Message-ID: <20210628151306.85D5373C@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2021 15:13:06 +0000 (UTC)
From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org>
Subject: TN: Open Source: Why is the Knox County Sheriff's office
phone line going down?
By Emma Davis, Report for America Corps Member
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is in response to a reader-submitted
question through Open Source, a platform where readers can submit
questions to the staff.
MOUNT VERNON - Over the past few months, when community members have
called the Knox County sheriff's office non-emergency line, the phone
has rung, and rung, and has continued ringing without end.
This was because intermittent equipment malfunctions prevented the
phone system from being triggered to take calls, said Kyle Webb,
Director for Information Technology services in Knox County
https://www.knoxpages.com/open_source/open-source-why-is-the-knox-county-sheriffs-office-phone-line-going-down/article_9361c4d4-d513-11eb-ae0c-270759fd1433.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
During the early days of the transition to Customer-provided
equipment, many companies purchased PBX's from manufacturers that did
not use "standard," Mother-Bell-Approved ringing voltages and
grounding.
Except, once one of the PBX's wasn't made by Western by-Ghod Electric,
things started to break. As a result, those PBX owners soon found
themselves unable to use "Extensions Off Premise," which were PBX
numbers that were connected to distant locations, such as the
company's warehouse. Such lines, which worked fine when connected to
the step-by-step electromechanical PBX's supplied by Western Electric,
would sometimes not be able to relay ringing voltage supplied without
a ground reference. For example, Rolm PBX's had something like 70
volts between tip and ring, usually enough to ring a "500" set, but it
was floating, *NOT* referenced to ground, and would not, therefore,
trip the "R" relay in some T-Carrier "FXO" (Foreign eXchange, Office
end) channel units.
The solution, back then in the dark ages when dinosaurs roamed the
earth, was that most of the PBX companies rushed to make their PBX's
"compatible" with Western Electric equipment.
You're probably thinking, since this is 2021, "Why didn't they just
dial '9' and make a regular call?" To which I, and probably many other
old phone guys, would reply "Oh, you innocent children!"
In the bad 'ol days of Mother Bell's monopoly, prices (I almost wrote
"rates," but few would understand) for even local calls between
business locations were exorbitant, and most large companies went to
great lengths to avoid any use of the PSTN that wasn't clearly
unavoidable. Large companies would have "tie lines" in-between their
PBX's, either from one operator position to another, or connected
directly so that PBX users at either end could dial directly into the
other PBX. The Tie Lines, which utilized DX signalling - the epitome
of ground-referenced signalling, dating from early single-wire
telegraph lines - would not work with the CPE PBX's that used isolated
ground environments and didn't understand *ANY* ground-referenced
lines.
The revisions, hardware modifications, and other work-arounds served
for a few decades, but now that Western Electric is deader than the
batteries that Thomas Alva Edison wanted to use to transport elec-
tricity between cities, well, it seems some incompatibilities have
crept back in to a no-longer-quite-so-well-integrated network.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Message-ID: <20210627205858.CB7A9736@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2021 20:58:58 +0000 (UTC)
From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Amazon Sidewalk Shares Your Home WiFi with the Neighbors
BY Theodore F. Claypoole
On June 8, Amazon just switched on a new feature for newer Echos and
Ring security cameras, sharing a part of your home's internet
connection with your neighbors. That's right, they just opened a door
to your personal home wifi so that others can use it. And it is
complicated to extricate your own system from the "Sidewalk" bandwidth
sharing.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/amazon-sidewalk-shares-your-home-wifi-neighbors
Message-ID: <963B4D02-06A9-4110-AC95-E2F0E7DA862B@roscom.com>
Date: 22 Jun 2021 09:36:18 -0400
From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Even Creepier Covid tracking: Google silently pushed app to
users' phones
Massachusetts launched a COVID tracking app, and uh, it was automatically
installed?!
By Ron Amadeo
Over the weekend, Google and the state of Massachusetts managed to
make creepy COVID tracking apps even creepier by automatically
installing them on people's Android phones. Numerous reports on
Reddit, Hacker News, and in-app reviews claim that "MassNotify,"
Massachusetts' COVID tracking app, silently installed on their Android
device without user consent.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/even-creepier-covid-tracking-google-silently-pushed-app-to-users-phones/
