31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Add this Digest to your personal
or 
The Telecom Digest for October 6, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 233 : "text" Format
====== 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: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:10:15 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Former Verizon Wireless engineer sentenced on fraud scheme
Message-ID: <k4n7q8$r7b$1@dont-email.me>
Former Verizon Wireless engineer sentenced on fraud scheme
An FBI press release dated Oct. 3, 2012 announced that Michael W.
Baxter, 62, of Ball Ground, Georgia, was sentenced today by Senior
United States District Judge J. Owen Forrester to serve four years in
federal prison on charges of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to
steal millions of dollars in high-value network communications equipment
from Cisco Systems Inc. and his employer, Verizon Wireless, while
employed as a network engineer for Verizon between 2000 and 2010.
October 5, 2012 by Joel Hendon
http://www.examiner.com/article/former-verizon-wireless-engineer-sentenced-on-fraud-scheme
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 14:03:13 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: T-Mobile USA's value down $13 billion since failed AT&T deal
Message-ID: <k4n7d0$l1d$1@dont-email.me>
T-Mobile USA's value down $13 billion since failed AT&T deal
By CORNELIUS RAHN & JOSEPH DE WECK Bloomberg News
Published: 10/5/2012 1:48 AM
Last Modified: 10/5/2012 4:57 AM
Deutsche Telekom AG's agreement to merge T-Mobile USA with
MetroPCS Communications Inc. reveals how the value of its
T-Mobile unit may have dropped by $13 billion amid client
losses following a failed sale to AT&T Inc. last year.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=52&articleid=20121005_52_E3_ULNSoi571908
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: 5 Oct 2012 13:35:01 -0500
From: "Paul W. Schleck" <pschleck@novia.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: AT&T Deploys More Fuel Cells in its Sites
Message-ID: <506f27f3$0$97799$540ea2cf@novia.net>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
In <k4l8ar$5mf$1@dont-email.me> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> writes:
>Bloom Energy continues to gain traction for its fuel cell technology
>with major data center operators. AT&T said today that it will purchase
>an additional 9.6 megawatts of fuel cell capacity, which will make it
>Bloom Energy's largest non-utility customer.
I saw the 60 Minutes piece on this company (Bloom Energy) and its fuel
cell technology back in 2010:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-6221135.html
and have a couple of observations and questions:
- The physics/thermodynamics/engineering behind fuel cells are
well-established. They aren't trying to exceed known science, or do
some sneaky end-run around limits, or even present something that's
not reproducible. So that's ruled out as an obvious rebuttal.
- Past limitations of fuel cells include the need to fabricate plates
from expensive precious metals (platinum, palladium), run at very
high temperatures, use a relatively pure and expensive fuel source
such as Hydrogen, as well as engineer something that will be reliable
over the required decades-long service life to recover investment.
- Like solar panels, the return-on-investment is measured over decades,
extremely vulnerable to failure of expensive components well before
that required long service life, and distorted by heavy government
subsidies.
- Using natural gas to generate a significant amount of U.S. electrical
demands (versus the present mostly hydro/coal/nuclear) may run up the
prices of natural gas and further extend or even eliminate a finite
return-on-investment timeline. Are other alternatives like
biomass-sourced methane realistic?
- Is this really carbon-neutral? What are the impact on emissions,
particularly emissions-sensitive regions of the country such as
California?
- There's clearly a generous dollop of IPO hype over all of this,
including "Appeals to Authority" testimonials by Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, etc. Also, what are early customers
like eBay, Google, AT&T, etc., getting out of this?
- How probable is it that a small company developed revolutionary
breakthroughs overlooked by GE, Siemens, Phillips, and other
companies with decades (or even century+) long experience with power
generation? The "David and Goliath" narrative sounds nice, and is
used often in the computer industry (e.g., HP declining to follow up
on the technologies that Apple later ran with), but is sometimes
overused in contexts where it is not completely credible. One expert
interviewed for the 60 Minutes piece estimated that there is about a
20% chance this will wind up in people's homes in 10 years, and if
so, it will say "GE" on it. In short, how unique is their
proprietary "secret sauce" in this, and could it be easily
reverse-engineered by GE, Siemens, Phillips, etc., either bringing
different patents to the table, or just waiting out the Bloom Box
patents and overtaking the market with something of their own?
- --
Paul W. Schleck
pschleck@novia.net
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger pschleck@novia.net for PGP Public Key
iEYEARECAAYFAlBvJ7YACgkQ6Pj0az779o46/ACgrVaRImyCEAdOYCBH6xkeY4ww
BjIAniG/wJsRh83HRoW1opIB9qqMmh3q
=aiYU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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) 2012 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