From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 2 22:30:43 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0F2AF15291; Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:30:43 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #51 Message-Id: <20060203033043.0F2AF15291@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:30:43 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, ITS_LEGAL autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:32:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 51 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Western Union in 1950-60's (Digest Archives Reprint) Western Union Public Telegram Offices (Patrick Townson) Re: Western Union Telegrams -- End of a Very Long Era (Lisa Hancock) Carlyle Group Gives IPv6 a Vote of Confidence (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment ... (T) Re: EFF Sues AT&T Over Phone Surveillance (Lisa Hancock) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in Lobby (Thomas Daniel Horne) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in Lobby (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 15:37:18 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Western Union in 1950-60's (Digest Archives Reprint) About 14 years ago in this Digest, I printed some files from Business Week Magazine which had appeared 32 years prior to that; they appeared in Business Week in August, 1960, discussing WUTCO over the decade prior to that. In this file: 3 part series "Things Looked Rosy For Western Union, appeared in TELECOM Digest February 20-24, 1992. Also, "Early History of Western Union, from Digest February 24, 1992. Also see 'history of telex' file and references to Morkrum Company. Also see articles on 'Western Union Clocks' during 1991-92 in Digest. From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 22:51:55 -0800 Subject: Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960 - Part I The August 27, 1960 issue of {Business Week} showed W. U. President Walter P. Marshall on the front cover, with a pushbutton message switching position in the background, and the following story inside. (page 86 ff) "Electronics Puts Young Blood in Old Company" "When Walter P. Marshall (cover) stepped into the president's job at Western Union in December, 1948, it looked as if his tenure might be short and unhappy. Western Union, once the backbone of fast and dependable long-distance communications in the United States, was, quite plainly, a deathly sick old company. It was saddled with high labor costs, old equipment, crushing debt, and local operations that often cost more to run than they returned in gross revenue. "Some Western Union executives were waiting for a declaration of bankruptcy; many doubted that the company would survive to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1951. "-Rejuvenation- But in the ensuing 10 years, Western Union not only has pulled through, but it has thoroughly rejuvenated itself. Instead of a winded oldster that could only look back at the days when its competition was the Pony Express, it now resembles an electronics adolescent with a bright and profitable future. The company's new strength already is evident: Last year its revenues and earnings set an all-time high. "Western Union can be expected to keep on growing. In the next five years, management hopes to spend $350-million on expansion. Next year, the company plans to spend $105-million for plant and equipment on top of $45-million this year. Completion of a transcontinental microwave network will increase the system's circuit capacity 10 times, and will add enormously to the range of services it can offer. It will be able to provide increased telegraphic service, leased voice channels, facsimile, closed-circuit television, and perhaps most important of all, high-speed data processing channels that can handle digital information at computer speeds. "-I. Financial Turnaround "The job of turning Western Union around from a faltering centenarian to an eager and aggressive competitor in the communications field was a difficult one. Before the company could even think about modernization, it had a raft of complex financial problems to solve. Few outside the company realized just how close to extinction it was 10 years ago. "A look at the books shows how deeply in trouble the company was: "- Operating losses were about $1-million a month. "- Bond issues totaling $30-million were maturing in 1950 and 1951, and bond issues and notes totaling $35-million were due in 1960, but no provisions for paying them were being made. "- Labor costs were eating up 69.2% of the company's gross revenues, leaving little money for maintenance or modernization. "- Message service, Western Union's basic revenue source, was declining steadily. It dropped from $178-million in 1947 to $146- million in 1949. "- Competition was formidable. More and more, business communication was going over long-distance telephone lines, and American Telephone & Telegraph's TWX service, a teletypewriter exchange network, was diverting a tremendous amount of business from Western Union's wires. "So the yellow glow of the familiar Western Union offices burned red in Western Union's ledgers. The many local offices it maintained hung like a weight around the company's neck, pulling it deeper toward losses. Yet to abandon some of the offices or even limit their hours required not only months of delay but also expensive hearings. "-Quick Action - These are problems that Marshall set about solving when he took over in 1948. He was 47 and had a background in financing and accounting. Unlike most of his predecessors, he had long experience in the telegraph business. With the exception of Joseph Egan, Marshall's immediate predecessor, Western Union's presidents since the 1930s all had been railroad men. "Marshall had come to Western Union in 1943 as assistant to the president when the company absorbed Postal Telegraph, where he had been executive vice-president. For years, Postal Telegraph had been on the verge of insolvency, and its troubles provided familiar experience. Marshall's first actions as president of Western Union were to organize the company's debts and to start cutting labor costs. "He took care of debts by selling off property and leasing it back, by selling pole lines, cashing in securities, and selling such subsidiaries as Teleregister and American District Telegraph. For example, the big Western Union building in downtown New York was sold to Woodmen of the World Life Insurance ... [illegible] company for over $12-million. "Then Marshall shocked the board of directors by announcing immediate plans to spend millions of dollars on a broad modernization and expansion program for services such as Desk-Fax, a method of transmitting telegrams by facsimile directly to business offices. He also accelerated the program for installing automatic switching centers in 15 cities. He got management behind a big push to get more private wire business and to increase facsimile services. All of this cost a lot of money. And with the company's history of steadily diminishing revenues, it looked risky indeed. "-Quick Results- Losses in 1949 amounted to nearly $4.5-million on sales of $181-million. But by the end of 1950, Marshall's moves began to show results. Unprofitable local offices were being cut out and automatic switching centers were beginning to increase efficiency. That year alone, labor costs were cut by nearly $6-million, revenues went up to almost $188-million, and the company turned a $7-million profit. There has been no red ink since then, and in 1959 earnings were a record $16-million on sales of $276-million. "The company's debt position also has been reversed. All the outstanding bond issues have been paid in full or advantageously refinanced." [Moderator's Note: This is part one of three parts. Part two will appear in the Digest Friday night, and part three on Saturday. PAT] From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 22:52:16 -0800 Subject: Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960 - Part II [Moderator's Note: This is part two of three parts of an article which appeared in {Business Week} magazine over thirty years ago, back in 1960. Part one appeared Friday morning; part three will appear here on Saturday morning. PAT] "-II. Leap to Modernization- "So, with its financial house in order, Western Union is in a position to take off in new directions to insure its future. And in many respects, never has there been so fortuitous a time for the company to modernize. "During the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, startling progress has been made in electronics and communications technology. Two developments particularly were important to Western Union: (1) the perfection of high frequency radio relay system - microwave - which provided a logical and much less expensive way to increased long-distance facilities; and (2) development of computers and automatic electronic switching systems, which promised big increases in efficiency at high reliability levels. "-Big Jump- With much of its plant obsolete, Western Union was able to go from old manual systems to the most modern automatic equipment in one big jump. For example, in the 1940s almost all of Western Union's services were carried on telegraph channels of a very narrow frequency range of 170 cycles per second, providing a top communications speed of only 60 to 100 words a minute. Today, the company's nearly complete transcontinental microwave system will consist of two 6-million cycle channels capable of carrying broadband television, handling over 12,000 simultaneous telegraph messages, transmitting computer tapes at high speed, or carrying voice communication or facsimile. These so-called broad band signals can't be carried on ordinary wires, but require coaxial cable or ultra-high-frequency radio beam carriers. "Had its modernization started earlier and been more gradual, the company would have sought to increase its capacity slowly through intermediate steps. These would have been expensive and yet they would not have been able to provide the facilities the company now feels it needs. "-Decreasing Dependency- The new broad-band system also will reduce Western Union's dependence on other communications carriers. Western Union particularly has been dependent on the Bell System for leased facilities. In the early 1950s, about 70% of Western Union's circuit mileage was leased, mostly from AT&T. "Although the number of leased wires has not been reduced in absolute terms, today their proportion has decreased to about 60%. S. M. Barr, Western Union vice-president in charge of planning, expects this percentage to drop to 40% in the next few years, hopes to get the proportion of leased facilities down to 20% eventually. 'You can see the kind of growth we expect, then, if we see no reduction and a possible increase in the number of leased facilities,' he says. "The big increase in traffic that Western Union anticipates for its new system is not likely to come from public message services, which have been the backbone of its business. This type of service basically is tied to population growth, and to some extent to merchandising gimmicks such as singing birthday greetings, flowers and candy by wire, and other special services. [1] "-Private Expansion- But it does expect its private wire services to expand greatly. Here, particularly, Western Union's new facilities will be of help in solving communications problems for private customers. Western Union already has a good deal of savvy when it comes to tailoring a special system to a customer's needs. About 2,000 companies in the U.S. -- among them U.S. Steel, General Electric, Sylvania, and United Air Lines -- have private communications networks leased from Western Union. And its bank wire service interconnects 213 banks in 55 cities with pushbutton switching. "Western Union got into the private systems business without much selling effort. In most cases, it just waited for customers to come to it. But those days, like the days of the hand-operated message centers, are long since gone. "Now the company is pushing leased systems aggressively, and the results show it. In 1950, private wire revenues brought in $8-million, or about 5% of Western Union's message business. In 1959, private wires sang a $52.3-million tune on the cash register. It won't be long, Marshall believes, before the revenues from private wires top those from public message services. "-Meeting the Competition- Until recently, however, Western Union could not compete directly with AT&T's TWX network, which offers direct customer-to-customer teleprinter connection through a central exchange system similar to a telephone network. Several years ago, FCC gave Western Union permission to purchase TWX from AT&T, but the price was too high. Now, Western Union is expanding a roughly similar system called Telex that will offer direct customer-to-customer dialing. [2] "Besides direct dialing, the biggest difference between Telex and TWX is the method of billing customers. Telex customers are charged only for the time that the facilities are in use plus a 50-cent connection charge. A short order to a New York broker from, say, Chicago via Telex might be subject only to a 10-second time charge, compared with a three-minute basic charge on TWX. "-Growing Network- At present, Telex service is available only between New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. But before yearend, 19 more cities will be added. In 1961, it will cover 23 more cities, and management hopes to get approval from the board of directors to cover 128 cities by 1962." [1] One would think that a writer for such an astute publication as {Business Week} would have noted the price elasticity of personal communication. This would have suggested that the dropping price of long-distance telephony would devastate public Telegram service, as it did. [2] Dial Telex service began in Germany in 1933, just three years after AT&T introduced manual TWX service in the U.S. Telex used modified SxS telephone switching equipment. Western Union imported the European technology and equipment, even to the 50-baud teleprinters. One wonders if AT&Ts conversion to dial TWX was at all in response to competition from Telex, or if it was simply a matter of taking advantage of the switched telephone network for transmission. I assume that manual TWX calls were timed using Calculagraphs, just as voice calls were. Telex used a simpler charging mechanism, no doubt because it originated long before automated telephone billing. At the time a Telex call was set up the customer's charging register was connected to a pulse generator, the pulse rate depending on the distance to the called station. The charges could be reduced at night simply by slowing down the pulse generators. At least in Germany there were Telex PBXs in hotels; in this case the pulses were relayed to the PBX so that the hotel guest could be billed. Telex was always customer-dialed long-distance service. [Moderator's Note: Although telex was always customer-dialed, provision was made for an operator's help in completing a difficult connection. Dialing (was it? ) '17' from the telex unit connected the user to WU's 'manual assistance positions' in Bridgeport, MO. An operator there communicated with the user by typing back and forth on the keyboard, like a modern day 'chat', and the operator could then do what any telco operator could do: complete the connection, verify a busy terminal, busy circuits, out of order, or number not in service condition on the receiving end. In addition, the WU manual assistance operator was used to place 'collect' (reverse charge) connections and special or third-party billing. I think dialing '19' connected the user to WU directory assistance where help was given by 'chatting'. Part three of this article will appear in the Digest on Saturday. PAT] From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 20 Feb 92 23:44:55 -0800 Subject: Things Looked Rosy for Western Union in 1960, part III [Moderator's Note: This is part three of three parts of an article about Western Union which appeared in {Business Week} magazine more than thirty years ago, in 1960. Parts one and two appeared in the Digest on Friday morning and Friday evening. To continue this series about Western Union, an issue Saturday overnight/Sunday morning will include an article from {Fortune Magazine}, March, 1959, also supplied by Jim Haynes. PAT] "-III. Building For the Future- "Western Union has great hopes that Telex will increase its revenue load many fold. Even so, it's hard to imagine that such business will fill all the extra traffic capacity that Western Union's new microwave system provides. And so, once again, President Marshall is counting on electronics technology to help him out. Three out of every four systems that Western Union is now installing for customers include provision for handling data processing information. Communication between computers, or tape-to-tape digital messages between dispersed plants, offices, and data processing centers may eventually equal the volume of voice and message communication. AT&T President Frederick R. Kappel, too, thinks that's possible. "-Expandable System- So Marshall believes his modern plant is coming on stream just in time to catch the new flood of data processing business. The transcontinental microwave network's two 6-million cycle channels each are capable of handling transcontinental telecasts, or thousands of telegraphic, voice, and data processing channels. The system is designed to carry up to seven broad-band channels, and these will be added as needed. "The Transcontinental network, with extension legs, will cost $56-million, but once the microwave relay towers are in place, the system's capacity can be doubled for about 15% to 20% of this cost. Eventually, Western Union will have a great loop of microwave routes that will interconnect North and South as well as East and West. The full system may cost $250- million between now and 1970. "-Government Contracts- Part of the load the new microwave system will carry is already under contract. The U.S. Air Force hired Western Union to build an automatic system of data and message handling that will interconnect all domestic Air Force bases. The combat and logistics network (COMLOGNET) [1] also costs, coincidentally, $56- million and will be operated by Air Force personnel. Western Union also built for the Air Force an international automatic switching telegraph network, [2] which was completed last May, and has put in a high-speed weather map facsimile system for the Strategic Air Command. In addition, it built a nationwide weather map facsimile system for the Weather Bureau that serves several hundred points. "To work out new communications applications to keep its microwave system busy, Western Union has enlarged its engineering and research departments. The company is now spending about $6-million a year on research and development -- more than ever before in its history. Of course, Bell Laboratories spends a lot more. But Marshall has some pretty definite ideas on how to get the most mileage out of research expenditures. "'One problem,' he admits, 'is getting the right kind of people that can really come through with innovations, and I'm not at all sure it is possible to hire this kind of person off the street, even if you have the most wonderful facilities in the world. Some people just don't like to work for big organizations.' "-Research Interests- To tap that kind of talent, Western Union has purchased large interests in a number of small companies that offer intriguing technological or manufacturing competence: "Microwave Associates, Inc., a leading developer of microwave elements such as waveguides, tubes, and semiconductor elements. "Technical Operations, Inc., a Boston company engaged in contract research for the government and industry in computing, physics, mechanical engineering and electronics. "Dynametrics Corp., another Boston company, which produces electronic measuring equipment that possibly could be related to future production control systems. Such systems might fit into an integrated data processing system built around a Western Union network. "Hermes Electronics Co., a producer of crystal filters for microwave uses and designer of part of the telemetering system for the Titan missile. Hermes also has done a lot of work on computer translators that change binary code to decimal readouts. "Gray Mfg. Co., Hartford, manufacturer of switchboards, dictating machines, and electronic gear. "Teleprinter Corp., which has developed the smallest page teleprinter on the market. [3] "These six companies dovetail so well as a combined research, engineering, and manufacturing operation that there are incessant rumors that Western Union intends to meld them into one big outfit. Marshall denies such an intent, disputes the logic of such a move on the ground that the talent attracted by these companies comes from their small size and independence. Actually, Western Union benefits substantially from the present management. As part owner, it can use the services of the individual companies and also coordinate their activities to some degree. "In addition to these six companies, Western Union also has invested in Teleprompter Corp. But this company falls into a different category. Teleprompter is not a manufacturer of communications equipment. It custom-designs office communication centers, assembling equipment made by others and mounting it on its own furniture. But Teleprompter's work in closed-circuit and pay TV and in other fields jibes with Western Union's interests. "-Dynamic Outlook- These new interests and Western Union's own research efforts all point to a greatly expanded future for the company. Although it still has some problems to solve, the company is in vastly better shape than it was ten years ago. Instead of sitting back and being outdated by new technology, Western Union very definitely is counting on the latest electronic wizardry to win a bigger piece of the communications market for itself." [1] COMLOGNET started out as a bunch of IBM card transceiver machines, which used internal modems to transmit punched cards over private telephone lines connecting the Air Materiel Command bases. When the Air Force set out to replace these with a Real communication system, both the name and the scope of the project changed several times as is typical of government projects. Names that followed COMLOGNET were first AFDATACOM and ultimately AUTODIN (automatic digital network), which became the main record communication system for the whole DOD. The original terminals consisted of a Model 28 ASR teletypewriter, an IBM card reader/punch, and a refrigerator-sized electronics package made by IBM. Transmission was synchronous using a modified Fieldata code. All transmissions were encrypted. This was somewhat to the dismay of the materiel people, who had started out with the card transceivers in their Base Supply offices; the AUTODIN terminals had to be locked up in secure Base Communications buildings because of the encryption equipment. So the supply people had to carry their cards between buildings on the base. There were also a few magnetic tape AUTODIN terminals. This was in the days before IBMs tape format became a de facto standard of the industry; so the terminals had to be designed to read and write the kind of tapes appropriate to the kind of computer they were to be used with. AUTODIN provided both message switching (i.e. store-and-forward) and circuit switching a la Telex. The switching centers for AUTODIN used computers made by RCA, originally discrete-transistor machines contemporary with the RCA 301-501-601 line, later replaced by machines of RCAs Spectra 70 line. Having to replace all those original computers after only five years or so must have been terribly galling to old Western Union hands, as some of the company's own offices were still using teleprinters made by Morkrum-Kleinschmidt prior to 1930. [2] This system was Western Union's Plan 55, based on paper tape store and forward technology. The switching centers used a combination of electromechanical and vacuum-tube electronic technology. Cross- office transmission was at 200 wpm, requiring electronic transmitting and receiving distributors and parallel-input reperforators. Plan 55 was superseded by AUTODIN when the latter acquired Teletype as well as punched card capabilities. [3] Perhaps Western Union hoped to use Teleprinter Corp. to free itself from dependence on AT&Ts Teletype subsidiary. W.U. had made some previous efforts to build its own teletypewriters. As things turned out the Teleprinter product, MITE (Miniature Integrated Teleprinter Equipment), was popular with the military for its small size and weight but never achieved much of a commercial market. From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Sat, 22 Feb 92 00:01:43 -0800 Subject: Early History of Western Union This is excerpted from {Fortune Magazine}, March 1959 - an excellent article with nice pictures, "Western Union, by Grace of FCC and AT&T". "Many legends have blurred the history of Western Union. Contrary to widely held belief, for instance, the company was not founded by Samuel F. B. Morse, the portrait painter who invented the first telegraph. Initially, as a matter of fact, it didn't even use the Morse patents and, relatively speaking, it was a latecomer to the field. "Morse did his pioneering work on the telegraph in the 1830's. By 1850 there were fifty telegraph companies operating between various cities in the U.S., most of them with licenses on the Morse patents. "In 1846, Royal E. House of Vermont had come up with a device that permitted the electrical impulse to imprint letters and numbers on tape, eliminating the dot-dash symbols. The House printer became the basis for a new company financed and operated by a group of Rochester[3] investors headed by Hiram Sibley. This was the New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph Co., formed to link upper New York State to St. Louis. But even as Sibley's plans began to unfold, the competition in the telegraph industry became chaotic. Some cities were being served by three competing patent systems. Meanwhile the war in rates was ruinous. "Sibley had a simple solution: consolidate all the telegraph companies into one. New York & Mississippi Valley Telegraph was reincorporated as the Western Union Co., with licenses on both Morse and House patents, in New York State in 1856. Its avowed purpose was to bring together into one company all the telegraph firms then operating beyond the Hudson -- hence 'Western' Union. "Western Union grew at a fantastic rate. The New York company gobbled up hundreds of competing telegraph companies, made exclusive, and advantageous, deals with the railroads, and reached all the way to the Pacific Coast. By 1866 it had a virtual monopoly. In the first ten years of its life its capital had grown from $500,000 to $41 million. "-The war with the telephone- "The company's first brush with the telephone came in 1877, when it imperiously declined an opportunity to buy the invention of Alexander Graham Bell for $100,000. Soon after, Western Union decided to enter the telephone field via the American Speaking Telephone Co., which would exploit voice-communication patents by Elisha Gray [1] and Thomas Edison. The Western Union system was quite as good as Bell's, and Western Union began to grow in the telephone field. But in 1878, Bell sued for patent infringement. As part of the settlement, reached the next year, Western Union agreed to stay out of the voice business and Bell agreed to stay out of the telegraph business. But Bell slipped out of the agreement when it formed, in 1885, a new company called the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. "In 1909, AT&T won stock control of Western Union by purchasing the shares held by the estate of Jay Gould. Theodore Vail, a distant cousin of the Alfred Vail who had helped Morse start his telegraph line, was president of Bell at the time, and he planned to integrate the two companies. To begin with he had himself elected president of Western Union and began using it to promote the telephone by encouraging people to phone in their telegrams. Western Union had already developed a private-wire business with a volume of $3 million annually, and AT&T took this over, too, adding it to the small private-wire service it had developed on its own. "In 1914, to avert government antitrust action, AT&T disposed of its Western Union holdings, but stayed in the private-wire business. After AT&T and Western Union parted, expansion of the telgraph system merely kept pace with the increase in population. By the Thirties the business was contracting. More and more Americans forsook telegrams for long-distance phone calls and air mail. Western Union was now bothered also by competition from the Postal Telegraph Service, a system formed in the 1880's. Postal had been taken over by Sosthenes Behn of IT&T in 1928, and thereafter fought Western Union hard. As if this were not enough, AT&T introduced in 1931 its TWX service, whereby subscribers could have direct telegraphic connection with each other through a central exchange. (AT&T invited Western Union to join it in the TWX network, and later even considered selling the system to Western Union, but Western Union couldn't pay the price.) "In the early Thirties a debate began on whether there was enough telegraph business to support two telegraph companies -- meaning Western Union and Postal, but not AT&T, which most people thought of as a telephone service only. The debate was not resolved until 1943, when Congress authorized a merger of the two companies. An amendment to the same law authorized Western Union to buy the telegraphic services of AT&T -- but it did not make it mandatory for AT&T to sell." The following material comes from a {Business Week} article of approximately ten years earlier than the {Fortune} article: Nov 19, 1949. "Western Union's only all-telegraph competitor of recent years in the domestic field, Postal Telegraph, Inc. started in the 1880s. It competed with Western Union with indifferent success, but Western Union was prevented by law from buying its competitor. "Finally, during the war, it became obvious that Postal couldn't go on. Operations for several years had been dependent on RFC [2] loans. So Congress finally permitted Western Union to absorb its competitor (BW - Aug. 7 '43, p102). "Western Union was probably not too eager to acquire Postal in 1943. For one thing, Postal's facilities partly duplicated its own. Further it had (1) to take over Postal's $12.5-million debt to RFC, and (2) to guarantee jobs for most of Postal's staff for four years, despite its own heavy labor costs. "However, Western Union didn't have much choice. Otherwise the government might have taken over Postal. "Another competitor is the government-operated communications systems. The armed services and the State Department have their own networks of 'record' communications (any means of communication that produces a permanent record on paper) ..." [This seems like a silly remark to me, since the government-operated systems were based on private wires leased from the common carriers.] [1] This is the Elisha Gray who lost the race to the Patent Office to Bell. I remember in the 50s or so there was a "Gray Telephone Pay Station Co.", making pay stations almost identical in appearance to the Bell phones, for the independent companies. I wonder if this is connected with the Gray Mfg. Co. that was listed as a Western Union affiliate in another article? [2] RFC = Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a Depression-era government agency in the business of lending money to business firms to help them get back on their feet. [3] I wonder if the late Larry Lippman, in clearing out the Western Union office there, was aware that Western Union was started in Rochester. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I recall receiving a phone call or two from Larry Lippman in 1989-90 asking me if I would join him in Rochester, NY for the cleaning out/closing of the local Western Union office there. I always regretted not being able to be there to help him, but I was quite ill at the timem ad simply could not go there to help him; it was really my loss. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:00:00 EST In Chicago, and almost all cities, large and small, there was a public telegraph office; a place where people could go either to send a telegram or wait for the arrival of one. In the bigger cities at least, the public offices were quite ornate places, replete with high back comfortable chairs for customer use, writing desks to sit at when you wished to compose your message or sit to read the message you had received, etc. They all had nice carpeting, were kept very cool in the summer with overhead ceiling fans which turned sort of slowly, spitoons and ashtrays, a long marbletop counter where one was waited on by the clerk(s) on duty (the desks where one could compose their message were finely polished wood) and of course there were always one or two Western Union clocks, often times the 'grandfather' style clock which had Western Union works in it. The offices were almost always open 24/7 and generally were rather noisy inside. You would always hear the clock(s) ticking, except for when the printing machinery would start up to print an incoming message or send a message. In Chicago, the public office was on the first floor of the main head- quarters building for Western Union, 407 South LaSalle Street, more or less across the street from LaSalle Street (Train) Station, and about a block or so away from the Illinois Bell central office locatred at 65 West Congress Parkway. Western Union had some kind of arrangment with the telephone company in most towns, the public office phone number was always (exchange)-4321. Chicago was a little different in this respect, the headquarters right upstairs had a switchboard whose number was WABash-4321 but the phone message takers were on WABash-7111. Smaller offices in little towns, etc were often times not operated directly by the company, but were maintained as 'agency stations', and operated by individuals who were 'agents' for the company. Western Union was like Greyhound Bus in this respect: the public offices which were good money-makers for the company were owned by the company; those which made less (if any) profit were owned by these agents, who were expected to hire their own help, transmit/recieve telegrams, etc. Most of the smaller 'agency locations' received a commission on their traffic both send-paid and received-collect in the range of 10-15 percent, where at a 'company' or 'corporate location' of course Western Union kept all the money, but also had to pay all the bills, the payroll, the rent and utilities, etc. Agents, on the other hand, paid all those expenses themselves, including their payroll, which generally amounted to a clerk for each shift (or time period in a day) as well as a 'relief clerk' as needed. Typically the agents tried to make do with only one clerk at a time to both man the front counter, send/receive the telegrams, answer the phone, etc. Company locations, generally limited to larger cities, would be more 'extravagent' with two or three telegraphers working in their area behind the main counter, and at least one or sometimes two clerks in front. The office would be sort of quiet (except for the telephone [always whatever-4321] which seemed to ring almost constantly.) Then the quietness would be broken as one would hear the 'whirring noise' of the gears engaging on a printing machine, then the noisy chatter of the keys as they began to strike the paper, etc. Sometimes, there would be almost constant clatter for hours at a time in the busier offices. Offices like Chicago had several 'circuits' in a 'hunting' system like lines on a switchboard: If things were busy, three or four printing machines would be going at once. One or two of the circuits were used for outgoing stuff, two or three were used for incoming messages. Experienced telegraphers usually operated two or three machines each; sitting in a swivel rolling wheels chair, they would hear the intial 'whirr', glance around to see which terminal it was and scoot their chair to that position to begin accepting a new incoming message. Incoming messages were put on a spindle on a counter near the clerk, who would enter it in the log book, stamp the proper indicia on the message, fold it up and put it in an envelope. Even if the customer was in the office waiting for the message to get there, the rule was 'the customer is entitled to privacy at all times', so always, the message was folded and put in an envelope before handing it over. One of the clerk's duties was to always announce in a clear voice, "a message recieved for Name; is Name here?" If the person came to the counter the message would be handed over; if the person was not there then the message was given to a messenger for delivery to the person at the address specified. In reverse, if a message was to be sent out, and the customer had brought the message to the office, after being seated at one of the desks used for writing messages, using the pads of yellow paper for that purpose, the customer would approach the counter with the scrap of yellow paper in hand. The clerk had the task of reading the message, using a red pencil just like an old-fashioned school teacher, squinting at the scribble marks on the yellow paper. Now and again the clerk would look at the customer and ask "what is this word here?" the customer would tell the clerk who would then use the red pencil and draw a circle around the word in question and off in the margin somewhere _neatly print_ the word in question. When the clerk was satisfied with the results, she (most clerks were women; most telegraphers were men) would count up the words and say to the customer, alright, this will be fifty cents or whatever it would cost. The clerk was expected to be a sales person also; she would say 'this is fourteen words, you can send six more words for seventy- five cents as a day message, that way it will not have to wait until night rates go in effect.' The customer would consider the offer she made him and decide one way or another. Many customers would approach the counter with a yellow slip of paper mostly looking looking like chicken scrawls and the clerk would have to ask him "what is it you are trying to say?" The customer would lean over and with sort of an embarassed look explain what he was trying to convey. The clerk would say, "then let's do it this way, and get it all down into eight or ten words instead of the hundred words you have here, and she would write the whole thing over for the customer with her red pencil, then show it to the customer, who was usually quite pleased at how the clerk had done it. And she would say to him, "now if this is what you want to tell your relatives, do me a favor and sign your name here at the bottom of the page." The person would sign off, the clerk would count up the words and announce the total due just as usual. Then she had to put the inidicia on that message outgoing as well, in addition to special indicia in the form of a rubber stamp which read "My name is (name). I am employed by Western Union in (city) office. First being deposed and under oath I state that the customer asked for assistance in preparing and sending his message." This was an FCC requirement as part of 'secrecy in communications' which WUTCO considered a very serious matter. The clerk _never_ discussed the matter any further or risked being fired if she did. Outgoing messages were handled the same way: On a spindle, a little attention-getting bell rung, and presently one of the telegraphers would pick it off the spindle and send it out. The clerks had to turn on/turn off their smiles and tears all day long depending on the customer they were with. An incoming message stated that 'grandpa had passed away; funeral on Tuesday, please come home'. With a somber look on her face, the clerk call the person's name; they had been waiting there in the office; she hands them the envelope. The customer opens the envelope, reads the bad news and gives it to her husband who reads it quietly and gently squeezes his wife's hand. The clerk would likely say something like "I sure am sorry to have to give you this news". A few seconds later when the machine in back started chattering again, it would be to tell the recipients that "junior graduated from high school yesterday", and as she handed over that message to the person waiting there when she saw them start to smile and show pleasure at what they were reading the clerk might also smile and say, "well Junior sure sounds like a very smart young guy!" Their laughs and tears turned on and off all day as called for, based on the message the customer recieved or sent out. And always the salesperson: would you like to respond to this message as long as you are here? You can send a ten word reply giving them congratulations for just sixty cents. An era long since gone. Most of the public telegraph offices were gone by the early 1970's, and people had to start calling in their messages to a central message taker in (I think) St. Louis. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Western Union Telegrams -- End of a Very Long Era Date: 2 Feb 2006 11:38:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all > Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any > inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal > patronage. I tried looking up the message but it was gone. Nothing was on the WU site except "Telegram" was blanked out. I wish I had known before the closure so I could of sent a Telegram just for the heck of it. The question remains: Suppose you need to quickly send a message to someone with an officially recognized receipt for legal purposes? I don't think a fax reaches that standard because it's easy to forge a fax receipt and no neutral third party is involved. Certified mail provides a legal receipt, but is too slow for most purposes. [public replies please] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 13:12:54 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Carlyle Group Gives IPv6 a Vote of Confidence USTelecom dailyLead February 2, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cUrYfDtutamPkFeWSA TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Carlyle Group gives IPv6 a vote of confidence BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Sprint Nextel names local phone spinoff * Analysis: Nortel-Huawei combo could create video powerhouse * IPSphereForum adds Verizon to its ranks * Alcatel, Comcast report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Author Steven Shepard teaches Crash Course at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Cambridge teams with MIT for Wi-Fi network * CBS to sell "Survivor" online REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * U.S. Patent Office backs RIM in patent dispute * Lawmakers back swift action on phone record sales * FCC looks into wireless spectrum discounts Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cUrYfDtutamPkFeWSA ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 17:38:14 -0500 In article , jmeissen@aracnet.com says: > I notice that in the UK Bulldog Broadband offers 8Mb/s DSL for 20 > pounds per month, for the life of your contract, and is starting to > deploy 20Mb/s ADSL+2 service (no price quoted). > Here in the States, Verizon offers a max 3Mb/s service for $30 per > month (after $20 per month for the first three months). And if you're > lucky and you're in one of the areas where they're deploying FIOS, you > can get 5Mb/s for $36 per month (which seems to be a drop from the > $40/mo I remember seeing the last time I looked). > Could it be the competition created by the US government's rulings to > give incumbent phone providers exclusive access to their networks? > For comparison purposes it's useful to note that while it's expensive > for US dollars to buy UK products, the salaries and prices in UK > currency for a UK citizen are roughly equivalent to US salaries and > prices in US currency for US citizens. With Cox I pay $39.95 for 5Mb/2Mb - for an extra $10.00 I can get 15Mb/2Mb but to be quite honest, 5Mb/2Mb is plenty fast enough for me right now. Now, if you want to talk deep discount, lets talk about the deal that Cox gives the State of Rhode Island. Like a 2Mb symmetrical over coax for $400 a month. Not too shabby - we use two as point-to-points and then we pay $1,200 a month for a 10Mb fiber connection. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: EFF Sues AT&T Over Phone Surveillance Date: 2 Feb 2006 11:55:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Matthew Fordahl wrote: > A civil liberties group sued AT&T Inc. on Tuesday for its alleged role > in helping the National Security Agency spy on the phone calls and > other communications of U.S. citizens without warrants. I am very sensitive to privacy issues. However, this particular case isn't so easy. Clearly, part of it is motivated by politics, that is, people are upset because they don't like Bush in general, not because of the specific issue involved and I don't like that. As the "moral principle", this country was attacked in an act of war and clearly the govt has the duty and responsibility to take defensive measures against a further attack. Spying on the enemy and possibly traitors within this country is a classic activity in time of war. IMHO, part of the issue here is what was done with the information gained. If they turned it over to prosecutors for other routine crimes (ie tax evasion, drug running, import laws), I would object since normal domestic search warrants were not obtained. But AFAIK that was not done. > It also seeks billions of dollars in damages. "Damages" means the plaintiff suffered a monetary loss in some way as a result of the defendant's action. Unless the govt utilized the gleaned information against someone, I'm not sure there was any loss suffered. I am also very hesitant about the class action status, I believe that is overused. > "Our main goal is to stop this invasion of privacy, prevent it from > occurring again and make sure AT&T and all the other carriers > understand there are going to be legal and economic consequences when > they fail to follow the law," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff > attorney. Did the EFF sue all other carriers as well? Activist groups like to pick on the big guys, but that is not fair. If EFF has a true case against the carriers, it has a responsibility to sue every carrier. > The White House has vigorously defended the program, saying the > president acted legally under the constitution and a post-Sept. 11 > congressional resolution that granted him broad power to fight > terrorism. I am not in a position to say if the White House was right or wrong in this action. However, it would appear that it is unfair to order the carriers to make that decision either. I can't help but wonder that the carriers received what appeared to be legitimate official wiretap requests and they complied accordingly. I'm pretty sure if some unknown Fed agent showed up with a wiretap demand without documentation he wouldn't get very far. However, I suspect this came through normal channels that the carriers were used to working with, and thus they had no reason to suspect there may have been a question on them. > "We are quite confident that discovery would reveal evidence proving > our allegations correct," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff attorney. That's very nice, but "discovery" is an expensive time consuming process. Who's gonna pay for AT&T's cost? We are! > "I think we are going to definitely have a fight on state-secret > issues," Bankston said. "I would also point out that the state-secret > privilege has never come up in a case where the rights of so many have > been at issue." Censorship of civilian activities was a major activity in WW II. Even back then it was not particularly appreciated, but it was done. As mentioned, I strongly believe in privacy and normally support EFF efforts. But I'm not so sure on this particular case and I wonder if it's grandstanding. I can think of a great many other privacy issues EFF ought to be concerned about, although they're not very glamorous or headline making. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: Thomas Daniel Horne Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:15:21 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I could never understand is how > stores such as Walmart on the one hand want to encourage shoppers > (although I do not personally care for the chain) yet on the other > hand they can claim that someone is 'tresspassing' if the person comes > in their store. Ditto with public transit. If it is a public place, > which is claimed, then how can a member of the public who chooses to > go inside or upon the property of the store or the transit agency get > arrested by police for trespassing? Yet CTA does that all time; so > does Walmart. Seems to me like Walmart and transit agency want to have > things both ways at the same time. PAT] Pat, Your purpose in being on private or public property must be consistent with the express or implied invitation of the properties owners. It makes perfect sense to me that a mall would not want skateboarders turning there property into a skateboarding park. When a juvenile skateboarder breaks their arm the parents may allege attractive nuisance. Clearly posted signs and active enforcement of the owners right to exclude that activity can serve as a strong element of the property owners defense against such a claim for damages. In the case of Walmart; or Mall wart as I unlovingly call them; any activity on the premise that detracts from the shopping experience of other shoppers is directly contrary to their ownership rights. I don't shop Walmart because I believe they use their market power in predatory and anticompetitive ways. That does not mean I would want to loose that choice because various pressure groups want to be able to harass them out of business by picketing and obstructing perfectly legal commercial activity. My least favorite misunderstanding of property rights is the difference between public ownership and public access. I'm a firefighter / rescuer by avocation. Many times I've had to turn down demands for access to fire stations by members of the public who demand access to the toilets or the apparatus bays on the grounds that "it is a public building." It has not happened often but we have sometimes needed police assistance to have belligerent citizens removed. You have no more right to use the toilet in a firehouse than you do to borrow one of the tankers quartered there to fill your swimming pool or water your lawn. The real kicker in the case of many volunteer fire stations in the US is that they are not publicly owned at all. They are often owned fee simple by a private corporation that is organized under state charter to provide a public service. So when someone tries to push past me at the door to my firehouse, after being denied access to the toilets that are located in locker rooms that are not open to anyone other than fire and rescue personnel, they are committing a number of crimes including assault on a public safety worker to deter the performance of their duty. You see one of our duties is to secure the station and it's contents from any unauthorized access. The same principals apply to a public transit station or conveyance. The express and implied invitation to the public to enter on that premise is for the very limited purpose of buying transportation from one place to another. You cannot set up housekeeping or a shop, You cannot demand the use of space set aside for employees to wash and change, you cannot put your land yacht up on the buss maintenance shops lift to change it's oil and so forth ad nauseam. hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > David wrote: >> The advantage of the passport is that it does not have address. It >> also does not have SSN (or a key that is easily cross-referenced to >> SSN). > For simple ID in cases like this the passport will work. But to say > open a bank account I wonder if banks will accept a document that does > not have an address and a key number. In other words, when they ask > for your license, they record that key number and your address. >> You can have a driver's license and a passport (I don't believe >> you're really allowed to have the license and the non-license ID). > True. I wanted to get a non driver's ID card for this very reason; > plus I wanted to keep my driver's history separate. In other words, > if a cop stops me while walking down the street, he has no need to see > my driver's license, just some official ID. (A passport would be > useful, unless he wanted an official address as well.) But you're > only allowed to get a non driver's ID if you can't drive. They appear > to be rather fussy about giving them out. >> I'll use my passport when I know I'm going to need specific ID (new >> job, getting a mortgage, etc.). > My only concern would be losing your passport. Is it hard to replace > if lost or stolen? For that reason when I traveled internationally I would have the US embassy in the destination country notarize a true attest copy of my Passport so that I could leave the original in the hotel safe. The reason I had it done at the destination embassy is that they new the local procedures and would do it in the form that the locals would recognize. That being said some places will except nothing but the original. I once had to find a different hotel when the hotel I had reservations with insisted that they needed to hold my passport as surety for my payment. I was not willing to have the passport out of my control in that particular country. -- Tom Horne "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both" Benjamin Franklin ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: 2 Feb 2006 13:53:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: CTA has (or did) have an almost > constant 'war' with 'street people' loitering in their stations during > overnight hours in cold weather. In the old, old days there weren't many street people so it wasn't much of a problem. Those people are mentally ill in some manner, some moderately so, some severely. Since the activists sued to shut down the state mental hospitals and made it much harder to commit someone many troubled people are now out on the street. They don't have a long lifespan as exposure and disease will get to them in a few years. Anyway, as time went on the street people grew in numbers and became a problem. Initially the transit carriers (in many cities) simply kicked them out, but the social activists sued the transit carriers and forced them to stop that practice. In the 1980s the situation got really bad as stations turned into whole communities of homeless and the transit carriers were innundated with complaints from regular riders who objected to walking in the human waste products left behind as well as the harassment. > CTA retaliated by remodeling the benches to put arm rest dividers on Other cities did likewise with various specific rules of behavior. Those are harder to argue with and activists have a hard time fighting them, even if they claim they are intended to keep out the homeless. The courts have leaned more toward riders' rights as well. In NYC, you are not allowed to lay down or sleep anywhere in the system. You must exit a train at the end of its run (you can't simply ride on one train back and forth all night as homeless used to do). There are some other rules, too. As mentioned, this is an issue I feel strongly about. A troubled person should not "live" in the transit system. Many die from the third rail or get run over by trains. Many start fires which hurt other people and disrupt the system. Some are violent and have hurt passengers. They are filthy with bodily waste and a health hazard. They harass other passengers. If one or two street people sat in a corner and didn't bother anyone they could be ignored. But that's not how it worked out -- it was far more than "one or two" and they didn't simply sit in the corner. Social activists made things worse by bringing food to transit stations. The homeless then had an incentive to be in the transit system where they'd get fed. The transit carriers tried to stop this but the advocates sued and won in court some years ago. The carriers, as you described, have other tactics. As an aside, there were problems in the mental health care system, but simply closing places down and making commitment extremely difficult was not the answer. There have been numerous publicized cases where a family desperately seeks a dangerous family member to be committed but it can't be done, and the ill person goes out and shoots a bunch of people. Many of the street people are troubled just enough so that they are too disruptive/tempermental to stay with relatives and of course hold down a job. They self medicate their demons through alcohol and drugs. Others ended up on the street from drug abuse. In any event, these people deserve better than a harsh life on the street. Frankly, I've followed the activists' work in closing down the hospitals by lawsuits and I put the blame squarely on them. The hospitals are needed with good staff to take care of these people. > With Walmart (there are _no_ Walmart stores in Chicago itself; only in > a couple of suburbs; that is because the Chicago politicians have > various disputes with Walmart executives over things like Walmart's > pay scale, non-union practices, etc) ... A lot of people hate Walmart, but it is a mixed issue. They are certainly not the first big powerful business; in their glory days the old chain stores like Woolworth's, Sears, and Penney's, had plenty of market power and hurt mom 'n pop stores. In the 1950s a new shopping center with chain stores hurt older stores on the old shopping avenue, so the Walmart onslaught is nothing new. Postwar supermarket chains also were hard on mom 'n pop stores. They opened up two Walmarts near me in somewhat depressed areas. Both stores were a re-use of an empty old shopping center. There wasn't much retail in those neighborhoods by that point anyway and the Walmart brough it new shopping options and jobs for people without them. I'll note that if Walmart is paying so low, people won't quit their other jobs to take them. Another consideration is that Walmarts do have a wide selection and are cheap. From the shopper's point of view, they are a great improvement over the little stores they may have killed off. For people of modest means, being able to buy inexpensive goods is very important. I don't particularly care to shop in Walmart. For sundry items, I prefer Target. Actually, I always liked Woolworths but they're gone. I patronized an independent drugstore until the CVS chain put him out of business. I am forced to admit I usually do better by the CVS because (1) it is open much longer hours which is convenient for me and (2) it offers much greater variety of sundry items. They even got a new pharmacist who is just as helpful to me as the other guy was. So, from the shopper's point of view, the CVS serves me better. As to wages, I don't know the profit situation and if Walmart can afford to pay better than it does. Frankly, I don't think the old time big department stores paid their people that much; a sales clerk was certainly not a rich person. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may recall reading here things I have mentioned about our local Walmart Supercenter versus the rest of the merchants downtown. Now we also have a Walgreen's store which is right downtown, and the other merchants do not like that very well either. Personally, I have a wee bit more sympathy for Walgreens than Walmart because of my personal friendship _many_ years ago with Myrtle Walgreen, widow of Charles the founder of the chain and mother of Charles II, the current president and CEO of the firm. Myrtle was a first class lady. But just like Walmart, the new Walgreens store right downtown does not offer any charge accounts, nor do they accept Main Street Gift Certificates (like the other stores here.) As soon as the other drug stores in town found out that Walgreens was not offering any sort of charge accounts, nor much in the way of customer service, the local merchants circled the wagons and started specificically advertising that _they_ offered charge accounts, _they_ offered delivery service to your home, _they_ worked closely with Medicare on the new Part D thing, _they_ would work closely with your physician to fill your scripts, etc. Buy anything you want here in downtown Independence is their new chant, forget about the Walgreens and the Walmarts; all you need are us, your long time merchants. But you know, Lisa, I can begin to see the handwriting on the wall; more and more vacant store fronts downtown, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #51 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 3 15:27:26 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5642B15133; Fri, 3 Feb 2006 15:27:26 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #52 Message-Id: <20060203202726.5642B15133@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 15:27:26 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Feb 2006 15:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 52 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson File Destroying Worm (Anick Jesdanun) FAQ on Latest Worm (Gregg Keizer) Microsoft Warning on 'MyWife' Worm (Robin Arnfield) More Data Theft (was Ameriprise Notifies Clients of Data Theft) (Al Gillis) Telecom Update #515, February 3, 2006 (Angus TeleManagement Group) AT&T ups Ante in Broadband Price Battle (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News for Friday 3rd February 2006 (cellular-news) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 3, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment (Bob Goudreau) Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment (DLR) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (DLR) Last Laugh! Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (Henry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: File Destroying Worm Not Causing Much Damage Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 12:53:29 -0600 By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer One Italian city's government shut down its computers as a precaution but a file-destroying computer worm otherwise caused relatively little damage when it triggered worldwide Friday. Hundreds of thousands of computers were believed to be infected, but many companies and individuals had time to clean up their machines this week after security vendors and media outlets warned of the "Kama Sutra" worm. "It's been pretty quiet," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security company F-Secure Corp. "We know the word is out there." In Milan, Italy, technicians switched off 10,000 city government computers after discovering the infection Thursday when they had been warned in various internet newsgroups and deciding they didn't have enough time to clean the machines before the worm would began wreaking havoc on Friday. "It has spread to all our computers," said Giancarlo Martella, Milan's councilman for technological innovation and public services. "Knowing how destructive it is, we turned off all personal computers to avoid losing our data." Only the municipality's registry office had been kept open because its "passive terminals" don't store data, Martella said, adding he hoped the computers would return to normal by Monday. Experts had warned earlier that the worm, also known as "CME-24," "BlackWorm," or "Mywife.E," or various other pornographic names could corrupt documents using the most common file types, including ".doc," ".pdf," and ".zip." The worm, nicknamed after the Hindu love manual Kama Sutra because of the pornographic come-ons in e-mails spreading it, affects most versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, prompting the software giant to issue a warning Tuesday. Although the worm tries to disable anti-virus software, vendors have generally posted updates that should protect users. Assuming the computer's internal clock is correct, users can also avoid the worm by leaving their machines off until Saturday, although the worm is set to trigger again on March 3, and on the third day of each month thereafter. Security vendors Trend Micro Inc. and CA Inc. both assessed the overall risk and distribution as low. The worm wasn't expected to spread any more quickly Friday. Rather, Friday was the first trigger date for the file-destroying code. "It's well past the deadline but we haven't confirmed any cases of the Kama Sutra in Japan, which suggests we're not looking at a major outbreak," said Itsuro Nishimoto, an executive at Tokyo-based computer security company LAC Corp. "It has been Friday here for almost a day already," he noted. A manager at Hong Kong's official coordination center for computer emergencies said he had not received any reports or calls for help from those infected by the worm. "It began spreading late last month but we haven't received any calls in the past two weeks," Roy Ko said. "We don't expect to receive any today, either." Ajit Pillai, India's manager for U.S. security firm Watchguard Technologies Inc., said about 10 percent of his customers in the country had the worm, but they "followed the remedies and managed to avoid any problem." "We didn't have to do any firefighting today," Pillai said. Unlike other worms generally designed to help spammers and hackers carry out attacks, Kama Sutra could inflict more damage because it sets out to destroy documents. "This virus is nowhere near as widespread as some of the (recent virus) cases," Hypponen said. "The reason it's talked about is because it's more destructive." He said damage is high among those hit, but many businesses should already be protected by anti-virus software. Home users and smaller companies without the latest software updates may be more vulnerable. But he noted that pornographic stuff is so common on the internet, that people who were not familiar with the worm itself might not take any special notice of it at first. He said one thing people could do is if they normally use AOL or Yahoo -- two email systems with a very high volume of spam and porn -- is to either simply quit using those systems or monitor email from those two very closely. And of course, in any event keep fresh loads of anti-virus software on their machines. Associated Press writers Ariel David in Rome, Sylvia Hui in Hong Kong and S. Srinivasan in Bangalore, India, contributed to this report. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Gregg Keizer Subject: FAQ on Latest Worm Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 12:56:44 -0600 FAQ: How Bad Is Kama Sutra? By Gregg Keizer TechWeb.comWed Feb 1, 5:06 PM ET Where did the worm come from? Nobody knows. It's not a new piece of malware, however. The current variant is part of a family that goes back to March 2004, when Nyxem.a launched a DoS attack against the New York Mercantile Exchange Web site. How serious, really, is the threat? Security vendors generally agree that the worm is no Sober, no Zotob, and certainly no MSBlast. Their threat rankings for the worm reflect that. Symantec, for example, tagged it as a "2" in its 1-5 scale from the start, and hasn't moved it off that number. F-Secure, which uses a 1-4 ranking, slapped the worm with "2," and Microsoft labeled it as "Moderate" in its three-level system. Largely because the number of infected machines is thought to be relatively low, no one has been calling for Doomsday. But some security companies' language is strong. In an alert to its DeepSight customers, Symantec said "it is of crucial importance that this threat be removed if it is found" and "that careful vigilance is executed over the coming days." Sometime on Friday computers already infected with the Kama Sutra worm will start writing over important documents, rendering them useless and potentially causing catastrophic damage to consumers and businesses. The worm, though not nearly as widespread as several that hit Windows PCs in 2005, has caught users' attention for that reason. It's a throw-back to times when hackers crafted their code to destroy data, not to make a buck. What is this worm called? Good question. According to some lists, the worm has more than two dozen obscene monikers. The most popular, though, are Kama Sutra, Blackworm, Blackmal, MyWife, Nyxem and ErectPenis. It's also been dubbed CME-24 by the Common Malware Enumeration database, which is supposed to provide one name for malicious code. What will the worm do? On Friday, the worm will write the text string "DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 F5]" over all data in files with file formats from Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls, .mdb, .mde, .ppt, .pps) and Adobe (.pdf, .psd), as well as popular compression formats (.zip, .rar) and memory dumps (.dmp). The worm will seek out these files on all connected drives, including mounted network drives, USB-based flash drives, and external drives. It also disables many popular security programs -- those from Computer Associates, Kaspersky, McAfee, Panda, Symantec, and Trend Micro -- so that users won't be able to sniff it out once it's planted on the PC. Techniques here include rendering the security programs unable to call for revisions of themselves, and reporting 'all okay' when run. For this reason users may want to manually re-install anti-virus software. When does it start destroying files? According to the security firms which pulled apart the worm's code, it will overwrite files on the third of each month, local time. Friday, Feb. 3, is the first such trigger. The worm will activate by looking at the PC's clock -- not, as have other worms, by synchronizing with time servers -- which is why there have been scattered reports of damage already. Helsinki-based F-Secure, for instance, has said it has received reports from users -- with incorrectly-set PC clocks -- who have had files overwritten. How many machines have been infected? The consensus seems to be that there are about 300,000 compromised PCs, worldwide. That number, however, has been extrapolated from the Web-based counter which was, at least for a time, providing a pretty accurate picture of the infection scale. The counter, which was triggered each time a PC was infected with the worm, was apparently manipulated by a large-scale denial-of-service (DoS) attack, perhaps by the worm's original author or another hacker. What can users do to protect themselves? Most security organizations have made the standard recommendation -- use anti-virus software and keep its definitions up-to-date -- from the beginning. Other advice doled out by Microsoft in a security advisory this week included the also-usual items of not opening e-mail attachments (that's how the worm is packaged and distributed) and running Windows in User, not Administrator, mode. Security vendors' warnings are getting shriller as the Friday deadline approaches, with a universal recommendation that users run an anti-virus scan as soon as possible, and certainly before Friday, PC clock time. Those without anti-virus software or who have been infected -- remember, the worm disables a wide range of security software -- can run one of the free tools security companies have posted on the Internet. Symantec, for instance, has one. And although Microsoft's declined to update its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool out-of-cycle, its online security service, Windows Live Safety, and its in-beta OneCare Live software disinfect compromised computers. Copyright 2006 CMP Media LLC. ------------------------------ From: Robin Arnfield Subject: Microsoft Issues Warning for MyWife Worm Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 12:59:39 -0600 Robin Arnfield, newsfactor.com Microsoft has published a security advisory to warn Internet users about a worm that could destroy their documents on February 3. While other companies have identified the worm by several names -- including Kama Sutra, Blackworm, Nyxem-D, and W32.Blackmail.E -- the Redmond, Washington-based software firm is calling the worm Mywife, and has said that it is a variant of the Win32/Mywife.E@mm virus. "The mass-mailing malware tries to entice users through social-engineering efforts into opening an attached file in an e-mail message," the Microsoft advisory states. It tries to make an intelligent guess regards what the user is likely to be sexually tempted by, then goes on to write an email attempting to lure the user into opening the alleged 'pictures' of 'mywife', 'these pictures of you', etc. "If the recipient opens the file, the malware sends itself to all the contacts that are contained in the system's address book. The malware may also spread over writeable network shares on systems that have blank administrator passwords. Never open mail or operate as 'administrator'" it goes on to say. Purely Malicious Microsoft is warning that on the third day of each month, starting February 3, the Mywife worm will attempt to destroy common document files. The advisory indicates that the malware also modifies or deletes files and registry keys associated with certain security-related applications. "Unlike most viruses, which have some financial objective, such as stealing Internet-banking passwords or using the victim's PC to send spam, this worm is purely malicious," said David Perry, antivirus software firm Trend Micro's global director of education. "It is as if its creators just want people to sit up and take notice of them." Perry said that Trend Micro's free virus-scanning service on its Web site -- used by those who do not have the company's security tools installed on their PCs -- had identified 26,000 computers that were corrupted with the Mywife worm, along with 184,000 infected files. "Other antivirus vendors are reporting hundreds of thousands of computers infected with Mywife, and one security research firm, SANS Institute, is even claiming the number is over two million," Perry said. Threat Assessment Perry also said that, compared to recent outbreaks, Mywife is not a major threat. Stacey Quandt, Aberdeen Group's research director of security solutions and services, agreed. "Since most businesses use antivirus software and understand the risk of clicking on a link in an e-mail, the threat that this worm poses is minimal," Quandt said. "However, the risk is certainly higher for any organization or consumer that does not currently use antivirus software or is not aware of the risks of executables in an e-mail." "Will I be infected, or will someone in my organization be infected?" asked Russ Cooper, senior information analyst at security firm Cybertrust. "The simple fact is that, if you are infected with this one, you were probably infected with something else -- likely a Sober variant -- before. That's because there's nothing special about this one that we haven't been seeing in so many worms over the past 18 months." Cooper said a user has to double-click on a .PIF, .SCR, or .ZIP file to get infected with the worm. "If .ZIP, then you have to further double-click on the .PIF or .SCR it contains," he said. "Further, for you to get infected, you have to have stopped your antivirus from running," Cooper said. "All antivirus applications have been detecting this since virtually the first day it was discovered." With .PIF, .SCR, and .ZIP files, our suggestion is if you are not expecting one, then just ditch it, zap it on the spot without further examination. "What this variant has going for it is that it 'social engineers' people who are tempted by porn." Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Network, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html Also please read more of interest in these areas: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/othernews.html ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: More Data Theft (was Ameriprise Notifies Clients of Data Theft) Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 09:36:31 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com The quoted story below informs us of a data theft involving 225,000 individuals. Here in Portland, Oregon we're all reeling from the announcement by the Providence Hospital chain that about 365,000 patients of the hospital now have their records in the hands of a thief! Providence has a few major hospitals and numerous smaller clinics in Oregon. Both my wife and I have been patients of this major business player here in Portland. It seems the IT staff at the hospital relied on employees taking CDs, disks and tapes home at night as their disaster recovery strategy! Well, it wasn't long before an employee had their car involved in a "smash and grab" with the thief taking the laptop bag complete with the backup records. That was back in December. The hospital's response was to keep quiet -- evidently the "don't say anything and deny everything" method of public relations was their protocol at Providence. Sooner or later, of course, the news got out and Providence had to own up to the problem. Now, in the face of an impending Class Action suit, they're starting to play nice and tell us how important we are to Providence and how much they will help us resolve any issues that may arise from this situation. Something not revealed so far is related to the mid-level manager that decided to send records to employee homes for safekeeping: did that manager get a nice promotion and a fat bonus? Also not revealed is, with their apparent cavilier approach to data integrity, how secure and accurate are medical records they maintain, pharmacy records, etc. There could, of course, be patient medical care issues mixed up in this now disclosed security problem. Google or other search engines will help locate more information on this issue. Telecom connection: St. Vincent's Hospital, now a mamber of the Providence chain, in the western suburbs of Portland was one of the first major users in Portland to install a privately owned PBX. This must have been in about 1970, shortly after the Carterphone decision. Their chosen switch was from Japan and had little support in the US - Pacific Northwest Bell was taken aback by this defection of one of thier previously good customers. Life goes on, of course, and now, "St. Vs" is still there and Pacific Northwest Bell has morphed into something much different than it was in 1970. Thanks! Al Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom25.38.8@telecom-digest.org: > By STEVE KARNOWSKI Associated Press Writer > MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Ameriprise Financial Inc. said Wednesday it has > notified about 226,000 people that their names and other personal data > were stored on a laptop computer that was stolen from an employee's > vehicle. > Ameriprise said it has alerted 68,000 current and former financial > advisers whose names and Social Security numbers were also stored on > the same computer. About 158,000 clients had only their names and > internal account numbers exposed. The company says it has more than 2 > million customers and about 10,500 current financial advisers. > Minneapolis-based Ameriprise said it had received no reports that the > data lost in the theft had been used improperly. Ameriprise is the > name of the former American Express Financial Advisors division, which > New York-based American Express Co. spun off last fall. > Ameriprise said the theft appeared to be a "random criminal act" and > that it has been working with law enforcement to recover the laptop, > which it said was stolen recently from an employee's locked vehicle > that was parked offsite. > Company spokesman Steve Connolly said the laptop was stolen in late > December outside Minnesota, but he declined to say where. > - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=55067057 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 10:09:05 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #515, February 3, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 515: February 3, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** BCE in 2006 -- Layoffs, Spinoffs, and Price Hikes "Bell Regional Lines" to Become Income Trust IPTV Still on Hold BCE Revenue Up 4% Bell Union Not Impressed ** MTS Launches Business Review ** U.S. Government Wants RIM Injunction Delayed ** CRTC Orders Changes to VoIP 9-1-1 Routing Services ** Nortel to Sell Huawei Broadband Gear ** Ontario and Michigan Research Networks Linked ** Wi-LAN Leaves Equipment Business ** Nicer Canada Launches Hosted VoIP ** Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams ** Roadpost to Offer Satellite Broadband ** Laliberte Named Aastra EVP ============================================================ BCE IN 2006 -- LAYOFFS, SPINOFFS, AND PRICE HIKES: BCE Inc. held its annual business review conference on Wednesday, February 1. Some highlights: ** Bell Canada will reduce its workforce by between 3,000 and 4,000 positions this year. CEO Michael Sabia said that "at least half" of the cuts will come from attrition. ** BCE will sell a minority stake in Telesat through an IPO in the second half of the year. ** BCE will use cash from recent deals to buy back 5% of its outstanding common shares ($1.3 billion) and reduce debt ($1 billion). ** Former Telus exec George Cope, who became Bell's President and COO in January, stressed a policy of price discipline. He announced near-term price increases in the LD network charge (from $2.95 to $4.50), the ExpressVu system access fee ($2.99 to $5.99) and Sympatico high-speed ($44.95 to $46.95, in Ontario only). ** Wireless president Robert Odendahl promised "selective price increases" for wireless offerings, including eliminating existing all-in-one plans, and shifting the start of night-time rates to 9pm on all mass-market rate plans. "BELL REGIONAL LINES" TO BECOME INCOME TRUST: Bell will spin off 1.6 million access lines, mainly in areas where cable competition is weak or non-existent, into a separate corporation that will operate as an income trust. Bell will keep 50% ownership and distribute the rest to its common shareholders. One thousand Bell employees will be transferred to the new entity. (See Telecom Update #484) ** The largest communities included in the spin-off areas are Sudbury, Sault Ste-Marie, Chicoutimi, and Sarnia. IPTV STILL ON HOLD: Speculation that Bell would use the conference to launch an IPTV service proved incorrect. Kevin Crull, President of Residential Services, told participants that the IPTV product works but is not yet sufficiently differentiated from other TV offerings, and that needed VDSL2 cards aren't yet available. He declined to give a launch date, but said that IPTV would have "no material impact" on Bell's video service sales this year. BCE REVENUE UP 4%: BCE's total revenue for the full year 2005 was $19.1 billion, up 4.0% from the previous year. Operating income was $4 billion compared to $2.9 billion. Earnings per share rose to $2.04 from $1.65. ** In the first year of competition from cable companies in the local telephone business, Bell lost 324,000 local access lines, a 2.5% decline overall -- residential lines were down 4.8%. The telco expects to lose 3%-5% of its lines in 2006. ** Long distance revenue fell to $2.0 billion from $2.3 billion. ** Wireless revenue was up from $2.8 billion to $3.1 billion. Data revenue rose from $3.6 billion to $4.0 billion. Bell added 387,000 new high-speed Internet customers, a 21% increase. BELL UNION NOT IMPRESSED: The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which represents workers at Bell Canada, says it will oppose the telco's plan to spin off rural lines into an income trust. "We have a long-term concern about job stability and service levels in what amounts to 15% of Bell's customer base," the union said. MTS LAUNCHES BUSINESS REVIEW: Manitoba Telecom's new CEO, Pierre Blouin, has hired advisors to conduct a "comprehensive review of our entire business," to be completed by December. MTS previously announced plans to lay off 800 employees, most of them in the former Allstream division. ** The company's October-December revenue was $504 million, the same as in these months in 2004. Net income fell to $14.6 million from $42.3 million. Wireless revenue rose 16%; long distance revenue fell 10%. ** Chief Technology Officer Kelvin Shepherd has been named President of MTS Manitoba, replacing Cheryl Barker, who has retired. U.S. GOVERNMENT WANTS RIM INJUNCTION DELAYED: The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a Virginia court to delay an injunction that would shut down Blackberry service. The brief described continuity of Blackberry service as "imperative" for the government, and said it had "serious questions" about whether service could be continued only for government users, as plaintiff NTP Inc. has proposed. ** Also this week: the U.S. Patent Office issued a non-final judgment that the last remaining NTP patent claim was invalid, and RIM won two European court rulings against patent infringement claims by Luxembourg-based InPro Licensing. ** Despite lawsuit-induced uncertainty, RIM's subscriber base has doubled in the past year: it now has about five million customers. CRTC ORDERS CHANGES TO VoIP 9-1-1 ROUTING SERVICES: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-5 gives final approval to Telus's tariff for routing VoIP service providers' 9-1-1 calls to the correct emergency centres. However, it orders Bell, Aliant, MTS Allstream, and SaskTel to change their tariffs to allow VoIP service providers to subscribe to existing zero-dialled emergency call routing services, including access to 9-1-1 agencies' 10-digit numbers. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-5.htm NORTEL TO SELL HUAWEI BROADBAND GEAR: Nortel Networks and Chinese telecom development giant Huawei Technologies have agreed to establish a joint venture to develop "ultra broadband access solutions." The Ottawa-based company will start production by September; in the meantime, Nortel will sell Huawei's access products. ONTARIO AND MICHIGAN RESEARCH NETWORKS LINKED: The Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) and its Michigan counterpart, Merit Network, have been connected by a one Gbps fibre link through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. The link, which is the first of its kind, is seen as a step towards a larger Great Lakes regional optical network for research and education. WI-LAN LEAVES EQUIPMENT BUSINESS: Calgary-based wireless broadband developer Wi-LAN Inc. will close down all manufacturing by April 30 and focus on licensing its patents and technologies to companies such as Cisco, which settled a patent infringement suit with Wi-LAN in December. (See Telecom Update #509) ** Wi-LAN has begun a search for a new President and CEO. Incumbent Bill Dunbar will remain in office during the search. NICER CANADA LAUNCHES HOSTED VoIP: Vancouver-based Nicer Canada Corp. has launched a hosted Voice over IP service that provides PBX-like functions for "businesses of any size." (See Telecom Update #466) WESTERN UNION STOPS SENDING TELEGRAMS: Western Union, once the largest telecommunications company in the world, sent its final telegram January 26, after 155 years in the business. It continues operations as a money-transfer company. ** Its Canadian counterpart, CNCP Telecommunications (a predecessor of Allstream), dropped out of the telegram business in 1999. ROADPOST TO OFFER SATELLITE BROADBAND: Toronto-based Roadpost Inc. will offer France Telecom's new BGAN broadband satellite service in North America when the service is launched later this year. LALIBERTE NAMED AASTRA EVP: Concord, Ontario-based Aastra Technologies, a manufacturer of residential and business telecommunications equipment, has named Yves Laliberte as Executive Vice-President. He previously held senior management positions at Avaya Canada and Cisco Canada. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 12:50:24 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T ups ante in broadband price battle USTelecom dailyLead February 3, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cUAMfDtutannslkPzj TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T ups ante in broadband price battle BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Q Television in carriage deal with Verizon's FiOS * Palm investor calls for sale * AOL, Charter Communications ink broadband deal * Consumer companies go wireless to boost brand * NTT reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * NEXT Papers: Hot technology on the TelecomNEXT exhibit floor TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Intel, NBC to offer Olympics online through Viiv * Cable warms to muni Wi-Fi * NYC subway plan sparks debate * Report: Wi-Fi phone market is red hot VOIP DOWNLOAD * VoIP tax exemption fails again in Colorado * Eastern Europeans take to VOIP * CableLabs aims to enhance VoIP services Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cUAMfDtutannslkPzj ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 3rd February 2006 Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:43:47 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] 3 Italia Seen Delaying IPO If No OK Before Feb 15-Sources http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15910.php Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. will have to further delay listing its Italian third-generation mobile operator if a Milan regulator fails to approve the deal in two weeks, a person familiar with the situation said Thursday. ... T-Mobile: Faster 3G Service Broadly Available In Summer 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15912.php T-Mobile, Thursday said that its high-speed third-generation wireless services will become broadly available in Germany as of summer 2006. ... Top exec sees Ukrtelecom sole co on Ukraine's 3G market till 2010 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15922.php Ukraine's national fixed-line monopoly Ukrtelecom is likely to be the only operator of third generation (3G) mobile networks until 2010, Igor Sirotenko, the company's deputy chairman of the management board, said Thursday presenting the company's 3G ... Hutchison To Migrate All Customers to 3G Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15926.php Australia's Hutchison Telecoms is considering shutting down its 2G CDMA network as it pro-actively migrates all its customers onto its WCDMA network. From today, and over a short period of time, Hutchison will rebrand Orange to 3 - specifically 3 CDM... [[ Financial ]] ISP Sunbeach aims for mid 2006 mobile launch http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15918.php Barbados internet service provider (ISP) Sunbeach could launch a new cellular phone service by as early as mid-year depending on the rate at which the company obtains funding, Sunbeach's CEO Ian Worrell told BNamericas. ... Hondutel CEO confirms US$21.2mn budget for 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15920.php Honduras' state telecom company Hondutel plans to invest 400mn lempiras (US$21.2mn) in its network in 2006, the company's new CEO Jacobo Regalado confirmed to local daily La Prensa. ... Russia's Sibirtelecom sees 2006 mobile investment up 60% on yr http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15923.php Russian regional telecommunications operator Sibirtelecom plans to increase its investment in mobile services 60% on the year in 2006 to U.S. $160 million, the company said in a statement Thursday, citing Dmitry Levin, deputy general director and dir... Investments in Ukraine's telecom sector up to $1.5 bln in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15924.php Investments in Ukraine's telecommunications sector rose to almost U.S. $1.5 billion in 2005 from about $0.75 billion in 2002, Georgy Butenko, director of state department for communications and IT, told a meeting Thursday. He provided no other compar... [[ Handsets ]] Are Parents Ready To Give Phones to Kids ? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15928.php Parents say that between the age of 10 and 12 is the most appropriate time for a child to get his or her first mobile phone, according to a new study from Compete. The company assessed interest in the new category of kid-friendly phones as well as th... [[ Interviews ]] INTERVIEW: Russia's Svyazinvest units may merge mobile assets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15917.php Executive directors of VolgaTelecom and Sibirtelecom, controlled by Russia's national telecom holding Svyazinvest, may consider merging their mobile assets this year, Valery Yashin, CEO of Svyazinvest, said in an interview with Prime-Tass this week. ... [[ Legal ]] U.S. Government Details Opposition To BlackBerry Ban http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15909.php The U.S. Department of Justice reiterated its opposition to a possible BlackBerry ban, saying in a court filing Wednesday that NTP should file a specific implementation plan that details exactly how BlackBerry service for authorized users will contin... Research In Motion Gets Positive Ruling In UK InPro Case http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15913.php A London patent court has ruled in favor of Research In Motion Ltd. in a patent dispute with InPro, a patent-holding firm based in Luxembourg. ... [[ Messaging ]] Nextel launches push to mail http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15919.php Mexican trunking operator Nextel Mexico has launched push to mail, a service that sends voice mail messages to email accounts, the company said in a statement. ... Mobile Email on the Verge of Mass Market Adoption http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15925.php A new report by Datamonitor expects the number of mobilized email accounts to explode over the next three years. According to the report there are roughly 650 million corporate email inboxes worldwide today. Based on the assumption that at least 35-4... [[ Mobile Content ]] Flash Alternative Shipped in 60 Million Handsets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15929.php Sweden's Ikivo has announced that their "Flash-Alternative" Mobile SVG client has been shipped in more than 60 Million handsets worldwide and estimates that more than 95 million handsets with Mobile SVG have been shipped globally. Flash is the vector... [[ Network Operators ]] T-Mobile UK Launches Flext Tariff Structure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15911.php T-Mobile International, the mobile arm of Deutsche Telekom, Thursday launched a new U.K. tariff structure called 'Flext,' designed to give customer more flexibility with mobile phone contracts. ... Road Believes Verizon Wireless Shutting Down CDPD Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15914.php @Road Inc. believes Verizon Wireless is in the process of shutting down a Cellular Digital Packet Data network, with completion scheduled for the next several days. ... [[ Offbeat ]] Greek PM's Vodafone Handset Was Bugged http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15915.php ATHENS (AP)--The mobile phones of Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and top government and security officials were tapped by unknown individuals during the Athens 2004 Olympics and for nearly a year, the government said Thursday. ... Vodafone Found Spy Software After Complaints http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15916.php U.K. wireless operator Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) uncovered spy software on its central system in Greece after complaints from customers, Greek Public Order Minister Yiorgos Voulgarakis said Thursday. ... [[ Reports ]] Modest Growth in Mobile Infrastructure - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15927.php In a newly released report, Dell'Oro Group forecasts that the mobility infrastructure equipment market will grow 3% in 2006 to US$41.8 billion, and that the market will continue to grow in the low single-digits through 2010. Subscriber growth should ... [[ Statistics ]] Indec: Mobile base grows 74.2% yoy http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15921.php Mobile operators in Argentina closed December 2005 with 22.1 million lines in service, up 74.2%, or 8.6 million lines, compared to the end of 2004, according to statistics bureau Indec. ... Handheld Market Experiences Year-Over-Year Decline http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15930.php The worldwide market for handheld devices swelled to its largest quarterly shipment volume all year, reaching 2.2 million units during the fourth quarter, growing 37.6% from the previous quarter. According to IDC's Worldwide Handheld QView, growth wa... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 11:55:13 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 3, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 3, 2006 ******************************** Sandvine Study Underscores Fluidity of North American and European VoIP Markets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16517?11228 Sandvine, the provider of broadband network management solutions, has revealed the results of a recent survey of its broadband service provider customers. The survey, carried out in November and December 2005, analysed VoIP traffic trends of over 700,000 broadband households serviced by a group of service providers with over 6 million... Turkish Regulator to Disconnect Unregistered Mobiles, to curb Grey Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16514?11228 In the wake of new regulations issued last year, Turkey's mobile operators have said that they will block unregistered mobile handsets in a bid to curb the grey market for smuggled or cloned handsets. According to the regulator, some 19 million people registered their handsets within the allotted time and the outstanding 500,000 will be... Location Services Lost on Users http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16509?11228 Location based services (LBS) -- which deliver localized information directly to your mobile phone in real time -- have generated plenty of buzz in the wireless industry over the last couple of years, but it turns out these new cellular applications are largely lost on enterprise users. Verizon Wireless this week announced its first... Business Professionals Expect Increased Wi-Fi Hotspot Use http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16506?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Business professionals' use of Wi-Fi hotspot access and services is on the rise, both in the number of users and the frequency that they use these services, reports In-Stat. According to an online survey of 579 business professionals conducted by the high-tech market research firm, nearly half of all respondents... Next DTV Step: Bush's Signature http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16503?11228 President George W. Bush has signaled his willingness to sign major budget-reconciliation legislation just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that includes a digital-television (DTV) cutover measure (plus a transition deadline three years from now). In a White House-issued statement also anticipating an Administration budget... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment ... Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 22:51:11 -0500 jmeissen@aracnet.com wrote: > I notice that in the UK Bulldog Broadband offers 8Mb/s DSL for 20 > pounds per month... > Here in the States, Verizon offers a max 3Mb/s service for $30 per > month (after $20 per month for the first three months). And if you're > lucky and you're in one of the areas where they're deploying FIOS, you > can get 5Mb/s for $36 per month... > For comparison purposes it's useful to note that while it's expensive > for US dollars to buy UK products, the salaries and prices in UK > currency for a UK citizen are roughly equivalent to US salaries and > prices in US currency for US citizens. Um, no, they are not remotely equivalent. Prices of certain items perhaps are, but not salaries. According to http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.txt, the average annual salary nof a US worker in 2002 was $36,764, which works out to $3,064 per month. A $30/month broadband offering thus costs 0.97 percent of the average salary. (The introductory rate of $20/month is 0.65 percent of salary.) In the UK in the same year, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/nes1002.pdf reports that the average weekly salary was 371 pounds. That works out to a monthly rate of 1,612 pounds, so the 20 pound/month broadband service consumes 1.24 percent of the average salary. I.e., 20 pounds in the UK represents almost DOUBLE the salary share that 20 dollars represents in the US. (Or at least it did in 2002, which was the most recent year for which I could find stats for both countries.) Coincidentally, at current exchange rates, 20 pounds is worth almost exactly $36, so at least the 20-pound Bulldog offering gets you more bandwidth (8 Mb/s for 1.24 percent of monthly earnings) than does the $36 Verizon FIOS offering (5 Mb/s for 1.17 percent of monthly earnings). Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 02:25:49 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: The Competitive Broadband Environment ... > I notice that in the UK Bulldog Broadband offers 8Mb/s DSL for 20 > pounds per month, for the life of your contract, and is starting to > deploy 20Mb/s ADSL+2 service (no price quoted). > Here in the States, Verizon offers a max 3Mb/s service for $30 per > month (after $20 per month for the first three months). And if you're > lucky and you're in one of the areas where they're deploying FIOS, you > can get 5Mb/s for $36 per month (which seems to be a drop from the > $40/mo I remember seeing the last time I looked). > Could it be the competition created by the US government's rulings to > give incumbent phone providers exclusive access to their networks? This was discussed briefly on another newsgroup and a fellow from London talked about how exchanges seemed to be a mile or so apart, many much less. Which would make it MUCH easier to offer high speed broadband. We didn't discuss the why but maybe they built them that close after WWII took out a lot of the infrastructure. Or maybe that was all they could drive the signals 100 years ago and now they get a totally unplanned benefit. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 02:21:28 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby > As to wages, I don't know the profit situation and if Walmart can > afford to pay better than it does. Frankly, I don't think the old > time big department stores paid their people that much; a sales clerk > was certainly not a rich person. http://www.ibiblio.org/wunc_archives/sot/index.php?p=3D548 Links to an interview: Host Frank Stasio talks with Charles Fishman, former editor at The News & Observer, about his new book, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works and How It's Transforming the= American Economy (Penguin/2006). Listener Call-In. (59:00) Very interesting. He's not a fan of Wal Mart but argues that big businesses are here to stay so we should look out how we change the landscape as they WILL be a part of it. One very interesting point he made. Wal-Mart isn't greedy. Their profits are about $6,000 per employee when averaged. So making them add heath benefits or other costs means that prices will go up. Tell that to the voters in an area. :) I'm not a big fan or enemy of Wal Mart. They are. Things change. My uncle died about a year ago. He was the last link to the family farm. When I was very young about 1960 it still had an operating saw mill, slaughter house, grew crops, etc... The slaughter house was the last operating piece and it was sold off about 10 years ago. I stopped by last year and the owner was candid that he couldn't stay open except for the work he did for deer hunters. We no longer go to school in white T shirts, jeans, and black Keds. We expect the drug store and doctor to be open on Thursday. We expect stores to be open Wednesday afternoon in particular and after 5 in general. Mom isn't home all day to run to the stores during the day. We like having more than two choices for canned green beans. Large and small. :) We no longer need to have towns every 10 to 20 miles so we can get there and back in one day on a horse. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may recall reading here things I > have mentioned about our local Walmart Supercenter versus the rest of > the merchants downtown. Now we also have a Walgreen's store which is > right downtown, and the other merchants do not like that very well > either. Personally, I have a wee bit more sympathy for Walgreens than > Walmart because of my personal friendship _many_ years ago with > Myrtle Walgreen, widow of Charles the founder of the chain and mother > of Charles II, the current president and CEO of the firm. Myrtle was > a first class lady. But just like Walmart, the new Walgreens store > right downtown does not offer any charge accounts, nor do they accept > Main Street Gift Certificates (like the other stores here.) As soon as > the other drug stores in town found out that Walgreens was not > offering any sort of charge accounts, nor much in the way of customer > service, the local merchants circled the wagons and started specificically > advertising that _they_ offered charge accounts, _they_ offered > delivery service to your home, _they_ worked closely with Medicare > on the new Part D thing, _they_ would work closely with your physician > to fill your scripts, etc. Buy anything you want here in downtown > Independence is their new chant, forget about the Walgreens and the > Walmarts; all you need are us, your long time merchants. But you > know, Lisa, I can begin to see the handwriting on the wall; more and > more vacant store fronts downtown, etc. PAT] Now that makes sense. Come up with a REASON for folks to visit a small store and pay a bit more. But most folks still look at purchase price and then complain later about the results of their decision. One of the most ironic comments I've ever seen was a fellow talking about how WalMart was evil, didn't pay people enough, provide benefits, etc ... This was on a forum dedicated to finding the absolutely cheapest prices on technology. ;) ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:32:38 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Patrick Townson wrote: > The clerks had to turn on/turn off their smiles and tears all day long > depending on the customer they were with. Reminds me of the old joke during the fad of 'singing telegrams'. Delivery messenger rings the bell and the lady of the house answers the door. 'Telegram for you, ma'm.' 'Oh!' says she. 'A telegram! I've never had a telegram before! You've got to sing it to me!' 'Well, no ma'm, I can't sing...' 'Oh, please! Sing it to me!' 'Well, all right ... if you insist ... HMMMMMM la la la (dramatically warming up the voice): JIM AND THE KIDS ARE DEAD. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #52 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Feb 4 19:57:07 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7918C150A4; Sat, 4 Feb 2006 19:57:07 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #53 Message-Id: <20060205005707.7918C150A4@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 19:57:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 4 Feb 2006 20:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 53 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MySpace.com Under Investigation For Sex Assaults on Kids (AP NewsWire) Teens at Risk on MySpace.com, Other Net Sites (Matt Apuzzo) Postage Due For Companies Sending Email (Saul Hansell) Cell Phone Interception in Greece Includes Prime Minister (Danny Burstein) Ev-Do In Ontario (gladman911@gmail.com) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (snertking) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (Robert Bonomi) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (not email replies) Re: EFF Sues AT&T Over Phone Surveillance (Dan) Thinking of David Nelson w/r to 1776 (Carl Moore) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: MySpace Investigated For Sexual Assaults on Children Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 17:09:50 -0600 MySpace.com Subject of Sex Assault Probe Police are investigating whether as many as seven teenage girls have been sexually assaulted by men they met through the popular Web site MySpace.com. The girls, ages 12 to 16, are from Middletown and say they were fondled or had consensual sex with men who turned out to be older than they claimed. None of the incidents appeared to be violent, said Middletown Police Sgt. Bill McKenna. He said it was difficult to determine the exact number of victims because some girls have been reluctant to disclose that they met their assailants online. Others, particularly boys, may also be reluctant to admit it 'happened to them also'. The social networking Web site allows users to create profiles that can include photos, personal information and even cell phone numbers. In a statement Thursday, MySpace.com said it was committed to providing a safe environment for its users. The site, which includes safety tips, also prohibits use by anyone younger than 14, though a disclaimer says the people who run the site can't always tell if users are lying about their ages. On the Net: http://www.myspace.com Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Matt Apuzzo Subject: Teens at Risk on MySpace, Other Net Sites Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 16:52:53 -0600 Teens Putting Themselves at Risk Online By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer On Web sites such as MySpace.com, teenagers can find people around the world who share their love of sports, their passion for photography or their crush on the latest Hollywood star. But authorities say teens are increasingly finding trouble in an online environment where millions of people can, in seconds, find out where they go to school, learn their interests, download their pictures and instantly send them sexual messages. Police in the central Connecticut city of Middletown suspect that as many as seven girls were recently assaulted by men they met on MySpace. The FBI says it regularly receives calls from police trying to figure out how to stay ahead of popular technology that puts children a mouse click away from millions of strangers. MySpace, one of several popular social networking sites, is a free service that allows people to create Web sites that can be personalized with information, pictures and movies. Searching for someone is as easy as typing the name of a high school and the photographic results are instantaneous. "They're licking their lips and arching their back for the camera because they can, and they have no idea of the consequences," said Parry Aftab, an attorney and child advocate who runs http://WiredSafety.org, a site that helps inform parents and site managers about online predators. MySpace said in a statement that it includes safety tips and prohibits children under 14 from using the site. Aftab said MySpace, a subsidiary of News Corp., has a great reputation for trying to keep the site safe. Some teens keep their personal profiles scant, aimed only at their friends. Others describe their likes and dislikes, from the mundane to the profane, and encourage people to send them messages. "That is a perpetrator's dream come true," said Middletown Police Sgt. Bill McKenna. McKenna said several Middletown girls, between 12 and 16, told police they met men on the MySpace who claimed to be teenagers. When they met in person, he said, the girls were fondled or had consensual sex with men who turned out to be older than they claimed. In at least one case, McKenna believes the assault happened at the girl's home while her parents were there, but unaware of what their daughter was doing in her room with the computer.. Last month, 14-year-old Judy Cajuste was found strangled and naked in a Newark, New Jersey, garbage bin and 15-year-old Kayla Reed was found naked and dead in a canal not far from her Livermore, California, home. Both deaths remain unsolved and the use of MySpace.com has surfaced in both investigations. As recently as a few years ago, Aftab said the profile of an online victim was a young woman who felt alone, didn't have many friends and craved attention. Then, in 2002, 13-year-old Christina Long of Danbury was strangled in a Danbury mall parking lot by a 26-year-old man she met on the Internet. Long was a popular cheerleader, a good student and an altar girl. The profile went out the window. Now, Aftab said, it's no surprise that a wealthy state such as Connecticut is seeing a spate of problems. "This is a rich and upper-middle-class problem," Aftab said. "They have too much time, too much technology and their parents aren't around to keep an eye on them." Connecticut's FBI office was the first in New England to launch an online, undercover program to catch sexual predators. Timothy Egan, the squad's supervisor, said parents often don't know their children are using these Web sites or what information is being released. The FBI hopes to train more local officers about these sites in coming months. The investigators are currently working undercover trying to catch/locate/arrest predators on MySpace.com as well as at their other favorite locations, aol.com and yahoo.com chat rooms Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano, who has strictly limited the information his 10- and 12-year-old children put on the Internet, said he was surprised to learn that they had been contacted by strangers they believed were pedophiles. His kids ignored it, Morano said, but parents need to closely monitor Internet activity. "You wouldn't leave your kid on the side of the highway without supervision," Morano said. "You shouldn't put them on the Internet highway without the same type of supervision." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html For more news on internet sex crimes, please go to: http://blog.watchright.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Please recall that http://myspace.com is also the home base for Jacob Robida, the 18 year old guy who on Wednesday night this past week went into 'Puzzles' the gay bar in Massachusetts and shot or axed several of the patrons. People who have seen his blog/web pages on My Space.com say it is a lot of Nazi propoganda and illustrations, along with promotions for his music recording business, 'Psycho Music'. He still is at large, police have not been able to find him. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Saul Hansell Subject: Postage Due for Companies Sending e-Mail Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 16:55:43 -0600 By SAUL HANSELL Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a controversial system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. The two companies also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted. AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a special bulk e-mail box or strip them of images and Web links. Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and worries about online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable way for companies to reach their customers, even as online transactions are becoming a crucial part of their businesses. "The last time I checked, the postal service has a very similar system to provide different options," said Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. He pointed to services like certified mail with return receipts, "where you really do get assurance that if what you send is important to you, it will be delivered, and delivered in a way that is different from other mail." But critics of the plan say that the companies risk alienating both their users and the companies that send e-mail. The system will apply not only to mass mailings but also to individual messages like order confirmations from online stores and customized low-fare notices from airlines. "AOL users will become dissatisfied when they don't receive the e-mail that they want, and when they complain to the senders, they'll be told, 'it's AOL's fault,' " said Richi Jennings, an analyst at Ferris Research, which specializes in e-mail. As for companies that send e-mail, "some will pay, but others will object to being held to ransom," he said. "A big danger is that one of them will be big enough to encourage AOL users to use a different e-mail service." In a broader sense, the move to create what is essentially a preferred class of e-mail is a major change in the economics of the Internet. Until now, senders and recipients of e-mail -- and, for that matter, Web pages and other information -- each covered their own costs of using the network, with no money changing hands. That model is different from, say, the telephone system, in which the company whose customer places a call pays a fee to the company whose customer receives it. The prospect of a multitiered Internet has received a lot of attention recently after executives of several large telecommunications companies, including BellSouth and AT& T, suggested that they should be paid not only by the subscribers to their Internet services but also by companies that send large files to those subscribers, including music and video clips. Those files would then be given priority over other data, a change from the Internet's basic architecture which treats all data in the same way. This Tuesday the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing to consider legislation for what has been called Net neutrality -- effectively banning Internet access companies from giving preferred status to certain providers of content. The concern is that companies that do not pay could find it hard to reach customers or potential customers, threatening the openness of the Internet. AOL and its parent, Time Warner, which also owns a large cable system offering high-speed Internet access, have not taken a public stand on the principle of Net neutrality. Neither has Yahoo, which has close relationships with AT& T and Verizon. The issue of e-mail postage has not yet come up in the debate over Net neutrality. In the next two months, AOL will start accepting e-mail processed by Goodmail Systems, a company in Mountain View, Calif., that will collect the electronic postage and verify the identity of the sender. Goodmail has tested the system with the participation of a few companies, including the American Red Cross and The New York Times. Paying senders will be assured that their messages will be delivered to AOL users' main in-boxes and marked as "AOL Certified E-Mail." Unpaid messages will be subject to AOL's spam-filtering process, which diverts suspicious messages to a special spam folder. Most of these messages will also not be displayed with their original images and links. Users will be able to specify that unpaid messages from a particular person or company should never be treated as spam, as they can do now. Yahoo will start trying out Goodmail's system in coming months, but it has not decided how paid mail will be differentiated from unpaid, said Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of communications products at Yahoo. Goodmail will charge 1/4 cent to 1 cent per message, with high-volume mailers getting the biggest discounts. It will give more than half of that amount to the e-mail service provider. When AOL started to explain the details of its plan last month to companies that send a lot of e-mail, many quickly raised objections. "No one wants Goodmail or any other provider to set up a tollbooth that makes it cost-prohibitive for legitimate mailers to reach the in-box," said Matthew Moog, the chief executive of Q Interactive. The company runs a marketing service called CoolSavings that sends e-mail to 10 million people a month who have requested it. Mr. Moog said that he was very much in favor of systems that helped distinguish the mail he sent from spam. But Mr. Moog added that he wanted AOL and other Internet providers "to offer several competing services to ensure that innovation continues and there is a competitive market to drive fair pricing for the service." For example, he said that CoolSavings already works with Bonded Sender, a company used by Microsoft's Hotmail service and other providers to identify sources of legitimate mail. Bonded Sender charges a flat fee of no more than $20,000 a year to the highest-volume senders, a fraction of what they would pay through the Goodmail system. Mr. Moog said that the Goodmail system would at least double the cost of an e-mail campaign. "I don't think the economics work," he added. Matt Blumberg, the chief executive of Return Path, the New York company that runs Bonded Sender, said there was no need for the Goodmail price to be so high. "From AOL's perspective, this is an opportunity to earn a significant amount of money from the sale of stamps," he said. "But it's bad for the industry and bad for consumers. A lot of e-mailers won't be able to afford it." But Mr. Garlinghouse of Yahoo said that by making senders pay for each message, they will be forced to be more discriminating in whom they send e-mail to, which will benefit users. "Because the cost of sending e-mail is so low, some players are not as good at keeping their lists clean," he said. "I still gets e-mails from lists I signed up for three years ago, but I haven't responded to a single one." As spam has started to clog millions of mailboxes, particularly over the last five years, some people have suggested that requiring all e-mail senders to pay some sort of postage would drive out spammers, who can profit even if they sell their wares to a very small percentage of mail recipients. But in recent years the volume of spam has leveled off, in part because of a new federal law that imposes penalties for many deceptive e-mail practices. Moreover, most major e-mail providers have built sophisticated filters that divert much of the spam. AOL says that spam complaints from its members are down 75 percent since their peak in 2003. (These filters also capture about 20 percent of legitimate mail, according to Ferris Research.) A more troublesome problem now is phishing, messages that appear to be from a bank or an online payment service and that seek to fool recipients into divulging their passwords or credit card numbers. Phishing has led Internet providers and other companies to look for ways to help people identify legitimate mail. Goodmail was founded several years ago with the idea that it would charge postage for all mail, but it has narrowed its focus to mail sent by companies and major nonprofit organizations, which will pay a reduced rate. It does not envision that individuals will pay to have their e-mail delivered. "The e-mail in-box is a potentially dangerous place," said Richard Gingras, the chief executive of Goodmail. "There is a tremendous need for a class of certified e-mail that can convey to consumers that a message is authentic." Mr. Gingras argued that companies will be glad to pay the postage fee because their customers will have more trust in their e-mail and thus will buy more from them. And Mr. Graham of AOL added that the portion of the postage it will receive is justifiable compensation for the costs it has incurred in developing systems to combat spam. "We have some prerogative to move to a system that asks for other people to participate and share the financial burden in making a clean e-mail environment on the Internet," he said. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from New York Times with no login nor registration requirement -- the way the net should be -- please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Cell Phone Interceptions in Greece, Includes Prime Minister Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 22:12:42 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC " The mobile phones of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and many other leading Greek officials were tapped for around a year, the government revealed yesterday while admitting that it had no way of finding out who had been eavesdropping on the conversations. " In a joint press conference lasting three hours, Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis, Justice Minister Anastassis Papaligouras and government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said that some 100 cellphones had been tapped from just before the Athens Olympics in August 2004 to March of last year. " 'It was an unknown individual or individuals who used high technology,' said Roussopoulos, who refused to say whether the people listening in on the calls were working for foreign agencies. . . " The software allowed calls to and from the numbers being tapped to be monitored by other cell phones, from which conversations could be recorded. rest at: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4Dcgi/4Dcgi/_w_articles_politics_2583625100003_03/02/2006_65959 ------------------------------ From: gladman911@gmail.com Subject: Ev-Do In Ontario Date: 4 Feb 2006 05:11:41 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone using EV-Do in Toronto with a treo 700w? What does it cost? How are you finding the speed? ------------------------------ From: snertking Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 14:34:13 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Herb Stein wrote: >> "NOT a public place" would imply that the no-smoking ban in NY is a crock. > I have no idea what the terms are of no-smoking ban which is a > different issue. But any property owner may ban smoking on their own > property if they so choose. The govt for many years has banned > smoking in some places, such as the inside of a transit bus. No smoking in "public places" -- which includes pretty much everywhere - bars, hotel lobbies, etc. Owner of premises CANNOT decide to allow smoking on his or her own property. Seems unconstitutional, if ya ask me. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 00:19:45 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I could never understand is how > stores such as Walmart on the one hand want to encourage shoppers > (although I do not personally care for the chain) yet on the other > hand they can claim that someone is 'tresspassing' if the person comes > in their store. Ditto with public transit. If it is a public place, > which is claimed, It is *still* _PRIVATE_PROPERTY_, and the property owner _does_ have the legal right to determine who can, and *cannot*, be present on their property. The property can extend an invitation (permission) to the 'general public', and then revoke -- by 'actual notice' to the party involved -- that permission for specific individuals. Where an invitation to the general public exists, *before* you can be charged with trespass, they must first expressly notify you that your presence is 'no longer welcome' (i.e., they ask you to leave the premises, "now"), and you fail to comply with that request in a timely manner. > then how can a member of the public who chooses to > go inside or upon the property of the store or the transit agency get > arrested by police for trespassing? Yet CTA does that all time; so > does Walmart. Seems to me like Walmart and transit agency want to have > things both ways at the same time. PAT] If you allow somebody into your apartment -- say, to use the phone -- do you think you should have no recourse, if they sit down on the sofa and refuse to leave when you ask? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a considerable difference between purely private, residential property and privately owned property used for commercial purposes, as any reasonably intelligent person would explain to you. At my house, for example, I have to positively invite someone to come in to use the phone. Walmart does not 'invite' someone in to do shopping or use the phone. The store just sits there with an open door; people walk in and out at their leisure. No one specifically 'invites' or 'allows' them to come in to do shopping. Now if Walmart was to specifically lock their front door, and have someone sit there to question all comers, and specifi- cally allow them to come in to do shopping or use the phone or whatever that would be different. When is the last time you ever heard someone walk into Walmart, seek out the manager or some responsible employee and ask permission, "is it okay if I come in to go shopping?" PAT] ------------------------------ From: Please post not email replies Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:40:19 GMT Organization: Road Runner Thomas Daniel Horne wrote: > ... The real kicker in the case of many volunteer > fire stations in the US is that they are not publicly owned at all. > They are often owned fee simple by a private corporation that is > organized under state charter to provide a public service. ... It's not just bathrooms that are off limits. For many of them, depending on the legal form of their organization, neither the public nor the municipality hiring them has any right to see their books or internal affairs. There was a recent case where the top two officials of a volunteer fire department suddenly resigned with no official explanation, but with a hint of financial impropriety. Yet, this same department regularly solicits the public for contributions. It tries to combine the best (for it) aspects of a privately owned corporation and of a public charity. To be fair to it, it does fight fires competently. ------------------------------ From: Dan Subject: Re: EFF Sues AT&T Over Phone Surveillance Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:42:50 -0600 On 2/2/2006 1:55 PM, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Matthew Fordahl wrote: >> A civil liberties group sued AT&T Inc. on Tuesday for its alleged role >> in helping the National Security Agency spy on the phone calls and >> other communications of U.S. citizens without warrants. > I am very sensitive to privacy issues. However, this particular case > isn't so easy. Clearly, part of it is motivated by politics, that is, > people are upset because they don't like Bush in general, not because > of the specific issue involved and I don't like that. > As the "moral principle", this country was attacked in an act of war > and clearly the govt has the duty and responsibility to take defensive > measures against a further attack. Spying on the enemy and possibly > traitors within this country is a classic activity in time of war. > IMHO, part of the issue here is what was done with the information > gained. If they turned it over to prosecutors for other routine > crimes (ie tax evasion, drug running, import laws), I would object > since normal domestic search warrants were not obtained. But AFAIK > that was not done. >> It also seeks billions of dollars in damages. > "Damages" means the plaintiff suffered a monetary loss in some way as > a result of the defendant's action. Unless the govt utilized the > gleaned information against someone, I'm not sure there was any loss > suffered. I am also very hesitant about the class action status, I > believe that is overused. >> "Our main goal is to stop this invasion of privacy, prevent it from >> occurring again and make sure AT&T and all the other carriers >> understand there are going to be legal and economic consequences when >> they fail to follow the law," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff >> attorney. > Did the EFF sue all other carriers as well? Activist groups like to > pick on the big guys, but that is not fair. If EFF has a true case > against the carriers, it has a responsibility to sue every carrier. >> The White House has vigorously defended the program, saying the >> president acted legally under the constitution and a post-Sept. 11 >> congressional resolution that granted him broad power to fight >> terrorism. > I am not in a position to say if the White House was right or wrong in > this action. > However, it would appear that it is unfair to order the carriers to > make that decision either. I can't help but wonder that the carriers > received what appeared to be legitimate official wiretap requests and > they complied accordingly. I'm pretty sure if some unknown Fed agent > showed up with a wiretap demand without documentation he wouldn't get > very far. However, I suspect this came through normal channels that > the carriers were used to working with, and thus they had no reason to > suspect there may have been a question on them. >> "We are quite confident that discovery would reveal evidence proving >> our allegations correct," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff attorney. > That's very nice, but "discovery" is an expensive time consuming > process. Who's gonna pay for AT&T's cost? We are! >> "I think we are going to definitely have a fight on state-secret >> issues," Bankston said. "I would also point out that the state-secret >> privilege has never come up in a case where the rights of so many have >> been at issue." > Censorship of civilian activities was a major activity in WW II. Even > back then it was not particularly appreciated, but it was done. > As mentioned, I strongly believe in privacy and normally support EFF > efforts. But I'm not so sure on this particular case and I wonder if > it's grandstanding. I can think of a great many other privacy issues > EFF ought to be concerned about, although they're not very glamorous > or headline making. > [public replies, please] Tapping (e.g. carnivore, eshalon) will get the low lying fruit. Real criminals will use strong encryption... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 16:49:32 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Thinking of David Nelson w/r to 1776 Some time ago there was the controversy about problems encountered by men called David Nelson. No, I don't know of any David Nelson in 1776, but I just now thought of this story which I read in history books long ago: One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll. We've read of the risks taken by such signing, and the story goes that someone told Mr. Carroll that he had nothing to fear because there were many Charles Carrolls. So he added "of Carrollton" after his name, and he remarked "They cannot mistake me now." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is a very inspirational story, and one which should give us all something to think about. I have always been amazed at how many 'essentially anonymous' blogs there are on the net. I am one of the few people -- at least it appears that way -- who bothers to put a real name and real picture and real 'life- style status' on my various blogs as well as on this Digest. For that matter, I also geo-tag all my pages; if you go to the trouble to read any of my blogs, etc and then cross reference them to Google Maps for example, you will see a nice little 'Google map marker' where I am at. Yet I see so many entries on http://blogspot.com which are just silly frivilous nonsense and the people refuse to sign them or even include a small thump-size .jpg of themselves. I am sure most of them do _not_ think of their blog pages as frivilous nonsense, just as I do not feel that way about mine. If you happen to wish to review my blog and how I like to handle it, please go to: http://ptownson.blogspot.com and feel free to comment on what I have written over the past few months. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #53 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 5 18:38:26 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 6B9D41512C; Sun, 5 Feb 2006 18:38:26 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #54 Message-Id: <20060205233826.6B9D41512C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 18:38:26 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Feb 2006 18:40:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 54 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tapping Into AT&T (Mike Riddle) An Important Lesson in 2005: Back up Your Data (Rhomda Abrams) Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set For Subways (Ellen Wulfhorst) Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail (Monty Solomon) Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court (Monty Solomon) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (Robert Bonomi) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (AES) Re: Cell Phone Interceptions in Greece Includes Prime Minister (Gerard Bok) Spammer With a Toll Free Fax number (Steven Lichter) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Riddle Subject: Tapping Into AT&T Organization: Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish & Short Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 15:37:46 -0600 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-nsa5feb05,0,4247173.story?coll=la-home-oped From the Los Angeles Times EDITORIALS Tapping into AT&T February 5, 2006 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has spent much of the last few weeks trying to explain that to protect American democracy, it must sometimes spy on American citizens. Now the debate over its warrantless domestic spying program has reached out to touch one of the iconic names of American capitalism: Ma Bell. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for civil liberties in cyberspace, sued AT&T last week, alleging that the company violated its duty to keep phone records and conversations private. The suit asserts that AT&T not only allowed the National Security Agency to intercept phone calls without a warrant as part of its program to monitor the calls of U.S. residents with suspected ties to terrorists overseas, but it also enabled government agents to sift through the company's vast database of calling records in search of suspicious activity. The lawsuit takes an indirect route to the foundation's ultimate goal, which is to force investigators to get a court's approval before spying on U.S. residents. At Senate hearings on the NSA program, which begin Monday, members of the Judiciary Committee may want to borrow from the foundation's strategy and see what they can learn not just from government officials but from telecommunications executives, who cannot hide behind executive privilege. Ma Bell is certainly an inviting target. Outside of the NSA, no one knows more about the domestic surveillance program than the phone companies, the largest of which is AT&T. And the Bush administration has been extremely tight-lipped about the program's details. As a result, it is impossible to judge whether the program has focused exclusively on people chatting with Al Qaeda, as President Bush likes to say, or a much larger group of Americans who just happen to make or receive international calls. AT&T, which isn't commenting on the suit, may have felt it had no choice but to comply with the NSA's requests. Federal law requires telephone companies to cooperate with law enforcement demands if they are supported by a court order or, in emergencies, certification from the U.S. attorney general that no court order is necessary. The surveillance program was almost certainly backed by just such a certification, and that could stop the lawsuit in its tracks. Ideally, the lawsuit will stop AT&T from cooperating in the NSA program, or at least prod it to put up more resistance. There is no need or excuse for warrantless surveillance in America, especially given the accelerated procedures Congress established for obtaining such warrants. Indeed, the court that Congress created with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is notoriously accommodating to such requests. In addition, the administration's assertion that it can conduct whatever spying operation it pleases during the unrelenting war on terrorism is an affront to Americans' privacy and due-process rights. More practically, the lawsuit may also reveal how the spying program works and what types of information it collects. But the administration views such details as sensitive national security secrets, and it is likely the government will try to have the lawsuit thrown out before any such disclosures are made. In the mid-1970s, the late Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, led a Senate investigation into domestic spying and other abuses of power by the NSA and federal agencies. By interviewing executives from telecommunications companies, his investigators gained critical details about the government's snooping. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee could learn from the Church committee's boldness. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** 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, Los Angeles Times. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Rhonda Abrams Subject: Important Lesson from 2005: Back up Your Data Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 15:48:40 -0600 Reviewing events of 2005, if I were to choose the most important lesson for entrepreneurs, it clearly would be this: Back up your data. This year, hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated tens of thousands of small companies. Critical to their recovery was gaining access to their business records. Yet, roughly 60% of small businesses and nearly 70% of home-based computer users fail to back up their data regularly, according to research firm IDC. The Information Technology Solution Providers Alliance, an association of computer consultants, differentiates between two types of backups small businesses need: .Data backup, or copying critical information as part of everyday operations. .Disaster prevention, or being able to recover information and keep operating after damage or loss of a location. For data backup, you need an easy mechanism to copy your critical data -- such as customer records, work product, key documents -- to a second storage device. For disaster prevention, you need a way to keep a copy of that mission-critical data in a safe location far away from your primary workplace in case of unanticipated emergencies. What type of backup system you use depends on your specific needs. But one thing's for certain: Any backup system is better than none. The key is finding one that's easy, affordable and relatively mindless. "If you have to take major steps to back up, you're not going to do it," said Mike Williams, general manager of branded products at Maxtor in Milpitas, Calif., a leading maker of backup storage devices for small business. I've tried a number of backup approaches in my business: Copy it yourself Years ago, I started with the simplest, cheapest procedure. Once a week, I copied critical files to backup drives. Depending on how much data you have, you can use CDs, DVDs, flash memory or other storage media. Then take or send these backups to another location at least a mile away. But you have to remember to do it. Advantages: It's easy, cheap and locates your data off site in case of emergency. Disadvantages: It's slow, especially if you have lots of data; the data is not very secure; and it's easy to forget to back up. Online backup service I've long been a proponent of online services such as EVault or SwapDrive. These systems access your computers over the Internet, copy files you've chosen and automatically back them up to their secure computers. You get both data backup and disaster prevention in one solution. Advantages: Once installed, you don't have to think about it; data is stored securely in a remote location; it's easy to recover from any computer. Disadvantages: Slow, especially if you have large amounts of data; you'll need to keep computers running overnight because backing up during the day will slow down regular computer use; ongoing monthly expense. Internal backup system These systems copy data over a USB2 or Firewire connection from your company's computers to your server using special software, such as Second Copy from Centered Systems. Or data can be backed up to a dedicated storage device, such as One Touch from Maxtor. Advantages: Fast, which is especially critical for large amounts of data or graphic-intensive files; relatively secure from intrusion; no fixed monthly expense. Disadvantages: The data is stored on site and you must remember to make a copy to take elsewhere. While the method is not difficult, it requires someone with technical capabilities to install and maintain. We use a hybrid approach in our office. We back up to our company server but make copies -- on DVDs -- of our most critical data and send those to a secure location out of state. Maxtor's Williams recommends the same approach. "Buy two (storage) drives. Do a full back up to one once a week. Take that drive home and swap out the one you had at home from last week. At the most, you'll lose one week's worth of data." Yes, 2005 was a reminder of how vulnerable and vital our data is. So choose a simple backup system for your important files. Remember, the most effective backup system is the one you actually use. Rhonda Abrams is author of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets & Strategies and president of The Planning Shop, publishers of books and other tools for business plans. Register for Rhonda's free business planning newsletter at www.PlanningShop.com. Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2005. Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/abrams/2005-12-23-data_x.htm?csp=N009 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For other headlines and news of interest from USA Today, and United Press International, see the most recent headlines and stories at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html -No login nor registration requirements, the way the Internet ought to be!- ------------------------------ From: Ellen Wulfhorst Subject: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2006 16:04:24 -0600 By Ellen Wulfhorst One of life's ironic oases of solitude -- the peace people find amid the roar of a New York City subway -- could soon be gone. As New York plans to make cell phones work in subway stations, experts say Americans eventually could be connected everywhere, underground or in the air. "It's technically feasible, both for airplanes and subways," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "It's the social aspect that's really the most intractable." People fall into two camps, one that defends the right to make calls no matter the inconvenience to others and the other that likes an undisturbed atmosphere, he said. Business people tend to belong to first camp, and leisure travelers to the second, he added. Any solitude found waiting for a New York subway is bound to end. City officials have solicited bids to connect more than half the stations for cell phone service, although there's no set timetable yet. Service through the tunnels is another, more expensive matter, but even the suggestion sends shudders through people who like being incommunicado. "It's a time when people should unplug," said Jon Giswold, a personal trainer in New York. "I rely on my cell phone, but I find it a safe haven on a train when people can't get a hold of me." Cell phone service in planes is further off, with the Federal Aviation Administration determining if use in flight would interfere with electronic equipment. If it's found to be safe, providing service would be up to individual airlines, an FAA spokeswoman said. Meanwhile, most people aren't clamoring for cell phones in the sky. CELL PHONE MANNERS In seeking public comment last year, the Federal Communications Commission, which deals with if it's technically feasible to operate phones on planes, heard from thousands of people, many of whom focused on passenger "air rage." "Can you imagine 13 hours to Beijing next to someone on a cell phone?" asked Fern Lowenfels, a Manhattanite walking in the city's Upper West Side. According to Katz, research shows cell phones become annoying because the human brain is uncomfortable listening to just one half of a conversation. "Without that other part of the conversation, our brain constantly thinks we're being tickled to be involved," he said. Michael Malice, author of the book "Overheard in New York," said bad cell phone behavior gives him good material. "It's just tacky and gauche. That's all there is to it," he said. "But most people are tacky and gauche." The Straphangers Campaign, which represents the interests of city subway riders, is "firmly and resolutely ambivalent," said Gene Russianoff, attorney for the group. "There's people who want to be permanently wired, and then there's a big contingent that ironically view the one private moment they have during their busy day is on the subways." Cell phones have gotten a bad reputation -- from being used as detonators in high-profile assassinations to the devices that spread mass insanity in Stephen King's newest horror tale "Cell: A Novel." But, Malice noted, phones are not to blame. "After September 11, none of us are really in a position to criticize cell phones entirely," he said. "So many people were able to call their families and talk to them one last time. "If you were trapped and your family was freaking out and you were able to call them, a lot of minds would be put at ease," he said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines and news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 22:48:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail By SAUL HANSELL Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. Thy also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted. AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a junk-mail folder or strip them of images and Web links. As is the case now, mail arriving from addresses that users have added to their AOL address books will not be treated as spam. Yahoo and AOL say the new system is a way to restore some order to e-mail, which, because of spam and worries about online scams, has become an increasingly unreliable way for companies to reach their customers, even as online transactions are becoming a crucial part of their businesses. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/technology/05AOL.html?ex=1296795600&en=6efb03c8cbfac79e&ei=5090 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This abreviated version of the original article we had in yesterday's digest was sent in again today by Monty Solomon, and is reprinted as a reminder to commercial emailers on what to expect in the near future. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 22:53:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Increasingly, Internet's Data Trail Leads to Court By SAUL HANSELL The New York Times February 4, 2006 Who is sending threatening e-mail to a teenager? Who is saying disparaging things about a company on an Internet message board? Who is communicating online with a suspected drug dealer? These questions, and many more like them, are asked every day of the companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites. And even though these companies promise to protect the privacy of their users, they routinely hand over the most intimate information in response to legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases. Such data led directly to a suspect in a school bombing threat; it has also been used by the authorities to track child pornographers and computer intruders, and has become a tool in civil cases on matters from trade secrets to music piracy. In St. Louis, records of a suspect's online searches for maps proved his undoing in a serial- killing case that had gone unsolved for a decade. In short, just as technology is prompting Internet companies to collect more information and keep it longer than before, prosecutors and civil lawyers are more readily using that information. When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section. The issue has come to the fore because of a Justice Department request to four major Internet companies for data about their users' search queries. While America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft complied with the request, Google is resisting it. That case does not involve information that can be linked to individuals, but it has cast new light on what privacy, if any, Internet users can expect for the data trail they leave online. The answer, in many cases, is clouded by ambiguities in the law that governs electronic communication like telephone calls and e-mail. In many cases, the law requires law enforcement officials to meet a higher standard to read a person's e-mail than to get copies of his financial or medical records. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/technology/04privacy.html?ex=1296709200&en=904f8c86659f2cfe&ei=5090 To read this full report in New York Times, and other headlines and stories of interest with no registration nor login requirements -- really, the way the web should always be -- please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 04:36:29 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I could never understand is how >> stores such as Walmart on the one hand want to encourage shoppers >> (although I do not personally care for the chain) yet on the other >> hand they can claim that someone is 'trespassing' if the person comes >> in their store. Ditto with public transit. If it is a public place, >> which is claimed, > It is *still* _PRIVATE_PROPERTY_, and the property owner _does_ have the > legal right to determine who can, and *cannot*, be present on their > property. > The property can extend an invitation (permission) to the 'general > public', and then revoke -- by 'actual notice' to the party involved > -- that permission for specific individuals. > Where an invitation to the general public exists, *before* you can be > charged with trespass, they must first expressly notify you that your > presence is 'no longer welcome' (i.e., they ask you to leave the > premises, "now"), and you fail to comply with that request in a timely > manner. >> then how can a member of the public who chooses to >> go inside or upon the property of the store or the transit agency get >> arrested by police for trespassing? Yet CTA does that all time; so >> does Walmart. Seems to me like Walmart and transit agency want to have >> things both ways at the same time. PAT] > If you allow somebody into your apartment -- say, to use the phone -- > do you think you should have no recourse, if they sit down on the sofa > and refuse to leave when you ask? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a considerable difference > between purely private, residential property and privately owned > property used for commercial purposes, as any reasonably intelligent > person would explain to you. At my house, for example, I have to > positively invite someone to come in to use the phone. Walmart does > not 'invite' someone in to do shopping or use the phone. The store > just sits there with an open door; people walk in and out at their > leisure. No one specifically 'invites' or 'allows' them to come in > to do shopping. Now if Walmart was to specifically lock their front > door, and have someone sit there to question all comers, and specifi- > cally allow them to come in to do shopping or use the phone or > whatever that would be different. When is the last time you ever heard > someone walk into Walmart, seek out the manager or some responsible > employee and ask permission, "is it okay if I come in to go shopping?" > PAT] When is the last time you heard someone ask "is it okay if I come in to go shopping?" at a garage sale. Which *is* held on "purely private, residential property", to use your language. An 'invite' to enter a premises can be "explicit" (as in the case of you allowing someone in to your apartment to use the phone), or "implicit" (as in the case of an establishment 'open to the public'). Absent _either_ an 'explicit' or 'implicit' invitation on the premises, *AND* absent 'actual notice' that ones presence is 'not welcome'; it is =NOT= trespassing for a person to "merely" be on the premises. However, =regardless= if you once had an 'explicit' _or_ 'implicit' invitation to be on the premises, when you receive ACTUAL NOTICE that you are no longer welcome -- that said invitation has, in your case, been withdrawn -- *THEN* if you enter (or _remain_ on) the premises, you are trespassing. Retail establishments -- or any other place for that matter -- that first _tell_ someone "you are not welcome on our property; get out of here now, and DO NOT RETURN", and *if*/*when* that person _does_ return has them arrested for trespassing, *ARE* properly exercising their 'private property' rights. Absolutely no different than a farmer that has somebody arrested for going hunting in his fields w/o permission, and despite the posted 'no trespassing' warnings. In article , Please post not email replies wrote: > Thomas Daniel Horne wrote: >> ... The real kicker in the case of many volunteer >> fire stations in the US is that they are not publicly owned at all. >> They are often owned fee simple by a private corporation that is >> organized under state charter to provide a public service. ... > It's not just bathrooms that are off limits. For many of them, > depending on the legal form of their organization, neither the public > nor the municipality hiring them has any right to see their books or > internal affairs. There was a recent case where the top two officials > of a volunteer fire department suddenly resigned with no official > explanation, but with a hint of financial impropriety. Yet, this same > department regularly solicits the public for contributions. It tries > to combine the best (for it) aspects of a privately owned corporation > and of a public charity. To be fair to it, it does fight fires > competently. Do they claim that the 'contributions' are tax deductible? If the answer is "no", then they don't have to reveal anything to the public. OTOH, if they claim the contributions are deductible, that they are a "501 (c) {something}" not-for-profit, then they are required by federal law to release certain financial information to _anyone_ who requests it. If they are 'hired' by a municipality -- then the municipality _can_ make it a condition of that 'hiring' that they disclose to the town whatever financial information that the town deems necessary. The FD has a 'free choice' -- disclose the info, or don't get the city contract. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your mention of 'bathrooms off limits' reminds me of how difficult it is to find a public restroom in a store in downtown Chicago. _None_ of the CTA stations allow anyone to use the restroom; _none_ of the little shops along State Street downtown permit it either. Even many restaurants do not permit the public to use the restroom. Now, a restaurant _which also sells liquor_ is required by the city code in Chicago to have available restrooms, but places for _food only_ are not. You can easily go five or six blocks in downtown Chicago before you can find either a public restroom or for that matter, a pay phone. Where this becomes worrisome for someone like myself is because since my brain aneurysm, I do not have extremely good control over my bodily functions; at least not perfect control. Years and years ago, CTA had restrooms in all their stations as a courtesy to the public; some of them were not terribly clean; even the ones which demanded a five cent coin to go in and use them, (coin lock on the door) but at least they were there. Then City of Chicago passed yet another ordinance which outlawed the installation/use of 'pay toilets' and CTA's response was to close all the bathrooms entirely. Lisa Hancock, this was another example of the social do-gooder activists I guess: CEPTIA (Committee for the Elimination of Pay Toilets in America) convinced City Council to get rid of them. To hell with those of us who at least could count on having somewhere 'to go' when downtown or in a CTA station. There was also a very large public facility in the basement of City Hall for at least fifty years; one day I went past (several years ago) and it was totally boarded up and permanently out of service. PAT] ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 07:46:54 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , snertking wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> Herb Stein wrote: >>> "NOT a public place" would imply that the no-smoking ban in NY is a crock. >> I have no idea what the terms are of no-smoking ban which is a >> different issue. But any property owner may ban smoking on their own >> property if they so choose. The govt for many years has banned >> smoking in some places, such as the inside of a transit bus. > No smoking in "public places" -- which includes pretty much everywhere > - bars, hotel lobbies, etc. Owner of premises CANNOT decide to allow > smoking on his or her own property. Seems unconstitutional, if ya ask > me. Might or might not be. However, government can probably nonetheless, in interest of public health and safety, mandate bans on smoking on any places where employees are required to work, or general public needs to go to obtain various services. In other words, owner of premises can indeed "decide to allow smoking on his or her own property" -- just can't compel or require (or allow) any employees to work there, and so on. I used to think that health risks of second-hand smoke were probably greatly exaggerated by opponents of smoking -- just didn't seem that great a threat. Then I read of a study on employees of bars and restaurants in San Francisco, whose health records were rather carefully followed before and after a smoking ban, which had earlier been in force, was turned off for a while. The quality of the study and the magnitude of the results convinced me the risks are real and significant. ------------------------------ From: bok118@zonnet.nl (Gerard Bok) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Interceptions in Greece, Includes Prime Minister Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 12:00:44 GMT On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 22:12:42 -0500, Danny Burstein wrote: > " The mobile phones of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and many other > leading Greek officials were tapped for around a year, > " The software allowed calls to and from the numbers being tapped to > be monitored by other cell phones, from which conversations could be > recorded. And how did the 'Prince Charles and Camilla tapes' come to us ? They could have known. They should have known. Kind regards, Gerard Bok ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Spammer with an toll Free Fax number Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2006 17:50:30 GMT I got a junk e-mail advertising Lumber Liquidators. I can't believe that such a large reputable company would fall for a spammer. The number is not theirs, it is the spammer's Fax, I thought about also putting theirs up, but figure I give them a chance to explain their actions when I call their corporate office on Monday. (888)269-3836 The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some readers here, who know the routine, may decide to investigate this latest listing. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #54 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Feb 6 14:28:59 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9F32D15104; Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:28:58 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #55 Message-Id: <20060206192858.9F32D15104@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:28:58 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Feb 2006 14:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 55 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Gonzales Defends Bush Eavesdropping (Katherine Shrader) No Internet Tax? - Don't Be So Sure (Sonia Blumstein) Cellular-News for Monday 6th February 2006 (cellular-news) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 6, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Google, Skype Want to Help People Fon Home (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Interconnecting Alcatel OmniPCX (caveman) Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway (Lisa Hancock) Re: Tapping Into AT&T (Lisa Hancock) Re: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail (David Wolff) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Katherine Shrader Subject: Gonzales Defends Bush Eavesdropping Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 12:24:15 -0600 Gonzales Defends Legality of Surveillance By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insisted Monday that President Bush is fully empowered to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants as part of the war on terror. He exhorted Congress not to end or tinker with the program. Gonzales' strong defense of Bush's program was challenged by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and committee Democrats during sometimes contentious questioning. Specter told Gonzales that even the Supreme Court had ruled that "the president does not have a blank check." Specter suggested that the program's legality be reviewed by a special federal court set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "There are a lot of people who think you're wrong. What do you have to lose if you're right?" Specter, R-Pa., asked Gonzales. However, he said that court was already quite familiar with the program. He also said he did not think the 1978 law needed to be modified. And, said Gonzales, "To end the program now would afford our enemy dangerous and potential deadly new room for operation within our borders." Specter told Gonzales that federal law "has a forceful and blanket prohibition against any electronic surveillance without a court order." While the president claims he has the authority to order such surveillance, Specter said, "I am skeptical of that interpretation." A former Texas judge, Gonzales played an important role as White House counsel in developing the legal justification for the spy program. He served in that post from January 2001 to February 2005. Committee Democrats, who have generally contended that Bush is acting illegally in permitting domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, sharply grilled Gonzales. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked if the authorization Bush claims to have would also enable the government to open mail -- in addition to monitoring voice and electronic communications. "There is all kinds of wild speculation out there about what the president has authorized and what we're actually doing," Gonzales said. "You're not answering my question," Leahy retorted. "Does this law authorize the opening of first class mail of U.S. citizens? Yes or no." "That's not what's going on," Gonzales said. "We are only focusing on international communications, where one part of the conversation is al-Qaida." Gonzales said the fact that the nation is at war gives the president more powers than during peacetime. "The president is acting with authority both by the Constitution and by statute," he said. Gonzales called the eavesdropping program "reasonable" and "lawful," and said much of the published criticism about it was "misinformed, confused or wrong." Monday's hearing got off to a rocky start when Republicans and Democrats disagreed over whether Gonzales should be sworn in. Democrats said he should, but Specter said it wasn't necessary. He wasn't. "My answers would be the same whether I was under oath or not," Gonzales told the panel. Gonzales reiterated the administration's contention that Bush was authorized to allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without first obtaining warrants, on people inside the United States whose calls or e-mails may be linked to terrorism. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., told Gonzales the administration broke with the time-honored system of checks and balances by not seeking greater congressional cooperation. Kennedy said the eavesdropping program could actually weaken national security, raising the prospect that terror suspects could go free if courts rule evidence collected from such surveillance to be tainted. "We're taking a risk with national security which I think is unwise," Kennedy said. "We don't believe prosecutions are going to be jeopardized because of this program," Gonzales told Kennedy. Gonzales declined to discuss details of the operation, as skeptics of the program have demanded. "An open discussion of the operational details of this program would put the lives of Americans at risk," he said. The program has sparked a heated debate about presidential powers in the war on terror since it was first disclosed in December. Gonzales argued that Congress did, in fact, authorize the president in September 2001 to use military force in the war on terror. The Judiciary Committee's Democrats want Specter to call more administration officials for questioning, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and ex-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, both of whom reportedly objected to parts of the program. Specter said such appearances were possible. The committee chairman asked Gonzales if he would have any objections to Ashcroft's appearance before the committee on the spy program. Gonzales told Specter his committee could ask whomever they wanted to appear. "Senator, I don't think I would have an objection." On the Net: Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov/ Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Sonia Blumstein Subject: No Internet Tax? - Don't Be So Sure Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 12:28:25 -0600 New IPI Study: No Internet Tax? Don't Be So Sure; Alarming State, Local, Federal & International Threats Contact: Sonia Blumstein of the Institute for Policy Innovation, 703-912-5742 or soniab@ipi.org WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ The Internet Tax Moratorium expires in 2007, and state, federal and international regulators and legislators are already targeting the Internet as a lush source of new revenue, says a new report released today by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). George Pieler, an IPI research fellow and author of "No Internet Tax? Don't Be So Sure," points out that, "Absent a sweeping federal intervention to secure the Internet's freedom, it will be an increasingly rich target for revenues and regulatory interference from all directions." STATE & LOCAL THREATS: One indication of states' eagerness to collect Internet taxes is that they quickly began taxing VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Because VoIP competes with traditional telecom services, the 2004 moratorium did not consistently block its taxation. If states are so quick to take this tax advantage, what is to stop them from taking even more Internet revenue? "It would be better if competition from VoIP was used as an occasion to rethink telecom taxation from the ground up," writes Pieler. FEDERAL THREATS: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is targeting VoIP for contributions to the "Universal Service Fund" (USF). There is no surprise here, however. The USF is not a legislated tax, and therefore with minimum scrutiny and oversight from the congressional budget and appropriations process, is wide open to increased funding through taxation. INTERNATIONAL THREATS: In November of last year, the UN failed in an attempt to create a globally-controlled Internet. If UN had succeeded, there would be strong pressure to make the currently operating Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) -- a UN program designed to encourage companies to donate part of their profits to the fund for "public technology projects" -- required instead of optional. According to Pieler, "As in the United States itself, the universal assumption that the Internet should be minimally regulated, and not taxed per se, rapidly seems to be vanishing." THE SOLUTION: "Before the Internet Tax Moratorium expires in 2007, Congress and the executive branch should seriously review Internet taxation from the local, state, national and international perspective, and determine how best to sustain the largely tax-free Internet, that has done more good for the world than any bureaucracy ever could," concludes Pieler. The Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) is an independent think tank with offices in Washington, DC and Dallas, TX. http://www.usnewswire.com/ Copyright 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770 ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 6th February 2006 Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 07:46:39 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] Bulgarian Operator Orders 3G Billing Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15949.php Bulgaria's GloBul has ordered a new platform from LHS to manage billing for its 3G services. GloBul has just recently been awarded a 3G license. LHS will implement the system at GloBul replacing an old legacy system. BSCS iX is a fully convergent end... EDGE Coverage Expanded in Bulgaria http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15950.php Bulgaria's M-Tel says that it has increased the coverage of its EDGE network to 9 new cities. Starting from the end of December 2005, customers living in Kardzhali, Samokov, the Borovetz resort, Sandanski, Dimitrovgrad, Dupnitsa, Bankia, Radomir and ... 3G Based Mobile TV to Dominate - But Not For Long http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15953.php Northern Sky Research (NSR) has released a report, which concludes that mobile TV will represent an increasingly compelling content offering to mobile subscribers and will enable new methods to deliver video programming and advertisements to consumer... T-Mobile Expanding German HSDPA Coverage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15956.php T-Mobile Germany says that it plans to offer HSDPA coverage at the upcoming CeBIT 2006 consumer and trade fair in Hanover. T-Mobile will offer transmission rates of up to 1.8 Mbit/s and uplink speeds of 384 Kbit/s in large parts of the UMTS network. ... [[Financial News]] Telenor Blocks VimpelCom 2006 Budget For 2nd Time http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15934.php Russia's second-largest wireless operator VimpelCom said Friday its board had failed for the second time to approve the company's 2006 budget. ... FOCUS: Russian operators want to expand abroad, opportunities limited http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15936.php Russia's largest mobile operators have divided the saturated domestic market and are now looking for opportunities in neighboring countries but there are not many assets available for sale and they may be pricey. ... CenterTelecom sells stakes in two regional mobile cos http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15938.php CenterTelecom, a hub telecommunications operator in Russia's Central Federal District, has sold its 30% stake in Belgorod Mobile Communications and its 40% stake in Smolensk Mobile Communications, according to information released by CenterTelecom ... Telenor supports cooperation between VimpelCom, Kyivstar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15939.php Norway's telecommunication operator Telenor supports establishing cooperation, such as a service provider agreement, between Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom and Ukrainian mobile operators, including Kyivstar, Telenor said in a pre... IDC: Mobile telephony to continue growing at 2 digits http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15944.php The mobile market in Latin America is expected to grow above 10% this year, although not as high as the 33% growth recorded in mobile handsets during 2005, Romina Aducci, Telecom Services Director for Latin America at tech consultancy IDC told BNamer... Virgin Mobile Australia Merging with SIMplus Mobile http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15948.php Australia's Optus is planning to merge its two wholly-owned subsidiaries, Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) and SIMplus Mobile. Mr Matt Davey has been appointed Chief Executive of the combined operation. Mr Davey replaces Jonathan Marchbank who has decid... Mid-East Operator Seeks Route Into Europe http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15952.php Mohammed Hassan Omran, Chairman and CEO of Emirates Telecommunications Corporation - Etisalat, says that the company aims to be among the Top 10 telecommunications corporations in the world, having successfully grown from a local to international oper... [[Handsets News]] Brightstar 2005 revenues boosted by Motorola sales, Brazil launch http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15943.php Entry into the Brazilian market, a partnership with Motorola and renewed agreements in Latin America were behind the US$2.2bn record revenues regional wireless equipment distributor Brightstar posted for 2005, the company's global marketing and publi... [[Legal News]] Maxim Enters Settlement Pact With Qualcomm In Patent Suit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15931.php Maxim Integrated Products Inc. said Thursday that it entered into a settlement agreement with Qualcomm Inc. to resolve patent litigation. ... Telekom Malaysia Pays $232 Million To Deutsche Telekom Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15942.php Government-controlled Telekom Malaysia said late Friday it has paid $232 million to DeTeAsia Holding, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, after it lost a dispute over a contract. ... [[Messaging News]] Telecom Rio de Janeiro selects First Hop to offer SMS platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15941.php Brazilian mobile services platform provider Telecom Rio de Janeiro has selected the Wireless Broker platform sold by Finland's First Hop to connect its value-added services to mobile phone operators across Brazil, the companies said in a joint stat... Mobile operators sign up for multimedia service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15945.php El Salvador's four mobile operators have signed up to receive multimedia services from provider LPG Mvil, local daily La Prensa Grfica reported. ... [[MVNO News]] Spain Regulator To Force Mobile Operators To Allow MVNO http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15933.php Spanish telecommunications industry regulator CMT Friday said it will force the country's mobile operators to share their networks with mobile virtual network operators, or MVNO. ... [[Network Operators News]] Wireless Broadband for Kenya http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15951.php Japan's Kyocera has announced the commercial introduction of iBurst wireless broadband services in the Republic of Kenya. iBurst base stations and terminals designed and produced by Kyocera will be provided to Africa Online, the Kenyan Internet servi... Celtel Launches Technical Center in Kinshasa http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15955.php The pan-African operator, Celtel International recently launched a US$7 million Technical Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This new infrastructure will serve as a technical hub for not only the DRC but also other Celtel operations such as;... [[Offbeat News]] Greek Phone-tapping Didn't Endanger National Security http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15935.php ATHENS (AP)--Greece's governing conservatives said Friday the country's security wasn't at stake despite the discovery government mobile phones were tapped by unknown individuals during the Athens 2004 Olympics and for nearly a year. ... Snow Leads to Exceptional Increase in MMS Traffic http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15957.php Vodafone says that it experienced a significant increase in traffic as the result of the snowfalls that swept across Portugal on Sunday 29 January. On that day, the Vodafone network registered a traffic peak between 3 pm and 4 pm, with the number of ... [[Personnel News]] KPN's Head Of Mobile Operations Resigns http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15932.php Dutch Telecommunications operator Royal KPN Friday said Guy Demuynck, the chief executive of its mobile division, will leave as of July 1 to join another company. ... Thailand Information And Communications Tech Min Resigns - Government http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15946.php BANGKOK (AP) _ Thai Information and Communication Technology Minister Sora-at Klinpratoom resigned Saturday, a government spokesman said, without citing a reason. ... [[Reports News]] Nightmare Customer Service Slashes Profits - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15947.php A backlash at shoddy customer service and unrelenting sales pitches is hitting British business where it hurts most -- on the bottom line -- warns a new report from the National Consumer Council (NCC). The report reveals a sorry picture of businesses o... [[Statistics News]] Belarusian GSM operator BeST user base at 2,000 as of Feb 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15937.php The subscriber base of state-controlled Belarus Telecommunications Network, or BeST, which started commercial operations in the capital city of Minsk on December 21, 2005, amounted to 2,000 users as of February 1, the company said late on Thursday. ... Russia's MegaFon user base in Orenburg Region up to 300,000 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15940.php The subscriber base of Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon in the Orenburg Region rose to over 300,000 people as of December 31, 2005 from about 100,000 people as of January 1, 2005, MSS-Povolzhye, a MegaFon subsidiary operating in the r... Vodafone Gains 100,000 3G Customers in Romania http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15954.php Romania's Connex Vodafone says that it added 602,832 net subscribers in the quarter to December 31, 2005, giving it a total customer base of 6,131,839 which is 25% higher year on year. As of December 31, 2005, postpaid subscribers accounted for 36% o... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 11:41:14 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, February 6, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 6, 2006 ******************************** Fitch: Reforms Threaten Financial Profiles http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16537?11228 Credit profiles of some wireless operators could be negatively affected by reforms to the Universal Service Fund (USF) - due to expire in June - according to Fitch Ratings. Fitch says the reforms could pose "a material event risk to some U.S. wireless operators and place negative pressures on future cash flows." Companies without enough... Turning a Campus into a Wireless Testbed http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16530?11228 Ubiquitous communications -- the ability to reach people anytime anywhere -- is getting a trial on the Newark, N.J., campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). In fact, the campus is about to be turned into a virtual laboratory for investigating innovative ways students can connect with each other using cell phones and... Survey: Wireline Erosion Will Accelerate; 20% of Households Plan to Cancel or Not Use Wireline Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16528?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- According to the In-Stat US Consumer Telecom Survey, nearly 20% of respondents that use wireless voice service plan to drop landline phone service, reports In-Stat. Furthermore, as an indication of future wireline erosion, wireless usage continues to increase in proportion to wireline usage, particularly among... German T-Mobile Makes Data Faster, Cheaper http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16523?11228 Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile, in a major mobile-data- services push in Germany, has unveiled a flat-rate wireless-data pricing scheme and a new High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) service with bandwidth as much as 1.8 Mb/s. The carrier says a handful of its business customers, including Deutsche Bahn AG, has been testing... Google, Skype Back WiFi Startup http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16520?11228 Google and eBay Inc. division Skype have invested in the Spanish start-up company FON , whose software turns home wireless routers into WiFi hotspots for broadband sharing among a worldwide community of "foneros." Google and Skype joined VCs Index Ventures and Sequoia... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:03:32 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Google, Skype Want to Help People Fon Home USTelecom dailyLead February 6, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cVjUfDtutaoxvxkBai TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Google, Skype want to help people Fon home BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Alltel asks RIM to settle beef with NTP * KDDI to buy stake in cable operator * Satcasters may join forces for Internet services USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What's NEXT for Disney? Find out at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * IBM chip links home entertainment platforms * More gaming consoles include Internet functions * Bravo to start gay/lesbian broadband channel REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Telecoms cooperated with NSA wiretapping plan * Bush nominates McDowell for FCC post Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cVjUfDtutaoxvxkBai ------------------------------ From: caveman Subject: Re: Interconnecting Alcatel OmniPCX Date: 6 Feb 2006 01:33:12 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can we use Alcatels ABC between enterprise and office ? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway Date: 6 Feb 2006 07:13:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Ellen Wulfhorst wrote: > In seeking public comment last year, the Federal Communications > Commission, which deals with if it's technically feasible to operate > phones on planes, heard from thousands of people, many of whom focused > on passenger "air rage." On commuter trains, the cell phone usage is very annoying. People talk loudly. Do cellphones have enough sidetone or too much anti-sidetone circuitry? At my local convenience store a customer was loudly yaking away on her cell phone, including liberal use of profanities, and created a disturbance. She utterly ignored requests to go outside; as if her phone conversation was more important than anyone else. A lot of cell phone talkers have that nasty attitude. Talking while driving is very distracting. Regularly motorists yaking pull up to the wrong lane and then block traffic trying to switch over. They still don't hang up even then. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Tapping Into AT&T Date: 6 Feb 2006 07:40:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mike Riddle wrote: > AT&T, which isn't commenting on the suit, may have felt it had no > choice but to comply with the NSA's requests. Federal law requires > telephone companies to cooperate with law enforcement demands if they > are supported by a court order or, in emergencies, certification from > the U.S. attorney general that no court order is necessary. The > surveillance program was almost certainly backed by just such a > certification, and that could stop the lawsuit in its tracks. The above is a very important point. If true, it means that EFF wasted the time and money of AT&T and hurt its own credibility. > Ideally, the lawsuit will stop AT&T from cooperating in the NSA > program, or at least prod it to put up more resistance. I object to that approach. If the government is doing something wrong, focus on the government; don't harass a private organization that may not have a choice in the matter. On principle, I object to lawsuits such as this because they are a backhanded way of creating social policy outside of the normal democratic means. Right now Congress is taking a hard look at this particular situation (this morning's paper had a front page headline on it), which is how it is supposed to work. > More practically, the lawsuit may also reveal how the spying program > works and what types of information it collects. But the > administration views such details as sensitive national security > secrets, and it is likely the government will try to have the lawsuit > thrown out before any such disclosures are made. Spying on enemy communications is a critical method of defense and must be kept secret, lest the enemy learn and change its codes. > In the mid-1970s, the late Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, led a > Senate investigation into domestic spying and other abuses of power by > the NSA and federal agencies. As a result of those hearings laws were passed limiting the FBI and CIA and information sharing. IMHO, these restrictions may have contributed to 9/11; perhaps there would've been better tracking of potential terrorists within the U.S. I also believe some of the domestic spying work of the 1960s and 1970s was justified because of efforts by some groups to disrupt and attack domestic targets in those years. ------------------------------ From: dwolffxx@panix.com (David Wolff) Subject: Re: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 16:45:38 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > By SAUL HANSELL > Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a > postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be > delivered to many of their customers. > America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of > e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives > preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 > of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must > promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their > messages, or risk being blocked entirely. So ... spammers sign up for this under a throwaway business/domain, send spam to AOL'ers knowing that the spam will be delivered without any filtering whatsoever, and then disappear. I understand this cuts down the spammers, since they actually have to pay a little, but the advantage of entirely bypassing filters would be huge for many spammers. Am I confused? Thanks -- David (Remove "xx" to reply.) ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #55 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Feb 6 23:48:11 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8E4801507A; Mon, 6 Feb 2006 23:48:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #56 Message-Id: <20060207044810.8E4801507A@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 23:48:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 6 Feb 2006 23:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 56 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BMW Cut From Google Search For Cheating (Nancy Gohring) Toys Go on Parade at New York's Annual Fair (Nichole Maestri) Straight Talk on Mac and Security Risks (Rebecca Freed) AOL Starts Charging for Email from Large Senders (Jon Swartz) Drivers Who Misuse Cell Phones Have Rest of us in a Dither (Gary Richards) Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway (Steven Lichter) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Nancy Gohring Subject: BMW Cut From Google Search For Cheating Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:46:33 -0600 BMW Cut From Google Results for Cheating Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service In a move that analysts say indicates a problem that still needs a solution, Google has removed BMW's German Web site from its index for violating Google's guidelines against trying to manipulate search results. The move was first reported by Google employee Matt Cutts in a posting to his blog on Saturday. He said BMW.de had been removed last week because certain pages on the site would show up one way when the search engine visited the page but when a Web user opened the page, a redirect mechanism would display a completely different page. Google noted that "you cannot show us one page, then show other users different pages." Cutts wrote that the practice violates Google's guidelines, particularly the principle that states: "Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users." Google's guidelines also specifically include an item that recommends that Web site creators don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects. Cutts' blog posting also said that Ricoh.de would be removed from Google's index soon for similar reasons. In mid-January, Cutts wrote in his blog that he was offering a courtesy notice to designers of non-English language sites that starting in 2006 Google would be paying closer attention to tricks that go against Google's guidelines. A Google spokesperson confirmed via e-mail that the BMW.de site has been removed but would not comment further on the specific case, adding that Google cannot tolerate sites that try to manipulate search results. Cutts wrote that he expects that Google's Web spam team will require a re-inclusion request including details on who created the misleading pages before BMW.de is included in the database again. He said that some of the offending pages had already been removed. Setting an Example Removing BMW.de from the Google database sets a high-profile example because BMW's Web site practices have been discussed online for years, said Hellen Omwando, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. Still, Google's actions don't tackle the source of a problem, she said. "Google needs to focus on enhancing its algorithms to deal with this kind of situation because right now BMW isn't the only company that does this," she said. In addition to better technology, Google should add some human editors to help prevent manipulation, she said. Companies commonly employ a range of techniques to try to ensure that their sites rank first when users search for them. Part of the problem that Google faces, however, is that there's a fine line between site optimization and tricky practices that manipulate results, Omwando said. While the BMW.de situation points to the control Google has on the type of information that users can access on the Web, Omwando said that if Google takes that too far it will only hurt itself. "Google is saying, 'we're the gatekeepers, if you will, of the information on the Web and if you'd like to be a part of that database you need to step in line,'" she said. However, if Google prevents users from accessing information they seek, they'll look elsewhere for that information, she notes. Google's response was "certainly that is true, but what you show us, has to what you show everyone. Put up whatever kind of web page you like, but do not be deceptive about it. So people will look elsewhere for information if we do not go along and give folks the same deceptive information other search engines give them?" Currently, a Google search for "BMW Germany" turns up BMW's international Web page first and a link to a story about BMW.de being removed from Google's index second. A Yahoo search turns up BMW.com first and BMW.de second. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more technical reports please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ From: Nicole Maestri Subject: Toys Go on Parade at New York's Annual Fair Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:42:16 -0600 By Nicole Maestri While many people still haven't paid their 2005 bills yet, it'll look very much like Christmas 2006 this weekend in New York as hordes of brand new dolls, action figures, toy cars and stuffed animals are set to make their debut at the annual American International Toy Fair. The fair, which takes place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and various showrooms in New York's Toy District, attracts toy makers and inventors from around the world who are looking to wow retail buyers and the media with their latest products. According to the Toy Industry Association, the trade group that organizes the fair, 14,000 buyers from more than 6,500 retail outlets are slated to attend, including buyers from toy stores, department stores, home furnishings retailers, consumer electronics stores, grocery stores and convenience stores. But the amount of business that gets done at the February show has changed in the past few years. With the U.S. toy industry now dominated on the retail front by national chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., buyers for many of the large stores are finalizing their orders for the upcoming year in October, at the American International Fall Toy Show, instead of waiting until February. The autumn show, also held in New York, is largely closed to the press and buyers often make their decisions based on toy prototypes. "The February show has really transformed over the last three years," said Jim Silver, editor-in-chief of Toy Wishes magazine, adding that the October show is where most of the buying gets done. But there is still plenty of work to be done at the upcoming February show, as toy makers meet with small or independent retailers, inventors show off their latest creations and the shroud of secrecy surrounding the 2006 crop of products is lifted. For instance, Mattel Inc. is set to reveal its makeover of the Ken doll as it works to boost sales of its iconic Barbie doll. MGA Entertainment, which makes rival Bratz fashion dolls, will also unveil its 2006 line. Toy makers often keep their plans secret as long as possible to deter copycats from beating them to market. "This is the first time that we can really talk about what we're going to do," said Julia Fitzgerald, vice president of marketing for VTech Electronics North America. VTech will be showcasing its new V.Smile Baby Development System and V.Flash Home "Edutainment" System, which build on the company's V.Smile educational video game system that teaches children math, phonics, problem solving and comprehension. The V.Smile Baby is aimed at infants aged 9 months to 36 months, while the V.Flash is a new video game console for kids between 6 and 10. VTech is hoping the V.Flash, with its line of nonviolent, educational video games, will resonate with parents who want to control which video games their children play and do not yet want to buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. VTech's products illustrate the convergence of electronics and toys as toy makers fight to regain sales they have lost to flashy consumer electronics. "Toy makers are trying to figure out: How do we get back the kids that we've lost?" Fitzgerald said. Highlighting the increasing importance of electronics in the toy industry, the Toy Industry Association is planning a new section at the fair this year that will be called "e@play." It will feature educational toys, handheld games, educational software, DVDs, video games and accessories. The TIA said it created the section after 49 percent of Toy Fair buyers said they were looking to purchase electronic, "edutainment" and educational products at the show. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news reports from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Rebecca Freed Subject: Straight Talk on Mac and Security Risks Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:48:09 -0600 The Mac Skeptic: Straight Talk on Mac Security Risks Rebecca Freed, special to PC World Are Macs impervious to malicious software? No. Have Macs been the subject of catastrophic attacks? No again. Should Mac users be vigilant anyway? Of course. It's time for me to fess up: I've been as complacent as most Mac users when it comes to taking precautions to safeguard my data and the integrity of my system. Although my Windows PC is swaddled in antivirus, anti-spyware, and firewall software, my Mac has been fairly undefended, up to now. I just haven't felt much urgency to put up barriers against threats that don't seem to exist. But at Macworld Expo last month, I stopped by the booths of several security software vendors and began to wonder if they are pushing products people don't need, or if they know something I don't. After all, Mac users are just as vulnerable as anyone to the social engineering used by many computer exploits to install themselves. (While Mac fanatics will insist that they're more sophisticated than the Wintel rabble, there are plenty of innocents in Apple-land as well.) Justifiable Confidence? The complacency about Mac security has some basis in fact: OS X comes with many of the ports that could allow snooping closed; you have to change a System Preference to activate file sharing, personal Web hosting, or even printer sharing. If you don't use these features, you're protected by default. If you want to give other users access to some areas of your system, you should turn on the firewall that's built into OS X. OS X's built-in firewall lets you specify which types of connections you will allow.The firewall is in the same System Preference window as the sharing services, and it lets you close all ports except those for services you want to allow. The firewall has some advanced features, including activity logging and a stealth mode. If enabled, the stealth mode makes your Mac invisible to incoming data inquiries, which is essentially the same thing that hardware firewalls do. If your home network includes a router with a built-in firewall, it probably gives you the same kind of protection. Turning on OS X's firewall is a no-brainer, but finding it isn't. I looked for this control under the Security heading--but instead you need to double-click the System Preferences icon in the Dock, then double-click the Sharing icon in the Internet & Network section. The Security preference in the Personal section deals with managing passwords for account access and FileVault, OS X's built-in encryption capability. I think FileVault is a great idea, but it's something of a blunt instrument. I would like the ability to encrypt just some folders, not all of my hard drive. And as someone who regularly forgets passwords, I'm scared of the possibility that I could irretrievably lock up the contents of my hard drive. Another reason that Mac users tend not to worry about exploits is that Apple tends to patch discovered vulnerabilities quickly. In 2005 Apple issued nine security updates as well as product updates incorporating security patches. These patches addressed exploits that were theoretical; as with most Windows vulnerabilities, no one had used the security holes to create a worm or virus and release it into the wild. For example, last May an independent developer revealed a proof-of-concept exploit in a Dashboard widget, but no malicious activities were reported as a result of the security hole. Within days, Apple had released a security update that fixed the problem: You are now warned with a dialog box when you download and open a widget, and you can remove them, unlike in the first iteration of Dashboard. Like using the built-in firewall, taking advantage of OS X's Software Update is also a no-brainer. To set up automatic updates, open System Preferences, click on Software Update in the System section, and choose an interval at which to check for updates. Safety Software All the precautions I've just discussed are nonintrusive and no-cost, since they are included in the operating system. But are they enough? Just because almost no Mac vulnerabilities have turned into full-blown exploits in recent years, does that mean it won't happen? It would be foolish to think so, and OS X's defenses aren't foolproof. I tried downloading the malicious widget mentioned above, and found that the system's warning said only "do you want to install the program 'zaptastic'"? That doesn't tell me anything about the program or warn me that it's potentially harmful. Only by comparing the name of the applet to a database of known viruses or spyware would I learn that I shouldn't install it. I checked out a spyware scanner from Securemac.com called MacScan 2.0, after speaking with the vendor at Macworld Expo and secretly thinking "Yeah, right. Mac spyware. Show me, dude." What the vendor showed me was a list of programs that its system had been intentionally infected with. So back at home, I downloaded a trial version of the $25 program and scanned my system. Predictably, MacScan found no malicious apps. I checked out the company's list of known spyware, and it consists mostly of keyloggers -- programs that can be surreptitiously installed on a computer to record a user's activities -- although MacScan does identify some Trojan horses and remote dialers as well. Since I don't share my Mac with anybody, and there's no one in my home office who'd want to spy on me, I don't need to worry much about keyloggers. And I wasn't completely satisfied with the amount of information provided by MacScan: There are generic descriptions of the various general categories of malicious software, but no information about the specific programs, such as how prevalent they are or how much damage they are capable of. Spyware scanners for Windows often give you this kind of information. Antivirus Scanner ClamXav lets you schedule virus scans and choose folders to watch for infected files.I also tried a free, open-source antivirus scanner for OS X, called ClamXav. I found it to be reasonably full-featured, allowing me to schedule scans and specify folders to watch. It was easy to install and run, and scanned everything on my system, including my e-mail files. When I ran it, ClamXav found a potentially harmful attachment. Scanning e-mail is important because Mac users could unwittingly forward an infected message attachment received from a Windows user. In fact, catching and containing crud received from Windows users is currently the best reason to use a virus scanner on the Mac. I haven't used ClamXav for long, but I'm keeping it on my Mac. I'd recommend giving it a try. A Firewall That Tells Too Much Little Snitch alerts you if programs on your Mac try to phone home. And then there's Little Snitch, a complement to the OS X firewall that monitors which programs on your system are calling out to the Internet, and through which ports. This $25 shareware has a trial that lasts for only 3 hours, but that's probably long enough to alert you to any suspicious programs -- or drive you crazy, whichever comes first. When I tried Little Snitch, it repeatedly popped up warnings for innocent connections (such as my e-mail program sending a message) even if I checked the "allow forever" option. And Little Snitch requires a rather high degree of computer know-how: It doesn't give you any hints as to which programs are legitimate and whether they should or shouldn't be using a particular port. I got numerous warnings related to my system connecting to my iDisk remote storage -- but they weren't easily recognizable and could have been very worrying. ZoneAlarm for Windows does a much better job of interpreting connections and allowing you to turn off particular alerts. Little Snitch is getting kicked off my system. Other Options There are a handful of commercial antivirus programs and security suites for the Mac as well, including McAfee's Virex, Symantec's Norton Antivirus and Personal Firewall, and Intego's collection of security products for the Mac, including ChatBarrier (an iChat encryption product), NetBarrier, and Virus Barrier. Last winter, sibling publication Macworld compared Mac security products, and the reviewer liked Intego's $70 VirusBarrier best among the antivirus products reviewed. And in a Macworld roundup of third-party software firewalls, the reviewer found that these products didn't add significant improvements over the built-in OS X firewall. After mulling all of this over, I think I've reformed a bit. I now have a few more defenses in place and a healthy caution about downloading and installing unknown files -- but I'm not paranoid. I'll fork over a donation to the developer of ClamXav, to make sure he keeps updating the product, and I'll keep an eye on information sources like Mac Security News and MacInTouch. Mostly, I figure that I'll take the same reasonable, sensible security precautions that I take with my Windows PC to keep out most of the crud -- and I won't be surprised when the Mac crud inevitably surfaces. Comments or questions? Drop a line to Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Jon Swartz Subject: AOL Starts Charging for Email from Large Senders Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:52:16 -0600 AOL to charge fee as way to cut spam By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY SAN FRANCISCO - America Online will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam. But some marketers affected by the plan, set to start in several weeks, call it e-mail taxation designed to create a new stream of revenue for AOL. The certified e-mail system would require advertisers to pay $2 to $3 per 1,000 messages. The plan is optional, though AOL and its tech partner, Goodmail Systems, cannot guarantee that all non-certified e-mail with Web links and images will be delivered. "This is all about protecting consumers from spam, phishing, viruses and fraud," says Richard Gingras, CEO of Goodmail. If successful, the plan could entice other Internet service providers to follow. Yahoo plans to test Goodmail's system to certify e-mail for transactions such as financial statements and shipping confirmations. Certified e-mail has become a hot topic in e-mail circles because many ISPs -- out of security concerns -- block messages with images and Web links. The AOL system would ensure such messages pass its stringent e-mail defenses and reach its 25.5 million subscribers worldwide. Gingras compares the system to certified postal mail. "This will be painful for marketers in the beginning, but it is a positive step in forcing them to be more selective in who they e-mail," says Jupiter Research's David Daniels. "Many now just blast e-mail rather than target an audience." Anyone can apply for the program. Goodmail determines if applicants are legitimate companies with pristine e-mail standards. AOL has final approval. E-mail of approved companies will come with digital tokens recognized by AOL security defenses. AOL subscribers will still be able to block mail from certified senders by adjusting anti-spam tools on their accounts, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham says. AOL says The New York Times and American Red Cross have signed up for the service. Spending on e-mail marketing is expected to jump 24%, to $1.1 billion, by 2010 from $885 million in 2005, Jupiter Research estimates. Still, the revamped commercial e-mail system could have unintended consequences for some marketers and consumers. "It's taxation of the good guys with cash, and it does nothing to help the good guys who can't afford the cost or to deter the bad guys who spam anyway," says Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, an e-mail services company. "Baloney," says AOL's Graham, scoffing at suggestions the e-mail system amounts to taxation. "That's competitive chatter and sour grapes." Consumers, meanwhile, may discover that some commercial e-mail they previously received, and wanted, no longer arrives if advertisers opt not to pay AOL, some e-mail marketers warn. E-mail users would need to retrieve them from a spam folder. "This takes a system that works and shoves a stick in the flywheel of communication," says Jordan Ayan, CEO of SubscriberMail, an e-mail service provider for high-tech, media and sports companies. Find this article at: http://yahoo.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2006-02-05-aol-yahoo-email_x.htm?csp=1 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For more news and headlines from USA Today please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Gary Richards Subject: Drivers Who Misuse Cell Phones Have Many Readers in a Dither Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 15:07:16 -0600 Drivers who misuse cell phones have many readers in a dither By Gary Richards Mercury News Staff Columnist Q I think we need a day dedicated to cell phone blunders. Maybe it will become an educational issue. Dennis McKenna San Jose A Oh, yeah. Here we go, with truly amazing stories. Q My candidate was the guy in a BMW in a left-turn lane on Almaden Expressway. While talking on his phone he pulls a U-turn, against the red light, under the sign saying no U-turn, in front of oncoming traffic at 45-plus mph. Dennis McKenna A We can do better than that . . . Q I'm a light-rail driver and missed a man by 18 inches coming into the Campbell station. He was on a cell phone, walking around the crossing arms which were down with lights flashing. I sounded the horn, he turned and put up his hand as if he was going to stop a 50-ton light-rail train doing 45 mph. The bad news: This is not an isolated incident. Gary Campbell San Jose A Truly, amazing. Q I was on Brokaw Road when suddenly I had to brake because there was a car stopped in front of me with its hazard lights on. I was cringing because I thought I might get rear-ended. Cars behind me stopped suddenly or swerved into the next lane. Next thing I know, the lady with her hazards on hangs up her cell phone and proceeds to drive to the left-turn lane. Patrick Ichikawa San Jose A She was truly a hazard. Q I know you probably get 1,000 e-mails about this a day, but I had to share this. I was crossing The Alameda at Newhall on foot when a driver on his cell phone came within a foot of hitting me as he made a left. Seconds later, a woman made a right turn and actually hit me (I wasn't hurt). She was on her phone as well. Can you please, please, please tell people not to talk on their cells while driving? Especially in residential areas. Kevin Cooper San Jose A Through you, I am trying. Q My favorite: the person who would alternate between driving 60 mph and 75 mph in the fast lane on Interstate 280, depending on whether she was speaking or listening. Ken Yee Sunnyvale A Roll on. Q Driving on Highway 101 south of Tully Road, the freeway was gridlocked. Some guy riding a motorcycle was splitting lanes and making cell phone calls. He would take his right hand off the throttle, weave back and forth as he dialed his phone. He then tucked the phone into his helmet, grabbed the throttle and took off. I saw him do this twice in about 300 yards. At least he was wearing a helmet -- although I am not sure there was much to protect. George Leavell Gilroy A Now, smile for you may be on ``Candid Camera.'' And . . . Q I was on Highway 17 when there was a car speeding along in the left lane that kept shoving back into the right lane. Wait, what's that on his head? Why, it's one of those newfangled video cell phones. But it's not glued to his ear. He's got it braced against his head with his hand as he's shooting clips of the Valley Surprise and gabbing at the same time. All the while wobbling all over the road. Lynne Jolitz Los Gatos A Wobble fits. Q Yikes! While driving on Highway 87 in the construction zone, a woman driving behind me was talking on her cell that she held in her left hand, smoking a cigarette she was holding in her right hand and flicking ashes out the window. My guess she was steering with her knee. Rita Capps San Jose A And . . . Q I don't think we need a law against driving while talking on a phone. But we need something like the 1-800-EXHAUST line, to report people driving badly. Maybe 1-800-YAKKING? Scott Schroeder Palo Alto A The signal would be constantly busy. Have a gripe, minor annoyance or major problem with transportation? Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5335. The fax number is (408) 288-8060. Please leave a daytime phone number. Copyright 2006 San Jose MercuryNews.com and wire service sources. http://www.mercurynews.com ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 02:57:09 GMT Lisa Hancock wrote: > Ellen Wulfhorst wrote: >> In seeking public comment last year, the Federal Communications >> Commission, which deals with if it's technically feasible to operate >> phones on planes, heard from thousands of people, many of whom focused >> on passenger "air rage." > On commuter trains, the cell phone usage is very annoying. People > talk loudly. Do cellphones have enough sidetone or too much > anti-sidetone circuitry? > At my local convenience store a customer was loudly yaking away on her > cell phone, including liberal use of profanities, and created a > disturbance. She utterly ignored requests to go outside; as if her > phone conversation was more important than anyone else. A lot of cell > phone talkers have that nasty attitude. > Talking while driving is very distracting. Regularly motorists yaking > pull up to the wrong lane and then block traffic trying to switch > over. They still don't hang up even then. Last year in Riverside, Ca. a person talking on a cell phone on the Freeway rearended a car with a family, killing several of them, he was charged and convicted of Murder, not Manslaughter as has been in the past. More of these trials are needed until the people in charge pass laws and then enforce them. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #56 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 7 16:18:05 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E22B215059; Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:18:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #57 Message-Id: <20060207211804.E22B215059@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:18:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ACCEPT_CREDIT_CARDS, ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:20:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 57 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Starts Instant Messenger (Eric Auchard) EU Domain Names Open for Business (Agence France Presse News Wire) Boston Globe Credit Card Phishing Scheme (Monty Solomon) Cellphone Law Seems to Silence its Critics (Monty Solomon) Confidential Patient Data Sent to Wrong Company -- For 15 Months (Solomon) Honeywell Blames Employee in Data Leak (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News for Tuesday 7th February 2006 (cellular-news) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 7, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Report Touts IPTV's Promise, Warns of Obstacles (USTelecom dailyLead) Great Job Board (ema32@msn.com) Re: AOL Starts Charging for Email from Large Senders (Matt Simpson) Yahoo Starts Using Fee-Based Email Also (Reuters News Wire) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Telecom Humor (Kenneth P. Stox) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Puts Instant Messenger Service Inside Email Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:29:31 -0600 By Eric Auchard Google Inc. users will be able to conduct instant message chats from a Google Web browser window, alongside their e-mails, instead of requiring a separate application, the company said late Monday. Google, known for its simple and powerful Web searching, hopes that by embedding new instant messaging software it calls "Gmail Chat" into its existing e-mail service, it can differentiate itself in a crowded market it was late to join. The company is struggling to stand out in an entrenched field. Instant messaging was pioneered by America Online more than a decade ago. AOL, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. now have tens of millions of users each. Google shares fell 4.2 percent to $369 on Nasdaq. Google is fixing a decade-old technical divide between the generic Web browser that can check e-mail, search the Web or perform a host of other activities, and separate software used to converse in quick back-and-forth messages with buddies. "We are breaking down some of the artificial barriers between e-mail and Web browsing," Salar Kamangar, Google's vice president of product management, said in a phone interview. "We observed by talking with our users that there is no reason to think of IM as different from an e-mail message." Gmail Chat complements Google Talk, a more sophisticated program the company introduced six months ago that combines instant messaging (IM) with free Web-based calling features. By joining IM to e-mail, Chat can reach a wider base of users. "This is training wheels for Google Talk," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Kelsey Group. "It is a way to introduce a broader population to instant messaging and give them exposure to Google Talk." Gmail Chat requires no special software download. It is available to any registered user of Gmail e-mail. Existing contacts within the more advanced Google Talk program automatically show up in Google Chat, the company said. Gmail Chat features include a Quick Contacts list on the left side of a Google e-mail page that automatically displays the people the user communicates with most frequently, not just via Chat but also via Gmail e-mail or Google Talk services. Gmail users will start receiving offers to join the Gmail Chat service over the coming weeks, although some members received invitations as early as Tuesday. In effect, Mountain View, California-based Google is easing the frustrations of millions of instant messaging users of having to install special software on each computer to hold instant chats. While this presents little difficulty for computers users sitting at a PC they control, many office workers are restricted from downloading the special IM software required for their work machines. Casual Web users checking their e-mail on friends computers or Internet cafes hit similar roadblocks. But the innovation is one of degree. Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo all allow users to send instant messages from within a Web browser, although none of them puts special emphasis on the feature. Last September, Meebo, a Silicon Valley-based start-up began publicly testing a simple-to-use service that allows someone to sign into the four major instant messaging programs at once -- AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Google -- from a single Web page, without any sign-up process or downloading any special software. The trial software is available at http://www.meebo.com/. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Agence France Presse Newswire Subject: EU Internet Domain Names Open for Business Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:33:41 -0600 Hundreds of thousands of businesses raced to snap up ".eu" internet domain names, with "sex.eu" taking the prize for the most sought-after address on the first day companies could apply. Two months after the .eu domain name was launched for public institutions and trademark holders, the tag was opened up to companies other than those seeking a site for a brand, as well as for art works and literature. Within the first hour, sex.eu domain had received 23 applications, followed by schumacher.eu with 15, realestate.eu with 12 and business.eu also with 12 applications, said the European Registry of Internet Domain Names (Eurid). Eurid, the non-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to manage requests, reported fierce demand for the ".eu" domain names. In the first 15 minutes, it received 27,949 applications and after one hour the number had risen to 71,235. The ".eu" domain name is not supposed to replace national endings such as ".fr" and ".de" but rather offer the possibility of a pan-European identity in cyberspace. Germany -- which already has 9.5 million ".de" names -- led the way and was by mid afternoon making up 30.5 percent of the total applications received to date followed by the Netherlands with 16 percent and France with 10.6 percent. A Eurid spokesman said that technically anyone who could claim a prior right to a domain name could apply although in reality that mostly meant that companies were applying. Individuals will have to wait until the second quarter of 2006 before trying to get access to their own veritable European piece of the Internet. Eurid chose to introduce the ".eu" in phases in hope of being able to discourage cybersquatting, when firms or individuals lay claim to a domain name likely to be sought by a somebody with a similar name. During the first phase reserved for institutions and trademark holders, ".eu" has proved hugely popular. About 180,000 requests made for 131,000 domain names during that period and about half of that was made on the very first day. The European Commission, which has been pushing the idea, hopes that ".eu" domain names will soon rival the ".com" that currently dominates the web and currently counts about 40 million variations. About a million ".eu" domain names are expected to be up and working by the end of the year. Just because a company applies Tuesday does not mean that it will get the name because the application process works on the basis of first-come, first-served. If two or more companies apply for the same domain name, then the runners up can appeal, by rapidly offering evidence to back their claim and prove that it is more justified than the others. Copyright 2006 Agence France Presse. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** 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, Agence France Presse. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 08:47:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Boston Globe Credit Card Phishing Scheme https://bostonglobe.com/subscriber/custsrvc/phishing.asp It has come to our attention that consumers are receiving telephone calls from companies offering to assist them prevent credit card fraud. These companies, including one calling itself the "National Verification Office", are asking consumers to provide the credit card or bank card information the consumer used to pay his or her Boston Globe or the Worcester Telegram & Gazette subscription. These companies are NOT AFFILIATED with the Boston Globe or the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. DO NOT RESPOND to these requests for private financial information from anyone on the telephone regardless of the company name given to you. These requests are not coming from a legitimate business or government office. Neither the Boston Globe nor the Worcester Telegram & Gazette are asking their customers to provide them with confidential credit card or bank account information. An investigator with a law enforcement office is not asking -- and would not ask -- consumers to provide credit card or bank account information by telephone. Consumers should not give personal financial information to someone claiming to be from a legitimate business, financial institution, or government agency who contacts you by phone or email. You should only give private financial information to businesses or government agencies when you have initiated the telephone call or other transaction. To learn more about what you can do to protect yourself, click on the link: http://www.ago.state.ma.us/sp.cfm?pageid=986&id=1602 or please contact the following agencies: The Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General http://www.ago.state.ma.us - Consumer Protection One Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108 617-727-2200 Consumer Hotline 617-727-8400 Federal Trade Commission for the Consumer http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/ 1-877-438-4338 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 09:29:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellphone Law Seems to Silence Its Critics By Associated Press BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- Think you won't get caught driving around with your hand-held cellphone? Think again. In the first three months of the new Connecticut law that targets motorists who do not use hands-free sets, police around the state have written more than 2,400 tickets. The hot spot has been Bridgeport. Police there have handed out 289 citations, the most in the state. http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2006/02/06/cellphone_law_seems_to_silence_its_critics/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 11:59:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Confidential Patient Data Sent to Wrong Company -- For 15 Months Doctors and clinics in the U.S. have been faxing information to an herbal remedy distributor News Story by Jaikumar Vijayan FEBRUARY 06, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - A small Lockport, Manitoba-based distributor of herbal remedies has for the past 15 months been mistakenly receiving faxes containing confidential information belonging to hundreds of patients with Prudential Financial Inc.'s insurance group. The data exposed in the breach -- and faxed to the company by doctors and clinics across the U.S. -- included the patients' Social Security numbers, bank details and health care information. So far, at least, efforts to deal with the issue appear to have failed, said Jody Baxmeyer, vice president of marketing at North Regent RX, the company that's been receiving the faxes. The situation has been caused by North Regent's toll-free fax number, which is nearly identical to one used by Prudential to receive medical claims-related information from doctors, Baxmeyer said. In fact, the two numbers differ by only one digit, Baxmeyer said. As a result, North Regent's Lockport office has mistakenly received thousands of documents sent to the wrong fax number that involve more than 1,000 claims. The documents contain detailed patient medical histories, Social Security numbers and bank information meant for Prudential's insurance division. http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,108429,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:13:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Honeywell Blames Ex-Employee in Data Leak Payroll, other information on 19,000 workers was published on Web, company says News Story by Robert McMillan FEBRUARY 06, 2006 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Honeywell International Inc. says a former employee has disclosed sensitive information relating to 19,000 of the company's U.S. employees. Honeywell discovered the information being published on the Web on Jan. 20 and immediately had the Web site in question pulled down, said company spokesman Robert Ferris. In court filings dated Jan. 30, the company accused former employee Howard Nugent of Arizona of accessing the information on a Honeywell computer and then causing "the transmission of that information." Nugent has since been ordered not to disclose any information about Honeywell, including "information about Honeywell's employees (payroll data, Social Security numbers, personal information, etc.)," according to a Jan. 31 order signed by Judge Neil Wake of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,108434,00.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 7th February 2006 Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 07:51:18 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com ====================================================================== [[ 3G ]] Italy's Consob Approves 3 Italia IPO Prospectus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15958.php Italy's market watchdog Consob late Friday approved Italian third-generation mobile operator 3 Italia's initial public offer prospectus. ... Shrinking 3G Tower Amplifiers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15973.php Andrew Corp. has introduced what it says is the industry's most compact tower mounted amplifier (TMA) that will provide operators with an ideal option for coverage and capacity enhancement for 3G networks.... 3G Licenses Awarded in Lithuania http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15977.php The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in Lithuania has awarded three 3G licenses. The winners are TeliaSonera's subsidiary Omnitel, Bite and Tele2. Omnitel says that it plans to launch the 3G services and to disclose country-wide roll-out plans... [[ Financial ]] Sony Ericsson Delays Availability Of P990 Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15961.php Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said Monday it has delayed the market introduction of its flagship P990 model, as setting up partnerships with external parties and ramping up production is proving more complex than anticipated. ... Telekom Malaysia In Talks For India Spice Stake http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15961.php Telekom Malaysia Monday said it is in talks to buy a stake in India's Spice Telecom. ... Sprint Nextel Gets Antitrust OK To Buy Nextel Partners http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15965.php Sprint Nextel received antitrust clearance from the Federal Trade Commission to buy out affiliate Nextel Partners. ... PRESS: Telenor to mull VimpelCom stake rise after URS conflict over http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15966.php Norway's telecommunication operator Telenor plans to consider the option of increasing its stake in Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom only after the conflict over VimpelCom's purchase of Ukrainian Radiosystems (URS) is resolved, Jan... Sweden's Tele2 ups stake in Russia's Lipetsk Mobile to 100% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15971.php Swedish telecommunications company Tele2 AB has increased its stake in Russia's Lipetsk Mobile to 100% by purchasing 5.9% in the company from CenterTelecom, according to a statement by CenterTelecom released on Monday. ... Jordan Telecom Revamps Operational Structure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15974.php Jordan Telecom, the Jordanian communications company, has announced the integration of the operations of Jordan Telecom, MobileCom, Wanadoo and e-Dimension into a single organization with a single management structure: Jordan Telecom Group. The new, ... MTC Completes Sudan Purchase http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15975.php Kuwait's MTC says that it has successfully concluded the acquisition of 61% of Mobitel from Sudatel in a deal valued at US$1.332 billion. Mobitel customers will benefit from further investments in network capacity and coverage. MTC plans to invest ap... [[ Handsets ]] Sony Ericsson Delays Availability Of P990 Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15961.php Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said Monday it has delayed the market introduction of its flagship P990 model, as setting up partnerships with external parties and ramping up production is proving more complex than anticipated. ... Telekom Malaysia In Talks For India Spice Stake http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15961.php Telekom Malaysia Monday said it is in talks to buy a stake in India's Spice Telecom. ... Customers Disappointed With Camera Phones - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15972.php A camera is considered by many users to be one of the most desirable features in wireless handsets, yet, evidence suggests that only a tiny percentage of camera phones are used regularly to transmit pictures or to store for later use, reports In-Stat... [[ MVNO ]] Spanish Regulator Sees Several Potential MVNO Entrants http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15962.php Several companies with operations in Spain are looking to become mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, the chairman of the country's telecommunications regulator CMT said Monday. ... [[ Network Operators ]] PRESS: Russia's MTS to change its advertising slogan soon http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15967.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) plans to change its Russian-language advertising slogan to "To hear you always" from "You are better" soon, Grzegorz Esz, MTS marketing director, said in an interview with Sekret Firmy bu... Russia's VimpelCom ready to launch network in Chechnya http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15969.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom has completed preparatory work to launch its network in Russia's constituent republic of Chechnya, Nikolai Pryanishnikov, VimpelCom's executive vice president, said Monday. ... [[ Offbeat ]] Sprint Nextel Cooperating In Domestic Spying -Report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15963.php AT&T, Verizon Communications' MCI and Sprint Nextel Corp. are among several large US telecommunications companies that agreed to cooperate with the National Security Agency's spying without warrants on international calls by suspected terrorists, USA... Greek Socialists Demand 2 Mins Quit In Phone-Tapping Case http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15970.php ATHENS (AP)--The opposition Socialist Party in Greece called Monday for the resignation of two senior ministers over a mobile phone-tapping scandal that hit the country last week. ... [[ Personnel ]] KPN: Michael Krammer To Become CEO Of E-Plus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15960.php Dutch telecommunications company KPN, Monday said it plans to appoint Michael Krammer as new chief executive of its German mobile operator, E-Plus. ... Qualcomm Names Andrew Gilbert President Of Europe Segment http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15964.php Qualcomm has named Andrew Gilbert as president of Qualcomm Europe to replace Pertti Johansson. ... Horn-Smith Swaps Out Of Vodafone, Into Sage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15968.php Julian Horn-Smith, a key player in building Vodafone into the world's largest mobile phone company by sales, Monday joined software developer Sage Group PLC as its next chairman. ... [[ Reports ]] Mobile Technology Helps Doctors Deliver Better Medical Care http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15976.php Physicians and others who use PDAs, Smartphones, and related medical decision support tools say they're providing better and more efficient patient care as a result, according to a new survey of 2,800 medical professionals conducted by Skyscape. In t... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:14:54 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Tuesday, February 7, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 7, 2006 ******************************** Taking Care of the Triple-Play http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16556?11228 Every aspect of customer care is impacted significantly by triple play. Even the cable MSOs that have been offering the telecom trinity for some time now have yet to advance their care practices significantly. This is not to say that services aren't being supported or that customers are disgruntled. What's at issue is the difference... Balance Swings to Customer Retention http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16552?11228 With carrier subscriber bases swollen by the recent string of mergers, the pendulum is swinging from customer acquisition to customer retention. Maintaining happy customers is certainly wise, considering that each subscriber costs several hundred dollars to sign up. But keeping existing customers has its costs, too. Carriers must... Regulator Plans to Tighten Control over ADSL Providers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16550?11228 The Spanish government is planning to put more regulatory pressure on the country's ADSL providers, in an effort to stem fraudulent business practices. This could include drafting a new law to govern the broadband sector and increasing the penalties on companies that breach the law. Significance: The move follows an increase in... SingTel Ends 2005 with 78 mil. Regional Mobile Customers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16547?11228 SingTel has announced that its aggregate number of mobile subscribers in the region increased to 77.79 million at end-2005, up 26% from a year earlier. On a year-on-year (y/y) basis, SingTel's three Asian mobile associates - Advanced Info Services (AIS), Bharti and Telkomsel - recorded strong subscriber growth, ranging from 8% to... Sonae Launches US$12.8 bil. Bid for Portugal Telecom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16545?11228 Sonae SGPS has launched a 10.7 billion-euro (US$12.8 billion) bid for Portugal's dominant telecoms company. It is promising to pay 9.50 euro per share, or a total of 10.72 billion euro, for Portugal Telecom's shares and convertible bonds; an offer worth a 16% premium on Portugal Telecom's last closing... Google to Unveil New Chat Feature http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16544?11228 SAN FRANCISCO--Online search engine leader Google Inc. is wedding its instant messaging and e-mail services in the same Web browser, hoping the convenience will lure users from the larger communications networks operated by its chief rivals. The new chat feature to be unveiled Tuesday will provide users of Google's Gmail... Comptel Exec Named New FCC Nominee http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16542?11228 WASHINGTON - Wireless carriers welcomed the White House's nomination late Friday of a fifth FCC commissioner, while some observers cautioned not to assume too much in the nomination's ramifications. Late Friday, the Bush Administration finally unveiled its choice - Robert McDowell - to fill the fifth and final FCC commissioner slot.... Big ISPs To E-Marketers: Pay To Play http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16541?11228 In a deal first announced in October 2005 but apparently only being subjected to scrutiny within the past few days, America Online Inc. (AOL) and Yahoo! Inc. say they will be charging large companies fees ranging from $2 to $3 per 1,000 e-mail messages sent to AOL or Yahoo! customers in an effort to reduce spam and to "certify"... Disappointment with Quality and Cost Limits Usage of Camera Phones http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16539?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- A camera is considered by many users to be one of the most desirable features in wireless handsets, yet, evidence suggests that only a tiny percentage of camera phones are used regularly to transmit pictures or to store for later use, reports In-Stat. Less than a third of camera phone owners surveyed by In-Stat... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:49:49 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report Touts IPTV's Promise, Warns of Obstacles USTelecom dailyLead February 7, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cVtEfDtutaoShRFiAj TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report touts IPTV's promise, warns of obstacles BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Sonae makes offer for Portugal Telecom * Google integrates e-mail, chat functions * Nokia turns focus to North America USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Cutting-edge technology papers, exhibits at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Q-and-A: Cisco exec says IPTV is the future * PanAmSat enters ethnic programming biz REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * AG Gonzalez defends NSA surveillance plan * Bush budget projects $25B from wireless sales Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cVtEfDtutaoShRFiAj Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: ema32@msn.com Subject: Great Job Board Date: 07 Feb 2006 10:03:27 GMT There is a great job board located at the employment section of http://www.4charlesson.com . So pass it on to anyone looking for a job. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Everyone look it over, but also consider our very own classified advertisemens here at http://telecom-digest.org/classified.html for quite reasonable rates on an (as of yet) not too widely used classified ads section. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Matt Simpson Subject: Re: AOL Starts Charging for Email from Large Senders Organization: Yeah Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:09:30 -0500 In article , Jon Swartz wrote: > Anyone can apply for the program. Goodmail determines if applicants > are legitimate companies with pristine e-mail standards. AOL has final > approval. E-mail of approved companies will come with digital tokens > recognized by AOL security defenses. AOL subscribers will still be > able to block mail from certified senders by adjusting anti-spam tools > on their accounts, AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham says. > AOL says The New York Times and American Red Cross have signed up for > the service. OK, right away we know the "pristine email standards" requirement is BS. Red Cross is a spammer, and AOL is going to let them pay to get around spam filters. I made a donation to the Red Cross for Katrina relief. (Please don't flame me; I realize now I should have donated to a better organization). Like most sites that accept credit card payments, they asked for an email address for confirmation. Fortunately, I gave them a throwaway one. Subsequently, that address was bombarded with email from the Red Cross. Each one had an "opt out" link that directed me to a website. The language on that site was something to the effect of "Click here if you want us to stop sending you news and only send you requests for money". There was no option to stop ALL email from them. Finally, I disabled the address I had given them. ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Yahoo Starts Using Fee-Based Email Also Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 12:44:33 -0600 AOL, Yahoo to test fee-based email America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's biggest e-mail providers, said on Monday they would offer a service where companies may choose to charge a tiny fee to ensure that e-mail reaches the intended recipient in a bid to derail spam. The service, provided in partnership with privately held Goodmail Systems, will also help the providers better protect their customers from online fraud, spam and phishing attacks, said Goodmail Chief Executive Richard Gingras. Phishing is a practice where criminals send e-mails asking prospective victims to verify personal data through links to real-looking, but fake, Web sites. "The main point we want to get across is that you cannot pay to spam or that consumers will have to pay to receive e-mail," Gingras said. The service will be optional on AOL, a Time Warner Inc. unit, and Yahoo Inc. Fees would only apply to senders such as large financial institutions where it was critical for e-mails to arrive promptly to the intended recipient, Gingras said. By serving two of the three biggest providers of consumer e-mails, Gingras said, the partnership marked an important step in protecting businesses and consumers from spam and other forms of unwanted electronic messages. "The in-box can be a dangerous place," Gingras said. "Certified e-mail was created to restore trust for commercial senders." AOL plans to introduce the service, which would charge fees of about a quarter of a cent per certified e-mail, in the next few weeks with Yahoo following a few months later, Gingras said. Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon said her company planned to accept certified e-mail from Goodmail to complement Yahoo's existing range of e-mail services. "Our goal is to provide additional protection against spam and phishing scams to our customers," Mahon said, "and we of course will interchange email between our systems, and we hope to get other large ISPs to start this also and work along with us, and us with them." The Goodmail service, which will undergo testing over the next several months, should be introduced in the coming year and be mainly targeted at large companies, she said, but any person using email will be welcome to particpate with us as well, to ensure the delivery of their email. AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company decided to employ the service after many of its members asked for more tools to combat spam. He also made it clear consumers will bear no financial cost for the service. "For our members, this is an easy and welcome way to identify mail they want to get more quickly and easily into their in-box," Graham said. Gingras also said similar partnerships with other e-mail providers would likely follow and that Goodmail would also target business e-mail providers. Yahoo and AOL will also share in revenue as part of the deal with Goodmail. Goodmail also does a background check on the senders to make sure they are authentic and the company only allows businesses to send permissioned e-mails to existing customers, he said. Then Goodmail provides a cryptographic token for each message so it can track the e-mail through the system, Gingras said. These safeguards ensure spammers cannot use the system to bypass a junk-mail filter. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please look at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Date: 7 Feb 2006 08:17:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Note that the original Western Union filed for bankruptcy and is essentially gone. Today's company is in the money transfer and financial service business. Patrick Townson wrote: > In Chicago, and almost all cities, large and small, there was a public > telegraph office; a place where people could go either to send a > telegram or wait for the arrival of one. In the bigger cities at least, > the public offices were quite ornate places, replete with high back > comfortable chairs for customer use, writing desks to sit at when you > wished to compose your message or sit to read the message you had > received, etc. To see a view scene of this, check out the opening scene of the movie "Executive Suite". A corporate executive goes into a WU office to send a telegram and it's exactly as Pat describes it. (The rest of the movie is good, too.) In the early 1980s I visited a WU owned office in Trenton NJ. It was not attractive, but quite austere in a 1960s kind of way, no decoration, ugly flourescent lighting, linoleum floor, and glass walled unit with holes to deal with the employee who looked tired. There was one Teletype in a corner and one equipment rack frame that didn't seem to be connected to anything. Soon after it was closed and WU service handled by an contract agent in a diner outside the city. At that time almost all business of WU was wire transfers, not personal messaging. This is the same business they do now. > In Chicago, the public office was on the first floor of the main head- > quarters building for Western Union, 407 South LaSalle Street, more or > less across the street from LaSalle Street (Train) Station I visited that office and the train station in the mid 1990s. The La Salle St station had been rebuilt. It once was the terminal for many classic trains, including the 20th Century Limited. Now it serves commuters only and looked it. It was reached by a narrow stairway and had a tiny glass waiting room at the top; whatever station building facilities it once had were gone. The WU office across the street was similar to the one in Trenton in appearance and atmosphere. Whatever dignified decorations it once had were gone. Indeed, I think the office was actually on the side of the building; probably the original nicely furnished office was closed and space for a small office found off to the side. > Western Union had some kind of arrangment with the telephone company > in most towns, the public office phone number was always (exchange)-4321. Early on the companies were jointly owned. Ever since they had a friendly arrangement. You could dial Operator and ask for Western Union and you'd be connected to them. You could charge your telegram to your home phone number and it would appear on your long distance bill. WU ended up using much of AT&T's physical plant and AT&T gave WU a big discount on service charges. I believe this was a matter of quiet policy. Accordingly to Oslin's book, AT&T hit WU hard in other ways such as TWX getting a great deal and other regulatory benefits. > An era long since gone. Most of the public telegraph offices were gone > by the early 1970's, and people had to start calling in their messages > to a central message taker in (I think) St. Louis. When MCI came along, it demanded the same discounts that WU got. AT&T wasn't about to give MCI a break and was forced to raise the WU rates steeply. This was the final knife that killed off WU. As mentioned, cheap long distance rates by the 1970s pretty much killed off the traditional telegram traffic. WU main business was wire transfers by individuals and some Telex. It operated a few service centers (one was near me). Basically an agent or customer would call in with a request, it would be verified and entered into the computer. The computer would then have another operator call the appropriate receiving agent to authorize the pickup. AT&T WATS lines were used. When AT&T rates went up per above, things got tough. WU was also well unionized. A friend of mine worked at a message center and was very well paid for the work she was doing. The office was very structured, the computer counted keystrokes and errors and was part of one's productivity report. (Sadly, this is common now, but new in 1978.) In alt.folklore computers we had discussions on the demise of WU other businesses. It tried getting into satellites, becoming a long distance provider, etc. but it didn't work out. In the above movie mention about an executive sending a telegram to his home office, I wonder when the switch to using long distance telephone would've taken place. The executive was in a distance city, heading home, and calling a special meeting of the Board. Had he telephoned, his secretary would've had the message immediately and would've started making arrangements, where via telegram there was a delay and it was a one-way conversation. (However, part of the movie's plot dealt with the Board speculating intensely on why the meeting was called, so the one-way concept was important to this particular movie.) It's amazing in so many old movies that vital information is telegraphed to a person rather than telephoned, even from relatively short distances. Most large railroad stations had a Western Union desks or ticket agents doubled as telegraph agents. When business people travelled, they'd wire ahead their arrival plans or that they arrived safely. Everyday people sent a postcard. Anyway, at some point in time (1960? 1965?) long distance phone rates came down low enough that a businessman could telephone his distant office. I think in the 1954 movie the telegraph charge was about $1.00 while a person-to-person long distance phone call would've been $3-5. In 1954 a $4 differential was like $40 today. Business did make extensive use of Long Distance telephone back then and before, but for simple messages they'd wire. I note that business people in those days made calls by name, not number. For person-to-person, charges would not start until the desired party was on the line, significant in a business atmosphere where someone might have to paged. I believe the p-to-p premium was relatively modest compared to later years. It is still offered to this day but one would pay about $2.00 or more for a call that otherwise might be 5c. Would anyone have a telephone directory from around 1954? They usually had sample long distance charges to various points and I'm curious as to what toll charges were back then. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although I never had any employee/employer relationship with Western Union, around 1960-62 I used to hang out with a guy who was himself employed by a Western Union agent, at the old Union Bus Terminal in Hammond, Indiana. Actually, the Western Union agent in Hammond was also the bus agent; both of those were sort of expensive and losing propositions; combining them and the help required to operate both at least mitigated the expense somewhat. The lady had three or four bus lines (Greyhound, a couple of the Trailways Bus companies, something else); she also had the Western Union agency; each and every one of them paying her 12-15 percent commission on the bus tickets she sold, the telegrams, etc. And from those proceeds she was responsible for hiring staff to run the place, both 24/7 operations of course. But since she owned the entire Bus station building, she also rented out space for a restaurant, a beauty salon, a barber shop and a few apartments, all of whom paid her rent as well. So I guess she did okay. The guy who worked for her doing the telegraph stuff was the guy I mentiond, my friend. He told me a very interesting story once, around 1960 or so. He said that one morning he had gone over into the restaurant area to get a cup of coffee; looked around the station, and had gone back to his office since the phone was ringing. He took the call, and a lady he had seen getting off an incoming bus with a big smile on her face walked into the telegraph office area; still with a big smile on her face. She was probably 18-19 years old. She wanted to send a telegram to her parents ('they told me to be sure and let them know I got here safely as soon as I arrived') so she wanted to do that, and also asked for directions on getting to some address. That done, she then picked up her luggage and started walking down the street, still with that big smile. My friend said he thought no more about it. He said he came to work the next morning, shortly after that this same woman came back, but this time instead of the big smile, she obviously had been crying. Her earlier smile had been so infectious, I could not help but wonder what had gone wrong to cause her to begin weeping sort of silently. She counted out some change and told me to please send a telegram for her. It simply said 'Bus leaves at 10 change in South Bend at 2 home about 6' . He said "I was curious about what had gone wrong: Had she been there for a new job and either not gotten hired or been hired then fired on her first day at work? Was she intending to meet a new boy friend who wound up being some sort of flake? Had she gotten physically hurt somehow?" But I did not dare ask her anything on it. She paid for the message and asked if she 'could sit in here and wait until the bus arrived' I told her of course, in a way hoping that she might decide to say something about it, but she did not. And the 'company' (WUTCO) was always so strict about secrecy in communications. If they found out that _I_ had brought the matter up, well -- you know, I do not work for the 'company' (WUTCO) directly, I only work for Jim R. and his wife Lillian (the agents) but Western Union would have put all kinds of heat on _Lillian_, she would have had to fire me. The company was like that with the agents. The company ran nothing personally when it suited them, but in reality they ran _everything_ when that suited them better, if you get my drift. So I walked in back by the printers and sent out her message; I came back out in front by the counter a bit later; she looked at me with a sort of very small, faint smile, said 'thank you so much for helping me find the place yesterday; my bus is here now, goodbye' got up and left, hauling along her suitcase. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Kenneth P. Stox Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks Subject: Telecom Humor Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 05:20:37 GMT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Or so the man says, 'humor'! I have never found anything 'humorous' about this story which seems to involve mistreatment of a small animal. The story has been around for simply _years_, I have printed it here a few times, but not for many years now since I do find it distasteful and not a bit funny. PAT] [Source Unknown] An Indiana farm wife called the local phone company to report her telephone failed to ring when her friends called, and that on the few occasions when it did ring, her pet dog always moaned right before the phone rang. The telephone repairman proceeded to the scene, curious to see this psychic dog or senile elderly lady. He climbed a nearby telephone pole, hooked in his test set, and dialed the subscriber's house. The phone didn't ring right away, but then the dog moaned loudly and the telephone began to ring. Climbing down from the pole, the telephone repairman found: 1. The dog was tied to the telephone system's ground wire via a steel chain and collar. 2. The wire connection to the ground rod was loose. 3. The dog was receiving 90 volts of signaling current when the phone number was called. 4 After a couple of such jolts, the dog would start moaning and then urinate on himself and the ground. 5. The wet ground would complete the circuit, thus causing the phone to ring. Which demonstrates that some problems CAN be fixed by pissing and moaning. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have seen this story set in England, in Scotland, and various other places, but this is the first time for it in 'Indiana'. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #57 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 7 19:30:27 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2870C14F24; Tue, 7 Feb 2006 19:30:25 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #58 Message-Id: <20060208003025.2870C14F24@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 19:30:25 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, URG_BIZ autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Feb 2006 19:33:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 58 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Broadband, Content Provider Firms Fight Over Net Neutrality (J. Pelofsky) Web Traffic Jams Bring Fights Over Fast-Lane Fees (Paul Davidson) The Front Lines - January 31, 2006 (Jonathan Marashlian) WUTCO and Telco Past Relationships (Patrick Townson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeremy Pelofsky Subject: Broadband, Content Provider Firms Fight Over Net Neutrality Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:33:21 -0600 By Jeremy Pelofsky High-speed Internet providers and Internet content companies clashed before lawmakers on Tuesday, in dispute over whether a law enshrining the right to surf anywhere on the Web would help or harm consumers. Representatives of local telephone and cable companies that offer fast Internet access, known as broadband, said passing a new law could stymie innovation while companies like Google Inc. said that could happen without legislation. Broadband providers have largely pledged that consumers will be able to access any Internet site. But some also said they may charge more for services that use faster private Internet networks, like downloading movies. "Regulatory or legislative solutions wholly without justification in marketplace activities would stifle, not enhance the Internet," Walter McCormick, head of the U.S. Telecom Association, told the Senate Commerce Committee. Yet companies like Web search engine Google and Internet telephone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. argued that a private fast Internet lane could not only block users from accessing their content and services, but also squash innovation. "We must preserve neutrality in this system in order to allow new Googles of the world, new Yahoos, the new Amazons, to form," said Vinton Cerf, a Google vice president who in previous jobs helped develop the Internet. "We risk losing the Internet as a catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation and for global competitiveness," Cerf said. In the middle were lawmakers who were divided and uncertain about whether they should act. Republicans and Democrats both expressed support for unfettered Internet surfing, but a few Republicans cautioned about legislating too quickly. "This hearing on Internet neutrality is one of the most difficult but most important issues before this committee as we consider revisions to the nation's communications laws," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican. Sen. John Ensign, who has offered legislation to revise U.S. communi- cations laws, questioned whether such provisions would cut incentives for companies to build out their networks and compete. "You do deserve a return on your investment is the bottom line if you're going to build out these networks," the Nevada Republican said. "Otherwise, if you can't give them the return on their investment, Wall Street is not going to loan them the money to do this." But Democrats on the panel countered that consumers are already paying for content and broadband access. "It is not a free lunch for any one of these content providers," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat. "I've already paid the monthly toll" to go to any Internet site. Analysts have been skeptical that Congress will act this year on the issue. "Details are devilish, suggesting differences would have to be bridged with broad and possibly ambiguous mandates that invite regulatory and court battles," said an analyst report by Stifel Nicolaus released on Tuesday. "And even then, legislation could easily stall." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For latest news and headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Paul Davidson Subject: Web Traffic Jams Bring Fight Over Fast-Lane Fees Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:34:48 -0600 Web traffic jams bring fight over fast-lane fees By Paul Davidson, USA TODAYTue Feb 7, 7:18 AM ET The Internet isn't always the smoothest information highway. Bottlenecks are increasing as more consumers use bandwidth-intensive applications, such as video, over broadband lines. When bottlenecks happen, videos may download more slowly. Live webcasts freeze up. Calls on Internet-based phone services break up a bit. To address the problem, BellSouth and AT&T, formerly SBC, plan to offer Web content providers new fee-based services that would assure speedy delivery of movies, games and other offerings over DSL broadband lines. Verizon is also considering enhanced services but has been vague about its plans. Yet Web stalwarts such as Google and Amazon say the strategy would turn the equal-opportunity Internet into a two-tiered market. One for phone companies, which are offering video services themselves, and their paying partners; another for websites that refuse to pay up. They also fear that while cable companies have not discussed similar plans, they would follow suit. "Once they decide what's normal and what's fast, (phone companies) are gatekeepers," says Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America. The phone companies say they simply want to recoup their multibillion-dollar investments in new broadband lines, better manage an increasingly congested network and hold down consumer prices. The debate has become the most heated battle in telecom and takes center stage at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday. Lawmakers are considering new laws to ensure consumer access to websites. The controversy is rooted in two trends. On the one hand, phone companies are beefing up their networks with fiber-optic lines so they can compete with cable providers. They're rolling out TV services, including video-on-demand, as part of a bundle that includes phone and turbocharged high-speed Internet services. At the same time, more video offerings are coming to the Web. Google last month started selling reruns of TV shows and National Basketball Association games. ITunes, NBC Universal and AOL also plan to sell or stream TV programs. Eventually, the distinction between traditional TV and online video could blur as subscribers watch more programs on demand and new technology delivers Internet content to TV screens. The emerging competition raises the fear that phone companies could block access to rivals' websites. A prohibition against such a practice was lifted when the Federal Communications Commission deregulated phone-company broadband services last year. As a condition for approval of the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers, those companies must refrain from blocking access to websites for two years. Phone companies say they would never impede such access, and telecom-reform bills in Congress would outlaw the practice. Yet the House bill explicitly allows phone companies to offer premium content-delivery services. They are needed, the phone giants say, because video and other high-bandwidth applications will place a growing strain on their networks, increasing congestion and costs. Already, snarls at certain times might disrupt the flow of an online game or cause a live video stream to jitter. The premium services would guarantee a content provider top-notch service by boosting its bandwidth or giving its offerings priority over other data packets. BellSouth says it's in talks about such deals with about five companies, including Movielink, which offers movie downloads. For example, to juice up the speed of a download for a Movielink customer, BellSouth is considering charging Movielink a fee equivalent to about 10% of the $3 to $5 the consumer pays Movielink, says BellSouth Chief Technology Officer Bill Smith. Similarly, an Internet-based phone company that charges subscribers $24 a month might pay BellSouth $2 a month per customer to ensure crystal-clear conversations. The added costs could be passed to consumers. "We have to have ways to recoup our investment," Smith says. Yet content providers say consumers already pay varying prices for different broadband speeds. Those who want faster service can simply upgrade to a higher tier. Why should the content provider also be hit with a fee? "If the customer isn't already buying high-quality broadband that doesn't have congestion, what are they getting -- substandard performance?" says Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, the No. 1 Internet-based phone service. Vonage worries the added cost could make it tougher to compete with the phone companies' own Internet-based phone services. Adds Google's policy counsel, Alan Davidson: "Our concern is that carriers are being given the power to control what consumers do and see online." Content providers that don't pay will suffer, he says, either by comparison or because giving routing priority to some services will inherently slow down those that wind up at the back of the line. While Google can afford the premium fees, Davidson says, many start-ups can't, hobbling innovation on the Web. Smith says regular broadband service would not be affected. "What we're talking about is offering a higher level of service, not pushing people to a lower level." Phone companies say they are trying to pass costs to high-bandwidth users and spare subscribers price increases. Content providers "can always say, 'No, we're not interested,' " says AT&T Vice President Jim Cicconi. Still, Cooper says, the plans are troubling because phone companies plan to ensure their own video offerings boast superior quality. To get comparable service, their rivals would be saddled with higher costs. If the phone giants really want to ease congestion, let them improve the quality of all video and pass the costs to their subscribers, Web providers say. "It ought to be done in a content-neutral fashion," says Brent Thompson of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which operates websites such as Ask Jeeves and Match.com. Smith retorts that BellSouth's plan is no different than Google charging a fee for prime placement in its advertised search results. "Their arguments are inconsistent with their own model," he says. Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from USA Today please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html (with BBC World Service Audio) ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - January 31, 2006 Date: Tue, 07 Fed 2006 14:42:58 -0500 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES Sponsored by The Helein Law Group, P.C. http://www.thlglaw.com/ Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry URGENT NOTICE: FCC ENFORCEMENT BUREAU FINES AT&T & ALLTEL $100,000 EACH AND ORDERS ALL TELECOMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS TO FILE CERTIFICATIONS REGARDING COMPLIANCE WITH CPNI RULES In the wake of highly-publicized investigations and lawsuits concerning the apparent misappropriation of telephone consumer's private information for use by black market data brokers (on the Internet), the FCC's Enforcement Bureau on Monday proposed fining AT&T and Alltel $100,000 each and, today, released a Public Notice which commands ALL telecommunications carriers providing interstate services to file CPNI compliance certifications with the Bureau. Section 222 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the "Act"), requires that telecommunications carriers protect the privacy of customer proprietary network information ("CPNI"). The Commission has initiated several inquiries into the procedures used by telecommunications carriers to ensure confidentiality of CPNI based on concerns regarding the apparent sale of telephone call records over the Internet. In furtherance of its investigations into this matter, the Commission directed several telecommunications carriers to submit compliance certificates they are obligated to prepare and maintain in accordance with section 64.2009(e) of the Commission's rules. After reviewing the submissions filed by these carriers, the Bureau proposed fining the "old" AT&T and rural ILEC, Alltel, $100,000 each. The Bureau found that AT&T and Alltel apparently violated section 64.2009(e) of the Commission's rules by failing to have a corporate officer with personal knowledge execute an annual certificate stating that the company has established operating procedures adequate to ensure compliance with the Commission's rules. In the Public Notice released today, based on the information received during its limited investigation the Bureau concluded that further investigation and review of ALL telecommunications carriers' most recent annual CPNI certifications is required. In the Public Notice, the Bureau directs all telecommunications carriers, including wireline and wireless carriers, to submit a compliance certificate to the Commission as required by section 64.2009(e) of the Commission's rules. Carrier certificates for the most recent period, along with the accompanying statement explaining how their respective operating procedures ensure compliance with the rules, must be filed no later than Monday, February 6, 2006 in accordance with the procedures outlined by the Bureau. Due to the short timeframe for making the required certification filing, we highly recommend contacting your regulatory counsel immediately to seek advice regarding your company's obligations. If you do not have existing counsel, please contact our firm at: 703-714-1300 or by e-mail: jsm@thlglaw.com. FCC ADOPTS MODIFIED COMPETITIVE BIDDING RULES IN ANTICIPATION OF AUCTIONS FOR WIRELESS BROADBAND AND OTHER SERVICES In a Report and Order ("R&O") released last Thursday, the FCC adopted several modifications to its wireless spectrum competitive bidding rules. Some of the changes the FCC adopted were required by the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act ("CSEA"); others are intended to enhance the effectiveness of the FCC's auctions program. In order to comply with CSEA, the FCC: * Modified its reserve price rule, section 1.2104(c), to provide that, for any auction of "eligible frequencies" requiring the recovery of estimated relocation costs pursuant to CSEA, the Commission will establish a reserve price(s) pursuant to which the total cash proceeds shall equal at least 110 percent of the total estimated relocation costs provided to the Commission pursuant to CSEA; and * Modified its tribal land bidding credit rule, section 1.2110(f)(3), to enable the Commission in auctions subject to CSEA to award all eligible applicants tribal land bidding credits on a pro rata basis in the event that the net winning bids at the close of bidding (exclusive of tribal land bidding credits) are not sufficient both (a) to meet the reserve price(s) and (b) to award all eligible applicants full tribal land bidding credits. To enhance the effectiveness of our auctions program, the FCC: * Modified its tribal land bidding credit rule, section 1.2110(f)(3), to enable the Commission in auctions with specified reserve price(s) not mandated by CSEA to award all eligible applicants tribal land bidding credits on a pro rata basis in the event that the net winning bids at the close of bidding (exclusive of tribal land bidding credits) are not sufficient both (a) to meet the reserve price(s) and (b) to award all eligible applicants full tribal land bidding credits; * Clarified its default rule, section 1.2104(g)(2), to facilitate early determination of a final default payment and clarify the appropriate calculation in certain circumstances; * Enhanced rules for interim withdrawal and the additional payment portion of default payments, section 1.2104(g)(1)-(2), by enabling the Commission in advance of each auction to set each type of payment at between 3 percent to 20 percent of the relevant withdrawn or defaulted bids; * Facilitated combinatorial (or "package") bidding by enabling the Commission to establish in advance of each such auction a mechanism to attribute an individual bid amount to individual licenses won as part of a package when an individual bid amount is needed for a regulatory calculation, such as calculating the amount of a small business bidding credit; * Modified section 1.2104 of its rules to allow the Commission to apportion a bid amount on an individual license whenever a bid amount on a portion of a license is needed to compare with bids on portions of corresponding reconfigured licenses, such as when a withdrawn bid on a license in an auction must be compared to bids on corresponding reconfigured licenses in a later auction; * Standardized auction payment rules by conforming rules applicable to broadcast construction permits won at auction, sections 73.3571, 73.3573, 73.5003, 73.5006, and 74.1233, to the final payment procedures in section 1.2109(a); and * Enhanced the availability of the consortium exception to the designated entity and entrepreneur aggregation rule, section 1.2110(b)(3)(i), by providing further clarity as to its implementation. In particular, the new rules provide that (a) each member or group of members of a winning consortium seeking separate licenses shall file a separate long-form application for its respective license(s) and, in the case of a license to be partitioned or disaggregated, the member or group filing the applicable long-form application shall provide the parties' partitioning or disaggregation agreement in its long-form application; (b) two or more consortium members seeking to be licensed together shall first form a legal business entity; and (c) any such entity must meet the applicable eligibility requirements in our rules for small business or entrepreneur status. _____ The Front Lines is a free publication of The Helein Law Group, P.C., providing clients and interested parties with valuable information, news, and updates regarding regulatory and legal developments primarily impacting companies engaged in the competitive telecommunications industry. The Front Lines does not purport to offer legal advice nor does it establish a lawyer-client relationship with the reader. If you have questions about a particular article, general concerns, or wish to seek legal counsel regarding a specific regulatory or legal matter affecting your company, please contact our firm at 703-714-1313 or visit our website: http://www.thlglaw.com/ www.THLGlaw.com The Helein Law Group, P.C. 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 700 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: WUTCO and Telco Past Relationships Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 16:08:09 -0600 In discussing Western Union Public Offices in a previous message, I noted: >> Western Union had some kind of arrangment with the telephone company >> in most towns, the public office phone number was always (exchange)-4321. Lisa Hancock noted in reply: > Early on the companies were jointly owned. Ever since they had a > friendly arrangement. You could dial Operator and ask for Western > Union and you'd be connected to them. You could charge your telegram > to your home phone number and it would appear on your long distance > bill. Actually, the way this worked was: If calling from your own telephone (presumably a private line) you either asked the operator for '4321' or in the event you were using a dial type phone you dialed (the EXChange)-4321. The WUTCO clerk asked for your number, and applied the charges to your phone bill (actually the portion of your bill known as 'Other Charges and Credits'); the charges were identified as 'Western Union Telegraph Company' and the appropriate WUTCO ticket or serial number. WUTCO submitted the charges to telco, via Separations and Settlements, then in turn it was put on your bill. If calling from a _coin operated phone_ one was to (dial the operator or otherwise ask) the operator for 'Western Union'. If you dialed it direct and expected to be billed direct, you were to go through the '4321' direction. Then, like now, going direct (via 4321) could not raise the operator as needed for money collection. Asking for 'Western Union' (by dialing the operator to start with) allowed flashing the hook switch to bring the operator back on the line as needed. I think the call generally terminated on the same incoming line(s) at WUTCO in any event. From a purely manual exchange, I do not suppose it mattered either way. But if you were using a coin phone, then _your_ operator had to tell the Western Union operator 'COIN SERVICE! Flash me when ready for coin collection!', then she left the line, and you chatted with the Western Union clerk. Once the message was prepared and ready for sending, the clerk would say 'Will you now please flash for your operator to come back on the line?' and you would flash once or twice. _Your_ operator would come on the line, the Western Union operator would instruct her, 'collect 75 cents (or however much money was required)'. You would fish for the change, and deposit it in the coin box. When _your_ operator notified WUTCO the money was in the box, WUTCO would respond, "thank you, I am (ticket serial number); you are?" your operator would reply "I am (ticket serial number)at (date/time) on (coin telephone number)". WUTCO would copy this information on their ticket in place of your signature and money payment. That paper, went in to telco separations/settlements the same as the 'billed direct' paper (for calls via 4321). Lisa Hancock continued: > When MCI came along, it demanded the same discounts that WU got. AT&T > wasn't about to give MCI a break and was forced to raise the WU rates > steeply. This was the final knife that killed off WU. Not only that, but the entire concept of '900' service (that is to say, services given over the phone and billed to your phone bill [i.e. sex phone, horoscope, etc]) had its start through that precedent originally set by Western Union. AT&T was originally not going to get all caught up in billing for sex, etc on the phone. The original vendors of same, MCI and Integratel (anyone remember that bunch of snakes?) knew that selling sex over the phone to a very dubious bunch of transient users would amount to collection rates via direct billing of almost zero. Invoices showing up in the mail would generally find their way to the closest trash can; MCI and Integratel both knew that; there would have to be a system of billing that the users would respect, or at the very least, be afraid to cross or ignore, presto, the phone bill. (This was the 1973-75 era). People will not just throw their phone bill in the trash, now will they? They approached AT&T and asked for the same arrangements 'as Western Union'. AT&T said no way, they would not get involved, and anyway, in those days, MCI was a nasty competitor to AT&T which was sort of inclined to say 'let there be a plague on both their houses' and stay out of it. MCI told AT&T if that was their decision, then they were fixing to get themselves sued. (Remember, this was several years before divestiture however AT&T was quite familiar with getting sued by MCI and they suspected MCI would use the Western Union precedent to sue them and win successfully) so they agreed to use the 'newly created' 900 mass- calling system as a way to administer it. MCI and Integratel did agree to pay an 'administrative fee' to AT&T, just as WUTCO did, so it got installed, even though by that point WUTCO was in the process of getting out of telco direct billing. AT&T, which for several generations had admonished their customers to 'never use profanity on the telephone; for one, it is an embarassment to our operators and for two, it is against FCC regulations' suddenly decided to bite the bullet and get into the sex business themselves for a few years (anyone remember those AT&T 'reach out' advertisements for a couple years in the 1970's and early 1980's ran in various gay newspapers and magazines: with an obvious S & M motif AT&T would tell us 'Reach Out and Meet a New Master/Slave/Friend/Lover/Whatever'. Just dial this number: (some international point, but the number was parsed in an odd way so as to decieve the users) and then we were cheerfully told, "no service charges for calling this 'bridge'; just pay toll!" as if that was supposed to be some bargain, and a little caraciture of 'Ma Bell' up in the corner of the ad telling us that toll would usually be 50-75 cents per minute. PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #58 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Feb 8 15:32:42 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5DCD714F77; Wed, 8 Feb 2006 15:32:42 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #59 Message-Id: <20060208203242.5DCD714F77@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 15:32:42 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NA_DOLLARS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Feb 2006 15:35:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 59 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Complaints Exceed Credit Complaints in New York State (Reuters) Cartoons Prompt Net Vandalism (Robert McMillan) Three Microsoft Bugs Found (Jeremy Kirk) Cellular-News for Wednesday 8th February 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 8, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Verizon Business Beefs Up IP Services (USTA Daily Lead) Seeking VOIP UK Consultants (Rob Nicholson) Re: Broadband, Content Providers Fight Over Net Neutrality (Danny Burstein) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway (Steve Sobol) Re: Great Job Board (David O'Heare) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Internet Complaints Exceed Credit Complaints in NY State Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:23:40 -0600 The Internet has passed credit and banking as the biggest source of consumer complaints in New York state, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Wednesday. Spitzer's office received 7,723 complaints about the Internet last year, up 28 percent from 2004, he said. Complaints about the Internet accounted for about 15 percent of the more than 51,000 written complaints the office received last year. Typical Web-related complaints involved non-delivery of goods, incorrect charges for shipped goods, auctions, computer spyware and spam, Spitzer said. Credit and banking complaints, involving such things as credit cards, identity theft, debt collection and credit reporting, generated 6,164 complaints in 2005, while automobile-related complaints totaled 5,514. In 2004, credit and banking generated 6,724 complaints, followed by 6,255 related to automobiles and 6,013 related to the Internet, Spitzer said. There were nearly 55,000 reported complaints overall. Spitzer is a 2006 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in New York. He announced the statistics as part of National Consumer Protection Week. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: Cartoons Prompt Spike in Danish Web Hacks and Vandalism Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:26:54 -0600 Robert McMillan, IDG News Service The furor over a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is being felt on the Internet, where hackers have struck down and defaced hundreds of Danish Web sites over the past week, according to a Web site that tracks digital attacks. Approximately 800 Danish Web sites have been hacked since the end of January, when reaction to the cartoons began to receive widespread media attention, says Roberto Preatoni, founder of the Zone-h.org Web site. On Tuesday, about 200 Danish Web sites were reported as hacked with many of them being defaced with messages "in support of this Islamic war on the Internet," Preatoni says. Typically between five and 10 Danish Web sites are reported hacked each day, he says. Messages on the hacked sites include "don't ever [expletice] tallk [cq] about our prophet," "[expletive] Denmark," and "Let the Muslim people live in peace [expletive]." Most of the hackers are "posting hate messages," Preatoni says, but there are exceptions. "In some examples, we actually saw intelligent educated people who hacked and posted very polite messages, explaining what they were thinking." The 12 cartoons, originally published on September 30 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have offended Muslims the world over and sparked attacks by protesters on Danish embassies in Tehran, Beirut, and Damascus. Preatoni estimates that another 700 non-Danish Web sites have also been hacked in connection with the cartoons. History of Hacks The Zone-h.org Web site contains about 10 years' worth of data on hacked Web sites, most of it submitted by the hackers themselves, including information on the motivation behind the attacks. Other worldwide hacking protests have flared up in the past, including a surge in attacks after a U.S. spy plane was downed in China in 2001. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there was also a "massive Islamic protest" on the Internet, Preatoni says. The reaction to the Danish cartoons, however, has yielded the largest number of defacements in such a short time, according to Preatoni. "Islamic hackers, regardless of where they are located in the globe, they are uniting in this general protest against Denmark," he says. One Danish site that has apparently not been defaced is that of the Jyllands-Posten itself. It has been the target of a number of denial of service attacks, where attackers attempt to flood the Web site with so many requests that it ceases to operate, but it has remained in operation, says Mikko Hypponen, director of anti-virus research with F-Secure. "Outside of that, I'm not aware of any hack attacks that have succeeded in any way," he says. "It has not been defaced." Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** 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, PC World Communications. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Kirk Subject: Three Microsoft Bugs Found Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:29:03 -0600 Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service Microsoft is warning of two bugs in its software that could potentially give unauthorized control or access over a person's computer, while a third problem has been highlighted by a security research company. One vulnerability revisits the Windows Metafile (WMF) debacle from December, but impacts fewer users. The bug is in Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01 Service Pack 4 on the Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 OS and IE 5.5 Service Pack 2 on Windows Millennium, Microsoft says. An attacker could gain control if a user opened a malicious e-mail attachment or if a user were persuaded into visiting a Web site that had a specially-crafted WMF image, Microsoft says. A patch has not been issued, but Microsoft says the issue is under investigation, and an out-of-cycle patch could be provided depending on customer needs. Microsoft typically issues patches on the second Tuesday of the month, due this month on February 14. Second Flaw Found A second vulnerability could allow a person with low-user privileges gain higher-level access, Microsoft says. Proof-of-concept code that has been released attempts to exploit overly permissive access controls on third-party application services, along with the default services of Windows XP Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003, the company says. No attacks have been reported. Microsoft says several factors diminish the threat of the problem. Those running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 -- the latest updates of the software -- are not affected, and someone who launches an attack would need authenticated access to the affected OS, it says. Security vendor Secunia detailed a third vulnerability involving Microsoft's HTML Help Workshop, software that can create online help for a software application or Web site content. Secunia says the problem "is caused due to a boundary error within the handling of a '.hhp' file that contains an overly long string in the 'contents file' field. This can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow and allows arbitrary code execution when a malicious '.hhp' file is opened." The bug could allow arbitrary code to be executed on a computer, Secunia says. An exploit has been released, and Secunia advises that untrusted.hhp files not be opened. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html *** 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, PC World Communications. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 8th February 2006 Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 08:43:09 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com ====================================================================== [[ 3G ]] Huawei Gets EUR150 Million UMTS Network Order From Polish P4 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15987.php Polish mobile telephone operator P4 Tuesday said it has chosen China's Huawei Technologies as the main supplier for its planned third-generation wireless network in Poland. ... Mobile Firms Go To Court For 3G License Fee Tax Refunds http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15993.php In Europe's top court, mobile telephone companies Tuesday accused European governments of acting like private companies, not regulators, and making too much profit from selling EUR109 billion of third-generation licenses. ... Mobile Cellular Industry as Set for the Year of the 3G Phone http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15998.php At the end of September 2005, the global cellular market clocked a record 2 billion cellular subscribers. By the end of December 2005 that figure had reached 2.14 billion and is well on the way to reaching 3 billion before the end of 2008.... European 3G Users Embracing New Multimedia Mobile Culture http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15999.php M:Metrics has published the findings of its first European Benchmark Surveys. Although 3G users account for a low percentage of mobile phones users overall, 3G users in the U.K. or Germany are as much as five times more likely to use the multimedia c... Nortel Demos HSUPA Calls http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16000.php Nortel has successfully achieved the industry's first simultaneous uplink and downlink high-speed wireless calls between two mobile devices at uplink speeds four times faster than current UMTS services. Nortel's demonstration used it's commercial UMT... [[ Financial ]] Sonae Launches EUR10.74 Billion Bid For Portugal Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15979.php Conglomerate Sonae SGPS late Monday launched an audacious, EUR10.74 billion bid for former state telecommunications monopoly Portugal Telecom. ... Portugal Telecom Calls Sonae Bid "Unsolicited" http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15980.php Portugal Telecom Tuesday called Sonae SGPS's EUR10.7 billion takeover offer "unsolicited" and said the board of directors would meet to review the offer. ... KPN CEO: Company Isn't For Sale http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15982.php Dutch Telecommunications company Royal KPN NV (KPN) "is not for sale," Chief Executive Ad Scheepbouwer said Tuesday during a press conference. ... CEO says Russia's MTS net profit up 9% on year in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15985.php The net profit of Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) rose 9% on the year in 2005 to U.S. $1.115 billion, MTS' President Vasily Sidorov said at a meeting with investors Tuesday. ... Moldova's Voxtel revenue up 51% on year in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15995.php The revenue of Moldova's leading mobile operator Voxtel rose 51% on the year to US$74.1 million in 2005, General Director of Voxtel Francis Gelibter told reporters Tuesday. ... MTS CEO says Q4 churn to rise to about 6.8% vs 2.9% in Q3 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15996.php Russia's Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) said Tuesday that it expects its churn rate, or the amount of subscribers leaving the operator, to rise in the fourth quarter to about 6.8% from 2.9% in the third quarter. ... [[ Handsets ]] Nolato Sees Increased Activity At Benq-Siemens In 06 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15983.php Swedish mobile phone parts maker Nolato sees increased activity at Benq Corp's European mobile phone operations in 2006 after some weakness in the fourth quarter of 2005, Chief Executive Georg Brunstam told analysts Tuesday. ... BenQ Mobile expects Brazilian revenues of US$450mn http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15989.php Taiwanese handset manufacturer BenQ Mobile expects its sales in Brazil to reach 1.5bn reais (US$450mn) in 2006, BenQ Brasil said in a press release. ... TTPCom Announces Blueprint for $20 Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16004.php TTPCom has developed a complete handset reference design to address the growing Ultra Low Cost (ULC) handset market segment. The design, which includes TTPCom's AJAR ULC application suite, protocol software and baseband chipset engine, will enable ha... [[ Legal ]] Russia's customs says 124 cases initiated for 2005 illegal imports http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15988.php Russian courts initiated 124 criminal cases against illegal imports of consumer electronics in 2005, Vladimir Yegorov, a department director at the Federal Customs Service said Tuesday. ... Data Lab to sue Conatel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15990.php Paraguayan telecoms services firm Data Lab plans to sue the country's telecoms regulator Conatel because of alleged irregularities in a tender for a contract to supply spectrum monitoring equipment, local newspaper ABC reported. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile TV Trial Doubles Average Viewing Time http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16002.php The world's first live trial of interactive mobile TV has doubled the average time viewers are using the mobile TV service. The trial was conducted by Ericsson and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). The nine-week trial has shown that, on a... [[ Network Contracts ]] Nokia Gets WCDMA Network Order From Telecom Italia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15981.php Finland's Nokia said Tuesday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Telecom Italia for wider cooperation in the area of WCDMA 3G. ... Another WiMAX trial in Russia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15997.php Alcatel and Russia's Start Telecom have signed an agreement to conduct a field-trial of WiMAX equipment, starting this month. Under the terms of this agreement, Alcatel will provide Start Telecom with its WiMAX end-to-end solution, including base sta... Improving T-Mobile's IP Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16003.php T-Mobile has contracted InfoVista to optimize network performance and reduce cost of operations on its new UK MPLS-based IP VPN. The software will enable T-Mobile to ensure the reliability and Quality of Service of 2.5 and 3G data services and, ultim... [[ Personnel ]] Intrigue, chaos, conflict at Andinatel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15991.php As plans to seek a foreign administrator for Ecuadorian state-owned landline telco, Andinatel and the mobile operator, Pacifictel remain on hold, the need for them appears ever more urgent. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Kuwait's MTC Bids For Egypt's 3rd GSM License: Official http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15978.php Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications (MTC) is bidding for Egypt's third GSM license, a spokesman said Tuesday. ... EU Says 16 Countries Lack Competitive Telecom Mkts http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15984.php The European Commission Tuesday said its long-running probe of the telecommunications sector showed 16 out of 25 member countries lacked sufficient competition. ... EU To Press For Lower Roaming Charges On Mobile Calls http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15986.php Europe's top telecommunications regulator Wednesday will propose a law forcing mobile phone operators to cut charges customers pay while traveling abroad. ... Virgin's Bloomfin Ld gets license for mobile service in Georgia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15994.php The Virgin Islands' Bloomfin has received a license to offer mobile services in Georgia, Dimitry Kitoshvili, chairman of the country's National Communications Commission told Prime-Tass Tuesday. ... [[ Reports ]] African Continent Fastest Mobile Growth Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16001.php The latest report from Portio Research, predicts that the African continent will see significant growth in mobile subscribers between 2006 and 2011, adding 265 million new subscribers over that period. During 2004 and 2005 Africa saw overall mobile m... WiMAX Will Dominate Fixed Broadband Wireless Market - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16005.php WiMAX will quickly dominate the fixed broadband wireless market, but its success in the mobile arena will be slower and more difficult to achieve, according to a new report from Senza Fili Consulting. Despite this, 802.16e -- the version of WiMAX tha... [[ Statistics ]] Panama Mobile sector grows 26% in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15992.php Panama ended 2005 with 1,588,200 mobile telephony clients, up 26% from 1,259,948 in 2004, Costa Rican daily Capital Financiero reported, citing statistics from Panama's telecoms regulator ERSP. ... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 11:54:30 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Wednesday, February 8, 2006 ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 8, 2006 ******************************** EU Reprimands 16 Countries for Uncompetitive Telecoms Markets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16576?11228 The European Commission has ruled that no European Union (EU) member countries have a competitive telecoms market. According to Dow Jones reports, 16 out of the 25 member states lacked sufficient competition, while the other nine failed to respond to the EU's inquiries before the 30 September 2005 deadline. From a total of 152 markets... Portugal Telecom Wary of Sonae's Hostile Bid http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16575?11228 Portugal Telecom has described Sonae's US$12.8 billion-bid for a majority stake as hostile and below the actual or potential worth of the company. In a statement, Portugal Telecom chief executive Miguel Horta e Costa insisted that the bid undervalued Portugal Telecom's current and future worth, warning that it could lead to a break-up of... SingTel Achieves Q3 Net Profit Growth on Mixed Regional Performance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16574?11228 In the quarter ending 31 December 2005, SingTel's net profit grew by 16% y/y to S$885 million (US$541.9 million), while underlying net profit rose 4.1% y/y to S$778 million. The net profit increase was mainly boosted by a S$105-million exceptional gain from the partial sale of its stake in Singapore Post. Revenue rose by 4.2% y/y to... "Better Than WiMax" Device Gets FCC Nod http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16573?11228 Startup xGTM Technology has received FCC approval for its novel wide area wireless network transmitter, an important step for a firm that's looking to buck a seemingly overwhelming trend toward 3G and 802.11 technologies.   The xGTM system is based on a new low frequency wireless networking protocol called xMax. Sarasota,... Google Battles Broadband Provider Fee http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16570?11228 WASHINGTON -- Internet giant Google said Tuesday that the wide variety of Web sites might shrink if broadband providers like AT&T start charging companies for premium access to high-speed networks. The Bell companies promised members of the Senate Commerce Committee that they have no plans to block Internet services. Lawmakers... Bush Wants $3.6B Wi-Fi Tax http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16564?11228 The Bush administration has asked the Federal Communications Commission to consider imposing fees that would yield about $3.6 billion during the next 10 years on unauctioned spectrum licenses -- a notion widely seen as targeting newer broadband and Wi-Fi services, but presumably also applicable to a wide range of emerging RF... Nortel Takes $2.5B Hit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16560?11228 Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT - message board) is on course to take a $2.473 billion charge to settle outstanding class action lawsuits. It would "remove a significant impediment to Nortel's future success and allow Mike Zafirovski and the Nortel team to move forward," the company's chairman Harry Pearce said in a statement this... US Business Data Services Spending Headed for Slow Decline http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16559?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Total US business end-user data service expenditures will grow 0.3% to $36.6 billion by the end of 2005, reports In-Stat. Expenditures will increase slightly again in 2006, fueled by broadband Internet access and shifts to IP environments, but start a gradual decline in 2007 as a result of mounting pricing ... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 13:39:59 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon Business Beefs Up IP Services USTelecom dailyLead February 8, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWeQfDtutarsvlenCd TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon Business beefs up IP services BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Lucent snaps up Riverstone * Cisco's business strategy begins to pay dividends * Nortel proposes $2.5B settlement for two lawsuits * Cisco, Level 3 report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * TelecomNEXT adds exhibit hall to meet demand! TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * IBM works with Houston utility on BPL network * IPTV firm to sell NBC Uni content on VOD service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Senate hearing looks at "net neutrality" Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWeQfDtutarsvlenCd ------------------------------ From: Rob Nicholson Subject: Seeking VOIP UK Consultants Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 08:53:27 UTC Organization: BT Openworld I'm looking for a independent UK based VOIP consultant who has a wide knowledge of the various VOIP PBX systems for impartial advice on picking a VOIP PBX system for use in the terminal server/Citrix environment in a medium sized office. I'm sure you can work out my email address. Thanks, Rob ------------------------------ From: danny burstein Subject: Re: Broadband, Content Provider Firms Fight Over Net Neutrality Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2006 00:41:54 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Jeremy Pelofsky writes: [ big snip ] (quoting a news clip: ) > "You do deserve a return on your investment is the bottom line if > you're going to build out these networks," the Nevada Republican > said. "Otherwise, if you can't give them the return on their > investment, Wall Street is not going to loan them the money to do > this." However, just because someone (some company...) "deserves a return" does NOT mean, under the free enterprise system, that they are _guaranteed_ a return. There are way, way, too many groups, that have managed to get either perpetual gov't (taxpayer...) handouts or, the next best thing (and sometimes better) a gov't enforced monopoly or... a gov't mandated price set. We don't need more. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 20:26:28 EST Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices In a message dated 7 Feb 2006 08:17:02 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > In the above movie mention about an executive sending a telegram to > his home office, I wonder when the switch to using long distance > telephone would've taken place. The executive was in a distance city, > heading home, and calling a special meeting of the Board. Had he > telephoned, his secretary would've had the message immediately and > would've started making arrangements, where via telegram there was a > delay and it was a one-way conversation. (However, part of the > movie's plot dealt with the Board speculating intensely on why the > meeting was called, so the one-way concept was important to this > particular movie.) Sending a telegram, just like sending a fax, an e-mail or a letter, has the advantage you don't have to wait around and engage in perhaps a lengthy conversation when you have something else more pressing. Also, the same telegram can be sent to multiple address (generally paying for each one) and you don't have to engage in a colloquy with every addresses. In addition, there may be, as in this case, a specific desire not to engage in conversation. In many cases there was also the desire to have a record of the sending and receiving of the message on paper. There was also the question of finding a telephone in a distant city to call from. Many people would not let you use their phone for a long distance call, particularly businesses, and the alternative would be to find the telephone office in the town. Telephone credit cards were becoming more common about that time, but certainly not the broad coverage of the public they later became. Note that rapid long distance connections generally were not especially common until at least the 1950s, and you would be waiting for the connection to come through. Manual connections were the rule, with the call being passed from operator to operator to an inward operator at the end office. The process speeded up quickly when operator toll dialing was introduced, but that was about the time that manual connections had also become more rapid. > It's amazing in so many old movies that vital information is > telegraphed to a person rather than telephoned, even from relatively > short distances. Can you clarify why distance would be a significant factor in the decision to telephone or telegraph? > Most large railroad stations had a Western Union desk or ticket > agents doubled as telegraph agents. When business people travelled, > they'd wire ahead their arrival plans or that they arrived safely. > Everyday people sent a postcard. Not just large stations; the smaller the town the more important the railroad office would be for sending telegrams. In small towns that would often be the only telegraph office there. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 18:29:18 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Steven Lichter wrote: > Last year in Riverside, Ca. a person talking on a cell phone on the > Freeway rearended a car with a family, killing several of them, he was > charged and convicted of Murder, not Manslaughter as has been in the > past. More of these trials are needed until the people in charge pass > laws and then enforce them. Cite? I live in the Inland Empire too, about an hour from Riverside, and I don't recall hearing about this anywhere. It'd be in the papers in my area too, since the company that owns my local newspaper also owns the Riverside _Press-Enterprise._ Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: David O'Heare Subject: Re: Great Job Board Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 23:34:26 -0500 Pat, there seem to have been submissions from this person, or someone very like them, to every newsgroup that there is. wrote in message news:telecom25.57.10@telecom-digest.org: > There is a great job board located at the employment section of > SPAM CRAP . So pass it on to anyone looking for a > job. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Everyone look it over, but also > consider our very own classified advertisements here at > http://telecom-digest.org/classified.html for quite reasonable rates > on an (as of yet) not too widely used classified ads section. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for passing on this advice. I have always _attempted_ (frequently without much success) to provide a safe harbor or legitimate place to put legitimate messages about employment opportunities, people seeking employment, groups of scientists holding seminars and/or seeking papers for publication, etc. Even those relatively safe (i.e. free from spam/scam) types of messages are becoming few and far between it would seem. In the past, I would publish 'call for papers' without bothering to verify anything they said; my assumption was the persons who coordinated/managed those events knew infinitly more about the subject matter under discussion than I did; I simply wanted to do a good job in my 'support role' for those events and spread the word if possible. Now, I got a message from John Levine, printed here a week or so ago, advising me that a group of people in China were sending out 'call for papers' spam; I sort of dismissed his complaint as a 'sour grapes' thing; I did not, and still do not have the time (really, the energy and interest) in confirming and verifying all those things; but today, Wednesday, when the _third_ CFP from the same bunch of Chinese people showed up with the same details as before except for a change in the date that papers were 'due' I bounced it out. I guess from now on I have to start reviewing CFP items for the Digest as well, or limit my acceptance of them to the very few 'tried and true' ones which arrive, from IEEE and others. Ditto with the classified ads: I had _thought_ it would be a good way to introduce our readers to employment opportunities and introduce employers to the readers here. Legitimate ones, that is. I have seen so damn many commercials on television and the net which say in effect "I bought my first computer. I read this web page, it taught me how to spam and my first month I made five thousand dollars. Now I am making ten thousand dollars per month. You need to read this web page and start making money also." We all know that amounts to so much bullshit ... working with Google AdSense now for over a year I do not come *close* to 'thousands of dollars per month'; so I thought a few months ago, why not start a legitimate web site with classified ads for people to use; let folks post LEGITIMATE ads for services offered and services desired, preferably technical in nature. Guess what! _Two_ LEGITIMATE advertisers have come along. The _illegitimate_ advertisers (i.e. spammers) continue to load my inbox and my spam box daily with all kinds of crapola. I have never advertised it even once outside this Digest. http://telecom-digest.org/classified.html . Maybe I should start spamming it (the presence of my classified section) on all the other web sites around ... whoever thought, a quarter-century ago, that the internet would become this crappy ... Thanks again, Mr. Oheare, for bringing this latest bunch of crap to my attention. I guess there are no longer any safe harbors on the net where one can work. Feel free to write me again whenever you wish. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #59 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 9 16:19:16 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9CA9A150D1; Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:19:15 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #60 Message-Id: <20060209211915.9CA9A150D1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:19:15 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, NA_DOLLARS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Feb 2006 16:20:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 60 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Fiber Cut Knock S.E. Kansas Off Line (TELECOM Digest Editor) News Corporation Reports Second Quarter Operating Income of $920 (Solomon) A Web Site for Real-Estate Voyeurs (Monty Solomon) Boston Unveils WiFi Push (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News For Thursday 9th February 2006 (cellular-news) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 9, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Vonage Goes IPO Route (USTelecom dailyLead) Ground Start Analog Phone (Administrator) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (Lisa Hancock) Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway (Steven Lichter) PanFish Inc. Searching For Respectable Person (Robert Hard) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Fiber Cut Knock Rural S.E. Kansas Off Line Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 14:06:05 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) A fiber got cut by a clumsy contractor with a backhoe early Thursday in Parsons, KS which knocked all of rural s.e. Kansas as served by cableone.net off line. This cut included TELECOM Digest. Right now I am working off of our back up modem dial up line using TerraWorld. Cableone is aware of the problem and they estimate it will be six to eight hours in repair. The contractor just shrugged his shoulders and acted like he did not know what he had done. "He'll shrug his shoulders alright when he gets the repair bill, noted a technician from Cableone.net in Phoenix, AZ where the cableone technical center is located. In the meantime, your editor has to limp along with a very slow dial up connection, meaning today's issue of the Digest will be sort of skimpy. You'll get what I had available when the fiber got cut; the rest will sit in the mailox until perhaps later tonight when they estimate repairs will be finished. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 00:28:17 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Corporation Reports Second Quarter Operating Income of $920 Mln News Corporation Reports Second Quarter Operating Income of $920 Million as Revenues Increase to $6.7 Billion; Income from Continuing Operations Increases to $694 Million - Feb 8, 2006 04:05 PM (BusinessWire) NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 8, 2006--News Corporation QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS -- Cable Network Programming operating income up 15% on advertising growth at Fox News Channel and higher affiliate revenues at the Regional Sports Networks. -- Television operating income up 20% on strong revenue growth at STAR and lower promotional costs at the FOX Network due to the earlier launch of its fall lineup versus a year ago. -- Filmed Entertainment delivers operating income of $299 million on continued strength of home entertainment sales of film and television titles. $108 million decrease versus prior year reflects record home entertainment results in second quarter a year ago. -- New subscriber additions at SKY Italia improve operating results by $52 million. At quarter end the subscriber base had expanded to 3.6 million, an increase of 496,000 subscribers in the past 12 months. -- Newspaper operating income declines as $99 million in redundancy costs associated with the printing project and advertising weakness in the U.K. more than offsets the inclusion of Queensland Press' results in Australia. -- Increased contributions from the In-Store division drives Magazines and Inserts operating income up 4% while an array of bestsellers at HarperCollins raises Book Publishing operating income 24%. News Corporation today reported second quarter income from continuing operations of $694 million, ($0.21 per share on a diluted combined basis(1)), as compared with $386 million ($0.13 per share on a diluted combined basis(1)) reported in the second quarter a year ago. These results primarily reflect an increase in equity earnings of affiliates and increased Other income from the unrealized change in fair value of certain outstanding exchangeable debt securities partially offset by a decrease in consolidated operating income. (1) See supplemental financial data on page 14 for detail on earnings per share Consolidated operating income for the second quarter of $920 million was down 4% versus the $954 million reported a year ago, primarily as a result of a $99 million redundancy provision recorded this quarter in connection with the U.K. newspaper printing project, as well as a reduction from the record Filmed Entertainment operating income reported in the second quarter a year ago. These items more than offset double-digit improvements from the Television, Cable Network Programming, Direct Broadcast Satellite and Book Publishing segments. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=55529641 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 00:55:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Web Site for Real-Estate Voyeurs By WALTER S. MOSSBERG and KATHERINE BOEHRET If there's anything Americans obsess over as much as sports, pop culture and college for their kids, it's real estate. All over the country, people love to talk about how much their homes, and those of their neighbors, might be worth if sold today and what it would take to snag a new house. Trouble is, it's hard for average folks to obtain solid, neutral estimates of the market values of homes without consulting a real-estate agent. There have been a few Web sites that offer estimates of a home's value, such as housevalues.com. But they require you to enter your contact information and to be contacted by a real-estate agent or mortgage broker in order to actually receive a detailed estimate. While these sites look like they are focused on the consumer, they are actually designed to generate sales leads for agents. Now there's a new, well-designed, free online service for finding the value of a home that doesn't require you to identify yourself or to communicate with an agent or broker, and provides heaps of information directly to consumers. It's called Zillow, and it is launching today, in beta, or test, form at http://zillow.com. Zillow uses data such as tax records, sales history and the actual prices of "comparables" -- homes in your area that are similar to yours -- to come up with an estimate, which it calls a "Zestimate." It backs up the estimate with lavish data -- aerial photos and maps showing prices in a neighborhood; loads of charts and graphs displaying historical data and price movements, as well as details on the size and room totals of a home. It even allows you to enter information, like the types and prices of recent renovations, that might change an estimate. A home needn't be for sale to be searched in Zillow, which claims to cover 62 million houses and to update its estimates daily. The company, founded by people who formerly ran the Expedia travel Web site, hopes to make money through advertising. When estimating home values, real-estate agents can draw on their industry's massive database, called the Multiple Listing System, as well as on their own local knowledge. Zillow doesn't have access to the MLS or to agents' local savvy. So, it draws on roughly 10 commercial providers of real-estate data, which supply information like a home's sale history; tax assessment and payment history; comparable-home sale prices; and numbers of rooms in a home. This information is largely collected by the commercial-data providers from government records. Zillow also obtains some government records directly. Zillow then crunches these numbers using its own proprietary computer formula and comes up with an estimate. The company acknowledges that its raw data on comparable sales can be three to six weeks older than the data in the MLS system that agents use. We've been testing Zillow for a couple of days, and we are favorably impressed. The site is fast, broad and deep. It's easy to use and is nicely laid out. It even offers to email updates on its estimates for any property that interests you. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20060208.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 12:26:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Boston Unveils WiFi Push By Robert Weisman Globe Staff Mayor Thomas M. Menino this morning said Boston will mount an effort to bring wireless Internet access to the entire city. A new task force announced today will report to Menino by mid-summer on a plan and a timetable for rolling out wireless Internet. The task force will be co-chaired by Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council; Jim Cash, a former Harvard Business School professor; and Rick Burnes, co-founder of Charles River Ventures. http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2006/02/boston_unveils.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 9th February 2006 Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 07:59:50 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Indonesia Telkomsel,Indosat, Excelcom Win 3G Licenses http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16006.php The Indonesian government has awarded PT Indonesian Satellite, PT Excelcomindo Pratama and unlisted PT Telekomunikasi Selular, or Telkomsel, licenses to operate 3G networks, Indonesian Communication Minister Sofyan Djalil told reporters Wednesday. ... Nokia Wins Network Expansion Contract With 3 In UK http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16008.php Nokia says it has received a network expansion contract in the U.K. from mobile operator 3, owned by Hutchison Whampoa. ... Regulator Asks Hutchison To Highlight 3G IPO Risks - Source http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16009.php Italian stock market regulator Consob has placed unusually strict disclosure requirements for Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s planned initial public offering of Italian mobile phone unit 3 Italia, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday. ... Mobilcom Founder: Letter Aids Claims Vs France Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16015.php Gerhard Schmid, the founder and former chief executive of German firm Mobilcom believes he has a good chance of making prior minority shareholder France Telecom liable for the financial consequences stemming from its termination of a contract between... KPN, Telfort Put Rollout Of 3G Networks On Hold http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16016.php Dutch telecommunications operators Royal KPN and Telfort have put the rollout of their third-generation mobile networks on hold, pending the outcome of a study into the possible synergies that can be reached by integrating the networks, the operators... ANALYSIS: Can Sunbeach's CDMA mobile model work? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16019.php PREMIUM - Barbadian ISP Sunbeach is gearing up to launch a new CDMA mobile service as early as mid year. However, while the company's CEO Ian Worrell is confident that Sunbeach will differentiate itself through roaming and advanced data services, analysts are ... HSDPA Launched in Kuwait http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16028.php Kuwait's Wataniya Telecom yesterday opened its High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) network, making it the first operator in the Middle East and Africa region to offer mobile services beyond 3G. The solution, provided by Nokia, covers Kuwait and... [[ Financial ]] FOCUS: VimpelCom shareholders' conflict worsens, future unclear http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16013.php PREMIUM - The conflict between two key shareholders of Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom has worsened in the last few weeks, creating problems for the company. Analysts see no easy exit from the situation since both shareholders want to incre... Comcel to invest US$66mn in infrastructure in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16020.php Colombian mobile operator Comcel plans to invest 150bn pesos (US$66.4mn) to expand its infrastructure in 2006, local daily Portafolio reported. ... Knowledge Management for Customer Service: Critical Ingredients for Success As enterprises increasingly use customer service to differentiate themselves; knowledge management has gained prominence as a strategic initiative. This eGain whitepaper discusses the critical ingredients of success as it relates to knowledge management strategy, technology, people and processes. CLICK HERE - Download New Whitepaper http://www.egain.com/pages/eGain_bestpractice_knowledge_management_uk.asp?id=ir200&source=IR%20Cellular%20News Compliments of eGain [[ Handsets ]] Camera Phone Demand Soon to Peak - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16031.php Phones with the ability to take images, both still and video, have captured about 40% of the wireless phone market, reports In-Stat. Despite the products' popularity, many camera phone users want higher resolution, the ability to use storage media, a... SonyEricsson Tops Handset Sales In January http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16034.php The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, has released their "Top 10"-list for January 2006. The list is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile phone cases that have been ordered from Krusell duri... [[ Legal ]] Telenor Commences Arbitration Against Alfa Group http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16007.php Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor, Wednesday said it has commenced an arbitration proceeding against Alfa Group Russia's subsidiary Storm LLC in connection with Storm's violations of the shareholders agreement of Ukrainian mobile operator... Nortel Reaches Proposed Class-Action Settlement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16011.php Nortel Networks Corp. has agreed in principle to settle two significant class-action lawsuits against it, which result in the payment of $575 million in cash and the issuance of 628,667,750 of its shares, or about 14.5% of its current equity. ... Qualcomm: Court Orders Broadcom Must Remove ITC Action http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16012.php Qualcomm says a district court permanently enjoined Broadcom Corp. from going ahead with infringement claims against it, regarding two patents. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile TV and Mobile E-Mail Are Favorite Applications - survey http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16026.php Downloading music to a mobile handset, accessing and editing e-mails on a mobile handset, watching television or the person at the other end on the display during a phone call - which services will wireless customers be using in the future, and what ... [[ Network Operators ]] O2 Abolishes Roaming Charges Between The Irelands http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16030.php O2 Ireland has became the first operator in Ireland to abolish roaming charges between the Southern Republic of Ireland and British Northern Ireland for all of it's 1.6 million customers. In addition the company has abolished roaming charges across G... Vodafone Japan Adopts Ethical Shopping http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16036.php Vodafone Japan has announce its implementation of Vodafone Group's Code of Ethical Purchasing (CEP) with its main suppliers starting mid-February 2006 as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. The CEP is designed to promote safe and fair... [[ Offbeat ]] UK Mobile Users Upset At Poor Customer Service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16029.php New research shows that more than 40% of internet chat about UK mobile operators is related to customer service issues. Not only is customer care the most common topic of discussion, it also attracts the most negative sentiment, with only one UK oper... [[ Regulatory ]] Russian lower house OKs last reading of caller-pays bill http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16010.php Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved Wednesday the third, and last, reading of a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle in Russia. ... Movistar: Spectrum bidding rules on sale Feb 20 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16021.php Mobile operator Movistar Chile has set February 20 as the date to start selling the bidding rules for the auction of 25Mhz of excess spectrum it has in the 800MHz band, local press reported. ... Hutchison joins Movistar spectrum suitors http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16022.php The Argentine unit of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications has put in a bid for the 35MHz of the spectrum mobile operator Movistar Argentina is expected to return to authorities, local press reported. ... EU Urges New Rules To Cut International Mobile Phone Roaming Costs http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16023.php BRUSSELS (AP)--The European Commission wants new rules to stop mobile phone firms charging travelers a higher price for making calls abroad, European Union Telecommuications Commissioner Vivane Reding said Wednesday. ... Antonyuk: Russia gets 50 bln rbl annually in GSM frequency fees http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16024.php The Russian government receives 50 billion rubles annually from GSM mobile operators in payments for frequency usage, Deputy IT and Telecommunications Minister Boris Antonyuk told a news conference Wednesday. ... [[ Reports ]] Spend on Wireless by Education Authorities to Soar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16027.php Juniper Research finds that the market for mobile and wireless in the education sector will grow exponentially from US$827 million in 2005 to US$6.49 billion in 2010. Overall expenditure will be made up of sums for the buying in of handheld and porta... Enterprise Wireless Data Revenues Set to Top $22 Billion http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16032.php Strategy Analytics has released a report that is predicting that business use of wireless data will step into the early mainstream market in 2006, growing over 20 percent to a market worth over US$22 Billion in North America, Western Europe and Asia/... Wireless Industry Must Prepare For Radically Different Futures http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16035.php The wireless industry could evolve in very different ways over the next five to ten years, demanding robust planning by network operators, technology vendors, service providers and regulators, according to a new report from Analysys Research. Major u... [[ Statistics ]] Analysts say Kyrgyz mobile subscriber base at 560,000 on Feb 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16014.php The mobile communications subscriber base in Kyrgyzstan amounted to 560,000 users as of February 1, consulting company Expert said in a report released Wednesday. No comparisons were provided. ... Survey shows Russia's mobile penetration up to 60% as of January http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16017.php Russia's mobile penetration rate amounted to about 60% in January, up from about 56% in December 2005, according to a survey results of which were released Wednesday by Russia's ROMIR Monitoring. Russia's population amounts to about 142.8 million p... Azercell mobile user base up 34.6% on year as of Jan 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16025.php The subscriber base of Azeri mobile operator Azercell Telecom rose 34.6% on the year to 1.75 million users as of January 1, the company said in a press release Wednesday. ... [[ Technology ]] Symbian OS License Costs Cut http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16033.php Symbian has drastically cut the cost of Symbian software licenses for use in smartphones. The company says that its objective is to reduce the cost of using Symbian OS and further accelerate the uptake of Symbian OS in high volume segments. The curre... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 10:50:18 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 9, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 9, 2006 ******************************** Oh, Wireless, Where Art Thou? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16596?11228 Now that Cabelcos have paired with Sprint Nextel Corp. for mobile wireless service, what are other CLECs to do about achieving the desired quadplay? Many regional CLECs simply don't have the volume, expertise or resources to take on a full-fledged MVNO business. Fortunately, help is on the way. "It's now mandatory for a CLEC to have... Jordan: France Telecom Looks to Take Controlling Jordan Telecom Stake http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16594?11228 France Telecom, which took a 40% stake in the Jordanian fixed-line incumbent when it was privatised in 2000, is in negotiations with the Jordanian government to increase its stake by 11% and thereby take a majority shareholding in the operator, Reuters reports. The state pension fund and private institutions own a 18.5% stake in Jordan... Broadband Boosts BT Q3 Results http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16590?11228 BT Group has announced not-so-wonderful results for its fiscal third quarter of 2005 and the nine months ending 31 December 2005. According to chief executive Ben Verwaayen, growth at the operator's broadband business helped boost results in a dynamic business environment. The company said that connections through BT Wholesale stand at... Vonage Files for $250 million IPO, Appoints New CEO http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16589?11228 NEW YORK (AP) -- Vonage Holdings Corp., the United States' largest Internet telephone service, on Wednesday filed for an initial public offering worth up to $250 million. The company also appointed Mike Snyder chief executive, succeeding founder Jeffrey Citron, who will remain chairman and take the new title 'chief... Motorola Launches Virtual Mobile Wallet http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16588?11228 Leave your wallet, credit cards and cash at home. All you'll really need is your mobile phone. Motorola says its M-Wallet gives users quick and secure access to their bank accounts and eliminates the need to ever carry credit or debit... Remote Control http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16586?11228 Mobile devices have become a bit of a mixed blessing for IT managers -- allowing unprecedented freedom and productivity, but raising a host of management issues most are unused to handling. To relieve some of that burden, developers are increasingly offering over-the-air management solutions that allow IT managers to do things like... Research: VoWLAN Device Sales To Spike In 2007-08 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16585?11228 Enterprise Voice-over-Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) usage is expected to grow dramatically during the next three years, according to a new study issued by TelecomWeb's sister division InfoTech as part of its "InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility" program. In its Mobile Communications in the U.S. Workplace report, InfoTech also predicts annual U.S.... Europe Is Urged to Improve Web Security http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16582?11228 VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Europe must work harder to make the Internet more secure as the nature of online threats becomes increasingly criminal across the 25-nation bloc, a senior EU official warned Thursday. "We are still far from achieving the goal of secure and reliable networks that protect confidential and reliable... Cable Telephony Service Revenues to Hit $10 Billion by 2009 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16580?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., February 8, 2006 - Worldwide cable telephony service revenues rose from $4.5 billion in 2004 to $5.6 billion in 2005, and are projected to reach $10 billion by 2009, reports In-Stat. The widening availability of VoIP-based cable telephony services has resulted in thousands of new cable telephony subscribers for... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 13:07:47 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Vonage Goes IPO Route USTelecom dailyLead February 9, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWoMfDtutasFxNbMLm TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Vonage goes IPO route BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telcordia announces IMS solution * Satellite company's wireless spectrum suddenly becomes valuable * EarthLink, Telstra, BT, DirecTV report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Complimentary Exhibits and Keynotes Only registration at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * RIM offers details for software workaround REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Surveillance requests more common after Sept. 11 * Slew of sites hawking phone records close down Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWoMfDtutasFxNbMLm ------------------------------ Subject: Ground Start Analog Phone Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 07:57:03 -0600 From: Administrator Hi Pat, With your vast experience, I was wondering if you can help me. I just installed a Cisco CallManager Express system. Everything is working great with the system. The problem is we set the lines to groundstart. Now we would like to have the main line also going to an analog phone just in case we have a power failure or the CME goes down. Is there an analog phone we can purchase that has groundstart capabilities? If so, please point me in the right direction. Kindest Regards, Damian P.C. Jones IT Manager Great Northern Cabinetry, Inc. 749 Kennedy Street P.O. Box 207 Rib Lake, WI 54470 (715) 427-5255 (715) 427-5227 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your compliment about my 'vast experience'. In the olden days of Ma Bell, asking your service rep for a 'ground start' style telephone would produce one promptly from a technician who would show up with it on request. You can purchase one from various suppliers, but their names escape me at the moment and it would not come as inexpensive as you could simply build one. Please recall all you need to do to have a 'ground start' phone is to touch the 'tip' side of the line to ground momentarily, like for one or two seconds, then remove that connection. Sort of like you press a doorbell for a second or two, then release the button you were pressing. I do not know how large your installation is, but I am sure you know where to find a connection to 'ground', such as a cold water pipe. Use a phone with a temporary push to connect switch on it such as one of the older 'two line twist button' phones. You know, the ones with red/green wires as line one, or turn the little twist button the other direction and yellow/black wires connect with line two. In this instance, 'line two' (yellow/black wires) will not do anything unless you want an actual line two. What you will concern yourself with are the blue/white wires in the cable which make temporary connection when the 'twist button' is used in its _third_ position, which is temporary push down/release (sort of like a doorbell button). In fact, when Bell was in business, what they did with those blue/white wires was have them temporarily connect to buzz or signal another phone somewhere on the line. But what you are going to do is use the blue/white wires to make a temporary connection to ground. When you press, then release the twist button (its third, press/release thing), you will bring ground onto the pair for for second or two needed to establish a ground start connection. I did that many years ago when my uncle was the proprietor of a Walgreen's Agency drug store in Whiting, IN. He had a pay phone in the front of the store and a private phone (Whiting-68 was the number as I recall) on the wall in back by the pharmacy. To use the pay phone, people had to put a nickel in the phone which tripped the ground, and presently the operator would answer and get the desired number. I found a two line/twist button phone somewhere and hooked it up in his pharmacy office instead. Turn the button one way, you got the Whiting-68 pharmacy phone line. Turn the button the other direction and you got the pay station in the front of the store, To _use_ the payphone however (without having to run up to the front of the store and put a nickle in) you would depress that little button for all of a couple seconds until you heard a sort of 'clack' or static on the line, then release the button and wait for the operator to respond, same as if you had been in the front of the store, on the payphone. I just went to the phone terminal box in the basement of the store and jumped the white wire (of the blue/white pair) to the yellow (ground wire) of the payphone. Either way, (person in front with a nickel which tripped the finger in the coin box to temporarily in turn trip the ground to make the connection) _or_ uncle in back in his pharmacy office twisting the button to the payphone line position then tapping the buton with his finger to temporarily touch blue to white down to the basement where white met yellow. *In theory* it was only supposed to be an 'answer-only' extension to the payphone which was always ringing because kids from school hung around the fountain area at the front of store making calls and getting calls from their buddies. The fountain clerk/store cashier was not always able to get to the pay phone to answer in time, and uncle would have to run out to the front and get the payphone. It worked fine for a couple weeks then one day I was in the store and the telephone inspector came around to see my uncle and asked him what had happened. Uncle played sort of dumb, he claimed to have no idea what was wrong. The telephone inspector went to the basement, looked in the terminal box, snapped off _my_ side of the ground wire, came back upstairs, disabled the twist button/two line phone, went over to the pay phone, lifted the receiver, waited for the operator to respond and said to her 'give me the Business Office'. I thought it sort of prudent at that point to make myself scarce so went outside the drugstore where I could spy through the window and see what was going on. The inspector told the Business Office he had 'corrected the problem'. Then he came outside, saw me and asked 'have you seen anyone fooling around with the pay station?' This inspector had a very large, red, bulbous nose; he appeared to drink too much ice tea, IMO. I assured him I had not seen anyone 'messing around' with the phone, and he replied "I sure would like to catch the little bastard; if you see who it was, tell him to stay away from the phone." I told him I would make certain to tell the 'little bastard' not to mess with the phone any further. But now days, Bell is out of business as you know. Feel free to tap the proper wire to ground anytime you want to get a groundstart phone to produce dial tone. You cannot get in trouble for it any longer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Date: 8 Feb 2006 13:36:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > Sending a telegram, just like sending a fax, an e-mail or a letter, > has the advantage you don't have to wait around and engage in perhaps > a lengthy conversation when you have something else more pressing. In the example of this movie, it was the big boss, who has the advtg of being able to cut short conversations. IIRC, the staff had unanswered questions about his arrival, that is, if someone should pick him up at the airport and on what flight. Also the staff were wondering what they should do to prepare for the meeting. Admittedly this unknown was a dramatic feature of the movie as it lead to speculation and scheming among the board members. > There was also the question of finding a telephone in a distant city > to call from. By the time of the movie, 1954, pay phones were a standard fixture virtually everywhere in cities. The building he was visiting had a Western Union office in the lobby and certainly would've had a bank of pay telephone booths; all office buildings had them in the lobby. Being the boss he could've called collect. > Note that rapid long distance connections generally were not > especially common until at least the 1950s, and you would be waiting > for the connection to come through. That is true. The movie took place in 1954 and while there was considerable operator toll dialing by that point, it was by no means universal. While I would expect his toll call to take a minute or two to put through, I don't think the delay would've been too cumbersome. If the call originated in a rural area and went to another rural area, additional relay points would've been required as the call moved from primary toll centers to secondary and tertiary ones on both ends. On the other hand, a call between two cities on a busy route (ie St. Louis to Chicago or Washington to NYC), I suspect the call was completed rather quickly. It is an interesting question. I strongly suspect the Bell System compiled completion-time statistics for toll calls and as the 1950s wore on the times decreased. In the 1950s the Bell System was busy upgrading its toll network with microwave and coax cables and No 4 crossbar switching. I wonder in 1954 what percentage of subscribers had DDD and what percentage of subscribers had operators who had toll dialing capability. > Can you clarify why distance would be a significant factor in the > decision to telephone or telegraph? I don't know about telegraph rates, but long distance telephone rates were based on distance. A call 1,000 miles away cost considerably more than a call 100 miles away. If telegraph rates were flat by distance, then telegrams would be more likely sent for longer distances than short distances. I wish I knew what telegraph rates were for 1954 compared to long distance decreasing rates. All I know for sure is that telegraph rates were increasing while long distance phone rates were. According to some literature, WU executives recognized this as early as 1960, knew their basic public message businsess would be soon obsolete because of cost, and sought to get into other lines, such as data transmission and military services. Anyone know a source where old rates might be found? [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Welcome or Not, Cell Phones Set for Subway Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 03:23:20 GMT Steve Sobol wrote: > Steven Lichter wrote: >> Last year in Riverside, Ca. a person talking on a cell phone on the >> Freeway rearended a car with a family, killing several of them, he was >> charged and convicted of Murder, not Manslaughter as has been in the >> past. More of these trials are needed until the people in charge pass >> laws and then enforce them. > Cite? I live in the Inland Empire too, about an hour from Riverside, > and I don't recall hearing about this anywhere. It'd be in the papers > in my area too, since the company that owns my local newspaper also > owns the Riverside _Press-Enterprise._ > Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED > Company website: http://JustThe.net/ > Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ > E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 I don't remember when it was to the date, but it was in the paper several days as well as on the news, the car hit a van with a whole family in it. You might try looking at the PE site and check the archives, I know the trial was not covered much since the person pleaded the case out. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:18:24 -0800 From: Robert Hard Subject: PanFish Inc. Searching for Respectable Person Multinational fish selling company "PanFish Inc." searching for respectable person to fill post of regional manager . Demands : age 21-61 years old, smart, communicative, prompt, call of duty, readiness. PanFish Inc. is pleased to offer you a job as a regional manager. We trust that your knowledge, skills and experience will be among our most valuable assets. Should you accept this job offer, per company policy you'll be eligible to receive the following beginning on your hire date. Salary: 1000-2000 per week Profit sharing Sick leave Vacation and personal days Please send your CV, profiles according this address : panfishfilial@aol.com PanFish Inc. seeks to hire only the best. We conduct business following the spirit and the intent of the equal opportunity laws and we strive towards maintaining a diverse community. We encourage excellence at all levels in our organization. PanFish Inc. is an equal opportunity affirmative action employer. Should you require accommodation to apply for a position at PanFish Inc., please contact us PanFish Inc. does not accept and does not respond to resumes that are unsolicited. Regards, Robert Hard, hiring coordinator. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let me ask this question, Mr. Hard. Would one of the new employee's duties be to accept payments from 'international customers', deposit said payments in a bank somewhere, convert the payments to money _you_ can use, deduct a fee, then remit proceeds to _you_, who will vanish about the time the sheriff, police, bank examiners show up looking for _me_? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I did not think you were that way ... Perhaps you can also write again and tell us why a large reputable company like yourself would dirty his hands with a post office like AOL, the original and still largest spam/scam operation on the net? And a two thousand dollar per week salary, you say? My, that is really something ... and you would make accomodations for me and my diseased brain. I can see now all my readers here rushing to get in on this great opportunity. Mr. Hard, if you are _for real_ please accept my apologies for having my tongue in check .. err .. cheek, but somehow I feel that something is not quite right. Another three hours since the fiber cut; I sure hope cableone gets their act togther sometime today. :( PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #60 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 9 23:52:38 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DEF24150A7; Thu, 9 Feb 2006 23:52:37 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #61 Message-Id: <20060210045237.DEF24150A7@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 23:52:37 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=unavailable version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Feb 2006 23:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 61 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Yahoo Accused in Jailing of 2nd China Internet User (Lindsay Beck) Fresh Outrage at Yahoo in China (Eric Auchard & Joel Rothstein) Japan Internet Suicide Rate Rises to 91 Last Year (Elaine Lies) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (DLR) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Ground Start Analog Phone (William Warren) Re: Fiber Cut Knock Rural S.E. Kansas Off Line (John McHarry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lindsay Beck Subject: Yahoo Accused in Jailing of 2nd China Internet User Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 21:40:31 -0600 By Lindsay Beck BEIJING (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. provided evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of an Internet writer, lawyers and activists said on Thursday, the second such case involving the U.S. Internet giant. The latest storm over Western Internet companies in China comes just weeks after Web search giant Google Inc. came under fire for saying it would block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing. Writer and veteran activist Liu Xiaobo said Yahoo had cooperated with Chinese police in a case that led to the 2003 arrest of Li Zhi, who was charged with subverting state power and sentenced to eight years in prison after trying to join the dissident China Democracy Party. Yahoo gave public security agents details of Li's registration as a Yahoo user, Liu said in an article posted on U.S.-based Chinese- language news portal Boxun, citing a defense statement from Li's lawyers. A spokeswoman for Yahoo said the company was looking into the matter. "As in most jurisdictions, governments are not required to inform service providers why they are seeking certain information and typically do not do so," spokeswoman Mary Osako said. "We would not know whether a demand for information focused on murder, kidnapping or another crime," she said by phone from California, adding Yahoo thought the Internet was a positive force in China. But media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the argument that Yahoo simply responds to requests from authorities did not hold water. "Yahoo certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals," it said in a statement. PROFITS AND PRINCIPLES The group, along with the Committee to Protect Journalists, also called on Yahoo to disclose information on all Internet journalists and writers whose identities it has revealed to Chinese authorities. The case is the latest in a string of examples that highlight the friction between profits and principles for Internet companies doing business in China, the world's number-two Internet market. In September, Yahoo was accused of helping Chinese authorities identify Shi Tao, who was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets abroad. Yahoo defended itself at the time, saying it had to abide by local laws. In December, Microsoft shut down a blog at MSN Spaces belonging to outspoken blogger Michael Anti under Chinese government orders. The government has also been pressuring mainstream Internet news Web sites in what analysts say is a tightening of the atmosphere for intellectuals. A notice issued by the Beijing Internet Propaganda Management Office earlier this week listed media sites it said were reprinting information that went beyond what was lawful. "At present, do not use what they report on political news; especially do not use them for frontpage news on the Internet," the notice warned. Its list included the Web sites of adventurous newspapers like Guangdong-based Southern Metropolis News, but also the International Herald Leader, which belongs to the state news agency Xinhua, and regional dailies such as the Lanzhou Morning News. Print editions have also been targeted. Chen Jieren, the chief editor of the Beijing-based Public Interest Times, was sacked on Wednesday over a report criticizing authorities, the South China Morning Post said. The case follows the dismissals of the editor of the outspoken Beijing News and the closure of Freezing Point, the weekly supplement of the China Youth Daily known for its critical commentaries and investigative reporting. (Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Hong Kong and Guo Shipeng in Beijing) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Reuters, please go to : http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Joel Rothstein & Eric Auchard Subject: Fresh Outrage at Yahoo Ahead of China Hearings Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 21:35:03 -0600 By Joel Rothstein and Eric Auchard U.S. Internet companies faced fresh bipartisan criticism in the Congress on Thursday following heightened controversy over Yahoo Inc.'s alleged role in the Chinese government's eight-year prison sentence against a second dissident. "I don't like any American company ratting out a citizen for speaking out against their government," Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat and member of the House Human Rights Subcommittee, told Reuters on Thursday. "This is the tip of the iceberg of a very oppressive regime that we have almost become accustomed to America," Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican and chairman of the House Human Rights Subcommittee, told Reuters. The storm over Western media companies' compliance with China's policies comes before next week's hearing by Smith's committee where lawmakers from both parties are expected to grill representatives from Yahoo, Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc.. "There are probably others (dissidents) that we need to find out about. We are going to make sure it doesn't get swept under the rug," Smith said. Google came under fire last month for bowing to Chinese government pressure to block politically sensitive terms on its new Chinese site. Microsoft has also angered human rights activists by blocking the blog of a critic of the Beijing government. Yahoo spokeswoman Linda Osaka said her company was unaware of the details of the latest case raised by Paris-based international rights group Reporters Without Borders. The group said Yahoo provided electronic records to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of writer Li Zhi in 2003. "The choice in China and other countries is not whether to comply with local laws. The choice is whether to remain in the country or not," Osaka said. "We have a philosophy of engagement. We believe the Internet is a positive force." Yahoo's engagement includes a $1 billion investment last year to acquire a 40 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba.com, which now runs the company's China operations. Alibaba has moved all of its 2,000 Yahoo China servers from the United States to China, Alibaba's CEO said last year. Smith, one of the harshest China critics in Congress, said he wants legislation requiring companies to pull operations such as e-mail servers out of China and other countries that lack U.S.-style civil rights and due process protections. Google is already engaged in a legal battle with the Bush administration over whether the Justice Department can force the Web search company to turn over data about its customers' Web-surfing habits. The information is sought by the government to defend a law to prevent online child pornography. Smith said the hearings set for February 15 will push Yahoo to reveal what information it provided to the Chinese government, the number of people involved and details on how Yahoo interacts with what he describes as the "secret police." "We only responded with what we were legally compelled to provide and nothing more," Osako said. "We had a vigorous process in place to make sure that only required material was provided," she said. "Congress remains very concerned with the Chinese pressure on Internet companies to help in Beijing's continuing crackdown on free speech," said Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), the founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. "We are looking into ways in which the companies can resist or circumvent this pressure, and this will be Topic A at our hearing next week," said Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee whose district includes the northern edge of Silicon Valley. "The bloom is off the rose for the Internet industry," said John Palfrey, director of an Internet think tank at Harvard Law School. "There is a sense that American companies have a higher obligation than has been practiced in China in recent years." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters and headline stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Elaine Lies Subject: Japan Internet Suicide Deaths Soar to 91 in 2005 Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 21:43:44 -0600 By Elaine Lies The number of Japanese killing themselves in groups after meeting through the Internet -- strangers afraid to die alone -- soared to a record 91 last year, nearly double that of 2004, police said on Thursday. The deadly pacts pose a grim challenge for officials struggling to deal with Japan's high suicide rate, one of the worst among industrialised nations. No religious prohibitions exist against taking one's own life in Japan, where suicide was once a form of ritual atonement for samurai warriors and in modern times is a way to escape failure or save loved ones from embarrassment or financial loss. Suicides surged by 35 percent in 1998 as Japan's economy was mired in stagnation and have exceeded 30,000 every year since then. Group suicides make up only a small fraction of the total, but the steady annual increase, along with the widespread media coverage most get, has experts increasingly worried. "Many people are too scared to die alone," said Yumiko Misaki, director of the Tokyo Inochi no Denwa (Phone of Life), a suicide counselling service. "So they reach each other through the Internet and make arrangements. "And the worst thing is that people are often very influenced by reporting on this, so it's likely to keep on increasing." In 2003, 34 died in group suicides, rising to 55 in 2004 and 91 last year. SECOND TO RUSSIA That compares with a total of 32,325 suicides in 2004, the latest year for which figures are available -- down from the record-high 34,427 in 2003 but second only to Russia among Group of Eight industrialised nations. According to World Health Organization data, Japan's suicide rate was 24.1 per 100,000 people in 2000, compared with 39.4 in Russia and 10.4 in the United States. The pace of group suicides was especially sharp during the first three months of last year. On one day in February, six people were found dead in a car on a deserted rural road. As with most of the other cases, police found several charcoal stoves in the car, which had its windows sealed from inside. The three men and three women had died by inhaling carbon monoxide from the charcoal. Experts warn that the Internet alone cannot be blamed for promoting suicide, but noted that the intensity of some suicide chat rooms may worsen the psychological state of those involved. With mental care systems in Japan still basic and often overloaded, the Internet also has the potential to be a powerful therapeutic tool, particularly since many Japanese find it hard to share their worries with others face to face. The time lag between people writing about their feelings and receiving an answer, however, is a hurdle that Misaki's group -- which plans to start an Internet counselling service later this year -- finds worrying. "The best solution would be if we could break into the chat rooms and start communicating with people directly," Misaki said. There are some hopeful signs, however. From October, several communications industry groups began providing police with information on people who posted messages suggesting they might be close to committing suicide. Deaths from group suicides in the last three months of the year, after the new system took effect, dropped to 11 from 36 during the same time the previous year, police said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 17:21:09 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices > It is an interesting question. I strongly suspect the Bell System > compiled completion-time statistics for toll calls and as the 1950s > wore on the times decreased. In the 1950s the Bell System was busy > upgrading its toll network with microwave and coax cables and No 4 > crossbar switching. I wonder in 1954 what percentage of subscribers > had DDD and what percentage of subscribers had operators who had toll > dialing capability. I have an early childhood memory. I think it is from a variety show staring Gary Moore. But I'd never swear to that name. He's doing a skit where his sidekick is telling him his new Direct Dial number and he goes on and on with digits. My memory was this was just after the "Bell System" announced country wide LD direct dial. Being born in 1954 I'm guessing this was around 1960 or so? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There were a lot of jokes on this topic during the 1960's. One person would ask for another person's phone number and the response would go on and on and on, with a long string of digits, and then for an added laugh, one or the other would inquire "do I need to put a '1' in front of that?" PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 20:22:04 EST Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices In a message dated 8 Feb 2006 13:36:16 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > By the time of the movie, 1954, pay phones were a standard fixture > virtually everywhere in cities. The building he was visiting had a > Western Union office in the lobby and certainly would've had a bank of > pay telephone booths; all office buildings had them in the lobby. It was certainly difficult to find any public telephone in Denton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and home to two universities, in that time frame, nor any business that would allow you to make a collect telephone call. I speak from experience. Denton was served by General Telephone. [ ... ] > I don't know about telegraph rates, but long distance telephone rates > were based on distance. A call 1,000 miles away cost considerably more > than a call 100 miles away. If telegraph rates were flat by distance, > then telegrams would be more likely sent for longer distances than > short distances. Telegraph rates, like telephone rates, were set by distance. I once had occasion to send a local telegram, and I believe they were common in some cities. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And there were also, like phones, both day and night rates on telegrams, and promotional deals, such as a person who picked up a telegram in the public office was entitled to a special cheap rate if they responded within a few minutes while still in the office. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:44:53 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Ground Start Analog Phone Administrator wrote: > Hi Pat, > With your vast experience, I was wondering if you can help me. I just > installed a Cisco CallManager Express system. Everything is working > great with the system. The problem is we set the lines to groundstart. > Now we would like to have the main line also going to an analog phone > just in case we have a power failure or the CME goes down. Is there an > analog phone we can purchase that has groundstart capabilities? If > so, please point me in the right direction. [snip] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip] > Please recall all you need to do to have a 'ground start' phone is > to touch the 'tip' side of the line to ground momentarily, like for > one or two seconds, then remove that connection. [snip] Pat, If all he wants is to be able to _answer_ the phone, any instrument will do. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I once wanted to see what would happen if a call came into a payphone (in those days they were all ground start with the coin touching the lever and tripping it to make the connection to ground). So I took one payphone off hook and held it to my ear while depositing the ten cent coin in a second nearby phone and dialing the first number. I heard (on the second phone) the audible ring aand as the second (audible) ring was occurring, the first phone gave a little 'click' as the table inside tilted to collect any coins it has been holding (none) and with another click the two phones were connected. Ditto with any ground start phone. I put a speaker phone on a ground start line once and left it there in the 'answered' position; a call came in to the phone, the way I could tell there had been a call was all of a sudden I heard breathing on the line as someone was sitting there waiting for an answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knock Rural S.E. Kansas Off Line Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:24:48 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Thu, 09 Feb 2006 14:06:05 -0500, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > A fiber got cut by a clumsy contractor with a backhoe early Thursday > in Parsons, KS which knocked all of rural s.e. Kansas as served by > cableone.net off line. This cut included TELECOM Digest. Right now I > am working off of our back up modem dial up line using TerraWorld. > Cableone is aware of the problem and they estimate it will be six to > eight hours in repair. The contractor just shrugged his shoulders and > acted like he did not know what he had done. "He'll shrug his > shoulders alright when he gets the repair bill, noted a technician > from Cableone.net in Phoenix, AZ where the cableone technical center > is located. There is a method to how these things are covered up. Whoever is causing the digging has the actual work done by a contractor. Unless the contractor can be proved to be directly supervised, this gets the instigator off the hook. Then they call in "Miss Utility", another party. If they didn't clearly mark the line, they may be the party at fault, but repairs will destroy the markings. I was burned out of a townhouse in Northern Virginia a number of years ago by a cable company crew drilling into the underground power lines. Everybody pointed fingers at everybody else. My insurance sued, but it took years to come up for trial, at which point the cable company settled, and I never got my deductible back. Verizon lost maybe 50 yards of buried cable, and the power company at least as much. They both seemed to take the attitude that they caused about as much damage as they suffered, so it was a wash. As long as it is only the consumers who really suffer, I doubt any of them much care. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That damnable mess here went on for several hours. We officially got back on line at 9:55 PM, or about 12 hours after it started. They had hoped to have the repairs finished before it got dark outside (which would have been about 7 PM this time of year.) It turned out they had to take bright lights and set them up there in that field where the contractor had been working. What a mess it was! PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #61 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 10 15:49:41 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0B0271509F; Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:49:41 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #62 Message-Id: <20060210204941.0B0271509F@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:49:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 62 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless to Organize - And Maybe Save - Lives (Sinead Carew) Web Site Lets Public Track Alaska Volcano (Jeannette Lee) Craigslist Accused of Ad Discrimination (Dave Carpenter) Everyday Gadgets Getting Smarter (Kevin Maney) Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Your Everything (Andrew Kantor) Cellular-News For Friday 10th February 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 10, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Indian Carriers Cut Rates Amid Stiff Competition (USTelecom dailyLead) Virtual Number With Flexible Call Forwarding? (joel@exc.com) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (DLR) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Jim Stewart) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sinead Carew Subject: Wireless to Organize - And Maybe Save - Lives Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:30:31 -0600 By Sinead Carew Imagine a warning on your cell phone that tells you when a parent in ill health needs help, when you've eaten too much, or that you should avoid your regular commute because of a biohazard danger. Forget mobile music and video. Wireless may end up running your life -- down to when to wash your underwear. This may sound far-fetched, but laboratories around the world are exploring such scenarios as wireless networks become more robust and amid moves to miniaturize electronic chips to the point where they can be discreetly placed into any product. James Canton, president of Institute for Global Futures, a consultancy that advises on trends, says sensor chips may one day even be embedded into underwear to send laundry-related text or voice alerts to cell phones, "It will tell you when it needs to get cleaned," he said and suggested a potential prompt: "Stop using that bleach on me because it's shrinking me and if I shrink any more, you're not going to be able to wear me." Chip-embedded clothes could also help suppliers manage stocks. They could even provide consumers walking by a wirelessly linked ad with details, such as a sale on a matching shirt for the trousers the passerby is wearing. Others foresee a prevalence of wireless sensors for potentially life-saving applications. Professor John Guttag from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is studying how wirelessly connected medical devices, such as heart-monitor sensors, could automatically send warnings of a problem to the patient's cell phone and then on to a relative or a doctor. "If your elderly parent is having trouble breathing, you can't rely on them to do something (like send a text message or make a call)," said Guttag who works in MIT's electrical engineering and computer science department. "It would have to happen automatically." But Guttag said such devices would only work if they are sophisticated enough to avoid false alarms. "The machine will have to be clever enough to tell the difference between fainting and having a nap," he said. "The doctors will go nuts if hypochondriacs flood them with information every day." WIRELESS LIFE Cell phones, software, computers and sensors can also work together to make our jobs easier and eliminate menial daily chores, according to researchers at the world's biggest handset makers. In the future, your computer will automatically switch on when you arrive at work and display documents for your first meeting, thanks to phone and PC-based sensors, said Tom MacTavish, a human interaction researcher at Motorola Inc. "I had to do a whole bunch of stuff this morning that the computer and the cell phone of the future will together to do for me," he said. MacTavish believes voice-recognition technology on cell phones, which can be frustrating to use when it does not recognize context or accents, could improve with pattern-recognition technology. For example, if you call John Jones at noon every day, your phone could remember this information and first suggest Jones rather than select a random John from your contacts. Image-recognition technology is also being developed, which could help with law enforcement. For example, a wireless device that can read license plates could automatically link to a database to tell a police officer if the car was stolen or belonged to somebody with no speeding record. Nokia also sees image-recognition technology aiding consumers by recognizing and labeling photographs taken on cell phones for albums or helping users remember locations. "We could think of it like a memory prosthesis," said Jyri Huopaniemi, Nokia's head of strategic research. Eventually we may be able to host a Web site from our phones to share holiday notes or create a personal diary. Many forecasters see location-aware phones playing a major role in the future, providing such information as the history of a neighborhood, a list of its restaurants and data on crime rates and pollution levels. Others say they could alert users to environmental hazards or terrorist attacks. But one analyst was skeptical about focusing on such sophisticated applications as he believes it will take years for more basic advances, such as simply connecting televisions and computers with wireless instead of cable. "You could see a lot less cable everywhere," said Stephen Baker of research firm NPD. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Jeannette J. Lee Subject: Web Site Lets Public Track Alaska Volcano Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:33:21 -0600 By JEANNETTE J. LEE, Associated Press Writer From his home in Nanwalek, Vince Evans can stare across the water at Augustine Volcano as it pumps out clouds of ash and steam, but like many residents in the isolated village, Evans prefers to check the Internet for the latest on the erupting island mount. The Alaska Volcano Observatory's popular Web site lets the public track Augustine's activity, from live earthquake data to hourly updates on the blasts of ash and rocky pyroclastic flows that have rumbled down the snowy volcano since it began erupting in mid-January. "When I wake up, I turn it on and keep track of Augustine through the night," said Evans, a 43-year-old health practitioner in the south-central Alaska community. With a network that includes seismic stations, cameras and Global Positioning System receivers, Augustine is the most heavily instrumented volcano in the state. In the last decade, scientists have concentrated equipment on the uninhabited island because it is a short flight from Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula and has less vegetation, ice and snow than other nearby volcanos in the Alaska Range. Because of the Web site, residents of remote Alaska communities like Nanwalek can make better decisions about whether to shut down schools, carry dust masks to church or take the time to cover heating vents with pantyhose to filter volcanic ash. "We can go online and see the wind direction and see when ash is going to fall," Evans said. "Before, it just happened, now there's more preparation." The Web site provides information Evans did not have during a major eruption 20 years ago, when a dark cloud filled with ash and spiked with lightning headed across Cook Inlet toward Nanwalek, a 200-person village only reachable by plane or boat. "We just went home and watched it through our window," Evans said. "Information we just got through TV and radio." Augustine dusted small communities in south-central Alaska with extremely light ashfall during two series of eruptions in January. Alaska Airlines, the state's largest carrier, grounded dozens of flights during one day of ash explosions. The string of sporadic eruptions could go on for months, scientists said. The wealth of data, combined with easy communication through the Internet, has allowed the public to glean more timely and useful information about Augustine's eruptions than those of any other volcano in the state's past. "No erupting volcano in Alaska has ever been this closely monitored before," said Game McGimsey, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. The observatory's Web site has tallied about 158 million hits this year, said Seth Snedigar, an analyst programmer for the state Department of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. Regularly updated Web camera images of the 4,134-foot volcano receive the most mouse clicks, he said. One camera sits on Augustine's eastern flank, while another records the volcano from the town of Homer, 75 miles northeast across Cook Inlet. Observatory scientists also use the site as a public journal of the research trips they take to the island during lulls between explosions, as well as aerial photos of Augustine. Data collection also is safer for scientists now that volcanos have more instruments on site. "The public can see almost everything we see," McGimsey said. "Even the seismic data is exactly what's posted in our operation room right now." People can also e-mail their own observations or ask questions through the site. Hundreds have written from all 50 states and a host of foreign countries and scientists have replied to every missive. Many Alaskans have mailed ash samples to the observatory after following the site's step-by-step guide on ash collection. Improvements in volcano monitoring have helped the Federal Aviation Administration and airlines make more accurate decisions on flying restrictions during a volcanic eruption. "The FAA and folks having to make the call to delay flights can almost do it in real time," said FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer. On the Net: Alaska Volcano Observatory: http://www.avo.alaska.edu/ Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Carpenter Subject: Craigslist Accused of Ad Discrimination Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:36:57 -0600 By DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business Writer A federal lawsuit accuses the online site Craigslist of violating fair housing laws by publishing discriminatory classified ads, reviving the question of what legal boundaries, if any, should exist for postings on the Internet. But legal experts say the lawsuit against Craigslist, a fast-growing online network of classified ads and forums, faces an uphill battle because of laws in place to protect online service providers. The lawsuit, filed by a Chicago fair housing group in U.S. District Court last Friday, contends that Craigslist's Chicago site distributed more than 100 ads that violated the federal Fair Housing Act by excluding prospective buyers or tenants on the basis of race, gender or religion. Among the housing ads cited as objectionable by the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Inc. were ones that read "NO MINORITIES," "Requirements: Clean Godly Christian Male," and "Only Muslims apply." While it remained unclear Thursday if the suit is the first of its kind, it signifies a burgeoning effort by housing watchdog groups to extend to the Internet the same legal restrictions facing those that publish print classifieds. "Our goal is to have the Internet places like Craigslist treated no differently than newspapers and other media who have traditionally been posting real estate advertisements," said Stephen Libowsky, a counsel for the housing group. "All of the gains are going to get lost if the same rules don't apply." The nonprofit group is an affiliate of the National Fair Housing Alliance. Its Louisiana affiliate, the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, recently filed a similar complaint against the hurricane relief Web site Katrinahousing.org, alleging it found 68 discriminatory housing ads. San Francisco-based Craigslist, founded in 1995 as a roundup of local events, now has listings in more than 20 countries and 150 cities and runs 8 million new classified ads a month. Its huge scope means the Chicago case will likely be watched closely by other online sites. EBay Inc. owns 25 percent of Craigslist. A ruling against it "would have a chilling effect on the Internet and what it was intended to provide, and that is an open forum and free expression," said Melissa Klipp, a Florham Park, N.J.-based attorney who practices Internet law. The lawsuit seeks, among other things, to require Craigslist to report to the government any individual seeking to post a discriminatory ad and to develop screening software to preclude discriminatory ads from being published on its Web site. Craigslist, which has 19 employees, maintains that screening its almost-nonstop classified listings would be impossible. Jim Buckmaster, its chief executive officer, said Thursday that the system is automated and that users can flag postings. If enough do, it comes off automatically. The "NO MINORITIES" ad was removed within two hours, he said. "We admit that one or two postings per 100,000 are discriminatory," Buckmaster said. "But we feel we're in the forefront of promoting fair housing for everyone." The site last month added a yellow link on each housing ad warning that "Stating a discriminatory preference in a housing post is illegal." When clicked, users get information about the Fair Housing Act and guidance on how to write ads that comply. Several Internet law experts said the suit seems likely to fail, citing a 1996 federal law that says an online service provider isn't considered a publisher or a speaker when it merely passes along information provided by someone else. Jennifer Rothman, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, called it "a complete nonstarter" despite legitimate concerns about discrimination. "Congress decided it was more important not to chill speech on the Internet and not to shut down these Internet providers," she said. "If you start holding them responsible, essentially you shut down the business." "From a moral standpoint, of course, people will expect that if you're going to run a site like that you ought to police it," said Houston-based attorney Jeff Diamant. "But all Craigslist is doing is running a forum for people to communicate." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines and stories from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Kevin Maney Subject: Everyday Gadgets Getting Smarter Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:40:40 -0600 By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY Regular old dumb stuff is getting smart and connected. You can buy a backyard telescope loaded with global position satellite (GPS) technology so it can point out which stars you're viewing. At one university, each parking meter has a chip and antenna so you can call it with your cellphone and buy more time. And then there are the touch-screen sewing machines that can download images to embroider, gas station pumps that run Microsoft Windows, and shipping crates that can call their owners for help if they're lost. A lot of technology companies focus on making computers more powerful and Internet connections faster. But a major trend is pushing in another direction -- toward getting cheap computer chips and limited networking capabilities into products that never used to have such technology. It lets companies turn commodity products into premium products that cost more and stand out in the marketplace. The trend is analogous to the electrification of products 100 years ago, when inventors found ways to use that technology to change everyday items. Hand-turned drills became power drills. Ice boxes became refrigerators. The same thing is happening now, but with computer chips and tiny radio transmitters. And there's a fascinating twist this time: When you add information and communications to a product, it doesn't just improve that product -- it allows that product to become part of a network. Which means those products can talk to other products, or to websites, or to you through your cellphone or PC -- creating layer upon layer of new possibilities. "It opens up innovation to all new things no one ever thought of," says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, in charge of IBM's technical strategy. "There's an interesting pattern now -- everything is an accessory to everything else," notes Mick McManus, CEO of Maya Design. The parking meters, for instance, are at the University of California, Santa Barbara. IBM devised the system and will try to sell it to other campuses and cities. In the near future, a "smart," networked parking meter might be able to talk to all the other parking meters in the neighborhood and feed that information to a website. That way, as you drive to an area looking for a place to park, your cellphone could tap the parking website and display a map showing open spaces. You might even be able to push a button and reserve a space. The meter could flash a "reserved" sign and refuse to accept payment from any other cellphone for five minutes. After that, you'd lose the space. The challenges Such a level of integration isn't here yet. In fact, there are significant challenges to getting there, as anyone knows who has tried to get two incompatible gadgets to work together. Still, the movement toward smart stuff keeps picking up steam. Research firms haven't yet put a value on the "smart stuff" industry because it's so scattered and new. But companies are clearly making plans to move in that direction. A survey by research firm Aberdeen Group found that more than half of executives plan to pump more money into radio frequency identification (RFID) projects in the next 12 to 24 months, even though half of those surveyed also said they don't yet know the "value proposition" of such investments. One way or another, though, fascinating developments keep popping into view. Some recent examples: Home goods. Consumer electronics companies keep pushing the idea of the "digital living room" -- a holy grail where high-end TVs, PCs, video recorders and stereos link up and share content. But while we're waiting for that to happen, a number of companies are digitizing less-glamorous appliances. Whirlpool's Duet Sport washing machine has embedded sensors that can set the water level depending on how big a load you put in. Down the road, Whirlpool and others plan to include sensors that can read bar codes or RFID tags on clothes so the machine can program appropriate wash settings. Another appliance maker, Salton, has introduced the Beyond Microwave. When you need to heat packaged food, swipe the bar code past the microwave's reader. Stored inside are 4,000 settings for different products. A wireless Internet connection allows the microwave to download new ones all the time. Salton's microwave reads the bar code, sets the right time and power level, and all you do is push start. Maya Design is bringing out a layer of technology it calls Home Heartbeat. It connects sensors on washing machines, microwaves, doors and other fixtures in a house. The system, in turn, can generate text messages that can be sent to a cellphone. So a homeowner can program the system to tell her every time the front door opens and the TV turns on -- a good sign the kids arrived home from school. On a more futuristic scale, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and New Jersey Institute of Technology are working on nanotechnology that could change the nature of paint and carpets. Both could be connected to the home network, so you could use a computer to instruct the paint or carpeting to change colors. The nano-engineered molecules would do just that. The military is already beginning experimental use of the smart paint. Fun stuff. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, telescope maker Celestron rolled out its $399 SkyScout -- a gadget loaded with global position satellite (GPS) technology and a database of star and planet positions. Aim it at a part of the night sky, and the device picks up its position via GPS, cross-checks with its database, and tells you what you're seeing. Also at CES, Brother was showing its Innovis 4000D sewing machine, which can store and download images, and then embroider them on fabric. Wearable technology is a hot concept. ElekTex makes "smart fabrics" -- clothing and backpacks with soft, built-in controllers and a Bluetooth wireless connection for an iPod or cellphone. Drop the gadget in your pocket, for instance, and use the buttons on your sleeve to control it. Swim goggles from start-up Inview add a computer chip to plain plastic goggles for competitive swimmers. The chip keeps track of time and number of laps and displays it on the inside of the goggle lenses. Industrial stuff. Computer and networking technology is even making its way into the least glitzy of places -- like the gas station. Gas pump maker Dresser Wayne in January unveiled its Ovation iX -- a prototype pump with a flat-panel screen and a network-connected, Windows-based computer inside. "In addition to dispensing fuel, the Ovation iX lets customers (order) a cup of coffee, download MP3s, or check traffic conditions without ever leaving the pump," the company's literature says. In a popular IBM commercial, the boxes inside a truck notify a help desk that the truck is off course. Though it's a dramatization, the technology is real. RFID tags and cheap GPS units today are being tacked onto crates. That lets the crates "talk" to the network and lets operators know where they are. If they get lost -- or stolen -- the crates can be located. "We have already recovered over $7 million of goods illegally diverted last year," says Mark Eppley, president of SC-integrity, a company formed to build this kind of technology. "I had no idea how large the supply chain 'shrinkage' problem was." Then there are cows. When asked about this trend of making mundane stuff smart, Matthew Szulik, CEO of open-source software company Red Hat, points to the DeLaval Voluntary Milking System. It's a milking machine -- running on Linux open-source software -- that lets the cow request to be milked by stepping into the milking area through a gate. A radio tag identifies the cow, and the system knows when the cow was last milked. That way, the system knows whether to attach the robotic milking arms -- or keep the gate closed, blocking the cow from getting in. That kind of development, Szulik says, "is just the tip of the iceberg." Why now? Why is stuff getting smart now? Some of it is straightforward: The technology has finally gotten good enough and cheap enough to put into everyday items without driving the cost sky-high. Inexpensive microprocessors add smarts. Wi-Fi, now nearly ubiquitous, allows appliances to get on the network without wires. Tiny RFID can add small bits of data and communications to any item. GPS is getting cheap and reliable. "The entire process and mindset of product makers now is to have a tech component," says tech research analyst Gary Arlen. As the technology falls into place, integrators such as IBM, Maya and SC-integrity can do their thing -- putting pieces together to create applications and services never before possible. Of course, it's not all smooth seas ahead. One huge hurdle is getting different technologies to work together. Just as Apple's iTunes doesn't work with a Dell MP3 player, various pieces built on different standards can't communicate. Some industry leaders such as Google's Vint Cerf, who helped create the Internet's TCP/IP standard, are pushing for new standards that would help solve these problems. One other possible hitch: "Everyone runs the risk of making products soooo complicated and off-putting," analyst Arlen says. Still, as the next decade unfolds, more of our stuff will get smarter. Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from USA Today please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Andrew Kantor Subject: Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Your Everything Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:42:52 -0600 Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak - Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Everything Andrew Kantor, USA TODAY It looks to be a busy year for lawmakers, technology-wise. Last week I wrote about a debate beginning in Washington about Net neutrality -- something that could affect everyone who uses the Internet. Continuing in that vein, there's another argument going on that also directly affects just about everyone. It's what you might think of as the next stage in the battle between "cable" companies and "telephone" companies. I put those terms in quotes because these days, no matter how they got their start, both are becoming phone, Internet, and increasingly television providers. Data are data. Sure, it's still a bit odd to get your phone service through your cable company, or your television through your phone line, but more and more that's exactly what's happening because it's all carried using the same technology that carries data across the Internet -- TCP/IP. (IP stands for Internet Protocol; think of it as the language of the Internet. That's why you hear about "voice over IP" and even "IPTV.") Having this common data language means that companies that used to only provide the connection can now provide other services as well -- as soon as the law catches up, that is. We're already seeing that in some places. Cable companies are offering VoIP telephone service, which is helping to drive down the price of traditional phone calls from traditional phone companies. Today, flat-rate service is the norm. And phone companies are offering television, most notably Verizon with its Fios service, which provides a fast enough connection for several DVD-quality signals to a home. It's been an uphill battle for the phone companies. If a high-speed Internet provider (e.g., a cable company) wants to offer VoIP phone service, it doesn't need to change the law. But if a phone company wants to offer TV, that's another story. Breaking in When cable television first came along, towns and cities were happy to get the extra channels. At the same time, though, they realized that the problem with cable TV was, well, cables. If 10 cable companies converged on an area, there would be wires hanging all over the place, streets dug up, traffic snarled, dogs and cats living together; you get the idea. So municipalities started to offer cable franchises, in which one cable company was granted the exclusive right to service an area. In exchange for a virtual monopoly, it agreed to wire every home and not discriminate against the poor side of town, among other things. Of course telephone companies enjoyed a monopoly status too, starting with good ol' Ma Bell, and then onto the regional Bells. Deregulation came along, but it never really took off for local phone service, which is why you still have "the phone company" wherever you live. The sharp division between the phone company and the cable company started to blur when the Internet came along. Both kinds of company began offering high-speed access, and suddenly the Sharks and the Jets were eyeing the same piece of turf. The line blurred even further when voice over IP caught on, and cable companies -- whose connections tended to be faster than the phone companies' DSL -- began to offer telephone service. They were able to crack into the phone companies' monopoly fairly easily as these things go, and suddenly there was more choice in the market thanks in large part to the deregulated phone business. Sauce for the gander But now the shoe goes on the other foot. Just as television providers' technology got to the point where it could carry phone calls, phone companies' technology is getting to the point where it can carry television. It takes about 3.5 Mbps of bandwidth to carry a single DVD-quality television signal,. (Obviously, companies want to be able to offer at least three times that; so many home have more than one television.) At less than 5 Mbps, DSL didn't fit the bill. But now companies like Verizon are deploying fiber-optic connections which have plenty of bandwidth. They want to break into the television business, but in their way are those cable franchises. To offer TV to an area, a company like Verizon needs to negotiate an agreement with the local franchising board. There are thousands of those, and they often have lots of requirements -- 'build a new wing for the library,' 'wire all government buildings for free TV,' etc. Sometimes those negotiations only take a few months. Sometimes they take years. Which brings us to today's arguments. On one side, the cable companies: If they're going to get competition from Verizon and Co., they want that competition to have to meet the same requirements they had to - namely, to build out to an entire area and not only the profitable parts of town. On the other side are the phone companies: They don't think they should have to meet those same requirements because, unlike the cable companies, they don't have monopoly status -- they have to fight tooth and nail against an entrenched competitor for every customer. "So what?" say the cable companies. It's unfair not to have a level playing field. Over here in Roanoke, VA, the phone companies played a bit of a trump card. They pointed out that, when the shoe was on the other foot, the cable companies were arguing for relaxed standards for a new entrant to a market. In fact, the cable TV people had practically written the phone companies' argument for them. Wrote the Virginia Cable Television Association, in a filing to the State Corporation Commission (which regulates these things): "[R]equirements necessary to regulate a government-protected monopoly can impose significant burdens on new entrants without any corresponding public interest benefits." So, says the phone industry, when you wanted to get into the phone business the regulations were a "significant burden." But when we want to get into TV, those regulations are a level playing field? Ha! (OK, I made up the "Ha!") What Verizon, and I suspect other phone companies want, is a standard set of requirements for anyone wishing to enter the television-provider market. So rather than negotiate everything with each franchising authority, the company would certify that it would meet those standards, pay the franchising fee, and start laying fiber. That's the premise behind the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act (S. 1504, if you want to search Thomas). It says, "A video service provider may not be required -- (1) to obtain a State or local video franchise; (2) to build out its video distribution system in any particular manner; or (3) to provide leased or common carrier access to its video distribution facilities and equipment to any other video service provider." By eliminating the cumbersome franchising process, an open-access law should make it easier for new providers to come to an area and start offering television service. Verizon's Fios is limited, for now, to larger metro areas, but that probably won't last, and smaller companies might be able to get into the game more easily. And as much as I hate to take the side of either major industry here, I gotta back the phone companies. Yes, consumers have some choice now; I use DirecTV instead of my local cable company. But more choice is almost always better for us little guys, and letting competition into the TV market isn't an exception. Andrew Kantor is a technology writer, pundit, and know-it-all who covers technology for the Roanoke Times. He's also a former editor for PC Magazine and Internet World. Read more of his work at kantor.com. His column appears Fridays on USATODAY.com. Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from USA Today, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 10th February 2006 Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:51:18 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Nokia To Supply WCDMA 3G Network To Cosmote In Greece http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16038.php Finland's Nokia said Thursday it has signed a contract with Cosmote Mobile Communications in Greece for the supply of a third generation WCDMA radio network. ... Nearly 60 Operators on Track for UMTS Enhanced With HSDPA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16046.php 3G Americas and Informa Telecoms & Media report that UMTS, the third generation evolution for the GSM family of technologies, having already added 33 million customers since the end of 2004, serves close to 50 million customers today. UMTS (WCDMA) is... Super 3G Could Arrive Within 3 Years http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16050.php Amid growing interest in alternative technologies, such as DVB-H and WiMAX, 3G is set to fight back with 3G LTE, or 'Super 3G', which could dramatically enhance the capabilities of 3G networks from 2009, according to a new report from Analysys. HSPA ... [[ Financial ]] Australia's Telstra Net Dives 10%, Grim Outlook http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16037.php Retaining its grim outlook ahead of its A$27 billion (US$20 billion) privatization later this year, Australia's largest telephone company Telstra, Thursday said first half net profit fell 10.3% due to its weakening fixed-line operations. ... Russia's VimpelCom completes purchase of Uzbekistan's Unitel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16041.php Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom has completed its acquisition of Uzbekistan's second largest mobile operator Unitel, VimpelCom said in a statement Thursday. ... Amrica Mvil predicts US$3bn in capex for 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16043.php Latin American mobile giant Amrica Mvil is planning capital expenditure of US$3bn in 2006 compared to some US$3.5bn in 2005, the company's CEO Daniel Hajj told a conference call to discuss fourth quarter 2005 results. ... [[ Handsets ]] Hospital SuperBug Found on Mobile Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16048.php A study conducted at the Craigavon Area Hospital Group Trust in Northern Ireland has found that the majority of mobile phones used by doctors and other health workers are carrying infectious pathogens, including on some phones the deadly hospital "su... [[ Legal ]] RIM Develops BlackBerry Software Workaround http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16039.php Research In Motion has developed and tested software workaround designs that will allow BlackBerry service in the U.S. to continue should it be forced to shut down its current service as a result of its ongoing patent dispute with NTP. ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Alcatel Wins Congo GPRS Upgrade http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16049.php Alcatel has been selected by Vodacom Congo for the deployment of a complete end-to-end GPRS (EDGE-ready) mobile data solution in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new mobile "always on" data services will be made available by Vodacom Congo from t... Improving Voice Quality On Orascom Networks http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16052.php Orascom Telecom has ordered a Voice Quality Assurance platform from Ditech Communications for use on its subsidary networks in Pakistan and Algeria. Mobilink, a GSM operator in Pakistan, and Djezzy, a GSM operator in Algeria, are the initial OT netw... High Speed Data for Somalia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16053.php Somafone, a nationwide wireless services provider in Somalia, says that it has completed a major network expansion, bringing high-speed mobile data services to the region. The Somafone network expansion features EDGE and GPRS wireless data capabiliti... [[ Network Operators ]] Telemig launches customer retention drive http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16045.php Brazilian mobile operator Telemig Celular (NYSE: TMB) has launched a customer retention drive based on reformulation of its online store, the company said in a statement. ... [[ Offbeat ]] India's Highest Base Station http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16051.php India's GSM network operator, Airtel (Bharti Televentures) has installed the country's highest elevation base station, at a height of 3,350 meters above sea level -- at Qutak Gompa in the Leh district of Northern India. The company currently has four ... [[ Personnel ]] Sprint CEO Gets Restricted Stock Valued At $5.7 Million http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16042.php Sprint Nextel Corp. granted restricted stock units valued at about US$5.7 million and 637,755 stock options to President and Chief Executive Gary D. Forsee. ... [[ Reports ]] Egyptians Would Switch Operators For Lower Tariffs http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16047.php A new Arab Advisors Group major survey of GSM users across Egypt has revealed that while a majority of GSM users (75.5%) are satisfied with their existing mobile operators, a substantial percent (close to 36.1%) will consider switching to a another o... [[ Statistics ]] Rogers Communications 4Q Loss Widens On Items; Operating Net Up http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16040.php Canada's Rogers Communications experienced growth in operating profit during the fourth quarter but posted an increased loss due to one-time integration expenses, the amortization of intangibles assumed on acquisition and the fact that the prior year... Non-voice traffic reached 25 million minutes in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16044.php Chilean mobile phone users dedicated 25 million minutes of traffic to non-voice services in 2005, local daily La Tercera reported. ... [[ Technology ]] Predictive Text Blends With Handwriting Recognition http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16054.php Zi Corp. has announced the release of the latest version of its Decuma handwriting recognition software. Decuma Version 4 is a new predictive pen-input solution now available for OEMs to embed into smartphones and PDA's. It adds predictive text capab... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:17:01 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 10, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 10, 2006 ******************************** TeliaSonera Net Sales Rise to US$11.3 bil. in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16612?11228 The Nordic telecoms giant has announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year ending in December 2005. According to a company press release, strong growth in mobile and broadband operations helped boost sales to 87.661 billion Swedish kronor (US$11.3 billion) in 2005, from 81.937 billion kronor in... Vonage Aims to Raise US$250 mil. in IPO http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16611?11228 The U.S.-based leading pure-play VoIP provider, Vonage, is planning to raise US$250 million in an initial public offering (IPO) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Vonage has also appointed Mike Snyder as its new chief executive officer (CEO), who will replace the company's founder, Jeffrey Citron. Significance: The... Nokia Introduces Location Based Services to Mid-Range Portfolio http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16609?11228 ESPOO, Finland -- Nokia today underlined its effort in making location based services available to a broad consumer base with the announcement of the Nokia GPS Module LD-3W, which is compatible with a wide selection of Nokia's Bluetooth enabled handsets. By cooperating with several partners, Nokia provides comfortable and... Cable 'A La Carte' Would Save Money http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16607?11228 WASHINGTON -- Most cable TV subscribers would save money if allowed to pay for only the channels they want, a Federal Communications Commission study said Thursday, reversing the agency's earlier finding that consumers wouldn't benefit. The analysis by FCC staff provides new support for consumer groups and conservatives pushing for a... Broadband Saves The Bacon At BT, Telstra http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16605?11228 Driven by booming broadband sales, BT today reported financial results far better than analysts had expected. The U.K. giant says "new wave" revenue -- from networked IT services, broadband and mobility -- for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2005, was more than $2.8 billion, 42-percent higher than the same quarter in 2004. This... Stoke Stokes 'Net Neutrality' Flames http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/16601?11228 If broadband network operators begin charging quality of service (QOS) fees in exchange for tranporting the bandwidth-hungry services of other companies, one of Silicon Valley's new communications startups, Stoke Inc. , believes it has the just the toolset to help them do it. (See Stoke Uncloaks.) "It seems intuitive to me that the... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:05:36 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Indian Carriers Cut Rates Amid Stiff Competition USTelecom dailyLead February 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWAAfDtutaulzRxsKN TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Indian carriers cut rates amid stiff competition BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon's Seidenberg says FiOS plans are on target * Qwest under pressure as it plots strategy * Wall Street cool on Vonage IPO * Report: Businesses to spend less on data services * Telmex holds tight grip on Mexico's telecom market * Murdoch seeks satellite alliance to build Web, phone services USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Cutting-edge technology papers, exhibits at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Disney to carry full episodes of some shows online. VOIP DOWNLOAD * Skype announces Web presence technology * With VoIP, it's all about the features REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC: A la carte pricing could pare cable bills * U.S. funds Web data-mining venture Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cWAAfDtutaulzRxsKN ------------------------------ From: joel@exc.com Subject: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? Date: 10 Feb 2006 05:45:32 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all, I'm looking for a virtual number that offers flexible call forwarding, including call forward to overseas numbers. The only options I've found are virtual PBX's, that answer the phone, put the caller on hold, and play music or a greeting. Can any recommend a good service that just forwards the call, possibly to more than one number? Many thanks. -Joel [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage does what you are requesting. It can forward calls to various numbers at one time (I think that service is called 'blast' or something similar. It goes down the list of numbers you have given it, rings them all, then transfers the call into the line you actually answered. I think virtual numbers are around four dollars each, and if you take a virtual 800 number, you get a certain number of minutes included. I still have e-coupons for a free month of Vonage service; the terms are you have to get the Vonage telephone adapter shipped through the e-coupon; you cannot get the TA through some other source (which often times allows its own rebate) and _then_ get a free month from my e-coupon as well. If you want to experiment with Vonage via a free month of service just write and ask for an e-coupon: ptownson@telecom-digest.org PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 04:30:23 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices >> I don't know about telegraph rates, but long distance telephone rates >> were based on distance. A call 1,000 miles away cost considerably more >> than a call 100 miles away. If telegraph rates were flat by distance, >> then telegrams would be more likely sent for longer distances than >> short distances. > Telegraph rates, like telephone rates, were set by distance. I once > had occasion to send a local telegram, and I believe they were common > in some cities. North by Northwest was on TCM a few hours ago. The plot hinged on Cary Grant wanting to send his mother a telegram across mid town Manhattan as she was at a friends where they had just moved in and the phone wasn't yet installed. My how times have changed. Also for years you couldn't place many types of toll calls to or from xxx-9xxx numbers as almost all pay phones were numbered that way. I worked at a business with such a number in the early 80s and calling the office collect was a big hassle at times. David Ross [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your complaint about exchanges which used '9' as the first digit in the suffix is very true. Many years ago when I was living in Chicago, I knew a guy whose mother had a phone on the LOngbeach-1 (312-561) exchange. Her number was LOngbeach-1-9xxx and she had a terrible time placing long distace calls or receiving collect calls. Operators would never believe she was giving her number correctly or that she had a private (not a coin) phone. Every other telephone in Chicago had been converted to (1) 911 calling; (2) long distance direct dialing (3) in most instances totally ESS while LOngbeach-1 kept plugging along as a step-by-step office for several more months. It was in the Chicago-Edgewater central office up on Carmen Street around Ashland Avenue somewhere. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:16:08 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: >> A fiber got cut by a clumsy contractor with a backhoe early Thursday >> in Parsons, KS which knocked all of rural s.e. Kansas as served by >> cableone.net off line. This cut included TELECOM Digest. Right now I >> am working off of our back up modem dial up line using TerraWorld. >> Cableone is aware of the problem and they estimate it will be six to >> eight hours in repair. The contractor just shrugged his shoulders and >> acted like he did not know what he had done. "He'll shrug his >> shoulders alright when he gets the repair bill, noted a technician >> from Cableone.net in Phoenix, AZ where the cableone technical center >> is located. I know that shrug. I have my own small company and a few years ago I watched as the 3 incoming POTS lines went one by one from good to scratchy to dead, followed by our ISDN line going down. I went outside and walked across the street where a contractor was using a Ditch Witch directional drill to install a new conduit for the phone company. I asked him if he might have just cut any cables. After a brief "oh shit" look, he responded "no". He had cut one of those thousand or so pair plastic and copper phone company cables about the size of your arm. The phone company was on-site within an hour and worked all night, stringing a cable along the ground and splicing it around the break at the two manholes nearest the cut. Everything was back up the next morning. It was at least 2 months before they pulled the cut cable section out and got everything back underground. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All the internet around here went out sometime in mid-morning Thursday. Cableone said they first hoped to have us back in service within 'a few hours', but by later in the day they were saying they 'hoped to have repairs finished by nightfall'. After stringing up lots of very bright lights across this very muddy farmer's field were the cut had occurred then they said 'we hope it will all be repaired sometime tonight' . At 9:55 PM, or about 12 hours after the fiber cut occurred near Parsons, KS _my_ service at least came back to life when the first four green LEDs on my cable modem illuminated. The lady in the office here in town over on Penn Street called me at about 10:30 PM to say 'we are notifying customers who called us throughout the day to say that service has been restored. If you do not mind, give it a try for me.' I told her I had tried it already; was working on the Digest and it all appeared to be working fine. A sort of odd event: Using my geo-locating tools and my javascripts, when I go to those places which identify my whereabouts, I am always correctly located in Independence, KS (although not on my exact spot on the map but within a couple blocks); but when I was using my TerraWorld modem backup line yesterday, the same pages and tools said I was in 'Ballwin, Missouri' (which is not that far away, about a hundred miles east and a bit south -- but still). I wish I knew how those geo-locating tools worked. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #62 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Feb 11 00:13:33 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 95DED1519B; Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:13:33 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #63 Message-Id: <20060211051333.95DED1519B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:13:33 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 11 Feb 2006 00:16:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 63 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update Canada Issue #516 (John Riddle) Using VPN to Provide Some Basic Security (info@go2site.biz) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Michael Chance) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (T) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Riddle Subject: Telecom Update Canada Issue #516 Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 22:23:27 -0600 a.. Rogers Projects Cable Phone Growth b.. Nortel to Pay $2.5 Billion to Resolve Suits c.. RIM Says Workaround Is Ready d.. Shaw and Rogers Deny Buyout Report e.. ISPs Oppose Persona Third-Party Tariff f.. BC Startup Connects Skype to Cellphones g.. CRTC Reaffirms CDNS Ruling h.. Rogers Says Bell Ads 'Malicious' i.. Will That Be Cash or Cellphone? j.. Wireless Number Portability Issues Addressed k.. Vonage Plans IPO, Replaces CEO l.. Minacs Owner Wants New Board m.. BabyTel Offers Small-Business VoIP n.. Cisco Sales Rise 9.3% o.. Dortmans Telecom Columns Offered by Email ROGERS PROJECTS CABLE PHONE GROWTH: Rogers Communications says it expects to add a net 200,000 to 250,000 local phone subscribers in 2006, most of them cable phone users. Rogers is also moving many of its circuit-switched service customers (inherited from Call-Net) to cable telephony. a.. Net wireline telephony subscriber additions for 2005: 144,000, of which cable phones account for 47,900. Net wireless additions: 619,000. Average wireless revenue per subscriber rose 7.1% to $53.61/month; subscriber disconnects were 2.04%/month. b.. Rogers Communications' fourth quarter revenue of $2.12 billion was 35% higher than a year ago, in part reflecting its purchase of Call-Net Enterprises (see Telecom Update #488). Operating profit increased 14% to $513 million; the net loss was $66.7 million, compared to $29.1 million a year ago. NORTEL TO PAY $2.5 BILLION TO RESOLVE SUITS: Nortel Networks has agreed to distribute US$575 in cash and 628 million shares to settle investor claims related to accounting irregularities. Two Canadian pension funds were lead plaintiffs in the suits against Nortel, which expects to take a charge of $2.47 billion. RIM SAYS WORKAROUND IS READY: Research In Motion says it has developed and tested workaround software that could be activated if a U.S. court orders its current service suspended as proposed by NTP Inc. RIM says the new software does not infringe on NTP's patent claims; NTP predicts the workaround will slow BlackBerry service. SHAW AND ROGERS DENY BUYOUT REPORT: On Tuesday, the National Post reported that Shaw Communications had rejected a $9.3 billion takeover bid from Rogers Communications. Both Rogers and Shaw immediately denied that any such offer had been made. Ted Rogers called the story "untrue and, in my view, irresponsible reporting." ISPs OPPOSE PERSONA THIRD-PARTY TARIFF: Persona Communications, which has 2.9 million cable TV customers in seven provinces, has asked the CRTC to approve a tariff for Third Party Internet Access based on one already approved for Rogers. a.. Two Sudbury-based Internet Services Providers, Vianet and Unitz, say the tariff will drastically change the third-party service they have received from Persona since 1999, and that approval of the tariff "will result in thousands of residential customers and hundreds of business customers losing their Internet connectivity." b.. Among other things, the ISPs object to the elimination of fixed IP addresses, and to Persona's decision to stop billing customers on the ISPs' behalf. BC STARTUP CONNECTS SKYPE TO CELLPHONES: EQO Communications, based in Richmond, BC, has introduced a service that lets Skype users talk to each other on cellphones. Mobile Internet Phone Service for Skype is free during beta testing; customers must have a compatible phone with a data plan, a SkypeOut account, and a Windows PC with broadband Internet access. CRTC REAFFIRMS CDNS RULING: The CRTC says it was not discriminatory to compensate incumbent telcos for lost revenues when it ordered them to provide reduced rates for Competitor Digital Network Services (see Telecom Update #467). Quebecor, on behalf of its subsidiary Vidéotron, had argued that competing carriers should also be compensated for revenue losses, but the Commission says the telcos' price cap rules justify different treatment. ROGERS SAYS BELL ADS "MALICIOUS": Rogers Communications is suing BCE over TV ads that Rogers says are "high-handed, oppressive, and malicious." Rogers wants Bell Canada to stop using Rogers' trademarks in its wireless service advertising and pay damages. Bell has denied any wrongdoing. WILL THAT BE CASH OR CELLPHONE? Motorola this week unveiled M-Wallet, a system that will allow cellphones to replace credit and debit cards. Motorola, which wants wireless carriers to offer the service to their customers, hopes it will be rolled out commercially in the U.S. this year. WIRELESS NUMBER PORTABILITY ISSUES ADDRESSED: CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2006-3 invites submissions on a number of technical and business issues that must be resolved in order to implement wireless number portability next year. (See Telecom Update #511) VONAGE PLANS IPO, REPLACES CEO: Vonage, which lost US$190 million in the first nine months of 2005, is planning to go public. Initial Public Offering documents filed this week with the SEC say the company hopes to raise US$250 million. No date has been announced, nor has the offering price. a.. Vonage also announced the appointment of Mike Snyder, former president of ADT Security Services, as Chief Executive Officer. Founder Jeffrey Citron will now be Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer. MINACS OWNER WANTS NEW BOARD: Elaine Minacs, founder and 46.5% owner of Minacs Worldwide, has called for a special shareholders meeting to replace the company's board and explore alternatives including sale of the call centre service bureau. She disagrees with the policies of recently appointed CEO Bruce Simmonds, who announced a restructuring plan last week. (See Telecom Update #506) a.. The Minacs Worldwide Board says it will establish a special committee to deal with issues related to the call for a shareholders meeting. BABYTEL OFFERS SMALL-BUSINESS VoIP: BabyTel, a Montreal-based Internet phone company, has introduced a business service that includes unlimited North American calling and other features for $49.95/month. (See Telecom Update #478) CISCO SALES RISE 9.3%: Cisco Systems reports sales of US$6.63 billion for the three months ended January 28, 9.3% higher than the same period a year ago. Accounting changes caused net income to drop slightly to $1.4 billion. Cisco ended the quarter with $15 billion in cash or cash equivalents. DORTMANS TELECOM COLUMNS OFFERED BY EMAIL: Telecom consultant Henry Dortmans has been writing his popular monthly column on business telecommunications for more than ten years. Last month he began distributing "On the Line" columns by email. Some reader responses to the first email edition: a.. "Gave me a very practical approach to developing a road map/plan for our department." b.. "Right on the money. Even if I have that understanding in my consciousness, you worded it exquisitely." c.. "Did you just read my mind? This eColumn will come in extremely handy at our next Customer Service Committee Meeting." d.. Subscriptions to "On the Line" are free. Add your name to the distribution list. Copyright Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All Rights Reserved. Conditions of Use. The information and data on this website has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding its 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: info@go2site.biz Subject: Using VPN to Provide Some Basic Security Date: 10 Feb 2006 18:46:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here's an article on how you can use VPN (virtual private networking) to provide some basic security and privacy protection for your VoIP calls: http://www.voip-news-net.com/2006/02/securing_your_d.html ------------------------------ From: Michael Chance Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:33:42 GMT TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > A sort of odd event: Using my geo-locating tools and my javascripts, > when I go to those places which identify my whereabouts, I am always > correctly located in Independence, KS (although not on my exact spot > on the map but within a couple blocks); but when I was using my > TerraWorld modem backup line yesterday, the same pages and tools said > I was in 'Ballwin, Missouri' (which is not that far away, about a > hundred miles east and a bit south -- but still). I wish I knew how > those geo-locating tools worked. PAT] Last time I checked, Ballwin, MO, is just outside of St. Louis -- a tad further east from Independence, KS, than "about a hundred miles". [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite correct; I was thinking of a small town in southwest Missouri close to the Arkansas border. The geotools stuff did claim yesterday that I was in Ballwin (since I was using dial up via TerraWorld; I dunno why. Any ideas on that? PAT] ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:57:48 -0500 In article , news22 @raleighthings.com says: >>> I don't know about telegraph rates, but long distance telephone rates >>> were based on distance. A call 1,000 miles away cost considerably more >>> than a call 100 miles away. If telegraph rates were flat by distance, >>> then telegrams would be more likely sent for longer distances than >>> short distances. >> Telegraph rates, like telephone rates, were set by distance. I once >> had occasion to send a local telegram, and I believe they were common >> in some cities. > North by Northwest was on TCM a few hours ago. The plot hinged on Cary > Grant wanting to send his mother a telegram across mid town Manhattan > as she was at a friends where they had just moved in and the phone > wasn't yet installed. > My how times have changed. > Also for years you couldn't place many types of toll calls to or from > xxx-9xxx numbers as almost all pay phones were numbered that way. I > worked at a business with such a number in the early 80s and calling > the office collect was a big hassle at times. > David Ross > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your complaint about exchanges which > used '9' as the first digit in the suffix is very true. Many years ago > when I was living in Chicago, I knew a guy whose mother had a phone > on the LOngbeach-1 (312-561) exchange. Her number was LOngbeach-1-9xxx > and she had a terrible time placing long distace calls or receiving > collect calls. Operators would never believe she was giving her number > correctly or that she had a private (not a coin) phone. Every other > telephone in Chicago had been converted to (1) 911 calling; (2) long > distance direct dialing (3) in most instances totally ESS while > LOngbeach-1 kept plugging along as a step-by-step office for several > more months. It was in the Chicago-Edgewater central office up on > Carmen Street around Ashland Avenue somewhere. PAT] The 9xxx rule wasn't implemented everywhere. For example, the phone number at my parents first home was 401-751-9392 but that was served by a #1 ESS. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just a quick mention of the 'spammer effect' on your messages here. Periodically, massis gets a 'denial of service' sort of effect from spammers who do a number on me, which is to say I have the spammer box totally zeroed out, completely empty, and am tidying up existing messages to get an issue of the Digest out. All of a sudden, the system seems to freeze up for a few seconds and wham! A quick review of the spam box will show one or two dozen _new_ spams, all dated at the same time have just arrived, as fast as the filter can process them out to the garbage bin. Since computers can only go so fast, the effect is the other processes sit and wait while the spam gets dealt with. Now and again, in the confusion, one or two or more _real_ messages disappear from my queue, which I think happened this evening to Lisa Hancock, and someone else, if she would care to resubmit them. Sorry about that, I had one of those 'explosions' tonight. But anymore, I don't really worry about it, because it just gets me too angry having to argue with the spam apologists around here each time I mention it and suggest suitable punishments for the spammers. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #63 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Feb 11 20:32:09 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EAD5515193; Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:32:08 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #64 Message-Id: <20060212013208.EAD5515193@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:32:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.0 required=2.0 tests=ACCEPT_CREDIT_CARDS, ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00,DRUGS_ANXIETY autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:35:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 64 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson US Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks (Ted Bridis) A Real Hospital Cyber Attack (Associated Press News Wire) FTC to Hold High Tech Issue Hearings (Associated Press News Wire) Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation (Solomon) Internet Service Providers Warily Eye Hub WiFi Plan (Monty Solomon) Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? (John Levine) Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? (joel@exc.com) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (panoptes@iquest.net) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Neal McLain) Re: Phone Problems and Question (Bill) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (W. Leatherock) Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices (T) Last Laugh! Funny Real Estate Stories (javabeane@prodigy.net) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ted Bridis Subject: US Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:31:03 -0600 By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers. Bloggers? Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events. The Internet survived, even against fictional abuses against the world's computers on a scale typical for Fox's popular "24" television series. Experts depicted hackers who shut down electricity in 10 states, failures in vital systems for online banking and retail sales, infected discs mistakenly distributed by commercial software companies and critical flaws discovered in core Internet technology. Some mock attacks were aimed at causing a "significant cyber disruption" that could seriously damage energy, transportation and health care industries and undermine public confidence, said George Foresman, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department. There was no impact on the real Internet during the weeklong exercise. Government officials from the United States, Canada, Australia and England and executives from Microsoft, Cisco, Verisign and others said they were careful to simulate attacks only using isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington. The Homeland Security Department promised a full report on results from the exercise by summer. Foresman likened his agency's role during any Internet attack to an orchestra conductor, coordinating responses from law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military and private firms. The government's goal is a "symphony of preparedness," Foresman said. Homeland Security coordinated the exercise. More than 115 government agencies, companies and organizations participated. They included the White House National Security Council, Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Agency and CIA, which conducted its own cybersecurity exercise called "Silent Horizon" last May. An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for Homeland Security and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit -- terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers. It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies. On the Net: Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: A Real Hospital Cyber Attack Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:32:55 -0600 Man Charged in Wash. Hospital Cyber Crash A 20-year-old man faces charges of launching a computer attack that crippled a hospital's computers, shutting down its intensive care unit and disabling doctors' pagers, prosecutors said Friday. Christopher Maxwell of Vacaville, Calif., was summoned to appear in federal court in Seattle on Feb. 25, but is not in custody. Two juvenile co-conspirators are being prosecuted out of state, federal prosecutor Mark Bartlett told reporters. At least 13,000 computers were infected in the January 2005 attack on Northwest Hospital, a 187-bed nonprofit facility in Seattle, prosecutors said. They said lives were endangered, and computer repairs cost about $150,000. Prosecutors said the three conspirators used a "botnet" attack -- a program that lets hackers infect and control a computer network -- to install unwanted Internet advertising software, a job that earned them about $100,000. The conspiracy charges against Maxwell would carry up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine upon conviction. His two alleged co-conspirators were not identified. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: FTC to Hold High Tech Issue Hearings Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 15:39:39 -0600 The Federal Trade Commission will host hearings this fall on emerging technologies being exploited by Internet spies and identity thieves. The FTC last held similar hearings in 1995, when the technology to create now familiar problems such as spyware and spam was still in its infancy. "It is time to look ahead and examine the next generation of issues to emerge in our high-tech global marketplace," FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras said at an anti-spyware conference Thursday. "Ten years is an eternity for technology." Claudia Bourne Farrell, an FTC spokeswoman, said the new hearings would probably include issues such as spyware, spam, radio frequency identification - which tracks goods through a computer chip embedded in a tag - and identity theft. Todd Davis, chief executive officer of LifeLock Inc., a Chandler, Ariz.-based identity theft prevention company, plans to attend the hearings. He said the government had some catching up to do. "The thieves have advanced with the technology and we have not," Davis said. Majoras said the hearings would take place sometime this fall, and would include business, technology, academic and law enforcement experts. On the Net: FTC: http://www.ftc.gov Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:10:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_02.php#004400 Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password. "Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "If you use the Search Across Computers feature and don't configure Google Desktop very carefully -- and most people won't -- Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business, and in many cases you wouldn't even be notified in time to challenge it. Other litigants -- your spouse, your business partners or rivals, whoever -- could also try to cut out the middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files." The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers -- much less privacy than the legal protections for the same information when it's on your computer at home. And even that lower level of legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve targeted advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility, and Google's current privacy policy appears to allow it. "This Google product highlights a key privacy problem in the digital age," said Cindy Cohn, EFF's Legal Director. "Many Internet innovations involve storing personal files on a service provider's computer, but under outdated laws, consumers who want to use these new technologies have to surrender their privacy rights. If Google wants consumers to trust it to store copies of personal computer files, emails, search histories and chat logs, and still 'not be evil,' it should stand with EFF and demand that Congress update the privacy laws to better reflect life in the wired world." For more on Google's data collection: http://news.com.com/FAQ+When+Google+is+not+your+friend/2100-1025_3-6034666.html http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/01/21/google_subpoena_roils_the_web/ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/01/20/EDGEPGPHA61.DTL http://news.com.com/Bill+would+force+Web+sites+to+delete+personal+info/2100-1028_3-6036951.html Contact: Kevin Bankston Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation bankston@eff.org ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:25:25 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Internet Service Providers Warily Eye Hub WiFi Plan By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff Advocates of a citywide wireless data network in Boston and the companies that currently sell Internet access in the city are eyeing each other warily as a new Boston WiFi Task Force opens its campaign to turn the entire city into a wireless hot spot. Representatives of Comcast Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and RCN Corp., which provide high-speed Internet connections to thousands of Boston households via cable modems or digital subscriber lines, said they are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the task force unveiled by Mayor Thomas M. Menino on Wednesday. But the effort clearly is raising anxiety at the Internet service providers, which have watched with alarm as other cities and towns across the nation have launched universal wireless Internet initiatives. "We would certainly see any new entrant into the broadband market as competition," affirmed Cliff Lee, a spokesman for Verizon. Verizon supported a Pennsylvania bill prohibiting municipalities from building WiFi networks, but it ultimately struck an accord exempting Philadelphia. Nationwide, cities and towns from San Francisco to Cambridge to Tempe, Ariz., are either working on or have launched WiFi networks. WiFi, short for wireless fidelity, allows laptop computers and other devices to connect to the Net at high speeds via radio waves. Task force members, meanwhile, have begun fielding inquiries from Internet service providers and other vendors that want to learn more and potentially participate in the initiative. The panel is developing a process to solicit ideas and feedback from vendors. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/11/internet_service_providers_warily_eye_hub_wifi_plan/ ------------------------------ Date: 11 Feb 2006 16:03:33 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? > I'm looking for a virtual number that offers flexible call forwarding, > including call forward to overseas numbers. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Vonage does what you are requesting. I think all the VoIP carriers do. Lingo certainly does. See my rundown at http://net.gurus.com/phone R's, John ------------------------------ From: joel@exc.com Subject: Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? Date: 11 Feb 2006 13:25:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Alas, Vonage (at least according to their website) only allows forwarding to US numbers. -Joel ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line Date: 10 Feb 2006 23:56:54 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > A sort of odd event: Using my geo-locating tools and my javascripts, > when I go to those places which identify my whereabouts, I am always > correctly located in Independence, KS (although not on my exact spot > on the map but within a couple blocks); but when I was using my > TerraWorld modem backup line yesterday, the same pages and tools said > I was in 'Ballwin, Missouri' (which is not that far away, about a > hundred miles east and a bit south -- but still). I wish I knew how > those geo-locating tools worked. PAT] Well, perhaps TerraWorld doesn't share its customer data with the geo-locating sites in realtime. The matching of an IP address to a location works a lot like the matching of a telephone prefix (e.g., 620-402) to a city/town (e.g., Winfield, KS). If someone with an FX line entered their prefix at a site like Fonefinder, would you expect them to see their actual location or the one associated with their exchange? Back to TerraWorld: I see no reason they would have an IP address permanently allocated to Patrick Townson's modem backup line. ARIN isn't in the habit of handing out IP blocks large enough for such behavior. Instead, when you dialed their modem, they handed you an address from the pool. And apparently, Ballwin is the listed address for that bank of modems. To be honest, the "within a couple blocks" for your normal connection is unusually close. Is there some equipment housed at that location? Or might the locator be using some sort of geographic center for that position? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My longitude is -95.699697 and my latitude is 37.218839 going by the ICBM program and my nine-digit zip code 67301-4349. Giving those coordinates to Google Maps puts the little dot across the street from my house, as well as on Frappr.com but Blogflux mapstats does claim it is 'Independence, KS' based on the above coordinates as well as my usual IP address, 24.119.70.45, however the little dot on the map is placed on the corner of Wald Street and Edison Street, two or three blocks east and south. I am on Poplar Street between Second Street and First Street so I walk a half block east to First Street a block further east to Wald Street, then south one block to Hill Street then south another block to Edison Street. Maybe the final digit in the latitude or longitude is rounded off one way or the other. Regards 620-402 and 620-331, the latter is the telephone exchange for _everything_ in Independence except municipal government which is 332 and cell phones which are either 330, 331, or 332. An exception is the very odd exchange 620-714 which is listed as Independence but there is no one on it except for the TerraWorld dialups. But the guy who owns TerraWorld also owns Prairie Stream, our local CLEC. He said to me that '714 was assigned to him when he started Prairie Stream' and that 'in theory' if he took on new customers who did _not already_ have phone service from SW Bell he would put his 'new' customers in 620-714. But, he 'uses SBC to do his credit checking for him'; in other words, you have to have working service from Bell before he will give you his phone service, therefore his customers already have phones with 331 or 325 (Neodesha) or 289 (Tyro/Caney KS rural) or 251 (Coffeyville) so if SBC has not cut you off, he assumes you are a good credit risk and takes you on with Prairie Stream if you wish to switch, and he just ports your existing 331 (325,289,251) number as he did with me when I started using Duane's company. In any event, TerraWorld's dialup in Independence is 714-0005. I think Coffeyville is -0008 and Neodesha is -0002. 620-714 is 'local' to all of us. Regards 620-402, that prefix is in Winfield, KS, a tiny little place about 50 miles west of here. It is also the Vonage POP for this part of S.E. Kansas. I have Vonage service here in my home (620-402-0134) as well as my Prairie Stream [nee, SBC] service on 620-331. But I do not have five cents worth of SBC service, a company which is starting to fall out of favor with many folks in Independence since Duane, with his good reputation for ISP service started Prairie Stream Communications as well, and now he is licensed to do business anywhere in Kansas which is otherwise SBC or Sprint/United territory. The Kansas Commission _loves_ him; they _hate_ SBC/Sprint/United. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 16:01:59 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Michael Chance wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite correct; I was thinking > of a small town in southwest Missouri close to the Arkansas border. > The geotools stuff did claim yesterday that I was in Ballwin (since I > was using dial up via TerraWorld; I dunno why. Any ideas on that? PAT] I bet the TerraWorld dialup server is located in Baldwin, MO. I'd love to know how exactly ISPs use centrally located modem servers but can provide "local" numbers just about anywhere. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is BALLWIN, _not_ BALDWIN, and Duane said to me that 'they' (meaning TerraWorld) do have 'an association' with 'another company in the St. Louis area'. But Duane and all his employees are located in offices in the Arco Building here in town, and prior to his purchase/startup of Pairie Stream in 2002 the TerraWorld dialups were on 620-332 something; a historical artifact from when Arco Oil was in business with the corporate offices of Harry Sinclair in the Arco Building, and all of Arco's phones were on 332. Arco has been gone for more than a decade now (when the company went out of business they gave their headquarters, the Arco Corporate Center, to City of Independence free and clear as a gift which renamed it the 'Independence Corporate Offices', kept the phone PBX system Arco had in place, named Duane and Terraworld as the 'Building LEC' for phone service on 620-332, etc. I think what they use between cities are 'concentrators' or several circuits all sent through one line, a bit of trickery where one or two lines serve as 'controllers' or traffic signals, telling the other end who is calling and what to do with the call being sent through the pipeline. 25 customers on one side are connected to the 25 on the other side by only 2 or 3 lines in the middle, thus 'concentrated'. Although the Atlantic Richfield Company and Harry Sinclair have been gone for many years, locals still refer to the place as 'the Arco Building'. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:35:45 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knock Rural S.E. Kansas Off Line PAT wrote: > A fiber got cut by a clumsy contractor with a backhoe early Thursday > in Parsons, KS which knocked all of rural s.e. Kansas as served by > cableone.net off line. This cut included TELECOM Digest. Right now I > am working off of our back up modem dial up line using TerraWorld. > Cableone is aware of the problem and they estimate it will be six to > eight hours in repair. The contractor just shrugged his shoulders and > acted like he did not know what he had done. "He'll shrug his > shoulders alright when he gets the repair bill, noted a technician > from Cableone.net in Phoenix, AZ where the cableone technical center > is located. Whereupon John McHarry responded: > There is a method to how these things are covered up. Whoever is > causing the digging has the actual work done by a contractor. Unless > the contractor can be proved to be directly supervised, this gets the > instigator off the hook. Then they call in "Miss Utility", another > party. If they didn't clearly mark the line, they may be the party at > fault, but repairs will destroy the markings. Whom do you mean by "they" in that last sentence? Are you implying that Miss Utility is responsible for marking the line? Miss Utility is not responsible for marking the line. Miss Utility is a "one-call" notification center: it answers calls from excavators (contractors, homeowners, landscapers, etc.) and relays that information (by e-mail, fax, or telephone call) to all owners of underground facilities in the affected area. The owners of the facilities are then responsible for actually marking the line, either by sending out their own personnel, or by contracting with a commercial locating service. http://www.missutilityofvirginia.com/contactMissUtility.htm One-call centers keep track of which underground facilities are located where. To appreciate what a monumental task this is, consider the number of possible facilities: electric power, ILEC telephone, CLEC telephone, one or more cable TV companies, one or more retail gas companies, gas transmission, petroleum transmission, culinary water, secondary water, steam, sanitary sewer, storm sewer, privately-owned communications facilities. Then consider the numerous ways in which a caller may try to describe a geographic location: by jurisdiction (city/town/village/borough), by GPS coordinates, by USPLS reference (town/range/section/quarter section), by road/street boundaries, by street address, by platted lot number. Or by vague descriptions like "it's near that Mobil station on highway 43." By making a single call to one-call, an excavator can legally notify every facility owner in the affected area without having to figure out what's there and who owns it. Similar one-call centers exist in every state, although they go by a variety of names (Blue Stakes in Utah; Diggers Hotline in Wisconsin; Miss Dig in Michigan; JULIE in Illinois). McHarry continued: > I was burned out of a townhouse in Northern Virginia a number of years > ago by a cable company crew drilling into the underground power lines. > Everybody pointed fingers at everybody else. My insurance sued, but it > took years to come up for trial, at which point the cable company > settled, and I never got my deductible back. > Verizon lost maybe 50 yards of buried cable, and the power company at > least as much. They both seemed to take the attitude that they caused > about as much damage as they suffered, so it was a wash. As long as it > is only the consumers who really suffer, I doubt any of them much > care. If Verizon and/or the power company could legally prove that the cable TV company's contractor was at fault -- AND that their own facilities were in 100% compliance with all applicable laws -- I'd guess that the cable company's contractor's insurance company had to pay up. By the same token, if CableOne can legally prove that the clumsy contractor was at fault -- AND that CableOne's own facilities were in 100% compliance with all applicable laws -- clumsy contractor will indeed get a huge repair bill. The phrase "100% compliance with all applicable laws" means: - The facility owner must have clear legal right (by franchise, recorded permit, recorded easement, or ownership) to occupy the underlying land. - The facility must have been installed in compliance with the National Electrical Code, the National Electrical Safety Code, state law, and local ordinances. - The facility owner must have accurately located and marked (and remarked, if requested) the facility within the specified time limit after receiving one-call notification. A few inches can make a big difference in cases like this. If an underground cable was only 23 inches deep, a defendant's lawyer can assert that the cable's owner was in violation of the NESC. If an underground cable was one inch on the wrong side of a property line, a defendant's lawyer can assert that the cable's owner didn't have legal right to occupy the land. If locate marks (paint and/or flags) were a few inches out of line, a defendant's lawyer can assert that the cable wasn't marked properly. Of course, as you note, damage repairs destroy the evidence. Which is why you'll sometimes see repair crews (or their insurance adjusters) documenting the situation (taking photographs and making sketches) before repairs begin. And why one-call centers record, and time/date stamp, every call. Neal McLain ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Phone Problems and Question From: Bill Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:28:23 GMT Eli Tomlinson wrote in news:telecom25.10.2@telecom- digest.org: > I have been suffering for quite some time with a PRI problem. The > short version is: > I never lose the signal, but sporadically I lose the line because of > 'bad data' or 'garbage' on the line. This can happen once a day or > thirty times a day. I am using Verizon as my PRI provider and a > Nortel BCM 400 as the phone equipment. > Verizon's position is that there is nothing wrong. Nortel's position > is that I am occassionally getting bad layer 2 data that their system > can't handle. > Both companies claim they do not have the resources or expertise to > help me ... > Do you know of anyone in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York area > that is an independent telco engineer that can come in with a protocol > analyzer and give me definitive evidence of what my problem is? I > need someone with the ability to authoritatively prove my issue so I > can end the finger-pointing. > Any help or references would be greatly appreciated. > - Eli > Eli Tomlinson > Wayne Bank > 717 Main Street > Honesdale, PA 18431 > (570) 253-8566 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Maybe you should advise both companies > that you 'do not have the resources to pay for their non-help. PAT] Eli, If you are using an external CSU with your PBX, although the majority of PBX's incorporate a CSU function in their DS1 line cards, examine the CSU's or PBX DS1 port performance messaging (PM) registers to identify if you are experiencing any layer one line & path defects. Unfortunately the ISDN-PRI standard does not support ANSI T1-403 PM protocl with respects to Far End (FE) PM reporting from the LEC switch. Even though the local CSU & PBX port may support such an item. A second item that you should consider exploring is the ISDN protocol used by your PBX, and the LEC (Verizon). The ISDN-PRI D channel protocol should have been negotated at the time the circuit was ordered. However my experience has shown that most sales representative, as well as CPE vendors, pay little attention to this one very important item. Both 5ESS, and NORTEL DMS100 support ISDN National 1 & 2 protocol, as well as other vendor specific (Lucent 5E Custom is one, as well as NORTEL having their own flavors of the Q931 protocol). PBX equipment should support most common Q931 layer 3 protocols, however the beiggest headache is the naming conventions used by vendors. To resolve an ongoing chronic ISDN-PRI trouble that exists at the ISDN D channel Q931 protocol layer, I suggest that you contact the manager of the Verizon test center that has responsibility for your account. Indicate the type of trouble you are encountering, and the relative frequency of these troubles. Just remember that if you had a trouble that cleared and was not reported to Verizon the event will not show up in the Verizon trouble history database known as WFA (Work Force Adminstration) or VZ Repair. Request that your chronic trouble condition is referred to Verizon's Tier Two Transport Techical Support (TTS) for follow up investigation. Hopefully your ISDN-PRI T1 can be accessed remotely so that a TTS Specialist can attach an ISDN protocl analyzer to examine your ISDN circuit's D channel Q931 messages. The Verizon TTS group operates full time, and is a more reliable group that what you will find when dealing with the normal Tier 1 maintennace center groups at Verizon. You will certainly not be charged for this service by Verizon. Especially if it is their trouble, and if it's not their trouble, Verizon TTS does not have any mechanism in place to bill customers for their time. The most thatyou would be changed with is a CPE Maintenance of Service Chanrge (MSC) for the time that was spent at your location by a service technician. Regards, Bill ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:10:03 EST Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices In a message dated Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:57:48 -0500, T writes:> > The 9xxx rule wasn't implemented everywhere. For example, the phone > number at my parents first home was 401-751-9392 but that was served > by a #1 ESS. While 9xxx was the most common, it was by no means universal. There were step offices and some 5XB where the 9xxx group didn't exist. Also for historical reasons the 9xxx group may have been assigned to regular customers. This was particularly true in C.O. locations where there were several prefixes, all the 9xxx numbers being put in one prefix, leaving 9xxx numbers with other prefixes for normal assignment to customers. The Rate & Route Information would include "check 9," or "check 2" or whatever, depending on the location. This meant a call to the inward operator a t the destination operator to determine whether or not a 9xxx (or 2xxx, or whatever) was a coin box. Collect calls to coin stations were permitted until 10 or 15 years ago. In my brief experiences filling in on the switchboard during a strike, I only encounted two such cases. If the call was accepted on a cash basis, the customer was told to hang up and then you called the destination inward operator to call the coin box and supervise the collection of the coins. In the other case, it was a person-to-person calls chasing someone up the Mississippi River, three or four places giving another number in a marine location to try, until the called party was reached at a coin phone somewhere along the river. As soon as I announced the call (and prepared to go through the same fol-de-rol) the called customer said something like "I'll accept it on credit card xxxxxxxx." Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you say it is no longer being done, I will take your word for it. The one instance of that I recall from many years ago, the local operator had to place the call via the inward operator in that town. She called inward and asked for 'assistance in collecting coins from a pay station'. The inward operator called the pay phone, got the approval of the person she was speaking with to collect from him, but then he, the person accepting the call and the charges said to inward, "I will pay with my calling card; please split the connection while I give my number." The operator split the connection, the card number was passed, then the connection re-opened. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Western Union Public Telegram Offices Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:48:02 -0500 In article , nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net says: > In article , news22 > @raleighthings.com says: >>>> I don't know about telegraph rates, but long distance telephone rates >>>> were based on distance. A call 1,000 miles away cost considerably more >>>> than a call 100 miles away. If telegraph rates were flat by distance, >>>> then telegrams would be more likely sent for longer distances than >>>> short distances. >>> Telegraph rates, like telephone rates, were set by distance. I once >>> had occasion to send a local telegram, and I believe they were common >>> in some cities. >> North by Northwest was on TCM a few hours ago. The plot hinged on Cary >> Grant wanting to send his mother a telegram across mid town Manhattan >> as she was at a friends where they had just moved in and the phone >> wasn't yet installed. >> My how times have changed. >> Also for years you couldn't place many types of toll calls to or from >> xxx-9xxx numbers as almost all pay phones were numbered that way. I >> worked at a business with such a number in the early 80s and calling >> the office collect was a big hassle at times. >> David Ross >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your complaint about exchanges which >> used '9' as the first digit in the suffix is very true. Many years ago >> when I was living in Chicago, I knew a guy whose mother had a phone >> on the LOngbeach-1 (312-561) exchange. Her number was LOngbeach-1-9xxx >> and she had a terrible time placing long distace calls or receiving >> collect calls. Operators would never believe she was giving her number >> correctly or that she had a private (not a coin) phone. Every other >> telephone in Chicago had been converted to (1) 911 calling; (2) long >> distance direct dialing (3) in most instances totally ESS while >> LOngbeach-1 kept plugging along as a step-by-step office for several >> more months. It was in the Chicago-Edgewater central office up on >> Carmen Street around Ashland Avenue somewhere. PAT] > The 9xxx rule wasn't implemented everywhere. For example, the phone > number at my parents first home was 401-751-9392 but that was served > by a #1 ESS. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just a quick mention of the 'spammer > effect' on your messages here. Periodically, massis gets a 'denial of > service' sort of effect from spammers who do a number on me, which is > to say I have the spammer box totally zeroed out, completely empty, > and am tidying up existing messages to get an issue of the Digest > out. All of a sudden, the system seems to freeze up for a few seconds > and wham! A quick review of the spam box will show one or two dozen > _new_ spams, all dated at the same time have just arrived, as fast as > the filter can process them out to the garbage bin. Since computers can > only go so fast, the effect is the other processes sit and wait while > the spam gets dealt with. Now and again, in the confusion, one or two > or more _real_ messages disappear from my queue, which I think > happened this evening to Lisa Hancock, and someone else, if she would > care to resubmit them. Sorry about that, I had one of those 'explosions' > tonight. But anymore, I don't really worry about it, because it just > gets me too angry having to argue with the spam apologists around here > each time I mention it and suggest suitable punishments for the > spammers. PAT] Spam, the bane of all of us that have been on the net for more than ten years. I searched Google Groups for one of my old nicknames and sure enough, goes back to 1989. Yikes! I can recall email being delightful back then. Now I view it with a little bit of disdain. At work we use Qmail with Spamassassin. We have Spamassassin torqued up so tightly that even legitimate mail gets dumped into my spam folder. At home I use PopFile and here are the current stats. Note that this is just in the past two months because the machine is only that old. Bucket Classification Count False Positives False Negatives other 0 (0.00%) 0 0 personal 267 (47.76%) 3 19 spam 268 (47.94%) 10 12 work 22 (3.93%) 5 2 unclassified 2 (0.35%) 15 I find it interesting that the ratio between spam and legitimate messages is nearly identical. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 22:01:04 -0800 From: javabeane@prodigy.net Subject: Last Laugh! Funny Real Estate Stories Karen Downing: (661)916-2494 Century 21-Yarrow and Associates Web: KarenDowning.com e-mail: thetabuggg@yahoo.com More Funny Real Estate Stories! Antelope Valley, Ca. - February 9, 2006 - Here are some more funny real estate tales. A residential sales associate was in the final stages of closing on a $2 million townhouse close to South Street Seaport. Upon reaching the penthouse level during the final walk-through with her buyers, they discovered a squatter comfortably sleeping on an Aero-Bed. Woken by the shriek of the prospective buyers, the unwelcome guest glanced at a small alarm clock next to his emptied liquor bottles and said, "Do you have an appointment?" E.P., Dallas TX About a year ago, I took a sophisticated and wealthy gentleman to see luxury apartments. He picked me up with a limo and I showed him about six places, each more elaborate than the last. Money seemed to be no object. At the end of the day he said he would take a place and was eager to follow up the next day. He offered to take me in the limo to where I was going but on the way needed to stop at a gourmet food store. He ordered thousands of dollars in prepared foods. As we waited in line, police and FBI agents suddenly ran in and shouted for everyone to stand back. It turned out that my client was a high-profile fugitive and we had been followed all day by the FBI. I stood there stunned saying over and over, "I'm just the broker ... I'm just the broker." As he was taken away in handcuffs, he slipped me his info and said he'd call me for an apartment shortly. L.R., Cleveland, OH A fellow agent and I were showing a client an apartment. I had shown her approximately 25 properties and we finally found "the one." She was filling out an application when the doorbell rang. Vasco opened the door when a man in a canvas jumper holding a strange spray tank announced "Roaches!" We said, "Excuse me?" to which the man (obviously an exterminator) responded, "Roaches!" Needless to say we were horrified and the client continued her search elsewhere. K.P., Newark, NJ I was locked out on a fire escape in a Park Avenue building. This was in the days before cell phones. I was trapped out there with a buyer for a long time and we were getting very cold. We finally dropped one of our shoes with a note in it down to the street in the hope that the doorman would see it. Instead, we hit someone on the head with it and it created a huge stir. We were finally rescued when the note was found. S.D. Merrick, NY This was a classic case. A developer bought and gut renovated a brownstone. The ground-floor garden-level apartment entrance under the stoop had been redone, too. We went to do the walk-through before the closing and realized that there was no way the buyer's furniture would fit through the door, nor was there a way to get it through the back. The only things that would fit were items that could be carried in your arms like pots and pans. A table, bed, etc. just would not fit. The closing was adjourned, the developer chiseled away at the door about a foot and a half and when it was done, we inspected and it closed. That's why an inspection is important before the closing. The saying is, "you own the problem after the closing. Before the closing, the seller owns the problem. U.O., Miami, FL I had a buyer go to a co-op board interview with his dog. Their dog was badly behaved and yipped constantly so I was very nervous, and I told them to give the dog a Valium. When the dog got to the interview, he fell asleep and at the end they couldn't wake him up. The buyer had to carry the dog out. The co-op board didn't think he would be a problem because he slept all the time. D.S., Phoenix, AZ Karen Downing is a licensed real estate agent at Yarrow & Associates in Lancaster, CA and can be reached via e-mail, thetabuggg@yahoo.com, cell phone 661-916-2494 or via the message form on her website, KarenDowning.com. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This was a refeshing change of pace from the 'dog serves as a ground, gets electrocuted and causes phone bell to ring (in Scotland, UK, Canada, Indiana or wherever) jokes I so often see here. I can tell you my mother and father lived a few blocks away on 11th and Sycamore Streets until he passed on in 1991, then a couple years later my mother moved over to the house where I live now. She went through a realtor to sell the old house, but for some reason, no one thought to _get underneath the house_ and look at the water pipes. New family closed on the deal, then a month or two later went to check it out and found one very rusty old water pipe under the house; still holding together but likely to develop a leak at any time. Realtor came back to my mother and tried to get _her_ to pay for the repairs. Mother said no way; it was their job, as the buyers to examine everything prior to closing, but she insisted she did not know about the rusted pipe under the house to start with. The realtor told mother she would get sued, mother said 'okay, let them sue me in that case', but of course the new owners never did sue. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #64 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 12 17:54:18 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5E30E15220; Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:54:18 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #65 Message-Id: <20060212225418.5E30E15220@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:54:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, US_DOLLARS_3 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 65 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Want to Use the Web? Give Your Fingerprint Specimen (Amanda Paulson) FCC Releases Report on Video Competition (Monty Solomon) 7.4 Billion Text Messages on Verizon Last Quarter (Monty Solomon) BlackBerry Software Workaround - BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition (M Solomon) Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 (Monty Solomon) N11 Codes (Neal McLain) Has Anyone Heard of Intelefone? (Claim Your Free Phone) Re: A Real Hospital Cyber Attack (Danny Burstein) Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? (John Levine) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Herb Stein) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line (Fred Goldstein) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Amanda Paulson Subject: Want to Use the Web? Give Your Fingerprint Specimen Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:50:33 -0600 from the June 02, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0602/p01s04-ussc.html By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor CHICAGO - Soon, patrons of the Naperville Public Library - at least those wanting to use the Internet - will need more than a library card. They'll give their fingerprints as well. It sounds like something out of a Philip K. Dick novel, but the new requirement is in many ways unsurprising. The library, like other Internet providers nationwide, has realized computer users aren't always who they say they are. And the technology it will use to check up on them is fairly simple -- patrons will press a glass-topped scanner. In Naperville, the identity swapping consists largely of kids trying to circumvent their parents' Internet-filter rules. But in today's wireless world, users' purposes can be much more sinister: sending spam, looking up child pornography, or, increasingly, trolling for personal information like bank-account numbers and passwords -- all under a cloak of anonymity. The Internet may have changed our intellectual landscape by opening doors to vast amounts of knowledge, but it's also made that landscape increasingly treacherous. Meanwhile, efforts to improve security -- whether scanning for fingerprints or requiring more personal information for access to wireless networks -- raise questions about how to keep a valuable resource open to all without letting it be abused, and whether it's possible to balance security with privacy. "I used to be the guy saying we have to have anonymity on the Internet, but now I think it's far more important for us to have an orderly space," says William Murray, a computer-security consultant at CyberTrust. Not everyone agrees, and moves like Naperville's have some worried that online privacy is endangered. The library says it's doing everything it can to protect patrons. It deletes its log-in files on a daily basis, and doesn't spy on the sites users visit. While deputy director Mark West acknowledges that some may be wary of the fingerprint technology, he hopes a public-education campaign will help explain how it's used and, most important, its limits. "You can't compare it to an FBI database or anything like that," says Mr. West. While the Naperville library has had a couple of encounters with the law over Internet use -- once when someone was apparently sending threatening e-mails to a local journalist, and once when a man was charged with committing an act of public indecency -- masturbating while viewing a porn site -- the fingerprint decision was prompted by the more mundane realization that patrons, especially children, were swapping library cards to sign on to the Internet. Like a number of libraries, Naperville requires a library card and ID to go online, and it allows parents to limit children's Internet access with a filtering system. To bypass filters, kids simply used their friends' cards. Still, the move worries some privacy advocates, including the American Library Association (ALA). Just the idea of requiring computer users to identify themselves is troublesome, says Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. "They say they destroy the records ... The problem is that while you can delete them from your mail, you have several layers under there," says Ms. Krug. "I understand the question [of Internet abuse] and I'm sympathetic to it, but I don't know how to deal with it. Where do you draw the line?" That question is becoming even tougher to answer with the proliferation of wireless technology, which has made the Internet more widely available even as it increases the ways people can mask their identities. Some become "wardrivers," cruising neighborhoods for unprotected wireless signals. Tapping into them can help protect people engaging in illegal activity from being caught. Worse, some hack into wireless networks to read their owners' e-mail or find passwords and bank information. The proliferation of wireless Internet access in cafes, airports, and cities can also shield identities. "One of the biggest concerns is that people will be able to use these commodity networks in order to do things that they aren't intended for," says Wade Trappe of the Wireless Information Network Laboratory at Rutgers University. He and others say that public education is critical: Internet users should know never to respond to e-mails asking for log-in and password information, even if they seem to be from a bank, and home wireless networks should be secured. While most agree on the need for security, the answer doesn't always have to involve trading a name or e-mail address for Internet access. "Both goals are important - we don't want less security or less privacy," says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Have better security protocols, but don't impose ID requirements on users." www.csmonitor.com | Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html To read more headlines and stories each day in the Monitor with no login nor registration requirements, as well as the New York Times, please go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:45:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC Releases Report on Video Competition By DAVID KOENIG AP Business Writer KELLER, Texas (AP) -- Cable company revenues rose faster than inflation last year, but cable's share of the TV-viewing market declined as satellite services gained ground, the Federal Communications Commission said in a report released Friday. The FCC's annual report on competition among video providers found that cable's revenues rose about 10.8 percent over the year through June 2005. It also found that the number of cable households fell by nearly 1 million, and cable's share of households with something more than an antenna fell to 69.4 percent from 71.6 percent a year earlier. At the same time, satellite TV's share of those households rose to 27.7 percent from 25.1 percent. The FCC didn't indicate how much cable rates rose, but Commissioner Michael Copps said they were too high. "Consumers are feeling the pain and paying the cost and not liking it," Copps said during a hearing. He added that the FCC doesn't fully understand the reasons for the increases. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=55629467 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:55:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 7.4 Billion Text Messages on Verizon Last Quarter TXT Messaging Heats up Verizon Wireless Network on Valentine's Day Customers Sent 20% More TXT Messages Last Feb. 14 BEDMINSTER, N.J., Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Love is in the air on Valentine's Day, and it's also on the Verizon Wireless network. Last year, star-crossed lovers apparently heated up Verizon Wireless's nationwide network by sending 20 percent more TXT Messages on Valentine's Day than any other day in February. This Feb. 14, lovebirds are expected to heat up the Verizon Wireless network once again -- sending short messages to stay in touch with their sweetheart, or to profess their affection, including the tried and true "I LUV U", "U R MINE", "I M URS", and "XXOO". And while Valentine's Day may be a popular day for sugary TXT Messages, it isn't the only day Verizon Wireless customers send TXT Messages. In the last three months of 2005 alone, Verizon Wireless customers sent and received an industry-leading 7.4 billion text messages on the company's nationwide network -- more than any other U.S. wireless carrier. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=55600085 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 01:46:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: BlackBerry software workaround - "BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition" http://www.blackberry.com/go/workaround ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:41:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 S.1932 was signed by President Bush on 2006 February 8. Excerpts from S.1932 http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s1932enr.txt.pdf TITLE III--DIGITAL TELEVISION TRANSITION AND PUBLIC SAFETY SEC. 3001. SHORT TITLE; DEFINITION. (a) Short Title- This title may be cited as the `Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005'. SEC. 3002. ANALOG SPECTRUM RECOVERY: FIRM DEADLINE. (b) Terminations of Analog Licenses and Broadcasting- The Federal Communications Commission shall take such actions as are necessary-- (1) to terminate all licenses for full-power television stations in the analog television service, and to require the cessation of broadcasting by full-power stations in the analog television service, by February 18, 2009 ; and (2) to require by February 18, 2009 , that all broadcasting by Class A stations, whether in the analog television service or digital television service, and all broadcasting by full-power stations in the digital television service, occur only on channels between channels 2 and 36, inclusive, or 38 and 51, inclusive (between frequencies 54 and 698 megahertz, inclusive). SEC. 3005. DIGITAL-TO-ANALOG CONVERTER BOX PROGRAM. (a) Creation of Program- The Assistant Secretary shall-- (1) implement and administer a program through which households in the United States may obtain coupons that can be applied toward the purchase of digital-to-analog converter boxes; and (2) make payments of not to exceed $990,000,000, in the aggregate, through fiscal year 2009 to carry out that program from the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Fund established under section 309(j)(8)(E) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 309(j)(8)(E)). (b) Credit- The Assistant Secretary may borrow from the Treasury beginning on October 1, 2006, such sums as may be necessary, but not to exceed $1,500,000,000, to implement this section. The Assistant Secretary shall reimburse the Treasury, without interest, as funds are deposited into the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Fund. (c) Program Specifications- (1) LIMITATIONS- (A) TWO-PER-HOUSEHOLD MAXIMUM- A household may obtain coupons by making a request as required by the regulations under this section between January 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009 , inclusive. The Assistant Secretary shall ensure that each requesting household receives, via the United States Postal Service, no more than two coupons. (B) NO COMBINATIONS OF COUPONS- Two coupons may not be used in combination toward the purchase of a single digital-to-analog converter box. (C) DURATION- All coupons shall expire 3 months after issuance. (2) DISTRIBUTION OF COUPONS- The Assistant Secretary shall expend not more than $100,000,000 on administrative expenses and shall ensure that the sum of-- (A) all administrative expenses for the program, including not more than $5,000,000 for consumer education concerning the digital television transition and the availability of the digital-to-analog converter box program; and (B) the total maximum value of all the coupons redeemed, and issued but not expired, does not exceed $990,000,000. (3) USE OF ADDITIONAL AMOUNT- If the Assistant Secretary transmits to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a statement certifying that the sum permitted to be expended under paragraph (2) will be insufficient to fulfill the requests for coupons from eligible households-- (A) paragraph (2) shall be applied-- (i) by substituting `$160,000,000' for `$100,000,000'; and (ii) by substituting `$1,500,000,000' for `$990,000,000'; (B) subsection (a)(2) shall be applied by substituting `$1,500,000,000' for `$990,000,000'; and (C) the additional amount permitted to be expended shall be available 60 days after the Assistant Secretary sends such statement. (4) COUPON VALUE- The value of each coupon shall be $40. (d) Definition of Digital-to-Analog Converter Box- For purposes of this section, the term `digital-to-analog converter box' means a stand-alone device that does not contain features or functions except those necessary to enable a consumer to convert any channel broadcast in the digital television service into a format that the consumer can display on television receivers designed to receive and display signals only in the analog television service, but may also include a remote control device. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 20:51:40 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: N11 Codes Further to my previous message [TD 25:64] about one-call centers, the FCC has designated 811 as a universal one-call number. All available N11 codes are now in use in the United States, either by FCC assignment or by what the FCC calls "traditional usage": 211 Community Information and Referral Services 311 Non-Emergency Police and Other Governmental Services 411 Local Directory Assistance 511 Traffic and Transportation Information (US); Available for Reassignment (Canada) 611 Repair Service 711 Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) 811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Available for Reassignment (Canada) 911 Emergency Source: Đ 2003 NeuStar, Inc. http://tinyurl.com/7zu2v According to the Dig Safely website, no one-call center has started using 811 yet. http://tinyurl.com/bcuek According to the FCC order, it must be fully implemented by April 2007. http://tinyurl.com/8phdo Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: ClaimYourPhone@gmail.com Subject: Internet Phones / VOIP Date: 12 Feb 2006 13:32:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Has anyone used Voice Over IP (VOIP)? If so which service did you use? Has anyone heard of InteleFone? They sound interesting because their phones work not only on broadband but also on dial-up as slow as 24k. They also have a hardware compression chip built into their phones. They claim to support to reach more international numbers than any other company. They even give away a FREE VOIP phone ($79.99 value). Do you think they are too good to be true? Read more about InteleFone http://www.ClaimYourPhone.com ------------------------------ From: danny burstein Subject: Re: A Real Hospital Cyber Attack Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 02:37:50 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Associated Press News Wire writes: [ snip of AP article ] > At least 13,000 computers were infected in the January 2005 attack on > Northwest Hospital, a 187-bed nonprofit facility in Seattle, > prosecutors said. They said lives were endangered, and computer > repairs cost about $150,000. While most of the story sounds legitimate, I did a doubletake when looking at those numbers above. The hospital has 187 beds, yet 13,000 computers. Say what? _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: 12 Feb 2006 04:43:25 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Virtual Number with Flexible Call Forwarding? > Alas, Vonage (at least according to their website) only allows > forwarding to US numbers. Lingo will forward anywhere. I just tried forwarding my number to my Swiss cell phone, and it worked. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 05:11:30 GMT wrote in message news:telecom25.64.9@telecom-digest.org: > Michael Chance wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite correct; I was thinking >> of a small town in southwest Missouri close to the Arkansas border. >> The geotools stuff did claim yesterday that I was in Ballwin (since I >> was using dial up via TerraWorld; I dunno why. Any ideas on that? PAT] > I bet the TerraWorld dialup server is located in Baldwin, MO. > I'd love to know how exactly ISPs use centrally located modem servers but > can provide "local" numbers just about anywhere. > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Herb Oxley > From: address IS Valid. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is BALLWIN, _not_ BALDWIN, and Duane > said to me that 'they' (meaning TerraWorld) do have 'an association' > with 'another company in the St. Louis area'. But Duane and all his > employees are located in offices in the Arco Building here in town, > and prior to his purchase/startup of Pairie Stream in 2002 the > TerraWorld dialups were on 620-332 something; a historical artifact > from when Arco Oil was in business with the corporate offices of > Harry Sinclair in the Arco Building, and all of Arco's phones were > on 332. Arco has been gone for more than a decade now (when the > company went out of business they gave their headquarters, the Arco > Corporate Center, to City of Independence free and clear as a gift > which renamed it the 'Independence Corporate Offices', kept the phone > PBX system Arco had in place, named Duane and Terraworld as the > 'Building LEC' for phone service on 620-332, etc. I think what they > use between cities are 'concentrators' or several circuits all sent > through one line, a bit of trickery where one or two lines serve as > 'controllers' or traffic signals, telling the other end who is calling > and what to do with the call being sent through the pipeline. 25 > customers on one side are connected to the 25 on the other side by > only 2 or 3 lines in the middle, thus 'concentrated'. Although the > Atlantic Richfield Company and Harry Sinclair have been gone for > many years, locals still refer to the place as 'the Arco Building'. > PAT] Pat, Ballwin is the next town over from me. I'm in Manchester. Just exactly who does TerraWorld have a relationship with here? Herb Stein herb@herbstein.com 314 952-4601 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know. Maybe KMC (?), the bunch mentioned by Fred Goldstein in another message in this issue who also have had some things going on in Wichita. KS? I do know Duane a little, but not well enough to mind his business for him. When I first got out of the hospital in Topeka and before I wound up having to go to the nursing home, Duane gave me a job working on the help desk a couple nights per week at TerraWorld. He had not yet started Prairie Stream as of that point. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 09:47:46 EST Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line In a message dated 2/11/06 7:33:03 PM Central Standard Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes in a note to a message from panoptes@iquest.net.: > Regards 620-402, that prefix is in Winfield, KS, a tiny little place > about 50 miles west of here. It is also the Vonage POP for this part > of S.E. Kansas. The 2005 official state highway map of Kansas shows the population of Winfield as 12,158, that of Independence as 9,607. That would make Independence an even tinier place. The distance between them, according to the mileage map in the same publication, is 87. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editr's Note: You are correct. I have never been to Winfield in my life and the map I used was sort of ancient and had a smaller (than Indy) dot on the road map for Winfield. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 12:36:20 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Fiber Cut Knocks S.E. Kansas Off Line Our esteemed editor wrote in V25 I64, > Regards 620-402 and 620-331, the latter is the telephone exchange for > _everything_ in Independence except municipal government which is 332 > and cell phones which are either 330, 331, or 332. An exception is the > very odd exchange 620-714 which is listed as Independence but there is > no one on it except for the TerraWorld dialups. But the guy who owns > TerraWorld also owns Prairie Stream, our local CLEC. He said to me > that '714 was assigned to him when he started Prairie Stream' and that > 'in theory' if he took on new customers who did _not already_ have > phone service from SW Bell he would put his 'new' customers in > 620-714. But, he 'uses SBC to do his credit checking for him'; in > other words, you have to have working service from Bell before he will > give you his phone service, therefore his customers already have > phones with 331 or 325 (Neodesha) or 289 (Tyro/Caney KS rural) or 251 > (Coffeyville) so if SBC has not cut you off, he assumes you are a good > credit risk and takes you on with Prairie Stream if you wish to > switch, and he just ports your existing 331 (325,289,251) number as he > did with me when I started using Duane's company. In any event, > TerraWorld's dialup in Independence is 714-0005. I think Coffeyville > is -0008 and Neodesha is -0002. 620-714 is 'local' to all of us. This is a very "interesting" industry, where rules, and companies who try to play by them, are often in flux. I was wondering about those numbers, so I looked them up. Prairie Stream is an Unbundled Network Element Platform CLEC, with no switch of its own. So it uses SW Bell numbers as well as the rest of the SW Bell network. UNE-P is basically a form of resale, though the financials are different from what is formally called "resale". A CLEC can have its own prefix codes. It normally does not get ILEC numbers for its own customers, except by porting them over (as Prairie Stream does). It can however usually get fresh ILEC numbers for new UNE-P installs. If it had its own switch, though, it would need its own number blocks, in order to assign fresh numbers to new subscribers who weren't porting numbers over. That's what the 620-714 prefix is. However, it's not Prairie Stream's. They don't have a switch. 620-714 belongs to "KMC Telecom III". It is an Independence prefix served by a "switch" in Wichita. I am not sure but I think the "switch" is a Cisco AS5800 gateway/RAS (modem pool) which, with a Signaling System 7 gateway and some software, passes for a decent little phone switch. So TerraWorld's dialups are probably on that system. It gets more interesting in figuring out who owns what. "KMC Telecom" was a fairly large CLEC operation, structured as a group of numbered subsidiaries. It owned tons of switches and metro fiber optics around the country. It was not, however, a financial success. So last year it sold off most of its assets. Some, mostly in the southeast, went to Telcove, the company set up to acquire the assets of Adelphia Business Solutions f/k/a Hyperion. Others, mostly in the midwest, went to CenturyTel, the Louisiana rural ILEC chain that owns a few CLEC assets in Bell areas. "KMC Telecom III LLC" went to CenturyTel. The deal included the switches, the fiber, and even the use of the name "KMC Telecom III LLC". If, as it appears, TerraWorld's Independence phone numbers are answered by modems in Wichita (the sane answer, from an engineering perspective), then CenturyTel (in its KMC III guise) is now in the curious position of providing a "Virtual NXX" service. This goes against their grain rather flagrantly. CenturyTel vigorously opposes any kind of "VNXX" or even foreign exchange services used by ISPs in their ILEC territories. They even oppose (this is before the FCC now) allowing "local" calls to radio pagers or cell phones whose switching systems are not in the Centurytel-defined local calling areas. For TerraWorld's modems to meet CenturyTel's standards, they'd have to backhaul the phone calls to a modem bank in Independence. That would be rather costly. Or they'd have to install a Media Gateway (essentially, a switch node) in Independence, so the calls don't go through Wichita. > Regards 620-402, that prefix is in Winfield, KS, a tiny little place > about 50 miles west of here. It is also the Vonage POP for this part > of S.E. Kansas. I have Vonage service here in my home (620-402-0134) > as well as my Prairie Stream [nee, SBC] service on 620-331. But I do > not have five cents worth of SBC service, a company which is starting > to fall out of favor with many folks in Independence since Duane, with > his good reputation for ISP service started Prairie Stream Communications > as well, and now he is licensed to do business anywhere in Kansas > which is otherwise SBC or Sprint/United territory. The Kansas > Commission _loves_ him; they _hate_ SBC/Sprint/United. PAT] 620-402 is a prefix belonging to Telcove, as successor to Adelphia Business Solutions, who originally got it. It too has a switch in Wichita. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you think that Adelphia, KMC, Century, or Telecove have anything going on out of St. Louis as well (or possibly in the St. Louis suburb of Ballwin? That might explain the comment to me from Duane with the unanswered response to Herb Stein's question elsewhere in this issue when Herb asked me 'who are his associates in St. Louis?' Fred, I can tell you this much about KMC and Wichita: six or eight months ago KMC (on paper at least) sold all its Wichita customers to Duane and Prairie Stream. Both newspapers (Wichita Beacon-Eagle I think) and our own Independence Reporter mentioned it; that Prairie Stream was getting about four thousand new customers as a result. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #65 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 12 23:53:35 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8E20915281; Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:53:34 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #66 Message-Id: <20060213045334.8E20915281@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:53:34 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, HOT_NASTY autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 66 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 19th Century Telegraphers (Archives Reprint) (TELECOM Digest Editor) So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? (TELECOM Digest Editor) Northeast Storm Sets All-Time Record (Karen Matthews) Personal Web Pages Sometimes Give Dark Glimpses (Andrew Ryan) Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes (Laurence Frost) Re: Internet Phones / VOIP (Fred Atkinson) Re: A Real Hospital Cyber Attack (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 23:02:05 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: 19th Century Telegraphers - Archives Reprint Since over the past couple weeks we have been touching on the history of Western Union, I thought another good item would be this piece from our archives about fourteen years ago, in 1992. From telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu Thu Oct 15 01:12:00 1992 Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU via TCP with SMTP id AA10674; Thu, 15 Oct 92 01:11:55 EDT Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu id AA11371 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for ptownson@gaak.lcs.mit.edu); Thu, 15 Oct 1992 00:11:49 -0500 Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 00:11:49 -0500 From: TELECOM Moderator Message-Id: <199210150511.AA11371@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: ptownson@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU Subject: 19th Century Telegraphers (Book Review) Status: R Date: Thu, 15 Oct 00:10:00 GMT Reply-To: TELECOM Moderator Organization: TELECOM Digest I received this interesting book review in my mail today and thought it worthwhile sharing with TELECOM Digest readers. PAT From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 18:20:09 -0700 Subject: 19th Century Telegraphers (Book Review) Book Review The American Telegrapher: a social history 1860-1900 Edwin Gabler Rutgers University Press, 1988 ISBN 0-8135-1284-0 (hardbound), 0-8135-1285-9 (paperback) I seem to read a lot of books which are at the same time both interesting and tedious. This is one such book. Written by an academic historian for reading by other academic historians, it is long on footnotes, theories, and statistics and short on flesh-and-blood storytelling; yet there is enough of the latter to entertain the casual reader. Part I of this review is an attempt to convey the general message of the book. Part II is for fun: a selection of stories about the lives and times telegraphers a century ago. Part I There are five chapters: a history of the Great Strike of 1883 as an introduction to the world of the operators; a description of the telegraph industry and especially Western Union; a social portrait of the telegraphers; a study of women telegraphers; and a summary of the labor movement and politics of telegraphers. An epilogue compares the situation of telegraphers in the 1880s with that of the air traffic controllers a hundred years later. Telegraph and railroad companies following the Civil War represented an entirely new kind of business, one in which the company's assets are strung out for hundreds or thousands of miles with offices and employees sprinkled along the lines. There were other affinities between the two kinds of companies. Railroads used telegraphy to support their own operations. Railroad rights-of-way were ideal places to run telegraph lines, affording easy access for construction and maintenance at a time when there were few roads. Telegraph business was likely to be found in the same places the railroads served. In many small towns the railroad station served as the public telegraph office, as there was not enough telegraph business to support an office for telegraph alone. Some railroads such as B & O operated their own public telegraph businesses. (cf. Southern Pacific a century later getting into the communications business.) Other railroads had contract arrangements with the telegraph companies, principally Western Union, for use of rights of way, interconnection of circuits, and providing public telegraph service at the railroad stations. These new kinds of businesses needed a new kind of management. The military became their model. Many of the top managers were alumni of the Civil War military telegraph system. The companies had divisions, rule books, general orders and special orders, and chains of command. Management style was authoritarian. As is the case with some companies today, the telegraph and railroad companies then were headed by a mixture of people who knew the business and those who were primarily financial wizards. Telegraph operators represented the beginning of a new social class, the lower-middle-class white-collar employees of large corporations. Many were the children of farmers or of city blue-collar workers. A great many were of Irish lineage. For all of these telegraphy offered a step up the social ladder as well as an escape from hard physical labor and city slums or rural isolation. Telegraphy was an occupation open to women, although the majority of operators were male (and, like the women, young and unmarried). The national economy was fairly flat or even deflationary during the period 1860-1890. Western Union profits rose handsomely throughout the period. The operators did not share in this prosperity. For one thing, there was an oversupply of them. First-class operators, who could send and receive thirty to forty words per minute for hours on end, were assigned to press and market reporting circuits. They could command pay two to three times as great as that of the second-class operators who made up the bulk of the force. Many operators learned the craft by hanging around small railroad and telegraph offices; others worked their way up from messenger and clerk jobs in larger offices; still others were trained at a number of schools that sprang up around the country. Most of the latter seem to have been disreputable if not completely fraudulent, operating for profit and promising high pay and mobility to rural youth. They were the century-ago counterparts of the for-profit data processing schools of our own times, the kind that advertised on matchbook covers and turned out an oversupply of under-qualified graduates for high tuition fees. Another financial problem for the telegraphers resulted from their new social class. Telegraphers' pay was on a par with that of skilled blue-collar workers; but their living expenses were greater. With the move to suits and ties and shined shoes they felt a need to live in middle-class housing, eat middle-class meals, and partake of middle-class entertainments. A few of the operators' perceptions of mistreatment by the companies were more apparent than real. The 1840s through 1860s had been a period when telegraphy was just getting started. Job opportunities were abundant and promotions were rapid. As the industry matured there were fewer spectacular success stories; telegraphy even seemed to be a dead-end job. Other complaints had a more solid foundation. Mergers of telegraph companies eliminated jobs. An economic downturn in the 1870s caused Western Union to institute across-the-board salary reductions, which were partially offset by monetary deflation. Operators tended to move around a lot, which allowed the company to hire cheaper replacements for those who left. The first attempt of telegraph workers to organize was the National Telegraphic Union of 1863. This was more of a mutual benefit society than a labor union. It provided members with sickness and funeral benefits and aimed to elevate the character of the members and promote just and harmonious relations with employers. With conditions for telegraphers growing worse after the Civil War the Telegraphers' Protective League was formed in 1868 as a very different kind of organization. It was a secret organization, because there was nothing at the time to protect its members from the unbridled power of their employers. Rather than relieving the sick and burying the dead it proposed to raise the members to a financial position in which they could take care of themselves. The TPL felt strong enough by January, 1870 to risk a strike against Western Union. It failed after about a week. There were just too many operators seeking work, especially in the winter season; the company was too strong; and the union was too poorly organized. The operators' situation continued to deteriorate through the 1870s as Western Union reduced wages, the number of would-be operators increased, and the company absorbed its competitors. An attempt to form another union in 1872 fizzled. In 1881 Jay Gould took over Western Union, moving the company closer to being a true national monopoly. By the summer of 1882 a number of regional labor organizations put aside their differences to form the Brotherhood of Telegraphers of the United States and Canada under the aegis of the Knights of Labor. The Brotherhood, unlike its predecessors, accepted the female operators as members. In July, 1883 the Brotherhood presented a list of grievances to Western Union and some other firms, hoping for at least a compromise settlement and at worst a short strike. When the company made no meaningful concessions the telegraphers walked out on July 19. At first things looked good for the Brotherhood. About three fourths of Western Union operators honored the strike. Public opinion was much on the side of the telegraphers, at least to the extent that it was against the side of Jay Gould and the W.U. monopoly. One competing telegraph company settled quickly with the union; and another (B & O) came close to, but never close enough. Union leaders worked hard to keep the public on their side, urging the strikers to be models of dignity and sobriety. The women were as valiant as the men, if not more so, in upholding the strike. Still, public sympathy did not feed the hungry; and the strike dwindled until it was officially called off August 17. Operators wishing to return to work had to sign a pledge of loyalty; those considered militant unionists were blacklisted by the company. Still, it appears the company was somewhat humbled by the power of the union and made a few concessions to the operators. Failure of the strike led to some ill feeling in the larger labor movement. The telegraphers accused the Knights of insufficient support; the Knights leadership felt the telegraphers had acted impulsively and without sufficient preparation. The Brotherhood soon withdrew from the Knights; and union activity reverted to local groups. Yet by 1885 there was a new organization, the Telegraphers' Union of America, which rejoined the Knights in 1886. This seems to have faded away by the early 1890s along with the Knights. Railroad telegraphers formed the Order of Railway Telegraphers in 1886. An Order of Commercial Telegraphers was formed in 1890 but never amounted to much, and allied itself with the railway telegraphers in 1897-98. The next attempt to form a union didn't happen until 1907, with the Commercial Telegraphers' Union of America, which also suffered disaster in a strike against Western Union. Gabler concludes with a discussion of a number of labor and political issues affecting telegraphers. One of the Brotherhood's demands had been equal pay for equal work, male and female. This seems to have been widely hailed as the Right Thing to do. I wonder whether the male telegraphers supported the demand because it was right; or if they supported it because they knew if the companies had to pay men and women the same they would hire only men. Some wanted a craft union, with membership limited to telegraphers, with an apprenticeship program that would raise the quality of operators while reducing their numbers. There was some interest in government licensing of operators. Others favored an industrial union, open to all Western Union employees. Some objected to the secret fraternal rites that were a feature of the Knights of Labor; Catholic workers were forbidden to become members of secret organizations of any kind. The operators wanted to protect their new middle-class image by being models of respectability and sobriety; some of the linemen on the other hand had no scruples about cutting wires to increase pressure on the companies during a strike. Some felt that telegraphy should be a government monopoly, as was and still is the norm in Europe. Some saw salvation in a worker-owned cooperative, if they could only convince the banks or the government to put up the money necessary to establish the system. Others sought to improve the status of the working classes through political action; quite a number were attracted to the United Labor Party of Henry George. A hundred years later issues like these are still with us. Part II Dr. Gabler had access to a vast amount of material: census records, archives of the telegraph companies, contemporary newspaper accounts, magazines published for the edification and amusement of operators, and even novels in which telegraphers were used as characters. The footnotes and bibliography take up 48 pages. One page in the book is an illustration of advertisements in a telegraphers' magazine of 1883. They include a book on shorthand, a book of money-making secrets, a book on the mysteries of love-making, a book on fortune telling, watch charms with microscopic pictures, a book of advice to the unmarried, a package of stationery, a book on politeness, a book of letters for all occasions, playing cards with marked backs, a book of magic tricks, a book on business, and a book on ballroom dancing. The theme is that these appealed to working-class young adults who felt a need to learn how to behave properly as members of the middle-class. A number of telegraph operators rose to prominence. Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie are the best known; Theodore N. Vail was a founder of AT&T; others found success in business or politics; and almost all the upper management of Western Union was drawn from the ranks of operators. In 1885 there were five doctors and one dentist moonlighting as telegraph operators -- maybe medicine and dentistry didn't pay all that well in those days. Thomas Edison, as a young telegrapher in the 1860s, would work a full day and then stay in the office at night, listening to a press circuit to get high speed code practice. Later he worked the Boston end of a New York circuit with an operator named Jerry Borst. Operators formed friendships with their counterparts at the other end of the wires. The telegraph companies insisted that operators should work at whatever circuits they were assigned. Edison and Borst conspired to change three characters of the code, so that nobody else could copy their transmissions and they could always work together. Cockroaches were such a problem in the office that Edison devised a bug zapper to protect his lunch from the little beasties. Friendships over the wires were nourished during lulls in traffic by exchanges of jokes and local news, and by checker games. Sometimes love and courtship blossomed too. At other times operators were rude to one another. On one occasion two operators got so angry at each other that they arranged to meet at a town halfway between their posts and settle the matter with fists at 1:00 AM. "Salting" (sending too fast for the receiving operator) was a frequent source of irritation. Salting was also part of the common practice of hazing new operators. Operators frequently got privileges, such as free passes to theaters and on trains. With the chronic oversupply it was common for operators to travel back and forth across the country looking for work, or for better conditions. Operators didn't get vacations, paid or otherwise; but in the summer months telegraph offices would open in the resort towns where the rich took their vacations, and operators could find work there. In 1883 Western Union employed 444 telegraphers in New York City, 96 in Boston, 88 in St. Louis, and 83 in Chicago. This seems to support a conjecture of mine that W.U. was weakened all its life by overattention to serving New York City and insufficient effort to develop the business in other parts of the country. There was friction between the city operators and the rural operators. The city operators were proud of their skills, and wanted to move the traffic. They resented they way country operators would frequently interrupt transmissions. The country operators, usually working in railroad depots, countered that telegraphy was but a small part of their duties. They had to answer questions from the public, sell tickets, meet trains, tend switches and signals, handle freight, and keep the lamps burning. They commonly worked shifts as long as twelve or even sixteen hours. Development of duplex and then quadruplex operation greatly increased the pressure on operators, as the receiving operators could not interrupt the senders. Gender stereotyping held that only male operators had the stamina to handle these heavily-loaded circuits; yet the book cites a number of examples of women who worked these circuits. Women were consistently paid less than men. The companies were well aware that women were a bargain compared with men, and continually tried to replace men with women. Nellie Welch had full charge of the telegraph office in Point Arena, California in 1886. She was eleven years old. Western Union and the Cooper Union Institute in 1869 jointly started a free eight-month telegraphy course for women. It lasted through the early 1890s, turning out about 80 graduates a year. They would first take non-paying jobs assisting regular operators, and then be hired as operators on lightly loaded city circuits. This school was much despised by men for its contribution to the oversupply problem, thought it probably hurt the opportunities for women more than those for men. Beginner and less-skilled operators were called "plugs" or "hams." (Note the endless controversy over the origin of the term "ham" for amateur radio operators.) The schools that turned out these operators were called "plug factories." Craft magazines sought to shame operators who taught telegraphy. They were urged to pass on the secrets of Morse only to brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. At least one railroad operator quit his job rather than cooperate with a student placed with him by the company. ---------------- [Moderator's Note: My thanks for this very interesting article. Digest readers are encouraged to send book reviews and other special articles like this to Telecom for distribution on the net. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:30:44 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) If anyone had/still has any doubts about whether or not 'global warming' has started in ernest need only look to the US east coast throughout the day on Sunday. But that was (still is, at this writing) such an aberation, maybe global warming is underway and we just do not appreciate it.. The news wire on Sunday was just full of items about the 'greatest snowstorm ever' on the east coast', So I just picked one at random which seemed to tell the story as well as any, with a reasonably recent dateline on it, so as to include any late breaking developments. _Apparently_ the storm has subsided almost everywhere, now it is just a matter of cleaning up the streets and sidewalks, and my experience with this, based on the Chicago example at the end of January, 1967 and again in April, 1978 is that they will be struggling with the mess for at least a month, and probably two months, with thick, muddy, dirty, ice-encrusted sidewalks and bus stops. Do take care as you walk around over the next few days. It appeared it was going to snow here also; very cloudy and cold on Saturday; then, a few minutes of snow flurries in the afternoon and that was it. Hooray for us, I guess. PAT ------------------------------ From: Karen Matthews ap2telecom-digest.org> Subject: Northeast Storm Sets Records for Snowfall Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:44:55 -0600 By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer A record-breaking storm buried sections of the Northeast under more than 2 feet of snow on Sunday, frustrating thousands of marooned travelers but enthralling winter-lovers who took to the streets with cross-country skis and snowshoes. The timing of the storm helped transportation workers who plowed streets in relatively light weekend traffic and expected to have roadways ready for Monday's rush hour. All three of the major New York-area airports were closed for much of the day, and airlines canceled more than 500 inbound and departing flights -- 200 each at LaGuardia and Newark airports and 120 at Kennedy. By Sunday evening, Newark and Kennedy reopened with limited service. The storm came on the heels of an unusually mild January that had people shedding jackets and ski resorts lamenting lost business. "It's sort of crazy because it was so warm a couple of weeks ago and now we have knee-deep snow," said Skye Drynan, walking her dogs Bella and Forest in Manhattan. Winds gusted up to 60 mph and in a rare display of lightning lit up the falling snow before dawn in the New York and Philadelphia areas, producing muffled winter thunder. The National Weather Service said 26.9 inches of snow fell in Central Park, the most for a single storm since record-keeping started in 1869. The old record was 26.4 inches in December 1947. "We might not see anything like this again in our lifetime," Jason Rosenfarb said as he walked with his 5-year-old daughter Haley in Central Park. Just then Haley jumped head first into the snow and said: "Help me out. There's too much snow." New York officials expected to have all roads cleared -- which costs the city about $1 million per inch -- by Monday morning. Elsewhere, 21 inches of snow fell at Columbia, Md., between Baltimore and Washington, as well as at East Brunswick, N.J., Hartford, Conn., and West Caln Township west of Philadelphia, the National Weather Service said. Philadelphia's average for an entire winter is about 21 inches. "It's going to be a menace trying to clean it up," said Mayor Scott T. Rumana in Wayne, N.J. Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell said state government would be closed Monday for Lincoln's Birthday, allowing people to stay at home one more day. "Lucky for us, it will keep some traffic off the highways," Rell said. The airport closures and grounded planes stranded travelers elsewhere across the country. About 7,500 people were stuck just at Florida's Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, spokesman Steve Belleme said. "We've been playing cards for two hours. We expect to play a lot more cards," said Cliff Jefferson whose flight was among the more than 80 canceled at the Miami International Airport. Delta Air Lines canceled arrivals and departures at Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Providence, R.I., and Hartford, Conn. Service in and out of New York's Pennsylvania Station on the Long Island Rail Road was canceled, and Metro North rail service to the northern suburbs was curtailed. New Jersey Transit suspended all bus service statewide. Amtrak reported a few cancelations and delays in the Northeast Corridor but said most trains remained in service. Still, many people took the storm in stride, in spite of drifts that made sidewalks tortuous, if not impassable. Lynda Carpentero didn't let the snow keep her away from yoga class at a neighborhood gym in Brooklyn. "We were afraid we would fall on our heads before we stood on them," Carpenter said. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html (audio and visual) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Andrew Ryan Subject: Personal Web Pages Sometimes Give Dark Glimpses Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:06:49 -0600 By ANDREW RYAN, Associated Press Writer It's like countless Internet photo albums: An adorable baby girl aglow at Christmas, at her baptism, in a skunk costume for Halloween -- joined in some frames by one or both of her smiling parents. Those pictures of Lillian Rose Entwistle, now heart-wrenching, have a far broader audience than the friends and family for whom they were intended, after she and her mother were slain and her father charged with killing them. The warm images helped catapult the Hopkinton murder from cable news onto the cover of People magazine and newspapers in Neil Entwistle's native Britain. As Web diaries and personal home pages proliferate, the likelihood that the victim or suspect of a high-profile crime had a life online is increasing. The blogs and photos normally lost in the clutter of the Internet can speak for the dead and hint at the motivation of killers when violence thrusts ordinary people into the spotlight. "People share their intimate thoughts, writing and rambling," said Lisa Bloom, an anchor for Court TV, who has covered several homicides in which personal home pages shed light on the cases. "You are really looking inside their heads." Jacob Robida, who was being sought in a hatchet-and-gun attack at a New Bedford gay bar when he killed a police officer, a companion and himself in Arkansas, left behind a Web site decorated with swastikas, bloodied axes and obscenities. "I'm interested in death, destruction, chaos, filth and greed," the 18-year-old wrote. http://Myspace.com, the forum where Robida created his site, has more than 53 million users, with 220,000 new members logging in every day. Overall, the online Blog Herald estimates there are about 200 million blogs or Internet diaries. "Back in the old days one of the first things we looked for in some cases was a diary," said Andy Spruill, a police officer in Orange County, Calif., who works at Guidance Software, a cyber forensics firm. "Now that diary just happens to be online and everybody can see it." Last year in Vienna, Va., the online musings of a missing 17-year-old college freshman captivated a region for weeks. Taylor Behl's online poems and photographs paint a picture of a naive young woman excited to venture into the world. "I just graduated from high school," Behl typed one day on her blog. "and ... I love to meet new people." Prosecutors allege that Ben Fawley, 38, an amateur photographer, killed Behl in September after talking with her online. Investigators found Fawley with the help of his own online postings, including photos of an abandoned shack where Behl's remains were found. His trial is scheduled for May. In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, authorities have said they will review Joseph Duncan's blog, called "The Fifth Nail," for possible evidence in the convicted child molester's upcoming murder trial. On May 11, 2005, Duncan wrote: "I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society." Five days later police found the bludgeoned bodies of Mark McKenzie, his girlfriend, Brenda Groene, and her 13-year-old son, Slade. Investigators would later discover the remains of 9-year-old Dylan Groene. In Craig, a remote island in Alaska, a jury is currently deliberating the fate of teenager Rachelle Waterman. Prosecutors say she conspired with two men to murder her mother, Lauri Waterman in November 2004. At age 15, Waterman began a blog she called, "My Crappy Life." She rambled about fights with her parents, and railed against coerced trips to church on Sunday. At the same time, the blog is laced with happy moments, baking Christmas cookies with her mother and academic triumphs. "I think the Internet allows more insight into the people's lives," said Roxanna Z. Sherwood, a producer at ABC's "Nightline." "It helps us in the media learn about the victims quickly, but at the same time we have to do our independent reporting and sort out fact from fiction." Police have the same problem. "People lie a lot," said Hollywood, Fla., police Capt. Tony Rode. "They like to embellish how much money they make, or how tall they are. They touch up photos or take a picture from five years ago and say, 'That's me.'" Another consequence can be saturation media coverage. The Web pages, blogs and photos become fodder for reporters, especially when investigators are sharing few details about a case. "It's oxygen for what should be a one- or two-day story," said Tobe Berkovitz, an associate dean at Boston University's communications college. "You go from just an ordinary person in the suburbs to B-roll on the cable news night after night," Berkovitz said. "What it does is it takes a regional crime story and turns it into a national frenzy." On the Net: http://www.MySpace.com http://www.friendster.com http://www.Blogger.com Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Laurence Frost Subject: Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:08:41 -0600 By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file. The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail technologies, analysts say. Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly from servers that handle a company's messaging - without the need for a separate mobile server or additional license payments. As costs fall, Microsoft is betting companies will extend mobile e-mail beyond top management to millions more of their employees. "We're at the tipping point of seeing exponential growth in this area," said Pieter Knook, the U.S. software giant's senior vice president for mobile and embedded devices. On the opening day of the 3GSM phone show, Hewlett-Packard Co. and three other handset makers are expected to launch the first Windows smartphones equipped with the new e-mail technology out of the box. HP's new iPAQ HW6900 Mobile Messenger also offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Vodafone Group PLC is to sell the phones under its own brand, in a joint marketing deal, targeting companies that already run Microsoft's Exchange software on their servers. Exchange is the collaborative glue behind Microsoft's popular Outlook application, which manages appointments and electronic address books in addition to e-mail. Together with Cingular Wireless, Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone will also deliver phone software upgrades to subscribers who are already running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on their smart phones. Microsoft laid the groundwork for its e-mail offensive with an October update to Exchange -- which led the server software market last year with 48 percent of global sales, according to technology research firm Gartner. Some observers have been predicting that the new technology will hurt Blackberry's maker, Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd (RIM). Strand Consult, a Denmark-based IT research house, expects companies worldwide to invest in much broader mobile e-mail access for their employees in 2006. "At the end of the year, many will be asking themselves whether they really needed a Blackberry handset from RIM to check mail -- and RIM might be asking themselves what went wrong," Strand wrote in a research note. "Microsoft will most probably overtake RIM as the leading mobile e-mail provider." Mobile messaging prices are already falling. In the United States, Cingular last year began bundling an e-mail service from Blackberry rival Good Technologies Inc. with its unlimited wireless Internet package, at no extra charge. Wireless access to e-mail, calendars and contacts -- once the preserve of jet-setting executives and professionals in law and finance -- is increasingly seen as a useful tool for a wider array of workers, keeping them connected wherever they may be. RIM has 4.3 million Blackberry customers, most of then in the United States. It enjoys by far the largest single share of a wireless e-mail market now estimated at about 10 million users globally. But Blackberry's future has been clouded by a court decision that it infringes U.S. patents belonging to NTP, a tiny U.S. technology company that is demanding license payments while seeking an injunction to shut down RIM's servers. A decision could come later this month. Blackberry Connect, a RIM service offering mobile e-mail on rival operating systems such as Symbian has also failed to make a major impact so far. "This means the door's been left open for others, including Microsoft," said Andrew Brown, an analyst with consultancy IDC. Microsoft is well-placed to leverage its leadership in server software -- as well as the 400 million PC users already familiar with its Office applications -- but still has work to do, Brown said. In Europe, larger Windows-powered smart phones trail more compact devices like Nokia's Symbian-based handsets. To make real inroads, Brown said, Microsoft must harness smaller models than the Windows phones to be unveiled Monday by HP and rival computer maker Fujitsu Siemens. Microsoft will also have to persuade customers that it can match RIM's strong data security record. "IT decision makers' experience of Microsoft hasn't always been a happy one, so there is some convincing to do there," Brown said. The 3GSM trade show runs Monday through Thursday in the northeastern Spanish city of Barcelona. Last year the event drew 34,000 visitors from more than 170 countries. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Internet Phones / VOIP Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:45:40 -0500 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com Try Carolina Net (http://www.carolinanet.nuvio.com). They are my current VOIP provider. Regards, Fred On 12 Feb 2006 13:32:19 -0800, ClaimYourPhone@gmail.com wrote: > Has anyone used Voice Over IP (VOIP)? If so which service did you use? > Has anyone heard of InteleFone? They sound interesting because their > phones work not only on broadband but also on dial-up as slow as 24k. > They also have a hardware compression chip built into their phones. > They claim to support to reach more international numbers than any > other company. They even give away a FREE VOIP phone ($79.99 value). Do > you think they are too good to be true? > Read more about InteleFone > http://www.ClaimYourPhone.com ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: A Real Hospital Cyber Attack Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 00:55:25 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC danny burstein wrote: > In Associated Press News Wire writes: > The hospital has 187 beds, yet 13,000 computers. Say what? The 13,000 was probably the size of the "botnet" that was used to attack the hospital. From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #66 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Feb 13 14:23:27 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C076314FE1; Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:23:26 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #67 Message-Id: <20060213192326.C076314FE1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:23:26 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:25:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 67 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World (Monty Solomon) Search Me / Googling Your Friday-Night Date (Monty Solomon) France -- $6.75 For Three Minutes in 1972 (Lisa Hancock) Cellular-News For Monday 13th February 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 13, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Cisco Puts Focus on Security (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: N11 Codes (DLR) Re: Gonzales Defends Bush Eavesdropping (Tom Horsley) Re: Internet Phones / VOIP (Dan) Re: Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes (Dan) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 00:54:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World By David Mehegan, Globe Staff First of two parts When the news broke last month that US Representative Martin Meehan's staff director admitted deleting unflattering material from Meehan's profile on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, it might have been a shock to some. Maybe it shouldn't have been. Wikipedia administrators have since turned up thousands of flattering or disparaging changes in profiles of dozens of members of Congress. Last week, volunteer investigators discovered that staff members in the office of Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, removed descriptions of him as a 'liberal Democrat' in college. A reference to Senator Dianne Feinstein's payment of a 1992 fine for not disclosing her husband's involvement in her campaign finances was removed by someone in her office. The revelations that political bias has crept into articles raises new questions about an Internet phenomenon that some are acclaiming as the future of information. And the issues plaguing the site run deeper than political spin. Wikipedia touts itself as 'the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,' and it is exactly that quality that is causing problems. Two months after a highly publicized attack on the Wikipedia profile of a Tennessee newspaper editor -- in which a prankster falsely implicated him in the murders of President John F. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy -- the new disclosures sharpen a nagging question about Wikipedia: Can it stop sabotage and distortion without losing the freedom and openness that made the reference possible? In five years, Wikipedia has amassed a mountain of impressive articles, written by thousands of anonymous contributors. But the dark side of that freedom is that Wikipedia's articles are becoming battlegrounds, pitting writers with biased viewpoints and vandals trying to sabotage entries against a volunteer band of 'Wikipedians' who constantly seek to set the record straight. For the true believers, Wikipedia is far more than a reference work. It's a movement, a social circle, a proof of the power of free Internet content, even a kind of optimistic cult. "Wikipedia's goal is to give everyone on the planet free access to information," founder Jimmy Wales said last week in a speech in Boston. "We're talking about bringing people in to join the global conversation." At the same time, teachers and college professors are wondering whether they should allow students to cite Wikipedia as a source in term papers, which they are increasingly doing. Given its inherent nature as a work in progress, some wonder whether Wikipedia can ever be a reliable source of information. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 01:31:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Search Me/Googling Your Friday-Night Date May or May Not be Snooping Search Me Googling your Friday-night date may or may not be snooping, but it won't let you peek inside any souls. By Alison Lobron On my first date with Stan, he startled me by asking about a Spanish-immersion course I took in Mexico three summers ago. I paused, mentally reviewing our initial encounter across the veggie dip at a friend's birthday party. I remembered debating the herbal properties of the dip with Stan. I remembered giving him my phone number. But I didn't ever recall the word "Spanish" crossing my lips. "Did I tell you about Mexico at the party?" I asked finally. "No." He grinned. "You once posted an email to a website asking for advice about language schools. It popped up when I Googled you. So, are you fluent now?" At this point, I was seized by the urge to place an Olympic-sized bowl of veggie dip -- a veritable veggie moat -- between my person and Stan's. Then I reminded myself that getting upset over Stan's Internet sleuthing would be rather hypocritical. I had checked him out via Google, too. So the problem wasn't that he'd Googled me; it was that he'd dropped his findings into conversation so confidently. Had he been more coy, I'd have been more comfortable. But is using a public resource something to be sheepish about? When I told pals about Stan, reaction split along generational lines. One friend in his 50s urged me to change my phone number -- or, ideally, enter a witness-protection program -- but no one younger than 40 seemed surprised by Stan's behavior. "It's like asking a mutual friend about you and then talking about what he'd learned without explaining how he'd learned it," says Josh, 28. "It's tacky, but it's not stalker material." The word "tacky" implies a violation of formal etiquette, and at the moment, there aren't any agreed-upon rules for Google, which could explain why many Internet sleuths are, like me, a little shy about our habit. To my mind, Josh's approach -- applying the same etiquette standards to Google that we apply to human gossip -- makes good sense. Asking a mutual friend where a new crush went to college doesn't seem intrusive, so uncovering the information online shouldn't be either. But just as many of us might hesitate before asking an acquaintance about, say, a date's financial history, we should also hesitate before inquiring online about the unsuccessful bid of $212,379 that Mr. Friday Night made on a piece of Worcester real estate in March of 2002. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/02/05/search_me/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: France -- $6.75 for Three Minutes (1972) Date: 13 Feb 2006 10:50:01 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com An AT&T/Bell System ad in the March 1972 National Geographic: "When you want to be in France for business or pleasure but can't get away...telephone. It's easy to get there in no time. The cost is low. As little as $6.75 plus tax for a three minute station to station call. Calling France is the next best thing to being there -- as well as a very cheap way to get there." ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 13th February 2006 Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 08:03:08 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] Siemens Makes Headway In China 3G Wireless Technology http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16056.php Siemens's Communications division said Friday it sees clear confirmation of its business strategy for China after the Chinese government officially declared TD-SCDMA as the national third-generation or 3G wireless technology standard. ... Hutchison 3G Italia Board Delays Planned IPO - Source http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16061.php The board of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.'s mobile telephone unit 3 Italia SpA has decided to delay its long-awaited initial public offering of shares, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. ... Hutchison Sells 10% Of 3 Italia To Goldman Sachs http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16073.php Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., which further postponed the spin-off of its Italian third-generation business, said Saturday it is selling 10% of the unit to Goldman Sachs for EUR420 million through a private placement. ... UK Mobile Users Disinterested in 3G - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16077.php New research is suggesting that UK consumers are finding mobile services increasingly confusing and that issues around ease-of-use are still holding them back from buying and using 3G handsets and services. According to the poll commissioned by Neton... [[Financial News]] Australia's Government Has No Deadline For T3, Says Howard http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16055.php The Australian government hasn't set a deadline for deciding whether to proceed with the A$27 billion privatization of telecommunications giant Telstra Corp., Prime Minister John Howard said Friday. ... TeliaSonera says looks to increase stake in Russia's MegaFon http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16059.php Swedish-Finnish mobile operator TeliaSonera may increase its stake in Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon, TeliaSonera said in a report Friday. ... Operators increase contributions to govt by 69% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16066.php Paraguayan telephony operators increased their contributions to the government by nearly 69% in 2005 compared to the previous year, paying 176bn guarantes (US$28.5mn), local newspaper La Nacin reported, citing a report from the Paraguayan finance ... Ancel aims for 725k users by year end http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16070.php Uruguayan state-run operator Ancel expects to reach 725,000 subscribers by year end, compared to the current client base of nearly 610,000, local press quoted Mara Simon, head of parent company Antel as saying. ... Hondutel: US$125mn needed to set up mobile business http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16071.php Honduran state telecommunications company Hondutel would need approximately US$125mn to set up the third mobile phone operator in the country, the company's new CEO Jacobo Regalado was reported as saying by local daily La Tribuna. ... [[Legal News]] Qualcomm:Broadcom Sought Stay Of Prelim Injunction http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16058.php Qualcomm said a federal appeals court denied an emergency motion by Broadcom Corp. to delay enforcement of a permanent injunction obtained by Qualcomm Feb. 6. ... CCIT sues to have wireless internet licenses revoked http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16065.php Colombia's IT and telecommunications chamber CCIT has filed a suit before the country's council of state requesting the revocation of the national wireless internet licenses granted to telcos ETB, Telecom and Orbitel (EPM), local daily Portafol! io r... [[Messaging News]] PIM Freaks Key to Mobile Enterprise Success http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16075.php Between early adopting Connectivity Junkies and laggard Cubicle Dwellers, significant untapped potential exists in three key mobile worker segments. Understanding how these mobile workers stratify into meaningful segments will dictate winners and los... Bypassing Network Elements to Improve SMS Delivery http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16079.php Sevis Systems has announced a new generation of SMS routers that allow SMS traffic to completely bypass the entire signaling network. Sevis's Transparent SMS Router (TSR) includes technology which enables mobile networks to offload SMS traffic at the... Yahoo! Messenger is the #1 Mobile Instant Messenger Application http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16083.php Yahoo! Messenger rises to the top among mobile IM applications, according to Telephia. The Telephia Mobile Internet Report shows that nearly 7.9 million mobile users logged onto Yahoo! Messenger via their wireless device in December 2005, reaching ne... Vodafone To Support Microsoft Mobile Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16084.php Vodafone has announced the launch of a Microsoft based email platform. This solution is based on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and incorporates the Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP) which includes Direct Push Technology and enhanced security ... [[Mobile Content News]] Enhanced Spam Filtering Could Block Independent Ringtone Suppliers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16076.php Jinny Software is launching a Spam Control Centre product, which directly addresses a fundamental mobile phone spamming issue, by allowing operators to automatically detect and block all types of unwanted content and harmful SMS and MMS traffic from ... Operators Increasingly Outsourcing Mobile Content Delivery http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16081.php The outsourcing of content delivery propositions has become big business in Europe according to new research from End2End. The trend of operators choosing outsourced solutions as opposed to in-house is on the increase and statistics show that End2End... [[Network Contracts News]] More Ocean Liners Get Cellular Coverage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16078.php SeaMobile says that it has signed an agreement with Oceania Cruises, the world's largest upscale cruise line, to provide communication solutions for its guests throughout the world. The first ship in the Oceania Cruises fleet to deploy the SeaMobile ... [[Network Operators News]] Alfa Group's Ukrainian unit to invest $60-80 mln in WiMAX services http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16060.php Ukrainian High Technologies, or Ukrainskiye Noveishiye Tekhnologii, an affiliate of Russia's Alfa Group holding, plans to invest between U.S. $60 million and $80 million in the development of WiMAX broadband services in 2006-2010, the company's press... Russia's VimpelCom to launch Beeline brand in Uzbekistan soon http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16063.php Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom plans to launch its Beeline brand in Uzbekistan in about six months, Yevgeny Ruban, general director of Unitel, told reporters Friday. ... Pacifictel Guayaquil office burns http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16067.php A fire engulfed part of the Guayaquil offices of Ecuadorian state-run telco Pacifictel early Thursday morning, reported local radio station CRE Satelital. ... [[Regulatory News]] FOCUS: CPP launch in Russia may be good for users, bad for networks http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16062.php PREMIUM - The Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle that is common in European countries may be finally introduced in Russia this year. The CPP bill was approved in the final reading by Russia’s lower house of parliament Wednesday and, if approved by the upper ... Signals: Interconnection rates to continue falling http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16064.php Interconnection rates in Latin America are expected to continue their downward trend over the next few years, according to a new study from telecommunications consultancy Signals Telecom Consulting. ... US Regulator Proposes Measures To Protect Phone Records http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16068.php The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Friday launched a proceeding to consider whether additional security measures are needed to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of consumer phone records. ... Anatel braced for budget cuts in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16069.php Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel is braced for budgets cuts in 2006, local newspapers reported. ... GSM Coverage in Trains Still Poor - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16074.php According to a study made by the Portuguese telecoms regulator, Anacom to monitor the quality of service, only 61.8% of the calls made in the Braga-Lisbon, Lisbon-Faro and Lisbon-Coimbra-Guarda rail routes were successfully made and terminated normal... [[Statistics News]] Report: Mobile base to reach 12 million by year end http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16072.php Chilean mobile operators are expected to grow their client base by 10% this year, to approximately 12 million, compared to 11 million at end 2005, local newspaper El Mercurio reported. ... [[Technology News]] Ericsson Offers Mobile Antivirus Solution http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16057.php Ericsson said Friday it is offering the industry's first mobile antivirus solution specifically designed for operator environments. ... New Camera Subsystem from STM http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16080.php STMicroelectronics has introduced its latest single-chip 1.3-Megapixel (SXGA) camera subsystem for high-volume mobile applications. Integrating a CMOS sensor with a digital image processor and analog system functions in a tiny package, ST's VS6624 me... Vodafone Developing Higher Resolution LCDS http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16082.php Vodafone Japan has announced the joint development with Sharp Corporation of a mobile phone equipped with an ultra-high resolution 2.4-inch VGA liquid crystal display (LCD). Vodafone K.K. will announce further details of this new mobile phone in the ... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:07:51 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, February 13, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 13, 2006 ******************************** Microsoft Mobile E-mail Drive Adds to Blackberry's Woes http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16636?11228 BARCELONA, -- Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file. The partnerships with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, due to be announced Monday at a mobile industry... Russian No. 2 Mobile Operator Makes US$5 Billion Bid for Ukraine's Kyivstar http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16633?11228 MOSCOW -- Russia's second-largest mobile phone operator OAO Vimpel Communications has made a US$5 billion offer to purchase Ukraine's Kyivstar, the company's management said Monday. Kyivstar is the largest mobile operator in Ukraine. "We believe the acquisition of Kyivstar will create significant value for all our shareholders and... Transistor Laser Works as Switch and Processor http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16632?11228 Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign say they have created a transistor laser that can be used as a high-speed dual-input, dual-output signal processor. "We have at once a new form of transistor and a new form of laser," says Nick Holonyak Jr., a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering. "We... Time Warner's Cable VoIP Users Reach 1.1 mil. in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16631?11228 Time Warner Cable has announced that it added 880,000 VoIP subscribers in 2005, an increase of 400% year-on-year (y/y), according to company president Jeffrey Bewkes. Time Warner Cable reached 1.1 million VoIP users in 2005, slightly lower than leading U.S. cable operator Comcast, which ended the year with 1.3 million VoIP users, while... Hutchison Whampoa Scraps H3G IPO, Sells 10% Stake to Major Investment Bank http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16623?11228 Citing unsatisfactory valuation, Hutchison Whampoa has shelved plans for the initial public offer (IPO) of its Italian 3G mobile unit on the Milan Stock Exchange. A company statement noted that the planned IPO could be revived, but failed to provide a timeline for such a... Profiles of Business and Personal Mobile Voice Users http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16622?11228 Wireless carriers, handset vendors, and application developers have built large businesses around several assumptions: Voice revenues will steadily deteriorate as voice becomes a commodity among wireless carriers Mobile applications such as music, video, and picture messaging will shore up those sagging revenues 3G networks... Mobile Email Monoculture Fades http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16618?11228 At this point, it seems, a workaround won't cut it. With yesterday's lawyer-vetted, IT-friendly alternative software for running Blackberry devices, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM - message board; Toronto: RIM) hopes to reassure restless customers and hold on to its dominant position in the North American enterprise mobile... VoiceSignal Gets Win with Motorola http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16617?11228 Letting your fingers do the walking is so 2005. VoiceSignal, a provider of speech recognition solutions for mobile devices, announced select Motorola GSM, CDMA and UMTS handsets will come equipped with technology that allows users to navigate contact lists and make calls, create text messages, check voice mail or use the phone's camera... CLECs Announce 'Merger Of Equals' http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16614?11228 In what is being described as the creation of one of the largest competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) in the United States and the largest privately held CLEC in the Northeast, CTC Communications of Waltham, Mass., and Choice One Communications of Rochester, N.Y., are merging. Shareholders of each carrier will own 50 percent of... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:16:00 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cisco Puts Focus on Security USTelecom dailyLead February 13, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cXiMfDtutavEehjhyu TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cisco puts focus on security BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft ups ante in mobile e-mail market * BT, Virgin, Microsoft team up for mobile TV service * China Telecom recruits UTStarcom for IPTV * Orascom finds profits in developing wireless markets * Carriers ramp up push to attract 3G users USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Wiley Rein & Fielding to host TechLaw Conference at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Broadband takes flight * TV on the go REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC chief makes pitch for level playing field in video market Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cXiMfDtutavEehjhyu ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 01:28:05 -0500 In article , ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu says: > If anyone had/still has any doubts about whether or not 'global > warming' has started in ernest need only look to the US east coast > throughout the day on Sunday. But that was (still is, at this writing) > such an aberation, maybe global warming is underway and we just do not > appreciate it.. > The news wire on Sunday was just full of items about the 'greatest > snowstorm ever' on the east coast', So I just picked one at random > which seemed to tell the story as well as any, with a reasonably > recent dateline on it, so as to include any late breaking > developments. And, as usual, the wires were wrong. Yes, it was a big snow, for MA. But trivial compared to the Blizzard of '78. I have about a foot or so on my lawn. Because it coincided with a high tide, the coastal town of Winthrop, MA got a storm surge, but that isn't unusual. The storm wasn't unusual; the mildness of the winter has been, and that has helped keep heating oil expenses tolerable. > _Apparently_ the storm has subsided almost everywhere, now it is > just a matter of cleaning up the streets and sidewalks, and my > experience with this, based on the Chicago example at the end of > January, 1967 and again in April, 1978 is that they will be struggling > with the mess for at least a month, and probably two months, with > thick, muddy, dirty, ice-encrusted sidewalks and bus stops. Do take > care as you walk around over the next few days. No, because it occured on a Sunday, most folks stayed home and watched the tape-delayed Olympics from snow-free Torino, the plows had plenty of warning, and the roads are OK. Local news spent almost a minute of tape on a gap-toothed yokel who managed to spin out into a snow bank in his Suzuki 4WD. It was more dangerous to be quail hunting in Texas with Dick Cheney. --Gene ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 06:05:01 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: N11 Codes Neal McLain wrote: > Further to my previous message [TD 25:64] about one-call centers, the > FCC has designated 811 as a universal one-call number. All available > N11 codes are now in use in the United States, either by FCC assignment > or by what the FCC calls "traditional usage": > 211 Community Information and Referral Services > 311 Non-Emergency Police and Other Governmental Services > 411 Local Directory Assistance > 511 Traffic and Transportation Information (US); > Available for Reassignment (Canada) > 611 Repair Service > 711 Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) > 811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and > Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Available for > Reassignment (Canada) > 911 Emergency > Source: 2003 NeuStar, Inc. http://tinyurl.com/7zu2v > According to the Dig Safely website, no one-call center has started > using 811 yet. http://tinyurl.com/bcuek > According to the FCC order, it must be fully implemented by April 2007. > http://tinyurl.com/8phdo > Neal McLain One would have thought that just maybe they'd reserve 811 for 811xx things so more could be added later. :( ------------------------------ From: Tom Horsley Subject: Re: Gonzales Defends Bush Eavesdropping Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 12:43:42 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet > Specter told Gonzales that even the Supreme Court had ruled that "the > president does not have a blank check." Specter suggested that the > program's legality be reviewed by a special federal court set up by > the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. > "There are a lot of people who think you're wrong. What do you have to > lose if you're right?" Specter, R-Pa., asked Gonzales. Considering the "Alice in Wonderland" aspects of the theory that this wiretapping is legal, I have a feeling they already have a defense planned if it should come down to impeachment: "But Senator, impeachment requires high crimes or misdemeanors, and illegal wiretapping is a felony, so it doesn't meet the criteria for impeachment" :-). ------------------------------ From: Dan Subject: Re: Internet Phones / VOIP Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:43:11 -0600 I use Vonage and there are less problems with it now compared to a few months ago. Dan On 2/12/2006 9:45 PM, Fred Atkinson wrote: > Try Carolina Net (http://www.carolinanet.nuvio.com). They are my > current VOIP provider. > Regards, > Fred > On 12 Feb 2006 13:32:19 -0800, ClaimYourPhone@gmail.com wrote: >> Has anyone used Voice Over IP (VOIP)? If so which service did you use? >> Has anyone heard of InteleFone? They sound interesting because their >> phones work not only on broadband but also on dial-up as slow as 24k. >> They also have a hardware compression chip built into their phones. >> They claim to support to reach more international numbers than any >> other company. They even give away a FREE VOIP phone ($79.99 value). Do >> you think they are too good to be true? >> Read more about InteleFone >> http://www.ClaimYourPhone.com ------------------------------ From: Dan Subject: Re: Microsoft Venture Adds to Blackberry Woes Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:45:43 -0600 Is anyone supporting a agnostic version of email push to mobile phones or is it all tied to proprietary infrastructure? Dan On 2/12/2006 9:08 PM, Laurence Frost wrote: > By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer > Microsoft Corp. has won backing from major cellular networks for a new > generation of phones designed to transform mobile e-mail from > executive accessory to standard issue for the corporate rank-and-file. > The partnerships, with operators including Vodafone and Cingular, to > be announced Monday at a mobile industry gathering in Spain, could > spell more trouble for the embattled Blackberry and other niche e-mail > technologies, analysts say. > Unlike the Blackberry and its peers, phones running Microsoft's latest > Windows Mobile operating system can receive e-mails "pushed" directly > from servers that handle a company's messaging - without the need for > a separate mobile server or additional license payments. > As costs fall, Microsoft is betting companies will extend mobile > e-mail beyond top management to millions more of their employees. > "We're at the tipping point of seeing exponential growth in this > area," said Pieter Knook, the U.S. software giant's senior vice > president for mobile and embedded devices. > On the opening day of the 3GSM phone show, Hewlett-Packard Co. and > three other handset makers are expected to launch the first Windows > smartphones equipped with the new e-mail technology out of the > box. HP's new iPAQ HW6900 Mobile Messenger also offers Bluetooth and > Wi-Fi connectivity. > Vodafone Group PLC is to sell the phones under its own brand, in a > joint marketing deal, targeting companies that already run Microsoft's > Exchange software on their servers. Exchange is the collaborative glue > behind Microsoft's popular Outlook application, which manages > appointments and electronic address books in addition to e-mail. > Together with Cingular Wireless, Orange and T-Mobile, Vodafone will > also deliver phone software upgrades to subscribers who are already > running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on their smart phones. > Microsoft laid the groundwork for its e-mail offensive with an October > update to Exchange -- which led the server software market last year > with 48 percent of global sales, according to technology research firm > Gartner. > Some observers have been predicting that the new technology will hurt > Blackberry's maker, Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd (RIM). > Strand Consult, a Denmark-based IT research house, expects companies > worldwide to invest in much broader mobile e-mail access for their > employees in 2006. > "At the end of the year, many will be asking themselves whether they > really needed a Blackberry handset from RIM to check mail -- and RIM > might be asking themselves what went wrong," Strand wrote in a > research note. > "Microsoft will most probably overtake RIM as the leading mobile > e-mail provider." > Mobile messaging prices are already falling. > In the United States, Cingular last year began bundling an e-mail > service from Blackberry rival Good Technologies Inc. with its > unlimited wireless Internet package, at no extra charge. > Wireless access to e-mail, calendars and contacts -- once the preserve > of jet-setting executives and professionals in law and finance -- is > increasingly seen as a useful tool for a wider array of workers, > keeping them connected wherever they may be. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #67 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 14 00:14:39 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DAA011503F; Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:14:38 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #68 Message-Id: <20060214051438.DAA011503F@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:14:38 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 14 Feb 2006 00:17:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 68 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AOL Tests Chinese US Site; Quiet on China Market (Kenneth Li) Wireless Firms Eye Instant Messaging (Santosh Menon) Two Workers Volunteer For Chip Implants (Associated Press News Wire) US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs (Associated Press News Wire) Bill Could Spur Telephone Warning Systems (Eric Friedebach) Telegraph office scene in the movie "The Sting" (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World (Mark Crispin) Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minutes (1972) (T) Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? (Barry Margolin) Employment Opportunity? (Frank Smith) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kenneth Li Subject: AOL Tests Chinese US Site; Quiet on China Market Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:43:34 -0600 By Kenneth Li America Online on Monday said it has launched a public test of a Chinese-language version of its U.S. Web site to court Chinese Americans, offering features that in some ways are more ambitious than its main U.S. site. The new site targets an estimated 2.7 million Chinese Americans and offers full-length features and episodes of TV series from China, viewable directly off the site. AOL's main U.S. site plans to offer vintage TV shows, but does not offer full length movies. Up to 20 hours of video will be available at any time. It can be found at http://www.aol.com/chinese The online unit of Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, is racing to bolster its online advertising business by making more video and services available for free as it staves off losses at its paid subscription Internet service. A spokeswoman said AOL planned to focus on its U.S.-based target audience and has not announced intentions to re-enter the China market. The company, which has over 25.5 million subscribers in the United States and Europe, announced a joint venture with Chinese PC manufacturer Legend Holdings in June 2001 to court China's growing market, which it abandoned a year later. By 2004, Jonathan Miller, chief executive of AOL told Reuters at the time the company was in discussions to enter the Chinese market again. Technology and Internet companies Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. have come under fire in recent months for concessions they have made to comply with government policies in the world's fastest growing market. Yahoo gave information to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of an Internet writer, according to defense lawyers. Google in recent weeks launched a China-version of its site that edits politically sensitive search results. Google has been criticized for creating a version of its site that blocks politically sensitive terms. Microsoft has been taken to task for shutting down a blog critical of China. This week, technology companies will answer to congressional leaders at a hearing on U.S. companies operating in China. For now, AOL is focused on the U.S. market and said it worked with U.S.-based MediaZone, owners of ChinaPortal.com, which provides high speed Internet video programming geared toward overseas Chinese viewers AOL's Web-based e-mail services will also available in Chinese, the company said. The site and its services features pages in traditional and simplified Chinese characters. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines and news of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Santosh Menon Subject: Wireless Firms Eye Instant Messaging Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:26:45 -0600 By Santosh Menon The mobile industry on Monday unveiled plans to bring instant messaging (IM) to cell phones later this year to tap a new source of revenues and build on the success of text messaging. Fifteen of the world's top mobile operators, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, Telefonica and China Mobile announced plans to roll out PC-type instant messaging services initially targeting some 700 million mobile users. Industry officials said the targeted user base would be much larger when other operators signed up to the initiative, which is expected to use open standards and work across networks, with pretty much the same features as computer-based messaging. But the service will not be free, and mobile operators plan to charge clients using the familiar "calling party pays principle," under which users pay for sending messages but not for receiving them. The operators did not give pricing details when announcing the industry-wide initiative at the 3GSM mobile technology fair in Barcelona. Instant messaging is a new opportunity for the mobile industry to grow its data revenues, said T-Mobile Chief Executive Rene Obermann, adding that he did not think the planned service would eat into operators' existing text messaging revenues. "IM is more chatty. SMS (text messaging) is fire and forget ... Messaging will trigger more messaging," Obermann said. T-Mobile, a Deutsche Telekom unit, plans to launch the service in Germany this year. Mobile operators have so far struggled to increase data revenues from areas other than text messaging, and new third generation (3G) mobile services such as video-calling and high-speed Web browsing are yet to provide a significant increase in data revenues. SMS STILL SUPREME Text messaging remains by far the biggest source of data revenue for mobile operators, but the industry believes instant messaging would build on its success by adding features such as presence information, instant delivery and the ability to track a whole conversation. "The mobile franchise is the biggest in the world with 2 billion customers," said Vodafone Chief Executive Arun Sarin, referring to the market potential for the new service. Vodafone and rival France Telecom's mobile unit, Orange, separately announced that they were close to an agreement for instant messaging interoperability across their networks, and were seeking support from other operators and Internet service providers to adopt the same to stimulate customer demand. Industry officials said instant messaging would be popular in countries like India and China with low computer penetration but a growing mobile population. The mobile operator's push for instant messaging could also prove music to the ears of mobile handset makers, allowing them to produce and sell a new range of phones if the service takes root in the mobile industry. Only pricier handsets such as smartphones with software from Symbian and Microsoft can be upgraded to support instant messaging now, and operators said the success of the new service would depend on it being available to the most basic models. "We want to ensure that all devices are IM compatible, not just the high-end phones," said Orange Chief Executive Sanjiv Ahuja. (Additional reporting by Robert Hetz) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Two Workers Volunteer For Chip Implants Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:28:47 -0600 Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment company, an official said Monday. The Mexico attorney general's office implanted the so-called RFIDs -- for radio frequency identification chips -- in some employees in 2004 to restrict access to secure areas. Implanting them in the workers at CityWatcher.com is believed to be the first use of the technology in living humans in the United States. Sean Darks, chief executive of the company, also had one of the chips embedded. "I have one," he said. "I'm not going to ask somebody to do something I wouldn't do myself. None of my employees are forced to get the chip to keep their job." The chips are the size of a grain of rice and a doctor embedded them in the forearm just under the surface of the skin, Darks said. They work "like an access card. There's a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door," Darks said. Darks said the implants don't enable CityWatcher.com to track employees' movements. "It's a passive chip. It emits no signal whatsoever," Darks said. "It's the same thing as a keycard." CityWatcher.com has contracts with six cities to provide cameras and Internet monitoring of high-crime areas, Darks said. The company is experimenting with the chips to identify workers with access to vaults where data and images are kept for police departments, he said. The technology predates World War II, but has appeared in numerous modern adaptations, such as tracking pets, vehicles and commercial goods at warehouses. After Hurricane Katrina, as body counts mounted and missing-person reports multiplied, some morgue workers in Mississippi used the tiny computer chips to keep track of unidentified remains. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news of interest from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 20:31:23 -0600 A government Web site that aims to serve as a one-stop shopping point for scholars and others in search of federal grants is creating headaches for users of Macintosh computers. The site's electronic forms for would-be applicants aren't Mac-compatible. "Frustration kind of goes through the roof," said Mark Tumeo, vice provost for research and dean of the college of graduate studies at Cleveland State University. He said about 30 percent of the systems used by his university's scientists and others are Macintosh computers. Those with Macs are having to seek out Windows-based PCs in order to fill out the applications. Tumeo estimated several hundred grant applications are affected by the glitch, which was first reported by The Washington Post. The idea behind the new government Web site, Grants.gov, is to streamline the process of applying for grants by reducing paper applications and replacing them with electronic ones. It also serves as a resource point for the 26 federal grant-making agencies that award over $400 billion in grants each year. Calls to Grants.gov and the Health and Human Services Department, a managing partner for the program, were not immediately returned Monday. The Post said HHS helped choose a small Canadian firm called PureEdge Solutions to create the electronic forms, which only work with Microsoft's Windows operating system. PureEdge is said to be working on a fix. On the Net: Federal grants: http://www.grants.gov Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: Bill Could Spur Telephone Warning Systems Date: 13 Feb 2006 12:35:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com (Indianapolis - AP) Indiana lawmakers are considering legislation that would allow counties to use emergency telephone systems to warn residents of approaching severe weather. Such a system would use "reverse 911" technology to ring the telephones in homes where a storm was headed. The bill was prompted by a November tornado that ripped through southwestern Indiana in the middle of the night, killing 24 people. Many of the victims were asleep and never heard the wailing of warning sirens. http://www.wane.com/Global/story.asp?S=4494672&nav=0RYb [From Eric: Does anyone know of this type of system being used anywhere else?] Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Municipal authorities here in Independence have tried something similar but only under a very limited test, using a 'phone tree' sort of thing, rather than a formal 'reverse-911'. We had a situation here a couple years ago where a small child was kidnapped from a school playground after school let out one day. The playground attendant saw it happen and the first order of business was to notify police of course. It turns out the 'kidnapper' was an older female who, while she and the child knew each other, she was _not_ authorized to take her away from the school. Police gave immediate chase, and caught the woman when she wrecked her car while attempting to get around a railroad crossing on Oak Street. The child was unhurt; the woman's car was pretty well wrecked and she was hurt enough to require hospitalization. In the meantime, the school's 'phone tree' was busy; one or two employees of the school immediatly telephoned 'responsible parents' from the local PTA organization; each of those responsible parents began notifying others on their lists, etc. Within 30-45 minutes, I think almost everyone in town knew something was going on. Police had the woman in custody and under arrest in about the same time; I understand the way it all ended was the woman was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. And I notice that many other community organizations and churches here in town have the same kind of 'phone tree'. If the matter is important enough, police will telephone one or two people from that group or organization, within an hour more or less everyone in town will know about it. I have often thought however that if terrorists or other malcontents decided to do a number on the USA, the best time to explode a bomb would be at 1 - 2:00 AM Pacific Time when eighty or ninety percent of all Americans would be asleep. I mean, just imagine you went to bed some night as usual, midnight or so, and never woke up again, because you died during the night either because of a tornado, a bomb from a terrorist, or whatever. You do NOT announce your terrorist activity for mid afternoon or early evening, that would give too many folks the chance to run for cover, try and evacuate, whatever. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Telegraph Office Scene in the Movie "The Sting" Date: 13 Feb 2006 13:10:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Around 1973 a popular movie, "The Sting" with Robert Redford and Paul Newman came out. Redford and Newman were con artists. Part of their scheme involved making their target think they had advance horse race information from Western Union. That is, someone from a WU office would secretly pass along the results of a race upon receipt a few minutes before WU relayed the results to local offices. To convince their target, the con artists "borrowed" a Western Union local office for a few minutes. They pretended to be painters with an official work order and marched into the manager's private office announcing they had orders to paint and began to set up. The manager went out to the front office while they worked. Then one of the painters posed as the office manager. The con target was brought in through a rear door to meet the fake "manager" so the scheme appeared ok. As soon as that was done the painters took off. The real manager came back in thoroughly puzzled. It was a good movie. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:56:24 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Monty Solomon wrote: > In five years, Wikipedia has amassed a mountain of impressive > articles, written by thousands of anonymous contributors. But the dark > side of that freedom is that Wikipedia's articles are becoming > battlegrounds, pitting writers with biased viewpoints and vandals > trying to sabotage entries against a volunteer band of 'Wikipedians' > who constantly seek to set the record straight. Some of those individuals in the "volunteer band" themselves have political axes to grind, as I observed with the biographies of two foreign politicians in different parties. One of the two resigned in disgrace; the other is still in office. The "volunteer band" member is in the political party of the disgraced politician. He removes important text related to the actions of the disgraced politician as being a "minor incident", yet has spurious text about how the party is getting away from the shadow of that individual (he can't get away with the fact that the politician left office as perhaps the most unpopular person ever). He also has written copious amounts of highly-critical text about the in-office politician; and has glossed over why he got re-elected. I decided that it wasn't worth fighting. -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minutes (1 Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:09:47 -0500 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > An AT&T/Bell System ad in the March 1972 National Geographic: > "When you want to be in France for business or pleasure but can't get > away...telephone. It's easy to get there in no time. The cost is low. > As little as $6.75 plus tax for a three minute station to station > call. Calling France is the next best thing to being there -- as well as > a very cheap way to get there." And now I pay 4 cents a minute from the U.S. to most G8 nations, including France. How things have changed. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? Organization: Symantec Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:42:09 -0500 In article , Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > And, as usual, the wires were wrong. Yes, it was a big snow, for MA. > But trivial compared to the Blizzard of '78. I have about a foot or > so on my lawn. Because it coincided with a high tide, the coastal > town of Winthrop, MA got a storm surge, but that isn't unusual. The > storm wasn't unusual; the mildness of the winter has been, and that > has helped keep heating oil expenses tolerable. While it wasn't record-breaking here in MA, it was in many other parts of the northeast and mid-Atlantic coast. And the geographic extent of this storm was bigger than most Nor'Easters, which typically just cover NY and New England. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And I am told there was a bit more snow during the day on Monday, or was it just all blowing and drifting? Barry, how far is Arlington, MA from Methuen, MA? Would the snow fall in Boston/Arlington probably be typical for Methuen? I spoke on the phone on Saturday with a musician friend in Chicago who was scheduled to fly out to Boston Sunday to get a "good night's rest" before proceeding on to Methuen Monday morning to record some stuff at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall some time this afternoon or evening. When he called me from Chicago Saturday afternoon, his flight (and any other flights in the forseeable future) had been cancelled. I am kind of worried if he is still sitting in Ohare waiting to get out or if things are back to normal. PAT] ------------------------------ From: frank smith Subject: Employment Opportunity? Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:41:30 +0000 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message could be retitled "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (to get the FBI on your case.) PAT] Hello, My name is FRANK SMITH, I am an artist. I live in United Kingdom, with my two kids, four cats, one dog and the love of my life. It is definitely a full house. I have been doing artwork since I was a small child. That gives me about 23 years of experience. I majored in art in high school and took a few college art courses. Most of my work is done in either pencil or airbrush mixed with color pencils. I have recently added designing and creating artwork on the computer, and have had my work featured on trading cards, prints and in magazines. I have been selling my art products for past 3 years, both locally and internationally, but I find it difficult getting paid by my clients in the US, as most of them has the only option of paying me either by money orders or checks, of which I am not based in the US and hence it is impossible for me to cash out the checks or money orders as the cost of flying down to the states to receive such payments is very expensive, so for me not to loose my clients in the US, I have decided to strategize a plan by employing someone in the United States who will be working as my representative, and hence receive payments on my behalf, I mean someone that is honest, transparent, responsible and reliable. And hence, I will be willing to pay 10% for every transaction. Anyway, I am working on setting up a little Gallery in the US, so for now I need a representative who will be handling the payment aspect, then along the line if I find you possessing the above characters, I could make you my manager once my Gallery is up the Dallas, Texas. Like I said earlier, these payments will be coming to you in form of money orders and checks. Hence, once you are fully employed, then the checks and money order would come in your name, as I will introduce you to my US customers and hence they will be making payment to me through you, so your job is just to cash out the money orders or checks, deduct your wage which is 10% from each payment and wire the rest via Western Union or Moneygram to me. Now, for such magnitude of business, the problem I have is trust, but I have my way of getting anyone that gets away with our money, I mean the FBI branch in Washington will be involved. But if you tend to possess the right characters I require of you, then I can assure you more goodies. Meanwhile, please bear it in mind that this job wont cost you anything, instead you will get paid, as you are just to receive payments which will be sent to you by FedEx or USPS from my customers, which would come in form of a money order or check like I said, then you are to cash it, deduct your wage which is 10% from each payment you receive and send the balanced to me via Western Union Money transfer or Moneygram Money transfer, all transfer fees should be deducted from my own share (90%) of the money after your remove your 10%. If this job offer is ok by you, then write and let me know you are interested, and then I will advise you what next to do. Please get back to me as soon as possible, so that I can enlighten you on how to proceed. Compliments!! Frank Smith N/B Endevour to contact me using my private address: (franksmith_artwork@yahoo.com) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, Mr. Smith, I must say this angle of yours is not as crude as most I have seen; after all, you are not claiming to be a banker or a solicitor in Nigeria seeking an American sucker -- err, business partner like so many of the 'employment opportunities' we see on the net these days. And, Mr. Smith, before you Go to Washington, like Jimmie Stewart in the 1941 movie by that same name, to snitch on your new partners, who, in their greed, decided to try and out-con another con man (or, as we say in street parlance 'try to bullshit another bullshitter') just be aware that it cannot be done. Another bullshitter or con-man will see through that thin veil you present every time. I might be a bit more sympathetic to your approach, and willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if I had not personally already recieved this same missive from you now three or four times, and it occurred to me that because your approach is so, well, unique and different than is usually seen in these parts; so refreshing it is, in fact, there is a good chance some of the guys on the net could get lured in, and that would be a pity, to see guys wind up in jail instead of you winding up there (in jail, I mean). Let me conclude by playing the role of straight man in this comedy for a minute. If you _really_ want a USA fiduciary agent to collect payments due you and remit proceeds, may I suggest you look at http://paypal.com and/or http://amazon.co.uk (or http://www.amazon.com ) and search there with keyword 'donations'. Pay Pal offers you ways to collect funds from Americans and so does Amazon. Both provide little templates you can put on your own web page. e-Bay also has a similar arrangement working with PayPal. But take care about playing any tricks on _those guys_, they'll get you in trouble easily. They are all (Amazon, Pay Pal and E-Bay) equipped to accept all manner of payment and remit to you, all forms of currency, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #68 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 14 16:09:20 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0A2011506E; Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:09:20 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #69 Message-Id: <20060214210920.0A2011506E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:09:20 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_REMOVE,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:10:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 69 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson US Internet Companies Discuss Operations in China (US NewsWire) Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Monty Solomon) Home PBX (Humanplant) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 14, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Survey Finds High Awareness of IPTV (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News for Tuesday 14th February 2006 (cellular-news) Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minute (Henry Cabot Henhouse III) Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minute (Lisa Hancock) Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? (DLR) Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs (George Berger) Re: N11 Codes (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Your Everything (Neal McLain) Re: Employment Opportunity? (Telephoneman) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: U.S. Newswire Press Release Subject: US Internet Companies Discuss Operations in China Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:21:53 -0600 Rep. Smith (R-N.J.) Looks Forward to Honest Conversation with U.S. Internet Companies on Operating Procedures in China Contact: Brad Dayspring of the Office of Rep. Chris Smith, 202-225-3765 WHAT: "The Internet in China: A Tool for Suppression?" WHO: Subcommittee on Global Human Rights, Africa and International Operations Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ), Chairman WHEN: Wednesday, Feb. 15, 10 a.m. WHERE: 2172 Rayburn House Office Building WITNESSES: The hearing will consist of three witness panels. Panel I: -- James Keith, State Department Senior Advisor for China and Mongolia -- David Gross, deputy assistant secretary for International Communications and Information Policy (Economic and Business Affairs Bureau) Panel II: -- Mark Chandler, vice president and general counsel, Cisco Systems. -- Jack Krumholtz, director, Govt. Affairs and Associate General Counsel, Microsoft -- Michael Callahan, general counsel, Yahoo -- Elliot Schrage, vice president of Communications and Corporate Affairs, Google Panel III: -- Lucie Morillon, head of the Internet Freedom Desk, Reporters Without Borders -- Harry Wu, publisher, China Information Center -- Libby Liu, president, Radio Free Asia -- Xiao Qiang, director, China Internet Project, University of California, Berkeley -- Sharon Hom, executive director, Human Rights in China LIVE WEBCAST: The hearing will be broadcast on the web live at: http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/ MEDIA ATTENDANCE: Please contact the appropriate House Media Gallery for information: 202-225-3945. DETAILS: Rep. Chris Smith -- chairman of the House panel that oversees Global Human Rights -- is preparing questions for representatives of four major US internet companies that operate in China, State Department officials and representatives of human rights NGO's. The hearing will mark the first time in the House of Representatives that live bloggers will be permitted to report on the hearing in real time. Earlier today, Secretary Condoleezza Rice announced a Global Internet Freedom Task Force in order to ensure "a robust US foreign policy response" to the international issues and fundamental human rights concerns inherent in the expansion of the Internet including: "the use of technology to restrict access to political content and the impact of censorship efforts on US companies; the use of technology to track and repress dissidents; and efforts to modify Internet governance structures in order to restrict the free flow of information." "The establishment of the Global Internet Freedom Task Force by Dr. Rice is a welcomed step and is a provision already included in legislation that I am currently drafting to address the issue of internet freedom," said Smith. "I am looking forward to an honest and straightforward dialogue about the operating processes and procedures of internet companies in China, the demands put forth by this communist regime and the continuing human rights abuses by the PRC." BACKGROUND: For nearly 60 years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has succeeded in manipulating the flow of information and stifling dissenting views. Constantly improving technology and the development of the Internet has challenged the Chinese government's ability to control news and information dissemination -- and more broadly, public opinion. Despite the rapid advancement of the Internet, many forms of expression online by individuals and the media remain significantly censored. According to the OpenNet Initiative, "Compared to similar efforts in other states, China's filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages." The Congressional Research Service notes that the "Chinese government employs increasingly sophisticated methods to limit content online, including a combination of legal regulation, surveillance, and punishment to promote self-censorship, as well as technical controls." Many pro-business and pro-democracy observers argue that the expansion of the Internet and trade will result in increased freedom of expression and political openness in China. Yet, despite recognizing that the ability to communicate openly is essential to breaking down the walls of communism and repression, several of the top U.S. Internet companies have aided and complied with the Chinese Government's demand for censorship in order to enter the PRC market, in essence becoming a megaphone for communist propaganda and a tool for controlling public opinion. For additional information about Representative Chris Smith and his commitment to global human rights, please visit http://www.house.gov/chrissmith/ . http://www.usnewswire.com/ Copyrigtht 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:36:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box By GARY GENTILE AP Business Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co.'s MovieBeam set-top box is coming back in an upgraded version that clearly aims to be a Blockbuster in a box. The box receives movies through over-the-air broadcasts and stores them on a hard drive. Disney started testing the service in three cities in 2003, then put it on hiatus in April. This time, Disney is relaunching the box as a separate company, MovieBeam Inc., with several new new financial backers, including Cisco Systems Inc. and Intel Corp., and is expanding the service with plans to eventually make it available on laptop computers and other devices. The new set-top box can show movies in high definition and display DVD extras such as directors' commentaries. Unlike cable TV video-on-demand services that keep movie files on a central computer and send them to an individual consumer when ordered, MovieBeam boxes come preloaded with 100 films. About 10 new movies are sent each week over an unused part of the broadcast TV signal using a technology called datacasting. Consumers will pay $199 for the box after a rebate, and a $29 activation fee. After that, they pay video store prices for the movies they watch. A rental is good for a 24-hour period. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=55707934 ------------------------------ From: Humanplant Subject: Home PBX Date: 14 Feb 2006 08:54:45 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Has anyone heard or have any experience with a company called SOHO-PBX? They are selling small PBX on ebay and have a website, http://SOHO-PBX.com. I am looking for exactly what they have, but hate to just jump into buying one (at around $80) without any information. It appears that they are centered in Hong Kong. It doesn't look like they are selling a bunch of their products on ebay, possibly due to the low cost and high shipping (ex. $10 for the pbx, $70 -- depending on model -- to get it shipped to USA) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you are seeking a _small_ PBX with a lot of programmable features (it defaults to 2 external lines and 6 extensions; is intended _not_ for heavy traffic but rather for covering a large amount of space with the ability to call between 'extensions' and 'forward' the same extensions around in a flexible way and is totally modular, then you might want to consider 'Totalcom', a small, relatively light-weight unit which can hang on a wall in a closet somewhere distributed by Mike Sandman http://sandman.com/pdf/page76.pdf in his latest catalog. Mike is out of Roselle, IL and he does give very good customer service. It is not the least expensive either, but does a very good job. Totally non-blocking, and you can program many, many features. The one I have from him has a thirty-page manual with programming instructions, which are all done from a touch-tone phone which serves as an 'operators console'. He gets around $350 for his unit, but, as noted, is totally modular, take it out of the box, plug it in, and use it with no programming at all if you wish. As defaulted, either of the two incoming lines ring through on the 'operator' station, which is extension 100, also aliased to '0' from internal use. As defaulted, the extensions are 100 through 105, with extensions 106 and 107 also aliased to 'dial 9' and/or 'dial 8' for outgoing calls. With no programming at all, 'dial 9' simply toggles between whatever line is plugged into port 106 and 107 (or if you have two outgoing calls at one time)to each of them. One small programming change allows '9' to force calls out on one line, and '8' to force calls out on the other line. (I do it that way, with my 'local' Prairie Stream line going out on '9' and my Vonage line going out on '8'.) Incoming calls on either Vonage or Prairie Stream ring through a common audible to extension 100, but can be picked up from any extension by dialing '*70'. It is not, strictly speaking a PBX; it is more correctly, a 'line sharing device', and I have a bunch of modems sharing 'extension 105' with my fax machine on extension 104. I use extensions 100, 101, 102, and 103 around my house. For my needs, it is ideal, or maybe even a little bit overkill. With me, it is not a question of massive amounts of phone traffic, but my own inability to move quickly as needed to get to a ringing phone and also to have my Vonage long distance line and my local line both in easy reach from any phone in the system. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:19:27 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Tuesday, February 14, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 14, 2006 ******************************** Fast-Growth CEOs Take Brighter Outlook, but Proceed with Caution http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16655?11228 CEOs of the nation's fastest-growing private companies are rebounding from effects of the third quarter's disastrous hurricanes, business interruptions, and shocking energy prices. They are now taking a more-optimistic view of the business climate for the next 12 months, coupled with somewhat diminished concern about market demand,... Ericsson Wins W-CDMA Contract with Rogers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16654?11228 Ericsson has announced that it has been chosen by Rogers Communications for the deployment of its HSDPA voice and data network, which is set to be launched in late 2006. Under the terms of the contract, Ericsson will be the sole provider of W-CDMA/HSDPA packet core and radio network... France Telecom Announces 89 Percent Boost in Profits and Massive Job Cuts http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16648?11228 PARIS -- France Telecom SA said Tuesday that 2005 net profit rose 89 percent thanks to EUR1.4 billion in one-time gains -- but also announced it would slash 17,000 jobs to reduce costs. In a statement capping a tumultuous year, Europe's second-largest telecoms company said net profit rose to EUR5.71 billion (US$6.79 billion)... Qwest's Fourth-Quarter Loss Widens on Items, NA http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16647?11228 DENVER -- Qwest Communications International Inc., one of America's largest phone companies, on Tuesday posted a wider fourth-quarter loss on one-time items. But results excluding items topped Wall Street estimates on improved revenue, margins and cash flow. The company's quarterly loss totaled $528 million, or 28 cents per share,... 3G Data and For-Pay Wi-Fi Services Face Tough Sell http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16646?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Lack of perceived value by consumers for 3G bandwidth indicates continued downward pressure on cellular data pricing, and will also dampen prospects for for-pay Wi-Fi service providers and aggregators, reports In-Stat. Nevertheless, because consumer enthusiasm for free Wi-Fi is ample, Wi-Fi hotspot operators do... Microsoft, Vodafone Team on E-mail http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16643?11228 BlackBerry's about to get some watermelon-sized competition in Europe. Microsoft and Vodafone announced plans for a European launch of Windows Mobile Email from Vodafone. The system uses Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 and incorporates the Messaging and Security Feature Pack that includes direct-push technology. Beginning in March,... FCC Eyes Tighter Consumer Data Privacy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16640?11228 Capitol Hill shock over commercial online infringement of customer calling records and confidentiality reached another stage late last week as the Federal Communications Commission opened a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) examining the need for tougher privacy measures. The four-member commission last Friday unanimously approved an... Verizon Steps Up Franchise Fight http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16639?11228 Though a nationwide video franchising system won't be in play anytime in the next few months, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ - message board) says it has "over 300 negotiations in play" to get local permission to offer video services in various municipalities across the U.S. That surprisingly large number was dropped during... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:34:05 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Survey Finds High Awareness of IPTV USTelecom dailyLead February 14, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cXtEfDtutaxauBRpMl TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Survey finds high awareness of IPTV BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * VimpelCom offers $5B for Ukraine's leading telecom * Sprint Nextel, CWA reach terms over spinoff * Spirent to acquire IMS/VoIP tester QuadTex * Disney to relaunch MovieBeam service today * Has Microsoft finally figured out the wireless business? * Nortel unloads switching hardware operation * France Telecom, Qwest report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * See What's Next in TV at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Dual-mode phones could threaten wireless carriers * Report: WWAN ready for takeoff * NBC Web traffic positively Olympian * Ashton Kutcher in deal to create programs for AOL REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Senate committee considers federal-state panel on franchising * India puts focus on deploying wireless networks Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/cXtEfDtutaxauBRpMl ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 14th February 2006 Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 07:55:44 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Australian Government To Monitor Telstra's 3G Transition http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16085.php Australian telecommunications company Telstra Corp.'s transition to its planned 3G network will be monitored by the government, Communications Minister Helen Coonan said Monday. ... Vodafone To Evaluate Infineon Tech 3G Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16087.php German semiconductor company Infineon Technologies, Monday said Vodafone will evaluate Infineon's Universal Mobile Telecommunications System dual mode platform. ... Taiwan Chunghwa Telecom Eyes 1 Million 3G Users By Year End http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16088.php The number of Chunghwa Telecom's third-generation mobile-service subscribers will likely triple to one million by the end of 2006, Chairman Ho Chen Tan said Monday. ... Sprint Testing 3G Evolution Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16104.php IPWireless has announced that the USA based CDMA operator, Sprint will be the first operator globally to test the next generation of IPWireless' mobile broadband technology. Starting in March, Sprint will test IPWireless' new platform that is progres... Vendors Developing Low Cost 3G Handsets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16105.php Japan's DoCoMo, Renesas Technology, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp Corp. have jointly announced that they will jointly develop a mobile phone platform combining a single-chip LSI for dual mode handsets supporting HSDPA /W-CDMA and GSM/GPRS/ED... Nokia Supporting New Frequencies in 3G Base Stations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16107.php Nokia has announced new frequency variants for its Flexi WCDMA Base Station product range.The Nokia Flexi WCDMA Base Station will be available for the IMT-2000 frequencies 2100 MHz, 1700 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1700/2100 MHz in the second half of 2006. In ... [[ Financial ]] Polands TPSA 4Q Net Profit Down http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16089.php Telekomunikacja Polska, Poland's largest telecommunications operator, Monday said its fourth-quarter net profit fell 2.3% as fixed-line shrinkage offset fast mobile and broadband growth. ... Russia's VimpelCom confirms offered to buy Ukraine's Kyivstar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16092.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom sent last week an offer to Norway's Telenor and Russia's Altimo to acquire 100% of Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar for a total of US$5 billion in VimpelCom common shares plus the assumpti... Moldovan mobile operators combined revenue up 52% in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16099.php The combined revenue of Moldova's two mobile operators, Voxtel and Moldcell, rose 52% on the year to 1.3 billion lei last year, Moldova's National Agency for Telecommunications and Information Regulation said Monday. ... VimpelCom CEO: Telenor not to discuss Kyivstar deal yet http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16100.php Russia's second-largest mobile phone operator Vimpel Communications Monday said its offer to buy Ukraine's Kyivstar had received different reactions from the parties involved. VimpelCom said it made the offer to Russia's Alfa Group and Norway's Telen... End2End Brought By Mach http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16102.php End2End, a provider of outsourced solutions for mobile data, has been acquired by MACH, one of the providers of inter-operator solutions to the telecommunications and data industry. End2End, founded in 2000, has become the leading provider of outsour... [[ Handsets ]] BenQ Sees Mobile Phone Business Grow From 2007 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16091.php Taiwanese handset maker BenQ Corp. Monday said it expects its mobile phone business to start growing from 2007 onwards, as the company launched three new mobile phones. ... Microsoft To Share Windows Media Tech On Motorola Handsets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16098.php Microsoft will integrate its Windows Media technologies on some of Motorola's music handsets. ... Emerging Market Handset Program Exceeding Targets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16106.php Mobile operators in developing countries have bought or ordered more than 12 million mobile phones from Motorola under the Emerging Market Handset programme run by the GSM Association (GSMA). Through the programme, leading operators in developing mar... First Quarter-Inch, 2 Megapixel CameraChip With Embedded Autofocus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16108.php OmniVision Technologies has unveiled the OV2645, the world's first ?-inch, 2 megapixel CameraChip with fully integrated autofocus (AF) control on a single chip. OmniVision say that it is the first company to integrate AF functions on a 2 megapixel CM... Three New Handsets From Sony Ericsson http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16109.php Sony Ericsson has launched two new handsets, one new 3G phone and a low-mid end market handset. The K610, a 3G phone is just 17mm thick and weighs 92 grams,. It packs into its slender frame a suite of advanced communications, business and entertainme... Three New Handsets From Nokia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16111.php Yesterday, Nokia unveiled three new devices; introduced its first UMA network solution and announced collaboration with Vodafone aimed at increasing usage of the S60 handset software platform. Nokia unveiled the Nokia 6131 and Nokia 6070 mid-range GS... [[ Interviews ]] INTERVIEW: Sony Ericsson Aims New Models At Mass Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16086.php PREMIUM - Sony Ericsson is banking on two new handsets unveiled Monday to tap into demand in both the lower-cost and high-tech ends of the highly competitive mobile phone market, said Steve Walker, head of product management for the company. ... INTERVIEW:Infineon Banks On Emerging Market Phone Demand http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16093.php PREMIUM - German chipmaker Infineon Technologies is counting on emerging market demand for cheaper phones to steer its loss-making mobile platform business back to recovery, a senior manager said Monday. ... INTERVIEW: Nokia Sees Converged Handsets Growth In 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16094.php PREMIUM - Nokia Corp. Monday said it expects more handsets that utilize both mobile and fixed-line telecommunications networks to emerge over 2006. ... Huawei European Workforce Could Double In 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16096.php PREMIUM - Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies could double its workforce in Europe in 2006, a senior manager said Monday, as the company continues to gain business in the region. ... [[ Legal ]] Greece To Toughen Laws Against Phone Tapping - PM http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16097.php ATHENS (AP)--Greece will toughen laws against phone tapping after discovering senior government officials' cell phones were under surveillance during and after the Athens 2004 Olympics, Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis said Monday. ... [[ Messaging ]] Vodafone Group Announces Link With Orange http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16095.php Vodafone and Orange Monday announced they are finalising an agreement to be the first multi-national mobile operators to launch Instant Messaging interoperability, with the intention to link Instant Messaging communities using the familiar "calling p... Solicitors Switches Away From Blackberry http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16103.php Good Technology has announced that one of the UK's leading firms of solicitors, is replacing its Blackberry devices with the it's GoodLink push email platform. Darbys is a full-service solicitors firm. The firm has over 150 staff and is regularly inv... [[ Mobile Content ]] Nokia, Sony Ericsson Cooperate On Mobile-TV Interoperability http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16090.php Finland's Nokia, Monday said it will cooperate with Sony Ericsson to work on interoperability in DVB-H enabled devices and secure multivendor mobile TV services from 2006 onwards. ... [[ MVNO ]] Russia's Euroset plans to start offering MVNO service in Apr-Jun http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16101.php Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset plans to start offering mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) services in April-June, the company said in a press release Monday. ... [[ Personnel ]] Sprint Nextel Secures Labour Union Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16110.php Sprint Nextel and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have announced an agreement covering labor relations issues for employees of Sprint Nextel's local communications company. The separation of the local communications company, which will be... ------------------------------ From: Henry Cabot Henhouse III Subject: Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minute Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 22:37:01 -0800 If we adjust for inflation ... What was worth $6.75 in 1972 would cost $31.39 in 2005 ... Inflation Amount 365.07% (courtesy of http://mortgages.interest.com/content/calculators/spi.asp ) So, your 12c 3 minute call these days is quite a bargain ! T wrote in message news:telecom25.68.8@telecom-digest.org: > In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > says: >> An AT&T/Bell System ad in the March 1972 National Geographic: >> "When you want to be in France for business or pleasure but can't get >> away...telephone. It's easy to get there in no time. The cost is low. >> As little as $6.75 plus tax for a three minute station to station >> call. Calling France is the next best thing to being there -- as well as >> a very cheap way to get there." > And now I pay 4 cents a minute from the U.S. to most G8 nations, > including France. How things have changed. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: France -- $6.75 for Three Minute Date: 14 Feb 2006 07:33:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com T wrote: >> As little as $6.75 plus tax for a three minute station to station >> call. Calling France > And now I pay 4 cents a minute from the U.S. to most G8 nations, > including France. How things have changed. I should've mentioned that the ad was announcing a big price reduction. If memory serves, overseas calls to Europe were previously $12.00 for three minutes, about $60 in today's money. Around that time technology was growing and they had finished a new high capacity underseas cable (TAT-5?) that enabled the rate reductions. I seem to recall they made a big deal about that particular cable. Anyone know more about underseas cable technology of that era? They also automated some parts of making the overseas calls. Just as was done implementing domestic direct dialing, their first effort was allowing US overseas operators to dial foreign points directly. Then local operators could do it rather than going to a specialized overseas operator. Finally customers could dial it themselves. I wonder if they still have special overseas operators for oddball places. They used to say that was the last bastion of traditional cord switchboards for specialities like ship to shore telephone and overseas calls to strange places. Note that back in 1972 when they advertised these new lower rates, there were still many places in the world you couldn't reach. One frustration over today's system is that I have no idea what a call would cost me. I have national unlimited, but anything else is a toll call. I believe Canada for me is 35c a minute; I have no idea what a a la carte call to England or Japan would be since I never make any. In the old days I would simply ask the operator for the rates, but now with the innumerable calling plans I don't think a long distance operator would know. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 06:12:41 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: So, Did it Snow By You on Sunday? Barry Margolin wrote: > In article , Gene S. Berkowitz > wrote: >> And, as usual, the wires were wrong. Yes, it was a big snow, for MA. >> But trivial compared to the Blizzard of '78. I have about a foot or >> so on my lawn. Because it coincided with a high tide, the coastal >> town of Winthrop, MA got a storm surge, but that isn't unusual. The >> storm wasn't unusual; the mildness of the winter has been, and that >> has helped keep heating oil expenses tolerable. > While it wasn't record-breaking here in MA, it was in many other parts > of the northeast and mid-Atlantic coast. And the geographic extent of > this storm was bigger than most Nor'Easters, which typically just > cover NY and New England. As someone who spent mid January 1978 through mid March 1978 living in a Holiday Inn outside of Cleveland while doing contract work, well I have to agree that that blizzard was likely bigger. And that blizzard was just a part of THAT winter. 18" of snow on the ground after a storm in Lexington, KY, where I lived. But back in Cleveland, they were telling me about having at least 1/2" of snow every day since Thanksgiving. There were big ice patches on the street where the water MAINS froze, thawed, covered a street, then refroze. A single storm does not a winter make. Businesses were going out of business as folks just hunkered down to wait for spring. We went to a main release movie on a Friday night and there were only 5 of use in a theater that could seat 500. After a while they began to wonder if spring was going to show up. :) David Ross ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:05:56 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Mark Crispin wrote: > I decided that it wasn't worth fighting. Fine, then don't bother with Wikipedia for anything that could possibly have any kind of political or ideological content. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:27:23 -0500 Organization: Heller Information Services PureEdge was bought out by IBM. According to the Washington Post article, IBM is "planning" to upgrade the software to accommodate Mac users, but it will take almost a year before the software is certified for use by those seeking grants. "Dog in the Manger??" George (The Old Mac Fud) I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: 14 Feb 2006 07:46:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Neal McLain wrote: > 211 Community Information and Referral Services Not sure that's such a good idea. > 311 Non-Emergency Police and Other Governmental Services When my city went to 911, they kept their 7 digit police number (231-3131) and attempted to educate the public that 911 was for critical emergencies while the existing number was for all other police calls (ie barking dog, car theft). Apparently it didn't work out that way and the old number was abandoned with all calls going to 911. Originally, the police emergency radio room was set up into geographic zones for the city. Then it was consolidated with operators taking calls city wide. There was a murder in process that generated a lot of calls but the operators didn't classify and prioritize it properly and the calls were spread over the whole room so there was no sense of urgency. A boy was killed as a result of no police response. The parents had an excellent lawsuit case but they said that wouldn't bring back their son. Rather, they asked that the city revamp its system (which would be rather costly) which was done. There are still some problems with 911 receiving operators and the computer systems they use. My little town is on the centralized county system which means the operators aren't familiar with local geography although they're working on "E" 911 which is a database with the phone address automatically appearing. Cellular and VOIP phones remain a problem. Suburban streets are not very well marked and it's hard to know where one is at times. > 411 Local Directory Assistance Some places purposely switched away from 411 to 555-1212 to discourage 411 use. Now they charge and make a profit on it. How good is the quality of the RBOC operator with national listings? Is their database kept reasonably up to date? Internet databases are horrible -- my home number is mislisted (fine by me) and they show aother number for me that's been out of service since 2000. > 611 Repair Service My RBOC says they had to change this from a plain number on account of divesture so they wouldn't have an unfair adtvg over other carriers. > 811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and > Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Available for > Reassignment (Canada) This was historically used as an internal access for craftspeople to reach the C.O. test desk. In my area it is the ringback command, but not in others. As to calling for pipeline checking, a single number won't help if the contractor is too lazy or stupid to make that call, and I've seen them do that many times with phone cables cut as a result. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 23:11:15 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: RE: Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Your Everything Andrew Kantor wrote: > Andrew Kantor: CyberSpeak > Cable, Phone Companies Battle to be Everything > Andrew Kantor, USA TODAY > It looks to be a busy year for lawmakers, technology- > wise. [snip] > When cable television first came along, towns and cities > were happy to get the extra channels. At the same time, > though, they realized that the problem with cable TV was, > well, cables. If 10 cable companies converged on an area, > there would be wires hanging all over the place, > streets dug up, traffic snarled, dogs and cats living > together; you get the idea. > So municipalities started to offer cable franchises, in > which one cable company was granted the exclusive right > to service an area. In exchange for a virtual monopoly, > it agreed to wire every home and not discriminate > against the poor side of town, among other things. Cable television franchises do not "grant the exclusive right to service an area." Every cable TV franchise agreement I've ever seen claimed to be non-exclusive. Even the City of Roanoke's franchise ordinance is non-exclusive, a fact that Kantor could have checked easily with a phone call to the City Clerk. http://tinyurl.com/exm9a Under the terms of these agreements, all franchisees are required to abide by the same requirements, including "wire every home and not discriminate against the poor side of town..." Plus pay a 5% (actually 5.26%) franchise fee, provide free service to government buildings and schools, provide PEG access channels, support PEG access production. No wonder Verizon is trying to make an end run local franchising authorities. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Telephoneman Subject: Re: Employment Opportunity? Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:53:27 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com frank smith wrote in message news:telecom25.68.10@telecom-digest.org: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message could be retitled > "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (to get the FBI on your case.) PAT] > Hello, > My name is FRANK SMITH, I am an artist. I live in United Kingdom, with > my two kids, four cats, one dog and the love of my life. It is > definitely a full house. I have been doing artwork since I was a small > child. That gives me about 23 years of experience. I majored in art in > high school and took a few college art courses. > SNIP> > is impossible for me to cash out the checks or money orders as the > cost of flying down to the states to receive such payments is very > expensive, SNIP > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, Mr. Smith, I must say this angle > of yours is not as crude as most I have seen; after all, you are not > claiming to be a banker or a solicitor in Nigeria seeking an American > sucker -- err, business partner like so many of the 'employment > opportunities' we see on the net these days. And, Mr. Smith, before > you Go to Washington, like Jimmie Stewart in the 1941 movie by that > same name, to snitch on your new partners, who, in their greed, decided > to try and out-con another con man (or, as we say in street parlance > 'try to bullshit another bullshitter') just be aware that it cannot be > done. Another bullshitter or con-man will see through that thin veil > you present every time. > I might be a bit more sympathetic to your approach, and willing to > give you the benefit of the doubt if I had not personally already > recieved this same missive from you now three or four times, and it > occurred to me that because your approach is so, well, unique and > different than is usually seen in these parts; so refreshing it is, > in fact, there is a good chance some of the guys on the net could get > lured in, and that would be a pity, to see guys wind up in jail > instead of you winding up there (in jail, I mean). > Let me conclude by playing the role of straight man in this comedy for > a minute. If you _really_ want a USA fiduciary agent to collect > payments due you and remit proceeds, may I suggest you look at > http://paypal.com and/or http://amazon.co.uk (or http://www.amazon.com ) > and search there with keyword 'donations'. Pay Pal offers you ways > to collect funds from Americans and so does Amazon. Both provide > little templates you can put on your own web page. e-Bay also has a > similar arrangement working with PayPal. But take care about playing > any tricks on _those guys_, they'll get you in trouble easily. They > are all (Amazon, Pay Pal and E-Bay) equipped to accept all manner of > payment and remit to you, all forms of currency, etc. PAT] Like you say, it's slightly better than the usual Nigerian 419 scam -- at least the grammar mostly makes sense! If people want to pretend to be from the UK however, they should do their homework. Our secondary education system is not known as "High School" and students study for "A levels" -- people don't graduate and there is no major. As Winston Churchill said, the US and the UK are two peoples separated by a common language (I think), so just to be awkward we spell checks as cheques! Liam ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #69 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Feb 15 00:51:02 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9B71A14FE7; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:51:02 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #70 Message-Id: <20060215055102.9B71A14FE7@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:51:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_REMOVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:52:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 70 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Lawmaker Renews Push Against Internet Gambling (Reuters News Wire) China Denies Internet Controls Lead to Arrests (Reuters News Wire) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Danny Burstein) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Barry Margolin) Re: N11 Codes (Danny Burstein) Re: N11 Codes (Neal McLain) Re: Telegraph Office Scene in the Movie "The Sting" (Al Gillis) Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs (Veritas) Re: Employment Opportunity? (Wesrock@aol.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Lawmaker Renews Push Against Internet Gambling Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:58:40 -0600 Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte will reintroduce a bill this week that would prohibit Internet gambling, a fast-growing industry valued at about $12 billion, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte said on Tuesday. Goodlatte, a Republican, first introduced legislation to ban online gambling nearly a decade ago. In 2000, his bill had strong support in the House but was unexpectedly defeated due in part to efforts by Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented gambling interests, according to the spokeswoman. Abramoff pleaded guilty to fraud charges in early January and is cooperating with prosecutors in a corruption probe that could implicate lawmakers and officials across Washington. The previous version of Goodlatte's bill would make it illegal to use the Internet for gambling and give law enforcement officials the authority to stop credit card payments to offshore Internet gambling sites. Goodlatte's spokeswoman said details about the new bill would be released on Thursday. Other sponsors of the bill will be fellow Virginia Republicans Rick Boucher and Frank Wolf, she said. Shares in two European gaming companies, PartyGaming Plc and 888 Holdings Plc fell in Tuesday trading due to concerns about new U.S. legislation, according to traders. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: China Denies Internet Controls Lead to Arrests Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:00:35 -0600 Chinese people can freely access the Internet and the government has never arrested anyone for expressing an opinion on the Web, an official state newspaper said on Wednesday. Chinese regulations were also in line with international practices and no different from rules in other countries like the United States which seek to block sites with harmful content, the China Daily said, quoting a senior Internet watchdog official. "No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the Internet," Liu Zhengrong, vice head of the Internet Affairs Bureau of the State Council Information Office, was quoted as saying. Several U.S. tech companies that operate in China have faced criticism in recent months for helping China enforce censorship laws and track down government critics who communicate online. Microsoft Corp. pulled the Web log, or blog, of a critic of the Chinese government after getting a government order to do so, and Yahoo Inc. has been criticized for helping Chinese authorities link journalist Shi Tao to a U.S.-based Web site, leading to a 10-year prison sentence for Shi. Liu defended China's record. "After studying Internet legislation in the West, I've found we basically have identical legislative objectives and principles," he said. "Companies, including Internet firms, that provide services in China must observe Chinese statutes," he added. "Global companies should know how to provide lawful services ... It is their own business when it comes to specific methods and approaches." Liu said China blocked only "a very few" foreign sites which have pornographic or terrorist-linked content, or have other information that is in violation of Chinese law. Google Inc.'s Chinese search engine, for example, blocks many terms associated with topics related to democracy or independence for Tibet, part of China, and Taiwan, a self-ruled island which China considers its own. China encouraged people to report Web sites that contain "harmful information," Liu said, just as in countries such as Britain. The government had imposed "lenient" penalties on sites that carry harmful or illegal information, and no Web sites had been shut down for abusing those rules, he added. The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had set up a task force to help U.S. technology companies protect freedom of expression in countries like China that censor online content. But some U.S. sites, like those of Yahoo, also imposed controls on what can be said online, Liu said. "It is unfair and smacks of double standards when (they) criticize China for deleting illegal and harmful messages while it is legal for U.S. Web sites (to do so)," he said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 21:15:55 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Monty Solomon writes: [ snip ] > About 10 new movies are sent each week over an unused part of the > broadcast TV signal using a technology called datacasting. ( in other words, the drive is, err, "trickle charged.. .") I'm troubled by this. The tv station was granted a license by the FCC [a] for the specific purpose of sending out a broadcast signal, that is, a tv program. Ok, the world has changed, and they can take, say, 5 percent of that bandwidth and use it for other purposes -- in this case to slow-feed a separate, "store and play..." series of movies, but... I'd think a solid case could and should be made that this additional bit of effective bandwidth should be either re-bid out (after all, the original licensee doesn't "need it" for their licensed purpose). [a] once upon a time the FCC licenses had to be renewed and it was possible to lose them. For all intents and purposes nowadays those FCC licenses are permanent. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Organization: Symantec Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:03:55 -0500 In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > By GARY GENTILE AP Business Writer > LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Walt Disney Co.'s MovieBeam set-top box is > coming back in an upgraded version that clearly aims to be a > Blockbuster in a box. It's the 21st Century -- shouldn't that be "Netflix in a box"? :) > The box receives movies through over-the-air broadcasts and stores > them on a hard drive. Disney started testing the service in three > cities in 2003, then put it on hiatus in April. Isn't this just a DVR? > Consumers will pay $199 for the box after a rebate, and a $29 > activation fee. After that, they pay video store prices for the movies > they watch. A rental is good for a 24-hour period. Ahh, it's a *crippled* DVR. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 21:20:59 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: [ snip of some historical stuff regarding his city ] > calls city wide. There was a murder in process that generated a lot > of calls but the operators didn't classify and prioritize it properly > and the calls were spread over the whole room so there was no sense of > urgency. A boy was killed as a result of no police response. The > parents had an excellent lawsuit case but they said that wouldn't > bring back their son. Rather, they asked that the city revamp its > system (which would be rather costly) which was done. Err, I strongly doubt "the parents had an excellent lawsuit". Despite the common belief, there is _NO_ "duty to act" by the police or other government services (outside of some very specific situations). There are court cases up the kazoo where the various plaintifs find their cases thrown out. > There are still some problems with 911 receiving operators and the > computer systems they use. Talk to your mayor, council, whatever. It's _their_ decision to go for the cheap. _____________________________________________________ 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: Well, excuse me, but if police are notified of a crime in progress or one recently committed, yet have 'no duty to act on it' except as it happens to suit them to do so, then _why_ are we citizens forbidden often times to carry handguns or cure criminal situations ourselves? And if police are too clumsy to coordinate their activities in these cases then why shouldn't citizens be permitted to cure the shortcoming themselves? What prevents police from failing to act on crimes due to their overall corruption and malfeasance, then blaming it on things like their improperly programmed computer system and seeking the protection of the law under the 'we have no duty to act' provision? Tell me this, Danny, do police in New York _ever_ get punished for incompetence (if not just downright refusal to obey the law) or is it there a lot like it is in Chicago, where by and large police just do as they damn well please in their actions and attitudes toward citizens? If I were the mother or father of that slain child I would definitly turn the screws very hard on police and I am sure there are many legal groups which would be perfectly willing to help with it. Police and city governments are not the only ones with unlimited budgets to use to stall for time on having to become accountable. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 17:24:40 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: N11 Codes I wrote: > 811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and > Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Available for > Reassignment (Canada) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> responded: > This was historically used as an internal access for craftspeople to > reach the C.O. test desk. In my area it is the ringback command, but > not in others. And in Las Vegas, it was the Sprint business office, plastered all over city busses. But all such non-standard uses are now preempted by FCC order. > As to calling for pipeline checking, a single number won't help if the > contractor is too lazy or stupid to make that call... Any contractor that's "too lazy or stupid to make that call" won't be in business long. If the repair bill doesn't put him out of business, his insurance carrier certainly will. > ... and I've seen them do that many times with phone cables cut as a > result. Are you sure that the cut resulted from a contractor's failure to call? There are numerous other requirements that both the contractor and the phone company must follow. If the phone company didn't follow through on its obligations, it would be at fault, not the contractor. Perhaps you might want to review the Pennsylvania One Call System's "Users Guide," which includes the full text of the Pennsylvania "Underground Utility Line Protection Act." http://tinyurl.com/8jq2w Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Telegraph Office Scene in the Movie "The Sting" Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 18:57:58 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Hi Lisa... That was a good movie, wasn't it? And I don't recall a single instance of the "F" word! But the reason I wrote was to note that the victum of a scam like this was referred to as the "mark" as I recall. Thanks for bringing back the memory of this movie! Al wrote in message news:telecom25.68.6@telecom-digest.org: > Around 1973 a popular movie, "The Sting" with Robert Redford and Paul > Newman came out. Redford and Newman were con artists. Part of their > scheme involved making their target think they had advance horse race > information from Western Union. That is, someone from a WU office > would secretly pass along the results of a race upon receipt a few > minutes before WU relayed the results to local offices. > To convince their target, the con artists "borrowed" a Western Union > local office for a few minutes. They pretended to be painters with an > official work order and marched into the manager's private office > announcing they had orders to paint and began to set up. The manager > went out to the front office while they worked. Then one of the > painters posed as the office manager. The con target was brought in > through a rear door to meet the fake "manager" so the scheme appeared > ok. As soon as that was done the painters took off. The real manager > came back in thoroughly puzzled. > It was a good movie. ------------------------------ From: hatespam@hatespam.com (Veritas) Subject: Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:59:22 GMT Associated Press News Wire wrote: > A government Web site that aims to serve as a one-stop shopping point > for scholars and others in search of federal grants is creating > headaches for users of Macintosh computers. FEMA won't let you register for disaster assistance from a Mac, either. I found this out the hard way. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:44:42 EST Subject: Re: Employment Opportunity? In a message dated Tue, 14 Feb 2006 08:53:27 -0000, Telephoneman writes: > Like you say, it's slightly better than the usual Nigerian 419 scam -- > at least the grammar mostly makes sense! If people want to pretend to > be from the UK however, they should do their homework. Our secondary > education system is not known as "High School" and students study for > "A levels" -- people don't graduate and there is no major. As Winston > Churchill said, the US and the UK are two peoples separated by a > common language (I think), so just to be awkward we spell checks as > cheques! > Liam The writer also overlooks the obvious fact that many businesses in the U.K. accept MasterCard and Visa through banks in the U.K., and M.C. and Visa are accepted whether the card issuer is local or half way around the world. If the amount is significant, he could also open a U.S. dollar account at a bank in the U.S.A. and would only have to go through the transfer process occasionally (the transfer cost is very high proportionately for small transfers, but the percentage is much less percentagewise on large transfers). If he has a U.S. bank account he could also get a debit card ("check card") from the bank in the U.S.A. and withdraw the funds from an ATM in the U.K. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #70 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Feb 15 19:48:35 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2E21914F43; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:48:35 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #71 Message-Id: <20060216004835.2E21914F43@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:48:35 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 15 Feb 2006 19:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 71 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Congress Grills Internet Executives (Joel Rothstein & Paul Eckert) Microsoft and EU Battle Over Large Daily Fine (David Lawsky) Microsoft Hits Back at EU Threats (BBC News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 15, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) BellSouth, DirecTV Extend Marketing Deal (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News For Wednesday 15th February 2006 (Cellular-News) Do Not Call Violator, Capital Services (Stanlel) Re: N11 Codes (DLR) Re: N11 Codes (Lisa Hancock) Re: N11 Codes (Mark Crispin) Re: N11 Codes (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Dan Lanciani) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Steven Lichter) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joel Rothstein & Paul Eckert Subject: Congress Grills Internet Executives Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:23:29 -0600 By Joel Rothstein and Paul Eckert U.S. lawmakers lashed out at Google Inc. and other prominent Internet companies on Wednesday, with one Democrat questioning "how your corporate leadership sleeps at night" because of the companies' alleged complicity in human rights abuses by the Chinese government. As representatives from Google, Yahoo Inc. , Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. looked on, lawmakers from both political parties delivered a withering attack. "Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I simply do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," said Rep. Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on a House International Relations subcommittee on human rights. Lantos' California district includes Silicon Valley. The Republican chairman of the subcommittee, Chris Smith of New Jersey, held the hearing to ask the companies about their procedures in China and demands from the Chinese government. Last week, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists, said Yahoo provided electronic records to Chinese authorities that led to an eight-year prison sentence for writer Li Zhi in 2003. In September, Yahoo was accused of helping Chinese authorities identify Shi Tao, who was accused of leaking state secrets abroad and was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison. Google came under fire last month for bowing to Chinese pressure to block politically sensitive terms on its new Chinese site. Microsoft has also angered human rights activists by blocking the blog of a critic of the Beijing government. NEW BILL EXPECTED Smith said he planned to introduce a bill this week to formalize the goals of a new State Department task force to help American technology companies protect freedom of expression in countries that censor online content. The bill will include export controls on certain types of hardware and software and prohibit putting e-mail servers and other assets in countries that lack U.S.-style due process laws, Smith said. "If a company allows itself -- in its filtering capability -- to filter terms such as 'democracy' and 'religious freedom,' they will be in violation of U.S. law," Smith told Reuters regarding the proposed legislation. At the hearing, California Republican Dana Rohrabacher introduced dissident Yuan Li, who was seated in the audience, to the panel. Looking directly at the U.S. executives, he said: "You have to choose between Mr. Lee and a gangster regime." Li, a U.S. citizen, was beaten in his Atlanta apartment. He writes for a Web site that is critical of the Chinese government. "The requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship -- something that runs counter to Google's most basic values and commitments as a company," said Google Vice President Elliot Schrage. Google's new product for China "respects the content restrictions imposed by Chinese laws and regulations," he said. Yahoo Senior Vice President Michael Callahan acknowledged that the Shi Tao case "raises profound and troubling questions about basic human rights." He said Yahoo "made our views clearly known to the Chinese government." Some lawmakers indicated that Congress must consider practical issues of diplomacy and trade when negotiating with a powerful competitor like China. "The U.S. trade deficit with China shows that while we value the potential of their market, they value the reality of our market," Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told Reuters. "It is in this area that we should use our leverage." Nonetheless, some action is expected. "After this hearing, it is clear we cannot accept business as usual," said Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican. "These companies tell us that they will change China, but China has already changed them," Lantos said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: David Lawsky Subject: Microsoft EU Battle Over Large Daily Fine Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:25:29 -0600 By David Lawsky Microsoft Corp. formally denied European Commission charges that could lead to 2 million euro ($2.4 million) daily fines in an antitrust case on Wednesday, saying critical evidence had been ignored. But the European Commission, in an unusual statement, said Microsoft had filed the evidence 11 days after a deadline in December -- once the Commission had already issued a Statement of Objections to fine the company. The Commission also said it is market testing Microsoft's plans to offer access to source code, the blueprint for Microsoft's software. The Commission had given the U.S. software giant until Wednesday to explain why it should not be fined for failing to carry out sanctions imposed in March 2004 for using its Windows software monopoly to muscle out smaller competitors. The company was supposed to provide rival makers of server software with directions to allow their products to interconnect with Windows desktop machines as easily as Microsoft's own server software, used for work-group printer and other tasks. The Commission said the directions were not workable but the company disagreed in its formal response. MISSED EVIDENCE "Microsoft has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements," it said in a nine-paragraph statement about its 75-page confidential filing. "The Commission has ignored critical evidence in its haste to attack the company's compliance," Microsoft said. Microsoft said that when the Commission issued the Statement of Objections it and its experts "had not even bothered to read the most recent version of those documents which Microsoft had made available on 15 December 2005." The Commission flatly rejected Microsoft's contention, saying documents were available only at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Microsoft's obligation was to present the Commission in Brussels with evidence that it had complied and that was not done until December 26, the Commission said. In any event, the Commission said the revised documentation was essentially the same as the earlier, problematic version. Microsoft also exercised its right to an oral hearing that must be held before the Commission decides whether to impose the fine. The Commission said that would be in the coming weeks. The company said part of the problem was that the Commission "repeatedly refused to clearly define its requirements and concerns, despite repeated requests and accommodations by Microsoft." One approach Microsoft took to deal with that was to offer to show its source code to licensees. The Commission said the source code license is being tested with customers and evaluated by the monitoring trustee, chosen by the Commission from several nominated by Microsoft. Even before Microsoft put forward the idea, the trustee had no enthusiasm for it, saying in the Statement of Objections: "I comment that source code was never asked for nor indeed welcomed as a part of an explanatory document." The trustee also called Microsoft's documentation "fundamentally flawed." Microsoft responded to that with two reports by professors it employed and labeled as "independent experts," that it said show the documentation met industry standards. In addition, Microsoft said that much work had gone into the documentation. "Hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents that are available for license today," the company said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: BBC News Wire Subject: Microsoft Hits Back at EU Threats Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:28:15 -0600 Microsoft has hit back at European Commission accusations that it has not complied with demands to provide data relating to an anti-competition case. It was given until Wednesday to prove it had provided rivals with computer codes that would let them develop products to work with Windows systems. Microsoft said that Brussels ignored a 75-page report from the company explaining and addressing the concerns. The company is facing daily fines of 2m euros (1.4m; $2.4m). "The Commission has ignored critical evidence in its haste to attack the company's compliance," Microsoft said in a nine-paragraph statement. "Microsoft has complied fully with the technical documentation requirements," it added. 'Detailed documents' It went on to accuse the Commission of helping create the problems. "The Commission repeatedly refused to clearly define its requirements and concerns, despite repeated requests and accommodations by Microsoft," it said. Microsoft's problems date back to March 2004, when Brussels hit it with a record 497m euro fine for abusing its dominant position. As well as the fine, Microsoft was ordered to share technical data that would allow rivals to make their programs compatible with Microsoft's products. The Commission complained in December that the company was dragging its feet and not living up to its requirements. Microsoft complained on Wednesday that that was not the case. "Hundreds of Microsoft employees and contractors have worked for more than 30,000 hours to create over 12,000 pages of detailed technical documents," it said. Microsoft has called for an oral hearing, that must be held before any fines can be imposed. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4717474.stm Copyright 2006 BBC. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from BBC World Service, and audio programs, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:10:57 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 15, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 15, 2006 ******************************** Medical Teleconferencing Shifts to Telepresence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16672?11228 Medical teleconferencing technology is quickly moving into its next phase -- telepresence. At the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, cutting edge telecom technology is allowing global consultations during surgery in real time. Barrow staff members recently designed and built the MedPresence Conference Room, an "immersion... Profiles of Age 30+ Mobile Voice Users http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16671?11228 Wireless carriers, handset vendors, and application developers have built large businesses around several assumptions: -- Voice revenues will steadily deteriorate as voice becomes a commodity among wireless carriers-- Mobile applications such as music, video, and picture messaging will shore up those sagging revenues -- 3G networks... WiFi VOIP: How Safe? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16667?11228 Just as vendors prepare the first generation of dualmode cellular and WiFi mobiles for launch later this year, the wireless security community is starting to turn up threats to 802.11 VOIP handsets in the field. The Wireless Vulnerabilities & Exploits site, a repository of -- surprise! -- wireless security threats, has posted a... Virgin Mobile Promises First "Real" Cell Phone TV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16664?11228 Virgin Mobile has signed up for BT's Movio broadcast digital TV and radio service for mobile phones, a deal that will apparently make it the first carrier in the world to offer IP packet-based TV on the tiny screen using standard Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) technology. "Virgin Mobile customers will be the first people in Europe to... U.S. Technical Giants Face Lawmakers' Questions Over Role in China's Internet http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16662?11228 WASHINGTON -- A State Department official told lawmakers Thursday that China's efforts to manipulate the Internet have increased in the last year, 'sending a chilling message to Internet users.' James Keith, the State Department's senior adviser on East Asia, testified at a House International Relations subcommittee hearing at... Wireless Mesh Test Gets Underway http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16658?11228 In the first comprehensive test of wireless mesh networking gear, sponsored by Light Reading and carried out by testing firm Iometrix Inc., three of the leading companies in the municipal mesh networking industry are having their gear put through the paces at a specially constructed test bed in South San Francisco. (See Wireless Mesh... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:22:49 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BellSouth, DirecTV Extend Marketing Deal USTelecom dailyLead February 15, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dabsfDtutaAjkhnMuI TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BellSouth, DirecTV extend marketing deal BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cisco buys stake in online game operator * Ballmer: Microsoft is wireless industry's friend * AT&T invests in WiMAX/HSDPA startup * Nortel scores 3G deal with Cingular * EchoStar's president quits after eight months USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Author Steven Shepard teaches two Crash Courses at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Wireless carriers join forces to offer interoperable IM * Intel promotes laptops with embedded 3G * FT blog: Some carriers embrace dual-mode phones REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Telecom execs take TV franchise fight to Congress * House looks at U.S. Web firms doing business in China * Muni broadband hearing focuses on state vs. federal control Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dabsfDtutaAjkhnMuI ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 15th February 2006 Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 07:52:32 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] T-Mobile Aims To Up Mobile Data Speed Tenfold By 2010 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16116.php T-Mobile International, the wireless operator of German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom, Tuesday said it aims to increase the speed of wireless data communications tenfold by the end of this decade. ... EDGE to HSDPA Handover Achieved http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16132.php The Hong Kong based network operator, CSL and Nokia have demonstrated the industry's first seamless service continuity between HSDPA and EDGE networks. In practice, this means seamless hand-overs from HSDPA to EDGE and back without service interrupti... [[ Financial ]] Vodafone To Confront VoIP Threat With Data Bundles - CEO http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16118.php Vodafone Group Chief Executive Arun Sarin Tuesday said the mobile phone operator will look to offer large mobile data bundles in the future to counter the potential threat from Voice over Internet Protocol telephony. ... Customer Centred Service: What It Is and How to Implement "A Clear Path to Loyalty" Customer service efforts often fail or fall short of objectives because of a largely inward focus on strategy, process, people and technology. This paper describes an outside-in approach to customer service and a 5 step plan to implement it. http://www.egain.com/pages/eGain_bestpractice_knowledge_management_uk.asp?id=ir200&source=IR%20Cellular%20News Compliments of eGain [[ Handsets ]] Nokia, Sanyo Intend To Form Global CDMA Mobile Phone Operations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16112.php Nokia and SANYO Tuesday unveiled a preliminary agreement with the intent to form a new global company comprised of their respective CDMA mobile phones businesses, separate from the parent companies. ... [[ Interviews ]] Microsoft To Significantly Ramp Up Mobile Presence http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16123.php Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Tuesday the world's largest software maker plans to significantly ramp up its presence in the mobile telecommunications sector over 2006. ... [[ Legal ]] Ukrainian court rejectsback tax claim against UMC http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16125.php Ukraine's Kiev Arbitration Court has rejected a back tax claim worth over 68 million hryvnas against Ukrainian mobile operator Ukrainian Mobile Communications (UMC), UMC's spokeswoman Yarina Klyuchkovskaya told reporters Tuesday. ... [[ Messaging ]] Letting Parents Monitor Children's texting http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16127.php Avalanche Mobile has launched a software plaform that enables parents to see who is messaging their child, block suspicious SMS and temporarily suspend the messaging function of their child's mobile phone during school hours or other quiet times. The... [[ Mobile Content ]] Vodafone Forms Collaboration With Google http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16113.php Vodafone said Tuesday that it is collaborating with Google to develop mobile search services for its customers. ... [[ MVNO ]] Swisscom Launches MVNO Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16130.php LogicaCMG says that it has successfully deployed a Mobile Virtual Network Operator-Enabler (MVNO-E) platform at Swisscom Mobile. This solution went into commercial service with the launch of Switzerland's lowest cost prepaid mobile offering, M-Budget... [[ Network Contracts ]] France's Alcatel, VimpelCom enable mobile NGN services in Russia http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16124.php French telecommunication equipment producer Alcatel and Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom have completed the first phase of a project for the deployment of a mobile Next Generation Network (NGN) solution in Russia, Alcatel said in a... Mobile Operators Spending Billions on Network Expansion in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16126.php According to the latest budget figures examined by analyst ABI Research, many mobile operators worldwide will commit increased capital expenditure to network expansion this year. The CAPEX data, collected for the company's new report reflect increase... Expanding GSM Coverage in Bangladesh http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16128.php Bangladesh's GrameenPhone has awarded a contract to Ericsson to expand its GSM/EDGE network and prepare the core network for all IP. The US$150 million contract is to be implemented over a period of two years, during which Ericsson will remain the so... [[ Network Operators ]] VimpelCom to keep providing mobile services to Russia's Duma http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16120.php Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom that provides mobile services under the Beeline brand has been awarded a contract to provide mobile telecommunications services to the deputies and staff of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia... America Mvil to invest US$100mn in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16121.php The Peruvian unit of Mexican mobile operator America Mvil plans to invest US$100 million in the country during 2006, AMX Peru president Humberto Chavez was quoted as saying by local business daily Gestin. ... [[ Offbeat ]] Telecom Trade Body Uses Mobile Phones To Track Bird Flu http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16115.php The GSM Association Tuesday said it is working with a project team to monitor cases of the bird flu virus as part of its push into the developing world. ... [[ Personnel ]] Nokia CDMA Unit To Reduce Staff By 250 After Sanyo Deal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16117.php Nokia Corp. will cut about 250 staff at its CDMA unit following a deal with Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. to set up a joint venture, a senior executive said on conference call with analysts Tuesday. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Africa Held Back By Erratic Telecoms Regulation http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16134.php Up to 30% more people (25 million) in Sub-Saharan Africa would have mobile phones if it weren't for the unpredictable and short-term approach to regulation in many countries in the region, according to a study published by the GSM Association (GSMA).... [[ Reports ]] One Billion High Speed Data Users By 2012 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16129.php In a new report published this week, mobile industry body The UMTS Forum forecasts that there will be almost one billion active users of High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) networks by 2012. The new study also anticipates that HSPA will significantly sti... [[ Statistics ]] Samsung Sees Mobile Phone Market At 850 Million-900 Million Units In 06 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16119.php Samsung Electronics, the world's No. 3 mobile-phone-maker, expects industry-wide handset sales to rise to between 850 million and 900 million units in 2006, a top executive said Tuesday. ... Telefonica chief: LatAm mobile penetration to reach 70% by 2009 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16122.php The penetration of mobile telephony in Latin America should be above 70% by 2009, the president of Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica, Antonio Viana-Baptista said in a statement. ... Global sales of Mobile Phones will approach a billion in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16133.php The research firm GfK has announced that the worldwide mobile phone market continued its strong growth in 2005, with new technologies and developing countries having a positive impact. GfK's research shows the worldwide market for Mobile Phones in 20... [[ Technology ]] Intel Corp: Laptops To Connect To Global Mobile Networks http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16114.php The GSM Association, or GSMA, and Intel Corporation said Tuesday that they are to enable laptops to connect automatically to high-speed 3G broadband data and Wi-Fi networks via SIM. ... 12GB Hard Drives for Mobile Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16131.php Seagate has launched a 12GB hard drive that can be fitted inside mobile phones. The new hard drive offers a footprint that is 23% smaller, 50% more storage capacity, and 30% less power consumption than Seagate's current 1-inch hard drive. The ST1.3 S... ------------------------------ From: Stanlel Subject: Do Not Call Violator, Capital Services Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:18:56 -0800 Organization: Read Free News Despite being on the National Do Not Call list, I received a telemarketing call on my answering machine from some supposed refinancing company called Capital Services who's phone number is 888-462-1846. I say supposed because a company who intentionaly breaks the law by calling people on the Do Not Call list is probably not legitimate. I called back and asked them if they ever heard of the Do Not Call List and the moron who answered the phone said "do you want to be put on the list not to be called?" I told him I already was and asked if he thought they were above the law. Again the Do Not Call Violator's phone number is 1-888-462-1846. Please do not call this scum sucking law breaking company, especially from a pay phone where the call will be free so could be done multiple times. Also, do not use their phone number of 1-888-462-1846 to fill in web forms for things like Get-Rich Quick Schemes or porn sites. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you suppose it will make any real difference in the grander scheme of things? For example, I today have been plaugued several times by calls from people who (at least took the trouble to Google me) have been bothered by that 800 number someone sent in a message to here a few months ago: The (800 number) calls, refuses to speak unless it hears a fax machine and when a real person calls back and is persistent enough to dial as many times as needed to get through, they are given a recorded message saying 'please enter the extension you wish to monitor'. Remember that one? So, the half dozen calls I receieved today were people who had gotten that routine (ring, no speak up, call back, be told to enter the extension you wish to monitor) and these individuals went to the trouble of Googling the phone number; the only thing Google has on it apparently is the messages we had on it here a few months ago. The conversations then went like this: "Is this Telecom Digest?" My answer, it must be, you called in on my Winfield, KS Vonage line, the only place I _ever_ publish that number. "Uh, what is Telecom?" My answer, what do _you_ think it is, you had to read some internet stuff on it in order to get the phone number you dialed me on. "Is this some kind of sales pitch, why did you call me?" My answer, I did _not_ call you; no, it is not a sales pitch, although I agree that commercial pitches and scams is about all the internet is good for these days. "Well I do not understand what you want". My answer, I do not want anything, _you_ called me, or have you forgotten that much already? If the conversation continued at that point (although many terminated with that) the conversations only deteriorated further. One lady said 'well you sure are rude for no good reason'; I thanked her for the compliment and hung up on her. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:54:39 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: N11 Codes Neal McLain wrote: > I wrote: >> 811 Access to One Call Services to Protect Pipeline and >> Utilities from Excavation Damage (US); Available for >> Reassignment (Canada) > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> responded: >> This was historically used as an internal access for craftspeople to >> reach the C.O. test desk. In my area it is the ringback command, but >> not in others. > And in Las Vegas, it was the Sprint business office, plastered all over > city busses. But all such non-standard uses are now preempted by FCC order. >> As to calling for pipeline checking, a single number won't help if the >> contractor is too lazy or stupid to make that call... > Any contractor that's "too lazy or stupid to make that call" won't be in > business long. If the repair bill doesn't put him out of business, his > insurance carrier certainly will. >> ... and I've seen them do that many times with phone cables cut as a >> result. > Are you sure that the cut resulted from a contractor's failure to > call? There are numerous other requirements that both the > contractor and the phone company must follow. If the phone company > didn't follow through on its obligations, it would be at fault, not > the contractor. > Perhaps you might want to review the Pennsylvania One Call System's > "Users Guide," which includes the full text of the Pennsylvania > "Underground Utility Line Protection Act." http://tinyurl.com/8jq2w I've had to call twice here in Raleigh, NC. Well, I guess I didn't have to call but as I understand it digging without calling makes you personally responsible for the total repair bill. Anyway. You have to call 48 hours in advance and I had to also tell them which sides of my house to mark. I wish I had asked for all just to know for future reference. The service then calls everyone who is in their database and gives them my location. All with a vested interest have 48 hours to come out and spray paint lines on your yard, sidewalk, driveway, etc... Different colors for each service. Now I know that my gas line is in a bad place for me to put in that patio. Especially since the line goes from the street to my house then to my neighbor. One of these days I need to find out if the AT&T cable across my back yard is still live. They have a 10' easement. I wonder who owns that easement now? Plus there's dark fiber under my front yard from the dot com bust. I'm sure it's "protected" but I have to wonder if it will ever be used. Now way back when in '67 we were putting in the driveway to our house we were building. The payloader lifted up the bucket after slicing just 1' down and there was a phone cable dangling from each end. (All utilities were supposed to be 3' below grade at this time and place. Plus we were in the drainage easement.) Phone guys came out, checked their maps, started trenching. Boom, they hit a gas line about 2' down and 6' from the mapped location. No explosion but there was enough pressure to blow a LOT of loose dirt out of the trench. They hit the power button on the trencher and we all got a long break. Just to call the gas company they had to walk over 500' to a pod to open in up and connect their butt set to a live line to call in and report the problem. The current way works better. :) ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: 15 Feb 2006 08:57:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danny Burstein wrote: > Err, I strongly doubt "the parents had an excellent lawsuit". Despite > the common belief, there is _NO_ "duty to act" by the police or other > government services (outside of some very specific situations). There are > court cases up the kazoo where the various plaintifs find their cases > thrown out. This particular situation received wide publicity and was made the city look terrible. The boy was killed from being beaten up. If the police had arrived promptly they would've saved him. There was no reason for the police not to have arrived promptly. They received numerous 911 calls but the system failed to dispatch officers accordingly. It was a disgrace. An excellent example of how automation and technology is not always better than manual systems they replaced. As to the legal liability, again there was widespread publicity and agreement that in this particular case the city would've been liable because of the circumstances. Indeed, the city police dept is often sued and loses for doing too much or doing too little. >> There are still some problems with 911 receiving operators and the >> computer systems they use. > Talk to your mayor, council, whatever. It's _their_ decision to go for > the cheap. Who said they went for the "cheap"? These systems were expensive and modern. Forgive me for sounding smug, but some years ago I had a chance informal encounter with a local police chief and we talked about the emerging 911 computer systems. I noted some possible risks -- general issues present in any computerized system. As time went on those issues have come up in modern 911 systems. Nobody wants to admit that "garbage in garbage out" can happen to their system. But it does. Often. Nobody wants to admit their program can crash. But it will. Often. To me, it is inexcusable that modern digital police radios -- selected because they are supposedly "better", regularly fail while on the job. Are the manufacturers rushing these things to market without extensive testing the radios in worst case situations? Do the engineers even understand the propagation issues of digital signals? Geez, way, way back in Bell Labs they outfitted a Model T with radio receivers and measuring equipment (which had to be developed all new) and drove around the entire NYC metro area measuring signal reception. The map of signal strength was very interesting and showed a heck of a wide variation. This was back c. 1915. I guess that was the last time anyone bothered to do that. When the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was built, the engineers and Feds were enamoured with high tech. The Feds wanted some work for the aerospace industry which was in decline because of the end of Vietnam. But building an jet fighter is totally different than building a train. They don't have gritty dirt to foul up circuits and animals that chew on wires 30,000 feet in the air. Trains do. So BART had delay after delay before it could open since the circuits just didn't work. Trains have been running elsewhere with electronic control circuits for 50 years, but BART purposely rejected that technology as "old fashioned". BART's trains ran off the track into the parking lot, I heard because crystals malfunctions. In the meantime, another brand new system, PATCO (Lindenwold NJ) was also bright and modern but used -- by design (and lack of money) -- standard off the shelf parts. It bought used WE pay phones for customer help phones and a used SxS switch for communications. But its trains ran at 75 mph and reliably none the less, apparently the 50 year old 100 Hz electronic signal circuits they chose had some value to it. Please forgive my rant, but when the techo-geeks and the capitalists behind them offer some new "wonderful" high tech stuff, please make sure it is a genuine improvement for me, not just a tradeoff of new inconveniences and risks. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:30:37 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, excuse me, but if police are > notified of a crime in progress or one recently committed, yet have > 'no duty to act on it' except as it happens to suit them to do so, Not "if". This is a statement of fact, confirmed in the courts. > then _why_ are we citizens forbidden often times to carry handguns or > cure criminal situations ourselves? That is something that you need to ask the Democratic Party, especially those Democrats running the cities of Washington DC, Chicago IL, and San Francisco CA, which have distinguished themselves as banning handguns. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That 'if' you questioned above was the 'wrong {if}'. That particular 'if' modified the sentence about whether or not crimes are committed (they frequently are) and whether or not people complain to police (they frequently do); that particular {if} had nothing to do with the later part of the statement about what police choose to do or not to do with crime which is reported to them. Maybe you edited my Editor's Note incorrectly by responding to the last part of the statement but quoting the first part of the statement? Regards the 'Democrats who run the City of Chicago' (at least) you are correct, they all made me very nauseous; the stunts I saw them pull off made me vomit more than once, I just did not (and still do not) have the stomach to deal with it. I _never_ intended to live in that hellhole once I retired and got on my pension anyway; it was a very unfortunate set of circumstances which caused me to have a brain aneurysm in 1999 and after a year or so of diddling around with them have to retire early, but now that I _am_ retired mostly, I would never want to return to Chicago and live there. I know it probably makes me come off sounding like a hateful, bitter old man ( and that, I may be) but the place at one point I was proud to be part of and enjoyed tremendously, I now simply cannot stand to be around or near. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: N11 Codes Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:48:06 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > As to calling for pipeline checking, a single number won't help if the > contractor is too lazy or stupid to make that call, and I've seen them > do that many times with phone cables cut as a result. After 811 for "DigSafe" (what my region calls that number) is fully in effect the penalty for NOT calling before digging should be for "professionals" should be permanent loss of license and for property owners a month in jail to go along with all costs (including lost profits). Conversly if someone calls 811 and encounters an undocumented utility the digger should be immunized; costs should be picked up 100% by the utility. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 02:41:26 EST From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box dannyb@panix.com (Danny Burstein) wrote: > In Monty Solomon > writes: [ snip ] >> About 10 new movies are sent each week over an unused part of the >> broadcast TV signal using a technology called datacasting. > ( in other words, the drive is, err, "trickle charged.. .") > I'm troubled by this. The tv station was granted a license by the FCC > [a] for the specific purpose of sending out a broadcast signal, that > is, a tv program. Back when the transition to ATSC was first detailed the FCC (if I recall correctly) stated that each licensee would be required to provide one stream of free programming in a resolution no less than that of its previous analog broadcast. Beyond this, stations are free to use the remaining bandwidth for whatever they wish (including pay services). This troubled me at the time, but most people I talked to seemed to dismiss the issue. There have already been a couple of schemes to use part of the ATSC bandwidth for pay services, though I can't tell from the original article whether this is one of them or whether they are talking about analog broadcasts. Regardless, I expect we will see a lot more of this as ATSC becomes more ubiquitous (and independent of whether analog broadcasts are discontinued). > Ok, the world has changed, and they can take, say, 5 percent of that > bandwidth and use it for other purposes -- in this case to slow-feed a > separate, "store and play..." series of movies, but... They will be able to use a lot more than 5 percent... > I'd think a solid case could and should be made that this additional > bit of effective bandwidth should be either re-bid out (after all, the > original licensee doesn't "need it" for their licensed purpose). Given the largely independent nature of ATSC streams it might actually have been possible to do something like this in a reasonable way, but I believe that the possibility of pay services was one of the carrots used to encourage broadcasters to invest in ATSC hardware. Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:58:42 GMT Danny Burstein wrote: > In Monty Solomon > writes: [ snip ] >> About 10 new movies are sent each week over an unused part of the >> broadcast TV signal using a technology called datacasting. > ( in other words, the drive is, err, "trickle charged.. .") > I'm troubled by this. The tv station was granted a license by the FCC > [a] for the specific purpose of sending out a broadcast signal, that > is, a tv program. > Ok, the world has changed, and they can take, say, 5 percent of that > bandwidth and use it for other purposes -- in this case to slow-feed a > separate, "store and play..." series of movies, but... > I'd think a solid case could and should be made that this additional > bit of effective bandwidth should be either re-bid out (after all, the > original licensee doesn't "need it" for their licensed purpose). > [a] once upon a time the FCC licenses had to be renewed and it was > possible to lose them. For all intents and purposes nowadays those FCC > licenses are permanent. > Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key > dannyb@panix.com > [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] I would not say permanent, stations do get challenged and at times lose their licenses, as LA channel 9 did after fighting it for years, and the Orange County Educational channel is under attach by a religious group that wants the license. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #71 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 16 15:28:13 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D0EDB14EFD; Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:28:12 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #72 Message-Id: <20060216202812.D0EDB14EFD@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:28:12 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NA_DOLLARS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 16 Feb 2006 15:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 72 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson China Defends Right to Police Internet (Associated Press News Wire) Telecom TV Services Win Support From Key Senator (USTelecom dailyLead ) How They Know What You Like Before You Do (Kate Moser, CS Monitor) Many Contributors, Common Cause (Monty Solomon) Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World (Monty Solomon) The Idealists, the Optimists, and the World They Share (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 16, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs (T) Re: Congress Grills Internet Executives (George Mitchell) Re: Do Not Call Violator, Capital Services (jared) Last Laugh! Reminds me of a (Highlights for Children?) Cartoon (Carl Moore) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: China Defends Right to Police Internet Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:46:59 -0600 China on Thursday defended its right to police the Internet, one day after four American technology giants appeared before Congress on charges they collaborated with Beijing to crush free speech online in return for market access. "It is normal for countries to manage the Internet in accordance with law and to guide its development in a healthy and orderly fashion," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. "China has also borrowed and learned from the United States and other countries in the world. Does United States think it is so superior to the rest of the world in dictating the internet?" While China encourages use of the Internet for business and education, it strictly monitors the Web and censors anything it considers critical or a threat to the ruling Communist Party. Representatives from Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. , Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc. on Wednesday faced harsh questioning from U.S. lawmakers at a hearing of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee in Washington. Yahoo has been accused of providing information that led to the jailing of two of its Chinese e-mail users, while Google started a Chinese version of its popular search engine that omits links to content deemed unacceptable by the government. Microsoft shut down, at Beijing's request, a popular Chinese blog that touches on sensitive topics such as press freedoms. Analysts have said that U.S. tech companies eyeing China's market of 110 million Internet users face a tough dilemma of wanting to tap into an enormous consumer base and following Chinese laws, which give way to the perception they're helping China harass dissidents. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Personally, I think that China represents such a _vast_, huge market of mostly untapped citizenry, that the four major USA players are so eager to get their share of it they promise anything they must to curry the favor of the Chinese government. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:46:49 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Telecom TV Services Win Support From Key Senator USTelecom dailyLead February 16, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/daoYfDtutbbqxNFiHx TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Telecom TV services win support from key senator BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Gear makers ready for China's 3G rollout * Telecom spending on the rise * Amazon to challenge Apple's iTunes * Lucent shareholders vote to rein in executives' pay * Cisco to join Michigan Wi-Fi project USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Microsoft's Robbie Bach To Speak at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Dual-mode phones could boost UMA technology * Local search, classified ad boom in the offing * Surfin' U.S.A. REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Lawmakers take Web firms to task over China business Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/daoYfDtutbbqxNFiHx ------------------------------ From: Kate Moser Subject: How They Know What You Like Before You Do Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:51:39 -0600 from the February 16, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0216/p13s02-stct.html How they know what you like before you do The high-tech tracking of people's preferences puts firms in touch with tastes. By Kate Moser | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor The other night, a few friends sat in Tracey Kennedy's Rock Island, Ill., living room listening to music. A song by a band no one but Ms. Kennedy knew started to play, and everyone wanted to know who it was. Kennedy revealed that it was Silversun Pickups, an under-the-radar Los Angeles band she'd found using an Internet music service called Pandora.com. For her, the website's personalized music recommendations have sparked new listening habits. "It's like I've come back to life," says Kennedy, a 30-something computer programmer. "I'm getting all these vitamins I need." Since she started listening to Pandora at work in late October, Kennedy has bought about 35 new albums. That's music to the ears of those who make recommendation technology. By 2010, one-quarter of online music sales will be driven by such "taste-sharing applications," predicts a study released in December by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and research firm Gartner. Over the past decade, e-commerce has taken a cue from the notion that friends give the best recommendations. Personalized suggestions have become more commonplace as various forms of media converge, industry professionals say, and this could both change the entertainment industry and give consumers more power. What started with Amazon.com's "collaborative filtering" approach, which made product suggestions to consumers based on what they bought, has become a more precise science. Kurt Beyer, president of Riptopia, a digital media processing company, divides recommendation technology into two general schools: theoretical and empirical. The theoretical approach bases its recommendations on qualities inherent in a product. The empirical approach is similar to what Amazon.com does, gathering large amounts of data about the buyers of a product to make recommendations based on demographics and interests. Recommendation technology is "exploding," claims Daren Gill, vice president of ChoiceStream, a Cambridge, Mass., company that powers recommendations for AOL, Yahoo Movies, and eMusic, among others. ChoiceStream makes recommendations based on about 25 attributes, such as "macho," "romantic," "mainstream," and "obscure." Eight editors monitor the technology to make sure that when new music or movies arrive, the automated system places them in the appropriate category. Then algorithms create recommendations for users based on their previous choices. MusicStrands, a free online music service based in Corvallis, Ore., launched last year and is working to make "music discovery" a social activity. Last week, the company rolled out a new version that lets users see what their friends are listening to in real time. "They don't want to sit down and listen to what other people are programming for them," says Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria, MusicStrands vice president, in a telephone interview. With a library of more than 5 million songs, MusicStrands provides instant recommendations based on what someone is listening to at that moment. Listeners can build and share playlists and "tag" music with terms such as "contemplative" or "driving." This kind of social interaction, the Berkman Center study predicts, will help democratize musical tastes. "Instead of primarily disc jockeys and music videos shaping how we view music, we have a greater opportunity to hear from each other ... These tools allow people to play a greater role in shaping culture, which, in turn, shapes themselves," the study states. The Berkman study found that 58 percent of participants said they were exposed to "a wider variety of music since using any online music service." That kind of discovery is what Pandora is banking on. "People are so hungry to get reconnected with music," says Pandora founder Tim Westergren. "When you get into your 20s, music's just going to play a smaller role in your life ... You become another person who hasn't bought an album in -- you name it -- number of years." To counteract that inertia, Mr. Westergren started the Music Genome Project. At Pandora's offices in Oakland, Calif., about 40 musicians classify about 8,000 songs per month. They identify a song's fundamental traits from among 400 possibilities. The traits of a Beatles song, for example, might include "melodic songwriting" and "a clear focus on recording studio production." By identifying these attributes, Pandora connects listeners with all kinds of music - from mainstream to obscure. At its website, people can enter a song or an artist that they enjoy. Based on the qualities of that song or artist, Pandora then plays other songs it thinks they'll like. If they like it, perhaps they will click on a link to an online store and buy the music -- and Pandora will get a commission. Movie renters are expanding their horizons, too. Customers have contributed more than 1 billion ratings on the Netflix website, says communications director Steve Swasey, adding that 60 percent of movies rented by its 4.2 million members are based on computer-generated recommendations. Those curious about what films are most popular can check out the Netflix Top 100, or they can enter their ZIP Code and find out what's hot in their neighborhood. Community-driven Netflix recommendations are useful, says Mike Kaltschnee, who publishes a Web log, HackingNetflix.com, which is supported partly by Netflix and Blockbuster ads. Mr. Kaltschnee, who lives in Danbury, Conn., says he sees friends dropping red Netflix envelopes into the mail, and conversations about what people are watching start there, and then move online. "It's sort of turned into a little club," he says. But advances in recommendation technology have raised concerns about privacy, too. Last month, iTunes customers complained about a new feature called "MiniStore," a list of personalized recommendations based on an individual's music library. Critics say Apple shouldn't have access to such information. "The more that the company tries to get into the mind of the consumer, the more that they try to aggregate consumer information, there is the danger of blurring those lines of what is mine and what is yours," says Mr. Beyer of Riptopia. Will Internet companies sell profiles of their customers to others? Westergren of Pandora says record companies have asked him many times "if any of this stuff is for sale." It never will be, he adds. http://www.csmonitor.com | Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and articles from Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times and National Public Radio, with no login nor registration requirements -- the way the net should be -- pleasew go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:48:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Many Contributors, Common Cause Wikipedia volunteers share conviction of doing good for society By David Mehegan, Globe Staff Second of two parts Who are the Wikipedians, these unsupervised volunteers with strange pen names such as Schzmo, Hooperbloob, and Chlewbot, most of whom will never meet face to face? Who are these people who made Wikipedia, the phenomenal online encyclopedia of almost a million articles in English, with no one leading or directing them? There is no simple answer, since they're spread all over the English-speaking world. But leaving aside the vandals who do their worst to wreck the project, interviews with participants over the past few weeks can be pieced together into a partial profile. Wikipedians -- as they call themselves -- tend to be young, bright, lively readers. They are highly educated, intellectually curious, sociable, interested in many things and in finding new interests. They are computer-savvy, accustomed to the world of Google, blogs, user groups, meetups, instant messaging, and free and open information on the Internet. According to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, there are many more males than females. They are also idealistic and optimistic about people and the good things they can accomplish when they collaborate. And they're confident they can outlast, outwit, and defeat the people they call trolls and vandals, who represent the dark side of Wikipedia. To some observers, the undirected, anonymous nature of Wikipedia is disturbing: Who are the people writing these articles, and why should anyone trust what they write? But to the Wikipedians, that mass of unmanaged anonymity is what makes Wikipedia great. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/13/many_contributors_common_cause/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:48:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world By David Mehegan, Globe Staff First of two parts When the news broke last month that US Representative Martin Meehan's staff director admitted deleting unflattering material from Meehan's profile on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, it might have been a shock to some. Maybe it shouldn't have been. Wikipedia administrators have since turned up thousands of flattering or disparaging changes in profiles of dozens of members of Congress. Last week, volunteer investigators discovered that staff members in the office of Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, removed descriptions of him as a 'liberal Democrat' in college. A reference to Senator Dianne Feinstein's payment of a 1992 fine for not disclosing her husband's involvement in her campaign finances was removed by someone in her office. The revelations that political bias has crept into articles raises new questions about an Internet phenomenon that some are acclaiming as the future of information. And the issues plaguing the site run deeper than political spin. Wikipedia touts itself as ''the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," and it is exactly that quality that is causing problems. Two months after a highly publicized attack on the Wikipedia profile of a Tennessee newspaper editor -- in which a prankster falsely implicated him in the murders of President John F. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy -- the new disclosures sharpen a nagging question about Wikipedia: Can it stop sabotage and distortion without losing the freedom and openness that made the reference possible? In five years, Wikipedia has amassed a mountain of impressive articles, written by thousands of anonymous contributors. But the dark side of that freedom is that Wikipedia's articles are becoming battlegrounds, pitting writers with biased viewpoints and vandals trying to sabotage entries against a volunteer band of ''Wikipedians" who constantly seek to set the record straight. For the true believers, Wikipedia is far more than a reference work. It's a movement, a social circle, a proof of the power of free Internet content, even a kind of optimistic cult. "Wikipedia's goal is to give everyone on the planet free access to information," founder Jimmy Wales said last week in a speech in Boston. "We're talking about bringing people in to join the global conversation." At the same time, teachers and college professors are wondering whether they should allow students to cite Wikipedia as a source in term papers, which they are increasingly doing. Given its inherent nature as a work in progress, some wonder whether Wikipedia can ever be a reliable source of information. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/12/bias_sabotage_haunt_wikipedias_free_world/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:48:34 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Idealists, the Optimists, and the World They Share By David Mehegan, Globe Staff Wikipedians are a varied group, and while they may not know one another except online, most share two things: comfort with computers and the online world, and delight with the idea of contributing to a free encyclopedia for the entire world. Here are some faces and voices of Boston-area Wikipedians. Brandon Stafford, 33, of Cambridge, works in information technology for a local company. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/02/13/the_idealists_the_optimists_and_the_world_they_share/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:15:49 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 16, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 16, 2006 ******************************** The Case for European MVNOs: Cheaper for National Calls Than Host Operator http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16708?11228 The provision of "low-budget" or "no-frills" services is a trend that started off in the middle of the previous decade gradually expanding over a number of sectors in human economies. No-frills airline easyJet pioneered the European "low-budget" airline market in 1995, when it launched its services as a  "low-cost" air carrier that... Cable's Wireless Strategy Moves to Next Phase http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16707?11228 The joint venture (JV) partnering Sprint Nextel with four of the cable industry's top multiple system operators (MSOs) is expected to not only produce a hard asset in the form of a jointly developed wireless device, but even more significantly supply the fourth piece to cable's quadruple play: wireless. Cable's addition of a wireless... The Babel of Business: Do we Over-Communicate? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16699?11228 How much communication is too much? Everyone complains about information overload. Yet businesses are having to shout even louder to get their messages heard above the noise. Frances Cairncross, author of The Death of Distance, points out that a message that might once have reached an entire nation through one well-placed television... Ericsson, Telenor Partner for IMS Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16697?11228 Ericsson has announced a partnership with Norway's largest telecoms group, Telenor, to test convergent and seamless IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) services. In a press release, Ericsson stated that it was set to run tests on its IMS solution for convergent services with Telenor research and development (R&D) in 2006. The tests will... Siemens Plans to Split Telecoms Unit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16694?11228 German vendor Siemens plans to break up its loss-making telecoms division Com, according to German business publication manager-magazin. The move would involve either selling parts of the division or creating joint ventures. Significance: In the last quarter of 2005, Com made an operating loss of 43 million euro (US$51 million),... Motorola, T-Mobile International Ink Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16690?11228 Motorola and T-Mobile International announced a first in the two companies' relationship with a global strategic program for the marketing and development of products and services. The companies say that under their agreement, signed at 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, both companies will develop and deliver a product portfolio... U.S. Mobile Workforce Composition To Stay Static Through 2008 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16683?11228 The composition of the U.S. mobile workforce is expected to remain basically unchanged during the next three years, according to a new study issued by TelecomWeb news break's sister unit InfoTech's InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility (IEM) in its Mobile Communications in the U.S. Workplace. In its most recent "Mobility Market Monitor"... Profiles of Age 18-29 Mobile Voice Users http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16682?11228 AbstractWireless carriers, handset vendors and application developers have built large businesses around several assumptions: -- Voice revenues will steadily deteriorate as voice becomes a commodity among wireless carriers -- Mobile applications such as music, video, and picture messaging will shore up those sagging... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:59:13 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Dan Lanciani wrote: > Back when the transition to ATSC was first detailed the FCC (if I > recall correctly) stated that each licensee would be required to > provide one stream of free programming in a resolution no less than > that of its previous analog broadcast. Beyond this, stations are free > to use the remaining bandwidth for whatever they wish (including pay > services). This troubled me at the time, but most people I talked to > seemed to dismiss the issue. > There have already been a couple of schemes to use part of the ATSC > bandwidth for pay services, though I can't tell from the original > article whether this is one of them or whether they are talking about > analog broadcasts. Regardless, I expect we will see a lot more of > this as ATSC becomes more ubiquitous (and independent of whether > analog broadcasts are discontinued). Yep -- tis already spreading. This is an older article, but AFAIK US Digital is still going strong: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1549797,00.asp ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:05:06 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Danny Burstein wrote: > I'm troubled by this. The tv station was granted a license by the FCC > [a] for the specific purpose of sending out a broadcast signal, that > is, a tv program. What's the difference between MovieBeam and Muzak, which uses vestigial bandwidth "created" by the FM-Stereo Multiplex system. Do FM stations have to get an additional license to provide SCA service? Now if MovieBeam causes degradation of TV picture or sound, that would be a serious concern. I think it would be neat if datacasting could be used for say Windows Update in conjunction with a low cost USB-attached receiver. That would be a godsend to those on slow dialup or satellite connections. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: US Grant Web Site Will Not Work With Macs Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:14:50 -0500 In article , hatespam@hatespam.com says: > Associated Press News Wire wrote: >> A government Web site that aims to serve as a one-stop shopping point >> for scholars and others in search of federal grants is creating >> headaches for users of Macintosh computers. > FEMA won't let you register for disaster assistance from a Mac, > either. I found this out the hard way. This is what happens when you use Windows specific things like Active-X or the like. ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Re: Congress Grills Internet Executives Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:09:53 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Joel Rothstein & Paul Eckert wrote: > Smith said he planned to introduce a bill this week to formalize the > goals of a new State Department task force to help American technology > companies protect freedom of expression in countries that censor > online content. Would that be *ALL* countries that censor online content? Really? Every single one? Even under the guise of "child online protection"? -- George Mitchell [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Usually what they mean when they say this are 'ALL countries _except_ for the United States', which, in their opinion can do no wrong. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:25:25 -0700 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Do Not Call Violator, Capital Services One could surf the net to https://www.donotcall.gov/Complain/ComplainCheck.aspx (That on the federal National Do Not Call Registry website) The text on the web page is: FILE A COMPLAINT 1. To file a complaint now, your phone number must have been on the registry for 31 days. 2. To file a complaint, we need the date you got the call, and either the name or telephone number of the company that called you. *Reminder: Even if your number is registered, companies with which you do business may continue to call you. So may charities, political organizations, and telephone surveyors. Click Here for more information about the companies that may continue to call the numbers on the registry. > Despite being on the National Do Not Call list, I received a > telemarketing call on my answering machine from some supposed > refinancing company called Capital Services who's phone number is > 888-462-1846. > I say supposed because a company who intentionaly breaks the law by > calling people on the Do Not Call list is probably not legitimate. I > called back and asked them if they ever heard of the Do Not Call List > and the moron who answered the phone said "do you want to be put on > the list not to be called?" I told him I already was and asked if he > thought they were above the law. > Again the Do Not Call Violator's phone number is 1-888-462-1846. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:26:16 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Last Laugh! Reminds Me of a (Highlights for Children?) Cartoon The cartoon I was thinking of had the line "Mom, are we Republicrats or Demolicans" (cut & paste down the middle of "Republicans" and "Democrats") ----- Forwarded message # 1: From: net-news02@jmatt.net (Matt Simpson) Subject: Re: President Bush Wants to Bug the Internet Date: 15 Mar 2004 06:04:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com In an editor's note, Pat wrote: > The Demopublicans and the Rebublicrats have things so tied up (and > they are essentially the same regards oppressive government > legislation, etc) no one else ever gets a chance at it. And when a > third party candidate comes along who is at all popular with a large > number of people, (i.e. Ralph Nader) then the Demopublicans all > grouse about how the new comer is going to spoil the election for > the others. Those who are not happy with the stranglehold the two major parties have on our political system and wish to vote for candidates they prefer instead of choosing the lesser of two evils should push for the adoption of "Instant Runoff Voting". http://www.fairvote.org/irv/ This system would encourage people to cast their votes for candidates they actually preferred, without the fear that doing so would allow the eviler of two evils to be elected with less than a majority. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Carl, that sort of thing would never be allowed here in the USA. It is a wonderful idea, but I am sure you can see why the politicians who run things here would never, never allow it. For instance, I would like to see a Libertarian get a chance -- even a small one -- at election. If we got in this country to the point where the election of a Libertarian or other minority party candidate was even likely, I am certain the Demopublicans or Republi- crats would arrange to have the person assassinated, either by the US Secret Service or someone else. They would do everything in their power to 'neutralize' such a person, and failing to accomplish that simply have him assassinated, sort of like happened with M.L. King. On this same topic, what do you think about the effort to repeal the 25th Amendment (the one limiting the president to two terms in office) in order to allow Bush to run again in 2008, and in the event the proposal does not make the rounds entirely in time to get ratified prior to the election then it is suggested that Bush will use his emergency powers to cancel the 2008 election in order to remain in office until someone 'suitable' can be found to replace him. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #72 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 17 16:24:43 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5F11F150CC; Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:24:43 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #73 Message-Id: <20060217212443.5F11F150CC@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:24:43 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:27:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 73 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Apple Hackers Encounter Poetic Warning (May Wong) Virus Attacking Apple MacIntosh Computers (Reuters News Wire) RIM Still Open to "Reasonable" NTP Settlement (Reuters News Wire) Internet Muck Raker Challenges China's Censors (Chris Buckley) Cell Towers Under Siege (Eric Friedebach) The New Face of Phishing (Monty Solomon) Lessons From the Sony CD DRM Episode (Monty Solomon) Two E-Mailers Get Testy, and Hundreds Read Every Word (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News for Friday 17th February 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 17, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World (Phil Earnhardt) Re: Last Laugh! Bush in 2008 (Henry) Re: Last Laugh! Reminds Me of a Cartoon (Matt Simpson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: May Wong Subject: Apple Hacker Encounter Poetic Warning Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:03:30 -0600 By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer Apple Computer Inc. has resorted to a poetic broadside in the inevitable cat-and-mouse game between hackers and high-tech companies. The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp.'s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software - in the form of a poem. Indeed, a hacker encountered the poem recently, and a copy of it has been circulating on Mac-user Web sites this week. Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January. The embedded poem reads: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc." Apple also put in a separate hidden message, "Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext," in another spot for would-be hackers. "We can confirm that this text is built into our products," Apple issued in a statement. "Hopefully it, and many other legal warnings, will remind people that they should not steal Mac OS X." The hacking endeavors are, for now, relegated to a small, technically savvy set, but it underscores a risk Apple faces if a pirated, functional version eventually becomes as accessible and straightforward as installing other software on a computer. It's a risk that became apparent after Apple decided to make a historic transition to Intel-based chips, the same type that its rivals use in predominant Windows-based PCs. Apple previously relied on Power PC chips from IBM Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc., but this year began switching its computers to the Intel platform. Various analysts have since hypothesized a worst-case situation in which Apple would lose control of its proprietary Macintosh environment: how its reputedly easy-to-use and elegant operating system would no longer be locked to its computers, a critical revenue pipeline for Apple. Such scenarios have raised a debate among Apple observers about whether the company should just license its operating system to run on other machines, similar to Microsoft Corp. But Apple has repeatedly said it will not do that. Meanwhile, security experts on Thursday identified a new computer worm that specifically targets Mac computers running OS X -- a rarity since most worms target the broader base of PCs with Microsoft's Windows. Experts, however, consider the threat low. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Virus Attacking Apple MacIntosh Computers Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:05:45 -0600 A malicious computer worm has been found that targets Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system, believed to be the first such virus aimed specifically at the Mac platform. The worm is called OSX/Leap-A, according to a posting on the Web site of antivirus software company Sophos, which said the worm is spread via instant messaging programs. The worm attempts to spread via Apple's iChat instant messaging program, which is compatible with America Online's popular AIM instant messaging program, according to the Sophos Web site. The worm sends itself to available contacts on the infected users' buddy list in a file called "latestpics.tgz," according to the Sophos Web site. The vast majority of malicious hacks are aimed at Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and some of its products, largely because Microsoft has more than 90 percent of the market for computer operating systems. "This first Macintosh OS X threat is an example of the continuing spread of malicious code on to other platforms," said Vincent Weafer, senior director at Symantec Security Response, in a statement. The worm will not automatically infect Mac computers, but will ask users to accept the file, Weafer said. Symantec ranked the new worm as a Level 1 threat (with 5 being the most severe). An Apple spokesperson was not immediately available to comment. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: RIM Still Open to "Reasonable" NTP Settlement Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:58:05 -0600 Research In Motion Ltd. has not shut down communications with U.S. patent holding firm NTP Inc. and remains open to a "reasonable settlement opportunity," its chief financial officer said on Friday. With one week before a February 24 court hearing on NTP's request for an injunction to halt U.S. service of RIM's BlackBerry e-mail device, he also repeated that Canadian firm's technical workaround will avert any blackout. "We haven't shut down communications" with NTP, said CFO Dennis Kavelman at a CIBC World Markets conference. "You know if there's a reasonable settlement opportunity that we'd be there. I think we showed last year that we were willing to settle that." In early 2005, Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM agreed to pay $450 million to resolve its long-running legal dispute with NTP, but the deal unraveled just months later. NTP sued RIM in the United States for patent infringement in 2002 and won an injunction in 2003 to shut down U.S. service. That injunction was stayed pending appeals. In what has been described as the latest move in a high-stakes poker match, RIM announced details last week of a workaround plan that it says will let U.S. BlackBerry service continue even if it loses the patent fight. "We have very strong contingency plans," Kavelman said. "The critical thing for us is really to keep our customers confident in knowing that the service isn't going to get shut down." In a court filing last month, RIM said it stands to lose customers even after rolling out a workaround. "It is reasonably certain that some of RIM's existing customers will opt for other providers ... rather than go through the trouble of installing the new software," it said. Subscribers won't see any changes from the contingency software, which could be activated if there is an injunction, RIM has said. The company, which has more than 3 million subscribers in the United States, can appeal any rulings from the U.S. District Court, Kavelman noted. "Whatever happens at the district court level can also be taken to other appeal levels," he said. RIM shares were up $1.72 or 2.4 percent on Friday at $72.32 on Nasdaq and ahead C$1.84 or 2.3 percent at C$83.31 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. ($1=$1.15 Canadian) Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Chris Buckley Subject: Internet Muck Raker Challenges China's Censors Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:00:09 -0600 By Chris Buckley Chinese Communist Party elders and U.S. lawmakers fired shots at China's powerful censors this week, but Li Xinde says muck-raking campaigners like himself are undermining the country's barriers to free speech every day. Li is one of just a handful of Internet investigative reporters, exposing corrupt officials and injustice on his China Public Opinion Surveillance Net (www.yuluncn.com). Then he spreads his often outrageous, sometimes gruesome stories on some of the 49 blogs he uses to slip past censors. "They shut down one, so I move to another," he told Reuters. "It's what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run." Li, 46, lives in Fuyang, a city of 360,000 in the rural eastern province of Anhui, and he is far from a household name among Chinese readers, even Internet enthusiasts. But some of the cases he first reported became notorious after other reporters, even state-run television, took them up. Li's Web site has become a magnet for discontented rural citizens hoping to turn his spotlight on their complaints. In 2004, Li helped bring down a corrupt deputy mayor in the eastern province of Shandong after posting bizarre pictures of the official kneeling before his one-time business partner, apparently begging her to stay silent. More recently, Li published the grisly story of a businessman apparently beaten to death while in official custody in the northern province of Hebei. Recently, the Communist Party has sought to tighten its grip on information. Censors sacked editors from three bolder newspapers, and on Thursday removed the editors of Freezing Point, the China Youth Daily's combative investigative weekly. But China has 110 million registered Internet users, and even rural towns have Internet bars where locals can email complaints to Li or, more often, play computer games. "Sometimes old farmers get their sons to write to me," Li said. "CAN'T TURN BACK A RIVER" Swelling popular demands for rights are combining with the spread of the Internet to make it harder for the Propaganda Department to shore up censorship, even as officials shut down newspapers and purge editors, he said. "It's like the Yellow River. You can guide its course, but you can't block it and you can't turn it back. That's the Internet." Before embracing the Internet in 2003, Li was a soldier who joined the Communist Party and then workend as a reporter for a series of small newspapers. Now payments from well-wishers and reporters who use his leads give him a small living. Several Chinese journalists who have written for Internet sites abroad are in jail, and in two cases Yahoo provided evidence used against them. Li said it might make business sense for international companies such as Yahoo and Google to comply with China's censors, "but morally it's wrong to sell people's freedom." Li said he had published hundreds of reports on the Internet without direct trouble with police, but evading the censors had become more difficult in the past two years, as controls were tightened and his reputation grew. His Web site was shut down for several months, and only recently reopened, and many of his blogs are regularly shut by nervous or intimidated operators. But Li said China had dozens of Web activists who shared news about corruption despite censors. "I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do," he said with a chuckle. On Tuesday, 13 retired senior officials and scholars in Beijing, including a former aide to Mao Zedong, jointly denounced censorship. And members of the U.S. Congress this week proposed legislation to deter foreign companies' cooperating with Chinese censors. Bu Li said Chinese people's demands for clean, accountable officials, and their salacious curiosity about bad ones, were the censors' ultimate enemy. "Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen -- the military and propaganda," said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao's. "The gun is still firmly in the party's hands, but the pen has loosened." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters News Service, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: Cell Towers Under Siege Date: 16 Feb 2006 12:43:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thieves steal the copper, then resell it By JOHN GHIRARDINI The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 02/16/06 A towering symbol of the communication age is under attack by thieves seeking loot coveted since the Bronze Age: copper. At least three cellphone tower sites in Gwinnett County have been stripped in the last month by criminals who apparently want to sell the metal. "It's an ongoing issue throughout the metro area," said Kristin Wallace, an Atlanta-based Sprint Nextel spokeswoman. The thieves don't scale the spindly, windblown towers. Much of their electrical equipment is on the ground, in metal boxes typically protected by padlocked chain-link fences. The copper plates and bars stolen from the tower sites don't directly affect cellular phone service. Instead, the shiny metal's electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance properties help ground the towers against lightning strikes. And those can cause service interruptions. Copper is one of the oldest metals known to humankind, and ranks third in industrial usage behind iron and aluminum, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its common use lends itself to easy and profitable recycling. Taken individually, the tower thefts do not add up to large amounts of money. Plates stolen from one Gwinnett tower were valued at just $100 by the technician reporting the crime. A copper bar taken from another tower site was valued at $500. http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/0216gwxcell.html Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:55:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The New Face of Phishing By Brian Krebs | February 13, 2006 Phishing is a difficult enough form of fraud to avoid for most computer users, but when some of the biggest names in the financial industry fail to do their part to detect and eliminate these online scams, consumers often are placed in an untenable situation. Case in point: A source recently forwarded a link to one of the "best" phishing attacks I've ever seen. This one -- targeting the tiny Mountain America credit union in Salt Lake City, Utah -- arrives in an HTML-based e-mail telling recipients that their Mountain America credit union card was automatically enrolled in the Verified by Visa program, a legitimate security program offered by Visa that is supposed to provide "reassurance that only you can use your Visa card online." The e-mail includes the first five digits of the "enrolled card," but those five digits are found on all Mountain America bank cards, so that portion of the scam is likely to be highly convincing for some recipients. The message directs readers to click on a link and activate their new Verified by Visa membership. Now here's where it gets really interesting. The phishing site, which is still up at the time of this writing, is protected by a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption certificate issued by a division of the credit reporting bureau Equifax that is now part of a company called Geotrust. SSL is a technology designed to ensure that sensitive information transmitted online cannot be read by a third-party who may have access to the data stream while it is being transmitted. All legitimate banking sites use them, but it's pretty rare to see them on fraudulent sites. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/02/the_new_face_of_phishing_1.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:02:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode J. Alex Halderman and Edward W. Felten Center for Information Technology Policy Department of Computer Science Princeton University Extended Version February 14, 2006 Abstract In the fall of 2005, problems discovered in two Sony-BMG compact disc copy protection systems, XCP and MediaMax, triggered a public uproar that ultimately led to class-action litigation and the recall of millions of discs. We present an in-depth analysis of these technologies, including their design, implementation, and deployment. The systems are surprisingly complex and suffer from a diverse array of flaws that weaken their content protection and expose users to serious security and privacy risks. Their complexity, and their failure, makes them an interesting case study of digital rights management that carries valuable lessons for content companies, DRM vendors, policymakers, end users, and the security community. ... http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/pub/sonydrm-ext.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:58:25 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Two E-Mailers Get Testy, and Hundreds Read Every Word By Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff | February 16, 2006 Once again, a friendly reminder: The next time you're tempted to send a nasty, exasperated, or snippy e-mail, pause, take a deep breath, and think again. Then consider the tale of local lawyers William A. Korman and Dianna L. Abdala. Korman was miffed that Abdala notified him by e-mail this month that, after tentatively agreeing to work at his law firm, she changed her mind. Her reason: "The pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living." In his e-mail reply, Korman told Abdala that her decision not to have told him in person "smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional," and noted that in anticipation of her arrival, he had ordered stationery and business cards for her, reformatted a computer, and set up an e-mail account. Nevertheless, he wrote, "I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors." Her curt retort: "A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised any such reliance until he did so." His: "Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community, especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?" Abdala's final three-word response: "bla bla bla." That's when the exchange, confirmed as authentic yesterday by Korman and Abdala, began whipping through cyberspace, landing in e-mail in-boxes around the city and country, and, eventually, across the Atlantic. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/02/16/2_e_mailers_get_testy_and_hundreds_read_every_word/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My question would be which of the two decided to cc: or bcc: the entire world. That would seem to be where the fault lies ... PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 17th February 2006 Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:57:42 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Eircom Continues To Eye Irish 3G Mobile License http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16164.php Irish telecommunications company Eircom Group said Thursday it is still eyeing Ireland's last third-generation mobile license should Smart Telecom PLC lose the license. ... Nokia Signs Global 3G Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16181.php Nokia and Cable & Wireless have signed an International Frame Agreement for the supply of GSM and WCDMA 3G radio and core networks. Cable & Wireless is a new mobile network customer for Nokia. Cable and Wireless operates in 34 countries across the gl... [[ Financial ]] UPDATE: Eircom 3Q Net Profit Falls, Meteor Lifts Revenue http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16165.php Irish telecommunications company Eircom Group PLC Thursday posted a 44% fall in third-quarter net profit, but said the purchase of mobile group Meteor Communications and broadband rollout helped boost revenues. ... Infineon Has Improved Outlook For Communications Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16166.php Germany-based Infineon Technologies, Thursday said it has improved the outlook for its communications unit. ... FOCUS: VimpelCom's merger with Kyivstar unlikely to be approved http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16169.php PREMIUM - Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom made an attempt this month to resolve the conflict between its key shareholders by offering to buy Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar from them for U.S. $5 billion in stock. ... Millicom 2005 LatAm revs reach US$593mn http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16177.php European mobile holding company Millicom International Cellular (Nasdaq: MICC) posted revenues of US$593mn in Central and South America in 2005, the company said in a statement. ... [[ Handsets ]] Emerging Markets' Growing Mobile Phone Leverage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16173.php The phenomenal growth of mobile phone subscriptions in countries like India and Sudan is putting pressure on infrastructure and handset providers to start tailoring some of their products to these emerging markets. ... IN BRIEF: Mobile handsets are number one import http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16178.php Mobile handsets were Venezuela's number one import in 2005, racking up sales of 1.3bn bolvares (US$632mn), reported local tech magazine La Red. ... [[ Messaging ]] Russia's MGTS launches fixed-to-mobile SMS service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16174.php Russia's main fixed-line operator Moscow City Telephone Network, or MGTS, has launched fixed-to-fixed and fixed-to-mobile SMS services for its clients, MGTS' Deputy General Director for Commerce Alexei Goncharuk told a news conference Thursday. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] North America and Europe Playing "Catch-up" in Mobile Gaming http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16179.php Consumers in Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries lead European and North American consumers more than two to one in the adoption of both single-player and multiplayer mobile gaming, according to a report from Parks Associates. In the APAC countries surveye... Orange Trialling Mobile TV Over Unpaired 3G Spectrum http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16180.php IPWireless says that Orange will be the first UMTS operator to test IPWireless' recently announced TDtv technology, a mobile TV and multimedia solution based on the 3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard. Orange will launch ... Video Game Business to Double by 2011, Driven by Online and Mobile Gaming http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16183.php The video game market will expand from US$32.6 billion in 2005 to US$65.9 billion in 2011 as a result of its fast-growing online and mobile gaming segments, according to a new study from ABI Research. The market's largest segments today - console, PC... [[ Network Contracts ]] Ericsson Signs UMTS Network Expansion Deal With Cingular http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16162.php Ericsson said Thursday it has received an additional UMTS network expansion contract from Cingular Wireless for delivery of mobile broadband services. ... Ericsson Gets HSDPA Order From Mobilkom Austria Members http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16163.php Ericsson said Thursday it has received an order for supply of HSDPA to members of the mobilkom austria group. ... [[ Network Operators ]] Iusacell plans capex of US$50mn in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16175.php Mexican mobile operator Iusacell plans capital expenditure of US$50mn in 2006 as the company intensifies its focus on boosting its postpaid subscriber base and offering 3G services, Iusacell's CEO Gustavo Guzmn told a conference. ... [[ Personnel ]] Nortel Networks CEO Gets $7 Million Restricted Stock Unit Award http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16167.php Nortel Networks on Thursday said President and Chief Executive Mike S. Zafirovski received a restricted stock unit award valued at about $7 million for 2005. ... Vodafone Denies CEO Arun Sarin To Resign http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16171.php Vodafone Group, the world's largest mobile telecommunications operator by sales, Thursday said Chief Executive Arun Sarin isn't planning to resign. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Hungarian Regulator To Order More Telecom Fee Cuts In '06 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16168.php Hungarian telecommunications authority NHH said Thursday it plans to require telecom companies to further reduce call termination fees in 2006, particularly in the mobile sector. ... PRESS: AFK Sistema plans to participate in GSM tender in Egypt http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16170.php Major Russian holding AFK Sistema plans to participate in a tender for a GSM license in Egypt, Sistema's President Vladimir Yevtushenkov said, Kommersant business daily reported Thursday. ... [[ Reports ]] Free Report into Mid East and North African Mobile Markets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16182.php The mobile phone industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs inside and outside the industry, boosting economic growth and fostering social harmony and security, according to a new report c... [[ Statistics ]] Consultant: Mobile telephony to grow 10-20% this year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16176.php The Argentine mobile market is expected to grow 10-20% this year, but that will very much depend on the offerings mobile operators launch for their customers, local news service CanalAr quoted Enrique Carrier from local consultancy Carrier y Asociado... [[ Technology ]] The Advent Of The Wi-Fi Phone Draws Attention http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16172.php A new brand of phones is emerging with the potential to disrupt the business model of traditional mobile operators. ... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:28:14 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 17, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 17, 2006 ******************************** All in-One Wireless and Wired http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16737?11228 Wireless LANs and voice over those WLANs have seen explosive growth in the last year as more businesses find the technology provides multiple benefits in convenience, cost savings and increased productivity. According to a study by Infonetics Research, the number of organizations deploying VoWLANs will triple over the next two years,... Nokia, Cable & Wireless in 3G Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16733?11228 Nokia has announced an international frame agreement to supply GSM and W-CDMA 3G radio and core networks to Cable & Wireless (C&W). In a press release, Nokia remarked that C&W is a new mobile network customer. Under the deal, Nokia will supply radio networks, including its HSDPA solution; core networks, including the latest... Portugal Telecoms Mulls Separate Fixed-Line Unit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16730?11228 Portugal Telecom is considering creating a separate wholesale fixed-line company within its fixed line division, PT Comunicacoes, so that rivals can have access to its network, according to a company statement reported by Reuters. The operator, currently the subject of a takeover target by Portuguese conglomerate Sonae, admitted that the... Deutsche Telekom Plans to Reorganise T-Com, Cuts 1,500 Jobs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16728?11228 The T-Com job losses are part of Deutsche Telekom's three-year, 3.3 billion-euro (US$3.9 billion) cost-cutting programme announced in November last year. The telco said that it was planning to shed 32,000 jobs, or 13% of its workforce in Germany, by... Five WiFi VOIP Security Issues http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16727?11228 As enterprise deployments of WiFi VOIP systems reach the staging point, security will be a key concern for enterprise users. Shawn Merdinger, an independent security consultant based in Austin, Texas, has worked with Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board) and 3Com Corp. (Nasdaq: COMS - message board)/Tipping Point. He's... BT Group Invests US$21 million on Global Platform for Voice Over Internet Platform http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16724?11228 HONG KONG -- British telecommunications firm BT Group PLC announced Friday it is investing US$21 million on a global platform to provide voice calls service through an Internet network. About half of the investment will go into developing the platform for the Asia-Pacific region, said Allen Ma, president of BT Asia Pacific. The... Report: Enterprise Market Ripe for Cable http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16718?11228 Instead of waging a costly war with the telcos over video subscribers, cable companies should go on the offensive in the $100 billion U.S. enterprise market. (See Telcos vs. Cable: The Wrong War?.) So says a new report from Heavy Reading titled "Cable vs. Telcos: The Battle for the Enterprise Market." (See Cable Crowd Seeks VOIP Peers.)... Mobile Imaging Services -- Focusing on the User Experience http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16717?11228 The camera is considered by many users to be one of the most desirable features in a new wireless handset. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that, on a global basis, only a percentage of camera phones are used regularly to transmit, print, or store pictures on a web site or PC. -- Less than a third of camera phone owners surveyed by... New York Bill Bans Call Records Sale http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16710?11228 In the latest wrinkle surrounding online brokers of user call data, legislation to ban the access and sale of telephone customer calling records and also hold carriers accountable has been introduced into the New York State Assembly. The proposed bill -- introduced by Democratic Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and Republican state... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World Date: 16 Feb 2006 13:49:59 -0800 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:05:56 UTC, nospam4me@mytrashmail.com wrote: > Mark Crispin wrote: >> I decided that it wasn't worth fighting. > Fine, then don't bother with Wikipedia for anything that could > possibly have any kind of political or ideological content. With all due respect, I'm not sure there's a clear line to be drawn on which entries could have ideological content. For instance: the Wikipedia entry on Pilates has some strange criticisms of that form of exercise. About a third of that criticism has to do with the claim that Pilates equipment is similar to already-existing gear: a reformer is similar to a rowing machine, a Cadillac is similar to a gymnast's parallel bars, etc. I regularly use both a Pilates reformer and a rowing machine; these are radically different pieces of equipment. Anyone who would place such an entry in the Wikipedia entry either is ignorant of how the equipment is used (and seemingly disqualified to contribute to that entry), has an ideological ax to grind, or both. I haven't investigated the process of "correcting" an entry yet; I'm somewhat concerned by Mr. Crispin's reports on his attempts to do that. At the same time, I am tremendously encouraged by the Wikipedia. I regularly use it personally and professionally. Even if the ridding of bias is problematic, it seems the best game in town. > Herb Oxley --phil ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Bush in 2008 Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 07:21:01 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > On this same topic, what do you think about the effort to repeal the > 25th Amendment (the one limiting the president to two terms in office) > in order to allow Bush to run again in 2008, and in the event the > proposal does not make the rounds entirely in time to get ratified > prior to the election then it is suggested that Bush will use his > emergency powers to cancel the 2008 election in order to remain in > office until someone 'suitable' can be found to replace him. PAT] Is there really any kind of 'effort' being made in this direction, or is it just scare-mongering? If you recall, back around '97 or '98 the wingnut sites (such as 'Free Republic') were alleging _exactly_ the same kind of nefarious 'effort' by the supporters of Bill Clinton. cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: Matt Simpson Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Reminds Me of a (Highlights for Children?) Cartoon Organization: Yeah Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:32:39 -0500 In article , Digest Editor wrote: > On this same topic, what do you think about the effort to repeal the > 25th Amendment (the one limiting the president to two terms in office) > in order to allow Bush to run again in 2008, At this point, I would think the Bush gang needs to worry more about 2006 than 2008. With current trends, it's beginning to look possible to have enough turnover in Congress this year to make impeachment likely. And, to get this back on the telecom topic, here's a UPI article someone sent me yesterday that doesn't seem to be getting much notice: Whistleblower Says NSA Violations Bigger UPI Tuesday 14 February 2006 Washington - A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans' Constitutional rights. Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a "special access" electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress. Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution's protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws. He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees -- members or their staff -- because they lack high enough clearance. Neither could he brief the inspector general of the NSA because that office is not cleared to hear the information, he said. Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said they believe a few members of the Armed Services Committee are cleared for the information, but they said believe their committee and the intelligence committees have jurisdiction to hear the allegations. "Congressman Kucinich wants Congressman Shays to hold a hearing (on the program)," said Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman. "Obviously it would have to take place in some kind of a closed hearing. But Congress has a role to play in oversight. The (Bush) administration does not get to decide what Congress can and can not hear." Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed. Tice was one of the New York Times sources for its wiretapping story, but he told the committee the information he provided was not secret and could have been provided by an private sector electronic communications professional. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe there is a provision to tell certain select details to members of the committee 'en camera', just as certain secrets can be told to judges in courts only for the purpose of providing proper context to the topic. 'En camera' means that _whatever_ the details are which are being revealed, those same details cannot be shared with the general public, for example newspaper reporters, etc. The judges in those few cases are under considerable restraint to _not_ discuss nor even acknowledge the 'en camera' proceedings. This happens occassionally when a patent lawyer for example has a dispute and the court has to review the details. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #73 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 17 19:55:16 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 61379150ED; Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:55:16 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #74 Message-Id: <20060218005516.61379150ED@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:55:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:56:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 74 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update #517, February 17, 2006 (Angus TeleManagement Group) Anyone Use This (or Similar) Cellular <-> Cordless System? (Danny Burstein) Re: Home PBX (Dan) Review of Windows Vista (Michael Desmond) Mobile Operators Set Sights on Last Frontier (Georgina Prodhan) US Lags in Propoganda War (Daniel Trotta) Nokia: IMS Market Will Surge (US Telecom Daily Lead) Re: Bias, Sabatoge Haunt Wikipedia (Mark Crispin) Why Journalists Get It Wrong (SPJ) (alan@bloomfieldpress.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:23:19 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #517, February 17, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 517: February 17, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** CRTC Orders Telcos to Expand Remote Broadband Residential Rates to Drop Dissenters Oppose Deferral Account Ruling ** Strike Costs Shrink Telus Profits ** Nortel Adds Microsoft Server to PBX ** Rogers Readies 3G Wireless Rollout ** Cable Association Closing Its Doors ** Wi-LAN Founder Quits Board ** JDS Sells Ottawa Plant ** Dubai Group May Buy Canadian Call Centre ** Microsoft Offers Push-Email Wireless Software ** Cable Results Shine at Quebecor ** IIT Appoints New Chair ** VoIP Users Group to Meet ** Correction--Persona Cable Subs ** Telemanagement Live Sets Golf Tournament ============================================================ CRTC ORDERS TELCOS TO EXPAND REMOTE BROADBAND: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-9 rules that the major telephone companies must spend most of the money accumulated in their deferral accounts (a total of about $650 million) to provide high-speed Internet service to residential customers in unserved areas. ** Each telco's fund will be spent within its own territory. The telcos are to report their final deferral account balances by May 15, and to file proposals for broadband expansion by June 30. ** Only the "uneconomic" portion of the deployments are to be funded from the deferral accounts. Backbones funded this way must be available to competitors at "minimal rates." ** At least 5% of deferral account funds must be used to improve services to disabled customers. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-9.htm RESIDENTIAL RATES TO DROP: The deferral accounts were established in the 2002 Price Cap decision to accumulate funds that would otherwise have reduced residential rates under the price cap formula. The CRTC has now ruled that after June 1 no further amounts will flow into the deferral accounts: instead, residential rates are to be reduced. Bell Canada estimates that its monthly rates will fall by about $1. DISSENTERS OPPOSE DEFERRAL ACCOUNT RULING: Commissioner Barbara Cram dissented from the CRTC's majority decision on the deferral accounts, saying the accumulated funds should be rebated to customers. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre, which had argued for customer rebates, calls the decision "unfair and unprecedented." STRIKE COSTS SHRINK TELUS PROFITS: Telus fourth quarter revenue of $2.01 billion was 6.2% higher than a year ago, but strike-related costs cut net income to $78.5 million, down 59% on the quarter and 42% on the year. ** Wireless revenue of $877 million was 16% higher than a year ago, and net subscriber additions rose 26% to 235,000. Wireline revenue was flat at $1.21 billion. Data revenue rose 7.2% compared to a year ago. Residential lines dropped by 3.6%. NORTEL ADDS MICROSOFT SERVER TO PBX: Nortel has begun shipping Converged Office, which integrates the Microsoft Office Live Communication Server into Nortel's Communication Server 1000 and adds features such as real-time collaboration on documents, click to call, instant messaging, and telephony presence. (See Telecom Update #495) ROGERS READIES 3G WIRELESS ROLLOUT: Rogers Communications says it will complete technical trials of High Speed Downlink Packet Access technology in March, and begin offering it commercially this fall. The company says HSDPA provides wireless data downloads that are 8 to 10 times faster than the technology it now uses, and 1.5 to 2 times faster than the EVDO technology introduced last year by Bell and Telus. ** Ericsson will be Rogers' sole provider of HSDPA packet core and radio network equipment. CABLE ASSOCIATION CLOSING ITS DOORS: The Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, formed 50 years ago, will wind up operations this month. In a press release, the CCTA says it is no longer possible "to consistently reflect a single industry position on many key issues" due to convergence, new services, and changing competitive conditions. Citing similar concerns, Videotron and Shaw left the association in recent years (see Telecom Update #316, 509). ** About 85 small cablecos will continue to pursue business and policy issues through the Canadian Cable System Alliance (CCSA), a purchasing group established in 1993. www.ccta.ca/english/view.asp?t=&x=150&id=1322 WI-LAN FOUNDER QUITS BOARD: Hatim Zaghloul has resigned as a director of Wi-LAN Inc. citing disagreements about the company's new strategy. (See Telecom Update #515) Zaghloul was co-inventor of the broadband wireless technologies that led to the formation of Wi-LAN in 1992. ** Wi-LAN has agreed to sell its Til-Tek Antenna Division, based in Kemptville, Ontario, to Kavveri Telecom Products of Bangalore, India. JDS SELLS OTTAWA PLANT: JDS Uniphase has sold its largest remaining Ottawa manufacturing facility to Bangkok-based electronics maker Fabrinet, which is expected to transfer the operation to Asia. The sale does not include JDSU's R&D group in Ottawa. DUBAI GROUP MAY BUY CANADIAN CALL CENTRE: Multi International Invest of Dubai says it plans to make an offer to buy all outstanding shares of Toronto-based call center service bureau Minacs Worldwide for approximately $160 million. Minacs has formed a special committee to consider the proposal. ** The Minacs Board has appointed three new directors, and says this makes it unnecessary to call the special meeting of shareholders sought by company founder Elaine Minacs. (See Telecom Update #516) MICROSOFT OFFERS PUSH-EMAIL WIRELESS SOFTWARE: Microsoft has announced an upgrade to its Windows Mobile software that will add "Direct Push" email capability. It has also unveiled Windows Mobile-based devices using this software, which it hopes will compete effectively with Research In Motion's BlackBerry. CABLE RESULTS SHINE AT QUEBECOR: Videotron's fourth quarter revenue of $278 million was 20% higher than the same period a year ago. Operating income increased 14% to $99.9 million, and monthly revenue per user rose 12% to $52. The expansion of VoIP services led to a 30% rise in business telecom income. ** Revenue of Videotron's owner, Quebecor, dropped 8% to $2.68 billion. IIT APPOINTS NEW CHAIR: The Montreal-based International Institute of Telecommunications has named as its chair Mary-Ann Bell, a Senior VP at Bell Canada. ** The IIT has agreed to conduct joint research with CRIM (formerly Centre de recherch informatique de Montreal). Both organizations are supported by the Quebec government. VoIP USERS GROUP TO MEET: The March 2 meeting of the Toronto VoIP Users Group, formed last November to represent business users of VoIP products and services, will feature speakers from Richardson Partners Financial and Symbol Technologies. http://www.tvug.org CORRECTION -- PERSONA CABLE SUBS: Telecom Update #516 incorrectly reported that Persona Communications has 2.9 million cable subscribers. The correct number is 229,000. TELEMANAGEMENT LIVE SETS GOLF TOURNAMENT: The 2006 Telemanagement Live Charity Golf Tournament will be held Wednesday, May 31, at Caledon Country Club, north of Toronto. Proceeds will be donated to Canada's Telecommunications Hall of Fame and the Terry Fox Foundation. For details, and to register: www.telemanagementlive.com/golf.html ** This year's Telemanagement Live! conference will be co- located with ICCM Canada (formerly Call Centre Canada) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, October 24-25. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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: Danny Burstein Subject: Anyone Use This (or Similar) Cellular <-> Cordless System? Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:09:42 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Uniden has a new 5.8 gig cordless setup which, instead of using a wired phone line, hooks up to a Bluetooth equipped cellular phone. It's pricey but could be handy. Has anyone tried it, or a similar setup? It would be useful for all sorts of situations, including where you've got cellular service in the upper floor left hand window but nowhere else in the building... Saw it in a store yesterday. Here's a typical writeup: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007TIYES/002-1247041-0107251?v=glance&vi=reviews&n=172282 Thanks. Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Dan Subject: Re: Home PBX Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:40:42 -0600 See asterisk.org for software PBX. On 2/14/2006 10:54 AM, Humanplant wrote: > Has anyone heard or have any experience with a company called SOHO-PBX? > They are selling small PBX on ebay and have a website, http://SOHO-PBX.com. > I am looking for exactly what they have, but hate to just jump into > buying one (at around $80) without any information. It appears that > they are centered in Hong Kong. It doesn't look like they are selling > a bunch of their products on ebay, possibly due to the low cost and > high shipping (ex. $10 for the pbx, $70 -- depending on model -- to > get it shipped to USA) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you are seeking a _small_ PBX with a > lot of programmable features (it defaults to 2 external lines and 6 > extensions; is intended _not_ for heavy traffic but rather for covering > a large amount of space with the ability to call between 'extensions' > and 'forward' the same extensions around in a flexible way and is > totally modular, then you might want to consider 'Totalcom', a small, > relatively light-weight unit which can hang on a wall in a closet > somewhere distributed by Mike Sandman http://sandman.com/pdf/page76.pdf > in his latest catalog. Mike is out of Roselle, IL and he does give > very good customer service. It is not the least expensive either, but > does a very good job. Totally non-blocking, and you can program many, > many features. The one I have from him has a thirty-page manual with > programming instructions, which are all done from a touch-tone phone > which serves as an 'operators console'. He gets around $350 for his > unit, but, as noted, is totally modular, take it out of the box, plug > it in, and use it with no programming at all if you wish. As defaulted, > either of the two incoming lines ring through on the 'operator' > station, which is extension 100, also aliased to '0' from internal > use. As defaulted, the extensions are 100 through 105, with > extensions 106 and 107 also aliased to 'dial 9' and/or 'dial 8' for > outgoing calls. With no programming at all, 'dial 9' simply toggles > between whatever line is plugged into port 106 and 107 (or if you have > two outgoing calls at one time)to each of them. One small programming > change allows '9' to force calls out on one line, and '8' to force > calls out on the other line. (I do it that way, with my 'local' > Prairie Stream line going out on '9' and my Vonage line going out on > '8'.) Incoming calls on either Vonage or Prairie Stream ring through > a common audible to extension 100, but can be picked up from any > extension by dialing '*70'. It is not, strictly speaking a PBX; it is > more correctly, a 'line sharing device', and I have a bunch of modems > sharing 'extension 105' with my fax machine on extension 104. I use > extensions 100, 101, 102, and 103 around my house. For my needs, it is > ideal, or maybe even a little bit overkill. With me, it is not a > question of massive amounts of phone traffic, but my own inability to > move quickly as needed to get to a ringing phone and also to have my > Vonage long distance line and my local line both in easy reach from > any phone in the system. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael Desmond Subject: Review of Windows Vista Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:40:58 -0600 by Michael Desmond Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you probably know that the latest version of Windows -- called Vista -- is due to hit store shelves later this year (in time for the holidays, Microsoft tells us). The successor to Windows XP offers a little something for everyone, from eye-catching graphics and new bundled applications to more-rigorous security. In fact, there is so much in the new operating system that it can be tough to get a handle on it all. I've been noodling around with a recent beta version of Windows Vista (Build 5270) and had a chance to make some observations. While the sleek new look and polished interface caught my eye, it's what's under the covers that impressed me most. Microsoft's done a great job of improving security across the board. Things like Windows and spyware library updates are streamlined, and I definitely appreciate the more robust Backup software. Still, there's plenty of unfinished work left to do. Internet Explorer 7 struggled to properly render some Web pages, and I found local network connectivity to be a hit-or-miss affair. And then there's the stuff that isn't even in there yet--like the intriguing Windows Sidebar, which will put real-time weather info, stock quotes, system status, RSS feeds, and other information on the display. So during my time with Windows Vista, I kept an eye out for the reasons I -- and you -- might ultimately want to lay my hands on the new OS when it's available. And frankly, if you buy a new Windows-based PC at the end of this year or any time in, say, the next five years, you'll probably end up with Vista by default. Keep in mind, this is based solely on my experience with prerelease software (and a whole new beta could be out by the time you read this). Features get tweaked, they come and go, but from what we can tell, Vista is now starting to harden into the product that will be running many, many desktops for the foreseeable future. And by and large, that's a good thing. Here's what to be excited about: 1. Security, security, security: Windows XP Service Pack 2 patched a lot of holes, but Vista takes security to the next level. There are literally too many changes to list here, from the bidirectional software firewall that monitors inbound and outbound traffic to Windows Services Hardening, which prevents obscure background processes from being hijacked and changing your system. There's also full-disk encryption, which prevents thieves from accessing your data, even if they steal the PC out from under your nose. Perhaps most crucial (and least sexy) is the long-overdue User Account Protection, which invokes administrator privileges as needed, such as during driver updates or software installations. UAP makes it much more convenient for users to operate Vista with limited rights (Cleaning the system won't let them do certain things, like load software, without clearance from an administrator). This in turn limits the ability of malware to hose your system. 2. Internet Explorer 7: IE gets a much-needed, Firefox-inspired makeover, complete with tabbed pages and better privacy management. There's also the color-coded Address Bar that lets you know if a page is secured by a digital key, or, thanks to new antiphishing features, if it's a phony Web site just looking to steal information about you. These features will all be available for Windows XP users who download IE7. But Vista users get an important extra level of protection: IE7 on Vista will run in what Microsoft calls "protected mode"--a limited-rights mode that prevents third-party code from reaching your system. It's about darn time. 3. Righteous eye candy: For the first time, Microsoft is building high-end graphics effects into Windows. The touted Aero Glass interface features visually engaging 3D rendering, animation, and transparencies. Translucent icons, program windows, and other elements not only look cool, they add depth and context to the interface. For example, hover your cursor over minimized programs that rest on the taskbar and you'll be able to see real-time previews of what's running in each window without opening them full-screen. Now you can see what's going on behind the scenes, albeit at a cost: You need powerful graphics hardware and a robust system to manage all the effects. 4. Desktop search: Microsoft has been getting its lunch handed to it by Google and Yahoo on the desktop, but Vista could change all that. The new OS tightly integrates instant desktop search, doing away with the glacially slow and inadequate search function in XP. Powerful indexing and user-assignable metadata make searching for all kinds of data -- including files, e-mails, and Web content -- a lot easier. And if you're running Vista on a Windows Longhorn network, you can perform searches across the network to other PCs. 5. Better updates: Vista does away with using Internet Explorer to access Windows Update, instead utilizing a new application to handle the chore of keeping your system patched and up-to-date. The result is quicker response and a more tightly streamlined process. The update-tracking mechanism, for instance, is much quicker to display information about your installation. And now key components, such as the Windows Defender antispyware module, get their updates through this central point. Like other housekeeping features, a better Windows Update isn't a gee-whiz upgrade, but it should make it easier -- and more pleasant -- to keep your PC secure. 6. More media: Over the years, one of the key reasons to upgrade versions of Windows has been the free stuff Gates and Company toss into the new OS, and Vista is no exception. Windows Media Player (perhaps my least favorite application of all time) gets a welcome update that turns the once-bloated player into an effective MP3 library. The Windows Photo Gallery finally adds competent photo-library-management functionality to Windows, so you can organize photos; apply metatags, titles, and ratings; and do things like light editing and printing. The DVD Maker application, which was still very rough when I looked at it, promises to add moviemaking capabilities -- along the lines of Movie Maker -- to the operating system. There are even some nice new games tucked into the bundle. 7. Parental controls: Families, schools, and libraries will appreciate the tuned-up parental controls, which let you limit access in a variety of ways. Web filtering can block specific sites, screen out objectionable content by selected type, and lock out file downloads. You can also restrict each account's access by time of day or day of the week. As a dad, I can tell you this will be great for keeping kids off the PC while you're at work, for instance. You can even block access to games based on their Entertainment Software Rating Board ratings. 8. Better backups: When Windows 95 first came out, the typical hard disk was, maybe, 300MB in size. Today, desktops routinely ship with 300GB or 400GB hard drives. And yet, the built-in data-backup software in Windows has changed little in the past decade. Windows Vista boasts a much-improved backup program that should help users avoid wholesale digital meltdowns. Microsoft also tweaked the useful System Restore feature -- which takes snapshots of your system state so you can recover from a nasty infection or botched software installation. 9. Peer-to-peer collaboration: The Windows Collaboration module uses peer-to-peer technology to let Vista users work together in a shared workspace. You can form ad hoc workgroups and then jointly work on documents, present applications, and pass messages. You can even post "handouts" for others to review. 10. Quick setup: Beta code alert: There are some Vista features I hope dearly for even though they haven't been built yet. This is one of them. Jim Allchin, Microsoft's co-president, says that Windows Vista boasts a re-engineered install routine, which will slash setup times from about an hour to as little as 15 minutes. Hurray! The new code wasn't in the beta version of Vista that Microsoft sent to me -- my aging rig took well over an hour to set up -- so I'll believe it when I see it. Still, any improvement in this area is welcome. Five Things That Will Give You Pause All this is not to say that Vista is a slam-dunk and everyone should be running out to buy it as soon as Microsoft takes the wraps off. Heck, Windows XP has developed into a fairly stable, increasingly secure OS. Why mess with that? Yes, during my time with Vista, I've found more than enough features to get excited about--features that will make a sizable chunk of Windows users want to upgrade. So why would anyone in their right mind stick with what they've got? Here are a few reasons: Pay that piper: Vista is an operating system. It's the stuff your applications run on. But it'll cost $100 or more to make the switch. Unless you're buying a new PC and starting from scratch, you may be better off saving the money for something else. Where's my antivirus?: For all the hype about security in Windows Vista, users may be disappointed to learn that antivirus software will not be part of the package. There's every indication that an online subscription service -- possibly under the OneCare rubric -- will offer antivirus protection to Vista users down the road. But for the time being, you'll need to turn to third-party companies like Symantec, McAfee, Grisoft, and others for virus protection. Watch that hourglass: Vista is a power hog. Unless you have a top-end PC with high-end graphics hardware, for instance, you won't see one of the coolest parts of the new OS -- the Aero Glass interface. Microsoft did the smart thing by offering Aero Basic and Windows Classic looks as well, which will let older and slower PCs run Vista. It just won't look as pretty. Curse the learning curve: Microsoft has already ditched some aggressive ideas -- such as the whole "virtual folders" thing -- because the concepts proved too confusing for users. Even so, you'll find that the new Windows changes a lot of old tricks, and not always for the better. Heck, it took me almost five minutes to find the Run command, which used to show up right in the Start menu. And many users may struggle with the new power scheme, which defaults to putting the PC into hibernation rather than shutting down. I know it frustrated me the first time I wanted to power down the system to swap out a disk drive. Meet the old boss, same as the new boss: Microsoft has added lots of new stuff to Vista, but some features are just warmed-over fare. Windows Mail is nothing more than a rebranded Outlook Express, and Windows Defender is simply an updated version of Microsoft AntiSpyware. So keep your eyes peeled for future previews of Vista. It may not be perfect (what software is?), but in a lot of ways, it's a giant leap forward. Michael Desmond writes about technology from his home in Colchester, Vermont. Copyright 2006 Yahoo! Inc. and Tech Tuesday ------------------------------ From: Georgina Prodhan Subject: Mobile Operators Set Sights on Last Frontier Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:42:35 -0600 By Georgina Prodhan Anyone who considers travel to remote parts of the globe or in a plane as a refuge from mobile phone calls should enjoy it while it lasts, because areas until now out of reach are set to get connected. A new generation of mobile networks is being built out of boxes no bigger than a microwave oven that are extending the reach of traditional networks of base stations, satellites and masts to places not worth the attention of big operators. At this week's 3GSM wireless trade show in Barcelona, a crop of start-up and more established firms showed off technology that can be packed up and carried off to just about anywhere to connect hundreds of people at a time. Israel-based Alvarion, better known for its WiMax broadband wireless technology, is one of the companies expanding into this niche but growing market. Alvarion, which estimates the size of the current market at several hundred million dollars, has connected populations in Micronesia, on cruise ships and in disaster zones where normal communications have been knocked out. It sells what it calls a network in a box -- a complete network containing a mobile switching center, a base station controller and a base transceiver station which it says is the world's tiniest complete GSM network. "Our smallest box can be lifted up by one person," says Gilad Peleg, Alvarion's director of compact cellular networks. He says such a box would typically be used to connect a few hundred callers in a radius of up to 20 kilometres (12 miles). The network can be just local, for use in military or post-disaster situations, or can be connected through the box to a satellite or wider GSM network. "We use it in places like Alaska where they have a base station on shore but there are fishing boats offshore that need some communication," says Peleg. "They use their phones when they're coming in from their catch to actually sell their fish before they hit the shore, adds Alvarion's marketing chief, Carlton O'Neal. IN-FLIGHT CALLS Other firms are impatiently eyeing the in-flight market, estimated in the industry to be potentially worth as much as $3 billion annually, despite surveys that show most passengers do not want to make calls in the air. Most major airlines have already teamed up with telecoms partners to be able to offer on-board GSM mobile calls as soon as regulators give the go-ahead. Connexion by Boeing has installed high-speed Internet access via WiFi in some planes for airlines including Lufthansa, and rival Airbus is part of a consortium working on an on-board GSM system. Operators are confident they can overcome issues of aircraft safety and cross-border telecoms licensing, and OnAir has said it expects a framework European agreement on coordinating telecoms regulations as early as this month. OnAir has estimated a potential market of more than 700 million users by 2009. CALLS IN SPACE? Behind the technology stand firms like privately held Ireland-based Altobridge, which provides call-by-call satellite connections from a small box that can be installed on board. Chief Executive Mike Fitzgerald told Reuters in Barcelona the equipment was significantly cheaper than alternatives, partly because it uses systems that already exist in planes for calls from seat-back phones to Inmarsat satellites. Calls would be far cheaper than broadband connections currently on offer, he said, starting at perhaps $2 per minute with the goal of coming down to $1.25 in three years. Altobridge, which says it has conducted a successful test with Boeing, currently uses the box in remote locations and on board ships and yachts. "Right now in the Antarctic there's Australian government scientists communicating with their families on their GSM phones using this box," Fitzgerald said. So is there anywhere it would be impossible to make a mobile call? "Underwater is the only place I can think of," says Alvarion's O'Neal. Asked whether one could build a network in space, he says: "Probably. You could get the signal to anywhere." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:36:24 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Nokia: IMS Market Will Surge USTelecom dailyLead February 17, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dazEfDtutbdvqhlXnS TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Nokia: IMS market will surge BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telefonica eyeing KPN? * Icahn ends fight to control Time Warner board * Report: Router sales jump, switch sales fall * Companies look to crack mobile entertainment market * Chicago to seek proposals on citywide Wi-Fi network USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * IDC to host IMS technology "shoot out" at TelecomNEXT * Last chance! Free study with full TelecomNEXT registration TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Google premieres episode of "Footballers' Wives" VOIP DOWNLOAD * Skype announces roaming deal with 3 Group * Wi-Fi/VoIP presents difficult security problems Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dazEfDtutbdvqhlXnS ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Bias, Sabotage Haunt Wikipedia's Free World Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:06:52 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Thu, 16 Feb 2006, Phil Earnhardt wrote: > I haven't investigated the process of "correcting" an entry yet; I'm > somewhat concerned by Mr. Crispin's reports on his attempts to do > that. To the extent that it undermines the credibility of Wikipedia, it should be of concern. However, I don't see a good or obvious remedy. Among other things, what is a "correction" to one person may be an ideological screed to another. Nevertheless, what happened in the incident that I mentioned is that EVERY last bit of my edits were revoked, including grammar and structure changes to make the articles less sloppy. What's more, a comment that I added to the Talk page was removed. I investigated the background of the person who did it. He's a proud member of the political party of the disgraced politician (an ultra-Left party), now totally out of power. My choice was to fight it, or to let it pass. I decided to let it pass. It makes no sense to fight the Left on a battlefield of their choosing; instead you defeat them where it matters. Nevertheless, it's yet another example of the Left's assertion of control via censorship. > At the same time, I am tremendously encouraged by the Wikipedia. I > regularly use it personally and professionally. Even if the ridding of > bias is problematic, it seems the best game in town. It is a useful resource, but it's vitally important to recognize its limitations on current topics which have political implications. I would not trust ANY Wikipedia biography on ANY current (or recent) public figure. If Wikipedia wants to be credible, it should delete all these biographies or simply replace them with short dry texts. Defer biographies until they're long-dead. -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. ------------------------------ From: Daniel Trotta Subject: US Lags in Propoganda War According to Rumsfeld Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:37:52 -0600 By Daniel Trotta The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday. Modernization is crucial to winning the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide who are bombarded with negative images of the West, Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations. The Pentagon chief said today's weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs. "Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but ... our country has not adapted," Rumsfeld said. "For the most part, the U.S. government still functions as a 'five and dime' store in an eBay world," Rumsfeld said, referring to old-fashioned U.S. retail stores and the online auction house, respectively. Rumsfeld said U.S. military public affairs officers must learn to anticipate news and respond faster, and good public affairs officers should be rewarded with promotions. The military's information offices still operate mostly eight hours a day, five or six days a week while the challenges they faces occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rumsfeld called that a "dangerous deficiency." Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy of the opposition Democratic Party immediately criticized Rumsfeld as missing the point. "Clearly, we need to improve our public diplomacy and information age communication in the Muslim world," Kennedy said in a statement. "But nothing has done more to encourage increased Al Qaeda recruitment and made America less safe than the war in Iraq and the incompetent way it's been managed. Our greatest failure is our policy." Rumsfeld lamented that vast media attention about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq outweighed that given to the discovery of "Saddam Hussein's mass graves." On the emergence of satellite television and other media not under Arab state control, he said, "While al Qaeda and extremist movements have utilized this forum for many years ... we in the government have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td=extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:23:01 -0500 From: alan@bloomfieldpress.com Subject: Why Journalists Get It Wrong (SPJ) Why Journalists Get It Wrong Why Journalists Get It Wrong Why Journalists Get It Wrong A discussion featuring ... journalists w/four lists of reasons by Alan Korwin The Uninvited Ombudsman February 17, 2006 In a move virtually without precedent locally, the Phoenix Society of Professional Journalists chapter staged a meeting to examine, "Why Journalists Get It Wrong," at a quiet private location in the northeast valley. Only about twenty attended the widely announced meeting, most of them working journalists or PIOs (public information officers, the current title for official government and private spokespersons). The meeting began tentatively, with a moderator asking thoughtful questions of the four panelists -- a courts reporter (Tribune), copy editor/headline writer (Arizona Republic), TV news director (ABC-15 Phoenix), and the PIO for the Peoria police. By the end of the 90-minute session, the room was alive with honest, introspective discussion, looking into some of the darkest corners of the beleaguered journalism profession. In the mild-mannered startup, the usual suspects were outed as reasons why mistakes occur. At this point, and to some extent throughout the evening, "getting it wrong" meant minor factual errors like getting names and dates wrong, or erroneous details contained in a piece. Be patient. It gets better. Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #1 Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #1 The usual suspects, widely recognized: Competitive pressure Time pressure Deadline pressure Rushing Lack of management oversight Novice staff Working from memory Non-malicious editing distortion Fixed amount of print space Fixed amount of broadcast time The effects of shortening Editorial predilection for official sources The Steel Curtain (more on this later) Shortage of journalists Lack of experience on a beat One panelist, citing a well-respected study, noted that journalism is "chronically wrong," with, on average, every other story containing three errors. The focus was still on countable errors, and didn't yet get to the rotten underbelly part -- those core reasons why many people (some would say rightly) do not trust what the news presents these days. As the audience and panelists warmed up to the subject, a dialog (multilog?) began to take hold. Personal reasons for not adequately pursuing a story began to emerge. The quotes below are paraphrases -- why feign accuracy when I have no recording and only hand notes and memory to draw from. Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #2 Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #2 Personal reasons emerge: "I can't be rude, or force error checking." "I'm at the mercy of the PIO." "There's noting I can do if the PIO doesn't get back to me." "I could get fired if I went that far." "No one will do that." "There is a culture of fear." "Reporters come to the task without understanding of the basics, civics, or the subject." About that "culture of fear" (a verbatim quote), it takes several forms. There is fear of management disapproval of verbiage, handling, decorum in the field. Also expressed was the editorial distaste for non-official sources. A statement from an official spokesdog is desirable, statements from anyone else is suspect, especially if it is a plain vanilla citizen. That's because the citizen's background and veracity are unknown. It's not clear how to contrast that against the PIO's veracity, whose background as a front for an organization is not only known, but shines in flashing neon. Don't get me wrong, PIOs are a valuable resource, serve a purpose, and the man from Peoria PD seemed and was received as an exemplary example of how the role should be filled. Reporter reliance however, and an outfit's hiding behind its PIO, are at issue. There was broad recognition of PIO stonewalling, and deep-rooted reporter fear of going around the PIO. Fear is also instilled in the hearts of an organization's people, by its leadership, to avoid the dangerous media. And it's getting worse, the crowd agreed. "I used to go through my Rolodex, call a contact, and get an answer. Now, it's, 'I'll have our PIO get back to you at some point.'" How does a breathing and conscious journalist or editor take that for a reliable source? What you get there is a sanitized, dandified massage from the outfit you're supposed to be reporting on. Taking that, or standing there begging for it as many reporters apparently do, defines a lapdog, not a watchdog. And what's bad for the media is that the public can see this. When a story begins, "The White House announced today ...", well, that's why they're called stories. Would transparency help? "We have no information beside what the outfit handed us." Or maybe, "We have in no way checked this wire service story before running it. If you find an error, just contact them." Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #3 Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #3 Deeper problems revealed through frank discussion - Journalists need more curiosity, because they often seem to lack any. - You can't cover a subject accurately if you haven't learned it first. - Journalists lack courage. They will piss off people if they report properly, and are unwilling to do so, so pabulum appears where the news is supposed to be. - What used to be thought of as normal reporting is now the special and narrow category of investigative reporting. It turns out that investigative work is hard and has special requirements. You need more than one person and a non-deadlined period of time, to identify an issue, research it, dig, and report on what you find. These stories that really report (instead of "disseminating information") have to go through the anxiety-ridden lawyercoaster, often more than once, at huge cost. Wrapup: Time ran out as the room really got into it, looking at fundamental issues like the lapdog-watchdog thing, the impossible constraints of business that must affect reporting (but which are routinely ignored so the objectivity flag can be waved with abandon). With a little more time we seemed on track to reach the largest and deepest sources of error in the news these days, the part people are most responsive to, and that harms the profession's reputation more than anything. Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #4 Reasons Journalists Get It Wrong, List #4 The rotten underbelly of the beast: Categorical omissions Tactical omissions Slant, spin and bias Agendas He-said she-said instead of research Pretense of objectivity in inherently subjective matters Position on the left-right continuum Government coziness Personal laziness Political correctness Advertising pressure and etiquette The rare reporter cheat who gets all the attention Personal hatred of some subjects We've got a long way to go. This was sure a good start. Alan Korwin The Uninvited Ombudsman ----------- Contact: Alan Korwin BLOOMFIELD PRESS "We publish the gun laws." 4718 E. Cactus #440 Phoenix, AZ 85032 602-996-4020 Phone 602-494-0679 FAX 1-800-707-4020 Orders http://www.gunlaws.com alan@gunlaws.com Call, write, fax or click for a free catalog. Encourage politicians to pass more laws... with expiration dates. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some very good discussions. In my own experience in years past, the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune were unwilling to listen to me describe what was wrong with the train in an Illinois Central train which crashed. Why? I was not an employee of the railroad, therefore could not possibly know anything. _Chicago Today_ (newspaper defunct since 1974) and Chicago Daily News (newspaper defunct since 1976) were perfectly willing to at least listen to alternative points of view but not the Tribune ... oh no ... the Tribune was the newspaper which, during the 1950-60's era always took such pride in its detailed reporting _using only the police files, [but of course]_ of the numerous morals raids the Chicago Police would conduct in gay bars and theatres around town, reports which included the entire name, home address and home phone number of each person caught up in a 'raid' along with the name of the company the person worked for. And the news this past week, where the hunting companion of Dick Cheney was almost killed by the VP. They (White House staff) reported the incident to the local newspaper, and everyone it seems was angry because it was reported to the Corpus Christi Times rather than the New York Times. Reporters are a funny bunch; generally I do not trust any of them. The reporters for NPR are okay and trustworthy, and by and large they are okay at the Monitor also, but mostly they just cannot be trusted. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #74 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Feb 18 16:59:35 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id ADA7615165; Sat, 18 Feb 2006 16:59:34 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #75 Message-Id: <20060218215934.ADA7615165@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 16:59:34 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 18 Feb 2006 17:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 75 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Formally Rejects Justice Department Subpoena (Eric Auchard) Defendant to Serve Life in Prison in Internet Child Porn Case (US Newswire) Rolling Over Customers Who Change Their Calling Plans (David Lazarus) Chicago Gears up For Wireless Broadband (Dave Carpenter) Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (David Lazarus) Give Us Your Consent, Online Now, or Else! (David Lazarus) Security Breach Reaches 200,000 Debit Card Holders (David Lazarus) Slamming (or Something Similar) (Here and Kickin') Re: Home PBX (Jim Haynes) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Formally Rejects Justice Department Subpoena for Information Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:58:45 -0600 By Eric Auchard Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets. Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California the government demand to disclose Web search data was impractical. The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand over Web search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department to appeal a 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators who allow children to view pornography. Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government request. Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the companies that have complied with the Justice Department demand for data to be used to make its case. Google's lawyers said the company shares the government's concern with materials harmful to minors but argued that the request for its data was irrelevant. They offered a series of technical arguments why this data was not useful. The Mountain View, California-based company said that complying with the U.S. government's request for "untold millions of search queries" would put an undue burden on the company, including a "week of engineer time to complete." "Algorithms regularly change. The identical search query submitted today may yield a different result than the identical search conducted yesterday," attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP, the company's external legal counsel, argue in the filing. Complying with the Justice Department request would also force Google to reveal how its Web search technology works -- something it jealously guards as a trade secret, the company argued. It refuses to disclose even the total number of searches conducted each day. Google's resistance contrasts with a deal the company has struck with the Chinese government to censor some searches on a new site in China, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from members of the U.S. Congress and human rights activists. "Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box ... that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate absent a compelling reason," attorneys for Google said in the filing. The legal spat also comes amid heightened sensitivity to privacy issues by the company as it recently began offering a new version of its Google Desktop service that vacuums up data stored on user PCs and makes it accessible on the users' other computers. For customers who consent to the service, copies of their data are stored on Google's central computers. Privacy activists have rallied to the defense of Google for fighting the U.S. government request while some conservative and religious organizations have criticized the company for failing to help the government combat child pornography. The American Civil Liberties Union, with other civil rights groups, bookstores and alternative media outlets filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Google. The hearing on the Justice Department motion to compel Google to divulge the search data is scheduled to take place on March 13 in San Jose before U.S. District Judge James Ware. "The government must show that this request is the most relevant way to accomplish its goal," said Perry Aftab, an attorney, privacy activist and executive director of WiredSafety.org, a popular online child safety site. "Why would Google or anyone else turn over data that might create further risks for their customers? The public policy gains don't outweigh the risks," she said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: U.S. Newswire Subject: Defendant to Serve Life in Prison in Internet Child Porn Case Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:11:35 -0600 Contact: Vickie E. Leduc of the U.S. Department of Justice, 410-209-4885; Web: http://WWW.USDOJ.GOV/USAO/MD BALTIMORE, Feb. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein announced today that U.S. Dist- rict Judge Marvin J. Garbis sentenced James A. Reigle, Jr., 46, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to life in prison in connection with his December 8, 2005 conviction by a federal jury of sexually exploiting minors to produce child pornography; conspiracy to transport, ship, and possess child pornography; and transportation and shipment of child pornography. United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said, "This case is significant for two reasons. First, the arrest stemmed from a new law enforcement initiative in which we take images of unknown adults from photographs that show them engaging in sex with children, then we broadcast the faces of the adults over the internet and on television. We employ the same technology that child molesters use to spread child pornography anonymously, but we use it to identify the child molesters and catch them. Second, this is the first time that a defendant has been sentenced to serve a mandatory sentence of life in prison for repeated sex offenses against children, under the 'two strikes and you're out' law enacted in 2003." According to evidence established at trial, between 1998 and September 2002, Reigle developed relationships with several minor males and took pictures of them engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Reigle, an avid Internet user, developed a relationship with Thomas Evered, 39, of Lolo, Montana, whom he met in a chat room. The two formed a close friendship and traded pictures with each other from their child pornography collection. The evidence showed that in 2002, Reigle was sentenced by a U.S. District Judge in Harrisburg, to a 37 month federal prison term for possession of child pornography. That same year, a state judge in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania sentenced Reigle to a concurrent sentence for sexually molesting a Harrisburg boy. Witnesses testified that shortly after he reported to federal prison on September 23, 2002, Reigle contacted Evered and asked him to take possession of his collection of child pornography until Reigle was released from prison. Thereafter, Evered, who was a cross-country tractor trailer driver, kept the collection with him at all times during his travels, including two trips that took him through Maryland. In a related case, Loren Williams, 45, of Edgewater, Maryland was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for production of child pornography in Maryland. The photographs in his collection included photographs produced and transmitted over the internet by Reigle. Evidence presented to the court showed that Reigle has been convicted on three previous occasions in Pennsylvania state courts of offenses relating to the sexual molestation of children. His 2002 federal conviction for possession of child pornography was his fourth conviction for a child sexual exploitation offense. On January 27, 2006 Evered was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by supervised release for life in connection with his February 16, 2005 guilty plea to sexually exploiting a minor boy for the purpose of producing child pornography. FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Louis M. Reigel III, (no relation to defendant) said, "The FBI, through our Innocent Images Unit, is committed to aggressively pursuing individuals who engage in the online sexual exploitation of children. In 2004, we established the Endangered Child Alert Program (ECAP) along with our law enforcement partners. Through ECAP and with the assistance of national media outlets and their viewers worldwide, to date, we have been able to identity and arrest five of the six "John Does" and one "Jane Doe" we profiled." "Mr. Reigle committed heinous acts of abuse against innocent children. A sentence of life in prison will ensure that he cannot hurt another child," said John Fox, Assistant Special Agent-In- Charge for ICE's Office of Investigations in Baltimore. "Those of us in law enforcement -- ICE agents, prosecutors and local officers -- share a commitment to ensure that child pornographers won't find a safe haven in cyberspace. We will use every available tool at our disposal to combat violators such as Mr. Reigle." United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Baltimore Police Department for the investigative work they performed as part of the Innocent Images Task Force. Mr. Rosenstein also commended "America's Most Wanted" for the extraordinary assistance that program has provided to law enforcement in this and many other cases. Mr. Rosenstein praised Assistant United States Attornies Andrew G. W. Norman and Jonathan Mastrangelo, who prosecuted the case. http://www.usnewswire.com/ Copyright 2006 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ------------------------------ From: David Lazarus Subject: Rolling Over Customers who Change Their Calling Plans Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:09:23 -0600 by David Lazarus Cingular, the country's largest wireless service provider, boasts that it's the only carrier that allows customers to roll over unused minutes from one month to the next. But be careful if you decide to switch Cingular plans. Those unused minutes no longer roll very far. Lafayette resident Claudia Valas learned this recently when she attempted to rejigger her Cingular plan to accommodate what has now ballooned to a surplus of more than 10,000 extra minutes. Valas, 53, runs a small book-publishing company and had originally signed up for a wireless plan that offered 900 minutes for $59.99 monthly, plus $9.99 for each additional phone sharing the account. However, she discovered in March that the plan wasn't providing enough minutes for her and two employees, so she upgraded to a plan offering 2,000 minutes for $99.99 a month. But that ended up being too much. By August, Valas said, she'd accrued about 4,000 extra minutes and had contacted Cingular about switching once again to a more suitable plan. "The person I spoke with said they didn't have a comparable plan at that time," Valas recalled. "She advised me to stick with my current plan, run up even more minutes, and then switch to something a lot cheaper and use up the minutes over following months." Good advice. Or so Valas thought. By December, her account was carrying nearly 9,000 extra minutes, and Valas once more contacted Cingular about making a switch. "This time, they said I could change plans, but I could only bring with me a small portion of the minutes," she said. "They said that since the last time I'd spoken with them, the company had changed its policy." Indeed, Cingular rewrote its policy in October -- and never bothered to inform customers of the change. Previously, all unused rollover minutes would follow a customer from plan to plan. Now, the most that customers can bring with them is the equivalent of a single month's minutes. In other words, if you switch to a plan offering 500 minutes a month, you can bring only 500 minutes from your previous plan, even if your total unused minutes is almost 20 times that amount (as is the case with Valas). "That doesn't seem right," Valas told me. "Those are my minutes. I paid for them. You can't just take them away." Au contraire. Cingular, like most wireless carriers, declares up front that it can pretty much do anything it wants. In its contracts, the company says it "reserves the right to change or modify any of the terms and conditions contained in this agreement or any policy or guideline referenced herein at any time and in its sole discretion." Lauren Garner, a Cingular spokeswoman, said the company changed its rollover policy "to ensure that rollover is used fairly." She declined to comment on why it's "unfair" for customers to switch to less-expensive plans as they burn off unused minutes. But Garner said the change "allows us to keep this competitive advantage for our customers." (To be fair, it also prevents any sharpies from scoring thousands of minutes in a single month and then deliberately switching to a bargain-basement plan and enjoying cheap service for a year.) Representatives of other wireless carriers said they don't offer rollover minutes because they've found that customers who accrue additional minutes each month probably aren't in the most suitable plan for their needs. Garner said Cingular never notified customers of the policy change because "only a small percentage" seeks in any given year to downgrade to lower-minute plans. She declined to be more specific about how many of Cingular's more than 54 million customers were affected by the change. As it happens, the California Public Utilities Commission is revisiting the notion of a telecommunications bill of rights for consumers. The PUC suspended its last stab at creating a telecom bill of rights a year ago after the wireless industry complained that the regulations were too burdensome -- such as having to clearly explain all rates and fees, and being required to print contracts in a legible type size. Next month, the commission is scheduled to vote on a new-and-improved bill of rights. Of the two proposals on the table, PUC President Michael Peevey's version is seen as having the highest likelihood of passage. Unfortunately, Peevey's plan focuses more on what consumers should expect from a telecom company, as opposed to what the company must do. It also makes the state, not the industry, more responsible for educating people about telecom issues. The Peevey plan was originally drafted by Susan Kennedy, a former PUC member who now works as chief of staff for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Peevey was unavailable for comment. A more consumer-friendly bill of rights has been crafted by PUC member Dian Grueneich. Among other things, it restores the original bill's requirements that contract terms be explained clearly, and that customers be able to cancel contracts within 30 days. "Mine are actual obligations," Grueneich told me. "President Peevey's are rights that consumers should have." She noted that in 2004, complaints against wireless carriers soared by 63 percent, while growth in overall subscribers rose by just 15 percent. "That tells me we need enforceable rules to protect consumers," Grueneich said. However, PUC insiders say her plan lacks political support from other commissioners and is likely to be shot down when the matter comes up for a vote on March 2. Here's the thing: If Grueneich's bill of rights had been in effect when Cingular changed its rollover policy, it's likely that Valas and other customers would have known in advance that they'd have to act fast if they wanted to keep their minutes. Now it looks like they're stuck (although Cingular's Garner said the company will try to help anyone who received misleading info from a service rep). Valas said she'll probably end up switching to a more sensible plan and throwing away thousands of already-paid-for minutes. But she isn't happy about it. "It's like putting money in the bank and then not being able to withdraw it because they changed the rules," Valas said. "It's wrong." David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/08/BUGIIH4FD01.DTL Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle ------------------------------ From: Dave Carpenter Subject: Chicago Gears up For Wireless Broadband Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 13:43:15 -0600 By DAVE CARPENTER, AP Business Writer The nationwide rush to go wireless appears poised to extend to its biggest city yet. Chicago is launching an effort to offer wireless broadband, city officials said Friday, jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon as similar initiatives proceed in Philadelphia, San Francisco and smaller cities. Chicago has hundreds of Wi-Fi hotspots in places like coffee shops, bookstores and libraries, where anyone can walk in, sit down and connect to the Web. Hoping to extend that wireless blanket to all 228 square miles, the city plans to ask technology companies this spring to submit proposals for the project. While it's too soon to say how the system would operate, the goal is to make Internet access "broad and affordable" for residents and heighten Chicago's appeal for businesses and tourists alike, according to Chris O'Brien, the city's chief information officer. The city did not specify goals for how much the system would charge for access. In Philadelphia, EarthLink Inc. is building a citywide network that will charge a wholesale rate of $9 a month to Internet service providers that would then resell access to the public at an undetermined price. "We think it's important for residents of the city and tourists and businesses to have lots of different ways to connect," O'Brien said. "For a city as big as Chicago, with the vibrant business community and diverse citizen base that we have, you want to make sure all kinds of technology are available to them as they work and enjoy entertainment options." If all goes smoothly, the system could be running as soon as 2007, O'Brien said. That would all but certainly leave the city behind Philadelphia, which hopes to have its entire system in place late this year or early next year. But the size of a Chicago network would dwarf Philadelphia's planned 135-square-mile network or anything now in place. Currently, the biggest municipal Wi-Fi network is the all-free MetroFi in the south San Francisco Bay area at 35 square miles, according to Wi-Fi expert Glenn Fleishman. By spring, that title will be passed to one covering nearly 110 square miles in the neighboring Phoenix suburbs of Tempe and Chandler, Ariz., he said. Cities' race to get into municipal broadband is being increasingly embraced by Internet service providers, since most cities are enlisting private companies to help build the wireless systems rather than doing it on their own. EarthLink created a division last year to solicit deals similar to Philadelphia's with the 50 largest cities. Cities besides Philadelphia that have put Wi-Fi projects out for proposals in the last four months alone, according to EarthLink, include Portland, Ore.; San Francisco, Anaheim, Pasadena and Long Beach, Calif.; Denver and Aurora, Colo.; Minneapolis; Milwaukee; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Pittsburgh; Arlington, Va.; and Brookline, Mass. Rather than viewing the cities' efforts as competition, said Don Berryman, president of EarthLink's municipal networks division: "This allows us to build our own network and provide broadband service anywhere we want and not have to work through the Bell company or the cable company, so it gives us a lot of freedom." Chicago's main phone company, AT&T, (formerly SBC); says it similarly would not be opposed to a city-initiated effort. "AT&T always has believed that the best approach is to stimulate investment in broadband," spokesman Rick Fox said. "As long as you're working with the private sector, that's a good thing." This is apparently a change of attitude for SBC which until its merger with AT&T had been vehemently opposed to any municipally managed/owned systems as being 'unfair' to telco. The idea of a citywide Wi-Fi network got a big thumbs-up from several Chicagoans who were sitting in cafes with their laptops Friday. "I'm always searching for Internet hotspots," said Beibei Que, a law student getting in some work at a coffee shop. "I like to have the Net at my fingertips wherever I go." Katy Harper, who works mostly out of her home, said she would welcome the chance to get online elsewhere. "It's nice to be able to go out and sit somewhere and get connected," she said. Chicago officials haven't yet committed to specific goals for the project, but they don't want to spend city funds. They have been closely watching Philadelphia's project, including its priority on low user costs and its intent to ensure that more computers and training programs are available for low-income residents. "Our main mission is to increase access and help overcome the digital divide," said Robert Bright, board chairman of the Wireless Philadelphia nonprofit group overseeing that initiative. Fleishman said building a municipal Wi-Fi network as big as the ones envisioned in Philadelphia and Chicago could be troublesome. He cited issues surrounding the need for high-powered antennas and interference from existing Wi-Fi networks. "Once you get into dense urban environments, it's not that it won't work but it's more problematic," he said. "Nobody's built a network of this size." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: David Lazarus Subject: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 13:47:43 -0600 Service providers recycling cell phone numbers is a dirty little secret - David Lazarus Would you pay full price for a used cell phone number? Chances are, you already have. In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers routinely recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to new customers without informing them of the number's history. Cell phone companies say they need to do this because there just aren't enough new numbers to go around. A number can be reused within as little as 30 days. But as cell phones increasingly are used to access the Internet and to purchase goods and services, reusing numbers can open the door to a variety of unexpected charges. San Francisco resident Frank Therre learned this the hard way. And as chief operating officer for a Bay Area software firm, he isn't exactly unsophisticated when it comes to technology. "I was very surprised to learn that cell phone numbers are recycled," Therre told me. "You never know who had the number before. Some pretty serious situations can come out of this." In his case, he said his company signed up with Sprint in November to create a back-up line for customer support. Therre said he plugged in the new phone overnight and was greeted the next morning with a text message reading: "Cindy wants to meet you. If you want to meet Cindy. ..." It invited Therre to send a text message to Cindy. He didn't bother and didn't give the matter another thought. Therre said the cell phone was given to a company technician responsible for fielding calls from customers. That's where the problems started. The technician's fiancee happened to look at the phone one day. She couldn't help but notice dozens of text messages from a seemingly wide assortment of women eager to meet her man. "This got him into quite a bit of trouble," Therre said. Therre then checked his company's Sprint bill. He was startled to find a $9.90 charge for no fewer than 99 text messages being received, plus an "additional charge" of $16.50 related to the service. Therre said he called Sprint and was told by a service rep that he must have signed up for a premium service. He said Sprint's records showed that the text messages were being billed by a company called SMS.ac. Therre replied that he never signed up for any service from this company. But he said the rep was adamant: It was Therre's problem. So he contacted SMS.ac, which turns out to be a San Diego firm that creates networks of people who send text messages to one another. The service also lets users purchase products and services via their phones, with the charges appearing on their phone bills. Therre said SMS.ac confirmed that his cell phone number had been signed up for the service. But the start date was June 2005 -- five months before Therre got the phone -- and the service was registered to someone named Morales. "I don't know anyone named Morales," Therre said. He told me that SMS.ac promptly canceled the account and explained that situations like this sometimes happen when a cell phone number is switched to a new customer. An SMS.ac rep said it's the responsibility of the wireless carrier to ensure that all outstanding obligations are canceled before a phone number nis reused. Greg Wilfahrt, executive vice president of SMS.ac, confirmed to me that his company's recurring charges can indeed be carried over to noncustomers who receive a recycled number. n"It's something we're conscious of," he said. "It can happen." Caroline Semerdjian, a Sprint spokeswoman, said the carrier makes it a habit to wipe clean all links to a former customer's phone number. As such, she said she couldn't imagine how Therre's line was billed for a previous customer's service. But Semerdjian acknowledged that Sprint, like most wireless carriers, does recycle cell phone numbers. She said a number might be handed out to a new customer 30 days after an old account is closed. "There aren't enough new numbers available for everyone who wants one," Semerdjian explained. A spokeswoman for Verizon Wireless said her company also recycles phone numbers after just 30 days. Cingular waits at least 90 days before recycling numbers. A spokeswoman said the company uses special software to block any bills related to a former customer. A T-Mobile spokeswoman said her company also has a 90-day waiting period before numbers are recycled. Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network in San Diego, said he's received numerous complaints from people in recent months about wireless customers getting calls for a line's former owner. "Each call can eat up your minutes, so there's a real impact," he said. "Why can't all the wireless providers wait at least 90 days, or even 180 days? That would go a long way toward preventing problems for new customers." Therre's case, Shames added, only underlines how important it is for people to closely inspect their bills after signing up for a wireless service. The growing practice (especially among teens) of downloading ring tones from services with monthly fees shows how easy it is for a cell phone number to be on the hook. Therre told me he called Sprint back after resolving things with SMS.ac, and this time a rep acknowledged that numbers get recycled and that problems can occasionally occur. "He said they try to do their best to clear accounts but made a point of saying that they can't be held responsible," Therre said. I'm guessing there might be a lawmaker or two reading this who think otherwise. David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/03/BUGA7GTHKM91.DTL Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle ------------------------------ From: David Lazarus Subject: Give us Your Consent, Online Now, or Else Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:11:29 -0600 by David Lazarus Thousands of Wells Fargo customers received a rude awakening this week when they attempted to access their bank accounts via the Internet. A box opened up on their computer screens seemingly declaring that if the customer wants to continue banking online, he or she has to agree to allow Wells Fargo to make all future communications electronically, not on paper. Accepting this and other conditions then causes a second box to open, this time containing an 11,000-word document written in frequently thick legalese. The document, Wells' "online access agreement," must also be accepted before a customer is once again permitted to bank via the Net. There's no summary of the voluminous contract's contents or any indication of what might be new. Vallejo resident John Rice was among numerous Wells Fargo customers who had questions about what they were being asked to accept -- and concerns about being limited to electronic communication with their bank. "I feel really uncomfortable with having to depend on the Internet to get important information," Rice said. "I just don't think it's as secure as some people think it is." First off, I've read the 11,000-word contract. There's nothing in there that jumps out as being unusually customer-unfriendly. But there are a number of provisions that may be a surprise to people who've never taken the time to read one of these things. More on that in a moment. As for the online-only communication requirement, it's apparently not as bad as Wells has made it out to be. You wouldn't know that, though, from the wording of the bank's mandatory "E-sign consent" form. It stipulates that "all of the disclosures, records and other information being provided to you may, at Wells Fargo's sole discretion, be in electronic form." It adds that "information provided in electronic form will not be distributed in paper unless you contact the customer service unit responsible for the particular product or service you are obtaining and request a paper version of a particular document." If you do this, however, "you may be subject to a fee for such request." The document says customers can later change their preference about receiving "all information in electronic form," but "withdrawal of consent may cancel your access to this and/or all services available through online banking." Not surprisingly, many Wells Fargo customers said they interpreted this to mean they'd have to agree to receive all statements, policy changes and other communications via the Net if they want to retain online access to their accounts. Michele Scott, a Wells spokeswoman, said by e-mail that this isn't the case. Customers, she said, "are not signing up for any additional online services such as online statements." "By accepting these agreements, the way they bank with us today does not change," Scott said. "For example, if customers receive statements in the mail, they will continue to do so." She didn't respond to follow-up questions about what precisely the bank means when it refers to all "disclosures, records and other information" being sent electronically. Scott did, however, appear to confirm that Wells Fargo customers will indeed be shut out from accessing their accounts online unless they accept the two documents. "If customers do not provide consent, they are making a decision to not accept the terms and conditions of using our online banking services," she said. In fact, a Wells insider told me the main change here is that confirmations of online transactions will now arrive by e-mail. The insider said the bank has been swamped this week with calls from people who didn't understand Wells' intentions. Call-center workers have had to be briefed on how to handle the flood of complaints, the insider said. San Francisco resident Mark Wiker, who has been banking online with Wells for years, said he'd rather not receive any important communica- tions from the bank by e-mail. "I get tons of e-mail, like most people," he said. "Lots of things can slip by and not get seen." For those who do agree to the terms of the bank's E-sign consent, next comes the 11,000-word contract, which runs 21 pages if printed for off-line perusal. Much of the document consists of boilerplate legal jargon typical to many customer-service agreements. Some of the provisions, though, may raise eyebrows among Wells customers. For example, the contract states that the bank's online banking service may not be available "at certain times." In such circum- stances, it says, customers "may use our touch-tone service" on the phone. What it doesn't say is that if you end up speaking with an actual human being during that call, it could cost an extra $2. The contract also specifies that Wells, like most banks, may use third parties to process online transactions, and that if you don't use Wells' online Bill Pay service for three months, it might cancel your access to the service. The contract says Wells can "in our sole discretion from time to time change this agreement by adding new provisions or by modifying or deleting existing provisions." "Your continued use of the service following the effective date of any modification of this agreement or revocation of any waiver will show your consent to that modification or revocation of waiver," it says. Moreover, the contract states that customers' personal information may be used "to determine your eligibility for products and services that may be offered by Wells Fargo affiliates." It says that "Wells Fargo or any of its officers, directors, shareholders, parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, agents, licensors or third-party service providers" can't be held accountable for any damages that may result from use of the online service. And after spending about 10,000 words on all that and much more, the contract finally states that "it is your responsibility to review this agreement including Wells Fargo's privacy policy from time to time in order to be aware of any such changes." "Who has the time to sift through 11,000 words?" responded Wiker, who works for a San Francisco law firm. "Nobody does. A summary would have been nice." For Jesse Dunn, a San Francisco Web developer, what really rankled was the way Wells just sprang the two documents on customers. There was no prior notice, no grace period in which the contracts could be considered. "It was just waiting for people when they tried to log in," Dunn said. "You either accepted or you couldn't access your accounts." In her e-mail, Wells' Scott indicated that the bank believes it's doing customers a good turn. "Our intent with this updated online access agreement was to simplify our process in response to customer feedback about receiving additional agreements when enrolling in each new online service," she said. David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com. Copyright 2006 SFGate.com ------------------------------ From: David Lazarus Subject: Security Breach Reaches 200,000 Debit Card Holders Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:14:01 -0600 by David Lazarus A data-security breach that resulted in numerous people having their debit cards canceled this week is actually much larger than first indicated. As first reported in my Thursday column, an unspecified number of Bank of America customers have received letters warning that accounts may have been compromised "at a third-party location unrelated to Bank of America." BofA has said only that the unnamed company is not a bank affiliate. But well-placed sources within the banking and credit card industries now tell me that the company in question is a leading retailer in the office-supply business. Those sources also place the total number of consumers affected by the security breach at nearly 200,000. Washington Mutual confirmed Thursday that it too was involved in the breach and is replacing customers' debit cards. Wells Fargo reiterated only that the bank protects customers "if we discover they are at risk for unauthorized transactions." However, multiple Wells Fargo customers told me they've received new debit cards from the bank via FedEx. It's unclear at this point whether the retailer violated state law by not directly notifying customers of the breach, instead allowing customers to be ambiguously alerted by their banks. State Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, a leading privacy advocate in Sacramento, said the spirit, if not the letter, of the law appears to have been violated. "The intention of the law was not to create anonymous notifications," she told me. "It was to link the consumer with the company being breached." Banking industry sources said they were notified last month by Visa and MasterCard that the computer system of a prominent merchant had been penetrated by a computer hacker, and that account information for thousands of customers had been endangered. Rosetta Jones, a spokeswoman for Visa USA, acknowledged Thursday that the incident involved a U.S. merchant that "may have experienced a data security breach resulting in the compromise of Visa card account information." "Upon learning of the compromise," she said, "Visa quickly alerted the affected financial institutions to protect consumers through independent fraud monitoring and, if needed, reissuing cards." Sharon Gamsin, a spokeswoman for MasterCard International, said the credit card company had been informed of "a potential security breach at a U.S.-based retailer." "We have notified the banks that issue MasterCard cards to monitor for any suspicious account activity and take the necessary steps to protect cardholders," she said, adding that MasterCard "will continue to monitor this event." In any case, a serious issue raised by the incident is whether a business can avoid compliance with a California law requiring that customers be notified in the event of a security breach State law requires that any company "that owns or licenses computerized data" must notify consumers if any personal info is "acquired by an unauthorized person." The law defines ownership of data as being "part of the business' internal customer account or for the purpose of using that information in transactions with the person to whom the information relates." Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the retailer whose security was recently breached would be liable for notifying customers only if it was maintaining a database of account info and that database was compromised. "Merchants clearly have notification requirements under the statute," he said. "The responsibility of this retailer is unclear based on the known facts." But Ray Everett-Church, who runs a San Jose privacy consulting firm called PrivacyClue, said this position undermines the intent of the law, which took effect in 2003. "Part of the intent of the law is for companies with lax practices to be held accountable," he said. "If they can hide behind card issuers, it calls into question whether merchants have a real incentive to improve their practices." The law, Everett-Church said, "is intended to increase the risk for companies so they are encouraged to fix problems before they become bigger problems." Speier agreed with this interpretation, observing that if the merchant in the latest case remains unidentified, its consequences for a serious security breach have been minimized. "You're insulating that company from any downside or loss of business that might occur as a result of the breach," she said. David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com. URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/10/BUG5HH5N841.DTL Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle ------------------------------ From: Here and Kickin' Subject: Slamming (or Something Similar) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 15:23:03 -0500 I opened my land line bill today. A voicemail/ID theft provider (ESBI, apparently a billing agent of "My Info Guard") decided to bill me for a service that wasn't requested. Pre-divestiture, charges like this simply didn't exist (unless some jerk happened to bill his/her long distance calls to a random phone number). Is there a land line carrier that allows a consumer complete control over what can or can't be billed to a line? If not, what mechanisms are missing from the land line providers that cell companies apparently have to "lock out" such billings? -d ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Home PBX Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 16:54:13 GMT Also there was the article in Linux Journal for January 2006 about building your own PC-based home PBX. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #75 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Feb 19 17:48:38 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4778115098; Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:48:38 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #76 Message-Id: <20060219224838.4778115098@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:48:38 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.4 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, COMPLETELY_FREE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:50:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 76 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telstra Cutting Out Payhones in Australia (Sydney Morning Herald) Teens at Risk on Web Sites (Matt Apuzzo) MySpace.com: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parent's Nightmare (Eric Auchard & Ken Li) Re: Google Formally Rejects Justice Subpoena for Information (Herb Stein) Re: Internet Phones / VOIP (Robert Bonomi) PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (Mark) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sydney Morning Herald Subject: Telstra Cutting Out Payhones in Australia Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:37:10 -0600 The Sydney Morning Herald. www.smh.com.au Telstra Has Plan to 'Slash Payphones' February 20, 2006 - 5:49AM Telstra is said to have approved plans to slash 5,000 of its 32,000 payphones in country towns and capital cities over the next seven months. The Australian Financial Review reports that while only 15 per cent of the payphones to be removed are in rural and regional areas, country towns in at least four states face the loss of half their public outdoor phones. To defuse the political fallout from its decision, the majority government-owned carrier will engage in a secret but deceptive strategy of marking the phones with a sticker claiming the service is being relocated, the paper says. It says it has obtained a Telstra Country Wide briefing note revealing a strategy to minimise consultation with local governments over the move, divert complaints and avoid media scrutiny. A Telstra insider says payphones identified for the removal program have an average annual usage totalling $1,500 to $4,000. The removal plan is set to further aggravate relations between the telco and the government over phone services in rural and regional areas in the lead-up to the sale of the government's remaining $26 billion stake in the carrier. The cost-cutting drive forms part of chief executive Sol Trujillo's plan to freeze $11 billion a year in expenses for the next five years. During the period, up to 11,000 people face the sack, its IT networks will be rationalised and $25 billion will be spent on new capital investment, the paper says. Copyright 2006 AAP Copyright 2006 The Sydney Morning Herald. ------------------------------ From: Matt Apuzzo Subject: Teens at Risk on Web Sites Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:11:38 -0600 Authorities: Teens at Risk on Web Sites By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer On MySpace.com, teenagers can find kindred spirits who share their love of sports, their passion for photography or their crush on a Hollywood star. They can also find out where their online friends live, where they attend school, even what they look like. And so can adults who wish to molest the kids. Parents, school administrators and police are increasingly worried that teens are finding trouble online at sites like MySpace, the leader of the social-networking sites that encourage users to build larger and larger circles of friends. While this 'honor' used to belong to America On Line, over the past year or two it has shifted to MySpace, among others, possibly because of attention or 'heat' drawn to AOL due to the proclivities of many of its users. Police in Middletown, Conn., are investigating recent reports that as many as seven local girls and a couple of boys were sexually assaulted by men in their 20s who contacted them through MySpace pretending to be teenagers. One girl allowed a man into her room while her parents were home, police said, underscoring just how in the dark parents often are about one of the most popular Web activities for teens today. There are other reports like these scattered around the country, prompting some parents and schools to equate the likes of MySpace with the Internet's red-light district, even as many experts believe that the worries are greater than the actual dangers. Joseph Dooley is among those who has heard it all before. A retired FBI agent who supervised the agency's first undercover Internet task force in New England, Dooley remembers when America Online chat rooms were the rage. Teens posted detailed profiles of themselves and chatted with any of AOL's subscribers. Teenagers are traditionally a lot smarter than their parents where computers are concerned, and Dooley points out that many teens are able to trick their parents in ways not considered much in the past. Chat rooms soon gave way to services like MySpace, but Dooley said the rules haven't changed and parents need to become more engaged. A lot of the kids are 'curious' where sex is concerned, there are plenty of adults ready willing and able to teach them how to fulfill their curiosity. Dooley also noted that "pedophilia is not a big dark secret to the kids ... they know what it is about, and regretfully often times a strong-willed child _will_ make 'come-ons' to weaker-willed adults. Many kids consider it sort of a badge of honor to 'get molested' by grown ups. Not to tell their parents, of course, but to brag about with their buddies. That does _not_ make it right; an adult having sex with a kid is always wrong; the adult is _always_ the one legally liable. But kids do know the score, often times better than their parents." "Let the kids know, on the Internet, you don't know who you're talking to," Dooley said. "Parents aren't the friends of their kids. Parents needs to know and observe what their kids are doing." That can be daunting for working parents. Keeping tabs on the kids used to mean knowing where they went after school, not whom they talked to in their bedrooms. So when they hear of a new fad among teens, their instinct is to worry. And the horror stories are indeed terrifying. Last month, for example, 14-year-old Judy Cajuste was found strangled and naked in a Newark, N.J., garbage bin. Police seized a computer from her bedroom after friends said she told them of a man in his 20s she met on MySpace. The death remains unsolved. Beyond the threat of abduction, bullies who once made the rounds on playgrounds are using Web logs and home pages to spread rumors and lies faster than the schoolyard grapevine ever could. MySpace profiles have been used to threaten classmates and in at least one case, to mock a school principal. Many schools have responded by restricting Internet access from school computers. One private school in Newark, N.J., ordered students to remove all personal blogs from the Internet, even if accessed from home, to protect them from online predators. Some parents, like Ululani Stauffacher of Eureka, Calif., forbid their children from using MySpace. Stauffacher said her 17-year-old daughter ran off for two days with a 19-year-old man she met online. "I was going crazy," Stauffacher said. "I was just hearing things about MySpace and incidents of girls missing and some don't get returned to their families. All that I was thinking about was that my daughter was going to be another statistic." The concerns aren't limited to MySpace, but the News Corp. unit gets the attention because of its sheer size -- 54 million users, a quarter of them registered as teens. MySpace forbids minors 13 and under from joining and provides special protections for those 14 and 15 -- only those on their friends' list can view their profiles. Nonetheless, kids lie when they sign up, and many of their profiles carry photos of themselves in suggestive poses, along with personal information against the site's recommendations. Dooley points out, "remember, for many of these kids, their parents would be horrified to find out that the teen knows exactly what 'getting molested' is all about and frankly, hopes to be the one it happens to. Of course the kid has _no idea_ just how far that can go astray." "They're licking their lips and arching their back for the camera because they can, and they have no idea of the consequences," said Parry Aftab, an Internet safety expert. But Aftab said most MySpace users aren't getting themselves in trouble, either innocently or on purpose. Experts say that banning children from using social-networking sites is akin to forbidding them from going to the mall or the movie theater for fear they'll be abducted, or molested. If you ban them, then they wonder about what it is they are missing out on. "I wish I could hover over my children 24-7, but the best I can do is teach them that there are ways to keep themselves safe," said Steve Jones, a communications professor who studies new media at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In a statement, MySpace said it has developed safety tips for parents and children and devotes scores of employees to monitoring the site around the clock. The site also has ways for users to report inappropriate behavior. The company says it removes inappropriate images and closes accounts that violate its rules. Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's chief executive, encourages parents to talk to their kids about Internet safety, but Aftab said many parents ignore advice until it is too late. Aftab alao points out that some parents 'talk too much', cluing the children in more than they should many times. Connecticut Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano, who has strictly limited the information his 10- and 12-year-old children put on the Internet, said he was surprised to learn that they had been contacted by strangers they believed were pedophiles. His kids figured the strangers were pedophiles -- ignored it and _laughed about it_ , Morano said, but parents need to closely monitor Internet activity. Morano also noted that many parents would be simply shocked to know what goes on in their children's bedrooms with the computer late at night. "You wouldn't leave your kid on the side of the highway without supervision," Morano said. "You shouldn't put them on the Internet highway without the same type of supervision." Associated Press reporter Louise Chu in San Francisco contributed to this report. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard & Kenneth Li Subject: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:15:15 -0600 By Eric Auchard and Kenneth Li Rupert Murdoch saw a Web site with monster growth potential in MySpace.com, the online music and dating phenomenon that makes it easy for teens to find friends and express themselves. The media mogul's News Corp Inc. paid $580 million for MySpace last July. And even as he figures out how to turn more than 56 million MySpace members into higher Internet revenue for News Corp., there is another concern: the safety of its teen denizens. The phenomenal growth of the Web site and popularity among youngsters has made it a magnet for adult sexual predators, authorities say. Recent headlines that rival those in Murdoch's tabloids, such as "Man arrested in MySpace.com teen-sex case," "Sex predators are stalking MySpace; is your teenager a target?" and "Space Invaders" have dotted airwaves, newspapers and television news across the United States, triggering a nationwide backlash against the site. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating a number of sexual assaults with links to MySpace. "What's troubling is the pornography and the access by children," Blumenthal said in a telephone interview. Teenagers have fueled MySpace's growth by using it as a virtual hangout, like video-game arcades and malt shops that once were gathering places for young people. "There are a percentage of kids that put up way too much information on MySpace about themselves," said Monique Nelson, executive director of Web Wise Kids, a nonprofit Internet safety organization based in Santa Ana, California. News Corp. and MySpace turned down repeated requests for interviews. MySpace said in an e-mailed statement that its users' safety is of "paramount importance" and that it is continuing to work with parents and authorities on improving safety. Emerging in 2004, MySpace's network of sites now ranks fourth in total U.S. audience, neck-and-neck with Google.com, but behind Yahoo and Microsoft, according Web measurement firm Hitwise. From its beginning, it ranked very close to AOL but of late has taken over AOL's spot. The growth of MySpace in speed and scale has outpaced previous Internet phenomena such as music-sharing site Napster and pioneering social networking site Friendster. The MySpace network has nearly 50 percent of the market share of all U.S. Web community sites -- 10 times more than any single rival site, including Yahoo, Facebook, Craigslist and LiveJournal, according to Hitwise. TEEN CRAZE, PARENTAL CRISIS Authorities in Santa Cruz, California, last week arrested 26-year-old Nathan Contos for felony child molestation after he met a 14-year-old high-school student on MySpace. Contos claimed he was 15, 17 and 26 years old in online conversations that led to several meetings, according to a spokesman for the Santa Cruz County sheriff's office. Blumenthal said the arrest underscored a key vulnerability in policing Internet communities, especially those targeting young people: verifying a user's age is extremely difficult. He said he expects to reach a settlement "in the next couple of weeks" under which MySpace agrees to tighten access to the site, with an aim for a better age verification system. "My hope is that what we do here will serve as a model for others," Blumenthal said. MySpace, which has operated below the radar of many Internet industry analysts to preserve its "cool factor," said in a statement that its users have to be at least 14 years old and are required to fill out an online form that includes their date of birth. From there, MySpace employs an automated search engine, along with a team that they claim sifts through "tens of millions" of profiles to identify potential minors. The company said it employs a third of its 175-person work force to "process customer care requests." "About sixty of our employees do nothing but handle customer service; verifying who is who and what is going on around the clock," MySpace said. MySpace also clearly advises members on its Web site to avoid posting too much personal information. But many youngsters include photos, names, addressees and the names of schools and hangouts. More than one picture and name/age is false. A hi-tech executive, whose 14-year-old daughter attends a high school in Seattle that now bars its teenage students from having a MySpace site, said he was unaware that his daughter was on the site until alerted by a friend of his, that several students in that school had been molested by guys they 'knew' (or thought they knew!) from MySpace; _then_ he found out _his_ daughter was hanging out there as well. When he confronted his daughter with what he found out about the site, he said she just laughed, and claimed "all the kids at school know that is the place to go to if you want to meet 'sophisticated men', we all have web cams; they all try to get us to 'show them our cams'. The school says stay away from that site, and some do, but most go on there anyway, using false names and ages and pictures. " "These kids have opened themselves up to the world and yet isolated themselves at the same time," Web Wise Kids' Nelson said of how individual MySpace sites can be viewed by anyone "passing by," but they restrict the ability to post to friends who must invited in. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: Google Formally Rejects Justice Subpoena for Information Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:37:15 GMT Eric Auchard wrote in message news:telecom25.75.1@telecom-digest.org: > By Eric Auchard > Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's > subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand > violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets. > Responding to a motion by U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, > Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern > District of California the government demand to disclose Web search > data was impractical. > The Bush administration is seeking to compel Google to hand over Web > search data as part of a bid by the Justice Department to appeal a > 2004 Supreme Court injunction of a law to penalize Web site operators > who allow children to view pornography. > Google is going it alone in opposing the U.S. government request. > Rivals Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are among the companies > that have complied with the Justice Department demand for data to be > used to make its case. > Google's lawyers said the company shares the government's concern with > materials harmful to minors but argued that the request for its data > was irrelevant. They offered a series of technical arguments why this > data was not useful. > The Mountain View, California-based company said that complying with > the U.S. government's request for "untold millions of search queries" > would put an undue burden on the company, including a "week of > engineer time to complete." > "Algorithms regularly change. The identical search query submitted > today may yield a different result than the identical search conducted > yesterday," attorneys from Perkins Coie LLP, the company's external > legal counsel, argue in the filing. > Complying with the Justice Department request would also force Google > to reveal how its Web search technology works -- something it > jealously guards as a trade secret, the company argued. It refuses to > disclose even the total number of searches conducted each day. > Google's resistance contrasts with a deal the company has struck with > the Chinese government to censor some searches on a new site in China, > a move that has drawn sharp criticism from members of the > U.S. Congress and human rights activists. > "Google users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google > search box ... that Google will keep private whatever information > users communicate absent a compelling reason," attorneys for Google > said in the filing. > The legal spat also comes amid heightened sensitivity to privacy > issues by the company as it recently began offering a new version of > its Google Desktop service that vacuums up data stored on user PCs and > makes it accessible on the users' other computers. For customers who > consent to the service, copies of their data are stored on Google's > central computers. > Privacy activists have rallied to the defense of Google for fighting > the U.S. government request while some conservative and religious > organizations have criticized the company for failing to help the > government combat child pornography. > The American Civil Liberties Union, with other civil rights groups, > bookstores and alternative media outlets filed a friend of the court > brief on behalf of Google. Damn! Just when I get really upset with the wackos at the ACLU, they come on the right side of an issue. > The hearing on the Justice Department motion to compel Google to > divulge the search data is scheduled to take place on March 13 in San > Jose before U.S. District Judge James Ware. > "The government must show that this request is the most relevant way > to accomplish its goal," said Perry Aftab, an attorney, privacy > activist and executive director of WiredSafety.org, a popular online > child safety site. > "Why would Google or anyone else turn over data that might create > further risks for their customers? The public policy gains don't > outweigh the risks," she said. > Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. > NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the > daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at > http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new > articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at > http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) > http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html Herb Stein herb@herbstein.com ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Internet Phones / VOIP Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 04:07:34 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Has anyone used Voice Over IP (VOIP)? If so which service did you use? > Has anyone heard of InteleFone? They sound interesting because their > phones work not only on broadband but also on dial-up as slow as 24k. > They also have a hardware compression chip built into their phones. > They claim to support to reach more international numbers than any > other company. They even give away a FREE VOIP phone ($79.99 value). Do > you think they are too good to be true? > Read more about InteleFone > http://www.ClaimYourPhone.com Do you, "ClaimYourPhone", think we're not going to notice that *you* are the vendor that you're supposedly inquiring about? Are you REALLY so *stupid* as to think we're dumb enough to fall for this kind of phony "advertising"? [ note to moderator: thanks for giving maximum exposures to this guy's idiocy. But where's the justifiably snide comments on his "marketing"? :) ] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Oh, I decided to leave that up to you this time around. I knew you would handle it just fine. And particularly, since I now and then hawk the virtues of a Vonage account inviting readers to 'claim your month of free service now' I thought it would be little bit biased to single this dude out for one of my tongue lashings. PAT] ------------------------------ Reply-To: From: Mark Subject: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:00:51 -0500 ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu - I saw your e-mail address on a web site and I thought you may want to know about this new site; http://www.PanhandleGateway.com. The site has just started, you may have even seen the press release that went to the Martinsburg Journal, Frederick Post, Hagerstown Herald, or Winchester Star and other local papers. PanhandleGateway.com provides a free platform for the community to communicate, advertise, do business locally, and connect with people of similar interests. The website enables registered users to submit free Classified Ads, submit a business listing in the Yellow Pages, post News articles, add their events to the Community Calendar, and much more. This is combined with great features such as the Message Board, weather conditions, and coupons from local businesses to be a one-stop community bulletin board. The Yellow Pages, Coupons, Shopping, and Dining Guides help promote the Panhandle's resources and even save people money. Best of all, the site is COMPLETELY FREE to users. When you get a chance, login ( http://www.PanhandleGateway.com ) and see what it has to offer -- I think you will like it. I hope this email wasn't too obtrusive, I won't bother you again. Mark [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Okay Mark, here is your free plug for the new website; but I did not realize that little strip of WV was known as 'Panhandle'; I always thought 'panhandle' was used for the northwestern strip of Oklahoma, or perhaps the northernmost section of Idaho, but I guess there is no reason it cannot apply to that northern wedge of WV as well. Good luck with your web site. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #76 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Feb 20 14:51:35 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BA02D15151; Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:51:34 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #77 Message-Id: <20060220195134.BA02D15151@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:51:34 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 77 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "Network Security Fundamentals", De Laet/Schauwers (Rob Slade) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, February 20, 2006 (telecomdirect) Cellular-News for Monday 20th February 2006 (cellular-news) In Wellesley, Books go Online / Library Offers Audio Downloads (M Solomon) Area Code, Sweet Area Code (Monty Solomon) ESPN Cellphone Has Great Sports Content But Many Trade-Offs (Monty Solomon) Wiffiti (Monty Solomon) An Easy Way to Back Up Phone Contacts (Monty Solomon) Automatic Electric Relay Datasheet (Tom GOUGH) AOL's About to Get VOIP (US Telecom DailyLead) Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (Sobol) Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (Bonomi) Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare (nospam4me) Re: Google Formally Rejects Justice Subpoena for Information (Henry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:18:00 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Network Security Fundamentals", G De Laet/G Schauwers Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKNTSCFD.RVW 20051127 "Network Security Fundamentals", Gert De Laet/Gert Schauwers, 2005, 1-58705-167-2, U$50.00/C$73.00 %A Gert De Laet %A Gert Schauwers %C 800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46240 %D 2005 %G 1-58705-167-2 %I Cisco Press %O U$50.00/C$73.00 feedback@ciscopress.com 800-382-3419 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587051672/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587051672/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587051672/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience i- Tech 2 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 454 p. %T "Network Security Fundamentals" The introduction states that the intended audience is comprised of two groups: system administrators who are new to network security concepts, and managers who need guidance for product purchase and strategy decisions. Part one is an introduction. Chapter one is supposed to be an overview of network security. It is a very short piece full of idiosyncratic definitions, isolated bits of security information, and with a set of extremely simplistic "reading check" type questions at the end. A few network security vulnerabilities (and, oddly, a discussion of buffer overflows) make up chapter two. Various security tools are listed in chapter three. Part two should be about the diverse building blocks that go into making up a protective system or architecture, but it really isn't. Chapter four is a very spotty overview of cryptography, failing to address some significant concepts. A very limited explanation of security policy and its creation is in chapter five. (The sample policy provided, even within its limited scope, is rather thin.) Secure design, in chapter six, is possibly even worse: vague opinings and a sales pitch for the Cisco SAFE blueprint document. Part five addresses specific security tools. Chapter seven looks at Web security by presenting certain security related settings for Windows systems and browsers. Router access configurations and the Cisco CBAC (Content-Based Access Control) content inspection and intrusion detection system (IDS) is outlined in chapter eight. Apparently more intent on selling Cisco products than educating readers, chapter nine does provide the basic information about different types of firewalls, but in a disorganized and confusing manner. Much the same approach is taken with IDSs in chapter ten. Chapter eleven describes two centralized remote authentication systems (RADIUS, Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service; and TACACS+, Terminal Access Controller Access Control System plus), but mostly in terms of packet types rather than functions. Virtual Private Network technologies are described in a disjointed manner in chapter twelve. A few aspects of public key infrastructure are presented in chapter thirteen, along with a great many screen shots of Windows dialogue boxes. The security, or insecurity, of wireless LANs is briefly reviewed in chapter fourteen. Chapter fifteen lists some auditing technologies. Those who are not familiar with security would probably feel more so after reading this book, although some of the material is of questionable accuracy and even more debatable clarity. Managers might be a bit more aware of some of the issues involved in protection strategy and product choice, although at the risk of making some errors. On balance, this work is probably serviceable as a quick guide. The more accurate works of which I am aware are more demanding of the reader, and there are some "instant introductions" to network security that are considerably worse. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005 BKNTSCFD.RVW 20051127 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Profanity: the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate. http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 11:32:13 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, February 20, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 20, 2006 ******************************** Network Neutrality? Hush! http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16758?11228 It's hard to imagine today, when mobile phone users think little of broadcasting their most sensitive conversations within easy earshot of strangers, that people once jealously guarded their telephone privacy. But there was enough concern about telephone propriety in the 1920s that an inventive corporation built a business around a... Software Aims to Streamline Tech Support http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16755?11228 As the number of worldwide computer users soars, and the systems themselves grow more complex, support call centers are becoming overwhelmed, leading to service backlogs and higher support costs. NetworkStreaming hopes to solve this problem with SupportDesk 9.0, its newly enhanced call center support platform. The company claims that... BT Plans Global Wi-Fi Network http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16754?11228 U.K.-based BT is planning to roll-out a global Wi-Fi network, the Business reported yesterday. BT is said to be in talks with internet and telecoms operators in order to sign roaming agreements.  Significance: The move is set to enable customers to make cheap calls routed over the internet.  BT already has a roaming deal with... IDT Acquires VoIP Provider Net2Phone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16753?11228 IDT, the international telecoms, entertainment and technology company, and Net2Phone, the VoIP enabler for service providers, has announced that they have executed a merger agreement for the acquisition of Net2Phone by IDT. Under the deal, shareholders in Net2Phone (other than IDT, which currently owns 87.2% of the VoIP provider) will... Canadian Billing Overpayments Will Fund Broadband http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16744?11228 According to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), rather than refunding US$566.54 million to consumers who overpaid on their telephone bills, Canada's incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) should use the money to improve the nation's broadband network, particularly in rural and remote areas. The... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 20th February 2006 Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:37:47 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] Andrew eyes 3G opportunities in LatAm http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16190.php US communications equipment manufacturer and supplier Andrew Corp sees growth opportunities in the medium term in Latin America in 3G mobile technology, Andrew's Americas sales vice president James McIlvain told BNamericas. ... South African Operator Preparing for HSDPA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16200.php South Africa's MTN says that it is on track to deliver commercial High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) or 3G Evolved services to customers this year, says Ashraff Paruk, General Manager of Business Strategy, MTN South Africa. MTN achieved its fi... [[Financial News]] Cingular Wireless CEO Says Consolidation Good For Industry http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16184.php Consolidation in the wireless industry is a positive, allowing companies to combine synergies and therefore put investments back into the marketplace, Cingular Wireless President and Chief Executive Stanley T. Sigman said. ... Sweden's Tele2 revenue in Russia soars to $133.6 mln in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16186.php The operating revenue of Swedish telecommunications company Tele2 AB in Russia soared 96.6% on the year to U.S. $133.6 million in 2005, the company said in a statement Friday. ... ETB: Ola is not for sale http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16189.php Colombian mobile operator Colombia Mvil (Ola) is not for sale, Rafael Orduz, president of Ola co-owner Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogot (ETB), was quoted as saying by local newspaper La Republica. ... Iusacell rules out merger with Unefon for the moment http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16191.php Mexican mobile operator Iusacell does not rule out the possibility of an eventual merger with its sister company Unefon, both owned by media magnate Ricardo Salinas, but for the moment it is not part of the company's plans, Iusacell's CEO Gustavo Guz... ETB to give Ola capital injection in 2Q06 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16193.php Colombian municipal telco Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Bogota (ETB) plans to provide mobile operator Colombia Mvil (Ola) with a fresh injection of capital, ETB president Rafael Orduz was quoted as saying by news agency Colprensa. ... [[Handsets News]] New Music Phone From BenQ-Siemens http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16195.php BenQ-Siemens has launched a new music player handset. When closed, the mobile looks just like a music player. Clearly arranged play, pause, and fast forward and backward keys enable quick, convenient operation. Hidden behind a flap below the 1.6 inch... [[Legal News]] Government raids bypass installations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16187.php Ecuadorian telecoms regulator Suptel, along with the national police, the district attorney's office and an unnamed mobile operator, raided a bypass facility in Guayaquil, Suptel reported in a statement. ... Nokia Sued Over Patent Infringement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16203.php The German company, Teles says that it is sueing Nokia for patent infringements over its latest VoIP mobile phone. The company says that the Nokia 6136 infringes, by means of its "GSM fallback" functionality, Teles' German und European VoIP patents.... [[Mobile Content News]] DoCoMo Signs MOU With RealNetworks On Software Devt http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16185.php NTT DoCoMo and RealNetworks announced Friday that they have signed a memorandum of understanding as a first step toward jointly deploying RealNetworks' Mobile Streaming Server software. ... UK Mobile Phones Need TV Licenses http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16199.php Owners of mobile phones which can show TV shows in the UK will still be required to buy a TV License, or could face a US$1,700 fine. In the UK, all people who own a television, or watch internet broadcasts of television shows are required to purchase... [[Network Operators News]] Oi: 100 million mobile users expected in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16188.php Brazil's mobile phone market is likely to reach 100 million users in 2006, local mobile operator Oi president Luiz Eduardo Falco was reported as saying by Agncia Estado. ... Nepal Telecom Expanding Into Rural Areas http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16197.php Nepal Telecom says that it plans to expand its GSM network to 24 remote regions of the mountainous country, using satellite links for the cellular backhaul. The company expects to spend some US$3 million on the network expansion and is in the process... Easier PrePay Top-Ups When Roaming http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16202.php The European operators alliance, Starmap has announced a new service whereby customers of one operator can use the PrePay top-up vouchers from another other alliance operator to top-up their account. Using this service, customers are able to buy vouc... Vietnam Operator Outlines Expansion Plans http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16204.php Vietnam's MobiFone says that it plans network upgrades over this year to enable it to support a further 1.4 million subscribers. Thanks to upgrades in early 2006, MobiFone's network now covers 100% of territory in the provinces of Lang Son and Nghe A... [[Offbeat News]] Telenor Attacked In Islamic Cartoon Controversy http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16198.php Norway's Telenor has become unexpectedly involved in the ongoing controversy over the "Islamic Cartoons" after their Pakistan subsidiary was attacked in protest over the publication of the cartoons. The company has been forced to close down its offic... [[Reports News]] Composition of US Mobile Workforce To Remain Static - With One Exception http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16201.php The composition of the U.S. mobile workforce is expected to remain basically unchanged during the next three years, according to a new study issued by InfoTech's InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility (IEM) in its Mobile Communications in the U.S. Workpla... [[Statistics News]] Vivo remains market leader; TIM, Oi catching up http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16192.php Brazil's largest mobile phone operator Vivo remains the market leader, but TIM and Oi are steadily catching up, according to data from telecoms regulator Anatel. ... Hong Kong China Mobile Adds 1.31 Million Subscribers in Jan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16194.php Mobile-phone services operator China Unicom Ltd. said Sunday it added 1.31 million subscribers in January, the largest monthly increase since May 2005 - bringing its total mobile service customers to 129.10 million. ... Two Million Customers in Delhi http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16196.php India's Airtel says that it has crossed the 2-million customer mark in Delhi. With this, Airtel becomes the first mobile operator to complete this milestone in the Capital. The journey to the 2 million landmark has been stupendous having achieved the... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:18:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: In Wellesley, Books go Online / Library Offers Audio Downloads by Missy Ryan, Globe Correspondent If you live west of Boston, and you want to check out 'Death Dance,' a new mystery by Linda Fairstein, chances are you're going to have to wait. There's a backlog of requests for the 94 copies at libraries in the region's library network. But if you live in Wellesley, and have an Internet connection, you can simply download an audio version and listen to it at home, on your morning commute, or while you're sweating away at the gym. Last month, the Wellesley Free Library became the first in the Minuteman Library Network, a group of 41 libraries in the western suburbs, to offer its patrons free access to recorded books online. Twenty-four hours a day, they can browse a collection that includes more than 1,100 titles -- and is growing every month. In a world where multitasking has become almost as natural as breathing, many people 'want to be doing something when they have commuting time or gym time,' said Elise MacLennan, Wellesley's assistant director for library services. While libraries in the Minuteman network share many materials, only patrons from Wellesley can access the program. It is offered through a partnership between NetLibrary, which provides digital content to libraries and publishers, and Recorded Books. More than 260 people have signed up since Wellesley launched the program on Jan. 3, MacLennan said. The audio book collection that Wellesley library patrons can access contains classics and bestsellers like David McCullough's Revolutionary War chronicle, '1776,' and lighter fare like 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' by Alexander McCall Smith. To get the recordings, patrons must register at the library, where they create an account with NetLibrary. At home, they can download as many as six digital recordings at a time, and have 21 days to listen or renew before the audio book's license expires. People can use speakers or headphones to listen directly from their laptop or desktop computers -- which must have the capacity to support Windows Media Player 9.0 or above -- or they can transfer the recordings onto compatible MP3 players, handheld organizers, and even some mobile phones. Because the files aren't compatible with Apple products, Wellesley library patrons cannot listen to the audio books on the wildly popular iPod. "That's probably the major drawback," McClellan said. They can, however, use portable music players by other manufacturers, like Creative. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/19/in_wellesley_books_go_online/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 08:23:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Area Code, Sweet Area Code By MAGGIE MASTER The New York Times WASHINGTON JAY works in communications for a Washington think tank, but if you want to give him a ring, try Boston. Samantha studies international relations in Dupont Circle, but you'll have to call San Francisco to find her. Michele has been a congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly four years, but ask for her number, and you'll be calling Starkville, Miss. In a city known for its revolving door of young professionals, graduate students and eager-eyed Hill staffers, many a mobile phone number proves that home is where the cell is. Like a rear-windshield decal or an old college T-shirt, a cellphone number has become as much a part of an identity as a Social Security number. It represents a hometown, a college or a first job, and such memories are not casually thrown aside for a few good years with a 202 romance. For these area-code clingers, those 10 little digits provide a constant in the face of changing locations and uncertain futures. And, hey, it's great small talk. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/fashion/sundaystyles/19CELL.html?ex=1298005200&en=23ad42e74bdcd66f&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:13:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ESPN Cellphone Has Great Sports Content But Many Trade-Offs By WALTER S. MOSSBERG When you think of U.S. wireless phone carriers, the name ESPN hardly leaps to mind alongside Verizon, Cingular, Sprint and T-Mobile. But this month, ESPN joined their ranks, sort of. It leapt into the cellphone business not merely with vastly increased sports content available from phones and a new phone customized for sports fans, but also with a whole new cellphone company. The sports network isn't actually building cell towers or licensing frequencies from the government, as traditional carriers do. Instead, it is launching a "virtual" cellphone carrier called Mobile ESPN. It's leasing high-speed network capacity from Sprint and reselling that capacity as if it were a real carrier, complete with its own sports-oriented services, phones, pricing plans, billing and customer service. I've been testing the new ESPN Mobile service and its first phone, called the Sanyo MVP. In general, I liked the elaborate package of sports news and information that lies at the heart of the new venture, which can only be accessed via ESPN phones and the ESPN service -- not through traditional carriers, even Sprint. But I encountered some glitches and problems, including missing features. And to my amazement, I discovered the phone's Web browser goes only to sites approved by ESPN. I can't imagine anyone other than the most hard-core sports addict going through the hassle of switching phones and carriers to sign up with ESPN, especially since the new company's prices seem to be on the high side. ... http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060216.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:20:25 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wiffiti http://www.wiffiti.com/blog/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:29:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: An Easy Way to Back Up Phone Contacts The Mossberg Solution By WALTER S. MOSSBERG and KATHERINE BOEHRET Cellphones keep getting sleeker and smaller, which means they are also getting easier to lose or misplace. For instance, Motorola's latest model, the SLVR, is so thin and light, you'd hardly notice if it slipped out of your pocket or purse. And, of course, losing your cellphone can be a disaster, because it contains your address book. In fact, it often contains the only copy of your address book. Except for a few smart phones, like the Palm Treo, most cellphone models -- especially the small ones that are easiest to lose -- don't synchronize with your computer to back up data. So, how can you back up your data to protect against losing your phone? Most of the big-name phone carriers offer services that will store your cellphone contacts for a relatively small monthly fee. But these services, which are designed in part to keep you tied to a carrier, aren't widely used, or even well known to most users. There are also various carrier-independent backup software products out there, but they involve the use of a computer and can be clumsy and complicated. Some use cumbersome cables to attach your phone to a PC, others use your phone's messaging capabilities or Bluetooth functionality to send data onto a nearby hard drive. But this week, we took a look at a new product from Spark Technology Corp. in San Jose, Calif., that eliminates the need for a computer altogether: CellStik. This $40 product is a pocket-size USB thumb drive with a cellphone adapter on one end and a USB adapter on the other. By plugging the phone adapter into your cellphone and pressing a button on the CellStik, you can have your contacts backed up on the device in just seconds -- problem solved. In our tests, we found CellStik to be a smart solution that really works, and it's about as easy to use as possible. We did have one problem with it, but that was relatively minor compared with the potential loss of all your contact data when a phone goes missing. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20060215.html ------------------------------ Subject: Automatic Electric Relay Datasheet Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 09:15:43 -0500 From: GOUGH Tom Just wondering if you know where to get old data sheets for Automatic Electric relays. I'm looking for Y5151 series telephone style. Thank you. Tom Gough Kinectrics, Room KL204 800 Kipling Avenue Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M8Z 6C4 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:52:07 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AOL's About to Get VoIP USTelecom dailyLead February 20, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dbiYfDtutbhvplpCZM TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL's about to get VoIP BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft plans mobile VoIP offering * BlackBerry dispute goes down to the wire * Broadband gains users, but not at expected clip * Consumers face dizzying array of phone options * Do U.S. mobile phone users want 3G? USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Is your business prepared for IPTV? TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Airlines, travelers eager for Wi-Fi access REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * European Commission ready to act on roaming prices * Telecom industry fights outdated excise tax Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dbiYfDtutbhvplpCZM ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 16:52:12 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Mark wrote: > ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu - I saw your e-mail address on a web site > and I thought you may want to know about this new site; Pat, this is spam, I got it too. I wish you hadn't forwarded it to the newsgroup. I will be complaining to this idiot's ISP and hope that others will do the same. > northern wedge of WV as well. Good luck with your web site. PAT] Good luck? I hope his website is taken down for AUP violations. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _had thought_ (there I go, trying to think for myself again!) that because a while back I had published a couple messages about the West Virginia coal mine disasters, had included a note about the generally unfortunate circumstances many of those folks live with as a routine part of their lives, and a day or two later had published a more positive note here from a reader familiar with the northern wedge of West Virginia that this (as you refer to him) 'idiot' was writing to follow up on those messages. Steve, I really do not know what to do any longer with spam, which is _so_ pervasive, _so_ entrenched in the net. Don't we trust anyone to say anything any longer without first going through all the various newsgroups, etc? I guess you are looking at someone (myself!) whose overall usefulness on the net ended sometime around 1985 or so ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 03:08:08 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Mark wrote: [[ irrelevant non-telecom content removed ]] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Okay Mark, here is your free plug for > the new website; but I did not realize that little strip of WV was > known as 'Panhandle'; I always thought 'panhandle' was used for the > northwestern strip of Oklahoma, or perhaps the northernmost section > of Idaho, but I guess there is no reason it cannot apply to that > northern wedge of WV as well. Good luck with your web site. PAT] FYI, the northern end of Texas (everything directly west of Oklahoma) is also commonly referred to as the "Panhandle". As is Western Florida (more-or-less Panama City to Pensacola, and on west). Even the far S.E. corner of Missouri is also referred to that way, sometimes. I've even heard it applied to the far-western part of Maryland. ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 01:13:19 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Once again parental vigilance over their kids' computer usage is a must to reduce risks from net.criminals. And web sites like MySpace should require a permission letter from parents before giving anyone under 17 an account. Interesting how around 10 years ago News Corp. bought the DELPHI online service and spent a fortune building out a network only to bail out a couple years later and sell the network, which itself (ZipLink) went broke a couple years later. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Google Formally Rejects Justice Subpoena for Information Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:32:16 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Some interesting semantics going on here. When I first saw the headline, I thought 'What?!?' I mean, a subpoena is a court order, signed by a judge, commanding you to appear in court and/or produce certain evidence. How can Google just 'reject' such an order? (They can't.) What they can do -- and, apparently, what they are doing -- is _appeal_ against the order. >> Google also said in a filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern >> District of California This is perhaps just sloppiness on the part of the Reuters reporter and laxity in his sub-editor(s). But then, in the remainder of the article, this fast-and-loose use of terminology continues. Some examples: > the government demand > compel Google to hand over > a bid by the Justice Department > opposing the U.S. government request > complied with the Justice Department demand > the request for ... data > the U.S. government's request > the Justice Department request > fighting the U.S. government request > the Justice Department motion to compel Google I suppose that 'demand' and 'compel' are connotatively similar, as perhaps are 'bid', 'request' and 'motion'. The last time I checked, however, 'request' and 'demand' meant rather different things. These terms can't be mixed up, higgledy-piggledy, just to avoid repetition -- like a student with a thesaurus. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #77 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 21 00:19:17 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 1F8D215083; Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:19:17 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #78 Message-Id: <20060221051917.1F8D215083@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:19:17 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:20:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 78 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Has no License For China (Google News Wire) Home Depot Online Expansion (Karen Jacobs) Judge Weighs Injunction in Blackberry Case (Stephanie Stoughton) Earthlink to Offer Direct TV, Dish Service (Associated Press News Wire) Cell Phone Architecture (Arvind) Re: Automatic Electric Relay Datasheet (Jim Haynes) Re: PanhandleGateway.com Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (Paul Lee) Nokia 12 (galsaba) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google Has no License For China Service: Newspaper Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:22:29 -0600 Internet search giant Google Inc.'s controversial expansion into China now faces possible trouble with regulators after a Beijing newspaper said its new Chinese-language platform does not have a license. The Beijing News reported on Tuesday that Google.cn, the company's recently launched service that accommodates the China's censorship demands, "has not obtained the ICP (Internet content provider) license needed to operate Internet content services in China." The Ministry of Information Industry, which regulates China's Internet, was "concerned" and investigating the problem, the paper said. Google has weathered criticism from United States lawmakers, international free speech advocates and Chinese dissidents for abiding by Chinese censors' demands that searches on its new Chinese service block links about sensitive topics, such as Tibet and the 1989 anti-government protests in Tiananmen Square. A spokesperson for Google told the paper that it shared an ICP license with another, local company, Ganji.com -- a practice followed by many international companies in China, including Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc.. Usually, foreign investors in Chinese internet services must hand over operation of the service itself to a Chinese partner, with the foreign investor receiving payment for technical support. The paper said Google.cn's operations appeared to be different and the name Ganji does not appear in reports about the U.S. company's China activities. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Karen Jacobs Subject: Home Depot Online Expansion Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:17:42 -0600 By Karen Jacobs Home Depot Inc. is on a mission to give its stores endless aisles. The top home improvement retailer has a bold vision to expand its online sales, including plans to broadcast live product demonstrations and how-to infomercials on its Web site, automation of special-order sales, and new catalogs focused on categories such as outdoor living. The plan includes company-branded kiosks where consumers can surf http://www.homedepot.com and buy goods at any time wherever they are, be that a Home Depot store, mega-mall or maybe even an airport. Such self-service kiosks are already being tested in 50 Home Depot stores and at two Georgia malls. "As shoppers become increasingly time starved, they are looking to shop any time, anywhere," said Harvey Seegers, president of Home Depot Direct, the 1,000-employee division that handles online and catalog sales. "We're going to be investigating different channels of shopping in the upcoming years and the ones that get approved will become permanent," Seegers said in an interview. Online retailing is an explosive growth business. For example, Internet research firm Nielsen/NetRatings tracked 92.3 million online purchases in December 2005, up from 61.9 million a year earlier. "Retailers are able to extend their business online and capture significant sales," said Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst at Neilsen/NetRatings. Home Depot did not give figures, but said its online sales grew 100 percent in the past year. Over the next few years, the retailer sees potential for online/catalog sales to reach $1 billion, an e-commerce sales level already reached by discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Home and garden is among the product categories seeing the most growth in online sales. "People are becoming comfortable buying things like appliances online now," Dougherty said. For Home Depot, online expansion is crucial to growth as new-store openings slow and smaller rival Lowe's Cos. Inc. moves aggressively into big U.S. cities. The Atlanta retailer is stepping up its push into other markets as well, illustrated by its $3.2 billion bid in January for Hughes Supply Inc., which distributes construction materials to builders and other commercial contractors. WEB SITE MAKE-OVER Home Depot redesigned its Web site a few years ago, making it more visually appealing, easier to navigate and adding gift registries. Currently, 30,000 products can be bought online, half of which include electronics, gym equipment and furniture that is not sold in Home Depot's more than 2,000 stores. Now that 60 percent of U.S. households have broadband Internet capability, Seegers said Home Depot is investing in technology that will enable consumers to shop on homedepot.com from kiosks in various settings, home computer or cable and satellite television or from their personal digital assistant. "I envision a day where we have complete convergence between cable, satellite and the Internet," Seegers said. In coming years, consumers will be able to see live and archived broadcasts of projects such as deck building on the retailer's Web site, send questions to experts for quick responses and access three-dimensional product demonstrations, Seegers said. "A retailer can stand out by offering that kind of depth of information and making (Internet shopping) an enjoyable experience, particularly now because you do have so many more people on broadband," said Dougherty, the Nielsen/NetRatings analyst. New catalog businesses are also key to Home Depot's online expansion. Last year, the retailer launched 10 Crescent Lane and Paces Trading, catalogs aimed at affluent women that will compete with high-end catalogs from companies such as Williams-Sonoma Inc. The 10 Crescent Lane catalog offers products such as a $2,000 headboard, while Paces Trading features upscale lighting. Both brands have their own Web sites. At the end of this month, Home Depot will start displaying a catalog of outdoor living equipment in its stores that includes pools, swing sets and furniture, just in time for spring. All products in the catalog, which will eventually be mailed to homes, will be available for purchase online. Special orders, which currently are mainly placed in stores, will also be moving to the Internet, pushing Home Depot's online sales into the several billions of dollars, Seegers added. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Stephanie Stoughton Subject: Judge Weighs Injunction in Blackberry Case Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:21:32 -0600 By STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, AP Business Writer Say what you want about patent infringement suits, but at least the BlackBerry case has drama. A federal judge, clearly impatient with the long-running case, could issue an injunction soon on U.S. sales and service of the wireless e-mail device. Most patent suits are dismissed or settled long before they reach this stage. Remarkably, neither BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. nor tiny patent holder NTP Inc. have shown signs of backing down. In effect, they're daring each other to blink first and settle. Governments, businesses and individual users are growing unnerved by the standoff. Although the odds of an actual shutdown are low, conflicting opinions about the possible outcomes and the spin from both sides have created a confusing picture. James R. Spencer, a no-nonsense U.S. district judge widely respected in the legal community, now finds himself in the unusual position of weighing an injunction against RIM even as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is expected to finally rescind NTP's patents. "These patents are ... guaranteed to go in the garbage," James Balsillie, co-chief executive of Canada's RIM, said in December. "At the end of the day, our position is real simple: Let the system work." Unfortunately for Balsillie, the system doesn't necessarily work in a timely fashion. Spencer has signaled that he is unwilling to delay his proceedings while awaiting final word from the patent office, which lags far behind the court system. A case that could change the practice of granting injunctions in patent cases, eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, will be taken up by the Supreme Court, but no decision is expected until the spring at the earliest. Spencer, meanwhile, has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 24 on the injunction and damages. Because patent infringement cases don't often rise to this level of importance and even fewer make it this far in the courts, it's hard to tell how Spencer will rule. An injunction he once issued on a sediment-control device, for instance, interested few people outside the construction industry. RIM v. NTP, on the other hand, could affect many of the more than 3 million BlackBerry users in the United States. "His bottom line is that he wants this case off his docket," said Susan Dadio, a patent attorney in Alexandria, Va. "And if the two sides can't reach a settlement or resolve this, he will not be afraid to act himself." Arlington, Va.-based NTP was co-founded by the late Thomas Campana Jr., an engineer who in 1990 created a system to send e-mails between computers and wireless devices. He is survived by his wife, who owns a large stake in NTP. The BlackBerry hit the market in the late 1990s, becoming popular with lawyers, consultants and others who wanted to check e-mails away from their office and home computers. In 2001, NTP filed suit. A year later, a federal jury in Richmond agreed that RIM had infringed on NTP's patents. The jury awarded the small firm 5.7 percent of U.S. BlackBerry sales, a rate that Spencer later increased to 8.55 percent. Spencer issued an injunction in 2003 but held off on its enforcement during RIM's appeals. Those efforts largely failed and the case returned to his court last year. Government and emergency workers would be exempted from any BlackBerry blackout, but the Justice Department has asked Spencer to hold off on an injunction until the details can be sorted out. If granted, that delay would also permit corporate and individual BlackBerry users to switch to other devices or to download new software that RIM claims would work around NTP's patents. RIM executives say the new software will prevent any service disruptions, but they have released few details. Some analysts are questioning the viability of the workaround and whether it might inconvenience users or degrade service. The unanswered questions in the case have led thousands of companies to contact consultants in recent weeks for advice on alternative technologies, though few have actually made the switch. At United Parcel Service Inc., as many as 3,000 managers, executives and technical support employees use BlackBerries. In the worst-case scenario, the company would switch those users over to Palm Treo handhelds, which are used by other employees, said Donna Barrett, a UPS spokeswoman. David Johnson, infrastructure technology director for Grant Thornton LLP, said the Chicago-based accounting firm has been moving away from BlackBerries to a variety of devices supporting Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile operating system. That move has been due to personal preferences rather than the RIM litigation, but now the firm has asked two wireless providers to be prepared to supply backup devices for some of its 550 remaining BlackBerry users. Even so, Johnson hopes RIM and NTP will work out their differences. "If they want to kill each other and put each other out of business, all they're going to do is drive people to Windows Mobile faster," Johnson said. "This is stupid is as stupid does." Analysts and others say both sides should settle. RIM would be able to avoid the headaches of the injunction and focus more on its business, especially with Microsoft posing a greater threat. And NTP, they say, would fare better with a fat settlement (perhaps beyond the $250 million RIM has deposited in escrow) while continuing to reap royalties from licensing agreements with RIM competitors Nokia Corp., Good Technology Inc. and Visto Corp. Those companies have only small pieces of the wireless e-mail market dominated by RIM. And eventually, some analysts say, the patent office would catch up to NTP, eliminating its leverage. "Their days of milking these patents are nearing their end," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said, referring to NTP. "If they are indeed worried about the poor widow Campana, they should take the money." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines of interest from Associated Press, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Earthlink to Offer DirectTV, Dish Service Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:50:42 -0600 EarthLink Inc. said Monday it will offer DirecTV and Dish Network satellite television service in bundled options in select markets across the United States. The Atlanta-based Internet service provider said the offers will begin by the end of the first quarter. It did not say in which markets the options will be available nor offer any pricing details. Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., the dominant local telephone provider in nine southeastern states, also has a partnership with DirecTV Inc. to offer bundled services. The idea is to allow customers to pay for their telephone, Internet and satellite television services on a single monthly bill. There is intense competition to provide such bundled services among traditional telephone companies, Internet providers and cable companies. News Corp. has a 34 percent stake in El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV, which has about 15 million customers. Rival EchoStar Communications Corp., based in Englewood, Colo., has about 12 million. On the Net: EarthLink Inc: http://www.earthlink.net Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Arvind Subject: Cell Phone Architecture Date: 20 Feb 2006 15:37:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I want to know more about the architecture of the cell phones. That is if we open up a cell phone, what are the components inside and what are their respective functions. I would really appreciate it if someone could tell me a good book, publication or white paper that does this. Thanks, Arvind ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Automatic Electric Relay Datasheet Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:12:46 GMT There are a couple of Yahoo groups that might be able to answer your question: singingwires is for telephone collectors and strowger is for SxS switching heads. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/singingwires jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Paul A Lee Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:48:20 -0500 Organization: Rite Aid Corporation In TELECOM Digest V25 #77, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote (in part): >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... I did not realize that little >> strip of WV was known as 'Panhandle'; I always thought 'panhandle' >> was used for the northwestern strip of Oklahoma, or perhaps the >> northernmost section of Idaho, but I guess there is no reason it >> cannot apply to that northern wedge of WV as well. > FYI, the northern end of Texas (everything directly west of > Oklahoma) is also commonly referred to as the "Panhandle". As > is Western Florida (more-or-less Panama City to Pensacola, and on > west). Even the far S.E. corner of Missouri is also referred > to that way, sometimes. I've even heard it applied to the > far-western part of Maryland. West Virginia actually has _two_ panhandles, which is why PanhandleGateway.com refers to "WV's Eastern Panhandle". The sliver of West Virginia between Pennsylvania's western border and the Ohio River is also referred to as a panhandle (i.e., "WV's Northern Panhandle"). The portion of Texas between the Rio Grande and New Mexico is called the West Texas panhandle. Michigan has a "thumb" (between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron), and Virginia has a "toe" (roughly, the portion between Kentucky and Tennessee -- or roughly the area included in NPA 276, to include at least a nominal telecom reference). And the portion of Pennsylvania that borders Lake Erie is sometimes referred to as the "chimney corner". There are undoubtedly other colorfully named territorial divisions. Paul A Lee Sr Telecom Engineer Rite Aid Corporation WP-IS-COM (Telecomm) V: +1 717 791-6408 5280 Simpson Ferry Rd, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050 F: +1 717 791-6406 P.O. Box 3165, Harrisburg, PA 17105-3165 C: +1 717 805-6208 ------------------------------ From: galsaba Subject: Nokia 12 Date: 20 Feb 2006 18:40:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Where can I find more info about it? Anyone here built any application using the Nokia 12? galsaba [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is the entire name of this unit simply 'Nokia 12'? Typically, I think, Nokia cellular telephones are model-numbered with four digits, such as 6125 or 6010, etc. Can you elaborate a bit more on this 'Nokia 12' ? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #78 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Feb 21 15:14:15 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9EB2F15003; Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:14:14 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #79 Message-Id: <20060221201414.9EB2F15003@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:14:14 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:16:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 79 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Denies Acting Unlawfully (Reuters News Wire) Fake Drugs on Internet (Laura MacInnis) Second Apple Worm Targeting Macs (Reuters News Wire) Cellular-News for Tuesday 21st February 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 21, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) EarthLink to Bundle DirecTV (USTelecom dailyLead) Which SIP Server to Choose? (octacube@hotmail.com) Re: PanhandleGateway.com Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (Wesrock) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google Denies Acting Unlawfully Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:18:50 -0600 Internet giant Google, which has agreed to block politically sensitive items on its new China site, rejected Chinese newspaper reports on Tuesday that the new platform does not have the correct license. The Beijing News reported on Tuesday that Google.cn, the recently launched service that accommodates China's censorship demands, has not obtained the Internet content provider (ICP) license needed to operate Internet content services in China. The Ministry of Information Industry, which regulates China's Internet, was "concerned" and investigating the problem, the paper said. "Under China's policy framework for the Internet, Google.cn is clearly unlawful," said the China Business Times. A Google spokeswoman said the newspaper reports were groundless. "Google has the required license to operate the Google.cn service in China," she said in an emailed statement. Google used the ICP license of another, local company, Ganji.com, under a business partnership -- a practice followed by many international Internet companies in China. The license number is displayed at the bottom of the Google.cn screen. Yahoo Inc. and EBay Inc. have similar license arrangements. The official spokesman for the ministry was not available for comment. But another official in his office, surnamed Wang, said, "We're aware of the problem. It was raised long ago." He said the ministry would offer a statement on the issue some time later, possibly on Wednesday, and refused to say anything more about the matter or whether officials had raised it with Google. The Chinese government blocks foreign investors from directly operating Internet services in China. Foreign investors have usually become minority shareholders in joint ventures with local Internet companies, or signed deals so the foreign investor receives payment for technical support to a Chinese client. Google has weathered recent criticism from United States lawmakers and Chinese dissidents for accepting Chinese censors' demands that its new Chinese service block links about sensitive topics, such as the 1989 anti-government protests in Tiananmen Square. But the China Business Times, a business paper with a sometimes nationalist slant, blasted Google for even telling users that links are censored. "Does a business operating in China need to constantly tell customers that it's abiding by the laws of the land?" it said, adding that Google had "incited" a debate about censorship. The paper likened Google to "an uninvited guest" telling a dinner host "the dishes don't suit his taste, but he's willing to eat them as a show of respect to the host." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Laura MacInnis Subject: Fake Drugs, Including Tamiflu, Thrive on Internet Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:20:14 -0600 By Laura MacInnis Criminals are using the Internet to sell increasing quantities of counterfeit medicines, including fake versions of bird flu drug Tamiflu, a senior U.N. health expert said on Tuesday. Vitamin and health supplements, so-called "lifestyle medications" like erectile dysfunction drugs, and steroids bought over the Internet were especially likely to be false. Antibiotics, anti-malarials and pain killers were also susceptible to fraud because of the huge demand, while Tamiflu, made by Swiss firm Roche, had also entered the market amid rising avian flu fears. "Yes, there have been cases reported in counterfeit Tamiflu," said Howard Zucker, the World Health Organisation's assistant director general for health technology and pharmaceuticals. But he declined to give details on the quantity or where the fake drugs had been found, except to say that often times, the fake drugs get mixed in with the real drugs and physicians unwitttingly use them. "They think they are giving a badly needed flu shot to an older person; it turns out to be counterfeit, and possibly kills the person." The WHO has estimated as many as 10 percent of drugs on the world market are mislabeled or fake, with the phoney medicines sometimes causing illness and even death in consumers. Speaking to reporters after a high-level meeting in Rome, where pharmarceutical industry and health experts agreed to set up a task force to fight the counterfeit drug trade, Zucker said better oversight of online drug sales was essential. "It ought to be an extremely serious offense to do this, especially to vulnerable groups of people; seniors, new-borns, etc." At the meeting, the U.N. health body said it would help set up an international expert group to raise awareness about fake drugs and to improve cooperation between governments, industry groups and international agencies on the issue. "Counterfeiting medicines should be distinguished from other types of counterfeiting which do not affect human health and should be combated and punished accordingly," the conference participants said in a statement at the end of their meeting. Harvey Bale, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations, said fake medicines remain more prevalent in developing countries than in places like Western Europe. Still, Bale stressed patients in the rich world were increasingly vulnerable to counterfeit drugs distributed online. He said the new task force would look into that growing sector. "The Internet needs to be addressed, clearly," he said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Reuters, please review this page: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Second Apple Worm Targeting Macs Found Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 13:21:57 -0600 A new computer worm targeting Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers has been identified for the second time in one week, security experts said. The new worm, called OSX.Inqtana.A, spreads through a vulnerability in Apple's OS X operating system via Bluetooth wireless connections, antivirus company Symantec said. "We have speculated that attackers would turn their attention to other platforms, and two back-to-back examples of malicious code targeting Macintosh OS X ... illustrate this emerging trend," said Vincent Weafer, senior director at Symantec Security Response. The latest virus follows OSX/Leap-A, which was identified last week and believed to be the first such virus targeting the Mac platform. That worm attempts to spread via Apple's iChat instant messaging program, which is compatible with America Online's popular AIM instant messaging program. Symantec said the latest worm attempts to use Bluetooth connections to spread by searching for other Bluetooth-using devices that will accept requests for a connection when the computer is restarted. Bluetooth is a wireless technology used to transmit data among devices at short distances. The worm spreads via a vulnerability in the OS X operating system called the Apple Mac OS X BlueTooth Directory Traversal Vulnerability. If a Bluetooth connection is made, the worm attempts to send itself to those remote computers. However, the worm itself does not appear to pose an immediate threat. "While this particular worm is not fully functional, the source code could be easily modified by a future attacker to do damage," Weafer said, adding that Mac users should install available software patches to their operating systems to prevent such attacks. The latest worm was identified on Friday. Both worms are ranked a Level 1 threat on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most severe, Symantec said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news of interest from the print media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html (and) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 21st February 2006 Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 08:31:33 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] 3 Italia Sees 500,000 New Clients In 06 For Mobile TV http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16211.php Italian 3G phone service provider 3 Italia hopes to add as many as 500,000 new clients in 2006 with the launch of its phone-delivered television service La3, 3 Italia Chief Executive Vincenzo Novari said Monday. ... Reiman sees 3G licenses in Russia awarded this year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16212.php Russia's IT and Telecommunications Ministry plans to auction licenses for third generation (3G) mobile services this year, Russian IT and Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman told a news conference Monday. ... [[ Financial ]] Sibirtelecom sells 10% in regional mobile operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16210.php Russian regional fixed-line operator Sibirtelecom has sold 10% in Siberian Cellular Communications mobile operator in the Omsk Region, Sibirtelecom said in a statement Monday. ... Sonaecom Formally Notifies Competition Authority Of PT Bid http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16214.php Sonaecom has formally notified Portugal's competition authority, or AdC, of its EUR10.7 billion bid for Portugal Telecom, the AdC said Monday. ... [[ Messaging ]] Cingular Expands MMS Delivery http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16218.php Aicent say that it has signed a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) Interworking Service agreement with the USA based, Cingular Wireless whereby Aicent will offer its global MMS footprint to Cingular in establishing MMS interconnections with global mo... [[ Mobile Content ]] Commodore Games For Mobile Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16219.php Commodore Gaming, the company which is resurrecting the 1980's Commodore C64 home computer brand says that it is preparing to roll-out a line of digital content touch screen MediaTowers in mobile phone and game retailers across Europe during 2006. Th... Brazilian Operator Orders DRM Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16220.php The Brazilian CDMA network operator, Vivo has ordered a digital rights (DRM) platform from CoreMedia, for their comprehensive digital content services together with the MMBox/DiNO Platforms, from Portugal Telecom (PT) Inovacao.... [[ Network Operators ]] Russian mobile operator NSS plans to invest over $23 mln this yr http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16216.php Russian regional mobile operator Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz, or NSS, plans to invest over U.S. $23 million this year, NSS said on Monday. ... [[ Personnel ]] Russia's MegaFon says deputy CEO plans to leave in March http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16213.php Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon's Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer William Norris plans to leave the company in March, MegaFon said in a statement Monday. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Telstra To Meet Government Over Pay Phone Service Reduction http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16205.php Australian Communications Minister Helen Coonan said department officials will meet Telstra Corp. at 0030 GMT Monday to discuss the company's plan to reduce pay phone services around the nation. ... Regulator Overturns Moviles EUR40 Million Payment - Sources http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16207.php A Spanish regulator has overturned a decision that forced Telefonica Moviles to pay EUR40 million to rival mobile operator Amena, people close to the situation said Monday. ... EU Telecom Report Says Deregulation Is Working http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16208.php Eight years after deregulating Europe's telecom markets, a European Commission report published Monday offered a mixed message on competition. ... Reiman says Russian operators to pay for frequency usage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16209.php Russia's IT and Telecommunications Ministry wants the government to approve a ruling, under which telecom operators would have to pay for radio frequency usage, sometime in March-May, IT and Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman told a news con... Second GSM License for the United Arab Emirates http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16217.php A second GSM license has been formally granted to Emirates Integrated Telecommunication Company, which says it plans to launch services later this year under the "Du" brand name. EITC Chairman Ahmad Bin Byat said the signing of the full services tele... Complaints About Wireless Service Drop http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16221.php The USA telecoms regulator, the FCC has reported that consumer complaints about wireless service had tumbled by 28%. The FCC report revealed that wireless complaints fell from 6,873 in third quarter 2005, to 4,956 in the fourth quarter.... [[ Reports ]] Unpaid Phone Bills Result In $26 Billion Written Off Every Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16222.php Unpaid bills and defaulting customers are costing mobile operators around US$26 billion every year with around 5% of total billings being written off annually, a survey of operators around the world has revealed. This is one of the main findings of r... [[ Statistics ]] Hong Kong China Mobile Adds 4.07 Million Subscribers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16206.php China Mobile (Hong Kong), the listed arm of China's largest mobile operator by subscribers, said it added 4.07 million new customers in January, the highest monthly rise since the beginning of 2005. ... [[ Technology ]] IBM:Tiny Circuitry Possible Without Big Technology Changes http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16215.php International Business Machines (IBM) said Monday its researchers have found a new way to keep shrinking the circuitry on computer chips without radical changes to the optical technology long used by semiconductor makers. ... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:42:08 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 21, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 21, 2006 ******************************** VC Funding: Wireless Leads the Way http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16775?11228 Although venture capital spending in the telecommunications industry category has languished in recent years, the wireless sub-category is still a hot spot. In 2005, 152 wireless-related companies received $1.3 billion, a 24-percent increase over 2004's $1.1 billion and representing a 4-year high for wireless. The increase pushed the... Perspectives: An Interview with Jon Stretch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16774?11228 Competition drives innovation, and it is often in smaller, discrete markets that innovation takes off at a rapid pace. In the Australian telecommunications market, the incumbents are being challenged more aggressively by companies like AAPT, a competitive carrier wholly owned by Telecom New Zealand, who are using innovative services and... Fraud and Risk Management Considerations for MVNOs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16771?11228 Most MVNOs rely on a lean operations structure in order to keep costs at a minimum. They maintain a core of highly skilled managers, but only a few full-time, trained resources dedicated to the control of operational risk. While prepaid MVNOs face some risk, it is the pricier postpaid service providers with their compelling content that... Mobile Complaints Decrease by 27.9% Q/Q in U.S. - FCC http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16770?11228 Mobile complaints decreased by 27.9% quarter-on-quarter (q/q) to 6,873 complaints in the fourth quarter of 2005 in the United States -- in other words, 24 users complained out of 1 million, according to reports from the U.S. regulator, the FCC. The complaints were related to every category measured by the FCC, for instance billing and... Cingular, Telenor Partner with Aicent to Expand MMS Delivery http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16768?11228 U.S. mobile operator Cingular Wireless and Norwegian mobile operator Telenor last week partnered with mobile data network provider Aicent to expand MMS coverage, according to Aicent's chief executive officer, Lynn Liu. Significance: Cingular Wireless will become the first U.S. mobile operator to offer worldwide MMS coverage and... EU Upbeat on Telecoms Reform, but Concerned About Competition In Some Markets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16763?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Reforms introduced eight years to open the telecommunications market have cut prices and offered customers new services, but some former state monopolies retain too strong a grip, the European Commission said Monday. 'Some markets are not open enough to competition,' EU Information Society and Media... London's Financial District To Go Wireless http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16762?11228 LONDON -- The heart of London's financial district is preparing to go wireless. The Square Mile, Europe's premier financial district, will soon feature WiFi 'hot zones' which turn broadband-speed internet into radio signals which can then be accessed by laptops, PDAs, handheld game consoles and WiFi-enabled mobile phones. 'This... Importance of Wireless SLAs to Businesses Growing Slowly http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16760?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The Service Level Agreement (SLA) is becoming increasingly more important in the US corporate wireless service buyer's selection process, but for most companies, it is not yet a key decision factor, reports In-Stat. The importance of the SLA among other service attributes across all companies has increased in... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:57:15 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: EarthLink to bundle DirecTV USTelecom dailyLead February 21, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dbtEfDtutbjcetYQTg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * EarthLink to bundle DirecTV BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cingular offers phone with Yahoo! services * City of London to get Wi-Fi * Cisco unveils Ethernet switch, MSPP * Comcast ups ante in broadband battle * RIM overtakes Palm in PDA shipments * Questions remain over Lloyd Braun's tenure at Yahoo! USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Cutting-edge technology papers, exhibits at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * BT plans MPLS network for VoIP * Report: 50% of cable, satellite homes to have DVRs * Click-to-call advertising poised to break out * AOL offers life coaching via video * Poll finds most consumers want free VOD Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dbtEfDtutbjcetYQTg ------------------------------ From: octacube@hotmail.com Subject: Which SIP Server to Choose? Date: 21 Feb 2006 06:48:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm trying to make our company's SIP/VoIP recording service to divide the workload on 2 computers that record the incoming calls and i would need a some kind of server program to redirect the incoming calls (they come through SIP Gateway from VarPhonex). Both computers can accept several calls simultaneously (using DialDictate for recording) but not enough for our company's needs and creating another voip number for the other computer would be quite non-userfriendly solution. I'm new to these things and haven't tested any server softwares yet. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:47:43 EST Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle In a message dated Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:48:20 -0500, Paul A Lee writes: > Michigan has a "thumb" (between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron), and > Virginia has a "toe" (roughly, the portion between Kentucky and > Tennessee -- or roughly the area included in NPA 276, to include at > least a nominal telecom reference). > And the portion of Pennsylvania that borders Lake Erie is sometimes > referred to as the "chimney corner". > There are undoubtedly other colorfully named territorial divisions. One them is the "boot heel" or "bootheel" of Missouri, a more common name for what somebody said was called Missouri's panhandle. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: 21 Feb 2006 10:20:26 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com David Lazarus wrote: > Would you pay full price for a used cell phone number? > Chances are, you already have. > In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers routinely > recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to new customers > without informing them of the number's history. Huh? The phone company has _always_ recycled phone numbers. The only time you got a new one if you're entering a new exchange. > Cell phone companies say they need to do this because there just aren't > enough new numbers to go around. A number can be reused within as little as > 30 days. It's certainly true that there aren't enough numbers to go around. Unlike a home phone which tends to be more permanent, cell phone accounts can be opened and closed repeatedly. However, I do feel 30 days is not enough delay time. Because one has to pay for incoming calls, wrong numbers can be costly. Accordingly, I think a number should lay dormant at least for a year. I also think they should give 90 days free referral just like a land line phone. [some techie suprised phone numbers don't last forever.] > Therre said he called Sprint and was told by a service rep that he > must have signed up for a premium service. He said Sprint's records > showed that the text messages were being billed by a company called > SMS.... Obviously when any business closes out an account, it must close out everything. This isn't an issue of recycling the number, but rather failing to close out the account and reset all defaults. Presumably the man didn't want text messaging so that should've been turned off. All those text calls would've been rejected. End of trouble. It appears companies that use new technologies are so quick to start up and get running that they don't bother to build proper administrative systems. So garbage like this happens. What is insulting is that the companies deny responsibility even though it was their inter-billing arrangements that made it all possible in the first place. You can be sure Sprint was nicely compensated for its relationship with the other outfit. Imagine you sit down at a restaurant and your check includes food ordered by the previous customer. No one in their right mind would tolerate that. But apparently when it comes to technology that kind of business practice is perfectly ok. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #79 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Feb 22 22:23:23 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8700714FD6; Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:23:23 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #80 Message-Id: <20060223032323.8700714FD6@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:23:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:25:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 80 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Stop AOL's Email Scheme? Not So Sure I Agree (Patrick Townson) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 22, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Internet Video Begins to Flourish (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News for Wednesday 22nd February 2006 (cellular-news) Toll Rates 1956 (Lisa Hancock) Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (M Roberts) Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle (J Lurker) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (Koos van den Hout) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (DLR) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (George Berger) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (Scott Dorsey) Re: Google Denies Acting Unlawfully (panoptes@iquest.net) Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare (masonboro_island) Am I Calling it Quits? Well, Some Day Soon, I Suspect (Patrick Townson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Patrick Townson Subject: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:51:08 -0600 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Below is a message I recieved from the http://moveon.org people passing along some suggestions on the new plan by AOL to begin charging 'postage' of _large_ commercial emailers. Mr. Pariser disapproves of the plan. Please read his response to the plan by AOL, and then after his response, I will make some comments of my own. I do _NOT_ agree with Mr. Pariser's interpretation of what is happening, nor do I agree with his conclusions. PAT] ----- Original Message ----- From: Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Civic Action To: ptownson Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:29 PM Subject: Stop AOL's email scheme AOL is threatening the Internet as we know it. They want to charge an "email tax" for sending email. Those who don't pay would risk their emails not being delivered. Can you help change AOL's mind by signing this emergency petition? Dear MoveOn member, The very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by America Online. AOL recently announced what amounts to an "email tax." Under this pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an "email tax" can bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people's inboxes -- with their messages having a preferential high-priority designation. Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even families with mailing lists will inevitably be left with inferior Internet service unless they are willing to pay the "email tax" to AOL. We need to stop AOL immediately so other email hosts know that following AOL's lead would be a mistake. Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it to your friends? Sign here: http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t=3D2 Petition statement: "AOL, don't auction off preferential access to people's inboxes to giant emailers, while leaving people's friends, families, and favorite causes wondering if their emails are being delivered at all. The In ternet is a force for democracy and economic innovation only because it is open to all Internet users equally-we must not let it become an unlevel playing field." Sign here: http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t=3D3 AOL is one of the biggest email hosts in the world -- if we stop them from unleashing this threat to the Internet, others will know not to try it. Everyo ne who signs this petition will be sent information on how to contact AOL directly, as well as future steps that can be taken until AOL drops its new "email tax" policy. AOL's proposed pay-to-send system is the first step down the slippery slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users -- those who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind. AOL pretends nothing would change for senders who don't pay, but that's not reality. The moment AOL switches to a world where giant emailers pay for preferential treatment, AOL faces this internal choice: spend money to keep spam filters up-to-date so legitimate email isn't identified as spam, or ma ke money by neglecting their spam filters and pushing more senders to pay f or guaranteed delivery. Which do you think they'll choose If AOL has its way, the big loser will be regular email users-whose email from friends, family, and favorite causes will increasingly go undelivered a nd disappear into the black hole of a neglected spam filter. Another loser will be democracy and economic innovation on the Internet-where small ideas become big ideas specifically because regular people can spread ideas freely on a level playing field. If an "email tax" existed when MoveOn began, we never would have gotten off the ground-indeed, AOL's proposal will hurt every membership group, regard less of political affiliation. That's why groups all across the political s pectrum are joining together with charities, non-profits, small businesses, labor unions, and Internet watchdog groups in opposition to AOL's "email tax." The president of the Association for Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) points out the real-world urgency of this issue: In essence, this is going to block every AOL subscriber suffering from any form of cancer from receiving potentially life-saving information they may not be able to get from any other source, simply because a non-profit like ACOR-which serves more than 55,000 cancer patients and caregivers every day-cannot afford to pay the fee. Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it to your friends? http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t4 Thank you for all you do. -Eli Pariser, Noah T. Winer, Adam Green, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 P.S. The Electronic Frontier Foundation summed up the "email tax" issue beautifully: Email being basically free isn't a bug. It's a feature that has driven the digital revolution. It allows groups to scale up from a dozen friends to a hundred people who love knitting to half-a-million concerned citizens wit hout a major bankroll ... Once a pay-to-speak system like this gets going, it will be increasing di fficult for people who don't pay to get their mail through. The system has no way to distinguish between ordinary mail and bulk mail, spam and non-spam, personal and commercial mail. It just gives preference to people who pay. Sources: 1. "Postage is due for companies sending e-mail," New York Times, February 4, 2006 http://www.moveon.org/r=3Fr=3D1453 2. "AOL's New Email Certification Program: Good Mail or Goodfellas" L-Soft Release, February 2, 2006 http://www.lsoft.com/news/aol-goodmail.asp 3. "AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail: Taxing Your Email for Fun and Profit," Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 8, 2006 http://www.moveon.org/rFD1454 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I was happy to run this message from Mr. Pariser, even though I am in almost total disagreement with it. Eli should note that if it were not for the huge amount of spam and other abuse email otherwise receives over the years, all this would be just a moot point anyway. Pariser claims the 'death of the internet' (where have we heard that expression before?) will happen when AOL starts imposing its 'email tax' on those who will pay. No one would have to pay anything if more agressive tactics were used against spammers. But, alas, that is not to be, since the spam-enablers (those users who are forever modifying their filters to dodge [usually unsuccessfully] the amount of garbage on the net) will not tolerate any method of handling the 'problem' except their own, mostly disproven one. Eli continues by noting that "if the email tax had been in effect when move-on got started, they would have never been able to do their thing." If I am correct, move-on got started as a result of a dispute over some actions (or antics, depends on your persuasion I guess) by President Clinton, now about a decade ago. Well, Eli, I have been around with _my_ mailing list -- my pulpit if you will -- a little over twice as long as yours, 25 years this summer. And yes, Eli, it would have been hard for TELECOM Digest in those days also, but it is an invalid comparison since in those times, just as in the middle 1990's when you started, we did not have spam. Not in the 1980's or early/middle 1990's at least we did not, and we certainly did not have spam-enablers, at least not until the middle-late 1990's. Then Eli decides to do the obligatory get-personal routine, talking about the 'poor cancer sufferers and patients' will not be able to get the help they need because the organization handing out the information on cancer won't be able to afford to send it either. How do you know, Eli? Have you audited their books or inquired in other than a general way? And anyway, _how_ do they get their information now, after wading through the tons of spam which show up in their inboxes every day? You say they use white/black listing to insure that at least some of their good mail gets through? Who ever at AOL ever said any of that would change? When the mail at AOL hits your inbox (regardless of how it gets through the AOL-operated filters [paid and 'valid' spam or unpaid spam]) individual users will still have the ultimate control over their own inbox. Individual users will still operate their white/ black lists, their Spam Assassins, etc and sort the mail as they wish. All the so-called 'email tax' as you like to call it will do is transfer a bit of the suffering and hardship over to the spammers; they'll have to start making a token (perhaps) payment for the mess they are causing on the net. Actually, Eli, if you want to send petitions of complaint around, those petitions should be against the spam-enablers, the spam-apologists who keep insisting (as they wring their hands) that there is nothing which can be done about spam. Your damn straight there can be actions taken against spammers, most of whom are too damn dumb to know any better anyway. I put your petition and links here for anyone who wishes to sign it, since that is the way which I believe is fair, but I wish you would have directed your efforts at real, true worthwhile vendettas against the spammers. By the way, anyone who really and truely still believes filters work successfully, please note: AOL has gone that route; tried it for more than a year; are zapping a million (?) pieces of mail each day, and _still getting no where_. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 11:27:50 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 22, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 22, 2006 ******************************** Revenues Ride Growth Curve http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16800?11228 Last year saw record subscriber growth by carriers in the United States and record handset sales around the world, but not all of the financial news in the wireless industry is as good. Capital spending by the carriers is expected to flatten out in 2006 as network buildouts slow and revenue per user is declining. The top two carriers in... Communications Act of 2006? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16797?11228 WHILE THERE IS CONSIDERABLE momentum behind a telecom policy rewrite, it is debatable whether it will be decided this year. 2006, say doubters, will find elections on the tops of politicians' priority lists. Others remain optimistic elections will pose no deterrent to new legislation. Executives for USTelecom and the Telecommunications... Telefonica Faces EU Broadband Antitrust Case http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16788?11228 The European Commission (EC) has built up a strong case against Telefonica and is planning to file an antitrust case later this week, the Financial Times reports. The Commission alleges that the telco's wholesale 'margin squeeze' pricing policies have undermined... Sprint Nextel Posts 55 Percent Drop in Profit in First Full Report as a Combined Company http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16781?11228 RESTON, Virginia -- In its first full quarterly report as a combined company, Sprint Nextel Corp. on Wednesday reported a 55 percent drop in fourth-quarter net income on heavy expenses. The telecommunications service provider posted a quarterly profit of $197 million, or 7 cents per share, versus $437 million, or 29 cents per... Technology Brings Relevance to Phone Call Management http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16780?11228 As people accumulate an ever-growing arsenal of fixed and mobile telecom devices, "communications overload" is becoming virtually inescapable. Help for the overconnected professional may be on the way, however. A Marlborough, Mass.-based start-up has developed a technology that aims to make it easier for people to focus on the calls that... Cingular, AT&T Team with Yahoo! on New Offering http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16779?11228 Three telecom/Internet giants announced a joint plan to give consumers real-time, mobile access to certain online content. Cingular, AT&T and Yahoo! announced the availability of AT&T Yahoo! Go Mobile, an integrated service allowing access to AT&T Yahoo! Internet customized online content, services and community on a... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:12:29 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Internet Video Begins to Flourish USTelecom dailyLead February 22, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcbsfDtutbkcdVuweL TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Internet video begins to flourish BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * AOL to raise dial-up price * EarthLink, Google in joint bid to build SF Wi-Fi network * Verizon offers FiOS in Massachusetts town * Nortel taps Juniper exec for strategy post * Aussie buyout firm to launch bid for Eircom * Sprint Nextel reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * See soft-switch "shoot out" on TelecomNEXT exhibit floor TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Cox recruits Cisco to streamline customer service systems * Telecoms roll out multipurpose home phones * AOL means business with new AIM service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Judge denies U.S. government request for BlackBerry hearing * Telefonica slapped with antitrust charges Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcbsfDtutbkcdVuweL ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 22nd February 2006 Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 07:30:20 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] EU Delays Completion Of Telering Review http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16227.php The European Commission Tuesday said it had delayed its review, by one month, of T-Mobile International's planned acquisition of Austrian mobile operator Tele.Ring Service, from U.S.-based Alltel Corp. ... MTS may receive $1.1 bln syndicated loan soon http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16228.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) may soon receive a U.S. $1.1 billion syndicated loan to refinance its debt, a source close to AFK Sistema, MTS' parent company, said, Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday. ... Alltel Buys Up Regional Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16235.php The USA based, Alltel has agreed to purchase First Cellular of Southern Illinois, a locally owned wireless provider based in Mt. Vernon, Ill. First Cellular covers a population of 485,000 in 24 Illinois counties and its network includes major transpo... [[ Handsets ]] Euroset outlets in Ukraine up to 145 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16230.php The number of outlets of Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset in Ukraine rose to 145 as of Tuesday from 126 as of January 1, Euroset's Ukrainian branch said Tuesday. ... 5 Contact Centre Megatrends and How to Ride Them The Contact Centre Executive's Guide to Career Success in Turbulent Times To learn these secrets, DOWNLOAD the new white paper now http://www.egain.com/landinguk/best_practice_contact_center_megatrends.asp?id=ir203&source=IR%20Cellular%20News Compliments of eGain [[ Legal ]] Qualcomm Legal Dispute - Decision Due Shortly http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16236.php Within the next couple of weeks, the European Commission is expected to publish an initial decision on complaints against Qualcomm and its alleged patent license policies. Typically, the EC takes about four months from when a complaint is made to pub... [[ Messaging ]] Movistar introduces advanced mobile email service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16226.php Telefonica Mviles' Ecuadorian unit Movistar has introduced an advanced mobile email system for its customers, local news radio service CRE Satelital reported. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Yahoo Available On Cingular Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16231.php AT&T, Cingular Wireless and Yahoo! have announced the availability of AT&T Yahoo! Go Mobile, an integrated service that gives consumers real-time access to their AT&T Yahoo! Internet customized online content, services and community via a wireless ph... Majority Of Brands Turning To Mobile Advertising - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16233.php Major brands are shifting significant marketing resources to marketing via mobile phones, according to an independent survey of 50 brand name companies commissioned by Airwide Solutions, the mobile infrastructure software provider. By 2008, 89% of br... [[ Network Contracts ]] SK Group Expands BackHaul Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16232.php ECI Telecom has announced that South Korea's SK Group has again selected it's optical solutions for a nationwide expansion of its long-haul DWDM backbone network. The deal is part of an ongoing relationship between SK Group and ECI Telecom. ECI's sol... [[ Regulatory ]] Analyst: Anatel will struggle to find buyers for GSM licenses http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16224.php Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel will struggle to find buyers for its GSM mobile phone licenses in Sao Paulo and the northeast of the country, Eduardo Roche, a telecoms analyst at gora Senior CTVM told BNamericas. ... German Econ Min Surprised At EU's Telecoms Bill Concern http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16229.php German Economics Minister Michael Glos Tuesday expressed surprise at the European Commission's criticism of the government's planned new telecommunications law. ... [[ Reports ]] Mobile Phones Replace Cash In Developing Nations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16234.php The proliferation of mobile communications in developing countries has the potential to bring a wide range of financial services to an entirely new customer base, according to a new report commissioned by the Information for Development Program (info... [[ Statistics ]] Porta holds 65% of mobile market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16225.php Ecuadorian mobile provider Porta had captured 65.4% of the country's mobile telephony market by the end of 2005, reported local daily El Universo. ... [[ Technology ]] Wi-Fi Mesh: Challenges and opportunities http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16223.php Mobility and the increasing bandwidth offer are some of the many reasons why more and more companies and individual users are now preferring to use internet connections through wireless networks. ... ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Toll Rates 1956 Date: 21 Feb 2006 14:11:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Per our earlier discussion concerning long distance vs. telegraph rates, here are some sample phone charges. If anyone could find telegraph rates for the same time period, it would greatly appreciated. June, 1956 OFF PEAK (Sundays and after 6pm only, day rates higher) First 3 minutes Detroit to Niagra Falls NY .60 Phila to Boston .70 Cincinnati to Washington .85 Cleveland to Minneapolis 1.10 St. Louis to Grand Canyon 1.50 coast to coast 2.00 [I hope these posted in fixed format] Again, please note these are night and weekend rates, day rates would be higher, how much I don't know. Now if we can determine what a telegram cost in 1956 we might be able to compare modes. I think a letter then was 4c. Inflation from then today was about 15 times, so $1 then was $15 today. ------------------------------ From: markrobt@myrealbox.com (Mark Roberts) Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:38:35 -0000 Organization: 1.94 meters Wesrock@aol.com had written: > In a message dated Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:48:20 -0500, Paul A Lee > writes: >> Michigan has a "thumb" (between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron), and >> Virginia has a "toe" (roughly, the portion between Kentucky and >> Tennessee -- or roughly the area included in NPA 276, to include at >> least a nominal telecom reference). >> And the portion of Pennsylvania that borders Lake Erie is sometimes >> referred to as the "chimney corner". >> There are undoubtedly other colorfully named territorial divisions. > One them is the "boot heel" or "bootheel" of Missouri, a more common > name for what somebody said was called Missouri's panhandle. Actually, it's the only term for the Bootheel. Absolutely no one I know of in Missouri (a state that I lived in for almost 40 years) would call it the "panhandle". Ever. What is odd is that a name never was given to the section of Missouri that was added by the Platte Purchase. Mark Roberts |"Weblogs, the toilet walls of the internet. (What on earth Oakland, Cal.| gives every computer owner the right to exude their opinion, NO HTML MAIL | unasked for?....)" -- Jean-Remy von Matt (who since apologized) Permission to archive this article in any form is hereby explicitly denied. ------------------------------ From: Justa Lurker Subject: Re: PanhandleGateway.com -- Your Gateway to WV's Eastern Panhandle Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:41:58 GMT Paul A Lee wrote: > And the portion of Pennsylvania that borders Lake Erie is sometimes > referred to as the "chimney corner". Never heard it called that (doesn't mean you're wrong, just that I hadn't heard that label before :-), but the phrase "Erie Triangle" apparently has some historical lineage in this context: http://today.answers.com/topic/erie-triangle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Triangle http://www.roadmuseum.org/4_04_erie,_pa.htm http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/erie_triangle et al. http://www.explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1963 shows an original survey map. In fact, I remember seeing this stone marker ---- http://www.rootsweb.com/~paerie/land/SpTriangleMon.htm ------------------------------ From: Koos van den Hout Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: 21 Feb 2006 21:02:22 GMT Organization: http://idefix.net/~koos/ nospam4me@mytrashmail.com wrote in : > I think it would be neat if datacasting could be used for say Windows > Update in conjunction with a low cost USB-attached receiver. That > would be a godsend to those on slow dialup or satellite connections. Sounds like a rehash of the usenet/fidonet via satellite services that sprung up in the 90s. See http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONCEPTS/SERVICES/SATELLITES/ for more info. Not wanting to be negative about the idea: I think it would be fantastic to use cheap data-broadcasting in some way to distribute data to a lot of people want (such as windows updates) for a low price. nospam4me@mytrashmail.com wrote in : > I think it would be neat if datacasting could be used for say Windows > Update in conjunction with a low cost USB-attached receiver. That > would be a godsend to those on slow dialup or satellite connections. A bit of further research shows me this exists (for the US): http://www.nationaldatacast.com/ Maybe somebody needs to alert Microsoft to this network ;) Koos van den Hout Camp Wireless, wireless Internet access at campsites| Koos van den Hout http://www.camp-wireless.org/ | http://idefix.net/~koos/ PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 or RSA/1024 0xCA845CB5| Fax +31-30-2817051 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:03:10 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > David Lazarus wrote: >> Would you pay full price for a used cell phone number? >> Chances are, you already have. >> In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers routinely >> recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to new customers >> without informing them of the number's history. > Huh? The phone company has _always_ recycled phone numbers. The only > time you got a new one if you're entering a new exchange. >> Cell phone companies say they need to do this because there just aren't >> enough new numbers to go around. A number can be reused within as little as >> 30 days. > It's certainly true that there aren't enough numbers to go around. > Unlike a home phone which tends to be more permanent, cell phone > accounts can be opened and closed repeatedly. > However, I do feel 30 days is not enough delay time. Because one has > to pay for incoming calls, wrong numbers can be costly. Accordingly, I > think a number should lay dormant at least for a year. I also think > they should give 90 days free referral just like a land line phone. Hey, when I moved to Raleigh, NC in 88 I was given the old number of a lawyer. Resulted in about 1 call a month that we had to tell them sorry, not us. The one I always wondered about was the call on the answering machine from the guy wanting use to come bail him out. :) > [some techie suprised phone numbers don't last forever.] >> Therre said he called Sprint and was told by a service rep that he >> must have signed up for a premium service. He said Sprint's records >> showed that the text messages were being billed by a company called >> SMS.... > Obviously when any business closes out an account, it must close out > everything. This isn't an issue of recycling the number, but rather > failing to close out the account and reset all defaults. Presumably > the man didn't want text messaging so that should've been turned off. > All those text calls would've been rejected. End of trouble. > It appears companies that use new technologies are so quick to start > up and get running that they don't bother to build proper > administrative systems. So garbage like this happens. What is > insulting is that the companies deny responsibility even though it was > their inter-billing arrangements that made it all possible in the > first place. You can be sure Sprint was nicely compensated for its > relationship with the other outfit. > Imagine you sit down at a restaurant and your check includes food > ordered by the previous customer. No one in their right mind would > tolerate that. But apparently when it comes to technology that kind > of business practice is perfectly ok. I've had someone in the restaurant business tell me that's exactly what happens some places. At many places uneaten food is scraped off and put back in the "pot". This was NYC. ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 19:43:08 -0500 Organization: Heller Information Services It happened several years ago, but it still torques my shorts. We signed up with AT&T for a cell phone, to be used for emergencies only, (the $29.95 per month stuff). We never gave anyone the cell phone number, and we keep the cell phone in the car -- period. We haven't used it, since 2001, for anything other than one emergency call. We just keep the battery charged up and the phone in the console between the front seats. Anyway, a couple of months after signing up with AT&T, we received a significant bill for "incoming calls" that we never received, as we still don't know how to use the Nokia except to call out ... It took over four months, and a lawyer, to get AT&T to admit that the phone number we had been assigned was earlier used by a lobbyist. The lawyer's bill was more than the AT&T bill, but it was worth it to get AT&T to admit error. I guess I'm an imbecile -- but, with our POTS phone, we do not have to pat for someone calling us. Why -- if you have a cell phone -- do you have to pay if someone calls you? Seems like a first class racket, worthy of Al Capone and the Mafia. George (The Old Fud) I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The reason you have to pay for incoming calls is because (they say) the radio transmitter _on your end_ has to be used also. Eons ago, when Bell was in business, they had a division of that erstwhile company known as Separations and Settlements. S&S (to oversimplify it a little) was a bunch of people who sat around a large table with adding machines and other such tools and huge mounds of operator toll tickets which they would toss back and forth into each other's piles of work. In New York at a payphone I called a number in California; my call had to go in transit through a pair of wires belonging to a telco in Indiana and also in Colorado before eventually reaching Los Angeles. Clerk # 1 said to Clerk # 2, "here is a thousand dollars (in the form of a couple dozen) worth of credits to Illinois Bell from New York Telephone, and toss his stack of tickets to the next clerk. Then maybe he had five hundred dollars in tickets from New England Telephone to Southwestern Bell all bundled together and tossed that stack at another clerk somewhere. Ditto with a stack of tickets from Florida to a telco in Michigan, and some from Bell outbound to GTE. Each clerk would parse out his area of interest: payphones in New York City, switchboards in California, etc. Parse our his area of interest, add up the batch of tickets again rebundle them a thousand or so at a time, and toss the new bundle to the next clerk to work on. And eventually, that 'average' toll ticket, which they said was $6.59 in the 1960's had been thumbed through and worked over so that the $6.59 had been divided, or 'separated' about 25 different ways: a nickle for you, thirty cents for the next guy, etc. More or less once per year, and a few zillion paper toll tickets later, it would all be summarized: Southwestern Bell 'owed' some amount of money to New York Telephone, and New York Tel 'owed' some amount of money to GTE, etc. Everyone got horrible headaches. Imagine for example, a ticket that a customer disputed, some service rep somewhere wrote it off rather than investigate it further; the entire process would then go in reverse; I take back my nickle from you, and my thirty cents from the next guy. GTE would pay back the amount it 'owed' to New York Tel, etc. But Separations and Settlements saw to it that ONE person paid for the call, and the recipient paid NOTHING. It was an extremely technical bookeeping process, but part of what made the 'System' work so well. Then Bell went out of business, none of the greedy telcos around after that saw any reason to show the end-user (the customer, their rationale for being in business) any courtesy. Each man for himself. If a customer somewhere used a transmitter, then YOU make him pay for his part of it. Oversimplified a little, yes, but a sign of the times in telephony these days. Only Settle and Separate to the extent the court requires of you. Thanks again, Judge Greene, for your well thought out plan of divestiture. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: 22 Feb 2006 15:38:47 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers > routinely recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to > new customers without informing them of the number's history. Little-known? This has been going on since long before I was born. When I was a kid, one of the neighbors got a number that had previously belonged to a defunct pizza parlor. I believe that it used to be standard practice for the telco to age out a number for about six months after disconnecting it, before assigning it to a new customer. So I have no idea why the author of the article thinks that things should be any different for cellphones than they have always been for landline phones. It's not as if there is an infinite supply of new phone numbers. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net Subject: Re: Google Denies Acting Unlawfully Date: 21 Feb 2006 23:13:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Reuters News Wire wrote: > The Beijing News reported on Tuesday that Google.cn, the recently > launched service that accommodates China's censorship demands, has not > obtained the Internet content provider (ICP) license needed to operate > Internet content services in China. > But the China Business Times, a business paper with a sometimes > nationalist slant, blasted Google for even telling users that links > are censored. > "Does a business operating in China need to constantly tell customers > that it's abiding by the laws of the land?" it said, adding that > Google had "incited" a debate about censorship. The bottom of the China Business Times webpage has a number that looks an awful lot like a license number, indicating that it's abiding by the ICP law of that land. ------------------------------ From: masonboro_island@yahoo.com Subject: Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare Date: 22 Feb 2006 10:43:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks for the article. I hadn't read this one yet. It is scary to think that kids are so vulnerable...and it's true that people reveal a surprising amount of information about themselves in online dating sites or social networking sites like My Space. I saw a news segment on tv recently about how some dating sites are conducting background checks when you sign up to weed out "predators." Did anyone else see that? I saw one website where you can report any suspect activity targeting kids online -- its http://www.cybertipline.com That's the only resource I've found so far that offers a place to report things online. Good to know there are some resources out there. This is a difficult thing for parents to monitor as well. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:00:00 Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. During the night, I was up and down a few times, feeling absolutely awful with chest pains, much shortness of breath and much coughing and gagging. When my 'keepers' came around this morning and saw how absolutely awful I looked and sounded, they insisted I had to go to the hospital ASAP. So I was taken to Mercy Hospital here in Independence, where a decision was reached that (whatever else is wrong with me) I have a very bad case of bronchitis and my lungs are not in good shape. I was put on 'breathing treatments' with oxygen and ambuterol (?) I have to smoke a pipe with some liquid pumped into it and an oxygen combination hooked to a compressor. As if I do not have enough pains in the ass! I had sincerely hoped to continue my role here as editor _at least_ through sometime in August, and I will continue as best I am able. But, if you do not see me around for a few days at a time then it either means I am back in the hospital again, or else I totally croaked. I hope to be able to give you a few days notice before the latter, at least. Those of you who remember me prior to Black Thursday, in November, 1999 (the aneuyrsm day) will recall I have been continually dizzy since that time, and am due for a new brain shunt anyway, but I am not sure if it is worth the time and money for a trip all the way up to Topeka (or down to Tulsa) -- the nearest brain surgeons -- to have it done. Anyway, that's where things are at here; I'll try to stay in touch as much as I can. I am back home from the hospital, where I was at all day Wednesday. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #80 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 23 17:03:09 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 1A14515027; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 17:03:09 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #81 Message-Id: <20060223220309.1A14515027@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 17:03:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 23 Feb 2006 17:03:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 81 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Review: Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure on Internet (Rob Slade) NSDI '06 (Lionel Garth Jones) Spammer Gets ... _Eight Year_ Jail Sentence (Danny Burstein) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 23, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) DirecTV Plans Broadband VOD Service (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News for Thursday 23rd February 2006 (cellular-news) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (Lisa Hancock) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (George Berger) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Robert Bonomi) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Steve Sobol) Bronchitis was Re: Am I Calling it Quits? (Danny Burstein) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (John Mayson) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (Dave Garland) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (jtaylor) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (Lisa Hancock) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (Jim Stewart) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 07:59:26 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure on Internet Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKCPKIOI.RVW 20051201 "Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure on the Internet", Klaus Schmeh, 2003, 0-470-84745-X, U$50.00/UK#34.95 %A Klaus Schmeh %C 5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON M9B 6H8 %D 2003 %G 0-470-84745-X %I John Wiley & Sons, Inc. %O U$50.00/UK#34.95 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047084745X/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/047084745X/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/047084745X/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience i- Tech 1 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 472 p. %T "Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure on the Internet" Part one is supposed to address the question of why you would want to use cryptography on the Internet. Chapter one is really a general introduction or preface to the book. Chapter two tells us that cryptography is important for security. The ability to sniff various types of communications channels is mentioned in chapter three. Part two introduces the basic principles of cryptography. Chapter four outlines basic cryptographic operations, but only in the sense of listing the basic terms: the explanations are very limited. Some details of the internal operations of DES (Data Encryption Standard), IDEA (International Data Encryption Algorithm), and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) are presented in chapter five, but not in a way that provides a full understanding of the systems. Chapter six looks at some of the math involved in asymmetric algorithms and describes the Diffie-Hellman and RSA algorithms, but not how they work in practice. Chapter seven says that digital signatures work, but not how. Hash functions are reviewed in chapter eight. Pseudo-random number generators and stream ciphers are the topic of chapter nine. Part three ostensibly moves to advanced cryptography. But the topics are ill-chosen and oddly grouped: chapter ten lists standards and standards bodies, eleven looks at DES modes and RSA data transforms, twelve outlines both communications protocols and attacks on cryptography. Authentication is covered in a reasonable manner in chapter thirteen, while a great deal of the math (and very little explanation) of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is given in fourteen, and fifteen deals with cryptographic hardware, software, and interfaces. Part four turns to public key infrastructures (PKI). Chapters sixteen and seventeen outline the elements of a PKI. Certificates and certificate servers are covered in eighteen and nineteen, respectively. Chapter twenty reviews practical aspects. Part five addresses cryptographic protocols for the Internet. Chapter twenty-one looks at the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) layered model, with twenty-two examining protocols for layer 2, twenty-three for 3 (limited to IPSec), twenty-four for 4, and twenty-five, -six, - seven, and -eight for layer 7. (Only fair, since the TCP/IP application layer subsumes the OSI session, presentation, and application.) Part six covers more about cryptography, and is probably the best section of the book. Chapter twenty-nine deals with political aspects of cryptography, such as export restrictions. People, companies, and organizations are listed in chapter thirty. References and resources are in chapter thirty-one, for those who want to study the topic further. Chapter thirty-two finishes off with flops, myths, and snake oil. The writing is ragged, the structure often odd, and the technical level very inconsistent. Material seems to have been added with no particular purpose in mind. The chapter on random numbers starts out with a mention of three movies, two of which have tenuous connections to cryptography, none of which deals with the concept of randomness. Technical details are thrown into the text without either fully explaining the technology under discussion, or being necessary for further topics. The result is a grab bag of indiscriminate facts that do not furnish the reader with a full understanding of the topics. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005 BKCPKIOI.RVW 20051201 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. - Pearl Buck http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 10:06:29 -0800 From: Lionel Garth Jones Subject: NSDI '06 Dear Colleague: We are writing to invite you to NSDI '06: 3rd Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation, May 8-10, 2006, in San Jose, CA. http://www.usenix.org/nsdi06/proga NSDI '06 focuses on the design principles of large-scale distributed and networked systems. Our goal is to bring together researchers from across the systems and networking communities to foster cross-disciplinary approaches and to address shared research challenges. We received 110 technical submissions, and from these the NSDI '06 Program Committee selected 28 papers for inclusion in the symposium. The resulting program includes a diverse collection of creative and well-developed papers in areas including wide-area distributed services, new network architectures, and measures of deployed systems. In addition, NSDI '06 will feature a poster session where attendees can learn more about the leading edge of networked systems design by talking with researchers who are presenting their current work in its formative stages. Please join us for this exciting symposium presenting the best of current networked systems research and practice. We look forward to seeing you there. Sincerely, Larry Peterson, Princeton University Timothy Roscoe, Intel Research NSDI '06 Program Chairs ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Spammer Gets ... _Eight Year_ Jail Sentence Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:05:34 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC ( the jail term isn't directly related to the spam itself, but close enough for gummint work ) " Bulk e-mailer gets 8 years in prison for Acxiom theft BY BRIAN BASKIN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE " Boca Raton, Fla., e-mail marketer Scott Levine was sentenced to eight years in federal prison Wednesday for orchestrating the theft of 1.6 billion consumer records from Acxiom Corp. " Levine will also pay a $12,300 fine, in addition to a $250,000 forfeiture ordered in September, for money his firm, Snipermail. com Inc., received in the only known sale involving the stolen data. U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson Jr. said he would later this week order Levine to pay damages to Acxiom somewhere between the defense estimate of $224,000 and the government's estimate of $6.8 million. Federal prisoners are not eligible for parole.... [ rest at (watch for line wrap) : http://www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2006/02/23&ID=Ar00104&Section=Business _____________________________________________________ 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 Mr. Pariser (with the moveon.org people) want to do something _useful and worthwhile_ it would be to testify _for the government_ on behalf of small organizations like themselves, the cancer people and other small publishers similarly situated on the horrible effects spam has caused for the net, rather than sending petitions around encouraging netizens to become spam-enablers and foisting off the costs of filtering spam onto the bigger ISPs willing to pay instead of those who caused the problem to start with. NO MORE SPAM! NO MORE SPAM-ENABLING! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:52:41 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 23, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 23, 2006 ******************************** Mobile Vision: Cellcos Tune In to TV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16829?11228 Mobile television is on the march. Video including news clips, sports highlights and the like is available now on American handsets. But the next generation of mobile video aims to elevate these applications from time-killers for the tech-savvy to something that is part of the broader American lifestyle, as mainstream as clicking on the... Altimo Rejects Participation in Ukrtelecom Privatisation, Eyes Svyazinvest http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16825?11228 Altimo, a subsidiary of the Russian group Alfa, has announced that it will not be participating in the imminent privatisation of Ukraine's state-owned fixed-line monopoly, Ukrtelecom. The latter is 92.865% owned by the Ukrainian government, which has long been declaring its intention to privatise the company. Ukrainian Transport and... MobilTel Becomes Vodafone Partner http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16824?11228 Vodafone has announced that it has signed a partnership deal with MobilTel, the Bulgarian mobile arm of Telekom Austria. Under the deal, MobilTel's customers will get access to Vodafone products and services. Meanwhile, customers of Vodafone, its joint ventures and partners will be able to access Vodafone services when travelling in... Forum Provides Look at Next-Generation E911 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16816?11228 WASHINGTON -- Wireless will play an important role in the next-generation E911 communications system that lies beyond the VoIP horizon, say government officials charged with designing the emergency network of the future. At a forum on Capitol Hill late yesterday, Department of Transportation (DOT) and emergency response... NTP Patent Rejected http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16813?11228 As the patent dispute between Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM - message board; Toronto: RIM) and NTP Software accelerates toward a conclusion, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today issued a final rejection of one of the mobile email patents held by NTP. The Patent Office has already issued preliminary rulings... U.K. Regulator Seeks New VoIP Rules http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16811?11228 U.K. regulator Ofcom today started the process of creating a new set of rules for the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) industry in United Kingdom, issuing a so-called "consultation" document outlining the areas it is going to consider and calling for comments. In its 121-page document, Ofcom indicates it intends to repeal some... Google, EarthLink Team for San Fran. WiFi http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16805?11228 Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - message board) confirmed Wednesday it has partnered with the ISP EarthLink Inc. to compete for a contract to build San Francisco's municipal WiFi network. (See Google, Earthlink Bid on WiFi.) Google and Earthlink submitted one of seven responses to a request for proposal (RFP) from the city, a spokesman says.Read... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:21:24 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: DirecTV Plans Broadband VOD Service USTelecom dailyLead February 23, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcmIfDtutblsiBIPjf TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * DirecTV plans broadband VOD service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: VoIP continues to surge * San Francisco unveils Wi-Fi proposals * World Wide Packets wins deal for gigabit broadband network * Patent office formally rejects NTP patent USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Sunday at TelecomNEXT: Steven Shepard, IMS, IPTV, WiMAX and more! TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * New companies seek to prevent 'Net gridlock * NTT offers firewall protection for IPv6 * Wireless broadband technology challenges fiber * Making Web search pay for users REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * U.K. telecom regulator eyes VoIP * EU clears Cisco's acquisition of S-A Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcmIfDtutblsiBIPjf ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 23rd February 2006 Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:54:40 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Georgia to auction 3G mobile license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16240.php Georgia's National Communications Commission plans to auction a third generation (3G) mobile services license on April 21, the commission said Wednesday. ... Challenges Ahead for TD-SCDMA in China http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16253.php The Chinese mobile telephony market is one of the most dynamic and complicated in the world, and it will become considerably more complex in the next few years. At the end of January 2006, China's government set TD-SCDMA as the national standard for ... [[ Financial ]] Australia's Telstra No Comment On Taiwan Mobile Stake http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16237.php Australia's Telstra Corp. declined to comment Wednesday on a report the company is interested in buying a 30% stake in Taiwan Mobile from Taiwan Fixed Network. ... Ukraine's mobile services revenue down 16.6% on month in Jan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16241.php Mobile services in Ukraine brought operators a total revenue of 1.291 million hryvnas in January, or 16.6% down on the month, Ukraine’s State Statistics Committee said Wednesday. ... [[ Handsets ]] Panasonic 3G Phone Shipping http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16251.php Panasonic Mobile says that it has begun shipment of "FOMA P901iTV" mobile handsets to Japan's DoCoMo. The P901iTV is NTT DoCoMo's first mobile handset to receive terrestrial digital broadcasting signals in addition to conventional analog signals. The... Samsung Starts Indian GSM Handset Production http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16252.php Samsung says that it has started production of GSM handsets at its Manesar plant in Haryana, India. All these products will be customized with the help of Samsung India Software Operations unit (SISO), Samsung's R&D Centre located at Bangalore. The f... [[ Mobile Content ]] Debifone expands regional presence http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16243.php Regional mobile payment solutions provider Debifone has expanded its presence in South America launching operations in Uruguay for its mobile payment service, the company said in a statement. ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Ericsson Gets HSDPA Contracts http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16239.php Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson, Wednesday said has signed contracts with Italian operator 3 and Swiss operator Swisscom Mobile for the use of its mobile broadband solution HSDPA. ... [[ Network Operators ]] Ukrainian president meets with Telenor's representatives http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16248.php Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko held a meeting with representatives of Norway's telecommunication company Telenor on Tuesday, the president's press office reported Wednesday. ... Vodafone Signs Bulgarian Branding Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16254.php Vodafone has signed a Partner Agreement with Mobiltel, the Bulgarian mobile operator of Telekom Austria. Under the terms of the agreement, Mobiltel will be able to provide their customers with Vodafone products and services for international voice an... [[ Regulatory ]] Russian parliament's upper house approves caller pays bill http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16238.php The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, approved Wednesday a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle in Russia. ... ICE, govt telecoms liberalization talks stalled http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16242.php Negotiations between government officials and authorities of Costa Rican state telecoms monopoly ICE to open up one of the last non-liberalized telecommunications markets in the Central American-Caribbean region have hit a stumbling block, local dail... Movistar to award spectrum April 21 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16245.php Chilean mobile operator Movistar, a unit of Spain's Telefonica Mviles, has set April 21 as the date to award 25Mhz of excess spectrum it has in the 800MHz band, local press reported. ... FAS wants to delay awarding frequencies in Russia's Far East http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16247.php Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has suggested that the State Radio Frequency Commission should decide on allocating frequencies in Russia's Far East Federal District after the FAS has completed considering VimpelCom's complaint, the ... Illegal GSM Network Closed http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16249.php Afghanistan's telecoms regulator has shut down an illegal GSM network which had been detected operating in the capital city, Kabul. H. E. Eng. A. Sangin Minister of Communications stated that T.R.B. Department of the Ministry of Communications in col... [[ Reports ]] Pre-Paid Customers Gain Traction With Wireless Carriers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16246.php The pre-paid wireless customer, once scoffed at by carriers, has now become a valuable source of business for the industry. ... Mobile Infrastructure Market to Continue Strong Sales in Coming Years http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16250.php Mobile expansion in emerging regions such as Latin America, Asia, and Africa and continued growth in data services throughout the world will allow infrastructure vendors to make great strides over the next years, according to a new Visant Strategies ... [[ Statistics ]] Movistar unit surpasses 8 million clients http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16244.php Argentine mobile operator Movistar Argentina, a unit of Spain's Telefonica Mviles, saw its client base rise 45% last year to over 8 million users, the company said in a statement. ... ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: 23 Feb 2006 06:55:42 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com George Berger wrote: > Anyway, a couple of months after signing up with AT&T, we received a > significant bill for "incoming calls" that we never received, as we > still don't know how to use the Nokia except to call out ... It took > over four months, and a lawyer, to get AT&T to admit that the phone > number we had been assigned was earlier used by a lobbyist. I'm afraid I don't understand this, could someone explain it? On my cell phone, I'm only charged for incoming calls when I answer the phone. If it the phone is turned off, obviously I can't answer it and I am not charged. But even if the phone is turned on, if I don't answer it I still am not charged. I know this because from time to time I test my cell phone (I don't use it very often) and I call it during prime time. It rings but I don't answer and I'm not charged. Is there some new policy that even unanswering incoming calls are now charged? [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think there is any such policy. It was more likely a clerical error by AT&T (even though the company in its bureaucratic stubborness refused to correct it or look into the problem until they were forced to do so.) I am not charged on my no-answers inbound either (Cingular Wireless). PAT] ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:20:46 -0500 Organization: Heller Information Services PAT - Thanks for your response, and for the rationale as to why cell phone users must pay for incoming calls. Good Gawd! I had a ham license before WWII (W9ZUK), and I worked over 100 countries -- and I still have the QSL cards for verification. In CW, I ran a pair of 809s, in push-pull, driven by 6L6s, into a primitive directional antenna. Receiver? A Halliburton Sky Buddy! Can you imagine how either Verizon, or the newly-minted AT&T, would act if they were placed in charge of today's ham radio? I don't even want to think about it. George( The Old Fud) I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 04:11:53 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Patrick Townson wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Below is a message I recieved from the > http://moveon.org people passing along some suggestions on the new > plan by AOL to begin charging 'postage' of _large_ commercial emailers. > Mr. Pariser disapproves of the plan. Please read his response to the > plan by AOL, and then after his response, I will make some comments of > my own. I do _NOT_ agree with Mr. Pariser's interpretation of what is > happening, nor do I agree with his conclusions. PAT] > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org Civic Action > To: ptownson > Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 1:29 PM > Subject: Stop AOL's email scheme > AOL is threatening the Internet as we know it. > They want to charge an "email tax" for sending email. Those who don't > pay would risk their emails not being delivered. > Can you help change AOL's mind by signing this emergency petition? > Dear MoveOn member, > The very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet > as we know it are under attack by America Online. > AOL recently announced what amounts to an "email tax." Under this > pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an "email tax" can > bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people's inboxes -- with > their messages having a preferential high-priority designation. > Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even > families with mailing lists will inevitably be left with inferior > Internet service unless they are willing to pay the "email tax" to > AOL. We need to stop AOL immediately so other email hosts know that > following AOL's lead would be a mistake. > Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it > to your friends? > Sign here: > http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t=3D2 > Petition statement: "AOL, don't auction off preferential access to > people's inboxes to giant emailers, while leaving people's friends, > families, and favorite causes wondering if their emails are being > delivered at all. The In ternet is a force for democracy and economic > innovation only because it is open to all Internet users equally-we > must not let it become an unlevel playing field." > Sign here: > http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t=3D3 > AOL is one of the biggest email hosts in the world -- if we stop them > from unleashing this threat to the Internet, others will know not to > try it. Everyo ne who signs this petition will be sent information on > how to contact AOL directly, as well as future steps that can be > taken until AOL drops its new "email tax" policy. > AOL's proposed pay-to-send system is the first step down the slippery > slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users -- those > who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind. > AOL pretends nothing would change for senders who don't pay, but > that's not reality. The moment AOL switches to a world where giant > emailers pay for preferential treatment, AOL faces this internal > choice: spend money to keep spam filters up-to-date so legitimate > email isn't identified as spam, or ma ke money by neglecting their > spam filters and pushing more senders to pay f or guaranteed > delivery. Which do you think they'll choose > If AOL has its way, the big loser will be regular email users-whose > email from friends, family, and favorite causes will increasingly go > undelivered a nd disappear into the black hole of a neglected spam > filter. Another loser will be democracy and economic innovation on the > Internet-where small ideas become big ideas specifically because > regular people can spread ideas freely on a level playing field. > If an "email tax" existed when MoveOn began, we never would have > gotten off the ground-indeed, AOL's proposal will hurt every > membership group, regard less of political affiliation. That's why > groups all across the political s pectrum are joining together with > charities, non-profits, small businesses, labor unions, and Internet > watchdog groups in opposition to AOL's "email tax." > The president of the Association for Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) points > out the real-world urgency of this issue: > In essence, this is going to block every AOL subscriber suffering from > any form of cancer from receiving potentially life-saving information > they may not be able to get from any other source, simply because a > non-profit like ACOR-which serves more than 55,000 cancer patients > and caregivers every day-cannot afford to pay the fee. > Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it > to your friends? > http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/=3Fid=3D6934-6797352-7qWN3jhbKHwoR6eVDce6yQ&t4 > Thank you for all you do. > -Eli Pariser, Noah T. Winer, Adam Green, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team > Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I was happy to run this message from > Mr. Pariser, even though I am in almost total disagreement with > it. Eli should note that if it were not for the huge amount of spam > and other abuse email otherwise receives over the years, all this > would be just a moot point anyway. Pariser claims the 'death of the > internet' (where have we heard that expression before?) will happen > when AOL starts imposing its 'email tax' on those who will pay. No one > would have to pay anything if more agressive tactics were used against > spammers. But, alas, that is not to be, since the spam-enablers (those > users who are forever modifying their filters to dodge [usually > unsuccessfully] the amount of garbage on the net) will not tolerate > any method of handling the 'problem' except their own, mostly > disproven one. > Eli continues by noting that "if the email tax had been in effect when > move-on got started, they would have never been able to do their > thing." If I am correct, move-on got started as a result of a dispute > over some actions (or antics, depends on your persuasion I guess) by > President Clinton, now about a decade ago. Well, Eli, I have been > around with _my_ mailing list -- my pulpit if you will -- a little > over twice as long as yours, 25 years this summer. And yes, Eli, it > would have been hard for TELECOM Digest in those days also, but it is > an invalid comparison since in those times, just as in the middle > 1990's when you started, we did not have spam. Not in the 1980's or > early/middle 1990's at least we did not, and we certainly did not have > spam-enablers, at least not until the middle-late 1990's. Then Eli > decides to do the obligatory get-personal routine, talking about the > 'poor cancer sufferers and patients' will not be able to get the help > they need because the organization handing out the information on > cancer won't be able to afford to send it either. How do you know, > Eli? Have you audited their books or inquired in other than a general > way? And anyway, _how_ do they get their information now, after wading > through the tons of spam which show up in their inboxes every day? You > say they use white/black listing to insure that at least some of > their good mail gets through? Who ever at AOL ever said any of that > would change? When the mail at AOL hits your inbox (regardless of > how it gets through the AOL-operated filters [paid and 'valid' spam > or unpaid spam]) individual users will still have the ultimate control > over their own inbox. Individual users will still operate their white/ > black lists, their Spam Assassins, etc and sort the mail as they wish. > All the so-called 'email tax' as you like to call it will do is > transfer a bit of the suffering and hardship over to the spammers; > they'll have to start making a token (perhaps) payment for the mess > they are causing on the net. Actually, Eli, if you want to send > petitions of complaint around, those petitions should be against the > spam-enablers, the spam-apologists who keep insisting (as they wring > their hands) that there is nothing which can be done about spam. Your > damn straight there can be actions taken against spammers, most of > whom are too damn dumb to know any better anyway. > I put your petition and links here for anyone who wishes to sign it, > since that is the way which I believe is fair, but I wish you would > have directed your efforts at real, true worthwhile vendettas against > the spammers. By the way, anyone who really and truely still believes > filters work successfully, please note: AOL has gone that route; tried > it for more than a year; are zapping a million (?) pieces of mail each > day, and _still getting no where_. PAT] At their peak, AOL was zapping well over a _billion_ pieces of spam per day. If I recall correctly, it was something like 2.2 billion/day, but I don't have an authoritative cite for that number. I believe that load was close to 90% of _all_ incoming mail at AOL. Interestingly, they have stated that the spam volume they currently see is _down_ by about 40% from peak levels. In recent times (i.e., the last year or two), their 'defensive measures' have become aggressive enough that they also block a non-trivial amount of legitimate mail. I'm given to understand mailboxes at AOL -are- nearly spam-free, though. The 'goodmail' pay-to-send service that AOL (and Yahoo) are participating in *claims* that they will authorize their 'stamp' only for "confirmed opt-in" mass mailings. There are a couple of possibilities: 1) they _always_ do 'due diligence' in investigating those who try to buy into the service, and, in time, enough people decide it 'really means something' that it actually *has* value. (I'm _not_ holding my breath.) 2) They _don't_ adequately validate their customers, and spam gets sent with the 'goodmail' certification. IF they don't immediately take extremely aggressive action against that party -- which violated their contract terms of service -- then the value of their 'goodmail' certification immediately drops to 'nothing' (or even "negative"; there are people that use the Habeas "certified non-spam mail" as a criteria to *block* on -- since (a) the Habeas mark in mail _has_ been forged *without* Habeas taking action against the forgers, and (b) 'more than one' actual Habeas client has violated the terms of use of the Habeas certification, and Habeas took -no- action other than to tell that client to stop using their mark/certification. In the present 'state of the world', I question whether 'enough' companies that do significant-size *CLEAN* mailings are going to 'buy into' this 'goodmail' idea for it to have any significant impact on general email-processing procedures. If only 0.001% of incoming mail bears the 'goodmail' stamp, then providers _will_ still have to keep up the existing defenses. In that scenario, 'goodmail' simply won't have any measurable effect on the world at large -- there will be no incentive for other providers to 'buy into' the program (since it won't produce enough revenue to make any noticable difference) -- and it will eventually 'wither away' and die. And, if 'goodmail' screws up _anything_ significant, even *once*, the 'wither away and die' will happen even quicker. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But at least Robert, you seem to be agreeing with my contention (in your 'amount of email AOL tosses each day statistics') that the practice of email/spam filtering is basically a waste of time, not accomplishing a lot. And of course we know that filters can screw up also, don't we? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:01:26 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Patrick Townson wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Below is a message I recieved from the > http://moveon.org people passing along some suggestions on the new > plan by AOL to begin charging 'postage' of _large_ commercial emailers. > Mr. Pariser disapproves of the plan. Please read his response to the > plan by AOL, and then after his response, I will make some comments of > my own. I do _NOT_ agree with Mr. Pariser's interpretation of what is > happening, nor do I agree with his conclusions. PAT] Eli Pariser is misinformed. AOL is not imposing a tax, and NO ONE is going to have to pay AOL to have their email delivered to AOL members. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I was happy to run this message from > Mr. Pariser, even though I am in almost total disagreement with > it. Pat, could you be so kind as to give me his email address offlist so I can educate him privately? I'm familiar with what AOL is actually doing, and it's not anything close to what he is claiming. I promise I will not do anything abusive, send Mr. Pariser spam or otherwise misbehave. He needs to be set straight. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That information has been passed on to Steve; and an observation -- isn't it a damn shame when these days when we ask for an email address to write someone we feel obligated to assure the person (providing the address) that we do not intend to abuse the email address? What happened to when a few years ago we could send decent email dealing with whatever and not have people think we were building a massive list of spam addresses? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:16:04 EST From: danny burstein Subject: Bronchitis was Re: Checking Out of Here Sometime Soon Brochitis refers to a buildup of "gunk" (nice scientific term there...) in the lungs. This messes you up (short term) two ways: a) it physically blocks transfer of oxygen and CO2 back and forth b) it makes the lungs all gooey (another nice scientific term) keeping them from opening up -- thus cutting down oxygen transfer even more. oh, and c) means a _lot_ more muscle effort to inhale and exhale. (Breathing takes a lot of work. usually you don't realize it...) oh, and coughing to try to clear your lungs made things even more sore This reduction in oxygen and the additional muslce work is what gave you chest pain, probably made you dizzy, etc. The albuterol is a drug that helps open up the parts of your lungs that are still ok, getting you an extra hit of oxygen from those portions. You should also be getting some stuff to treat the bronchitis directly. If the crud is courtesy of an infection, then you'd get antibiotics. _____________________________________________________ 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: Part two in this saga -- I was back this morning, Thursday, for a followup visit. We used to have a very good doctor, Dr. Charles Empson here in Independence who worked for the Mercy Physicians Group (an independent operation affiliated with but not controlled by the hospital of the same name) which is across the street from the hospital. Dr. Empson (like all the guys in the medical group) are admitted to practice at the hospital itself, of course. My mother went to Empson for at least 30 years. Around the year 1999, he quit taking on new patients and only dealt with his existing patients; it was his intention to 'begin to retire'. His very thick white hair and face makes him greatly resemble Albert Einstein, IMO. People who went to MPG were told 'no more Empson, we have to assign you now to whoever else', so I got back after my Aneurysm and was assigned to Dr. Wilkins' case load instead. Finally, at the start of 2006, Empson's case load got down to only a few 'survivors' (my mother and a few other old ladies) since by attrition others had all died, moved out of town, or whatever. New comers were _not_ given to him any longer. So, Empson turned in his resignation to MPG, and Dr. Wilkins was promoted to Vice President of Mercy Hospital by Sisters of Mercy, the parent company. The case loads were all shuffled around at MPG; several of us got left in limbo for a month of so with a Dr. Naheem, a doctor from India in residency at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City who spent a month or so with us here while a permanent replacement was found, which turned out to be a Doctor Watkins, who is supposed to now be our perm- anent, full time replacement for Charles Empson. Now I can see some quizzical looks from readers: _Why_ would a doctor doing his residency in New York City or his successor, Watkins, choose to come to Smallville, Kansas to continue his practice? But we here in Smallville, Bumpkins though we may seem to be, were not naive enough to take either of them without _thorough_ investigations into their medical abilities and personal lifestyles, etc. When Mercy Hospital and the MPG people were completely satisfied there were no hidden secrets anywhere, these two men were both employed by MPG to attend to us patients. Yesterday, Wednesday, I was 'encouraged' -- to put it politely -- by my keepers to go to the emergency room. When I got into ER and the examining area, _who_ pops in the door but dear old Charles Empson. "Charlie," I said (for after so long and in such a small town one does not go by formalities such as 'Doctor', especially when the man also takes reasonably good care of my mother), "they told me you were gone, out of here for good, they put you out to pasture at the end of last year." "Ah," he said, "I did retire from MPG, but I just could not take the idle time, so I applied over here at the hospital and the director of the ER took me on part time, a few hours per week." Hmmm ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:11:05 -0500 In article , ptownson@telecom- digest.org says: > I have a very bad case of bronchitis and my lungs are not in good > shape. I was put on 'breathing treatments' with oxygen and ambuterol > (?) Albuterol. It's a bronchodilator, which means it expands the bronchial airways by relaxing the surrounding muscles. Very commonly prescribed for acute asthma attacks. SIDE EFFECTS: Albuterol can cause side effects including palpitations, fast heart rate, elevated blood pressure, tremor, nausea, nervousness, dizziness, and heart burn. Throat irritation and nose bleeds can also occur. Get well soon! --Gene ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:39:11 -0600 (CST) From: John Mayson Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. > I am not sure if it is worth the time and money for a trip all the way > up to Topeka (or down to Tulsa) -- the nearest brain surgeons -- to > have it done. Anyway, that's where things are at here; I'll try to > stay in touch as much as I can. I am back home from the hospital, > where I was at all day Wednesday. PAT] Pat, you're certainly in our prayers. I would hope you would consider your life and well-being "worth the time and money" for the trip. John Mayson Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ From: Anonymous Letter Writer Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:45:50 -0600 (not for publication) Best wishes for the outcome. We're all thinking of you, and (selfishly) we don't want to lose you. You've done a damn fine job since year zero. Hang in there. -Friend [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks very much for your kind words. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jtaylor Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:27:28 -0400 Organization: MCI Canada News Reader Service "Patrick Townson" wrote in message news:telecom25.80.14@telecom-digest.org: > Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. During the night, > I was up and down a few times, feeling absolutely awful with chest > pains, much shortness of breath and much coughing and gagging. When my > 'keepers' came around this morning and saw how absolutely awful I > looked and sounded, they insisted I had to go to the hospital ASAP. So > I was taken to Mercy Hospital here in Independence, where a decision > was reached that (whatever else is wrong with me) I have a very bad > case of bronchitis and my lungs are not in good shape. I was put on > 'breathing treatments' with oxygen and ambuterol (?) I have to smoke a > pipe with some liquid pumped into it and an oxygen combination hooked > to a compressor. As if I do not have enough pains in the ass! I had > sincerely hoped to continue my role here as editor _at least_ through > sometime in August, and I will continue as best I am able. But, if you > do not see me around for a few days at a time then it either means I > am back in the hospital again, or else I totally croaked. I hope to > be able to give you a few days notice before the latter, at > least. Those of you who remember me prior to Black Thursday, in > November, 1999 (the aneuyrsm day) will recall I have been continually > dizzy since that time, and am due for a new brain shunt anyway, but > I am not sure if it is worth the time and money for a trip all the way > up to Topeka (or down to Tulsa) -- the nearest brain surgeons -- to > have it done. Anyway, that's where things are at here; I'll try to > stay in touch as much as I can. I am back home from the hospital, > where I was at all day Wednesday. PAT] Pat, you are worth saving. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Apparently Dr. Empson thought so also. He did prescribe two more antibiotic drugs for me, had some of his young helpers (you know, the kids who come in the room, all smiles, probing you everywhere, taking blood, using their computers on various parts of your body, sticking tubes down you in one place and pulling them out elsewhere, etc) give me a 'breathing treatment'. When _they_ were finished having their way with me, Empson came back later on to the examining room, reviewed what the kids had done to me, prescribed some antibiotics, told me to report to Dr. Watkins across the street at MPG this morning, and sent me back home. I got over to MPG early this morning, spent a few hours there, Dr. Watkins came in and introduced himself. "Hello, I am Doctor Watkins, the new guy here in town, you may have heard of me, your mother was put on my case load also." Well, yes I had heard of him. The Mercy Hospital 'Inspectors of Credentials' (or whatever you would call them) had given him a good Bill of Health (heh heh!) and so did the Independence Reporter newspaper when he arrived in town, and most people had by that point in time heard of him arriving, some eyeing him suspiciously as you might expect but now resigned to deal with him. He took the scripts Dr. Empson had given me the night before, examined them closely, took them away with him, and returned shortly thereafter with _his_ group of young helpers; just like at the hospital ER, the MPG has a group of kids who probe you everywhere and do as they wish with your body. One of them decided I had to accept a shot in my (well, you know) and as I pulled my pants down he assured me it would not hurt at all and it didn't. When I left the examining room Dr. Watkins was at the front desk in that area. He gave me back ONE of the scripts Dr. Empson had written me last night (but kept ONE of them) and gave me (TWO others of his own). Maybe the tone of my voice was too questioning, I do not know, but he answered in kind of a defensive tone of voice saying, "The one script he gave you was okay but the other one, IMO, was not the best, so I swapped it for two others I feel will work better. I called Charles over in ER where he is today, and told him what I wanted to do, he said he agreed it might be a better thing." He also gave me a note to give to the front desk on my way out, calling for a return visit in ten days. On my way back home, I stopped at our _local pharmacy_ -- not Walgreens, not Walmart, but the local guy who makes deliveries and offers charge accounts -- filled the scripts, came home and started popping the recommended treatments. More news tomorrow or if I get better or if I die, whichever comes first. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: 23 Feb 2006 07:24:51 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Patrick Townson wrote: > Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. During the night, > I was up and down a few times, feeling absolutely awful with chest > pains, much shortness of breath and much coughing and gagging. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Being sick is no fun. Unfortunately, as we get older, more and more parts starts to break and we need to spend more and more time in the "garage" for repairs. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:30:43 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well, Some Day Soon ... TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > From: Patrick Townson > Subject: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. > Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:00:00 (Message truncated to allow brevity) Put your health first and do what you have to do. I'll keep a good thought for you. -jim ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #81 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Feb 23 23:33:35 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 574EA14DEB; Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:33:35 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #82 Message-Id: <20060224043335.574EA14DEB@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:33:35 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DRUGS_ERECTILE,NO_COST,OPTING_OUT autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:35:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 82 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Launches Extensive Broadband, Video-On-Demand Lineup (M Solomon) Employment Opportunity: Avaya Telecom Engineers Needed (pbrletic@comsys) Shell Code Issue in DCOM (changs@iastate.edu) A Question About 'Dial 1' on USA Calls (Dan Popescu) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Robert Bonomi) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Barry Margolin) Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare (nospam4me@mytrashmail) Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box (nospam4me@mytrashmail.com) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (George Berger) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (nospam.kd1s) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (Al Gillis) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well, Someday Soon, I Guess (Bob Weller) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 17:06:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Launches Extensive Broadband and Video-On-Demand Lineup From ABC News, Disney Online and ESPN - Feb 23, 2006 03:55 PM (PR Newswire) Verizon Offers Its Customers the Most Extensive Online and Video-On-Demand Content Available From Disney and ESPN Networks, Including ABC News Now, Disney Connection, ESPN360, Movies.com Max and More. NEW YORK and BURBANK, Calif., Feb. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- As more consumers turn to the Internet and on-demand TV services for entertainment, Verizon is introducing to its consumer broadband and FIOS TV customers an extensive, new lineup of entertainment and informational programming from ABC News, Disney Online, ESPN and Movies.com. Verizon is the only broadband provider to offer a full collection of content from Disney and ESPN Networks on both its consumer broadband and television platforms. The launch follows the announcement in September of wide-ranging video and broadband content agreements between Verizon and The Walt Disney Company. The online programming includes live video news feeds, live sports events, children's entertainment and other content specially targeted to broadband Internet users. Other special broadband content includes live local sports action like the recent Villanova-South Florida men's basketball game aired live in the Tampa area on ESPN360, which is only available in that market via Verizon Online. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56072070 ------------------------------ From: pbrletic@comsys.com Subject: Employment Opportunity: Avaya Telecom Engineers Needed Date: 23 Feb 2006 13:18:10 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have multiple Telecom Engineer positions available in Philadelphia, PA and Christiana, DE. The project is for a large financial services company. Contract length is one year with the expectation that the project will go on through 2008. Looking for qualified candidates who will be responsible for analyzing, recommending, and implementing support of standard templated technology solutions via approved processes, tools and techniques. Will work within a team structure that may require matrix management reporting. Provide voice engineering, documentation and creation of engineering packages using current approved tools and processes, and provide support of cleared change controls. Requires: a broad background in PBX environments, specifically Avaya, technical competency in network engineering principles and the ability to manage multiple project assignments with minimal supervision. Avaya associate or professional certification is preferred with a minimum of five years in call center design, support or engineering. Must be proficient in PBX and ACD configuration and scripting. If qualifed and interested in discussing further, please send an updated resume with contact information to pbrletic@comsys.com. Thank you in advance. Patty Brletic Placement Manager COMSYS ------------------------------ From: changs@iastate.edu Subject: Shell code issue in DCOM Date: 23 Feb 2006 19:15:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, all I got totally lost when reading the shell code of DCOM. Could anyone give some suggestions on how to read those codes? Or is there any tools that can transfer the shell code to ASM or C? Many thanks, Tony ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:47:25 -0800 (PST) From: Dan Popescu Subject: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Patrick, I wanna ask you a question if that's OK. First I should tell you that I live in Europe. It's not clear to me: when you make an interstate call within the US is it necessary to dial 1 before the area code and number or can you dial just area code + number? What about when calling Canada or other NANPA country -- is the country code 1 necessary? Thanks:) Dan [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When _YOU_ in Europe and elsewhere dial the USA you use '1' as our _country code_ (which includes Canada, USA, various Carribbean places, etc.) When _WE_ here in these same places dial '1' it is between any two _area codes_ which are different. The general rule is we have to dial '1' between any two area codes in any of those places. Between USA states (and sometimes in the same _large_ city in the USA), USA and Canada, USA and Carribbean, no matter where, if my areacode is NNN and your area is XXX then we use '1' to call the other area code. Our _area codes_ in the USA/Canada are roughly eqivalent to what you call 'city codes' in Europe, or maybe, since so many of your countries are very small compared to our states/provinces (in Canada), our 'area codes' are eqivilent to your 'country codes'. It is NOT that we are 'dialing our country code' (as you are doing to reach us) but that we are telling the telephone switches to expect ten more digits from us rather than simply seven digits total, meaning a different area code will be included in the numeric address. And when we call any of _you in Europe_ or elewhere in the world, we have to use the prefix '011' to tell the switches what we want to do. I will admit the international telephone dialing system is a bit American-centric and biased where '1' is concerned with USA calling. You mentioned earlier and requested a link for your 'callingabroad.com' pages which is now installed in our links here. http://telecom-digest.org/links.html . As you develop those pages further, feel free to ask our experts here for advice as needed. And readers, please check out 'international calling' on our links page for some interesting interesting information. PAT] ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:01:35 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Please bear in mind MoveOn.org was previously doing "opt-out" emailings, that is using postal-mail type address gathering and sending practices, something that is guaranteed to get any large emailer placed in a lot of antispam block lists both public and private, regardless of how worthy their cause appears to be. Appears MoveOn didn't really learn too much from large providers diverting their mailings to the Spam or Bulk folder or even rejecting it completely. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:52:31 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Patrick Townson wrote: >> companies that do significant-size *CLEAN* mailings are going to 'buy >> into' this 'goodmail' idea for it to have any significant impact on >> general email-processing procedures. If only 0.001% of incoming mail >> bears the 'goodmail' stamp, then providers _will_ still have to keep >> up the existing defenses. >> In that scenario, 'goodmail' simply won't have any measurable effect >> on the world at large -- there will be no incentive for other >> providers to 'buy into' the program (since it won't produce enough >> revenue to make any noticable difference) -- and it will eventually >> 'wither away' and die. >> And, if 'goodmail' screws up _anything_ significant, even *once*, the >> 'wither away and die' will happen even quicker. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But at least Robert, you seem to be > agreeing with my contention (in your 'amount of email AOL tosses each > day statistics') that the practice of email/spam filtering is basically > a waste of time, not accomplishing a lot. No, I don't agree with your assertation. AOL mailboxes are actually _usable_ these days. *BECAUSE* virtually _none_ of the spam that is sent to AOL addresses gets through to the user mailbox. Aggressive filtering can accomplish a *LOT* as far as 'keeping an in-box clean', and usable. To wit: I see less than one piece of spam _per_month_, on average. It does nothing for 'solving the problem' regarding the 'added cost' of the requisite defensive measures -- an 'involuntary cost' that ISPs, etc. are saddled with as a result of sociopathic behavior by persons who are _not_ their customers. As far as the AOL users go, spam hardly exists any more and they think that that is "simply great". They _don't_know_ the extent of the "warfare" that is going on with the spammers trying to force their way through, and the 'good guys' fighting back. And they _don't_know_ how much they are paying for that stuff that they never see'. Me, I've got a filtering system that is incredibly close to perfect. It is fine-tuned to the characteristics of _my_ incoming e-mail, and would not necessarily give similar results for anyone else. That said, _for_me_, I've seen less than a dozen pieces of spam in my in-box in the last *year*. And the filtering has blocked delivery of over 15,000 pieces of spam in that time. Of that number, _seven_ pieces were 'legitimate' mail. All from a family member, in point of fact. Two pieces were blocked because of a filter error -- the character string 'cialis' trips the 'pharmacy spam' block, and my relative used the word 'specialist' in their message. The other five messages were cases where they used their _netscape.net_ email address as the sender, but actually the message through the mail-server of their cable provider. My system rejects such messages -- *with* a self-explanatory error response ; netscape mail must come from _Netscape's_ servers. (I treat a couple of other 'frequently abused' free-mail domains the same way.) > And of course we know that filters can screw up also, don't we? PAT] IF filters screw up, it is no different than if a mail-server screws up. email is *not* a 'reliable' delivery mechanism, and *NEVER* has been. Unfortunately, too many users these days _don't_know_, and have *never* been told that _all_ e-mail is on a 'best effort' (at best) basis, and they *think* it is reliable. Blame the marketing folks for that. _Careful_ system design ensures that the sender of legitimate mail *knows* that there is a delivery problem with their mail, and they can then use 'other channels' to make contact and get the message through. _Why_ there was a delivery problem doesn't really matter, at least as long as the system *still* passes back the 'delivery failure' information even if the filter screwed up in classifying the message. For my filter system, I've had to spend only about 10 minutes in maintenance and/or trouble-shooting, in the last year. Half of that time was running down what turned out to be the 'cialis/specialist' collision, and tweaking the pattern-match. The rest went to adding a few additional 'rules' to catch most of those less-than-a-dozen messages that got through the then- existing filters. The 'netscape sender from a Non-Netscape mailserver' messages, the _sender_ was able to simply re-send the message with the e-mail address that matched the system they were sending through (*WITHOUT* any intervention from my end), and the message got through the second time around. In that year, in addition to the 10 minutes mentioned above, I probably 'wasted' another 3 minutes or so, on that handful of spam messages that made it through to my in-box -- in reading enough to decide that they _were_ spam. A tool-rental yard (in the town I grew up in) had a big banner hanging in their place that read: "Having the right tools is half the job." It is even more important in the war against spam. effective anti-spam techniques must be integrated into the 'gateway' mail-server (where mail from the outside world _first_ touches your -- or your service provider's -- equipment), to be truly effective. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you, my spam-enabling friend, for explaining how you and spam can peacefully co-exist on the same planet. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:04:33 -0500 In article , Steve Sobol wrote: > Pat, could you be so kind as to give me his email address offlist so I can > educate him privately? I'm familiar with what AOL is actually doing, and > it's not anything close to what he is claiming. I promise I will not do > anything abusive, send Mr. Pariser spam or otherwise misbehave. He needs to > be set straight. Do you really think you can "educate" conspiracy theorists like these people? They're intentionally spreading FUD, probably because they hate huge corporations like AOL. They don't care about facts. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 19:50:43 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC I think the baseline for parental security policies should be Internet access only on devices that are in "family" space, where parents can see what's on the screen and where they can check history and cookies files. That is for kids, no 3G phones, SMS messaging restricted to a parent-approved list. A big complicator is the fact the kids usually know a lot more about computers than parents, including how to circumvent parental-security measures. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Disney Bringing Back MovieBeam Set-Top Box Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:32:59 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Koos van den Hout wrote: > nospam4me@mytrashmail.com wrote in : >> I think it would be neat if datacasting could be used for say Windows >> Update in conjunction with a low cost USB-attached receiver. That >> would be a godsend to those on slow dialup or satellite connections. > Sounds like a rehash of the usenet/fidonet via satellite services that > sprung up in the 90s. See > http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONCEPTS/SERVICES/SATELLITES/ > for more info. As the former assignee of fidonet 1:101/435 I remember quite well the controversies which in conjunction of the general availability of public Internet access led to the virtual death of FidoNet in the USA. Namely when EchoMail got going which in turn led to many BBSes hooking up to FidoNet, most of the actual telecom cost was picked up by those with "deep pockets" or low/no cost access to the long distance phone system. With the severe economic contraction in the late 80s, many of these "Sugar Daddies" simply couldn't do it any more. Thus various Cost Recovery schemes came into being. Satellite Echomail distribution was seen as more cost effective alternative to dial up - I recall many Regional Echomail hubs spending over $200 a month in long distance charges, even with 14.4 kbps (the fastest you could go over dialup back then. However satellite involves some fairly substantial up-front costs for a dish and a receiver, plus a dialup back channel to feed echomail replies back to the network. In my neck of the woods there were two factions who wanted to be the only source for echomail -- the conflict this caused caused the whole Fidonet around Metro Boston to quickly implode; many SYSOPS didn't want to have to take sides in this. I'm sure this situation occured in many other places too. [ re: datacasting] > Not wanting to be negative about the idea: I think it would be > fantastic to use cheap data-broadcasting in some way to distribute > data to a lot of people want (such as windows updates) for a low > price. I think some sticky points of datacasting is what the owners of the TV and radio stations consider is the value of their bandwidth coupled with the lack of technical standards needed to make receivers inexpensive enough that they could become standard equipment for all PCs. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:20:09 -0500 Organization: Heller Information Services In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > George Berger wrote: >> Anyway, a couple of months after signing up with AT&T, we received a >> significant bill for "incoming calls" that we never received, as we >> still don't know how to use the Nokia except to call out ... It took >> over four months, and a lawyer, to get AT&T to admit that the phone >> number we had been assigned was earlier used by a lobbyist. > I'm afraid I don't understand this, could someone explain it? On my > cell phone, I'm only charged for incoming calls when I answer the > phone. If it the phone is turned off, obviously I can't answer it and > I am not charged. But even if the phone is turned on, if I don't > answer it I still am not charged. > I know this because from time to time I test my cell phone (I don't use > it very often) and I call it during prime time. It rings but I don't > answer and I'm not charged. > Is there some new policy that even unanswering incoming calls are now > charged? > [public replies please] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think there is any such > policy. It was more likely a clerical error by AT&T (even though the > company in its bureaucratic stubborness refused to correct it or > look into the problem until they were forced to do so.) I am not > charged on my no-answers inbound either (Cingular Wireless). PAT] It happened in August, 2001, and PAT is correct, the AT&T clerical errors and the "bureaucratic stubborness" both were at fault. It took us almost a year to get the charges removed. Since then, I've had the cell phone monthly bill paid via credit card. That way, if Cingular Wireless (who now owns our account) goofs, I have an additional recourse. As an aside, our cell phone still is used only in emergency situations, and we've had to fire it up only about four or five times in six years. Once, on the way to the hospital's ER, it was worth its weight in diamonds. George (The Old Fud) I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:17:27 -0500 In article , kludge@panix.com says: >> In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers >> routinely recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to >> new customers without informing them of the number's history. > Little-known? This has been going on since long before I was born. > When I was a kid, one of the neighbors got a number that had previously > belonged to a defunct pizza parlor. > I believe that it used to be standard practice for the telco to age > out a number for about six months after disconnecting it, before > assigning it to a new customer. > So I have no idea why the author of the article thinks that things > should be any different for cellphones than they have always been for > landline phones. It's not as if there is an infinite supply of new > phone numbers. That's ok. Here's one that should get a chuckle. We own 401-222-1234 and 1235. They're in a rotary hunt and are tied to an 800 number for voter information. People have been calling on 222-1234 complaining that they get hang up calls at all hours of the day. I made sure both our PBX and the Verizon line didn't allow outdial. The calls continued. Obviously someone is spoofing the number. After all it's the lowest possible exchange code around here, and the 1234 is just a natural. It's gotten so bad that we had to change that initial number. I pity the state agency that gets it next. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:19:49 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com George ... That was a "Hallicrafters" Sky Buddy! (Halliburton is, of course, a whole different thing.) I, too had a Sky Buddy. It was quite a radio for an SWL in high school. I had it for several years until I graduated to an S-38C receiver (which I still have, along with the original reciept which reveals I bought it used in the early 1960s). My Sky Buddy suffered a painful (and smelly death) one day when the power transformer decided to have a melt down! The S-38C was a great radio for its time as well! It's still in the garage, langushing day after day in a cardboard box. My present HF receiver is 'way smarter than I am but it certainly runs circles around those old ones! George, thanks for pulling the memory of that radio and those times our of the background noise! Al George Berger wrote in message news:telecom25.81.8@telecom-digest.org: > PAT - > Thanks for your response, and for the rationale as to why cell phone > users must pay for incoming calls. > Good Gawd! I had a ham license before WWII (W9ZUK), and I worked over > 100 countries -- and I still have the QSL cards for verification. In > CW, I ran a pair of 809s, in push-pull, driven by 6L6s, into a primitive > directional antenna. Receiver? A Halliburton Sky Buddy! > Can you imagine how either Verizon, or the newly-minted AT&T, would act > if they were placed in charge of today's ham radio? I don't even want to > think about it. > George( The Old Fud) ------------------------------ From: Bob Weller Subject: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:15:16 -0800 Pat- I have been around since your life-changing event on Black Thursday, and I want to express that you have been more of a public servant than the ones that I elect. My advice: "be strong." Bob Weller From Patrick Townsend, Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:00:00 > Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. During the night, > I was up and down a few times, feeling absolutely awful with chest > pains, much shortness of breath and much coughing and gagging. When my > 'keepers' came around this morning and saw how absolutely awful I > looked and sounded, they insisted I had to go to the hospital ASAP. So > I was taken to Mercy Hospital here in Independence, where a decision > was reached that (whatever else is wrong with me) I have a very bad > case of bronchitis and my lungs are not in good shape. I was put on > 'breathing treatments' with oxygen and ambuterol (?) I have to smoke a > pipe with some liquid pumped into it and an oxygen combination hooked > to a compressor. As if I do not have enough pains in the ass! I had > sincerely hoped to continue my role here as editor _at least_ through > sometime in August, and I will continue as best I am able. But, if you > do not see me around for a few days at a time then it either means I > am back in the hospital again, or else I totally croaked. I hope to > be able to give you a few days notice before the latter, at > least. Those of you who remember me prior to Black Thursday, in > November, 1999 (the aneuyrsm day) will recall I have been continually > dizzy since that time, and am due for a new brain shunt anyway, but > I am not sure if it is worth the time and money for a trip all the way > up to Topeka (or down to Tulsa) -- the nearest brain surgeons -- to > have it done. Anyway, that's where things are at here; I'll try to > stay in touch as much as I can. I am back home from the hospital, > where I was at all day Wednesday. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #82 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 24 15:08:50 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2C26514FB9; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:08:50 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #83 Message-Id: <20060224200850.2C26514FB9@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:08:50 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, PREST_NON_ACCREDITED autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:10:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 83 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cellular-News for Friday 24th February 2006 (Cellular-News) Telecom Update Canada #518, February 24, 2006 (Angus TeleManagement Group) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 24, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Nortel Chief Details Road Map (USTelecom dailyLead) Kevin Mitnick Update (davidesan@gmail.com) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Mark Crispin) Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme (Matt Simpson) Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers (George Berger) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Mark Crispin) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 24th February 2006 Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 07:36:07 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] 3G Chipset Design for Music, Gaming, Video and TV http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16261.php After many stops and starts, 3G mobile telephony is coming on with a vengeance. In 2004, ABI Research counted 17.3 million 3G subscribers worldwide, but by the end of 2005 there were 42 million: a year-on-year growth of 142%. And by the end of 2010, ... DoCoMo Conducts World's First 2.5Gbps 4G Tests http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16263.php Japan's DoCoMo says that it achieved 2.5Gbps packet transmission in the downlink while moving at 20km/h. The fourth-generation (4G) radio access field experiment took place in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture on December 14, 2005. DoCoMo achieved a maxi... [[ Financial ]] Centennial updates outlook for fiscal year 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16257.php US and Caribbean wireless and broadband provider Centennial has updated its outlook for fiscal year 2006 ending May 31, the company said in a statement. ... Sri Lanka Dialog Telekom In $150 Million Expansion Plan For 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16259.php Sri Lankan mobile-phone operator Dialog Telekom said Thursday it will spend around $150 million in 2006 to expand its overall network and boost infrastructure. ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Improved GSM Roaming In Caribbean http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16264.php Roamware has announced the commercial launch of its roaming services across 12 mobile network properties of Cable & Wireless International Communications Company in the Caribbean region. Cable & Wireless networks are spread across popular tourist loc... [[ Regulatory ]] Unicel submits sole application for mobile license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16255.php Local phone company Unicel do Brasil TelecomunicaçÃĩes (Unicel) submitted the sole application for a GSM mobile telephone license in the Greater SÃĢo Paulo area, Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel said in a statement. ... Ka band satellite not likely in LatAm for several years http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16256.php Mexico's telecoms regulator Cofetel has rejected newspaper reports that it plans to auction this month licenses for the ka frequency band used for satellite communications. ... Telco regulator to hear TSTT, Digicel interconnection rate dispute http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16258.php Trinidad & Tobago's (T&T) telecommunications regulator (TATT) will hold the first hearing in two weeks' time regarding a dispute between Caribbean mobile operator Digicel and incumbent telco TSTT over interconnection rates, The Trinidad Guardian repo... Spanish Regulator: Will Set Some Mobile Rates http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16260.php Spain's telecommunications industry regulator CMT Thursday said it will set rates for calls between different networks before July 15, in a move that may lower revenue for the country's mobile operators. ... [[ Statistics ]] China's Mobile Phone Sales Volume Neared 21 Million In Q4 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16262.php Analysys International reports that China's mobile phone market grew steadily and sales volume reached 20.86 million units in the fourth quarter of 2005, increasing 7.6% quarter on quarter, in its recently released report China Mobile Phone Market Qu... [[ Technology ]] Multi-Chip NAND Flash Solution for Latest Mobile Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16265.php STMicroelectronics has announced a new MCP (Multi-Chip Package) memory portfolio designed to meet the needs of multimedia applications in 3G and CDMA mobile phones, and in other portable devices, where memory requirements are high and space and power... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:41:31 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #518, February 24, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 518: February 24, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** BlackBerry Ruling Deferred ** CRTC Begins Setting Do-Not-Call Framework ** Wi-Fi--A Tale of Two Universities ** CEO Says Nortel Must Sharpen Focus ** Telecom Policy Review Report Expected in March ** Another Application for the 5-1-1 Code ** Aliant Launches High-Speed Wireless ** Bond Agency Downgrades MTS Debt ** Ontario MPP Seeks Ban on Drivers' Cell Calls ** FCI "Eliminates" Long Distance ** SaskTel Widens Digital Wireless ** Association to Speak for VoIP Providers ============================================================ BLACKBERRY RULING DEFERRED: A U.S. judge today declined to issue an immediate injunction to shut down BlackBerry service in the United States, but said that he would issue a ruling "as soon as reasonably possible." The injunction was sought by NTP Inc., which claims that the Research In Motion product violates NTP-held patents. ** This week the U.S. patent office issued a "final rejection" of two of the five disputed patents. The office previously rejected the other three on a preliminary basis. CRTC BEGINS SETTING DO-NOT-CALL FRAMEWORK: CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2006-4 invites comment on various aspects of how a national Do Not Call List regime should operate, including the rules that should apply once the list is established. To participate, notify the Commission by March 6. (See Telecom Update #508). ** A public consultation on the issues will take place in Gatineau, May 2-5, 2006. ** The Commission directs the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee (CISC) to set up two subcommittees: one to create a consortium that will hire a Do Not Call List operator, and one to consider implementation and operational issues. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2006/pt2006-4.htm WI-FI--A TALE OF TWO UNIVERSITIES: Two Ontario universities have adopted very different policies towards wireless networks. ** The University of Windsor has formally launched UWin Wireless, a network of 1,000 Wi-Fi access points that provides Internet access everywhere on campus. About 5,000 people have logged on since Bell Canada and Aruba Networks completed the installation. ** Lakehead University President Fred Gilbert, who has a PhD in Zoology, announced that the university will not deploy Wi-Fi while he is president, because "the jury is still out on the impact that electromagnetic forces have on human physiology." CEO SAYS NORTEL MUST SHARPEN FOCUS: In his first public presentation as Nortel Networks CEO, Mike Zafirovski told a Whistler, B.C. conference that his company "must have 20 points of market share anywhere we compete, or look for some alternatives." Nortel now reaches that level in only five of 22 product categories, he said. ** Nortel has named George Riedel, formerly of Juniper Networks, as its Chief Strategy Officer, with responsibility for mergers and acquisitions. ** Veteran Nortel Board members John Cleghorn, Robert Ingram, and Robert Brown say they will step down at Nortel's annual meeting in May. TELECOM POLICY REVIEW REPORT EXPECTED IN MARCH: The Secretariat for the Telecom Policy Review says the panel's report is in its final stages of translation and production. The panel hopes to release the report sometime in March. (See Telecom Update #510) ANOTHER APPLICATION FOR THE 5-1-1 CODE: The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and the Canadian Distress Line Network have jointly asked the CRTC to allocate the last remaining 3-digit code, 5-1-1, to crisis intervention and suicide prevention services. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2006/8698/8698_06.htm#200601725 ** A previous application for 5-1-1 is already before the Commission. Last year a consortium including all ten provincial governments and the Yukon Territorial government applied to have 5-1-1 assigned to weather and travel information services. (See Telecom Update #485) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2005/pt2005-5.htm ALIANT LAUNCHES HIGH-SPEED WIRELESS: Aliant now offers wireless data speeds "up to 2.4 Mbps" to its cellular customers in Halifax. The telco plans to make the EV-DO-based service available to 60% of its customers by the end of 2007. BOND AGENCY DOWNGRADES MTS DEBT: Dominion Bond Rating Service has downgraded its trend rating of Manitoba Telecom debt to "negative," citing the weakness of its Allstream unit. ONTARIO MPP SEEKS BAN ON DRIVERS' CELL CALLS: An Ontario MPP has introduced a private member's bill to limit the use of cellphones by drivers. Conservative John O'Toole wants to ban all cellphone use by new drivers, and to require others to use handsfree devices. FCI "ELIMINATES" LONG DISTANCE: FCI Broadband has introduced XP Calling, a VoIP service that "eliminates long distance" for calls to the U.S. and Canada. Customers pay $10/month for North American calls or $7/month for Canada only, in addition to the regular local service rate, and don't have to dial "1" before the area code. SASKTEL WIDENS DIGITAL WIRELESS: SaskTel has introduced digital wireless service in Dorintosh and expanded service in the vicinity of Duck Lake, Hepburn, Melville, and several other rural communities. ASSOCIATION TO SPEAK FOR VoIP PROVIDERS: The Canadian Association of VoIP Providers, now being formed by some regional suppliers, aims to "present an independent perspective on regulatory issues" to the CRTC. http://www.cavp.ca/ ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:20:51 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 24, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 24, 2006 ******************************** Finland's Elisa telecom to cut 200 more jobs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16840?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Finland's second-largest telecommunications operator, said Friday it plans to lay off 200 people, or 4 percent of its work force, to further cut costs. The move follows 500 layoffs in 2005, and the company warned that it might have to cut more jobs in its work force of 5,000 later this year. Most of the layoffs will... Cesky Telecom Records 85% Broadband Revenue Rise in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16839?11228 The former Czech telecoms monopoly, now a unit of Spain's Telefonica, posted a 0.8% y/y fall in total revenue, to 61 billion koruna (US$2.56 billion). Revenue from fixed-line telephony operations declined by 5.2% y/y to 10.9 billion koruna, but was offset by dynamic growth in broadband sales, which jumped by 85% y/y to 1.8 billion... RIM, NTP Prepare for Court http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16834?11228 Just before NTP will appear in court to ask a federal judge to shut down BlackBerry service, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has negated another of the company's wireless e-mail patents. But in a statement released this morning, the company accuses Research In Motion (RIM) of mischaracterizing the situation in public statements... Tech Execs Decry Spectrum Policy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16832?11228 In advance of a series of major spectrum auctions by the U.S. government, the Technology CEO Council has released a report that sharply criticizes current U.S. policy toward spectrum allocation and calls for a new 10-point "21st century spectrum policy." "Our nation's wireless needs are too often governed by outdated regulations that... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 12:45:56 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Nortel Chief Details Road Map USTelecom dailyLead February 24, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcywfDtutbmarZNBHF TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Nortel chief details road map BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon offers Disney content on FiOS, DSL services * Orange announces fixed-line service in U.K. * Hearings on BlackBerry's fate begin * EarthLink CEO touts growth prospects * Cablevision upgrades broadband offerings * Colt, Citizens reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Manage the Total Cost of Ownership of Triple Play Networks TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * U.S. home Internet adoption slowing VOIP DOWNLOAD * XO extends VoIP service to bigger businesses * Yak launches unlimited international VoIP plan Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dcywfDtutbmarZNBHF ------------------------------ From: davidesan@gmail.com Subject: Kevin Mitnick Update Date: 24 Feb 2006 05:24:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Kevin Mitnick update. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1139395477381&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:40:06 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you, my spam-enabling friend, for > explaining how you and spam can peacefully co-exist on the same > planet. PAT] Pray tell, just how does using effective filters enable spam? There is no conspiracy among Internet architects to protect spammers. We find spam and spammers to be at least as annoying as you do. But there simply is no effective technical solution at hand. At best, there are technical band-aids, which only serve to escalate the technical war that is being waged against the spammers. Email postage stamps sound attractive, until you realize that there is no government monopoly running email the way there is one for the posts. Who gets to collect the cost of the postage stamps? And by the way, in case you haven't noticed, most of the mail that goes through the posts is spam, and the government sells spammers stamps at discount prices that you and I can't get! Nothing, short of Taliban-like tribunals empowered to issue summary death sentences and immediate execution, will stop spammers. The profits to be made from spam are too much high. So are the costs to investigate and prosecute spammers with anything approaching due process. Just take a look at the prosecutions of spammers in the USA (which is by far the worst spam-producing country). These court cases were ridiculously expensive to the taxpayer, with minimal recovery of the spammers' ill-gotten gains, and jail sentences (again at taxpayer expense) that amount to a slap on the wrist. At the same time, there will be a hue and cry about jailing "non-violent criminals" while rapists and murderers are getting early parole due to the prisons running out of space. You are just not going to see more than a few token prosecutions. Not even in Red China (the world's #2 spam-generating country, but less than 1/4 the USA's count), which has a very efficient system of executing and of making it profitable for the state (by harvesting organs). The only thing that will put an end to spam will be it ceasing to be profitable. But as long as cretins continue to buy penis pills, fake diplomas from "prestigious non-accredited universities", penny stock tips etc. ad nauseum there will be spammers. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Matt Simpson Subject: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme Organization: Yeah Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 09:21:21 -0500 Snopes has an analysis of this that is, in my opinion, fairly reasonable. http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/emailtax.asp My own view is that I hate AOL, and I don't think this scheme is very good, but I'm not getting upset about it. Even if it is bad, it's not my problem. If AOL customers think it's going to hurt them, they can gripe to AOL, or they can switch ISPs. ------------------------------ From: George Berger Subject: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 00:48:46 -0500 Organization: Heller Information Services Al -- You're right -- It was a Hallicrafters receiver. A Sky Buddy. In those days, we built our transmitters, and bought our receivers, as the capability to build a decent receiver was out of the reach of most of us. We strung our antennas, and we rapped and turned the loading coils in the transmitter output stage. The ARRL handbooks of those days gave us the knowledge, as well as giving musthe knowledge to pass the exams. For me, the hardest part was passing the Morse Code exam for the first time. although I finally was sufficient in code to get my Class A license and move up to 20 meters. I'll never forget my first CQ QSL, as I was in Missouri (W9), and the person who answered was in Canada! 40 meters CW. My fist wasn't too good, and he gently chastised me for my lousy CW. I switched to a bug! Long time ago. George I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:11:57 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Dan Popescu wrote: > I wanna ask you a question if that's OK. First I should tell you that > I live in Europe. It's not clear to me: when you make an interstate > call within the US is it necessary to dial 1 before the area code and > number or can you dial just area code + number? The 1 prefix in the NANPA countries is equivalent to the 0 prefix in most other countries; it prefixes an area code (city code). The 10 prefix is followed by a company code and the number, to route the call through some other carrier than the phone's default. The 0 prefix is used as well. Followed by a 10-digit NANPA number, it indicates alternative charging (credit card, third-party billing, etc.) and/or "operator assistance" within the NANPA. Followed by 1, a country code, and a number in that country, it indicates alternative charging for an international (outside NANPA) call. Followed by 11, a country code, and a number in that country, it indicates direct dialing for an international call. At one time 0 by itself used to get you the local operator, and 00 got you the default long distance operator. I don't know if these still exist. > What about when calling Canada or other NANPA country -- is the > country code 1 necessary? All calls within the NANPA are dialled as local or long distance calls. As seen above, it's impossible to reference country code 1 within the NANPA. Intra-NANPA calls are treated as long-distance calls, even if they are international. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: 24 Feb 2006 10:36:00 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dan Popescu wrote: > I wanna ask you a question if that's OK. First I should tell you that > I live in Europe. It's not clear to me: when you make an interstate > call within the US is it necessary to dial 1 before the area code and > number or can you dial just area code + number? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The general rule is we have to dial > '1' between any two area codes in any of those places. Not necessarily. Rules vary from place to place depending on legacy dialing procedures and contemporary needs. Some places need to dial only seven digits even when crossing an area code boundary. Other places must dial ten digits even within their own area code. It's very complicated. I believe today's system is set up so that you can dial 1+area code+7digits regardless of where you're calling and if the area code is needed or not. My region, for example, has 10 digit dialing. If I call a different area code (overlay or adjacent) within my region, whether it is a toll call or not, I do not need the "1". If I go outside the region I do need the 1. There's a artificially defined border known as the LATA, which separates local from toll calls; that is, calls handled by the local telephone company vs. calls handled by a "long distance" company. Anyway, some area codes span multiple LATAs. That is, one can dial only seven digits yet be charged for a long distance call. Other area codes are very small or even overlays for the same region. The above mess is a result of (1) divesture of long distance from the once central Bell System, and (2) competition in local phone service resulting in an explosion of exchanges which in turn required many new area codes. In the old days, the "1" was not universal. Area codes originally had a middle digit of only 1 or 0 and exchanges did not have a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. By this standard the switchgear could distinguish the type of call. The "1" prefix was used for two reasons: 1) to serve as a toll alert. In my area, making a toll call within the same area code required a 1, that is, 1+7 digits. 2) To serve as a long distance signal to the switchgear. While the switchgear didn't actually need the 1, having it made circuitry simpler for some exchanges. (Some places used other codes). As mentioned, not all places required the 1, you just dialed the ten digits. There is also the 0 prefix (0+ac+7d) which is used to signify operator assistance, such as for collect, 3rd party billing, person to person, time and charges, credit card. The concept of a "toll alert" is somewhat obsolete because of the great variety of billing plans. I have national unlimited, so theorectically I don't need the 1 at all. But obviously some people have a la carte plans. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #83 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Feb 24 23:52:10 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3609114EA1; Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:52:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #84 Message-Id: <20060225045210.3609114EA1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:52:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 24 Feb 2006 23:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 84 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft to Make EU Dispute Documents Public (David Lawsky) Judge Delays Decision on Blackberrry Shutdowns (Peter Kaplan & J. Crawley) Online House-Hunting Gets More Sophisticated (Yinka Adegoke) Cybersquatting (Gosh Darnit Dude) Re: BlackBerry Software Workaround - BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition (Hank) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (Herb Stein) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Lawsky Subject: Microsoft to Make EU Dispute Documents Public Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:12:32 -0600 By David Lawsky Microsoft said it was posting on the Web confidential documents used in its defense as it fought the threat of European Commission antitrust fines reaching up to 2 million euros ($2.4 million) a day. The U.S. software giant planned to post the documents at 1800 GMT on Thursday at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/legalnews.mspx, including an exchange of letters between its chief executive, Steve Ballmer, and EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. "Transparency is vitally important in what can be a very opaque process in Brussels. We've decided to open this up so people can understand the issues," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's European associate general counsel. The Commission says Microsoft failed to comply with remedies it imposed in 2004 for the company's violation of antitrust rules. Specifically, the Commission says Microsoft failed to produce required documentation in a form that worked. "Microsoft has ... supplied this documentation in a usable form in accord with industry practice," the company said in the introduction to its documents. Microsoft is opening defense documents it sent in response to a statement of objections from the Commission, minus business secrets, but has no plans to post the Commission's objections. The Commission considers those objections confidential and had little to say. COMMISSION SAYS LITTLE "We are carefully analyzing (Microsoft's) reply and after they have had the opportunity to present their arguments at the oral hearing we will decide whether or not to impose a daily fine," Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said. The hearing, as yet unscheduled, will be closed. The Commission found in 2004 that Microsoft used the dominance of its Windows operating system to damage rival makers of work group server software, used to run printers, password sign-ins and file access for small groups of connected computers. Microsoft was fined 497 million euros and ordered to provide interconnections so competitors could get their server software to work as well as Microsoft's own with Windows desktop machines. Microsoft appealed -- that case will be heard by an EU court in Luxembourg in April -- but in the meantime the Commission said the company had not carried out the sanctions. Microsoft's reply covers a lot of ground, focusing on questions of timing, dealing with criticisms and suggesting an alternative way of approaching the problem. At least one other lawyer has posted documents to the Web in a case involving the Commission. In 2000, lawyer Stephen Kinsella posted a statement of objections for the International Motoring Federation. "I took the view that any confidentiality was for the protection of my client. Therefore they could choose to waive that confidentiality. That decision was not challenged by the Commission," Kinsella said. Kinsella, whose firm Sidley Austin represents an organization that has intervened on the side of Microsoft, said when a case had intense interest it might make sense to provide full access to avoid the danger of selective quotes and leaks. Microsoft says the Commission's instructions were unclear. "The Commission went more than nine months without suggesting to Microsoft that the scope of the interoperability information provided was too narrow," the company said, adding that its staff spent 8,000 to 9,000 hours putting it together. "Microsoft has never refused to supply technical documentation that the Commission has requested," the company said, calling the charges "false, misleading and unfair." But a Commission monitoring trustee, one of several nominated by Microsoft, as well as competitors and a technical review committee gave Microsoft's documentation scathing reviews. The trustee called it "fundamentally flawed." The company relied in part on consultant reports to respond. Imperial College Consultants said neither the trustee nor competitors -- including Sun Microsystems and IBM -- had "devoted sufficient effort" to a sound evaluation of the documentation. "All the competitors state that they are unable to perform a proper evaluation, before going on to opine of the matter of completeness and accuracy," the consultant said. More broadly, the company suggested the Commission could look at the process used in the United States, where a court also found that Microsoft had violated antitrust law. There, a settlement was reached and Microsoft now has 28 licensees. Each month a judge reviews the process, at the same time that both sides work with the Justice Department. "A similar process could wisely be followed under the (European Commission) 2004 decision as well," the company said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Reuters News headlines and stories please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Peter Kaplan & John Crawley Subject: Judge Delays Blackberrry Cutoff Decision Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:14:03 -0600 By Peter Kaplan and John Crawley A U.S. judge on Friday stopped short of ordering the shutdown of millions of BlackBerry devices but made blunt observations about the case that could nudge manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd. and patent holder NTP Inc. toward settlement. U.S. District Judge James Spencer reminded RIM that a jury had already found it to be infringing NTP's patents and said the parties should have settled out of court. "The simple truth, the reality of the jury verdict has not changed," Spencer said after nearly four hours of a hearing on whether to grant NTP an injunction halting BlackBerry service. "This case should have been settled but it hasn't, so I have to deal with that reality," said Spencer. "I'm surprised you have left this decision to the court." Spencer said he would issue a decision on an injunction "as soon as reasonably possible" but gave no indication of when. The delay sent RIM shares soaring, but the judge expressed skepticism about RIM's argument that a shutdown of the portable e-mail devices would hobble critical public services. Spencer noted that RIM had told investors that its software work-around would avoid disruptions to its more than 3 million U.S. users. RIM and NTP reached a tentative settlement of $450 million early last year, but the deal fell apart. The question now is whether the judge's comments may push the two sides to reach a pact. "He certainly wants them to settle. He's giving them one more chance to do that," said Steve Maebius, a patent attorney with the firm Foley & Lardner LLP who is following the case. Martin Glick, a patent lawyer for RIM, said the company was still in active negotiations with privately held NTP. "Judges always try to find ways to urge the parties to reach a resolution," he told reporters outside of court. NTP said in a statement it had tried to meet with RIM this week. "We want all BlackBerry users to know that we have repeatedly attempted to settle this issue with RIM." RIM shares rose as much as 12.7 percent to $78.38 after Spencer's announcement but trimmed their gains to close at $74.05 on Nasdaq, up $4.52 a share or 6.5 percent for the day. Canada-based RIM has been locked in a court battle for more than four years with NTP, which filed suit late in 2001. A jury found in favor of NTP in 2002. Earlier on Friday, NTP asked Spencer for an injunction against U.S. BlackBerry service with a 30-day grace period for users to find alternative service and sought an immediate imposition of $126 million in damages for past infringement. RIM countered by arguing a shutdown would be against the public interest but it also pledged outside of court to keep BlackBerry service going. "I will tell customers that, no matter what, the BlackBerry service will keep on running," RIM co-chief executive James Balsillie told reporters. The technical workaround would take 15 to 30 minutes per BlackBerry user to implement. A lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department asked Spencer to exempt all government employees and contractors from any shutdown and sought a 90-day grace period for all users. Some users are so reliant on the gadgets that they have dubbed them "CrackBerries." Among the alternatives to the BlackBerry is the Treo 650 smartphone made by computer and smartphone maker Palm Inc.. Others who could cash in on a BlackBerry blackout are Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard Co., which offer e-mail capable mobile phones. RIM has challenged the validity of the NTP patents in an administrative proceeding at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office but the process is lengthy and NTP could appeal any final decision against it at the patent office back to the courts. The patent office this week issued final rejections of two of the five NTP patents at issue in the case. RIM's Balsillie told Reuters he was "thrilled beyond thrilled" at the patent office action. RIM has been hoping that all the patents will be invalidated before Spencer issues any injunction. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Yinka Adegoke Subject: Online Home-Hunting Gets More Sophisticated Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:15:47 -0600 By Yinka Adegoke When 32-year-old lawyer Elaine Lippmann and her husband were planning to buy a new home, they used the Web to find a wealth of information that would have been almost inaccessible just a few years ago. The Silver Spring, Maryland, couple is part of the fast-growing ranks of U.S. home buyers who are turning to the Internet. Online research tools helped them find key information about the area and the best ways to commute to Washington. Through the Internet, Lippmann also chose a real estate agent with a helpful Web site of its own. But consumers like her might soon be using an even more comprehensive Web site called Zillow, whose founder hopes to revolutionize the way people research their home buying and selling. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, about 15 percent of the active Internet population visited a real estate or apartment site last April, up 26 percent from a year earlier. This helped convinced Rich Barton, who founded travel site Expedia and sold it to IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2003, to return to the dot-com fray this month with Zillow http://www.zillow.com , backed by $32 million of venture capital. The free service, which is funded through advertisements from local suppliers, is completely independent from real estate agents. It doesn't feature any property listings. But in the same way that Expedia took the mystery out of ticket pricing, Zillow allows consumers to find out key data on neighborhoods and calculate the value of their homes. And unlike Web sites like Housevalues.com http://www.housevalues.com , which require users to fill in contact information so that a real estate agent or mortgage broker can call with a detailed estimate, Zillow allows them to do it all online. "We're opening this thing up, allowing anyone to come in and use it to get smarter," Barton said. To put its valuations in context, Zillow provides aerial photos of neighborhoods, showing prices of other homes along with charts and graphs with historical data and price movements of the property in question. A quick search in a wealthy neighborhood in Marlborough, Connecticut, for example, showed home values, or "Zestimates," that start at $451,000. But that was only the beginning. Besides the usual details such as number of bedrooms and baths, square footage, etc., Zillow tells you when the property was built, what kind of heating and cooling system it has, the type of roofing and even the construction quality. For instance, the site says the most expensive home in the Marlborough neighborhood was built in 1984 on 1.15 acres (0.46 hectares), with three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. Property taxes were $6,310 in 2004. This one-story house, which sold for $470,000 in June 2004, ranks in the top 10 percentile for its zip code. Exactly how much is the home worth now? Zillow lists it at nearly $630,000, but acknowledges the value could range from $553,000 to $754,500. The accuracy of the Zestimates depend on historical data such as tax records and sales history -- and access to that data can vary from county to county. The site is also still in its test stages, said Barton, who said the estimates currently have a 7.2 percent margin of error. He expects accuracy to improve as more up-to-date information becomes readily available. Meanwhile, homeowners who feel some the details about their house are out of date can simply update the information and see how that affects the Zestimate. With Zillow, Barton is now competing with IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns such leading real estate sites as RealEstate.com http://www.realestate.com , LendingTree http://www.lendingtree.com and Domania http://www.domania.com . Kim Gorsuch-Bradbury, senior vice president of networks at RealEstate.com, said research showed that as many as 80 percent of consumers begin their search for property online. "It's a logical place for consumers to search and educate themselves," she said. Does this mean the traditional Realtor role is becoming redundant or just evolving? "The premium has shifted to agents being an expert on the area," said Gorsuch-Bradbury, whose site has partnerships with hundreds of real estate companies across the country. Corus Home Realty Chief Executive Michael Gorman said trends at his own company, which covers Washington and its suburbs, illustrate how the business is changing. "More than half of our business comes in through the Internet with partners including RealEstate.com and RealtyNow.com," he said. Corus also buys search engine advertising links on Google and Yahoo to lead to its own site http://www.corushome.com . Still, Gorman doesn't think that traditional real estate agents are headed for extinction. "These sites have great exciting information as a starting point," he said, "but there are too many other factors such as improvements to the house that might not be recorded or general expertise on a local area." Despite the growing popularity of do-it-yourself Web sites such as forsalebyowner.com http://www.forsalebyowner.com , most listings -- even on the Internet -- are through real estate agents. Most people need a dedicated professional to help them through the buying and selling process. Even Internet-savvy Elaine Lippmann relied on Corus to close the deals for her home and for her parents' new house six months later. The National Association of Realtors says sites like Zillow and its own Realtor.com http://www.realtor.com add value by offering more than just property listings such as interactive maps and integrated mortgage calculators. "Listing sites are a dime a dozen now because they don't differentiate your site anymore," said Mark Lesswing, the association's vice president for Realtor technology. "You need to supplement property listings with local information, mapping, blogs to educate the consumer." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Gosh Darnit Dude Subject: Cybersquatting Date: 24 Feb 2006 18:57:18 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com In an interesting twist to the cyberquatting wranglings I thought you may want to know what the results are once WIPO brands you or your company as a cyberquatter. In this instance, a company accused of cybersquatting [yet no proof exist] the state of Oregon delivers 'bill' web domain name register for selling stock without the proper license so the state alleges. The local news agency that brought the story in regard to acusations of cybersquatting is "The Columbian" found online at http://www.columbian.com/ Temporary article on this cybersquatting / domain case link is http://www.columbian.com/business/businessNews/02222006news941.cfm Previously: Vancouver resident Hans Wayne Schnauber formed Internet company Zipee.com, which promised family-friendly Web surfing. What's new: The state of Oregon alleges Schnauber owes $2.48 million for selling interest in the company without a proper license. What's next: Schnauber intends to fight the allegations. Local Web Entrepreneur in Hot Water Oregon alleges shares of Zipee.com were sold without proper license By JOHNATHAN NELSON Columbian staff writer Hans Wayne Schnauber, or the "Butterfly Guy" as he was once known, allegedly owes the state of Oregon $2.48 million for selling shares of a failed Internet company he formerly owned. The "bill" arrived at Schnauber's Vancouver home Saturday, leaving the 46-year-old curious as to why Oregon, five years after revoking his corporation's license, is now taking action. It's another chapter in a peculiar trip that links Schnauber to the late '90s heyday of the dot.com craze. He has alternately been described as a champion of butterflies and a cybersquatter, someone who holds hostage domain names that are similar to legitimate Web addresses for large corporations. Schnauber denies all allegations. He understood that he was licensed to sell interest in his Internet company, Zipee.com, and said the cybersquatter label is inaccurate because he never tried to sell domain names back to companies. "I'd give them their name back for free," he said. The Oregon Department of Consumer and Business services sent Schnauber an order that demands he and two business associates stop selling securities in Oregon. The state also demands Schnauber pay $2.48 million in civil penalties. The order alleges the Schnauber sold stock or "licenses" of Zipee.com to 500 people, most of whom live in Oregon and Washington. Schnauber told investors Zipee owned more than 2,000 Internet domain names that took legitimate site names and replaced the "com" suffix with "org," a designation normally used for nonprofit groups. Schnauber told investors the companies would pay to get the names back, the order said. The practice of cybersquatting made headlines in the 1990s as legitimate sounding domain names like whitehouse.com often took unsuspecting Web surfers to sites filled with pornographic content. Others registered domain names similar to a corporation's correct address and offered to give up the site for exorbitant fees. A 1999 federal law that linked cybersquatting with trademark infringement and increased vigilance by companies have dramatically reduced such aggressive takeovers. Back when Schnauber was snapping up names like timewarner.org or espn.org, the founder of the International Federation of Butterfly Enthusiasts said he was merely trying to highlight how companies are helping or hurting the plight of butterflies. He also said he was demonstrating that such Internet locations are valuable. The Wall Street Journal and trade publications appeared amused with his tactic. Time Warner executives saw little humor in the action and demanded Schnauber release the names. Schnauber denies he ever owned the names, just that he registered them. He plans to fight Oregon and says if he loses, he doesn't have $2.48 million sitting in a bank. "I'm a strange kind of person," Schnauber said. "I'm not weird, but my brain works differently." ------------------------------ From: Hank Subject: Re: BlackBerry Software Workaround - BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition Date: 24 Feb 2006 18:59:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks I was looking all over for this. Monty Solomon wrote: > http://www.blackberry.com/go/workaround ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:09:13 GMT Amen. We could not ask for a better (or more opinionated :-)) guy to run this group. The opinionated part comes with age. I'm there myself. Best of luck Pat! Bob Weller wrote in message news:telecom25.82.13@telecom-digest.org: > Pat- > I have been around since your life-changing event on Black Thursday, > and I want to express that you have been more of a public servant > than the ones that I elect. > My advice: "be strong." > Bob Weller > From Patrick Townsend, Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:00:00 >> Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. During the night, >> I was up and down a few times, feeling absolutely awful with chest >> pains, much shortness of breath and much coughing and gagging. When my >> 'keepers' came around this morning and saw how absolutely awful I >> looked and sounded, they insisted I had to go to the hospital ASAP. So >> I was taken to Mercy Hospital here in Independence, where a decision >> was reached that (whatever else is wrong with me) I have a very bad >> case of bronchitis and my lungs are not in good shape. I was put on >> 'breathing treatments' with oxygen and ambuterol (?) I have to smoke a >> pipe with some liquid pumped into it and an oxygen combination hooked >> to a compressor. As if I do not have enough pains in the ass! I had >> sincerely hoped to continue my role here as editor _at least_ through >> sometime in August, and I will continue as best I am able. But, if you >> do not see me around for a few days at a time then it either means I >> am back in the hospital again, or else I totally croaked. I hope to >> be able to give you a few days notice before the latter, at >> least. Those of you who remember me prior to Black Thursday, in >> November, 1999 (the aneuyrsm day) will recall I have been continually >> dizzy since that time, and am due for a new brain shunt anyway, but >> I am not sure if it is worth the time and money for a trip all the way >> up to Topeka (or down to Tulsa) -- the nearest brain surgeons -- to >> have it done. Anyway, that's where things are at here; I'll try to >> stay in touch as much as I can. I am back home from the hospital, >> where I was at all day Wednesday. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #84 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 3 00:01:28 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C0BFC15115; Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:01:27 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlistSu Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #85 Message-Id: <20060303050127.C0BFC15115@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:01:27 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 85 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TELECOM Digest: Pat is in The Hospital (John Levine) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat is The Hospital (burris) Re: TELECOM Digest: I Was in the Hospital For About a Week (P. Townson) Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways (Monty Solomon) Wi-Fi to Go: The Hot Spot in a Box (Monty Solomon) Plug-In Internet Connection to Get Test on Long Island (Monty Solomon) Word in the Hand (Monty Solomon) Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It's Not (Monty Solomon) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John Levine Subject: TELECOM Digest: Pat is in the Hospital Date: 26 Feb 2006 16:53:58 GMT Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA Mike Sandman reports that Telecom Digest moderator Pat Townson had a heart attack early Saturday morning (around 6AM). They took him to the local hospital, and then transferred him to a hospital in Oklahoma that's supposed to have the best heart department around there. At the moment he's in a critical care room with no phone, with luck he'll be moved to a regular room with a phone in the next day or two. Readers who want to send him a get well card or note can send it to: Pat Townson Jane Phillips Medical Center 3500 E Frank Phillips Blvd Bartlesville, OK 74006 Regards, John Levine, sometime Digest mailman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John is quite correct in this report from Mike Sandmsan. It was not known at first be to be a heart attack, but simply a shortness of breath, to the extent I was inhaling/exhaling about every two seconds quite rapidly. It was a bit earlier than mentioned above; more about 4 AM last Saturday morning. Which came first and brought on the other? I do not know; in my state of panic and if you have ever had extreme shortness of breath to the extent you were panicing and pleading for more air, then you know the the exper- ience. I do remember passing out while the EMTs were patiently working on. I recall the EMT supervisor, who is quite familiar with my friend Raymond (Raymond has occassional epileptic seizures) got a little annoyed with Raymond, when Raymond apparently started having a panic attack of his own, having said somehing like 'my god, look at how his face has turned all pasty and white (meaning myself) are you going to let him die right here?' EMT Supervisor says 'Raymond you better go sit down over there abd stay out of the way' ... with sort of a threatinging look on his face as Raymond (but I did not see it) apparently in his panic decided _he_ would take over; EMTs put a quick halt to that nonsense and continued pummping my chest, and doing their work. I remember that before I passed out, I gave Raymond the phone number for Mike Sandman, and my mother. PAT]. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 18:02:28 -0500 From: burris Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat is in the Hospital John Levine wrote: > Mike Sandman reports that Telecom Digest moderator Pat Townson had a > heart attack early Saturday morning (around 6AM). They took him to the > local hospital, and then transferred him to a hospital in Oklahoma > that's supposed to have the best heart department around there. At > the moment he's in a critical care room with no phone, with luck he'll > be moved to a regular room with a phone in the next day or two. > Readers who want to send him a get well card or note can send it to: > Pat Townson > Jane Phillips Medical Center > 3500 E Frank Phillips Blvd > Bartlesville, OK 74006 > Regards, > John Levine, sometime Digest mailman This is so sad .... I wish him well along with a speedy recovery ... Burris [TEELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How _speedy_is speedy enough in your opinion? When I first came out of my delirium, I was laying completely naked on an examining table in ER Room 3 at Mercy Hospital, here in Independence. Staring at me were Doctors Empson and Watkins, two nurses and a couple of EMTs. Apparently some body movement of mine, or lack thereof had triggered some some signal in ER and brought them all running around. Watkins did not not just admit to shortness of breath: yes, he said, there was, but you also had a heart attack in the process. That explained the pefectly _evil, dreadful_ thoughts I had off and on during the time I was conscious, even if delirious. There then followed a debate among them: I would have to be 'transported', they thought Jane Phillips was best; the one doctor said "if we airlift him it will take 15-20 minutes to get there by the time the chopper gets here fom Wichita (110 miles)" (Chopper is stationed many times when not in use at Independence, but on this night for whatever reason, it was in Wichita.) The decision reached was to transport me by ambulance 'since Jane Phillips is only 45 miles straight south of here.' EMT drivers say 'this time of night (5:30 AM) we will have him in Bartlesville by the time the chopper got here from Wichita' and in fact they did pull into Jane Phillips at about 5:55 A.M. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2006 18:00:00 The residents of Bartlesville, OK, a town of about 40,000 in the northeast corner of the state, have always been extremely fortunate to have a generous family like Frank and Jane Phillips living there. Major heirs in the Phillips' Petroleum business, while they were alive, they could not give it away fast enough. On a major street named for him (Frank Phillips Parkway) sits a major medical center named in honor of his wife. Their attitude was always, 'there is nothing we need right now', so why not give it to the city? The Jane Phillips Medical Center is a cluster of three or four different high-rise (ten to fifteen story buildings,) dealing with everything from heart desease through mental illness and whatever else. They take in broken people and turn out semi-well people. I think it is handled _officially_ by ECUSA -- the Episcopal Church in the United States . I know when I arrived there in my dilerium Saturday morning last, following some ex-rays and other stuff I was wheeled in my bed into the critcal care unit, where I slept in my groggy state until somerime mid-afternoon. Sometime around 5 PM Saturday, I was presented with some forms I was asked to sign, one of which stated that 'new developments in angioplasty/angiography allow us to move your blookd vessels/arteries around. ' The form went on to state that a 'stent' would be implanted (via my groin area if I permitted it) but woiuld do its work up around neck.) This 'programmable stent' would cure things for me. Officially it refererred to the 'right ventrical (something) was totally blocked up and it showed new veins they proposed to install around my heart which they said would be held together by plastic cememt and that may be true or it maybe be just more hassle for me. At any rate, today, Thursday, just abut a week after I had my heart attack, I was dismissed from Jane Phillips and I could return to my home. As to how well I feel, I am not quite suer I can answer that. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:14:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data By JOHN MARKOFF The New York Times February 25, 2006 PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 23 - A small group of National Security Agency officials slipped into Silicon Valley on one of the agency's periodic technology shopping expeditions this month. On the wish list, according to several venture capitalists who met with the officials, were an array of technologies that underlie the fierce debate over the Bush administration's anti-terrorist eavesdropping program: computerized systems that reveal connections between seemingly innocuous and unrelated pieces of information. The tools they were looking for are new, but their application would fall under the well-established practice of data mining: using mathematical and statistical techniques to scan for hidden relationships in streams of digital data or large databases. Supercomputer companies looking for commercial markets have used the practice for decades. Now intelligence agencies, hardly newcomers to data mining, are using new technologies to take the practice to another level. But by fundamentally changing the nature of surveillance, high-tech data mining raises privacy concerns that are only beginning to be debated widely. That is because to find illicit activities it is necessary to turn loose software sentinels to examine all digital behavior whether it is innocent or not. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/technology/25data.html?ex=1298523600&en=d231d2f98b31262a&ei=5088 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:17:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wi-Fi to Go: The Hot Spot in a Box David Pogue The New York Times February 23, 2006 YOU know what would be so cool? A portable Wi-Fi hot spot. Whenever you wanted Internet access, you wouldn't have to hunt for a wireless coffee shop or pay $24 a night to your hotel. Instead, you'd travel with a little box. Plug it into a power outlet - or even your car's cigarette lighter - and boom, you and everyone within 200 feet could get onto the Internet at high speed, without wires. Actually, such boxes exist. They come from companies like Kyocera, Junxion and Top Global, and they're every bit as awesome as they sound. (Unfortunately, the category is so new that it has no agreed-upon name. "Portable hot spot" is descriptive but unwieldy. "Cellular gateway" is a bit cryptic. Kyocera's term, "mobile router," may be as good as any.) Before you start thinking that you've died and gone to Internet heaven, however, you should know that these boxes don't work alone. Each requires the insertion of a PC laptop card provided by a cellular carrier like Verizon, Sprint or Cingular. The card provides the Internet connection, courtesy of those companies' 3G ("third generation") high-speed cellular data networks. The box just rebroadcasts that connection as a Wi-Fi signal so that all nearby computers - not just one privileged laptop - can go online. With those PC cards, you can go online anywhere there's a cellular signal: in a taxi, on a bus, in a waiting room or wherever. In major cities, the speed is delightful, like a D.S.L. or slowish cable modem (400 to 700 kilobits a second). In other areas, you can still go online, but only slightly faster than with a dial-up modem. (Also note that uploading is far slower than downloading.) All right, go ahead, ask it: If you can already outfit your laptop with one of these miraculous cards, why do you need a mobile router that translates the cellular connection into a Wi-Fi one? First, not all computers have the necessary card slot. ( Apple's iBooks and new MacBook Pro laptops come to mind.) Second, a mobile router can accommodate machines with no wireless features at all - like desktop computers -- thanks to standard Ethernet network jacks on the back. (The Kyocera has four, the Junxion two and the Top Global one.) Above all, Wi-Fi lets lots of computers share the same Internet signal. Cellular PC-card service is very expensive: $60 a month for unlimited use ($80 if you don't also have a voice plan). That's a lot to pay for a single computer to go online. A mobile router opens up that signal to any computer within about 200 feet; $60 a month is a lot more palatable when 10 or 20 of you are sharing it. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/technology/circuits/23pogue.html?ex=1298350800&en=cce7913cb6d5d7e8&ei=5088 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:27:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Plug-In Internet Connection to Get Test on Long Island By KEN BELSON The New York Times February 17, 2006 Customers love to grumble about their phone and cable companies, and residents on Long Island are no different. But for those unhappy with their service from Verizon or Cablevision, an alternative may be on the way. The Long Island Power Authority announced on Wednesday that it would begin testing technology that provides high-speed Internet connections through people's electrical outlets, a service that could ultimately make a dent in a business now dominated by Cablevision and Verizon. For several years, utilities across the country, including Con Edison, have been examining the technology, known as broadband over power line, or B.P.L. Companies like Cinergy in Cincinnati have started selling the service, which requires that customers plug in special adaptors that link to their computers via Ethernet cables or wirelessly. In addition to generating new revenue, the technology is attractive to utilities because the two-way Internet connections let them more effectively monitor their networks and their customers' electricity use. Some companies are also using the technology to provide Internet phone and video services to residential and business customers. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/17/nyregion/17lipa.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 15:52:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Word in the Hand Word in the Hand By WALTER S. MOSSBERG AS SMART PHONES and personal digital assistants become more like little computers, they have begun to compete with laptops as portable digital workstations. For short or light-duty business trips, you can now leave the laptop at home and rely instead on a smart phone with a keyboard, such as a BlackBerry phone from Research in Motion, a Treo from Palm or a keyboard-equipped iPAQ from Hewlett-Packard. These devices can place and receive phone calls, send and receive e-mail, surf the Web in a basic fashion, and maintain your calendar and contacts list, synchronized with your computer. They can even play music and videos, display your photos, and just like your laptop, they'll let you play solitaire. But what about the other major function of a laptop - viewing and editing Microsoft Office documents? Well, it turns out you can do that, too, on these devices, at least to a point. Currently, you can read Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, as well as Adobe PDF files, on certain handhelds; you can even edit them and synchronize the changes back to a PC. Here's a look at how that's possible, on the three most popular types of smart phones and PDAs in the U.S.: those powered by the Palm operating system, those powered by the Windows Mobile operating system (formerly known as Pocket PC), and the BlackBerry, which uses both hardware and software from RIM. First, make sure your device has lots of storage capacity, either in internal memory or on a removable memory card, if your device can accept them. (The Treo, the iPAQ and most other devices running Windows Mobile software can; BlackBerry models cannot.) You will need that room to store your Office documents. Second, I strongly advise those wanting to edit documents to buy a phone or PDA with a full keyboard, rather than one that relies solely on handwriting recognition or a phone keypad. The software for viewing and editing documents does work on devices without a keyboard, but unless you just want to read documents, the process is painful on these models. You might think that the devices running Windows Mobile software would do the best job of handling Microsoft Office documents because both systems are made by Microsoft. Or you might imagine the BlackBerry was tops at this task because it is bought mostly by corporate computer departments, where Microsoft Office is the application software of choice. But in fact, the best devices for viewing and editing Office documents are those using the Palm operating system, such as the Palm Treo 650. That's because of a helpful third-party program, Documents to Go, from DataViz, which is packaged with many Palm devices, including the Treo. Next best are the Microsoft-powered phones and handhelds, which come with built-in mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Bringing up the rear is the BlackBerry, which can display Word, Excel and PowerPoint files when sent as e-mail attachments, but doesn't let you edit or synchronize them with a PC. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/report-20060214.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:11:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It's Not Under New Management Your Call Should Be Important to Us, but It's Not By WILLIAM C. TAYLOR The New York Times =46ebruary 26, 2006 PAUL M. ENGLISH never imagined that a pet peeve would become such a cause clbre. For more than four years, Mr. English, a veteran technologist and serial entrepreneur, has maintained a blog on which he shares everything from his favorite chocolate cake recipe to the best management advice he's received. But last summer, fed up with too many aggravating run-ins with awful customer service, Mr. English posted a blog entry that reverberated around the world: a "cheat sheet" that explained how to break through automated interactive voice-response systems at a handful of companies and speak to a human being. He named the companies and published their codes for reaching an operator -- codes that they did not share with the public. The reaction was overwhelming. Visitors to the blog began contributing their own code-breaking secrets and spreading the word. The consumer affairs specialist for The Boston Globe wrote about Mr. English, who is now the chief technical officer of Kayak.com, a travel search engine he helped to found, and gave his online cheat sheet mainstream attention. That led to appearances on MSNBC, NPR and the BBC, an article in People magazine -- and more than one million visitors to the blog in January alone. So, this month, Mr. English transformed his righteous indignation into a full-blown crusade. He started Get Human, which he calls a grass-roots movement to "change the face of customer service." The accompanying Web site, www.gethuman.com, sets out principles for the right ways for companies to interact with customers, encourages visitors to rate their experiences (the site is to issue a monthly best-and-worst list), and publishes many more secret codes unearthed by members of the movement. As of last week, the ever-expanding cheat sheet offered cut-through-the-automation tips for nearly 400 companies. "I'm not anticomputer," Mr. English explained over lunch near his office in suburban Boston. "`I've been a programmer for more than 20 years. I'm not anticapitalist. I'm on my fifth start-up. But I am anti-arrogance. Why do the executives who run these call centers think they can decide when I deserve to speak to a human being and when I don't?" The Get Human cheat sheet makes for entertaining - and mystifying - reading. Want to reach an operator at a certain major bank? Just press 0#0#0#0#0#0#. Want to reach an agent at a big dental insurance company? Press 00000, wait through a message, select language, 4, 0. Want to reach a human at a leading consumer electronics retailer? Press 111## and wait through three prompts asking for your home phone number. It would be funny if it weren't so depressing - and such bad business. Countless chief executives pledge to improve their company's products and services by listening to the "voice of the customer." Memo to the corner office: Answer the phone! How can companies listen to their customers if those customers have such a hard time reaching a human being when they call? The obvious defense is that it's prohibitively expensive to offer the personal touch to millions of curious, confused, angry (or even enthusiastic) callers. The trouble is, companies tend to be better at cutting costs than at identifying missed opportunities. Richard Shapiro is president of the Center for Client Retention in Springfield, N.J., a business that dials out to customers who have dialed in to toll-free call centers and asks them to evaluate their experiences. He argues that customers who interact with human beings are more likely than other callers to volunteer useful information, try out a new product and come away with a strong sense of loyalty - positive outcomes that are eliminated by excessive automation. =2E.. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/business/yourmoney/26mgmt.html?ex=3D129861= 0000&en=3D1c71138fd05c2289&ei=3D5088 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #85 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 3 19:14:48 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4A618151ED; Fri, 3 Mar 2006 19:14:48 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #86 Message-Id: <20060304001448.4A618151ED@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 19:14:48 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, NA_DOLLARS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Mar 2006 19:15:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 86 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Harvard, Tech Firms Push Data Privacy (Monty Solomon) Podcast Hosting Splits NPR, Affiliates (Monty Solomon) Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV Show (Monty Solomon) The Next Big Thing: Tiny Screens, Way Up Close (Monty Solomon) In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax (Monty Solomon) Cyberthieves Silently Copy Your Passwords as You Type (Monty Solomon) Protecting Yourself From Keylogging Thieves (Monty Solomon) Study: Children's TV Studded With Dark Acts (Monty Solomon) Review: Xbox 360 Diving Into Living Rooms (Monty Solomon) How to Survive a Tech Support Call (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 27, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - February 28, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 1, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:49:13 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Harvard, Tech Firms Push Data Privacy Goal is to let Net users control the personal By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society is joining with a consortium of technology companies, including IBM Corp. and Novell Inc., today to unveil an 'open security' project aimed at creating software to give people more control over their online identities. The initiative, which is set to be spelled out at a forum in New York, is code-named Higgins, after a long-tailed Tasmanian mouse symbolizing the 'long tail' of micro-markets -- dozens of websites and online retailers of interest to an individual -- that sponsors believe will be tapped by the user-centric identity management system they are developing. For individuals, such a system promises a 'single sign-on' enabling the sharing with third parties of personal information, ranging from bank and credit card accounts to medical records and phone numbers, said John H. Clippinger, senior fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. Clippinger said the system will enable people to share tiers of their digital data with different parties, giving broader access to doctors, for example, than to cable companies. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/02/27/harvard_tech_firms_push_data_privacy/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 23:50:58 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Podcast Hosting Splits NPR, Affiliates By Frank Barnako, Marketwatch While National Public Radio has been a pioneer in podcasting, some local member stations are not happy. It comes down to the relationship with listeners, according to Rafat Ali, publisher of PaidContent.org. He's covering the Public Broadcasting New Media Conference in Seattle this week. "If you thought that the newspaper people were in the grips of a siege mentality, you should come and see the public radio and TV people," he wrote Friday. Local stations worry that contributions from listeners will dry up if their programming is distributed through NPR's uber-guide, NPR Podcast Directory: www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php. "Organizations like NPR and PBS are arguing that there should be a centralized aggregation effort, a bit like a destination site," Ali reported, adding that affiliates "want to make their local sites as the destination sites." Meanwhile, almost 500 international newspaper publishers, editors, and marketers are in Paris wrestling with how the Internet has changed their business. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/02/26/podcast_hosting_splits_npr_affiliates/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:04:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Digital method puts ad inside TV show By Reuters | February 27, 2006 LOS ANGELES -- A breakthrough in television advertising debuted without fanfare last spring as a brand-name box of crackers appeared on the CBS sitcom 'Yes, Dear' for about 20 seconds, seen but hardly noticed by millions of viewers. Unbeknownst to them, the image of Kellogg's Club Crackers had been digitally painted onto the top of a coffee table after the scene was filmed, launching the latest advance in a marketing practice known in the industry as product placement but derided by critics as 'stealth advertising.' The 'Yes, Dear' episode in April 2005 marked the first commercial use of a patent-pending innovation dubbed Digital Brand Integration, or DBI, developed by New York-based Marathon Ventures, and grew out of an unprecedented marketing deal with CBS. Since then, CBS has used the technology to plug brands such as StarKist Tuna and Chevrolet on several other shows, including the hit police drama 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' and new sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother.' David Brenner, founder and president of Marathon, said his company expects to unveil a new pact soon with the Fox network, a unit of News Corp. Ltd. Blending brand names and products into television shows, as opposed to traditional ads that run during commercial breaks, has gained greater currency in recent years as the industry faces the rising popularity of TiVo and other devices that let viewers skip commercials. But some industry experts suggest that product placement -- digital or otherwise -- has limited value in delivering a message. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/02/27/digital_method_puts_ad_inside_tv_show/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:14:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Next Big Thing: Tiny Screens, Way up Close ENTERTAINMENT 2.0 By Scott Kirsner Stuart Auerbach doesn't mind being mistaken for a cyborg in airports across the country. On a trip last month that took the Wellesley venture capitalist to Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, and back home, Auerbach was wearing a pair of narrow, futuristic glasses with integrated headphones. The glasses, made by MicroOptical Corp. of Westwood, enlarged the image from Auerbach's video iPod, making it seem as though he were looking at a 25-inch screen from about 6 feet away. Auerbach may have been watching ''Master and Commander," but he looked like 'RoboCop.' His glasses, a freebie from his friend Mark Spitzer, the chief executive of MicroOptical, are part of a new wave of products designed to improve on the screens of our tiny portable devices. These next-generation displays will allow you to surf the Web on your cellphone without squinting or catch up on ''Conan" during a transcontinental flight. For several years, MicroOptical has been trying to convince people that eyewear is much better with monitors built in. Now that the iPod can play video, company executives feel the stars are finally aligned: wearable displays + devices with small screens = major profits. But competitors aren't far behind. MicroOptical's glasses -- the company calls them the 'Myvu Personal Media Viewer' -- have tiny liquid crystal screens built into each of the temples. (The screens are made by another Massachusetts company, Kopin Corp.) A kind of periscope relays the image to a spot on the glasses in front of each eye, magnifying it in the process. The wearer can see what's going on above and below the glasses, and can even see through areas that aren't occupied by the image. The glasses, which cost $269, are connected to a battery pack by a thin wire (the pack holds three AAA batteries) that plugs into the iPod. http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2006/02/05/the_next_big_thing_tiny_screens_way_up_close/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:36:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: In Sony's Stumble, the Ghost of Betamax By KEN BELSON The New York Times February 26, 2006 AT first glance, Amir Majidimehr does not look like a game-changer in the battle to develop the next generation of DVD players and discs. As the vice president for Windows digital media at Microsoft, he neither steers a Hollywood studio nor controls one of the many consumer electronics giants that are betting billions of dollars on one of the two new formats that promise to play high-definition movies and television shows. Yet when he and his team in Redmond, Wash., decided last September to abandon their neutral stance and to support Toshiba and its HD-DVD standard over the Blu-ray format led by Sony, the unexpected change of heart reverberated through the technology industry. Suddenly, Toshiba's seemingly quixotic defense of its format had new life. Intel joined Microsoft in backing HD-DVD. Hewlett-Packard withdrew its exclusive support of Blu-ray. This month, another member of the Blu-ray camp, LG Electronics, hedged its bets, too, signing a deal to license Toshiba's technology. And earlier this month, one of the main reasons underpinning Microsoft's move to shuck its neutrality - the complexity of producing Blu-ray technology - led to Sony's acknowledgment that it might delay this spring's scheduled release of its PlayStation 3 game console partly because the needed technology was still being worked out. The possible delay and the Blu-ray group's loss of its once-commanding lead are not encouraging developments for Sony in its attempt to revive its electronics group after a series of bungles. PlayStation 3 is crucial to Sony's future, and not only because the latest version of its gaming consoles could generate billions in revenue; the new machines will include disc drives that will turn them into Blu-ray DVD players as well. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/business/26disks.html?ex=1298610000&en=b58667f2875201a0&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:49:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cyberthieves Silently Copy Your Passwords as You Type By TOM ZELLER Jr. The New York Times Most people who use e-mail now know enough to be on guard against "phishing" messages that pretend to be from a bank or business but are actually attempts to steal passwords and other personal information. But there is evidence that among global cybercriminals, phishing may already be passe. In some countries, like Brazil, it has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con -- the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks. These programs are often hidden inside other software and then infect the machine, putting them in the category of malicious programs known as Trojan horses, or just Trojans. Two weeks ago, Brazilian federal police descended on the northern city of Campina Grande and several surrounding states, and arrested 55 people -- at least 9 of them minors -- for seeding the computers of unwitting Brazilians with keyloggers that recorded their typing whenever they visited their banks online. The tiny programs then sent the stolen user names and passwords back to members of the gang. The fraud ring stole about $4.7 million from 200 different accounts at six banks since it began operations last May, according to the Brazilian police. A similar ring, broken up by Russian authorities earlier this month, used keylogging software planted in e-mail messages and hidden in Web sites to draw over $1.1 million from personal bank accounts in France. These criminals aim to infect the inner workings of computers in much the same way that mischief-making virus writers do. The twist here is that the keylogging programs exploit security flaws and monitor the path that carries data from the keyboard to other parts of the computer. This is a more invasive approach than phishing, which relies on deception rather than infection, tricking people into giving their information to a fake Web site. The monitoring programs are often hidden inside ordinary software downloads, e-mail attachments or files shared over peer-to-peer networks. They can even be embedded in Web pages, taking advantage of browser features that allow programs to run automatically. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/technology/27hack.html?ex=3D1298696400&en= =3Db714c1a5b0571162&ei=3D5090 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:49:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Protecting Yourself From Keylogging Thieves TOM ZELLER Jr. The New York Times February 27, 2006 The network security firm Sophos estimates that an unprotected computer has a 40 percent chance of being infected by a malicious worm within 10 minutes of being connected to the Internet. After an hour, the odds rise to 94 percent. That's reason enough to keep up to date with operating system patches, invest in a solid antivirus program and use a basic firewall. But even with those measures in place, malicious code - including a keylogger - can sometimes find its way onto your computer. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/technology/27hackside.html?ex=1298696400&en=d696e7bcd487b384&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 22:32:41 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Study: Children's TV Studded With Dark Acts Study: Children's TV Studded With Dark Acts - Mar 2, 2006 09:49 PM (AP Online) By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Children's television is studded with violence, much of it darker and more realistic than when an anvil dropped on Wile E. Coyote's head, a watchdog group reported on Thursday. The Parents Television Council analyzed 444 hours of kids' daytime programs last summer and detailed 2,794 violent incidents, even after sifting out "cartoony" moments like those involving the Road Runner. That's 6.3 incidents an hour _ more than the PTC found in prime time aimed at adults during a 2002 study. Programs like "Teen Titans" on the Cartoon Network and ABC Family Channel's "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" often feature intense fights with swords, guns and lasers, the group said. It detailed a scene on Fox's "Shaman King" where two characters have a lengthy sword fight. One character is knocked out by a blow to the head, and his opponent reaches into the chest of his screaming rival and pulls out his "soul," leaving him dead. There's nothing wrong with fanciful, fantasy violence, said Brent Bozell, PTC founder. "I grew up with `Tom and Jerry' and I think I'm OK," he said. "Popeye beat up Bluto and you cheered," he said. "That was perfectly fine. Now the protagonists will be caught in dark, powerful, oftentimes scary scenarios where there is hard violence." Violent cartoons can increase children's anxiety, desensitize them or lead them to believe that violence is more prevalent _ and acceptable _ in real life than it really is, said Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center of Media and Children's Health at Harvard University's medical school. Children under age 8 are cognitively unable to distinguish between real and fantasy violence, he said. Rich studied reactions to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and found children much less upset than their parents, perhaps because they couldn't distinguish it from what they saw on TV regularly, said Rich, who endorsed the study. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56322400 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 22:31:28 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Review: Xbox 360 Diving Into Living Rooms By MATTHEW FORDAHL AP Technology Writer With enough hardware horsepower to deliver movie-like graphics and high-quality sound, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 is setting a new standard for video games. But the console isn't just about shoot-'em-ups and virtual sports. Like its predecessor, the 360 can serve as an "extender" to a PC running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system. Nearly every type of media that plays on the PC can be piped _ wired or wirelessly _ over a home network and through the Xbox to a TV. This time, the feature is built into the console (both the $300 and $400 versions) and doesn't require the purchase of additional software. It also can handle the demands of high-definition television without a hiccup. All this is in addition to the Xbox's primary purpose _ gaming. Taken as a whole, it's Microsoft's strongest case yet for its future in the living room. It shows that the PC, even if hidden elsewhere in the house, can serve up media and more for the entertainment center. To try it, I borrowed an Xbox 360 and a Hewlett-Packard Co. PC decked out with the Media Center software. The PC itself could have easily been a Gateway, Dell or any other brand _ the operating system is offered by almost all PC makers, with prices starting at less than $1,000. Though setup isn't as easy as it could be and the Media Center software still has some rough patches, it performed remarkably well. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56318763 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 13:16:47 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How to Survive a Tech Support Call From the Desk of David Pogue How to Survive a Tech Support Call The New York Times February 22, 2006 OK, we all know that the tech-support problem is out of control these days. But just for fun, reader John Stumpf, ex-CIO and now just a "retired geek," wrote up a Guide to Dell Tech Support that's so clever/funny/smart, I had to pass it on. Please welcome substitute columnist John Stumpf. Preparatory Work So it has happened: you have fired up your Dell PC, and -- nothing. Or the dreaded "cannot find boot drive" or something like that. Now you are forced into the unenviable position of having to call Dell Off-shore Hardware Support. Look at it as a journey, one on which you will be tested, much like Job or Arthur Dent. You will descend into the ninth circle, but with the proper preparation, tools and attitude, you will return, a better person for it. First, before you call, prepare. Raid your kids' library and find some simple reading primers along the lines of "See Spot Run." This will help you speak in non-complex sentences and monosyllabic words. Make an appointment for that root canal you have been putting off. After what you are about to experience, you will look forward to it. Buy a speakerphone; it's tough to stay rational when your neck is cramped. When you are ready to MAKE THE CALL, go to the bathroom, take an aspirin, get a book or crossword, stock up on water and nibbles (preferably ones with high sugar content and no nutritional value; Twinkies are good). Shoo the kids out of your den; it's possible that they will hear things that could cause serious psychological issues later. Do your relaxation exercises; take a sip of water; remember Dan Rather's closing, "Courage." And MAKE THE CALL. What Happens Next ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/technology/circuits/23POGUE-EMAIL.html?ex=1298264400&en=6989ccaf170df4e4&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 11:49:13 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, February 27, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 27, 2006 ******************************** The China Challenge http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16861?11228 In 1967 a leading French opinion-maker, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, published a book entitled Le Defi Americain (The American Challenge) that had a huge impact at the time and was translated into numerous languages. This was just 20 years after the end of World War II, when a rapidly increasing number of US companies were casting... Mobile TeleSystems Approves Integration of Subsidiaries http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16860?11228 MTS, one of Russia's three major mobile operators, has announced that it will merge nine of its subsidiaries into the parent company. The decision was made at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of shareholders and should bring MTS' total subscriber base to 59.5 million, in a total national market of 115.6 million. MTS is 52.8% owned... OTE Reports 37% Fall in Q4 Net Profit, Makes End-2005 Loss http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16858?11228 Greek telecoms group OTE posted a 37% year-on-year (y/y) fall in net profit, to 37.1 million euro (US$44.0 million), in the last quarter of 2005, from 58.9 million euro a year earlier. The company mainly attributed the fall to a tax credit recorded in the fourth quarter of 2004. For full-year 2005, OTE posted a net loss of 294.1 million... Vodafone Trims Forecasts, Takes 23-28 Billion Pound Impairment Charge http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16856?11228 LONDON -- Vodafone Group PLC warned Monday that its assets are overvalued by as much as 28 billion pounds (US$49 billion) and it faces a slowdown in revenue growth. Shares in the mobile phone giant fell 2.6 percent to 114 pence (US$1.98) after it said it would take an impairment charge of between 23 billion pounds (US$40.2... Wireless Sensors Let Machines "Talk" to Computers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16855?11228 Wireless communication isn't only useful for linking people to people or people to computers. Increasingly, researchers are turning their attention to wireless sensors that connect machines to computers to remotely monitor mechanical parts and systems. The key to this technology are remote wireless sensors that are small, power-thrifty... Analysts Bullish on Wireless VC http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16853?11228 A report released this week by visiongain says wireless venture capital has seen steady growth since 2000 and is poised to hit an all-time high this year. In general, the report says, venture capital investments are trending downward. Wireless technology, however, is the exception. During 2005, 152 wireless-related companies received... TIA: 2005 Wireless Sub Growth The Best Ever http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16851?11228 According to new numbers from the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), U.S. wireless revenues totaled $174.7 billion in 2005, up 10.7 percent from 2004. Sales of new handsets and a ramp-up in new wireless subscribers drove that figure. Total revenues from all wireless services rose 14.8 percent in 2005 to $118.6 billion, and... Light Reading Poll: Bundles Begone! http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16849?11228 Not many are keen on having a phone company as their video provider, and all-in-one service bundles (phone, broadband, and video) may not be as big a deal to consumers as many believe, according to the latest Light Reading poll. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents to the poll, Costly Cable, indicated that getting all communications... New In-Stat Research Explores Corporate Buying of Wireless Services and Equipment in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16847?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Because of their ability to generate higher average revenues per user (ARPU), business customers continue to represent one of the most attractive market segments for wireless carriers.  As they seek to expand this lucrative subscriber base, carriers need to better understand the dynamics and drivers of... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:50:51 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Tuesday, February 28, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For February 28, 2006 ******************************** Cisco Systems Closes Scientific-Atlanta Deal for US$6.9 bil. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/16877?11228 Cisco Systems announced yesterday (27 February 2006) that it has completed the US$6.9 billion acquisition of set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta in the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal, which represents Cisco's largest acquisition to date. Significance: Cisco has used a different strategy for this buy-out -- instead... Cable & Wireless Aims to Cut Staff in Half http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16867?11228 LONDON -- Cable & Wireless Group PLC, Britain's second-largest telecommunications company, said Tuesday that it aims to shed up to half of its work force, or up to 3,000 jobs, within five years. The company said it envisaged cutting staff from the current 5,500 to between 2,500 and 3,500 as it concentrates on fewer and larger... CTIA: Leave DE Alone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16863?11228 WASHINGTON -- CTIA is opposing the FCC's proposal to restrict bidding requirements in the upcoming advanced wireless services (AWS) auction. The organization said in comments filed late Friday that the agency's proposed restriction of "designated entity," or DE, partnerships formed between small carriers and larger incumbent... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 11:46:15 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Wednesday, March 1, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 1, 2006 ******************************** T-Online reports plunge in fourth-quarter profit amid sharp competition http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16898?11228 BERLIN -- T-Online International AG, Europe's largest Internet service provider, said Wednesday that its net profit plunged 82 percent in the fourth quarter amid stiff competition and higher costs. The German firm posted net profit for the last quarter of 2005 of  11.4 million (US$13.5 million), down from 63.1 million (US$74.9... Versatel Posts 13% Y/Y Increase in End-2005 Sales http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16894?11228 Dutch alternative telco Versatel posted a 13% year-on-year (y/y) increase in end-2005 revenue to 681 million euro (US$813 million) (compared to 601 million euro in 2004). Net profit stood at 199 million euro, compared to a loss of 23 million euro in 2004. The sale of Versatel's German operations to Germany's Apax for an equity value of... U.S. Residential VoIP Subscribers Reach 4.2 mil. in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/16893?11228 The U.S. Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) has announced that at the end of 2005 there were 4.2 million residential VoIP subscribers, up from 1.2 million at the end of 2004 and 150,000 at the end of 2004. Revenues from VoIP reached US$1.1 billion in 2005, up from US$200 million in 2004 and US$25 million in 2004. In its 2006... Sprint's Enterprise Challenge http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/16890?11228 Customers can be forgiven if they view formation of Sprint's new Enterprise Mobility division as a good-news/bad-news proposition. (See Sprint Opens Mobile Services.) Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S - message board) launched the unit in December to help large businesses and government users design, implement, and manage custom wireless... EU Probe Endangers $1.6B Austria Sale http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16885?11228 Alltel says its subsidiary Western Wireless International Austria Corp. and Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile Austria GmbH are negotiating to extend their agreement for the $1.6 billion cash sale of tele.ring, Alltel's Austrian business, to T-Mobile. This deal was signed more than six months ago but it never closed because of... Enhanced Enterprise VoIP Security System http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/16883?11228 Enterprises, financial institutions and other organizations using Internet telephony need to sure that their voice communications are secure as well as inexpensive. That's not easy, however, when an organization uses low-cost VoIP services that fling voice data out over the public Internet.   Patton Electronics, a Gaithersburg,... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #86 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 3 20:48:10 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EB5E5154BA; Fri, 3 Mar 2006 20:48:09 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #87 Message-Id: <20060304014809.EB5E5154BA@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 20:48:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Mar 2006 20:48:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 87 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cellular-News for Monday 27th February 2006 (Cellular-News) Cellular-News for Tuesday 28th February 2006 (Cellular-News) Cellular-News for Wednesday 1st March 2006 (Cellular-News) Cellular-News for Thursday 2nd March 2006 (Cellular-News) Cellular-News for Friday 3rd March 2006 (Cellular-News) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 2, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 3, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Survey: Broadband Spikes in Rural America (USTelecom dailyLead) BT Increases Broadband TV Spending Before Launch (USTelecom dailyLead) Yahoo! Reverses Content Strategy (USTelecom dailyLead) Book Review: "Home Networking: A Visual Do-It-Yourself Guide" (Rob Slade) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 27th February 2006 Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 07:54:50 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] 3G Coverage Testing In China http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16288.php Telestone Technologies has announced the successful completion of a comprehensive 3G wireless coverage test for China Mobile's Guizhou Province Division using Telestone's new 3G wireless coverage platform system. The test specifications were outlined... [[Financial News]] Portugal Telecom Merger Defense To Focus On Price -Report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16267.php Portugal Telecom is focusing it defense against Sonae' EUR10.7 billion ($12.7 billion) takeover approach on the price of the offer, the Jornal de Negocios newspaper reports in its Friday edition, without specifying its sources. ... Shenandoah Telecom Extends Talks With Sprint To April 15 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16268.php Shenandoah Telecommunications said Friday that it again extended its discussions with Sprint Nextel Corp. over a wireless territory rights agreement, to April 15, in order to avoid litigation. ... Brasil Telecom GSM posts net loss in 2005 of US$281mn http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16269.php Brasil Telecoms' mobile phone arm, Brasil Telecom GSM, posted a net loss in 2005 of 599mn reais (US$281mn), the company said in a statement. ... Comcel to offer US$156mn in bonds http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16272.php Colombian mobile operator Comcel is set to offer 350bn pesos (US$156mn) in ordinary bonds on Friday, the Colombian stock exchange reported in a statement. ... Telesp Celular reports US$424mn net loss for 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16275.php Brazilian telephone carrier Telesp Celular made a net loss of 909mn reais (US$424mn) in 2005 compared to a net loss of 490mn in 2004, the company reported in a statement. ... US MCT Corp sells 100% in Vostok Mobile Volga telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16277.php The U.S. MCT Corp. has sold its 100% stake in Russian telecommunication company Vostok Mobile Volga, MCT Corp. said in a press release Sunday. ... Sweden's Tele2 says ups stakes in 5 Russian mobile operators http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16278.php Swedish telecommunications company Tele2 has increased its stakes in five Russian regional mobile operators, Tele2 said in a statement Sunday. ... Russia's MTS approves merger of subsidiaries at EGM http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16280.php The extraordinary general meeting of shareholders (EGM) of Russia?s largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has approved the merger of nine of its subsidiaries into the parent company, MTS said in a statement Sunday. ... [[Handsets News]] Kyocera seeks to double market share to 40% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16270.php US CDMA mobile handset manufacturer Kyocera Wireless (KWC) plans to double its market share in Mexico to 40% with handsets that integrate global positioning systems and internet access, KWC's new Mexico manager Renata de la Vega Serratos was quoted a... New Law Proposed Ban On Toxins In Cellphones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16283.php California is considering a bill which will ban the use of hazardous materials in the construction of cellphones, and other electronic devices sold in the US state by 2008. Assembly Member Lori Salda said that, while current state law requires the No Ban On Handset Subsidies Planned http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16287.php South Africa's telecoms regulator, ICASA has concluded their study into handset subsidies in the country, and decided not to ban subsidies on the sales of handsets with contracts. The enquiry was motivated by consumer interest mainly in respect to th... [[Legal News]] ANALYSIS: TEF, govt agreement seen as a political move http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16274.php On February 15, Spain's Telefonica officially suspended its suit against the Argentine government, filed with the World Bank's international arbitration tribunal ICSID. ... Courts ask ombudsman to sue operators http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16276.php The Argentine justice system has recommended the nation's ombudsman Eduardo Mondino sue telecoms operators to the tune of nearly 1bn pesos (approximately US$325mn) for non-payment to the universal service fund, local newspaper Clar reported. ... Court to hear Norway's Telenor claim against VimpelCom on Apr 3 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16281.php The Moscow Arbitration Court scheduled on Sunday for April 3 the hearings of a lawsuit filed by Norway's telecommunication company Telenor, seeking to find VimpelCom's extraordinary general meeting of shareholders (EGM) held on September 14, 2005, vo... [[Mobile Content News]] Mobile Content Firm Fined And Banned From Service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16289.php The UK arm of the mobile content provider, LaNetro Zed has been fined US$44,000 by the UK's premium rate telephony regulator, ICSTIS and also had access to its premium rate SMS services barred for three months. The company is appealing the fine and b... [[Network Operators News]] NII cautious about investment in high speed data services http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16273.php Latin American digital trunking holding company NII Holdings does not expect to make significant investments in introducing high speed data services in the medium term as the region in general is not ready to pay for them, NII's CFO Byron Siliezar to... Kyivstar doubles number of its base stations in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16279.php Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar increased the number of its base stations by 96.7% in 2005 to 5,855, the company's press office said Sunday. ... Mtel Increases its Network Capacity http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16285.php Mtel, the Mobile subsidiary of Nigeria's state owned telecommunications outfit, has unveiled plans to increase the capacity of the network by an additional two and half million lines, a more than two hundred percent increase on the existing 1.2 milli... [[Regulatory News]] Taiwan Government May Up Foreign Invest Cap In Chunghwa Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16266.php The Taiwan government may raise the limit on direct foreign investment in Chunghwa Telecom to 49% from the current limit of 40%, a government official said Friday. ... [[Reports News]] In-Car Cell Phone Use Impacting Radio Listening http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16282.php Bridge Ratings says that it recently completed its first six month analysis of in-car cell phone use and its potential impact on other in-car listening including that of radio. The study was commissioned by a wireless company in 2005 as part of a mul... Latin American Location Services Set To Take Off - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16284.php Despite years of build-up and hype, location based services were still in an early stage of slow growth at the beginning of 2005. From about the year 2000, only a handful of operators worldwide had launched location based services for their enterpris... [[Statistics News]] Mobile telephony expands 48.4% in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16271.php Venezuela's mobile telephony sector grew 48.4% in 2005, reaching a total of 12,495,721 subscribers, local daily El Universal said, citing a report by telecoms regulator Conatel. ... USA Wireless Market Revenue Rises 10.7% - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16286.php Revenue in the USA wireless market totaled US$174.7 billion in 2005, up 10.7% from 2004, with an acceleration in handset revenue and a ramp-up in new wireless subscribers as key drivers of growth, according to the newly released report from the indus... ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 28th February 2006 Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:38:13 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] 3G LTE Could Enhance 3G Networks http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16299.php Amid growing interest in alternative technologies, such as DVB-H and WiMAX, 3G is set to fight back with 3G LTE, or Super 3G, which could dramatically enhance the capabilities of 3G networks from 2009, according to a new report from Sound Partners Re... China's 3G Subscribers Will Reach 10 Million in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16300.php Analysys International says that China's total 3G mobile communication subscribers will exceed 10 million in 2006 and will reach 100 million in the following five years. In 2006, the development of 3G services will drive the increase of 3G subscriber... Quintel Deploys First Multi-Operator 3G Shared Antenna System http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16306.php Quintel Technology says that it has successfully installed its first multi-operator, independent variable tilt (IVT) 3G shared antenna solution at Trentham in Staffordshire on behalf of three UK mobile operators. O2, the Trentham site owner, replaced... [[ Financial ]] Vodafone CEO Says No Plans To Sell Verizon Wireless Stake http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16290.php Vodafone Group has no plans to sell its 45% stake in U.S. company Verizon Wireless, the UK cellular operator's Chief Executive Arun Sarin said Monday. ... NEWS SNAP:Vodafone Slashed Outlook Means GBP23-28 Billion Charge http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16291.php Vodafone Group, Monday slashed its own forecasts for its medium and long-term growth, triggering an impairment charge of at least GBP23 billion and possibly as much as GBP28 billion. ... 2ND UPDATE: Vodafone To Write Off Up To $49 Billion In Goodwill http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16293.php Vodafone Group on Monday said it will slash as much as $49 billion in goodwill due to slowing growth in Germany and other top markets. ... Vodafone Files To Block TDC Sale Of Polkomtel Shares http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16295.php PREMIUM - Vodafone has filed a request to a Warsaw court to stop a transfer of shares in Poland's mobile operator Polkomtel by Denmark's TDC, Vodafone's spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires Monday. ... Sonaecom Registers PT Bid; Offer Values Co Above Peers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16297.php Sonaecom SGPS on Monday delivered its preliminary bid offer for Portugal Telecom to the market regulator to begin the formal registration process. ... Vodacom Still Interested In Nigerian Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16298.php According to Mr. Alan Knott-Craig, Chief Executive Officer of the Vodacom Group, Vodacom remains committed and interested in entering the Nigerian market, and to that end has been pursuing the acquisition of a controlling interest in V-Mobile, one of... [[ Handsets ]] All CDMA Handsets Sold Last Year Were 3G Capable http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16307.php The CDMA Development Group (CDG) has reported that 3G CDMA2000 accounted for nearly all CDMA handsets sold in 2005. Sales of 1xEV-DO handsets grew from 11 million to 27 million units, as more operators aggressively promoted their broadband offerings.... [[ Legal ]] NTP Offered RIM A License That'Fully Protects Everyone' http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16294.php NTP Inc. said Monday that Blackberry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. mischaracterized the proposed license agreement between the two companies and that it offered RIM a license "that protects everyone." The patent-holding company added that it is "open... [[ Messaging ]] BlackBerry's Lags Brand Perception in Growing Smartphone Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16302.php Brandimensions has released a new research report that measures consumer sentiment for the smartphone market, which encompasses Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry, Palm Treo, HP iPAQ and Motorola Q devices. Brandimensions searched over 150 million I... [[ Mobile Content ]] CBS, Viacom, Fox Reach Out For Cell-Phone Users http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16296.php Media companies CBS, Viacom and News Corp. made a series of moves into the wireless arena as they battle for the eyes and ears of cell-phone users with their own TV shows, films and music. ... [[ Network Operators ]] Tele2 Signs National Roaming Pact In Switzerland http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16292.php Tele2, the Swedish telephony services company, said Monday it strengthens its mobile telephony offering in Switzerland with a national roaming agreement, with TDC owned Sunrise. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Indian Regulator Orders Tariff Changes http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16303.php India's regulator, TRAI has issued an order to the mobile network operators in the States of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh not to charge differential tariffs for calls terminating in BSNL network and other service providers n... Millicom Extends Sri Lanka GSM License http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16305.php Millicom International Cellular has announced that its subsidiary Celltel has extended its cellular license in Sri Lanka until 2018 at a cost of approximately US$5 million. Celltel has extended its license for 10 years from the expiry of the current ... [[ Reports ]] Corporate Buying of Wireless Services and Equipment in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16301.php Because of their ability to generate higher average revenues per user (ARPU), business customers continue to represent one of the most attractive market segments for wireless carriers. As they seek to expand this lucrative subscriber base, carriers n... Wireless Venture Capital Is About To Hit An All-Time High http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16304.php Investments in wireless technology maintained strong growth recently and are bucking the general venture capital investment trends that have witnessed overall decline from 2000 to 2005. The portion dedicated to wireless investments is on the increase... ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 1st March 2006 Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 07:44:36 -0600 From: cellular-news Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Ericsson Gets HSDPA Order From KPN http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16310.php Sweden's Ericsson Tuesday said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with KPN Mobile for the rollout of a high speed mobile broadband network based on HSDPA for both KPN and Telfor in the Netherlands. ... China Vice-Minister: Conditions Exist For 3G Development http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16312.php Conditions already exist in China for the development of third-generation mobile phone services, Lou Qinjian, industry vice minister at the Ministry of Information said Tuesday. ... [[ Financial ]] UbiquiTel Swings To 4Q Profit On Operating Leverage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16308.php UbiquiTel Inc. (UPCS) swung to a fourth-quarter profit, boosted by operating leverage and improvement to its cost structure. ... Vodafone Japan: Impairment Charge Won't Hurt Japan Operations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16309.php The president of Vodafone Group PLC's (VOD) Japanese unit said Tuesday that an expected impairment charge won't affect its business strategy in Japan. ... MobilCom 2005 Sales EUR2.05 Billion Vs EUR1.90 Billion http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16311.php Telecommunications company MobilCom AG (MOB.XE) Tuesday said its 2005 sales were up 8.1% to EUR2.05 billion from EUR1.90 billion in 2004, mainly driven by strong customer growth. ... Alltel Negotiating To Extend Sale Pact For Austrian Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16314.php Alltel Corp. said its Western Wireless International Austria Corp. unit is negotiationg to extend the agreement covering its planned EUR1.3 billion, or $1.54 billion, sale of tele.ring to T-Mobile International. ... Kenyan President: Government To Sell 9% Of Mobile Phone Co Safaricom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16315.php NAIROBI (AP)--Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said Tuesday the government will sell 9% of the country's largest mobile phone service provider to fund the restructuring of the ailing state-owned telephone company. ... Lucent COO Maintains View Of Stronger Second Half http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16316.php Lucent Technologies Chief Operating Officer Frank D'Amelio reiterated Tuesday that the company expects higher revenue in the second half of the fiscal year than in the first half. ... Comcel launches US$200mn bond issue http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16318.php Colombian mobile operator Comcel issued 450bn pesos (US$200mn) in ordinary bonds on Friday (Feb 24), Mexican parent company America Mvil said in a statement. ... Iusacell reports first net profit since 2001 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16319.php Mexican mobile company Iusacell reported net profit of 143mn pesos (US$13.6mn) in the fourth quarter of 2005, its first quarterly profit since 2Q01, the company said in a statement. ... [[ Handsets ]] New Walkman Handset From SonyEricsson http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16325.php Sony Ericsson has expanded its growing line-up of Walkman phones with the W300, a quad band EDGE clamshell which aims to bring the mobile phone Walkman experience to an even greater market. With the announcement of the W300 Sony Ericsson has now laun... A CameraPhone That Looks Like A Camera http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16326.php Sony Ericsson is launching the K800 and K790 phones, the first handsets to carry the Cyber-shot brand, a true mark of imaging quality. Both are highly capable mobile phones with integrated 3.2 Megapixel digital cameras with Autofocus, Xenon flash and... Three "snap shot" Camera Phones From Sony Ericsson http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16329.php Three new camera phones from Sony Ericsson combines good quality digital photography with simple operation to create albums, search for pictures by timeline and send them on by MMS, infrared or email. The phones are the K510 with 1.3 Megapixel camera... New Vodafone 3G Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16330.php Vodafone Japan has announced the Vodafone 904SH by Sharp, the first mobile handset to feature a VGA liquid crystal display (LCD). The 904SH is scheduled to go on sale in late April 2006 as a new 3G handset. The 904SH's VGA LCD has four times the reso... [[ Legal ]] PRESS: Ukrainian court rejects Telenor's appeal in Kyivstar deal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16313.php The Ukrainian Supreme Court has rejected Norwegian telecommunication company Telenor's appeal of an earlier court ruling in favor of amending the charter of Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar, Vedomosti business daily said Tuesday, citing a c... [[ Network Contracts ]] Comptel: Region ripe for revenue saving software http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16317.php Comptel, a Helsinki-based software producer for convergent telecommunications networks, sees 2006 as a decisive year for its business in Latin America as operators opt for solutions that plug revenue leakages, Comptel's Americas region director Kipp G... [[ Network Operators ]] IN BRIEF: Supermarket chain registers brand for telephony, cable http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16320.php Chilean supermarket Lider, owned by local holding company D&S, has published in the official gazette its own brand for broadband, cable TV and IP, long distance and mobile telephony services. ... [[ Offbeat ]] Childs Mobile Phone Recalled http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16327.php The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a voluntary recall of a childs plastic toy in the shape of a mobile phone. The CPSC says that consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. The iPlay M... [[ Regulatory ]] Russian antitrust chief: VimpelCom should get license for Russia's Far East http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16322.php Russia's second largest mobile operator VimpelCom should receive a license for radio frequencies in Russia's Far East Federal District, Igor Artemyev, director of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), told reporters Tuesday. ... [[ Reports ]] Smartphone Forecast: Shipments to More Than Double in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16324.php Smartphones' premium prices and "supersized" form factors have historically combined with a limited demand for advanced data services to restrict them to "niche market" status. But 2006 will bring a growth spurt in the smartphone market that will see... [[ Statistics ]] Official sees Kazakh mobile user base doubling by 2009 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16321.php The mobile service subscriber base in Kazakhstan is expected to increase to 7.5 million users in 2008 from 3.8 million users as of now, Rizat Nurshabekov, deputy director of Kazakhstan?s IT and communications agency, told Prime-Tass Tuesday. ... Russia's Yeniseitelecom mobile user base up to 1 mln http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16323.php The subscriber base of Russia's regional mobile operator Yeniseitelecom has increased to 1 million users as of now from 970,000 users as of February 1, the company said in a press release Tuesday. ... [[ Technology ]] Wi-Fi Chipset Market Continues Impressive Growth http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16328.php The Wireless LAN (WLAN) chipset market is on a phenomenal growth pace that is projected to continue over the next few years. The market will soar from just over 140 million annual chipset unit shipments in 2005 to 430 million in 2009, reports In-Stat... Facial Recognition Software for 3G Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16331.php Vodafone Japan is launching a Face Recognition function that authenticates customers by sensing their facial features to increase mobile phone security. The new function will be included in the Vodafone 904SH, a new 3G handset by Sharp scheduled to g... ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 2nd March 2006 Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 08:26:11 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Samsung Launches First TD-SCDMA Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16346.php Philips, Samsung and T3G have announced that they are bringing TD-SCDMA handsets to the Chinese market. The Samsung video phone, announced in August 2005 is available now and has already been experienced by Huang Ju, China's Vice Premier. The Samsung... [[ Financial ]] NEWS SNAP: Telefonica 4Q Net Profit +52%, Spain Still Grows http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16332.php Telefonica, Wednesday posted a 52% jump in fourth-quarter net profit, boosted by several Latin American acquisitions and Internet-driven revenue growth in its key Spanish fixed-line division. ... Cesky Telecom To Join Forces With Eurotel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16333.php Cesky Telecom said Wednesday that a new integrated telecommunications operator Telefonica O2 Czech Republic, a.s. is to be formed. ... Poland's KGHM: Polkomtel 2005 Net Profit Up 16% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16336.php Mobile telephone operator Polkomtel, increased its full-year net profit by 16% in 2005, to 1.07 billion zlotys ($1=PLN3.1618), according to figures issued Wednesday in the consolidated fourth-quarter report of shareholder KGHM Polska Miedz. ... Unefon revenues decline 10% in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16337.php Mexico's fourth placed mobile operator Unefon saw revenues fall 10% in 2005 to 4.0bn pesos (US$382mn) from 4.4bn pesos in 2004, the company said in a statement. ... Sonae confirms bid for control of Vivo http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16338.php Portuguese industrial conglomerate Sonae SGPS has clarified that a desire for control of Brazilian mobile group Vivo is one of the considerations in its recently proposed takeover of Vivo shareholder Portugal Telecom, according to a note to Portugal'... [[ Handsets ]] Nokia Opens Mexico Handset Factory http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16345.php Nokia has opened the expansion to its Reynosa, Tamaulipas plant in Mexixo, which is intended to boost its mobile-device production. With an investment of more than US$50 million, the expansion provides greater capacity and flexibility to meet the req... Top Six Vendors Drive Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16347.php Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 816.6 million units in 2005, a 21% increase from 2004, as the leading six vendors increased their share of the market at the detriment of smaller vendors, according to Gartner. The top six vendors accounted for 79... [[ Legal ]] Court to hear Telenor claim against VimpelCom's URS buy on Apr 5 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16342.php The Moscow Arbitration Court adjourned on Wednesday until April 5 the preliminary hearings of a lawsuit filed by Norway's telecommunication company Telenor, seeking to void VimpelCom's purchase of mobile operator Ukrainian Radiosystems (URS). ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile Data Services set to score at World Cup http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16344.php Ceon, a provider of service fulfilment software for next generation IP-based services has revealed the findings of an NOP survey examining consumer attitudes towards mobile digital services at the Football World Cup. With kick-off less than four mont... [[ Regulatory ]] PRESS: Russia's MTS applies for long-distance license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16334.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has filed an application with the Russian Communications Supervision Service to get a long-distance license, MTS' Press Secretary Galina Istratova said, Kommersant business daily reported Wedn... IN BRIEF: US desists from push to force telco privatization http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16339.php Colombia has managed to convince the US government to back off from its demands to privatize public telcos and to include mobile operators in the free trade agreement the two countries have recently finished negotiating, local daily El Universal repo... Russian telecom official slams antitrust for Far East frequency comments http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16341.php An official with the Federal Telecommunication Agency criticized Wednesday the Federal Antimonopoly Service's (FAS) recent statements on frequency allocation in Russia's Far East as "groundless." ... [[ Statistics ]] Ukraine's DCC subscriber base down 39% in Oct-Dec 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16335.php The subscriber base of Ukraine's Digital Cellular Communications of Ukraine (DCC), which operates using the DAMPS standard, decreased 39% in October-December 2005 to 42,700 users as of January 1, a source in the company told Prime-Tass Wednesday. ... Belarus' MDC subscriber base up to 2 million users http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16340.php The subscriber base of Belarus mobile phone operator Mobile Digital Communications, or MDC, rose to 2 million users as of March 1 from 1.885 million users as of January 1, the company's press office said Wednesday. ... [[ Technology ]] Cellphones Pose Greater Risk to Airplanes Than Previously Thought http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16343.php A study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) has found that cell phones and other portable electronic devices, like laptops and game-playing devices, can pose dangers to the normal operati... ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 3rd March 2006 Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 07:43:00 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Telefonica Mviles 2005 investments up 41.3% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16350.php Spanish mobile phone group Telefonica Mviles increased investments 41.3% in 2005 to 2.3bn euros (US$2.7bn) compared to 2004 with the lion's share going to operations in Brazil and Spain, Spanish news wire EFE reported. ... Deutsche Telekom Sets Record Dividend As Profit Falls http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16352.php Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telephone company, said Thursday it would make its biggest-ever dividend payment, while also detailing a 43% decline in quarterly profit due to asset sales a year ago. ... [[ Handsets ]] The Top 10-Selling Phones in February 2006. http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16362.php The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, has released their "Top 10"-list for February 2006. The list is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile phone cases that have been ordered from Krusell dur... Phone Retailer Doubles In Size http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16363.php The USA based phone retail franchise Wireless Toyz, says that it doubled its footprint to 124 stores in 2005 and expects to repeat the achievement in 2006, with a total of 250 stores anticipated by the end of the year. Michigan-based Wireless Toyz op... [[ Legal ]] Russian antitrust says frequency commission breaks law in VimpelCom case http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16355.php Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) ruled that the State Radio Frequency Commission violated the law by refusing to provide licenses for Russia's Far East Federal District to Russia?s second largest mobile operator VimpelCom, a spokesperson w... [[ Mobile Content ]] Google Talks Up Mobile-search Push http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16354.php Ahead of Google's annual analyst day, which kicks off later Thursday, a company product executive underscored the search engine's desire to penetrate the non-PC market by being on the homepage of mobile devices. ... Protecting Kids From Adult Content On Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16361.php Singapore's three mobile operators - M1, SingTel and StarHub have announced the launch of a voluntary code to self-regulate mobile content in Singapore. The initiative is in response to concerns about minors having easy access to undesirable conten... [[ MVNO ]] Nokia and Aina Group Collaborate in Developing a New MVNO Concept http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16360.php Nokia and Aina Group, a regional Finnish content and service provider, have announced a frame agreement to develop Aina Group's unique media-based mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) concept. In addition, Nokia will supply Aina with a circuit swit... [[ Network Contracts ]] Ukraine Operator Orders Roaming Package http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16357.php BSG Clearing Solutions has selected by the Ukraine based operator, Astelit to provide GSM wireless data clearing capabilities for Astelit's mobile operator life:). Astelit LLC launched life:) in January 2005 and is the third of five Ukrainian telecom... Ericsson Awarded Afghan GSM Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16359.php Investcom says that it has selected Ericsson as its supplier for the infrastructure and telecommunication services to support the development of its GSM 900 and 1800 network in Afghanistan. Investcom announced in September 2005 that it had been award... [[ Network Operators ]] easyMobile Services To Be Sold In UK Via The Link Outlets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16348.php easyMobile, the mobile telecommunications service offered by Danish TDC using the brand of Stelios Haji-Ioannou's EasyGroup, will be sold on the U.K. high street for the first time after the company said Thursday it will sell handsets via The Link's ... Publicis, Havas Get Orange Advertising Accounts http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16356.php France Telecom said Thursday it has picked the Fallon/Marcel agency of Publicis Groupe and Havas's Euro RSCG C&O to handle advertising contracts for its Orange mobile phone division. ... EV-DO Offered in Quebec City http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16358.php Canada's Bell Mobility has expanded its EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) network into Quebec City's downtown core. A further expansion of the Quebec City EV-DO rollout is expected this Autumn. Bell has multiple EV-DO devices available including the K... [[ Regulatory ]] Exec: Govt keen for Vivo to have national coverage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16351.php Brazil's communications ministry and telecoms regulator Anatel are keen to see mobile operator Vivo achieve national coverage, local daily Panorama Brasil quoted Vivo president Roberto Lima as saying. ... [[ Statistics ]] Mobile base grows with 1.5 million new clients http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16349.php Chilean mobile operators sold 1.5 million new mobile lines during 2005 to reach a total client base of 11.3 million users, up nearly 14% compared to end-2004, local newspaper El Mercurio reported, citing statistics provided by operators. ... [[ Technology ]] Nokia And Telenor To Test Converged Services http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16353.php Finnish telecommunications company Nokia, Thursday said it will trial services for fixed and mobile environments using Fixed-Mobile Convergence technologies together with Telenor. ... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 12:03:30 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Thursday, March 2, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 2, 2006 ******************************** AOL Study Reveals Web Worries http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16920?11228 The biggest fear people have about the Internet is that it is being used by terrorists, according to a study by Time Warner subsidiary AOL's U.K. operation. The study asked users to rate a series of both positive and negative issues. "How important an issue for society, if at all, are the following?" AOL... Metro Ethernet Finally Delivers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16918?11228 As carriers are pressed by the financial community to compensate for lost voice revenues and to counter triple and quad play competition from cable, they have to figure out how to move to multi-service offerings without compromising operational efficiency. Service providers are feeling a definite sense of urgency, as they rush to make... Voice Over Internet Use Soaring http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16914?11228 NEW YORK -- Last year was a breakout time for Internet telephone services, with the number of U.S. subscribers more than tripling to 4.5 million and industry revenue surpassing $1 billion. When 2005 began, there were 1.3 million subscribers of Voice over Internet Protocol services, according to a survey by analysis firm... Philly Wi-Fi Network to Pay for Computers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16911?11228 PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia on Wednesday announced details of its deal with EarthLink Inc. for the construction of a high-speed wireless network that will span the city, including provisions for EarthLink to pay for computers, training, and subsidize Internet access for low-income households. Among the country's major cities,... Court Date Set for Telenor in VimpelCom Dispute http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16908?11228 The lawsuit filed by Telenor against VimpelCom, in which the Norwegian company is seeking to void VimpelCom's purchase of Ukrainian Radiosystems (WellCom), has been adjourned by the Moscow Arbitration Court. The case will now be heard on 5 April 2006. Telenor, which holds a 26.6% share of VimpelCom compared to the 32.9% owned by Russia's... Alltel, T-Mobile Agree to Extension http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16903?11228 Negotiations proved fruitful for Alltel subsidiary Western Wireless International Austria Corporation and T-Mobile Austria, which were able to come to terms to extend a previously announced agreement involving the acquisition of tele.ring.  The tele.ring asset sale was originally announced in August 2005 as part of Alltel's... Virus Leaps to Wireless http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16902?11228 The Mobile Antivirus Researchers Association (MARA), a membership organization dedicated to mobile data security, says it has uncovered the first virus with the capability of leaping from a PC to a handheld device. Called "Crossover," the Trojan horse virus can spread from a Win32 desktop machine to a Windows Mobile Pocket PC handheld. ... EU, U.S. End Telecom Trade Sanctions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/16900?11228 The European Union (EU) and the United States this morning ended a decade-long trade dispute under which companies from 11 European states were barred from bidding on certain types of U.S. government contracts, primarily smaller contracts in telecommunications, and vice versa. The end to the somewhat obscure, but nasty disagreement... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 11:36:55 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Friday, March 3, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 3, 2006 ******************************** Nokia Sees Handset Replacement Driving Mobile Sales in 2006 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16930?11228 Nokia expects that mobile handset replacements will push its global sales this year. The Finnish vendor estimates that replacements will account for more than 60% of its total sales in 2006. Significance: With mobile penetration reaching or exceeding 100% in mature mobile markets, handset manufacturers now rely upon customers upgrading... Deutsche Telekom's 4Q Net Profit Down http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16928?11228 FRANKFURT, Germany -- Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telecom and parent of the T-Mobile cell-phone brand in the U.S., said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit fell 43 percent due to a charge on its British wireless operations and lower sales of traditional telephone services. However, full-year profit grew strongly and the company... Nokia Ousts Design Head http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16927?11228 ESPOO, Finland -- Nokia (NYSE:NOK) today announced it will strengthen its multidisciplinary design unit by forming a single company-wide design organization. The new global team will be responsible for the entire design process, from strategy and conceptualization to product development, for Nokia's complete portfolio of devices. This... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:33:41 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead ustelecom@dailylead.com Subject: Survey: Broadband spikes in rural America USTelecom dailyLead February 27, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ddhsfDtutbnkqRjCZc TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Survey: Broadband spikes in rural America BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * China gets ready for 3G explosion * EarthLink shifts course * Vodafone announces $48B goodwill charge * Cable-phone consortium readies new mobile phone services * Qwest eyes nontelecom acquisitions USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Siemens' Braun To Speak at TelecomNEXT HOT TOPICS * AOL's about to get VoIP * Nortel chief details road map * DirecTV plans broadband VOD service * Internet video begins to flourish * Wireless broadband technology challenges fiber TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Municipal Wi-Fi has drawbacks * CBS to roll out mobile content play REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Canadian government may consider fourth wireless carrier * Judge stops short of immediate BlackBerry shutdown Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ddhsfDtutbnkqRjCZc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 11:55:51 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BT Increases Broadband TV Spending Before Launch USTelecom dailyLead March 1, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ddAMfDtutboWfNRLnP TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT increases broadband TV spending before launch BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Lucent names new CFO * BlackBerry shutdown could be costly for companies * Cox upgrades with Juniper routing platforms * Anschutz, Harvey leave Qwest board * Handset makers face new pressures * Telefonica reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * AT&T, Verizon, Disney, Time Warner Cable, NTT, BellSouth among CEOs at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * KT announces WiBro trial REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Hearing focuses on possible USF overhaul * Barton backs national cable franchising Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ddAMfDtutboWfNRLnP ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006 13:12:09 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Yahoo! Reverses Content Strategy USTelecom dailyLead March 2, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/demIfDtutbpFzRoKsE TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Yahoo! reverses content strategy BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Philly, EarthLink close Wi-Fi deal * Telecoms mull pay-as-you-go Web access * Nokia, Telenor test fixed-mobile convergence * Report: BitTorrent to open video download store * Deutsche Telekom reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Author Steven Shepard teaches two Crash Courses at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Atlanta airport considers new uses for wireless network * New AP/MSN Web news video service debuts REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Oregon senator to introduce Web access bill * FCC chief wants more choices for cable customers Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/demIfDtutbpFzRoKsE ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:14:40 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Home Networking: A Visual Do-It-Yourself Guide", Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKHNVDYG.RVW 20051130 "Home Networking: A Visual Do-It-Yourself Guide", Brian Underdahl, 2005, 1-58720-127-5, U$24.95/C$35.95 %A Brian Underdahl %C 800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46240 %D 2005 %G 1-58720-127-5 %I Cisco Press %O U$24.95/C$35.95 feedback@ciscopress.com 800-382-3419 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587201275/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587201275/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587201275/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience n- Tech 1 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 186 p. %T "Home Networking: A Visual Do-It-Yourself Guide" The Introduction states that this book is for people who want to make good choices in terms of quickly setting up a home network, and that this is the only such text that you will need. Part one introduces networking itself. Chapter one says that computers can talk to each other and share files and printers. (And also get at radio stations around the world on the Internet.) The material is not so much simple, as simplistic. Bits and pieces for home networks are described in chapter two, although the discussion of the relative advantages of wired and wireless networks completely ignores issues of security. (The chapter also concludes with a discussion of network client software that is neither detailed enough to help anyone with anything, nor important enough, in the current state of the technology, to be worth mentioning.) Part two addresses starting your network. Chapter three outlines some of the products (all Cisco, for some strange reason) that you will need to get connected, as well as throwing around some protocol and standards references that home users will not need. Chapter four provides more of the same. Installation, in chapter five, assumes plug and play (although there is some graphical advice on putting a network card into an older computer). Chapter six reprints screenshots of the Microsoft Windows Network installation wizard. Part three discusses enhancements. Chapter seven addresses firewall and security issues that are far more advanced than the previous material. Windows file and printer sharing dialogue boxes are displayed in chapter eight. Chapter nine is a grab bag of media options, having little to do with networking. There is very little useful information for home users provided in this book. The content is mostly too limited, although sometimes it jumps into "look how much I know" mode: both are equally unhelpful. There is some material here that will walk a home user through a standard and trouble-free installation, but it could have been condensed into a pamphlet. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005 BKHNVDYG.RVW 20051130 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched, My eyes fail, looking for my God. - Psalm 69:1-3 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #87 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 3 22:29:10 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id CF9C9151F7; Fri, 3 Mar 2006 22:29:09 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #88 Message-Id: <20060304032909.CF9C9151F7@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 22:29:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=unavailable version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 3 Mar 2006 22:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 88 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Audix Outcalling and Nextel (Tim) DTMF Sequences (sonali) Bogus! -- The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (Ron Chapman) Buffalo NY 25 HZ Power (John Bachtel) Article About AM Radio (Mike Sandman) Call for Papers: IAENG International Workshop on Wireless Networks (imecs) Verizon EVDO PDA Phone and VOIP (hizark21@yahoo.com) Report: Verizon's FiOS Enhances Competition (USTelecom dailyLead) Telecom Update #519, March 3, 2006 (Angus TeleManagement Group) How Can I Change the Ring? (Bill) Pilot on Cell Phone When Killed (in VA), FAA Says (Michael Quinn) Long-Term AT&T Investors (Garrett Wollman) Employment Opportunity: Looking For VoIP Developers/System Testers (stanna) Re: Digital Method Puts Ads Inside TV (Jim Stewart) Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare (William Warren) Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare (T) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tim Subject: Audix Outcalling and Nextel Date: 03 Mar 2006 14:54:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just recently got a Nextel cell phone; had Verizon and Cingular and we use the outcalling feature at our office. What seems to be happening is when audix calls out to the Nextel phone and I don't answer it Nextel records the voice prompt when it goes to voicemail. Typically in the past with other carriers they drop the call when two voicemail systems hear each other. Anyone else run into this problem and have a resolution? ------------------------------ From: sonali Subject: DTMF Sequences Date: 03 Mar 2006 00:01:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all! I wanted to know what sequences are sent when we press * and #. also, what sequences are sent for international calls?what happens when the sender tries to morph his identity ?what sequences are sent in such a case? Regards, Sonali ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 01:10:05 -0500 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Today was my first time in the Container Store. I bought something; at checkout, she asked for my phone number. I politely declined. She assured me that they didn't sell the number; their purpose, she said, was to tell them where their customers were coming from for store planning and general demographic purposes. I'm no Einstein, but my mind works quickly enough that it took me all of about half a second to realize that this was utter and complete BS. I even told her that, and explained it: 1) if you want to know where your customers are coming from, use the ZIP code where they live. 2) If you insist on using a phone number, you need only the area code and exchange in order to pin down a geographic location. You don't need my entire number. 3) What about people who have only cell phones and no land lines? "Oh, the company we use has some way of working through that," she said. This poor babe. She had no idea what she was saying or to whom she was saying it. I explained how unless their data collection company had inside tracks with the cell companies, which we're finding out is HIGHLY frowned upon, a cell phone number is not trackable to a physical location for the purposes of demographic planning. In other words, the Container Store just throws this BS out there as a smokescreen. I told her up front that I didn't believe they'd never sell my phone number, and a couple minutes later -- after explaining the above -- I restated that. Of course, it was like talking to a wall. Nonetheless, it forced me to think it all the way through and come to the conclusion that in FACT the Container Store is lying to everyone when they say they're going to hold your phone number private. Either that, or they're spending a lot of time and money and effort collecting data that are entirely useless. But once they realize the data are useless, they'll just recoup their losses by selling the numbers. Fortunately she accepted without question my knee-jerk "No, thank you" response to her request for my phone number. But she had to plug something in; she plugged in all 1s. Shades of the old Radio Shack days, when you couldn't buy a 30 cent battery without giving up your family tree and medical history. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Speaking of Radio Shack, at the store in Skokie, IL where I worked as one of the 'you have questions, we have answers' people, (in other words a humble sales person for a two year period in 1994-95 96?) they were big on the that 'get a name and _address_ and a _phone number_' for even a small purchase like batteries. I went along with it and based, I assume, on my good looks and charm managed to obtain a lot of names, addresses and phone numbers. My specialty was telephones and telephone equipment. The store manager and the regional manager and the _area_ manager (as well as we clerks) all got such _tremendous_ heat from the general public RS finally discontinued the system. It was a horid system, in a terrible place to work. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 12:34:48 -0500 From: John Bachtel Reply-To: lilburn.ga.30047@att.net Subject: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power In 1957 and 1958, after graduating from Kenmore High School, near Buffalo, I was a turbine operator at Niagara Mohawk's Charles R. Huntley Steam station in Tonawanda, on the Niagara River. We were still operating units 25 hz 24, 25 and 26 and a reversable frequency changer. Total cap. was abt. 200 MW, alongside 1000 MW of 60 Hz power in the newer sections of the plant. Operation varied with the business climate, from full bore 24/7 to daily startup/ shutdown, occasionally with only one unit. Interesting work ... I got to do the throttle ups and enjoy the synchrozation process during startup. It could get dicey with our 30-50 year old equipment and synchroscope like a giant clock up on the wall. Equally exciting were sudden power dumps as happened during severe weather. Big building quake, followed by opening of steam safety valves atop the adjoining boiler house. While there I saw tail end of demo. of three older 25 hz units 21-23 with new installation of turbine and generator units 67 & 68, in their place in the existing building shell along with two enormous B&W boilers in a new bldg. I resigned in Nov '58 to enter engineering school in U of FL, but worked at the electric bldg downtown two summers in 61 and 62. To my knowledge the 25hz units were still running in '62. John Bachtel Lilburn, GA de NR4JB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Note: Address modified to avoid so-called "spam". To reply via . . e-mail, delete the ".30047" from address! tnx/jrb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All the articles in this issue of the Digest have been re-dated to Friday, March 03, to accomodate Usenet which has a habit of tossing things with stale dates (i.e. more than two or three days old) on them. I also used the first two or three issues today to mostly accomodate my paying customers (the newsletters, etc), knowing that the rest of you would probably stick around a while anyway, and be more understanding. And thanks, John, for your interesting reminisence with Niagara Power Company. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:57:32 -0600 From: Mike Sandman Subject: Article About AM Radio Hi Pat. I thought you might be interested in this: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114125971438087021-whLN_IXLyiPsenX9v7Nti_dn3Fo_20070302.html?mod=blogs Mike Sandman 630-980-7710 mike@sandman.com - http://www.sandman.com Check out our catalog of Unique Telecom Products & Tools. We have a fantastic assortment of Cable Installation Tools and Training Videos to help you use them. New "Basic Installation 2" is a 3 tape set, 6 hours that shows you how to build a frame. Also check out our Telephony History Page which contains ads, catalogs and information from telephony related magazines from the first part of the last century: http://www.sandman.com/telhist.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mike Sandman has been a wonderful friend of this Digest since sometime in the 1980's, and he still remains am ongoing patron. That is why when people sometimes write here saying, 'where can I find a gizmo (you supply the meaning) I refer them to Mike's catalog. PAT] ------------------------------ From: imecs_2006@iaeng.org Subject: Call for Papers: IAENG International Workshop on Wireless Networks Date: 27 Feb 2006 05:49:30 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com CFP From: IAENG: International Association of Engineers (http://www.iaeng.org) Engineering Letters (http://www.engineeringletters.com) IAENG International Workshop on Wireless Networks (IWWN'06) (Part of The International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists IMECS 2006) 20-22 June, 2006, Hong Kong http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006/IWWN2006.html IWWN'06 has the focus on some specific issues for wireless LAN, PAN, sensor networks and ad hoc networks such as efficient management of energy, the security, the behaviour of different protocols over these networks, the theoretical and applied study of these networks in a disconnected and weakly connected operation and middlewares/agents/proxies based solutions. This workshop is held as part of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2006. The IMECS 2006 is organized by the International Association of Engineers (IAENG), and serves as good platforms for the engineering community members to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. Extended version of the papers under this workshop can be included in the special issue of our journal Engineering Letters. And, further extended version can also be included in a book called "Current Trends in Wireless Networks" to be published by IAENG. The IMECS 2006 multiconference has the focus on the frontier topics in the theoretical and applied engineering and computer science subjects. It consists of 14 workshops (see the details at IMECS website: www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006). The multiconference serves as good platforms for the engineering community members of different disciplines to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. The current conference committee of the IMECS 2006 includes over 140 workshop co-chairs and committee members of mainly research center heads, department heads, professors, research scientists from over 20 countries, while a few of the committee members are also experienced software development directors and engineers. All submitted papers will be under peer review and accepted papers will be published in the conference proceeding (ISBN: 988-98671-3-3). The abstracts will be indexed and available at major academic databases. The Technology Research Databases (TRD) of CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts), DBLP and Computer Science Bibliographies have promised to index the print proceeding in advance of its publication. And after the publication of the proceeding, print copies will also be sent to databases like IEE INSPEC, Engineering Index (EI) and ISI Thomson Scientific for indexing. The accepted papers will also be considered for publication in the special issues of the journal Engineering Letters. Some participants may also be invited to submit extended version of their conference papers for considering as book chapters (soon after the conference). Workshop Co-Chairs: Chin-Chen Chang IEEE Fellow, IEE Fellow Chair Professor in Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taiwan Chung Shue Chen Assistant Professor, Department of Information Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Joy Iong-Zong Chen Associate professor of Dep. of Communication Engineering Da Yeh University, Taiwan Yuh-Shyan Chen Associate Professor, Co-Editors-in-Chief of International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing (IJAHUC) Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan I-Shyan Hwang Associate professor in the Department of Computer Engineering & Science Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan Rajgopal Kannan Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Louisiana State University, USA Phone Lin Associate Professor, Department Computer Science & Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Dr. Elsa M. Macias Lopez (Chair) Dept. of Telematic Engineering, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University, Spain Ali Nazari Research staff member Fraunhofer IGD, Germany Ai-Chun Pang Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Information Engineering National Taiwan University, Taiwan Prof. Vaidy Sunderam (co-chair) Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Computer Science, Dept. of Math & Computer Science, Emory University, USA Chia-Sheng Tsai Assistant Professor, EE & CSE College Tatung University, Taiwan GEC. Yang Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering National ChungHsing University, Taiwan Wei Yen Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering Director of Industrial Cooperation Section Tatung University, Taiwan Technical papers describing original, previously unpublished research results are solicited. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Location-based Services and Positioning Wireless Ad-hoc Networks, MANET Wireless Broadband Mobile Access Wireless LAN/PAN Sensor Network Planning and Deployment Wireless/mobile networked applications Interworking heterogeneous wireless/wireline networks Disconnected and weakly connected operation Mobile agents Multimedia QoS support & middleware Proxies and middleware for wireless networks Performance of end-to-end protocols over wireless networks Wireless multicasting T ransport Layer Issues in Mobile and Wireless Networks Routing in multihop, ad hoc and sensor networks Congestion and admission control Wireless network security and privacy System-level energy management for wireless devices Submission: Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft paper in abstract format (one page) or in full paper format to imecs@iaeng.org by 12 March, 2006. The submitted file can be in MS Word format, PS format, or PDF formats. The first page of the draft paper should include: Title of the paper; Name, affiliation and e-mail address for each author; A maximum of 5 keywords of the paper; Also, the name of the workshop session that the paper is being submitted to should be stated in the email. Important Dates: Draft Manuscript / Abstract submission deadline: 12 March, 2006 Camera-Ready papers & Pre-registration due: 2 April, 2006 IMECS 2006: 20-22 June, 2006 More details about the IWFE 2006 can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006/IWWN2006.html ------------------------------ From: hizark21@yahoo.com Subject: Verizon EVDO PDA Phone and VOIP Date: 3 Mar 2006 02:37:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I tend to agree, unless there was some way to flash the hardware, then it would be hard to get the phone to ring. Another possiblilty would be to get the softphone to stay active and ring. One scenario is where the PDA phone makes bluetooth connection to voip phone and the phone rings there. In any case EVDO is still quite useful for making. > Subject: RE: [sdw2003] Verizon EVDO PDA Phone and > VOIP > So it plays a WAV file when a call is > recieved....?? >> The VoIP app just plays a WAV file... Like any >> other app. >> Tony >> Subject: RE: [sdw2003] Verizon EVDO PDA Phone and VOIP >> The really cool thing would be if VOIP using EVDO were able to get >> the PDA phone to ring. It's probably possible, but I am not sure >> what initates that action in the phone. It's most likely a >> embedded function so I am not certain how much you could > >> configure it. The big upside however is that you could >> make outbound calls with the PDA phone. >>> Currently no blockage at this point by Verizon, although the EULA >>> forbids it...however I tried it once and it works really nice >>> this phone. I did hear rumors that Verizon was >>> going to block VOIP calls, but I have not heard any confirmation of >>> this. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 12:11:25 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: March 3, 2006 - Report: Verizon's FiOS enhances competition in USTelecom dailyLead March 3, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/deuYfDtutbqczhSJvR TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Verizon's FiOS enhances competition in Texas BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Deutsche Telekom seeks to lift dividend 16% * Ciena CEO: Network convergence, flexibility to drive market USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * AT&T's Whitacre, Network Disaster Recovery team only at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * BT feels a need for speed * Is the future now for mobile video? * Cable's share of Internet access drops VOIP DOWNLOAD * Samsung, Avaya team up to develop IP products * Fusion's forthcoming VoIP service could shake up industry REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Senator introduces "network neutrality" bill * Indiana lawmakers OK statewide video franchise plan * California PUC approves Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/deuYfDtutbqczhSJvR ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 11:48:15 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #519, March 3, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 519: March 3, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** MTS Reorganizes into Customer Segments ** Mitel Upgrades Flagship PBX ** Plan for Email Fees Arouses Protests ** NTP, RIM Hurl Barbs ** Aliant Bundles Internet, Computer ** Ontario Municipalities Adopt Vehicle Tracking ** Indian Carrier Buys Teleglobe ** Bell Acquires Online Music Service ** Philly Wi-Fi Net to Fund Computer Literacy ** Cellphone Driving Bill Reintroduced ** Data Market Shows Steady Growth ** Bell Lays Off 471 in Ontario ** Globalstar Has 200,000 Customers ** Tell Your Call Centre Story ============================================================ MTS REORGANIZES INTO CUSTOMER SEGMENTS: Pierre Blouin, MTS-Allstream's new CEO, has reorganized the carrier into two divisions, Consumer Markets and Enterprise Segments, headed by Kelvin Shepherd and John MacDonald respectively. Blouin also named six chief officers including Dean Prevost (strategy), Paul Frizado (technology), and Chris Peirce (regulatory). (See Telecom Update #515) MITEL UPGRADES FLAGSHIP PBX: Release 7 of the Mitel Networks 3300 ICP, just introduced, offers SIP trunking and networking and a new gateway to Microsoft Office Communicator and LCS. Mitel has also upgraded its contact centre offering and introduced new messaging and remote access products. PLAN FOR EMAIL FEES AROUSES PROTESTS: AOL and Yahoo have said they plan to charge between a quarter-cent and a cent a message for premium service on bulk email delivery. A coalition opposed to the plan (www.dearaol.com) includes the National Humane Society and Gun Owners of America. Seventeen U.S. senators are supporting a bill that would ban this practice. NTP, RIM HURL BARBS: On February 24, U.S. Judge James Spencer told Research In Motion and NTP to settle their patent dispute privately in order to avoid a court-imposed settlement that "will be imperfect." NTP and RIM both responded by accusing the other of trying to mislead public opinion. (See Telecom Update #518) ALIANT BUNDLES INTERNET, COMPUTER: Aliant's new Business PC Purchase Program enables small businesses to lease a Compaq PC with Microsoft software and a high-speed Internet connection, on a three-year contract, for $79.95/month ONTARIO MUNICIPALITIES ADOPT VEHICLE TRACKING: Durham Region, the City of Vaughan, and 11 other Ontario municipalities have agreed to use vehicle tracking from Toronto-based Grey Island Systems, utilizing the Rogers wireless network. INDIAN CARRIER BUYS TELEGLOBE: Teleglobe, Canada's former overseas phone carrier, has been purchased by VSNL, which itself was once India's overseas carrier and is now owned by the Tata family. BCE once bought a majority interest in Teleglobe for $9.65 billion; VSNL will pay US$239 million. (See Telecom Update #221, 364) BELL ACQUIRES ONLINE MUSIC SERVICE: Bell Canada has acquired a majority interest in Puretracks Inc., a Canadian Internet music store. PHILLY WI-FI NET TO FUND COMPUTER LITERACY: EarthLink, an Atlanta-based ISP, has won a contract to supply the City of Philadelphia with a 135-square-mile Wi-Fi network. EarthLink will pay US$300,000 a year plus 5% of revenue into a fund to provide computers and training to low-income households. CELLPHONE DRIVING BILL REINTRODUCED: A private member's bill to ban using handheld cellphones while driving has received approval in principle in the Ontario legislature. Premier Dalton McGuinty opposes the bill, which has been introduced before and is not expected to pass. (See Telecom Update #381) DATA MARKET SHOWS STEADY GROWTH: A new report by Convergence Consulting Group says that Canada's data/Internet access market expanded by 5% in 2005 and is expected to grow by another 5% this year and 5.5% in 2007. http://www.convergenceonline.com BELL LAYS OFF 471 IN ONTARIO: Bell Canada has announced elimination of 256 jobs in Kingston and 215 in Hamilton, part of a program to cut 3,000 to 4,000 positions this year. GLOBALSTAR HAS 200,000 CUSTOMERS: Globalstar, the world satellite phone provider, says it activated its 200,000th subscriber during February. TELL YOUR CALL CENTRE STORY: Angus Dortmans Associates is now developing the conference program for Canada's premier call centre conference, ICCM Canada, which will be held October 23-25 in Toronto. If you're interested in presenting a real-life success story, email Henry Dortmans at dortmans@angusdortmans.ca for more information. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 http://www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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: Bill Subject: How Can I Change the Ring? Date: 3 Mar 2006 09:51:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just got a beautiful Trub phone and its ring tone is hideous. Is it possible to replace it? I'd like the sound of windchimes ideally.... Any ideas? Cheers, Billster ------------------------------ Subject: Pilot on Cell Phone When Killed (in VA), FAA Says Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 12:52:18 -0500 From: Michael Quinn I'm not really trying to jump on the anti-cell phone bandwagon here, but I heard this on the news on the way home yesterday and thought it might be of interest to the TD readership. I suppose it could be argued that this could similarly have happened if the pilot was talking on the radio to a ground station or other aircraft, but those transmissions tend to be short, terse, and flight related. Like many of you, I have been nearly clobbered more than once on the road and in parking lots by someone who was too busy chatting to pay attention to where their vehicle was going. By the way, there has also been some recent news articles about potential interference between Personal Electronic Devices (PEDs) and aircraft communication and navigation and other avionic systems. A similarly emotional topic, and best suited for a different thread. Best wishes to PAT for a speedy recovery, and welcome back! Regards, Mike Springfield VA This is a printer friendly version of an article from http://newsleader.com. Fair usage clause appies Article published Mar 1, 2006 Pilot on Cell Phone When Killed, FAA Says By Brad Zinn/staff bzinn@newsleader.com MOUNT SIDNEY - A Spottswood pilot killed last week after crashing his airplane along Interstate 81 in Mount Sidney was talking on a cell phone when the accident occurred, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The agency's preliminary report prepared for the National Transportation Safety Board stated that Benjamin R. Hickin, 30, of Spottswood, was flying above I-81 while speaking to a friend below who was driving a tractor-trailer northbound on the interstate when the plane clipped cables running between two transmission towers. 1st. Sgt. Jeff Pearson, of the Virginia State Police, said the aircraft severed two small lines connecting the towers. "They're about the size of your thumb," he said. Pearson estimated Hickin's Cessna was traveling between 120 and 140 miles an hour when he struck the lines. The impact sheared off the right wing of the aircraft, he said, sending the plane tumbling onto the interstate. The plane struck a car hauling vehicles sold on Ebay before it came to rest in a ditch just off the highway and exploded in flames. Pearson said, "We're not aware of any mechanical or medical deficiencies." Hickin and the unidentified man he was talking to on the cell phone both were part owners of the plane, according to the report. "There was an apparent attempt for the person on the ground to visually see the aircraft," Pearson said. Witnesses described the plane as circling the area before the crash. Hickin died on impact from multiple injuries, according to autopsy results released by the Medical Examiner's Office in Roanoke. The FAA has taken fuel samples from the aircraft and will disassemble the engine as part of its investigation, Pearson said. A manufacturer's assessment also is pending, he said. "The man from Cessna was there the next day." Hickin was an experienced commercial pilot who recently left Manassas-based Colgan Air for a position with Gemini Air Cargo, where he was flying internationally. ------------------------------ From: wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Long-Term AT&T Investors Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 17:56:45 UTC Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab [Welcome back, PAT!] We've all heard that AT&T was once (perhaps still is) the most widely-held stock in the United States. Most of us probably know someone who bought AT&T stock long before the breakup and then never touched it. Every so often you'd hear reports about how good an investment this turned out to be. I was curious to see if I could replicate this myself, following the history of Mother and her babies from 1970 to the present day. My results suggest a somewhat different picture. Adjusting for inflation, that investment would today be worth today about what you paid for it in 1970. I suspect this is because most such analyses assume reinvestment of dividends, whereas I assume the contrary. (I had to make this assumption in order to finish this project in a single evening.) You can find my analysis at . Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those | search for greater freedom. of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) ------------------------------ From: stanna@optonline.net Subject: Employment Opportunity: Looking for VoIP Developers/System Testers Date: 3 Mar 2006 16:25:23 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, This is Sai from TANNA Corporation, Technical consulting firm in East coast of USA. I am looking for VoIP (Voice over IP Protocol) Developers and System Testers to work in Network side and end user side of SIP/MGCP/H.323 Protocols for various VoIp vendor Chipsets. If anybody is interested, please send me your resume to stanna at optonline dot com. Thanks for your time, Sai. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:40:06 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV Monty Solomon quoted a newspaper story saying: > LOS ANGELES -- A breakthrough in television advertising debuted > without fanfare last spring as a brand-name box of crackers appeared > on the CBS sitcom 'Yes, Dear' for about 20 seconds, seen but hardly > noticed by millions of viewers. > Unbeknownst to them, the image of Kellogg's Club Crackers had been > digitally painted onto the top of a coffee table after the scene was > filmed, launching the latest advance in a marketing practice known in > the industry as product placement but derided by critics as 'stealth > advertising.' I think the "breakthrough" happened a lot earlier. I recall watching what I seem to recall to be a Formula 1 race where a tire company logo was 'painted' on the pavement, in front of the start line. The logo disappeared after the race started. This was at least 3 years ago. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And for those of you who like to watch (or mock and laugh) at CSI - Special Victims Unit did you ever notice how often a Federal Express delivery truck is driving across the next street south of (wherever) the Brave and Courageous (and frequently brutal) detectives are walking as they create their theories for the prisoner/ scum of the day? Same idea, it began four or five years ago on CSI-SVU; lately I have not seen the Federal Express truck parked there or driving past. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 10:44:03 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare masonboro_island@yahoo.com wrote: > Thanks for the article. I hadn't read this one yet. It is scary to > think that kids are so vulnerable ... and it's true that people > reveal a surprising amount of information about themselves in online > dating sites or social networking sites like My Space. I saw a news > segment on tv recently about how some dating sites are conducting > background checks when you sign up to weed out "predators." Did > anyone else see that? No, I didn't see that, but that's because I figured out a long time ago that television has one basic rule: "If it bleeds, it leads". It's scary to think that adults are so vulnerable: a carnival barker doing nothing more exotic than selling soap can get them into a frenzy by mouthing a few buzzwords about "predators". > I saw one website where you can report any suspect activity targeting > kids online -- its http://www.cybertipline.com That's the only > resource I've found so far that offers a place to report things > online. Good to know there are some resources out there. This is a > difficult thing for parents to monitor as well. You've been hyping this site on http://alt.tv.comedy-central.daily-show and probably other newsgroups as well. Are you the owner, or do you just work there? Don't bother to reply: this post isn't really for your eyes, but for Pat's other readers who don't have time to do a Google search. With that in mind, I'll remind people that there are _other_ resources out there: my favorite one is the power switch on the computer. When my kids were at an impressionable age, I placed their computer in our family room and and forced them to use it in full view of an adult. I told them that it's impossible to be private on the internet, and that anybody in between them and their friends could see what they were typing. My kids were never approached by any predators, but then again, they never had to worry about telling me important things or asking for advice if someone sending them a message seemed creepy, and they always knew that they should approach someone they could trust, such as the minister at our church or their school guidance counselor, if they wanted to get advice and didn't feel like talking to their mother or to me. As for you, I'll just say that it seems there's more than one way to take advantage of childrens' innocence. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: MySpace: Murdoch's Big Hope; Parents Nightmare Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 09:31:01 -0500 In article , nospam4me@mytrashmail.com says: > I think the baseline for parental security policies should be Internet > access only on devices that are in "family" space, where parents can see > what's on the screen and where they can check history and cookies files. > That is for kids, no 3G phones, SMS messaging restricted to a > parent-approved list. > A big complicator is the fact the kids usually know a lot more about > computers than parents, including how to circumvent parental-security > measures. One of my coworkers has a one year old and already he's running Squid coupled with Dan's Guardian at home. Good luck to his kid. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #88 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 5 00:23:09 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B04DF15111; Sun, 5 Mar 2006 00:23:08 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #89 Message-Id: <20060305052308.B04DF15111@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 00:23:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Mar 2006 00:22:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 89 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson DSL Price War Helps Close Broadband Gap (Monty Solomon) Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby (Seth Breidbart) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Stephen Sprunk) Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (T) Re: How Can I Change the Ring? (Dave Garland) Re: You do Understand I Guess ... (Steve Sobol) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Steve Sobol) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Justa Lurker) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Lisa Hancock) Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. (A Friend) Best Wishes (Scott Drown) Independence?? (Chuck) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 22:59:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DSL Price War Helps Close Broadband Gap By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Last year was the first in which telephone companies added more broadband Internet subscribers than their cable TV rivals did, according to a research report. The largest DSL providers, which have been engaged in a price war that has slashed promotional prices as low as $13 a month, added 5.2 million subscribers in 2005, according to Leichtman Research Group's analysis of company statements. The major cable companies gained 4.4 million high-speed Internet subscribers last year, for a total of 24.3 million. That means cable retained a narrowing lead in total subscribers over the phone-line based DSL technology, or digital subscriber line, which had 18.5 million customers. The numbers reflect the 20 largest broadband companies in the United States, with 42.8 million total subscribers and about 94 percent of the market. Bruce Leichtman, principal analyst at Leichtman Research, estimates that around 35 million people are still using dial-up access. The number of new cable broadband customers has been fairly stable each year since 2002, while DSL growth has been accelerating. Meanwhile, the overall phone vs. cable fight is becoming even more contested as phone companies begin rolling out subscription TV services in some locations. Prices for low-end and introductory DSL services were cut in half last year, as SBC Communications, now AT&T Inc., introduced a one-year plan for $15 which was matched by Verizon Communications Inc. The phone companies hit the "grand slam" with those price plans in the second half of the year, Leichtman said. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56352525 ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Challenge to Hospitality: The ID Check in the Lobby Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 06:23:35 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Herb Stein wrote: > wrote in message > news:telecom25.45.11@telecom-digest.org... >> Monty Solomon wrote: >>> The New York Times >>> "At that point, I was kind of irritated at myself. I mean, a hotel >>> lobby is, like, a public place, right? They claim the right to >>> demand ID just to come in?" >> No, a hotel lobby is NOT a public place. It is private property and >> the owner may require such security checks as the owner deems >> appropriate. > "NOT a public place" would imply that the no-smoking ban in NY is a crock. In New York City, quite a few hotel lobbies _are_ public places, because the hotel got a zoning variance in return for making its lobby a public place. Seth ------------------------------ From: Stephen Sprunk Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 16:16:20 -0600 wrote in message news:telecom25.83.10@telecom-digest.org: > Dan Popescu wrote: >> I wanna ask you a question if that's OK. First I should tell you that >> I live in Europe. It's not clear to me: when you make an interstate >> call within the US is it necessary to dial 1 before the area code and >> number or can you dial just area code + number? >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The general rule is we have to dial >> '1' between any two area codes in any of those places. > Not necessarily. Rules vary from place to place depending on legacy > dialing procedures and contemporary needs. Some places need to dial > only seven digits even when crossing an area code boundary. Other > places must dial ten digits even within their own area code. It's > very complicated. There are still places where you can dial 7d and it goes to another area code? Wow. > I believe today's system is set up so that you can dial 1+area > code+7digits regardless of where you're calling and if the area code > is needed or not. That depends on where you are. Each state PUC seems to set different rules about how these things work for landlines. Mobile phones are an entirely different matter, and thankfully they seem to be more consistent. > My region, for example, has 10 digit dialing. If I call a different > area code (overlay or adjacent) within my region, whether it is a toll > call or not, I do not need the "1". If I go outside the region I do > need the 1. In my state, all toll calls begin with "1" and all non-toll calls do not. If you get it wrong (either way), you get a recording telling you to add/remove the "1". All areas with more than one area code have mandatory 10-digit dialing even within the same area code. In other states, you may need a "1" to dial another area code even if it's not toll, and non-toll calls may be either 7 or 10 digits. It appears that dialing "1" plus 7 digits to make a toll call within your own area code went out of use in the mid 90s when the "new" area codes were opened up, but I wouldn't be surprised if some corner of the US still had it. There are still places with 4- and 5-digit local dialing, too. > There's a artificially defined border known as the LATA, which > separates local from toll calls; that is, calls handled by the local > telephone company vs. calls handled by a "long distance" company. > Anyway, some area codes span multiple LATAs. That is, one can dial > only seven digits yet be charged for a long distance call. Other area > codes are very small or even overlays for the same region. Local calling regions are usually much, much smaller than a LATA. Most of the US can only dial neighboring exchanges for free. Even large cities like Chicago and Detroit don't have local calling across town, though a few others do. That's mostly a state PUC issue. There's also a distinction between interstate, intrastate, and intra-LATA toll calls; the first is always carried by an IXC and the third is always carried by the LEC, but who carries the second seems to vary. > The concept of a "toll alert" is somewhat obsolete because of the > great variety of billing plans. I have national unlimited, so > theorectically I don't need the 1 at all. But obviously some people > have a la carte plans. It gets worse ... The toll alert here actually varies depending on your billing plan with the LEC. For instance, I can order regular service (which only has 5 exchanges local), metro service (the entire city is local), extended service (the entire LATA is local), and statewide service (the entire state is local). A call that requires a "1" with one billing plan may only work without a "1" in another billing plan. Sheesh. Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin *** Free account sponsored by SecureIX.com *** *** Encrypt your Internet usage with a free VPN account from http://www.SecureIX.com *** [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why my original response in this thread included the operative phrase 'the _general rule_ is'. I personally was thinking more of cellular phones versus landline phones when originating calls, but calls from landline phones in different LATAs/zones/etc also can be applied. While frequently omitting the area code, the obligitory '1' at the start, etc does make a difference, and gives various undesired results (on a cell phone for example)I have never yet seen a case where a person who always went to the effort of punching in the fully qualified eleven digits ('1' plus AC plus 7 D) ever went wrong with a cellular phone. The trouble is, we are lazy; why do eleven digits if we can get by with ten, why do ten if we can get by with seven, etc? I am _very_ fortunate that here in my area of s.e. Kansas (a/c 620) on my 620 Cingular Wireless cellphone I can do seven digits for everything in the area, which is pretty vast, east from Missouri and west to Colorado. NOT on my landline, mind you, but on my cell phone. Anywhere else requires the area code first, but I never have use a '1' in any case, just A/C plus 7 D. But here is an odd one: my GAIT phone, which I use now and then, does okay out on the far west side of town, near Walmart, but the newer totally GSM phone absolutely insists it wants 620 plus 331 whatever out there. Over here around my house, 7-D is just fine. Now I should mention the tiny amount of calling on the cell phone I do: I call my keepers (if I am not at home but need to speak to/see them), the taxi- cab driver to come and get me to go wherever, the store I want to get something from, etc. Every call I make is 331-something, now and then a 332 number. It really roasts me to get out by Walmart (I do not usually like to go to Walmart; but I do to the Dollar General store in that mall and my hair dresser is by there also); Jeff (cab driver) drops me off, I putter around and come back home in an hour or so. I go to call the cab to come back (331-6019), call won't go through. I wind up getting confused and annoyed (by product of my brain aneurysm) my fingers cannot hit the right keys and I sit there with re-order after re-order, literally struggling trying to figure out why _my_ phone keeps refusing my requests.("We do not recognize you as an authorized user.") _Then_ I remember what Cingular told me to do: recycle the phone entirely; dial _ten_ digits and see if that works. Well, of course it does. And soon, I see the welcome sight of Jeff and his cab pulling up, loading my shopping results in the back seat or the trunk, getting me in the front seat next to him, etc. Cingular insists: dial whatever as _ten_ digits, not as seven, even though 'some of our towers around your area work wirh seven, the one [out where you were at, they know nothing about our town naturally] apparently does not allow seven digits.' Well, I scream at the Cingular lady, my Vonage phone allows seven digits anywhere in 620, why doesn't yours? My Prairie Stream landline phone does also, except that they insist on 1-411 for Directory ("cause SBC makes us to it that way" and they [SBC] outsources their Directory service to somewhere in India where the people have not learned the difference betweeen Independence, Iowa, Missouri [or only if you scream at them also, the one in Kansas]. So to our original question-asker my now elaborated response would be, 'dial ten digits and you won't go wrong. Dial a leading '1' if telco tells you to do so.' The phone system here in the USA is a frightful hodge podge of schemes developed over the years with little or no effort to keep it simple or make it understandable to everyone. PAT] ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 10:53:27 -0500 In article , ronchapman@wideopenwest.com says: > Today was my first time in the Container Store. I bought something; > at checkout, she asked for my phone number. I politely declined. > She assured me that they didn't sell the number; their purpose, she > said, was to tell them where their customers were coming from for > store planning and general demographic purposes. > I'm no Einstein, but my mind works quickly enough that it took me all > of about half a second to realize that this was utter and complete BS. > I even told her that, and explained it: > 1) if you want to know where your customers are coming from, use the > ZIP code where they live. > 2) If you insist on using a phone number, you need only the area code > and exchange in order to pin down a geographic location. You don't > need my entire number. > 3) What about people who have only cell phones and no land lines? > "Oh, the company we use has some way of working through that," she > said. This poor babe. She had no idea what she was saying or to whom > she was saying it. I explained how unless their data collection > company had inside tracks with the cell companies, which we're finding > out is HIGHLY frowned upon, a cell phone number is not trackable to a > physical location for the purposes of demographic planning. > In other words, the Container Store just throws this BS out there as a > smokescreen. I told her up front that I didn't believe they'd never > sell my phone number, and a couple minutes later -- after explaining the > above -- I restated that. > Of course, it was like talking to a wall. Nonetheless, it forced me > to think it all the way through and come to the conclusion that in > FACT the Container Store is lying to everyone when they say they're > going to hold your phone number private. > Either that, or they're spending a lot of time and money and effort > collecting data that are entirely useless. > But once they realize the data are useless, they'll just recoup their > losses by selling the numbers. > Fortunately she accepted without question my knee-jerk "No, thank you" > response to her request for my phone number. But she had to plug > something in; she plugged in all 1s. > Shades of the old Radio Shack days, when you couldn't buy a 30 cent > battery without giving up your family tree and medical history. I know that Bed, Bath & Beyond will occasionally ask for a zip code. I see that as reasonable. But the zip code in which I live covers a pretty huge swarth of the city. For example, 02903 covers about 5 square miles. But I think your assesment is dead on. The Container Store is not using it for analysis, they're using it as a revenue stream. This is particularly true since the advent of VoIP and cell. Someone had to know that when the program was implemented. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Speaking of Radio Shack, at the store > in Skokie, IL where I worked as one of the 'you have questions, we > have answers' people, (in other words a humble sales person for a two > year period in 1994-95 96?) they were big on the that 'get a name and > _address_ and a _phone number_' for even a small purchase like > batteries. I went along with it and based, I assume, on my good looks > and charm managed to obtain a lot of names, addresses and phone > numbers. My specialty was telephones and telephone equipment. The > store manager and the regional manager and the _area_ manager (as well > as we clerks) all got such _tremendous_ heat from the general public > RS finally discontinued the system. It was a horid system, in a > terrible place to work. PAT] Oh do I remember those days. They used to just ask for name to which I'd reply "C-A-S-H". Most got the message quite clearly and had a CASH account setup already. But those who didn't simply lost a sale. That being said, I'd been and still am on RS mailing lists pretty much forever. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: How Can I Change the Ring? Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 09:09:09 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Bill wrote: > I just got a beautiful Trub phone and its ring tone is hideous. Is it > possible to replace it? I'd like the sound of windchimes ideally.... On most phones you can turn the ringer off. Then you could add an external ringer: Sandman http://www.sandman.com/pdf/Page72.pdf Radio Shack http://tinyurl.com/knorz MCM http://tinyurl.com/l5dsd I don't see any wind chimes (there are regular chimes), but if you google for "telephone ringer" http://tinyurl.com/ojzro and wade through the listings you'll find a lot of different devices, maybe you'll find the ringer of your dreams. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 08:05:18 -0800 From: Steve Sobol Organization: JustThe.net Subject: Re: You do Understand I Guess ... TELECOM Digest Editor wrote (in private correspondece to me): > When I use the term 'spam-enablers' the kinds of netizens I am speaking > about. I think so, but could you elaborate please? Thanks, Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I borrowed permanently that phrase (at least the '-enabler' portion) from a Kansas guy we all know and love, Dr. Fred Phelps of Topeka. Fred has several highly successful web sites based out of his home in Topeka (assuming 'highly successful' can be defined as high-volume, high traffic sites, even if the content is by and large gibberish or pseudo-intellectual nonsense.) Fred first coined the -enabler suffix to deal with what he sees as a world-wide scourge, gay people. Two of his web sites http://www.godhatesfags.com and http://www.smellthebrimstone.com are absolutely priceless. In fact, please check out that second link here and now: http://www.smellthebrimstone.com then return here and continue reading. 'Smell the Brimstone" asks if you can smell what hell has cooking for all of us, sung to the tune 'America the Beautiful' by Katherine Lee Bates, (a/k/s/ 'Materna') your choice of Windows Media or Real Player. Did you see Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, the New York Fire Department and Condi Rice in the little video? Then as time permits look at his several other web sites including http://www.priestsrapeboys.com and http://www.godhatesamerica.com and http:/www.yourpastorisawhore.com They are all quite funny, and in Fred's opinion, quite serious. Dr. Phelps certainly does not mince words. Most people in Kansas absolutely hate the old guy; in fact when we had the obligatory state constitutional amendment thing against same sex marriage here, it _almost did not pass_, so many people thought that "if we go for that, the world will think we are on the side of that crazy man over in Topeka, Fred Phelps", so it barely -- just barely -- squeaked though. Anyway, his use of 'fag-enablers' inspired my use of 'spam-enablers', as netizens who simply try to either totally ignore the way spam/scam and viri has rooted itself in our net almost entirely rendering the net useless for anything which is not sex-pornography based or commer- cially (in many odd ways) based. Some enablers just ignore it and live with tons of crap to be weeded out each day and far too often almost total breakdowns of their personal networks. Other enablers apologize for it, (i.e. "isn't it too bad there is so much spam"), or they are forever adjusting and fine-tuning their filters, trying to avoid losing good messages while avoiding the 'bad' messages. But never does an enabler approve of finding a bonfide, known, confirmed spammer (that is to say, someone whom our computer forensics experts have idenfified as such, not just some hapless soul whose zombie computer was used, etc), dragging the person through the town square, whipping and beating him, holding him up to the ridicule of netizens everywhere, giving the person a 'fair trial' complete with an eight to ten year sentence in prison. An enabler would be horrified by that. An enabler makes excuses, i.e. "our net is not set up to work like that", "it is not the job of ICANN", "Vint Cerf and his visions of the net back in 1994 cannot be blamed," etc, etc, etc I have heard all the excuses, so have most of you. And here is another good one: it is called 'if/then' and it goes like this: if netizens take Action A (whatever that is, postage stamps, certain required indicia in the headers of all outgoing mail) then the spammers will take Action B to offset it. In other words they will forge the indicia to get themselves through, or maybe they will spend the pittance remittance required for postage to be able to continue dummping their loads of trash and since the ISPs cannot be trusted to continue their research work, we netizens (or you guys, they mean to say) will be right back where you started, and those of us (insert here someone like 'move on') will be in dire straits because we cannot afford to pay the postage bill and we will have to go out of business and cancer inquirers will not be able to get needed help either. Those kinds of rationales are what qualify EFF (a signatory to the move-on petition) to be Spam-Enablers. Okay Steve, is that sufficent elaboration on the term 'Spam-Enabler'? No one objects to your using Band-Aids as needed (spam filters) to temporarily rescue your net which has fallen on hard times; what some of us object to is the use of the same band-aid to patch what long ago became a horrendous, huge, gaping hole in the side of the dike, which only gets worse as time goes on. Geoffrey Welsh provided me with a slogan which I use in the mast head of each issue here (if you only read c.d.t. or one of the RSS syndicate feeds or 'Digest_Online' then you don't get to see it) which says in part "We are not naive enough to think Spam will ever go away, but we must continue to fight it as we do all crime". Very true, but if there is some particular crime in your physical community (wherever you live) which routinely had reached the 85-90 percent or higher level in permeating the the actions of the people in your town (as spam has done to us here in virtual-land), wouldnt you say it was time to get down to business and rid ourselves once and for all of the plague? I certainly would say so. I think it is time to begin requiring licenses for computers. Six or eight digit numbers (like MAC numbers) on every computer as part of the indicia, available to one and all too see (mock, etc). We might not know WHO was the present owner of the machine but we would know WHICH machine was making the nuisance of itself and being such an affront to everyone else. Publish those numbers as part of _every_ email indicia. You don't like that? Well fine, then shut up and don't say anything on the net at all. I suppose we could even find a useful function for ICANN out of all this; as the keeper of the license numbers with a requirement that users selling/trading/stealing computers from others were required to notify ICANN abut the machine's new location. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:14:15 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Patrick Townson wrote: > At any rate, today, Thursday, just abut a week after I had my > heart attack, I was dismissed from Jane Phillips and I could return > to my home. As to how well I feel, I am not quite suer I can answer > that. Well, at least you're home, that's great news. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: Justa Lurker Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 12:56:21 GMT I am very glad you are out of the hospital, and hope you are doing well and feeling better soon. Have a good (and relatively uneventful, especially when compared to a few days ago) weekend! MRB ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: 3 Mar 2006 07:24:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Patrick Townson wrote: > At any rate, today, Thursday, just abut a week after I had my > heart attack, I was dismissed from Jane Phillips and I could return > to my home. As to how well I feel, I am not quite suer I can answer > that. Glad to hear you're home. Best wishes for a speedy recovery! ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 10:52:29 -0500 From: A Friend Subject: Re: Am I Calling it Quits? Well Some Day Soon, I Think. Patrick Townson wrote: > Earlier today, Wednesday, I had a very bad incident. Pat, I'm sorry to hear you're hurting so much: please don't hesitate to write if you need help moderating the digest or with other chores. Please try to remember that there's always hope: better to take a risk than to give up. You've got more time than you may think at this dark hour. Good luck. Signed, a Friend [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Then a couple days ago, the Friend wrote again. PAT]: Pat, Welcome back! I hope your recovery goes well, and quickly. Please don't hesitate to ask if you need help with the digest or other projects: it's time to be nice to yourself and take it easy for a while. ------------------------------ Subject: Best Wishes Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2006 11:27:42 -0500 From: Scott Drown Pat, I too have a stent implanted in my heart. It was done in 1995. Same procedure you had ... open cut in the femoral artery in your groin, and slide it up into your heart. When I had mine, they were considered "experimental" devices. I am guessing that since I am writing you today, the experiment was successful. Best wishes for continued health. Also, it is quite normal to be worried at this point. I worried for several months afterward. It was quite a wakeup call. Regards, Scott Scott Drown Corporate Systems Engineer Nortel Email: drown@nortel.com SIP: drown@nortel.com Telephone: +1 978 288 4390 / ESN 248 4390 Fax: +1 978 288 4391 / ESN 248 4390 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought it was pretty wild back in 1994 or so when I received an angiogram and angioplasty (but no stent) after my first heart attack. Living in Skokie at the time, I was taken up the street to Rush-Presbyterian-St. Lukes Northshore Medical Center as some longer-time readers recall. They picked me up off the street where I was laying (in the gutter, like any old drunken souse) tossed me in the back of the wagon and drove up the street less than a mile where the physicians took a look at me and decided the best cure would be to rod me out (the same as was done with you and at least try to get the plumbing working right once again. I did not think very much of their plan at first, especially when the hospital's lawyer-lady came around with some forms to sign telling me to please kindly explain how to dispose of my body parts if that was needed. I signed off on her forms, tried to make myself appear invisible as I hid in my bed; finally some kid (all hospitals and clinical procedure places such as Jane Phillips, Mercy in Independence and Mercy Physicians Group also in Independence seem to have these smart young whipper-snappers it would appear to work with the doctors and nurses, etc) came up to me in my room in the Rush-Prez Med Center and he said, "Mr. Townson, this really scares you doesn't it?" I agreed, and he said, "I have a videotape here of the process, why don't we watch it together; you can ask me any questions you have, and tmorrow morning _I_ will come here to your room to get you and take you there, and I will be there the entire time so you can ask me more questions as it is going on." I asked him about the form I had signed for the lawyer which allowed for disposal of my parts and also the reference to the surgeon being present. His answer was you are not going to die; the hospital lawyers make everyone sign those forms, and the law in the state of Illinois is that a surgeon must physically be present, standing next to the 'heart guy' so that in the event there _was_ some problem (like once out of [at that point] three hundred thousand invasions) the 'heart guy' can turn to the surgeon and tell him, "I have lost control of this; you take over and get him out of it", and Mr. Townson, I can tell you if that happened (very unlikely) the surgeon would have you cut open and correct the problem on the spot, the heart guy would be working with him and in about five seconds you would hear 'blue' said over and over on the loud speaker and at last two or three more doctors would be in this room within a minute." The next morning, this cheerful, quite bright young guy showed up at 8 AM just as promised and pushed my wheel-bed down to the basement lab where the work was done. We got into the basement lab, the kid says you gotta go pee ... I thought he meant it like a question but it was in fact a direct order 'pee in this bottle while I watch and take it away', Okay I did ... in the main working area a sort of hard-rock radio station was playing, several more young guys were there, diddling with computers attached to overhead tracks, typing on keyboards, checking out monitors attached to cameras, etc. I asked him, are you going to put me out during the procedure, with anesthesia? He seemed sort of surprised to hear that and said "do you want to be under? I figured you might like to watch it on television." Indeed ... I turned my head to look and several other (relatively young) guys had filed into a 'viewing room' and had taken seats. An older guy who was identified to me as Professor (someone) was in charge of them; he was making some marks on a blackboard. "Oh, they are from Northwestern University and the Pre-med school." All of a sudden the 'heart guy' and the surgeon walked in the room; asking no one's permission for anything, I heard the radio station change from acid rock to some soothing Mozart, playing WNIB (when we used to have that station). The kids did not dare to question the doctor's musical taste of course but continued what they were doing at their keyboards and other instruments. The doctor and the surgeon were over in the viewing area making a courtesy visit to the pre-med students and their teacher. He was explaining something and responded to the teacher by making some other mark on the blackboard. Meanwhile it was obvious to the kid in charge of me laying there on the table that I was starting to get paniced again. He told one of the others to "turn on the monitor overhead so Mr. Townson can see what is going to happen to him." It flashed to life and little wheels built into the ceiling pulled it along, like a robot where it was right over my head then it was lowered slightly; a perfect viewing angle. "Did you go pee? Do it again for me, doctor wants you to be totally empty. I did so in the little jar he held down there, then they anestisized me in my groin area so I felt *absolutely nothing* as they cut me there and proceeded to insert a very long but tiny tube in there. And they just kept feeding the tube up it seems; the kid made a joke with me: "open your mouth, Mr. Townson" and then taking a pretend peek in my throat said to the heart-guy, "you have a ways to go, I don't see your tube down there yet; remember doc, this is sort of a big guy and it might take a lot of your stuff to fill him up properly." After a few minutes the monitor changed images to what was purported to me my blood vessles (instead of a visual where I was watching the medic do his thing down there) and after they had all made some notes and discussed what they saw (I did not understand any of it) the kid walks up next to me and says, "Now Mr. Townson, when you were a little guy, did you ever accidentally pee in your pants?" I assured him I probably had and holding my hand very firmly, he said "we are going to do something now which is going to make you feel like you are peeing in your pants or having an orgasm or whatever. Don't worry about it, do not be embarrassed." And as he patted my shoulder, I suddenly felt a very long, penetrating warmth, like one that guys sometimes get when they urinate in their pants or underwear. They had filled me with some of the dye used in tne angioplasty test. They turned the tv screen off, and told me to put head down on the pillow and go to sleep. I asked them to let me watch them clean up their mess. "No, you don't want to watch us to that," said the kid, "just close your eyes and rest a few minutes.". I was asleep for maybe five minutes, I thought, but when I woke up fully they had a very heavy sandbag laying across the leg they had used. Doctor was no where in sight, the viewing room area was totally empty; the doctor had gone elsewhere, I was told. But the bright young guy from the day before was still there, chatting with me as he wheled me back to my room. "But do not remove that sandbag from your leg," he warned me. "We will come and take it away in a couple hours. Try to avoid any movement until we return." True to his word two or three hours later he came back and took away the sand bag. His last words to me were that it had gone quite successful in my case also. Then who knew it would happen again in February, 2006, but with that time. a 'stent' included in the process. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2006 18:52:21 -0500 From: Chuck Subject: Independence?? Pat, Chuck Eby (antique telephones) here ... My goodness, I didn't realize you are in Independence, KS ... I just spent most of last week there!!! My aunt, Ruth Craig, passed away and I was there for the funeral last Thursday. Got there on Monday and stayed at the Knights Inn (was the Best Western)... small world. Chuck [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Best Western/Knights Inn is on West Main Street about two blocks down from the Walmart shopping center The Independence Reporter had her obituary notice on (I think) Friday, the day of my heart attack, but I cannot remember for sure without finding all of last week's papers and looking though them. Did she live in the old people's home on South Penn Street where my mother is at? Somehow her name rings a bell for me. If I recall, I will ask mother sometime over the weekend. This has really been a very wild, very troubling week for me and I must now sign off for the weeekend and try to get some badly needed sleep. More Digest sometime either Sunday night or Mondy. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #89 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 5 20:41:55 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id A2155151E0; Sun, 5 Mar 2006 20:41:54 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #90 Message-Id: <20060306014154.A2155151E0@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 20:41:54 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 5 Mar 2006 20:43:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 90 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bell All Comes Together Once Again! (Harry Weber) AOL Free Email to Non Profits (Reuters News Wire) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Ernie Klein) Multimedia Monster (Monty Solomon) How Much Profit Is Lurking in That Cellphone? (Monty Solomon) SONY BMG CD Technologies Settlement (Monty Solomon) The Story Behind the BlackBerry Case (Monty Solomon) Re: How to Survive a Tech Support Call (T) Re: DTMF Sequences (Jack Hamilton) Re: DTMF Sequences (Gordon Burditt) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Stephen Sprunk) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Joseph Adajian) Re: How Can I Change the Ring? (Bill) NTP Patents (sinister) Re: Article About AM Radio (John McHarry) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Weber, Subject: Bell All Comes Together Once Again Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 18:24:18 -0600 AT&T to Buy BellSouth for $67B in Stock By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer AT&T Inc. is buying BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock in a bid that further consolidates the telecommunications industry and would give AT&T total control of their growing joint venture, Cingular Wireless LLC. The proposed purchase, announced Sunday, also goes a long way toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system, which was broken apart in 1984. The merged company would have 70 million local-line phone customers, 54.1 million wireless subscribers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers in the 22 states where they now operate. The deal appears to be the largest yet among U.S. telecom players. In 1999, MCI WorldCom Inc. agreed to buy Sprint Corp. for an even larger sum, $115 billion, but that deal was blocked by federal regulators. Internationally, Britain's Vodafone Airtouch PLC paid $180 billion in stock for Mannesmann AG of Germany in 2000. The sale, which is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, would give San Antonio-based AT&T total control over Atlanta-based BellSouth's nine-state network and its share of Cingular. AT&T currently owns a 60 percent share of the nation's No. 1 cell phone provider, while BellSouth has 40 percent. The deal would substantially expand the reach of AT&T, already the country's largest telecommunications company by the number of customers served. Together, the three companies employ more than 316,000 people, though that head count may fall as AT&T eliminates redundant operations. After spending millions of dollars to rebrand AT&T Wireless Services Inc. stores as Cingular stores and hundreds of millions of dollars more on marketing the new Cingular after its $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless in October 2004, Cingular will now become AT&T if the merger with BellSouth is completed. The BellSouth name also would be absorbed in the deal. "It's going to be confusing," said industry analyst Jeff Kagan. "This is the reinvention of the telecommunications industry." AT&T will pay 1.325 of its own shares for each BellSouth share. Based of Friday's closing price of $27.99 for AT&T shares, that works out to be $37.09 for each BellSouth share, an 18 percent premium from the Friday closing price of $31.46 for the company. AT&T Inc. was formed by SBC's acquisition of AT&T Corp. in November. The deal added a substantial national reach to the former Southwestern Bell's local business, which is concentrated in 13 states, including Texas, California, and the Midwest. BellSouth is the dominant local telephone provider in the Southeast. The shift in the U.S. telecom landscape -- moving from four to three regional Bell operators -- is sure to garner close review from Washington. "Twenty years after the government broke up Ma Bell, this deal represents a mother and child reunion," said Rep. Ed Markey, the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. "Our nation's telecommunications markets must be vigorously competitive and open to innovation in order to promote job creation and economic growth," Markey said. "This merger proposal is one that unquestionably merits the utmost scrutiny by government antitrust officials." Cingular spokesman Mark Siegel dismissed the notion there would be public perception issues with the switch back to the AT&T name for the wireless company. "We built a business," Siegel said. "Is the brand an important part of that business? Yes. But it is a business that is made primarily up of people. None of that changes." Siegel said sole ownership by AT&T "gives us clarity of decision-making, and that is a good thing." With cable companies increasingly vying for traditional phone companies' share of local telephone service, such mergers in the industry have been commonplace of late. Kagan, the industry analyst, said more could be on the horizon. "We're not over it yet," Kagan said. The combined company will be based in San Antonio, and Ed Whitacre, AT&T's chairman and chief executive, will keep those positions. His counterpart at BellSouth, Duane Ackerman, 63, will run BellSouth's operations in a "transition period" after the merger. Cingular's headquarters will stay in Atlanta, as will the Southeast regional headquarters for the merged company. Cingular has grown strongly since it was formed in 2001 by the merger of a number of regional wireless carriers, and there has been speculation that AT&T wanted to assume full control of this growth business, in part to be able to market it under the AT&T name. The wireless operations will be the growth engine of the new company, and will account for one third of the combined revenue. AT&T expects the acquisition to save it $2 billion annually, starting the year after the deal closes. About half of the savings would come from reduced advertising expenses and from combining their work forces. The rest of the savings would come from combining the backbone network and information-technology operations of the two companies. AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson contributed to this report from New York. On the Net: AT&T: http://www.att.com BellSouth: http://www.bellsouth.com Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: AOL to Give Free Email to Non Profits Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 18:27:54 -0600 AOL, the Internet service provider unit of Time Warner Inc., on Friday said it will not charge legitimate not-for-profit organizations and advocacy groups to have their e-mails authenticated and delivered to consumers. The decision addresses an outcry from political and civic activist groups, which said AOL's plans to charge mass senders of e-mail a fee to reduce junk mail amounted to an "attack" on the "free existence of online civic participation." The company said that it is seeking to make it "crystal clear" that nonprofit groups would have all their e-mails delivered, including enabled Web-links and images, contrary to recent criticism in the media by advocacy groups. "There will be no requirement, ever, for not-for-profits who deliver e-mail to AOL members to pay for e-mail certification and delivery," Charles Stiles, AOL's Postmaster, said. The company said it is also offering to pay for the e-mails of qualifying groups to be validated by a third party. "AOL may never see eye to eye with organizations who say there must never be a system such as certified mail," an AOL spokesman said. "But we believe it will benefit consumers by tackling problems such as identity theft and phishing." AOL is working with the Goodmail Certified E-mail program, which authenticates e-mail messages allowing the delivery of images and hyperlinks on most high-volume messages. Earlier this week the advocacy groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and MoveOn.org called the plan a tax on e-mail. MoveOn sent an e-mail to its membership claiming the "very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by America Online." It claimed that among others, charities and civic organizing groups with mailing lists would be left with "inferior" Internet service unless they proved willing to pay the "e-mail tax" to AOL, a claim the service provider denies. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Ernie Klein Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Organization: Not very organized Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 00:30:22 GMT In article , wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) wrote: > [Welcome back, PAT!] > We've all heard that AT&T was once (perhaps still is) the most > widely-held stock in the United States. Most of us probably know > someone who bought AT&T stock long before the breakup and then never > touched it. I am one of them. > Every so often you'd hear reports about how good an > investment this turned out to be. I was curious to see if I could > replicate this myself, following the history of Mother and her babies > from 1970 to the present day. > My results suggest a somewhat different picture. Adjusting for > inflation, that investment would today be worth today about what you > paid for it in 1970. I suspect this is because most such analyses > assume reinvestment of dividends, whereas I assume the contrary. (I > had to make this assumption in order to finish this project in a > single evening.) But the reinvestment of dividends is what made the investment so good. > You can find my analysis at . I purchased 100 shares of AT&T in 1962. Other than cashing a few very small checks sent to me because of mergers or spinoffs for partial shares, I have not touched the account. Until 2001 all dividends were automatically reinvested, after 2001 dividends have been sent to me in cash otherwise the total value would be higher. As of Friday, 3/3/2006 the value of the shares (of the remaining companies, ACR, T, BLS, CMCSA, LU. Q, VZ & VOD) was $118,188.12. Actual figures, no analysis involved -- all from 100 shares of AT&T. -Ernie- "There are only two kinds of computer users -- those who have suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure, and those who will." Have you done your backup today? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 16:32:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Multimedia Monster By: Samuel K. Moore IEEE Spectrum January 2006 Cell's nine processors make it a supercomputer on a chip We're flying at about Mach 1.5 around Mount Saint Helens, in Washington state. IBM Corp. senior programmer Barry L. Minor is at the controls, rocketing us over the crater and then down to the lake at its base to skim over the tree trunks that have been floating there since the volcano exploded over 25 years ago. The flight is exhilarating, even though it's just a simulation projected on a widescreen monitor in a cluttered testing lab. Then, at the flick of a switch, Minor turns the simulation over from his new Cell processor to a dual-processor Apple Power Mac G5, and the scenery freezes. The G5 almost audibly groans under the burden, though it's no slouch. In fact, it's currently the top of the line for PCs. But Cell is something different entirely. It's a bet on what consumers will do with data and how best to suit microprocessors to the task-and it's really, really fast. Cell, which is shorthand for Cell Broadband Engine Architecture, is a US $400 million joint effort of IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It was originally conceived as the microprocessor to power Sony's third-generation game console, PlayStation 3, to be released this spring, but it is expected to find a home in lots of other broadband-connected consumer items and in servers too. Executives at Sony Corp., in Tokyo, wanted more than just an incremental improvement over PlayStation 2's processor, the Emotion Engine. What they got was a 36-fold acceleration, to a whopping 192 billion floating-point operations per second (192 gigaflops). Because Cell is a combination of general-purpose and multimedia processors, it defies an exact comparison with other upcoming chips, but it's thought to be more powerful than the chips driving competing game systems. Cell can calculate at such blazing speed, in part, because it's made up of nine processors on a single chip of silicon, optimized for the kind of real-time calculations needed in today's broadband, media-rich environment. A specially designed 300-gigabit-per-second bus knits the processors into a single machine, and interface technology from Rambus Inc., Los Altos, Calif., gives it fast access to memory and other off-chip systems. So far, microprocessor watchers have been impressed with what they've seen of Cell. "To bring huge parallel processing onto a single chip in a clean and efficient way is a real accomplishment," says Ruby B. Lee, a professor of electrical engineering at Princeton University and an IEEE Fellow. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan06/2609 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 16:55:34 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How Much Profit Is Lurking in That Cellphone? By RICHARD SIKLOS The New York Times March 5, 2006 IN some ways, wireless is the new China. Both are huge, largely untapped markets for news and entertainment media companies. And media executives have made a lot of dreamy statements about both of these markets and funneled a lot of effort into them. Yet neither has yet translated into a significant new businesses for established companies, which are feverishly seeking ways to grow in a world of technological and competitive obstacles. While China's media moment seems eternally right around the corner, mobile may be approaching its own at last -- it may just take a lot longer and be less earth-shaking than the recent hoopla may suggest. Last week, there were announcements of three ventures by media companies looking to insinuate themselves into the hip pockets of teenagers and their elders. All three are part of a deluge of wireless moves and offer glimpses at new ways of both distributing existing products and using big-media power to start new businesses. In one of the deals unveiled last week, the MTV Networks unit of Viacom said it would sell mobile versions of its MTV, VH1, CMT and Comedy Central channels to Sprint customers; the services will include video clips from shows including "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." The most intriguing announcement came from a tentacle of the News Corporation, in the form of Mobizzo, which is essentially a kind of online studio and store for selling games, ring tones and adornments for mobile handsets. CBS, meanwhile, which is perhaps best known for its notably unhip television network, plans to start a venture along the lines of Mobizzo in a few weeks. For now, CBS unveiled a plan to sell multimedia message alerts nationwide that will play short video clips on some cellphones. In a way, CBS aims to show that it wants to compete in this arena along with MTV, NBC and ESPN -- rivals that have been making their content available across a range of new mobile formats and gizmos. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/business/yourmoney/05frenzy.html?ex=1299214800&en=74606224a33fd7fa&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 12:10:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: SONY BMG CD Technologies Settlement United States http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/ FAQ http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/faq.html CD's Containing XCP Content Protection Technology http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/titles.html Canada http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/canada/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 12:08:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Story Behind the BlackBerry Case By: Kirk Teska IEEE Spectrum March 2006 A single filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1991 has caused one of the largest patent disputes in recent memory, threatening to sever more than 3 million BlackBerry subscribers from their wireless e-mail service In 1991, 164 306 patent applications were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). One was filed by Thomas Campana Jr. It, and the additional patents he ultimately received, would threaten the wireless e-mail industry 11 years later, when the BlackBerry system would be found to infringe Campana's patents. The ensuing tumult got so bad that at one point the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in court. The DOJ warned that disabling the service would harm the public, particularly since federal employees and even members of congress regularly use the wireless e-mailers, especially in emergencies. Along the way were false reports of settlement, a second look at the Campana patents by the PTO, court decisions regarding whether that reexamination should have an effect on the pending litigation and the threat of an injunction, a first take on how certain aspects of U.S. patents affect activities conducted outside the United States, a decision regarding an important difference between patents for methods or processes and apparatuses or systems, and a hard lesson in the consequences of not adequately investigating a patent threat. Let's take a closer look at what really happened in the infringement litigation, and learn how, in one possible scenario, a court could permanently shut down the BlackBerry system even if the Patent Office holds Campana's patents invalid. The story begins on 20 May 1991. Campana filed a patent application for his idea to merge existing e-mail systems with radio-frequency wireless communication networks. Without the need for a computer connected to a landline, you'd be able to receive e-mail outside the office. The PTO granted the first patent on 25 July 1995, and that one ultimately spawned eight more. In 1995, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) of Waterloo, Ont., Canada, was a pager company. But in the next few years, it would introduce its BlackBerry line of handheld wireless e-mail appliances and strike successful deals with various wireless carriers, quickly becoming a market leader. Campana was an electrical engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. Interestingly, his first company, ESA Telecon Systems was a contract engineering concern supplying gear to pager companies. In 1992, he and his patent attorney formed Arlington, Va. firm NTP to patent and license Campana's inventions, then put the patents in NTP's name and brought in investors to cover litigation expenses. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3087 ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: How to Survive a Tech Support Call Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 11:10:58 -0500 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > From the Desk of David Pogue > How to Survive a Tech Support Call > The New York Times > February 22, 2006 > OK, we all know that the tech-support problem is out of control these > days. But just for fun, reader John Stumpf, ex-CIO and now just a > "retired geek," wrote up a Guide to Dell Tech Support that's so > clever/funny/smart, I had to pass it on. Please welcome substitute > columnist John Stumpf. > Preparatory Work > So it has happened: you have fired up your Dell PC, and -- nothing. Or > the dreaded "cannot find boot drive" or something like that. Now you > are forced into the unenviable position of having to call Dell > Off-shore Hardware Support. Look at it as a journey, one on which you > will be tested, much like Job or Arthur Dent. You will descend into > the ninth circle, but with the proper preparation, tools and attitude, > you will return, a better person for it. > First, before you call, prepare. Raid your kids' library and find some > simple reading primers along the lines of "See Spot Run." This will > help you speak in non-complex sentences and monosyllabic words. > Make an appointment for that root canal you have been putting off. > After what you are about to experience, you will look forward to it. > Buy a speakerphone; it's tough to stay rational when your neck is > cramped. > When you are ready to MAKE THE CALL, go to the bathroom, take an > aspirin, get a book or crossword, stock up on water and nibbles > (preferably ones with high sugar content and no nutritional value; > Twinkies are good). Shoo the kids out of your den; it's possible that > they will hear things that could cause serious psychological issues > later. > Do your relaxation exercises; take a sip of water; remember Dan > Rather's closing, "Courage." And MAKE THE CALL. > What Happens Next > ... > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/technology/circuits/23POGUE-EMAIL.html?ex=1298264400&en=6989ccaf170df4e4&ei=5090 Oh, I'm very familiar with Dell support scripts. When I've had server drives fail that were both under and not under warranty I've had to go through the script. One had the audacity to ask me to reboot a critical production server. I explained to him that we had already done so during off-hours, run their diagnostic and had found out the drive was dead. Not the controller, the drive. Takes about 20 minutes to pound into their heads that you want a replacement shipped. Just be prepared for it and don't lose your cool. There was one instance in which my boss was unfamiliar with Dell support. His lack of knowledge meant a misson critical server was down for five days. Luckily the dead drive was just dying and I was able to get a replacement drive and used a pencil to keep the old drive in the bay. Then I used ghost to copy the whole stripe set to two other drives we had bought in the meantime. Set it up as a RAID 10 array, snapped the bad drive out, put the new one in and all was well. ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: DTMF Sequences Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:25:08 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 2005 by Jack Hamilton. Reproduction without attribution, and archiving without permission, are not allowed. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org sonali wrote: > Hi all! > I wanted to know what sequences are sent when we press * and #. Touch tones are also known as DTMF, or dual-tone multi-frequency. There are 4 "low" tones and 4 "high" tones. They combine, two at a time, to create the 16 standard DTMF signals. There's no sequencing involved in * and # - they're just two of the combinations. The other 4 combinations, which you're not likely to have on your phone, are A, B, C, and D. I have them on an amateur radio Handi-Talkie, where they might be used to control radio repeaters. They were originally intended for military use. See . > also, what sequences are sent for international calls? what happens > when the sender tries to morph his identity ?what sequences are sent > in such a case? You may be thinking of trunk signaling, which I know nothing about. Jack Hamilton California <> Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit. <> Franįois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld ------------------------------ From: gordonb.ppxxs@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: DTMF Sequences Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 05:42:10 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > I wanted to know what sequences are sent when we press * and #. also, DTMF is not a sequence. It's a pair of frequencies sent down the line. One frequency is selected from the row the key is in and the other from the column on a standard dial layout: 1 2 3 A 697Hz 4 5 6 B 770Hz 7 8 9 C 852Hz * 0 # D 941Hz 1209 1336 1477 1633 Hz Hz Hz Hz Most phones do not have the ABCD column. On military phones it may be labelled Flash Override, Flash, Immediate, and Priority. Some modems let you dial A, B, C, or D. These codes are sometimes used for controlling ham radio gateways to landline phones. > what sequences are sent for international calls? What do you dial for an international call? It's a sequence of digits, each transmitted as a pair of frequencies. From the USA, this is often 011 followed by the country code followed by the number. > what happens when the > sender tries to morph his identity ? Caller-ID is not transmitted by DTMF. It is sent by modulation of the same type used by a Bell 202 modem. > what sequences are sent in such a case? Gordon L. Burditt ------------------------------ From: Stephen Sprunk Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 23:35:25 -0600 Pat, > [ ... I go to call the cab to come back (331-6019), call won't go > through. I wind up getting confused and annoyed (by product > of my brain aneurysm) my fingers cannot hit the right keys and I sit > there with re-order after re-order, literally struggling trying to figure > out why _my_ phone keeps refusing my requests. ... ] Might I suggest you program the full phone number, e.g. +16203316019, into your phone's memory so that you don't have to worry about it anywhere you go? With the effects of your aneurysm, making use of the phone book may make sense anyways, and it takes almost no effort to add the extra three or four digits. I have yet to find a GSM carrier (even roaming) that doesn't accept that form; I assume it's mandatory in the standard. I live in a ten-digit dialing area, so all my numbers go in the long way (plus I rarely remember which area code overlay a given person is in, so I can't dial by hand). I switched to using the full E.164 form when I went overseas and found it was the simplest way to call home. Oddly, that's also how SMS messages always come in even though my normal caller ID is only 10/11 digits (depending on roaming) in the US. Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin ------------------------------ From: Joseph Adajian Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:30:56 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Dear Pat, Sorry to hear about your illness, but glad that you're out of the hospital. I wish you a full recovery, and hope that you continue to publish this wonderful Digest for many years to come. Best, Joseph Pine [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words, but I do not think I will be doing it much longer. A few months, perhaps, and maybe someone _responsible and trustworthy_ will take it over. I know I have to find some permanent person for it soon; it worries me a lot to think of incidents like last week and it just vanishes with no warning. I am reminded of Sonia and Bill Florian, former owners of WNIB Radio Station in Chicago. Sonia ran the station for 45 years, started it from almost nothing in the late 1950's. But, she pointed out in her last year as owner, "I am now 70 years old. I will not be around forever. What will happen to my 'baby' (the station) when I am gone? Better there should be an orderly transition now, and she sold it for _considerably_ more than had been invested in it over the Florian family's nearly half-century of ownership." That would really be amazing if someone offered to buy the Digest/web URL from me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Bill Subject: Re: How Can I Change the Ring? Date: 5 Mar 2006 09:43:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com The wonder of the Net. Thank you. I didn't even know such things existed but I have found just the thing : http://www.now-zen.com/cgi-bin/orders/shop.pl?ACTION=ENTER+SHOP&thispage=tibetanbell&AFFILIATE=&ORDER_ID=%21ORDERID%21 ------------------------------ From: sinister Subject: NTP Patents Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 07:30:28 -0500 Can anyone point me to a description/discussion of what's actually _in_ the patents? My impression is that they're typical of patents that might meet the ridiculously low standards of non-obviousness that the patent bar prefers, but which many in tech fields would sneer at. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Article About AM Radio Date: Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:05:14 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:57:32 -0600, Mike Sandman wrote: > Hi Pat. > I thought you might be interested in this: > http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114125971438087021-whLN_IXLyiPsenX9v7Nti_dn3Fo_20070302.html?mod=blogs That whole IBOC thing is a mess at present. Most of the rest of the world went with Eureka DAB, but the Band III and L Band frequencies have other uses in the US. IBOC is claimed to make AM sound like FM, but 36kb coded 15kHz audio is full of artifacts to a discerning ear. Mine isn't, but I worked with MP3 (a different coding scheme) with someone who is. We had to get that up to 128kb before he couldn't hear "flanging". The real push behind this is the transmission equipment manufacturers, and Ibiquity, who see a gold mine in the wholesale replacement of existing transmitters, and much upstream studio equipment. The other pusher is large networks of FM stations, including Clear Channel, but perhaps more so, NPR. FM IBOC can be subdivided into multiple channels, allowing a single station licensee to serve two or three market segments. This is being tested on air as we "speak". The scuttlebutt is that it works acceptably, although my golden eared friend would probably yodel his lunch. My guess is that if, and it is a big if, IBOC catches on, there will not be an increase in audio quality, but in quantity. And that is a reaction to the competition from satellite radio. ----------------------------- TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #90 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Mar 7 00:35:30 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2DBC31520D; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 00:35:30 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #91 Message-Id: <20060307053530.2DBC31520D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 00:35:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, HOT_NASTY,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,MARKETING_PARTNERS,NIGERIAN_BODY1 autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Mar 2006 00:38:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 91 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T, BellSouth Merger Fact Sheet (Monty Solomon) Huge Phone Deal Seeks to Thwart Smaller Rivals (Monty Solomon) Unsafe At Any Airspeed? / Cellphones and Other Electronics (Monty Solomon) Popular Web Site Falls Victim to a Content Filter (Monty Solomon) The High-Speed Money Line (Monty Solomon) In Your Facebook.com (Monty Solomon) AOL Introduces New Open AIM Strategy (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 6, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AT&T to Acquire BellSouth for $67B (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular-News for Monday 6th March 2006 (cellular-news) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Request for Linking to Your Website (Mark Burgess) Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (Carl Zwanzig) Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (davidesan@gmail) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Garrett Wollman) Re: AOL to Give Free Email to Non Profits (Danny Burstein) Re: How Can I Change the Ring? (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (John McHarry) Re: How to Survive a Tech Support Call (Henry) Telecom Update Extra, March 6, 2006 (Angus TeleManagement Group) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 22:29:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AT&T, BellSouth Merger Fact Sheet http://att.sbc.com/Common/files/doc/Merger_Fact_Sheet.doc ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 00:10:00 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Huge Phone Deal Seeks to Thwart Smaller Rivals By KEN BELSON The New York Times March 6, 2006 The AT&T Corporation, in announcing plans yesterday to buy BellSouth Corporation for $67 billion after months of speculation, took the offensive against low-cost rivals in the free-for-all for phone, wireless and television customers. With cable providers and technology companies entering the phone business, the former Baby Bells starting to sell television programming and more and more services available on mobile phones and on the Internet, companies like AT&T are trying to bulk up and turn themselves into one-stop shops for all communications needs. "We literally have hundreds of competitors coming in every day; it's nothing like the old days," said Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., the chairman and chief executive of AT&T, the country's largest phone company. "If we're going to have the strength to compete, we better get our companies together." The new company, with $120 billion in sales, about 317,000 workers and 71 million local phone customers in 22 states, would recreate a big chunk of the former AT&T monopoly that was broken up a generation ago. With the deal, only three Baby Bells would remain: AT&T, the former SBC Communications that provided service in the Southwest and elsewhere; and Qwest and Verizon, the $90 billion company which is AT&T's chief rival. The latter two might now face renewed pressure to build themselves up. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/business/06phone.html?ex=1299301200&en=b62a0e6446637502&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 23:03:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Unsafe At Any Airspeed? / Cellphones and Other Electronics By: Bill Strauss, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, and Daniel D. Stancil Cellphones and Other Electronics Are More of a Risk Than You Think IEEE Spectrum March 2006 Is it safe to use cellphones on airplanes? The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) thinks it may be. In December 2004, the agency began soliciting comments on proposed regulations that would allow airline passengers to use cellphones and other electronic devices. To be sure, it acknowledges that a sister agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has ultimate authority regarding regulations that govern airline safety. Yet a July 2005 report by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, which held hearings on the matter, noted: "The FCC hopes to issue a final ruling in 2006, stating that its ultimate objective is to allow consumers to use their own wireless devices during flight." In the meantime, more and more passengers are bringing cellphones, PDAs, laptops, DVD players, and game machines on board. All of these items emit radiation and have the potential to interfere with aircraft instrumentation. More and more passengers, however, do not believe that using portable electronic devices presents a risk to their safety. We, on the other hand, have had our doubts that such use was safe. Over the course of three months in late 2003, we investigated the possibility that portable electronic devices interfere with a plane's safety instruments by measuring the RF spectrum inside commercial aircraft cabins. What we found was disturbing. Passengers are using cellphones, on the average, at least once per flight, contrary to FCC and FAA regulations, and sometimes during the especially critical flight phases of takeoff and landing. Although that number seems low, keep in mind that it represents the furtive activity of a small number of rule breakers. Should the FCC and the airlines allow cellphone use, the number of calls could rise dramatically. In addition, regulations already permit a wide variety of other portable electronic devices-from game machines to laptops with Wi-Fi cards-to be used in the air today. Yet our research has found that these items can interrupt the normal operation of key cockpit instruments, especially Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are increasingly vital to safe landings. Two different studies by NASA further support the idea that passengers' electronic devices dangerously produce interference in a way that reduces the safety margins for critical avionics systems. There is no smoking gun to this story: there is no definitive instance of an air accident known to have been caused by a passenger's use of an electronic device. Nonetheless, although it is impossible to say that such use has contributed to air accidents in the past, the data also make it impossible to rule it out completely. More important, the data support a conclusion that continued use of portable RF-emitting devices such as cellphones will, in all likelihood, someday cause an accident by interfering with critical cockpit instruments such as GPS receivers. This much is certain: there exists a greater potential for problems than was previously believed. Although our data are more than two years old, they still represent the best available in this critical area of air safety. Ours is the first documented study of in-flight RF emissions by portable electronic devices and, we believe, the first such scientific measuring other than what has been done by individual airlines. And as far as we know, it is the first in-the-field examination ever into the critical question of emissions interference with the spectrum bands used for navigation. Yet despite the paucity of available data, regulators and the airlines seem poised to yield to public demands to allow the use of cellphones in flight and the use of other devices, such as PDAs, during critical phases of flight. We believe additional studies are needed to characterize potential risks, followed by regulations that ensure the safe use of radiating devices, and we conclude with a suggested five-point program for such studies. And we argue that in the meantime, the public needs to be more clearly informed about the risks of its current behavior. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar06/3069 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 00:57:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Popular Web Site Falls Victim to a Content Filter By TOM ZELLER Jr. The New York Times March 6, 2006 THERE are lots of ways to describe Boing Boing, the Web's obliquely subtitled "Directory of Wonderful Things," which draws millions of eyeballs to its relentless, stylistically minimalist scroll of high-weirdness each month. It is a site where, on Saturday morning, there were links to video games that "subvert post-industrial capitalism," federal legislation aimed at digital radio technology, a guitar made out of a toilet seat and a new species of brown shark. But nudity? "Access denied by SmartFilter content category," was the message a Halliburton engineer in Houston said he received last Wednesday when he tried to visit BoingBoing.net from his office computer. "The requested URL belongs to the following categories: Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies, Nudity." Yep. "When it happened I was pretty put off," said the employee, who did not want to be named because the topic involved company filtering policies, "as I enjoyed the little distractions it provided me during the workday." It was a sentiment that, over the last two weeks, united oppressed employees -- and citizens -- all over the globe. The culprit, SmartFilter, is a product of Secure Computing of San Jose, Calif. It is marketed in a few different flavors to corporations, schools, libraries and governments as a sort of nannyware -- a way for system administrators to monitor and filter access to Web sites among users of their networks. This is accomplished with a central database of millions of Web sites organized into 73 categories -- things like "General News" or "Dating/Social" or "Hate Speech." At some point late last month, it seems, a site reviewer at Secure Computing spotted something fleshy at Boing Boing and tacked the Nudity category onto the blog's classification. The company's database was updated and, from that point on, any SmartFilter client that had its network set up to block sites with a Nudity designation would now automatically block Boing Boing. The impact quickly rippled across the globe, which had the ancillary effect of outing corporate and government SmartFilter clients, as their employees and citizens, now deprived of their daily fix of tech-ephemera, blasted their overlords in anonymous e-mail messages to Boing Boing's editors, who then posted them to the blog. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/technology/06link.html?ex=1299301200&en=48b5af5cb1e49d20&ei=5088 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 01:05:01 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The High-Speed Money Line By KEN BELSON The New York Times March 6, 2006 Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web? Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently by floating plans that would have Amazon, Yahoo and other Web sites paying new fees to ensure that their content will be delivered to customers faster. This possibility has raised the prospect that consumers may end up having to pay twice for access to the Internet -- once to the phone or cable company that sells them a dial-up or broadband line, and again to Internet companies that pass along new charges for fast access to content from their sites. Late last year, the Bells proposed to share the burden of upgrading their networks -- particularly as big video files, which take up a lot of bandwidth on the networks, become more common -- with the companies sending out that data. The plan quickly drew fire from consumer groups, technology companies and lawmakers eager to preserve open access to the Internet and fearful that the Bell companies have too much power. Those worries were highlighted yesterday when AT&T announced plans to buy BellSouth for $67 billion, a merger that would create a telecommunications giant with $130 billion in sales and 70 million local phone customers in 22 states. If a plan like the one the Bells are proposing were to come into effect, consumer prices might not increase immediately, consumer advocates, industry analysts and telecommunications executives say. But one way or another, consumers are likely to shell out more in the future for Web content. The reason, they say, is simple. As Internet traffic booms and competition intensifies, the phone and cable companies are spending billions of dollars to expand their networks -- and they want someone to help them foot the bill. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/technology/06broadband.html?ex=1299301200&en=8d3878a2b1fef9be&ei=5088 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 22:35:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: In Your Facebook.com By NANCY HASS The New York Times January 8, 2006 AS far as Kyle Stoneman is concerned, the campus police were the ones who started the Facebook wars. "We were just being, well, college students, and they used it against us," says Mr. Stoneman, a senior at George Washington University in Washington. He is convinced that the campus security force got wind of a party he and some buddies were planning last year by monitoring Facebook.com, the phenomenally popular college networking site. The officers waited till the shindig was in full swing, Mr. Stoneman grouses, then shut it down on discovering under-age drinking. Mr. Stoneman and his friends decided to fight back. Their weapon of choice? Facebook, of course. Once again they used the site, which is visited by more than 80 percent of the student body, to chat up a beer blast. But this time, when the campus police showed up, they found 40 students and a table of cake and cookies, all decorated with the word "beer." "We even set up a cake-pong table," a twist on the beer-pong drinking game, he says. "The look on the faces of the cops was priceless." As the coup de grace, he posted photographs of the party on Facebook, including a portrait of one nonplussed officer. A university spokesman, Tracy Schario, insists that noise complaints, not nosing around Facebook, led the police to both parties. But, she says, "it's sort of an inevitability that if a party is talked about on the site, word of it will reach the enforcement people, who then have no choice but to investigate." In fact, two campus police officers and the chief's assistant are among the 14,000 Facebook members at George Washington. The stunt could be read as a sign that Facebook has become more than a way for young people to stay in touch. Started in 2004 by Harvard students who wanted to animate the black-and-white thumbnail photos of freshman directories, the site is the ninth most visited on the Internet, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, and is used by nearly five million college students. Facebook is available at most of the country's four-year colleges, and many two-year colleges, too. Because of its popularity, though, the site has become a flashpoint for debates about free speech, privacy and whether the Internet should be a tool for surveillance. It has also raised concerns from parents, administrators and even students about online "addiction." "There are people on this campus who are totally obsessed with it, who check their profile 5, 6, 20 times a day," says Ingrid Gallagher, a sophomore at the University of Michigan. "But I think that more and more people are realizing that it also has a dark side." Her estimates are not far off. Nearly three-quarters of Facebook users sign on at least once every 24 hours, and the average users sign on six times a day, says Chris Hughes, a spokesman for the site. Using it is simple: students create online profiles, which they can stock with personal details like sexual preferences, favorite movies and phone contact numbers, with links to photo albums and diaries. The details listed are by no means reliable; it's common, under "personal relationships," to list a spouse as a joke (as does Mr. Stoneman). Like most networking sites, Facebook enables users to compile lists of friends whose names and photos are displayed, and to post public comments on other people's profiles. One of the most attractive features to many students is that they can track down friends from high school at other colleges. Users can also join or form groups with names that run from the prosaic ("Campus Republicans") to the prurient ("We Need to Have Sex in Widener Before We Graduate") and the dadaesque ("I Am Fond of Biscuits and Scones"). Unlike general networking sites like Friendster and myspace.com, which let anyone join, Facebook and xuqa.com, which was started last year by a student at Williams, are confined to the insular world of the campus, which Internet experts say is the key to their success. Last fall, Facebook opened a parallel site for high school students. To sign up, a high school student has to be referred by a college student who is a Facebook user. Facebook's charms are obvious even to administrators. "It's a fantastic tool for building community," says Anita Farrington-Brathwaite, assistant dean for freshmen at New York University. "In a school like ours that doesn't have an enclosed campus, it really gives people a way to find each other and connect." Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, gave kudos to Facebook in the opening lines of his address to freshmen in September, saying he had been browsing the site to get to know everyone. But concerns have flourished with Facebook's popularity. Despite safeguards placed on access -- only those with valid university e-mail addresses, ending in edu, can register as users, and students can bar specific people from viewing their profiles -- administrators and parents worry about cyberstalking. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/education/edlife/facebooks.html?ex=3D11417= 07600&en=3D2dd279e55faac7b5&ei=3D5070 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 09:07:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: AOL Introduces New Open AIM Strategy DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2006-- Puts the Power of Real Time Communications and Access to More Than 63 Million Active Worldwide Users into the Hands of Developers, Online Communities and Sites and Services of Every Kind AOL today announced the creation of a new Open AIM initiative designed to make it easier than ever to connect with anyone and everyone on the Web. For the first time in the company's history, AOL is inviting developers, online communities and sites and services of every kind to build new plugins and custom communications clients based on the popular AIM platform (http://www.aim.com). The Open AIM(R) initiative empowers companies, communities and independent developers alike to build customized plugins, stand-alone communications clients and popular application 'mash-ups' that access AOL's global instant messaging network and reach more than 63 million active users across the AOL(R), AIM(R), ICQ(R) and Apple(R) iChat(TM) services. The program gives developers unprecedented freedom to unleash their creativity with an AIM(R) Software Development Kit (SDK) that lets them build new tools that deliver real time text, voice and video communications without compromising the security of the AOL instant messaging network. The AIM SDK features support for AOL's proprietary protocols and is available today at http://developer.aim.com/. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56396267 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 12:22:19 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Monday, March 6, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 6, 2006 ******************************** Where Babies Come From: Supply and Demand in an Infant Marketplace http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16952?11228 Persistent demand from people who have been denied the blessings of parenthood has created an assisted-reproduction market that stretches around the globe and encompasses hundreds of thousands of people. In the United States alone, nearly 41,000 children were born via in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2001. Roughly 6,000 came from donated... Auction Action: Slower This Time Around? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/16948?11228 The federal government stands to reap billions of dollars from the June 29 auction of advanced wireless services (AWS) spectrum, but bidding might not be as vigorous as it has been in the past. And the biggest historical bidders may be no-shows, according to some analysts. The changes aren't due to a single factor but to many. Some of... Job Cuts Feared as AT&T Makes $67 billion Bid for BellSouth http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16945?11228 ATLANTA -- AT&T Inc.'s $67 billion bid for BellSouth Corp. would expand the number of voices using America's largest telecommunications company, but it may end up sounding more like a hang up for some employees. San Antonio-based AT&T expects the acquisition announced Sunday to save it $2 billion annually, partially... OTE Seeks Total Control of CosmOTE http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16942?11228 Dominant Greek telecoms operator OTE has confirmed its readiness to acquire the 34% share that it does not already own in its mobile arm CosmOTE. Dow Jones, quoting OTE's reply to a letter from the Athens Stock Exchange authorities, reports that the firm is mulling the option of buying the remaining CosmOTE stake during the timeframe of... Software Makes Teleconferencing More Convenient http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16935?11228 Despite the best efforts of many software vendors, teleconferencing systems aren't always easy to use. While great strides have been made over the years in sound and video quality, as well as in tools that help teleconference participants to interact with each other, most systems still fall short in terms of user accessibility and... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 12:46:48 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T to Acquire BellSouth For $67B USTelecom dailyLead March 6, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dffYfDtutbrtqhdoCj TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T to acquire BellSouth for $67B BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Telecom, cable industries will feel deal's impact * Vodafone inks deal to unload Japanese unit * Cisco, Microsoft team up * Despite settlement, RIM faces challenges * Ricochet seeks to return to Bay Area USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Communications Security in the Digital Age: Only at TelecomNEXT HOT TOPICS * Survey: Broadband spikes in rural America * Report: Verizon's FiOS enhances competition in Texas * Qwest eyes nontelecom acquisitions * Cable-phone consortium readies new mobile phone services * Municipal Wi-Fi has drawbacks TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Practice of "piggybacking" sparks debate * The Web's last holdouts * Phone service driving basic cable growth * Who will pay for network upgrades? Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dffYfDtutbrtqhdoCj ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 6th March 2006 Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 08:00:06 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] Thai TOT To Get Control Of Mobile JVs; Plans To Offer 3G http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16365.php Thailand's state-owned telecom firm TOT said Friday it will buy shares in two mobile-phone joint ventures from state agency CAT Telecom PCL, in a move to gain full control over 1,900 and 2,000 megahertz mobile-phone frequencies for the third generati... [[Financial News]] Taiwan Mobile Earns NT$124.7 Million From Chunghwa Tel Share Sale http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16366.php Taiwan Mobile, Friday reported a disposal gain of NT$124.7 million from the sale of 9.99 million Chunghwa Telecom shares. ... OTE To Buy Cosmote Shares Currently Not Owned, But Not Yet http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16367.php Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (OTE) confirmed Friday that it's interested in buying the shares in its mobile arm Cosmote that it doesn't currently own, but not just yet. ... Vodafone Group Confirm Offer Talks For Japanese Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16369.php Vodafone Group said that it has noted Friday's press speculation regarding its Japanese subsidiary. ... UPDATE: Vodafone In Talks To Sell Loss-making Japanese Arm http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16370.php Mobile-phone company Vodafone Group rallied 9% on Friday after saying it's in talks to sell its loss-making Japanese arm. ... AT&T TO Acquire BellSouth -Sources http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16373.php NEW YORK (Dow Jones) AT&T Inc. is planning to acquire BellSouth Corp, people familiar with the situation say. A deal between the two could be announced as early as Monday. ... [[Handsets News]] Motorola Cant Meet Demand For RAZR Handsets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16364.php Speaking at a recent Merrill Lynch conference, Ron Garriques, President of Mobile Devices Division at Motorola, noted that the company is still having trouble meeting demand for their iconic RAZR handset. ... Orange, Sony Ericsson In Joint Marketing Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16368.php Orange, the mobile telecommunications arm of France Telecom, has signed a joint marketing partnership with Sony Ericsson to promote the manufacturer's Walkman-branded music handsets. ... [[Legal News]] Research In Motion Pays NTP $612.5 Million To Settle Dispute http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16372.php Research In Motion Ltd. said late Friday that it agreed to pay NTP Inc. $612.5 million to settle a long-running patent dispute that had threatened to disrupt its widely used BlackBerry wireless-email service. ... [[Messaging News]] BlackBerry Problems in Trinidad http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16376.php Cable & Wireless in the Cayman Islands says that it has identified a potential problem for some of their BlackBerry customers whilst trying to roam in Trinidad on the TSTT network. While in Trinidad, customers may experience difficulty acquiring and ... [[Mobile Content News]] Ericsson Providing WAP Billing For ZapDance http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16377.php Ericsson will provide WAP billing in the UK for ZapDance, a Norwegian developer of mobile internet portals. Ericsson Internet Payment eXchange (IPX) is the dominant aggregator in enabling WAP billing across major networks in the UK. ZapDance is now a... [[Network Contracts News]] Orange Upgrades Data Services http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16381.php Orange Slovakia has made a major capacity upgrade of its NettGain Data Optimization solution, provided by Flash Networks to improve data optimization over it's mobile network, which is seeing a dramatic increase in traffic and subscribers, as a resul... [[Network Operators News]] The Fight For Mobile Customers At Border Areas http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16378.php Five years ago, residents in Vietnam's remote and border areas didn't even know what a mobile phone was. Now, cell phone networks cover almost all of these areas. The area around the Ban Thi Railway Station in the Van Thuy Commune in Chi Lang Distric... Over 40 Million Subscribers Shortly for South Africa http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16382.php South Africa's Vodacom says that it has had to add an additional number range to the current number ranges, including 082, 072 and 076, to make room for its growing family of subscribers. As from 1 March 2006, Vodacom added the 079 number range to it... Chris Gent Opposes Sarin As Vodafone CEO - report http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16383.php There have been reports that the former head of Vodafone, Sir Chris Gent had considered voting against the re-election of Arun Sarin as Chief Executive of the company. ... [[Offbeat News]] Motorola Private Jet Crashes http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16374.php A Motorola private jet had an accident last Friday when landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, USA. The plane went off the runway and stopped some 100 feet from the end of the runway. There was an unnamed Motorola executive on board, but a Motor... [[Regulatory News]] CRT names new executive director http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16371.php Colombian telecoms regulator CRT has named Carlos Alberto Herrera Barros as its new executive director, replacing Gabriel Adolfo Jurado Parra, the country's communications ministry announced. ... [[Reports News]] Australians Consider Ditching Landlines Within 2 Years http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16375.php A Newspoll survey commissioned by Vodafone has revealed that approximately 1.4 million Australians see few reasons to hold onto their landline and are seriously considering ditching it altogether to become totally mobile inside the next two years. Ba... [[Statistics News]] dea crosses 7 Million-Subscriber base http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16379.php India's dea Cellular has announced its achievement of crossing the 7 million strong customer mark in its eight circle operation covering only 45% of the country's cellular base. In less than 12 months the company has added nearly 2 million subscribe... [[Technology News]] OmniVision Eases Upgrade to 3 Megapixel Camera Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16380.php OmniVision Technologies has launched a CameraChip solution which allows handset customers to upgrade their camera phones from 2 megapixels to 3 megapixels without mechanical design changes. This 'drop-in' replacement method will significantly reduce ... ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 20:52:26 EST Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling In a message dated Sat, 04 Mar 2006 16:16:20 -0600, Stephen Sprunk writes: > Local calling regions are usually much, much smaller than a LATA. > Most of the US can only dial neighboring exchanges for free. Even > large cities like Chicago and Detroit don't have local calling across > town, though a few others do. That's mostly a state PUC issue. The Oklahoma City and Tulsa local calling areas are something like 75 miles across east-west and north-south. There are no zones or other charges associated with making calls in this local calling area. I believe the Oklahoma City local calling area is the most extensive in the U.S.A. The Atlanta area is not quite as large but serves more telephones (exchange access arrangements or whatever they are called now). These are all flat rate service. Some of the places where cross-area code 7-digit was permitted, and may still be, were local calls in the greater Kansas City area (816 in Missouriand 913 in Kansas), Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas (that's the name of the post office as well as the exchange), Coffeyville, Kansas, and South Coffeyville, Oklahoma (Pat can furnish the area code for Coffeyville, which is near Independence where he lives; South Coffeyville is in 918). Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Coffeyville, KS is entirely 620-CLinton-1 (620-251) and South Coffeyville, OK is included in the s.e. Kansas regional phone directory for Southwestern Bell. Coffeyville has the occassional 620-252 number, just as Independence (620-EDison-1)[331] has the occassional 620-332, but those 'occassional' numbers are always entirely either either for local government use or perhaps cell phones. Coffeyville gets local calling to S. Coffeyville. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: 6 Mar 2006 07:56:47 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > ... The phone system here in the USA is a frightful > hodge podge of schemes developed over the years with little or no > effort to keep it simple or make it understandable to everyone. PAT] I'm not sure I agree. The basis for the present day system was developed about 60 years when they developed the concept of an area code and exchange to give every US/Canadian telephone a unique number. Area Codes specificially had the middle digit of 0 and 1 while exchanges did not have a 0 or 1 as the middle digit. Exchanges were unique within an area code. Many people in the 1950s and 1960s had their telephone number changed so as to conform to the new layout. This was a good plan. It is true different areas had different "toll" call rules. Some large metro areas used message units to meter suburban calls. Others used toll tickets with very small amounts. Historically, in my state long distance rates matched interstate rates beyond the message unit area. In a neighborhood states, the rates were less. In any event, we must remember that long distance rates were graduated by mileage. A short distance call didn't cost very much compared to a 3,000 mile call. The old plan had a key assumption: telephone service would be a monopoly and under the AT&T umbrella. In the 1983 that went all out the window and new things like LATAs and competing local telephone companies were designed. Further, the whole network had to be redesigned to allow easy access by the competitors. Toll rates became flat for the nation. That benefited those who called coast-to-coast, but hurt others who called relatively close by, particuarly rather short distances (ie 30 miles). My own home telephone area has about 20 exchanges assigned to it although in reality we need only 3. That's an enormous waste of numbers. Some towns have 40 exchanges when 5 will do, an even worse waste. As a result we discarded the old 0/1 scheme and create area codes in the blink of an eye. Those who let the genie out of the bottle to create telephone competition only looked at one side of the ledger and ignored the other. They presumed they'd have _only_ the benefits of a free market but none of the problems. So today we have price gouging and out and out fraud for certain telephone services, as frequent posts to this newsgroup indicate. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But that being the case, Lisa, why was Canada arbitrarily included as part of the 'USA numbering scheme' while Mexico was deliberatly excluded? The system back in the 1950's was deliberatly designed, IMO, to include all (mostly) English speakers and with certain other politics in mind, which was unfortunate. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Request For Linking to Your Website Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 13:34:44 -0500 From: Mark Burgess I am the marketing director for a CLEC based in New Jersey. I am interested in placing a link to your website so my agents have easy access to your content. Would you agree to our using your web address and if so, please provide that address. Let me know if your have any questions. Mark Burgess Director of Marketing Spectrotel mark.burgess@spectrotel.com 732.345.7852 www.spectrotel.com Dialing Without Limits. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No Mark, there are no objections to that. You, or any other reader who wishes direct access to content here on a message by mesage basis can either link to our front page which is http://telecom-digest.org and then one or more of the front page categories, _or_ you can direct to our RSS feed line which is http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html (with javascript examples for using the feed) (or) http:/telecom-digest.org/TELECOM_Digest_Online/atom.xml for the raw feed itself if you do not need assistance in dealing with it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) Subject: Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:23:20 -0000 Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Ron Chapman wrote: > Fortunately she accepted without question my knee-jerk "No, thank you" > response to her request for my phone number. But she had to plug > something in; she plugged in all 1s. Usually being in California, I'll give 410-555-xxxx, where xxxx is random :-). The time/temp numbers were good, too. > Shades of the old Radio Shack days, when you couldn't buy a 30 cent > battery without giving up your family tree and medical history. I always liked "1600 S Beach St, Ft Worth Tx." If the clerk/manager was on top of things, they recognised the address of Tandy corp. headquarters. Not as much fun when Tandy moved to "1 Tandy Plaza". z! ------------------------------ From: davidesan@gmail.com Subject: Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Date: 6 Mar 2006 07:48:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Welcome back PAT! I have yet to figure out why I need to do the market research for the company that I'm doing business with. I'm not getting paid, I'm not getting a price break from them. At least the supermarket affinity card gives me discounts while they track my grocery purchases. I usually refuse to give information. If they are insistent and I'm not in the mood for a fight my zip is always 90210. Let the company figure out what a Beverly Hills zip is doing among the 146?? numbers in upstate New York. They ask for a phone number I'm at 202-456-1414 (which is the White House). I wonder what happens when they make that sales call? I also use 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for an address. It is amazing what spam I get offering me mortgage deals on my property. My favorite recently was going to doctor's office. Our local Blue Cross has just changed all the subscriber numbers from the Social Security number to some random number. I hand over the new card so the secretary can copy the new number down for her billing records. I tell her what a good idea this is, how it avoids identity theft. (I did skip my paranoia about the government checking out our medical records). She agrees, and then asks me for my Social Security number so they number my patient file. When I refuse, she got all huffy: How can I fill out this form? The doctor won't be able to see you! I suggested she make up a number, use that, or contact her supervisor because if I was refused service I would contact Social Security and they would have a nice discussion about legal uses of my SS number. Needless to say, they found some way around the system. ------------------------------ From: wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 02:06:59 UTC Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab In article , Ernie Klein wrote: > I purchased 100 shares of AT&T in 1962. [...] > As of Friday, 3/3/2006 the value of the shares (of the remaining > companies, ACR, T, BLS, CMCSA, LU. Q, VZ & VOD) was $118,188.12. You forgot NCR and AV, by the way. If you bought your shares on January 2, 1962, you paid about $13,300 for them. In 2006 dollars, that corresponds to about $87,300 -- a decent 35% return for you, even after the ravages of inflation, but only about 1.27% on an annualized basis. (In the more conventional way of presenting return on investment, which does not consider inflation, that's a better-than-respectable 9.5%.) Today, very few people reinvest dividends in stocks they hold directly (although they very frequently reinvest mutual-fund distributions), although most of Mother's dwindling offspring still offer such plans. With a stock like AT&T which was a strong dividend-paying stock for many years, it was obiously a big win for investors like Ernie. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those | search for greater freedom. of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) ------------------------------ From: danny burstein Subject: Re: AOL to Give Free Email to Non Profits Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 02:32:26 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Reuters News Wire writes: [ snip ] > "There will be no requirement, ever, for not-for-profits who deliver > e-mail to AOL members to pay for e-mail certification and delivery," > Charles Stiles, AOL's Postmaster, said. Hopefully they're not going to get suckered into the same exemptions the Do Not Call legislation allowed for phone calls. A "not for profit" label, even if IRS approved, is NOT a clean bill of health. And ... the Do Not Call list famously exempted politicians. (Wonder why????) > MoveOn sent an e-mail to its membership claiming the "very existence > of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are > under attack by America Online." Yawn. MoveOn (and its ilk -- don't mean to specifically point them out) is an advocacy group promoting an agenda. Oh, and fundraising. There's always fundraising. I see no reason they should be treated any differetly than "people for baby seal hunting" or, for that matter, Sears or McDonalds -- which are also engaged in fund raising.. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 18:35:37 -0800 (PST) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: How Can I Change the Ring? Bill 5 Mar 2006 09:43:11 -0800 wrote: > The wonder of the Net. Thank you. I didn't even know such things > existed but I have found just the thing : http://www.now-zen.com/cgi-bin/orders/shop.pl?ACTION=ENTER+SHOP&thispage=tibetanbell&AFFILIATE=&ORDER_ID=%21ORDERID%21>> It's really cool looking and I'm sure it's very "harmonius" but for $120 I could probably order a bell chime from phonecoinc for considerably less. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 02:52:31 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ...I am reminded of Sonia and Bill > Florian, former owners of WNIB Radio Station in Chicago. Sonia ran > the station for 45 years, started it from almost nothing in the late > 1950's. But, she pointed out in her last year as owner, "I am now 70 > years old. I will not be around forever. What will happen to my > 'baby' (the station) when I am gone? Better there should be an > orderly transition now, and she sold it for _considerably_ more than > had been invested in it over the Florian family's nearly > half-century of ownership." That would really be amazing if someone > offered to buy the Digest/web URL from me. I am as happy as anyone to still find you looking down at the grass, which is the important thing. I have followed the Digest or its Usenet echo since JSOL was moderator. I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property that can be sold. I doubt you bought it from JSOL or have a deed of gift. I do believe you own the web site. If you sold the web site, it would make a mess not to include a transference of the moderation, so maybe it doesn't much matter. Perhaps you could get the Telephone Pioneers interested in taking over the operation. That would give it a pseudo immortality. TD is the Internet autobiography of telecom after all. But hang around a few more years. We need you and your remembrances. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, maybe a mailing list is property which can be sold, or maybe it is not ... I do know that several years ago -- when a company called 'TOPICA' was quite active (remember them, anyone?) Topica management offered me one dollar per each name on my mailing list (as they did for many Usenet moderators) with the admonition in mind, "we do not need to tell anyone on the net this is what we are doing, and we will continue to have you moderate the thing." I mean, how sneaky can you get? All I had to do was supply them with a list of names/emails, put them in charge of the add/removes to the list, etc; they could have cared less about the content. No one would have even noticed the extra spam generated as a result of Topica's participation. On the other hand, I would like to find someone who is willing and will commit to maintaining the Digest and newsgroup in the style I have established, take care of the archives, or improve on their filing, and in geneal work with the same zeal I have shown here. How that person wishes to treat me with respect or consideration for my efforts over the years will be negotiated. And it will not be something which gets snuck past: if and when any argreement is ever reached, every reader here will receive an annncement saying "person X is designated, as of date Z I am out of here, goodbye and thank you." Then others can do as they please. No back door sneaking around as Topica and certain other spammers would prefer. I would hope if the day ever comes when I am no longer the moderator here I will still be welcome to continue posting; but that would be the new editor/ publisher's choice at that point. As Sonia Florian said when WNIB was sold, "I wish they had decided to continue on with classical music; it always was a great format for me, but how can I tell others what to do with their newly purchased property?". PAT ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: How to Survive a Tech Support Call Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 06:22:40 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer T wrote: > Oh, I'm very familiar with Dell support scripts. When I've had server > drives fail that were both under and not under warranty I've had to go > through the script. That's just the thing, isn't it? They're following a script. I have never owned any Dell hardware and thus have never had this particular experience, but it's actually quite widespread, I think. A couple of years ago I was travelling around the US and needed temporary net access so I decided to take advantage of AOL and their free sign-up plus x-number of free hours offer. At the end of the trip I rang them up to cancel, as per the rules. Jeez-Louise. The woman I spoke to was pleasant enough but by golly she stuck to that script, trying to get me to not cancel. It took about 15 minutes of insisting before she would give me a cancellation number. Had I known that getting out was going to be such a pain in the arse, I never would have gone in in the first place. cheers, Henry ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 03:55:01 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update Extra, March 6, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE EXTRA ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 519A: March 6, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ RIM, NTP SETTLE FOR $612 MILLION: Research In Motion announced late March 3 that it has settled its patent dispute with NTP Inc. RIM will make a "full and final" payment of US$612.5 million in return for an unlimited transferable licence for NTP technology. The agreement, which has been accepted by Judge James Spencer, will stand even if NTP's patents are ultimately rejected by the U.S. patent office. ** RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said the agreement will bring "calmness and comfort to our ecosystem." Following the announcement, RIM shares jumped 14.5% in after-hours trading. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #91 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Mar 7 16:51:48 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 19C1C15074; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 16:51:48 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #92 Message-Id: <20060307215148.19C1C15074@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 16:51:48 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.5 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NIGERIAN_BODY1,URG_BIZ autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 7 Mar 2006 16:55:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 92 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TiVo Mobile (Monty Solomon) Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Anthony Bellanga) Mexico (Dial 1) (Anthony Bellanga) Cellular-News for Tuesday 7th March 2006 (Cellular-News) AT&T-BellSouth Deal May Lead to Cable Mergers (USTelecom dailyLead) Cops Using Cellphone Tracking ... (Danny Burstein) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Bob Goudreau) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (Steve Kl.) Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV (DLR) Re: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power (DLR) Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (Jack Hamilton) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 7, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re; Long-Term AT&T Investors (Anthony Bellanga) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Steve Sobol) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (jtaylor) Hello I Need Help Please (tonyfredw@.SYNTAX-ERROR) Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ (Geo Mitchell) Digest Directions (Tom Singleton) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 08:40:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Mobile By MAY WONG AP Technology Writer SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- TiVo subscribers will soon be able to program television recordings straight from cell phones using the Verizon Wireless network. An agreement with Verizon Wireless, to be announced Tuesday, expands on TiVo Inc.'s strategy to bring the digital video recording pioneer's capabilities beyond its set-top-boxes and the television, and directly to cell phones for the first time. Dubbed TiVo Mobile, it's also the latest feature the Alviso, Calif.-based company is introducing to help differentiate itself from the growing number of rival DVR offerings from cable and satellite TV operators. A DVR records TV programming onto hard disks and gives viewers the ability to pause live TV and fast-forward through commercials. Terms of the TiVo-Verizon deal were not disclosed, but TiVo said Verizon would be the first cellular carrier to offer the remote TiVo scheduling feature on its handsets. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56426556 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:00:27 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) ****************************** PAT: PLEASE DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thnx ****************************** Wes Leatherock wrote: > Some of the places where cross-area code 7-digit was permitted, and > may still be, were local calls in the greater Kansas City area (816 > in Missouri and 913 in Kansas) Local calls within the Kansas City Metro Area, that cross the state and area code line, i.e., calls that are between 816/MO and 913/KS, have required ten-digit dialing for several years now. THe call is still a local (free) call, and a 1+ is not required (although I don't know if 1+ is permitted optionally, but I tend to doubt it). Ten-digit local dialing across the state and area code boundary went mandatory on December 4, 1999. It had been officially permissive since June 5, 1999 (although it might have already been permitted in some central office switches prior to June 1999), and local calls within one's own state and area code is also permitted as ten-digits since that date (if not earlier). > Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas (that's the name of the post office as > well as the exchange) The local telephone company for Texarkana TX/AR is no longer GT&E. When GTE was absorbed into Bell Atlantic's new Verizon in 2000, a good deal of Texas (including Texarkana TX and the Arkansas side as well) was spun-out of Verizon into a new telecom entity called "Valor". At that same time, all of GTE in Oklahoma and New Mexico was also spun out of Verizon into Valor as well. The 903 (Texas) side of Texarkana has been overlaid with area code 430, and thus has mandatory ten-digit local dialing for all calls within 903 and 430. The overlay officially became effective on April 20, 2003. Mandatory ten-digit local dialing within 903, as well as for all local calls between TX/903 and AR/870 took effect on February 15, 2003. Permissive ten-digit dialing in preparation for the overlay took effect on July 20, 2002 (if not already permissive earlier in some central office switches). The Arkansas side (area code 870, which had split from 501 back in 1997) still has seven-digit local dialing within the AR/870 side. However, since the TX/903 side is overlaid with 430, and all local calls to and from the Texas side have to be dialed with all ten-digits, I assume that Valor allows permissive ten-digit local dialing for local calls within the AR/870 side, most likely since July 20, 2002 (if not already permissive earlier in some central office switches). I doubt that a 1+ is permitted before any ten-digit dialed local calls though, whether originated in Texas or Arkansas. There are NO more "protected" central office codes in any of these area codes -- neither in KS/913 (which had 785 split off from it back in 1997) nor MO/816 (which had 660 split off from it back in 1992 as well); nor in 870 or 903/430. Central office codes can be "duplicated" with any of these area codes, even near the boundary, since ten-digits is now required for all local calls crossing the state and area code boundaries. > Coffeyville, Kansas, and South Coffeyville, Oklahoma I would *assume* that "protected" seven-digit local dialing is still available between the OK (918) and KS (620) sides. Many local telcos and state regulatory agencies still allow permissive seven-digit local dialing across area code (and state) boundaries in rural areas with smaller local calling areas, but even that isn't always the case though now-a-days! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think OK/KS allows 7-D in the Coffeyville situation. Bartlesville, OK is in the 'regional' directory which includes South Coffeyville (but _not_ C'ville itself) and when I was there last week on a couple occassions I spent a few minutes as my disposition permitted, looking at the regional phone book for clues of one kind or another. It said rather plainly 'for calls to points in southeast Kansas including Caney (literally across the _street_ from a tiny place called Copan, OK), Coffeyville, Independence, etc dial 1-620 and the number.' I was hardly in a position to ssy either way for sure I was so sick and confused the days I was there. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:35:17 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Mexico (Dial 1) ****************************** PAT: PLEASE DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thnx ****************************** Pat Townson said: > ... why was Canada arbitrarily included as part of the 'USA numbering > scheme' while Mexico was deliberatly excluded? The system back in the > 1950's was deliberatly designed, IMO, to include all (mostly) English > speakers and with certain other politics in mind, which was > unfortunate. The topic of Mexico has been brought up numerous times in the past in this group. Canada and the US have had close relations politically and with respect to business, culture, and telephone service. AT&T and GT&E had both been quite active in the development of Canada's telephone network. As for Mexico, AT&T had desired that Mexico become part of the North American Numbering Plan, and there was a period of time when a small part of Mexico was actually part of the NANP (country code +1) while the rest of Mexico was its own country code +52. It was actually *MEXICO* that chose NOT to be a part of the US/Canada telephone network. The northwestern Mexican border was really the only area in Mexico that truly was a part of the NANP DDD network, and their local and toll offices "homed" on AT&T toll offices based in the US, well into the 1970s (and possibly early 1980s). This northwestern Mexican border area was not Telefonos de Mexico but rather Telefonica Fronteriza, which was partially held by AT&T and Pacific Bell, and was reached by area code 903. Shortly before 1980, the Mexican Federal Government (which owned Tel Mex as a government monopoly) seized the partially US-held Telefonica Fronteriza in northwestern Mexico, and began to re-number the codes and re-home the switches to Mexico's numbering/dialing plan (under country code +52) and toll switching/routing network. AT&T removed 903 for access to the northwestern border, changing it temporarily to 70-6 based on the city codes beginning with '6' under country code +52, for those who did not have International Dialing (011+), so that they could be able to continue to dial to Mexico. Mexico City (which had always been Tel Mex) was temporarily accessible from the US (and Canada) as a pseudo area code 90-5, based on the fact that Mexico's city code was '5' under country code +52. But this "pseudo" access to northwestern Mexico (70-6) and Mexico City (90-5) from the US and Canada was discontinued by AT&T, MCI, Sprint (co-ordinated by Bellcore) in 1991, with 706 and 905 being reassigned within the US and Canada. (903 had already been taken back and subsequently reassigned to the split of 214 in northeastern Texas in 1990). With 1991, all calls to Mexico had to be dialed from the US and Canada as an International call, 011+ country code +52 and then the domestic number in Mexico. It wasn't AT&T that tried to keep Mexico out of the plan. AT&T had made numerous overtures to Mexico since the late 1950s and continuing forward for Mexico to join the North Aemrican DDD Network. When the ITU Country Code format was finalized in 1963, Mexico already had already decided that they wanted to be their own country code +52. And any previous attempt for any part of Mexico to be part of the US/Canada network (such as area code 903 for the northwestern border) was fought against by *MEXICO* themselves. About fifteen years ago, in the early 1990s, Mexico did think about the possibility of joining the North American Numbering Plan. Mexico and the North American (US and Canadian) telephone industry did look at this, to see if it could be feasible at the present time. However, both sides realized that the present capacity of numbering in the NANP wouldn't be able to satisfy Mexico's current and future numbering needs, as well as continue to satisfy the development of numbering in the original base of the US and Canada. Mexico decided that expansion of their *own* numbering and dialing plan (under country code +52) would be in both the US/Canada and Mexico's best interests and that is what has happened. It is probably better that way -- the vast bulk of traffic is between the US and Canada. While there is considerable traffic between the US and Mexico, it just isn't nearly as much as has always been between the US and Canada (even before customer dial capability). In the Caribbean, again, AT&T had hoped to include ALL of the Caribbean within area code 809 when that was "created" in 1958, created on paper, at least (as it would take YEARS before various parts of the Caribbean would eventually become customer dialable from the US and Canada). This "creation" of 809 took effect five years BEFORE the ITU came out with their country code format in 1963. But the French and Dutch held islands in the Caribbean also decided that they would prefer to be masters of their own numbering/dialing destiny, and chose to get their own ITU country codes rather than be part of area code 809 in Country Code +1. But there are some Spanish-speaking parts of the Caribbean that have been part of Area Code 809, or now their own unique area codes, within the NANP, Country Code +1. Puerto Rico (now area code 787 overlaid with area code 939), and the Dominican Republic (which retained 809, and is now overlaid with area code 829). Of course, Puerto Rico is politically and jurisdictionally a part of the US (although not a state), and the Dominican Republic has had GT&E's involvement there for many decades now. GTE's Codetel in the Dominican Republic is now part of Verizon. Even Puerto Rico Telephone Company has had involvement from GTE since the late 1990s, and is now associated with Verizon. Had Cuba not had Castro, it is quite possible that they too would have been part of Country Code +1, area code 809 (though now possibly split to a unique area code or area codes of its own). Prior to Castro, Cuba had close relations with the US as far as business and culture, and its telephone network was managed by ITT. But that all changed with Castro. When the ITU's first country code list was announced in 1963, Cuba was assigned its own country code +53. On the one hand, it might have been "nice" to have more countries to be included within Country Code +1. But some might argue that those countries would have to "cow-tow" to some degree to the US FCC and the Canadian CRTC, and not truly be their own masters of their own telephone numbering/dialing destiny. Also, while the cost and rates of calls between the US and Canada are mostly comparable to the rates for calls within each country (as long as one is on a good "discount" plan), the same is NOT true for calls from the US or Canada to the (non US) Caribbean islands which are still a part of the NANP. This is a regular complaint about the (so called) "809 scams". Unfortunately, the FCC (and CRTC) can't do too much about *THAT* except for informing the general public about being careful about dialing calls to certain area codes. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing they _could_ do now to alleviate any need for number (length) expansion forever would be to eliminate '1' as a country code and put this side of the globe on a somewhat more equal footing with everyone else by assigning (as an example) '14' to USA, '15' to Canada, '16' to Pacific Islands (fomerly in '1'), etc. Then everyone's (no longer needed because out of the new country code) area codes could be reassigned forever. Obviously they would never run out. That would at least even the score a little where the America-centric numbering system was concerned, IMO. Oh, I know there would have to be major reprogramming of some switches along the way, but what the hell, AT&T was always foisting off that reprogramming on the other countries for years and years was it not? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 7th March 2006 Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 07:51:30 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com Apologies ! You might not have received your newsletter yesterday. Some of the text in the email triggered spam filters at some companies which will have blocked the emails. Sorry about that ! To ensure that the newsletter arrives, please add dailydigest@cellular-news-mail.com to your email address book or ask your IT department to add it to their spam whitelist. [[ 3G ]] Simple 3G Phones For Japan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16399.php Japan's DoCoMo has announced that it has developed the third-generation (3G) FOMA SIMPURE series of basic and compact handsets for people who do not require highly sophisticated functions. The series has two models, SIMPURE L, supplied by LG Electron... HSDPA Launched in Bulgaria http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16401.php Mobiltel, mobilkom austria group-member, has launched the first HSDPA network in Bulgaria. The company thereby joins the world's first five network operators offering their customers the new 3G technology. In September 2005, Mobiltel announced the te... [[ Financial ]] AT&T Deal Seeks Growth Through Cingular http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16385.php The prospects of fully owning the faster growing Cingular Wireless business and gaining access to BellSouth's lucrative southeast market may have been the catalyst for AT&T's US$67 billion acquisition of the Baby Bell. ... Softbank Shares Rise On News May Buy Vodafone Japan Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16386.php If Softbank strikes a deal with Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI would likely face stiffer competition. Softbank's Son is known for driving down prices in markets his firm enters. For example, Softbank initially stomached large losses when promoting its... UPDATE: Research In Motion Surges After Settlement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16389.php Research In Motion shares climbed as much as 14% Monday as investors cheered as the company's settlement in a patent-infringement suit that threatened to shut down the popular BlackBerry wireless e-mail service. ... ATP Sues NTC For Trying To Force Other TDC Holders To Sell http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16390.php Danish pension fund ATP Monday said it will take legal action against private-equity company Nordic Telephone Co., or NTC, for seeking to force minority shareholders in Danish telecommunications operator TDC to sell their shares. ... Ministry: Sector needs US$19bn investment http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16393.php Colombia's telecoms sector will require investments of 43tn pesos (US$19.1bn) over the next 15 years if it is to grow into a tool that will allow other sectors to develop, communications minister Martha Pinto said in a statement. ... Analysis: After BellSouth, Is Anyone Left? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16394.php After a decade of dealmaking, the phone industry is running out of buyers and sellers. The latest deal, AT&T Inc.'s agreement on Sunday to buy BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion, would remove one of the few major targets left in the phone business. Bell... [[ Handsets ]] Just How Did Motorola Make the RAZR V3 So Thin? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16398.php In its latest Insight on Ultra-Slim phones, Strategy Analytics uncovered the secrets of the Motorola RAZR V3, comparing the thickness of the majority of ultra-slim clamshell phones. The success of the RAZR, and the growing trend by other vendors to i... Samsung Shows Off Windows Mobile Phone http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16403.php Samsung Electronics has shown off the world's first 8GB Hard Disk embedded smartphone. Samsung was the first to adopt a hard disk drive into mobile phones and has launched three models equipped with a hard disk drive; the world's first 1.5GB HDD embe... [[ Messaging ]] Movistar agrees to interconnect SMS with Nextel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16391.php Mexican mobile operator Movistar, owned by Spain's Telefonica Mviles, has agreed to interconnect its short messaging services (SMS) with trunking operator Nextel as ordered by Telecoms regulator Cofetel, local daily El Financiero reported. ... Britain's Reality TV Craze Fuels Text Message Voting http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16397.php I'm a text voter, get me out of here! The reality TV craze sweeping the UK has reached the mobile industry, according to M:Metrics' latest figures. The measurement firm's January Benchmark Survey found that 21.8% of British mobile subscribers (8.9 mi... Mobile365 Signs Premium SMS Deal in Taiwan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16400.php Mobile 365 says that it has successfully obtained full Premium SMS (PSMS) connectivity with three mobile operators in Taiwan. The cross-operator PSMS connectivity not only enables Mobile 365 customers to reach over 23 million mobile subscribers in Ta... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile TV in China Ready to Take Off http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16404.php Still in their infancy, mobile TV services in China are ready to take flight, reports In-Stat. Mobile TV subscribers in China will grow to 94 million by 2009, the high-tech market research firm forecasts, with 2007 being the year that the services ga... [[ Network Operators ]] Orange Launches Animal-Themed UK Tariff Structure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16384.php Orange, the mobile telecommunications arm of France Telecom, Monday launched a new marketing campaign in the UK contract market that links customer behavior with animal characteristics. ... [[ Offbeat ]] Vodafone Branded Guitars ? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16405.php Vodafone, as sponsor of the Rock in Rio - Lisbon Festival, is to install three countdown displays in the form of 'giant guitars' at a number of sites in Lisbon. The guitars, which will be installed starting this week on the 2nd Ring Road, at PraįĄ de... [[ Regulatory ]] Russian president signs caller pays principle bill into law http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16387.php Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle effective July 1, the government's press service said on Saturday. ... [[ Reports ]] Explosive Growth Continues for India's Mobile-Phone Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16396.php How fast is India's mobile-phone market growing? So fast that Indian wireless carriers added approximately 4.7 million new subscribers in January alone, a new high mark for mobile-phone service growth in the nation, according to iSuppli Corp. So fast... Industry Experts Predict Continued Growth in Mobile Technology http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16402.php Optimism reigned at yesterday's RBC Capital Markets' Mobility Evolution Conference in New York when institutional investors, wireless service and content providers, research analysts and wired/wireless advertisers predicted the past five years of 20 ... [[ Statistics ]] Indec: Mobile base grows 62.2% yoy http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16392.php Mobile operators in Argentina closed January 2006 with 22.7 million lines in service, up 62.2% compared to the 14.0 million subscribers recorded in January 2005, according to statistics bureau Indec. ... Russia's SMARTS user base hits 3 million as of Monday http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16395.php The subscriber base of Russian regional mobile operator SMARTS hit 3 million users as of now, the company said in a press release Monday. ... [[ Technology ]] AT&T CEO: Merger To Speed Next-Gen Network Technology http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16388.php AT&T Inc.'s merger with BellSouth Corp. should speed the adoption of next-generation technology integrating wireless and wireline networks, according to AT&T Chief Executive Edward Whitacre. ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Part of today's opening message from these folks is worth repeating: A spam-enabler speaks out: > You might not have received your newsletter yesterday. > Some of the text in the email triggered spam filters at some companies which > will have blocked the emails. > Sorry about that ! > To ensure that the newsletter arrives, please (do the gyrations and > contortions each day as explained in the opening statements.) If you did not receieve this newsletter yesterday, it is _your_ fault. Its never the fault of the one-celled organism which dumped a load of trash and garbage all over, forcing ISPs and company sysadmins to scramble to make efforts to protect their systems. If the ISP or company sysadmin had been on his toes, _he_ would have done it correctly. Whatever happened to the concept of blaming the problem on the person(s) who created the mess, and punishing them accordingly? I can remember the time, years ago, when we used to _expose_ (to sunlight) the guys who did that crap, giving their home phone numbers, their white-trash trailer park home addresses, their employment as telephone company 'marketing' reps [i.e. cold-calling guys in an office somewhere] their driver's records -- everything we could do to punish them and make them wish they had never heard of nor used computers. Then the original spam-enablers came along -- with tears in their eyes, oh this is so sad -- telling us we could not invade the privacy of the erk-jays, that the erk-jays might choose to sue _us_ for denying them _their_ service, invading _their_ privacy, and the more noble of the spam-enablers would keep insisting (as they pouted!) we have no right to tell others how to use their computer sites, etc. How times have changed! Pardon me while I go vomit, and try to get rid of the latest chest pains I am feeling. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 12:58:49 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T-BellSouth Deal May Lead to Cable Mergers USTelecom dailyLead March 7, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dfpwfDtutbrXztIVSl TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T-BellSouth deal may lead to cable mergers BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Deal makes AT&T an all-in-one provider * Microsoft takes under-the-radar approach to telecom * DT plans major network investment in '06 * Online players spend big to compete USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * The Trillion-Dollar Challenge Principles for Profitable Convergence TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * TiVo goes mobile with Verizon Wireless deal * Cingular launches video service * Comcast launches portal for Latinos Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dfpwfDtutbrXztIVSl ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Cops Using Cellphone Tracking ... Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 00:22:23 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC We've got a high profile (read: Pretty White Girl) case of murder/rape here in NYC. Telecom relevance: " The police said they have tracked Mr. Littlejohn's cellphone to the area around his home in South Jamaica, Queens, after he left the bar and, later that morning, to the part of southeast Brooklyn where the body was found. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/nyregion/07dead.html _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 01:11:24 -0500 [Please anonymize my email address as usual. Thanks.] Wes Leatherock wrote: > The Oklahoma City and Tulsa local calling areas are something like 75 > miles across east-west and north-south. There are no zones or other > charges associated with making calls in this local calling area. > I believe the Oklahoma City local calling area is the most extensive > in the U.S.A. The Atlanta area is not quite as large but serves more > telephones (exchange access arrangements or whatever they are called > now). > These are all flat rate service. I wonder what the exact figures are for these areas. Another contender for the title of largest calling area would be Hawai`i County, Hawai`i, a.k.a. "the Big Island". The entire 4028-square-mile island is a single flat-rate local calling area. It's a good two-hour drive between the two chief cities (Hilo on the east coast and Kailua-Kona on the west coast), but they're just a local call away from each other. Even if it isn't the *biggest* local calling area, it might well be the *tallest* (as distinct from highest) local zone. There are phone numbers listed for some of the telescope facilities at the summit of Mauna Kea, more than 13,000 feet above sea level. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: stevekl@panix.com (Steve Kl.) Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 13:24:38 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. In article , wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But that being the case, Lisa, why was > Canada arbitrarily included as part of the 'USA numbering scheme' > while Mexico was deliberatly excluded? The system back in the 1950's > was deliberatly designed, IMO, to include all (mostly) English > speakers and with certain other politics in mind, which was unfortunate. > PAT] In the 1970s, I specifically remember that Mexico was included on area code maps. It had 2 area codes, one was 905 and the other was 90-something (902?). Later on in the 80s though, Mexico got a international prefix and the two area codes it got assigned were reassigned to other places in Canada and the US. So, as it was originally conceived, it did cover North America north of Guatemala. Steve Kl. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: A Question About 'Dial 1' in USA Calling Date: 7 Mar 2006 07:33:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But that being the case, Lisa, why was > Canada arbitrarily included as part of the 'USA numbering scheme' > while Mexico was deliberatly excluded? The system back in the 1950's > was deliberatly designed, IMO, to include all (mostly) English > speakers and with certain other politics in mind, which was unfortunate. > PAT] I don't know the actual reason, but I suspect at the time that: 1) The US had considerably more trade and contact ties to Canada than to Mexico in terms of volume. That is, a lot more phone calls back and forth. 2) I suspect the telephone system of Canada was reasonably well developed and would continue to grow and modernize, particularly in the cities. (Certainly there was lots of very rural service, but there was as well in the U.S. They were focusing more on the high volume city calls and presumed operators would continue to manually set up rural calls). 3) I suspect the telephone system of Mexico, on the other hand, was fairly poor given Mexico was a fairly poor country, and probably would not proceed too fast in modernization or expansion. I suspect the ratios of telephones per person were much lower in Mexico than in Canada and not expected to improve much. 4) Going DDD required a considerable investment by local companies. They had to convert their exchanges to be unique, provide interfaces and higher capacity, etc. I suspect Canada was willing to do so as it would improve their internal long distance handling between their cities and towns. Perhaps Mexico was not willing to do make such improvements. Maybe its toll lines were on a delay-basis and it didn't want to invest to capacity to make them a demand-basis. It should be noted that some poor countries world wide didn't have _any_ international access at all until 1972--I recall reading a Bell System announcement about certain countries now being accessible that weren't before. 5) Eventually Mexico or Mexico City did get an area code, but it was pulled later on. Pat, I'm glad you're back. Stay in good health. Your writing seems as good as always. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Lisa, you may wish to also review the message from Anthony Belanga elsehwere in this issue [called 'Mexico'] for some further thoughts on this, and I hope you would agree with me that part of the problem was also the original DDD and IDDD founders were very American-centric ('the world revolves around the USA') people. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:47:31 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV >> LOS ANGELES -- A breakthrough in television advertising debuted >> without fanfare last spring as a brand-name box of crackers appeared >> on the CBS sitcom 'Yes, Dear' for about 20 seconds, seen but hardly >> noticed by millions of viewers. >> Unbeknownst to them, the image of Kellogg's Club Crackers had been >> digitally painted onto the top of a coffee table after the scene was >> filmed, launching the latest advance in a marketing practice known in >> the industry as product placement but derided by critics as 'stealth >> advertising.' > I think the "breakthrough" happened a lot earlier. I recall watching > what I seem to recall to be a Formula 1 race where a tire company logo > was 'painted' on the pavement, in front of the start line. The logo > disappeared after the race started. This was at least 3 years ago. Actually I'd bet it was the yellow first down line used in football telecasts that started it all. Once a marketing wiz noticed what was happening they starting coming up with all kinds of things to superimpose. I'm fairly certain those small ads on the backstop to the side of the view of the batter in major league base ball games is superimposed on a specially colored panel. It keeps changing, there are a LOT of different displays, I can see no lines from rotating panels, and at times with "special views" the area is blank. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 19:03:04 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power John Bachtel wrote: > In 1957 and 1958, after graduating from Kenmore High School, near > Buffalo, I was a turbine operator at Niagara Mohawk's Charles R. Huntley > Steam station in Tonawanda, on the Niagara River. We were still > operating units 25 hz 24, 25 and 26 and a reversable frequency changer. > Total cap. was abt. 200 MW, alongside 1000 MW of 60 Hz power in the > newer sections of the plant. Operation varied with the business > climate, from full bore 24/7 to daily startup/ shutdown, occasionally > with only one unit. Interesting work ... I got to do the throttle ups > and enjoy the synchrozation process during startup. It could get > dicey with our 30-50 year old equipment and synchroscope like a giant > clock up on the wall. Equally exciting were sudden power dumps as > happened during severe weather. Big building quake, followed by opening > of steam safety valves atop the adjoining boiler house. Who bought this 25Hz power? ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:05:00 -0500 Organization: Copyright (c) 2005 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org davidesan@gmail.com wrote: > My favorite recently was going to doctor's office. Our local Blue > Cross has just changed all the subscriber numbers from the Social > Security number to some random number. I hand over the new card so the > secretary can copy the new number down for her billing records. I tell > her what a good idea this is, how it avoids identity theft. (I did > skip my paranoia about the government checking out our medical > records). She agrees, and then asks me for my Social Security number > so they number my patient file. When I refuse, she got all huffy: How > can I fill out this form? The doctor won't be able to see you! I > suggested she make up a number, use that, or contact her supervisor > because if I was refused service I would contact Social Security and > they would have a nice discussion about legal uses of my SS number. > Needless to say, they found some way around the system. It would be a short discussion, resulting in the Social Security Administration telling the doctor's office that they were free to request your social security number and to refuse to give you service if you would not provide it. No, they don't need it. Yes, they can ask for it. You're free to find another doctor, and they're free to find other patients. See http://www.cpsr.org/issues/privacy/ssn-private . The rules are different when dealing with a government agency, or when potentially taxable income is involved. Jack Hamilton California <> Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit. <> Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:42:33 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 7, 2006 ******************************** Navigating the Web of Financial Reporting http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16977?11228 Two trends are combining to change the nature of financial reporting in the modern world. First, technology, particularly the internet, has altered the way that information is presented and communicated. Traders, stakeholders, institutions, analysts, agencies, governments and regulators alike all use the data available online as they go... BT, Alcatel Conclude 21st Century Network Contract http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16976?11228 BT and Alcatel have concluded contract negotiations for BT's next-generation network transformation programme, 21st Century Network (21CN). In a press release, Alcatel confirmed that it would provide its 7750 Service Routers and 5620 Service Aware Manager for BT's 21CN Metro node. Alcatel claims that its products provide 'service and... MobilTel Launches Bulgaria's First 3G Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16972?11228 Bulgaria's leading mobile operator has commercially launched the country's first W-CDMA network in Sofia, the capital. MobilTel plans to expand the coverage of its 3G network to the Black Sea cities of Varna and Burgas by mid-2006. As part of its promotional package, MobilTel offers a 50% discount on video-calling - its first 3G service... SMB/Branch Office Bundle Could be Worth Billions to Carriers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16970?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The Small Business (SMB)/ Branch Office Bundle, a converged network solution, may be worth billions of dollars in recurring revenue to telecom carriers in a few years, reports In-Stat. In-Stat primary research conducted during 2005 shows strong demand for a small office network service bundle, with over 80% of... Portugal Telecom Rejects Takeover Bid; 2005 Profit Hits US$780.7 mil. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16968?11228 Portugal Telecom's board has recommended shareholders to reject the US$12.8-billion takeover bid from Sonae, claiming that it undervalues the company. In a statement, Portugal Telecom said: 'Sonaecom's offer significantly understates the full value of Portugal Telecom, and SonaeCom's arguments on value are... CeBIT Show to Unveil New Range of Products http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16967?11228 FRANKFURT, Germany -- The annual CeBIT high-tech fair is set to show off a new range of advanced mobile phones, ultra-light laptops, powerful yet compact digital cameras and -- maybe -- Microsoft's latest secret project. Established names such as Intel and Samsung will vie for product buzz with newcomers seeking entry into the... TiVo to Expand TV Recording to Cell Phones http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16965?11228 SAN JOSE, Calif. -- TiVo subscribers will soon be able to program television recordings straight from cell phones using the Verizon Wireless network. An agreement with Verizon Wireless, to be announced Tuesday, expands on TiVo Inc.'s strategy to bring the digital video recording pioneer's capabilities beyond its set-top-boxes and... Nokia in US$190 million Deal To Supply Digital Networks to Saudi Arabian Company http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16963?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Nokia Corp. will supply digital networks and equipment for Saudi Arabia's Du, in a deal worth more than US$190 million, the Finnish company said Tuesday. Du, 50-percent owned by the Saudi government, holds the second national mobile license in the United Arab Emirates providing fixed line, TV and high speed... Sprint Nextel Subscribes to Fandango Mobile http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16960?11228 Sprint Nextel is the first carrier to use Fandango Mobile to take movie ticket purchases wireless. The wireless application was developed in conjunction with Crisp Wireless. The Fandango Mobile service enables users to purchase movie tickets through the Web browser on their wireless phone or PDA. Once tickets are purchased, virtual... Ofcom Hangs Up 'Silent' Auto-Dialer Calls http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16957?11228 U.K. telecom regulator Ofcom has ordered new, more stringent rules to clamp down on so-called "silent and abandoned" telephone calls generated by automatic dialers run by telemarketing organizations with overburdened call-center personnel. "Silent calls are a significant cause of inconvenience and anxiety for thousands of people every... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:57:34 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re; Long-Term AT&T Investors ****************************** PAT: PLEASE DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thnx ****************************** >> As of Friday, 3/3/2006 the value of the shares (of the remaining >> companies, ACR, T, BLS, CMCSA, LU, Q, VZ & VOD) was $118,188.12. > You forgot NCR and AV, by the way. I assume that NCR is for National Cash Register, AV is for Avaya, VZ is for Verizon, Q is for Qwest, BLS is for BellSouth, and LU is for Lucent. (Am I correct?) But, pray tell, what do the stock codes ACR, T, CMCSA, VOD stand for? And if they aren't "obvious" entities, how would they relate to the (old) AT&T "Bell System"? Also, AT&T used to own a part of Bell Canada, which is now part of Bell Canada Enterprises. I don't know if Nortel is now an entity totally separate from Bell Canada (in the way that Lucent is now separate from AT&T), but Nortel was once Northern Electric, and also a "part" of the "Bell System" in a way. Both Bell Canada (partially owned by AT&T) and Western Electric (totally owned by AT&T) were part owned Northern Electric back then. Southern New England Telephone Company (for most of Connecticut) was only partially owned by AT&T, and became a separate entity altogather with 1984. But in 1997, SBC (which had just taken over Pacific Telesis' Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell) took over SNET. And now, SBC has been renamed "at&t" with their purchase of AT&T. But I think that Cincinnati Bell is still a separate entity altogather. Prior to 1984, AT&T only partially held Cincinnati Bell, but with 1984, it became a totally separate company of its own. But it was still a "part" of the old Bell System, to some degree. So, shouldn't Nortel, Bell Canada Enterprises, and Cincinnati Bell also be included as "leftovers" in what had once been the old AT&T "Bell System" as well? ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:27:24 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com John McHarry wrote: > I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property > that can be sold. I doubt you bought it from JSOL or have a deed of > gift. I do believe you own the web site. If you sold the web site, it > would make a mess not to include a transference of the moderation, so > maybe it doesn't much matter. > Perhaps you could get the Telephone Pioneers interested in taking over > the operation. That would give it a pseudo immortality. TD is the > Internet autobiography of telecom after all. I'll be happy to take over the web site and the mailing list/newsgroup moderation if Pat becomes unable to. That's essentially how I started moderating rec.radio.broadcasting: I volunteered after Bill Pfeiffer died. Having said that, don't go anywhere soon, Pat, or I might have to drive out to Kansas and give you a good swift kick in the pants. :) > On the other hand, I would like to find someone who is willing and > will commit to maintaining the Digest and newsgroup in the style I > have established, take care of the archives, or improve on their > filing, and in geneal work with the same zeal I have shown here. Here I am. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: jtaylor Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 09:58:53 -0400 Organization: MCI Canada News Reader Service John McHarry wrote in message news:telecom25.91.19@telecom-digest.org: > I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property > that can be sold. Control, absent legislation to the contrary, equals posession, and all the rights and privileges associated with it. If PT is the only one who can decide who is moderator, then that is something that he can decide to sell, should he so choose. Who can prevent him? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, some of you newcomers who started reading this Digest since 1993 do not recall -- maybe never even heard of -- the great battle that year over comp.dcom.telecom. There were some people then -- they are still around today -- who do not care for my moderation of c.d.t, thus they began c.d.t.t. as a work around. They were going to have an election for a new moderator and vote for someone else. But one or more of the 'Usenet authorities' (at least at that time it was David Lawrence ['tale'] and Gene Spafford told them they could not do it; the technical reason is because c.d.t. is not actually a Usenet newsgroup. Its origin was as an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects) newsgroup which had been split off from HumanNets and was merely _ported_ into Usenet each day. Therefore the rules which apply to Usenet did not apply to c.d.t. which was not Usenet to start with. And even today, I merely send the Digest over to Usenet as part of the distribution scheme; Usenet is _not_ the reason for my existence. It may sound like splitting hairs, but TELECOM Digest is an independent thing on its own, having been birthed by Bitnet in 1981 and originally just a humble, quite small, text-only mailing list. Usenet people said 'let us look at it'; I started sending it there, and still do, but they do not _own_ it. And that is what makes the difference, and to a large extent makes TELECOM Digest unique on the net. Usenet has looked at it now for so long, they perhaps feel they own it, but they do not. People who read the Usenet-version of this Digest (yes, there are minor differences) will note they are only sent the 'messages' (that is, the dozen or so individual items each day between the top group of eighty dashes and the bottom group of same; never the top header file nor the boilerplate message at the end. They do not get the colorful 'TELECOM Digest' logo nor my picture, nor the links to previous issues, etc which appear on the top and bottom of the 'web version'. I received TELECOM Digest when Jon Solomon _gave it to me_ in the middle 1980's. Prior to him _giving it to me_ I wrote articles here like most of you. I took/still take Jon Solomon's trust in me and my work quite seriously. The person _I_ select (after due diligence and [I would hope] some other consideration) will be at the very least as knoledgeable and concerned about telecom as I have been over the years. Yes, I could be an asshole, highest spam-bidder with the fattest wallet and most consideration takes all ... but no, I won't be, and I hope you all take my word on that. I know some of you consider me an asshole anyway, which is your right, but I hope to whatever extent you consider me to be an asshole, it will _not_ be because I sold the newsgroup down the river. I hope that whomever takes it over from me will consider me worthy to occassionally write articles for it, just as before. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 10:11:20 -0500 From: tonyfredw@.SYNTAX-ERROR Subject: Hello I Need Help Please [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let us see what comes next in our mailbox today. Ah, a fourteen year old boy, he must be curious about how telephones work or telecom and want some expert advice. PAT] Good Day: I am Tony Fred Williams I am 14 years old I live in Manchester(UK) before my father died, now I live with my mother in Scotland. my father is from Manchester (UK) and my mother is from Scotland. my late father Mr. Fred Williams was a Contractor in Manchester(UK) before he died in a car accident last year July 25th 2005. he left Fifty Million Pounds in his account before he died. The 50 Million is in (First Union National Bank UK) I have been trying to collect the money from (First Union National Bank UK) but the MD CEO told me to go and look for some body that is honest and old enough to help me collect the money. I could have told my mother to assist me to collect the 50 Million but my mother and father were devourced before my father died and my father told me not to have anything to do with my mother I don't even want her to know because what my father told me before he died was true, now that I stay with my mother in Scotland she don't even have time for me all she do is to take hard drugs and to bring men to the house and she also hit me all the time. I don't want to have anything to do with her, I just want some body that is old enough and honest to help me collect the 50 Million from the bank as I am too young to take care of 50 Million. Please I need your help if you can assist me to collect the 50 Million from the bank I will give you 40% and take 60%. I have all documentation on my name you can confirm from the bank. i am the Next of Kin to my late father Mr. Fred Williams. The MD CEO (First Union National Bank UK) told me to look for some body that is honest and old enough so that he can send the 50Million to the person's account immediately. If you can help me i will contact the MD CEO (First Union National Bank UK) and tell him that i have found a honest person who want to help me collect the 50 Million, so when you contact him he will know it is me that sent you to contact him. I will give you is contact so that you can contact him to enable him send the 50 Million to your provided account immediately Please help me. I will be waiting for your urgent reply so I can give you the contact of the bank and send you the last statement of account of my late father and I will also send you my picture and my birth certificate. Please Help me reply back on my private email: tonyfredw@mail.md so I can send you all information you need. Best Regards, Tony Fred Williams Si queres tu casilla de mail y tu pagina WEB gratis... no lo dudes: http://www.eltimon.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now this is the first time I have ever seen this particular variety of the scam. And what that says under his name (appears to be a standard boiler-plate message advertising eltimon.com (whatever that is) is a mystery to me. These Nigerians apparently have something to float everyone's boat, from deposed dictators and their widows, through fine Christian ladies seeking assistance and now fourteeen year old adolescent boys asking older guys to help them via some kind of vicarious thrills. Name your flavor and do you want the lights on or the lights off? Geeze, I can remember when 14 year old guys would write here to ask phreaking and hacking questions, or when they wanted serious know- ledge about some aspect or another of the phone system. I never thought the net would be reduced to asking for assistance in getting rid of millions of dollars. PAT] ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:34:02 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [...] > On the other hand, I would like to find someone who is willing and > will commit to maintaining the Digest and newsgroup in the style I > have established, take care of the archives, or improve on their > filing, and in geneal work with the same zeal I have shown here. This is not a pleasant topic, but it's better to talk about it now rather than later. Pat, you have set the bar very high during your years as moderator, and there aren't many people at all whom I would trust to take over. At the top of the list is John Levine. Lisa Hancock seems like a good possibility. What about Monty Solomon? Is this a good topic for discussion now? -- George Mitchell [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Monty Solomon is just a writer; a person who collects and puts together news reports from various sources, I doubt he would be interested. Sure, talk about it whenever you wish. My dilemma is similar to yours: anyone who has nothing better to do but sit and read this ouvre all day long is not someone _I_ would want as Editor, either. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 07:25:40 -0800 (PST) From: Tom Singleton Subject: Digest Directions > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words, but I do > not think I will be doing it much longer. A few months, perhaps, and > maybe someone _responsible and trustworthy_ will take it over. I know > I have to find some permanent person for it soon; it worries me a lot > to think of incidents like last week and it just vanishes with no > warning. That would really be amazing if someone offered to buy the > Digest/web URL from me. PAT] Hi Pat, First, I wish you a full and speedy recovery, and many continued happy years. The Digest will not be the same without you, from any point of view. On the positive, your years of experience, interesting stories from the telecom past, and overall care and concern to prepare and present telecom information do not appear to be duplicatable from within our ranks. From that aspect, at best I suspect that the Digest will be a shell of it's former self, and most likely die after a while. We all will miss it. On the other hand, I doubt many will miss the unrelated and never-ending, one-sided, pseudo-political forum you continue to force us to endure in order to see the good stuff buried within. I for one will NOT miss your oh-poor-me David v. Goliath whinings against everything from business to cops to government to courts to cities to whatever has ever 'wronged' you, always without objective and reasonable information from the "other side" du jour. If the Digest survives, the LACK of those sorts of items will most likely be your most enduring epitaph. Good health. Hang in there. Ken Hoehn [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (Sticking out tongue, making a passing gas-like sound at you). I see you are no good for your promises, either. You promised me -- assured me -- you were never going to read nor offer any support here ever again after your last hissy fit here a couple years ago. But here you are again. You are _not_ being forced to read anything here, Ken. Why don't you have one of the guys help you get a working filter on your computer? Set it to block everything between "TELECOM Digest Editor's Note:" and "PAT". Then your virgin and undefiled eyes will not be subject to viewing/hearing truths you do not undestand nor want to deal with. You are welcome! PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #92 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 8 13:29:09 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 169221535B; Wed, 8 Mar 2006 13:29:08 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #93 Message-Id: <20060308182908.169221535B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 13:29:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,HOT_NASTY,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Mar 2006 13:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 93 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Daily News Update March 8, 2006 (telecom-direct daily) Citi-Bank Blocks Some Debit Card Use Abroad (Monty Solomon) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (John McHarry) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Jack Hamilton) Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV (Robert Bonomi) Re: Digest Directions (Steven Lichter) Re: Mexico (Dial 1) (Bob Goudreau) Re: Mexico (Dial 1) (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (John Levine) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Lisa Hancock) Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number (Touch Tone Tommy) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Garrett Wollman) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Ernie Klein) Re: Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: Pat in (Lisa Hancock) Spammer Asks to be Allowed to Rejoin Net Community (Ryan Pitylak) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 11:39:27 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Wednesday, March 8, 2006 ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 8, 2006 ******************************** KGHM to Acquire TDC's 19.6% Polkomtel Stake http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16994?11228 Polish copper conglomerate KGHM expects to purchase a further 19.61% stake in Poland's number-three cellco, Polkomtel, from Denmark's TDC. Last month, the Danish telecoms group offered its entire stake in the mobile operator for 214.04 euro per share to other Polkomtel shareholders, who have the right of first refusal on TDC-owned... Telecom Italia 2005 Revenue Up; Asset Sale Boosts Profit by 77% http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16993?11228 Italy's dominant telecoms group has announced a 77% rise in net profit, buoyed by the sale of TIM Hellas (Greece) and TIM Peru. In a statement yesterday, the company said that full-year 2005 net profit closed at 3.22 billion euro (US$3.83 billion), compared to 1.82 billion euro for... Building a Better Solar Cell http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/16992?11228 One of the biggest complaints people have about mobile devices, including cell phones and notebook computers, is a lack of adequate operating time. Excessive battery weight is another often-heard gripe. Both of these problems could be alleviated, perhaps even solved, through the use of solar cell technology. Unfortunately,... Nokia: T-Mobile To Launch High-Speed Data Network at CeBIT fair in Germany http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16988?11228 HELSINKI, Finland --Germany's T-Mobile International AG will launch Nokia's high-speed network in Germany on March 9 to coincide with the opening of the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, the Finnish company said Tuesday. Nokia Corp.'s high-speed downlink data packet access, or HSDPA, networks -- with initial speeds of 1-2... Mexico's Telmex, Spain's Telefonica Among Six Firms Considering Bid for Colombia Telecom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16985?11228 BOGOTA, Colombia -- Mexico's Telefonos de Mexico SA is considering a bid for Colombia's biggest phone company, almost six months after the government nixed a closed-door deal with the Mexican telecom to privatize the state-run operator. Telmex was one of six companies to meet a Monday deadline to buy a bidding form to participate... Will AT&T Become Ma Video? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16984?11228 With cable franchises, content buying power, and a wireless powerhouse, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - message board) will significantly add to its video services potential with its $67 billion bid to buy BellSouth Corp. (NYSE: BLS - message board). (See Ma Bell Is Back!.) First, consider a pile of local video franchises. For years, BellSouth... Meshing the Plano Police http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/16982?11228 For a glimpse at how WiMAX might be used in the United States, take a look at what's happening in the Dallas suburb of Plano. The Texas city has decided to use a wireless mesh network for city police communications that will use wireless backhaul. The system is being built out by Motorola, which is using its Motomesh multi-radio... BT Final Four Finally Get 21CN Contracts http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/16980?11228 BT said it finally signed contracts with the last four of the eight preferred suppliers for its vaunted $17.4 billion 21st Century Network (21CN) next-generation network (NGN), giving no new explanation for the months-long delay in signing the pacts with Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu. In a canned statement Paul Reynolds, BT... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:40:13 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Citibank Blocks Some Debit-Card Use Abroad By EILEEN ALT POWELL AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Citibank said Wednesday it has blocked the use of some of its PIN-based debit cards after detecting fraudulent cash withdrawals in three countries. The bank, the retail arm of the nation's largest financial institution, Citigroup Inc. of New York, said the debit-card information apparently was obtained by thieves in "a third-party business' information breach" last year. Citibank did not name the merchant or processing firm, but industry officials familiar with the case said the breach occurred in the United States. Citibank said it began monitoring affected accounts after the breach "and in mid-February, we detected several hundred fraudulent cash withdrawals in three countries." The industry officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the three countries were Britain, Canada and Russia. The bank said it blocked transactions on cards that may have been compromised in the breach after the fraud was detected. Debit cards often require the use of PINs, or personal identification numbers, for security. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=56481434 ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:25:12 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 02:52:31 +0000, John McHarry wrote: > I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property > that can be sold. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, maybe a mailing list is property > which can be sold, or maybe it is not ... I do know that several years > ago -- when a company called 'TOPICA' was quite active (remember them, > anyone?) Topica management offered me one dollar per each name on my > mailing list... I wasn't thinking about it that way, but now I think you are right. The list can be sold. As a matter of fact, I knew somebody who did sell an email list. He was producing a rather specialized newsletter that had paid subscribers. > If PT is the only one who can decide who is moderator, then that is > something that he can decide to sell, should he so choose. Who can > prevent him? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, some of you newcomers who > started reading this Digest since 1993 do not recall -- maybe never > even heard of -- the great battle that year over comp.dcom.telecom. > There were some people then -- they are still around today -- who do > not care for my moderation of c.d.t, thus they began c.d.t.t. as a > work around. They were going to have an election for a new moderator > and vote for someone else. But one or more of the 'Usenet authorities' > (at least at that time it was David Lawrence ['tale'] and Gene > Spafford told them they could not do it; the technical reason is > because c.d.t. is not actually a Usenet newsgroup. Its origin was as > an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects) newsgroup which had been split > off from HumanNets and was merely _ported_ into Usenet each > day. Therefore the rules which apply to Usenet did not apply to c.d.t. I think that is what I was forgetting when I made my initial comment. I have pulled TD off Usenet for years, although I was a subscriber before that. Strangely, the main reason I use the Usenet mirror is that I read both groups, and have since the beginnings of cdtt. I don't remember, or was never aware of, the fight, but I do recall they wanted a newsgroup that was more focused on the technology of telecom, which they are. cdt is more focused on the history and sociology of the field. I enjoy both. I don't know who, if anybody moderates cdtt these days, but it has gone quiet enough it could easily be merged back into cdt. ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:46:44 -0500 Organization: Copyright (c) 2005 by Jack Hamilton. Reproduction without attribution, and archiving without permission, are not allowed. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, some of you newcomers who > started reading this Digest since 1993 do not recall -- maybe never > even heard of -- the great battle that year over comp.dcom.telecom. > There were some people then -- they are still around today -- who do > not care for my moderation of c.d.t, thus they began c.d.t.t. as a > work around. They were going to have an election for a new moderator > and vote for someone else. But one or more of the 'Usenet authorities' > (at least at that time it was David Lawrence ['tale'] and Gene > Spafford told them they could not do it; the technical reason is > because c.d.t. is not actually a Usenet newsgroup. That's not quite my recollection. The discussion on the moderator's mailing list said, basically, that there was not (and as far as I know still is not) any mechanism to call for a vote to replace a moderator. Therefore such an election could not take place. No moderators were in favor of creating such a mechanism. Dissidents were free to create their own group if they didn't like an existing group (comp.dcom.telecom.tech as an alternative to comp.dcom.telecom; misc.health.aids as an alternative to sci.med.aids, of which I was then a co-moderator). Jack Hamilton California <> Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit. <> Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, that is true also (about no mechanism in place to handle it); they did not quite know what to do with me. I was not voted 'in'; therefore could not be voted 'out'; I was just doing my thing and they could either read it or reject it. But there was also that sticky problem of what to do about 'newsgroups' which were never really part of the original Usenet News scheme to begin with, such as telecom. So many of these names in the past have been used interchangeably, i.e. 'Usenet', 'internet', 'Internet', 'the Web', and so forth. Just like the (now rarely used) 'Gopher', 'Archie', 'Veronica', 'Telnet' 'mail', 'Mail', 'mailx', 'elm', 'FTP', and many others, they are all _transport mechanisms_ which do a lot the same thing: copy data and information from one site to another site, but they are separate and distinct functions. Quite a few years ago, someone once asked me 'how does Usenet work'? And I said what is certainly an over simplification and has been changed some since I said it: "Usenet is like a big mailbox with universal read/write priviledges. Everyone can write to it, everyone can read from it, but otherwise the contents move around a lot like any other mail, but instead of it being chmod the owner only; it is chmod everyone." Then too, as we know there can be but one _name_ per newsgroup; they have to be _unique_; there can be only _one_ comp.dcom.telecom and it was (still is, perhaps?) that choice bit of real-estate which many of them desired in 1993. Again, I am reminded of the sale of WNIB: it was parked smack-dab in the middle of the spectrum, at 96.9 and 97.1 FM from a time when the space was so wide open. Sonia and Bill Florian paid _nothing_ for a license to be there, and virtually nothing for the transmitter. When the FM band got so full and busy in Chicago there was not a single vacancy anywhere, people were willing to kill to get those frequency allocations. The purchasers did not care about classical music or anything else; all they wanted was _admission_ to the FM spectrum in a good, juicy spot. They agreed that $165 million was a good price to pay Sonia and Bill for 'permission to take over their spot on a crowded spectrum. Imagine an obscene profit like that! A license which cost the paperwork effort to apply for in the late 1950's, a transmitter which cost a few grand to install and maintain over the years, payroll, etc. WNIB went on the air for less than ten thousand dollars in the late 1950's; Sonia and Bill walked out with $165 _million_ dollars at the time of the sale, that was how badly that 96.9 - 97.1 FM spot was wanted. The new owners said to hell with Bach and Beethoven, we want the right to oscillate at 97 megahertz, that's all. Now comes late 1970's and early 1980's: The newsgroup 'arpa.telecom' did just fine. Comes the re-organizaton or 'great renaming' as it was called in the middle 1980's, and 'arpa.telecom' became 'comp.dcom.telecom' but since it came over from ARPA rather than being an entirely created by Usenet thing (they merely assigned us a name is all for technical reasons) and everyone was happy. I guess it never occurred to folks that there might some day be a fight over the _root itself_ and here is this dude, Townson, squatting daintily over the root, telecom, refusing to give up his squat pot, and no legal way to evict him. And Bill Pfieffer, in one of his communications with me in 1996 (he passed on in 1999) was like this: "Whatever you do, make it work right; the way this shakes out is the way things are going to be for many, many years. You best not give up control of the 'root' telecom. If you do, you'll never see it again." Of course, just as the internet 'fathers' never suspected back in the 1980's nor early 90's how things would 'shake out' over the decade to follow, neither did _I_ expect to become a decrepit, mostly feeble and bitter old man in a decade either. Nor did Sonia Florian come close to imagining she would walk out of WNIB $165 million richer than she walked in. I would never even claim to come close to _their_ stature nor anywhere close to the stature of the men and women who have made the internet what it is (in good times, bad times?) today. That would be the height of dillusions of grandeur on my part if I did. But when the time comes for a transiion here, I do want to be fair about it, and hope people will trust me in that way. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:16:57 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , DLR wrote: >> I think the "breakthrough" happened a lot earlier. I recall watching >> what I seem to recall to be a Formula 1 race where a tire company logo >> was 'painted' on the pavement, in front of the start line. The logo >> disappeared after the race started. This was at least 3 years ago. > Actually I'd bet it was the yellow first down line used in football > telecasts that started it all. Once a marketing wiz noticed what was > happening they starting coming up with all kinds of things to > superimpose. I'm fairly certain those small ads on the backstop to the > side of the view of the batter in major league base ball games is > superimposed on a specially colored panel. It keeps changing, there > are a LOT of different displays, I can see no lines from rotating > panels, and at times with "special views" the area is blank. The ads on the backstop -- also at tennis court-side, and other similar places -- have been around for a _long_ time. The technology employed was _commercially_ deployed back in the mid 1960s for U.S. television. known as 'chroma-key', you could use it to drop in a 'replacement' image for anything that was in the scene of a particular color. Usually, the gear was set to trigger on a fairly narrow range of blue. Blue was the commonly-used color because it was not a component of 'flesh tones'. To make the insert of the replacement image 'believable', the camera that provided the original scene needed to hold a fixed view of that scene. You know "something's funny" when, for example, one part of the image zooms in, while another part _doesn't_. Note: The original chroma-key technology was pure analog, some early hardware was employing vacuum tubes. It was only a little more complex than the circuitry in the basic 'special effects generator' used for "split-screen" "corner inserts", etc. In fact, it shared most of the circuitry with the special-effects generator. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Digest Directions Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 02:39:09 GMT Tom Singleton wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words, but I do >> not think I will be doing it much longer. A few months, perhaps, and >> maybe someone _responsible and trustworthy_ will take it over. I know >> I have to find some permanent person for it soon; it worries me a lot >> to think of incidents like last week and it just vanishes with no >> warning. That would really be amazing if someone offered to buy the >> Digest/web URL from me. PAT] > Hi Pat, > First, I wish you a full and speedy recovery, and many continued happy > years. > The Digest will not be the same without you, from any point of view. > On the positive, your years of experience, interesting stories from > the telecom past, and overall care and concern to prepare and present > telecom information do not appear to be duplicatable from within our > ranks. From that aspect, at best I suspect that the Digest will be a > shell of it's former self, and most likely die after a while. We all > will miss it. > On the other hand, I doubt many will miss the unrelated and > never-ending, one-sided, pseudo-political forum you continue to force > us to endure in order to see the good stuff buried within. I for one > will NOT miss your oh-poor-me David v. Goliath whinings against > everything from business to cops to government to courts to cities to > whatever has ever 'wronged' you, always without objective and > reasonable information from the "other side" du jour. If the Digest > survives, the LACK of those sorts of items will most likely be your > most enduring epitaph. > Good health. Hang in there. > Ken Hoehn > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (Sticking out tongue, making a > passing 'gas'-like sound at you). I see you are no good for your > promises, either. You promised me -- assured me -- you were never > going to read nor offer any support here ever again after your last > hissy fit here a couple years ago. But here you are again. You are > _not_ being forced to read anything here, Ken. Why don't you have > one of the guys help you get a working filter on your computer? Set > it to block everything between "TELECOM Digest Editor's Note:" and > "PAT". Then your virgin and undefiled eyes will not be subject to > viewing/hearing truths you do not undestand nor want to deal > with. You are welcome! PAT] I can remember many years ago, Pat took on GTE, when I was reporting fire data from Southern California and I sent out a company private number with the posting. Some friends of mine that are still with Verizon say they still hear about it. Got my e-mail access with the company cut off, but still had my own. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Mexico (Dial 1) Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 23:07:19 -0500 [Please anonymize me as always. Thanks.] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing they _could_ do now to > alleviate any need for number (length) expansion forever would be to > eliminate '1' as a country code and put this side of the globe on a > somewhat more equal footing with everyone else by assigning (as an > example) '14' to USA, '15' to Canada, '16' to Pacific Islands (fomerly > in '1'), etc. Then everyone's (no longer needed because out of the new > country code) area codes could be reassigned forever. Obviously they > would never run out. That would at least even the score a little where > the America-centric numbering system was concerned, IMO. Oh, I know > there would have to be major reprogramming of some switches along the > way, but what the hell, AT&T was always foisting off that > reprogramming on the other countries for years and years was it not? PAT] Pat, I'm afraid that the numbers simply don't work for your idea. The NANPA website reports 328 area codes (and special access codes) are currently assigned. They break down as follows: 24 For Canada (23 geographic, 1 SAC [NPA 600]) 18 For other NANP nations (in Caribbean and Atlantic) 8 Multinational SACs (NPAs 900, 700, 800, etc.) 278 For USA The 278 USA NPAs can be further broken down as: 1 US-only SAC (NPA 710) 2 For US territories in Caribbean (Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands) 3 For US territories in Pacific (Guam, American Samoa, N. Marianas) 272 For geographic NPAs in the 50 states and District of Columbia So, to address the specifics of your suggestion: 1) What would be the point of a separate country code for the Pacific islands currently in +1? Those three territories have only a handful of people and their departure from the USA's putative new country code would free up a whopping total of *three* NPAs. Even if you also exiled Hawaii to this new Pacific country code, that would only bring the total up to 4 reclaimed codes. Besides, the entire point of those territories joining the NANP over the past decade was to better integrate them into US calling plans and economy. For instance, my VoIP service provides me unlimited free calling to the *entire* USA, including *all* its territories (now that American Samoa has joined the NANP), not to mention all of Canada. 2) Even splitting Canada and the other NANP nations out into separate country codes would provide very little NPA relief. The US would still need the 8 SACs, so we would require a total of 286 NPAs to serve just the US, compared to the current 328 NPAs that serve the entire NANP. I.e., you'd still need 88 percent of the area codes that currently exist. This is hardly surprising, since the US accounts for close to 88 percent of the NANP's population. The NANP is so "US-centric" simply because the area it serves happens to be US-centric when you count people and phone lines. It's not all that different from the other single-digit country code (+7); most of the people and phone lines in +7 are located in Russia, with relatively few in Kazakhstan. 3) What problem are you trying to solve, exactly? It's not the case that the NANP is close to exhausting its area codes anyway -- NANPA projects an exhaust date of 2035. Even that may be premature given the way that 1K block pooling has dramatically slowed the consumption of NPAs in recent years. I suppose that reclaiming those 12 percent of the NPAs that are not used by the US would push the exhaust date out another few years, but if you're going to posit a scenario in which the US alone is going to chew through 300+ new area codes, adding another 42 reclaimed codes to the pot is hardly going to "alleviate any need for number (length) expansion FOREVER". Bob Goudreau Cary, NC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It would never, ever work out that the USA gained that many more area codes (as you point out, maybe a dozen or so) [unlesss you further split the USA into two 'county codes', lets call them eastern-USA and western-USA, '13' and '14' perhaps,] while all the 'others' gained such an abundance of codes they would never, ever run out. What _would_ happen would you would have a numbering scheme which 'looked more like' the rest of the world, with each country having its own block of numbers. It would give the whole thing a more consistent appearance. It would partially or mostly remove the appearance of the USA-centric nature of the phone system. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Mexico (Dial 1) Date: 8 Mar 2006 07:40:35 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: > But the French and Dutch held islands in the Caribbean also decided that > they would prefer to be masters of their own numbering/dialing destiny, > and chose to get their own ITU country codes rather than be part of > area code 809 in Country Code +1. There's a tiny island within Canada near Newfoundland, St. Pierre/Miquelon, that is part of France and is reached by dialing international codes. I suppose keeping this island under France instead of Canada is a matter of nationalistic pride, but I suspect the overall administrative costs of running an island like that as a separate country are enormous. ------------------------------ Date: 8 Mar 2006 08:16:27 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) >> Some of the places where cross-area code 7-digit was permitted, and >> may still be, were local calls in the greater Kansas City area (816 >> in Missouri and 913 in Kansas) U.S. phone companies ended "protected" prefixes several years ago. That was the arrangement near the edge of an area code that let you dial local calls with 7D into another area code, by reserving the prefix in both area codes. Canada still had this arrangement until I think last year, notably in the Ottawa / Hull area which is partly in 613, partly in 819. They're also ending protected codes so people in Ottawa now have to dial all ten digits to Hull and vice versa. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And did you know that through the 1960's and into the 1970's, prefixes were not duplicated in adjacent area codes/states. For example, since Hammond/Whiting, IN (219 but exactly on the state line with Illinois and Chicago) since there was 219-931, 219-932, 219-933, 219-659 there were NOT any 931,932,933, 659 exchanges in area 312. I guess there was concern about possible confusion. I remember the first of those exchanges to get duplicated 'on the other side' was 659; 312-659 was intended for Cellular One in the earliest cell phone days of 1982-83. 219-659 on the other hand had been Whiting, IN since it was cut to dial in the 1960's. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) Date: 8 Mar 2006 07:52:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com For you geography fans out there: Just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing procedures between such very close small border towns of: Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick Pembina, North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba Sweetgrass, Montana and Coutts, Alberta Thomas Falls, Montana and Burke Idaho I randomly picked off towns on the map that closest to the border. Are dialing instructions for towns available on the web now? Thanks. [public replies, please} ------------------------------ From: Touch Tone Tommy Subject: Re: Bogus! The Container Store Wants Your Phone Number Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 21:31:33 -0800 Organization: Acme Telephone Works Reply-To: touch_tone_tommyNOSPAM@yahoo.com On Mon, 06 Mar 2006 23:23:20 -0000, zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) wrote: > Ron Chapman wrote: >> Fortunately she accepted without question my knee-jerk "No, thank you" >> response to her request for my phone number. But she had to plug >> something in; she plugged in all 1s. > Usually being in California, I'll give 410-555-xxxx, where xxxx is > random :-). The time/temp numbers were good, too. 410-555-0020 or 0002 is the milliwatt test tone. Always useful when someone needs your number >> Shades of the old Radio Shack days, when you couldn't buy a 30 cent >> battery without giving up your family tree and medical history. > I always liked "1600 S Beach St, Ft Worth Tx." If the clerk/manager > was on top of things, they recognised the address of Tandy > corp. headquarters. Not as much fun when Tandy moved to "1 Tandy > Plaza". > z! ------------------------------ From: wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 22:02:11 +0000 (UTC) Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: > I assume that NCR is for National Cash Register, AV is for Avaya, VZ > is for Verizon, Q is for Qwest, BLS is for BellSouth, and LU is for > Lucent. (Am I correct?) Yes. > But, pray tell, what do the stock codes ACR, T, CMCSA, VOD stand for? > And if they aren't "obvious" entities, how would they relate to the > (old) AT&T "Bell System"? AGR is Agere Systems, a spin-off from Avaya, which was a spin-off of Lucent. Agere is the business that used to be "AT&T Microelectronics" many years ago, and made things like microprocessors and D-to-A converters. T is of course AT&T itself. CMCSA is Comcast, a descendant of AT&T Broadband. VOD is Vodafone Airtouch plc, the mutant offspring of Pacific Telesis and Racal. (The Web page I started this thread with goes through the whole history.) > Also, AT&T used to own a part of Bell Canada, which is now part of > Bell Canada Enterprises. AT&T's interest in BCE was sold, rather than being distributed to AT&T shareholders, so an AT&T shareholder never received BCE (or NT) stock. Likewise SNET and Cinti Bell. When one company only has an investment in another company, without control, that's usually how it's done. For a majority-owned and controlled subsidiary, there are tax benefits to spinning it to shareholders rather than doing a public offering. (AIUI, in the former case, the shareholders only have to pay taxes when they sell their shares; in the latter, it's treated as a capital gain [or loss] to the parent company at the time of the offering. IANATA, YMMV, etc.) Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those | search for greater freedom. of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Date: 7 Mar 2006 14:28:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I think any analysis of AT&T has to have a big break in 1983 with divesture. So much of the company was changed as was its whole focus that pre and post 1983 are totally separate issues. Also, the divesture of Lucent and Ayaya (sp?) are a factor as well. Stockholders did not necessarily hold on to those companies. Many stockholders ended up with a fractional odd lot that is a nuisance to keep and they sold it back to the company when they had the chance. IMHO, in analyzing the long term investment value of a stock, the spinoffs do _not_ count. They're separate companies. To me, the question would be: After divesture one held $1,000 of AT&T stock. Deduct from that all spinoffs net value (after-sale proceeds) at the time of the spinoff. Determine the value of the stock when AT&T was bought out. That is the answer. Although the question is of historical interest only at this point because the company no longer exists, even if the name is continuing. Before the 1960s owning stock was primarily for the wealthy. Then, stockbrokers decided to market small lots of blue chip companies to small investors and everyday people got into the stock market. AT&T was the bluest of the blue chips and was a popular stock. Changes in the financial market have reverted a bit toward the past where more wealthy people own individual stocks. The market has gotten too complicated to follow by individuals, with too many machinations going on. Individuals are more into mutual funds today. As best I can tell, the cost of buying/selling stock has jumped much faster than inflation. In the 1960s many people held but a single share of AT&T (I was one of them, having received it as a gift). In later years that was discouraged with buy backs (as I accepted, it was foolish cashing a dividend check for 45c every quarter that I had to get my father to co-sign). I don't know if there are any "blue chip" companies today. The business world seems so violatie, where today a company could be considered rock-solid and tomorrow it's near bankruptcy. In the old days the biggest companies had much more steadiness in the price of their stock. Smaller companies and those in riskier ventures had more violatility. (But there were once solid companies, like the railroads, that fell onto hard times and investors lost out). An old episode of Dick Van Dyke had the Petrie's investing in a shoe store and getting involved in running it. ------------------------------ From: Ernie Klein Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Organization: Not very organized Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 04:48:22 GMT In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: >>> As of Friday, 3/3/2006 the value of the shares (of the remaining >>> companies, ACR, T, BLS, CMCSA, LU, Q, VZ & VOD) was $118,188.12. >> You forgot NCR and AV, by the way. Sorry about that, you are correct. I did forget about AV. NCR was a 'forced' sale on 2/21/01. The National Cash Register simply took their stock back and sent a check so I no longer have NCR.. > > I assume that NCR is for National Cash Register, AV is for Avaya, VZ > is for Verizon, Q is for Qwest, BLS is for BellSouth, and LU is for > Lucent. (Am I correct?) Correct. > But, pray tell, what do the stock codes ACR, T, CMCSA, VOD stand for? > And if they aren't "obvious" entities, how would they relate to the > (old) AT&T "Bell System"? If I can remember correctly. ACR= typo, It should have been AGR=Agere Systems which was a spinoff from Lucent T=AT&T of course, (now both the old AT&T + the "new" AT&T i.e. SBC CMCSA=Comcast (Bought out AT&T's failed cable TV business 11/18/02) VOD=Vodafone (8/11/99 Vodafone (British company) took over Airtouch with stock and cash. Airtouch itself was a spinoff from Pacific Telesis on 3/31/94 and Pacific Telesis was swallowed up by SBC on 4/1/97, except SBC is now AT&T - simple huh?) Its hard to tell the players without a scorecard and if you blink they will change again :-) But not to worry. Before long they will all be AT&T again :( -Ernie- "There are only two kinds of computer users -- those who have suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure, and those who will." Have you done your backup today? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Date: 7 Mar 2006 14:13:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com George Mitchell wrote: > At the top of the list is John Levine. Lisa Hancock seems like a > good possibility. Thank you for the kind words, but I wouldn't be able to do it. Unfortunately, moderating a newsgroup has become a pretty tough challenge these days. There's the technical considerations to keep the basic functionality and archives going along. Then there's the massive amount of spam, viruses, etc to be filtered out, as well as off-topic and nasty messages. It might be helpful to have multiple moderators to share the load. I think the world-war-II newsgroup does that, with incoming messages routed around to the different moderators. Hopefully Pat will be with us for a long time to come. ------------------------------ From: Ryan Pitylak Subject: Followup to http://TELECOM_Digest_Online2005-1/1721.html Article Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 02:27:59 -0600 [TELECOM Digesst Editor's Note: This _former_ spammer says he has seen the errors of his ways, been reformed, and wishes to again be part of our online community. PAT] So, this is to follow-up on the information left on the website. As everyone knows, I was in the Spamming business until about one year ago. I have made a dramatic change in opinion about the industry and I would like to become a part of, and an advocate for, the anti-spam industry. I will be providing services to businesses in the future so that they can become better prepared to fight off spam. This was not a switch motivated by money, but an actual switch in opinion about what spam is, and how it should be handled in the community. Please visit my website if you're interested in more information. http://www.skycorpservices.com Thank you, Ryan Pitylak ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #93 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 8 23:22:57 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7CB7915398; Wed, 8 Mar 2006 23:22:57 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #94 Message-Id: <20060309042257.7CB7915398@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 23:22:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.5 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 8 Mar 2006 23:20:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 94 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T-BellSouth Deal Could Prompt M&A Activity (USTelecom dailyLead) More on Western Union Rates (Lisa Hancock) Help Needed : SS7 Continuity Check With NMS TX boards (raistlin.buces) 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET ( video - clip) (Hansi) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Robert Bonomi) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Wesrock@aol.com) Small Multi-Site Voice Network (john687@yahoo.com) 25 Hz Power (jsw) Re: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power (Lisa Hancock) Re: Mexico (Dial 1) (DLR) Re: Mexico (Dial 1) (MIQUELON) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (William Warren) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (T) Re: Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: Pat _was_ in the (sidd@situ.com) Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV (DLR) Re: Popular Web Site Falls Victim to a Content Filter (William Warren) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 13:10:07 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T-BellSouth Deal Could Prompt M&A Activity USTelecom dailyLead March 8, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dfAAfDtutbsKzFgGYf TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T-BellSouth Deal could prompt M&A activity among gear makers BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Lucent inks deals worth up to $300M * Verizon stands behind fiber plans * Survey points to interest in wireless/wireline bundle * Sprint Nextel CEO touts growth prospects USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Solving the In-Home Networking Problem Once and for All * Free USB Flash Drive or Computer Bag: Register Today for TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * CBS to show March Madness online for free * Opinion: IPTV would improve Olympics coverage * "Cerfing" the Web * Intel: WiMax chips to be ready in '06 REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Panelists discuss E911 mandate Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dfAAfDtutbsKzFgGYf ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: More on Western Union Rates Date: 8 Mar 2006 10:44:04 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com In a prior discussion we were comparing long distance voice charges against telegraph rates for the 1950s. We were curious as to when the telephone became cheaper than the telegraph for sending messages. It has been hard to find Western Union rates. In checking the New York Times electronic index for the 1950s I found that: 1) Confirmation of a post that rates were indeed graduated by mileage zone. Further, there were different rates for intra- and inter-state messages. In state rates were controlled by the state's PUC, interstate by the FCC. 2) Rates included various commercial services, such as press wires and private line services. There were also money orders. Rates also had sub parts, such as delivery charges waived in certain circumstances. 3) There were several steep rate increases reported in the 1950s, about 8-10%. At the same time Bell was lowering rates. 4) In 1974 the basic telegram went up from $1.30 to $3.00 in a rate increase. I understand by then the Telegraph was obsolete. In 1974 AT&T offered dialed direct discounts on toll calls. 5) Almost all articles referred to the percentage of the increase only, there was nowhere I could find any kind of rate table. 6) In August 1951 I found that: a) The minium length of the basic telegram (rate not shown) was increased from 15 words from 10 with about a 10% rate increase. b) A "Day Letter", which I think was the intermediate grade and sent on a delayed basis, was to cost from 65c to $2.10. c) A "Night Letter" which was overnight service was to cost $0.40 to $1.20. d) I don't know what the basic Telegram cost, which is needed for this comparison. Anybody have any ideas for that time frame (1951)? 7) There was another rate increase in 1956. Given all this, it would seem that in 1956 a telegram was somewhat cheaper than a long distance phone call. For business people, a written record was helpful and more reliable. Further, business people often called person to person which cost more and took some time to set up. The other question when the next AT&T long distance rate reduction took place. I recall the mid 1960s charging $2.00 for a coast to coast call during the day time; in the 1950s that was the night rate for such a call. I bet some business writer wrote an article "Telephone or Telegraph" around 1960 discussing these changes in communication. Hopefully I can find a library with _both_ old Western Union and AT&T annual reports and check out message traffic statistics, if available. ------------------------------ From: raistlin.buces@gmail.com Subject: Help Needed : SS7 Continuity Check With NMS TX Boards Date: 8 Mar 2006 17:04:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, For an application that uses NMS TX 3220 boards to handle the SS7 signalling and NMS AG 4000 boards to handle the voice channels, I need to implement the continuity check. But i can't put a circuit into a loopback mode, can anyone please help/ give any clues? NMS just said that "loopback should be done with TX board", not any more clues. and i did not find any other info from documentation. Here is some detail about the scenario The far end sends IAM packet and then sends COT right after it. And after some seconds REL comes and conversation drops. ----------------------------------------- IAM 17:58:32.0 MTP3.1 <-- : Link # 0 xx xx xx xx 8B 08 00 01 08 20 01 0A 00 02 0A 08 02 xx xx xx xx xx xx xx 0A 09 04 13 xx xx xx xx xx xx 12 31 02 00 00 39 02 31 C0 00 COT 17:58:32.0 MTP3.1 <-- : Link # 0 xx xx xx xx 8B 08 00 05 01 ------------------------------------------ from Q764 * IAM packet, "Nature Of Connection Indicators" field, * HGFEDCBA : * bits DC: Continuity check indicator * 0 0 continuity check not required * 0 1 continuity check required on this circuit * 1 0 continuity check performed on a previous circuit * 1 1 spare So, I may be wrong but it DC bits seem to be "10" on this packet (08) ------------------------------------------ Best Regards. ------------------------------ From: Hansi Subject: 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET ( video - clip) Date: 8 Mar 2006 12:51:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I found this TV reportage from 1993 about a few guys who work with computers on a system called INTERNET. It is odd to watch when they say, that the INTERNET could have theoretically up to 5000 members. Very interesting and fun to watch, although it is only from 1993, but it seems older, looking at the INTERNET now, and was it has become. I hope this is interesting fror the dcom.telecom Group. Greetings from Hansi Film clip URL: http://www.jumpingpixels.com/internet.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for passing this along, Hansi. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:06:42 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > For you geography fans out there: > Just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing procedures > between such very close small border towns of: > Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick > Pembina, North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba > Sweetgrass, Montana and Coutts, Alberta > Thomas Falls, Montana and Burke Idaho Burke, Idaho is, for practical purposes, a ghost town (Wallace, ID is the "big" town in the area, population circa 1100.) All inter-state dialing in that vicinity is 1+areacode+number.` Pretty much the entire width of the state is the "local calling area", less than 30 miles _west_ gets you into WA state. Telco switching offices are "few and far between" up there -- population density is *low*. I know there's one in Wallace, and one in Sand Point. I think there's also one in Cour D'elane, and maybe Kellogg. The feds regulated max rates for (domestic U.S.) inter-state calls, and a formula based strictly on distance was employed -- Burke (vicinity) to Thomas Falls would have been about the same as Omaha NE to Council Bluffs IA, or Souix City IA to South Souix City SD. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:38:50 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit ****************************** PAT: PLEASE DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thnx ****************************** hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > For you geography fans out there: > Just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing > procedures between such very close small border towns of: > Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick > Pembina, North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba > Sweetgrass, Montana and Coutts, Alberta > Thomas Falls, Montana and Burke Idaho > I randomly picked off towns on the map that closest to the border. > Are dialing instructions for towns available on the web now? Two of the crossborder pairs you listed are indeed TOLL, and you are charged US-to-Canada or Canada-to-US toll rates depending on which carrier you use, according to whatever discount plan you might have for any/all US/Canada calls. If the call is indeed TOLL, then station sent-paid toll calls are dialed as 1+ten-digits. (Card calls, collect calls, etc. could be dialed as 0+ten-digits, or using the 800 dial-up number of the card or operator provider of your choice). But Sweetgrass MT and Coutts AB are local to each other. I don't know if only seven-digits will work, or if ten-digits is required, or even if 1+ten-digits is required, but as long as you don't force the call via a long distance carrer with a 101XXXX+ code or on a calling card, that call is indeed LOCAL. Again, I don't know the dialing instructions and they could be different in each direction for the local call. The local TELUS directory for Coutts AB or local NORTHERN TELEPHONE CO-OP for Sweetgrass MT might give the proper dialing instructions. Similarly, Madawaska ME and Edmunston NB. The local directories might indicate the proper dialing procedures, 7-d, 10-d, 1+10-d, for the local call, and which would be used in which direction. The Maine (USA) side is Verizon (Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, New England Telephone), and the New Brunswick (Canada) side is Aliant (NB Tel) which is partially held by Bell Canada. An interesting website to check out is Ray Chow's "Local Calling Guide" website: http://members.dandy.net/~czg/lca_index.php There is a section called "Seldom Asked Questions" (scroll down from the main page just referenced and click), and there is a section on local call arrangements between certain US/Canada border communities, under the header "Are there places where international local calling exists? -- Cross-border local calling exists between the following exchanges (two-way local calling unless otherwise specified; only incumbent carrier prefixes listed)". It doesn't indicate dialing instructions, i.e., 7-d, 10-d, 1+10-d, which can vary in each direction on the same bordertown pair, but it does indicate the communities and NPA-NXX central office codes involved for those US/Canada bordertown or cross-border arrangements. I mention how the local dialing instructions might not be exactly the same in each direction. The dialing procedure for local calls from Bell Canada's St.Regis QC (613-575) to Verizon's (NYNEX, NY Telephone) Fort Covington NY (518-358) was only seven-digits back about six or seven years ago. I don't know if that still holds true. But even seven years ago, the local dialing procedure to call from the NY/USA side to the QC/Canada side was a *required* 1+, followed by all ten-digits, 613-575-xxxx. The call was still local unless you tried to force a 101XXXX+ code, or tried using a calling card via a long distance carrier. Also, note while St.Regis is in Quebec (Canada), it uses area code 613 for its c.o.code 613-575. 613 is the area code for eastern Ontario. At one time, St.Regis QC was indeed 514-575, using the southwest Quebec 514 area code. But St.Regis is a "remote" off of Cornwall ON, and apparantly Bell Canada needed to change the area code to one of Ontario's. Note in the next section on "Seldom Asked Questions", titled: "What about local calling arrangements across provincial or territorial boundaries?", you'll see that St.Regis QC also has local calling with its "host" of Cornwall ON (which is indeed area code 613). There are a few situations where the area code of the adjacent province (or state) is used instead of creating a special central office code with the "correct" state's area code, despite the fact that telco would tell us that "area codes never cross state boundaries". Most certainly in Canada, they CAN cross provincial boundaries, but there are a few hidden examples of this in the US as well, but very few, and not really easily documented as such. But Ray Chow's website indicates all of the US/Canada crossborder local situations, as far as we know. And his website is an excellent resource for finding out if calls between two communities or NPA-NXX codes, are indeed local to each other! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 18:50:16 PST From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com 8 Mar 2006 07:52:17 -0800 wrote: > just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing > procedures > between such very close small border towns of: > Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick International local calling exists between New Brunswick and Maine as follows: - McAdam, NB and Vanceboro, ME - Clair, NB and St Francis & Ft Kent, ME - Edmunston, NB and Madawaska, ME - St-Leonard, NB and Van Buren, ME - St Stephen, NB and Calais, ME http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/archives/npa.list-canada/npa.506.exchanges-canadaPembina, North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 19:59:25 EST Subject: Re: [Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) In a message dated Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:00:27 -0700, Anthony Bellanga writes: >> Coffeyville, Kansas, and South Coffeyville, Oklahoma > I would *assume* that "protected" seven-digit local dialing is still > available between the OK (918) and KS (620) sides. Many local telcos > and state regulatory agencies still allow permissive seven-digit local > dialing across area code (and state) boundaries in rural areas with > smaller local calling areas, but even that isn't always the case > though now-a-days! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not think OK/KS allows 7-D in the > Coffeyville situation. Bartlesville, OK is in the 'regional' directory > which includes South Coffeyville (but _not_ C'ville itself) and when I > was there last week on a couple occassions I spent a few minutes as my > disposition permitted, looking at the regional phone book for clues of > one kind or another. It said rather plainly 'for calls to points in > southeast Kansas including Caney (literally across the _street_ from > a tiny place called Copan, OK), Coffeyville, Independence, etc dial > 1-620 and the number.' I was hardly in a position to ssy either way > for sure I was so sick and confused the days I was there. PAT] Coffeyville and South Cofferville were at one time served from the same central office and from the same machine (located in Kansas). They probably still are, since it would be illogical to have a second wire center on the Oklahoma side unless it has grown mightily, which I don't think it has. Caney and Copan are about 10 miles apart, not across the street, and historically have been served from different c.o.'s. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well what about Caney, KS and Dewey, OK in that case? PAT] ------------------------------ From: john687@yahoo.com Subject: Small Multi-Site Voice Network Date: 8 Mar 2006 11:34:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Greetings All, We have at present, three office sites with on average, 10 people at each location. Two of these locations are within a few miles of each other, the third is separated from the first two by a distance of 800 miles or so. We also have a few teleworkers scattered about. We have a half-dozen or so POTS lines coming in to each location as well as broadband Internet service at each location, either cable or DSL. We curently use a mix of small key systems, a 3Com NBX (pseudo VOIP) and individual POTS lines. We use an outsourced service provider (VirtualPBX) to host our public telephone numbers which are then routed to the various locations by the VirtualPBX auto-attendant. This arrangement is marginally acceptable at present, but we are seeking a better solution. Our users have several issues with the current solution: 1. There is no Caller-ID display on the telephone sets, only the verbal Caller-ID announced by VPBX. Numerous other features one would expect to have on say a Norstar MICS type system with a PRI between sites are missing such as conferencing, call parking, etc VPBX does provide some of these services such as conferencing, but not all our users have their own VPBX virtual extension. 2. The VPBX fees are rather expensive. 3. There are significant delays when calls are answered and/or transferred by the VPBX. 4. We have done some VOIP over the broadband Internet connections with the 3Com NBX, but the call quality was/is poor, likely because we have no way to control QOS. 5. We pay a per-minute fee to VPBX for all calls, even calls coming in to our local numbers. I'm not looking for implementation-specific handholding, but I'm curious what technologies other folks are using in similar situations? I'm currently leaning toward an all-Cisco VOIP system with a MPLS VPN between the sites for both data and voice traffic, but that's quite an investment to make without knowing for sure that it will give the results we expect. We're also willing to consider an open-source product such as Asterisk, but the same QOS issues would apply. We'd still need the MPLS VPN, but would save some money on equipment. In addition to the above, would anyone care to comment on the success (or lack thereof) of using simple Internet VPN for handling VOIP calls? We could manage QOS to our network edge, thus preventing a big download from monopolizing our bandwidth, but once the traffic leaves our network, what kind of call quality could we expect then? Thanks in advance to those who read and respond. John ------------------------------ From: jsw Subject: 25 Hz power Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:45:38 CST >> We were still operating units 25 hz 24, 25 and 26 and a reversable >> frequency changer. > Who bought this 25Hz power? IIRC, and somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, 25Hz power was used even in residential settings up into the early 50's in some parts of eastern Canada. In NYC up into the 70's at least, power for two of the subway divisions (BMT and IRT) was generated at 25Hz but converted to DC in the field. However, I very distinctly remember the flicker of the incandescent lamps in some of the BMT stations in the 60's, as these were operated from the unrectified 25Hz source. I do remember that some people claimed they could not see this flicker, but it was very obvious, to me, anyway. As another trivia point, commercial DC power was still available to some grandfathered customers in parts of Manhattan until just a few years ago. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power Date: 8 Mar 2006 13:09:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com DLR wrote: >> In 1957 and 1958, after graduating from Kenmore High School, near >> Buffalo, I was a turbine operator at Niagara Mohawk's Charles R. Huntley >> Steam station in Tonawanda, on the Niagara River. We were still >> operating units 25 hz 24, 25 and 26 and a reversable frequency changer. > Who bought this 25Hz power? In the 1920s and 1930s certain AC motors had to be 25Hz. I don't know why. But major railroad electrifications like the Pennsylvania, Reading Co., and New Haven used 25 Hz (11,000V). (Former PRR/RDG routes still do to this day.) The electric motors of prewar trains used the 25 Hz. Also, streetcar systems used 600VDC and used rotary converters (an integrated motor-generator set) to convert the power; these also ran off of 25Hz. Modern trains either rectify the AC power to DC or convert it around to AC control. So, it was common for commercial power plants to supply 25 Hz and continue to supply it for legacy customers. I don't know who supplies today's Amtrak's 25 Hz--whether the power company provides it that way or it has to be converted by the carriers. SEPTA converts theirs, having finally replaced old worn out rotary converters with solid state units. In the Buffalo area there was an electrified freight switching railway known as Niagara Jct. That probably consumed the 25 Hz. There may have been industrial customers as well. Note that for many years DC power was provided by commercial utilities. Originally, Edison's power plants supplied DC. There was a big fight between Edison and Westinghouse over DC vs AC. AC won out. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:21:54 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Mexico (Dial 1) > There's a tiny island within Canada near Newfoundland, St. > Pierre/Miquelon, that is part of France and is reached by dialing > international codes. > I suppose keeping this island under France instead of Canada is a > matter of nationalistic pride, but I suspect the overall > administrative costs of running an island like that as a separate > country are enormous. Cost is never a barrier to French pride. :) ------------------------------ From: MIQUELON Subject: Re: Mexico (Dial 1) Date: 8 Mar 2006 10:39:03 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Nationalistic pride ? The same argument could be made of Canadians, why not just surrender and become Americans, the cost should justify the means. Ah ! Its different now isn't it ? Seriously, such comments are typical of those who do not grant much importance to linguistic, historical and cultural rights. The inhabitants of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and French citizens and have always wanted to remain so. To go against this smacks of .. neo-colonialism ? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 15:44:26 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital TELECOM Digest Editor's wrote: > Well, that is true also (about no mechanism in place to handle it); > they did not quite know what to do with me. I was not voted 'in'; > therefore could not be voted 'out'; I was just doing my thing and > they could either read it or reject it. But there was also that > sticky problem of what to do about 'newsgroups' which were never > really part of the original Usenet News scheme to begin with, such > as telecom. [snip] > Then too, as we know there can be but one _name_ per newsgroup; they > have to be _unique_; there can be only _one_ comp.dcom.telecom and > it was (still is, perhaps?) that choice bit of real-estate which > many of them desired in 1993. Again, I am reminded of the sale of > WNIB: it was parked smack-dab in the middle of the spectrum, at 96.9 > and 97.1 FM from a time when the space was so wide open. Sonia and > Bill Florian paid _nothing_ for a license to be there, and virtually > nothing for the transmitter. When the FM band got so full and busy > in Chicago there was not a single vacancy anywhere, people were > willing to kill to get those frequency allocations. The purchasers > did not care about classical music or anything else; all they wanted > was _admission_ to the FM spectrum in a good, juicy spot. They > agreed that $165 million was a good price to pay Sonia and Bill for > 'permission to take over their spot on a crowded spectrum. Imagine > an obscene profit like that! [snip] Pat, I'll try to put this in a good light: I think we all understand that you're anxious to see your life's work passed on to others who will respect both it and you. However, these broad hints about selling aren't going to get you anything, so I'm going to ask you to say what you want. > Now comes late 1970's and early 1980's: The newsgroup 'arpa.telecom' > did just fine. Comes the re-organizaton or 'great renaming' as it was > called in the middle 1980's, and 'arpa.telecom' became > 'comp.dcom.telecom' but since it came over from ARPA rather than being > an entirely created by Usenet thing (they merely assigned us a name is > all for technical reasons) and everyone was happy. I guess it never > occurred to folks that there might some day be a fight over the _root > itself_ and here is this dude, Townson, squatting daintily over the > root, telecom, refusing to give up his squat pot, and no legal way to > evict him. And Bill Pfieffer, in one of his communications with > me in 1996 (he passed on in 1999) was like this: "Whatever you do, > make it work right; the way this shakes out is the way things are > going to be for many, many years. You best not give up control of the > 'root' telecom. If you do, you'll never see it again." What makes you think anyone wants to "evict" you? If I wanted to comptete with CDT, I could go to the RFC database and find out how to start a different Usenet group -- there's no reason for me or anyone else to try and pry you away from CDT, other than an understandable concern for the community that you've built and must, inevitably, depart from. > Of course, just as the internet 'fathers' never suspected back in the > 1980's nor early 90's how things would 'shake out' over the decade to > follow, neither did _I_ expect to become a decrepit, mostly feeble and > bitter old man in a decade either. Well, you're still able to edit and write the digest, so don't cut yourself too short: I can't do anything about any bitterness you feel, except to remind you that we're all destined to meet Cerberus. As for being old, c'est la vie. > Nor did Sonia Florian come close to imagining she would walk out of > WNIB $165 million richer than she walked in. I would never even > claim to come close to _their_ stature nor anywhere close to the > stature of the men and women who have made the internet what it is > (in good times, bad times?) today. That would be the height of > dillusions of grandeur on my part if I did. But when the time comes > for a transiion here, I do want to be fair about it, and hope people > will trust me in that way. PAT] I agree, and I applaud your desire to have an orderly transition in a fair manner that preserves both the spirit and the substance of CDT. The question, bluntly put, is whether you think C.D.T. should be sold or given away. This isn't a radio station, and the resource it depends on -- Usenet -- is NOT limited in the way the spectrum is, so you don't have any way to hold your readership or to deliver us up for sale as a commercial product. That said, I'll also say that it's impossible to buy what your readers feel for you. Let's face it: _YOU_ *ARE* the digest. CDT isn't a collection of eyeballs that a new owner could profitably exploit: it's a group of readers loyal to you. I think you've got to decide if you want to be paid for what you've built: if you want to sell CDT, say so, and the marketplace will educate both of us as to what your readers' loyalty is worth. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 20:14:39 EST Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors In a message dated Tue, 07 Mar 2006 09:57:34 -0700, Anthony Bellanga writes: > Also, AT&T used to own a part of Bell Canada, which is now part of > Bell Canada Enterprises. I don't know if Nortel is now an entity > totally separate from Bell Canada (in the way that Lucent is now > separate from AT&T), but Nortel was once Northern Electric, and also a > "part" of the "Bell System" in a way. Both Bell Canada (partially > owned by AT&T) and Western Electric (totally owned by AT&T) were part > owned Northern Electric back then. AT&T steadily reduced it's investment in the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, was it was legally know then, to about 4 per cent. It was my understanding that Northern Electric was wholly owned by Bell Canada. Both the Bell Telephone Company of Canada and its subsidiary, Northern Electric, were parties to the "license agreement," a contract with the American Telephone and Telegraph Company which allowed them use use all of AT&T's patents and trademarks. This was the document that made a company a part of the Bell System. Northern Electric built all kinds of equipment to the same Bell Labs designs as adopted by Western Electric. When a southeast Tulsa growth area needed serious relief more quickly than W.E. could provide it, they acquired an entire 5XB office from Northern Electric which became the newly-built NAtional office in Tulsa. The Bell chief engineer for Oklahoma was, of course, much interested in what would be different, but the only thing he could find different was that the paint on equipment housings and the like was beige rather than the rather dingy blue that W.E. used.. > Southern New England Telephone Company (for most of Connecticut) was > only partially owned by AT&T, and became a separate entity altogather > with 1984. But in 1997, SBC (which had just taken over Pacific > Telesis' Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell) took over SNET. And now, SBC > has been renamed "at&t" with their purchase of AT&T. > But I think that Cincinnati Bell is still a separate entity > altogather. Prior to 1984, AT&T only partially held Cincinnati Bell, > but with 1984, it became a totally separate company of its own. But it > was still a "part" of the old Bell System, to some degree. Both Cincinnati Bell (formerly the Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Company) and the Southern New England Telephone Company were particpants in the "license agreement," so they were part of the Bell System although AT&T had only a minority interest in those two companies. In a message dated 7 Mar 2006 14:28:40 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > Although the question is of historical interest only at this point > because the company no longer exists, even if the name is continuing. It is not all that uncommon in the business world for the acquirer to take the name of the acquired company. Phil Anshutz's (he of Qwest fame, among many other businesses) Denger and Rio Grande Western Railroad acquired that Southern Pacific Company, parent of the Southern Pacific Railroad (which had long since divested Sprint). Then he changed the name of the company to Southern Pacific. (Also of historic interest only, since the Union Pacific Railroad acquired Southern Pacific and dropped the name). NationsBank, formerly NCNB National Bank, and before that North Carolina National Bank, acquired Bank of America and then changed its name to Bank of America. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 20:01:46 -0500 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > I think any analysis of AT&T has to have a big break in 1983 with > divesture. So much of the company was changed as was its whole focus > that pre and post 1983 are totally separate issues. > Also, the divesture of Lucent and Ayaya (sp?) are a factor as well. > Stockholders did not necessarily hold on to those companies. Many > stockholders ended up with a fractional odd lot that is a nuisance to > keep and they sold it back to the company when they had the chance. > IMHO, in analyzing the long term investment value of a stock, the > spinoffs do _not_ count. They're separate companies. > To me, the question would be: After divesture one held $1,000 of AT&T > stock. Deduct from that all spinoffs net value (after-sale proceeds) > at the time of the spinoff. Determine the value of the stock when AT&T > was bought out. That is the answer. > Although the question is of historical interest only at this point > because the company no longer exists, even if the name is continuing. > Before the 1960s owning stock was primarily for the wealthy. Then, > stockbrokers decided to market small lots of blue chip companies to > small investors and everyday people got into the stock market. AT&T > was the bluest of the blue chips and was a popular stock. > Changes in the financial market have reverted a bit toward the past > where more wealthy people own individual stocks. The market has gotten > too complicated to follow by individuals, with too many machinations > going on. Individuals are more into mutual funds today. As best I can > tell, the cost of buying/selling stock has jumped much faster than > inflation. In the 1960s many people held but a single share of AT&T (I > was one of them, having received it as a gift). In later years that > was discouraged with buy backs (as I accepted, it was foolish cashing a > dividend check for 45c every quarter that I had to get my father to > co-sign). > I don't know if there are any "blue chip" companies today. The > business world seems so violatie, where today a company could be > considered rock-solid and tomorrow it's near bankruptcy. In the old > days the biggest companies had much more steadiness in the price of > their stock. Smaller companies and those in riskier ventures had more > violatility. (But there were once solid companies, like the railroads, > that fell onto hard times and investors lost out). Oh there are still blue chip companies. IBM is still one of them though they aren't so much a manufacturer as a service provider now. It's a company that evolved. I'd also count companies like Microsoft as blue chip too. And Google is pushing its way toward being a blue chip someday soon. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Thinking the Unthinkable; was Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the From: sidd@situ.com () Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:57:58 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com In article , wrote: snip -- > Unfortunately, moderating a newsgroup has become a pretty tough > challenge these days. There's the technical considerations to keep > the basic functionality and archives going along. Then there's the > massive amount of spam, viruses, etc to be filtered out, as well as > off-topic and nasty messages. I am willing to help on the technical side of keeping this mailing list going, and I may be able to contribute some bandwidth and CPU. but as has been pointed out, Pat has set a very high bar, and I am certainly not knowledgeable enough to moderate some of the highly informed contributions to this group/mailing list. > It might be helpful to have multiple moderators to share the load. I > think the world-war-II newsgroup does that, with incoming messages > routed around to the different moderators. This is an excellent suggestion, in addition to John Levine, I might suggest Floyd Davidson as well. (their time and inclinations permitting of course ...) > Hopefully Pat will be with us for a long time to come. Seconded, he has played a very large role in informing this community over the years, and i hope that he will be able to do so for many years to come. sidd ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:29:44 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Digital Method Puts Ad Inside TV >>> I think the "breakthrough" happened a lot earlier. I recall watching >>> what I seem to recall to be a Formula 1 race where a tire company logo >>> was 'painted' on the pavement, in front of the start line. The logo >>> disappeared after the race started. This was at least 3 years ago. >> Actually I'd bet it was the yellow first down line used in football >> telecasts that started it all. Once a marketing wiz noticed what was >> happening they starting coming up with all kinds of things to >> superimpose. I'm fairly certain those small ads on the backstop to the >> side of the view of the batter in major league base ball games is >> superimposed on a specially colored panel. It keeps changing, there >> are a LOT of different displays, I can see no lines from rotating >> panels, and at times with "special views" the area is blank. > The ads on the backstop -- also at tennis court-side, and other > similar places -- have been around for a _long_ time. The technology > employed was _commercially_ deployed back in the mid 1960s for > U.S. television. known as 'chroma-key', you could use it to drop in a > 'replacement' image for anything that was in the scene of a particular > color. Usually, the gear was set to trigger on a fairly narrow range > of blue. Blue was the commonly-used color because it was not a > component of 'flesh tones'. > To make the insert of the replacement image 'believable', the camera > that provided the original scene needed to hold a fixed view of that > scene. You know "something's funny" when, for example, one part of > the image zooms in, while another part _doesn't_. > Note: The original chroma-key technology was pure analog, some early > hardware was employing vacuum tubes. It was only a little more > complex than the circuitry in the basic 'special effects generator' > used for "split-screen" "corner inserts", etc. In fact, it shared > most of the circuitry with the special-effects generator. Do they still use the chroma-key method? I've not see a "flub" in many years and you can usually get one or two a game with chroma-key. The yellow line in football still amazes me. And I know some of the technology. It tracks the field even as the camera moves. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 19:42:19 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Popular Web Site Falls Victim to a Content Filter Monty Solomon wrote: > By TOM ZELLER Jr. > The New York Times > March 6, 2006 > THERE are lots of ways to describe Boing Boing, the Web's obliquely > subtitled "Directory of Wonderful Things," which draws millions of > eyeballs to its relentless, stylistically minimalist scroll of > high-weirdness each month. [snip] Pat, Viewers who visit boingboing might note an item promoting a new website by John "Captain Crunch" Draper - crunchtv.net. I'd advise them to be cautious, because the crunchtv.net site froze both my Opera and my Internet Explorer browsers. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #94 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Mar 9 13:45:33 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D815514E4F; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 13:45:32 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #95 Message-Id: <20060309184532.D815514E4F@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 13:45:32 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Mar 2006 13:46:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 95 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cellular-News for Thursday 9th March 2006 (cellular-news) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 9, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Prepaid 800 Service (Ronald L. Hoppes) IPTV Security Risks (Neal McLain) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (John Levine) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Anthony Bellanga) Re: 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET (Steven Lichter) Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital (Herb Stein) Re: Mexico (Dial 1) (Mark Crispin) Smart Dialer Available For Commercial Call Generation (sadi) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: 25 Hz Power -- But Wait, There's More !! (jsw) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 9th March 2006 Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 08:02:17 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] 70 Operators Commit To HSDPA Launches http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16436.php A survey by the GSA has identified 70 network operators who have confirmed interest in deploying HSDPA systems, reflecting an increase of 40% over the past 4 months. The survey also confirms that the majority of the 102 operators who have commerciall... [[ Financial ]] Telecom Italia Sets '06-'08 Revenue Target Growth At 3%-4% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16428.php Telecom Italia said Wednesday it has set its target for annual revenue growth to 3%-4% for the period 2006-2008, slightly less than its previous target of an annual 4%-6% from 2005-2007. ... Telecom Italia Cuts Guidance For TIM Through '08 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16429.php Telecom Italia Wednesday trimmed its mobile unit's financial guidance for the three years through 2008, after cutting the group's revenue targets for the same period. ... Telecom Italia Chairman: No Merger Plans With Telefonica http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16434.php Telecom Italia Chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera Wednesday denied media reports that had said Telecom Italia and Spanish firm Telefonica could be planning a merger. ... [[ Legal ]] Nextel may sue mobile operators for failure to interconnect SMS http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16431.php Mexican trunking operator Nextel Mexico does not rule out the possibility of suing local mobile operators for damages because of their failure to interconnect short messaging services (SMS), the company's VP of operations Gustavo CantÚ told BN... [[ Mobile Content ]] EU Commission To Decide On Mobile TV Within 12 Months http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16435.php The European Commission will decide within the next 12 months on unifying the European Union's divergent rules for television broadcasts to mobile phones, Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding said Wednesday. ... Mobile TV set to be very popular http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16439.php Results from pilots on broadcast (DVB-H) mobile TV services amongst consumers in Finland, the UK, Spain and France have revealed clear consumer demand for such services as well as important indications over future business models for commercial mobil... Vodafone Offers Japanese to Chinese Translation http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16441.php Vodafone Japan has added a new function to its MMS service for 3G handsets which displays mails written in foreign languages. At the time of launch on 3 April 2006, customers will be able to send mails in Japanese to China Mobile and China Unicom cus... [[ Network Contracts ]] Nokia To Expand Mobile Network In Thailand http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16427.php Finnish telecommunications equipment firm Nokia Wednesday said it will expand network coverage for Thailand's second largest mobile operator Total Access Communication, as part of an existing exclusive frame agreement. ... Lucent Deploys Billing Solution for Russian Mobile Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16438.php Lucent Technologies says that it has completed the first stage of deploying a real-time charging solution for Russian mobile service provider MegaFon. Lucent's solution ensures internetworking between MegaFon's network infrastructure and its billing ... [[ Network Operators ]] CDG: CDMA records 58.3 million users in LatAm http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16430.php The number of mobile subscribers in Latin America and the Caribbean using CDMA technology reached 58.3 million in 2005, Celedonio von Wuthenau, regional director for Latin America CDMA Development Group (CDG) told BNamericas. ... Vodafone Abolishes Roaming Charges Between UK and Ireland http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16437.php Following on from the decision last month by O2 in Ireland to abolish roaming charges between Southern and Northern Ireland, Vodafone has now joined in and also abolished its international roaming charges between the UK and Ireland.... [[ Personnel ]] Vodafone Board Ructions In Focus As Bamford Exits http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16433.php Vodafone Group, Wednesday ousted chief marketing officer and board member Peter Bamford, the latest high-profile departure amid ongoing speculation of boardroom ructions. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Anatel voids GSM spectrum auction http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16432.php Brazil's telecoms regulator Anatel has voided its auction of GSM spectrum licenses for the states of Alagoas, Cear, Paraba, Pernambuco, Piau, Rio Grande do Norte and Sao Paulo, the regulator said in a statement. ... Australia Considering Mandatory PrePay Registration http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16440.php The Australian Communications and Media Authority has commenced a review of the way in which telephone companies collect identity information about their pre-paid mobile phone customers. As part of the review, ACMA has released a discussion paper, Id... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 12:15:58 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Thursday, March 9, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 9, 2006 ******************************** Larger Players See Potential of VoIP Interconnection Services http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/17017?11228 VOIP PEERING SERVICES ARE young, but already the sector is seeing significant growth and change. Launching as small communities comprising a few nascent voice-over-broadband providers, the services now are signing up major carriers, refining their business models and facing new competitors -- a sure sign of success. While VoIP is... Playing Up the 'n-Play' http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/17013?11228 Cable MSOs and telecom service providers are scrambling to grow revenues and reduce churn by diversifying beyond their core services. However, leading with the conventional "triple play" approach of voice, data and video should be recognized as a purely operator-centric view, because customers view their service provider offerings from a... Predicting a Future for Wireless E-mail http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/17012?11228 For years, the difficulty of typing on tiny keypads has been a major impediment to mobile devices being wholeheartedly embraced for e-mail. But a number of companies are trying to make sending e-mail from mobile phones a little easier with predictive-text-entry systems that use built-in dictionaries to guess what users are about to type.... Siemens in VoIP Partnership with Yahoo!; No Plans for Cordless Phones, Broadband Business Sale http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/17007?11228 German equipment vendor Siemens has partnered with global internet company Yahoo! on a VoIP service that will operate with Siemens' Gigaset Cordless Telephone range. Siemens' cordless phone and broadband division, Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices, will provide cordless phones from the Gigaset range, along with a USB adapter.... Telecom Italia to Sell French, Dutch Assets; Denies Merger with Telefonica http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/17004?11228 Telecom Italia chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera has pledged to dispose of non-core assets in the group's drive to reduce its debt burden. At a media briefing in Milan (Italy) yesterday, he maintained the group's willingness to sell its stake of approximately 7% in French fixed operator Neuf Telecom and its Dutch broadband operations... Enterprise = WLAN Action http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/17003?11228 Predicting that the overall 802.11 equipment market will be worth $3.8 billion by 2009, Research firm Infonetics Research Inc. says that the enterprise market in particular is set to thrive, with revenue jumping 120 percent between 2005 and 2009. Worldwide wireless LAN equipment revenue dropped 5 percent in the fourth quarter of last... Sprint Unveils New Unlimited Calling Plans http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/17000?11228 Sprint Nextel unveiled new plans that will enable its customers to make unlimited calls between a designated home or office number and their wireless phone. For consumers, Sprint Nextel is introducing Sprint to Home, which gives its wireless customers the ability to make and receive calls between a home phone and their wireless phone.... Portugal Telecom Takeover Defense Faces Probe http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/16998?11228 Portugal's stock-exchange regulator, the Comissao do Mercado de Valores Mobiliarios (CMVM), is going to launch an investigation into just where Portugal Telecom (PT) says it can find the $3.6 billion it promised to give shareholders if they turn down Sonae's hostile $12.85 billion takeover bid for the carrier. It's also going to look... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 07:23:15 -0500 From: Ronald L. Hoppes Subject: Prepaid 800 Service I just learned that AT&T has discontinued the card and you can no longer add time to it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 06:48:03 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: IPTV Security Risks IPTV privacy risks By Jeffrey Krauss, President of Telecommunications and Technology Policy March 1, 2006 I went to the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show with the goal of learning more about IPTV, and in particular, whether there are any services that IPTV can deliver but traditional hybrid fiber/coax cable technology cannot. What I learned is disturbing. http://www.cedmagazine.com/article/CA6311273.html ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2006 05:40:12 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) > Just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing procedures > between such very close small border towns of: > From the US into Canada it's 1+10D, even if it's a free local call. According to NANPA, in some parts of Canada it's 1+10D, other places it's just 10D which suggests they still protect the adjacent area code as a local prefix. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 05:40:00 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit ****************************** PAT: PLEASE DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thnx ****************************** Robert Bonomi wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> For you geography fans out there: >> Just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing >> procedures between such very close small border towns of: >> Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick >> Pembina, North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba >> Sweetgrass, Montana and Coutts, Alberta >> Thomas Falls, Montana and Burke Idaho > Burke, Idaho is, for practical purposes, a ghost town > (Wallace, ID is the "big" town in the area, population circa 1100.) > All inter-state dialing in that vicinity is 1+areacode+number.` > Pretty much the entire width of the state is the "local calling area", > less than 30 miles _west_ gets you into WA state. > Telco switching offices are "few and far between" up there -- > population density is *low*. I know there's one in Wallace, and one > in Sand Point. I think there's also one in Cour D'elane, and maybe > Kellogg. In my earlier reply on this subject regarding the US/Canada crossborder situations, I mentioned that two of the four "pairs" above that were asked about were indeed local (free) calls! I also referenced Ray Chow's Local Calling Guide website as well, which also has a summary of all known US/Canada bordertown pairs which have local calling with each other. Pembina ND (USA) and Emerson MB (Canada) are not indicated as local (free) at Ray Chow's website -- so I assume that they are toll to each other. I also didn't realize that the fourth and last entry inquired about was intra-USA inter-state -- the Burke ID and "Thomas Falls" MT pair. Detailed telephone company numbering and geographical records show that Burke ID is associated with the Wallace ID exchange. This is all GTE of North Idaho, now part of Verizon. Ray Chow's website does show that Wallace ID (which includes Burke ID) is local with other nearby north ID exchanges (all of them GTE now Verizon), but doesn't indicate any local calling with anything in nearby Montana. I also was unable to find ANYTHING called "Thomas Falls" MT in any telephone company lists, nor on any map search programs (Mapquest, Yahoo Maps, Google Maps, etc). But I was able to find *Thompson* Falls in Montana, not too far away from the Wallace/Burke ID area. Telephone company numbering and geographic lists show that Thompson Falls MT is served by the Blackfoot Telephone Co-operative. Ray Chow's website shows that Thompson Falls ID has local (free) calling with other nearby MT exchanges, but doesn't have any local calling with anything in nearby Idaho. > The feds regulated max rates for (domestic U.S.) inter-state calls, > and a formula based strictly on distance was employed -- Burke > (vicinity) to Thomas Falls would have been about the same as Omaha NE > to Council Bluffs IA, But there are some local (free) interstate calling situations, some of them within the same LATA (and LATAs can cover all or part of two or more adjacent states), or the interstate local calling could even be between different LATAs as well. I don't know how much regulation the FCC has over these arrangements after they have been put into effect, but I do know that any proposal for future interstate calling arrangements (and international, such as US/Canada) would require FCC approval, as well as approval by both US-state regulatory agencies, and if involving Canada at the border, the CRTC would also have to approve. Even any proposed future local calling arrangements within a state but crossing over a LATA boundary has to get a "nod" from the FCC, as well as from the state regulatory agency. Carter Lake IA gets its dialtone from Omaha NE, and I think that there has been local calling between the two going back many many decades. Council Bluffs IA didn't always have local calling with the Omaha NE area, but ISTR heraing that local (free) calling has probably been in place since the mid-1960s era. But there are still various calls within this section of the NE/IA border that are toll, although they are within the same "LATA". The Omaha NE (and vicninty) LATA does cover quite a bit of Iowa side as well as the Nebraska side. > or Souix City IA to South Souix City SD. NOTE: It is Sioux City IA, South Sioux City NE, and North Sioux City SD. These three communities have local calling with each other, and area all part of the same LATA (the Qwest Telco "Sioux City IA" LATA). The incumbent telco (Qwest, formerly US West, formerly Northwestern Bell) in Sioux City IA also provides dialtone to the N.Sioux City SD customers. But Qwest (US West, Northwestern Bell) in S.Sioux City ND customers have their own central office switch. (However, CLECs and wireless have their own network structure which is not necessarily following exactly what the incumbent Qwest does for providing service and dialtone). I don't know for certain, but I would assume that the local calling in the Sioux City IA / N.Sioux City SD / S.Sioux City NE situation might still be permissive seven-digits. John Levine wrote: > U.S. phone companies ended "protected" prefixes several years ago. > That was the arrangement near the edge of an area code that let you > dial local calls with 7D into another area code, by reserving the > prefix in both area codes. > Canada still had this arrangement until I think last year, notably in > the Ottawa / Hull area which is partly in 613, partly in 819. They're > also ending protected codes so people in Ottawa now have to dial all > ten digits to Hull and vice versa. The practice of "protecting" central office codes across state or area code boundaries to facilitate permissive seven-digit local dialing is *still* being practiced, despite being "frowned upon" by the telco industry and the FCC/CRTC, but is apparantly still being "winked at", mostly in rural areas. However, remember that "code protection" usually means protecting a central office code from being assigned in an adjacent area code *ONLY* in the immediate vicinity, NOT from being assigned "anywhere else" within the adjacent area code. But the Ottawa ON/Hull QC arrangement allowed "full dual dialability" of either/both 613 or/both 819 for calling into that metro area. All Ottawa ON side 613-NXX codes had to be fully protected from being assigned *anywhere* in the QC 819 area code, and vice-versa, all Hull QC side 819-NXX codes had to be fully protected from being assigned *anywhere* in the ON 613 area code. This type of *full* code "protection" was rare in the US (and quite possibly rare in Canada as well). I don't think that there is any more "full" central office code protection anywhere else in the NANP, except for the Ottawa/Hull situation. With one exception (which I'll elaborate on in a moment), ALL forms of code protection in the Ottawa ON/Hull QC area is being ended by this year. And all (local, free) calls between Ottawa ON (613) and Hull QC (819) will require full ten-digit dialing (the correct destination area code followed by seven-digits) later this year. Additionally, ALL (local) calls *everywhere else* in both 613 ON and 819 QC will also be mandatory ten-digits! Even if you are "local only unto your own exchange"! Area Code 613 is not expected to need "relief" (most likely an overlay) until 2012 or 2015 (by eliminating all code protection in the Ottawa/Hull area), and Area Code 819 is not expected to need "relief" for decades to come (especially after eliminating all code protection). Yet mandatory ten-digit local dialing is being extended across the entire coverage area of both area codes! The one exeption of code protection in the Ottawa/Hull area applies only to the NXX office codes for the Federal Government of Canada's own Centrex system. These five or six office codes will continue to exist in both 819 and 613, and will be dialable with either of those two area codes. More information on Ottawa ON (613)/Hull QC (819) can be found from the Canadian Numbering Administrator's website (http://www.cnac.ca), and Neustar NANPA even has a Planning Letter on this issue as well: http://www.nanpa.com/pdf/PL_340.pdf "NPA 613 & NPA 819 Relief -- Phase One -- Dial Plan Change" dated August 20, 2004. Pat Townson wrote: > And did you know that through the 1960's and into the 1970's, prefixes > were not duplicated in adjacent area codes/states. For the most part, that only applied to the area covered under a local calling area that "straddled" a state/NPA code boundary. With a very few rare exceptions, there wasn't any "full" or "total" protection against assignment "anywhere" in adjacent area codes. > For example, since Hammond/Whiting, IN (219 but exactly on the state > line with Illinois and Chicago) since there was 219-931, 219-932, > 219-933, 219-659 there were NOT any 931,932,933, 659 exchanges in > area 312. Well, the 219-NNX office codes (Indiana side) that were immediately adjacent to the Illinois (312) side might not be duplicated anywhere and everywhere throughout the 312 area code (Chicago IL Metro). But I doubt that OTHER parts of 219, much further away from Chicago IL Metro, much "deeper" into Indiana in NPA 219, woud have had their 219-NNX office codes "unduplicated, anywhere and everywhere" in area code 312. And I doubt that ALL 312-NNX office codes were "unduplicated, anywhere and everywehre" in the 219 area code. "Full and total" code protection was rare in the US. I think such code protection might have been "approached" in the "old" days in the Washington DC Metro area (which also includes northern VA and suburban MD), but even there it wasn't "perfect" to the degree that "NOTHING" in the immeidate vicinity was "completely unduplicated (rather untriplicated), anywhere and everywhere else" throughout 202/301/703 -- although C&P Tel did come close to it! And even the 312 (IL)/219 (IN) form of code protection you describe wasn't always universal neither. New York City (212) had NNX office codes that were also assigned in New Jersey (201) even in northeastern NJ across the Hudson River from New York City, and vice-versa. And that was the situation even in the 1950s and earlier. The NJ (Newark, etc) side had developed its switching and office codes separately from the New York City side. Calls across the Hudson River had to be placed through the operator until probably in the 1940s era, when they could then be dialed in either direction. However, a special access prefix (11+) had to be used. By the later 1950s, the use of the area code (201 for NJ from NY, 212 for NY from NJ) began to be dialed before the seven-digit (two-letter five-digit) number when calling across the Hudson River. Anyhow, "full, complete, total" office code "protection" in adjacent area codes was rare in both the US and Canada. And I think that the last example (with the exception of the Government of Canada's 613/819-NXX centrex office codes) will disappear later this year. And "code protection" to allow LOCAL AREA seven-digit dialing across a state/NPA boundary, while "frowned upon" by the telco industry and the federal regulators (FCC, CRTC), is still being practiced, mostly in small towns and rural areas, to allow seven-digit cross-boundary local dialing. I think that the state regulatory agencies are the ones that mandate such code protection to facilitate seven-digit cross-boundary local dialing. But this "code protection" only applies to protecting the code from being assigned in the opposite state/NPA only in the local calling area scope, not against being assigned "anywhere and everywhere else" in the opposite/adjacent state(s)/NPA(s). HOWEVER, if there is an overlay in any of those adjacent area codes, then ten-digit local dialing is required not only within the overlay area, but also for all local calls from the overlaid area, as well as *to* the overlaid area even from local non-overlaid adjacent area codes! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct there. In the 312/219 (IL/IN) case, by the time one traveled east as far as around Gary, IN the prefixes were being repeated on the Illinois side again. And if you got much further south than Dyer, IN or Crown Point, IN they were back to 'usual' again also. There was always an odd historical quirk about how that far northest part of Indiana came to be considered 'Illinois Bell' rather than the more logical (regards loca- tion) 'Indiana Bell'. It went back to the pre-Illinois Bell days of the Chicago Telephone Company. All the big shot executives, the Gary's of US Steel fame, the Rockefeller's of Standard Oil, etc had their offices in _Chicago_ but their industrial complexes (Whiting Refinery, Sinclair Oil, US Steel, Inland Steel, etc) along the lake front on the Indiana side. Time line, 1880-1890 phones coming in vogue _in bigger cities_ but still sort of rare in small areas, but in that time of the industrial age, the refineries, steel mills, etc were going full blast. Mssrs. Rockefeller, Gary and the other guys wanted quick, easy ways to stay in touch with their foremen and superintendents. Chicago Telephone Company could not quite justify the cost of line expansion 'that far away from the city itself'. A consortium of the business leaders (who had plants, mills, etc in the Hammond/Whiting/East Chicago/Gary, IN region subsidized the earliest of the phone lines going in that direction and Chicago Telephone Company was glad to accomodate them under those circumstances. Chicago Tel later became Illinois Bell, a _Chicago based_ company. Sometime in the 1970's Illinois Bell decided to balance things up according to state lines and geography a little, and traded that territory off to 'Indiana Bell' a few years prior to divestiture. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET ( video - Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 04:46:18 GMT Hansi wrote: > I found this TV reportage from 1993 about a few guys who work with > computers on a system called INTERNET. > It is odd to watch when they say, that the INTERNET could have > theoretically up to 5000 members. > Very interesting and fun to watch, although it is only from 1993, but > it seems older, looking at the INTERNET now, and was it has become. > I hope this is interesting fror the dcom.telecom Group. > Greetings from Hansi > Film clip URL: http://www.jumpingpixels.com/internet.html > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for passing this > along, Hansi. PAT] Very interesting piece. My BBS had been up about 6 years by then and we were tied to a network which then went to FidoNet and into the internet. My users could not believe that a message could get around the world and they would have an answer within minutes. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: TELECOM Digest: Pat _was_ in the Hospital Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 05:57:57 GMT I was thinking of it also. Steve would br a good choice, until we disagree. "Steve Sobol" wrote in message news:telecom25.92.15@telecom-digest.org... > John McHarry wrote: >> I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property >> that can be sold. I doubt you bought it from JSOL or have a deed of >> gift. I do believe you own the web site. If you sold the web site, it >> would make a mess not to include a transference of the moderation, so >> maybe it doesn't much matter. >> Perhaps you could get the Telephone Pioneers interested in taking over >> the operation. That would give it a pseudo immortality. TD is the >> Internet autobiography of telecom after all. > I'll be happy to take over the web site and the mailing list/newsgroup > moderation if Pat becomes unable to. That's essentially how I started > moderating rec.radio.broadcasting: I volunteered after Bill Pfeiffer > died. > Having said that, don't go anywhere soon, Pat, or I might have to > drive out to Kansas and give you a good swift kick in the pants. :) >> On the other hand, I would like to find someone who is willing and >> will commit to maintaining the Digest and newsgroup in the style I >> have established, take care of the archives, or improve on their >> filing, and in geneal work with the same zeal I have shown here. > Here I am. > Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED > Company website: http://JustThe.net/ > Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ > E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I will not be so bold as to say, "Why didn't God take me away after my brain aneurysm -- life has been pretty difficult physically for me since then -- but I sure wonder at times what _He_ (she, it, higher power)was thinking about by essentially dragging me back to life as a shell. I thought the latest heart attack would resolve it once and for all; it failed to do so also. Hmmmm ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Mexico (Dial 1) Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 23:43:17 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, MIQUELON wrote: > Seriously, such comments are typical of those who do not grant much > importance to linguistic, historical and cultural rights. The > inhabitants of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon and French citizens and have > always wanted to remain so. To go against this smacks of .. > neo-colonialism ? "Neo" does not mean "anti". France is the last major imperialist/colonialist power in the world, and has steadfastly resisted decolonization. Even the British, who practically wrote the book on imperialism and colonialism, have faced up to reality. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: sadi Subject: Smart Dialer Available for Commercial call Generation Date: 9 Mar 2006 01:42:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Unicorn Software and Solutions Bangladesh brings you Smart Dialer, a high performance VOIP dialer . Compatible with various gateways and gatekeepers and have many useful features included. Go to http://www.unicornsoftbd.com/smartdialer.html to learn more. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 07:14:32 PST From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Wesrock@aol.com Wed, 8 Mar 2006 20:14:39 EST wrote: > It is not all that uncommon in the business world for the acquirer to > take the name of the acquired company. Phil Anshutz's (he of Qwest > fame, among many other businesses) Denger and Rio Grande Western > Railroad acquired that Southern Pacific Company, parent of the > Southern Pacific Railroad (which had long since divested Sprint). > Then he changed the name of the company to Southern Pacific. (Also of > historic interest only, since the Union Pacific Railroad acquired > Southern Pacific and dropped the name). > NationsBank, formerly NCNB National Bank, and before that North > Carolina National Bank, acquired Bank of America and then changed its > name to Bank of America.>> Or in the recent case of SBC (formerly Southwestern Bell Corporation) [not to be confused with SBC for Seattle's Best Coffee, a division of Starbucks] buying AT&T and taking on the name of the rechristened company as at&t (just "lower casing" themselves and ditching the death star in favour of a blue marble.) Then again there are other cases where a name change was affected -- MCI (Microwave Communications Incorporated) becoming Worldcom, but more than likely Worldcom was not a favourable name after the higher level hijinx with "creative" accounting bankrupted the original corporation so they changed their corporate name to that of the acquired entity (perhaps thinking that the public was too stupid to notice that it was still the same entity that screwed them out of their investment if they invested in the company.) MCI hasn't dealt with microwave in *years* and AT&T hasn't had much of anything to do with telegraph either for that matter either. ------------------------------ From: jsw Subject: 25 Hz Power -- But Wait, There's More !! Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 10:45:08 CST Curiosity got me last night, and I googled a bit for references to commercial 25Hz power, and I found this tidbit buried in a railfan newsletter pertaining to the Pennyslvania Railroad and Penn Station in Manhattan: "Up until the late 1970's, at least, Consolidated Edison still supplied power billable at their meter, depending on your location in NYC, at DC, 25 Hertz and 60 Hertz, in a variety of voltages. ... At the turn of the {last} century {and} well until the 1940's both DC and 25 Hertz were fairly widely used as power for commercial establishments; after all, Edison started the city off with a DC system. ... The PRR had a 25 Hertz power supply feed account established with Consolidated Edison in the 1930's when they strung catenary into NYC. The interesting thing is that this was supplied and billed by Edison to the PRR at catenary voltage (11 kV at 25 Hertz), and not at 132 kV as done by the PRR's other 25 Hertz suppliers ... The Consolidated Edison 25 Hertz supply generally was the highest cost power to the railroad, even well into the Amtrak era, ..." I knew that DC was commercially available in places in Manhattan in most of the 20th century, but it's news to me that commercial 25Hz was available in the area. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #95 ***************************** TELECOM Digest Thu, 9 Mar 2006 20:48:42 EST Volume 25 : Issue 96 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Appeals Court Okays Computer Searches for Child Porn (Reuters News Wire) Google and Child Porn (Reuters News Wire) China Blogs Reappear a Day After Closure (Reuters News Wire) Verizon Targets MDUs for FiOS Penetration (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) (T) Re: Buffalo NY 25 hz Power (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors (T) Re: 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET (T) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Appeals Court Okays Computer Searches For Child Porn Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 19:43:11 -0600 US court OKs computer searches for child porn Police may search computer hard drives for child pornography if their owners subscribe to Web sites selling the images, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday. There is a "fair probability" customers of child pornography Web sites receive or download the illegal images, opening the door for police searches, according to the ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling affirmed a lower court's decision supporting an affidavit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its probe of Lolitagurls.com Web site and subscriber Micah Gourde. Gourde had sought to suppress more than 100 images of child pornography seized from his home computer, arguing an FBI affidavit did not establish probable cause he had violated child pornography laws to justify a search of his computers. The San Francisco-based court took up his appeal. The panel voted nine to two in ruling that a district court had properly declined to suppress the evidence. The majority opinion by Judge M. Margaret McKeown held there was a "reasonable inference" that supported a "fair probability" Gourde had downloaded banned images. She noted the owner of Lolitagurls.com admitted to selling child pornography over the Web site and Gourde subscribed to it with a credit card and had unlimited access to its images. Additionally, she held computer technology assured any images he received would leave a trail for investigators. "It neither strains logic nor defies common sense to conclude, based on the totality of these circumstances, that someone who paid for access for two months to a Web site that actually purveyed child pornography probably had viewed or downloaded such images onto his computer," McKeown added. Gourde's attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Colin Fieman, said he would discuss with Gourde whether to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Reuters News reports, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google's Brazil Unit Summoned on Orkut Chat Rooms Complaint Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 19:45:06 -0600 Google Inc.'s Brazilian unit has been asked to appear before authorities on Friday to explain what the company was doing to curb crimes allegedly being committed through its Orkut chat rooms. The Web search engine's Brazil spokesman confirmed that the unit, Google Brasil, had received a summons from the Public Ministry, but he declined to give details. The Public Ministry is similar to a U.S. attorney general's office. The summons came after a complaint was filed with the ministry by the nongovernmental organization Safernet, http://www.safernet.org.br, which monitors crime on the Internet. Orkut, a chat room service provided by Google, has around 14 million registered users, nearly 73 percent of whom say they are Brazilian. "Since June, we have sought out Google to request preventive measures against crimes that are practiced on Orkut, but we never got a response," said Safernet President Thiago Nunes de Oliveira, who is also a professor of information rights at the Pontificia Catholic University of Bahia. "We found more than 5,000 profiles of users that were publishing images with scenes of child pornography in photo albums," said Oliveira. He said Google's local administration referred Safernet to Google's headquarters in the United States. But Safernet said that was unacceptable since the crimes were committed in Brazil where the local unit is registered. Google Brasil has offices in Sao Paulo. Oliveira said that Safernet wants Google to remove illegal material and report users that post it. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Reuters News and headlines, please go to: htt://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: China Blogs Reappear a Day After Closure Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 20:32:54 -0600 Two of China's most adventurous Web logs reappeared on Thursday, a day after apparently being shut down by government censors. The blogs, belonging to Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng and to entertainment reporter Yuan Lei, from the southern city of Guangzhou, carried messages saying they had been temporarily closed, but they were both accessible again on Thursday. "I like telling jokes, but this really wasn't a joke and it wasn't meant to deceive everyone," read a new post on Wang's blog, known as "Massage Milk." But Wang, who blogs under the name "Dai San Ge Biao," a play on former leader Jiang Zemin's Three Represents, or "San Ge Dai Biao" political slogan, is known for his political satire, raising the possibility that the closure may have been a prank. Yuan Lei's blog, called "Milk Pig" and known for its gossipy posts about the entertainment scene, carried no new messages. Both are hosted on the domestic Yculblog.com. The closures coincided with China's annual 10-day session of its rubber-stamp parliament, when political controls are tightened as leaders descend on Beijing. They also fit a pattern of stepped up monitoring of the Internet. The blog of Michael Anti, an outspoken political blogger, was shut down under government orders in December and several Internet writers have been jailed over the sensitive content of e-mails and postings. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 12:47:32 EST From: ustelecom@dailylead.com Subject: Verizon Targets MDUs for FiOS Penetration USTelecom dailyLead March 9, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgjwfDtutbtHdlcqeZ TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon targets MDUs for FiOS penetration BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Skype targets small-business users * Sprint Nextel rolls out fixed-mobile service * Kansas-based telecom acquires Sprint lines * Q-and-A: How to brand telecom USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Find everything you need for IP video in one place TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Microsoft-powered tablet PC set for release * London-area consumers to get 2/Gbs broadband * TiVo bundles service with DVR REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Ireland wins EU's blessing for broadband plan * D.C. seeks Wi-Fi network * Justice Department targets Mario Gabelli in lawsuit over wireless spectrum Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgjwfDtutbtHdlcqeZ ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:34:32 EST Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) In a message dated 3/8/06 10:24:55 PM Central Standard Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: Wes Leatherock (wesrock@aol.com)_ wrote: >> Caney and Copan are about 10 miles apart, not across the street, and >> historically have been served from different c.o.'s. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well what about Caney, KS and Dewey, > OK in that case? PAT] Dewey is another 9 miles south of Copan and so would be 19 miles south of Caney. Dewey is part of the Bartlesville local calling area. It is served by its own c.o. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Crossborder 7-Digit (Dial 1) Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:48:52 -0500 In article , joeofseattle@yahoo.com says: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com 8 Mar 2006 07:52:17 -0800 wrote: >> just out curiosity, would anyone know the rates and dialing >> procedures between such very close small border towns of: >> Madawaska, Maine and Edmunston, New Brunswick > International local calling exists between New Brunswick and Maine as > follows: > - McAdam, NB and Vanceboro, ME > - Clair, NB and St Francis & Ft Kent, ME > - Edmunston, NB and Madawaska, ME > - St-Leonard, NB and Van Buren, ME > - St Stephen, NB and Calais, ME > http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/archives/npa.list-canada/npa.506.exchanges-canadaPembina, > North Dakota and Emerson, Manitoba At one point we'd discovered that depending on the calling area -- you could set up call forwarding on regular phone lines and bounce calls for several hundred miles. What a treat when we discovered we could also get it into/from Canada. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The only trouble I see is if the local phone charges for each of the small hops (when added together for each hop) saved any money over the single long-haul charge of an interstate toll from the starting point to the eventual ending point. Long distance charges are quite inexpensive these days; can you get the combined (various) local charges down to less? And what about coordinating the in-between call-forwards? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:43:11 EST Subject: Re: 25 Hz power In a message dated Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:45:38 CST, jsw writes: > In NYC up into the 70's at least, power for two of the subway > divisions (BMT and IRT) was generated at 25Hz but converted to DC in > the field. Some electrified intercity railroads in the Northeast used 25 Hz power. There are, or at least were in the past, some advantages to 25 Hz power for running locomotives. (Some railroads in other parts of the world use or used 16-2/3 HZ power. > However, I very distinctly remember the flicker of the > incandescent lamps in some of the BMT stations in the 60's, as these > were operated from the unrectified 25Hz source. I do remember that > some people claimed they could not see this flicker, but it was very > obvious, to me, anyway. This same flicker was apparent when I stayed with my parents at the Fred Harvey Hotel at the Santa Fe Railroad station in Gallup, New Mexico, in the late 1940s. It was my assumption this was built before there was a public electric power system in Gallup and that the hotel was supplied by the Santa Fe's own power plant, built probably well before the standardization of 60 Hz power in the U.S.A. In a message dated 8 Mar 2006 13:09:09 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > Note that for many years DC power was provided by commercial > utilities. Originally, Edison's power plants supplied DC. There was > a big fight between Edison and Westinghouse over DC vs AC. AC won > out. Most of today's power companies descended from Edison's companies and are still reluctant to give any credit to Nikola Tesla, who conceived of the far more practical (for most commercial purposes) multiphase alternating current now universally used. (Westinghouse bought the Tesla patents.) Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Long-Term AT&T Investors Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:52:26 -0500 In article , joeofseattle@yahoo.com says: > Wesrock@aol.com Wed, 8 Mar 2006 20:14:39 EST wrote: >> It is not all that uncommon in the business world for the acquirer to >> take the name of the acquired company. Phil Anshutz's (he of Qwest >> fame, among many other businesses) Denger and Rio Grande Western >> Railroad acquired that Southern Pacific Company, parent of the >> Southern Pacific Railroad (which had long since divested Sprint). >> Then he changed the name of the company to Southern Pacific. (Also of >> historic interest only, since the Union Pacific Railroad acquired >> Southern Pacific and dropped the name). >> NationsBank, formerly NCNB National Bank, and before that North >> Carolina National Bank, acquired Bank of America and then changed its >> name to Bank of America.>> > Or in the recent case of SBC (formerly Southwestern Bell Corporation) > [not to be confused with SBC for Seattle's Best Coffee, a division of > Starbucks] buying AT&T and taking on the name of the rechristened > company as at&t (just "lower casing" themselves and ditching the death > star in favour of a blue marble.) > Then again there are other cases where a name change was affected -- > MCI (Microwave Communications Incorporated) becoming Worldcom, but > more than likely Worldcom was not a favourable name after the higher > level hijinx with "creative" accounting bankrupted the original > corporation so they changed their corporate name to that of the > acquired entity (perhaps thinking that the public was too stupid to > notice that it was still the same entity that screwed them out of > their investment if they invested in the company.) > MCI hasn't dealt with microwave in *years* and AT&T hasn't had much of > anything to do with telegraph either for that matter either. And MCI really doesn't exist anymore. It's all Verizon -- including UUNet. Scary indeed. ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: 1993 TV Reportage, About a System Called INTERNET Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 16:57:37 -0500 In article , shlichter@diespammers.com says: > Hansi wrote: >> I found this TV reportage from 1993 about a few guys who work with >> computers on a system called INTERNET. >> It is odd to watch when they say, that the INTERNET could have >> theoretically up to 5000 members. >> Very interesting and fun to watch, although it is only from 1993, but >> it seems older, looking at the INTERNET now, and was it has become. >> I hope this is interesting fror the dcom.telecom Group. >> Greetings from Hansi >> Film clip URL: http://www.jumpingpixels.com/internet.html >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for passing this >> along, Hansi. PAT] > Very interesting piece. My BBS had been up about 6 years by then and > we were tied to a network which then went to FidoNet and into the > internet. My users could not believe that a message could get around > the world and they would have an answer within minutes. By 1992 I was getting a UUCP feed from a friend. I used Waffle at the time. I also owned the cdp.org domain but back then it didn't cost anything to obtain a domain name. Now instead of the Church of the Dead Presidents it's the Center for Democracy Project domain. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V25 #96 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 10 15:22:22 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DCB971506D; Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:22:21 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #97 Message-Id: <20060310202221.DCB971506D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:22:21 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, HOT_NASTY,MILLION_EMAIL autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:25:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 97 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Remote Control Humans (Scott Ortiz, Jr.) Amazon in Talks For Movie and TV Downloads (Reuters News Wire) Suits Stifle Efforts to Sheltering Kids Online (Maryclaire Dale) Amazon Considering Downloads (Monty Solomon) The 411 on Directory Assistance (Monty Solomon) House Panel Leaders OK National Cable Franchise (Neal McLain) Cellular-News for Friday 10th March 2006 (Cellular-News) Inmarsat to Enter Satellite-Phone Market (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - March 10, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update - Canada - #520 (Angus Telemanagement) Re: 25 Hs Power (Al Gillis) Re: 25 Hz Power (Thomas D. Horne, Electrician) Re: 25 Hz power (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Scott Ortis, Jr. Subject: Remote Control Humans Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:09:07 -0600 Sixto Ortiz Jr. newsfactor.com The idea of controlling people by manipulating brain activity long has been a staple of science fiction and dystopian fantasy. Hypnotism, implanted devices, brainwashing, even the Jedi mind trick -- all are methods that have appeared in fictional works as effective ways to subvert the will of human beings. Today, however, the possibility of being controlled by an outside force is more science than fiction, thanks to researchers at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan. A team at NTT's Communication Science Laboratories has invented a headset that can, when linked to a remote control equipped with a pair of joysticks, force the wearer to move against his or her will. The device originally was designed to add realism to video games and other virtual environments. But while technically impressive, the invention is viewed by some as ethically troubling -- viewed, quite literally, as a new form of mind control. The apparatus has raised questions about the possibilities and perils of a world in which humans can be moved around like chess pieces. Shock Value NTT is using a technology called galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) to influence the delicate machinery in the inner ear that controls balance and movement in humans. Subjects slip on the headset, which looks like a pair of bulky headphones, and researchers zap electrical impulses into their ears to control their movements remotely. "At low currents, GVS selectively activates nerve cells in the peripheral vestibular system (the balance receptors in the inner ear) and such activation results in sensations and movements of the eyes and limbs, just as natural stimulation of balance receptors results in such movements," said Dr. Ian Curthoys, professor of vestibular function at the University of Sydney's Vestibular Research Laboratory. In other words, GVS artificially induces the same natural sensations caused whenever the inner ear's balancing mechanism is stimulated with real movement. For example, Curthoys said, a subject undergoing this type of stimulation could feel like she is turning even though she is sitting still. The technology could be used both to trick a person into "feeling" motion and to move in a predetermined direction. The possibilities are endless, from fully immersive virtual-reality environments that faithfully reproduce real motion to, perhaps, a way to control unruly crowds without tear gas, rubber bullets, and riot police. Playing with Your Head Dr. J.J. Collins, professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University and codirector of its Center for BioDynamics, said GVS does indeed hold massive potential appeal for gamers. "[Its] great chance for success is as a component of virtual-reality games, one for enhancing the total immersion experience by creating motion illusions." In fact, one of the NTT research team's experiments, presented last year in Los Angeles at the SIGGRAPH conference -- a gathering focused on computer graphics and interactive techniques -- used GVS to enhance a racing game by simulating the sharp movement of the vehicle without the usual mechanical props. The GVS procedure itself is not inherently dangerous as long as it's done by people who know what they're doing, Curthoys said. "If people give their informed consent for such a procedure and it is applied carefully by people who are familiar with its use, then there is not much issue," he said. If the electrodes are placed incorrectly, however, the application of large currents can burn the skin, Curthoys said. Warned Collins: "GVS involves applying currents to the nerves in an individual's head, and if this is not done properly, it could lead to injury." Buyers of commercial GVS kits -- if the technology ever is commercialized -- probably should refrain from entrusting the remote control to those who enjoy inflicting pain on others. Is It Ethical? Giving someone the ability to do something that has been compared to mind control inevitably raises the question of whether or not it ought to be done at all. Critics of the GVS technology have raised concerns over the ethical implications associated with pumping electricity into the brain and providing others with a means of physical control. Dr. Jonathan D. Moreno, a professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia and author of the upcoming book Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense, said it was important to draw a line between medical and entertainment research when talking about GVS. He pointed out that medical research has built-in safeguards, such as informed consent and risk-analysis protocols, that are designed to protect experimental subjects. "The gaming situation makes me uncomfortable," Moreno said, "especially in an uncontrolled situation where volunteers simply sign a blanket waiver that provides no legal protection to the experimenter in case of negligence." Moreno said that any company hoping to commercialize GVS for entertainment purposes potentially would face a tremendous liability burden due to possible injury claims, especially with products designed for children, teens, and young adults. "Would you want your kid to be zapping his or her brain for entertainment after school?" he asked. GVS and World Domination Beyond fun and games, several potentially sinister applications come to mind when talking about GVS technology. Could it be used to put a human being in harm's way? Could a prison equip all inmates with GVS devices so guards could move them easily from place to place, even when they don't want to be moved? Could housewives eventually use GVS to force recalcitrant husbands to go shopping on game day? "The prison question is intriguing because prisoners have surrendered much of their autonomy," said Dr. Margaret McLean, director of biotechnology and medical ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. The question to ask, according to McLean, is whether or not an internal control such as GVS could be compared realistically to other traditional means of prisoner control -- such as bars, cells, dogs, or guards. The truth is that GVS in its current stage is far from the control freak's ultimate weapon. Boston University's Collins dismissed the possibility of using the technology to move humans completely against their will because, he said, "Our central nervous system, through volitional commands, could largely override the effects produced by GVS." Score one for good, old-fashioned willpower. Collins noted that "this is much like using hypnotic suggestions: You can suggest to the subject that they 'jump off a roof' or engage in some sort of activity which (under ordinary conditions) the suject believes is immoral. The subject will often-times struggle against obeying such a command and will sometimes come out of the hypnotic trance entirely in the process." Another researcher active in GVS agreed. "At present, we can induce small changes in body stance and posture, but are nowhere near remote controlling humans." The researcher did not wish to be identified by name. Some people have pointed out that GVS has tangible theraputic applications. Besides its possible uses as a tool for creating immersive virtual-reality environments, GVS also can be used, said Collins, for treating patients who suffer from balance disorders and other types of neurological diseases that attack the vestibular system. Curthoys and McLean agreed that the technique has potential for patients with balance problems. "Our aging population faces a number of health challenges, one of which is the loss of balance," said McLean. If GVS could be used to treat balance disorders, she added, the technology would a boon to keeping people on their feet, preventing falls and fractures, and -- somewhat ironically, given its potential to influence the brain -- allowing continuing independence. A New Reality The best commercial promise for GVS still appears to be its use for enhancing video games. Next-generation gaming consoles such as the Xbox 360 and ever-evolving PC graphics cards are setting the bar for visual realism higher and higher. If developers can someday enhance stunning visuals with equally stunning sensations, ultrarealistic games that take advantage of GVS might shake up the industry. But even the use of GVS in gaming raises an interesting ethical dilemma, McLean said. Could the technology, she asked, enhance gamers' experience of violence to the degree that it blurs or even completely evaporates the line between fantasy and reality? If that's the case, McLean added, GVS could be seen as a tool that ultimately promotes violent behavior. McLean said, however, "we are a long way from the point -- if we ever reach it -- of deliberate, willful behavior which goes against a person's strongly held convictions." It also could be a tool that provides a virtual experience unlike any other. If GVS delivers on its game-enhancement potential, developers and marketers might hold the remote in their hands, easily holding a captive audience of enthralled gamers in their sway. But rest assured that any steps toward mainstream adoption of GVS will attract the attention of many others who will insist on thrashing out the ethical implications of the technology -- and those people most likely will not be silenced by a mute button. Copyright 2006 NewsFactor Network, Inc. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more tech news, also see http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra and the various categories therein. ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Amazon in Talks for Movie and TV Downloads Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:06:49 -0600 Online retailer Amazon.com Inc is holding talks with three Hollywood studios on creating a service to allow consumers to download movies and television programs and copy them onto DVDs, the New York Times reported on Friday. Citing three people briefed on the discussions, the Times said Amazon is in advanced negotiations with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers. The report did not give a timetable or estimate cost of such a service. Such a fee-based service could compete with new video download options available at Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes digital download store. In February, sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Amazon is in talks with four major music labels on starting a digital music service. Warner Brothers is part of Time Warner Inc., Universal Studios is owned by General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Paramount is part of Viacom Inc.. Amazon officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Maryclaire Dale Subject: Suits Stifle Effort to Shelter Kids Online Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:10:41 -0600 By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer It seemed like a good idea: enact a federal law to protect children from sexually explicit material on the Internet. But eight years after Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act, legal challenges from sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other Web publishers have kept it from being enforced. The 1998 law would impose a $50,000 fine and six-month prison term on commercial Web site operators who publish content "harmful to children," as defined by "contemporary community standards." Opponents say that definition is so broad it would stifle free speech. Now, technology experts and others oppose the law on more practical grounds -- they say it's obsolete. Parents today are more concerned about online predators than racy pictures, said University of Pennsylvania law professor Polk Wagner, who teaches intellectual property. "This was a hot issue in the late '90s," Wagner said. "There are much more serious concerns (now): the instant messaging, the videoconferencing." The Justice Department is nonetheless gearing up to defend the law at a trial set for October in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The case spawned a high-profile debate last month when Google, Inc. refused a government subpoena for documents the government sought as it develops its strategy. Justice lawyers subpoenaed several leading search engines for information, apparently to study what information people seek -- and find -- online. They asked Google for 1 million sample queries and 1 million Web addresses in Google's database, according to court documents. Google is fighting the subpoena, although primarily citing trade secrets, not privacy issues. Yahoo! and others are cooperating, saying the information they provided does not identify individual users. "I think it's natural for people to think this is creepy, even though it's unlikely ... the Department of Justice would ever link that up with who I am," said John G. Palfrey Jr., executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice granted preliminary injunctions that prevent the government from enforcing the Child Online Protection Act, known as COPA, until the case is tried. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the 5-4 decision that upheld the latest injunction in June 2004 on grounds the plaintiffs were likely to prevail. He, too, questioned whether evolving technology had not substantially changed the issue since 1998. "The current case does not reflect current technological reality -- a serious threat in any case involving the Internet," Kennedy wrote. He also noted that filters can block dubious Web material posted offshore, which the U.S. law could not target. "Promoting the use of filters does not condemn as criminal any category of speech, and so the potential chilling effect is eliminated, or at least much diminished," Kennedy wrote. The law, signed by then-President Clinton, requires adults to use some sort of access code, or perhaps a credit-card number, to view questionable material. At least one earlier attempt by Congress to fashion a blanket online child-protection law, and about a dozen state laws, have previously been thrown out on First Amendment grounds, according to attorney Chris Hansen of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court has approved more limited measures, such as the use of filters on computers at federally funded public libraries. "Congress has repeatedly attempted to address this serious need and the court yet again opposed these common-sense measures to protect America's children," Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said after Kennedy's decision. Michael J. Miller, the longtime PC Magazine executive editor who is now an executive with parent Ziff Davis Publishing, said the government is fighting the good fight, but with the wrong tool. "The problem is, you're never going to be able to completely criminalize it at the source because the problems here are international problems," Miller said. Parental filters have gotten more sophisticated since 1998, and now often come with spyware and firewall packages that consumers purchase, he said. And Wagner, at Penn, noted that parents have come up with their own solutions -- including putting the computer in a common area of the house. Hansen said his clients are not defending child pornography or obscenity, which are both covered under other laws. "The language of the law would make you fearful, I think," he said. "And the penalty for guessing wrong is, you go to jail." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:43:19 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Amazon Considering Downloads By RICHARD SIKLOS The New York Times March 10, 2006 Amazon.com is in talks with three Hollywood studios about starting a service that would allow consumers to download movies and TV shows for a fee and burn them onto DVD's, according to three people briefed on the discussions. If the advanced negotiations are successfully concluded, Amazon's service would position itself in the media world alongside rivals like Apple Computer's iTunes as a place where people go not just to order goods to be sent by mail, but to instantly enjoy digital wares as well. So far, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers are engaged in the talks, said one person close to the talks who, like the others, asked not to be identified because the negotiations are continuing. Although it is not clear when it might begin, an Amazon downloading service would be sure to send waves through both the media and retail worlds. Players in both industries are racing to offer new ways to give technology-savvy audiences instant access to their favorite shows and songs, in a field crowded with potential rivals using Internet and on-demand technologies. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/technology/10movies.html?ex=1299646800&en=79fbf1b4dab9270c&ei=5090 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See the entire report on this from Reuters elsewhere in this issue of the Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 04:18:15 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The 411 on Directory Assistance By FRED A. BERNSTEIN The New York Times March 9, 2006 Calling 411 for directory assistance can be maddeningly expensive. Carriers like Sprint and Verizon charge more than $1 and sometimes as much as $2 a call from a cellphone.. And much of that is profit. Directory assistance "truly is a cash cow," said Saroja Girishankar, a vice president at the Pelorus Group, a telecommunications market research firm based in Raritan, N.J. She and other industry analysts said that the carriers paid wholesalers -- who actually provide the 411 service -- from 25 to 50 cents a call. Naturally, the wireless carriers and directory assistance companies want to keep the cash cow in their barn. But increasingly, customers have access to free alternatives to 411. And as cellphones become more sophisticated, the options for avoiding paid directory assistance are multiplying. Already, two new services -- 800-FREE-411 and 800-411-METRO -- offer directory assistance free of charge, though users have to listen to advertisements. Other companies, including Google, offer free directory assistance via text message. Soon, voice-activated search engines may make it possible to bypass directory assistance entirely. One contender, the Maestro system, a voice-activated search engine being developed at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, will allow users to surf the Web just by speaking and listening. To keep users calling their paid 411 services, the major wireless carriers have added features like horoscopes, sports scores and stock prices. As cellular bandwidth increases, those offerings will go from voice to text to multimedia, said Tom Moran, executive director of product management and development for Verizon LiveSource. (LiveSource, owned by Verizon Communications, handles about 1 billion 411 calls a year for customers not only of Verizon Wireless, but of T-Mobile, Cingular and Alltel.) http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/business/09cell.html?ex=1299560400&en=51a40b3b3f749c77&ei=5090 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not understand why people and companies keep insisting on paying _obscenely high_ rates for DA when there are so many alternatives to xxx-555-1212 and 411. The Directory Assistance service this Digest recommends -- mainly because I do make a wee bit of profit on it -- is 877-EASY-411. The charge is all of *65 cents* for one or two inquiries, and it is billed your credit card more or less monthly. (The inquiries for the month accumulated). 65 cents per inquiry (or two) still makes money for the people who operate the program and five or six cents for the Digest. So imagine, if you will, the $1.25 to $2.00 per call charged by Verizon, AT&T, SBC, Cingular Wireless and others, to picture the rip offs in this business. Now just as Divestiture allowed for '1010 calling' the '00' operator and the default long distance 1+ carriers to be chosen by consumers, it also allowed for '411' to be a consumer choice; but _just try_ to get your telco to agree to send _your_ 411 traffic to the bureau of your choice. They will not do it! They may, someday, if/when lawsuits force them to comply with this provision, but until then, telco continues to control the destiny of '411' itself; telco's own choice of overpriced bureau, etc. People who do not like it, have to work around it, just like years ago when we had to dial 950-whatever to use MCI/Sprint. The service which sponosors the Digest is one such example: You have to dial 1-877-327-9411, or 877-EASY-411. Some users have built that into speed dial buttons on their phones. Other users have added 'intercept boxes' (such as what Sandman offers) to listen on line for '411' and on hearing it, to drop the connection and immediatly dial 1-877-327-9411, at _65 cents per call_. How do they know who to bill? Well, you enroll for the service by going to http://easy411.com/telecomdigest to sign up. You provide up to five numbers you would ordinarily use to call Directry Assistance. You also provide it with the credit card number you wish to have billed at monthly more or less intervals. When one of those (up to five) phone lines dials into 877-327-9411 the 'caller ID' (or ANI) captured is recorded and you are put straight through to the _live, real-time_ directory assistance bureau and a live operator answers. No need for PINS, little or no chance of cheating on your credit card since presumably you control the (up to five) phone lines used. Maybe one or two for your office, one or two for your home numbers, one for your cell phone, etc. No need to 'login in', no need for 'passwords' etc. Just dial 877-327-9411 and pass your request when the operator answers. The ANI generated takes care of it all, and about once per month (because it is very unrealistic and impractical to submit a credit card charge for 65 cents each time an inquiry is made) they are all batched up and charged to your card. For your protection against abuse by others in your office, I think they will set monthly 'credit cut-off levels' if you ask, and they do provide a print out of your inquiries a few days before the credit card charge is put through if you request it. There is NO fee to sign up, NO monthly minimum usage, none of that stuff. Just 65 cents for one or two inquiries. If your computer has speakers/sound card you can hear a sample call to EASY411 on their web site. Consider using EASY411 as your directory assistance provider please. It is real time, as up to date as all such bureaus are (within a day or two?), and you will be helping this Digest. http://easy411.com/telecomdigest PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:23:32 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: House Panel Leaders OK National Cable Franchise In a setback for cable, key House lawmakers Wednesday night agreed in principle to award a national cable franchise to phone companies and to subject cable operators to continued local franchising requirements until phone rivals have reached 15% local-video-market penetration, industry and Capitol Hill aides said Thursday morning. http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6314469.html?display=Breaking+News ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 10th March 2006 Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:59:23 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Ericsson Delivers HSDPA To Vodafone In Germany http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16447.php Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson Thursday said Vodafone Group will today launch its mobile broadband offering in Germany with support of a HSDPA solution delivered by Ericsson. ... Siemens: No 3G until 2008 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16451.php Brazilian mobile operators are expected to launch true 3G services in 2008, local daily IT Web quoted Siemens Brasil VP Aluizio Bretas Byrro as saying. ... Vodafone Planning British HSDPA Rollout http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16460.php Following successful testing in Newbury, Vodafone UK will start customer trials on its live HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) network from April. With 100 business users testing Vodafone UK's HSDPA-enabled Mobile Connect Cards across central ... [[ Financial ]] Vodafone Australia: No Due Diligence From Optus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16442.php Singapore Telecommunications's Australian unit, Optus, hasn't conducted due diligence on Vodafone Group's Australian network assets, a spokesman for Vodafone said Thursday. ... Hong Kong Hutchison Telecom 2005 Net Loss Widens To HK$768 Million http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16443.php Hutchison Telecommunications International said Thursday its net loss widened to HK$768 million in 2005 from HK$30 million in 2004. ... Six Companies Bid To Acquire 35% Stake In Tunisie Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16444.php Six companies have placed a bid to acquire a 35% stake in Tunisia's largest telecommunications carrier Tunisie Telecom, the Tunisian Communication Ministry said Wednesday evening. ... Siemens unit plans US$56mn investment in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16450.php German equipment supplier Siemens plans to inject 120mn reais (US$55.6mn) into its operations in Brazil this year, up 10% on last year's figure, Siemens Brasil VP Aluizio Bretas Byrro told BNamericas. ... Digicel to acquire Bouygues Telecom Caraibe http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16453.php Caribbean mobile group Digicel intends to acquire Bouygues Telecom Caraibe, a wireless operator in the French West Indies, Digicel said in a statement. ... [[ Handsets ]] FOCUS: Sales of cell phones in Russia seen slowing down in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16448.php In all likelihood, 2005 was the last boom year for mobile handset sales in Russia. The government crackdown on illegal imports of handsets and lower demand are likely to result in slower sales although the average price of phones is likely to increas... Study: Children rise as new target segment for mobile business http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16452.php Children of 10-13 years of age make up 95% of the almost 170,000 Argentine minors using mobile telephones today, yet children with cell phones represent only 6% of the 10-13 bracket, according to a new study by local consultancy Carrier y Asociados. ... A Cellphone in the Shape of the Iconic Red Telephone Box http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16459.php A USA based handset retailer has designed a GSM handset that is in the shape of the infamous UK public telephone box. But why make a cell phone that looks like a phone booth? Well, C&D Wireless, say that they don't like conformity. When they started ... Mandatory Handset Recycling For US County http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16462.php The government of Westchester County in New York State, USA is passing legislation which will make it illegal to dispose of cell phones in the conventional rubbish supplies. When passed, the legislation will effectively force residents to recycle the... [[ Legal ]] Norway's Telenor claims Alfa's control of VimpelCom would break law http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16456.php Norway's telecommunication company Telenor has sent a letter to Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) claiming that if it were to approve an application of Russia's Alfa Group to increase its stake in VimpelCom, it would contradict Russian anti... [[ Messaging ]] Nokia Hunts For The Business User http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16455.php With the BlackBerry off the endangered-species list and Microsoft homing in on the market for phones that double as e-mail devices, Nokia is on the prowl for its own corporate-customer base. ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Golden Telecom to build 5,000 WiFi nodes in Moscow in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16457.php Golden Telecom, a U.S.-registered provider of telecommunications and Internet services in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), plans to develop a WiFi network with up to 5,000 access nodes in Moscow, the company said in a statemen... CDMA Expansion For Brazil http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16461.php Motorola has announced a CDMA 3G EV-DO network expansion for Brazil's VIVO. This development enables VIVO to effectively manage large increases in high speed mobile data network traffic for Brasilia and Curitiba, two Brazilian cities where VIVO bring... [[ Offbeat ]] Vodafone: Overseas Involvement Likely In Greek PM Wiretap http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16454.php ATHENS (AP)--A senior official from the mobile telephone operator Vodafone said Thursday he suspected overseas involvement in the wiretapping of Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and top officials during the Athens Olympics two years ago. ... [[ Personnel ]] Vodafone Greece Chief To Face MPs On Tapping Scandal -BBC http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16445.php The head of Vodafone in Greece is due Thursday to give evidence to a parliamentary committee about a phone tapping scandal, the BBC Web site reports. ... Sonaecom Non-Executive Directors Borges, O'Toole Resign http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16446.php Sonaecom said Thursday that non-executive directors Antonio Borges and Richard O'Toole have resigned because of a potential conflict of interest, given Sonaecom's bid for Portugal Telecom. ... [[ Regulatory ]] EU Says Germany Willing To Solve Telecom Conflict-Sources http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16449.php The German government appears to be willing to ease its stance in the controversy with the European Commission about Germany's planned new telecommunications law. ... [[ Reports ]] Free WiMAX Report from the OECD http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16463.php The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published a rather good report into WiMAX and its impact on competition and regulation. It gives a status report of the technology and its rollout, then outlines the regulatory cha... [[ Statistics ]] Russia's MegaFon user base in Arkhangelsk Region up 70% in 2005 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16458.php The subscriber base of Russia?s third largest mobile operator MegaFon in the Arkhangelsk Region and the Nenets Autonomous District rose 70% in 2005 to 500,000 people as of December 31, the company said in a press release Thursday. ... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:35:27 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Inmarsat to Enter Satellite-Phone Market USTelecom dailyLead March 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgucfDtutbunopVUgb TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Inmarsat to enter satellite-phone market BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon adopting coaxial cable to cut costs * Sprint taps Lucent for VoIP deployment * Microsoft unveils Origami details * Net2Phone helps cable go wireless USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Last Chance: Free USB Flash Drive or Computer Bag TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: DSL subs expected to double by 2009 * Survey: Many consumers don't know what IPTV means * Broadband, mobile figure prominently in Nick's upfront VOIP DOWNLOAD * Startup tries hand at ad-backed VoIP REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Key lawmakers reach deal on national video franchising plan * FCC appointee assures Senate on lobbying ties Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgucfDtutbunopVUgb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:59:48 -0500 From: telecomdirect_daily Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - Friday, March 10, 2006 Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For March 10, 2006 ******************************** Nortel Still Haunted by Accounting Woes http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/17030?11228 Nortel Networks Ltd. (NYSE/Toronto: NT - message board) shocked the markets this morning with news that it is delaying its fourth-quarter 2005 and full-year financial reports, and restating its 2003, 2004, and first nine months of 2005 numbers, due to "revenue incorrectly recognized in prior periods that should have been deferred to... Telenor Complains About Alfa's Attempt to Control VimpelCom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/17027?11228 Telenor has told Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) that a proposed move by Alfa Group to increase its stake in mobile operator VimpelCom would constitute a breach of Russia's antimonopoly legislation. Alfa currently owns 32.9% of voting shares in VimpelCom and asked the FAS in May 2005 for permission to increase this stake to... Wireless Warehousing's Real Driver http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/17025?11228 While supply-chain technology based on RFID grabs headlines, it's simpler and less costly barcode-and-WiFi systems that are increasing productivity in America's small and medium-sized warehouses. Two ready-made cases in point: Based in Tacoma, Wash., Stellar Industrial Supply is a wholesale distribution company specializing in... Cingular Embraces Mobile Blogging http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/17019?11228 Blogging continues to gain traction in the wireless space as the United States' top two wireless carriers now offer customers the ability to create mobile blogs. Cingular Wireless is the latest carrier to sign up for Intercasting Corporation's Rabble service. The Rabble platform is designed to give customers the ability to create and... Copyright (C) 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:25:55 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #520, March 10, 2006 From: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 520: March 10, 2006 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Bell and Aliant Create New 3.4-Million-Line Telco ** Toronto Hydro Plans Downtown-Wide Wi-Fi ** TWU Executive Fights Ouster in Court ** Cisco Offers Multimedia Platform ** Avaya, Cisco Embrace Microsoft LCS ** AT&T Inc to Buy BellSouth ** Third-World Phone Service Expands ** Vonage and Shaw Debate 'VoIP Tax' ** Bell Must Provide Equal Access on Digital Voice Lite ** Once Again, Nortel Delays Results ** Bell and Telus Launch EV-DO in Quebec City ** NEC Hosts Network Management ** Mitel Partners for Power over Ethernet ** Ceasefire at Minacs Worldwide ** Telesat Posts Record Earnings ** Canadian Telecom Conferences in 2006 ============================================================ BELL AND ALIANT CREATE NEW 3.4-MILLION-LINE TELCO: On Tuesday BCE announced plans to create a new income trust that will own Aliant's wireline operations, Bell's recently announced "regional lines" spin-off (see Telecom Update #515), and Bell's 63.4% share of Bell Nordiq. ** The new company, which may be created as early as July, will have 3.4 million local lines and 400,000 high-speed Internet customers, spread over six provinces. Its headquarters will be in Atlantic Canada. It will continue to use the existing Aliant and Bell brand names for most services. ** Initially BCE will own 73.5% of the new company, but will reduce that to 45% by distributing units to its shareholders. It will have the right to nominate a majority of the company's directors and to control the appointment of its CEO. ** Bell will acquire Aliant Mobility and Aliant's DownEast Communications phone stores. TORONTO HYDRO PLANS DOWNTOWN-WIDE WI-FI: Toronto Hydro plans to create the largest Wi-Fi zone in Canada, installing access points on light standards throughout an area of six square kilometres bounded east-west by Jarvis and Spadina and north-south by Front and Bloor. The utility's telecom subsidiary says it will begin offering service in about half of that area by June 30, and in all of it by year-end. ** Service will be free for the first six months, and then offered in "a variety of access packages at competitive rates." TWU EXECUTIVE FIGHTS OUSTER IN COURT: On Monday, the Telecommunications Workers Union convention, meeting in Burnaby B.C., voted non-confidence in the union's leadership. The entire executive was replaced by a new group headed by Kamloops installer George Doubt. On Thursday, 67 of the 118 delegates were served with notice that ousted president Bruce Bell had applied for a court injunction to block the new executive from taking office. ** The non-confidence vote appears to reflect discontent with the process that led to approval of a new contract with Telus in November. (see Telecom Update #504, 505, 507) CISCO OFFERS MULTIMEDIA PLATFORM: Under the slogan "This Changes Everything," Cisco Systems has launched Cisco Unified Communications, a suite of integrated voice, data, and video applications. The new offering includes Unified CallManager 5.0, a Linux-based platform that supports Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and that will ultimately converge with the existing Windows-based version of CallManager. AVAYA, CISCO EMBRACE MICROSOFT LCS: Avaya and Cisco have both announced plans to integrate support for Microsoft's Office Communicator and Live Communications Server into their IP-PBX offerings. Nortel and Mitel have recently made similar announcements (see Telecom Update #517, 519). AT&T INC TO BUY BELLSOUTH: AT&T Inc., created when SBC bought AT&T Corp. last year (see Telecom Update #506), has agreed to buy BellSouth in a stock swap valued at US$67 billion. In 1984, the old AT&T was broken into eight companies -- seven regional phone companies and AT&T. Only three of the eight exist as independent companies today. THIRD-WORLD PHONE SERVICE EXPANDS: In 1980, developing countries accounted for only 20% of the world's telephone lines. In 2005 the figure was 60%, with much of the growth driven by wireless. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where phone penetration is still low, the rate tripled in the last five years, to 104 subscribers per 1,000 people. ** Detailed statistics on telecom and IT growth in 144 countries appear in a World Bank report issued this week. Information and Communications for 2006: Global Trends and Policies can be purchased online at http://WorldBankReport.notlong.com VONAGE AND SHAW DEBATE 'VOIP TAX': In an exchange of press releases this week, Vonage and Shaw debated whether a "quality of service" enhancement that Shaw offers at $10/month to Vonage customers using Shaw's Internet service is really a thinly disguised "VoIP tax." ** Vonage first made the claim last December, in a submission to the CRTC in support of a related application by Cybersurf (see Telecom Update #509), saying Shaw's QoS fee has a "chilling effect" on customers considering a competitive VoIP service. ** Shaw says that Vonage's accusation is "both wrong and misleading." It told the CRTC that its QoS service is an optional enhancement, offered as a value added service to its retail Internet customers. http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2006/07/c4352.html http://ShawVoIP.notlong.com http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2005/8622/C122_200512716.htm BELL MUST PROVIDE EQUAL ACCESS ON DIGITAL VOICE LITE: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-11 gives final approval to Bell Canada's "Digital Voice Lite" access-independent VoIP service tariffs, with conditions. (See Telecom Update #496) ** Within a year Bell must implement equal access, allowing DVLite customers to choose their long distance providers. Bell must also comply with the CRTC's earlier order to implement full local number portability on DVLite by June 2006 (see Telecom Update #508). ** Bell must file new tariff pages when DVLite prices change, but the maximum and minimum points of the price range approved by the Commission can remain confidential. ** Bell must inform customers of service limitations and obtain their express acknowledgement before starting service. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-11.htm ONCE AGAIN, NORTEL DELAYS RESULTS: Nortel Networks is postponing the filing of its annual report for 2005 in order to restate about US$850 million in revenues that were recognized in the wrong quarters. The adjustments, which affect 2003, 2004, 2005, and some earlier periods, do not alter Nortel's cash reserves. ** Nortel's fourth-quarter revenue, subject to adjustment, was US$2.95 billion, an increase of 13% on the quarter and 14% on the year. A $2.47 billion litigation expense resulted in a net loss of $2.21 billion (see Telecom Update #516). Gross margin was 43% of revenue. ** CEO Mike Zafirovski expressed dissatisfaction with Nortel's results which "have not been good ... since 1998." BELL AND TELUS LAUNCH EV-DO IN QUEBEC CITY: Bell and Telus both introduced EV-DO high-speed cellular data service in Quebec City's downtown core this week. The two companies share wireless network facilities across Canada. ** Manitoba Telecom Services says it will launch EV-DO in Winnipeg and Brandon this spring. NEC HOSTS NETWORK MANAGEMENT: NEC Unified Solutions now offers two new network management offerings for small to medium businesses: Remote Management, which monitors data and VoIP network infrastructure, and Threat Management, which reports on network security. MITEL PARTNERS FOR POWER OVER ETHERNET: Mitel and Foundry Networks have completed interoperability testing to supply power from Foundry switches to Mitel phones over gigabit Ethernet networks. CEASEFIRE AT MINACS WORLDWIDE: Minacs Worldwide says that Elaine Minacs, who owns 46.5% of the company's stock, has agreed not sell her shares or call a special shareholder's meeting, and to tender her shares to any Board-approved transaction that pays at least $5/share. Elaine Minacs had previously called for a special shareholders meeting to replace the existing board. (See Telecom Update #516) TELESAT POSTS RECORD EARNINGS: Telesat Canada, a BCE subsidiary, reports revenue in 2005 of $475 million, 31% higher than the previous year, and cash flow of $204 million, a 10% increase. Net earnings rose 6.6% to $89 million. CANADIAN TELECOM CONFERENCES IN 2006: Mark your calendar -- it's a busy year for telecom conferences. Some highlights: ** Voice on the Net Canada 2006. April 3-5, Metro Toronto Convention Centre. http://www.voncanada.com/ ** Canadian Telecommunications Consultants Association Spring 2006 Conference. April 6-8, Radisson Plaza Admiral, Toronto. http://www.ctca.ca/EventDetails.asp?R=5&EV=55 ** 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit. June 12-14, Toronto Congress Centre. http://www.gstconferences.com/home?show=11&el=159351-13404 ** Telemanagement Live! October 24-25, Metro Toronto Convention Centre. http://www.telemanagementlive.com/ ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-mail ianangus@angustel.ca and jriddell@angustel.ca =========================================================== 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 late Friday afternoon each 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 2005 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail jriddell@angustel.ca. 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: Al Gillis Subject: Re: 25 Hz power Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:07:14 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Hi Wes ... Sorry for the off-topic question but could you detail some of the advantages you mentioned? I know the Great Northern Railroad used electric locomotives through mountain passes in Washington State because electrical locos could out pull steam locomotives on the steep grades encountered there. Thanks! Al wrote in message news:telecom25.96.7@telecom-digest.org: > In a message dated Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:45:38 CST, jsw > writes: >> In NYC up into the 70's at least, power for two of the subway >> divisions (BMT and IRT) was generated at 25Hz but converted to DC in >> the field. > Some electrified intercity railroads in the Northeast used 25 Hz > power. There are, or at least were in the past, some advantages to 25 > Hz power for running locomotives. (Some railroads in other parts of > the world use or used 16-2/3 HZ power. (Many deletions from here down!) ------------------------------ From: Thomas D. Horne, Electrician Reply-To: hornetd@mindspring.com Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:05:20 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. Tom Horne "This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous for general use." Thomas Alva Edison ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: 9 Mar 2006 19:30:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > Some electrified intercity railroads in the Northeast used 25 Hz > power. There are, or at least were in the past, some advantages to 25 > Hz power for running locomotives. The Pennsylvania Railroad used 25Hz 11,000 Volt from Washington to NYC and are major branches, including commuter lines. The Reading Company's Philadelphia area commuter network uses a similar system. The pre-war locmotives and self-propelled cars required that type of power supply. To this day that power continues although all the equipment is modern. Today's equipment uses rectifiers to convert the AC power to DC. Newer designs use a modern type of AC motor; I believe the frequency is varied by solid state control units to control speed. There was some talk of converting this system to more modern power but that would be costly and not gain anything. The most modern equipment has switches and can run on various types of power, older equipment must be modified in the shops. The Reading Company had its own rotary converters and now has solid state converters. Amtrak, which inherited the former PRR installation, may still get 25Hz from PECO and other suppliers or convert itself (I'm not sure of the latest arrangements). The Erie-Lackawnna suburban NYC commuter service used DC. It was converted to 60Hz in a rebuild; the advtg is this is commercial power and can be taken right off the grid. The above installations have fewer input points and have their own substations and distribution lines. The New Haven RR also used 25Hz 11kv but too was converted to 60 Hz. Amtrak extended the electrification to Boston. I wonder how the telephone company rectified AC power for its DC batteries. For large installations, a motor-generator set known as a rotary converter was required. Early machines would need 25Hz as well. Later on mercury arc rectifiers came out. Over the years the technology of power supplies dramatically improved. The size and cost of power converters had marked improvement. > Most of today's power companies descended from Edison's companies and > are still reluctant to give any credit to Nikola Tesla, who conceived > of the far more practical (for most commercial purposes) multiphase > alternating current now universally used. (Westinghouse bought the > Tesla patents.) I don't know if true, but someone told me that in Europe that didn't bother with three phase for house supply, but just give everyone 220 service. That does seem to be more efficient for house supplies. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #97 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Mar 11 15:27:19 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DD3B4150EB; Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:27:18 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #98 Message-Id: <20060311202718.DD3B4150EB@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:27:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DIET_1,LONGWORDS,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,SEDUCTION autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:30:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 98 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bush Advisor Arrested For Merchandise Fraud in MD Store (Deb Reichmann) Sun Going Away For Awhile; Don't Panic (Reuters News Wire) Prostitutes Start Radio Station (Reuters News Wire) Bishops New Web Site (Reuters News Wire) Call for Articles: Encyclopedia of Mobile Computing & Commerce (jygoh3) Internet and Civil Liberties? (Lisa Hancock) SS7/Intelligent Networks (Munish) CBS, Sinclair Toss Fuel on Re-Trans Fire (Neal McLain) Re: Verizon Targets MDUs for FiOS Penetration (T) Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance (Steven Lichter) Re: 25 Hz Power (William Warren) Re: 25 Hz Power (Herb Stein) Re: 25 Hz Power (Dale Farmer) Re: 25 Hz Power (Joe Morris) Re: 25 Hz power (Eric Tappert) Re: 25 Hz Power (Jim Stewart) Re: 25 Hz Power (Garrett Wollman) Re: 25 Hz Power (Michael G. Koerner) Last Laugh! Now That's What I Call Fat (Associated Press News Wire) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Deb Riechmann Subject: Bush Advisor Arrested For Merchandise Fraud in MD Store Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:27:09 -0600 Bush Shocked by Arrest of Former Adviser By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer President Bush on Saturday said he was shocked and saddened to learn that former domestic policy adviser Claude Allen was charged with theft for allegedly receiving phony refunds at department stores. "When I heard the story last night, I was shocked, and my first reaction was one of disappointment, deep disappointment -- if it's true -- that we were not fully informed," Bush said. "Shortly thereafter, I felt really sad for the Allen family." Allen, 45, was arrested Thursday by police in Montgomery County, Md., for allegedly claiming refunds for more than $5,000 worth of merchandise he did not buy, according to county and federal authorities. He had been under investigation since at least January for alleged thefts on 25 occasions at Target and Hecht's stores. "If the allegations are true, Claude Allen did not tell my chief of staff and legal counsel the truth, and that's deeply disappointing" the president said at the White House following an event on Iraq. "If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad." Allen, who had been the No. 2 official at the Health and Human Services Department, was named as domestic policy adviser at the White House in early 2005. He resigned abruptly on Feb. 9, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. The night of Jan. 2, after an alleged incident at the Target in Gaithersburg, Md., presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Allen called White House chief of staff Andy Card to tell him what had happened. The next morning, Allen spoke in person with Card and White House counsel Harriet Miers. McClellan said Allen told Card and Miers that it was all a misunderstanding and cited confusion with his credit card because he had moved several times. "He assured them that he had done nothing wrong and the matter would be cleared up," McClellan said. The president first learned of Allen's planned departure and the January incident in early February. But since Allen had passed the usual background checks and had no other prior issues that White House officials were aware of, "he was given the benefit of the doubt," McClellan said. Mallon Snyder, a Gaithersburg lawyer representing Allen, said his client was not improperly trying to take the items. Snyder said asked Target to produce videotape they said they have of Allen but that store representatives refused. He said he wants to meet with Target investigators to clear things up. "It's a misunderstanding on their part," Snyder said, adding that the investigation had nothing to do with Allen's departure from the White House. Allen has been released on his own recognizance. Calls to Allen's home in Gaithersburg, a Washington suburb, were not returned. A representative of Target's credit/sales authorization department spoke off the record saying "the gentleman took merchandise from our store with a credit card which had been abused/misused, and later tried to return it and get a cash refund. He did it earlier; owing to his government position we chose to privately warn him not to attempt it again. It was not our intent to humiliate or disgrace either the man, his family, nor the government administration, but his personal credit status does _not_ warrant any authorization for purchases on credit. None the less, he persisted in buying things on credit and returning them for cash. We had to stop the loss to our store." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news reports and headlines from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: The Sun is Going Away For Awhile, Don't Panic Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:17:14 -0600 The sun is going away, but don't panic ... The Nigerian government, anxious to avoid a repeat of riots that marked a solar eclipse in 2001, warned citizens they may suffer "psychological discomfort" during a new eclipse this month but urged them not to panic. Information Minister Frank Nweke said an eclipse five years ago caused riots in northern Borno state because people did not know why it happened. "Some people even felt some evil people in their communities were responsible for the eclipse," he said in a statement on Thursday aimed at reassuring Nigerians that the eclipse is expected to darken parts of the country on March 29. "Others are convinced that the Iraqi people are correct in their feelings that 'the American Satan' has chosen to punish the whole bunch of them." Their rationale is that "Satan did not cause the sun to go away in America, why is he punishing us?" Their belief is that an extended period of worship of their God will appease God to return their sun to them after a period of darkness. "The eclipse is not expected to have any real damaging effect, only social and psychological discomforts are envisaged," Nweke said, "So many of our citizens are not that well informed." He did not explain what the discomforts might be. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The one almost total solar eclipse I can recall did not cause absolute, total darkness in the USA (I was living in the Chicago area at the time). It resulted in what appeared to me as a sort of 'twilight' condition; the sky was extremely _blue_ and transparent. After eight or ten minutes of that, things returned to normal. Does that make sense? Does anyone know exactly where the eclipse will cover on March 29, and to what extent and for how long? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Prostitutes Get Own Radio Station Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:20:19 -0600 Prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Salvador are starting up their own radio station. The Association of Prostitutes of Bahia state has won government permission for the project, enabling FM station Radio Zona to start broadcasting in the second half of the year, project coordinator Sandro Correia said on Thursday. "We are not going to apologize for prostitution but we are going to struggle for the dignity of the profession," Correia told Reuters. The aim was not to attract women to the business. The station will feature programs about the trade but will also discuss issues such as human rights, social questions, and sexual abuse, Correia said. "The idea is that we have diverse programs that look at health issues, AIDS prevention, and racism, for example," he said. Working girls and media professionals such as Correia will staff the station and will give prostitutes training in an alternative job. Funding will come from association funds, advertising and sponsorship. Prostitution is widespread in Brazil, especially in Bahia state and other parts of the impoverished northeast. International rights organizations have criticized the country as a destination for sex tourism and child prostitution. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Bishops New Web Site Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:34:04 -0600 The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops took aim at "The Da Vinci Code" on Friday, launching a Web site that disputes central points of the best-selling novel. The site, http://www.jesusdecoded.com, denies one point on which the novel turns, saying the New Testament "does not offer any support for speculation about Jesus' being married or having a child." The novel by Dan Brown centers on the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, they had children who survived and married into a line of French kings, that the lineage continues today and a secret society based in France aims to restore the lineage to the thrones of Europe. The bishops' group said in a statement that the Web site "presents authentic Catholic teaching about Jesus and the origins of Christianity and corrects misinformation that appears in current popular media." The site disavows the book's notion that the Leonardo Da Vinci work "The Last Supper" shows Mary Magdalene bending toward Jesus. "What this novel does to Leonardo's Last Supper, it does to Christianity as such," according to the site's introduction. "It asks people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition quite a few odd claims. "Some are merely distortions of hypotheses advanced by serious scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or false." In a section on the art mentioned in the novel, an art historian wrote: "Along with trashing Christianity, Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code' is a veritable museum of errors where Renaissance art is concerned." A copyright trial is currently under way in a London court based on accusations that Brown borrowed research from the work of two historians to write his book without acknowledgment. A paperback edition of the novel is due out this month, with a run of 5 million copies, and a major motion picture adaptation starring Tom Hanks is due for release in May. Reuters/VNU Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: jygoh3@gmail.com Subject: Call for Articles: Encyclopedia of Mobile Computing & Commerce Vol 2 Date: 11 Mar 2006 03:58:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MOBILE COMPUTING & COMMERCE VOLUME 2 CALL FOR SHORT ARTICLES Proposal Deadline: 13 April 2006 Full Paper Submission Deadline: 1 May 2006 EDITOR: David Taniar, PhD., Monash University, Australia Encyclopedia represents a publication where concepts from a specific domain is consolidated and published as one. Encyclopedia provides opportunities for authors to publish their conceptual ideas through short articles without going through extensive performance evaluation process like conference papers or journal papers. Volume 1 of the Encyclopedia of Mobile Computing and Commerce (EMCC) has attracted more than 100 articles in a wide range of field covering from mobile business to mobile health, and from mobile wireless network to mobile entertainment. We are now soliciting new articles for the second volume. Due to the nature of short articles of up to 3,000 words per article, authors may submit a few short articles in one encyclopedia. For further details on the Encyclopedia of Mobile Computing and Commerce, please visit the encyclopedia website at http://users.monash.edu.au/~dtaniar/encyclopedia/. Topics: Recent advances in wireless technology have led to mobile computing, a new dimension in data communication and processing. Mobility is perhaps the most important market and technological trend in information and communication technology. With the advent of new mobile infrastructures providing higher bandwidth and constant connection to the network from virtually everywhere, the way people use information resources for work and business is being radically transformed. Whilst technological developments and standardization processes proceed at a rapid pace, many business challenges pertaining to the deployment of value added services remain unresolved. This encyclopedia presents current trends in mobile computing and their potential use in business and commerce. It also includes research challenges and innovative in mobile computing and commerce. Representative topics include but are NOT limited to the following: 1. Mobile Information Systems - Enterprise modeling and business process re-engineering - Evaluation and management of mobile information systems - Context and location awareness - Content personalization and tailoring based on context 2. Mobile Commerce and Mobile Business - Frameworks for M-Business models - M-Business management and innovation strategy - M-Business and public regulatory policy - Adoption and diffusion of M-Business 3. Mobile Enterprise implications for Society, Business and Security - National security applications of mobile computing - Mobile applications via industry sector - Mobile web enterprise systems and services - Security, privacy, authorization, and billing 4. Mobile Service Technologies - XML-based mobile services - Mobile agents - Interface design and usability - Mobile portals 5. Mobile to Consumer Applications - Mobile banking, Mobile investing and marketing - Mobile shopping, Mobile ticketing, Mobile e-payments - Mobile passports, Mobile record keeping - Mobile games 6. Mobile Applications for the Extended Enterprise - Mobile information systems applications in organizations - E-services in mobile information systems - Mobile databases and mobile data mining - Public sector and public safety use and development of mobile technologies 7. Enabling Technologies - Wireless LANs, 3G & 4G technologies, ZigBee - Ubiquitous and pervasive computing - Enabling technologies for mobile commerce and mobile working - Emerging Technology (Grid, P2P, Pervasive, Embedded Computing) 8. Enabling Applications - Corporate and personal email - Instant messaging - Mobile chat - M-Learning 9. Mobile Multimedia - Mobile multimedia applications and services - Wireless and mobile multimedia network management - Regulatory and societal issues of mobile multimedia - Personalization, privacy and security in mobile multimedia 10. Mobile Security - Security for mobile devices - Security for mobile networks - Fraud detection and prevention - Identity fraud 11. Mobile Education - Mobile learning experiments and results - Effectiveness of mobile learning - Accessibility issues for mobile education - Models for mobile education Proposal and Submission Procedure: Proposal submission should clearly outline the intention of the paper, and be submitted according to the submission procedure below. Minimum requirement for proposal must include: 1. Proposed Title 2. Author(s) 3. Affiliation 4. Contact details of author(s) 5. Abstract of the proposed short article (minimum 1 paragraph) Upon submission of proposal, proposal will be reviewed but feedbacks will only be given if there are significant issues. Otherwise, a paper ID will be assigned to the proposed paper, and the proposed content will be considered accepted if a paper ID has been assigned. Full papers will be around 1500 to 3500 words. Layout and formatting requirements can be found at the encyclopedia URL at http://users.monash.edu.au/~dtaniar/encyclopedia/ . Paper format for all submissions is either word or pdf. Important Dates: 14 April 2006: Proposal submission deadline 1 May 2006: Full paper submission deadline 2007: Publication of encyclopedia * If paper ID has been assigned, the proposed topic is accepted. * Authors are encouraged to submit their proposal early to ensure proposed topic corresponds to encyclopedia EMCC. Submission and Inquiries: Submission of proposal should be emailed to: Jen.Goh@infotech.monash.edu.au Inquiries can be sent directly to the editor at: David.Taniar@infotech.monash.edu.au Further information can be found at: http://users.monash.edu.au/~dtaniar/encyclopedia/ Publisher: Idea Group Reference, USA http://www.idea-group-ref.com ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Internet and Civil Liberties? Date: 10 Mar 2006 12:30:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There's been a lot of press lately about dangerous people using the Internet to prey on others. However, technical weaknesses make it easy to forge someone else's identity. What protection is there if an innocent person is accused of being an identity thief, pervert, defrauder, etc.? Suppose some molester uses your identity in a chat to arrange an illicit meeting with a victim. Will cops come after you? How would you defend yourself? [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: Munish Subject: SS7/Intelligent Networks Date: 10 Mar 2006 12:55:41 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi All, 1. Can anybody please tell me some thing about Hunt Group and Hunt lines in intelligent networks? Are these two different or the same ? 2. Signalling: Two STP are connected via a E1 and T1 truck. As only 1 slot is configured for signalling. if we are not using any voice chanel. is there any limit on the number of calls in terms of signalling at a time. 3. At the originating switch do both the state machines will be maintained O-BCSM and T-BCSM ? Regards, Munish ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:40:36 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: CBS, Sinclair Toss Fuel on Retrans Fire CBS, Sinclair Toss Fuel on Retrans Fire Station Owners Say They Expect More Cash for Carriage By Mike Farrell 3/6/2006 The campaign for retransmission-consent cash gathered steam last week, as two prominent broadcast executives predicted that cash payments to their companies from cable operators carrying their signals would increase significantly in 2006. http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6313013.html ------------------------------ From: T Subject: Re: Verizon Targets MDUs for FiOS Penetration Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 16:47:43 -0500 In article , ustelecom@dailylead.com says: > USTelecom dailyLead > March 9, 2006 > http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgjwfDtutbtHdlcqeZ > TODAY'S HEADLINES > NEWS OF THE DAY > * Verizon targets MDUs for FiOS penetration > Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. > http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dgjwfDtutbtHdlcqeZ Baloney on MDU's. That is particularly why they won't string Providence but yet will string Warwick. Oh -- and at the 130th Anniversary of the First Transmission of Speech over Electrical Wire a Verizon bigwig let loose with the fact that they've spent $72 Billion so far. That's twice their market cap. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:48:49 GMT Monty Solomon wrote: > By FRED A. BERNSTEIN > The New York Times > March 9, 2006 > Calling 411 for directory assistance can be maddeningly expensive. > Carriers like Sprint and Verizon charge more than $1 and sometimes as > much as $2 a call from a cellphone.. > And much of that is profit. Directory assistance "truly is a cash > cow," said Saroja Girishankar, a vice president at the Pelorus Group, > a telecommunications market research firm based in Raritan, N.J. She > and other industry analysts said that the carriers paid wholesalers -- > who actually provide the 411 service -- from 25 to 50 cents a call. > Naturally, the wireless carriers and directory assistance companies > want to keep the cash cow in their barn. But increasingly, customers > have access to free alternatives to 411. And as cellphones become more > sophisticated, the options for avoiding paid directory assistance are > multiplying. > Already, two new services -- 800-FREE-411 and 800-411-METRO -- offer > directory assistance free of charge, though users have to listen to > advertisements. > Other companies, including Google, offer free directory assistance via > text message. Soon, voice-activated search engines may make it > possible to bypass directory assistance entirely. One contender, the > Maestro system, a voice-activated search engine being developed at > Ben-Gurion University in Israel, will allow users to surf the Web just > by speaking and listening. > To keep users calling their paid 411 services, the major wireless > carriers have added features like horoscopes, sports scores and stock > prices. As cellular bandwidth increases, those offerings will go from > voice to text to multimedia, said Tom Moran, executive director of > product management and development for Verizon LiveSource. > (LiveSource, owned by Verizon Communications, handles about 1 billion > 411 calls a year for customers not only of Verizon Wireless, but of > T-Mobile, Cingular and Alltel.) > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/business/09cell.html?ex=1299560400&en=51a40b3b3f749c77&ei=5090 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not understand why people and > companies keep insisting on paying _obscenely high_ rates for DA when > there are so many alternatives to xxx-555-1212 and 411. The Directory > Assistance service this Digest recommends -- mainly because I do make > a wee bit of profit on it -- is 877-EASY-411. The charge is all of > *65 cents* for one or two inquiries, and it is billed your credit card > more or less monthly. (The inquiries for the month accumulated). 65 > cents per inquiry (or two) still makes money for the people who > operate the program and five or six cents for the Digest. So imagine, > if you will, the $1.25 to $2.00 per call charged by Verizon, AT&T, > SBC, Cingular Wireless and others, to picture the rip offs in this > business. > Now just as Divestiture allowed for '1010 calling' the '00' operator > and the default long distance 1+ carriers to be chosen by consumers, > it also allowed for '411' to be a consumer choice; but _just try_ to > get your telco to agree to send _your_ 411 traffic to the bureau of > your choice. They will not do it! They may, someday, if/when lawsuits > force them to comply with this provision, but until then, telco > continues to control the destiny of '411' itself; telco's own choice > of overpriced bureau, etc. People who do not like it, have to work > around it, just like years ago when we had to dial 950-whatever to > use MCI/Sprint. The service which sponsors the Digest is one such > example: You have to dial 1-877-327-9411, or 877-EASY-411. > Some users have built that into speed dial buttons on their phones. > Other users have added 'intercept boxes' (such as what Sandman offers) > to listen on line for '411' and on hearing it, to drop the connection > and immediatly dial 1-877-327-9411, at _65 cents per call_. > How do they know who to bill? Well, you enroll for the service by > going to http://easy411.com/telecomdigest to sign up. You provide up > to five numbers you would ordinarily use to call Directry > Assistance. You also provide it with the credit card number you wish > to have billed at monthly more or less intervals. When one of those > (up to five) phone lines dials into 877-327-9411 the 'caller ID' (or > ANI) captured is recorded and you are put straight through to the > _live, real-time_ directory assistance bureau and a live operator > answers. No need for PINS, little or no chance of cheating on your > credit card since presumably you control the (up to five) phone lines > used. Maybe one or two for your office, one or two for your home > numbers, one for your cell phone, etc. No need to 'login in', no need > for 'passwords' etc. Just dial 877-327-9411 and pass your request when > the operator answers. The ANI generated takes care of it all, and > about once per month (because it is very unrealistic and impractical > to submit a credit card charge for 65 cents each time an inquiry is > made) they are all batched up and charged to your card. For your > protection against abuse by others in your office, I think they will > set monthly 'credit cut-off levels' if you ask, and they do provide a > print out of your inquiries a few days before the credit card charge > is put through if you request it. There is NO fee to sign up, NO > monthly minimum usage, none of that stuff. Just 65 cents for one or > two inquiries. > If your computer has speakers/sound card you can hear a sample call to > EASY411 on their web site. Consider using EASY411 as your directory > assistance provider please. It is real time, as up to date as all such > bureaus are (within a day or two?), and you will be helping this Digest. > http://easy411.com/telecomdigest PAT] I don't know how much of a profit it is since the DA from Cell phones are handled by another company and the Telco contract with them. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even from cell phones, you can and should be using EASY-411. Just set up a speed dial button on your cell phone; maybe '4' for example. Of course, first go onto http://easy411.com and enroll that particular cellphone number, then never again use your cellphone's directory service. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:11:26 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: [snip] > I wonder how the telephone company rectified AC power for its DC > batteries. For large installations, a motor-generator set known as a > rotary converter was required. Early machines would need 25Hz as > well. Later on mercury arc rectifiers came out. The only motor-generator sets in use when I joined the phone company in the 1970's were used for creating 90v, 20Hz ringing voltage and +/- 110 volt coin collect/return battery. All the MG sets ran off the -48V CO battery plant, which was floated across the -48 rectifier outputs powered from commercial mains. These MG sets were replaced with solid-state units in the 1980's, although I think the MG sets were kept as standby units well into the 90's. Some CO's also had independent alternators in case of power failure: many of them powered by jet engines, and so powerful that they were actually used to generate power for the electric grid during summer brownouts. > Over the years the technology of power supplies dramatically improved. > The size and cost of power converters had marked improvement. > [snip] > I don't know if true, but someone told me that in Europe that didn't > bother with three phase for house supply, but just give everyone 220 > service. That does seem to be more efficient for house supplies. I don't know why, but Europe uses 50 Hz AC power, instead of the 60Hz we favor in the US and Canada. Despite the different frequency, both US/Canadian and European homes have single-phase power; nobody bothers with three phase for homes, because there isn't enough demand in homes to justify the added expense of installing three-phase power. The difference is that European homes receive a 220-volt, single-phase feed at their electric outlets, which is, of course, twice the "110" volt standard used on this side of the Atlantic. The higher voltage means lower current for the same wattage, thus allowing smaller wire sizes and concomitant savings in home construction costs. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 04:08:17 GMT (Thomas D. Horne) "Electrician" wrote in message news:telecom25.97.12@telecom-digest.org: > Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of > elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. I know Milwaukee, WI had DC available at some point in the distant past. I used to have a water cooler with a DC motor from downtown somewhere. Upper Michigan had 25Hz (cycles/second at the time) at a number of copper mining operations, if memory serves. > Tom Horne > "This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous > for general use." Thomas Alva Edison Herb Stein herb@herbstein.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dale Farmer Organization: I'm working on that.... Subject: Re: 25 Hz power Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 05:58:04 GMT Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:45:38 CST, jsw > writes: >> In NYC up into the 70's at least, power for two of the subway >> divisions (BMT and IRT) was generated at 25Hz but converted to DC in >> the field. > Some electrified intercity railroads in the Northeast used 25 Hz > power. There are, or at least were in the past, some advantages to 25 > Hz power for running locomotives. (Some railroads in other parts of > the world use or used 16-2/3 HZ power. >> However, I very distinctly remember the flicker of the >> incandescent lamps in some of the BMT stations in the 60's, as these >> were operated from the unrectified 25Hz source. I do remember that >> some people claimed they could not see this flicker, but it was very >> obvious, to me, anyway. > This same flicker was apparent when I stayed with my parents at the > Fred Harvey Hotel at the Santa Fe Railroad station in Gallup, New > Mexico, in the late 1940s. It was my assumption this was built before > there was a public electric power system in Gallup and that the hotel > was supplied by the Santa Fe's own power plant, built probably well > before the standardization of 60 Hz power in the U.S.A. > In a message dated 8 Mar 2006 13:09:09 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > writes: >> Note that for many years DC power was provided by commercial >> utilities. Originally, Edison's power plants supplied DC. There was >> a big fight between Edison and Westinghouse over DC vs AC. AC won >> out. > Most of today's power companies descended from Edison's companies and > are still reluctant to give any credit to Nikola Tesla, who conceived > of the far more practical (for most commercial purposes) multiphase > alternating current now universally used. (Westinghouse bought the > Tesla patents.) > Wes Leatherock > wesrock@aol.com > wleathus@yahoo.com Boston's subway system uses 600 volt DC for third rail and overhead wire powered electrical trains. Washington DC's metrorail system uses 750 volt DC on it's third rail. Boston buys regualar 60 Hz power, and converts it to DC at various substations around the system. As an amusing sidebar, read about the marketing wars between Westinghouse and Edison when they were battling over DC versus AC power as the standard. One of the sort of sad ones were that both of them made electric chairs to be used for executions. Westinghouse's chair used DC current, because, he claimed, it was more deadly. I believe Edison's chair used AC current, for the same stated reason. --Dale [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The last hanging (as a method of execution or capital punishment) in Chicago occurred in 1921. They used to erect the gallows needed for the occassion in the alley on Hubbard Street behind Clark Street at the old Cook County Courthouse. That same year -- 1921 -- the new courthouse and associated jail were constructed on the (then booming and showing promise) southwest side of the city, 26th and California Avenue. They proudly proclaimed that henceforth they would be using the 'much more humane' method of execu- tion devised by Thomas Edison, an 'Electric Chair' as it was to be known, and they gave a tour of it in the basement of the (then) newly constructed county jail. On the first occassion of its use in 1922, Mr. Edison was a guest of honor, giving a short speech about the workings of the Chair before a crowd of civic leaders a few minutes before it was put to use. His Chair was used for more than forty years, with the last execution taking place, I think, in 1965 when executions were transferred from Chicago to Joliet, IL at the prison there. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joe Morris Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:43:02 UTC Organization: The MITRE Organization Thomas D. Horne, Electrician writes: > Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of > elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. Chicken-and-egg question: 600V is one of the breakpoints in the standards process (specifically in NFPA 70, the National Electric Code, in which article 710 is dedicated to special requirements for circuits at "over 600 volts, nominal", and in which several other articles have their own special cases for >600V. It also appears to be the highest voltage for which a standard plug-and-recptacle pair (e.g., L9-30) is defined in the NEC. Was the decision to use 600V for hoist installations driven by the standards, or were the standards written to have the requirement for speical protection begin one volt above the highest nominal voltage for hoists? Joe Morris ------------------------------ From: Eric Tappert Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:30:26 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet On Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:07:14 -0800, Al Gillis wrote: > Hi Wes ... > Sorry for the off-topic question but could you detail some of the > advantages you mentioned? > I know the Great Northern Railroad used electric locomotives through > mountain passes in Washington State because electrical locos could out > pull steam locomotives on the steep grades encountered there. > Thanks! > Al > wrote in message > news:telecom25.96.7@telecom-digest.org: >> In a message dated Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:45:38 CST, jsw >> writes: >>> In NYC up into the 70's at least, power for two of the subway >>> divisions (BMT and IRT) was generated at 25Hz but converted to DC in >>> the field. >> Some electrified intercity railroads in the Northeast used 25 Hz >> power. There are, or at least were in the past, some advantages to 25 >> Hz power for running locomotives. (Some railroads in other parts of >> the world use or used 16-2/3 HZ power. > (Many deletions from here down!) Electric locomotives use series wound DC motors (lots of torque at low speed...) on each driven wheel as the power source. DC motors will operate fine on AC, but as the frequency increases you run into commutation problems. As such, to gain the advantage of being able to transform voltages yet still operate the DC traction motors without intervening rectification, many railroads use low (lower than 50 or 60 Hz) frequency AC power. I recall a tour of PECo's (now Excelon) Schuylkill Station in Philadelphia, probably in the early 70's. This was PECo's first central generation plant (it is still in service, mainly because the steam is used to heat center city and the University of Pennsylvania) and had a lot of old equipment retired in-place. Of particular interest was a pair of 60 Hz to 25 Hz conversion sets that were used to supply 25 Hz to the Broad Street Subway in Philadelphia. They had been retired only a few years before, but about 2 years after that there was a fire that destroyed the subway's converters, so they fired them up again for a couple of months until the subway system could be repaired. The really interesting part was that the stator on the 25 Hz side was mounted on a set of ring gears so that it could be rotated to properly phase it to the 25 Hz bus. The nameplate said it was a GE set, but when PECo tried to get the drawings for the archives, GE claimed they had no records of ever making the machines. Legend has it that Steinmetz designed it (they were old enough that it could have been true!). Eric Tappert ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:31:00 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: 25 Jz Power From: Al Gillis wrote: > I know the Great Northern Railroad used electric locomotives through > mountain passes in Washington State because electrical locos could out > pull steam locomotives on the steep grades encountered there. The Great Northern initially ran electrics through the Cascade tunnel to prevent asphyxiation from steam engine flue gas. Later they extended the run from Wenatchee to Skykomish. They could have extended the run to improve engine rotation issues or to take advantage of the increased efficiency of electrics. I've never seen a definitive reason in print. The Milwaukee Road, which also ran through the Cascades about 50 miles south of the Great Northern, was electrified from Othello to Renton, about 200 miles and from Harlowton Montana to Avery Idaho, 207 miles. The two electrified divisions spanned the Cascades, Saddle Mountain (the ruling grade) and the Bitterroots in the Rockys. The electrification was clearly done for the improved performance and cheaper crew and operating costs. Another, less often mentioned, reason for the electrification had to do with members of the Milwaukee's board of directors having financial interests in both General Electric and Anaconda Copper, two companies which stood to make a lot of money on the deal. At the time running two steam locomotives on a train required two engine crews. The electrics were configured in permanent two-locomotive sets, could be operated from a single control stand and were treated as a single locomotive by union rules. The electrics were far more reliable than steam, rarely requiring service. Steam on the other hand required maintainance every 100-200 miles, frequent stops for water and loss of performance in cold weather. The electrics could also use regenerative braking, giving back about 12% of the total electricity cost. I know a little about these things because my dad was a brakeman and conductor on the Milwaukee for 33 years. ------------------------------ From: wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:31:25 UTC Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab In article , wrote: > I don't know if true, but someone told me that in Europe they didn't > bother with three phase for house supply, but just give everyone 220 > service. That does seem to be more efficient for house supplies. This paragraph doesn't make any sense. The standard residential supply in Europe is 400 V three-phase wye, with 230 V nominal on each leg, at 50 Hz. In the UK it is actually 415Y/240, but the standard includes enough slop to allow it. (Similarly most other European countries' "230" is actually 220.) In some locations, rather than drawing all three legs into each residence, neighboring dwellings may get single-phase feeds from different legs. The standard residential supply in North America is 240 V single-phase center-tap, with 120 V nominal on each leg, at 60 Hz. However, some residences, particularly in New York City, have 208 V three-phase wye with 120 V nominal on each leg, still at 60 Hz. Commercial office buildings in the US often have 480Y/277; commercial lighting often operates on 277 V, and blowers, compressors, elevators, and pumps often use 480 (either wye or delta). Power companies can also supply 600Y/347 for medium-size industrial customers. I don't know how they do it in Japan, but with 100 V nominal supply I would assume they do either the center-tap hack or three-phase in order to supply high-power devices at lower current. Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every wollman@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own Opinions not those | search for greater freedom. of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 16:03:27 -0600 From: Michael G. Koerner Subject: 25 Hz Power Al Gillis wrote: > Hi Wes ... > I know the Great Northern Railroad used electric locomotives through > mountain passes in Washington State because electrical locos could out > pull steam locomotives on the steep grades encountered there. > Thanks! > Al The GN's electrification (it was in their Cascade mountains crossing), which was 11kV 25Hz AC from 1928-1956, was installed due to safety concerns inherent with running trains through long tunnels, mainly relating to what to do about the exhaust from locomotives. Remember that GN opened a very long tunnel there in early 1929. In 1956, the electrification was scrapped in favor of installing ventilation equipment in the tunnel. Several of GN's electric locomotives were then sold to the PRR and with only minor upgrades, were placed into heavy freight service on their lines. BTW, before 1928, the GN had a much shorter electification using an interesting 3 phase system, using two overhead 'trolley' wires and the rails as conductors on an older line that that 1929 tunnel replaced. The 3 phase system only operated through the previous shorter tunnel and into small yards at either end of that tunnel and was used because the two wires being spaced farther apart allowed a safe place for brakemen to walk on top of the cars. One interesting advantage for electric operation in mountainous regions was that the kinetic energy built up by a train ascending the hill could then be reused by the railroad through regenerative braking, using the locomotives' traction motors as generators to feed that built up energy back into the wire as that train descends the other side of the hill, controlling the train's speed on its descent and helping to lift the next train up the hill. If there was no ascending train ready, the railroad was also able to store that energy by pumping water into a reservour to be used later. Also, the Milwaukee Road's much more extensive electrifications out west used an amazing (in that it worked) 6kV DC system. ___________________________________________ ____ _______________ Regards, | |\ ____ | | | | |\ Michael G. Koerner May they | | | | | | rise again! Appleton, Wisconsin USA | | | | | | ___________________________________________ | | | | | | _______________ ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Last Laugh! Now That's What I Call Fat Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:23:18 -0600 Man Who Weighed 1,000 Pounds Down to 400 Neighbors Say He Must Have 'Lost Some Weight'. Patrick Deuel, who once weighed more than 1,000 pounds, has lost another 81 pounds in a surgery that removed a mass of fat and skin hanging from his midsection. "He's doing well," said Dr. Fred Harris, who performed the surgery Tuesday. The mass, called a pannus, made it difficult for Deuel, 43, of Valentine, Neb., to walk. Surgery to remove it had been scheduled for January, but the procedure was postponed when Deuel got the flu. With the surgery, Deuel now weighs about 400 pounds. He could lose even more through exercise, said Harris. "But if Patrick never lost another pound, I'd be a happy camper," Harris said. When Deuel came to Sioux Falls for gastric bypass surgery in 2004, he weighed 1,072 pounds. An emergency required that medical EMT workers or 'first responders' try to assist him at his home. He was so large his bedroom wall had to be cut out to extract him from his home. He was rushed to the hospital in an 'ambulance' with extra-wide doors and a ramp-and-winch system that had to be dispatched from Denver. The 'ambulance' which conveyed him from his home to the hospital gave more the appearance of being a semi-trailer truck; when the medic-responders got him out of his house, the ramp-and-winch was used to hoist him up and into the semi-trailer truck. It then followed the 'ambulance' and the procedure went in reverse when they got to the hospital, where the winch lowered him, a loading dock and freight elevator took him to a room. Gastric bypass surgery, a stomach stapling procedure, was thought to be his best chance for permanent weight loss. Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Just imagine having that much fat on yourself! Do any older readers here recall a fellow who was known on television in the late 1940's and early 1950's as "Two-Ton Baker". He sold automobiles for some car dealer on the north side of Chicago, played the piano as part of his routine, and I do not know which was more obvious: his Obnoxiousness or his Fatness. Two-Ton would sit at the keyboard to play and sing about the cars for sale at the used car dealer where he worked; his stomach would quiver like a bowl full of jelly, he would laugh and from time to time would say 'come on up to your screen and give old Two-Ton a great big kiss.' Then the camera would close in on him puckering his lips and slobbering at the viewers. I think his name was a misnomer; he did not weight 4800 pounds (two tons) but he did weigh about five or six hundred pounds. It was a disgusting performance, but I guess it sold used cars back in the 1950's; he was on television several years until he died, probably from all that fat. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #98 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 12 00:05:34 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BCC0014E14; Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:05:32 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #99 Message-Id: <20060312050532.BCC0014E14@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:05:32 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, LIVE_PORN,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=unavailable version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:08:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 99 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 208/240V, was: 25 Hz Power (Long) (Danny Burstein) Re: 25 Hz Power (John McHarry) Re: SS7/Intelligent Networks (Thor Lancelot Simon) Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power (John McHarry) 3 Phase Power (John McHarry) Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) (Dave Grebe) Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? (Steven Lichter) Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? (William Warren) Re: The Sun is Going Away For Awhile, Don't Panic (Jack Hamilton) Re: The Sun is Going Away For Awhile, Don't Panic (Sidney Zafran) Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance (Steve Sobol) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Danny Burstein Subject: 208/240V, was: 25 Hz Power (Long) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:14:11 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) writes: [ misc snip ] > The standard residential supply in North America is 240 V single-phase > center-tap, with 120 V nominal on each leg, at 60 Hz. However, some > residences, particularly in New York City, have 208 V three-phase wye > with 120 V nominal on each leg, still at 60 Hz. Just to expand on this a bit as I've run into it far too many times ... and it may answer some wierd problems otehr people see here and there: As the above poster mentioned, "240V" is usually a "real" (more or less...) 240V based on tapping two 120V legs against each other. If they're (that is, both wires) coming off opposite sides of the transformer, you get a simple addition (120 + 120 = 240) [a]. [a] I'd personally consider that design to be two-phase, since the legs are 180 degrees apart, but the rest of the world disagrees with me and calls it single phase. However, in multi-apartment dwellings in NYC and in a fair amount of other places, including some locations and places here and there ... what you've got is a "three phase" feed from the transformer; that is, three separate wires each 120 degrees apart. (That 120 degree number is coincidental and has little to do with the 120 Volt figure). Anyway ... in the three phase situation, a circuit that's using one hot wire and a neutral gets you that same 120V as in the single phase situation. HOWEVER, if you grab two of the hot legs for the circuit, you're NOT getting 240V but instead, because it's 120 degree out of phase, you get (again, that's separate from the 120V... ) you get: 120V * (square root of 3) = 208V (For the physical layout reason why this is often done see below ...) Now in most, but certainly NOT all cases, appliances designed for the nominal 240V will work ok at the lower voltage. But there will often be some diminishment. Motors, depending on design, may either work slower (and/or less hard) -or- may pull higher amperage to do the same work (and will be hotter ... burning out sooner). This is a common problem with air conditioners. Heating devices, such as a furnace, will usually work ok _but_ will take longer to heat up. Similarly, something like an oven will take longer to come to temperature (but should be ok once it stabilizes). Where you see serious issues is in things like a broiling element, or for that matter when you try boiling water ... Let me explain: The difference between 208V and 240 V is about 15 percent. So you'd think it would take 15 percent longer to get your kettle going. But ... in reality, since the voltage is down by 15 percent, the current is also down by 15 percent. Meaning the wattage (power) is down by roughly 25 percent. That adds up ... Similarly, a broiler element or a toaster wire frame will _not_ get as hot, so won't be toasting (crisping) the food as well. (I'm leaving out the complicating factors of different reistances at different temperatures. Feel free to work on them at your leisure) So again, something designed for 240V will probably work on 208V, but check it out first. Techish design issue: The practical design that gets you two legs of three phase in many NYC structures (and other places): The transformer is tapped by three wires (plus neutral) that are 120 degrees apart. These then pass through each apartment, with the first one getting legs "a", "b", and the neutral (and a safety ground). The next apartment gets "b" and "c". The third gets "a" and "c". Rinse, lather, repeat. All three legs continue to the roof for the three phase motor used by the elevator and, perhaps, some central air condtioning equipment, etc. Sidenote: I once saw an Isotec power strip that said, in big letters, that it only worked on 208V and should NOT be used on 240V. I've never been able to track that one down again... _____________________________________________________ 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: I know of a janitor in an apartment building who always used 25 watt _240 volt_ light bulbs in the exit signs in his building (even though the fixures were the more standard and customary 120 volts.) He said those 240 volt bulbs (which were in difficult to reach places) _never_ had to be changed; they would on burning for several years. He did not like the idea of getting out a step ladder to climb up and change a bulb in an exit sign if he could avoid it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:26:48 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is > interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- > rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- > gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no > compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think > (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire > Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if > I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] My mother had one of those, probably in the early 50s. When it was replaced by a more modern unit, it was moved to the back porch and used in the summer to cool melons and stuff. I guess this was high tech for the back porch -- the neighbors had an ice box on theirs for similar uses. I think those were ammonia-water absorption cycle refrigerators. I seem to recall its making little gurgling noises from time to time. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: SS7/Intelligent Networks Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:59:26 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Munish wrote: > Hi All, > 1. Can anybody please tell me some thing about Hunt Group and Hunt > lines in intelligent networks? Are these two different or the same ? > 2. Signalling: > Two STP are connected via a E1 and T1 truck. As only 1 slot is > configured for signalling. if we are not using any voice chanel. is > there any limit on the number of calls in terms of signalling at a > time. > 3. At the originating switch do both the state machines will be > maintained O-BCSM and T-BCSM ? Is this a homework assignment? It's generally considered very, very bad manners either to post or to help with a homework assignment on Usenet. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com "We cannot usually in social life pursue a single value or a single moral aim, untroubled by the need to compromise with others." - H.L.A. Hart ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:01:52 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net When I was young I was told that the dam at Keokuk, IA generated 25Hz power. Since construction was completed in 1913, this may well have been true. I was also told that the power was by then converted to 60Hz and fed into the grid. Whether I was told so, or figured out later, this must have been done with rotating machinery. I would guess, unless there is a cute hack I am unaware of, this would give a nasty waveform, but would probably be smoothed out by the rest of the grid. The dam is still generating electricity, but the old generators and converters have probably long ago been replaced by native 60Hz generators. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: 3 Phase Power Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:24:22 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Apropos the earlier discussion in the 25Hz thread, I think both the US and Europe distribute three phase wye connected power. If you look at a distribution pole, at least before the phases are split out, you will see three well insulated wires, and a fourth wire that is earthed at each pole. I believe both systems provide single phase house current by attaching a transformer from one phase to neutral/earth. If you go down a street with three phase distribution you will see the transformers (pole pigs) attached to each phase in sequence. When you get near the end of a run, it may drop down to two, or even a single phase. If you are going down a street with streetlights, there will likely be a line below the main distribution lines carrying lower voltage for them. When you come to a customer requiring three phase power, there will be three pole pigs, one off each leg. I think in Europe these are also wye connected, but some in the US are delta connected. Some places the power company, at least in the past, got cheap and used two pole pigs to deliver an "open delta" where the third phase is imputed. On a warm spring day with the sun shining and the birds singing, this works fine. When the loads get out of balance, all sorts of evil ensues. There is, however, a reason for both wye and delta connections. Non linear loads, and ever more are with the prevalence of switching power supplies, generating harmonics. Multiples of the third harmonic, called triplen (from triple n) currents add in phase on the neutral. A wye-delta transformation traps them and keeps them out of the upstream system, where large currents on the neutral can wreak havoc. ------------------------------ From: Dave Grebe Subject: Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 02:36:20 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is > interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- > rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- > gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no > compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think > (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire > Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if > I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] I encountered a gas refrigerator on a trip out West back in 1966 or so. The place we stayed had only recently got AC power so the gas refrigerator made sense. It seemed to be cold and freeze water just like any other refrigerator. Being 9 or 10 years old at the time I was fascinated that a device could be built that could make cold using only a flame. My dad had seen such things before and was not surprised, he told me there were even kerosene refrigerators at one time. Anyway Google "absorption cycle" if you want to know the history and how it works. Here's one example: http://www.robur.it/us/pag_technology_history.jsp Sorry, can't think of any way to tie this back to telecom. Never heard of a gas phone. Dave Grebe [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I have heard that when a gas leak is suspected, one should _never_ use a telephone in the vicinity as there is a remote chance of a spark hitting the gas and causing an explosion. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2006 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:46:44 GMT hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > There's been a lot of press lately about dangerous people using the > Internet to prey on others. > However, technical weaknesses make it easy to forge someone else's > identity. What protection is there if an innocent person is accused > of being an identity thief, pervert, defrauder, etc.? > Suppose some molester uses your identity in a chat to arrange an > illicit meeting with a victim. Will cops come after you? How would > you defend yourself? > [public replies, please] I would guess your protection would be the IP data from the site and data on your computers, but then Police can get very nasty and DA look at convicting someone, even if that person did not do it, just look at the long list of conviction reversals. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2006 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: in my experience, police do not really care who they convict; guilt or innocence is not a big thing nor an important issue with them. Its a very poor police officer who cannot create a story to match a crime he wants a conviction on. Look at the political convention in New York City a couple years ago; Even when they had hundreds of prisoners stashed away in that old bus barn in Brooklyn waiting for transport to Riker's Island or wherever, it took a judge specifically ordering the release of the people or fines and penalties for the police before they would let the people out. And then police chose to argue and appeal the fine imposed on them rather than obey the court. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:16:24 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > There's been a lot of press lately about dangerous people using the > Internet to prey on others. > However, technical weaknesses make it easy to forge someone else's > identity. What protection is there if an innocent person is accused > of being an identity thief, pervert, defrauder, etc.? > Suppose some molester uses your identity in a chat to arrange an > illicit meeting with a victim. Will cops come after you? How would > you defend yourself? > [public replies, please] Lisa, There has been a lot of press _lately_ because the networks were in "Sweeps week", and the local stations were doing their bit to boost ratings by sticking to the time-honored TV tradition - IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS!!!! Technical _devices_ may make it easier to produce the forged documents needed to steal someone's identity. Technical _weaknesses_ don't make it easy to forge someone's identity: in fact, it's much more difficult to forge an electronic identity than a paper one. The weekness that makes identity theft more believeable in the context of the Internet is _human_ weakness, i.e., the tendency to give more weight and attention to bad news than to good. Innocent people accused of crimes have the same protections they have always had -- the truth -- and the truth is that we all do very predictable things at very predictable times, in full view of dozens, if not hundreds, of witnesses. Innocent people seldom have trouble proving that they are what they seem. Now that the Television sweeps are finished, let's all take a breath and hope for a collective attack of common sense. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: The Sun is Going Away For Awhile, Don't Panic Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:41:34 -0800 Organization: Copyright (c) 2005 by Jack Hamilton. Reproduction without attribution, and archiving without permission, are not allowed. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The one almost total solar eclipse I > can recall did not cause absolute, total darkness in the USA (I was > living in the Chicago area at the time). It resulted in what appeared > to me as a sort of 'twilight' condition; the sky was extremely _blue_ > and transparent. After eight or ten minutes of that, things returned > to normal. Does that make sense? Does anyone know exactly where the > eclipse will cover on March 29, and to what extent and for how long? PAT] According to , "On Wednesday, 2006 March 29, a total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor which traverses half the Earth. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow begins in Brazil and extends across the Atlantic, northern Africa, and central Asia where it ends at sunset in western Mongolia. A partial eclipse will be seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes the northern two thirds of Africa, Europe, and central Asia." There's a map on that page, which is not the best one I've ever seen. A telecom tie-in: The Exploratorium in San Francisco is sending a TV crew to Turkey, whence the eclipse will be broadcast live: http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2006/index.html . You can watch it on the web around 2am Pacific Time, or watch an archived version later. You can also go to the Exploratorium and watch it, presumably on a much bigger screen. You can watch Turkish dancers while you're waiting. The next one over the continental US won't be until 2017. Jack Hamilton California <> Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit. <> Francois VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld ------------------------------ From: Sidney Zafran Subject: Re: The Sun is Going Away For Awhile, Don't Panic Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 22:33:17 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 11:17:14 -0600, Reuters News Wire wrote: > The sun is going away, but don't panic ... ...snip... > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The one almost total solar eclipse I > can recall did not cause absolute, total darkness in the USA (I was > living in the Chicago area at the time). It resulted in what appeared > to me as a sort of 'twilight' condition; the sky was extremely _blue_ > and transparent. After eight or ten minutes of that, things returned > to normal. Does that make sense? Does anyone know exactly where the > eclipse will cover on March 29, and to what extent and for how long? PAT] For more information go to http://www.hermit.org/Eclipse/2006-03-29/ ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:28:55 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Steven Lichter wrote: > I don't know how much of a profit it is since the DA from Cell phones > are handled by another company and the Telco contract with them. It depends. TellMe, 800-555-Tell, was originally owned by AT&T, and still may be after all the mergers. AT&T Wireless phones used TellMe for 411. Here in my area, I live fifteen minutes away from a huge Verizon call center that handles both wireline and wireless directory assistance calls. They handle VZW phones and also contract out to other carrieers. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #99 ***************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 12 20:58:37 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 06ACC15728; Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:58:36 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #100 Message-Id: <20060313015836.06ACC15728@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:58:36 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, EARNINGS,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:00:00 EST Volume 25 : Issue 100 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Little-Used Corner of Net Becomes Piracy Battlefield (Monty Solomon) Re: Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power (BobT) Re: Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power (Justa Lurker) Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? (DLR) Re: Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) (DLR) Re: Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) (GlowingBlueMist) Re: 25 Hz Power (Robert Bonomi) Re: 25 Hz Power (DLR) Re: 25 Hz Power (obsidian) Re: 25 Hz Power (CharlesH) Re: 25 Hz Power (Herb Stein) Re: 25 Hz Power (Ernie Kline) Re: 25 Hz Power (Dale Farmer) Re: 208/240V, was: 25 Hz Power (L (John McHarry) Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance (Lou Jahn) Re: 3 Phase Power (DLR) Employment Opportunity: Testing Development Positions East Coast (stanna) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 11:38:16 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Little-Used Corner of Net Becomes Piracy Battlefield Movie industry sues companies that aid downloads on Usenet By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff An obscure data network technology called the Usenet has become the newest battleground between the entertainment industry and digital music and movie pirates. Late last month, the Motion Picture Association of America filed its first-ever lawsuits against Internet companies that help people download illegally copied films over the Usenet. The association says that the companies, NZB-Zone, BinNews, and DVDRS, provide a Google-like search service for Usenet, one that lets its users find thousands of pirated films, including recent hits such as 'King Kong', 'The Chronicles of Narnia', and 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin.' The three companies did not respond to e-mail messages requesting comment. Their websites do not list physical addresses or phone numbers, and one of them, DVDRS, has apparently been shut down. Even the lawsuits filed against the companies identify them as John Does, and do not include contact information. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/03/09/little_used_corner_of_net_becomes_piracy_battlefield/ ------------------------------ From: BobT Subject: Re: Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 13:38:56 GMT On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:01:52 GMT, John McHarry wrote: > When I was young I was told that the dam at Keokuk, IA generated 25Hz > power. Since construction was completed in 1913, this may well have > been true. I was also told that the power was by then converted to > 60Hz and fed into the grid. This is probably no longer true, but in the 60's/70's, Union Electric (as it was then) still had a 25 Hz grid. Keokuk in particular had a number of electrochemical industries that were on this grid. By the time Griffin Wheel (an electric arc furnace operation) came to town, no new customers were being connected at 25 Hz, and Griffin used 60 Hz power. I don't know what proportion of Keokuk dam 25 Hz production was converted to 60 Hz. ------------------------------ From: Justa Lurker Subject: Re: Keokuk Dam & 25Hz Power Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 14:45:53 GMT John McHarry wrote: > When I was young I was told that the dam at Keokuk, IA generated 25Hz > power. Since construction was completed in 1913, this may well have > been true. I was also told that the power was by then converted to > 60Hz and fed into the grid. > Whether I was told so, or figured out later, this must have been done > with rotating machinery. I would guess, unless there is a cute hack I > am unaware of, this would give a nasty waveform, but would probably be > smoothed out by the rest of the grid. Not necessarily ... the resulting waveform would be quite fine ... imagine a 25 Hz motor on one side turning a shaft connected to a 60 Hz alternator. One RPM from the motor is one RPM for the generator, and so forth. To the alternator, it doesn't care if it's a 25 Hz motor or steam turbine or gerbils on a wheel driving its shaft (as long as the speed is correct and kept reaasonably stable under various loads, of course). And it's fairly easy to pick an RPM which is a nice common multiple of 25 and 60 so the math works out OK. Meanwhile, the alternator output frequency relates to the angular spacing of the windings and shaft speed. The alternator would produce nice clean 60 Hz relatively free of higher order harmonics and other non-linear trash. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 05:51:04 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Internet and Civil Liberties? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > There's been a lot of press lately about dangerous people using the > Internet to prey on others. > However, technical weaknesses make it easy to forge someone else's > identity. What protection is there if an innocent person is accused > of being an identity thief, pervert, defrauder, etc.? > Suppose some molester uses your identity in a chat to arrange an > illicit meeting with a victim. Will cops come after you? How would > you defend yourself? If you're not technically astute, you'd better hire a good lawyer quick. But at the same time it is getting to be like the situation with money with cocaine residue on it. For a while in the 80s it was considered strong evidence of trafficking if you had 20s with cocaine traces on it. Then someone showed that most of the money in possession of police, judges, court officials, people on the street, and most all money in major cities and soon the entire country had traces on it. Most all Internet fraud and other illegal activity is now based on bogus identities. Any police force of any size who deals with this knows it and deals with it appropriately. And most local police (at least here in NC) call in the state guys for this type of stuff as they have the knowledge to deal with it. Sheriff Bubba doesn't go after much related to computers. Not to say people will not get falsely accused, but it should be a minor part of the problem as time goes on. I run some mail servers and looking at the appearance of "falseness" of the incoming mail is the best indicator of things to toss. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 05:19:07 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) Dave Grebe wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is >> interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- >> rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- >> gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no >> compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think >> (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire >> Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if >> I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] > I encountered a gas refrigerator on a trip out West back in 1966 or > so. The place we stayed had only recently got AC power so the gas > refrigerator made sense. It seemed to be cold and freeze water just > like any other refrigerator. Being 9 or 10 years old at the time I > was fascinated that a device could be built that could make cold using > only a flame. My dad had seen such things before and was not surprised, > he told me there were even kerosene refrigerators at one time. > Anyway Google "absorption cycle" if you want to know the history and > how it works. Here's one example: > http://www.robur.it/us/pag_technology_history.jsp > Sorry, can't think of any way to tie this back to telecom. Never > heard of a gas phone. "This Old House" showed a gas power "AC" unit from the late 1700s early 1800s a while back in Savannah (I think). It was basically a cupola with a ring of flame from gas that when running would create an updraft and pull air throughout the entire house. Quite a bit of air as I recall. One of those "outside the box" designs where you use fire in the summer to cool a building. :) ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Gas Refrigerator (was 25 Hz Power) Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:39:53 -0600 Organization: Octanews Dave Grebe wrote in message news:telecom25.99.6@telecom-digest.org: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is >> interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- >> rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- >> gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no >> compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think >> (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire >> Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if >> I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] > I encountered a gas refrigerator on a trip out West back in 1966 or > so. The place we stayed had only recently got AC power so the gas > refrigerator made sense. It seemed to be cold and freeze water just > like any other refrigerator. Being 9 or 10 years old at the time I > was fascinated that a device could be built that could make cold using > only a flame. My dad had seen such things before and was not surprised, > he told me there were even kerosene refrigerators at one time. > Anyway Google "absorption cycle" if you want to know the history and > how it works. Here's one example: > http://www.robur.it/us/pag_technology_history.jsp > Sorry, can't think of any way to tie this back to telecom. Never > heard of a gas phone. > Dave Grebe > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But I have heard that when a gas leak > is suspected, one should _never_ use a telephone in the vicinity as > there is a remote chance of a spark hitting the gas and causing an > explosion. PAT] You can still purchase brand new gas or kerosene powered refrigerators. Here is a link to one company that showed up in a quick search. http://www.thenaturalhome.com/gasappliances.htm I have no connections with the company nor have I purchased anything from them. You can still find units for recreational purposes as well as for fixed installations like fishing cabins or homes in remote locations. My fathers camper had a refrigerator that worked on 120v, 12v, or gas. I seem to remember it would switch and use 120, 12v, or gas in that order once he turned it on. The automatic switch-over feature was nice for times when we were at a remote site and someone left a light on when we went fishing. We would come back and find the battery dead but the refrigerator still keeping things cold using the gas mode. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:56:51 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is > interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- > rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- > gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no > compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think > (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire > Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if > I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] Gas-powered refrigerators were not terribly uncommon 'way back when'. Quite uncommon by the 60s, however. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 05:41:41 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power >> Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of >> elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. > Chicken-and-egg question: 600V is one of the breakpoints in the > standards process (specifically in NFPA 70, the National Electric > Code, in which article 710 is dedicated to special requirements for > circuits at "over 600 volts, nominal", and in which several other > articles have their own special cases for >600V. It also appears to > be the highest voltage for which a standard plug-and-recptacle pair > (e.g., L9-30) is defined in the NEC. > Was the decision to use 600V for hoist installations driven by the > standards, or were the standards written to have the requirement for > speical protection begin one volt above the highest nominal voltage > for hoists? > Joe Morris As someone who's worked on standards bodies (insurance industry computer file exchange issues) it's likely both. The dominant players (I was one) want to protect their investment, the minor players want the field re-leveled (break the the installed base) to allow them entry, and the body as a whole has some mission statement about being fair, technically advanced, a boon to world peace, a chicken in every pot, etc ... :) 600V seems high to me from a safety point of view. But I bet it was chosen to allow existing things to stay in place and was at the limit of technology for making flexible conductors with jacketing that did wear out quickly. ------------------------------ From: obsidian Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 16:25:53 +0100 Organization: -= Belgacom Usenet Service =- Your observation about single phase is correct for UK. However in other parts of Europe 3 phase is routinely supplied to quite small dwellings. I live in a small 2 bedroom apartment in Belgium of about 80mē which is supplied with 3 phase with 230 volts between phases and no neutral. More modern homes are supplied with 3 phase and neutral with 400 volts from phase to phase. This arrangement makes a standardised pre-wired power distribution box impossible (except in UK). As a side note the UK nominal 240 volts is becoming 230 volts and the rest of Europe 220 volts is becoming 230 volts for European harmonisation. obsidian William Warren wrote in message news:telecom25.98.11@telecom-digest.org: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > [snip] > > Despite the different frequency, both US/Canadian and European homes > have single-phase power; nobody bothers with three phase for homes, > because there isn't enough demand in homes to justify the added > expense of installing three-phase power. > The difference is that European homes receive a 220-volt, single-phase > feed at their electric outlets, which is, of course, twice the "110" > volt standard used on this side of the Atlantic. The higher voltage > means lower current for the same wattage, thus allowing smaller wire > sizes and concomitant savings in home construction costs. > > William Warren > (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: CharlesH Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:06:35 GMT John McHarry wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is >> interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- >> rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- >> gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no >> compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think >> (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire >> Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if >> I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] > My mother had one of those, probably in the early 50s. When it was > replaced by a more modern unit, it was moved to the back porch and used in > the summer to cool melons and stuff. I guess this was high tech for the > back porch -- the neighbors had an ice box on theirs for similar uses. > I think those were ammonia-water absorption cycle refrigerators. I > seem to recall its making little gurgling noises from time to time. The refrigerators in RVs are pretty much all of the absorption type. This allows them to work on propane, away from commercial electric power. When commercial power is available, it is used only as a heat source instead of the propane. No compressors or other moving parts. The 12VDC system in the RV is used to ignite the propane (so it doesn't need a pilot), but otherwise, it does not require any electricity. ------------------------------ From: Herb Stein Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 05:14:18 GMT Herb Stein wrote in message news:telecom25.98.12@telecom-digest.org: > (Thomas D. Horne) "Electrician" wrote in message > news:telecom25.97.12@telecom-digest.org: >> Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of >> elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. > I know Milwaukee, WI had DC available at some point in the distant past. I > used to have a water cooler with a DC motor from downtown somewhere. > Upper Michigan had 25Hz (cycles/second at the time) at a number of > copper mining operations, if memory serves. >> Tom Horne >> "This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous >> for general use." Thomas Alva Edison > Herb Stein > herb@herbstein.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is > interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- > rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- > gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no > compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think > (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire > Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if > I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] I'll have to make a phone call, but I think a friend of mines girl friend has a gas air conditioner at her house in Farmington MO. I'll have to get back to you on that one. Herb Stein herb@herbstein.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have also seen 'air conditioners' which have a position on the switch to put out heat (as well as the usual two or three cool air positions.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ernie Klein Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power Organization: Not very organized Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 01:20:45 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ > powered by -gas- rather than -electricity-? Very common. Almost every RV (Recreational Vehicle) has one. Actually most are powered 3-way. 1) They run from standard 120VAC when parked and that power source is available. 2) Most also run from 12VDC while the RV is underway. 3) They burn Propane (gas) when parked and 120VAC is not available. Not all have the 12VDC option but it is safer to turn the propane tank off while driving and use the battery instead. -Ernie- "There are only two kinds of computer users -- those who have suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure, and those who will." Have you done your backup today? ------------------------------ From: Dale Farmer Organization: I'm working on that.... Subject: Re: 25 Hz Power In-Reply-To: Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 01:30:16 GMT Herb Stein wrote: > (Thomas D. Horne) "Electrician" wrote in message > news:telecom25.97.12@telecom-digest.org: >> Boston Edison used to provide 600 volt DC service for the operation of >> elevators and cranes. I don't know if they still do. > I know Milwaukee, WI had DC available at some point in the distant past. I > used to have a water cooler with a DC motor from downtown somewhere. > Upper Michigan had 25Hz (cycles/second at the time) at a number of > copper mining operations, if memory serves. >> Tom Horne >> "This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous >> for general use." Thomas Alva Edison > Herb Stein > herb@herbstein.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A water cooler with a DC motor is > interesting; but did you ever see a _refrigerator_ powered by -gas- > rather than -electricity-? I had one of those in a long since for- > gotten apartment in Chicago back in the 1960's. No motor of course, no > compressor, etc, but it was a refrigerator, freezer, etc, and I think > (cannot remember for sure) it was manufactured by 'Frigidaire > Company'. Totally silent of course. I have no idea how it worked; if > I ever knew, I have since forgotten. PAT] Usually ammonia absorption cycle. Commonly found in motor homes and places that don't have electricity, such as remote vacation/hunting cabins, or small islands. Google for RV refrigerators to find lots of sites that explain them better than I can. Only moving parts are the gas valve and thermostat. Although this brings to mind a telecom subject. How can you get telephone service out to places small islands that have residents who want phone service? These sorts of places are usually not that large, having anywhere from one to a few hundred residents, so not lots of income potential there. Nowadays they probably just have cell phones, if they have coverage. --Dale ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 20:33:07 EST Subject: Re: 25 Hz power In a message dated Fri, 10 Mar 2006 11:07:14 -0800, Al Gillis < alg@aracnet.com> writes: > Hi Wes ... > Sorry for the off-topic question but could you detail some of the > advantages you mentioned? > I know the Great Northern Railroad used electric locomotives through > mountain passes in Washington State because electrical locos could out > pull steam locomotives on the steep grades encountered there. > Thanks! > Al Al, These are summaries given to me by two members of another (non-communication related) list where this was a thread a few months ago. Interestingly, the first summary is from Bob Gillis. Any relation? Wes Leatherock wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------------------ The lower the frequency the better an AC commutator motor runs. A 0 frequency or DC motor runs best. When the electric industry was starting here in the USA and Canada, two standard frequencies were set. 60 Hz for lighting and 25 Hz for industrial. (in Europe the standards were 50 Hz and 16-2/3 Hz.) Back in the 1950s visited the NY Central Buffalo Station and you could see the incandescent lights flicker. Most of the electric power generated at Niagara Falls was 25 Hz. The first railroad AC electrfications had commutator motors and so they were electrified on the industrial frequency of 25 Hz: New Haven, PRR etc. Today AC commutator motors are not often used. So the common 60 Hz lighting frequency can be used. The electrification's still using 25 Hz are holdovers. Amtrak between New York and Washington is 25 Hz because it ws too expensive to convert the line to 60 HZ and there was 25 Hz generating capacity available. The New Haven line has been changed to 60 Hz. - - - 25 Hz was a standard for MOTOR loads, because, as noted, these worked best on the lowest acceptable frequency. Lower frequencies have less 'inductive transmission loss' than higher frequencies. The differences are not huge, but, ca. 1910 were enough to make a difference. Transformer and motor efficiencies (core losses) were better at lower frequenciess, though the devices were larger. The first point has been superseded by progress in design, and changes in technology: e.g. use of rectifiers and inverters to build the drives. The second point has been superseded by the cost benefits of using the standard grid. (Its a bit more complex than that, but leave it there for now....) The last point has been superseded by the first, and by progress in design and application of transformer steels. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: 208/240V, was: 25 Hz Power Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:08:59 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:14:11 +0000, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Danny Burstein: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know of a janitor in an apartment > building who always used 25 watt _240 volt_ light bulbs in the > exit signs in his building (even though the fixures were the more > standard and customary 120 volts.) He said those 240 volt bulbs > (which were in difficult to reach places) _never_ had to be changed; > they would on burning for several years. He did not like the idea of > getting out a step ladder to climb up and change a bulb in an exit > sign if he could avoid it. PAT] They used to sell little button devices to put in a lamp socket that did pretty much the same thing with an ordinary 120v bulb. I think it was a diode to block ever other half cycle. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And did you ever notice how the output from the bulb is always sort of a soft, golden color? I wonder what would happen if you used a 240 volt bulb in a socket with one of those button devices you mentioned as well? Probably some very feeble light would result. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lou Jahn Subject: Re: The 411 on Directory Assistance Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:47:34 -0500 Organization: Info Partners Corp. Steven Lichter wrote: > I don't know how much of a profit it is since the DA from Cell phones > are handled by another company and the Telco contract with them. On Average, the true 411 service base cost for land lines is between $0.21 to around $0.31 per call to listen to the request, find the listing and to release a number to a caller. Before heavy voice automation such service took an average of 23 seconds of operator work time to complete a transaction. With good standard automation, operator average work times can be as low as 13 seconds -- meaning a good DA operator is handling four calls per minute! Heavy voice automation such as Tell-me or Verizon's Darby handle about 30-35% of all calls without ever using an operator, further reducing the average cost. So it would be save to approximate the average cost to process one (1) DA call to between $0.18 to $0.26 per DA call. The actual DA listing costs about $0.04 to $0.05 of the total cost, the rest of the cost is either operator time or voice platform infrastructure costs. You might add another penny to the cost to cover the billing. Nice margins -- most LECs charge $1.25 for 411 numbers out of their region. AT&T and MCI charge $2.99 per DA call if you use the old NPA-555-1212 dialing approach At one time Wireless DA cost a little more as Wireless service was not as focused on the operator work time as they got air minutes to cover the longer time to handle a DA call. Today, most DA call centers handle both landline and/or wireless DA call services. The base cost remains the same, the only difference might be how many firms are involved in the actual DA service delivery - causing multiple markups on the service delivery. Today DA service is commodity priced. BTW in Italy one Wireless service provides a video feed DA approach so the caller actually looks at the DA operator as the service is delivered. Another wireless trend (now being done in Italy) is (will be) using the GPS coordinates off of the wireless phone to augment DA service. Hence calling for a pizza store will no longer require telling what city you want to use for a pizza look-up. Rather, the GPS coordinates are used to give you pizza store options nearby where you are located. Lou Jahn Info Partners Corp 609-823-6602 www.InfoPartnersCorp.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is why, IMO, a service such as 877-EASY-411 -- which sponsors this Digest -- is such a good deal at 65 cents per one or two inquiries, or one reverse lookup, etc. Once you are enrolled, your ANI is given to the bureau at the time you make your call; you need no pins, or other arrangements except for the credit/debit card you want to have billed every month or so. Get all the details from http://easy411.com/telecomdigest . PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 05:32:08 -0500 From: DLR Subject: Re: 3 Phase Power John McHarry wrote: > Apropos the earlier discussion in the 25Hz thread, I think both the US > and Europe distribute three phase wye connected power. If you look at a > distribution pole, at least before the phases are split out, you will > see three well insulated wires, and a fourth wire that is earthed at > each pole. > I believe both systems provide single phase house current by attaching > a transformer from one phase to neutral/earth. If you go down a street > with three phase distribution you will see the transformers (pole pigs) > attached to each phase in sequence. When you get near the end of a > run, it may drop down to two, or even a single phase. If you are going > down a street with streetlights, there will likely be a line below the > main distribution lines carrying lower voltage for them. I studied power a bit 30 years ago in but now my knowledge is a bit more limited so excuse any technical mistakes. Here in Raleigh, NC and I'm assume other CP&L/Progress Energy locations, they have been on a campaign for a while to loop all the 3 phase feeds from the substations so there are few if any "ends of runs". I don't know if this started due to Hugo & Fran, just happened at the same time, or was accelerated due to them. But it sure makes it faster to bring folks back "on the grid". Plus as a rule they don't tap transformers for houses directly off the 3 phase wires. They have runs of a one to a few blocks attached to a feeder drop below the 3 phase lines which helps keep the main lines running even when local problems arise. These feeders are connected with fuses to one of the 3 phase legs. I learned most of this talking to a repair supervisor as it turns out my pole is one of the first visited after a major storm. It has the first disconnect switch for the 3 phase loop out of the substation. And I'm on the substation side. Plus my transformer is still connected directly to a 3 phase leg which means that I'm one of about 5 houses in my area to get power before anyone else within about 1/2 mile or so. I was told unless they had to change out the transformer they'd leave it connected that way. > When you come to a customer requiring three phase power, there will be three > pole pigs, one off each leg. I think in Europe these are also wye > connected, but some in the US are delta connected. Some places the power > company, at least in the past, got cheap and used two pole pigs to deliver > an "open delta" where the third phase is imputed. On a warm spring day > with the sun shining and the birds singing, this works fine. When the > loads get out of balance, all sorts of evil ensues. > There is, however, a reason for both wye and delta connections. Non > linear loads, and ever more are with the prevalence of switching power > supplies, generating harmonics. Multiples of the third harmonic, > called triplen (from triple n) currents add in phase on the neutral. A > wye-delta transformation traps them and keeps them out of the upstream > system, where large currents on the neutral can wreak havoc. ------------------------------ From: stanna@optonline.net Subject: Employment Opporunity: Testing, Development Positions East Coast Date: 12 Mar 2006 09:57:26 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, This is Sai from TANNA Corporation, Technical consulting firm in East coast of USA. I am looking for System Test Engineers and Software Development Engineers to work in VoIP and Embedded systems, If anybody is interested, please send me your resume to stanna at optonline dot com. Thanks for your time, Sai. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome. I hope you find some good employees, although you should really put these messages in our http://telecom-digest.org/classified.html classified ad section. As for me, this Sunday evening, for about an hour now the weather people and the Independence Police have been chattering about 'tornado clouds forming overhead' and urging people to be prepared to move to shelter, so I guess I will go somewhere which is safe. A very nice thing about living here is because we are in a valley area, tornados are very, very rare. And because police and public servants seem to be much more interested in providing service rather than doing politics, etc, there is _no way_ anyone could have missed their several announcements; television/radio weather stations; the police scanner (for Independence, rural s.e. Kansas), indeed, even the cable system itself, with police having taken it over a few times in the past 45 minutes or so telling people to watch out for major chunks of hail, along with extremely strong winds. So, assuming my house does not get blown away, I will be back here with you again tomorrow, Monday. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2006 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 V25 #100 ******************************