32 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Add this Digest to your personal
or 
The Telecom Digest for November 5, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 226 : "text" Format
====== 32 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: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 09:57:19 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: 50th anniversary of first commercial installation of ESS
Message-ID: <5723f9b6-1fb5-4a89-bc36-1102c4226a22@googlegroups.com>
1963 marks the anniversary of several major Bell System innovations.
* A No. 101 ESS, the first commercial installation of electronic
switching, using stored-program control, went into service in Cocoa
Beach, Florida on November 30, 1963. (details below)
* ESS No. 1 was being prepared for its first use. The first
commercial installation of No. 1 ESS was a 4,000-line office at
Succasunna, New Jersey. The equipment for Succasunna was installed
in the summer and fall of 1963, and system program testing began at
this location in January 1964.
* Technical trial of custom calling services on No. 5 crossbar
(Columbus, Ohio). Whiles the services were popular, it was not
cost-effective to offer them on a No. 5 switch.
* First public (non-trial) offering of Touch Tone service.
* TSP service (person-to-person, collect, coin--automated consoles)
first offered Forest Hills, NY.
* Federal Telephone System cutover (national internal network).
While most of the above are vital elements of today's telephone
service, TSP/TSPS is essentially obsolete due to loss of payphones.
Also, inexpensive or unlimited long distance service has virtually
eliminated the need for toll classes other than directly dialed
station-to-station.
No. 101 ESS, excerpted from the literature:
Over the years, intensive studies made at Bell Laboratories have shown
that electronic switching systems are quite feasible and that
electronic techniques are readily adaptable to a wide range of new
services. Electronic systems also have many other advantages for the
customer and the telephone engineer. Electronic switching techniques
make it possible to easily change services and accommodate new
requirements stemming from a customer's growth.
The system embodies a number of new switching techniques. Among the
most characteristic are:
Shared Centralized Control: The switching equipment and the control
equipment are separated. The control unit, located in a telephone
company office, controls simultaneously a number of customer switch
units.
Stored Program Control: Highly versatile control of switching and
service features is attained by stored program techniques. Switching
instruc- tions are stored in plug-in electronic memories and these are
consulted and acted upon as dictated by the service demands and the
internal system logic. This technique allows features to be changed or
added easily at the control unit. It does not require any action at
the customers offices.
Time Division Switching: The time division networks in the switch
units keep to a minimum the space requirements on the customer's
premises and enable simple and flexible growth capabilities within the
limits of the system. Time division switching permits all calls in
the switch unit to simultaneously share a common transmission path
called a common bus. A cycle of time for the bus is divided into
discrete, rapidly recurring time positions called time slots. Each
time slot serves as a switched-in link over which a call connection
can be established. Thus, when terminal circuits are to be joined in a
talking connection, they are assigned the same time slot. Each switch
unit has 50 time slots, so that 50 call connections can exist
simultaneously.
This system included support for Touch Tone dialing.
Source: Bell Laboratories Record, November 1963;
A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System, Switching, 1925-1975.
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 12:11:29 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: iPhone 5S surprises
Message-ID: <p06240826ce9d7783fa34@[10.0.1.11]>
iPhone 5S surprises
Oct 20, 2013
By Jean-Louis Gassée
Monday Note
"I will withhold judgment on the new iPhone until I have a chance to
play customer, buy the product (my better half seems to like the 5C
while I pine for a 5S), and use it for about two weeks - the time
required to go beyond my first and often wrong impressions".
I wrote those words a little over a month ago. I've now played
customer for the requisite two weeks - I got an iPhone 5S on October
3rd - and I'm prepared to report.
But first, some context.
iPhone launches always generate controversy, there's always something
to complain about: Antennagate for the iPhone 4, the Siri beta for
the 4S, the deserved Maps embarrassment last year - with a clean,
dignified Tim Cook apology.
(Whether these fracas translate into lost revenue is another matter).
As I sat in the audience during the introduction of the original
iPhone, back in January, 2007, I thought the demo was too good, that
Steve was (again) having his way with facts. I feared that when the
product shipped a few months later, the undistorted reality would
break the spell.
We know now that the iPhone that Steve presented on the stage was
unfinished, that he trod a careful path through a demo minefield. But
the JesusPhone that Apple shipped - unfinished in many ways (no
native apps, no cut-and-paste) - was more than a success: It heralded
the Smartphone 2.0 era.
...
http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/10/20/iphone-5s-surprises/
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 12:09:43 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Security Shouldn't Trump Privacy - But I'm Afraid It Will
Message-ID: <p06240825ce9d76edd733@[10.0.1.11]>
Security Shouldn't Trump Privacy - But I'm Afraid It Will
Oct 28, 2013
Jean-Louis Gassée
Monday Note
The NSA and security agencies from other countries are shooting for
total surveillance, for complete protection against terrorism and
other crimes. This creates the potential for too much knowledge
falling one day in the wrong hands.
An NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, takes it upon himself to gather a
mountain of secret internal documents that describe our surveillance
methods and targets, and shares them with journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Since May of this year, Greenwald has provided us with a trickle of
Snowden's revelations - and our elected officials, both here and
abroad, treat us to their indignation.
What have we learned? We Spy On Everyone.
We spy on enemies known or suspected. We spy on friends, love
interests, heads of state, and ourselves. We spy in a dizzying number
of ways, both ingenious and disingenuous.
(Before I continue, a word on the word "we". I don't believe it's
honest or emotionally healthy to say "The government spies". Perhaps
we should have been paying more attention, or maybe we should have
prodded our solons to do the jobs we elected them for - but let's not
distance ourselves from our national culpability.)
You can read Greenwald's truly epoch-making series On Security and
Liberty in The Guardian and pick your own approbations or invectives.
You may experience an uneasy sense of wonder when contemplating the
depth and breadth of our methods, from cryptographic and social
engineering exploits (doubly the right word), to scooping up metadata
and address books and using them to construct a security-oriented
social graph.
We manipulate technology and take advantage of human foibles; we twist
the law and sometimes break it, aided by a secret court without
opposing counsel; we outsource our spying by asking our friends to
suck petabytes of data from submarine fiber cables, data that's
immediately combed for keywords and then stored in case the we need to
"walk back the cat".
The reason for this panopticon is simple: Terrorists, drugs, and
"dirty" money can slip through the tiniest crack in the wall. We
can't let a single communication evade us. We need to know
everything. No job too small, no surveillance too broad.
...
http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/10/28/security-shouldnt-trump-privacy-but-im-afraid-it-will/
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.
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 (3 messages)
Return to Archives ** Older Issues