---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <18eeb7cf-41f4-4b79-b553-f266c5ef32de@googlegroups.com> Date: 8 Jan 2019 13:50:22 -0800 From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> Subject: New Jersey diverts 911 fees elsewhere NJ.COM reported that New Jersey continues to be one of the country's worst offenders when it comes to taking much-needed taxpayer funds for the state's ailing 911 infrastructure and spending it elsewhere, as reported by the FCC. [There is a] detailed article describing the finances and possible new 911 technology (NextGen911) at: https://www.nj.com/news/2019/01/a-tiny-fee-on-your-monthly-phone-bill-is-worth-more-than-1b-but-youre-not-getting-what-you-pay-for-nj.html ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190108221433.GA546@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 17:14:33 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile selling customers' real-time locations: report Data ends up in hands of property managers, bail agents, 'bounty hunters,' report says. By Ethan Baron If like most people you keep your cell phone handy, your mobile- service provider knows where you are nearly all the time. And several major cell companies are selling that information to firms that sell it onward in a practice that could let stalkers and criminals find out your location in real time, according to a new report. "A wide variety of companies can access cell phone location data, and ... the information trickles down from cell phone providers to a wide array of smaller players, who don't necessarily have the correct safeguards in place to protect that data," Motherboard reported Jan. 8. https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/08/att-sprint-t-mobile-selling-customers-real-time-locations-report/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <q12b57$b5p$1@dont-email.me> Date: 8 Jan 2019 09:12:50 -0500 From: "Fred Goldstein" <fg_es@removeQRM.ionary.com> Subject: Re: CenturyLink's 911 Outage + One Bad Network Card? On 1/7/2019 4:23 PM, HAncock4 wrote: ... >> >> http://www.govtech.com/em/emergency-blogs/disaster-zone/centurylinks-911-outage--one-bad-network-card.html > > When the Bell System introduced automation 100 years ago, > reliability was a key issue. Dial equipment included a full > set of testing facilities and alarms. > > When ESS was introduced 50 years ago, again reliability was > an issue. The CPU was duplicated and the backup CPU was always > ready in case the first failed. Further, a good deal of the > software that controlled the ESS contained testing and diagnostic > instructions so that circuit failures could be quickly identified, > isolated, and repaired. > Every piece of major network equipment has redundancy built in, and networks themselves have redundancy in their backbone routes. Even a company as hapless as CTL knows that. Singing praises of Old Ma Bell and her primitive 1ESS does nothing to advance the art. > Failures happen. They always will. The question for CenturyLink > isn't that something failed, but rather why did a failure propagate > through its network and why did it take so long to be identified > and resolved. > Any system with redundancy has to have some mechanism that invokes it, a switchover mechanism of some sort. Even the 1ESS had to know when to switch. In a network with redundant routes, there needs to be some mechanism to determine what route to use, based on knowledge of which links are working and which aren't. What failed at CTL was the mechanism for implementing that redundancy. A control card in an optical multiplexor in Denver seems to have sent out "packets of death", malformed packets on a management channel. Apparently a bug in the system's code did not discard these upon receipt but propagated them, causing them to spread across the network. And they went out on the "secondary" (redundant) paths too. So we have a hardware failure (bad card) and a software failure (not discarding bad packets), and together they caused the mechanism for implementing redundancy (the control plane) to malfunction. I've seen similar things happen elsewhere. (I investigate E911 failures for state regulators.) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190108222628.GA766@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 17:26:28 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: AT&T leaving downtown Syracuse, taking 150 jobs to Florida AT&T confirms its call center on South Clinton St. in Syracuse is closing and will be moving 150 jobs out of Syracuse in April. "The lease is expiring on the location and we are consolidating the work into another company facility in Orange Park, Florida to increase efficiency and make the most effective use of our facilities," said AT&T Spokesperson Jim Kimberly. "We'll also be doing some hiring in Orange Park, in addition to those employees who elect to go there from Syracuse." https://fingerlakes1.com/2019/01/08/att-leaving-downtown-syracuse-taking-150-jobs-to-florida/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Wed, 09 Jan 2019