Infozech -- Software for Telecom Service Providers Fax: 91-11- 6411455, Tel: 91-11-6414784; 91-11-6414785 in US Contact: 408-490-2840, 2090 Hillsdale Circle, Boulder, CO-80303 Microsoft Certified Solution Provider Visit us at http://www.infozech.com **************************** Telcomine: A Telecom & Technology Newsletter http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.html **************************************************** Telcomine (http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.html), a monthly newsletter from Infozech. Telcomine brings you the latest trends and developments in frontline IT Technologies. To subscribe send a mail to nl@infozech.com **************************************************** *****TELCOMINE************ Wealth of Information about Telecommunications Volume 2,No 2, February 1999 IN THIS ISSUE 1. FREE CALLS IN LIEU OF HEARING TELEPHONE ADVERTISEMENTS Want a free call? Get ready to listen to a series of advertisments on telephone and get yourself free trunk call time. 2. INDIA WARNS AGAINST US SECURITY SOFTWARE The Indian Defense and Research Organization sounds a "red-alert" against network security software made in the United States. 3. HIGH LOCAL PHONE RATES ANGER EURO NET USERS High local phone rates force European Internet users to lauch a widespread civil unrest movement against their telephone companies. 4. FREE PHONE HELP SITE ON THE INTERNET CUT'S MONTHLY PHONE BILLS "CallCompare" a free online service claims to cut monthly phone bills by as much as 35% 5. COMPUTER SYMPHONY IN THE STYLE OF MOZART A new computer program fools listners by recreating music in the style of great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Joplin and many others. 6. CHEAPER, BETTER SERVICE ON HIGH SPEED INTERNET LINKS Major computer industry and telephone companies such as US West, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Compaq Corporation, GTE, Intel, Microsoft and SBC combine to develop high speed Internet connections. 7. BIOLOGIST BREAKS INTO WINDOWS98, REMOVES BROWSER A Maryland Biologist seperates Internet Explorer and Windows'98 inspite of Microsoft's insistence that it cannot be done. 8. NET 'SUPERCOMPUTER' BLASTS US SECURITY CODE A challenge that used to take 96 days of heavy duty computing - cracking the U.S. government's 56-bit Data Encyption Standard was met in less than a day through 1,00,000 PCs linked over the Internet. 9. HEADPHONES CAN MAKE YOU DEAF Studies reveal that regular use of portable stereos with headphones can cause loss of hearing, and if you suffer from a history of ear infections then the risk is greatest. 11. EBILL: BILLING SOLUTION FOR TELECOM SOLUTION PROVIDERS For details visit http://www.infozech.com/solution.html 10. MAILBOX MORE ON EURO Three years is a long period to make old systems euro friendly, says a reader. ****************************************** If you have found Telcomine useful, please consider telling somebody else about it. Executive Editor: Seema Dhawan E-mail: Telcomine@infozech.com Internet: http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.html Fax: 408-490-2840; Voice Mail: 408-490-2842 Please visit us at http://www.infozech.com ******************************************************** FREE CALLS IN LIEU OF HEARING TELEPHONE ADVERTISEMENTS ******************************************************** Want a free call ? Get ready to listen to a series of advertisements on telephone and get yourself free trunk call time. Advertising support had already made it possible to offer free websites on the Internet, free radio, TV channels and now it has made possible free telephone calls. The idea has been pioneered in the US by a company called BroadPoint Communications called "Sponsored Communications". This concept in advertising offers free trunk calls to subscribers who agree to listen to advertisements before making their calls. When you want a free call, you call a toll-free number (for which BroadPoint itself bears the costs), and then your PIN on the telephone buttons. You will hear a series of ads. For every advertisement (each is 10 to 15 seconds long) you listen to, you get two minutes of free trunk call time. Listen to ten ads and you get no less than 20 minutes free of charge. You can subscribe to Broad Point's free service without hassle on the Internet. You are asked to list your personal particulars, such as income, education, profession, shopping habits, purchasing plans, religion and ethnic group. You are given a Personal Identity Number(PIN). BroadPoint's clients represent a premium section of society prized by advertisers. Moreover, BroadPoint has software that allows advertisers to target uses by profession, age, income, community or any other characteristics listed at subscriptions. Only targeted users will hear the ads not others. The software makes possible extraordinary fine-tuning in targeting. Ads can be delivered to callers in response to triggers like fluctuations in the stock market or interest rates, changes in weather, religious holidays and so on. The service is rapidly gaining popularity in the US. Last year, BroadPoint conducted trials in Pittsburgh, and picked up 10,000 customers for this service. Two weeks ago, it extended its service to the whole US, and claims to have additional 40,000 customers already. ********************************************* INDIA WARNS AGAINST US SECURITY SOFTWARE ********************************************* A "red alert" has been sounded against network-security software made in the United States. This alert was issued by the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization that cited the limits the U.S. government places on encryption exports as the reason of the alert. The U.S. National Security Agency limits most exported products to relatively weak 64-bit encryption. This development has attracted considerable attention on the Internet. At least three online newsletters apart from those covering India-specific issues, have filed reports warning that the United States export policy on encryption could cripple the US Software industry. The Gartner Group, an international authority on Information Technology issues also carried a report on the subject . The report said India's Central Vigilance Commissioner had advised all Indian banks and financial institutions to stop using any US-made software. Cryptographic export policies have been in the limelight especially after the US announced the Wassenaar Agreement. The agreement limits international trade of encryption products using more than 56-bit keys, and mass-market products with keys more than 64-bits. Germany, Japan and Britain are also signatories to this agreement. The Indian alert is certain to be the subject of heated debate at the RSA Data Security Conference which attracts over 50 security majors from across the world. RSA has been a leader in the security market in the U.S. ********************************************* HIGH LOCAL PHONE RATES ANGER EURO NET USERS ********************************************* Fed up with exorbitant local phone rates, European Internet users have launched a widespread civil unrest movement against their telephone companies. Their grudge is that they have to pay as much as three times what an American pays for a minute of local calling. Spain was the first country to organize an online "strike," held in September. Webmasters replaced their sites with a logo explaining their cause, and surfers abstained for 24 hours. Telef=F3nica, seeing its earnings for the day drop, proposed lower rates. Italy followed suit in October. Instead of abstaining from the Net, users connected en masse to Telecom Italia's Web site, spiking traffic at the company's servers. The protest tactic worked. Telecom Italia promised to offer a discount for frequent callers. The uprisings have now spread to virtually every European country. Internet users in Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and Poland all have hosted similar boycotts, hoping to see the results on their next phone bills. Apart from Spain and Italy, Europe's phone companies are not going to give in easily. Deutsche Telekom has no plans to lower its rates, which like France run about $3 an hour during the day and $1 at night. France Telecom, however "is considering extending the hours of its 50 percent discount rate for Net users to 7 p.m. instead of 10 p.m., "according to a spokesperson; but this is not considered enough by the organizations behind the strike. ******************************************** FREE PHONE HELP SITE ON THE INTERNET CUT'S MONTHLY PHONE BILLS ******************************************* Long-distance telephone bills screw-ups continue to dominate reader complaints and pleas for help. But help is at hand on the Net itself in the form of a free online service, "CallCompare" (http://www.callcompare.com), which claims to cut your monthly bill by as much as 35 percent This service finds out the best long distance plan from your telephoning habits. All it asks for is a few answers to its electronic questionnaire detailing info from previous telephone bills - and you are on your way. CallCompare then emails you its analysis and suggestions of specific long-distance plans that match you best. CalCompare's recommendations on long-distance services and plans are unbiased. In September it entered into a series of agreements with more than 40 long-distance companies to pay it a "small flat fee" for each customer referral the site sends their way. It's a relationship that helps CallCompare cover expenses. But the deal does not in any way influence what recommendations is made by the service. Results give the best deal to the customer and often send consumers to long-distance carriers who have no agreement with CallCompare, as well as small companies and the big players like AT&T, MCI, and Sprint. **************************************** COMPUTER SYMPHONY IN THE STYLE OF MOZART **************************************** If you think the works of great music composers of the like of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach can never be recreated - then think again. A new computer program has been created that analyses the music of the masters and then makes its own in their style. It has fooled many people including David Cope, the developer of the program. He has used his program, called Experiments in Musical intelligence, to recreate work in the style of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Joplin and many others. Looking for patterns, it extracts musical signatures; styles common to different compositions by the same composer. "For the most part, music theorists extract the value of chords. This program examines the way they move in relation to one another," he says. One of its most ambitious compositions has been in the style of Mozart, which some have called the Australian composer's 41st. The computer can quantify why Mozart sounds unlike Beethoven or Bach. David Cope, a composer in his own right, is convinced that the computer is a unique composer. According to him, "computer has already achieved composer-dom. Bach and Mozart would have loved it." ***************************************************** CHEAPER, BETTER SERVICE ON HIGH SPEED INTERNET LINKS ***************************************************** Several telecom giants have combined to develop high-speed Internet connections. This will ensure greater multi-media efficiency at lower costs. "I applaud the efforts of these companies to speed the availability and lower the cost of high-speed Internet connections for Americans", said Henry Geller, former head of the National Telecommunications Information Administration and former FCC general counsel As a fine example of cross-industry collaboration, major computer industry and telephone companies such as US West, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Compaq Computer Corporation, Gateway, GTE, Intel, Microsoft, and SBC have announced a unified proposal that will ultimately give consumers the fastest Internet experience possible by accelerating deployment of high-speed ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) Internet access. ************************************************** BIOLOGIST BREAKS INTO WINDOWS 98, REMOVES BROWSER ************************************************** Despite Microsoft's insistence that Internet Explorer and Windows 98 cannot be separated, a Maryland biologist has done it and is willing to share his methods with anyone who's interested. Shane Brooks, a researcher at the University of Maryland, began his IE (Internet Explorer) extraction project, called 98Lite, because Win 98 ran so poorly on his Pentium 133-MHz computer.According to Analysts this does take some wind out of Microsoft's integration claims. "They were pretty steadfast that [IE] was so integrally woven into the OS that you couldn't remove the files before breaking the OS," said Dwight Davis of Boston-based Summit Strategies. Microsoft said it wants more time to evaluate what Brooks had done, but said it doesn't think the 98Lite modification is good for end users. "We allow end users to change Windows 98 in any way they wish, but the initial impression is this process seems to retard and replace many of the core functions that users benefit from in Windows 98," said Jim Cullinan, a spokesman for the company. ******************************************** NET 'SUPERCOMPUTER' BLASTS US SECURITY CODE ******************************************** A challenge that used to take 96 days of heavy duty computing - cracking the U.S. government's 56-bit Data Encryption Standard - was met in less than a day, thanks to a supercomputer created by linking PC's over the Internet. It took, nearly 100,000 PCs linked over the Internet to find the key that unlocked the encrypted message, "See you in Rome (second AES Conference March 22-23, 1999). "AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard or one that employs up to 128 bits in the encryption process, greatly complicating the effort to crack the code. RSA data security, a supplier of data encryption and authentication software, has issued the challenge four times to illustrate that the recommended standard for exportable security was too weak. Members of Distributed.Net, whose members account for a network of nearly 100,000 PCs downloaded pieces of collective problem and let their machines work in the background. Distributed.Net's = effort was linked to Gilmore's custom DES cracking computer, Deep Crack. Gilmore's team, found the key that unlocked the encoded message in 22 hours and 15 minutes. ***************************** HEADPHONES CAN MAKE YOU DEAF ***************************** Where mobile phones as potential health hazards can cause dreaded diseases like cancer - as pointed out in the January'99 issue of Telcomine - headphones are not far behind. Studies reveal that regular use of portable stereos with headphones can cause loss of hearing ,and, "if you suffer from a history of ear infections then the risk of such ear infections is the greatest," concludes a new French study. In this study of 1,208 young Frenchmen being inducted into the armed forces, personal stereo use was associated with greater degrees of hearing loss than frequent attendance at rock concerts or having worked in a noisy environment. Among 205 inductees who reported listening to personal stereos for at least an hour per day, some degree of hearing loss (compared with non-users) was detected at all frequencies tested. However, when researchers further analyzed data from one of the induction centers, it appeared that significant hearing loss from personal stereo use was limited to men who had suffered repeated ear infections in childhood. In 114 men with a history of such infections, the use of personal stereos was associated with a mean hearing loss of 11 decibels. ************************************************ Ebill : A Billing Solution For Telecom Services ************************************************ For more details please visit http://www.infozech.com/solution.html ******** MAILBOX ******** 1. MORE ON EURO Euro as a business currency will have long term benefits. The participating countries will have three years transition period in which both national currency and the euro can be used. So, there is a long enough period to make the old systems euro friendly. I myself am working on one of these - Baljeet Singh, UK 2. Good article on marriage stuff. Also, please put more new stuff related to telecom and kudos for getting eBill to HK. - Arup Bhanja, India 3. I enjoy receiving your technology newsletter. I would not like to miss any issue. - Jonathan Hochberg, New York 4.Thank you for your interesting articles.I would be interested in finding out more about advertising, should you decide to go that route.- Hafiz 5.Thanks for yet another excellent issue of Telcomine. I want to make a suggestion. Please include more billing/OSS related developments globally - Shyamanuja Das, India ************************************************ Ebill : A Billing Solution For Telecom Services ************************************************ For more details please visit http://www.infozech.com/ebill.htm *************************************** Information supplied on as is basis. If you have found Telcomine useful, please consider telling somebody else about it. Executive Editor: Seema Dhawan E-mail: Telcomine@infozech.com Internet: http://www.infozech.com/telcomine.html Fax: 408-490-2840; Voice Mail: 408-490-2842 Please visit us at http://www.infozech.com