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The Telecom Digest for July 7, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 165 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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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
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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.
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Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 10:38:00 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Amazon apology for Friday outages
Message-ID: <p0624084acc1aec748ba2@[10.0.1.6]>
Summary of the AWS Service Event in the US East Region
July 2, 2012
We'd like to share more about the service disruption which occurred
last Friday night, June 29th, in one of our Availability Zones in the
US East-1 Region. The event was triggered during a large scale
electrical storm which swept through the Northern Virginia area. We
regret the problems experienced by customers affected by the
disruption and, in addition to giving more detail, also wanted to
provide information on actions we'll be taking to mitigate these
issues in the future.
Our US East-1 Region consists of more than 10 datacenters structured
into multiple Availability Zones. These Availability Zones are in
distinct physical locations and are engineered to isolate failure
from each other. Last Friday, due to weather warnings of the
approaching storm, all change activity in the US East-1 Region had
been cancelled and extra personnel had been called into the
datacenters for the evening.
...
http://aws.amazon.com/message/67457/
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 17:13:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Fiber Is the Key to U.S. Telecom Diet
Message-ID: <b9cd51d8-d07d-4f83-a5b9-031b26f82ac3@h20g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 5, 12:20 am, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote:
> The National Regulatory Review Institute reported earlier this month
> that between January 2010 and April 2012 intense industry lobbying
> had resulted in passage of laws removing or reducing oversight of
> telecommunications providers in 20 states.
Which is unfortunate, considering the problems that new technology has
brought us, such as the flood of illegal telemarketing calls (see
separate thread). As discussed here, since there is no incentive for
any carrier to do anything about the problem, they won't.
It's too bad legislators don't know the history and can't look back at
the problems a "free-for-all" marketplace created circa 1900 in the
utilities of that era, such as the railroads.
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:58:42 -0500
From: hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ]
Message-ID: <G5SdndnYnbt_fmjSnZ2dnUVZ_qSdnZ2d@megapath.net>
> My experience is that the national Do Not Call list works very well.
I'm on the list. I get several calls per week.
Most of them are obviously crooks. The obvious example is the
guy with a strange accent who wants to fix my Windows box.
Other common examples are
Heather from Account Services
Attention Public Utility Customers
Carpet cleaners
I get a few calls from charities and a few claiming to be doing
marketing surveys. "We're not selling anything" from the local
newspaper. Right...
So in some sense, it's working as I don't get a lot of calls
from legitimate businesses. On the other hand, it's not working
as well as I'd like, and from the repeat pattern of many of the
bad guys, it sure would be nice if somebody went after them.
--
These are my opinions. I hate spam.
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:21:53 -0400
From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers ]
Message-ID: <barmar-9048F4.11215306072012@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <G5SdndnYnbt_fmjSnZ2dnUVZ_qSdnZ2d@megapath.net>,
hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray) wrote:
> > My experience is that the national Do Not Call list works very well.
>
> I'm on the list. I get several calls per week.
>
> Most of them are obviously crooks. The obvious example is the
> guy with a strange accent who wants to fix my Windows box.
>
> Other common examples are
> Heather from Account Services
> Attention Public Utility Customers
> Carpet cleaners
How about the ones that want to help me with my home mortgage? I don't
get many telemarketer calls, but for some reason I keep getting these,
even though I'm not having any problem paying my mortgage.
I used to get calls from Heather at work.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
***** Moderator's Note *****
I was able to stop the mortgage calls years ago: I would tell them I'm
interested, and then confirm that I was interested when the
sweat-young-thing called to ask if I really was, and then when the
real mortgage brokers called, I'd tell them they just wasted their
money on a non-productive lead, and that I don't do business with
crooks, and that I don't do business with those the crooks do business
with.
It took about four months, and I haven't had a mortgage call since.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:37:40 -0500
From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (PV)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers
Message-ID: <_tednflbCqRJX2jSnZ2dnUVZ_oSdnZ2d@supernews.com>
Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes:
>Per Steven:
>>If you built the SIT generator, you should sell them.
>
>I was wondering what a "SIT Tone" was until I read this:
>
>http://tinyurl.com/2xp9vw
>
>
>Sounds like a no-brainer to download a .WAV file and just add it
>to the start of the answering machine's message - with a long
>enough persistence to trigger the robo caller's response, but
>short enough so the actual message comes on before the innocent
>caller's "WTF?" response kicks in.
Back in the dark days before the DNC list, I used to get more than a
dozen telemarketing calls in a day. One of the things I tried was the SIT
trick. You don't need any fancy generator, you just need to put a
recording of the tone onto your voicemail or answering machine, right at
the front of the message. Info here:
http://www.yourhomenow.com/sit.html
In my experience, you only needed the first tone, and it could be very
short. The yourhomenow guy says that some dialers are now listening for
the second tone too. If it works, you'll know - the machine on the other
end will hang up almost immediately.
Personally though, I think this is all obsolete. The companies that are
likely to give a crap are already using the do-not-call list. I still get
a few calls, but they are ALWAYS scams; "Heather from card services" and
other such con games. Put it this way - if you are getting unsolicited
calls, they are either going to be surveys, political calls, or scams
(note, may be overlap in all categories, grin). None of those people care
about the DNC list, and a boiler-room operation probably doesn't have SIT
detectors on their dialers (if they're using dialers at all, they could
just as easily have people doing the calling).
Really the only thing you can do is collect as much information as you
can and forward it to the FTC. If you try putting SIT on your machine, by
all means tell us if it seems to result in faster hangups and less calls
after that, but I think it's fairly doubtful to make much difference. *
P.S. Also note: The people that are likely to call you nowadays aren't
like the old telemarketers who you could browbeat into submission
fairly easily. The kind you get now, if they go to a person, tend to
be sociopathic nutters. A few months ago I got fed up with one of
the guys who was calling and leaving messages on my machine about
fundraising for a (nonexistent) charity, and told him to stop
calling. Instead of doing that, he called back immediately and
cursed into the machine for a fairly-creative 30 seconds straight.
My machine recorded it all so I had a nice piece of evidence to give
the cops when he threatened to come over and break my arm, but I
really don't think it's worth it to taunt the weirdos anymore. I
either let it go to voicemail or hang up without comment.
--
* PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something
like corkscrews.
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:27:51 -0400
From: Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers
Message-ID: <i1mev7pm75s12knsk3opuhrsjkfcsti0hv@4ax.com>
Per PV:
>Really the only thing you can do is collect as much information as you
>can and forward it to the FTC.
Devil's Advocate Question: If the Feds can't nail Heather, what
can they do?
--
Pete Cresswell
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:24:23 -0500
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cold call firms flaunt rules that block telemarketers
Message-ID: <CradnQIooox6dGjSnZ2dnUVZ_q2dnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <jt2p5m$ktl$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>,
Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org> wrote:
>In article <jsvp1v$gp3$1@pcls6.std.com>,
>Michael Moroney <moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com> wrote:
>>Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes:
>>Don't SIT tone generators not work for any phone system using out-of-band
>>signalling of stuff like that? (that is, just about anything other than
>>POTS) ? Certainly telemarketers run from a call center with a DS-n
>>feed.
>
>>Special Information Tones are in band because they are intended to
>>signal to originating-end-point automatic calling equipment that the
>>call has failed.
>
>Why would "automatic calling equipment" pay any attention to them when
>they have a trunk-side connection to the phone network that explicitly
>tells them otherwise?
Because it DOESN'T. grin
At least not always, that is. All it takes is one analog trunk circuit
-anywhere- in the call path, and the caller's digital trunk signalling
dother than oesn't tell them diddly-squat.
Specifically consider a PBX with analog DID trunk lines. The only
way that PBX has to signal the caller, for 'non working number', or the
other 'failure' conditions ('all circuits busy' excluded), is via SIT.
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2012 01:10:10 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Car-Pooling Makes a Surge on Apps and Social Media
Message-ID: <p0624088bcc1c237d145c@[10.0.1.6]>
Car-Pooling Makes a Surge on Apps and Social Media
By MICKEY MEECE
July 4, 2012
The annual ritual of piling into the car for the great American
summer road trip has a new twist as more travelers are inviting
strangers along for part of the ride.
Long-distance travelers as well as commuters are connecting on sites
like Zimride.com, Ridejoy.com, Avego.com, Nuride.com, Rideshare.com
and eRideShare.com.
This summer, a German company with a quintessential American name,
Carpooling.com, will try to break into the United States market with
a trial run in the Northeast. In June, the company announced that 30
million rides had been offered through its 10-year-old network, which
now has 3.8 million registered users.
Ride-sharing and car-pooling, it seems, are having a moment in the
United States after many fits and starts.
"It's been a tough sell in the U.S. for a long time," said David
Burwell, director of the energy and climate program at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "A lot is due to not only the fact
that people have different places they want to go, but also safety
and other concerns about going into a car with strangers."
What is different now, Mr. Burwell said, is the advancement of
digital technology and social networking, "which removed a
significant amount of barriers."
To that end, eRideShare, which was started in 1999, is testing a
mobile app this week for iPhone and Android phones. "I see a lot of
new entrants this year" as well as new technology, said its founder,
Steven Schoeffler. "I think it will be a very interesting time for
ride-sharing."
The sites vary in the process of matching drivers with passengers,
security protocols and how payment is calculated and made. Some sites
allow participants to settle on the cost of a ride; others charge by
mile traveled. The profit-making sites take a percentage of the fee
charged to riders, but it's free to sign up for the service.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/technology/technology-makes-car-pooling-safer-and-easier.html
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