31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for November 20, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 272 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
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Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 20:51:43 -0800 (PST)
From: "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Area code splits
Message-ID: <305e6eb1-a7cf-4894-89f4-b487f54607cc@s14g2000vba.googlegroups.com>
On Nov 18, 11:30 pm, John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> >I don't see why New York boroughs should be denied the pleasure of
> >experiencing something comparable to the 312/773 split, which follows
> >rate center boundaries and jog all over the place.
>
> Well, New York has the geographic peculiarities of Marble Hill, which
> is legally part of Manhattan while physically connected to the Bronx,
> and Rikers' Island which is legally part of the Bronx, while only
> accessible from Queens, but in general the borough boundaries are
> unambiguous, mostly marked by large navigable waterways, so that's
> where the splits happen. And perhaps the NY PSC is more on the ball
> than IL.
>
> Irrelevant fact: for many years the NY PSC was run by Fred Kahn, who
> later was the force behind airline regulation, and after that retired
> to a sinecure at Cornell.
Where'd you hear that?
He was professor of economics and Dean of the College of Arts &
Sciences during my time (1968-72), and went to the FAA under Carter,
by which time he was probably at emertus age. If he had an office on
campus after 1981, it was as a courtesy.
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:24:36 -0500 (EST)
From: johnl@iecc.com (John L)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Area code splits
Message-ID: <k8e11k$25i0$1@leila.iecc.com>
>He was professor of economics and Dean of the College of Arts &
>Sciences during my time (1968-72), and went to the FAA under Carter,
>by which time he was probably at emertus age. If he had an office on
>campus after 1981, it was as a courtesy.
He was definitely back at Cornell in some capacity after that, since
he was interviewed in the local paper from time to time. The movie
theater with the urinal was redone around 2008.
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:01:39 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: phone numbers
Message-ID: <a71eafc6-7143-4624-b2d2-22ac20f3cf0f@v9g2000yql.googlegroups.com>
On Nov 18, 12:44 am, John Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote:
> Bell was mostly panel which didn't need 1+, independents were mostly
> SxS which did. That's why states where most people lived in Bell
> areas, e.g., New York, Illinois, and California, never had toll alerting.
>From the Bell Labs history (Switching):
Panel peaked in 1958 at 3,830,000 lines.
Step peaked in 1973 at 24,440,000 lines, more than any other
switching system.
No. 5 surpassed step in 1974 in number of lines.
Also, note that for the small community dial office, there were 3,500
of them serving 4,000,000 lines. The book notes that a common-control
swtich was uneconomical for small exchanges for years.
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 14:49:18 -0800
From: Andrew Carey <carey@ar-ballbat.VALID-IF-THIS-IS-ELIDED.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Was "Wall Street" ever out of service?
Message-ID: <253CD5DC-2331-412A-A816-2CF767E32081@ar-ballbat.VALID-IF-THIS-IS-ELIDED.org>
On Nov 18, 2012, at 11:24, HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
> I suspect that the incident being asked about was a failure in a
> post Divestiture AT&T toll exchange serving downtown NYC. If memory
> serves, this was in the 1980s. They were running a test and
> switched to battery supply but forgot to switch back, and apparently
> the batteries simply ran down.
http://bit.ly/TLu4s9
According to the article, AT&T switched off commercial AC at the
request of ConEd and had a rectifier failure so the battery string
went into discharge. It also says the DACS cross connect machine lost
power not the 4ESS switch itself.
> I don't know if the following affected Wall Street, but some years
> ago a programming error in a generic caused several ESS's nationwide
> to fail. I believe the error was in switches made in Plano, Texas.
http://bit.ly/UOEgqP
About a year before the one above. Software bug in the 4ESS software
caused cascading failures in other 4ESS systems. As part of the
software recovery, a bogus message would be sent which would cause the
receiving 4ESS to go into recovery. The second 4ESS would launch its
own bogus messages causing still more systems to go into recovery,
including the first one.
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 01:16:11 -0600
From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Smart TV Viewer's Bill Of Rights
Message-ID: <50A9DCBB.50506@annsgarden.com>
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
> Subject: Re: The Smart TV Viewer's Bill Of Rights
> Message-ID: <20121112005043.GA20513@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
>
> On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 09:41:23AM -0600, Neal McLain wrote:
>>
>> Quoting the article:
>>
>>> 4. The Right to Quality. I didn't buy a 60-inch TV to watch cats,
>>> babies and skateboard wipeouts in my living room. That's what my
>>> office PC is for.
>>>
>>> 5. The Right to Free TV. Our parents watched three channels and
>>> paid nothing. I watch five channels and pay $150 a month. Don't
>>> charge me even more for programs that come from the Internet.
>>
>> This sounds like the latest iteration of the old cable TV "a-la-carte"
>> discussion: pay for only the channels you watch. The market for
>> television programming doesn't work that way. If you subscribe to cable
>> or satellite TV, you're part of the audience for every channel on the
>> dial even if you only watch five of them.
>>
>> Advertising rates are based on "net paid circulation," and every
>> subscriber is part of the circulation for every channel. The advertiser
>> is paying for the right to reach you even if you never watch his
>> advertisements. Not surprisingly, then, programmers all want their
>> programs carried on the basic tier, and they contractually prohibit
>> anything that smells like a-la-carte.
>
> I don't think that makes sense these days: AFAIK, most set-top boxes
> report the channel being watched. That gives cable-tv operators very
> accurate data on who is watching what, and when, and for how long: why
> don't advertisers just pay only for the sets that are actually tuned
> in while their commercial is playing?
Under current law, no cable or satellite company can legally release
any "personally identifiable information" to any third party without
the subscriber's permission. According to the FCC:
| "Finally, your [cable TV] provider may not disclose any of this
| information without your written permission. If you are damaged
| by your cable provider's violation of any of these requirements,
| you may sue your cable provider in federal court."
| Source: FCC Guide "Protecting Your Privacy."
|
| http://www.fcc.gov/guides/protecting-your-privacy
|
Whether or not disclosing the channel to which customer X is watching
at a given moment constitutes of violation of this prohibition is not
for me to say. But imagine the firestorm that would break out if cable
TV operators actually tracked viewership at that level of
detail. Every self-proclaimed consumer-protectionist outfit from the
ACLU to Consumers Union to the FTC to state-level CUBs would oppose
it. Rush Limbaugh would throw an apoplectic fit: "The government is
spying on us!"
Many local franchise agreements contain similar language. This was
hot-button issue during the Great Franchise Wars of the '70s and '80s:
conspiracy theorists were spreading all sorts of nonsense about how
this new thing called cable TV would allow big corporations to spy on
you. One crackpot even claimed that a TV set hooked cable TV could be
used to watch you.
I recognize that this may change in the future. It's certainly
possible that changes in technology and federal law may permit the
business model you suggest. It just hasn't happened yet.
>> In any case, internet TV blows up the whole business model. There's no
>> such thing as "basic" service; every program has to stand on its own as
>> a separate retail product. So of course the programmer is going to
>> charge more for each program.
>
> Maybe not: the Internet TV supply-on-demand model must, by its nature,
> keep track of who orders what program, and since there's a charge for
> the service, the viewing choices are usually made by adults (at least
> during prime time), which means that advertisers can get much better
> feedback about which programs interest the "buying audience" that has
> money to spend. A program owner doesn't need to charge more for each
> program if (s)he knows that the offering draws a better class of
> viewer: after all, 1,000 upper-income homes are a much better audience
> for most discretionary purchases than 100,000 random TV sets that are
> likely to be on another channel anyway.
You may be right, but I have a hard time believing that any advertiser
would pay 1000 times more for an ad spot in an internet-delivered
program than he'd pay for a spot in a non-broadcast program delivered
by cable TV.
>> Bottom line: you're not going to get internet TV programming at
>> the same per-program price that you pay when it's part of a larger
>> package.
> That depends on several things, not the least of which is what we
> think of as the "price" of a program. I took my wife out to the movies
> the other day: on a cash basis, I paid a lot more than I would have if
> I wait for the movie (ARGO, btw) to appear on TV or Netflix,
> etc. That, however, is not the point: I didn't just pay for the
> movie, but for a quiet interlude free of cell phones, emails, and
> expectations. The "price" is relative, and it's not just money.
Well, sure. But I was comparing two methods of delivering and charging
for video programming.
Neal
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 03:37:05 +0000 (UTC)
From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: NYC CO Fire: Was "Wall Street" ever out of service?
Message-ID: <k8c9h1$num$1@reader1.panix.com>
HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes:
>The fire described above occured in 1975 and was in the Second Avenue
>exchange in lower Manhattan. Service in the neighborhood was out for
>a week or so. The following link has some information on that fire
>and the massive recovery effort.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Telephone
>
As befits a PR film, "The Miracle on Second Avenue" carefully
avoided several topics:
a) What caused it?
b) Why was it so massive?
c) What did cost ($$)
d) What was the human cost?
The informed speculation I have seen was the cause was an
electrically-caused explosion in the Main Distribution Frame.
Seems NY Tel had found a loophole in the Factory Mutual rules,
and since their distribution was underground, had skimped and
not put protectors [aka fuses] at the MDF. Then one of two
things occurred:
1) "Backhoe fade" crossing trunkage with ConEd 10KV+ primaries
or
2) A crew using a "hotshot" to burn out an outside plant short
failed to disconnect the pair from the frame first.
In any event the MDF "exploded"...
b) The MDF area had lots of polyethylene insulated cable {PIC}.
It burns well, with choking dense black smoke. The fire soon
spread to panel switches. Panel had lots of spinning shafts, and
they were regularly lubed, with oil. The lube dripped down into
the cotton-insulted jumper bundles. If you think this resembles
candle wicks, so did the fire.....
c) I never saw a published value, and suspect it was as classified
as General Petraeus's email contents.
d) Many FDNY inhaled the smoke, and there were allegations of
coverups of their lung damage.
In any case, the replacement MDF did have protectors, and NYT
also ordered large quantities of protectors soon after...I wonder why.
--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2012 22:42:00 -0600
From: Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Area code splits
Message-ID: <k8cdap$lkh$1@dont-email.me>
On 18-Nov-12 22:32, John Levine wrote:
>> It is a practical issue affecting the market viability of any
>> caller-pays "non-geographic" number where it is impossible to determine,
>> before making the call, what the rate applied will be.
>
> We already have those. They're 1-900 and 1-500 (and 1-5XX) numbers.
> Wahoo.
... and, other than for phone sex operators and Caribbean scammers, such
numbers have been a complete market failure.
S
--
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
Date: 19 Nov 2012 14:17:15 -0500
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Was "Wall Street" ever out of service?
Message-ID: <k8e0jr$f47$1@panix2.panix.com>
In article <k89dls$pr3$1@dont-email.me>, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
>Thanks for reading this: I have a question for the historians on the list.
>
>My brother says he read (somewhere) that the ESS telephone exchanges
>that serve Wall Street in New York City were out of service for several
>days at some time in the distant past.
>
>I say that never happened and he read an urban legend.
>
>Was there ever a long-term failure in an ESS that served Wall Street?
He doesn't mean the Feb 27, 1975 cable vault fire?
That had widespread disruptions but did not directly serve Wall Street
and wasn't an ESS.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:31:17 -0500
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: photos/article of VZ NYC hurricane cleanup
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1211191930060.313@panix5.panix.com>
It turns out that, as you might guess, basements
and 15 foot storm surges... don't mix well.
Triply so when it's salt water.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/17/3655442/restoring-verizon-service-manhattan-hurricane-sandy
lost of photos..
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
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