---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <dad5ed04-e80b-49e7-afc1-9490fcb2562e@googlegroups.com> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 13:16:50 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: Verizon Building being converted to luxury apartments On Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 10:03:55 PM UTC-4, Neal McLain wrote: > Inside the Art Deco skyscraper that once serviced 200,000 landlines > in Manhattan - but that is now being turned into luxury apartments > as the dying technology is stamped out It should be noted that many landline subscribers like their service and don't even have any alternative - fibre does not serve many places. To say the old technology is "dying" is premature, at least until reliable alternatives are rolled out for everyone. > The Verizon Building in New York's Manhattan once serviced 200,000 > landlines across the city. Built in the 1920s and with more than > 1million square ft of space over 32 floors on 140 West Street, it > was one of the telecommunications company's most bustling factories. Unless Western Electric operated there, the building was not a "factory", but rather a switching center. Also, fibre lines still need to be switched, as well as calls coming into Vz from the internet or wireless systems. I suspect the article author is confusing "copper" with switchgear. That building likely originally housed panel switches, and modern ESS is far more compact. Also, the building probably housed operator services - local, toll, and information, and those services are virtually gone. As mentioned, before, Vz buildings in other cities have been converted into other uses. A handsome switching center at 1835 Arch Street in Philadelphia is now luxury housing, with polished Bell Telephone emblems still remaining on the exterior. ------------------------------ Message-ID: <Csednaej2J5DWpPFnZ2dnUU7-cXNnZ2d@posted.internetamerica> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 21:47:58 -0500 From: gordonb.ezkob@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Hey, Check Out My New Phone! It Does Nothing. > Hey, Check Out My New Phone! It Does Nothing. So how many existing laws outlaw use of the NoPhone while driving? "Use" might include showing it off to a girl in order to get laid, using it to smash flies buzzing around annoying the driver, or just holding it because the driver is so used to holding a smartphone that he's not comfortable driving without it? Does it even matter that the NoPhone does nothing? Some cop that sees it in your hand while you are driving might not think so, and the law in some towns / cities / states might back him up. ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20161024183047.GB2305@dong.corp.xrtc.net> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 11:30:47 -0700 From: Astrid Smith <Astrid+digest@xrtc.net> Subject: Re: Every LTE call & text can be intercepted or blacked out, hacker finds On 2016-10-24 at 6:36 am PDT, Monty Solomon wrote: > Ruxcon Hacker Wanqiao Zhang of Chinese hacking house Qihoo 360 has > blown holes in 4G LTE networks by detailing how to intercept and > make calls, send text messages and even force phones offline. > > The still-live attacks were demonstrated at the Ruxcon hacking > confab in Melbourne this weekend, with the demo offering a recording > of the hack perpetrated in part on a live network. It exploits > fall-back mechanisms designed to ensure continuity of phone services > in the event of overloads. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/23/every_lte_call_text_can_be_intercepted_blacked_out_hacker_finds/ Well, this appears to be spoofing directed at forcing a directed handover. Not very interesting to me, it's basically the same as jamming the 3G signal so that phones connect to the unauthenticatable 2G signal. Which is what Stingray devices do. However, the other bits are interesting to me. I'm not sure how familiar readers of Telecom DIgest are with VoLTE (and IMS), but they're vaguely interesting. VoLTE (Voice over LTE) is a technology where the "telephone" functions (calling and SMS) are transferred as IP data. In particular, it's all SIP, encapsulated into an alternate datastream of the LTE network. Much like a VLAN on an Ethernet network; it's just IP datagrams separately tagged for special bandwidth/latency treatment by routers, and segregation in the core network to dedicated voice VLANs. (IMS, the IP Multimedia Subsystem, is a subset of this same mechanism, using only the SMS transport functionality. So when I say VoLTE, I mean "VoLTE and IMS".) VoLTE does not encrypt itself; it depends on the transport for security. The interesting bit is VoLTE can also work on 3G and 2G networks. It's not limited to LTE. As long as the provider has the appropriate technology in their core network to speak VoLTE, it doesn't particularly matter what the bearer technology is. All of the various GSM-family radio protocols support this mechanism of using multiple PDP contexts; after all, it's necessary for MMS sexting to work. So, if you can force a hand-down from LTE to EDGE, where the phone has no way to authenticate the network, and then you supply an EDGE base station, you can do basically anything you want. The promised work-around mentioned in the article, that is, the LTE modem ignoring the directed hand-down request and performing a base-station search of its own, is completely ineffective against this attack if the attacker is able to jam all the carrier frequencies that they don't control. Tools for this are commercially available, as I'm sure other Telecom Digest readers well know by now. Astrid ------------------------------ Message-ID: <8a81efd3-15bf-4b3f-afb9-249f75db42e3@googlegroups.com> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2016 13:18:55 -0700 (PDT) From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: Re: Making sense of AT&T's bid for Time-Warner On Monday, October 24, 2016 at 12:09:24 PM UTC-4, Monty Solomon wrote: > The proposed $85 billion merger faces tough regulatory scrutiny, but the > potential to challenge cable companies may make a compelling case. What happened to anti-trust laws? AT&T was broken up for being too big. So, why is it allowed to get big again? Warner Brothers was ordered to divest threatre chains it owned because it had too much market power. In essence, move studios that created content had to be separate[d] [from] exhibitors. So why is it being allowed to combine (likewise with Comcast/NBC/ Universal)? ***** Moderator's Note ***** That's a very good question. Be sure to vote. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Thu, 27 Oct 2016