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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 343 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Re: FCC RFC for replacement of USA PSTN with VoIP per "2009 Recovery Act" Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens Back to the Future ====== 28 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 Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:20:42 -0800 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <hhh5aa$1ul$1@news.eternal-september.org> Sam Spade wrote: > Steven wrote: > >> >> I have unlimited long distance and never really make it pay, but it >> had brought down the costs of other services that are bundled. >> > > Today, if an AT$T wireline customer in California wants just Caller ID, > it's an astounding $9 per month. > > Vonage bundles it, and many other features, in their basic unlimited > service, as do other VOIPs and the wireless carriers. > > In California I suspect the AT&T wireline unit (Pacific Bell) must be > hurting these days. > > Is wireline going to self-destruct? > > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > That's a very good question. When I worked at N.E.T., I would have > laughed at the idea, but I wonder if the baby bells, or in fact any > of the ILECs, can adapt to the changing telecom world. > > The Engineer in me wants to predict that the system will reach > equilibrium when the ILECs lose enough customers to force them to cut > rates, but that's not likely. I grow more and more convinced that > wire-line service will fade to the point where there's not enough > revenue to maintain it. > > You might think that business users, who are still mostly in the > wire-line camp, will demand wire-line because they depend on their > existing phone systems and networks so heavily. That dependence, > however, will lead them to seek and adopt alternatives to wire-line, > such as VoIP, because wire-line costs will rise as home users abandon > it for cellular. It will become a vicious circle, with decreasing > revenues driving lower maintence and higher adoption of alternatives. > > At some point, there will have to be another political debate about > the value of universal service: remember that it has always been > subsidized by high-profit offerings, and that such offerings are > facing competition from more agile, lower-margin CLECs. This comes at > the same time that demand for long-distance is decreasing (due, I > think, to email use), and also at the same time that business users > become more aware of viable alternative services which offer dramatic > cost savings over traditional circuit-switched long-distance. > > The end result is that ILECs will be very tempted to allow wire-line > to wither on the vine, favoring high-profit cellular users and "gotta > have it" business customers, both of whom can be served by the robust > infrastructures of the cities, while low-profit, high-maintenance > ex-urban copper paths are left to rust. > > That's my 2¢. > Bill Horne > Moderator I believe that is why AT&T and Verizon are pushing U-verse and FIOS both are VOIP services which cost almost nothing to maintain. The only cost will be the copper and that is now starting to be replaced [by] fiber. AT&T spent a whole day out at my house, an MTech as well as 2 Core techs working on my house wiring as well as replacing my 30 year old drop, 10 bad splices and 11 more bridge taps. My DSL is now running at 5.4 MH on a 6MH circuit and it is down to 55% from 95%. I was also told that they plan on now installing another U-Verse Node and [will] replace the old lead cable; they say that we will have U-verse in the first 3 months of next year. The fiber is there: all they have to do it engineer and place the Node. I have no idea if it was my complaint to the PUC last Thursday or the 15 times they were out here in the last 3 months. I have never seen the PUC act that fast. The Core Manager with AT&T told me that one reason is that I'm an active CO Tech with 40 years on the job and clearly wording the complaint with the PUC right down to what I thought the problem was. If they had been honest with me on the problem and not having someone who had any idea call me and give me the company line about I'm too far out for U-verse and told me it was a cable problem that were working on the complaint would never had been filed. Now I have to work with some of these same people doing work for them installing CO equipment, at least for now I'm doing work for Verizon. -- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:18:48 -0500 From: "Geoffrey Welsh" <gwelsh@spamcop.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <e55cc$4b3cf917$adce602a$13849@PRIMUS.CA> Steven wrote: > I believe that is why AT&T and Verizon are pushing U-verse and FIOS > both are VOIP services which cost almost nothing to maintain. The > only cost will be the copper and that is now starting to be replaced > [by] fiber. While I suspect that fiber costs at least as much to install as copper and the installation is far more complicated than POTS service (almost nothing else is as simple as plugging a telephone into a jack, and it rarely requires configuration adjustment <grin>) the point of the new facilities is not so much to reduce the costs but rather to increase revenue. This is the new monopoly M.O.: when you have near-100% market saturation and can't expand your territory, your increase revenue by offering higher priced services. (The old monopoly philosophy was to increase revenue by embracing costs and using them to justify rate increases, but competition has undermined that somewhat.) . Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:11:57 -0600 From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <4B3CBF3D.6030907@annsgarden.com> harold@hallikainen.com wrote: > This is indeed impressive. So, where are the cost savings that > allow such dramatically lower costs? > Between yesterday and today, of course, bandwidth costs have > been dramatically reduced. Data compression also allows lower > bitrates for voice. POTS has access to the lower bandwidth > costs and could, I suppose, use compression. POTS, of course, > uses circuit switched instead of packet switched, so the > circuit is dead in one direction about half the time (remember > TASI?). So, there is some additional cost savings there. But > even then, POTS costs are considerably above Vonage or other > VoIP services. Is the difference in bandwidth usage (dedicated > 64kbps in each direction for POTS versus bursts for VoIP)? > Is it regulatory? Why the big difference? In both cases, > we're just transmitting bits. "We're just transmitting bits." Sure, if you ignore the last-mile costs -- the cost of constructing, owning, operating, and maintaining the analog outside plant and the cost of providing operating power for the customer's telephone. ILECs have to pay these costs while Vonage (and VOIP providers generally) avoid these costs by riding on the internet connections and the electrical power that customers purchase separately. That's a substantial part of the "big difference." We've had this discussion several times before here on T-D, and somebody always says, "yeah, but I have an internet connection anyway because I...." Ok, fine, you have it anyway for other reasons. But that doesn't change the fact that somebody still has to pay the last-mile costs. Bill Horne wrote: > The end result is that ILECs will be very tempted to allow > wire-line to wither on the vine, favoring high-profit cellular > users and "gotta have it" business customers, both of whom can > be served by the robust infrastructures of the cities, while > low-profit, high-maintenance ex-urban copper paths are left to > rust. So how will all those ex-urban customers get telephone service? Will the entire country eventually get wired for high-speed internet service and five-bar cellular service, so we can all switch to VOIP or cell? Perhaps it will. Perhaps the feds will provide enough stimulus funding to pay for it. I don't discount the fact that federal and state regulatory bodies have contributed to all this. But the fact remains that somebody has to pay the last-mile costs, and one way or another, that somebody is us. Neal McLain ***** Moderator's Note ***** Not to put to fine a point in it, but ... ... the ex-urban customers don't generate enough income to make ILECs want to keep them. I don't know if alternatives will emerge, but I think wire-line service will go away. Remember that wire-line is maintenance intensive, and ILECs are facing increasing costs for their increasingly old and unionized work force. The net (pun intended) result is likely to be benign neglect: as service quality goes down, more ex-urban users will grit their teeth and buy a cellphone. It used to be that "home" users were a dependable profit center for ILECs, where the majority of such customers payed "fixed" monthly bills to avoid the uncertainty of message-unit charges. No longer: compared to the huge profits from cell users, who pay for everything, every time they use it, and who pay for maintenance, and who think that poor voice quality, drop-outs, and picket-fencing are the way telephones are supposed to sound, wire-line customers are a drag on the market. The cellular divisions of the major ILECs are mostly non-union, and the cellular infrastructure is mostly erected and maintained by contractors who can be thrown away as easily as an old cellphone. Bill Horne Moderator Date: 31 Dec 2009 17:30:53 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <20091231173053.3190.qmail@simone.iecc.com> > ... the ex-urban customers don't generate enough income to make ILECs > want to keep them. Sure we do. You put money into the USF fund, it then pays lavish subsidies for us rustics. Thanks! R's, John ***** Moderator's Note ***** That should be "_we_ rustics". Bill Horne Moderator Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:44:56 -0600 From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <jZmdnX4YD8Ql8qDWnZ2dnUVZ_gidnZ2d@speakeasy.net> John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote: +--------------- | > ... the ex-urban customers don't generate enough income to make ILECs | > want to keep them. | | Sure we do. You put money into the USF fund, it then pays lavish | subsidies for us rustics. Thanks! .... | ***** Moderator's Note ***** | | That should be "_we_ rustics". | | Bill Horne | Moderator +--------------- Actually, it shouldn't. "Us" is correct in the position in which John used it, the object of a preposition: "pays ... for us ...". ....unless you're trying to make some joke equating rustic with being poor at grammar. -Rob Rob Warnock <rpw3@rpw3.org> 627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/> San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607 Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:19:54 -0800 (PST) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <48fae863-18b4-47a3-a23c-f70f10d971f9@s3g2000yqs.googlegroups.com> On Dec 31, 10:11 am, Neal McLain <nmcl...@annsgarden.com> wrote: > "We're just transmitting bits."  Sure, if you ignore the last-mile > costs . . . > ILECs have to pay these costs while Vonage (and VOIP providers > generally) avoid these costs . . . > > We've had this discussion several times before here on T-D, and > somebody always says, "yeah, but I have an internet connection anyway > because I...."  Ok, fine, you have it anyway for other reasons.  But > that doesn't change the fact that somebody still has to pay the > last-mile costs. These are all very important points, especially the last sentence. Somebody has to pay the costs of the "last mile", and they are expensive. While it is true that many people have Internet connections, it is also true a great many people do not nor have any interest in them. (Every public library I've ever been in has public PCs and they are heavily used.) What will complicate matters in the future is that various communication modes that once were separate are today blended together. The playing field constantly changes. Today we have Verizon pushing its FIOS which also provides TV system, and cable companies pushing telephone service. How it will play out is very hard to see. Keep in mind that a particular technology eventually levels off. There isn't much investment today to improve AM radio receivers and broadcast equipment and phonograph records and players since people have switched to FM and satellite and CDs/Ipods for music. > ***** Moderator's Note ***** > > Not to put to fine a point in it, but ... > > ... the ex-urban customers don't generate enough income to make ILECs > want to keep them. I don't know if alternatives will emerge, but I > think wire-line service will go away. Remember that wire-line is > maintenance intensive, and ILECs are facing increasing costs for their > increasingly old and unionized work force. The net (pun intended) > result is likely to be benign neglect: as service quality goes down, > more ex-urban users will grit their teeth and buy a cellphone. I wouldn't rule out legacy wireline phone services just yet; I think they'll be around for a long time to come. The phone companies have evolved tremendously since the old days. They use sub-contractors and their old unionized workforces have shrunk dramatically. Service bureaus and business offices have been centralized many miles from the actual town of service. At the same time local service rates are up. For decades people said the IBM mainframe was a dinosaur and dead, but to this day mainframe products remain an important part of IBM's total revenue base. Not as much as the past, but still important. As mentioned above, someone still has to provide the last mile, and the legacy phone companies are in an extremely strong position to do so, whether by ancient copper lines or modern fibre. Note that running wires through developed areas requires legal finese and skill which the legacy companies have. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:47:35 -0800 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Long Distance On Same Physical Switch Message-ID: <hhjd6p$gr1$1@news.eternal-september.org> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On Dec 31, 10:11 am, Neal McLain <nmcl...@annsgarden.com> wrote: > >> "We're just transmitting bits." Sure, if you ignore the last-mile >> costs . . . >> ILECs have to pay these costs while Vonage (and VOIP providers >> generally) avoid these costs . . . >> >> We've had this discussion several times before here on T-D, and >> somebody always says, "yeah, but I have an internet connection anyway >> because I...." Ok, fine, you have it anyway for other reasons. But >> that doesn't change the fact that somebody still has to pay the >> last-mile costs. > > These are all very important points, especially the last sentence. > Somebody has to pay the costs of the "last mile", and they are > expensive. > > While it is true that many people have Internet connections, it is > also true a great many people do not nor have any interest in them. > (Every public library I've ever been in has public PCs and they are > heavily used.) > > What will complicate matters in the future is that various > communication modes that once were separate are today blended > together. The playing field constantly changes. Today we have > Verizon pushing its FIOS which also provides TV system, and cable > companies pushing telephone service. How it will play out is very > hard to see. > > Keep in mind that a particular technology eventually levels off. > There isn't much investment today to improve AM radio receivers and > broadcast equipment and phonograph records and players since people > have switched to FM and satellite and CDs/Ipods for music. > >> ***** Moderator's Note ***** >> >> Not to put to fine a point in it, but ... >> >> ... the ex-urban customers don't generate enough income to make ILECs >> want to keep them. I don't know if alternatives will emerge, but I >> think wire-line service will go away. Remember that wire-line is >> maintenance intensive, and ILECs are facing increasing costs for their >> increasingly old and unionized work force. The net (pun intended) >> result is likely to be benign neglect: as service quality goes down, >> more ex-urban users will grit their teeth and buy a cellphone. > > I wouldn't rule out legacy wireline phone services just yet; I think > they'll be around for a long time to come. > > The phone companies have evolved tremendously since the old days. > They use sub-contractors and their old unionized workforces have > shrunk dramatically. Service bureaus and business offices have been > centralized many miles from the actual town of service. At the same > time local service rates are up. > > For decades people said the IBM mainframe was a dinosaur and dead, but > to this day mainframe products remain an important part of IBM's total > revenue base. Not as much as the past, but still important. > > As mentioned above, someone still has to provide the last mile, and > the legacy phone companies are in an extremely strong position to do > so, whether by ancient copper lines or modern fibre. Note that > running wires through developed areas requires legal finese and skill > which the legacy companies have. > I have a friend that lives up in the mountains East of Sacramento, Calif. she can't get DSL, no digital cable and Satellite is an expensive option and it is only 1.3 MH for over $200.00 a month plus equipment. I was talking to the AT&T Core Manager who got the PUC I had filed and he did some searching for me and found out that they are planning to install U-verse up there sometime near the end of next year. They have fiber in place that was placed there for the Forest Service and it is no longer being used, plus a new Metro was just installed so they might not only get U-verse, but Fiber to the door. That area is at the edge of snow sports. -- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:09:06 -0800 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: FCC RFC for replacement of USA PSTN with VoIP per "2009 Recovery Act" Message-ID: <4B3CDAB2.4010503@thadlabs.com> On 12/3/2009 8:54 AM, Thad Floryan wrote: > The FCC desires to transition from the decades-old circuit-based > Public Switched Telephone Network to a new system run entirely with > Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. This is perhaps the > most serious indication to date that the legacy telephone system will, > in the near future, reach the end of its life. This public commenting > phase represents a very early stage in what will undoubtedly be a very > complex transition that makes this year's bumpy switch from analog to > digital television look relatively easy. > > 3-page FCC "Public Notice" here: > > http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-2517A1.pdf > > Released: 1-DEC-2009 > Comment date: 21-DEC-2009 Well, AT&T's response follows current thinking here: landlines will be abandoned in favor of VoIP (and cell phones?). PC World here: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/185649/atandt_tells_fcc_its_time_to_cut_the_cord.html quotes AT&T: "... the death of landlines is a matter of when, not if, and asked that a firm deadline be set for pulling the plug." AT&T said in its response to the FCC that "with each passing day, more and more communications services migrate to broadband and IP-based services, leaving the public switched telephone network ("PSTN") and plain-old telephone service ("POTS") as relics of a by-gone era." Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:56:59 -0800 From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? Message-ID: <hhivjp$93l$1@blue.rahul.net> John R. Levine wrote: > I'm looking for someone else who will provide good service at lower > cost, without so many nuisance fees. Any suggestions? Poking around > on the net I found a company in Maine called Pioneer Telephone that > looks promising with reasonable Tier 3 rates of 3.3 cpm and no monthly > minimum if I get billed online. Anyone use them? I've used them for years and am very satisfied with them. In my area they're a reseller of Global Crossing. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:58:12 -0700 From: Robert Neville <dont@bother.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Dial-1 and 800 provider for low volume user? Message-ID: <43bqj5144jkr2n4h7038f813hrhdi6a1sv@4ax.com> John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote: >I've used them for years and am very satisfied with them. In my area >they're a reseller of Global Crossing. I've used Pioneer in the past as well and was very pleased with them. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:19:43 -0800 From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens Message-ID: <hhj0ud$a6g$1@blue.rahul.net> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > NYC 1010newsradio reported that 'sexting' is common among young > people, despite the risk that intimate pictures are often shared with > others without consent, and that in some states sexting results in a > felony charge. > > see: http://www.1010wins.com/Poll-Finds-Sexting-Common-Among-Young-People/5810157 > > IMHO, while this practice should be discouraged, kids should not be > prosecuted under felony charges for this sort of thing. But I've > heard from some parents who feel aggressive law enforcement is the > right way to go. I'm with you. Kids exposing themselves (or for that matter, doing things they shouldn't with other kids) arguably deserve to be charged with misdemeanors, but they don't deserve to be lumped with molestors. They're kids being kids. For that matter, if the pictures do get out, those passing them on should get some leniency too. The law against child porn exists, and is justified, only to deter adults from misusing kids. Therefore, if a picture came from a kid misbehaving by himself or with other kids and not from some adult abusing him/her, it ought to be a lesser offense (privacy violation or maybe copyright) to have that picture. And there need to be safeguards against people being punished for accidentally seeing such things because they went to a website that promised legal porn, or even unknowingly having them on their hard drive because their computer got hacked or virus-infected. Both have happened, and the policies that caused the victims to be successfully prosecuted are still in place. Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:04:04 -0500 From: Telecom digest moderator <redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Back to the Future Message-ID: <20091231230404.GA24597@telecom.csail.mit.edu> As we all know, the FCC recently issued a Public Notice (DA 09-2517), titled "Comment Sought On Transition From Circuit-Switched Network To All Ip Network". As I said in comments I made at the time, I thought the FCC was responding to President Obama's call for new investments in our nation's infrastructure by publishing a once-over-lightly fluff piece that would get them through the holidays without any heavy lifting. Bluntly put, and pun intended, I thought they phoned it in. However, it seems there is a hidden agenda, and now the real purpose of the Commission's notice is becoming clear. I confess to being diverted by the technical issue: IP will never be the backbone of the voice network - a fact that is so obvious that two Senators introduced a bill which would authorize each FCC commissioner to hire an Electrical Engineer. The FCC, of course, doesn't need Congressional approval to hire Electrical Engineers, but that is, as I said before, as close to a rebuke as a major federal agency ever gets in Washington. However, all things come to he who waits, and now the real reason for the FCC's notice is evident. The release of AT&T's answer to the FCC's notice is the sound of the other shoe dropping in what now seems to me to be a combined effort to remove a critical part of the competitive environment: the concept of Unbundled Network Elements (UNEs), which has been its cornerstone. The FCC's complicity in this effort was a blunder so obvious that it has already commenced backpedaling: on the FCC's web pages regarding "Broadband" and "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act)" they have stated that "The FCC is currently working in coordination with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to perform the FCC's role under the Recovery Act."(1) Right on the heels of the FCC's notice, we get AT&T's suspiciously well-timed response. To my jaundiced eye, it looks like they are intent on eliminating the upstart Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) that have been usurping what "son of Ma Bell" considers its divine right to oversee every aspect of how Americans communicate. To that end, they have set in motion a public fairy tale, intended to put regulators to sleep at the same time it convinces a somnambulant customer base that Mother knows best. Of course, Ma Bell's former child - the former Southwestern Bell Corp. - will need government help to make this monopolist's dream come true. They have found a sympathetic ear at 12th Street SW: FCC Commissioners continue to promote what amounts to a puppet show, being conducted not for the benefit of the onlookers, but for the pickpockets who move among them and dip into their wallets with practiced ease. Those of us on the receiving end have been lucky. The fact is that the FCC blundered badly: by putting "VoIP" in front of the Potemkin Village that has been erected to hide its dismal record of rubber-stamping everything any Baby Bell ever wanted to do, the feds invited investigation into the real purpose both of the notice and the acronym: the term "VoIP", it seems, has morphed from "Voice over Internet Protocol" to a new and more sinister meaning, i.e., "Very Obvious Income Protection"[TM]. I'll go further: I think AT&T's resounding arse-kissing is the first in a long series of penny operas that will keep the masses diverted while the "old" wire-line infrastructure is replaced by a "new" infrastructure: one which will be unavailable to the CLECs who have depending on UNEs for their very existence. Of course, even if that part of the scheme doesn't work, AT&T and the other ILECs stand to benefit: you see, fiber to the (curb|pole) can provide enough bandwidth that local central offices aren't necessary. Thus, the "new" infrastructure, while it replaces high-maintenance copper, will also obviate not only most of the central-office switches and the CO's themselves (an immensely valuable asset, since the buildings are in the centers of every hamlet, town, and city across the United States), but also the costly annual software upgrades the ILECs pay for as regularly as clockwork, which Nortel and Lucent always regarded as a permanent annuity. Of course, without the CO's, there's no need for the ever-more-expensive union workforce that Ma Bell has been trying to eliminate for almost a century. The tectonic plates of the telecommunications world are starting to shift again. Where's FEMA when we need it? Bill Horne Moderator Copyright © 2009 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved. (1) http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/broadband.html -- Bill Horne Moderator 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. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom 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) 2009 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 (12 messages)