Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa27732; 21 Jan 95 3:49 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20047; Fri, 20 Jan 95 23:40:12 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20039; Fri, 20 Jan 95 23:40:07 CST Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 23:40:07 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501210540.AA20039@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #51 TELECOM Digest Fri, 20 Jan 95 23:40:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 51 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? (Andrew Laurence) Re: LD ISDN Service (Martin Carroll) Re: Legal Problem Due to Modified Radio (Bill Tighe) Re: Long Distance Caller ID/Cellphones? (Don Skidmore) Re: Format of Telephone Number/Fax Numbers in Germany, France (L. Madison) Re: Long Distance Blocking, was Re: Old Rotary Service Question (J. Galt) Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? (Linc Madison) Re: North Korea Holds US Representative Over $10K Phone Bill (Dan Kahn) Re: Looking up Addresses and Phone Number From Just Names (Linc Madison) Re: Always Busy 800 Number? (bkron@netcom.com) Re: FCC PCS Auction Information (Bob Keller) Re: Cattle Call (Andrew Laurence) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Paul Robinson) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Larry Schwarcz) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Michael P. Deignan) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: laurence@netcom.com (Andrew Laurence) Subject: Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 02:11:10 GMT clifto@indep1.chi.il.us (Clifton T. Sharp) writes: > In article laurence@netcom.com (Andrew > Laurence) writes: >> The Pentium bug affects only floating-point calculations, not overall >> system performance. Whether you NEED to have it replaced depends on >> what type of work you do. Spreadsheets and mathematical modeling, and > I disagree. Which application do you run on a computer from which you > would accept an incorrect result? If the answer is "all of them", > then you don't need your Pentium replaced. Otherwise ... > Personally, I want a computer at least as consistently accurate as my > $6 pocket calculator. Yes, but unless you perform floating point calculations, you will not RECEIVE incorrect results, so whether they are acceptable or not (of course they aren't) is irrelevant. I do concede, however, that some users may not always be aware of whether they perform floating point calculations or not. Andrew Laurence laurence@netcom.com Certified NetWare Administrator (CNA) Oakland, California, USA CD-ROM Networking Consultant Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) Phone: (510) 547-6647 Pager: (510) 308-1903 Fax: (510) 547-8002 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Jan 95 16:33 EST From: Martin Carroll <0006014478@mcimail.com> Subject: Re: LD ISDN Service John Schmerold (john@katy.com) wrote: > At long last, Southwestern Bell is offering ISDN service in St. Louis. > We need to select a LD company, our current carrier LDDS says they > don't offer it. Any recommendations from the crowd? MCI will be more than happy to meet your long distance ISDN needs. MCI offers ubiquitous ISDN PRI service nationwide and ISDN BRI service in connection with the local provider. For more information, contact MCI's local sales office in St. Louis at the numbers below: Joe Rodriguez, Sales Manager 314-342-8568 (3880757@mcimail.com) Jim Brann, Manager Technical Consultant 314-342-7422 (3679735@mcimail.com) In other areas, contact the local MCI sales office listed in your telephone directory. Martin Carroll ** Richardson, TX ** martin_carroll@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: bill@noller.com (Bill Tighe) Subject: Re: Legal Problem Due to Modified Radio Date: 20 Jan 95 16:39:48 GMT mudaw@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (David A. Webb @ Educational Computing Network) once wrote: > The reason I have opted to do this on my own is that the radio isn't > worth more than a few hundred bucks. I am pursuing this on the > principal. My radio is legal for me to own, and I am tired of the > harassment from university police. > Please send your comments to me at mudaw@ecom.ecn.bgu.edu. Try contacting the radio manufacturer. They have a large interest in maintaining the legality and saleability of their product. They should have plenty of information to back up your case and perhaps even a lobbyist in Washington to give support. Its people like you who maintain our freedom. Good Luck, Bill Tighe Email: bill@noller.com ------------------------------ From: dskidmo@halcyon.com (Don Skidmore) Subject: Re: Long Distance Caller ID/Cellphones? Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 17:02:34 PST Organization: The Lone Net-Surfer :-) ! In article , zawada@ncsa.uiuc.edu says: > I had read somewhere that the FCC was going to require carrier (both > LEC and IXC) to pass CPN info back and forth where SS7 was in place. > Sure enough, I dug a little and found that a "Report and Order and > Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" was issued with such a requirement. > (URL= http://fcc.gov:70/0/Orders/Common_Carrier/orcc4001.txt.) > However the order doesn't seem to have any effective date and seems a > bit wimpy to me ... My recollection is that the effective date is mid April 1995 - providing the various carriers use any SS7 services--doesn't appear to be any dead-line to start doing so. However, I thought I heard somewhere that most enhanced services were SS7 dependent and that billing data was going SS7 -- is that wrong? > Does the NT DMS-100 (with the proper software of course) support SS7? > I find it hard to believe that there is no SS7 capability for the > DMS-100 ... can someone prove me wrong? If not, a lot of us are going to be out of luck. I am counting on the new rule to improve my experience re your next question -- hope it's not in vain. > How useful is Caller-ID in other parts of the country? Do other folks > that have the service get "OUT OF AREA" for 99.5% of their interstate > calls, or am I just in the wrong city to get that info? I'd be > especially interested to hear how well it works in the Chicago area > since Chicago is also served by Ameritech Illinois. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well I can tell you that north of you in > the Chicago area of Ameritech's territory, we have been getting very good > results on Caller-ID for awhile now. Lots of long distance calls are having > their ID shown ... interestingly, even some recent calls from California > in the 415 area code were displayed. Of course all this is relevant to > *where* most of your calls originate, and maybe I just lucked out but I > would say about 90 - 95 percent of my incoming calls now show Caller-ID, > or they show that the caller is blocking it, etc. PAT] I am in the Seattle area. I checked my last 99 calls -- 21 were blocked, 50 were "out of area" and 28 had the calling number or the number and name. This is not particularly great from my perspective. One problem is that GTE serves part of the local calling area, but apparently declines to pass CID to USWest customers. I was hoping the new rules would have a positive influence even though they are about long distance -- hassle factor if nothing else. Can anyone address how the new rules affect cellphone calls? All cellphone calls report "out of area" around here. Presumably this is because the cellphone customer has to pay air charges for all calls. Will they have to pass CID info under the new rules? Don dskidmo@halcyon.com dskidmo@eskimo.com Bellevue, Washington USA ------------------------------ From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Format of Telephone Number/Fax Numbers in Germany, France, UK Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 01:04:46 GMT Tom Barrett (tjbarre@srv.PacBell.COM) wrote: > I've been asked about the format of telephone numbers and fax numbers > in the three countries above ... specifically if fax numbers in these > countries have different numbers of digits than a phone number in the > same locale? Telephone numbers in France are always eight digits for the local number, whether it's a voice line or a fax. The UK is in the process of standardizing the length of phone numbers so that all numbers in any given city will have the same number of digits. This is already true in all the major cities (anything with city code 01x1 or 011x), which have seven-digit numbers. In Germany, they still use a "decimal tree" system. For example, the main switchboard at a hotel where I stayed was XXXX1, but you could dial directly to my room phone by calling XXXX375. Most local numbers in this town were six digits. Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ From: John_David_Galt@cup.portal.com Subject: Re: Long Distance Blocking, was Re: Old Rotary Service Question Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 15:36:10 PST This reminds me of a prank I saw done in my college dorm, in the 70s. The two guys in the room next to mine lived about two hours' drive away, and would often go home on the weekends. They also used the phone a lot, and on weekend nights it would ring and ring, so that I and their other neighbors couldn't get much sleep. The dorm had the standard, wall-mounted dial phones. After several months of this, the guys on the far side of these two got fed up. So one night, when they left the room for a minute, we stuck a one inch square chunk of pencil eraser under the offending phone's switch-hook, then hung up the phone. Result: the phone was off-hook but it didn't show. A few minutes later, one of the phone's owners comes back in, tries to make a call, and gets no dial tone and nothing happens. He tries three or four times. Then he proceeds to take the handset and beat the living s__t out of the phone! It was down for about ten days, and guess who got stuck with the bill! John David Galt ------------------------------ From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 23:40:06 GMT Clifton T. Sharp (clifto@indep1.chi.il.us) wrote: > In article laurence@netcom.com (Andrew > Laurence) writes: >> The Pentium bug affects only floating-point calculations, not overall >> system performance. Whether you NEED to have it replaced depends on >> what type of work you do. Spreadsheets and mathematical modeling, and > I disagree. Which application do you run on a computer from which you > would accept an incorrect result? If the answer is "all of them", > then you don't need your Pentium replaced. Otherwise ... The question is not that simple. Your question should be something more like "which application do you run on a computer *that uses floating point* *and* from which you would accept a result that is only reliable to 0.001?" The worst error in the Pentium floating-point divide is in the fourth decimal place. There are plenty of applications in which that is adequate precision for everyday use. I'm not saying that anyone with a Pentium should consider keeping the defective chip, only that some people don't need to RUSH OUT to get the replacement RIGHT THIS MINUTE. > Personally, I want a computer at least as consistently accurate as my > $6 pocket calculator. My, my. Demanding, aren't we? ( ;-P for the humor-impaired) Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ From: kahn@physics.unc.edu (Dan Kahn) Subject: Re: North Korea Holds US Representative Over $10K Phone Bill Date: 20 Jan 1995 23:06:52 GMT Organization: UNC Dept. of Physics and Astronomy > In Jack Anderson's column today, he reports that when Representative > Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico) tried to cross the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) > between North and South Korea, with the casket carrying the remains of > Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon, North Korean officials refused to let > him cross until the bill was paid. > In Cash. [stuff deleted] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They don't need any collection agencies > over there do they? Just keep the people there until they pay their > bills. Remind me not to go visit there anytime soon! I would never get > back home. PAT] Several years ago the Honduran government confiscated the passports of (mostly US) residents of Honduras because they had really big phone bills. The government wanted to be sure they got their money in case the callers had time to leave the country. At least one debtor claimed the calls had been made when she was not at home (or in the country). Some of the calls were international which makes me think that the phone company discovered the fraud themselves but didn't want to take the loss by paying fees for the other end of the connection so they called in the army. Just food for thought the next time you have to contest a long distance call with AT&T or MCI:) dan ------------------------------ From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Looking up Addresses and Phone Number From Just Names Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 19:14:43 GMT Tim Bach (timb@europa.com) wrote: > I have a bunch of names I need addresses and phone numbers to. They > are all mostly in the same local calling area. Is there a service or > product I can buy that will allow me to take a ASCII file of names and > have it try and lookup the addresses plus phone numbers? The phone books on CD products I have seen will do this. If you only need to go from name (with or without partial address) to phone number, the entire US fits on a single CD-ROM. Of course, the quality and current- ness of the listings may vary. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > ...why don't you ask the telco serving the local calling > area for a copy of their directory. Most telcos will send it free of > charge, or they may get some small handling/postage fee. This has been covered somewhat, but to clarify, the policy here in Pac*Bell land is that you get white pages within your LATA for free. If the white pages and yellow pages are in the same book, the yellow pages are free. If the yellow pages are separate, you pay a per-book fee. Thus, the San Francisco YP (2 books) costs twice as much as the Oakland YP (a single book), even though the Oakland YP is almost as large as the combined SF books. As a point of reference, I believe that the only cities in the San Francisco LATA with separate YP's are S.F., Oakland, and San Jose (two books). Of course, all this may change soon with the advances in deregulation, but don't expect the change to favor the consumer in this area. Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ From: bkron@netcom.com (BUBEYE!) Subject: Re: Always Busy 800 Number? Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 06:54:27 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is a good one for you to figure out. > I have two 800 numbers ... well, when I use the phone to dial the 800 > numbers, one of them does in fact go off somewhere, set up the call, > come back to me and give me a call-waiting tone. Obviously it leaves > my switch and returns. That's right. Your line is in the "not able to get call waiting" state and will return the busy signal to anyone who calls until your call, completed or not, leaves your switch. > Now the other 800 number on the other hand is quite a mystery to me > -- how it operates, that is. When I dial it the call goes through > *instantly* as though it were a local call, and if I dial it from the > phone it terminates on, I instantly get a busy signal. That's because this line happens to terminate on a switch that they are also using as a LATA tandem. The translation happens on the same switch. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 05:33:08 EST From: Bob Keller Subject: Re: FCC PCS Auction Information In an earlier post I gave a pointer to the file: ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/rjk/pcs_mkts.txt.Z It has come to my attention that the file that was there was an older version that had some sorting errors, glitches, and inaccuracies. It has since been replaced. Anyone who ftp'd the file prior to approximately 5:30 am EST on Jan 20, 1995 should delete the file and get it again. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Bob Keller (KY3R) Email: rjk@telcomlaw.com Law Office of Robert J. Keller, P.C. Telephone: 301.229.5208 Federal Telecommunications Law Facsimile: 301.229.6875 ------------------------------ From: laurence@netcom.com (Andrew Laurence) Subject: Re: Cattle Call Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 02:12:24 GMT rice@ttd.teradyne.com (John Rice) writes: > I can't feed my dog for $18/month, which is what I can get pager service > (tone only) for, around here. One page a day is well under most limits > for maximum pages/month. Wow! I get numeric paging, unlimited airtime, for $8.50 per month on a six- month contract. Andrew Laurence laurence@netcom.com Certified NetWare Administrator (CNA) Oakland, California, USA CD-ROM Networking Consultant Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) Phone: (510) 547-6647 Pager: (510) 308-1903 Fax: (510) 547-8002 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 15:24:59 EST From: Paul Robinson Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Paul Barnett wrote me in response to my message: > Paul Robinson said: >> I'm going to raise an issue here because I think it relates to the >> issue of why nothing beyond lip service seems to be done by carriers >> about cellular fraud. > I think you made some good points about the impact of cellular fraud, > but I think you missed an important one (I didn't read real carefully, > so the omission may be mine): > Unlike software piracy, cellular bandwidth is a limited commodity. > Every fraudulent call has the opportunity to block a legitimate call > that would have resulted in some additional revenue. I did make that point in part. Additionally, and if a particular system is saturated, then some additional fraudulent unpaid traffic might cause legitimate, paid traffic to not get through. > Furthermore, there is the capital investment required to build and > maintain the facilities to provide the additional increment of bandwidth > used by fraudulent calls, in order to provide a satisfactory level of > service to the legitimate subscribers. Yes, but again, how much of the claimed losses are real chargebacks and out of pocket costs, and how much of it is illusory lost profits (some of which might never have occurred). If someone who can't afford cellular service places fraudulent calls, certainly the cellular company loses revenue and perhaps has out of pocket costs, but those calls would never have been made, so the company would never have received the revenue from it. About the only place where lost revenue might be a valid issue is for people who use fraudulent time, not because they can't afford to use the service, but because they cannot afford to have a particular call tracked to a phone issued in their name, again typically because they are involved in the manufacture and sale of unauthorized dried plant residues, and referred to by police and prosecutors as drug dealers. This was the point I probably should have made: that if the cellular companies were actually getting hit for $1 million a day in settlements, I find it likely that they would have pushed for encryption a long time ago. What the $1 million figure probably represents is imaginary lost profits from unbilled fraud, which is a whole different matter altogether. It means that their overall profit margin is less, it does not mean they are actually *out* any money. And this may be the reason cellular companies have essentially either made customers eat most of the fraud, or barely done anything beyond lip service to stop it. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 16:49:54 -0800 From: Larry Schwarcz Paul Robinson says: > I'm going to raise an issue here because I think it relates to the > issue of why nothing beyond lip service seems to be done by carriers > about cellular fraud. > I got thinking about the issue and wondered: of the industry claimed > more than $1 million a day in fraud that occurs, how much of this is > real money, how much is it lost profits, and how much is sheer > imagination? > And then Patrick Townson says: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does it matter, Paul? Does it really > matter? Should stealing someone's 'profits' be any less severe an > offense than stealing their actual cash? You may not be condoning cell- > ular phone fraud, but you sure know how to speak the language of the > phreaks and hackers. Well, I don't know Paul's motives, but, one good reason for asking this is in relation to my cellular bill. It's my understanding that cellular carriers can bill back 100% of their fraud losses to subscribers. So, if joe-hacker steals a MIN/ESN and starts making calls (lets assume all local and no LD carrier is involved), the carrier may claim $100 in losses. That $100 is paid for by all of the other subscribers via higher rates. Now, if, as Paul suggests, those losses are just "paper" losses, the carrier is now ahead by $100 and I'm out a bit by higher rates. So, my interest is in how much higher my rates are due to my cellular carrier inflating their losses. How much lower would my rates be if the carrier could only claim their actual cash (as Paul defined) losses? Keep in mind that I'm in the San Francisco/Bay Area and my rates are: $30/month with 5 free minutes; $0.85/min peak and $0.20/off- peak. So, the carriers out here are making a KILLING to start with! Just my $0.02 worth (+/-), Lawrence R. Schwarcz, Software Design Engr/IND Internet: lrs@cup.hp.com Hewlett Packard Company Direct: (408) 447-2543 19420 Homestead Road MS 43UK Main: (408) 447-2000 Cupertino, CA 95014 Fax: (408) 447-2264 ------------------------------ From: md@pstc3.pstc.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 21 Jan 1995 04:23:36 GMT Organization: Population Studies & Training Center > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does it matter, Paul? Does it really > matter? Should stealing someone's 'profits' be any less severe an > offense than stealing their actual cash? You may not be condoning cell- > ular phone fraud, but you sure know how to speak the language of the > phreaks and hackers. If I develop a concept or invent a device or > otherwise devise something you could not possibly do on your own, and > then I have the audacity to ask to be paid if you wish to benefit from > my work, how can you say your refusal to pay me is any less wrong than > taking a gun, holding it to my head and demanding my purse? I think Paul raises an interesting point, and I believe that you trivialize it. Nobody denies that cellular fraud happens. I believe, though, that the cellular industry's dollar figures are overinflated, just as the SPA's estimates of software piracy are overinflated, purposely so in a self- serving interest. The key issue is cost versus selling price. The per-minute selling price of a cell call may be, in Paul's case, $.50. But, what is the actual cost of providing that minute to Paul, including depreciation of network infrastructure construction, salaries, software development depreciation, research and development, etc? $.35? Can you really say when a fradulent call is placed that the loss is $.50? Not really. Loss implies that you're depriving the company of something that they otherwise couldn't sell. In a cell call case, its bandwidth. Unless bandwidth is saturated, the "fraudulent" cell call is simply using unoccupied bandwidth that would simply be assigned to a legit call. In this case, the only real "loss" to the carrier is the cost of providing the service (with those depreciated costs, etc.), not the loss of profit from being unable to make a profit by selling that amount of bandwidth. Now, if the network were saturated, and by placing a fradulent cell call you permanently deprived the company of the ability to make a profit off that bandwidth, then you might be able to say the cost of fraud is $.50. I believe that the real reasons industries overstate losses from fraud is to make the problem appear larger than it really is. For example, the recent case of the guy who stole calling card numbers by collecting them through MCI's network software -- they estimated the fraud at what? 25 MILLION dollars? At $1 per minute, that requires 25 million minutes worth of long distance -- or 250,000 people making a 100 minute phone call. Unfortunately, the issue is really techy, and not many people are in a position to question the numbers -- even though, with a little high-school mathematics, running the numbers sometimes makes you stand up and scratch your head with a "wait a minute, something here doesn't juve." And, when people do raise a question, they're critized in the same manner that you address Paul. But, I guess telcos are just honest, trustworthy companies that we shouldn't question at all -- sort of like the attitude we should take with our government too, huh? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I never said the telcos are always honest and I certainly do not believe the government is always honest. But even theives have property rights. You and Paul both bring up the same point about how 'it would not have been sold anyway' ... and while that may or may not be true, my response would be that whether or not it gets sold is my business, not yours. I have some commodity, whatever it is, maybe its capacity on a cellular switch; maybe its a cable television system. I make the statement, 'this is worth X dollars, and that is what you will pay me if you wish to have/use it.' The owner of a product or service is the sole person with the authority to decide what his product or service is 'worth'. If all you and Paul are saying is that people or companies who have things stolen from them occassionally inflate the value of what was stolen for reasons of their own, i.e. insurance payoff, then I would agree with you. Yes, they do that that. If they report what they sold as worth one dollar and what was stolen as worth two dollars (for the same quantity or product, etc) then that is wrong. If they report what was stolen as worth the same amount as that which was sold, then I don't think that is wrong. If you are attempting to trivialize the theft because 'it was not worth as much as they claim' or because 'they would not have sold it anyway' then I contend both those reasons are invalid, simply because what the other person claims is none of your business nor is what he manages to sell or not sell. You cannot trivialize theft based on how out of whack the property owner's ideas about his property's values are with reality. It is still his property. To put it another way, consider a large supermarket in a city like Chicago. Jewel Food Stores tosses a huge amount of perishable stuff out in the dumpster each week when their new stock comes in. Milk with an expiration date only two or three days away. Loaves of bread which have been around awhile or which got banged up and the wrapping slightly sliced open by accident in transit. Entire cartons of eggs where one egg got broken. Boxes of breakfast cereal smashed up in transit. In other words, perfectly good food, but American consumers are picky people. Homeless or other poor people with sophistication or 'street-smarts' know exactly what day, or rather night of the week each Jewel store in the area gets its deliveries and within minutes or maybe an hour what time to go hit those dumpsters and clean them out. Granted, you can't be too picky about variety; you can have a dozen boxes of corn flakes because they threw out the whole carton when the box on top got sliced open accidently by the stock clerk opening the carton, but don't look for any Raisin Bran this week. And in the middle of winter, all those gallon jugs of milk are just fine, but in the middle of the summer if they've been out there in the dumpster more than an hour or so, you don't want them ... otherwise, everything is fine. So since a grocery store is going to toss out all of its perishables when a new order comes in, and since they never manage to sell it all, and since the price tag for the item is probably five times higher than what they paid for it, what real problem is there if someone wants to shoplift a little right from the store? Right? Now substitute cellular carriers and/or telcos and/or software writers. If sneaking something out without paying is cool, then fine. If 'shoplifting' is wrong, then it is wrong. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #51 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa29071; 21 Jan 95 9:32 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA23906; Sat, 21 Jan 95 05:34:05 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA23899; Sat, 21 Jan 95 05:34:02 CST Date: Sat, 21 Jan 95 05:34:02 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501211134.AA23899@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #52 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Jan 95 05:34:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 52 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson DOJ Computer Siezure Guide (Dave Banisar) T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference (Alan Jackson) In the Matter of Callback Services (Paul Robinson) Worldwide Area Code Listing Available via ftp (Paul Robinson) New York A-Carrier Roaming Ban Lifted (Greg Monti) Cellular Phone Information (Lokesh Kalpa) LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Pete Norloff) Looking for SS7 / CCS7 Spec Information (George E. Cabanas) Looking for Autodialers For Callback (Hadi Fakhoury) Canadian Carrier TelRoute in Receivership (Dave Leibold) American Literature on Multimedia (Toyoaki Kondo) MCI Won't Bill For Calls Already Made to 1-800-CALL-INFO (bkron.netcom.com) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Organization: Electronic Privacy Information Center From: Dave Banisar Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 21:08:18 EST Subject: DOJ Computer Siezure Guidel EPIC Analysis of New Justice Department Draft Guidelines on Searching and Seizing Computers Dave Banisar Electronic Privacy Information Center The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has obtained the Department of Justice's recently issued draft "Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers." EPIC obtained the document under the Freedom of Information Act. The guidelines provide an overview of the law surrounding searches, seizures and uses of computer systems and electronic information in criminal and civil cases. They discuss current law and suggest how it may apply to situations involving computers. The draft guidelines were developed by the Justice Department's Computer Crime Division and an informal group of federal agencies known as the Computer Search and Seizure Working Group. Seizing Computers A major portion of the document deals with the seizure of computers. The draft recommends the use of the "independent component doctrine" to determine if a reason can be articulated to seize each separate piece of hardware. Prosecutors are urged to "seize only those pieces of equipment necessary for basic input/output so that the government can successfully execute the warrant." The guidelines reject the theory that because a device is connected to a target computer, it should be seized, stating that "[i]n an era of increased networking, this kind of approach can lead to absurd results." However, the guidelines also note that computers and accessories are frequently incompatible or booby trapped, thus recommending that equipment generally should be seized to ensure that it will work. They recommend that irrelevant material should be returned quickly. "[O]nce the analyst has examined the computer system and data and decided that some items or information need not be kept, the government should return this property as soon as possible." The guidelines suggest that it may be possible to make exact copies of the information on the storage devices and return the computers and data to the suspects if they sign waivers stating that the copy is an exact replica of the original data. On the issue of warrantless seizure and "no-knock warrants," the guidelines note the ease of destroying data. If a suspect is observed destroying data, a warrantless seizure may occur, provided that a warrant is obtained before an actual search can proceed. For "no-knock" warrants, the guidelines caution that more than the mere fact that the evidence can be easily destroyed is required before such a warrant can be issued. "These problems ... are not, standing alone, sufficient to justify dispensing with the knock-and-announce rule." Searching Computers: Generally, warrants are required for searches of computers unless there is a recognized exception to the warrant requirement. The guidelines recommend that law enforcement agents use utility programs to conduct limited searches for specific information, both because the law prefers warrants that are narrowly tailored and for reasons of economy. "The power of the computer allows analysts to design a limited search in other ways as well ... by specific name, words, places ..." For computer systems used by more than one person, the guidelines state that the consent of one user is enough to authorize a search of the entire system, even if each user has a different directory. However, if users have taken "special steps" to protect their privacy, such as using passwords or encryption, a search warrant is necessary. The guidelines suggest that users do not have an expectation of privacy on commercial services and large mainframe systems because users should know that system operators have the technical ability to read all files on such systems. They recommend that the most prudent course is to obtain a warrant, but suggest that in the absence of a warrant prosecutors should argue that "reasonable users will also expect system administrators to be able to access all data on the system." Employees may also have an expectation of privacy in their computers that would prohibit employers from consenting to police searches. Public employees are protected by the Fourth Amendment and searches of their computers are prohibited except for "non-investigatory, work related intrusions" and "investigatory searches for evidence of suspected work-related employee misfeasance." The guidelines discuss the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which was successfully used in the Steve Jackson Games case against federal agents. They recommend that "before searching any BBS, agents must carefully consider the restrictions of the PPA." Citing the Jackson case, they leave open the question of whether BBS's by themselves are subject to the PPA and state that "the scope of the PPA has been greatly expanded as a practical consequence of the revolution in information technology -- a result which was probably not envisioned by the Act's drafters." Under several DOJ memos issued in 1993, all applications for warrants under the Privacy Protection Act must be approved by a Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division or the supervising DOJ attorney. For computers that contain private electronic mail protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, prosecutors are advised to inform the judge that private email may be present and avoid reading communications not covered in the warrant. Under the ECPA, a warrant is required for email on a public system that is stored for less than 180 days. If the mail is stored for more than 180 days, law enforcement agents can obtain it either by using a subpoena (if they inform the target beforehand) or by using a warrant without notice. For computers that contain confidential information, the guidelines recommend that forensic experts minimize their examination of irrelevant files. It may also be possible to appoint a special master to search systems containing privileged information. One important section deals with issues relating to encryption and the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination. The guidelines caution that a grant of limited immunity may be necessary before investi- gators can compel disclosure of an encryption key from a suspect. This suggestion is significant given recent debates over the Clipper Chip and the possibility of mandatory key escrow. Computer Evidence: The draft guidelines also address issues relating to the use of computerized information as evidence. The guidelines note that "this area may become a new battleground for technical experts." They recognize the unique problems of electronic evidence: "it can be created, altered, stored, copied, and moved with unprecedented ease, which creates both problems and opportunities for advocates." The guidelines discuss scenarios where digital photographs can be easily altered without a trace and the potential use of digital signatures to create electronic seals. They also raise questions about the use of computer generated evidence, such as the results of a search failing to locate an electronic tax return in a computer system. An evaluation of the technical processes used will be necessary: "proponents must be prepared to show that the process is reliable." Experts: The DOJ guidelines recommend that experts be used in all computer seizures and searches -- "when in doubt, rely on experts." They provide a list of experts from within government agencies, such as the Electronic Crimes Special Agent program in the Secret Service (with 12 agents at the time of the writing of the guidelines), the Computer Analysis and Response Team of the FBI, and the seized recovery specialists (SERC) in the IRS. The guidelines reveal that "[m]any companies such as IBM and Data General employ some experts solely to assist various law enforcement agencies on search warrants." Other potential experts include local universities and the victims of crimes themselves, although the guidelines caution that there may be potential problems of bias when victims act as experts. Obtaining a Copy of the Guidelines: EPIC, with the cooperation of the Bureau of National Affairs, is making the guidelines available electronically. The document is available via FTP/Gopher/WAIS/listserv from the EPIC online archive at cpsr.org /cpsr/privacy/epic/fed_computer_siezure_guidelines.txt. A printed version appears in the Bureau of National Affairs publication, Criminal Law Reporter, Vol. 56, No. 12 (December 21 1994). About EPIC: The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research center in Washington, DC. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy issues relating to the National Information Infrastructure, such as the Clipper Chip, the Digital Telephony proposal, medical record privacy, and the sale of consumer data. EPIC is sponsored by the Fund for Constitutional Government and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. EPIC publishes the EPIC Alert and EPIC Reports, pursues Freedom of Information Act litigation, and conducts policy research on emerging privacy issues. For more information email info@epic.org, or write EPIC, 666 Pennsylvania Ave., S.E., Suite 301, Washington, DC 20003. +1 202 544 9240 (tel), +1 202 547 5482 (fax). The Fund for Constitutional Government is a non-profit organization established in 1974 to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a national membership organization of people concerned about the impact of technology on society. For information contact: cpsr-info@cpsr.org. Tax-deductible contributions to support the work of EPIC should be made payable to the Fund for Constitutional Government. David Banisar (Banisar@epic.org) * 202-544-9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * 202-547-5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Suite 301 * ftp/gopher/wais cpsr.org Washington, DC 20003 * HTTP://epic.digicash.com/epic ------------------------------ From: Alan Jackson Subject: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 20 Jan 1995 18:42:47 GMT Organization: South Coast Computer Services (sccsi.com) What's the difference between the two as far as the user is concerned? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 13:42:18 EST From: Paul Robinson Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Subject: In the Matter of Callback Services > There ought to be a flag which tells the CO receiving a call if the > call is from within or without the USA, and to reject those calls > which originate in the USA. ("I'm sorry, the number you dialed cannot > be reached from within the USA"). The simplest way would be if the service provider knew what carrier was delivering the call, then they could make arrangements with these carriers to both save them some money and perhaps make some arrangement with them to share the calls coming back. You set up the system so that the carrier sends only a single line from their switch for international calls, and all it has to do is pass down the destination number; they don't even need to supply a voice channel. Calls that come from U.S. Destinations through the carrier are given answer supervision and a message either that the customer is refusing calls from US numbers or that they called an outgoing trunk like. This would then charge the caller the minimum 10c for connecting to the number. Caller ID could be put on the trunk lines; callers that are marked as blocked or local either get a busy signal, an announcement that it's an outgoing only trunk, or just get spiked with an immediate answer and disconnect, causing them to pay for a message unit. If you know which carriers provide overseas service from the countries in question, you can get the major carriers to go along with it in exchange for saving them money since they now no longer pay the 2c termination charge to the local telephone company, and would get outgoing business from the service being generated. But, the point being except where phone rates are still very high, these services aren't of much use because the phone rates for most direct-dial calls have been reduced as a result of the mere existence of arbitrage service resellers. What they would still be good for is bypassing dial restrictions, e.g. from an Arab country to Israel, or other places where direct dial calls are not permitted due to local regulations. And also for making long distance calls that the local authorities have no means to discover the termination number, e.g. a U.S. company without local presence there can tell a southeast asian government to get lost when it demands toll records of someone over there since that government's orders have no validity here, as has been the practice where local banks were typically ordered to provide all credit card transactions of locals. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 14:00:13 EST From: Paul Robinson Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Subject: Worldwide Area Code Listing Available via FTP I am in the final stages of updating my list of US and international area code, telex code, datagram numbers and country codes. I would like comments from anyone who is interested in the information in the document to take a look and check for any errors or additional related information I could squeeze into this before it is submitted for publication as an Internet RFC to replace my current RFC 1394. I am interested in making sure I have all of the currently proposed new format US area codes as well as any city or province codes of major large international cities. Also of any related information I could have included which is not part of this document. The document's name is: /internet-draft/draft-robinson-newtelex-01.txt It is 154,911 bytes in size. I would like to receive any final comments by February 1. If you cannot FTP you can obtain the document by E-Mail. The FTP sites having the document are: Africa: ftp.is.co.za (196.4.160.2) Europe: nic.nordu.net (192.36.148.17) Pacific Rim: munnari.oz.au (128.250.1.21) US East Coast: ds.internic.net (198.49.45.10) US West Coast: ftp.isi.edu (128.9.0.32) To obtain the document by E-mail, send a message to: In the body (the subject is ignored) type: FILE /internet-drafts/draft-robinson-newtelex-01.txt Thank you for any assistance, and I hope this document will be of use to some people. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: International country codes and related files are also available in the Telecom Archives at lcs.mit.edu. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 11:56:59 EST From: Greg Monti Subject: New York A-Carrier Roaming Ban Lifted According to a story in the January 20, 1995, issue of {Communications Daily}, Cellular One Baltimore/Washington's ban on automatic roaming (and on billed-to-your-cell-phone roaming) in the New York City area "A" system existed only from November 30 to January 9. This is the first word I have heard that the service is back. The story says that C1-Wash-Balt blocked customer calls from New York "while installing antipiracy equipment." This was mentioned at the bottom of a story noting that New York City police have accused a 28-year-old Uruguayan native of forgery, computer tampering and other charges in cloning of several hundred cellular numbers. Greg Monti, Tech Mgr, FISPO, Distribution Division National Public Radio Phone: +1 202 414-3343 635 Massachusetts Av NW Fax: +1 202 414-3036 Washington, DC 20001-3753 Internet: gmonti@npr.org ------------------------------ From: LOKESH KALRA Subject: Cellular Phone Information Wanted Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 12:16:22 EST Hello, Is there a place other than the January 93 issue of {Consumer Reports} (probably quite out of date now) that discusses the Cellular/Mobile phone technology, kinds of plans offered, and the various models and how they are rated? Would appreaciate any info at lk05@cs2.cc.lehigh.edu Regards, Lokesh ------------------------------ From: eyegaz1@ibm.net (Pete Norloff) Subject: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 20 Jan 1995 17:29:51 GMT Organization: LC Technologies, Inc. Reply-To: eyegaz1@ibm.net I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the local carrier for connecting one end of the call. I'm hoping to find an authoritative reference to help me in an argument with a Bell Atlantic engineer. This engineer believes that Bell Atlantic is providing the terminating end of long distance calls to the long distance carriers for free. Anyone have any information on this topic? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: gec@panix.com (George E. Cabanas) Subject: Looking For SS7 / CCS7 Spec Information Date: 20 Jan 1995 12:58:36 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC Hello all, I'm looking for an archive site that has documents detailing the SS7 / CCS7 specs. I'm interested in the control and alarm messages produced. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, George E. Cabanas gec@panix.com ------------------------------ From: fakhoury@Glue.umd.edu (Hadi Fakhoury) Subject: Looking For Autodialers For Callback Date: 20 Jan 1995 18:20:03 GMT Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland, College Park I am looking for autodialers to be used in conjunction with a callback service, for both single line and PBX usage. The dialer in effect renders the service transparent to me. Any information would be appreciated. Please post response or email to HFAKHOURY@MCIMAIL.COM. Thanks, Hadi ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 00:24:00 -0500 From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: Canadian Carrier TelRoute in Receivership {The Toronto Star}, among other Canadian media outlets, reports that TelRoute Communications, one of the major new competitive Canadian long distance carriers, is in receivership. TelRoute owed $15-16 million to various companies, including Teleglobe, Fonorola, and Bell Canada to which $3.5 million is owed. TelRoute's specialty was to be its microwave network, and there are reported debts with their Toronto-Buffalo link. Last weekend, Bell Canada switched many of TelRoute's 40 000 customers off equal access, mostly to default to Bell (or in one case I'm familiar with, the line was defaulted to Unitel). After some legal wrangling, Bell is to return TelRoute customers default status back to its customers for now. TelRoute will operate for another three weeks while receiver Peat Marwick Thorne attempts to sell the assets, according to reported terms of agreement between Bell and TelRoute. The TelRoute failure, along with the recent bankruptcy of smaller carrier Northquest Ventures (whose assets were sold to Fonorola), marks a definitive beginning of a shake-out in the Canadian long distance industry, where a surprisingly large number of companies took advantage of the 1992 CRTC decision to open long distance competition. ------------------------------ From: tko161@nwu.edu (Toyoaki Kondo) Subject: American Literature on Multimedia Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 00:30:17 -0600 Organization: Northwestern University Does anyone know of any good books or information on how technologies, especially multimedia, will change economic activities of consumers and producers, life styles, political participations, culture, perceptions, and international economic relations. I'm doing a comperative study of Japanese literature and American literature on multimedia. I am having a hard time finding American literature. If somebody knows any relevant resource, I would appreciate your help. Thank you, Toyo ------------------------------ From: bkron@netcom.com (BUBEYE!) Subject: MCI Won't Bill For Calls Already Made to 1-800-CALL-INFO Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 06:57:59 GMT I saw a wire story which said that MCI reached an agreement with 17 states whereby they will not bill customers for calls they have already made to their 1-800-CALL-INFO service. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #52 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa10563; 21 Jan 95 10:48 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA24598; Sat, 21 Jan 95 06:43:10 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA24591; Sat, 21 Jan 95 06:43:07 CST Date: Sat, 21 Jan 95 06:43:07 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501211243.AA24591@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #53 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Jan 95 06:43:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 53 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mobility Canada Views on 2 GHz Spectrum (Dave Leibold) ATT True Voice Patents (Monty Solomon) Which Countries Have Competition (For FAQ Update)? (Dave Leibold) 800 and Caller ID (Comments) (Glenn Foote) Teleworking Stories (Marc Schaefer) Corporate Creativity, was Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much? (Danny Burstein) Canadian Universal Internet Access (Sarah Holland) Glossary Wanted (S. Cantor) Internet Mail With Half the Address? (Jane McMahon) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 00:23:00 -0500 From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: Mobility Canada Views on 2 GHz Spectrum [a news release via CNW - content is Bell Mobility's] MOBILITY CANADA READY TO BUILD THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY OTTAWA, Jan. 16 /CNW/ - Mobility Canada, the country's leading supplier of personal communication services (PCS), today submitted to Industry Canada its position on the federal governments' pending licensing of spectrum at 2 GHz. The 2 GHz spectrum will open up a new realm of personal communications possibilities, bringing Canadians one step closer to accessing the Information Highway. "Canada is on the brink of a new age in personal communications," said Dave Wells, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mobility Canada. "Whether it's using a video phone to call home to the family, or transmitting an X-ray image from an ambulance to a hospital, the 2 GHz spectrum will facilitate the introduction of radical new technology and services that demand considerable bandwidth and are unavailable in today's cellular environment. Essentially, we're going to see a fundamental shift from communication between places, to communication between people, and Mobility Canada is ideally placed to help make that shift happen." Mobility Canada intends to apply for a national license with a minimum capacity of 30 MHz to offer service at 2 GHz so that its growing base of 1.5 million customers across the country can benefit from the range of innovative and complementary services that the additional capability of 2 GHz will make possible. Mobility Canada is also developing a suite of services called Customer First, to ensure that it can meet the changing needs of its customers over time. In preparation for this opportunity Mobility Canada recently launched a comprehensive testing program of potential new PCS technologies -- code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), PCS 1900 and PACS. The trial, which is the only one in the world to include all three major contending technologies, will determine the merits of each and ensure that Mobility Canada can provide the best possible communications solutions. The federal government is scheduled to award licenses for the use of 2 GHz spectrum later this year. If successful, Mobility Canada expects that approximately $1 billion will be invested in developing and implementing new technology and services in the next five years. As a result, up to 1,000 direct new jobs would be created, mostly in the high-skill areas of radio and network engineering and computer software design. A further 2,000 jobs could be created indirectly through an anticipated economic spin-off of up to $2 billion. Mobility Canada recommends that the federal government takes into account the proven track record, business plans and technical and operational abilities of all license applicants, believing preference should be given to those capable of developing and delivering innovative and competent services at this new frequency range. As well, Mobility Canada hopes to see Canadian companies taking the lead in charting this new [news release omitted a line or two here, unfortunately] To date, competition has played a major role in positioning Canada as a world leader in cellular communications. "The provision of PCS at 2 GHz will maintain competition in this emerging telecommunications sector, which is good news for the consumer," said Wells. "And we're confident the federal government will recognize that Mobility Canada is ideally situated to help bring Canadians into the next realm of telecommunications services, and are looking forward to the call for applications." Personal communications services at 2 GHz should offer more than just portable voice communications. While voice will be a key basic service, the spectrum will also enable the transmission of enhanced voice, facsimile data and video services. Some of the possibilities include: mobile medical imaging, mobile video phone, mobile classrooms, virtual field trips, intelligent vehicles and wireless e-mail. PCS will provide a "network of networks" enabling customers to choose services that best meet their individual communications needs. Mobility Canada, a corporation established to deliver quality mobile communications operates Canada's largest cellular and paging networks. Together, Mobility Canada shareholders have invested a record $1.3 billion in wireless technology products and services and directly employ over 3,500 Canadians. For further information: or a copy of Mobility Canada's submission: Suzzanne Ricard (514) 421-4907; Angela Hislop (416) 213-3308. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 01:53:38 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ATT True Voice Patents Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM FYI. Date: Fri, 13 Jan 1995 09:57:57 -0500 From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) To: patents@world.std.com Subject: PATNEWS: Re-examination filed for ATT's True Voice technology 19940113 Re-examination filed for ATT's True Voice patent It seems that someone is filing a reexamination with the Patent Office challenging ATT's patent on its true voice technology. There are a series of files posted to misc.int-property containing documents filed. Here is one of the declarations filed. Should be interesting to see what happens. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service (for subscription info, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com ) (for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents@world.std.com ) (for WWW patent searching, try http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html ) ==================== IN THE UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE In re: U.S. Patent No. 5,195,132 DECLARATION OF LEONARD R. KAHN I, Leonard R. Kahn, declare as follows: 1. I am the President of Kahn Communications, Inc. located at Carle Place, New York. 2. I am the same Leonard R. Kahn who co-authored an article entitled "Enhancement of Telephone Line Performance", which was presented at the National Association of Broadcasters' Engineering Conference held on March 23-26, 1969, in Washington D.C. (hereinafter the NAB article). I am also the same Leonard R. Kahn who is listed as a sole or joint inventor in U.S. Patents Nos. 4,217,661; 3,684,838; and 3,696,298. 3. In addition to the patents set forth in paragraph 2, I am also the sole or joint inventor of over 80 other U.S. patents in the field of electronics and telecommunications. My professional qualifications and achievements are set forth in Attachment A. 4. My above-referenced NAB article was directed to the problem of obtaining high quality speech in the standard telephone network as it was available in 1969. The explicit intention of my 1969 article was to discuss the desirability of restoring, in a telephonic communication system, certain frequencies that were normally attenuated. Specifically, I suggested in my NAB article that the frequencies between 100 Hz and 300 Hz are desirable frequencies to be restored in a telephonic communication system. In the NAB article, I also discussed various devices that could be employed in restoring low frequencies (those between 100 Hz and 300 Hz) in a telephone communication network. 5. Frequencies in the range of between 100 Hz to 300 Hz frequencies are normally attenuated in telephone systems. 6. My NAB article suggested, among other solutions, using an equalizer in a telephone network as a device to accomplish restoration of low frequency speech signals in telephone communication. 7. My NAB article specifically mentions the speech signal associated with a telephone set as the signal to be selectively amplified for more natural speech communication. 8. It was well known, in 1969, when my NAB article was published, that equalization, as referenced in paragraph 6 above, could be accomplished with any of a number of electronic devices known as equalizers or filters. 9. The telephone network was, in 1969, controlled by American Telephone and Telegraph Inc. (AT&T) in a manner which prevented using an equalizer in the straightforward way as suggested in my NAB article. Consequently, it was necessary for me and others to develop complex systems for restoring low frequency signals in the telephone network. 10. The disclosure in U.S Patent No. 5,195,132 relative to the use of an equalizer to restore low frequency speech signals in a telephone network merely reflects the ability of AT&T to arrange their telephone network in accordance with the teaching of my NAB article. In other words, AT&T has modified its network in order to take advantage of the equalizer arrangement suggested in my NAB article. 11. I believe that the disclosure of my NAB article appears to constitute the stated invention in U.S. Patent No. 5,195,132, which provides truer voice transmission of low frequencies. I declare under penalty of perjury, pursuant to the laws of the United States of America, that the foregoing is true and correct. -------------------- John Berryhill 1601 Market St., Suite 720 Philadelphia, PA 19103 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 00:32:00 -0500 From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: Which Countries Have Competition (for FAQ Update)? As the FAQ update is under way, one section dealt with the various countries that have introduced telecom competition in some form or other. I've heard of a European Community directive to the effect that its member countries are to open up telecom markets by a given date. Competing local networks are also emerging (including UK, US developments). Information on which countries have introduced, or are about to introduce, competition is welcome, in order to keep the Telecom FAQ comments on this up to date. The current FAQ excerpt on the matter follows: Competition Q: Which countries have competitive long distance service? A: Most countries have a single monopoly telephone company for their local and long distance services. Yet, deregulation of telephone companies and telecommunications in general is a worldwide trend. For better or worse, the international marketplace is demanding more innovation and competition in telecom markets in such areas as electronic mail, fax and data services as well as the long distance, satellite and other network services. The United States has competition in terms of long distance services (i.e. a choice of carriers such as AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Metromedia/ITT, Allnet, ATC). This was established in the early 1980s with the court-ordered dissolution of the Bell System into such pieces as regional local telephone providers, AT&T (long distance) and Bellcore (research, administration of telephone standards, etc.). The UK has a duopoly long distance situation: British Telecom and Mercury can provide long distance services but that could be challenged as other companies wish to provide long distance services. Canada permitted public long distance competition in June 1992. Prior to that, there was limited competition in terms of such things as fax communication services and various long distance/local service resellers, aimed at business interests. Unitel and BCRL/Call-Net were successful in their application to compete. A subsequent appeal of certain aspects of this decision was made by Bell Canada and other existing telephone companies. The result of the appeal was that the decision could stand, and that long distance competition may proceed. New Zealand recently allowed Clear Communications to compete in long distance. Australia now has Optus as a long distance competitor. Japan has competition in international public long distance services. There are initial signs competition in the "local loop", or local exchange services, also. Reports from the UK indicate that there is significant growth in alternative local services, besides the Mercury/BT long distance duopoly (competition of two). Cable companies are touted as alternative local phone companies because of the available capacity on cable feeds, plus the cable industry's conversion to fibre optic and digital technologies. A choice of "dial tone" providers may eventually be available to match the availability of competition in long distance services. ------------------------------ From: glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Glenn Foote) Subject: 800 and Caller ID (Comments) Date: 21 Jan 1995 05:23:07 -0500 Organization: The Greater Columbus Freenet > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They are NOT 'paying for the right to > see your phone number'; they are *paying for the phone call*, period. > The person or company or whatever paying for a phone call is entitled > to know where -- to what telephone number -- the connection was extended. > Any 'contract' with telco regards blocking of ID is governed by tariff. > Furthermore, in my phone book where the enhanced custom calling features > are explained in detail, it says plainly 'although you may choose to > block delivery of your number to the telephone you are calling, you may > NOT block delivery on calls to 800 numbers or collect calls.' I would > think that 'contract' is rather plain. So people can be as 'touchy' as > they like -- and I know a few who are -- but that is really their problem. > *They* are the ones who want things both ways at the same time: *you* > pay for my phone call, and *you* don't have any right to know what you > are paying for, because I am a prima-donna about such things. Har har har! > Then start dialing my seven digit number and paying for it yourself, bozo. > Either that, or handle those calls similar to 'blocked number blocking' > with an intercept saying 'the 800 number you have dialed requires your > phone number. Since you wish to not give it, please hang up and dial the > regular number, paying for the call yourself.' PAT] Well, Pat, maybe those who pay for the calls do have a "right" to see the data. But, this "right" does, or at least did, not exist in the tariff for 800 service. And, if it does exist now, you can bet the house, the barn, and the dog, that it is restricted by the words "... where facilities allow". For that matter, only AT&T actually files tariffs with the FCC, the others "publish rates" by choice, not by requirement. Even for AT&T this may end soon. The other companies, who started giving out the calling telephone number, did so (and probably continue) for "marketing" reasons. The "contract(s)" at the local level are different depending on the state and the local telephone company. Also, some (many) phone companies have no provisions for making the tariffs available to the public. For example, although the various PUC's usually require copies of the tariff to be available in "public offices", there is no provision that the Telco must actually have a "public office". So some (many?) the Telco's just did away with "public offices", in favor of "service locations". Everything else is just the same, except no tariff availability. Therefore, if access to the tariff is restricted, by design of the Telcos, the "public" must rely on the assertions of the Telco. Neat, for the Telcos; for the public, it's a problem, and not just in the area of Caller ID. In response to your question/comment: "Are you suggesting because I get this information I 'paid to get your number'? All I paid for was the phone call, which legally means the call *belongs to me*, and I am entitled to know the uses made of my phone when I am charged for those uses. Yes, I am stating that you get this information because you paid to get it. (Incidently, the "you" here refers to anyone who is using a 800 number and gets the caller data, not you personally, Pat.). This data has been made a large part of the marketing effort, and the aftermarket IS software and hardware product area for some time. To claim that you are not paying for the data, as an integral part of the call, is naive. For some time, there was, and still may be, an extra charge for this data when small companies (light traffic) are/is involved. I can point to major companies who have switched carriers just to get this data when it was not available from AT&T. As to "who owns a telephone call", the various courts are in disagreement on that issue as we speak. It may be that a call is "owned" by both parties. There is a lot of history that supports that contention. About "entitled to know": Yes, you are! The right, and ability, to audit Telco bills was a hard won battle. I would be among the first to fight against giving up that right or ability. However, the ability to audit the bill is not as important as the individual privacy/security right of the consumer, nor are they incompatible. The existing technology is more than adequate to provide both. It is very easy to say "pay for it yourself, bozo.". Speaking for myself, and my clients, and I think many others as well, (none of whom are "prima-donnas") paying for it is NOT a problem. Unfortunately, many companies do not allow calls except to 800 numbers, and/or will only "give out" 800 numbers. Increasingly, the reasons for this seem to be the intent to penetrate the privacy/security of the caller, while "hiding" behind a 800 number front which itself cannot be readily identified as to location, company, or purpose. At the risk of repeating myself, It will be interesting to see what will happen when (not, I expect if) this challenge takes place ... makes me kind of glad I retired from the Consulting business ... ;-). Glenn L Foote glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 95 07:25 MET From: schaefer@alphanet.ch (Marc SCHAEFER) Subject: Teleworking Stories Organization: ALPHANET NF - Research and information - Not for profit Hi, Do you happen to know a teleworking story? Especially in the aspect of worker-firm interaction/conflicts. Do you know about court cases (featuring piracy, privacy/non privacy of mails in commercial environment, snooping of mails from employees, successful examples, etc). This would be for a thesis. Thank you! ------------------------------ From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: Corporate Creativity, was Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much is Real? Date: 21 Jan 1995 01:43:59 -0500 [Summary until now: The points raised basically question how much of the claimed cellular phone losses to fraud are "real" versus fiction. i.e., when they claim $20 million in losses, is that actual cost to them, or is based on, say, 20 million minutes at their full retail price of $1/minute]. This overstating of losses is common by Big Business, and by numerous other groups, for the following reasons: a) It gets a lot more publicity; b) It can be used to justify rate increases; c) It can boost insurance payments; d) It can reduce taxes. Let's take a couple or so examples, not necessarily telecom: Police grab 100 pounds of cocaine. Well, umm, maybe they grabbed a bit more, but they show off 100 pounds. They state: "This was worth $1,000/pound on the street, so we just kicked ORGANIZED CRIME for one hundred thousand dollars." However, the actual and replacement cost to the Bad Guys is only $25 plus shipping and handling ... but that wouldn't be newsworthy. Or, let's say you are Mega-tele-sleaze, Inc. You're about to make $100 million in profits. But the IRS will take $50 million of it. So what do you do? Well, for starters, you give $100,000 to the local "take-a-buck political club", but in addition, you tell your accountants to come up with "losses" to offset your profits. Aha!, they say. Let's see ... hmm, there were 10 million minutes of FAKE CALLS!. So we can claim $10 million in losses. Poof, there go $5 million in IRS payments! Or even better ... These calls "would have been" at the Roaming Rate of $5/minute. Wow!. (It's not quite that simple to claim tax losses, but at these figures, it's worth having the tax lawyers work out creative charts). BTW, if I might give an analogy that shows how absurd this can become: Let's say you're a former felon who was given a pardon by an "uindicted co-conspirator", and, in addition to owning a shipyard, you're also the principal shareholder of a major league baseball (remember them?) franchise. You sell tickets to your stadium at $25-$1,000 dollars (depending on location). Lo and behold your security staff finds a dozen kids climbing a tree and watching the game from the outside. You've just had a $1,200 loss ... And, since your payments to the City are based on your profits ... (Now Corporate America would never use logic like that, would they???) dannyb@panix.com (or dburstein@mcimail.com) ------------------------------ Date: 21 Jan 95 02:51:54 EST From: Sarah Holland <70620.1425@compuserve.com> Subject: Canadian Universal Internet Access My last message to TELECOM Digest was about how SaskTel was offering universal Internet access, and BC Tel was reported as saying that it wouldn't. I'd like to take credit for their change of heart ... {Vancouver Sun}, January 20, 1995, Bits & Bytes Column Canadian phone companies are joining forces to offer access to the Internet from anywhere in the country, especially rural areas. [Sarah's comment -- yippee!!] Executives from the Stentor alliance, which includes BC Tel, are working on a plan to allow Canada's estimated one million Internet users to dial into the computer network from anywhere in Canada without having to phone long distance. *** Sarah Holland 70620.1425@compuserve.com Fort St. James, BC, Canada - "Historic Capital of New Caledonia" [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Good for you! I hope the connection gets turned on soon, and it works out well for everyone. PAT] ------------------------------ From: scantor@tiac.net (S Cantor) Subject: Glossary Wanted Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 09:11:14 -0500 Organization: The Internet Access Company I'm looking for a good laymen's type glossary of common data communications and telecommunications terms. E.g. how would you define "internetworking"? How would you describe "physical plant" to non-techie? Any suggestions? Is the FAQ of this sort floating around? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes it is. The Telecom Archives has several glossary files available. There are various ways to access them. You can use anonymous ftp lcs.mit.edu. When connected, 'cd telecom-archives' and then 'cd glossaries'. The glossary files can also be searched interactively using the Telecom Archives Email Information Service. To do this you send mail to the Archives (tel-archives@lcs.mit.edu) in the usual way -- see the help file for assistance), using the command GLOSSARY where the argument is the word or phrase or abbreviation being searched. You will receive back in email the appropriate excerpts from the various files. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 09:06:00 +1000 From: /I=C/G=JANE/S=MCMAHON/O=DEMO.SALES.NSW/@telememo.au Subject: Internet Mail With Half the Address? Pat, I know this looks like a lonely hearts type message, but the answers might be interesting to other readers. Thanks for your help. Here goes: How do find someone using Internet? Is it possible to send a mail message to someone knowing only half their Internet address? I'm trying to track down a Jesuit priest by the name of Bill Roach (broach@ I assume), who's last known physical address was a Jesuit seminary in Menlo Park California. Is there a directory of addresses or some way to get a message to all the "broach"s on the Internet? I've tried American telephone directory assistance - no luck. Couldn't even find Menlo Park. Excuse my ignorance - We Australians are reasonably new at this Internet stuff -- bloody crocs keep chewing up the phone lines! Thanks in anticipation. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps it is about time for someone to write an article describing the Internet 'white pages' and how to use them. I think searching those would be a good way for you to start. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #53 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa11962; 21 Jan 95 11:08 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA25244; Sat, 21 Jan 95 07:27:05 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA25237; Sat, 21 Jan 95 07:27:03 CST Date: Sat, 21 Jan 95 07:27:03 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501211327.AA25237@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #54 TELECOM Digest Sat, 21 Jan 95 07:27:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 54 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Pending ATT Videoconferencing Patent With C++ Source Code (Greg Aharonian) Programmable Touch-Tone Interpreter Needed (Paul Robinson) Re: CallerID and ANI (Scott Falke) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Attention: 800 Number Subscribers (News Alert) (Bob Goudreau) Re: Looking For TDM Box (Paul A. Lee) 800-MY-ANI-IS and Car Phone Redialers (Tom Ward) Cellular Exchanges Wanted (Tom Ward) Re: Can Caller ID Information Be Faked? (Chris Telesca) Re: Where to Get Text of the ECPA? (Wilson Mohr) Where: T1 Information/FAQ? (bruce268@delphi.com) Re: ISDN in Florida (bh0386@aol.com) Telephony Card/Software Needed (Paul Garfield) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Pending ATT Videoconferencing Patent With C++ Source Code Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 18:40:11 GMT 19941019 ATT Videoconferencing patent with C++ source code ATT has a patent pending at the US Patent and Trademark Office dealing with multimedia conferencing. While not overly notable for novel ideas, it does list 12,000 lines of C++ source code, if you are interested in learning more about how ATT does software. The patent is titled "Multimedia Communications Network" and filed April 1993. The abstract starts: "A circuit configuration in a multimedia network simulates an actual meeting room where the conferences between two or more people may be held." To order a copy of the patent application, contact your local supplier of patent hardcopy and ask for PCT application WO 94/24807 filed on April 15,1994. Of interest to telecommunications investors is which countries ATT designated that it might be filing national applications (PCT applications only protect your filing date and is not a standalone patent application). ATT lists most but not all of the European/EPO countries (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Sweden), Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, Korea and New Zealand. I guess that is where all of the telecom money is at. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service (for subscription info, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com ) (for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents@world.std.com ) (for WWW patent searching, try http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html ) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 14:17:14 EST From: Paul Robinson Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Subject: Programmable Touch-Tone Interpreter Needed Jeffrey A. Porten , writes: > a client.. wants to provide her incoming callers with a automated > system that will allow them to schedule time with her by using a > touch-tone phone Sounds like what she wants is an automated scheduling system. > I just attended the Consumer Electronics Show, and was very > disappointed with the selection there; most vendors basically said, > "can't be done" or "I'll do it if you order 10,000 units." Eh? I wonder if he has a license to spread cow manure, because he's doing a pretty good job. The gonoph should have his license lifted. > Anyone with suggestions on how to do this? Proposals from vendors > also cheerfully accepted. I can supply a product to do this, including the computer to run it on, for about $500. If the customer has an extra 286 they're not using, then the price would be less. This isn't rocket science, it's mainly getting the parts and putting together the stuff to do what is desired. You can give me a call at 1-800-TDARCOS if you're interested. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 21:45:17 -0800 From: scott@csustan.csustan.edu (Scott Falke) Subject: Re: CallerID and ANI Organization: CSU Stanislaus In article barrus@merl.com writes: > My wife sometimes returns calls to mental health patients when they > phone an emergency number. When CallerID was started in our area, we > called and specifically asked to have line blocking put on our line > (we have to press something like *67 to turn on CallerID on outgoing > Two evenings ago, I called PC Connection from our phone and casually > asked if our number had come through when the customer assistant > answered our phone. He then proceeded to recite our phone number to > me. I did not (and never have) dialed the code to turn on CallerID. At least PCConnx honestly advertises this feature. They *will* disable the link to your account at your request. Other 800 sleazeball outfits take the oppposite appraoch and *lie* about it, even when directly questioned. I was charged 6-bucks+ using a flip-phone in rural Idaho once. Knowing ANI was linked to US-Whores roamer custserv 800 number, I *still* called 'em up and suggested a new name that more accurately described their true corporate motives; i.e.; the rep heard the term "Total Bastard Cellular" from my lips in a most close-up and personal manner. scott@csustan.csustan.edu ------------------------------ From: mds@access.digex.net (Michael D. Sullivan) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 21 Jan 1995 01:10:07 -0500 Organization: Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer & Quinn (Washington, DC, USA) Paul Robinson writes: > I'm going to raise an issue here because I think it relates to the > issue of why nothing beyond lip service seems to be done by carriers > about cellular fraud. > Let me explain that I'm not condoning the idea of cellular fraud, what > I want to do is discover exactly where the numbers for the amount is > coming from and what relationship to reality those numbers represent. > I remember reading some seven years ago an article which someone had > gotten permission to reprint out of a magazine that stated that > because the ESN and MIN pairs are sent in clear the possibility for > fraud was virtually unlimited. > I got thinking about the issue and wondered: of the industry claimed > more than $1 million a day in fraud that occurs, how much of this is > real money, how much is it lost profits, and how much is sheer > imagination? When a phone is cloned, it is typically used not by Joe Devious to call his office, family, and friends, or to call other mobiles. It is typically used for a day or two by a criminal enterprise to sell long-distance calls, and particularly international calls. The phone gets used for a few days or even hours to sell immigrants the ability to call home in India, Taiwan, Somalia, etc. for say $10 for 10-15 minutes. The airtime costs involved are minimal compared with the long-distance charges. The call-shop operator pockets the cash, then either trashes the phone or re-clones it to a different number. The cellular system incurs actual cash losses equal to the long-distance charges; this may be picked up by the home system, if the cloned number is from a roamer. Whether the serving system or the home system pays, the cellular industry loses big-time cash. Even if a cloned phone is used for local landline calls, there are big losses. If the cloned number is a roamer, the home system picks up losses for the airtime and local connection charge. Many cellular systems charge both per-minute rates for airtime and a local landline charge of 10 cents or so to cover landline interconnection. Whether there's a markup in these or not, the home system that has to pay is socked big-time. Plus there is the cost of doing the roamer verification and record transfer. Roamer verification database administration is expensive; that's why there is typically a premium price paid to roam. These are actual cash losses. The only time there are not actual cash losses is when the cloned phone is used to call only mobile numbers in the same area and neither the cloned number nor the called number is a roamer. It's pretty unlikely that this is a significant proportion of cellular fraud. If a local phone is cloned and only local calls are made, the cellular operator is out of pocket for local interconnection costs and operational overhead costs. If one assumes, as some have asserted, that cellular companies have a 40% profit ratio, then their out-of-pocket costs are 60% of the charges. Think of it this way: If someone broke into your home or tapped into your phone line and made $2000 of calls, your loss would be $2000. If the phone company decided to eat that cost, its loss would be $2000. If the long-distance company decided to eat that cost, its loss would be $2000. Stealing $2000 in phone calls results in $2000 in losses. The same facilities are used to make fraudulent calls as would be used for legitimate calls. The costs are the same, the profits are the same; if the bill isn't paid, those costs are lost and so are the profits. It's not quite the same as software copying, where there are no direct costs to the software company if a kid copies his dad's Autocad. Michael D. Sullivan | INTERNET E-MAIL TO: mds@access.digex.net Bethesda, Md., USA | also avogadro@well.com, 74160.1134@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 14:30:13 -0500 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: Attention: 800 Number Subscribers (News Alert) producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) writes: > Remember, too, that international freephone numbers will *co-exist* > with domestic toll-free numbers in the U.S.. > So there will be 1 800 FLOWERS, and 011 800 FLOWERS, both of which can > be called and advertised within the United States, but which may reach > competing companies! This seems to imply that the +800 country code will contain numbers with only seven digits, yielding a total of no more than ten million international free-phone numbers for the entire world! Given that the North American Numbering Plan alone is already close to running out of seven-digit intra-NANP free-phone numbers, isn't this +800-XXX-XXXX arrangement a bit short-sighted? > If the U.S. position, and U.S. Users Group Position, of grandfathering > existing U.S. 800 numbers is not aggressively supported by U.S. 800 > subscribers, these companies will find they have a 50-50 chance of > winning -- or losing -- their branded number to a lottery, and > competition for the same customers and marketshare in the U.S., and > abroad. Many countries besides the US have intra-national free-phone services. Some even use the same 800 area code! I believe that Ireland, for example, even uses 1-800 as the full prefix, just like the NANP (although I understand that the number that follows is only six, not seven, digits). So why should owners of US 800 numbers (or even NANP 800 numbers -- don't forget Canada and the islands!) be singled out for the privilege of "grandfathering" their existing numbers into the worldwide +800 number space? That doesn't sound very fair to the rest of the world. I think that better schemes are available that could address both these issues (number scarcity and number collision). One simple idea would be to use the format +800--. For example, the US number 1-800-FLOWERS would also be available internationally (assuming the company was willing to pay for incoming international calls) as +800-1-FLOWERS, and a hypothetical Irish number 1-800-FLOWER could be dialed internationally as +800-353-FLOWER. Since each country code would have its own domain within the overall +800 number space, no collisions would be possible. Of course, even this simple scheme could still run into the number scarcity problem, since it presumes only a single free-phone area code for each country (a presumption that will soon break in the NANP, as the 800 NPA fills up and additional free-phone NPAs are allocated). So perhaps the only fool-proof plan is to just use +800- as a prefix to the entire national toll free number, area code and all. Under this method, the US and Irish examples above would become +800 1 800 FLOWERS and +800 353 800 FLOWER, respectively. There are disadvantages with this idea too, of course. One is that all national free-phone numbers that can be mapped transparently into the +800 space must be no longer than - 3 digits, where is the ITU limit on the number of digits that can follow the "+" sign. Fortunately, itself will soon change (or has just recently changed) from 12 to 15 anyway, so this might not be a problem. But the sheer length of the resulting +800 numbers would be unattractive. Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 02:28:13 -0500 Subject: Re: Looking for TDM Box From: Paul A. Lee Organization: Woolworth Corporation In {TELECOM Digest), Volume 14 Issue 33, Andrew P. Dinsdale wrote (in part): > We are looking for a Time Division Multiplexing Box to split a 56k > digital line into one voice channel, one data channel and handle more > than one point-to-point digital circuit with one voice and one data > channel. MICOM in Simi Valley, CA, is somewhat of a specialist in such devices. Call them at 800-642-6687 or 805 583-8600. Paul A. Lee Voice 414 357-1409 Telecommunications Analyst FAX 414 357-1450 Woolworth Corporation CompuServe 70353,566 INTERNET <=PREFERRED ADDRESS* ------------------------------ From: gaypanda@pinn.net (Tom Ward) Subject: 800-MY-ANI-IS and Car Phone Redialers Date: 20 Jan 1995 04:57:10 GMT Organization: Pinnacle Online - Internet access for Hampton Roads, Virginia I recently called 800-MY-ANI-IS from my Contel Cellular telephone. Instead of reading back my cellular number of 804/635-XXXX the number was translated as 804/623-9110. When I tried calling this number directly, it said that the number was being checked for trouble. My question is: Do cellular switches use landline telephone lines with DIDs of their own to put calls through? Tom Ward, President & CEO AirPage Communications of Va email: gaypanda@pinn.net pager: 804/326-PAGE [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something like this is common. I do know that cellular phones here in the Chicago area return very odd numbers when tested against Caller-ID and ANI. Often as not, Caller-ID boxes show the cellular phone as 'out of area', but at least in the case of my cellular phone, the ANI given was cross-referenced to a 'subscriber' given as 'IBT Company', at an address which turned out to be a central office in one of the western suburbs -- with a 312 area code yet, even though the suburbs are 708. When I tried to dial that number, it was intercepted saying the number was not in service for incoming calls. PAT] ------------------------------ From: gaypanda@pinn.net (Tom Ward) Subject: Cellular Exchanges Wanted Date: 21 Jan 1995 05:05:41 GMT Organization: Pinnacle Online - Internet access for Hampton Roads, Virginia I am working on a project to develope a shareware database of NPA/NXX data. Included in this database will be NPA/NXX location data, state, type of number (land line, pager, cellular, pcs, etc.), and responsible carrier. Each exchange is broken down into "billable" sections: for example, some paging companies by blocks of numbers from an exchange but not the entire exchange. If anyone has any information on pager and/or cellular NPA/NXX-XXXX data, please email me with the information. If you do not with to give me your cellular or pager number, I completely understand. (I wouldn't either.) Just email me with the area code, exchange and first digit of the four remaining numbers along with the city, state and carrier. Thank you all for your assistance. NOTE: All those who perticipate in "donating" information shall have their names and email addresses listed in the "Special Thanks" documentation of the program. Tom Ward, President & CEO AirPage Communications of Va email: gaypanda@pinn.net pager: 804/326-PAGE ------------------------------ From: sascjt@unx.sas.com (Chris Telesca) Subject: Re: Can Caller ID Information Be Faked? Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 10:09:45 GMT Organization: SAS Institute Inc. In article , sascjt@unx.sas.com (Chris Telesca) writes: > I recently got Caller-ID and *69 Call Return service beause a friend > and I have been getting prank and other strange phone calls over the > last few months. Generally it works great, but several times I've > seen a few numbers displayed numerous times and used *69 to call the > number back, only to find that the people I've called back say they > never called me at all (sometimes these are elderly people, BTW). > So I was wondering if it possible to somehow fool Caller ID/Call Return > features into displaying and/or calling back the wrong/incorrect number? > Any ideas, thoughts, experiences? Thanks to the Editor and others who have responded so far. While I have both Caller-ID and *69 phone features, my friend (who lives elsewhere) only has *69. She can only trace back the last number that called her. I get a number of ANONYMOUS CALLER calls on my Caller-ID box. If I'm not home when these calls come in, or I've turned the ringer off at night and miss a number of calls, then I can't use *69 to trace these calls. I also can't check to see if the info on the screen changes. A number of these ANNONYMOUS calls are coming from pay phones where someone can press *67 and block their phone number. *69 will not call back these numbers, according to my experience and according to Southern Bell. Raleigh is also ringed by many small towns and several different phone companies: GTE, Centel, Contel, Carolina Telephone/Sprint, etc. Calls made from some of these companies show up as OUT OF AREA calls. Some show the phone number, but will not let you use *69 to redial, so I presume that some of my ANONYMOUS calls that I can't use *69 to call back might be from these phones as well as from some local pay phones. I've back-tracked many of the calls using a 1-900 number and/or various Cross Reference phone directories (at local libraries). 99% of the calls I can trace are coming from individual homes as opposed to apartment complexes, so I don't know how someone could tap or splice into someone else's line in the open out on the street. Thanks for the info so far. Chris Telesca Associate Photographer (919)677-8001 x7489 SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / sascjt@unx.sas.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 12:58:19 GMT From: Wilson Mohr Subject: Re: Where to Get Text of the ECPA? PAT (telecom@eecs.nwu.edu) wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now that you mention it, I have a full > copy here sent recently to me by someone, and I think I will send it > out as a special mailing in the next day or three. It is quite huge, > so I may have to just put it in the archives for reference. PAT] Yes, it is rather intimidating. It was 42 pages when I formatted it out to the printer. I do not have to worry about being able to get to sleep for awhile. One, maybe three pages and I'm out like a light! Many thanks to all for their replies. Wilson Mohr mohr@cig.mot.com Strategic Quality - Motorola Cellular Infrastructure Group [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is installed in the TELECOM Archives. Anyone who wants a full copy of the text can pull it from there. PAT] ------------------------------ From: BRUCE268@news-feed.delphi.com (BRUCE268@DELPHI.COM) Subject: Where: T1 Information/FAQ? Date: 21 Jan 1995 03:07:25 -0500 Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation Would some one please pass on any sites/addresses where information or FAQs on T1 service might be found. Looking for general technical overview of the service. Thanks in advance. Bruce ------------------------------ From: bh0386@aol.com (BH0386) Subject: Re: ISDN in Florida Date: 21 Jan 1995 06:05:13 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Southern Bell has ISDN in Florida. You can call 1-800-858-9413 (BellSouth Data Customer Support Center) and they can determine avaliability in your area and give you the price for both residential and business service. ------------------------------ From: garfield@vanilla.cs.umn.edu (Paul Garfield) Subject: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 07:10:06 GMT I've seen a couple similar questions posted but haven't seen an answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #54 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa08771; 24 Jan 95 8:00 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA21830; Tue, 24 Jan 95 01:28:14 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA21822; Tue, 24 Jan 95 01:28:10 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 01:28:10 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501240728.AA21822@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #55 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 01:28:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 55 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wireless and Mobile Computing Presentation (David Scott Lewis) U.S. 800 Subscribers and Freephone Issue (Judith Oppenheimer) MCI Digital 800 Information (0003436453@mcimail.com) Nynex-Prodigy News Conference (Barry M. Brooks) Markets for 220 vs. 800 vs. 900 MHz Communications? (Will Estes) Faxing Through a PABX (Doug Pickering) Questionnaire Reposting - Datacom Over Mobile Phones (Simon J. Wallace) Tonetalk / TTS (Erwin Lubbers) Does Anybody Need an ATM PBX? (Alex Zacharov) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: callewis@netcom.com (David Scott Lewis) Subject: Wireless and Mobile Computing Presentation Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 18:29:31 GMT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This message only arrived on Monday here so it is not going to be of much value for people outside the southern California area, but perhaps some of them will want to attend. In the future, please try to get meeting notices to the Digest at least two or three weeks before they occur if possible. PAT] ------------- A presentation providing an overview and forecast on wireless and mobile computing, and the overall activities of Cellsys Inc., will be held on Tuesday evening, Jan. 24, at the Los Angeles office of JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization. David Scott Lewis, president and chief operating officer of Cellsys, will discuss emerging industry trends, including remote access and teleporting, third-generation electronic messaging, wireless LANs and `RoomLANs,' home automation and home LANs, computer-based iconic communication and agent-oriented software, palmtop and handheld communication and computing devices such as PDAs and PICs, and the role of wireless communications in interactive entertainment and virtual reality. Lewis, a graduate of the Stanford University Executive Institute, served for the past several years as the head of business development with a leading systems integrator. He is the editor and publisher of the largest-circulation Internet-based trade publication, the editor of IEEE's `hands-on' journal for engineering managers and technology executives, and a member of AEA's national `Infobahn' and `Information Superhighway' committee. The meeting will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Conference Room of JETRO Los Angeles. Pizza and refreshments will be served. The meetings of the 4th Tuesday Group are fully sponsored and funded by JETRO Los Angeles. JETRO is located in the Citicorp building above the Seventh Street Market Place, between Seventh and Eighth streets on Figueroa Street. Coming from the Harbor Freeway, take the Ninth Street exit (East) from either direction. The eight-story parking-structure entrances are located on either side: Eighth Street or Seventh Street. There is no cost to attend the meeting, but reservations are requested. For reservations, contact Susana Herman by fax at 213/629-8127. CONTACT: Cellsys Inc. David Scott Lewis Telephone: 818/786-0420 Fax: 818/994-5026 E-mail: d.s.lewis@ieee.org or cellsys@earthlink.net (after March 1, 1995, use `david@cellsys.com' without the quotation marks). David Scott Lewis, Editor and Publisher HOTT (Hot Off The Tree) Internet-based electronic magazine E-Mail: d.s.lewis@ieee.org Telephone: +1.818.786.0420 ------------------------------ From: producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) Subject: U.S. 800 Subscribers and Freephone Issue Date: 23 Jan 1995 17:18:56 -0500 Organization: Interactive CallBrand(TM) As you read the following, remember: If the ITU is not forced to consider alternatives ... IF THE DOCUMENT THAT IS NOW ON THE TABLE PASSES UNOPPOSED ... The 1 800 FLOWERS vs. 011 800 FLOWERS scenario as I've outlined it, will become reality. THIS COULD HAPPEN AS EARLY AS THIS APRIL. That said, I've tried to answer Bob Goudreau's posting as logically as possible. It gets involved -- I've tried to keep it theaded. I'd written, > Remember, too, that international freephone numbers will *co-exist* > with domestic toll-free numbers in the U.S.. So there will be 1 800 > FLOWERS, and 011 800 FLOWERS, both of which can be called and > advertised within the United States, but which may reach competing > companies! And I'd like to add, What is worse is that the 1-800-AIRWAYS which is British Airways terminates in London now, and 011-800-AIRWAYS could go to American Airlines and terminate in Tulsa. **** For every 800 number dialed the customer will have to determine if it is international or domestic, and understand that "international" doesn't mean it terminates internationally, just that the number belongs to the international number pool. **** Bob went on, > This seems to imply that the +800 country code will contain numbers > with only seven digits, yielding a total of no more than ten million > international free-phone numbers for the entire world! Given that the > North American Numbering Plan alone is already close to running out of > seven-digit intra-NANP free-phone numbers, isn't this +800-XXX-XXXX > arrangement a bit short-sighted? Back to me, Seven or eight digits has not yet been decided. Also there are many options. You can have seven and eight digit. There is a proposal for variable format seven to nine digits. The majority want eight fixed right now so the US could have 1-800-0-xxxxxxx and the rest of the world could have what ever they want. I'd also said, > If the U.S. position, and U.S. Users Group Position, of grandfathering > existing U.S. 800 numbers is not aggressively supported by U.S. 800 > subscribers, these companies will find they have a 50-50 chance of > winning -- or losing -- their branded number to a lottery, and > competition for the same customers and marketshare in the U.S., and > abroad. I'd like to add here, There could be dozens of people who want your number. Having the number now will give you 50/50 chance, but others can obtain the numbers today or next year in other countries (say five other countries) and have a five to one chance better than you even though you have had the number for years. Based on what's currently on the table, it doesn't matter if you've had the number 30 years or 30 minutes to qualify for priority. So, Bob responded, > Many countries besides the US have intra-national free-phone > services. Some even use the same 800 area code! I believe that > Ireland, for example, even uses 1-800 as the full prefix, just like > the NANP (although I understand that the number that follows is only > six, not seven, digits). So why should owners of US 800 numbers (or > even NANP 800 numbers -- don't forget Canada and the islands!) be > singled out for the privilege of "grandfathering" their existing > numbers into the worldwide +800 number space? That doesn't sound very > fair to the rest of the world. > I think that better schemes are available that could address both > these issues (number scarcity and number collision). My response: There are approximately four million U.S. toll-free subscribers, and 150,000 freephone subscribers outside of the U.S. (Some of the 150,000 also are U.S. marketers' international freephone numbers.) U.S. marketers, large and small, corporate and entreprenurial, have invested in, developed and designed the infrastructure for, and nurtured the 800 industry into the marketing powerhouse it is today. Now, I'm a marketing person, and this is important to me. But I don't want to be unfair, or impractical, either. Bob's 100% right here. The question is, why won't the ITU allow alternatives to be discussed? Remember, random numbers mean there's no way to translate from the domestic to international. Bob's scheme is good: +800--. As Bob discusses, the US number 1-800-FLOWERS would also be available internationally (assuming the company was willing to pay for incoming international calls) as +800-1-FLOWERS, and a hypothetical Irish number 1-800-FLOWERS could be dialed internationally as +800-353-FLOWERS. Since each country code would have its own domain within the overall +800 number space, no collisions would be possible. Of course, even this simple scheme could still run into the number scarcity problem, since it presumes only a single free-phone area code for each country. So perhaps the only fool-proof plan is to just use +800- as a prefix to the entire national toll free number, area code and all. Under this method, the US and Irish examples above would become +800 1 800 FLOWERS and +800 353 800 FLOWERS, respectively. There are disadvantages with this idea too, of course. One is that all national free-phone numbers that can be mapped transparently into the +800 space must be no longer than - 3 digits, where is the ITU limit on the number of digits that can follow the "+" sign. Fortunately, itself will soon change (or has just recently changed) from 12 to 15 anyway, so this might not be a problem. But the sheer length of the resulting +800 numbers would be unattractive. Bottom line, we agree that there are better options that merit serious consideration. So the question for U.S. 800 Subscribers to ask their U.S. carriers at the ITU is, why isn't this being discussed?!!! J. Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 14:46:00 EST From: Hardwire <0003436453@mcimail.com> Subject: MCI Digital 800 Information Contact: David Sutton MCI Business Markets 404/644-NEWS MCI LAUNCHES TOLL-FREE ALTERNATIVE FOR MULTIMEDIA ACCESS First-Ever 800 Digital Service Integrates Voice, Data and Video Redefines the Way Businesses Service and Sell to Customers WASHINGTON, DC, January 23, 1995 -- In its latest extension of the Information Superhighway, MCI today announced at ComNet the first-ever tariffed and commercially available 800 digital service. MCI 800 Digital Service enables users to send and receive simultaneous voice, data and video communications through a single 800 number. Available immediately, MCI 800 Digital Service is ideal for high-speed applications including on-line shopping, remote access to corporate database libraries, customer service, technical support, videoconferencing, document sharing and software distribution. MCI's new service differs from existing data services by transferring connection costs to the service provider, thus encouraging customer access and increasing the likelihood that applications will succeed commercially. "We believe MCI 800 Digital Service will revolutionize the way companies do business," says Brian Brewer, vice president of marketing for MCI Business Markets. "For example, this service will easily allow consumers to call an 800 number to not only order software but also have it simultaneously delivered to their PC. In this same scenario, technical support could then conveniently follow via on-line screen-sharing." Wide Range of Applications By combining the ease of toll-free dialing with the power of high-speed switched data services, MCI is providing users with a highly effective, cost efficient communications link to businesses, consumers and suppliers. Typical applications might include: * On-line Interactive Catalogs -- By dialing a toll-free number, customers can view and purchase a company's products and services directly, dramatically reducing sales cycles. * File Sharing and Collaborative Computing -- Companies can work faster and smarter by enabling workers in different locations to use toll-free desktop videoconferencing and document sharing to edit documents simultaneously. * Toll-Free Access to Corporate Systems -- Companies can connect telecommuters and other office locations to corporate systems, data libraries and LANs. * Multimedia -- Users can combine voice, data and video at speeds of up to 64 Kbps, toll-free. Represents Evolution of Switched Data Services More and more of today's data applications require greater transmission bandwidth and, as a result, are tightly coupled to the underlying technology used to connect to end users. Traditional transmission rates achievable with modems, even high-speed modems, are in many cases unacceptable and degrade an application's quality until it is no longer a viable commercial product. MCI 800 Digital Service offers a solution to this problem by supporting switched data at up to 64 Kbps speeds, six times the speed of a 9.6 modem, toll-free. Digital 800 can originate through a local telephone company's ISDN basic rate interface (BRI) connection or via switched data access. Consumers can call the local phone company to order a BRI line. For consumers already using ISDN BRI or switched data access technology, connecting to a digital 800 application is as simple as dialing an 800 number. Service providers interested in developing digital 800 applications have the option of providing terminating access to their application through a choice of local exchange carrier (LEC) provided switched data, primary rate interface (PRI), BRI or MCI provided PRI terminating access methods. MCI 800 Digital Service is an integral component of MCI's portfolio of 800 services and can be used along with all existing Vision 800 and MCI 800 features. For example, time-of-day routing or percent-allocation routing can be used to ensure that every incoming call is routed to the correct location on the first attempt. MCI reporting tools, Perspective and TrafficView analysis, are also compatible with MCI 800 Digital Service. Pricing for MCI 800 Digital Service will initially reflect standard MCI Vision 800 or MCI 800 voice rates based on the type product platform selected. As with standard voice rates, 800 Digital Service rates will differ based on selection of switched BRI or dedicated PRI termination. All usage will contribute to overall 800 discounts and term commitments. MCI, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has grown from its core long distance business to become the world's third largest carrier of international calling and a premier provider of data communications over the vast Internet computer network. With annual revenues of $12 billion, the company today provides a wide array of consumer and business long distance and local services, data and video communications, on-line information, electronic mail, network management services and communications software. ------------------------------ From: BARRY M. BROOKS Subject: Nynex-Prodigy News Conference Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 08:53:01 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Again unfortunatly, this arrived on Monday, with little chance for anyone to plan it into their schedule. Meetings should be announced here two or three weeks prior if not sooner! Thank you. PAT] ------------- Mat Stover, president and CEO of NYNEX Information Resources Company and Ross Glatzer, president of Prodigy Services Company will announce the nations first advertiser-supported, online, interactive Yellow Pages, on the information superhighway, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 1995. You are invited to participate in the interactive press briefing and live demonstration of the new interactive, online service, with Mr. Stover and Mr. Glatzer: Subject: Announcement of the NYNEX Interactive Yellow Pages Live, on PRODIGY Date: Tuesday, Jan. 24, 1995 Time: 10 a.m. (EST) Place: Lincoln Center, Rose Building (Corner West 65 and Amsterdam) Location: The Kaplan Penthouse, 9th floor You are welcome to remain in the Kaplan Penthouse after the press briefing to be among the first in the nation to JUMP NYNEX on PRODIGY. To attend the press briefing, please arrive at the Kaplan Penthouse approximately 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start of the briefing (9:45 a.m. EST). Refreshments will be served. For more information, please contact Phil Santoro, NYNEX, at (508) 762-1326. ------------------------------ From: westes@netcom.com (Will Estes) Subject: Markets for 220 vs. 800 vs. 900 MHz Communications? Reply-To: westes@usc.com Organization: U.S. Computer Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 06:45:14 GMT Can someone briefly go over what are the markets for different frequencies of the various spectrums for personal communication markets? I am familiar enough to know that 220, 800, and 900 MHz are the common frequencies that people seem to be using. I gather that 220 is use for Specialized Mobile Radio (SMR) applications, which appear to be one-to-many broadcast applications, like information being sent to delivery vehicles. 900 MHz seems to be reserved for high-end digital personal communication services. What are the other parts of the spectrum that are being used? What are the principle applications at each part of the spectrum? Where does current analog and digital cellular telephone fall in this spectrum? Will Estes Internet: westes@usc.com ------------------------------ From: Doug Pickering Subject: Faxing Through a PABX Date: 23 Jan 1995 07:16:42 GMT Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation Hi, I have just gotten a PABX. Everything seems to be working OK, except I cannot fax out through it (I haven't tried receiving yet). Modem connections are fine all the way up to 14400 (all my modem supports). Without the PABX, faxing is fine, but with it, the modem dials the number get connected then never gets beyond 'Connecting'. I am using WinFAX Pro 4. Picking up an extension proves that connection has been made to the other fax. I have a Rockwell based Voice/Fax/Modem. Any ideas? Doug Pickering ------------------------------ From: Simon J Wallace Subject: Questionnaire Repost - Datacom Over Mobile Phones Organization: Edinburgh University Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 10:10:23 GMT May I first thank all respondant to my questionnaire (14). I was hoping for 20 so I'll repost to see if I can get a few more. I will of course post all results next week. I wonder if you could help me with a questionnaire I am doing for my Masters Degree. I would appreciate some opinions on DATA communications over mobile phones. It should only take a couple of minutes. Could you please post the replies to me at sjw@ee.ed.ac.uk. I shall post my findings as soon as I have collated them. Thanks in Advance. Simon #:-) 1) Do you have a Digital (D), Analog (A) or Dual Mode (DM) phone? 2) Do you at present use your mobile phone to transmit data? 3) Do you at any time in the future plan to use a mobile phone to transmit data? 4) If so what factors would influence your decision: i) ease of use; ii) cost of equipment; iii) cost of calls; iv) reliability; v) Other please state: 5) What be your MAIN use of mobile data comms? Thanks again Simon #8-) ------------------------------ From: elubbers@inter.nl.net (Erwin Lubbers) Subject: Tonetalk / TTS Organization: NLnet Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 10:26:53 GMT I need information about the Tonetalk/TTS voicemail card for the PC. Does someone have this info or do you know where to get it? Thanks, Erwin ------------------------------ From: alexz@tmx100.elex.co.il (Alex Zacharov) Subject: Does Anybody Need an ATM PBX? Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 11:33:34 GMT Organization: Telrad Ltd. I would like to make a little referendum: If somebody had offered an ATM PBX in a form of small N-ISDN servers interconnected by ATM, supporting N-ISDN basic and supplementary services with interfaces to global ATM and PSTN, who would have bought it NOW? Regards, Alex alexz@tmx100.elex.co.il ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #55 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa09368; 24 Jan 95 8:51 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA22917; Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:46:42 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA22910; Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:46:39 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:46:39 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501240846.AA22910@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #56 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:46:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 56 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Changes to 411 Directory Assistance Service in Atlanta (Nigel Allen) BellSouth ISDN Rates (Was ISDN in Florida) (Ed Goldgehn) Belgacom and Greek Panaphone (Juha Veijalainen) LD Provider Juggling (Justin T. Leavens) Sub-Lease 900 Number Possible? (Clint Scott) GAO's Information Superhighway Report (Mike Dolak) Voice Over Frame Relay and ISDN (Dino Sims) Spokane Service Outage (Ry Jones) Jobs Available in San Diego: ATM/SONET/OC48 (Shaun Maki) FAX Group 3 and Group 4 Standard Information Wanted (Elron Adar) Help Needed Locating Retailer For MicroTac Ultralite (Steve Chinatti) Help Needed With Procomm (kbsherm@holonet.net) PC Telcom Equipment Wanted (Tom Lempicke) Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? (Alan Boritz) Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? (Wes Leatherock) Re: US <> Purto Rico: Options? (Julio Frondeur) Re: CO/Boston Added to NACN (John R. Covert) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 03:35:21 -0500 Subject: Changes to 411 Directory Assistance Service in Atlanta From: ndallen@io.org (Nigel Allen) Organization: Internex Online (io.org) Southern Bell says it is introducing a more-automated directory assistance service which will reduce the amount of speaking a directory assistance operator has to do. The company didn't say whether the resulting savings in operator time will lead to layoffs. And it seems as if the company is reducing operator time at the expense of making customers wait on the phone longer while a shortened recorded version of their request is played back to an operator. It is not clear whether the service will also be used for long distance directory assistance requests from outside the Atlanta area. A Southern Bell press release says: "With the company's new DA*Plus service, customers dialing 411 are greeted by the system and then are asked for the name of the city and the person or business whose phone number they need. The system will then record the customer's response. After the information is recorded, DA*Plus automatically trims the silence at the beginning and end of the customer responses and places the call in queue for the next available operator. By eliminating the pauses and silence on each call, the operator hears only the customer's responses, not any hesitation or pauses. The operator then checks for the listing and provides the number requested to the caller just as it is done today. At any time, a caller who wishes to bypass the service can press zero and is immediately connected to an operator." (The press release does not explain how someone with a rotary dial can be connected to an operator.) The company says that customers who have questions or comments about this new service may call 404-780-2323. Attendants will be available to answer questions Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Journalists can call Lynn Bress of Southern Bell at 404-391-2484. Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ndallen@io.org ------------------------------ From: edg@ocn.com (Ed Goldgehn) Subject: BellSouth ISDN Rates (Was ISDN in Florida) Date: 22 Jan 1995 16:01:31 GMT Organization: The INTERNET Connection, LLC Reply-To: isdn@ocn.com In article , xu@gate.net says: > I was wondering if anyone has heard anything about Southern > Bell implementing ISDN in Florida? I've been considering it to get a > link to the net and a business line as well. I was also wondering if > anyone could give me an idea of the rates I might get charged. If no > one knows or isn't sure how about a number I might call to get this > info? Barring that I was wondering if anyone was currently using ISDN > in Florida and what their experiences with it were. The rates for BellSouth ISDN in all areas are: BELLSOUTH RESIDENCE --------- --------- ISDN RATES (2B+D) Flat Rate Monthly* State Minimum Maximum Installation Alabama $63.85 $68.60 $210.00 Florida 52.80 56.15 226.00 Georgia 60.05 66.40 184.50 Kentucky 54.67 60.05 213.00 Lousiana# 70.50 70.50 259.80 Mississippi 61.29 65.51 196.00 North Carolina 72.44 75.01 197.50 South Carolina 57.70 60.40 212.50 Tennessee 24.50 29.50 N/C** *Minimum & Maximum Rates are due to different rate groups. (The rate will not be more than the maximum or less than the minimum.) #Louisiana rates are not rate group sensitive **Residence service order charge and line connection charge for initial installations will be waived for a period of one year beginning October 29,1993. (Tenn. Only) BELLSOUTH BUSINESS --------- ^^^^^^^^ ISDN RATES (2B+D) Flat Rate STATE MONTHLY INSTALLATION ---- ------- ------------ Alabama $93.50 $219.00## Florida 93.50 206.00## Georgia 93.50 208.25## Kentucky 91.00 230.00## Louisiana 95.50 254.19## Mississippi 94.50 236.00## North Carolina 93.50 212.50## South Carolina 91.00 232.50## Tennessee 93.50 58.50## These rates do not include any features or packet services. Rates Subject to change. Rates Subject to all applicable taxes ========================================================================== ##Before firm rates can be confirmed, loop qualification and facilities availability request must be processed for each address. This request is to determine if the local facilities meet distance and provisioning requirements. This will determine if ISDN can be provided to that address without additional charges. To have the above request performed for your location, send your name, the name telephone service is listed to, the address and existing telephone number to: isdn@ocn.com ========================================================================== Open Communication Networks, Inc. (OCN) provides turnkey ISDN implementation services which includes the ordering and coordination of ISDN installation with BellSouth (and other telcos) as well as coordination with ISP's (we'll check what customer equipment requirements they have). OCN also provides a "dial-in" test site for all forms of ISDN data connections including terminal emulation, SLIP, and PPP (sync and async). OCN provides the above services *at no additional charge* when the customer's ISDN equipment is purchased at LIST PRICE. For more information, send e-mail to isdn@ocn.com Ed Goldgehn E-Mail: edg@ocn.com Sr. Vice President Voice: (404) 919-1561 Open Communication Networks, Inc. Fax: (404) 919-1568 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Belgacom and Greek Panaphone From: juha.veijalainen@pcb.compart.fi (Juha Veijalainen) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 22:33:00 +0200 Organization: ComPart BBS - Helsinki, Finland References: > I send this letter to protest for the services of Belgacom Proximus > Cellular Telephone service and that of the Greek Panaphone. I am an > owner of a Panaphone number and I am visiting Belgium since 10 > December 1994. My telephone is not working in a certain area of > Belgium even the Proximus signal is very stong. This area is This sounds familiar. Let me guess, you are using a handheld phone, right? I visited Belgium and Holland last autumn and had similar problems. IMHO the problem is that GSM networks in those countries are not built for handheld phones. Cells are too widely apart and use maximum power allowed for a cell site (20 W?). Your phone sees the cell transmitter and may even show maximum field strength. When you try to _use_ your phone, you'll see that field strength indicator rapidly goes to zero and net connection is lost (that is what happens with Nokia 2110). Handheld phones' 2 W maximum transmitting power is not enough, when cell transmitter is shouting at 20 W! The only decent GSM nets (for handheld phones) are in my opinion in Finland and Sweden (I've used my phone also in UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland). Lots of low power cell sites make it work. Juha Veijalainen Helsinki, Finland ------------------------------ From: jtleavens@aol.com (JT Leavens) Subject: LD Provider Juggling Date: 23 Jan 1995 13:35:15 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: jtleavens@aol.com (JT Leavens) I had my LD service provided to me by AddTel, a LDDS reseller until October 94, when I switched it all to LDDS directly, except for a lonely 800 number that I was hanging on to, but not really using. So I was still getting bills from AddTel for this 800 number with just a few wrong numbers that called the line; no big deal. In December, I took a closer look at my bill and noticed that AddTel was still charging me for the monthly rates for the 800 number they were no longer carrying, and I got suspicious. I then combed through bills since I had switched my service, and found that there were calls that were still being billed by them on that 800 number, even though LDDS was supposedly my provider. Not a lot of calls, mind you, but just a few. Checking my AddTel bills against my LDDS bills I found: *Most of the service was provided by LDDS, as it should have been. *There was an entire week in November when AdTel billed my service and LDDS did not. It was a Monday through Friday, for no explanation I can provide. *There were some days when LDDS and AdTel seemed to fight for my calls, some calls in a day going to one carrier and others going to the other, right after each other with no pattern. *Most upsetting were calls I found on BOTH bills, billed by both companies. There is no doubt that these were the exact same calls. How exactly can this happen? I got a partial explanation from a tech at LDDS who said a "send resporg command to the SDS database" would take care of the routing to LDDS (I assume that's the central 800 database that ensures the proper call routing), but how exactly could the two companies both bill for a single call? And do I have any responsibility to pay AdTel for providing service when I expressly did *not* want them to? Especially since being able to compare identical calls billed side by side proved that I had saved a good bit of money by switching to LDDS. Any ideas from anyone? Thanks in advance! Justin Leavens ------------------------------ From: cscott@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Clint Scott) Subject: Sub-Lease 900 Number Possible? Date: 22 Jan 1995 16:02:37 -0600 Organization: NeoSoft Internet Services +1 713 684 5969 I am in need of 'renting' a 900 number for a one month trail period. I don't want to have to pay the whole down money, etc just for this brief time. Is it possible to sort of sub-lease a 900 number with a particular extension? E-mail is preferable to news post. cscott@starbase.neosoft.com ------------------------------ From: mjdolak@access3.digex.net (Mike Dolak) Subject: GAO's Information Superhighway Report Date: 23 Jan 1995 00:00:40 GMT Organization: Digex Net The United States General Accounting Office (GAO) has released a report entitled Information Superhighway: An Overview of Technology Challenges (GAO/AIMD-95-23). The 84 page report provides an overview of pivotal technical issues -- security and privacy, interoperability, and reliability -- facing the industry and federal regulators in planning and implementing the information superhighway. Orders for a single free copy of this report may be placed by calling (202) 512-6000, by using fax number (301) 258-4066, or by mailing a request to the U.S. General Accounting Office, P.O. Box 6015, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-6015, USA. ------------------------------ From: dino@crl.com (Dino Sims) Subject: Voice Over Frame Relay and ISDN Date: 23 Jan 1995 14:02:53 -0800 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access Hello all, My company is in the process of installing a WAN between our locations here in Atlanta, Hong Kong and Holland. And I was wondering is it possible or even practical to do voice over frame relay or isdn to extend our digital PBX system (Executone 432) so users here can just punch in an extension and get someone over seas. Also has anyone done video conferencing over frame relay? I know that all of this is possible by using 56k leased lines but I would like to try and save some money :-) Dino Sims Systems Administrator Atlanta, GA email1 dino@crl.com email2 DSims_+a_AJC_+lDino_Sims+r%AJC_International@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: rjones@rjones.oz.net (Ry Jones) Subject: Spokane Service Outage Date: 23 Jan 1995 19:55:50 GMT Organization: The SenseMedia Network, http://sensemedia.net/ Saturday morning on KIRO (710 AM, Seattle) they said that USWest was trucking in hundreds on service persons from Idaho and Western Washington to "Dry out lines on the south hill of Spokane", where apparently several thousand people are without service at this hour. Does anyone have the 411 on this outage? What happened? ------------------------------ From: smaki@teleport.com (Shaun) Subject: Jobs Available in San Diego: ATM/SONET/OC48 Date: 23 Jan 1995 20:27:51 GMT Organization: Teleport - Portland's Public Access (503) 220-1016 ATM/SONET/DS3/T1/FAX/modem in moderate sunny San Diego: Pay can be over 100K/year depending on experience! If you have the above skills please read to the bottom. More than ten jobs are being filled right now. From Component Engineer to Hardware Manager. From Software Engineer to Software Manager. With the right background you may find yourself working as a technology scientist planning the next generation. HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER: Overall responsibility for board level hardware development including initial high level definition, detailed design, simulation/verification building and debugging of prototypes, and successful introduction into production. In addition to extensive hands-on detailed design experience (uP, ASIC's, FPGA's, ...), a minimum of three years of management experience is required along with a BSEE /MSEE. Must be comfortable working in a team oriented high energy environment, T1/DS3/SONET telecom experience is a plus. SOFTWARE MANAGER TELECOMMUNICATIONS: BSEE/BSCS (Masters desired): Eight + years experience with a minimum of three years experience in managing software development for multiprocessing embedded systems; strong C/C++ programming skills in UNIX development environment; experience with real-time kernels (PSOS, VRTX, OS-9, must also have experience with systems oriented towards fault tolerant software architecture and software associated with Digital Telephony switching systems. TECHNOLOGY SCIENTISTS (multiple jobs): Requires masters degree or higher with extensive ATM/SONET real world experience. Develop the next generation in a laboratory environment with all the toys you want. Within reason you will be given whatever you need. LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER: TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS: BS/MS, EE/CS and eight+ years of experience in multiprocessor embedded system software development. Strong C/C++ programming experience in UNIX development required. Experience in software architectures typified by digital telephony switching systems, telephony network access servers/routers, etc. a plus. Candidates will lead design team in the architecting and development of real-time, fault tolerant, multiprocessor software. Must posses strong technical leadership skills and proven ability to be a self-starter in the ground-level architecting and development of new products. LEAD SOFTWARE ENGINEER: DSP PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: BS/MS/PhD in EE or a related discipline and five + years DSP software development experience. Qualified candidates will lead design team in the development of real-time DSP engine for high speed analog and digital protocol analysis, Must Posess strong technical knowledge in the area of DSP algorithms used in the transmission and discrimination of FAX and modem protocols, associated training sequences, signal constellations, and compression (Group III FAX, V.32, V.32bis, V.42bis, MNP, etc.). Strong technical leadership/decision making skills and proven ability to deliver products from conception to production also required. SOFTWARE ENGINEERS: TELECOMMUNICATIONS (multiple jobs): Candidates must posses BSEE/BSCS (masters desired); strong C/C++ programming skills; five + years experience in the development of real-time embedded systems; basic knowledge of assemble language (particularly the Motorolla 68K family); strong debugging skills using native debugger and associated emulators. Experience with products interfacing to the digital telephone network a plus. PHYSICAL DESIGN MANAGER: Overall responsibility for Mechanical Engineering and Document Control including mechanical/OEM issues, managing the engineering change control process, and successfully transitioning new designs from engineering into production. BSME/MSME is required along with experience in introducing complex multi-level products into volume production in an ISO/Bellcore quality environment. Hands on experience is beneficial along with a minimum of four years of management experience. COMPONENT ENGINEER: BSEE Required. Work with design engineers selecting components and perform functional/performance analysis of components. Do not reply to this message. EMail direct to smaki@teleport.com with a phone number and reasume (if easy). Otherwise just your phone number will do. I will call you on my nickel. Or you may call me if you wish at the number below. -- Shaun Maki smaki@teleport.com 503 614 9627. Must be legal to work in the US (no H1/F1 visa!). If you are a student without experience please do not respond. ------------------------------ From: vocaltec@datasrv.co.il Subject: FAX Group 3 and Group 4 Standard Information Wanted Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 07:02:11 GMT Organization: Elron Adar Where can I find the CCITT standard for fax group 3 and group 4 transmission? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: chinatti@SRTC.COM (Steve Chinatti) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 16:45:27 -0500 Subject: Help Needed Locating Retailer for MicroTac Ultralite Hi, I'm looking for information on purchasing a Motorola MicroTac Ultralite flip phone. I'm in the central NJ area and I am interested in activating with Bell Atlantic mobile, as one of their plans seem to best fit my travel area and calling patterns. My problem is that I cannot find a discounter in the area that activates with Bell Atlantic and carries the Ultralite. I've called Bell Atlantic but I have been unable to get a list of discount retailers that activate with BAMS, probably because Bell Atlantic would like to have me buy the phone through them (at list price!). The coverage area I'm looking for is Central NJ - Philly. I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to find a discount retailer in this area that I can buy from, or possibly some mail order house that has good prices. Since this is a pretty specific question, it would probably be best to e-mail responses to me, and if I come up with any leads I'll post a summary. Thanks in advance, Steve Chinatti ------------------------------ From: kbsherm@holonet.net (tacnav) Subject: Help Needed With Procomm Date: 23 Jan 1995 23:27:50 GMT Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access System: 510-704-1058/modem I am having trouble using PROCOMM. Can anyone offer me some help? Thanks, ken kbsherm@holonet.net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 04:43:27 GMT From: tlempicke@sunbelt.net Subject: PC Telcom Equipment Wanted Organization: SunBelt.Net Does anyone know of a drop in board for a PC which would allow it to handle an office phone system? I have three incoming lines and eight extensions, and it seems like a perfect project for a dedicated PC. The open architechture and programming would allow future expansion, etc>. Thanks, Tom Lempicke Tlempicke@sunblet.net ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? From: drharry!aboritz@uunet.uu.net (Alan Boritz) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 20:59:55 EST Organization: Harry's Place - Mahwah NJ - +1 201 934 0861 ophidian59@aol.com (Ophidian59) writes: > If you want an inexpensive high quailty phone, try buy a plain > telephone at the parts counter of your local Greybar, a telephony > supply house. Figure into the cost of picking up that phone, window or car repair. The last time I parked down the street from Graybar, in Long Island City, someone broke off a new padlock from the back of my truck (within about 15 minutes). It's much safer to deal with them via mail order. ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 19:14:36 Subject: Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? Quoting ophidian59@aol.com (Ophidian59) > While on the subject of phones, I'd really like to find one of > those old yet very mod (e.g. 60's) British phones with the dial > and the hook-switch on the bottom. Anyone? Do you mean the Ericofon? That was Swedish, made by L.M. Ericsson Company. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I knew someone with an Ericofon back in 1967; they were really considered very avante-guard back then. Of course he had *no permission* whatsoever from telco to have it on his line. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Julio Frondeur Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 16:13:42 -0500 Subject: Re: US <> Purto Rico: Options? Organization: InfiNet You may try asking Puerto Rico Telephone Co. for their Switched-56 offering which is much less expensive than the 4K monthly figure you actually have. The C.O. serving the Carolina area is a DMS-100 equipped with the TCM-based SW-56 feature called DATAPATH by Northern Telecom. If you are within 15K feet from the C.O., it will be piece of cake for PRTC to give you the service. Julio Fondeur ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 11:42:23 EST From: John R. Covert 21-Jan-1995 1125 Subject: Re: CO/Boston Added to NACN NACN in Boston does not appear to be working very well. Sitting here in Boston, I just turned on my Montreal CanTel number; the first thing I tried was to call in via the Montreal number. Usually (e.g. in Pittsburg) calls are properly routed to the phone within five seconds of power-on. Calls continued to no-answer transfer at the Montreal end until I actually attempted to originate a call with the Montreal number here in Boston. Then call delivery started working some but not all of the time. Frequently there was just a fast-busy. None of the feature codes work -- I've tried to use the Ericsson codes (*21* to forward, #21# to cancel) which work when roaming using the CanTel number in Albany, Rochester, Pittsburg, Florida, and San Francisco but not in Utica or Dallas/Fort Worth. I also tried the Cellular One/SWBell feature numbers for Boston, but nothing. At the moment I have turned the phone back off, and calls are no longer going to the no-answer transfer location. That works properly when the phone is turned off in most other places (such as Florida), without the need for any timeout period. It even worked on failed pages; in South Florida I could leave my CanTel number forwarded on no-answer to my NYNEX number; if I got a failed page on the CanTel number I had time to switch to the other NAM and would receive the call on the NYNEX number via BellSouth. But none of this works in Boston; it looks like Boston's NACN connection is either AFU or not completed. /john ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #56 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa17463; 24 Jan 95 20:12 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA01817; Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:08:10 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA01802; Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:08:07 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:08:07 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501241808.AA01802@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #57 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:08:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 57 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Where to Find tpage? (Rob Etzel) Want Information on Wireless Short WAN Links (Eduardo Kaftanski) What's the Current Status of LEOS? (Donald R. Newcomb) Data Wanted Measuring Internet Performance (Jeff Grau) PC Board For Terminal Emulation (SNA, BSC, VIP) (Massimo Fusaro) Cellular Service in the Lincoln Tunnel (Doug Reuben) New RJ-48 Jack Used in Nynex Service Area For T-1? (Steve Pinkston) Marketing Strategies Information Request (Angelo Raffaele Fernicola) Looking For Voice Mail For Panasonic Key Switch (Rebecca Brooke) Where Can I Find a Telecom Group in Chicago? (logicarsch@aol.com) Re: Looking For TDM Box (Roger Atkinson) Re: Flat Rate Long Distance (Edwin Chen) Re: Inter-Lata Rates in California (Ed Smith) Re: GSM Cellular Operators List (Lim Kong Hong) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (sjohn0421@aol.com) Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? (Paul Robinson) Re: CallerID and ANI (Glenn Foote) Re: Antenna For Cellular Phone in Bangkok (Alan Shen) Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? (Alan Shen) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rob@cutter.cpac.washington.edu (Rob Etzel) Subject: Where to Find tpage? Date: 24 Jan 1995 00:59:47 GMT Organization: The Center for Process Analytical Chemistry Can someone please tell me where I can find tpage, the perl (?) code to talk to alpha-numeric pagers? Also, where are the FAQ's that might have answered this question? Thanks, Rob Etzel Computing Services Manager Center for Process Analytical Chemistry 153 Chemistry Library Building University of Washington, BG-10 Seattle WA 98195 Office: (206) 543-9881 Fax: (206) 543-6506 E-Mail: rob@cpac.washington.edu ------------------------------ From: ekaftan@mailnet.rdc.cl (Eduardo Kaftanski) Subject: Want Info on Wireless Short WAN Links Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 02:36:49 GMT Hi, I need information on small (less than 300 meters) WAN/LAN wireless links. I have two offices separates less than three blocks, with a clear line of sight, and as I am in a non-purely business area, leased lines involve digging in the street at my expense. I am looking forward to near Ethernet speed if posible. Can it be done? At what cost? I can buy direct from a US company (I am not in the US but have a Miami address for shipping). Many thanks for any answer. I can be reached at: ekaftan@ing.puc.cl for direct e-mail. ------------------------------ From: dnewcomb@whale.st.usm.edu (Donald R. Newcomb) Subject: What's the Current Status of LEOS? Date: 24 Jan 1995 08:01:14 -0600 Organization: University of Southern Mississippi A few years ago we were hearing about numerous proposals for global personal communications based on LEOS (Low Earth Orbital Satellite) systems. One was Motorola's proposed Iridium system. I have not heard anything about these in the last few months. Have we reached some sort of watershed. What's the news? I'd like to find a low-power (e.g. ~1 W) system with better bandwidth than ARGOS. Donald R. Newcomb University of Southern Mississippi dnewcomb@whale.st.usm.edu "The God who gave us life gave us liberty dnewcomb@falcon.st.usm.edu at the same time." T. Jefferson (1774) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 10:12:44 EST From: grau@library.mt.att.com Subject: Data Wanted Measuring Internet Performance I am a reference librarian at Bell labs who has been asked to find data measuring Internet performance. Specifically, my client wants to know how long it takes for ascii text to travel from a point "A" to a point "B" under different situations that might be time of day, day of week, etc. A colleague of mine says measurements of packet transfer rates have been done but doesn't know where to find them. If you have such data and are willing to share it or know where I might find it, I would appreciate hearing from you. Please send any responses to: grau@library.mt.att.com Thank you, Jeff Grau ------------------------------ From: max@sixcom.it (Massimo Fusaro) Subject: PC Board For Terminal Emulation (SNA, BSC, VIP) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 14:36:52 +0100 Organization: Sixtel S.p.A I need information about sells and forecast of PC board for terminal emulation (BSC, SNA, VIP) for the european market or where to find such information. Please reply by mail, I'll summarize. Massimo Fusaro E-mail: max@sixcom.it Sixtel S.p.A. X400: c=it;admd=garr;prmd=IUnet;O=sixcom;S=max Milan, Italy Phone: +39 (2) 3192 216 ------------------------------ From: dreuben@interpage.net (Doug Reuben) Subject: Cellular Service in the Lincoln Tunnel Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 13:42:57 EST Just a quick note ... Cell One/NY (00025) has added cellular coverage in the Lincoln Tunnel ("Temp" I-495 between NY and NJ), providing through service from one end to the other. Callers can now place and receive calls, or continue on existing calls uninterrupted. A very productive addition considering how backed up traffic can be there! No service yet (that I have heard of) in the Holland Tunnel (was going to be I-78 when they still built new roads in NYC ...). NYNEX is dead in the Lincoln Tunnel. It seems that most of the tunnels in the northeast are now covered: -In Boston, CO/Boston (and NYNEX/Boston?) has excellent coverage in the Callahan and Sumner Tunnels. -In NYC, the Lincoln Tunnel is now covered by CO/NY. -In Baltimore, both tunnels are covered quite well by CO/Baltimore-DC and BAMS/Baltimore-DC. -In DC, the "tunnels" under the Mall (I-395, was to be I-95) and the I-195 (?) tunnels both have excellent coverage with both carriers. (How's the coverage in the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel and in Newport News, VA?) Am I missing any? Doug Reuben dreuben@interpage.net (203) 499 - 5221 Interpage Network Services -- E-Mail/Telnet to Alpha or Numeric Pagers & Fax ------------------------------ From: pinkston@kentrox.com (Steve Pinkston) Subject: New RJ-48 Jack Used in Nynex Service Area for T-1? Organization: ADC Kentrox - Portland, Oregon Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 19:13:52 GMT We've had reports of a new type of RJ-48 jack being used in the Nynex service area for T-1 service. Can anyone familiar with Nynex practices and materials help us out? The traditional RJ-48X jack provides shorting bars which loop transmit (pins 4 and 5) to receive (pins 1 and 2) when the customer's plug is withdrawn. The RJ-48X jacks we're familiar with do this by means of a small stationary printed circuit board upon which the "fingers" of the jack rest when the plug is withdrawn. The reports we're getting describe a jack which has some sort of mechanism that is moved off of its shorted position by contact with the flat areas of the plug adjacent to the outside pins (1 and 8). The problem is that some vendors' RJ-48 jacks are solid in this area and some have grooves that look as if they could accomodate a 9th and 10th contact. These grooves apparently prevent the shorting mechanism from releasing. If anyone is familiar with these jacks, we would appreciate your help. We need: 1. The name of the manufacturer of these jacks. 2. The part number of these jacks. 3. The spec, if any to which they are designed. 4. A sample of the jack itself, if possible. Please respond directly by email to pinkston@kentrox.com and cc: lilesc@kentrox.com. You can also reach me at 1-800-733-5511, ext 6341. We would greatly appreciate any help or pointers to resources. ------------------------------ Subject: Marketing Strategies Information Request Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 16:49:29 CET From: Angelo Raffaele Fernicola Hi, I'm looking for someone who can help me to find (or tell me where to find) information on marketing strategies of communications companies in the EEC. Maybe it's not clear what I want, so if somebody thinks they can help me, e-mail to MC56652@mclink.it. Thank you, Raffaele Fernicola ------------------------------ From: Rebecca Brooke Subject: Looking For Voice Mail For Panasonic Key Switch Date: 23 Jan 1995 14:38:32 GMT Organization: The Internet Access Company We have a Panasonic 616(KXT) key switch and want to add auto-attend/voice mail. Can voice mail be added to this system at all? Is there a "generic" component we can add on that will do the job and acts like a separate extension? ------------------------------ From: logicarsch@aol.com (LogicaRsch) Subject: Where Can I Find Telecom Group in CHICAGO? Date: 22 Jan 1995 22:05:25 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: logicarsch@aol.com Are there any telecom groups/clubs/associations that meet in Chicago? I'm not talking about cyberspace -- I mean the sort of thing where real, live humans come together in a defined physical space -- a room, for example -- and converse. I'm an independent market research consultant specializing in telecom? How can I hobnob with all you telecom types? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Someone is not checking through recent back issues before submitting questions ... this identical question came up here two or three weeks ago and perhaps one or more of the people who responded at that time will write directly to the correspondent with an answer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rogera@cts.com (Roger Atkinson) Subject: Re: Looking for TDM Box Organization: R. F. Atkinson & Co. Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 04:26:18 GMT In article aa293@detroit.freenet.org (Andrew P. Dinsdale) writes: > We are looking for a Time Division Multiplexing Box to split a 56k > digital line into one voice channel, one data channel and handle more > than one point-to-point digital circuit with one voice and one data > channel. Try Glasgal Communications, Inc. Their number is 800-LANWAN1 (800-526-9261). They have a huge variety of equipment, and in my experience, their people are competent. Good luck! Roger Atkinson ------------------------------ From: chen@leland.stanford.edu (edwin chen) Subject: Flat Rate Long Distance Information Wanted Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 20:26:52 -0800 Organization: Stanford University If anyone has any information about flat rate long distance calling, please e-mail me with it. I'm trying to diminish my phone bill. I currently have a $149/month service but it has a 20 minute/call limit. Thanks. Edwin chen@leland.stanford.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Edwin, are you seeking information or trying to slip in a sales pitch? ... by the merest coincidence of course (of course!) this very topic consumed a great deal of bandwidth in a couple other telecom newsgroups in recent weeks. Some respondents were very suspicious of the program. Wasn't there some discussion of having to make payment by courier service rather than regular mail? Weren't there a couple other questions raised but never really answered about the firm? If you are getting truly unlimited service for $149 per month, with no gimmicks and no fraud (there was a hint of that in the other discussion, wasn't there?) then I would say you probably have the best deal you are going to find if your usage otherwise would total at least $200-250 or more per month through more 'conventional' carriers. If all you are using normally is $100-150 per month, then its just a dollar for dollar trade, with your twenty minute per call restriction and (I think I read) a limit of one call at a time. Since all the major and well-established carriers will cut various deals with large users, even if your 'normal' usage came to $200 or so per month, you would not be getting any significant savings. I don't know of any instances where the major carriers will give a forty or fifty percent discount, so if your bill would usually be in excess of $250-300 per month, then I would say you have a good bargain. But at the going rate per minute, if you are on the phone long distance that much time, you must be on the phone for something or other for several hours per day. Well ... I guess I am also, now that I think about it. I am on the dialup to Northwestern University for several hours each day, but I don't know how I could live with the twenty minute per call limit. Is your useage mainly for data transmissions, or do you use it for voice also? Does the carrier allow data transmissions? PAT] ------------------------------ From: knute@netcom.com (Ed Smith) Subject: Re: Inter-Lata Rates in California Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:21:24 GMT I know of at least one company in California that has inter-lata rates that start at .096 flat per minute billed in six second increments for a one year term. I am not permitted to post the company's name. I will respond to any email on the subject. (See Biz.Comp.Services) Puerto Rico $0.20; Australia $0.34; Germany $0.46; U.K. $0.29; Hong Kong $0.52; Brazil $0.69; Canada $0.23; France $0.41; Netherlands $0.40; Singapore $0.50. knute@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: limkh@einstein.technet.sg (Lim Kong Hong) Subject: Re: GSM Cellular Operators List Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:45:52 PST Organization: Siemens (Pte) Ltd Reply-To: limkh@technet.sg In article , Kimmo.Ketolainen@utu.fi says: >> Estonia EMT > New: > Estonia=09=09Radiolinja >> Hong Kong Smartone > Also: > Hong Kong=09Telecom CSL In Singapore there is Singapore Telecoms Mobilelink GSM GSM Code 525-01. In Singapore, GSM subscribers have the option to subscribe to autoroaming services to Hongkong, UK, Australia, Switzerland and Denmark. This means that with their GSM SIM Card, they are able to send/receive call in the above countries. ------------------------------ From: sjohn0421@aol.com (SJohn0421) Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 10:05:21 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: sjohn0421@aol.com (SJohn0421) The difference, (besides pricing) is bandwidth. A T1 has total bandwidth at 1.54 Mbps. Thats 24 channels at up to 64kb of speed. A DS3, or T3, has enough bandwidth to carry 28 T1's. That's quite a bit of bandwidth. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 11:13:54 EST From: Paul Robinson Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Subject: Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? Benjamin P. Carter , writes: > A typical phone book with both white and yellow pages has a > map with a large white area surrounding a smaller yellow area. > What is this map trying to tell me? The white area shows the limits of the white pages covered by that book. In the case of the Los Angeles area, there can -- and will be -- holes in that area because pieces will be covered by different telephone companies there. The yellow area is the maximum area that yellow pages for that area will cover, and again, may have holes. > Are all the listed numbers in the white area supposed to be in > white pages of the phone book? They don't seem to be. Let's not forget that people can have nonpublished numbers that you can still get from directory assistance, and in California, 40% of the telephone subscribers are unlisted which means they don't show up anywhere. > The GTE phone books where I live (near LA) show the parts of the > puzzle covering their turf, but the PacBell phone books don't. Also, > GTE has "neighborhood" directories that invade PacBell's turf. A > "neighborhood" directory is typically much thinner than a real > directory. A "neighborhood" directory is a private directory sold to companies for a lot less money than additional Yellow Pages listings in the phone book from the telephone company, but listings in those still have to be purchased separately, and this costs extra money, so the secondary books typically tend to be thinner. Also, they usually cover smaller areas (so the salesman can collect more commissions from those who want good coverage by selling them listings in multiple books). > Why? What is going on? Directory advertising means money, and as long as they can sell advertising to people, they will continue to publish them. I'm surprised we haven't seen fringe directories, say the "National Gay & Lesbian Yellow Pages" for businesses that want to solicit to those groups. Or this could be used for people to run personal ads. :) (I would have thought this was silly until I discovered American Express was advertising it's double signature travelers checks in gay-oriented newspapers and showing two men in the picture). How about the "National Amputee Yellow Pages" where companies that specialize in services for people with missing limbs can look. Etc. If you can figure out something that you can sell advertising for, chances are someone, somewhere, will create a magazine, directory or catalog to cash in on it. You or I may think it's wierd or unusual, but 50% of a niche market can be a lot more revenue than 1/2 of 1% of a major national one. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A few responses are in order. First of all, in large cities like Chicago, there *are* the equivilent of 'gay and lesbian yellow pages' directories. One published covering the Chicago area is called 'OUT'. Next point: telco itself also publishes 'neighborhood phone directories'. For instance, there are a couple hundred phone books covering the greater Chicago area all of which are published by DonTech, which is the recent name for the Ameritech subsidiary formerly known as R.R. Donnelly and Company. There is the large Chicago alphabetical directory and corresponding two-part Yellow Pages. There are about thirty 'neighborhood' books, with their own yellow pages in the back of the book. These are just subsets of the larger book, extracted by address groupings within a given area of the city, and all published by telco. There are eight 'regional books' for the suburbs, broken down by near north, far north, northwest, near west, far west, southwest, south, and 'Calumet Region' (northern Indiana suburbs). Each of these books contains a couple dozen suburban communities, and each regional book is roughly equivilent to the Chicago White Pages for their particular area. Just as the large Chicago book has about thirty smaller 'neighborhood' books based on it, each of the eight regional books has its own collection of smaller 'neighborhood' (or actually, suburban town) books, usually with two or three villages or towns grouped together. For example in Skokie where I am, we are in the near north suburban regional book (white pages only, no yellow pages, but with alpha listings divided into two categories, business and residential), and we are in the book known as 'Skokie/Evanston/Morton Grove' with addresses defaulting to Skokie unless 'MG' or 'EV' is shown following the address. These little community books also have yellow pages. The other telco-published directory comes from Centel. That phone company serves Des Plaines and Park Ridge in their entireity. It also serves a small portion of Chicago on the northwest side, along with bits of Niles, Illinois and bits of the Ohare Airport complex not considered within the city of Chicago for whatever reason. They publish their own book for those towns, and Centel even has its own book for that part of Chicago it serves, entitled 'Chicago-Newscastle' for the central office involved. But all of Centel's listings also show up in the Illinois Bell/Ameritech/DonTech books in routine alphabetical order as well with no mention made they are really Centel numbers. Finally, although Lincolnwood, Harwood Heights, Norridge and unincorporated Norwood Park Township are suburbs and not part of Chicago, for whatever reason (I guess, since they are mostly surrounded by Chicago), their listings appear in the large white pages book for the city itself. There are a couple of independent (non-telco) directory publishers serving this area, and there is even something called the 'Sprint Yellow Pages' which I presume comes from that company. It seems like every few days a new book or books is dropped on our doorstep in a plastic bag. Some of these independent directories are rife with errors; some so obvious even an untrained eye like mine can scan through the pages and find mistakes. Oh yeah -- DonTech also publishes numerous 'crisscross' or cross reference directories for the entire area. I think there are about six or eight volumes of those. PAT] ------------------------------ From: glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Glenn Foote) Subject: Re: CallerID and ANI Date: 21 Jan 1995 13:07:55 -0500 Organization: The Greater Columbus Freenet John W. Barrus (barrus@merl.com) wrote: > asked if our number had come through when the customer assistant > answered our phone. He then proceeded to recite our phone number to > me. I did not (and never have) dialed the code to turn on CallerID. > Does this mean that our phone number is being transmitted, even when > the phone company says that it isn't? Or do commercial enterprises > have a different system that always gets our phone number? I assumed > that ANI and CallerID were both blocked with line blocking. > Is there an easy way to test whether or not line blocking is working? > (I don't have any friends with CallerID boxes). > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you dial an 800 number then the called > party gets your ID whether you like it or not. There is no way for you to > block this. Regards Caller-ID, it *should* be blocked as you requested > except I think on long distance calls you now need to do the *67 whether > or not you have per-line blocking for local calls. I am not even certain > if you can block CID on interstate long distance any longer after the most > recent FCC rulings. PAT] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Can someone [Pat maybe] shed some light on WHICH rulings you are referring to here ... and why would they remove blocking on interstate long distance calls that are dialed directly? Glenn L Foote ...... glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The FCC said something recently about telcos being required to pass Caller-ID between themselves on an interstate basis beginning this year. I think the caller can still explicitly block his ID if desired with *67, but the caller cannot get careless about this and assume that since it is 'long distance' the other end won't get his ID by default. In other words, no more (or very little) 'out of area' messages. It is not so much that they 'removed blocking' as it is they said ID had to be passed along where interstate calls was concerned. I routinely now get the ID of parties calling me from all over the USA -- even California. There are still some 'out of areas' but they are getting to be fewer and fewer. And it is always worth repeating to the newbies here and others: no matter how many times you press *67 or how big of a tantrum you have on the phone with a telco service rep and her supervisor and the office manager and the president of the telco and the chairman of the board, when you dial an 800 number (or a 500/700 number using a reverse charge pin or you ask for the charges to be reversed to the called party) your number *WILL* be available to the person you are calling. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Alan Shen Subject: Re: Antenna For Cellular Phone in Bangkok Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:08:55 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On 17 Jan 1995, Roland Peter Sauermann wrote: [snipped stuff about over-loaded AMPS systesm, dropped calls ...] > Would I do better with a Magnetic mounted antenna on the roof? What would > suit me better a 3db or a 5db one? There seem to be a whole bunch of > options, some cost three times others. One guy told me the material was > different ... some antennas simply have squiggles in them others have a > thick section of a ceramic or hard plastic. I know I need to be sure I > get one for the correct phone system (we have five different types here > from 470mhz, 800, 900 to the new Digital stuff). How do I evaluate these > different antennas that run between $25-$60 and apparently have different > properties? Your best bet is to magnetic mount on the roof, right in the middle so the antenna has a grounding plane. Do not get a 5dB antenna. That's over kill in a metro area. It'll over shoot the towers. Best one's to try out is a 3dB, or a 1/4 wave antenna. Or maybe all you need is the unigain antenna. This setup should help quite a bit. Daniel Kao ------------------------------ From: Alan Shen Subject: Re: Is the Pentium Bug Really That Bugging? Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1995 10:17:41 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Tue, 17 Jan 1995, Anthony D'Auria wrote: > Question: Does this floating point calculation bug affect system > performance? Is that why some Pentiums bottleneck? What and where > should a person contact to get the messed up chip replaced? Is it > actually worth it? Little off topic, but the bug does not affect system performance. CPU bottlenecks are only caused by how your system was designed (your motherboard). The problem has been solved. Intel will 'swap' chips with you if you have a defective one, OR the NCSA has released a software fix solution for the bug. Daniel Kao ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #57 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa17811; 24 Jan 95 20:41 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA07209; Tue, 24 Jan 95 14:38:31 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA07202; Tue, 24 Jan 95 14:38:26 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 14:38:26 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501242038.AA07202@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #58 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 14:34:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 58 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Universal International Freephone Numbers (John Carl Brown) Chicago 630 Plan - Such As It Is (Greg Monti) Wireless Lan FAQ For Campus Networks (Jim Williams) Looking For ISDN in Burlington, Mass (Steve Samler) Old Phone Number Format Question (Andrew C. Green) GSM SIM Format - One Solution (Robert Lindh) Re: Which Countries Have Competition (for FAQ Update)? (Eric Tholome) Re: Question on Call-Back Operators (Eric Tholome) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: John.Carl.Brown@att.com Subject: Universal International Freephone Numbers Organization: AT&T NSD, Holmdel, NJ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 18:17:02 GMT I thought it would be helpful in the discussion of Universal International Freephone Numbering (UIFN) for people to see what has actually been discussed at the ITU-T Study Group 2, and what is on the table now. As background, I am one of the people representing AT&T in UIFN work in the US and at Study Group 2 in the ITU-T. I'd like to pass on two pieces of information. First, in response to: J. Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com who wrote: > Bottom line, we agree that there are better options that merit serious > consideration. > So the question for U.S. 800 Subscribers to ask their U.S. carriers > at the ITU is, why isn't this being discussed?!!! I've included a time line we've kept as to what the format proposals and discussions have been at the ITU-T Study Group 2 level. Most of this will look familiar to those who have read this thread thus far. After that is an extract from the current DRAFT recommendation E.169, specifically dealing with the case of duplicate requests for the same UIFN. As background, the procedures specify first-come, first-served. At the start-up of UIFN assignments, a window of a specified number of days is treated as the same time to allow applicants to get their initial requests in and be treated as if they all arrived simultaneously. I'd also like to note that the U.S. standards process is an open process. The State Department Study Group A coordinates the positions and contributions going forward to ITU-T Study Group 2. An Ad Hoc committee on Numbering meets more frequently to discuss the issues in depth. We've had customer participation from associations and from individual companies interested in this issue, and that participation has been welcome and encouraged. We've also encouraged multi-national customers to contact thier carriers in other countries to make their views known. Also, this process is a contribution driven process. Those with views are most effective when documenting those views, and making specific proposals as to positions or text to be deleted, added, or altered. All contributions to the Ad Hoc or Study Group A meetings are discussed. I hope this is helpful. John Carl Brown --------------------------------------------- Universal International Freephone Numbering Timeline Current study period June 1993 through May 1996 GENEVA - JUNE 1993 Study Group 2 (numbering experts group) accepted a liaison from Study Group 1 (service description experts), recognizing the need for IFS to have an easily recognizable universal global code, develop a numbering plan for this Universal IFS Number. The following is an excerpt from that liaison: ... a universal freephone number as a service feature of IFS. This feature allows a customer to be assigned a specific IFS number that would be the same throughout the world, while calls to this number, if required, can be routed to different destination accesses depending on country or point of origin. ... the legitimacy of this IFS service feature, noting increasing customer demand for such a capability, and the significantly increased use of the IFS that would result from the provision of a universal IFS number. Recognizing the current North American 800 Service code has world wide customer identification, country code "800" was reserved as the Universal Freephone indicator. A list of attributes for the numbering plan includes, but is not exclusive of: the plan should provide a substantial capacity, and should be easily recognizable. OTTAWA - OCTOBER 1993 Proposed Numbering Structures: Source: PTT Netherlands 800 0YXXXXX To be issued by Administrations in countries with a 1 digit CC 800 1YXXXXX 800 0YYXXXX To be issued by Administrations in countries with a 2 digit CC 800 1YYXXXX 800 0YYYXXX To be issued by Administrations in countries with a 3 digit CC 800 1YYYXXX Source: Telecom Denmark 800 ZYX XXXX Allocated by countries with a 1 digit CC 800 ZYY XXXX Allocated by countries with a 2 digit CC 800 ZYY YXXX Allocated by countries with a 3 digit CC Source AT&T and MCI 800 YXXXXXX[X][X] A single numbering pool, of variable length where Y=1-9, and X = 0-9 Source US West and Ameritech 2 digit CC + 1 digit Actual CC (1 digit) <8 digit subscriber number " " Actual CC (2 digit) < 7 digit subscriber number " " Actual CC (3 digit) < 6 digit subscriber number Source: Norwegian Telecom 800 - (Administrator code) - Subscriber Number Source: France Telecom 800 XXXXX or, 800 XXXXXX or, 800 XXXXXXX or, up to a maximum of 800 XXXXXXXX All of the above proposals require the international prefix to precede the call. Results of these proposals categorized the numbering formats into three groups (fixed, variable/reusable, and variable non-reusable). Further attributes agreed to: The numbers should be portable so the customers can retain their number and change their service provider. The plan should be stable and support growth. MADRID - JANUARY 1994 The debate over the UFN format continued, discussing as many as seven different formats. Preserving national freephone numbers within a UFN as well as the administration of the numbers compounded the problem of agreeing to any specific format. It was suggested at this meeting that a neutral body administer these numbers, under consideration is the ITU. All participants were asked to only consider two formats for the next meeting; a variable six to eight digit length, or a fixed eight digit length. GENEVA - MARCH 1994 Source: AT&T 800 XXXXXXX (7 digits) Existing customer's seven digit freephone subscriber numbers are retained as the subscriber number of the UFNs for one year. After the one year period all seven digit freephone subscriber numbers that are not identified to be used as the subscriber number of UFNs for IFS would be included in the UFN resource pool and available for assignment. Source: Remaining Representative: 800 XXXXXXXX (8 digits) One representative (Sweden) conclusion for supporting eight digits: Since the seven digit fixed format doesn't give all the countries existing countries customers the ability to either retain or embed their existing numbers in an equal and fair basis, and doesn't offer any way of expanding the capacity, the only alternative left is the eight digit fixed format. A fixed format was agreed to with bracketed text for seven or eight digits. Work will continue on administrative issues. OSLO - JULY 1994 Approximately 30 countries presented a single contribution supporting an eight digit fixed format. The US was the only representative supporting a seven digit format. Acknowledging the need to continue the work, the U.S., restated their support for seven digits but agreed to work on the remaining portions of the document, assuming the format would be eight digits in length. Start up procedures, in particular conflict resolution procedures for that time were debated. The representative from the U.K., offered partitioning the subscriber number with specific leading digits: 800 1Z XXXXXX For further study 800 2Y XXXXXX 6 digit subscriber number migration space 800 3Y XXXXXX 6 digit subscriber number migration space 800 4 XXXXXXX 7 digit subscriber number migration space 800 5Y YYYYYY New 8 digit number 800 6Y YYYYYY " " 800 7Y YYYYYY " " 800 8Z ZZZZZZ For further study 800 9Z ZZZZZZ For further study 800 0Z ZZZZZZ For further study WASHINGTON DC - OCTOBER 1994 (joint experts editing team) To try to progress the work, a small group of representatives met to edit the document. This will be presented to the next meeting in Geneva, December 1994. This document assumes a fixed eight digit subscriber number. The numbers will be assigned on a first come first served basis with no preallocation of space. Priority will be given to those subscribers who are embedding their existing freephone subscriber number. Embedding can be requested by adding trailing or leading filler digits. For example: Subscriber A's 7 digit existing number is 234 5678 Embedding by adding leading filler digits: UIFN requested could be 800 X2345678 Embedding by adding trailing filler digits: UIFN requested could be 800 2345678X When two or more applicants request the same number, the Registrar will communicate with the applicants and notify them of the duplicate request and attempt to resolve the duplicate request by having the applicant(s) change their filler digits to eliminate the duplication. GENEVA - DECEMBER 1994 The meeting agreed that the edited output of TD 1/2-127 (Washington meeting) should be used to advance the work at the meeting and to incorporate any points it thought as appropriate from E.IFSNUM. The TSB had assigned temporary number E.169 to E.IFSNUM. ---------------------------------------------- end of timeline Extract from draft recommendation E.169: Annex A A1 Duplicate Requests 1 The purpose of these procedures is to resolve UIFN conflicts, e.g., when more than one applicant applies for the same UIFN at the same time. 1a) The registrar should advise only the involved applicants when problems are identified, and provide advice to them and cooperate in problem resolution. 1b) The registrar shall give priority to the applicants embedding their subscriber's existing entire national FSN [Freephone Subscriber Number], this is known as priority assignment. 2 The specific procedures are: 2a) The applicant can only request and receive priority assignment based on the intent to embed the entire existing FSN. The embedding can only be requested by adding trailing or leading filler digits to the entire existing FSN, in the manner illustrated below. For example: Subscriber A 7-digit FSN is 234 5678 Embedding by adding leading filler digit: UIFN request 800 X2345678 Embedding by adding trailing filler digit: UIFN request 800 2345678X Subscriber B 6-digit FSN is 654 321 Embedding by adding leading filler digits: UIFN request 800 XX654321 Embedding by adding trailing filler digits: UIFN request 800 654321XX Embedding by adding one leading and one trailing digits: UIFN request 800 X654321X where X = 0-9 Similar principles apply for IFS subscribers with fewer than 6 digit FSNs 2b) When two or more applicants request the same UIFN, and only one of applicants request a priority assignment, the registrar will assign the UIFN to the applicant which requested priority assignment. The registrar will then assign the stated alternative choices, or solicit alternative choices, to the other applicants. 2c) When two or more applicants requesting the same UIFN based on their entire FSN, request priority assignment, the registrar will communicate with the applicants and notify them of the duplicate request and attempt to resolve the duplicate request by having the applicant(s) change their filler digits to eliminate the duplication. During this procedure, the registrar will inform the applicants that they are in contention for their selected UIFN. Identities of other applicants involved in the contention will only be divulged with the consent of all the involved applicants, for the purpose of resolving the contention. 2d) When two or more applicants requested the same UIFN, and none have requested priority assignment, the registrar will communicate with the applicants and notify them of the duplicate request and attempt to resolve the duplicate request by having the applicant(s) choose an alternate UIFN if applicable. During this procedure, the registrar will inform the applicants that they are in contention for their selected UIFN. Identities of other applicants involved in the contention will only be divulged with the consent of all the involved applicants, for the purpose of resolving the contention. 2e) Absent agreement to resolve the duplicate request with the applicants the registrar will, after 15 days, do a random selection to resolve duplicate request. The applicants not receiving the number will be assigned one of their alternate choices or the registrar will solicit another choice, if not provided. -------------------------------------------- End of E.169 extract. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 12:04:57 EST From: Greg Monti Subject: Chicago 630 Plan - Such As It Is A story in the January 23, 1995, issue of {Communications Daily} says that an Illinois Commerce Commission hearing examiner has "endorsed" a plan to create the 630 area code to relieve 708. Presumably, the endorsed plan is the overlay that has already been discussed because the story notes that it wouldn't require existing customers to change their telephone numbers. The story then says, cryptically, that the plan also would "create 'permissive and mandatory dialing arrangements' that wouldn't jeopardize new competitors". And that the City of Chicago "opposed the stipulation on ground that eleven-digit rather than seven-digit dialing requirement was 'onerous' and might predetermine similar fate for 312 area code where customers are used to seven-digit intraLATA calls." --------------------- Monti interprets shakily: Isn't this a little late for "endorsements" with the new code already created? Callers between the three Chicagoland area codes will need to dial eleven digits to reach local subscribers in the other two codes, which is the same as now. Allowing seen digit dialing between 312 and 630 would require that the prefix codes used in 630 not be usable in 312, which would exhaust 312 faster. Allowing seven digit dialing *within* your own area code may be -- or may not be -- permitted. Others who'd like to try their hands at translating this story into English are welcome to do so. Greg Monti, Tech Mgr, FISPO, Distribution Division National Public Radio Phone: +1 202 414-3343 635 Massachusetts Av NW Fax: +1 202 414-3036 Washington, DC 20001-3753 Internet: gmonti@npr.org ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:50:19 -0800 From: routers@halcyon.com Subject: Wireless Lan FAQ For Campus Networks 1. What Bandwidth is available for campus area Wireless LANS? Ans. 2Mbps 2. What distance's can they do? Ans. From 3 miles to 10 miles (line of site) 3. Are they secure? ANS. Spread Spectrum Radio technology is Proven and Secure. Options are available for Encryption ie 64 bit DES chip. 4. What type of management is available? ANS. SNMP MTll compliant. 5. Do they reguire a FCC license? ANS. No 6. For Large installations is there support for on site surveys and installations? ANS. Yes Airlan offers a S.W.A.T. Team of Professional field engineers. 7. How about support after installation? ANS. Toll free support is always available for all Airlan products 8. Is this technology World Wide? ANS. As of today it is available in The USA, Canada, and South America. 9. Can this technology be used to connect inside of Buildings PC's, Desk Tops, and Laptops, at the same 2Mbps? ANS. Yes it supports all the above at 2Mbps, No matter what the size (5 doors, to 4 floors, to 5 miles or more. 10. What type of Lap Top adaptors are available? ANS. Parallel/Pcmcia. 11. Does the inside technology support Roaming? ANS. The Airlan Access point (Hub) creates a 50,000 Square foot "cell" area of connectivity, Access cell to Access cell maintains a seamless connectivity to a network. 12. What networking operating Systems (NOS) is the Airlan compatable? ANS. Airlan is compatable with all Major network operating systems (NOS) including all versions of Netware and Netware-life, Microsoft-Lan Manager, 3 Com 3 Com+, Dec Pathworks, Banyan Vines, IBM Lan Manager, and Artsoft Lantastic 13. Can more that one Remote Bridge be connected to a single Host Bridge? ANS. Yes with a Omni attenna, You can connect more than one Remote Bridge with an agregate of 1.544Mbps. 14. How difficult is the Airlan Bridge Plus to install? ANS. Menu driven diagnostic Software for the installation and alignment of attenna's make Airlan/Bridge/Plus easy to setup, and SNMP makes it easy to use. 15. How does the Airlan compare in cost to a T-1 circuit? Ans. Airlan/Bridge/Plus costs less than a T-1 bridge, and performs up to 40 X faster than leased lines. For more information contact: Jim Williams 1-800-837-4180 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 13:00:03 EST From: Steve Samler Subject: Looking for ISDN in Burlington, Mass Does anyone have any information on ISDN from the Burlington (Mass) CO. We've been told that since we are two miles from the switch, we can't get ISDN. True? Anyone know when this might be available? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:20:05 CST From: Andrew C. Green Subject: Old Phone Number Format Question The following question appeared recently in the Old Time Radio Digest mailing list, and seems tailor-made for an answer from this forum. Anyone care to comment or reminisce? Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 16:17:25 -0500 From: "Richard M. Weil" To: otr@airwaves.chi.il.us Subject: PaperMate Ball Point Pens I was listening to a 1953 episode of The Hall Of Fantasy last night, and there was an ad for Philco TVs being sold through a store called CET in Rockford, Illinois. The main store was in Chicago. The pitchman promised a FREE PaperMate Ball Point pen, without obligation, to anyone who called the store to set up an appointment for a salesman to visit your home to give you info about Philco TV's. The pitchman said the new pen was "sweeping the nation", ... "a $1.59 value!" For those interested, and maybe the offer still holds (hee hee), the number for the store in Chicago was MOhawk 4-4100. The number for the store in Rockford was curiously 8-22-47. I'm too young to know anything about 5 digit phone numbers. Is that how it was back then in small cities? I'd also be curious to know if anyone remembers this store and if it's still around. (I could call directory assistance myself, but this is more fun.) I'd also like to know if a ball point pen was such a novelty that you'd let a salesman into your home for a free one, or was it the TV, or both? Andrew C. Green (312) 266-4431 Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com 441 W. Huron Chicago, IL 60610-3498 FAX: (312) 266-4473 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: CET = Central Electric Television. They were a big distributor of television sets in the 1950's here. Both television and 'throw away when used' ball-point pens were new and unusual items in those years. Pocket calculators had never been heard of. When I was in high school, 1956-60, the school gave us the 'option' of using ball-point pens instead of fountain pens, although the latter were preferred. Desks in school classrooms had a little holder near the top for the bottle of ink used to fill the little rubber bladders inside fountain pens. The schools and all progessive educators of the era preferred that children use fountain pens, as it was believed they helped develop better penmanship. Television sets were becoming more common by then; maybe a third to half the households in the USA had one, mainly if the owner lived in a large city where television stations could be received. A few people had television sets as early as 1946-47. Our family got one in 1949; it had a two or three inch screen that was totally round with a very large magnifying glass attachment which hooked on the front of it. It was in fact a Philco (for anyone interested, that was our friends at Phillips) and stood in a large cabinet about four feet tall and two feet wide. We got three channels on it, one being WGN Channel 9; and there were two others. MOHawk was a central office in Chicago from shortly after the turn of the century. Now it is known as 312-664, and then as now serves the near-north side of the central Chicago area. In addition to CET, which was located on Chicago Avenue at Halsted Street (now for thirty plus years the site of a housing complex operated by the Chicago Housing Authority known as 'Cabrini-Green Homes'), other notable subscribers on the MOHawk exchange included the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, MOHawk-4-7200 for administrative offices, (7000 for transit information) which in 1947 became the Chicago Transit Authority. They still use 312-664-7200 for Transit Authority offices, but 836-7000 for general transit information throughout northern Illinois in a consolidated phone room operated jointly by all the commuter railroads and local/suburban bus lines. Since CRT Company had that number as of about 1921, I guess that makes 664-7200 one of the longest continuing subscribers on the same number; 74 years of it now. Five digit numbers were common in communities which had automatic dialing systems in those days but only one exchange in the community. Since the exchange name was always the same, it was assumed when dialing. In your example you parsed the number incorrectly. It was 8-2247, or to be complete about it, ROckford-8-2247. Gary, Indiana had the same kind of setup. The company town named after William Gary, president of US Steel at the turn of the century had several exchanges, but they were all TUrner, as in TUrner 2,3,4,5,6 or 7. Therefore five-digit dialing (or five digit asking of the operator, prior to 1955) was allowed in the form of 2-xxxx through 7-xxxx. Someone once asked who was Turner ... he was a vice-president of US Steel about the same time, and highly revered for his contributions to the civic life in Gary. In the early 1920's, the United States Supreme Court required US Steel to divest itself of the Gary Municipal Corporation. But some things did not change; the town name was retained and the phone exchanges continued to be Turner. Today they are 219-882 ... 887. Why yes ... ballpoint pens were quite a novelty in 1953, and the better quality ones were quite expensive, in the $7-10 range. 'Cheaper' ones, like the free gifts from Central Electric Television ranged in price from a dollar to a dollar and a half. But don't worry, they made out like bandits since the television sets sold for several hundred dollars each; three-inch round screens which looked like oscilliscopes. CET had as a commercial, a jolly man singing "Cee Eee Tee .... for television! (and concluding) Mohawk four, four one hundred!" They've been out of business for about thirty years now. PAT] ------------------------------ From: etxlndh@eos99.ericsson.se (Robert Lindh) Subject: GSM SIM Format - One Solution Organization: Ericsson Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 14:03:04 GMT At least one GSM-operator here in Sweden (Europolitan) automatically gives you 2 SIM-cards per subscription, one small and one full-size. Originally, the incoming calls go to the cellular phone that have the small card inserted. If you want to change that, you insert either one of the cards in a cellular phone and use a code ("333") to switch incoming calls from the card now receiving them to the other card. ------------------------------ From: tholome@dialup.francenet.fr (Eric Tholome) Subject: Re: Which Countries Have Competition (for FAQ Update)? Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:36:14 +0200 In article , dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) wrote: > As the FAQ update is under way, one section dealt with the various > countries that have introduced telecom competition in some form or > other. I've heard of a European Community directive to the effect that > its member countries are to open up telecom markets by a given date. > Competing local networks are also emerging (including UK, US > developments). Indeed, competition will be introduced no later than 1998 in most European countries (except in countries that specifically asked for a delay). Actually, we need to be more precise: for instance, we tend to think that the French public telecoms are still under a monopoly, which is almost true, except for international and mobile communications, which have long been open to competition (and there has indeed been competition for quite some time). I don't recall what exactly will be opened to competition in 1998. I believe the story says that all services will, but not infrastructures, though many countries are willing to open *everything* to competition by 1998. Can someone be more precise on this point? Otherwise, I'll have to look up my archives. Hope this helps! Eric Tholome 23, avenue du Centre tholome@dialup.francenet.fr 78180 Montigny le Bretonneux phone: +33 1 30 48 06 47 France fax: same number, call first! ------------------------------ From: tholome@dialup.francenet.fr (Eric Tholome) Subject: Re: Question on Call-Back Operators Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:36:10 +0200 Pat wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another problem you did not mention is the > cost of your call to the callback center. That call has to supervise also, > you see, and that costs you some amount of money. Add that to whatever you > pay for the callback part of the connection and let me know how much less > expensive it *really* is. Part of the gimmick that makes callback services > so inexpensive is that you usually do not have to pay for a call to the > USA. You dial your number and hang up without it answering; thus no charge > for that part of the call. Why do you think AT&T was so out of joint on > this for quite awhile? Hey, if people think they can pay for a supervised > call to the USA (and enter a password, eliminating random ringbacks) and > still get by cheaper than via straight calling through their PTT, whoever > it is, then let me know ... I may start a callback service of my own. Well, let me give you some figures: France Telecom's rate to call the U.S.A. varies between $0.95 and $1.27/minute depending on the time of the day. My ATT calling card isn't much cheaper, especially because of the $2.50 initial charge. My callback operator does not require a minimum monthly charge, nor does it impose a monthly fee. It charges $0.66/min at any time for the same call. You're right that I'm also charged $0.14 for my call to the callback center. Moreover, my callback call is timed from the moment I get the American dial tone (only if the call is answered), which adds another $O.15 (approximately). Still, if the call lasts a minute or more (which is almost always the case, even for calls that reach an answering machine), my callback service is a good deal; a very good deal. I called an American friend last month and we stayed 70 minutes on the phone. I saved around $25 thanks to my callback operator. Not bad, right? To be totally honest, I must add that my callback operator times the call in 30 second periods, whereas France Telecom uses circa 7.5 second periods. Who cares? The service is so much cheaper. I'm looking forward to signing up for your new callback service (still to come), which will have to beat mine! :-) Eric Tholome 23, avenue du Centre tholome@dialup.francenet.fr 78180 Montigny le Bretonneux phone: +33 1 30 48 06 47 France fax: same number, call first! ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #58 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa19137; 24 Jan 95 22:59 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13570; Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:42:17 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13563; Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:42:15 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:42:15 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501242342.AA13563@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #60 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 16:40:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 60 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: North Korea Holds US Representative Over $10K Phone Bill (Alan Shen) Re: Long Distance Caller ID (ludden@indirect.com) Re: Privately Owned Cables on Public Utility Poles (Mark Fletcher) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Robert Levandowski) Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? (Larry Drebes) Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? (Bill Garfield) Re: Using U.S. Modem in Israel (Supak Lailert) Re: 800 Numbers From Overseas (Kimmo Ketolainen) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (John Lundgren) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (Dale Wooden) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (Harold Buehl) Re: Planning to Purchase a Voice Mail System (Greg Habstritt) Re: Planning to Purchase a Voice Mail System (Bill Garfield) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Alan Shen Subject: Re: North Korea Holds US Representative Over $10K Phone Bill Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:36:17 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Thu, 19 Jan 1995, Paul Robinson wrote: > In Jack Anderson's column today, he reports that when Representative > Bill Richardson (D-New Mexico) tried to cross the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) > between North and South Korea, with the casket carrying the remains of > Chief Warrant Officer David Hilemon, North Korean officials refused to let > him cross until the bill was paid. > In Cash. > $10,000 is about eight times North Korea's per capita yearly income. Why didn't they just bring a satellite phone with him? Or was he out of range? $10K for 23 calls ... is a LITTLE too much for me ... Daniel Kao ------------------------------ From: ludden@indirect.com Subject: Re: Long Distance Caller ID Organization: Internet Direct, indirect.com Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 18:51:56 GMT Paul J Zawada writes: > I've had a couple of interesting conversations with the folks at > Ameritech regarading the delivery of interstate Caller-ID information. > I have a question or two regarding the availablity of the above service, > so let me summarize and pose a question or two to the readers of TELECOM > Digest. > How useful is Caller-ID in other parts of the country? Do other folks > that have the service get "OUT OF AREA" for 99.5% of their interstate > calls, or am I just in the wrong city to get that info? I'd be > especially interested to hear how well it works in the Chicago area > since Chicago is also served by Ameritech Illinois. US West has offered Caller-ID in the Phoenix Metro Area for over a year now, and I have been quite pleased with it. All non-cellular local calls either have display a name and number, or PRIVATE NAME for blocked calls. I recieved a note from US WEST in December saying that they would have long distance Caller-ID in place by summer 95, as well as having Caller-ID work when a call-waiting call comes in (so you can decide whether to answer or not). Lee ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 13:55:52 -0800 From: mfletch@ix.netcom.com (Mark Fletcher) Subject: Re: Privately Owned Cables on Public Utility Poles > In many areas the local cable company has rights to access > all pole space (for a small fee per year per pole, as a rule). > I've found the cable operators to be more that willing to construct > and maintain private fiber optic cables, for reasonable costs. > This is the very simplest solution I've found, they have all the > rights, equipment and contractors in place. > You should also consider fiber due to its longer life and lower > problem level, e.g. lightning immunity, etc. > There are also contractors who are willing to take on such a project > on a turnkey basis, including negotiating access rights. They can > be located by contacting a few of the larger contractors, such > as Henkels and McCoy, and others out of industry directories. > You might want to consider the use of a experienced consultant for > this project. They know who to approach and what to consider. We tried a few contractors who "knew the ropes" on who to contact, but their cable prices were through the roof! The cable company is an interesting route though ... It looks like T1 may be an answer, and cost effective from the RBOC, and TELCO Inc. has an interesting product that links direct with the Northern Telcom Meridian for 2500 or Digital sets. Getting close to the answer! Thanks all! ------------------------------ From: rlvd_cif@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Robert Levandowski) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 22:05:43 GMT > is 'worth'. If all you and Paul are saying is that people or companies who > have things stolen from them occassionally inflate the value of what was > stolen for reasons of their own, i.e. insurance payoff, then I would agree > with you. Yes, they do that. If they report what they sold as worth > one dollar and what was stolen as worth two dollars (for the same quantity > or product, etc) then that is wrong. If they report what was stolen as > worth the same amount as that which was sold, then I don't think that is > wrong. > To put it another way, consider a large supermarket in a city like Chicago. > Jewel Food Stores tosses a huge amount of perishable stuff out in the > dumpster each week when their new stock comes in. Milk with an expiration > date only two or three days away. Loaves of bread which have been around > awhile or which got banged up and the wrapping slightly sliced open by > accident in transit. Entire cartons of eggs where one egg got broken. Boxes > of breakfast cereal smashed up in transit. In other words, perfectly > good food, but American consumers are picky people. Homeless or other poor > people with sophistication or 'street-smarts' know exactly what day, or > rather night of the week each Jewel store in the area gets its deliveries > and within minutes or maybe an hour what time to go hit those dumpsters > and clean them out. Granted, you can't be too picky about variety; you > can have a dozen boxes of corn flakes because they threw out the whole > carton when the box on top got sliced open accidently by the stock clerk > opening the carton, but don't look for any Raisin Bran this week. And in > the middle of winter, all those gallon jugs of milk are just fine, but > in the middle of the summer if they've been out there in the dumpster more > than an hour or so, you don't want them ... otherwise, everything is fine. > So since a grocery store is going to toss out all of its perishables when > a new order comes in, and since they never manage to sell it all, and > since the price tag for the item is probably five times higher than what > they paid for it, what real problem is there if someone wants to shoplift > a little right from the store? Right? Now substitute cellular carriers > and/or telcos and/or software writers. If sneaking something out without > paying is cool, then fine. If 'shoplifting' is wrong, then it is wrong. PAT] This is an interesting analogy, but it's not quite what the original poster was trying to say, I think. To expand: If said supermarket were to suffer from a crime wave, and a certain amount of milk were stolen, but no more milk than would normally be discarded in any given week as you described, what if the supermarket then turned around and announced it would increase its milk prices to make up for its losses? Should it figure the value of the lost milk at full retail, or at wholesale? It would not have sold the milk; if they recover the full retail price, they would end up making more money than they would have if the crime had not occurred in the first place. Persomally, I don't think that's reasonable, from the customer's point of view. When you move from supermarkets to cellular carriers, an additional factor comes in. The cellular system transmits its authentication in the clear, making it relatively easy for modern crooks to commit cellular fraud. I've seen lots of people here mention this, and it seems the carriers must have known this weakness. To go back to the analogy, would the supermarket customers be happy about rate increases if they found out the store had knowingly left the back door unlocked and unguarded every night, at the time the milk thefts occurred? I see the point as being: the cellular customers are not responsible for the theft of their billing codes. They exercise reasonable caution in protecting the company from fraud; it is the system that is at fault and it's not reasonable to ask people not to use their phones. In this case, it's bad enough to be charged for theft beyond your control, and even worse to be charged based on theoretical costs that will net the company more money than they'd get if there were no crime to start with. Rob Levandowski Computer Interest Floor associate / University of Rochester macwhiz@cif.rochester.edu [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am reminded of several years ago when I had a neighbor by the name of Mike Polonski and his wife. They were an older, retired couple. Not being able to get by on what Social Security paid them as a married couple, they decided to get a divorce -- after fifty years of marriage! -- so that each of them would begin getting their own check each month, in a total amount higher than what they gpt as a married couple. None the less they continued to live together, they were simply divorced in the eyes of the law is all. We would get together for dinner at least once a week, sometimes more often. Time and again, at dinner in their home, we had only the finest meats, vegtables, and other foods. Where do you do your shopping, I asked ... Mr. Polonski's answer shocked me: the Carnegie Safeway dumpsters every Tuesday about midnight, he said. He saw my startled look and explained what I said in my previous message. Every Wednesday morning at 4:00 am the semi-trailer truck full of stock for the store would show up. About the same time the refrigerator truck would show up with milk, eggs, butter, ice cream, etc. Then soon the 'bread man' would be there. In anticipation, the stock clerks late Tuesday night began cleaning out the old stuff from the shelves; anything with an expiration date *even two or three days ahead* had to be disgarded. The store knew the stuff was still good, but they figured if someone had milk at home with the current day or the day before as the expiration and they got sick for some reason they would blame in on the 'spoiled milk' and sue the store. It was easier to dump it all. You would not believe all the stuff they throw out ... I know I did not believe it until about a week later Mr. Polonski came to my home and brought three large shopping bags with him. "Here," he said, "I did your shopping for this week." He had already taken home three or four bags for himself, and these were mine. Milk, peanut butter, crackers, bread, several boxes of macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, two packages of pre-sliced balogna (this was in the winter; I caution you against taking the meat or dairy stuff in the summer!) and more. Everything had some minor thing wrong with it; usually it was near the 'must be sold by' date. Some boxes were smashed. A box of 48 Milky Way candy bars where two of the bars on the top row had been sliced in half accidentally with a box-cutting knife. I asked him if he ever had the nerve to take something he did not want back inside the store to the courtesy counter to get a refund and tell them he 'lost his reciept' ... he said no, but he knew of one older lady who 'did it all the time' until Safeway finally slapped her hands for it and told her to stay away from the store and the dumpsters. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ltd@netcom.com (Larry Drebes) Subject: Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 13:49:43 GMT Try Four11. It's free to search and add your own info. It has both a Web interface ( http://www.Four11.com ) and an e-mail interface (free@four11.com). ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Where to Find Nice-Looking Phones? From: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:10:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) ophidian59@aol.com (Ophidian59) in writes: {some deleted} > While on the subject of phones, I'd really like to find one of those > old yet very mod (e.g. 60's) British phones with the dial and the > hook-switch on the bottom. Anyone? Wasn't this the "ERICO" phone of that era? I recall they were very modernistic-looking for the day, but the dial and switchook contacts were prone to cause static after a few months use and the carbon button mic tended to get packed easily from overzealous hangups. :-) Neat phones, but a maintenance nightmare. Ye Olde Bailey BBS Zyxel 713-520-1569(V.32bis) USR 713-520-9566(V.34/FC) Houston,Texas yob.com Home of alt.cosuard ------------------------------ From: lailert@ucssun1.sdsu.edu (Supak Lailert) Subject: Re: Using U.S. Modem in Israel Date: 24 Jan 1995 05:25:12 GMT Organization: San Diego State University, College of Sciences Jeremie Kass (kass@tacout.army.mil) wrote: > I am interested in using the modem I use in the U.S. while I am in > Israel. Is there any technical and/or legal problem in doing this? > Also, what kind of telephone jacks are used there? This will be > connected to a residential line, so will it be the same RJ-11 jack as > here? I've had a problem of using a US modem in other countries. I used SupraExpress 144i modem in Thailand and it doesn't detect the busy signal so that automatic redialing is impossible. The answer from Supra tech support is that "Your modem is adjusted to detect US busy signal. The UK busy tone used in Thailand is different. They are faster. There is no way to adjust the modem to detect the busy signal." (Thailand uses UK telephone standard). Is this true? Supak Lailert -- MBA (IS) Program, San Diego State University lailert@rohan.sdsu.edu lailert@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Kimmo.Ketolainen@utu.fi (Kimmo Ketolainen) Subject: Re: 800 Numbers From Overseas Organization: Turun yliopisto - University of Turku, Turku, Finland Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 12:44:25 GMT I seem to have terrible trouble with accessing the 1 800 numbers from Finland, using Telecom Finland (code 990). About every second try gives me the usual error message "the number is not in use" instead of "access to the 800 number you have dialed is not free of charge outside the United States. If answered, you will be charged international direct dialing rates for this call. If you do not want to proceed with this call, please hang up now." Luckily I have a redial button. I called this week one of the other international operators, Finnet (99= 9) and was told that they are planning to offer similar service. Kimmo Ketolainen University of Turku home +358 21 237 8227 Kimmo.Ketolainen@utu.fi shoe +358 40 500 2957 FIN-20540 Turku http://www.utu.fi/finland.html work +358 21 262 1496 ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: 24 Jan 1995 00:08:00 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Paul Garfield (garfield@vanilla.cs.umn.edu) wrote: > I've seen a couple similar questions posted but haven't seen an > answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs > that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the > call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with > touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I > want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to > perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What > are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. Try Periphonics for a vendor. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: Dale Wooden Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: 24 Jan 1995 15:53:01 GMT Organization: NB*Net > answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs > that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the > call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with > touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I > want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to > perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What > are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. Pika Technologies Inc has such a card, the V12. It is programmable and comes in several configurations. you can contact Rahul Virmani at (613) 591-1555 or rahul.virmani@pika.ca Hope this helps. We have had very good success with this card in our own products and have been very pleased with the service. Dale Wooden ------------------------------ From: hbuehl@dsm1.dsmnet.com Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: 23 Jan 1995 22:46:49 GMT Organization: Des Moines Internet Reply-To: hbuehl@dsm1.dsmnet.com In , garfield@vanilla.cs.umn.edu (Paul Garfield) writes: > I've seen a couple similar questions posted but haven't seen an > answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs > that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the > call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with > touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I > want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to > perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What > are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. There are a number of PC based solutions for being able to take multiple line analog and digital trunks, do stuff such as play voice scripts and capture DTMF Digits, generally referred to as VRU or to actually recognize the the caller's voice, generally referred to as Voice Recognition. Natural MicroSystems of Natick MA and Dialogic of Parsippany NJ are a couple of names that leap to mind, although there are certainly others. Go to Barnes and Noble, or one of the Book Superstores and pick up a copy of Computer Telephony Magazine. It is like a toy catalog of all of the new CTI hardware and software. Harold Buehl Croyle & Associates Des Moines, IA ------------------------------ From: gregicg@cadvision.com Subject: Re: Planning to Purchase a Voice Mail System Date: 23 Jan 1995 20:45:48 GMT Organization: CADVision > We purchased a system from Phoneby which was bought out by VMX. The > system works, but has less features than Pacx Bells's system. We > tried to upgrade it a year or so ago, but they wanted an arm and a leg > to put a larger hard disk in it. The hard disk is a regular Maxtor > MFM disk drive, something like 170 MB. They wanted thousands to > upgrade it. The only thing special is that it's formatted in a > proprietary format. Alot of the major manufacturers go about their upgrades in this way. Pretty well EVERY Voice Processing manufacturer uses regular off-the-shelf components, and they are all PC-Based (whether they like to admit it or not.) Some claim "stand-alone" but that just means they sell their components under their own name and proprietary nature, and charge crazy amounts of dollars for it. They often install a 200+ MB HDrive into their systems, but only format a certain percentage of it depending on how much you pay for. Then, when you upgrade, they send out a technical specialist who inserts a 5 1/4" floppy and runs a little UPGRADE program that basically formats a larger part of the drive (as they put it, "unlocks more memory". So, you end up paying hundreds of dollars for something that should really have no cost involved at all. That is one of the biggest rip-offs in Voice Processing today. greg@cadvision.com Greg Habstritt Intellitech Communications Group Calgary, Alberta, Canada ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Planning to Purchase a Voice Mail System From: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 12:10:00 -0600 Organization: Ye Olde Bailey BBS - Houston, TX - 713-520-1569 Reply-To: bill.garfield@yob.com (Bill Garfield) Paul Hebert (paul_hebert@powershare.markem.com) wrote: > My company is doing research for selection of a voice mail system. We > have presentations scheduled with Octel and Centigram. Would anyone > have some technical or user related insight into these systems? We > have an NEC 2400 switch. Any interface issues we should be aware of? I've had an OCTEL "Aspen" (mid-sized) system in service since 1990 (nearly five years now) with absolutely -ZERO- downtime. It is fully integrated with my Mitel SX2000SG pbx and just keeps working and working. I originally purchased a service contract from OCTEL but finally let it go as they were about like the Maytag man... :-)) I've had them out once, to replace a disk drive. My Octel Aspen system has 20 ports and serves approx. 800 users. Much to Octel's chegrin, I'm still at the original installed software rev level, 8.45.:-) My system is running four 80-meg drives and is still at less than 1/2 capacity. Small mailbox sizes and short save times help that alot. I typically allow each user a max of 20 two-minute msgs with a "new" message hold window of 21 days and a save/archive window of seven days, tho I do make an occasional exception -- just don't let it become a filing cabinet nor an attic. Make that a -POLICY- and your life as System Administrator will be much more pleasant. Run monthly subscriber usage reports to keep tabs on your big "exception" mailbox users as they can bring your disk space to its knees if they abuse the "save" priviledge. Force passwords to six digits, minimum. Beware that "auto attendant" can become a sneak path for toll fraud with any voicemail system. Otherwise, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? You tell me ... As an aside, my Octel/Aspen system sits in a 68-degrees/temp-stable environment and is powered through a Liebert PDU (clean power), plus has a sturdy industrial grade UPS behind it. That may contribute to the good results thus far achieved. I know if the need arose that I'd sure buy another one in a heartbeat. Bill Garfield The pbx/datacomm guy Panhandle Eastern Corp, Houston NYSE: PEL America's Natural Gas Transportation Company Ye Olde Bailey BBS Zyxel 713-520-1569(V.32bis) USR 713-520-9566(V.34/FC) Houston,Texas yob.com Home of alt.cosuard ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #60 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa19440; 24 Jan 95 23:21 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13529; Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:40:39 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13522; Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:40:36 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:40:36 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501242340.AA13522@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #61 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 17:36:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 61 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Educational Telecom List Started (Todd Graham) 500 Numbers and CID (Mark Stieger) Looking For Papers on LD Competition (Elizabeth Wasserman) Automatic Page Application Off of NT-SL1 ? (Ken Stone) Re: Cellular Service in the Lincoln Tunnel (Carl Moore) Re: Help ... Ancient Party Lines Must Die! (Eduardo Kaftanski) Re: ISDN in Florida (Bruce W. Glassford) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (synchro@access3.digex.net) Re: Looking For 900-MHz Cordless Handsfree Headset (Wayne Huffman) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Roger Atkinson) Re: Cattle Call (Dale Neiburg) Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? (Ted Timar) Re: LD Provider Juggling (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: GSM SIM Implementation (Sam Spens Clason) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Todd Graham Reply-To: Todd Graham Subject: New Educational Telecom List Started Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 15:09:08 -0500 Members of this list -- and the greater listserv community -- will be interested to know that the Midwestern Higher Education Commission has recently established a new list dedicated to educational telecommunications. MHEC-TEL is intended as a forum for discourse and information exchange by telecommunications professionals within the higher education community and others interested in opportunities enabled by telecommunications tech- nologies -- for example, distance learning, teleconferencing, interinstitu- tional resource sharing and programming cooperation. List membership is not geographically constrained -- the list welcomes higher education administrators, faculty and professionals from all regions of the country. However, discussion on the MHEC-TEL list should avoid focus on issues of no applicability to institutions in the Midwest. To subscribe, simply follow the normal protocol for Bitnet list subscription. Send a message to: LISTSERV@UMINN1.BITNET (or LISTSERV@VM1. SPCS.UMN.EDU) Message should include your name and the name of your organi- zation/institution: SUBSCRIBE MHEC-TEL First-name Last-name (Affiliation) Comments? Questions? The list-owner for MHEC-TEL is Jeff Williams . ---- opening message on list ---- Welcome to the Midwestern Higher Education Commission's Telecommunications listserv. The MHEC-TEL list has two main purposes. The first is to provide a forum for higher education telecommunications professionals to share ideas, questions, comments, and announcements with peers across the Midwest. The second is to solicit ideas and suggestions from telecommunications professionals in MHEC member states about common institutional challenges, existing MHEC programs, and future cost-savings initiatives. Each of you is welcome (and encouraged) to tell your higher education colleagues about the mhec-tel list and discuss its contents. However, MHEC wishes the list to remain "private" within the higher education community; commercial entities, such as equipment vendors, will not be allowed to join. [stuff deleted] If you have specific questions or suggestions for the MHEC-TEL list, please do not hesitate to contact either MHEC or myself directly. Once again, welcome. Jeff Williams, MHEC-TEL Administrator (willi132@gold.tc.umn.edu) MHEC ------------ Forwarded Message ends here ------------ ABOUT THE MIDWESTERN HIGHER EDUCATION COMMISSION The Midwestern Higher Education Commission (MHEC) was established in 1991 by the Midwestern Regional Education Compact, an interstate agreement among midwestern states. The current member states include Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The mission of MHEC is to improve higher education opportunities and services in the midwest region though interstate cooperation and resource sharing. Programs include activities to produce regional cost savings to benefit colleges and universities, expand student access, support public policy development through analysis and information exchange, facilitate regional cooperative academic programming, encourage quality management, and promote economic growth through higher education and industry innovation. Todd Graham Midwestern Higher Education Commission 1300 South 2nd Street, Mpls, MN 55454 ph.: 612/626-8288 fax: 612/626-8290 ------------------------------ From: stud@subzero.winternet.com (Mark Stieger) Subject: 500 Numbers and CID Date: 24 Jan 95 20:35:36 GMT Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc Here's something I haven't seen asked in here. When nationwide Caller ID is available, and someone calls you through a 500 number, will their CID information be passed, or will the 500 number (or some ATT number show up? Mark [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't know, and let's talk about it when the service gets underway. Actually I am a little ticked off about this. In the middle of December I ordered 500 service, and got my number assigned. They insisted there was no way to turn it on until Janaury 20. Comes January 20 it is not working and I call AT&T. It will really be the 23rd, the lady says. Okay, I waited until Monday afternoon and tried it ... still nothing. I get intercepted at the 1-500 and 0-500 mark; Ameritech will listen to nothing further after that. I call back to AT&T and ask them about it. The lady put me on hold for the *longest* time -- about ten minutes -- then comes back and says Ameritech won't have it turned on until January 30. So on that day I shall try it again; who wants to bet me I will still get intercepted at the local switch? And of course, poor, put upon little AT&T: 'there is nothing we can do about it; the local telcos have to install the billing software ...' Well heck, in case she has not heard, Ameritech and AT&T have been fighting over the access fees to be charged for 500 service, and Ameritech is planning their own 500 service. Who wants to bet me this will drag on for months before it gets installed here. Meanwhile of course, AT&T promptly billed me for the service on January 24 -- on my local Ameritech bill -- so much for how it is out of their control until Ameritech cooperates. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 15:04:50 -0600 From: wrigley@mcs.com (Elizabeth Wasserman) Subject: Looking For Papers on LD Competition I'm doing some research into long distance competition in the US and am looking for academic papers or articles that evaluate the competitive situation in the US marketplace. I've managed to find about 5-7 good articles but would like to dig up a few more -- do any of you have suggestions on what articles I should be looking out for? I'm interested in anything published after 1988, although articles done in the last two or three years would be most useful. Send your suggestions to me at wrigley@mcs.com Thanks for your generous help, Elizabeth Wasserman wrigley@mcs.com chicago, evanston ------------------------------ Subject: Automatic Page Application Off of NT-SL1? Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 11:59:21 -0800 From: Ken Stone I have an application where I need to generate a numeric page when a phone number is dialed. We have an emergency number here on site that when called rings a series of "red phones" around the site at key people's desks. What I would also like to do is generate a page to these same people when the emergency number is dialed. Any ideas? Ken Stone Hewlett Packard, San Diego Site Telecomm & Networking ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 21:25:52 GMT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Cellular Service in the Lincoln Tunnel In New York City, there are also the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. For the Lincoln Tunnel, what do you mean by "'Temp' I-495 between NY and NJ"? This was to be I-495, which: split off NJ Turnpike at what is now exit 16-E; was to cross Manhattan from Lincoln Tunnel to the above- mentioned Queens-Midtown Tunnel (this stretch was never built), and then emerged from there as the Long Island Expressway, becoming N.Y. 495 at or near the Clearview Expressway in eastern Queens. The latest I remember now is that the stretch in NJ is state route 495, and I-495 signs were erected from Queens-Midtown Tunnel all the way to the expressway's end in Suffolk County (eastern Long Island). Old maps had I-78 crossing the Manhattan Bridge, passing near the JFK airport, then turning north to the Throgs Neck Bridge (into the Bronx) and hitting I-95. Now the last reference to I-78 is the New Jersey Turnpike Extension. (From there, you have to go through two intersections to reach the Holland Tunnel.) > In DC, the "tunnels" under the Mall (I-395, was to be I-95) and the > I-195 (?) tunnels ... Where is this I-195? I live and work less than 100 miles from DC, and given adequate description could figure what you are talking about. > Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel and in Newport News, VA There are two or three tunnels between Norfolk and Portsmouth (one is I-264); the I-664 bridge-tunnel going south from Hampton; and the I-64/U.S. 60 bridge tunnel across Hampton Roads. Going west, there are the tunnels on the PA Turnpike and in Pittsburgh. Oops, there are at least two tunnels in Philadelphia, but not on main routes. There is the 5th Street tunnel, which goes under the approach road to the Ben Franklin Bridge. And there is another tunnel near the Art Museum. At the 26th Street/Passyunk Ave. interchange on the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76) you pass through a short tunnel if you are on 26th Street. ------------------------------ From: ekaftan@mailnet.rdc.cl (Eduardo Kaftanski) Subject: Re: Help ... Ancient Party Lines Must Die! Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 05:09:32 GMT In article , Raymond Mereniuk wrote: > I heard a rumor a few years ago which indicated BC Tel's main source > of CO switches was Chile, as the Chilian telco upgraded their switches > BC Tel took all their old switches through a deal with BC Tel's parent This could as well be true. Chilean's biggest telco is CTC (Compa~ia de Telefonos de Chile) nowadays a long way from the state inefficiency it was submerged what eight, maybe less, years ago. CTC Corp., as it is called now, is a corporation with full independancy. It was once owned by an investor named Bond, and I think is now owned by Telefonica de Espa~a (Spain's telco). Ok, back on track, CTC has changed nearly all the switches here for new ones. (Does somebody know tech info on them?) And you can kow get all kinds of services you could not dream of five years ago. So if the rumor heard is betweeen three and ten years old, it may be true. Anyways, I hope this didn't sound as propaganda. I still hate monopolies. CTC Corp is one, they sometimes work REALLY well (I got three lines installed in my office in less that 24 hours) and sometimes real bad (try to get a line where my apartment is; I quit after three years of waiting in a line and got a second hand line from a competing telco (CMET) who works better that CTC but has a VERY limited area). Just a last bit of information. Chile has now a full 'multicarrier' system since October 94. But almost no one has gotten any bill. I myself have not paid a single long distance call since then. How do US long distance operators bill? Ah, you also get an 'IS...D... what?' response here. You do get that response also if you ask for leased lines. Eduardo Kaftanski ekaftan@ing.puc.cl [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Long distance calls here are billed each month. You will usually get the bill within a month or less of making the call; occassionally it might be the second month before the bill comes. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bruceg@interramp.com (Bruce W Glassford) Subject: Re: ISDN in Florida Date: 23 Jan 1995 05:43:34 GMT Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link In article , Evon Bent says: > I was wondering if anyone has heard anything about Southern > Bell implementing ISDN in Florida? I've been considering it to get a > link to the net and a business line as well. I was also wondering if > anyone could give me an idea of the rates I might get charged. If no > one knows or isn't sure how about a number I might call to get this > info? Barring that I was wondering if anyone was currently using ISDN > in Florida and what their experiences with it were. The local SB folks here know squat. But, I went to a BellSouth get-together a few months ago touting Intel's ISDN application ProShare, and BellSouth announced an 800 number for ordering ISDN services. The event was in August of last year, and I don't have my notes with me (meaning I don't have the 800 number), but you might try 800 Info for "BellSouth ISDN Service". I don't have my BRI yet, probably will order it in the next few months. Hope this helps. Bruce W. Glassford Digital Communications Consultants, Inc. Orlando, FL bruceg@interramp.com ------------------------------ From: synchro@access3.digex.net (Steve) Subject: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 12:02:45 GMT Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA The most basic difference is that a T3 is roughly 28 times "faster" than a T1. T1s are 1.544 Mbps while T3s are 44.736 Mbps. Telcos and big telecomm users often aggregate their T1 traffic onto T3s with an M13 type multiplexer or a 3:1 digital cross-connect machine. This is just a start. The line coding is different as well. T1s uses AMI or B8ZS, whereas T3 always uses B3ZS. Take it easy, Steve ------------------------------ From: whuffman@ix.netcom.com (Wayne Huffman) Subject: Re: Looking For 900-MHz Cordless Handsfree Headset Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:13:52 GMT Organization: Netcom In Martin.Soques@amd.com (Martin Soques) writes: > Greetings! Subject line says all; I'm looking for a 900-MHz digital > phone with a cordless headset rather than a cordless handset. So that Pat doesn't seem to be the one plugging Hello Direct, *I* will take a turn at it. They show a 900MHz cordless HEADset on page six of their Spring '95 catalog for US$349. It weighs 7 ounces with the two hour battery. Hello Direct can be reached at 1-800-HI-HELLO. They also have a WWW site at URL http://www.hello-direct.com/hd/ Their e-mail address is xpressit@hihello.com BTW I don't work for them either. Wayne Huffman ------------------------------ From: rogera@cts.com (Roger Atkinson) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Organization: R. F. Atkinson & Co. Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 02:33:26 GMT In article eyegaz1@ibm.net (Pete Norloff) writes: > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. > I'm hoping to find an authoritative reference to help me in an > argument with a Bell Atlantic engineer. This engineer believes that > Bell Atlantic is providing the terminating end of long distance calls > to the long distance carriers for free. Obviously, you don't believe that Bell companies give anything away. I suppose you also don't believe in the tooth fairy . Seriously, there must be a tariff filed with the state utilities commission for them to collect money, on a regular basis, from multiple customers (IXCs). Check your local telco business office. In most states, they are required to make their tariffs available for public inspection. (Maybe we should start a movement to pressure PUCs to require that tariffs be on the Internet?) (Maybe they already are in some states?) Consider the case of the small telco (non-Bell), in Nebraska, I believe, that apparently had some mysterious financial relationship with a local filthy talk operator. Said sleaze bag (my opinion) advertized his "service" all over the country, and listed an ordinary area code and number, not a 900 SAC. The net income of the telco reportledly went up spectacularly in the ensuing months. The filth peddler continued to operate, and expand his system. Since he was merely receiving ordinary long distance calls, he had no obvious source of revenue to support his generosity. I read about it in the {San Diego Union Tribune}, because a local mother of a teenage girl was stuck for thousands of dollars of ordinary toll charges, even though she had arranged with the local Bell company to block 1+900 calls. Getting back to your question, it would appear that the various long distance carriers involved in carrying these calls paid the local telco for such termination. This used to be called something like "settlements and separations" before Judge Greene "fixed" the phone system. Hope this helps! Roger Atkinson ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 15:25:58 EST From: DNEIBURG@npr.org Subject: Re: Cattle Call In TELECOM Digest v15 #46, the Moderator noted: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A couple of questions for whoever knows > the answers ... is it hard to train a cow to respond to your call? Is If not, this practice may lead to a worse problem. What happens when the cow gets corrupted by the promise of easy fodder and starts moonlighting as a drug courier? Dale Neiburg, STC National Public Radio Phone: 202-414-2640 635 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 Internet: dneiburg@npr.org ------------------------------ From: tmatimar@isgtec.com (Ted Timar) Subject: Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? Organization: ISG Technologies Inc. Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 11:12:22 -0500 In Volume 15, Issue 53, Message 9, Jane McMahon wrote, > How do find someone using Internet? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps it is about time for someone to > write an article describing the Internet 'white pages' and how to use > them. I think searching those would be a good way for you to start. PAT] Three Usenet FAQs of use exist, in Comp.Mail.Misc, "Updated Inter-Network Mail Guide" also in Comp.Mail.Misc, "FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses" and in Soc.Net-People, "FAQ: College Email Addresses" These in turn are archived at rtfm.mit.edu as (in order), pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide pub/usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part[123] The last of these (College email addresses) is close to a year out of date, so any volunteers to take it over would probably be extremely welcome. Ted Timar tmatimar@isgtec.com ------------------------------ From: producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) Subject: Re: LD Provider Juggling Date: 24 Jan 1995 11:42:56 -0500 Organization: Interactive CallBrand(TM) Justin, My advice is to call your LDDS account representative and explain your problem; copy them by fax on the paperwork, and *expect* them to iron out the problem. Much of our long distance is via a top-notch reseller in Atlanta. When there are billing or other adminstrative errors, overlaps, etc., one phone call to her, with a documenting fax, is all it's ever taken to straighten the problem out. Including appropriate account crediting, etc. If you are not getting this level of service from your account rep at LDDS, speak with that person's manager. If they are still not responsive, switch service providers. If you need any more help, feel free to email me directly - producer@pipeline.com. Good luck! Judith Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com Interactive CallBrand(TM) ------------------------------ From: d92-sam@black29.nada.kth.se (Sam Spens Clason) Subject: Re: GSM SIM Implementation Date: 24 Jan 1995 18:02:19 GMT In tholome@dialup.francenet.fr (Eric Tholome) writes: > In article , k22413@kyyppari.hkkk.fi > (Harri Kinnunen) wrote: >> Most of the hand-held GSM phones use a "punched-out" section of the >> Smartcard, being about 1cmx2cm in size. The punch-out dimensions are >> also standard, but I don't know if they are included in ISO-7816. > And this totally ruins one of the nice purposes of the SIM: being able > to have several phones (for instance, one nice vehicle mounted phone, > and a hand held terminal) and still using them with one SIM only. If > two of your phones use different types of SIM, you're out of luck! > I've been told that some companies were now selling adapters, but the > convenience of all this has yet to be seen. I agree that different SIMs are pain. But, it's really not that bad. All Swedish operators offer two-card subscriptions. Two IMSIs but one phone number. Only one phone can make or receive calls at the same time. I don't have a cellphone myself. But I've been told that on Europolitan you must dial 333 to "change IMSI" but on Comviq you only have to turn the other phone on. The IMSI last to do a manual update is the one that gets the calls. How it works on Telia I don't know. Sam Sam Spens Clason ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #61 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa21953; 25 Jan 95 2:52 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19866; Tue, 24 Jan 95 21:43:11 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19849; Tue, 24 Jan 95 21:43:07 CST Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 21:43:07 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501250343.AA19849@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #62 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 21:43:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 62 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Where is PicturePhone II Now? (Ed Ellers) Re: Using U.S. Modem in Israel (Rich Galen) Re: Wireless CO's Challenge New NPAs? (David E.A. Wilson) Re: Ancient Party Lines (David Breneman) Re: Voice Response Unit Question (Christian van der Ree) Re: Help Locating Telephone/PC Interface Board (Christian van der Ree) Re: Cellular Phone Information Wanted (John Lundgren) Re: Where: T1 Information/FAQ? (John Lundgren) Re: Help Needed With Displaying X Windows on the PC (Mike MacFaden) Re: Chatter Heard on Scanner Leads to Criminal Charges (David Hough) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (Joe Sulmar) Re: ANSI Terminal Communications (Timothy D. Shoppa) Re: Anyone Have Experience With LDDS/Metromedia? (Justin T. Leavens) Re: Looking For 900-MHz Cordless Handsfree Headset (Roger Snyder) Re: AT&T First to Deliver Long-Awaited "Follow-Me" 500 Numbers (jamiec102) Re: CID Question (Dave Levenson) Re: More CO Codes For Each NPA; Any Telcos Take Advantage? (W. Leatherock) Five Digit Phone Numbers (Carl Moore) Cable Cost-of-Service Regulation (Prakash Hariramani) Radio Station Transmission Lines (Daniel Ritsma) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Ed Ellers Subject: Re: Where is PicturePhone II Now? Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 18:33:55 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) David Gingold writes: > Can anyone tell me what ever happened to the PicturePhone II phones > manufactured by AT&T in the '70's? I have heard a rumor that these > phones might have been given to Ameritech as part of the breakup, but > I have know idea where to start looking. NYNEX, Bell Atlantic and Ameritech probably have them, if they weren't sent back to Western Electric to be scrapped -- the service was offered in New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh, with other cities getting intercom-only Picturephone service (i.e. you could have it within your own PBX but not to other sites because the video switches weren't in place). The Bell System also had a setup for several years between top executives at 195 Broadway and the presidents of each of the BOCs, and some other BOCs obtained sets to be used for demonstrations. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They were in the lobby of the Illinois Bell headquarters building in Chicago. Customers could use them by appointment to hold conferences, etc with people in other cities. PAT] ------------------------------ From: rgalen@tad.eds.com (Rich Galen) Subject: Re: Using U.S. Modem in Israel Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 11:20:58 -0600 Organization: EDS In article , kass@tacout.army.mil (Jeremie Kass) wrote: > I am interested in using the modem I use in the U.S. while I am in > Israel. Is there any technical and/or legal problem in doing this? > Also, what kind of telephone jacks are used there? This will be > connected to a residential line, so will it be the same RJ-11 jack as > here? This will NOT be technical because I aren't one, but I have been in Israel several times over the past few months and have found (1) my US modem (GV Mercury) works fine back to the US; and (2) sometimes you find an RJ-11 jack and sometimes you find a jack which is the same height, but about 4x wider than an RJ-11. A friend of mine said he would send me a converter which had the RJ-11 female on one end and the standard Israeli jack on the male end. Rich Galen rgalen@tad.eds.com EDS Emerging Market Development Plano, TX 214-605-0017 ------------------------------ From: david@cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson) Subject: Re: Wireless CO's Challenge New NPAs? Date: 25 Jan 1995 09:35:11 +1100 Organization: University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. pritter@nit.AirTouch.COM (Phil Ritter) writes: > In article Liron Lightwood apana.org.au> writes: >> Here in Australia, we have the best of both worlds. Our cellular >> phones have their own area code like prefixes, e.g. 018, 015, 041. >> However, when making a local call from a cellular phone, you only have >> to dial the six or seven digit number, no area code required. > While this may be interesting in areas like Australia, where the > numbering plan areas (or city codes) are large, it breaks down quickly > in the NANP [at least in the dense parts of it]. It even breaks down here in Australia -- we often get calls from mobile phones which should have gone to the adjacent 044 area code but end up here in 042. When the new eight digit numbering plan arrives in 1998 we will only have four area codes for the entire country the only problems will be along a couple of state borders. David Wilson Dept CompSci Uni Wollongong Australia david@cs.uow.edu.au ------------------------------ From: daveb@dgtl.com (David Breneman) Subject: Re: Ancient Party Lines Date: 24 Jan 95 23:41:13 GMT Organization: Digital Systems International, Redmond WA Scott Falke (scott@csustan.csustan.edu) wrote: > In article scott@csustan.csustan.edu > (Scott Falke) writes: >> In re your story about party-line entertainment: >> X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 15, Issue 11, Message 2 of 14 >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The way you describe it was one way >> of doing the ringing; there were various methods. What happened on >> your system if you wanted to call someone on your party line? > For 8-party, one dialed 119xy, where x was your line position (1-8) > and y was the called party (1-8). The ring generator would alternate > between the two. When the ring quit, you picked up the handset, cause > they had too. If the ring didn't quit, you picked up the handset > anyway. They weren't home. If you shared the same relative polarity > with the called party (the gas tubes and tip/ting to gnd) you'd hear > one long (i.e., yours) and two shorts (theirs) in repetition. THAT > was real cool. Hey, a farming town, you know ... On our system, you dialed the number of the person you wanted, got a busy signal, then hung up. Unless you and the other party shared a ring (ie, one long vs two short) you heard nothing -- you just had to wait a while and pick up the receiver and find out if they were there. Of course, this system could always be used to ring your own phone as well. When the Jehovah's Witnesses showed up, an accomplice would ring the phone, then annouce you had an important call. Worked every time. :-) David Breneman Email: daveb@jaws.engineering.dgtl.com Systems Administrator, Voice: +1 206 881-7544 Fax: +1 206 556-8033 Product Development Platforms Digital Systems International, Inc. Redmond, Washington, U. S. o' A. ------------------------------ From: ttm@xs4all.nl (Christian van der Ree) Subject: Re: Voice Response Unit Question Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 00:03:17 GMT Organization: TTM Nederland > I presently operate a voice/fax response unit using a 486 pc with > analog phone lines directly connected to a Rhetorex voice board. > The software and hardware I have is capable of being used with a PBX > to do call transfers. I don't have a PBX but I was wondering if I > could purchase a desktop phone which could be configured so that if a > caller asks for my extension the voice response unit would transfer > the call to the phone just like a PBX. > Anybody have any ideas? What about this workaround that I use: A caller types in the extension he wish to connect to. If he types in #110 for instance, the computer beeps one time. I know he wish to speak to me and pick up the phone. If the caller types in #200, the computer makes two beeps (or plays a .wav file) I know its for ... Hopefully you like one. I'm still waiting for some nice payable voice- hardware that can transform a PC in a real PBX. TTM Nederland ------------------------------ From: ttm@xs4all.nl (Christian van der Ree) Subject: Re: Help Locating Telephone/PC Interface Board Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 00:07:53 GMT Organization: TTM Nederland > I need to locate an "IBM" PC peripherial board that will let me > answer the phone, play audio prompts and accept touch tone input from > the caller. Multiple lines per card and multiple cards per box will > be better. Any leads will be greatly appreciated. If it must be an IBM board, I can't help you. But else I can suggest some real nice boards that will do the things that you want it to do and much ... much ... more. TTM Nederland ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Cellular Phone Information Wanted Date: 24 Jan 1995 15:12:26 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network LOKESH KALRA (lk05@lehigh.edu) wrote: > Is there a place other than the January 93 issue of {Consumer Reports} > (probably quite out of date now) that discusses the Cellular/Mobile > phone technology, kinds of plans offered, and the various models and > how they are rated? Would appreaciate any info at lk05@cs2.cc.lehigh.edu It seems that the carriers are practically giving the phones away to get you to sign up with them for a year or so. Just goes to show where the profits are. Rather than worry about the phone technology, it might be wise to worry about the bills you may be getting. According to the newsmedia, the cloning and fraud is rampant. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: Where: T1 Information/FAQ? Date: 25 Jan 1995 00:09:42 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network BRUCE268@DELPHI.COM (BRUCE268@news-feed.delphi.com) wrote: > Would some one please pass on any sites/addresses where information or > FAQs on T1 service might be found. Looking for general technical > overview of the service. Probably the best place to look for this is the local telco service representative. Maybe for tech info try a good library. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: mike@premisys.com (Mike MacFaden) Subject: Re: Help Needed With Displaying X Windows on the PC Date: 24 Jan 1995 18:44:03 -0800 Organization: Premisys Communications, Inc In article , Ken Stack wrote: > I am trying to fins a way to display x windows on my PC from my Sun at > work. The problem is that my Sun at work does not have slip or ppp > for security reasons. I have attempted to use PSI's interramp service 1) You need a SLIP or PPP link from home. If your workstation doesn't have it, then I suggest your sysAdm install a Terminal Server which does provide good security (companies: Livingston, Xylogics, Xyplex) 2) Get a copy of an X server that implements Low Bandwidth X (LBX) A good company to talk to is Network Computing Devices (NCD). All of these companies are on the net. Regards, Mike MacFaden Premisys Communications, Inc Fremont CA USA ------------------------------ From: David Hough Subject: Re: Chatter Heard on Scanner Leads to Criminal Charges Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 10:33:38 GMT Organization: Chaotic In article it was written: > ECPA as amended is only the latest insult. Previous laws made it illegal to > intercept certain satellite downlinks (and uplinks), radar speed guns, > and a number of other types of signals. If the trend continues, listening to > any signal not explicitly intended for broadcast will be illegal. I know > that at least one Congress member proposed legislation with just that > wording. In the UK you are only allowed to listen to authorised broadcast stations, amateur radio stations and transmissions from the Standard Frequency Service. Even listening to CB is illegal unless you possess a CB licence. Dave djh@sectel.com Tel +44 1285 655 766 Fax +44 1285 655 595 ------------------------------ From: Joe Sulmar Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: 24 Jan 1995 20:04:40 GMT Organization: North Shore Access/Eco Software, Inc; (info@shore.net) > I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs that can handle phone calls ... > with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to perhaps 24 The following companies make boards that will meet your needs: Dialogic 800-755-4444, 201-993-3030 Natural Microsystems 800-533-6120, 508-650-1300 (Vikki Stoneback) Rhetorex 408-370-0881 I also know of some sources of used equipment, but I recommend that you buy your first board direct, so that you get all of the latest doc, software and support. A 4-port board from these companies costs approximately $1200 (check out the quantity discount break points before you buy). All of the above companies offer OS/2 and UNIX drivers, some of them offer DOS drivers, and NT is either under development or already available. Lots of third party companies make application development tools for these boards. Let me know if you need information on software. Good luck. Joseph J. Sulmar jsulmar@shore.net Computer-Telephony Consultant voice: 617-862-6358 Lexington, MA fax: 617-621-0499 ------------------------------ From: shoppa@almach.krl.caltech.edu (Timothy D. Shoppa) Subject: Re: ANSI Terminal Communications Date: 24 Jan 1995 10:29:00 PST Organization: California Institute of Technology In article , ua291@fim.uni-erlangen.de (David O. Laney) writes ... > I am interested in getting the ANSI Terminal Standards (i.e. escape > sequences) to use to drive a communications package. Check out the anonymous ftp site cs.ukt.edu; in the directory: /pub/shuford/terminal You'll find many files that will be useful, particularly "ansi_x3_64.txt". Tim. (shoppa@altair.krl.caltech.edu) ------------------------------ From: jtleavens@aol.com (JT Leavens) Subject: Re: Anyone Have Experience With LDDS/Metromedia? Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:20:16 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: jtleavens@aol.com (JT Leavens) I agree with the comment on inbound service from LDDS. I've got an 800 line with them right now, and I am getting comments from customers about once a week that they can't get through, getting some intercept message. Outbound is no problem, but I don't know how long I am going to keep them for inbound. It's a tough choice though: I've got their rates at something like 13 cents/min for inbound and outbound calls ... ($1000/monthly and one year commitment). ------------------------------ From: rsnyder@panix.com (Roger Snyder) Subject: Re: Looking For 900-MHz Cordless Handsfree Headset Date: 24 Jan 1995 21:38:25 -0500 Organization: SHAD Martin Soques (Martin.Soques@amd.com) wrote: > Greetings! Subject line says all; I'm looking for a 900-MHz digital > phone with a cordless headset rather than a cordless handset. Hello Direct (1-800-444-3556) has a 900MHz cardless headset for $349. Roger ------------------------------ From: jamiec1024@aol.com (JamieC1024) Subject: Re: AT&T First to Deliver Long-Awaited "Follow-Me" 500 Numbers Date: 24 Jan 1995 08:50:30 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: jamiec1024@aol.com (JamieC1024) It is the owner of the "Follow-Me" card. However this information may be misleading. AT&T was not the first to deliver long-awaited "Follow-Me" Numbers. A case in point: a company in Michigan called US Signal was in fact the first to have TRUE "Follow Me" capabilities. The AT&T card is really a FIND ME card where it calls a set of preprogramed numbers; this service can get expensive real fast. UniDial Communications [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And despite their statements that 500 numbers would be available by now, they still are not turned on, at least here in the Chicago area. I was one of the first people to sign up for 500 service when they started taking orders. Despite calling within a day or so of their announcement that orders were being accepted, there were absolutely *no* good numbers available ... already taken, I was told. Yeah, we know how AT&T does that; trying to get 800 numbers away from them and into the hands of another resporg or carrier got me soured. All these 'reservations' and never once a name to go with them. Well, be that as it may, they told me back in December that my 500 number would take a month to turn on but be available January 20. Comes last Friday, they said it would be Monday the 23rd ... now they are saying it will be next week on January 30. As usual, point your finger at someone else; the rep claimed to me that Ameritech does not yet have the billing software in place; that's nonsense because in fact I got billed for my first month of 500 service by AT&T back on January 24 as part of my Ameritech bill. Watch on January 30 for some new date to be set. Why wouldn't the AT&T reps have known this when they took my order now over a month ago? PAT] ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Re: CID Question Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 02:37:11 GMT Stan Schwartz (stanschwartz-aviswizcom@e-mail.com) writes: > I have recently begun using TotalTel as a secondary LD carrier (by > signing up for secondary service and a calling card). ... > HOWEVER ... if I dial 10081 + NPA + NXX + XXXX, the call is completed > with CID information provided at the receiving end! Any ideas on what > they are doing here? > On their 800 service, TotalTel also seems to translate the ANI of the > calling party and delivers it as CID information on the receiving end. This is just a guess on my part, but this sounds very similar to the service we get using Cable & Wireless. Could it be, perhaps, that C&W and TotalTel are both reselling WillTell service? WillTell is the company most often described in this digest as providing Inter-LATA delivery of ANI via CID, or something like that. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu Date: Tue, 23 Jan 95 21:29:55 Subject: Re: More CO Codes For Each NPA - Any Telcos Take Advantage? Quoting dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold): > With the introduction of "interchangeable" area code formats > officially beginning in a few days, the required dialing changes > throughout the North American Numbering Plan mean that all area codes > should be able to assign N(0/1)X format prefixes for their local > numbers. > Are there other area codes where introduction of N(0/1)X > format CO codes/prefixes is planned? I first encountered CO codes in this format at least ten years ago when I was calling a Southern California firm with which my company was doing business. (Sorry I don't remember the area code, and it's probably been changed from what it was then anyway.) The July 1992 telephone directory for "Greater Fort Worth" has a list of all prefixes in both the Fort Worth metro calling area (in area code 817) and the Dallas metro calling area (area code 214). In 817 these prefixes are listed in the N(0/1)X format: 410 and 806 And in the 214 area code: Southwestern Bell exchanges: 508 703 712 812 704 707 815 202 204 212 215 305 314 502 504 601 602 603 606 609 616 707 801 802 803 804 805 807 808 906 908 909 912 913 914 708 709 217 218 515 617 302 309 302 312 819 407 713 401 402 506 406 919 308 404 419 701 702 715 716 301 705 801 802 803 907 917 918 902 904 706 503 613 203 319 819 905 216 GTE exchanges: 313 413 513 514 518 607 714 717 718 719 915 916 219 304 315 317 316 318 306 307 416 417 418 403 516 517 519 604 605 608 612 618 619 205 303 414 (These were scooped off the maps arranged geographically by wire centers/zones, so they are not in numerical order and I might have missed one or two.) This was two and a half years ago, and there are probably more of these now. I know the Houston metropolitan exchange (area code 713) also has a lot of CO codes in the N(0/1)X format. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu wes.leatherock@f32.n147.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 23:09:10 GMT From: Carl Moore Subject: Five Digit Phone Numbers I am originallly from Wilmington, Delaware. For many years, what became the {News-Journal} newspapers were on what became 302-654-5351. (Please don't call that number; it was changed long ago!) Originally (and I had to read about this since I am too young to remember that far back) it would have been printed as "Wilmington 4-5351" or simply "4-5351" with Wilmington being understood; I believe you had to ask the operator if you wanted to reach such a number. "Wilmington" was replaced by "OLympia" (OL for short) when it came time for customers to be able to dial directly. Then, in 1966, Diamond State Telephone stopped printing exchange names in the Wilmington phone book, and existing numbers of form OLx-xxxx began to be printed as 65x-xxxx. TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Until the late 1960's a peculiar thing existed in Lafayette/West Lafayette, Indiana with Purdue University and the rest of the phones in the town. Lafayette was surrounded by area code 317, and it had seven digit numbers like everyone else, yet it was not direct dialable. You could call Indianapolis, or towns on either side of it by dialing 317 and the number, but for Lafayette and West Lafayette you asked your operator for the number. Purdue had five digit extension numbers, and locally from within town if you knew the desired extension you could dial 92 plus the five digits. To get the Purdue operator from anywhere in town, you just dialed 90. If you were calling from somewhere like Chicago, you dialed 211 for the long distance operator and asked for 'Lafayette, Indiana nine-oh' or perhaps for nine-two-whatever. Finally about 1970 long after everywhere else in the area was dialable, Lafayette and Fort Wayne (both were served by GTE, both had seven digit numbers like everyone else) got connected with everyone else. Does anyone remember when all the military bases around the USA had their own special arrangements? Camp McCoy in Wisconsin, for example, was just 'Camp McCoy' to the long distance operator; it had four digit extensions but no actual 'main listed number'. It was just 'Camp McCoy, extension xxxx' via the long distance operator. Ditto Fort Benjamin Harrison in southern Indiana and Great Lakes Naval Base. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Prakash Hariramani Subject: Cable Cost-of-Service Regulation Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 18:56:03 -0500 Organization: Info Networking Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Hi: I was wondering if any one could tell me the status of cost-of-service regulation for cable companies by the FCC. I am specifically interested in accounting details, i.e. what costs should be considered and how to calculate cost-of-service. I searched through the FCC gopher but did not find anything with this level of detail. Thanks, Prakash Hariramani (ph2k@andrew.cmu.edu) Information Networking Institute Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 ------------------------------ From: Daniel Ritsma Subject: Radio Station Transmission Lines Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 00:23:51 -0500 Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences I am working for a small radio station that is now using two 8kHz lines to feed four tansmitters (AM). On one line we feed three transmitters since they are for buildings next to each other; the other line is for a building some 150 blocks from here. Should we stick with analog lines or slowly move over to other types of communication by phone? The fact that we have to branch off led me to believe that we should go for digital transmition, so that we would have less noise and a better signal. Does anybody have experience with this? We are located in Manhattan and NYNEX is not of much help. Getting our current two lines to work properly without too much loos was already a great victory for us. Our budget is limited as we are a college radio station. All help is greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Daniel ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #62 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa02513; 25 Jan 95 17:20 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA00129; Wed, 25 Jan 95 09:22:05 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA00119; Wed, 25 Jan 95 09:22:03 CST Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 09:22:03 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501251522.AA00119@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #63 TELECOM Digest Wed, 25 Jan 95 09:22:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 63 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 205/334 Area Code Split (Jerry Pruett) Radio Modems For the European License-Free Bands? (ko@komac.knoware.nl) Questions About ADSL and HDSL (Olivier Andrieu) Implementations of the German SISA Specs? (Finn Andresen) Marine Telecom Installation (Demosthenes Panagopoulos) Wireless Networks (Marie-Louise Kok) Difficulty With Atlantic Bell ISDN (Jeff Hersh) Value of Motorola Flip Phone (Microtac 950) (Brian Klaas) Technical Help Needed With Pending Litigation (John Marinelli) Re: Question on Call-Back Operators (Georg Oehl) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (Christian van der Ree) Re: Radio Station Transmission Lines (satyr@bpd.harris.com) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 205/334 Area Code Split From: kd4cim@vulcan.com (Jerry Pruett - KD4CIM) Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 19:41:33 -0600 Organization: Vulcan - Live Long and Prosper! On 1/15/95, the 205 area code (Alabama) was split into 205 and 334. 205 remains the area code for LATAs 476 (Birmingham) and 477 (Huntsville). LATAs 478 (Montgtomery) and 480 (Mobile) were moved to the new 334 area code. The following is a list of the NNXs that have moved to the 334 area code. This list does NOT come from any official source, but my sampling of it seems to agree with the ad posted by South Central Bell in the 1/16/95 Communications Week. There is a "grace" period for which both the 205 and 334 area codes will work, but I left the Comm Week at the office, so I don't have the exact date. I seem to recall the "grace" period ending in June or July though. For more precise information for programming PBXs and such, call SCB (they had an 800 number in the Comm Week ad). At the end of the "grace" period, I assume that SCB (or is it Bellcore) will start assigning new NNXs that may duplicate in the 205 and 334 NPAs. Again, this following information is NOT guaranteed as it is extracted from a personal database. My use of the database requires that I keep it as accurate as possible however. For exact details, you should consult the Comm Week Ad and/or call SCB. NPA-NNX CLLI NPA-NNX CLLI NPA-NNX CLLI NPA-NNX CLLI 334-206 MTGMALMT 334-210 ANDSALXA 334-213 MTGMALDA 334-215 MTGMALDA 334-216 DMPLALMA 334-222 ANDSALXA 334-223 MTGMALMT 334-223 MTGMALMT 334-225 CTHRALXA 334-227 FTDPALMA 334-240 MTGMALMT 334-241 MTGMALMT 334-242 MTGMALMT 334-243 BNKSALXA 334-244 MTGMALDA 334-246 JCSNALNM 334-248 RPTNALXA 334-255 DLVLALXA 334-256 FMTNALMT 334-256 FMTNALMT 334-257 NTSLALXA 334-258 GSPTALXA 334-260 MTGMALDA 334-261 MTGMALMT 334-262 MTGMALMT 334-263 MTGMALMT 334-264 MTGMALMT 334-265 MTGMALMT 334-266 LSVLALXA 334-267 FRCYALXA 334-269 MTGMALMT 334-270 MTGMALDA 334-271 MTGMALDA 334-272 MTGMALDA 334-275 GVHLALXA 334-276 CFVLALXA 334-277 MTGMALDA 334-278 LWBOALXA 334-279 MTGMALDA 334-281 MTGMALNO 334-282 FNBGALXA 334-283 TLLSALXA 334-284 MTGMALNO 334-285 MTGMALMB 334-286 MTGMALNO 334-288 MTGMALNO 334-289 DMPLALMA 334-293 MTGMALMT 334-294 HXFRALXA 334-295 LNDNALMA 334-296 FMTNALMT 334-299 NWTNALXA 334-301 MTGMALDA 334-303 MTGMALDA 334-304 MOBLALSH 334-308 ENTRALXA 334-312 MTGMALDA 334-316 MOBLALSH 334-317 MTGMALDA 334-327 WLHLFLXA 334-330 MOBLALPR 334-334 EUFLALMA 334-335 LVRNALXA 334-337 VRBGALXA 334-341 MOBLALSH 334-342 MOBLALSH 334-343 MOBLALSH 334-344 MOBLALSH 334-346 FRHMALXA 334-347 ENTRALXA 334-361 PRVLALMA 334-365 PRVLALMA 334-366 MPVLALMA 334-368 ATMRALXA 334-369 WLHLFLXA 334-374 MCKNALXA 334-376 GRGNALXA 334-380 MOBLALSH 334-382 GNVLALXA 334-385 ARTNALXA 334-388 GNTTALXA 334-393 ENTRALXA 334-397 CLIOALXA 334-399 MTGMALDA 334-401 MOBLALAZ 334-402 MOBLALAZ 334-405 MOBLALAZ 334-408 MOBLALBF 334-409 MTGMALDA 334-412 SELMALMT 334-414 MOBLALSH 334-415 MOBLALAZ 334-416 MTGMALDA 334-417 MOBLALAZ 334-418 SELMALMT 334-419 SELMALMT 334-421 MOBLALAZ 334-427 ANDSALXA 334-431 MOBLALAZ 334-432 MOBLALAZ 334-433 MOBLALAZ 334-434 MOBLALAZ 334-438 MOBLALAZ 334-439 MOBLALAZ 334-441 MOBLALAZ 334-443 MOBLALBF 334-445 OZRKALXA 334-450 MOBLALOS 334-452 MOBLALPR 334-454 MOBLALAZ 334-456 MOBLALPR 334-457 MOBLALPR 334-460 MOBLALSH 334-469 RDLVALXA 334-470 MOBLALOS 334-471 MOBLALOS 334-473 MOBLALOS 334-474 PROTALXA 334-476 MOBLALOS 334-478 MOBLALOS 334-479 MOBLALOS 334-484 GSHNALXA 334-485 FTDVALXA 334-493 OPP ALXA 334-496 DOZRALXA 334-502 AUBNALMA 334-503 DLVLALXA 334-513 MOBLALAZ 334-514 WTMPALMA 334-516 MTGMALMT 334-519 MTGMALMT 334-522 GRDNALXA 334-527 BTLYALXA 334-529 MDWYALXA 334-537 LAPIALXA 334-540 FTMRALXA 334-541 ECLCALXA 334-542 SILSALXA 334-548 HYVLALXA 334-562 RAMRALXA 334-563 GOVLALXA 334-564 PTMNALXA 334-565 KSTNALXA 334-566 TROYALMA 334-567 WTMPALMA 334-569 HLVIALMA 334-573 ALBRALXA 334-575 MOVLALXA 334-577 MCCLALXA 334-578 EVRGALMA 334-580 BYMNALMA 334-584 PNLVALXA 334-585 ABVLALXA 334-588 HRFRALXA 334-598 DLVLALXA 334-602 MOBLALSK 334-604 MOBLALAZ 334-605 MOBLALAZ 334-607 MOBLALAP 334-610 MOBLALAZ 334-613 MTGMALNO 334-615 DTHNALXA 334-616 EUFLALMA 334-617 MOBLALSH 334-621 MOBLALSF 334-624 GNBOALMA 334-626 MOBLALSF 334-627 THMTALXA 334-628 UNTWALNM 334-633 MOBLALAP 334-636 THVLALMA 334-639 MOBLALAP 334-641 MOBLALSE 334-645 MOBLALSE 334-649 MOBLALSE 334-653 MOBLALTH 334-660 MOBLALSK 334-661 MOBLALSK 334-666 MOBLALSK 334-667 HRBOALOM 334-670 TROYALMA 334-671 DTHNALXA 334-675 MOBLALSA 334-677 DTHNALXA 334-677 DTHNALXB 334-679 MOBLALSA 334-682 CMDNALXA 334-683 MARNALNM 334-684 GENVALXA 334-687 EUFLALMA 334-690 MOBLALAZ 334-691 CTWDALXA 334-692 WCBGALXA 334-693 HDLDALXA 334-694 MOBLALAZ 334-696 CLMAALXA 334-702 DTHNALXA 334-703 OPLKALMT 334-704 OPLKALMT 334-705 OPLKALMT 334-712 DTHNALXA 334-714 DTHNALXA 334-724 TSKGALMA 334-727 TSKGALMA 334-735 BRNDALXA 334-736 NNFLALXA 334-738 UNSPALXA 334-742 OPLKALMT 334-743 MOVLALXA 334-745 OPLKALMT 334-746 PNAPALXA 334-749 OPLKALMT 334-754 FKVLALXA 334-762 ARITALXA 334-765 EXCLALXA 334-770 MOBLALAZ 334-774 OZRKALXA 334-775 CYTNALMA 334-777 DRPKALXA 334-789 BTRCALXA 334-792 DTHNALXA 334-793 DTHNALXA 334-794 DTHNALXA 334-795 ECHOALXA 334-807 TROYALMA 334-809 BRTOALMA 334-814 ASFRALXA 334-821 AUBNALMA 334-824 BLBTALXA 334-826 AUBNALMA 334-827 FRDLALXA 334-829 MTVRALMA 334-832 MTGMALMT 334-834 MTGMALMT 334-843 GLTWALXA 334-844 AUBNALMA 334-846 MLRYALXA 334-847 CHTMALXA 334-857 KWLGALXA 334-860 MTGMALMT 334-861 DPISALXA 334-862 URIHALXA 334-863 RONKALXA 334-864 LFYTALRS 334-865 GDBAALXA 334-866 CTRNALNM 334-867 BRTOALMA 334-872 SELMALMT 334-873 FWRVALXA 334-874 SELMALMT 334-875 SELMALMT 334-885 RCMLALXA 334-886 SLCMALXA 334-887 AUBNALMA 334-889 NWVIALXA 334-894 NWBCALXA 334-897 ELBAALXA 334-898 SMSNALXA 334-899 ASFRALXA 334-928 FRHPALMA 334-937 BYMNALMA 334-943 FOLYALXA 334-944 MCINALMA 334-946 SMNLALXA 334-947 RBDLALXA 334-948 GLSHALXB 334-949 BNSCALXA 334-952 FOLYALXA 334-953 MTGMALMT 334-957 IRSEALXA 334-962 LLLNALXA 334-963 PNHLALXA 334-964 LXLYALXA 334-965 MGSPALXA 334-966 CSTLALXA 334-968 GLSHALXA 334-973 BLFNALMA 334-981 ORBHALXA 334-983 MLCYALXA 334-986 ELBTALXA 334-989 SRDLALXA 334-990 FRHPALMA 334-992 DXMLALXA 334-994 SWWRALXA 334-996 ORVLALXA 73 de Jerry BHM AmprNet - kd4cim@kd4cim.ampr.org [44.100.113.19] Packet Radio - KD4CIM @ KD4CIM.AL.USA.NA Internet - kd4cim@vulcan.com (or kd4cim@amsat.org) ------------------------------ From: ko@komac.knoware.nl (kS) Subject: Radio Modems For the European License-Free Bands? Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 10:34:03 +0100 Organization: V2S What are those bands 9.. Mhz, ... Ghz in Europe? Are there products in these bands to build a >1Mbps wireless digital network? V2S Holland ------------------------------ From: olivier_andrieu@email.franceNet.fr (Olivier Andrieu) Subject: Questions About ADSL and HDSL Date: 25 Jan 1995 12:22:53 GMT Organization: ADIT Hi, Where can I find some informations about the HDSL and ADSL technologies (URLs, Gopher sites, FAQs) ? I am also looking for informations about the integration projects of these technologies in the future Electronic Highways in USA, Australia, Europe, etc. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: andresen@netman.dk (Finn Andresen) Subject: Implementations of the German SISA Specs? Date: 25 Jan 1995 12:49:24 GMT Organization: NetMan A/S, Denmark Hi, I am looking for some information on implementations of the German SISA specifications for management of PDH/SDH equipment. I'm lokking for the following kind of information: 1) Which vendors of PDH/SDH equipment are supporting the SISA specs? This would help us to decide whether to implement an equipment specific solution or to go for a more generic approach. 2) Are there any implementations of the SISA protocol stack available out there (freeware or comercial)? Regards, Finn Andresen E-mail: andresen@netman.dk Netman A/S, Vandtaarnsvej 77 Phone no: (+45) 39 66 40 20 DK-2860 Soeborg, Denmark Fax no: (+45) 39 66 06 75 ------------------------------ From: dimos@ics.forth.gr (Demosthenes Panagopoulos) Subject: Marine Telecom Installation Date: 25 Jan 1995 13:41:49 GMT Organization: FORTH - ICS, P.O.Box 1385, Heraklio, Crete, Greece 71110 I was wondering if anybody whould know of any information source regarding marine teleommunications installations. The question I am facing is the installation of some voice/data lines on a marina. Ideally the boats should be able to dock and hook into the marina network. Are there any special products (connectors, cables, etc.) for marine installations? Are there any other information (standards, past experience)? I would appreciate any help. Thanks, Demos ------------------------------ From: Marie-Louise.Kok@ios.nl Subject: Wireless Networks Organization: NLnet Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:30:29 GMT IOS Press is pleased to announce the publication of: WIRELESS NETWORKS Catching the mobile future Edited by: J. H. Weber, J. C. Arnbak and R. Prasad Proceedings of two combined conferences held in The Hague, The Netherlands, 18 - 23 September 1994: 5th IEEE International Symposion on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'94 ); ICCC Regional Meeting on Wireless Computer Networks (WCN'94) 1994; 1528 pp. in 4 volumes; paperback; ISBN: 90 5199 193 2 Price: HFL 390; GBP 140; DM 350; US$ 200 The professional fields of Wireless Computer Networks and Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications have, within a few years, become the fastest growing business area of telecommunications. The papers presented in these volumes on WCN focus on the emerging wireless extensions of intelligent networking and other computer services. The contributions on PIMRC concentrate on the latest developments in radio technologies and network access. If you would like to receive a full list of contents and more information on other telecommunication-books by IOS Press, please e-mail your full mailing address to Marie-Louise.Kok@ios.nl. If you would like to place an order, please e-mail Monique.Mulder@ios.nl IOS Press, Van Diemenstraat 94, 1013 CN Amsterdam, The Netherlands, fax: +31 20 620 34 19 ------------------------------ From: Hersh Jeff Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 09:25:00 GMT Subject: Difficulty With Atlantic Bell ISDN My office (located in Eatontown, NJ, area code 908) recently had two ISDN lines installed for experimental purposes. We receive our ISDN from a #5ESS. It was obvious, despite what is written about Bell Atlantic in "Reengineering the Corporation," that it is very inexperienced and unorganized in providing ISDN service. All we asked for was two ISDN BRI lines with NT-1s. It took about two months before we were able to get the lines installed, and we have already had to replace the NT-1s once. Anyone else have experience with Bell Atlantic ISDN? Jeff Hersh, Booz, Allen & Hamilton hershj@bah.com ------------------------------ From: bklaas@cha049.ch.intel.com (Brian Klaas) Subject: Value of Motorola flip phone (Microtac 950) Date: 25 Jan 1995 01:50:52 GMT Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona Given the fact that phones are given away free with subscription, does an old phone have any value? I changed service and was able to purchase a new phone (the exact same alpha flip phone model) with two batteries for the cost of two batteries. Now, I am left with an old phone. Is taking it apart to see what's inside its only value? Thanks. Brian Klaas ADC Design Automation Intel, Corp. (602) 554-5564 6505 W. Chandler Blvd. Mailstop CH11-91 Chandler, AZ 85226 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 00:31:32 EST From: John Marinelli Subject: Technical Help Needed With Pending Litigation I need a specific technical question resolved for pending litigation with Bell Canada. Here it is: Is it physically possible to infiltrate a telephone company's network, remotely manipulate the company's switches; process long distance calling; make it appear that those calls originated from a particular site and the subsequently billed to that location? Can anyone answer this question or lead me to the individual(s) that could? Any help will be justly rewarded and sincerely appreciated by yours truly. Please leave a way to get in touch! However, if you prefer to remain unknown, thanks a million, and rest assured that I will respect and protect your anonimity. Thank you for your help in this matter. Regards, John P. Marinelli jmarinel@freenet.niagara.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, this generally can be done. It is not real easy, and requires a degree of sophistication by someone who knows how to do it. It involves getting into the telephone network using a 'backdoor', using a dialup and passcode. In other words, what I am saying is certain switches have a phone number you can dial into, give the correct passcode, and then manipulate or make changes to the way calls are processed as though you were in the central office itself at a terminal and keyboard. Quite a few telcos have disabled this 'feature' for obvious reasons. I guess some still have it available. I would not have the slightest idea *what* commands/passcode to use, nor the numbers to dial to get into the switch. The commands probably stay the same from one switch to the next more or less, but certainly the phone numbers and passcodes are different. Plus, I strongly suspect anyone fooling around like this leaves tracks all over the place leading back to them. PAT] ------------------------------ From: oehl@student.uni-kl.de (Georg Oehl) Subject: Re: Question on Call-Back Operators Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 09:56:12 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another problem you did not mention is the > cost of your call to the callback center. That call has to supervise also, > you see, and that costs you some amount of money. Add that to whatever you > pay for the callback part of the connection and let me know how much less > expensive it *really* is. Well, Pat, I tell you how much it is in Germany. Calls to the States from here cost you the (rounded) equivalent of 15 cents for every seven seconds of your phone call. That means billing is in those seven second increments as well; so if you make a phone call of, say, ten seconds you pay 30 cents and give the PTT a gift of four unused seconds. Hence, assuming it is possible to type six buttons on your phone within seven seconds (to enter your PIN), your initial call to the callback company costs you 15 cents. Now for the rates: I have seen Callback services that charge as much as 75 cents a minute; but the chepeast I came across so far was 51 cents per minute with a 30 second minimum and billing in six second increments. And that is without a monthly flat fee, or call surcharge. (Note: This is only for calls _from_ Germany _to_ the US of A.) So, a three minute call the direct way (ie. with "wonderful" German Telekom) costs you about $3.75. (This is all rounded). Using the Callback service it is $1.53 plus the 15 cents I used to call the Callback service, ie. $1.68. That's more than 50% cheaper! Things from France may look a little narrower, because German Telekom, as far as I know, charges the most in Europe, perhaps even in the world (which wouldn't surprise me.) But still -- you can apparently save from France too. > Part of the gimmick that makes callback services so inexpensive is > that you usually do not have to pay for a call to the USA. You dial > your number and hang up without it answering; thus no charge for that > part of the call. Why do you think AT&T was so out of joint on this > for quite awhile? They were? Was unnoticed here. > Hey, if people think they can pay for a supervised > call to the USA (and enter a password, eliminating random ringbacks) and > still get by cheaper than via straight calling through their PTT, whoever > it is, then let me know ... I may start a callback service of my own. Go right ahead. It is cheaper. The more competitors the better. > I have objected to it thus far because I don't want automated callbacks with > all the trouble those have, and I cannot pencil in a bottom line I could > live with if I offered a supervised (both senses of the word, telco charge > for inbound call to set it up and a clerk to oversee it) system. Maybe if > someone really cuts a deal with AT&T -- a very good deal -- they will be > able to accept inbound collect/800 from the distant PTT, establish a call- > back to the distant country and make an outgoing USA call ... and still > make money at it while being competitive. I could not figure out how. PAT] Well, what's the difference (in terms of security) between calling a number, letting it ring a couple of times and calling a number and _letting_ them answer to punch in your PIN? I don't see any. The point you originally tried to make I didn't understand either: misdialed calls. If someone has your Callback number, he stole it or got it in some other illegal way. People can steal Credit Cards or Credit Card numbers too and cause quite some harm to you, although a harm more of the subtle kind -- it doesn't wake you up at three o'clock in the morning. Instead, it lets you sleep and comes in the (later) morning in your credit card bill. Georg [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, AT&T was claiming that deliberatly causing a phone to ring then disconnecting amounted to sending coded transmissions without paying for them (which it does). When it was noted that AT&T's own answering machines use 'toll-saver' techniques the same way (if ringing phone does not answer within two rings, disconnect since there are no messages waiting for you), then the company found it difficult to object to others using their network in the same way. The difference between merely calling a number, letting it ring a couple times and hanging up versus dialing a number, waiting for an answer and specifically entering a PIN number is that the former happens how many ever millions of times daily when clumsy people dial wrong numbers and realize it within seconds of finishing the dialing. They then hang up, but the callback switch has no way of knowing if the real user was giving a signal or if some careless person caused that to happen. At least by inserting a PIN, a positive, specific effort has to be made. Most wrong number callers and telemarketing people don't get that far along. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ttm@xs4all.nl (Christian van der Ree) Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 00:29:32 GMT Organization: TTM Nederland > I've seen a couple similar questions posted but haven't seen an > answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs > that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the > call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with > touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I > want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to > perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What > are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. The company I'm working for is developer of voice-processing software. We are also distributor of Dialogic Voice hardware. You can start with a two or four lines board and when you need more capacity, you youst plug in extra boards. All Dialogic boards come with manuals and drivers that allows you (if you are a good programmer) to make everthing you want for the DOS OS. Contact us for detailed information and pricing: TTM Nederland Rietveld 10 3641 GS Mijdrecht The Netherlands Tel. +31-297988365 Fax. +31-297981241 Or e-mail full details ------------------------------ From: satyr@bpd.harris.com Subject: Re: Radio Station Transmission Lines Organization: bpd.harris.com Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:41:27 GMT In article Daniel Ritsma writes: > I am working for a small radio station that is now using two 8kHz > lines to feed four tansmitters (AM). On one line we feed three > transmitters since they are for buildings next to each other; the other > line is for a building some 150 blocks from here. > Does anybody have experience with this? We are located in Manhattan > and NYNEX is not of much help. Getting our current two lines to work > properly without too much loos was already a great victory for us. Contact Harris Allied at (317) 962-8596 They engineer systems for Radio stations and supply equipment from many manufacturers. Should be able to help you out on all of your many possibilities. I must say that I DO work for a sister division of this company, but I think that they can help you out. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #63 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa06731; 26 Jan 95 1:19 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19344; Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:04:15 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19337; Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:04:13 CST Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:04:13 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501260304.AA19337@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #59 TELECOM Digest Tue, 24 Jan 95 15:15:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 59 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson **REMAILED SINCE VARIOUS READERS REPORTED NOT RECEIVING THIS ISSUE WHEN** **FIRST MAILED ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON. IF DUPLICATE TO YOU, PLEASE DISGARD** Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (John Lundgren) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (G. Straughn) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Fred R. Goldstein) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Ed Goldgehn) Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs (Judith Oppenheimer) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Barry Margolin) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Peter Knoppers) Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Paul Houle) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Dearing) Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? (John Lundgren) Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? (John Levine) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 15:08:11 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Pete Norloff (eyegaz1@ibm.net) wrote: > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. I heard somewhere that this might have something to do with the number of connections that the RBOC supplies. There don't have to be as many connections to the long distance carriers as there are subscribers. > I'm hoping to find an authoritative reference to help me in an > argument with a Bell Atlantic engineer. This engineer believes that > Bell Atlantic is providing the terminating end of long distance calls > to the long distance carriers for free. I know I'm paying something like $3.50 a month to be connected to the LD carriers. At one time, it was something like $2, and was upped to $3.50. Maybe the difference at one time was paid by the LD carriers but it was later shifted to the subscribers. I think it had something to do with the old AT&T Long Lines high profits funding the local exchanges (before breakup). I know that my next bill will have another couple bucks added to the basic service charges to make up for the money lost from letting the LD carriers compete for intraLATA toll calls. That's going to make a lot of old ladies unhappy. I'm not pleased about it either, but I can afford it. Our district, with $30K bill, will be getting a four percent raise. That's about $1200 a month. I guess I should be happy. But the Pac Bell reps say that it will be a wash when the toll rates are factored in. Hmmm. > Anyone have any information on this topic? Just mostly rumor and hearsay, and a decade of faded memories. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: gregs@best.com (g straughn) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 09:40:06 -0800 Organization: BEST Internet (415) 964-2378 In article , eyegaz1@ibm.net wrote: > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. In California, Pacific Bell charges $0.0142 per minute of "terminating access" to all IEC's, this rate is regulated at the FCC and I suspect Bell Atlantic has a similar tariff on file at the FCC. Greg S. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 00:37:58 -0500 From: Fred R. Goldstein Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs eyegaz1@ibm.net (Pete Norloff) asks, > I'm looking for some information on the sharing of long distance fees > between long distance carriers and the RBOCs. I've found casual > references which indicate that the long distance carriers pay the > RBOCs approximately 25% each of the fees collected for long distance > calls and keep 50% for themselves. This 25% was referred to as > something like "line termination charges". It's the payment to the > local carrier for connecting one end of the call. In the olden days (before 1984's FCC-mandated rules change, which coincidentally was the same time as the Bell breaksup), there were "separations and settlements" in which the overall toll revenues were divided based upon a complex formula. Nowadays, the local companies use certain formulas to justify the rates they charge for "access" by LD carriers. When an inter-LATA call is carried from and/or to a local carrier, the inter-LATA carrier pays a tariffed rate. The last time I looked, the lowest rates were just over 3c/minute for either the originating or terminating end (thus over 6c/minute for both ends), but up to around 5c/minute for some telcos. There may also be a distance charge for intra-LATA calling TO the carrier's POP; typically this is 1/100 of a cent per minute per mile. That's their real "toll" cost base! In a few obscure cases (very small telcos) the price can be much higher, so the interexchange carrier is guaranteed to lose money on it. (America's Network columnist Art Brothers owns one such telco, Beehive Tel in Utah, which has extremely high costs and thus can charge something like 90c/minute to terminate calls there.) If a customer has direct access to an interexchange carrier switch (say, a T1 into the POP), thus not using (let's not use the "b word", bypass, here) the local Bell's switched network, the fee is avoided. Most big 800 numbers work that way, so only the consumer (caller) end invokes a Bell charge. The flip side is that for intra-LATA toll calls, a customer who hooks up as a carrier gets a lower price (3-5c/minute) than almost anybody's intra-LATA WATS rate. This is not impossible for a large user (there's a game called "rusty switch" in case you need to leave the LATA) so intra-LATA tolls are being forced down. NYNEX, at least, understands this and charges only around 5c/minutes for bulk business toll, and actually encourages big users to go directly to their own toll switches and hook up as carriers do for around 3c/minute. ------------------------------ From: edg@ocn.com (Ed Goldgehn) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 16:10:23 GMT Organization: The INTERNET Connection, LLC All fees charges for LD termination can normally be found in the Feature Group tariffs. Normally, LD carriers fall under (last I heard) Feature Group 'D' tariffs due to their method of termination. You can request a copy of these tariffs from each of the RBOC's or from the PUC in any State. BTW, the method of charges is entirely different for LD service in the cellular industry. With cellular, it is not unusual for local cellular carriers (RBOC's or otherwise) to provide FREE or flat rate termination charges to LD carriers. Ed Goldgehn E-Mail: edg@ocn.com Sr. Vice President Voice: (404) 919-1561 Open Communication Networks, Inc. Fax: (404) 919-1568 ------------------------------ From: producer@pipeline.com (Judith Oppenheimer) Subject: Re: LD Termination Fees to RBOCs Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:56:27 -0500 Organization: Interactive CallBrand(TM) Pete, you're absolutely right and this is a GIANT issue and always has been. This is known as "access charges" and is a basic feature of the phone charges. WHY DO YOU THINK THE LD CARRIERS ARE SO INTERESTED IN WIRELESS? It bypasses the local access charges and they keep the whole banana. This is a major threat to Local that is struggling anyway. This is the most likely reason RBOC's will get relief against the prohibition on doing long distance. Because: 1. Technically LD carriers will be providing local service which is prohibited too. 2. Local Service providers will have to jack up rates to survive and that angers users who for the most part don't make long distance calls (95% of all traffic is local, 40% of LD is to 800 numbers.) 3. The local rates have already been jacked up because those companies have lost the off setting revenue they use to get from LD before divestature, so angry localities are demanding competition for local service just like there is competition for LD. To do that would drive prices down even further and really kill the RBOC's. 4. Local's revenue stream is from access charges. To their benefit though, they do get the fee even if the call isn't completed. RBOC's will have to be allowed to do long distance, provide information services, provide video delivery and anything else they can to off set lost access charges. Judith Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 24 Jan 1995 11:15:26 -0500 Organization: NEARnet, Cambridge, MA In article md@pstc3.pstc.brown.edu (Michael P. Deignan) writes: > Can you really say when a fraudulent call is placed that the loss is > $.50? Not really. Loss implies that you're depriving the company of > something that they otherwise couldn't sell. In a cell call case, its > bandwidth. Unless bandwidth is saturated, the "fraudulent" cell call > is simply using unoccupied bandwidth that would simply be assigned to > a legit call. It's not quite that simple. Telecommunications providers generally engineer their network so that the bandwidth should never be saturated; it's common to target something like 40-60% load. So if fraudulent calls increase the load on the network, the carrier will have to increase the capacity to accomodate it. This costs money, but because the calls are fraudulent there's no corresponding income to pay for it. This is precisely the same as any other kind of theft: the vendor fails to receive income when someone gets something that the vendor paid for. Barry Margolin BBN Internet Services Corp. barmar@near.net ------------------------------ From: knop@dutecai.et.tudelft.nl (Peter Knoppers) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 24 Jan 1995 13:37:18 GMT Organization: Delft University of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering The preceding discussion compared cellular fraud with making illegal copies of software or tapping the signals from the cable television company. I believe that those cannot be compared because cellular phone facilities and the cable television signals can easily be pro- tected from fraud or theft without hampering the legitimate users, unlike software, where copy-protection invariably reduces the use- fullness and attractiveness of the product. A cellular phone or cable television facility is a product that has value. Protection from fraud is technically feasible and affordable and does not reduce the usefullness of the system. (In fact increased protection from fraud _increases_ the attractiveness by reducing the probability that customers are billed for calls that they did not make.) The fact that the providers of cellular phone systems do not protect their product suggests that said providers make more profit from the product in its current state than they would if the product was adequately protected. The legitimate users pay part of the cost of the fraud. More is paid by the taxpayers through the provision of police and justice systems that track down and prosecute phreakers. Using taxpayer's money to track down and prosecute phreakers should stop until the providers of cellular phone systems add _reasonable_ protection from fraud to their product. Customers of those cellular phone companies (should) know that each bill must be scrutinized and anticipate to dispute billing errors. If they do not want the hassle, customers should select a provider that has a better product. Cable companies can protect their product from unauthorised use (i.e. theft) at a reasonable price without hampering legitimate users. Regretfully, software producers do not have this luxury, therefore it is acceptable that software producers rely (in part) on the police and justice systems to control illegal copying. Generally, everyone is obliged to make a reasonable effort to protect his or her products and properties from theft, vandalism or misuse. The police and justice systems are public services for cases where reasonable protection fails, or is impossible. Peter Knoppers - knop@duteca.et.tudelft.nl ------------------------------ From: ph18@crux2.cit.cornell.edu (Paul Houle) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 22:12:09 -0500 Organization: Cornell University > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Does it matter, Paul? Does it really > matter? Should stealing someone's 'profits' be any less severe an > offense than stealing their actual cash? You may not be condoning cell- > ular phone fraud, but you sure know how to speak the language of the > phreaks and hackers.] I think it does matter, because when companies hue and cry about fictional losses they add to the cloud of media distorsions about technology. To take an example, a friend of mine brought an AP story to my attention today about an "attack" on the internet that makes it possible for people to "steal information" and makes it sound like it is a really great crisis that is a fantastic threat to the "information superhighway", that people are going to tap future commerical traffic on the internet to steal credit card numbers and so forth. Now it's certainly true that people are doing things like this, but our beef with the article is that this has been going on as long as there has been an internet, as long as we've had data networks, and that it's something that we're going to live with as long as we have data networks. The media plays up particular incidents as if they were world shattering, as if they were warning us that there is a band of cocaine-crazed Lybian terrorists hiding an atomic bomb in somebody's basement, instead of recognizing individual network 'incidents', computer viruses and so forth as rather common events: not any more newsworthy in themselves then would be individual muggings in central park. What the media ought to be doing is to put electronic intrusion, vandalism and crime into context, how this is a problem inherent in our social organization and technology and that it's something that we have to find ways to live with, instead of something that we should be cowering in fear about. Similarly, every few months, some paper somewhere prints a story about the discovery of a "vast pornographic computer network" with 8 million users, thousands of sites and so forth. That's right, somebody just stumbled onto the alt.sex hierarchy or a secret cache of porno GIF's, so now your local paper prints that the local research university has not only been corrupted by post-modernist deconstructionalist Marxist English professors, but adding insult to injury, is part of an international porn conspiracy called USENET. There's no mention, of course, that you can also read comp.dcom.telecom, rec.arts.startrek.tech, sci.chemistry, comp.os. linux.announce, or even alt.angst! [Except of course, when an AT&T PR man told the media that people from the "network" (meaning comp.dcom.telecom) who were communicating and complaining about the USA Today 800/900 incident were people who were interested in "getting something for nothing". (Remember that Pat?)] More recently, we can consider media coverage of the Canter & Siegel affair, heroes of the {Wall Street Journal} editorial page right up there with Milton Freedman, Arthur Laffer and Margaret Thatcher. It hurts the electronic community when software publishers wildly overestimate their "losses" due to software piracy. It leads to alarmism, crippled shareware, and looses dongle-peddling charlatans on the street. [Why don't dongle ads show the twenty-odd dongles that you'd have hanging off your parallel port if every software publisher used dongles? A fellow worker had what amounted to a cute little CNC milling machine that cut traces out of circuit boards; it was controlled by a propreitary piece of software that ran on an IBM PC -- and even though the software was only useful to control a piece of hardware manufactured by one company, it was still "protected" with a dongle!] Digital storage and communications create a crisis in intellectual property, this is a technological fact. Our society needs to find some way to protect the rights of people that produce information products and those that use them -- and when industry screams like chicken little about hypothetical losses, it doesn't help us think clearly about the problem. It is the same thing with the cellular phone companies; the problem of cellular phone fraud is real; but if they want the public [including the police, regulators, etc] to be part of the solution, they'd best come clean about the economics of cellular phones. ObAnswer: To directly address Paul Robinson's question, I had the impression that an awful lot of cellular phone phraud is directed out-of-the-country, particularly to third-world countries that have absurdly high phone rates. According to a phriend, a cloned phone is typically going to cost an "end user" something in the $100-$300 range, though people sometimes program phones for less (like $50 or so); you have to talk a ~long~ time to justify that cost making local and long distance calls in the US. Compare this to a typical cost of $8 or so for a code. Unless Colombian Dial-a-Druglord and Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone are remarkably forgiving, I think cellular phone carriers ~are~ paying for those calls. ------------------------------ From: jdearing@netaxs.com (John Dearing) Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 04:40:12 GMT Organization: Netaxs Internet BBS and Shell Accounts Alan Jackson (alan@sccsi.com) wrote: > What's the difference between the two as far as the user is concerned? In a word, SPEED. In another word, COST. T1 gives you a 1.544MB/sec circuit. T3 is a 45MB/sec circuit. The prices for the terminal gear that goes on the end of a T1 have come down a lot over the last few years as more companies start using T1's. The end user market for T3 terminal gear is still pretty small (but growing). One application (besides Internet backbone trunks) that is pushing the use of T3's is full-motion commercial broadcast quality video conferencing. John Dearing jdearing@netaxs.com ------------------------------ From: jlundgre@kn.PacBell.COM (John Lundgren) Subject: Re: T1 vs. T3: What's the Difference? Date: 24 Jan 1995 00:04:16 GMT Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network Alan Jackson (alan@sccsi.com) wrote: > What's the difference between the two as far as the user is concerned? ^$$^ Bye-bye! Lotsa difference in $. If you can't afford either one, why bother to ask ... Don't quote me on this, but I think there's a difference of 28 times the data thruput between them. T-3 = 28 T-1's and then some. John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs Rancho Santiago Community College District 17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706 jlundgre@pop.rancho.cc.ca.us\jlundgre@kn.pacbell.com ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John Levine) Subject: Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? Date: Tue, 24 Jan 95 02:56:14 GMT > A typical phone book with both white and yellow pages has a > map with a large white area surrounding a smaller yellow area. > What is this map trying to tell me? Around here, NYNEX makes big bucks by having zillions of different Yellow Pages, far more than they have white pages. For example, the West Suburban white pages are available by themselves, or bound with three different sets of yellow pages for subareas of the area covered by the white pages. So the map means what it seems to, the white pages cover a larger area than the yellow pages. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com Primary perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #59 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa07376; 26 Jan 95 2:28 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20431; Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:54:36 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20424; Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:54:32 CST Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:54:32 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501260354.AA20424@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #64 TELECOM Digest Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:54:30 CST Volume 15 : Issue 64 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Service Outage ND and MN (Kevin Bluml) Telebit Introduces Two V.34 Modems (Eileen Lin) UC Berkeley Short Courses on Communication (Harvey Stern) AT&T LD Carrier CID Question (Terrence McArdle) Cellular Provider in Israel (Isaiah W. Cox) RS449 - Help Please! (Vadim P. Kikin) WAN Employment Opportunities (Bobby Lowe) Alpha Paging via PC (Kevin Kadow) GSM SIM Simulator Suppliers Wanted (Gurj Bahia) Re: Old Phone Number Format (Wes Leatherock) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 10:40:33 CST From: kevin@carina.cray.com (Kevin Bluml) Subject: Service Outage ND and MN Phone service to Moorhead, Minnesota and portions of Fargo, North Dakota is still out after someone cut at least five different major cables in the Fargo area over the weekend. Most of the service lost is in Minnesota even though the cuts were in North Dakota. Some cables were above ground, others were in manholes. Most were cut in several places so simple splicing is not possible. Some of the cables were up to five inches in diameter. Full service has been restored as of Tuesday night to the Fargo area, with only 911 service and long distance service restored to Moorhead, full service is expected to be restored by Saturday. Emergency services had cellular service available and instructed people needing assistance to go to the local fire stations or police stations to seek help. I have not heard of any emergencies that were worsened due to this, but many areas in northwestern MN had no dial tone for several days. I believe as many as 500,000 people were impacted by this at one time or another. The police and FBI are looking for a suspect in a burglary of a stereo store from Saturday night where the alarm wires where also cut. Initial suspicions were that it was someone with knowledge of the system due to the way things were damaged, however the current burglary suspect is not a past telco employee according to current reports. From: Kevin V. Bluml - Cray Research Inc. 612-683-3036 USmail - 655 - Lone Oak Drive, Eagan, MN 55121 Internet - kevin.bluml@cray.com UUCP - uunet!cray!kevin ------------------------------ From: eileen@telebit.com (Eileen Lin) Subject: Telebit Introduces Two V.34 Modems Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 15:41:08 GMT Contact: Direct Marketing Dept., Telebit Corp. Tel: 408/734-4333 or 800/835-3248 Fax: 408/734-3333 Internet: sales@telebit.com TELEBIT INTRODUCES TWO V.34 MODEMS SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 16, 1995 -- Telebit Corporation, a leader in the on-demand remote access industry, today announced that its FastBlazer 8840 modems now support the ITU-T V.34 standard. The FastBlazer(R) 8840 is designed for environments where large central site modem requirements include reliability, comprehensive network management, high speed and global homologation. In addition, today the company introduced the TeleBlazer, a V.34 modem designed for remote users dialing into LANs who want to take advantage of increased speeds. Product Features: Features of the FastBlazer 8840 include: - Speeds of up to 28.8 Kbps uncompressed and up to 115.2 Kbps with compression - Support for V.34, V.32terbo and eight other ITU-T and Bell standards - Flash memory for simple upgrades - Simple on-site configuration, control and monitoring via an 18-button front panel keypad and LCD display - Extensive command set and configuration parameters - Automatic single-call dial restoral of leased lines - Full configuration, control, testing and monitoring of FastBlazer rackmount modems via Telebit's ViewBlazer (R) network management system - Full compatibility with Telebit's NetBlazer(R) family of dial-up routers - Available in standalone and rackmount versions - Conformity to worldwide regulatory requirements - Extensive global homologation plans TeleBlazer features include: - Speeds of up to 28.8 Kbps uncompressed and up to 115.2 Kbps with compression - Support for V.34, V.FC and eight other ITU-T and Bell standards - Support for 14.4 Kbps fax transmissions - V.42bis and MNP 5 data compression - Full compatibility with Telebit's NetBlazer(R) family of on-demand routers - MNP 10 with `Adverse Channel Enhancement' for reliable cellular communications Price and availability The FastBlazer 8840 Standalone and FastBlazer 8840 Rackmount are available at the end of January 1995 and have a list price of $1,199 (U.S.). Telebit's TeleBlazer is also available at the end of January 1995 and has a list price of $399 (U.S.). V.34 support can be added to the FastBlazer through a free software upgrade that is available through Telebit's Customer Service bulletin board. The telephone number for the Chelmsford, MA bulletin board is 508-656-9103; to contact the Sunnyvale, CA bulletin board, phone 408-745-3707 or 408-745-3861. Telebit Corporation designs, manufactures and markets a family of remote network access products to enable cost-effective extension of LANs to remote users. The company has offices in the United States and Europe and markets its products and services worldwide through value-added resellers, wholesale distributors and OEMs. Telebit is traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol TBIT. Telebit, FastBlazer, ViewBlazer and NetBlazer are registered trademarks of Telebit Corporation. ------------------------------ From: southbay@garnet.berkeley.edu Subject: UC Berkeley Short Courses on Communication Date: 25 Jan 1995 18:20:13 GMT Organization: University of California, Berkeley U.C. Berkeley Continuing Education in Engineering Announces 3 Short Courses on Broadband Communications, Wireless Networks MODERN TELECOMMUNICATIONS: Wide Area Networks, Personal Communication Systems, Network Management and Control, and Multimedia Applications (March 2-3, 1995) This course is designed as a gentle but comprehensive overview of telecommunications including current status and future directions. This course traces the evolution of telecommunications, starting from its voice roots and progressing through local, metropolitan, and wide area networks, narrowband ISDN, asynchronous transfer mode, broadband ISDN, satellite systems, optical communications, cellular radio, personal communication systems, all-optical networks, and multimedia services. Lecturer: Anthony S. Acampora, Ph.D., Professor, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University. He is Director, Center for Telecommunications Research. He became a professor following a 20 year career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is an IEEE Fellow, and is a former member of the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors. SONET/ATM-BASED BROADBAND NETWORKS: Systems, Architectures and Designs (March 29-31, 1995) It is widely accepted that future broadband networks will be based on the SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) standards and the ATM (Asynchronous transfer Mode) technique. This course is an in-depth examination of the fundamental concepts and the implementation issues for development of future high-speed networks. Topics include: Broadband ISDN Transfer Protocol, high speed computer/network interface (HiPPI), ATM switch architectures, ATM network congestion/flow control, VLSI designs in SONET/ATM networks. This course is intended for engineers who are currently active or anticipate future involvement in this field. Lecturer: H. Jonathan Chao, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Brooklyn Polytechnic University. Dr. Chao holds more than a dozen patents and has authored over 40 technical publications in the areas of ATM switches, high-speed computer communications, and congestion/flow control in ATM networks. NETWORKS FOR DIGITAL WIRELESS ACCESS: Cellular, Voice, Data, Packet, and Personal Communication Systems (March 6-8, 1995) This comprehensive course is focused on the principles, technologies, system architectures, standards, and market forces driving wireless access. At the core of this course are the cellular/microcellular/ frequency reuse concepts needed to enable adequate wireless access capacity for Personal Communication Services (PCS). Presented are both the physical-level issues associated with wireless access and the network-level issues arising from the inherent mobility of the subscriber. Standards are fully treated including GSM (TDMA), IS-54 (North American TDMA), IS-95 (CDMA), CT2, DCT 900/CT3, IEEE 802.11, DCS 1800, and Iridium. Emerging concepts for wireless ATM are also developed. This course is intended for engineers who are currently active or anticipate future involvement in this field. Lecturer: Anthony S. Acampora, Ph.D., Professor, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University. He is Director, Center for Telecommunications Research. He became a professor following a 20 year career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, is an IEEE Fellow, and is a former member of the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors. For more information (complete course descriptions, outlines, instructor bios, etc.) send your postal address or fax to: Harvey Stern or Loretta Lindley U.C. Berkeley Extension/Southbay 800 El Camino Real Ste. 150 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (415) 323-8141 Fax: (415) 323-1438 ------------------------------ From: mcardle@paccm.pitt.edu (Terrence McArdle) Subject: AT&T LD Carrier CID Question Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 14:09:27 -0500 Organization: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center I have seen articles indicating the LD carriers WilTel and US West (at least in Phoenix area) forward CID information interstate. Does anyone know if the major LD carriers, notably AT&T, Sprint, & MCI, foward CID information interstate? As secondary questions, (1) can anyone tell me if the areas of Louisville, KY and Cincinatti, OH can send the CID information and (2) whether Pennsylvania (that CID-fearful state) will accept the information? The Bell Atlantic person told me that PA switches suppress CID information on INTER-LATA calls, but my understanding is that this is only an outgoing suppression, not an incoming supression. Specifically, I'm interested in pinning down why I get an out-of-area message on calls from Louisville, KY to my number in Pgh, PA. They use MCI, I use AT&T. Thanks for the info/experiences, Terry McArdle email mcardle@paccm.pitt.edu Mgr, Information Systems work (412) 648 9218 Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care University of Pittsburgh Medical Center ------------------------------ From: Isaiah@borealis.com (Isaiah W. Cox) Subject: Cellular Provider in Israel Date: 25 Jan 1995 22:30:33 GMT Organization: The Direct Connection (Call London, 0181 317 2222 for demo) Bezek has a cellular competitor -- they are like $0.03/minute in Israel, which beats the pants off of Bezek. I know these phones are selling well -- but I have been unable to find people selling them! I know that the venture is jointly done by Southwestern and Cellcom (not the one is Wisconsin). So if I could get an e-mail address for Southwestern Bell, I could track this down. If anyone could help, it would be most appreciated. Thanks, Isaiah [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sometimes it is simply easier to call on the phone than it is to look all over for an email address. Have you considered calling their offices in St. Louis, finding out where their cellular headquarters is located, then calling there? PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: UGTU-UPI From: Vadim P. Kikin Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 18:18:24 +0300 Subject: RS449 - Help Please! Hi friends, I want to connect my hardware to a sort of cisco router. They say I have to match my output connector with RS449 interface. I couldn't find any hints what RS449 is. People who own the router cannot help me.Can anybody give me advise were to look for schematic of connections with RS449 and its signals description? Every help will be appreciated: hints on Internet locations of docs, titles of printed books or articles etc. Thanks in advance. Regards, Vadim Kikin Department of Transmitting devices Ural State Technical University Ekaterinburg, 620002 Russia Email: vad@rpu.rcupi.e-burg.su ------------------------------ From: lowekawk@onramp.net (B. LOWE) Subject: WAN Employment Opportunities Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 19:43:24 +0000 Organization: emjay Network Application Engineer - Integration of Network Application in WAN Network Design Engineer - Design a Cell Swithching Backbone Network Network System Engineer - Integration of WAN systems tools Satellite/Wireless Engineer - Design and Integration ( x.25, Frame Relay, TCP/IP) DEGREE REQUIRED, Masters Degree preferred THE OPPURTUNITY!: Major Partnership to build a Worldwide Network Service Company to provide Frame Relay, x.25 and Cell Backbone Network Services. This network will reach over 100 countries and will utilize state of the art technology. Great growth potential for the company as well as the individual employees. Call BOBBY @ (713)529-5000 or FAX(713)529-0141 OR lowekwak@onramp.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 21:00 CST From: kadokev@rci.ripco.com (Kevin Kadow) Subject: Alpha Paging via PC Organization: Ripco Internet BBS, Chicago [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The original message shown below did not appear in this Digest. PAT] In article <3fsmd0$2ajo@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>, Robert Babcock v wrote: > I have a Motorola advisor pager, it is an alpha/numeric pager is > there any way to send a message to my pager via a pc? A friend who > used to work for a local messenger service said that it is possible. > He said that he would type a phone number for the local transmitting > tower and type in the message and that would send the text to the > pager. Well if anybody has got any info on this please let me know. You need the modem number for the paging company; usually it connects at 300 or 1200 baud. At least for the system I use the pager ID is the same as the phone number for the pager. A MS-DOS program for paging is available from ftp.ripco.com: /pub/msdos/comm/acspg31.zip [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A new service started here on the net is also worth exploring. Send email to info@internet.net. Or perhaps Doug Reuben will see this message and reply directly to the writer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gurj Bahia Subject: GSM SIM Simulator Suppliers Wanted Date: 25 Jan 1995 16:30:14 GMT Organization: Fujistu Systems Europe Ltd Anyone know if there are any other GSM SIM Simulator providers apart from GemPlus and Orga ? Please email me at the address below. Thanks, Gurj Bahia email: gurj@fujitsu.co.uk smail: Mobile Radio Division, Fujitsu Europe G S M Telecom R & D Centre Ltd.2 Longwalk Rd, Global Stockley Park, Middx, UB11 1AB, U.K. System for phone: 0181-6064523 (natl) Mobile com. +44-181-6064523 (intl) ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 15:47:25 Subject: Re: Old Phone Number Format Question Quoting Andrew C. Green > The following question appeared recently in the Old Time Radio > Digest mailing list, and seems tailor-made for an answer from this > forum. > From: "Richard M. Weil" > The number for the store in Rockford was curiously 8-22-47. I'm > too young to know anything about 5 digit phone numbers. Is that > how it was back then in small cities? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > It was in fact a Philco (for anyone interested, that was our > friends at Phillips) [ ... } I must respectfully disagree with Pat on this. Philco was a big U.S.A. appliance company not connected, at least at that time, with the Netherlands electronic giant N.V. Philips (not Phillips). "Philco" was formed from the company's original corporate name, the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, and was one of the biggest manufacturers of radios in the 1930s and probably earlier. Perhaps they got into radios as allied to their battery business, since radios, at least home radio receiver, originally were all battery operated. It is my recollection that they became a major player in the television business because in the 1930s they acquired the rights to the patents of Philo T. Farnsworth, who had invented a television system entirely compatible with, but not the same as, the system invented by Vladimir Zworkin, the RCA genius. Farnsworth invented his system at age 16 and was granted the key patent at age 22. Some commentators have suggested he has largely been dropped out of the history of television because the idea that this callow youth could have developed a system that worked as well as the system developed by great corporate laboratories staffed with multiple Ph.D.'s is inconsistent with the supposed value of extensive higher education and big R&D expenditures, and the big embarrassment this caused RCA. Philco, I believe, was the only manufacturer that didn't have to pay licensing fees to RCA, although I think they later reached a cross-licensing agreement with RCA. Philips, the Netherlands company, was not very well known in the United States before World War II. During World War II, after the Netherlands was occupied by Germany, their American operation became separate under the name North American Philips Company, which used the trade name Norelco. But Pat's description of the early television sets and how they developed is right on the mark. > Five digit numbers were common in communities which had automatic > dialing systems in those days but only one exchange in the > community. Since the exchange name was always the same, it was > assumed when dialing. In your example you parsed the number > incorrectly. It was 8-2247, or to be complete about it, > ROckford-8-2247. I couldn't speak to the situation in Rockford, but I'm very familiar with Oklahoma City, which had five-digit numbers for many years, starting in 1920 when the "Northwest" office was put into service as the first dial operation in the city (and the first central office outside the downtown area). The downtown office was all manual, with exchanges Maple and Walnut (not MAple and WAlnut; they were manual exchanges and you spoke their names to the operator). The manual numbers were the exchange name plus one, two, three or four digits: Maple 5, or Walnut 4434. Maple 5, for example, was not Maple 0005; it wouldn't have had any meaning in a manual exchange. The "Northwest" office (it's really part of the inner city now) had five-digit numbers starting with 4, such as 4-1468. But there was no name associated with that; there was no toll dialing and it was just 4-1468 in Oklahoma City; not Oklahoma City 4-1468. The downtown office was cut over to dial in 1928, using the prefixes 2 and 3. Tulsa had a different history, and right up until the days of 2L-5N numbering (seven digits expressed as two letters and five numerals) in the 1950s or 1960s, had four, five and six digits numbers. In a small town I lived in (Konawa, Oklahoma, one of the first CDOs in Oklahoma) the numbers were three and four digit. My home number was 287; office 234. Four digit numbers there were party lines; the central office was terminal per line and the fourth digit selected the type of ringing. It's true that Bell companies usually recommended printing five digit numbers as "8-2247," as Pat said, and six digit numbers as "54-1468." But it was variable; Dallas and Houston expressed their numbers as, for example, Riverside-4085, which was dialed as R-4085. But not too many telephones outside the largest metropolitan areas had letters on the dial in those days. And independent companies often recommended displaying numbers in different ways, such as 8-22-47, or 82-247. "All Number Calling" (ANC) (seven numerals) came after the 2L-5N (two letter and five number) arrangement, usually in the 1960s or thereabouts. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #64 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa08948; 26 Jan 95 3:18 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA21958; Wed, 25 Jan 95 22:51:07 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA21945; Wed, 25 Jan 95 22:51:04 CST Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 22:51:04 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501260451.AA21945@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #65 TELECOM Digest Wed, 25 Jan 95 22:51:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 65 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? (Dan J. Declerck) Corporate Creativity, was Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much is Real? (C. Jones) Re: Five Digit Phone Numbers (Linc Madison) Re: Freephone Forum vs. ITU Question (David Leibold) Re: Northern TeleCom Norstar Key System (sherim@delphi.com) Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? (Ted Timar) Re: Help Needed With Displaying X Windows (Daniel R. Oelke) Re: Where to Find tpage? (John R. MacLeod) Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book (Wes Leatherock) Re: Radio Station Transmission Lines (Ron Kritzman) Re: GSM Cellular Operators List (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos) 28.8k bps Modem (Victor Hu) What is an STD Coupler? (Richard Palmer) Re: Voice File Formats (Steve Rothkin) Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed (moshtr@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: declrckd@cig.mot.com (Dan J. Declerck) Subject: Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much of it is Real Money? Date: 25 Jan 1995 18:45:20 GMT Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group In article , Paul Robinson wrote: > Paul Barnett wrote me in response to my message: >> Paul Robinson said: >>> I'm going to raise an issue here because I think it relates to the >>> issue of why nothing beyond lip service seems to be done by carriers >>> about cellular fraud. >> I think you made some good points about the impact of cellular fraud, >> but I think you missed an important one (I didn't read real carefully, >> so the omission may be mine): >> Unlike software piracy, cellular bandwidth is a limited commodity. >> Every fraudulent call has the opportunity to block a legitimate call >> that would have resulted in some additional revenue. > I did make that point in part. Additionally, and if a particular > system is saturated, then some additional fraudulent unpaid traffic > might cause legitimate, paid traffic to not get through. >> Furthermore, there is the capital investment required to build and >> maintain the facilities to provide the additional increment of bandwidth >> used by fraudulent calls, in order to provide a satisfactory level of >> service to the legitimate subscribers. > Yes, but again, how much of the claimed losses are real chargebacks > and out of pocket costs, and how much of it is illusory lost profits > (some of which might never have occurred). > If someone who can't afford cellular service places fraudulent calls, > certainly the cellular company loses revenue and perhaps has out of > pocket costs, but those calls would never have been made, so the company > would never have received the revenue from it. Plain and simple ... ethically, there is NO difference between cellular fraud and calling card fraud. Both of them require the carrier to purchase additional equipment or potentially deny service to a paying customer. The carrier can't always eat the costs. EVERYBODY pays for cellular fraud. > About the only place where lost revenue might be a valid issue is for > people who use fraudulent time, not because they can't afford to use the > service, but because they cannot afford to have a particular call tracked > to a phone issued in their name, again typically because they are involved > in the manufacture and sale of unauthorized dried plant residues, and > referred to by police and prosecutors as drug dealers. > This was the point I probably should have made: that if the cellular > companies were actually getting hit for $1 million a day in settlements, > I find it likely that they would have pushed for encryption a long time > ago. What the $1 million figure probably represents is imaginary lost > profits from unbilled fraud, which is a whole different matter > altogether. It means that their overall profit margin is less, it does > not mean they are actually *out* any money. Businesses exist solely for the purpose of making a profit. BTW: the new digital systems (CDMA/TDMA, etc) will have much more robust authentication and encryption algorithms. This will be another reason to move to digital. > And this may be the reason cellular companies have essentially either > made customers eat most of the fraud, or barely done anything beyond lip > service to stop it. I wouldn't say they've done nothing. There exist many methods to combat fraud, but they cost money! Since they'll end up migrating to digital, which will probably fix the problem, why spend now?? Dan DeClerck EMAIL: declrckd@cig.mot.com Motorola Cellular APD Phone: (708) 632-4596 ------------------------------ From: cajones@Gateway.Uswnvg.COM (Carl Jones) Subject: Corporate Creativity, was Re: Cellular Fraud: How Much is Real? Date: 26 Jan 1995 00:59:51 GMT Organization: U S WEST NewVector Group, Inc. > Or even better ... These calls "would have been" at the Roaming Rate > of $5/minute. Wow!. Ok, let's get something straight. If a cloner takes a number from Seattle and uses it in New York to make fraudulent calls, the Seattle company has to pay hard cash to the New York company because those calls were put through using a MIN/ESN combination that belonged to the Seattle company. That money must be paid even though the calls were fraudulent. That is where the big losses occur. It's not cooking the books, it's not tax evasion. It's a hard cash loss! End of story ... I speak for everyone in a twenty mile radius around me :) Any questions..E-Mail cajones@uswnvg.com................... ------------------------------ From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Five Digit Phone Numbers Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 00:43:08 GMT My mother is from the small town of Goliad, Texas, about half way between San Antonio and Corpus Christi (in the Corpus LATA). Until very recently, all local numbers were dialed as just five digits. Until about ten years ago, all local numbers were 5-3xxx, but they are now up to 5-2xxx and even 5-8xxx numbers. However, as of a few months ago, you now must actually dial the entire seven-digit number for local calls! (All long-distance calls are eleven digits.) They finally got touch-tone some time in the late 1980's. The reason for the change, however, is that the local calling area is being expanded slightly, to cover points as far as 30 miles away. It will now be a local call to phone Fannin, Charco, Weesatche (all 30 or so subscribers), and Victoria (a town of 50,000 or more with an airport and two TV stations). For you history buffs, Goliad is the oft-forgotten second piece of the battle cry: "Remember the Alamo, remember Goliad!" Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com ------------------------------ From: djcl@io.org (woody) Subject: Re: Freephone Forum vs. ITU Question Date: 25 Jan 1995 22:19:20 -0500 Organization: Internex Online (io.org) Data: 416-363-4151 Voice: 416-363-8676 In article , Judith Oppenheimer wrote: > Because the International Freephone numbers, and domestic freephone > numbers, will *co-exist* in the U.S., the U.S. Users Group has valid > concerns that there will be confusion among U.S. consumers. With regards to International Freephone service, it would seem that a country code *other* than +800 should be used, due to the possible confusion this would create with the domestic toll-free services, most of which use an "800" code already. One potential problem is that someone intending to call a domestic 800 number might try to use the international format instead -- a company called as a wrong number might have to pay the international charges. How much of the international freephone system has been decided so far? djcl@io.org ------------------------------ From: SHERI Subject: Re: Northern TeleCom Norstar Key System Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 17:12:26 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Daniel Aharonoff writes: > Would like to get some feedback on reliability, expandability, stability > on a Norstar switch by Northern Telecom. We are also looking to get a > voice-mail that would compliment that system. I'm a certified installer of Norstar switches. I've been installing them for two years. I would like to say that they are the best systems I've installed so far. I've never heard any complaints from any customers. All had good things to say about the systems. They are also very flexible when it comes to expanding. Northern Telecom makes a voice mail systems that goes side by side with the Norstar systems. It's called Star Talk. There are different size voice mail systems. Norstar systems are also compatibile with other voice mail systems. ------------------------------ From: tmatimar@isgtec.com (Ted Timar) Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 11:12:00 -0500 Organization: ISG Technologies Inc. Subject: Re: Internet Mail With Half the Address? In Volume 15, Issue 53, Message 9, Jane McMahon wrote, > Pat, > How do find someone using Internet? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Perhaps it is about time for someone to > write an article describing the Internet 'white pages' and how to use > them. I think searching those would be a good way for you to start. PAT] Three Usenet FAQs of use exist, in Comp.Mail.Misc, "Updated Inter-Network Mail Guide" also in Comp.Mail.Misc, "FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses" and in Soc.Net-People, "FAQ: College Email Addresses" These in turn are archived at rtfm.mit.edu as (in order), pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/inter-network-guide pub/usenet/news.answers/finding-addresses pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/college-email/part[123] The last of these (College email addresses) is close to a year out of date, so any volunteers to take it over would probably be extremely welcome. Ted Timar tmatimar@isgtec.com ------------------------------ From: droelke@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Daniel R. Oelke) Subject: Re: Help Needed With Displaying X Windows Date: 25 Jan 1995 18:19:12 GMT Organization: Alcatel Network Systems Inc. Reply-To: droelke@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com In article 9@eecs.nwu.edu, mike@premisys.com (Mike MacFaden) writes: > In article , Ken Stack edu> wrote: >> I am trying to fins a way to display x windows on my PC from my Sun at >> work. The problem is that my Sun at work does not have slip or ppp >> for security reasons. I have attempted to use PSI's interramp service > 1) You need a SLIP or PPP link from home. If your workstation doesn't > have it, then I suggest your sysAdm install a Terminal Server which > does provide good security (companies: Livingston, Xylogics, Xyplex) > 2) Get a copy of an X server that implements Low Bandwidth X (LBX) A > good company to talk to is Network Computing Devices (NCD). > 1 - you do not *need* a SLIP or PPP link if all you want to do is display X-windows on your PC. 2 - NCD has a product called X-Remote. It implements LBX over a direct modem connection, and exports your Sun's x-windows into an MS-Windows environment. I love it. For X-windows, this is the best solution (and cheapest) that I know of. If you want to do more on your PC -- then you might need an actual network (i.e. SLIP/PPP) connection. Dan Oelke Alcatel Network Systems droelke@aud.alcatel.com Richardson, TX http://spirit.aud.alcatel.com:8081/~droelke/ ------------------------------ From: jrm@world.std.com (John R MacLeod) Subject: Re: Where to Find tpage? Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 19:19:53 GMT The `tpage' distribution is at lcs.mit.edu, in the directory /telecom-archives/technical. The FAQs and www search engines I tried were utterly useless in finding this stuff, I just happened to notice telecom-archives and went searching. Look for ixo.program.scripts and ixo.tap.protocol (there are also two unrelated files, pager.bin.uqx and pager.ixo.example, for Macintosh). It turns out that the ixocico program at lcs.mit.edu can be made to work with our pager service, "Pagenet". Just recognize the ACK character at the end of the service's message packet, do not require length 1. For example, ixocico should consider "PAGENET MESSAGE CENTER" equivalent to plain ACK. John ------------------------------ From: wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 15:47:27 Subject: Re: Areas Covered by Phone Book? Quoting Paul Robinson > Benjamin P. Carter , writes: >> A typical phone book with both white and yellow pages has a >> map with a large white area surrounding a smaller yellow area. >> What is this map trying to tell me? > The white area shows the limits of the white pages covered by > that book. In the case of the Los Angeles area, there can -- > and will be -- holes in that area because pieces will be covered > by different telephone companies there. The yellow area is the > maximum area that yellow pages for that area will cover, and > again, may have holes. I believe the Los Angeles area was mentioned in this respect, and if there are holes in the listings because of different telephone companies that is a retrogression. At one time there were 30 or 40 telephone companies in the L.A. area, and they somehow reached agreement (possibly at the prodding of the P.U.C. or local civic leaders) to issue regional books with the listings "interleaved" (all in one alphabetical list). For example, one for Northwestern, one for Central, etc. The independent exchanges were dotted all over the area. There was no indication in the listings as to what telephone company served what customer. The yellow pages were a different story and each company usually issued yellow pages, and sold yellow page advertising, only for their territory. So a book would have complete white pages listings for the area covered, but only yellow pages for the area served by that telephone company. Now, of course, the independent companies have all been absorbed by GTE and the only two players are Pacific Telephone and GTE. But I'd be surprised in the P.U.C. or public pressure would let them go back to issuing directories with "holes" in the area covered. Yellow Pages directories, "locality" directories and private directories, of course, are an entirely different story. Wes Leatherock wes.leatherock@oubbs.telecom.uoknor.edu wes.leatherock@f2001.n147.z1.fidonet.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sometimes all the listings will be in one book but in separate parts. For example, I remember seeing a couple of books issued by Bell a few years ago which covered some regional area, however after that part of the book finished, and some other pages were put in the middle (maps, etc) then another set of white pages started, with a notation saying something like 'alphabetical listings for Podunk'. 'Copyright 19xx, Podunk Telephone Company'. So they were in the directory of record for the area (the Bell System directory) but not actually merged with it. Other times, such as with Illinois Bell and Centel, the Centel listings for Chicago only are part of the Illinois Bell Chicago White Pages, with no reference at all to the fact that they are part of a different telco. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ronk@eagle.ais.net (Ron Kritzman) Subject: Re: Radio Station Transmission Lines Date: 25 Jan 1995 15:50:03 GMT Organization: American Information Systems, Inc. Daniel Ritsma (ritsma@yu1.yu.edu) wrote: > I am working for a small radio station that is now using two 8kHz > lines to feed four tansmitters (AM). On one line we feed three > transmitters since they are for buildings next to each other; the other > line is for a building some 150 blocks from here. > Should we stick with analog lines or slowly move over to other types > of communication by phone? The fact that we have to branch off led me > to believe that we should go for digital transmition, so that we would > have less noise and a better signal. This sounds like the typical "carrier current" scenario. We had the same sort of setup when I was in college. Since the 8 kHz line well exceeds the bandwidth you can cram thru an AM radio, the two remaining questions are noise and cost. For your "close" string feeding the four buildings -- is there enough noise on the line to be objectionable? How about the 150 block run? Your "yu" login tells me you're in NYC, which means twenty blocks to the mile. Thats about seven miles then, give or take the zigzagging to and from the telco COs. Presuming that the noise and bandwidth are acceptable on both lines, look at cost. What will NYNEX hit you with for a digital line? One more thought, especially if you want to save money. Does the school have some sort of dedicated carrier already connecting the locations? A T-1 maybe? And can the Telecomm or MIS dept or whomever runs it, spare you a bit of bandwidth? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: New York City has twenty blocks to the mile? Gee whiz ... they must be very small blocks. In Chicago we have eight blocks to the mile with the exception of one area just south of downtown where there exist twelve blocks to the mile, and that's only for about one mile. On first reading the above, I thought there was a distance of 15-18 miles involved. PAT] ------------------------------ From: c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com (Spiros Triantafyllopoulos) Subject: Re: GSM Cellular Operators List Date: 25 Jan 1995 15:13:26 GMT Organization: Delco Electronics Corp. In article , Lim Kong Hong wrote: > In Singapore, GSM subscribers have the option to subscribe to autoroaming > services to Hongkong, UK, Australia, Switzerland and Denmark. This means > that with their GSM SIM Card, they are able to send/receive call in the > above countries. Could someone provide a brief explanation of GSM? A friend of mine in Greece got a car phone with GSM and he was talking about the SIM card and of course I had no clue as to what he's talking about. Thanks, Spiros Triantafyllopoulos Kokomo, IN 46904 (317) 451-0815 Software Development Tools, AD/SI c23st@kocrsv01.delcoelect.com Delco Electronics/GM Hughes Electronics "Reading, 'Rithmetic, and Readnews" ------------------------------ From: Victor Hu Subject: 28.8k bps Modem Date: Wed, 25 Jan 95 19:43:02 PST Hello, I just purchased a 28.8 K modem with the brand "Supra". I paid extra to get the 28.8 K instead of the 14.4 K. Can someone help me with the following? 1. Is the bps across the twisted pair wire actually running at 28.8 or 14.4 when 28.8 is invoked? Or is it just data compression? 2. What kinds of host supports 28.8K? I only connect up to my university's computer which only runs at 9.6K max. 3. What is the speed of fax machines? My impression of my new modem: 1. The Supra has a nice display (external version for the PC) that shows the mode of transmission. 2. However, I found that it required a different initialization string than that suggested as default for modems that are Hayes compatible. Thanks very much, Victor ------------------------------ From: rdp@palmer.com (Richard Palmer) Subject: What is an STD Coupler? Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 17:05:56 GMT Organization: RD & MA Palmer MD PMC My local telco (South Central Bell) has been charging me $18 a month for an STP coupler. I am apparently not using this, not in posession of it, and there is some question in my mind if I ever was. Could some kind soul please tell me what this is, and if anyone has any insights as to their responsibility about refunding erroneous charges I would be very interested. The South Central Bell representitive with whom I spoke told me that the "statute of limitations" was six months. Richard Palmer richard.palmer@palmer.com (504) 888-5315 ------------------------------ From: srothkin@aol.com (S Rothkin) Subject: Re: Voice File Formats Date: 25 Jan 1995 10:20:19 -0500 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: srothkin@aol.com (S Rothkin) Another reply to your message answered your question for all formats except Vbase. If by Vbase you mean the indexed file used by VFEdit, The file starts with a header record which can be read with the following C structure (note that TD_BYTE4 should be defined to whatever will evaluate to four bytes on your platform): struct t_VFE_xfile_hdr { unsigned TD_BYTE4 IdxTot; /* total indices allocated in the file (including gaps) */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 SmpFrq; /* Sample frenquency */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 IdxUse; /* total indice used by phrases */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 dummya; /* dummy */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 BytUse; /* total bytes used */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 dummyb; /* dummy */ }; Following the header is an array of IdxTot entries of the following structure. Entries are in order of phrase number. If you have gaps in phrase numbers, there will be some entries with length 0. struct t_VFE_xfile_index { unsigned TD_BYTE4 offset; /* absolute offset in file */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 length; /* length of the index */ unsigned TD_BYTE4 Txtoff; /* annotation text offset in file */ }; The rest of the file is the phrase data, and the annotation text entered through VFEdit (if any). The offset and length fields of the index entries control access to the phrase data and annotation text. Steve Rothkin Senior Systems Consultant, Granada Systems Design Email: SRothkin@aol.com Work: (914) 221-1617 ext. 217 Fax: (914) 226-5779 Home: (914) 298-1242 ------------------------------ From: moshtr@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com (Ramin ) Subject: Re: Telephony Card/Software Needed Date: 25 Jan 1995 16:13:48 GMT Organization: Alcatel Network Systems Inc. Reply-To: moshtr@rockdal.aud.alcatel.com Paul Garfield (garfield@vanilla.cs.umn.edu) wrote: > I've seen a couple similar questions posted but haven't seen an > answer. Please post the answer. I'm looking for cards for IBM PCs > that can handle phone calls. I need to be able to program how the > call is handled (when and what to play and record, what to do with > touch tone presses, etc). All I've seen is things for one line. I > want to start with about four lines but have the ability to upgrade to > perhaps 24, so I need multiple (four or eight) lines per card. What > are good vendors for this and where can I go for information? Thanks. Try Dialogics at 1-800-755-4444. If you need some help with the software drop me a line. Ramin ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #65 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa24059; 31 Jan 95 20:35 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA10842; Tue, 31 Jan 95 14:57:17 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA10834; Tue, 31 Jan 95 14:57:15 CST Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 14:57:15 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501312057.AA10834@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #66 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 95 14:57:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 66 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson No Activity in This Newsgroup? (Glenn Foote) GSM Operators - List (Robert Lindh) When Will PBXs Go Away? (Brent Laminack) Infrared Network Devices (Tim Lee) Sprint For IntraLATA Calls in California (Javier Henderson) Anyone Know High Speed Serial Interface (Chuc Do) Ten Digit Dialing (Evan Champion) Cheap Way to Get an 800 Number? (David Hayes) Data Engineer Position in Houston (pp002963@interramp.com) Directory Assistance in Tokyo (Javier Henderson) CCITT Class A (Jesus Ruelas) Is There a Newsgroup For SONET? (Geno Rice) The Four Minute Battle For 800-555 (Dave Leibold) Bell Canada Multi-Language Operator Support Trial (Dave Leibold) IVR Software Information Wanted (Robert Geradts) DAX Software - RAM Research (Barton Fisher) Telebit Introduces Two V.34 Modems (Eileen Lin) Consultant Wanted in Denver, Colorado USA (Richard Bourassa) RBOC Aids Motorola's ISDN Push (Chris J. Cartwright) Plumber Arrested: Fraudulent Call Forwarding (Dave Levenson) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Glenn Foote) Subject: No Activity in This Newsgroup? Date: 31 Jan 1995 14:28:26 -0500 Organization: The Greater Columbus Freenet I haven't seen any activity in this newsgroup for about a week now. Is it my site, or has our moderator been ill? Glenn L Foote ...... glnfoote@freenet.columbus.oh.us [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our site, nwu.edu was victimized by a hacker last Thursday. Somehow he got in as root and did quite a bit of damage. The entire site was down for a couple days while repairs were made. At that point, by the weekend, the computers were operational again, however our links to the outside world (that is, our dial ups and our telnet, rlogin, ftp, etc) remained shut down until some additional changes were made. Our links to the network and our dialups were turned back on late Monday night. The sysadmin here has complete details on it but I discourage writing or bothering him as there are still some repairs going on and he is quite busy. I am grateful he and his staff made the enormous effort they did in order that things like this Digest could get back in publication as quickly as possible. I think we now have Caller-ID on our dialup lines. Its too bad hackers have to ruin things for everyone else. PAT] ------------------------------ From: etxlndh@eos99.ericsson.se (Robert Lindh) Subject: GSM Operators - List Organization: Ericsson Telecom AB Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 19:01:56 GMT Country Operator name Network code Tel to customer service ------ ------------- ------------ ----------------------- Argentina Australia Optus 505 02 Telecom/Telstra 505 01 Int + 6 118 018 287 Vodafone 505 03 Int + 612 415 7236 Austria PTV Austria 232 01 Belgium Belgacom 206 01 Int + 32 2205 4000 Cameroon Denmark Sonofon 238 02 Int + 45 9936 7196 Tele Danmark Mobil 238 01 Int + 45 80 20 20 20 Estonia EMT 248 01 Radiolinja Estonia Finland Radiolinja Finland 244 05 Int + 358 800 95050 Telecom 244 91 Int + 358 800 7000 France SFR 208 10 Int + 33 1 44 16 20 16 Telecom 208 01 Int + 33 1 44 62 14 81 Germany D1, DeTeMobil 262 01 Int + 49 511 288 0171 D2, Mannesmann 262 02 Int + 49 172 1212 G Britain Cellnet 234 10 Int + 44 753 504548 Vodafon 234 15 Int + 44 836 1100 Greece Panafon 202 05 Int + 30 944 00 122 STET 202 10 Int + 30 93 333 333 Holland Telekom 204 08 Int + 31 50 688 699 Hong Kong SmarTone 454 06 Int + 852 880 2688 Telecom CSL 454 00 Int + 852 803 8450 Hungary Pannon GSM 216 01 Int + 36 1 270 4120 Westel 900 216 30 Int + 36 30 303 100 Iceland Telekom Int + 354 96 330 Ireland Telecom 272 01 Int + 353 42 31999 Israel Italy SIP 222 01 Int + 39 6615 20309 Jersey Jersey Telecoms Lebanon Libancell Lithuania LMT 247 01 Luxemburg Telekom 270 01 Int + 352 4088 7088 Macao New Zealand Bell South 530 01 Norway NetCom 242 02 Int + 47 92 00 01 68 Telenor Mobil 242 01 Int + 47 22 03 03 01 Portugal Telecel 268 01 Int + 351 931 1212 TMN 268 06 Int + 351 1 793 91 78 Singapore Singapore Telecom 525 01 South Africa MTN 655 10 Vodacom 655 01 Int + 27 82 111 Spain Telefonica Spain 214 07 Sweden Comviq 240 07 Int + 46 200 22 20 40 Europolitan 240 08 Int + 46 20 22 22 22 Telia 240 01 Int + 46 771 91 03 50 Switzerland Telekom 228 01 Int + 41 46 05 64 64 Thailand AIS GSM Turkey TEKnoTEL 286 02 Turkcell 286 01 Int + 90 800 211 0211 UAE ETISALAT 424 01 Uganda [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The information for the last entry on the list, Uganda, was missing when this arrived here. PAT] ------------------------------ From: brent@cc.gatech.edu (Brent Laminack) Subject: When Will PBXs Go Away? Date: 31 Jan 1995 10:17:45 -0500 Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology What is the current thinking on when a PC (powerPC, whatever) replace the PBX? i.e. when can I run my T1 from the telco with my voice trunks on it into one card on a PC and have it route voice over the LAN to other desktop computers that double as phones? It will probably be a time curve: first available for small offices (ten users) on an ethernet, then a while later available for 200 lines on a faster LAN, etc. What says the net? My Mitel sx200 lite has a 68000 for a processor: it's a MacPlus! Surely the cpu horsepower is available to replace lots of dedicated TTL and switching hardware. I was just at a briefing from Apple and they're working with the PBX makers for a Geoport Mac to be a voice terminal behind a "big maker" PBX. But who are the startups that are out to kill the PBX makers? Brent Laminack (brent@cc.gatech.edu) ------------------------------ From: tslee@csupomona.edu (Tim_Lee) Subject: Infrared Network Devices Date: 31 Jan 95 10:39:45 PST Organization: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Those of you who have some experience working with Infrared Network Devices (for LANs): What are some of the more reliable equipments you have used or you know of? Will you also inform me on their basic specs? ------------------------------ From: henderson@mln.com Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 11:20:58 PDT Subject: Sprint For IntraLATA Calls in California Organization: Medical Laboratory Network; Ventura, CA We had a discussion about the Sprint offer of one cent per minute for customers in California using them to carry their intraLATA calls. One of the caveats mentioned here was that customers on any of their 'saving' plans (say, The Most) would not be eligible for the special rate. I am with The Most plan, and today I got my bill. There are several intraLATA calls, all billed at one cent per minute. This confirms what I was told on the phone by Sprint customer service: the rate is good for all of the residential customers (the person didn't specify any geographical restrictions, i.e., Northern versus Southern. I'm in SoCal [Ventura, to be precise]). Javier Henderson (JH21) henderson@mln.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 13:27:26 +0000 From: bcarh8ab!bcars703!chucdo@uunet.uu.net Subject: Anyone Know High Speed Serial Interface? Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada I'm looking for any available information on commercially available products that support HSSI (1M-52Mbit/s). Please, feel free to post information or send it to me via e-mail. In returns, if there is enough interest, I will post a summary of what I get in e-mail. Thanks in advance. Chuc Do chucdo@bnr.ca ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 08:55:08 +0000 From: evan champion Subject: Ten Digit Dialing Organization: Bell Northern Research Recently there has been a lot of talk about having to do ten digit dialing to call even local numbers that are in a different phone number. I have a number of users who are going to be affected by the above and am looking for a good explanation for them. I'm myself am not completely sure myself of all the reasons for making the changes to out-of-area dialing and would like to get it right the first time :-) Could someone e-mail me with an explanation? Thanks! Evan [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, it is eleven digit dialing, not ten digit if you count the '1' on the front. However, one would think that when this becomes universal all over the USA that we could in fact get by with ten digits since the '1' would no longer be needed; there would be no 'local' calls to distinquish from 'long distance'. Since everything that we dial would consist of area code plus seven digits, there would be no need for a '1' to indicate that 'what follows is an area code' -- everything that follows would be area codes! It would be nice to see the '1' vanish under those cirucmstances. Or maybe they will insist on keeping it using as their rationale that '1' is also -- by coincidence -- the country code for the USA and Canada, and that what we are really dialing is country code, area code and seven digit number. As to *why* they are imposing it on calls within the same area -- as is supposed to be the case in Chicago beginning sometime in 1996 -- I do not know. Various reasons have been given. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dhayes@onramp.net (David Hayes) Subject: Cheap Way to Get an 800 Number? Date: 31 Jan 1995 17:54:01 GMT Organization: On-Ramp; Individual Internet Connections Some friends and I are starting a new small business. We would like to have an 800 number. How do I get one? Other than ATT/MCI/Sprint, are there other people who can provide an 800 number cheaply? How do I minimize my cost? How do I get 800-CALL-MY-BUSINESS? Do I have have to pay extra for a "good" 800 number. David Hayes PGP public key available on request, or send dhayes@onramp.net mail subject: help to pgp-public-keys@demon.co.uk ------------------------------ From: pp002963@interramp.com Subject: Data Engineer Position in Houston Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:42:40 PDT Organization: PSI Public Usenet Link Responsibilities include supporting regional and national customer CDPD applications, coordination with marketing, network engineering, MIS and systems vendors. Eight years experience in software/networking/data comm- unications (or four years with BSEE/CS) REQUIRED. Experience in TCP/IP and Software Testing needed; Documentation and presentation skills, knowledge of cellular industry and technology are a plus. Payment for relocation to Houston will be considered. Immediate availability. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO ME BY E-MAIL AS I DO NOT LOG IN EVERY DAY; FAX RESUMES TO 713-876-5011. Thanks. ------------------------------ Subject: Directory Assistance in Tokyo From: henderson@mln.com (Javier Henderson) Date: 31 Jan 95 08:30:58 PST Organization: Medical Laboratory Network; Ventura, CA Hello, I need help with directory assistance in Tokyo, Japan. I tried AT&T, which I guess connected me with DA in Tokyo, but I may not have the correct spelling for the business I'm looking for, so the search was a bust. It's a hotel, and I was told it spells Abiko. Any help will be much appreciated. Javier Henderson (JH21) henderson@mln.com ------------------------------ From: rgu332@email.sps.mot.com (Jesus Ruelas) Subject: CCITT Class A Organization: Motorola GDL - IS Department Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 02:34:21 GMT Hi everybody, I read about the committee CCITT that is formed by 5 class groups, they are class A, class B, ..., class E; and know that only the group class A has the voting right while proposing a Standard specification. Does anybody know why only this group has this kind of privileges?. Thanks and regards, Jesus Ruelas Telecommunications & WAN Motorola, Inc. ------------------------------ From: geno@paladin.ho.att.com (-E.RICE) Subject: Newsgroup For SONET? Organization: AT&T Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 19:37:37 GMT What newsgroup contains discussions of SONET? Geno Rice [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You will find them here from time to time. Does anyone know of a group specifically on the topic? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 00:14 EST From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: The Four Minute Battle For 800-555 [from Bell News, 23 Jan 95 - content is Bell Canada's] [from photo caption...] I've got one ... The event began at 9 a.m. and by 9:04 a.m., it was over. On December 15, a new NXX (555) was opened for 1-800 numbers across North America allowing for approximately 8,000 new numbers. We were competing against all the other telephone companies in North America to get as many of them as we could. Doris Tesolin, an 800 Service Centre associate, celebrates getting the first number just after the 9 a.m. start. At exactly 9:04 a.m., the entire 8,000 numbers were gone and the 800 Service Centre was successful in securing about 40 numbers for our customers. [dl note: apart from 555.1212 and perhaps 555.4141, and with a capacity of 10 000 possible 800 555.xxxx numbers, what happened to most of the other 2000 numbers available in 800-555?] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 00:17 EST From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: Bell Canada Multi-Language Operator Support Trial [from Bell News, 9 Jan 95, content is Bell Canada's] Our LD assistance comes in 17 languages. Our customers can now receive assistance in making long distance calls in the language of their choice. In a six-month trial which began last December, our operators are offering 24-hour access to Language Assistance, at no extra charge, to assist customers in completing their long distance calls. This month and next, customers will receive information on dialing "0" for language assistance via a SIM (Short Informational Message) on their monthly bill. "It's another example of how we continue to find new services to delight our customers," says Janet Garrod, of Consumer Market Management. The trial will measure customer response and demand for the free service, assess the cost and benefits of providing such a service, and identify the most frequently used languages. ------------- [sidebar] Our ethnic customers can receive assistance in the following 17 languages: Mandarin; Cantonese; Japanese; Vietnamese; Korean; Hebrew; German; Spanish; Polish; Russian; Portuguese; Romanian; Tagalog; Italian; Hindi; Arabic; and French. ------------------------------ From: css@pacifier.com (Robert Geradts) Subject: IVR Software Information Wanted Date: 31 Jan 1995 06:36:54 GMT Organization: Pacifier Internet Server (206) 693-0325 I have been attempting to evaluate many different Interactive Voice Recognition development platforms. Can anyone out there share their views on the following products? Visual Voice by Stylus Innovation ProVIDE by Telephone Response Technologies REKOLL by N-Soft Ring! Application Generator by Ring! 4Voice and Narrator by C3 Voice Applications Language by U.S.Telecom CallPath DirectTalk/2 by IBM Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks, Rob ------------------------------ From: bartonfisher@delphi.com Subject: DAX Software - RAM Research Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 01:20:54 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) I'm interested in finding people that own the DAX voice/fax developement software. Please Email me. Thanks, Bart ------------------------------ From: eileen@telebit.com (Eileen Lin) Subject: Telebit Introduces Two V.34 Modems Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 15:43:35 GMT Contact: Direct Marketing Dept., Telebit Corp. Tel: 408/734-4333 or 800/835-3248 Fax: 408/734-3333 Internet: sales@telebit.com TELEBIT INTRODUCES TWO V.34 MODEMS SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 16, 1995 -- Telebit Corporation, a leader in the on-demand remote access industry, today announced that its FastBlazer 8840 modems now support the ITU-T V.34 standard. The FastBlazer(R) 8840 is designed for environments where large central site modem requirements include reliability, comprehensive network management, high speed and global homologation. In addition, today the company introduced the TeleBlazer, a V.34 modem designed for remote users dialing into LANs who want to take advantage of increased speeds. Product Features: Features of the FastBlazer 8840 include: - Speeds of up to 28.8 Kbps uncompressed and up to 115.2 Kbps with compression - Support for V.34, V.32terbo and eight other ITU-T and Bell standards - Flash memory for simple upgrades - Simple on-site configuration, control and monitoring via an 18-button front panel keypad and LCD display - Extensive command set and configuration parameters - Automatic single-call dial restoral of leased lines - Full configuration, control, testing and monitoring of FastBlazer rackmount modems via Telebit's ViewBlazer (R) network management system - Full compatibility with Telebit's NetBlazer(R) family of dial-up routers - Available in standalone and rackmount versions - Conformity to worldwide regulatory requirements - Extensive global homologation plans TeleBlazer features include: - Speeds of up to 28.8 Kbps uncompressed and up to 115.2 Kbps with compression - Support for V.34, V.FC and eight other ITU-T and Bell standards - Support for 14.4 Kbps fax transmissions - V.42bis and MNP 5 data compression - Full compatibility with Telebit's NetBlazer(R) family of on-demand routers - MNP 10 with `Adverse Channel Enhancement' for reliable cellular communications Price and availability: The FastBlazer 8840 Standalone and FastBlazer 8840 Rackmount are available at the end of January 1995 and have a list price of $1,199 (U.S.). Telebit's TeleBlazer is also available at the end of January 1995 and has a list price of $399 (U.S.). V.34 support can be added to the FastBlazer through a free software upgrade that is available through Telebit's Customer Service bulletin board. The telephone number for the Chelmsford, MA bulletin board is 508-656-9103; to contact the Sunnyvale, CA bulletin board, phone 408-745-3707 or 408-745-3861. Telebit Corporation designs, manufactures and markets a family of remote network access products to enable cost-effective extension of LANs to remote users. The company has offices in the United States and Europe and markets its products and services worldwide through value-added resellers, wholesale distributors and OEMs. Telebit is traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol TBIT. Telebit, FastBlazer, ViewBlazer and NetBlazer are registered trademarks of Telebit Corporation. ------------------------------ From: bourassa@teal.csn.org (Richard Bourassa) Subject: Consultant Wanted in Denver, Colorado USA Date: 31 Jan 1995 15:51:18 GMT Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc. World-wide manufacturing company is looking for a consultant with expertise in tariff analysis and telephony cost management. Major locations exist in Denver & Miami (USA), France and Australia. Objective is to analyze existing facilities and service contracts and make recommendations to reduce global communications costs for voice, fax, video and data. Familiarity with tariff 12 issues required. Interested parties contact: Ben Pepper Senior Director World-Wide Information Systems (303) 799-2230 (US Phone Number) benp@tps.com (Internet) -or- Richard Bourassa Systems Analyst World-wide Information Systems (303) 799-2413 (US Phone Number) richb@tps.com (Internet) Feel free to submit credentials and contact information via email. Richard Bourassa, Information Systems ___T_e_l_e_c_t_r_o_n_i_c_s__|/\ __ Telectronics Pacing Systems Pacing Systems \/ 7400 S. Tucson Way, Englewood, CO 80112 ph (303)799-2413 fax (303)799-1241 Internet: richb@tps.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 11:14:34 EST From: Chris J. Cartwright Subject: RBOC Aids Motorola's ISDN Push In the 1/23/95 issue of {PC Week}, page 55, there is an article that describes a joint effort between Motorola and Ameritech to bundle ISDN hardware and services for home and office use. ISDN BRI starts at $28/mo and the RBOC will sell Motorla's terminal adapter for $399 or $19/mo for two years. Ameritech also provides it's own software for the ISDN and has a similar program using two T-1's. This is not an ad, I work for neither, just want ISDN at home at a price I can afford and expect others do too. Chris Cartwright, Technical Engineer Voice 301.295.0809 Mail dsc3cjc@imc220.med.navy.mil C-serve 71614,2441 ------------------------------ From: dave@westmark.com (Dave Levenson) Subject: Plumber Arrested: Fraudulent Call Forwarding Organization: Westmark, Inc. Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 01:43:14 GMT A story in the Monday {New York Times} describes a Philadelphia area plumber who subscribed to Call Forwarding Ultra. This is a service offered by Bell Atlantic which allows subscribers to control call-forwarding from a telephone other than the one being forwarded. This plumber allegedly subscribed to the service for several of his competitors without their permission, and then forwarded their calls to his telephone. He then intercepted some or all of their business. He was found out after approximately one month, when one of his victims was complimented by a customer for a job well-done -- a job the victim never did! The perpetrator is currently in jail pending trial for an un-related charge of battery, but is now being charged with numerous counts of wire fraud, theft of business, operating a business under a false identity, and similar charges. Dave Levenson Internet: dave@westmark.com Westmark, Inc. UUCP: uunet!westmark!dave Stirling, NJ, USA Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This same report appeared in alt.dcom.telecom today submitted to that newsgroup by Jack Decker who concluded by saying this was a good reason telcos should password accounts, presumably to prevent fraudulent Call Forwarding among other things. The thing he neglected to mention -- nor was it mentioned by Dave Levenson here -- was that Call Forwarding Ultra (or Enhanced Call Forwarding or Remote Call Forwarding as it is known in other telcos) *does* require a password. If you have Call Forwarding on your line otherwise -- you have to already have it installed -- then if you further subscribe to 'Ultra' you are given a personal password or PIN. You dial a seven digit number which is the switch itself, begin by identifying yourself with your PIN, then give the number you wish to have (un)forwarded, followed by the number (if turning it on). The change takes effect immediatly. Needless to say, the switch keeps its own records on who called it from what remote location, with none of this 'private entry' stuff permitted. Typically, that number at the switch will not even answer or respond if the switch cannot tell what number is being used to call it before it answers. Also, no other custom calling features can be changed in any way, nor can any of the many other features of the switch be programmed using that PIN. So telco does make reasonable precautions to insure that one person cannot just call up and change the forwarding for someone else. What goes around comes around: Does anyone remember the old anecdote about the original development of automatic switching involving Alvin Stroger? Mr. Stroger was an undertaker a hundred years ago; he believed that the operators on the manual exchange serving his community had been bribed to divert calls from the public seeking funeral/burial services to his compe- tition. So the story goes, he developed the switch which came to bear his name as a way to be certain that manual operators at telephone exchanges could not wilfully give away his business to his competitors. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #66 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa27089; 31 Jan 95 20:57 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13300; Tue, 31 Jan 95 15:55:43 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA13287; Tue, 31 Jan 95 15:55:33 CST Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 15:55:33 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9501312155.AA13287@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #67 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 95 15:55:30 CST Volume 15 : Issue 67 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Book Review: "The Mosaic Navigator" by Gilster (Rob Slade) WilTel's New Telecom Atlas (Leslie Smith) ACC Reports Increase in Billable Minutes (Dave Leibold) Canada and Chile Sign Telecom Research Agreement (Nigel Allen) NACN Problems With Cell One/Utah (Brianhead) (Doug Reuben) Needed: Network Solutions Manager (Lambert Schuyler Jr.) Bell Atlantic ISDN, Part II (Hersh Jeff) More on Universal International Freephone Numbers (Judith Oppenheimer) Gigabit Networking Workshop GBN'95 - Call for Participation (J. Sterbenz) Does AT&T 7506 TAD 03A Pass CID to RS232 of Orignating Caller? (ulmo@panix) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 14:54:30 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Mosaic Navigator" by Gilster BKMOSNAV.RVW 941201 "The Mosaic Navigator", Gilster, 1995, 0-471-11336-0, U$16.95 %A Paul Gilster gilster@interpath.net %C 5353 Dundas Street West, 4th Floor, Etobicoke, ON M9B 6H8 %D 1995 %G 0-471-11336-0 %I John Wiley & Sons, Inc. %O U$16.95 416-236-4433 fax: 416-236-4448 %P 243 %T "The Mosaic Navigator" HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the standard for the construction and use of documents which link to other items on the net through the use of URLs (Universal Resource Locators). The World Wide Web is the term which refers to the interconnected set of documents which use HTTP. (World Wide Web is often abbreviated to WWW, W3, or just Web, although this latter causes confusion with a social issues information network by the same name.) Mosaic is an HTTP or W3 client program, often referred to as a "browser". In addition, the Mosaic browser has a graphical interface, and can utilize "viewer" software to display graphics, sound, and video in conjunction with HTTP "pages". There are other browsers, some, like WWW and lynx, text-based. Other graphical clients include Netscape, now being built by one of the original Mosaic developers, and a proprietary part of the new "Warp" version of OS/2. Mosaic, itself, exists in multiple freeware, shareware, and commercial versions, and can be obtained for MS-Windows, the Macintosh, and X. For those who have access to the Internet, but do not yet have Mosaic or the necessary SLIP or PPP access, this book is an excellent guide to getting set up. Chapters three and four give quite detailed instructions for obtaining, installing, and configuring the program. This includes an explanation of the MOSAIC.INI file for Windows. Other resources include Mosaic and W3-related newsgroups and mailing lists. Chapter six is also a solid guide to the use of Mosaic to access ftp, telnet, Gopher, and Usenet news resources. Gilster's "The Internet Navigator" (cf. BKINTNAV.RVW) and "Finding It On the Internet" (cf. BKFNDINT.RVW) are both excellent works, and the weaknesses of this one are shortcomings only in light of that comparison. The explanations of the World Wide Web, HTTP, and Mosaic, while good, are not up to the previous standard. The directions are not quite as lucid, and sometimes seem to assume more knowledge on the part of the reader. Coverage of the actual operation of Mosaic could be stronger: figures would have benefitted from the use of pointers to items being selected, and the discussion of Mosaic menu items is better in the O'Reilly & Associates' Mosaic handbooks (cf. BKMOSAHX.RVW). Also, while Gilster does discuss the fact that the capabilities of HTTP, W3, and Mosaic may be misused for trivialities, that point is not made strongly enough. He mentions the frustration involved with trying to use Mosaic with a slow modem, but not the growing impact of massive graphic, video, and sound file transfers on the bandwidth of the net as a whole. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKMOSNAV.RVW 941201. Permission given to distribute in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for Robert_Slade@sfu.ca Research into rslade@cue.bc.ca User p1@CyberStore.ca Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Jan 95 12:08:10 CST From: leslie_smith@wiltel.com Subject: WilTel's New Telecom Atlas Dear Telecom Digest, WilTel is excited to announce our New Telecom Atlas. We would love to know what you and your readers think about this new service that WilTel now provides. My name is Leslie Smith and if you would like to talk with me about our New Telecom Atlas, I can be reached at 918-588-3645, or at Leslie_Smith@wiltel.com. Thank you very much, Leslie Smith Your Ticket to the "World" Have you ever wondered where in the World you could find International Telecom Information at one location on the Internet? Well, wonder no longer, because WilTel has laid the "World" at your fingertips with our New Telecom Atlas. Whether you need to know about the South of France or South Dakota, WilTel's New Telecom Atlas allows you to maneuver around the "World" with ease. The Telecom Atlas provides sojourners overseas with a clickable map of International Carriers and Telecom Research Centers. If your trip is not as far from home, the Telecom Atlas also provides clickable information on Interexchange Carrier Sites, Regional Bell Operating Companies, Freenets, Research Testbeds, and Value Priced Long Distance Providers to those of us in the U.S. The WilTel Telecom Atlas is part of WilTel's Telecom Library. WilTel is devoted to ensuring that Telecommunication information is readily available and easily comprehendable to the public. If you would like to learn more about Wiltel and our many services, we can be reached at http://www.wiltel.com. ------------------------------ From: dleibold@gvc.com (Dave Leibold) Subject: ACC Reports Increase in Billable Minutes Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 00:26:51 -0500 [from a news release via CNW] ACC TELENTERPRISES LTD. BILLABLE MINUTES UP OVER 25% TORONTO, Jan. 24 /CNW/ - ACC Telenterprises Ltd. (`ACC') is pleased to announce that their billable minutes for the fourth quarter 1994 are up more than 25% over the same period last year. Billable minutes were reported at 127,245,250 compared to 101,555,897 billable minutes in the fourth quarter of 1993. Commenting on the strong growth, Mr. Steve Dubnik, President and Chief Executive Officer stated, "This increase in traffic is in line with our expected growth. It is exciting to confirm that our billable minutes are trending as planned." The company's U.S. affiliate, ACC Long Distance Corp., has also reported over 14% growth in billable minutes. Their billable minutes in the fourth quarter were 144,519,771 compared to 126,109,656 billable minutes in the fourth quarter of 1993. It's affiliate, ACC Long Distance UK Ltd., reports billable minutes in the fourth quarter of 1994 were up 215% over the third quarter in 1994. The 11,048,441 minutes in the fourth quarter compares to 3,503,304 billable minutes reported in the previous quarter. The billable minutes were 21,795 in the fourth quarter of 1993. ACC TelEnterprises Ltd., together with its sister companies ACC Long Distance Corp. in the United States and ACC Long Distance UK Ltd. is a multinational provider of enhanced telecommunications services. The Canadian company is headquartered in Toronto and provides worldwide long distance voice and data services to business and residential customers in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Alberts and British Columbia. The company operates in 33 metropolitan centres and currently has an annualized revenue run rate in excess of $100 million. ACC TelEnterprises Ltd. is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Montreal Stock Exchange under the symbol "ACL". For further information: Barry K. Singer, Vice President, Legal and Regulatory, ACC TelEnterprises Ltd., Etobicoke, Ontario, Tel: (416) 236-3636, Fax: (416) 236-4749. ------------------------------ From: Nigel Allen Subject: Canada and Chile Sign Telecom Research Agreement Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 20:19:31 EST Organization: Allen Telecom Policy Consultants, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Here is a press release from Industry Canada, the Industry department of the Canadian federal government. Other Industry Canada press releases are available from the ftp/www/gopher site (debra.dgbt.doc.ca) operated by the department. I don't work for the government. File name:01-26-95.b Internet address: debra.dgbt.doc.ca File path: /pub/isc/Industry.Canada.News.Releases/1995 Date archived: Mon Jan 30 08:58:38 EST 1995 Archive name: Industry Canada, Canadian Federal Government Archived by: tyson@debra.dgbt.doc.ca Originator: Industry Canada CANADA AND CHILE SIGN MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT ON COMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPMENT DAVOS, Switzerland, January 26, 1995 -- Industry Minister John Manley today welcomed the signing of an agreement between Industry Canada's Communications Research Centre (CRC) and the Chilean government's Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications to establish a framework for collaboration in telecommunications research and development. The agreement was signed in Santiago, Chile, today by Trade Minister Roy MacLaren during the trade mission led by Prime Minister Jean Chretien. The agreement provides the Chilean Ministry of Transportation and Communications with access to CRC's expertise in communications R&D including spectrum management, remote telecommunications, networks and broadcast technologies. "This agreement underlines the CRC's international reputation for excellence in communications research," said Mr. Manley. "The Centre's increasing participation in such international collaborations helps bring Canadian technology and capabilities to world, and translates into new opportunities for the growth of the telecommunications sector in the National Capital Region and Canada." Under the agreement, CRC will provide technical consulting services on a cost-recovery basis, technology transfer, exchange programs and set up conferences and technical symposia. There is no monetary value attached to the agreement. Any CRC technologies transferred will be subject to separate licensing agreements. For additional information, please contact: Kevin Shackell CRC (613) 998-0138 - forwarded by Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ndallen@io.org ------------------------------ From: dreuben@interpage.net (Doug Reuben) Subject: NACN Problems with Cell One/Utah (Brianhead) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 07:10:41 EST For the past five days, I've noticed that the system serving Brianhead, Utah (for once I am unsure of the SID! :) ), seems to be unable to deliver any sort of switch recordings. When someone calls my 914-643 number, and my phone rings in Brianhead, and goes unanswered, NOTHING happens! The ringing just stops, and the line remains open, but callers do NOT get any message at all! This is a particular problem as coverage is quite transient, and you can easily find yourself in a dead spot where there is no coverage at all. If you had been registered in the system 20 minutes prior to hitting the dead spot, calls will be sent out to Utah, yet since you are in a dead spot, the switch will not send any ringing tones back to the caller, and all the caller hears is dead air, ad infinitum! If the phone is inactive for more than 20 minutes, it usually resets to the NY switch properly, but the fact that no recording is reported when the phone is registered in Utah and either "off" or in a dead or "no service" area is particularly confusing to callers who already have enough difficulty waiting for the beeps, tones, clicks, and other messages which they frequently must endure to reach my phone while roaming. (Although NACN roaming is by far more seamless than most B-side systems ... the B side in the Northeast laughable in most cases with inane messages and hold times.) Doug * Interpage Network Services/CID Tech * (203) 499-5221 ------------------------------ From: sfbatl@mindspring.com (Lambert Schuyler Jr.) Subject: Needed: Network Solutions Manager Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 15:57:02 -0400 Organization: MindSpring Enterprises, Inc. NEEDED: Manager - Network Support Solutions (NSS) Consulting The Company: Recognized internationally as a premier professional services firm noted for its information systems integration, strategic consulting, change management and process management consulting services. The companys Telecom Industry Consulting Group, is a leader in providing consulting services to telecommunications operating companies worldwide. The Position: The group provides specialized systems integration and process reengineering consulting services in the areas of network operations support, material logistics, service delivery and service assurance. The Manager - Network Support Solutions (NSS) Consulting position offers an outstanding career opportunity for a manager with telecom carrier network operations support systems experience to join this premier consulting firm. Professional Requirements: Candidates for the position will have at least three years of experience in the telecommunications industry. Such exper ience will have included assignments with direct responsibility for the p lanning and execution of network support solutions information systems de velopment projects. A candidates experience may have been gained while working with a telecom carrier or firms that serve the telecom carrier industry such as hardware/solutions vendors, systems integrators, strategic consultants or information systems consultants. A technical undergraduate degree is expected. Compensation/Location: The financial package for the position will include an attractive salary and company provided fringe benefits. Relocation may not be required. If interested, please contact: Gabrielle Griffith (I am with an Executive Search firm) E-Mail: sfbatl@mindspring.com Fax: 404-804-1917 ------------------------------ From: Hersh Jeff Subject: Bell Atlantic ISDN, Part II Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 11:52:00 PST In TELECOM Digest V15 #63 I wrote: > My office (located in Eatontown, NJ, area code 908) recently had two ISDN > lines installed for experimental purposes. We receive our ISDN from a > #5ESS. It was obvious, despite what is written about Bell Atlantic in > "Reengineering the Corporation," that it is very inexperienced and > unorganized in providing ISDN service. All we asked for was two ISDN > BRI lines with NT-1s. It took about two months before we were able to > get the lines installed, and we have already had to replace the NT-1s > once. Anyone else have experience with Bell Atlantic ISDN? There's another issue I neglected to mention in the original submission: billing. As I mentioned, the ISDN lines are used for experimental purposes, for maybe five to seven hours per month. Our usage bills for the latest three billing cycles are as follows (at $.05 per minute): November 94: 3228 minutes (about 54 hours) December 94: 3392 minutes (about 56 hours) January 95: 3406 minutes (about 57 hours). All time is charged for circuit switch data calls (BA's name). In no case did we actually use that much access. We have been trying to get call detail from Bell Atlantic for the specific charges (mostly dialed destination and time of day) to see if we can pinpoint the trouble. BA says it cannot provide that type of info, so that right now we're at a standoff. (I have trouble believing it can't do this.) If anyone has any experience with how ISDN is billed and if similar problems have been experienced, please let me know. We know we didn't use nearly this much time. TIA, Jeff Hersh hershj@bah.com ------------------------------ From: Judith Oppenheimer Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 11:51:30 -0500 Subject: More on Universal International Freephone Numbers In reference to John Carl Brown's posting on January 24th: Everything he says confirms what we have said. But it doesn't answer the question -- why are the carriers refusing to support the U.S. users that did make their wishes known? If it is such a participatory process, why are the U.S. carriers ignoring the users who are participating? I would be happy to provide *current and un-edited* documents - timeline, E.169, and more, to whomever emails their fax number to me. Judith Oppenheimer, Producer@Pipeline.com Interactive CallBrand(TM) ------------------------------ From: jpgs@gte.com (James Sterbenz) Subject: Gigabit Networking Workshop GBN'95 -- Call for Participation Date: 31 Jan 1995 13:51:26 GMT Organization: GTE Laboratories Incorporated GIGABIT NETWORKING WORKSHOP GBN'95 - Call for Participation 2 April 1995 - Boston, Massachusetts, USA Sponsored by the IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Gigabit Networking in conjunction with INFOCOM'95 PURPOSE AND FORMAT The purpose of this workshop is to provide a forum for presenting and discussing very recent work in gigabit networking and publishing it in a timely manner. The workshop will consist of short presentations and discussions of current work in high bandwidth networking, as well as longer discussion sessions. The workshop will take place from 8:30 AM until 3:00 PM with lunch provided. There will be an open business meeting of the Technical Committee on Gigabit Networking following the workshop at 3:00 PM. The workshop will consist of a number of short informal presentations and discussion on current research and implementation, hot topics, position statements, and controversial issues relating to high bandwidth networking. End-to-end issues including transport and higher layer protocols, host and network interface architecture, operating systems, emerging applications, deployment and management of large networks, economic and regulatory issues, security and privacy, and other societal impacts will be of particular interest. A one-page abstract of the presentation is due on 1 March 1995; all reasonable proposals will be considered (and possibly some controversial ones). The length of the presentations will be limited to 10 or 15 minutes each, with the number of presentation foils strictly limited. Presentations will appear in the online proceedings of the workshop, under URL http://info.gte.com/ieee-tcgn/conference/gbn95 or by FTP from ftp.gte.com/pub/ieee-tcgn/conference/gbn95/. Selected abstracts of the presentations will appear in _IEEE Network Magazine_ (tentatively May 1995), and presenters may be invited to submit papers to a special issue of the _Journal of High Speed Networks_ (JHSN). There will blocks of time reserved for interactive discussion sessions. Suggestions for topics will be taken in advance (email to giga@tele.pitt.edu and Cc: to jpgs@ieee.org), but will also be welcome at the workshop. Controversial topics and outrageous viewpoints are encouraged. A summary of the workshop discussions will appear in _IEEE Network Magazine_. SUBMISSION The submission deadline for the one-page abstract is 1 March 1995. Submission should be in plain text by email to the program chair at jpgs@ieee.org; please include the text "GBN'95 Submission" in the Subject: field. All submissions will be quickly acknowledged; the lack of an acknowledgment indicates that the author should contact the program chair to confirm the receipt of the proposal. Notification of accepted presentations will be made by 10 March 1995, and all accepted presenters are expected to register in advance for the workshop. At the time of the workshop, an electronic version of the presentation foils will be due for inclusion in the online proceedings. Submission in postscript and/or HTML is encouraged; if these formats are not possible, plain text will be accepted. REGISTRATION Registration for the workshop will be handled as part of INFOCOM'95 registration; information is available: on the WWW http://www.research.att.com/~hgs/infocom95/program.html by anonymous FTP gaia.cs.umass.edu/pub/hgschulz/infocom95/progam.txt email request to infocom95@fokus.gmd.de Additional copies of the GBN'95 CFP are available: on the WWW http://info.gte.com/ieee-tcgn/conference/gbn95/cfp.html by anonymous FTP ftp.gte.com/pub/ieee-tcgn/conference/gbn95/cfp.txt email request to jpgs@ieee.org The home page for the TCGN is URL http://info.gte.com/ieee-tcgn, and has additional information. PROGRAM CHAIR PROGRAM COMMITTEE James P. G. Sterbenz Nim Cheung, Bellcore GTE Telecom. Research Laboratory Dave Feldmeier, Bellcore 40 Sylvan Road MS-61, Bryan Lyles, Xerox PARC Waltham, MA 02254 USA Ira Richer, MITRE +1 617 466 2786 Dick Skillen, Northern Telecom jpgs@ieee.org Richard A. Thompson, Univ. of Pittsburgh http://info.gte.com/jpgs Shukri Wakid, NIST James P.G. Sterbenz Senior MTS, Broadband Intelligent Networks jpgs@{acm|ieee}.org GTE Telecommunications Research Laboratory +1 617 466 2786 40 Sylvan Road MS-61, Waltham, MA 02254 USA http://info.gte.com/jpgs ------------------------------ From: ulmo@panix.com Subject: Does AT&T 7506 TAD 03A Pass CID to RS232 of Orignating Caller? Date: 31 Jan 1995 06:13:25 -0500 Organization: URL:http://www.armory.com/~ulmo/ (see rivers.html for PGP key) An early reply would be appreciated ... Today I'm ordering my AT&T 7506 TAD 03A and ISDN service with NYNEX. Does this particular 7506 pass the CID of each caller to the RS232? I want to plug my computer in and have it look into my customer database and pop up the record for the customer before I even know the phone is ringing. I'll program it. I just want to know if the firmware allows it, and how. Thanks. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #67 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa00804; 31 Jan 95 23:41 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19693; Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:09:13 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA19685; Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:09:08 CST Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:09:08 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9502010109.AA19685@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #68 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:09:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 68 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson WAN Compression For Data Networks (Jim Williams) Book Review: "LANtastic Quick Reference" by Talbot (Rob Slade) MCI Bureaucratic Blunder (Richard Wildman) Hidden Features in Panasonic Telephones (Douglas Pokorny) Business/Residential Long-Distance/800 at 12.9 Cents/Minute (Tom Fellrath) Digital PBX Transmission Standards, Devices (Peter J. Kerrigan) CCITT TCAP Message Format (Hari Kalva) The Cost of Technology (James Bellaire) Question About CT2 / Cellular Service (Aries Hackerman) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 20:49:12 -0800 From: routers@halcyon.com Subject: WAN Compression for Data Networks Some general comments regarding compression. First do you know about the Motorola 326X FAST V.34? It has SDC at 28.8 with 85Kb sync thruput, and up to 128 async thruput. Motorola also has a 56Kp DSU/CSU with SDC that has 256Kp thruput on a DDS circuits It also has two TDM ports for ASYNC or SYNC traffic up to 19.2 that allow you to piggy back async on top of your SNA traffic. They sell for less than $1500ea. Most compression is done via software in routers. Most like Cisco partnership with a compression company such as Magnalink. When adding a compression stand alone device to a network ie they fit between the router and the DSU, and are no problem. For more information on compression products contact our FTP site at . Please feel free to examine other leading edge technologies listed in this FTP list. If you have any questions please call me at 1-800-837-4180. Regards, Jim Williams CODEX 3500 SERIES 3512-SDC BANDWIDTH EXPANDER DSU ------------------------------- Overview: Data Communications managers are increasingly faced with requirements for higher data transmission speeds, shorter response time and lower telecommunication budgets as networks migrate from traditional terminal-to-host legacy applications to those supporting LAN internetworking. The Motorola Codex 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander DSU is ideally suited to this changing environment. The 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander provides Synchronous Data Compression (SDC) on HDLC/SDLC framed data in one port while two additional ports support the lower bandwidth requirements of polled, legacy data and/or restoral requirements. The 3512 Bandwidth Expander is an intelligent, high-speed digital access device providing up to four times the available bandwidth using existing low cost DDS-I or DDS-II secondary channel type leased-line facilities. The 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander DSU opens new dimensions in network design, flexibility, productivity and cost reduction by providing benefits such as: * Compression up to 4:1. * Reduction of bandwidth requirements without reducing performance. * Extends the useful life of existing telco facilities and equipment. * Reduction in file transfers and quicker response time. * Flexibility for future applications and network migration. The 3512 Bandwidth Expander DSU is available in standalone and rackmount configuration and offers all the features, performance, functionality and reliability of the 3512 family of digital leased-line DSU/CSU's. Product Highlights: * Transmits Synchronous HDLC/SDLC framed data at rates up to 256 Kbps over 56 Kbps point-to-point digital leased-lines providing cost-effective, superior performance LAN-to-LAN internet- working. * Three Ports Standard. One compression port for transmission speed reaching up to 256 Kbps (Port 3). The two remaining uncompressed ports, each supporting speeds up to 56 Kbps. * Port Two of the 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander supports operation as an intelligent A/B switch for restoral of failed WAN links at rates up to 72 Kbps over analog dial circuits, and up to 256 Kbps over switched digital services (e.g. Switched 56). * Flexibility in network design with support for Point-to-Point and Multipoint Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), port sharing (MSU) and mixed TDM/MSU. High bit rate efficiency provides up to 55.2 Kbps available bandwidth in TDM modes with 56 Kbps service. Mixed compression and TDM is supported. * Integral asynchronous to synchronous conversion of non- compressed data is supported up to 19.2 Kbps. Limited distance modem operation is supported for point-to-point private wire circuits in DDS-I and DDS-II SC modes. Benefits: 1. The 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander provides rapid pay back by providing the bandwidth of more expensive fractional T-1 services over conventional digital services to 56Kbps. 2. The 3512 SDC lets you build networks that support existing applications today with a migration path for future applications to be efficiently absorbed into an existing corporate network. 3. As a three port digital access device, the 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander is a modular and flexible low-end data mux supporting mixed legacy terminal-to-host applications and LAN traffic over a single circuit. 4. The 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander lets you continue your optimum throughput even when your primary digital leased-line fails. The 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander features an intelligent A/B switch for optimum restoral at rates as high as 72 Kbps over analog dial circuits or 256 Kbps over switched digital circuits. Since it is unlikely that throughput demands will diminish or that communication budgets will increase, you should investigate the 3512 SDC Bandwidth Expander. Motorola Codex offers a total solution by providing an economical and cost effective digital service up to 256 Kbps at a fraction of the cost of competing products. The 3512 SDC is simple, reliable and economical. SPECIFICATIONS Service Types * Supports digital data services in the U.S. and Canada conforming to AT&T Technical Reference 62310: Inter-LATA carriers including AT&T (DATAPHONE(r) Digital Service and Accunet(r) Spectrum of Digital Services), MCI (Digital Data Service) and US Sprint (Clearline DDS) as well as service offerings from the Regional Bell Operating Companies and independents Operating Mode * Full-duplex, point-to-point and multipoint; compressed channel point-to-point only Digital Aggregate Interface * DDS-I type facilities: 2.4, 4.8, 9.6, 19.2 and 56 Kbps * DDS-II SC type facilities: 3.2, 6.4, 12.8, 25.6 and 72 Kbps providing primary channel rates of 2.4, 4.8, 9.6, 19.2 and 56 Kbps respectively plus secondary channel Data Format * Synchronous: serial, binary * Asynchronous: serial, binary 6 - 9 bit including parity bit * Compression Port: HDLC/SDLC framed data (NRZ or NRZI coding) Data Encoding * Bipolar, return to zero, alternate mark inversion Port Timing * Network, internal, external or station DSU Timing * Network, internal or external (external for DDS-I only) DTE Port Interface * Front panel selectable EIA 232-D or V.35 on ports I and 2; V.35 on port 3 * 25 Pin DB-25 connector (port 1); EIA 232-D alternate DB-26 subminiature connectors (ports 2 and 3) DTE Port Rates: Ports 1 and 2: * Synchronous: 1.2, 2.4, 4.8, 7.2, 9.6, 14.4, 16.8, 19.2, 21.6, 24.0, 28.8, 32.0, 38.4, 48.0 and 56.0 Kbps 7 * Asynchronous: 2.4, 4.8, 7.2, 9.6, 14.4, and 19.2 Kbps Port 3: * Synchronous: 1.2, 2.4, 4.8, 7.2, 9.6, 14.4, 16.8, 19.2, 21.6, 24.0, 28.8, 32.0, 38.4, 48.0, 56.0, 64, 112, 128, 168, 192, 256 Kbps NOTE: Port rates less than 9.6 Kbps not supported in compressed mode * Asynchronous: 2.4, 4.8, 7.2, 9.6, 14.4, and 19.2 Kbps NOTE: Asynchronous data not supported in compressed mode Network Management * Network management support by the Codex 9800 and 9300 * Direct LPDA-2 interface to IBM NetView_ with Codex DualVIEW option * Monitoring via Novell NetWare(tm) with WANVisible(tm) NLM * Management Protocols Supported: - Codex Proprietary Protocol - Link Problem Determination Aid (LPDA) Revision 2 (Ports 1 & 2 only; Port 3 in direct mode only) * IBM Software/Protocol Compatibility: - NetView Version 1.3 or later - ACF/NCP Version 4.2 or later - Lines configured for either SDLC or BSC * Network control channel: - Data format: Asynchronous, serial, binary, compatible with Motorola Codex Network Management Systems (NMS) - Data Rate: Selectable 75, or 150 bps - Line overhead in DDS-I derived secondary channel mode: 113, 181 and 800 bps with 9.6, 19.2 and 56 Kbps service respectively Power Requirements: * 3512 SDC Standalone: 110 or 230 VAC nominal; 47 to63 Hz * 3512 SDC Nest Card: 110 or 230 VAC nominal; 47 to 63 Hz -48 VDC * Environment - Operating temperature: 320 to 1220 F. (0 to 500 deg C.) - Non-operating temperature: -400 to 1580 F. (-400 to 700 C.) - Operating relative humidity: 10% to 95% non-condensing * Physical Dimensions - 3512 DSU/CSU Standalone: Height: 2.3 in (5.8 cm) Width: 6.6 in (16.8 cm) Depth: 9.6 in (24.4 cm) Weight: 2.5 Ibs (1.1 kg) - 3500 Mini-Nest Enclosure: Height 7.0 in (17.8 cm) Width 19.0 in (48.3 cm) Length 10.0 in (25.4 cm) Weight (empty) 22 lbs (10.0 kg) * Certification - UL Listed and CSA Certified - FCC Part 15 Class A Compliant - FCC Part 68 Registered - Bell Canada Approved ------------> For further information on prices, warranty extensions, upgrades, and service, please contact: Router Solutions 5527 Preston Fall City Road Fall City, WA 98024 USA 800-837-4180 (USA and Canada) 206-644-6082 (other locations) Fax: 206-222-7622 Email: routers@halcyon.com Please check our FTP site for additional product literature and current prices: ftp.halcyon.com /pub/local/routers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 13:10:25 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "LANtastic Quick Reference" by Talbot BKLNTSQR.RVW 941206 "LANtastic Quick Reference", Talbot, 1992, 0-934605-78-5, U$14.95 %A David Talbott %C 1580 Center Dr., Santa Fe, NM 87505-9746 %D 1992 %G 0-934605-78-5 %I Onword Press %O U$14.95 800-842-3636 %P 164 %T "LANtastic Quick Reference" While LANtastic has made a name as a simple, minimally intrusive, peer-to-peer network for sharing disks and printers, its documentation has become increasingly complex. This book can serve as a reminder of the various command and function options. For basic commands, this may be enough: for more advanced items, it can serve as an introduction to the correct section of the program documentation. The book is divided into three sections: User, System Manager, and Installer. The last is a bit brief, being merely a listing of ArtiSoft network interface card settings, and the command-line switches and options for the basic network drivers. The lack of any mention of NDIS is unfortunate. Ironically, the author seems to be extremely proud of the indexing job on the book. There *is* an index, but it is quite brief, and hardly a selling point. Nevertheless, this book is doubtless well worth the price for those working with and managing LANtastic networks. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKLNTSQR.RVW 941206 Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for Robert_Slade@sfu.ca Research into rslade@cue.bc.ca User p1@CyberStore.ca Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ From: rich@hpfcla.fc.hp.com (Richard Wildman) Subject: MCI Bureaucratic Blunder Date: 31 Jan 1995 21:45:38 GMT Organization: Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Site This is a sad tale of bureaucratic bungling at its worst. I have been an MCI customer since the initial choose your long distance caller days; we recently had a run in with MCI bureaucracy which has soured us on MCI, and convinced us to change to another carrier. It is truly a case for the books. For some reason, U.S. West or MCI changed the way we were being billed in October. Neither knows why or what happened, and neither will admit to any fault of their own. Rather than receiving our long distance billing on U.S. West bills, MCI begin to bill us separately, or so they thought. We finally inquired why we were not receiving an MCI bill for long distance calls. Nobody would admit to a thing, but conversations with MCI revealed that they had been sending it to an old address -- one we had not lived at for five years. But the drift of the conversation was that we were at fault for not paying the bill we had never seen. They said they would send the bill to the correct address. No bill came. We got a call from MCI Financial Services in St. Louis giving us warning that the bill had not been paid, and that we would have to deal with a collection agency shortly. We told them we had not seen the bill. Not their problem -- they had sent it. I suggested they send it by registered mail, so that at least we and they would know what's going on. Nope, can't do that -- it is your responsibility to pay the bill -- MCI sends their bills by first class mail -- all that is legally required. I even offered to pay for overnight registered mail. No go. Asked to speak with a supervisor, but I was hung up on. Finally got hold of a young man who seemed inclined to listen to what was going on. Yes, he too thought something did not make sense. For a couple of decades, no billing problems, but all of a sudden, one day, we stop paying our bills. But, sorry, it has been assigned to financial services, and there was nothing he could do -- his hands were tied. Only after a very lengthy conversation did we learn that we could pay the bill by credit card (one time only though) by calling a certain number. We have to rely on MCI having the actual amount of the bill correct, because to this day, we have not seen any billing for the two and half months in question. Given MCI's recent performance, we do not have a lot of faith, but did it anyway, just to get rid of them, and the harassing phone calls. My best guess at what happened traces to a $35 billing mistake made by U.S. West last May. That too required several telephone calls, and a copy of a cancelled check with U.S. West endorsement on the back to convince them a mistake had been made. However, the amount kept showing up on our bill each month until October, because, we were told, it could not come off our bill until they found where the error was made! October was the last month we received a billing from MCI on the U.S. West bill, and it was only for part of the month. So, suspicions are that an error made by U.S. West in finally correcting their bill to us created the problem with MCI, and started the dominoes cascading. If this is true, it still does not explain why MCI has things so screwed up, nor why they would screw over what had been a long-time very good customer for them. And I would not bet two cents that this whole ugly episode if over. It's a brave new world -- Kafka must be smiling. Disgruntled, and no longer an MCI customer. R W - Fort Collins, Colorado ------------------------------ From: drp@cs1.bradley.edu (Douglas Pokorny) Subject: Hidden Features in Panasonic Telephones Date: 31 Jan 1995 15:49:13 -0600 Organization: Bradley University Most Panasonic Telephone/Answering machine combos can have various features turned on and off by pressing the program key followed by several digits on the keypad, and hitting store. (This is done without specifying a memory location for a stored telephone number.) An example of this is the ability to turn on and off the "15-second beep" which occurs when recording telephone conversations. The user's manual which comes with these phones only contain partial lists of these codes. (e.g., they tell you how to turn the beeping on, but not off.) Does anyone know of a comprehensive list of "hidden features" for various models of Panasonic telephones? Douglas R. Pokorny Happily running: drp@camelot.bradley.edu OS/2 3.0 & Workplace Shell MS-Windows NT 3.5 This mesage posted with Linux 1.1 & OpenLook X-Windows OS/2 3.0's SLIP software PC-DOS 6.3 & MS-Windows 3.11 ------------------------------ From: Tom Fellrath Subject: Business/Residential Long-Distance/800 at 12.9 Cents/Minute Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 12:50:26 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) I just came upon this when investigating ways to cut costs on basic everyday services like telephones. There's a company that offers 12.9 cents per minute on ALL long- distance calling -- both inbound 800's and outbound (1+ calling). When I called them, they told me that this program was available to anyone, be it residential or business phone customers. I don't know what you think of 12.9 cents, per minute, but I was on what I thought was a GREAT business program for my home phone where I was paying roughly 16 cents a minute. By switching to this, my $100 monthly phone bill is going to drop to $80! That's 20 percent savings off what I THOUGHT was a good program. I don't even have to wait until after business hours to get the low rates! This program is 12.9 cents ALL THE TIME, calling to ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES. If you want more information, please reply with your fax number. I saved what these people sent me and would be happy to send it along to you. If you don't have any accessibility to a fax machine, please give me your address and I'll send printouts along to you. Take a look! This is the best long-distance program I've ever seen. Tom Fellrath tdfellrath@delphi.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Tom, I am wondering why you did not give us the name of the company and their address/phone/fax number so people could contact them directly. By chance, are you a commission sales agent for this wonderful company with their great program? And do you mean to tell me there are no catches at all? No long term contracts, no monthly minimum requirements? Very interesting ... but why don't you want people to contact them directly? Or are *they* the ones that don't want to be contacted directly? ... most MLM programs are like that. Readers, if any of you get anything from Tom on this, please share it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pjk@mcs.com (Peter J. Kerrigan) Subject: Digital PBX Transmission Standards, Devices Date: 31 Jan 1995 12:53:00 -0600 Organization: Joe's Bar and Grill I would like to a more sophisticated Voice Mail interface to my Digital PBX (Intertel GMX-152D), than I currently can with an analog port. I really want access to the signaling and call progress info that's available on the digital lines only. Intertel has no clue how this could work (they only know that model X set plugs into model Y port). Do PBX's use generally accepted standards for digital transmission (such as Bellcore's ISDN) or is it roll-your-own? I looked in lcs.mit.edu:/telecom-archives, no mention of digital telephony. Peter J. Kerrigan pjk@mcs.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Digital telphony is an area that does not have the coverage it should have in the archives, sad to say. Maybe I will get some good files on the topic to include there some day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hari@ctr.columbia.edu (Hari Kalva) Subject: CCITT TCAP Message Format Date: 31 Jan 1995 19:04:49 GMT Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research Hi TCAP experts! I am working on a CCITT(White book) TCAP application. I need some help in the TCAP white book message format. I would like to know the purpose of the DIALOG portion of TCAP message. Also, I would like to get a HEXDUMP of WHITE BOOK TCAP message. Thanks in advance, Ajay Vasanadu NewNet Inc. Monroe, CT Please reply to: hari@ctr.columbia.edu ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 04:03 EST From: bellaire@iquest.net (James Bellaire) Subject: The Cost of Technology I was looking throught the front pages of the local telco directory for Marion, IN (an Ameritech town) when I came across the price list for "custom services." They charge $7.50 for Caller-ID and offer free *67 per call blocking to all customers. I don't want to get into a discussion of how much your telco charges for Caller-ID or any other service. I was just thinking, how much does it cost them? The cost of offering caller ID to the telco is the software that handles the procedure, the hardware that allows that software to work, memory space for that software to reside, maintainance costs for techs that could be fixing something else if CID were not there, etc. Obviously the marketing idea is to spread the capital and upkeep costs across the user base, so a high price for a new service is expected with prices falling when it is accepted and widely used. So cost plus profit = price charged. Now imagine if CID became a basic service, similar to tone dialing. Every line would be given it "free of charge." Of course the basic rate service may need to be bumped up a little in price, since CID does cost the telco something. An area with a 10% subscription rate would need to charge 75c to all customers to 'break even.' An area with a 5% subscription rate would only have to boost the bill 37.5c. So your non-technical "it rings, I answer it and ASK who is calling" neighbors will subsidize the highly technical "my PC VoiceMail takes all blocked and out of area calls; it even blows a whistle and hangs up when I get the CID of teleslease!" type of phone customer. The cost of the software is another interesting question. The telco gets to pay the price set by the writers. How much did it cost the writers? This is where we can get into lots of numbers, including salary for years in development, benifits paid to the software techs, etc. But I digress ... The cost of an item is the price you are willing to pay. The price of the item is set by the person who owns it. If the owner AGREES to give the item to you an a lower price, or free (the best price except when someone pays you to take it from them) you are lucky. And the old owner gets to write down the price he offered you in his income column. If you don't pay the price, you don't get the item. If you take the item without paying the price, you are a thief. And the old owner gets to complain about losing the price he offered you, not his cost, but the price he would have sold it for. If you wouldn't have bought the item at the owners price, even though you disagree with it, IT DOESN'T MATTER. You are still a thief if you take it. If the old owner claims an outrageous price, above that whith they would normally charge, for a stolen item then they are a thief. It doesn't make the original thief any better of a person. Each person must own his own failings, each company its own reputation. If you don't like the way a company does business, go somewhere else. If you can't, buy stock until you can take over the management. Until then be your own person and do right as you should. If another's wrong makes it ok for you to do wrong to them, then your wrong makes it ok for someone to do wrong to you. If you rob the phone company don't complain when someone robs your house, after all your thief was just stealing from a thief that stole from the telco! Something to ponder as you lie down your head tonight. Goodnight, bellaire@iquest.net James E. Bellaire ------------------------------ From: aries@mis.bppt.go.id (Aries Hackerman) Subject: Question About CT2 / Cellular Service Date: 31 Jan 1995 04:08:20 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Hello all, It's common nowadays that several carriers operate on the same telecom services. For example, cellular operators of CT2 standard. Since I'm a kind of 'newcomer' in providing telecom services (cellular) I'd like to know how it works in the sharing methods between two /more operators. That question relates to these subjects: 1. Operation; 2. Project; 3. Interconnection Agreement; 4. Charging / Billing. Illustrations: 1. Operation: The building and maintenance of the base stations Is it 50 - 50 or other method? 2. Interconnection Agreement: suppose subcribers of other operators use 'our' base stations while those operators do not have agreements with us. What's the common method used to solve this kind of situation? 3. Billing / Charging: in case there are 'flat rate users' and 'pulse rate users'. Please reply to 'aries@asterix.bppt.go.id' since we don't have 'direct' news service, yet. I'm particularly interested in providing CT2 service. Many many thanks in advance! If you have any useful information about CT2, it will be very helpful. Aries ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #68 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa01298; 1 Feb 95 0:25 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20741; Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:46:43 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA20734; Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:46:41 CST Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:46:41 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9502010146.AA20734@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #69 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:46:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 69 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson GEnie Services Offers Free Japan Access Until Further Notice (Finkenstadt) Job Posting: Aspect Telecom, CTI Product Marketing Manager (James McDonald) FAQ'S re: Connectivity Options (routers@halcyon.com) Federal Judge Rules Against FCC - Historical Precedent (Bill Sohl) Clock Slips Again (Martin McCormick) Emergency Cellular Phone (Testmark Laboratories) Ericsson GH337/EH237 Cellular Modem I/F (Alfredo E. Cotroneo) Metro Mobile (CT/RI/MA) Added to the NACN (Doug Reuben) Product to Prevent PBX Phone Fraud (Paul Murray) Electro 95 Electronics Conference, June 21-23, Boston (Paul R. Baudisch) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 18:04:16 -0500 From: Andy Finkenstadt Subject: GEnie Services Offers Free Japan Access Until Further Notice January 23, 1995 -- GEnie Services is offering free access to its online service to all current and new GEnie members in Japan to assist in restoring the lives of Kobe and Osaka earthquake victims and establish a communications vehicle both in Japan and around the world. Effective immediately and until further notice, GEnie will waive all usage fees as well as the standard connect fee for all GEnie users in Japan. "The tragedy in Japan has struck all of us. Although too small a token of our desire to help, we hope that free access to the worldwide interconnectivity of the GEnie network and specifically our Japanese roundtable will help concerned citizens around the world keep in contact with affected locals", said Mark Walsh President of GEnie Services. "We hope that life soon returns to normal and wish only that we can help the process." The Japanese roundtable is an online meeting place for users with an interest in Japanese affairs. The forum is accessible to GEnie users around the world. GEnie Services, which became operational in 1985, is one of the leading online information services with subscribers around the world. GEnie had been available in Japan since December 1988. GEnie Services is a part of GE Information Service, Inc., which is headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. For more information about GEnie, send electronic mail to info@genie.com, visit the GEnie gopher (gopher to gopher.GEnie.com), the GEnie web (use an URL of "http://www.GEnie.com"). andy@genie.geis.com Andy Finkenstadt, GEnie Sysop, GEnie Postmaster postmaster@genie.com personal account: genie@panix.com Andrew Finkenstadt andy@genie.geis.com Gaithersburg, MD 301-975-9890 ------------------------------ From: james_mcdonald@interramp.com (James McDonald) Subject: Job Posting: Aspect Telecom, CTI Product Marketing Manager Date: 31 Jan 1995 23:45:09 GMT Organization: Aspect Telecommunications, Inc. Reply-To: pball@cctosmtp.west.aspect.com Aspect Telecommunications, the market leader in stand-alone Automated Call Distribution systems, is announcing the following position: Product Marketing Manager, Computer-Telephony Integration, San Jose, CA ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE POSITION (Include special duties and responsibilities) This senior level Product Marketing Manager will: Perform a catalyst role for Aspect's long-term computer-telephony product strategy and direction. Define market forces, opportunity, and metrics, and paint a long-term CTI product vision for Aspect with ROI analysis and business case justification. Define business expansion and market development strategies for Aspect's CTI product line. Develop marketing requirements for CTI products within the framework of the long-term product vision, and define a roll-out plan for delivering the individual products to market. Develop product positioning, packaging and pricing strategies, and champion the product launch process for CTI products. QUALIFICATIONS (Include technical skills, education and experience): BA/BS; MS/MBA a plus. This person must possess strong technical and business analysis skills in order to quickly assess and remain abreast of the state of the CTI industry. This includes synthesis of any promising new technologies, new applications of technology, standards activities, changes in buyer behavior and expectations, strategic vendor positioning or moves, etc. They must also must possess excellent interpersonal skills to quickly gather and distill information, to build relationships with strategic vendors outside of Aspect and with many key people within Aspect, and to evangelize and champion their CTI-related ideas within Aspect. (Minimum requirements.) Seven or more years experience in one or more of the following areas: product marketing, product management, strategic planning, business development, systems integration, and/or international marketing for advanced telecom or data products. (Preferred qualifications.) Knowledge and experience with CTI products and with systems integration in multi-vendor environments. Please send resume to: Phyllis Ball Aspect Telecommunications, Inc. 1730 Fox Dr. San Jose, CA 95131 or by E-mail in ASCII or Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 format (uuencoded) to: pball@cctosmtp.west.aspect.com ------------------------------ From: routers@halcyon.com Subject: FAQ'S re: Connectivity Options Date: 31 Jan 1995 02:00:45 GMT Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc. This posting may be freely distributed to Internet and commercial online sites. Keywords: UTP distance standards, campus networks connectivity, ethernet, wireless, LAN, microwave, repeaters, video 1. QUESTION: What is the maximum bandwidth that 4-wire copper UTP can handle in campus environments? ANSWER: ---E-1 up to 2.5 miles (4 km) 2. QUESTION: What is the longest distance that 4-wire copper UTP can transmit at T-1 band width? ANSWER: ---5 miles (8 km), up to 7 miles (11.2 km) with a repeater 3. QUESTION: Can you transmit data, voice, and video across 4-wire UTP at the same time without cross-talk? ANSWER: ---Yes 4. QUESTION: What is the maximum distance that ethernet at 10 Mbps can be extended? ANSWER: ---1500 ft (495 m), up to 3000 ft (990 m) with repeater 5. QUESTION: Is there a wireless solution that would allow a campus to connect all buildings together, and allow any PC or laptop computer on campus to communicate, even if they move about the campus? ANSWER: ---Yes. One solution allows building -to- building connections up to 6 miles (9.6 km), and allows any PC or laptop to be on line. It operates at 2 Mbps, has SNMP, and requires no FCC licence. 6. QUESTION: Are there any wireless solutions at 10 Mbps for LAN-to-LAN connections? ANSWER: ---Yes. A microwave solution allows LANs to connect up to 5 miles (8 km). This same system has options that will allow voice, data, and video at the same time, in either 4 -T1 slots, or 8 -T1 slots. The 8 -T1 version can handle 192 voice-grade circuits. For further information and product data sheets, please contact Router Solutions (routers@halcyon.com), or check our FTP site: ftp.halcyon.com /pub/local/routers ------------------------------ From: billsohl@earth.planet.net (Bill Sohl Budd Lake) Subject: Federal Judge Rules Against FCC - Historical Precedent Date: 31 Jan 1995 17:33:27 GMT Organization: Planet Access Networks - Stanhope, NJ I offer the following to the telecom newsgroup as it indirectly relates to an entire series of postings related to the allegation that operation/use of radio receivers/scanners that have been modified is illegal. From the post below relating to the problems the FCC is having just enforcing its laws/regulations against actual pirate broadcasting, is there anyone that can even perceive the FCC has any resources to worry about the thousands of people using and/or modifying radio scanners to receive cellular telephone broadcasts? I think not. As before, don't kill the messenger. I point this out to illustrate the practical side of life and the law as opposed to those that suggested illegal activity was going on by modifying radios. Bottom line is ... no one cares, least of all the FCC. Begin post from misc.legal.moderated newsgroup In another newsgroup, Stephen Dunifer (frbspd@crl.com) wrote: Victory for Micro Power Broadcasting - Historical Defeat for the FCC On Friday, January 20 Federal judge Claudia Wilken refused to grant the Federal Communications Commission a preliminary injunction to stop the micro power broadcasts of Stephen Dunifer and Free Radio Berkeley. Stating serious constitutional concerns as her reason, Judge Wilken denied the request, ordered the FCC to exhaust administrative remedies and to rule on Dunifer's appeal of their $20,000 fine before seeking any further court action. This ruling sets a historical precedent: it is the first time the FCC has been denied an injunction to stop the broadcasts of an unlicensed radio station. The Commission will have to address the issue of the constitutionality of their regulations when ruling on Dunifer's appeal. Any further court proceedings are delayed until the FCC acts on the appeal which has languished in Washington for more than a year. In the meantime the government's attempt to enjoin broadcasting by non- licensed micro radio has been put on hold. Luke Hiken, attorney for Stephen Dunifer, stated, "This is the second time a Federal court has recognized the constitutional implications of micro radio technology. We hope the FCC will recognize the importance of facilitating the use of this technology for the benefit of the American people instead of denying its existence and obstructing its use." Speaking on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications, Peter Franck commented, "The CDC hopes that the court's refusal to enjoin micro radio is the beginning of a recognition by the country that any hope for democracy depends on free access to the airwaves. Micro power broadcasting has the potential for creating a 'green movement' of low-cost, easy-to-use media. It is as totalitarian to require expensive, hard-to-get licenses for micro radio as it would be to say you can only speak from a soap box if it is made of gold." Stephen Dunifer said, "Judge Claudia Wilken's decision affirms the validity of our legal position. Further, this victory is a credit to four years of work by the National Lawyers Guild Committee on Democratic Communications and my attorney, Luke Hiken, on behalf of the micro power broadcasting movement. Unlike FCC attorney, David Silberman, I do not see irreparable harm resulting from micro power broadcasting. Instead, I see an immeasurable benefit for all citizens if the micro power broadcast movement prevails. For too long, media access and the tools of communication have been concentrated in the hands of corporate and essentially anti-democratic interests. If any harm results, it will be to those monopoly interests." For further information contact: Free Radio Berkeley - (510) 644-3779, (510) 464-3041 or Luke Hiken, attorney at law - (415) 705-6460. Email: frbspd@crl.com or hiken@igc.apc.org. Send request to frbspd@crl.com for information packet. Legal briefs and documents are available at our ftp site - ftp.crl.com. Directory path is ftp/users/ro/frbspd/legal. -------------------------- Bill Sohl K2UNK (Budd lake, New Jersey) (billsohl@planet.net) ------------------------------ From: Martin McCormick Subject: Clock Slips Again Date: 31 Jan 1995 19:27:51 GMT Organization: Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK I am pretty sure that we have a chronic case of clock slippage somewhere in the interface between our campus' Ericsson MD110 and the Southwestern Bell trunks. I would like to prove it once and for all. It occurred to me that a modem sending a steady carrier such as is used to establish a 300-baud connection would be a perfect signal generator. It could be placed on a line off-campus and then called from on-campus. An oscilloscope placed on an analog campus line should show clock slips as sudden phase shifts in the carrier. Is this a valid test? If so, we could show the phase shifts through such a line and then demonstrate that no such problems occur on campus or between two Southwestern Bell lines. Any suggestions are appreciated since the feeling is that there is really nothing wrong because the lines all sound clean and voice calls don't get dropped. With a 2025hz tone, a clock slip should advance or retard the carrier 90 degrees which should truly destroy the phase component of a data transmission. Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK OSU Computer Center Data Communications Group ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 18:00 EST From: Testmark Laboratories <0006718446@mcimail.com> Subject: Emergency Cellular Phone I once heard of a cellular phone that was intended primarily for emergency use, something to carry in a car for instance. One could purchase it, have it authorized, and pay no monthly fee. If one used it, they paid a fairly high per minute airtime that was automatically charged to a major credit card. Does anyone know of a product like this? John Combs, Project Engineer, TestMark Labs, testmark@mcimail.com ------------------------------ From: 100020.1013@compuserve.com (Alfredo E. Cotroneo) Subject: Ericsson GH337/EH237 Cellular Modem I/F Date: 31 Jan 1995 14:56:13 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway I am looking for information on availability of cellular modem I/F for the Ericsson GSM GH337 model, and for the European TACS version EH237. For both models the modem I/Fs are not apparently on sale (yet) on the Italian market. An Italian reseller also told me that in it is not possible (yet?) to operate any modem/data communication over the Italian GSM network; I made some experiment myself sending a modem signal over the voice channel, but had no success, apparently for the losses induced by the quantization/compression on GSM. I would be most interested in knowing your experiences -- good or bad -- with the use of the GSM version of this phone, for both voice and data (?). Please cc by e-mail to : 100020.1013@compuserve.com, since I do not get a regular news-feed. Thanks, Alfredo Cotroneo Milano, Italy ------------------------------ From: dreuben@interpage.net (Doug Reuben) Subject: Metro Mobile (CT/RI/MA) Added to the NACN Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 13:23:46 EST After years of holding out, Metro Mobile CT/RI/Western and Southeastern Mass (collectively known as Bell Atlantic's Northeast service area) has been added to the NACN. The NACN, or North American Cellular Network, is the A-side's automatic call delivery service, initiated by McCaw Cellular and some of it's roaming partners, to provide increasingly seamless coverage throughout the US and Canada. Prior to Metro Mobile's addition to the NACN, Metro Mobile CT and Western Mass customers had the use of most of their features as well as call-delivery to Cell One/NY, ComCast/NJ-PA-DE, Metro Mobile/RI-SE Mass, Cell One/Boston, and CO/Boston's Concord, NH "partnership" service with Atlantic Cellular. So the addition of the NACN won't make too much of a difference in terms of added coverage near Metro Mobile's territory. Moreover, Metro Mobile, unlike CO/NY, will assess a roam charge for most (all) markets outside of it's properties, Boston, and NY. Additionally, the link between NY and CT (and everywhere else) seems to lack the functionality of a typical NACN link. I've noticed that ALL features normally available to a customer on his/her home system are also available on a visited system (although some switches won't allow this.) Thus, Cell One/Boston customers can *successfully* set up and remove voicemail from most NACN systems, as well as get call-waiting, yet on Metro Mobile's switches, the same Boston customer will find that none of these features will work. Additionally, Metro Mobile customers roaming in NY can not, for example, forward calls to voicemail, selectively unforward unconditional forward calls (by using *723), etc., even though these same features are currently available to Boston customers roaming in NY, and even though both Boston and CT use the same type of switches (Motorola EMX-2500). I've asked CO/NY for years to put in the *723 code so I could use forwarding in NY without killing voicemail, but they were never able to implement it, so it seems as if the same old link to CT is still in place, but somehow Metro Mobile is now "on" the NACN in some limited way. (If they were "fully" connected, I'd expect to be able to use my features in NY or SF or wherever to the same extent that I can use my Boston them from my Boston account.) Additionally, the standard NACN Do Not Disturb codes (*350/*35) will NOT work in NY, instead, the older Motorola codes (*28/*29) are required. In any event, this finally allows most roamers to get automatic call delivery in the Rhode Island system, which has been slow to get any connectivity outside of Boston and CT in recent years. Any NACN customer should now be able to receive calls in RI, use (some) features, etc. RI customers should now be able to receive calls in NY, although they will pay a $3 daily and $.99 per minute. If you are a RI customer, and roam into NY a good deal, get Boston account, which offers no daily roam charge, and 44 peak/29 off-peak. You still have to pay Boston's outrageous home airtime for call-delivery though. Maybe just get a NYNEX account instead and be done with all these silly charges from Metro Mobile and Cell One/Boston, both of whom seem to want to nickel and dime their customers as much as possible. (I still can't see how Boston customers put up with home airtime charges, plus roaming charges, plus a daily roam charge, plus a $2 Boston charge, just to receive phone calls! :( ) Note that Metro Mobile's addition and lack of some features does NOT affect Litchfield, CT, which has been on the NACN since October 1994 (or earlier), and seems to be run through CO/NY's switches. (They are both McCaw owned and have the same messages on their switch/error announcements.) Doug Reuben dreuben@interpage.net (203) 499 - 5221 Interpage Network Services -- E-Mail/Telnet to Alpha or Numeric Pagers & Fax ------------------------------ From: ai093@freenet.carleton.ca (Paul Murray) Subject: Product to Prevent PBX Phone Fraud Reply-To: ai093@freenet.carleton.ca (Paul Murray) Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 12:26:29 GMT Pat, A short while ago, I posted an item enquiring about phone fraud, extent of the problem, etc. You asked for details, in your editorial message following my posting. As I am an agent of the company which owns the technology, I wanted to get their OK before releasing information. They have given that OK. Here is a brief summary: (note that I'm a layman and not a techie) The Call Control System CCS is a controlled access gateway which provides an additional layer of security to the fraud vulnerable components of a PBX system. By validating the call origin using the Calling Line ID (CLID) and an authorization code, the CCS limits access to the DISA ports, maintain- enance ports and voice mail systems of a PBX. The CCS is a combination of Canadian software and hardware. There are three components to the system: Call Control Manager (CCM) software; System Administration Manager (SAM) software; and Call Control Interface hardware. The intial application was developed for a long distance reseller. To date this application has not had any unauthorized access. The traffic runs over 15 million calls per month. The company that developed the system is now offering the technology to the general narketplace. Acquistion cost to users will run in the $20,000 range for the system. This is the general concept. If you would like to know more, I would be pleased to follow up. We think this product will have appeal in the US market (and anywhwere else that phone fraud is a problem) and would be pleased to have your feedback, etc ... Look forward to hearing from you (question from a nephyte Internet user - do you "hear" from someone using this medium??) Best regards, Paul Murray Targeted Communication Management, Ottawa Canada ------------------------------ From: Paul R. Baudisch Subject: Electro 95 Electronics Conference, June 21-23, Boston Date: 31 Jan 1995 22:18:32 GMT Organization: The Internet Access Company Electro '95 is a major electronics conference and exposition to be held in Boston, June 21 - 23, 1995. The show, sponsored by the IEEE in alliance with the IPC (Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits), will highlight important trends in surface mount technology and contract manufacturing. Over 8,000 attendees are expected. Marjorie Clapprood, a popular Boston talk show hostess and 1990 candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, will deliver the keynote address on June 21. She will speak about the business climate in the Northeast and its impact on the electronics industry. For more information, please visit our web site at: http://www.netmarquee.com/electro/electro.html or contact Kathryn Piersall at kpiersall@mfi.com. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V15 #69 ***************************** Received: from delta.eecs.nwu.edu by MINTAKA.LCS.MIT.EDU id aa02733; 1 Feb 95 2:54 EST Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA24385; Tue, 31 Jan 95 22:11:48 CST Return-Path: Received: by delta.eecs.nwu.edu (4.1/SMI-4.0-proxy) id AA24377; Tue, 31 Jan 95 22:11:46 CST Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 22:11:46 CST From: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Digest (Patrick Townson)) Message-Id: <9502010411.AA24377@delta.eecs.nwu.edu> To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V15 #70 TELECOM Digest Tue, 31 Jan 95 22:11:00 CST Volume 15 : Issue 70 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NYNEX Offers Unlimited Weekends (Stan Schwartz) Cellphone Car Antennas - Passive Repeaters Any Good? (Charles Beatty) SONET Telephony Engineer Needed ASAP (imi@bilbo.pic.net) Billing Data Formats LD Carriers <-> RBOCs (Antony Upward) Help Wanted With Nokia 6050 GSM Car Phone (Jurgen Morhofer) For Sale: Motorola Codex 6525 (Benoit Maneckjee) AT&T 500 Number Problems (Matthew Spaethe) AudioText Applications (Richard Cayne) Another Look at the 'Old Days' (Dale Neiburg) Test Line Directory (Steve Coleman) Re: Cellular in Israel (Steve Samler) What to Look For in Choosing an LD Carrier? (Steve Chinatti) Strange Stuff (Stan Schwartz) Looking For High-Speed Wireless Tech (Roger Bergstrom) Looking For Chip Modem V22 (perretc@eiga.unige.ch) Using a Laptop Modem With ATT Public Phones (Thomas Hinders) Planning to Start a Pager Network (Thu Ra Tin) Pac-Tel New Standard Plus Phones (Dan Srebnick) Re: Radio Station Transmission Lines (Alan Sterger) Re: Bell Atlantic ISDN, Part II (Dan Brown) Last Laugh! Career Opportunities With the RBOCs (David McCord) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: 9457-D Niles Center Road Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 708-329-0571 Fax: 708-329-0572 ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Additionally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 17:37:51 EST From: Stan Schwartz Subject: NYNEX Offers Unlimited Weekends As per the ad in today's {Long Island Newsday}, this is NYNEX Cellular's current New York area promotion: One Year Contract: $29.99/month 30 minutes included (peak or off-peak) .69 peak/.45 off-peak beyond 30 minutes HERE'S THE KICKER: Free weekend calls through July. (home region) Not only is NYNEX the first in the NY Metro area to offer the unlimited weekend plans that the rest of the country offers, but their rates are lower than Cell One and their off-peak band begins at 8pm, rather than 9pm. Once again, I am forced to re-think my cellular choice! Stan ------------------------------ From: beatty@access3.digex.net (Charles Beatty) Subject: Cellphone Car Antennas - Passive Repeaters Any Good? Date: 31 Jan 1995 23:03:55 GMT Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA I am considering buying one of those passive repeater antennas for my car to get my portable cellphone signal out of the vehicle. You know the type, a piece inside the glass with a small horizontal antenna, no wires, about $60 from Hello Direct. Are these things any good. I use the phone in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Any comments? ------------------------------ From: imi@bilbo.pic.net (imi) Subject: SONET Telephony Engineer Needed ASAP Date: 31 Jan 1995 03:28:29 GMT Organization: imi Major project in Dallas, TX needs High Level SONET Engineer to conduct JAD sessions, Analysis and Design to assist Major LDS company. Phase I starting in Feb. - please contact us ASAP. IMI Systems, Inc. 800-828-0180 Press #3 for Dallas Office Press #113 for info pertaining to opportunities ... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 17:36:34 -0500 From: upward@hookup.net (Antony Upward) Subject: Billing Data Formats LD Carriers <-> RBOCs Organization: KPMG Management Consulting I am looking to understand how LD carriers pass billing data to RBOCs for inclusion on subscribers local statements. I believe there is a standard data interchange protocol between LD carriers and RBOCs for this data. Can anyone supply details of this protocol. Many thanks, Antony Upward = Voice: +1 416 691 1560 = Internet: upward@hookup.net Fax: +1 416 691 3694 = 24 Devon Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 2J8 KPMG Management Consulting, Business Systems and Technology Suite 3300, Commerce Court West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5L 1B2 Voice: +1 416 777 8791 = X.400: /C=CA/S=UPWARD/G=ANTONY/P=KPMG/A=MARK400 ------------------------------ Reply-To: morhofer@heavyfun.com Date: Tue, Jan 31 1995 12:50:36 GMT From: Jurgen.Morhofer.morhofer@heavyfun.com Subject: Help Wanted With Nokia 6050 GSM Car Phone Recently I bought a Nokia 6050 GSM car phone with built-in hands-free-kit and I experienced some trouble with my antenna. Before switching to GSM I had a NEC P3 (ETACS version; the same system that is used in UK and Austria too) with a Hands-Free-Kit and external antenna. During installation of the new Nokia phone I connected the existing antenna, that always had worked fine with my NEC P3, to it. When making phone calls everything works fine if I use the handset but in case of using the hands-free option the called or calling party on the other side hears some very loud interference-like sounds mixed together with my voice. First I thought that the hands-free section of my phone would be defect but then by case I tried to turn off my antenna leaving the antenna cable connected to my phone and surprise, surprise, everything was perfect. I called Nokia Customer service but their representitive did not understand very much about GSM phones as they are still not very popular here in Italy. For now I attached a small FM-antenna to cover the ugly knob that comes out of my trunk, but I'm afraid to burn my amplifier (8W) without a proper antenna. Who has any idea of what happened and what I should do? Please e-mail to morhofer@heavyfun.com. Thanks in advance, Jurgen ------------------------------ From: bmaneckj@random.ucs.mun.ca (Benoit Maneckjee) Subject: For Sale: Motorola Codex 6525 Date: 31 Jan 1995 17:33:16 GMT Organization: NLnet Spare Unit, Never Used. Originally purchased from Motorola Canada in 1992. SPECIFICATIONS: Modulus 18 Slot Enclosure with 1 Power Supply 6525 CPU Card (Switch) with 2 80K WAN Ports, 4 high speed ports Network Port Card w/ 6 high speed ports PAD port card with 6 19.2K ports V 2.10 SW dor 6525 6500 SN?SDLC Firmware (applies to all high speed ports) Complete with all documentation & original invoices Frame relay ready with firmware upgrade Willing to part with entire unit or spare parts. Am willing to trade for a router or Unix Workstation. Originally paid CDN $17,000 wholesale from Motorola; will part with it for much less - need cash. Please EMAIL serious enquires only to: bmaneckj@random.ucs.mun.ca Benoit Maneckjee President, SiNET Corporation ------------------------------ From: mspaethe@umr.edu (Matthew Spaethe) Subject: AT&T 500 Number Problems Date: 31 Jan 1995 23:50:10 GMT Organization: UMR My 500 number isn't scheduled to be ready until Feb 3, but I've been trying it pretty much everyday. Well, AT&T completed the call today (the local switch has been accepting 1-500-367-XXXX for sometime) and the only billing option was calling card. Well, I tried that, and someone other than me answered the phone. I have no idea who it was, but I guess I'll have the number when I receive my calling card bill! Matt :) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, you have gotten a lot further with it than I have here. My 500 number was supposed to be turned on yesterday, January 30. Still no go as of Tuesday evening, January 31. The AT&T rep suggested calling the Illinois Commerce Commission and asking them to ask Ameritech to unblock 500. A call to the ICC got me the response that 'so far as they knew' (the ICC), there was nothing yet tariffed for 500 here. AT&T said try using it via 800-225-5288 (CALL-ATT), but guess what? That didn't work either. Since my long distance service is defaulted to AT&T I tried double zero, and ask the operator to get it for me. After asking someone what to do, she tried dialing it and it went nowhere. She said it was 'blocked' in her computer and would not 'leave'. I am sure the AT&T billing department is more effecient and that I will be billed for this month anyway, just as I was for last month. :( PAT] ------------------------------ From: r_cayne@pavo.concordia.ca (Richard Cayne) Subject: AudioText Applications Date: 31 Jan 1995 09:23 -0500 Organization: Concordia University Please send details on audiotext applications currently in use by retailers to better serve their clients. Am interested in contacting these organizations to explore how effective are their systems. Regards, Richard email address: r_cayne@pavo.concordia.ca Tel: (514) 488 7110 Fax: (514) 488 1629 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 13:12:34 EST From: DNEIBURG@npr.org Subject: Another Look at the 'Old Days' In TELECOM Digest, v15/58, the Moderator wrote: > When I was in high school, 1956-60, the school gave us the 'option' > of using ball-point pens instead of fountain pens, although the latter > were preferred. In my high school days (1959-63), ball-point pens were also allowed, fountain pens preferred. Curiously, during my later university years I first encountered some classes where fountain pens were required for exams. > large city where television stations could be received. A few people > had television sets as early as 1946-47. Our family got one in 1949; > it had a two or three inch screen that was totally round with a very > large magnifying glass attachment which hooked on the front of it. It Our first set was a '46 model, as I recall. It was an RCA with a screen about eight inches diagonal, in a cabinet about three feet long, a foot and a half deep, and about the same height. If memory serves, it weighed about 100 pounds -- but by the standard of the time, RCA called it a "portable". It was one of very few sets I've ever seen with channel 1 on the tuner. That channel space (44-50 MHz) was originally intended for low-power stations to serve smaller towns, but was quickly taken away for FM broadcasting, which was then moved to 88-108 MHz. > Five digit numbers were common in communities which had automatic dialing > systems in those days but only one exchange in the community. Since the > exchange name was always the same, it was assumed when dialing. In your When we moved to a new house in Washington, DC, in 1953, we still had a six-digit number (actually 2 letters/4 digits: KEllogg 1528), but very soon after it received an extra digit and became KE7-1528. Ten years later, my parents retired and moved to a little town in the western "corner" of South Carolina. They had a modern seven-digit number (646-nnnn, previously released as MIlton 6-nnnn: I have no idea who "Milton" was), but since the entire town was on the same exchange, only four digits needed to be dialed to reach anyone else in town. I don't believe seven-digit local dialing became mandatory until about 1970. Dale Neiburg, STC National Public Radio Phone: 202-414-2640 635 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 Internet: dneiburg@npr.org [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Channel 1 was gone from television sets by around 1949-50 I guess. There is a national organization which provides educational (but some say infomercial) television to school students on closed circuit called 'Channel One'; you may have heard of them. I have a General Electric portable color television which still goes up all the way to Channel 83; so you can guess how old it is. Most folks are unaware there is a HUGE gap in the frequency spectrum for television between Channels 6 and 7. Where Channel 6 ends at about 88 megs, Channel 7 does not start until about 175 megs, way up in VHF. About thirty years ago when FM radios were still sort of new (they had been around for twenty years, but not for over fifty years like now) a religious station called WYCA went on the air in Hammond, Indiana, around 88-90 megs someplace. We have discussed *them* here in the past, a few years ago when thier station was the cause of many complaints to the FCC. In those days, around 1962-63 they had the nerve to tell people, 'if you do not have an FM receiver, you can still listen to the Word of God daily on this station by putting your television set on Channel 6 then moving the fine tuning dial until you hear our signal.' How's that for brass? By the way, 'Milton' was Milton Berle, one of the first people to appear on your 1946 television set. PAT] ------------------------------ From: stevecoleman@delphi.com (Steve Coleman) Subject: Test Line Directory Date: 31 Jan 1995 20:39:21 GMT Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation Does anybody know of an FTP site where a list of test lines can obtained? I am looking specfically for 102 type test lines by NPA-NXX. I know that Pacbell and GTE in Southern California use NPA-NXX-0002 as a standard for the 102 test. In Northern California Pacbell uses NPA-NXX-0020 for the most part. USWest also uses the NPA-NXX-0020 format in most parts of Oregon and Washington. If anybody knows a standard format for other regions, I would also appreciate that information if the test line directory is not available. Thanks in advance, Steve Coleman stevecoleman@delphi.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 14:44:59 EST From: Steve Samler Subject: Re: Cellular in Israel Celcomm is in NYC; their fax is 212 752 1157. The international division of SWBell is in the UK. I have a phone number 44 483 751 756. By the way, SWBell has most of their headquarters in San Antonio now. Most everybody who was in St. Louis is now there. ------------------------------ From: chinatti@SRTC.COM (Steve Chinatti) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 10:43:24 -0500 Subject: What to Look For in Choosing an LD Carrier? Well, I've been following this and some of the other related newsgroups for a while, and I've finally decided to try to pick a good LD carrier to cut down on my LD bills. I use about $60+/mo. in LD for one residential line, so I don't expect any earth shattering savings, but I figure that I shouldn't pay any more than I have to. I know from reading articles here that I can do much better than the big three, and I realize that I'll have to do a little leg work for this. The big problem is that I'm not sure exactly what I should be looking for, specifically what questions to ask and what pitfalls I should look out for. I've heard of LD resellers, six second increment billing; are there any other important issues? Should I be concerned with who the resellers are reselling from? Is there a good starting point for finding LD carriers that don't advertise much (my Yellow Pages lists only two companies in the Long Distance heading)? How about LD calls not carried by my LD carrier (i.e. in my area code, covered by Bell Atlantic)? Is there anything that I'm not asking that I should be? Also, I'll be adding a cellular phone soon, and is there any way that I can get a better rate by virtue of having two accounts with an LD carrier? Thanks in advance for any information that anyone can provide. Steve Chinatti [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would refer your questions to that genius Marilyn Von Savant -- the smartest person in the world with an extremely high IQ whose column appears each week in {Parade Magazine} -- but the last time someone asked her the same question you are asking here, namely which long distance company to pick, she admitted that even she was unable to answer that one. Put the names of several carriers in a hat. Close your eyes, reach in and pick one. Live with it for a few months, then try one of the others. PAT] ------------------------------ From: stans@panix.com (Stan Schwartz) Subject: Strange Stuff Date: 31 Jan 1995 14:58:31 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC I was driving home last night and saw this sign on a bar: "Tonight: Live music with 'Star 69'" I wonder if any other CLASS service has its own band. Stan ------------------------------ From: roger.bergstrom@lkab.se Subject: Looking For High-Speed Wireless Tech Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 16:02:29 PDT Organization: Unisource Business Networks Sweden AB LKAB, a northern Swedish mining company, is planning to use remotely operated loaders in the production levels of the underground iron mine in Kiruna. The loaders will be fully automated and operated and monitored by operators above ground. Each loader will be equipped with up to 4 CCD-cameras. For the moment we are investigating the possibilities to transfer data from and to the remote machines. Since the loaders are mobile we've considered some kind of some broad-band wire-less technology (spread-spectrum). The data transfer is divided into three categories, the transfer of digitalized video signals the transfer of status information from the loader and the transfer of steering information from the operator to the loader. Anybody out there heard of: - the possibility for high-speed wireless transmission of data and video? - any suppliers of such a system? - any similar works or studies? - conferenses? Please mail any information to roger.bergstrom@lkab.se. ------------------------------ From: perretc@eiga.unige.ch Subject: Looking For Chip Modem V22 Organization: E.I.G Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 01:37:38 GMT Hello, I'm looking for a modem chip who can do V22 and his alimentation (power) have to be 3.3 Volt. Thanks if you can E-mail me the answer. Perretc@eig.unige.ch Perret Cedric. ------------------------------ Date: 31 Jan 1995 21:43:21 EDT Reply-To: THINDER@SOFTSW.SSW.COM From: Hinders, Thomas Subject: Using a Laptop Modem With ATT Public Phones The instruction for using the Data Port on the ATT Public phones are confusing (dialing the line waiting for the modem to answer). Why can't you dial-through? Thanks in advance ... reply directly and I'll summarize and re-post. Tom Hinders thinder@ssw.com Lotus Dev ------------------------------ From: thura@crl.com (Thu Ra