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The Telecom Digest for April 6, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 87 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
The Rise Of Micro-Labor (Monty Solomon)
SaskTel ending rotary dial service (Koos van den Hout)
Re: SaskTel ending rotary dial service (John Levine)
Re: SaskTel ending rotary dial service (HAncock4)
Poisson Table (Fred Atkinson)
Re: Ohio bill could doom landlines (Adam H. Kerman)
Fax Modem gadgets (David Lesher)

====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 23:57:35 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: The Rise Of Micro-Labor Message-ID: <p06240897cba2c67e3652@[10.0.1.4]> http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/04/03/micro-labor-websites The Rise Of Micro-Labor On Point with Tom Ashbrook Tuesday, April 3, 2012 New websites putting up small jobs for bid, or micro-labor, are on the rise. Clean my compost bin. Buy my dog food. Job-hungry Americans are bidding low. Where does this go? A lot of Americans need work. A lot of Americans need work done. A raft of new web sites is hooking them up around specific tasks that need doing. You want a pile of sand moved. You post a picture of that pile online. I bid for the work. I'll move that sand for thirty bucks. Or twenty. Or ten. Or five if I'm hungry enough. The upside: efficient connection of job and labor, and I make a buck. The downside: it's work, but not a job. And the low bid that wins can be very low indeed. This hour, On Point: the new era of bidding for work online. How hot it is. How low it can go. -Tom Ashbrook Guests Scott Kirsner, writes the weekly"Innovation Economy" column and blog for the Boston Globe and Boston.com. Eric Koester, founder and chief marketing officer/chief operating officer of Zaarly, a peer-to-peer mobile start up that allows people to bid for goods and services. Harley Shaiken, professor at U.C. Berkeley who specializes in labor and the global economy. John Horton, staff economist at oDesk Corporation, a online global marketplace that helps people hire, manage and pay remote freelancers or teams. http://onpoint.wbur.org/2012/04/03/micro-labor-websites
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 07:16:44 +0000 (UTC) From: Koos van den Hout <koos+newsposting@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: SaskTel ending rotary dial service Message-ID: <jljgss$d0r$5@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> Canadian phone company SaskTel, the telephone company (and broadband/tv provider) for the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, has been allowed by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission to discontinue rotary-dial service. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2012/04/02/sk-rotary-dial-service-ending.html Remarkable (to me) is that they still 'get away' with charging for touch-tone as a premium service when the other option is not available anymore (and in a modern exchange rotary support is probably more expensive than touch-tone). (footage from the cbc item was used in a 'ligher news' item here in the Netherlands) Koos --
Koos van den Hout,PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 via keyservers
koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nlWeather maps from free sources at
http://idefix.net/http://weather.idefix.net/

Date: 5 Apr 2012 14:22:40 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: SaskTel ending rotary dial service Message-ID: <20120405142240.8084.qmail@joyce.lan> >Remarkable (to me) is that they still 'get away' with charging for >touch-tone as a premium service when the other option is not available >anymore (and in a modern exchange rotary support is probably more expensive >than touch-tone). Where do they still do that? R's, John
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 06:50:05 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: SaskTel ending rotary dial service Message-ID: <355e91c5-6212-4a72-a811-a132a2a0ee95@k6g2000vbz.googlegroups.com> On Apr 5, 3:16 am, Koos van den Hout <koos +newspost...@kzdoos.xs4all.nl> wrote: > > http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/story/2012/04/02/sk-rotary > ... > Remarkable (to me) is that they still 'get away' with charging for > touch-tone as a premium service when the other option is not available > anymore (and in a modern exchange rotary support is probably more expensive > than touch-tone). The press release is a bit puzzling since it says Touch Tone is needed to access special services such as Call Waiting. The ESS special services were developed when most subscribers were manual; and most services will work fine with rotary phones (voice mail will not). Instead of hitting *, one dials 11, eg, *69 is 1169. The conclusion of the earticle says rotary phones will still be supported: "Finally, even with the move to touch-tone service, customers will still be able to use their rotary dial phones if they want to, the CRTC says." So, as the other poster suggests, this sounds like an excuse to charge everyone the Touch Tone premium rate. I believe some of the Baby Bells did the same thing a few years ago-- simply increased the rates to make Touch Tone standard for all, whether one actually used it or not. As to the price and cost of providing a service, they are not necessarily related. Services seen as a premium service get charged more. As an example, a cement plant charges one price for a bag of cement, but they charge a higher price for a pre-mixed bag of cement and sand, even though sand is cheaper than cement and the pre-mixed bag costs less to make. I don't think rotary service costs any more to provide in a modern exchange. An exchange still requires the ability to detect line pulsing for things as on/off hook supervision and 'flashing', and this is done by a signal processor. Since that capability is already in place, it's simple for the software to count up the dial pulses as they come in. (The ESS literature on BSTJ explains all of this.)
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:57:47 -0600 From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Poisson Table Message-ID: <ho8sn79q4uorj9jh1bgt675padi5iukra7@4ax.com> Can someone here tell me where I can get a Poisson table for trunk traffic analysis? I've searched on Yahoo and Google but I find no tables. There are a few calculators around but that's not what I'm looking for. Regards, Fred
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 21:37:43 +0000 (UTC) From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Ohio bill could doom landlines Message-ID: <jll3b7$929$1@news.albasani.net> danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote: >[Ohio news] >Ohio bill could doom landlines >With the steady stream of innovations to wireless phones, many companies >are regarding the traditional landline as obsolete. > .... >The [Ohio] bill addresses Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) obligations that >previously required franchises to serve everyone who wanted service in a >franchise territory. > ... >According to a copy of the bill provided by the Ohio state legislature, to >discontinue basic telephone service a company must prove there are at >least two other telecommunications companies providing services within the >area. Those companies, however, do not have to provide service through the >entire area serviced by the phone company. >For rural areas like Washington County, that can lead to some people being >unable to acquire a basic phone service. > ------ >rest: > >http://www.mariettatimes.com/page/content.detail/id/543092 > I'm confused. What were all the subsidies for universal service for? Will they be returning those subsidies if universal service is no longer provided?
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 19:00:41 +0000 (UTC) From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Fax Modem gadgets Message-ID: <jlkq4p$m8r$1@reader1.panix.com> HP made a great gadget called a PrinterPal. It answered your fax line, and printed the faxes on your existing laser printer. Alas, printers now have USB, not parallel ports. Does anyone make a similar gadget with USB output? {No, I do not want a "fax modem" needing a separate computer....} --
A host is a host from coast to coastwb8foz@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 dead20915-1433

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.
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