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The Telecom Digest for December 6, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 311 : "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
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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: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 17:23:05 -0500
From: "Geoffrey Welsh" <gwelsh@spamcop.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MSNBC/NYT: Caller ID Forging
Message-ID: <6c638$4edd4416$adce29b0$2762@PRIMUS.CA>
Wes Leatherock wrote:
> They are complaining that when only the main number is given from a
> PBX, that location may be miles away from where the actual caller is
> (and where the need is for fire, ambulance or police).
That may be true anyway. I have configured a branch office with no trunks
but a T1 back to the PBX at the main office. Some staff at the branch
office had DIDs that could have been registered at the new address but some
extensions were not DIDs so the main number would have been used for CID.
In retrospect that was awfully foolish of me: a 911 operator could have been
forgiven for assuming that the address in question was accurate but I might
have ended up in a lot of hot water if emergency services showed up to the
wrong address and someone was seriously effected as a result (the offices
were only a few doors apart but, in a situation like a heart attack, the
extra couple of minutes to redirect the responders might have been
critical.) I'm probably not the only person to have made such an oversight
but hopefully this will remind us all to be mindful of the issue.
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 13:34:09 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Sneaky Mobile Ads Invade Android Phones
Message-ID: <p06240809cb02bf07e4d5@[10.0.1.4]>
Sneaky Mobile Ads Invade Android Phones
Download the wrong app to your Android phone, and you may end up with
ads on your home screen or notification bar. We'll tell you who's
behind the annoyance and how to get the ads off your phone.
By Tom Spring
December 4, 2011
Are you wondering how that mysterious icon ended up on your Android
phone's start screen? Annoyed at the ads clogging your notification
bar? You aren't alone. Thousands of Android apps now include software
that shoves marketing icons onto your phone's start screen or pushes
advertising into your notification bar--and many of the apps give you
no warning about the ad invasion.
Many of these ads come from mobile marketing firms such as AirPush,
Appenda, LeadBolt, Moolah Media, and StartApp. The companies work
with app developers hungry for some way to make money from their
smartphone software. By bundling their adware into popular Android
programs, these marketing companies say they are now pushing ads to
millions of new smartphones each week.
Smartphone users generally hate the swarm of marketing on their
touchscreens, but the approach is growing fast. One of the companies,
AirPush, says 800,000 people a day download an Android app with its
adware inside--up from 250,000 just three months ago.
It may be next to impossible to completely avoid this kind of
advertising on your phone. I looked at dozens of apps that contain ad
software and found that few of them disclose that they contain
adware. But there are ways to get the ads off your phone, as we'll
see below.
...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/245305/sneaky_mobile_ads_invade_android_phones.html
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:34:16 -0500
From: John Stahl <aljon@stny.rr.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: OSHA: Two Federal DOT Agencies Ban Hand-Held Phone Use
Message-ID: <33.43.23309.A900DDE4@cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com>
US Occupational Health & Safety has reported on their web site
(www.ohsonline.com) that "Two DOT agencies, the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration, published a final rule Dec. 2 that will prohibit use
of hand-held mobile phones by commercial drivers while on the
road...."
It seems that the DOT has put a higher penalty on hand-held cell phone
usage while driving than probably most states have imposed on
over-the-road drivers and have even added a fine on their employers,
too. According to the article, "Drivers who violate the restriction
can be charged a civil penalty of as much as $2,750; a civil penalty
of as much as $11,000 can be imposed on employers who fail to require
their drivers to comply." These new rules take effect January 3, 2012.
See complete article here:
http://ohsonline.com/articles/2011/12/02/dot-agencies-ban-handheld-phone-use-by-commercial-drivers.aspx
73's,
John Stahl
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 10:36:51 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein.SeeSigSpambait@wn2.wn.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MSNBC/NYT: Caller ID Forging
Message-ID: <20111205153717.5304858A9@mailout.easydns.com>
On Sat, 03 Dec 2011, John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote,
>Robert Bonomi wrote:
>...
> > For ALL these reasons, the -only- way that the public will get 'reliable'
> > Caller-ID info is via government regulation that requires originating
> > telco enforcement.
>
>This is correct only as long as the feds require any carrier that receives
>Caller-ID via SS7 from an earlier carrier to pass it along unchanged.
In the recent Order on Universal Service and Intercarrier
Compensation, the FCC did require carriers to pass along Calling
Party Number and Charge Number unchanged. This was intended to
prevent "phantom calls", where the terminating carrier can't tell
where the call originated, so they can't see if they can charge high
intrastate rates.
HOWEVER,the new rules do not require every telco to correctly
populate the CPN field; they just require intermediate telcos to pass
it unchanged .
...
On Sun, 04 Dec 2011, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) replied,
...
> > 1) An ethical telco does not pass along any Caller-ID from a call
> > originating on its network (at least not without flagging it as
> > "unreliable" in some machine readable way) unless it can
> > authenticate that the number belongs to the originating
> > subscriber.
>
>There is no provision in SS7 for such a flag.
Actually, there is. Look at ITU-T Recommendation Q.763, the Calling
Party Number information element. It includes two bits:
Screening indicator
0 0 reserved (Note 2)
0 1 user provided, verified and passed
1 0 reserved (Note 2)
1 1 network provided
NOTE 2 - Code 00 and 10 are reserved for "user provided, not
verified" and "user provided, verified
and failed" respectively. Codes 00 and 10 are for national use.
These are also included in ISDN signaling to the subscriber. Now
whether telcos ever bother to screen is a different question. (I
don't know for sure but I doubt it's done often if at all, at least
in the US.) The point is that there is a way to indicate whether a
screen CPN passed the originating carrier's screen.
And yes I know that ANSI SS7 (used in the US) is not quite the same
as ITU SS7, but I think this part is similar, and the ITU stuff is
available for free on line. The US stuff AFAIK isn't.
--
Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com
ionary Consulting
http://www.ionary.com/
+1 617 795 2701
Date: 5 Dec 2011 15:27:09 -0500
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MSNBC/NYT: Caller ID Forging
Message-ID: <jbj9et$cgd$1@panix2.panix.com>
John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote:
>
>1) An ethical telco does not pass along any Caller-ID from a call originating
>on its network (at least not without flagging it as "unreliable" in some
>machine readable way) unless it can authenticate that the number belongs to
>the originating subscriber.
This would require a lot of legal changes, to the point of pretty much
redfining the concept of the common carrier.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:16:08 -0500
From: Pete Cresswell <withheld@Invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Pending legislation would allow robot calls to cell phones
Message-ID: <6g2qd7tb4i0mb9fq36mj7rn1mm4kcvf81o@4ax.com>
Per Stephen:
>Unfortunately UK has always been "caller pays" - and we still get
>voice spam to mobiles....
>
>at 6p / minute for cheap retail consumer calls (10 US cents) less bulk
>discounts, the call costs are not going to make much difference to a
>call centre costs per agent.
Never thought of that.
I pay 32 cents a minute. The bottom feeder that interrupts my
work gets time for 6 cents a minute.... Sheesh!
Oh well, so much for "Caller Pays" as a solution....
Seems to me like we're back to challenge-response as the only
viable fix.
--
PeteCresswell
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 18:08:49 +0000 (UTC)
From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MSNBC/NYT: Caller ID Forging
Message-ID: <jbj1bh$j7a$1@reader1.panix.com>
In article <4ed688c6$0$79798$8046368a@newsreader.iphouse.net>,
Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> wrote:
>"Geoffrey Welsh" <gwelsh@spamcop.net> writes:
>>r.e.d. wrote:
>>> Can someone point to technical articles/references/etc. giving
>>> details about how various methods of caller-id spoofing work?
>
>>... The obvious way to stop that abuse would be for
>>the telco switches to verify that the number provided was associated with
>>the trunk in question;
>
>Most CLECs I have encounted lately do this filtering automatically.
>For instance, on my PRI trunks, I can not send out a CLID number that
>is not in my range of DIDs, whereas I could with the old ILEC trunks
>on the same gear.
Again: one major issue here is the inadequacy of the caller id display
to the end user. Within the network, there's a "network provided" bit
that indicates whether the network or the customer provided the
calling party number. The way the interworking standards are written,
if you, the originating customer, send a number that is not provisioned
on the facility from which you originate the call, that number should
be duly sent on in the network -- but marked as customer-provided
rather than network-provided.
Unfortunately, customers' terminal equipment can't display the network
provided bit, so you cannot know whether you can trust the number
you have received. There is no reason why cellphones couldn't, and
ISDN can (but who has ISDN phones?) -- but analog CLID displays simply
can't. And cellphones aren't mandated to, so they don't.
What your CLEC is probably doing -- and all should do, really -- is
avoiding trouble with the ILEC and the regulators by stamping the
ChargeNumber over the CallingPartyNumber any time you hand it a
CallingPartyNumber it doesn't know you own. That way, nobody will
complain that they allowed a "forged" CallingPartyNumber -- even if
they did, correctly, mark it as customer-provided.
There is, however, another severe problem, which so long as it persists
will make any resolution to this impossible. Some carriers are being
allowed to maintain connections to the SS7 network while they
blithely stamp "network provided" onto arbitrary numbers that came not
from the network but from customer equipment. These parties should (and
could, with one stroke of the regulatory pen) be summarily disconnected
from the interconnected SS7 network -- as should those who sell them
access.
Without that, no solution that does not effectively turn CLID back into
ANI (by always stamping the ChargeNumber over the CallingPartyNumber
at the terminating end office) is technically possible.
--
Thor Lancelot Simon tls@panix.com
"All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all
at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 06:47:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Update on at&t/T-mobile merger
Message-ID: <1323096443.77255.YahooMailClassic@web111726.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
--- On Sat, 12/3/11, HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote:
> I presume you are talking about dialed direct station-to-station
> rates.
In those days there was no direct dialing.
Later there was a discount for DDD calls, or if DDD was not available
to th= e caller, the DDD rates applied to all calls.
> In those days rates were usually in steps broken down by mileage.
> Could you provide a rate step schedule for a year that reflects
> those high figures for California and Illinois? At $3/minute, a
> three minute call would cost $9.00.
Rates were normally for a initial 3-minute period, and then in
one-minute increments after that.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 03:15:39 -0500
From: Telecom Digest Moderator <redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: I'm looking for #5XB training manuals
Message-ID: <20111205081539.GA24898@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Thanks for reading this. I'm writing a brief talk about #5XB, and would appreciate
pointers to traning materials. An overview document would be ideal, but I'll take
anything. TIA.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 08:33:09 -0800 (PST)
From: withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org (HAncock4)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: I'm looking for #5XB training manuals
Message-ID: <65a70129-d9eb-44df-bd8b-7b10c207fe39@y7g2000vbe.googlegroups.com>
On Dec 5, 3:15 am, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
> Thanks for reading this. I'm writing a brief talk about #5XB, and
> would appreciate pointers to traning materials. An overview document
> would be ideal, but I'll take anything. TIA.
The Bell Labs history "Switching 1925-1975" has a full chapter on No.
5 crossbar as well as other numerous references to it as additional
applications were developed.
I was surprised that No 5. crossbar was able to support Call Waiting.
They tried it as an experiment and it was popular, but not cost
effective to do in xbar and had to wait until ESS.
In the original installation in Media, PA, there was a trial of
pushbutton dialing.
No. 5 crossbar, combined with AMA, helped bring subscriber dialed
direct long distance.
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 18:15:39 +0000 (UTC)
From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: MSNBC/NYT: Caller ID Forging
Message-ID: <jbj1ob$j7a$2@reader1.panix.com>
In article <mZqdnV68z8zrDkXTnZ2dnUVZ_rGdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>,
Robert Bonomi <bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
> Given that the 'telephone company' of the party originating the call
> and the 'telephone company' of the party receiving the call are two
> different entities -- as is almost invariably the case for
> marketing calls. Then:
>
> 1) The telephone company of the party receiving the call CANNOT do
> anything to prevent or even detect spoofed/forged CallerID
> info. No amount of money spent will make one bit of difference
> in customer attitude/opinion about the 'value' of Caller-ID.
>
> 2) The telephone company for the party making the calls =has= a
> financial incentive NOT to filter 'customer-supplied" CID
> data.
There are two very different cases here, and the difference matters.
A) The "spoofed" CallerID information is marked in the network messaging
as customer-provided.
B) It is marked as network-provided.
In case A, the telephone company of the party receiving the call can
do something about it: it can cease sending customer-provided
CallingPartyNumber to analog caller-ID displays which can't alert the
called party that the number they're receiving is untrustworthy. Or
send the ChargeNumber (BTN) instead, so in this case the service behaves
like ANI.
In case B, the originating telephone company is unquestionably violating
its interconnection agreements with other carriers, by marking customer
provided calling party number as network-provided, thus violating the
interworking standards to which it agreed in order to get either SS7
or ISDN access. In this case, it should be cut off by the carriers
to which it is interconnected -- and if this is not done, the
regulators should fine them, too, for deliberately facilitating this
nonsense.
I see hints in the giant new FCC order that someone on the staff there
is actually starting to worm his or her way towards this conclusion; it
is very, very clear to myself and everyone else I've talked to who's
ever worked on carrier interconnection (particularly ISDN interconnection,
which was once obscure but is now more and more common with the cheaper
pricing compared to SS7, and the tendency of VOIP providers to take
advantage of it). Unfortunately, it seems some carriers are throwing
up a smoke screen and it may well be one that works.
--
Thor Lancelot Simon tls@panix.com
"All of my opinions are consistent, but I cannot present them all
at once." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On The Social Contract
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:02:50 -0500
From: Matt Simpson <net-news69@jmatt.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: long distance tariffs, was: Update on at&t/T-mobile merger
Message-ID: <net-news69-FF59D6.12025005122011@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <jbep6k$iq0$1@reader1.panix.com>,
danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
> Back in 1976 or so, I was living in a student frat-type building
> in NYC. I had a girlfriend in Newark, NJ. A friend had one
> up in Buffalo.
>
> We checked out the various costs. It turned out that getting
> a Foreign Exchange line from our building to Newark, NJ, would
> have let my GF and I talk using an untimed local call, and
> let him and his... make a long distance interstate call.
In about that same time frame, I worked for a utility in OH that had a
generating station on the OH river. The plant did enough business in
the KY town across the river that it was cost-effective to install FX
lines. Calls to other locations in OH were also routed through KY over
the FX lines so they would be interstate instead of intrastate, because
that was cheaper.
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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