From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 6 15:15:38 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id AD06B15602; Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:15:37 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #251 Message-Id: <20060706191537.AD06B15602@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:15:37 -0400 (EDT) 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, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NA_DOLLARS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 6 Jul 2006 15:19:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 251 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Society Announces Election of New Board of Trustees (Peter Godwin) EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World (Anick Jesdanun, AP) A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists (Ed) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 06, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AOL Could Offer Free Service to High-Speed Users (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Bellsouth Keeps Calling (jared) Re: Last Laugh! Did You Hear the One About the Nuclear Warhead? (DLR) Re: AOL Said, 'If You Leave Me I'll Do Something Crazy' (Rick Merrill) Re: Identity Thief Finds Easy Money Hard to Resist (Rick Merrill) Re: NorVergence Founders Fined For Fraud (John Dearing) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:26:26 +0200 From: Peter Godwin Subject: Internet Society Announces Election of New Board of Trustees Reston, VA and Geneva, Switzerland - 6th July 2006 - The Internet Society (ISOC) has announced the composition of its new Board of Trustees. The new Board was seated during ISOC's recent Board meeting held in Marrakesh, Morocco. Newly-elected Board members include Dr. Baoping Yan (General Director of the Computer Network Information Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences), Bill St. Arnaud (Senior Director Advanced Networks for CANARIE Inc., Canada's Advanced Internet Development Organization) and Franck Martin (vice-chairman of the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society). At the same time Patrik Fetstrm was appointed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in conjunction with the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). They join current Board members Fred Baker, Erik Huizer, Daniel Karrenberg, Veni Markovski, Desiree Miloshevic, Glenn Ricart, Stephen Squires, Patrick Vande Walle, and Lynn St. Amour, ISOC President and CEO. Daniel Karrenberg (chief-scientist at RIPE NCC) was elected as Chair of the new Board. "The Internet Society has much to contribute to the continued success of the Internet," said Karrenberg. "The diligent work of my predecessors, the Trustees and the staff has put the society in a very sound position. Building on this foundation we will intensify our work in the areas of public policy and education. We will ensure that the IETF has the administrative support it needs to continue its exemplary standardisation work. We will continue to build a healthy network of chapters for local activities close to the Internet users. All this will help us to realise our motto 'The Internet is for Everyone'." "I very much look forward to working with Daniel as we continue to build on ISOC's past achievements. At the same time, I thank outgoing Chair Fred Baker for his excellent stewardship of the organisation over the past four years," said Lynn St. Amour, ISOC President and CEO. "Fred has done much to help the organisation become stronger and more broadly recognised than ever before. I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank all outgoing Trustees and to welcome those that start their term of office this year." # # # ABOUT ISOC The Internet Society http://www.isoc.org is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. ISOC is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other Internet-related bodies who together play a critical role in ensuring that the Internet develops in a stable and open manner. For over 14 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time. FOR FURTHER DETAILS: Internet Society E-mail: info@isoc.org 1775 Wiehle Ave.,Suite 102 Reston, VA 20190-5108, USA 4 rue des Falaises CH-1205 Geneva Switzerland ------------------------------ From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 17:37:54 -0500 By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer In March 1990, when few people had even heard of the Internet, U.S. Secret Service agents raided the Texas offices of a small board-game maker, seizing computer equipment and reading customers' e-mail stored on one machine. A group of online pioneers already worried about how the nation's laws were being applied to new technologies became even more fearful and decided to intervene. And thus the Electronic Frontier Foundation was born -- 16 years ago this next Monday -- taking on the Secret Service as its first case, one the EFF ultimately won when a judge agreed that the government had no right to read the e-mails or keep the equipment. Today, after expanding into such areas as intellectual property and moving its headquarters twice along with its focus, the EFF is re-emphasizing its roots of trying to limit government surveillance of electronic communications, while keeping a lookout for emerging threats even as the Internet and digital technologies become mainstream. In one of its highest-profile lawsuits to date, the EFF has accused AT&T Inc. of illegally cooperating with the National Security Agency to make phone and Internet communications available without warrants. "It's quite possibly the most important privacy and free speech issue in the 21st century," said Kevin Bankston, an EFF staff attorney formerly with the American Civil Liberties Union. "We are trying to force the government to follow the law. We are trying to force the phone company to follow the law." Shari Steele, the EFF's executive director, described the NSA program as "a place where technology and civil liberties collide in a big way." The EFF was born July 10, 1990, as three men who met on the online community The WELL grew concerned that the ACLU and other traditional civil-liberties organizations didn't understand technology enough to question government actions like the Secret Service raid. "It's difficult at this stage of the game to remember how few people even knew the Internet existed," said John Perry Barlow, a co-founder who used to write lyrics for the Grateful Dead. "It wasn't on their radar." Even the World Wide Web wouldn't be invented for another five months, until almost the end of 1990, then begin to gain in popularity through 1991 and 1992, finally getting a firm start in 1993. Software pioneer Mitch Kapor, another co-founder, said that even when a group like the ACLU had the will, it didn't have the technical know-how to consider how basic, constitutional rights would even apply to the online world. "Nobody had done the thinking," he said. "The questions hadn't been raised." So from Day One, the EFF sought to become a high-tech ACLU and ensure that offline rights indeed transferred to emerging technologies. Early on, the EFF took on government efforts to treat encryption technology as military weapons rather than speech, and later it joined other groups in successfully challenging -- on free-speech grounds -- congressional efforts to block online pornography. The group also defended developers of file-sharing software, arguing that technology with legal uses shouldn't be barred even if others can use it to commit crimes, such as trading copyright music and movies. There have been internal tensions along the way as the organization left Cambridge, Mass., for Washington, D.C., in 1993. The EFF started trying to influence legislation, and some in the organization grew uncomfortable with the need to compromise in that setting. So the EFF moved once more, to San Francisco in 1995, and after dabbling with corporate issues like privacy policies and spinning off the TRUSTe privacy-certification program for businesses as a standalone organization, it redirected its energies to litigation. Most of the EFF's 25 employees now work in a former sewing factory and paint warehouse in San Francisco's gritty Mission District, its cubicle-less offices having the makeshift, open feel of a political campaign rather than a law firm. Attorneys walk around sans ties and suits and hold impromptu meetings on colorful couches. Chewed up tennis balls scattered throughout provide evidence of a dog-friendly environment. Although the EFF was among the few tech-focused groups when it formed, many other organizations now complement it. The Center for Democracy and Technology, or CDT, formed by former EFF staffers in the rift over its role in lobbying, is housed in Washington and tackles issues before Congress and federal agencies. The ACLU also became active in technology and led the online pornography lawsuits. In challenging the Bush administration's domestic-surveillance program, the ACLU sued the government, while the EFF sued AT&T. The EFF's nonlitigation projects include ongoing funding for the Tor system for anonymous online communications and research last year exposing tracking codes embedded in color laser printers. Its staffers also testify at public hearings; one took part in an electronic-voting task force that released a report on security in late June. But the bulk of the work is legal -- 60 percent to 70 percent, Steele estimated. That focus has left the group open to criticisms that by refusing to play the Washington game of compromising, its views are idealistic and sometimes extremist. "They are the lawyers for the open vision of the Internet," said Peter Swire, the Clinton administration privacy counselor who sometimes tussled with the EFF. "They are the Left Coast advocacy group." Companies targeted by the EFF say the group appears overly skeptical of intellectual property and the free market. Paul Ryan, whose Acacia Research Corp. the EFF cited for "crimes against the public domain" for claiming patents on streaming media, said the EFF ignores the fact that without patent protection, companies have less incentive to innovate. The EFF also has faced criticisms that, despite its many victories, its losses can establish legal precedents that make subsequent cases harder to win. In the file-sharing case, the EFF won twice in lower courts, but the Supreme Court narrowed a 1984 ruling that technology shouldn't automatically be barred because it had illegal uses. "The decision to expend energy on cases and in some sense to work to get them to the Supreme Court is to really gamble with the outcome," said Danny Weitzner, who left EFF in 1994 to help form the rival CDT. He said the EFF should have waited for a better case, so that the high court wouldn't be "deciding about whether kids could steal music." EFF attorneys say that they can't always wait for the perfect case and could at least prevent a worse ruling. Others say that by refusing to take risks, no rights will be left. "People will always second guess what you do," said Lee Tien, an EFF attorney active in the AT&T lawsuit. "If you're going to be afraid to complain about something wrong, you deserve to have wrongdoing done to you." The EFF continues to tackle issues like anonymity, electronic voting, patents and copyright, but the Sept. 11 attacks nearly five years ago have forced the EFF to spend more time on surveillance. It has sought to require more evidence before law enforcement can legally track people's locations by their cell phones, and in January the group sued AT&T, saying the San Antonio-based company violated U.S. law and the privacy of its customers. AT&T and NSA officials declined comment for this article. The AT&T lawsuit already has generate grassroots momentum for the group, which gets the bulk of its $2.5 million budget from individuals. About 1,400 joined the EFF and sent in contributions after the EFF sent a mid-May appeal that cited the AT&T case. The group now has about 11,500 dues-paying members. Basic online rights are more established today than when the EFF formed, but EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said there's no shortage of cutting-edge cases. "We're not near the end of the digital revolution in terms of new technology being rolled out," she said. "Just because some stuff is mainstream, there's still a lot of stuff coming down the road to raise new issues or raise old issues over again in slightly new ways." The EFF, she said, remains committed to fighting the battles "nobody's talking about yet." 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 ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: 5 Jul 2006 16:51:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Just wanted to let you know there is a new (or maybe it's not so new ) scam for telemarketers to get around the do not call list. They use an automated system on which a message is recorded. This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy Holiday. I had briefly, many years ago, visited his lot and looked at some cars. Next, a couple of months later, I got another call or two and I informed them that I was on both the PA & US Do Not Call Lists. I asked them to take me off their lists and did get mad at them. A month later or so, I got another call from them, this time through a "Voice Messaging Center" that let me hear the message and I called and told them again to take me off their list. Last week, I got another call, and listened to the instructions on how to instruct them to take me off their list and I did. Tonight, I got the same call but this time, could not hear a Peruzzi message but heard that "we will try again later". I immediately sent a message to the Attorney General Tom Corbett and now of course, I am here. Whatever you do, don't patronize Perruzi Dealerships. Here is the "Voice Messaging Service" number: 866-849-3243. Has anyone here had the same experiences? Thanks, Sincerely, P. Edward Murray ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 06, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 12:00:30 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 06, 2006 ******************************** AOL May Offer Its Services for Free http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18729?11228 NEW YORK -- America Online, the online unit of Time Warner Inc., is considering offering its services, including e-mail, free to customers who already have a high-speed Internet connection, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Under terms of the proposal, which comes amid AOL's quickly depreciating subscriber base, AOL ... Nokia in US$150 million deal to expand GSM/GPRS networks in China http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18727?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Nokia Corp. on Thursday announced a US$150 million deal to further expand mobile phone networks for Henan MCC in China, the company's largest single market area. Deliveries for the contract -- the 11th expansion of GSM, or Global System for Mobile communication, networks for Henan Mobile ... AT&T Offers Voice, Broadband and Wireless Bundle http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18725?11228 AT&T has launched an All Distance wireline, AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet and Cingular Wireless package for US$100 per month. For their money, consumers will get unlimited direct-dialled long-distance calling and local calling; Caller ID and the choice of two other features; internet access at 384 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream,... Siemens Deploys WiMAX Network for Orbitel http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18720?11228 Siemens has announced that it has deployed a WiMAX network for Orbitel in Colombia's third-largest city, Cali. The nework, which is based on Colombia's WayMAX@vantage solution comprising base stations, modems and a monitoring and control system, will provide wireless broadband internet access in direct competition to xDSL... Fixed-Line Operator CenterTelecom Expects to Profit From Russia's CPP http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18717?11228 Regional fixed-line operator CenterTelecom has revealed that it expects to generate a profit of 133.12 million roubles (US$4.95 million) in 2006, as a result of the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle, which was introduced in Russia on 1 July 2006, reports Prime-Tass. According to the ruling, mobile users are no longer charged for ... Broadcom, TI Challenge Qualcomm http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18715?11228 Qualcomm is once again the subject of a complaint. The latest: Texas Instruments and Broadcom have filed a complaint in South Korea, alleging antitrust behavior. The complaint, filed with the South Korea Fair Trade Commission, charges Qualcomm with wielding its CDMA market dominance to keep competitors out of the market ... Homeland Security NIPP's At Telecom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18713?11228 The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a sweeping, 196-page report on implementing a nationwide national infrastructure protection plan (NIPP), with telecom networks, cyber security and information technology (IT) playing one of the central roles in American preparedness and recovery. In completing the work, DHS ... Mobile WiMax Takes Fixed Field http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18709?11228 It may not be long before the 'd' in 802.16d stands for 'defunct'. More and more WiMax companies acknowledge that 802.16e -- the standard often called 'mobile WiMax' -- is in demand for fixed deployments, too. "We think the basic technology for WiMax will be 802.16e," says Tzvika Friedman ... Vonage Peer Makes a Fine Whine http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18706?11228 8x8 Inc. shareholders are feeling testy about the company's sagging stock price. So much so that CEO Bryan Martin Wednesday issued an open letter meant to reassure them. While several things may be pulling 8x8's stock price down, 8x8 has clearly been hit with some shrapnel flying from the general direction of Vonage's ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 12:57:20 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report: AOL Could Offer Free Services to High-Speed Users USTelecom dailyLead July 6, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dWpkfDtutfeAsxCHke TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: AOL could offer free services to high-speed users BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Intel, Motorola to invest $900M in Clearwire * South Korea no longer tops in broadband penetration * Survey: IPTV to generate significant cash in 2009 * Moody's: VoIP poses minimal threat to European telecoms USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about billing systems TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Group puts computing to humanitarian use REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * NYC parks to get Wi-Fi Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dWpkfDtutfeAsxCHke ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:57:18 -0600 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Bellsouth Keeps Calling Details of the do not call law at http://www.donotcall.gov > There's a loophole for companies with which you have an existing > business relationship. So if you're a BellSouth customer, it's legal > for them to call you and try to sell you more services. I assume this > changes if you specifically tell them to quit, but I'm not sure. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 00:22:43 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Did You Hear the One About the Nuclear Warhead? mc wrote: > Was there in fact a nuclear warhead on anything they launched? > Their marksmanship is impressive -- apparently not one missile went > anywhere near the distance it was intended to. > TELECOM Digest Editor" wrote in message > news:telecom25.249.8@telecom-digest.org: >> It seems our good friends in North Korea send us a nuclear warhead on >> Tuesday. The 'fireworks' were intended to reach us about the same time >> as the NASA launch took place. Trouble is, the warhead was defective, >> a total dud. It never got here, and apparently did not explode either. >> Had the 'fireworks' arrived safely and gone off as intended, then >> spam/scam -- indeed the entire telephone network -- would have been >> the least of our worries, I am sure. >> PAT Neither did ours way back in the day. But if they work at it long enough and throw lots of money at it, they will likely get better at it. At least as long as the folks working on it get to keep eating. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As 'they' say, "practice makes perfect" and no one could reasonably expect the North Koreans to perfectly hit the target (US of Amerika) the first time around. I realize this is not a gambling casino and we are not in the business of 'giving chances', but give them another chance or two. I am sure they will eventually reach their goal which was temporarily put on hold back in 1950-51. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:48:26 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: AOL Said, 'If You Leave Me I'll Do Something Crazy' Monty Solomon wrote: > To listen as Mr. Ferrari tries to cancel his membership is to join > representative, self-identified as John, sounds like a native English > speaker; he refuses to comply when Mr. Ferrari asks, demands and > finally pleads -- over and over again -- to close his account. Account reps are actually 'graded' on how many they sign up and how many they cancel! ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:49:34 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Identity Thief Finds Easy Money Hard to Resist Monty Solomon wrote: > Stolen Lives > Identity Thief Finds Easy Money Hard to Resist > By TOM ZELLER Jr. > The New York Times > By the time of Shiva Brent Sharma's third arrest for identity theft, > at the age of 20, he had taken in well over $150,000 in cash and > merchandise in his brief career. After a certain point, investigators > stopped counting. > The biggest money was coming in at the end, postal inspectors said, > after Mr. Sharma had figured out how to buy access to stolen credit > card accounts online, change the cardholder information and reliably > wire money to himself -- sometimes using false identities for which he > had created pristine driver's licenses. > But Mr. Sharma, now 22, says he never really kept track of his > earnings. > "I don't know how much I made altogether, but the most I ever made in > a quick period was like $20,000 in a day and a half or something," he > said, sitting in the empty meeting hall at the Mohawk Correctional > Facility in Rome, N.Y., where he is serving a two- to four-year term. > "Working like three hours today, three hours tomorrow -- $20,000." > And once he knew what he was doing, it was all too easy. > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/us/04identity.html?ex=1309665600&en=18bc230a1ae1ba06&ei=5088 What are you trying to do, recruit more ID thieves? ------------------------------ From: John Dearing Subject: Re: NorVergence Founders Fined For Fraud Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:54:28 -0400 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: -=[ snippage re: the Salzano thieves ]=- > Isn't fraud a criminal offense? Shouldn't be prison be considered for > them? I don't understand. These are FTC proceedings. Not judicial proceedings. I'm certain the Salzano's are still facing additional criminal and/or civil cases at the state and federal level. John Dearing ------------------------------ 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 #251 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 7 20:41:24 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EA68815315; Fri, 7 Jul 2006 20:41:23 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #252 Message-Id: <20060708004123.EA68815315@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 20:41:23 -0400 (EDT) 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, 7 Jul 2006 20:45:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 252 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines (Reuters News Wire) Cingular Wireless Gets Sued; Refutes Claims; Plans Copuntersuit ( TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 07, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Verizon Takes Step Toward Directories Spinoff (USTelecom dailyLead) http://www.privatephone.com/ (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) Re: A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists ... (mc) Re: A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Last Laugh! Did You Hear the One About the Nuclear Warhead? (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 18:33:33 -0500 The Navy said on Friday that it was trying to determine how personal information on more than 100,000 Navy and Marine Corp aviators and air crew wound up on a publicly available Web site for more than six months. In a fresh case of private information on military personnel being compromised, the full names and social security numbers of both active and reserve members appeared on the Naval Safety Center Web site at http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil last December. Those affected are believed to include any Navy or Marine Corp aviator who has served during the past 20 years. The same information was also disseminated late last year to Navy and Marine Corps commands on 1,083 program disks mailed out as part of the service's Web Enabled Safety Program. The Naval Safety Center found out about the problem and removed the information from the web site on Thursday, a week after the recovery of a stolen Veterans Affairs Department laptop that contained sensitive information on more than 26 million U.S. military veterans and service members. The center is now recalling the mailed program disks. As in the case of the Veterans Affairs laptop, the Navy said there was no evidence that any of the disseminated data has been used illegally. But the service is notifying those affected by mail and setting up a 24-hour call center to handle queries. Safety center spokeswoman Evelyn Odango said the problem appeared to be an errant file. "The information was inadvertently included in a file that was then posted on the Web," she said. "We found out about it through a Web site user and it was removed immediately." 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 of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is this getting to be a bad joke, or what? Every day or three of late we hear of files which should remain totally private and confidential somehow making their way into the public's view, mostly because of thievery of laptops, but now in this instance, by being put on display on the web. And I suspect if we used our imaginations, with all sorts of number combinations we could find even more stuff on the web which should ideally _not_ be on display. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Cingular Wireless Gets Sued; Refutes Claims; Plans Copuntersuit Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 18:37:30 -0500 Cingular Wireless, one of the largest U.S. mobile phone carriers, on Friday indignantly refuted claims in a lawsuit that it misled and overcharged some customers, and said it is considering coutersuing. The claims, made by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and filed on behalf of seven plaintiffs, are "completely without merit, and just a lie" said Joaquin Carbonell, Cingular's general counsel. The foundation filed its lawsuit on Thursday in federal court in Seattle charging that Cingular reneged on its promise to provide AT&T Wireless customers with new and better services. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless for $41 billion in October 2004. Instead, Cingular "immediately began dismantling and degrading the AT&T network, forcing AT&T customers to move to Cingular's cell network," the foundation said. Cingular then forced AT&T customers to pay $18 to transfer or upgrade their service to its wireless network, and charged others $175 early termination fee if they tried to switch to another company, the group said. "Others who didn't want to pay or couldn't afford the fees have been stuck with riding out their contract with AT&T Wireless while suffering poor to no reception," the group said in a statement. The lawsuit says that "the amount in controversy" exceeds $5 million, and that the plaintiffs are seeking triple that amount in damages. Cingular said it is considering its options including filing a counter-suit. Cingular said it spent nearly $10 billion to integrate and improve its networks over 21 months since the merger was completed. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 07, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 11:48:54 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 07, 2006 ******************************** EU takes Poland, Latvia and Finland to court for not obeying telecoms rules http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18748?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Commission said Friday it would take Poland, Latvia and Finland to court for not obeying EU telecoms rules. It said it would ask the European Court of Justice to make Poland and Latvia provide a full comprehensive telephone directory and full directory enquiry services. It will also sue... Bulgarian Government Plans New Telecoms Law in 2007 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18743?11228 The Bulgarian government is planning to introduce new telecoms legislation, the Electronic Communications Act, from 2007. This will divide the sector into 18 types of markets that will be controlled by the telecoms market regulator, the CRC. The government is now revising the draft, which will subsequently be submitted to parliament. ... EU Ups Pressure on German Government over VDSL Broadband Network http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18739?11228 The German government is resisting European Commission pressure, in efforts to enable the incumbent to recoup its hefty investment in its new fibre-optic broadband infrastructure. It plans to introduce legislation shielding the VDSL broadband network from competition for several... Intel, Motorola Back Clearwire http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18737?11228 Craig McCaw's Clearwire may have backed off its initial public offering plans, but the company has received a vote of confidence from the funding world -- securing a $900 investment commitment. Of the total, $600 million will come from Intel Corporation's capital arm. Motorola also is on the list of backers. Intel's $600... MacBook Pro: Performance at a Price http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18735?11228 What if money were no object? What sort of laptop computer would you buy? For many people, the answer will be the Apple MacBook Pro. Yet, at about $2,800, price will be a very large object indeed for many potential MacBook Pro buyers. Memory and storage enhancements can easily send the laptop's price tag soaring far past $3K. But... Communications Reform Bill Gets Fast Tracked http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18734?11228 In a rarely seen legislative maneuver, the sweeping communications reform bill recently approved by a key Senate committee has been re-designated as a House of Representatives proposal, ostensibly to accelerate the floor voting process during this Congressional session. After three days of markup covering 214 amendments, not... Cisco Buys WLAN Security Smarts http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18732?11228 Cisco Systems Inc. is buying software security firm Meetinghouse Data Communications Inc. for $43.7 million in a move that reflects the importance of secure network access via WLAN. The move marks the return of Cisco's roving acquisition eye to the network security sector after it snapped up three specialist companies... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 12:57:59 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon Takes Step Toward Directories Spinoff USTelecom dailyLead July 7, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXakfDtutfeZdJzFGF TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon takes step toward directories spinoff BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cingular hit with lawsuit over AT&T Wireless integration * Cisco wins China Telecom contracts * Study: Connected networks to drive electronics sales * Analysis: Motorola makes big WiMAX play with Clearwire move * Qwest plans to expand TV service by year's end, analyst says USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Evaluating IPTV Transport Systems using MDI Curves TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Analysis: Microsoft takes "go-it-alone" approach to capture digital media market share VOIP DOWNLOAD * Report: EarthLink to sell Wi-Fi phones * Lessons in VoIP from Bryant University REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * NYC considers citywide broadband network * FCC set to vote July 13 on Adelphia sale Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXakfDtutfeZdJzFGF ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: http://www.privatephone.com/ Date: 6 Jul 2006 12:41:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I saw their ad on TV. They give you a free voice mail account. You can access messages by phone or 'net. Most interestting fo their TOS is: 6.4 Downloads. Provider may from time to time download and install software, including additional Software or third party software, to your computer while it is connected to the Internet through any means. Provider retains the right to limit, restrict or require the use of certain software or service in connection with the Services. AND if you pay for extra services they have an "early termination penalty" I like OneSuite. Incredibly low long distance phone rates. As low as USA-Canada 1.9CPM! Works as prepaid phone card. PIN not needed for calls from home or cell phone. Compare the rates at https://www.OneSuite.com No monthly fee or minimum. Use Promotion/SuiteTreat Code: "FREEoffer23" for FREE time. Although from USA payphones there is a connection fee, there is NONE from other phones or Canadian payphones. Also works FROM many other countries. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 17:01:44 -0400 Ed wrote in message news:telecom25.251.3@telecom-digest.org: > This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership > here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy > Holiday. I think people are going around telling each other -- quite falsely -- that if the message doesn't explicitly announce things for sale, it's not an advertisement and therefore not a violation. A few weeks ago, a jeweler in my town used an autodialer to invite people for a free ring cleaning. He told me it wasn't an advertisement but an invitation. Worse, he made no attempt to avoid dialing hospitals, fire stations, large PBXes, etc. ... my first encounter with it was when my secretary got about 8 copies of the message via other phones rolling over to hers. I don't know, but I suspect someone is aggressively selling autodialers by telling people falsehoods about the law. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 22:59:19 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Ed wrote: > Just wanted to let you know there is a new (or maybe it's not so new ) > scam for telemarketers to get around the do not call list. > They use an automated system on which a message is recorded. This is, and always has been, illegal. 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: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Did You Hear the One About the Nuclear Warhead? Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:19:46 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As 'they' say, "practice makes perfect" > and no one could reasonably expect the North Koreans to perfectly > hit the target (US of Amerika) the first time around. I realize this > is not a gambling casino and we are not in the business of 'giving > chances', but give them another chance or two. I am sure they will > eventually reach their goal which was temporarily put on hold back > in 1950-51. PAT] If N.K. has nukes, they are far more apt to sell them to terrorists than to launch them with a missile. ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #252 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 9 18:13:57 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 920891541D; Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:13:56 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #253 Message-Id: <20060709221356.920891541D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:13:56 -0400 (EDT) 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, 9 Jul 2006 18:15:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 253 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (Monty Solomon) Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Monty Solomon) Assessors Grapple With Tax Change: Communications Gear (Monty Solomon) Wi-Fi Wars/Loiterers Can be a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line (M Solomon) Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead / Phone Companies Fail (Monty Solomon) Questions Linger Over Secrets on Laptops (Monty Solomon) Elegy For the Video Store (Monty Solomon) Bar-Code Tags, ATM-Style Machines Drive High-Tech Laundry (Monty Solomon) Western Union Now Blocking Money Transfers to Arab-Sounding Names (Sundram) Virtual Numbers (Dave Warren) Re: EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: http://www.privatephone.com/ (castellan) Re: (Ab)use of Javascript; was Re: Web Services Under Attack (dpmartin) Re: Wireless Firms Agree on Rules for Mobile Web Sites (Koos van den Hout) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Robert Bonomi) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (mc) Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 00:44:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You By Gary Haber, The News Journal Caller ID -- the little telephone display that tells you who's calling -- is many people's protection from folks they'd rather not talk to, whether it's a telemarketer making a pitch at dinner time or a scammer trying to con them out of personal financial information. Now, legislation pending in Congress would strengthen a line of defense that turns out to be more porous than many may think. Technology readily available for sale over the Internet allows callers to fool caller ID with a bogus name and number. The practice is known as identity spoofing. It's hard to get a handle on how widespread identity spoofing is, but it's gone well beyond harmless pranks. The AARP Bulletin recently reported a scam in which people received fraudulent calls claiming they missed jury duty and asking for their Social Security number. The calls seemed legitimate because the telephone number of the local courthouse showed up on caller ID. In Pennsylvania, constituents of Republican Rep. Tim Murphy were flooded with bogus calls from someone purporting to be from Murphy's office. The primary worry for consumers is that if a call appears to be coming from their bank, credit card company or a government agency, they could be persuaded to give up financial data a thief could use to open new bank accounts or apply for loans and credit cards. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-06-caller-id-scam_x.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 03:32:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones By Tyler B. Reed/ Daily News Staff FRAMINGHAM -- High school administrators under a new policy are claiming the right to snatch information stored in students' cell phones when they search for drugs or stolen property at school. The change clarifies the school's search and seizure policy, adding cell phones to the list of places school officials can snoop if they suspect a student has contraband. Federal law says school officials need only "reasonable suspicion" of the presence of drugs or stolen goods to conduct searches. "We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were to have a notebook. We've had instances of graffiti. We've looked through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti." The apparent broadening of principals' search rights drew criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=134730 Students Cry Foul Over Cell Phone Policy: Teens Say Officials Are 'Overreacting' and Violating Their Privacy By Eric Athas/ Daily News Correspondent FRAMINGHAM -- Fearing their wireless freedom may be in jeopardy, students at Framingham High School were fuming over a new school policy that allows administrators to seize cell phones and search their contents. The policy, administrators say, is to improve security and stop the sale of drugs and stolen goods, but students said that the edict is an invasion of privacy. http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=134816 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 03:36:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Assessors Grapple With Tax Change Assessors grapple with tax change: Communications gear owned by wireless companies now require local valuations By John Hilliard/ Daily News Staff It won't be a slow summer for local assessors, as officials scramble to prepare tax valuations for the communications gear owned by wireless companies. "It's one more thing -- on top of everything else -- that we're dealing with," said Bob Bushway, Hopkinton's principal assessor. "It definitely has been a burden to all the cities and towns, as far as I'm concerned." In May, the state Appellate Tax Board ended state-controlled tax valuation of wireless companies' equipment and stripped them of a status that blocked collecting taxes on most wireless communication machinery. Previously, the state Department of Revenue issued valuations for applicable wireless equipment across Massachusetts. While the DOR issued similar valuations for fiscal 2007, communities are not bound to use those figures. Tax Board Commissioner Frank Scharaffa has said the decision could be appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court. Last year, the town earned about $163,000 in taxes -- based on DOR valuations -- from wireless firms in town, said Bushway. He said 11 wireless companies have located operations inside Hopkinton. The town has requested information on company equipment located within its borders, but he did not believe the town is guaranteed extra tax dollars from wireless companies. http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=134926 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 11:06:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Wi-Fi Wars / Loiterers Can be a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line By Alison Lobron, Globe Correspondent | July 9, 2006 Some wireless users sneak in their own food with their laptops. Others buy one cup of coffee at 9 a.m. and surf the Net until closing time. And the truly audacious sit for hours without making any pretense of a purchase. In and around Boston, cafe owners who installed wireless signals to draw customers say they also are drawing Internet users who tie up seats for hours, buy little or nothing, and make coffee shops feel like the office as they tap away at their laptops. Now some owners are fighting back by charging for wireless access, shutting off their signal at peak business hours, or telling loitering laptoppers to shell out or ship out. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/09/wi_fi_wars/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 15:52:30 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Caution: Unidentified callers ahead Phone companies fail to provide some IDs because of the cost of obtaining the data By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff Are you getting your money's worth from caller ID? Some callers can't be identified because their information is blocked or unavailable, but in other cases the callers aren't named because the customer's phone company simply doesn't want to spend the money to obtain the data. A small Globe test of caller ID accuracy found several instances where Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. didn't provide a caller's name because they didn't want to pay the extra money. The price is minimal on a per-call basis -- often a penny or less a call -- but spread across a telecommunications giant's many customers, it can quickly run into the tens of millions of dollars. A spokesman for Verizon said the company provides excellent caller ID service, culling names from its own vast database and also spending tens of millions of dollars each year to access additional names from other telecommunications companies. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/09/caution_unidentified_callers_ahead/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 15:57:45 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Questions Linger Over Secrets on Laptops By BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer BOSTON (AP) -- Every month seems to bring another episode of sensitive personal information escaping into the wild because a corporate or government laptop computer is lost or stolen. A common response is a lot of hand-wringing over how the data should have been encrypted. But some key questions usually go unanswered. Why is so much private data allowed to be on laptops to begin with? What do people do all day that compels them to tote around records on, say, 26 million Americans, the staggering number seen in the recent Veterans Affairs case? "It's pure laziness. There's actually no excuse for it," said Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Gartner Inc. "There's no good business reason for it." Litan advocates a few simple steps: Organizations should keep sensitive information only on secure, centralized servers. Workers can access the data from PCs in the office or over private Internet connections, but can't store the records on their own machines to fiddle with them offline. If they absolutely need to analyze data out of the office, the employees should run programs that replace live credit card or Social Security numbers with random "dummy" figures whenever possible, since the actual numbers aren't always relevant. Following such rules would have prevented the scare that resulted when a laptop with veterans' data was burgled from an analyst's home May 3 (it was later recovered with the information apparently unaccessed). The VA inspector general told Congress that the staffer had been bringing data home for policy analysis since 2003. It's true that encrypting data _ scrambling them with private codes _ can make whatever is found on a laptop almost impossible to read. But encryption often isn't turned on by users who think it degrades computer performance. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=59637955 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 16:54:03 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Elegy For the Video Store As Netflix and on-demand change the way we rent movies, the corner video store is fading out. It's a greater loss than you might think. By John Swansburg IN AN ESSAY recently published in The New York Times Book Review, John Updike noted that, 'mirabile dictu', the small New England city where he lives still holds an independent bookstore -- "one of the few surviving in the long coastal stretch between Marblehead and Newburyport." I happen to know that bookstore; I grew up just a few miles down the road from it, in Beverly, and bought books there as a kid. Yet when I read Updike's encomium for such 'lonely forts', I couldn't help but think of a different outpost, one that never enjoyed such praise from on high, and one that, unlike the bookshop, closed its doors not long ago: Photographics, the video store where I rented movies growing up. The demise of the independent bookstore has been augured for nearly a generation now, the inevitable casualty of behemoths like Borders and Barnes & Noble, online booksellers like Amazon, and ultimately, so we're told, of the universal, digital library imagined by Google and various techno-visionaries. The more imminent demise of the video store, meanwhile, has merited only occasional notice, mostly in the business pages. Yet something important is being lost here, something that isn't going to be replaced by rent-by-mail outfits like Netflix, video-on-demand services, or newfangled delivery systems like the Disney-backed MovieBeam. Though it may never have acquired the cache of the independent bookstore, for people who care about movies, the video store is just as vital an institution. Video stores aren't just a place to grab a movie. The halfway decent ones-in other words, not Blockbuster, which is almost entirely given over to new releases, the so-called back wall -- are places where the enthusiasms of the cinephile find a home. The theater is a place to see movies; the video store is a place to be among them-and to be among other people who love movies. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/07/09/elegy_for_the_video_store/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 22:08:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bar-Code Tags, ATM-Style Machines Drive High-Tech Laundry Business By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff In the dry-cleaning world, they're called the 'not mines'. Those too-small jeans and who-would-wear-that dress that infiltrate your dry-cleaning order. Zoots, a Newton dry-cleaning chain, has hit upon some high-tech solutions to curb the 'not mines' and 'where are mines'? (the favorite cashmere sweaters that go missing in a vast dry-cleaning vortex) that plagued the company after it was launched in 1998 . In the early days, Zoots was spending 6 percent of revenue on lost and damaged claims -- about six times the industry average -- and not doing a great job of cleaning the clothes it didn't lose. "While we always knew this business would be challenging, we underestimated the magnitude of the challenge," said Tom Stemberg, one of Zoots's founders and creator of Staples Inc., the Framingham office-supply chain. "As we lost customers' favorite garments or failed to remove spots, we had huge customer payments and defecting customers." Zoots knew change was needed to survive. So the chain brought in a manufacturing team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to focus on quality and productivity. The leaders began investing more in technology, such as permanent garment tags and ATM-style dry-cleaning machines that automatically dispense orders. In recent years, Zoots finally began to do what it had set out to do: take the dry-cleaning world by storm, offering quality 24-hour service, home delivery, and high-tech perks like e-mailed invoices at dozens of stores. The 78-store chain says it has cut its loss claims to less than 1 percent and made huge gains in adding new customers, keeping existing customers, and improving margins at its locations in nine states. Along the way, the $66 million company got the confidence to continue its acquisition spree -- including last month's takeover of Sarni Cleaners -- and racked up more than 75 Readers Choice awards for best dry cleaner. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/03/bar_code_tags_atm_style_machines_drive_high_tech_laundry_business/ ------------------------------ From: Anjan Sundram Subject: Western Union Now Blocking Money Transfers to 'Arab-Sounding' Names Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 14:20:14 -0500 Western Union blocks Arab cash transfers By ANJAN SUNDARAM, Associated Press Writer Money transfer agencies have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company officials said. In one example, an Indian driver here said Western Union prevented him from sending $120 to a friend at home last month because the recipient's name was Mohammed. "Western Union told me that if I send money to Sahir Mohammed, the money will be blocked because of his name," said 36-year-old Abdul Rahman Maruthayil, who later sent the money through UAE Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer service. In a similar case, Pakistani Qadir Khan said Western Union blocked his attempt this month to wire money to his brother Mohammed for a cataract operation. "Every Mohammed is a terrorist now?" Khan asked. Dubai-based representatives from Western Union Financial Services, an American company based in Colorado, and Minnesota-based MoneyGram International, said their clerks are simply following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed for a few hours. Some are blocked entirely. In many cases, would-be customers like Maruthayil simply find another way to send the funds -- often through informal exchanges with less stringent monitoring. Critics say the screening is far too broad. The number of people inconvenienced in the Emirates alone, which closely cooperates with U.S. counterterror operations, is thought to be in the tens of thousands. One Western Union clerk said about 300 money transfers from a single Dubai franchise were blocked or delayed each day -- none of which has turned up a terrorist link. In Washington, U.S. Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said foreign banks have used the department's list of terrorist names to freeze $150 million in assets since Sept. 11. Millerwise didn't know the value of money transfers blocked using the list, but said frustrations endured were regrettable but necessary. "We have an obligation to do all we can to keep money out of the hands of terrorists," Millerwise said. The list of names, available on the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control Web site, contains hundreds of Mohammeds. Inconveniences from the screening go far beyond money transfers in the Middle East. In the United States, banks, car dealers, title companies, landlords, and employers have used the list to unjustly block scores of ordinary transactions, said Shirin Sinnar, a San Francisco attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. In one case, a couple in Sacramento, Calif. was thwarted from purchasing a treadmill on a financing plan, simply because the husband's first name was Hussein, Sinnar said in an e-mail interview. Western Union's caution is perhaps understandable. Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta sent money from two Western Union agencies in Maryland before boarding a plane he helped crash into New York's World Trade Center. The money transfer crackdown comes amid revelations that the U.S. Treasury and CIA have tracked millions of confidential transactions handled by the Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. In Dubai, a Western Union branch manager said he was forced to obey U.S. rules he and others consider too broad. "Mohammed and Ahmed have become problematic names because they are so common on the list of terrorists," said Nixon Baby, who runs a Western Union franchise in Bur Dubai, a neighborhood packed with South Asian businesses. "These are regulations that Western Union is required to obey. We have no control." At another Western Union office, an executive who deals with security measures said about 1 percent of the store's 30,000 daily money transfers -- about 300 a day -- are delayed or blocked because of suspected terrorist links. Thus far, all have proven false, the executive said on condition of anonymity, because she wasn't permitted to speak to a reporter. Western Union routinely delays or blocks transfers between customers whose names even partially match names on the Treasury list. The money is usually released once suspects show identity documents that prove they are not on the list, the executive said. Bernie Rabina, a representative at Dubai airport's MoneyGram outlet, said her company follows a similar process. Rabina didn't know what percentage of her franchise's daily transactions were blocked. The U.S. regulations apply to Western Union money transfers made anywhere, said Marc Aubry, the company's Dubai-based Mideast marketing director. But the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is one of seven city-states, is especially susceptible to the Treasury's restrictions because it is home to more than a million foreign laborers who sent home a collective $14 billion last year, according to a government report. The Emirates government has cooperated with the U.S. Treasury in tightening oversight after a 2004 U.S. investigation found that Emirates banks handled most of the $400,000 spent on the Sept. 11 attacks. Dubai expatriates like Khan and Maruthayil say Western Union, which earns about $3 billion annually from operations in 200 countries, has no valid basis for delaying cash meant for their families. They say Treasury guidelines are sending more people to informal money transfer networks called "hundis" or "hawalas" that have been used by gangsters and terrorists because they circumvent such scrutiny. "Sending money by hawala is cheaper and it does not get checked by banks, so it is quicker," said a Pakistani taxi driver who called himself Munir Ahmed. "They say it is not legal, but it is a reliable alternative to Western Union." At the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, spokesman Corey Saylor said Treasury needs to reform its rules. "The Treasury program interferes with even the most innocent transactions," Saylor said. "Just because Ahmed is a common name on their list, everyone with that name is suddenly stuck." 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 news each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Warren Subject: Virtual Numbers Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 05:55:25 -0500 Organization: Disorganized I currently have Vonage and am less and less impressed with their service. As a result, I'm debating jumping ship. I no longer need the outbound long distance at all, my local telco no longer charges LD fees. However, the one thing that has kept me with Vonage throughout the last few years is my virtual numbers. First off, does anyone know if Vonage's numbers can be ported? I have a couple in Canada and a couple in the US, all of which I'd like to keep. My understanding is that although Vonage's ToS doesn't permit you to transfer numbers away, that's not actually enforceable. Either way, it's been a while since I've done any VoIP research and the market has changed. What are my options? All I really need is a few virtual numbers that either terminate on an ATA, or to a PSTN landline in Canada. 403 Calgary 204 Winnipeg 817 Arlington/Grapevine Anyone have any pointers or shall I just hit Google and start wandering? All that being said, I could just keep my Vonage service and call forward it to my PSTN line, and unplug the ATA -- This is a functional, if less then elegant solution. However, I'd like to get the cost down. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World Date: 8 Jul 2006 13:50:51 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anick Jesdanun wrote: > Today, after expanding into such areas as intellectual property and > moving its headquarters twice along with its focus, the EFF is > re-emphasizing its roots of trying to limit government surveillance of > electronic communications, while keeping a lookout for emerging > threats even as the Internet and digital technologies become > mainstream. As a citizen, I have mixed feelings about the work of both the ACLU and EFF. We must remember that Constitutional and legal rights are relative. My right to do something might impact your rights of protection. In short, we don't have the "free speech right" to yell fire in a crowded theatre and there are many examples of that. When it comes to gray areas of rights, I think the public interest must be carefully considered. I value my privacy and naturally and I don't want the govt listening in to my telephone calls or Internet activity. But on the other hand, I don't want terrorists blowing up a building or transport that I or my loved ones happen to be in. During WW II the U.S. Government locked up Japanese-Americans in California out of fear for sabotage and espionage. In hindsight most see that as a big mistake, because those people were loyal Americans (and many were citizens) and because the lockup was motiviated for selfish reasons -- other California farmers disliked the Japanese and wanted to get rid of them. However, Japanese in Hawaii -- who ironically were not interned -- had supplied vital information to Japan that assisted with the Pearl Harbor attack. In the rec.arts.tv newsgroup, many people cite EFF concernrs for new security controls in entertainment media and are very upset about such new controls. In reading the comments, it seems to be they're upset since they won't be able to copy freely anymore rather than the controls themselves. I don't like controls either but I can understand the desire of the entertainment industry to stop the massive piracy that is going on and stealing legitimate revenue from them. (That people dislike the industry is not a valid reason to deny them revenue by illegal piracy.) I frankly don't know what the balance should be. It's a tough decision. The U.S. and other countries DO have bitter enemies out to murder us; that's a fact. Our very open country allows enemies to come in easily or even be home grown. Now, I don't want school officials reading every kid's personal email and diary to see if another Columbine is in the making, but I don't want another Columbine either. I don't want the Feds reading our remails, but I don't want another 9/11 either. [public replies please] ------------------------------ From: castellan Subject: Re: http://www.privatephone.com/ Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 02:29:59 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com I'm pretty happy with it. Free voicemail! No arguments from me. I used j2 previously, but they have a limit on how many messages/faxes you can get a month. On 2006-07-06, NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: > I saw their ad on TV. > They give you a free voice mail account. > You can access messages by phone or 'net. > Most interestting fo their TOS is: > 6.4 Downloads. Provider may from time to time download and install > software, including additional Software or third party software, to > your computer while it is connected to the Internet through any means. > Provider retains the right to limit, restrict or require the use of > certain software or service in connection with the Services. > AND if you pay for extra services they have an "early termination > penalty" > I like OneSuite. > Incredibly low long distance phone rates. As low as USA-Canada 1.9CPM! > Works as prepaid phone card. PIN not needed for calls from home or > cell phone. Compare the rates at https://www.OneSuite.com No monthly > fee or minimum. Use Promotion/SuiteTreat Code: "FREEoffer23" for FREE > time. > Although from USA payphones there is a connection fee, there is NONE from > other phones or Canadian payphones. Also works FROM many other > countries. Sick of USENET postwhores? Trolls? Flamers? Read the Killfile FAQ for Newsgroups to learn how to filter their drivel straight to /dev/null http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/killfilefaqhtm.htm ------------------------------ From: dpmartin@alum.mit.edu Subject: Re: (Ab)use of Javascript; was Re: Web Services Increasingly Under Date: 9 Jul 2006 06:28:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In the future, voice services which convert voice to text and vice versa will become more common. If the voice can be recognized then identity can be established. Spy programs now exist that can determine who is typing by the pattern and cadence of their keying. Two versions; one which listens to the sound in the room and the other which is internal to the computer and records the arrival of keystrokes electronically. The one which listens only to the sound in the room can be trained to distinguished which keys are being typed. Blind people can learn this skill as well, much as a deaf person can learn lip-reading. redefined wrote: > This is true, but it's no different than the cookies that are currently > stored/tracked on these computers. > To stretch my idea even further, if there is a will there is a > way. All they have to do is create a simple little program that will > change the system's IP address every time a new user logs on. Say a > window will prompt for the login/password, and the login will be the > IP. This will of course wreak havoc on the network structure, but with > the advance of wireless networks and entire cities getting ready to go > wifi, this is looking more and more like when cell phones first > appeared on the market. I'm sure they can come up with routers that > will send traffic from each IP to its appropriate router over wifi. > Again, not saying that it's going to happen. Just letting my > imagination work here. > Julian Thomas wrote: >>> If the government really wants to track people's online usage >>> they'll have to give everyone the option to keep the same IP >>> throughout their lifetime, much like they allow people to keep their >>> phone numbers now. That way each IP address will have a name >>> attached to it. >> Hardly. Consider local network environments and shared usage computers, >> where many users share the same IP. >> Julian Thomas: http://jt-mj.net >> In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! >> Warpstock X - October 12-15 2006; Windsor, Ont. I'll be there - will you? >> Finagle's First Law: >> If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. ------------------------------ From: Koos van den Hout Subject: Re: Wireless Firms Agree on Rules for Mobile Web Sites Date: 9 Jul 2006 19:34:41 GMT Organization: http://idefix.net/~koos/ Reuters News Wire wrote in : > The guidelines advise developers against using big graphics or pop-up > ads that could clutter phone screens. > They also suggest designing sites in such a way that the content > appears right at the top of a cell phone screen, allowing users to > avoid scrolling past multiple navigation links. > "A common problem is that you have a small screen, so when a Web site > loads, the navigational elements like home page or next page links are > the only things you see instead of the content you're looking for," > Applequist said. Funny, those sound a bit like the guidelines for making websites accessible to blind users using screenreaders, braille devices. Now it's commercially interesting (alllll those mobile users!) there is an interest in this subject all of a sudden. Not complaining about W3.org, they have always insisted on an accessible web. Koos van den Hout (website self-promotion) For example, I made sure Camp Wireless at http://www.camp-wireless.org/ works for all browsers and should be usable for blind persons. For mobile browsers with WAP and WML support, there is a very lightweight WML version at http://wap.camp-wireless.org/ since I think the content can be useful even when accessed from a first generation mobile device. (/website self-promotion) Koos van den Hout, PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 via keyservers koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl or RSA/1024 0xCA845CB5 -?) Fax +31-30-2817051 Camp Wireless, wireless Internet access /\\ http://idefix.net/~koos/ at campsites http://www.camp-wireless.org/ _\_V ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:41:18 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , mc wrote: > Ed wrote in message > news:telecom25.251.3@telecom-digest.org: >> This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership >> here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy >> Holiday. > I think people are going around telling each other -- quite falsely -- > that if the message doesn't explicitly announce things for sale, it's > not an advertisement and therefore not a violation. A few things are proscribed or regulated by law (or the implementing 'federal regulation') on the basis of content -- e.g. 'advertising'. Other things are proscribed/regulated on the basis of the methodology/technology used. e.g. autodialers, pre-recorded voice announcement, etc. The regulations on 'advertising' *do* provide an explicit definition of what is, and is not, covered. And there has to be a direct relation to a solicitation for "the purchase or sale of property, goods, or services." > A few weeks ago, a jeweler in my town used an autodialer to invite > people for a free ring cleaning. He told me it wasn't an > advertisement but an invitation. Worse, he made no attempt to avoid > dialing hospitals, fire stations, large PBXes, etc. ... my first > encounter with it was when my secretary got about 8 copies of the > message via other phones rolling over to hers. By 47 USC 227, and the FCC rules implementing it, Dialing (1) 'emergency numbers', (2) _patient/_guest_ rooms at hospitals, etc., and (3) 'paging service', 'cell phone', 'mobile phone', 'radio common carrier', and any other 'called party pays' service is forbidden. Dialing 'staff' numbers at a hospital, etc. is _not_ proscribed by law. The *ONLY* restriction on dialing 'large PBXes' is that they may not tie up two (or more) lines simultaneously. All of the above apply *ONLY* to the use of autodialers or 'pre-recorded' voice announcements. And, they apply *regardless* of the content of the message being delivered. The only explicit mention of 'advertising' as a proscribed activity is with regard to the sending of unsolicited FAX messages. If he only called -one- number of your business at a time, his calling was legal. Business numbers, not subject to the DNC list; not 'called party pays'; and not an 'emergency' line; Q.E.D. > I don't know, but I suspect someone is aggressively selling > autodialers by telling people falsehoods about the law. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is > when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our > original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still > in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] The statute, and the various sections of the CFR implementing it, is quite specific. "(3) The term "telephone solicitation" means the initiation of a telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services, which is transmitted to any person, but the term does not include ..." If the call is _not_ "for the purpose of" getting some one to purchase or rent "property,goods, or services", then it is not subject to restriction. The FCC _did_ exempt, by rule, unsolicited calls that are "not of a commercial nature". The 'other' regulator, the FTC, is by statute, restricted to regulation of 'commercial' activities, and *their* telephone regulations apply ONLY to calls related to the offering for sale, or soliciting the purchase of, 'property, goods, or services'. _They_ have held that calls just 'setting appointments' for someone to make an actual sales pitch, are covered by FTC regs. The 'happy holidays' call _is_ probably legal, in a strict interpretation of the law. OTOH, the dealership may well be doing more damage to it's reputation by making the calls, than the goodwill it generates. The free ring cleaning offer is also probably, technically, non-commercial, and thus exempt from the telemarketing restrictions. A great deal depends on exactly how the message reads -- if they mention only the free ring cleaning, who they are, and when they're open, they're almost assuredly on 'safe ground' legally. OTOH, if they talk up _other_ things they do as well, -- .e.g, " free ring cleaning offered by XYK jewelers, purveyors of fine diamond jewelry, and quality watches. Distributors for Omega,Wittenhaur, Rolex, and Movado watches", _that_ is likely to run afoul of the FTC telemarketing rules. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2006 11:34:34 -0400 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is > when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our > original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still > in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] If the intent is to drum up business, then most definitely, whether it says "Come and buy something" or "Happy holidays" or "Boola boola!" A very basic principle of law is that intent and foreseeable effect are of paramount importance. There are also some laws against autodialing some kinds of numbers (hospital rooms, etc.) regardless of the purpose. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 06:30:45 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Reuters News Wire wrote: > Safety center spokeswoman Evelyn Odango said the problem appeared to > be an errant file. > "The information was inadvertently included in a file that was then > posted on the Web," she said. "We found out about it through a Web > site user and it was removed immediately." They make it sound like some file has a human brain and those who *finally* found out about it are Knights in Shining Armour. Whatever became of personal and corporate responsibility? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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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 #253 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 10 19:33:14 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 28B88153BE; Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:33:14 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #254 Message-Id: <20060710233314.28B88153BE@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:33:14 -0400 (EDT) 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, URG_BIZ autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:35:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 254 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 10, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Li Sells PCCW Stake (USTelecom dailyLead) IBM PC Debut Exhibit (Lisa Hancock) Concession to Modern Technology (Lisa Hancock) Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? (Lisa Hancock) Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy (Mr. Joseph Singer) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (mc) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Barry Margolin) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Ed) Re: EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World (Thomas Daniel Horne) Re Western Union Now Blocking Money Transfers to Arab Names (Joseph Singer) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Sam Spade) Re: Wi-Fi Wars/Loiterers Can be a Drag on Business Bottom Line (Berkowitz) Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (Sam Spade) Back to Being a Luddite (Oh, Well) (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 10, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 12:04:00 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 10, 2006 ******************************** Qualcomm's CEO says company aims 50-percent share of mobile phone chip market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18772?11228 BERLIN -- The chief executive of chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. said the company hopes to capture 50 percent of the mobile phone industry's chip market. We want to raise our market share in the mobile phone chip segment to 50 percent. But we're not yet there where we want to be, CEO Paul Jacobs told Dow... Faced with industry protests, EU bids to soften roaming rates law http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18770?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The EU's consumer-friendly attack on the 'unjustified' high cost of using a mobile phone abroad hit roadblocks Monday as regulators debated changes to a plan that would set a limit on how much phone companies can charge for roaming. Under pressure from phone companies, the European... Wireless tech company Qualcomm says trade commission to launch Nokia probe http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18767?11228 SAN DIEGO -- Wireless technology company Qualcomm Inc. said Monday the United States International Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether Finland's Nokia Corp. and its U.S. unit engaged in unfair trade practices and infringed upon six Qualcomm patents. Qualcomm said it seeks an exclusion order to bar... Garmin Quest 2 Does Double Duty http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18765?11228 While a vehicle-mounted GPS navigation system is a great convenience for drivers, a handheld model is just as useful for people who like to hike, run, jog, bike or just plain walk. Targeting people who travel on both wheels and feet, Olathe, Kans.-based Garmin has developed the Garmin Quest 2, a GPS navigator that can be mounted insider ... UMC Announces Wi-Fi Plans http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18763?11228 Ukraine's second largest mobile operator, Ukrainian Mobile Communications (UMC), has announced plans to enter the Wi-Fi market, reports Ukrainian News Digest. The move will attempt to increase revenues by exploring a niche in the Ukrainian market that remains fairly untapped. Only Golden Telecom and fixed-line incumbent Ukrtelecom... Tiscali Denies Takeover Talks; Plans Wireless Expansion http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/110/18761?11228 Contrary to recent market speculation, Italian-based internet service provider, Tiscali SpA, is not for sale, according to chief executive Tommaso Pompei. In an interview in La Repubblica, Pompei rebutted speculation of an imminent sale, particularly of the company's United Kingdom unit. "I have seen a lot of rumours ... U.S. Wireless Online Wins Pittsburgh Wi-Fi Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18758?11228 U.S. Wireless Online was named to design, build and operate WiFi Downtown Pittsburgh, a free outdoor wireless access service project that got under way this week. As part of the contract, U.S. Wireless will be tasked with setting up, as well as operating the network. The wireless network will cover Pittsburgh's Central Business... Cingular Slapped With Deceptive Practices Lawsuit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18756?11228 Cingular Wireless has been hit with a federal class action lawsuit accusing the mobile operator of a series of deceptive practices and contract upgrade tricks against AT&T Wireless Services subscribers after it purchased the rival two years ago. The 22-page litigation, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western... Strong Interest by US Businesses in 3G Service; Mid-Sized Companies Have Greatest Reliance on Wireless http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18754?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Nearly 5% of employees in US companies report that they have already adopted 3G services and an additional 15% to 20% would be likely to do so reports In-Stat. In addition, a recent survey of over 1,000 business users conducted by the high-tech market research firm revealed that mid-sized companies ... Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:15:39 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Li Sells PCCW Stake USTelecom dailyLead July 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXjUfDtutfgadlrIdV TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Li sells PCCW stake BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Will AOL dial back on dial-up? * SunRocket expands VoIP service to overseas callers * Phone directories dial up new online plan * Microsoft looks for way into the living room ... again USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Evaluating IPTV Transport Systems using MDI Curves Tomorrow HOT TOPICS * Tech companies eye telecom market * Survey: IPTV to generate significant cash in 2009 * C&W plans to sell broadband customer base * Internet calling shakes up phone market * Report: AOL could offer free services to high-speed users TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Plenty of traffic, but no hits for broadband video * Wireless transforms life in Congo REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile approved for spectrum auction * Cable & Wireless, Tiscali asked to block file-swappers Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXjUfDtutfgadlrIdV ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: IBM PC Debut Exhibit Date: 10 Jul 2006 09:44:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com The IBM Web Page has an exhibit on the debut of the IBM PC (along with other interesting historical exhibits). See: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Concession to Modern Technology Date: 10 Jul 2006 09:52:13 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com As regular posters know, I am a major "Luddite". I constantly question if some new technology is really worth the hype around it and will truly make things easier for us, on in reality, be more of a nuisance than the past. I must admit one new tech item is pretty slick. I just got some CD-ROMs with .PDF files of various antique telephone manuals and catalogs. They were very reasonably priced. The use of .PDF files (a file format used to store images from printed matter such as books) and the CD ROM media made it easy to copy, distribute, and use the old stuff. Otherwise, I'd have to purchase the original manuals at considerably more cost and then only I could view them; by mass media, many people can benefit. I'd also have a bunch of old paper lying around the house subject to getting torn or deteriorating or lost. (Now if only Adobe wouldn't keep upgrading its free reader every other day. I use version 5 and now they're up to 7 or 8.) [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? Date: 10 Jul 2006 10:52:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Years ago (1969) at the hospital I worked at, the paging (loudspeaker) system was built directly into the Bell PBX switchboard. The paging operators pulled a separate key and then could broadcast via their standard operator's headset. When they pulled the key a red light glowed to indicate to other paging operators the system was in use. [Only the operators were allowed to broadcast on the page, nurses and staff dialed the page operators for their request. For urgent requests ("stat"), a special number was used that sounded a Bell Chime ringer set on doorbell. Operators instantly answered that and announced the page five times instead of twice. There was another number for fire calls which rang a very loud bell. In certain urgent cases operators telephoned the main elevator operator in the car with instructions.] The system also played music when not paging, this was automatically cut out when the operators used the page. The operators did not handle the music tape recorder other than to merely turn it on and off as appropriate. The loudspeakers and wiring appeared to be of a generic design that could've been Western Electric, but I could not find any labeling on them. Also at my uncle's factory, anyone could use the page. They had a small telephone net as a key system. To use the loudspeaker, one dialed 6 on the LOCAL circuit and then made their announcement. I only visited there briefly once, but it appeared the loudspeakers were not Bell System issue. I was wondering if the Bell System supplied the paging system, music player tape recorder, or allowed a private interconnect (one of the rare exceptions where Bell allowed physical interconnects). Would anyone know if such paging systems were allowed to be independent and connected into the switchboard? As an aside, in a very recent visit hospital visit I saw operators making many pages for doctors. Way back in my day they were slowly converting to beeper operation for doctors. Back then, the page operator dialed the beeper's code then announced the message. Beepers only worked in hospital grounds. I'm surprised today, 30 years later, beepers aren't exclusively used. Also, my old hospital PBX was quite regimented in Bell System dial. Page operators used brief exact simple phases: "Dr Jones 536" (meaning, 'Dr. Jones call extension 536'). The modern hospital added verbage and was inconsistent, "Dr Jones call for you on extension 453" or "Dr. Jones, please call extension 435". In sitting there (I had to wait for my visit), I found the modern day verbose announcements annoying; I'd prefer the old style brief announcement. My old hospital also had a dictaphone system. That was privately owned but fully interconnected with the switchboard. That is, when dialing the dictaphone system, a whole separate level on the switch, the trunk was through and the user could dial instructions and the dictaphone would decode the dial impules and respond accordingly. Later, secretaries would hear the recordings and type up the material. The PBX operators had nothing to do with that system. I don't know if hospitals still have such systems. Miniature tape recorders can be easily carried around and record notes right on the spot, without the need to go to a phone and mess with dial codes. I think there are commercial services -- using Touch Tone command codes, that provide transcription. I wonder what other physically connected systems were allowed by the Bell System in the old days. (Railroads had their own systems.) [public replies, please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was employed by the University of Chicago in the phone room (1958-63 or so), we had more or less the same kind of operation. Users (mostly nurses and other employees of the University of Chicago Hospitals) dialed '7' -- it was known as 'Telepage' and gave their message to one of the operators, who then relayed it over the paging system. It was a little bit disconcerting however, since the operator could not 'hear herself speak' when paging. By that, I mean that the phone room was about a block to the east of the hospitals complex. We also had a musical background for those very few instances when there was not a page in process. Typically the operators who answered 'Telepage' -- I think there were five or six of them -- were frequently queued in line waiting for the red light on their boards to indicate the channel was free for them to use. The pages went out one after the other, all day and much of the night, to 'channels' were the caller was waiting on hold. For example, when Dr. Jones responded to a page by dialing 5904 for example, he would be cut into the holding circuit where Mr. Smith (who had earlier dialed '7') was waiting on hold to speak with him. I think they had ten links or holding circuits where the '7' dialers would wait for the person they were paging to respond to them (by dialing 5901 to 5910 I think). 'Dr. Blue' and 'Dr. Cart' were two exceptions of course. When the loudspeakers called for Dr. Blue or Dr. Cart those two were told where they were needed. There were also some code names for security police and fire as needed. But if an operator got a request for Dr. Blue or Dr. Cart or security (I forget what that code word was) they did not have to wait in the queue; they simply went on line and started announcing it. But for those special emergency pages, the operators also pressed a little 'chirper' noise when they went on the line to identify what they were doing. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:11:25 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy Forgive me for making this comment, but I feel I must. Many people when replying to digest articles apparently have no concept of editing. In a recent digest of articles several replies made their reply swell to two or three times the necessary size by replying and including every single bit of the original article and sometimes even beyond that including previous replies! Please have pity on those of us who read this list as a digest. It's a real PITA to try and read the digest only to have to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to information that I haven't already seen. I don't care for people top posting but that's not my beef. My beef it people who don't trim or edit anything. Please consider editing your replies to only include enough that we know what you're referring to. Get rid of the rest it's just not needed and only junks up the list. Thank you for your consideration. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A lot of that is really my fault. A rule I used to have here was the quoted amount of the post could not be more than 50 percent of the entire post, and ideally should be a lot less. I do not know why I got away from that, but let's try to implement it again. Make the number of lines in your reply at least be equal to or greater than the amount of the thing you are quoting. Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 01:02:36 -0400 Robert Bonomi replied to TELECOM Digest Editor in message news:telecom25.253.15@telecom-digest.org: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is >> when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our >> original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still >> in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] > The statute, and the various sections of the CFR implementing it, is > quite specific. > "(3) The term "telephone solicitation" means the initiation of a > telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase > or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services, which is > transmitted to any person, but the term does not include ..." > If the call is _not_ "for the purpose of" getting some one to purchase > or rent "property,goods, or services", then it is not subject to > restriction. Bingo. The "greeting" or "invitation" from a business is intended to bring in customers and lead to purchase or rental of goods, property, or services. The fact that it is expressed indirectly does not change that fact. Some court probably needs to rule on this to confirm it, but it's the obvious intent of the law. There is such a thing as indirect communication, and the purpose of the Do Not Call list was to prohibit a specific type of recorded messages, not a specific set of words within recorded messages. > The 'other' regulator, the FTC, is by statute, restricted to > regulation of 'commercial' activities, and *their* telephone > regulations apply ONLY to calls related to the offering for sale, or > soliciting the purchase of, 'property, goods, or services'. _They_ > have held that calls just 'setting appointments' for someone to make > an actual sales pitch, are covered by FTC regs. > The 'happy holidays' call _is_ probably legal, in a strict > interpretation of the law. OTOH, the dealership may well be doing > more damage to it's reputation by making the calls, than the goodwill > it generates. I don't think it was legal. In any case, what I always say is, "remember *why* there is a Do Not Call list." Even if you think it's technically legal, why do you think people are going to enjoy it? > The free ring cleaning offer is also probably, technically, > non-commercial, and thus exempt from the telemarketing restrictions. I disagree. Its purpose is to bring potential customers into a place of business so they can be given a sales pitch. > A great deal depends on exactly how the message reads -- if they > mention only the free ring cleaning, who they are, and when they're > open, they're almost assuredly on 'safe ground' legally. OTOH, if > they talk up _other_ things they do as well, -- .e.g, " free ring > cleaning offered by XYK jewelers, They at least got that far. > purveyors of fine diamond jewelry, and quality watches. Distributors > for Omega,Wittenhaur, Rolex, and Movado watches", _that_ is likely > to run afoul of the FTC telemarketing rules. I don't think they went quite that far. > The statute, and the various sections of the CFR implementing it, is > quite specific. > "(3) The term "telephone solicitation" means the initiation of a > telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase > or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services, which is > transmitted to any person, but the term does not include ..." > If the call is _not_ "for the purpose of" getting some one to purchase > or rent "property,goods, or services", then it is not subject to > restriction. Just as an aside ... I think what we are arguing about here is a very common kind of misunderstanding of the law by technologists. Laws are not computer programs. The words and phrases in laws are not self-defining. Laws have to be understood in context. One of the guiding principles of law is that technical loopholes generally do not work (which is a dramatic difference between laws and computer programs). Laws address intent and foreseeable effect. They are interpreted by courts, not just by the individuals who read them. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Organization: Symantec Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2006 13:05:19 -0400 In article , mc wrote: > Ed wrote in message > news:telecom25.251.3@telecom-digest.org: >> This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership >> here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy >> Holiday. > I think people are going around telling each other -- quite falsely -- > that if the message doesn't explicitly announce things for sale, it's > not an advertisement and therefore not a violation. > A few weeks ago, a jeweler in my town used an autodialer to invite > people for a free ring cleaning. He told me it wasn't an > advertisement but an invitation. Worse, he made no attempt to avoid > dialing hospitals, fire stations, large PBXes, etc. ... my first > encounter with it was when my secretary got about 8 copies of the > message via other phones rolling over to hers. > I don't know, but I suspect someone is aggressively selling > autodialers by telling people falsehoods about the law. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is > when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our > original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still > in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] What does it not being a sales call have to do with it? The DNC list isn't only for sales/advertising, it's for any kind of mass calling except political and surveys. I presumed the "way around" that the original caller was referring to was the fact that he had once done some business with this dealership, so they used the exception for calls when there's an existing business relationship with the recipient. 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: Ed Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: 9 Jul 2006 16:14:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com What I'm saying is that they have found new ways of circumventing the law. Not to say that just because something is against the law ever stopped some folks. Personally, and I think most folks agree, calling someone's house is a privelage and that privelage has been so terribly abused and that's why we have these do not call list laws. If retailers had been just a bit more careful in not calling folks at dinner time or late in the evening, we might not have these laws. Then again too, we have a administration in power that looks the other way when we talk about corrupt practices. Just look at all the scams that abound today. ------------------------------ From: Thomas Daniel Horne Subject: Re: EFF Defends Liberties in High-Tech World Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:05:03 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Anick Jesdanun wrote: >> Today, after expanding into such areas as intellectual property and >> moving its headquarters twice along with its focus, the EFF is >> re-emphasizing its roots of trying to limit government surveillance of >> electronic communications, while keeping a lookout for emerging >> threats even as the Internet and digital technologies become >> mainstream. > As a citizen, I have mixed feelings about the work of both the ACLU > and EFF. > We must remember that Constitutional and legal rights are relative. > My right to do something might impact your rights of protection. In > short, we don't have the "free speech right" to yell fire in a crowded > theatre and there are many examples of that. > When it comes to gray areas of rights, I think the public interest > must be carefully considered. I value my privacy and naturally and I > don't want the govt listening in to my telephone calls or Internet > activity. But on the other hand, I don't want terrorists blowing up a > building or transport that I or my loved ones happen to be in. > During WW II the U.S. Government locked up Japanese-Americans in > California out of fear for sabotage and espionage. In hindsight most > see that as a big mistake, because those people were loyal Americans > (and many were citizens) and because the lockup was motiviated for > selfish reasons -- other California farmers disliked the Japanese and > wanted to get rid of them. > However, Japanese in Hawaii -- who ironically were not interned -- had > supplied vital information to Japan that assisted with the Pearl > Harbor attack. > In the rec.arts.tv newsgroup, many people cite EFF concernrs for new > security controls in entertainment media and are very upset about such > new controls. In reading the comments, it seems to be they're upset > since they won't be able to copy freely anymore rather than the > controls themselves. I don't like controls either but I can > understand the desire of the entertainment industry to stop the > massive piracy that is going on and stealing legitimate revenue from > them. (That people dislike the industry is not a valid reason to deny > them revenue by illegal piracy.) > I frankly don't know what the balance should be. It's a tough > decision. The U.S. and other countries DO have bitter enemies out to > murder us; that's a fact. Our very open country allows enemies to > come in easily or even be home grown. Now, I don't want school > officials reading every kid's personal email and diary to see if > another Columbine is in the making, but I don't want another Columbine > either. I don't want the Feds reading our remails, but I don't want > another 9/11 either. > [public replies please] The use of external threat to destroy internal freedom is not new to our time. My favorite quote on the subject is: "Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." - Hermann Goering, Nazi Reich Marshall I dare to hope that in a democracy Goering may yet be proven wrong. It is the freedom of the press that prevents our leaders from concealing their excesses from us. Now we must use our votes to make ourselves heard while we yet can. Spain under Franco and Argentina under Pinochet were reportedly both rather safe places for anyone who kept their mouth shut about politics. Tom Horne "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:05:02 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re Western Union Now Blocking Money Transfers to 'Arab-Sounding' Anjan Sundram on Sat, 8 Jul 2006 14:20:14 -0500 wrote: > Western Union blocks Arab cash transfers > By ANJAN SUNDARAM, Associated Press Writer > Money transfer agencies have delayed or blocked thousands of cash > deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because > senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company > officials said. Why should this be any surprise coming from our government who rounded up anyone who even appeared to be Japanese and sent them to concentration camps at the beginning of the US involvement in World War II or even more recently when "enemy combattants" are stored at Guantanamo, Cuba without benefit of being charged with committing any crime or let them have any access to an attorney. The US is very selective about applying protections and only applies them when it's "convenient" for them to do so. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 18:18:04 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications The FCC never took jurisdiction over name identification. Should they? Monty Solomon wrote: > Caution: Unidentified callers ahead > Phone companies fail to provide some IDs because of the cost of > obtaining the data > By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff > Are you getting your money's worth from caller ID? > Some callers can't be identified because their information is blocked > or unavailable, but in other cases the callers aren't named because > the customer's phone company simply doesn't want to spend the money to > obtain the data. > A small Globe test of caller ID accuracy found several instances where > Verizon Communications and Comcast Corp. didn't provide a caller's > name because they didn't want to pay the extra money. > The price is minimal on a per-call basis -- often a penny or less a > call -- but spread across a telecommunications giant's many customers, > it can quickly run into the tens of millions of dollars. > http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/09/caution_unidentified_callers_ahead/ ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Wi-Fi Wars / Loiterers Can be a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:36:03 -0400 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By Alison Lobron, Globe Correspondent | July 9, 2006 > Some wireless users sneak in their own food with their laptops. > Others buy one cup of coffee at 9 a.m. and surf the Net until closing > time. And the truly audacious sit for hours without making any > pretense of a purchase. > In and around Boston, cafe owners who installed wireless signals to > draw customers say they also are drawing Internet users who tie up > seats for hours, buy little or nothing, and make coffee shops feel > like the office as they tap away at their laptops. Now some owners are > fighting back by charging for wireless access, shutting off their > signal at peak business hours, or telling loitering laptoppers to > shell out or ship out. > http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/09/wi_fi_wars/ Of course, this is what they should have been doing all along with the Rowling and Salinger wannabes who hog the NY Times, take extra chairs to keep their precious crap off the floor, and sit at the choice tables for hours nursing an empty latte while reading Noam Chomsky. I really don't care if you're surfing for porn, doing your French Lit homework or writing the Great American Novel; drink your coffee, then get the hell out. --Gene ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 18:16:34 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications The article states that Verizon is watching this. This is such baloney. Neither the LECs nor the FCC have ever been the least bit concerned about CID spoofing. The FAA had a great idea to force ubiquitous CID in 1995, but they reserved a decision on private exchanges, etc, thus opened the door for spoofing. The FCC never resloved that one. Oh, wow, now the LECs are working on it ahead of Congress. Yeah, right. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: 10 Jul 2006 12:53:18 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In an earlier post, I remarked how modern technology let me inexpensively enjoy stuff. It made me think about getting a new PC to replace my existing one at home (let's just say for home I have to keep track of EPA coal emissions rules and I use coffee cans for the sounder). So today I asked my co-workers for recommendations to buy a new PC; that is, what specs and features should it have. Ads for desktops seem to range from $300 to $1,000. I also discussed speed. With a new machine I'll sign up for DSL or even FIOS. But then I found out the downside. My speed won't increase that much because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows stuff down greatly. I must admit I'm very frustrated. And very offended. How much effort do the "powers that be" spend on tracking down and imprisoning saboteurs of the Internet? Considering the flood of viruses and spyware out there, I don't think very much time at all. How much effort does the technical people who define the Internet's data exchange protocols put into developing indelible "return addresses" and "postmarks" so as to track the source of sabotage and harassment? (As an aside, some of this effort may reduce spam as well.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How much 'time and effort' do the powers that be and the technical people spend developing 'fool proof' addresses and 'postmarks'? Oh, about as much time as Southwestern Bell spends making sure caller-id is foolproof; namely little or no time at all. When a spokesperson for the chairman's office at SBC told me once that "if we deliver caller-id to you on a call which shows the calling number as 111-111-1111 and the name of the caller as 'anonymous' we have done our job" I knew right then I had to get away from SBC's "services" as quickly as I could. What I find so absolutely amazing is that the computer network equivilent to the SBC chairman's office (ICANN) _could_ -- if they chose to do so, clamp down heavily and hard on all the nonsense we see in a day's time here. But the joke is, they do not wish to do it. ICANN mainly ignores the average, everyday users of the net. 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! 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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 #254 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jul 11 18:09:45 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id A30731517B; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:09:45 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #255 Message-Id: <20060711220945.A30731517B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:09:45 -0400 (EDT) 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, NA_DOLLARS autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:12:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 255 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Gambling Banned in House of Representatives (Reuters News Wire) Microsoft Hopes to Release Vista in January (Reuters News Wire) EU Still Trying, Without Success, to Collect on Microsoft Fineu (Pat Seitz) Producers Use the Web to Romance Audience; Bring Them Back (Monty Solomon) Someone to Watch Over Me (on a Google Map) (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 11, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Lucent Warns of Sales Slowdown (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (mc) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (John Hines) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (Dave Garland) Re: Concession to Modern Technology (Carl Navarro) Re: Concession to Modern Technology (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) Re: Concession to Modern Technology (harold@hallikainen.com) Re: Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy (AES) Re: Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy (Lisa Hancock) 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Internet Gambling Banned in House of Representatives Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:58:01 -0500 House approves bill banning Internet gambling The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a Republican-written bill to limit Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gaming sites. Internet gambling generates some $12 billion annually worldwide, with half coming from American gamblers. It remained unclear whether the Senate would approve similar legislation in the dwindling number of work days left before the November election. 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 of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Hopes to Release Vista in January Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:00:13 -0500 Microsoft sees January Vista release Microsoft Corp's release of Windows Vista should begin in November with roll-out to businesses and broader release of the software to general customers by January, company officials said on Tuesday. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told local software partners at a Cape Town technology conference there was an "80 percent chance" Vista would be ready as scheduled for broad release in January, a company spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman, who asked not to be named, said the current plan was to begin releasing Vista to business customers in November, with the general release in January. There has been speculation that the much-expected new operating system could be delayed, although this has been denied by top company officials. Microsoft originally targeted a 2005 launch for the new Windows, then pushed the release to 2006 before announcing in March that Vista would again be delayed to improve the product. The new versions of Microsoft's Windows and Office software are central to the company's efforts to revive a stock that has underperformed major indexes since the start of 2002. Gates made his comments to Microsoft software partners at a conference in Cape Town to discuss how technology can be harnessed to boost Africa's competitiveness. 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 of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Patrick Seitz Subject: EU Still Trying, Without Success, to Collect on Microsoft Fine Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:07:24 -0500 Microsoft Vs. The EU May Hit Another Level Patrick Seitz The European Union hopes to get Microsoft to comply with its more than 2-year-old antitrust ruling by threatening to boost the daily fines it can levy against the software giant. The EU's European Commission is discussing whether to raise the ceiling on future fines because Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT - News) has failed to comply with the March 2004 decision that the company abused its dominant market position. The current ceiling is 2 million euros ($2.5 million) a day. But regulators are considering raising it to 3 million euros ($3.8 million), according to a Reuters report. The European Commission is meeting this week to decide how much to fine Microsoft for defying sanctions to remedy its abuses. The penalty could approach the record 497 million euro ($620 million) fine the Commission already imposed in its landmark decision against Microsoft. A decision on the total daily fines Microsoft owes to date is expected on Wednesday. Commission members have complained that Microsoft has been stalling in enacting reforms. The EU's antitrust authority ruled that Microsoft had shut out rivals by not disclosing technical information about how its ubiquitous Windows PC operating system communicates with its server software. Servers are central computers that form networks among PCs and perform such tasks as storing files, printing documents and hosting Web sites. Can Exploit Windows The EU is seeking to level the playing field for makers of software for work group servers. It claims Microsoft has an advantage because its server software can exploit hidden software interfaces in Windows. Microsoft claims that disclosing all the information that the EU has demanded would infringe its intellectual property rights. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has until July 18 to provide the required documentation to European regulators. Microsoft's stock rose nearly 1% Monday to close at 23.50. For the year, shares are down 10%. Microsoft shares have been virtually flat for four years. Legal overhangs have dogged Microsoft's stock for years, says Brent Thill, an analyst with Citigroup. The EU case isn't likely to be resolved soon and it won't be the last such case for Microsoft, he says. Microsoft has appealed the European Commission's original decision to the Court of First Instance, Europe's second-highest court. A ruling could take months. "It just seems like once they get something cleared up on the legal side, something else emerges," Thill said. "It's a function of their size and their power in the industry." Bundling New Features Microsoft has been attacked for its bundling of software features and products. But that approach has benefited customers by reducing complexity and creating a better user experience, he says. But since Microsoft's Windows operating system runs more than 90% of personal computers worldwide, that bundling creates what many see as an unfair advantage. Microsoft's planned upgrades to its core products early next year -- Windows Vista and Office 2007 -- will continue its strategy of bundling new features and applications. The interoperability issue hasn't hurt the growth of open-source Linux, says Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "Linux has been a large and growing competitor in the server space, displacing most of the existing Unix products that are out there in Europe and the U.S.," Enderle said. "The interoperability problem doesn't appear to be causing any major issues." Microsoft's rivals appear to be using the courts to try to "significantly hobble Microsoft," Enderle said. "Whatever Microsoft does, the competitors won't be happy." Microsoft has proceeded cautiously in giving out information about server interoperability, he says. If Microsoft wins its appeal, the damage from the release of information about its intellectual property will be irreversible, Enderle says. Much of what the EU sees as stalling by Microsoft was the company trying to get clarification about what specifically the Commission was seeking in its broad demands, he says. Copyright 2006 Investor's Business Daily 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 and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:39:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Producers Use the Web to Romance Audience and Bring Them Back By JESSE GREEN If you were one of the 2,500 people who saw the Off Broadway musical "Altar Boyz" last week, its producer, Ken Davenport, probably has your number. Or at least, if you were among the 40 percent who bought your tickets online, he has your e-mail address. So don't be surprised when a thank-you message ("on behalf of Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham") shows up in your electronic mailbox Monday morning, including a discount offer for a return visit or to send to friends, "so that they too can fall in love with The Boyz, just like you have." "The open rates on that e-mail are off the charts," Mr. Davenport said: more than 70 percent, in an industry where 30 percent is high. But the point isn't just to get you to open the message, it's really to push you to the show's Web site, where you might be tempted to join the Altarholics fan group ("Win big prizes and help spread the word"), take a trivia quiz, find out what your favorite cast member's favorite lunch meat is, sign up for a newsletter, click over to the show's official MySpace page or add to a list of "audience confessions" like, "I hate flan," or, more inspirationally, "I ditched 'Lestat' for 'Altar Boyz' ... again!" In the old days -- about five years ago -- producers didn't know much about their audiences, who they were and how to reel them in (or back). They largely relied on direct mail and print advertising, communications that were one-way, not to mention expensive, scattershot and impersonal. The old-technology equivalents of Mr. Davenport's Monday morning e-mail blasts were the "bounceback" discount coupons blown into Playbills and usually left to confetti Times Square. The "Altar Boyz" messages are much "stickier": people apparently pay attention to them because they come across as personal and interactive. "When you see a show you love, the moment after you see it is the moment you're most excited about it," Mr. Davenport said. "My job is to capture that feeling, as close to the event as possible, and turn it into word of mouth." Word of mouth has always been the ideal. But the Internet has provided a new and, some say, vastly improved set of tools to generate it: not just e-mail blasts but also Web sites, banner ads, search-engine pop-ups and blog coverage. In the last few years these tools have reshaped the way the theater reaches its audience. The most obvious change is in ticketing, which the Internet makes simpler for customers and cheaper for producers. During the 2004-5 season the portion of Broadway tickets sold online more than quadrupled to 29 percent from 7 percent; this past season it continued to creep up, to about 33 percent. (For non-group ticket sales, the figure is more than 60 percent.) The remaining tickets were purchased via phone, group-sales brokers, the TKTS booths and the old-fashioned box office, which now accounts for only one-quarter of purchases, making lines around the block mostly a thing of the past. But that's just technical, a change in how people buy what they were going to buy anyway. A much bigger change involves tapping audience members' social networks to bring in entirely new theatergoers. This summer "The Color Purple" is rolling out a Web campaign called "Organize Your Group" to help families, schools, gospel choirs and churches arrange theatergoing "reunions"; an earlier form of this program has already referred more than 100,000 people to the show. In May "Avenue Q" filled some slow midweek houses by offering discounts to people who had visited its Web site. A single blast to 20,000 e-mail addresses netted $40,000 in sales and cost almost nothing. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/theater/09gree.html?ex=1310097600&en=baea179e8230ff27&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:43:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Someone to Watch Over Me (on a Google Map) By THEODORA STITES The New York Times I'm 24 years old, have a good job, friends. But like many of my generation, I consistently trade actual human contact for the more reliable emotional high of smiles on MySpace, winks on Match.com and pokes on Facebook. I live for Friendster views, profile comments and the Dodgeball messages that clog my cellphone every night. I prefer, in short, a world cloaked in virtual intimacy. It may be electronic, but it is intimacy nevertheless. Besides, eye contact isn't all it's cracked up to be and facial expressions can be so hard to control. My life goes like this: Every morning, before I brush my teeth, I sign in to my Instant Messenger to let everyone know I'm awake. I check for new e-mail, messages or views, bulletins, invitations, friend requests, comments on my blog or mentions of me or my blog on my friends' blogs. Next I flip open my phone and check for last night's Dodgeball messages. Dodgeball is the most intimate and invasive network I belong to. It links my online community to my cellphone, so when I send a text message to 36343 (Dodge), the program pings out a message with my location to all the people in my Dodgeball network. Acceptance into another person's Dodgeball network is a very personal way to say you want to hang out. I scroll through the messages to see where my friends went last night, and when, tracking their progress through various bars and noting the crossed paths. I check the Google map that displays their locations and proximity to one another. I note how close Christopher and Tom were last night, only a block away, but see that they never met up. I log on to my Friendster, Facebook, MySpace and Nerve accounts to make sure the mail bars are rising with new friend requests, messages and testimonials. I am obsessed with testimonials and solicit them incessantly. They are the ultimate social currency, public declarations of the intimacy status of a relationship. "I miss running around like crazy w/you in the AM and sneaking away to grab caffeine and gossip," Kathleen commented on my MySpace for all to see. Often someone will write, "I just posted to say I love you." I click through the profiles of my friends to the profiles of their friends (and their friends of friends, and so on), always aware of the little bar at the top of each profile indicating my multiple connections. A girl I know from college is friends with my friend from college's best friend from Minnesota. They met at camp in seventh grade. The boyfriend of my friend from work is friends with one of my friends from high school. I note the connections and remind myself to IM them later. On Facebook, I skip from profile to profile by clicking on the faces of posted pictures. I find a picture of my sister and her boyfriend, click on his face and jump right to his page. Pictures are extremely necessary for enticing new friends -- the more pictures the better. I change my pictures at least once a week. There are hidden social codes in every image. Shadows and prominent eyes: not confident about their looks. Far away and seated in beautiful scenery: want you to know they're adventurous. Half in the picture: good looking but want you to know they're artistic, too. Every profile is a carefully planned media campaign. I click on the Friendster "Who's Viewed Me" tab to see who has stumbled upon my profile recently, and if people I don't know have checked me out, I immediately check them back. I get an adrenaline rush when I find out that a friend of a friend I was always interested in is evidentially interested in me, too. Just imagine if we could be this good in person. Online, everyone has bulletproof social armor. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/fashion/sundaystyles/09love.html?ex=1310097600&en=e0eeb156b9bc069e&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 11, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:22:37 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 11, 2006 ******************************** Regional WiMAX Licences Granted in France http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18797?11228 French telecommunications regulator ARCEP has awarded regional licences for WiMAX as part of its plan to ensure nationwide coverage by June 2008. Fifteen companies and six regional councils shared the licences, earning the state 125 million euro (US$159.2 million) in revenue. Maxtel, a group including motorway operator APRR and Iliad,... Winning the Fraud Game http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18795?11228 For telcos, effectively managing fraud risk is closely linked to revenue protection, reputation, and commercial integrity. Fraud should not be seen in isolation. While there are specific technical issues around telecom fraud, the risks and solutions are actually grounded in the general good governance principles for any corporation in... To Build or to Buy? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18794?11228 The promise of a converged, all-IP future is one of the big drivers cable operators-particularly the larger ones-are contemplating as they cobble together massive, high-capacity broadband backbone infrastructures. While some have had that groundwork completed for a number of years, others are polishing theirs off or just getting... Cord-Cutters Pose Threat to Landline http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18789?11228 It may not make the headlines that it did a few years ago, but landline displacement is alive and well in the United States. In fact, big-bucket wireless calling plans and the go-anywhere convenience of mobile phones are threatening the stronghold of traditional telephone carriers. The threat comes in two forms. Some consumers are... Big Three Mobile Operators in Russia Reportedly Hike Interconnection Tariffs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18787?11228 Russia's 'troika' of leading mobile operators, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), VimpelCom and MegaFon, are to raise their interconnection tariffs for other operators four-fold, reports Kommersant. The three companies have also agreed to set low interconnection charges for calls from one another's networks. The big three have... AWS Auction Process Moves Ahead http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18781?11228 WASHINGTON -- Some familiar and not so familiar names have turned up on the FCC's list of applications to participate in the August auction of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum. The agency posted a list on its Website of 81 applications for the sale of 1,122 licenses in the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz (AWS-1) bands.... AT&T To FCC: Erase 'Ma Bell Breakup' Requirements http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18778?11228 AT&T is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to eliminate the regulatory requirements for separate digital subscriber line (DSL) wholesale subsidiaries -- requirements that grew out of those originally imposed as a result of the breakup of the 'old' ATT, or Ma Bell -- so the company can meld the activities... A Prof on Your iPod http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18776?11228 Even as professors wage an uphill struggle to keep cell phones out of classrooms, universities and community colleges are developing new ways to use mobile and wireless technology to enhance learning, reach new groups of non-traditional students, and stretch educational budgets further. The groundswell in mLearning will... Lucent Drags Down Alcatel http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18774?11228 A profit warning issued late Monday by Lucent Technologies Inc. hit Alcatel's share price in Tuesday morning trading on the Paris bourse, even though the French giant announced trading in line with expectations. The two companies announced their intention to merge in April this year. Lucent said revenues... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:27:49 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Lucent Warns of Sales Slowdown USTelecom dailyLead July 11, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXuofDtutfgvlZYJMj TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Lucent warns of sales slowdown BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon pushes FiOS deeper into Cablevision territory * Time Warner expects almost $1B hit from free AOL * BellSouth broadens Ethernet options for small businesses * Vonage buys three patents, becomes target of new lawsuit * Telstra rivals threaten to build shared FTTN network USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Demystifying the E-rate Thursday, July 13, 1:00 p.m. ET TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Can video games bring the boys back to TV? * Video making Net "Show me" place for users REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Cable, satellite companies prepare to bid for wireless licenses * New coalition promotes numbers-based USF * AT&T reaches deal with FCC in privacy cases Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dXuofDtutfgvlZYJMj ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:01:07 -0400 wrote in message news:telecom25.254.15@telecom-digest.org... > But then I found out the downside. My speed won't increase that much > because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything > coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must > be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows > stuff down greatly. I don't think it does. Has anyone made measurements? Text files and graphics don't have to be checked, only executable code. > How much effort does the technical people who define the Internet's > data exchange protocols put into developing indelible "return > addresses" and "postmarks" so as to track the source of sabotage and > harassment? That I agree with. The Internet was designed for use within secure research labs. It needs to be completely re-engineered for use by the public. We can't make authentication perfect, but we can make fakery a *lot* harder than it presently is. We can also make our software make more intelligent use of the routing information that is already included in everything we receive; phishing, for instance, is close to 100% detectable if anyone cares to do it. ------------------------------ From: John Hines Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:55:21 -0500 Organization: www.jhines.org Reply-To: john@jhines.org hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > But then I found out the downside. My speed won't increase that much > because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything > coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must > be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows > stuff down greatly. Try installing Firefox as your browser. With the adblock plug in it is very effective at nailing popups before they display. http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ > How much effort do the "powers that be" spend on tracking down and > imprisoning saboteurs of the Internet? Considering the flood of > viruses and spyware out there, I don't think very much time at all. The defacto standard browser, MS's IE hasn't been updated in years, MS is a promoting a beta of their latest attempt. Silly sig to prevent isp ad ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:16:59 -0400 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > In an earlier post, I remarked how modern technology let me > inexpensively enjoy stuff. It made me think about getting a new PC to > replace my existing one at home (let's just say for home I have to > keep track of EPA coal emissions rules and I use coffee cans for the > sounder). > So today I asked my co-workers for recommendations to buy a new PC; > that is, what specs and features should it have. Ads for desktops > seem to range from $300 to $1,000. > I also discussed speed. With a new machine I'll sign up for DSL or > even FIOS. > But then I found out the downside. My speed won't increase that much > because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything > coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must > be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows > stuff down greatly. I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I have running at home. That said, I don't download from sites I don't trust, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I delete "Hey, Take a Look at This" emails. Basically, the precautions that anyone should take (don't eat found food, don't have unprotected sex with multiple partners, don't leave your keys in the ignition) metaphorically apply to the internet. Even if you DO feel the need for multiple layers of protection (which, by the way, usually turns out to be the real performance killer when these various layers don't play nice with each other), even bargain priced PCs have more than enough horsepower to outrun even a fiber line. An ATA-100 hard drive has a 100 megaBYTE per second transfer rate; you'd have to be supremely lucky to have a DSL line that exceeds 3 megaBITS/s, or 0.3% of the maximum hard drive transfer rate. Even a high end FIOS line can only supply 35 megabits/sec, or 3.5% of the hard drive transfer rate. The real performance killers are not evil spyware; it's cluttering up your PC with "trusted" conveniences like RealPlayer, QuickTime, and CD- recorder "helpers" that sit in your system tray consuming memory and CPU cycles waiting for you to finally play a stream or burn a CD. It's printer drivers that instead of being designed to optimize the printing process, contain drivel like voice prompts of "Your document is printing now" (in case you missed the desk rattling as the $29 inkjet printer that requires $49 ink cartridges blows a dollar's worth of ink while consuming all the CPU resources, because the manufacturers don't put any intelligence in them). It's operating systems that require 50 separate processes "just in case" you find the need to perform remote program loads from a server that encodes all its pages in Mandarin. > I must admit I'm very frustrated. And very offended. Go ahead, but make sure you know what to be offended by. > How much effort do the "powers that be" spend on tracking down and > imprisoning saboteurs of the Internet? Considering the flood of > viruses and spyware out there, I don't think very much time at all. According to a 2004 article in USA Today, "Symantec, McAfee, Internet Security Systems, and Trend Micro grew from nothing to a combined market capitalization topping $24 billion by supplying anti-virus software to a hungry market." With that much money to be made from the fear of virii, is it any wonder that we're all being conditioned to be afraid of them? Even though your credit card is most at risk when handled by a minimum wage waiter in a tourist trap restaurant, we are constantly bombarded with warnings about cybercrime. Here's the news: it wasn't a virus that "lost" the SS#s of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and veterans; it wasn't a trojan horse download that encouraged a for-profit data vendor to sell personal records to organized criminals. Save your outrage for the Credit Bureau Troika who continue to convince their pocket congressmen that we "want" 50 credit card applications to show up in our mail each month, that having to wait 24 hours before issuing you a line of credit at BestBuy would be like burning the Flag, and that 24% interest for "universal default" isn't usary. --Gene ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:39:20 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > My speed won't increase that much > because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything > coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must > be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows > stuff down greatly. That should not affect your speed very much at all. Especially if you do not use one of the overweight, ponderous, suites like Norton or McAfee. Firefox and Thunderbird (and there are other choices as well) are far less susceptible to problems than Internet Explorer and Outlook. There are free AV programs like AVG and Avast! that work very well without slowing you down, and likewise spyware protection like Spybot, AdAware, and ewido. The biggest thing that affects your online speed is the speed of your connection. The next biggest thing is that you're not running 500 other programs at the same time. Turn off unneeded Windows services (google "black viper" for a guide to Windows services). And that your computer meet certain minimum specs. As an example, I've got a 1.5Mb/s DSL line. One of the computers I regularly web browse with is a 450MHz Pentium II with 512M RAM and Windows 2000. It's also operating as an ftp server and running a P2P file sharing application uploading at about 600Kb/s. Browsing is perfectly fine. Any machine you buy will probably be far more powerful (so long as you have at least as much RAM), and probably won't be doing as many bandwidth-consuming things at the same time. Now (to drag this into telephony) if you use Vonage and are talking on the phone using Vonage at the same time, that's probably gonna hurt performance seriously. Dave ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Concession to Modern Technology Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:50:13 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 10 Jul 2006 09:52:13 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > As regular posters know, I am a major "Luddite". I constantly > question if some new technology is really worth the hype around it and > will truly make things easier for us, on in reality, be more of a > nuisance than the past. > I must admit one new tech item is pretty slick. I just got some > CD-ROMs with .PDF files of various antique telephone manuals and > catalogs. They were very reasonably priced. Yeah, someday maybe, you can get the address for the old phone manuals, arcade machines (sorry, no High Speed), cameras and fax machines. > The use of .PDF files (a file format used to store images from printed > matter such as books) and the CD ROM media made it easy to copy, > distribute, and use the old stuff. Otherwise, I'd have to purchase > the original manuals at considerably more cost and then only I could > view them; by mass media, many people can benefit. I'd also have a > bunch of old paper lying around the house subject to getting torn or > deteriorating or lost. If you ever feel brave enough to do your own scanning, get Paperport (now up to 11) from Nuance and it creates a digital file cabinet of pdf files. It was $99 until July 1, but you still ought to find a deal on the internet. Carl Navarro > (Now if only Adobe wouldn't keep upgrading its free reader every other > day. I use version 5 and now they're up to 7 or 8.) > [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: Concession to Modern Technology Date: 10 Jul 2006 22:01:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > (Now if only Adobe wouldn't keep upgrading its free reader every other > day. I use version 5 and now they're up to 7 or 8.) > [public replies, please] I have Adobe Reader 4.x I don't really like .PDF files. The reader I think needs 32 Mb to run. This computer [my most modern] only came with 32 Mb. I upgraded to 160 [32+128]. The orginal Adobe Acrobat reader I don't think worked with voice synsthezisers for the blind. Altho legally blind myself I am lucky I can get by with 19" screen and large text. At the NYC Public Library Branch for the Blind, they have braille printers and voice synthesizers. I wonder how well they work with .PDF. ---- Incredibly low long distance phone rates. As low as USA-Canada 1.9CPM! Works as prepaid phone card. PIN not needed for calls from home or cell phone. Compare the rates at https://www.OneSuite.com No monthly fee or minimum. Use Promotion/SuiteTreat Code: "FREEoffer23" for FREE time. Altho from USA payphones there is a connection fee, there is NONE from other phones or Canadian payphones. Also works FROM many other countries. ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Concession to Modern Technology Date: 11 Jul 2006 05:29:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > As regular posters know, I am a major "Luddite". I constantly > question if some new technology is really worth the hype around it and > will truly make things easier for us, on in reality, be more of a > nuisance than the past. > I must admit one new tech item is pretty slick. I just got some > CD-ROMs with .PDF files of various antique telephone manuals and > catalogs. They were very reasonably priced. > The use of .PDF files (a file format used to store images from printed > matter such as books) and the CD ROM media made it easy to copy, > distribute, and use the old stuff. Otherwise, I'd have to purchase > the original manuals at considerably more cost and then only I could > view them; by mass media, many people can benefit. I'd also have a > bunch of old paper lying around the house subject to getting torn or > deteriorating or lost. > (Now if only Adobe wouldn't keep upgrading its free reader every other > day. I use version 5 and now they're up to 7 or 8.) > [public replies, please] I agree! My old manual collection is at http://www.hallikainen.org/BroadcastHistory . I'm still using Acrobat 4... Harold ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:45:28 -0700 Organization: Stanford University In article , Mr Joseph Singer wrote: > My beef it people who don't trim or edit anything. Please consider > editing your replies to only include enough that we know what you're > referring to. Get rid of the rest it's just not needed and only junks > up the list. Agreed! (Even if this reply violates Pat's rule that reply must be at least as long as quoted material -- which I don't think is a good rule, even if well meant.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your rule is a good one also, and many times when I respond in private email to people who sent me a long thing to read, I will do it like this: >one or two sentence summary. I just make up a sentence or or two which summarizes what the person said then reply based on that. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Digest Contributors Are Getting Very Sloppy Date: 11 Jul 2006 06:49:58 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mr Joseph Singer wrote: > Many people when replying to digest articles apparently have no > concept of editing. In a recent digest of articles several replies > made their reply swell to two or three times the necessary size by > replying and including every single bit of the original article and > sometimes even beyond that including previous replies! This is a very common problem on Usenet. It seems most people add a sentence or two to a post already hundreds of lines long. Very frustrating to us with slow modems and connections since we have to wait for all that garbage to page through, especially when the added line is merely "I agree". Google as a news reader blanks old stuff out unless you ask to see it, this is a big help. The WW II site moderator rejects such posts. ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #255 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jul 11 19:36:05 2006 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id AB60915775; Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:36:04 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #256 Message-Id: <20060711233604.AB60915775@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:36:04 -0400 (EDT) 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, 11 Jul 2006 19:38:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 256 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bomb Attack Puts Bombay Phone System Out of Service (Ramola Badam, AP) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Ed) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Sam Spade) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Robert Bonomi) Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? (Carl Navarro) Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? (jsw) Re: Wi-Fi Wars/Loiterers a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line (Joshua Putnam) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh, Well) (mc) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ramola Talwar Badam Subject: Bomb Attack Puts Bombay Phone System Out of Service Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:44:32 -0500 Bomb attack on Bombay trains kills 147, Injures Many Others By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer Eight bombs exploded in first-class compartments of packed Bombay commuter trains Tuesday, killing 147 people and wounding hundreds in a well-coordinated terror attack on the heart of a city that embodies India's global ambitions. Suspicion quickly fell on Kashmiri militants who have repeatedly carried out nearly simultaneous explosions in attacks on Indian cities, including bombings last year at three markets in New Delhi. Pakistan, India's rival over the disputed territory of Kashmir, quickly condemned Tuesday's bombings. Even so, India alleges that Pakistan supports the Muslim militants, and analysts said a Kashmiri link to the blasts could slow -- or perhaps even derail -- a peace process that has gained momentum between the nuclear rivals over the past several years. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said "terrorists" were behind the attacks, which he called "shocking and cowardly attempts to spread a feeling of fear and terror among our citizens." Security was tightened in cities around the world from New Delhi to New York after the eight blasts, which struck seven trains within minutes of each other during the early evening rush hour. The bombings appeared timed to inflict maximum carnage in this bustling Arabian Sea port of 16 million, more than 6 million of whom ride the crowded rail network daily. Emergency crews struggled to treat survivors and recover the dead in the wreckage during monsoon downpours, and the effort stretched into the night. Survivors clutched bandages to their heads and faces, and some frantically tried to use their cell phones. Luggage and debris were spattered with blood. The telephone network collapsed, adding to the sense of panic across the city. With train services down until midnight or later, thousands of people were stranded without any way of reaching their families. There was no immediate indication if suicide bombers were involved. Police inspector Ramesh Sawant said most of the victims suffered head and chest injuries, leading authorities to believe the bombs were placed in overhead luggage racks. The Press Trust of India, citing railway officials, said all the blasts hit first-class cars -- a sign the assailants were targeting the professional class in a city that has come to embody India's 21st century ambitions. Bombay, also known as Mumbai, is the center of India's booming financial industry and the home of Bollywood, a city that presents itself to the world as a cosmopolitan metropolis where bankers dine with movie stars and fashion models party until dawn. While that image captures one side of life in the city, Bombay is also crowded and largely poor. And across the city, the prosperous and downtrodden worked together to aid survivors. As police and rescue services struggled to reach the blast scenes through Bombay's jammed, chaotic everyday traffic, bystanders pulled the wounded from the debris, offering them water and bundling them into every available vehicle -- from trucks to three-wheeled auto-rickshaws. Others wrapped bodies in railway blankets and carried them away. Police collected body parts in white plastic bags streaked with blood and rain. Those survivors who could walked from the stations to hospitals. There, they found scenes of chaos and carnage. Doctors and volunteers wheeled in the wounded and dead, one after the other. Rickishaws waited in line with dead and wounded for a chance to get into the hospital emergency room. "I can't hear anything," said Shailesh Mhate, a man in his 20s, sitting on the floor of Veena Desai Hospital surrounded by bloody cotton swabs. "People around me didn't survive. I don't know how I did." Another man, bloody bandages over his eyes, held out a phone to a nurse, begging her to call his wife and tell her he was OK. The nurse tried to explain to the man that 'the phones are not working right now.' The first bombing hit a train at Bandra station at 6:20 p.m. The blasts followed down the line of the Western Railway at or near stations at Khar, Jogeshwari, Mahim, Mira Road, Matunga and finally Borivili, which was struck by two blasts at 6:35 p.m., according to the Star News channel. However, other reports gave different timelines. Some passengers reportedly jumped from speeding trains in panic. Maharashtra state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said after meeting with his Cabinet that the death toll was 147, with 439 others wounded, as of Tuesday night. In Washington, the State Department said it had no information about whether there were any American casualties. All of India's major cities were reportedly on high alert following the attacks, which came hours after a series of grenade attacks by Islamic militants killed eight people in the main city of India's part of Kashmir. Reflecting the fears of coordinated or copycat bombings throughout the world, even New York City increased its transit security Tuesday with hundreds more officers patrolling the subways and more random bag searches. "We take a terror attack in any place in the world, especially one on a public transport system, as a serious warning," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Bloomberg also noted, "if they did the same thing here, it would completely knock out our cell phone system also." Commuter transit systems have been tempting targets for terrorists in recent years, with bombers killing 191 in Madrid in 2004 and 52 in London last year. Bombay suffered blasts in 1993 that included the Bombay Stock Exchange, killing more than 250 people. A senior Bombay police official, P.S. Pasricha, said Tuesday's explosions were part of a well-coordinated attack. "Doing it at a time when trains were ordinarily more crowded, and hitting several trains over a distance apart from each other showed us they were 'professional and well-trained in their approach", noted Parischa. Police reportedly carried out raids across the country following the blasts. One TV station said a suspect was in custody. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned upon independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir. Dozens of militant groups have been fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, demanding the largely Muslim region's independence or merger with Pakistan. New Delhi has accused Pakistan of training, arming and funding the militants. Islamabad insists it only offers the rebels diplomatic and moral support. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf offered condolences over the loss of life Tuesday, his Foreign Ministry said, adding: "Terrorism is a bane of our times and it must be condemned, rejected and countered effectively and comprehensively." Accusations of Pakistani involvement in a 2001 attack on India's parliament put the nuclear-armed rivals on the brink of a fourth war. But since then, Pakistan and India have embarked on a peace process aimed at resolving their differences, including the claims to all of Kashmir. In Washington, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the events were still unfolding said the coordination of Tuesday's attacks and the targeting of trains at peak travel times match the modus operandi of two Islamic groups active in India during the last several years: Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. "We do not know where this is going as of now," he said. The U.S. government has designated both terrorist organizations and considers them affiliates of al-Qaida. Copyright 2006 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 news of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: 10 Jul 2006 16:40:58 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I don't believe there is an excuse when you just visit an establishment once and you do not buy anything. Way around means way around the law. Again, there is no "relationship" when you just visit one time and do not buy and say that you don't want to either. And what's more, I fully intend to touch on this kind of scam if I do run for office next year! ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:38:02 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Legal points well taken. Another aspect of consumer law is effective enforcement. Without effective enforcement a law such as "do not call" except for "thus and such" eventually is eroded over time. There is no enforcement by any agency of this law. If you complain to the FCC they will refer you to the FTC. The FTC merely compiles statistics on violations. mc wrote: > Just as an aside ... I think what we are arguing about here is a very > common kind of misunderstanding of the law by technologists. > Laws are not computer programs. The words and phrases in laws are not > self-defining. Laws have to be understood in context. One of the > guiding principles of law is that technical loopholes generally do not > work (which is a dramatic difference between laws and computer > programs). Laws address intent and foreseeable effect. They are > interpreted by courts, not just by the individuals who read them. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:38:15 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Barry Margolin wrote: > In article , mc > wrote: >> Ed wrote in message >> news:telecom25.251.3@telecom-digest.org: >>> This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership >>> here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy >>> Holiday. >> I think people are going around telling each other -- quite falsely -- >> that if the message doesn't explicitly announce things for sale, it's >> not an advertisement and therefore not a violation. >> A few weeks ago, a jeweler in my town used an autodialer to invite >> people for a free ring cleaning. He told me it wasn't an >> advertisement but an invitation. Worse, he made no attempt to avoid >> dialing hospitals, fire stations, large PBXes, etc. ... my first >> encounter with it was when my secretary got about 8 copies of the >> message via other phones rolling over to hers. >> I don't know, but I suspect someone is aggressively selling >> autodialers by telling people falsehoods about the law. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is >> when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our >> original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still >> in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] > What does it not being a sales call have to do with it? The DNC list > isn't only for sales/advertising, it's for any kind of mass calling > except political and surveys. Says *who*? The FCC regulations regarding DNC cover, per 47 USC 227, *only* calls involving the "solicitation of the purchase or sale of, or investment in, property, goods, or services". And 'tax-exempt non-profit organizations are not bound by those rules. The FTC regulations regarding the DNC list cover *only* "telemarketing" calls -- which, again are defined as calls for the purpose of the "solicitation of the purchase or sale of property, goods, or services". Again tax-exempt not-for-profits are exempted. Now, the proscriptions on the use of "recorded voice", and/or "autodialers", *that* is a different story. Those rules apply to _all_ mass calling -- well except by tax-exempt non-profits, that is. In article , mc wrote: > Robert Bonomi replied to TELECOM Digest > Editor in message news:telecom25.253.15@telecom-digest.org: >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is >>> when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our >>> original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still >>> in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] >> The statute, and the various sections of the CFR implementing it, is >> quite specific. >> "(3) The term "telephone solicitation" means the initiation of a >> telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase >> or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services, which is >> transmitted to any person, but the term does not include ..." >> If the call is _not_ "for the purpose of" getting some one to purchase >> or rent "property,goods, or services", then it is not subject to >> restriction. > Bingo. The "greeting" or "invitation" from a business is intended to > bring in customers and lead to purchase or rental of goods, property, > or services. The fact that it is expressed indirectly does not change > that fact. _Legally_ that is nowhere near the clear-cut matter that you seem to think that it is. > Some court probably needs to rule on this to confirm it, but it's > the obvious intent of the law. "Sorry, Charlie" there -have- been rulings already. and "indirectly" _does_ change things. Calling to attempt to 'make appointments' for a salesperson to call and make a pitch, _is_ proscribed. They're trying to 'sell' having a salesman come make a presentation. "happy holidays from your friends at Wal-mart" is not proscribed. > There is such a thing as indirect communication, and the purpose of > the Do Not Call list was to prohibit a specific type of recorded > messages, not a specific set of words within recorded messages. Wrongo. The DNC list has -nothing- to do with 'recorded messages'. Recorded messages are either allowed, or disallowed, according to criteria that *DO*NOT* involve presence on the DNC list. >> The 'other' regulator, the FTC, is by statute, restricted to >> regulation of 'commercial' activities, and *their* telephone >> regulations apply ONLY to calls related to the offering for sale, or >> soliciting the purchase of, 'property, goods, or services'. _They_ >> have held that calls just 'setting appointments' for someone to make >> an actual sales pitch, are covered by FTC regs. >> The 'happy holidays' call _is_ probably legal, in a strict >> interpretation of the law. OTOH, the dealership may well be doing >> more damage to it's reputation by making the calls, than the goodwill >> it generates. > I don't think it was legal. In any case, what I always say is, > "remember *why* there is a Do Not Call list." Even if you think it's > technically legal, why do you think people are going to enjoy it? Who says I think they will? But, unfortunately (well maybe not), "bad judgment" is _not_ against the law. >> The free ring cleaning offer is also probably, technically, >> non-commercial, and thus exempt from the telemarketing restrictions. > I disagree. Its purpose is to bring potential customers into a place > of business so they can be given a sales pitch. "Everyone has the inalienable right to be wrong." There _have_ been rulings, by a court of competent jurisdiction, on point, which disagree with your 'opinion'. >> A great deal depends on exactly how the message reads -- if they >> mention only the free ring cleaning, who they are, and when they're >> open, they're almost assuredly on 'safe ground' legally. OTOH, if >> they talk up _other_ things they do as well, -- .e.g, " free ring >> cleaning offered by XYK jewelers, > They at least got that far. Which *is* perfectly O.K. >> purveyors of fine diamond jewelry, and quality watches. Distributors >> for Omega,Wittenhaur, Rolex, and Movado watches", _that_ is likely >> to run afoul of the FTC telemarketing rules. > I don't think they went quite that far. >> The statute, and the various sections of the CFR implementing it, is >> quite specific. >> "(3) The term "telephone solicitation" means the initiation of a >> telephone call or message for the purpose of encouraging the purchase >> or rental of, or investment in, property, goods, or services, which is >> transmitted to any person, but the term does not include ..." >> If the call is _not_ "for the purpose of" getting some one to purchase >> or rent "property,goods, or services", then it is not subject to >> restriction. > Just as an aside ... I think what we are arguing about here is a very > common kind of misunderstanding of the law by technologists. > Laws are not computer programs. The words and phrases in laws are not > self-defining. Laws have to be understood in context. One of the > guiding principles of law is that technical loopholes generally do not > work (which is a dramatic difference between laws and computer > programs). *SNICKER* The courts _routinely_ hold that loopholes *do* apply. That if the legislative body had 'meant' to say things other than the literal interpretation of the words as enacted, that they *would* have SAID IT DIFFERENTLY. Legislative bodies, with _great_ regularity, enact amendments to existing legislation *because* the courts have held that 'what they _actually_ said' was *not* 'what they meant'. > Laws address intent and foreseeable effect. They are > interpreted by courts, not just by the individuals who read them. Tell me about it. I have worked professionally as legislative staff, not staff of a legislator, but for the State Senate, itself. Also, I have drafted proposed legislation (as a lobbiest), which was subsequently introduced in the body, and enacted into law. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:32:57 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 10 Jul 2006 10:52:00 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Years ago (1969) at the hospital I worked at, the paging (loudspeaker) > system was built directly into the Bell PBX switchboard. The paging > operators pulled a separate key and then could broadcast via their > standard operator's headset. When they pulled the key a red light > glowed to indicate to other paging operators the system was in use. > Also at my uncle's factory, anyone could use the page. They had a > small telephone net as a key system. To use the loudspeaker, one > dialed 6 on the LOCAL circuit and then made their announcement. I > only visited there briefly once, but it appeared the loudspeakers were > not Bell System issue. > I was wondering if the Bell System supplied the paging system, music > player tape recorder, or allowed a private interconnect (one of the > rare exceptions where Bell allowed physical interconnects). Since Western Electric made Amps, I would guess that they made their own paging systems, speakers, mics, and amps. In our non-Bell environment, we had Dictaphone dictation trunks, which decoded the commands for the boxes. Dictaphone still makes a "Tub" that probably reuses all the old 386 technology you can find for PC based dictation. The interface was a specially provisioned trunk. > Would anyone know if such paging systems were allowed to be > independent and connected into the switchboard? > As an aside, in a very recent visit hospital visit I saw operators > making many pages for doctors. Way back in my day they were slowly > converting to beeper operation for doctors. Back then, the page > operator dialed the beeper's code then announced the message. Beepers > only worked in hospital grounds. I'm surprised today, 30 years later, > beepers aren't exclusively used. > Also, my old hospital PBX was quite regimented in Bell System dial. > Page operators used brief exact simple phases: "Dr Jones 536" > (meaning, 'Dr. Jones call extension 536'). The modern hospital added > verbage and was inconsistent, "Dr Jones call for you on extension 453" > or "Dr. Jones, please call extension 435". In sitting there (I had to > wait for my visit), I found the modern day verbose announcements > annoying; I'd prefer the old style brief announcement. What, you think anybody remembers phone ettiquette? There is no central trainer like there was back in the day :-) I remember Veasey the old time operator. Probaby about 75 years old or so it seemed who didn't have any other place to go so she just stayed on the switchboard. Proably died on the job LOL. > My old hospital also had a dictaphone system. That was privately > owned but fully interconnected with the switchboard. That is, when > dialing the dictaphone system, a whole separate level on the switch, > the trunk was through and the user could dial instructions and the > dictaphone would decode the dial impules and respond accordingly. > Later, secretaries would hear the recordings and type up the material. > The PBX operators had nothing to do with that system. > I don't know if hospitals still have such systems. Miniature tape > recorders can be easily carried around and record notes right on the > spot, without the need to go to a phone and mess with dial codes. I > think there are commercial services -- using Touch Tone command codes, > that provide transcription. > I wonder what other physically connected systems were allowed by the > Bell System in the old days. (Railroads had their own systems.) > [public replies, please] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was employed by the University > of Chicago in the phone room (1958-63 or so), we had more or less the > same kind of operation. Users (mostly nurses and other employees of > the University of Chicago Hospitals) dialed '7' -- it was known as > 'Telepage' and gave their message to one of the operators, who then > relayed it over the paging system. It was a little bit disconcerting > however, since the operator could not 'hear herself speak' when > paging. By that, I mean that the phone room was about a block to the > east of the hospitals complex. We also had a musical background for > those very few instances when there was not a page in process. Typically > the operators who answered 'Telepage' -- I think there were five or > six of them -- were frequently queued in line waiting for the red > light on their boards to indicate the channel was free for them to > use. The pages went out one after the other, all day and much of the > night, to 'channels' were the caller was waiting on hold. For example, > when Dr. Jones responded to a page by dialing 5904 for example, he > would be cut into the holding circuit where Mr. Smith (who had earlier > dialed '7') was waiting on hold to speak with him. I think they had > ten links or holding circuits where the '7' dialers would wait for > the person they were paging to respond to them (by dialing 5901 > to 5910 I think). 'Dr. Blue' and 'Dr. Cart' were two exceptions of > course. When the loudspeakers called for Dr. Blue or Dr. Cart those > two were told where they were needed. There were also some code names > for security police and fire as needed. But if an operator got a > request for Dr. Blue or Dr. Cart or security (I forget what that code > word was) they did not have to wait in the queue; they simply went on > line and started announcing it. But for those special emergency pages, > the operators also pressed a little 'chirper' noise when they went on > the line to identify what they were doing. PAT] By the late '70's, Elgin made a Meet Me Conference system that was station based. You extended your call to the first extension on the box, and the joiner dialed the second port extension. I'm not sure if it was amplified or not, but there may have been a 3dB compensation for the station to station loss. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: jsw Subject: Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:22:26 CDT > I was wondering if the Bell System supplied the paging system, music > player tape recorder, or allowed a private interconnect (one of the > rare exceptions where Bell allowed physical interconnects). > Would anyone know if such paging systems were allowed to be > independent and connected into the switchboard? I worked at a major medical center for 13 years, spanning the late 70's to the early 90's. I was not in the telecom department, but I did have a very good idea of how the campus phone systems and paging systems operated. ;-) When I first came aboard, the campus was served (??) by Centrex-CU off of an aging and quirky 101 ESS on campus. Many departments had their own (meaning serving them only, but owned and maintained by Ma Bell) key systems. There was a mix of rotary and touch-tone on campus. Ma Bell actually stationed two techies semipermanently on campus. They had a small 'office' in a room off of a steam tunnel, with their stash of cables, KTU parts, etc. Our main paging system was totally independent of Ma Bell. It was based on a huge honker Crown amplifier and hundreds of speakers around the campus. The operators had paging microphones on their consoles, but they did not connect with Ma Bell. However, several departments had their own departmental paging systems which *WERE* connected to Ma Bell. In these cases a departmental amp would be fed from a 600 ohm feed from the main campus paging system and another twisted-pair 600 ohm feed from Ma Bell's key system. To page locally, a code was dialed on the departmental intercom key and that cut into the departmental paging system. Both rotary and touch-tone phones were supported. When TT was used for a page, it was often obvious with a very loud TT burst as the page began. I don't remember any black box or dedicated interconnect device for these. IIRC, twisted pair frame wire ran right from the KTU punch block over to the amplifier cabinets. > Also, my old hospital PBX was quite regimented in Bell System dial. > Page operators used brief exact simple phases: "Dr Jones 536" They usually kept pages short and to the point. There were two special 'code' pages. 'Dr. Red' was a fire alarm, with the location Dr. Red was supposed to report to immediately being the location of the fire. 'Dr. Blue' was for code blue, or a cardiac incident which scrambled the code team. We converted to Centrex-CO in the early 80's. Same phones, same dialing plan, but all extensions cabled to the CO about two miles away. (The campus straddled a CO boundary. Pay phones in some buildings were served out of a different CO than the regular office phones.) In the late 80's the Med Center bought their own switch, a Definity of some sort. Almost everybody got their own 2500 style desk set with their own DID number. Just before I left, four-digit dialing gave way to five-digit dialing as the campus expanded. There were still many rotary dial phones on campus until the new installation. ------------------------------ From: Joshua Putnam Subject: Re: Wi-Fi Wars / Loiterers Can be a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:48:14 -0700 In article , first.last@comcast.net says: > Of course, this is what they should have been doing all along with the > Rowling and Salinger wannabes who hog the NY Times, take extra chairs > to keep their precious crap off the floor, and sit at the choice > tables for hours nursing an empty latte while reading Noam Chomsky. I > really don't care if you're surfing for porn, doing your French Lit > homework or writing the Great American Novel; drink your coffee, then > get the hell out. It's not quite so cut-and-dried. An empty business looks like an unpopular business. Having a few seats occupied, even if the people in the seats aren't buying, can make a coffee shop or restaurant look more popular, and thus increase sales. The trick is getting just the right number of seat-warmers without cutting into your sales capacity. If you get too many of them, you take down some of the flypaper, but not all of it. josh@phred.org is Joshua Putnam Books for Bicycle Mechanics and Tinkerers: ------------------------------ From: "mc" Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:43:05 -0400 Gene S. Berkowitz wrote in message news:telecom25.255.10@telecom-digest.org: > According to a 2004 article in USA Today, "Symantec, McAfee, Internet > Security Systems, and Trend Micro grew from nothing to a combined > market capitalization topping $24 billion by supplying anti-virus > software to a hungry market." > With that much money to be made from the fear of virii, is it any > wonder that we're all being conditioned to be afraid of them? > Even though your credit card is most at risk when handled by a minimum > wage waiter in a tourist trap restaurant, we are constantly bombarded > with warnings about cybercrime. Here's the news: it wasn't a virus > that "lost" the SS#s of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and > veterans; it wasn't a trojan horse download that encouraged a > for-profit data vendor to sell personal records to organized > criminals. Well said. At this point, virus protection is big business, and lots of companies would go out of business if viruses actually died out. ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #256 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jul 12 23:27:36 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 44EF7219E; Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:27:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #257 Message-Id: <20060713032736.44EF7219E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:27:36 -0400 (EDT) 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=-1.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE,NA_DOLLARS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:30:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 257 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - July 12, 2006 (Jonathan Marashlian) New Audio Service From International Herald Tribune (Reuters News Wire) Paralyzed Man Moves Computer Cursor Through Thought (Reuters News Wire) Verizon Again (Residential Foreign Listings) (Fred Atkinson) Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Lisa Hancock) Survey: Fiber Connections Increase Demand for CE (USTelecom dailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 12, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (sidd@situ.com) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (Lisa Hancock) Re: Wi-Fi Wars/Loiterers a Drag on Businesses' (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Ed) Re: A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists ... (mc) Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Elegy For the Video Store (Rick Merrill) WE 608 Cord Switchboard (Lisa Hancock) Small Size PBXs -- Manual vs. Dial? (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: From: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - Urgent Regulatory Reminders Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:08:48 -0400 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES Sponsored by The Helein Law Group, P.C. Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry REMINDER: FCC FORM 499-Q DUE AUGUST 1st Interconnected VoIP Providers Required to Register with FCC, File FCC Form 499-Q by August 1, 2006 and Make USF Contributions Providers of interstate and international telecommunications services, which now include "interconnected VoIP providers" (collectively, USF contributors) are reminded that their FCC Form 499-Q is due no later than Tuesday, August 1, 2006. The FCC requires USF contributors to file Form 499-Q to report actual billed revenue and projected revenues. In the Form 499-Q due August 1st contributors must report actual billed revenue for the 2nd Quarter of 2006 and projected billed & collected revenue for the 4th Quarter of 2006. De Minimis carriers and service providers (i.e., those with $10,000 or less in annual USF contributions) are not required to file Form 499-Qs, but are reminded that an annual Form 499-A is required each year in April. Important Details for Interconnected VoIP Providers Pursuant to paragraphs 60 through 62 of the FCC's June 27, 2006 Order, in which it declared interconnected VoIP providers subject to Universal Service Fund contributor requirements, the FCC requires all interconnected VoIP providers to take the following actions prior to August 1, 2006: * Secure Registered Agent in the District of Columbia, as required by 47 U.S.C. 154(i); * Obtain FCC Registration Number (FRN); * File Form 499-A (interstate telecommunications provider registration) with Blocks 1, 2 and 6 completed; * Obtain USF Filer ID from the Universal Service Administrative Corporation (USAC); * File Form 499-Q reporting historical gross-billed interstate and international revenues collected in the 2nd Quarter of 2006 and projected gross-billed and projected collected end-user interstate and international revenues for the 4th Quarter of 2006; Form 499-Q must be filed no later than August 1, 2006. The timeline established by the Commission for accomplishing all of the above actions is extremely tight. Indeed, in order to satisfy the deadline, action is required immediately. Therefore, we urge clients and interested parties requiring assistance to contact Jonathan S. Marashlian at jsm@thlglaw.com or 703-714-1313. REMINDER: FCC ANNUAL SECTION 43.61(a) INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS TRAFFIC REPORTS DUE JULY 31, 2006 Carriers are reminded that Section 43.61(a) of the Federal Communications Commission's rules requires each common carrier that provided international telecommunications services in year 2005 to file a report of their international traffic data for the calendar year by July 31, 2006. All common carriers that provided international facilities-based and facilities-resale switched and private line services, or pure switched resale services, in the calendar year are required to file the report regardless of the amount of traffic they provided. Facilities-based services are provided using international transmission facilities that the carrier owns in whole or in part, or that the carrier leases from an entity that does not report those circuits in its own Section 43.61 report. Facilities-resale services are provided by leasing non-switched international circuits from other reporting international carriers. These are distinct from pure switched resale services, which are switched services that are provided by reselling the international switched services of other U.S.-authorized carriers. International facilities-based and facilities-resale switched message telephone and private line services data must be filed on a country-by-country, region and world total basis. International switched telegraph, telex and other miscellaneous services data may be provided on a region and world total basis only. Carriers that provided international pure switched resale services for the calendar year may file world totals only. Clients seeking assistance with the Section 43.61(a) traffic reporting requirements may contact Jonathan S. Marashlian at jsm@thlglaw.com or 703-714-1313. FCC DECLARES ALL PREPAID CALLING CARDS SUBJECT TO TRADITIONAL TELEPHONE REGULATIONS; REPORTING & CERTIFICATION RULES ADOPTED On June 30, 2006, the Federal Communications Commission released a Report and Order in Docket No. 05-68 declaring all prepaid calling cards telecommunications services and establishing rules and procedures to ensure prepaid phone providers are subjected to the full panoply of traditional telephony regulations, including access charges and Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions. The Order does exempt revenue derived from the sale of calling cards to the U.S. military from USF, if done pursuant to contract. In the Order, the Commission ruled that Internet Protocol-based, menu driven prepaid calling cards and cards using IP Technology in the middle are telecommunications services and therefore subject to all legal and regulatory requirements applicable to such services, including USF reporting and contributions, as well as inter and intra-state access charges. Importantly, the Commission also imposed reporting and certification requirements on prepaid phone providers to ensure compliance with the new regulatory regime and deter gaming of the system. In addition, the FCC held that, although the classification of menu driven cards as telecommunications services will be applied prospectively only, the classification of IP Technology cards will be applied retroactively. The retroactive application of the Commission's decision means companies relying on IP Technology as a basis for exemption in the past will be required to voluntarily make USF contributions for all past periods or face the prospect of formal enforcement actions. The new rules, set forth below, will become effective 90 days after their publication in the Federal Register, except that the certification requirements will be effective at the end of the first quarter following Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval. New Prepaid Calling Card Regulations 47 C.F.R. 64.5000 Definitions (a) Prepaid Calling Card. The term 'prepaid calling card' means acard or similar device that allows users to pay in advance for a specified amount of calling, without regard to additional features, functions, or capabilities available in conjunction with the calling service. (b) Prepaid Calling Card Provider. The term 'prepaid calling card provider' means any entity that provides telecommunications service to consumers through the use of a prepaid calling card. 47 C.F.R. 64.5001 Reporting and Certification Requirements (a) All prepaid calling card providers must report prepaid calling card percentage of interstate use (PIU) factors, and call volumes from which these factors were calculated, based on not less than a one-day representative sample, to those carriers from which they purchase transport services. Such reports must be provided no later than the 45th day of each calendar quarter for the previous quarter. (b) If a prepaid calling card provider fails to provide the appropriate PIU information to a transport provider in the time allowed, the transport provider may apply a 50 percent default PIU factor to the prepaid calling card provider's traffic. (c) On a quarterly basis, every prepaid calling card provider must submit to the Commission a certification, signed by an officer of the company under penalty of perjury, providing the following information with respect to the prior quarter: (1) The percentage of intrastate, interstate, and international calling card minutes for that reporting period; (2) The percentage of total prepaid calling card service revenue (excluding revenue from prepaid calling cards sold by, to, or pursuant to contract with the Department of Defense (DoD) or a DoD entity) attributable to interstate and international calls for that reporting period; (3) A statement that it is making the required Universal Service Fund contribution based on the reported information; (4) A statement that it has complied with the reporting requirements described in section 64.5001(a) above. Effect on Dial-Around Compensation In an interesting twist, the Commission's Order also addressed the issue of Dial-Around Compensation (DAC). In footnotes, the Commission agreed with payphone aggregator, APCC Services, that providers of calling cards are obligated to pay DAC to payphone service providers pursuant to section 276 of the Act when menu based and IP Technology cards are used in the provision of telecommunications services. Furthermore, the Commission agreed with APCC that calls completed to a calling card platform without attempting to reach a third party are subject to DAC. While the first conclusion was not unexpected, the Commission's latter statement appears to change the industry's understanding of what constitutes a completed call under the FCC's Tollgate Rules. Conclusion This new federal regulatory regime for prepaid calling card providers is certain to cause a great deal of disruption in the calling card marketplace which, up to now, has been provided ample opportunity to minimize the financial and administrative burdens of traditional telecommunications regulations through technology and other means. The application of traditional telecommunications regulations and the FCC's reporting and certification requirements will undoubtedly result in material increases in prepaid providers cost of doing business. Our firm is continuing to analyze the implications of the Commission's Order and is standing by to assist clients and interested parties with their efforts to understand and comply with the new requirements. To be certain you understand how these regulations will affect your company and make preparations for compliance with the new regulatory regime, we urge you to contact your telecommunications counsel. If you do not have counsel, please contact us at 703-714-1300 or by e-mail jsm@thlglaw.com, if you require assistance. 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 775 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ From: Jeffrey Goldfarb Subject: New Audio Service From International Herald Tribune Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:09:30 -0500 By Jeffrey Goldfarb The International Herald Tribune has launched a new twist on the podcasting craze sweeping media companies with a service that instantly generates an audio version of any article in the newspaper. The IHT, which is owned by New York Times Co., said it was the first English-language Web site to deliver the service, which it rolled out on Wednesday with Swedish technology company ReadSpeaker. German newspaper Waz has unveiled a similar service. A female voice with a British accent and only a slight robotic stammer reads the articles with nearly accurate intonation and word emphasis, though the beta version is not glitch-free as some words were difficult to understand in a recent test. The IHT is providing the audio service free at http://audionews.iht.com/home/ and without advertising temporarily as it makes changes and improvements, but is seeking advertisers to help generate revenue. "It allows us to sell advertising on a scalable basis," said Meredith Artley, editor and publisher of IHT.com. "No advertisers are on board yet, but we've got a couple of folks who are interested," she said. "We would probably put on five to 10 seconds of an audio ad, and we're considering doing it on every third or fifth article." Users can either listen to articles on the spot or download them onto an MP3 player or mobile phone, creating a personalized audio version of the Paris-based newspaper, which was founded in 1887 and is sold in 180 countries. The IHT Web site draws 2.7 million unique readers a month. About 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, are downloading audio podcasts, according to figures released on Wednesday by research firm Nielsen/NetRatings. "The portability of podcasts makes them especially appealing to young, on-the-go audiences," Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Michael Lanz said. "We can expect to see podcasting become increasingly popular as portable content media players proliferate." 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 the daily media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Patricia Reaney Subject: Paralyzed Man Moves Computer Cursor Through Thought Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:13:55 -0500 Paralyzed man moves computer cursor through thought By Patricia Reaney A paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking about doing it, a team of scientists said on Wednesday. They believe the BrainGate sensor, which involves implanting electrodes in the brain, could offer new hope to people paralyzed by injuries or illnesses. "This is the first step in an ongoing clinical trial of a device that is encouraging for its potential to help people with paralysis," Dr Leigh Hochberg, of Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview. The 25-year-old man who suffered paralysis of all four limbs three years earlier completed tasks such moving a cursor on a screen and controlling a robotic arm. He is the first of four patients with spinal cord injuries, muscular dystrophy, stroke or motor neurone disease testing the brain-to-movement system developed by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. in Massachusetts. "This is the dawn of major neurotechnology where the ability to take signals out of the brain has taken a big step forward. We have the ability to put signals into the brain but getting signals out is a real challenge. I think this represents a landmark event," said Professor John Donoghue of Brown University in Rhode Island and the chief scientific officer of Cyberkinetics. The scientists implanted a tiny silicon chip with 100 electrodes into an area of the brain responsible for movement. The activity of the cells was recorded and sent to a computer which translated the commands and enabled the patient to move and control the external device. "This part of the brain, the motor cortex, which usually sends its signals down the spinal cord and out to the limbs to control movement, can still be used by this participant to control an external device, even after years had gone by since his spinal cord injury," added Hochberg, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. Although it is not the first time brain activity has been used to control a cursor, Stephen Scott of Queen's University in Ontario, Canada said it advances the technology. "This research suggests that implanted prosthetics are a viable approach for assisting severely impaired individuals to communicate and interact with the environment," he said in a commentary in the journal. In a separate study, researchers from Stanford University Schools of Medicine and Engineering described a faster way to process signals from the brain to control a computer or prosthetic device. "Our research is starting to show that, from a performance perspective, this type of prosthetic system is clinically viable," Stephen Ryu, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Stanford, said in as statement. 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: Fred Atkinson Subject: Verizon Again (Residential Foreign Listings) Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 19:04:13 -0400 Well folks, Verizon is at it again. Some of you remember all the trouble I had getting a foreign residential listing with them. They've had me listed with directory assistance for a year. They've never properly billed me and I was calling back monthly asking where the bill was. I told them that I was concerned that if I wasn't properly billed and paid that bill that my listing my not show up in the June phone book. Of course, I got transfered from department to department until someone finally decided to pull up my account (each time I called). They kept telling me a month or two. When I'd call again in a month or two, it was 'a month or two', which happened a few more times. Then they told me I would get a year's bill in March. March came without a bill. I called them to ask where the bill was. They hadn't a clue why someone had told me March. I was told I'd be billed in June when the directory came out. I told them that if we waited for that, there was a strong possibility that my listing would not be included in the directory. They insisted there was no way that could happen. Well, June came, the bill came (a year's bill, by the way), and the directory came out. My name and number were *not* in it. Well, some of you remember how much trouble I was having with the VOIP company (Voicepulse) that was providing me with that number. Besides all the quality problems that their CSRs were not interested in addressing and the fact that there was no one to escalate to except the CEO of the company (whom they would not let you talk to, by the way), they wouldn't allow me to port my number away from them. I had been paying for a Carolina Net line so the number could be transfered all that time. I only held onto Voicepulse because that number was to be listed in the telephone directory and I couldn't port it elsewhere. I had filed a complaint with the FCC but after many months the FCC told me that they couldn't do anything about it because they were a VOIP provider (they can require them to provide E911 but they can't require them to port numbers? Strange). I talked with Verizon Executive complaints. They were just as shocked as I was (like they didn't know how much trouble I've been having with their customer service). They wanted to issue me a credit for the listing but I don't want them to do that and told them so. I felt that if I didn't pay that bill, there was a danger that this would happen next year. Instead, we neogiated them providing me a forwarded local number that I could later port to Carolina Net. That number is up and running now. You dial my Verizon number and get forwarded to my Carolina Net line. I am waiting on the first bill for the forwarding (which Verizon is paying for me in settlement of this major foulup) until I can get a copy of the bill to Carolina Net and have the line ported to them. So, I put in a change order on my foreign residential listing with the new Verizon Number. Since it is going to be ported away from Verizon, I needed it as a foreign listing so it would still be given out by directory assistance and appear in the 2007 book. I went to the local Radio Shack last week and paid my Verizon bill for the foreign listing. The check cleared my bank account this morning. I called Verizon and the residential department still denied that they had responsibility for the account (even though the executive complaints department said that they had confirrmed that the residential department should be handling foreign listings). I had to call back and got someone else. I had to tell her how to pull up the account with the account number (not the phone number). After talking with her supervisor, she managed to pull it up. She told me that they had indeed received my check. That the payment had indeed been applied to my account. But also a credit in the amount of my payment had been applied and they were refunding me the payment and they had closed the account against my explicit instructions. Verizon Executive Complaints is furious and is looking into what happened. I've involved the NC Utilities Commission and sent a FAXed letter to Verizon's Executive Offices in New York to describe all of this incompentent account support. Will let you know what happens. And they call this a telephone company? Regards, Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: 12 Jul 2006 09:30:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dial equipment existed long before the perfection of air conditioning for large buildings, so I presume step-by-step, panel, and crossbar switches did not require air conditioning. I presume that the heat generated by relays, ringer motor generators and the like was not great enough to cause worry. Most old telephone buildings had big windows. However, in the late 1930s, carrier systems and long distance routes using electronic gear was installed. These used vacuum tubes which generated a lot of heat. Did switching buildings that had such gear have any special ventilation or early a/c to remove that heat*? In the 1950s electronics continued with the implementation of microwave systems. Likewise, did amplifiers require air conditioning in those buildings? I believe ESS offices were always air conditioned. Indeed, the literature states a failure of an early ESS unit was due to air conditioning failure, not the switch itself. As an aside, one of the Western Union Technical Bulletins housed on this site has an article about how WU air conditioned one of its buildings in NYC. Air conditioning for buildings was perfected in the late 1930s though its use grew very slowly. A couple of buildings built during WW II in DC were air conditioning, I don't know how people survived DC's hot humidity in non a/c buildings. Technical advances and efficiency in the early 1950s allowed it to be more widespread and home window units came out at that time. I think a Bell Labs facility built around 1940 was built with air conditioning. I think the Pentagon had a/c when built. *The labs where the Univac was developed were not air conditioning and the workrooms were extremely warm. Engineers ran around in their underwear and rules were posted requiring them to put their clothes on when entering the outer offices. In contrast, IBM's labs of the same era were air conditioned (since the 1930s). IBM's people had to wear suits, but when entering IBM's front offices in those days they had to use old fashioned starch collars favored by Thomas J. Watson Sr, president. Interesting contrast between the two computer companies -- suits vs. underwear. In a visit to a Univac facility in 1978, it was clear they were still much more informal about dress (colored shirts and the like) than an IBM facility of the same time -- white shirts only. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting you wrote about this today when the outside temperature here in Independence reached 106 degrees; the hottest for this year so far. My air-conditioning has been running almost continuously for the past two days. I do not know how I survived back in the 1950-60s when the places I worked did not have a/c nor did I have it at home until around 1968 or so. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:56:35 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Survey: Fiber Connections Increase Demand for CE USTelecom dailyLead July 12, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dYfcfDtutfiwvlImgY TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Survey: Fiber connections increase demand for CE devices BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Blue Room site key to AT&T's branded-content push * Tellabs wins Verizon deal * Can music phones take a bite out of iPod's market share? * Alcatel releases OmniPCX 5.0 server for all-in-one IP telephony USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Demystifying the E-Rate Tomorrow, July 13, 1:00 p.m. ET TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * TV will remain dominant platform, HDNet founder says * Web-video sites pay in fleeting fame -- and cash REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Government to use text messages as primary emergency alert method * Tennessee OKs AT&T-BellSouth deal Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dYfcfDtutfiwvlImgY ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 12, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 11:56:36 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 12, 2006 ******************************** Digital warning system may hinder mobile/Internet communications http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18817?11228 WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government will soon be sending warnings of national emergencies on wireless phones, Web sites and hand-held computers. The new digital system will update the emergency alerts planned -- but never used -- during the Cold War in the event of a nuclear strike. More likely, these 21st-century... EU set to regulate roaming fees; Operational details still fuzzy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18815?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The EU head office, saying roaming calls now command profit margins for network operators of up to 400 percent, was to unveil a bill Wednesday designed to slash the cost of using a mobile phone abroad. The bill would basically cap roaming profits at 30 percent for international calls, three to four ... Stealth Radar is Just a Lot of Noise http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18812?11228 Imagine a radar signal that's undetectable. Such a technology might prove to be the ultimate weapon in the war against lead-footed motorists. Yet the stealth radar developed by Ohio State University researchers also offers potential applications that extend far beyond everyday traffic law enforcement. The new radar ... Government Invests US$295 mil. in Broadband Development in Rural Spain http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18811?11228 The Spanish government is planning to invest a total of 231 million euro (US$295 million) in the development of broadband technology in rural areas by 2008, according to Spanish business daily Expansion. Spain's fixed-line incumbent, Telefonica, is participating in the project. By the end of June this year, the ... Consolidation Brewing in Italian Internet Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18806?11228 Two of Europe's more attractive take-over targets, Tiscali and Fastweb, are reportedly in merger talks to create the third-largest telecoms group in Italy. Pan-European internet-service provider Tiscali, and Italian alternative telecoms operator, Fastweb, are in talks about a possible merger, which could involve a share swap, the... CTIA Joins USF Coalition http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18804?11228 WASHINGTON -- Wireless carriers have joined a new, diverse group that backs a numbers-based approach to Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions. The new group, called USF by the Numbers Coalition, is pushing its idea of using fees based on the number of working telephone numbers a carrier serves to support universal service, ... Place Your Bets: Will House Vote To Ban Internet Wagers? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18803?11228 The U.S. House of Representatives could soon put their cards on the table, facilitating a full-floor vote on a bill pending since last year that would prohibit various forms of online gambling by preventing the use of credit cards, fund transfers and other payment transactions for wagering over the Internet. The proposed ... Lucatel: New Team, Old Faces http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18801?11228 Alcatel and Lucent Technologies Inc. have provided an update on their impending merger process, which, apart from significant change at the top table, appears to be going well. The duo announced late Monday that their marriage is set to be consummated by the end of this calendar year, a timescale reported by Light ... Bluetooth Chips Get Big Boost From Mobile Phone Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18800?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Fueled by the rapid uptake of Bluetooth in mobile phones, Bluetooth chip shipments have been on the rise, reports In-Stat. The rising Bluetooth chip shipments have had a cascading effect, leading to falling chip prices. This has led in turn to greater Bluetooth penetration of mobile phones and the... Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: 11 Jul 2006 23:35:55 GMT Organization: Aracnet Internet Services I guess I shouldn't be surprised at how many people know so little about their computers or how they work ... > In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > says: >> So today I asked my co-workers for recommendations to buy a new PC; >> that is, what specs and features should it have. Ads for desktops >> seem to range from $300 to $1,000. Basic systems are essentially appliances. For the most part they're all standard components and they all work the same. Although eMachines seem to have a propensity for failing power supplies, which tend to take the processor or motherboard (or both) with them. Dell often has very reasonable systems, complete with 17" flat panel monitor, for $450 or less with no rebates required. >> I also discussed speed. With a new machine I'll sign up for DSL or >> even FIOS. >> But then I found out the downside. My speed won't increase that much >> because of the need for a firewall and virus protection. Everything >> coming across the line, including today's constant java applets, must >> be carefully checked for virus and spyware infestation. That slows >> stuff down greatly. That's baloney. Any checking will happen much faster than your wire speed. What's gotten slower is the rendering of the "rich content" that many sites feel are so important. My favorite source for PC components, NewEgg.com, is painful on my old 800mhz laptop. In article , Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > >I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 >PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I >have running at home. If you don't run a virus checker, how do you know? That's not just foolish, it's stupid. There are free AV products out there, some of them very good. I use Avast! on all of my home PC's. > That said, I don't download from sites I don't > trust, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I delete "Hey, Take a Look at > This" emails. Basically, the precautions that anyone should take > (don't eat found food, don't have unprotected sex with multiple > partners, don't leave your keys in the ignition) metaphorically apply > to the internet. And you don't use IM? Hopefully you at least keep your OS and apps updated with the latest patches. Even Mozilla/Firefox has had it's problems, and some exploits were independent of the browser used. Even only visiting sites you trust isn't good enough -- there have been several reputable sites responsible for spreading infections because the site serving their banner ads got compromised, and they were serving infected content with the ads. > An ATA-100 hard drive has a 100 megaBYTE per second transfer rate; > you'd have to be supremely lucky to have a DSL line that exceeds 3 > megaBITS/s, or 0.3% of the maximum hard drive transfer rate. Even a > high end FIOS line can only supply 35 megabits/sec, or 3.5% of the > hard drive transfer rate. You know, there's really nothing to relate Internet activity with disk activity. And hard drive performance has almost nothing to do with the performance or capability of a system. > The real performance killers are not evil spyware; it's cluttering up > your PC with "trusted" conveniences like RealPlayer, QuickTime, and > CD- recorder "helpers" that sit in your system tray consuming memory > and CPU cycles waiting for you to finally play a stream or burn a CD. While I agree that they're unnecessary and mostly pointless, the system tray apps don't consume cycles. They do consume memory, however. Removing them helps, but "modern" OSes consume enough that taking that step isn't much by itself. Memory is currently cheap. You can significantly improve performance just by adding memory. I wouldn't even try to run XP with less than 512M of RAM, and generally prefer 1GB. > It's operating systems that require 50 separate processes "just in > case" you find the need to perform remote program loads from a server > that encodes all its pages in Mandarin. They don't consume cycles, but they do take memory. Most service processes live in a constant blocked state until they're actually needed. > In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > also says: >> How much effort do the "powers that be" spend on tracking down and >> imprisoning saboteurs of the Internet? Considering the flood of >> viruses and spyware out there, I don't think very much time at all. Go study International Law and politics. Most of the phishing and virus development and operations happens in place like Russia, Romania, Korea China, etc. The Russian mob is very big in funding virus R&D. If you really care about viruses and spyware, don't use a Windows system. Get a Mac, or a Linux system. Nothing is 100% secure, and there have been reported security issues with Macs, but I can't think of a single published expoit targeting them. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) From: sidd@situ.com Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 03:01:03 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com In article , mc wrote: > I don't think it does. Has anyone made measurements? Text files and > graphics don't have to be checked, only executable code. I believe there have been several overflows found in image processing libraries (jpeg,pdf,tiff...) used by popular browsers and image viewers. I am also aware of atleast one entirely text based attack on a hole in a java runtime engine. sidd ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: 12 Jul 2006 08:26:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com mc wrote: > I don't think it does. Has anyone made measurements? Text files and > graphics don't have to be checked, only executable code. I think the problem is that today's web developers like to put on many bells and whisticles do the transmission consists of executable code, not merely graphics and text. That's the reason we're forced to go to DSL, the transmissions contain so much more bytes. Some sites won't even allow old browsers to access them; they tell you to get a new one and even let you download it on the spot. Heaven forbid someone has to type something in instead of flipping the mouse and automatically bringing up neat stuff (as done with Flash). As an example, I tried to get on to the new CW TV network website (the one replacing WB and UPN). My PC didn't have the latest Flash so I couldn't get on. Why was that so important to them to require that? * Does it really make a difference in convyeing information to the end user? * I submit the bells and whistles aren't necessary and a waste of machine CPU cycles and bandwidth. But businesses and even government agencies want super fancy screens and the industry wants to sell ever more powerful CPUs, routers, servers, etc. Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 > PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I > have running at home. That said, I don't download from sites I don't > trust, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I delete "Hey, Take a Look at > This" emails. Basically, the precautions that anyone should take > (don't eat found food, don't have unprotected sex with multiple > partners, don't leave your keys in the ignition) metaphorically apply > to the internet. Thanks for the info. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's easier than to transmit a virus because browsers today are sophisticated and execute programs sent over from web site ("java applets"?). Several times while merely surfing what should've been legitimate web sites -- not downloading or "running" anything -- the virus alarm kicked in because of an attempt to send over hostile code. Further, a subsequent run of spyware software (ad-aware) detected manipulations. In other words, merely looking at a website allowed it to send over malicious code. Further, some malicious people intentionally use common mispelling of common websites to trap people; others hijack legitimate sites. I'm angry at the Internet community for constantly demanding more and more power in browsers. Web developers can't wait to use the latest bells and whistles yet browsers of ten years ago (ie IE Vers 4) were more than adequate to display information from a website. Developers are so snobby about this they won't even allow users with old browsers to get on. I understood a future Microsoft release will not be as "automatic"; I hope so. People blame M/S for this situation, but the community loves that automation to make their websites so fancy. For a lay user who is not a specialist, having an alternative browser as suggested is difficult. As a lay user, I am frustrated that I have to become a systems programmer to maintain my own machine, what browsers, what settings, how to set the settings, what do they mean, etc. It means buying books and learning new stuff OFTEN since the stuff changes every few years. (I was quite happy with DOS 3 and text based BBS browsers of that era, they fan quite fast on 14.4 modems). I'm annoyed that I had to go out and learn Windows 95 and now that is scrapped and I have to learn all new junk. People with less technical knowledge than me are very vulnerable to either slow machines or sabotage. Of course the computer industry loves this state of affairs because they get to sell people new machines every few years, just as GM's planned obselescence got people to buy new cars every few years. GM added worthless chrome, so does the computer industry. It amazes me that no one objects to this, but I suppose everyone is riding the gravy train as a system supporter or part of the sales/mfr chain. (I'm not angry at you personally, sorry if I sound that way, I do appreciate your response.) > Go ahead, but make sure you know what to be offended by. Actually, I don't know enough. The industry and its players keeps changing. > With that much money to be made from the fear of virii, is it any > wonder that we're all being conditioned to be afraid of them? My employer's anti-virus software has stopped attempts and new viruses not as yet registered pass through do lots of damage. Given that, I think the fear of of viruses is justified. > Save your outrage for the Credit Bureau Troika who continue to > convince their pocket congressmen that we "want" 50 credit card > applications to show up in our mail each month, that having to wait 24 > hours before issuing you a line of credit at BestBuy would be like > burning the Flag, and that 24% interest for "universal default" isn't > usary. True. ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Wi-Fi Wars / Loiterers Can be a Drag on Businesses' Bottom Line Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 21:52:02 -0400 In article , josh@phred.org says: > In article , first.last@comcast.net > says: >> Of course, this is what they should have been doing all along with the >> Rowling and Salinger wannabes who hog the NY Times, take extra chairs >> to keep their precious crap off the floor, and sit at the choice >> tables for hours nursing an empty latte while reading Noam Chomsky. I >> really don't care if you're surfing for porn, doing your French Lit >> homework or writing the Great American Novel; drink your coffee, then >> get the hell out. > It's not quite so cut-and-dried. An empty business looks like an > unpopular business. Having a few seats occupied, even if the people in > the seats aren't buying, can make a coffee shop or restaurant look more > popular, and thus increase sales. Have you ever tried to get a seat in *$$ in any college town? McDonald's is extremely popular, and yet is designed for maximum turnover (uncomfortable seating, garish colors and lighting, screaming children). > The trick is getting just the right number of seat-warmers without > cutting into your sales capacity. If you get too many of them, you take > down some of the flypaper, but not all of it. The tables should be temperature sensitive. When your beverage cools to skin temperature or lower, a spotlight should go on over your head. --Gene ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: 11 Jul 2006 18:08:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My point being is that we know what they are up to ... trying to work around the law whatever way they can. More baloney from these folks who can't figure out what NO means. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:24:20 -0400 > Also, I have drafted proposed legislation (as a lobbiest), which was > subsequently introduced in the body, and enacted into law. As a "lobbiest" or as a lobbyist? ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? Date: 12 Jul 2006 09:05:23 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Carl Navarro wrote: > On 10 Jul 2006 10:52:00 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> Years ago (1969) at the hospital I worked at, the paging (loudspeaker) >> system was built directly into the Bell PBX switchboard. The paging >> operators pulled a separate key and then could broadcast via their >> standard operator's headset. When they pulled the key a red light >> glowed to indicate to other paging operators the system was in use. >> Also at my uncle's factory, anyone could use the page. They had a >> small telephone net as a key system. To use the loudspeaker, one >> dialed 6 on the LOCAL circuit and then made their announcement. I >> only visited there briefly once, but it appeared the loudspeakers were >> not Bell System issue. >> I was wondering if the Bell System supplied the paging system, music >> player tape recorder, or allowed a private interconnect (one of the >> rare exceptions where Bell allowed physical interconnects). > Since Western Electric made Amps, I would guess that they made their > own paging systems, speakers, mics, and amps. By the fifties, they were no longer allowed to make any of that stuff, and the division that made it had been split off. I believe it eventually became Altec. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:53:40 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Elegy For the Video Store "an elegy (sometimes spelled elegie) may be a type of musical work," - wikipedia You meant "eulogy" "An eulogy is a funeral oration given in tribute to a person or people who have recently died. " - [op cit] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: WE 608 Cord Switchboard Date: 12 Jul 2006 11:20:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In the late 1950s, the Bell System issued its last cord switchboard, the 608. It was noticeably different than earlier models, with push buttons instead of levers and was white and modern instead of black and wood. The 608 board had certain standard features that were not common or not available on earlier cord boards: 1) Automatically ringing: On most cord boards, the operator pulled the ringing key until the call was answered, and had to give progress reports to the caller. On the 608, ringing began automatically and an audible signal was provided. 2) Ring supervision signals: On most cord boards, the supervision signal indicated only on hook or off hook. On the 608 the supervision signal winked while the call was ringing. This avoided confusion between a call awaiting answer and a call that was finished on a busy board. 3) Automatic flashing: if a user wants the attendant, they must manually keep flashing the hookswitch until the operator responds. On the 608, a single movement causes the supvision signal to flash rapidly. 4) Universal cord: On most cord boards, only one cord of a pair (usually the front or left) will work on trunk circuits, while on the 608 either will work. 5) Thinner cords and jacks, modern appearance. Presumably the 608 rented for a higher price than older models. However, I've seen all sorts of cord boards in service until the demise of cord PBXs. FWIW, my own observation was that the 608 was popular in motels and some apartment houses. The City of Philadelphia had twenty four (two banks of 12) of them for its Centrex; operators plugged into a dial group and dialed the extension. I would presume the new features required considerable extra circuitry and relays. I was wondering if the higher price justified the operational features. Automatic flashing and ringing are desirable on boards with heavy traffic since the attendant doesn't have to worry about such calls, and the board displays the difference between an awaiting call and a terminated call. But push button talk keys and universal cords seem a little frivolous. Around 1960 console dial PBXs came out. They had the advantage of dial for users (see separate post) and no need to pull cords down after a call. Does anyone have any experience maintaining or using a 608 board? Thanks. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Small Size PBXs -- Manual vs. Dial? Date: 12 Jul 2006 11:03:03 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com By 1960, the Bell System offered modest sized dial PBXs for small installations. These usually had cordless consoles. Customers of course could still get manual cord switchboards for such sizes, such as the 555 or 551. Indeed, around 1970 Bell Labs developed a manual cordless switchboard to replace the 555. Obviously a primary tradeoff is that inter-office calls could be dialed instead of requiring an attendant. This was particularly useful for off hour times when an operator wouldn't be on duty. However, the attendant was still required to process incoming calls and perhaps serve as a "gatekeeper" to control toll calls (as was common in those days). Having seen numerous examples of both types of boards in service in small installations, I was wondering what factors caused the users to pick one over the other. Obviously the dial board cost more to rent. Did the rent save the cost of an operator? As mentioned, an operator was still required to handle incoming calls. (If anyone knows of actual rentals for say a 555 or 551 vs a small dial PBX, could you share them with us.) [public replies, please] ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V25 #257 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 13 14:29:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3428F21B9; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:29:52 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #258 Message-Id: <20060713182952.3428F21B9@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:29:52 -0400 (EDT) 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,FULL_REFUND,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: R TELECOM Digest Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:32:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 258 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery in Cellphone Started House Fire (M. Hughlett) Book Review: "The TCP/IP Guide", Charles M. Kozierok (Rob Slade) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 13, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Sorry For Being Stupid (carsten.ringsing@gmail.com) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (ranck@vt.edu) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (DLR) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (DLR) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Sam Spade) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Verizon Again (Residential Foreign Listings) (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Hughlett Subject: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery in Cellphone Started House Fire Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:07:22 -0500 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607130182jul13,1,1195700.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed By Mike Hughlett Tribune staff reporter July 13, 2006 It has the ring of an urban legend: A cell phone blows up and sets fire to a house. But to Pablo Ortega, it's no myth. A mobile phone exploded in his living room last year, causing up to $100,000 in damages. Ortega and his family had to live in a trailer for a few months while their house in California was fixed. Fire and insurance investigators concluded the phone's lithium-ion battery failed and then ignited. Ortega's case is one of 339 battery-related overheating incidents tracked by the Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2003. Most involve lithium-ion batteries, which have become the dominant power source for all sorts of portable electronic gadgets. Aviation regulators are taking notice too. The National Transportation Safety Board held a hearing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., to explore whether lithium-ion batteries stowed in a cargo jet caused a midair fire last winter on its approach to Philadelphia. A lithium-ion battery is able to store a tremendous amount of energy in a small space. But if it short circuits or otherwise fails, all that energy can cause a violent explosion. Such explosions and fires are rare considering the hundreds of millions of cell phones, laptops, digital cameras and other devices that are powered by lithium-ion batteries. "The safety record of lithium-ion batteries is very good," said Dan Doughty, a battery expert at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. "But occasionally there are problems." And since those problems can cause serious injuries and major property damage, it's gotten a lot of attention from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. "It's certainly one of the things we are particularly interested in," said Richard Stern, an associate director in the compliance office of the commission. Reports of overheating incidents have risen as lithium-ion batteries have come to rule the portable electronics business in the last few years. Battery recalls are on the rise too. The safety commission has announced eight since October, after 10 during the previous 12 months and five in the year before that. Nineteen of the 23 recalls involved lithium-based batteries. They occurred after the safety commission or an electronics manufacturer received reports of batteries overheating and sometimes causing minor injuries or property damage. The recalls include more than 2 million batteries and involve major laptopmakers Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Apple Computer Inc.; camera giant Nikon Corp.; and a firm that makes portable DVD players under the Disney brand. Most electronics-makers, including Schaumburg-based cell phone giant Motorola Inc., buy lithium-ion batteries primarily from Asian manufacturers. They are shipped by boat or plane. The Federal Aviation Administration is examining the potential risks of such batteries as cargo in passenger planes. In 2004, non-rechargeable "primary" lithium batteries were banned as cargo on passenger flights. The FAA found that Halon, a fire suppressant used on planes, couldn't snuff out a primary-lithium-battery fire. Primary lithium batteries contain volatile lithium metal; rechargeable lithium-ion batteries don't, operating instead with less volatile lithium chemical compounds. Still, the FAA noted "concerns" about lithium-ion batteries as cargo. Although an FAA report on the issue is due out within a few months, FAA fire-safety expert Harry Webster said at Wednesday's NTSB hearing that recent tests show Halon effectively fights lithium-ion battery fires. The hearing was called because a UPS jet was forced to make an emergency landing in February. Its crew escaped unhurt, but the blaze severely damaged the plane and shut down the Philadelphia airport for several hours. The NTSB hasn't determined the fire's cause. (The plane also had flammable solvent in its cargo hold). There have been a handful of minor air-cargo fires involving lithium-ion batteries, according to an NTSB report. No one has been killed or seriously injured in the U.S. by lithium-ion battery combustion, the safety commission says. But there have been numerous reports of property damage, including fires like the one at Pablo Ortega's house in Selma, Calif., a town near Fresno. Ortega's wife and 19-year-old son arrived home one evening in January 2005 to find their house full of smoke. When firefighters arrived, the fire was out. But the living room had been destroyed, according to safety commission records. Fire investigators found the charred remains of a Motorola V220 cell phone on the living-room floor. The phone, which had been purchased a month earlier, had been charging while the Ortegas were away. Fire and insurance investigators concluded the battery malfunctioned and exploded, rocketing almost 16 feet across the living room, igniting a curtain fire that spread to furniture. Ortega said he thinks the living room's marble floors stopped the flames from destroying the whole house. "If it weren't for the marble floors, adios," he said. Ortega said his insurance covered the bulk of damages. Motorola declined to comment, saying Ortega's case is "pending." However, the company says it contacts the consumer in any reported battery incident and tries to determine what happened. "The battery industry does take safety very seriously," Motorola energy technologies manager Jason Howard said at Wednesday's NTSB hearing. "The acceptable number of incidents is zero." Portable computers require more battery power than phones, so a laptop explosion could be more severe. But people carry phones in pockets and on belt clips, potentially increasing the hazard of a skin burn if a battery overheats. For example, in May 2003 a Plano, Texas, man was driving with his family to visit relatives when he heard "a loud bang, sort of like a firecracker," a safety commission report said. Suddenly, his car filled with smoke, and the man "felt flames lapping at his back." His phone, clipped to his side, had ignited because of a battery problem, the commission's file said. The man claimed to have sustained first-, second- and third-degree burns. Robert Colabella, a log-home salesman, had a similar experience last year while driving from his home in Murphy, N.C., to a convention in Atlanta. "All of a sudden, I don't know how to describe it, but something in that vehicle exploded, and I had no idea what it was," he said in an interview. His vehicle quickly filled with smoke. "I was in trouble. I was all over the road," Colabella said. After managing to pull over, he discovered a spare cell phone battery he was carrying in his jacket pocket had blown up. His jacket was destroyed, and he burned a finger on a smoldering battery fragment while trying to undo his seat belt. He later filed a complaint with the safety commission. Many types of batteries can fail and combust. But lithium-ion batteries have at least twice as much stored energy as the next most powerful electronics battery. So, an explosion is potentially twice as powerful. Plus, the electrolyte in lithium-ion batteries is flammable. To prevent combustion, lithium-ion batteries are outfitted with sophisticated safeguards, battery experts say. But they obviously are not foolproof. Batteries often ignite due to short circuits. And in several cases short circuits have occurred after a cell phone was dropped and its battery accidentally compressed, said the safety commission's Stern. Counterfeiting also has been a culprit in some lithium-ion battery incidents, he said. Rogue battery-makers have slapped the names of well-known brands on shoddily designed products. Still, most battery recalls and overheating incidents don't appear to have involved counterfeits, according to the safety commission. Sometimes, batteries go bad simply because of quality-control issues at a legitimate battery manufacturer, Stern said. Stern said major computer-makers, phone firms and other electronics manufacturers have been good about reporting battery problems to regulators. Those reports have led to voluntary recalls in tandem with the safety commission. "It's to their credit that they stepped up and recognized these issues," Stern said. They pack a real energy punch ADVANTAGES: A lithium-ion battery can be lighter because of its high-energy density. It is low maintenance with relatively low self-discharge, less than half of nickel-based batteries. DISADVANTAGES: Lithium-ion batteries are subject to aging, even if not in use, and usually more expensive. They aren't as durable and can easily rupture, ignite or explode when exposed to high temperatures. Source: Cadex Electronics. mhughlett@tribune.com Copyright 2006, Chicago Tribune 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 the daily media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those people inclined to think that a fire caused by an exploding battery is 'just another urban legend' which never has any verifiable source to it, here is an instance where proof is available: Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2006 Section B, with a real person named. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 09:59:48 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The TCP/IP Guide", Charles M. Kozierok Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKTCPIGD.RVW 20060702 "The TCP/IP Guide", Charles M. Kozierok, 2005, 1-59327-047-X, U$79.95/C$107.95 %A Charles M. Kozierok www.tcpipguide.com tcpipguide@tcpipguide.com www.pcguide.com ixl@fearn.pair.com %C 555 De Haro Street, Suite 250, San Francisco, CA 94107 %D 2005 %G 1-59327-047-X %I No Starch Press %O U$79.95/C$107.95 415-863-9900 fax 415-863-9950 info@nostarch.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/159327047X/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/159327047X/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/159327047X/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience i+ Tech 3 Writing 3 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 1539 p. %T "The TCP/IP Guide" In the introduction, the author states that he has tried to write a guide to the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) protocol suite (the set of networking protocols that are the currently preferred form of networking, and also underlie the Internet) that is complete, readable, logical in structure, and also provides for quick reference overviews with an option for the reader to get full details when necessary. The scope involves the principles behind the protocols (rather than system-specific minutia or even the Internet itself), currently used protocols (instead of proposed), and (where examples are necessary) a bias in favour of small systems. (One aspect that I found understandable, but personally disappointing, was the avoidance of security issues and technologies, other than IPSec). With eighty-eight chapters, the book is divided not only into parts, but also sections. Section one covers TCP/IP overview and background information. Part I-1 deals with networking fundamentals, starting with a chapter that introduces networks, with types and characteristics. Kozierok has done a good job. In a short space the most fundamental aspects of networking are outlined and clearly explained. The quick reference promise is fulfilled by "key concept" text boxes, that provide a concise but effective summary of central ideas that otherwise may take pages to fully explain. Extraneous detail is at a minimum: additional particulars are dealt with as specific topics are raised later in the work. The individual chapters are short, contained, logical, and readable. Chapters two to four review network performance factors, standards and standards groups, and data representation (with a side foray into some basic boolean operations). The three chapters of part I-2 define the OSI (Open System Interconnection) reference model, while part I-3 takes a single chapter to provide an overview of TCP/IP itself. (Chapter six outlines the seven layers of the OSI model: chapter seven is a determined, and, for educators, very useful attempt to ensure that readers and students remember the layers and what they do.) Section two looks at the core protocols at the lower layers. Part II-1 examines the network interface (data link) layer, concentrating primarily on the PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) suite. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and its reverse (RARP) are reviewed in part II-2 as the glue between the network interface layer and the network layer. Part II-3 begins a string of five parts dealing with the network layer and IP (Internet Protocol) itself: these cover the basics of IPv4 (addressing, subnetting, datagrams, and the beginning of routing), IPv6 (addressing and datagrams), related protocols (Network Address Translation/NAT, IPSec, and mobile IP), ICMP (for both versions 4 and 6, including the new Neighbour Discovery/ND in 6), as well as routing and gateway protocols. The transport layer protocols, TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) are outlined in part II-8. Various application layer operations and protocols are dealt with in section three. Part III-1 reviews DNS (Domain Name System) in fair detail (and eight chapters). NFS (Network File System) is in the one chapter of part III-2. Host configuration, in part III-3, is mostly concerned with DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Part III-4 explains SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and related protocols. Part III-5 starts to move towards user tools, dealing with addressing and Universal Resource Identifiers, Locators, and Names (URI, URL, URN). It's a bit hard to say why chapter seventy one belongs in this part. On the other hand, while it introduces parts III-6, -7, -8, and -9, it doesn't belong in any of them, either. These pieces cover file transfer, email, the Web, news, and gopher. Part III-10 handles the basic administrative, informational, and troubleshooting utilities. Kozierok's intention is ambitious: has he achieved his purpose? Well, the work is complete, with all the bases (and basics) covered, and some trivia thrown in besides. I noted the absence of a few items on the way through that made me wonder, but, given the excellent coverage elsewhere I'm starting to think I should research my own understanding before suggesting that he's made an error. (The one shortcoming I definitely did note was the lack of further references in any areas.) The text is readable, and any intermediate computer user should be able to understand it. The book has a logical structure and flows well. As noted, the provision for quick overview reference works well. This is a valuable reference for anyone charged with managing a TCP/IP network, or even a connection to the Internet. Those who wish, either as students or for personal satisfaction, to understand the protocol suite would be hard pressed to find any better source of information. (And, for my colleagues in security, the lack of specific attention to security issues is no hindrance: the technology is presented in a lucid manner that will make the safety issues clear to anyone with an information assurance background.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006 BKTCPIGD.RVW 20060702 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org McDonald's, which does not wait on your table, does not cook your food to order, and does not clear your table, came up with the slogan `We Do It All For You.' - Dave Barry Dictionary of Information Security www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=4150 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 13, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:23:00 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 13, 2006 ******************************** The Adaptive Corporation http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18845?11228 The world of business is constantly changing, and the pace of that change is rising sharply. There are no longer any certainties in today's globalised world. Change is happening in three different dimensions and the successful corporation of the future must be capable of managing all of them. Technological change: Technological... Carriers Try Back Door State Pre-emption http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18844?11228 Washington -- Wireless carriers are still courting the FCC on state pre-emption even as Congress addresses the issue in its rewrite of the Telecommunications Act, but the opportunity to get extra protection from state regulators is narrowing. The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of the legislation in early June -- without... Microsoft, Yahoo Test Instant Messaging Partnership http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18842?11228 SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are beginning a limited test of plans to make their instant messaging systems work together. The much-vaunted pairing comes a bit later than the two companies had originally hoped. The project was delayed because Microsoft wanted to make sure the systems would work well with both... Sony Ericsson Net Profits Surge to $143 Million in Q2 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18839?11228 STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said Thursday that second-quarter earnings almost doubled, in large part due to continued strong sales of its popular Walkman music phones, and it raised its global market forecast for 2006. The world's No. 5 handset maker said net profit rose 91 percent to euro 143... VimpelCom Acquires Georgian Mobile Operator http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18833?11228 Russian mobile operator VimpelCom has entered the Georgian mobile market, with the acquisition of GSM 1800 operator Mobitel. VimpelCom has acquired a 51% stake in Mobitel, for US$12.6 million, with a call option for the remaining 49%. Although Mobitel has not yet begun commercial operations its licences are valid until 2013, and... Regulatory Pressures Set to Hit TP's Revenues, Good News for Alternative Telcos http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18832?11228 According to the UKE, the planned regulatory changes could shed some 1.8-2.7 billion zloty (US$564.5-846.5 million), or 1.0-1.5%, of TP's top-line revenue. The competition is also likely to hit its EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) margin, which currently stands at 45%, against the industry average... Vodafone Cobbles Together SME Convergence Offering http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18827?11228 Vodafone, refocusing its efforts on the small- to medium-size enterprise (SME) sector in the U.K., has unveiled a set of services it's dubbed 'Mobility Solutions for Business', combining fixed and mobile services in one package to support users who work in the office, from home or remotely. Analysts quickly thumbed... Multiple Antennas Key to Mobile B'band http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18823?11228 Mobile operators will have no choice but to evolve from single antenna cell site coverage to multiple antenna systems as they strive to keep up with wireline network access data rates, according to a new Heavy Reading report, "The Future of Mobile Broadband."  WiMax is already specified to support multiple antenna... Verizon VP Says There's Time for Telecom Bill http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18819?11228 WASHINGTON -- One of Verizon Communications' top executives is confident that telecom legislation could make it through Congress this year, despite tight timing between now and the end of the year. Verizon Communications Executive Vice President and former Congressman Tom Tauke says that the light regulatory approach that was... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: carsten.ringsing@gmail.com Subject: Sorry For Being Stupid, but I'm Not a Regular User of Usenet Date: 13 Jul 2006 02:19:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Which is the right NG to go and advertise some reduntant Avaya Phone Systems stuff I have got. My location is UK. Cheers, Carsten ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 00:02:48 -0400 In article , jmeissen@aracnet.com says: > In article , Gene S. Berkowitz > wrote: >> I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 >> PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I >> have running at home. > If you don't run a virus checker, how do you know? Because my systems operate the same as when I initially set them up, I periodically monitor my ethernet traffic for unusual activity, and I don't have crashes, pop-ups, or other trouble. > That's not just foolish, it's stupid. There are free AV products out > there, some of them very good. I use Avast! on all of my home PC's. Honestly, when was the last time you ACTUALLY had a virus infect or try to infect your system? The virus threat is vastly over-reported, with the big numbers coming from single strains infecting large corporate networks. >> That said, I don't download from sites I don't >> trust, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I delete "Hey, Take a Look at >> This" emails. Basically, the precautions that anyone should take >> (don't eat found food, don't have unprotected sex with multiple >> partners, don't leave your keys in the ignition) metaphorically apply >> to the internet. > And you don't use IM? No, I don't, except over my company's VPN, then using a secure client that does not support remote execution of code. > Hopefully you at least keep your OS and apps > updated with the latest patches. I'd say I'm more conscientious than most in that regard. > Even Mozilla/Firefox has had it's > problems, and some exploits were independent of the browser used. > Even only visiting sites you trust isn't good enough -- there have > been several reputable sites responsible for spreading infections > because the site serving their banner ads got compromised, and they > were serving infected content with the ads. Which pales in comparison to the amount of damage done by similar companies who put their client's or employee's data on unsecured, easily stolen laptops. >> An ATA-100 hard drive has a 100 megaBYTE per second transfer rate; >> you'd have to be supremely lucky to have a DSL line that exceeds 3 >> megaBITS/s, or 0.3% of the maximum hard drive transfer rate. Even a >> high end FIOS line can only supply 35 megabits/sec, or 3.5% of the >> hard drive transfer rate. > You know, there's really nothing to relate Internet activity with disk > activity. And hard drive performance has almost nothing to do with the > performance or capability of a system. I was trying to point out that wire speed is probably the slowest interface remaining for a typical PC. >> The real performance killers are not evil spyware; it's cluttering up >> your PC with "trusted" conveniences like RealPlayer, QuickTime, and >> CD- recorder "helpers" that sit in your system tray consuming memory >> and CPU cycles waiting for you to finally play a stream or burn a CD. > While I agree that they're unnecessary and mostly pointless, the > system tray apps don't consume cycles. They do consume memory, > however. Removing them helps, but "modern" OSes consume enough that > taking that step isn't much by itself. Memory is currently cheap. You > can significantly improve performance just by adding memory. I > wouldn't even try to run XP with less than 512M of RAM, and generally > prefer 1GB. Excuse me, but throwing RAM at a problem caused by poorly written crap simply leads to more poorly written crap. In 3 years, you'd be writing "I wouldn't even try to run Vista 2010 Pro with less than 128GB of RAM, and generally prefer 1TB." >> It's operating systems that require 50 separate processes "just in >> case" you find the need to perform remote program loads from a server >> that encodes all its pages in Mandarin. > They don't consume cycles, but they do take memory. Most service > processes live in a constant blocked state until they're actually > needed. But not all, and they get more pernicious all the time, what with the "need" for animation, status reporting, and other nonsense. --Gene [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Gene, I do not know how often _YOU_ get viruses, but I get a dozen or more each day. Fortunatly, most of them are caught in the virus trap operated for customers of http://cableone.net where I am a high-speed subscriber. Viruses which are addressed to me -- regardless of whatever phony name they were sent from -- fall into a special 'mailbox' in my name set up by Cable One in red with warning flags all over it. So I can pick through them if I wish to examine them closer, or most of the time I just bash them. Often times they get 'sent by' ptownson, (either with the massis address or cableone.net or whoever. A dozen each day ... I suggest the problem is worse than you admit. And I am sort of concientous also; in addition to that virus trap I also run three scanners, AVG, Ad-Aware, SpyBot Smash and Destroy. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ranck@vt.edu Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:48:05 UTC Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > DSL, the transmissions contain so much more bytes. Some sites won't > even allow old browsers to access them; they tell you to get a new one > and even let you download it on the spot. Yes, some software/web developers are idiots. I am always amazed at how much bad code is written and gets sold. > As an example, I tried to get on to the new CW TV network website (the > one replacing WB and UPN). My PC didn't have the latest Flash so I > couldn't get on. Why was that so important to them to require that? This is just bad business sense. Why keep out potential customers with artificial barriers such as this? I guarantee the web site geek just got carried away with some "cool graphics" and if marketting understood what this meant to real people trying to surf the site it would not work that way. > I submit the bells and whistles aren't necessary and a waste of > machine CPU cycles and bandwidth. But businesses and even government > agencies want super fancy screens and the industry wants to sell ever > more powerful CPUs, routers, servers, etc. Again, I think it's the technical folks who are behind much of this. Sure, they make sure the boss has the latest browser and it works great for *him*, but screw any actual customers who might not have the latest and greatest. If the real business people understood that I think things would change. And, some businesses do seem to get it, and their web pages work on almost any browser. Really smart ones have pages that work well with lynx. ;-) > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's easier than to > transmit a virus because browsers today are sophisticated and execute > programs sent over from web site ("java applets"?). Several times > while merely surfing what should've been legitimate web sites -- not > downloading or "running" anything -- the virus alarm kicked in because > of an attempt to send over hostile code. Further, a subsequent run of > spyware software (ad-aware) detected manipulations. A lot of what ad-aware catches is cookies. While cookies are a concern for privacy reasons they are mostly innoucuous and used to keep state information from one visit to the next of a particular website. Applets are more of a concern, and good web site design will not require them. > I'm angry at the Internet community for constantly demanding more and > more power in browsers. Web developers can't wait to use the latest > bells and whistles yet browsers of ten years ago (ie IE Vers 4) were > more than adequate to display information from a website. Developers > are so snobby about this they won't even allow users with old browsers > to get on. I tend to agree. Web designers like to try every new feature they can, but forget their target audience in the process. It's easy to get carried away and forget that not everyone has, or wants, the most up-to-date browser. The ones that really bug me are the web sites that say I need to have IE. That's beyond stupid. Even Microsoft isn't that parochial. Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:10:15 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) sidd@situ.com wrote: > In article , mc > wrote: >> I don't think it does. Has anyone made measurements? Text files and >> graphics don't have to be checked, only executable code. > I believe there have been several overflows found in image processing > libraries (jpeg,pdf,tiff...) used by popular browsers and image > viewers. > I am also aware of atleast one entirely text based attack on a hole in > a java runtime engine. > sidd Yep. Buffer overruns are the biggest issue with web stuff. Shove more of something than is expected at just the right time and a badly coded something will barf or let it over write some code. And if that code can later be forced to execute then you have a way to stuff your own code into the system and have it execute. I saw a writeup about one of the biggies that his MS servers a few years back and the actual inserted code was maybe 20 or 40 characters. So it doesn't take much. And it doesn't have to be "code" that your browser thinks it is being fed. Text, graphics, code, etc ... are just lables. It's all bits. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:02:50 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? > Air conditioning for buildings was perfected in the late 1930s though > its use grew very slowly. A couple of buildings built during WW II in > DC were air conditioning, I don't know how people survived DC's hot > humidity in non a/c buildings. Technical advances and efficiency in > the early 1950s allowed it to be more widespread and home window units > came out at that time. If you grew up in the south and never had it you just dealt with it. But the south never really took off economically until central air showed up. The border in general was the Mason-Dixon line or basically the KY, VA east west line. I grew up in far western KY and if you look at it with Google earth you'll understand how humid it could get. My dad built our house in 56 (I was 2) and we had window units when I was small. We added central air around 61 or 62. Then we built a new house and moved into it in late 67. It was setup for a/c but the compressors were not there initially. (Money and all that.) When it got to August, 1968 and after about the 4th day of 98/98 (temp/humidity) at 4 am, we bought and installed the compressors. :) Here in Raleigh, NC, I can do summers without AC but my wife keeps talking about divorce so we pay the bills. :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ditto here in the southeast corner of Kansas by the Oklahoma border. You would not believe how high the electric bill is all summer long, but it is absolutely required to survive. (At least, 'survive' in the life-style of the late twentieth- century which we have come to expect.) PAT] ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 06:24:43 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > In the 1950s electronics continued with the implementation of > microwave systems. Likewise, did amplifiers require air conditioning > in those buildings? As I recall the first viable commercial air conditioner was installed in a department store in Detroit in 1924. A/C become common in metro movie houses in the 1930s. It is reasonable to presume that the Bell System used it, where necessary, by the mid to late 1930s. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Trouble was, Bell's definition of 'necessary' was not like that of many people. If you went past a central office in the 1950's on a summer night when it was about to rain (but had not yet started raining) you'd see those big windows open everywhere; here and there, an operator went over and stuck her hand out the window feeling for drops of rain so the windows could be closed. As soon as the rain started, the windows went shut, the very instant it stopped raining someone went around and opened all the windows again. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: 13 Jul 2006 10:07:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting you wrote about this today > when the outside temperature here in Independence reached 106 degrees; > the hottest for this year so far. My air-conditioning has been running > almost continuously for the past two days. I do not know how I > survived back in the 1950-60s when the places I worked did not have > a/c nor did I have it at home until around 1968 or so. PAT] It's warm and humid around here too, which is what prompted me to write the note. I don't know how working people survived without air conditioning, especially 40 years ago when people had to wear much more clothing at work than they do now -- men had to wear suits and long sleeved shirts (albeit lightweight material), women full dresses. Today young women come to work dressed for the beach, pushing the envelope a little too much for most employers. Many men don't wear ties. I believe many years ago the workday started very early (6am) to beat heat. Also, older buildings had high ceilings and cross ventilation by design, plus awnings over windows to help. That might help the temperature, but high humidity? Again, I don't know how the many office workers in Washington DC during WW II survived; only a few buildings at that time had a/c. I recall a photo of an old switchboard room in Texas where fans were directed at blocks of ice in pails in an attempt to reduce 100+ temperatures for the operators. While switchboard lamps and currents were tiny, collectively they did throw off some heat. I presume relay operated telephone equipment was not affected by high heat or humidity (or cold for that matter). That is, relay parts wouldn't expand so much as to get out of alignment or timing (many telephone relays operated slowly by design). Likewise for motors that drove panel or SxS banks, and xbar switches and control logic relays. Likewise, I wonder if relay controlled IBM tabulating/accounting machines, built before A/C, were sensitive to high heat. The last generation (1948) used very tiny precision built relays. Some machines used tubes which threw off heat. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I worked at University of Chicago in the phone room we had overhead ceiling fans which would spin around every few feet up and down the room. They did not do much good, IMO. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Verizon Again (Residential Foreign Listings) Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:52:40 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Fred Atkinson wrote: > Verizon Executive Complaints is furious and is looking into what > happened. They do a good job of acting "furious" and "shocked" and suchlike, don't they? They certainly should: it's their job to give you the feeling that there's someone on your side so that you won't call the public utilities commission. This has backfired in some states in the past: for example, New York now requires Verizon to give the PSC detailed accounting of all calls to the Executive Complaints line and at one point the NY PSC considered requiring Verizon to inform all callers to that line that a call to the PSC might be in order. This all happened between the first and second jillions-of-dollars givebacks from Verizon (then NYNEX) to the New York State ratepayers in the mid 90's for persistent poor service (and, if you read between the lines of the PSC orders, for trying to hide the quality-of-service issues from the PSC). > I've involved the NC Utilities Commission and sent a FAXed > letter to Verizon's Executive Offices in New York to describe all of > this incompentent account support. The only thing that will get you any real traction is the decision to involve the NC UC. At one point in the early 1990s when I was spending many workdays _at Ameritech headquarters_ working on a new service offering, I had a persistent billing problem in which Ameritech charged all local calls from my home telephone (which was an ISDN "virtual" from a central office in downtown Chicago, relayed through my extreme-north-side central office which had no ISDN line cards, just extenders, in a piece of truly stupid engineering that should never have occurred in any major urban area) as if they were from the physical rather than the virtual serving office -- that is, as if they were made from downtown. Since that line was in use about 10 hours a day to my employer in Evanston, this resulted in approximately $8500 in overbilling -- about half of which I *paid* to forestall threats to terminate service. Ameritech refunded my money every couple of months (this went on for six months after I discovered it) and kept apologizing and saying the problem either had been or would be fixed. I called their equivalent of the "executive complaints" line; heck, I gave them the *name* of someone in the billing group who had told me in person that he could fix the problem if his boss would just tell him to. Blah, blah, blah. Finally I took the quiet suggestion of one of my coworkers -- one of my coworkers _at Ameritech_, that is: I called residential repair and reported the problem *again*, and lucked out and got a rep dumb enough or poorly trained enough to try to talk me out of calling the Illinois Commerce Commission (the Illinois PUC) when I threatened to. Now I could call the ICC and honestly say the problem had existed for six months, I'd been promised resolution on this date, that date, the other date ... "and Ameritech has been trying to talk me out of calling you to get the problem solved." I had a full refund _with interest on all the overpayments_ two days later in the mail, sent 1st Class from Hoffman Estates, not from the usual billing address; and, of course, the problem did not recur with my next bill. 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: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Bell System Interconnect Paging Systems? Date: 13 Jul 2006 07:22:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com jsw wrote: > When I first came aboard, the campus was served (??) by Centrex-CU off > of an aging and quirky 101 ESS on campus. Many departments had their > own (meaning serving them only, but owned and maintained by Ma Bell) > key systems. There was a mix of rotary and touch-tone on campus. It was common for large organizations for individual departments to have their own key systems for within the department, sometimes individual departments had their own PBX. The "trunks" on the PBX were actually extensions off the main switchboard; often there were true outside trunks as well. Users would dial 9 for an outside line and 8 for the main PBX line. Some places had a variety of outgoing lines and users had a series of 8n codes for whatever particular line they wanted. > Ma Bell actually stationed two techies semipermanently on campus. They > had a small 'office' in a room off of a steam tunnel, with their stash > of cables, KTU parts, etc. It was also common for large organizations to have such arrangements. One or more people were essentially assigned full time to the facility from Bell. Large hospitals and other institutions would have thousands of extensions in multiple buildings and there'd always be repair or change orders. > When TT was used for a page, it was > often obvious with a very loud TT burst as the page began. The loud TT burst is an annoying aspect that continues to this day. > They usually kept pages short and to the point. There were two special > 'code' pages. 'Dr. Red' was a fire alarm, with the location Dr. Red > was supposed to report to immediately being the location of the fire. > 'Dr. Blue' was for code blue, or a cardiac incident which scrambled > the code team. Their fire code was "Signal Signal Signal". The fire alarm gongs sounded like calm department store chimes instead of the usual loud urgent tone. The hospital ran fire drills often and all employees and volunteers received some fire training. Everyone else I've ever been I was told not to fight a fire but to leave the area. In the hospital we were taught to fight the fire. The cardiac code was "Pacemaker Team". The operators phoned the elevator operator to have him place the elevator at the appropriate spot. The elevators were very slow. (I used to use the visitors' elevators instead of staff elevators for which I got into trouble. I didn't understand why, especially if I used them outside of visitor's hours when the elevators were idle but the staff elevators were busy.) > We converted to Centrex-CO in the early 80's. My hospital converted to Centrex after I left. I believe it was served by an old panel switch or maybe #1 xbar (part of a big city exchange). I think they needed to wait until the exchange was converted to ESS. Obviously at some point they converted from rotary to TT. I wonder what it was like to convert their thousands of hard wired extensions, included many complex key systems. When I was there it was served by a very busy twelve position PBX. The switchgear room occupied about 2,000 sq feet. No one was allowed in there except Bell people. Carl Navarro wrote: > What, you think anybody remembers phone ettiquette? There is no > central trainer like there was back in the day :-) I remember Veasey > the old time operator. Probaby about 75 years old or so it seemed who > didn't have any other place to go so she just stayed on the > switchboard. Proably died on the job LOL. The chief operator -- the stern kind in the classic tradition -- retired. She was back the next day as a volunteer handling calls, though not working as many hours. > By the late '70's, Elgin made a Meet Me Conference system that was > station based. You extended your call to the first extension on the > box, and the joiner dialed the second port extension. I'm not sure if > it was amplified or not, but there may have been a 3dB compensation > for the station to station loss. When I was leaving the hospital, they added "meet me" page for outside calls. Inside calls were announced as before. Outside calls that needed paging were sent to special extensions that the page operator answered. She then paged the person with a matching special extension number which resulted in a meet. At this time the page operators were moved off the cord board and given a desk with Call Directors to use instead. That freed up two positions on the cord board to handle traffic. As mentioned, at this time (late 70s) they were going to beepers. Again, I don't understand today, when beepers are cheap and universal, that there were so many page requests in a hospital. ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #258 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 13 15:20:29 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0882821BE; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:20:28 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #259 Message-Id: <20060713192028.0882821BE@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:20:28 -0400 (EDT) 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 Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:23:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 259 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Settles Customer Privacy Case With FCC (NewsWire) Tennessee Gives Unconditional Approval to AT&T/Bell South Merger (NewsWire) Finally, Microsoft, Yahoo Messenger Customers Can Chat ( Microsoft, Yahoo! Join Forces in IM Pact (USTelecom dailyLead) Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel (AES) USB Phone With Yahoo Messenger? (Gyuri) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation (Garrett Wollman) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: News Wire Subject: AT&T Settles Customer Privacy Case With FCC Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:44:22 -0500 AT&T has agreed to settle two FCC enforcement actions with a one-time payment of $550,000 and a promise to enhance consumer privacy provisions. The telecom giant hasn't formally admitted to breaking any law, but didn't deny claims that it failed to properly protect private customer information from so called "data brokers." AT&T has also reported failures in notifying customers of their privacy rights, including their right to opt out of certain internal marketing programs. "AT&T has commendably self-reported some of its failures in its compliance mechanisms and has agreed to adopt a compliance plan so that consumers are appropriately notified" about FCC privacy rules, said FCC Commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, in a statement. This settlement will likely relieve many consumers who want their data kept away from marketers, but it also raises question about the FCC's selective enforcement of consumer privacy rights. It may be tempting to ask why the same FCC that was willing to follow through on these relatively minor violations is willing to allow the government itself to indiscriminately collect private customer details without restriction. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, it would be very tempting to ask why the FCC came down on the one matter, while seemingly ignoring the other, more important issue. PAT] ------------------------------ From: News Wire Subject: Tennessee Gives Unconditional Approval to AT&T and Bell South Merger Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:42:28 -0500 The Tennessee Regulatory Authority gave their unconditional approval earlier this week to AT&T's $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth. "I did not find any compelling evidence that this merger would do any harm to consumers," said TRA Chairman, Sara Kyle who was joined by Director, Pat Miller in approving the merger. A third TRA member, Ron Jones, tried to put conditions on the merger, but his amendment was voted down by the Kyle and Miller. BellSouth Tennessee president, Marty Dickens, praised the decision saying that "this is two big companies coming together to become one big company, and that's going to be good for shareholders and consumers." Dickens and other BellSouth executives believe that the huge merger will improve competition in the state by improving broadband access in rural areas and speeding up the deployment of AT&T's fiber optic IPTV network. To complete their merger AT&T and BellSouth still need to gain approval from the U.S. Justice Department and FCC, as well as state authorities in Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Arizona. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Finally, Microsoft, Yahoo Messenger Customers Can Chat Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:47:57 -0500 By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday they have begun a limited public test to allow users of the companies' respective instant messaging programs to trade messages with one another. The agreement to work together, first announced last October, marks a long-awaited breakthrough among major instant messaging services, which include AOL's pioneering AIM service, Microsoft and Yahoo, along with more recent upstarts including eBay Inc.'s Skype and Google's Google Talk. Specifically, users of an upgraded version of MSN Messenger, recently rebranded "Windows Live," can trade messages with Yahoo Messenger, creating the world's largest instant messaging community, with 350 million accounts. These instant messaging, or IM, systems allow users to type messages to others on their "buddy list" via computers and in some cases over mobile phones. Historically, each provider sought to create "walled gardens" that prevented users of one IM system from talking to users of rival systems. AOL agreed in December to make its U.S.-market-leading AIM eventually work with, or to use the technical terminology, "interoperate," with Google Talk, but no date has been set to do so. AIM users can already chat with users of Apple Computer Inc.'s iChat system for Macintosh computers. Google and AIM work with various other independent IM projects too. With the Yahoo and Windows deal, icons will allows users to distinguish which program their IM contacts are using. Executives said the two companies were initially testing how to allow their vast audience bases to trade text messages. IM users eventually will be allowed to make voice calls between the two systems, but no specific timeline has been set. "We are taking the crawl, walk, run approach," Blake Irving, corporate vice president, Windows Live Platform, said in a phone interview. "(Voice) is the feature that we both think is extremely important" to add eventually, he said. Yahoo and Microsoft said they plan to make interoperability between their services broadly available in the coming months. Users can register to join the test at http://messenger.yahoo.com or http://ideas.live.com. It is available in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada (English and French), China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, Britain and the United States (English and Spanish). Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg said the Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up marks the culmination of years of jockeying for market share by IM providers. "We have had people say they are working on interoperability for the better part of a decade," he said. "Consumers have pretty much settled in and defined their preferred IM systems and buddy lists," he said. "It does make it easier for many consumers who will need to keep one less instant messaging system up and running now." U.S. Internet traffic measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings data shows AIM with 47.2 million users in June, compared with 28.0 million MSN/Windows Live users and 22.5 million Yahoo Messenger users. The unduplicated audience of Microsoft and Yahoo was 43.5 million U.S. users, the survey showed. Yahoo and Microsoft took issue with these numbers, citing comScore Networks's global figures which showed that Microsoft IM had 204 million users and Yahoo IM had 78 million users worldwide. AIM had 34 million users, the comScore data showed. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:52:02 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Microsoft, Yahoo! Joins Forces in IM Pact USTelecom dailyLead July 13, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dYsUfDtutfjGANnTPO TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Microsoft, Yahoo! joins forces in IM pact BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Clearwire files Bay Area lawsuit over wireless spectrum * Microsoft seeks to challenge YouTube * MobiTV picks up $70M investment USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * VoIP, VoIP and More VoIP TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Consumers willing to give up iPod before Wi-Fi REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Judge to look at phone mergers * Governor vetoes Louisiana franchise bill Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dYsUfDtutfjGANnTPO ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:52:00 -0700 Organization: Stanford University Some of you may be interested in this: Re: petition Save the Cradle of Radio Astronomy Dear fellow members of . . . As you probably know, the Bell Labs property in Holmdel, NJ, is currently being sold to a real estate developer. It may be resold again after development. The property has been in Bell Labs possession for over 75 years and includes the cradle of radio astronomy where, in 1931, Karl Jansky observed the first radio waves of extraterrestrial origin. In 1998 Bell Labs erected a Karl Jansky Monument on the exact location of the original Jansky antenna. The goal of this petition to the Governor of New Jersey, to the Mayor of Holmdel, and to the new owners, is to secure the preservation of this site and its public access in the future. A copy of the petition and further detail on the site and its history can be found at http://www.lsst.org/jansky.shtml We hope that you are one of the members of . . . who will support this petition by agreeing to be listed as a signatory. If you agree, please send your approval by e-mail to . . . where it will be stored for record (this will serve as an electronic signature, no other action is required). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Unfortunatly, AES did _not_ provide us the email address where we should send our approval or signature. If AES will write again with the address to which responses should be sent, I will print that message as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gyuri Subject: USB Phone With Yahoo Messenger? Date: 13 Jul 2006 10:35:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi. I got this USB Adaptor: http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/images/products/Skype_USB_Telbox.jpg I was wondering if there's was a way to make it work with Yahoo Messenger because they have better rates than Skype. I want to make international calls with Yahoo voice messenger by using my home phone connected to this adapter but unfortunately I don't know how to make it work with Yahoo and this is if it really works with Yahoo. I would really appreciate if someone could help me. Thank you. ------------------------------ From: wollman@csail.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:51:37 UTC Organization: MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote: > I don't know how working people survived without air conditioning, Many larger buildings had (what was then considered to be) air conditioning. Skyscrapers prior to the "sealed glass box" era were designed with vertical air shafts running the entire height of the building. On each floor or pair of floors, an air-handler would pull air out of the shaft into each floor through a system of ventilation ducts; it would be exhausted through the windows. I've been in one of the vent shafts at the Empire State Building, and I've seen the top of one at Boston's Prudential Tower. After central air was installed at Empire, the vent shafts gained a new purpose as communications corridors, particularly connecting the broadcast facilities on the 79th, 80th, 81st, 84th, and 85th floors. -GAWollman -- 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) ------------------------------ 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! 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End of TELECOM Digest V25 #259 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 14 13:56:31 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2E37721B7; Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:56:30 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #260 Message-Id: <20060714175630.2E37721B7@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:56:30 -0400 (EDT) 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, INFO_TLD,MAILTO_TO_REMOVE autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:58:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 260 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Judge Dismisses Antitrust Complaint vrs. Google (Eric Auchard) NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers (Danny Burstein) Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused (benson_james@yahoo.com) Re: Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel (Lisa Hancock) Re: Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel (Arthur Kamlet) Re: Elegy (sic) For the Video Store (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Rick Merrill) Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (Rick Merrill) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Rick Merrill) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (mc) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (mc) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Jim Haynes) Re: A New Way Around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Rick Merrill) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eric Auchard Subject: Judge Dismisses Antitrust Complaint vrs. Google Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:53:40 -0500 By Eric Auchard A federal court judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit against Google Inc. by disgruntled advertising customer Kinderstart that had accused the Web search leader of monopolistic business practices. Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose said in a ruling he would grant Google's motion to dismiss Kinderstart's complaint, but gave Kinderstart leave to amend and resubmit its case. "The court concludes that Kinderstart has failed to allege any conduct on the part of Google that significantly threatens or harms competition," Fogel wrote in a 23-page decision. Kinderstart filed suit in March after Google altered the way it ranked sites in its Web search and advertising system. The change allegedly relegated the parental information site to a "zero" ranking in Google searches, leading to a 70 percent plunge in traffic to the site in 2005, according to court papers. Google considers how it calculates the relevance of Web sites to specific consumer searches to be a closely guarded secret critical to its ability to ward off manipulation of search results by advertisers it deems abusers of its system. A 2003 ruling in a case filed by Oklahoma City-based Search King Inc. had sided with Google's assertion that the ability to tweak its search results system was a form of opinion protected by free-speech rights. A Google spokesman was not immediately available to comment on Judge Foley's ruling. In a lawsuit filed in March, Kinderstart, a Norwalk, California-based company accused Google of "pervasive monopolistic practices" that denied it its free-speech rights, destroyed competition and led to predatory pricing conditions. Kinderstart had sought class-action status for its suit on behalf of other Web sites that the company alleged had been also effectively been banished from Google's search system. The complaint argued Google's growing dominance of Web search advertising makes it vital for businesses to rank high in Google search results. As such, Google has become an essential public facility for being discovered on the Web. The court found all nine counts in Kinderstart's complaint insufficient to refer the case to trial. Attorneys for Kinderstart said they would promptly file a second, amended complaint to address the judge's concerns prior to the next court date scheduled for September 29. "Not a single count was dismissed with prejudice by the judge," Kinderstart's legal team said in a statement following the ruling. "Now, plaintiffs have the full opportunity to amend all nine counts in the class action complaint." 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:52:41 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC " Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today filed a federal lawsuit charging leading manufacturers of computer memory chips with price-fixing. " New York's lawsuit charges that beginning in approximately 1998, the chip manufacturers made a secret agreement to raise the prices of their memory chips, known in the industry as 'dynamic random access memory chips' or 'DRAM.' DRAM chips are used to hold data and temporary instructions available for quick access while the computer or other digital product is in use. Many of the chips are sold to computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment manufacturers or 'OEMs,' for use in computers and other products... rest: http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2006/jul/jul13b_06.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: benson_james@yahoo.com Subject: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused Date: 14 Jul 2006 05:17:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi folks, I could really do with some help with something. I'm studying telecoms in particular T1 circuits. Currently its on about superframing and Extended Superframing. Ive been reading something: http://telecom.tbi.net/t1_frm.html D4 Voice and Data Signaling The transport of signaling states is required in Switched voice or data (Switched 56K service). Signaling is accomplished through a "Robbed Bit" method where bit 8 of each channel's timeslot is "robbed" to indicate a signaling state in the 6th and 12th frames. Effective throughput for the A signaling bit (Frame 6) is 666.66 BPS. Effective throughput for the B signaling bit (Frame 12) is the same (666.66 BPS). But i cant figure out how they got to 666.66Bps? Looking at the diagram on the webpage, the least significant bit in all channels has the last bit robbed, for frames 6 and 12, so in every superframe thats sent, thats 24 bits, multiply that by 8000 and i get 192Kbps???? Where am i going wrong. Could someone explain this to me. Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel Date: 13 Jul 2006 14:20:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com AES wrote: > The goal of this petition to the Governor of New Jersey, to the > Mayor of Holmdel, and to the new owners, is to secure the > preservation of this site and its public access in the future. Neither the Governor nor mayor would have anything to do with this. It's basically up to the new owners and perhaps the sellers. Who are the sellers? (Lucent?) It may be rather expensive for the new owners to revise their plans to preserve the monument; that would be after all wasted space and possibly interfere with the design of buildings for the site. Providing public access to the site will definitely be expensive since in today's world there are significant security and liability considerations. In the end, you may be asking too much from the new developers. In cases like this, sometimes monuments have to be relocated. It may be better for all to move the monument to the nearest public park. ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: Bell Labs, Jansky, and the Jansky Monument in Holmdel Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 02:26:00 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , AES wrote: > Some of you may be interested in this: > Re: petition Save the Cradle of Radio Astronomy> > Dear fellow members of . . . > As you probably know, the Bell Labs property in Holmdel, NJ, is > currently being sold to a real estate developer. It may be resold > again after development. The property has been in Bell Labs possession > for over 75 years and includes the cradle of radio astronomy where, in > 1931, Karl Jansky observed the first radio waves of extraterrestrial > origin. > In 1998 Bell Labs erected a Karl Jansky Monument on the exact location > of the original Jansky antenna. The goal of this petition to the > Governor of New Jersey, to the Mayor of Holmdel, and to the new > owners, is to secure the preservation of this site and its public > access in the future. A copy of the petition and further detail on the > site and its history can be found at http://www.lsst.org/jansky.shtml Also see http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1998/june/4/2.html and see http://photos.aip.org/images/catalog/jansky_karl_f4.jsp > We hope that you are one of the members of . . . who will support this > petition by agreeing to be listed as a signatory. If you agree, please > send your approval by e-mail to . . . where it will be stored for > record (this will serve as an electronic signature, no other action is > required). Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:40:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Elegy (sic) For the Video Store Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:53:40 -0400 Rick Merrill wrote: > "an elegy (sometimes spelled elegie) may be a type of musical work," - wikipedia > You meant "eulogy" > "An eulogy is a funeral oration given in tribute to a person or people > who have recently died. " - [op cit] Is it really any wonder when I commonly see that people have no idea that there's any difference between to and too or they're their or there? It's as I've always said that a homophone is not necessarily a pink Motorola Razr owned by a gay person. :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: /too/ can mean 'also' and /to/ connects the words on either side of it and of course /two/ is the smallest (and only) prime number which is even instead of odd. /They're/ is a contraction for 'they are'. /There/ refers to a place as in 'over there'. /Their/ is a personal pronoun describing the group of things which possess some other thing, as in 'these computers are 'their' property. Those are only quick, short examples. On one of my blog sites http://ptownson.blogspot.com ('Gay Man in a Small Town in Kansas') one of my daily features is the 'Word of the Day' with an attached dictionary. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:53:02 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Sam Spade wrote: > The FCC never took jurisdiction over name identification. > Should they? Is that you Sam?-) What exactly would the FCC "enforce" if they took over name id? All the "unavailable" calls I get do not even show the phone number! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What they could enforce, if they wished to go to the trouble, would be to insist that all telephone calls for which name/number delivery was technically possible were required to give that same information. No more playing around with it, as telemarketers are inclined to do. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:38:30 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You Monty Solomon wrote: > By Gary Haber, The News Journal > Caller ID -- the little telephone display that tells you who's calling > -- is many people's protection from folks they'd rather not talk to, > whether it's a telemarketer making a pitch at dinner time or a scammer > trying to con them out of personal financial information. > Now, legislation pending in Congress would strengthen a line of > defense that turns out to be more porous than many may think. > Technology readily available for sale over the Internet allows callers > to fool caller ID with a bogus name and number. The practice is known > as identity spoofing. > It's hard to get a handle on how widespread identity spoofing is, but > it's gone well beyond harmless pranks. > The AARP Bulletin recently reported a scam in which people received > fraudulent calls claiming they missed jury duty and asking for their > Social Security number. The calls seemed legitimate because the > telephone number of the local courthouse showed up on caller ID. > In Pennsylvania, constituents of Republican Rep. Tim Murphy were > flooded with bogus calls from someone purporting to be from Murphy's > office. > The primary worry for consumers is that if a call appears to be coming > from their bank, credit card company or a government agency, they > could be persuaded to give up financial data a thief could use to open > new bank accounts or apply for loans and credit cards. Even the old advice not to give out info unless you placed the call is now obsolete because the crooks are sending fake phone numbers via email. CID is now much more easily spoofed by using VOIP. In fact they can make it appear as if the call is a local call while in reality the call is from an overseas address. The people chasing these crooks are not Verizon, not the FBI, but the Postal Inspectors! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:41:13 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Monty Solomon wrote: > By Tyler B. Reed/ Daily News Staff > FRAMINGHAM -- High school administrators under a new policy are > claiming the right to snatch information stored in students' cell > phones when they search for drugs or stolen property at school. > The change clarifies the school's search and seizure policy, adding > cell phones to the list of places school officials can snoop if they > suspect a student has contraband. > Federal law says school officials need only "reasonable suspicion" of > the presence of drugs or stolen goods to conduct searches. > "We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal > Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were > to have a notebook. We've had instances of graffiti. We've looked > through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti." That's very interesting: it implies that the searchers already know the phone number of the dealers, or student dealers. ;-) Next thing you know is they'll be searching for stolen 'ring tones' !-) ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: 13 Jul 2006 14:05:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > Because my systems operate the same as when I initially set them up, I > periodically monitor my ethernet traffic for unusual activity, and I > don't have crashes, pop-ups, or other trouble. The problem is lay users like me do not even know what ethernet traffic is, let alone what (indeed even where) to look for that constitutes unusual activity. My modem logo on the screen gives character counts. Way back that meant something since most of the traffic was characters that went onto the screen, there were a few bytes for formatting. But as time went on formatting got fancier and fancier and then of course we went away from DOS text screens altogether. Now, many thousands of bytes are sent in both directions before I type a single key, and I have no idea what any of them are. > Honestly, when was the last time you ACTUALLY had a virus infect or > try to infect your system? The virus threat is vastly over-reported, > with the big numbers coming from single strains infecting large > corporate networks. I do not agree the virus/spyware/phising threat is over reported. There's always been some brilliant but malicious technies. Today's Internet makes it easier than ever because so much unknown happens "under the hood". For me, the virus alarm detected something a few weeks ago which is why I'm nervous. In the old days of plain text I didn't have to worry since I never executed anything from the net. Now, stuff "executes" and I don't even know about it through java applets and the like. By the way, early on I tried turning java off, but almost every web site today requires it on. (There are various levels of java, but I don't know what they are nor which ones are particularly vulnerable and which are relatively harmless; again, the frustration of being a lay user). For my employer, from time to time bad emails slip through and do really nasty stuff by getting into the address books and propagate like crazy. Lots of companies get nailed this way. >> Even only visiting sites you trust isn't good enough -- there have >> been several reputable sites responsible for spreading infections >> because the site serving their banner ads got compromised, and they >> were serving infected content with the ads. > Which pales in comparison to the amount of damage done by similar > companies who put their client's or employee's data on unsecured, easily > stolen laptops. The two issues are unrelated. Just because there is one bad practice does not mean another bad practice is acceptable. As mentioned, reputable sites can host viruses for numerous reasons. Some sites might seem reputable but actually not at all. As to the issue of not using common applications, for us lay people that is difficult. Specialty programs that I've seen often aren't so easy to use for lay people; it's like replacing your carbureator or fuel injection with a speciality model after buying your car. You better know what you're doing. We lay people basically are stuck with what is delivered on our machines; especially with today's complex layers of junk. In my old DOS 3 days I could load something else easily. Today, with "registries" and all sorts of DLLs floating all over the place it is very risky for someone to do that. I learned that the hard way with Windows 95 when my machine was new -- after tinkering several times I had to restore the hard drive back to ground zero with the initiall install CDROM (which killed off a lot of my work I wanted to keep). > Excuse me, but throwing RAM at a problem caused by poorly written crap > simply leads to more poorly written crap. In 3 years, you'd be writing > "I wouldn't even try to run Vista 2010 Pro with less than 128GB of RAM, > and generally prefer 1TB." Your statement is very true and people will indeed be saying what you wrote. But what are we consumers supposed to do about it? What can we do about it? Not a damn thing! Heck, I come from a world where we ran an entire hospital on a mainframe with all of 128K with a 16K operating system. It blows my mind that 'core' memory is so cheap today we measure it in gigabytes, but it annoys me that people bloat up everything to milk it. As I said, it's no different than cars of the 1950s. Every year they added more chrome and bigger tailfins. Didn't do anything for the car's real quality, but buyers loved it. Admit it, you know damn well the make/model of your automobile, but do you know the brand of your refrigerator or air conditioner? Today people want the baddest a--- SVU they can get. There was an article just today in the New York Times about how important fancy features are important to kids to look cool with their cell phones. The computer industry is milking this all the way to bank. The manufacturers get to sell premium overloaded profitable machines. The software developers sell premium features. The trade press writers have their columns. Everyone has a vested interst to keep the gravy train rolling. But heck, it's what the people want. Ralph Nader railed against GM "Unsafe at any speed" but people kept buying and still buy the heavy chrome. Kids put their life history up on myspace despite all the warnings of the dangers. Recently one teen secretly travelled all the way from Michigan to Jordon to hook up with an older guy she met that way. ranck@vt.edu wrote: >> DSL, the transmissions contain so much more bytes. Some sites won't >> even allow old browsers to access them; they tell you to get a new one >> and even let you download it on the spot. > Yes, some software/web developers are idiots. I am always amazed > at how much bad code is written and gets sold. "Some"? A lot more than some. But much of the blame goes to their employers or business partners or marketers who put on the pressure to push something out the door quickly before it's optimized or cleaned up, or overloaded with unnecessary bells and whistles. >> As an example, I tried to get on to the new CW TV network website (the >> one replacing WB and UPN). My PC didn't have the latest Flash so I >> couldn't get on. Why was that so important to them to require that? > This is just bad business sense. Why keep out potential customers > with artificial barriers such as this? I guarantee the web site geek > just got carried away with some "cool graphics" and if marketting > understood what this meant to real people trying to surf the site it > would not work that way. In the specific case of CW, their target viewer market is young people who would be a lot more likely to be up to date than an oldster like me. Indeed, the young people would be impressed with the whiz bang graphics. I have to admit I was that way when I was a kid, too--I wanted to see the latest and greatest on-line real-time stuff in computers, and could care less about batch processing that was the true reality of the industry. However, I don't understand the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority http://www.mta.info . They require an up to date browser, but let you download it right on the spot. I don't know why getting a bus schedule has to be so fancy. Maybe they're youth oriented too, figuring oldsters like me will ride the subway anyway while they have to appeal to young yuppies and kids who may think the subway is uncool. > Again, I think it's the technical folks who are behind much of this. > Sure, they make sure the boss has the latest browser and it works > great for *him*, but screw any actual customers who might not have the > latest and greatest. If the real business people understood that I > think things would change. And, some businesses do seem to get it, > and their web pages work on almost any browser. Really smart ones > have pages that work well with lynx. ;-) Agreed. > A lot of what ad-aware catches is cookies. While cookies are a > concern for privacy reasons they are mostly innoucuous and used to > keep state information from one visit to the next of a particular > website. Applets are more of a concern, and good web site design will > not require them. The key wood is "good web site design". As you pointed out, many developers can't or won't, and they like making things as fancy as possible. ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Organization: BellSouth Internet Service Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:13:14 -0400 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Gene, I do not know how often > _YOU_ get viruses, but I get a dozen or more each day. Fortunatly, > most of them are caught in the virus trap operated for customers of > http://cableone.net where I am a high-speed subscriber. Viruses which > are addressed to me -- regardless of whatever phony name they were > sent from -- fall into a special 'mailbox' in my name set up by > Cable One in red with warning flags all over it. So I can pick through > them if I wish to examine them closer, or most of the time I just > bash them. Often times they get 'sent by' ptownson, (either with the > massis address or cableone.net or whoever. A dozen each day ... I > suggest the problem is worse than you admit. And I am sort of > concientous also; in addition to that virus trap I also run three > scanners, AVG, Ad-Aware, SpyBot Smash and Destroy. PAT] The fact that viruses arrive in your e-mail doesn't mean that they would have infected you. Almost all such e-mail is so obviously spam that you're not going to open the files attached to it anyhow. >> I believe there have been several overflows found in image processing >> libraries (jpeg,pdf,tiff...) used by popular browsers and image >> viewers. >> I am also aware of atleast one entirely text based attack on a hole in >> a java runtime engine. > Yep. Buffer overruns are the biggest issue with web stuff. Shove more of > something than is expected at just the right time and a badly coded > something will barf or let it over write some code. And if that code can > later be forced to execute then you have a way to stuff your own code > into the system and have it execute. I saw a writeup about one of the > biggies that his MS servers a few years back and the actual inserted > code was maybe 20 or 40 characters. So it doesn't take much. And it > doesn't have to be "code" that your browser thinks it is being fed. > Text, graphics, code, etc ... are just lables. It's all bits. There should never have been any such thing as a buffer overrun. I blame the C and C++ programming languages, with their lack of internal checking, for almost all the unreliability and security vulnerability of modern software. Computers are 1000 times as fast as the first PCs, and we still can't afford to spend 1% of our precious CPU time bounds-checking the arrays. It isn't macho. I know C and C++ can be used responsibly. My point is that C and C++ led to a culture developing in which programmers insist on not "wasting" a single CPU cycle on error-checking or security. (I call it "programming without a helmet.") As a result, we are having to add security in the form of additional software. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) Date: 13 Jul 2006 21:48:03 GMT Organization: Aracnet Internet Services In article , Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > In article , jmeissen@aracnet.com > says: >> In article , Gene S. Berkowitz >> wrote: >>> I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 >>> PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I >>> have running at home. >> If you don't run a virus checker, how do you know? > Because my systems operate the same as when I initially set them up, I > periodically monitor my ethernet traffic for unusual activity, and I > don't have crashes, pop-ups, or other trouble. In other words, you don't. All you can say is that you haven't seen any obvious signs of infection. Monitoring for suspicious (or known malicious) activity is good, but any security person will tell you that it's only part of the solution. > Honestly, when was the last time you ACTUALLY had a virus infect or > try to infect your system? The virus threat is vastly over-reported, > with the big numbers coming from single strains infecting large > corporate networks. Well, I use Linux. :-P But I've found and cleaned viruses from my kids' systems in the last couple of years (I believe it was after Norton expired and before I installed Avast!), and just spent an afternoon cleaning a couple of systems at a friend's house. All of these systems sit behind NAT gateways (and a firewall, in my case), so any infection came via IM, web browser or email. Most likely browser-related, but I don't have any way to know for sure. In the case of my kids' systems they had no clue they were infected, the systems showed no unusual symptoms. >> And you don't use IM? > No, I don't, except over my company's VPN, then using a secure client > that does not support remote execution of code. Most exploits don't depend on any application support for executing code. They typically use buffer or stack overflows to inject code and break out of the application into a system shell. You can use the most "secure" client you want, but if it has any vulnerability of that sort then you're at the mercy of whatever is on the other end. I assume you also restrict your login priviledges, and don't have yourself configured with "Administrator" priviledges? >> Even only visiting sites you trust isn't good enough -- there have >> been several reputable sites responsible for spreading infections >> because the site serving their banner ads got compromised, and they >> were serving infected content with the ads. > Which pales in comparison to the amount of damage done by similar > companies who put their client's or employee's data on unsecured, easily > stolen laptops. I wasn't trying to make any sort of comparison about relative risk, only pointing out that you can't make claims about safety just because you only surf "trusted" sites. > Excuse me, but throwing RAM at a problem caused by poorly written crap > simply leads to more poorly written crap. In 3 years, you'd be writing > " wouldn't even try to run Vista 2010 Pro with less than 128GB of RAM, > and generally prefer 1TB." I won't disagree with your sentiment about poorly written code. All I'm saying is that you're going to spend a lot of time and effort with minimal return, because there's not a lot you can do about the bloat in XP. Cleaning up the taskbar is good, but it's not going to make a significant difference in performance. However, spending $40 to add another 512M of RAM will result in immediate and noticable improvements. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Organization: BellSouth Internet Service Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:22:35 -0400 > older buildings had high ceilings and cross ventilation by design, plus > awnings over windows to help. That might help the temperature, but > high humidity? I went to high school in such a building in Valdosta, Georgia. It really isn't too bad. High ceilings and cross ventilation help a *lot*, and due to thermal inertia, the day and night temperatures get averaged, and the daytime temperature indoors is a good bit cooler than outdoors in the middle of the day. What's *bad* is "modern" (1960s) schools and other "modern" buildings that were built without air conditioning. Somehow the architects just forgot that they were building a kind of architecture that only worked with air conditioning. The worst was a dormitory I lived in at Yale (Helen Hadley Hall) whose central HVAC system was deleted from the plans at the last minute. The place was hot for half of the year and smelled bad all the time. > Again, I don't know how the many office workers in Washington DC > during WW II survived; only a few buildings at that time had a/c. To this day the Executive Office Building has only window units -- I noticed while walking by it recently. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 01:52:08 GMT I remember a couple of telephone offices in southern Arkansas in the 40s and 50s. The first one was a manual office on the second floor of a building. As someone mentioned there were high ceilings - about 16 feet in this case. There were windows that could be opened, and in the switchboard room there were oscillating fans mounted on the walls. In old buildings you sometimes see fan outlets high up on the walls; you can recognize them by the large bolt they have to hold the fan. There was not much electronics in this office. Maybe 3 channels of H1 carrier with maybe 4 tubes each. Tungar rectifiers to charge the batteries. Later there was added a program amplifier for radio networking, a 48 volt power system, a few 24 volt rectifiers, and a mobile radiotelephone setup which included a 250 watt transmitter and a receiver with a bunch of tubes. Of course the transmitter was not used much, so only keeping the tubes heated generated heat. Then there was a SxS office on a one-floor building in the early 1950s. I'm trying to remember if it had A/C in the switchboard area from the beginning. Possibly in the business office too. The equipment room did not get A/C until fairly late, when a bunch of O and N carrier equipment came in. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:34:01 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... mc wrote: > Ed wrote in message > news:telecom25.251.3@telecom-digest.org: >> This past January I got a call from Peruzzi, a local car dealership >> here in Bucks County PA (suburban Philadelphia), wishing me a Happy >> Holiday. > I think people are going around telling each other -- quite falsely -- > that if the message doesn't explicitly announce things for sale, it's > not an advertisement and therefore not a violation. You're right, it's false. > A few weeks ago, a jeweler in my town used an autodialer to invite > people for a free ring cleaning. He told me it wasn't an > advertisement but an invitation. Worse, he made no attempt to avoid > dialing hospitals, fire stations, large PBXes, etc. ... my first > encounter with it was when my secretary got about 8 copies of the > message via other phones rolling over to hers. Tell him you are thinking of filing a class action suit. See if he'll settle asap. > I don't know, but I suspect someone is aggressively selling > autodialers by telling people falsehoods about the law. Very clever, and the salesperson is breaking no law, only the user! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What may be a bit more tricky, IMO is > when the purported message is to 'wish happy holidays' as our > original writer noted. When such a message is conveyed, is it still > in fact a 'sales call' or an advertising pitch? PAT] No, giving out calendars is clearly advertising (but not illegal) yet making such phone calls is a violation. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V25 #260 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 14 16:23:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0CE60219E; Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:23:14 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #261 Message-Id: <20060714202314.0CE60219E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:23:14 -0400 (EDT) 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=-1.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, NA_DOLLARS,NIGERIAN_BODY1 autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:25:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 261 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Attackers Exploit PowerPoint Flaw (Robert McMillan, IDG) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 14, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecoms, Cable Operators add Broadband Subs (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines (Rick Merrill) Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery in Cellphone Started Fire (H. Leighton) Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused (William Warren) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (ranck@vt.edu) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Rick Merrill) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert McMillan Subject: Attackers Exploit PowerPoint Flaw Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:12:46 -0500 Robert McMillan, IDG News Service Attackers have found another hole in Microsoft's Office products. Yesterday, Symantec reported that it has discovered a targeted attack that takes advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's PowerPoint software. The hackers behind this attack are using the same techniques that were used in previously reported Word and Excel attacks, says Dave Cole, a director with Symantec Security Response. "It's similar to the pattern we've seen over he past few months where they're using a previously unknown Microsoft vulnerability, and an e-mail enticement to get a backdoor on someone's machine," he says. Cole believes that the same hackers may be behind all three attacks. "It looks like it may be the same group just based on the similarly of attacks," he says. Not Widespread As with the Word and Excel attacks, this latest malware is not widespread. This PowerPoint attack was discovered late Wednesday by a Symantec customer, who received a Chinese-character e-mail from a Gmail account. The e-mail contained a PowerPoint attachment that installed two pieces of malicious code when opened: a Trojan horse program, called Trojan.PPDDropper.B, and a backdoor program called Backdoor.Bifrose.E. The backdoor program tries to cover its tracks, by writing over the original PowerPoint document. It then awaits instructions from the attackers, who can use it to control the infected system. Office is fast becoming the target of choice for hackers. Microsoft patched a total of 12 Office vulnerabilities on Tuesday, but the PowerPoint bug used by this latest malware was not one of them, according to Cole. Microsoft is investigating the vulnerability, says Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager with Microsoft's security response center. Symantec is studying it as well. The security vendor said it does not yet know if the attack is specific to PowerPoint, or whether it affects all Office products. 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 tech news each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 14, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:07:10 -0400 (EDT) ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 14, 2006 ******************************** Containing the Cost of Compliance: A Major Challenge for Financial Institutions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18866?11228 We hear it in almost every conversation with senior executives of major financial institutions: Compliance is driving much of the business agenda today, and the management teams of some of the world's most successful institutions are growing frustrated and concerned. They are concerned because the compliance burden is being ... Wind Mulls Part-Sale of Network to 3 Italia http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18865?11228 Italian telecoms company Wind is reportedly studying the possibility of selling half of its network to Hutchison Whampoa's 3 Italia, the daily MF said. The report adds that Wind is considering spinning off its network, worth about 2 billion euro (US$2.5 billion), into a separate company and subsequently selling a 50% stake to 3... Vodafone Set to Sue Telecom Italia for US$665.5 mil. for Market Abuse http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18862?11228 Vodafone's Italian unit has confirmed press reports that it is to sue Telecom Italia for abusing its market dominance, Dow Jones reports. The company said that it would launch a 525 million-euro (US$665.5 million) claim, accusing its rival of leveraging its strength in other market segments to stifle competition in the mobile sector.... Big Three Mobile Operators Accused of Discriminatory Interconnection Pricing http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18861?11228 Russia's Association 800, which represents regional mobile operators, has accused VimpelCom and its peers Megafon and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) of discriminatory practices in the mobile termination market. Earlier this week the association issued a press release stating that VimpelCom had sent an order to its units that calls from ... Palm Makes European Treo Push http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18858?11228 Palm, along with Vodafone and Microsoft Corporation, is trying to make push e-mail more of a desired mobile feature in Europe. The trio is joining forces to introduce a 3G-compatible Treo device in Europe this year. The new device will run on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, operate on a high-speed 3G/UMTS network and ... Cableco VoIP Tops Telco TDM In Customer Satisfaction http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18855?11228 Consumers who now get their phone service from a cable company -- which means VoIP -- are far more satisfied than those who are getting phone service from traditional local exchange carriers (LECs), according to a new study by J.D. Power and Associates. Out of the six regions rated by J.D. Power in its 2006 Residential ... Good Wins on RIM Turf http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18851?11228 Bearding the mobile messaging lion in its den, Good Technology Inc. said this morning it has signed a reseller agreement with Bell Mobility Inc. , based in Canada, the home of BlackBerry provider Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM). Good also said it has signed a similar deal with Australian mobile operator Telstra Corp. Normally, when ... Cisco, Motorola Vetting VOD http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18848?11228 Cisco Systems and Motorola are looking to move deeper into the cable and digital video market through acquisitions in the video-on-demand (VOD) space, analysts and other sources say. On the heels of last month's Cable-Tec Expo in Denver, where rumors flew wildly on the tradeshow floor about numerous possible deals, three ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 13:26:35 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Telecoms, Cable Operators Add Broadband Subs at Record Rate USTelecom dailyLead July 14, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dZdwfDtutfkBdxKNih TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Telecoms, cable operators add broadband subs at record rate BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * FCC OKs sale of Adelphia * Analysis: Microsoft lagging in digital home initiative * McCaw eyes nationwide wireless broadband network * Verizon's FiOS wins franchises in California, Florida * Welcome mat out for new media at elite summit USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Telecom at your Fingertips -- Updated TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Streaming video falls short for World Cup viewers * Wi-Fi visionary discusses plans for the future VOIP DOWNLOAD * Chinese company said to hack Skype protocol * Cisco finds VoIP vulnerability REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Bush strikes deal over surveillance program * States sue seven chip makers * Gabelli settles civil fraud case arising from FCC auction Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dZdwfDtutfkBdxKNih ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:24:27 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines Reuters News Wire wrote: > The Navy said on Friday that it was trying to determine how personal > information on more than 100,000 Navy and Marine Corp aviators and air > crew wound up on a publicly available Web site for more than six > months. > In a fresh case of private information on military personnel being > compromised, the full names and social security numbers of both active > and reserve members appeared on the Naval Safety Center Web site at > http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil last December. > Those affected are believed to include any Navy or Marine Corp aviator > who has served during the past 20 years. > The same information was also disseminated late last year to Navy and > Marine Corps commands on 1,083 program disks mailed out as part of the > service's Web Enabled Safety Program. > The Naval Safety Center found out about the problem and removed the > information from the web site on Thursday, a week after the recovery > of a stolen Veterans Affairs Department laptop that contained > sensitive information on more than 26 million U.S. military veterans > and service members. > The center is now recalling the mailed program disks. > As in the case of the Veterans Affairs laptop, the Navy said there was > no evidence that any of the disseminated data has been used illegally. > But the service is notifying those affected by mail and setting up a > 24-hour call center to handle queries. > Safety center spokeswoman Evelyn Odango said the problem appeared to > be an errant file. > "The information was inadvertently included in a file that was then > posted on the Web," she said. "We found out about it through a Web > site user and it was removed immediately." > Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is this getting to be a bad joke, or > what? Every day or three of late we hear of files which should remain > totally private and confidential somehow making their way into the > public's view, mostly because of thievery of laptops, but now in this > instance, by being put on display on the web. And I suspect if we > used our imaginations, with all sorts of number combinations we could > find even more stuff on the web which should ideally _not_ be on > display. PAT] All confidential information should always be in an encrypted file! - thereoughttobealaw ------------------------------ From: Hudson Leighton Subject: Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery in Cellphone Started House Fire Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 11:57:38 -0500 In article , Mike Hughlett wrote: > http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607130182jul13,1,1195700.s > tory?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed > By Mike Hughlett > Tribune staff reporter > July 13, 2006 > It has the ring of an urban legend: A cell phone blows up and sets > fire to a house. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those people inclined to think that > a fire caused by an exploding battery is 'just another urban legend' > which never has any verifiable source to it, here is an instance where > proof is available: Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2006 Section B, with a > real person named. PAT] There was a recent incident where a Dell laptop went up in flames at a conference in Asia. It's amazing how hot a 9 volt transistor battery gets when it contacts the loose change in your pocket. Energy = Energy Uncontrolled Energy = Bomb ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:05:59 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused benson_james@yahoo.com wrote: > (Switched 56K service). Signaling is accomplished through a "Robbed > Bit" method where bit 8 of each channel's timeslot is "robbed" to > indicate a signaling state in the 6th and 12th frames. Effective > throughput for the A signaling bit (Frame 6) is 666.66 BPS. Effective > throughput for the B signaling bit (Frame 12) is the same (666.66 BPS). > But i cant figure out how they got to 666.66Bps? 8000 samples per second = 8000 bps The "A" or "B" bit is robbed in two frames out of 12, so - 8000 bps * (10/12) = 6666.66 bps 6666.66 bps = 666.66 BPS (Bytes per second), assuming asynchronous ASCII with 8 bit bytes, one start bit, and one stop bit. HTH. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: ranck@vt.edu Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:19:20 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Monty Solomon wrote: > By Tyler B. Reed/ Daily News Staff > "We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal > Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were > to have a notebook. We've had instances of graffiti. We've looked > through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti." Without going into the rights issue, how do they know that the "identical" grafitti in a notebook wasn't something the student copied off of the real grafitti because he thought it was cool. I mean, sure, it's gives them some probable cause to further question, but it's hardly damning evidence by itself. Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:21:41 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Rick Merrill wrote: > Sam Spade wrote: >> The FCC never took jurisdiction over name identification. >> Should they? > Is that you Sam?-) What exactly would the FCC "enforce" if they took > over name id? All the "unavailable" calls I get do not even show the > phone number! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What they could enforce, if they > wished to go to the trouble, would be to insist that all telephone > calls for which name/number delivery was technically possible were > required to give that same information. No more playing around with > it, as telemarketers are inclined to do. PAT] I suspect from the way current VoIP calls are structured that it would be (a) very easy to spoof the number, (b) impossible to enforce upon overseas numbers and (c) too easy to make the number unavailable in the first place. Heck, even the doctor's office number is "unavailble". [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We cannot do anything about international phone calls short of some kind of enforceable treaty between nations. But the doctor's office number would not be unavailable if there was a law with strong teeth in it saying the correct number had to be given out when available. I do know that in my own situation, since about a year ago when I had 'reject anonymous calls' (*77) added to my features here, my phone has rung a lot less than before. All that 'reject anonymous calls' does is if the caller uses *67 when dialing my number (or has his line set up to go anonymous) his call does not get through here. I do not think I have missed any calls I felt like receiving anyway. 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 #261 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 14 21:47:43 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3087D219E; Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:47:43 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #262 Message-Id: <20060715014743.3087D219E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:47:43 -0400 (EDT) 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, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:50:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 262 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson IMF Warns of Fake Emails Using its Name (Reuters News Wire) Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application (Mark Hachman) Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused (James Carlson) Re: NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers (DLR) Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) (DLR) Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (DevilsPGD) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines (Clark W. Griswold) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (DLR) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Reuters News Wire Subject: IMF Warns of Fake Emails Using its Name Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:14:39 -0500 The International Monetary Fund on Friday warned of a jump in the number of fraudulent e-mails and communications claiming to be from or affiliated with the Washington-based multilateral lender. There has been an apparent spike in such messages recently involving people in the United States targeting recent immigrants and people in cities, an IMF official said. The IMF said U.S. authorities have been informed. The scams range from "phishing" attacks where the names of IMF officials are misused to deceive recipients into disclosing personal financial information to "spoofing" in which a fake IMF Web site was created with false contact details to mislead potential users, the fund said. "The IMF does not send any unsolicited business communications to individuals," a fund statement said. "The IMF does not operate through other agents nor endorse the activities of any bank, financial institution, or other public or private agency." 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Mark Hachman Subject: Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 20:19:18 -0500 Mark Hachman - ExtremeTech and Natali Del Conte - PC Magazine If you've heard of Microsoft Private Folder 1.0, forget it. As of 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, it no longer exists. Microsoft quietly added the free encryption utility earlier this month, and then just as quietly deleted it. The utility allowed users to encrypt and store files inside a private folder. "Private Folder 1.0 was designed as a benefit for customers running genuine Windows," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "However, we received feedback about concerns around manageability, data recovery and encryption, and based on that feedback we are removing the application." While it lasted, the software created a "My Private Folder" on a user's desktop by installing a Private Folder Service. Inside the folder, files were apparently encrypted and locked with a password. The problem was that the password assigned to the folder was binding so losing or forgetting it locked users out of their data permanently. "There are lots of passwords out there and with this, if you forget it then there was no way to get back into it," said the Microsoft spokesperson. One of the issues that also puzzled consumers was that the feature was remarkably similar to an existing option, where consumers could right-click a folder and select a "Sharing and Security" option. That allowed a user to manually add a password to a folder and protect users from using it. Microsoft said that the utility was designed as an "extra" or reward for installing the WGA service. Other extras included Windows Defender, an anti-spyware services, which also requires installation of the WGA service. Microsoft has no plans to fix or rethink the concerns that caused them to scrap the program, the spokeswoman said. The company is simply removing the application with no plans to re-release at a future date. PCMag Says... [Editor's Note: This was written when Private Folder was live, obviously.] I was afraid it would be just a pretty user interface for one of the many folder-encryption possibilities already present in Windows. It's more than that - it runs a service in the background to allow encryption/decryption, and it pushes you to use a strong password. Looks like you can't change the password ex post facto, so make it good. I'm not terribly impressed. Right after I installed the Private Folder service my system slowed to a crawl, with over 90% of CPU usage devoted to svchost.exe (meaning *some* service was hogging the CPU). And when I uninstalled it, the CPU-hogging stopped. Coincidence? -- Neil Rubenking Copyright 2006 Ziff Davis Inc. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused Organization: Sun Microsystems From: James Carlson Date: 14 Jul 2006 16:29:40 -0400 benson_james@yahoo.com writes: > But i cant figure out how they got to 666.66Bps? It's 8000/12 -- there are 12 193-bit frames in a superframe. In other words, there's a repeating pattern of length 12 in that 8th bit. You get 8000 samples per second, and the whole pattern repeats every 12 samples, or 666.667 bits per second. James Carlson, KISS Network Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:32:20 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers Danny Burstein wrote: > " Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today filed a federal lawsuit > charging leading manufacturers of computer memory chips with > price-fixing. > " New York's lawsuit charges that beginning in approximately 1998, the > chip manufacturers made a secret agreement to raise the prices of > their memory chips, known in the industry as 'dynamic random access > memory chips' or 'DRAM.' DRAM chips are used to hold data and > temporary instructions available for quick access while the computer > or other digital product is in use. Many of the chips are sold to > computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment > manufacturers or 'OEMs,' for use in computers and other products... > rest: > http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2006/jul/jul13b_06.html Couldn't be that the heads of these billion dollar companies all quit acting stupid and decided to make a profit on less sales than try an continually grow market share while loosing money. Noooo. Spitzer is too smart to go after an industry loosing money and tell them it's illegal to raise prices. Open non-monopolistic markets do always mean lower prices. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:44:47 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Back to Being a Luddite (Oh Well) hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: >> Excuse me, but throwing RAM at a problem caused by poorly written crap >> simply leads to more poorly written crap. In 3 years, you'd be writing >> "I wouldn't even try to run Vista 2010 Pro with less than 128GB of RAM, >> and generally prefer 1TB." > Your statement is very true and people will indeed be saying what you > wrote. But what are we consumers supposed to do about it? What can we > do about it? Not a damn thing! Heck, I come from a world where we ran > an entire hospital on a mainframe with all of 128K with a 16K operating > system. It blows my mind that 'core' memory is so cheap today we > measure it in gigabytes, but it annoys me that people bloat up > everything to milk it. I used to develop an application for a mini-computer. It ran in an 8K program space with about triple that for the OS. We did a lot. We really did. But we were obviously running out of steam after about 6 years and after about 10 years the system got retired. People just didn't want to buy 24x80 glass CRTs when the competition was giving the color graphics. We had letter writing where you embedded the format codes, the competition had DOS then Windows WordPerfect. Word didn't really get rolling until later. And to be honest I doubt we'd be able to even make the system work any more. We were in the insurance industry. I'd bet that the legal (both law and lawsuit avoidance) data issues and logic would make it impossible for my application or the hospital's to operate. Now that computers are more powerful, Legislatures no longer seem to care about the cost of implementing things. Courts also. I've programed payroll systems. Back in the later 70s. I don't even want to consider it today. Way too complicated. Some studies have come to the conclusion that the insurance processing costs now eat up 1/2 or more of the medical system. At least for non-invasive surgical issues. Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: > In article , jmeissen@aracnet.com > says: >> In article , Gene S. Berkowitz >> wrote: >>> I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5 >>> PCs are behind a router. I have zero infections on any of the PCs I >>> have running at home. >> If you don't run a virus checker, how do you know? > Because my systems operate the same as when I initially set them up, I > periodically monitor my ethernet traffic for unusual activity, and I > don't have crashes, pop-ups, or other trouble. >> That's not just foolish, it's stupid. There are free AV products out >> there, some of them very good. I use Avast! on all of my home PC's. > Honestly, when was the last time you ACTUALLY had a virus infect or > try to infect your system? The virus threat is vastly over-reported, > with the big numbers coming from single strains infecting large > corporate networks. I run some networks for some small businesses and I have my own mail server in my home office. I get to see a lot. Plus I have some friends who work on computer security at the NSA level. Every IP address on the planet is under attack. Period. End of discussion. So any computer not connected to the net via a NAT router is asking for trouble when just sitting there. If you have to be exposed as in a dial up situation or as a server had better have protection running all the time. And even a NAT router doesn't stop web surfing injected things or viruses in emails. My new local pool president doesn't understand technology but he uses his computer a lot. He doesn't see the point of mailing lists so he emails the entire pool membership and doesn't BCC the list most of the time. I got a real spike in virus infected emails just after his first email like this and it continues 6 months later. Plus my mail server got a spike in attacks on the domains in my email addresses. Just because you don't see the attacks, doesn't mean they are not happening. Your ISP is killing off most of them for you and trying to figure out how to do it and stay in business. >>> That said, I don't download from sites I don't >>> trust, I don't use IE or Outlook, and I delete "Hey, Take a Look at >>> This" emails. Basically, the precautions that anyone should take >>> (don't eat found food, don't have unprotected sex with multiple >>> partners, don't leave your keys in the ignition) metaphorically apply >>> to the internet. Yes but the bad guys are walking down the street at night throwing bricks through windows. And now walking up your driveway. But on the computer they aren't leaving piles of broken glass as a indication of some thing's up. >>> The real performance killers are not evil spyware; it's cluttering up >>> your PC with "trusted" conveniences like RealPlayer, QuickTime, and >>> CD- recorder "helpers" that sit in your system tray consuming memory >>> and CPU cycles waiting for you to finally play a stream or burn a CD. >> While I agree that they're unnecessary and mostly pointless, the >> system tray apps don't consume cycles. They do consume memory, >> however. Removing them helps, but "modern" OSes consume enough that >> taking that step isn't much by itself. Memory is currently cheap. You >> can significantly improve performance just by adding memory. I >> wouldn't even try to run XP with less than 512M of RAM, and generally >> prefer 1GB. > Excuse me, but throwing RAM at a problem caused by poorly written crap > simply leads to more poorly written crap. In 3 years, you'd be writing > "I wouldn't even try to run Vista 2010 Pro with less than 128GB of RAM, > and generally prefer 1TB." My wife likes her automatic door locks, power windows, fuel injection, cruise control, etc ... So do I, I just think I could live without them easier. My grandfather's generation thought 2nd gear on a 3 speed manual transmission was a foolish waste of money. :) As someone who's written code for small memory foot prints, there becomes a point where spending an extra 2 years to elegantly code something to cut the memory usage in half will put you out of business. At one point during a major update to our package we got blunt with management. And they realized it was cheaper to give away some hardware than to try and write perfect code to fit into the same foot print we were using for the previous 5 years. Steve Job's is credited with saving Apple. But in many ways he caused the problem. The early culture at Apple and Mac was to be insanely great and not throw equipment at issues when a prefect piece of software could do the job with less. The problem was that no software is anywhere near perfect and to plan for it to be so was a disaster. Inadequate networking, disk speeds, sound ports, etc... all were very limiting for the 1/2 of the Macs life. Now those issues are mostly gone and Macs are selling much better than in a long time. But you need to have a 100 gig disk drive and a gig or more of ram to make them sing. Literally. :) None of this excuses the crude that people accept from MS. I don't blame MS. It's the strategy that won the platform wars for them. The gave people what they wanted. Lots of buggy features, lots of revisions, etc ... Now they and we are paying the price. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:36:06 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message Rick Merrill wrote: > Even the old advice not to give out info unless you placed the call is > now obsolete because the crooks are sending fake phone numbers via > email. Not at all, you just need to call a known-good number. You don't just dial any number you're given, but rather, you need to dial the number on the back of your bank card to contact your bank. Some mistakes are too fun to make only once. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:08:30 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Rick Merrill wrote: > I suspect from the way current VoIP calls are structured that it would be > (a) very easy to spoof the number, > (b) impossible to enforce upon overseas numbers and > (c) too easy to make the number unavailable in the first place. Heck, > even the doctor's office number is "unavailble". This is all false. Why do we have this same discussion over and over again every few months? Networks should not mark calling party identification received from customers as "network provided" in the resulting ISUP Initial Address Message. In cases in which the customer-provided number cannot be directly verified to be billed to the party originating the call, it should be *replaced* in the IAM with the Billing Telephone Number for the originating party, which is a _required_ component of the IAM. The FCC could require this at the drop of a hat, and it could be complied with -- imperfectly at first, much better very quickly -- with the flick of a switch. Network operators should be required to disconnect customers who feed bogus customer-provided numbers. Certainly any network providing customer-provided numbers and claiming them to be network-provided should be disconnected by all of their peers. 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: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:29:21 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Rick Merrill wrote: > thereoughttobealaw Especially regarding people who quote an entire 48 line post to add 9 words and moderators who approve such posts. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:49:00 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting you wrote about this today >> when the outside temperature here in Independence reached 106 degrees; >> the hottest for this year so far. My air-conditioning has been running >> almost continuously for the past two days. I do not know how I >> survived back in the 1950-60s when the places I worked did not have >> a/c nor did I have it at home until around 1968 or so. PAT] > It's warm and humid around here too, which is what prompted me to write > the note. > I don't know how working people survived without air conditioning, > especially 40 years ago when people had to wear much more clothing at > work than they do now -- men had to wear suits and long sleeved shirts > (albeit lightweight material), women full dresses. Today young women > come to work dressed for the beach, pushing the envelope a little too > much for most employers. Many men don't wear ties. I believe many Yep. My wife calls it the "nude look". She works in a call center. It got so distracting they had to implement rules. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I worked at University of Chicago > in the phone room we had overhead ceiling fans which would spin around > every few feet up and down the room. They did not do much good, IMO. > PAT] While you may not have felt it directly, any time someone is sweating, moving the air around them will have an A/C effect as it evaporates the sweat. Until the humidity gets into the 90's. Then you don't get enough evaporation to matter. Which is why you really don't FEEL as hot in a dry heat like Las Vegas at 110 vs Miami at 95. Just have lots of water around. :) ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #262 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 16 01:20:39 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2388A21EA; Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:20:38 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #263 Message-Id: <20060716052038.2388A21EA@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:20:38 -0400 (EDT) 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, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 16 Jul 2006 01:22:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 263 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Do the Feds Owe You a BIG Refund on Your Phone Bill? (Anders Mikkelsen) Headgear - Bluetooth Headset (Monty Solomon) 1/2 U or Smaller Rack Cable Organizer (Will) Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (crankbuster) Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (Rick Merrill) Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Sam Spade) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Rick Merrill) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Robert Bonomi) Re: NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers (DLR) Re: Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application (Jack Hamilton) Re: Elegy (sic) For the Video Store (mc) Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines (Rick Merrill) Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused (Robert Bonomi) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Robert Bonomi) Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... (Ed) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Anders Mikkelsen Subject: Do the Feds Owe You a BIG Refund on Your Phone Bill? Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:59:11 -0500 Do the Feds Owe You 9% of Your Long Distance Bill? by Anders Mikkelsen Taxes and surcharges are responsible for a huge portion of monthly telecom bills paid in the US. They amount to about 50% of the cost of a local line, and less for other services. While presumably not considered a sin, telecom is taxed and regulated heavily like gambling, liquor, and cigarettes, driving up the costs of service. Telecom companies are huge tax collectors for the local, state, and federal government. Fortunately taxes are now supposed to go down for Long Distance. Amazingly this is because the IRS now has to follow the letter of the law, and can no longer collect the Federal Excise Tax of 3% on the per minute long distance charges sold today. They may even owe you money. This is the official announcement. The Federal Excise Tax was created in 1898 to tax the new luxury of phone service and help finance the Spanish American War. While that war was soon over, the tax remained. When the law was re-written in 1965 a distinction was made between local and toll services (and teletypewriter exchange services). The tax applied to toll calls, and toll calls were defined as being based on time and distance, not time or distance. In 1965 to call New Jersey from New York was cheaper than calling California. All calls were toll calls, and the distance to California made the call expensive. Today 'toll calls' don't exist as no one is charged based on the distance. Clearly if no one is making calls based on time and distance, there are no toll calls therefore there is no revenue to tax. [The law really is that simple.] Naturally, the IRS chose to tax all long distance calls, even ones that weren't toll calls. The IRS has been challenged in court repeatedly and for a long time. Apparently the IRS wanted to argue that the law was clearly intended to tax all long distance at three percent, regardless of how it was worded. Since this clearly violated the letter of the law, it took many years for Treasury to acknowledge the court decisions ruling against the IRS. The bottom line is that you, the long-suffering taxpayer, should no longer be charged for the 3% Federal Excise Tax on Long Distance starting July 31st. Sadly the local Federal Excise Tax stays for now. It is unclear, but it probably stays on all non-per-minute charges related to cell phones, e.g. bundled minutes. In addition the IRS will also refund you on three years of taxes paid from March 2003 to July 2006. That could be 9% of your annual long distance bill. Unfortunately you have to ask for a refund, and prove you paid the taxes. The IRS may give a token $50 or so in a refund to those unwilling to document their tax expenditures. There is no reason to think the telecom companies that collected the taxes will collect them back for their customers. However you should make sure they don't collect the tax in the future, saving 3% a year. Ironically, for most people long distance is going down to zero with the proliferation of cell phones, calling cards, voip, and cheaper long distance plans. Long Distance is comparatively less regulated, so the market has a chance to work its magic. My clients can pay a fraction of their old rates, and even calling China can be dirt cheap. This means most people are facing lower bills regardless. However if you have high long distance bills, especially international calls, it would be worth trying to get a refund. The only reason why this has happened is because a bunch of companies fought for this in court. Those companies who did fight in court have apparently still not received their money. Why did they fight? Well, even firms with 500 employees can spend tens of thousands a month on telecom, and $200,000 a year on long distance. The Federal Excise Tax just for their long distance can be six thousand dollars, and the refund eighteen thousand. If you have five thousand or fifty thousand employees the savings would be orders of magnitude higher, justifying paying a lawyer to point out the letter of the law. While this isn't a huge change, it is always nice to know that taxes are not always permanent. Anders Mikkelsen is a cost management consultant in New York City. Copyright 2006 LewRockwell.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 00:08:47 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Headgear - Bluetooth Headset By ROB WALKER The New York Times Bluetooth Headset Here's how new tech innovations are supposed to spread: First, clever young people adopt them, because that's what clever young people are hard-wired to do. Later, everybody else catches on, and eventually even the middle-aged golf-course guy gets it. Think of text messaging or MP3 players. Now think of Bluetooth-enabled wireless-phone headsets. They sound pretty techie, and according to a recent report by Strategy Analytics, a research-and-consulting firm, sales of Bluetooth headsets nearly tripled in 2005, to 33 million units around the world. But this time the pattern looks a little different: Golf Course Guy has led the way. Bluetooth-enabled headsets hook over the ear, interact wirelessly with a phone tucked away in a pocket or a bag and thus allow easier "hands free" use. Put another way, they're little gizmos that appear to be welded to the heads of people who seem to be talking to themselves. Hands-free-ness sounds ideal for drivers, but the devices can increasingly be seen on the heads of people grocery shopping, strolling along a quiet block of brownstones or - perhaps especially - loitering near Cinnabon outlets in airports. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/magazine/16wwln_consumed.html?ex=1310702400&en=86da46a023da70da&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: Will Subject: 1/2 U or Smaller Rack Cable Organizer Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:38:45 -0700 I'm looking for an extremely short 1/2 U (or smaller) cable organizer that I can use with 16 port ethernet switches. I have a lot of these associated with different segments on a firewall, and I really have a shortage of rack space. Does anyone make such a thing? I have many 1U organizers, and I really do need 1/2 U. Will ------------------------------ From: crankbuster Subject: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: 15 Jul 2006 06:28:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can anybody from India access any Yahoo! Geocities websites? For example try http://www.geocities.com/lupeliti/ or any other geocities website you know of. As far as we know, various ISP's from Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta are unable to connect to any geocities websites for the past week or so. Does anybody know what the problem is? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:09:59 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You DevilsPGD wrote: > In message Rick Merrill > wrote: >> Even the old advice not to give out info unless you placed the call is >> now obsolete because the crooks are sending fake phone numbers via >> email. > Not at all, you just need to call a known-good number. You don't just > dial any number you're given, but rather, you need to dial the number > on the back of your bank card to contact your bank. That is true. What I wanted to point out is that 'human engineered' phish mail are warning people of exactly THAT and providing (so conveniently) the number of your Chase Bank HQ to phone! (that number is of course manned by scammers ). Using the number on the back of your bank card is a good way to direct people. > Some mistakes are too fun to make only once. example?-) ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:20:39 EDT Subject: Re: Caller ID Scammers Plan to do a Number on You In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2006 16:36:06 -0500, DevilsPGD writes: > Not at all, you just need to call a known-good number. You don't just > dial any number you're given, but rather, you need to dial the number > on the back of your bank card to contact your bank. Why do we get less credulous when we have fancier technology. Many years ago, after I bought the house I still live in, a year or two later I got a call from a person representing himself as an IRS agent auditing the person who sold me the house and wanted to know what my records showed I paid for the house. I told him I'd have to look up my records and call him back. He gave me his phone number (a Centrex number). I found the records but I did not call him back on the Centrex number. I looked up the main number for the local IRS office in the phone book, called that, and asked for him by name, not by number. The PBX attendant found his number and rang him. She also told me his extension number -- the same last four digits as the Centrex number. This confirmed that he was indeed an IRS employee and that he had given me a good number. Something I was not willing to take just on his representation over the telephone. So now with technology it seems people do not take even the most basic precautions. At that time there was no caller ID, no internet, hardly any computers and no one expected a private citizen to have a fax. Just POTS. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 02:10:28 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Sam Spade: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Trouble was, Bell's definition of > 'necessary' was not like that of many people. Good point. Like someone mention, until vacuum tube carrier equipment came along there was probably no need to provide A/C for SxS, Panel, and XBAR equipment. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Date: 15 Jul 2006 11:45:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Garrett Wollman wrote: > I've been in one of the vent shafts at the Empire State Building, and > I've seen the top of one at Boston's Prudential Tower. After central > air was installed at Empire, the vent shafts gained a new purpose as > communications corridors, particularly connecting the broadcast > facilities on the 79th, 80th, 81st, 84th, and 85th floors. In Chicago, there were a large series of narrow tunnels that carried freight (mostly coal). Because tunnel air was cool, some large buildings bought the air for internal use. The tunnels were abandoned in the early 1950s (IIRC). In more recent years they have been used for utility conduits. I think the original purpose of the tunnel but never used was a telephone cable vaults. A few years ago one of the tunnels was breeched by a contractor which caused tremendous flood damage. The Central Electric Railfan's Association has a book on the tunnels. As to older buildings being more "ventilation friendly" that was true to an extent. None of my public schools had air conditioning. On some spring and fall days the weather could be very hot (90) and the classrooms would be pretty miserable (depending on sun exposure). Fans would've been a big help. I noticed today some classrooms have been retrofitted with window a/c units in all the schools I attended. Initially a/c was installed mostly to protect equipment or improve industrial processes, not to make people more comfortable. The army installed A/C in the assembling hut on Tinian for the Manhattan Project work. That in itself attracted great attention to a project that was desperately trying to keep a low profile. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:05:52 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > In article , > Rick Merrill wrote: >> I suspect from the way current VoIP calls are structured that it would be >> (a) very easy to spoof the number, >> (b) impossible to enforce upon overseas numbers and >> (c) too easy to make the number unavailable in the first place. Heck, >> even the doctor's office number is "unavailble". > This is all false. Why do we have this same discussion over and over > again every few months? Well, you don't say where you think you got your information. I got mine from the United States Postal Inspectors as far as #1 goes. #2 is only partially true, I admit: in some cases the inspectors are able to extradite the perps, e.g. from Canada. #3 is my personal observation. So I conclude that your knowledge of the above is faulty and your statement doubious. I do, however, agree with the following ... > Networks should not mark calling party identification received from > customers as "network provided" in the resulting ISUP Initial Address > Message. In cases in which the customer-provided number cannot be > directly verified to be billed to the party originating the call, it > should be *replaced* in the IAM with the Billing Telephone Number for > the originating party, which is a _required_ component of the IAM. > The FCC could require this at the drop of a hat, and it could be > complied with -- imperfectly at first, much better very quickly -- > with the flick of a switch. You exagerate: it would require some 30 small steps to comply AND it would cost $. > Network operators should be required to disconnect customers who feed > bogus customer-provided numbers. Certainly any network providing > customer-provided numbers and claiming them to be network-provided > should be disconnected by all of their peers. With voice over IP there is no "connection" in the classic sense; therefore it is very difficult to determine if a number is a relay or not, i.e. if it is "bogus". > 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 I expect you to live up to your byline ;-) ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 03:07:24 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Rick Merrill wrote: > Sam Spade wrote: >> The FCC never took jurisdiction over name identification. >> Should they? > Is that you Sam?-) What exactly would the FCC "enforce" if they took > over name id? All the "unavailable" calls I get do not even show the > phone number! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What they could enforce, if they > wished to go to the trouble, would be to insist that all telephone > calls for which name/number delivery was technically possible were > required to give that same information. No more playing around with > it, as telemarketers are inclined to do. PAT] The FTC already _does_ require telemarketers to provide accurate caller ID info. AND they've got bigger fining authority than the FCC on such matters. Get anything other than 'not available', or accurate ID info -- file a complaint with the FTC. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:58:55 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYS AG Spitzer Again; Against Price Fixing Chip Makers DLR wrote: > Danny Burstein wrote: >> " Attorney General Eliot Spitzer today filed a federal lawsuit >> charging leading manufacturers of computer memory chips with >> price-fixing. >> " New York's lawsuit charges that beginning in approximately 1998, the >> chip manufacturers made a secret agreement to raise the prices of >> their memory chips, known in the industry as 'dynamic random access >> memory chips' or 'DRAM.' DRAM chips are used to hold data and >> temporary instructions available for quick access while the computer >> or other digital product is in use. Many of the chips are sold to >> computer manufacturers, known in the industry as original equipment >> manufacturers or 'OEMs,' for use in computers and other products... >> rest: >> http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2006/jul/jul13b_06.html > Couldn't be that the heads of these billion dollar companies all quit > acting stupid and decided to make a profit on less sales than try an > continually grow market share while loosing money. > Noooo. Spitzer is too smart to go after an industry loosing money and > tell them it's illegal to raise prices. > Open non-monopolistic markets do always mean lower prices. Argh. Open non-monopolistic markets do NOT always mean lower prices. ^^^ ------------------------------ From: Jack Hamilton Subject: Re: Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 21:00:47 -0700 Organization: Copyright (c) 2006 by Jack Hamilton. Reply-To: jfh@acm.org Mark Hachman wrote: > Mark Hachman - ExtremeTech and Natali Del Conte - PC Magazine > If you've heard of Microsoft Private Folder 1.0, forget it. As of 2:30 > p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, it no longer exists. > Microsoft quietly added the free encryption utility earlier this > month, and then just as quietly deleted it. The utility allowed users > to encrypt and store files inside a private folder. I would trust TrueCrypt, an open source encryption tool, much more readily than I would trust something from Microsoft. TrueCrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/ has gotten rave reviews, and in my limited experience with it seems to be one of those rare programs that just does the right thing. > "Private Folder 1.0 was designed as a benefit for customers running > genuine Windows," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a > statement. "However, we received feedback about concerns around > manageability, data recovery and encryption, and based on that > feedback we are removing the application." > While it lasted, the software created a "My Private Folder" on a > user's desktop by installing a Private Folder Service. Inside the > folder, files were apparently encrypted and locked with a password. > The problem was that the password assigned to the folder was binding > so losing or forgetting it locked users out of their data permanently. > "There are lots of passwords out there and with this, if you forget it > then there was no way to get back into it," said the Microsoft > spokesperson. If you really want cryptography, that's the way it has to work. What, you want trap doors? [...] > PCMag Says... > [Editor's Note: This was written when Private Folder was live, > obviously.] I was afraid it would be just a pretty user interface for > one of the many folder-encryption possibilities already present in > Windows. It's more than that - it runs a service in the background to > allow encryption/decryption, and it pushes you to use a strong > password. Looks like you can't change the password ex post facto, so > make it good. I'm not terribly impressed. > Right after I installed the Private Folder service my system slowed to > a crawl, with over 90% of CPU usage devoted to svchost.exe (meaning > *some* service was hogging the CPU). And when I uninstalled it, the > CPU-hogging stopped. Coincidence? -- Neil Rubenking Right now there are 5 instances of svchost running on my computer. I have no idea what any of them are doing ot what started them. Jack Hamilton jfh@acm.org Children of the future age, Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time Love, sweet love, was thought a crime. -Blake ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Elegy (sic) For the Video Store Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 01:27:09 -0400 I don't know what this is all about. A eulogy is indeed a funeral oration, but an elegy is also an act of mourning, a poetic one (from Greek elegos, mournful song). The American Heritage Dictionary says this: elegy: 1. A poem composed in elegiac couplets. 2a. A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person. b. Something resembling such a poem or song. 3. (Music) A composition that is melancholy or pensive in tone. In general, a eulogy is also an elegy (definition 2b). ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 10:07:10 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines Clark W. Griswold wrote: > Rick Merrill wrote: >> thereoughttobealaw > Especially regarding people who quote an entire 48 line post to add 9 > words and moderators who approve such posts. I do not know if you are a troll, so I will just mention that other people complain when posts are trimmed as you suggest. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Superframing and ESF ... A Little Confused Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 02:45:09 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Hi folks, I could really do with some help with something. > I'm studying telecoms in particular T1 circuits. Currently its on about > superframing and Extended Superframing. > I've been reading something: > http://telecom.tbi.net/t1_frm.html > D4 Voice and Data Signaling > The transport of signaling states is required in Switched voice or data > (Switched 56K service). Signaling is accomplished through a "Robbed > Bit" method where bit 8 of each channel's timeslot is "robbed" to > indicate a signaling state in the 6th and 12th frames. Effective > throughput for the A signaling bit (Frame 6) is 666.66 BPS. Effective > throughput for the B signaling bit (Frame 12) is the same (666.66 BPS). > But i cant figure out how they got to 666.66Bps? > Looking at the diagram on the webpage, the least significant bit in > all channels has the last bit robbed, for frames 6 and 12, so in every > superframe thats sent, thats 24 bits, multiply that by 8000 and i get > 192Kbps???? Where am i going wrong. > Could someone explain this to me. > Thanks in advance. How many times per second, on each channel, does 'frame 6' occur? with one bit of that frame being used for 'A' signalling, the bit rate for that bit is the same as the frequency of that frame. I don't know where you got that 8000 multiplier from, but it is _way_ wrong. A superframe has _12_ frames, each containing 1 sample from each channel it is 12x (192+1) bits long. A superframe passes once every 12/8000 second. this means that there are 666.66666 ... superframes per second.`o Thus, there is 1 bit per superframe *per*channel* used for 'A' signalling, and 1 bit per superframe *per channel* used for 'B' signalling. 666.666666 ... superframes /second means 666.6666 ... 'A' bits *per*channel* per second and a similar number of 'B' bits/second multiplied by 24 channels, gives 16,000 'A' bits/second aggregate, and the same for the 'B' bits. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 02:55:09 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Rick Merrill wrote: > Monty Solomon wrote: >> By Tyler B. Reed/ Daily News Staff >> FRAMINGHAM -- High school administrators under a new policy are >> claiming the right to snatch information stored in students' cell >> phones when they search for drugs or stolen property at school. >> The change clarifies the school's search and seizure policy, adding >> cell phones to the list of places school officials can snoop if they >> suspect a student has contraband. >> Federal law says school officials need only "reasonable suspicion" of >> the presence of drugs or stolen goods to conduct searches. >> "We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal >> Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were >> to have a notebook. We've had instances of graffiti. We've looked >> through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti." > That's very interesting: it implies that the searchers already know the > phone number of the dealers, or student dealers. Or students are dumb enough (wanna bet that they're not that dumb? you _will_ lose! :) to stick 'notes' about prices, availability,etc. next to a number. OR that there's a name with the number, and the searchers know _names_ of dealers. Or the 'text message' offers. In article , wrote: > Without going into the rights issue, how do they know that the > "identical" grafitti in a notebook wasn't something the student copied > off of the real grafitti because he thought it was cool. I mean, > sure, it's gives them some probable cause to further question, but > it's hardly damning evidence by itself. > Bill Ranck > Blacksburg, Va. MOST graffiti has elements that are as unique as a (traditional) artist's brush-strokes. It's really not terribly difficult to match up the 'artist' behind several pieces of 'street' art. ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: A New Way around the Do Not Call Lists ... Date: 15 Jul 2006 20:22:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Calendars are pretty inoffensive though even sent through the mail. Usually you can get them from Real Estate Agents or some retailer that you have patronized lately. Other "junk mail" is just "tiring". ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #263 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 16 18:51:09 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B13EA21E6; Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:51:08 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #264 Message-Id: <20060716225108.B13EA21E6@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 18:51:08 -0400 (EDT) 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, 16 Jul 2006 18:53:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 264 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Bogus Advertising Clicks Continue to Rise (Michael Liedtke, AP) No Quick Fix For Government Data Security (Joel Rothstein, Reuters) You Tube Now at the 100 Million Users Daily Mark (Reuters News Wire) Re: 1/2 U or Smaller Rack Cable Organizer (Al Dykes) Re: Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application (JE Durbin) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Thor Lancelot Simon) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:12:50 -0500 From: Michael Liedtke Subject: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Swindlers have stepped up their effort to fleece millions of dollars from online advertisers who use lucrative marketing networks run by Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. according to a quarterly report to be released Monday. The sales referrals generated by clicks on the brief advertising links popularized by the two Internet powerhouses are a sham 14.1 percent of the time, based on information collected from 1,300 online marketers. That's up from a click fraud rate of 13.7 percent three months ago, according to Click Forensics, a San Antonio-based consulting service that compiles the index. The statistics jibe with other data asserting advertisers are paying a significant sum to Google, Yahoo and their partner Web sites for phantom shoppers even as more resources are devoted to thwarting scammers. A recently released survey of 407 online advertisers by market research firm Outsell Inc. estimated click fraud cost advertisers $800 million last year. Click fraud is a highly sensitive subject for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo because it raises doubts about the trustworthiness of the advertising model that drives their profits and stock prices. Google, Yahoo and partner Web sites get paid each time someone clicks on advertising links usually displayed at the top and on the side of Web pages. Advertisers pay the commission even when the click doesn't produce a sale, a system that inspired bilking schemes. The motives for click fraud vary. Most often, Web site owners repeatedly click the ads on their own sites to generate money for themselves. In other cases, advertisers target the ads of their rivals to drain their marketing budgets. As click fraud becomes more prevalent and attracts more media attention, advertisers are becoming more aggressive about demanding refunds and better protection, said Tom Cuthbert, Click Forensics' president. "Advertisers aren't satisfied with the status quo," he said. "They don't want to keep losing sleep at night wondering how much money they are losing to click fraud." Reflecting those concerns, about 900 advertisers have joined Click Forensics' anti-fraud network during the past three months. Google and Yahoo are better at weeding out click fraud than smaller Web sites, but Click Forensics still concluded both companies are being hard hit. About 12.8 percent of the clicks on ads served up by Google and Yahoo are deceptive, up from 12.1 percent three months ago. Cuthbert said Google and Yahoo may be identifying some of those fraudulent clicks and removing fees from advertisers' bills. Both companies are tightlipped about how they monitor for click fraud, another factor that has frustrated some advertisers that want more transparency. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged click fraud remains an ongoing headache, but disputed the notion that the problem is becoming more prevalent. "Smart people are trying to break the law, but we have even smarter people trying to prevent it," Schmidt said during an interview at a conference that concluded Sunday in Idaho. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel declined to discuss the latest data on click fraud, saying he intended to address the issue Tuesday when the company is scheduled to release its second-quarter earnings. "We will be very proactive about it," Semel said during the same Idaho conference. Both Google and Yahoo have agreed to settle class-action lawsuits to limit their potential liability for past click fraud. If approved, the two settlements would address any click fraud that occurred amid more than $22 billion of ad spending. A two-day court hearing on Google's offer to pay up to $90 million in refunds and attorney fees is scheduled to begin July 24 in an Arkansas court. Yahoo's proposed settlement, which doesn't limit how much the company might pay, isn't scheduled to be reviewed in a Los Angeles federal court until late this year. 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 each day please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:10:33 -0500 From: Joel Rothstein Subject: No Quick Fix For Government Data Security By Joel Rothstein The White House has set an early August deadline for government agencies to encrypt sensitive data after the embarrassing theft of millions of veterans' personal information, but experts warn a quick technology fix will not cure security problems. While encryption and other security technology can help, slipshod handling of data and equipment, poor training and the slow moving government bureaucracy are seen as the main causes of vulnerability. "The White House directive is a good first step, but we're concerned about the time frame," said John Dasher, director of product management at encryption software maker PGP Corp. "Do they have funds budgeted and allocated? These are the nuts and bolts of the procurement process." Companies, including PGP, are eager to sell existing encryption and other security software to the government that could be deployed in a matter of weeks. But several executives interviewed by Reuters said agencies must first consider basic concepts of data security before buying software. "I'll bet many organizations can't even tell you where sensitive data is," said Chris Voice, chief technology officer at security software maker Entrust Inc.. "Not only should certain data be stored and encrypted properly, but certain people should not have access to it to begin with it." With personal data, such as social security numbers and addresses, thieves can open credit card accounts and reek havoc with victims financial lives. PRESSURE TO MEET DEADLINES After calls for Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson to resign in the wake of the stolen laptop incident, agency heads and cabinet secretaries are now hurrying to learn about their own information technology programs. The VA laptop, which was later recovered by police, contained personal data on 26.5 million veterans. And the VA is hardly alone. The government has been embarrassed by a spate of recently disclosed data breaches at the Energy Department, Agriculture Department, FBI, and even the Federal Trade Commission -- the agency responsible for protecting Americans from fraud and identity theft. "Agency executives do not know the value of the data they have in their information technology systems and they take security for granted," said Paul Kurtz, director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) and a former White House computer systems security policy adviser. Cabinet secretaries should insist on being informed of all security breaches, Kurtz said. Government agencies also face an October deadline to comply with a 2004 White House order to adopt secure access cards to protect government buildings. The same access technology is expected to be used to secure information technology as well. Few, if any, agencies outside the Department of Defense are expected to meet that deadline, according to industry sources. Michael Butler, the official in charge of the program at the Pentagon, was recently assigned to the General Services Administration to help other government offices adopt secure access cards offered a more optimistic, if qualified, view. "There are a number of agencies who intend and have systems in test today that are certainly capable of making the date," Butler told Reuters. "There is much to do." IS ENCRYPTION THE ANSWER? Encryption software scrambles computer files to keep data private. One of the major criticisms of encryption technology is that it is difficult for non-technical workers to use. Some question whether the government's mandate to encrypt all data on laptops, Blackberries and other mobile devices is practical. Exceptions are allowed only if approved by deputy cabinet secretaries in writing. "We can't be encrypting and decrypting everything," said Sarah Gates, vice president of identity management for Sun Microsystems Inc. Instead, private companies and government agencies should lock down data and applications on central networks and restrict the use of powerful laptops and hand-held devices that run applications. "We will have to trade some convenience for better security," Gates said. Encryption vendors disagree. But tellingly, their most recent product and marketing efforts have focused on making the software easier for typical computer users to use. "If we don't invest in making encryption technology transparent and easy to use, it will not be used," Entrust's Voice said. "Today we have disk encryption products where users don't have to know it's on their laptop." PGP claims its latest products offer similar ease of use. Regardless of the technology approach, however, experts agree that implementation depends on the sheer will of the government officials involved. "What we're talking about is not rocket science. All of the technology exists today," said Kurtz. "It's about telling the chief information officers to go get it done." 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 17:39:37 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: You Tube Now at 100 Million Videos Daily YouTube serves up 100 mln videos a day YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare. Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise. YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online, the company said. Videos are delivered free on YouTube and the company is still working on developing advertising and other means of generating revenue to support the business. The site specializes in short -- typically 2-minute -- homemade, comic videos created by users. YouTube serves as a quick entertainment break or viewers with broadband computer connections at work or home. News Corp.'s MySpace, the social networking site popular with teens, has a nearly 19 percent share of the market according to Hitwise. Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, Google and AOL each have 3 percent to 5 percent of the video search market. Collectively, these four major Web portals have a smaller share than either YouTube or MySpace. In June, 2.5 billion videos were watched on YouTube, which is based in San Mateo, California and has just over 30 employees. More than 65,000 videos are now uploaded daily to YouTube, up from around 50,000 in May, the company said. YouTube boasts nearly 20 million unique users per month, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, another Internet audience measurement firm. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. ------------------------------ From: adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) Subject: Re: 1/2 U or Smaller Rack Cable Organizer Date: 16 Jul 2006 07:51:21 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. In article , Will wrote: > I'm looking for an extremely short 1/2 U (or smaller) cable organizer > that I can use with 16 port ethernet switches. I have a lot of these > associated with different segments on a firewall, and I really have a > shortage of rack space. Does anyone make such a thing? I have many > 1U organizers, and I really do need 1/2 U. IMO, if it's not in either the Chatsworth or Milestek catalog, it doesn't exist. http://www.milestek.com/ http://www.chatsworth.com/ Doesn't a U/2 strip effectively use as much space as a 1U strip? a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001 ------------------------------ From: JE Durbin Subject: Re: Microsoft Kills Off 'My Private Folder' Application Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 09:14:31 -0700 > Right now there are 5 instances of svchost running on my computer. I > have no idea what any of them are doing ot what started them. Try the free utility "Process Explorer" from http://www.sysinternals.com. It will show what started the instances of svchost on your machine. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 19:18:34 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Rick Merrill wrote: > Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: >> In article , >> Rick Merrill wrote: >>> I suspect from the way current VoIP calls are structured that it would be >>> (a) very easy to spoof the number, >>> (b) impossible to enforce upon overseas numbers and >>> (c) too easy to make the number unavailable in the first place. Heck, >>> even the doctor's office number is "unavailble". >> This is all false. Why do we have this same discussion over and over >> again every few months? > Well, you don't say where you think you got your information. I got it from 10 years of design and analysis experience with the underlying protocols; that it is impossible to "spoof" calling party ID in properly configured SS7 networks whose operators do not configure trunks to _customers_ as if they were trunks to _network equipment_ is simply a matter of fact. As all the interworking standards make clear, any interworking to a protocol which does not differentiate between customer-provided and network-provided calling party identification must either use the supplied number as a customer provided number only, or replace it with the BTN for the trunk. 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 ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V25 #264 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 17 13:24:54 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2F68521EF; Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:24:53 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #265 Message-Id: <20060717172453.2F68521EF@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:24:53 -0400 (EDT) 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 Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:27:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 265 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TelecomDirect News Daily Update July 17, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Hackers/Malware Writers Now Working as a Group (Robert McMillan, IDG) New Very Tiny Wireless Chip from HP (Duncan Martell, Reuters) 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS/Public Safety Chief Metes (Monty Solomon) For Millions of Africans, Cellphones Signal a Change (Monty Solomon) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP (Rick Merrill) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead (Lisa Hancock) Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? (Jim Haynes) Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise (jared) Re: No Quick Fix For Government Data Security (Lisa Hancock) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 17, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:48:52 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 17, 2006 ******************************** Buyer Motivations and Expectations Propel The Market Forward http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18883?11228 The North American managed-services market is expected to grow from $47.3 billion in 2005 to $87.5 billion in 2011, a compounded average growth rate (CAGR) of 10 percent. Globally, the market for managed services topped $129.7 billion in 2005 and is projected to reach $252 billion in 2011 with a CAGR of 12... Breaking Down Walls: How an Open Business Model is Now the Convergence Imperative http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18882?11228 We are looking at a singular juncture in the history of business-a time when technology, content, and distribution are converging at a speed never before seen, and where innovations have fuelled a power shift toward consumers that verges on social revolution. Despite the abundant energy in the convergence of the technology, content, and... Desperately Seeking USF Funds: With DSL Contributions Drying Up in August, FCC Turns to VoIP Providers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18880?11228 BY mid-August, Universal Service Fund (USF) contributions from DSL providers will be a thing of the past. It's a deadline that has had the FCC scrambling to adopt interim policies ensuring the fund has a future.Ironically, the base of contributors was diminished in August 2005 when the FCC deregulated DSL; like cable modem Internet... Algorithm Enhances Mobile Media Management http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18878?11228 As cell phones continue morphing into personal communication/ media player devices, users are beginning to demand products that provide greater control over content. Penn State researchers believe they can help handset makers better address users' content management demands with a fresh math-based approach. The researchers' new... Telefonica to Invest US$12.7 bil. in Latin America http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18876?11228 Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica plans to invest nearly 10 billion euro (US$12.7 billion) by 2009 to increase its penetration in the Latin American mobile telephony market, Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, president of Telefonica International, was quoted as saying by the regional press. Telefonica... Greece: Government to Reduce OTE Stake in 2007, Would Prefer Interest from European Telco http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18874?11228 Greece would like to divest its stakes in telecoms group OTE by 2007 if a European operator indicates interest, Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis has told the financial daily Imerisia in an interview. "The government's intention is to further divest in OTE should there be interest from a European telecoms group to participate ... Three Bids for Third Slovak Mobile Licence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18873?11228 mobilkom Austria, which has assets in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, and Czech provider Radiokomunikace are two of the three players to have bid for Slovakia's third mobile licence. The deadline for the bidding for the 20-year licence for frequencies in the GSM 900, GSM 1800, UMTS and FS 29 frequency bands was Friday (14... Broadcom Plans Restatement http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18870?11228 Broadcom's need to correct accounting missteps related to employee stock-option grants is prompting the company to restate its financial results for full-years 2000 to 2005 plus the first quarter of 2006. In terms of expenses, Broadcom expects to record an additional non-cash stock-based compensation expense of more than $750... The Water-Powered Cellphone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18869?11228 Japan's NTT DoCoMo, working with a previously-unheard-of company called Aquafairy Co., says that the two have jointly developed a water-powered micro-fuel cell for use with 3G FOMA handsets. The fuel cell, which NTT DoCoMo plans to show publicly for the first time next week at a Japanese wireless trade show, is claimed to be the... Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:32:44 -0500 From: Robert McMillan Subject: Hackers/Malware Writers Now Working as a Group Malware Now a Group Effort Robert McMillan, IDG News Service Hackers are taking a page from the open-source playbook, using the same techniques that made Linux and Apache successes to improve their malicious software, according to McAfee. Hackers Using Open-Source Collaboration Tools Nowhere is this more apparent than within the growing families of "bot" software, which allow hackers to remotely control infected computers. Unlike viruses of the past, bots tend to be written by a group of authors, who often collaborate by using the same tools and techniques as open source developers, said Dave Marcus, security research and communications manager with McAfee's Avert Labs. "Over the last year and a half, we've noticed how bot development in particular has latched on to open-source tools and the open-source development model," he said. The current generation of bot software has grown to the point where open-source software development tools make a natural fit. With hundreds of source files now being managed, developers of the Agobot family of malware, for example, are using the open-source Concurrent Versions System (CVS) software to manage their project. McAfee researchers have described this use of open-source techniques in a new magazine set to be unveiled Monday. Called Sage, the publication features a cover story entitled "Paying a price for the open-source advantage" in its inaugural issue. McAfee plans to publish Sage every six months, Marcus said. Full Disclosure Practice Questioned Marcus said his company is drawing attention to the open-source trend in order to educate users, and not as an attempt to discredit open-source alternatives to its own proprietary software products. "We think [open-source antivirus products] are fine. They've never been something that was really in the same class as ours, but we've always been big supporters of open-source antivirus," he said. However, Marcus did take issue with security researchers who distribute samples of malicious software, a practice known as full disclosure. "We're not taking aim at the open-source movement; we're talking about the full-disclosure model and how that effectively serves malware development," he said. Marcus's opinion was not well-received by one security professional. Full disclosure serves legitimate researchers and helps users by making vendors more responsive, said Stefano Zanero, chief technology officer with Secure Network SRL. "I drive an A-class Mercedes," he said. "And I feel much safer since [a] car magazine revealed that the original design of the A-class was flawed," he wrote via instant message. "Research works on disclosure, not on secrets," Zanero added. 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 news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 10:35:36 -0500 From: Duncan Martell Subject: New Very Tiny Wireless Chip from HP By Duncan Martell Researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ - news) have developed a tiny wireless data chip that can store up to 100 pages of text and could ultimately be used in a variety of consumer and commercial applications, HP said late on Sunday. Developed over four years by HP Labs' campus in Bristol, England, the chip is about the size of the head of a match and could potentially store a patient's medical chart on a hospital band, said Howard Taub, associate director at HP Labs. "There's no question that it has long-term potential," said Tim Bajarin, president of market research firm Creative Strategies of Campbell, California. "But keep in mind this is a technology announcement. It's difficult to predict what applications will be developed and what we would call the 'killer application' for this." Consumers could store audio commentary, music or short videos on such a chip, affixed to a printed digital photograph. Devices to read and write data on the chip would then eventually be embedded in cell phones, handheld computers, personal computers, printers, or small standalone readers. "This really bridges the digital and physical worlds," Taub said. "The digital data is attached to the physical object it's related to." Palo Alto, California-based HP plans to take the technology to industry standards bodies in hopes of it being welcomed across the technology sector, Taub said. While broad commercial applications are at least two years away, HP will license the technology to partners, customers and rivals well before that. "Licensing will almost definitely be part of it," Taub said of HP's plans to cash in on its investment in the technology, which was developed by the "Memory Spot" team within HP Labs. While similar in some ways to RFID -- radio frequency identification -- chips, there are key differences in Memory Spot technology in data transfer rates, storage and security. The chip can transfer data at 10 megabits per second, 10 times faster than Bluetooth wireless technology, comparable to Wi-Fi rates and far faster than RFID. Also, HP has managed to store up to 4 megabits in working prototypes of the chip, far more than an RFID chip can store. HP said the chips could be embedded in paper or stuck to surfaces, and not even seen in most cases. "At a buck a piece, that could be a really good business," Taub said, noting that at production volumes of millions of chips, a dollar per chip would be a reasonable cost. The chip is comprised of a capacitor array, modem, loop antenna, a targeted microprocessor, memory driver and memory, all fabricated as one piece, which helps cut production costs. It needs no battery or external electronics, getting its power via inductive coupling from the read-write device, Taub said. Inductive coupling is an energy transfer from one circuit component to another through a shared electromagnetic field. The reader must be touched to the chip or placed within a millimeter for data transfer to occur, which could render it safer than typical RFID chips, whose range of up to about 10 feet exposes them more to data thieves, Taub said. Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 23:29:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS / Public Safety Chief Metes 20 inspectors suspended over GPS Public safety chief metes out discipline By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff The Massachusetts public safety commissioner yesterday suspended 20 state building and engineering inspectors for refusing to accept cellphones equipped with global positioning systems. Only two inspectors accepted the phones; another two were out on vacation when Commissioner Thomas Gatzunis tried to distribute the phones, which supervisors want to use to keep track of the inspectors during the work day. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/11/20_inspectors_suspended_over_gps/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 22:03:40 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: For Millions of Africans, Cellphones Signal a Change By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Until not long ago, if Zadhe Iyombe wanted to talk to his mother, he had to make the eight-day boat trip up the Congo River to the jungle town where he was raised. In a country with almost no roads, mail, or telephone system and a grisly guerrilla war raging, making that exhausting and dangerous trip was about the only way he could find out whether his 59-year-old mother was still alive. Then he got a cellphone. Now he talks to his mother every day. And once a week, he uses a text message to transfer five minutes of airtime to her phone to make sure she can always call him. http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2006/07/16/for_millions_of_africans_cellphones_signal_a_change/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 20:47:37 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > In article , Rick Merrill > wrote: >> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: >>> In article , >>> Rick Merrill wrote: >>>> I suspect from the way current VoIP calls are structured that it would be >>>> (a) very easy to spoof the number, >>>> (b) impossible to enforce upon overseas numbers and >>>> (c) too easy to make the number unavailable in the first place. Heck, >>>> even the doctor's office number is "unavailble". >>> This is all false. Why do we have this same discussion over and over >>> again every few months? >> Well, you don't say where you think you got your information. > I got it from 10 years of design and analysis experience with the > underlying protocols; that it is impossible to "spoof" calling party > ID in properly configured SS7 networks whose operators do not configure > trunks to _customers_ as if they were trunks to _network equipment_ is > simply a matter of fact. > As all the interworking standards make clear, any interworking to a > protocol which does not differentiate between customer-provided and > network-provided calling party identification must either use the > supplied number as a customer provided number only, or replace it with > the BTN for the trunk. > 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 How may SS7 are in use with a VoIP call? As few as zero for PC 2 PC. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers Ahead Date: 17 Jul 2006 10:03:54 -0700 Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > The FCC could require this at the drop of a hat, and it could be > complied with -- imperfectly at first, much better very quickly -- > with the flick of a switch. > Network operators should be required to disconnect customers who feed > bogus customer-provided numbers. Certainly any network providing > customer-provided numbers and claiming them to be network-provided > should be disconnected by all of their peers. Everything you suggest makes perfect sense. In this day an age, there is absolutely no excuse for Caller ID to display anything but the correct originating telephone number of record. But unfortunately, in the interests of "competition", we have allowed sleazy, lazy, and incompetent telecom providers into the system and a nightmare of lousy connections. As a matter of public policy (espoused by so many users on this newsgroup), the old line Bell successor companies were evil and the newcomers were our saviours. We also tolerate hordes of fraud and sleazy practices from shady overseas companies. Remember how some countries would fake out a user's modem to quietly dial a very expensive overseas phone call? Countries that allow that sort of thing should be cut off from international calling networks. (I am nervous that I'll accidently dial some superexpensive Carribean country with an unknown area code since they split up 809.) There is no excuse for the FCC or FTC or whoever to not demand proper technical standards and compliance with them. There is no excuse for main line companies (the "backbone providers") to require such compliance or refuse to connect with them. Remember how consumers got burned with "slammers" where their long distance carrier was unkowingly changed and huge bills followed? The phone companies were required by public policy to allow anyone to hook up to the existing networks. That was ridiculous and wouldn't be tolerated in other lines of business. Any newcomer desiring to hook up to existing networks should first demonstrate their financial stability (perhaps posting a security bond), good business practice, and ability to comply with standards, all BEFORE the connection is provided. The newcomers off course couldn't stand that because it would cost them too much and then they couldn't undersell existing companies. If VOIP carriers had to first install 911 capability and other basic features like proper Caller ID before they sought customers, would their prices have been so cheap? I don't think so! [public replies, please] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Pre A/C Central Office Ventilation? Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 01:05:09 GMT Straying off to one side of the topic, there is an interesting house in Texarkana that is now a museum. Called the Ace of Clubs house because of its shape -- the original builder supposedly won the money to build the house on the turn of a card. Anyway there is a central column in the middle of the three lobes of the club that goes all the way to the roof -- the house is three stories high. And there are sunken places around the outside walls that are meant to be sinks for cool air. So hot air rises through the central shaft and goes out the top, drawing in cool air at the bottom from the sinks. I can't say how well it works, but for late 1800s technology it seems pretty clever. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2006 20:37:43 -0600 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise It is unclear to me who are the swindlers and how they benefit. Are people clicking on competitor's links to drive up costs? Not everyone who clicks will purchase, but that's what advertising is about. Suppliers are working on more directed techniques, as an example Microsoft is running ads for their search tools, claiming they have a technique to weed out, a child looking at furniture for her doll house. > By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer > Swindlers have stepped up their effort to fleece millions of dollars > from online advertisers who use lucrative marketing networks run by > Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. according to a quarterly report to be > released Monday. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards click fraud, the swindlers come in at least two varities: destructive and (presumably) constructive. The constructive swindlers (often times, publishers who use Google Adsense) click on all the ads their site displays in order to make money. Google specifically warns publishers "do not click on the ads shown on your site." Get the information -- if that is all you want -- from some other source, going direct to the advertiser's web site. Google does not want to pay you for your own click throughs obviously. Now the destructive clickers are advertisers trying to 'get even with' competitor advertisers by 'clicking them out of business'; clicking sufficiently to run the other guy's advertising budget sky-high and/or using up all the other guy's self-imposed allotment of click-throughs so his ad won't appear any longer for that day/week/month, etc. It is sort of like what is done with spammers with a toll-free number. You see an 800 number in some spam/scam and you call it just to basically annoy and hopefully bankrupt the owner, although of course we do not describe it that way; we try to give our efforts a 'good-faith motive' on all those phone calls. _But if we can 'teach the spammer' how expensive it is to spam and give good, bonafide contact information in the process of his spam_, we feel we have done a good job. Or maybe they are not 'competitive advertisers' at all, but simply netters who cannot see the difference between one form of spam/scam (the informal do it yourself kind) and the more 'officially approved' kind which comes through Google Ad Sense, so they take the attitude 'down with all of it'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: No Quick Fix For Government Data Security Date: 17 Jul 2006 08:37:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Joel Rothstein wrote: > While encryption and other security technology can help, slipshod > handling of data and equipment, poor training and the slow moving > government bureaucracy are seen as the main causes of vulnerability. This is by no means a "government" problem. The private industry is just as bad and carries more sensitive personal information than the government does. A banker who takes home then loses a laptop with customer account information is almost giving away cash since all sorts of personal data useful to thieves is being shared. Of more concern apparently not being addressed by anyone is the risk of a disgruntled employee making secret copies of sensitive data and then selling it on the black market. Of course nobody is addressing the issue of why this data is now so powerful in the first place. Our financial systems are as good as screen doors on a submarine. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: 17 Jul 2006 08:49:47 -0700 > Monty Solomon wrote: >> By Tyler B. Reed/ Daily News Staff >> FRAMINGHAM -- High school administrators under a new policy are >> claiming the right to snatch information stored in students' cell >> phones when they search for drugs or stolen property at school. >> "We reserve the right to look through the cell phone," Principal >> Michael Welch said. "It would be no different than if a student were >> to have a notebook. We've had instances of graffiti. We've looked >> through a notebook and found identical instances of graffiti." I am uncomfortable with this. It is one thing to 'search' a student to ensure he is not carrying a weapon or stolen property. It is another to look into his or her _thoughts_ by reading anything belonging to the student, be it a notebook, laptop, etc. I would strongly object to this unless there was a court ordered search warrant caused by the most gravest of circumstances. In this country, we supposedly have freedom of association and not guilt by association. If a kid just happens to have a gang banger's phone number on his speed dial, that by no means makes the kid a criminal himself, nor should it. (I also worry about CCTV cameras capturing an innocent encounter and it being used as evidence as conspiracy.) This kind of power leads to "thought crimes". A kid may have done nothing wrong, but doodling or writings may get him charged with numerous criminal offenses. Many people use pen and pencil private notes as an outlet for their frustration or fantasies. Many people keep diaries or journals of some sort. Now those private thoughts will be evidence for "criminal activity". If a boy writes down inappropriate fantasies of a girl, he'll be accused as a rapist and sent off to a shrink or other punishment. If a girl writes a fantasy romance with a teacher, that teacher will be prosecuted even if the fantasy was only that and not real. Of course any angry writings will be cause for big trouble. President Harry Truman was famous for writing nasty letters to vent his frustration but never mailing them (except once to a critic of his daughter's singing). If those letters ever became public during his term he'd be impeached. But they were his private thoughts and remained so until long after he left office, as it should be. Can anyone justify this kind of searching? Would you like it if your employer searched and read your personal notebooks, papers, your private cellphone records, as you left the office? [public replies, please] ------------------------------ 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 #265 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jul 18 00:44:29 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BE28A2200; Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:44:28 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #266 Message-Id: <20060718044428.BE28A2200@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:44:28 -0400 (EDT) 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, 18 Jul 2006 00:45:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 266 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Feed Burner Buys Blog Beat, Expands Services (Reuters News Wire) Book Review: Intrusion Prevention and Active Response, Rash etc (Rob Slade) Parlino? (Jim Haynes) Alltel Completes Spinoff of Local Phone Assets (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS (Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Tom Horsley) Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise (Greg Skinner) Coming Soon to This Space (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 23:19:12 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Feed Burner Buys Blog Beat, Expands Services FeedBurner buys BlogBeat, expanding blog analysis FeedBurner.com, which syndicates Web postings for 200,000 publishers, said it has acquired blog analytics company BlogBeat.net for undisclosed terms. FeedBurner manages managing headline syndication services and operates a growing Web site advertising network. The deal will allow the company to provide publishers with tools to better understand what headline feeds blog site visitors are reading. Chicago-based FeedBurner, founded three years ago, said it has acquired the assets of BlogBeat, based in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. BlogBeat founder Jeff Turner has joined FeedBurner as its lead engineer for Web analytics. FeedBurner has around 25 employees. It manages 346,000 syndicated feeds of blog posts, news stories, podcasts and other regularly updated Web information for 212,000 publishers, both large and small. Steve Olechowski, FeedBurner's co-founder and chief operating officer, said in a phone interview the deal will provide publishers the most comprehensive picture of how their content is being distributed and consumed online. FeedBurner, which runs online news feeds for commercial publishers including Gannett, Hearst and Reuters and publications such as Crain's, Newsweek and Wired, will combine BlogBeat's blog analytic services with FeedBurner's existing free feed management services, he said. The combination of the two services is set to be completed by fourth quarter. Existing BlogBeat customers will receive refunds from FeedBurner, the company said. Fee-based enhanced services are planned to be launched in 2007. The company counts more than 19 million subscribers from around 190 countries to headline feeds it syndicates on behalf of its customers. Two thirds of FeedBurner's audience also see advertising supplied through its ad network. FeedBurner has received $10 million in funding to date from venture capital investor Portage Venture Partners, SutterHill, Union Square, Mobius and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:37:50 -0800 From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Intrusion Prevention and Active Response", Michael Rash Reply-To: rMslade@shaw.ca Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User BKINPRAR.RVW 20050615 "Intrusion Prevention and Active Response", Michael Rash et al, 2005, 1-932266-47-X, U$49.95/C$69.95 %A Michael Rash www.cipherdyne.org %A Angela Orebaugh %A Graham Clark %A Becky Pinkard %A Jake Babbin %C 800 Hingham Street, Rockland, MA 02370 %D 2005 %G 1-932266-47-X %I Syngress Media, Inc. %O U$49.95/C$69.95 781-681-5151 fax: 781-681-3585 www.syngress.com %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/193226647X/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/193226647X/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/193226647X/robsladesin03-20 %O Audience i- Tech 2 Writing 1 (see revfaq.htm for explanation) %P 402 p. %T "Intrusion Prevention and Active Response" In the beginning were the blackhats, and the net was without form, and void. (Actually, slightly before the beginning were a bunch of grad students who were just all keen to share stuff and never figured anybody would try and deliberately break such a neat toy.) And the security community said, "Let there be firewalls!" And the security community looked upon the firewalls and saw that they were good. (And they didn't say anything in particular about the fact that there were also ACLs, and rulesets, and management issues, and all manner of creeping features.) And the security community said, "Let there be intrusion detection systems, which shall also be known as IDSs!" And the security community looked upon the IDSs and saw that they were good. (And there were even *more* ACLs, and rulesets, and management issues, and all manner of creeping features.) And the security community said, "Let us make unto ourselves the ultimate in network security tools, and let it be the Holy Grail and Silver Bullet and Philosopher's Stone of security, and let it manage itself and respond to any kind of attack!" And lo, the security vendors looked upon the intrusion prevention system (IPS) and saw that it was a very good marketing idea. Chapter one attempts to define intrusion prevention and active response, but it doesn't do so in a particularly clear or consistent manner. An IPS is an IDS that can take some kind of action. What kind of action? Well, an IPS does data content (application level) inspection. Maybe. Then again, a network-based active response system (and an active response system may or may not be the same thing as an IPS: it depends upon which section of the chapter you are reading) might modify firewall policies or respond to attack packets by resetting the port and killing the connection. (This means, as the book points out, that an active response system can't do anything at all to prevent an attack that consists of a single packet. I'm not sure that all IPS vendors would agree with that position.) Network- based IPS/active response systems can block ports or systems, change firewall rules, reset connections, or alter the data content. (And why wouldn't that stop a single-packet attack?) Host-based IPS/active response can revise filesystem privileges, perform disinfection, and change firewall rules. I'm sorry, that paragraph was confused, had poor structure, and was not particularly clear. But then again, it seems to capture the essence and style of chapter one. (In response to the draft of this review, one of the authors feels that I have not been fair. He primarily notes that the authors wish to make a distinction between intrusion prevention and active response, but that is not made terribly clear in the printed text. In addition, he says that the missing details I have listed are present in the book -- but gives citations that come from a variety of different places in the volume.) Chapter two seems to be an attempt to declare that "deep" packet inspection is different than inspection of the packet contents, but, aside from giving a whole bunch of examples of things that shouldn't be in packets, it doesn't say why. False positives can be a real danger, so I agree with the title of chapter three. Unfortunately, the text doesn't: we simply have a lot of discussion about how Nmap works, finishing off with a terse mention of Bayesian statistics. A few specific attacks against certain applications (and certain versions) are listed in chapter four. Chapter five discusses systems that will modify data content, but only in terms of setting up Snort or Netfilter for specific attacks, and not in a usefully detailed way, or one that is helpful for general usage. A few more attacks, and ways that systems operating at the level of the kernel can help, are described (in a rather confused fashion) in chapter six. Chapter seven proposes an application-level IPS, but what is described seems to be identical to any application-level proxy firewall with content inspection. Chapter eight lists some of the data you might obtain from a number of open source tools. Some of the things that can go wrong with an IPS are mentioned in chapter nine. Intrusion prevention systems are new, not terribly well-defined, and popular. The security literature on the topic is limited. Therefore, any work that addresses the topic will have some value. Indeed, in his response, one of the authors felt that they should get some credit for being first, and this is generally true. This book, however, will be difficult for the newcomer to approach with any certainty. The expert will find it both limited and (because of this) misleading at times. Some of the content is useful, and a number of the points raised should be considered, but the material should be treated with caution. The volume is doctrinaire about items that cannot yet be fully agreed upon, neglects issues and options that should be considered by security professionals, includes considerable information that has only the most tenuous connection to the topic at hand, and is written without much consideration for the reader. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2006 BKINPRAR.RVW 20050615 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care. - George Bernard Shaw Dictionary of Information Security www.syngress.com/catalog/?pid=4150 http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm ------------------------------ Subject: Parlino? Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:45:06 GMT Just got my credit card statement and there are three charges and one credit from Parlino Bertrange LU. Looking that up on the web says it is a VOIP phone company. I've never knowingly done business with them -- does anybody else have any stories about them? jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 12:31:53 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Alltel Completes Spinoff of Local Phone Assets USTelecom dailyLead July 17, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dZocfDtutflXrNiwPJ TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Alltel completes spinoff of local phone assets BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Juniper bows new edge router * Analysis: KPN to feel pressure following Casema deal * Comcast to enlarge marketing deal with Wal-Mart * Rural telecom offers triple play via Wi-Fi USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Responding to Information Security and Privacy Protection ConcernsThursday, July 20, 1:00 p.m. ET HOT TOPICS * Tellabs wins Verizon deal * Lucent warns of sales slowdown * McCaw eyes nationwide wireless broadband network * Li sells PCCW stake * Survey: Fiber connections increase demand for CE devices TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Interest grows in fast wireless networks * Bluetooth headsets lack cool quotient * Discovery looks to crack mobile video market Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dZocfDtutflXrNiwPJ ------------------------------ From: Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT Subject: Re: 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS / Public Safety Chief Metes Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:56:21 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Monty Solomon wrote: > 20 inspectors suspended over GPS > Public safety chief metes out discipline > By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff > The Massachusetts public safety commissioner yesterday suspended 20 > state building and engineering inspectors for refusing to accept > cellphones equipped with global positioning systems. > Only two inspectors accepted the phones; another two were out on > vacation when Commissioner Thomas Gatzunis tried to distribute the > phones, which supervisors want to use to keep track of the inspectors > during the work day. > http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/11/20_inspectors_suspended_over_gps/ Fire their asses. They have no right to privacy in the conduct of the States business. Tom Horne ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:35:32 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Rick Merrill wrote: >> As all the interworking standards make clear, any interworking to a >> protocol which does not differentiate between customer-provided and >> network-provided calling party identification must either use the >> supplied number as a customer provided number only, or replace it with >> the BTN for the trunk. > How may SS7 are in use with a VoIP call? As few as zero for PC 2 PC. Do you _really_ think that what people are up in arms about is forged calling party ID on PC to PC calls handled by a single carrier? No way. The problem is that VOIP carriers are feeding bogus calling party numbers into the PSTN. These carriers typically connect to the PSTN via ISDN trunks where the signaling is Q.931; the Q.931<->SS7 interworking standard is very clear that trunks to "customers" should clear the network-provided bit on all calling party numbers. And, as far as I'm concerned, if you don't validate the numbers you're sending up the trunk into the PSTN, you are a "customer"; you are not a "network", because you are not operating at the level of trust that would allow other networks to treat calling party numbers supplied by you as canonical. The other problem is that the standard for delivery of CLID to analog sets does not preserve the distinction between customer-provided and network-provided numbers. In a network environment in which originating carriers do not validate customer-provided numbers as being associated with the same BTN as that of the facility on which they were delivered (which is what they should do; but at present just about nobody does) the only sane thing to do is _never present customer-provided numbers over the analog interface_. Either present "number unavailable" or present the BTN instead -- every call has to have a BTN, so it's always available for use. This is what the FCC could require, in order to solve this problem -- along with requiring carriers to disconnect peers who pass them customer-provided, unverified numbers as "network provided". 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: Tom Horsley Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 18:37:04 GMT On Mon, 17 Jul 2006 08:49:47 -0700, hancock4 wrote: > Can anyone justify this kind of searching? You obviously haven't been paying attention to court cases involving students rights -- the court's consensus appears to be that students have no rights at all. Certainly there have been several cases that said they have to submit to drug tests if the schools decide they want drug testing, don't know why the courts would ever decide differently for cell phone searches. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:57:43 +0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise jared (jared@netspacenospamnet.au) wrote: > It is unclear to me who are the swindlers and how they benefit. Are > people clicking on competitor's links to drive up costs? Yes, as a matter of fact they are. There are many types of click fraud, such as: * Competitive clicking that drives up a competitor's ad spend, and/or affects their ranking in the sponsored listings. * Competitive clicking of one publisher by another trying to get that publisher kicked out of the content ad network. * Publishers clicking on their own ads, pocketing the revenue. * Investors in search engines or ad networks clicking on ads, increasing ad spend, and thus the profitability of the SE or ad network in question. Click fraud can be committed various ways, such as: * Auto-clicking "bots", possibly distributed via spyware or adware. * The same, operated through networks of dedicated machines. * Click rings organized to spread fraduluent traffic across a large range of IP addresses, user agent types, etc. * In some cases, sites are designed so that novice web surfers cannot exit them without clicking on an ad. (This isn't always considered click fraud, but it contributes to the drain on an advertiser's budget.) > Not everyone who clicks will purchase, but that's what advertising is > about. True, but these techniques can drain advertisers budgets quite easily. Some very savvy advertisers realize this, and put caps on spending, or move spending to places they feel are less vulnerable to fraud (such as the search engines themselves, rather than content networks). But most advertisers are unaware of click fraud, or don't feel they can do much about it. Some liken it to a "tax" on Internet advertising, and others have large enough budgets that they can absorb some fraudulent clicks. Furthermore, it is not possible to determine that a click is fraudulent in all cases. (Otherwise, the SEs and ad networks would do this.) Especially when bots or click rings are spread through the Internet, their traffic shows up just as any other traffic. One cannot be sure that they are filtering out legit clicks when filtering out clicks that look a little unusual, e.g. a small rise in accesses to one site or a few new IP addresses. Bruce Schneier recently wrote an article for Wired magazine on click fraud from a more formal security perspective. You can find it at http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/07/click_fraud_and.html. Personally, I am glad this issue is starting to get the exposure it deserves. gregbo Austin, Texas, USA ------------------------------ Subject: Coming Soon to This Space Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 14:14:18 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Someone is helping me work up the past twenty-five years of Digest messages in mailbox format ... with over 110,000 messages it will be in several volumes. You will be able to start at the beginning, August 1981, and read forward through the messages as desired. Watch for this new permanent addition to our archives sometime soon. 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 #266 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Jul 18 19:05:40 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9A6E7218D; Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:05:40 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #267 Message-Id: <20060718230540.9A6E7218D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:05:40 -0400 (EDT) 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,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:08:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 267 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Online Gambling Site Operators Arrested; Equipment Seized (David Koenig) Microsoft Sues Resellers Over Piracy (Reuters News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 18, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Private Equity Firms Begin Chase For Verizon's (USTelecom dailyLead) Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Bell 607 Dial PBX Cordboard (Lisa Hancock) Re: Parlino? (harold@hallikainen.com) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Lisa Hancock) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (Scott Dorsey) Re: 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS (David B. Horvath, CCP) Last Laugh! was Re: Exploding Lithium Battery Starts Fire (Mark J.) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:12:40 -0500 From: David Koenig Subject: Online Gambling Site Operators Arrested; Equipment Seized By DAVID KOENIG, Associated Press Writer Federal officials have charged 11 people, including the CEO of a big gambling Web site, alleging they committed conspiracy, racketeering and fraud in taking sports bets from U.S. residents. The Justice Department said Monday it is seeking the forfeiture of $4.5 billion, cars and computers from the defendants, including BetOnSports PLC and three other companies. BetOnSports Chief Executive David Carruthers and four other defendants were arrested over the weekend. Carruthers was arrested Sunday at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport during as he awaited a flight from Texas to Costa Rica, where the company has operations. The 22-count indictment was unsealed Monday in St. Louis, where a federal judge also ordered BetOnSports to stop accepting bets placed from within the United States. Several of the defendants live outside the United States, which will make them hard to catch, said U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway in St. Louis. "This is a tough crime to prosecute," she said. Among those who live abroad is Gary Stephen Kaplan, the founder of BetOnSports, which is incorporated in the United Kingdom and listed on the London Stock Exchange. Trading of the company's shares was suspended in London on Tuesday. Shares of BetOnSports fell as much as 24 percent Monday following news of Carruthers' arrest, but they recovered to close 17 percent lower at 122.50 pence ($2.24). In the fiscal year ending Feb. 5, BetOnSports reported a 65 percent gain in operating profit on continuing operations to $20.1 million. The company said it handled $1.77 billion worth of bets for the year, up 25 percent. Kaplan is a former New York area bookie who moved his operations to the Caribbean after being arrested on gambling charges in New York in 1993. Despite the move, the United States has remained Kaplan's main market, officials said. He is now living in Costa Rica and owns 15 percent of the company, according to the indictment. A warrant was issued for his arrest. Officials said those arrested include Kaplan's brother, Neil Scott Kaplan, who handled purchasing for the company. He was arrested in Fort Pierce, Fla. Two other defendants were arrested in Miami and another was arrested in Philadelphia. Carruthers was being held in Fort Worth after he was detained while trying to make a connecting flight Sunday from the United Kingdom to Costa Rica. A federal magistrate ordered him held until a detention hearing on Friday. Carruthers' first appearance in court Monday lasted about 10 minutes. He was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, wearing a lime green T-shirt with the words "World Traveler" across the front, faded jeans and gray suede shoes. Tim Evans, an attorney who appeared on Carruthers' behalf, handed him a lengthy document, adding, "You won't have time to read it all, of course." Kevin Smith, a spokesman for BetOnSports, said Carruthers and other company officials had no idea that there was an indictment. "Certainly had they told us, we would have been more than willing to negotiate with them and work on whatever these charges are," Smith said. "There wouldn't have been any need to nab him while he's waiting on a layover for a flight." Others named in the indictment include Kaplan's sister and several BetOnSports employees. The other three companies named in the indictment are based in Florida and handle promotional activity for BetOnSports. The indictment charges Kaplan with failing to pay federal wagering excise taxes on more than $3.3 billion in U.S. wagers. Authorities also charged that Kaplan's group fraudulently claimed that Internet and phone wagering on sporting events was legal and licensed. Internet gambling has become a political issue in Washington. Last week, the House passed a bill that would make it illegal for American banks and credit card issuers to make payments to online gambling sites. The bill's fate in the Senate is uncertain, in part because of exemptions granted for horse racing and state lotteries. Associated Press writer Jeff Douglas in St. Louis 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 and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 14:16:44 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Sues Resellers Over Piracy Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it had filed 26 lawsuits that allege computer dealers sold illegal software. The filings are part of the company's effort to crack down on intellectual property piracy. The lawsuits, filed in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and South Carolina, allege that the computer resellers pirated software or installed unlicensed software on computers they sold, Microsoft said. "Our message should be made very clear by today's lawsuits," Mary Jo Schrade, senior attorney at Microsoft, said in a news release. "We are committed to finding the unscrupulous dealers of pirated software and making piracy a business model that doesn't work." Microsoft gathered evidence for these cases through the use of a program that is similar to a secret shopper concept. As part of its test purchase program, the company buys hardware and software from computer dealers across the country and then tests the software and software components to determine their authenticity, it said. Shares of Microsoft ended up 19 cents or 0.85 percent at $22.48 on the Nasdaq on Monday. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 18, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:15:12 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 18, 2006 ******************************** Cable's Quad Play http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18900?11228 Cable companies want to control everything in the home, including wireless. Does it mean the end of cellular as we know... France: Vivendi Pulls Out of PagesJaunes Sale http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18895?11228 French conglomerate Vivendi has pulled out of the race to acquire France Telecom's 54% stake in directory-services provider PagesJaunes, citing high price as its reason. "Primarily, due to price considerations, we will not participate in the bid for the acquisition of PagesJaunes, in the best interest of our ... Netherlands: Warburg, Cinven Snap Up Casema for US$2.6 billion http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18894?11228 The prospect of consolidation in the Dutch cable industry moved a step closer today as private-equity companies finalised plans to merge the country's third-largest cable operator, Casema, with Multikable. Less than four years after buying Casema from France Telecom, Providence Equity Partners and the Carlyle group have ... Microsoft, Nortel Form Telecom Alliance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18893?11228 Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks Corp. have formed a four-year alliance to develop and sell products that aim to give people more sophisticated ways to communicate with each other. The wide-ranging deal, which could be extended, is focused on selling high-tech business communications offerings to corporations. It was announced... BellSouth Shareholders Vote On AT&T Bid http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18891?11228 The 'moment of truth' is approaching this week for BellSouth shareholders who will be asked to approve the $67.1 billion purchase offer from AT&T and to incorporate the Cingular Wireless joint venture into the combined carrier company. Atlanta-based BellSouth has scheduled a special meeting of shareholders for Friday to vote ... Microdot, Meet Memory Spot http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18890?11228 Promising to 'bridge the physical and digital world', Hewlett-Packard Co.said today it has developed a miniature wireless data chip that can store up to 4 megabits of data and transmit information at speeds of up to 10 Mbit/s. Resembling an RFID chip on steroids, the new experimental chips have a built-in antenna ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:38:37 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Private Equity Firms Begin Chase For Verizon's Directories Business USTelecom dailyLead July 18, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/dZxMfDtutfmEqhHPKe TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Private equity firms begin chase for Verizon's directories business BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * BSkyB begins pursuit of triple-play ambitions * Verizon upgrades Internet speed in three Northeast states * Cablevision says it has 1M phone subscribers * Report: Telecoms head up list of "Top 200 Megabrands" * Commentary: Murdoch's connected future * Researcher says Vonage ads served via spyware makers USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about IPTV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * The rise of PC gaming REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * PCCW deal faces new scrutiny ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:06:22 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers I owned a retail business that went belly-up a few years ago. I've been hanging on to the phone numbers in case I get an opportunity to restart things; hundreds of customers have them memorized :-) Anyway, I'm currently in 630-832 (Elmhurst, IL CO); one of the numbers is also 630-832 and the other is 630-691 (Lombard, IL CO). My first plan was to port them to Vonage. But Vonage won't take a commercial number on a residential plan, and since I'm just parking them I don't need the pricey business plan. So I asked SBC (now AT&T) to convert them to residential. To do that, I had to first make them unlisted/nonpub, then wait for the next directory to print; then I could call and convert them to residential service. Well, the directory printed, I called back, and it turns out I can only convert the 832 number to residential because the 691 number is RCF'ed from the other CO and apparently RCF is not available on residential lines. The rep started suggesting all kinds of call packages and features to "help" me so I just told her firmly to make no changes whatsoever to the account, and now I'm working up a Plan B. All I really want is to retain control of these numbers, at minimal cost. I don't need them to physically terminate anywhere -- in fact I didn't plan to even use the Vonage TA, I'd just have them simultaneously ring to my cellphone. My current plan is to see if I can port 691 to my T-Mobile cell mid-term (which, BTW, I am SO dumping T-Mobile as soon as my contract runs out, but that's another story) and then convert 832 to residential and port it to Vonage or some other VOIP provider. Any other suggestions? Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com If your teacher tells you to Question Authority Should you do it? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard Date: 18 Jul 2006 14:10:07 -0700 Recently I mentioned the Bell 608 PBX, which was the last cord switchboard developed by the Bell System and had a modernized appearance and some automated functions. I've discovered there was a predecessor, the 607 PBX. This looked like a traditional switchboard (black and wood), cords, and lever keys, however, this had similar automated functions such as automatic ringing and flashing supervisory signals. I don't know if the 607 had wink flash for ringing. Would anyone have had any experience with this particular board? I suspect it came out in the mid 1950s. I'm not sure how it related to the 555/556; they had modular components but no automated features. For those unfamiliar with switchboards (cord or cordless), they contain "supervisory signals" which is the status of whether the telephones are on hook or off hook. These tell the operator whether the call has been answered or whether the call has been completed. On cord switchboards, these were small lights at the base of the cords. On meant on-hook, off meant off hook. On busy boards the operator had to remember, for each cord pair, whether the call had been answered or completed. Either would display on-hook. For not answered, she'd have to continue ringing or get on and take a message. For already done, she would disconnect. The 607 and 608 boards provided automatic flashing of supervisory signals to aid. A slow wink indicated ringing, a fast wink indicated a user flash for operator. These help productivity. What is sad that today PBX operators have no idea about these things. They connect you and forget about you. If the called party is busy or doesn't answer you're out of luck. Sometimes you'll come back to the board as a fresh call and the operator will just plug you in all over again, not realizing the called party isn't answering and you need to be referred to someone else or a message taken. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 607 came out in 1950, and that was what we had at University of Chicago (actually a 26-position, broken in two groups of 12 positions and one group of 2-positions) when I worked there in 1958-62. In addition to what you noted above, each position had a 'tie-line' plug on the bottom row of plugs to every other position; the tie-line plugs were in a sort of 'rotary hunt' arrangment; unlike the other lines where we had to 'test for busy' before plugging in and ringing ('test for busy' meant touch the tip of your cord to the sleeve of the plug on the board; if you heard a 'crackle' sound of static in your ear the line was free and you could use it; if you did _not_ hear the 'static noise' it meant [and your report to the caller was] 'line is busy') with those tie lines you just plugged in, waited for another operator to answer then passed the desired extension number. The reason you had to do this test was because some other operator down the line who multipled to that extension might have a cord up down there. If you did not test for busy first, you might well accidentally put an unwanted 'three way call' up in error. The three clusters of positions were known informally as 'Midway' (for MIDway-3-0800 the main campus number with 59 incoming lines in rotary hunt; PBX extensions were numbered in the 2000-4999 series), 'Museum' (for MUseum-4-6100 which was the main number for the hospital/medical center complex with 93 incoming lines in rotary hunt; PBX extensions were numbered in the 5000-6999 series plus Telepage '7') and 'Normal' (for NORmal-7-4700 which was the Fermi Computation Center main number with about 20 incoming lines in rotary hunt; PBX extensions numbered in the 8000 series). The extensions could all dial each other of course, but incoming calls from outside were _supposed_ to begin with the outside caller using the 'proper' listed number to reach us. But many folks would call the medical center (MUseum-4-6100) and then ask for the 'personnell department' [for example] which was part of the main campus MIDway-3-0800, so whenever an incoming caller wound up on 'the wrong board' the operator had to transfer them via the tie-line to the board on the other side of the room; sort of like the old 'A' and 'B' board arrangement. And yes, it was otherwise a 607 board in terms of automatic ringing/flashing-back/ etc. When the 607-style boards were first installed -- they told me it was about 1949-50 -- all five thousand plus extensions (main campus, hospital and the (then new) Computation Center were assigned to MIDway-3-0800; there were then a couple hundred lines in rotary hunt used, I think from 0800 through 0999, but the 'powers that be' decided the traffic congestion was just too much, and it had to be split up differently. All the student dormitories, faculty housing and the 'International House' (sort of a 'YMCA-like' place on campus) all had their own switchboards as well, all of which had extensions from our main board _plus_ their own 'outside' 7-digit numbers to use as their incoming/outgoing lines. For about six months, they had me work over in the medical center at the 'psychiatric board' (that is, the switch- board in the psychiatric unit at the university hospitals). There were five or six extensions from the main phone room and each of the psych doctors had their own private extensions as well. I think about 1963-64 Illinois Bell decided the entire mess should be done over; they got University of Chicago to split the cost with them fifty/fifty to install centrex; over on 61st Street and Kenwood Avenue (across the alley from 'Kenwood Bell' [the central office for the whole area] Illinois Bell built an area for a new centrex installation. It was down the street from the university power plant. It took them about a year to construct the whole thing, and they put it on the 312-753 exchange. PAT] ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Parlino? Date: 18 Jul 2006 06:05:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jim Haynes wrote: > Just got my credit card statement and there are three charges and one > credit from Parlino Bertrange LU. Looking that up on the web says it > is a VOIP phone company. I've never knowingly done business with them > -- does anybody else have any stories about them? I had this happen a few years ago. Some voicemail company showed up on my phone bill. It was quite a hassle to get it off the bill. I think there's now some way to tell your POTS provider to not accept charges from any other company. There was a recent article in the SF Chronicle about a similar situation. See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/09/BUG6GJRLBG1.DTL&sn=006&sc=605 Harold [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On my cellular phone bill we discovered that a company known as 'M-Qube' was charging me $9.95 _per month_ for a 'subscription' of some kind; it had gone unnoticed for several months until I got a chance to look at the bill personally, at which point I called Cingular Wireless and they took it off the bill; they never could explain what it was supposed to be, but they did credit it back. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: 18 Jul 2006 07:12:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tom Horsley wrote: > You obviously haven't been paying attention to court cases involving > students rights -- the court's consensus appears to be that students > have no rights at all. Certainly there have been several cases that > said they have to submit to drug tests if the schools decide they want > drug testing, don't know why the courts would ever decide differently > for cell phone searches. While drug tests are troublesome, at least they (hopefully) are specific and accurate and objective. Drugs are illegal and dangerous and kids shouldn't be doing them. However, I don't like drug sniffing dogs in parking lots. I wasn't asking about the legality of such searches, but rather the public need and justification for schools to probe into a student's private life and student owned things. I fail to see how those warrantless searches help the public safety except in the most extreme circumstances. I also find it objectionable because it leads into the areas of thought crime and guilt by association. It's one thing if I'm seen passing large amounts of cash with a known drug dealer, but something else entirely if I merely happen to have his phone number. I also strongly object to schools looking at a student's personal notebooks; again, that becomes risk of a thought crime and violating private property and private space. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: 18 Jul 2006 10:31:41 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) crankbuster wrote: > Can anybody from India access any Yahoo! Geocities websites? For > example try http://www.geocities.com/lupeliti/ or any other geocities > website you know of. As far as we know, various ISP's from Delhi, > Bombay and Calcutta are unable to connect to any geocities websites > for the past week or so. Does anybody know what the problem is? What does a traceroute tell you? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 12:47:22 -0400 Subject: Re: 20 Inspectors Suspended Over GPS / Public Safety Chief Metes From: David B. Horvath, CCP Reply-To: dhorvath@notchur.biz> PAT -- please obscure email address. You can show my name. On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 23:29:34 -0400, Monty Solomon posted: > 20 inspectors suspended over GPS > Public safety chief metes out discipline > By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff > The Massachusetts public safety commissioner yesterday suspended 20 > state building and engineering inspectors for refusing to accept > cellphones equipped with global positioning systems. > Only two inspectors accepted the phones; another two were out on > vacation when Commissioner Thomas Gatzunis tried to distribute the > phones, which supervisors want to use to keep track of the inspectors > during the work day. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/11/20_inspectors_susp ended_over_gps/ While I dislike the idea of being tracked, if the employer provides the phone and is paying for you to be working, they generally have the right to know where you are and what you are doing. The article does mention that the phone would not have to be turned on during breaks and lunch (and I assume before/after work). Of course, how long before the phones are dropped in a sewer pit ("oops, sorry, it fell off my belt as I was climbing down" (or "slipped the last 2 rungs of the ladder"))? Or the battery dies on a regular basis? The job may require the person to carry the phone and turn it on but I bet the contract does not require the employees to charge the phones at home ... - David ------------------------------ From: Mark J Subject: Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started House Fire Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:17:24 -0700 I almost had my pants catch fire when I swapped out a battery on a smoke detector and dropped the old one in my pants pocket. A few minutes later I felt something hot in my pocket and I reached in and found the 9v battery had shorted on some change in my pocket. Even batteries that may be 'dead' can still have the potential to do harm if they overheat. Hudson Leighton wrote in message news:telecom25.261.5@telecom-digest.org: > In article , Mike Hughlett > wrote: >> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607130182jul13,1,1195700.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed >> By Mike Hughlett >> Tribune staff reporter >> July 13, 2006 >> It has the ring of an urban legend: A cell phone blows up and sets >> fire to a house. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those people inclined to think that >> a fire caused by an exploding battery is 'just another urban legend' >> which never has any verifiable source to it, here is an instance where >> proof is available: Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2006 Section B, with a >> real person named. PAT] > There was a recent incident where a Dell laptop went up in flames > at a conference in Asia. > It's amazing how hot a 9 volt transistor battery gets when it > contacts the loose change in your pocket. > Energy = Energy > Uncontrolled Energy = Bomb [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, Mister Hot-Pants-a-Fire, I presume there was no damage of any sort to your essential parts down there; you did not have to call the Fire Department to put it out, did you? I know ... its not funny ... but it _is_ funny! 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! 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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 #267 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jul 19 18:59:09 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.9 required=2.0 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,ADVANCE_FEE_2, AWL,BAYES_00,HEADER_SPAM,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NA_DOLLARS,NO_COST, NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0051121C8; Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:59:08 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #268 Message-Id: <20060719225908.0051121C8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:59:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:00:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 268 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NBC Nightly News Now on Internet Each Day (Reuters News Wire) Verizon Boosts Top Broadband Speed (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 19, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Microsoft, Nortel Form Partnership (USTelecom dailyLead) Odd Dialing Code (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers (DevilsPGD) Re: Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers (Ken Abrams) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (Srikrishna Koma) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (Dave Garland) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (crankbuster) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Scott Dorsey) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP (DLR) Re: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard (Lisa Hancock) Re: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard (Jim Stewart) Re: Last Laugh! was Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started Fire (Merrill) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:32:01 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: NBC Nightly News Now on Internet Each Day After more than a year with the pioneering "Daily Nightly" blog, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams is expanding to a video blog that will give a quick glimpse at the day's top stories by mid-morning. "The Early Nightly" went live earlier this week on http://www.MSNBC.com as a one- to two-minute video blog recorded by Williams after the 9:30 a.m. ET morning meeting held by members of the "NBC Nightly News" staff. "It's an electronic curtain raiser for the day's coverage," Williams said from Haifa, Israel, where he was reporting for "NBC Nightly News." He added it will normally be shot at his desk, although for the last two days it's been done from his location in Israel. "The idea is to be a little more transparent in the way we talk about the process, giving people an early insight into the news, knowing that what we think is critical at 10 o'clock in the morning may be less important at 6," said MSNBC.com deputy editor Randy Stearns. It's possible that this could also eventually become a part of NBC's deal with online video phenomenon YouTube.com, although there have apparently only been talks but no real movement on putting the "Early Nightly" on YouTube. NBC's newest move online, which has been in development for months, came after CBS News said it would produce a daily Webcast featuring Katie Couric and other CBS News correspondents. NBC has offered the "Daily Nightly" for more than a year, as well as the full version of "NBC Nightly News" every night on MSNBC.com after it airs on the West Coast. ABC has produced a daily 15-minute Webcast at 3 p.m. daily since December. ABC's commitment to the Webcast has been unwavering, despite a critical staffing shortage following the injury of then co-anchor Bob Woodruff. That Webcast has recently drawn as many as 2 million downloads per week, which ABC News executives believe to be incremental and more than likely to be a different audience than for the traditional "World News Tonight." One of the unexpected outgrowths of ABC's "World News Tonight" Webcast is that it isn't just a dress rehearsal for the broadcast. The Webcast puts to work in elevated capacities some of the more junior people at "World News Tonight," said ABC News senior vp Paul Slavin. And while the story selection and manner of presentation is different, some of the offbeat stories can make the leap from Web to TV. Slavin said one recent story, about the YouTube video mocking Zinedine Zidane's headbutt, went from the Webcast to the half-hour broadcast. "They find stories that do make it on the national broadcast," Slavin said. "It informs some of the story selection." Network-news analyst Andrew Tyndall, who has been calling on the networks to create a comprehensive effort in new media, said NBC's announcement, like all of the network efforts online, have yet to be fully realized. "The entire process of establishing an identity online is going to be this gradual addition. It's not a grand thing they will launch, they're going to build it brick by brick," Tyndall said. Not exactly so to ABC's Slavin, who said that news divisions lke ABC and NBC are using their news smarts and their positions in traditional media to help them decide what to do in the new media. "We're not all just talking about digital. We're in digital with both feet," Slavin said. Reuters/Hollywood Reporter 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:03:29 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Boosts Top Broadband Speed NEW YORK (AP) -- Verizon Communications Inc. on Tuesday raised the top download speed for its fiber-based Internet service in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, the areas where it competes with Cablevision Systems Corp. for broadband customers. New York customers of Verizon's FiOS paying $89.95 a month can now get download speeds of 50 megabits per second, up from 30 mbps. The new speed appears to be the fastest offering from a major U.S. Internet service provider. At 50 mbps, users of Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store could download a standard-length song in about a second. Cablevision has a competing cable broadband service at 30 mbps, far faster than most cable companies. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=59829820 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 19, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 12:17:12 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 19, 2006 ******************************** How EMEA Set The 1Q Broadband Growth Pace http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18922?11228 The number of broadband lines in the world grew to 229 million by the end of the first quarter of this year, up 36 percent from a year earlier according to a new study by research house Point Topic, and Europe set the pace.   Meanwhile, DSL continued its worldwide dominance, growing slightly in market share at the expense of... EU Takes France to Court Over France Telecom Aid http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18919?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Commission Wednesday referred France to the European Court of Justice for failing to recover state aid illegally granted to France Telecom. The commission ruled in August 2004 that France was giving illegal tax breaks worth between Euro 798 million and Euro 1.14 billion to its national phone... Alltel Spins off Wireline Business, Embarq Goes MVNO http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18915?11228 Alltel has confirmed that it has completed the spin-off of its wireline business and merger into VALOR Communications. The new company is called Windstream Corp and will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Alltel also confirmed the go-ahead for a US$3-billion share-repurchase programme, which will expire on 31 December 2008, and... Uzbekistan: VimpelCom Merges Uzbek Mobile Assets http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18913?11228 VimpelCom's Uzbek mobile subsidiaries, Buztel and Unitel, have announced that they have merged, reports Prime-Tass. VimpelCom, Russia's second-largest mobile operator, acquired both groups in January 2006. Buztel was bought for US$60.0 million, plus an assumed US$2.4-million debt, while Unitel cost US$200.0 million, plus... Nokia N80: The Best of Everything http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18909?11228 When a cell phone is priced at around $700, it ought to offer just about every possible feature. In this respect, and in many other areas, the Nokia N80 doesn't disappoint. After all, how many cell phones offer two built-in cameras? The slider-style N80 is literally packed with features, yet it measures a compact 3.7 x 1.9 x 1.0... Sprint Offers Made-for-Mobile Reality TV http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18907?11228 Zingy and GoTV Networks have come together to launch an on-demand made-for-mobile reality TV series. 'Primped' is available exclusively through Sprint Nextel. The series follows Cuban-born model Vida Guerra as she attempts to transform three 'plain Janes' into outgoing, gorgeous divas. The 30-episode ... Antitrust Think Tank Offers Court Mega-Merger Review Aid http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18905?11228 The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) think tank has asked to intervene in a federal court's review of last year's SBC Communications AT&T and Verizon Communications/MCI mega mergers, saying the bench doesn't yet have enough information to make rulings on the proposed final judgments (PFJs) offered by the U.S. ... AT&T Hits Homezone http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18903?11228 AT&T Inc. announced today the rollout of its integrated video, data, and home networking package, Homezone, in its hometown of San Antonio and within its territory in Ohio. The new service combines satellite TV programming from EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network; a dual-tuner DVR; Internet-based video from ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 13:44:22 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Microsoft, Nortel Form Partnership USTelecom dailyLead July 19, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eaiYfDtutfnXoZkmQD TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Microsoft, Nortel form partnership BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * AT&T rolls out Homezone * AOL targets corporate sector with AIM Pro * Intel, MySpace make overtures to cable * Amdocs snaps up Cramer * Rumor mill: Apple to launch digital movie rental service USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Responding to Information Security and Privacy Protection Concerns TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Analysis: Digital home not ready for primetime * RIM looks to enhance appeal with media applications * Movie download service offers TV interface REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Ofcom lifts retail price controls on BT * Analysis: Spectrum auction to have additional benefit of improving wireless services Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eaiYfDtutfnXoZkmQD ------------------------------ Subject: Odd Dialing Code Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:35:50 EDT From: dp@icmail.net Where I live, it is possible to setup a call to virtually any destination number using the format: [+] 1 - 611 - [NPA] - [NXX] - [XXXX] and after a few unsuccessful attempts (diverted to intercept recording that references "0 7 7 P" at the end) ... calls will ring through. These calls do not get billed, when using prepaid phone and activated SIM. If there are minutes on the balance, none are deducted; even with balance of $0.00 (!!!), calls are completed when dialing with the sequence. for the life of me, i cannot figure out WHY this works -- though I have some theories. * anyone help me out with this ? * Doesn't even make sense to me following the numbering plan information I am familiar with. Is it an international call ? Choke prefix (contest code) ? Priority access code (emergency preparedness type of thing) ? It has been used for years, locally; some people, whose opinions I don't respect, have mentioned it in a network routing sense and associate it with satellites ! I think it's an error somewhere in the mobile switching center, but seems like it would have been corrected by now; considering ... it delivers unlimited calling for no cost to probably a lot more people than just me. (Having already posted this question to howardforums and other such places, feedback from others has been limited to: "tried this over and over, didn't work! this guy's pulling our leg!" so cautionary word: don't waste your time trying if you're not in or around Portland, Oregon.) -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Access your email from home and the web -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.1/391 - Release Date: 7/18/2006 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And if you are around Portland, Oregon note what he said early on -- 'after a few unsuccessful attempts, calls will ring through ...' meaning the first few times, you may fail to connect. This sounds like a case where, if the timing is not _just perfect_ -- meaning some of your dialing signals reach a switch somewhere where they are expected exactly on time, or within a couple milliseconds of when they will be dealt with, the other switch accepts what it did recieve and acts on it instead (meaning you wind up getting a 'wrong number' [or no number at all] since you get told 'call cannot be completed as dialed' or words to that effect.) I am reminded of the old 9928/9929 scam which worked in much the same way in Chicago years ago, for a few years. If you called 312-(any exchange)-9928 it would answer by extending dialtone from 9929 and then the device attached to 9928 would quickly pulse out '611' and release itself from the line. Your object was to cause your fingers to be quick enough to (upon hearing the dial tone extended by 9929) seize that dial tone and dial whatever you wanted in the three or so second interval before 9928 woke up and pulsed out '611' on you. If you got your seven or ten/eleven digits in there first, then the network began acting on your request and when 9928 woke up and tried to say '611' to the dialtone outbound on 9929 it was ignored. In other words, whoever got the dialtone first controlled the dialtone; if you both hit it at the very same instant, then the outbound got confused and usually wound up either producing a 'cannot be completed as dialed' or maybe a wrong number. We knew which of the 9928s had the slower and 'more liberal' dialers on them and which of the 9928s were almost impossible to work with, meaning they responded so quickly with their rendition of 611 that they _always_ controlled the dialtone and all we could get was a 'cannot be completed' message if we did get a few digits into the audio stream in the process. A couple of the 9928s were very liberal; they would give you all of five seconds or so before they woke up and took over. For some of them, no matter how fast your reactions and your fingers, you just could not within the one or two seconds allowed between hearing outbound dialtone and the waking up of the device on 9928 manage to dial anything. I will not bore you with what it was used for; at one point in telco's past glorious history there was a reason that two sequential numbers in the 9900 series (almost always reserved exclusively for telco internal use) responded that way. As a hint, '611' used to be a three digit code used by subscribers to reach repair service. On cellular phones, either 611, *611, or 1-611 are usually used to reach voice mail at the cellular company customer service. You know, you dial '611' and a recording thanks you for calling Verizon customer service and press one to speak English, or press two for Pig-Latin, etc. Now with cellular phones, there is no audible dial tone, and with voice mail systems -- such as cellco's own customer service, it usually is possible to 'break out' of voice mail, or do an 'operator- escape' to get you somewhere. You said this happens with a cell phone. What happens if you only give the phone '1-611' and nothing more? Do you wind up with the cellco's opening voicemail message? What happens if _some_ voicemail thing starts but you instantly break into whatever message it is and continue with dialing NPA, etc? I say 'instantly' and I mean _as soon as you hear the first syllable of the first word_. Does the voicemail recitation instantly stop at that point and maybe either ask something else of you, or say nothing and just sit there silently? If this happens, that 1-611 _only_ gets you to a voicemail (probably cellco) and tapping another key _at that point_ serves as an 'operator escape' from voicemail then the answer to your question is that you have inadvertently hacked cellco's voicemail to get an outside line and the reason it takes no minutes off of your account is because cellco does not charge 'itself' for outgoing calls. If you have a caller-ID box there, try your experiment again with 1-611-NPA-the number of your own landline with caller-ID on it and if/when the system (it sounds like it is rather sensitive) completes the call and rings your own landline phone back at you, note from the caller-ID 'who is calling'; I'll bet you anything it is NOT the number of your cell phone but a number from cellco's switchboard or whatever they use for incoming calls post-voicemail greeting. The reason it sometimes fails to complete as desired is because the timing of your cell phone, the cell tower, and wherever 611 or 1-611 terminates is not exactly as precise as it should be. It is _not_ an 'error in the mobile routing center' as you put it; it is instead a situation where some devious beady-eyed phone phreak at some point or another in the past discovered a way to break out of cellco's voicemail and make phree phone calls. And he discovered, or already knew that by dumping the entire string in at once at the beginning 1-611-NPA-etcetera it would shut off the audio path back to him until the dialing had completed and the call started to set up at some point. See if this helps you any. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:41:29 -0500 In message Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote: > I owned a retail business that went belly-up a few years ago. I've > been hanging on to the phone numbers in case I get an opportunity to > restart things; hundreds of customers have them memorized :-) > Anyway, I'm currently in 630-832 (Elmhurst, IL CO); one of the numbers > is also 630-832 and the other is 630-691 (Lombard, IL CO). > My first plan was to port them to Vonage. But Vonage won't take a > commercial number on a residential plan, and since I'm just parking > them I don't need the pricey business plan. So I asked SBC (now AT&T) > to convert them to residential. To do that, I had to first make them > unlisted/nonpub, then wait for the next directory to print; then I > could call and convert them to residential service. > Well, the directory printed, I called back, and it turns out I can > only convert the 832 number to residential because the 691 number is > RCF'ed from the other CO and apparently RCF is not available on > residential lines. The rep started suggesting all kinds of call > packages and features to "help" me so I just told her firmly to make > no changes whatsoever to the account, and now I'm working up a Plan B. > All I really want is to retain control of these numbers, at minimal > cost. I don't need them to physically terminate anywhere -- in fact I > didn't plan to even use the Vonage TA, I'd just have them > simultaneously ring to my cellphone. > My current plan is to see if I can port 691 to my T-Mobile cell > mid-term (which, BTW, I am SO dumping T-Mobile as soon as my contract > runs out, but that's another story) and then convert 832 to > residential and port it to Vonage or some other VOIP provider. > Any other suggestions? A $100 T-Mobile prepaid SIM is good for a year, after that it's $10/year to keep the account active. Perhaps not the best solution, but I doubt you'll find much under $8.33/month (for the first year) and definitely not under $0.83/month every year after that. If you ever do decide to give them up, you'll have some prepaid accounts worth some money to resell too. You don't need phones, just SIMs, which will probably bump your starter cost from $100 to $120-$130 to buy the SIM -- Or find someone who is equally unhappy with T-Mobile and will give you their SIM. God must love stupid people; He made so many. ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: Parking a Couple of Phone Numbers Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:50:40 GMT Gordon S. Hlavenka wrote > All I really want is to retain control of these numbers, at minimal > cost. I don't need them to physically terminate anywhere -- in fact I > didn't plan to even use the Vonage TA, I'd just have them > simultaneously ring to my cellphone. Back in the time when AT&T was "the Bell System", you could do exactly that; retain control of a non-working number that you previously "owned" simply by paying a small monthly fee. For all practical purposes, it simply was a non-working number except that it was blocked from being re-assigned as long as you paid the fee. Alas, I don't remember the name for said service. Maybe they don't even do that anymore. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:28:16 +0800 From: Srikrishna Komatineni Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Yes. Government requested ISP's to restrict lot of websites due to the recent blasts. Intelligence agencies found that the LeT & Other such terrorist groups are using Blogs, personal homepages to reach their people. srikrishnak ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:05:15 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when crankbuster wrote: > Can anybody from India access any Yahoo! Geocities websites? For > example try http://www.geocities.com/lupeliti/ or any other geocities > website you know of. As far as we know, various ISP's from Delhi, > Bombay and Calcutta are unable to connect to any geocities websites > for the past week or so. Does anybody know what the problem is? From http://chennai.metblogs.com/archives/2006/07/bloggers_blocked_across_india_3.phtml > According to a report on NDTV 24X7, an Indian news channel, the Indian > government's clampdown on blogsites (and some websites) is NOT connected > to the recent blasts in Mumbai, but is an effort to curb the propagation > of religious extremism on the Net. If that's true, the ban may not be > lifted any time soon. The Indian government, however, has yet to issue > an official statement on the subject. > If it's not clear from what has been said so far, the Indian ban > applies to ALL blogs from these sites, not just those originating in > India: ALL blogspot, typepad, geocities blogs worldwide. If you have > a blog from one of these providers anywhere in the world, I cannot > read you. > It's odd that we can still post to our own blogs, and read the blogs > that we have had the foresight to subscribe to through RSS. These > loopholes may be closed soon, if this is to be a long-term policy. > The list of blocked sites includes: > hinduunity.org > hinduhumanrights.org > princesskimberley.com > bloodspot.com > dalitstan.org > clickatell.com > blogspot.com > geocities.com > typepad.com ------------------------------ From: crankbuster Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: 19 Jul 2006 02:38:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks for the tip. Trace route for the geocities.com server times out ... Nobody from India can connect to geocities.com since July 1, 2006. This appears to be deliberate web censorship by the Indian government! A lot of people in India are very angry about this, check out this thread: http://groups.google.com/group/BloggersCollective Scott Dorsey wrote: > What does a traceroute tell you? ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: 19 Jul 2006 10:07:16 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > I am uncomfortable with this. It is one thing to 'search' a student > to ensure he is not carrying a weapon or stolen property. It is > another to look into his or her _thoughts_ by reading anything > belonging to the student, be it a notebook, laptop, etc. I would > strongly object to this unless there was a court ordered search > warrant caused by the most gravest of circumstances. I would tend to agree, but sadly children don't seem to have such privacy rights. How many times did you see kids passing notes in class, who were required to give those notes up to the teacher? How many times did teachers demand to look inside your notebook in school? This is just an extension of the same thing. > This kind of power leads to "thought crimes". A kid may have done > nothing wrong, but doodling or writings may get him charged with > numerous criminal offenses. That's been happening since long before I was a kid. Why should we expect technology to change that? > Can anyone justify this kind of searching? I cannot, but my 4th grade English teacher sure did. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:30:49 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP To change the direction of this thread a bit I got a call yesterday on my Sprint cell phone from 303-720-1234. I had no idea at the time where area code 303 was so I let it go to voice mail. But they didn't leave a message. So today I tried to call it back and got a "no such number exists" type of message. And I can't find anyone with this number via Google searches and don't really want to pay for more information. Now to be honest it looks a bit bogus to me. 1234 and all. Anyone in the 303 area care to try and call it locally and see what it is? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard Date: 19 Jul 2006 10:41:59 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 607 came out in 1950, and that was > what we had at University of Chicago (actually a 26-position, broken > in two groups of 12 positions and one group of 2-positions) when I > worked there in 1958-62. This must have been a very interesting installation. I wish I could've seen it. I presume this was run in a no-nonsense strict manner like Bell exchanges. Most PBXs of any reasonable size strictly required the attendants* to be "Bell trained", that is, have previously worked for Bell as an operator. It wasn't just knowing how to work the keys and cords, but also the discipline of handling a high volume of call traffic without getting confused. Telephone operators were taught to "overlap", that is, pull up the cord in advance ready for the next call while you were serving the current one and to use both hands independently. It was one thing to properly know how to work the keys, but quite another to do so in high traffic. Pretty amazing to watch. *Bell called its own people "telephone operators" but called people at PBXs "attendants" to differentiate. The general public called them operators. At PBXs "trunks" were lines from the PBX to the central office while "stations" were lines to extensions. The use of the word "line" was somewhat discouraged as it was vague. In practice terms were mixed. I'd also love to know what Bell charged to rent the switchboard, dial exchange behind it, trunks, extensions, and other parts. I think back then everything was a la carte without combo packages. The tie-plugs you mention were extra. (Did you mean tie-jacks?) The Eng & Sci history says such big boards were custom designed and built since there were few customers for such large equipment. Most PBXs were pretty small and mass produced. I wonder how many 24 position PBXs were in the Chicago area, probably not very many. > ('test for busy' meant touch the tip of your cord to the sleeve of > the plug on the board; if you heard a 'crackle' sound of static in > your ear the line was free and you could use it; if you did _not_ > hear the 'static noise' it meant [and your report to the caller was] > 'line is busy') I once read how they designed the circuit to do a busy test, it was kind of tricky. I don't think the callers heard the click the attendant heard since it was on the sleeve, not tip or ring. Circuit design did lots of things with the sleeve part of the connection; in central offices sleeve tests were used for early billing and ANI. Small non-dial switchboards of course didn't need a busy test nor did it work on them. All dial boards had to have them as to multiple manual boards. Certain jack strips had in-use lights so a busy test wasn't necessary, I guess they didn't want to take any chances. This included trunks and some tie lines. On some boards there was a separate row of lights, on others a light glowed behind the designation strip. > The extensions could all dial each other of course Many dial PBX networks had all sorts of dialing procedures between sister organizations. Many PBXs had both 3 and 4 digit extension numbers, for example. Some tie-ins required a prefix code first. A department store with branches could have a number of tie line codes between stores and to the main store. > And yes, it was otherwise a 607 board in terms > of automatic ringing/flashing-back/ etc. That must have been a big help to productivity and good service. In the hospital I was at, the operators weren't too good at checking supervisory signals. Outside calls got a single ring and that was it; they were busy taking more incoming calls. They were poor on responding to flashes for a transfer or assistance request. Operators served as gatekeepers, outsiders weren't allowed to call certain extensions, such as patient rooms late at night. All toll calls had to be dialed by the operator with a toll ticket and time & charges obtained. Bell would call back with T&C which would be placed on the toll ticket for internal or patient billing. Calls to incoming patients were made collect (ie to tell them to come to the hospital); I thought that was tacky. Again, I believe in those days (1971) every call was charged at retail, not bulk discounts. Indeed, I think the hospital was a bit frugal and should've perhaps had another operator at peak times. They also had many key systems that didn't have any lights to save a few bucks. The two page operators handled a lot of traffic and that was the toughest job since it included keeping track of doctors' coming and going. (The operator sat with a clipboard scrunched in her lap, quickly squibbling in/out.) They did take the page operators off the switchboard and give them Call Directors and a desk and a "meet-me" page plus beepers which helped somewhat. IIRC, 1 (dial 1) was the staff page (interns, residents, nurse supervisors) and 8 was the doctor page (all other doctors). I really wish I had taken some high quality photos of that board before it was moved out, but by the time I got a camera a lot of time had passed by and no one knew me; would've been awkward just walking in off the street. > All the student dormitories, faculty housing and the > 'International House' (sort of a 'YMCA-like' place on campus) all had > their own switchboards as well, all of which had extensions from our > main board _plus_ their own 'outside' 7-digit numbers to use as their > incoming/outgoing lines. This was a very common arrangement in many organizations. At our hospital the x-ray dept had its own PBX and outside number (a modern Call Director style console). As you described routing outside calls for a sister unit , some organizations wouldn't do that to not tie up tie lines; they would tell callers the outside number and make them dial. At the hospital, if someone was calling long distance or put up a fuss, they would pass the call through reluctantly. On tie-lines to a rehab facility, they had to do some sort of flip -- dialing the extension with the front cord, then quickly putting in the back cord in a separate jack (the tie lines had two rows of jacks.) Somehow I don't think their little flip was a Bell approved practice. > I think about 1963-64 Illinois Bell decided the entire mess should be > done over; Was it really a "mess"? Or was it just labor intensive handling the high volume of calls? Were hospital and college personnel satisfied with service or were their complaints of dropped calls, long answers, trouble getting through, etc? Were there enough trunks and dial equipment to serve everyone when needed at peak times? At my hospital during peak times an outside caller might have to wait a minute before being answered. (Although unlike today the operator was ready when she did answer and ringing didn't stop until then; today they answer but put you on hold forever). Patients had trouble getting an outside line or attendant; not enough trunks for them. > they got University of Chicago to split the cost with them > fifty/fifty to install centrex; I thought Bell rented everything. For a new Centrex, I thought Bell would charge rent and use that to amortize the cost of the system. For Centrex, there was the issue of putting the gear at the customer's location (which meant using up floor space) or at the CO. Presumably there'd be an "installation charge" and a steep one given all the lines involved, but still nowhere near the full cost of the new system. For the organization like that, there'd be a tremendous saving in labor costs since so many of the callers could dial directly in without the PBX attendant. The phone book, letterheads, invoices, and literature would all list direct dial numbers. I wonder what the rent difference was for Centrex vs traditional system. My hospital clearly needed Centrex but apparently the serving CO had panel or 1XBar and couldn't support it. It would take some time before they got ESS (1980s?) and went Centrex. Because of expanding programs, I think they came close to running out of physical space for extensions on the face of the board. Again, I wish I could've visited and taken lots of pictures. As an aside, the designation strips were printed with the names of whatever dept it was. Later on changes were made by Wite-Out and handwritten notations, new strips were handwritten. Somehow the dial system could decode allowable exchanges and reject distant ones. People were allowed to dial out to the city and adjacent suburbs only, any other 7 digit call that generated a message unit charge was not allowed and no 1+ calls were allowed. How an SxS dial system manged to do that table lookup (and who maintained the table as new suburban and city changes came on line) is beyond me. Maybe the trunks were restricted at the CO by special arrangement. In the city, when dialing a suburban location that kicked in message units, one would hear a series of various pitch clicks building the connection, similar to the clicks on a long distance call so obviously the CO gear knew one from the other. (For message rate or "limited" customers, a call used 1 unit but calls were untimed). For surburban calls, they were timed and the overtime units varied by distance. The system is still used today for metro area calls. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The 607 came out in 1950, and that was > what we had at University of Chicago (actually a 26-position, broken > in two groups of 12 positions and one group of 2-positions) I realized that your 26 position switchboard probably would cost more to build today than a entire modern full featured dial system for the 5,000 extension organization. It's ironic how technology changes the cost of things. In other words, in the old days, until probably around 1975, a manual cord switchboard was cheaper to build than the equivalent dial system to replace it. After 1975, electronics made dial equipment cheaper. The huge drop in the cost of electronics and concurrent growth in power (look at the cost of logic and memory chips in 1975 vs today) enabled automatic systems to be everywhere Manual cord switchboards contained a lot of hardware that would be expensive to make and assemble today. Every station line required at least one relay, every cord circuit a few relays, and trunk circuits several relays. Keys, cords, plugs, and jacks had to be well constructed of heavy duty materials to withstand heavy use and wear. The keyshelf and jack strips were a forest of minute complex wiring. An equivalent modern PBX is stamped out from a few chips in mass production. Operator's consoles are stamped out in mass production and instead of hard wired signals with very specific meanings, LCD and LEDs controlled by chips provide the info. No mass of wiring. As mentioned, I do feel some level of service quality has been lost by today's PBX attendants. They were not trained in the same service oriented manner as in the past and we all suffer as a result when we call organizations. I forgot to mention in my earlier post that the Bell System provided a lot of freebies along with the switchboard; I doubt any of which is available today. They would train new operators or offer refresher courses. (I was so trained by a Bell person). They would monitor service and offer recommendations. They supplied the furniture. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: University of Chicago and Illinois Bell/Ameritech always had a very close relationship. I do not know how much the board itself cost in monthly rent, but I do know that at least in the 1950-70's era, University of Chicago was the second _largest_ customer of Illinois Bell; their monthly 'phone bill' was about a million dollars per month; the 'phone bill' each month was delivered by United Parcel Service in a huge carton box, consisting of eight hundred to a thousand small pages. There was only one person at Illinois Bell who was authorized to make any adjustments on the account or for that matter even discuss it; University of Chicago was her sole account, she spent six or eight hours daily working on it. When there was any need of repair service, for example on the board itself, a repair person was there in usually 30 minutes. I recall a _very hot_ Sunday afternoon when I reported for work on the afternoon shift (3 to 11 PM) with a giant-size paper cup of Coca-Cola. I came sashaying in a wee-bit late (like two or three minutes after 3 PM), sat my cola down, relieved the one operator on duty (despite the fact that we had 26 positions, on summer weekends or overnight when traffic was very slow there would only be one or two of us there; we used headsets with _very_ long cords and plugged in at the spot where most calls came through, then when a 'night bell' rang with a call elsewhere in the room we just unplugged, walked over there, plugged in and took the call, etc) ... anyway, I had just sat down and despite knowing full well the rule and the reasoning behind it -NEVER EVER SET A DRINK ON OR AROUND THE SWITCHBOARD- I took a sip from my cola, sat it back down and got busy with something else. I accidentally moved my arm in that direction, and the big, 24 ounce paper-cup of cola all spilled down inside the switchboard keys. Ooops! Board lit up like a Christmas Tree, night buzzer went off, and it was _very messy_. I had the presence of mind to immediatly remove myself to a few positions away where I dialed out to 611 and told the repair clerk that a cup of 'Coke' had just been spilled in the board. The man who answered my call asked if I had any electric heater/blower around there and to set it up near the board so things would start drying out and 'I will have someone over there in 15-20 minutes'. Sure enough about fifteen minutes later a man got off the elevator, came over and looked at it, without saying a word, gave me a dirty look, and sat down there with his tools, unlocked the cabinet, got inside it with a little 'pick-like' thing and started scraping around and drying it out. I sat at my new position very quietly, very humbly, not peeping a single word; nor did he speak at all. He sat there about 30-45 minutes picking away at all the tiny wires inside, occasionally muttering to himself. He finished his work, put the top back down, locked it in place, then took a rag and wiped around the metal keys a little bit. Finally he was finished, put his tools back in his holster and turned to leave, but he paused, looked at me and said, "You know, if I mentioned this to Mrs. Parsons (our chief operator) you would get fired -- be out on your ass! -- as soon as she heard about it." I knew that would be the case, and thanked him for keeping his mouth shut about it, which he said he would do (although the ten dollar bill I had in my pocket also probably induced him since it was a hot Sunday evening at that point and he had no doubt given up some of his day coming there to work on it. Mrs. Parsons never heard about it I guess, at least I never did hear about it. The next day was a day off for me but when I came in Tuesday one of the operators told me "something is wrong on that position; the 'action' is not quite right; a lot of crosstalk, etc, I think Parsons is going to make Bell come out and fix it or replace it." Oh ... is something not right over there, I asked innocently. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:15:51 -0700 From: Jim Stewart Subject: Re: Bell 607 Cordboard > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Much interesting material snipped ... > For about six months, they had me work over in the medical center at > the 'psychiatric board' (that is, the switchboard in the > psychiatric unit at the university hospitals). There were five or > six extensions from the main phone room and each of the psych > doctors had their own private extensions as well. You must have a couple of good stories regarding that time period ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: See the message just before this one about the errant cup of Coca-Cola, but that happened in the main phone room, not over at the Psych unit at the medical center. But one thing I did observe about that time period was that Bell technicians -- the 'outside plant' guys -- were always quite dedicated and willing to go above and beyond the call of duty sometimes. See for example the messages here from the time of the riot in 1968 and the phone guys who braved going over to Bethany Bretheren Medical Center at midnight on the night of the riots to fix the hospital switchboard, only to finish about 2:00 AM and return to their looted/burned out telephone truck. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:44:09 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started House Fire Mark J wrote: > I almost had my pants catch fire when I swapped out a battery on a > smoke detector and dropped the old one in my pants pocket. A few minutes > later I felt something hot in my pocket and I reached in and found the 9v > battery had shorted on some change in my pocket. > Even batteries that may be 'dead' can still have the potential to do > harm if they overheat. > Hudson Leighton wrote in message > news:telecom25.261.5@telecom-digest.org: >> In article , Mike Hughlett >> wrote: >>> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607130182jul13,1,1195700.story?page=2&coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed >>> By Mike Hughlett >>> Tribune staff reporter >>> July 13, 2006 >>> It has the ring of an urban legend: A cell phone blows up and sets >>> fire to a house. >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For those people inclined to think that >>> a fire caused by an exploding battery is 'just another urban legend' >>> which never has any verifiable source to it, here is an instance where >>> proof is available: Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2006 Section B, with a >>> real person named. PAT] >> There was a recent incident where a Dell laptop went up in flames >> at a conference in Asia. >> It's amazing how hot a 9 volt transistor battery gets when it >> contacts the loose change in your pocket. >> Energy = Energy >> Uncontrolled Energy = Bomb > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, Mister Hot-Pants-a-Fire, I presume > there was no damage of any sort to your essential parts down there; > you did not have to call the Fire Department to put it out, did you? > I know ... its not funny ... but it _is_ funny! PAT] What department do you call to "pat it out"? ;-) ------------------------------ 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 #268 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 20 14:52:20 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=2.0 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,HEADER_SPAM,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NO_COST,NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id D441A219E; Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:52:19 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #269 Message-Id: <20060720185219.D441A219E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:52:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:55:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 269 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Child Porn Again on Increase in USA (Reuters News Wire) India Closes Access to Many Internet Sites (Reuters News Wire) Yahoo and Motorola to Feature New Web Phone Service (Eric Auchard, Reuters) Google Tests More Accessible Web Search for Visually Disabled (Reuters) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 20, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AOL Targets Microsoft, IBM With Corporate IM Play (US Telecom DailyLead) 303-720-1234 (Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Odd Dialing Code (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Odd Dialing Code (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP (jared) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (Srikrishnak) Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India (Scott Dorsey) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (Lisa Hancock) Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started Fire (Joseph Singer) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:13:33 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Internet Child Porn Again on Increase in USA A UK-based Internet monitoring group said on Thursday it had received a record number of reports of online child pornography in the first six months of 2006, with half of all content traced back to the United States. The Internet Watch Foundation said it had received 14,313 reports between January and June, up almost a quarter from the same period in 2005, involving 4,908 cases where investigators found potentially illegal content, an increase of nearly 50 percent. "2006 is proving our busiest year yet, with record reports processed and record number of Web sites confirmed to contain child abuse," said Peter Robbins, IWF chief executive. The report said the increase did not necessarily mean there were more illegal Web sites being set up, saying it could reflect a greater public intolerance and knowledge of where to report such sites. Just over half of all the child abuse content had been traced to the United States, with 15 percent traced to Russia, 12 percent to Japan and 9 percent to Spain. That compared to just 0.2 percent in the United Kingdom. "With a large proportion of the world's internet users, servers and ISPs in the U.S, their Cybertipline, NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and U.S. law enforcement agencies have a considerable task in tackling the apparently high level of abuse of their hosting networks," the report said. Despite warnings to relevant authorities around the world, some Web sites with child abuse remained accessible for up to five years, according to the IWF, the official UK body for the public and IT professionals to report suspicious content. One Web site, first reported to the IWF in 1999 and which had been reported 96 times since, was still up and running despite 20 alerts to the relevant authorities. "This new information underlines the need for unified international efforts, transcending borders and legal jurisdictions," the IWF report said. Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said the UK was pushing for better worldwide cooperation. "Whilst the IWF works to have illegal content hosted in the UK taken down within 48 hours, not all countries have such an effective record," he said in a statement. The IWF also warned that new technology designed to allow Internet users to share their pictures and videos with friends was being abused by pedophiles. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:16:04 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: India Closes Access to Many Internet Sites India bans access to blogs it says preach hate India has banned access to 17 Internet Web sites and blogs it says preach messages of religious hatred, an official said on Wednesday. But in scrambling to obey the order some of India's Internet service providers have simply blocked users from looking at entire domains such as http://blogspot.com -- and the thousands of blogs, or online web journals, hosted there. The government said it had written to ISPs, which it licenses, with a list of sites to blocked in the interest of Indian security on July 13, two days after seven bombs killed more than 180 people on the Mumbai train network. But Gulshan Rai, director of the Ministry of Communication's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, said the ban order was not a specific response to the attack. "These blogs are pitting Muslim against non-Muslim," he said. Bloggers have reacted with outrage at what they say is an erosion of free speech, as well as bafflement at the sometimes surprising choice of sites included in the ban. "If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is," wrote blogger Neha Viswanathan at http://www.withinandwithout.com. Several of the blogs, like http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com, contain conservative American commentaries on the Middle East and the "war on terror," of a kind unlikely to stand out from thousands of others on the Internet. At least two took passing swipes at Islam in posts referring to suspicions that Muslim extremists may have carried out bombings in India, but there appeared to be little which could worry those charged with looking after India's security. Bloggers were quick to post simple methods for skirting the ban, including accessing some banned sites through http://pkblogs.com, a site designed for people whose blog is "blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China." And with the banned Web sites' addresses splashed on newspaper front pages, many pointed out that the ban would have the opposite effect to the one intended. "The ban is just bringing more attention to these sites which can be accessed anyway," Delhi-based blogger Shivam Vij http://www.shivamvij.com told Reuters. "Before they would have had a very small readership -- most of these sites most of us hadn't even heard of. There is no proven evidence of these Web sites provoking violence, it's just paranoia." Internet service provider Spectranet confirmed that it had received the government order last week but had only been able to follow the ban by blocking entire domains. Its technicians were working on a more precise block that would only restrict access to the 17 banned sites. "We have a hell of a task on our hands," said B. C. Jain, Spectranet's Chief Operating Officer. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:24:27 -0500 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Yahoo and Motorola to Feature New Web Phone Service By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc., the world's largest Internet media company, and Motorola Inc., the second-biggest maker of mobile phones, said late on Wednesday that Motorola will embed Yahoo services on tens of millions of phones. The new multi-year deal calls for new mid-priced and high-end Motorola phones to run an integrated set of services known as Yahoo Go for Mobile http://go.yahoo.com/mobile that includes Yahoo e-mail, search and address book in a single place. "We are looking at a broad range of phones," Bruce Stewart, vice president of business development for Yahoo's Connected Life's business unit, said in a phone interview. He declined to disclose names of the specific Motorola models involved. Yahoo's deal with Motorola is the second agreement with a major handset maker to use the Yahoo Go platform -- a software system it introduced earlier this year designed to make Yahoo services as easy to use on mobile phones and TVs as they have become on computers. In January, Yahoo announced a deal with Finland's Nokia, the world's largest mobile handset maker, to begin installing Yahoo Go on millions of Nokia phones worldwide. The new deal builds on an existing partnership signed last July between the two companies in which Motorola has installed a version of Yahoo Mail locally on certain Motorola phones, enabling connection to Yahoo e-mail by the press of a button. The Nokia-Yahoo deal covers certain mid-priced and high-end phones in Nokia's Series 60 and "N" class multimedia phone categories, a Yahoo spokeswoman said. A single Yahoo Go Nokia model went on sale in the United States through wireless service provider Cingular in February. Five to 10 such Nokia models are available in several European and Asian markets now, Stewart said. As part of the latest deal, Motorola will pre-load and prominently feature Yahoo Go for Mobile on handsets it sells, worldwide, starting in the first half of 2007. The new ties between Internet companies and hardware makers promise to give consumers quicker access to personal Internet information than is possible on most current phones. Existing phone models require users to make several clicks and wait for a period of time before the phones can connect to the Web. Yahoo initiated its partnership with Nokia in March 2004 and first signed up Motorola as a partner in July 2005. Yahoo rival Google Inc. is racing to win similar positioning for its Web services through deals with handset makers and mobile carriers. 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, 20 Jul 2006 12:28:31 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google Tests More Accessible Web Search for Visually Disabled Google Inc. has begun testing a new version of its search system that makes finding information on the Web easier for the blind or visually impaired, its creator said on Wednesday. Accessible Search, available on Google's experimental software site at http://labs.google.com/accessible, uses Google's standard page-ranking system and goes further by evaluating the usability of each Web page it displays. T.V. Raman, a research scientist at Mountain View, California-based Google, said his project sorts search results based on the simplicity of page layout, the quality of design and the organization and labeling of information on each page. "I knew it was a hard problem," Raman, who is blind, said in a phone interview. "What did I discover by doing this project? It's an even harder problem than I anticipated." Complex, graphical designs that pack a lot of information onto large Web pages fare poorly when a low vision user relies on screen magnifiers that must expand small sections of a computer screen and make them huge, the researcher said. A blind or dyslexic user of a screen reader that converts text into spoken words using a synthesized voice would waste a lot of time skipping over extraneous page content, he noted. "You get a lot of conflicting signals," said Raman, who formerly worked for IBM Research before joining Google. Accessible Search rates how, on balance, each Web page handles such issues and gives priority to pages that do the best job of balancing relevant data and solid design. An estimated eight million people in the United States have visual impairments. Nearly three million are color blind, according to a 2001 study of Web site accessibility. The dirty little secret of Internet design is that many shortcuts Web page builders take to make it easier to view information online, render Web pages nearly impossible to use by the visually impaired with machine-reading technology. Web design guru Jakob Nielsen, the co-author of a 150-page 2001 study called "Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use of Users with Disabilities" came up with 75 principles for accessible Web design after a study of 100 computer users. Making Web pages more accessible offers potential benefit to all users, Nielsen argues. His ground rules apply to anyone looking to scan the Web quickly for information, in low light or on complex sites: Avoid small buttons. Minimize scrolling. Design and label pages consistently. Create good contrast between text and pages. Google Accessible Search is built using Google Co-op technology, which the company recently introduced to enable organizations with specialized search systems that target information on specific topics such as health or food. Raman, who worked at IBM Research before joining Google, said that by developing better ways of measuring accessibility, Google eventually could offer consumers with specific disabilities ways to perform more customized searches. "Perhaps senior citizens who want a less busy interface or for people who are color blind," he said. In an ideal world, every Web page would be coded cleanly. It would take advantage of style sheets that separate the formatting of Web pages from the content contained on any page. Columns of data would be labeled. Photos would have captions. But Raman says that the World Wide Web is too messy to draw simple lines and fence off accessible pages from inaccessible ones. "How accessible or how inaccessible a Web page, from a user's perspective, is a really relative question," 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 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 20, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:20:11 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 20, 2006 ******************************** North American Telephone System Manufacturers Go Global http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18945?11228 July 5, 2006, Cherry Hill, NJ -- North American telephone system manufacturers are increasingly offering telephony systems outside of North America in other world regions -- Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). Database publisher and analyst group TelecomTactics, part of ... MRG Inc. on How to Create Winning IPTV Content Strategies http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18944?11228 When telcos are asked how they are going to differentiate their TV services from the entrenched cablecos and DBS providers and otherwise create successful business models, ease of use, local content and a wider selection of content often are the answers. A new study from MRG (Multimedia Research Group) Inc. touches on these themes and ... Vodafone Czech Republic Halts Launch of 3G Technology http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18942?11228 PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- The Czech unit of Vodafone Group PLC said Thursday it was suspending its plans to launch its third-generation UMTS technology, citing excessive costs. We decided to suspend the planned launch of the UMTS network, the company's spokesman Jakub Hrabovsky said. The costs ... Nokia's Profits Grow 43 Percent in 2nd Quarter http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18939?11228 HELSINKI, Finland -- Nokia Corp., the world's leading mobile phone maker, on Thursday posted 43 percent growth in second-quarter earnings, boosted by rising sales of high-end phones and a settlement related to the sale of a Turkish operator. The results were largely in line with expectations, but Nokia shares were down 2.9... United Kingdom: Ofcom Removes Cap on BT Residential Charges http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18937?11228 The United Kingdom's telecoms watchdog Ofcom has lifted price caps on incumbent British Telecom (BT) residential line rental and call charges. Significance: Ofcom's U-turn decision removes price caps on BT after 22 years. The move signals that the regulator considers competition in the U.K. telecoms market mature enough ... Qualcomm Moves Closer to Commercial HSUPA http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18930?11228 Qualcomm is moving full-speed ahead with its planned commercialization of high-speed uplink packet access technology (HSUPA) in early 2007. The CDMA pioneer says it has successfully completed live tests with the technology. Qualcomm says the test calls, which were completed using the company's Mobile Station Modem (MSM) 7200... Mobile Content Delivery And The New Wild West http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18927?11228 According to ABI Research principal analyst Ken Hyers, "The mobile-content marketplace is currently something of a Wild West frontier, especially for off-portal sales. As operators increasingly move to off-portal content sales (an established trend in Western Europe and becoming more important in North America), a robust delivery ... Bedside Planners http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18925?11228 As hospitals become test beds for enhanced wireless networks and nurses become seasoned users of various wireless devices, mobile technology is helping transform the way the next generation of physicians is being educated. At Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, first- and second-year students in the ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:29:45 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AOL Targets Microsoft, IBM With Corporate IM Play USTelecom dailyLead July 20, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eauYfDtutfpjudvnha TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL targets Microsoft, IBM with corporate IM play BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Skype bows Wi-Fi phones * Nortel snares Verizon Wireless contract * Ikanos launches new chipsets * Cingular, EarthLink, Motorola, Nokia report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Take a Stephen Shepard Crash Course in IMS, VoIP and Telecom TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Comedy Central takes broadband channel to mobile phones * Motorola to embed Yahoo! services in phones REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * BT mulls price cuts Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eauYfDtutfpjudvnha ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:46:05 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: 303-720-1234 (Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers) ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** DLR wrote: > I got a call yesterday on my Sprint cell phone from 303-720-1234. > I had no idea at the time where area code 303 was so I let it go > to voice mail. But they didn't leave a message. So today I tried > to call it back and got a "no such number exists" type of message. > And I can't find anyone with this number via Google searches and > don't really want to pay for more information. Now to be honest it > looks a bit bogus to me. 1234 and all. It is bogus. 303 is the area code for the Denver CO Metro area. (At one time, the entire state of Colorado used 303, but that was some time ago). 720 is being used as a central office code within the 303 area code in your situation, but the 720 numerics as an area code also happens to be the overlay area code for the Denver CO Metro area. Since ten-digit local dialing is mandatory within the Denver Co Metro area of area codes 303 and 720 in overlay, there isn't anything "wrong" with having a 303-720 code, nor a 720-303 code, nor even a 303-303 or 720-720 code. Ten-digit local dialing is mandatory in overlay areas. However, it happens that at this time, there is no such 303-720 code assigned in the Denver CO Metro area. I looked up the central office code reports at NANPA's website, http://www.nanpa.com and 303-720 is unassigned but still available for assignment. So, you probably got a call from a telemarketer sending bogus caller-ID information. Typical. :( ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:06:30 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** dp@icmail.net wrote: > Where I live, it is possible to setup a call to virtually any > destination number using the format: > [+] 1 - 611 - [NPA] - [NXX] - [XXXX] > and after a few unsuccessful attempts (diverted to intercept > recording that references "0 7 7 P" at the end) ... calls will ring > through. > These calls do not get billed, when using prepaid phone and activated > SIM. If there are minutes on the balance, none are deducted; even > with balance of $0.00 (!!!), calls are completed when dialing with the > sequence. for the life of me, i cannot figure out WHY this works -- > though I have some theories. > * anyone help me out with this ? * > Doesn't even make sense to me following the numbering plan information > I am familiar with. Is it an international call ? Choke prefix > (contest code) ? Priority access code (emergency preparedness type of > thing) ? (SNIP) > I think it's an error somewhere in the mobile switching center, but > seems like it would have been corrected by now; considering ... it > delivers unlimited calling for no cost to probably a lot more people > than just me. > (Having already posted this question to howardforums and other such > places, feedback from others has been limited to: "tried this over > and over, didn't work! this guy's pulling our leg!" so cautionary > word: don't waste your time trying if you're not in or around > Portland, Oregon.) First, the recorded announcement you are getting ends 0-7-7-T (tee), not 0-7-7-P (pee). AT&T's #4ESS toll switch in Portland OR uses the identification code 077-T. That's where you are getting the "call cannot be completed as dialed" *VACANT CODE* (not intercept) recording. A couple of other questions ... Just out of curiosity, who is your cell provider? Also, you mention that after several attempts, you "ring through". RING THROUGH TO WHAT?! You don't exactly mention WHAT they ring through to. Obviously not the NPA-NXX-XXXX portion of your dial string +1-611-NPA-NXX-XXXX, since you keep pondering if this is an "international" call, or or "choke", or "priority/emergency access". I'm GUESSING that there are some attempts where your cellular provider is sending the digits 611-NXX-NXXX, truncating off all remaining digits of your "dialed" 611-NXX-NXX-X(XXX), over to AT&T's Portland #4ESS switch, and AT&T doesn't recognize any such area code 611 (which is actually a local service provider 3-digit special code, USUALLY for Repair Service, and sometimes for Customer Service/Business Office. Other times, your cellular provider must be attempting to send those digits 611-NXX-NXXX-(final XXX truncated) over to some OTHER Long Distance Provider (quite possibly MCI?), where THAT company's VACANT CODE RECORDING is preceded by a one or two ringing cycles, yet you hang up before hearing the (MCI?) vacant code announcement. AT&T's 4ESS switches play their various "vacant" announcementw without any ring cycle preceding it. MCI's toll switches usually have a full ring cycle (sometimes two full ring cycles) before playing their "vacant" announcements. Please provide more specific information -- stay on the line long enough when you hear something "ring through" to hear the recording and the "trailer code" at the end of the recording. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:20:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:35:50 EDT dp@icmail.net wrote: > Where I live, it is possible to setup a call to virtually any > destination number using the format: > [+] 1 - 611 - [NPA] - [NXX] - [XXXX] > and after a few unsuccessful attempts (diverted to intercept recording > that references "0 7 7 P" at the end) ... calls will ring through. Since you don't mention where you live or which cellular company you are using no one can make a check with any authority. I tried the number sequence you have as above with both a T-Mobile prepaid and a T-Mobile postpaid monthly line and all calls placed in the sequence listed get an error recording from T-Mobile. Perhaps you could give a little more detail such as where you are and which service you are using. The reality is that a company is not very likely to leave a big loophole in their service to allow unbilled calls. What you describe sounds a bit suspicious to me. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:16:17 -0600 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers - VoIP 303 is Denver -- Denver also has area code 720 - adds to the suspicion. > To change the direction of this thread a bit I got a call yesterday on > my Sprint cell phone from 303-720-1234. I had no idea at the time > where area code 303 was so I let it go to voice mail. But they didn't > leave a message. So today I tried to call it back and got a "no such > number exists" type of message. And I can't find anyone with this > number via Google searches and don't really want to pay for more > information. > Now to be honest it looks a bit bogus to me. 1234 and all. > Anyone in the 303 area care to try and call it locally and see what it is? ------------------------------ From: Srikrishnak Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: 19 Jul 2006 19:51:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I think in total 17 websites were blocked. Reason given "To stop the hatenews" :| Quite weird. Srikrishna Komatineni wrote: > Yes. Government requested ISP's to restrict lot of websites due to the > recent blasts. Intelligence agencies found that the LeT & Other such > terrorist groups are using Blogs, personal homepages to reach their > people. > srikrishnak ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Unable to Access Yahoo! Geocities Websites From India Date: 20 Jul 2006 11:43:32 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) crankbuster wrote: > Thanks for the tip. Trace route for the geocities.com server times out. Where does it timeout? Does it time out right before a major router in or out of the country? That would be a sign, you know. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Date: 20 Jul 2006 08:25:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Scott Dorsey wrote: > I would tend to agree, but sadly children don't seem to have such > privacy rights. How many times did you see kids passing notes in > class, who were required to give those notes up to the teacher? How > many times did teachers demand to look inside your notebook in school? > This is just an extension of the same thing. No, I see it as something very different. When a teacher takes a note being passed around the room, it is in response to active behavior violation. Reading the note is mostly to embarass the kids doing it and get them to stop. Reading a notebook while in class is to ensure the student is working on the assignment properly and not day dreaming or drowning. Again, the situation does this in response to behavior, such as the kid staring out the window or at the ceiling. When a teacher does check a notebook, it's the current subject, the teacher doesn't wade through subjects of other teachers. The teachers' response are specific the issue at hand. The teacher's don't use passing a note in class as an excuse for a body pat down for weapons. The new situation is where the kids aren't in the classroom and haven't engaged in any bad behavior; they're just walking in the front door. They may have happened to be near an undesirable student. As to the key issue here, my high school had pay phones which kids used. I never heard of any school listening in to pay phone calls, recording who made them and to what number. The school could care less. They have no business doing likewise with cellphones except in extremely grave circumstances with a court order. I see no reason they should have access to a student's cell phone for its records. >> This kind of power leads to "thought crimes". A kid may have done >> nothing wrong, but doodling or writings may get him charged with >> numerous criminal offenses. > That's been happening since long before I was a kid. Why should we > expect technology to change that? Except in very extreme rare cases, schools did not bother reading personal entries in notebooks, track a student's associations or telephone calls. My school would not check lockers except in extreme cases. Everybody doodles and some doodling can be pretty bizzare. It didn't call for confiscation. Indeed, in my day the school literary magazine published some bizarre writings at times; and these were things voluntarily submitted. In some classes (like science labs) our notebook was explicitly stated to be part of the class and would be inspected and turned in. The main issue for us was to buy a separate notebook just for that class so we wouldn't lose our history notes. We also knew to keep the notebook in the prescribed format and perhaps a little neater than notes we took strictly for ourselves. In elementary school notebooks were subject to inspection (for neatness, mostly) and we knew that. But in high school and beyond, unless specifically stated, our notebooks were our own private property. Back in my day schools would threaten kids with bad stuff going on their "Permanent Record". In reality that record was buried in a closet never to be seen again. No more. With cheap powerful computers the incidents, writing reviews, searches truly become part of one's permanent record, accessible beyond school years, whether legally or not. They could come back to haunt someone applying for a job or a mortgage or college, or add suspicion in a criminal investigation. public replies please ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:02:04 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started House Mark J Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:17:24 -0700 wrote: > I almost had my pants catch fire when I swapped out a battery on a > smoke detector and dropped the old one in my pants pocket. A few > minutes later I felt something hot in my pocket and I reached in and > found the 9v battery had shorted on some change in my pocket. I just have to ask: Did the smoke detector go off? :) ------------------------------ 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V25 #269 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 21 18:26:47 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.7 required=2.0 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,AWL,BAYES_00, HEADER_SPAM,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3656F2191; Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:26:47 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #270 Message-Id: <20060721222647.3656F2191@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:26:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:29:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 270 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Vivo Gives Network Contract to Ericsson (Reuters News Wire) Carolina Net Can't Validate E911 Info (Fred Atkinson) Be Wary of Phone Calls From Financial Institution (tedrichardson9925) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 21, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AOL Targets Microsoft, IBM (USTA Daily Lead) NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Lisa Hancock) Gambling Bill Flops on Principle (San Antonio Express Editorial) Frist Seeks Quick Action on Web Gambling (Reuters News Wire) Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones (mc) Re: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard (Lisa Hancock) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:59:25 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Vivo Gives Network Contract to Ericsson Brazilian telecoms operator Vivo has awarded a 400 million euro ($506 million) contract to build a mobile phone network to Ericsson of Sweden and China's Huawei, a source close to the process said on Friday. Vivo, a joint venture between Spain's Telefonica and Portugal Telecom, has around 28.5 million clients in Brazil. 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 the daily media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:08:38 -0700 From: Fred Atkinson Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com Subject: Carolina Net Can't Validate E911 Info I'm now using Carolina Net VOIP phone service. I've tried to register my street address as E911 on my phone. Every time I try or they try, the system kicks it back as unable to validate. CN told me that the database apparently didn't include my street address. I called E911 here in Jackson county and spoken directly to the lady who manages that database. She assures me that that address is indeed in the database. She told me to have them call her and she'd work it out with them. I gave CN her name and number over a week ago. Tonight, they told me they had spoken with someone but wouldn't tell me who and they are telling me that the person they spoke to said that my number is not in the database. Does anyone have any ideas about how this situation can be resolved? Regards, Fred Atkinson [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You should really not have to go through the daily gyrations you seem to go through regularly to merely get your VOIP phone service working. You seem to _always_ have so many problems with your VOIP service ... and have had ever since you first started using VOIP. At this point, Fred, I would give it one final fling: document the difficulty you are having with it, take a photo of the front of your house (or wherever the street number on your house is located), try to include a small child in that photo, and in your cover letter tell them "I am tired of doing everyone else's customer service work for them. Coordinate (phone number) with (your address, [inside the building location as needed], zip code) and write back to notify me when this is done. My several attempts to accomplish this have failed. If you prefer, we can go legal with the whole thing, and we assuredly will go legal if some emergency situation arises and no help arrives in a timely manner. Thank you." Send the photos showing your street address, the child, an elderly frail person or whatever to Carolina Net and also a copy to the regulators in your area. Then wash your hands of it. If you can document 'what happens' when you try to register the address and the system bounces it out, include that as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: tedrichardson9925@sbcglobal.net Subject: Be Wary of Telephone Calls From Your Financial Institution Date: 21 Jul 2006 07:12:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com There is a new scam call "vishing." In case you haven't heard about it yet: http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2006/07/vishing-new-way-to-lose-your-identity.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 21, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:04:11 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 21, 2006 ******************************** IMS Need Orchestration on Many Levels http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18962?11228 Service providers want IMS to enable service creation, but little is understood about the orchestration on the fulfillment and assurance sides, which could be the deal breaker in bringing IMS to life. Customers want more choices. Rather than remaining locked into one-size-fits-all product offerings, they want to mix and match the... Russia: New MTS Plan Sees Early Success http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18960?11228 Mobile TeleSystems has revealed that 1.4 million subscribers have signed up to their new tariff plan 'Pervy The First'. Significance: According to MTS, the new plan, which offers free incoming calls, has stimulated growth in both incoming and outgoing calls. Subscribers on 'Pervy' generated monthly ... Czech Republic: Vodafone Scraps Czech 3G Network Launch http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18956?11228 Vodafone Czech Republic has decided to suspend the construction of its W-CDMA network, owing to high costs. The company claims that the 3G services that it would offer to its customers would not generate the revenues required for a significant return on investment. Vodafone has not laid out much on the roll-out so far, but spent 2... Cingular Inches Closer to 60M Subs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18954?11228 Cingular Wireless ended the second quarter with 57.3 million customers, after attracting 1.5 million net subscribers and posting a 7-percent increase in sales. Profits tripled during the quarter. The No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier reported second-quarter revenue of $9.22 billion. In the year-ago period, Cingular recorded revenue of... AT&T, Qwest Ask FCC For Broadband Freedom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18952?11228 AT&T Inc. and Qwest Corp. are seeking government approval to free a wide range of their broadband telecom activities from regulatory restrictions originally designed to control and restrict former Bell company practices, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The 'forbearance petitions' from AT&T ... Moto's Handy Quarter http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18950?11228 Motorola Inc. busted analyst predictions for its second quarter handset sales with 51.9 million units shipped, compared to the consensus estimate of 48.3 million. The breakthrough gives Motorola its biggest chunk of the handset market in years with 22 percent of the cellphone pie. Motorola says that its results are down to the ... Emerging Markets Boost Ericsson http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18948?11228 Ericsson AB announced financial results pretty much in line with market expectations today, but behind the numbers lie some interesting pointers about the state of the mobile infrastructure business and the aftermath of a major acquisition. First, the numbers. The company generated net income of 5.7 billion Swedish Kronor ($782 ... Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AOL Targets Microsoft, IBM With Corporate IM Play Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2006 16:00:00 EDT USTelecom dailyLead July 20, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eauYfDtutfpjudvnha TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL targets Microsoft, IBM with corporate IM play BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Skype bows Wi-Fi phones * Nortel snares Verizon Wireless contract * Ikanos launches new chipsets * Cingular, EarthLink, Motorola, Nokia report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Take a Stephen Shepard Crash Course in IMS, VoIP and Telecom TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Comedy Central takes broadband channel to mobile phones * Motorola to embed Yahoo! services in phones REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * BT mulls price cuts Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eauYfDtutfpjudvnha ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? Date: 21 Jul 2006 08:21:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In Feb 1975 there was a very bad fire in a big Central Office building in New York City. Twelve local exchanges and numerous tandem switches were knocked out. The Bell System mobilized and worked around the clock to get service restored. Some burnt panel switchgear was removed and replaced with new ESS switches airlifted in. Other gear was cleaned one contact at a time with Q-Tips. Some calls were rerouted to other offices. Service was restored quickly and known as the "Miracle on Second Avenue". I wonder: Suppose a fire like that happened today: Would it take longer or shorter to restore service in today's world? On the plus side, I think ESS would make things a lot simpler. No contact cleaning, just replace the "boxes" with new ones. Some traffic could be rerouted as was done before by ESS reprogramming. Hopefully CO buildings today have non destructive (ie Halon) fire supression systems. But there are some negatives: Without the big Bell System in existence, could new "boxes" be found quickly and deployed? Western Electric had them ready (for another location). Do today's switch makers carry such inventory being they're very expensive? Secondly, New York Telephone brought in craftsmen from other companies. Could that happen today with staff size so much lower and the company fractured? Third, some work involved resplicing cables in the cable vault. Small space limited the number of people who could work at one time, despite laying plank catwalks to "double up". I think in a fire such splicing would still need to be done and take just as long, possibly longer if skilled crews weren't available (see above). Comments? (Public replies, please) P.S. A read of the New York Times of that incident disclosed the tenor of troubled NYC at that time. Merchants and residents without phones were more worried about security -- being able to call police -- than they were about lost business; that theme was repeated many times in interviews. Many businesses and people had burglar alarms that were now inoperative without a phone line. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: February 27, 1975 was the date. And it was a very bad fire, with service out for a long time afterward. There have been other very severe fires in their history, in the summer of 1945 in the Chicago area, in one of the suburbs was one of the first. This Digest was not around at the time, nor at the time of the 1960's fire in Richmond, Indiana. However, Richmond, IN and New York City in 1975 are both reported in detail in our archives in the section on history. Then on Mother's Day, in May, 1988 was the major fire in Hinsdale, IL, which like New York City, took place on 'only' one building but affected a _large_ number of phones and exchanges and services in the Chicago area and throughout Illinois and Indiana. So telco tends to 'play the averages' on things like this, with fires or other disasters (New Orleans and Katrina for example) occuring about once every fifteen or twenty years. Although it is questionable if telco could have done very much to protect their property and services in the Katrina disaster, they most certainly could have mitigated their losses and the disruption in service in Manhattan in 1975 and again in Hinsdale in 1988. But in the case of Hinsdale at least, telco said at the time and still insists even today that it is not 'cost effective' for them to take steps in advance to mitigate their losses when these things happen. So, they do nothing about it, and deal with it when it happens. So, the difference between February, 1975 and February, 1965 was ten years; May, 1988 was another thirteen years. Add twelve years for the cable fire in St. Louis in January, 1990, and about fifteen years for New Orleans and Katrina; although both New Orleans and St. Louis were not really anything telco could do 'much about'. So Lisa, it is not a question of 'if it happens again' so much as it is a question of 'when it happens again' as it will, I am sure, given the facts of life these days, with 'terrorists' all around us and your heroine, Ma Bell telling us she will deal with it if it happens, but it is not 'cost-effective' to worry about it before that time. She still says 'if'; most of us say 'when'. Don't worry, when it does and after it has been dealt with, Ma Bell will put out another very self- congratulatory book like they did in the summer of 1975 with a cover picture of a plume of thick, black smoke and a Brave, Couragous Fireman and tell us how They Knew What Was Best in getting service restored a month or two later. What they will not tell you until they get sued with their backs up against the wall will be as it was in Hinsdale: the first alarms went off in _Springfield, IL_ (about two hundred miles south of Chicago and were ignored by the on-duty staff for about an hour until _they_ decided to make inquiry from someone in the Chicago area. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Editorial: Gambling Prohibition Bill Flops on Principle Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:54:51 EDT From: San Antonio News Express The House of Representatives has passed a bill that its supporters would like you to think bans wagering over the World Wide Web. "This is the strongest bill that works to end this scourge of Internet gambling, protects our young people and our families," the Washington Times quoted Virginia Republican Robert W. Goodlatte, a cosponsor of the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act. Rep. Goodlatte's morally inspiring words, however, weren't entirely true. The bill does close a loophole in current law that has allowed offshore casinos and casinos in states where gambling is legal to accept online bets from residents of all 50 states. But it falls far short of prohibiting Internet gambling. The House, for instance, carved out an exception for online interstate betting on horse racing. It also creates intrastate exceptions for Indian casinos and for lotteries. So online gambling is a scourge if it's done with a non-Indian casino, but not if it's done with a state lottery. And young people and families need to be protected from betting on dogs, but betting on horses is a wholesome activity. Far from being a strong measure against gambling, the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act is a demonstration of politics as usual in Washington. Interest groups with lobbying muscle on Capitol Hill got their exemptions, while legal brick and mortar casinos in the United States created a financial obstacle for their foreign, online competition. Whether you support or oppose gambling is a matter of principle. A House measure that feigns gambling prohibition is about as unprincipled as playing poker with a marked deck of cards. ------------------------------ Subject: Frist Seeks Swift Action on Web Gambling Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:57:20 EDT From: Reuters News Wire A bill to ban Internet gambling faces opposition in the U.S. Senate, but backers still hope to win passage of it within a few weeks, a top aide to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said on Thursday. "We are trying to get something done before the August recess," set to begin on August 4, said Eric Ueland, Frist's chief of staff. Earlier on Thursday, another Frist aide said lawmakers were still working on the bill, but would not be able to vote on it before the Senate heads off for its month-long vacation. Ueland rejected that characterization, saying Frist had not given up on getting a vote before the August recess. Backers of the legislation have hoped to push it through the Senate this month following the arrest in the United States of David Carruthers, the chief executive of BETonSPORTS Plc, on charges of racketeering and conspiracy. Carruthers is scheduled to appear at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday to determine if he must remain in jail until his trial. The Senate bill is virtually identical to legislation overwhelmingly approved earlier in July by the U.S. House of Representatives. It would prohibit most forms of Internet gambling and make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. The Republican-backed bill has been criticized by some as an election-year appeal to the party's conservative base. Supporters of a crackdown on Internet gambling say legislation is needed to clarify that a 1961 federal law banning sports betting also covers an array of online gambling. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Principals Claim Right to Search Cell Phones Organization: BellSouth Internet Service Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 21:08:27 -0400 wrote in message news:telecom25.269.13@telecom-digest.org: > Scott Dorsey wrote: >> I would tend to agree, but sadly children don't seem to have such >> privacy rights. How many times did you see kids passing notes in >> class, who were required to give those notes up to the teacher? How >> many times did teachers demand to look inside your notebook in school? >> This is just an extension of the same thing. > No, I see it as something very different. When a teacher takes a note > being passed around the room, it is in response to active behavior... > Reading a notebook while in class is to ensure the student is working > on the assignment properly.. Agreed. Exactly. I'm a (college) teacher and that's how I always understood it when I was a student. Passing the note is a visible disturbance. The notebook is supposed to contain assigned work (or lecture notes -- and notetaking is a skill that we teach). Neither one is private. If a student had another notebook, or another section of the notebook, not containing assigned work, the teacher would have no reason to look at it. > As to the key issue here, my high school had pay phones which kids > used. I never heard of any school listening in to pay phone calls, > recording who made them and to what number. The school could care > less. > They have no business doing likewise with cellphones except in > extremely grave circumstances with a court order. I see no reason > they should have access to a student's cell phone for its records. ... > Except in very extreme rare cases, schools did not bother reading > personal entries in notebooks, track a student's associations or > telephone calls. My school would not check lockers except in extreme > cases. Everybody doodles and some doodling can be pretty bizzare. It > didn't call for confiscation. Query: What are the schools looking for in/on students' cell phones? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Bell 607 Dial PBX Cord Switchboard Date: 21 Jul 2006 07:12:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: I checked the Bell Labs Eng & Sci history and I have some corrections to what I wrote: >> they got University of Chicago to split the cost with them >> fifty/fifty to install centrex; The goal of Centrex was more than Direct Inward Dialing. There were two other goals as well around 1960 for Centrex: - Outward dialing with direct billing to extension - Encouragement of use of new DDD network. As mentioned, PBX operators served as a gatekeeper for long distance calls since there was no way to charge back to an individual extension. Centrex included extension identification and billing and it was a key part of it. This way extensions could dial out directly and get billed back. Originally this was done with CAMA (ONI) but later regular AMA with ANI. With DDD being implemented, the Bell System wanted callers to get away from "Get me Joe Smith at ABC Company, Kansas City" to "get me 311-555-2368" or better still, dialing it himself. By dialing extensions directly, people would get used to dialing for themselves and not using an operator. Likewise for outward calls. > Somehow the dial system could decode allowable exchanges and reject > distant ones. People were allowed to dial out to the city and > adjacent suburbs only, any other 7 digit call that generated a message > unit charge was not allowed and no 1+ calls were allowed. > Maybe the trunks were restricted at the CO by special arrangement. The Bell history said this toll restriction was done by panel or #1xbar at the Central office; that is, the trunks could only make local calls. This was introduced in 1953. > In other words, in the old days, until probably around 1975, a manual > cord switchboard was cheaper to build than the equivalent dial system > to replace it. After 1975, electronics made dial equipment cheaper. > The huge drop in the cost of electronics and concurrent growth in > power (look at the cost of logic and memory chips in 1975 vs today) > enabled automatic systems to be everywhere According to the history, the newest 608 boards were still being shipped in 1968. (My high school got a 555 in 1968, I don't know if it was new or reconditioned.) I'd love to know when the last cord boards of various types were made. (When did the last conventinal 500 set come out?) My guess is that by 1980-1985 cord switchboards were rapidly replaced by electronic gear, either rented from Bell or bought privately. I wished some of the big ones (or at least the jack faces) could've been salvaged somehow but they were awfully big and heavy. Small 555s seem to be around. Even small installations required Bell maintenance from time to time, too. The history details developments of electronic PBXs. This took time and did not come easy, especially for small installations where the high cost of electronic common control would be spread among few stations and thus not be economical. Also, I suspect Bell had a large inventory of traditional cord boards and wanted them used as well so the newest style PBXs and console-switchboards were priced at a premium. (IBM did the same with older computers). > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When there was any need of repair > service, for example on the board itself, a repair person was there > in usually 30 minutes. I'm sure there was at least one, probably more, Bell employees at your site full time to handle repairs and extension change orders. > Finally he was finished, put his tools back in his holster and turned > to leave, but he paused, looked at me and said, "You know, if I > mentioned this to Mrs. Parsons (our chief operator) you would get > fired -- be out on your ass! -- as soon as she heard about it." I think "Mr. Hamilton" saved you. I wonder what the repairman had to report back. Our little PBX in school had a big red sticker "LIQUIDS SPILLED ON THE SWITCHBOARD WILL DISRUPT YOUR SERVICE". In my high school we had a Teletype for computer time sharing. It failed and the repairman (from Bell whom we rented the TTY from at $100/month) found lots of raisons gumming up the works. One kid liked to eat them while working. The repairman said any future repairs of that nature would be billed. We teased the kid forever with that. The school system eventually bought its own TTYs. The Bell ones had the built in equipment ASR (buttons on the side, automatic connection). Our new ones had an external modem and DAA box and plain phone with a 2-way switch. We also had offline Teletypes. We found that offline units also had a modem in them and a way to connect them to an idle phone line (and not using any DAA). The School District didn't like this since (1) it tied up phone lines not meant for that purpose and (2) it violated the rules. One rich kid rented his own Teletype from Bell for a month. We were jealous. When I got my first home PC, I realized I had a device that did everything our old Teletypes did, only at a faster speed (2400 vs 110), and here it was in my home. Actually, I didn't need to dial up to anything since GW-BASIC was included in the machine. I avoided eating raisons while on the PC. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You referred to him as 'Mr. Hamilton' but around Chicago he was known as 'Mr. Green'. For example, a lawyer might go into court and ask for a continuance on the case or the judge might grant a continuance because 'Mr. Green has not yet had a chance to give his testimony.' Or if 'Mr. Green' had been in judge's chambers or the lawyer's office, then often-times the judge or the prosecutor and other lawyers would decide it is 'in the best interest of justice' to dismiss the case. 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! 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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 #270 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 23 01:59:27 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.3 required=2.0 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD,HEADER_SPAM,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DBF5B2175; Sun, 23 Jul 2006 01:59:26 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #271 Message-Id: <20060723055926.DBF5B2175@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 01:59:26 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 23 Jul 2006 02:00:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 271 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight (Verena Dobnik) Fake Google Site Has Trojan Horse Waiting (John E. Dunn) Search Going on for Hidden Google Malware (Robert McMillan, IDG) Laptop Phone Calls With Digital Phone Service (mjb920) Coverage Areas of FiOS? (maruk2@hotmail.com) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Anthony Bellanga) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Steven Lichter) Re: MYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Bob Goudreau) Re: Carolina Net Can't Validate E911 Info (Thor Lancelot Simon) Report Agrees Google Attempting to combat Fraud (Eric Auchard) Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise (Greg Skinner) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 23:58:47 -0500 From: Verena Dobnik Subject: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer The damage to a utility's underground network in the borough of Queens is greater than imagined; a twist in the six-day power outage caused Con Ed officials to say electricity won't be back until 'sometime' in the next week, the mayor said Saturday. "It'll be done when it's done," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters gathered in Queens' Astoria Park, where the city's emergency command center for the blackout is set up. Consolidated Edison CEO Kevin Burke apologized to customers for the inconvenience and attributed the outages to an unprecedented failure of multiple power lines. "It was really a very extraordinary event, something that I've never seen before," Burke said. "I don't know right now what has happened." The problem began with failures on a series of feeder cables, circuits that carry 27,000 volts and power entire neighborhoods, he said. The cables are designed to compensate for failures; if one goes down, others pick up the load. On Monday, 10 feeder cables were out of service. Lower-voltage cables also were damaged, apparently by carrying larger than normal amounts of current, Burke said. To hasten the restoration of power to as many 18,000 customers, or about 72,000 people, electrical crews from as far away as Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, were on their way to New York to assist Con Ed in the restoration of the network, Bloomberg said. Severe thunderstorms Friday hindered repair efforts and knocked out some fixed circuits, Bloomberg said. Con Ed crews "are going manhole to manhole, pulling up every line," the mayor said. As workers inspected underground cables and transformers, they "found more damage than they thought they would find. They were surprised. Everything they check, it needs to be fixed or replaced. " Power has been out for many residents and businesses since Monday. Some residents found their own solutions. One barber set up a generator on the street and cut hair on the sidewalk. "It's very dark and you can't really see inside," said Hair Fantasy owner Rocco Aliberti. "It's very bad. We try to do as much as we can do. I've got to pay bills." On Friday, Con Edison revealed the failure was 10 times larger than it had previously reported. The utility had initially said only 2,000 customers were affected. On Friday, this '2000' estimate changed to 18,000 which continued to rise as Con Ed workers went door by door surveying residences and businesses. The utility's acknowledgment that more customers were affected drew a furious response from some residents and city leaders. "Con Edison's behavior has crossed the line from reprehensible to criminal," said Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, who called for an investigation. Meanwhile, emergency service employees reached out to the most vulnerable city residents; the elderly and the ill, including diabetics whose insulin must be kept under refrigeration. Insulin was among medication carried by mobile health centers driven to about a dozen Queens locations. The Red Cross had distributed 20,000 bottles of water and 15,000 meals. Sixteen senior centers normally closed on weekends were open Saturday and Sunday. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:04:02 -0500 From: John E. Dunn Subject: Fake Google Site Has Trojan Horse Waiting by John E. Dunn, Techworld.com Scammers have set up an exact copy of the download page for Google's Toolbar plug-in in an attempt to lure users to download a Trojan backdoor. Reported by security outfit Surfcontrol, some versions of the scam even spoof the correct Google Toolbar web address for Internet Explorer, using Google's own redirection service in an attempt to hide the real, non-Google address. The Trojan itself -- W32.Ranky.FW -- is designed to turn the PC into a bot zombie, and is spread using the conventional technique of asking recipients of a spam e-mail to follow an embedded link. According to Surfcontrol, the version detected by the company fails because of poor programming of defective compilation, but it remains a proof-of-concept in how to attack users using a simple combination of convincing elements. Clever Combination Outwardly simple, the scam has a clever combination of tricks. Although using parts of established Web sites is standard in phishing scams, it is relatively unusual to go to the length of reproducing en entire page precisely, in combination with a convincingly-spoofed web address. The fact that the spammed e-mail appears to come from Google could convince recipients to follow the link. Assuming that a re-engineered version appears -- highly likely -- once infected, users will notice nothing untoward, although their PCs will have become part of a bot-controlled network. Google has been attacked in similar way before. Last September, scammers faked the Google search page itself in order to aid the spread of a worm. More recently, a Trojan attacked the company's adsense advertisements, replacing them, in-browser, with fake ones on any PC infected with the malware. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:07:48 -0500 From: Robert McMillan, IDG Subject: Search Going on for Hidden Google Malware Robert McMillan, IDG News Service A well-known security researcher has released code that can be used to mine Google's database for malicious software. The tool is similar to one developed by Web filtering vendor Websense last week, but which was not released to the general public. Websense said that making this software public could lead to its being misused by attackers. Using a database of digital fingerprints of known malware -- called "signatures" -- the Malware Search tool uses the popular search engine to find a number of known worms and viruses. It was developed by HD Moore, the researcher best known as the developer of the widely used Metasploit hacking tool. Moore's tool, was posted early Monday. Though Google is widely used to search the Internet for Web pages and office documents, the search engine also can peek through the binary information stored in the normally unreadable executable files that are run by Windows computers. Google won't say when it added this feature, but it has gained the attention of security researchers over the past three months. Moore built his tool to help shed some light on how much malware was actually being indexed by Google, he said. His findings: not much. When the security researcher examined a sample of about 4GB of executable code, he found that very few of the programs were malicious. "You can search for malware, but it's not a big risk," he said. Of the approximately 2400 samples he examined, 125 contained malware. More than 90 of these popped up as part of malicious e-mail messages stored in online e-mail archives. The rest of the samples came from Web sites that were actively distributing malware. Attackers Disappointed? So any attacker that might be looking to find new sources of malware using Moore's tool will probably be disappointed. "Attackers have much better sources of malware and the items in the Google index are not recent or useful," he said. "If anything, the Google index is a great tool for determining who distributes malware -- the actual malware in question is not that interesting." Though some have speculated that Google's ability to search through executable files might allow it to create its own shareware and freeware search service, Moore said that Google has not yet indexed enough files for this to be useful. Three months ago, Google had indexed about 30,000 executable files. That number has now risen to about 112,000 samples, he said. "Considering that they're Google, you'd expect better results," Moore said. "If they could grow their index of executables to some sort of useful amount, then this would be really useful," he said. However, without some way of weeding out malicious software, this kind of service could be misused by attackers to trick users into downloading worms or viruses masquerading as legitimate downloads, Moore said. Google declined to comment for this article except to say that it is aware that users can find malicious executables via its search engine, and is making an effort to shield users from this code. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. ------------------------------ From: mjb920 Subject: Laptop Phone Calls With Digital Phone Service Date: 22 Jul 2006 21:29:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have a sister who has Bright House (central Florida) cable Internet and digital phone service. She is confined to a wheelchair, and would like to make phone calls from her laptop computer, using a headset. Is this possible? Thanks for any help. Jim ------------------------------ From: maruk2@hotmail.com Subject: Coverage Areas of FiOS? Date: 22 Jul 2006 11:43:59 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Do you know of any web link to check the latest coverage areas for Verizon's FiOS? Verizon website can search on phone number or address but I could not find anything to show which cities, which parts of the cities, esp. in Texas (e.g. Dallas metroplex). Who provides fiber with at least 10 Mbps in San Antonio? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:47:55 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com asked about the 1975 New York City Central Office Fire, and what would happen if something like this happened today. Many CLECs could also be affected if a fire occured in a large city or even mid sized town. CLECs frequently co-locate at Bell/ILEC central offices. Some CLECs are simply re-selling Bell/ILEC dialtone and would be immediately affected if the central office switching equipment were destroyed or severely damaged. Those CLECs which have their own switching facilities elsewhere might be affected to some degree, depending on whether or not those CLECs have their own distribution plant (such as the Cable TV companies), or whether they use the ILEC's copper/fiber. If the CLEC is also a Cable TV company, chances are that they aren't using Bell copper at all, and as long as those customers in the area aren't in the immediate vicinity of the fire, those Cable TV CLEC customers wouldn't be affected. However, calls from those Cable TV CLEC customers to those ILEC landline customers served from the burned out central office couldn't be completed, obviously. If the CLEC has their own switch elsewhere, but are using the ILEC's copper distribution plant, it depends on whether or not the fire burned or damaged the main distribution frame. Such CLEC customers are still going to be "wired" to that building, but then at the MDF are grouped on direct trunks to get dialtone from where ever the CLEC's central office switching actually is located. A lot of people today also have cellular phones. In some cases, those residental customers don't even have landline phone service anymore. It's also quite possible that an ILEC might offer temporary service to their affected landline customers with cellular phone service provided by that ILEC's wireless subsidiary or wireless partner company. I seem to remember hearing that BellSouth has offered Cingular phone service to many returning to affected parts of Katrina- damaged New Orleans who still had to wait for their landline BellSouth service to be restored. Residential customers simply got Cingular cellphones with Cingular assigned numbers. However, I think that business customers were able to temporarily port their BellSouth landline numbers to their new (temporary?) Cingular phones. If there were a severe fire, flood, etc. to an ILEC's central office switch or building these days, I would think that the ILEC might also offer temporary cellular service to affected customers in those cases as well. And of course, there are always going to be those customers who don't even have (ILEC) landline phone service anymore, and have strictly cellular service. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 02:12:09 GMT hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > In Feb 1975 there was a very bad fire in a big Central Office building > in New York City. Twelve local exchanges and numerous tandem switches > were knocked out. > The Bell System mobilized and worked around the clock to get service > restored. Some burnt panel switchgear was removed and replaced with > new ESS switches airlifted in. Other gear was cleaned one contact at > a time with Q-Tips. Some calls were rerouted to other offices. > Service was restored quickly and known as the "Miracle on Second > Avenue". > I wonder: Suppose a fire like that happened today: Would it take > longer or shorter to restore service in today's world? > On the plus side, I think ESS would make things a lot simpler. No > contact cleaning, just replace the "boxes" with new ones. Some > traffic could be rerouted as was done before by ESS reprogramming. > Hopefully CO buildings today have non destructive (ie Halon) fire > supression systems. > But there are some negatives: > Without the big Bell System in existence, could new "boxes" be found > quickly and deployed? Western Electric had them ready (for another > location). Do today's switch makers carry such inventory being > they're very expensive? > Secondly, New York Telephone brought in craftsmen from other > companies. Could that happen today with staff size so much lower and > the company fractured? > Third, some work involved resplicing cables in the cable vault. Small > space limited the number of people who could work at one time, despite > laying plank catwalks to "double up". I think in a fire such splicing > would still need to be done and take just as long, possibly longer if > skilled crews weren't available (see above). > Comments? (Public replies, please) > P.S. A read of the New York Times of that incident disclosed the > tenor of troubled NYC at that time. Merchants and residents without > phones were more worried about security -- being able to call police > -- than they were about lost business; that theme was repeated many > times in interviews. Many businesses and people had burglar alarms > that were now inoperative without a phone line. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: February 27, 1975 was the date. And it > was a very bad fire, with service out for a long time afterward. There > have been other very severe fires in their history, in the summer of > 1945 in the Chicago area, in one of the suburbs was one of the > first. This Digest was not around at the time, nor at the time of the > 1960's fire in Richmond, Indiana. However, Richmond, IN and New York > City in 1975 are both reported in detail in our archives in the > section on history. Then on Mother's Day, in May, 1988 was the major > fire in Hinsdale, IL, which like New York City, took place on 'only' > one building but affected a _large_ number of phones and exchanges and > services in the Chicago area and throughout Illinois and Indiana. So > telco tends to 'play the averages' on things like this, with fires or > other disasters (New Orleans and Katrina for example) occuring about > once every fifteen or twenty years. Although it is questionable if > telco could have done very much to protect their property and services > in the Katrina disaster, they most certainly could have mitigated > their losses and the disruption in service in Manhattan in 1975 and > again in Hinsdale in 1988. > But in the case of Hinsdale at least, telco said at the time and still > insists even today that it is not 'cost effective' for them to take > steps in advance to mitigate their losses when these things > happen. So, they do nothing about it, and deal with it when it > happens. So, the difference between February, 1975 and February, 1965 > was ten years; May, 1988 was another thirteen years. Add twelve years > for the cable fire in St. Louis in January, 1990, and about fifteen > years for New Orleans and Katrina; although both New Orleans and St. > Louis were not really anything telco could do 'much about'. So Lisa, > it is not a question of 'if it happens again' so much as it is a > question of 'when it happens again' as it will, I am sure, given the > facts of life these days, with 'terrorists' all around us and your > heroine, Ma Bell telling us she will deal with it if it happens, but > it is not 'cost-effective' to worry about it before that time. She > still says 'if'; most of us say 'when'. Don't worry, when it does and > after it has been dealt with, Ma Bell will put out another very self- > congratulatory book like they did in the summer of 1975 with a cover > picture of a plume of thick, black smoke and a Brave, Couragous > Fireman and tell us how They Knew What Was Best in getting service > restored a month or two later. What they will not tell you until they > get sued with their backs up against the wall will be as it was in > Hinsdale: the first alarms went off in _Springfield, IL_ (about two > hundred miles south of Chicago and were ignored by the on-duty staff > for about an hour until _they_ decided to make inquiry from someone > in the Chicago area. PAT] Most of the companies have switches located in trailers that can be moved to a site and spliced into the office cables. Also many of the offices have a very good fire suppression systems that would stop a fire very fast. I was involved in the 1971 Sylmar, Calif office, in fact I was working that night in Sunland and we really felt it. Trailers were brought in with switch boards and a construction center was set up in Pacoma and the step equipment was cabled and moved to the Sylmar CO. That was in the step days, things are much smaller today. 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 In Feb 1975 there was a very bad fire in a big Central Office building > in New York City. Twelve local exchanges and numerous tandem switches > were knocked out. > The Bell System mobilized and worked around the clock to get service > restored. Some burnt panel switchgear was removed and replaced with > new ESS switches airlifted in. Other gear was cleaned one contact at > a time with Q-Tips. Some calls were rerouted to other offices. > Service was restored quickly and known as the "Miracle on Second > Avenue". > I wonder: Suppose a fire like that happened today: Would it take > longer or shorter to restore service in today's world? I think the most prominent recent comparable telecom disaster in the US also occurred in Manhattan, but is perhaps overlooked because it was just a small part of a much larger disaster. I'm referring to the Verizon facilities damaged during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. See: http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=61409 and http://telephonyonline.com/news/telecom_verizon_dial_tones/index.html and http://www.connectlive.com/events/verizon/transcript-120301.html for some reflections on how Verizon recovered from the loss of a switching office that served hundreds of thousands of voice lines and millions of data circuits. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Carolina Net Can't Validate E911 Info Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 21:10:43 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Fred Atkinson wrote: > I'm now using Carolina Net VOIP phone service. I've tried to register > my street address as E911 on my phone. > Every time I try or they try, the system kicks it back as unable to > validate. CN told me that the database apparently didn't include my > street address. [...] > Does anyone have any ideas about how this situation can be resolved? VOIP E911 is an FCC mandate. Write a detailed (but clear) letter to the FCC about the problem; carbon it to the corporate counsel at Carolina Net and to the E911 supervisor you spoke with, and to your state Public Utilities Commission. Send it certified mail, return receipt requested. If you don't receive a timely response, you may have more luck contacting your state PUC than the FCC if you call them on the phone, but I'd call both, if I were you. 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 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:01:15 -0500 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Report Agrees Google Attempting to Combat Fraud By Eric Auchard An independent report filed on Friday in an Arkansas court sided with Google over disgruntled advertisers who had sued the search engine giant accusing it of trying to drive up fees through so-called click fraud. The two sides agreed to commission the report as part of a settlement deal for the lawsuit, filed by advertising customer Lane's Gifts in a state court in Miller County, Arkansas. Pay-per-click advertising, where advertisers only pay when people click on ads, is seen by critics as the Achilles' heel of Web search leader Google, which last quarter saw revenues grow 77 percent to $2.46 billion, virtually all from such ads. The suit alleged Web advertisers allowed their pay-per-click ad systems to be abused in order to drive up fees paid by customers. It argued that companies such as Google have not taken reasonable steps to regulate the practice. "Based on my evaluation, I conclude that Google's efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable," Alexander Tuzhilin, a professor of information systems at New York University, said in the report. Lane's Gifts commissioned Tuzhilin's report. Google, in a statement on its Web site, said in response: "The bottom-line conclusion of the report is that Google's efforts against click fraud are in fact reasonable." It added: "It is an independent report, so not surprisingly there are other aspects of it with which we don't fully agree." In a separate court filing, Google urged the Arkansas judge, Joe Griffin, to give final approval for the settlement, which was unveiled in March and got preliminary approval in April. A hearing is scheduled for Monday to hear objections raised to the proposed agreement, in which Google has agreed to pay up to $90 million to settle charges of overbilling customers. Tuzhilin, a Web marketing expert, said after talking to Google's fraud prevention team, he could say "with a moderate degree of certainty" that click fraud is "under control." Critics argue that up to 30 percent of pay-per-click advertising actions may be fraudulent, a figure Google and rival Yahoo Inc. describe as wildly exaggerated. Google says it uses a variety of automated filters to protect advertising customers from "invalid clicks." Tuzhilin identified a previously undisclosed policy change in March 2005 where Google quit double-billing advertisers when customers, perhaps inadvertently, clicked twice on the same ad. The report criticizes Google for taking two years to halt the double-click billing practice. "Despite its noticeable negative effects on its financial performance, Google decided to abandon the old double-click policy and not to charge advertisers for the second click, which was an appropriate action to take," the report states. Tuzhilin does not identify the source of his information and he was not immediately available to comment. Barry Schwartz, an analyst with Search Engine Watch, said the report sheds light on a business shrouded in secrecy, which Google has argued is vital to protect it from unethical users who seek to game Google's system and commit massive fraud. "It is going to be good for advertisers to know more about how their clicks are getting charged," he said. Financial research firm Outsell estimates click fraud is a $1.3 billion problem. The Click Fraud Network, which detects such fraud for advertisers, estimates it affects 14 percent of pay-per-click ads, though a bit less for Google and Yahoo. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In our last message of this issue, Greg Skinner provides us with a detailed copy of the report discussed in this Reuters newswire story and discusses Professor Tuzhillan's findings in more detail. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 07:21:23 +0000 From: Greg Skinner Subject: Re: Bogus Advertising Click Count Continues to Rise TELECOM Digest readers may find the following report valuable. It describes Google's click fraud detection practices to date. The author, Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin of NYU, was appointed to evaluate Google's click fraud detection methods, as part of the recent lawsuit filed by Lane's Gifts and Collectibles. He concluded that Google has made reasonable efforts to fight click fraud, but raises some important questions concerning why and how certain design and policy decisions were made. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/pdf/Tuzhilin_Report.pdf ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #271 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 24 00:52:36 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.7 required=2.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,HEADER_SPAM, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 556FB218D; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:52:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #272 Message-Id: <20060724045236.556FB218D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:52:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:55:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 272 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson What its Like to Work for Google (Business Week Online) Soldiers' Words May Test PBS Language Rules (Monty Solomon) Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight (NOTvalid) Re: Search Going on for Hidden Google Malware (mc) Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? (Rick Merrill) Re: Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started House (Mark J) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:09:05 -0500 From: Business Week Online Subject: What its Like to Work for Google With fun perks like free lunches, on-site massage, and weekly roller hockey games, it's no wonder that Google is high on the list of where college grads want to work. After all, the company was launched from a Stanford University dorm room, and Staffing Programs Director Judy Gilbert says working at Google is still a lot like being at a college campus. While most of the Internet company's undergraduate hires are in technical fields like software engineering, she says Google is also hiring top-notch candidates for positions in sales and marketing. She spoke with BusinessWeek.com reporter Kerry Miller about what it's really like inside the Googleplex and revealed the one answer students shouldn't give when interviewers ask, "Why are you interested in Google?" Google ranked No. 2 in this year's Universum Survey of where college grads most want to work and fourth among undergrad business majors (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/4/06, "They Love it Here and Here and Here") Certainly, we have a very visible brand, as a company as well as an employer, and I think it's very difficult to separate those. But, at the end of the day, we don't know quite what drives it. We're just flattered to be near the top of the list. We like being popular. And does that make it easier to find good talent, or does it actually make it harder -- since you have so many people clamoring to get your attention? It's a good problem to have, but there is a little bit of both. We're very selective about the people that we hire. It's very important to us to find the right match. There are some very smart people who are enormously capable, but for various reasons, they're not likely to be very happy or successful at Google. Part of what we try to do throughout our hiring process is to spot that, so that candidates can get to know us and understand what it would actually be like to work at this place vs. what it's like to experience Google as a user or as a customer. But we're more than happy to wade through piles of resumes and applicants if they're coming to us. How fierce is the competition? For most of the positions for which we would hire entry-level people, we're not looking to fill a particular number of chairs. It's not like there's one position that's up for grabs and we're going to look at five candidates and pick the one we like best. We want to try to hire everybody that we find who we think would be a good fit for that position and successful, long-term, in this company. It's one of the things that's hardest to talk to students about because there is this sense that the guy who goes in to interview right after is someone you're competing with, and that's really not the way we think about it here. What types of jobs are open to undergraduate business majors? Most of the undergrad hiring that we do is for software engineering positions, so it's technical. But there are positions available for people who do not have a technical background and who are interested in the business side of things. The biggest groups into which we hire business-oriented undergrads are in our online sales and operations world. So these folks come in and they support our products like AdWords and AdSense, and they learn the tools inside and out. They work in small teams, and they interact with customers and prospective customers. What's the career path like for a new hire in online sales? A new hire would start as a coordinator, and they move up from there. They're given progressively more responsibility as they demonstrate that they can handle it. And many of the people who come up through that program move into roles where they are managing teams that are not just a batch of grads within two or three years. There's a very structured training program, with clear objectives that you hit at different points in your career, and there's a fairly well-established promotion track. So what would a coordinator be doing on a daily basis? Depending on which product they were working with, they might be dealing with inquiries that have come in from, for example, advertisers who were trying to understand why their keywords were showing up in certain areas or where the clicks were coming from. Basically, a coordinator is helping our advertisers use the product more effectively and get the most value out of it. As a coordinator moves up and gets more experience, he or she might work with individual customers to help them optimize their ad program by helping them understand how to select keywords, how to bid more effectively, and other placement strategies. We're very focused on providing clear metrics on the outcomes of the products that we sell. And the AdWords coordinators are really on the front lines in delivering that kind of service. Are there other types of positions open to undergrads? We're also a product marketing organization, so we hire associate product marketing managers (APMMs) who work on increasing acceptance and usage of our products worldwide. For example, we have a set of APMMs who work on marketing our products to a college-student audience. There's a section of our web site called College Life Powered by Google, and those APMMs work with products like Gmail and Picasa, and highlight how college students might find that set of things particularly useful. How many people will you be hiring this year? I would say for undergrads, it's going to be more than a hundred, and most of those will be primarily at our headquarters in Mountain View. We've also got a big center in Dublin, and we've got folks at a few locations in India. You may have seen in the papers that Ann Arbor is about to be a much bigger place for us. We're opening an office there that will support our advertising businesses, and and I would say a good chunk of our undergrad hires will be at our new facility in Ann Arbor. The AdWords coordinators, for example -- we'll be hiring lots and lots of them in Ann Arbor. What kind of long-term like career development opportunities does Google offer? The company is growing and so, historically, the answer on career development has been the thing that you're doing now is probably going to grow out from under you, and that automatically gives you larger, more complicated, more interesting things to do. It also creates opportunities. For example, we're going to open a big office in India, and one of the guys who's over there running that joined Google not too long after he finished his MBA program. He was in the online sales and operations program, and was very successful as a manager there. So he went over to start the India office, and he will have been over there for about two years now. So those kinds of international assignments are definitely part of the growth path. One of our initiatives right now is that we've hit a point in growth where we as a company see the need to become more systematic about developing career paths and giving people more visibility into what the options are. People get promoted here very regularly, but we're trying to provide more of a road map to help people understand how this might work over a period of a few years. So, right now, is there such a thing as a typical career path at Google? There really isn't, and I actually don't think that will change once we have things formalized, because we hire people with such broad, interesting skill sets, and we hire people with the idea that they might grow and do a lot of different things, and we don't want to try to bet on it too much up front. So I think soon we'll have a clearer set of what the range of possibilities might be, and we'll have that somewhat better defined, but there will continue to be exceptions. Do you offer internships for college students? We do, though not every group offers intern programs. And to be honest, on the undergrad side, we don't have a lot of programs for business students. They tend to be more onesy-twosy projects, where some group said, "You know what? I could really use some help on this, and this would be a good project for an intern." We actually have an intern in my team right now -- she's a statistics major, and she's doing analysis of various factors that contribute to hiring decisions, looking at some of the science behind hiring and helping us figure out what the attributes are that we should be looking for. We're sending a whole bunch of interns on a scavenger hunt to San Francisco one day next week. And the idea is to put them on teams with people who are also interns but they probably haven't worked with. And so it's a fun, sort of silly team-building exercise and a good example of the kind of sort of nutty team events that are a really important part of the culture around here. There's a kind of aura that surrounds the culture of Google and the work environment there, with the free lunches and everything else. What's it really like working at Google? I've got to say, it's really all true -- it is an amazing environment. With some of the perks, like the frozen yogurt machine, say, it really does feel like a college campus -- and I'm certainly not the first person to have said that. I think because the company has such trust in the fantastic people that we bring on board, we want to give them the tools and the environment they need to do their very best work. We prefer to let them run free, not to constrain them with silly things that they shouldn't have to deal with. Silly things like dress code? Dress code is certainly one thing. You want people to be comfortable, and that means a variety of different things depending on who you've got. So, you know, just looking out the window of this conference room here, there are people walking by in shorts and flip-flops, somebody's got their dog. But people do wear suits here, too. People wear shirts with collars. It's very much what the individual is comfortable with and feels that he or she needs to do to do his job best that day. What do you wear to an interview with Google? Whatever you like. It really is whatever people are comfortable in. It's likely that when you come in, your interviewers will be wearing an array of different things. Business casual is a pretty safe bet. Some of the software engineering candidates we get in here are wearing tank tops, shorts. For a business role, I would probably wear long pants. But it really is about the content of what you've done and of your ideas rather than what you've got on. So when you're when you're talking to students, what is it that you're looking for? We look for a track record of accomplishment. We look for a history of being effective in environments where the rules aren't necessarily clearly defined and you've got to make it up a little bit as you go along, which is a big part of what we do here. And we look for different signs that point to the fact that the person isn't somebody who takes the easy way out. With people who are coming straight out of school and often haven't had a lot of work experience, we're looking for people who have consistently demonstrated that they're willing to take on tough challenges, wrestle them to the ground, and come out either on top or having learned something. Academics are also a big piece of that for people who don't have a lot of work experience. So, here's a tough program, did you take some classes that were outside your major that forced you to stretch yourself? At some of the schools where we do a lot of recruiting, we actually look at what courses a student took, and we'll say, we know that this is part of a particular major and this is a really hard class, and when we see someone who did very well in that class, we know that that's a really strong marker. In places where we've gotten good data about what a certain piece of information might predict, we definitely will look for it and we try to get it. What are the major campuses where you do recruiting? We went to 80 different schools in the U.S. last fall for campus recruiting, so it's a long list. Obviously, Stanford is right in our back yard, Berkeley is just across the bay. We certainly go to Harvard, Princeton. We get a lot of engineers out ofCarnegie Mellon and MIT, and, while we're there, we also are looking for the non-technical students, as well. Are there certain things that people do when they're interviewing that they think will really impress you but just totally backfire? One question we ask when we interview people, is "Why are you interested in Google," and an answer that we don't think is so great is, "Well, because it's Google." But you'd be surprised how often we get that answer. Copyright 2006 BusinessWeek Online. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 22:52:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Soldiers' Words May Test PBS Language Rules By ELIZABETH JENSEN The New York Times The PBS documentarian Ken Burns has been working for six years on "The War," a soldier's-eye view of World War II, and those who have seen parts of the 14-plus hours say they are replete with salty language appropriate to discussions of the horrors of war. What viewers will see and hear when the series is broadcast in September 2007 is an open question. A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10 p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language, to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal Communications Commission. Most notably, PBS's deputy counsel, Paul Greco, wrote in a memo to stations, it is no longer enough simply to bleep out offensive words audibly when the camera shows a full view of the speaker's mouth. From now on, the on-camera speaker's mouth must also be obscured by a digital masking process, a solution that PBS producers have called cartoonish and clumsy. In addition, profanities expressed in compound words must be audibly bleeped in their entirety so that viewers cannot decipher the words. In the past, PBS required producers to bleep only the offensive part of the compound word. Since May 31, bits of dialogue have been digitally obscured about 100 times in four PBS programs, most often in two episodes of the music documentary "The Blues." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/arts/television/22pbs.html?ex=1311220800&en=133201ba731dcf3e&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight Date: 23 Jul 2006 20:43:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Here in Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in North America we alternate from days with shut-down of elevator service with days of hot water shut down with at least one notice that BOTH may go down at one time. This is to "conserve power". We are one block away from BIG ALLIS part of the electricity generating complex that supplies THIRTY PER CENT of all power to NYC. At this rate, the entire city could have electricity as reliable as Iraq. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Interesting you mention it ... where I live here in Independence, I am four blocks from the electric generating plant for our town (East Main Street and South Cement Street [so named because the cement plant is at one end of that street] on the eastern edge of town) which is operated by Westar Energy -- the former KG&E operation. When my mother lived in this house seveveral years ago, she would complain "the electricity goes out sometimes, and that seems odd considering how close we are to the power house." But what mother did not understand was that _distance from the power plant_ is not the only criteria; lots of other things come into play as well. It seems pretty reliable to me, although much more expensive than I would like. Electric here costs me during the summer in excess of $150 per month, although I am on the 'average pay plan' which means I wind up paying about $100 per month all year around. We have not had any outages this summer at all; we had a couple of brief ones (about one hour each) last year, and one or two of the same short duration last winter. What I _really miss_ however is when the water went out by accident but that was only once in the time I have lived here -- this past weekend in fact -- and like the electric, there was no advance notice; it was just gone. Friday about 5 PM a main water line under Second Street decided to spring a rather bad leak. The water people say they lost 'several thousand gallons' of water before they could get it shut off (all of the block I live on plus much of South Second Street. I walked down the street through the lake of water to where I saw a couple of trucks which said 'City of Independence Water Works' on the side and asked the men about it. They said their 'best estimate' was several hours needed of work. And it was off 3-4 hours, which is a real pain if you have no water in reserve and only ice cubes in the fridge, and one tank full of toilet water in reserve to be flushed as needed. Anyway, the water guys came to my door about 10 PM Friday night and said "it is going to take us much longer than we expected, so we are going to turn the water on _temporarily_ so everyone can stock up on water to drink and flush their toilets, etc, _then_ after about an hour we are going to cut it off again, so be warned." True to their word, shortly afterward, the pipes started hissing as air ran out, and a _tiny_ stream of water started running. I filled up several jugs and also the cats' water bowl, etc before it finally dribbled off. Saturday morning I awakened to the sound of a jack hammer and a Catepillar tractor-like scoop shovel digging in the street about a block away. They finished their work around noon, tossed gravel in the giant hole they made, and came by every house to say "sorry for the inconvenience in the 100-degree heat." If the water and the electric had gone off at the same time, that would have been sort of an ugly situation. Our newspaper, the Independence Daily Reporter, told us today in the Sunday paper that a ninety year old section of the main pipe had given out. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Search Going on for Hidden Google Malware Organization: BellSouth Internet Group Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 13:58:46 -0400 > Though Google is widely used to search the Internet for Web pages and > office documents, the search engine also can peek through the binary > information stored in the normally unreadable executable files that > are run by Windows computers. Google won't say when it added this > feature, but it has gained the attention of security researchers over > the past three months. One's own computer or other people's? ?? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:13:34 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? maruk2@hotmail.com wrote: > Do you know of any web link to check the latest coverage areas for > Verizon's FiOS? > Verizon website can search on phone number or address but I could not > find anything to show which cities, which parts of the cities, esp. in > Texas (e.g. Dallas metroplex). > Who provides fiber with at least 10 Mbps in San Antonio? Since the list changes weekly I suggest you call your local office, and let us know what you find out!-) ------------------------------ From: Mark J Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Re: Exploding Lithium-Ion Battery Started House Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 23:44:13 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Nope ... didn't get to the smoldering stage yet :-P "Mr Joseph Singer" wrote in message news:telecom25.269.14@telecom-digest.org: > Mark J Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:17:24 -0700 wrote: >> I almost had my pants catch fire when I swapped out a battery on a >> smoke detector and dropped the old one in my pants pocket. A few >> minutes later I felt something hot in my pocket and I reached in and >> found the 9v battery had shorted on some change in my pocket. > I just have to ask: Did the smoke detector go off? :) ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #272 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 24 21:11:36 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8636A21C3; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:11:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #273 Message-Id: <20060725011136.8636A21C3@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:11:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:13:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 273 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Name Privitization Planned (Joel Rothstein, Reuters) AOL Poised to Give More Free Services (Anick Jesdanun, AP) Emergency Alerts to be Sent via Cell Phones and Computers (Nicole King) Sprint Pseudowire RFP (Blue Horseshoe) Report: Skype, Kazaa Founders Working on Video Venture (USTelecomdailyLead) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 24, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Color 3 Slot Payphones? (Lisa Hancock) Future 911/Technology is Changing so Quickly That Emergency (Monty Solomon) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Lisa Hancock) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (DLR) Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? (DLR) Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? (Lisa Hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues No Relief in Sight (Dennis Ritchie) Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues No Relief in Sight (DLR) Re: The Great [sic] Queens Blackout Continues No Relief in Sight (Goudreau) Re: Laptop Phone Calls With Digital Phone Service (Mr Joseph Singer) T-Mobile Waives Call Charges for American Evacuees (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: http://www.privatephone.com/ (Anna) CellPhone Filmmaking (kshag5@yahoo.com) Re: 303-720-1234 (Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers) (agreatnate@gmail.com) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:33:43 -0500 From: Joel Rothstein Subject: Internet Name Privitization Planned Hearing looks at Internet name privatization plan By Joel Rothstein The U.S. Commerce Department will hold a Wednesday hearing on the government's September deadline to give up control over Internet domain names, a schedule that some high-tech industry advocates say should be delayed. The U.S. government controls the naming system for ".com" and all web addresses through the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based not-for-profit company that decides what names can and cannot be registered. Some foreign governments and critics have been concerned that the U.S. government has too much control over what has become a global commerce, communications and social engine. The transition is currently slated to take place by September 30, but the U.S. Commerce Department has the option to extend its control. The European Commission was highly critical of what it called "political interference" by U.S. officials last May in rejecting a proposed .xxx Internet domain for pornography websites -- a system supporters said would help confine and filter such sites. The Commerce Department scheduled the Wednesday hearing to consider "the progress of this transition" to the private sector, according to a department statement. Most companies and individuals register domain names such as the ubiquitous ".com" and ".net" addresses through private sector companies such as VeriSign Inc. Less well known is that VeriSign operates the ".com" registry under a contract granted from ICANN, which cannot make changes to the domain name system without the approval of the U.S. Commerce Department. While countries outside the United States rely on ICANN to maintain the domain name system (DNS) through what are known as "root servers," they could decide to set up their own root servers and operate under their own rules. "The incentive (for the U.S. to privatize ICANN) is to keep the Internet on one DNS to avoid multiple systems -- much like the multiple phone systems we have around the world," according to Steve DelBianco, director of The NetChoice Coalition, a Washington policy group. Although DelBianco supports privatization in the long run, he suggests that the United States maintain control for two more years to ensure that ICANN is ready to operate as an independent entity. "ICANN needs to be as strong as it can be to resist foreign governments," 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 and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:37:05 -0500 From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: AOL Poised to Give More Free Services By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer The company responsible for introducing millions of people to the Internet is poised to undergo a transformation that would likely accelerate its decline as a gatekeeper of access to the information superhighway. Time Warner Inc.'s board is expected to review on Thursday a proposal for its AOL LLC online unit to make even more services free, likely including the vaunted AOL.com e-mail accounts, in hopes of boosting advertising. The strategy is risky: Millions of customers would likely drop their paid subscriptions, and AOL would lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year, perhaps even a billion or more, for the promise of an advertising payoff some time in the future. But AOL has little choice. Its subscription business will keep eroding regardless. Internet advertising, meanwhile, is booming industrywide, and opportunities abound with ad-supported online video, where AOL is strong. "It's a risky game they're playing, but it would be riskier not to play," said David Hallerman, a senior analyst with research company eMarketer Inc. AOL got its start in 1985 as a provider of a proprietary online service, then known as Q-Link. Though it gradually allowed users to venture off to the public Internet, AOL tried its best to keep users within its walled gardens filled with exclusive articles, chat rooms and other features. Millions of Americans got their first taste of e-mail, the Web and instant messaging through discs that continually arrived in mailboxes unsolicited. To many users, AOL WAS the Internet. But most people connected then via telephone dial-up modems. As Americans turned to cable and phone companies for high-speed service, they saw less need to pay AOL simply for the exclusive content, even as the company offered discounts for those who didn't need unlimited dial-up access currently $11 off the $26 monthly fee. After peaking in September 2002 with 26.7 million U.S. customers, AOL's subscription base plummeted 30 percent, to 18.6 million in March. It's still the largest Internet service provider, but AOL faces the reality that fewer and fewer Americans want dial-up. Roughly two-thirds of AOL's subscribers are on dial-up plans, while nearly two-thirds of U.S. Internet users have broadband at home. Over the past year and a half, AOL has aggressively moved most of its content news, music videos, chat rooms to free, ad-supported Web sites. Last year, ad revenues grew 33 percent, even as subscription revenues declined by 10 percent. However, the company kept AOL.com e-mail a premium offering, giving free accounts only with less-desirable AIM.com addresses. Many subscribers hung on, but over time found the free offerings from Yahoo Inc. , Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. too sweet to resist. AOL's proprietary software for checking e-mail, among other things, became even less of a draw as its rivals made their Web-based tools richer and easier to use. "Just about everything AOL offers, you can get free from Google, Microsoft or somewhere else," said Dave Burstein, editor of the industry newsletter DSL Prime. "How long are people going to pay for that?" Free e-mail is particularly important because the service is used often and regularly. As users check e-mail on an ad-supported Web page, Hallerman said, they may stumble upon a video or other content, boosting AOL's ad opportunities. Keeping users on the paid service merely risks sacrificing those opportunities forever, said Jeff Lanctot, general manager of aQuantive Inc.'s Avenue A/Razorfish, an online advertising agency that places some ads on AOL sites. "AOL is recognizing that over time, a larger and larger customer segment will in fact leave the (AOL) nest and like what they find" elsewhere, Lanctot said. Two years ago, Bryan Chin, 27, discovered Google's Gmail, a free e-mail service he found easier to use. He kept his AOL account because not everyone has his new address yet, but he doesn't believe he'll ever switch back even if AOL is entirely free. "If it has all the same features that I am still using AOL for, I don't know why I would still use AOL," said Chin, an entertainment writer in New York. The thinking behind AOL's latest strategy proposal is to prevent further defections and keep users within the AOL family whether they are a paid subscriber or not. It's not clear what else might become free. It's possible AOL would charge separately for parental control and security software, so users wouldn't need the entire subscription package simply for those programs. AOL officials would not comment for this story. Investors, who have seen Time Warner stock prices hovering near its 52-week low, eagerly await details, which Time Warner plans to issue Aug. 2. "The market's highly suspect," said Scott Benesch, head of stock research at the investment firm U.S. Trust. "We're not sure that you're able to reduce costs at the same rate, if not faster, than revenues decline in the dial-up (subscription) business." Subscriptions still account for about 80 percent of AOL's revenues. The unit is profitable and contributed to 19 percent of Time Warner's revenues last year. Still, that's down from 24 percent in 2002. Despite his doubts, Benesch acknowledged the latest proposal is something AOL should have considered even sooner. If adopted, the new plan likely would result in a curtailment of subscriber retention efforts, which have been criticized for being too aggressive. It also could mean fewer television ads encouraging people to sign up and perhaps an end to those promotional disks. Layoffs would be likely, on top of the thousands already let go in recent years, including about 1,300 customer-service personnel given pink slips in May. Allen Weiner, a Gartner research analyst, said AOL could benefit from focusing on one rather than two potentially competing businesses. Although Yahoo and AOL have bought several startups recently, Weiner said Yahoo has been quicker and nimbler at integrating their technologies. The number of unique U.S. visitors to AOL sites has remained steady, while its three chief rivals all saw gains in June, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. And comScore Media Metrix found that in June, pages viewed at the main AOL sites by subscribers and free users dropped 44 percent, while Yahoo increased 23 percent. AOL officials have said they've been trying to shore up the basic Web portal offerings, having had a late start, to put the company in a position to make gains with emerging features like online video. Although it faces stiff competition from the major portals and startups like YouTube Inc., AOL can potentially tap the archives of other Time Warner units, as it already has with old Warner Bros. TV shows. AOL also can take advantage of Google's recent $1 billion investment. As part of the deal, Google would help ensure that AOL's video and other hard-to-index materials find their way into Google's search results, though it won't give AOL preferential treatment. "The real value to AOL in the future — if it has a value — is as an advertising and marketing platform," said Morris Mark, managing partner of Mark Asset Management LLC, a Time Warner shareholder. "Google did not make a 5 percent investment in the company out of charity." AP Business Writer Seth Sutel 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 and headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 00:25:12 -0500 From: Nicole King Subject: Emergency Alerts to be Sent via Cell Phones and Computers Nicole King - All Headline News Staff Writer (AHN) - The government will soon use Web sites, personal computers and cell phones to send out warnings about national emergencies. Most likely the warnings will be about natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Homeland Security expects to have the system working by the end of next year. The government has been testing the system in the Washington, D.C., area since October 2004. The new system will update the emergency alerts planned during the Cold War. President Harry Truman created the nation's first alert system in 1951, which required radio stations to broadcast only on certain frequencies during emergencies. Only the president can order a national emergency alert. ------------------------------ From: Blue Horseshoe Subject: Sprint Pseudowire RFP Date: 24 Jul 2006 15:36:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone know if Sprint has really issued this pseudowire RFP last month? Nobody seems to be able to tell me definitively if it was truly issued and if so, where I might be able to get my hands on it ... Thanks all. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:55:27 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report: Skype, Kazaa Founders Working on Video Venture USTelecom dailyLead July 24, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ebqQfDtutfrbfZcTiL TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Skype, Kazaa founders working on video venture BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Beyond cable, DSL, Verizon sees demand for fiber-optic speed * Analysis: Huawei, other Chinese players poised to surge * Commentary: Speculation continues to grow about possible satellite merger * Motorola close to $186M acquisition of Broadbus * Analysis: Microsoft challenges Cisco with Nortel deal * BellSouth reports earnings * Microsoft's MSN to offer more original content USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about billing systems TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Love 'em or hate 'em, Bluetooth headsets are catching on * The sky's the limit for wireless in India REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC sets sports conditions to Adelphia sale Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ebqQfDtutfrbfZcTiL ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 24, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 12:07:36 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 24, 2006 ******************************** United States: BellSouth Shareholders Approve Sale to AT&T http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18987?11228 BellSouth shareholders have voted in favour of the sale of their company to AT&T for US$67 billion in stock. Significance: The deal will also require the approval of federal and state regulators. It is likely to be opposed by consumer groups, but, like the tie-ups between AT&T and SBC and Verizon and MCI, is likely to go ... Brazil: Clouds Gather over Brazil's Mobile Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18981?11228 The board of Vivo, Brazil's largest mobile operator, has approved the roll-out of a GSM network. The joint venture between Telefònica and Portugal Telecom has said that it will invest some 1.08 billion reais (US$492 million) in the deployment of the new ... Wireless Network Design for Dummies? Not Likely. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18979?11228 In the next few years, you can expect a number of major wireless network initiatives to launch in the United States. Judging from the buzz surrounding the upcoming AWS spectrum auction, some initiatives possibly will be undertaken by large and successful 'new economy' companies that are newcomers to the wireless arena. Others... Governors To Congress: Telecom-Reform Act Snubs States' Rights http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18975?11228 The nation's governors and other non-federal officials have resumed pressing their case in the U.S. Congress that pending communications-reform legislation severely pre-empts state, county and local authorities and powers. They want the federal threat reversed. Instead of appealing to Senate and House authors, sponsors and ... A Camera Phone Lens Cover http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/18973?11228 Camera phones are useful tools for people like real estate agents and claims adjusters. They can also be plenty of fun for non-professionals. Yet some groups aren't exactly enthusiastic camera phone supporters. Business and government agencies, among other organizations, worry about the technology's ability to steal secrets,... Wireless EAS Still Bubbling in D.C. http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18967?11228 WASHINGTON -- Almost all lawmakers, regulators, industry representatives and even the White House agree it's time to include wireless capabilities in the national emergency alert system (EAS) that's now supported by broadcasters. What they are having a hard time agreeing on, however, is how to do it fairly. The groups ... Skype's Fire(wall) Fight http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18965?11228 Many enterprises are likely to try and block the cheap Skype Ltd. WiFi phones from the likes of Netgear Inc.that are now arriving on the market because they don't jibe with corporate firewall policies. Gartner Inc. analyst Lawrence Orans lays out the nub of the problem. "The problem with Skype is that it uses a ... Copyright 2006 Price Waterhouse Coopers. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Color 3 Slot Payphones? Date: 24 Jul 2006 08:59:44 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com An old "Brady Bunch" episode showed the parents using 3 slot pay phones in a fancy restaurant. They were beige. Phile the vast majority of Bell System 3 slot pay phones were black, in some places they did use colors; I've seen beige in many places. In rare instances, 3 slot phones had Touch Tone. Some 3 slots were "modernized" by use of a flat panel front, but it was the same phone behind it with chutes to route the coins. Would anyone know what how common colored 3 slot pay phones were, and if any were other than beige? Also, how common were Touch Tone 3 slot phones? I've seen single slot phones in a dark green instead of heavy gray in a few places. I think all rotary models were converted to TT. public replies, please [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, years ago they had colored three slot payphones with Touch Tone at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in the telephone exhibit. They also had a beige colored speakerphone payphone thing. That is, sit on a chair in the booth, pay your ten cents, punch out the desired number and then talk to the speaker in the booth. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:57:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Future 911/Technology is Changing so Quickly That Emergency Future 911 Technology is changing so quickly that emergency communication systems are struggling to keep pace By Kim-Mai Cutler, Globe Correspondent Picture a highway crash: a vehicle flips over in the center lane. Ten cars plow into the twisted wreck. Panicked witnesses dial 911. They shoot video of the scene with their cell phones. Drivers too distraught to speak text message the call center. A vehicle with a built-in security system automatically dials 911 after the air bags are deployed. It forwards the driver's health history, letting police know he has had two heart attacks before. It's not a far-off scenario with the development of Next Generation 911 or NG911 for short, a new emergency call system run via Internet protocol that will allow rescuers to plug and play all of the latest communications technologies. A consortium funded with a $570,000 grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, is conducting trials at call centers in Virginia and Texas, routing voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), mobile video, and text messages to 911 responders. The group, which includes Columbia University, Texas A&M University, and the National Emergency Number Association, hopes to run a full-scale test in 2008, using real emergency calls. An overhauled 911 system would open a world of possibilities: responders could send a video demo of the Heimlich maneuver to a cell phone if a family member is choking, or firefighters could receive a burning building's floor plan before they reach the scene. Because it is Internet-based, it would be easier to incorporate unforeseen technological breakthroughs, unlike the current struggle to handle VoIP calls and the decade-long process of upgrading to handle wireless 911. Under the new architecture, data would be broken down into packets sent through the network, which handles several different types of information. In the old system, data flowed in a continuous stream, meaning only one type of data could be handled at a time. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/24/future_911/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? Date: 24 Jul 2006 08:47:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... So telco tends to 'play the > averages' on things like this, with fires or other disasters (New > Orleans and Katrina for example) occuring about once every fifteen > or twenty years. Although it is questionable if telco could have > done very much to protect their property and services in the Katrina > disaster, they most certainly could have mitigated their losses and > the disruption in service in Manhattan in 1975 and again in Hinsdale > in 1988. I can't comment on Hinsdale other than that occured when it was no longer the Bell System and there was great pressure to cunt costs to meet competition. As to Manhattan and other disasters, I'm not sure exactly what the phone company could've done any differently to prevent the fire or restoring service any faster short of extremely expensive duplication of facilities or very expensive safeguards. The Manhattan building was staffed, they smelled smoke and reported the fire. I don't know what fueled the fire (PVC cables?) that made it so severe or hard to knock down. Thanks for posting that information (see below). That devastation was lost in the coverage of 9/11. Part of that was due to the area being extensively evacuated and people not home or at work to use the phones that were down. Indeed, it seems this destruction was worse than Feb 1975 -- there were 200,000 lines out, nearly twice as many as before. Further, there were substantial private line data circuits out. I couldn't tell exactly the extent of damage to the building or the switchgear, but it seemed like a mess. Working in that area, as the Verizon crews did, was extremely difficult with nasty air and other horrors. Some of my co-workers were detailed to the WTC area for emergency assistance and stayed for a few days (sleeping in the van); I hope they didn't pick up anything for the bad air. Bob Goudreau wrote: > I think the most prominent recent comparable telecom disaster in the > US also occurred in Manhattan, but is perhaps overlooked because it > was just a small part of a much larger disaster. I'm referring to the > Verizon facilities damaged during the September 11, 2001 terrorist > attacks. See: > http://newscenter.verizon.com/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=61409 > and http://telephonyonline.com/news/telecom_verizon_dial_tones/index.html > and http://www.connectlive.com/events/verizon/transcript-120301.html > for some reflections on how Verizon recovered from the loss of a > switching office that served hundreds of thousands of voice lines and > millions of data circuits. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:38:04 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > In Feb 1975 there was a very bad fire in a big Central Office building > in New York City. Twelve local exchanges and numerous tandem switches > were knocked out. > The Bell System mobilized and worked around the clock to get service > restored. Some burnt panel switchgear was removed and replaced with > new ESS switches airlifted in. Other gear was cleaned one contact at > a time with Q-Tips. Some calls were rerouted to other offices. > Service was restored quickly and known as the "Miracle on Second > Avenue". > I wonder: Suppose a fire like that happened today: Would it take > longer or shorter to restore service in today's world? > ... big snip ... > But in the case of Hinsdale at least, telco said at the time and still > insists even today that it is not 'cost effective' for them to take > steps in advance to mitigate their losses when these things > happen. So, they do nothing about it, and deal with it when it > happens. So, the difference between February, 1975 and February, 1965 > was ten years; May, 1988 was another thirteen years. Add twelve years > for the cable fire in St. Louis in January, 1990, and about fifteen > years for New Orleans and Katrina; although both New Orleans and St. > Louis were not really anything telco could do 'much about'. So Lisa, > it is not a question of 'if it happens again' so much as it is a > question of 'when it happens again' as it will, I am sure, given the > facts of life these days, with 'terrorists' all around us and your > heroine, Ma Bell telling us she will deal with it if it happens, but > it is not 'cost-effective' to worry about it before that time. She To be honest it's a complicated equation. If the CLECs stock too many spare switches, they'll be less likely to buy new ones with new features and we'll be back in a situation like the 50s and 60s where the plans where based on 30 year life spans. After all the financial markets would complain they are wasting money on non-productive assets. Plus when I've read about the entire life cycle of some of these outages, the major time line was reconnecting the wiring for 100,000s of wire pairs. In NYC, wasn't the switch on the 35th floor or some such? So the cables had to go up a wire chase and then into equipment rooms on these floors. Now there's a limit to how fast techs can re-connect pairs and/or string new pairs. And in these buildings there's a physical space limit as to how many bodies you can get in to work on things at any one time. And since I'm convinced people would complain bitterly about their phone bill if it was only $1 a month, imagine trying to get folks to pay more for this redundancy. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about something a lot more simple? _Do not ever_ leave a central office unattended, anytime, anywhere. Even in an office which is 'usually' deserted on weekends, etc you schedule at least one worker to be there nights and weekends. Give that person something to do -- for example data entry work -- and have them go around once an hour more or less checking all the nooks and crannies where problems could develop. In the case of Hinsdale, Ameritech could have had one or two people on their payroll for several years mainly as watchdogs and still come out ahead of what the 1988 fire cost them. PAT] > If there were a severe fire, flood, etc. to an ILEC's central office > switch or building these days, I would think that the ILEC might also > offer temporary cellular service to affected customers in those cases > as well. And of course, there are always going to be those customers > who don't even have (ILEC) landline phone service anymore, and have > strictly cellular service. Typically much of the re-routing would occur in the dead switch which doesn't help much. Also much of the ILEC service to businesses is T1/BR1 service where the internet is also involved. And the office where we just switch to an ILEC for both voice and internet is more and more dependent on email than voice. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:46:59 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? >> Do you know of any web link to check the latest coverage areas for >> Verizon's FiOS? >> Verizon website can search on phone number or address but I could not >> find anything to show which cities, which parts of the cities, esp. in >> Texas (e.g. Dallas metroplex). >> Who provides fiber with at least 10 Mbps in San Antonio? > Since the list changes weekly I suggest you call your local office, and > let us know what you find out!-) And just how would you do that? Call your "local" office? Surely Verizon has gone to regional call centers where any call to them is routed to the next free rep somewhere on the planet. The only way to call anyone local here in BellSouth country is to get a business card from a tech with a their cell number on it. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? Date: 24 Jul 2006 08:39:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com maruk2@hotmail.com wrote: > Do you know of any web link to check the latest coverage areas for > Verizon's FiOS? You have to call the special FIOS office 800 number and give them your home phone number. They do a lookup and say yes or no. They would not respond with an address. I found them not helpful and uncooperative. My area has FIOS and they advertise it heavilly, but they did not come into my complex. I cannot find out why (they don't want to or my complex doesn't want them???, probably they don't want to.) Their rep said they don't like doing multi family complexes which makes no sense to me since shorter cable runs will serve more people. We are, though, underground wiring, not pole. ------------------------------ From: Dennis Ritchie Subject: Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:34:05 -0000 Organization: Bell Labs By contrast with the major power problems currently in NYC and reminiscences of telecom disasters in the past, here's an account of a rather minor disaster that started last Tuesday evening on my street, when a brief but rather violent Tstorm went through. The immediate effect was that the power went out, because a transformer was knocked off the utility pole across the street and was dangling, with its wires (feeding my immediate area) strewn across the street. By the next day JCP&L, the power company, or the town had put up barriers and parked a truck (just a pickup, not a repair vehicle) in front. I still had phone service (VZ). On Thursday, JCP&L arrived in force. However, when they cut down the transformer, the pole fell over, and the added wire tension also pulled down the pole outside my house: both old poles were rotted at the base. No phone now either, but a hell of a lot of wire on the lawn. By about 3:00 Thu JCP&L had put in two new utility poles and I had power. Later that afternoon, VZ arrived and did the preliminary hookup to the new pole. The VZ guy bitched mildly that JCP&L had cut their wires. Friday, VZ came back and completed their installation (wire to the house). Now had phone service (and the DSL still works). The cable company (Comcast) was around too and did some pole setup but didn't string the house wire. Maybe tomorrow. I called all of these things to the various repair services just to get my name on the record. JCP&L had already reported the two downed poles to the others. What was interesting was the differences in trying to register the problem. JCP&L was right on the case. Comcast was easy to report to (but unlike the others hasn't finished yet). Verizon, however, uses an infuriating voice-recognition system that at the end tried three times to get me to make an appointment for a tech to come into my house with a possible cost of $91 if it wasn't their fault; all I wanted to say was "Your pole fell over. Your wires are lying on my lawn." When I finally got to the human, things went OK. Indeed VZ pulled into my driveway again just this afternoon to close out my trouble report. And, as I say, 2/3 of the services were back in a reasonable time, given the storm disruptions in the NYC metro area over the past couple of weeks, including a tornado in Westchester Co. Dennis ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 05:24:49 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: > Here in Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing project in > North America we alternate from days with shut-down of elevator > service with days of hot water shut down with at least one notice that > BOTH may go down at one time. > This is to "conserve power". We are one block away from BIG ALLIS > part of the electricity generating complex that supplies THIRTY PER > CENT of all power to NYC. > At this rate, the entire city could have electricity as reliable as > Iraq. Including Fran in 96, we've had 4 events which have wreaked the power distribution system around the Raleigh, NC area. Since the 1st high voltage 3 phase feeder switch point for the distribution out of the local substation is on "my" pole I get lots of trucks in front of my house during these times and at various other times. Every time I or a neighbor has asked about underground power making this easier, everyone working on the repairs has said they would rather do a "Fran" every year than deal with underground power. And this is from the mouth of someone who's on their 3rd 18 hour day in a row. It always has more problems, insulation always leaks at some point, and when there is a problem it's 10 to 100 times more difficult to fix. As I understand things from the previous post about the Queens outage, it's mostly underground power there. And to make matters worse, the airport wound up to 1000s of uncollected and/or mis-routed bags. And trying to deliver them to people when the power is out around the area just makes everything worse. Many folks with in house cordless phones (and that's all they have) are discovering the reason some of us keep those old WE 2500s on a shelf in the closet. > Reporter, told us today in the Sunday paper that a ninety year old > section of the main pipe had given out. PAT] The folks on the TV show This Old House have said that there are still hollowed out wooden logs carrying water under some streets in Boston. As a side note related to my comment about the switch point being on my pole. For some reason my transformer is connected directly to the substation side of the feeder line while most all houses and businesses are connected to local stubs fused to the feeders. It's nice to get power back when 99% of the area is still dark. ------------------------------ From: Goudreau_Bob@notchur.biz Subject: Re: The Great [sic] Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:54:40 -0400 [Please obfuscate my email address as always.] NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: > At this rate, the entire city could have electricity as reliable as Iraq. Oh puh-leeze. Do I detect a bit of hyperbole in the coverage of this event? Let's start with the title that someone decided to bestow: "the GREAT Queens Blackout". The latest estimates from the utility were that 25,000 customers were without power, which Mayor Bloomberg said translated into 100,000 residents. This works out to less than 5 percent of the population of Queens and a bit over 1 percent of the population of New York City as a whole. For a contemporary comparison, about four times as many people in the St. Louis area are still without power due to storm damage four days ago. If the current Queens outage qualifies as a "great" blackout, then how should we describe the blackout of 2003 that affected most of the Great Lakes region and some bits of the Northeast, including all of New York City? Not to mention other occasions when the entire city went dark, such as 1977 and 1965. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:19:52 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Laptop Phone Calls With Digital Phone Service mjb920 22 Jul 2006 21:29:34 -0700 wrote: > I have a sister who has Bright House (central Florida) cable Internet > and digital phone service. She is confined to a wheelchair, and would > like to make phone calls from her laptop computer, using a headset. > Is this possible? Thanks for any help. Till the end of the year you can make free calls to the US and Canada on Skype using "Skype Out" service from a computer with the Skype software installed. No special equipment is needed just a computer with headphones and a microphone. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 06:31:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: T-Mobile Waives Call Charges for American Evacuees BELLEVUE, Wash. July 21, 2006 -- T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced today the company is providing relief to Americans who are being evacuated from Lebanon to Cyprus and Turkey. Through the end of July, T-Mobile USA is enabling its customers to make phone calls and send text messages free-of-charge from Lebanon, Cyprus and Turkey on their T-Mobile handsets. This relief is retroactive to July 12 for calls and text messages from Lebanon and Cyprus; and begins July 21 for Turkey. "We are in the business of connecting people to those that matter most, and there is no more important time to stay connected than in a time of crisis," said Robert Dotson, president and chief executive officer, T-Mobile USA. T-Mobile USA customers in these countries also can receive calls and text messages free-of-charge within the specified timeframe. Credits will be applied and be reflected in upcoming billing cycles. About T-Mobile USA Based in Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile USA, Inc. is a member of the T-Mobile International group, the mobile telecommunications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT). T-Mobile USA's GSM/GPRS voice and data networks in the United States (including roaming and other agreements) reach more than 268 million people. In addition, T-Mobile operates the largest carrier-grade, commercial wireless broadband network in the United States, providing Wi-Fi access at more than 7,400 public locations throughout the country, with further Wi-Fi access being made available at over 27,000 international roaming locations. For more information, visit the company web site at www.t-mobile.com. T-Mobile is a federally registered trademark of Deutsche Telekom AG. http://www.t-mobile.com/company/PressReleases_Article.aspx?assetName=Prs_Prs_20060721&title=T-Mobile%20Waives%20Call%20Charges%20for%20American%20Evacuees ------------------------------ From: Anna Subject: Re: http://www.privatephone.com/ Date: 24 Jul 2006 10:04:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Old thread I know, but I wanted to say that I like OneSuite.com too. They always seem to outdue their competitors in rates and service. I tried another long-distance company a few months ago and pretty much immediately went back to OneSuite. They have been around for longer than most companies, and that alone speaks volumes. Anna ------------------------------ From: kshag5@yahoo.com Subject: CellPhone Filmmaking Date: 24 Jul 2006 10:17:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Check out www.CellPhoneFilmmaking.com ------------------------------ From: agreatnate@gmail.com Subject: Re: 303-720-1234 (Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers) Date: 24 Jul 2006 13:37:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: > ******************************************************************** > PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. > ******************************************************************** > DLR wrote: >> I got a call yesterday on my Sprint cell phone from 303-720-1234. >> I had no idea at the time where area code 303 was so I let it go >> to voice mail. But they didn't leave a message. So today I tried >> to call it back and got a "no such number exists" type of message. >> And I can't find anyone with this number via Google searches and >> don't really want to pay for more information. Now to be honest it >> looks a bit bogus to me. 1234 and all. > It is bogus. 303 is the area code for the Denver CO Metro area. (At > one time, the entire state of Colorado used 303, but that was some > time ago). 720 is being used as a central office code within the 303 > area code in your situation, but the 720 numerics as an area code also > happens to be the overlay area code for the Denver CO Metro area. > Since ten-digit local dialing is mandatory within the Denver Co Metro > area of area codes 303 and 720 in overlay, there isn't anything > "wrong" with having a 303-720 code, nor a 720-303 code, nor even a > 303-303 or 720-720 code. Ten-digit local dialing is mandatory in > overlay areas. > However, it happens that at this time, there is no such 303-720 code > assigned in the Denver CO Metro area. I looked up the central office > code reports at NANPA's website, http://www.nanpa.com and 303-720 is > unassigned but still available for assignment. > So, you probably got a call from a telemarketer sending bogus caller-ID > information. > Typical. :( I have gotten a call on my cell-phone from 303-720-1234 also, it was a recorded message in Spanish that I couldn't understand. I have gotten this same message three times now, always from a different number most recently from 351-460-1234. ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #273 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jul 26 00:55:21 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id DA6D72200; Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:55:20 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #274 Message-Id: <20060726045520.DA6D72200@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:55:20 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:57:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 274 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Now Offers 'Traffic Maps' (Reuters News Wire) The Telcos Still Don't Get it (Business Week Magazine Editorial) Technology Changing; Telcos Struggle to Keep Up (Kim-Mai Cutler) Is the DSL Meltdown Starting? (jmeissen@aracnet.com) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 25, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Consumers Getting More Options -- High-Speed Internet (USTelecom dailyLead) Google Report on Click Fraud (Monty Solomon) WW II Long Distance Narrow Bandwidth; Toll Rate Drop (Lisa Hancock) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (DLR) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Lisa Hancock) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (Wesrock@aol.com) Multi-Line Cordless Phone System (Grip) Broadband RSS Feed (absinthe) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones? (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones? (bv124@aol.com) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? (Neal McLain) Seeking a Particular Web Page (Steven Lichter) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:23:45 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Google Now Offers 'Traffic Maps' Google Inc. said on Tuesday that the company has begun offering mobile phone users in more than 30 major U.S. cities the capacity to view highway maps with "live" traffic data. The Mountain View, California-based company said that Google Maps for Mobile would allow mobile phone users to chose a destination within Google Maps and select "show traffic," said Gummi Hafsteinsson, product manager of Google Maps for Mobile. Google Maps calculates the route to the location. Highway traffic information is sent to the phone, with road conditions highlighted in three colors: -- red for congested, yellow or orange for slowdowns, and green for smooth sailing. The service can be found on mobile phone Web browsers at http://google.com/gmm. Rival Yahoo Inc. offers live traffic conditions on its computer-based map service, but it does not yet provide a mobile phone version for Yahoo maps. Google said it is offering comprehensive data on traffic conditions in more than 30 major U.S. metropolitan areas and partial information in an unspecified number of other areas. Traffic data is available only in the U.S. market. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:31:42 -0500 From: Business Week Magazine Editorial Subject: The Telcos Still Don't Get it The Phone Companies Still Don't Get It They block competition and charge too much. You call this a communications revolution? One day this spring in San Antonio, I sat on a couch to watch TV with two AT&T (T) executives and three public-relations aides. It's not a bad job, sitting on a comfortable sofa in a pretty, air-conditioned brick Tudor watching TV, and the way I got it was by telling AT&T's PR folks that I was working on a story that could wind up saying that in this age of enormous technological upheaval, their very own behemoth was not adding to innovation but standing in its way. No, no, they said, that's all wrong. If only I could go down and see AT&T's new video technology in action. Some 200 participants in AT&T's test there were the first beneficiaries of the great new network war, the mega-telcos' drive into video. Come down to San Antonio, they said, we'll take you to a customer's house to show you. The day before my trip to Texas, on my way back from a tour of AT&T's Florham Park (N.J.) labs, a PR guy had clarified that they didn't mean just any home. "Hundreds of reporters have asked to see this," he said, and they couldn't ask their test customers to take them all in. So the customer probably would be, while not an AT&T employee, someone with some connection to the company. "A friendly," the PR person had said. When I get to Texas, however, still another PR person confides to me that, despite the many press requests, I will be only the second reporter to see the new video offering in action. You would think rounding up a bona fide customer for two reporters shouldn't be impossible, but the proud homeowner who meets me at the door is wearing brightly polished cap-toed oxfords and a blue button-down shirt, an odd outfit for a guy sitting around his own house waiting for a reporter to stop by. And so we make our greetings and I sit down in front of the TV. In the armchair next to me Jeff Weber, the AT&T vice-president in charge of Project Lightspeed, grabs the remote control. He presses a button. The channel changes (much faster, he points out, than on a conventional cable system). He hits another button. It changes again. He gives a little flourish and gestures to the set. "TV," he says. "It works." I ask if this brand-new system will let me record one show while watching another, as TiVo or my own cable box at home do. Sure, says Weber, as soon as AT&T gets the new generation of set-top boxes built and delivered. Meanwhile, the homeowner has remained standing, watching me watch TV. So I try to break the ice, asking what he does, assuming he doesn't work for AT&T. Actually, he corrects me, he does. "So what exactly do you do?" I ask. "I'm the architect of Project Lightspeed." For a few seconds I take this in, wondering why nobody bothered to tell me. Baby Steps It's a classic moment, an illustration of where the power lies in telecom. It is tough -- no, make that impossible -- to think of another ostensibly technology-focused industry where the chief technical architect of a planned multibillion-dollar, company-changing project does not merit so much as an introduction. In fact, in San Antonio, that architect, John Kirby, neatly managed to dispel any confusion about the status of engineering at the company when, after clarifying what it is he does, he explained that when it came to big new projects, "marketing dreams it up, and then I have to design it." Ah. Welcome to Telco Land, a strange country where the biggest players talk more and more about innovation yet approach new ideas with baby steps, build little themselves, and when they think about technology are apt to believe it's a threat they have to fight. In case you haven't been keeping score, after the original phone company, American Telephone & Telegraph, was broken up in 1984, the country was left with eight major regional telcos. Over the past decade these companies proceeded to cannibalize and eat each other up. Now there are four: AT&T, Verizon (VZ ), BellSouth (BLX ), and Qwest (Q ). Just keeping track of the mergers and names is an endless challenge and requires a scorecard to keep track of the remaining players. The "new" AT&T is actually the rechristened SBC, based in Austin, Tex., which acquired the venerable name last year -- and it's in the process of buying BellSouth. That will leave two phone giants, Verizon and AT&T, and the much smaller Qwest. The biggest wireless carriers are Verizon Wireless, majority owned by Verizon, and Cingular, which is soon to be wholly owned by AT&T. It's not exactly the return of the old Ma Bell monopoly -- the world has gotten way too complicated for that -- but that's a lot of power in the hands of just two companies. One way in which these companies are very different from the old phone monopoly is that while the original AT&T had a world-class research operation, its successors don't. One of the signal facts of the communications revolution is that virtually all the new technologies that made it possible were developed outside the phone world. Last year, Verizon's revenue came in at nearly $80 billion. AT&T (without BellSouth or Cingular) had revenue of $44 billion. And yet while Intel Corp. (INTC ) spent $5.1 billion last year on research and development, AT&T spent just $130 million. The word "research" doesn't even appear in Verizon's annual report. But if in the era of telecom deregulation the most common industry buzzword was "competition," it is now "innovation." And Verizon and AT&T increasingly are asking to be viewed as leaders in the realm of ideas. Do a Web search on "Verizon" and "innovation" and you'll pull up speeches by Verizon CEO Ivan G. Seidenberg extolling its importance. The phone giants have even used "innovation" as a key justification for their aggressive merger wave. Last year, when SBC was buying the remnants of AT&T, SBC Chief Executive Edward E. Whitacre made sure to note that by merging, the combined company would have "the intellectual and financial resources to spur innovation." Verizon and AT&T are under great pressure to recast themselves as innovators. They lag behind the cable companies in their efforts to sell high-speed Internet access. Their local telephone monopolies are under attack as those same cable companies' offer to provide phone service at lower rates along with TV and data. Looking ahead, wireless technologies ranging from the familiar Wi-Fi to more powerful wireless standards being advanced by researchers in academia and companies such as Intel pose a whole new set of threats. In response, AT&T and Verizon are rushing to build networks to deliver TV service and high-speed broadband access. They point to them to make the case that, yes, they are technology companies. Verizon is spending billions to roll out a next-generation phone, data, and video network called FiOS (as in "fiber optic") to give its customers faster Internet service and an alternative to cable. While not matching FiOS' impressive speeds, AT&T promises to do something similar with Lightspeed, which it started marketing in parts of San Antonio under the brand name "U-verse" not long after my visit. The rhetoric of the tech biz has always been about who can out-revolutionize whose revolution, and executives at AT&T and Verizon are embracing it. Says Thomas J. Tauke, a former Iowa congressman who is now Verizon's chief Washington lobbyist: "As we deploy new technology, what is happening is that we are the insurgents who are trying to come in and change the marketplace." To give Verizon its due, the company has made some major strides. Its FiOS broadband and video network is by most accounts the state of the art in network technology. (It's pricey, though -- the highest level of FiOS home broadband service costs $109 to $139 a month.) But dissonant realities remain. Isn't it a little odd, for example, to hear the CEO of a company the size of AT&T talk about needing to get bigger to have the resources to innovate? In fact, over the past decade the big telcos have mostly looked outside for technological innovation. "We develop services, and we figure out how to use and deploy technology that many others are developing," says Verizon's Tauke. Edmond J. Thomas, who ran the labs at Verizon when it was Bell Atlantic, puts it another way. "They do very little fundamental research and very little advanced development," he says. "Their view of the world is: 'We can buy it elsewhere."' There is something to be said for "buying it elsewhere." If the big telcos built everything themselves, there would be no Cisco (CSCO ) and no Motorola (MOT ). But years of buying it elsewhere has yielded a culture distrustful of technology -- and of progress: It's impossible to imagine Microsoft (MSFT ) developing a big new product and having the lead engineer shift from foot to foot in the corner pretending to be just another customer. It has meant, as with AT&T's Lightspeed, that telcos are likely to offer services that only match, but not surpass, those available from others. And increasingly their approach has put the telcos on the wrong side of technological innovation, leaving them in the position of protecting their investments in their networks from the encroachments of new ideas. To some extent, Verizon and AT&T have been forced to take innovation seriously and move into offering TV and improved broadband. A world in which big telcos competed with big cable companies was something envisioned as far back as the 1996 Telecom Act. It only became a reality when Internet-based phone services allowed cable companies to offer the dreaded "triple play" of television, broadband, and phone, putting AT&T and Verizon on the defensive. But even as they've pushed into this new area, in others the telcos' instinctual response has also been to fight new technologies rather than foster them. Throwing Sand in the Gears That's what happened in the skirmish over "municipal WiFi" -- the effort by cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia to offer citywide wireless services that AT&T and Verizon fought (a struggle Verizon has largely abandoned but AT&T is still pursuing). It's evident in battles that are just starting on Capitol Hill over emerging technologies, such as a proposal to open the empty space between TV channels to powerful WiFi-like services that would pose a serious threat to the telcos' $60- to $80-a-month wireless broadband businesses. And you can see it in less technologically sexy areas as well: Verizon crippling freatures on its phones that would let users send photos or games to and from their computers without paying Verizon, or AT&T's yearlong foot-dragging in giving Internet phone competitor Vonage (VG ) access to its 911 switches. But fighting innovation is just a stopgap. The giant telcos have been in the driver's seat when it comes to communications technologies because of their sheer size. "Our motto," says CEO Paul E. Jacobs of Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM ), which develops many of the chips and technologies that make cell phones work, "is love the carriers. We know which side our bread is buttered on." Increasingly, though, the telcos are not the only game in town. And with competition gearing up, getting serious about innovation increasingly becomes a necessity, not just words. Will the telcos use their positions to bring more new ideas to consumers? For years technologists have talked about the possibilities opened up by combining television and high-speed Internet. But neither Verizon nor AT&T take advantage of that. Talk to them about what's next, and both companies bring up the possibility of providing weather and sports scores in a box on the TV screen. Not exactly radical. But it's what you'd expect from companies that are afraid of new technology. That paucity of new ideas has led critics to think the telcos see their future not in developing better services but in extracting greater and greater tolls from anyone who wants to use their networks. Over the last few months AT&T in particular has managed to scare the heck out of technology companies by talking about charging Internet content providers such as Google Inc. (GOOG ) or YouTube for access to the customers on its new network. That's a logical plan for a company like AT&T, but it's probably not one that can be sustained forever. There's another strategy the telcos could consider. In San Antonio, AT&T tried very hard to sell me on the virtues of Project Lightspeed. But the most impressive thing you're likely to see in AT&T's labs might be a feature of Homezone. Lightspeed's less ballyhooed sibling, Homezone is a simpler video and Internet system that combines satellite TV with a DSL line. One feature of the set-top box AT&T has developed for Homezone is the ability to get music files easily from a PC and play them on a television or home entertainment system. It was the one time during my visit that I thought: "Wow, I'd like to have this at home." Homezone demands no expensive new network infrastructure and no partnership in which companies pay AT&T for exclusive access. It's proof that a simple new idea can grow inside a giant telco. It's a hint of what AT&T might achieve if it spent on research and development even half of what a company like Intel does. But it may not be a hint the telcos are ready to take. 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 and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:34:38 -0500 From: Kim-Mai Cutler Subject: Technology Changing; Telcos Struggle to Keep Up Future 911 Technology is changing so quickly that emergency communication systems are struggling to keep pace By Kim-Mai Cutler, Globe Correspondent Picture a highway crash: a vehicle flips over in the center lane. Ten cars plow into the twisted wreck. Panicked witnesses dial 911. They shoot video of the scene with their cell phones. Drivers too distraught to speak text message the call center. A vehicle with a built-in security system automatically dials 911 after the air bags are deployed. It forwards the driver's health history, letting police know he has had two heart attacks before. It's not a far-off scenario with the development of Next Generation 911 or NG911 for short, a new emergency call system run via Internet protocol that will allow rescuers to plug and play all of the latest communications technologies. A consortium funded with a $570,000 grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the Department of Commerce, is conducting trials at call centers in Virginia and Texas, routing voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP), mobile video, and text messages to 911 responders. The group, which includes Columbia University, Texas A&M University, and the National Emergency Number Association, hopes to run a full-scale test in 2008, using real emergency calls. An overhauled 911 system would open a world of possibilities: responders could send a video demo of the Heimlich maneuver to a cell phone if a family member is choking, or firefighters could receive a burning building's floor plan before they reach the scene. Because it is Internet-based, it would be easier to incorporate unforeseen technological breakthroughs, unlike the current struggle to handle VoIP calls and the decade-long process of upgrading to handle wireless 911. Under the new architecture, data would be broken down into packets sent through the network, which handles several different types of information. In the old system, data flowed in a continuous stream, meaning only one type of data could be handled at a time. "Technology around communications are evolving really fast and 911 doesn't keep up really well with that," said Gabe Elias, a senior systems engineer at a Virginia call center testing the new technology. When the first 911 call was made in 1968 from Haleyville, Ala., it came in over a traditional land-line phone. In a land-line system, emergency operators simply match the phone number in a database of registered addresses and dispatch responders. But telecommunications have become exponentially more complicated, requiring costly upgrades to thousands of call centers around the country. "Whenever a new telecom technology came along, we had to completely rebuild the infrastructure," said Henning Schulzrinne, a Columbia University computer science professor leading the program. In the 1990s, the country slowly upgraded to accommodate cell phone callers. Because they aren't fixed to a location, it became slightly more difficult to find them. Emergency call centers locate callers based on signals from nearby cell towers or by tracking global positioning system chips embedded in the phones. Even now, about 25 percent of all call centers cannot provide both the location and number of wireless callers. Today, an estimated 2.9 million people have switched over to VoIP technology, which means a call could be routed through servers all over the country before it reaches a 911 center. They could be dialing through a computer using Wi Fi, or through an Internet-enabled phone . Currently, if a person dials 911 through VoIP on a computer, they have to type in their location, which could be imperfect if they're in a state of panic or are in an unfamiliar place. Pressure to offer emergency services reached VoIP providers last year when a 17-year-old girl in Houston tried to call 911 through her house's VoIP line after an intruder shot her parents. But when she dialed 911, she reached a recording and had to run over to a neighbor's house to call the police. The Texas attorney general filed a lawsuit against Vonage Holdings Corp., charging that it did not clearly disclose that its 911 services were not always available. The case is still pending. The future offers even more bewildering possibilities for 911 operators. There could be widespread use of WiMAX-enabled mobile phones, which would make calls through wireless broadband networks extending for miles, making it impossible to locate them using cell phone towers. "There's not a single technology that's going to work for locating everything," said Walt Magnussen, the director of telecommunications at Texas A&M, which is also playing a leading role in the project. However, the new system will at least be able to route all different kinds of data, he said. The increased ability of the new system to transmit emergency data raises privacy concerns for some who worry that photos of emotionally distraught victims or medical information could be leaked. "There certainly could be abuses," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Visuals and text messages would become public record that could later be obtained by news media and others." But NG911's backers say the system will run on a private network and that the benefit of locating victims in distress outweighs threats to privacy. As new applications arise, particularly ones that involve medical history, lawmakers will decide what will be allowed through the revamped 911 system. "I don't think there has ever been a technology that man has invented that could not be abused," Magnussen said. Kim-Mai Cutler can be reached at kcutler@globe.com. 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 headlines and news each day from NY Times, Christian Science Monitor and NPR, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Is the DSL Meltdown Starting? Date: 25 Jul 2006 17:09:14 GMT Organization: Aracnet Internet Services About a year ago the FCC ruled that the phone company's DSL circuits were not techincally part of the telecommunications network and not subject to the same regulations. The net result was that DSL was no longer tariffed and that, like the cable TV companies, they were under no obligation to provide access to 3rd-party providers. At the time many of us were predicting that the phone company would take advantage of this ruling to gain complete control over all Internet traffic flowing over phone company circuits and kill off the 3rd party independent ISPs. The FCC asked for a one-year waiting period before the phone company took any action. That year is now almost up. Yesterday I received my copy of a notice that Verizon Data has been sending to all of their DSL customers: Dear Valued Customer, On September 23, 2005, the FCC released an order in which it concluded that Verizon was no longer required to offer DSL services under tariff. In place of a tariff, the FCC order allows Verizon to offer DSL services under commercial contract. This letter is to advise you that effective August 14, 2006, Verizon will begin offering Verizon Infospeed DSL Solutions on a month-to-month or annual plan basis and Verizon Inforspeed Premium DSL Solutions on an annual plan basis (Verizon DSL Service) under contract pursuant to terms that will be posted on Verizon's website at the following URL: http://business.verizon.net/dslgatc Please note that your continued use of Verizon DSL Service after August 13, 2006 will constitute your consent to these terms under your current plan. The terms are substantially similar to those under the existing FCC tariffs, including price and other material terms, and these terms will apply to your purchase of Verizon DSL Service until at least November 15, 2006. After August 13, 2006, Verizon DSL Service will no longer be available for purchase from Verizon's FCC tariffs. This change affects Verizon DSL Service in all geographic locations in which Verizon makes the service available. Should you wish to negotiate other terms for the purchase of Verizon DSL Service, or if you have any questions about this change, please contact Verizon at 1-877-483-3651. Sincerely, Peter Castleton Director, Product Management/Product Development Verizon Broadband Solutions The statement I found most interesting was "until at least November 15, 2006." To me that says they're planning additional changes in another three months. Neither my ISP nor myself have been able to get Verizon to tell us what they're planning. According to my ISP, in a correspondence just a couple of days ago, The removal of the FCC tariff regulations for DSL providers has been rather nerve wracking for independent ISP's over the last year. Verizon in particular has been extremely vague regarding its intentions once the regulations completely end in August. They have not as yet provided us with any detailed information as to what changes will occur for our customers, nor to our relationship with Verizon in general, other than that changes will occur. .... I simply cannot guarantee beyond doubt that we will be able to operate as a Verizon host ISP after November. The communications from Verizon state that we will be in operation through them between August and November, but we have not established any information beyond then. I cannot imagine that Verizon and the other phone companies will leave such easy money laying on the table just to maintain the status quo. The FCC has made it possible for them to forcibly absorb all of the DSL customers of all independent ISPs. And because there will be no choice for DSL subscribers they can do it without having to worry about such trivial things as service options or quality of service. In one fell swoop they'd go from competing with hundreds of ISPs, who differentiate themselves primarily on the basis of quality and customer service, to only competing with the cable companies. And that's not much competition since the basic package from Comcast is now almost $60/mo, and there's generally only one cable provider in any given service area. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is what will happen once the phone companies have complete control over what flows through their wires. "Net Neutrality" is a phrase that's generated a lot of angst lately. Some, mostly industry representatives, claim it's unfounded. A recent article on Newsforge has made an interesting comparison with the current cellular phone network to demonstrate what can happen in the closed network environment that the phone companies are trying to create. http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/07/19/206209.shtml What will happen to the voice competition from all of the VOIP providers such as Vonage and Packet8 when neither Comcast nor Verizon will route their traffic? Note the author tagline at the end of the Newsforge article: He is writing the article pseudonymously because the cell phone companies have the power and freedom to crush his company by blocking it from their networks. The evolving oligarchy is going to have the power to control the who, what, where, when, why and how of your Internet usage. There are some very smart people who can creatively manipulate that into profit. I wish someone would tell my why they won't. Be afraid. Be very afraid. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 25, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:06:29 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 25, 2006 ******************************** Cable and Wireless Convergence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19010?11228 The relationship between the cable industry and Sprint's mobile arm is generating excitement for consumers and trepidation amongst LEC competitors. The integrated cable-mobile offering promises to deliver a combined set of voice, Internet and entertainment services, as well as subscriber control capabilities, which will take the ... Ukraine: ITC to Offer Fixed Wireless Services in Four More Regions of Ukraine http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19006?11228 The National Communication Regulatory Commission (NCRC) has licensed International Telecommunications Company (ITC), which provides fixed-line CDMA services, to provide services in four more regions, the Ukrainian News reports, citing Vsevolod Volovyk, the head of marketing and advertising for ITC. The operator obtained the licence for... EU Examines Mobile Phone Risks for Children http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18999?11228 BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European Union regulators said Tuesday they would examine the risks children face when using mobile phones, with a view to recommending EU-wide legislation to protect minors from illegal content transmitted by phones and defend their privacy. The European Commission requested input from child safety, parent ... Vodafone Shareholders Vote to Re-elect Beleaguered CEO Arun Sarin http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18997?11228 LONDON -- Shareholders in mobile phone operator Vodafone Group PLC voted Tuesday to re-elect chief executive Arun Sarin, the focus of recent criticism about the firm's lackluster share performance. Europe's largest mobile telecoms company said at its annual meeting that 85.6 percent of shareholders who voted by proxy ... Intercarrier Compensation Plan Filed at FCC http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18995?11228 WASHINGTON -- A broad coalition of state regulators and telecommunications companies submitted a long-awaited intercarrier compensation reform plan to the FCC today that would rely on a tiered approach rather than the bill-and-keep model that some wireless carriers want. The plan, dubbed the Missoula Plan because early talks... France Telecom Falls Out Of Orbit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/18993?11228 France Telecom is getting out of the satellite communications business, selling off its France Telecom Mobile Satellite Communications SA (FTMSC) to an investment group at what looks to be a bargain-basement price. In a terse statement this morning, the company said it's selling FTMSC for just $75.7 million, signing the deal ... Lucatel Clears Euro Hurdle http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/18991?11228 The European Commission (EC) gave the marriage of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies Inc. its blessing today, saying the merger of the two vendors "would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area." Hmmm. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? The EC's Competition ... Vodafone CEO Faces Showdown http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/18989?11228 Vodafone Group plc as got off to a good start in what could be a pivotal week for the mobile giant, unveiling better than expected subscriber growth in its first quarter. That's the calm before the storm, though, as Tuesday brings the company's annual shareholder's meeting, where it's ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:18:52 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Consumers Getting More Options for High-Speed Internet USTelecom dailyLead July 25, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ebywfDtutfrClNRpwZ TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Consumers getting more options for high-speed Internet BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Clearwire defies odds in tough climate for telecom startups * AOL considering expanding free services * Motorola adds sleek phones to lineup * AT&T reports earnings * Sarin re-elected as Vodafone chief USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Securing Service Provider/Carrier Backbone Networks TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Study: VoIP quality is getting worse * DirecTV's HD DVR delays may benefit competitors, analyst says REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * EU regulators approve Alcatel-Lucent merger Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ebywfDtutfrClNRpwZ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 09:00:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Google report on click fraud Findings on invalid clicks 7/21/2006 12:05:00 PM Posted by Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager, Trust and Safety Google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/findings-on-invalid-clicks.html The Lane's Gifts v. Google Report by Alexander Tuzhilin Executive Summary I have been asked to evaluate Google's invalid click detection efforts and to conclude whether these efforts are reasonable or not. As a part of this evaluation, I have visited Google's campus three times, examined various internal documents, interviewed several Google's employees, have seen different demos of their invalid click inspection system, and examined internal reports and charts showing various aspects of performance of Google's invalid click detection system. Based on all these studied materials and the information narrated to me by Google's employees, I conclude that Google's efforts to combat click fraud are reasonable. In the rest of this report, I elaborate on this point. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/pdf/Tuzhilin_Report.pdf ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: WW II Long Distance Narrow Bandwidth; Toll Rate Drop Date: 25 Jul 2006 08:08:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In reading Bell System histories, it appears that they purposely narrowed the bandwidth provided for voice long distance calls so as to increase the capacity of circuits. During the war, the phone system was under extremely heavy use. Would anyone know more about this and when it was concluded? Apparently it remained after the war because new DDD signalling efforts caused a problem. IIRC, the normal bandwidth for telephone voice is about 4 KHz. I'm not sure how much the narrowed it or what part of the bandwidth they took off (I think it was the upper end), so perhaps the bandwidth was 2.5 KHz. I wonder how much it affected clarity. There was a definite noticeable difference in voice quality between the 1938 302 set and prior sets. Indeed, the 202 "French" telephone and "candle stick" telephone were retrofit with 300 components--the French telephone got an "F" handset and the candlestick got new 300 type transmitter and receiver. (There is a slight change in appearance of the transmitter external cup when so modified, it is wider and much flatter.) However, when war broke out the 302 was pretty new and likely the vast majority of subscribers had older telephones. Accordingly, clarity wasn't so great to begin with. * * * On 1/21/43 the Bell System lowered long distance rates. The initial period of 3 minutes remained the same. However, overtime per minute rate went down from 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of the initial period. So if the initial period is $1.20, overtime was 40c and became 30c. I believe this protocol remained in place until 1 minute periods were introduced in the 1970s. During the war the Bell System had a major ad campaign asking people NOT to use the phone, especially long distance. If one had to use it, limit the call to five minutes. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: About the same time, the federal government nationalized Western Electric and diverted WECO entirely into wartime production of its own equipment needs. AT&T also asked subscribers to give up any extension phones on their lines (although they did not require it) for the reason the reason that Bell needed phones to supply new customers with instruments. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:12:57 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? > To be honest it's a complicated equation. If the CLECs stock too many > spare switches, they'll be less likely to buy new ones with new > features and we'll be back in a situation like the 50s and 60s where > the plans where based on 30 year life spans. After all the financial > markets would complain they are wasting money on non-productive > assets. > Plus when I've read about the entire life cycle of some of these > outages, the major time line was reconnecting the wiring for 100,000s > of wire pairs. In NYC, wasn't the switch on the 35th floor or some > such? So the cables had to go up a wire chase and then into equipment > rooms on these floors. Now there's a limit to how fast techs can > re-connect pairs and/or string new pairs. And in these buildings > there's a physical space limit as to how many bodies you can get in to > work on things at any one time. > And since I'm convinced people would complain bitterly about their > phone bill if it was only $1 a month, imagine trying to get folks to > pay more for this redundancy. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about something a lot more simple? > _Do not ever_ leave a central office unattended, anytime, anywhere. Even > in an office which is 'usually' deserted on weekends, etc you schedule > at least one worker to be there nights and weekends. Give that person > something to do -- for example data entry work -- and have them go > around once an hour more or less checking all the nooks and crannies > where problems could develop. In the case of Hinsdale, Ameritech could > have had one or two people on their payroll for several years mainly > as watchdogs and still come out ahead of what the 1988 fire cost them. > PAT] Let's see. That would require 4.2 40 hour weeks with no vacation time. So assume 4.5 people to handle it. Given union pay scales I'd say that fully funded that would cost about $100,000 per person. (Don't forget benefits and overhead.) So we're looking at about $450,000 per year in payroll costs. Plus facility upgrades that might be needed. Even if I'm a bit high that's a cool $1,000,000 for each year for every 3 COs and other facilities. You can buy a LOT of insurance for that money. Way more than is needed to cover the costs of a repair. It's not the costs of staffing the facility that had the fire. Since you do not know which facility will have such a fire, you get to staff them all. And that costs real money. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you say is true if a firm was only concerned about the almighty dollar rather than some modicum of continuity of service to subscribers, which is where things are at with the telcos these days. But one thing you overlooked in your equations above was that the persons employed for this task could be assigned other duties as well, and that pro-rated portion of their salaries could be charged to those other tasks. For example, one person whose work was normally data entry could be assigned to work 'the midnight shift' or weekends for example, and while there would have to be some pay differential the entire cost could not in fairness be charged off entirely to security. So, assuming your figures are more or less accurate, probably half or three-quarters of it could be assigned to the department where the person was usually working anyway. I am saying you do not hire extra people for this job, you re-arrange the working hours of people you have already. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? Date: 25 Jul 2006 06:53:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about something a lot more simple? > _Do not ever_ leave a central office unattended, anytime, anywhere. Even > in an office which is 'usually' deserted on weekends, etc you schedule > at least one worker to be there nights and weekends. Give that person > something to do -- for example data entry work -- and have them go > around once an hour more or less checking all the nooks and crannies > where problems could develop. In the case of Hinsdale, Ameritech could > have had one or two people on their payroll for several years mainly > as watchdogs and still come out ahead of what the 1988 fire cost them. > PAT] But if I understand Hinsdale, the problem was that alarms were ignored, not that the fire was ignored. Had they responded to the alarms the damage would've been reduced. In the case of 1975 Second Ave, IIRC the NYT articles, there were several people working in the building and they caught it. Given the vast number of telco buildings, I think they're record is pretty good. The issue is fire prevention as much as fighting. I don't know if they ever found the cause of the NYC fire. Question: In looking through the Archives at the NYC brochure, is there any way to page through quickly each separate frame? The only way I saw is to manually change the page number in the address bar. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct on that, Lisa. Regards Hinsdale, 'catching the alarm' was left to clerks in Springfield, IL a couple hundred miles away who chose to simply ignore it. When the weekend duty-supervisor in Chicago got in their car, drove out to Hinsdale, saw the smoke pouring out of the windows, tried to use the phones to call the Fire Department, discovered the phones all dead they went out on the street _and asked a passer-by to 'call the fire department from some other phone'. We will give that passer-by credit and assume they attempted to call from some payphone somewhere around town, but _found it dead also by that time_. Finally, when several more minutes had passed with no fire department arrival, the supervisor then got in their own car and drove to the fire station. I will suggest that even a minimum-wage clerk who was paid to sit in the office and do data-entry work in a lacsidaisical way while watching television or otherwise screwing around that day (and making rounds of the facilities every hour or two [maybe while on the way to the employee kitchen to get another sandwhich or can of cola out of the fridge] would have smelled the smoke, muttered 'WTF!' to no one in particular and called both the Fire Department and the responsible supervisor on the phone and the job would have been handled _much quicker and less expensively_ than it turned out ... then he would have finished his sandwhich and can of cola and gone back to his/her data entry work for the rest of the afternoon. And most of that employee's payroll costs would get charged back to the data-entry department or whoever. Springfield chose to first ignore the alarm, saying, "Well, it had been raining and windy all day, that alarm had 'falsed' a couple times already that day and Chicago had told us not to trouble them with a bunch of false alarms like that." So much for the false economy of an alarm system no one pays attention to. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 16:45:53 EDT Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? In a message dated 7/24/06 8:13:25 PM Central Daylight Time, editor@telecom- digest.org writes, in a comment on a post by DLR : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about something a lot more simple? > _Do not ever_ leave a central office unattended, anytime, anywhere. Even > in an office which is 'usually' deserted on weekends, etc you schedule > at least one worker to be there nights and weekends. Give that person > something to do -- for example data entry work -- and have them go > around once an hour more or less checking all the nooks and crannies > where problems could develop. In the case of Hinsdale, Ameritech could > have had one or two people on their payroll for several years mainly > as watchdogs and still come out ahead of what the 1988 fire cost them. > PAT] I think you may underestimate the tremendous costs involved, since many offices -- including, I imagine, Independence, are unattended most nights and probably most often on weekends. Smaller offices may be unattended at all times. So the costs for putting somebody in every office all night and all weekend would double or triple the manpower or womanpower costs for most offices. And people costs are usually the largest, even in a high-fixed-cost business like a telephone company. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But please see my earlier messages: You do not _add to your payroll for this function_ but instead you re-arrange the working hours of the employees you already have, and charge off or prorate much of the payroll expense to the existing job function. Telco has employees 24/7 in places like Traffic Department; cannot they even afford to have one lousy person manning a repair desk (for example) all night? You are correct; Independence is unmanned at night and weekends. There was a time when the majority of the first floor was occupied by service representatives and cashiers. Then they did away with the service reps (putting a wall-mounted 'tie-line' phone and a desk in the corner) for people to sit at and talk to a long-distance rep, but keeping the cashiers so people could still pay their bill. Then one day, the cashiers disappeared also. My mother says she can recall going in there and talking to a live rep, explaining what she wanted; the rep called upstairs to the guy in the frames and told him what was wanted; mother said when she got home the work had already been completed. Foolish telco! Would _you_ leave a property worth millions of dollars (ESS switch for example) totally unguarded over a long weekend and hope to God it was still sitting there working on Tuesday or whenever? After all, it is monitored from an office in Tulsa or Wichita a hundred miles away in either direction. They'll let us know if an alarm goes off. Foolish telco, and penny-wise but pound foolish cheap bastards as well. They deserve whatever grief they get. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Grip Subject: Multi-Line Cordless Phone System Date: 25 Jul 2006 15:23:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm looking for a small business solution and I've come across two systems, the Panasonic KXTG4000 and the RCA 25450 each of which appears to fill my basic needs. Those needs are a multiple line (3 in our office) cordless phone which workers can clip onto their belts and use a headset with during the course of the day. My questions, if you choose to answer them are: Have you had any experience with these systems, good or ill? Do either one of these have the ability to intercom or page handsets (a specific one or all) from another handset or the base station? Thanks, G ------------------------------ From: absinthe Subject: Broadband RSS Feed Date: 25 Jul 2006 18:20:57 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com FYI - Found a new Broadband RSS feed if anyone is looking for one ... http://www.broadbandinfo.com/news/rss.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:46:40 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com 24 Jul 2006 08:59:44 -0700 wrote: > An old "Brady Bunch" episode showed the parents using 3 slot pay > phones in a fancy restaurant. They were beige. > While the vast majority of Bell System 3 slot pay phones were black, > in some places they did use colors; I've seen beige in many places. > In rare instances, 3 slot phones had Touch Tone. > Some 3 slots were "modernized" by use of a flat panel front, but it > was the same phone behind it with chutes to route the coins. > Would anyone know what how common colored 3 slot pay phones were, and > if any were other than beige? Also, how common were Touch Tone 3 slot > phones? > I've seen single slot phones in a dark green instead of heavy gray in > a few places. I think all rotary models were converted to TT. Myself I've only seen colored three-slot coin phones in beige and olive green. I can't recall ever seeing that many color three-slot coin phones. The ones that I saw were either beige or olive green. The touch-tone three-slotters had a brushed metal front panel surrounding the keypad. I never saw very many three-slot coin phones perhaps because touch-tone itself only started to come into common use in the early to mid-sixties and the at the time "new" fortress (big boxy style single slot) style payphones both in dial (Very often grey dial surround and grey handset with blue "strain relief" and an armored cable between the handset and the body of the fortress) and touch-tone models. With that in mind the life of three-slot touch tone models was likely limited. Speaking of fortress style pay phones how many times have you seen a TV or movie that has someone using a fortress style pay phone and when the coins are inserted you hear a ding-ding?! When three-slotters were replaced by single-slot fortress phones there *never* was any external sound. At the outset when coins were inserted the operator could hear beep for a nickle or beep-beep for a dime or beep-beep-beep-beep-beep for a quarter which was on later models just a feed to the operator's console indicating how much had been inserted. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But occassionally even later on, an operator had to manually collect the money by listening to the beeps. The 5 and 8 keys (or maybe it was the 6 and 9 keys) when pressed together very rapidly once or twice or five times in a row gave the audible sound required to simulate a nickle, dime or quarter quite well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bv124@aol.com Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones? Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:43:51 -0700 I remember black, white, beige, and green, 3 slot, rotary & touchtone Western Electric (WECO) payphones. These were very common in the Chicago area in the 60's & 70's, but were being replaced by the boxy, single slot touchtone models. I also remember an Automatic Electric (AE) model in all chrome in the non-Bell areas. It was a rotary dial. (I've NEVER seen an AE touchtone payphone.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:07:44 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > An old "Brady Bunch" episode showed the parents using 3 slot > pay phones in a fancy restaurant. They were beige. While the > vast majority of Bell System 3 slot pay phones were black, in > some places they did use colors; I've seen beige in many places. The third color for 3-slotters that was sometimes used was green. I've heard that in some cases, the telephone company might even paint a 3-slot payphone some "unusual" color (for an extra fee, I assume), such as red or blue. But the three standard colors, in order of how common they were, were black, then beige, then green. I know that Western Electric's single-slot payphones, that first came out circa mid-1960s, have been mostly black/gray/chrome, but there are also some that are green/chrome (with some gray). I don't remember if beige (with gray and chrome) was ever used. As for the Brady Bunch, there is also that first season episode (when the kids and parents were squeaky clean-cut, before they all became "hippy-dippy"), where Mike Brady puts in a payphone line for the kids to use, since they were hogging the one phone for the entire family, and running up huge bills. This was in 1969/70. The payphone was a 3-slotter, and I think it was also beige -- and rotary dial. Mike Brady reverts back to a standard residential phone at the end of the episode. I read on a tribute website about the Brady Bunch that for all five original ABC-TV seasons (1969-74), they NEVER had a touchtone phone at all in the house. They always had a standard rotary dial phone. Since the setting was southern California, I wonder if it could be assumed that they were always served by a "Step-by-Step" office, and one which didn't have DTMF to DP converters! Afterall, Mike would have been able to afford Pacific Telephone's monthly touchtone surcharges! :-) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:14:27 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Caution: Unidentified Callers ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** agreatnate@gmail.com wrote: > I have gotten a call on my cell-phone from 303-720-1234 also, > it was a recorded message in Spanish that I couldn't understand. > I have gotten this same message three times now, always from a > different number most recently from 351-460-1234. FWIW, I looked up the 351-460 central office code in Neustar NANPA's website, and there is no such 351-460 code presently assigned! :( The 351 area code overlays the 978 area code in northeastern Massachusetts, outside of the Boston and vicinity Metro area. There are very few 351-NXX central office codes currently assigned or active. But 351-460 is NOT currently assigned. This is obviously some kind of telemarketer or worse, scam artist, trying to avoid detection! :( ------------------------------ From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Coverage Areas of FiOS? Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:23:38 -0400 hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I found them [Verizon FiOS call center] not helpful and > uncooperative. My area has FIOS and they advertise it heavilly, but > they did not come into my complex. I cannot find out why (they don't > want to or my complex doesn't want them???, probably they don't want > to.) Their rep said they don't like doing multi family complexes > which makes no sense to me since shorter cable runs will serve more > people. We are, though, underground wiring, not pole. If it's a true FTTH network (which means fiber all the way to the end customer's home), Verizon would have to run a fiber all the way into each apartment or condo unit. Which means installing fiber cables *inside* existing MDU buildings. For several reasons (minimum inconvenience to residents; minimum disruption to structures and landscaping; lowest cost to Verizon), Verizon would (presumably) want to wire all units at the same time, even if only one unit signed up for the service. It's the same hassle that the cable TV industry went through back in the 1970s and 80s when we were installing coax in MDU buildings. Back in my cable TV days, we dragged our feet about MDUs too. We didn’t want to invest in wiring an entire building until we had enough residents signed up to justify the cost. On a few occasions, building owners agreed to assist: either they'd pick up part of the construction cost, or they'd contract for bulk billing (basic cable to every unit with the cost buried in the rent). But most building owners refused to contribute anything, and many of them were outright hostile. Some even demanded a "deal" (i.e., money) as a condition for signing an easement. Another reason for dragging our feet: hackers. It's a lot easier to hack wiring inside an MDU building than wiring on a pole or in a ped. The worst offenders were fraternities: I've encountered frat boys hacking coax wiring within an hour after the installer left. Verizon is facing this whole hassle all over again. Only it's worse this time around because fiber can't be spliced, so each fiber cable would have to be run continuously from the building entrance to the apartment/condo without any splices. Furthermore, fiber is just as vulnerable to physical hacking by residents as coax, but it's far more difficult to repair -- again, the splicing problem. Alternatively, Verizon could run a fiber bundle to some secure common area (basement, telephone closet, etc.) in the building, and utilize existing coax and telco wiring from there. Assuming, of course, that the existing coax and telco wiring is in usable condition, with no bad splices, no hidden splitters buried behind drywall or under the attic insulation, no smashed shields, no ground faults, no illegal taps, etc. Anybody who's read the horror stories posted on this list over the past several years might question the advisability that approach. Eventually, of course, all this will pass. Coax wiring is now as common in MDU buildings as power and telephone. In another decade or two, fiber will be just as common. So just be patient, Lisa! Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Looking for Web Page Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006 04:03:22 GMT There used to be a web site that had pictures of many Co's mostly on the west coast. The last time I tried it nothing happened. Any ideas, did the guy give it up. I was going to send him a couple of photos for Verizon (GTE) that he had wanted. 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! 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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 #274 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Jul 26 21:34:22 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B7EF22221; Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:34:22 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #275 Message-Id: <20060727013422.B7EF22221@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:34:22 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:35:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 275 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Society Calls for Greater Autonomy for KEY (Peter Godwin) CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 System (Cheech Chong) Scam in UK: Mobile Contract Expiring (Nodak) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 26, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Mexico Set to Open Phone Market to Cable (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Multi-Line Cordless Phone System (DLR) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch (DLR) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch (Lisa Hancock) Re: The Great [sic] Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief (NOTvalid) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (DLR) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:46:41 +0200 From: Peter Godwin Subject: Internet Society Calls For Greater Autonomy for Key Organization INTERNET SOCIETY CALLS FOR GREATER AUTONOMY FOR KEY INTERNET ORGANIZATION Reston, VA and Geneva, Switzerland - 26th July 2006 - Speaking during today's US Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) public meeting on the transition of the Internet's domain name system (DNS) to the private sector, ISOC President and CEO Lynn St. Amour outlined how key Internet organizations need to have enough autonomy to respond appropriately to the fast-changing technical and operational environment of the Internet. ISOC's comments come as the current Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the US Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) concerning administration of the DNS approaches expiry at the end of September 2006. ISOC has always promoted the self-regulation model of the Internet, and supports ICANN and the role it plays in coordinating certain aspects of the "collaborative" Internet management model. Furthermore, ISOC believes that ICANN along with its related organizations and their supporting processes are now ready to take the next step in the move to support the Internet's management and development in a private sector model, just as envisioned by the US Government in 1998. "While we recognize and applaud the 'light hand' the US Government has always taken with respect to the Internet, we believe it is time to move to a minimal, transitional MOU where the US Government plays a 'backstop' role that would only come into play in the event of a serious organizational failure," said Ms. St. Amour. "We consider the MOU in its present form no longer necessary or appropriate at this stage of the Internet and ICANN=92s development. ISOC believes a clear unambiguous signal needs to be made internationally that we are entering a new phase and taking steps to move to the private sector model per the original vision of the US Government." ISOC believes the success of the Internet lies in the fact that it is a "network of networks" characterized by distributed management and a minimum of regulation with operational and governance mechanisms being implemented as locally as possible using bottom-up community based processes built on publicly developed principles. These principles and processes have enabled the Internet to grow rapidly and adapt to new demands and opportunities -- and this is where the strength and stability of the Internet model lies. Note to Editors: The full text of today's ISOC statement is available here: http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/ISOC_NTIA_statement_060726.pdf ISOC's response to the NTIA's Notice of Inquiry is available here: http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/ISOC_NTIA_response_060707.pdf About ISOC The Internet Society is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. ISOC is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other Internet-related bodies who together play a critical role in ensuring that the Internet develops in a stable and open manner. For over 14 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time. For further details: Internet Society E-mail: info@isoc.org 1775 Wiehle Ave., Suite 102 Reston, VA 20190-5108, USA 4 rue des Falaises CH-1205 Geneva Switzerland ------------------------------ From: user@host.com (Cheech Chong) Subject: CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 system Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:55:18 GMT Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95 Hello all, Recently setup a used phone system for our office (NT5801FD-93) with M7310 phones. The KSU supports up to 6 lines, but we only have 2 lines at the moment. The caller id does not display on the M7310 phones, but prior to having a phone system, the regular household phones we had connected to our 2 lines were able to display the caller id. Is there some programming needed in the phone system to allow the caller id to display? I logged into the KSU and didn't see any caller id options, but I could have missed the section. (The phone system has the following software installed: SP 30NSE08 DR5) Let me know if any more details are needed. Thanks in advance, CC ------------------------------ From: Nodak Subject: Scam in UK: Mobile Contract Expiring Date: 26 Jul 2006 06:23:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, Just a warning to all. There is a scam whereby people will call you on your mobile saying that your contract is due to expire at the end of this month. They will not call you by name, and try to phish information out of you. Do NOT give them any information whatsoever. Once they have any account details from you they can impersonate you and charge calls to your phone or approve of calls with you unaware. Here's a sample phone number that called: +447737951756 If you try calling the number back it will not be registered, but that's what turned up on my mobile. As a caution, remember to never give out information. Just like when receiving an email asking for passwords and account information, a mobile company would not ask you for that unless you call them. 1) See if they call you by name when you answer (if not, probably a scam). They should have your details on record. 2) Know when your contract will expire. (Saying your contract is to expire is often a scam.) Normally contracts work by auto-renewal with the customer having to NOT renew a contract. 3) If they ask for any personal information, tell them they have it on file. If they pry for information, ask them to provide you with a phone number to call them back. If they do not want to give you one, it's usually a scam. Anyway, hope this helps! :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We get a lot of that same crapola here in the USA also. Cell phone spamscam has gotten to be almost as bad as the internet variety. Frankly, I seldom even answer the phone any more if I do not recognize the calling number. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 26, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:28:31 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 26, 2006 ******************************** Lucent Profit Meets Lowered Forecast As Revenue From U.S. Operations Lags http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19032?11228 MURRAY HILL, New Jersey -- Lucent Technologies Inc., the telecom equipment maker being acquired by rival Alcatel SA, said Wednesday that profit declined in the third quarter due to weakness in its North American operations. Net income for the quarter ended June 30 fell to $79 million, or 2 cents per share, from $372 million, or ... Telefonica Moviles First-half Net Profit Up 12.8 Percent http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19030?11228 MADRID, Spain -- Spanish wireless operator Telefonica Moviles on Wednesday said first-half net profit rose 12.8 percent compared to the same period in 2005, helped by solid growth in several Latin American countries and improved domestic margins. Madrid-based Moviles said net profit stood at Euro 1.05 billion (US$1.33 billion) ... United Kingdom: NTL, Virgin Unveil Quadruple-Play Package http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19028?11228 NTL has unveiled plans to offer quadruple-play services before the year-end, taking the first step towards exploiting opportunities from its acquisition of Telewest and Virgin Mobile. Unlike Carphone Warehouse, Orange and BSkyB, NTL has said that it will not offer a free broadband service, but instead provide free TV to customers who ... Netherlands: KPN Loses Legal Challenge to "Unfair" Regulation http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19025?11228 Dutch telecoms group KPN has lost its legal challenge against what it refers to as unequal regulation between itself and cable companies. KPN took the Dutch state to court last month arguing that it should be treated the same way as cable operators, given that its and cable operators; networks were capable of providing the same ... World: Telecom Italia Posts 5.6% Rise in H1 Revenue, Selling Brasil Telecom Stake http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19023?11228 Telecom Italia has announced its first-half 2006 results showing a 5.6% year-on-year (y/y) rise in revenue to 15.34 billion euro (US$19.3 billion). Compared to revenue of 14.53 billion euro in the first half of 2005, the 2006 result reflects new revenue sources, without which revenue would have grown by 2.6%. EBITDA (earnings before ... Firefox: The Next Generation http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19021?11228 Mozilla has just released the first public beta version of Firefox 2.0, the open source organization's popular Web browser. The updated software, code-named 'Bon Echo' marks an evolution of the program that has successfully challenged the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Firefox 2.0 Beta 1... Google Takes Maps Mobile http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19019?11228 Google unveiled Google Maps for mobile, which delivers live traffic maps and road conditions to a cell phone. The service provides information on traffic conditions in more than 30 major metro areas, which is delivered directly to a mobile phone upon request, according to the company. Road conditions are categorized by color: red ... Courting Disaster: Telenor Unveils Satcom In A Briefcase http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19017?11228 Telenor Satellite Services, jumping into the fray surrounding the massive criticism resulting from the lack of emergency- communications capabilities revealed by last year's Hurricane Katrina disaster, has gone to market with what may be the world's first complete satellite-based emergency communications response kit small enough ... Moto Makes New Friends http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19015?11228 Motorola Inc. kept the newswires busy today with a string of partnership announcements and the acquisition of video server firm Broadbus Technologies Inc. Announcing the deals during its strategy day, Motorola appears to have joined Nortel Networks Ltd. in adopting an alternative strategy (partnerships and joint ... NARUC Tunes Up Termination http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19013?11228 A task force assembled by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Monday an intercarrier compensation reform plan that appears to stand a good chance of adoption. The new plan, called the Missoula Plan, proposes a common (and lower) termination rate ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 12:22:40 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Mexico Set to Open Phone Market to Cable USTelecom dailyLead July 26, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eciYfDtutfssAdiKKc TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Mexico set to open phone market to cable BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * PCCW opts to keep its core assets * Verizon to offer branded headsets * AT&T gets positive feedback on U-verse launch * Trio of executives drive Cingular's push into Hispanic market * Lucent reports earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Securing Service Provider/Carrier Backbone Networks Tomorrow, July 27 TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Google, Yahoo! look to jump-start mobile Web * 2006: The year of the video site REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Lawsuit against AT&T dismissed Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eciYfDtutfssAdiKKc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:54:53 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Multi-Line Cordless Phone System Grip wrote: > I'm looking for a small business solution and I've come across two > systems, the Panasonic KXTG4000 and the RCA 25450 each of which > appears to fill my basic needs. Those needs are a multiple line (3 in > our office) cordless phone which workers can clip onto their belts and > use a headset with during the course of the day. My questions, if you > choose to answer them are: > Have you had any experience with these systems, good or ill? > Do either one of these have the ability to intercom or page handsets > (a specific one or all) from another handset or the base station? Visit for a great site with lots of details on Panasonic systems. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 02:03:30 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch Anthony Bellanga wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> An old "Brady Bunch" episode showed the parents using 3 slot >> pay phones in a fancy restaurant. They were beige. While the >> vast majority of Bell System 3 slot pay phones were black, in >> some places they did use colors; I've seen beige in many places. > The third color for 3-slotters that was sometimes used was green. > I've heard that in some cases, the telephone company might even paint > a 3-slot payphone some "unusual" color (for an extra fee, I assume), > such as red or blue. But the three standard colors, in order of how > common they were, were black, then beige, then green. Here's a strange twist. My aunt was a Bell operator. Not critical but add some additional humor to the story. Back about 1963 or so she moved into a new house and ordered a black dial phone. They wanted her to take a new "colored" touch tone phone or at least a white dial phone. Well that cost an extra $1 a month back then and she was watching pennies closely at the time and refused to take anything but a black dial phone. So they came out with the phone. It was a white dial phone BRUSH painted black at the local office. :) They had run out of black, apparently WE wasn't making them any more as the local Bells assumed they could meet demand from disconnects and they ran out. > I read on a tribute website about the Brady Bunch that for all five > original ABC-TV seasons (1969-74), they NEVER had a touchtone phone at > all in the house. They always had a standard rotary dial phone. Since > the setting was southern California, I wonder if it could be assumed > that they were always served by a "Step-by-Step" office, and one which > didn't have DTMF to DP converters! Afterall, Mike would have been able > to afford Pacific Telephone's monthly touchtone surcharges! :-) I thought Southern Cal was GTE. Which after I had them in Lexington KY for a few years, I decided I'd make my living choices with a strong negative factor if it required living where the provided service. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch Date: 26 Jul 2006 08:33:08 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Mike Brady puts in a payphone line for the kids > to use, since they were hogging the one phone for the entire family, > and running up huge bills. IIRC, that episode was discussed here on the newsgroup not long ago. Some places had tarffis which allowed homes to pay phones instead of regular service. But normally Bell then and now requires a minimum usage to support a pay phone line, otherwise the properrty owner must make it up. If usage exceeds (such as from toll calls), the owner (then and now) received a comission check. Many small businesses had an extension to a pay phone. In those places the pay phone had a plastic flipcap over the coin slot "Listen first to see if line is in use". The extension was non dial. I think these were known as "semi public" stations. One reason credit card rates from pay phones is so high is that the property owner makes money off of them. I noticed that phones at SEPTA stations no longer accept 1+ coin calls. They used to for $1.00/minute. I guess SEPTA wants more money from them. I've learned that some transit agencies purposely have pay phones at their stations to serve as emergency 911 phones. They are apparently willing to pay for low usage, but this is still cheaper than providing a direct emergency line On the new NJ Transit River Line, every station platform has a pay phone. I thought that was strange in a time everyone has cell phones, but they're more for 911 use if needed. Of course people can use them for regular calls and some do. (I saw one person talking on the pay phone with one hand/ear and her cell phone with the other hand/ear). I do wish they had prominent signs "for emergency use payphone to call 911 free call"; SEPTA has those. > As for the Brady Bunch, there is also that first season episode (when > the kids and parents were squeaky clean-cut, before they all became > "hippy-dippy"), where By the standards of those years, the Brady Bunch all remained squeaky clean throughout the series. It was ridiculous in the last years; the older kids were not realistic. In subsequent roles, both Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb (Marcia and Jan) played wild girls. McCormick was not convincing as a fast girl, but Plumb did a great job playing a teen runaway hooker. Today even on Disney you have teens hooking up. I just saw two early episodes of the series and they weren't as "fluffy" as I expected. The first dealt with a bully picking on the kids. The bully gave the middle boy a black eye. The family taught the boy to avoid a fight, but then, after meeting with the boy's parents who were just as belligerent, taught the boy to fight and he hit back the next time, loosening a tooth on the bully. In that "Sesame Street" TV era, I was surprised they would show violence like that that lead to an injury. Today of course there'd be a huge lawsuit over a broken tooth and the cops involved with lots of finger pointing (and it could be about girls fist fighting). In another early episode Marcia came out for "women's lib". She joined Greg's scout troop. They made Marcia take a tough initiation test which she passed. I was surprised they got "political" like that in an early episode; the show glossed over anything sensitive. > I read on a tribute website about the Brady Bunch that for all five > original ABC-TV seasons (1969-74), they NEVER had a touchtone phone at > all in the house. They always had a standard rotary dial phone. Since > the setting was southern California, I wonder if it could be assumed > that they were always served by a "Step-by-Step" office, and one which > didn't have DTMF to DP converters! Afterall, Mike would have been able > to afford Pacific Telephone's monthly touchtone surcharges! :-) Touch Tone service was available in all types of central offices. For step by step, they had a variety of converters including cheap ones. Many step offices were due to go ESS so they may not have bothered. In affluent areas Touch Tone use was greater but by no means universal in 1974. I would guess the Brady Family would've gone TT by 1976. I'd say the big wave of TT conversions occured 1976-1980. (The Bell System switching history ends at 1975). In 1974 many large affluent families had a second phone line for the kids. Given the Brady Household, I would've expected them to have such a line. However, note that many plots and subplots in the household revolved around the phone being tied up and busy. In the 3-slot episode, Mike and Carol were trying to call home to check in but Jan was yakking on the phone. If they were lucky to get an early ESS they'd have call waiting (another device for TV plots). In the Archie Bunker household, he had a noticeable older telephone set (302). Somewhere down the line in the series he got a Touch Tone phone. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The phones used in the Bunker household varied by the show they were doing, it seems. Usually it was a rotary dial phone sitting on the table; but in a couple of episodes the rotary dial phone was sitting over by the sofa. PAT] ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: The Great [sic] Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight Date: 25 Jul 2006 20:54:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Goudreau_Bob@notchur.biz wrote: > [Please obfuscate my email address as always.] > NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: >> At this rate, the entire city could have electricity as reliable as Iraq. > Oh puh-leeze. > New York City? Not to mention other occasions when the entire city > went dark, such as 1977 and 1965. For how long? One week later some people in Queens still don't have power. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What about today, Wednesday? Last Friday they said it would come back on 'sometime this week' (we are in now). Is it in fact back yet? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:53:36 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 7/24/06 8:13:25 PM Central Daylight Time, > editor@telecom- digest.org writes, in a comment on a post by DLR > : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How about something a lot more simple? >> _Do not ever_ leave a central office unattended, anytime, anywhere. Even >> in an office which is 'usually' deserted on weekends, etc you schedule >> at least one worker to be there nights and weekends. Give that person >> something to do -- for example data entry work -- and have them go >> around once an hour more or less checking all the nooks and crannies >> where problems could develop. In the case of Hinsdale, Ameritech could >> have had one or two people on their payroll for several years mainly >> as watchdogs and still come out ahead of what the 1988 fire cost them. >> PAT] > I think you may underestimate the tremendous costs involved, since > many offices -- including, I imagine, Independence, are unattended > most nights and probably most often on weekends. Smaller offices may > be unattended at all times. > So the costs for putting somebody in every office all night and all > weekend would double or triple the manpower or womanpower costs for > most offices. And people costs are usually the largest, even in a > high-fixed-cost business like a telephone company. > Wes Leatherock > wesrock@aol.com > wleathus@yahoo.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But please see my earlier messages: You > do not _add to your payroll for this function_ but instead you > re-arrange the working hours of the employees you already have, and > charge off or prorate much of the payroll expense to the existing job > function. Telco has employees 24/7 in places like Traffic Department; > cannot they even afford to have one lousy person manning a repair desk > (for example) all night? You are correct; Independence is unmanned at > night and weekends. There was a time when the majority of the first > floor was occupied by service representatives and cashiers. Then they > did away with the service reps (putting a wall-mounted 'tie-line' > phone and a desk in the corner) for people to sit at and talk to a > long-distance rep, but keeping the cashiers so people could still pay > their bill. Then one day, the cashiers disappeared also. My mother > says she can recall going in there and talking to a live rep, > explaining what she wanted; the rep called upstairs to the guy in the > frames and told him what was wanted; mother said when she got home the > work had already been completed. > Foolish telco! Would _you_ leave a property worth millions of dollars > (ESS switch for example) totally unguarded over a long weekend and > hope to God it was still sitting there working on Tuesday or whenever? > After all, it is monitored from an office in Tulsa or Wichita a > hundred miles away in either direction. They'll let us know if an > alarm goes off. Foolish telco, and penny-wise but pound foolish cheap > bastards as well. They deserve whatever grief they get. PAT] Pat, you're from an different time. Staffing is a MAJOR hassle for these times. You're dealing with a union who'd want union pay. You're candidates are likely young somethings in college or folks looking to earn extra money. And the "work" you'd have them do isn't done in every or even most areas. It's concentrated in call centers, DP centers, or maybe India. My wife works a call center. I've even worked as the night auditor for a motel in the past. Night shifts have very high turn over. Your plans sounds nice but fails when human nature, employment laws, and union rules are applied. Much less getting someone to show up for work at a deserted parking lot at night on a weekend. And when you sit down and do the math, you put in the systems which satisfy the insurance carriers (or more likely the risk assessment team who reports to the re-insurance company you use to back up your self insurance plan) and let it go. It's still way way way cheaper to have it unattended nation wide and deal with the 5 or 10 year issue in 1 building out of 1000s. Small businesses do it all the time. Switching offices are really the same thing, just on a larger scale. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess I am from a different time ... seriously. :( When I worked at U of Chicago, I started when I was in high school at age 16, and I worked around my school hours, mostly on weekends and after school hours. During the summer they gave me more hours but it was still weekends and some weekdays, but early hours. I was always out by 9 PM or so. But once I graduated from high school in 1960 at the age of 17, Mrs. Parsons asked me if I would take the overnight shift 'with a raise in pay' which I was glad to do for the money involved. I think I was paid $2.00 per hour when I started working nights. That was to be a regular 48 hour shift for me; my first full time job. Yes, times have certainly changed. 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. 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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 #275 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Jul 27 15:42:42 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C2F0D2221; Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:40:38 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #276 Message-Id: <20060727194038.C2F0D2221@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:40:38 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:43:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 276 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? (B.Kushnick) Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance (Glenn Chapman) AOL Expected to Scrap Charges on Email and Web Services (Kenneth Li) Nokia Starts Test of Wi-Fi Internet Mobile Calls (Reuters News Wire) 7th USENIX Symposium: Operating Systems Design; Implementation (LG Jones) Skype Allows Free Calls to Japan This Weekend (Skype Press Release) Pioneer Cellular Mobile Telephone System -- Metroliner Phones (L. Hancock) GTE & Verizon; SBC and AT&T in Southern California (Anthony Bellanga) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 27, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Broadband Subs Rise, DSL Outpaces Cable (USTelecom dailyLead) 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (fake.e-mail@stonyx) Re: The Great Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight (D. Burstein) Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? (DLR) Re: WW II Long Distance Narrow Bandwidth; Toll Rate Drop (Robert Bonomi) Re: CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 System (Robert Bonomi) Re: CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 System (Carl Navarro) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:41:01 -0500 From: Bruce Kushnick Subject: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Activist Bruce Kushnick writes that both telecom bills before Congress would be huge giveaways to the very same telecommunications giants that have in the past pocketed massive government subsidies while shafting consumers and knee-capping American competitiveness. But they've taken very good care of members of Congress. By Bruce Kushnick Bruce@teletruth.org Q. Is 200KBPS a reasonable broadband standard for America? (Asian countries are now using 100 Mbps in both directions for their standard. That is 500 times more powerful.) Q. Given that the telcos have repeatedly failed to live up to the promises they made in return for huge subsidies in the past, why would it be different this time? Q. Who is speaking on behalf of the consumers? Q. Why do phone companies with excessive profit margins need Universal Service Fund subsidies? Congress has decided to update the Telecommunications Act of 1996. There are two proposed bills; both would benefit the large telephone firms at the expense of consumers. The press has pretty much left the public in the dark when it comes to what these bills would do. Decent coverage is long overdue, especially considering the likely increases in telephone, broadband taxes and new Internet constraints on users. The 1996 legislation had the stated purpose of having the telecoms compete to spur on advanced networks and lower prices to consumers. That didn't happen; instead America is 16th in the world in broadband access and competition has been removed. Firms that stand to benefit the most, like Verizon and AT&T (formerly SBC Communications), are offering new networks but they are crippled networks that will never be competitive on a global basis. They are simply too expensive and too slow. In earlier articles in this series, I highlighted how the phone companies in the 1990s promised to deploy fiber optic services to America and pocketed over $200 billion but never delivered, how the FCC helped to kill off competitors on customer-funded networks, and how the telecoms have now taken exclusive rights to public-funded property. The proposed House bill is titled the Barton “COPE bill: Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006, H.R. 5252 (Joe Barton, R-Texas). The Senate bill is the 'Stevens bill' (Ted Stevens, R-Alaska), S. 2686, Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 (Introduced in Senate). These bill names use D.C.-Speak, a modern Orwellian vernacular. Both would give the Bells new incentives in the form of national franchises with no "build-out" requirements for states or cities to be fully wired. The cable companies currently have local franchises, where the companies have to meet specific requirements for local provisioning, such as local access channels. This new corporate 'one size fits all' national franchise is not about customers but about expediency and lack of community services, as the House bill allows the new entrants (that is, the phone companies) not to worry about local, existing obligations. The House bill adds an additional 1 percent tax on the cable operators' gross revenues, and the language of the bill states that the operators can 'designate that portion of a subscriber's bill attributable to such payment', meaning that new taxes can be charged directly to the customer. The phone companies have had extensive financial incentives before, but they have never fulfilled their obligations. Rewarding them for such a record is brazen, and raises the question of whether Capitol Hill lawmakers are in cahoots with the telecoms. By 2010, the entire state of New Jersey -100 percent- was supposed to have fiber-optic based 45 mbps bidirectional service, deployed in rich and poor areas, rural, urban and suburban alike. Other states had similar deals. Since 1993, customers have been paying higher phone rates and telecoms also have been getting tax breaks. The result was supposed to be intensive new construction. That hasn't happened. Imagine building a highway: Wouldn't the regulators and lawmakers want to examine what happened in the past before freeing companies to simply build roads wherever they want? Wouldn't it be more prudent to actually hold the companies accountable for deployments, much less the extra financial perks? History, as a predictor for future events, dictates that serious build-out requirements for all municipalities and financial accountability should be key parts of new legislation. There is virtually nothing to show for past commitments, many made as part of state law as well. And now the companies are asking that government "trust them"? If America is really going to modernize its telecom system, you would think new legislation would require companies to be able to compete globally, with comparable speed and service capability. Both current bills call for America's broadband standard to be 200KBPS in one direction. That is 1/5 of a megabit. Asian countries are now using 100 Mbps in both directions for their standard. That is 500 times more powerful. Unfortunately, even the new products, Verizon's FiOS, and AT&T's Lightspeed, are inferior, crippled services that can't compete globally today and may never be fully deployed. These networks are lower in speed and higher in price than anything offered overseas. (SBC acquired AT&T in 2005; it is sometimes referred to as SBC and sometimes as AT&T.) Shouldn't the rewrite of the Telecommunications Act have a vision of the future that is not already part of history as the wrong direction? Net Neutrality The concept of 'Net neutrality' is central in both bills in that it is missing in both. Net neutrality refers to open access of data-transmiss- ion lines without favor to all Internet users, giving telecoms no control over content or applications. But the phone companies claim that they need more money to pay for new network investments and that Net neutrality harms their bottom line. Without Net neutrality, the proposed legislation gives the phone companies greater control of their networks, letting them charge more, offer different levels of service to customers, and place restrictions on what customers may do online. The public funded the telecoms, and Congress in the Telecommunications Act and state law acknowledged the customer financial incentives in exchange for open networks, or “common carrier” obligations. No phone company has lived up to its obligations. Yet Congress apparently takes the view that this time there will be competition and this time the companies will not block or harm competitors. Raising Universal Service Fund Taxes On phone bills right now, every customer is paying what are called Universal Service Fund taxes, either state or federal or both. The federal tax varies but around 11 percent is currently tacked on to all long distance and international calls, including land lines and cell phones. Because of really bad regulation, a Universal Service Fund tax is also applied to other charges on your phone bill, including the FCC Line charge (which is on your local phone bill) and even the local number portability charge. The Universal Service Fund is supposed to subsidize schools, libraries, rural health care providers, and low-income phone users; these organizations get a discount for their services while the telco gets paid back in full for residential or business rates. My group, Teletruth, has written separately about the Universal Service fund from the position of the proposed legislation. The fact is, the Universal Service Fund is little more than a slush fund, and the Senate bill would make it worse. For one thing, the Stevens bill would increase USF costs to consumers by 200 percent, on average. It would add charges to local and toll service, which are the largest costs to customers, and it would increase the charges on wireless phones. It also would add charges to VOIP (use of the Internet as a telephone) and broadband, even though they are supposed to be exempt. In the past, VOIP and broadband were considered "information" services, and therefore not required to pay USF charges. However, right now every service is up for grabs. From 1999 to 2005, Universal Fund charges on long distance phone calls increased by 185 percent, going from 3.9 percent in 1999 to 11.1 percent. (In the second quarter of 2006, the charge was 10.9 percent.) The largest part of this fund is not for wiring of schools and libraries and the like, but for so-called "high-cost support", which are corporate subsidies to the phone companies. The high cost support represents over 60 percent of the total collected, doubling from $1.7 in 1999 to $3.5 billion in 2004, and growing. These funds are not going to corporations that need the money. Many of the phone companies receiving funds, such as Centurytel, Inc., or Citizens Communications Company have higher than 50 percent profit margins in terms of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a standard business measurement that shows firms' revenues in relation to primary working expenses, not including network upgrades. This high EBITDA is in large part due to the high-cost fund. USA Today (November 14, 2004) found that one small telco, XIT Rural Telephone Cooperative, which serves only 1,500 customers in Texas, received $2.9 million in USF subsidies. It was so profitable that it gave a "dividend to its customers, who also own XIT, an average $375," the article said. A recent report on Universal Service sponsored by the Seniors' Coalition found that some rural companies in states including Texas, Hawaii, Alaska and Arizona are receiving from $2,900 a line to $13,000 a line in high-cost fund benefits, not counting what the customer actually pays the phone company for service. Many states have also added statewide high-cost funds and other Universal Fund type taxes that are already covered under the federal program. This is the equivalent of double taxation, sometimes quintuple taxation. To my knowledge, no one in a position of authority has examined the totality of taxes from multiple funds! Daniel Berninger of Tier 1 Research, an independent tech research firm for investors, wrote an open letter to the Senate Commerce Committee saying that the "Universal Service Fund generated remarkably meager results for $50 billion spent." Astroturf groups (phone company funded) sprout over these issues. Like unwanted weeds, many fake grass-roots groups have sprouted 'Astroturf groups, you could call them' and lots of biased research reports have been pouring out over issues such as franchise agreements, Universal Service and Net neutrality. One such group is called Hands Off the Internet. Its co-chairman is Mike McCurry, press secretary to former President Clinton. In fact, this is not a citizens group in the normal sense but a lobbying group whose major members are telecom firms. Hands Off The Internet describes itself as 'a nationwide coalition of Internet users united in the belief that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation.' Here's their membership: mostly phone companies and other Bell-funded groups. Another group is Consumers for Cable Choice, led by a person who ran an AT&T fake group called Voices for Choices. Their Web site says the reason you should join is to 'Tell Congress to Make Cable Choice a Priority': "Consumers deserve, need and want real choice in video services as soon as possible. At the stunning rate of $260 every second nationwide, American consumers are seeing hard-earned dollars pour out of their pockets for a total of over $8.2 billion in annual savings that consumers are missing." Here's what Common Cause wrote about this group: "Consumers for Cable Choice, on the other hand, is financially backed largely by telephone companies, including Verizon and AT&T -- the very companies that would benefit the most if Congress makes it easier for competitors to enter the cable television market." The Keep USF Fair Coalition: Our personal favorite is the 'Keep USF Fair Coalition,' which has been around for years. It includes multiple fake consumer organizations, many of whose members are funded by the Bell companies. While the groups sound like they care, their principal point has been to call for an increase in the tax, and for VOIP to be taxed. This group's core organizations represent senior citizens, Hispanics, blacks, low-income households and people with disabilities. Of course, raising rates doesn't help these memberships, who might better be served by calls for investigations of the money. Business cozies up to Congress? One authentic grass roots group, Save Access.org, found that the Democratic House sponsors of the COPE bill received considerable money for their pet projects. It wrote, "This is a bi-partisan Bill, the Democratic co-sponsor is Rep. Bobby Rush (Ill.) whose non-profit community center received one million dollars in donations from an AT&T/SBC foundation over the past five years. Rep. [Joe] Barton [R-Texas] has pushed hard to get this legislation passed quickly and without revision." On the Senate side, I was surprised to see that there were sections of the bill dedicated to Alaska and Hawaii, the home states of Senator Stevens (R) and Daniel Inouye (D), co-sponsors of the bill, and that there was considerable increase to rural unserved markets for broadband to be paid for by the higher Universal Service Fund fees. More surprising is that there is an entire section of the bill devoted to satellite services to be used in Alaska and Hawaii. TVPredictions, an online publication about new TV technologies, outlined how a significant portion of Stevens's campaign contributions come from Rupert Murdoch's stable, including DirecTV. Dated July 10, 2006, the report said that Stevens, 'the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is pushing legislation that could give the Rupert Murdoch owned-DIRECTV a huge advantage over the cable TV industry.' 'Stevens has not explained why he supports the legislation,' it went on, 'but TVPredictions.com has learned that nearly 10 percent of the senator's 2005-2006 individual campaign contributions have come from employees of companies owned by Murdoch, such as News Corp., Fox and DIRECTV.' Something wrong with this picture? Ties between the various politicians and their funders influencing these bills? And money has been flying all over the place from the phone companies to curry favor. The Center for Public Integrity wrote: 'Telecommunications companies spent $60.3 million on political contributions over six years and a minimum of $83.4 million on lobbying over two years in an attempt to curry favor with elected officials in the states, according to a new Center for Public Integrity analysis.' We don't need a new bill. We need accountability and enforcement and customers should have their rights returned. The existing Telecom Act is flawed: There was no enforcement or accountability. But the new bills in Congress do not fix the primary problem that customers' rights have been taken away. Most customers no longer can use their own independent Internet Provider when they go from dialup to broadband (though some of the very large Internet providers have been able to cut a deal with the telcos). The phone companies got rid of line-sharing as well the wholesaling for their DSL broadband product. And competitors can no longer rent the phone networks, which included the original AT&T and MCI, who were forced to stop selling local service because it became unprofitable. Even the new networks are off limits. This is the opposite of the Telecom Act's primary reason for existence to bring in competition that would lower prices and bring advanced services. The idea that "deregulation" now means "free the monopoly from pesky competition" is yet another twist in this tale. Therefore, simply reinstating the rights that customers were granted a decade ago should be the first on the agenda. The second major problem is enforcement and accountability. The FCC's track record on enforcing the provisions of the Telecom Act or the phone company mergers is non-existent. Individual states' ability to monitor the companies infrastructure progress has also been missing in action. For example, when SBC merged with Ameritech, it promised to be competing with wireline competition in 30 cities outside its region. The FCC never held them accountable under the rationale that if there were at least three customers in a city, that equated to 'robust' competition. When it comes to small businesses, the FCC helped put 6,000 Internet providers out of business. It deregulated the Bell companies while re-regulating the ISPs and competitors, eliminating the basic laws of the Telecom Act of 1996. It did not enforce the protections built into the laws, so that the ISPs and competitors received sub-standard services from the telecoms. Diversity The Telecommunications Act of 1996 had at its core competition and diversity through the elimination of market-entry barriers and the express favoring of diversity of media voices, vigorous economic competition, technological advancement, and promotion of the public interest, convenience, and necessity. Is real competition important? Most people reading this went online with an independent Internet Service Provider because this law said they could. These entrepreneurial firms created the skill and expertise to help customers navigate the Internet and World Wide Web. In fact, these companies, and NOT the phone companies, were the innovators. Ironically, the ISPs even helped to sell phone company second lines. The original Telecom Act realized that innovation was for small business to add a telecom diversity. Instead, there is a duopoly, which is not competition; it is splitting up the world between two non-innovative companies. Rewrite the Telecom Act of 1996? Don't COPE: Revolt is the better solution. Bruce Kushnick has been a telecom analyst for 24 years, and is currently the chairman of Teletruth, an independent customer advocacy group focusing on broadband and telecom issues, as well as executive director of New Networks Institute, a market research firm. E-mail: bruce@newnetworks.com Copyrighht 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:48:03 -0500 From: Glenn Chapman Subject: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance by Glenn Chapman Key Internet freedoms are under threat in a legal battle between online search leader Google and pornography publisher Perfect 10, a prominent Internet rights foundation said. At issue in the landmark case being appealed to the San Francisco circuit court of appeals is whether Google infringed on copyrights by creating links to Perfect 10 pictures copied from its website and posted elsewhere on the Internet, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "The stakes are high and everybody is out expressing an opinion," EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann told AFP. "Links are really the whole enchilada when it comes to the worldwide web." A Perfect 10 court victory would stifle the sharing of website links whether it be by bloggers, search engines, online newspapers, or simply people sending e-mail to friends, von Lohmann said. "It will be the most important copyright decision for search engines in years." The photos which Google provided links to were evidently copies made by Perfect 10 website visitors and put on other websites. The links turned up in the results of Google searches for images of certain models, said von Lohmann. In the case originally filed in the US district court in Los Angeles, Perfect 10 also argued its copyright was infringed by thumbnail images -- small versions of the pictures -- that Google generated in response to the search queries. Perfect 10 argued that Google was giving away for free copyrighted "natural women" adult images that the pornography publisher was charging for in magazine and website subscriptions. The district court ruled in February that Google did nothing wrong by making links to the images, but agreed with Perfect 10 that the online search giant shouldn't provide thumbnail copies of the pictures. Both sides appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. "We are confident that Google Image Search is legal under principles of fair use and copyright law," Google's lawyer Michael Kwun said in a response to an AFP inquiry on Wednesday. Leading technology industry groups, EFF and the Library Copyright Alliance have weighed in on the side of Google by filing amicus, or "friend of the court", briefs supporting Google's position. In recent filings, the two groups contended that Perfect 10 was aiming at expanding copyright law to the detriment of the Internet. Major motion picture, music recording, and photography industry organizations with clear stakes in protecting copyrighted material have countered with amicus briefs backing Perfect 10 in the case. "Links are really the stuff that has made the worldwide web a success," von Lohmann said. "It would be very chilling if any time you sent a link you could be held responsible for copyright infringement." The deadline for filing briefs with the court of appeals was several weeks away. After the deadline the court will schedule a hearing at which rival attorneys will make their arguments. Von Lohmann didn't expect a judgment until early next year. 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 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:51:02 -0500 From: Kenneth Li Subject: AOL Expected to Scrap Charges on Email and Web Services By Kenneth Li Investors in Time Warner Inc., whose shares touched a two-year low in mid-July, are seeking signs of a turnaround on August 2, when the world's largest media company is set to introduce its fourth plan in five years to save its online unit AOL. AOL is widely expected to announce that it will give its e-mail and Web services away for free, hoping to win back customers who had switched to other free services from rivals like Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. The new strategy, which will be discussed at a Time Warner board meeting in New York on Thursday, aims to boost online advertising sales, but analysts say it is a risky move as its subscription business currently accounts for 80 percent of AOL's revenue. AOL is still expected to continue to charge for dial-up Internet access, but it will no longer advertise the service. "I think a lot is riding on August 2," said Larry Haverty, a portfolio manager at Gamco Investors, which owned 14.1 million shares of Time Warner as of March 31. "People like us have been patient with strategy. From what I've heard, I'm comfortable. "But seeing is believing," Haverty added. Once the reigning king of online services, AOL has lost about 30 percent of its subscribers since 2003. The 2001 merger of AOL and Time Warner has been blamed for destroying some $200 billion in market value. Free services are now viewed by some investors as the only hope of survival for AOL in a world dominated by faster-moving companies, including News Corp.'s MySpace.com. "They should have done what they contemplated two years ago to aggressively develop AOL as a web service," said Morris Mark at Mark Asset Management, which owns 1.22 million Time Warner shares as of March 31. "Its position is so much more powerful than the advertising revenue that they're generating. Time Warner's enterprise value trades at 7.6 times its expected 2007 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, compared to News Corp.'s 11.9 multiple and Walt Disney Co.'s 9.81 multiple. TOO LATE? Gamco's Haverty hopes Time Warner's online advertising sales will rise at least 30 percent, when the company posts its second quarter results on Aug 2. That would put AOL roughly on par with Yahoo, but still lag Google's 77 percent advertising growth in the second quarter. AOL strategists may be emboldened to act aggressively after a 26 percent growth in online ad sales in the first quarter. But a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month cited unnamed sources as saying Time Warner could lose up to $1 billion through 2009 from its plan to offer free services. Time Warner on July 11 dismissed the report and called the newspaper's assessment "incomplete" and laden with "largely erroneous financial information." Six days later, its stock had slipped to a two-year low. "Time Warner's stock chart is like the flatline EKG of a dead person for the last three years," Joan Lappin, chairman of Gramercy Capital Management, wrote in Forbes.com, calling for Chief Executive Richard Parson's resignation. Lappin, whose firm no longer holds media stocks, was a longtime media analyst who has watched the company since the late 1960s, when it was just a magazine publisher. The sentiment on Time Warner's stock, however, appears to be improving judging by activity in the stock options market. There are already more than 200,000 outstanding calls that give holders the right to buy Time Warner shares at $17.50 and $20 by mid-January 2007. The stock closed at $16.27 on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange. "The high open interest is a sign that players have been positioning in these options, and placing relatively cheap bets that Time Warner will rise between now and the end of the year," said Frederic Ruffy, an analyst at Optionetics, a California-based options education firm. Haverty said he hopes the stock gets a 10 to 15 percent boost when the dust settles. (Additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago) 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:41:22 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Nokia Starts Test of Wi-Fi Internet Mobile Calls Nokia, the world's largest cellphone maker, has started its first tests of a technology that allows users to roam seamlessly between phone networks and local wireless hotspots such as Wi-Fi. Fifty families in Oulu near the polar circle in northern Finland will test the technology over the next two months, Nokia said on Thursday. Mobile subscribers with handsets enabled for so-called unlicensed mobile access, or UMA, can make calls over the Internet when they are in range of an unlicensed wireless network such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. When they move out of range, the connection will automatically revert to a GSM, GPRS or UMTS mobile phone network. The technology has the advantage that carriers can add coverage, for example in remote areas, at low cost with Wi-Fi hotspots instead of having to build expensive base stations. It could also encourage customers to use mobile phones at home instead of having landline connections, if they have Wi-Fi at home. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:11:44 -0700 From: Lionel Garth Jones Subject: 7th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation 7th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '06) November 6-8, 2006, Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/osdi06/proga/ Sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with ACM SIGOPS Dear Colleague, The 7th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '06) continues the conference's tradition of presenting the best work in the systems area. This year's program includes 27 papers spanning a broad range of systems technologies and implementations--work that you, as a systems practitioner, will find both stimulating and useful. The full program is now available. Register today at http://www.usenix.org/osdi06/proga/ At this year's OSDI, you will hear from and interact with researchers who are addressing a wide range of important questions. Sessions include Runtime Reliability Mechanisms, OS Implementation Strategies, Distributed Storage and Locking, Program Analysis Techniques, Operating System Structure, and more. These papers were drawn from a large and highly competitive pool of submissions, and were selected to highlight novel ideas instead of incremental work. OSDI '06 also offers more opportunities to learn about the state of the art in systems software through posters and short Work-in-Progress (WiP) presentations on novel ideas in systems research. We are seeking proposals for posters and WiPS. Please see http://www.usenix.org/events/osdi06/activities.html for more information. In summary, we believe this year's OSDI features an outstanding program covering the best systems software research and practice. Please join us at the Red Lion Hotel on Fifth Avenue in Seattle, WA, November 6-8, 2006. Early bird registration discounts are available. Register by October 16, 2006, to save. http://www.usenix.org/osdi06/proga/ For the OSDI '06 Program Committee, Brian Bershad, University of Washington Jeff Mogul, HP Labs OSDI '06 Program Co-Chairs P.S. OSDI '06 is co-located with the 3rd Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems (WORLDS '06), which will take place on November 5. http://www.usenix.org/events/worlds06/ The Second Workshop on Hot Topics in System Dependability (HotDep '06) will be held on November 8, immediately following OSDI '06. http://www.usenix.org/events/hotdep06/ 7th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '06) November 6-8, 2006, Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/osdi06/proga/ Sponsored by USENIX in cooperation with ACM SIGOPS ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:43:24 -0500 From: Skype News Department Subject: Skype Allows Free Calls to Japan This Weekend This weekend, Skype is giving away free calls to Japan. Starting at 12:01AM July 29th until 11:59PM July 30th EST you'll be able to make as many calls as you like to any phone in Japan, and it won't cost a thing. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Pioneer Cellular Mobile Telephone System: Metroliner Train Phones Date: 27 Jul 2006 10:44:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com The following has an article from the Bell Laboratories Record about the original telephone service provided on the Penn Central Metroliner trains in 1969. This was the first application of the "cell" concept of re-using radio frequencies and shifting frequencies as the vehicle is in motion. While we take cell phones for granted these days, in 1969 the Metroliner service was a major technical advancement. There were passenger radio-trainphones before Metroliner, but they were limited. The article notes: - The system was two-way. Land based people could call any train by giving the train number, location was not necessary. The equipment automatically located the desired train along the route. An attendant answered the call and paged the desired passenger. - Calls could be paid by collect, credit card, or coin. - Passengers would dial direct on a Touch Tone. Direct dialing and Touch Tone on coin phones was a new concept in 1969. - Service was provided in the five Baltimore tunnels and under Phila 30th Street by special antenna work designed for the underground environment. I don't think service was provided in the Hudson River tunnels. - As mentioned, the system was cellular. The article describes some technical details on radio transmission within the cells and separation of the cells. - Because calling traffic was expected to be heavy as the train approached its end terminals, additional channel capacity was provided in those areas. - The train transmitters produce 12 watts of RF power. - Every phone on a car is independent of other phones on a train. - The system accounts for variation of train battery supply from 56 to 88 volts. - The car antenna was protected from sharp brushes used in the carwash and noise from the 11KV AC pantograph arcs and power cable. - Base station transmission power design took into account terrain, antenna heights, and distances between base stations so as to maximize the signal up to cell boundaries but not far beyond. http://long-lines.net/tech-equip/mobile/BLR0369/076-077.html The Metroliner was a marked advance in railroad passenger service. It was very successful in attracting passengers back to the rails. But the trains themselves had many technical problems. Amtrak eventually pulled the original train sets and used other equipment instead, keeping the name. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:58:49 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California DLR wrote in "Phones on Brady Bunch": > Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> I read on a tribute website about the Brady Bunch that for all five >> original ABC-TV seasons (1969-74), they NEVER had a touchtone phone >> at all in the house. They always had a standard rotary dial phone. >> Since the setting was southern California, I wonder if it could be >> assumed that they were always served by a "Step-by-Step" office, and >> one which didn't have DTMF to DP converters! Afterall, Mike would >> have been able to afford Pacific Telephone's monthly touchtone >> surcharges! :-) > I thought Southern Cal was GTE. Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles extended metro area, has been a *HODGE PODGE* of General Telephone (or their predecessors) and Pacific Telephone going back to the 1920s. The GTE areas were the early dial independent telcos that had originally come about prior to the 1920s as competitors to Pacific Tel (Bell). There was also some Continental Telephone in the mix, mostly to the east of the basic L.A. Metro Area, but Contel was taken over by GTE in the early 1990s. The Palm Springs area further to the east is exclusively GTE. The San Diego area to the south is exclusively Pacific Tel (Bell). Of course today there are CLECs and wireless, but the incumbent landline telcos in southern California is still a hodgepodge of Verizon (legacy GTE and Contel) and the -NEW- "AT&T" (legacy SBC, formerly Pacific Bell Telephone). The immediate Los Angeles Metro Area has both GTE (Verizon) and Pacific Bell Telephone (at&t) in ways that you could go back and forth between the two several times in just a short 5 or 10 mile drive! It's almost like the hodgepodge of area code splits that have occurred in Southern California in the past 15 years. A bit of irony here -- when the breakup of the Bell System took effect in January 1984, Pacific Telesis was spun out as the holding company for both California's Pacific Bell and also Nevada Bell. The spun-off BOCs had the exclusive rights to use the "Bell" logo, while former parent company and long distance provider AT&T was forbidden the use of the "Bell" logo. AT&T went to that first "death star" logo. However, Pacific Telesis corporate chose NOT to use that 1970s era "Bell" logo. Pacific Telesis used the touchtone star logo, and applied it to its two BOCs as well, Pacific Bell and Nevada Bell. When SBC tookover Pacific Telesis circa 1997, they did NOT "re-introduce" the "Bell" logo into California and Nevada. And over the past ten years, SBC eliminated the "Bell" logo for Southwestern Bell, as well as Ameritech which it also tookover sometime around 2000. Southern New England Telephone in Connecticut dropped the "Bell" logo with 1984 -- they started up their own unique logo which has been modified a few times since. But the "Bell" logo was also NOT "re-introduced" in SNET Connecticut when SBC purchased them circa 1998. (FWIW, Cincinnati Bell still retains the "Bell" logo) Bell Atlantic and NYNEX have always "more or less" retained the "Bell" logo. BA kept it for both corporate and the individual BOCs (NJ Bell, Bell of PA, Delaware's Diamond State Tel, and the four Chesapeake & Potomoc Telcos). NYNEX initially did NOT use the "Bell" logo for corporate but did retain it for its two BOCs (NY Tel, New England Tel & Tel). When the NYNEX name replaced the use of the NY Tel and New England Tel names, NYNEX corporate simply adopted the "Bell" logo. And when BA and NYNEX merged circa 1997/98, both of them were using the "Bell" logo. Verizon was formed in 2000 by the merger of Bell Atlantic (including NYENX) and GTE (including Contel; at least what GTE and later VZ have retained of old GTE and old Contel). The "Bell" logo has been retained by VZ in BA (and NYNEX) territories, but it has also been introduced into VZ-held legacy GTE (and Contel) territories when it comes to basic local telephone services, such as repair trucks, directories, monthly bills, and even telco-owned payphones. Note that VZ Wireless does NOT use the "Bell" logo, nor various aspects of VZ that are not "basic local landline telephone functions". So, in places where SBC or Qwest (US-West) is the local telco, but there is also VZ-retained legacy GTE (or Contel) in those states, you won't find the "Bell" logo in the legacy BOC areas (SBC or Qwest), but you WILL see occurrances of the "Bell" logo in the VZ areas that had once been GTE (or Contel)! And this includes southern California! In areas that are at&t-once-SBC-once-Pacific Telephone, you won't find the "Bell" logo (unless there are OLD signs that haven't been taken down or fell down), but rather the recent revised at&t deathstar "marble". But in areas that are Verizon-once-GT&E-or-Continental, you will probably see the VZ logo alongside the "Bell" logo of the 1970s, such as on VZ-owned payphones, VZ-printed directories, bills for VZ local landline telephone service, etc. As for US-West, in 1984, "corporate" did not retain the "Bell" logo, but the operating companies (Mountain Bell, Pacific NW Bell, and Northwestern Bell) retained their "Bell" logos. When the US-West corporate name replaced the old BOC names for those BOCs, the "Bell" was retained and then adopted by corporate. But when US-West and Qwest merged in 2000, the Qwest "ride the light" ribbon logo replaced the "Bell" logo, along with the Qwest name replacing the use of the US-West name. BellSouth (Southern Bell and South Central Bell) retains the "Bell" logo (and name), but with the -NEW- 'AT&T' (SBC) about to takeover BellSouth, everything regarding 'AT&T' name and marble deathstar will replace the old names and logos. As for the Brady Bunch, Southern California, and telcos, I always remember seeing "Bell" (Western Electric) 500 sets, "Bell" (WECO) payphones, etc., maybe Bell (WECO) Princess and Trimline phones as well. I don't ever remember seeing GT&E Automatic Electric phones or other equipment used in the Brady Bunch. In the Los Angeles Metro area: GTE (VZ) has Malibu, Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, Redondo, Long Beach (and virtually all of area code 562), communities to the east of Pasadena (Pasadena is AT&T-once-Pacific Bell) extending to San Bernardino, and other scattered communities. Pacific Bell (AT&T) has Los Angeles, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Culver City, Inglewood, Compton, Gardena, Anaheim and most of area codes 714 and 949 (Orange County), Riverside, and other communities. You might be able to find some maps of California's telco service territories at the California Public Utilities Commission website, http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/ ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 27, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:27:43 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 27, 2006 ******************************** Risk 101: Lessons in VoIP Deployment Security http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19053?11228 AS IP TELEPHONY BECOMES the standard of communications for both business and residential users, understanding and mitigating the security risks associated with it become even more paramount. It is important to understand the various threats and how to mitigate each one. Configuration Consternation. In their default configurations, ... United States: FCC Says U.S. Broadband Subscribers Reach 50.2 Million in 2005 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19047?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the U.S. telecoms regulator, reports that at the end of 2005 there were 50.2 million broadband lines in service, up 33% year-on-year. Significance: The figure reflects an increasing shift to ADSL, which had 38.8% of the market at the end of 2005, up from 36.5% at the end of 2004. Cable ... Survey Sez: Cellular Subs Demand More Customer Care http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19039?11228 Wireless customers who have problems or issues with their service are more likely now to contact their current providers than they were in the past, and the incidences of users dialing their carriers for customer care are at an all-time high. According to the J.D. Power and Associates most recent semi-annual study on the subject, ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:48:13 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Broadband Subs Rise, DSL Outpaces Cable USTelecom dailyLead July 27, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ecuMfDtutftBmVmTQS TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Broadband subs rise, DSL outpaces cable BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Hearst-Argyle in carriage deal with Verizon's FiOS * Local telecom reshapes tiny Oregon town with IPTV * BT inks TV deal with NBC Uni, reports rise in Q1 profits * Small mobile search providers score big deals with wireless carriers * Alcatel, Comcast report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Top Communications, Media CEOs to Headline Telecom TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * YouTube chief: Full-length not part of new "clip culture" * IMS drives big changes for gear makers REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Muni Wi-Fi efforts in SoCal hit roadblock: the power company Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ecuMfDtutftBmVmTQS ------------------------------ From: fake.e-mail@stonyx.com Subject: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns Date: 27 Jul 2006 08:22:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Is there any information out there that would indicate which is safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know which of the two is considered less harmfull ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz radio waves. Thanks, Harry ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: The Great [sic] Queens Blackout Continues; No Relief in Sight Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:40:42 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us writes: > For how long? > One week later some people in Queens still don't have power. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What about today, Wednesday? Last > Friday they said it would come back on 'sometime this week' (we are > in now). Is it in fact back yet? PAT] Every building in the affected zone now has power back, although lots of the wiring is temporary -- laying on the sidewalk and covered over, and a hefty number of buildings are hooked up to large portable generators. There's lots of concern for later this week as the temperature is continuing to rise again. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:36:45 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC 1975 CO Fire -- Supposed it Happened Today? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess I am from a different time > ... seriously. :( When I worked at U of Chicago, I started when I > was in high school at age 16, and I worked around my school hours, > mostly on weekends and after school hours. During the summer they > gave me more hours but it was still weekends and some weekdays, but > early hours. I was always out by 9 PM or so. But once I graduated > from high school in 1960 at the age of 17, Mrs. Parsons asked me if > I would take the overnight shift 'with a raise in pay' which I was > glad to do for the money involved. I think I was paid $2.00 per hour > when I started working nights. That was to be a regular 48 hour > shift for me; my first full time job. Yes, times have certainly > changed. PAT] So apparently are many of us here. From a different time that is. I still have my ingrained habits and thoughts that are hard to abandon. I earned my spending money from the age of 14 through 18 or 19 by mowing fields. We owned a small Ford farm tractor to deal with some land we subdivided and built houses on one at a time. I hired out at $7 an hour to mow for folks with a 6' bush hog. No roll cage. My clothing would typically be low cut sneakers, shorts, MAYBE a T shirt and a hat. Gloves also. I wonder if this would even be legal these days. And for those not in the know, in most states back then anyone of any age could drive "farm" equipment on the roads as long as you obeyed the driving laws. About 71 or 72 we had to start using those red/orange triangle signs. In another vein, when we replaced our water heater last year, my wife of nearly 20 years asked why I NEVER called a plumber or other repair person. I thought about it for a minute and realized in my family we had never hired anyone to fix anything. We just did it. Of course our extended family of the time and my dad's circle of friends was very different than now. And now I take my cars to a good repair shop. Shade tree skills are no longer valid. Getting back to the point of this group, attendance at the national parks is not growing even as the population grows. The speculation is that XBox, 24/7 cartoons on TV, etc ... are reducing the trips to the parks. And I'm firmly convinced that the way sports is covered on TV is killing off participation of all but basketball by most kids. Soccer is big K-6 but falls off fast after that. Baseball is almost a wasteland as far as kids participation and I blame most of that on the way TV covers it these days. An old fart signing off for now. ;) David Ross ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: WW II Long Distance Narrow Bandwidth; Toll Rate Drop Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:46:29 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > In reading Bell System histories, it appears that they purposely > narrowed the bandwidth provided for voice long distance calls so as to > increase the capacity of circuits. During the war, the phone system > was under extremely heavy use. > Would anyone know more about this and when it was concluded? > Apparently it remained after the war because new DDD signalling > efforts caused a problem. > IIRC, the normal bandwidth for telephone voice is about 4 KHz. I'm > not sure how much the narrowed it or what part of the bandwidth they > took off (I think it was the upper end), so perhaps the bandwidth was > 2.5 KHz. 'Traditional' voice bandpass was 300-3,000 Hz, with a fairly sharp roll-off past the endpoints of the passband. > I wonder how much it affected clarity. To paraphrase a Clintonism, "it depends on what you mean by 'clarity'". 'High Fidelity', it wasn't. :) "Good enough for 'speech' purposes, it definitely *was*. If you know a ham operator that plays on the HF frequencies, you an get a good feel, by listening in on some of those conversations. Most of the better receivers have variable width audio band-pass you can kick in, and given a 'wide' signal, you can _hear_ what happens as you go to the narrower bandpass settings. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 system Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:10:43 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Cheech Chong wrote: > Hello all, > Recently setup a used phone system for our office (NT5801FD-93) with > M7310 phones. The KSU supports up to 6 lines, but we only have 2 > lines at the moment. > The caller id does not display on the M7310 phones, but prior to > having a phone system, the regular household phones we had connected > to our 2 lines were able to display the caller id. > Is there some programming needed in the phone system to allow the > caller id to display? I logged into the KSU and didn't see any caller > id options, but I could have missed the section. (The phone system has > the following software installed: SP 30NSE08 DR5) > Let me know if any more details are needed. Yup, that's a Northern Telecom 'Nortel' system. I think it's a "compact 6x16", with 'DR 5' software. To the best of my knowledge, the 6x16 does not support CallerID directly. There _may_ be an add-on hardware box which provides the functionality. On the slightly bigger boxes, to wit, the 'compact ICS'(CICS) and/or 'modular ICS' (MICS), you have to have different cards for the telco interface side to get CID info in to the box. with the 6x16, everything is built onto the motherboard, and 'what you have is what you get'. I have a _vague_ recollection of an outboard box that did CID decoding/capture for a 6x16, but the 6x16 I ran was replaced by a MICS in the previous millenium. And, oddly enough, I haven't paid much attention to current 6x16 offerings. :) ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: CallerID on Norstar NT5801FD-93 system Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:16:29 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:55:18 GMT, user@host.com (Cheech Chong) wrote: > Hello all, > Recently setup a used phone system for our office (NT5801FD-93) with > M7310 phones. The KSU supports up to 6 lines, but we only have 2 > lines at the moment. > The caller id does not display on the M7310 phones, but prior to > having a phone system, the regular household phones we had connected > to our 2 lines were able to display the caller id. > Is there some programming needed in the phone system to allow the > caller id to display? I logged into the KSU and didn't see any caller > id options, but I could have missed the section. (The phone system has > the following software installed: SP 30NSE08 DR5) It's as you suspect, in need of programming. Take the box off the wall and replace it with a CICS 7.0 with CID trunks and you're good to go. A 4x16 CICS will run about $1k. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #276 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Jul 28 22:28:48 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 123AE222E; Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:28:48 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #277 Message-Id: <20060729022848.123AE222E@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:28:48 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:30:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 277 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Death Thoes of Pay Phones (Samantha Gross, AP) Web Services to Aid, Not Kill, Software (Eric Auchard, Reuters) The Telcos' Latest Multimillion Dollar Subsidy and Ripoff (Dave Burstein) Telecom Update #539, July 28, 2006 (John Riddell) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 28, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) BellSouth, TiVo Enter Marketing Deal (USTelecom dailyLead) Cellular Carriers Work to Outdo Google, Yahoo (Monty Solomon) NYC Broadband (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) VoIP Call Quality Falls - Survey (KnowingAbout.com) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (DLR) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (Sam Spade) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (Steve Sobol) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (DLR) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (Sam Spade) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (jtaylor) Re: Future 911/Technology is Changing so Quickly That Emergency (B. Wright) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? (Hancock) Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance (B Margolin) Re: Odd Dialing Code (dp@icmail.net) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:09:35 -0500 From: Samantha Gross Subject: The Death Thoes of Pay Phones AP Technology Pay Phones Suffer As Cell Phone Use Rises By SAMANTHA GROSS Associated Press Writer NEW YORK -- A stroll along Ninth Avenue in Manhattan reveals an ugly picture of the state of the pay phone these days. The phones are sticky, beat up and scarred, and some don't work at all. A child's change purse is stuffed on one phone ledge, along with a large wad of wrapping plastic. On a nearby ledge, an empty bottle of tequila sits in front of a hole that once held a phone. Empty cans of malt liquor sheathed in brown paper bags are a frequent sight. With rising cell phone use and vandalism and neglect taking their toll, pay phones are disappearing around the nation. Consumer activists and advocates for the poor have protested the drop in numbers -- saying that public phones are necessary in emergencies and represent a lifeline for those who can't afford a cell phone or even a landline. "If you have a cell phone, you hardly look for the pay phones," said 25-year-old Sayed Mizan, listening to his iPod on a subway platform. "Besides, most of the time if you see the pay phones, they're either out of order or they're too filthy to touch." Public phone operators insist that the bad reputation of pay phones is undeserved -- though they do concede that they have removed many stands in recent years due to falling use. Nationwide, the number of pay phones has dropped by half to approximately 1 million over the last nine years, according to an estimate by the American Public Communications Council, a trade association for independent pay phone operators. "If a pay phone isn't covering its costs, we take it out," said Jim Smith, a spokesman for Verizon, which operates more pay phones in New York than any other company. "Toward the late '90s, the wireless phenomenon really got some momentum. That really put the squeeze on the pay phones." The drop in pay-phone numbers angers advocates, who are quick to point out that cell phones -- and sometimes any phones at all -- are prohibitively expensive for many people. A full 7.1 percent of the nation's households had no phone of any kind in November 2005, up from 4.7 percent three years earlier, according to the Federal Communications Commission. For those people, and for the estimated 43 percent of U.S. residents with no cell phones (as of June 2004), pay phones are especially crucial, advocates say. "Pay phones are a big deal for them," Sage Foster said of the homeless men and women he works with as a housing counselor. "For most of them, it's their only means of communication." Pay phones also served an important purpose during two recent catastrophes in New York City -- the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 2003 blackout that darkened much of the Northeast. Cell phones failed during the crises, but many pay phones kept working because of their direct wiring and the phone company's backup power stores. Ragan Belton remembers queuing up at a pay phone with 30 others to call her daughter on Sept. 11. "God forbid there's an emergency and you have to go several corners to find one that's working," she said. But public telephones were not always regarded as such a blessing. In the late 1970s and early '80s, the phones became increasingly unpopular with community boards and local officials afraid of drug dealers. Eventually, Verizon changed all its phones to refuse incoming calls and removed phone booths, which had become grim repositories for trash and human waste. "There was a time when all kinds of criminal elements would set up a sidewalk office using a pay phone," recalled Smith, the Verizon spokesman. But the phone stands that replaced them are still magnets for trash and vandalism, and some still smell distinctly of urine. "Some operators have just abandoned locations," said Willard R. Nichols, president of the independent operators' trade group. "If you've got vandalism and damage, it's very hard to keep the phone in service, because the repair costs are too high." Despite the rising costs, it is unlikely that pay phones will be phased out entirely, according to industry representatives who say demand remains high in working-class neighborhoods and in locations like truck stops and airports. Marilyn Ginsberg, a retired city employee who at 63 relies almost exclusively on her cell phone, says she hopes they are right. "They're important to have around, if for no other reason than if there's an emergency, someone can dial 911," she said. 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 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to be the proprietor of two pay phones in Skokie, Illinois at the Skokie Swift station. I had them both set for 25 cents unlimited timing on local area 847 calls and one dollar (four quarters) for three minutes on long distance calls. I kept the phones clean and in good working order. This was in 1998 when I still lived in the area. Eventually though, Chicago Transit Authority came around and told me I had to remove them, which at first I did not do; after all, my phones were by the Greyhound Station and were clean and not rip offs like theirs. CTA then sued me, to force the removal of the payhones. I countersued CTA, claiming that they had not kept up parts of their lease for the Greyhound Station, but shortly after that I was given the full time job opportunity in Junction City, Kansas and decided to wash my hands of the whole thing in Chicago. I was really glad to get out of the area finally. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:39:31 -0500 From: Eric Auchard Subject: Web Services to Aid, Not Kill, Software By Eric Auchard Web services, delivered alongside classic software, will complement rather than replace the existing software industry, Microsoft Corp.'s chief technologist said on Thursday. Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told investors and reporters attending the annual financial analyst meeting at Microsoft's headquarters that the company is looking to convert its existing software franchises into Web-delivered services. "The overall services opportunity is largely additive, increasing revenue opportunities for both our existing software licensing model as well as our services business model," Ozzie said. Microsoft's strategy is to connect a wide range of devices onto various networks to allow consumers to enjoy the same information and entertainment not only on their computers but also via mobile phones, televisions and gaming systems. "It's not unreasonable to think we'll catalyze some level of additional PC and device purchases," he said. Last month, Ozzie stepped into the top technical post at Microsoft, replacing co-founder Bill Gates and spearheading an important transition for the $44 billion company to extend its reach beyond the computer desktop. Gates remains chairman, but Ozzie is the up-and-coming visionary with a track record of ground-breaking software including Lotus Notes and wide respect among industry rivals. Ozzie took issue with technology purists who say Web-delivered services will completely replace traditional computer-installed software. "Software as service" advocates include Microsoft competitors in business and consumer markets, including Salesforce.com, Google Inc. and thousands of Web start-ups who are focused on market niches. Instead, Ozzie and other Microsoft executives see the emerging industry model as "software plus services." Windows Live, Microsoft's newly introduced Internet services platform, will act as the centralized services center, linking its portfolio of business software, consumer services and entertainment systems, he said. "Our 'Live' efforts will have a natural side effect of increasing the use of genuine software," Ozzie said of how the security and personalization features built into Windows Live can act as a gateway to Microsoft's existing businesses. Far-larger rivals such as IBM, Oracle Corp., SAP AG are racing along with Microsoft to allow many of their existing businesses to be delivered over networks as services rather than as products. "A fundamental transformational shift toward services is a necessary move for all technology companies now," Ozzie said. IBM, the world's largest technology company, has been perhaps the most aggressive in this transformation, reducing its focus on building its own hardware and software to the point where it now depends on services for most of its revenue. In response to a question, Ozzie declined to say how much revenue per user could come from new Web services or how these might compare to license revenue streams from Windows and Office software that generate the bulk of Microsoft revenue. (Additional reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi in Redmond) 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:44:24 -0500 From: Dave Burstein Subject: The Telcos' Latest Multimillion Dollar Subsidy and Ripoff by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [July 27, 2006] While the telcos complain to the government about losing money, they boast to Wall Street about how many layoffs and profits they can achieve. Now, a new telco subsidy will cost every phone subscriber in the U.S. at least $3.50 per month. Telcos' "Missoula Plan" disguises multibillion price increase Will reporters find the facts in 193 dense pages? A multibillion dollar per year D.C. story broke Tuesday to near total press silence. The most important detail: a $3.50 per month+ increase in nearly every phone bill in America. The "Missoula Plan" is backed by a long list of phone companies. It will be very hard to stop. It moves at least $4 billion from consumers to telcos. Add the $1.29 per line USF subscriber charge, and more people will cancel phone service. When Al Gore proposed a billion a year for schools and libraries, Republicans called it "The Al Gore Tax." If Bush and his FCC demand several times more, with the money going to the telcos instead of a public purpose, I say call this "The George Bush Tax." This will be another test of the backbone of the FCC. It's all being presented in the guise of "protecting rural America" when instead it actually raises basic phone rates in both rural and urban America. Steve Labaton, Arshad Muhammad, Amy Schatz: Please take the time to report this well. None of your papers had the story today, but D.C. insiders know this is the biggest money deal in U.S. telecom. The supporting documents are extraordinarily clever, but follow the money flows. Consumers are being asked to pay 20 to 35 percent more for basic phone service, with most of the benefits going to LD carriers. The smaller telcos fought hard to keep their share, and eventually a deal was reached to pass the bill to consumers. Four hours with the proposal gave me confidence to see the main money flow, but no depth. I'll have more as I fact check and get supporting data. But heck, I'm the DSL reporter. I'd much rather the big papers with more resources cover this so I can focus on chips instead of Washington follies. Just follow the money, and question the lobbyists closely. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #539, July 28, 2006 Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:59:36 -0400 From: John Riddell TELECOM UPDATE published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 539: July 28, 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 Issues 2005 Telecom Monitoring Report Wireless Tops the Charts Little Growth for Local Service 51% of Homes Have High-Speed Internet ** MTS, Rogers Settle LD Dispute ** Avaya Profits Down 77%; CEO Resigns ** Nortel Changes Wi-Max, Converged Core Management ** Top Nfld Court Upholds Cell Ban ** Former Director Sues Minacs ** 5-1-1 Approved for Weather & Travel Info ** Internet Registrar Launches Privacy Review ** SaskTel, 2Wire Expand Broadband Partnership ** Internap to Add Toronto Hub ** MTS Results Dip Into Red ** Aliant Records Sales, Profit Gains ** Lucent Sales Continue to Slide CRTC ISSUES 2005 TELECOM MONITORING REPORT: The CRTC's annual report on telecom competition and broadband services says that telecom service revenues grew 3.5% in 2005, to $34.5 billion. Most of the growth was in wireless and high-speed Internet. ** Competitors took in 35% of all wireless and wireline telecom revenues. 11% went to incumbent telcos operating outside of their home territories, 19% to facilities-based competitors, and 5% to resellers. ** 98.9% of Canadian households receive some form of telephone service; 4.8% of households use only wireless. ** Long distance traffic grew 10%, but LD revenues fell by 8.6% to $5 billion. The average retail price is now 7.8 cents per minute. www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/PolicyMonitoring/2006/tmr2006.htm WIRELESS TOPS THE CHARTS: Wireless service is now the largest and fastest-growing segment: it grew 16% in 2005 and generated 32% of telecom service revenues ($11 billion). There were 17 million wireless subscribers at the end of December, 2 million more than in 2004. LITTLE GROWTH FOR LOCAL SERVICE: Local and access service brought in $9.8 billion, 28% of the industry's revenues. Revenues and lines both grew only slightly in 2005. ** The incumbent telcos' share of local revenue fell to 92%, and their share of local lines fell to 90%. ** Competitors have more than 10% of residential lines in 11 markets, and more than 10% of business lines in 31 markets. The most competitive residential market is Halifax, where competitors have 35% of lines. In Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Barrie and Toronto, competitors have over 20% of business lines. 51% OF HOMES HAVE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET: Internet revenues passed $4.5 billion in 2005. Eight million households now have Internet access. 51% of households subscribe to a high-speed Internet service, and 13% use dialup. ** Broadband Internet service is available to 92% of all Canadian households, but to only 74% in rural areas. Canada is first among the G-8 countries in broadband availability, and eighth among OECD countries in Internet subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. ** About 2,000 Canadian communities will still have no access to broadband at the end of 2007. MTS, ROGERS SETTLE LD DISPUTE: In October 2005, MTS Allstream went to court to prevent Rogers from shifting long distance traffic from Allstream to Call-Net, which Rogers had acquired (see Telecom Update #502). The two carriers have now agreed on a revised LD contract, expiring in December, under which MTS will continue to provide Web hosting and data services. AVAYA PROFITS DOWN 77%; CEO RESIGNS: Avaya's sales for the quarter ended June 30 were 5% higher than the same period a year ago, but net income dropped to US$44 million from $194 million. Product sales rose 12%, but rental and managed-services revenue declined 9%. ** Don Peterson has resigned as CEO, the post he has held since Avaya was spun off from Lucent in 2000. He will remain as Chairman of the Board until September 30. Avaya veteran Lou D'Ambrosio has been named President and CEO, and former senior VP Michael Thurk is now COO. NORTEL CHANGES WI-MAX, CONVERGED CORE MANAGEMENT: Nortel seems to be reorganizing the top management of two of its three strategic focus areas. Mark Whitton, VP/GM for WiMax and Wireless Mesh Networks, has left the company, and Alan Stoddard, VP/GM for Converged Core, has been "reassigned." TOP NFLD COURT UPHOLDS CELL BAN: The Supreme Court of Newfoundland an Labrador has reinstated the conviction of a man charged with using a handheld cellphone while driving. A lower court had thrown out the 2003 law on the grounds that the word "use" was ambiguous. FORMER DIRECTOR SUES MINACS: Call Centre operator Minacs Worldwide says that John Simmonds has filed suit against the company, the estate of Elaine Minacs, and the company's directors. No details on the action were released. ** John Simmonds was a member of the Minacs Board from June 2005 to February 2006, when he was removed as a result of what the company called "certain deficiencies" in the process by which he was appointed. 5-1-1 APPROVED FOR WEATHER & TRAVEL INFO: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-44 assigns 5-1-1 as a three-digit telephone number for free delivery of weather and travel information to the public. (See Telecom Update #485) ** The Commission denied a competing application to use 5-1-1 for crisis intervention and suicide prevention, saying those services could be provided through collaboration with 2-1-1 centres or through a national 800 number. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-44.htm INTERNET REGISTRAR LAUNCHES PRIVACY REVIEW: The Canadian Internet Registration Authority is asking for public input on procedures for implementing a new privacy policy for the dot-ca WHOIS directory. Information about the policy, and an online questionnaire, has been posted at www.cira.ca/en/Whois/whois_intro.html. ** Nominations are now open for the CIRA Board of Directors. See the online nomination form at https://elections.cira.ca/2006/nominations/login/en. SASKTEL, 2WIRE EXPAND BROADBAND PARTNERSHIP: SaskTel has chosen California-based 2Wire as its exclusive provider of connectivity and home networking equipment to the telco's broadband subscribers. SaskTel already uses 2Wire ADSL gateways. INTERNAP TO ADD TORONTO HUB: Internap Network Services Corporation says it will implement its first Canadian network access point in Toronto by the end of this year. The Atlanta-based company promises corporate clients 100% network availability on the public Internet, less than 45 milliseconds latency, and less than 0.3% packet. MTS RESULTS DIP INTO RED: Manitoba Telecom reports a second quarter loss of $1.2 million, compared to a $111.5 million profit for the same period a year ago. Revenues were flat at $500 million: an 18% decline in long distance sales was offset by growth in local and wireless business. EBITDA of the enterprise services division declined 4.3%; overall EBITDA was unchanged. ** Because of losses brought forward from the former Allstream, MTS expects to pay no cash taxes until 2014. ALIANT RECORDS SALES, PROFIT GAINS: The final quarterly results of Aliant, now part of the Bell Aliant Regional Communications Inc, show a 3.7% year-over-year gain in operating revenue, to $534 million. Second quarter net income increased 6.9%, to $53 million. Internet and wireless revenues rose by 20% and 15%, respectively. LUCENT SALES CONTINUE TO SLIDE: Sales by Lucent Technologies for the quarter ended June 30 were down 12% on the year and 4% on the quarter -- the third successive quarterly decline. Net income was $79 million, 79% less than a year ago. ** Lucent's pending merger with Alcatel has been approved by European Union regulators and is expected to close by year-end. 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=20 are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web late Friday afternoon each week at http://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=20 or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave=20 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 2006 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. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 28, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:04:21 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 28, 2006 ******************************** World: TeliaSonera Posts 4.5% Rise in Q2 Revenue http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19071?11228 TeliaSonera increased its second-quarter 2006 revenue by 4.5% year-on-year (y/y) to 22.737 billion Swedish kronor, helped by improved sales boosted by its recent acquisitions and strong growth in its international mobile operations, which offset declining revenues at its domestic Swedish and Finnish fixed-line ... Making Revenue Assurance Maturity Models Practical http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19069?11228 Revenue Assurance Maturity Models (RAMMs) are abundant today, because they are useful as evaluative tools and can provide the basis for a phased roadmap. Yet their documentation often lacks pointers for crossing over from the academic realm to the real... Pay Phones Suffer As Cell Phone Use Rises http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/19064?11228 NEW YORK -- A stroll along Ninth Avenue in Manhattan reveals an ugly picture of the state of the pay phone these days. The phones are sticky, beat up and scarred, and some don't work at all. A child's change purse is stuffed on one phone ledge, along with a large wad of wrapping plastic. On a nearby ledge, an empty bottle of ... Telecom Heavyweights Test UMTS 900 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19059?11228 Qualcomm and Lucent Technologies, along with O2 and its subsidiary Manx Telecom, announced plans to conduct a UMTS/high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) trial using 900 MHz spectrum. The trial will take place on the Isle of Man. For its part in the trial, Lucent will supply its UMTS/HSDPA base station products developed for the ... FCC Stats: CLECs The Big Losers As Wireless Use Soars http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19057?11228 Competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) are taking a worse beating than incumbents as growth in mobile wireless lines during the latter half of 2005 continued to erode the wireline base, according to recently issued government figures on local competition in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday ... Alcatel Slams Wireless Price War http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19055?11228 Alcatel CEO Serge The Merge Tchuruk lashed out at his company's GSM infrastructure rivals today, saying they were driving pricing levels down to unsustainable levels in a bid to win market share. Talking during his company's second-quarter conference call, Tchuruk said that a lot of the players involved in ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:33:24 CDT From: USTelecom DailyLead Subject: BellSouth, TiVo Enter Mmarketing Deal USTelecom dailyLead July 28, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/edgkfDtutfujyxvnXg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BellSouth, TiVo enter marketing deal BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Time Warner board leaves 'em guessing about AOL plans * Verizon picks GPON lineup * Microsoft pins its future on the Internet * Time Warner Telecom buys Xspedius Communications for $531.5M USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * SS7, CALEA Compliance & Telco IPTV -- Now Free On-Demand TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Gartner: IPTV, Mobile TV overhyped * Americans hang up on pay phones * Apple may be positioned for home entertainment play VOIP DOWNLOAD * Analysis: Cable's phone growth spells trouble for VoIP providers * Report: VoIP revenues soaring REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Legislators call for cable decency regs Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/edgkfDtutfujyxvnXg ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:28:34 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellular Carriers Work to Outdo Google, Yahoo By Amol Sharma The Wall Street Journal Envisioning a lucrative wireless search and advertising market, U.S. cellphone companies are shying away from deals with Internet giants such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in favor of partnerships with small start-ups they can more easily control. Google, Yahoo and other Internet companies are targeting wireless search as a major new growth area as cellphone use proliferates globally. They see billions of dollars in potential revenue from selling advertising that is linked to searches for ringtones, games, local listings and mobile Web content. The search giants have had some success overseas, but they have still had difficulty penetrating the large U.S. carriers, which ultimately control access to the nation's nearly 217 million cellular subscribers. Large phone companies, including Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc., never really profited from the explosion of search and advertising on the Internet. Now wireless operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless, which are partly owned by those same phone giants, don't want to make the same mistake. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06208/709073-28.stm ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: NYC Broadband Date: 27 Jul 2006 16:09:45 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com There is DSL at various speeds from Verizon. There is RoadRunner and Earthlink cable broadband via Time Warner. Apparently you can get 5mbps for $19.99 x 6 month followed by $44.95 x six months from Earthlink via Time Warner. This averages to $32.48 a month for a year of 5mbps. Anyone have opinions on the Earthlink broadband in NYC? Please reply in the newsgroup. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: KnowingAbout.com Subject: VoIP Call Quality Falls - Survey Date: 27 Jul 2006 11:14:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com VoIP call quality has taken a nosedive over the last 18 months, with nearly 20 percent of VoIP callers experiencing unacceptable voice quality, according to a survey done by Brix Networks. The results come from Brix Networks' TestYourVoIP.com site, a free VoIP quality-testing portal. Brix claims that nearly one million VoIP phone tests have been conducted at the site since its March, 2004 launch. Brix claims that from late 2004 through mid-2006, the tests done at the site have shown a consistent decrease in overall voice quality as calculated via the Mean Opinion Score (MOS). MOS is an a measurement of conversational voice quality that rates calls on a scale from one (bad) to five (excellent). Test calls with a MOS of 3.6 or better are usually regarded as being satisfactory, and those below it as unsatisfactory. Only 81 percent of VoIP calls tested on the site were rated at 3.6 or better, the company says. How accurate are the results? Without a third party to analyze them, it's difficult to know. Brix, though, sells IP and VoIP testing solutions, and the company does have a vested interest in touting any results that show poor VoIP quality. On the other hand, anyone who has made a VoIP call knows only too well the sometimes erratic nature of call quality. - By Networking Pipeline Staff For Further Information : www.knowingabout.com/voip ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:49:16 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California > Verizon was formed in 2000 by the merger of Bell Atlantic (including > NYENX) and GTE (including Contel; at least what GTE and later VZ have > retained of old GTE and old Contel). The "Bell" logo has been retained > by VZ in BA (and NYNEX) territories, but it has also been introduced > into VZ-held legacy GTE (and Contel) territories when it comes to > basic local telephone services, such as repair trucks, directories, > monthly bills, and even telco-owned payphones. Note that VZ Wireless > does NOT use the "Bell" logo, nor various aspects of VZ that are not > "basic local landline telephone functions". If you're a fan of West Wing you might have notice a goof in the episode or two where they did a flash back to when Bartlet first ran for President. Josh made a phone call from a phone booth with very prominent Verizon signage. Verizon didn't exist at the time of the call. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:28:44 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles extended metro area, > has been a *HODGE PODGE* of General Telephone (or their predecessors) > and Pacific Telephone going back to the 1920s. The GTE areas were the > early dial independent telcos that had originally come about prior to > the 1920s as competitors to Pacific Tel (Bell). > There was also some Continental Telephone in the mix, mostly to the > east of the basic L.A. Metro Area, but Contel was taken over by GTE in > the early 1990s. > The Palm Springs area further to the east is exclusively GTE. Contel never saw the ocean side of the So Cal mountains. The pockets of pre-GTE that were in the San Fernando Valley, Sierra Madre/Monrovia and Palm Springs was California Water and Telephone. GTE took that over in 1967. Contel showed up to take over some funky company that served Victorvile and Eastern Sierra Telephone that served Ridgecrest, the Owens Valley and the Eastern High Sierra. That was circa 1950. Again, Contel was never, ever in the Los Angeles Basin. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:33:33 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> I thought Southern Cal was GTE. > Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles extended metro area, > has been a *HODGE PODGE* of General Telephone (or their predecessors) > and Pacific Telephone going back to the 1920s. The GTE areas were the > early dial independent telcos that had originally come about prior to > the 1920s as competitors to Pacific Tel (Bell). > There was also some Continental Telephone in the mix, mostly to the > east of the basic L.A. Metro Area, but Contel was taken over by GTE in > the early 1990s. Yup. Out here northeast of LA too, in the Victor Valley. This was ConTel country. Now the old ConTel business office is a Verizon call center. They're always hiring 411 operators up here. 90 miles west, in the Antelope Valley on the L.A. County side of the High Desert, it's all PacBell/SBC/at&t. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:02:14 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns fake.e-mail@stonyx.com wrote: > Is there any information out there that would indicate which is > safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? > I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones > actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know > which of the two is considered less harmful ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz > radio waves. We all want simple answers to complicated issues. Harmful to what in what way? There are a LOT of variables in play. Older phones tend to have higher power levels as newer phones many times (but not always) have better DSP circuits and can pull out clear voice from weaker signals. Plus is it analog, digital, spread spectrum digital, etc ... All of this matters. Are you worried about brain cancer, skin cancer, or something else? To be honest I doubt you can come up with a clear choice just based on frequency and nothing else. It would be very dependent on make, model, production run, etc ... For me, I'd buy 5.8 as that is less likely to interfere with wireless computer setups and other things you might own or buy in the future. :) ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:22:20 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications fake.e-mail@stonyx.com wrote: > Is there any information out there that would indicate which is > safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? > I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones > actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know > which of the two is considered less harmful ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz > radio waves. > Thanks, > Harry Re-read your post. You are indeed trying to get into a health hazard discussion. ------------------------------ From: jtaylor Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:05:14 -0300 Organization: MCI Canada News Reader Service wrote in message news:telecom25.276.11@telecom-digest.org: > Is there any information out there that would indicate which is > safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? > I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones > actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know > which of the two is considered less harmfull ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz > radio waves. If they do not pose a real hazard, your question is moot. ------------------------------ From: B. Wright Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:28:42 UTC Organization: XMission Internet http://www.xmission.com Subject: Re: Future 911/Technology is Changing so Quickly That Emergency Monty Solomon wrote: > Future 911 > Technology is changing so quickly that emergency communication > systems are struggling to keep pace > Picture a highway crash: a vehicle flips over in the center lane. Ten > cars plow into the twisted wreck. Panicked witnesses dial 911. They > shoot video of the scene with their cell phones. Drivers too > distraught to speak text message the call center. A vehicle with a > built-in security system automatically dials 911 after the air bags > are deployed. It forwards the driver's health history, letting police > know he has had two heart attacks before. This is quite funny, many people still can't figure out how to operate most of their mobile phone's features under normal circumstances. The author's suggestion that if they are "too distraught to speak" that people will "text messsage the call center" is a good one! Speaking is about the most natural thing for people to do, what makes them think someone in severe shock is going to faff about navigating menus and wrestling the T9 predictive text in their phone so they can fire off an SMS if they're unable to think enough to even speak? > An overhauled 911 system would open a world of possibilities: > responders could send a video demo of the Heimlich maneuver to a cell > phone if a family member is choking, or firefighters could receive a > burning building's floor plan before they reach the scene. I can just see that one now too, someone trying to configure their GPRS settings on their phone so they can receive this video while their friend is over in the corner choking to death. Riiiight! The current usability level of technology is just not where it needs to be for most people to make these things that useful realistcally. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Date: 27 Jul 2006 14:13:59 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Bruce Kushnick wrote: > (Asian countries are now using 100 Mbps in both directions for their > standard. That is 500 times more powerful.) Could someone elaborate on this? Does this mean that if I were to go to Asia, everyone everywhere -- wealthy and poor, urban and rural, democracy and dictatorship -- all have a nice 100MBPS hookup at their disposal? Somehow I don't think that's the case. Now I don't know the utility situation in Asia (which is a pretty huge land area), but I suspect a heck of a lot of people don't even have electricity nor telephones, let alone this high speed connection. Actually, I suspect the telecom situation in the U.S. -- overall -- is better than in Asia. Undoubtedly a few parts of Asia (such as very wealthy people or countries) have some fancy hookups. But I suspect the great masses do not. Consequently, I think the use of "500 times more powerful" is a littnle exaggerated hyperbole. I am not familiar with the issues adequately he raises to comment on them. But over the years articles against the "big evil Big Guy" tended not to be not so reliable. Perhaps significant facts were left out or inappropriate issues emphasized. For example, back during the early MCI-AT&T fight the issue of cream skimming, lack of rural service, mandated cross subsidy, and local connection cost was ignored by AT&T critics. I was searching thru the telecom archives and found a post criticizing the Bell Systems' PBX offerings of 1969 as being junk. I personally saw some modern good systems in use in those days and a check of the Bell Labs history confirms the offerings. To put it another way, how much computer horsepower could you buy back in 1969 for $2,000? Today you get quite a bit and people say it's easy to make your own PBX from that. But back then I don't think you could hook up a string of Altair's and make an ESS out of it, and real computers of that era cost a heck of a lot more. But people seem to expect that the Bell System would have offered cheap yet powerful electronic systems in those days, long before the technology even existed to make it happen. (Sorry, offering a few ICs at the local hobby store doesn't count.) All I know is that when Verizon was finally allowed to offer long distance my costs went down and service quality went up. The "consumer advocates" wouldn't let Verizon do that in order to "protect me". How they protected me from those restrictions I don't know nor understand. LIkewise, I'm not sure painting today's big telcos as bad is necessarily in the consumer's interest. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:17:15 -0400 In article , Glenn Chapman wrote: > "Links are really the stuff that has made the worldwide web a > success," von Lohmann said. "It would be very chilling if any time you > sent a link you could be held responsible for copyright infringement." But they're not arguing that the links are infringement, it's the thumbnail images included with the links that are infringing. IANAL, but it seems pretty clear to me that these thumbnails are "derivative works". So the only question is whether they should fall under the "fair use" exceptions in copyright law. There's also the issue that Google isn't actually copying these from Perfect 10. According to the story, the copying was done by web site subscribers, who copied the pictures to their own web sites. Google then discovered them when searching those other web sites. Perfect 10 presumably has a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index their pictures (and I'm sure Google obeys this protocol) as well as requiring registration to see most of its content (and Google wouldn't have an account). But once some copies the pictures to other sites (which is more blatant copyright infringement, but the perpetrators are probably judgement-proof), how is Google supposed to know that they shouldn't be indexed and thumbnailed? 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: dp@icmail.net Reply-To: dp@icmail.net Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:25:39 -0700 Dear Mr. Townson, Thanks very much for your insights into the 'odding dialing code' (+1611NPANXXNXXX) and the historical analogues you provide. I see the sense in your analysis, and have been attempting to confirm or dismiss the theory that this dialing sequence is actually seizing cellco's voicemail system for a dialtone. Unfortunately, the handset I have been using doesn't allow for much flexibility or control over the length of tones sent. I will seek others. In any event, it is curious that this dialing sequence (when call is completed) sends along Calling Line Identification to the party called. I have never been told that a cellco number appears in place of my own. It is also curious that ONLY the sequence that includes the [+] symbol will ever work, ultimately. Why wouldn't 611-NPA-NXX-NXXX work as well; is it simply a matter of timing? As in, the addition of [+] is enough to mistime the call ? Another tidbit of information you might make use of to further the investigation: there are some WATS numbers that will generate a different error announcement. These appear to be of the type 'cannot be reach from your region'. Most of my attempts that lead to such an annoucement have been to the cellco itself (tech support and so on), internal numbers. Does this make sense in the analysis that you provided earlier ? And -- one last question is -- why does this 'free calling' sequence only work within the city limits ? Any more information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. -dp@icmail.net Have you tried either 611 or 1-611 or +611 _only_ -- with nothing following from your cell phone to see if eventually it times out and gets you to 'customer service' or some type of voicemail recording? As to why it only works within city limits I would suggest is that maybe only _one cell tower_ in the middle of the area somewhere has this misprogrammed feature. As soon as you get outside the 'city limits' perhaps your call is normally handled by a different tower. Or is the city area you are in large enough that you know for a fact you are landing on different towers? Which cellular company is this if you do not mind saying? And, if you routinely -- like most of us -- dial (some variation on) 611 to reach cellco customer service, have you tried getting into that voicemail thing they always put on the start and tried the usual 'breakout' or 'escape' routines to see what happens? Such as let it start talking then immediatly punch # or * or + to see what it does? 'Cannot be reached from your region' means the toll free number you are calling was structured as a Band 1 through Band 5 in the old days (pre-divestiture, when WATS were structured in geographic 'bands' to save money for their owners. If all your business needed was a state-wide toll-free line, or surrounding states toll-free, then you would purchase from telco (not cellco, but telco!) a 'Band 1 or Band 2' type line. Then persons who were further away (let's say several hundred miles and three or four states away) would not be able to call you _on that particular WATS line_. Some WATS lines (either inbound or outbound WATS) were the state you are in only; I think that was Band 8. The exact structure of WATS geographic 'bands' is terribly boring, but I think you may get the idea. In the olden days, dialing 800 plus the next three digits, like a 'prefix' detirmined the _type_ of WATS service you had. 800-631-xxxx for example was a Chicago, Illinois 'band six' or nationwide WATS line. In our archives http://telecom-digest.org there is a section on the assigments given for prefixes following the area code. I think there is a section in there devoted to area code 800 locations, and their range of calls allowed. Its a very old chart, may not be much good, but if you recall any of the numbers you dialed where the response was 'cannot be reached from your region' you may find some of them in there. In case you did not know it, 800/888/877/866 numbers are usually just aliased to existing seven digit numbers in a community. For example, if you dial my 800 number it gets translated into my 620-331-xxxx number here in Independence. The laugh was on me once (yes, I know, some guys say the laugh is always on me!) when I kept getting wrong number calls on our inbound 800 phone line at the office where I worked. I had not yet learned about how they are translated, and the phone rang over and over again with a lady saying she was trying to reach 312-WELlington-5-something. I kept telling her she had the wrong number, "lady, you are on our toll-free 800 line." She would mutter to herself, hang up and redial; I would get her again. She kept insisting she was dialing correctly. It turns out she was dialing correctly, but there was no such number in service; it was our 800 line tied in there instead. That would have been around 1963-64, when In-WATS was a sort of new thing, having just replaced Enterprise and Zenith numbers. 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. 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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 #277 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 30 02:03:05 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 951A02168; Sun, 30 Jul 2006 02:03:05 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #278 Message-Id: <20060730060305.951A02168@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 02:03:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 30 Jul 2006 02:05:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 278 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Monty Solomon) Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (History)? (Lisa Hancock) ISP Telco Vendors That Work With Asterisk (ImOk) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (Steven Lichter) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (Sam Spade) Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California (Lisa Hancock) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (DLR) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (Rick Merrill) Re: The Death Thoes of Pay Phones (Mark Atwood) Re: The Death Thoes (sic) of Pay Phones (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch (Sam Spade) Re: NYC Broadband (DLR) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? (DLR) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? (J Hines) Re: Odd Dialing Code (Hr.ZeroHour) Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance (Hallikainen) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 18:30:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Effective with their September invoice, Cingular customers will start receiving a monthly network service charge of $4.99 for each TDMA or Analog line of service on their account. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (History)? Date: 29 Jul 2006 13:35:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Early on (1920) the Bell System realized step-by-step would be inadequate for big city high calling volumes and developed and implemented panel switching for cities. However, Los Angeles already had step-by-step when Bell took over. As Los Angeles/southern California grew in the war years (big defense aircraft plants, new postwar development), how did they handle the high volume traffic with step-by-step? Did they run into problems? SxS switches are limited to a 10x10 pattern and get very unweildy when it grows beyond that. I could imagine things got messy in the early 1960s before ESS was available. Were some SxS offices upgraded to a more powerful No 5 crossbar? The Bell Labs says they considered developing common control senders as a front-end to SxS, but I didn't understand how far they went with that. They also did something called a "graded multiple" which apparently was a big help. In the early 1950s NYC got network management, a control center for city wide traffic. It seems the Los Angeles area would need likewise in the 1950s or early 1960s. Thanks. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: ImOk Subject: ISP Telco Vendors That Work With Asterisk Date: 29 Jul 2006 13:08:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I need to find a vendor in the North East who can provide VoIP service via SIP and work with Asterisk. Does anyone know of any reliable vendors or if there is a list I can search? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:43:37 GMT Sam Spade wrote: > Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles extended metro area, >> has been a *HODGE PODGE* of General Telephone (or their predecessors) >> and Pacific Telephone going back to the 1920s. The GTE areas were the >> early dial independent telcos that had originally come about prior to >> the 1920s as competitors to Pacific Tel (Bell). >> There was also some Continental Telephone in the mix, mostly to the >> east of the basic L.A. Metro Area, but Contel was taken over by GTE in >> the early 1990s. >> The Palm Springs area further to the east is exclusively GTE. > Contel never saw the ocean side of the So Cal mountains. > The pockets of pre-GTE that were in the San Fernando Valley, Sierra > Madre/Monrovia and Palm Springs was California Water and Telephone. > GTE took that over in 1967. > Contel showed up to take over some funky company that served > Victorvile and Eastern Sierra Telephone that served Ridgecrest, the > Owens Valley and the Eastern High Sierra. That was circa 1950. > Again, > Contel was never, ever in the Los Angeles Basin. Go even farther back and the CWT area in the desert was Cochella Valley Home Telephone, and the north end of the San Fernando Valley was partly Sunland Tujunga Telephone. When I started in with GTE in San Fernando, the company was for the most part still running CWT. The hammer finally fell in the first part of 1968 when General Telephone send managers into the CWT operating areas and they made the changes. I had worked up in Sunland and there were still signs of the old company. I got several old payphone signs, I collected those along with CWT and others. Things were a lot simplier then. As to Contel, they came into the Victor Valley when the took over California Interstate Telephone, General tried then to take them over. 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: Sam Spade Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 06:50:05 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Steve Sobol wrote: > 90 miles west, in the Antelope Valley on the L.A. County side of the > High Desert, it's all PacBell/SBC/at&t. Contel was never in the LA Basin. It had the Victor Valley and up to Ridgecrest and the Eastern Sierra. The Eastern Sierra was originally served by a local LEC. Barstow is, and was, Bell territory because it was a regional toll center way back when. Palmdale is, and was Bell, but Lancaster was GTE. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: GTE and Verizon; SBC and AT&T, in Southern California Date: 29 Jul 2006 13:30:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Verizon was formed in 2000 by the merger of Bell Atlantic (including > NYENX) and GTE (including Contel; at least what GTE and later VZ have > retained of old GTE and old Contel). The "Bell" logo has been retained > by VZ in BA (and NYNEX) territories, but it has also been introduced > into VZ-held legacy GTE (and Contel) territories when it comes to > basic local telephone services, such as repair trucks, directories, > monthly bills, and even telco-owned payphones. Note that VZ Wireless > does NOT use the "Bell" logo, nor various aspects of VZ that are not > "basic local landline telephone functions". Verizon is weird about the old Bell logo. It appears on the side of pay phone enclosures, but not on bills or leaflets or ads. In fine print on ad leaflets there is "Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania" which is strange on an advertisement, and I don't think that's their legal name anymore; they formally changed it long ago. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:08:23 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns DLR wrote: > fake.e-mail@stonyx.com wrote: >> Is there any information out there that would indicate which is >> safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? >> I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones >> actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know >> which of the two is considered less harmful ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz >> radio waves. > We all want simple answers to complicated issues. > Harmful to what in what way? > There are a LOT of variables in play. Older phones tend to have higher > power levels as newer phones many times (but not always) have better > DSP circuits and can pull out clear voice from weaker signals. Plus is > it analog, digital, spread spectrum digital, etc ... All of this > matters. > Are you worried about brain cancer, skin cancer, or something else? > To be honest I doubt you can come up with a clear choice just based on > frequency and nothing else. It would be very dependent on make, model, > production run, etc ... > For me, I'd buy 5.8 as that is less likely to interfere with wireless > computer setups and other things you might own or buy in the future. :) I'll add that all other things being equal (and they never ever ever are) a 5.8 phone will likely use less power to transmit than a 2.4. But as I said, all other things are never equal. If this subject worries you in any way at all you're better off without a cordless phone. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 11:19:39 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns fake.e-mail@stonyx.com wrote: > Is there any information out there that would indicate which is > safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? > I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones > actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know > which of the two is considered less harmfull ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz > radio waves. > Thanks, > Harry It is not the frequency that is harmful: it is the power level. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: The Death Thoes of Pay Phones From: Mark Atwood Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 06:35:25 GMT Samantha Gross writes: > The drop in pay-phone numbers angers advocates, who are quick to point > out that cell phones -- and sometimes any phones at all -- are > prohibitively expensive for many people. > A full 7.1 percent of the nation's households had no phone of any kind > in November 2005, up from 4.7 percent three years earlier, according > to the Federal Communications Commission. These two paragraphs are not necessarily linked. Or rather, more and more households "had no phone of any kind" for reasons other than poverty. Most of my friends and acquaintances are reasonably prosperous, and most of them don't have any landline phone service at all. They use their cellphone for everything. Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure me@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all. http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 21:57:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: The Death Thoes (sic) of Pay Phones Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:09:35 -0500 Samantha Gross wrote: > AP Technology Pay Phones Suffer As Cell Phone Use Rises > By SAMANTHA GROSS > Associated Press Writer > NEW YORK -- A stroll along Ninth Avenue in Manhattan reveals an ugly > picture of the state of the pay phone these days. The phones are > sticky, beat up and scarred, and some don't work at all. A child's > change purse is stuffed on one phone ledge, along with a large wad of > wrapping plastic. On a nearby ledge, an empty bottle of tequila sits > in front of a hole that once held a phone. Empty cans of malt liquor > sheathed in brown paper bags are a frequent sight. Is it really any wonder that pay phones are not used at all except by poor people and the few that don't have a cell phone? The pay phone vendors brought it on themselves. When the pay phone vendors charge 50 cents for a local call and charge $1.50 for local directory assistance and not provide any paper directory is it any wonder that someone would choose to find other means to make calls? My local super market completely ripped out all pay phones explaining that it was just an invitation for drug dealers to use them. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Color 3 Slot Payphones; Phones on Brady Bunch Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:32:58 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications DLR wrote: > I thought Southern Cal was GTE. Which after I had them in Lexington KY > for a few years, I decided I'd make my living choices with a strong > negative factor if it required living where the provided service. Los Angeles metro was mostly Bell surrounded by GTE. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:02:37 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC Broadband NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: > There is DSL at various speeds from Verizon. > There is RoadRunner and Earthlink cable broadband via Time Warner. > Apparently you can get 5mbps for $19.99 x 6 month followed by $44.95 x > six months from Earthlink via Time Warner. This averages to $32.48 a > month for a year of 5mbps. > Anyone have opinions on the Earthlink broadband in NYC? Earthlink broadband is a resale of an incumbents last mile. So if the last mile with DSL or cable is ok, it comes down to would you rather do business with Earthlink, your cable company, or your phone company as a broadband provider. I've dealt with Earthlink, TimeWarner, and Bellsouth here in Raleigh NC and would take EL any day of the week and pay a premium to do so compared to the other choices. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:32:11 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Bruce Kushnick wrote: >> (Asian countries are now using 100 Mbps in both directions for their >> standard. That is 500 times more powerful.) > Could someone elaborate on this? > Does this mean that if I were to go to Asia, everyone > everywhere -- wealthy and poor, urban and rural, democracy and > dictatorship -- all have a nice 100MBPS hookup at their disposal? These discussions are usually talking about Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc ... Where population densities make my town of Raleigh look more like Montana. Broadband implementation costs are all about location, location, location. If you have block after block after block of 500 unit or more apartment buildings, this (100mbps Internet) is MUCH easier to do. Plus toss in a totally different tax and public utility structure and you get things in one country which just can't be done in another. > Somehow I don't think that's the case. Now I don't know the utility > situation in Asia (which is a pretty huge land area), but I suspect a > heck of a lot of people don't even have electricity nor telephones, > let alone this high speed connection. Now you're talking about rural Thailand, Cambodia, China, etc ... (And someone I know to travels to China frequently says that in many ways that country is becoming very very very split between the big cities and the rural areas. > Actually, I suspect the telecom situation in the U.S. -- overall -- is > better than in Asia. Undoubtedly a few parts of Asia (such as very > wealthy people or countries) have some fancy hookups. But I suspect > the great masses do not. It's more homogenized but better? That gets into issues of subsidization vs getting what you pay for. And As someone who grew up and lived in the more less developed parts of this country but traveled to major cities for years, I was amazed at how backward the big cities here could be in terms of phone service, cable TV, etc ... All in the name of protecting their citizens. That has changed a lot in the last 20 years but still it was amazing to see. I read somewhere recently that cable TV service in San Jose is still stuck in the 80s. > Consequently, I think the use of "500 times more powerful" is a littnle > exaggerated hyperbole. > I am not familiar with the issues adequately he raises to comment on > them. But over the years articles against the "big evil Big Guy" > tended not to be not so reliable. Perhaps significant facts were left > out or inappropriate issues emphasized. For example, back during the > early MCI-AT&T fight the issue of cream skimming, lack of rural > service, mandated cross subsidy, and local connection cost was ignored > by AT&T critics. > I was searching thru the telecom archives and found a post criticizing > the Bell Systems' PBX offerings of 1969 as being junk. I personally > saw some modern good systems in use in those days and a check of the > Bell Labs history confirms the offerings. To put it another way, how > much computer horsepower could you buy back in 1969 for $2,000? Today > you get quite a bit and people say it's easy to make your own PBX from > that. But back then I don't think you could hook up a string of > Altair's and make an ESS out of it, and real computers of that era > cost a heck of a lot more. But people seem to expect that the Bell > System would have offered cheap yet powerful electronic systems in > those days, long before the technology even existed to make it happen. > (Sorry, offering a few ICs at the local hobby store doesn't count.) > All I know is that when Verizon was finally allowed to offer long > distance my costs went down and service quality went up. The > "consumer advocates" wouldn't let Verizon do that in order to "protect > me". How they protected me from those restrictions I don't know nor > understand. LIkewise, I'm not sure painting today's big telcos as bad > is necessarily in the consumer's interest. > [public replies, please] AT&T's major problem was that it bread bureaucracies. Any time you have decades of cost +10% for profit pricing, the costs will creep up. IBM had the same thing when they owned the market. Just as Akers retired and things were really headed south the org chart was 15+ steps from the top to the bottom. His replacement (I forget his name) started first on things like this. Within a year it was down to under 10 and shrank a bit more later. I was there for a while during this time on a short term deal and it was amazing how insular the employees were. They ridiculed the competition without even knowing anything about their products or why a customer might want them. In another direction, my wife works for a major airline. They survived the last 25 years due to the man at the top realizing that the universe was changing. The company staff and management fought him tooth and nail all the way but at the end of it they didn't wind up like Pan Am, Braniff, Eastern, etc ... And they never went through bankruptcy. But they still are not fully there. Maybe it literally takes 2 generations to clear out the dead wood. And for anyone who thing Southwest has it perfect, they really just got an 6 or 7 year extension on the old ways. They are NOT a low cost carrier, their labor costs near the top of the scale. What they did was win big on a bet back 6 or so years ago. They bought very long term futures contracts on jet fuel and won. These contracts have all expired. They've publicly stated that their fuel cost increases this year will be larger than last years profits. No more flying on fuel based on $30 a barrel oil. My point to all of this is that the world changes and big dominant companies hate change. It makes them work to maintain their dominance and what they really want to do is coast and talk about what they are doing, not actually do something. ------------------------------ From: John Hines Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2006 18:42:57 -0500 Organization: www.jhines.org Reply-To: john@jhines.org hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I was searching thru the telecom archives and found a post criticizing > the Bell Systems' PBX offerings of 1969 as being junk. I personally > saw some modern good systems in use in those days and a check of the > Bell Labs history confirms the offerings. To put it another way, how > much computer horsepower could you buy back in 1969 for $2,000? My father reported paying $7 a word for memory in the 60's for a Xerox Sigma 7 computer. Silly sig to prevent isp ad ------------------------------ From: Hr.ZeroHour Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code Date: 29 Jul 2006 01:11:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > Have you tried either 611 or 1-611 or +611 _only_ -- with nothing > following from your cell phone to see if eventually it times out and > gets you to 'customer service' or some type of voicemail recording? Yes, of course; only 611 actually connects to customer care line. Other variations, including (+)1-611 and +611 result in "call cannot be completed as dialed / check the number and try your call again or dial 6-1-1 for customer service" (trailer: "Message O R O 1 51") or the "your *international* call cannot be completed as dialed, etc." (trailers: "0 8 3 T" or "1 [0?] 9 5 T") There is no way to silence the prompts when connected to their voicemail, as far as I can tell. After two failed (or "did not understand response") prompts to re-enter menu option, call is terminated with suggestion to call again later ... when you've sobered up a bit, etc. > tower. Or is the city area you are in large enough that you know for > a fact you are landing on different towers? Not sure; what I notice is with a prepaid airtime balance of less than approx. $0.50; whereas, after sending the full (+1611-etc) string -- but before ring cycle is heard -- there is a prepended cellco annoucement suggesting you add more airtime soon for continuous service. At this point, outside of Portland, no matter how many times you redial, no calls will ever be completed using +1611NPANXXXXXXz . >From my repeated attempts, I have come to the realization that the ratio of successfully completed calls to vacant code annoucements (dialed using +1611-) is proportional to network traffic; viz, during peak hours of the day it takes significantly more attempts. On Friday nights (6PM-4AM), like tonight in fact, it is virtually impossible to complete a call this way. I haven't been able to yet (after 50-60 attempts -- and, yes, I *am* this bored as to continue to try ...) Early Sunday or Monday morning (say, 4:30A), by contrast, it takes only three or four attempts to get a call through. Hmmmm ... and there are some strange permutations of 1611 (e.g., +61101-etc or +116111-etc) that result in ring cycles I havent heard in the US before. Sometimes doublering -- something like I remember landlines rang in western Europe, but with distorted type of noise -- then 'answered' by "subscriber is not available or has left their local calling region." These are new sounds to me; I will have to take a listen to some recordings archived on http://www.thisisarecording.com or http://dmine.com to make a more accurate analogy. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: '01' and '011' in this context can be 'operator assistance' codes on an IDDD (international direct dial) type call. This is indeed very puzzling. Are the responses (when the double-rings finally get 'answered') 'British sounding' or otherwise 'European-sounding' accent-wise? Does anyone know where country codes 61, or 611 or 161 or 1611, etc are located? PAT] ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Google Porn Site Battle Puts Internet Freedoms in Balance Date: 29 Jul 2006 09:07:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Barry Margolin wrote: > There's also the issue that Google isn't actually copying these from > Perfect 10. According to the story, the copying was done by web site > subscribers, who copied the pictures to their own web sites. Google > then discovered them when searching those other web sites. Perfect 10 > presumably has a robots.txt file that tells Google not to index their > pictures (and I'm sure Google obeys this protocol) as well as > requiring registration to see most of its content (and Google wouldn't > have an account). But once some copies the pictures to other sites > (which is more blatant copyright infringement, but the perpetrators > are probably judgment-proof), how is Google supposed to know that > they shouldn't be indexed and thumbnailed? I wonder if the owner of the photo could embed the registered username in the photo (on the fly) so if it shows up somewhere else on the web, they'd know who downloaded it from their site. I think a similar technique was used to track down who was giving away copies of the Academy Award "scrrener" DVDs. Of course, someone would then write code to strip that out, but it might work some ... Harold ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #278 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jul 30 21:03:46 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0872421F1; Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:03:45 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #279 Message-Id: <20060731010345.0872421F1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:03:45 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:06:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 279 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson E-mailed Crime Alerts on Horizon (Monty Solomon) The Wi-Fi in Your Handset (Monty Solomon) Trying Out the Latest Sidekick (Monty Solomon) All the Good Ones Have Been Taken -- In Domain Names, Too (Monty Solomon) Free Sharpcast Service Lets You Synchronize Photo Albums (Monty Solomon) Moguls of New Media (Monty Solomon) Email Scammers Try New Bait in 'Vishing' For Fresh Victims (Monty Solomon) Some Safety Tips To Help You Avoid Latest Theft Scams (Monty Solomon) Re: Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (History) (Sam Spade) Re: Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (History) (Steve Lichter) Re: NYC Broadband (Sam Spade) Re: NYC Broadband (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns (Scott Dorsey) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Re: The Death Thoes (sic) of Pay Phones (Lena) Re: Odd Dialing Code (Christopher Sabine) Re: Odd Dialing Code (jared) Mypeople: New VOIP Phone Service (vikris) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 01:58:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: E-Mailed Crime Alerts on Horizon Police chief weighs pilot notification program for residents By Jennifer Rosinski, Globe Correspondent The latest news on crime in Westborough soon may be just an e-mail away. Police Chief Alan Gordon will present the Board of Selectmen next month with several possible ways of electronically alerting residents about local crime. One proposal is to sign up with a Minnesota company now running a pilot e-mail program in Boston. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/07/27/e_mailed_crime_alerts_on_horizon/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 02:52:46 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Wi-Fi in Your Handset By MATT RICHTEL The New York Times What if, instead of burning up minutes on your cellphone plan, you could make free or cheap calls over the wireless networks that allow Internet access in many coffee shops, airports and homes? New phones coming on the market will allow just that. Instead of relying on standard cellphone networks, the phones will make use of the anarchic global patchwork of so-called Wi-Fi hotspots. Other models will be able to switch easily between the two modes. The phones, while a potential money-saver for consumers, could cause big problems for cellphone companies. They have invested billions in their nationwide networks of cell towers, and they could find that customers are bypassing them in favor of Wi-Fi connections. The struggling Bell operating companies could also suffer if the new phones accelerate the trend toward cheap Internet-based calling, reducing the need for a standard phone line in homes with wireless networks. The spottiness of wireless Internet coverage means that for now, the phones will be more of a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, standard cellphone service. But dozens of American cities and towns are either building or considering wide-area wireless networks that would allow Wi-Fi phones to connect and make free or cheap calls. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/technology/29phones.html?ex=1311825600&en=f4e35ba52faa0380&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Trying Out the Latest Sidekick Trying Out the Latest Sidekick By Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret When it comes to cool hand-held devices, one always stands out in the crowd: the T-Mobile Sidekick. You may have seen photos of Hollywood stars posing with this device like an accessory, or maybe you've just seen someone using one and you caught yourself wondering what it was. The Sidekick, built for T-Mobile by Sharp Electronics Corp., doesn't look like most common hand-helds, such as the Palm Treo or RIM BlackBerry, which are designed with a screen and keyboard lined up under one another for convenient emailing, phone use and Web browsing. Instead, the Sidekick is meant to be held horizontally and its screen must be twisted out with a dramatic, eye-catching snap in order to use its hidden keyboard underneath. In closed-keyboard position, the device can be held up to your ear vertically to use as a phone. This week, we tested the latest version of this trendy hand-held, the Sidekick 3. It will officially launch July 10 for $300 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile USA Inc., but is available just for current T-Mobile customers starting today for 12 days. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20060628.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: All the Good Ones Have Been Taken -- In Domain Names, Too PORTALS By LEE GOMES It's hardly secret knowledge, though perhaps only Dennis Forbes has seen it in all its glory. There are roughly 47 million domain names that end with ".com," making that space the biggest and most prestigious piece of real estate on the Internet. Getting a URL listed as a dot-com involves, ultimately, checking in with a database at Verisign, the Mountain View, Calif., company that keeps tabs on the dot-com world, the way your state's DMV knows about which cars have which license plates. If you know who at Verisign to ask, you can get the complete dot-com list. Mr. Forbes, an analyst at Vastardis Capital Services, a New York mutual-fund service company, got it and has since made a hobby of studying the list, something he does in his spare time. He has, in the process, become the world's pre-eminent domainologist. His findings ought to be relevant to aspiring Web entrepreneurs everywhere. For the rest of us, they are an amusement. (Registering a dot-com domain costs around $9 a year. After the initial registration period is purchased, you have to re-register the name or risk losing it to someone else.) Most people trying to do business online will tell you that the good domain names are already taken. Mr. Forbes's research proves them out. For example, for every possible two-character and three-character combination -- including both letters and numbers -- all possible domains are taken. Virtually all English words with four letters are claimed; those that aren't are usually contractions, and Web rules don't allow apostrophes. All of the 1,000 most common English words have been snatched up. The word "a" appears more than any other, though most of the time, of course, it's just a letter in a longer word. The least-used common word is "consonant," Mr. Forbes says, which is in just 42 domains, including "consonantpain.com," which isn't a misspelling but a word game. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115326960876810574-_mmS58T0lfhu6KI_rTyu_lFS8mY_20070718.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Free Sharpcast Service Lets You Synchronize Your Photo Albums By Walter S. Mossberg As more people acquire multiple computers and high-end cellphones, one of the biggest problems they face is synchronizing important files among all of these devices, and ensuring they have backup copies. Inside big corporations, these tasks often are handled by internal networks, which store files centrally and back up computers nightly. But consumers have had to resort to time-consuming and imperfect methods. These include emailing files to themselves, manually synchronizing their phones and computers, and manually copying files among their computers. Over the next year or so, I expect that one of the big trends in personal technology will be the introduction of services and products that make this job easier. Both Google and Microsoft are reportedly preparing new services that will back up all of a consumer's data to their servers. Apple already offers a service called .Mac, which, for $99 a year, gives consumers storage space on an Apple server, allows backups to that remote server and synchronizes selected data among multiple Macs. And Microsoft has recently acquired a small service called FolderShare, which I reviewed last year, that can synchronize and back up selected folders on any mix of Windows and Macintosh computers. Now, a small Silicon Valley start-up called Sharpcast is introducing an impressive, free service that synchronizes data among PCs, phones and a Web site at lightning speeds. I tested Sharpcast for several weeks, and found that it works really well. You can try it out at www.sharpcast.com. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060713.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Moguls of New Media The MySpace member with a million 'friends.' The receptionist with a production deal. Some of the Web's amateur entertainers are becoming powerful players. By JOHN JURGENSEN On the popular Web site MySpace.com, members set up profiles with information about their interests and then network across the site, recruiting other members to link to their pages. Often, the teens and 20-somethings who dominate the site have dozens or hundreds of these registered "friends." Then there's Christine Dolce, whose MySpace page boasts nearly one million friends -- making her arguably one of the most connected people on the Internet. A 24-year-old cosmetologist who until a few months ago worked at a makeup counter in a mall, she now has a manager and a start-up jeans company and has won promotional deals for two mainstream consumer brands. As videos, blogs and Web pages created by amateurs remake the entertainment landscape, unknown directors, writers and producers are being catapulted into positions of enormous influence. Each week, about a half-million people download a comedic video podcast featuring a former paralegal. A video by a 30-year-old comedian from Cleveland has now been watched by almost 30 million people, roughly the audience for an average "American Idol" episode. The most popular contributor to the photo site Flickr.com just got a contract to shoot a Toyota ad campaign. While online stardom can sometimes be fleeting, and some measures of audience size are subject to debate, a look at the rising stars in this world shows how the path to entertainment success is being redefined. Traditional media companies and marketers are already in pursuit of some of these new faces. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115412710465720901-U6_GRP11Z3o9APvWCRgJ3S9RY5Q_20060829.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Email Scammers Try New Bait in 'Vishing' For Fresh Victims By ANDREW LAVALLEE For some time, banks and credit-card companies have been warning computer users about so-called phishing emails that link to counterfeit Web sites where customers are asked to enter their account numbers and other personal information. Now, savvy con artists are adding a new twist dubbed "vishing." Customers of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust recently received emails telling them that their accounts with the company's online banking system had been disabled after the bank detected unauthorized access. They were told to dial a telephone number (with a local, Southern California area code) where an automated voice prompted them to enter their account numbers, personal-access codes and other details. It's not clear who was on the other end of the phone line, but it wasn't Santa Barbara Bank & Trust. The incident was among the latest in a string of vishing, or voice phishing, attacks. Security experts say such schemes are made possible by Internet-telephone services, which allow computer users to quickly establish phone numbers, often without undergoing some of the verification checks used by traditional telephone companies. Also, Internet phone companies dole out numbers with a choice of area code, regardless of where in the country -- or world -- the user is located. That can make it much more difficult to locate fraudsters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it has traced the Santa Barbara scheme to computers inside and outside the U.S., but so far hasn't made any arrests. The phone number has been deactivated. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115309244673308174-x2hR8RSpz6MIerq1fDIShcsPHQg_20070716.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 13:58:10 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Some Safety Tips To Help You Avoid Latest Theft Scams By Walter S. Mossberg If you're running a Windows computer, you must install an array of security software to fend off an international collection of crooks, hackers, vandals and sleazy business people who aim to invade your PC through the Internet. You need a good antivirus program, a strong firewall program, an effective antispam program, and a program that specializes in stopping spyware and adware. Or you could just buy an Apple Macintosh, which isn't significantly affected (so far) by these threats, other than spam email. But the fastest-growing computer-security problem isn't viruses or other traditional malicious programs, and it can't be entirely defeated by using security software or by buying a Mac. It's called "social engineering," and it consists of tactics that try to fool users into giving up sensitive financial data that criminals can use to steal their money and even their identities. Social engineering is a broad term that includes "phishing," the practice by which crooks create emails and Web sites that look just like legitimate messages and sites from real banks and other financial companies. It's closely linked to a newly named category of malicious software called Crimeware -- programs that help criminals steal your private financial information. These terms are confusing and overlapping, but the threat is real. Increasingly, common-looking scams are combined with secret installations of software that help criminals spy on you and steal your data. Here are a few tips to help you avoid these schemes: http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060727.html ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (Histo Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 01:16:08 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Early on (1920) the Bell System realized step-by-step would be > inadequate for big city high calling volumes and developed and > implemented panel switching for cities. However, Los Angeles already > had step-by-step when Bell took over. > As Los Angeles/southern California grew in the war years (big defense > aircraft plants, new postwar development), how did they handle the > high volume traffic with step-by-step? Did they run into problems? > SxS switches are limited to a 10x10 pattern and get very unweildy when > it grows beyond that. I could imagine things got messy in the early > 1960s before ESS was available. Were some SxS offices upgraded to a > more powerful No 5 crossbar? > The Bell Labs says they considered developing common control senders > as a front-end to SxS, but I didn't understand how far they went with > that. They also did something called a "graded multiple" which > apparently was a big help. > In the early 1950s NYC got network management, a control center for > city wide traffic. It seems the Los Angeles area would need likewise > in the 1950s or early 1960s. > Thanks. > [public replies, please] The steppers were not allowed to grow that large. There were multiple, separate SxS machines in the largest office, downtown LA and perhaps Hollywood. Most of the defense plant areas were served by General Telephone. Pacific Telephone installed at least one No. 5 Crossbar in each large SxS office on a rather rapid basis after the war. These units served as the common control unit for toll and the SxS machine (or machines) in the building fed into the No 5 machine for toll routing. The No. 5 machines were also often used as a local machine as well, providing much better line services for preferred customers. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 05:58:02 -0700 From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: Los Angeles Step by Step - Network Management (History) Both the Bell company and GTE went to a full Satt system which gave them directors and translater which would move the call along the network faster but routing it without having to go through a full switch train; ie: if it was a local office call it would drop it into the local switch train, another local office; switch it to an out going trunk, toll or long distance; into a DDD trunk. 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: Sam Spade Subject: Re: NYC Broadband Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 06:41:25 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications DLR wrote: > NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: >> There is DSL at various speeds from Verizon. >> There is RoadRunner and Earthlink cable broadband via Time Warner. >> Apparently you can get 5mbps for $19.99 x 6 month followed by >> $44.95 x six months from Earthlink via Time Warner. This averages >> to $32.48 a month for a year of 5mbps. >> Anyone have opinions on the Earthlink broadband in NYC? > Earthlink broadband is a resale of an incumbents last mile. So if the > last mile with DSL or cable is ok, it comes down to would you rather > do business with Earthlink, your cable company, or your phone company > as a broadband provider. I've dealt with Earthlink, TimeWarner, and > Bellsouth here in Raleigh NC and would take EL any day of the week and > pay a premium to do so compared to the other choices. I would go for speed for the buck. Cable wins over DSL handsdown. Cox now offers a higher tier residential broadband for $55 a month; 12 megabits down, 1 megabit up. Find that with your friendly (read: predatory LEC that wants now to own the Internet and charge by "message" units) and their lousy DSL. ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: NYC Broadband Date: 30 Jul 2006 14:52:34 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com DLR wrote: > Earthlink broadband is a resale of an incumbents last mile. So if the > last mile with DSL or cable is ok, it comes down to would you rather > do business with Earthlink, your cable company, or your phone company > as a broadband provider. I've dealt with Earthlink, TimeWarner, and > Bellsouth here in Raleigh NC and would take EL any day of the week and > pay a premium to do so compared to the other choices. Earthlink would be thru TWC. TWC offers: RoadRunner Earthlink and I think New York Connect. But when I went into TWC to get specs for Earthlink in writting I was told that $19.99 promo was over and that promo was now $29.99. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Concerns Date: 30 Jul 2006 18:00:36 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > Is there any information out there that would indicate which is > safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? > I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones > actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know > which of the two is considered less harmful ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz > radio waves. If gophers could read, what books would they choose? Well, the truth is that gophers can't read, so that question can't be answered. As far as RF exposure is concerned, nobody has provided any real evidence for harm, so it's hard to say which is less harmful when there isn't any evidence of harm. If you're worried, use a beltpack unit and hold it away from your body. Or just use a wired phone. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: 31 Jul 2006 00:10:03 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge > Effective with their September invoice, Cingular customers will start > receiving a monthly network service charge of $4.99 for each TDMA or > Analog line of service on their account. Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM as well as TDMA, and analog? R's, John ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: The Death Thoes (sic) of Pay Phones Date: 30 Jul 2006 02:14:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mr Joseph Singer wrote: > My local super market completely ripped out all pay phones .... Where will Superman go to change outfits? Lena ------------------------------ From: Christopher Sabine Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 03:07:20 -0400 Country code 61 is Australia and the Australian telephone ring is similar to the British style but with some differences. It is a double ring. Chris. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 09:06:00 -0600 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Odd Dialing Code > Does anyone know where country codes 61, or 611 or 161 or 1611, etc > are located? PAT] 61 is Australia 61-1 is an area code including special services, used to include analogue mobile phones (no longer in use), paging, toll free, directory assistance, dial-at-the-cost-of-a-local-call. ------------------------------ From: vikris Subject: Mypeople: New VOIP Phone Service Date: 30 Jul 2006 09:07:47 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My People is a new VOIP phone service with some interesting features priced at $25 per month. http://www.mypeople.com These are their features: http://www.mypeople.com/frmFeatures.aspx Have some fun with their goodies. (Try mypeople sing) http://www.mypeople.com/Goodieshome.aspx International Rates: https://www.mypeople.com/InternationalRates.aspx You can sign up from here: https://www.mypeople.com/join/frmStep1.aspx ------------------------------ 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. 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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 #279 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 31 14:07:48 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3154421F1; Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:07:47 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #280 Message-Id: <20060731180747.3154421F1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:07:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:10:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 280 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Studies Ways to Avoid Big EU Fine (Reuters News Wire) AOL to Launch Video Search Engine (Kenneth Li, Reuters) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 31, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AOL to Test Video Search Service (USTelecom dailyLead) 1947 Train Phone Service (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (DLR) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health (Robert Weller) Re: NYC Broadband (DLR) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills (Dorsey) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:34:03 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Studies Ways to Avoid Big EU Fine Microsoft Corp has submitted documents required by the European Commission in an effort to avoid further fines for breaching an antitrust ruling, the European Union regulator said on Monday. The Commission said it was studying the files and that it was too early to tell whether the world's largest software company would be subject to an additional non-compliance penalty. "We have received technical documents from Microsoft. Our people are looking at it, including the trustee, and it's too early at this stage to give any indication of whether there will be another payment, another penalty, and if there is to be another penalty, how much it would be," Commission spokesman Michael Mann told a news briefing. Microsoft said that it had made a final submission of 2,600 documents which "further demonstrates our ongoing commitment to reaching full compliance with the Commission's decision of March 2004." "We are working with the trustee to ensure that all of this documentation meets his requirements and to respond promptly and fully to any further requests for information," the statement said. Earlier this month, EU regulators fined the company 280.5 million euros ($356 million) for defying a 2004 antitrust ruling that required it to share key information on its office servers with rivals. They warned the company to comply or face bigger daily fines from next month. The information is needed so that rivals' servers can compete on a level playing field with Microsoft's own. Microsoft must help its rivals interconnect smoothly with its Windows operating system for personal computers. Part of the decision was based on an evaluation by an independent monitoring trustee, British Professor Neil Barrett, who was nominated by the U.S. software giant. MASSIVE EFFORTS The non-compliance penalty imposed on July 12 was the first of its kind and came on top of a record 497 million euro fine the Commission levied in its landmark antitrust decision against Microsoft in March 2004. That decision found that the company abused the dominance of its Windows operating system to squeeze out competitors. Microsoft faces a further fine of up to 3 million euros a day if it is found to be still not in compliance with the ruling. The move signaled the Commission's determination to force the software company to obey its order. Microsoft had two years to comply. Microsoft says it has made massive efforts to comply with the Commission's ruling and had 300 people working to complete its package of interoperability information. The company, which has appealed against every ruling the Commission has made against it, has said it will appeal against the non-compliance fine as well. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:31:06 -0500 From: Kenneth Li Subject: AOL to Launch Video Search Engine Kenneth Li AOL plans to announce on Monday it will test launch a new Internet video service in an attempt to demonstrate how much it has learned from mistakes that cost the once reigning king of the online world its leading position. The new service, AOL Video, aims to be the one-stop shop for online videos and will let users search for videos across the Web, upload their own, or buy or watch for free thousands of TV shows from any one of 45 video-on-demand channels on nearly any device. Users will also be able to subscribe and rent videos later this year, executives said. These channels will include shows licensed from Viacom Inc.'s MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central networks, A&E Television Networks, and corporate sibling Warner Bros. The launch comes at a critical moment at the online division of Time Warner Inc. and precedes a presentation by AOL on Wednesday, when it will lay out a new strategic plan widely believed to involve giving away its e-mail and Web services away for free to boost online advertising sales. Getting AOL right could significantly boost the share price of the world's largest media company, which touched a two-year low in July and trades at a relative discount to its big media peers, investors have said. Experts said AOL's service could face a tough time as it has lost its cachet among young male audience, considered the most voracious consumers of online videos, according to Jupiter Research analyst Joseph Laszlo. But AOL sees the growing popularity of viewing TV shows -- not just among young guys but across other age and gender categories -- as ample opportunity. "What we've really seen in the market for online video consumption ... (is that) it is moving quickly from early adopter to early majority," Kevin Conroy, executive vice president of AOL, said in an interview last week. "We're in a really good place to help fuel this and bring this together, Conroy said. AOL's new video portal plays a significant role in the company's transformation from a business that relied on subscriptions for 80 percent of its sales to one driven primarily by online advertising sales, executives said. Once synonymous with getting online, AOL has been left in the dust in recent years by faster moving rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), whose growth have been driven by ad sales from text search engines, which AOL does not own. Three years ago it began planting a stake in video search with the purchase of video search engine Singingfish, and AOL announced the purchase of Truveo in January. Unlike text search, with video AOL opted to own, not lease, the business. Still, the lion's share of Web video watchers have flocked to young start-up YouTube.com, which claimed a 31.2 percent market share in the week ending July 22, according to HitWise. News Corp.'s MySpace.com came in second with 17.61 percent share, while AOL Video was ranked ninth with less than 3 percent. AOL WEB 2.0 Technology industry analysts were impressed with AOL's video plans and said it reflected a big change in how it viewed its place on the Internet. While not earth-shattering, "Overall, AOL's service is very comprehensive," said Brian Haven, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "They're starting to really sink their teeth into Web 2.0 technologies," added Haven, referring to the second generation of Web technologies that let people collaborate and share information online. What impressed some reviewers was that AOL's video search let users find what they wanted even if it meant sending viewers outside of AOL to watch it. "It is a change ... to let people go and visit other places," Jupiter's Laszlo said. AOL also plans to let other Web sites incorporate its search technologies directly onto their own sites, which text search engine companies like Google have allowed for quite some time. An area on AOL called UnCut video will let users upload, share and talk about their own videos, like YouTube. Users can send videos in by cellphone, handheld device or computer, Conroy said. Viewers will also soon be able to watch some of the videos on handheld devices and cellphones that support Microsoft Corp.'s copy protection system. "If it's out there, you'll find it here," Conroy said. AOL Video can be found at http://www.aolvideo.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 and headlines each day, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - July 31, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:22:52 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For July 31, 2006 ******************************** A Helpful Traveling Companion http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19096?11228 Have you ever wanted a traveling companion who would talk to you, offer road directions and even provide entertainment? Well, good friends are hard to find. On the other hand, Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Navman USA is offering the next best thing--a mobile device that supplies many of the best attributes of a trusted traveling buddy and... Telefonica May Deploy GSM Network in Venezuela http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19093?11228 Spanish telecoms group Telefónica is considering the deployment of a GSM network in Venezuela, reports The Financial Times. Telefonica's Venezuelan arm, Telefonica Moviles, is the country's leading operator, with 7.8 million subscribers. However, Venezuela represents the only arm of Telefonica's ... Users Find SmartPhones More Valuable than PDAs and Laptops http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19087?11228 According a consumer survey, more users of SmartPhones reported that these devices are essential to their business than the users of PDAs or laptops, reports In-Stat. But this does not mean that there will be automatic acceptance of SmartPhones and widespread replacement of PDAs and laptops, the high-tech market research firm says. ... O2 Germany Focuses on Gaining New Customers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19084?11228 Germany's third-largest mobile operator, which is part of Spain's Telefonica, plans to focus its strategy on new customer acquisitions in efforts to boost its revenue. The cellco expects to lower prices and introduce an array of new products to appeal to new customer... Verizon Wireless to End Music Download Fee http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19083?11228 Verizon Wireless is eliminating the monthly $15 fee for its music download service in conjunction with the launch of a cellphone featuring an iPod-like click wheel and a memory card that can hold up to 1,000 songs. The new Chocolate handset, made by LG Electronics Inc. of Korea, features software that will let users ... Telenor ASA to Buy Serbian Cellphone Company for US$1.9 billion http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19080?11228 BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) - Telenor ASA of Norway offered Monday to buy Mobi 63, Serbia's cellphone company, for US$1.92 billion. Telenor ASA outbid Mobilkom Austria AG and Egypt's Orascom Telecom at an auction organized by the government, which holds 70 percent in Mobi 63, and a group of Austrian investors who control the... Motorola Inks Content Deal, Revises Governance Policy http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19079?11228 Motorola signed an exclusive content deal with Shanda Interactive in China. Separately, the handset manufacturer said its board terminated its shareholder rights plan, or its 'poison pill' clause. In its deal with Shanda, Motorola will launch the entertainment company's World of Legend and Magical Land online role-playing ... FCC To Debate BPL Deregulation Decision http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19076?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) next week may decide on whether to deregulate broadband over power line (BPL) offerings as information services, based on a seven-month-old petition from the United Power Line Council (UPLC) and its United Telecom Council (UTC) affiliate. The UPLC/UTC request to the commission for a ... Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:18:48 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AOL to Test Video Search Service USTelecom dailyLead July 31, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/edqgfDtutfuVdlzwWy TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL to test video search service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon Wireless to accelerate music plans with "Chocolate" phone * ESPN 360 deal a sign of the times * Time Warner may cut costs, not prices, after Adelphia deal * MetaSwitch pitches VoIP platform to cable operators USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Integrate WiMax into Your 3G Network HOT TOPICS * Report: Skype, Kazaa founders working on video venture * Verizon picks GPON lineup * Motorola adds sleek phones to lineup * Study: VoIP quality is getting worse * Analysis: Huawei, other Chinese players poised to surge TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Wi-Fi phones hit the market * Viral video bursts onto the media scene REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Gabelli, Cingular win approval to bid for wireless licenses * Boston plans Wi-Fi system run by nonprofit * Ebbers loses appeal Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/edqgfDtutfuVdlzwWy ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: 1947 Train phone service Date: 31 Jul 2006 10:15:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com As mentioned in the thread on the Metroliner train phones, this service began in 1947. Here is some info on that I paraphrased from the articles. Unfortunately, the sources for this is hard copy from the library. Some libraries may have online access to the NYT. 1947 Train Phone System On Aug 15, 1947, train phones were implemented on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional Limited and the B&O's Royal Blue between NYC and DC. Riders could use the phones to call anywhere the Bell System offered. I couldn't tell if service was offered continuously between NYC and DC, or if there were dead spots in between beyond range of the transmitters and in tunnels. I suspect there were dead spots. The charge appears to be 30-40c additional over a regular call, which is about $4.50-$6.00 today. Long Distance calls were carried as person-to-person at the day rate. Since a railroad attendant assisted the callers, a tip may have been necessary for him or her as well. (Were such train secretaries / lounge attendants tipped?) A booth was built in the lounge cars for users. (Contrast that today where cell phone users share their personal business loudly in coach for all to hear.) The phones utilitized the newly built mobile system for motorists. Frequencies are 43.66 MHz and 35.66 MHz. They didn't give the power wattage. Proposals are advanced for service on the C&O "Chessie" trains [which never went into service] the NYC's Twentieth Century Limited. It appears radio trainphone service was offered on the Century between New York and Buffalo, but not to Chicago until relay stations were built. I don't know when Chicago service was offered. Before radio train phones, major trains had portable lines connected to landside jacks while at principal stations. This allowed people to use the phone during a station stop. The phone booth contained a chair, 354 wall phone, and little window to the attendant next door. The railroad-provided attendant handled the calls via a control unit. This unit had a lock, a selection for either of the two channels available, intercom, and control switches and signals. The attendant also had a wall phone. I don't know if the phones themselves had specially modified transmitters and receivers for radio service. The attendant unlocked the gear and placed the call for the passenger. The articles didn't say if the attendant collected money for Bell for pre-paid calls. I wonder what the financial arrangements were with the carrying railroads? Did they get a cut of the telephone revenue, after all, they supplied the attendant and train space for the phones. On the other hand, they were offering a premium service that would be attractive to business riders they sought. [In those days, there were many places were a telephone employee collected money from a user before making a phone call. This was common in large train stations where attendants ran the public phones. After making the call, the user would be directed to a phone booth and connected. In small towns, people could make calls and pay the operator directly.] This implementation did not use the "push-to-talk" button of other mobile phones. The trains got two antennas, one for receiving, one for transmitting. They used 38C radio transmitters and 38A radio receivers operating from a special 12VDC battery charged by the car battery through a regulator. A cabinet as big as a phone booth contained the radio equipment. I don't know how long this service was offered before it was retired. If the cars were running on another premium train in the corridor with a trained attendant, the service was available to passengers. Both the 20th C and Congressional were upgraded with new equipment in a few years after 1947, I presume the new cars were equipped with the train phone gear. I have no idea how popular the service was. I would think businessmen would take full advantage of it, although calls had to be kept brief before hitting a dead zone. When I was young I was on a PRR train that had a phone booth but was chased away before I could check it out. Sources: - Bell Laboratories Record, January 1948 - New York Times, 8/15/47 - New York Times, 8/17/47 If anyone knows of addtional details, could you post them? [publc replies, please] ------------------------------ Date: 31 Jul 2006 06:25:30 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Organization: >> Effective with their September invoice, Cingular customers will start >> receiving a monthly network service charge of $4.99 for each TDMA or >> Analog line of service on their account. > Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM > as well as TDMA, and analog? I just got my bill, and it does. Bah. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 06:29:25 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge John Levine wrote: >> Effective with their September invoice, Cingular customers will start >> receiving a monthly network service charge of $4.99 for each TDMA or >> Analog line of service on their account. > Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM > as well as TDMA, and analog? The issue is that the new digital protocols use less than 1/50 of the radio bandwidth of a cell tower. So what they really want is for all the older analog phones to be tossed in the trash. But that would upset some folks. So this is a nudge for them to switch to s new phone. And I'm sure they'll "make a deal" if it helps you to switch. GSM is a digital technology. ------------------------------ From: Robert Weller Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 19:16:47 -0700 The 2.4 GHz frequency has greater penetration into tissue, but both types of phones are Non-licensed devices, meaning that the power density impinging on your person is extremely low. The exposure from your WiFi card or garage door opener is probably comparable to that from a cordless phone. Bob Weller Member, SC-4, ICES (International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety) > From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) > Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and > Health Concerns > Date: 30 Jul 2006 18:00:36 -0400 > Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) >> Is there any information out there that would indicate which is >> safer/healthier to use ... a 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz cordless phone? >> I'm not trying to get into a discussion of whether cordless phones >> actually pose a real health hazard, however, I would like to know >> which of the two is considered less harmful ... 2.4Ghz or 5.8Ghz >> radio waves. > If gophers could read, what books would they choose? Well, the > truth is that gophers can't read, so that question can't be > answered. > As far as RF exposure is concerned, nobody has provided any real > evidence for harm, so it's hard to say which is less harmful when > there isn't any evidence of harm. > If you're worried, use a beltpack unit and hold it away from your > body. Or just use a wired phone. > --scott ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 06:26:33 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: NYC Broadband NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us wrote: > DLR wrote: >> Earthlink broadband is a resale of an incumbents last mile. So if the >> last mile with DSL or cable is ok, it comes down to would you rather >> do business with Earthlink, your cable company, or your phone company >> as a broadband provider. I've dealt with Earthlink, TimeWarner, and >> Bellsouth here in Raleigh NC and would take EL any day of the week and >> pay a premium to do so compared to the other choices. > Earthlink would be thru TWC. TWC offers: RoadRunner Earthlink and I > think New York Connect. > But when I went into TWC to get specs for Earthlink in writting I was > told that $19.99 promo was over and that promo was now $29.99. Re-read my the last sentence of my previous message. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Date: 30 Jul 2006 20:32:58 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > Does this mean that if I were to go to Asia, everyone > everywhere -- wealthy and poor, urban and rural, democracy and > dictatorship -- all have a nice 100MBPS hookup at their disposal? No, but if you go to a big city, like Seoul, Singapore, or Hong Kong, you'll find something close. The high population density makes it feasible. The reason there is such a severe Korean spam problem, for instance, is because South Korea went from having no internet infrastructure to having almost universal DSL in every home, rich or poor, in the course of about three years. This is not enough time for people to understand the network, and what happened was they grew a network with very different rules than the rest of the world expects. Spam there is considered routine, and people expect to change e-mail addresses monthly. They don't even put them on business cards because they don't expect company addresses to stay the same for long. > Somehow I don't think that's the case. Now I don't know the utility > situation in Asia (which is a pretty huge land area), but I suspect a > heck of a lot of people don't even have electricity nor telephones, > let alone this high speed connection. Well, that's part of the problem. A lot of places are being broken up into haves and have-nots and very little in-between. China is perhaps the most dramatic example of this although you can see similar things in Thailand and even Korea. There are cities with very high population density and extremely powerful communications, and rural areas with very low population density and marginal to nonexistent communications. And little in the middle. I could make an analogy with MCI "cream-skimming" but I'm not going to. scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #280 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Jul 31 23:52:19 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 0814D21C8; Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:52:18 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #281 Message-Id: <20060801035218.0814D21C8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:52:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:55:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 281 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rogue Amoeba Hijacks Phone Calls More Easily (Glenn Fleishman, Tidbits) Cingular Plans to Raise Prices on Older Phones (Reuters News Wire) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Dan Lanciani) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Hub Sets City-Wide WiFi Plan (Monty Solomon) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills (Hancock) Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health (Scott Dorsey) Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (jzz) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:33:39 -0500 From: Glenn Fleishman Subject: Rogue Amoeba Hijacks Phone Calls More Easily by Glenn Fleishman http://action.lasso?-database=TEPAuthors&-layout=AuthorDetail&-response=authsummary.html&op=eq&AuthorName=Glenn%20Fleishman&-search Contact the author at: glenn@tidbits.com Audio Hijack Pro has been updated to better capture phone conversations. No, the folks at Rogue Amoeba haven't signed up with the NSA. Rather, they've recognized the ongoing interest in recording Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, whether computer-to- computer or computer-to-PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network -- you know, the real phone network). http://www.rogueamoeba.com/ audiohijackpro/ Audio Hijack Pro 2.7 bypasses a fairly wacky setup that I described for O'Reilly Networks last year, and worked with Andy Affleck-Williams to build into his "Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac" ebook, which I edited. Audio Hijack Pro is designed to capture sound from any application or system resource and pass it through. Combining multiple capture streams enables live mixing, and built-in filters enable live processing, too. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/10/10/how-to-podcast.html http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/podcasting-mac.html?14@@%21pt=TRK-TB840 The difficulty was, primarily, when recording a podcast or for other purposes, having the sound on a headset's earpiece totally or partially suppressed to avoid echo, while still recording each voice. It was also impossible within Audio Hijack Pro to capture each side of a conversion separately without recording separate audio files and mixing them later in another application. The newest version, a free update for existing registered users, adds MegaMix, which enables hijacking of both sides of a conversion, with an added option to record each voice separately. Simply creating a stream (Session > New) and choosing a VoIP program handles the details. You can modify the default choice of mixing down both sides of a conversation by clicking Advanced in the Input tab and checking Separate Inputs and Outputs by Channel. (Rogue Amoeba has good illustrations in this blog entry.) http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/Article/ahp27-tour-2006-07-31-12-00 Solutions already exist for several major VoIP programs. Apple's iChat AV can record directly to GarageBand 3, with one track per participant in conference calls. A new plug-in for Skype, Ecamm Network's Call Recorder, enables multiple track recording within that software. The Gizmo Project has long provided direct MP3 recording, too. http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/ http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/features/ichatrecording.html http://www.skype.com/ http://www.ecamm.com/mac/callrecorder/ http://www.gizmoproject.com/screen-shots.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:52:32 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Cingular Plans to Raise Pries on Older Phones Cingular to raise prices for users of older phones Cingular Wireless, a venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., said on Monday it would start charging customers with older phones an extra $4.99 monthly fee as early as September unless they upgrade their phones as it moves toward using a single network technology. The biggest U.S. wireless service, said the fee would apply to about 4.7 million subscribers, or about 8 percent, of its 57.3 million customer base unless these users upgrade their phones. It is part of Cingular's plan to phase out phones based on older TDMA and analog technology, the technical standard for the first cellphones produced more than 20 years ago. Cingular has been working for years to phase out these technologies in favor of GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications), a newer technology that is the world's most popular wireless standard. Cingular, which hopes to create savings by converging to a single network, said last month on a conference call that it would risk an increase in customer cancellations for the rest of the year as it works to eliminate the older technology. Customer discounts on new phones will depend on issues such as how long they have been customers at Cingular. "Some customers will qualify for discounts on their new phones," said spokeswoman Rochelle Cohen, without specifying the number. Cohen said the quality of service on Cingular's GSM network is better than on its TDMA and analog networks. It is planning to shut down its TDMA network in early 2008 and under Federal Communications Commission rules it must keep its analog network in place until February 2008, Cohen 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:02:16 EDT From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) wrote: >>> Effective with their September invoice, Cingular customers will start >>> receiving a monthly network service charge of $4.99 for each TDMA or >>> Analog line of service on their account. >> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM >> as well as TDMA, and analog? > I just got my bill, and it does. Bah. Looks like it might be time to leave Cingular. I currently still have an analog-only phone with a ~$25/month plan. It appears that Cingular's cheapest current plan is ~$40/month and doesn't even include unlimited nights/weekends. Sprint and T-Mobile have ~$30/month plans with unlimited nights/weekends and weekends respectively. I hate to give up the analog coverage, but maybe the new features make it worth considering. What does T-Mobile's unlimited web service at $5.99/month do for me? Would I be able to access arbitrary web servers (in particular, my own) or is it only for special "mobile web destinations?" (I don't mean whether the format of the web page is suitable for a mobile display but whether they constrain the the IP addresses to which I can connect.) Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ Date: 31 Jul 2006 23:46:04 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge >> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM >> as well as TDMA, and analog? > The issue is that the new digital protocols use less than 1/50 of the > radio bandwidth of a cell tower. So what they really want is for all > the older analog phones to be tossed in the trash. But that would > upset some folks. So this is a nudge for them to switch to s new > phone. And I'm sure they'll "make a deal" if it helps you to switch. Except my phone already does GSM. I called them, asked if I can just keep the plan I have as GSM-only, and not is there no deal, the cheapest plan they offer is ten bucks more than what I'm paying now. Time to look at T-Mobile. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hope we can get a definitive answer on this sometime soon. I'll tell you what my conversation was like with them on Monday afternoon: After reading the original Monty Solomon item here on Sunday, and the newswire item earlier Monday, I called customer service to ask them. I have _two_ cellular phones from Cingular Wireless, in a 'family plan' type of arrangement: both phones draw from the same 500 minutes per month, share the same unlimited nights and weekends arrangement, etc. The phone _I_ use is Nokia 6010 which is GSM exclusively. The other phone is GAIT, Nokia 65-something, which is used by my caretaker, a fellow who now stays around here with me when the nurse or the meals-on-wheels lady is not here. The Doctor says it is good for me to have someone around much of the time, given my poor health. So seldom was I using the cell phone in recent months, there was a _huge_ amount of rollover minutes accumulating, so Raymond (the caretaker) was given the GAIT phone to stay in touch with me when he or I was out, etc. Now the GAIT phone can do both the old style calls and the newer GSM calls. I called customer service Monday afternoon to ask if this was going to apply to me, at least to the GAIT phone. I was assured it will _NOT_ apply to me. To those of you who are on contracts with Cingular who wish to break their contracts, this might be an ideal time to do so; after all, Cingular is changing the terms of their contract with you. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 23:03:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hub Sets Citywide WiFi Plan Nonprofit to install `open access' hookups By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff Boston will tap a nonprofit corporation to blanket the city with "open access" wireless Internet connections, under a plan to be unveiled today by Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The plan, which envisions raising $16 million to $20 million from local businesses and foundations, is a striking departure from the business models used by other cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have turned over responsibility for their wireless data networks to outside companies such as Earthlink Inc. and Google Inc. By empowering an independent organization to own and operate the city's WiFi, or wireless fidelity, network, Boston is hoping to keep control of the technology deployment and use it to spur innovation, improve city services, and extend wireless Internet access into low-income neighborhoods across the so-called digital divide. WiFi allows laptops, handheld computers, cellphones, music players, and other devices to connect to the Internet at high speeds via radio waves. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/31/hub_sets_citywide_wifi_plan/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Date: 31 Jul 2006 11:39:55 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com DLR wrote: > My point to all of this is that the world changes and big dominant > companies hate change. It makes them work to maintain their dominance > and what they really want to do is coast and talk about what they are > doing, not actually do something. You make many good points. However, not all "big dominant" companies dislike change and are stagnet, indeed, many of them are the ones developing and pushing the changes. The Bell System and IBM of the 1960s were behind many of the social changes in business communication. Reduced toll rates and more sophisticated technology allowed the telephone to be a commodity than high cost specialized appliance. Centrex and DDD allowed someone to call another instantly compared to operator arrangements people were used to. IBM's reports and punched cards dramatically raised the volume of information being passed around. There was much social criticism of the new world of phones and computers. People pleaded for a place away from the incesant ring of the phone. The Bell System was huge. Some parts were better than others, some quite responsive, others sluggish. From reading responses, I don't know if NYC ever got over the past service crises. IBM went through a relatively brief period of stagnation. It did get too bloated by hiring too many people to fit the IBM "no layoff" model and ceased being lean. But plenty of small companies are merely followers of the big guys with no contribution of their own. IBM was mad at small companies that cloned the fruits of IBM's research (as in tape and disk drives), sold them cheaper, then complained when IBM made upgrades that hurt their clones. My argument against the first poster was that it seems to be more of a triade against the traditional phone companies and not one based on the facts. I am greatly suspicious when someone holds up a new invention and is upset that it isn't in everyone's hand the next day. The world doesn't work that way. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: 2.4Ghz vs. 5.8Ghz Cordless Phones and Health Date: 31 Jul 2006 14:13:01 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Robert Weller wrote: > The 2.4 GHz frequency has greater penetration into tissue, but both > types of phones are Non-licensed devices, meaning that the power > density impinging on your person is extremely low. Absolutely. > The exposure from your WiFi card or garage door opener is probably > comparable to that from a cordless phone. I would disagree with this, because the normal operation of the WiFi card is somewhat away from your body. Likewise the garage door opener is normally some distance away from the body. The inverse square law actually applies here since you're outside of the (very small) nearfield area of the antenna. Also, note the exposure time is different as well. Many folks spend hours a day on the phone. > Bob Weller > Member, SC-4, ICES > (International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety) What IS the current state of affairs on biological RF effects? When last I looked, there were high-intensity B field issues, but almost all the other biological effects had to do with tissue heating, RF burns, etc. As someone who used to have an office under a tower with tens of volts per meter squared, I was keeping pretty close watch on the research in the eighties but I haven't seen anything too recently. scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: jzz Subject: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Date: 31 Jul 2006 11:16:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? Regards, Johann ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #281 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 1 15:26:56 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5C49621E8; Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:26:56 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #282 Message-Id: <20060801192656.5C49621E8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:26:56 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:28:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 282 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New CVS Photo Center Plans (Reuters News Wire) Verizon Stops Tax Collection (Reuters News Wire) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 01, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Netgear Buys SkipJam for $9M (USTelecom dailyLead) Blocking 711 - Revisited (Jim Willis) Universal Telecommunications (nospam) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Steve Sobol) Re: Cingular Plans to Raise Pries on Older Phones (Lisa Hancock) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? (DLR) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (Barry Margolin) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (Matt Simpson) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (Lisa Hancock) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (George Mitchell) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:42:23 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: New CVS Photo Center Plans CVS Matches Walgreen With Online Photo Center CVS Corp. on Tuesday said its new online photo center will allow customers to store images, share them and order photos and gifts, much like a service already in place at rival Walgreen Co. CVS said Internet processing, with photos available at a CVS store within an hour, would be available at more than 4,600 of its stores, and that it plans to offer the CVS Photo Center service in more stores by the end of the year. Walgreen already has the Walgreens Photo Center, an online service for shoppers to send in photos and then pick up printed copies in an hour at a local store or have them shipped. The service also lets shoppers upload and share their photos and create photo gifts, such as mugs and t-shirts, as the new CVS service offers. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 11:44:48 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Verizon Stops Tax Collection Verizon stops excise tax on long distance, bundles Verizon Communications said on Tuesday it stopped collecting a 3 percent federal excise tax on monthly bills for long-distance services and those bundled with wireless and Web-based services. Verizon said the change, effective Tuesday, follows a decision by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Customers will be able to obtain a refund or credit from the IRS on their 2006 federal income tax returns, 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 01, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:31:34 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 01, 2006 ******************************** Cingular Wireless to Impose $5 Surcharge http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19119?11228 NEW YORK -- About 4.7 million Cingular Wireless subscribers with older phones will have to pay $5 extra each month as the company tries to prod them to get new handsets so it can devote its entire network to one type of signal. The new surcharge, unique among the major U.S. carriers, will be added to bills starting in September, ... Dutch Telecom Provider KPN Announces Doubling Net Profit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19117?11228 AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Dutch telecommunications provider Royal KPN NV announced Tuesday that it doubled its second-quarter net profit thanks to a strong performance by its German mobile unit E-Plus. KPN's second quarter net profit came in at Euro 464 million (US$590 million) compared to Euro 230 million a year ago, when ... Internet Phone Provider Vonage Sees Loss Deepen 17 Percent http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19115?11228 NEW YORK -- In its first earnings report as a public company, Internetphone provider Vonage Holdings Corp. said Tuesday its losses increased 17 percent in the second quarter as customer-acquisition costs stayed high. The results illustrated the multiple challenges facing Vonage, which raised $531 million, with a May 24 ... Verizon's Q2 Profit Falls 24 Percent on Labor, Merger Costs But Tops Forecasts http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19113?11228 NEW YORK -- Second-quarter profits fell 24 percent at Verizon Communications Inc., weighed down by labor and merger expenses, but the results exceeded most forecasts as the telephone company's cellular and broadband Internet businesses posted more strong growth. New York-based Verizon said Tuesday it earned $1.61 billion, or... United States: Time Warner, Comcast Complete Adelphia Acquisition http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19109?11228 The U.S. cable TV (CATV) market is undergoing a major consolidation, with Time Warner and Comcast Corporation announcing yesterday (31 July 2006) that they had closed the transaction to acquire the assets of the bankrupt CATV operator Adelphia Communications Corporation. Adelphia Communications was the fifth-largest CATV company in the ... Verizon Lets America Get Sweet on Chocolate http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19105?11228 Verizon Wireless is hoping to take the music phone sector by storm with the launch of LG Electronics' Chocolate handset, a wireless phone that also is a music player. The wireless carrier also announced its intentions to do away with its monthly V CAST Music subscription fee. The chocolate-colored handset features a hidden LCD ... Telenor Beats Two Other Contenders For Serbian Celco http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/19103?11228 Telenor won the auction for Serbian mobile operator Mobi 63 with an offer of $1.93 billion on Monday. In the final round, it topped offers by Telekom Austria AG and Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding SAE. A total of 10 bidders, representing carriers from around the globe, had submitted opening bids for the carrier, which is ... UMA : Next Year's Model? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/100/19101?11228 Being able to seamlessly move voice calls between cellular, WiFi, and other wireless networks is seen as a potentially big step forward for enterprise users, but it probably won't happen for at least a year or longer, according to users and analysts. One of the first convergence technologies expected out of the gate is ... Study: VOIP Quality Getting Worse http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19100?11228 A recent study has found the quality of VOIP calls declining steadily over the past two years, and points to network congestion and lack of service prioritization as the culprits. Brix Networks Inc. has come up with a clever way to study the quality of VOIP calls -- a portal called http://TestYourVOIP.com where consumers themselves ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:55:36 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Netgear Buys SkipJam for $9M USTelecom dailyLead August 1, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eeakfDtutfwuehIJbY TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Netgear buys SkipJam for $9M BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Time Warner, Comcast complete buyout of Adelphia * Cingular announces surcharge for users of old phones * Ikanos to buy Doradus * Verizon, Vonage, Qwest report earnings USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Softswitch: Architecture for VoIP TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Special report: Video on the Web * Gen Y takes to tech, at the expense of TV REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Phone-tax refund a headache for businesses * FCC rules for MASN in baseball dispute with Comcast Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eeakfDtutfwuehIJbY ------------------------------ Reply-To: Jim Willis From: Jim Willis Subject: Blocking 711 - Revisited Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 13:05:41 -0400 I posted here a long time ago about the blocking of 711 in Long Term Care and Hotels. Question: I can see their side of it as they don't need people making toll calls they are not aware of. Is there a way of ordering "NO LONG DISTANCE on this Line" flag from the telco then the relay operator would know to ask for a calling card or other method of payment for Long Distance. Does anyone know if this is do-able or if the phone company is supposed to do this and that the Long Term Care and Hotels are not aware of it. Jim Willis [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes there is. Have telco set the line up for 'No Long Distance' which then forces the user to do zero-plus and pass the billing details to the operator. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Frank Huguenard Subject: Universal Telecommunications Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 17:19:26 GMT Please check out http://www.z-boyz.org/ut.htm Thanks! ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:17:07 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Dan Lanciani wrote: > Looks like it might be time to leave Cingular. I currently still have > an analog-only phone with a ~$25/month plan. It appears that > Cingular's cheapest current plan is ~$40/month and doesn't even > include unlimited nights/weekends. Sprint and T-Mobile have > ~$30/month plans with unlimited nights/weekends and weekends > respectively. I hate to give up the analog coverage, but maybe the > new features make it worth considering. If you can get your Cingular phone unlocked, you can stick a T-Mo sim into it. Plus, Sprint used to be nowhere near as horrible as many people claimed - my wife and I used them for years with no problems -- and then their CS tanked when they outsourced it. T-Mo customer service has been consistently terrific for us in the year since we moved there from Sprint. > What does T-Mobile's unlimited web service at $5.99/month do for me? > Would I be able to access arbitrary web servers (in particular, my > own) or is it only for special "mobile web destinations?" (I don't > mean whether the format of the web page is suitable for a mobile > display but whether they constrain the the IP addresses to which I can > connect.) It's supposed to allow you to access any mobile web site, unlike T-Zones which is free but only allows access to T-Mo's web portal. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Cingular Plans to Raise Pries on Older Phones Date: 1 Aug 2006 10:32:42 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Reuters News Wire wrote: > Cingular, which hopes to create savings by converging to a single > network, said last month on a conference call that it would risk an > increase in customer cancellations for the rest of the year as it > works to eliminate the older technology. This sucks. Unfortunately, customers who cancel won't be able to use their analog phones elsewhere. AFAIK, other companies don't honor them. Of course, some customers might change just out of principle. > Customer discounts on new phones will depend on issues such as how > long they have been customers at Cingular. If they believe in loyalty, they'll provide a nice deep discount. Since analog hasn't been around for a while, most customers have probably been long standing. > Cohen said the quality of service on Cingular's GSM network is better > than on its TDMA and analog networks. How good is it in fringe areas -- both in rural and within built up areas? Have they eliminated all the tough dead spots that analog handles just fine. Digital signals have lots of dead spots. I was on a train last year and my old analog phone worked just fine. But everyone else's died. That is ridiculous in this day and age -- that ten year old "ancient" technology works better than 2005 technology. Is GSM used on other US systems? Do their phones still have the old "A/B" switch to work between two carriers if one carrier is unavailable? (Is that A/B switch used by anyone anymore? In the early days, the idea was that phones could switch between the two pioneer carriers -- the Bell company and the independent.) > It is planning to shut down its TDMA network in early 2008 and under > Federal Communications Commission rules it must keep its analog > network in place until February 2008, Cohen said. Interesting. I thought it was the FCC mandating to shut down analog to steal its frequencies. But is it that the telcos want to shut it down? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can tell you my personal experience: When I migrated here to live I had a *Chicago area-based* (a/c 630) phone from AT&T Wireless.The old AT&T quit serving Independence and sold or traded this territory to Cingular Wireless. In fact, the AT&T Wireless store downtown one day converted into a Cingular Wireless, but all the same people working there; just the sign in front was changed. They made a 'suggestion' that I would be better off changing my service to the Cingular network (although AT&T continued to work just fine at that time). I took their advice and became a Cingular TDMA customer. The new phone was an _identical_ Nokia, and it worked fine. Then they started their present GSM campaign. I did not want to throw away all my accessories so in addition to the Nokia 6010 they insisted I had to have, I bought on E-Bay a phone sort of similar to the one I had been using quite successfully for a couple years, thus was able to keep on using (mostly, but not entirely) my accessories. GSM works just fine here, although I get a little nervous seeing the 'signal strength' bar being very low most of the time (with the old system, the signal bar always hit the top all the time.) But frankly, I do not care for the 'attitude' of the two guys who work in the Cingular store here, and I think when renewal time comes around I will swap out for either Cellular One (Dobson around here) or U.S. Cellular or _possibly_ Alltel. I do not see anything particularly special about GSM. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 07:42:21 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > DLR wrote: >> My point to all of this is that the world changes and big dominant >> companies hate change. It makes them work to maintain their dominance >> and what they really want to do is coast and talk about what they are >> doing, not actually do something. > You make many good points. However, not all "big dominant" companies > dislike change and are stagnet, indeed, many of them are the ones > developing and pushing the changes. > The Bell System and IBM of the 1960s were behind many of the social > changes in business communication. Reduced toll rates and more > sophisticated technology allowed the telephone to be a commodity than > high cost specialized appliance. Centrex and DDD allowed someone to > call another instantly compared to operator arrangements people were > used to. IBM's reports and punched cards dramatically raised the > volume of information being passed around. > There was much social criticism of the new world of phones and > computers. People pleaded for a place away from the incesant ring of > the phone. > The Bell System was huge. Some parts were better than others, some > quite responsive, others sluggish. From reading responses, I don't > know if NYC ever got over the past service crises. > IBM went through a relatively brief period of stagnation. It did get > too bloated by hiring too many people to fit the IBM "no layoff" model > and ceased being lean. It was not relatively brief. It was continuous. But it wasn't stagnation as much as taking great things and doing mediocre things with them. It was just that being dominant in their fields hid much of it most of the time. I have friends in some key places inside IBM and they talk about the constant battle to compete against the competition, not against what they did last year. But it has gotten much better. Read the Mythical Man Month. He talks about how only IBM had the resources to do the System 360 at the time but the bureaucracy of IBM almost doomed the project. There's another book about quality written by a senior IBMr from the past. For a while he ran the typewriter division in the 60s/70s with a mandate to turn a profit or shut it down. Manufacturing was a disaster. He cleaned it up, totally changed it, and 5 years after he left it was back as if he's never been there. Dominance breeds contempt of others. Sometimes through ignorance but it's there. The best IBM story is why they got out of the networking businesses. When Gerstner came in he made everyone show their P&L and if you were loosing money justify why you should exist other than "because". He also had them break out green vs. blue revenue and profits. This is what created the riots. Networking was something like 90% blue and 10% green. I.E. only 10% of the revenue came from sales to customers. The rest came from sales to run the IBM in house network, service contracts, and bundles with other hardware sales. Note in this last category that IBM was forbidden to sell anything from a competitor if IBM made something else that worked. So a $10 million mainframe sale might include $5 million of IBM networking. Once they dug deep into this practice and what their customers wanted, they shut down the networking division within a year and sold it off to Cisco. But try going into an IBM retail store in the 80s and buy something for PC. Before you could pay for it and leave you had to register the serial number of the floppy disk drive with your name and address. There are other stories about DB2, Microchannel, disk drives, etc ... At to Bell Labs, they did great work. Most of it took years to make it into the field. Much of it went no where in terms of the phone system. I still remember how colored phones were marketed as innovations. I had an older cousin who was a senior sales rep for Bell in IL in the 70s. He could spout the company line all day long about innovation, protecting network from foreign devices, etc ... He would also say privately it was all about locking everyone else out of the market. > But plenty of small companies are merely followers of the big guys > with no contribution of their own. IBM was mad at small companies > that cloned the fruits of IBM's research (as in tape and disk drives), > sold them cheaper, then complained when IBM made upgrades that hurt > their clones. It's called a free market. If they really impinged on IBM patents they could have been made to pay royalties or not sell the products. What really was happening was IBM was claiming that plugging in any non-IBM device voided the warranties and service contracts on the entire system; similar to Bell and their $150 + monthly charges data protection device to plug in a phone not supplied by the phone company. Or heaven forbid a modem. If the old Bell system was still in place without the fall out of the MCI situation, we'd all still be debating whether or not 128kbps ISDN was worth the extra costs and wondering why the rest of the planet had 3mbps Internet. But we'd be told over and over it wasn't very reliable compared to the great product we were using. Heard that line WAY too many times. Watching the mainframe sort wars of the 80s was similar. Syncsort(?) had a sort that was up to twice as fast as IBMs. Every week in ComppurterWorld they'd run a different ad showing how their sort ground IBM into the dust in a different situation. After a few years IBM started running ads showing how they really were better according to their "fair" tests. Then it came out when no one could reproduce IBM's results that they were faked. High up at IBM the troops were told to beat the competition, period. So they did. They just forgot to play by the rules since that was the only way to win. Bell and IBM had great research arms. They had lots of bright people. But the companies were run by managers who were out to protect their turf at all costs. And bringing new widgets to markets where they already owned 90% of the market was riskier than doing nothing. I say the above based on a variety of information sources. I've been a potential customer of IBM where they wanted us to switch to them in the 80s for the 500 or so minicomputers we were installing around the country a year. To be blunt, they flat out lied about the capabilities of the computers. And given the looks on the faces of the folks we worked with, they knew it but were under orders. I also worked in IBM manufacturing as a grunt to pay the bills during a career switch. (Amazing way you can see from the bottom. :) ) I have current friends who are high up in Leveno and IBM. They like the company but want to fix the flaws, not ignore them. > My argument against the first poster was that it seems to be more of a > triade against the traditional phone companies and not one based on > the facts. > I am greatly suspicious when someone holds up a new invention and is > upset that it isn't in everyone's hand the next day. The world > doesn't work that way. Agreed. But then again IBM and AT&T were never in a hurry to put out new things unless it would increase profits. And new things in technology tend to lower profits unless you also grow the market and that's not always a given. If you want to really see the economics of high tech at work, look around and think about the turn over in retail computer stores for the last 15 years. They just have a real hard time dealing with the costs of their products dropping by 1/3 year after year after year. It makes you scared to put out a new product. And if you "own" the market you tend to do just that. Sit on things that are disruptive. As to a counter to this think of Intel, Cisco (usually), Texas Instruments, and lately Motorola. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Organization: Symantec Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:50:52 -0400 In article , jzz wrote: > What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? You're going to have to be more specific than just "mainframes". -- 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: Matt Simpson Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 10:28:47 -0400 Organization: None In article , jzz wrote: > What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? What's a "mainframe"? I hear a lot of people using that word, but very few of them can tell me what they mean when they say it. You will probably find lots of different machines that fit somebody's vague definition of "mainframe", and you will probably find that they have very different security interfaces. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Date: 1 Aug 2006 07:33:12 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com jzz wrote: > What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? There are a variety of mainframe security packages, and the command set would vary by both package and installation policy. Your organization should have a security representative who is familiar with the package and authorized to make changes to it. You should see that person with your questions. As an end user, normally you would not be allowed to enter such a command or even receive that information. ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 09:57:09 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com jzz wrote: > What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? > Regards, > Johann As I recall, it's the same as the command to get ceasefire enforcement for the Middle East. I had it written down somewhere, but I can't seem to lay my hands on it at the moment ... -- George Mitchell ------------------------------ 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 #282 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 2 01:15:54 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C52F92220; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:15:53 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #283 Message-Id: <20060802051553.C52F92220@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:15:53 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 2 Aug 2006 01:18:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 283 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - August 1, 2006 (Jonathan Marashlian) Not Much Interest in Cell Phone Gadgets (Chicago Tribune News Wire) Court Okays Look at NY Times Phone Records (David B. Caruso, AP) Honda Owner Manual Lists Talk Line (Monty Solomon) Verizon Reports Continued Strong Quarterly Results (Monty Solomon) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (DLR) Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes (Robert Bonomi) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Mark Roberts) Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills (Hancock) Satellite Telephones, Systems, Information UPDATED August,1st (sezamorg) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: From: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - August 1, 2006 Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 15:30:01 -0400 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 FCC PROVIDES GUIDANCE ON A COMPLETING CARRIER'S DUTY TO SHARE CALL TRACKING SYSTEM AUDIT WORK PAPERS On July 11, 2006, the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") released an Order clarifying the audit information sharing provisions of its Tollgate rules in the context of a complaint proceeding involving payphone aggregator, American Public Communications Council (APCC), and completing carrier, IDT. The FCC's Tollgate rules ensure that PSPs are fairly compensated for coinless calls originated from their payphones. These rules require that the last facilities-based long distance carrier in a call path, the "completing carrier," compensate PSPs for coinless calls that are completed by that carrier. The Tollgate rules also provide for detailed procedures to ensure that calls are tracked in a way that allows for compensation, review of these procedures by a third party auditor, and sharing of the audit information with the FCC and PSPs for which they complete calls. The provision requiring the sharing of audit information (such as work papers) was the focal point of the APCC-IDT dispute which gave rise to the FCC's Order. The Tollgate rules require that, "subject to protec- tions safeguarding the auditor's and the Completing Carrier's confidential and proprietary information, the Completing Carrier shall provide, upon request, to the payphone service provider for inspection any documents, including working papers, underlying the System Audit Report." In July 2004, IDT filed its first System Audit Report with the FCC. Two months later APCC (on behalf of its PSP clients) requested "all documents underlying [IDT's] system audit report." This request prompted a dialogue regarding the terms of the information exchange. IDT questioned which PSPs APCC was requesting the information for, requested documentation of APCC's authority to request the information of their behalf, and wanted to produce the information at its New Jersey office, while APCC demanded that copies be sent to their attorney's Washington, D.C. office. While the parties were still discussing the production of the documents, on February 1, 2005, APCC filed an informal Section 208 complaint with the FCC. The APCC complaint alleged that IDT violated the Communications Act by engaging in a "dilatory and obstructive pattern of conduct" in response to APCC's request for documents underlying the System Audit Report, and by failing to provide those documents. The complaint asked that the FCC to find IDT in violation of Rule 64.1320(g) and the Act. The only relief sought by APCC was an FCC order requiring IDT to either deliver copies of the Underlying Documents (work papers) to their attorneys, or alternatively, to allow APCC to inspect the documents in Washington, D.C., and to request and receive copies of such documents, subject to the condition that Complainants reasonably compensate IDT for such copies. APCC and IDT reached an agreement regarding the terms of disclosure before the FCC resolved the pending complaint. IDT thereafter filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. APCC, however, opposed the motion on grounds that: (1) IDT could evade review again in the future; (2) APCC was harmed by the delay in obtaining the documents; and (3) IDT may have failed to produce all of the documents. In its July 11th Order, the FCC granted IDT's motion to dismiss, but in doing so provided official guidance to the industry in order to facilitate prompt production of audit documents in the future. The FCC's Order clarified a Completing Carrier's duties to produce, as follows: 1 "We believe that it is reasonable to expect that a party requesting documents under rule 64.1320(g) will specifically identify on whose behalf it makes the request." 2. "We note that rule 64.1320(g) effectively requires the Completing Carrier to permit payphone service providers to copy the audit documents, at the payphone service providers' expense, not merely to examine them. To the extent that copying raises greater issues of safeguarding confidential information than does on-site inspection, we expect parties to be able to address this in their nondisclosure agreements." 3. "We note that this rule effectively requires Completing Carriers to ensure that their auditors are contractually obligated to provide the documents covered by the rule if a payphone service provider requests them. This obligation can readily be imposed when the auditor is engaged; if the Completing Carrier fails to take this step, then any 'impossibility' of compliance will be of its own making. If the auditor failed to live up to its contractual obligation, we would consider whether the Completing Carrier had taken all reasonable steps to enforce compliance before we would excuse its failure to provide the documents as 'impossible.'" Clients seeking assistance with rule 64.1320(g) and other Tollgate requirements may contact Jonathan S. Marashlian at jsm@thlglaw.com or 703-714-1313. VONAGE APPEALS TO DC CIRCUIT REGARDING FCC ORDER EXTENDING USF CONTRIBUTIONS TO VoIP PROVIDERS On July 21, 20006, Voice over IP provider, Vonage, filed a Petition for Review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asking the court to review the FCC's Report and Order altering the methodology for assessing contributions to the federal Universal Service Fund ("USF"). At issue is the FCC's decision to apply registration requirements and USF contribution obligations on "interconnected VoIP" providers, such as Vonage. The case is docketed as Vonage Holdings Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission, 06-1276. QWEST ASKS DC CIRCUIT TO REVIEW FCC PREPAID CALLING CARD ORDER On July 16, 2006, Qwest Services Corporation ("Qwest") filed a Petition for Review asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the FCC's June 30, 2006, Declaratory Ruling and Report and Order, In the Matter of Regulation of Prepaid Calling Card Services, WC Docket No. 05-68, FCC 06-79. In the Order the FCC determined it will treat all prepaid calling card service providers as telecommunications service providers. Such providers are required to, among other things, pay interstate access charges on interexchange calls that originate and terminate in different states, and to contribute to the universal service fund based on their interstate revenues. Qwest argues that the FCC's Order is arbitrary and capricious, contrary to the record and otherwise not in accordance with law. FCC REQUESTING COMMENTS ON MULTIPLE RBOC AND INDEPENDENT LEC FORBEARANCE PETITIONS In the past several weeks, incumbent local exchange providers BellSouth, AT&T, Qwest and Embarq (formerly Sprint) all filed Petitions requesting FCC forbearance from the application of common carrier regulations, such as Title II and Computer Inquiry rules, to their "broadband" offerings. BellSouth asks the Commission to grant BellSouth and similarly situated carriers forbearance from Title II and the Computer Inquiry rules to certain specified broadband services. Qwest and AT&T also filed separate Forbearance Petitions. In its petition, Qwest asks the FCC to forbear from applying Title II and the Computer Inquiry rules to any broadband services Qwest does or may offer to the extent those services are not offered as part of an Internet access service. AT&T, in its petition, asks the Commission to forbear from applying Title II and the Computer Inquiry rules to non-time division multiplex (non-TDM) based broadband transmission services offered by AT&T and other Bell Operating Companies. On July 26, 2006, the Embarq Local Operating Companies asked the FCC to forbear from applying Title II and Computer Inquiry rules to certain broadband services offered by Embarq and similarly situated independent incumbent local exchange carriers (independent incumbent LECs). Specifically, Embarq seeks relief from Title II requirements regarding tariffs, prices, cost support, price caps, and pricing flexibility for certain broadband services. Embarq also seeks relief from the Computer Inquiry requirements to the extent they require independent incumbent LECs to tariff and offer the transport component of their broadband services on a stand-alone basis. Reacting to the spate of Forbearance Petitions by the RBOCs, CompTel and Embarq asked the FCC to extend the comment and reply comment deadlines. On July 28, 2006, the FCC granted in part and denied in part the motions filed by CompTel and Embarq. The FCC agreed to extend the comment date until August 17, 2006, and the reply comment date until August 31, 2006 on the three RBOC petitions. The same filing deadlines apply to the Embarq petition. 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 775 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 23:26:27 -0500 From: Chicago Tribune News Wire Subject: Not Much Interest in Cell Phone Gadgets CHICAGO _ These days, mobile phones have all sorts of bells and whistles, including models that play videos and download music. Yet so far, customers appear happier using their phones to do old-fashioned things, like making a call. Heralded as the next big technological conversion, phones that download music and play videos aren't as popular as some in the industry had hoped they would be at this point. And that is forcing some wireless companies to rethink their strategies. Verizon Wireless, the nation's second-largest carrier, said it will stop charging customers $15 a month to subscribe to a music service few customers were using. That shift came this week even as Verizon introduced a new music phone, dubbed Chocolate, that is eerily similar in style to the popular iPod, the runaway leader in music-playing gadgets. Downloading rates for music are less than what industry experts had hoped. A study released Monday from Forrester Research shows only 6 percent of mobile phone subscribers download or stream music files once a week while only 3 percent of customers do the same with video services. That compares to 38 percent of customers who say they send a text or picture message. Some of the problems for carriers lie in the popularity of other devices. Music remains the domain for Apple Computer Inc., even as competitors ranging from mobile phonemakers to Microsoft Corp. revamp their strategies for selling music online. Now Verizon is "acknowledging that the monthly fee is a barrier to experimentation," holding back the adoption of music services on mobile phones, said Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester. "Phones continue to be communication devices." Verizon still will charge customers $15 a month to access its video services, but customers interested in music will only pay to download the songs. "It is hard to say goodbye to $15 a month per customer, but by eliminating the fee, a lot of people will start" downloading music, said Jeffrey Nelson, Verizon's executive director of corporate communications. "Two bucks might entice people to start doing this more than $15 plus two bucks." Verizon charges $1.99 to have a song downloaded directly to a phone with another copy sent to the computer. Or, users can pay 99 cents to download a song to a computer and then manually transfer it to a phone. Nelson said more downloads have come "over the air" to a consumer's phone, even though it costs $1 more. "That surprises us," he said. It doesn't surprise Julie Ask, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The price disparity reflects that people are experimenting," she said. They want to see how the service works. "The reality is that most of the music I want to put on my phone is what I already own," Ask said. "A small portion of that music is bought from a carrier." That also applies to the iPod. In a survey Jupiter conducted earlier this year, it found that only 8 percent of the music people have on their iPods comes from Apple's iTunes online music store. Those figures come despite the fact that Apple has sold more than 1 billion songs from its iTunes music store, launched in 2003. By comparison, Nelson said Verizon has sold more than 1 million songs online since launching its music service in January, but he did not provide further details. Nor did Verizon provide details about song downloads or customer usage in Tuesday's second-quarter earnings report. It did report that revenue for data services, including text messaging and e-mails, topped $1 billion for the quarter, a record for the carrier. Music sales are better for Sprint, where more than 4 million songs have been downloaded since October 2005, said spokesman Mark Elliot. He added that Sprint has no plans to separate music downloads from its Power Vision service, which starts at $15 a month and includes video. But of the 51 million subscribers Sprint has, only 750,000 customers were paying for Power Vision at the end of the first quarter. Cingular Wireless has taken a different path. It does not have a store for people to download songs, but it launched a relationship in October with Motorola Inc. and Apple to put the iTunes software on the Rokr phone. It is now available on one other Cingular phone, but Apple capped the number of songs a user could put on a phone at 100, which limited the popularity of those models. Video, too, has been problematic for carriers. For one, people don't have large video collections they tote around, Ask said. Plus, most people so far don't see the value in watching video clips on a 2-inch screen. According to Jupiter's research, Ask said only 1 percent of mobile customers watch video on their phones, and that figure is expected to rise to only 5 percent by 2010. "Prices have to start to come down to attract more users," she said. "They are not interested right now." The debate on the merits of mobile video has become so intense lately that an analyst report from Merrill Lynch last month called for ESPN to dump its phone service, which highlights clips from fans' favorite sports teams and ESPN shows. The Merrill analysts previously said ESPN should attract 240,000 subscribers this year. Now, they say it will only attract 30,000. "It is time ... to pull the plug on Mobile ESPN," they wrote. A spokeswoman for Mobile ESPN acknowledged slower sales than anticipated, but the company has made several changes to pricing, added new handsets. The service now also is sold at Sprint stores. "Mobile ESPN is not for everybody," she said. "We've said that from the beginning. We're only five and a half months into this." Verizon hopes its new strategy will help jump-start what so far has been low adoption rates for music downloads. Some of that hope rests on the shoulders of LG Electronics' Chocolate phone, which will be in stores next week. With a 2-megabyte storage card _ sold separately _ the Chocolate can store roughly 1,000 songs. The phone features a scroll wheel in front, similar to the iPod, to move quickly through a user's song library. "We think it will draw music lovers to Verizon from other carriers," Nelson said. "And for our existing customer base, for real music lovers, this is something they will upgrade to." Golvin said Verizon might be on the right track. In order for mobile music to succeed, the complexity of the service needs to be removed, he said. "All the carriers need to provide some sort of freebie period to get people hooked." (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 23:36:04 -0500 From: David B. Caruso Subject: Court Okays Look at NY Times Phone Records By DAVID B. CARUSO Federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned on a 2-1 vote a lower court's ruling that the records were off limits unless prosecutors could show they had exhausted all other means of finding out who spoke to the newspaper. The judges said a grand jury investigation of the disclosures wasn't likely to go anywhere without help from the reporters or access to their records. "There is simply no substitute for the evidence they have," Judge Ralph K. Winter wrote. The newspaper was considering an appeal, its lawyers said. The case involved stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon that revealed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. Prosecutors claimed the reporters' phone calls to the charities seeking comment had tipped the organizations off about the government investigation. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald asked the Times for information about the source of the reports in 2002, then threatened to subpoena phone company billing records in 2004. The newspaper sued to block any such effort, saying prosecutors might use the records to fish for information about the Times' sources for a long list of stories. In February 2005, the newspaper appeared to achieve a victory when U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet ruled that the government had failed to prove that it had exhausted all other methods. Tuesday's decision to overturn the lower court ruling prompted a dissent by Judge Robert D. Sack, who said prosecutors had made little effort to assure the court that the information was unavailable from any other source. He noted, however, that the majority opinion contained at least two victories for journalists: It held that reporters do have a right, in some circumstances, to protect the identities of people they speak to, and government investigators may not simply bypass an uncooperative reporter by seizing records from a phone company. "Without such protection," Sack wrote, "prosecutors, limited only by their own self-restraint, could obtain records that identify journalists' confidential sources in gross and virtually at will. "Reporters might find themselves, as a matter of practical necessity, contacting sources the way I understand drug dealers reach theirs - by use of clandestine cell phones and meetings in darkened doorways." Times attorney Floyd Abrams said the closeness of the vote illustrates a disagreement within the courts about whether reporters have a limited privilege to protect their sources. "Not until the U.S. Supreme Court takes one of these cases and decides it will we really know where we are," Abrams said. It is unclear whether prosecutors already have the Times' phone records. Fitzgerald's office has refused to say whether it received the records before the Times sued. A spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment. Fitzgerald had Miller jailed last year for refusing to tell a grand jury about conversations she had with the vice president's chief of staff regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame. Copyright 2006 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 00:27:27 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Honda Owner Manual Lists Talk Line WASHINGTON, Jul 31, 2006 (AP Online via COMTEX News Network) -- A toll-free number listed in more than a million Honda owners' manuals was supposed to direct callers to a government hotline - not to another number where the conversation is probably about anything but auto safety. Honda Motor Co. said it incorrectly published an 800 prefix, rather than an 888, on a toll-free vehicle safety telephone number in 1.2 million manuals for 2006 model year Honda and Acura vehicles and Honda motorcycles. Owners who dial the 800 prefix hear a recorded message in which a woman's voice, speaking over a funky beat, urges them to call 1-800-918-TALK for "just 99 cents per minute." - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=60129282 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 00:31:37 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Reports Continued Strong Quarterly Results Verizon Reports Continued Strong Quarterly Results - Aug 1, 2006 06:55 AM (PR Newswire) Maintaining industry-leading growth in wireless and broadband markets, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) today reported continued strong financial and operational results for the second quarter 2006. Verizon reported quarterly earnings of $1.6 billion, or 55 cents per diluted share, compared with $2.1 billion, or 75 cents per share, in the second quarter 2005. Reported earnings in the second quarter 2006 reflect 9 cents per share in special items for severance and related pension and benefits charges, and for employee relocations and merger integration costs. Reported earnings in the second quarter 2005 had included a net of 12 cents per share in non-recurring gains, principally from the sale of Verizon's wireline and directory operations in Hawaii. Before special items (non-GAAP), Verizon's earnings were 64 cents per share in the second quarter 2006, compared with 63 cents in the second quarter 2005. For the full year, Verizon has reiterated guidance of 2006 EPS similar to 2005 earnings of $2.56 per share before special items. Consolidated operating revenues in the second quarter 2006 were $22.7 billion, a 25.6 percent increase compared with the second quarter 2005. Consolidated total operating expenses were $19.1 billion, a 35.7 percent increase compared with the second quarter 2005. Reported results in the second quarter 2006 include revenues and expenses from the former MCI, Inc., which merged with Verizon on Jan. 6, 2006. On a pro-forma (non-GAAP) basis, comparing second quarter 2006 with second quarter 2005, adjusted operating revenues increased 2.3 percent, adjusted cash expenses increased 1.0 percent and adjusted operating income increased 12.4 percent. Adjusted operating income margins, including the effects of net pension and OPEB (other post-retirement benefits), would have been 17.7 percent in second quarter 2006, compared with 16.1 percent in second quarter 2005. Pro-forma adjusted information presents the combined operating results of Verizon and the former MCI on a comparable basis. - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=60104138 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 16:17:11 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes George Mitchell wrote: > jzz wrote: >> What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? >> Regards, >> Johann > As I recall, it's the same as the command to get ceasefire enforcement > for the Middle East. I had it written down somewhere, but I can't > seem to lay my hands on it at the moment ... Look to see if it's taped to the bottom of your keyboard. I assume if it was on a PostIt you'd have seen it by now. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Password Enforcement Policy For Mainframes Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:44:44 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , jzz wrote: > What is the command to get password enforcement policy for mainframes ? In some environments, 'XYZZY', 'plugh', and 'plover' will provide interesting info. Of course, it helps if you _really_ are a wizard, and not just a charlatan. ------------------------------ From: markrobt@myrealbox.com (Mark Roberts) Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:49:44 -0000 Organization: 1.94 meters Dan Lanciani had written: > Looks like it might be time to leave Cingular. I currently still have > an analog-only phone with a ~$25/month plan. It appears that > Cingular's cheapest current plan is ~$40/month and doesn't even > include unlimited nights/weekends. Sprint and T-Mobile have > ~$30/month plans with unlimited nights/weekends and weekends > respectively. I hate to give up the analog coverage, but maybe the > new features make it worth considering. In my household, this may finally motivate us to make some changes. The two TDMA phones have batteries that are starting to get flaky. As it is, we're not using even half the minutes we're paying for each month. Even though we're on a corporate plan, I feel like we're overpaying. And the plans that we have are not offered by Cingular any more. Instead, Cingular keeps trying to entice us into changes with new phones, with features that we don't need, offering rate plans that are more expensive, giving us yet more minutes that we won't ever use, while trying to lock us into two-year contracts. I don't see much better from other providers, at least ones that work at my house. No wonder I can resist the temptation. Cell phone providers have earned their lousy, customer-hostile reputation, and that reputation, too, rolls over from month to month. Mark Roberts - Oakland, CA - NO HTML MAIL ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills? Date: 1 Aug 2006 13:07:00 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com DLR wrote: >> IBM went through a relatively brief period of stagnation. It did get >> too bloated by hiring too many people to fit the IBM "no layoff" model >> and ceased being lean. > It was not relatively brief. It was continuous. But it wasn't > stagnation as much as taking great things and doing mediocre things > with them. It was just that being dominant in their fields hid much of > it most of the time. I have friends in some key places inside IBM and > they talk about the constant battle to compete against the > competition, not against what they did last year. But it has gotten > much better. Read the Mythical Man Month. He talks about how only IBM > had the resources to do the System 360 at the time but the bureaucracy > of IBM almost doomed the project. I read Mythical Man Month some time ago but don't recall that the IBM bureacracy almost killing the project. IBM was a much smaller company then. Could you elaborate on what was said on that subject? My impression from the book (and others) was that IBM greatly understimated the time to develop S/360 hardware and software, test it, and get it out the door. It was hard to test the software before the hardware was ready to have something run on it. Further, the OS software turned out to be much more complex than expected, that is, harder to write, harder to debug, harder to use, and most importantly, extremely slow. Brooks' point was that throwing more people at the project only made it later, and some projects will require time so matter how many people are thrown at it. > When Gerstner came in .... I think the biggest problem when he came it was IBM was too big to support the declining business. If there were no PCs or minis and IBM kept selling bigger and fancier mainframes ever year -- as it had been doing since 1952 -- it would've done ok. But that was no longer the marketplace. Just like GM discovernig the marketplace of the 1950s and 1960s had expired in the 1970s. Mainframes were more of a commodity than they were before; IBM's extensive customization options were not as necessary. I remember the extremely complex option list for PCs -- stuff that would make sense on a mainframe but not on a PC. In other words, while mainframes were still a viable product, IBM had to significantly reduce the number of people involved in making them--reduce the cost per unit. IBM never had to contract before in its history, it never had layoffs. It almost always had growth. The consent decree (more below) constrained IBM from freely competing in those years. > But try going into an IBM retail store in the 80s and buy something > for PC. Before you could pay for it and leave you had to register > the serial number of the floppy disk drive with your name and address. A lot of software vendors in those days imposed various restrictions. > At to Bell Labs, they did great work. Most of it took years to make it > into the field. Much of it went no where in terms of the phone > system. I still remember how colored phones were marketed as > innovations. I had an older cousin who was a senior sales rep for Bell > in IL in the 70s. He could spout the company line all day long about > innovation, protecting network from foreign devices, etc ... He would > also say privately it was all about locking everyone else out of the > market. In the 1970s, with electromechanical switching, there were very legitimate concerns about foreign devices hurting the network. The Independent phone companies, state PUCs, and FCC engineers were all in agreement on that risk. ESS has more tolerance and controls. Further, the world has changed. In those days, regardless of actual fault, Bell would be the one held responsible -- blamed -- for any problems caused by foreign gear, not the actual irresponsible party. As to keeping others out of the market, that was FCC policy. The market was cross subsidized -- the profits from business and toll services cross subsidized local residents. (Today we have 911 and Universal Service Fees. Back then the dial 0 operator handled 911 calls and that was a big part of their traffic.) Anyway, they knew that they'd STILL have to keep residential rates low but without the cross subsidy. > It's called a free market. If they really impinged on IBM patents they > could have been made to pay royalties or not sell the products. IBM, as a result of the consent decree, did not have patent protection. It was required to release its patents and technology to allow that kind of competition. But how far should IBM go to prop up its competitors? > What really was happening was IBM was claiming that plugging in any > non-IBM device voided the warranties and service contracts on the > entire system; similar to Bell and their $150 + monthly charges data > protection device to plug in a phone not supplied by the phone > company. Or heaven forbid a modem. If the old Bell system was still > in place without the fall out of the MCI situation, we'd all still > be debating whether or not 128kbps ISDN was worth the extra costs > and wondering why the rest of the planet had 3mbps Internet. But > we'd be told over and over it wasn't very reliable compared to the > great product we were using. Heard that line WAY too many times. Times have changed since 1983. IBM changed over the years and the Bell System would've changed to. It was already on its way to dumping company ownership of customer equipment with ESS coming in, better FCC certification, and a recognition that customer problems were the customer's fault. IBM prospered when it dropped bundled and so would've Bell -- as the Baby Bell's did quite nicely. One key difference was that IBM won its lawsuit but was content to stick with the consent decree a while longer (it eventually rid itself of that and made a big difference). AT&T want it gone so it could go into new projects, which it promptly did. > Watching the mainframe sort wars of the 80s was similar. Syncsort(?) > had a sort that was up to twice as fast as IBMs. Every week in > ComppurterWorld they'd run a different ad showing how their sort > ground IBM into the dust in a different situation. After a few years > IBM started running ads showing how they really were better > according to their "fair" tests. Strange. I remember Syncsorts ads very well; but never saw an IBM ad for Sort. I also never knew a site that didn't use Syncsort. I thought IBM's sort was free, anyway. Software products didn't become a big thing until the 1990s; they were once free, then pretty cheap. > Bell and IBM had great research arms. They had lots of bright people. > But the companies were run by managers who were out to protect their > turf at all costs. And bringing new widgets to markets where they > already owned 90% of the market was riskier than doing nothing. Except both companies continually did bring new products to market. Also both companies made continual improvements internally to existing products. The "bank per buck" of IBM machines always improved over time. > I say the above based on a variety of information sources. I've been > a potential customer of IBM where they wanted us to switch to them > in the 80s for the 500 or so minicomputers we were installing around > the country a year. I do not claim that every IBM product was the best in the marketplace or IBM didn't make mistakes. However, my employers have been IBM customers for the last 35 years and I've seen what they can do. I've also dealt with other vendors and for the most part IBM was superior. Not always, but usually. > Agreed. But then again IBM and AT&T were never in a hurry to put out > new things unless it would increase profits. Just like any other company. > And new things in technology tend to lower profits unless you also > grow the market and that's not always a given. If you want to really > see the economics of high tech at work, look around and think about > the turn over in retail computer stores for the last 15 years. They > just have a real hard time dealing with the costs of their products > dropping by 1/3 year after year after year. It makes you scared to > put out a new product. And if you "own" the market you tend to do > just that. Sit on things that are disruptive. If that were true, we'd still have SxS or panel and open lines and talk on candlesticks. Period. We'd be using punch card machines. Period. Both IBM and Bell took plenty of risks over the years. ESS and S/360 were HUGE expensive risks, fraught with tons of problems along the way. They have taken big risks and small risks. > As to a counter to this think of Intel, Cisco (usually), Texas > Instruments, and lately Motorola. ------------------------------ From: sezamorg Subject: Satellite telephones, systems, informations... UPDATED August,1st Date: 1 Aug 2006 13:52:08 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Satellite communications alternatives and informations (March 2006) Introduction, satellite phone models informations, satellite FAX system informations, VoIP informations, Conclusions Look at http://www.freewebs.com/sattelephones ------------------------------ 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 #283 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 2 17:42:08 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 735602213; Wed, 2 Aug 2006 17:42:08 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #284 Message-Id: <20060802214208.735602213@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 17:42:08 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 2 Aug 2006 17:45:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 284 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free and Ad Supported (Reuters News) Questions and Answers on AOL Now Mostly Free (Anick Jesdanun, AP) Time-Warner and Comcast to Trade Cable Systems (Neal McLain) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 02, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) AOL Boosts Free Offerings in Ongoing Strategy Shift (USTelecom dailyLead) Today's Cell Phone Companies? (Lisa Hancock) Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Court Okays Look at NY Times Phone Records (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Steven Lichter) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:53:47 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free and Ad Supported AOL Shifts to Free Web Services Time Warner Inc. on Wednesday said its AOL unit will no longer charge high-speed Internet users for e-mail and other Web services in a gambit to attract more viewers and boost online advertising. AOL, the online division of the world's biggest media company, is undertaking its fourth overhaul in five years as it competes with Web search and advertising leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Shares in Time Warner rose 2 percent. The largest U.S. provider of Internet access has steadily lost subscribers to high-speed services offered by cable operators and phone companies, and hopes to counter that trend by tapping a burgeoning online ad market. The AOL transition is set to be completed in early September. High-speed subscribers who have paid about $15 per month to use AOL's Web services will now get them for free. AOL will still offer its slower dial-up Internet access and its Web features for about $26 per month but will not aggressively market the service. The free services will include e-mail, instant messaging, a local phone number with unlimited incoming calls as well as safety and security features. AOL aims to hold on to individuals who are considering moving to other Internet access services but want to keep their AOL e-mail accounts and other features, the company said. "This is the next logical step for AOL to capitalize further on the explosive rise in broadband usage and online advertising," said Time Warner President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Bewkes. AOL's future is key to Time Warner, whose stock hit a two-year low in July and faces investor pressure to extract more value out of the Internet division. On Wednesday, Time Warner also posted a second-quarter profit versus a year-ago loss on more digital phone and high-speed data customers and strong growth in online advertising. YOU'VE STILL GOT MAIL AOL, which has 17.7 million U.S. subscribers, has kept the e-mail addresses of former members from the last two years and will offer the free services to them and to new users. Time Warner is due to discuss details of its plans for AOL during a conference at 11 a.m. EST. The company said the changes at AOL would not materially affect its 2006 full-year forecasts. AOL had already made clear it sought to change into an ad-supported network providing information and entertainment as its Internet access business steadily lost subscribers. It also lost 976,000 subscribers in the quarter from the first quarter and more than 3 million subscribers from a year ago. Total revenue dropped 2 percent to $2 billion in the quarter. But AOL's ad revenue rose 40 percent from a year ago. The company's Web sites drew an average of 113 million viewers in the United States during that period. "Online ad growth was strong. Trying to understand what really drove that ... is key to the prospects of AOL's new strategy," said Richard Greenfield, analyst at Pali Capital. The stock was up 34 cents to $16.59 on the New York Stock Exchange. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/news-today.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:57:19 -0500 From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: Questions and Answers on AOL Now Mostly Free By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Some questions and answers about how AOL's changes will affect consumers: Q. I have dial-up access with AOL. What does this mean for me? A. AOL will still charge $25.90 a month for an unlimited dial-up plan that includes free phone support, though it will add 50 gigabytes of online storage and security features beyond the basic software that just became free. Customers can also choose a $9.95 monthly plan with unlimited access but no storage or enhanced security. Dial-up customers can stop paying AOL altogether by getting dial-up or broadband service through another provider. Q. I have broadband but I pay extra to AOL for its premium services such as e-mail and parental control. What does this mean for me? A. Nothing will happen unless you call AOL to cancel service. AOL promises that its employees no longer will try to push customers to keep paying, a tactic that drew criticisms in the past. Those who occasionally need dial-up access, such as when they travel, can sign up for a $9.95 monthly plan with only 10 hours of access but enhanced security. Some customers who now get AOL-branded service through a cable or phone provider may find it cheaper to switch to a standalone offering from that provider. They can call AOL to cancel service, although they may have to call the provider as well to change their plan. Q. What does this mean for subscribers abroad? A. The changes are aimed at U.S. customers, although AOL says it won't stop European and other subscribers from participating in the freebies. However, they may have to download the U.S. version of software or use the English-language Web site. Q. What does it mean for former subscribers? A. Those who left AOL within the past two years can access their old accounts using the same passwords. Those who forgot the password can reset it by answering a security question, such as their pet's name, or providing the credit card they had used for verification. Q. Wasn't AOL free before? A. In late 2004, AOL began moving away from its traditional "walled garden" approach of emphasizing exclusive content, deciding to make most of its news articles, music video and other content available for free on ad-supported Web sites. However, AOL kept many services, including AOL.com e-mail accounts and parental controls, part of the paid offering. Q. What is becoming free with this strategy shift? A. Just about everything not already free. Immediately, AOL is making e-mail accounts free, along with its proprietary software for accessing AOL features and its Safety and Security Center offering basic protection from viruses, spyware and other threats. By September, AOL will make parental controls free as well, along with now-premium offerings aimed at kids and teens. 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: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 15:56:38 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Time-Warner and Comcast to Trade Texas Cable Systems Yesterday, reporters received early word that Time Warner will be leaving the Houston market and Comcast will take over the operations locally. The official announcement happens today. The news came from an internal e-mail at Time Warner. Comcast customers in Dallas just got word yesterday that their service will switch to Time Warner. This swapping is due to Comcast and Time Warner's purchase of Adelphia and deals the two companies made ions ago. http://www.houstonist.com/archives/2006/08/02/comcast_replaci.php http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/08/report_comcast.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 02, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:14:00 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 02, 2006 ******************************** Latin America: Telefonica Plans to Invest US$177 Mil. in Broadband Expansion for SMEs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19142?11228 Spanish telecoms group Telefonica is planning to invest 139 million euro (US$177 million) in expanding its broadband service for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Latin America. Telefonica will make the investment through its Telefonica Negocios unit, which serves the SME segment. The company also ... France: Sale of Tele2 French Units Imminent, MVNO Reaches 300,000 Customers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19139?11228 A buyer for Tele2's French units may emerge at the end of the month, La Tribune reports. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said that front-runner Neuf Cegetel may not make it to the second round, as it only bid 300 million euro (US$384 million) for the stake. However, Tele2's MVNO operations would probably not be included in... Russia: SMARTS Plans Alternative to Interconnection Fees http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19137?11228 Regional mobile operator SMARTS has announced that it plans to offset projected losses incurred by the country's new Calling Party Pays (CPP) system by adding new subscribers, reports Prime-Tass. SMARTS estimates that an increase of around 500,000 customers would be sufficient to compensate revenue losses brought about by ... Leading Search Engines Agree to Team Up to Fight Click Fraud http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19135?11228 SAN FRANCISCO -- The Internet's leading search engines are teaming up with an advertising trade group to find a better way to identify and measure 'click fraud' a scam that has raised doubts about the Web's trustworthiness as a marketing vehicle. The initiative, to be announced Wednesday morning by the ... Spain's Telefonica Wins Slovakia's 3rd Mobile License http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19133?11228 BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Telefonica SA won a tender for Slovakia's third mobile operators license, the Slovak Telecommunications Office said Wednesday. The office said in a statement that it will allot cellular frequencies to Telefonica 02 Slovakia SRO, a unit of Spain's Telefonica SA, in four weeks' time. The ... Despite Naysayers, IMS Has Real Potential in Enterprise Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19131?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Despite widespread views to the contrary, enterprise businesses will likely become a hot market for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) services, reports In-Stat. IMS has the potential to generate over US$15 billion annually by 2010 for US carriers, the high-tech market research firm says. IMS provides ... Court: FCC Overstepped Billing Authority http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19127?11228 A federal court of appeals in Atlanta ruled the FCC overstepped its authority by telling state regulators they couldn't require or prohibit the use of line items on consumers' wireless bills. The issue is close to a larger effort by wireless carriers to keep states from regulating wireless services. States are allowed to ... Boston Wi-Fi Plan Eyes Nonprofit Muni Net Operator http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19125?11228 A special wireless task force for the City of Boston has proposed a nonprofit organization be formed to build and run a wholesale municipal Wi-Fi network that would recruit service-provider partners to offer low-cost Internet broadband access. The three-member task force formed by the city in mid-February issued a 56-page report to ... Vodafone Hangs On to Verizon Stake http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19123?11228 Defying months of intense rumor and speculation, Vodafone Group plc will not flog its 45 percent stake in massive U.S. cellular operator Verizon Wireless , according to the man who may have most wished for such a sell-off -- the CEO of Verizon Communications Inc., Ivan Seidenberg. The Verizon big cheese said on Verizon's ... India's Carriers Report Major Growth http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19121?11228 Phenomenal growth in mobile uptake is giving India's leading operators a financial boost, according to the latest earnings reports. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) , the country added 12.91 million mobile subscribers during the quarter ended June 30, bringing the country's total number of... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:16:15 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AOL Boosts Free Offerings in Ongoing Strategy Shift USTelecom dailyLead August 2, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eejUfDtutfxrbhyyTU TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL boosts free offerings in ongoing strategy shift BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon discusses Verizon Wireless, FiOS plans * Small MSOs must wait to participate in Sprint Nextel venture * Report: Alcatel eyeing Nortel mobile unit * Some Vonage IPO buyers refuse to pay for shares USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * VoIP, VoIP and more VoIP TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Landlords stay out of Wi-Fi business in NYC * MSN has advantages over rivals in online video * Bringing broadcast to broadband REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * BT slashes tariffs, price war expected Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eejUfDtutfxrbhyyTU ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Today's Cell Phone Companies? Date: 2 Aug 2006 08:09:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com With all the mergers, could someone list today's major cell phone companies that provide their own service (not merely piggyback off someone else)? Comments on telephone service quality and customer service would be appreciated. (I do realize there are regional differences and some places may do much better than others.) I must admit my opinion of ALL cell phone carriers is that their first priority is to sell service and issues about providing service come in second. I presume their people you meet in their stores are on sales commission and not particularly well trained or able (or interested) to answer any substantive question. That is, they want to make a sale and move on to the next customer, time is lost money to them. I have yet to meet a cell phone rep in person who was decent. Over the phone, I've dealt with some nice and smart ones and some total idiots. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: 2 Aug 2006 10:26:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com In looking through 1960-era articles and advertisements about future telephone service (including Touch Tone service), a continuing theme was telephone grocery shopping. The newspaper's ad every day would contain code numbers next to each advertised product. A housewife would use this to call in an order. I realize some supermarkets have Internet orders, but I don't think telephone pick up ever became widespread as originally forseen. (I wonder if it ever was used for grocery shopping). I suspect some retailing issues had an impact: 1) At one time grocery stores delivered, no more. 2) Grocery stores evolved into self-service supermarkets with lower prices and less support. A busy supermarket did not have the resources to have people pull orders. 3) Desire to select their own products, such as meat, fruits, and vegatables. Some things we do use today like telephone banking of course came to pass. Unfortunately, today you are forced to use the automatic system and can't talk to a person when you need one without a long wait and aggravation. Early Bell Touch Tone installations included Carnegie and Greensburg in Western Pa (NYT 11/14/63), Chardon Ohio (Stromberg Carlson NYT 12/19/62), Findlay Ohio November, 1960. Canton Ohio would be ready in 1963. All Bell machine exchanges required a front end tone converter. Different types were built for different switch types (panel, No 1 Crossbar, No 5 crossbar). For Step by Step, a variety of converters were required depending on traffic volume and remaining life of an exchange. While Touch Tone availability slowly grew throughout the U.S., I think between 1975-1980 the remaining parts of the country rapidly got it; I believe it was virtually available everywhere by 1980. However, consumers were slower to convert and a great many remained rotary into the 1990s. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Internet grocery shopping and delivery was a very good feature and when I lived around Chicago area (both in Skokie and on the north side of Chicago, it was offered by a company called 'Pea Pod', and although we had to pay a relatively small fee for the service, Pea Pod generally made its money from Jewel Food Stores, with whom they had a relationship. The service was rather good and very prompt. Here in Independence, we do not have 'internet grocery shopping' at the present time, but one of the grocery stores (Safeway) had planned on starting it a few years ago, but then Walmart showed up and chased not only Safeway, but the three other major grocery stores out of town. And Walmart, of course, has no provision for doing anything different than cash and carry, in huge quantities. A chain of stores called 'Marvins IGA' moved in where the old Country Mart had been located, but they are just barely hanging on, financially, and do not feel they could afford the cost of working along with the internet people. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Court Okays Look at NY Times Phone Records Date: 2 Aug 2006 10:39:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com David B. Caruso wrote: > Federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding > probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters, a > federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. I don't have an opinion about this particular case. However, I do feel strongly that a reporter's rights are not unlimited and that they must observe the law and respect privacy in their dealings. It is generally not desirable to tip off a target in advance that they're being investigated as that could thwart the investigation. Note a botched investigation could mean an innocent person is prosecuted. This issue is even more sensitive in issues of national security and terrorism. I used to read "Columbia Journalism Review", a magazine about the news industry. They regularly covered issues such as this -- protecting sources, not cooperating with the government, privacy, etc. Generally, they took a very extreme position that a reporter could do no wrong and his/her work was sacrosanct and protected by the Constitution, regardless of Constitutional rights of others involved. I saw that as a "Holier Than Thou" attitude and I didn't care for it. Now I'm not saying the "government is always right", but many people seem to believe it and then ACT on the principle "the government is always wrong and evil" and that's certainly not true either. In WW II, people who thought they knew better gave critical military secrets to hostile enemies. Who were those people to think they knew better than the rest of us? What gave them authority over our duly elected representatives? Another issue is personal privacy. The news media are real quick to jump around that by creating some connection -- true or false -- to an issue and thus the person is suddenly now a "public figure". Even if the circumstances were false to begin with, the news media go with that and print anything. Some of us value our privacy and don't have the resources to fight adverse publicity and lose our job, families, etc. If you're a genuine public figure they can really go to town on you. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:11:58 GMT Mark Roberts wrote: > Dan Lanciani had written: >> Looks like it might be time to leave Cingular. I currently still have >> an analog-only phone with a ~$25/month plan. It appears that >> Cingular's cheapest current plan is ~$40/month and doesn't even >> include unlimited nights/weekends. Sprint and T-Mobile have >> ~$30/month plans with unlimited nights/weekends and weekends >> respectively. I hate to give up the analog coverage, but maybe the >> new features make it worth considering. > In my household, this may finally motivate us to make some changes. > The two TDMA phones have batteries that are starting to get flaky. As > it is, we're not using even half the minutes we're paying for each > month. Even though we're on a corporate plan, I feel like we're > overpaying. And the plans that we have are not offered by Cingular any > more. Instead, Cingular keeps trying to entice us into changes with > new phones, with features that we don't need, offering rate plans that > are more expensive, giving us yet more minutes that we won't ever use, > while trying to lock us into two-year contracts. I don't see much > better from other providers, at least ones that work at my house. No > wonder I can resist the temptation. > Cell phone providers have earned their lousy, customer-hostile > reputation, and that reputation, too, rolls over from month to month. > Mark Roberts - Oakland, CA - NO HTML MAIL I have had Sprint for some years and have had no problems with them. On two times when I contacted them for questions, I was advised that I could save money by changing to a cheaper plan using less minutes since I was not using mine, I did not ask them -- they told me, the reason was they would rather keep a customer. Also the last time I called I was given a 10% discount for the remainder of my contract. Also when it does come up I will get the $150.00 discount is I want new handsets, plus any other rebates they have at the time. I had worked for GTE/Verizon and when Airtouch and GTE Mobelnet merged I dropped Airtouch because I did not want to have to deal in anyway with Modelnet. Maybe others have had problems with Sprint, I have not, but then you hear problems from others about all the companies, so I guess it is just who you have the best luck with, is who you stay with. 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 #284 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 3 16:42:37 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EBD772233; Thu, 3 Aug 2006 16:42:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #285 Message-Id: <20060803204236.EBD772233@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 16:42:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 3 Aug 2006 16:43:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 285 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 03, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Verizon Expands FiOS in Texas (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Today's Cellular Phone Companies?y (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Today's Cellular Phone Companies? (DLR) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (B. Wright) Re: Not Much Interest in Cell Phone Gadgets (Ed) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (DLR) Re: AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free (Henry Cabot Henhouse III) Fiber Cut Again Today; Watch Us Make You Smile (Patrick Townson) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 03, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 12:39:09 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 03, 2006 ******************************** Is That Your Final Answer?: Telco TV Says 'Yes' to Gaming http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19164?11228 As they move to conquer the world of TV, one of the prime areas of play for the big telcos like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. appears to be game-related content. Verizon this fall expects to roll out interactive game network GSN on its FiOS networks, and another major incumbent telephone company was putting the final ... Will Net Neutrality Stifle MVNOs? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19162?11228 Washington - Exactly how network neutrality rules -- one of the biggest points of contention in a new national telecommunications bill -- would apply to wireless carriers is still something of a mystery, even as the legislation moves forward on Capitol Hill. Network neutrality boils down to whether wireline service providers who own big ... Wireless Device Monitors Acid Reflux http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19159?11228 Wireless technology promises to make gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) monitoring more comfortable for patients, if not more effective. Bravo, a wireless monitor developed by Minneapolis-based Medtronic, is the latest advancement in gastric pH testing. The system allows physicians to monitor GERD symptoms without the discomfort ... Russia: Amendments to Communications Law Being Considered by Russian Government http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19155?11228 Prime-Tass has reported that the Russian government is considering an amendment to its communications law concerning payments made by telecoms operators to the 'universal services fund'. The fund finances the government's programme of upgrading and installing telecoms networks and infrastructure, including public payphones ... Slovakia: Telefonica Wins Slovak Mobile Licence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19153?11228 The Slovak Telecommunications Office awarded the country's 20-year renewable mobile operator licence to Europe's third-largest telecoms group by revenue. Telefonica beat offers from Mobilkom and a consortium featuring Ceske Radiokomunikace and Slovak private-equity firm Penta Group. The latter confirmed that it offered 400 ... Sprint Posts Lower 2Q Profit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19151?11228 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sprint Nextel Corp. said Thursday that its second-quarter profit fell 38 percent as the nation's third-largest wireless carrier absorbed costs from its formative merger last year. Sprint Nextel, struggling to attract and retain higher-paying subscribers, also slightly lowered its earnings guidance. ... Ericsson Sues Samsung http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19147?11228 Further roiling the legal waters surrounding mobile phone technology, Ericsson AB has filed a complaint in U.S. federal district court against Samsung Corp. , alleging that the Korean handset manufacturer has infringed 11 patents covering technology that includes CDMA and WCDMA. The new filing comes in the wake of a lawsuit ... Cable to Hit 11M VOIP Subscribers in '07 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19145?11228 With the number of North American broadband homes approaching 50 million, U.S. and Canadian cable operators have now signed up more than 4 million VOIP subscribers and will likely add at least 7 million more subscribers by the end of next year. In a new Cable Industry Insider report from Light Reading that looks at the top 11 cable ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 12:29:27 EDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon Expands FiOS in Texas USTelecom dailyLead August 3, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eewsfDtutfyilpeRQb TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon expands FiOS in Texas BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Neuf may acquire AOL France * Web campaign dials up buzz with fake lawsuit * Nortel, Sprint Nextel report earnings * Private equity firms buy Netherlands' Kablecom for $3.3B USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about IPTV TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Caltrain riders watch streaming video during commute * Hollywood embraces the downloadable movie * Japanese CE giants to develop Internet TV standard REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Web players just say no to D.O.P.A. Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eewsfDtutfyilpeRQb ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:26:09 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga With all the mergers, could someone list today's major cell phone > companies that provide their own service (not merely piggyback off > someone else)? These six companies seem to be the "major, nationwide" cellular phone companies in the US. Some of them aren't fully "nationwide" (yet), and might have to "piggyback" off of a "native" provider in some parts of the US for roaming customers, but these are still the more "major" cellular providers: -- Cingular -- which took over and retained most of the previous AT&T Wireless; Cingular is owned 60% by the "new" at&t (SBC), and 40% by BellSouth, and is HQ'd in BellSouth's current HQ of Atlanta GA. If AT&T (SBC) does indeed buy out BellSouth (which is very likely), I have been told that the Cingular name will be replaced by a reincarnation of "AT&T Wireless". -- Alltel -- some of what at one time had been Alltel Wireless has since become associated with Verizon Wireless. Alltel also took over some of what had one time been AT&T Wireless, when Cingular was buying them out a few years ago. Alltel's old incumbent landline telco operations have been spun off, effective only a few weeks ago, merged with Valor (which had been some legacy GTE in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and parts of Texas -- such GTE areas not retained by Verizon in 2000) to form the new entity called "Windstream" (incumbent landline telco). -- Verizon Wireless -- Verizon was formed by the merger of GTE (including Contel) and Bell Atlantic (including NYENX) in 2000. This included their wireless operations as well. Some of what at one time been Alltel Wireless became part of Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless is also quite dominant in parts of the Pacific (Hawaii, Northern Mariana Islands) and Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic). -- T-Mobile -- which was once known as VoiceStream, Omnipoint, Aerial 6701, etc. -- Sprint -- which recently tookover Nextel; Also, Sprint's old incumbent landline telco side, the legacy United and Centel telcos, have been recently spun-off into a new entity known as "Embarq". -- Centennial -- Not really "national" in scope, but is still considered a "major" cellco as opposed to strictly regional cellcos. I think that they have to "piggyback" on "native" cellcos in parts of the country where they are not dominant, to service their roaming customers. Centennial Wireless (and CLEC) is also popular in some parts of the Caribbean (such as Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic). This is just a brief summary of the cellco situation in the US over the past few years. If you want the history of US cellcos back in the 1980s and 1990s, it can get MUCH more complicated and "messy". I think that there are some here (Stan Cline?) who can easily rattle off the "ancient" history of US Cellcos. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 13:15:26 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Today's Cellular Phone Companies? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > With all the mergers, could someone list today's major cell phone > companies that provide their own service (not merely piggyback off > someone else)? > Comments on telephone service quality and customer service would be > appreciated. (I do realize there are regional differences and some > places may do much better than others.) > I must admit my opinion of ALL cell phone carriers is that their first > priority is to sell service and issues about providing service come in > second. I presume their people you meet in their stores are on sales > commission and not particularly well trained or able (or interested) > to answer any substantive question. That is, they want to make a sale > and move on to the next customer, time is lost money to them. I have > yet to meet a cell phone rep in person who was decent. Over the > phone, I've dealt with some nice and smart ones and some total idiots. I work with small businesses doing computer work for them. I've yet to find anyone who thinks their cell phone service is wonderful. I've yet to see anyone with service for more than one year without a complaint. It seems the market is devolving into "which one is the least worst". This issue has been building for years. 10 years ago bonds were issues, mergers made, money raised, etc ... thinking the typical consumer would pay for a $300 phone and $100 to $200 a month in service. It didn't happen. Phones except for PDA are expected to be free or nearly so, and $50 a month makes many people wince. So out the window went a lot of customer service and support. Not only does service vary by company / region, it also varies by office. I have a Sprint office near me that I dread visiting. Reasonable/helpful staff to idiots is about 1 to 9. A 20 minute drive away the situation seems reversed. It's WORTH the drive. :) ------------------------------ From: B. Wright Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 21:29:33 UTC Organization: XMission Internet http://www.xmission.com Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge John Levine wrote: >>> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM >>> as well as TDMA, and analog? >> The issue is that the new digital protocols use less than 1/50 of the >> radio bandwidth of a cell tower. So what they really want is for all >> the older analog phones to be tossed in the trash. But that would >> upset some folks. So this is a nudge for them to switch to s new >> phone. And I'm sure they'll "make a deal" if it helps you to switch. What they really want is to screw all the old long time AT&T customers into new two year contracts with less favorable rates. > Except my phone already does GSM. I called them, asked if I can just > keep the plan I have as GSM-only, and not is there no deal, the > cheapest plan they offer is ten bucks more than what I'm paying now. It doesn't have to do with TDMA/GSM, they want to get rid of the AT&T contracts. This is contrary to what they said they would do during the takeover. You can find a lot of people with stories related to this being the case if you search around. > Time to look at T-Mobile. That's exactly what we did for my sister, she had a 300+ "anytime" minutes plan (probably free nights & weekends, I don't know) plan. She, in actuality used about 15-30 minutes/mo tops and paid around $30 for it. Cingular was making $ on her, no doubt, and as a 6-7 year customer they are idiots to let people like this leave. They wouldn't budge on converting to GSM (even though we had our own phone already) without a two year contract and change of the plan. We sh*t canned them ASAP and ported the number to T-Mobile ToGo, now after $100 topup card the balance is good for a year (with further topups extending the balance another year, regardless of topup denomination). It works out to be about $8/month (or less) at the rate she uses her phone. Unless you have strong reasons to stay with them, vote with your feet, dollars, and number portability! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I hope we can get a definitive answer > on this sometime soon. I'll tell you what my conversation was like The definitive answer is: If you were an former AT&T customer acquired through the buyout, the really do not care to keep you around under the status quo. You'll get worse treatment than any new customer off the street. > Now the GAIT phone can do both the old style calls and the newer GSM > calls. I called customer service Monday afternoon to ask if this was > going to apply to me, at least to the GAIT phone. I was assured it > will _NOT_ apply to me. To those of you who are on contracts with > Cingular who wish to break their contracts, this might be an ideal > time to do so; after all, Cingular is changing the terms of their > contract with you. PAT] I would trust the telephone customer service reps about as far as you can throw them, I hope you recorded the call if you plan to go off of what they have told you. There have been people who say that now you can get them to waive the early termination fee if it was an AT&T contract and you switch to Cingular. Now, apparently after you do that you have the "30 day trial" under the new Cingular contract and if you cancel it within this time you're done (i.e. no fee from the AT&T contract and no ridiculous new two year Cingular contract that you were bullied into). I can't confirm this from experience as my sister was well out of contract by about 4-5 years when we ported her number and got the hell out of Cingular. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am going to be watching the bill very closely this month and next to see how they deal with it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ed Subject: Re: Not Much Interest in Cell Phone Gadgets Date: 2 Aug 2006 21:21:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com It figures ... During my time as a Customer Service Tech at Panasonic I was constantly reminded of this by customers who wanted to know how to work the phones and digital cameras. My personal viewpoint is that while it may be nice to clip on all kinds of tech wizardry, more time needs to be devoted to make sure that the device actually does one main thing right. If it's a phone, make sure the phone works as a phone, if it's a camera, make sure that it can take a photo. Above all things make sure that your manual is readable and understandable and is not filled with fluff but with good information. Both Panasonic & Siemens corps needs to figure the former out. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:30:03 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > In looking through 1960-era articles and advertisements about future > telephone service (including Touch Tone service), a continuing theme > was telephone grocery shopping. The newspaper's ad every day would > contain code numbers next to each advertised product. A housewife > would use this to call in an order. > I realize some supermarkets have Internet orders, but I don't think > telephone pick up ever became widespread as originally forseen. (I > wonder if it ever was used for grocery shopping). > I suspect some retailing issues had an impact: > 1) At one time grocery stores delivered, no more. > 2) Grocery stores evolved into self-service supermarkets with lower > prices and less support. A busy supermarket did not have the resources > to have people pull orders. > 3) Desire to select their own products, such as meat, fruits, and > vegatables. > Some things we do use today like telephone banking of course came to > pass. Unfortunately, today you are forced to use the automatic system > and can't talk to a person when you need one without a long wait and > aggravation. snip of phone technology > [public replies please] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Internet grocery shopping and delivery > was a very good feature and when I lived around Chicago area (both in > Skokie and on the north side of Chicago, it was offered by a company > called 'Pea Pod', and although we had to pay a relatively small fee > for the service, Pea Pod generally made its money from Jewel Food > Stores, with whom they had a relationship. The service was rather good > and very prompt. Here in Independence, we do not have 'internet grocery > shopping' at the present time, but one of the grocery stores (Safeway) > had planned on starting it a few years ago, but then Walmart showed up > and chased not only Safeway, but the three other major grocery stores > out of town. And Walmart, of course, has no provision for doing > anything different than cash and carry, in huge quantities. A chain of > stores called 'Marvins IGA' moved in where the old Country Mart had > been located, but they are just barely hanging on, financially, and do > not feel they could afford the cost of working along with the internet > people. PAT] What most people don't realize is how expensive it is to run an Internet shopping setup. There's a huge cost of startup to deal with 24/7, fraud prevention, security, E&O, etc ... A small business will have trouble keeping up unless they make it an Internet order taking setup with billing handled manually. And many small folks do this but for a grocery, doing this is more expensive than running a checkout line. While the uninformed press and consumers keep thinking that Internet stores are cheaper to operate than brick and morter, in general most physical stores have gotten very efficient and are in fact cheaper IN TOTAL to operate than Internet stores. What this means is that Internet shopping and delivery becomes a premium item and many times there just isn't enough of a market to pay for it. Amazon is the exception to all of this but they are not a local store selling via the Internet, they are one of the few .com Internet stores that survived. And I'm convinced it's more due to the strange economics of the book industry and not that they figured it out way better than the pet food sellers. What in many cases still works best for automated orders is FAX. It's incredibly rare that the store (or lunch service mostly) gets something that isn't what the customer wanted. And if they can't read it, they can call and figure it out. But this mainly works for businesses already in the delivery market. When growing up some friends our family (this was a small town) ran a local grocery. A major hassle with delivery was mistakes (both ways) complaints of things missing that weren't, complaints about produce selection, etc ... Some real, some bogus. One advantage the local store had was that a bad check was from someone in the area and was usually a mistake that was quickly corrected, but in any case was usually handled locally. With the Internet, you open up all kinds of scam possibilities from folks on the other side of the planet. And the rules for CC cards is if there's a complaint the merchant agrees to allow the money to be withdrawn from their account until the issue is resolved. All in all the profits to a grocer are based on getting you into the store and you buying things you didn't plan. I've seen a lot of Wal-Mart is bad because they're big in this forum. Let me ask this. Were Penny's and Sears bad because they put a lot of smaller retailers out of business? Was IGA bad because they put the local indenpendent out of business. Was Kroger's bad because they did it to IGA? Is Wal-Mart now bad because ...? Over and over the majority of people have voted with their wallets that they want large selections at dirt cheap prices over personal service. At least until things go wrong. :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But although on the interest you can do business from all over the world, an internet grocey service is mostly going to be local; a merchant who was asked to deliver groceries from his local store to some addresss in Nigeria or wherever would look at the order rather askance. He is going to deliver to somewhere within a few miles of his store, so he in effect has the same protection as he does with someone local coming in and writing him a bad check. And although the 'majority' of people have voted and said they prefer low prices over customer service, you claim, there are still those of us who for whatever reason find shopping in a large mall environment very difficult, and much prefer local, downtown merchants whose prices are not that much higher (sometimes the same, now and then less) who also provide delivery service. For example with me; it is much more preferable to be able to call Proscript (one of the local pharmacies) and ask the clerk "please refill (serial number on the botle) and send it out to me this afternoon"; it gets sent out and my account gets charged; I have it usually in an hour or so. Just try to do that with Walmart pharmacy or for that matter, even Walgreens (of which we have one now in town also.) When I mentioned to Angie (Proscript clerk) that not only would Walgreen's not deliver and demanded cash on the spot, she was amazed. She knew that to be the case with Walmart of course, and neither of them (Walmart nor Walgreens) will take requests over the phone based on the serial number on the bottle; they both demand to have you bring in the empty bottle personally, and stand in line for however long waiting, and have your cash or credit card available handily. Local store are always so much better, no matter what. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Henry Cabot Henhouse III Subject: Re: AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free and Ad Supported Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 11:27:00 -0700 Great. .. now the perves and pedos will find it easier to get online to prey on the youngsters ... Reuters News Wire wrote in message news:telecom25.284.1@telecom-digest.org... > AOL Shifts to Free Web Services > Time Warner Inc. on Wednesday said its AOL unit will no longer charge > high-speed Internet users for e-mail and other Web services in a > gambit to attract more viewers and boost online advertising. > AOL, the online division of the world's biggest media company, is > undertaking its fourth overhaul in five years as it competes with Web > search and advertising leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. > Shares in Time Warner rose 2 percent. > The largest U.S. provider of Internet access has steadily lost > subscribers to high-speed services offered by cable operators and phone > companies, and hopes to counter that trend by tapping a burgeoning > online ad market. > The AOL transition is set to be completed in early September. High-speed > subscribers who have paid about $15 per month to use AOL's Web services > will now get them for free. > The free services will include e-mail, instant messaging, a local > phone number with unlimited incoming calls as well as safety and > security features. > AOL aims to hold on to individuals who are considering moving to other > Internet access services but want to keep their AOL e-mail accounts > and other features, the company said. > "This is the next logical step for AOL to capitalize further on the > explosive rise in broadband usage and online advertising," said Time > Warner President and Chief Operating Officer Jeff Bewkes. > AOL's future is key to Time Warner, whose stock hit a two-year low in > July and faces investor pressure to extract more value out of the > Internet division. > On Wednesday, Time Warner also posted a second-quarter profit versus a > year-ago loss on more digital phone and high-speed data customers and > strong growth in online advertising. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Fiber Cut Again Today Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 15:00:00 CDT Cable One experienced still another fiber cut today near Parsons, KS. I guess it was the same bunch of klutzes who back-hoed us off to oblivion a month or so ago. The recorded message which comes on first thing at the cable office here said the cut was 'severe' and it would be at least six to eight hours restoring service. I suggested to the lady in the office it would be good, when they find out _who_ did it this time, to take that person and cut off his arms so he would not be in a position to operate a back-hoe any further. Thank goodness I still have my dialup line from TerraWorld to use as a backup, even though by comparison it is quite slow. Another very hot, miserable day here; I do not need this aggravation. Cable One's advertising slogan is 'Watch Us Make You Smile'. 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 #285 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 4 16:06:55 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 941B32206; Fri, 4 Aug 2006 16:06:55 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #286 Message-Id: <20060804200655.941B32206@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 16:06:55 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 4 Aug 2006 16:09:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 286 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 04, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #540, August 4, 2006 (John Riddell) IPTV Use Expected to Boom (USTelecom dailyLead) Breaking Into a Laptop via Wi-Fi (Monty Solomon) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (Neal McLain) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (jtaylor) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (DevilsPGD) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (DLR) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Re: Cingular Plans to Raise Prices (sic) on Older Phones (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Today's Cell Phone Companies? (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free, Ad Supported (B Margolin) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 04, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 12:17:24 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 04, 2006 ******************************** Apple to Integrate iPod With Car Radios http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19184?11228 SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In the latest boost to its dominance in portable music players, Apple Computer Inc. is teaming with General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Mazda Motor Corp. to integrate the iPod into car audio systems. GM and Ford are the nation's No. 1 and No. 2 automakers, and the new alliances mean the iconic audio ... Germany: Deutsche Telekom Starts FMC Promotion http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19181?11228 Germany's leading telecoms group has begun marketing its new fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) product. Branded T-One, the service enables customers to make calls via the internet when they are at home, using a WLAN connection, while the connection automatically switches to Deutsche Telekom's mobile network operated by T-Mobile ... Two U.S. Firms Could Invest up to US$1.0 bil. in WiMAX in Brazil http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19175?11228 Two U.S. companies have submitted a WiMAX proposal with Brazil's Communications Ministry as they plan to invest up to US$1.0 billion in WiMAX networks covering 3,000 municipalities in Brazil. Significance: The government currently favours a public tender for remaining 20-year licences for the WiMAX spectrum, which is likely to be... Equity Firms Take On KPN http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19173?11228 Private equity firms Cinven and Warburg Pincus are creating a Dutch cable powerhouse with the acquisition of Essent Kabelcom BV from utility firm Essent for euro 2.6 billion (US$3.3 billion). The equity firms will add Kabelcom to their existing cable assets -- Casema NV , which they agreed to buy in July for euro 2.1 billion... FCC Stands Firm While Straddling BPL Fence http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19169?11228 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today essentially stuck to its guns on a wide range of broadband over power line (BPL) technology and operational regulations and RF interference enforcement measures, rebuffing for the most part a total of 17 requests by the nascent BPL business itself as well as various opponents to change ... New Muni Models http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19166?11228 As ambitious projects for building city-wide WiFi networks move from the proposal stage to the build-out phase, some municipalities and providers are running into unforeseen obstacles, and others are developing new and creative ways to avoid or overcome those hurdles. In San Jose, Calif. yesterday, the Wireless Silicon Valley ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #540, August 4, 2006 Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 14:05:00 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 540: August 4, 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 Profits Dip 15% ** Telus Net Income Up 88% ** Rogers Profits Climb ** Oosterman Joins Bell ** New President for Bell Enterprise Sales ** Rogers Joins the Bandwidth War ** Consumer Safeguards Extended to All 900 Services ** Quebec ISPs Rebuffed on ADSL Complaints ** Aliant-Owned Call Centre Slashes Staff ** Aliant, Northwestel Expand Satellite Internet ** U.S. Tries to Stop AT&T Suit ** Nortel Sales Rise 5% ** Cable Cut Interrupts NW Ontario Phone Service ** New President at Axia ** Telus Chair Honoured ** AOL in Freefall ** Whatever Happened to Convergence? BCE PROFITS DIP 15%: BCE reports second quarter revenue of $4.80 billion, 1% more than the same period a year ago. Net income declined 15% to $476 million; EBITDA was flat at $1.97 billion. In the business segment, revenue rose 2.1%, but operating income was down 10%. ** Capital expenditure of $875 million was 3.3% lower than a year ago. ** Subscriber net activations in the quarter: access lines: -134,000; high-speed Internet: +47,000; wireless: +90,000; video: +19,000. TELUS NET INCOME UP 88%: Telus operating revenues of $2.14 billion in the second quarter were 5.8% higher than the same period a year ago. EBITDA increased 3.7%; net income rose 88% to $357 million. Telus's wireless division accounted for 44% of total sales. ** Capital expenditure of $311 million was 5.9% higher than a year ago. ** Subscriber net activations: access lines: -44,000; high- speed Internet: +29,200; wireless: +123,900. ROGERS PROFITS CLIMB: Rogers Communications had second quarter operating revenues of $2.24 billion, an increase of 29% over a year ago, or 15% if the effects of the Call-Net purchase are disregarded. Net income was $277.5 million, compared to $14.9 million the previous quarter and $19.2 million in the second quarter of last year. ** Subscriber net activations: cable connections: +38,900; cable phone: +68,000; Internet: +21,600; wireless: +130,000. OOSTERMAN JOINS BELL: As expected (see Telecom Update #537), Wade Oosterman has joined BCE, replacing Robert Odendaal as President of Bell Mobility and Bell Distribution. Oosterman, who is widely credited with leading very successful branding campaigns at Clearnet and Telus, has also been named as Chief Brand Officer of Bell Canada. NEW PRESIDENT FOR BELL ENTERPRISE SALES: Stephane Boisvert, former Senior Vice-President of Global Client Solutions Sales for Sun Microsystems, has been named President of Bell Canada's Enterprise division. ** Boisvert replaces Isabelle Courville, who has held the post since July 2003. Bell says it has offered Courville "an opportunity in advanced management development this fall at a leading international business school." ROGERS JOINS THE BANDWIDTH WAR: Following announcements from Bell (16 Mbps) and Videotron (20 Mbps), Rogers Cable now says it will offer 18 Mbps Internet access by the end of the year. The $99.95/month service will be available in areas where Rogers currently offers 6 Mbps service. (See Telecom Update #537, 538) CONSUMER SAFEGUARDS EXTENDED TO ALL 900 SERVICES: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-48 requires all 900 service providers and 900 service content providers to comply with the consumer safeguards set out in Decision 2005-19 (see Telecom Update #475). ** To enforce this ruling, the Commission is requiring all regulated carriers to include consumer safeguard compliance in their contracts with 900 service providers. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-48.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-19.htm QUEBEC ISPs REBUFFED ON ADSL COMPLAINTS: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-49 rejects all points of last November's application by a coalition of Quebec ISPs against Bell Canada. The ISPs had argued that Bell Canada's wholesale ADSL rates were too high, and that its retail ADSL offers were anticompetitive. (see Telecom Update #507) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-49.htm ALIANT-OWNED CALL CENTRE SLASHES STAFF: Salesbridge, a New Brunswick call centre service bureau launched in 2003 by Aliant and Maryland-based Marketbridge, laid off 270 of its 310 employees this week. The company says its only major client, Ikon Office Solutions, decided not to renew its contract. ALIANT, NORTHWESTEL EXPAND SATELLITE INTERNET: Two BCE companies are using Telesat's Anik F2 satellite to expand their high-speed Internet footprints. Northwestel now offers the service to customers in Alberta and Aliant is offering it throughout Atlantic Canada. Both provide download speeds from 512 Kbps to 2 Mbps, at prices ranging from $59.95 to $199.95 a month. U.S. TRIES TO STOP AT&T SUIT: The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T. The civil liberties group accuses AT&T of illegally allowing the National Security Agency to tap calls; the Bush administration says that allowing the suit to proceed would endanger national security. NORTEL SALES RISE 5%: Nortel Networks' second quarter sales of US$2.74 billion were up 15.1% on the quarter and 4.8% on the year. Gross margin was 39%, 1% higher than the previous quarter but down from 43% a year ago. Net earnings of $366 million included a $510 million accounting adjustment. With one-time items excluded, the operating loss was $96 million. ** Sales of the enterprise and packet networks division were up 23% on the quarter and down 1% on the year. Sales of $139 million in Canada were 17% less than a year ago. ** CEO Mike Zafirovsky said that Nortel is considering selling its UMTS wireless unit, which has sales of about $350 million a year. CABLE CUT INTERRUPTS NW ONTARIO PHONE SERVICE: Thousands of homes and businesses in Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma, and surrounding areas lost 9-1-1, LD, and Internet access for five and a half hours on Wednesday, when a highway construction crew cut a fibre optic cable near Echo Bay, Ontario. NEW PRESIDENT AT AXIA: Geoff Thompson, former CEO and President of Control-F1 Corporation, has been named President of Calgary-based Axia NetMedia, which was a principal contractor for Alberta SuperNet. He replaces Murray Wallace. TELUS CHAIR HONOURED: Brian Canfield, the long-time BC Tel and Telus executive who is currently chair of Telus's Board of Directors, has been named to the Order of Canada. AOL IN FREEFALL: America Online, once the biggest Internet provider in the world, lost three million subscribers and 11% of its subscriber revenue in the second quarter of 2006. The company is cutting 5,000 jobs, eliminating charges for many services, and is in talks to sell its European Internet access business. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONVERGENCE? It's rude to say "we told you so," but we can't resist. AOL's latest news reminded us of three editorials that appeared early in 2000, just after the AOL and Time-Warner merger was announced. ** The Globe and Mail wrote that "historians will look back on this day as a defining moment for media." The National Post said the merger "could radically transform huge chunks of our economy." ** And we wrote in Telemanagement: "To compete in the Internet age, companies must be nimble, able to make decisions quickly, and turn on a dime when necessary. That is not a good description of the lumbering giant this deal will create.... Change the world? Not a chance. The whole idea is just so twentieth century." 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 http://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 2006 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, 4 Aug 2006 13:36:52 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: PTV Use Expected to Boom USTelecom dailyLead August 4, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/efhgfDtutfzwlBGSkE TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * IPTV use expected to boom BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Spectrum set for auction * Commentary: Further telecom reform needed * Cisco mulls big changes to pricing scheme * ViaSat Q1 earnings jump 17% * Verizon, Novatel roll out wireless broadband ExpressCard USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Learn more about Next Gen Wireless Applications TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * New systems streaming more Internet content direct to TV * Nielsen: More TV gets watched in DVR homes VOIP DOWNLOAD * Report: Service providers look to VoIP * Time Warner, Sprint extend VoIP deal * Black Hat show yields VoIP security tools REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC renews push for broadband over power lines Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/efhgfDtutfzwlBGSkE ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 09:37:24 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Breaking Into a Laptop via Wi-Fi Flaws in software that runs wireless-networking hardware could let attackers take over PCs, including Macs, Black Hat warns. By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com LAS VEGAS -- Flaws in the software that runs wireless-networking hardware could let an attacker break into a PC over Wi-Fi, security researchers warned Wednesday. An attacker could gain complete control over a laptop by sending malformed network traffic to a vulnerable computer, David Maynor, a senior researcher at security service provider SecureWorks, said in a presentation at the Black Hat security event here. Maynor, along with researcher Jon "Johnny Cache" Ellch, showed a video of a successful attack on an Apple Computer MacBook. However, the attack is possible also on other computers, both laptops and desktops, and not just MacBooks, the researchers said. http://news.com.com/2100-7349-6101523.html Video: Breaking into a MacBook http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6101573.html Senior SecureWorks Researcher Exposes Vulnerabilities in Wireless Device Drivers at Blackhat Conference Senior researcher Dave Maynor, along with Jon "Jonny Cache" Ellch, revealed a vulnerability in the device drivers of several wireless cards at the first day of the Blackhat conference in Las Vegas. http://www.secureworks.com/newsandevents/blackhatcoverage.html ------------------------------ From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:22:18 -0400 PAT wrote: [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: ... > ... course, and neither of them (Walmart nor Walgreens) will take > requests over the phone based on the serial number on the bottle; > they both demand to have you bring in the empty bottle personally, > and stand in line for however long waiting, and have your cash or > credit card available handily. Local store are always so much > better, no matter what. PAT] This hasn't been my experience with Walgreens. I can call the number on the prescription label, get a recording, enter the prescription number(s), follow the prompts, and pick the order up after 10:00 am the following day. If there's a problem (no refills left ... have to call the doctor first), the recording tells me that as soon as I enter the prescription number. If I need to talk to the staff, I just dial "O" anytime during the recording. Doing it on line is even easier. Once I've set up the prescriptions at http://walgreens.com, all I have to do is log in. The site presents me with a list of all my prescriptions, and all I have to do is click on the ones that I want to renew. Again, the order is ready after 10:00 am the following day. If I use the driveup window to pick up the order, they even throw in a couple of biscuits for the dogs. Yes, they require payment (cash, credit card, or debit card) at the time of pickup, but that doesn't seem reasonable. Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct on Walgreens; I stand corrected. I will note however that our local pharmacies will deliver at no additional charge the same day and for those of us on a _very_ fixed income (Social Security only in my case) and having the bank disburse payment for all my bills each month, having a charge account is very helpful also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jtaylor Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 19:23:12 -0300 Organization: MCI Canada News Reader Service >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Internet grocery shopping and delivery >> was a very good feature and when I lived around Chicago area (both in [...snip...] > provide delivery service. For example with me; it is much more > preferable to be able to call Proscript (one of the local pharmacies) > and ask the clerk "please refill (serial number on the botle) and send > it out to me this afternoon"; it gets sent out and my account gets > charged; I have it usually in an hour or so. Just try to do that with > Walmart pharmacy or for that matter, even Walgreens (of which we have > one now in town also.) When I mentioned to Angie (Proscript clerk) > that not only would Walgreen's not deliver and demanded cash on the > spot, she was amazed. She knew that to be the case with Walmart of > course, and neither of them (Walmart nor Walgreens) will take requests > over the phone based on the serial number on the bottle; they both > demand to have you bring in the empty bottle personally, and stand in > line for however long waiting, and have your cash or credit card > available handily. Local store are always so much better, no matter > what. PAT] A few eyars ago, when I had returned on a visit to the town where my family lived, my mother asked me to go to her bank and get her some cash. She was ill but had filled out the paperwork on forms she had from the bank, and I was going up to the high street anyway for other errands. She had been a customer of that bank for many decades. The young cashier took the form and listened to what I told her, said "wait a minute please", and got her supervisor. The supervisor, a lady with grey hair and a strong face, came and looked at me, and then said "You look more like your father." I agreed, she nodded to the cashier, and mom got the money. No ID, no signature check; just the best damm facial recognition system on earth in operation. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The same thing is true here of our local banks and stores; they know you and work along with you. Even the post office; yes, the post office requires all the usual paperwork to do things like open/maintain a PO Box, but they do so in an apolo- getic manner, typically blaming all the new rules and regulations on 'the 9-11 situation and what is required of us now-days as a result.' PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:45:30 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message DLR wrote: > What most people don't realize is how expensive it is to run an Internet > shopping setup. There's a huge cost of startup to deal with 24/7, fraud > prevention, security, E&O, etc ... A small business will have trouble > keeping up unless they make it an Internet order taking setup with > billing handled manually. This doesn't need to be expensive -- The grocery delivery in Calgary simply billed you when you showed up. They didn't take cash, just a swiped card and signed receipt for a credit card, or a debit card + pin (this is real debit, not the Visa --> debit gateway the US has.) Even less fraud potential since they didn't accept cheques, and have a confirmed address. In Jolt We Trust ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 00:14:20 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? > When growing up some friends our family (this was a small town) ran a > local grocery. A major hassle with delivery was mistakes (both ways) > complaints of things missing that weren't, complaints about produce > selection, etc ... Some real, some bogus. One advantage the local store > had was that a bad check was from someone in the area and was usually > a mistake that was quickly corrected, but in any case was usually > handled locally. With the Internet, you open up all kinds of scam > possibilities from folks on the other side of the planet. And the > rules for CC cards is if there's a complaint the merchant agrees to > allow the money to be withdrawn from their account until the issue is > resolved. All in all the profits to a grocer are based on getting you > into the store and you buying things you didn't plan. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But although on the interest you can do > business from all over the world, an internet grocey service is mostly > going to be local; a merchant who was asked to deliver groceries from > his local store to some addresss in Nigeria or wherever would look at > the order rather askance. He is going to deliver to somewhere within > a few miles of his store, so he in effect has the same protection as > he does with someone local coming in and writing him a bad check. And > ... PAT] To be clear. I wasn't referring to being asked to deliver groceries in Nigeria. But an internet enabled store has to deal with fraud, data theft, etc ... which can come from the other side of the planet. Where the old local grocery really was a local operation. Fraud occurred with people in the store or at a delivery location. There was no website to break into and take over. Now anyone taking Visa/MC has to deal with more of this but a small store will likely use a service and the onus is on the service, not the small store. Plus processing Visa/MC payments is a LOT easier than running a web enabled storefront. ------------------------------ Date: 3 Aug 2006 20:57:59 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge >> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM >> as well as TDMA, and analog? ... [yes, it does] > What they really want is to screw all the old long time AT&T > customers into new two year contracts with less favorable rates. Since I have never been an AT&T customer, I don't find that very persuasive. I originally signed up in 1995 when they were Cingular One and my phone was a real 3W AMPS built-in car phone, then went to a TDMA handheld, then to my current GSM/TDMA/AMPS phone which I have no intention of giving up. It's entirely plausible that they want to chase out all the TDMA and AMPS users so they can switch their network to be 100% GSM. >> Time to look at T-Mobile. The prices are great, I need to figure out whether the coverage is OK here which basically means whether they let me roam onto Cingular. It appears that in some places they do, some they don't. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 16:06:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Cingular Plans to Raise Pries (sic) on Older Phones hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com 1 Aug 2006 10:32:42 -0700 wrote: Organization: http://groups.google.com > Unfortunately, customers who cancel won't be able to use their analog > phones elsewhere. AFAIK, other companies don't honor them. Of > course, some customers might change just out of principle. No strictly analog AMPS accounts have been activated by any carrier for years. Mark Cuccia was using an AMPS phone up until several months ago and only changed because they were not making the batteries he was using in his Moto handset and Cingular wil not activate any analog only and now will not activate any TDMA (IS-136) handsets. > If they believe in loyalty, they'll provide a nice deep discount. > Since analog hasn't been around for a while, most customers have > probably been long standing. You'd think a reputable company would do just such a thing. Unfortunately that's not Cingular's attitude. Former AT&T Wireless subscribers saw this first hand. Initially Cingular would tell AT&T Wireless subscribers if they wished to get a new phone for their AT&T Wireless GSM handsets TS. You'll have to convert your account from "blue" to orange meaning Cingular pay *$18* and force you to buy a new handset since Cingular would not provide unlock codes for AT&T Wireless handsets so they could be used on the Cingular network. Cingular's attitude seems to be that "customers are expendable" and that they don't mind if they lose customers because they got the shaft from Cingular. In other words "we are Cingular, you will be assimilated." >> Cohen said the quality of service on Cingular's GSM network is >> better than on its TDMA and analog networks. Of *course* they would say that! They wouldn't dare admit that the network was deficient! > How good is it in fringe areas -- both in rural and within built up > areas? Have they eliminated all the tough dead spots that analog > handles just fine. Digital signals have lots of dead spots. In built up areas usually it's pretty good. In rural areas it's a mixed bag and often not as good as what was available with analog AMPS even though they might claim differently. > I was on a train last year and my old analog phone worked just fine. > But everyone else's died. That is ridiculous in this day and age -- > that ten year old "ancient" technology works better than 2005 > technology. Analog often works better in rural situations than do the digital technologies. As far as the technology analog is really over twenty-three years old since the first analog AMPS systems were put into commercial use in 1983. > Is GSM used on other US systems? Do their phones still have the old > "A/B" switch to work between two carriers if one carrier is > unavailable? No. There is no "A/B" switch as there was on analog AMPS. With GSM the way it usually works at least on monthly billed accounts is your home carrier (such as T-Mobile, cingular, Suncom, etc.) will be what you will generally use. *If* your home carrier has a roaming agreement with another carrier you can use that service if it is available and a roaming agreement is in place. If no roaming agreement is in place all you'll be able to do is call emergency 911/112 (if there's any GSM signal at all available.) > (Is that A/B switch used by anyone anymore? In the early days, the > idea was that phones could switch between the two pioneer carriers > -- the Bell company and the independent.) A & B were only used in analog AMPS never in digital technologies. >> It is planning to shut down its TDMA network in early 2008 and >> under Federal Communications Commission rules it must keep its >> analog network in place until February 2008, Cohen said. >> Interesting. I thought it was the FCC mandating to shut down analog to >> steal its frequencies. But is it that the telcos want to shut it >> down? Actually the way I understand it is that the carriers are mandated to keep the analog AMPS system running through February of 2008. After that date the FCC has given permission that the analog system *may* be shut down. There is no mandate that the companies running analog AMPS shut those systems down, but you can most likely be assured that they will so it will free up that part of the spectrum that analog AMPS uses so they can better use it for GSM or CDMA voice or data service. Spectrum is very inefficiently used with AMPS and is used more efficiently with TDMA/IS-136 but is nowhere as efficient as GSM or CDMA technologies. The carriers will shut down analog systems as soon as they can. TDMA/IS-136 also uses spectrum that GSM could use if TDMA/IS-136 wasn't using it so it's in cingular or any company running TDMA/IS-136 to get customers off it as expeditiously as possible. cingular chose to do it in as unfriendly a manner as possible is the difference. cingular could have offered incentives such as free handsets or allowing former TDMA/IS-136 plans to be transferred to GSM. That's why many people were keeping the older technology since they had really good plans and cingular doesn't have anything that's close to the benefits they get with their present plan so they have stuck it out and decided not to go with a GSM plan because of the perceived benefit they have with an older plan on 1st generation TDMA/IS-136 technology. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 16:40:12 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Today's Cell Phone Companies? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com 2 Aug 2006 08:09:11 -0700 wrote: > With all the mergers, could someone list today's major cell phone > companies that provide their own service (not merely piggyback off > someone else)? Well, at this time there are four major national networks for mobile service. In order of number of subscribers: Cingular, Verizon, Sprint-Nextel and T-Mobile. I won't go into how these happened but none of them are exactly what they started out to be through mergers takeovers, etc. > Comments on telephone service quality and customer service would be > appreciated. (I do realize there are regional differences and some > places may do much better than others.) I've had T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream) since June of 2000 and by and large I've been very pleased and whenever I encountered a problem if there was one it was taken care of with the minimum amount of fuss. Calling in to deal with customer care generally has been a favourable experience. About two years ago they started to use an IVR (interactive voice response) system for typical ordinary things and I have to say that whoever designed the IVR used a good bit of logic and it's very intuitive to use. If you do need a human being to assist you all you have to say is a choice of several things including, operator, assistance, help etc. and you'll be connected to a live representative. The main problem with the IVR is if you're using it in a noisy environment such as loud vehicles on the stree the IVR may become confused. Once in my six years of having service with them I had a billing issue that I had to escalate but one incident in six years is pretty good. The issue did get taken care of which is the end result I was looking for. > I must admit my opinion of ALL cell phone carriers is that their > first priority is to sell service and issues about providing service > come in second. This is true somewhat but at least from my experience it's not been something that's been forced on me and I've had no pressure to get anything that I didn't want. > I presume their people you meet in their stores are on sales > commission and not particularly well trained or able (or interested) > to answer any substantive question. This is generally true, but it's true in most any sales oriented outfit. Generally I've found that you get more information and help out of the carrier's customer care than you'll get in a store unless it's a corporate store in which case you'll still get the emphasis on sales, but you will get some tech help if needed. The truth is though that often those people in the stores have less knowlege than you'll find elsewhere. I know that I know scads more about the tech end of things for my service than anyone in the local store and that I can get more information from a user's group on the net than I'm likely to find in a corporate or authorized store. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: AOL Makes it Official; Now it's Mostly Free and Ad Supported Organization: Symantec Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:49:40 -0400 In article , Henry Cabot Henhouse III wrote: > Great. .. now the perves and pedos will find it easier to get online to prey > on the youngsters ... Not really. They're only dropping the charge for the portal service. You still have to pay to use them as a dialup service. So if you're not already online via broadband, it won't be any easier. 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 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 #286 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 6 01:20:36 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 48EEE21ED; Sun, 6 Aug 2006 01:20:36 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #287 Message-Id: <20060806052036.48EEE21ED@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 01:20:36 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 6 Aug 2006 01:23:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 287 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Brian Westley, AP) Defcon Tries to Thwart Counterfeit Admission Badges (Dan Goodin, AP) Cybercrime Treaty Hailed As Potential Violation of Privacy (tedrichardson) Re: Breaking into a laptop via Wi-Fi (Monty Solomon) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (B. Wright) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John L) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (DevilsPGD) Gorilla Warfare and Cybersquatters (Miles Odonnol) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 23:26:48 -0500 From: Brian Westley, Associated Press Subject: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer 2 teens accused in theft of VA computer By BRIAN WESTLEY, Associated Press Writer Two teenagers were arrested Saturday morning in the theft of a laptop and hard drive containing sensitive data on up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, authorities said. The equipment was stolen May 3 during a burglary at the Maryland home of a Veterans Affairs employee. The laptop and hard drive were turned into the FBI June 28 by an unidentified person in response to a $50,000 reward offer. The equipment contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of veterans discharged since 1975, in what was the worst-ever breach of government data. Jesus Alex Pineda, 19, and Christian Brian Montano, 19, both of Rockville, Md., were arrested early Saturday, Montgomery County police said. Pineda was charged with first-degree burglary and theft over $500. Montano was charged with first-degree burglary, conspiracy to commit first-degree burglary, theft over $500, and conspiracy to commit theft over $500. Police said similar charges were also filed against a third male suspect who is a juvenile. "I commend the FBI, Montgomery County Police, VA's Office of Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies for their professionalism and diligence throughout this investigation," Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson said in a statement. "Today's announcement that arrests have been made is good news." Authorities said the suspects did not specifically target the VA employee's home in Aspen Hill, Md., and did not realize the hard drive contained veterans' information until the case was publicized. Police did not have any information about attorneys for the suspects. A bond hearing could be held Monday at the earliest, officials said. The VA announced last month that the FBI has determined with a high degree of confidence that the files were not compromised. "While this arrest is good news, we were lucky that the data belonging to veterans was not accessed and misused," Steve Buyer, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement. "The vulnerability is real and with the help of Congress, VA must move forward with information security reform," said Buyer, R-Ind. Congress is investigating the steps leading up to and after the theft. It also is pondering legislation to improve information security. On the Net: Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.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 headlines and news from the Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 23:30:19 -0500 From: Dan Goodin, Associated Press Subject: Defcon Tries to Thwart Counterfeit Admission Badges by DAN GOODIN, AP Technology Writer The thousands of people who waited an hour or more to get into Defcon drove home what a hot ticket this 14-year-old computer-hacking event has become. In years past, when would-be attendees couldn't afford the admission price, they put their hacking skills to work by creating counterfeit badges. This year, organizers turned to Joe Grand, a designer of consumer electronics hardware, to come up with something that couldn't be easily duplicated. Admission this year costs $100. "This particular badge, because it's electronic, is hard to counterfeit," Grand said as he pointed to a circular plastic badge with two blinking lights at the top. "To make something like this in a few days could cost a lot of money." The circular badge's deceptively simple design features the Defcon logo of a skull and crossbones and a smiling face. Two light-emitting diodes designate the eyes, and a tiny microprocessor inside causes them to blink in four different ways. But the processor isn't something sold at Radio Shack or other electronics stores, said Grand, whose San Diego-based company, Grand Idea Studio, licenses hardware designs to electronics manufacturers. Trying to embed the processor into plastic less than 1/8-inch thick would also be a difficult undertaking. Grand has added other features to the circuitry in the hopes that attendees will give the badges new capabilities. He said he wouldn't be surprised if someone figures out a way to make the processor act as a remote control that can turn hotel televisions on and off. In past years, attendees have managed to counterfeit badges anyhow, despite designs meant to thwart copying. A shiny gum wrapper was once used to replicate a badge's holographic icon, Grand said. Another time, hackers were able to duplicate badges even though they had liquid pulsing through them. "Every time they've taken steps to stop counterfeiting, and every time somebody always figures out a way to counterfeit the badge," Grand said. Grand's design, and the inevitable attempts to circumvent it, are part of the spirit of Defcon, where some of the world's best-known hackers gather to share ideas and try to one up each other in their endless crusade to get machines to act in ways they weren't designed to behave. Defcon is also an opportunity for computer-security experts to air some of the latest research. Greg Conti, a computer science professor at the United States Military Academy, prepared a report that shows just how much information free Web services such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have about typical Internet users. He wrote a program that allows anyone to see the kind of personal details including a complete list of every search item ever entered, every location surveyed on a map, and entries put in electronic calendars routinely stored by such sites. "I was shocked, and I think other people will be shocked, to learn the information they've been handing over," Conti said in an interview ahead of his presentation. "What we're doing is implicitly trusting a handful of companies with a tremendous amount of our personal information." On the Net: http://www.defcon.org 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, also see: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html http://telecom-digest.otg/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: tedrichardson9925@sbcglobal.net Subject: Cybercrime Treaty Hailed as Potential Violation of Privacy by EFF Date: 5 Aug 2006 20:36:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Time will tell, but the implications are there. Hopefully, Alberto Gonzales is right when he said: "The cybercrime pact strengthens international cooperation in 'obtaining electronic evidence' while still honoring constitutional protections of free speech and privacy." http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2006/08/cybercrime-treaty-hailed-as-violation.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 23:38:11 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: Breaking Into a Laptop via Wi-Fi Follow-up to the Macbook Post Brian Krebs August 3, 2006 I'd like to respond to the people who commented on yesterday's post about the video's depiction of the use of a third-party wireless card on the Macbook. I spent more than an hour with Dave Maynor watching this exploit in action and peppering him with questions about it. During the course of our interview, it came out that Apple had leaned on Maynor and Ellch pretty hard not to make this an issue about the Mac drivers -- mainly because Apple had not fixed the problem yet. Maynor acknowledged that he used a third-party wireless card in the demo so as not to draw attention to the flaw resident in Macbook drivers. But he also admitted that the same flaws were resident in the default Macbook wireless device drivers, and that those drivers were identically exploitable. And that is what I reported. I stand by my own reporting, as according to Maynor and Ellch it remains a fact that the default Macbook drivers are indeed exploitable. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/followup_to_macbook_post.html Hijacking a Macbook in 60 Seconds or Less http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/hijacking_a_macbook_in_60_seco.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 14:53:09 MDT From: B. Wright Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, John Levine wrote: >>> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do GSM >>> as well as TDMA, and analog? ... [yes, it does] >> What they really want is to screw all the old long time AT&T >> customers into new two year contracts with less favorable rates. > Since I have never been an AT&T customer, I don't find that very > persuasive. I originally signed up in 1995 when they were Cingular > One and my phone was a real 3W AMPS built-in car phone, then went to a > TDMA handheld, then to my current GSM/TDMA/AMPS phone which I have no > intention of giving up. It's entirely plausible that they want to > chase out all the TDMA and AMPS users so they can switch their network > to be 100% GSM. Doesn't really apply to you then, but it is true, there is plenty of evidence to support this. The TDMA customers are also unwanted, but not quite so badly as the others and I imagine since you're already on a Cingular plan they won't strong arm you into switching that. You'll have to let me know if they try to ask you to sign another one/two year contract to make this change though, I believe this is a special "bonus" reserved only for the AT&T customers. >>> Time to look at T-Mobile. > The prices are great, I need to figure out whether the coverage is OK > here which basically means whether they let me roam onto Cingular. It > appears that in some places they do, some they don't. Yes, this is the only real drawback of T-Mobile in some areas but I believe it's getting better. A couple of months ago I got a text message here saying that the ToGo prepaid can now roam onto Cingular's 850Mhz network in our area but I think it is not the case nationwide yet. -Blake ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 17:00:11 -0400 (EDT) From: John L Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge >> Since I have never been an AT&T customer, I don't find that very >> persuasive. > Doesn't really apply to you then, but it is true, there is plenty of > evidence to support this. The TDMA customers are also unwanted, but > not quite so badly as the others and I imagine since you're already > on a Cingular plan they won't strong arm you into switching that. > You'll have to let me know if they try to ask you to sign another > one/two year contract to make this change though, I believe this is > a special "bonus" reserved only for the AT&T customers. When I called them up, they told me there was no way to keep my existing $30 plan and the only thing they offered was the standard $40 plan with a contract, take it or leave it. I left it. There is absolutely no reason to think this surcharge has anything to do with ex-AT&T customers, and every reason to think that it's to get rid of AMPS and TDMA customers. As should be blindingly obvious, the large number of ex-AT&T customers with GSM plans won't be affected by this at all. Even with the $5 surcharge, my current plan is a better deal than anything they offer now, but if T-Mobile has adequate coverage here, Cingular is history. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://johnlevine.com, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Aug 2006 08:14:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge 3 Aug 2006 20:57:59 -0000 John Levine wrote: > Time to look at T-Mobile. > The prices are great, I need to figure out whether the coverage is OK > here which basically means whether they let me roam onto Cingular. It > appears that in some places they do, some they don't. Generally the way it works is if the home carrier (in this case T-Mobile) offers service in a locality you can only use them. If they do not offer service in a locality often times a roaming partner may offer service *if* the home carrier has a roaming agreement with the other carrier. In any case if there's no roaming agreement you will not be able to register on that network and the only thing you will be allowed to do is to use that network for emergency 911/112 calls. All carriers including T-Mobile usually have a trial period of 14 days or more where you can try the service before committing to an agreement (usually it's a minimum of a year.) You can try a service out and see whether it works in a satisfactory manner in the places you need it to work (home, work, etc.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 19:36:08 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** John Levine wrote: >>> Any idea if this applies to those of us with GAIT phones that do >>> GSM as well as TDMA, and analog? ... [yes, it does] >> What they really want is to screw all the old long time AT&T >> customers into new two year contracts with less favorable rates. > Since I have never been an AT&T customer, I don't find that very > persuasive. I originally signed up in 1995 when they were > Cingular One and my phone was a real 3W AMPS built-in carphone In 1995 when "they" were "Cingular One" ?? Don't you really mean "Cellular One" !! The Cingular name first came into existance in 2000, when SBC (now the "new" at&t) and BellSouth, "merged" their wireless entities, SBC Mobility and BellSouth Mobility, into a "joint-venture", which was now branded as Cingular. Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 by Cingular. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:57:22 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message DLR wrote: > To be clear. I wasn't referring to being asked to deliver groceries in > Nigeria. But an internet enabled store has to deal with fraud, data > theft, etc ... which can come from the other side of the planet. Where > the old local grocery really was a local operation. Fraud occurred with > people in the store or at a delivery location. There was no website to > break into and take over. But none of that really applies to an internet based order that ultimately ends with the customer going face to face with an employee. Grocery delivery is basically immune from internet drive fraud, no? ===== Some people are like Slinkies... You can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs. ------------------------------ From: Miles Odonnol Subject: Gorilla Warfare and Cybersquatters Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 04:30:17 -0500 Love your sense of humor! Wonder if anyone has followed up on your dastardly suggestions. My cousin's site http://www.taipeipeacepeople.com lapsed and got snarfed by onlinenic. Probably holding for ransom. That's why I am researching this subject. Best eGads, Miles ------------------------------ 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 #287 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 6 18:32:13 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 634D721FA; Sun, 6 Aug 2006 18:32:13 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #288 Message-Id: <20060806223213.634D721FA@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 18:32:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 6 Aug 2006 18:35:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 288 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Is ICONIX a Good Answer to Email Verification? (Patrick Townson) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Steve Sobol) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (Robert Bonomi) Re: Honda Owner Manual Lists Talk Line (3z3k3l) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:14:35 -0500 From: Patrick Townson Subject: Is ICONIX a Good Answer to Email Verification? A new system for email verification has come to my attention, and I thought maybe some of the email experts here would care to examine it and make comments. The URL is http://www.iconix.com for details and to download what is needed to make it work on your computer, but I have included a few of the FAQ items here for review as well: GENERAL QUESTIONS Who is ICONIX, Inc.? What is Iconix eMail ID? What kind of icons will I see in my inbox? Do I have to pay to use Iconix eMail ID? What is phishing? What companies (senders) are currently identified by the Iconix solution? Will this change my current email solution or provider? Will you see my email? How can my business become a registered sender? TECHNICAL QUESTIONS How does the Iconix solution work? Can Iconix eMail ID be spoofed? Tell me more about Sender ID. Tell me more about Domain Keys. What's the difference between this solution and a spam filter? How is this better than other email authentication solutions? Are messages without a Truemark icon suspicious? What if I don't see any Truemark icons in my inbox? What does it mean if I don't see a Truemark icon next to a message from a company that's on your list of identified senders? I have a question that isn't answered here, where do I go now? DOWNLOAD & SETUP QUESTIONS What are the system requirements for using Iconix eMail ID? Do I need to configure any settings? Does it work with my email program? How do I upgrade from an older version of Iconix eMail ID? How easy is Iconix eMail ID to install? How long will the download take? How do I uninstall Iconix eMail ID? I have a question that isn't answered here, where do I go now? GENERAL QUESTIONS - Who is ICONIX, Inc.? ICONIX, Inc. provides email identity services that proactively combat email fraud spawned by phishing. The IconixSM solution that we offer uses icons to enable users to quickly and visually distinguish emails sent by identified senders. - What is Iconix eMail ID? Iconix eMail ID is software that works in conjunction with your email program and confirms the source of an email message. Once confirmed, we make the message easy to identify by placing an icon next to it. If you ever wonder who is really sending you an email message; Iconix eMail ID helps solve that problem! - What kind of icons will I see in my inbox? After Iconix eMail ID confirms the source of an email message, you will see a Truemark icon to represent that the message is real: A check lockTM icon represents identified senders. Before displaying the icon, we perform an identification function in the background. Identified senders consist of more than 300 companies we have recognized as senders using publicly available information about the sender's domain and business (see the list). These senders represent many of the top online sites for retail, travel, auctions, banking, dating, etc.; and other companies that have enrolled with us. - Do I have to pay to use Iconix eMail ID? No. It's FREE to consumers. - What is phishing? Phishing is a form of email fraud where senders impersonate legitimate businesses and organizations to try and get you to divulge personal information like passwords, account numbers, etc. so they can steal your identity and/or funds from your account. These phishing messages are becoming more and more realistic-looking and phishers are not just targeting large financial institutions, but even smaller businesses and organizations. - What companies (senders) are currently identified by the Iconix solution? A list of identified senders can be found at http://www.iconix.com - Will this change my current email solution or provider? No. You continue using the same email browser or client that you are using now. Your email experience will remain the same, except now you'll be able to see the Truemark icons, and when you mouse over the icon, a Truemark profile box will show you more details. - Will you see my email? No. Your email continues to travel the same path it always did. Your messages are NOT routed through us. The eMail ID software simply checks messages in the inbox to see if the sender is on our list of identified senders. - How can my business become a registered sender? Submit a request at our web site. - I have a question that isn't answered here, where do I go now? You can read more information and post questions in our user forum. TECHNICAL QUESTIONS - How does the Iconix solution work? Iconix eMail ID confirms the source of email messages using industry-standard authentication technologies such as Sender ID and DomainKeys. After we get a positive result from these authentication checks, we check that result against a list of identified senders. This multi-step process is required to make sure we aren't adding a Truemark icon to a spoofed message. - Can Iconix eMail ID be spoofed? The Iconix solution couples our advanced technologies with authentication techniques such as Yahoo!'s Domain Keys and Microsoft's Sender ID to confirm the source of an email, and will support Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which is a joint effort between Cisco and Yahoo!, as it is adopted in the industry. This combined solution makes it very difficult for bad guys to spoof the identity of emails with an Iconix Truemark icon. Not impossible, just very difficult. - Tell me more about Sender ID Sender ID records tell the world what IP address(es) senders use to send mail. When receiving a message from that IP address, this record can be checked to make sure the sender's email address isn't being spoofed. To learn more about Sender ID see our web site. - Tell me more about Domain Keys Domain Keys is a technology that gives email providers a mechanism for verifying both the domain of each email sender and the integrity of the messages sent (i.e,. that they were not altered during transit). And, once the domain can be verified, it can be compared to the domain used by the sender in the From: field of the message to detect forgeries. If it's a forgery, then it's spam or fraud, and it can be dropped without impact to the user. If it's not a forgery, then the domain is known, and we can check that domain name against our list of identified senders. To learn more about Domain Keys see our web site. - What's the difference between this solution and a spam filter? Spam filters are like a net that stop emails by using suspect words, characters, etc. Iconix eMail ID doesn't filter or prevent email messages from coming in, we just help you identify senders quickly and easily. - How is this better than other email authentication solutions? The Iconix solution uses a two-step process. Normal authentication solutions will verify that a domain is a valid domain, but that domain could still be owned by a fraudulent person. The second step in our process verifies the identity of the sender themselves to ensure the message is truly from them. - Are messages without a Truemark icon suspicious? Messages without a Truemark icon should be treated with the same caution you use now to open messages. It may mean that the sender does not send authenticated mail or that they are not currently an identified sender in the Truemark service. It does _NOT_ absolutely mean it is spam or a scam. You treat that mail according to your procedures for other email received. - What if I don't see any Truemark icons in my inbox? You probably have not received messages from any Iconix identified senders yet. To check whether the Iconix eMail ID software is operational, look for an 'Iconix enabled' logo on your email screen. You can also use the self test button at our support page to send yourself a message to see if our logo appears next to our email in your inbox. - What does it mean if I don't see a Truemark icon next to a message from a company that's on your list of identified senders? There are three reasons this may occur: Companies send email from many different addresses and domains. In some cases, they authenticate email sent from some addresses and not from others, and we can only display a Truemark icon for authenticated addresses that are on our list. To submit the sender's email address so that we can inform the company and update our list with additional authenticated addresses, click where requested on our web site. This message may have been forwarded before arriving in your inbox. In some cases, the email authentication cannot be verified if the message is forwarded, so even though the message may be real, we cannot mark it as such. Or -- This message may be a spoof. Use the same caution you use on any unmarked email when dealing with this message. Your judgment and caution is the solution. - I have a question that isn't answered here, where do I go now? You can read more information and post questions in our user forum. DOWNLOAD & SETUP QUESTIONS - What are the system requirements for using Iconix eMail ID? Iconix eMail ID works with Internet Explorer 5.0+, Internet Explorer 7BETA 2, Mozilla Firefox and Windows XP/2000. We will be supporting Macintosh and SafariTM in the near future. Chck our website to see when new versions are available. - Do I need to configure any settings? No, just download and follow the prompts. After you have downloaded, continue sending and reading email as you normally do; if we identify messages from one of our identified senders you will see the Truemark icon. - Does it work with my email program? We currently support Microsoft Outlook Express, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and many more. Check our website to see the entire list. You can also sign up to be notified when we add support for new email programs. - How do I upgrade from an older version of Iconix eMail ID? When it comes to email safety, updates are important so Iconix eMail ID updates itself automatically. You can check for updates manually in Internet Explorer by going to Tools>Iconix Preferences>Check for updates - How easy is Iconix eMail ID to install? Installation is a snap! Click here to go to the download page. Click Run or Save in the new window that appears. The download will start. You will be asked to allow automatic updates, click 'I Agree' to continue. During the installation you will be asked to close your internet browser to complete the install, click yes. Next screen will show that you are finished. Congratulations! If you don't already see Truemark icons in your inbox, you can send yourself a test message here. - How long will the download take? If you're on a high speed connection, it's very quick. If you're on dial-up, it's probably about a 4 minute download. - How do I uninstall Iconix eMail ID? You can easily uninstall Iconix eMail ID by going to: Start > Programs > Iconix > Uninstall Iconix eMail ID [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can find out more about this sender-ID for email at http://www.iconix.com PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:36:09 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) > were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 > by Cingular. I'm not sure when SBC acquired the CellularONE brand, but they owned it until they sold it as part of the creation of Cingular. The brand went to Western Wireless. Western Wireless was then bought by Alltel. Alltel is marketing under their own name, but there are some independent C1 franchisees like Dobson who continue to sell their services as CellularONE. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Dobson Cellular One' is what we have here in our town. Dobson also has an 'antenna farm' southeast of town in a rural area called Liberty, Kansas, and quite a few carriers are out there on his 'farm', where he leases space to them. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 6 Aug 2006 15:39:50 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge > In 1995 when "they" were "Cingular One" ?? Don't you really mean > "Cellular One" !! Of course. I never said I could type. It was SBC. At the time, they were the only cell carrier available because the B franchise was held up by the claim of a local Indian tribe who said they had the rights to it. The FCC finally decided the Indians were bogus, and they had a lottery among the area ILECs which my own tiny telco won. They sold the license to Frontier and after the usual array of mergers and spinoffs, it's now part of VZW. > Generally the way it works is if the home carrier (in this case > T-Mobile) offers service in a locality you can only use them. If they > do not offer service in a locality often times a roaming partner may > offer service *if* the home carrier has a roaming agreement with the > other carrier. Yeah, it depends on what they mean by locality. T-Mobile has a tower in Ithaca, but that's the only one around here. Cingular has great coverage, and Cingular and T-Mobile have extensive roaming agreements. The question is whether they roam here. > All carriers including T-Mobile usually have a trial period of 14 days I bought a T-Mobile prepaid SIM on ebay for $9.85. That should be plenty to find out whether it works. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This goes back many years, but does anyone remember when, in the Chicago metro area, Illinois Bell (or Ameritech) was the so-called "B" carrier with 'Ameritech Wireless' and Celluar One was the "A" carrier? But then travel down the highway toward St. Louis and it flip-flopped; Ameritech became the "A" carrier and SBC (doing business as 'Southwestern Bell Mobility') was the "B" carrier? I think 'B' was always the established land- line phone company and 'A' was the maruders, or invaders into the established telco territory. It was that way all over the USA, with an A/B system; where established telco was 'B' and whoever got the franchise otherwise was the 'A' side. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 12:16:39 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , DevilsPGD wrote: > In message DLR > wrote: >> To be clear. I wasn't referring to being asked to deliver groceries in >> Nigeria. But an internet enabled store has to deal with fraud, data >> theft, etc ... which can come from the other side of the planet. Where >> the old local grocery really was a local operation. Fraud occurred with >> people in the store or at a delivery location. There was no website to >> break into and take over. > But none of that really applies to an internet based order that > ultimately ends with the customer going face to face with an employee. > Grocery delivery is basically immune from internet drive fraud, no? No. There are some kinds of fraud that rely on the Internet for execution. Grocery delivery -- or other local delivery services -- _is_ mostly immune from these kinds of 'remote-control' frauds. There are other kinds of fraud that can be carried out via many means, one of which happens to be the internet. The use of the Internet is 'incidental' to the fraud. Grocery-delivery, or other local services, *are* vulnerable to these kinds of frauds 'over the internet', just as they are vulnerable to them when executed using other means. Example: How do you insure that the delivery address is the party that really ordered the groceries? You get there and find out 'nobody ordered anything'. You're out the 'costs' of the delivery trip. Example: How do you insure that the check you're given is not drawn on a 'closed' account? (they're moving out tomorrow, three states away, and this delivery is food for the trip.) Example: There are thugs waiting for the driver to show up so they can rob the driver. And/or hijack the grocery load for 'discount' resale to innocents. ------------------------------ From: 3z3k3l Subject: Re: Honda Owner Manual Lists Talk Line Date: 6 Aug 2006 05:32:26 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Oops! LOL! That should go over well, maybe they will think it tech support! http://www.merassistant.com Monty Solomon wrote: > WASHINGTON, Jul 31, 2006 (AP Online via COMTEX News Network) -- > A toll-free number listed in more than a million Honda owners' > manuals was supposed to direct callers to a government hotline - not > to another number where the conversation is probably about anything > but auto safety. > Honda Motor Co. said it incorrectly published an 800 prefix, rather > than an 888, on a toll-free vehicle safety telephone number in 1.2 > million manuals for 2006 model year Honda and Acura vehicles and Honda > motorcycles. > Owners who dial the 800 prefix hear a recorded message in which a > woman's voice, speaking over a funky beat, urges them to call > 1-800-918-TALK for "just 99 cents per minute." > - http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=60129282 ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 05:33:52 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Brian Westley wrote: > Congress is investigating the steps leading up to and after the theft. > It also is pondering legislation to improve information security. By far, the worst criminal in this case is the jerk government employee who took the data home. ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #288 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 7 03:22:32 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9962021F6; Mon, 7 Aug 2006 03:22:31 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #289 Message-Id: <20060807072231.9962021F6@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 03:22:31 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 7 Aug 2006 03:25:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 289 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Pipeline Problems Cause Much of Alaska Oil Supply to Cease (AP News) Free AIM on Motorola V555? (superkrups20056@gmail.com) Old Analog Cellular A/B Systems (Re: Cingular Surcharge) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (William Warren) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Mark Crispin) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (DevilsPGD) A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet (Christian Science Monitor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:45:13 -0500 From: Mary Pemberton, AP Subject: Pipeline Problems Cause Huge Amount of Alaska Oil Supply to Cease Major Alaskan oil field shutting down By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press Writer In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line. BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel. "You cannot just turn a valve or throw a switch and shut it down," he pointed out. Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East. "We regret that it is necessary to take this action and we apologize to the nation and the State of Alaska for the adverse impacts it will cause," BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone said in a statement. A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo. "Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment," Emori said. "But we can't really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced." Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said he expected the impact to be minimal. "The U.S. market is actually well-supplied; crude inventories are very high," he said. "So while this won't have any immediate impact on U.S. supplies, the market is in very high anxiety. So any significant disruption, traders will take that into account, even though there is no threat of a supply shortage." Light, sweet crude for September delivery was up 36 cents to $74.95 a barrel in midmorning Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Malone said the field will not resume operating until the company and government regulators are satisfied it can run safely without threatening the environment. "We are not going to do a thing which could endanger either Alaksa or the envirnoment in general." Officials at BP, a unit of the London-based company BP PLC, learned Friday that data from an internal sensing device found 16 anomalies in 12 locations in an oil transit line on the eastern side of the field. Follow-up inspections found "corrosion-related wall thinning appeared to exceed BP criteria for continued operation," the company said in a release. Steve Marshall, president of BP Exploration Alaska, Inc., said at an Anchorage news conference that testing in the 16 areas found losses in wall thickness of between 70 and 81 percent. Repair or replacement is required if there is over an 80 percent loss. "The results were absolutely unexpected," he said. Marshall said Sunday night that the eastern side of Prudhoe Bay would be shut down first, an operation anticipated to take 24 to 36 hours. The company will then move to shut down the west side, a move that could close more than 1,000 Prudhoe Bay wells. Marshall said BP is looking at repairing, bypassing or totally replacing the line. Only one of BP's three transit lines is operating. The third was shut down in March after up to 267,000 barrels of oil spilled. BP installed a bypass on that line in April with plans to replace the pipe. While they suspect corrosion in both damaged lines, they can't say for sure until further tests are complete. Corrosion is primarily caused by carbon dioxide that comes up with water, oil and gas during drilling. BP puts millions of gallons of corrosion inhibitor into the Prudhoe Bay lines each year. It also examines pipes by taking X-rays and ultrasound images. "Up until Friday of this weekend we were of the opinion the techniques we were using were ultimately reliable," Marshall said. Workers also found a small spill, estimated to be about 4 to 5 barrels. A barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil. The spill has been contained and clean up efforts are under way, BP said. "Our production while all this is in place is going to be marginal," said Will Vandergriff, spokesman for Gov. Frank Murkowski. "That presents some technical problems because it's a high capacity line and it's meant to be filled." Vandergriff said he did not know exactly what potential problems a sudden drop in oil flow might cause the pipeline. Alyeska Pipeline Co. officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but Vandergriff noted that BP employees and environment officials would be in 'constant communication' over the several days needed to completely evacuate the pipeline and begin replacement as needed. A prolonged shutdown would be a major blow to domestic oil production, but even a short one could be crippling to Alaska's economy. According to forecast figures from the Alaska Department of Revenue, a 400,000 barrels of oil per day production drop would mean approximately $4.6 million per day lost to the state. That is money going to both the state treasury and the state's oil wealth savings account, the Alaska Permanent Fund. "That starts adding up to big bucks in a hurry," said House Finance Co-Chairman Mike Chenault, R-Nikiski. "It could start having a disastrous effect on the state as early as today." BP said it was sending additional resources from across the state and North America to hasten the inspection of the remaining transit lines. About 40 percent of the lines have been inspected. BP previously said it would replace a 3-mile segment of pipeline following inspections conducted after up to 267,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the frozen ground about 250 miles above the Arctic Circle in March. Now it appears even more of the pipeline must be replaced. House Speaker John Harris said it was admirable that BP took immediate action, although it's sure to hurt state coffers. "This state cannot afford to have another Exxon Valdez," said Harris, R-Valdez, "and we are very pleased that BP is making this effort to protect the Alaskan environment". The Exxon Valdez tanker emptied 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in 1989, killing hundreds of thousands of birds and marine animals and soiling more than 1,200 miles of rocky beach in nation's largest oil spill. 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 please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: superkrups20056@gmail.com Subject: Free AIM on Motorola V555? Date: 6 Aug 2006 21:58:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi. I have a Motorola V555 and have been trying to get a free AIM application on my phone for a long time, as the V555 doesn't come with an embedded AIM app. Could anyone give me an application and a plan to get this service free? I've already tried Yamigo, with horrible luck. Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 16:54:28 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Old Analog Cellular A/B Systems (Re: Cingular Surcharge) ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** Patrick Townson asked: > This goes back many years, but does anyone remember when, in the > Chicago metro area, Illinois Bell (or Ameritech) was the so-called > "B" carrier with 'Ameritech Wireless' and Celluar One was the "A" > carrier? But then travel down the highway toward St. Louis and it > flip-flopped; Ameritech became the "A" carrier and SBC (doing > business as 'Southwestern Bell Mobility') was the "B" carrier? > I think 'B' was always the established land-line phone company > and 'A' was the maruders, or invaders into the established telco > territory. It was that way all over the USA, with an A/B system; > where established telco was 'B' and whoever got the franchise > otherwise was the 'A' side. NO, it wasn't "always" that way -- but it was MOSTLY that way, the "B" side analog wireless system being the wireless operation of the incumbent landline local telephone company, and the "A" side being the "non-wireline" wireless company. There were several exceptions to this -- I can't think of any specific examples offhand, maybe others can -- but there were indeed several cases where the "wireline" cellular provider in a particular area operated on the "A" side, and the "non-wireline" or "radio common carrier" wireless company operated on the "B" side. Most cellphone companies issued roaming booklets to the customer to indicate whether that company (or an associated company) operated on the "A" vs "B" side in each market, what types of roaming charges applied, how to activate romaing, or if roaming would automatically "turn-on" in that market, etc. None of that seems to apply today in a digital or GSM cellular environment. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, I _can_ think of an example: right here in southeast Kansas. In the north eastern corner of our state (metro Kansas City, Topeka, etc) the "B" carrier long ago was United Telephone Company, the telco owners 'of record' in the area. (Now of course it is known as Sprint). I do not know who was the "A" carrier up there. But here in southeast Kansas, where we are actually part of the 'Tulsa (business) Market' Southwestern Bell (our telco of record in those days [and still so, largely]) did _not_ operate a cellular system, at least not in the early days. They would have been the "B" carrier here if they had acted on it. We had no cellular phone service here until the middle 1990's, although I can recall using my Ameritech Wireless 'brick phone' when I came here in 1991 to help my mother bury my dad. Cellular phones generally did not work at all here in town in those days (they always just said 'no service') with one exception in my case: if I went up to the second floor in our old house on 11th Street in one bedroom with the phone held out the window I was able to get a slight (two or three bars) signal which I found curious; I dialed the '0' operator and asked her who she was, she replied she was Southwestern Bell in Tulsa, 85 miles straight south. But I digress ... at one time, about 1999, I had a cellular phone from Alltel here in Kansas, on the "A" side up in Junction City. I kept the Alltel phone through my hospital stay in 2000. When I came here to Independence after the hospital with my Alltel phone, set to the "A" side I began getting charges from a company called 'U.S. Cellular' billed as roaming charges. The representative from Alltel told me that although they were on the "A" side in 'the old United Tel territory' they had 'won the lottery for the "B" side in southeast Kansas' when no one else had applied for it. The old AT&T was also an "A" side carrier when they were serving us here, prior to selling out their wireless service to Cingular. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:23:00 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Sam Spade wrote: > Brian Westley wrote: >> Congress is investigating the steps leading up to and after the theft. >> It also is pondering legislation to improve information security. > By far, the worst criminal in this case is the jerk government > employee who took the data home. The VA employee who took the data home -- to work on during his private hours when he could have been with his family or entertaining friends -- had permission to do so, according to testimony from the VA brass made before a Senate committee. Do you feel that civil servants who are willing to work extra hard for the veterans they serve are jerks, or did you just make an uninformed blunder? William (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 20:16:15 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Sam Spade wrote: > By far, the worst criminal in this case is the jerk government > employee who took the data home. Au contraire! Your statement would be more accurate without line 2 :-) From the Washington Post http://tinyurl.com/ghyxr >>> Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.) said yesterday that three VA documents >>> obtained by the Veterans Affairs Committee indicate that the data >>> analyst was authorized to take a laptop home and use a software >>> package to access the data. That contradicted Nicholson's previous >>> testimony that the employee was not authorized to have the >>> information at home. >>> "He got all the approvals that he was supposed to have," Filner said. Whereas from "Official Sources" http://www.firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml >>>> In May 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) learned that an >>>> employee, a data analyst, took home electronic data from VA that was >>>> stored in his home on a laptop computer and external hard drive. He >>>> was not authorized to take this data home. This behavior was in >>>> violation of VA policies. >>>> The employee is cooperating fully with the investigation. The >>>> employee was initially placed on administrative leave, and VA is >>>> implementing procedures necessary to dismiss the employee. In fact this guy was DOING HIS JOB -- taking his work home with the knowledge, permission, and encouragement of his bosses. When things went wrong they all turned around and fingered him. He is currently suing the VA; obviously some new definition of "cooperating fully" that I wasn't previously familiar with. The government website has been updated to include information on the recovery of the laptop, and the fact that none of the data appears to have been accessed by unauthorized people. But strangely enough the information that the employee WAS AUTHORIZED has not been added. The spinmasters are hard at it ... Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com If your teacher tells you to Question Authority Should you do it? ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Sun, 6 Aug 2006 16:45:08 -0700 Organization: University of Washington On Sat, 5 Aug 2006, TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Steve Sobol: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 'Dobson Cellular One' is what we have > here in our town. Dobson also has an 'antenna farm' southeast of town > in a rural area called Liberty, Kansas, and quite a few carriers are > out there on his 'farm', where he leases space to them. PAT] Dobson Cellular One is also the GSM carrier in Alaska, and is phasing out their TDMA and analog. Until recently, Dobson was the only choice if you wanted digital service outside of the major cities. However, ACS Wnireless is now aggressively building out their CDMA network; I found CDMA service in the Copper River Valley (Glennallen, etc.) this year when previously there was none. ACS also has some TDMA. Although ACS is actively touting the advantages of CDMA ("every GSM carrier in the world today is upgrading their network to CDMA", "CDMA has a noticably better voice quality than GSM and TDMA", "CDMA has fewer dropped calls"), neither carrier seems to be unconditionally "better" in performance. With both carriers, either "it works" or "it doesn't work"; there seemed to be no in-between state. There are many places where there was no CDMA service but full bar GSM service, or vice versa. ACS Wireless roams with Verizon in the USA but not with Telus Mobility; in fact, ACS seems to be on the Telus PRL forbidden list since Telus phones go into analog mode in ACS land. -- 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: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2006 21:20:14 -0500 Organization: Disorganized In message bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > In article , DevilsPGD > wrote: >> In message DLR >> wrote: >>> To be clear. I wasn't referring to being asked to deliver groceries in >>> Nigeria. But an internet enabled store has to deal with fraud, data >>> theft, etc ... which can come from the other side of the planet. Where >>> the old local grocery really was a local operation. Fraud occurred with >>> people in the store or at a delivery location. There was no website to >>> break into and take over. >> But none of that really applies to an internet based order that >> ultimately ends with the customer going face to face with an employee. >> Grocery delivery is basically immune from internet drive fraud, no? > No. > There are some kinds of fraud that rely on the Internet for execution. > Grocery delivery -- or other local delivery services -- _is_ mostly > immune from these kinds of 'remote-control' frauds. > There are other kinds of fraud that can be carried out via many means, > one of which happens to be the internet. The use of the Internet is > 'incidental' to the fraud. Grocery-delivery, or other local services, > *are* vulnerable to these kinds of frauds 'over the internet', just as > they are vulnerable to them when executed using other means. Sure, but that's my point -- If a grocery store is offering delivery anyway (most around here do, although it's a pick-stuff-yourself and we'll charge way more then cab fare to deliver it to your house variety ...) > Example: > How do you insure that the delivery address is the party that really > ordered the groceries? > You get there and find out 'nobody ordered anything'. > You're out the 'costs' of the delivery trip. Sure, but that's a possibility for any delivery-based service, not an inherent internet risk. > Example: > How do you insure that the check you're given is not drawn on a > 'closed' account? (they're moving out tomorrow, three states away, > and this delivery is food for the trip.) How does the supermarket ensure against this at the store? Again, no worse at the customer's location. > Example: > There are thugs waiting for the driver to show up so they can rob > the driver. And/or hijack the grocery load for 'discount' resale to > innocents. While possible, it's just as simple to walk into a grocery store, put the stuff in the cart and walk out the door. All of the stores around here have their employees trained to back down at the first sign of physical threat ... Sure, a bunch of employees might decide to be heros, but the same could happen to grocery delivery drivers. And again, not an internet threat, as much as a delivery threat in general. I guess we'll be going down together, I mean getting off together, I mean ... That's Ok, I'll just press the button for the stimulator. Elevator! -- Homer Simpson ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:56:40 -0500 From: Stephanie Hanes Subject: A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet from the August 04, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0804/p20s01-stct.html Backstory: Wrong-domain man and other Web intrigue 'No voice, no face, just a guy in cyberspace.' By Stephanie Hanes | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA This is a story about Scott Calvert. Not Scott Calvert my husband, the 34-year-old journalist who lives in South Africa. This is about the other Scott Calvert, the computer expert living near Chicago, the man who came into our lives via a slew of misdirected e-mails. In the end, really, it is a story about a cyber voice, one that left us with poetry and smiles along with unanswered questions and dangling ends, a classic Internet connection. It all started some time ago when Chicago Scott, obviously more cyber savvy than my husband, managed to snag a Firstname.Lastname address with one of the country's large e-mail providers. This is no small feat. Ask anyone who has tried to set up an account recently with Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail. A name is no longer sufficiently unique -- you must add letters or numbers to make a distinctive address. So when my husband signed up for his account, he included his middle initial -- Scottmcalvert. It wasn't a big deal. After all, I'm srhanes in cyberworld. My cousin, Jessica, is jessie8689. He didn't think about who owned regular old scottcalvert, and certainly didn't imagine a name double typing away in the Midwest. But before long, the cyber gods were messing with us. My Scott -- who would become known as SMC, or "smack" -- wondered why he kept missing important e-mails. Chicago Scott -- now known by his initials SLC, or "slick" -- wondered why he was being spammed with dozens of Africa-related press releases. (My husband is the Baltimore Sun's correspondent here.) SLC also got e-mails about our house in Baltimore, our life in Johannesburg, our jobs. Eventually, he would receive details about our lease, as well as a happy birthday e-card from some woman named Carol. "Who are you and why are you sending me a birthday card?" he wrote to Carol, my mother-in-law. "You're kidding, right?" she responded. "I'm sending you a birthday card because I'm your mother, you dope." Sometimes SLC responded to the senders, informing them of their error. Sometimes he just forwarded the e-mails to SMC. In January, we sensed his patience was wearing thin. "This e-mail was sent to the wrong recipient; please notify the necessary parties so they can change their records," he replied to Global Witness, a group focused on resource exploitation. "The sender of this e-mail will now be put on my blocked senders list. Thank you." After that, my Scott wrote back. "Sorry about that, SLC." Signed, "SMC." "SMC, Thank you." Signed, "SLC." The next thing I knew, Scott and Scott were e-mailing back and forth, comparing weather in Chicago and Johannesburg. (Johannesburg: sunny and mid 70s. Chicago: snowy, foggy, windy.) In a bizarre sort of way, they became, well, not really friends, but acquaintances. Much has been written about the Internet's power to connect, and to pull people apart. There are the horror stories -- the antisocial teenagers glued to the keyboard, the Internet predators. But there are also the positive social bonds -- the neighborhood chat groups, discussion boards for dog lovers, weekly e-mail notices about global human rights issues. There are couples who meet on Match.com; families who keep in touch using e-mail and Web phones. A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report found that 60 million Americans turn to the Internet to make major life decisions, such as career shifts. "If people are tucked away in their homes rather than conversing in cafes, then perhaps they are going online: chatting online one-to-one; exchanging e-mail in duets or small groups; or schmoozing, ranting, and organizing in discussion groups such as listservs or newsgroups," University of Toronto researchers suggest in a 2001 Centre for Urban and Community Studies article. There are also the random connections. A colleague of mine, for instance, was puzzled to come across his name double online, and even more surprised to discover that the other Jeff Barbee was also a photographer. He e-mailed, pointing out the coincidence. My stepfather, Ken Goldman of Potomac, Md., regularly receives wine store and synagogue notices for a K Goldman in Connecticut. When he informed the synagogue of the error, they replied that they could take donations from well-wishers in Maryland, as well. My mother's friend, Roberta, couldn't understand the annoyed response from another friend, Sue, to a number of e-mailed dinner invitations. It turns out Roberta had added a letter to her friend's last name -- the e-mails were going to another Sue who thought she was being harassed. When Roberta realized the error, she invited this new Sue to dinner as well. Sue politely declined. These connections tend to be fleeting. As the Pew study, "The Strength of Internet Ties," points out, the Internet primarily connects people who are already acquaintances, or who have similar interests and have sought out a particular online community. "The relationships maintained with online communication only rarely are with an entirely new set of individuals who live far away," the report says. "Instead, a large amount of the communication that takes place online is with the same set of friends and family who are also contacted in person and by phone." Still, the SLCs of the world have an important job in cyberspace: They bring smiles to strangers, the e-equivalent of Random Acts of Kindness. With SLC, the ill-directed birthday card from my mother-in-law was the breakthrough. Here is his response: "Carol, I know a man who works for the Sun Who is waiting on an e-mail from his mum Birthday wishes it does contain but it was sent to the wrong domain. Now you know wrong domain man Who helped you complete your e-mail plan, No voice, no face, just a guy in cyberspace, All he cares about is putting a smile on your face. Glad I could help you spread some love to someone so dear sent from above, He is so close yet so far away, and you make his birthday a special day." I haven't heard from SLC in a while. I wrote to him to tell him about this story -- he checked with my husband to make sure I wasn't an e-stalker, or someone trying to scam him. He never wrote back -- I guess Internet rejection is also part of the game. But we have to admit, we're kind of glad for those missent e-mails. And my mother-in-law is musing about hiring SLC for some online help with her computer. ========================================== 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, the Christian Science Publishing Society. 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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 #289 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Aug 7 15:48:27 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 60F2921EF; Mon, 7 Aug 2006 15:48:27 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #290 Message-Id: <20060807194827.60F2921EF@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 15:48:27 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 7 Aug 2006 15:50:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 290 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Piracy Check Draws Privacy Complaints (Allison Linn, AP) ESS Feature Usage (Lisa Hancock) The Hive / Can Thousands of Wikipedians be Wrong? (Monty Solomon) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 07, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Cable Surge Slows Satellite TV Gains (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet (harold@hallikainen.com) Re: Free AIM on Motorola V555? (Steven Lichter) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (DLR) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (B. Wright) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Sam Spade) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 01:09:54 -0500 From: Allison Linn, AP Subject: Microsoft Piracy Check Draws Privacy Complaints by ALLISON LINN, AP Business Writer When Microsoft Corp. said it planned to begin checking for pirated copies of its Windows operating system using the method it set up to send people security fixes, even some of the company's traditional critics could sympathize. After all, although Microsoft rakes in billions, piracy of its flagship products remains a huge, costly problem, particularly in developing countries such as China and Russia. The Business Software Alliance estimates that 35 percent of software installed on PCs worldwide is pirated. Nevertheless, 18 months after announcing the Windows Genuine Advantage piracy check, Microsoft faces controversy and backlash, including two lawsuits. Some say the company clumsily handled several elements of the program, including a key privacy issue. "They have a right to say, 'If you want patches from Microsoft, you know, you should let us make sure you're not running a pirated copy of Windows,'" said Gartner analyst John Pescatore. "That's a valid claim, and with the Windows Genuine Advantage tool, I think, they tried to go a little too far." Microsoft introduced the piracy check in mid-2005 as a condition for downloading security fixes and other software, such as anti-spyware technology, from its Web site. Now the anti-piracy check is also being sent to customers whose computers receive security updates automatically. For now, users can take extra steps to opt out of the piracy check. But Microsoft strongly encourages people to run it, calling it a "high priority update," and says the check might become mandatory at some point. Once installed, the program checks whether it believes the user's version of Windows is legitimate. It gathers information such as the computer's manufacturer, hard drive serial number and Windows product identification. Microsoft still offers important security fixes even if the company alleges the version of Windows is pirated, although those users can't get non-security downloads, such as a test version of the new Internet Explorer browser. Those users also receive a barrage of notices that they are running an illegal copy of Windows. While Microsoft had told users the new software would gather information related to piracy, some people became alarmed when they discovered that the software also was performing a daily check-in with the company. Microsoft said the daily "call home" was a safety measure designed to let the company shut the program down quickly if something went wrong. But critics saw the undisclosed communications as a breach of privacy and trust. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the concern is that users did not know about or control the interaction. "It feels very much like a digital trespass you know, someone is getting access to your system without your consent," he said. Microsoft conceded that it should have told users it was making the daily connection. It has since discontinued the daily check and revised its disclosures. The system will, however, continue to occasionally check in with Microsoft to make sure it still believes a person's software is legitimate. Even so, although many had sympathized with Microsoft's original anti-piracy efforts, to some this misstep was enough to call into question the entire program. "To use the security mechanism to install marketing software that is designed to increase Microsoft's revenue but actually interferes with some people's use of their PCs is a real breach of faith with customers," said Brian Livingston, editor of Windows Secrets, a newsletter and Web site that offers tips for using Microsoft software. He thinks the episode will have a long-term, negative effect on how well people regard the software maker. "The trust has been broken," he said. Microsoft faces two federal lawsuits over the software, both of which accuse the company of violating laws that seek to combat spyware. The lawsuits seek class-action status. Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler insists the piracy check is not spyware. "These lawsuits are without merit and they really distort the objective of our anti-piracy program," he said. Pescatore, the Gartner analyst, said he thinks Microsoft has found a good middle ground by backing off on the daily checks, and he doesn't think most users will be affected by the controversy. But for those who were already suspicious of Microsoft, this adds more fuel. "I definitely think that there's paranoia; would argue unwarranted paranoia," said Russ Cooper, a security researcher at Cybertrust Inc. who approves of the privacy check. Microsoft has taken great pains to improve its privacy policies since it came under intense fire about five years ago for a system called Passport that sought to store all sorts of personal information under one log-on. The program was scaled back considerably and, despite some ongoing concerns, Rotenberg said Microsoft has come to play a leading role in privacy issues. "Since that time you can say simply, they got privacy religion," Rotenberg said. But he thinks Microsoft has misstepped with the piracy check, and should separate it from the system for sending security updates. Because the piracy check isn't mandatory -- for now at least -- Microsoft is using incentives to try to get people to download it. One short-lived offering, called Private Folder, gave people a special place on their computers to password-protect data they didn't want to share with family members or co-workers. The company was forced to pull that product amid complaints that the secret folders would create headaches for corporate technology experts trying to manage big computer systems, and raise other problems if consumers forgot their passcodes and couldn't get at their data. Despite such flubs, Microsoft appears if anything to be redoubling its commitment to crack down on illegal Windows copies, part of a larger push to increase profits from the highly lucrative franchise. Microsoft takes legal action against those it believes are distributing pirated copies and it says it has used data from the piracy check to help track down some sellers. The company also is working with government officials in places like China to try to make piracy less acceptable. But in a meeting with financial analysts in late July, Microsoft also made clear it is counting on the individual check as part of its overall bid to grow sales by slashing piracy. Kevin Johnson, co-president of the Microsoft division that includes Windows, said: "We're really trying to amplify the fact that being genuine enables a set of benefits and value." On the Net: http://www.microsoft.com/genuine http://www.microsoft.com/security Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra.AP.html For more tech news each day, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: ESS Feature Usage Date: 7 Aug 2006 07:31:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I wonder how many customers use abbreviated dialing, which was an early feature of ESS. You would program in a list of frequently called numbers and dial a 2 digit code. Perhaps in dial days that might have been helpful, but in TT days not as much. It's a bit cumbersome to enter a number and then remember a code along with it. Lastly, many phones today have memory with that. I think Call Waiting is the most widely used service. I would think Call Forwarding gets some use still, though cell phones removed much of the need for that. If they had an a la carte (pay as you go) call forwarding I'd use it occassionally to route calls to my cell phone. But in my area they only offer call forwarding on a monthly subscription. Of course, since I pay for incoming calls on my cell, I would be upset being routed wrong numbers of solicitation calls and I get a fair amount of those. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At one point, Bell was offering 'Speed Dial-8' _and 'Speed Dial-32'. 8 required "#" plus a single digit 2-9 while 32 required '#" plus 2 digits 21 through 60 with a few number combos not used. I do not think they ever promoted 'Speed Dial-32' all that much. You can still get speed dial for your cell phone, although with all the ways of saving numbers on your cell phone, I cannot see why anyone would need it as a _network_ feature as well. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 10:48:48 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Hive / Can Thousands of Wikipedians be Wrong? The Hive Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an online encyclopedia touched off history's biggest experiment in collaborative knowledge by Marshall Poe The Atlantic Monthly | September 2006 http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200609/wikipedia Interviews Common Knowledge Atlantic Unbound | August 1, 2006 Marshall Poe on the marvels and pitfalls of Wikipedia, the fastest-growing encyclopedia in human history. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200608u/poe-interview ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 07, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 12:16:56 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 07, 2006 ******************************** Senior Executives Say U.S. Has Lost Competitiveness Over Past Five Years http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19203?11228 PricewaterhouseCoopers' Management Barometer Surveys Top Executives Of Large, U.S.-Based Multinational Businesses. Interviewing Of 131 CFOs And Managing Directors Was Completed In The Spring Of 2006. NEW YORK - Nearly half of surveyed senior executives believe the country has lost ground in its economic competitiveness, and in ... Italy: Vodafone Deploys Lucent's Integrated Network Solution http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19199?11228 Vodafone's Italian unit has deployed Lucent's Intelligent Network solution for its HomeZone fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) project. Under its flagship 'Vodafone Casa' service, the operator offers subscribers the opportunity to use their mobiles both as home phones and mobile devices. The arrangement means that customers ... Eyes-Free, Hands-Off E-Mail http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19194?11228 Read your e-mail while driving? The very thought sounds more like a warning from a driver education film than a good idea. But Waterloo, Ont., Canada-based Intelligent Mechatronic Systems (IMS) is now offering iLane, a product it claims is the "world's first hands-free and eyes-free e-mail solution for in-vehicle use." ... Sprint Rushes 'Mobile DSL' Deployment http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19192?11228 Sprint has decided to move up the schedule for its rollout of EV-DO Revision A wireless broadband services -- what it's touting as 'mobile DSL' -- with plans to start delivering service to customers during the fourth quarter. The decision, Sprint says, came following the completion last week of successful tests of the ... Shareholders Nix Telent Deal http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19189?11228 The 346 million (USA=$660 million) purchase of telent plc, the former telecom services of Marconi, by private equity firm Holmar is off following a shareholder revolt against the deal. At an Extraordinary General Meeting in London last Friday, a group of shareholders led by the largest single stakeholder -- hedge fund Polygon -- ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 13:26:56 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cable Surge Slows Satellite TV Gains USTelecom dailyLead August 7, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/efrAfDtutfAzntmdPk TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cable surge slows satellite TV gains BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cable companies ready bids for wireless spectrum * Home offices adopt VoIP faster than other residences * CommScope tops ADC's bid for Andrew USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * USTelecom can help you reach telecom decision-makers HOT TOPICS * IPTV use expected to boom * Verizon expands FiOS in Texas * XO takes aim at Level 3 with fiber move * Cisco mulls big changes to pricing scheme * Cingular announces surcharge for users of old phones TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * The Web turns 15 * Study: VOD use doesn't cannibalize DVD sales REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Time Warner vows court fight over FCC decision on NFL Network * New Jersey approves statewide franchises for telecom TV Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/efrAfDtutfAzntmdPk ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet Date: 7 Aug 2006 05:42:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I had something like this happen. A friend wrote my wife, but accidentally used hallikainen.net instead of hallikainen.org or hallikainen.com . The friend got a response from Australia. Turns out I have a relative I didn't know in Australia! Harold ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: Free AIM on Motorola V555? Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:35:56 GMT superkrups20056@gmail.com wrote: > Hi. I have a Motorola V555 and have been trying to get a free AIM > application on my phone for a long time, as the V555 doesn't come with > an embedded AIM app. Could anyone give me an application and a plan > to get this service free? I've already tried Yamigo, with horrible > luck. > Thanks in advance. I don't know much about your phone, but if it has a browser, you should be able to log onto the Aim site; for cell phone and D/L it. 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: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: 7 Aug 2006 07:23:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > Grocery-delivery, or other local services, *are* vulnerable to these > kinds of frauds 'over the internet', just as they are vulnerable to > them when executed using other means. I think the original concept when Touch Tone shopping was first proposed was that the customers would be pre-registered with an existing account. In those days, credit was only approved in advance or the goods were COD. I don't think there was as much intentional fraud against the corner grocer or pizza delivery place. There were some accident screwups where a customer ordered the wrong stuff and refused delivery or forgot to pick up a pizza. In today's Internet world, the big theme is instant gratification and anonymity. That allows for more opportunities for fraud. No delayed credit review first. Further, unlike the world of 1964, we are more anonymous from each other and our merchants. Supermarkets are much bigger than they were back then and the old corner grocers no longer exist. Today's convenience stores are very anonymous. The old corner stores had to eat a lot of bad credit from customers and their prices were higher. Supermarkets, by offering no delivery or credit, could offer lower prices. (Initially trading stamps were offered but then discontinued to save money and lower prices). Ironically, today supermarkets do take credit cards which annoys me since it adds to the cost of the food. Indeed, pizza places, fast food, and convenience stores take credit cards too. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:36:51 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Steve Sobol wrote: > Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) >> were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 >> by Cingular. So what the heck is SunComm? It appears to be a part of the old AT&T wireless but I don't get what made some of AT&T become SC and some become Cingular. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it was a legal thing. For example, in part of Oklahoma (Okla City, perhaps?) wasn't Cingular Wireless required to divest itself of some customers in the purchase of AT&T and those (divested) customers were handed over to Alltel? I know there was much customer confusion over it. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 11:38:48 MDT From: B. Wright Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge >>> Since I have never been an AT&T customer, I don't find that very >>> persuasive. >> Doesn't really apply to you then, but it is true, there is plenty of >> evidence to support this. The TDMA customers are also unwanted, but not >> quite so badly as the others and I imagine since you're already on a >> Cingular plan they won't strong arm you into switching that. You'll have >> to let me know if they try to ask you to sign another one/two year contract >> to make this change though, I believe this is a special "bonus" reserved >> only for the AT&T customers. > When I called them up, they told me there was no way to keep my existing $30 > plan and the only thing they offered was the standard $40 plan with a > contract, take it or leave it. I left it. > There is absolutely no reason to think this surcharge has anything > to do with ex-AT&T customers, and every reason to think that it's to > get rid of AMPS and TDMA customers. As should be blindingly > obvious, the large number of ex-AT&T customers with GSM plans won't > be affected by this at all. Then it may be that it is no longer an "exclusive right" of the former AT&T customers to be mistreated by Cingular. With what you have just said it now seems any TDMA/AMPS Cingular customers or ANY ex AT&T customer will be treated this way. That includes AT&T GSM, they will not allow you to make any changes (or probably even re-issue a lost SIM) to your account even if you're currently using GSM if you are on an AT&T plan. Before cancelling my sister's TDMA account with them we asked if they would provide a GSM SIM for us and simply leave the rate plan the same, the would not. I think Cingular's actions and policies clearly show that getting rid of the TDMA technology is not their only agenda here. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:08:22 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications William Warren wrote: > Do you feel that civil servants who are willing to work extra hard for > the veterans they serve are jerks, or did you just make an uninformed > blunder? I don't buy that argument at all. If he had been needed to do work on such sensitive material it should have been done at the office, period. ------------------------------ 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 #290 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 8 01:11:17 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 6DEAC21F8; Tue, 8 Aug 2006 01:11:17 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #291 Message-Id: <20060808051117.6DEAC21F8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 01:11:17 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 8 Aug 2006 01:13:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 291 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Equipment Failure Disrupts LAX and Other Aiports For 90 Minutes (G Flaccus) AOL Draws Fire After Releasing User Search Data (Kenneth Li, Reuters) Voicewing (Marco Polo) AT&T U-verse and IPTV (randall.shimizu@gmail.com) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Lisa Hancock) Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer (Greg Hennessy) Re: The Hive / Can Thousands of Wikipedians be Wrong? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (John Levine) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Jim Rusling) Re: A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet (Rick Merrill) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (R. T. Wurth) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 23:01:30 -0500 From: Gillian Flaccus, AP Subject: Equipment Failure Disrupts LAX and Other Aiports For 90 Minutes Equipment failure disrupts LA flights By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer A computerized system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed on Monday, delaying numerous flights around the country. Two incoming flights were diverted, others were forced to circle the airport, and some planes were ordered to remain on the ground at other airports, officials said. Arriving flights were held up about 90 minutes. Departing flights were delayed about an hour, and several flights were canceled. Airport authorities worked around the problem about an hour and a half hour later, and operations were expected to be back to normal by mid-afternoon. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the cause of the problem was unknown. The malfunctioning piece of equipment, called a localizer, acts as a beacon to guide arriving planes onto runways. It is most crucial when it is foggy or hazy, and it was foggy at the airport Monday. Because of a runway construction project, LAX, the world's fifth-busiest airport, has three working runways — one handles arrivals, one handles takeoffs, and one handles both. It was the shared runway that had the problem. The equipment used on that runway failed at 9:17 a.m., the FAA said. Airport authorities responded by reversing the direction of the runways so that the faulty equipment was no longer needed. Before the fix was made, the number of landings, usually about one a minute, was reduced by half, said FAA spokesman Mike Fergus. Laney Fishera, 46, from Topsfield, Mass., said her flight from Boston circled above the ocean for about 30 minutes until a runway was available. "We had to fly over the ocean, which was really weird," she said. LAX was hit with a major power failure July 18 that backed up flights across parts of the western United States and Canada. That outage happened when a vehicle crashed into a utility pole, causing a power fluctuation that prompted the air traffic control center's backup generator to turn on automatically. About an hour later, that generator failed. The airport averages 1,800 daily flights and will serve an estimated 18.7 million passengers this summer, 200,000 more than last year. 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: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:57:40 -0500 From: Kenneth Li Subject: AOL Draws Fire After Releasing User Search Data By Kenneth Li AOL on Monday apologized for releasing information on about 20 million keyword searches in a move that ignited a firestorm of criticism about privacy rights on the Internet. AOL, the online unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc., said it launched an internal investigation into how a research division of the company mistakenly released the data on its Web site about 10 days ago. AOL released search information on about 20 million searches done from its software by about 658,000 anonymous AOL users over a three-month period, representing about one-third-of-1-percent of searches conducted over that time. The disclosure, which AOL said was not cleared through official channels, came months after Google Inc. won kudos from privacy pundits for refusing to comply with U.S. government requests for search data on its users. "This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it," said Andrew Weinstein, an AOL spokesman. "It was an innocent-enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant." Although user information was not disclosed, keyword searches have included users who search their own names. The data escaped notice until this weekend, when blogs began linking to the study. Techcrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/ was among the first blogs to report the data's release. According to these blogs, which were able to download the file, searches among some AOL users included one who conducted a series of searches on "how to kill your wife," "murder photo" and www.murderdpeople.com (sic). Techcrunch said the most serious problem with the disclosure was that many people search their own names. "Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with "buy ecstasy" and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen," said Techcrunch blogger Michael Arrington in a posting. "The possibilities are endless." One legal expert said the disclosure probably did not violate the company's own privacy policy as the data did not include personally identifiable information. "This is more of a business snafu than anything else," Jason Epstein, head of the business and technology group at law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC said. The link to the actual file, containing searches done by users whose personal IDs are replaced with random numbers, is no longer available on AOL's Web site. "Although there was no personally identifiable data linked to these accounts, we're absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize," AOL's Weinstein said. "We've launched an internal investigation into what happened, and we are taking steps to ensure that this type of thing never happens again." Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited. For more news and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Marco Polo Subject: Voicewing Date: 7 Aug 2006 17:25:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am on a one year gig with Voicewing which is over in September. They provided me with a Linksys PAP2 Adapter for VOIP. I found a better deal with Viatalk but I don't know if Verizon locked this to their setup. Anyone know?? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: randall.shimizu@gmail.com Subject: AT&T U-verse and IPTV Date: 7 Aug 2006 18:09:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com http://www.uverseusers.com/ I have been following IPTV and I was a little disappointed to learn that AT&T's U-verse internet (VDSL: next gen dsl) will only have a max speed of 6mb's. One reason is that since VDSL is next generation dsl it still relies upon copper twisted pair telco technolgy. The other reason is that HDTV utilizes 1.5gb of bandwidth. The strange thing is that VDSL is supposed to have a bandwidth of 20gb's. The more likely scenario is that the current VDSL chips are first generation. Will be interesting to see what happens in any case. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing I do not understand about the 'new' AT&T is that now they claim they have _three_ DSL speeds available, low, medium and high, ranging from 1.5 through 6.0. Can anyone who happens to be an AT&T DSL customer explain how they calculate this, and if it is true or not? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Date: 7 Aug 2006 13:12:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Sam Spade wrote: > By far, the worst criminal in this case is the jerk government > employee who took the data home. I strongly disagree. The criminals were the kids who stole the laptop, and the other criminals who perform identity theft. A second level of criminals are those who created a system where identity theft is a profitable enterprise, that is, allowing stolen identies to make money. This is the area that needs reform. Until very recently, the data involved was not considered "sensitive". It's not military secrets. Until recently, having the data was worthless because you couldn't do anything with it. But that was then. What nobody -- government, business, and the armchair critics -- seems to realize is that it's real easy to take home sensitive data without even realizing it. It's very common for people to take home work; people have done so for years. A person might be working on a particular data column and not realize the row (record) contains sensitive stuff like SSN or other critical stuff. Don't forget that at one time work consisted of file folders. It's hard to manipulate the data stored within. But now work is encoded on computers and easy to steal and manipulate. The Nixon Administration warned that the use of the SSN as a universal identifier was dangerous for privacy concerns way back then and recommended against it. Today it is the universal number and impossible to function without it. The government requires kids to get one at birth. Almost all organizations require it to check credit on someone. The retail world loves instant credit. That should be illegal. Anyone wanting a credit card should have to fill out a handwritten application and mail it in, with the card returned by Registered Mail. A nuisance and expense no one would tolerate, but one that would go a long way to control identity theft and fraud. There are other controls that could and should be instituted by retailers won't tolerate them. Ordering on-line must get more controls to prevent fraud. ------------------------------ From: Greg Hennessy Subject: Re: Arrests Made in Theft of VA Laptop Computer Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:35:42 GMT Organization: Cox Communications On 2006-08-07, Sam Spade wrote: > I don't buy that argument at all. If he had been needed to do work on > such sensitive material it should have been done at the office, > period. Being a civil servant myself, there are often times I work more hours than I put on my timecard. When I read a post like yours, I wonder why I do so. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: The Hive / Can Thousands of Wikipedians be Wrong? Date: 7 Aug 2006 13:26:28 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > The Hive > Can thousands of Wikipedians be wrong? How an attempt to build an > online encyclopedia touched off history's biggest experiment in > collaborative knowledge Although a basic principle of democracy is majority rule, that counts only on election day. In real life there are other serious factors. In Usenet discussions several people cited Wikpedia. Wikpedia was wrong in those cases. It had "conventional wisdom" which many people share but did not delve deeply enough into an issue to have a proper conclusion. Now you might ask why don't I correct the entries? I don't have the time nor interest to do so. There are many things in life in which a large subset of people are passionately involved in, but that in itself does not make something 'right' or 'wrong'. Go into a sports bar and ask some football history -- you may or may not get an accurate answer despite having a large collection of sports-minded people right on the spot. For example, as you know, I am a supporter of Amtrak. There is a subset of people who detest Amtrak (or actually the idea of passenger trains) and invest a great deal of time and effort being critical of it. Since they're arguments are all carbon copies of each other, it's easy to see they're coming from a single propaganda source which has its facts (IMHO) wrong. Similar subsets of people are reporting to Wikpedia and as you can see, that doesn't necessarily make the issue correct, rather, it's just what a passionate group of involved people believe is right at that particular moment. For example: PBS just had on a documentary of Edward R. Murrow and McCarthy. We forget that back then a great many people were supportive of McCarthy and not very fond of Murrow, and critical of Murrow in some other segments he did. Today we think those Murrow critics were nuts, but back then they had quite a passionate following. It would be curious as to what Wikpedia would have said about the Communists in 1945 and 1950. With Communists supporters and critics both very passionate, we'd have various writing, but all of them -- on both sides -- would likely be wrong. (We know today the Communists and their critics were both wrong.) [public replies, please] ------------------------------ Date: 7 Aug 2006 21:31:56 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge >>> Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) >>> were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 >>> by Cingular. > So what the heck is SunComm? It appears to be a part of the old AT&T > wireless but I don't get what made some of AT&T become SC and some > become Cingular. Every time there's a cellular merger, there's always a few places where the two merging parties compete head to head, so they have to divest one of two systems to someone else. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Jim Rusling Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Organization: Retired Reply-To: usenet@rusling.org Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 20:56:25 -0500 DLR wrote: > Steve Sobol wrote: >> Anthony Bellanga wrote: >>> Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) >>> were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 >>> by Cingular. > So what the heck is SunComm? It appears to be a part of the old AT&T > wireless but I don't get what made some of AT&T become SC and some > become Cingular. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it was a legal thing. For > example, in part of Oklahoma (Okla City, perhaps?) wasn't Cingular > Wireless required to divest itself of some customers in the > purchase of AT&T and those (divested) customers were handed over to > Alltel? I know there was much customer confusion over it. PAT] Yes they were in Oklahoma City. Jim Rusling More or Less Retired Mustang, OK http://www.rusling.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 17:33:38 -0400 From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: A Tale of Two Scott Calverts and the Internet I received a PayPal *payment*! Knowing no one owed me money I suspected a scam and began researching this and the sender! It turned out that my paypal name differed from the other recipient by a single in the username. So now I have the email address of someone with the same name! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You may or may not have recieved an actual PayPal payment from someone. I say this because one of the more common phisher scams these days intended to get a response out of the victim (the real purpose in their exercise) is to send out a letter _claiming_ you have a refund coming (irs.gov for example) or very likely in your PayPal account. Of course there is no such thing, all they want to do is have you respond (showing them it is a good address) and if they are really lucky, you accurately filled out some form they sent you to. It is not that uncommon to have bogus email sent to and from the same name, so maybe the fool made a typographical error is all in how he addressed your 'payment' letter to you. If it was a GENUINE payment, you can always go to the https: version of the Paypal site itself to claim the money. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? From: R. T. Wurth Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 02:34:17 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news:telecom25.290.8@telecom-digest.org: > Ironically, today supermarkets do take credit cards which annoys me > since it adds to the cost of the food. Indeed, pizza places, fast > food, and convenience stores take credit cards too. I'm pretty much a cash shopper myself, but I do wonder about the economics of credit cards vs. cash and checks. Disadvantages of cash or check/advantages of credit: 1.) Banks charge big cash depositing businesses a counting fee to deposit cash. 2.) Banks charge businesses a fee to deposit checks. 3.) Merchants bear the risk of bad checks, but for a fee can hire check guarantee companies to screen their checks at the point of sale and guarantee payment of those it approves. 4.) Banks charge fees to big customers for rolled coins and wrapped small bills used to make change. (What a racket--banks charge on both ends of the transactions!) 5.) Counting the cash tendered and making change slows up the line, perhaps enough to require adding staff. 6.) Stores were already required to put in electronic card-based payment systems as part of food stamp conversion from coupons to electronic cards, (either convert or lose all the business of food stamp customers) so none of the infrastructure costs are attributable to credit cards. (Note to non-US readers: food stamps are an agriculture subsidy/welfare program, whereby the poor receive coupons/electronic credits that can only be spent at qualified food merchants for the purchase of qualified foods (no liquor, candy or soda) processed in US factories from US agricultural products.) 7.) Handling all that cash poses several theft risks (embezzling cashiers, embezzling managers, armed robbers), and imposes increased security costs (installation of time-lock safes, armored car service fees). 8.) For merchants who require presentation of a physical card, validate the transaction with the issuer's clearing house and collect a customer signature along with a card imprint or magstripe data, the merahcnt's bank makes funds available at the close of the current business day and guarantees payment with no chargebacks for counterfeit or stolen cards (unless there is clear evidence of fraud that the merchant was in on). (Chargebacks from customer disputes are a separate matter). Advantages of cash and checks/disadvantages of credit cards 1.) Credit card clearing houses charge a considerable percentage fee on transactions. 2.) Disgruntled customers can generate chargebacks far after the date of the transaction, which also trigger the merchant's bank to assess penalty fees. Where does the balance of these factors lie? I have no idea, but it seems to me it's not necessarily the no-brainer in favor of cash over credit most folks would make it out to be. Is there anyone reading this looking for a subject for a thesis in economics? You are welcome to take this idea, research the numbers and run with it. Rich Wurth / rwurth@att.net / Rumson, NJ USA ------------------------------ 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 #291 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 8 21:25:19 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8D87421CB; Tue, 8 Aug 2006 21:25:18 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #292 Message-Id: <20060809012518.8D87421CB@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 21:25:18 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 8 Aug 2006 21:27:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 292 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless Sale Draws a New Crowd: Media Firms (Jeremy Pelofsky) FCC Starts Auctioning Airwaves (John Dunbar) Court Rules Against Man in Computer Porn in Workplace (Reuters NewsWire) Microsoft Releases a Dozen New Fixes on Tuesday (Associated Press) Another Vets Admin Desktop PC Goes Missing With 36,000 Names (PC World) New Google Warnings Help Protect Internet Users (Jay Worlstad) Cablevision Delays Earnings Report Lifts 2006 Outlook (USTelecom dailyLead) My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (TELECOM Digest Editor) Administrivia: Messages Lost in Processing (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:57:27 -0500 From: Jeremy Pelofsky Subject: Wireless Sale Draws a New Crowd: Media Firms By Jeremy Pelofsky U.S. wireless companies face new competition on Wednesday as they start bidding on licenses for advanced wireless services like high-speed Internet -- from the satellite and cable television industries. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will auction 1,122 licenses that analysts predict may raise $15 billion and last several weeks. The 168 bidders, including the top cable and satellite providers, have made $4.3 billion in deposits. "That appears to indicate strong industry interest in the spectrum, though some of the parties may be more serious than others," Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. analysts said in an August 4 research note. Wireless companies are eager for additional airwaves as they expand new offerings like video service and high-speed Internet access. Companies reported an eight-fold jump to more than 3 million subscribers in the last six months of 2005. The sale comes as telecommunications and television providers are battling to attract consumers to a package of voice, Internet and video services, including wireless. Some consumers are also moving away from traditional phone service. The auction of 90 Megahertz (Mhz) of spectrum will kick off on Wednesday with two rounds of bidding and expand to three rounds on Thursday and subsequent business days until there are no new bids or activity. There is some risk that the sale could fall short of predictions because some bidders may prefer to wait for airwaves television broadcasters are giving up in 2009. That spectrum is seen as more desirable because it transmits further and can more easily penetrate walls. MEDIA COMPANIES IN THE GAME The biggest downpayment, $972.5 million, came from a joint venture of U.S. satellite television rivals, DirecTV Group Inc. and EchoStar Communications Corp. but also includes media conglomerate Liberty Media. It was followed by $637.7 million from a group of cable operators -- including the top two Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc. -- that have joined forces with No. 3 wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp.. "We are surprised with the strong interest from the satellite and cable (with Sprint) companies," said Bear Stearns analyst Phil Cusick in a July 31 research note. The companies have not disclosed details of their plans if they win. The auction is especially critical for No. 4 U.S. carrier T-Mobile USA, a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, because it does not have as much spectrum. The company put down $583.5 million. "We expect T-Mobile USA to bid aggressively for spectrum in several of the major markets (especially New York) as it has less spectrum than the other national wireless carriers," Exane BNP Paribas analyst Stuart Birdt said in a research note. He estimated that the carrier had about 25 Mhz of airwaves in the top 25 markets but only 20 Mhz in New York, less than half compared to the three bigger carriers. Other qualified bidders include No. 1 provider Cingular Wireless, a joint venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., and Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 carrier. It is a venture between Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc. Another bidder drawing attention is money manager Mario Gabelli. He and 38 affiliates agreed last month to pay $130 million to settle a government probe into whether they improperly took advantage of discounts offered to smaller bidders in past FCC wireless auctions. He denied wrongdoing. Gabelli, who heads the $28 billion asset management group Gamco Investors Inc., has ties in the upcoming sale to the venture Lynch AWS Corp., which has paid a $1.5 million downpayment. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:06:21 -0500 From: John Dunbar, AP Subject: FCC Starts Auctioning Rights to Airwaves By JOHN DUNBAR, Associated Press Writer The government is auctioning off rights to the largest chunk ever of mobile-phone-friendly airwaves. The auction, being conducted Wednesday by the Federal Communications Commission, may bring in as much as $15 billion to the U.S. Treasury and lead to an expansion of advanced services for mobile wireless customers, like super-fast Internet access. Already, the auction has brought in $4.3 billion from 168 bidders who made payments simply to qualify for participation. They are competing for the right to use portions of the radio spectrum -- a publicly owned, extremely valuable highway in the sky that allows sound, data and pictures to be transmitted from one place to another. The FCC is responsible for making sure users are not interfering with one another's signals and that they use the spectrum in the public interest. The auction, to be conducted via telephone and online, may go on for weeks. Companies will be bidding for 1,122 licenses to use the spectrum, good for an initial term of 15 years. While it is impossible to say who the big winners in the auction will be, the FCC's qualification process, which requires bidders to provide money up front depending on how many licenses they plan to bid on, provides a list of front-runners. The top qualifier is Wireless DBS LLC, an alliance that includes two competing direct broadcast satellite providers: EchoStar Communications Corp. and the DirecTV Group. The bidders paid $972.5 million. Second was SpectrumCo, a consortium of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and Bright House Networks, with $637.7 million. Third was T-Mobile License LLC, at $583.5 million. T-Mobile is expected to be among the most aggressive bidders. Analysts say EchoStar and DirecTV are investing in the future. Increasingly, cable television operators and telephone companies are offering bundles of services to customers that include high-speed Internet access, phone service and video while satellite companies have been limited primarily to video. The new spectrum could allow the satellite companies to offer wireless broadband access to customers along with their usual video services. "This will allow them to offer a wider range of services," said telecommunications industry analyst Jeff Kagan. "What they're going to use them for, that's the question. Is it going to be for wireless phones, is it going to be for wireless television?" If EchoStar and DirecTV were to build a new cellular phone network from scratch, it would require billions of dollars and take years. The joint bid has helped to fuel rumors of a potential merger between the two companies. The cable industry, while it offers a greater menu of consumer services, needs wireless capability to be able to field a full range of services. Harold Feld, senior vice president of the Media Access Project, said the cable companies may also be getting into the auction simply to drive up the cost to the satellite companies, their primary competitors. "But if they win, certainly they'll be able to put the spectrum to good use," he said. Wednesday's auction is expected to attract bids between $10 billion and $15 billion, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. It is the biggest auction since late 2000 and early 2001, when a spectrum sale attracted $16.9 billion in bids. The total amount of spectrum for auction is 90 megahertz, more than twice the amount occupied by Verizon Wireless. The amount of spectrum, combined with the fact that the licenses for sale span the nation means a major new player could emerge. "If someone wanted to put together a national footprint they could do that in this auction," said former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. While there is enough spectrum available to create a new network, a more likely result will be an upgrade and expansion of services for wireless customers. Besides high-speed Internet access, consumers may enjoy clearer reception on voice calls, music downloads, video streaming and other offerings. "These licenses will support a lot more intensive use than the traditional cell phone (market)," Feld said. T-Mobile probably is the most motivated bidder in the auction. Compared to other wireless companies, T-Mobile is spectrum starved. Other wireless carriers, like No. 1 Cingular Wireless and No. 2 Verizon Wireless Inc. have also made large upfront payments and are expected to be active. On the Net: FCC summary: http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?jobauction_summary&id66 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: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:32:44 -0500 From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Court Rules Against Man in Computer Porn in Workplace A Montana man who used his work computer to access child pornography does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that would bar a search of the machine, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. Jeffrey Ziegler had argued that his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures should prevent the government from using evidence that he had viewed many images of child pornography at work. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco cited similar past cases and found that even if some people lament the lack of privacy at work, the law was against Ziegler. "Social norms suggest that employees are not entitled to privacy in the use of workplace computers, which belong to their employers and pose significant dangers in terms of diminished productivity and even employer liability," Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for a three-judge panel. "Employer monitoring is largely an assumed practice, and thus we think a disseminated computer-use policy is entirely sufficient to defeat any expectation that an employee might nonetheless harbor." 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:36:10 -0500 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Microsft Releases a Dozen New Fixes on Tuesday Microsoft releases 12 security fixes Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released 12 security fixes for its Windows operating system and Office business software. Seven of the patches are to fix Windows flaws that carry the company's highest danger rating. In its monthly security bulletin, Microsoft also said that two of the fixes are for vulnerabilities in some versions of its Office software that carry the highest "critical" rating. One of those fixes also applies to the 2004 version of Office for Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh systems. All of the patches are to fix weaknesses that could allow an attacker to take complete control of a person's computer. 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: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:34:44 -0500 From: PC World Communications Newswire Subject: Another Vets Admin Desktop PC Goes Missing With 36,000 Names WASHINGTON-- A desktop PC containing the personal information of up to 36,000 U.S. military veterans has gone missing from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) subcontractor Unisys, the VA announced yesterday. The PC may have contained VA patients' names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, insurance carriers and billing information, dates of military service, and claims data that may include some medical information, the VA said. Unisys notified the VA on Thursday that the computer was missing from the subcontractor's Reston, Virginia, offices. The VA immediately dispatched a team to Unisys to assist in the search for computer and to help determine what information it held, the VA said in a press release. Similar Situation The announcement comes after the VA said in late May that a laptop and hard drive containing the personal data of 26.5 million veterans and their spouses was stolen from a VA analysts' home. Police recovered the laptop and hard drive in late June, but the theft set off a series of hearings in the U.S. Congress about the VA's management and IT organization, with several lawmakers calling for an overhaul of the VA's decentralized IT reporting structure. On Saturday, Montgomery County, Maryland, police announced they had arrested two Maryland men for the theft of the laptop and hard drive. In the Unisys case, the VA believes the missing personal records belong to people who received treatment at the VA's two Pennsylvania medical centers during the past four years. The PC appears to have contained personal information for about 5000 patients treated at Philadelphia, about 11,000 patients treated at Pittsburgh, and it may have also contained information from another 20,000 people treated at the VA's Pittsburgh medical center. The PC appears to have also contained information on about 2000 deceased patients, the VA said. The VA is working with Unisys to offer credit monitoring and individual notifications to potential victims, the VA said. "VA is making progress to reform its information technology and cybersecurity procedures, but this report of a missing computer at a subcontractor's secure building underscores the complexity of the work ahead as we establish VA as a leader in data and information security," VA Secretary R. James Nicholson said in a statement. Copyright 2006 PC World Communications, Inc. For more tech news each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:38:47 -0500 From: Jay Worlstad Subject: New Google Warnings Help Protect Internet Users by Jay Wrolstad, newsfactor.com Google is taking a proactive approach to Web surfing security by issuing warnings about potentially harmful sites detected during an Internet search. Through a partnership with StopBadware.org, which has a vast database of sites that distribute spyware, spam, and other potentially harmful Web pages, the search giant initially will caution users who attempt to click on such a site. An alert from Google will appear that says, "Warning -- The website you attempted to visit has been reported to StopBadware.org as a site that hosts or distributes badware." The advisory page identifies the possible risk and gives you the choice to return to the query results page or proceed to the questionable site. Down the road, the general warning will be replaced by the Stop Badware Coalition to include information specific to a site, such as a file-sharing network, that describes the potential problems. Right Approach Malicious software is wreaking havoc on many Internet users, by downloading Internet software that appear harmless at first glance, but can adversely impact computer performance or usher in a flood of pop-up ads. "This is a smart move by Google to protect its users, and marks a trend among companies looking to stem the tide of malware," said Forrester Research analyst Natalie Lambert. She noted that Microsoft is including a similar capability in the forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser, which will include an indicator that warns users against certain nefarious Web sites collected in a database and allows users to report such locations. Others taking this approach include AOL, which has enlisted help from McAfee to safeguard its users. McAfee's Total Protection package includes a SystemGuards module, which monitors computers for specific behaviors that might signal virus, spyware, or hacker activity, and a plug-in called X-Ray for Windows, which is designed to detect and eliminate "root kits," i.e. hacker software. The new SiteAdvisor tool is designed to identify potentially dangerous Web sites that contain spyware or adware. Findings are summarized with red, yellow, and green icons that provide users with an at-a-glance view of Web site ratings. Educating the Masses Anything that helps inform and safeguard consumers is a step in the right direction, Yankee Group analyst Jonathan Singer said. Lambert concurred, pointing out that the distribution of malicious software is extensive, with hackers and cybercriminals creating official-looking destinations that are, in fact, "phishing" operations used to steal personal information. "Warnings are essential in addressing this problem," says Lambert. "And the ability to quickly update the listings of questionable sites will certainly help." 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 of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 13:09:49 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cablevision Delays Earnings Report, Lifts 2006 Outlook USTelecom dailyLead August 8, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eiakfDtutfBjoNxtLp TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cablevision delays earnings report, lifts 2006 outlook BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Sprint Nextel to build nationwide wireless Internet network * Softbank reports Q1 profit, outlines new challenges ahead * Deutsche Telekom to fight for brand protection * Comcast names Stemper president of business services division USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Telecom at your Fingertips -- Updated TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * CableLabs new specs promise faster broadband * Study: The how of communication depends on the who REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC again backs NFL Network in Time Warner carriage dispute Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eiakfDtutfBjoNxtLp ------------------------------ Subject: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 20:28:17 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-11-81) this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. We have had two of these in the past (1995-96 and again in 2002-03) and they were both 'best sellers' in the sense that I received a lot of orders for each of them. This time around, however, it is a 'do-it-yourself' type project: The entire collection of messages (about 125,000 of them, spanning a 25 year period) in comp.dcom.telecom have been collected and placed into MBOX format with the help of a Digest reader and are being made available for your review in zip format. You go into our archives http://telecom-digest.org and then into the back-issues files. Within the back-issues files, look for the category "25 years of c.d.t. messages in MBOX format." There you will see 25 files, labeled 1981 through 2006; each year is a zip file which when uncompressed using DOS will produce a new directory on your own computer entitled 'mail'. If the process goes as it should, each file uncompression you do should produce such a 'mail' folder with several thousand each mail files, sort of Usenet style reading. Unless you have _lots_ of storage space on your computer, I do not recommend trying to uncompress all the files at one time. But of course you can also send your output to a writeable DVD/CD if that is your preference. Many of the messages also have hyperlinks in them, so I assume if you are connected to the net when you do this, you should get the benefit of the various links as well. The final year (2006) of this collection cuts off at the end of June. I hope you enjoy this 'one-stop shopping' collection of c.d.t. messages over the past quarter-century. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: Messages Lost Tuesday Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 20:44:14 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) If you sent a message to c.d.t. or the Digest on Monday evening or Tuesay and it _does not appear in this issue_ then please accept my apologies and resend it. It was lost in processing. Thanks very much. 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 #292 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 9 21:16:10 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3170D21ED; Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:16:09 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #293 Message-Id: <20060810011609.3170D21ED@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:16:09 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:18:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 293 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - August 9, 2006 (Jonathan Marashlian) SS7 VS TCP/IP (mailursubbu@gmail.com) Need Info Re A/C 650 Dialing Problem (David Kaye) Spectrum Auction Set For Today (USTelecom dailyLead) Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge (Michael D. Sullivan) My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (Patrick Townson) Inquiry About comp.dcom.telecom Posting (Robert Cohen) Re: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (Jim Stwart) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Reply-To: From: Jonathan Marashlian Subject: The Front Lines - August 9, 2006 Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 10:13:56 -0400 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES http://www.thlglaw.com/ Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry FCC REGULATORY FEES DUE NO LATER THAN SEPTEMBER 19, 2006 The Federal Communications Commission has published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the Fiscal Year 2006 Regulatory Payment window is opening to accept annual regulatory fee payments. Regulatory fee payments will be accepted from September 6, 2006 through September 19, 2006. Any payments received after 11:59 p.m. September 19, 2006 will be assessed a 25% late fee. If your company is registered with the FCC as an interstate carrier (i.e., Form 499 registration) you should have already received an invoice for Regulatory Fees. The invoiced amount reflects application of a 0.00264 fee factor to the combined interstate and international retail revenue reported in your company's FCC Form 499-A. If you have not received your Regulatory Fee invoice, but generated retail telecommunications revenue during 2005, do not ignore the legal duty to pay Regulatory Fees. The FCC reminds regulated entities of the consequences of delinquent and non-payment: A LATE PAYMENT PENALTY OF 25 PERCENT OF THE AMOUNT OF THE REQUIRED REGULATORY FEE WILL BE ASSESSED ON THE FIRST DAY FOLLOWING THE DEADLINE DATE FOR FILING OF THESE FEES. REGULATORY FEE PAYMENT MUST BE RECEIVED AND STAMPED AT THE LOCKBOX BANK BY THE LAST DAY OF THE REGULATORY FEE FILING WINDOW, AND NOT MERELY POSTMARKED BY THE LAST DAY OF THE WINDOW. Failure to pay regulatory fees and/or any late penalty will subject regulatees to sanctions, including the Commission's Red Light Rule (see 47 C.F.R. 1.1910) and the provisions set forth in the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 (DCIA). The FCC also assesses administrative processing charges on delinquent debts to recover additional costs incurred in processing and handling the related debt pursuant to the DCIA and 71.1940(d) of the Commission's Rules. These administrative processing charges will be assessed on any delinquent regulatory fee, in addition to the 25 percent late charge penalty. Partial underpayments of regulatory fees are treated in the following manner. The licensee will be given credit for the amount paid, but if it is later determined that the fee paid is incorrect or not timely paid, the 25 percent late charge penalty will be assessed on the portion that is not paid in a timely manner. NEW PREPAID CALLING CARD REGULATORY REGIME EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 31, 2006 On August 2, 2006, the FCC published notice in the Federal Register announcing that it will treat prepaid calling card service providers as telecommunications service providers and, as such, require them to pay interstate access charges and contribute to the federal Universal Service Fund. The new prepaid calling card regulatory regime will become effective on October 31, 2006. Under the new rules, prepaid calling card providers will be required to provide their transport providers with 'PIU Certifications' on a quarterly basis. They must also file quarterly 'Compliance Certifications' with the FCC's Enforcement Bureau. Based on the effective date of the rules, the first certifications will be due no later than December 31, 2006. Thereafter, PIU Certifications are due by the 45th day after the close of the prior quarter and the Compliance Certification is due by the last day of the quarter in which the PIU Certification was provided. For example, in 2007, the first full year under the new rules, prepaid carriers will have the following filing schedule: Q1: PIU Certification: Due Feb. 15, 2007; Compliance Certification Due March 30, 2007 Q2: PIU Certification: Due May 15, 2007; Compliance Certification Due June 30, 2007 Q3: PIU Certification: Due Aug. 15, 2007; Compliance Certification Due Aug. 30, 2007 Q4: PIU Certification: Due Nov. 15, 2007; Compliance Certification Due Nov. 30, 2007 Should you require assistance complying with these FCC Rules, please contact your regulatory attorney. If you are not represented by counsel, please feel free to contact The Helein Law Group at 703-714-1313 or by e-mail: jsm@thlglaw.com. 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 775 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ From: mailursubbu@gmail.com Subject: SS7 VS TCP/IP Date: 9 Aug 2006 03:47:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I am very new to the Telecom world. I have a basic doubt. Why people are using the SS7 protocol instead of TCP/IP Stack. Best Regards, Subramanya ------------------------------ From: David Kaye Subject: Need Info Re A/C 650 Dialing Problem Date: 9 Aug 2006 16:07:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have phone book ads in the two directories in San Mateo County. When they were first distributed in June I began getting phone calls. As of July 5th or so I haven't gotten any calls from that area code. Today I drove to South San Francisco, in area code 650, and used a pay phone to call my own number. If I dial 1-415-271-xxxx (my number) I get through fine. If I dial 415-271-xxxx (wthout the 1) I do *not* get the "You must first dial 1", but instead I get the "The number you have reached is not in service at this time". I think this is at the crux of the problem. Can anybody shed any light on this? Does anybody here know someone at AT&T/SBC who can see to it that the "You must first dial 1" recording is restored the way it should be? I'm spending $2,000 on phone book ads this year and I unless this is resolved it's money wasted. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 13:22:53 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Spectrum Auction Set For Today USTelecom dailyLead August 9, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eilofDtusXadgQTXbn TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Spectrum auction set for today BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon says its FiOS service is catching on * Time Warner unveils photo-sharing TV service * DirecTV's Q2 profit soars * Cisco makes a play for everyday Internet users USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * SS7, CALEA Compliance & Telco IPTV -- Now Free On-Demand TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: IP telephony market to grow quickly * Time Warner inks CMTS deal with Arris REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Broadcasters suggest FCC is manipulating appeals process Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eilofDtusXadgQTXbn ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:33:04 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** Patrick Townson asked: > At one point, Bell was offering 'Speed Dial-8' _and 'Speed Dial-32'. Most BOCs and LECs in the US and Canada still do offer Speed-8 and Speed-30. It is/was NOT speed-32. > 8 required "#" plus a single digit 2-9, while 32 required '#" plus 2 > digits 21 through 60, with a few number combos not used. NO, you've reversed it for both. Speed-8 is used by dialing any single "N" digit 2-thru-9, pre- programmed with a specific full telephone number, and then either waiting for a 3-to-5 second post-dial-delay time-out, or if using DTMF, keying the '#' (pound) button AFTER the single "N" digit. Speed-30 is used by dialing any two-digit code from 20 through 49, pre-programmed with a specific full telephone number, and then either waiting for the post-dial-delay time-out, or touch-tone keying the '#' button AFTER the two-digit code was entered. To take advantage of the trailing '#' (POUND) button, you had to be a "subscribed" touchtone customer, though. There were some Centrex and PBX systems, and even some specialty "package" deals for single and small multi-line groups where the speed-dialing or "rapid-dial" feature did (does) use a '#' (pound) BEFORE the one/two digit speed dial code, but those are only exceptions. The common practice was (still is) 'N'(#) with Speed-8, and 'NX'(#) for Speed-30; where 'N' by itself is any digit 2 through 9, and 'NX' is a two-digit code from 20 through 49. > I do not think they ever promoted 'Speed Dial-32' all that much. My observation is that many BOCs and LECs are trying to eliminate or reduce promotions for Speed-8. Since you can get over three-times as many central-office memory slots with Speed-30, and telco can charge more as well, most telcos would prefer the customer to get "30" over "8". Most (though not necessarily all) BOCs and LECs can easily offer a single customer BOTH Speed-8 AND Speed-30 on the same line. There's no network or switch programming conflict with having both on the same line! > You can still get speed dial for your cell phone, although with all > the ways of saving numbers on your cell phone, I cannot see why > anyone would need it as a _network_ feature as well. I can't see anyone getting or using "Speed-8/30" as such on a cellphone (although I think it is possible, although necessariy 8 or 30 coded entries -- even those PBX and Centrex, and single/multi-line packaged features described above don't necessarily use the 8/30 "convention"), since as you mention that you can do all kinds of things to save dialed numbers in a cellphone, i.e., the cellphone's own personal directory. And these days, modern landline phones have memory slots and "hot" buttons, etc. But if you have several phones at home all on the same line that are "plain Jane" Western Electric 500 or 2500 sets, telco switch-based Speed-8 or 30 can be an attractive option. And ALL phones will use the same coded "line-up", rather than having several individual phones to program, and try to program all of them identically. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cingular Analog/TDMA Surcharge Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:49:12 GMT On 8/6/2006 1:36 AM, Steve Sobol wrote: > Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> Over the years, various miscellaneous entities (I assume Cellular One) >> were taken over by SBC Mobility, or BellSouth Mobility, or post-2000 >> by Cingular. > I'm not sure when SBC acquired the CellularONE brand, but they owned > it until they sold it as part of the creation of Cingular. The brand > went to Western Wireless. The "Cellular One" brand was created and initially owned by the Washington Baltimore Cellular Telephone Company, which was the first fully-licensed and operational cellular system in the US. One of its partners, American Radio Telephone Service, had operated the "developmental" system in the Washington-Baltimore markets and contributed its existing network to the partnership. One of the other major partners was a subsidiary of the Washington Post. The Cellular One brand was developed in the early years of cellular, probably the mid-1980s, as a way for the A block cellular licensees to establish a common identity, which was believed to be critical for roaming; the B block carriers, at the outset were all affilated with the local telephone company, and the A block carriers wanted ti be able to have a counter to the the "One Bell System" identity that persisted in the minds of the public even though Ma Bell had been broken up. WBCTC sold its service exclusively under the Cellular One name, as did many other A carriers that licensed the name. By the early 1990s, SBC (to use its current name) bought out the Washington Post, and then ARTS, and eventually all of the other partners in WBCTC, but it continued to use the Cellular One name in the Washington-Baltimore markets and in other markets where it had bought an A block license. SBC thus became the sole owner of the trade name used by A block cellular carriers that competed with the B block systems associated with local telephone companies, including the in-region systems of the Bell operating companies such as SBC. Meanwhile, McCaw was buying up one after another A block license across the country, eventually reaching the point where McCaw's A block licenses covered more ground than anyone else's -- including in SBC's own telco states, where it operated the competing B block licenses. Given the relatively primitive intelligence in the analog phones available at the time, this meant that SBC's A block Cellular One customers, when roaming in SBC's own home territory, used Cellular One service provided by McCaw instead of SBC's B block service. In other words, the customers had a relationship with Cellular One -- the anti-Bell cellco -- instead of with SBC, which was a Bell company and the owner of the Cellular One name. This was not good from a SBC marketing viewpoint -- especially since the Cellular One name was being used more by SBC's competitor than by SBC itself, which was seen as by the consumer as the competitor to Cellular One. Moreover, it raised antitrust questions as well, since any restrictions SBC placed on the use of the Cellular One name could ultimately benefit its own competing B bloc systems. During this time, the early 1990s, digital service was being introduced by some carriers, and the FCC was setting the rules for the PCS auctions that started in 1995. And, AT&T bought McCaw, beating out a competing bid from BellSouth. Initially, the AT&T/McCaw networks continued to use the Cellular One name. This meant that AT&T was using SBC's trademark to compete with SBC in its own territory. AT&T was the true anti-Bell, and it was loath to use a trademark owned by the competitor it wanted to beat. The imminent introduction of PCS gave AT&T the opportunity it needed to jump the Cellular One ship. In the mid-1990s, AT&T Wireless started doing business under its own new name and very quickly phased out its use of Cellular One, using its introduction of TDMA digital service as the opportunity to call its service AT&T Wireless Digital PCS, even though it wasn't in the PCS band. The result of AT&T's defection from the Cellular One brand was that Cellular One was no longer a near-universal A block logo. SBC owned the brand name used by its own A Band licensees and a bunch of lesser-ranked carriers not in the big markets where AT&T held the A block licenses. Next, the FCC licensed PCS operators. The Cellular One brand was irrelevant to these. PCS service was offered either under a brand name of the company holding the licenses or its partner, or else it was offered under another company's name pursuant to a brand affiliation arrangement. SBC, AT&T, and the other major carriers now pursued promotion of their own brands in PCS. Cellular markets where they still used the Cellular One name were an anomaly for the majors. Carriers were striving for the elusive "national footprint." And SBC was still stuck with Cellular One in some markets, especially those where SBC was not a known brand name. Evenually, SBC and BellSouth decicded to merge their wireless mobile operations in a single company, ultimately known as Cingular, and to use a unified brand name. During the process of the merger (I don't know whether it was shortly before, at the same time as, or shortly after the merger) SBC sold its rights to the Cellular One name. Given the defection of AT&T Wireless from the brand and the consolidation that had taken place in the wireless industry, the brand was principally being used in smaller markets and rural areas. Western Wireless -- a largely rural carrier covering mostly western states -- was one of the principal users of the name and bought the rights. (Ironically, the controlling stockholder and CEO of Western Wireless was John Stanton, who had been responsible for SBC competitor McCaw's early successes.) Finally, Western wireless was acquired by Alltel in early 2005, giving Alltel -- then a telephone company -- the rights to the nonwireline name. Later, Alltel spun off its wireline assets and became a pure wireless operator. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (To reply, change example.invalid to com in the address.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My thanks to Attorney Sullivan for this precise and mostly accurate history of the 'Cellular One' brand name. The only thing I question is when were 'middle eighties' regards cellular phone service? I know that Ameritech was one of the _early_ cellular companies in Chicago (which was itself about the first market place for cellular if I recall correctly) and at the time Ameritech first went into business, 'Cellular One' was there also. Its strange how at my old age I remember the most insignificant things: the first instance of an overlapping prefix (219-659 was/is Whiting, Indiana; 312-659 was vacant, not in use at all as used to be the custom; it used to be in the very old days, Bell did not assign the 'same' prefix in immediatly adjacent area codes, across state line boundaries such as Chicago, and northwest Indiana; therefore prefixes such as 659 Whiting, 931-932-933 and 844 Hammond, 397-398 East Chicago, IN, were 'protected' to enable seven digit dialing across the metro area regardless of state boundary lines, etc, so those in particular were NEVER assigned in Chicago itself until that rule was abolished and strict a/c + seven digits became a forced requirement). Anyway, about the time that Ameritech started cellular, all of a sudden there was 312-659 in one of the northwest suburbs; 312-659-0000 was the office number for Cellular One out of Rolling Meadows (?), Illinois. So to get more specific I think 'early eighties' in this context probably was 1981-82. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ptownson@telecom-digest.org Subject: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 19:00:00 CDT As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-11-81) this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. We have had two of these in the past (1995-96 and again in 2002-03) and they were both 'best sellers' in the sense that I received a lot of orders for each of them. This time around, however, it is a 'do-it-yourself' type project: The entire collection of messages (about 125,000 of them, spanning a 25 year period) in comp.dcom.telecom have been collected and placed into MBOX format with the help of a Digest reader and are being made available for your review in zip format. You go into our archives http://telecom-digest.org and then into the back-issues files. Within the back-issues files, look for the category "25 years of c.d.t. messages in MBOX format." There you will see 25 files, labeled 1981 through 2006; each year is a zip file which when uncompressed using DOS will produce a new directory on your own computer entitled 'mail'. If the process goes as it should, each file uncompression you do should produce such a 'mail' folder with several thousand each mail files, sort of Usenet style reading. Unless you have _lots_ of storage space on your computer, I do not recommend trying to uncompress all the files at one time. But of course you can also send your output to a writeable DVD/CD if that is your preference. Many of the messages also have hyperlinks in them, so I assume if you are connected to the net when you do this, you should get the benefit of the various links as well. The final year (2006) of this collection cuts off at the end of June. I hope you enjoy this 'one-stop shopping' collection of c.d.t. messages over the past quarter-century. PAT ------------------------------ From: rcohen@notchur.biz Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:04 +0000 Subject: Inquiry About comp.dcom.telecom Posting Pat, For some time, years, I've reading c.d.t and I'd swear I've posted on occasion, although I can't remember a specific post, but a short while ago I tried to reply to a post it it just never showed up. After several rounds with my news provider they said I would have to contact the moderator since posting is restricted. I'm hoping that's you and you'll grant me posting rights. Or tell me my provider is wrong. Thanks, if you need any details let me know. I post/read from a few locations, typically with a name of RC and a phony from email address. Thanks again, RC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your provider is correct. The c.d.t. news group on Usenet is moderated; I am the moderator. You can reply to a newsgroup posting or originate a new posting, doesn't matter, but it will come to me first before it goes out to the network. Like anyone else reading here, you do not need to be 'granted posting rights'; all you have to do is send me email either through the newsgroup or direct to my Digest email address ptownson@telecom-digest.org. Now a problem is posting with 'a name of RC and a phony from address'. You do not get back my auto-ack, or receipt for your submission. Use a good address if you want to know for sure if the submission was received. There are readers here (see one in this issue) who always ask me for an address in one of my domains (notchur.biz) to protect _them_ from the truckloads of spam delivered each day and the other diseased brain crackpots around here. You are welcome to do the same _but make sure the request is in the first line of your message_ so I do not miss it. In this message I did it automatically (gave you a 'notchur.biz' email address) which I usually do not do. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:26:42 -0700 From: Jim Stewart Subject: Re: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-11-81) > this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. A big thanks for what looks to be a ton of work. Windows users might find the following program useful: http://people.freenet.de/ukrebs/mbox2eml.html If the files are given a .mbox prefix, the program will open them and allow you to sort them by date, subject or sender then read them. Note that the default format is Mozilla and you have to drop down the Files of Type menu item and select .mbox. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for this new tool. I hope some of the readers who pull down the 25 volume collection of zip files I put on line will find it useful. 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 #293 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Aug 10 14:52:30 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 14A5521EA; Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:52:29 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #294 Message-Id: <20060810185229.14A5521EA@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:52:29 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:54:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 294 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Newest Airport Regulations Cause Delays and Inconvenience (Danica Kirka) Satellite, Cable Companies Battle Wireless in FCC Auction (Jeremy Pelofsky) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 10, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) EchoStar, DirecTV Team For Top Bid in Auction (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP (DLR) Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP (Scott Dorsey) Re: Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) (Mr Joseph Singer) Re: Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) (Sam Spade) Sam Spade (Wally Roberts) Re: Need Info Re A/C 650 Dialing Problem (Ken Abrams) My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 12:47:31 -0500 From: Danica Kirka, AP Subject: Newest Airport Regulations Cause Considerable Delays, Inconvenience Newest Airport Regulations Bring Nnew 'Security', Delays By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer British authorities said Thursday they thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up several aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in carry-on luggage. Security was raised to its highest level in Britain, and carry-on luggage was banned on all flights. Huge crowds backed up at London's Heathrow airport as officials searching for explosives barred nearly every form of liquid outside of baby formula. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products and set them off with detonators disguised as electronic devices. The extreme measures at a major international aviation hub sent ripples throughout the world. Heathrow was closed to most flights from Europe, and British Airways canceled all its flights between the airport and points in Britain, Europe and Libya. Numerous flights from U.S. cities to Britain were canceled. Washington raised its threat alert to its highest level for commercial flights from Britain to the United States amid fears the plot had not been completely crushed. The alert for all flights coming or going from the United States was also raised slightly. Two U.S. counterterrorism officials said the terrorists had targeted United, American and Continental airlines. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Police arrested 21 people, saying they were confident they captured the main suspects in what U.S. officials said was a plot in its final phases that had all the earmarks of an al-Qaida operation. A U.S. intelligence official said the plotters had hoped to target flights to major airports in New York, Washington and California. British Home Secretary John Reid said the 21 people were arrested in London, its suburbs and Birmingham following a lengthy investigation, including the alleged "main players" in the plot. Searches continued in a number of locations. The British Broadcasting Corp. said police were evacuating homes in High Wycombe, a town 30 miles northwest of London, near one of the houses being searched. Police refused to confirm the report or to discuss any details of the searches. President Bush said during a visit to Green Bay, Wis., that the foiled plot was a "stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists." Despite increased security since Sept. 11, he warned, "It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America." While British officials declined to publicly identify the 21 suspects, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said in Paris that they "appear to be of Pakistani origin." He did not give a source for his description, but said French officials had been in close contact with British authorities. The suspects were "homegrown," though it was not immediately clear if they were all British citizens, said a British police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Police were working closely with the South Asian community, the official said. The suicide bombing assault on London subway trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, was carried out by Muslim extremists who grew up in Britain. The police official said the plotters intended to simultaneously target multiple planes bound for the United States. "We think this was an extraordinarily serious plot and we are confident that we've prevented an attempt to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale," Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said. Prime Minister Tony Blair, vacationing in the Caribbean, briefed Bush on the situation overnight. Blair issued a statement praising the cooperation between the two countries, saying it "underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it." White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush also had been briefed by his aides while at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he has been on vacation. "We do believe the plot involved flights from the U.K. to the U.S. and was a direct threat to the United States," Snow said. While Snow called the plot a serious threat, he assured Americans that "it is safe to travel." Chertoff, the homeland security chief, said the plot had the hallmarks of an operation planned by al-Qaida, the terrorist group behind the Sept. 11 attack on the United States. "It was sophisticated, it had a lot of members and it was international in scope. It was in some respects suggestive of an al-Qaida plot," Chertoff said, but he cautioned it was too early in the investigation to reach any conclusions. It is the first time the red alert level in the Homeland Security warning system has been invoked, although there have been brief periods in the past when the orange level was applied. Homeland Security defines the red alert as designating a "severe risk of terrorist attacks." "We believe that these arrests (in London) have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted," Chertoff said. He added, however, there was no indication of current plots within the United States. Chertoff said the plotters were in the final stages of planning. "We were really getting quite close to the execution phase," he said, adding that it was unclear if the plot was linked to the upcoming fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official said authorities believe dozens of people -- possibly as many as 50 -- were involved in the plot. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. The plan involved airline passengers hiding masked explosives in carry-on luggage, the official said. "They were not yet sitting on an airplane," but were very close to traveling, the official said, calling the plot "the real deal." Passengers in Britain faced delays as tighter security was hastily enforced at the country's airports and additional measures were put in place for all flights. Laptop computers, mobile phones, iPods, and remote controls were among the items banned from being carried on board. Liquids, such as hair care products, were also barred on flights in both Britain and the U.S. Liquid medicines and baby formula are excluded, but must go through manual examination before boardng. In the mid-1990s, officials foiled a plan by terrorist mastermind Ramzi Youssef to blow up 12 Western jetliners simultaneously over the Pacific. The alleged plot involved improvised bombs using liquid hidden in contact lens solution containers. Huge lines formed at ticket counters and behind security barriers at Heathrow and other airports in Britain. Ed Lappen, 55, a businessman from Boston, who was traveling with his wife and daughter to Russia, found himself unable to travel further. "We're safe, we're OK," he said at Heathrow. "Now my daughter is going to get a shopping trip in London." Hannah Pillinger, 24, seemed less concerned by the announcement. "Eight hours without an iPod, that's the most inconvenient thing," she said, waiting at the Manchester airport. Most European carriers canceled flights to Heathrow because of the massive delays created after authorities enforced strict new regulations banning most hand baggage. Tony Douglas, Heathrow's managing director, said the airport hoped to resume normal operations Friday, but passengers would still face delays and a ban on cabin baggage "for the foreseeable future." Security also was stepped up at train stations serving airports across Britain, said British Transport Police spokeswoman Jan O'Neill. At London's Victoria Station, police patrolled platforms with bomb-sniffing dogs as passengers boarded trains carrying clear plastic bags. Margaret Gavin, 67, waiting to board a train, said she wasn't scared. "Why should I change my life because some idiots want to blow something up?" she said. Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Matt Moore in Frankfurt, Germany, 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 and headlines from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some of us gave up any form of air travel years ago, when the tough restrictions first were implemented. My health simply will not allow it. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 12:21:06 -0500 From: Jeremy Pelofsky Subject: Satellite and Cable Companies Battle Wireless in FCC Auction By Jeremy Pelofsky U.S. wireless carriers battled with satellite and cable operators on Wednesday for valuable licenses for advanced wireless services -- like high-speed Internet access -- on the first day of an auction that so far has raised $933.5 million. A partnership of the top two satellite television providers, EchoStar Communications Corp. and DirecTV Group Inc., led the Federal Communications Commission sale with top bids for 13 licenses totaling $282.5 million. After the day's second round of bidding, the group knocked No. 4 U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile USA out of the first place spot it had after the initial round. T-Mobile has the highest bids for 23 licenses, totaling $121.7 million. T-Mobile, a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG, does not have as many wireless airwaves as the bigger U.S. carriers and analysts have expected the company to bid aggressively. Analysts have predicted the Federal Communications Commission sale could raise as much as $15 billion and would last several weeks. The sale includes 1,122 licenses and the bidding will resume on Thursday and continue until there are no new bids or other activity in the sale. Telephone, cable and satellite companies are competing to offer consumers a bundle of voice, Internet, wireless and television services and some see acquiring the airwaves in the FCC auction as aiding their efforts. The cable and satellite companies have not said publicly what they would do with the wireless licenses if they won them. However, analysts have suggested satellite firms would use the airwaves for high-speed Internet access while cable operators could use them for voice communications. A consortium of big cable operators was in third place, with the top bids for four licenses with offers of $106.9 million. They have joined forces with No. 3 wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. in bidding during the auction. That group includes the biggest cable operators, Comcast Corp., Time Warner Inc., and Cox Communications. Two smaller licenses covering the New York City and Newark, New Jersey, area received high individual bids from Dolan Family Holdings LLC, which has ties to Cablevision Systems Corp. Chairman Charles Dolan. Dolan bid almost $25 million for one and $19.4 million for the other, according to FCC data. Among larger regional licenses being offered, the one receiving the highest bid covered a swath of territory that stretches across the northern United States, including Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and Cleveland. The satellite television group bid $69.1 million for this license. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 10, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 11:32:48 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 10, 2006 ******************************** United States: FCC's Multi-Billion Spectrum Auction Begins http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19292?11228 The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday commenced its auction for advanced wireless services (AWS) spectrum licences with expectations of a windfall of up to US$15 billion. The licences, which were recently released by the Department of Defense, are within the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands, making them ideal ... Russia: Alfa Bank Considers Creation of New Telecoms Company http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19287?11228 Alfa Bank, a unit of the Russian financial-industrial conglomerate Alfa Group, is planning the creation of a new telecoms company in Russia, Prime-Tass quotes Alfa Bank president Pyotr Aven as saying yesterday in a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The new company would have key assets based in Russia and the Commonwealth of ... MobiTV Backs WiMAX http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19285?11228 On the heels of Sprint Nextel's decision to go with WiMAX as its 4G technology of choice, MobiTV threw its support behind the technology, saying it is committed to offering advanced mobile television and media delivery services over WiMAX networks. As part of its commitment to the technology, MobiTV says it is investing ... Qualcomm Hit With New Patent Demands http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19282?11228 The multi-venue legal flap between Qualcomm and Nokia over wireless patents, contracts and royalties took yet another twist today as the Finnish manufacturer asked a Delaware court to enforce the U.S. vendor's 'contractual obligations in essential patent licensing' ... RIM Dominance Slips, Slightly http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19280?11228 As competition in the expanding market for mobile enterprise email heats up, the dominance of Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)'s BlackBerry devices is eroding slightly, according to new industry analyst reports. Cliff Raskind, director of the wireless enterprise strategies service at research firm Strategy Analytics Inc., released ... Components Crunch Hits Vendors http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19277?11228 Telecom equipment vendors have been struggling to source the components they've needed to fulfill their orders in the past few months, according to a number of executives that have talked to Light Reading. The vendors, who all requested anonymity, operate in different market segments, yet all say the same thing -- it's been ... XM In Deal With Alltel to Deliver Satellite Radio Channels Over Cell Phones http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19274?11228 NEW YORK -- XM Satellite Radio Inc. has made a deal with Alltel Wireless, a cell phone service provider, to distribute some of XM's commercial-free channels over cell phones. The deal, which is expected to be announced Thursday, mirrors a similar arrangement announced last year between XM's competitor Sirius Satellite ... Deutsche Telekom's 2Q Net Profit Slips 14%, Cuts Forecasted http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19270?11228 FRANKFURT, Germany -- Deutsche Telekom AG said its second-quarter net income fell 14 percent because of the loss of traditional phone users, and cut its profit outlook for the rest of this year and 2007. Its shares fell 8 percent. Europe's biggest telephone company blamed intense competition among Europe's ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 12:35:53 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: EchoStar, DirecTV Team For Top Bid in Spectrum Auction USTelecom dailyLead August 10, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eivIfDtusXagndGRAI TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * EchoStar, DirecTV team for top bid in spectrum auction BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon to unveil free gaming service * Young people aren't that crazy about mobile TV, poll says * DSL sees most dramatic price drop in four years * Time Warner scores on-demand deal with L.A. Dodgers USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * What you need to know about billing systems TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Number of VoIP subscribers climb 21% in Q2 REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Verizon expands FiOS TV in Florida DIVERSIONS * The Summer Drink to Be Seen With * It's the Latest in Cellphone Chic, and So Mysterious * The Ultimate Beer Run in the Czech Republic * The Little Town That High Prices Forgot * Pinned Under the Weight of Skyscrapers and History in 'World Trade Center' * Diner Beware: Turisti Pay More in Roman Restaurants Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/eivIfDtusXagndGRAI ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:54:45 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP mailursubbu@gmail.com wrote: > I am very new to the Telecom world. I have a basic doubt. Why people > are using the SS7 protocol instead of TCP/IP Stack. > Best Regards, > Subramanya SS7 was there first. Now there are literally billions of dollars of equipment in place. Tossing that in the trash isn't economically feasible. When SS7 was designed (I think) TCP/IP didn't exist and for all practical purposes couldn't exist due to limits in the processing power of the electronics of the day. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP Date: 10 Aug 2006 09:00:39 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) mailursubbu@gmail.com wrote: > I am very new to the Telecom world. I have a basic doubt. Why people > are using the SS7 protocol instead of TCP/IP Stack. Because they are totally different things for totally different jobs. IP isn't even remotely designed for realtime applications. The current trend of using IP for everything under the sun because the hardware is cheap and available mostly is possible only because bandwidth is cheap too. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 07:32:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:33:04 -0600 Anthony Bellanga wrote: > I do not think they ever promoted 'Speed Dial-32' all that much. > My observation is that many BOCs and LECs are trying to eliminate or > reduce promotions for Speed-8. Since you can get over three-times as > many central-office memory slots with Speed-30, and telco can charge > more as well, most telcos would prefer the customer to get "30" over > "8". Most (though not necessarily all) BOCs and LECs can easily offer > a single customer BOTH Speed-8 AND Speed-30 on the same line. There's > no network or switch programming conflict with having both on the same > line! My ILEC Qwest with their "super" packages offers you both 8 and 30 "fast dial" services in addition to other CLASS services. That's getting sort of moot anyway since all the new VOiP services include all CLASS services included in your monthly cost. > You can still get speed dial for your cell phone, although with all > the ways of saving numbers on your cell phone, I cannot see why > anyone would need it as a _network_ feature as well. > I can't see anyone getting or using "Speed-8/30" as such on a > cellphone (although I think it is possible, although necessariy 8 or > 30 coded entries -- even those PBX and Centrex, and single/multi-line > packaged features described above don't necessarily use the 8/30 > "convention"), since as you mention that you can do all kinds of > things to save dialed numbers in a cellphone, i.e., the cellphone's > own personal directory. I'm not sure if this trick works on anything other than Nokia GSM handsets but you can actually have more presets for numbers than just 2 - 9. If you key any number followed by # you have as many "quick dials" as you have numbers in your phone's contact list. This "trick" does not seem to work on anything other than GSM handsets. ------------------------------ From: Sam Spade Subject: Re: Speed 8 and Speed 30 (re: ESS Feature Usage) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:46:01 -0700 Organization: Cox Communications Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Most BOCs and LECs in the US and Canada still do offer Speed-8 and > Speed-30. It is/was NOT speed-32. SBC in California offers only Speed 8 these days. When they offered both the 8-list was accessed with feature code 74; the 30-list with feature code 75. The real advantage of the speed list was the storing of long international dialing strings. The speed list, as I recall, could store up to 16 digits. But, almost everyone other than the LECs offer cheaper international rates, etc, etc. My SBC wireline service is now toll-restricted and limited to incoming and local outgoing calls. They can't compete with Vonage, so they are trying to destroy it. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:47:24 -0700 From: Wally Roberts Subject: Sam Spade I am the guy who posts as Sam Spade. I decided a long time ago to not give out a valid email address on any Usenet Group. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are not the only person who is totally fed up with Usenet and the huge amount of spam generated by piracy of real names. I have been victimized by that for many years now; if they find any sort of real name and working email address they begin using it to spread their porn and other scams. After more than twenty years on Usenet and Internet how much of that do you suppose I deal with? We are going to begin making it a bit more difficult for them starting immediatly. Henceforth all subject lines _MUST_ have the word 'telecom' with a left bracket and a right bracket [] around the word, or the mail will be tossed by my own filter. The sender will get the auto-ack but with a note saying their mail has been rejected for lack of the magic word. The magic word will not be included in the subject line however. This takes effect immediatly, however there will be a two or three day grace period to allow all writers an opportunity to learn about it. The magic word has to be the very first word in the subject line. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: Need Info Re A/C 650 Dialing Problem Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 02:57:27 GMT David Kaye wrote: > Today I drove to South San Francisco, in area code 650, and used a pay > phone to call my own number. If I dial 1-415-271-xxxx (my number) I > get through fine. If I dial 415-271-xxxx (wthout the 1) I do *not* > get the "You must first dial 1", but instead I get the "The number you > have reached is not in service at this time". I think this is at the > crux of the problem. Part of the problem, sure. "Crux" I doubt. What percentage of folks trying to call you, do you imagine, forget to dial the 1 ? I seriously doubt that it is 100%. 1+10d dialing has been around a long time. I'd be surprised if the human error rate is much above 10%. The call will probably complete without the 1 from any major cell phone provider. Moreover, screening is different for pay phones. Calls from other types of lines might get the right response when they dial wrong. Your testing wasn't thorough enough and "I think" it led you to an invalid conclusion. > Can anybody shed any light on this? Does anybody here know someone at > AT&T/SBC who can see to it that the "You must first dial 1" recording > is restored the way it should be? I know that for unusual things like this it is likely to be a MAJOR hassle getting the drone who answers to understand the problem but you really should try reporting it to the predominate LEC for that area. Of course, it will be a waste of your time unless you can give them the phone number of the pay station where you experienced the problem ... because they don't know how to take a report without a phone number. And it might be important because it might not be an LEC phone, in which case it might not be their (AT&T/SBC) problem at all. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:33:56 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-11-81) this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. We have had two of these in the past (1995-96 and again in 2002-03) and they were both 'best sellers' in the sense that I received a lot of orders for each of them. This time around, however, it is a 'do-it-yourself' type project: The entire collection of messages (about 125,000 of them, spanning a 25 year period) in comp.dcom.telecom have been collected and placed into MBOX format with the help of a Digest reader and are being made available for your review in zip format. You go into our archives http://telecom-digest.org and then into the back-issues files. Within the back-issues files, look for the category "25 years of c.d.t. messages in MBOX format." There you will see 25 files, labeled 1981 through 2006; each year is a zip file which when uncompressed using DOS will produce a new directory on your own computer entitled 'mail'. If the process goes as it should, each file uncompression you do should produce such a 'mail' folder with several thousand each mail files, sort of Usenet style reading. Unless you have _lots_ of storage space on your computer, I do not recommend trying to uncompress all the files at one time. But of course you can also send your output to a writeable DVD/CD if that is your preference. Many of the messages also have hyperlinks in them, so I assume if you are connected to the net when you do this, you should get the benefit of the various links as well. The final year (2006) of this collection cuts off at the end of June. I hope you enjoy this 'one-stop shopping' collection of c.d.t. messages over the past quarter-century. 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 #294 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 11 01:25:52 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 04E1A2212; Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:25:51 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #295 Message-Id: <20060811052551.04E1A2212@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:25:51 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:28:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 295 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Passengers May Expect Double/Triple Screening (Leslie Miller, AP) Re: Newest Airport Regulations Cause Considerable Delays, (L Hancock) Re: Sam Spade (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Sam Spade (William Warren) Re: Sam Spade was: Please Delete Message With Real Email (Wally Roberts) Role of Cost in Shifting Communications Channels (Swisscom Innovations) My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 11, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 22:53:50 -0500 From: Leslie Miller, Associated Press Subject: Passengers May Expect Double/Triple Screening Passengers can Expect Double/Triple Screening, Pay and Cell Phone Monitoring By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer Beginning Friday, airline passengers will go through double screening to make sure they're not carrying liquids onto planes, the head of the airline industry's largest trade group said. Passengers and their carry-on luggage will be checked not only at the main security checkpoint, but also a second time at the boarding gate, and perhaps a third time randomly. In addition, calls from public phones at the airport may be monitored, as well as cell phones. The stepped-up screening in response to a new terrorist threat began Thursday at 25 airports where planes leave for Britain. "It's going to spread across the whole system tomorrow," James May, president of the Air Transport Association, said Thursday. It will be phased in across the USA throughout the day Friday and the weekend. The response to the terrorist threat produced long lines at airports Thursday as security officials scrambled to put new measures in place and passengers faced perplexing new restrictions -- including the ban on carrying liquids onto aircraft. Intelligence had indicated the terror plot unfolding in Britain involved using benign liquids that could be mixed inside an airplane cabin to make an explosive. While plots to blow up airliners using liquid explosives are nothing new -- such an attempt was foiled more than a decade ago -- the government has been slow to upgrade its security equipment at airport checkpoints so that it can detect explosives on passengers. Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said the need to tighten security came as a surprise and the changes were difficult to implement. "It normally takes us about four weeks to roll out a change at a security checkpoint, and this one came about in a little bit more than four hours in the middle of last night," Hawley said. "Excuse us if the additional security takes another day or two to implementt." Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, said the government was overreacting. "They paralyzed the system with the hassle factor again," Woerth said. During the first few hours of the alert, the TSA was taking toiletries away from flight crews, he said. "Then they said, 'This is stupid. We're taking toothpaste away from the guy who's going to fly the plane.' It didn't take them long to back down." But Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said it makes sense to insert "uncertainty and randomness into the system so we can't let the adversary game the system." Still, he said, coordination among agencies and the industry remains a problem. Denis Breslin, spokesman for the American Airlines pilots union, faulted nagging communication shortcomings among intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies. "There's a whole lot of people making rules up right now, and until they get it all sorted out, every passenger is going to have to go through the nightmarish procedures that they're putting together right now," said Breslin. David Mackett, a pilot who heads the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, said flight crews are treated as part of the problem. "We're not happy that every time there's a threat we find out from the media, and that there's almost a complete vacuum of information when it comes to the air crews," Mackett said. It was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that box cutters and other sharp objects were banned, bulletproof cockpit doors installed and air marshals rushed into service. And it was after Richard Reid, the confessed shoe bomber, tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in December 2001 that security officials made passengers remove their shoes. Lighters were later banned from passenger cabins. Members of Congress have for several years criticized the TSA for using 1970s-era X-ray technology to screen carry-on bags at security checkpoints. Rafi Ron, former head of security at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and now a security consultant in Washington, said part of the problem is that terrorists always try to exploit new vulnerabilities. "Weapons and explosives are various and you can expect new types of weapons as well as tactics," Ron said. Douglas Laird, an aviation security expert and former security chief for Northwest Airlines, said the plot described Thursday resembled a 1994-1995 attempt, codenamed "Bojinka," to blow up a dozen airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean using liquid explosives smuggled onto planes in bottles of contact lens solution. On the Net: Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.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: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Newest Airport Regulations Cause Considerable Delay, Inconvenience Date: 10 Aug 2006 13:40:56 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danica wrote: > Newest Airport Regulations Bring New 'Security', Delays > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Some of us gave up any form of air > travel years ago, when the tough restrictions first were implemented. > My health simply will not allow it. PAT] The news media have reported massive delays at airports for domestic travelers, even those at small airports for regional flights. This is on top of anticipated bad delays on account of restructering in the aviation business. USATODAY reported there'd be six hour delays and 2 am departures as a result before the current problem. Further, fuel supplies are tight as a result of the Alaskan trouble and at risk due to middle eastern troubles and hurricane vulnerability. A partial solution would be investing in Amtrak -- instead of trying to destroy it -- so it could provide speedy regional corridor service. A fast train can cover a lot of ground in the four hours passengers are wasting in airport terminals. The investment in improved trains would be far less costly than airport expansion. Amtrak critics complain of people not wanting to take the train coast to coast. These improvements aren't for that kind of service, but rather regional service, such as Hartford CT to DC. Because of govt policy, many Amtrak routes are starved of capital for rehab to allow fast train operation and not very attractive. Former Amk president David Gunn -- who the Bush Adm fired despite being extremely well respected -- proposed a very cost efficient upgrading using conventional equipment. He focused on a win-win with psgr and freight trains by removing existing bottlenecks so trains could move faster. His plan had a very high "bank for the buck". There are many who oppose passenger trains, not for monetary reasons, but ideological ones. For whatever reason, they just can't stand the idea of trains instead of driving or airplanes. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not oppose trains; I just wish there were more of them and in reasonably convenient locations and routes. We have had absolutely _no_ passenger train service here in Independence since the middle 1970's. The nearest passenger trains are in Topeka (slightly) and in Kansas City. To get to New York I would have to somehow find a ride to Kansas City, get a train for Chicago, then change trains to get to New York. I would almost rather take the Jefferson Lines/Greyhound Bus; at least the bus station is out by the Walmart store west of town. It is not a good scene at all. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Sam Spade Date: 10 Aug 2006 13:42:47 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Wally Roberts: > Henceforth all subject lines _MUST_ have the word 'telecom' with a > left bracket and a right bracket [] around the word, or the mail > will be tossed by my own filter. But my newsreader automatically puts in the RE: prefix. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But, 'RE:' or 'Re:' is not the first word in a subject line. The subject line will be "Re: [telecom] whatever the subject is". PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:34:28 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Sam Spade Wally Roberts wrote: > I am the guy who posts as Sam Spade. > I decided a long time ago to not give out a valid email address on any > Usenet Group. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are not the only person who is > totally fed up with Usenet and the huge amount of spam generated by > piracy of real names. I have been victimized by that for many years > now; if they find any sort of real name and working email address they > begin using it to spread their porn and other scams. After more than > twenty years on Usenet and Internet how much of that do you suppose I > deal with? We are going to begin making it a bit more difficult for > them starting immediatly. Henceforth all subject lines _MUST_ have > the word 'telecom' with a left bracket and a right bracket [] around > the word, or the mail will be tossed by my own filter. The sender > will get the auto-ack but with a note saying their mail has been > rejected for lack of the magic word. The magic word will not be > included in the subject line however. This takes effect immediatly, > however there will be a two or three day grace period to allow all > writers an opportunity to learn about it. The magic word has to > be the very first word in the subject line. PAT] Don't do it, Pat! If you do, the terrorists have won! William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why would you say something like that? The 'terrorists' won long ago, when you started asking people to 'filter noise from your address' and when readers started using Spam Assassin and when mailing list maintainers started requiring their readers to jump through hoops to get on or off mailing lists. Why is a simple minded filter -- (either the word '[telecom]' is present or it is not present) -- such a sign that the 'terrorists' have won? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:57:19 -0700 From: Wally Roberts Subject: Please Delete Message With my Real Email Goodness, please delete that posting! You are screwing me. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wally, I am sorry about that. As I mentioned to you in private email, this evening I went through the archives, both HTML and text, and diddled up your from address to show you as part of my 'domain' notchur.biz It would help if you would counsel me on each and every email in the first line of your text to do that, so I do not forget in the future. Of course, it actually was not _me_ who screwed you; it is the infinite number of parasites who select names from our mailing list with which to forge porn and spam/scam email, but as any right-thinking Usenetter would explain to you, we dare not tell others how to use their computers or their web sites; to do so would be quite politically incorrect. Some day a real person may apply for 'notchur' and ask for it in the .biz domain. I have it so loaded up now with spamscam and porn trash all I can say is God help the poor devil who decides to actually use it, if ever. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:07:21 -0500 From: Swisscom Innovations Subject: The Role of Cost in Shifting Communications Channels What role does cost play in shifting usage from one communications channel to the other? "Cost does play a role, but it's not absolute," says Stefana Broadbent, an ethnologist working for Swisscom Innovations. She cites as evidence the fact that we use cell phones from home although it's more expensive and we have alternatives available. The cost is offset by convenience. Cell phone users spend lots of time talking into their devices, but they generally communicate with very few people. Just how few? Would you believe four? It's one of the surprising recent findings of a study carried out in Switzerland. In the last few years our communication environment has been expanding at a very fast pace. The lone fixed-line telephone has given way to multiple fixed and mobile phones, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), text messaging, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) free (or near-free) telephony and videoconferencing, and other interactive channels such as blogs and wikis. This expanded communication environment raises some questions: Are people "specializing" their use of different communication channels? For example, do mobile-phone, fixed-line, and e-mail users differentiate their usage of those tools in terms of content, communication partners, and habits? Are new channels affecting how existing channels are used? Specialized Communication Stefana Broadbent, an ethnologist working for Swisscom Innovations, a division of Swisscom, Switzerland's largest telecom operator, says the answer to each of these questions is yes. Broadbent studies the economic and social aspects of telecommunications. In recent months she and her team have closely observed and studied a few hundred consumers in their interactions with technology -- interviewing them, mapping the location of communication devices in their homes, collecting timelines and usage schedules, and asking users to keep detailed communication logs. And, she says, what this has revealed is that people "are very good at choosing the best media for each situation." What would that be? "SMS is to tell you I miss you, e-mail is to organize our dinner, voice is to say I'm late, and IM is to continue our conversation," says Broadbent half-jokingly. Here is how she explains it in more detail: The fixed phone is the collective channel: "a shared organizational tool for the whole household," with most calls done in "public," because they are relevant to other members of the household. Only 25 percent are done "privately," from one's bedroom or study. Mobile voice is "the micro coordination channel": It is "the preferred channel for last-minute adjustment of plans or updates on where people are and what they are doing." Surprisingly, "80 percent of all exchanges are with only four people." SMS, or short messaging, is "for intimacy, emotions, and efficiency. Only the most intimate sphere of friends and family are contacted by SMS, and the content of the messages is often related to 'grooming' and emotional exchanges." E-mail is "the administrative channel," used to support online activities such as travel reservations and shopping, for coordination with extended social groups (clubs, friends, acquaintances), or for exchanging pictures, music, and other content with close social networks. IM and VoIP are "the continuous channels": "users open an instant messaging channel for the day and then just keep it open in the background while they do other activities; they multitask -- and step in and out of a conversation." This starts to apply to VoIP as well (think Skype). Blogging is the broader networking channel: "Personal pages are often primarily a center of communication with friends and people online in general." Some of these findings are very surprising. In particular, I asked Broadbent how certain she was that 80 percent of mobile voice calls are with only four people. She answered that she's "quite sure of it: maybe we're talking about five people, but it's consistent across studies," including research done in other European countries such as France (where, as in Switzerland, the penetration of mobile phones is much higher than in the United States, nearing 100%). Constant Redefinition So do new channels affect how existing channels are used? According to Broadbent, yes. Each new channel or media that appears slowly redefines the uses of the older existing media, she suggests: IM is currently redefining usage of short messaging; blogging is redefining the usage of e-mail; VoIP is changing the nature of a phone call. New patterns of communication emerge slowly, stabilize for a period, and then change again when new channels come along. What role does cost play in shifting usage from one channel to the other? "Cost does play a role, but it's not absolute." She cites as evidence the fact that we use cell phones from home although it's more expensive and we have alternatives available. The cost is offset by convenience: With phone numbers stored in a cell phone's memory, it's more practical to take the device out of our pocket and push a button to place a call. Even if it is just to call the same four or five people over and over. 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 each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html (and) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:33:56 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-11-81) this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. We have had two of these in the past (1995-96 and again in 2002-03) and they were both 'best sellers' in the sense that I received a lot of orders for each of them. This time around, however, it is a 'do-it-yourself' type project: The entire collection of messages (about 125,000 of them, spanning a 25 year period) in comp.dcom.telecom have been collected and placed into MBOX format with the help of a Digest reader and are being made available for your review in zip format. You go into our archives http://telecom-digest.org and then into the back-issues files. Within the back-issues files, look for the category "25 years of c.d.t. messages in MBOX format." There you will see 25 files, labeled 1981 through 2006; each year is a zip file which when uncompressed using DOS will produce a new directory on your own computer entitled 'mail'. If the process goes as it should, each file uncompression you do should produce such a 'mail' folder with several thousand each mail files, sort of Usenet style reading. Unless you have _lots_ of storage space on your computer, I do not recommend trying to uncompress all the files at one time. But of course you can also send your output to a writeable DVD/CD if that is your preference. Many of the messages also have hyperlinks in them, so I assume if you are connected to the net when you do this, you should get the benefit of the various links as well. The final year (2006) of this collection cuts off at the end of June. I hope you enjoy this 'one-stop shopping' collection of c.d.t. messages over the past quarter-century. 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 #295 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Aug 11 15:40:19 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 1B0962212; Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:40:19 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #296 Message-Id: <20060811194019.1B0962212@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:40:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:42:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 296 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services (John Nolan) Army Signs New Deal With Verizon (United Press International News Wire) Google Says Government Intrusions Is a Threat to Online Privacy (E Auchard) Bet on Sports no Longer Doing US Business (Jane Wardell, AP) TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 11, 2006 (telecomdirect_daily) Telecom Update #541, August 11, 2006 (John Riddell) Using a 608 (Mike Sakowitz Twomey) 1010987 # (Gus Sparatore) My 25th Anniversary Gift to You (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Newest Airport Regulations Cause Delay, Inconvenience (Lisa Hancock) Question About Story: Re: Airport "Pay and Cell Phones" (Ed) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:17:39 -0500 From: John Nolan, Dayton Daily News Subject: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio By John Nolan DAYTON | Verizon Communications Inc. has taken advantage of a state-granted privilege to raise rates on its own for some telephone services, Ohio's consumer advocate said Thursday. The increases included raising the monthly charges for call forwarding from 75 cents to $2, Caller ID with name and number from $7.95 to $9.25 and three-way calling from $2.75 to $3.50, according to the Ohio Consumers' Counsel. The state agency represents residential customers in Ohio utility rate cases. The consumers' counsel said it is the first increase Verizon has put into effect since state regulators in June gave the company permission under "elective alternative regulation" to raise rates at will for some optional service features. In exchange, the company agreed to cap prices on basic local exchange service, basic Caller ID and basic call waiting. The price increases allow Verizon to compete with providers of wireless phone service, Internet-based phone capability and cable television companies which offer phone service, Verizon spokesman Bill Kula said. The number of local telephone lines Verizon provides in Ohio has dropped from 976,000 in January 2003 to 852,000 in January 2006 because of the competition, Kula said. Verizon has responded by offering bundled service options to make it more affordable for customers to take combined phone, high-speed Internet and digital video services, he said. Verizon -- which also offers wireless service -- trails only AT&T Ohio in the number of residential phone lines provided in Ohio. Verizon's service area includes parts of Montgomery, Miami, Preble, Greene, Clinton, Butler and Warren counties. Troy, Englewood and Trotwood are the largest communities Verizon serves in the region. Eight other telephone companies, including AT&T Ohio, have received Ohio regulatory approval to raise rates for optional service in exchange for capping charges on basic service. The Ohio Consumers' Counsel said that could be unfair to consumers in areas without other providers of similar services. Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com. 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, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:24:37 -0500 From: United Press International News Wire Subject: Army Signs New Deal With Verizon Verizon to upgrade U.S. Army telecom WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Verizon has received a contract to help modernize and improve the U.S. Army's telecommunications infrastructure. Verizon Business -- through its federal network system -- was among 10 contractors chosen by the Army to participate in bidding for its $4 billion Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity Infrastructure Modernization program. The 10 successful contractors are all guaranteed a minimum amount of the final program. The infrastructure modernization program replaces the Digital Switch Systems Modernization Program, which expires in June 2007. Verizon Business announced Wednesday that Paul Bates, Verizon Business vice president for global professional services and enterprise solutions, said: "We are supporting Army communications from the installation level all the way up to the front lines. This effort is intended to increase network capabilities and boost bandwidth around the world. "As the Army moves everything over to Internet protocol, Verizon Business will provide the latest technology to help the government increase networking capabilities while maintaining affordability," the company said. Copyright 2006 United Press International, 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 and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:34:28 -0500 From: Eric Auchard, Reuters Subject: Google Says Government Intrusions Is a Threat to Online Privacy Google sees privacy threats By Eric Auchard Web search leader Google Inc., which stores vast amounts of data on the Web surfing habits of its users, sees government intrusions rather than accidental public disclosures of data as the greatest threat to online privacy, its chief executive said on Wednesday. CEO Eric Schmidt told the Search Engine Strategies industry conference here that Google had put all necessary safeguards in place to protect its users' personal data from theft or accidental release. His remarks followed last weekend's discovery by online privacy sleuths that AOL, a key Google search customer, had mistakenly released personally identifiable data on 20 million keyword searches by its users. But Schmidt said a more serious threat to user privacy lay in potential demands on Google by governments to make the company give up data on its customer's surfing habits. "You can never say never," Schmidt said during an onstage interview with Web search industry analyst Danny Sullivan. "The more interesting question is not an accidental error but something where a government, not just the U.S. government but maybe a non-U.S. government would try to get in (Google's computer systems)," Schmidt said. Google won kudos earlier this year from privacy advocates for going to court to block a U.S. government request for data on Google users. Schmidt warned that such intrusions could occur again. Google operates one of the world's largest collections of computer databases at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters. It asks users for permission to store personal data, which it uses to speed Web searches to help advertisers target ads. But Google also operates computer data centers in other countries, including China, where its entry into the market earlier this year stoked controversy over the risks of doing business under China's censorship laws. Sullivan asked Schmidt why Google does not purge its users' data from its computers every month or two to guard against building up too much history of any Web user's search habits. "We have actually had that debate," Schmidt said, adding that security protections Google has put in place would make it very difficult, if not impossible, to steal customer data. He said keeping users' trust was Google's most essential mission. AOL, the online unit of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. , apologized on Monday and said it had launched an internal probe into how a research division of the company mistakenly released the data on its Web site two weeks ago. The trove of personal data continues to circulate on the Web, where it can be downloaded and probed for details on user interests. Release of the data on searches by about 658,000 anonymous AOL users over a three-month period has provoked a firestorm of criticism over the risks created by collecting vast stores of personal data as many online companies do, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon.com. Even though the users' names are not attached to the data, they can be identified by the personal nature of many Web searches. "It is obviously a terrible thing," Schmidt said of the AOL data breach. "The data that was released was obviously not anonymized enough." He said Google has very sophisticated security plans to protect its databases. The federal Sarbanes-Oxley law also requires companies to have demonstrable procedures for protecting against not just external threats but also the risk that a company insider could release Google data, 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 and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:43:50 -0500 From: Jane Wardell, AP Subject: Bet on Sports no Longer Doing US Business BetOnSports shuts U.S.-focused business By JANE WARDELL, AP Business Writer BetOnSports PLC, the British-based Internet gambling company that has been charged with fraud and racketeering in the United States, said Friday it will shut down its services for American gamblers. BetOnSports said it plans to stop operating in Costa Rica and Antigua -- from where it accepted wagers from tens of thousands of customers in the United States -- as soon as possible following a U.S. federal court order for the company to stop taking bets from the country. The company said the decision would allow it to gain more sales from outside the United States, in Europe and Asia, to help it pay creditors. However, Wayne Brown, an analyst at Altium said the decision was the "worst case scenario" that effectively spelled the end of the company, which currently generates almost three-quarters of its business in the United States. The company took in wagers of $735 million and had 50,000 active players in the first quarter of this year. Brown said an attempt to focus on the company's Asian operations was unlikely to succeed. "Asia provides around 5 percent of profits and is very small in the scheme of things," he said. Internet betting is illegal throughout the United States and authorities there have targeted BetOnSports in a clampdown. Last month, the company's former chief executive David Carruthers was arrested at a Texas airport and a 22-count indictment was unveiled in St. Louis, Mo., alleging fraud and racketeering against the company. The federal court also ordered the company to stop taking U.S. bets and return deposits paid by American bettors. BetOnSports' shares were suspended on the same day. They were worth around $234 million when they were removed from active trading. In a statement issued to the London Stock Exchange, the board of directors said Friday that "after thoroughly reviewing possible alternative business plans, they no longer consider the U.S.-facing operations of the company ... to be viable." The company also pledged to refund the deposits of its U.S.-based customers, many of whom have uncollected winnings that must be transferred through third-party agencies based outside the United States. The directors said they wanted to refund all customers' money, but cautioned this would prove difficult and "will depend upon the company's ability to persuade banks and cash processors to release its funds." Almost all the wagers placed on BetOnSports come from the U.S. For the 53 weeks preceding February 2005, the company's sportsbook had more than 71,000 active customers who placed 9.9 million bets. The average bet was $109. Prosecutors said 97 percent of the sports bets are made on American football, basketball and baseball. Associated Press writer Adam Goldman in New York 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 ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 11, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Reply-To: telecomdirect_daily-owner@telecomdirectnews.com Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:36:42 -0400 (EDT) ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 11, 2006 ******************************** Russia: MTS Agrees to Deal with BBR Saatchi&Saatchi, VimpelCom with Warner Music http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19311?11228 Russia's leading mobile operator, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), has selected Israeli advertising agency BBR Saatchi; Saatchi to lead its advertising campaign, and has also appointed renowned Russian film director Yury Grymov as new creative director, according to press reports. Prime-Tass estimates that the deal with BBR ... Poland: Ericsson Selected to Manage Polkomtel's GSM/W-CDMA Networks http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19309?11228 Poland's number-three mobile operator, Polkomtel, has selected Swedish vendor Ericsson for its three-year managed services contract. According to the terms of the deal, Ericsson will manage the design, development, deployment, and integration of Polkomtel's new multi-vendor GSM/W-CDMA network in northern and western Poland from 1 ... Next-Gen DA: Assisting Carrier Revenue Through Outsourced Directory Assistance http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19305?11228 Americans spend more than $7 billion calling 411, making it not only a lucrative revenue stream but a proven communications channel for carriers. Seeing the opportunity, outsourcers are offering network operators ways to leverage the service everyone uses to gain value-added revenue, and differentiate their offerings. The average ... Will Industry Get Its Zoove On? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19303?11228 The rollout of the industry's common short code did wonders to promote SMS and catapult wireless into mainstream marketing. But the creator of a rival mobile marketing technology says short codes and keywords haven't lived up to expectations. They're too cumbersome and limit spontaneity, says Tim Jemison, CEO and founder of ... Cable Companies, Verizon Bet on AWS Licenses http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19299?11228 WASHINGTON -- After two rounds of bidding in the FCC's Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) auction, Verizon Wireless and Cablevision look to be among the top bidders for choice licenses. CellCo Partnership, which is also known as Verizon Wireless, placed a $62 million bid on a regional license that covers the western United States ... Access Charges: US LEC, Qwest Secretly Settle Suits http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19297?11228 Competitive local exchange carrier US LEC and incumbent Qwest Communications say they've settled their interexchange carrier access-revenue lawsuit dispute, ending the litigation on the matter between them. Terms of the agreement -- reflecting several such legal battles around the country in general -- weren't disclosed, ... Andiamo Crew Reunites With Cisco http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19294?11228 Former Cisco Systems Inc. spin-in exec Mario Mazzola is back in the fold -- or 80 percent there, anyway. Late yesterday, Cisco announced it's taken 80 percent ownership of Nuova Systems, the startup founded by Mazzola, Luca Cafiero, Prem Jain, and Soni Jiandani -- a quartet of former Cisco executives who left the company ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: Telecom Update #541, August 11, 2006 Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:59:08 -0400 From: John Riddell ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 541: August 11, 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: ** Telecom Union Ousts President ** Videotron Offers Wireless Phones ** Sprint to Build U.S.-Wide WiMAX Network ** Telus to Sell Amp'd Services in Canada ** Bell Aliant Appeals Rebate Ruling ** U.S. Broadband Spectrum Auction Under Way ** Comment Sought on 3.6 GHz Spectrum Licensing ** Cogeco Joins the Broadband Wars ** Court Refuses to Block AT&T Suit ** Fido Adds City-Only Rate Plan ** Discussion Opens on Bell Rate Hike ** Telus Quebec to Offer Wholesale Ethernet & DSL ** Nortel, Ciena Bury Hatchet--Again ** Videotron Adds 56,000 Phone Customers ** Shaw Buys Kenora Cableco ** Cisco Sales Rise 21% ** Nakina Names New CEO TELECOM UNION OUSTS PRESIDENT: Bruce Bell has been removed as President of the Telecommunications Workers Union. In March, widespread dissatisfaction with the outcome of last year's strike at Telus led to a membership meeting that voted non-confidence in Bell. When he refused to resign, charges were laid under the union's constitution, and a Trial Board recommended that he be fired. Bell can appeal the decision to the Canadian Labour Congress. VIDEOTRON OFFERS WIRELESS PHONES: Videotron has launched its version of the much-hyped "quadruple-play" by adding cellular phone service to its product line in Quebec City. A bundle including a residential phone, Basic Internet, digital cable, and a cellphone with 300 anytime minutes, is $94.95/month, all fees included. ** Videotron is using Rogers' wireless network, but will provide its own customer service, billing, and marketing. The company plans to roll out wireless service in the rest of its territory by year-end. SPRINT TO BUILD U.S.-WIDE WIMAX NETWORK: U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel has announced plans for national deployment of a "4G" broadband wireless network using WiMAX technology. Sprint says it will invest at least US$2.5 billion by 2008 on the venture, working together with Intel, Motorola, and Samsumg. TELUS TO SELL AMP'D SERVICES IN CANADA: Telus has announced an exclusive agreement to sell and distribute mobile entertainment, gaming, information, and messaging services developed by Amp'd Mobile Inc, beginning early in 2007. The youth-oriented services will be available only to users of Telus's Wireless High Speed (EVDO) services. ** California-based Amp'd describes itself as "the first integrated mobile entertainment company that fully optimizes third generation (3G) functionality." BELL ALIANT APPEALS REBATE RULING: Bell Aliant has asked the CRTC to amend its ruling in Telecom Decision 2006-27, to exclude 100% (instead of 50%) of the effects of the 2004 strike from its quality of service calculations. Since the telco has already paid customer rebates based on the earlier ruling, it wants to recover the money through a future application. (See Telecom Update #530, 535) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2006/8662/b54_200609927.htm U.S. BROADBAND SPECTRUM AUCTION UNDER WAY: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission began a major spectrum auction on August 9: 168 parties are bidding on 1,122 broadband wireless licences in the 1.7 GHz to 2.1 GHz spectrum bands. The licences are expected to be used for Advanced Wireless Services including voice, Internet access, and full-motion video. The FCC hopes to raise US$15 billion. http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=3Dauction_summary&id=3D6=6 COMMENT SOUGHT ON 3.6 GHz SPECTRUM LICENSING: In Gazette Notice DGTP-006-06, Industry Canada invites comments by October 27 on its proposed policies for licensing spectrum in the 3650-3700 MHz band for wireless broadband applications. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/en/sf08674e.html COGECO JOINS THE BROADBAND WARS: Cogeco has raised the maximum download speed of its standard Internet service, formerly 7 Mbps, to 10 Mbps, and the maximum for its "Pro" service from 10 Mbps to 16 Mbps. (See Telecom Update #540) COURT REFUSES TO BLOCK AT&T SUIT: A U.S. court has rejected a Bush administration attempt to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally allowing the government to monitor phone calls without warrants (see Telecom Update #540). Seventeen similar lawsuits against other carriers have now been combined with the AT&T case. FIDO ADDS CITY-ONLY RATE PLAN: Rogers' Fido service has added a new rate plan that offers 400 outgoing airtime minutes and unlimited incoming calling within a single urban area for $30 a month. "Suburban" calling is $5/month extra. DISCUSSION OPENS ON BELL RATE HIKE: CRTC Telecom Public Notice 2006-11 invites comment on the Bell and Bell Aliant proposal to raise all residential phone rates by 80 cents/month, and to eliminate connection charges for new or moving residential customers. (See Telecom Update #537) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Notices/2006/pt2006-11.htm TELUS QUEBEC TO OFFER WHOLESALE ETHERNET & DSL: CRTC Telecom Decision 2006-50 directs Telus Communications to file wholesale tariffs for Ethernet transport and DSL services, including dry loop DSL capability, in its Quebec territory. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2006/dt2006-50.htm NORTEL, CIENA BURY HATCHET--AGAIN: Nortel Networks and Ciena Corp. have settled two patent lawsuits and signed a patent cross-licence agreement. The dispute goes back to an earlier patent disagreement that appeared to be settled in January 2003. VIDEOTRON ADDS 56,000 PHONE CUSTOMERS: During the second quarter, Videotron added 1,200 cable TV, 28,800 Internet, and 56,200 cable phone customers, increasing its cable-phone subscriber base (residential and business) to 283,000. ** Problems in the printing division of Videotron's parent company, Quebecor Inc, resulted in an overall decline of 6% in sales and 75% in profits. SHAW BUYS KENORA CABLECO: Shaw Communications has agreed to buy Norcom Telecommunications Ltd, a Kenora-based cableco that serves 7,000 customers in 15 northwest Ontario communities. CISCO SALES RISE 21%: Cisco Systems revenue for the quarter ended July 29 was US$7.98 billion, an increase of 20.9% over the same quarter a year ago, or 12.1% if the effects of the recent Scientific-Atlanta acquisition are not included. Net income of $1.54 billion was unchanged from last year. NAKINA NAMES NEW CEO: Ottawa-based Nakina Systems, which makes network management software for carriers, has named Marco Pagani as President and CEO, replacing co-founder David Vicary. (See Telecom Update #527) 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 http://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 2006 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: Mike Sakowitz Twomey Subject: Using a 608 Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:55:11 -0400 What memories I have on a 608. I was in high school and happened to find a newspaper ad for a telephone operator in a large city hospital. Since I had always been fascinated with switchboards and telephone equipment this was a job that I had to have. I was only 16 and this was 1979 so when I was called for the interview I just knew that I was going to encounter a "PABX" console type board. I was elated to find a 608 when I went in. 8 position board with 1 call director for paging. I was the youngest they had ever hired but this was run like a CO and I learned telephone etiquette at its best. We kept this board until 1983 and went to a system by the trade name of "Dimension". The level of service dramatically dropped and I went off to college and would periodically go back to reminisce with some of the gals I worked with. Being a young kid I had more fun when the supervisors were not looking I would depress a "talk" key and hold it down while I depressed the others along the board. All of the talk keys would light up and then I would depress the "release" key and they would all click off making all of the relays in the board rattle. I learned quickly that if there were a connection on the board it would quickly disconnect the parties. We also learned that we could take a front cord and connect it to an extension jack then depress the "ring front" key and we could almost press out a tune. I could go on and on. I miss that service and the days of switchboards. I was lucky, even then that 608 was considered very dated but since we had it doing very advanced things (tandem lines, long distance billing, conference calls) the powers that were decided that the 608 was the only acceptable board for us until 1983. From what I could tell they spent a lot keeping the board up and parts were becoming very scarce. I never will forget the day we converted to Dimension and all of the 608 positions were removed. Was like they had taken a part of my heart. Michael Sakowitz Twomey, Director Morrow Tourist Center 6475 Jonesboro Road Morrow, Georgia 30260 Phone/Fax 770-968-1623 lisasewell@cityofmorrow.com www.morrowtourism.com ------------------------------ From: guspa@webtv.net (Gus Sparatore) Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:50:01 -0500 Subject: 1010987 # Dear Sirs, Yesterday I changed my telephone number which was 504 835 8423 to the unlisted new number 504 835 9013. Since this morning I cannot have access to the prefix 1010987 ... to Italy. On dialing this prefix comes out a tape recorder saying to dial 1 800 444 3333 from the other side of the line an operator of MCI tried to "HELP" me and I was under the impression she knew nothing about to assist me instead she tried to sell a program of international calls . So I decided to give up and called TELECOM"USA-CENTRAL,which is my International Service Provider . So I dialed the number shown on the bill and came out a BELL SOUTH OPERATOR, with much confusion I explained the case to the operator, who tranferred me to another operator ( time: over 2 hours altogheter ). Which is the direct line # for TELECOM"USA CENTRAL? Thank you for your assistance regards augusto sparatore http://community.webtv.net/guspa/AugustoCSparatore ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:33:56 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: My 25th Anniversary Gift to You As we approach the 25th anniversary of this Digest (started 8-21-81) this next weekend, I decided to prepare another CD for you. We have had two of these in the past (1995-96 and again in 2002-03) and they were both 'best sellers' in the sense that I received a lot of orders for each of them. This time around, however, it is a 'do-it-yourself' type project: The entire collection of messages (about 125,000 of them, spanning a 25 year period) in comp.dcom.telecom have been collected and placed into MBOX format with the help of a Digest reader and are being made available for your review in zip format. You go into our archives http://telecom-digest.org and then into the back-issues files. Within the back-issues files, look for the category "25 years of c.d.t. messages in MBOX format." There you will see 25 files, labeled 1981 through 2006; each year is a zip file which when uncompressed using DOS will produce a new directory on your own computer entitled 'mail'. If the process goes as it should, each file uncompression you do should produce such a 'mail' folder with several thousand each mail files, sort of Usenet style reading. Unless you have _lots_ of storage space on your computer, I do not recommend trying to uncompress all the files at one time. But of course you can also send your output to a writeable DVD/CD if that is your preference. Many of the messages also have hyperlinks in them, so I assume if you are connected to the net when you do this, you should get the benefit of the various links as well. The final year (2006) of this collection cuts off at the end of June. I hope you enjoy this 'one-stop shopping' collection of c.d.t. messages over the past quarter-century. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Newest Airport Regulations Cause Considerable Delay, Inconvenience Date: 11 Aug 2006 07:07:30 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not oppose trains; I just wish > there were more of them and in reasonably convenient locations and > routes. We have had absolutely _no_ passenger train service here in > Independence since the middle 1970's. The nearest passenger trains are > in Topeka (slightly) and in Kansas City. To get to New York I would > have to somehow find a ride to Kansas City, get a train for Chicago, > then change trains to get to New York. I would almost rather take the > Jefferson Lines/Greyhound Bus; at least the bus station is out by > the Walmart store west of town. It is not a good scene at all. PAT] Plane and auto will be the dominant travel mode. But those modes have their problems and simply aren't adequate to meet the country's transportation needs. Thursday's four hour delays was not an isolated event; it has happened often before and will happen often again. (Telephone failures have hurt airports). But the train system could and should be expanded to cover much more of the country and trains could run a lot faster than they do now. The "powers" have fought against Amtrak since its creation and still do. It has crawled along with literaly a sliver of funding (1% of the DOT budget). In other words, doubling or tripling the Amtrak budget would be a big boost while barely noticed by highways and airways. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 12:19:52 -0400 From: Ed Subject: Question About News Report Re: Airport "Pay and Cell Phones" I'm very interested in learning how "calls from public phones at the airport may be monitored, as well as cell phones" got into this story. I just got off the phone with AP reporter Leslie Miller at the DC bureau, (212)776-9400 who told me emphatically that she never put that in her story. Can anyone explain how this got into the story and on this list? Such random public and cell phone monitoring without probable cause would be unconstitutional, but then, so is much of what's going on today in the name of "national security". -ed cummings > At 01:25 AM 8/11/06, editor@telecom-digest.org wrote: > TELECOM Digest Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:28:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 295 > Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 22:53:50 -0500 > From: Leslie Miller, Associated Press > Subject: Passengers May Expect Double/Triple Screening > Passengers can Expect Double/Triple Screening, Pay and Cell Phone Monitoring > By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer > Beginning Friday...snip...In addition, calls from public phones at > the airport may be monitored, as well as cell phones ... snip ... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your question got me to thinking and I looked into the wire service report a little further. It appears there were _two_ wire service reports, about a minute apart. (That sometimes happens, which is why the 'News Today' feature which I offer at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html sometimes prints the same story two or three times in a row.) The first version of the airport security story was attributed to 'newswire' (rather than a specific reporter's name) contained the remarks about 'payphone and cell phone monitoring'; the second version a minute or less later was attributed to Leslie Miller and did not make those statements, and was a bit different in other respects as well, such as length of the article, etc. My error was using the first account which came but attributing it to Ms. Miller (the second acount). As you pointed out, so much of what is happening in the name of 'national security' is very questioable from a constitutional point of view, my attitude was 'well, why wouldn't they do that as well?' Apparently, Associated Press had more than just one person working on the story and neglected to reconcile or otherwise piece together their accounts. Of course, I should have more carefully identified (as best I could given limited resources) who wrote what. I still maintain however that it would be foolish to think that a telephone call at the airport would of necessity be untouchable or private. 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 #296 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 12 00:26:18 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id F105021F3; Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:26:17 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #297 Message-Id: <20060812042617.F105021F3@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:26:17 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:25:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 297 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Surveillance Lawsuits Transferred to Judge Skeptical of Bush Plan (Egelko) San Francisco Judge Selected for Telecom Lawsuits (Pete Carey) US to Roll Out Electronic Passports (Dan Cateriniccia) EarthLink to Launch DSL Service for Small Offices (USTelecom dailyLead) NYC History: Switch to 2L From 3L Exchanges, 1950 Panel? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Using a 608 (Lisa Hancock) Re: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio (Joseph Singer) Re: 1010987 # (Thor Lancelot Simon) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 22:26:07 -0500 From: Bob Egelko Subject: Surveillance Lawsuits Transferred to Judge Skepitcal of Bush Plan Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer A judicial panel on Thursday ordered privacy-rights lawsuits from around the nation, accusing telecommunications companies of collaborating with a Bush administration electronic surveillance program, transferred to a federal judge in San Francisco who has already issued a key ruling against the government. The decision by the Multi-District Litigation panel affects more than three dozen class-action suits against the likes of AT&T and Verizon, said lawyers for customers who claim that records of their phone calls and e-mails were illegally turned over to the National Security Agency. The Bush administration and the telephone companies wanted the cases transferred to a federal judge in Washington, D.C. The plaintiffs preferred San Francisco, where Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled July 20 that a suit against AT&T could proceed despite the government's claim that it would endanger national security. The company and the government are appealing that ruling. The panel of federal trial and appeals court judges from different states said San Francisco was the better choice because the suit there was filed first, has advanced the furthest and is before a judge "well versed in the issues.'' Walker has already reviewed classified evidence presented by the government in arguing for dismissal of the AT&T suit, a procedure that would have to be duplicated if the cases were sent to Washington, the panel said. "This is not favorable to the government,'' said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor in Virginia who has followed the cases. He noted that Thursday's order also transferred appellate review of the cases to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is generally more sympathetic to privacy claims and less deferential to the government than its Washington counterpart. It was not immediately clear whether the transfer order would also apply to four separate suits filed solely against the government to challenge the surveillance program. A ruling on the legality of the program is pending before a federal judge in Detroit in a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Congressional intervention is also possible. Legislation by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., supported by the administration, would allow the government to transfer all of the cases to a court in Washington, D.C., that meets in secret and hears arguments only from the government, mostly in cases involving spying or terrorism. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. AT&T and Verizon, which have been publicly noncommittal about their alleged involvement in the program, had little to say. "AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy," said spokesman Walt Sharp. "We do not comment on matters of national security." Verizon spokesman Robert Varettoni declined comment but cited a statement the company issued in May, which said it had not been asked by the National Security Agency for any customer records -- but left open the possibility that such a request had been made to MCI, its newly acquired long-distance subsidiary. BellSouth, another defendant, has denied any role in the government program. The suits have been filed against telecommunications companies in 19 states. The first, filed by AT&T customers in San Francisco in late January, followed a report by USA Today that the companies had given the National Security Agency access to records of tens of millions of calls to screen for possible terrorist contacts. The plaintiffs submitted a statement by a former AT&T engineer who said that equipment installed in a San Francisco office in 2003 allowed the federal agency to intercept worldwide e-mail traffic. President Bush acknowledged last December, in response to a New York Times story, that he had authorized the National Security Agency shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to wiretap calls between Americans and suspected terrorists abroad without the warrants required by federal law. He claimed he had the authority as commander in chief to override the congressional mandate for a warrant. But Bush and his aides have refused to confirm telephone company participation in the surveillance program and have argued that any such disclosure would aid terrorists. Government lawyers asked Walker and judges in at least two other cases to dismiss the lawsuits, contending that the entire subject of each case was a state secret. Walker, an appointee of President Bush, ruled last month that the existence of the surveillance program and the possibility of AT&T's participation were not state secrets, because the company's size, history and public statements indicated that it was likely to cooperate in such a program. He refused to dismiss claims of illegal data-sharing despite the absence of similar public statements, saying the plaintiffs may turn up evidence that illuminates AT&T's role. Walker also said AT&T's alleged "dragnet'' program, sweeping up all calls and e-mails for relay to the National Security Agency, would violate customers' rights regardless of whether the contents of any messages were actually examined. Five days later, a federal judge in Chicago dismissed another suit against AT&T, filed by the ACLU on behalf of author Studs Terkel and other customers. Judge Matthew Kennelly said the secrecy of the program prevented the company from confirming or denying that it shared records with the government, and thus made it impossible for the customers to prove that their records were furnished illegally. But ACLU attorney Adam Schwartz noted Thursday that Kennelly did not dismiss the suit permanently, and instead allowed the customers to file an amended suit that alleged their communications were illegally intercepted -- the distinction that Walker found crucial in allowing the San Francisco suit to proceed. With the Chicago suit now transferred to Walker, Schwartz said he expects the case to be revived. E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 22:23:13 -0500 From: Pete Carey Subject: San Francisco Judge Selected for Telecom Lawsuits COMPANIES ACCUSED OF COOPERATING WITH NSA WIRETAPPING By Pete Carey Mercury News A federal judge in San Francisco was designated Thursday to hear all class-action lawsuits against telecommunications companies that allegedly cooperated with a warrantless government eavesdropping program. The decision by a federal panel in Washington, D.C., means that 17 cases from 13 federal court districts will be heard in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who recently ruled against the government's demand that a case before him be dismissed immediately because it involved state secrets. The cases have been brought by citizens and public-interest groups who accuse AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth of illegally cooperating with eavesdropping on the communications of millions of Americans by the National Security Agency. Case against AT&T Walker already is presiding over a class-action suit brought against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group, and four related cases. He recently ruled against AT&T and the U.S. Department of Justice, which wanted the case dismissed because it involves state secrets, saying it was too early to grant the request. The decision is being appealed by AT&T and the Justice Department. Walker said the government can't claim the very existence of the call-monitoring program is a secret, when President Bush has admitted authorizing it and the Justice Department issued a lengthy white paper on it. But the allegations that call records were collected has not been confirmed by the government, so he withheld deciding that issue. EFF contends that AT&T allowed the NSA to illegally monitor the content and review the call records of millions of customers' e-mails and voice communications from a ``secret room'' in a telecommunications center in San Francisco. Disclosed by technician. A warrantless wiretapping program by the government was revealed in December by the New York Times. The report prompted lawsuits in Detroit, New York and San Francisco. A former technician at AT&T's San Francisco telecommunications center later disclosed the existence of the NSA's secret room there. In May, USA Today reported that three telecom companies had given the NSA access to customer call records, triggering many more lawsuits. BellSouth and Verizon have denied contracting with the government to provide customer call records. AT&T has neither confirmed nor denied the reports. President Bush has acknowledged authorizing a warrantless communications monitoring program but has said only that it was narrowly targeted and confined to calls in which one party was in the United States. The administration contends that the president's wartime powers give him authority to run an electronic surveillance program without a warrant or Justice Department certification, and that the monitoring is necessary to uncover terror plots and related activity. Congress is considering legislation that would turn the cases over to a secret federal court that reviews government eavesdropping projects. In consolidating the 17 cases in San Francisco, the federal panel noted that Walker's court was where the first case was filed. That case is 'significantly advanced,' said the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, and Walker is 'already well versed in the issues presented by the litigation.' A case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in Detroit is not affected, because the ACLU there has sued the government rather than the phone companies. 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, 11 Aug 2006 21:42:17 -0500 From: Dan Caterinicchia, AP Subject: US to Roll Out Electronic Passports By DAN CATERINICCHIA, AP Business Writer Despite ongoing privacy concerns and legal disputes involving companies bidding on the project, the U.S. State Department plans to begin issuing smart chip-embedded passports to Americans as planned Monday. Not even the foiled terror plot that heightened security checks at airports nationwide threatens to delay the rollout, the agency said. Any hitches in getting the technology to work properly could add even longer waits to travelers already facing lengthy security lines at airports. The new U.S. passports will include a chip that contains all the data contained in the paper version -- name, birthdate, gender, for example -- and can be read by electronic scanners at equipped airports. The State Department says they will speed up going through customs and help enhance border security. Privacy groups continue to raise concerns about the security of the electronic information and a German computer security expert earlier this month demonstrated in Las Vegas how personal information stored on the documents could be copied and transferred to another device. But electronic cloning does not constitute a threat because the information on the chips, including the photograph, is encrypted and cannot be changed, according to the Smart Card Alliance, a New Jersey-based not-for-profit made up of government agencies and industry players. "It's no different than someone stealing your passport and trying to use it," Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the alliance, said in a statement. "No one else can use it because your photo is on the chip and they're not you." Yet the ability to clone the information on the chips may not be the sole threat, privacy advocates argue. A major concern is that hackers could pick up the electronic signal when the passport is being scanned, said Sherwin Siy, staff counsel at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading privacy group. "Many of the advantages the industry is touting are eliminated by security concerns," Siy said. After testing the passports in a pilot project over the past year, the government insists they're safe. Numerous companies competed the last two years to provide the technology. One winner was San Jose-based Infineon Technologies North America Corp., a subsidiary of Germany's Infineon AG. Another was French firm Gemalto, which earlier this month announced that it had received its first production order from the Government Printing Office. It is producing the passports for the State Department, using the Infineon technology. Another company, On Track Innovations Ltd., was notified July 31 that it had been eliminated from consideration and is appealing the decision, a spokeswoman for the Fort Lee, N.J. company said this week. On Track previously had been eliminated but appealed that decision in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., which found in favor of the company and ordered it be reinstated. Infineon has been approved for production-quantity orders but hasn't received any because of the unresolved legal dispute, said Veronica Meter, a spokeswoman for the Government Printing Office. The rollout that begins Monday will use technology built up during the pilot project. Neville Pattinson, director of technology and government affairs for Gemalto in Austin, Texas, would not discuss financial terms of the contract. He acknowledged the economic potential is massive, noting that the State Department issued 10 million passports in 2005 and expects that to increase to 13 million this year. Citizens who get new passports can expect to pay a lot more. New ones issued under this program will cost $97, which includes a $12 security surcharge added last year. Not all new passports will contain the technology until it's fully rolled out -- a process expected to take a year. Existing passports without the electronic chips will remain valid until their normal expiration date. American Depository Shares of Infineon fell 12 cents to $10.65 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. 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 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:10:30 CDT From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: EarthLink to Launch DSL Service For Small Offices USTelecom dailyLead August 11, 2006 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ejgwfDtusXamiFgVSb TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * EarthLink to launch DSL service for small offices BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Deutsche Bank begins telecom coverage * EchoStar shares climb on increased revenue * Goldman Sachs, Providence Equity may sell YES stake * Sprint Nextel gets $1M in 1st Source settlement * Decisionmark unveils DTV multicast solution USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Mid-Band Ethernet -- Extending the Ethernet Service Edge TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * TV, magazines can't compete with Internet in U.K. VOIP DOWNLOAD * Commentary: Will cable bundling make pure-play VoIP companies obsolete? REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Verizon's FiOS TV adds seventh Long Island franchise DIVERSIONS * Let's Go Fly With a Kite * Weighing a Switch to a Mac * Provincetown, Mass. * Refined Tequilas, Meant to Be Savored * Ibiza Gets in Touch With Its Hippie-Chic Roots * Sold at First Sight * For Some Tourists, War Is No Bar to Visiting Israel Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ejgwfDtusXamiFgVSb ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: NYC History -- Switch to 2L From 3L Exchanges, 1950 Installation? Date: 11 Aug 2006 13:36:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Anyone familiar with this? 1) NYC got dial in 1922. It was set up as 3L-4N, that is, PENnsylvania 1234. At some point it was switched to 2L-5N, that is, PEnnsylvania 6-5000. Philadelphia switched in the mid 1940s. Would anyone know when NYC switched? Did Chicago switch? 2) The Bell history says the last all new panel exchange was installed in NYC in 1950. (Extensions to existing exchanges continued for years after). By 1950 No 5 crossbar was out and certainly No 1 crossbar. Why would an all new panel exchange be installed that late -- it was clearly obsolete by that point and not compatible with upcoming changes they knew were coming. P.S. According to the NYT for 1922, the conversion to dial was a very big deal. Thousands and thousands of subscribers were converted city wide in a fairly short time, although total conversion would take a while. They needed an enormous number of operators even after dial. I can't imagine how many girls or switchboard positions they had. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For comparison, Chicago started converting from manual to dial in the late 1930's however the conversion took several years (on account of WW-2 when Western Electric was nationalized by the federal government and not returned to its owner, Bell, until spring, 1946). The earliest conversions occurred in 1938-39 and after nothing was done on it 1942-46 the conversion then continued with HUMboldt and AVEnue being the final two central offices converted, in I think, 1949. There were a lot of rumors going around among the operators that they were all going to be fired once the conversion was finished which of course was a false rumor. The Chicago-Avenue central office serves, or did serve Orchard Field. Six months following the AVEnue office cutover, Orchard Field closed and Ohare International Airport opened on the same spot. Chicago-Avenue wound up with about three times as many operators as had worked there before the cut. Chicago also was 3L - 4D for many years, and this is still reflected in the fact that the _oldest_ central offices have as their first number the third letter of the old system even today. Bearing in mind that many of these have long since metamorphed into a/c 773 from the old 312, but CENtral is now CE-6 (236), FRAnklin is now FR-2 (372), DEArborn is now DE-2 (332), WABash is now WA-2 (922), IRVing is now IR-8 (478), GRAceland is now GR-2 (472) and so forth. Coincidentally, AVEnue is now AV-3 (283), but it is still referred to as 'the Avenue central office'. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Using a 608 Date: 11 Aug 2006 12:59:54 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mike Sakowitz Twomey wrote: > What memories I have on a 608. I was in high school and happened to > find a newspaper ad for a telephone operator in a large city hospital. > Since I had always been fascinated with switchboards and telephone > equipment this was a job that I had to have. I was only 16 and this > was 1979. Thanks for the report. Did you have any trouble getting the job because of your youth or gender, especially in a large installation? Around 1973-74 the Bell System and employers slowly began to accept the idea of male switchboard operators. Before that it was strictly a female job. The only exceptions were rough environments, such as a police station or waterfront warehouse. I think the boys hired then were ex-military with signal corps experience. There were boys from an all-boys high school who were interested in such jobs (they learned on their school's 555 PBX) but in those days found a brick wall because of age and gender. Most companies -- large and small -- took their PBX jobs very seriously. Big companies wouldn't break with tradition. Small companies wanted a girl since receptionist type jobs were women. Young people weren't perceived as being responsible enough for a large board, although they could get jobs in very small places, where perhaps working the switchboard was only part of the duties. > We also learned that we could take a front cord and connect it to an > extension jack then depress the "ring front" key and we could almost > press out a tune. > I could go on and on. I miss that service and the days of > switchboards. I was lucky, even then that 608 was considered very > dated but since we had it doing very advanced things (tandem lines, > long distance billing, conference calls) the powers that were decided > that the 608 was the only acceptable board for us until 1983. I would not call the 608 "dated", it was the most advanced cord board the Bell System offered. There were plenty of older models in service in those years. I think what killed the cord board was economics--the cost of purchasing and maintaining electronics -- like the Dimension PBX -- came down enough that they were competitive with cord boards. With all its automation, I don't think the 608 was cheap. A big disadvantage of cord boards was that they required two operations per call while a console required only one. With cord boards, you had to pull the cords down at the end of the call, a console disconnected automatically. If your employer was a large organization, it probably went Centrex which eliminated a lot of traffic. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But before female operators there were men (mostly young boys) doing it. I am referring to the 1880-1900 era. Bell got rid of the young guys because they said the customers complained that the younger guys were rude and crude. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 18:47:23 PDT From: Mr Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio Fri, 11 Aug 2006 01:17:39 -0500 John Nolan, Dayton Daily News wrote: > DAYTON | Verizon Communications Inc. has taken advantage of a > state-granted privilege to raise rates on its own for some telephone > services, Ohio's consumer advocate said Thursday. [snip] > The price increases allow Verizon to compete with providers of > wireless phone service, Internet-based phone capability and cable > television companies which offer phone service, Verizon spokesman Bill > Kula said. Somehow this "logic" escapes me. Verizon is *increasing* rates for extra services when the competing services from VOiP and cellphones are *including* all these services in the base cost of service. By that logic increasing the price of services will make the services more desirable? Is it any wonder that traditional phone companies are worried for their very existance? I guess it makes as much sense as increasing the cost of coin phones to "compete" with cellphones. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: 1010987 # Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 19:39:31 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Gus Sparatore wrote: > Dear Sirs, > Yesterday I changed my telephone number which was 504 835 8423 to the > unlisted new number 504 835 9013. Since this morning I cannot have access Well, it's not exactly "unlisted" any more ... 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 ------------------------------ 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! 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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 #297 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Aug 12 21:07:06 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id C872621CA; Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:07:05 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #298 Message-Id: <20060813010705.C872621CA@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:07:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:10:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 298 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NY, Too, was: Verizon Raising Rates on Many Services in Ohio (Dan Burstein) Three Walmart Customers Arrested for 'Aid to Terrorists' (AP News Wire) Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges (AP News) Re: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio (Steve Sobol) Re: NYC History -- Switch to 2L From 3L Exchanges, 1950 (Lisa Hancock) Re: Surveillance Lawsuits Transferred to Judge Skeptical (Lisa Hancock) Re: Using a 608 (Steven Lichter) Re: Using a 608 (DLR) Re: 101-0987 for MCI's Telecom USA (Anthony Bellanga) 3L-4N (was NYC History) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: ISP Telco Vendors That Work With Asterisk (bsd_mike) Magic Word Must be Used! (TELECOM Digest Editor) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Danny Burstein Subject: NY, Too, was: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 04:33:17 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC I can't speak to the other rates, but one thing both Verizon _and_ AT&T have just announced/implemented is a change to their late fees. From now on, if they don't record your paying a bill on time, you'llbe hit with a fee of: 1.5 percent or $5.00, whichever is more. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:54:12 -0500 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Three Walmart Customers Arrested for 'Aid to Terrorists' 3 more arrested on cell-phone terror charges Dallas men accused of buying 80 phones at Wal-Mart to aid terrorists CARO, Mich. - Three men were arrested Friday on charges of supporting terrorism after they purchased 80 prepaid mobile phones from a Wal-Mart store, police said. The men, all from the Dallas area, were being held on charges of soliciting or providing material support for terrorism and obtaining information of a vulnerable target for the purposes of terrorism, police Sgt. Dale Stevenson said. They were being held in Tuscola County Jail and were scheduled to be arraigned Saturday. Stevenson declined to elaborate on how the case relates to terrorism. Telephone messages were left Friday with the Tuscola County prosecutor's office and the FBI, which assisted with the investigation. He said the men, ages 18, 22 and 23, went to a 24-hour Wal-Mart store in Caro early Friday and bought the cell phones despite a store policy limiting customers to three phones per purchase. A patriotic Wal-Mart clerk who thought the purchases were suspicious alerted police. "They target these stores late, in the morning, hoping to get an inexperienced or disinterested clerk," Stevenson said. Police stopped the men's van about 1:30 a.m. and found nearly 1,000 phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones, along with a laptop computer and a bag of receipts, Stevenson said. "The cell phones can be used as detonators. Batteries can be disassembled and used to make methamphetamine. Obviously there's something wrong here; they should stop selling these," Caro Police Chief Ben Page said. The men told police they were buying the phones, which cost about $20 and come with a charger, taking them out of their packaging and selling them to a wholesaler in Texas for about $38 without the charger. The arrests in Caro, about 90 miles north of Detroit, come three days after two men were arrested in Marietta, Ohio, where police said they piqued suspicions when they acknowledged buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio. Attorneys cite bias against Arab-American men. Investigators found information about airline flights and airports in their car. The men, Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan, both 20 and from Dearborn, have been charged with two felonies: money laundering in support of terrorism and soliciting or providing support for acts of terrorism, and misdemeanor falsification. A preliminary hearing on the felony counts was set for Tuesday. Defense lawyers said Houssaiky and Abulhassan planned to resell the phones simply to make money and the flight information consisted of old papers left in the car by a relative who worked at an airport. "The only illusory connection advanced by the prosecution to date is based on race and national origin," Abulhassan's family said in a statement. "This appears to be a typical case of racial profiling and we are confident Osama and Ali will be exonerated." Prosecutors in Ohio have said the prepaid phones can be used to make hard-to-track international calls and have been linked to use by terrorists. Wal-Mart has an agreement with cell phone manufactures to enforce a limit of three cell phones per purchase, said John Simley, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark. "We're providing law enforcement officials with all the information we can to help with the ongoing investigation," Simley said. "We are not discussing the purchases or other details pertinent to the incidents." 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 news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:13:25 -0500 From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges [Editor's Note: A slightly different version of the earlier report.] 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges. Three Texas men were arraigned Saturday on terrorism-related charges after police found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan. Investigators believe the men were targeting the 5-mile-long Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But one of the men said they were only trying to buy and sell phones to make money. A magistrate set bond at $750,000 for each of the men, who are charged with collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes. No pleas were made at the arraignment at a District Court in Caro, about 80 miles north of Detroit. Officials have not said what they believe the men intended to do with the phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones. But Caro's police chief said cell phones can be used as detonators, and prosecutors in a similar case in Ohio have said that TracFones are often used by terrorists because they are not traceable. "All we did is buy the phones to sell and make money," Louai Abdelhamied Othman told the magistrate. He said it wasn't the first time the group had been questioned. "We've been checked by the FBI before," he said. "They even gave us their card and everything." Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark E. Reene told The Saginaw News that investigators believe the men were targeting the Mackinac Bridge. He declined to say what led investigators to that belief. Reene and the FBI did not return phone messages Saturday to The Associated Press. Othman and Maruan Awad Muhareb, both of Mesquite, Texas, and Adham Abdelhamid Othman, of Dallas, were stopped before dawn Friday after they purchased 80 cell phones from a Wal-Mart in Caro. Police said they found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan. The men cooperated with police and the FBI for hours before their arrests Friday afternoon. Adham and Louai Othman are in their early 20s, and Muhareb is 18. All are being held at the Tuscola County Jail, Caro police said. The arrests in Caro came three days after two men were arrested in Marietta, Ohio, where police said they aroused suspicions when they acknowledged buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio. Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan, both 20 and from Detroit suburb of Dearborn, have been charged with two felonies: money laundering in support of terrorism and soliciting or providing support for acts of terrorism, and misdemeanor falsification. A preliminary hearing on the felony counts was set for Tuesday. Defense lawyers said Houssaiky and Abulhassan planned to resell the phones simply to make money. They say the men were targeted only because they are of Arab descent. 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 additional headlines and news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon Raising Rates on Many of its Services in Ohio Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:27:47 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Mr Joseph Singer wrote: > Somehow this "logic" escapes me. Verizon is *increasing* rates for > extra services when the competing services from VOiP and cellphones > are *including* all these services in the base cost of service. By > that logic increasing the price of services will make the services > more desirable? If I was going to raise costs in the face of declining numbers of customers, it would only be to recoup some of my lost revenue, not to entice new customers to sign up. I wonder if that's their reasoning. > Is it any wonder that traditional phone companies are worried for > their very existance? I guess it makes as much sense as increasing > the cost of coin phones to "compete" with cellphones. Same thing, maybe? Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: NYC History -- Switch to 2L From 3L Exchanges, 1950 Installation? Date: 12 Aug 2006 12:16:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There were a lot of rumors going > around among the operators that they were all going to be fired once > the conversion was finished which of course was a false rumor. In the NYC conversion the Bell System emphasized there'd be no layoffs because many operators would still be needed for toll calls, assistance, and traffic growth. However, they did note that attrition would also be a factor as "many girls leave to get married". Some operator jobs in those days were somewhat numbing. For example, a "B" operator, who made the actual connection, simply heard a 4 digit number and inserted her plug. The machine did the rest (automatic ringing). One very simple transaction repeatedly all day long. No toll, no assistance -- all of that was handled by the "A" or other operators. Some operators worked a keyboard, simply entering a 4 digit number they heard on a keypad (manual to automatic call). Toll operators had much more variety and tasks to do in the old days when their work included locating the desired party. > Chicago also was 3L - 4D for many years, and this is still reflected > in the fact that the _oldest_ central offices have as their first > number the third letter of the old system even today. When Philadelphia went to 2L5D they purposely changed the third dial pull. Thus WAL became WAlnut 2. WAVerly became WA 4. In essence, virtually everyone got a new phone number. For some reason I don't understand, they purposely gave out numerous exchanges instead of additional digits in one exchange. For example, when DAvenport 4 and DA 9 when out, instead of adding more DA- numbers they created GLadstone even though there were plenty of DA- codes available. My neighborhood had LIvingston, CApital, HAncock, and WAverly all out of the same building, then they added 276. With panel this kind of thing is easy (hard in step-by-step). Most exchange zones had multiple names within them, so you could have GErmantown while your next door neighbor had VIctor. When ANC came out it got even crazier. Would anyone know why they used multiple names instead of multiple numbers per name? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Surveillance Lawsuits Transferred to Judge Skepitcal of Bush Plan Date: 12 Aug 2006 12:18:36 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Bob Egelko wrote: > Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer > A judicial panel on Thursday ordered privacy-rights lawsuits from > around the nation, accusing telecommunications companies of > collaborating with a Bush administration electronic surveillance > program, transferred to a federal judge in San Francisco who has > already issued a key ruling against the government. In the light of recent events the need to monitor such overseas calls appears more compelling. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: Using a 608 Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 22:32:14 GMT hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Mike Sakowitz Twomey wrote: >> What memories I have on a 608. I was in high school and happened to >> find a newspaper ad for a telephone operator in a large city hospital. >> Since I had always been fascinated with switchboards and telephone >> equipment this was a job that I had to have. I was only 16 and this >> was 1979. > Thanks for the report. > Did you have any trouble getting the job because of your youth or > gender, especially in a large installation? > Around 1973-74 the Bell System and employers slowly began to accept > the idea of male switchboard operators. Before that it was strictly a > female job. The only exceptions were rough environments, such as a > police station or waterfront warehouse. I think the boys hired then > were ex-military with signal corps experience. > There were boys from an all-boys high school who were interested in > such jobs (they learned on their school's 555 PBX) but in those days > found a brick wall because of age and gender. Most companies -- large > and small -- took their PBX jobs very seriously. Big companies > wouldn't break with tradition. Small companies wanted a girl since > receptionist type jobs were women. Young people weren't perceived as > being responsible enough for a large board, although they could get > jobs in very small places, where perhaps working the switchboard was > only part of the duties. >> We also learned that we could take a front cord and connect it to an >> extension jack then depress the "ring front" key and we could almost >> press out a tune. >> I could go on and on. I miss that service and the days of >> switchboards. I was lucky, even then that 608 was considered very >> dated but since we had it doing very advanced things (tandem lines, >> long distance billing, conference calls) the powers that were decided >> that the 608 was the only acceptable board for us until 1983. > I would not call the 608 "dated", it was the most advanced cord board > the Bell System offered. There were plenty of older models in service > in those years. I think what killed the cord board was economics--the > cost of purchasing and maintaining electronics -- like the Dimension > PBX -- came down enough that they were competitive with cord boards. > With all its automation, I don't think the 608 was cheap. > A big disadvantage of cord boards was that they required two > operations per call while a console required only one. With cord > boards, you had to pull the cords down at the end of the call, a > console disconnected automatically. > If your employer was a large organization, it probably went Centrex > which eliminated a lot of traffic. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But before female operators there were > men (mostly young boys) doing it. I am referring to the 1880-1900 > era. Bell got rid of the young guys because they said the customers > complained that the younger guys were rude and crude. PAT] In 1971 I was injured on the job in the CO, so GTE to avoid a loss time injury put me in the business office in West LA. At the time there were only women working there, with a very few men as upper level managers since it was also a division and sales office. At first I just did files of the old paper bills; way before computers, then I started dealing with calls from other business offices needing information on calls and such, plus pulling information when law enforcement needed something. One day things got busy so the office manager put me live in the rotary to receive customer calls. Customers were surprised to hear a male voice, but for the short time I did this before going back to my regular CO job, both the employees in the office and the customers got used to it. One time a customer got really mad and wanted to talk to a supervisor, when the supervisor came on the call, he still was made and wanted to to to a higher level. They put me on the line; there was no other managers around; with just a few seconds going by the customer slowed down and explained the problem, which the supervisor who was on the call with me took care of and the customer was very happy. I really respect the customer contact people in all departments it is a very hard job to do. 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: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:06:00 -0400 From: DLR Subject: Re: Using a 608 > I would not call the 608 "dated", it was the most advanced cord board > the Bell System offered. There were plenty of older models in service > in those years. I think what killed the cord board was economics--the > cost of purchasing and maintaining electronics -- like the Dimension > PBX -- came down enough that they were competitive with cord boards. > With all its automation, I don't think the 608 was cheap. > A big disadvantage of cord boards was that they required two > operations per call while a console required only one. With cord > boards, you had to pull the cords down at the end of the call, a > console disconnected automatically. The economics against a cord board were/are huge. With these there is a very large number of mechanical parts that could and would wear out over time. With electronic systems most of the mechanics at the board were replaced by electronics inside the PBX. And the electronics didn't have the "wear and tear" of the board. The switch board console turned into a relatively cheap (compared to a cord board) device. So if it broke you'd typically just replace the entire thing. Maybe with a credit for the old unit which would be repaired at a depot and put back on the shelf as a repair part. So the entire economics of the sale and ongoing operations changed. Which upset a lot of sales plans, sales reps, service contracts, and union technicians. Which is why much of the savings customers might expect with the new technology takes years to show up. Sometimes it takes a generation for the old staff to "age" out and some times it takes a new entrant without a past before the economics change. In computers mini-computers did this to mainframes and PCs did it to both. Much of IBM's problems of the 80s and 90s were caused by the inability of the existing work force to adapt to these new economics. Ditto the airlines and deregulation. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:22:23 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Yesterday I changed my telephone number which was 504 835 (????) > to the unlisted new number 504 835 (????). Since this morning I > cannot have access to the prefix 1010987 ... to Italy. > On dialing this prefix comes out a tape recorder saying to dial > 1 800 444 3333 from the other side of the line an operator of MCI > tried to "HELP" me and I was under the impression she knew nothing > about to assist me instead she tried to sell a program of > international calls . > So I decided to give up and called TELECOM"USA-CENTRAL,which is my > International Service Provider . So I dialed the number shown on > the bill and came out a BELL SOUTH OPERATOR, with much confusion I > explained the case to the operator, who tranferred me to another > operator ( time: over 2 hours altogheter ). Which is the direct > line # for TELECOM"USA CENTRAL? While I can't help you with a direct number for Telecom USA, I can tell you that the 101-0987 carrier code is one assigned to MCI or one of their subsidiaries. I can also tell you that Telecom USA is a subsidiary of MCI, and has been so for at least ten years now. I'm not at all surprised that you are getting MCI responses regarding your inquiries about 101-0987. As for the number printed on your bill to contact Telecom USA, I assume that this is on a BellSouth billing, on the additional pages for your Telecom USA charges. BellSouth probably has you set up such that Telecom USA is a "dialaround" carrier, not your primary chosen carrier on that line, and any billing for 101-0987 Telecom USA calls would be through a page or section of your BellSouth monthly billing, along with BellSouth, your local telephone company, being the primary billing agent or billing contact, on behalf of MCI's Telecom USA. As for a direct toll-free 800 or 888 type number for Telecom USA, try doing a Google search on Telecom USA and see what happens. I haven't tried one, but maybe you might find something for them with a Google search. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:34:51 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: 3L-4N (was NYC History) ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** On Fri 11 Aug 2006, Lisa Hancock asked: > Anyone familiar with this? > NYC got dial in 1922. It was set up as 3L-4N, that is, > PENnsylvania 1234. At some point it was switched to 2L-5N, that is, > PEnnsylvania 6-5000. Philadelphia switched in the mid 1940s. Would > anyone know when NYC switched? Did Chicago switch? (snip) This has been asked and answered numerous times in the past in this forum. The most recent time seems to be last Fall, in September 2005, and I'll post exactly what I said back then to one of Lisa's posts: ---------- From: Anthony Bellanga (email address suppressed) Date: 09/29/2005 07:42 PM Subject: 2L-4N, 3L-4N, 2L-5N Numbering In an ongoing effort to TRY to eliminate or at least reduce $pam, please REMOVE my email address from display in the "from" line, AS WELL AS in the "reply to" line. Further, re, Lisa Hancock's post on Oakland and San Francisco and 2L-4N numbering ... Numerous cities and large towns throughout the US and Canada developed with 2L-4N numbering, sometimes mixed with 2L-5N as previously mentioned. Only the largest of cities actually had 2L-5N numbering from the earliest days of local dialing within those cities or metro areas. As for 3L-4N, only four cities in the US (none in Canada) ever used 3L-4N: New York City during the 1920s had 3L-4N, but changed to 2L-5N around 1930 or 1931. I don't know how consistant New York Telephone was regarding the third dial pull letter being converted to a digit, i.e., was it the actual digit that the original letter corresponed to, or was it something different, and if the latter, were there some few cases where the third letter actually did convert to the corresponding digit. Philadelphia changed from 3L-4N to 2L-5N shortly after WW-II, either 1945 or 1946. In MOST cases, the third letter changed to a numerical digit that did NOT correspond to the original letter. But there were a few cases where the conversion to a digit did correspond to the original third letter. Chicago changed from 3L-4N to 2L-5N around 1948; Boston changed from 3L-4N to 2L-5N around 1949. My understanding for both Chicago and Boston, is that in most cases, the third dial-pull letter did changeover to the corresponding digit, but there were some exceptions. There were a handful of cities in the United Kingdom which had 3L-4N numbering. Every other place in the UK had less-than-seven digits (or dial pull) local numbering throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. These UK locations that did have 3L-4N were the "director" cities, the largest of all metro areas, and also had the shortest STD codes ending in a '1' (or having the only digit of '1'). (0)1 London (0)21 Birmingham (0)31 Edinborough (SCOTLAND) (0)41 Glasgow (0)51 Liverpool (0)61 Manchester. Note that (except for London with just the digit '1' as its significant STD code digit), that the first digit of the STD code also corresponded to the first letter of the town: (0)B-1 Birmingham (0)E-1 Edinborough (0)G-1 Glasgow (0)L-1 Liverpool (0)M-1 Manchester Circa 1990, London split into "inner London" (0)71, and "outer London" (0)81. Circa 1994/95, most STD codes in the UK had an extra digit '1' tacked onto the front (following the leading '0' indication digit), although some completely changed to new STD codes with a '1'. Starting circa 2000, the largest cities in the UK changed their local numbering plans (and dialing plans in some cases) as well as their STD Code -- particularly London: (0)171 + NXX-xxxx (inner London, seven-digits) changed to (0)20 + 7NXX-xxxx (note the first new digit of the eight-digit number begins with '7', that '7' signifying the old 1990s era STD code) (0)181 + NXX-xxxx (outer London, seven-digits) changed to (0)20 + 8NXX-xxxx (note the '8' in the old STD code and the '8' as the first digit of the new eight digit local number) Paris FRANCE also had 3L-4N (later seven-digits) at one time, the change to 7-digit ANC (All Number/figure calling/dialing) took place in the early to mid-50s. I think that ANC format numbers corresonded exactly to the previous letters of the exchange names. In the UK (at least London), they actually numbered previously named EXChanges with totally different numerics, possibly to "force" people to think of telephone numbers now as numericals, not with letters. I can't think of any other places in the world ever having had 3L-4N. ------------------------------ From: bsd_mike Subject: Re: ISP Telco Vendors That Work With Asterisk Date: 12 Aug 2006 04:45:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jon, The vendor probably does not need to be located in the Northeast. I recommend http://www.voipstreet.com. They work with both SIP and Asterisk. We use them and their service is great. Really great. (I am not associated with them beyond using them.) A quick search of Google you will see a lot of IAX trunk vendors. Finally, if you look at http://www.telecomtools.org, advertisements for IAX trunk vendors show up under the google ads there as well. -Mike ImOk wrote: > Hi, > I need to find a vendor in the North East who can provide VoIP service > via SIP and work with Asterisk. > Does anyone know of any reliable vendors or if there is a list I can > search? > Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 19:58:25 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: [TELECOM] Must be Used! Are you remembering to use [TELECOM] as the first word in your subect line on messages? 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 #298 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Aug 13 22:44:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3D56F216D; Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:44:07 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #299 Message-Id: <20060814024407.3D56F216D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:44:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:45:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 299 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Your Life as an Open Book (Monty Solomon) 2L-4N, 3L-4N, 2L-5N Numbering (Earle Robinson) Clueless Hollywood (Ron Kritzman) Re: 101-0987 for MCI's Telecom USA (John Levine) Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges (mc) Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges (Henry) Re: Three Walmart Customers Arrested for 'Aid to Terrorists' (AES) Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? (Robert Bonomi) Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP (Robert Bonomi) Advertise For a Roommate and Get Scammed (tedrichardson9925@sbcglobal.net) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 00:13:28 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Your Life as an Open Book By TOM ZELLER Jr. The New York Times Privacy advocates and search industry watchers have long warned that the vast and valuable stores of data collected by search engine companies could be vulnerable to thieves, rogue employees, mishaps or even government subpoenas. Four major search companies were served with government subpoenas for their search data last year, and now once again, privacy advocates can say, "We told you so." AOL's misstep last week in briefly posting some 19 million Internet search queries made by more than 600,000 of its unwitting customers has reminded many Americans that their private searches - for solutions to debt or bunions or loneliness - are not entirely their own. So, as one privacy group has asserted, is AOL's blunder likely to be the search industry's "Data Valdez," like the 1989 Exxon oil spill that became the rallying cry for the environmental movement? Maybe. But in an era when powerful commercial and legal forces ally in favor of holding on to data, and where the surrender of one's digital soul happens almost imperceptibly, change is not likely to come swiftly. Most of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN collect and store information on what terms are searched, when they were queried and what computer and browser was used. And to the extent that the information can be used to match historic search behavior emanating from a specific computer, it is a hot commodity. As it stands now, little with regard to search queries is private. No laws clearly place search requests off-limits to advertisers, law enforcement agencies or academic researchers, beyond the terms that companies set themselves. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/technology/12privacy.html ------------------------------ From: earle robinson Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:50:04 +0200 Subject: 2L-4N, 3L-4N, 2L-5N Numbering (Pat, please mask my email address. Thank you.) France went to all numbers in the late 60s, or perhaps in the early 70s, a result of the rebuilding of what had been a very creaky old system. To force people to use numbers instead of letters, all phones from then on only had numbers, no letters and this for some 20 years. Phones now have letters and numbers, as before. As was pointed out, they went to 8n with two digits 0x, to identify the area called. Finally, the first two digits became mandatory and represent the 4 areas, Paris area (01), then the north, south east and south west. The first digit became a way of permitting competitors to offer service directly to subscribers. Thus, if one were using tele2 to make calls, one would dial 4x-yyyy-yyyy instead of 0x-yyyy-yyyy. -er ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 17:30:38 -0500 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Clueless Hollywood I was channel surfing the other night and caught a minute or two of a movie allegedly set in Chicago. In front of Wrigley Field, on the Addison Street side, with the famous red marquee in the background, one of the main characters was making a call from a Verizon pay phone! Who knew? Not subtle either. Big logo with the checkmark and the red Z. C'mon guys, if you're going to do product placement at least place it where it lives. - RK Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray ------------------------------ Date: 13 Aug 2006 05:10:26 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: 101-0987 for MCI's Telecom USA >> Yesterday I changed my telephone number which was 504 835 (????) >> to the unlisted new number 504 835 (????). Since this morning I >> cannot have access to the prefix 1010987 ... to Italy. Their rate appears to be 4 cpm plus a 53 cent per call connection charge. Why would anyone pay that much? Type Italy calling card into Google and you will find about a zillion places selling cards with rates to Italy under 2 cpm with no connection fee. R's, John ------------------------------ From: mc Subject: Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges Organization: BellSouth Internet Service Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 02:33:26 -0400 Associated Press News Wire wrote in message news:telecom25.298.3@telecom-digest.org: > [Editor's Note: A slightly different version of the earlier report.] > 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges. > Three Texas men were arraigned Saturday on terrorism-related charges > after police found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan. > Investigators believe the men were targeting the 5-mile-long Mackinac > Bridge, which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But one > of the men said they were only trying to buy and sell phones to make > money. Ummm ... Is this from The Onion? No? I don't see what a *large* number of cell phones has to do with terrorism. Yes, a cell phone can be used as a detonator, but you only need one, or maybe a few as backups, and having a thousand doesn't make it any more terrifying. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Three Texas Men ... on Terrorist Charges From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:11:45 +0300 Organization: Saunalahti Customer Associated Press News Wire wrote: > ... the men ... are charged with ... surveillance of a vulnerable > target for terrorist purposes. Do you mean to tell me that in some statute book, code X, chapter Y, section Z, there is an actual criminal offense specified as 'surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes'??? With unambiguous definitions of 'surveillance', 'vulnerable', 'target', 'terrorist' and 'purposes'? Or does it just depend on what the meaning of 'is' is? Where will it end? The US seems well on the way to the old Czarist model, where _everything_ was _forbidden_ unless explicitly allowed by the authorities. cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Three Walmart Customers Arrested for 'Aid to Terrorists' Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:08:36 -0700 Organization: Stanford University > CARO, Mich. - Three men were arrested Friday on charges of supporting > terrorism after they purchased 80 prepaid mobile phones from a > Wal-Mart store, police said. > Police stopped the men's van about 1:30 a.m. and found nearly 1,000 > phones, most of which were prepaid TracFones, along with a laptop > computer and a bag of receipts, Stevenson said. > "The cell phones can be used as detonators. Batteries can be > disassembled and used to make methamphetamine. Obviously there's > something wrong here; they should stop selling these," Caro Police > Chief Ben Page said. > The men told police they were buying the phones, which cost about $20 > and come with a charger, taking them out of their packaging and > selling them to a wholesaler in Texas for about $38 without the > charger. > The arrests in Caro, about 90 miles north of Detroit, come three days > after two men were arrested in Marietta, Ohio, where police said they > piqued suspicions when they acknowledged buying about 600 phones in > recent months at stores in southeast Ohio. Sure like to get some informed opinions about just what the h-ll is really going on here ... really bad actors? (i.e., terrorism effort) ... or just very weird? (buying "wholesale" at Walmart, selling for more "on the street") ... or something totally else??? ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Touch Tone Grocery Shopping - Promise Never Realized? Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 05:21:47 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , R. T. Wurth wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news:telecom25.290.8@telecom-digest.org: >> Ironically, today supermarkets do take credit cards which annoys me >> since it adds to the cost of the food. Indeed, pizza places, fast >> food, and convenience stores take credit cards too. > I'm pretty much a cash shopper myself, but I do wonder about the > economics of credit cards vs. cash and checks. > Disadvantages of cash or check/advantages of credit: > 1.) Banks charge big cash depositing businesses a counting fee to > deposit cash. > 2.) Banks charge businesses a fee to deposit checks. > 3.) Merchants bear the risk of bad checks, but for a fee can hire check > guarantee companies to screen their checks at the point of sale and > guarantee payment of those it approves. > 4.) Banks charge fees to big customers for rolled coins and wrapped small > bills used to make change. (What a racket--banks charge on both ends of > the transactions!) > 5.) Counting the cash tendered and making change slows up the line, > perhaps enough to require adding staff. > 6.) Stores were already required to put in electronic card-based > payment systems as part of food stamp conversion from coupons to > electronic cards, (either convert or lose all the business of food > stamp customers) so none of the infrastructure costs are attributable > to credit cards. (Note to non-US readers: food stamps are an > agriculture subsidy/welfare program, whereby the poor receive > coupons/electronic credits that can only be spent at qualified food > merchants for the purchase of qualified foods (no liquor, candy or > soda) processed in US factories from US agricultural products.) > 7.) Handling all that cash poses several theft risks (embezzling > cashiers, embezzling managers, armed robbers), and imposes increased > security costs (installation of time-lock safes, armored car service > fees). > 8.) For merchants who require presentation of a physical card, > validate the transaction with the issuer's clearing house and collect > a customer signature along with a card imprint or magstripe data, the > merahcnt's bank makes funds available at the close of the current > business day and guarantees payment with no chargebacks for > counterfeit or stolen cards (unless there is clear evidence of fraud > that the merchant was in on). (Chargebacks from customer disputes are > a separate matter). > Advantages of cash and checks/disadvantages of credit cards > 1.) Credit card clearing houses charge a considerable percentage fee on > transactions. > 2.) Disgruntled customers can generate chargebacks far after the date > of the transaction, which also trigger the merchant's bank to assess > penalty fees. > Where does the balance of these factors lie? I have no idea, but it > seems to me it's not necessarily the no-brainer in favor of cash over > credit most folks would make it out to be. Is there anyone reading > this looking for a subject for a thesis in economics? You are welcome > to take this idea, research the numbers and run with it. Most merchants would 'prefer not' to take credit cards. The 2-3% (minimum) that card-issuers/clearinghouses charge _is_ a big bite out of profits. Grocery stores, for example run a profit margin of about 4%. Either they give up *half* their profits, or they raise prices. Unfortunately, in many businesses, accepting 'plastic' is a "business necessity -- too much of the competition does, and a significant share of business will 'go elsewhere' (to somebody who does take plastic), if you don't. You've got the 'unpleasant' choice to make, between losing business, and losing profits. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: SS7 VS TCP/IP Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 05:49:56 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Hi, > I am very new to the Telecom world. I have a basic doubt. Why people > are using the SS7 protocol instead of TCP/IP Stack. "Because, that way, it will work." That is a sufficiently obscure reference that some expansion is required -- The characteristics of the two systems are radically different -- especially with regard to latency, 'jitter', and congestion handling. "non-real-time" (data) communications have different reqirements from "strict real-time" (voice) communications. Different solutions for different needs. ------------------------------ From: tedrichardson9925@sbcglobal.net Subject: Advertise For a Roommate and Get Scammed Date: 13 Aug 2006 07:45:23 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I was reading about this "overpayment scam," which is targeting roommate ads. I've had readers send me questions about similar "scam attempts" about an apartment they were renting. http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2006/08/advertise-for-roommate-and-get-scammed.html ------------------------------ 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'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V25 #299 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Aug 15 14:22:17 2006 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.8 required=2.0 tests=ADVANCE_FEE_1,ADVANCE_FEE_2, AWL,BAYES_00,BIZ_TLD,BODY_ENHANCEMENT2,HEADER_SPAM,NO_RELAYS autolearn=no version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: ptownson Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id A9F9821E5; Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:22:16 -0400 (EDT) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V25 #300 Message-Id: <20060815182216.A9F9821E5@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:22:16 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:23:00 EDT Volume 25 : Issue 300 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Police Raid Two Internet Cafes (Paul Haven, AP) Dell Recalls Laptop Batteries (David Koenig, AP) If Your Email Smells Phishy, Hit the Delete Key (Christian Science Monitor) TelecomDirect Daily News Update - August 14, 2005 (TelecomDirect News) TelecomDirect Daily News Update - August 15, 2006 (TelecomDirect News) Re: Clueless Hollywood (Steven Lichter) Verizon and Other Payphones (Re: Clueless Hollywood) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Sam Spade (William Warren) Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist (Steven Lichter) Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist (Gene Berkowitz) ====== 25 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== 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, and why not support Net Freedom Now http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:34:50 -0500 From: Paul Haven, AP Subject: Police Raid Two Internet Cafes By PAUL HAVEN Associated Press Writer Police said Tuesday that they raided two Internet cafes in the investigation of an alleged plot to blow up jetliners over the Atlantic, and a news report said officers found firearms in a search of a woodlands near where some of the suspects were arrested earlier. Travelers continued to face problems at Britain's main airports, where delays and cancellations exacerbated confusion over shifting rules governing hand luggage. The two Internet cafes were raided Thursday in central Slough, 25 miles west of London, not far from the neighborhood in the town of High Wycombe where several suspects were arrested last week, Thames Valley police said. They didn't say what, if anything, was found. Police said they had increased their presence in Slough, but urged people to remain calm. "There is no intelligence to suggest that there is any specific terrorist threat to anyone in this area," Chief Superintendent Brian Langston said. Meanwhile, the British Broadcasting Corp. said a search of some suspects' homes and of a woodland area in High Wycombe turned up several firearms and other items of interest. It was not clear if they were related to the alleged jetliner plot, which authorities say involved a plan to smuggle liquid explosives aboard flights hidden in hand luggage. The two developments came after several days of a near lockdown on information. The government has not briefed the media since last week, has not said where suspects are being held, and has not even released the names of some of them. Authorities will have to provide at least some details of its evidence to a judge at a detention extension hearing Wednesday. Twenty-three people are being held in the plot, including the alleged ringleaders. On Tuesday, opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron accused the government of talking tough but doing little to counter extremism and boost counter-terror efforts. Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said, failed to follow through on a plan unveiled after last year's London transit bombings to crack down on radical clerics and help Britain's moderate Muslims face down militants in their communities. "We need follow-through when the headlines have moved on," Cameron said. "But precious little has actually been done." At London airports Tuesday, passengers were allowed to take a single, briefcase-sized bag as a carry on and were also permitted to have mobile phones, laptops and other electronic devices. Cosmetics, gels, toothpaste, liquids and sharp objects remained forbidden. Despite the easing of the rules, British Airways canceled a fifth of its flights from London on Tuesday, the same as on Monday. BA cut 52 flights, including four bound for the United States. Budget airline Ryanair canceled eight flights out of Stansted airport. At Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, travelers again were forced to wait outside before taking their turn at a check-in desk. Inside the terminals, stranded and delayed passengers slumped against piles of luggage or tried to sleep on rows of chairs. "I'd rather have the increased security, but the people are just so irritable and angry," Reema Alhabeeb, 16, said after waiting two hours outside a terminal hoping to fly home to Boston. British Defense Secretary Des Browne said work was under way on new permanent security requirements for airports, but declined to say what the new measures might be. A report by The Times newspaper said officials were considering a system of passenger-profiling that would select people behaving suspiciously, who had an unusual travel pattern or were of a certain ethnic or religious background. Leaders in the Muslim community criticized that approach, saying it would further isolate British Muslims. "The government needs to think very, very carefully before it considers putting this measure into practice," said Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. "There is concern that such profiling would perhaps only contribute to further alienating a group whose close co-operation is essential in countering terror." The government dropped the terror threat level Monday to severe — where it was before the alleged jetliner plot was thwarted. Interrogations continued in an atmosphere of secrecy. Tough new anti-terror laws give the government up to 28 days to hold suspects without charge, but they must periodically go before a judge to make a case for continued confinement. Investigations were also under way in Pakistan, where authorities held 17 people, including British citizen Rashid Rauf, who they said has al-Qaida connections and was a key player in the plot. At least one of Rauf's brothers was arrested in England during the sweep here. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it might extradite Rauf to Britain. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of 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: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:38:55 -0500 From: David Koenig Subject: Dell Recalls Laptop Batteries By DAVID KOENIG, AP Business Writer In the largest electronics-related recall involving the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Dell Inc. agreed to replace 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony Corp because they can burst into flames. A Dell spokesman said Monday that the Sony batteries were placed in notebooks that were shipped between April 1, 2004, and July 18 of this year. "In rare cases, a short-circuit could cause the battery to overheat, causing a risk of smoke and/or fire," said the spokesman, Ira Williams. "It happens in rare cases, but we opted to take this broad action immediately." The battery packs were included in some models of Round Rock, Texas-based Dell's Latitude, Inspiron, XPS and precision mobile workstation notebooks. Dell launched a Web site, http://www.dellbatteryprogram.com , that described the affected models. Williams said the Web site would tell consumers how to get free replacement batteries from Dell. Rick Clancy, a Sony spokesman, said the companies have studied problems with the battery packs intensely for more than a month, after getting reports of about a half-dozen fires or smoking laptops in the United States. Lithium-ion batteries have been around for about a decade and are used in devices such as cell phones and digital music players. Clancy said tiny metallic particles sometimes short-circuit the battery cells, adding that configuration in an electronic device can contribute to problems. "But it begins with the (battery) cell, and we acknowledge that," he said. "That's why we're supporting Dell in this recall." Clancy said Sony would help Dell pay for the recall, but neither he nor Dell officials would estimate the campaign's price tag or say how the companies would divide the cost. Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst with UBS, estimated the recall could cost $400 million, with Sony bearing most of it. The larger potential cost for Dell is that such a huge recall could dampen future notebook sales. Dell rival Hewlett-Packard Co. said it does not use Sony batteries and was not affected by the recall. Apple Computer Inc. is investigating whether its notebook batteries meet safety and performance standards, spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. There have been numerous recent news reports about Dell laptops bursting into flames, and pictures of some of the charred machines have circulated on the Internet. Dell, the world's largest maker of personal computers, confirmed that two weeks ago, one of its laptops caught fire in Illinois, and the owner dunked it in water to douse the flames. Other reports have surfaced from as far away as Japan and Singapore. Monday's move was at least the third recall of Dell notebook batteries in the past five years. Dell recalled 22,000 notebook computer batteries last December after they had symptoms similar to those that prompted Monday's recall. The company also recalled 284,000 batteries in 2001. Consumers with affected laptops should only run the machines on a power cord, said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The safety agency knows of 339 incidents in which lithium batteries used in laptops and cell phones not just Dell products overheated between 2003 and 2005, Wolfson said. The list of problems ranged from smoke and minor skin burns to more serious injuries and property damage, Wolfson said. Most of the incidents reported to the CPSC occurred around the home, but transportation-safety officials have become increasingly concerned about the threat of a laptop causing a catastrophic fire aboard a commercial jetliner. Dell's recall comes as it battles other questions about quality and customer service. Last year, Dell absorbed a charge against earnings of $338 million to repair faulty computer components. Dell's sales have grown this year, but less rapidly, causing shares in the company to lose nearly one-half their value in the past 52 weeks. The shares rose 49 cents, or 2.3 percent, to $21.73, in Tuesday morning trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Sony shares rose 47 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $45.28 on the New York Stock Exchange. On The Net: http://www.dellbatteryprogram.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 and headlines each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:49:09 -0500 From: Tom Regan, Christian Science Monitor Subject: If Your Email Smells Phishy, Hit the Delete Key In the March 29, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0329/p16s01-stct.html By Tom Regan If your e-mail smells 'phishy,' hit the delete key. A record 9,715 phishing sites were reported in January. Most of these scams involved six well-known brands. They almost got me. The e-mail from PayPal said that my account had a problem. To correct some faulty information, I was instructed to click on a link included in the message. Well, I didn't have a PayPal account, but I knew my wife did. Perhaps she had given my name or e-mail address as a backup. But my spider-sense was tingling, so I decided not to use the link, but to visit PayPal's website directly. And that's when I saw the notice about the scam. Someone had been phishing, and I was almost hooked. No, it's not a misspelling. Phishing has become the most pervasive form of criminal activity on the Internet today. Using a variety of methods, phishers send out e-mails that look like they are from legitimate companies or organizations. The messages lead people to fake websites where they try to collect personal financial information. In the 10 years that phishing has existed, it's grown from rather clumsy operations to much more sophisticated endeavors. Law enforcement officials believe some are run by organized crime rings from around the world. According to one recent estimate, computer users in the US lost more than $929 million to these scams over one 12-month period. These days the phishers also plant software (known as 'crimeware') on people's computers that record their keystrokes. The information is then sent back to scammers. Another trick is to get people to visit the actual websites of a company, but through a means created by the phishers which allows them to record your keystrokes. According to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup http://www.antiphishing.org , a record 9,715 phishing sites were reported on the Web in January. About 80 percent of these scams involved six well-known brands. (One that I have been receiving recently was a regular stream of e-mails telling me about problems with my "Chase" account.) The vast majority of these operations are based in the US, with Korea and China close behind. And here's a mind-boggling stat: Most of these sites only last an average of five days. So these folks run the scam, hook as many people as they can, and then get out of Dodge before the law can catch them. Phishing is increasingly becoming a concern to Internet users, says Joe Laszlo, senior analyst for Jupiter Research in New York. When consumers were asked recently about what bugged them about the Internet, 53 percent said spam (no surprise there), but 35 percent said phishing, Mr. Laszlo notes. "No matter how Internet savvy you are, all it takes is one time for a scam to fool you," he says. "And there is no depth to which the phishers won't sink. They will do anything to trick you." After hurricane Katrina struck last year, numerous e-mails spoofing the Red Cross appeared, as phishers tried to take advantage of people's desire to help people in the Gulf Coast. Recently, these scam artists have been spoofing the IRS in an attempt to use tax season as a way to trick people into divulging their personal information. Software companies and law enforcement agencies are trying to do something about phishing. Last week, Microsoft announced it was taking legal action against 100 phishing operations based in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. This follows a similar initiative by the company against 117 suspects in the US. And in late February, AOL used a new Virginia antiphishing law to go after 30 phishers working for three international groups. The increase in phishing is also behind the move by companies like AOL and Yahoo to offer "certified e-mail," Laszlo says. This type of e-mail costs a certain amount per message but ensures that the message comes from the people who sent it. The idea of paying for e-mail of any kind has raised objections from consumer groups and free-speech advocates. But it was recently endorsed by the Red Cross, after its experience with the Katrina scam. Regardless of whether certified e-mail becomes a reality, you remain your own best protection against phishing. Beware any e-mail from a bank, financial company, or even the IRS, which indicates you need to visit their site to "fix" a problem, or because your "account is about to expire." Don't act, until you visit the company's website first, or call it on the phone, to find out if any alerts exist about phishing scams. Better to take extra time examining the worm on the hook, than being caught, landed, and gutted by an expert phisher. http://www.csmonitor.com | Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Publishing Society. To read the news each day in the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times and listen to the top stories via National Public Radio, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html with no login nor registration requirements. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It would have been good if Mr. Regan had mentioned the origin of the spelling of the term 'phishing'. Quite a number of years ago, when a small cross section of the public who were _not_ telephone company employees (which actually is the vast majority of us, since we are not employed by telco) began to show an inordinate degree of interest in the workings of telco (unusual if you are not employed by telco) their 'hobby' or 'interest' earned them the label of freaks where telco procedures and the instruments were concerned. Those 'freaks' disliked that word, which is disparaging, adapted its spelling to what, in their opinion, was a less disparaging spelling: Since /f/ and /ph/ phoenetically sound the same anyway, the freaks began spelling it 'phreaks'. Ditto the word 'fraud' which could be spelled 'phraud'. Basically, they took words which begin with /f/ and began spelling them with /ph/ instead. Or at least, those words which they felt reflected a more 'positive' spin on things. I do not think the freaks ever did convert the word 'fraud' since there is very little, if any, positive use of that word. But I think you get my point. Then along came the words 'fishing' and 'fish' and 'fisherman'. The meaning of the words are pretty obvious, especially when used in connection with a 'stream' which usually refers to a moving body of water, or as in more recent times, a body of data (such as a newsgroup) moves along down the stream between one site and another. On the perhaps erroneous assumption that all phreaks are bad people out to damage or destroy telco, someone about a decade or so ago decided to use the same phoenetic spelling on 'fish' and variations that had been done with 'freak' and variations. I do not think most phreaks (who by and large consider themselves an educational and positive force in telecommunications) approve of the same thing being done to 'fish'. Picture, if you will, a man with a rod and pole sitting on the side of a smelly old cess pool or septic tank amusing himself by examining all the rotten stuff pulled out of the water. So 'phishermen' rely largely on social engineering the way many 'phreaks' used to do to get the required information needed to make their schemes work. Just as ESS and more sophisticated telephone switching and billing systems required that phreaks get more sophisticated in their ways, likewise the 'phishermen' had to adapt as well. Anyway, to make a short story long, the obvious misspelling of 'fisherman' and 'fishing' got its start as a take off on freaks and 'phreaks'. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 14, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:40:39 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 14, 2006 ******************************** Russia: Enforta Acquires Two Wireless Broadband Providers http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19336?11228 Enforta has acquired 100% stakes in the wireless broadband providers SkyTelecom and Mir TV, reports Prime-TASS. The stakes were bought from unnamed personal shareholders, and no financial details of the agreements have been disclosed. Created in 2002, SkyTelecom offers wireless broadband access services in the south-western region of ... Technologies for Disabled Inspire Mobile Web Solutions http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19329?11228 The Web is a place where the interests of people with and without visual disabilities converge. That's because all mobile Web users confront many of the same usability limitations that visually impaired people ordinarily encounter when surfing the Web on any device. Taking a cue from technologies designed to help visually ... Video iPod Jumpstarts Portable Media Player Market http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19324?11228 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Even though Apple's video-capable iPod technically does not fit the definition of a 'true Portable Media Player (PMP)', it has given the product class a boost, reports In-Stat. Today, consumers are more aware of portable video, additional PMP brands, and ways in which they can download video to ... Sprint Claims Victory in Data Broker Suit http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19321?11228 Sprint Nextel is touting another win in its fight to fend off data brokers trying to fraudulently obtain and sell wireless customer call detail records. The latest: the carrier will receive a $1 million settlement from 1st Source Information Specialists. Sprint was pleased with the outcome of the court case. "Our customers are ... FCC Launches Sweeping Telecom-Regulation Review http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19319?11228 It sure doesn't look like beach reading. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started its latest biennial review of telecom rules and regulations, seeking public input on a broad range of items that might be modified or repealed in order to encourage 'meaningful economic competition' between U.S. service providers of ... T-Mobile: UMA 'Round the Corner? http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19317?11228 It's already been a big week for cellular network upgrades in the U.S., and now analysts say that T-Mobile USA could soon be ready to join the fun by rolling out fixed/mobile convergence services in the fall. Third-ranked operator Sprint Nextel Corp. said last week it will launch a mobile WiMax network due to cover ... Open Source Eyes Telecom http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19315?11228 The open-source movement might not be making Cisco Systems Inc. nervous yet, but it's definitely intent on becoming a serious factor in the networking sphere. The last few weeks have seen a couple of open-source ideas step beyond cult status into the 'real' business world. Digium Inc. -- which supports the Asterisk ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ Subject: TelecomDirect News Daily Update - August 15, 2006 From: telecomdirect_daily Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:41:10 EDT ******************************** PricewaterhouseCoopers Presents The TelecomDirect News Daily Update For August 15, 2006 ******************************** Ukraine: Kyivstar H1 Revenue Up 133%, ARPU Showing Signs of Stabilising http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19359?11228 Ukraine's leading mobile operator, Kyivstar, has released its financial figures for the first six months of 2006, calculated according to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The company recorded net revenue of US$757.27 million, a 67.9% year-on-year (y/y) increase from the US$450.9 million recorded at the end of first-half ... Spain: Telefonica Contracts Movial for VoIP Services Aimed at SMEs http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19357?11228 Spain's incumbent operator, Telefonica, has signed a VoIP deal with Finland's IP communications software provider Movial. According to the terms of the contract, Movial will supply equipment for Telefonica's VoIP services. Movial will provide the telco with its Connect products, which consist of an IP multimedia ... France: French Regulator Draws Up Rules for Fibre-Optic Network http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19354?11228 French telecoms regulator ARCEP has given its strongest indication yet of how new investments in fibre-optic networks should be handled, in a report to the French Ministry of Finance, La Tribune newspaper reports. Prompted by the ministry, ARCEP suggested in the report that it was difficult to appreciate the long-term return on ... Dell Recalls Fire-Risk Laptop Batteries http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/120/19348?11228 DALLAS -- In the largest electronics-related recall involving the Consumer Products Safety Commission, Dell Inc. agreed to replace 4.1 million notebook computer batteries made by Sony Corp. because they can burst into flames. A Dell spokesman said Monday that the Sony batteries were placed in notebooks that were shipped between ... PalmSource, Access Team for Mobile Linux http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19346?11228 Access and its subsidiary PalmSource used the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo going on this week in San Francisco as a backdrop to announce their new Access Developer Network. The online resource is designed to speed the development, distribution and usage of mobile Linux applications, according to the companies. The network... Universal Service Shakeup: 'Reverse Auction' Mooted http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/130/19344?11228 In what could be one of the biggest policy shake-ups of the universal service fund (USF) in years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) formally unveiled the possibility of using so-called 'reverse auctions' to determine the eligibility of carriers and subsidy awards on the basis of bids by the lowest-cost providers. ... Visualize WiFi & Other Cool Stuff http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/140/19342?11228 When Is a Cellphone Not a Phone? When it's Novatel Wireless Inc.'s new Ovation MCD3000 3G console. The vendor says that this cellphone-sized device is intended to enable enterprise users to access multimedia services via high-speed cellular networks through their desktops or laptop computers as an alternative to wired networks. ... Verizon Hones Home Networking http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/150/19340?11228 Verizon Communications Inc. is hoping its new Home Media DVR will, among other things, shorten the distance between the bedroom or office PC and the entertainment center in the living room. The carrier says its DVR's Media Manager software will let customers of its FiOS service manage and enjoy their music and photo ... TelecomDirect Editor Copyright (C) 2006 PricewaterhouseCoopers. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Telecom Re: Clueless Hollywood Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 03:51:25 GMT Ron Kritzman wrote: > I was channel surfing the other night and caught a minute or two of a > movie allegedly set in Chicago. In front of Wrigley Field, on the > Addison Street side, with the famous red marquee in the background, one > of the main characters was making a call from a Verizon pay phone! Who > knew? Not subtle either. Big logo with the checkmark and the red Z. > C'mon guys, if you're going to do product placement at least place it > where it lives. > - RK > Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray It could very well have been a Verizon pay phone. They have phones in a lot of areas that are not served by them. In California, you can look outside Albersons Supermarkets, Savon, 7/11 and a lot more. 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: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:20:42 -0600 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam Subject: Verizon and Other Payphones (re: Clueless Hollywood) ******************************************************************** PAT - DO NOT display my email address anywhere in this post! Thanks. ******************************************************************** Ron Kritzman wrote in "Clueless Hollywood": > I was channel surfing the other night and caught a minute or two > of a movie allegedly set in Chicago. In front of Wrigley Field, > on the Addison Street side, with the famous red marquee in the > background, one of the main characters was making a call from a > Verizon pay phone! Who knew? Not subtle either. Big logo with the > checkmark and the red Z. C'mon guys, if you're going to do product > placement at least place it where it lives. Verizon and other ILECs have their own payphone subsidiaries which have been placing private (COCOT) payphones in locations outside of their basic ILEC territory (in addition to their own ratecenters and territory) for several years now. Verizon private payphones are located in BellSouth territory as well, so it's not unusual for Verizon branded private payhones to be located in SBC (at&t) Ameritech territory as well. Qwest (US West) has private payphones in states and locations outside of Qwest (US West) ILEC territory, including in BellSouth states. Sprint (United and Centel) has placed Nortel Millennium payphones in most Greyhound Bus Stations in the US, for several years now, regardless of who the incumbent local telco for that city happens to be. Over the past few months, these payphones are being rebranded as Embarq, since Sprint-Nextel has begun to spin-off their legacy United and Centel ILECs into the now-separate Embarq company. This apparantly includes payphones which were once branded as Sprint. I don't know if at&t (SBC, Pacific Bell, Ameritech, and SNET in Connecticut) has private payphones outside of their territory (i.e., in non-at&t ILEC ratecenters in at&t ILEC states; or in Qwest or BellSouth or Verizon or Cincinnati Bell locations). BellSouth got out of the payphone business, at least in BellSouth states, a few years ago. I don't know if BellSouth ever owned BellSouth branded private payphones in other states though. But with the "new at&t" (SBC, Ameritech, SNET) soon to takeover BellSouth, I wonder if "at&t" branded payphones will soon be seen in the southeast! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 23:53:55 -0400 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Sam Spade William Warren wrote: > Don't do it, Pat! If you do, the terrorists have won! > William Warren > (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Why would you say something like that? > The 'terrorists' won long ago, when you started asking people to > 'filter noise from your address' and when readers started using > Spam Assassin and when mailing list maintainers started requiring > their readers to jump through hoops to get on or off mailing lists. > Why is a simple minded filter -- (either the word '[telecom]' is > present or it is not present) -- such a sign that the 'terrorists' > have won? PAT] Pat, That was a joke. I had thought you would laugh. Sorry. William (Filter noise from my address for direct replies. No laughing matter!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _would_ laugh if it were not such a hypocritcal thing. People talk about how anything but the purest of email address forms used in email are such a hassle (I quite agree) but the same people then act like it is so 'politically incorrect' to attack the problem at its source; i.e. the spammer/scammers who make it necessary. You'll have to pardon me, but I get very tired of having to give even a cursory review to several hundred items each day which are only penis-enlargement advertisements, requests to re-enter time and again all my personal banking information, etc. The really evil thing about it all is even when I try my hardest, some days _good_ messages get dumped by accident. People get one single phish-item in their mail and think it is such an affront ... well, I get hundreds of them daily, and even if I culd just type 'delete 1-250' and be done with it, it would still be a nuisance, but when good messages get caught in the middle of that mess each day as they _always_ do, it makes the job much harder. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Organization: I Kill Spammers, inc. Subject: Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 03:55:04 GMT mc wrote: > Associated Press News Wire wrote in message > news:telecom25.298.3@telecom-digest.org: >> [Editor's Note: A slightly different version of the earlier report.] >> 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges. >> Three Texas men were arraigned Saturday on terrorism-related charges >> after police found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan. >> Investigators believe the men were targeting the 5-mile-long Mackinac >> Bridge, which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But one >> of the men said they were only trying to buy and sell phones to make >> money. > Ummm ... Is this from The Onion? No? > I don't see what a *large* number of cell phones has to do with > terrorism. Yes, a cell phone can be used as a detonator, but you only > need one, or maybe a few as backups, and having a thousand doesn't > make it any more terrifying. What you have are law enforcement that has gone wild, they need to be pulled back in. When these people are released and they will be, they should sue the agencies involved as well as each and every person involved. The government only knows it is wrong when they get bit with a large judgment. 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: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Three Texas Men With Cellphones Arrested on Terrorist Charges Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 01:34:14 -0400 In article , look@www.ai.uga.edu.for.address says: > Associated Press News Wire wrote in message > news:telecom25.298.3@telecom-digest.org: >> [Editor's Note: A slightly different version of the earlier report.] >> 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges. >> Three Texas men were arraigned Saturday on terrorism-related charges >> after police found about 1,000 cell phones in their minivan. >> Investigators believe the men were targeting the 5-mile-long Mackinac >> Bridge, which connects Michigan's Upper and Lower peninsulas. But one >> of the men said they were only trying to buy and sell phones to make >> money. > Ummm ... Is this from The Onion? No? > I don't see what a *large* number of cell phones has to do with > terrorism. Yes, a cell phone can be used as a detonator, but you only > need one, or maybe a few as backups, and having a thousand doesn't > make it any more terrifying. Since July of 2003, there have been 931 deaths attributed to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq. The number of IEDs exploding or disarmed is approximately 40 PER DAY. So that minivan was carrying less than a 1-month supply ... --Gene ------------------------------ 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. 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