---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <qtgv33$1gj1$1@gal.iecc.com> Date: 19 Dec 2019 22:54:27 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Subject: Re: FCC advances plans for 988, a national suicide- prevention hotline In article <323B74F1-7915-4EA6-A49F-18FCB996FBCE@jt-mj.net>, Julian Thomas <jt@jt-mj.net> wrote: >> On Dec 17, 2019, at 14:00, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote: >> >> A quick visit to nanpa.com finds 158 area codes in the US with 7D >> local dialing and another 25 elsewhere in the NANPA. > >I suspect that a high percentage of users are still in 7D areas. You and I are but the 7D area codes tend to be pretty rural since none of them are overlaid. It occurs to me that a lot of this is a tempest in a teapot since the timeout issue only applies on landline phones. With cell phones, there's a send button that tells the switch when you're done dialing and there is no ambiguity about the length of the number. Only geezers like us still have home landlines. -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly ------------------------------ Message-ID: <qtlufk$43h$1@gal.iecc.com> Date: 21 Dec 2019 20:14:44 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Subject: Re: History trans-Atlantic cable In article <f5cc631d-04b3-48f4-a140-d889a332a977@googlegroups.com>, HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote: >Would anyone know how long in practice these [TAT-1] repeaters actually >lasted? Did they meet or exceed their desired targets? >According to Wikipedia, it was retired after 22 years in service. > >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-1 TAT-1 had 51 voice channels. By 1978, TAT-6 was in service with 4000 channels, later expanded to 10,000, and TAT-7 was being laid with another 4000 channels expandable to 10,000. If anything, it's surprising that they kept TAT-1 in use as long as they did since it was so tiny and obsolete. I'm confident that the repeaters worked up to spec. Western Electric's designs were very, very, conservative. TAT-1 was retrieved and repaired at least once due to damage from a fishing trawler. Here's a report of a repair in 1959 which took slightly over three days from damage to full repair. The damage was in shallow water close to the Scotland end of the cable and a suitable cable ship was in port nearby. https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/1956TAT-1/repair.htm -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly ------------------------------ Message-ID: <2C5D208D-E4A2-483A-A808-A4D48BB07804@roscom.com> Date: 19 Dec 2019 23:43:33 -0500 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Senate passes new limits on robocalls, sending legislation to Trump Senate passes new limits on robocalls, sending legislation to Trump With the so-called Traced Act, lawmakers hope that a mix of new federal powers -- and key reforms targeting the telecom industry -- will spell relief against spam calls that continue to harass Americans at record rates. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/19/robocalls-rang-consumers-billion-times-congress-just-adopted-new-law-fight-back/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <BD136F79-463F-4471-9D24-6C02FB651267@roscom.com> Date: 20 Dec 2019 11:52:53 -0500 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Lawsuit forces CenturyLink to stop charging "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" Settlement brings refunds to customers but applies only in Washington state. By Jon Brodkin CenturyLink has agreed to pay a $6.1 million penalty after Washington state regulators found that the company failed to disclose fees that raised actual prices well above the advertised rates. CenturyLink must also stop charging a so-called "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" in the state, although customers may end up paying the fee until their contracts expire unless they take action to switch plans. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/lawsuit-forces-centurylink-to-stop-charging-internet-cost-recovery-fee/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <14C7C247-76D4-43DC-98D0-C29EAA6A897E@roscom.com> Date: 19 Dec 2019 09:47:32 -0500 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy What we learned from the spy in your pocket. VERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies - largely unregulated, little scrutinized - are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 23 Dec 2019