 'there is no answer' or 'the line is busy'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lee317@yahoo.com (Levi) Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: 19 Aug 2004 14:19:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > When I read drivel like that, I say, damned right you're looking > elsewhere! Vonage has its place, but not yet as a utility, and > certainly not a replacement to five-nines service. Right now it's a > convenient way to save money in applications that *aren't* critical. Hey guy, this wasn't a personal attack on your choice to use Vonage. I agree it has a place as a prototype experimental technology and that's why I am registering my complaint and looking to spark discussion. I am one person who had a problem and I am warning others to consider my sole experience among others before diving in head first and porting your POTS line to Vonage. My opinion is no more or less "drivel" than yours. Let's keep this kind of unwarrented criticism off the boards. -lee317 ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:09:02 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:47:12 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor opined: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read NY Times articles, many Digest > readers use our group reading name: operator10 and password > operator10 in order to preserve their own privacy and prevent spam. > PAT] The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are slandering the company unduly. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their subscriner list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of outfits who *do* spam us. I am sure they don't personally send out spam, but they close their eyes to spam from companies which buy their mailing list. And why do they need to give cookies out to people who read their web pages? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 04:04:52 +0000 In article , Kyler Laird wrote: > I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack at > getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on my > home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit > someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a > thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. > I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch > and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? How > do I find that person? No it is _not_ reasonable. Not for a _residential_ POTS phone line. If you want to pay for a 'commercial rates' _trunk_ line, Then you can start talking about things like "wink start" vs "ground start" vs "loop start", "E&M" vs "T&R", "MF" vs "DTMF" signalling, etc., etc., ad nauseum. ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #390 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 20 20:51:18 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7L0pIj19834; Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:51:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:51:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408210051.i7L0pIj19834@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 #391 TELECOM Digest Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:50:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 391 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Copper Remains Golden for Legacy Networks (Jack Decker - VOIP News) VoIP Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers (Jack Decker - VOIP) U.S. FCC Issues Rate Freeze For Phone Networks (Monty Solomon) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Ankur Shah) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Isaiah Beard) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J Sobol) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Robert Bonomi) Re: Internet Spam Claims Stir Concern (John Levine) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Steven J Sobol) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (William Warren) Misplaced Ugliness, was Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults (D Burstein) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Doug McIntyre) Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage (Isaiah Beard) Re: Rotary Step Relays (Lisa Hancock) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (G Novosielski) Re: Number Not in Use (Wes Leatherock) 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: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:18:12 -0400 Subject: Copper Remains Golden for Legacy Networks Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3397121 By Roy Mark When three of the four Baby Bells decided in May to walk out of a telecom industry summit crafting a new interconnection access fee system, they dealt a serious blow to reforming a 20-year-old scheme that generates $14 billion a year for the incumbent networks. Meeting at the explicit suggestion of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, a tenuous coalition of Baby Bells and their local rivals, long distance carriers and rural telecom providers agreed to call a truce in their internecine wars and to produce an industry consensus rate reform solution to the FCC. The new odd bedfellows all agreed access fee reform was necessary for long-term survival against the competitive threats to long distance and local voice traffic posed by cable, wireless and Internet-based telephone services. Access fees are charges between traditionally defined phone companies for originating and terminating calls on the legacy copper Bell networks. Most of the fees flow one way to the Bells. Long distance provider AT&T has frequently complained that access charges are its single largest expense. The fees also help fuel the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes the cost of rural phone service and forces carriers to engage in fee negotiations with 50 separate state utility commissions. The regime is based on the 20th Century telecom economics of time and distance, creating a system where it can cost more to send a call one mile than it does 10,000 miles but has fostered low, albeit subsidized, local rates for consumers. Internet telephony-based phone services, by contrast, currently operate in a virtually fee free, regulation free world. They pay low to no connection fees since there are no current laws or regulations classifying Voice over IP (define) service. In the absence of an FCC classification or federal law, the courts have rebuffed both Minnesota and New York when they attempted to regulate VoIP as a traditional carrier. VoIP providers are also currently not required to pay into the Universal Fund. Full story at: http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3397121 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:25:01 -0400 Subject: VoIP Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://news.com.com/VoIP+firm+tussles+with+states+over+phone+numbers/2100-7352_3-5316368.html?part=rss&tag=5316368&tag&subj=news.7352.20 By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com A dispute between SBC IP Communications and state utility agencies over how to distribute phone numbers promises to shape regulations that are key to the future of the fledgling Net telephony industry. SBC IP Communications, a subsidiary of SBC, wants to sidestep the usual procedures and get telephone numbers directly from the North American Numbering Plan Administration, without first obtaining a state telephone operator's license. Last month, SBC IP asked the Federal Communications Commission for a temporary waiver of the licensing requirement. Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be hampered. NANPA is the organization that maintains the comprehensive telephone-numbering plan for the United States, its territories, Canada and the Caribbean. Full story at: http://news.com.com/VoIP+firm+tussles+with+states+over+phone+numbers/2100-7352_3-5316368.html?part=rss&tag=5316368&tag&subj=news.7352.20 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:39:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. FCC Issues Rate Freeze For Phone Networks WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - U.S. communications regulators on Friday issued interim rules that would freeze for six months wholesale rates for leasing access to the major U.S. local telephone networks to try to preserve competition. The Federal Communications Commission had required the four major local telephone carriers, known as the Baby Bells, to lease network access to rivals at government-set rates in order to promote competition for local service, but an appeals court in March threw out the rules. The FCC has been trying to draft new regulations and in the interim ordered the Bells to keep the rates at the present prices while final rules are hashed out. The Bells had argued the prices were below cost and have sought to eliminate them. After the first six months, if final regulations have not been set, the FCC said lease rates for existing customers could rise as much as 15 percent and new customers would have to negotiate new lease rates with the Bells. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43245933 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 14:54:22 -0400 From: Ankur Shah Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Joseph wrote: > On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400, Ankur Shah > wrote: >> MR wrote: >>> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. >> Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. > Not *yet* they don't! AT&T has hardly turned over the keys at this > time. They are still two distinct companies and are still doing > business independently even though there are reports that some AT&T > subscribers are able to use the cingular network in *some* locations. From all the hoopla around the two companies, I thought Cingular had already started the process of acquisition of ATTWS back in February. I also remember reading that the "acquisition" was to be finalized in September and is just waiting for a final approval from the FCC. Not too sure how one is not unrelated to the other? And you're correct, a friend of mine in New Jersey is able to switch between AT&T and Cingular networks (though, he's a ATT sub) without problems. I think its just that ATTWS permits free roaming on Cingular, whereas Cingular prohibits doing the same on ATTWS or any other carrier's network. John Levine wrote: > Cingular has an agreement to buy AT&T Wireless, but it's waiting for > regulators to OK it. Until then, the two companies are operating > separately. It's not out of the question that the regulators will > turn them down, since that'd be a merger of two of the three largest > wireless companies in the country. You're probably correct, although I hear mixed things about their whole merger/acquisition (see my previous post). This post from alt.cellular.* http://tinyurl.com/48wgs , for instance says: "Eventhough Cingular has bought AT&T the merger is not complete when it comes to infrastructure consolidation.". So Cingular has "bought" ATTWS, but is just waiting for a nod from the FCC to consolidate the shares? Nevertheless, this yahoo post from 8/13 seems to suggest that the deal may get the Federal approval sooner than what people had initially expected: http://tinyurl.com/5dxu8 Regards, -- Ankur ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 10:00:18 -0400 John Levine wrote: >>> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. >> Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. > Nope. > Cingular has an agreement to buy AT&T Wireless, but it's waiting for > regulators to OK it. Until then, the two companies are operating > separately. It's not out of the question that the regulators will > turn them down, since that'd be a merger of two of the three largest > wireless companies in the country. So basically, you're hedging your bets on regulatory hurdles. During a pro-big business administration, no less? > When AT&T spun of AT&T Wireless, part of the deal was that AT&T > woudn't compete with their namesake under the AT&T brand. Since the > plan is that ATTWS will be absorbed into Cingular and use the Cingular > name, after that AT&T is free to start using the AT&T name for > wireless service, which they say they will. True, but as you so keenly point out, AT&T wireless is still the same AT&T wireless it has been, and barring the regulatory hurdles you appear to be banking on, it *will* be absorbed into Cingular. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:47:12 -0500 Joseph wrote: > On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:18:29 -0400, Ankur Shah > wrote: >> MR wrote: >>> Go to Cingular or T-Mobile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT&T s@#ks. >> Umm, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Cingular *owns* AT&T. > Not *yet* they don't! AT&T has hardly turned over the keys at this > time. They are still two distinct companies and are still doing As I understand it, we're looking at roughly six months to complete the transaction if everything goes smoothly and regulators approve it. 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: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:08:17 GMT In article , JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com says: > The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly > the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are > slandering the company unduly. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their > subscriber list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of > outfits who *do* spam us. I am sure they don't personally send out > spam, but they close their eyes to spam from companies which buy > their mailing list. And why do they need to give cookies out to > people who read their web pages? PAT] The Times's privacy policy says this about email: E-Mail: If you so elect at registration or in the E-mail Preferences section of our Member Center, The New York Times on the Web will periodically send you promotional e-mail about services offered by The New York Times on the Web and its advertisers. Additionally, the e-mail address provided by you at registration may be used by The New York Times on Web to contact you regarding (1) account status (including confirmation of registration), (2) major changes to the Web site and or to the Subscriber Agreement and Privacy Policy, and (3) participation in user surveys, asking for feedback on the Web site and existing or prospective products and services, as well as information to better understand our users. User surveys greatly help us to improve our Web site, and any information we obtain in such surveys will not be shared with third parties, except in aggregate form. (Effective as of August 21, 2002). The E-Mail This Article feature is an easy way for New York Times on the Web users to send articles through e-mail. The e-mail address(es) that you supply to use this service will only be used to send the requested article. We use e-mail links located in the Site Help area our Member Center to allow you to contact us directly with any questions or comments you may have. We will use your e-mail address to respond directly to these questions or comments. Except as permitted by this policy, The New York Times on the Web does not send unsolicited e-mail. The site also says: Programs From Our Partners: During the registration process, new users who select to register for certain featured offers from our partners will begin receiving e-mail from these companies. You will only receive e-mail messages from these companies if you elect this opt-in service. In addition to providing these partners with your e-mail address, certain partners may also receive other information collected on the The New York Times on the Web registration form but this will be noted on the Additional Information page, linked from the Programs from our Partners area of the Registration page. The New York Times on the Web may use this information as set forth in this privacy policy. Should you decide to discontinue your e-mail subscription or would like more information on these companies, please see our list of partners that have participated in this program. YesMail: Users who selected to register for YesMail during The New York Times on the Web registration process became YesMail members. If you selected this option, YesMail uses the information collected on The New York Times on the Web registration form to provide targeted e-mails to you on behalf of its advertisers. The New York Times on the Web may use this information as set forth in this privacy policy. You will only receive e-mail messages from YesMail if you elected this opt-in service. Please contact membercare@yesmail directly if you no longer wish to receive e-mail messages from them. In other words, they will give your name to spammers IF YOU TELL THEM TO. Otherwise, they will not. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of times I have received spam where the sender (a) claims it is not spam or (b) it *might* be considered spam but you 'obviously' must have opted-in to recieve it, just go back and read what you agreed to when you signed up with us; read it closely, you will see where you agreed. I have at one point subscribed to NY Times paper edition, where it showed up on my front steps each day, delivered by their Tulsa newspaper agency. (Actually, the same carrier who brings the Independence Reporter each day also delivers the NY Times.) When the paper was coming each day (it was a gift subscription), it came with a unique spelling of my name, and presently I started getting junk mail to that same unique spelling of my name. If NY Times sells their print edition mailing list, I cannot see why they would not sell their internet mailing list. PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:41:05 +0000 In article , Joseph wrote: >On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:47:12 -0400, Telecom Digest Editor opined: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read NY Times articles, many Digest >> readers use our group reading name: operator10 and password >> operator10 in order to preserve their own privacy and prevent spam. >> PAT] > The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly > the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are > slandering the company unduly. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their > subscriner list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of > outfits who *do* spam us. I am sure they don't personally send out > spam, but they close their eyes to spam from companies which buy > their mailing list. Data point: *I* have _never_ gotten any spam to an e-mail address given only to the NYT. Going on 4 years now. NO ONE _I_ know has ever gotten any spam traceable to having given an address to the NY Times. This encompasses 40+ NYT-online subscribers. ------------------------------ Date: 20 Aug 2004 06:35:38 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Internet Spam Claims Stir Concern Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The New York Times may be originator of some things but it's hardly > the originator of spam. Unless you can prove otherwise you are > slandering the company unduly. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They certainly willingly sell their > subscriner list (computer subscribers at least) to all sorts of > outfits who *do* spam us. I don't think so. I gave the Times a unique e-mail address, and I've never gotten mail to that address from anyone else. I hardly get any from the Times, either, other than the daily headline newsletter I asked for. It's quite rare for legit companies to sell e-mail address lists. If the list is any good, the pittance they could get from selling it isn't worth the hatred of their soon-to-be-ex-customers. Big company marketers may be venal, but they're not totally stupid. Some sites do "co-registration" which means selling your address, but it's usually pretty obvious who they are, sweepstakes, free lame joke of the day, stuff like that. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:45:16 -0500 Pat said, > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone could tell you how downright > awful American citizens when it comes to geography American citizens (as a group, in general) seem to think that the US is the only important country on this planet and that other countries are not worth even thinking about. 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is correct, and our politicians, with a few exceptions think it is our job to be police officers for the entire world. That is known as arrogance, IMO. PAT] ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:37:14 GMT Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom23.390.2@telecom-digest.org: > Paul Brown, environment correspondent > Insensitive computer programmers with little knowledge of geography > have cost the giant Microsoft company hundreds of millions of dollars > in lost business and led hapless company employees to be arrested by > offended governments. [snip] > http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286066,00.html > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Anyone could tell you how downright > awful American citizens when it comes to geography. Do the schools > even bother to teach geography any longer? [snip] Pat, Although I came from a generation that _does_ know where the Pacific Ocean is, and the Indian as well, I disagree with your assessment of our nation's schools vis-a-vis Geography and its relevence in the 21st century. Although I'm as nostalgic as anyone for the "good old days" when children were taught to the tune of a Hickory Stick, my resentment about the ways teenagers wear their trousers must be tempered by my wisdom about the world they are going to inherit. The rote memorization we were burdened with as children (Johnny points to map and says "This is Columbia. The capitol city is Bogota. They export Medicines.") must give way to more enlightened ideas about Geopolitics: location is not nearly as important as attitude when it comes to other peoples and ways of life. Frankly, I feel you're confusing Geography with Political Science. It may be important to know that there is a border dispute between India and Pakistan, but exactly _where_ the disputed borders are is relevant only to aid workers, missionaries, spies, and surveyors. It might be important to know that Argentina exports beef and wine, but it's more important to know if their government is stable and if contracts will be enforced. It may be important to know where the Pacific Ocean is (why?), but it's more important to know that Hawaii is separated from the Mainland, not the U.S. Johnny needs to know that Columbia exports medicines with a higher value now, and that the percentage of drug adicts in the populations of industrialized countries is almost a constant, no matter what -- or where -- the U.S. proposes to eliminate the problem. Johnny needs to know that there are as many dialects of Spanish as there are countries speaking it, and to consult with natives in all of them before advertising a car labelled "Nova" (which loosely translates to "no balls") in those places. Johnny needs to know that business depends on making friends and asking for advice instead of just faxing a price sheet and a FedEx schedule. Johnny needs to know that his is not the only view of world events, and that people he wants as customers like to be talked with instead of down to. Geography is important to navigators, but if we make the mistake of confusing navigation with human nature, then we wind up with Mercator Projections on all our schoolroom walls, and children who think Greenland is as big as Africa. The question is not why M$ didn't know about a border in Asia or the meaning of a certain word in a certain dialect of Spanish. The question is "Why did they assume they couldn't ask the people who live there?" FWIW. William (Filter noise from my address for direct replies.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your points are all very good, but I believe a person, to be well rounded or knowledgeable in political science needs to have a geography background as well. Now I do not expect American troops to all be well-verse in political science, but I *would* expect that before they get dispatched to host countries (like Saudi Arabia for example) to be instructed on the types of lifestyles, etc which offend their hosts, when the soldiers have free time. Here is a more 'at home' example: Many people know that I smoke cigarettes. I *DO NOT* smoke in someone else's home unless they invite me to do so. I *DO NOT* smoke in their car. I try to be considerate of the sensibilities of others, as I expect them to be considerate of my sensibilities or wishes, etc. I do not even smoke in *my own home* when there are invited guests here who may object to it. That is simply being courteous. If I were a guest in a foreign country, either physically, in person or through commerce (selling things) I would want to learn about my hosts and as nearly as possible, work along with them, not start right out like gangbusters, and offend them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Misplaced Ugliness, was Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 06:18:54 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Monty Solomon writes: [ full snip ] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip] > I am reminded of a book from several years ago which > was entitled 'The Ugly Americans' where some tourists from USA went > to some country and proceeded to act like rude, ignorant pigs, and > made fun of the local customs and things like that. The book was "The Ugly American," by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdic. It was published in the mid 1950s (I found a reference to 1956, but that seems like it might be a year or two early. I can't get to my copy right now to check). The book is a series of vignettes showing American (US) mistakes, arrogance, and indifference in a thinly veiled Southeast Asia. However, the title refers to an American engineer (and his wife) who actually mix in with the countryside, get their hands very, very, dirty, do a lot of good things, and are warmly appreciated by everyone. Oh, that is, appreciated by everyone in the country. Not by the American professional politicians, the business interests, or the French ... In short, "the ugly American" is actually the good guy. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? From: Doug McIntyre Date: 20 Aug 2004 13:53:47 GMT Organization: VISI.com bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > In article , Kyler Laird > wrote: >> I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack at >> getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on my >> home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit >> someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a >> thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. >> I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch >> and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? How >> do I find that person? > No it is _not_ reasonable. Not for a _residential_ POTS phone line. > If you want to pay for a 'commercial rates' _trunk_ line, Then you can > start talking about things like "wink start" vs "ground start" vs > "loop start", "E&M" vs "T&R", "MF" vs "DTMF" signalling, etc., etc., > ad nauseum. FWIW: kewlstart isn't a telco line type like a loopstart or groundstart trunk line. Its a special mode of the Asterisk soft PBX system that takes a normal loopstart line (ie. a POTS line) and watches for a certain event on it to handle line drops (ie. remote disconnect detection) better than normal loopstart signalling. (ie. a posting on the Asterisk users archives from the main author kewlstart is what we call loopstart with battery drop. this is also known as "far end disconnect supervision" to some people. Basically when the switch hangs up on you, it drops battery for a fraction of a second to signal that you've been hung up on. As such, you won't find any telco offering it, because its a special mode that Asterisk has for its FXO cards on a plain old loopstart telephone line. Its not surprising at all that nobody at any telco has heard of it, and the OP is barking up the wrong tree for nothing. Doug McIntyre merlyn@visi.com Network Engineer/Jack of All Trades Vector Internet Services, Inc. ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Vonage Will Drive You Crazy - Beware Vonage Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 09:54:57 -0400 Levi wrote: >> When I read drivel like that, I say, damned right you're looking >> elsewhere! Vonage has its place, but not yet as a utility, and >> certainly not a replacement to five-nines service. Right now it's a >> convenient way to save money in applications that *aren't* critical. > Hey guy, this wasn't a personal attack on your choice to use Vonage. > I agree it has a place as a prototype experimental technology and > that's why I am registering my complaint and looking to spark > discussion. [snip] I'm not one to perpetuate arguments on fine forums like this, but if you'll read my post, you'll find that I was referring to comments by people *not even on this forum* who had completely dumped POTS for their business and then relied entirely on Vonage, and then had a fit when the service went down. Clearly you're an intelligent fellow who knows that "experimenting" and dumping a reliable service for an experimental one are two very different things ... right? > My opinion is no more or less "drivel" than yours. Let's keep this > kind of unwarrented criticism off the boards. Gladly agreed. But I must also kindly ask that you fully read the post before you immediately ASSuME that the attack was a personal one. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Date: 20 Aug 2004 07:38:31 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Schuch wrote > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. There are two organizations that may be of help to you: 1) ATCA The Antique Telephone Collectors Association 2) TCI Telephone Collectors International. I'm not sure of their web address, but try searching altavista "Telephone collectors" and relevant stuff should come up for you. Those groups have newsletters where you could put in an ad for what you seek; their members have that kind of stuff. Some even have miniature step exchanges working in their basements. At their shows, there are working SxS demos on display--as you dial the number, you see the step go up and around. Fortunately, many collectors saved the guts of step offices when they were converted. ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 19:58:54 GMT John McHarry wrote: > The reference has to be to photons, or any emf for that matter (lower > frequency photons are rather porcine and more wave like at our scale) > in a vacuum. They are always somewhat slower in media, since, like > dogs, they tend to pause to sniff things as they pass. Transmission > lines tend to give 65-80% of c as velocity constants. It is my understanding that higher frequency photons are slowed down more by passing through a given medium than are lower frequency photons. This is somewhat counterintuitive, since higher frequency photons are also higher energy photons. Nevertheless, this slowing ratio (also known by the name refractive index) accounts for the fact that violet light is refracted more than red light on passing an optical boundary where the speed of light differs on either side. This is all very different from the speed of electrons in a wire. Although the signal may travel at a large fraction of /c/, electrons themselves move very sluggishly by comparison. In a sub-ampere DC current in a wire several meters long it might take a week or so for a given electron (on average) to complete the trip. Of course DC currents have a frequency of zero, and so can't be understood to comprise "photons" in the first place. In an AC current, of course, a given electron would make no overall progress at all, on average. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:38:30 EDT Subject: Re: Number Not in Use In a message dated Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:14:12 GMT, Nick Landsberg writes: > By the way, I had heard an urban legend that "ring back tones" were > established in order to try to prevent what the Telco termed "theft of > service." Consider the following example: > "Mom, I'll call you when I get there and hang up after exactly two > rings. I should be there around 8 PM or so." Some say that the > Telco's were concerned that they were losing money because the > customers were communicating "out of band" but never completing a > billable call. > Can anyone confirm this (or deny this)? Can anyone put an approximate > date when they started using "ring back tones" rather than you hearing > the electrical buzz from the actual ringer on the far end phone? > Thanks, NPL With step euipment originally some of the ringing current was fed back to the calling party. So you did hear the actual ringing and that form of code calling was indeed not uncommon. Even after they used a separate ringing tone, it was usually operated by the same relay that applied ringing current to the called party. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #391 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 21 02:43:45 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i7L6hja23286; Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:43:45 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:43:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408210643.i7L6hja23286@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 #392 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:43:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 392 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J Sobol) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers (Steven J Sobol) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Joseph) Info re: NorVergence and the Salzanos? (Satchel Paige) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Tony P.) Re: Number Not in Use (Tony P.) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (William Warren) A Place For Political/Social Issues Discussion (TELECOM Digest Editor) 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: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:32:32 -0500 Ankur Shah wrote: > From all the hoopla around the two companies, I thought Cingular had > already started the process of acquisition of ATTWS back in > February. They may have, but there are a lot of things that have to happen for it to be finalized. > "Eventhough Cingular has bought AT&T the merger is not complete when > it comes to infrastructure consolidation.". > So Cingular has "bought" ATTWS, but is just waiting for a nod from the > FCC to consolidate the shares? Infrastructure - Infrastructure consolidation refers to consolidating the two *networks.* This may happen quickly, or it may not (e.g. Verizon Wireless's creation, which happened around four years ago, and it took them at least three years to standardize policies, billing systems and calling plans across all of their markets.) 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. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Aug 2004 02:03:21 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > And you're correct, a friend of mine in New Jersey is able to switch > between AT&T and Cingular networks (though, he's a ATT sub) without > problems. I think its just that ATTWS permits free roaming on > Cingular, whereas Cingular prohibits doing the same on ATTWS or any > other carrier's network. This is partly a technical question, but mostly a question of your rate plan. Cingular and AT&T for the most part use the same technology, TDMA migrating to GSM in both the 800 MHz AMPS band and the 1900 MHz PCS band. That means that an AT&T handset will work in a Cingular network and vice versa. My Cingular phone is quad mode, GSM 1900, GSM 800, TDMA 800, and analog 800, and roams just fine onto AT&T in places like Pittsburgh where Cingular has no service. My plan offers national roaming, so it doesn't cost any extra when I do so. Verizon is almost entirely CDMA, so you can only roam onto them with analog AMPS, and most phones are programmed to try really hard to find a digitial system before falling back to analog. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on their network with no success. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States Over Phone Numbers Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 20:34:34 -0500 Jack Decker wrote: > Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP > argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be > hampered. Employees of Vonage, VoicePulse and other VoIP services would laugh at that. SBC continues as the absolute lamest telecom company in existence. 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: SBC is just trying to make an end run around the rules. They know what's going on, and are trying to get around having to get their paperwork in order in a timely way. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:39:31 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 07:08:17 GMT, Telecom digest editor wrote: > If NY Times sells their print edition mailing list, I cannot see why > they would not sell their internet mailing list. PAT] Well, it's pretty evident that you're going to believe what you want to believe so even if the NYT says that they won't send you unsolicited offers if you opt out when you register you believe they will so it appears that there's no way to mollify you. You're better off not registering and using someone else's registration or not going to NYT links. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of companies which send spam out make that claim, i.e. "you must have mistakenly agreed to accept our stuff." PAT] ------------------------------ From: dor@writeme.com (Satchel Paige) Subject: Info re: NorVergence and the Salzanos? Date: 20 Aug 2004 18:41:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know what is happening with NorVergence and it's former executives, specifically the Salzano brothers? Will there be criminal charges? Any info will be appreciated. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:50:35 GMT In article , merlyn@visi.com says: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: >> In article , Kyler Laird >> wrote: >>> I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack at >>> getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on my >>> home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit >>> someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a >>> thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. >>> I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch >>> and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? How >>> do I find that person? >> No it is _not_ reasonable. Not for a _residential_ POTS phone line. >> If you want to pay for a 'commercial rates' _trunk_ line, Then you can >> start talking about things like "wink start" vs "ground start" vs >> "loop start", "E&M" vs "T&R", "MF" vs "DTMF" signalling, etc., etc., >> ad nauseum. > FWIW: kewlstart isn't a telco line type like a loopstart or > groundstart trunk line. Its a special mode of the Asterisk soft PBX > system that takes a normal loopstart line (ie. a POTS line) and > watches for a certain event on it to handle line drops (ie. remote > disconnect detection) better than normal loopstart signalling. > (ie. a posting on the Asterisk users archives from the main author > kewlstart is what we call loopstart with battery drop. this is also > known as "far end disconnect supervision" to some people. Basically > when the switch hangs up on you, it drops battery for a fraction of a > second to signal that you've been hung up on. > As such, you won't find any telco offering it, because its a special > mode that Asterisk has for its FXO cards on a plain old loopstart > telephone line. Its not surprising at all that nobody at any telco has > heard of it, and the OP is barking up the wrong tree for nothing. What ever happened to CPC? I forget exactly how it worked but the switch would actually reverse polarity on the line to indicate the call had dropped or some such. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 02:05:47 GMT In article , Wesrock@aol.com says: > In a message dated Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:14:12 GMT, Nick Landsberg > writes: >> By the way, I had heard an urban legend that "ring back tones" were >> established in order to try to prevent what the Telco termed "theft of >> service." Consider the following example: >> "Mom, I'll call you when I get there and hang up after exactly two >> rings. I should be there around 8 PM or so." Some say that the >> Telco's were concerned that they were losing money because the >> customers were communicating "out of band" but never completing a >> billable call. >> Can anyone confirm this (or deny this)? Can anyone put an approximate >> date when they started using "ring back tones" rather than you hearing >> the electrical buzz from the actual ringer on the far end phone? >> Thanks, NPL > With step euipment originally some of the ringing current was fed > back to the calling party. So you did hear the actual ringing and > that form of code calling was indeed not uncommon. > Even after they used a separate ringing tone, it was usually > operated by the same relay that applied ringing current to the called > party. Not anymore. I tried a test and called my home number from my cell -- heard ring tone on the cell but the home phone rang about a second AFTER ring tone had ended. ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Organization: Comcast Online Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:20:58 GMT William Warren wrote in message news:telecom23.391.11@telecom-digest.org: [snip] > The rote memorization we were burdened with as children (Johnny points > to map and says "This is Columbia. The capitol city is Bogota. They > export Medicines.") must give way to more enlightened ideas about > Geopolitics: location is not nearly as important as attitude when it > comes to other peoples and ways of life. [snip] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your points are all very good, but I > believe a person, to be well rounded or knowledgeable in political > science needs to have a geography background as well. To a point, I agree: however, the slavish attention to irrelevant detail that cursed our primary education (and made test preparation easy for a generation of teachers overwhelmed by the Baby Boom) has hurt us more than we realize. I don't think Americans need to know the capitol city of Columbia; better that they know the kinds of people who live and work there, and their value systems. What we need to succeed in business (or, for that matter, International Politics) is knowledge about people, not places. > Now I do not expect American troops to all be well-verse in > political science, but I *would* expect that before they get > dispatched to host countries (like Saudi Arabia for example) to be > instructed on the types of lifestyles, etc which offend their hosts, > when the soldiers have free time. [snip] Which translates into requirements (recently lifted IIRC) that female soldiers wear burkas while off base. The Saudis managed to offend a lot of female soldiers, and in the process show the same sort of jingoism which you see in the U.S. population. _THAT_ is Political Science, an area of study in which monarchies are notoriously undistinguished. The funny thing is, we're making each other's points stronger: had the U.S. Soldiers been educated about the views of other people in other nations, they might have objected less and fit in more. Had the Saudis been less arrogant, or less afraid of foreign ideas about the role of women, they might have invited the soldiers to meet with local peoples to learn first hand about how the culture is different. C'est la guerre: everybody wants someone else to adapt. William [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I think we Americans shoul do the adapting; after all, *we* are guests in their land. I do not think the Saudi people said to us "oh please come over here and protect us." I think it was a case (in the latest instance) where the USA wanted a strategic location to make war with the Iraqi people, and earlier with the Iranian people. So *we* asked the Saudi people "may we be there to do our thing?" The Saudi people okayed that, so it behooves the Americans to act like guests. And yes, the female headwear was one item of contention. Another item of contention was that however people wish to observe their religious activites, they deserve respect while in that observance. Some of the soldiers were 'disorderly in their conduct' when around the Saudi people engaging in their religious practices. There were various bones of contention that the Americans were, well, walking around like they owned the place. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:42:13 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: A Place For Political/Social Issues Discussion I have put up a sort of on-the-fly 'bulletin board' for people to use for discussion about the candidates in the November election, and would appreciate everyone who wants to participate to use it for open discussion. There are two parts, one for general discussion and one part specifically for November election discussion. Names and registration are not needed nor desired. Just go in there and do your thing, please. If you want, you can 'register' but I don't think it gives you any additional privileges if you do or do not. http://kerry-or-bush-2004.us.tt 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #392 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 21 15:34:09 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7LJY9q05806; Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:34:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:34:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408211934.i7LJY9q05806@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 #393 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Aug 2004 15:33:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 393 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? (qazmlp) Verizon Cable TV? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Jack Hamilton) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J. Sobol) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Mark Crispin) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Kyler Laird) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Ken Abrams) Re: Rotary Step Relays (DonS) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Joseph) Re: Number Not in Use (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance (Scott Dorsey) Last Laugh! was Re: VOIP Firm Tussles With States (John Levine) 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: qazmlp1209@rediffmail.com (qazmlp) Subject: SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? Date: 21 Aug 2004 01:44:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com What exactly is the medium of transferring SS7 messages? Is this via Fiber optic cables? Is it possible to transfer SS7 messages via air? Also, I would like to know about what exactly is the factor that mainly decides about the mode of communication like whether via cable or air etc. Is it the frequency of the messages? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Verizon Cable TV? Date: 21 Aug 2004 11:06:05 -0700 Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've heard rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce Cable TV and other services. I presume this is now legal due to deregulation of both cable and telephone industries. Many of the neighbors are excited about this prospect. When cable was regulated, an intermediate-teir customer paid $35/month, just a few years later it's up to $50/month under deregulation. The cable company is very profitable. Anyone have any experience with Verizon cable TV or other new services? ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: 21 Aug 2004 07:31:56 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Joseph wrote: > Well, it's pretty evident that you're going to believe what you want > to believe so even if the NYT says that they won't send you > unsolicited offers if you opt out when you register you believe they > will so it appears that there's no way to mollify you. You're better > off not registering and using someone else's registration or not going > to NYT links. I suspect it's a matter of being burned so often that eventually you decide you can't trust anyone, regardless of their reputation or the testimonials. I mean, how often are you going to be Charlie Brown, trusting Lucy to hold the football? Privacy policies can change, without notice. Yahoo added a bunch of marketing preferences to their user accounts and automatically opted everyone in as the default. Most account sign-ups that offer opt-in selections have them checked by default, so if you don't look very, very closely you opt yourself in to their marketing. Think about it; why require an email address at all? There's only one reason, really. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am well aware, very mindful of the *excellent* reputation NYT has in many circles. I read it often times myself. I am also aware of the very good reputation Yahoo used to enjoy a few years ago before they changed their policy on privacy and advertising. I am also aware that Yahoo attempts to slip in a spy cookie when you call their page; I deliberatly reject their attempts to install 'Avenue A' cookies on my computers when I use Yahoo daily for news and a free email service. Yahoo never talks about it, except in an oblique way in their 'privacy notice', but day after day, the Avenue A spy cookie shows up when I use one of the Yahoo properties. I only get notice of it because *my* computer and *my* copy of Ad- Aware tells me Avenue A was sent away. No one who ever uses those cookies ever bothers to tell you about it; they just slip it in place. But note how if you attempt to login to a Yahoo site with a heavy Proximotron filter in place, Yahoo won't even accept your login. And your point about 'why does NYT even need email addresses' is a good one also. In the registration process, if you decide to opt out on receiving notices or advertising it ought to be sufficient to simply *not* give an email address, rather than have to give it and then add your opt-out as well. If NYT was so pure in their motives, why not just put the news on display on the web site and let anyone go in and read without registration at all? If they want to count the number of 'hits' each day on their pages, that's understandable, or if they want to have a *purely voluntary* system of registration (like a 'guest book' approach) that's okay also. I do not mean to pick on NYT about this, but as the web grows in size and sophistication I have seen many, many otherwise good sites fall victim to the lure of 'easy money'. Google, for example, would love to have a crack at advertising to the eight thousand more or less daily viewers of telecom-digest.org and have tried to encourage me to get on the band wagon. They have invited me in, and discouraged me telling readers here of what I am doing. "Just take this bit of code we send you, and install it here and there around your site. Don't bother telling the readers what you did; many will just complain about it anyway." There are many, very powerful people in the world who want to see the Internet become a totally commercial thing. There are still a few of us who want to see Internet stay as a cooperative free thing among the people. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:11:46 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:39:31 -0700, Telecom Digest editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Any number of companies which send > spam out make that claim, i.e. "you must have mistakenly agreed to > accept our stuff." PAT] As I said you will believe what you want to believe. ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2004 23:56:41 -0700 Organization: Copyright (c) 2004 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] What that often means is that the phone is required to use a SIM card from the provider from which you bought the phone. It doesn't really have anything to do with roaming. There seems to be a healthy market for phone unlocking programs and codes -- try Googling "unlock cingular SIM", for example. Sometimes it's possible, and sometimes it's not -- rumor has it that no one outside the factory knows how to unlock certain ATTWS phones. ATTWS seems to have the worst attitude towards unlocking phones, by the way -- they won't unlock a phone even after your contract is over and the phone is paid for, and they refuse to admit that it might even be possible to do so. I was once told by an ATTWS technician that I couldn't be talking to him, because the phone I was using wouldn't work on their network. True, I might as well not have been talking to him for all the good it did me. That phone was an unlocked Cingular Nokia 6340i I bought on eBay. It said "Cingular" on the display, but worked fine with an ATTWS SIM. I finally got sick of ATTWS's deteriorating coverage and poor customer service and switched to Verizon Wireless. Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted comfort and security. And in the end, they lost it all - freedom, comfort and security. Edward Gibbons [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I first re-located here to Independence, Kansas from Chicago I had a Nokia 6100 cell phone programmed onto AT&T Wireless with a Chicago area (630) number, in the 'national no-roaming charges' plan. AT&T served us here as an 'extended' point (closest major city is Tulsa) on the Cell One tower out of Liberty, KS. We are *barely* in the AT&T extended area of coverage; it was pretty awful service. Then one day, AT&T decided to close up our local shop here, and the AT&T service rep that was here in town told me that she was going to become an agency for Cingular Wireless instead, and 'her employees' there would become Cingular Wireless employees also as of some date. She converted my Nokia 6100 phone over from area 630 Chicago to an area 620 southeast Kansas number, put me on a local plan (no more free roaming) but kept me on AT&T. I think she said I was her last customer while she represented AT&T. A week or so later, I went past her shop downtown; it now had a 'Cingular Wireless' sign on the front of it and a huge stack of Nokia 6100 series phones in the window for a 'close out' sale. Take a year contract on Cingular Wireless and get one of those phones for free. I told her since I already have a Nokia 6100 phone which I like, just cut it over to Cingular for me. She said "AT&T has that phone of your's locked up tight. No way to do it; but the same phone is on close out now through Cingular Wireless; take one of them for free." I told her I did not want to lose my phone listings or the other features I had programmed into *my* phone. She said most of what was in there she could 'suck out' and move it into the new phone (directory items; she pointed at a device on her desk with a jumper which went from one Nokia 6100 phone to another Nokia 6100 phone), "but not the transmission software, which is why you have to get a new phone". Before I agreed to that, I went to the other cell phone agencies around town (Cell One, Alltel, US Cellular) and had them look at my phone. They had the same answer: "If you choose to not stay with AT&T then you may as well junk the phone. It is good for nothing else." (I wanted to make sure it was not just the Cingular Wireless lady with a grudge against her former employer AT&T). I took her offer of a 'new' Nokia 6100 phone and a new one year contract with Cingular Wireless. I then had the 'old' Nokia 6100 phone converted to AT&T Wireless Prepaid service and buy about ten dollars in advance every three months or so to keep it active with an area 316 number (AT&T never did offer any 620 numbers) and I use it (quite rarely) as a standby phone in emergencies. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:10:31 -0500 John Levine wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be Yes. Locking is one thing. The technology is still compatible. Sprint locks its phones too, but if you can social-engineer the Master Subsidy Lock code out of them, you can use a tri-mode Sprint phone on Alltel or Verizon. Both of those carriers use CDMA like Sprint and both are willing to activate other carriers' handsets as long as those handsets use CDMA. > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] Well, of course; Alltel doesn't run GSM and the 6100 is a GSM phone. If the 6100 has analog you MIGHT be able to get it to run in analog if Alltel has analog coverage. Maybe. 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: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:28:43 -0700 Organization: University of Washington On Fri, 21 Aug 2004, John Levine wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] Unlike CDMA, TDMA, or analog phones, "reprogramming" a GSM phone is simply a matter of changing the SIM card in the phone. ATTWS "SIM locks" their handsets, so that the handset will not accept a non-ATTWS SIM card. Unlike most GSM carriers, ATTWS will not unlock your handset for any reason (not even if you're a long-time customer and/or are willing to pay for the privilege); nor will they sell you an ATTWS SIM card to put into an existing unlocked GSM phone. It is for this reason, among others, that I would not consider buying GSM service from ATTWS. If you look at the used cell phone market, you'll see that an "unlocked" (either officially or by hackers) GSM phone commands a premium over one which is still SIM locked. Hacker SIM unlocking is a big business in Europe, although I believe it's actually illegal in some countries over there. It's legal in the US as long as you're not doing so for fraudulent purposes; when you buy a phone, title transfers to you, and the only recourse the selling phone company has is to make you sign a service commitment and hit you with an early cancellation penalty if you break it. I wonder what Dobson's policy is on GSM unlocking. My Alaska cell phone service is currently TDMA with Dobson. I'm in no rush to switch it to GSM, and by the time the plug is pulled on TDMA I'm going to give serious consideration to satellite instead of GSM. At least Verizon has decided that handset locking is silly, and doesn't do it; all modern Verizon phones have a "security code" or "unlock code" of 000000. It's good press for them, and it doesn't really matter since most other CDMA carriers (at least, SprintPCS and Telus) will not active an ex-Verizon phone on their networks even though technically it will work. Verizon *will* activate an ex-SprintPCS or ex-Telus phone on its network as long as you get the security code for it and accept the risk of it not working right. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:09:29 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 21 Aug 2004 02:03:21 -0000, John Levine wrote: > My Cingular phone is quad mode, GSM 1900, GSM 800, TDMA 800, and > analog 800, and roams just fine onto AT&T in places like Pittsburgh > where Cingular has no service. My plan offers national roaming, so it > doesn't cost any extra when I do so. Your cingular phone is not quad *mode*! It is tri-mode with dual band GSM, TDMA (IS-136) and AMPS. If it was quad mode it would have to be able to do four separate types of mobile/cell technologies such as GSM, TDMA, CDMA and AMPS. It's multi *band* but that is not the same thing. Telecom Digest Editor went on to comment: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and > AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T > rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be > swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the > Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same > thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close > to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on > their network with no success. PAT] AT&T "SOC" locks their phones to work with their system. I've heard (but haven't personally experienced it) that they can be programmed over the air to use the other company's network, but the problem lies in that it will work fine when you're not in the other company's area, but when you are in the company's area that the phone originally was on there are problems. You could probably "fix" the problem by having the phone re-flashed with the firmware that the other company uses, but you'd have to do it independently from the manufacturer since they probably wouldn't put another company's firmware on someone else's phone even though the actual phones are exactly the same. The firmware is different and is customized for a particular carrier. ------------------------------ Date: 21 Aug 2004 16:09:34 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular > and AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? No, the Cingular ones are programmed to look for Cingular systems and the AT&T ones are programmed to look for AT&T systems, but in each case if they can't find their favorite, they can and do roam on the other since they're both TDMA and GSM. The GSM handsets are also locked so that they only work with SIM cards of the carrier that sold it to you. All handsets can be unlocked with the cooperation of the selling carrier, some can be unlocked without. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? From: Kyler Laird Organization: Insight Broadband Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 12:53:36 GMT Doug McIntyre writes: > As such, you won't find any telco offering it, because its a special > mode that Asterisk has for its FXO cards on a plain old loopstart > telephone line. And yet others make money selling devices to detect it from "most modern electronic COs". http://www.sandman.com/cpcbull.html --kyler ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 13:54:23 GMT Tony P. wrote > What ever happened to CPC? I forget exactly how it worked but the > switch would actually reverse polarity on the line to indicate the > call had dropped or some such. On a pots, loop start line, the reversal occurs at answer (on an outgoing call). This indicates answer supervision to a connected PBX. ------------------------------ From: Don_Shoemaker@HotMail.com (DonS) Subject: Re: Rotary Step Relays Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 12:10:13 GMT Organization: Road Runner - NC In article , John Schuch wrote: > Does anyone know of a source for rotary stepping relays? AKA Step > relays, sequencing relays, Strowger relays. I need several that have > at least two poles, and 10 positions. Yea, I know I could accomplish > the same thing fairly simply with electronics, but this is an "art > project", and the coolness is the sound and action of the old relays. > I searched the web ad-nausium with no luck. An alternative to the suggestions in the other posts may be to use a stepper mech from an old electro-mechanical pinball (1977 or earlier). Check on eBay or the classified section of www.MrPinball.com. -don ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:14:28 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:20:58 GMT, William Warren wrote: > What we need to succeed in business (or, for that matter, > International Politics) is knowledge about people, not places. But people live in places! And just to inform the country in South America is *not* Columbia it is Colombia!!!!! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lady in Colombia called me on the phone once and in our discussion (about something else) she complained to me that "most people in the USA think our country is spelled the same as 'District of Columbia' because they do not know better." PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 06:18:14 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Tony P. wrote: >> Even after they used a separate ringing tone, it was usually >> operated by the same relay that applied ringing current to the >> called party. > Not anymore. I tried a test and called my home number from my cell -- > heard ring tone on the cell but the home phone rang about a second AFTER > ring tone had ended. Of course, "not anymore." The reference was to how the ringing tone was changed on step-by-step switches. On electronic switching, which is all there is around these days, the ring voltage and ring tone have always been independent functions, since circa 1965. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Transmission Time Calculation & Impact of Distance on it Date: 21 Aug 2004 11:46:15 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) John McHarry wrote: > The reference has to be to photons, or any emf for that matter (lower > frequency photons are rather porcine and more wave like at our scale) > in a vacuum. They are always somewhat slower in media, since, like > dogs, they tend to pause to sniff things as they pass. Transmission > lines tend to give 65-80% of c as velocity constants. No. A _pulse_ travels at that rate, but the rate of an actual electron is much slower. Imagine a row of golf balls. You tap on the back one, and almost instantly the one at the front shakes. But it takes a lot of tapping for the whole row to move forward to the front. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: 21 Aug 2004 17:23:53 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States On Phone Numbers Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP >> argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be >> hampered. > Employees of Vonage, VoicePulse and other VoIP services would laugh > at that. SBC continues as the absolute lamest telecom company in > existence. Oh, you just don't understand. The RBOCs have always had a sooper-sekrit agreement that they won't invade each other's territories. For example, a few years back they were all complaining that the wholesale rates for CLECs that wanted to resell local phone service were so low that they were below cost. So someone asked the obvious question: If they're that low, why aren't you making big buck$ reselling each other's services, since you just told us that would be more profitable than selling your own? The only answer was a fairly sniffy "we don't do that." So they can't file as CLECs in each other's territories since We Don't Do That. They sure don't want to buy service through existing CLECs as Vonage et al do, since those are the very same CLECs they've been shafting for the past decade or two who would be unlikely to pass up an opportunity to turn the tables. What's a poor RBOC to do? Go whine to the FCC and hope that Chairman Mike will make things all better. He's always given them all of the nonsense they wanted in the past. Why should he stop now? John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Was anyone else as amused as I was by hearing SBC referred to in the header as a 'VOIP Firm'? So now that they have called the shots for so many years, all of a sudden they want to be known as an underdog? Poor, pitiful, put upon SBC! 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #393 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 22 17:52:35 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7MLqZg05601; Sun, 22 Aug 2004 17:52:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 17:52:35 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408222152.i7MLqZg05601@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 #394 TELECOM Digest Sun, 22 Aug 2004 17:52:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 394 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Web Phones Connect on Buzz Circuit (Jack Decker-VOIP News) Vonage - Area Codes (Matt B.) Hunt Group / Trunk Group (zombie) International Call Forwarding (Divert) to US, UK or Germany (Helman) Political Advocacy Group (Ned Protter) Microsoft Changed My Mind (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Danny Burstein) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Steven J Sobol) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Neal McLain) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J Sobol) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Earle Robinson) 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: Jack Decker@VOIP News Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 08:01:17 PDT Subject: Web Phones Connect on Buzz Circuit Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com VoIP technology excites many, though there is a fear of dot-comlike hysteria By Jon Van Tribune staff reporter Running a telecom equipment company seldom elicits much excitement from ordinary people. But these days, when the conversation turns to the business of making phone calls over the Internet, a telecom executive can become the life of the party. "When someone heard I was in telecom, they'd ask what they should buy to invest" in Internet phone calling, said Westell Technologies' Van Cullens of a recent trip back to his hometown in Georgia. "It's a hot topic." It is more like a gold rush, and a lot of people are looking for nuggets. Commonly known as VoIP, for voice over Internet protocol, the technology that routes phone calls over the Web has generated a powerful buzz. Phone giants like AT&T Corp. are building a new business around Internet telephony, start-ups are abundant and cable companies are beginning to launch phone services through high-speed Web connections. Entrepreneurs and investors are drawn to Internet telephony because there's no clear industry leader and the technology is in its infancy, providing an attractive target for innovation -- and investment. Yet the sudden interest in VoIP is reminiscent of the dot-com euphoria that led to an ever-escalating stock market in the late 1990s and into 2000. And that worries veteran telecom executives like Cullens, who fears the hyperbole percolating through the media and Wall Street is starting to put air into another bubble. "Everybody's running around thinking there's going to be a quick buck here," he said. "But this isn't a revolution, it's an evolution. There are too many unresolved issues for this to happen quickly." Still, Cullens believes Internet telephony is the industry's future. His Aurora (Illinois) firm said two weeks ago it will partner with a pioneering VoIP company to develop a suite of Internet telephony equipment for carriers like SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. The telecom industry, which is only now emerging from the deep slump following the bust of the dot-com bubble, both craves and fears VoIP. Revenue a concern Internet telephony moves voice over networks in data packets identical to how information moves for e-mail and Web pages. It offers lower costs and versatility that could inject telecom with new vitality. But implementing VoIP will cost billions, and it's unclear how carriers will generate new revenue. No one has devised a business plan outlining how carriers can make big money. That deficiency, which was the hallmark of the dot-com boom, is making insiders nervous. Big phone companies make three-fourths of their money with voice service, and those revenues are shrinking significantly. Long-distance companies, including giants like AT&T and MCI, are financially shaky because their calling revenues are rapidly declining. Local companies like SBC and Verizon, once accustomed to adding new phone lines, are now subtracting them. If anything, VoIP will accelerate these trends, said Rob Marano, director of global restructuring services for PricewaterhouseCoopers. "So when vendors roll out VoIP, with prices going down, where is the revenue going to come from to pay for the new equipment? That's the big unknown." While VoIP has been around for several years, users comprise only a few percent of the tens of millions using traditional phone service. Even so, the new technology has generated a powerful buzz. The buzz began last year with Vonage, an upstart offering inexpensive calling packages through an Internet voice service. VoIP recently was embraced by AT&T, which is exiting its traditional consumer phone business, and now promotes VoIP as an alternative. How many will fail? Most recognize there's no way that everyone jumping into VoIP -- or even a majority -- can succeed. "It's a dangerous space," said David Helfrich, managing director of Garnett & Helfrich Capital, a Silicon Valley investment partnership. "VoIP is going to happen because it's great technology and clearly the future. "But it's visible to everyone in the marketplace and there's a lot of competition. I prefer to find a niche with less competition and use that as a base and grow from there." Because so many businesses and investors were burned by dot-com mania, entrepreneurs are seeking new strategies. HyperEdge Corp., a small telecom company in Itasca, brought in a new president and vice president with experience in Silicon Valley-style start-ups. The company wants to develop VoIP technology and sell it to the likes of SBC and Verizon. The new executives went to HyperEdge as a vehicle to create VoIP technology because it's been in business for more than a decade. The company has a history of selling dull but profitable equipment to telecom carriers. "To innovate and produce new, disruptive technology, you have to be small and agile," said Marty Hahnfeld, HyperEdge's new president. "But doing this with a start-up company would be difficult because large carriers don't like doing business with start-ups. "Too many carriers got burned recently when they bought technology from companies that went out of business. Also, by working through HyperEdge, we can develop technology more quickly and with less expense because we don't have to raise funding," he said. "We call this an inverse start-up." Hahnfeld's strategy makes sense, said venture investor Peter Fuss, former president of Tellabs International. "We used to call it a restart," Fuss said. "It's a good strategy because customer relationships are very important." Larry Strickling, a former SBC executive who also headed the telecom agency at the Federal Communications Commission, said "the problem for any start-up trying to work for a Bell company is the lack of a track record. The Bells don't want any undue risk and are always more comfortable working with a company they already know." While established vendors like HyperEdge and Westell work to develop VoIP technology, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs using the same start-up route so many traveled during the dot-com run-up. "We're pursuing VoIP ourselves," said Joseph D'Angelo, managing partner of Alvarez & Marsal, a New York-based restructuring firm. "There are lots of start-ups out there. Some have enough critical mass that I think they'll succeed. "Some late entry start-ups may need to go to established companies to partner just because they're a little late to the race. No one has cornered the VoIP market." While carriers fret over revenue potential, consumers may be disappointed that VoIP underdelivers on promises of cheaper calling rates. That's because most calls made from a VoIP service end up going to someone with traditional phone service, said Jim Andrew, vice president with Adventis, a telecom consultancy in Boston. "The cost of carrying a VoIP call isn't significantly lower than for a traditional call," Andrew said. "That's because 96 percent of VoIP calls end up on a traditional phone line. "The real benefits of VoIP won't be felt until a majority of people use it. Whether that'll be 10 years from now or 30, I'm not sure. But it won't happen in two years. "A lot of people are acting as if it will." - - - Telecom Giants Hook up With VoIP VoIP, or voice over Internet protocol, allows voice communications using the same technology to package and send data, such as e-mail, over networks. Nearly every company involved in telecom is adopting Internet telephony technology in some way. Here is a sampling: AT&T Corp. is withdrawing from offering traditional long-distance and local phone service to consumers, but has moved aggressively into offering VoIP. Cisco Systems Inc. is the leading supplier of VoIP equipment to the enterprise market and seeks to supply carriers as well. Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable TV operator, is testing VoIP in several markets and plans to roll out service next year. Covad Communications Group Inc., a competitive telecom carrier, recently launched a VoIP product aimed at small to medium-size businesses. -- Jon Van Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune *** 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, Chicago Tribune Company. For more information on copyright law go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Matt B. Subject: Vonage - Area Codes Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:22:27 -0400 Pat, Please hide my e-mail address. Thanks. All, I've had Vonage for about 2 years now. I signed up with a 631 area code (Suffolk County, NY). About a year after I signed up, I moved to Philadelphia so I added a virtual area code (215). Nobody has the 631 number as I never gave it out when I had it, and the 215 number is what I use. I called Vonage to have them remove the 631 and put the 215 as the primary phone number. They told me they can not do this. Has anyone had any experience with this or gotten this done? If you want to reply off-list, e-mail to moc.oohay@02091bttam (backwards) Thanks! Matt B. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Exactly, precisely the same problem. I started Vonage two years ago with a 415 San Francisco number when the company only had east/west coast numbers, and nothing in the middle of the USA at all, because I thought maybe I would some day visit San Francisco again. And I had a Chicago area 773 number since some family and friends are sill in the Chicago area. Then one day Vonage announced they were expanding thier service to include the southeast Kansas area, with numbers in the 620-402 exchange, which is relatively local to where I actually live. So in addiion to my 'virtual' area 773 number I got a 'virtual' 620-402 number and kept my primary 415 number. But I did not want to spend that much money on phone service each month (although for the time being I am getting by on 'next month free' e-coupon proceeds from Vonage.) So I asked Vonage to drop the 415 primary number, make 620 the new primary number and retain 773 as a virtual number. Vonage said the same thing to me: "we cannot do that". We reasoned together for a while, then they said "We will ask our technical guru to try and make this happen." It took them (or their guru to be exact) a full two or three weeks to make it happen. During that two or three week period, although my Vonage phone *did* work both directions, the web page interface was *very confused*, at times claiming I had no primary numbers; other times claiming I had two or three primary numbers. As often as not, voice mail could not be retrieved either on the phone or on the web page. Finally after much effort and several trouble ticket calls by me, the 415 number eventually vanished and the 620 number became primary. But it was a challenge, to say the least. I think (not certain) I saw something on one of their web pages a while back which said they could change the primary number and another of their web pages which said they could not change it. In any event I do not think they *like* changing a primary number. After all the commotions in my case, I rewarded them by taking yet another virtual number for a toll free 888 line, which was an easy, thirty- second job, but they get another five dollars per month out of my e-coupon residual account. I'd say in general don't press your luck on that primary number change. If it is totally essential to you, then I would suggest *closing* your one account totally and *opening* a new account in the desired area code. PAT] ------------------------------ From: zombie Subject: Hunt Group / Trunk Group Date: 21 Aug 2004 21:51:21 -0700 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] Hi Folks, I am new to the world of telecom products and protocols. Would like to know the difference between a trunk group and a hunt group. Are there any good articles on the internet that discuss the following topics. Any books regarding these topics ... Would appreciate any good pointers. Zombie ------------------------------ Subject: International Call Forwarding (Divert) to US, UK or Germany Needed From: David Helman Organization: NY Office Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:56:39 GMT Hello, I have a customer with special requirement. I need to get one telephone number in as many countries as possible (except the US, UK, and Germany) to forward a call to either my telephone number (DID) in either the US, UK, or Germany (whichever is cheaper). There are several ways to do this, but I think this would be the best and cheapest way: Have the local phone company install a single telephone line (POTS). This could be at a home or business (which ever is cheaper/easier). This telephone line should have call forwarding (maybe known as call divert, or something else by your local phone company). Once this is done, I will ask that the phone number be forwarded to a telephone number (direct dial to a DID) in either the US, UK, or Germany, depending on which is the least expensive call from your country. I of course will pay for the cost to install the service and all usage charges. In addition, I will pay a 10% premium over the cost of the service or if you prefer, provide you with a free voice mail number in New York, London, or Germany (your choice) with messages forwarded to you via e-mail. This is a USD$ 15 monthly value. While neither the 10% or free voice mail is a lot of compensation, you would have helped me a great deal in meeting the special requirement of one of my customers, which would be very much appreciated by me and my customer. If you are willing to help, please advise me of an estimate of any one- off installation charges, monthly costs, and per minute call forwarding cost to US/UK/Germany. I would prefer to pay the telephone companies directly via my credit card, but if this is not possible, I can pay you via PayPal or other means in advance so that you are not out of pocket. For general questions, please reply to this posting or e-mail me at callforwarding@nyoffice.com Thanks for reading! David ------------------------------ From: Ned Protter Subject: Political Advocacy Group Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:00:41 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Today when I answered the phone,the caller asked "Ned?" I assumed it was an acquaintance who thought he recognized my voice. He said he wondered if I was interested in voting for candidates with realistic health-care plans. I said I was interested and would like to know where to find out more about where the candidates stood. He said he wasn't allowed to tell me. I said I could try Google but would appreciate it if he could give me a hint. He said he couldn't. He gave figures about how many people in my state had trouble affording health care and asked if he could count on me as a member of the citizens' group pledged to vote for candidates with realistic plans. I said sure. I found it peculiar that he did not ask me to affirm who I was and would not tell me where to find out what plans were realistic. Call Return said the number could not be given. It it legal for a political advocacy group to block its number? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You *may* have gotten burned by someone who is seeking your whereabouts. These are purely hypothetical examples: An investigator or bill collector is looking for you. He does not want to say why; he just wants to confirm that your working telephone number is in fact *you*, not someone who knows you or some new person who took over your number. If he asked for 'Ned?" when he called, and you answered affirmatively, then he got the answer he was seeking; the rest of the conversation was just bulljive to keep you from getting suspicious about his true purpose in calling. I've had calls like that, unknown females (in most instances) who ask in a sort of whiny, plaintiff voice "hello Pat ... " or "Pat? ..." before they say anything else. My response to *any caller whose voice I do not instantly recognize* is to demand, "who is calling please and the purpose of your call?" Either they answer, or they stall for time, and my subsequent conversations with the caller are predicated on that. As I said, just a hypothetical example. Any unknown voice who uses my name in their opening line is just like someone who sends me email with my name (or some variation on my name) in the subject line of email. They're up to no good, or spammers or telemarketers. Last time a question like this about 'is it allowed to do this' came in I told the person (you?) that is what *67 is for. I was promptly corrected by folks who told me about new laws forbidding telemarketers from blocking their ID. I do not know where 'political advocacy groups' fit in the spectrum of telephone pests. PAT] ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Microsoft Changed My Mind Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 20:11:01 GMT I hope this subject is not too much of a stretch for this forum but it seems consistent with certain types of threads here. I just went from a "poor Microsoft why are they persecuting it" to a "Microsoft is really really dangerous and something needs to be done" in only a few short hours. What caused this great change of heart you might ask? The answer is "XP". I held out for as long as I could without buying it, but ... I had a simple motherboard problem so I simply removed the hard disk on that machine and moved it to one of the little used computers. Then, not only do I have the effort etc of the reconfig, I have this garbage where I have to call Microsoft and explain to them why I am requesting an activation code for software that I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! What if the phones had been down ... etc ... Then I am advised that someone had been using that "little used" computer and had extremely important work on it. So I take the other computer, fix it, and then put the hard disk back in that computer. Sooo ... then we have the same Microsoft garbage that I only have "three days to activate". I figure it is best to set up networking first so I click no to the reactivate now planning to do it later but install some Windows update that it had there. The next reboot it would not let me log on unless I activated, minutes later not "three days". Of course I called the phone number and wasted more of my time. But this is software I PAID FOR! If this kind of thing doesn't scare you, you are not paying attention. I admit that I was not paying attention before enjoying all the free updates and cool software etc and etc ... The next time I read of some patriot trying to bust the Microsoft monopoly I will have a whole new attitude. Steve Winter (The opinions expressed here are not necessarily the opinions of any company express or implied, but they SHOULD BE!) http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Uniden 2line 5.8GHz cordless If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told by people who know how to generate Microsoft 'product keys' that if you have a good, working product key it will work on other copies of the same product; that the product key is not peculiar to the individual disk. I am told that a product key is based on some mathematical formula (like a credit card 'check digit'); that I could install XP and later when you decided to install your copy of XP you could use my product key number. I know that when I installed my copy of Win 98 on a different laptop it worked just fine. Now when I recently attempted to install Win 98 on an old IBM Think Pad which had Win 95 on it out of the (original) box. I ran into a crude awakening. I could not just format the hard drive and install Win 98. I was missing some drivers needed by IBM Think Pad, so I had to first run the Win 95 restore disk to get those missing drivers and then I discovered that Win 95 would not lay down unless it had FAT-16 on the hard drive. I started from scratch, formatted the hard drive with FAT-16, ran the restore CD, *then* installed Win 98 on top of that. It *still* did not work right, and my friend said the problem is "you cannot do all that with it in the docking station, do it without the laptop attached to anything. Only use the docking station when you have everything else finished and installed." When I removed it from the docking station, and started from scratch once again, it actually worked. **Then** I started working on the networking side of it. It finally, more or less, came around to working right as of Friday, about three months after I first made an appeal here to get a new laptop to replace the one that had bit the dust. Someone also sent me a second IBM Think Pad, and I 'celebrated' my victory over Microsoft yesterday by installing a WiFi card in it to go with my wireless router. Today for the first time in three months I am not feeling so depressed with myself. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 19:44:11 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) writes: > Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've heard > rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce Cable TV and > other services. Verizon has been doing a couple of in house tests using hi capacity DSL circuitry to provide switched video [a], which they hope to market as an alternative to cable systems. It's possible your area will be a semi-public alpha test. Keep your eyes and ears open ... [a] while a cable tv system sends all the channels to your setup and then your tv (or converter) chooses which one to display, the video over DSL circuits don't have the same bandwidth. When you tune to, say, channel two on a standard cable box, the other 50 or 100 or whatver channels are still in your apt, but just not getting to your screen. When you tune to channel two in a video-over-dsl circuit, the server gets the instruction to feed that broadcast over to you. The other channels don't get anywhere near your home. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:01:59 -0500 Lisa Hancock wrote: > Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've heard > rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce Cable TV and > other services. > I presume this is now legal due to deregulation of both cable and > telephone industries. It's been legal. When I lived in Cleveland, SBC Ameritech offered cable service through their Americast subsidiary. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 07:57:02 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Lisa Hancock (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) wrote: > Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've > heard rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce > Cable TV and other services. > I presume this is now legal due to deregulation of both cable > and telephone industries. It's always been legal. Every cable TV franchise agreement I've ever seen purports to be "non-exclusive," and every LFA (local franchising authority) I've ever encountered claims that it would like to grant franchises to competitors. At one time or another, at least two telcos (Ameritech and SNET) have obtained franchises and constructed ("overbuilt") competitive cable TV networks. Apparently, these networks weren't successful financially; SBC's management sold them once it gained control. RCN bought some of these networks, but it's apparently having financial problems too as per http://bankrupt.com/rcn.txt So why aren't there any competitive cable systems? Several reasons, but the three most obvious: 1. Simple economics: it requires (at least) twice as much capital to build two cable systems as one, yet the number of potential subscribers remains the same. 2. Buried-cable construction costs: it requires substantially *more* capital to build a second cable system today (compared with the first system's capital cost) in any neighborhood with buried utilities. Sometime back in the 50s or 60s, many county and municipal governments began mandating buried utilities in new residential neighborhoods. Ever since then, utility companies have been installing buried facilities in utility easements dedicated by developers. Typically, this work has been done right after the land surveys were completed, but before any street, house, fence, or landscape construction was begun. Power, telephone, and cable TV companies usually installed their facilities in joint trenches, splitting costs three ways. These arrangements minimized costs for all three parties. Now imagine the construction problems a new cable TV company would face today. Instead of dropping its cable into an open trench across an open field, it would have to work its way through easements in established neighborhoods, working around existing utilities, streets, sidewalks, signs, lawns, buried lawn-sprinkling systems, fences, bushes, trees, gardens, garden sheds, woodpiles, kiddie play equipment, swimming pools, doghouses, whatever. Not to mention dogs, children, nude sunbathers, and hostile homeowners. Even with modern computer-controlled directional-boring equipment, much of this work would still have to be done by hand. 3. Franchise requirements: many cable systems were originally franchised during the Great Franchise Wars of the 70s and 80s, when LFAs were demanding all sorts of fancy extras: color studios, multiple access channels, I-nets, free basic service for schools and municipal buildings, million-dollar construction bonds (the City of Sacramento even demanded that the cable company plant trees). By the time this process was finished, the bidder that had agreed to the most goodies got the franchise -- essentially an exclusive franchise in spite of the fact that the LFA piously claimed otherwise. The net result of all this was to drive construction costs even higher, further inhibiting any interest from competitive bidders. In the process, the LFAs painted themselves into a corner: they can't relax their franchise requirements now without inviting lawsuits from incumbent cable companies. > Many of the neighbors are excited about this prospect. When > cable was regulated, an intermediate-teir (sic) customer paid > $35/month, just a few years later it's up to $50/month under > deregulation. I'm sure you've heard this a hundred times before, but here it is again: the primary reason for rising prices for cable (and satellite) service is the increase in the wholesale cost ("license fee") for programming. To cite the extreme case, ESPN has risen 20% per year for the past few years, and now costs well over $2.00 per sub per month ($2.61 according to one reader's post here a year or so ago). All of this is exacerbated by the fact that programmers can -- and do -- bundle broadcast programming with non-broadcast programming. The absurdly-misnamed "Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992" (and similar legislation applicable to satellite carriers) allows programmers to force cable and satellite companies to carry, and pay for, non-broadcast programming as a condition for getting "retransmission consent" for the broadcast programming. This situation was the cause of some notable squabbles we've discussed here before: Time Warner v. Disney (ABC) and Dish Network v. Viacom (CBS). Even without rate deregulation, the price for your neighbor's intermediate tier would have risen. Under the FCC's now-defunct upper-tier cable-rate regulation formula, increases in programming costs were "external costs" which could be passed through to subscribers [47 CFR 76.922(d)(3)(i) and 76.922(f)(1)(v)]. > The cable company is very profitable. I suspect that some of their stockholders might not agree. Especially Paul Allen. > Anyone have any experience with Verizon cable TV or other > new services? Verizon and SBC are building FTTP networks, not conventional cable TV networks. According to this month's FiberOptic Product News, "The lowest data streams Verizon will deliver are 5 Mbits/sec downstream and 2 Mbits/sec upstream" (Bob Pease, "The Windy City Fills The Sails of Those Attending Supercomm," FiberOptic Product News 19:8, August 2004, p.4). Verizon and SBC will certainly be able to deliver cable-TV-like video these networks, but they must have a lot more in mind than just "cable TV" in order to justify the construction costs. Several obvious applications come to mind: high-speed internet access, VoIP telephony, HDTV PPV, real-time full-motion videoconferencing, high-speed virtual private data networks. But I rather doubt that even Verizon and SBC will be able to get video programming any cheaper than Comcast or Time Warner can. Especially from Disney. Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:03:32 -0500 Joseph wrote: > AT&T "SOC" locks their phones to work with their system. But Alltel is CDMA, so an AT&T phone would only work in analog on Alltel's network anyhow. 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: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:25:22 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 23:56:41 -0700, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to John Levine in a quote by Jack Hamilton : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John are you *certain* the Cingular and >> AT&T Wireless handsets are interchangable? Reason I ask is the AT&T >> rep said AT&T locked the firmware in the phone so they could NOT be >> swapped with any other service (Nokia 6100 series at least) and the >> Cingular Wireless rep and the Alltel rep both confirmed the same >> thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close >> to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on >> their network with no success. PAT] > What that often means is that the phone is required to use a SIM card > from the provider from which you bought the phone. It doesn't really > have anything to do with roaming. But not in this case. They are not talking about GSM phones, but rather TDMA (IS-136) models. TDMA does not use SIMs. > There seems to be a healthy market for phone unlocking programs and > codes -- try Googling "unlock cingular SIM", for example. But since the models being referred to are TDMA models your advice does not apply. AT&T has their TDMA phones SOC locked which can lead to problems if you attempt to use it on other TDMA systems. Also worth noting that in the last couple of years Nokia has switched their model numbering where formerly you could tell which technology was used by the model number that no longer is the case. So saying "6100" series can be misleading since there is now a model number 6100 as well as 5100 which could be confusing. The TDMA "6100" series is very different from the different current models that Nokia is marketing. On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 03:10:31 -0500, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Steven J Sobol : >> thing. The Alltel tech at their shop here in Independence spent close >> to an hour attempting to reprogram my Nokia 6100 phone to work on >> their network with no success. PAT] > Well, of course; Alltel doesn't run GSM and the 6100 is a GSM > phone. If the 6100 has analog you MIGHT be able to get it to run in > analog if Alltel has analog coverage. Maybe. Be very careful in your assumptions. Pat keeps referring to a "6100" model but it's in fact probably a 6120 or 6160 which is decidedly a different model than the 6100 which is a digital only GSM phone. Pat was/is using TDMA (IS-136) handset. Both the 6120 (800 TDMA/800 AMPS) and the 6160 (800/1900 TDMA 800 AMPS) have analog AMPS built in as part of the phone. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My two Nokia phones are actually model 5165 Type NSW-1NX. The batteries, the headsets, the chargers, etc are all interchangable between my two phones. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Earle Robinson Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 16:44:27 +0200 Pat, please mask my email address. Thank you. In Europe, GSM phones are locked if included at a lower price to subscribe for a period of one year minimum. This is normal since an unlocked phone is sold at a somewhat higher price. However, after six months the carrier will provide the code to unlock the phone. This doesn't release you from fulfilling the year's contract, however. There are backstreet stores that will unlock any phone, too, for $10 or so. This service is mainly for phones that were stolen. But, more carriers now monitor the phones' own serial number, so that it if is stolen the carriers will disable any use of the phone whatsoever. This has reduced the number of phone thefts, as one can imagine. -er ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #394 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 22 19:09:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7MN9gX06271; Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:09:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:09:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408222309.i7MN9gX06271@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 #395 TELECOM Digest Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:09:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 395 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Begins Phone Trials in New Zealand (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (John McHarry) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Dave Close) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (John McHarry) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Tony P.) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Steven J Sobol) Re: Number Not in Use (Paul Coxwell) Re: Info Re: NorVergence and the Salzanos? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Last Laugh! was Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States (Steven J Sobol) 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: Jack Decker Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 14:52:47 -0400 Subject: AT&T Begins Phone Trials in New Zealand Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3010966a28,00.html By ADRIAN BATHGATE New Zealand will be one of the first places outside the United States to experience AT&T's consumer internet telephone product, CallVantage. CallVantage consists of a desktop unit which connects a standard telephone to a DSL or cable modem and lets people make calls over the internet through AT&T, avoiding regular toll charges. A pilot of the product is just beginning in the Asia-Pacific region. Between 200-to-300 units will be trialled in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand among staff of AT&T's corporate customers. "The trial will be complete by the years' end then a decision will be made on roll-out," says Steve Lowe, AT&T's vice-president responsible for the Asia Pacific. Full story at: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3010966a28,00.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 22:13:31 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Joseph wrote: > But people live in places! And just to inform the country in South > America is *not* Columbia it is Colombia!!!!! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lady in Colombia called me on the > phone once and in our discussion (about something else) she complained > to me that "most people in the USA think our country is spelled > the same as 'District of Columbia' because they do not know better." > PAT] Last year during a hurricane the public radio station I volunteer for was called by a station in Colombia. I took the call and told them to wait a bit for the real storm to move in, then call the next NPR station up the coast, which was right in the boresite. I gave them the number and told them to call back if they couldn't get what they wanted from them. At the end I asked again where they were calling from, and the lady said Bogota. I was a bit amazed. Her English was good enough I had thought Columbia, MD, or some such. I don't think she was offended. ------------------------------ From: dave@compata.com (Dave Close) Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: 21 Aug 2004 11:28:36 -0700 Organization: Compata, Costa Mesa, California > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... Many people know that I smoke > cigarettes. I *DO NOT* smoke in someone else's home unless they invite > me to do so. I *DO NOT* smoke in their car. I try to be considerate > of the sensibilities of others, as I expect them to be considerate of > my sensibilities or wishes, etc. I do not even smoke in *my own home* > when there are invited guests here who may object to it. That is > simply being courteous. As a non-smoker, I appreciate your consideration. But when I am a guest in the home or office of a smoker, I do not feel it is my right to deny that person his own right to smoke. The beginning of your argument makes sense, but the conclusion is contradictory. Should a guest impose on his host, as you claim US troops do in Arabia, or should a host modify his behavior when he has guests, as you do but Arabians do not? This is the Golden Rule paradox. If I believe you should not smoke and you believe that I should, how can we reconcile? If I changed to do as you wanted and you changed to do as I wanted, would either of us be any better off? Wouldn't we both be worse off, in fact, as now we would be committing the offensive behavior ourselves instead of observing it in someone else? (I understand that you don't believe I should smoke. Like- wise, I don't care if you do.) The key to getting along is to accept the choices of others. Unfortunately, that rule can't be absolute or we'd have to accept the moral choices of a murderer. And some religions teach that a non-believer is morally equivalent to a murderer. Where is the boundary between those differences we accept or tolerate and those we don't? And is the boundary the same for everyone? Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Politics is the business of getting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 power and privilege without dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu possessing merit." - P. J. O'Rourke [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You raise some good points I am not in a good position to answer, even though the Digest is known to get off topic now and then and even though this is Sunday and I know and then have been known to give Sunday Sermons of some length in this column. The fact is, I just do not know the answer. I only know what works best for me. I am not pleased with the decision I made, now some 48 years ago to smoke cigarettes, but at the time I started, at age 13, I knew that smoking cigarettes made me more glamorous and showed I was very sophisticated. And the *huge* amount of money I have spent on my filthy habit over the years causes me much depression also. Recall, when I started smoking the cost was twenty-four *cents* per package at the drug store. If you got them out of a cigarette machine, the machine would not take pennies so you put in a quarter and the machine returned a penny wrapped in the cellophane on the cigarettes along with a book of matches. I told myself I 'could quit anytime I wanted' but I just did not want to quit, however I would force myself to do so when the cost reached a dollar per package. The last time I was in Chicago -- about three years ago -- the price was in excess of four dollars per package, with the vast majority of that money going for taxes. I smoked Pall Mall most of those 48 years, but now that I am on a *very* fixed income from Social Security Disability I smoke a much cheaper brand called 'Echo' for $1.80 per pack which comes from our native American neighbors at their reservation in Pryor, OK. I think I am one of the few remaining people in the world -- err, I meant to say United States -- who smoke cigarettes. I wish it is something I had never started. I still rely on that 'glamorous and sophisticated' argument when people ask me why do I smoke, and they think it is very odd that 'three out of every four doctors' prefer Chesterfield' but 'Pall Mall is the choice where particular people congregate', and I am as particular as they come. To get back to your question/observation, I do not smoke when I have guests in my home unless *they wish to smoke also*, and many/most of them do not want to. Mostly I sit on my patio behind my house and smoke (now improved conditions, with a Think Pad wireless laptop computer to use [as I am right now] to work on this Digest or otherwise check out the net.) I am mindful of the fact that many teenagers or young adults mimick or follow the examples set by older adults, and I *do not* wish to be the example they choose to follow with my filthy habit. If anything, Dave, I prefer to be imposed on rather than imposing on others. I just have to do what works best for me, although my ideas have certainly caused me to endure some abuse in the past few years, mostly around Chicago instead of here in my new home in Independence, Kansas. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 22:08:41 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Ken Abrams wrote: > Tony P. wrote >> What ever happened to CPC? I forget exactly how it worked but the >> switch would actually reverse polarity on the line to indicate the >> call had dropped or some such. Not exactly. It just interrupted the talk battery for a short period. This was sufficient to drop a hold relay if the other party dropped off. > On a pots, loop start line, the reversal occurs at answer (on an > outgoing call). This indicates answer supervision to a connected PBX. A pots line, as opposed to some PBX trunks, offers no indication of answer supervision. A caller is supposed to recognize the greeting from the callee. Back in the bad old days, this was the cause of a number of long distance calls getting billed that never went through. All the carrier could do was assume the call was answered if it lasted over a certain period of time. Wait too many ringy-dingies and you got billed. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But that never happened with AT&T, only with MCI and Sprint in their earliest years. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 04:18:54 GMT In article , k_abrams@[REMOVETHIS] sbcglobal.net says: > Tony P. wrote >> What ever happened to CPC? I forget exactly how it worked but the >> switch would actually reverse polarity on the line to indicate the >> call had dropped or some such. > On a pots, loop start line, the reversal occurs at answer (on an > outgoing call). This indicates answer supervision to a connected PBX. Ah yes ... that's it. Been some time since I've even seen it offered anywhere as most PBX's around these parts are now using PRI circuits. All the supervision info comes down the D channel. From what I recall though, CPC was active on all lines. You don't have to ask for it. One of these days I'll throw my scope on the line and watch the polarity when answer occurs. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:21:36 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > In 2002, the company began sending out letters demanding licensing > fees See, what I wonder is this: Trademark law says that if you don't defend your trademark vigorously you lose the legal protection of the trademark registration. Does a similar rule apply with patents? I'm sorry, but this would have been a groundbreaking technology in '92, and I would *think* that they'd have been pursuing licensing fees back then if they seriously had the patents. 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: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Number Not in Use Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 23:15:08 +0100 >> Even after they used a separate ringing tone, it was usually >> operated by the same relay that applied ringing current to the >> called party. > Of course, "not anymore." The reference was to how the ringing tone > was changed on step-by-step switches. On electronic switching, > which is all there is around these days, the ring voltage and ring > tone have always been independent functions, since circa 1965. > Even back in the days when SxS was the main switching system over here in Britain, there was no guarantee that ringback tones would be in phase with the applied ringing on the line. Ringing machines typically had two or three different outputs for actual ring voltage and for tone, and each final selector (connector in U.S. terminology) could be wired to any combination of outputs. Many people tried the fixed-number-of-rings trick, not realizing that the tones they heard back might or might not correspond with the actual ringing depending upon which selector they happened to hit for the last two digits. Paul ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Info re: NorVergence and the Salzanos? Date: 21 Aug 2004 19:01:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com dor@writeme.com (Satchel Paige) wrote: > Does anyone know what is happening with NorVergence and it's former > executives, specifically the Salzano brothers? Many libraries have access to powerful on-line business article indexes in which you could search for information, both past and present. I would recommend checking that out so you could find their history as well as current situation. Also, check the Wall Street Journal carefully, sooner or later they should have something. ------------------------------ From: Steven J Sobol Subject: Re: Last Laugh! was Re: VoIP Firm Tussles With States Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:07:52 -0500 John Levine wrote: >>> Without an unfettered supply of phone numbers from NANPA, SBC IP >>> argues, it and other carriers' rollouts of Net phone service will be >>> hampered. >> Employees of Vonage, VoicePulse and other VoIP services would laugh >> at that. SBC continues as the absolute lamest telecom company in >> existence. > Oh, you just don't understand. The RBOCs have always had a > sooper-sekrit agreement that they won't invade each other's > territories. Well, if it's between *them*, I fail to see how whining to the government will do any good at all. And I remain skeptical of SBC's claim. > For example, a few years back they were all complaining that the > wholesale rates for CLECs that wanted to resell local phone service > were so low that they were below cost. So someone asked the obvious > question: If they're that low, why aren't you making big buck$ > reselling each other's services, since you just told us that would > be more profitable than selling your own? The only answer was a > fairly sniffy "we don't do that." Is it because they really have that agreement, or because it was easier to tell the Feds that they don't do that? > They sure don't want to buy service through existing CLECs > as Vonage et al do, since those are the very same CLECs they've been > shafting for the past decade or two who would be unlikely to pass up > an opportunity to turn the tables. I have little sympathy. As far as I'm concerned ... well, I've not had any trouble with Verizon to date, but SBC is run by a bunch of criminals. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Was anyone else as amused as I was by > hearing SBC referred to in the header as a 'VOIP Firm'? So now that > they have called the shots for so many years, all of a sudden they > want to be known as an underdog? Poor, pitiful, put upon SBC! PAT] Exactly!! 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. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The absolutely worst thing that ever happened to Illinois Bell Telephone Company was when SBC bought them out. 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #395 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 23 15:16:03 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7NJG2713399; Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:16:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:16:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408231916.i7NJG2713399@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 #396 TELECOM Digest Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:15:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 396 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update (Canada) #445, August 23, 2004 (Angus TeleManagement) Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church (Rob Slade) Cincinnati Bell Alternatives (BMN) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Joseph) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (John Levine) Needed: Auerbach Books, Reports especially Early Ones (Ed Sharpe) Suggestions For USB Phone? (John R Levine) Mailing lists for Audiocodes/Mediatrix equipment (Ryan Tucker) Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed (J Levine) Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed (Joseph) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (SELLCOM Tech support) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Paul Vader) HDTV Gets a New Player (Monty Solomon) Microsoft Internet Explorer Drag and Drop Vulnerability (Monty Solomon) 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: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:48:05 -0400 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update (Canada) #445, August 23, 2004 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 445: August 23, 2004 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Bad News Continues at Nortel ** Bell Plans Wireless Broadband in Alberta ** Marketers Want National Do-Not-Call List ** Bell Workers Accept Contract ** Cygnal Fires CEO, Lays Off 50 ** Ten-Digit Dialing Schedule Set in 613, 819 ** Telus Extends Offer for Microcell ** Globalive to Buy Canada Payphone ** NorthernTel and Telebec Deploy 1X ** Applications for Leftover Wireless Licences Due Today ** CRTC to Hold Expedited Hearing September 24 ** MDS Broadcasting Licences Renewed ** Aliant Wants Deferral Account Ruling Changed ** Bell Joins Aeroplan ** Telecom Management Awards Program ** Comparing VoIP Services ============================================================ BAD NEWS CONTINUES AT NORTEL: Nortel Networks issued its long-delayed "estimated limited preliminary unaudited financial results" for the first half of 2004 last week. The company took in about US$5.1 billion in the six months, but net earnings were essentially zero. ** The company will cut another 3,500 jobs (10% of its workforce) this year, but is predicting no improvement in gross margin in 2005. ** A new strategic plan calls for "an increased focus on the enterprise market and customers." ** Nortel's wireless, wireline, and optical businesses have been recombined into a single carrier networks organization. ** Seven more executives have been terminated for cause. They and the three senior executives fired in April will be asked to give back their 2003 bonuses. BELL PLANS WIRELESS BROADBAND IN ALBERTA: Bell Canada says it will build a wireless broadband network in Alberta, using Ericsson's Mini-Link point-to-multipoint wireless technology. The network, which will support data speeds up to 155 Mbps, will extend the reach of Bell's IP network by several thousand kilometers. MARKETERS WANT NATIONAL DO-NOT-CALL LIST: The Canadian Marketing Association says the CRTC should change its mind and order a national do-not-call list. The CMA says that the new rules set in May, which focus on company-by-company procedures, are at least as expensive for telemarketers as a national list would be. The Commission wants comments on the CMA's request for a stay by September 3, and on its proposed changes by September 7. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2004/8662/c131_200408543.htm BELL WORKERS ACCEPT CONTRACT: Members of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers' Union have voted to accept Bell Canada's final contract offer. 81% of the 7,000 members at Bell voted; 85.4% said yes to the four-year deal. (See Telecom Update #439, 441) CYGNAL FIRES CEO, LAYS OFF 50: Markham, Ontario-based telecom and network equipment provider Cygnal Technologies last week reported a loss of $2.7 million on $29.7 million in quarterly revenue. CEO Kieron Dowling has resigned "at the request of the Board of Directors," and the company has laid off 50 employees in its network operations group. TEN-DIGIT DIALING SCHEDULE SET IN 613, 819: CRTC Telecom Decision 2004-55 approves a revised industry plan to introduce mandatory 10-digit local dialing in 613 (eastern Ontario) and 819 (western Quebec). Callers who dial only seven digits will receive recordings announcing the change beginning June 17, 2006; use of ten-digits will become mandatory in the week of October 21, 2006. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2004/dt2004-55.htm TELUS EXTENDS OFFER FOR MICROCELL: Telus Corporation has again extended its offer to buy all outstanding shares of Microcell Telecommunications. The new closing date is September 20. GLOBALIVE TO BUY CANADA PAYPHONE: Toronto-based Globalive Communications has agreed to purchase Canada Payphone Corporation for $1 million. CPC has been in bankruptcy protection since April. (See Telecom Update #430, 432) ** Globalive also owns OneConnect, Canopco, Lucky Call, and other Canadian telecom companies. NORTHERNTEL AND TELEBEC DEPLOY 1X: On August 16, NorthernTel and Telebec Mobility put 1XRTT high-speed wireless technology into service throughout the digital parts of their networks in Northern Ontario and Quebec. APPLICATIONS FOR LEFTOVER WIRELESS LICENCES DUE TODAY: Bidders have until today at 5 pm to apply for 2300/3500 licences that were unassigned in the February 2004 spectrum auction. In September, Industry Canada will announce the winners of licences wanted by only one bidder, and the timing and format of an auction for the rest. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/en/sf06079e.html CRTC TO HOLD EXPEDITED HEARING SEPTEMBER 24: The third of the CRTC's expedited hearings will consider two disputes: ** Infolink vs Bell Canada: Bell says Infolink's Voicecasting service is a prohibited Automatic Dialing-Announcing Device (ADAD) and should be cut off; Infolink disagrees. This dispute dates from 2001. ** Interbaun vs Shaw: Edmonton-based ISP Interbaun Communications wants to resell Shaw's high-speed service on the same basis as ordered for Cybersurf (see Telecom Update #427), but says Shaw is dragging its feet. www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/process/2004/sep24_t.htm MDS BROADCASTING LICENCES RENEWED: The CRTC has renewed the Multipoint Distribution System (MDS) licences held by Look, Craig Wireless, and Image Wireless until August 2011. They may use part of their spectrum to provide internet services, but must devote at least 50% to non-pay-per-view television. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2004/pb2004-63.htm ALIANT WANTS DEFERRAL ACCOUNT RULING CHANGED: Aliant has once again asked the CRTC to allow the telco to draw down from its deferral account $6.4 million in "unused price cap room" from the first price cap period. The CRTC rejected a similar proposal in Telecom Decision 2004-42. www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2004/8662/a53_200408626.htm BELL JOINS AEROPLAN: Beginning in November, Bell Canada customers will be eligible to receive one Aeroplan Mile for every dollar spent on Bell's Digital Bundle, which includes Internet, wireless, and TV services. TELECOM MANAGEMENT AWARDS PROGRAM: The 2004 Telemanagement Live! conference will include the first "Management and Industry Commitment" (MIC) awards for Canadian telecommunications managers. The recipients will be selected by a panel of independent consultants. ** Nominations in five categories are due by September 30. For details, go to www.telemanagementlive.com/award.html. ** Telemanagement Live! 2004 will be held October 20-21 at the metro Toronto Convention Centre. COMPARING VoIP SERVICES: In the new issue of Telemanagement, Ian Angus offers a "Buyers Guide" to Canadian broadband-IP telephone services from nine suppliers, and John Riddell compares the IP Centrex offerings available from three Canadian carriers. ** Also in this issue: Designing Converged Networks for Manageability, including a checklist for troubleshooting converged nets. ** Subscribers to Telemanagement Online can read the new issue on our website now. ** To receive Telemanagement every month--including unlimited access to Telemanagement's extensive online content--visit www.angustel.ca/teleman/tm-sub.html or phone 800-263-4415 ext 500. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2004 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 08:36:12 -0800 Subject: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKFTSPDM.RVW 20040719 "Fighting Spam for Dummies", John R. Levine/Margaret Levine Young/Ray Everett-Church, 2004, 0-7645-5965-6, U$14.99/C$21.99/UK#9.99 %A John R. Levine www.iecc.com/johnl %A Margaret Levine Young www.gurus.com/margy %A Ray Everett-Church www.everett.org %C 5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON M9B 6H8 %D 2004 %G 0-7645-5965-6 %I John Wiley & Sons, Inc. %O U$14.99/C$21.99/UK#9.99 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764559656/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764559656/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764559656/robsladesin03-20 %P 222 p. %T "Fighting Spam for Dummies" Part one introduces the world of spam. Chapter one tells us that spam is bad and that spammers like to do it, but there is little substance to the material and a lot of oddly spam-like verbiage. Even though the authors outline the "dictionary" process (that generates addresses on a semi-random basis) in chapter two, they insist on trotting out the usual recommendations to limit exposure and prevent address harvesting. A confusing look at US law, in chapter three, says that the situation is confused. Chapter four does provide information about obtaining and deciphering email headers, but the attempts to be funny make it hard to understand. Part two deals with filtering spam. Chapter five has a generic description of filtering, but there is little useful content. Chapters six to ten describe menu items related to filtering in the Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo programs. Part three looks at filtering programs and services. Chapter eleven has a terse review list of major filtering programs (with some odd exceptions: SpamAssassin is not mentioned), a few spam filter review sites, and fairly detailed descriptions of POPfile and Spam Bully. A reasonable, if brief, outline of filtering services is given in chapter twelve. Chapter thirteen touches on a few items not previously detailed, but it is far from being a useful guide to the network and email administrators that it supposedly addresses. Part four is the usual "Part of Tens." Chapter fourteen lists the most common spam scams. The list of annoyances in chapter fifteen is mostly unrelated to spam. (For the one that is, dealing with popups, some fairly complex solutions are listed, and a simple one is missed -- turning off JavaScript and ActiveX works great. The cost to the user will vary with patterns of activity.) This book does provide some pointers to software based assistance with spam filtering and removal. However, even in relation to the minuscule size of the book the content is very thin. Repetition, editorializing, and attempted humour take the place of substantive information. "Stopping Spam" (cf. BKSTPSPM.RVW) and "Removing the Spam" (cf. BKRMSPAM.RVW) are from an older era, and address the issue from a perspective of users who were more used to manual email controls, as well as a time when spam was not the overwhelming majority of email. Even so, they dealt with the issue realistically and informatively, which this book does not. The current work is better than nothing, but only just. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004 BKFTSPDM.RVW 20040719 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu I've got a PhD and no one listens. I take off my clothes off, and here you all are. - Briony Penn to the media, 20010123 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John Levine is a regular participant in our little digest. He, or Ms. Levine-Young or Mr. Church may wish to respond. PAT] ------------------------------ From: telecommunication@sympatico.ca (BMN) Subject: Cincinnati Bell Alternatives Date: 23 Aug 2004 10:25:35 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Looking to get the low down on wire line alternatives to Cincinnati Bell. They don't want to play ball on renegotiating our pricing and I am wondering how good, bad or indifferent other providers are. We have about 10K/month in local and LD. Its a lot of work to switch and sometimes the devil you know...etc. Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 18:29:28 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 16:03:32 -0500, Steven J Sobol wrote: > Joseph wrote: >> AT&T "SOC" locks their phones to work with their system. > But Alltel is CDMA, so an AT&T phone would only work in analog on > Alltel's network anyhow. True, but if say there was cingular TDMA in one town and someone wanted to use an AT&T TDMA phone the SOC lock would be a problem if the cingular people sent OTA information to update the phone. Once the phone wandered into AT&T territory it would present a problem since the phone is SOC locked. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 18:33:06 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 18:25:22 -0700, [Telecom Digest Editor] wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My two Nokia phones are actually > model 5165 Type NSW-1NX. The batteries, the headsets, the chargers, > etc are all interchangable between my two phones. PAT] In your original article you spoke of "6100" series phones not Nokia 5165. At any rate 5165 is a TDMA/IS-136 handset and not GSM at any rate at all. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Because, in the advertising and instructional material I have from the era when these phones were sold and used, Nokia referred to them as the '5100/6100 series of phones.' PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 23 Aug 2004 00:22:15 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My two Nokia phones are actually > model 5165 Type NSW-1NX. The batteries, the headsets, the chargers, > etc are all interchangable between my two phones. PAT] I used to have one of those. It's TDMA 800 and AMPS. Physically all the phones are the same, but they all have custom software for the provider who sold it. I gather it's possible but difficult to load in new software for a different carrier. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Reply-To: Ed Sharpe From: Ed Sharpe Subject: Needed: Auerbach Books, Reports, Journals Especially Early Ones Organization: coury house / smecc - see us at www.smecc.org Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 17:00:35 -0700 ***needed: Auerbach books, reports and journals especially. the early ones. Also any early data processing journals and information. Reply off list to me directly please. Thanks Ed Sharpe, Archivist for SMECC - - See the Museum's Web Site at www.smecc.org Coury House / SMECC 5802 W. Palmaire Ave. Phone 623-435-1522 Glendale Az 85301 USA ------------------------------ Date: 22 Aug 2004 21:46:06 -0400 From: John R Levine Subject: Suggestions For USB Phone? I've been lugging my Vonage ATA around to hotels which works but is a pain in the patoot once I set up my laptop as a router and cables and whatnot and borrow a phone from somewhere. There are lots of VoIp packages that work with USB phones. But I don't know anything about USB phones. Any suggestions for a good or bad one? I realize there are standalone VoIP phones like the Grandstream, but that's not what I want, since I doubt they can negotiate the signon on hotel networks and they need separate power, just like the ATA. I could also just plug a headset into the sound card on my laptop, but I gather a USB phone has better sound and also feels like a phone. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 10:12:25 -0400 From: Ryan Tucker Reply-To: Ryan Tucker Subject: Mailing Lists For Audiocodes/Mediatrix Equipment Greetings! We're using the Mediatrix 1102 analog telephone adapter and the Audiocodes Mediant 2000 large-scale media gateway to provide VoIP and Fax-over-IP service to a few customers. Alas, we're running into problems where the faxes aren't working quite as well as they should, and our support contacts are more or less regurgitating what the manual says, which isn't working. I'm wondering if there's any fora out there for these two pieces of equipment, or for those manufacturers in general. I haven't been able to find anything with casual Googling. If folks are interested in such lists, e-mail me and I'll let you know if I hear of anything ... if I don't, I may just start a list myself. Thanks! -rt ------------------------------ Date: 23 Aug 2004 00:49:29 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I have a customer with special requirement. I need to get one > telephone number in as many countries as possible (except the US, UK, > and Germany) to forward a call to either my telephone number (DID) in > either the US, UK, or Germany (whichever is cheaper). This sounds like an ideal application for Lingo's VoIP service. Their basic business service is $50/mo for a US phone number with unlimited calling to the US, Canada, Mexico, and most of western Europe. For $10/mo each you can add incoming local numbers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Incoming calls are free. You can attach your Lingo box to any broadband connection, so the phone can be wherever you are, and if you want, you can call forward the calls to any other POTS number. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 18:40:51 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:56:39 GMT, David Helman wrote: > I have a customer with special requirement. I need to get one > telephone number in as many countries as possible (except the US, UK, > and Germany) to forward a call to either my telephone number (DID) in > either the US, UK, or Germany (whichever is cheaper). > There are several ways to do this, but I think this would be the > best and cheapest way: > Have the local phone company install a single telephone line (POTS). > This could be at a home or business (which ever is cheaper/easier). > This telephone line should have call forwarding (maybe known as call > divert, or something else by your local phone company). Once this is > done, I will ask that the phone number be forwarded to a telephone > number (direct dial to a DID) in either the US, UK, or Germany, > depending on which is the least expensive call from your country. > I of course will pay for the cost to install the service and all usage > charges. In addition, I will pay a 10% premium over the cost of the > service or if you prefer, provide you with a free voice mail number in > New York, London, or Germany (your choice) with messages forwarded to you > via e-mail. This is a USD$ 15 monthly value. While neither the 10% or > free voice mail is a lot of compensation, you would have helped me a > great deal in meeting the special requirement of one of my customers, > which would be very much appreciated by me and my customer. I may not be understanding what you wish to do, but what *is* available is the ability to get local numbers in several different countries including the UK, Germany, France and Spain that will forward to to other countries. Kall8 has such a service. http://www.kall8international.com/ ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 01:59:01 -0400 In article , support@sellcom.com says: > I hope this subject is not too much of a stretch for this forum but it > seems consistent with certain types of threads here. > I just went from a "poor Microsoft why are they persecuting it" to a > "Microsoft is really really dangerous and something needs to be done" > in only a few short hours. What caused this great change of heart > you might ask? The answer is "XP". I held out for as long as I could > without buying it, but ... > I had a simple motherboard problem so I simply removed the hard disk > on that machine and moved it to one of the little used computers. > Then, not only do I have the effort etc of the reconfig, I have this > garbage where I have to call Microsoft and explain to them why I am > requesting an activation code for software that I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! > What if the phones had been down ... etc ... > Then I am advised that someone had been using that "little used" > computer and had extremely important work on it. > So I take the other computer, fix it, and then put the hard disk back > in that computer. Sooo ... then we have the same Microsoft garbage > that I only have "three days to activate". I figure it is best to > set up networking first so I click no to the reactivate now planning > to do it later but install some Windows update that it had there. > The next reboot it would not let me log on unless I activated, minutes > later not "three days". Of course I called the phone number and > wasted more of my time. But this is software I PAID FOR! > If this kind of thing doesn't scare you, you are not paying attention. > I admit that I was not paying attention before enjoying all the free > updates and cool software etc and etc ... > The next time I read of some patriot trying to bust the Microsoft > monopoly I will have a whole new attitude. > Steve Winter > (The opinions expressed here are not necessarily the opinions of any > company express or implied, but they SHOULD BE!) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told by people who know how > to generate Microsoft 'product keys' that if you have a good, working > product key it will work on other copies of the same product; that the > product key is not peculiar to the individual disk. I am told that a > product key is based on some mathematical formula (like a credit card > 'check digit'); that I could install XP and later when you decided to > install your copy of XP you could use my product key number. I know > that when I installed my copy of Win 98 on a different laptop it > worked just fine. > Now when I recently attempted to install Win 98 on an old IBM Think > Pad which had Win 95 on it out of the (original) box. I ran into a > crude awakening. I could not just format the hard drive and install > Win 98. I was missing some drivers needed by IBM Think Pad, so I had > to first run the Win 95 restore disk to get those missing drivers > and then I discovered that Win 95 would not lay down unless it had > FAT-16 on the hard drive. I started from scratch, formatted the hard > drive with FAT-16, ran the restore CD, *then* installed Win 98 on > top of that. It *still* did not work right, and my friend said the > problem is "you cannot do all that with it in the docking station, > do it without the laptop attached to anything. Only use the docking > station when you have everything else finished and installed." When > I removed it from the docking station, and started from scratch once > again, it actually worked. **Then** I started working on the > networking side of it. It finally, more or less, came around to > working right as of Friday, about three months after I first made an > appeal here to get a new laptop to replace the one that had bit the > dust. > Someone also sent me a second IBM Think Pad, and I 'celebrated' my > victory over Microsoft yesterday by installing a WiFi card in it > to go with my wireless router. Today for the first time in three > months I am not feeling so depressed with myself. PAT] Of course, all these issues of licensing and activation were much publicized at the time of XP's release. XP does not depend exclusively on the "quintet" CD key of older MS products. It produces a unique key using identifying characteristics of: Display adapter SCSI controller IDE controller Network adapter type and MAC address RAM amount Processor type Processor serial number Hard Drive type and serial number CD-ROM drive If it sees more than a few of these devices change at the next boot, it assumes that the computer has changed, so re-activation is required. In the case of the original poster, everything EXCEPT the hard drive appeared to have changed, which triggered the re-activation. --Gene [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By the way, I also found out in *my* saga it could not be just any old copy of Win 98; it had to specifically be an 'upgrade' version of Win 98. My copy of Win 98 started loading and did a few things, wasting about 10 minutes of my time, then it came back and said in effect, "You cannot use this disk to upgrade an OEM type earlier product such as Win 95." At one point it even stopped and asked me to insert the OLD product key from the version of Windows which was running on here prior to this upgrade. Good luck in trying to find that number somewhere! Then it ran a few more minutes and came back to tell me it would not work. Microsoft would be doing a good thing if they published a little booklet entitled "How to upgrade our products from one edition to another" and explained all these things, obviously without giving away their formulas and secret rules, just telling users what would be expected, and the order in which it had to be done, etc. Or is their objective to be sadists trying to torture and confuse the guys trying to do Microsoft upgrades on their own? PAT] ------------------------------ From: SELLCOM Tech support Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 02:03:04 GMT TELECOM Digest Editor responded to SELLCOM Tech support on that vast internet thingie: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told by people who know how > to generate Microsoft 'product keys' that if you have a good, working > product key it will work on other copies of the same product; that the > product key is not peculiar to the individual disk. I am told that a > product key is based on some mathematical formula (like a credit card > 'check digit'); that I could install XP and later when you decided to > install your copy of XP you could use my product key number. I know > that when I installed my copy of Win 98 on a different laptop it > worked just fine. However, the issue here is the activation. You can certainly install it but it will stop functioning in 30 days if not activated, or if you have to change motherboards it may stop functioning immediately. The "activation" garbage is new with XP and I believe is way over the line. It is astounding that we have been so conditioned that we will put up with it, but do we have a choice? Right now we do not have a choice (if we need to run many apps), but hey that's what monopoly is all about, right? Steve at SELLCOM http://www.sellcom.com Discount multihandset cordless phones by Siemens, AT&T, Panasonic, Motorola Vtech 5.8Ghz; TMC ET4000 4line Epic phone, OnHoldPlus, Beamer, Watchguard! Brick wall "non MOV" surge protection. Uniden 2line 5.8GHz cordless If you sit at a desk www.ergochair.biz you owe it to yourself. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:42:54 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations support@sellcom.com writes: > I just went from a "poor Microsoft why are they persecuting it" to a > "Microsoft is really really dangerous and something needs to be done" > in only a few short hours. What caused this great change of heart > you might ask? The answer is "XP". I held out for as long as I could > without buying it, but ... A bit late to the party, aren't you? People have been complaining about exactly what you describe since the day XP came out. That's the way XP works, and you agreed to that way of doing things by using the software. Annoying, isn't it? Then TELECOM Digest Editor opened his mouth and taught the people saying: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told by people who know how > to generate Microsoft 'product keys' that if you have a good, working > product key it will work on other copies of the same product; that the > product key is not peculiar to the individual disk. It's true that there is no on-disk copy protection. But there are actually several different kinds of Windows disk (upgrade, full retail, OEM, possibly others), and the product keys are NOT interchangable among them. > product key is based on some mathematical formula (like a credit card > 'check digit'); that I could install XP and later when you decided to > install your copy of XP you could use my product key number. I know You could, and if it happened just a couple times it would even work. If the key came up too many times in activation (that's what activation is FOR), eventually MS will disable the key, and the next time the OS phones home, you're out of business. > Now when I recently attempted to install Win 98 on an old IBM Think > Pad which had Win 95 on it out of the (original) box. I ran into a > crude awakening. I could not just format the hard drive and install > Win 98. I was missing some drivers needed by IBM Think Pad, so I had [remainder of the tale of the hard disk shuffle deleted] This is a BIG problem with trying to use older versions of Windows on new equipment. Besides the drivers, chances are the hard disks are incompatible. Win 95 can't see more than a FAT16 filesystem can address, period. Win 98 upped this to FAT32, but the formatting utilities won't make a FAT32 filesystem larger than 32gb. In fact, the only reliable way I've found to make a FAT32 system larger than that is to use linux: 'mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/blah'. This is really irritating if you want to reformat a large external hard drive as FAT32 -- time to break out the Knoppix CD. One note about the linux trick -- if you're doing this for mac compatibility, forget it. While WINDOWS, despite the fact it tells you it won't make a FAT32 partition larger than 32gb, will recognize and use it just fine, Macs will simply refuse to mount one of these. There's other odd restrictions too, concerning which type of partition is first on the disk for booting purposes. So while linux will let you break any rule you like, it doesn't mean it will work anywhere else. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When my Canadian advisor helped me over the phone work with my (then) new 80 gig hard drive, putting Windows 2000 on it and then Red Hat Linux version 9.0 on my original hard drive, he told me how to fix it so Linux was the default boot unless I specifically asked for Windows 2000. Also, regards the size of FAT, he told me to do something (I forget what) so that when running Linux it would also mount the Windows hard drive and allow me to *read but not execute* the files there -- such as text files, letters I had written, etc (on Windows). I had to restrict the FAT size on Windows in order to accomodate Linux. I also asked him if it was possible to create a Knoppix.rc type file so I did not have to manually fill in all my details each time; then load all that on the hard drive and run it instead of Win 2000. He said it just would not work; that Knoppix had to be run from the CD each time. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:52:53 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: HDTV Gets a New Player Cablevision says the outlook for its Voom service is crystal clear. But in the rapidly evolving satellite TV market, the reception has been considerably more fuzzy. By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | August 22, 2004 As the owner of a 64-inch high-definition television set, Stephen Ferreira of Billerica got excited when a new satellite network called Voom started up last year, offering nearly three dozen channels of high-definition shows and movies. All Voom needs now is about 2 million more people like Ferreira -- and fast. Nine months after Cablevision Systems Corp. , the Long Island cable TV company, launched Voom at a cost of over $600 million, the service has attracted only 25,000 subscribers nationwide. With Voom accounting for less than 1 percent of Cablevision's revenues but nearly half its most recent quarterly loss, and threatening to gobble up another $500 million this year, many Wall Street analysts have been bluntly urging Cablevision to pull the plug on the would-be third satellite TV provider. Not that Ferreira and other fans of crystal-clear, super-sized television aren't enjoying the show. "I love being able to enjoy a breadth of high-definition content," said Ferreira, a 54-year-old regional sales executive for consumer electronics maker Pioneer North America Inc., who raves about watching HD-format Lyle Lovett and Sheryl Crow concerts and movies in wide-screen format. Ferreira already had a DirecTV satellite dish. But once Voom cut its installation prices this spring by more than 70 percent to $200, he was happy to pay another $50 a month for a Voom dish to get access to much more HD content. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/08/22/hdtv_gets_a_new_player/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:20:26 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Microsoft Internet Explorer Drag and Drop Vulnerability http://secunia.com/advisories/12321/ TITLE: Microsoft Internet Explorer Drag and Drop Vulnerability SECUNIA ADVISORY ID: SA12321 VERIFY ADVISORY: http://secunia.com/advisories/12321/ CRITICAL: Highly critical IMPACT: System access WHERE: From remote SOFTWARE: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 http://secunia.com/product/11/ Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 http://secunia.com/product/10/ Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 http://secunia.com/product/9/ DESCRIPTION: http-equiv has discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient validation of drag and drop events issued from the "Internet" zone to local resources. This can be exploited by a malicious website to e.g. plant an arbitrary executable file in a user's startup folder, which will get executed the next time Windows starts up. http-equiv has posted a PoC (Proof of Concept), which plants a program in the startup directory when a user drags a program masqueraded as an image. ... http://secunia.com/advisories/12321/ ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #396 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 23 23:20:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7O3KgX16158; Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:20:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:20:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408240320.i7O3KgX16158@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 #397 TELECOM Digest Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:20:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 397 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Hunt Group / Trunk Group (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults (John Beaman) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Paul Vader) Blackberry Timesheet Software Suggestion (Tee Khuu) Re: Verizon Cable TV (Tony P.) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Tony P.) Re: SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Jack Decker) Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake (Steven J Sobol) VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider in PC (Decker-VOIP) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Paul Vader) Last Laugh! Inventors of Voice Over IP [joke] (Paul Timmins) 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: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Hunt Group / Trunk Group Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 05:16:20 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications A hunt group can be a group of POTS lines or a group of trunk lines (trunks usually serve a customer's PBX ). Hunting means the terminating switch will land an inbound call, presumably dialed to the "main number," on the first idle number in the group. There are two types of hunting, series completion and circle. Series completion is one pass through the group then it's all over. It they are all busy the caller will get a line-busy signal. Series completion is all that was available with the old switches. Circle hunting generally will go back and forth through the entire group up to 20 times looking for an idle line before giving up. In old step-by-step equipment hunting groups had to be dedicated to special switch groups and were consecutive numbers in increasing magnitude; i.e., 7501, 7502, and so forth. 7500 was at the top of the group. With crossbar switches hunting could be within any 1,000 number group. With electronic switching it can be anywhere within the common office code group (10s of thousands of numbers). Trunk lines may, or may not, be assigned dialable numbers. If not, they will be tied to the primary number, which is dialable. zombie wrote: > Hi Folks, > I am new to the world of telecom products and protocols. Would like to > know the difference between a trunk group and a hunt group. Are there > any good articles on the internet that discuss the following > topics. Any books regarding these topics ... > Would appreciate any good pointers. > Zombie ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 08:38:03 -0500 From: John Beaman Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults > Johnny needs to know that Columbia exports medicines with a higher > value now, and that the percentage of drug adicts in the populations > of industrialized countries is almost a constant, no matter what -- or > where -- the U.S. proposes to eliminate the problem. Johnny needs to > know that there are as many dialects of Spanish as there are countries > speaking it, and to consult with natives in all of them before > advertising a car labelled "Nova" (which loosely translates to "no > balls") in those places. Actually, va is the spanish verb for "to go", so the literal translation is "does not go". ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:18:32 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Steven J Sobol writes: > See, what I wonder is this: Trademark law says that if you don't > defend your trademark vigorously you lose the legal protection of the > trademark registration. Does a similar rule apply with patents? I'm Not really. But since you only have until the patent sunsets to make any claims, you've got to get the ball rolling eventually. There's no such thing as dilution of patent. > sorry, but this would have been a groundbreaking technology in '92, > and I would *think* that they'd have been pursuing licensing fees back > then if they seriously had the patents. I'm fairly certain that streaming protocols existed well before 1992, and I think it's bloody obvious to use one for the things the 'patent' claims as novel. It's evil to patent an established technique within a restricted sphere (and criminally incompetent to GRANT a patent), only because someone hasn't thought to apply standard tools of the trade in that sphere yet. Patents should be for NEW things. * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: teekhuu@gmail.com (Tee Khuu) Subject: Blackberry Timesheet Software Suggestion? Date: 23 Aug 2004 15:37:01 -0700 Hi, I'd like to know if anyone can recommend a timesheet or expense tracking web-based software for BlackBerrys. We need the application to be web-based, so we don't have to deal with software on our PC's, and our data to be hosted by an ASP because we don't want to deal with maintaining a server. Thanks for the help! ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Organization: ATCC Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:03:56 GMT In article , dannyb@panix.com says: > In hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa > Hancock) writes: >> Verizon is stringing new wires in our neighborhood and we've heard >> rumors (unconfirmed) that they're planning to introduce Cable TV and >> other services. > Verizon has been doing a couple of in house tests using hi capacity > DSL circuitry to provide switched video [a], which they hope to market > as an alternative to cable systems. I was thinking about that very same thing the other day. What would prevent me other than the agreement not to re-sell the cable signal I pay for to streaming say, x number of channels of CATV via 802.11g. There are a number of hacks for Linksys devices that let you offer VoIP for several different subscribers, and video can be compressed down to what, 6Mbps so at 54Mbps you'd be able to offer 9 switched channels. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Organization: ATCC Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 23:24:31 GMT In article , support@sellcom.com says: > I hope this subject is not too much of a stretch for this forum but it > seems consistent with certain types of threads here. > I just went from a "poor Microsoft why are they persecuting it" to a > "Microsoft is really really dangerous and something needs to be done" > in only a few short hours. What caused this great change of heart > you might ask? The answer is "XP". I held out for as long as I could > without buying it, but ... > I had a simple motherboard problem so I simply removed the hard disk > on that machine and moved it to one of the little used computers. > Then, not only do I have the effort etc of the reconfig, I have this > garbage where I have to call Microsoft and explain to them why I am > requesting an activation code for software that I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! > What if the phones had been down ... etc ... > Then I am advised that someone had been using that "little used" > computer and had extremely important work on it. > So I take the other computer, fix it, and then put the hard disk back > in that computer. Sooo ... then we have the same Microsoft garbage > that I only have "three days to activate". I figure it is best to > set up networking first so I click no to the reactivate now planning > to do it later but install some Windows update that it had there. > The next reboot it would not let me log on unless I activated, minutes > later not "three days". Of course I called the phone number and > wasted more of my time. But this is software I PAID FOR! > If this kind of thing doesn't scare you, you are not paying attention. > I admit that I was not paying attention before enjoying all the free > updates and cool software etc and etc ... > The next time I read of some patriot trying to bust the Microsoft > monopoly I will have a whole new attitude. > Steve Winter > (The opinions expressed here are not necessarily the opinions of any > company express or implied, but they SHOULD BE!) > http://www.sellcom.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have been told by people who know how > to generate Microsoft 'product keys' that if you have a good, working > product key it will work on other copies of the same product; that the > product key is not peculiar to the individual disk. I am told that a > product key is based on some mathematical formula (like a credit card > 'check digit'); that I could install XP and later when you decided to > install your copy of XP you could use my product key number. I know > that when I installed my copy of Win 98 on a different laptop it > worked just fine. > Now when I recently attempted to install Win 98 on an old IBM Think > Pad which had Win 95 on it out of the (original) box. I ran into a > crude awakening. I could not just format the hard drive and install > Win 98. I was missing some drivers needed by IBM Think Pad, so I had > to first run the Win 95 restore disk to get those missing drivers > and then I discovered that Win 95 would not lay down unless it had > FAT-16 on the hard drive. I started from scratch, formatted the hard > drive with FAT-16, ran the restore CD, *then* installed Win 98 on > top of that. It *still* did not work right, and my friend said the > problem is "you cannot do all that with it in the docking station, > do it without the laptop attached to anything. Only use the docking > station when you have everything else finished and installed." When > I removed it from the docking station, and started from scratch once > again, it actually worked. **Then** I started working on the > networking side of it. It finally, more or less, came around to > working right as of Friday, about three months after I first made an > appeal here to get a new laptop to replace the one that had bit the > dust. > Someone also sent me a second IBM Think Pad, and I 'celebrated' my > victory over Microsoft yesterday by installing a WiFi card in it > to go with my wireless router. Today for the first time in three > months I am not feeling so depressed with myself. PAT] Not only are there numerous product key files and generators on the net, but also activation code crackers too. I've been running Windows 2000 for a few years now and have no current intention of moving to XP for the specific reason that I hate the activation crap on MS products. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: SS7 via Cable/Air? Factor Deciding This Medium? Date: 23 Aug 2004 13:40:03 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) qazmlp wrote: > What exactly is the medium of transferring SS7 messages? It's bits. Is this via > Fiber optic cables? Is it possible to transfer SS7 messages via air? Sure, you can send bits over fibre optic cables, twisted pair, radio or satellite links. Bits is bits. > Also, I would like to know about what exactly is the factor that > mainly decides about the mode of communication like whether via cable > or air etc. Is it the frequency of the messages? It has to do with what's in place where you want to go and how much you want to pay. If you want to go to a place with no landline cables, you go over a microwave or satellite link. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:15:39 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Re: Choosing AT&T Wireless Worst Mistake Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 14:38:16 -0500 TELECOM Digest Editor opened his mouth and instructed John Levine : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My two Nokia phones are actually >> model 5165 Type NSW-1NX. The batteries, the headsets, the chargers, >> etc are all interchangable between my two phones. PAT] > I used to have one of those. It's TDMA 800 and AMPS. Physically all > the phones are the same, but they all have custom software for the > provider who sold it. I gather it's possible but difficult to load in > new software for a different carrier. A carrier who has sold the 5100 series in the past should have no trouble. Verizon was happy to flash my 6185 (from Alltel) with their firmware; they never sold the 6185 directly, but a few of their resellers did, so they had firmware for it. Joseph wrote: > In your original article you spoke of "6100" series phones not Nokia > 5165. At any rate 5165 is a TDMA/IS-136 handset and not GSM at any > rate at all. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Because, in the advertising and > instructional material I have from the era when these phones were > sold and used, Nokia referred to them as the '5100/6100 series of > phones.' PAT] The 5100 and 6100 series actually had more common features than differences. And all of the accessories for the 51xx phones also worked with the 61xx phones. 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: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 15:34:58 -0400 Subject: VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider in PC Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-23-2004/0002237079&EDATE= Company Outperforms Vonage and AT&T CallVantage JAMESBURG, N.J., Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- VoicePulse Inc. has been rated the best VoIP phone service provider in PC Magazine's September 2004 issue. The review compares VoicePulse with competition including Vonage's DigitalVoice and AT&T's CallVantage. The review, resulting from weeks of thorough evaluation in the Ziff-Davis test labs, concluded: "We were extremely impressed with the breadth of features offered by VoicePulse and its easy to navigate Web interface." This latest achievement comes on the heels of another award for VoicePulse when, in May 2004, PC World Magazine gave its PC World BEST BUY rating to the company's service. The PC Magazine review, VoIP: Finally Worth a Look, can be found at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1630778,00.asp. VoicePulse allows consumers to use their existing cable or DSL Internet connection for phone service. The service includes traditional features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forward and Voicemail as well as a host of advanced features such as Distinctive Ring, Call Filters, Telemarketer Block and Anonymous Call Block. Consumers need only a high-speed Internet connection and an ordinary touch-tone telephone to use the service. VoicePulse uses Voice-over-IP technology to deliver broadband phone service. VoicePulse's services include: * Unlimited local, regional and US long distance calling for $24.99 per month * Unlimited local, regional and 200 US long distance minutes for $14.99 per month * Advanced features including Voicemail, Telemarketer Blocking, Do Not Disturb, Anonymous Call Rejection, Distinctive Ring * Voicemail with optional e-mail delivery of messages as sound attachments * Choose your own area code * Low international calling rates About VoicePulse VoicePulse is a New Jersey based communications company that uses its VoIP network to deliver advanced features and high-quality phone service to residential and small-business consumers. The company leads the industry in delivering innovative features and excellent customer service. For more information about VoicePulse, please visit http://www.voicepulse.com. VoicePulse is a trademark of VoicePulse Inc. For more information, please contact: Rima Vaghasiya 732-339-5100 rima@voicepulse.com SOURCE VoicePulse Inc. Web Site: http://www.voicepulse.com http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1630778,00.asp How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:58:24 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations According to pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader), TELECOM Digest Editor opened his mouth and taught the people saying: > specifically asked for Windows 2000. Also, regards the size of FAT, he > told me to do something (I forget what) so that when running Linux it > would also mount the Windows hard drive and allow me to *read but not > execute* the files there -- such as text files, letters I had written, > etc (on Windows). I had to restrict the FAT size on Windows in order Well, you can't execute windows binaries in l inux unless you have WINE working. Last time I checked, WINE was not set up on the knoppix CD. > to accomodate Linux. I also asked him if it was possible to create a > Knoppix.rc type file so I did not have to manually fill in all my > details each time; then load all that on the hard drive and run it > instead of Win 2000. He said it just would not work; that Knoppix had > to be run from the CD each time. PAT] There is a way of storing your Knoppix settings on your PC so that the enviornment will be built the way you like every time you boot from the CD, but I've never used it, since the only time I use the CD is when I specifically want a generic environment. If I wanted to tweak, I'd do a hard disk install like you did with dead rat. Knoppix has a bare-bones but very functional hard disk installer written by fabianx. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Organization: Timmins Technologies, LLC From: Paul Timmins Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:58:16 -0700 Subject: Last Laugh! Inventors of Voice Over IP [joke] Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Wow, here it was, invented by three people. http://www.att.com/reinvent/ (I guess the authors of RFC 2543, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", (M. Handley of ACIRI, H. Schulzrinne of Columbia University, E. Schooler of Cal Tech, and J. Rosenberg of Bell Labs [and amusingly not listed as an inventor on Ma Bell's website] must be really upset.) Paul Timmins Timmins Technologies, LLC ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #397 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 24 14:47:58 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7OIlwa22133; Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:47:58 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:47:58 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408241847.i7OIlwa22133@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 #398 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:48:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 398 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Chairman Calls for New Laws Regards VOIP (Jack Decker-VOIP News) 8x8 Adds Fry's Electronics to List of Retailers (Jack Decker-VOIP News) Vonage and Linksys Team Up to Redefine Telecom Marketplace (Decker-VOIP) Vonage, Staples Offer VOIP Telephony via Office Supply Store (VOIP News) Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed (D Helman) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Henry) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Paul Vader) Re: VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider (Isaiah Beard) Re: VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church (Levine) Display Forwarding Phone Number in Caller ID when multiringing (Munsey) Re: Suggestions For USB Phone? (Ted Klugman) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (yeltrabnhoj@email.com) Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern (Clarence Dold) 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: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:58:44 -0400 Subject: FCC Chairman Calls For New Telecom Laws Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5321042.html By Declan McCullagh CNET News.com ASPEN, Colo.--The head of the Federal Communications Commission said on Monday that the nation's telecommunications laws, written before the rise of the Internet, are "broken" and need to be fixed by Congress. "Is the current law broken and we need a new one? Of course," said FCC Chairman Michael Powell. The law is "dated -- it does not match reality anymore." Powell's comments at a Progress and Freedom Foundation conference here mark his strongest criticism yet of the 1934 and 1996 telecommunications acts, which created arcane regulatory categories that do not clearly include the Internet. That lack of clarity has bedeviled regulators and left entrepreneurs puzzled about what laws might eventually apply to their businesses. Powell singled out voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a "killer app for legal policy change" because it pits two different regulatory models against each other and forces governments to choose which will prevail. The two models: a highly-regulated "common carrier" environment of cable TV and telephone service, and the lightly-regulated world of the Internet. Full story at: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5321042.html http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2354297,00.html FCC chief: Reform 1996 Telecom Act By Julie Dunn Denver Post Staff Writer Aspen - In a candid question-and-answer session covering everything from voice over Internet protocol to Washington politics, Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell spoke about the future of the regulatory agency. "We've tried to build an institution that is more concerned with looking forward than looking backward and one that understands the transformative power of the computer and innovation revolution that has driven some of the greatest inventions in technology in history," he said. Powell spoke Monday at the Aspen Summit, the 10th annual telecommuni- cations and technology gathering sponsored by the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington think tank that favors deregulatory policies. Powell said he has tried to shift the agency's focus to emerging technologies such as voice over Internet protocol. "VoIP is a defining issue. It can't be ignored in its current manifestation," he said. "This thing has a resonance, a tangibility and a speed that I think are going to drive it in a way; it's a killer ap (application) for legal policy change." Full story at: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2354297,00.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:11:06 -0400 Subject: 8x8 Adds Fry's Electronics to Growing List of Packet8 Retailers Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237469&STORY&EDATE= SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- 8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq: EGHT), the Packet8 broadband voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and videophone communications service provider, announced that beginning August 27th, Fry's Electronics, a leading electronics retailer serving the western U.S., will be offering the Packet8 Broadband Videophone and Packet8 Broadband Phone Adapter. The 28 store chain, with locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Georgia and Texas, is considered one of the industry's premiere retailers of products representing the latest technological trends and advances in the personal computer marketplace. 8x8's Internet telephony service offerings consistently display feature and capability achievements on the cutting edge of communication technology, including the industry's first enhanced E911 calling capability and the technological sophistication of the new Packet8 DV326 videophone, introduced in June 2004. The Packet8 Broadband Videophone transmits high quality audio and crisp instant-on video communications over a standard broadband Internet connection with the ease and convenience of regular telephone service. Previous videophone technology has been limited by bandwidth capabilities of the PSTN (public switched telephone network), which hampered the delivery of crisp real-time video images. Because it is based on SIP, an international Internet protocol standard, the Packet8 videophone achieves a level of technology and performance sophistication previously not possible. The Packet8 Broadband Phone Adapter enables Internet users to enhance the functionality of their high speed connection with a telephone service that is affordable, as easy to use as a regular telephone, and bundled with many advanced features not included with traditional circuit-switched telephone services. Packet8 recently became the first VoIP residential telephone service to offer "real" E911 service, which automatically routes calls and computer-based "screen pops" of caller information to emergency personnel at local Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs). "We are very pleased that a respected retail chain like Fry's has acknowledged the strength and potential of our Packet8 offerings," said Huw Rees, 8x8 Vice President of Marketing & Sales. "Our voice products represent the industry's easiest to use and most affordable VoIP telephone service available, and our broadband videophone service opens up new ways of communicating and staying in touch with friends and family. Consumers that are thinking about trying VoIP and broadband communications can get 'hands-on' with Packet8 at all Fry's Electronics locations." Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237469&STORY&EDATE= ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:48:48 -0400 Subject: Vonage(R) and Linksys(R) Team Up to Redefine Telecom Marketplace Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237388&EDATE= Capitalizing on Linksys' Retail Strength and Brand Awareness, Vonage Expands Device Options for Consumers EDISON, N.J. and IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage, the leading broadband phone company and Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced a relationship that will redefine the way consumers and small businesses communicate. Vonage will now be offering its broadband telephony service for use with two different Linksys Voice over IP (VoIP) devices to meet the ever-growing broadband communications marketplace. Customers can now choose products for their home or small business broadband telephony needs with a number of Linksys options that fit their requirements. Vonage subscribers will be offered a choice of the Linksys (PAP2) Phone Adapter with 2 Phone Ports or the (RT31P2) Broadband Router with 2 Phone Ports. In a few weeks, Linksys will also make available a Wireless-G Router with 2 phone ports (WRT54GP2). "Linksys' retail channel strength and leadership in broadband networking solutions hardware development makes it an ideal partner as Vonage continues to redefine the standard for home and small business telephone service," stated Jeffrey A. Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage. "We are very excited about the opportunity to now offer our customers the advantage of receiving their equipment from a company such as Linksys, which is known for its high-level performance and reliability." The Vonage and Linksys relationship enables consumers and small businesses to easily set up a high-quality feature-rich phone service via their broadband connection, at significantly reduced rates in comparison to traditional telephone service. Further, this collaboration offers retailers a ground- breaking opportunity to increase sales and expand into a new category, capitalizing on Vonage's leadership in broadband telephony and Linksys' retail strength in home and broadband networking solutions. "Linksys is utilizing Cisco's leadership, experience and R&D in VoIP to bring this fast growing technology to consumers and small office environments everywhere," said Charlie Giancarlo, President of Cisco-Linksys. "Teaming with Vonage will enable Linksys to expand the audience for its products while helping us to achieve our goal of bringing new, IP-based communications and entertainment services and applications into the home." Both the Linksys Phone Adapter (PAP2) and Broadband Router with Voice (RT31P2) are equipped with two standard telephone jacks, support session initiation protocol (SIP), and are compatible with a cable or DSL high-speed Internet connection. Both devices have Web-based configuration through a built-in web server, offer high quality, clear sounding voice service and are compatible with all common telephone features: caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, etc. The RT31P2 Broadband Router features three 10/100 BaseT Ethernet ports, supports advanced security management functions for port filtering, MAC address filtering, DMZ hosting and Quality of Service (QoS) to ensure best voice quality. The router also supports Universal Plug-and Play for easy set up and can act as a DHCP server. "Together, Vonage and Linksys offer everything a customer needs to make high-quality, inexpensive phone calls," said Jeffrey Citron. Availability Customers can sign up for Vonage phone service and purchase the Linksys VoIP devices at http://www.vonage.com or by calling 1-VONAGE-HELP. The Linksys Phone Adapter with 2 Phone Ports (PAP2) and the Linksys Broadband Router with 2-Phone Ports (RT31P2) bundled with Vonage phone service offerings are immediately available at select retailers throughout the United States. The Wireless-G Router with 2 Phone Ports will be available in a few weeks. Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237388&EDATE= ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:28:36 -0400 Subject: Vonage(R) and Staples(R) Offer Broadband Telephony in an Office Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237389&STORY&EDATE= Vonage(R) and Staples(R) Are the First to Offer Broadband Telephony in an Office Supply Chain Nationwide EDISON, N.J., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage, the leading broadband phone company, today announced Staples, Inc. (Nasdaq: SPLS) as the first national office supply chain to offer Vonage services in all of its approximately 1,200 stores throughout the United States and online at http://www.staples.com. High-speed Internet customers, who have a standard telephone, can sign up for Vonage service by purchasing one of two Vonage starters kit at Staples, both featuring Linksys devices. Either device will allow customers to make unlimited calls in the U.S. and Canada for one low, flat monthly rate starting at $14.99. "Staples' national roll-out of Vonage's service is evidence of the transformation of the telecommunications industry and the need to make broadband telephony more readily available to the general consumer market," stated Daniel Elwell, director of New Business Development for Vonage. "We are looking forward to a successful sales relationship with the world's largest office supply chain." Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-24-2004/0002237389&STORY&EDATE= ------------------------------ Subject: Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed From: David Helman Organization: NY Office Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 00:42:26 GMT John Levine wrote in news:telecom23.396.10@telecom-digest.org: >> I have a customer with special requirement. I need to get one >> telephone number in as many countries as possible (except the US, UK, >> and Germany) to forward a call to either my telephone number (DID) in >> either the US, UK, or Germany (whichever is cheaper). > This sounds like an ideal application for Lingo's VoIP service. > Their basic business service is $50/mo for a US phone number with > unlimited calling to the US, Canada, Mexico, and most of western > Europe. For $10/mo each you can add incoming local numbers in > Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, > the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. > Incoming calls are free. > You can attach your Lingo box to any broadband connection, so the > phone can be wherever you are, and if you want, you can call forward > the calls to any other POTS number. > Regards, > John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for > Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, > http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, > on the writing of Charlotte's Web Good Idea John, However, my customer wants non-toll free numbers. As some of the telephone numbers will be used regional from nearby countries, toll free numbers could be hard to call. I did research Lingo, they limit you to two international numbers per account. If toll-free would meet my customers needs, this would be a great deal, as the cost would work out to $ 25 per country with no toll charges. Joseph wrote in news:telecom23.396.11@telecom-digest.org: > On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 15:56:39 GMT, David Helman > wrote: >> I have a customer with special requirement. I need to get one >> telephone number in as many countries as possible (except the US, UK, >> and Germany) to forward a call to either my telephone number (DID) in >> either the US, UK, or Germany (whichever is cheaper). >> There are several ways to do this, but I think this would be the >> best and cheapest way: >> Have the local phone company install a single telephone line (POTS). >> This could be at a home or business (which ever is cheaper/easier). >> This telephone line should have call forwarding (maybe known as call >> divert, or something else by your local phone company). Once this is >> done, I will ask that the phone number be forwarded to a telephone >> number (direct dial to a DID) in either the US, UK, or Germany, >> depending on which is the least expensive call from your country. >> I of course will pay for the cost to install the service and all >> usage charges. In addition, I will pay a 10% premium over the cost >> of the service or if you prefer, provide you with a free voice mail >> number in New York, London, or Germany (your choice) with messages >> forwarded to you via e-mail. This is a USD$ 15 monthly value. While >> neither the 10% or free voice mail is a lot of compensation, you >> would have helped me a great deal in meeting the special requirement >> of one of my customers, which would be very much appreciated by me >> and my customer. > I may not be understanding what you wish to do, but what *is* > available is the ability to get local numbers in several different > countries including the UK, Germany, France and Spain that will > forward to to other countries. Kall8 has such a service. > http://www.kall8international.com/ Thanks for the suggestion, but if I only need to take in voice mails and faxes, this would be easy. I need to backhaul the call to my one of my IVRs. My IVRs are in the US, UK, and Germany only. ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 09:16:17 +0300 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Joseph wrote: > ... And just to inform the country in South America is *not* > Columbia it is Colombia!!!!! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lady in Colombia called me on the > phone once and in our discussion (about something else) she complained > to me that "most people in the USA think our country is spelled > the same as 'District of Columbia' because they do not know better." > PAT] As a university teacher for many years, I was often frustrated by students who said things like "Columbia ... Colombia ... what's the big deal?!?" However, when computers started to come into academia, things did begin to get better. The kids eventually realised that if they wanted the machine to do something, they had to follow the machine's rules -- and no amount of 'attitude' would change that. Monty Solomon wrote: > Paul Brown, environment correspondent > ... Tom Edwards ... senior geopolitical strategist ... said that as > a geographer himself it was depressing that Americans had a > reputation for being particularly unaware of the rest of the > world. The annual National Geographic Survey had thrown up the sad > fact that only 23 out of 56 young Americans knew the whereabouts of > the Pacific Ocean. I have always liked maps and I will admit to reading these (almost annual, it seems) shock! horror! reports with more than a little _Schadenfreude_. I saw one a few years ago -- sorry, don't remember now just where -- in which something like 1/3 of the freshman Geography 101 students completing the questionnaire could not find on the map the city where they were!!! Cheers, Henry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: These horror stories are all too common for my comfort. The Chicago Tribune once did a story on this theme with students at a high school in Chicago. The Tribune gave students a test with just a few questions: (1) What is the name of the place where you live? (2) On the (totally blank - devoid of city names or state names) map attached, mark an 'X' where that place is located. (3) What is the name of the state where that place you live is located? (4) With lines, make an *approximate* drawing of where that place is located on the map. And from there on, the remainder of the eighty or so questions got increasingly more difficult, including such things as 'name entirely the list of various states in the USA; how many are there in total; name the geographic center of the country you live in, etc. Most -- but not all -- of the students got the first four or five questions correct. Any number thought 'New Mexico' was part of Mexico instead of USA. The person who first answered me in this thread suggested that political science was more important than geography per se; to know more 'important things' rather than such 'trivialities' as capitol cities in those places, etc, and *he was correct in large part*, but when taken in total context with how overall ignorant so many Americans are when put on a scale with their arrogance his thoughts about political science were so unrealistic. First, people need to know their own country like the palm of their hand, *then* begin investigating the rest of the world. I've told a few old Chicago area friends I now live in 'Kansas' (forget for a minute about Independence or the other small towns) and when they hear 'Kansas' they immediatly begin remarking on Kansas City (which is actually in Missouri and a few hundred miles north and east of here; I am *no where* close to that place.) That's how bad things are in geography in this country. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 08:10:16 -0400 Organization: Primus Canada Yeah, this XP registration thing IS scary, especially (as Steve found out) since the registration invalidates itself if several characteristics of the system (e.g. hard drive size, RAM, installed I/O devices) change ... so, if you've got a home/OEM version of XP, don't upgrade multiple components at once or you'll have the same experience Steve did! However, it's worth noting that not all verions of XP are activated in this way. The volume-licensed versions for corporate customers don't require activation; perhaps this applies to all versions of XP Professional, and only the Home version includes the activation fiasco? Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't Win 98 or Win 2000 actually preferable and more flexible for most people anyway? PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 15:17:03 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Quoting a digest article, pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) writes: > According to pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader), TELECOM Digest Editor > opened his mouth and taught the people saying: Pat, is your moderation software altering posts in transit? I certainly didn't use that rude salutation on any of my messages (anything I reply to just says " writes:" unless I add to it like I did here), and I've seen at least a couple messages with broken sigdashes as well. I haven't seen that happen here before. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No Paul, the software is okay. Its just my sense of humor -- like that of most sick puppies -- that's a bit warped. I promise it won't happen again, and you know what all my promises are worth. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider in PC Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:44:13 -0400 The big drawback of VoicePulse (well, it might not be a drawback for some, but it is to me) is that they seem to be the only VoIP provider that does NOT offer unlimited calling to Canada. And I still don't get why there's such a huge spread in monthly rates among the carriers. AT&T thinks they can charge $34.95 (after 6 months ... maybe it's just that people see $19.99 in big type and assume that's the rate forever, when it's just an intro rate), VoicePulse's low-use plan offers 200 minutes less than Vonage's similarly priced plan, and Packet8 undercuts most of the major players with their unlimited plan by $10 to $20. I don't quite buy the brand recognition argument, because all of the services are new and untested, and the model certainly doesn't work in the traditional LD market where the rate spread is almost nonexistent now. And the "don't cares" of the telephony world -- the consumers who haven't bothered to choose an LD rate plan and just get billed exhorbitant AT&T "no plan" rates -- probably won't start caring anytime soon, or at leat not enough to switch to VoIP anyway. Jack Decker wrote in message news:telecom23.397.10@telecom-digest.org: > http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-23-2004/0002237079&EDATE= > Company Outperforms Vonage and AT&T CallVantage > JAMESBURG, N.J., Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- VoicePulse Inc. has been > rated the best VoIP phone service provider in PC Magazine's September > 2004 issue. The review compares VoicePulse with competition including > Vonage's DigitalVoice and AT&T's CallVantage. > The review, resulting from weeks of thorough evaluation in the > Ziff-Davis test labs, concluded: "We were extremely impressed with the > breadth of features offered by VoicePulse and its easy to navigate Web > interface." This latest achievement comes on the heels of another > award for VoicePulse when, in May 2004, PC World Magazine gave its PC > World BEST BUY rating to the company's service. > The PC Magazine review, VoIP: Finally Worth a Look, can be found at > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1630778,00.asp. VoicePulse > allows consumers to use their existing cable or DSL Internet > connection for phone service. The service includes traditional > features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forward and Voicemail > as well as a host of advanced features such as Distinctive Ring, Call > Filters, Telemarketer Block and Anonymous Call Block. Consumers need > only a high-speed Internet connection and an ordinary touch-tone > telephone to use the service. VoicePulse uses Voice-over-IP > technology to deliver broadband phone service. VoicePulse's services > include: > * Unlimited local, regional and US long distance calling for $24.99 per > month > * Unlimited local, regional and 200 US long distance minutes for $14.99 > per month > * Advanced features including Voicemail, Telemarketer Blocking, Do Not > Disturb, Anonymous Call Rejection, Distinctive Ring > * Voicemail with optional e-mail delivery of messages as sound > attachments > * Choose your own area code > * Low international calling rates > About VoicePulse > VoicePulse is a New Jersey based communications company that uses > its VoIP network to deliver advanced features and high-quality phone > service to residential and small-business consumers. The company leads > the industry in delivering innovative features and excellent customer > service. For more information about VoicePulse, please visit > http://www.voicepulse.com. VoicePulse is a trademark of VoicePulse > Inc. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: VoicePulse Rated Best VoIP Phone Service Provider in PC Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 05:56:56 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications I'd suggest that PC Magazine is far from objective or even thorough in their recommendations. Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-23-2004/0002237079&EDATE= > Company Outperforms Vonage and AT&T CallVantage > JAMESBURG, N.J., Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- VoicePulse Inc. has been > rated the best VoIP phone service provider in PC Magazine's September > 2004 issue. The review compares VoicePulse with competition including > Vonage's DigitalVoice and AT&T's CallVantage. > The review, resulting from weeks of thorough evaluation in the > Ziff-Davis test labs, concluded: "We were extremely impressed with the > breadth of features offered by VoicePulse and its easy to navigate Web > interface." This latest achievement comes on the heels of another > award for VoicePulse when, in May 2004, PC World Magazine gave its PC > World BEST BUY rating to the company's service. ------------------------------ Date: 24 Aug 2004 04:34:01 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > "Fighting Spam for Dummies", John R. Levine/Margaret Levine Young/Ray > Everett-Church, 2004, 0-7645-5965-6, U$14.99/C$21.99/UK#9.99 I don't know what Rob Slade's problem is with the books I write. His reviews are so full of petty complaints and factual errors that it's hard to recognize the book he's reviewing as the one I wrote. In this review, for example, in the chapter on desktop spam filter programs he complains that we don't mention spamassassin. Well, of course, that's because it runs on Unix servers, not Windows desktops. I could go point by point but you get idea. This book is quite short so I'd suggest that anyone interested in it take a look at it at a bookstore (or any of the zillion other stores that carry Dummies books) and draw their own conclusion. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly. ------------------------------ From: john@munsey.net (John Munsey Jr) Subject: Display Forwarding Phone Number in Caller ID When Multiringing Date: 24 Aug 2004 00:23:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am curious if any VOIP service such as Vonage, Packet8, Broadvoice, etc can do the following: When forwarding a call to another phone (i.e cell phone), display in the caller id of the other phone something that indicates it is a forwarded call. I would like to distinguish incoming calls on the cell phone. Is the caller calling my cell direct or calling my voip line? Any ideas? Thx. John M ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 15:28:14 GMT From: Ted Klugman Subject: Re: Suggestions For USB Phone? Organization: Optimum Online On 22 Aug 2004 21:46:06 -0400, John R Levine wrote: > I've been lugging my Vonage ATA around to hotels which works but is a > pain in the patoot once I set up my laptop as a router and cables and > whatnot and borrow a phone from somewhere. > There are lots of VoIp packages that work with USB phones. But I > don't know anything about USB phones. Any suggestions for a good or > bad one? > I realize there are standalone VoIP phones like the Grandstream, but > that's not what I want, since I doubt they can negotiate the signon on > hotel networks and they need separate power, just like the ATA. I > could also just plug a headset into the sound card on my laptop, but I > gather a USB phone has better sound and also feels like a phone. I've used two with my Cisco IP SoftPhone: Clarisys i750 -- a very good phone. Great voice quality, and acceptable built-in speakerphone. Volume is excellent. Only downer is that it's a bit bulky, and the cable comes out the wrong end (the top). They discontinued the i750 and were going to release the i750H, which is compatible with a plug-in headset. As of the last time I checked (a couple months ago), the i750H was delayed. GN Netcom USB headset (I don't have a model number offhand) - Decent. Volume is a bit low. Voice quality is decent. ------------------------------ From: yeltrabnhoj@email.com Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 15:40:44 GMT Organization: (reverse to reply) (John Bartley, K7AAY, Portland OR) On 6 Aug 2004 07:10:28 -0700, dan04@comcast.net (Dan) wrote: > Will I ever be able to sign up for VOIP and keep my existing POTS > (landline) phone number? I did, three months ago. Qworst 'lost' the order; it took a second call to them to get them to process the paperwork they acknowledged they already had, and two more phone calls to get them to stop billing us for the phone number Vonage took. John Bartley K7AAY http://celdata.cjb.net This post quad-ROT-13 encrypted; reading it violates the DMCA. Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. ------------------------------ From: dold@InternetXP.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Internet Patent Claims Stir Concern Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 15:49:21 UTC Organization: a2i network Robert Bonomi wrote: > NO ONE _I_ know has ever gotten any spam traceable to having given an > address to the NY Times. This encompasses 40+ NYT-online subscribers. 41+. I have received no SPAM from NYTimes. Just inline ads. They have begun to use a background protocol that will _eventually_ download huge data files even over the slowest link, so that you can view high quality advertisements. You may notice a "Applet TransitionSensor running" message appear briefly in an IE status bar. I block their popups, and route most of the advertising links to 127.0.0.1, but I haven't figured out how to stop the downloads of the transitional advertisements. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ 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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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #398 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 25 15:13:29 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7PJDTM01532; Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:13:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:13:29 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408251913.i7PJDTM01532@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 #399 TELECOM Digest Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 399 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Airport Express Leads the New Breed of Consumer APs (Monty Solomon) Linksys Voice Over IP (VoIP) Solutions (Monty Solomon) Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe (Monty Solomon) Phone Phishing (John Bartley) Phone Industry Upheaval as Ways of Calling Change Fast (Sufaud via WSJ) Avaya ODBC pw (Danny Councell) Re: Vonage - Area Codes (John R. Covert) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance (Randolph Herber) Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? (John Bartley) Re: Last Laugh! Inventors of Voice Over IP [joke] (Hank Karl) Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? (Paul A Lee) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Paul A Lee) Re: Considering VoIP For Home? Think Twice About CallVantage (charlie3) Re: Verizon Cable TV? (Neal McLain) Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church (noname) Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany (John Levine) Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany (dave@nyoffice) AT&T CallVantage Service Now Online@Amazon.com (Jack Decker-VOIP News) 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: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 19:28:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Airport Express Leads the New Breed of Consumer APs Roaming charges: Hardware hunger hits Wi-Fi Level: Introductory Larry Loeb (larryloeb@prodigy.net) Principal, pbc enterprises Learn about the whole new crop of consumer-oriented APs that work with Windows and the Mac OS. True to trend, these babies are smaller, lighter, and built to deliver everything from AirTunes to pizza. Those doggoned engineers have finally gotten around to revamping the hardware that most of us use to wirelessly connect to a network. As Larry discovers in this month's Roaming Charges, the imposing blue Linksys box is about to give way to a whole new crop of consumer-oriented access points (AP) that work with Windows and the Mac OS. True to trend, these babies are smaller, lighter, and built to deliver everything from AirTunes to pizza. Well, maybe not pizza. Hardware is usually taken for granted by users, who just want the goods it provides. No one really cares much what's inside a TV set, for example; or, for that matter, a wireless LAN. The thing is, these days it pays to know a thing or two about the inner workings of your WLAN. Most brands have moved past the stage where access points were interchangeable, and competition among vendors has driven prices down to the point where a major electronics retail chain will now sell you one of the 802.11 varieties (in either b or g flavor) for about $40, which is less than half of what it would have cost a year ago. Because most APs are platform independent, you can use them with whatever sort of computer you have. With APs becoming such a commodity, manufacturers need to differentiate their products from the other boxes out there. And this is leading to the rise of APs that are backward-compatible variations of the original idea of an AP, but offering considerably more bang for your buck. In this month's Roaming charges I'll show you four new APs that integrate hardware, software, and forward-thinking design for exceptionally exciting results. They all share one thing in common: they're reengineered versions of first-generation APs/routers, such as the signature blue one from Linksys. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wi-roam25/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:49:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Linksys Voice Over IP (VoIP) Solutions Small Offices Save Money on Phone Calls Linksys Enters VoIP Market With New Hardware That Connects Standard Telephones and Fax Machines to a High-Speed Internet Connection IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Linksys(R), a division of Cisco Systems, Inc., the leading provider of broadband, wireless and networking hardware for the consumer, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and small business markets, today announced new Voice Over IP (VoIP) products to help consumers and small offices save money and get more use out of their broadband connection. Linksys is offering three new affordable and easy to use VoIP products that enable users to connect their standard telephones and fax machines to a cable or DSL broadband connection so they can make and take calls: The Linksys Phone Adapter with 2 Phone Ports (PAP2), a Wireless-G Router with 2 Phone Ports (WRT54GP2) and a wired Broadband Router with 2 Phone Ports (RT31P2). The new Linksys VoIP hardware solutions were developed with its parent company, Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in IP Telephony. After signing up for a Voice over IP service through a specific service provider, both families and small offices can use the Internet to make phone calls, getting substantial savings on local, long distance, and International calling while also enjoying additional features at no cost such as call waiting, voicemail, caller ID, call blocking, repeat dialing and more. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43289993 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 01:53:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe Comcast Enables Customers to Become Directors of Their Own Photo Slideshows and Makes Organizing & Sharing Personal Digital Photos Easier Than Ever - with the Launch of Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe - Aug 24, 2004 09:00 AM (PR Newswire) PhotoShow Deluxe Is the Latest Built-For-Broadband Application Now Available To Comcast's 6 Million High-Speed Internet Customers via Comcast.net, the Nation's #1 Broadband Portal* PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Comcast, the nation's number one broadband Internet provider, announced the launch of Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe -- which answers the need for a simple way to organize and share digital photos - but does it broadband-style. Leveraging broadband's interactive power, Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe also enables users to create multimedia slideshows as a special way to share their photos. Users can literally become directors of their own photo slideshows -- complete with music, transitions, animation, and clip art -- to tell their stories to family and friends: babies' first birthdays, what they did on their summer vacations, family reunions, and more. The result is a richer, lean- forward experience for both users and their recipients. Comcast PhotoShow Deluxe is available through a partnership with Simple Star, a leading consumer imaging software and services company, based in San Francisco, CA. This premium product is offered at no additional charge to all of Comcast's six million High-Speed Internet customers. This is another way Comcast is adding value as it focuses on enhanced communication along with five other key areas (sports, kids, gaming, music and movies). This announcement closely follows the announcement of another complementary communication application - Comcast Video Mail. Editor's Note: To view Comcast Video Mail press release please visit: http://www.cmcsk.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=147565&p=irol-newsArticle&t=Regular&id=601188& Even novice photo enthusiasts can quickly and easily create their own multimedia slideshows. These slideshows can then be shared online or downloaded to a CD-ROM or Video CD (VCD) for playback on TV and most DVD players. When sent via email, the slideshows are conveniently embedded as live links, which solves the problem of overwhelmed email inboxes with large photo files. Along with the link, recipients will receive a thumbnail of the first photo within the slideshow, inviting them to view the digital slideshow. Comcast High-Speed Internet customers can send their PhotoShow slideshows to any valid email address, to users operating in a Windows or Mac environment with the free Flash player installed. The recipient of the slideshow does not need to be a Comcast High-Speed Internet customer in order to view it. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43289732 ------------------------------ From: John Bartley Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:05:20 -0800 Subject: Phone Phishing In Monday's Mail http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail324.html#Monday the estemmed Dr. Pournelle passed on a phone-phishing story (copied at the bottom of this message). Since Caller ID is easily hacked, especially by users of IP telephony (which this call almost certainly used), it appears that IP telephony has put the unscrupulous everywhere within thirty seconds of Aunt Minnie, as it is amazingly cheap and works over infrastructure available worldwide. Recording whatever Caller ID information is available along with the date and time of the call may be useful to catch the dumbest of phone phishers ('phonshers'? 'phoshers'?), but don't put too much stock in that. Caller ID will soon become only a way for you to know when your friends and family are calling, but the ability to use it to discern prank callers and scammers is no longer reliable. Now, since (as my beloved wife puts it), 'half of all folks are below average', it should not be difficult for these thieves to make a good Second-World living at phone phishing along with their other favorite scams. Social engineering as at the heart of most fraud, and Barnum's Law surely is relevant here. Reporting? Oh, there's http://www.fraud.org/info/repoform.htm plus the FTC, local law enforcement and your telephone company, but the lack of tracability of IP calls and the unreliability of Caller ID data makes finding these blackguards nearly impossible. Any phone number they provide for a callback will be here today and abandoned tomorrow. Honeypots (a la Tom Clancy novels) are the only practical way to catch them. An enterprising Fed might list phone numbers at the addresses of retirement homes, and forward those numbers to a call center staffed with elderly-sounding folks who can tie up a phisher long enough to get a good trace. Government folks have access to ANI, a much more reliable protocol for calling party information than Caller ID, so fraudulent callers could be traced to the IP telephony provider, whereupon local law enforcement may (or may not) do something useful. The only bright spot I can see here is that, after a new wave of sob-sister stories about this fraud, folks will become more suspicious of anything from strangers, and that's not a bad idea in an election year. Anyone else have an idea on how to nail these nogoodniks before they rob Aunt Minnie of her house and assets? ============== Dr. Pournelle, I wanted to alert you of a new variant of the Nigerian Scam. I just received a telephone call from a gentleman explaining the he was from "the government" and that I had been selected to receive a grant of between $8,000 and $25,000. He had my Name, work address, and telephone number. His command of the English language was not great and the background noise sounded as if he were in a call center. I strung him out for about 10 minutes to see if I could glean any additional information from him (he offered that he was on the 4th floor of "the government building" and the treasury department was on the 17th floor). He asked for my date of birth and checking account information (just like the other scams). When it was obvious that I was not going to provide him with this he hung up. John Bartley K7AAY http://livejournal.com/users/clackablog Clackablog http://kiloseven.blogspot.com Kilo Seven "Clearly, latrines are the forgotten Last Amenity of the Apocalypse. (Other signs.. Michael Jackson as your Best Man (?), Christina Aguilara as your makeup consultant & Cher as your personal shopper.) - ginmar ------------------------------ From: sufaud@hotmail.com (Sufaud) Subject: Phone Industry Upheaval As Ways of Calling Change Fast Date: 25 Aug 2004 01:12:41 -0700 Heavy Toll Phone Industry Faces Upheaval As Ways of Calling Change Fast Cable, Internet, Wireless Hurt The Value of Old Networks, Threaten a Business Model Echoes of Railroads' Ordeal By KEN BROWN and ALMAR LATOUR Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL In just over a year, one out of every eight households in the Portland, Maine, region has signed up for Internet phone service supplied by Time Warner Inc.'s cable-television unit. For many, the phone jack in the wall that connects to the phone company's network is now just a useless hole. Time Warner is rolling out the same service to millions of consumers nationwide. ... article at: http://www.angelfire.com/co4/legalstuff/wsj_tele.htm ------------------------------ From: Danny Councell Subject: Avaya ODBC pw Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:56:11 -0400 If you don't currently subscribe to or participate in these technical forums, perhaps you should check them out. I've highlighted the AVAYA sections, and you might find the answer in threads already submitted. If not, post your question here! http://avaya.pbxinfo.com/ http://www.pbxtech.info www.tek-tips.com [after you sign up, you can drill down to the Avaya Definity forum] http://www.callcenterops.com/forum/index.php http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Avaya-List/ AND if you know of any others, please send them my way! All the best, Danny Councell NetLert Communications, Inc. direct: [828] 670-9900 ext.309 fax: [828] 670-9909 e-fax: [801] 858-7132 e-mail: danny@netlert.com 'Information! In Control!' ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:26:47 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Vonage - Area Codes Vonage lets you change your number at any time, and when you change your number, you have the option of either releasing the old number (permanently) or keeping it as a virtual number. When you moved from 631 to 215, if you had thought of it then, you could have changed your number and (optionally) kept your 631 number as a virtual number. Now you can still change your number to a 215 number, but you won't be able to change it to your existing virtual number. That's tough, but that's the way it is. You can always change your number to a 215 number and keep the 215 virtual number until you've told everyone to use the new number. Otherwise you're stuck. You can always change virtual numbers at any time by just requesting a new one and deleting the old one. When you have multiple real numbers (either ATA-phones or Soft-phones), and one or more virtual numbers, you get access to a web page that allows you to control which virtual numbers go to with real numbers. If we ever get full two-way number portability with non-CLEC VoIP customers, then you could port your virtual number to a cellphone or something, and then port it back to your main number. But at the moment, except for CLECs such as VoIP2Save.com (I think the actual CLEC is RNK-Telecom with VoIP2Save operating as their retail interface), while you can port _to_ a VoIP company, you can't port _out_of_ a VoIP company. In fact, if you port your real phone number to a VoIP company (other than a regulated CLEC), and decide you don't like them anymore, you may not be able to port it back. /john ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:08:28 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com TELECOM Digest Editor Noted in response to Henry: > I've told a few old Chicago area friends I now live in 'Kansas' > (forget for a minute about Independence or the other small towns) > and when they hear 'Kansas' they immediatly begin remarking on > Kansas City (which is actually in Missouri and a few hundred miles > north and east of here; I am *no where* close to that place.) That's > how bad things are in geography in this country. But do you live near Dorothy? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I am not mistaken, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz lived out in western Kansas somewhere; I am in the southeastern corner of the state; 110 miles southeast of Wichita, KS; 80 miles almost straight north of Tulsa, OK; about 90 miles almost straight west of Joplin, MO/Pittsburg, KS. Those are the closest larger towns. Kansas City, *MO* and its suburban town, Kansas City, KS are about 250 miles north and slightly east of us. I think -- not sure -- Dorothy was a few hundred miles west, maybe Liberal, KS or Dodge City. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:15:22 GMT From: herber@dcdrjh.fnal.gov (Randolph J. Herber) Subject: Re: Microsoft Pays Dear For Insults Through Ignorance Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've told a few old Chicago area > friends I now live in 'Kansas' (forget for a minute about > Independence or the other small towns) and when they hear 'Kansas' > they immediatly begin remarking on Kansas City (which is actually in > Missouri and a few hundred miles north and east of here; I am *no > where* close to that place.) That's how bad things are in geography > in this country. PAT] There are Kansas City's in both Missouri and Kansas. They are separated by the Missouri and Kansas border and economically function as a single city. http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3ba1n9wa%3a%29fr01za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40z%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3ba1n9wa%3a%29fr01za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24x9%40 Randolph J. Herber, herber@dcdrjh.fnal.gov, +1 630 840 2966, CD/CDFTF PK-149F, Mail Stop 318, Fermilab, Kirk & Pine Rds., PO Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510-0500, USA. (Speaking for myself and not for US, US DOE, FNAL nor URA.) (Product, trade, or service marks herein belong to their respective owners.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Right you are, but KCMO and KCKS are legally separate entities with their own governments, etc. Half of the population of Kansas live in that upper one-eighth of the state. About another one-third of our citizens live in the eastern part of the state, from Wichita eastward to Topeka. There are entire *counties* in the western part of the state with fewer than a thousand people; an example is Greely County with its two villages of Tribune and Horace, between them most of the thousand residents of the county. (Yes, the entire area was named for Horace Greely who was the publisher of Chicago Tribune in the mid 19th century.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: John Bartley Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:59:59 -0800 Subject: Re: Number Transportability for VOIP? On 6 Aug 2004 07:10:28 -0700, dan04@comcast.net (Dan) wrote: > Will I ever be able to sign up for VOIP and keep my existing POTS > (landline) phone number? > When? Now. I did it three months ago with Vonage. Qworst, being Qworst, 'lost' the order to move the landline number to Vonage, and only did it when I called them, three weeks after Vonage passed the order to them. Then, Qworst *kept* billing me for the 'Market Expansion Line' service to forward my out-of-boundary phone number to my (lifeline service only) landline at home, the MEL being the number which they transferred to Vonage. Meet the New Qworst; Same as the Old Qworst. Vonage, on the other hand, has been *perfect*. Yes, I know about the outage they had, but I wasn't home, and besides, it auto-forwarded the calls to my cellphone as I requested, anyway, during that outage. ------------------------------ From: Hank Karl Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Inventors of Voice Over IP [joke] Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 15:44:25 -0400 Organization: NETPLEX Internet Services - http://www.ntplx.net/ On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 19:58:16 -0700, Paul Timmins wrote: > Wow, here it was, invented by three people. > http://www.att.com/reinvent/ > (I guess the authors of RFC 2543, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", > (M. Handley of ACIRI, H. Schulzrinne of Columbia University, > E. Schooler of Cal Tech, and J. Rosenberg of Bell Labs [and amusingly > not listed as an inventor on Ma Bell's website] must be really upset.) They did say "REinvented" :-) SIP was not the first VoIP protocol; H.323 was published in 1996 (RFC 2543 was published in 1999). Cisco's "skinny" may predate it. And there are other VoIP protocols that have fallen by the wayside. Schulzrinne, Schooler and Rosenberg may have been the key contributors to, and authors of the first SIP RFC, but they can't claim to have invented VoIP on this basis. On the other hand, Bell Lab's engineers and scientists contributed to the ITU work on H.323 and other VoIP protocols, and chaired several ITU committees. There are also some Bell Labs (and Lucent) names in IETF standards related to VoIP. ------------------------------ From: Paul A Lee Subject: Re: How Do I Get "Kewlstart" From my Phone Company? Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:58:16 -0400 Organization: Rite Aid Corporation In TELECOM Digest V23 #388, Kyler Laird wrote (in part): > I'm trying to set up a home PBX and I decided to just take a crack > at getting kewlstart/calling party control/disconnect supervision on > my home line. I called Verizon and got bounced around until I hit > someone "with 31 years of experience" who had never heard of such a > thing. I was told that Verizon certainly doesn't offer it. > I suspect that someone in Verizon knows how to provision the switch > and can twiddle a few bits to give it to me. Is that reasonable? > How do I find that person? I had not heard the term "kewlstart" before, so I did a quick Yahoo! search and reviewed what popped out. It appears that "kewlstart" is just a coined name for loop signaling with disconnect supervision. Disconnect supervision is also called "calling party control", "forward disconnect", "open loop disconnect", "open switch interval", "adjunct control", and perhaps other names. What is supposed to happen is that the CO switch (or other switch serving as the office end) will remove battery voltage from the loop for about 250 ms within 6 seconds after the far-end party disconnects. As far as I can tell, most CO switches now seem to provide disconnect supervision by default on loop-start lines. Consequently, it can be difficult to find someone at telco who knows anything about it. My company uses a store phone system configuration that requires disconnect supervision to work properly. Out of a few dozen stores per week with four to 10 lines each, I think we run into a disconnect supervision problem perhaps twice a month. As for availability on residential service, just check your current loop-start line(s) with a voltmeter and see if it drops toward zero for about 250 ms when the far end disconnects from the call. If there's no disconnect supervision, you'll see the voltage stay at about 7-8 VDC when off-hook, and about 48 VDC on-hook. On my residential service, I have three loop-start lines in hunt with disconnect supervision. The telco is Verizon and the CO switch is a 5ESS. The fact that it's residential service never was an issue in getting the signaling and hunting I needed. Paul A Lee Sr Telecom Engineer Rite Aid Corporation HL-IS-COM (Telecomm) V: +1 717 730-8355 30 Hunter Lane, Camp Hill, PA 17011-2410 F: +1 717 975-3789 P.O. Box 3165, Harrisburg, PA 17105-3165 W: +1 717 805-6208 ------------------------------ From: Paul A Lee Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:27:11 -0400 Organization: Rite Aid Corporation Responding to no particular post, but to the general lamentations about having to activate software: Yes, the activation procedures, serial numbers, key codes, etc., are a frustrating nuisance and introduce their own operational problems. But let's put at least some of the blame on the prodigious software bootlegging that has driven numerous software companies -- not just Microsoft -- to such measures. I remember reading (but don't recall the exact source of) an analysis of the bootleg software problem that concluded that, if all Microsoft software in use were purchased and used in accordance with the license, Microsoft would be able to reduce retail prices by 90% and still make as much profit as they do currently. I know the Microsoft bashers will take umbrage and claim that evil giant Microsoft would simply keep the extra revenue. Save your breath ... Paul A Lee Sr Telecom Engineer Rite Aid Corporation HL-IS-COM (Telecomm) V: +1 717 730-8355 30 Hunter Lane, Camp Hill, PA 17011-2410 F: +1 717 975-3789 P.O. Box 3165, Harrisburg, PA 17105-3165 W: +1 717 805-6208 ------------------------------ From: charlie@cdsdetroit.com (charlie3) Subject: Re: Considering VoIP For Home? Think Twice About AT&T CallVantage Date: 24 Aug 2004 16:22:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm having a good experience with Vonage. I've found customer support to be available and competent. Because of Vonage, every call I make is free. Because of Vonage simultaneous ring people need only one number to find me. I move the Vonage box to seasonal locations where I have broadband avialable. I expected some glitches and planned accordingly, mostly by having a cell phone for backup. (Vonage automatically rings my cell phone during network outages or when the vonage box is in my luggage between locations. If I don't pickup, Vonage records a voice message which is available via the web, landline, cell phone or Vonage phone.) We can argue that personal computers should not be adopted for record keeping and communications because hard drives crash and data can be lost. Paper and pencil are more reliable than computer disks. Paper and pencil is a lot simpler and more people know how to use them. All the above is true but that didn't stop the advance of computers. (Today I do so little handwriting, my already bad style is getting noticably worse.) When enough people cancel POTS service, as I have, the traditional phone companies fixed costs for POTS services will rise so close to revenues they won't be able to sustain the service. VOIP users like me will vigorously protest being taxed to subsidize a communications dinasaur we've abandoned. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:59:58 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Verizon Cable TV? Danny Burstein (dannyb@panix.com) wrote: > Verizon has been doing a couple of in house tests using hi > capacity DSL circuitry to provide switched video [a], which > they hope to market as an alternative to cable systems. Tony P. responded: > I was thinking about that very same thing the other day. What > would prevent me other than the agreement not to re-sell the > cable signal I pay for to streaming say, x number of channels > of CATV via 802.11g. There are a number of hacks for Linksys > devices that let you offer VoIP for several different > subscribers, and video can be compressed down to what, 6Mbps > so at 54Mbps you'd be able to offer 9 switched channels. Well, the copyright owners would certainly object. It wouldn't take them long to sic their lawyers onto you. As it happens, I've been thinking about this situation too, but for the opposite reason. Now that WFMT has lost its satellite feed, and has reinstated its web stream (at $100/year), cable systems can't get the signal from the satellite any more. So what would prevent a cable system from setting up a PC in its headend and sending the streamed signal over cable FM? Probably the same reason: copyright owners would object. But it might take them a bit longer to get their lawyers involved. Danny Burstein continued: > [a] while a cable tv system sends all the channels to your > setup and then your tv (or converter) chooses which one to > display, the video over DSL circuits don't have the same > bandwidth. > When you tune to, say, channel two on a standard cable box, the > other 50 or 100 or whatver channels are still in your apt, but > just not getting to your screen. When you tune to channel two > in a video-over-dsl circuit, the server gets the instruction to > feed that broadcast over to you. The other channels don't get > anywhere near your home. But a true FTTP network *would* have enough bandwidth to pass the entire "cable TV" spectrum to your "setup." Current HFC (hybrid fiber-cable) networks do exactly that. So why wouldn't Verizon's new FTTP network be set up the same way? Neal McLain nmclain@annsgarden.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Book Review: Fighting Spam for Dummies, Levine/Young/Church From: noname@example.invalid Organization: We Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:37:23 +0000 In article , John Levine wrote: >> "Fighting Spam for Dummies", John R. Levine/Margaret Levine Young/Ray >> Everett-Church, 2004, 0-7645-5965-6, U$14.99/C$21.99/UK#9.99 > I don't know what Rob Slade's problem is with the books I write. His > reviews are so full of petty complaints and factual errors that it's > hard to recognize the book he's reviewing as the one I wrote. In this > review, for example, in the chapter on desktop spam filter programs he > complains that we don't mention spamassassin. Well, of course, that's > because it runs on Unix servers, not Windows desktops. I could go > point by point but you get idea. Do you suppose, just _suppose_, that it might be because you DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT? Spamassassin *does* run on Windows desktops. > From the spamassassin home page, at Note: This is the home page for the main open-source SpamAssassin distribution. Packages downloaded here contain UNIX-oriented front-end scripts. Versions for Windows, commercial versions, and other front-ends, are listed on the wiki. Note well: "Versions for Windows..." Neat trick for a package that "doesn't run on Windows", isn't it? ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2004 04:48:43 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >However, my customer wants non-toll free numbers. Huh? What leads you to think that Lingo does toll free numbers? When I go through the signup menus on their web site, they're clearly offering POTS numbers in most if not all of the countries they cover, e.g., Paris numbers in France, Milan or Rome in Italy, the five state capitals in Australia, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, etc. I don't know about two numbers per account but it seems like an odd restriction. Did you call them to check? Vonage will sell you all you want, albeit only in the US and Canada. ------------------------------ From: Subject: Re: International Call Forwarding to US, UK or Germany Needed Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 09:51:33 -0400 John, The toll-free number and two international numbers per account is what the Lingo rep at the call center told me. I agree, unlimited toll-free international does not make a lot of sense, as Lingo could really lose there shirt with that sorta deal. The rep was not too familiar with this aspect of the Lingo service, as I had to lead her, rather than her tell me, about this option. I would guess that English was not the rep's first language, and since most of Primus' call centers are now based in India, its a good bet that is where she was. As far as the two number limit, this is also indicated on the website. Assuming the rep was wrong about the toll-free, Lingo is an option for those countries that Lingo has coverage in. Thanks, David ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:55:47 -0400 Subject: AT&T CallVantage Service Now Online@Amazon.com Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-25-2004/0002238318&STORY&EDATE= BEDMINSTER, N.J., Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T (NYSE: T) today announced that Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), a leading retailing Website (http://www.amazon.com), will offer AT&T CallVantage(SM) Service, the company's residential Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) broadband phone service, to consumers. Amazon.com customers can find AT&T CallVantage in the Electronics Store at Amazon.com by searching for VoIP or CallVantage. "Tech-savvy shoppers know Amazon.com to be one source where they can find all of their online purchases quickly and easily," said Cathy Martine, AT&T senior vice president for Internet Telephony. "We're delighted to launch our e-tail strategy for AT&T CallVantage Service online with Amazon.com. Our goal is to make our service widely and conveniently available to as many consumers as possible." AT&T CallVantage Service is now available to consumers in 170 U.S. markets coast to coast and is currently being trialed overseas for use by remote workers of U.S. multinational corporations. All that's required to use AT&T CallVantage is a telephone adapter provided by AT&T and a broadband connection, which lets consumers talk over high-speed Internet connections instead of traditional circuit-switched phone networks. [Comment: Once again I would remind everyone that CallVantage is on the high end of the price scale for VoIP providers -- there are other companies that offer more features, and charge $10 or $15 less per month for unlimited calling within the U.S. (and sometimes Canada also).] Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-25-2004/0002238318&STORY&EDATE= How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #399 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 26 01:13:46 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i7Q5Djp05307; Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:13:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:13:46 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200408260513.i7Q5Djp05307@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 #400 TELECOM Digest Thu, 26 Aug 2004 01:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 400 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Norvergence Employees Bilked Out of More Than Just Paycheck (I Beard) VoIP Suggestions Wanted (Justin) OS Preference (Mark Smith) Re: Cincinnati Bell Alternatives (Al Gillis) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Geoffrey Welsh) Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind (Paul Vader) Vonage Dials Up $105M (Jack Decker) 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: Isaiah Beard Subject: Norvergence Employees Bilked Out of More Than Just a Paycheck Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 17:10:17 -0400 I'm really beginning to wonder where all this money went ... --------------------------------- Bankrupt firm hit with new pay flap The Record of Bergen County, NJ By MARTHA McKAY STAFF WRITER NorVergence, a Newark-based telecommunications reseller that went bankrupt last month, left a trail of angry ex-employees who say they are stuck with tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills. The employees say NorVergence was deducting medical insurance costs from their paychecks, but apparently fell behind in payments to the company it hired to administer its insurance plan. Now, the federal government is asking questions. At least one former NorVergence employee, Mark Englander, said he has been contacted by an investigator from the U.S. Department of Labor who asked for detailed information about the insurance problems. Full story at: http://tinyurl.com/4zyan (registration required unfortunately) E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: justin_ltg@yahoo.com (justin) Subject: VoIP Suggestions Wanted Date: 25 Aug 2004 19:26:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, This is sort of a lengthy rant, but I would appreciate any help. I run the IT & phone systems for our company. Our owner is bent on moving from our Partner system to VoIP, specifically a hosted solution. Now, I am all for VoIP, but we have a particular 'Used VoIP Salesman' touting the cost benefits that will be realized by moving to a hosted solution (with him). I have dealt with SBC and know what a top tier carrier is charging. SBC gives a great deal on Cisco equipment, but they are charging $55 per phone for basic services and $70 per phone for 'premium' services. In addition, we would have to purchase another T1, and 2 Qos devices for each T1 (the manufacturer escapes me now) from SBC. Our other used ... I mean VoIP salesman ... is saying he can drastically beat these monthly phone prices and provide a high quality solution without using a second T1 or a QoS device for each T1 (He would use Cisco QoS, I assume IP RTP priority, I doubt he could configure LLQ correctly). I am just looking for suggestions, or places where I can find more information on the 'typical' per month phone costs of a hosted VoIP solution. Are there any websites with hosted VoIP reviews??????? I have been unable to find anything like that, yet ... Here is some information on our company: 30-40 users at any given time (with a growth rate of 1-2 people every 6 months); One SBC T1; NO remote locations (One is coming soon, but it will be local); NO traveling salesman; NO interstate traveling; Possibly a need for two people to work from home (local); Currently, local usage + long distance usage totals anywhere from $1350 to $1600 per month; I am in the process of gathering SMDR information on our current key system so I can provide some tangible cost/usage information to our 'executives'. This email address is valid, so any suggestions comments are greatly appreciated. I do not want to get caught in a very expensive sub-par solution. Thank you for reading my post. Justin ------------------------------ From: Mark Smith Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:30:47 PDT Subject: OS Preference Reply-To: telecom-news@yahoogroups.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't Win 98 or Win 2000 actually preferable and more flexible for most people anyway? PAT] It depends :-) The computer I am typing on right now is Win98. The main reason it's not getting updated is it's 4 GB Hard Drive. 2000 & XP are too big. The computer next to it is a laptop running Win2000. Not my choice, but the IT setup is 5 year old Os's on 5 year old machines :-( My two home machines (one laptop and on desktop) both run XP Home. It's stable, supports USB2.0, and matches the newer hardware. My rule of thumb is if you have at least 128 Mb of RAM, 20 GB of hard drive and no offending hardware; run XP. The added features justify it. Mark L. Smith smith@stones.com http://smith.freehosting.net ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Cincinnati Bell Alternatives Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 11:52:37 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Hi! I moved our local trunks and DID numbers from one of the former Bell companies to a CLEC several years ago. I needed more DID numbers and wanted 10,000 new ones so we could avoid yet another number change in the future. I asked our then present carrier (US West) for new numbers and was rebuffed several times (they couldn't provide any numbers from my CO, it was to hard to get an entire office code of numbers for one customer, I'd have to pay mileage on new trunks as new numbers would come from a different exchange, all sorts of reasons that didn't make good sense). So I called up a local CLEC (Electric Lightwave, Inc.) and asked them for the same service. In less than a week they came back to me with six office codes -- we could choose the one we wanted! Imagine that! So I bought some PRI trunks (which also weren't available from US West) - they got installed on time, we got them in service for a short test period and then announced the number change to the company. After about six weeks we disconnected the US West trunks and never looked back! That was about six or seven years ago. My experience with ELI has been very good. They're usually fast and flexible (I'm a moderately large customer, so maybe they listen more closely to my requests) and they don't have a huge rule book to consult before they try something. While you won't find my CLEC in Cincinnati I'd bet some of your local CLECs are just as good. Here's what I'd try: Interview a couple of the larger ones serving your area and tell them what level of business they might get from you. Then install a PRI (or T-1) on a 60 day trial basis (gratis if possible and with no disconnect penalty) and see how they do. How's their installation interval? Have they configured the trunks to work with your equipment correctly (or do you have to spend hours troubleshooting with them)? Does the LD work as you expect? Things like that. If it seems positive I'd make the change and start saving money! Good luck! Al BMN wrote in message news:telecom23.396.3@telecom-digest.org: > Looking to get the low down on wire line alternatives to Cincinnati > Bell. They don't want to play ball on renegotiating our pricing and I > am wondering how good, bad or indifferent other providers are. We have > about 10K/month in local and LD. Its a lot of work to switch and > sometimes the devil you know ... etc. > Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 15:47:45 -0400 Geoffrey Welsh wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Isn't Win 98 or Win 2000 actually > preferable and more flexible for most people anyway? PAT] I find the the Windows 95/98 lineage to be a lot less reliable than the NT/2000/XP/2003 line and, since Windows 98 (and, presumably, ME; I never even tried it after I realized how disgusted I was at 98) takes up a lot more memory than 95, I would not recommend using anything in that product line, period. The Windows 2000 vs. XP (especially after you set it to 'maximum performance', which turns off almost all of the visual effects) is a bit less clear, though the advantages of XP are unlikely to overcome the hassle of the activation. Geoffrey Welsh VOTE FOR BUSH IN 2004 because the Founding Fathers were just kidding about that liberty stuff. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Microsoft Changed My Mind Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 20:41:27 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Paul A Lee writes: > Yes, the activation procedures, serial numbers, key codes, etc., are > a frustrating nuisance and introduce their own operational > problems. But let's put at least some of the blame on the prodigious > software bootlegging that has driven numerous software companies -- > not just Microsoft -- to such measures. Feh. The activation scheme doesn't stop the warez kiddies for a second -- there were key generators out there the day XP was released, and they're easily findable on the net. Software piracy is bad, but annoying activation processes are 100% proven not to stop or even slow it. So why do it? You're only annoying your actual *good* customers. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 14:22:25 -0400 Subject: Vonage Dials Up $105M Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=58297 VOIP competition reached another all-time high today as Vonage Holdings Corp. announced it has closed a $105 million Series D funding round, bringing its total funding to date to $208 million. The company says its financing will be used to speed the expansion of its service in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the Pacific Rim, and Latin America. With more than 240,000 lines in service, Vonage says it continues to add more than 25,000 lines per month to its network. At the end of 2003, it had about 87,500 lines in service, according to Vonage CFO John Rego. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led Vonage's latest round with a $40 million investment. The VC firm has pumped about $60 million into the company overall, Rego says. Other investors include 3i Group plc and Meritech Capital Partners. This funding boost for Vonage comes at a time when VOIP competition in the U.S. has taken an interesting turn. Full story at: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=58297 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ 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. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #400 ******************************