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The Telecom Digest for April 24, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 106 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
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Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:41:56 -0500
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: If Hollywood is right T-Mobile lives on
Message-ID: <BANLkTikqp7=rLO5thzqDt0hda_hmnhouPg@mail.gmail.com>
I saw the movie "Atlas Shrugged" tonight. The movie is set in 2016
and one of the characters had a Blackberry with T-Mobile service. I
personally don't think either company will still be around in five
years and if RIM does survive I wouldn't expect their 2016 phones to
look like their 2009 phones.
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
***** Moderator's Note *****
Someone made a movie? Atlas Shrugged? Who's playing Dabney?
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 19:47:09 -0500
From: gordonb.mbb7h@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: If Hollywood is right T-Mobile lives on
Message-ID: <geSdnezNvvKQ7i7QnZ2dnUVZ_rOdnZ2d@posted.internetamerica>
> I saw the movie "Atlas Shrugged" tonight. The movie is set in 2016
> and one of the characters had a Blackberry with T-Mobile service. I
> personally don't think either company will still be around in five
> years and if RIM does survive I wouldn't expect their 2016 phones to
> look like their 2009 phones.
You fail to take into account that after AT&T takes over T-Mobile,
it decides that it can get away with 10-year contracts, AND charge
a surcharge on phones you buy yourself at full price. So if you
can find a used Blackberry 9700 on Ebay for $300, you get to pay
AT&T $1500 to put it on their network, and a 10-year contract that
renews every time you replace the battery. Or, you can buy a used
Blackberry 9700 from AT&T for $3000, and a 10-year contract that
renews every time you replace the battery. You have to have an
excellent credit rating and sign a contract just to see the price
list for newer phones, which come with a non-disclosure agreement
that you won't let the price list or the phones be seen in public.
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:22:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: New Austin area code confirmed to be hoax
Message-ID: <30156.4824.qm@web111707.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
--- On Thu, 4/7/11, John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Adam
> H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com>
> wrote:
> > John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
> wrote:
> >
> >>New Austin area code confirmed to be hoax
> >>http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2011/04/01/new-austin-area-code-plan-confirmed-hoax.html?ana=handmark
>>
>> Is there something Austin-specific about 834 that people should
>> have recognized it as humor?
>
> I was hoping someone here would know. :-) I can't think of
> anything. 839 spells "TEX" but this is 834. No idea.
>
> --
> John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
> Austin, Texas, USA
I have no idea about 834, but I would point out that presumably for
political reasons the area code for Austin has never been changed
from the original 512.
When they split 512, the much larger San Antonio got the new area
code, 210, not Austin.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
Date: 23 Apr 2011 03:21:50 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: When country codes become +1-NPA codes
Message-ID: <20110423032150.67694.qmail@joyce.lan>
>Mark Cuccia can tell us if this is the first telephony area not originally
>set up by the British that joined NANPA.
I'm not Mark, but surely we all know that the Dominican Republic was
not a British colony.
Other than that, I think that all the NANP islands have been former or
current British colonies. I'd think that their attraction to the NANP
is more that they speak English than their colonial heritage.
R's,
John
Date: 23 Apr 2011 03:26:46 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: That pesky plus signs and mobile phones
Message-ID: <20110423032646.68899.qmail@joyce.lan>
>My understanding is that "+" means "dial the international access code
>appropriate to your location, then this number."
No, it's part of the GSM standard. The whole point is that you can put
numbers in your phone's address book, and they will work regardless of
where in the world you use your phone. If I use my US phone in the UK,
do I dial calls with 011 or 00? I have no idea, I dial +.
I'm sort of surprised that VZ phones don't support them, but it does
appear to be a defect in their implementation of CDMA. Since CDMA
phones work hardly anywhere outside NANP land, it's less of a
practical issue.
R's,
John
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:57:14 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstarbox-usenet@yahoo.com.au>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: An interesting use for phone relays
Message-ID: <pan.2011.04.22.22.57.09.218652@yahoo.com.au>
On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:13:13 -0400, T wrote:
> Check this out. I think it's an awesome use of discarded technology.
.........
The museum in my city used to have a mechanical "Tic Tac Toe" (Noughts and
Crosses) machine that you could play and it was made mostly of old SxS
relays and linefinders etc. (I only found out what they actually were
years later when I was introduced to Step exchanges).
This was back in the 1970's and it didn't take long to work out how to
defeat the hardwired logic and win every game, but it was a pretty
effective "kid magnet" and was very popular for the junior tech-heads.
I don't know if it still exists, but it would be an exhibit in its own
right now on the old technology used let alone the pioneering use as an
entertainment device!
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:18:35 -0400
From: Eric Tappert <e.tappert.spamnot@worldnet.att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: An intersting use for phone relays
Message-ID: <gt24r653s9d4hjnq60v6ncrdeqapo2sgnp@4ax.com>
On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:13:13 -0400, T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
wrote:
>Check this out. I think it's an awesome use of discarded technology.
>
>http://hackaday.com/2010/11/18/electromechanical-computer-built-from-relays/
This is a bit more complicated than the science fair project I did
about 50 years ago.... My project was a 32 bit, two input binary
adder. I was working in a hardware store at the time and my boss had
a friend in the pinball machine business who donated all the relays.
A neat feature was when you added 0001 to FFFF you could hear the
carry (it was a ripple carry circuit) for a couple of seconds, then
watch the transformer smoke a bit. Pretty cool for its day.
BTW, I got an honorable mention at the science fair (maybe because of
the smoke...)
ET
***** Moderator's Note *****
Please tell us why a carry overloaded the transformer.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:31:23 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: When country codes become +1-NPA codes
Message-ID: <iot6kr$4fj$1@news.albasani.net>
Bob Goudreau <BobGoudreau@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>Adam Kerman wote:
>>John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
>>>Since the mid-1990s a few areas, namely US territories in the Pacific
>>>Ocean, joined the NANPA. I understand why they did this. The calls
>>>became "domestic" for billing purposes.
>>Changing the dialing plan didn't change anyone's billing. It certainly
>>made it easier to scam a US telephone subscriber into dialing a number
>>served by a foreign telephone exchange but not necessarily terminating
>>in that country in order to jack up the bill.
>Now hold on there. None of the areas that joined the NANP in the past 15
>years are "foreign" to the US. They are all US territories in the Pacific:
>Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Marianas Islands.
Are we discussing the legal status of territories of the United States,
or rates charged as international calls to these areas by long distance
telephone companies?
My long distance company charges domestic interstate rates for calls
between the 48 states plus Washington, DC. International rates are charged
on calls to Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam, former Trust Territories,
etc. That these areas are in the NANPA dialing plan and some are part of
the United States proper is irrelevant to rate setting.
Btw, when the former Trust Territories changed their status to compact of
free association with the United States (except Commonwealth of Northern
Mariana Islands), the plan was to treat their mail as foreign after a
few years. This plan was put off indefinitely, and eventually abandoned,
as they realized that their rates to send mail to and from the US would
have been comparable to sending mail to Japan or Australia, a tremendous
increase in postage.
>Sint Maarten's admission the NANP will represent the first new
>non-American members since NPA 809 was set up decades ago and eventually
>encompassed much of the Caribbean.
Plus Bermuda.
>When NPA 809 was broken up during the latter half of the 1990s, every
>country/territory/colony ended up with its own separate area code instead of
>all sharing 809. Unwary callers from the mainland could still end up dialing
>an expensive foreign call without a leading "011", but they were already
>able to do that anyway before the breakup with "1-809". At least now, every
>area code goes to only a single country. Before the split, some 1-809 calls
>were domestic (Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands) and others were international
>calls (to everywhere else). You couldn't tell where a 1-809-NXX-XXXX call
>was headed or how much it cost just by looking at the 1-809 part; you had to
>drill down to the 1-809-NXX level to make that determination.
Domestic calling rates? Seriously? Can you demonstrate that typical
long distance rates would have been comparable to calling Florida from
a major metropolitan area in the 48 states, as opposed to a higher rate
to reflect the use of INMARSAT or whatever underseas cable was in use at
the time to connect mainland US to various islands?
I don't have access to a sample international rate chart from the early
1990's, but these still would have been expensive calls as geography didn't
lend itself to open competition among long distance telephone companies.
>>Mark Cuccia can tell us if this is the first telephony area not originally
>>set up by the British that joined NANPA.
>You're forgetting one of the original 809 Caribbean countries (and
>ironically, the only one that still retains that code): the Dominican
>Republic.
No, I'm not thinking it was wired up by the British. Yes, I know it's
a former Spanish colony. Of course Dominican Republic was part of NANP
as GTE subsidiary CODETEL wired it up post WWII.
I suppose there are exceptions I'm not thinking of, but the rest of NANP
outside US and Canada are places wired by the British, and the rest of
the Caribbean didn't join NANP.
Also, when certain parts of Mexico were dialable as if part of NANP, it
was due to US investments in telphone infrastructure, plus I suppose Mexico
city for the convenience of US callers. I assume these parts of Mexico were
not dialable from outside NANP using NANP numbers.
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:33:57 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Porn Company Has Snatched Up Nearly 25% of 1-800 Numbers in U.S., Canada
Message-ID: <iot6pl$4fj$2@news.albasani.net>
Michael G. Koerner <mgk920@dataex.com> wrote:
>With the nationwide-local calling plans that the phone companies are nearly
>all offering now, I would pretty much declare '1-800' (as well as '888',
>'877', '855') services to be obsolete.
>The marginal cost to me of a call to any number in the USA from my cell
>phone is zero - and '1-800' services were started for businesses to make
>it as easy and inexpensive as possible for their customers to call them,
>increasing customer traffic and thus sales. With that no longer being
>an issue for most customers, I'm seeing no reason why most businesses
>would retain them for much longer.
Because they want a non-geographic telephone number versus a telephone number
associated with particular geography, 'cuz then inbound callers have the
unreasonable expectation that the call center is truly located where the
call terminates, and not in the Philipines.
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:23:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: That pesky plus signs and mobile phones
Message-ID: <259472.67575.qm@web161504.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:39:21 -0500 John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
> At home we have AT&T and recently had T-Mobile for our cell service.
> I noticed on all phones, regardless of manufacturer, incoming SMS and
> calls without names assigned displayed in the +1xxxyyyzzzz format.
> Specifically the number is prefaced with the +1.
>
> I have a Verizon phone at work. I only see xxx-yyy-zzzz. What's
> more, I cannot call internationally by using the (+). The phone
> doesn't recognize that. I have to use 011. My attempt to call
> +60-4-yyy-zzzz resulted in a call to Vancouver.
>
> Is this difference due to GSM versus CDMA?
It all depends on what the sending service sends and the capability of
the receiving phone or CID box. On pretty much all my calls on
T-Mobile calls come in as 1 NXX NXXXXXX. If I receive a call from a
Netherlands mobile number it comes in as +316NXXXXXXX or if it comes
from an Israeli mobile number it comes in as +97254NXXXXXX. If you're
receiving the call on a mobile phone it may come in as +country
code/number on a regular CID box if it shows an international number
it may just show the country code. You say you have a Verizon phone
at work. Is this a Verizon land line or Verizon Wireless? If it's
Verizon Wireless then it may not know what to do with a + character
and it's probably due to the difference between how CDMA and GSM
handles calls.
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