31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

The Telecom Digest for August 1, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 164 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Vote on Fire Island phone service Thursday (HAncock4)
Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld (Monty Solomon)
The Joys of 802.11ac WiFi (Monty Solomon)
Re: Verizon telemarketers violating laws? (Doug McIntyre)
How does third-party DSL work? (Jim Haynes)
Ninth Circuit Tosses Fox into the Hopper...For Now (Neal McLain)

====== 31 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 Bill Horne 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 that person, or email address owner.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of that address. 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, and other stuff of interest. 




Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:31:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Vote on Fire Island phone service Thursday 
Message-ID: <37361b16-f62b-4cd7-ba39-8bcda885cb02@googlegroups.com>

On Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:16:13 PM UTC-4, Bill Horne wrote:
> A plan to eliminate landline phone service in western Fire Island is
scheduled to be voted on by the state Public Service Commission Thursday amid
concern it could leave people on the barrier island unable to make calls if a
storm knocks out electrical power.

CBS News New York reported on July 9th that Verizon Communications is using
the barrier island as a test case in eliminating landline telephones. (It also
seeks to do this in storm-ravaged Mantoloking, N.J.; see separate thread.)
The underground copper wiring was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.  Instead of
costly replacement, Verizon is using Fire Island as test case, offering all
300 permanent residents and dozens of businesses a wireless alternative it
calls Voice Link.

Residents are not pleased.  Businesses say it's hard to verify credit cards
and send faxes.  But Verizon says not many would use traditional landlines if
they were rebuilt.

for full article please see:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/07/09/verizon-using-fire-island-to-test-getting-rid-of-landline-phones/




Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 23:21:41 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld
Message-ID: <p06240804ce1e330fe240@[10.0.1.3]>

Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
July 30, 2013

In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court 
on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical 
location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a 
search warrant.

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for 
the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the 
constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data 
stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said 
a warrantless search was "not per se unconstitutional" because 
location data was "clearly a business record" and therefore not 
protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already 
bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to 
require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location 
data.

The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State 
Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a 
warrant to track a suspect's whereabouts in real time. That decision 
relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in 
the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/technology/warrantless-cellphone-tracking-is-upheld.html




Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2013 23:42:50 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Joys of 802.11ac WiFi
Message-ID: <p06240806ce1e35bd8315@[10.0.1.3]>

The Joys of 802.11ac WiFi

by Jarred Walton
July 8, 2013
AnandTech

Recap: 802.11ac Wireless Networking

We've had quite a few major wireless networking standards over the 
years, and while some have certainly been better than others, I have 
remained a strong adherent of wired networking. I don't expect I'll 
give up the wires completely for a while yet, but Western Digital and 
Linksys sent me some 802.11ac routers for testing, and for the first 
time in a long time I'm really excited about wireless.

I'm not a good representative of normal PC users, but it has been a 
long time, relatively speaking, since we first saw Draft-N wireless 
options-Gary Key (now with ASUS) wrote about it what seems like an 
eternity ago, and in Internet time I suppose seven years is pretty 
darn close. Granted, 802.11ac has really been "done" for about two 
years now, but the first laptops to arrive with 11ac adapters are 
less than a month old-up until now, 11ac has been almost exclusively 
used for routers and bridges.

Before I get into a few performance specifics of 802.11ac testing, 
let me start by saying what is bad with 802.11n. The single biggest 
issue for me is the lack of quality implementations in so many of our 
devices. If you look at Apple's MacBook Pro offerings, they've all 
been 3x3:3 MIMO for several years, offering connection speeds of up 
to 450Mbps. The problem with that "up to 450Mbps" is that it's 
influenced by several factors.

Of course you need to know what sort of signal quality you have, but 
by far the bigger issue is this: are you talking about 2.4GHz 802.11n 
or 5GHz 802.11n? If you're talking about the former, you can pretty 
much throw any thoughts of 450Mbps out the window. The bigger problem 
with "up to 450Mbps" is that the vast majority of laptops and routers 
don't offer such support; Apple's 3x3:3 dual-band implementation is 
better than 99% of Windows laptops (and yes, I just made up that 
statistic).

...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7127/the-joys-of-80211ac-wifi




Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 17:27:34 -0500
From: Doug McIntyre <merlyn@dork.geeks.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon telemarketers violating laws? 
Message-ID: <XqOdnbHvFfrLcWvMnZ2dnUVZ_jqdnZ2d@giganews.com>

Fred Atkinson <fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com> writes:
>On Jul 29, 2013, at 2:34 AM, "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>>> I get very few if any telemarketer calls on my cell phone. Probably 
>>> because I call block the really egregious stuff and block a lot of 
>>> 800/888/877 numbers.
>> 
>> You're just lucky.  I get tons of junk calls on my cell phone, clearly
>> because it is on sucker lists that junk callers trade.
>> 
>> I've never given them anything more than instructing them to take me
>> off their list and then die, so I can only imagine what the previous
>> holder of the number did.

>I very seldom get telemarketing calls.  In fact, I cannot remember
>getting one in the last few years.  I have had my numbers on the
>national DNC list for a very long time.

>I rarely get survey calls either.  When I have, I simply tell them
>that I do not do surveys and please do not waste their time or mine by
>calling me again.

>For me, it works.  When I hear all of this crying about it not
>working, I wonder what people are doing to compromise their privacy.

I think it has to do more with luck of the draw than anything. 
Ie. I too get very few telemarketing calls, the only ones I get are
ones that would be permitted via the do-not-call rules. 

BUT, my home phone # is in an NPA-NXX that is not very populated, ie.
very few #s have ever been allocated in it since the area code split
13-14 years ago, and most #s are intercepts. And my cell NPA-NXX's are
from very old-school cell phone allocation to the original smaller
wireless carriers that were long bought out and are part of the
conglomerates now (ie. Aerial Communications). 

So, I don't think my #s are "attractive" to the war-dialers and such
that the bad-players use, since there are so little hits. 

I'd imagine that densly populated NPA-NXX's, especially in the main
area, instead of a semi-recent split is much more attractive to the
war-dialers.




Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 21:08:24 -0500
From: Jim Haynes <jhaynes@cavern.uark.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: How does third-party DSL work? 
Message-ID: <slrnkve80o.241.jhaynes@Frances.localdomain>

I have telephone service from AT&T, and DSL from Earthlink.

A while back my DSL went totally dead.  The modem indicated that there
was no connection to the DSL modem at the other end.  Eventually Earthlink
had an AT&T man come by, who spent a lot of time checking the wiring in my
house and eventually found that the trouble was somewhere out there in
the telephone plant, believe he said pair gain equipment.  He said there are
cards in there that go bad sometimes, and he switched my line to a different
pair and that fixed it all up.

Now I'm having a different problem - the DSL modem indicates that it has
a solid connection to the DSL modem at the other end, but the Internet
connection keeps going away and coming back.  There's supposed to be an
AT&T man coming to look at it again.  

It would help if I understood how all this works.  DSL modem on copper
pair at my house goes somewhere out in the city to some apparatus but not
direct to the telephone office.  I don't know where the DSL modem at
the far end is, nor whether it is owned by AT&T or by Earthlink, nor
how the DSL modem out there connects to the Internet.

-- 
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net




Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 22:55:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Ninth Circuit Tosses Fox into the Hopper...For Now 
Message-ID: <cf59a467-12fe-4b61-ad20-19343e175cf5@googlegroups.com>

Posted on Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth blog on July 29, 2013 by Kevin Goldberg

At first blush, the Ninth Circuit decision allowing Dish to continue to offer
its "Hopper" service may not look great for broadcasters, but don't hop to any
conclusions just yet.

The TV industry has suffered some setbacks on the copyright front in the Aereo
litigation in the Second Circuit and, as we have reported, the industry is
keeping its fingers crossed, hoping for support from the Ninth Circuit on the
Left Coast (in the pending Aereokiller appeal).

Bad news. In an unrelated case the Ninth Circuit has issued a decision that
doesn't help broadcasters although, much like the Aereo decisions so far, the
damage here is by no means catastrophic.

The decision involves the "Hopper" from Dish.

Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/pg6ausl

Neal McLain






TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
addition 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 Bill Horne. 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.

The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
Contact information: Bill Horne
Telecom Digest
43 Deerfield Road
Sharon MA 02067-2301
339-364-8487
bill at horne dot net
Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom
Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom 
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


Copyright (C) 2013 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved.
Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.



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 The Telecom Digest (6 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues