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Message Digest 
Volume 29 : Issue 78 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not)
 How Privacy Vanishes Online 
 Power outages and batteries
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Re: Subject: Defenition of Baseband, Broadband, and Carrier
 Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Re: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal
 Re: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal
 Re: Power outages and batteries
 Re: Subject: Defenition of Baseband, Broadband, and Carrier
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Re: Waiting for Verizon.. 
 Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal
 Re: Waiting for Verizon


====== 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, 17 Mar 2010 22:54:52 -0700 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <4BA1C02C.2040703@thadlabs.com> On 3/17/2010 9:42 PM, danny burstein wrote: > [...] > Looking at the battery in my APC small UPS, it's 12V and 7.5 AH. Figuring > on a 50 percent drainage/efficiency number, that would be > 12 [enter], 7.5 [times], 2 [divide] -> 45 watt-hours. meaning > that a 10 watt demand would run for about 4.5 hours. > > My commercial grade UPS (also from APC) uses 2 12V batteries with, > iirc, 15 amp hours each. Or four times the capacity. That would > give us about 16 hours. (The batteries can drain a bit lower, > but the conversion efficiency overhead is bigger...) > > A small car battery with 500 watt hours would get you... 50 hours. Car batteries are inappropriate for this type of usage; their internal plates are w-a-y too thin -- they're designed for starting a car quickly then accepting a continuous recharge, period. The correct types of batteries are marine deep discharge trolling batteries and the similar kind for powered wheelchairs and golf carts. These batteries have extremely thick lead plates and are also quite a bit heavier by volume (typically 50+ pounds per battery). One of my hobbies is astronomy and I know what works and what doesn't to operate a computerized scope and accessories from dusk to dawn. I get the 85aH (Amp/Hour) or greater capacity batteries at discount stores like Costco and they're also available at marine suppliers; the wheelchair batteries can be found at Sears and similar. I use battery cases from sporting goods suppliers such as Cabelas because one doesn't want these batteries "naked" and exposed -- they have enough current to vaporize a screwdriver, for example. :-) Some of my smaller scopes work fine with "jumpstart" batteries such as these http://thadlabs.com/PIX/battery_packs.jpg [note the cases from Cabelas on the right side] per http://thadlabs.com/PIX/LX200+DS80.jpg, but the deep-cycle batteries are mandatory for prolonged use or high- power use such as the SBIG STV device at the left in the LX200+DS80 photo. Another advantage of "external" batteries for a UPS is the UPS won't be ruined when the internal batteries go belly-up and leak; I've lost numerous UPS systems (APC, Best, etc.) over the years that way (with internal batteries only). ***** Moderator's Note ***** I don't think car batteries get a continuous recharge: IIRC, the voltage regulator interrupts the circuit from the alternator to the battery when the proper voltage is reached. However, this brings up a good question: are car batteries suitable for use in any backup service? Despite their shortcomings, their price/performance ratio might justify the compromises. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:01:36 -0700 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <4Smon.260774$OX4.244112@newsfe25.iad> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > > I think a problem will be with all consumer-oriented broadband > services will be when the initial promotional pricing ends and the > cost goes up steeply. Some carriers/services keep extending the > promotions or offer new ones, but the rules always change and the > consumer has to invest time to keep on top of it. If the consumer > does nothing the plan may default to a high level. Of course, other > services these days, like banks and cable TV, pull the same stuff. > Vonage is on that kick now, and promoting it widely. After 6 months the price goes up from something like $15 to $25 a month.
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:07:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not) Message-ID: <p0624089bc7c7e1b98cee@[10.0.1.4]> Telling Friends Where You Are (or Not) By JENNA WORTHAM March 14, 2010 AUSTIN, Tex. - As Jordan Viator roams the conference rooms, dimly lit bars and restaurants here at the South by Southwest Interactive conference, she often pulls out her cellphone and uses the Foursquare service to broadcast her location. Such a service might sound creepy to the privacy-minded. But it came in handy for Ms. Viator when she arrived Friday at a party in a bar called Speakeasy and could not find anyone she knew. Her friends who also use Foursquare could see where she was, and some joined her a few minutes later. "I only share my location with people I am comfortable meeting up with, and when I want to be found," said Ms. Viator, a 26-year-old communications manager at a nonprofit company. Mobile services like Loopt and Google's Latitude have promoted the notion of constantly beaming your location to a map that is visible to a network of friends - an idea that is not for everybody. But now there is a different approach, one that is being popularized by Foursquare. After firing up the Foursquare application on their phones, users see a list of nearby bars, restaurants and other places, select their location and "check in," sending an alert to friends using the service. This model, which may be more attractive than tracking because it gives people more choice in revealing their locations, is gathering speed in the Internet industry. Yelp, the popular site that compiles reviews of restaurants and other businesses, recently added a check-in feature to its cellphone application. And Facebook is expected to take a similar approach when it introduces location features to its 400 million users in coming months. If checking in goes mainstream, it could give a lift to mobile advertising, which is now just a tiny percentage of overall spending on online ads. If a company was able to pitch offers to people who say they are at a particular spot, it would "allow for the sharpening of mobile advertising," said Anne Lapkin, an analyst at the research firm Gartner. The check-in idea got its start in 2004, when Foursquare's predecessor, a service called Dodgeball, started to let people tell their friends where they were with a text-message blast. Most cellphones at the time did not have GPS location features, "so using text to check in was a necessity," said Dennis Crowley, who created the service with a classmate in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. In 2005, Mr. Crowley sold Dodgeball to Google, which eventually shut it. He decided to expand on the idea with Foursquare. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/technology/15locate.html
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:07:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: How Privacy Vanishes Online Message-ID: <p0624089ac7c7e0e15a4e@[10.0.1.4]> How Privacy Vanishes Online By STEVE LOHR March 16, 2010 If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address? Probably not. Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae - birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched. Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person's identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number. "Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete," said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's privacy division. "You can find out who an individual is without it." In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male. So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers. But the F.T.C. is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening on Wednesday the third of three workshops on the issue. Its concerns are hardly far-fetched. Last fall, Netflix awarded $1 million to a team of statisticians and computer scientists who won a three-year contest to analyze the movie rental history of 500,000 subscribers and improve the predictive accuracy of Netflix's recommendation software by at least 10 percent. On Friday, Netflix said that it was shelving plans for a second contest - bowing to privacy concerns raised by the F.T.C. and a private litigant. In 2008, a pair of researchers at the University of Texas showed that the customer data released for that first contest, despite being stripped of names and other direct identifying information, could often be "de-anonymized" by statistically analyzing an individual's distinctive pattern of movie ratings and recommendations. In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual's actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet. You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html ***** Moderator's Note ***** I've said before that the current generation of twenty-somethings is the first in history to give up the last bastion of privacy: the names of their friends. Social media, starting with Instant-messenger programs and ranging up to applications that disclose a cellphone user's lattitude and longitude, have allowed database designers to compile social maps which will be eagerly sought after by marketers of all kinds. We're not yet at the point where our chopsticks have continuously- scrolling advertisements on them, but I think that the "younger" generation will soon realize that technology isn't always their friend. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:39:08 -0700 From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Power outages and batteries Message-ID: <siegman-8403E3.08390818032010@sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu> As an extension to the thread on keeping communications hardware running on battery power during power outages and other emergencies: I have 10 kW of commercially installed photovoltaic panels on the roof of my house [1]. But when the grid goes down, this system goes down also, for reasons I think I understand [2]. Adding a full-bore battery setup to this installation to capture some or all the multiple kW that could be generated and used or stored even when the grid was out for multiple days, would clearly be a large and unreasonably expensive installation. Seems to me, however, with a minor addition to the DC-to-AC inverter electronics one might be able to switch to a backup DC-to DC mode where the panels just trickle-charged a small set of low-voltage backup batteries of the kind used in lanterns, power tools, or electronics at say a few hundred watts charging rate. If we had a multi-day outage, we could at least charge up some of these batteries each day, and use some that charge for minimal purposes each night. I've not gotten around to exploring the possibility of such a capability with the vendor who installed our system, and I'm aware of the existence of much smaller solar-to-battery units available at retail. I'm just wondering if anyone on this group has seen any mention of this kind of backup DC-to-DC trickle-charging capability built into any larger residential solar systems?
[1] If anyone is curious why this large a system on a single-family residence, it's a large old empty-nester house with half its area converted into three rental apartments, so more or less 4 households under one roof; PG&E will nonetheless only allow one meter; domestic rates are sharply tiered; the house layout is near optimal solar-wise; and we got in early on an good installation plan. So, it's saving us enough on my electric bills that it should pay for itself over a decade or so [2] My understanding is the inverters need the grid AC to drive the inverter electronics and keep them synched and running properly. ***** Moderator's Note ***** The only solar installation I've seen in person was a "standalone" design, with the arrays used to charge batteries that handle the house load at night or during cloudy days. The family has a generator to use when the batteries get too low, since they're too far from the pole line to have any outside feed. I assume that it's possible to have both a battery-backup system, and to sell power back to the electric utility, although I now realize I've never seen such a system described. The funny thing about solar is that a very small increase in cell efficiency would push it over the edge into "gotta have" status. I'll bet many major corporations are working on it right now. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:16:18 -0500 From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (PV) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <Q8Sdne7l6qJf3j_WnZ2dnUVZ_tudnZ2d@supernews.com> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: >Sometimes I wonder if service problems today are a legacy from sloppy >or rushed cable work done back in the 1970s. Perhaps splices and >building distribution panels (say the panel in the basement of a large >old apt building) were adequate for voice grade communications but >don't hold up well for DSL. I also wonder if some of the old wiring >in apt and office buildings may not be well maintained, but I'm just >speculating. There's nothing to wonder about, this is exactly the case in major metro areas. When I first tried to get DSL in the early 2000s, Ameritech tried to turn it on for me, but it turned out they had absolutely no idea how I got service, what state the wires were in, and what else was hooked up to them (I was listed as 19,000 feet from my central office, we've since gathered that this is database code for "damifino"). They eventually gave up, and I didn't get DSL until 2 years later after SBC took over and from what I can tell, trashed lots of the old plant and started over. This turned out to be nice for me, because they set up a brand spanking new uverse vrad just one street over a couple months ago and I have stupid fast internet now, and crackle-free phone service for the first time ever. * - - * PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something like corkscrews. ***** Moderator's Note ***** Someone please help out an old CO Tech, and tell me what a "vrad" is and what "uverse" is. Please. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:21:30 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <6b797588-0644-432c-a4d8-1da4002532df@z35g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> On Mar 17, 6:51 pm, David Clayton <dcs...@myrealbox.com> wrote: > Why is there an expectation that infrastructure that has its technical > origins back in the early 20th century will still be up to the job of > satisfying the demands of this era? In some (not all) applications older infrastructure had heavier and more rugged construction than later construction. Some reasons include: --Longer term outlook: Companies expected they'd be around for awhile and that the infrastructure needs would be stable. Thus, they were willing to invest for the long term. For example, central office switches were expected to last decades and were built accordingly. --Cheap capital: Capital was cheaper going way back, so companies could raise money to pay for the heavy infrastructure. In the 1960s and 1970s capital became quite expensive. --Limited material options: Not so much for telephone equipment, but way back they didn't know as much about long term durability and strength of materials. In order to prevent failure they were conservative and used heavy designs. This allowed a long service life. As time went on, they realized they could get away with lighter designs. They also discovered substitute materials later on that were cheaper and functional, but not necessarily as long lasting. --Business freedom: Going way back there was less or no government regulation and companies had more freedom to do as they chose. Originally telephone service was expensive; a nickel per neighborhood call (dime for across a big city) meant the equivalent of $2 or $4 today. By the 1960s telephone companies were under great pressure to hold rates down and from unions to raise wages so they sought cheaper methods that weren't as durable. Some Bell companies felt this rate pressure more than others, and I believe what became NYNEX was subject to quite a bit of rate pressure, perhaps not enough to pay for proper service in areas that were costly to serve. (Maintaining the massive underground wire plant in NYC must be very expensive, especially they must dodge subways and numerous other utilities.)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:11:59 -0600 From: Michael Grigoni <michael.grigoni@cybertheque.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Subject: Defenition of Baseband, Broadband, and Carrier Message-ID: <4BA255F9.24403.84C0B0@msg.cybertheque.org> AJB Consulting said: > The various popular flavors of twisted pair > ethernet all have names that contain the word "base," e.g., 100baseT. Sure > enough, the "base" is short for baseband, and this misnomer, applied to > twisted-pair ethernet at the beginning, has stuck. Putting aside gigabit > ethernet (which splits the message data stream across more than one > physical circuit), even lowly 10baseT is not actually baseband in the > electrical sense. Complex voodoo encoding schemes in all versions of > ethernet result in a symbol rate that is indeed lower than the actual > content bit rate. Thus, the use of the word "baseband" here is strictly > applicable only in the sense that David referred to, i.e., it is used to > connect a single node on a network, or at least talk to only one node at a > time over a given physical connection. It seems to me that the distinction in LAN PHY technologies between broadband and baseband stems from the time during which there were competing technologies such as IBM PC-LAN (broadband, using CATV frequencies and physical media, with a head-end concentrator and translator terminating the cable) and baseband technologies like arcnet, ethernet, IBM PC-LAN baseband, etc. which applied the datastream directly to the medium (e.g. manchester, nrzi, etc) Michael
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:07:12 -0700 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal Message-ID: <4BA287F0.2000401@thadlabs.com> Mississippi HB-872 was signed into law Monday by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and makes Caller ID spoofing illegal: http://www.wdam.com/Global/story.asp?S=12154048 The law covers alterations to the caller's name, telephone number, or name and telephone number that is shown to a recipient of a call or otherwise presented to the network. The law applies to PSTN, wireless and VoIP calls. Penalties for each violation can be up to $1,000 and one year in jail. Blocking of caller identification information is still permitted.
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:55:49 -0500 From: "GlowingBlueMist" <GlowingBlueMist@truely.invalid> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <4ba2854a$0$65858$892e0abb@auth.newsreader.octanews.com> > Telecom Digest Moderator wrote: > > Someone please help out an old CO Tech, and tell me what a "vrad" is > and what "uverse" is. Please. Hi Bill, In short U-verse is one of AT&T uses to sell DSL/TV services using Fiber. The VRAD (Video Ready Access Device) equipment does the actual termination of the fiber trunks. They are big bulky boxes that AT&T puts above ground if at all possible. From them you can get DSL and or Digital TV plus what ever else AT&T can talk you into paying for. Here is a link for more info on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_ready_access_device And here is a link showing a picture of one style of equipment cabinets they are using in neighborhoods: http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k185/clevelanddiary/vrad1_mapledale.jpg Seems many of them use lithium batteries that were catching fires or just plain exploding with enough force to blow the cabinets 50 feet from the base. I hear that a company that supplied many of the batteries to AT&T went bankrupt leaving them with the task of finding their own replacements for the defective batteries that had not already self immolated.
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:10:56 -0700 From: Sam Spade <sam@coldmail.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal Message-ID: <Rxxon.53040$Dv7.39248@newsfe17.iad> Thad Floryan wrote: > Blocking of caller identification information is still > permitted. > I would hope so since that is a F.C.C. mandate.
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:37:27 -0700 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal Message-ID: <hnu9va$g0a$1@news.eternal-september.org> Thad Floryan wrote: > Mississippi HB-872 was signed into law Monday by Mississippi > Governor Haley Barbour and makes Caller ID spoofing illegal: > > http://www.wdam.com/Global/story.asp?S=12154048 > > The law covers alterations to the caller's name, telephone > number, or name and telephone number that is shown to a > recipient of a call or otherwise presented to the network. > The law applies to PSTN, wireless and VoIP calls. Penalties > for each violation can be up to $1,000 and one year in jail. > Blocking of caller identification information is still > permitted. > And how are they going to enforce their state law from someone spoofing who is in India or China? -- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co.
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:43:50 +1100 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Power outages and batteries Message-ID: <pan.2010.03.18.21.43.43.494754@myrealbox.com> On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:39:08 -0700, AES wrote: > I have 10 kW of commercially installed photovoltaic panels on the roof of > my house [1]. But when the grid goes down, this system goes down also, > for reasons I think I understand [2]. ....... > [2] My understanding is the inverters need the grid AC to drive the > inverter electronics and keep them synched and running properly. ....... It is my understanding that the standard inverters do indeed require a running connection to the grid to allow them to remain in phase, and if you are going to have a system that will still power your own property in the event of grid failure it has to be able to firstly isolate the grid connection and then make any appropriate phase adjustment when the grid returns and it reconnects. I believe these setups exist, but are probably a bit more pricey than the standard inverter. -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:13:25 -0700 (PDT) From: JimB <ajbtelecom@yahoo.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Subject: Defenition of Baseband, Broadband, and Carrier Message-ID: <975ad495-dc6e-48c7-a4cb-f9b47038d7d6@g10g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> On Mar 18, 12:11 pm, Michael Grigoni <michael.grig...@cybertheque.org> wrote: > > It seems to me that the distinction in LAN PHY technologies between > broadband and baseband stems from the time during which there were > competing technologies such as IBM PC-LAN (broadband, using CATV > frequencies and physical media, with a head-end concentrator and > translator terminating the cable) and baseband technologies like > arcnet, ethernet, IBM PC-LAN baseband, etc. which applied the > datastream directly to the medium (e.g. manchester, nrzi, etc) > > Michael That is an excellent point - I painted myself into a semantic corner with my somewhat dubious assertion. Ethernet over twisted pair does indeed have more in common with true baseband signalling systems like RS-232 and T1/DS1 than it does with modulated carrier systems. There is also an error in my original post that I should correct: I said that the symbol rate is lower that the content bitstream, I meant to say higher. I may never be able to think of it as true baseband because of the extra signal transitions in manchester encoded ethernet that don't actually carry data. This could lead to more semantic hand- wringing on my part, because the extra transitions don't actually qualify as symbols precisely because they don't carry data.... (These are the kind of things that keep me up at night.) Jim ************************************************************ Speaking from a secure undisclosed location. ***** Moderator's Note ***** Jim, I think you were right the first time: the symbol rate is lower than that of the data bitstream. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:37:48 -0400 From: Ron <ron@see.below> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <09k5q5lei2283ovl5shj8rsmqcddh3t1ca@4ax.com> "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com> wrote: > I would suspect that this FIOS unit does not use much power. Adding it >to the list of necessary items to keep voice going during a power outage >should not be overly demanding. Measured DC current (12V) on my FIOS box is .48 Amp. It rises to .57 A when off-hook. The backup battery is 7.2 AH, and the installer told me it's supposed to give around 12 hours of backup. Of course, that's assuming the battery is kept reasonably current. Replacing it is a "user responsibility". -- Ron (user telnom.for.plume in domain antichef.com)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:41:58 EDT From: Wesrock@aol.com To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon.. Message-ID: <9131e.79352b52.38d42256@aol.com> In a message dated 3/18/2010 11:45:51 AM Central Daylight Time, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > Maintaining the massive > underground wire plant in NYC must be very expensive, especially they > must dodge subways and numerous other utilities.) Does the Empire City Subway Company still exist? Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:52:00 -0500 From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Mississippi makes Caller ID spoofing illegal Message-ID: <6645152a1003181852n7a22b8bfg6fa54977f21294be@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> wrot e: > And how are they going to enforce their state law from someone > spoofing who is in India or China? Simple. They aren't. This is yet another example of a useless piece of legislation pushed through because the people demand they "do something". I wonder how many in the state capitol even understood the technology they were attempting to regulate? John -- John Mayson <john@mayson.us> Austin, Texas, USA
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:21:50 -0700 From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Waiting for Verizon Message-ID: <hnujjg$vgp$1@news.eternal-september.org> > GlowingBlueMist wrote: > >>Telecom Digest Moderator wrote: > >> > >>Someone please help out an old CO Tech, and tell me what a "vrad" is > >>and what "uverse" is. Please. > > > >Hi Bill, > > > >In short U-verse is one of AT&T uses to sell DSL/TV services using > >Fiber. The VRAD (Video Ready Access Device) equipment does the actual > >termination of the fiber trunks. They are big bulky boxes that AT&T > >puts above ground if at all possible. From them you can get DSL and > >or Digital TV plus what ever else AT&T can talk you into paying for. > > > >Here is a link for more info on the subject. > > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_ready_access_device > > > >And here is a link showing a picture of one style of equipment cabinets > >they are using in neighborhoods: > > > >http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k185/clevelanddiary/vrad1_mapledale.jpg >Seems many of them use lithium batteries that were catching fires or >just plain exploding with enough force to blow the cabinets 50 feet >from the base. I hear that a company that supplied many of the >batteries to AT&T went bankrupt leaving them with the task of finding >their own replacements for the defective batteries that had not >already self immolated. That is great, with all the noise I have been making with AT&T here in Riverside to get U-verse, I agreed to let them put it on a corner of my lot, it is city right of way, but I had to agree to it. I already had one explosion when an underground transformer that the city installed on the side of my house in 1977; it went up in 1985 and we then found out it had PCS's in it. -- The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc., A Rot in Hell. Co.
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